It is, to be sure, more difficult to establish fixed values upon a broad basis of human life than upon a narrow one. More difficult were the problems that confronted Euripides the Pan-Hellene, than Sophocles the Athenian. There is a contrast in technical perfection, between the work of Balzac the Frenchman, and Daudet the adoptive Parisian; between that of Kipling the imperialist, and Bridges the Englander; between that of Ibsen the cosmopolitan, and Björnson the Norwegian. But in all these instances the loss in classical perfection is vastly overbalanced by the gain in human worth. There were poets and dramatists in Scandinavia before the days of Holberg. They had an elaborate canon, all the rules of which were violated by Holberg's iconoclastic cosmopolitanism. What has become of the works of Holberg's predecessors? No one can read them. But Holberg was never so widely read and honored as today.
A broader and more liberal humanity than the world has known before—such, after all, is the evolving soul of capitalism. This does not indicate, however, that capitalism will last forever, or deserves immortality. There comes a time when the most responsive body becomes a clog upon the soul, and should accordingly be buried. The body of capitalism is none too responsive; therefore we may be certain that it must, in the end, be discarded. What the succeeding order will be, no man can forecast. But it will not be one of unbridled individualism; for a spirit of fraternity, transcending that imposed by capitalism, will carry the principle of coöperation to lengths beyond present dreams. And it will not be Socialism; for the spirit of toleration and freedom, now only germinating, will have attained to its full efflorescence in institutions that guarantee a range of personal development not compatible with the well-regimented scheme of a Socialistic state. Capitalism will disappear; but can we doubt that it will be honored in history as a most significant stage in the progress of the human soul towards liberty?
A SOCIOLOGICAL NIGHTMARE
Τὰ μῶρα γὰρ πάντ' ἐστὶν Αφροδίτη βροτοῖς.
Eur. Troad. 989.
The wise Hecuba accused the frail Helen of throwing upon Aphrodite blame which really belonged to no one but Helen herself. Can it be that, now the whole world has turned sociologist, many of us are guilty of throwing upon poor society blame that ought solely to attach to us as would-be students of society? When emancipated spirits give utterance to their views with regard to the iniquities of the man-ruled world of the past, and describe the ideal eugenic world of the future, in which woman is to be man's superior, and the family a new thing under heaven, one wonders how far the nature of the views and the character of the vision are determined by the deficiencies, and how far by the exceptional endowments, mental and moral, of the critic and prophet. When economists cross their scientific hearts, and assure us on their honor as impartial students that, however much they may regret to announce its speedy demise, the monogamous family is a doomed institution, one is tempted to ask whether a few shrivelling leaves of a brief season would be reliable authorities with regard to the condition of a large tree at its roots. To anyone who inquires whether a metaphor or an analogy is an argument, we will say that we have known political economists who spoke of themselves and their work in terms indistinguishable from those employed by students of the so-called physical sciences.
We are free to confess that these perhaps inconsequential remarks proceed from a middle aged person who is not a sociologist, or an economist, or even an adept in the New History. That we make any remarks at all is due to the fact that, as our title perhaps indicates, a little too much sociological diet has induced in us a condition analogous to nightmare. When a small boy of our acquaintance, in a family not yet extinct, is afflicted with this disorder, he invariably screams out lustily and runs to his mother. Following his example as nearly as manners and circumstances permit, we vent our feelings in The Unpopular Review.
"But who forces you, in this free country, to feed upon sociological diet?" This hypothetical question from a hypothetical reader admits of an easy reply. It is impossible to earn one's living pent up in a barricaded study, reading Greek; and outside of such a fastness, how can one escape the amateur sociologist? He intrudes himself into your most select circle at your club. He, or she, sends you through the mail notices of "thon's" books and lectures. He preaches at you if you go to church, and you make him an excuse for staying away. He assails your ears at college commencements. He makes the Congressional Record duller. He solicits your vote for this and that candidate, on the ground that they are advocates of a new freedom, or exponents of a progressive social and political movement, or, at the very least, stanch friends of the people. He writes editorials and letters in your morning and evening newspapers, and articles in your favorite magazine. He punishes you for your weakness in attending a public dinner. He—or rather she—airs his—or rather her—most advanced ideas when you are just beginning to sip your afternoon cup of tea, and you are fortunate if, in your disgust, you do not play havoc with the china of your hostess. Avoid sociological diet in the year of our Lord one thousand, nine hundred and fourteen? It was far easier to avoid the Plague in the year sixteen hundred and sixty-five.
We admit frankly that the amateur sociologist is not the only person our weak nerves dread. We avoid a Pragmatist and a New Realist almost as assiduously, and with but slightly more success. Latter-day novelists, poets, statesmen, and educators, "uplift-men" in general, and advocates of scientific efficiency in particular, preachers of social service who blandly assume both that society wants their services and that they have services to render, when what is chiefly apparent is their own need of education—these and other sons of thunder too numerous to mention have given us many a bad quarter of an hour. But it is the amateur sociologist alone who is able to give us a nightmare.