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Mankind In The Making
By
H. G. Wells
Contents
II -
THE PROBLEM OF THE BIRTH SUPPLY
III
- CERTAIN WHOLESALE ASPECTS OF MAN-MAKING..
IV -
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MIND AND LANGUAGE.
V -
THE MAN-MAKING FORCES OF THE MODERN STATE.
VII
- POLITICAL AND SOCIAL INFLUENCES.
VIII
- THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION..
IX -
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE HIGHER EDUCATION..
APPENDIX
- A PAPER ON ADMINISTRATIVE AREAS READ BEFORE THE FABIAN SOCIETY
PREFACE=
It may save misunderstanding if a w=
ord or
so be said here of the aim and scope of this book. It is written in relatio=
n to
a previous work, Anticipations, [Footnote: Published by Harper Bros.] and t=
ogether
with that and a small pamphlet, "The Discovery of the Future," [F=
ootnote:
Nature, vol. lxv. (1901-2), p. 326, and reprinted in the Smithsonian Report=
for
1902] presents a general theory of social development and of social and
political conduct. It is an attempt to deal with social and political quest=
ions
in a new way and from a new starting-point, viewing the whole social and
political world as aspects of one universal evolving scheme, and placing all
social and political activities in a defined relation to that; and to this
general method and trend it is that the attention of the reader is especial=
ly directed.
The two books and the pamphlet together are to be regarded as an essay in
presentation. It is a work that the writer admits he has undertaken primari=
ly
for his own mental comfort. He is remarkably not qualified to assume an
authoritative tone in these matters, and he is acutely aware of the many
defects in detailed knowledge, in temper, and in training these papers
collectively display. He is aware that at such points, for example, as the
reference to authorities in the chapter on the biological problem, and to b=
ooks
in the educational chapter, the lacunar quality of his reading and knowledg=
e is
only too evident; to fill in and complete his design--notably in the fourth
paper--he has had quite frankly to jerry-build here and there. Nevertheless=
, he
ventures to publish this book. There are phases in the development of every
science when an incautious outsider may think himself almost necessary, when
sketchiness ceases to be a sin, when the mere facts of irresponsibility and=
an
untrained interest may permit a freshness, a freedom of mental gesture that
would be inconvenient and compromising for the specialist; and such a phase=
, it
is submitted, has been reached in this field of speculation. Moreover, the =
work
attempted is not so much special and technical as a work of reconciliation,=
the
suggestion of broad generalizations upon which divergent specialists may me=
et,
a business for non-technical expression, and in which a man who knows a lit=
tle
of biology, a little of physical science, and a little in a practical way of
social stratification, who has concerned himself with education and aspired=
to
creative art, may claim in his very amateurishness a special qualification.=
And
in addition, it is particularly a business for some irresponsible writer,
outside the complications of practical politics, some man who, politically,=
"doesn't
matter," to provide the first tentatives of a political doctrine that
shall be equally available for application in the British Empire and in the
United States. To that we must come, unless our talk of co-operation, of
reunion, is no more than sentimental dreaming. We have to get into line, and
that we cannot do while over here and over there men hold themselves bound =
by
old party formulae, by loyalties and institutions, that are becoming, that =
have
become, provincial in proportion to our new and wider needs. My instances a=
re
commonly British, but all the broad project of this book--the discussion of=
the
quality of the average birth and of the average home, the educational schem=
e,
the suggestions for the organization of literature and a common language, t=
he
criticism of polling and the jury system, and the ideal of a Republic with =
an
apparatus of honour--is, I submit, addressed to, and could be adopted by, a=
ny
English-reading and English-speaking man. No doubt the spirit of the inquir=
y is
more British than American, that the abandonment of Rousseau and anarchic
democracy is more complete than American thought is yet prepared for, but t=
hat
is a difference not of quality but of degree. And even the appendix, which =
at a
hasty glance may seem to be no more than the discussion of British parochia=
l boundaries,
does indeed develop principles of primary importance in the fundamental sch=
ism
of American politics between the local State government and the central pow=
er.
So much of apology and explanation I owe to the reader, to the contemporary
specialist, and to myself.
These papers were
first published in the British Fortnightly Review and in the American
Cosmopolitan. In the latter periodical they were, for the most part, printed
from uncorrected proofs set up from an early version. This periodical
publication produced a considerable correspondence, which has been of very
great service in the final revision. These papers have indeed been honoured=
by
letters from men and women of almost every profession, and by a really very
considerable amount of genuine criticism in the British press. Nothing, I
think, could witness more effectually to the demand for such discussions of
general principle, to the need felt for some nuclear matter to crystallize =
upon
at the present time, however poor its quality, than this fact. Here I can o=
nly
thank the writers collectively, and call their attention to the more practi=
cal
gratitude of my frequently modified text.
I would, however,
like to express my especial indebtedness to my friend, Mr. Graham Wallas, w=
ho
generously toiled through the whole of my typewritten copy, and gave me much
valuable advice, and to Mr. C. G. Stuart Menteath for some valuable referen=
ces.
=
&nb=
sp; =
H. G. WELLS. =
&nb=
sp; =
SANDGATE,
July, 1903.
Toleration to-day is becoming a dif=
ferent
thing from the toleration of former times. The toleration of the past consi=
sted
very largely in saying, "You are utterly wrong and totally accurst, th=
ere
is no truth but my truth and that you deny, but it is not my place to destr=
oy
you and so I let you go." Nowadays there is a real disposition to acce=
pt the
qualified nature of one's private certainties. One may have arrived at very
definite views, one may have come to beliefs quite binding upon one's self,
without supposing them to be imperative upon other people. To write "I
believe" is not only less presumptuous and aggressive in such matters =
than
to write "it is true," but it is also nearer the reality of the c=
ase.
One knows what seems true to one's self, but we are coming to realize that =
the
world is great and complex, beyond the utmost power of such minds as ours.
Every day of life drives that conviction further home. And it is possible to
maintain that in perhaps quite a great number of ethical, social, and polit=
ical
questions there is no absolute "truth" at all--at least for finite
beings. To one intellectual temperament things may have a moral tint and
aspect, differing widely from that they present to another; and yet each ma=
y be
in its own way right. The wide differences in character and quality between=
one
human being and another may quite conceivably involve not only differences =
in
moral obligation, but differences in fundamental moral aspect--we may act a=
nd
react upon each other towards a universal end, but without any universally
applicable rule of conduct whatever. In some greater vision than mine, my r=
ight
and wrong may be no more than hammer and anvil in the accomplishment of a
design larger than I can understand. So that these papers are not written
primarily for all, nor with the same intention towards all who read them. T=
hey
are designed first for those who are predisposed for their reception. Then =
they
are intended to display in an orderly manner a point of view, and how things
look from that point of view, to those who are not so predisposed. These la=
tter
will either develop into adherents as they read, or, what is more likely, t=
hey
will exchange a vague disorderly objection for a clearly defined and unders=
tood
difference. To arrive at such an understanding is often for practical purpo=
ses
as good as unanimity; for in narrowing down the issue to some central point=
or principle,
we develop just how far those who are divergent may go together before
separation or conflict become inevitable, and save something of our time an=
d of
our lives from those misunderstandings, and those secondary differences of =
no
practical importance whatever, which make such disastrous waste of human
energy.
Now the point of =
view
which will be displayed in relation to a number of wide questions in these
pages is primarily that of the writer's. But he hopes and believes that amo=
ng
those who read what he has to say, there will be found not only many to
understand, but some to agree with him. In many ways he is inclined to beli=
eve
the development of his views may be typical of the sort of development that=
has
gone on to a greater or lesser extent in the minds of many of the younger m=
en
during the last twenty years, and it is in that belief that he is now prese=
nting
them.
And the questions
that will be dealt with in relation to this point of view are all those
questions outside a man's purely private self--if he have a purely private
self--in which he interacts with his fellow-man. Our attempt will be to put=
in
order, to reduce to principle, what is at present in countless instances a =
mass
of inconsistent proceedings, to frame a general theory in accordance with
modern conditions of social and political activity.
This is one man's
proposal, his attempt to supply a need that has oppressed him for many year=
s, a
need that he has not only found in his own schemes of conduct, but that he =
has
observed in the thought of numberless people about him, rendering their act=
ion
fragmentary, wasteful in the gross, and ineffective in the net result, the =
need
for some general principle, some leading idea, some standard, sufficiently =
comprehensive
to be of real guiding value in social and political matters, in many doubtf=
ul
issues of private conduct, and throughout the business of dealing with one's
fellow-men. No doubt there are many who do not feel such a need at all, and
with these we may part company forthwith; there are, for example, those who
profess the artistic temperament and follow the impulse of the moment, and
those who consult an inner light in some entirely mystical manner. But neit=
her
of these I believe is the most abundant type in the English-speaking
communities. My impression is that with most of the minds I have been able =
to examine
with any thoroughness, the attempt to systematize one's private and public
conduct alike, and to reduce it to spacious general rules, to attempt, if n=
ot
to succeed, in making it coherent, consistent, and uniformly directed, is an
almost instinctive proceeding.
There is an objec=
tion
I may anticipate at this point. If I am to leave this statement unqualified=
, it
would certainly be objected that such a need is no more nor less than the n=
eed
of religion, that a properly formulated religion does supply a trustworthy
guide at every fork and labyrinth in life. By my allusion to the failure of=
old
formulae and methods to satisfy now, I am afraid many people will choose to=
understand
that I refer to what is often spoken of as the conflict of religion and sci=
ence,
and that I intend to propound some contribution to the conflict. I will at =
any
rate anticipate that objection here, in order to mark out my boundaries with
greater precision.
Taken in its
completeness, I submit that it is a greater claim than almost any religion =
can
justifiably make, to satisfy the need I have stated. No religion prescribes
rules that can be immediately applied to every eventuality. Between the gen=
eral
rules laid down and the particular instance there is always a wide gap, into
which doubts and alternatives enter and the private judgment has play. No d=
oubt
upon certain defined issues of every-day life some religions are absolutely=
explicit;
the Mahomedan religion, for example, is very uncompromising upon the use of
wine, and the law of the Ten Commandments completely prohibits the making of
graven images, and almost all the great variety of creeds professed among us
English-speaking peoples prescribe certain general definitions of what is
righteous and what constitutes sin. But upon a thousand questions of great
public importance, on the question of forms of government, of social and
educational necessities, of one's course and attitude towards such great fa=
cts
as the press, trusts, housing, and the like, religion, as it is generally u=
nderstood,
gives by itself no conclusive light. It may, no doubt, give a directing lig=
ht in
some cases, but not a conclusive light. It leaves us inconsistent and uncer=
tain
amidst these unavoidable problems. Yet upon these questions most people feel
that something more is needed than the mood of the moment or the spin of a
coin. Religious conviction may help us, it may stimulate us to press for
clearer light upon these matters, but it certainly does not give us any
decisions.
It is possible to=
be
either intensely religious or utterly indifferent to religious matters and =
yet
care nothing for these things. One may be a Pietist to whom the world is a
fleeting show of no importance whatever, or one may say, "Let us eat,
drink, and be merry, for to- morrow we die": the net result in regard =
to
my need is the same. These questions appear to be on a different plane from
religion and religious discussion; they look outward, while essentially
religion looks inward to the soul, and, given the necessary temperament, it=
is
possible to approach them in an unbiassed manner from almost any starting-p=
oint
of religious profession. One man may believe in the immortality of the soul=
and
another may not; one man may be a Swedenborgian, another a Roman Catholic,
another a Calvinistic Methodist, another an English High Churchman, another=
a
Positivist, or a Parsee, or a Jew; the fact remains that they must go about
doing all sorts of things in common every day. They may derive their ultima=
te
motives and sanctions from the most various sources, they may worship in the
most contrasted temples and yet meet unanimously in the market-place with a
desire to shape their general activities to the form of a "public
spirited" life, and when at last the life of every day is summed up,
"to leave the world better than they found it." And it is from th=
at
most excellent expression I would start, or rather from a sort of amplified=
restatement
of that expression--outside the province of religious discussion altogether=
.
A man who will bu=
ild
on that expression as his foundation in political and social matters, has at
least the possibility of agreement in the scheme of action these papers will
unfold. For though we theorize it is at action that our speculations will a=
im.
They will take the shape of an organized political and social doctrine. It =
will
be convenient to give this doctrine a name, and for reasons that will be cl=
ear
enough to those who have read my book Anticipations this doctrine will be
spoken of throughout as "New Republicanism," the doctrine of the =
New
Republic.
The central
conception of this New Republicanism as it has shaped itself in my mind, li=
es
in attaching pre-eminent importance to certain aspects of human life, and in
subordinating systematically and always, all other considerations to these
cardinal aspects. It begins with a way of looking at life. It insists upon =
that
way, it will regard no human concern at all except in that way. And the way,
putting the thing as compactly as possible, is to reject and set aside all
abstract, refined, and intellectualized ideas as starting propositions, suc=
h ideas
as Right, Liberty, Happiness, Duty or Beauty, and to hold fast to the asser=
tion
of the fundamental nature of life as a tissue and succession of births. The=
se
other things may be important, they may be profoundly important, but they a=
re
not primary. We cannot build upon any one of them and get a structure that =
will
comprehend all the aspects of life.
For the great
majority of mankind at least it can be held that life resolves itself quite=
simply
and obviously into three cardinal phases. There is a period of youth and
preparation, a great insurgence of emotion and enterprise centering about t=
he
passion of Love, and a third period in which, arising amidst the warmth and
stir of the second, interweaving indeed with the second, the care and love =
of
offspring becomes the central interest in life. In the babble of the grandc=
hildren,
with all the sons and daughters grown and secure, the typical life of human=
ity
ebbs and ends. Looked at thus with a primary regard to its broadest aspect,
life is seen as essentially a matter of reproduction; first a growth and
training to that end, then commonly mating and actual physical reproduction,
and finally the consummation of these things in parental nurture and educat=
ion.
Love, Home and Children, these are the heart-words of life. Not only is the
general outline of the normal healthy human life reproductive, but a vast p=
roportion
of the infinitely complex and interwoven interests that fill that outline w=
ith
incessant interest can be shown by a careful analysis to be more or less
directly reproductive also. The toil of a man's daily work is rarely for
himself alone, it goes to feed, to clothe, to educate those cardinal
consequences of his being, his children; he builds for them, he plants for
them, he plans for them, his social intercourse, his political interests,
whatever his immediate motives, tend finally to secure their welfare. Even =
more
obviously is this the case with his wife. Even in rest and recreation life
still manifests its quality; the books the ordinary man reads turn enormous=
ly
on love- making, his theatre has scarcely ever a play that has not primaril=
y a strong
love interest, his art rises to its most consummate triumphs in Venus and
Madonna, and his music is saturated in love suggestions. Not only is this so
with the right and proper life, but the greater portion of those acts we ca=
ll
vice draw their stimulus and pleasure from the impulses that subserve this
sustaining fact of our being, and they are vicious only because they evade =
or
spoil their proper end. This is really no new discovery at all, only the
stripping bare of it is new. In nearly every religious and moral system in =
the
world indeed, the predominant mass of the exposition of sin and saving virt=
ue
positively or negatively centres upon birth. Positively in the enormous
stresses, the sacramental values which are concentrated upon marriage and t=
he initial
circumstances of being, and negatively in a thousand significant repudiatio=
ns.
Even when the devotee most strenuously renounces this world and all its wor=
ks,
when St. Anthony flees into the desert or the pious Durtal wrestles in his
cell, when the pale nun prays in vigil and the hermit mounts his pillar, it=
is
Celibacy, that great denial of life, that sings through all their struggle,=
it
is this business of births as the central fact of life they still have most=
in mind.
This is not human
life merely, it is all life. This living world, as the New Republican will =
see
it, is no more than a great birth-place, an incessant renewal, an undying f=
resh
beginning and unfolding of life. Take away this fact of birth and what is t=
here
remaining? A world without flowers, without the singing of birds, without t=
he
freshness of youth, with a spring that brings no seedlings and a year that
bears no harvest, without beginnings and without defeats, a vast stagnation=
, a universe
of inconsequent matter--Death. Not only does the substance of life vanish i=
f we
eliminate births and all that is related to births, but whatever remains, if
anything remains, of aesthetic and intellectual and spiritual experience,
collapses utterly and falls apart, when this essential substratum of all
experience is withdrawn. So at any rate the world presents itself in the vi=
ew
the New Republican takes. And if it should chance that the reader finds this
ring untrue to him, then he may take it that he stands outside us, that the=
New
Republic is not for him.
It may be submitt=
ed
that this statement that Life is a texture of births may be accepted by min=
ds
of the most divergent religious and philosophical profession. No fundamenta=
l or
recondite admissions are proposed here, but only that the every-day life for
every-day purposes has this shape and nature. The utter materialist may say
that life to him is a fortuitous concurrence of atoms, a chance kinking in =
the universal
fabric of matter. It is not our present business to confute him. The fact
remains this is the form the kinking has taken. The believer, sedulous for =
his
soul's welfare, may say that Life is to him an arena of spiritual conflict,=
but
this is the character of the conflict, this is the business from which all =
the
tests and exercises of his soul are drawn. It matters not in this present
discussion if Life is no more than a dream; the dream is this.
And now one comes=
to
another step. The reader may give his assent to this statement as obvious o=
r he
may guard his assent with a qualification or so, but I doubt if he will deny
it. No one, I expect, will categorically deny it. But although no one will =
do
that, a great number of people who have not clearly seen things in this lig=
ht,
do in thought and in many details of their practice follow a line that is, =
in effect,
a flat denial of what is here proposed. Life no doubt is a fabric woven of
births and the struggle to maintain and develop and multiply lives. It does=
not
follow that life is consciously a fabric woven of births and the struggle to
maintain and develop and multiply lives. I do not suppose a cat or a savage
sees it in that light. A cat's standpoint is probably strictly individualis=
tic.
She sees the whole universe as a scheme of more or less useful, pleasurable=
and
interesting things concentrated upon her sensitive and interesting personal=
ity.
With a sinuous determination she evades disagreeables and pursues delights;
life is to her quite clearly and simply a succession of pleasures, sensatio=
ns
and interests, among which interests there happen to be--kittens!
And this way of
regarding life is by no means confined to animals and savages. I would even=
go
so far as to suggest that it is only within the last hundred years that any
considerable number of thoughtful people have come to look at life steadily=
and
consistently as being shaped to this form, to the form of a series of birth=
s, growths
and births. The most general truths are those last apprehended. The univers=
al
fact of gravitation, for example, which pervades all being, received its
complete recognition scarcely two hundred years ago. And again children and
savages live in air, breathe air, are saturated with air, die for five minu=
tes'
need of it, and never definitely realize there is such a thing as air at al=
l.
The vast mass of human expression in act and art and literature takes a
narrower view than we have here formulated; it presents each man not only as
isolated from and antagonized with the world about him, but as cut off shar=
ply
and definitely from the past before he lived and the future after he is dea=
d;
it puts what is, in relation to the view we have taken, a disproportionate
amount of stress upon his egotism, upon the pursuit of his self-interest and
his personal virtue and his personal fancies, and it ignores the fact, the
familiar rediscovery which the nineteenth century has achieved, that he is
after all only the transitory custodian of an undying gift of life, an
inheritor under conditions, the momentary voice and interpreter of a being =
that
springs from the dawn of time and lives in offspring and thought and materi=
al consequence,
for ever.
This
over-accentuation in the past of man's egoistic individuality, or, if one p=
uts
it in another way, this unsuspicious ignorance of the real nature of life,
becomes glaringly conspicuous in such weighed and deliberate utterances as =
The
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Throughout these frank and fundamental
discourses one traces a predominant desire for a perfected inconsequent
egotism. Body is repudiated as a garment, position is an accident, the past
that made us exists not since it is past, the future exists not for we shall
never see it; at last nothing but the abstracted ego remains,--a sort of co=
mplimentary
Nirvana. One citation will serve to show the colour of all his thought. &qu=
ot;A
man," he remarks, "is very devout to prevent the loss of his son.=
But
I would have you pray rather against the fear of losing him. Let this be the
rule for your devotions." [Footnote: The Meditations of M. A. Antoninu=
s,
ix. 40.] That indeed is the rule for all the devotions of that departing
generation of wisdom. Rather serenity and dignity than good ensuing. Rather=
a
virtuous man than any resultant whatever from his lifetime, for the future =
of
the world. It points this disregard of the sequence of life and birth in fa=
vour
of an abstract and fruitless virtue, it points it indeed with a barbed poin=
t that
the son of Marcus Aurelius was the unspeakable Commodus, and that the Roman
Empire fell from the temporizing detachment of his rule into a century of
disorder and misery.
To the thoughtful
reader to whom these papers appeal, to the reader whose mind is of the mode=
rn
cast, who has surveyed the vistas of the geological record and grasped the
secular unfolding of the scheme of life, who has found with microscope and
scalpel that the same rhythm of birth and re-birth is woven into the minute=
st
texture of things that has covered the earth with verdure and shaped the
massifs of the Alps, to such a man the whole literature the world produced
until the nineteenth century had well progressed, must needs be lacking in =
any definite
and pervading sense of the cardinal importance in the world of this central
reproductive aspect, of births and of the training and preparation for futu=
re
births. All that literature, great and imposing as we are bound to admit it=
is,
has an outlook less ample than quite common men may have to-day. It is a
literature, as we see it in the newer view, of abstracted personalities and=
of
disconnected passions and impressions.
To one extraordin=
ary
and powerful mind in the earlier half of the nineteenth century this
realization of the true form of life came with quite overwhelming force, and
that was to Schopenhauer, surely at once the most acute and the most biasse=
d of
mortal men. It came to him as a most detestable fact, because it happened he
was an intensely egotistical man. But his intellect was of that noble and
exceptional sort that aversion may tint indeed but cannot blind, and we owe=
to
him a series of philosophical writings, written with an instinctive skill a=
nd a
clearness and a vigour uncommon in philosophers, in which a very complete s=
tatement
of the new view is presented to the reader in terms of passionate protest.
[Footnote: Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung.] "Why," he asked,
"must we be for ever tortured by this passion and desire to reproduce =
our
kind, why are all our pursuits tainted with this application, all our needs
deferred to the needs of the new generation that tramples on our heels?&quo=
t;
and he found the answer in the presence of an overwhelming Will to Live
manifesting itself throughout the universe of Matter, thrusting us ruthless=
ly
before it, as a strong swimmer thrusts a wave before him as he swims. That =
the personal
egotism should be subordinated to and overwhelmed by a pervading Will to Li=
ve
filled his soul with passionate rebellion and coloured his exposition with =
the
hues of despair. But to minds temperamentally different from his, minds who=
se
egotism is qualified by a more unselfish humour, it is possible to avail on=
e's
self of Schopenhauer's vision, without submitting one's self to his conclus=
ions,
to see our wills only as temporary manifestations of an ampler will, our li=
ves
as passing phases of a greater Life, and to accept these facts even joyfull=
y,
to take our places in that larger scheme with a sense of relief and discove=
ry,
to go with that larger being, to serve that larger being, as a soldier marc=
hes,
a mere unit in the larger being of his army, and serving his army, joyfully
into battle.
However, it is no=
t to
Schopenhauer and his writings, at least among the English-speaking peoples,
that this increasing realization of life as essentially a succession of bir=
ths,
is chiefly ascribed. It is mainly, as I have already suggested, the result =
of
that great expansion of our sense of time and causation that has ensued from
the idea of organic Evolution. In the course of one brief century, the human
outlook upon the order of the world has been profoundly changed. It is not
simply that it has become much more spacious, it is not only that it has op=
ened
out from the little history of a few thousand years to a stupendous vista of
ages, but, in addition to its expanded dimensions, it has experienced a cha=
nge
in character. That wonderful and continually more elaborate and penetrating
analysis of the evolutionary process by Darwin and his followers and succes=
sors
and antagonists, the entire subordination of the individual lot to the spec=
ific
destiny that these criticisms and researches have emphasized, has warped and
altered the aspect of a thousand human affairs. It has made reasonable and =
in order
what Schopenhauer found so suggestively perplexing, it has dispelled proble=
ms
that have seemed insoluble mysteries to many generations of men. I do not s=
ay
it has solved them, but it has dispelled them and made them irrelevant and
uninteresting. So long as one believed that life span unprogressively from
generation to generation, that generation followed generation unchangingly =
for
ever, the enormous preponderance of sexual needs and emotions in life was a=
distressing
and inexplicable fact--it was a mystery, it was sin, it was the work of the
devil. One asked, why does man build houses that others may live therein; p=
lant
trees whose fruit he will never see? And all the toil and ambition, the str=
ess
and hope of existence, seemed, so far as this life went, and before these n=
ew
lights came, a mere sacrifice to this pointless reiteration of lives, this
cosmic crambe repetita. To perceive this aspect, and to profess an entire d=
etachment
from the whole vacuous business was considered by a large proportion of the
more thoughtful people of the world the supreme achievement of philosophy. =
The
acme of old-world wisdom, the ultimate mystery of Oriental philosophy is to
contemn women and offspring, to abandon costume, cleanliness, and all the
decencies and dignities of life, and to crawl, as scornfully as possible, b=
ut
at any rate to crawl out of all these earthly shows and snares (which so
obviously lead to nothing), into the nearest tub.
And the amazing
revelation of our days is that they do not lead to nothing! Directly the
discovery is made clear--and it is, I firmly believe, the crowning glory of=
the
nineteenth century to have established this discovery for all time--that one
generation does not follow another in fac simile, directly we come within s=
ight
of the reasonable persuasion that each generation is a step, a definite mea=
surable
step, and each birth an unprecedented experiment, directly it grows clear t=
hat
instead of being in an eddy merely, we are for all our eddying moving forwa=
rd
upon a wide voluminous current, then all these things are changed.
That change alters
the perspective of every human affair. Things that seemed permanent and fin=
al,
become unsettled and provisional. Social and political effort are seen from=
a
new view-point. Everywhere the old direction posts, the old guiding marks, =
have
got out of line and askew. And it is out of the conflict of the new view wi=
th
the old institutions and formulae, that there arises the discontent and the
need, and the attempt at a wider answer, which this phrase and suggestion of
the "New Republic" is intended to express.
Every part
contributes to the nature of the whole, and if the whole of life is an evol=
ving
succession of births, then not only must a man in his individual capacity
(physically as parent, doctor, food dealer, food carrier, home builder,
protector, or mentally as teacher, news dealer, author, preacher) contribut=
e to
births and growths and the future of mankind, but the collective aspects of
man, his social and political organizations must also be, in the essence, o=
rganizations
that more or less profitably and more or less intentionally, set themselves
towards this end. They are finally concerned with the birth and with the so=
und
development towards still better births, of human lives, just as every
implement in the toolshed of a seedsman's nursery, even the hoe and the rol=
ler,
is concerned finally with the seeding and with the sound development towards
still better seeding of plants. The private and personal motive of the seed=
sman
in procuring and using these tools may be avarice, ambition, a religious be=
lief
in the saving efficacy of nursery keeping or a simple passion for bettering
flowers, that does not affect the definite final purpose of his outfit of
tools.
And just as we mi=
ght
judge completely and criticise and improve that outfit from an attentive st=
udy
of the welfare of plants and with an entire disregard of his remoter motive=
s,
so we may judge all collective human enterprises from the standpoint of an
attentive study of human births and development. Any collective human enter=
prise,
institution, movement, party or state, is to be judged as a whole and compl=
etely,
as it conduces more or less to wholesome and hopeful births, and according =
to
the qualitative and quantitative advance due to its influence made by each
generation of citizens born under its influence towards a higher and ampler
standard of life.
Or putting the th= ing in a slightly different phrasing, the New Republican idea amounts to this: = the serious aspect of our private lives, the general aspect of all our social a= nd co-operative undertakings, is to prepare as well as we possibly can a succeeding generation, which shall prepare still more capably for still bet= ter generations to follow. We are passing as a race out of a state of affairs when the unconscious building of the future was attained by individualistic self-see= king (altogether unenlightened or enlightened only by the indirect moralizing influence of the patriotic instinct and religion) into a clear consciousnes= s of our co-operative share in that process. That is the essential idea my New Republic would personify and embody. In the past man was made, generation a= fter generation, by forces beyond his knowledge and control. Now a certain numbe= r of men are coming to a provisional understanding of some at least of these for= ces that go to the Making of Man. To some of us there is being given the privil= ege and responsibility of knowledge. We may plead lack of will or lack of moral impetus, but we can no longer plead ignorance. Just as far as our light upon the general purpose goes, just so far goes our responsibility (whether we respect it or not) to shape and subdue our wills to the Making of Mankind.<= o:p>
Directly the man,=
who
has found akin to himself and who has accepted and assimilated this new vie=
w,
turns to the affairs of the political world, to the general professions of =
our
great social and business undertakings, and to the broad conventions of hum=
an
conduct, he will find, I think, a very wide discrepancy from the implicatio=
ns
of this view. He will find--the New Republican finds--that the declared aim=
s and
principles of the larger amount of our social and political effort are
astonishingly limited and unsatisfactory, astonishingly irrelevant to the b=
road
reality of Life. He will find great masses of men embarked collectively upon
enterprises that will seem to his eyes to have no definable relation to this
real business of the world, or only the most accidental relationship, he wi=
ll
find others in partial lop-sided co- operation or unintelligently half help=
ful
and half obstructive, and he will find still other movements and developmen=
ts
which set quite in the opposite direction, which make neither for sound bir=
ths
nor sound growth, but through the thinnest shams of excuse and purpose, thr=
ough
the most hypnotic and unreal of suggestions and motives, directly and even
plainly towards waste, towards sterility, towards futility and death and
extinction.
But not deliberat=
ely
towards Death. It is only in the theoretical aspirations of Schopenhauer th=
at
he will find an expression of conscious and resolved opposition to the
pervading will and purpose in things. In the common affairs of the world he
will find neither deliberate opposition nor deliberate co-operation, chance
opposition indeed and chance co-operation, but for the most part only a
complete unconsciousness, a blind irrelevance or a purely accidental accord=
ance
to the essential aspect of Life.
Take, for example,
the great enthusiasm that set all England waving bunting in June, 1902. It =
was
made clear to the most unwilling observer that the great mass of English pe=
ople
consider themselves aggregated together in one nation mainly to support,
honour, and obey a King, and that they rejoice in this conception of their
national purpose. Great sums of money were spent to emphasize this purpose,
public work of all sorts was dislocated, and the channels of public discuss=
ion
clogged and choked. A discussion of the education of the next generation, a
matter of supreme interest from the New Republican point of view, passed fr=
om public
sight amidst the happy tumults and splendours of the time. The land was fil=
led
with poetry in the Monarch's praise, bad beyond any suspicion of insincerit=
y.
All that was certainly great in the land, all that has any hold upon the
motives and confidence of the English, gathered itself into a respectful
proximity, assumed attitudes of reverent subordination to the Monarch. All =
that
was eminent in science and literature and art, the galaxy of the episcopate,
the crowning intellectualities of the army, came to these rites, clad in ro=
bes
and raiment that no sane person would ever voluntarily assume in public exc=
ept
under circumstances of extreme necessity. The whole business was conducted =
with
a zest and gravity that absolutely forbids the theory that it was a mere
formality, a curious survival of mediævalism cherished by a country t=
hat
makes no breaks with its past. The spirit and idea of the whole thing was
intensely real and contemporary; one could believe only that those who took
part in it regarded it as a matter of primary importance, as one of the
cardinal things for which they existed. The alternative is to imagine that =
they
believe nothing to be of primary importance in this world; a quite incredib=
le
levity of soul to ascribe to all those great and distinguished people.
But it reflects n=
ot
at all upon the high intelligence, the unobtrusive but sterling moral
qualities, the tact, dignity, and personal charm of the central figure in t=
heir
pageantries, a charm the pathetic circumstances of his unseasonable illness
very greatly enhanced, if the New Republican fails to consider these
ceremonials of primary importance, if he declines to see them as of any
necessary importance at all, until it has been conclusively shown that they=
do
minister to the bettering of births and of the lives intervening between bi=
rth
and birth. On the surface they do not do that. Unless they can be shown to =
do
that they are dissipations of energy, they are irrelevant and wrong, from t=
he
New Republican point of view. The New Republican can take no part in these
things, or only a very grudging and qualified part, on his way to real serv=
ice.
He may or he may not, after deliberate examination, leave these things on o=
ne
side, unchallenged but ignored.
It may be urged t=
hat
all the subserviences that distinguish our kingdom and that become so amazi=
ngly
conspicuous about a coronation, the kissing of hands, the shambling upon kn=
ees,
the crawling of body and mind, the systematic encouragement of that undigni=
fied
noisiness that nowadays distinguishes the popular rejoicings of our imperial
people, are simply a proof of the earnest preoccupation of our judges, bish=
ops,
and leaders and great officers of all sorts with remoter and nobler aims. T=
he
kingdom happens to exist, and it would be complex and troublesome to get ri=
d of
it. They stand these things, they get done with these things, and so are ab=
le
to get to their work. The paraphernalia of a Court, the sham scale of honou=
rs,
the submissions, the ceremonial subjection, are, it is argued, entirely
irrelevant to the purpose and honour of our race, but then so would rebelli=
on
against these things be also irrelevant and secondary. To submit or to rebe=
l is
a diversion of our energies from the real purpose in things, and of the two=
it
is infinitely less bother to submit. In private conversation, I find, this =
is
the line nine out of ten of the King's servants will take. They will tell y=
ou
the public understands; the thing is a mere excuse for festivity and colour;
their loyalty is of a piece with their Fifth of November anti-popery. They =
will
tell you the peers understand, the bishops understand, the coronating
archbishop has his tongue in his cheek. They all understand--men of the wor=
ld
together. The King understands, a most admirable gentleman, who submits to
these traditional things, but who admits his preference is for the simple, =
pure
delight of the incognito, for being "plain Mr. Jones."
It may be so. Tho=
ugh
the psychologist will tell you that a man who behaves consistently as thoug=
h he
believed in a thing, will end in believing it. Assuredly whatever these oth=
ers
do, the New Republican must understand. In his inmost soul there must be no
loyalty or submission to any king or colour, save only if it conduces to th=
e service
of the future of the race. In the New Republic all kings are provisional, i=
f,
indeed--and this I shall discuss in a later paper-- they can be regarded as
serviceable at all.
And just as kings=
hip
is a secondary and debatable thing to the New Republican, to every man, that
is, whom the spirit of the new knowledge has taken for its work, so also are
the loyalties of nationality, and all our local and party adhesions.
Much that passes =
for
patriotism is no more than a generalized jealousy rather gorgeously clad.
Amidst the collapse of the old Individualistic Humanitarianism, the Rights =
of
Man, Human Equality, and the rest of those broad generalizations that serve=
d to
keep together so many men of good intention in the age that has come to its
end, there has been much hasty running to obvious shelters, and many men ha=
ve
been forced to take refuge under this echoing patriotism--for want of a bet=
ter gathering
place. It is like an incident during an earthquake, when men who have aband=
oned
a cleft fortress will shelter in a drinking bothy. But the very upheavals t=
hat
have shattered the old fastnesses of altruistic men, will be found presentl=
y to
be taking the shape of a new gathering place--and of this the New Republic
presents an early guess and anticipation. I do not see how men, save in the=
most
unexpected emergency, can be content to accept such an artificial conventio=
n as
modern patriotism for one moment. On the one hand there are the patriots of
nationality who would have us believe that the miscellany of European squat=
ters
in the Transvaal are one nation and those in Cape Colony another, and on the
other the patriots of Empire who would have me, for example, hail as my
fellow-subjects and collaborators in man- making a host of Tamil-speaking,
Tamil-thinking Dravadians, while separating me from every English-speaking,
English-thinking person who lives south of the Great Lakes. So long as men =
are
content to work in the grooves set for them by dead men, to derive all their
significances from the past, to accept whatever is as right and to drive al=
ong
before the compulsions of these acquiescences, they may do so. But directly=
they
take to themselves the New Republican idea, directly they realize that life=
is
something more than passing the time, that it is constructive with its
direction in the future, then these things slip from them as Christian's
burthen fell from him at the very outset of his journey. Until grave cause =
has
been shown to the contrary, there is every reason why all men who speak the
same language, think the same literature, and are akin in blood and spirit,=
and
who have arrived at the great constructive conception that so many minds
nowadays are reaching, should entirely disregard these old separations. If =
the
old traditions do no harm there is no reason to touch them, any more than t=
here
is to abolish the boundary between this ancient and invincible kingdom of K=
ent
in which I write and that extremely inferior country, England, which was
conquered by the Normans and brought under the feudal system. But so soon as
these old traditions obstruct sound action, so soon as it is necessary to be
rid of them, we must be prepared to sacrifice our archaeological emotions
ruthlessly and entirely.
And these
repudiations extend also to the political parties that struggle to realize
themselves within the forms of our established state. There is not in Great
Britain, and I understand there is not in America, any party, any section, =
any
group, any single politician even, based upon the manifest trend and purpos=
e of
life as it appears in the modern view. The necessities of continuity in pub=
lic
activity and of a glaring consistency in public profession, have so far
prevented any such fundamental reconstruction as the new generation require=
s.
One hears of Liberty, of Compromise, of Imperial Destinies and Imperial Uni=
ty,
one hears of undying loyalty to the Memory of Mr. Gladstone and the inalien=
able
right of Ireland to a separate national existence. One hears, too, of the
sacred principle of Free Trade, of Empires and Zollvereins, and the Rights =
of
the Parent to blockade the education of his children, but one hears nothing=
of
the greater end. At the best all the objects of our political activity can =
be
but means to that end, their only claim to our recognition can be their
adequacy to that end, and none of these vociferated "cries," these
party labels, these programme items, are ever propounded to us in that way.=
I
cannot see how, in England at any rate, a serious and perfectly honest man,=
holding
as true that ampler view of life I have suggested, can attach himself loyal=
ly
to any existing party or faction. At the utmost he may find their
faction-fighting may be turned for a time towards his remoter ends. These
parties derive from that past when the new view of life had yet to establish
itself, they carry faded and obliterated banners that the glare and dust of
conflict, the vote-storms of great campaigns, have robbed long since of any
colour of reality they once possessed. They express no creative purpose now,
whatever they did in their inception, they point towards no constructive
ideals. Essentially they are things for the museum or the bonfire, whatever
momentary expediency may hold back the New Republican from an unqualified a=
dvocacy
of such a destination. The old party fabrics are no more than dead rotting
things, upon which a great tangle of personal jealousies, old grudges, thor=
ny
nicknames, prickly memories, family curses, Judas betrayals and sacred pled=
ges,
a horrible rubbish thicket, maintains a saprophytic vitality.
It is quite possi=
ble
I misjudge the thing altogether. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, for example,=
may
hide the profoundest and most wide-reaching aims beneath his superficial ef=
fect
of utter superficiality. His impersonation of an amiable, spirited, self- c=
onscious,
land-owning gentleman with a passion for justice in remote places and a
whimsical dislike of motor cars in his immediate neighbourhood, may veil the
operations of a stupendous intelligence bent upon the regeneration of the
world. It may do, but if it does, it is a very amazing and purposeless
impersonation. I at any rate do not believe that it does. I do not believe =
that
he or any other Liberal leader or any Conservative minister has any
comprehensive aim at all-- as we of the new generation measure
comprehensiveness. These parties, and the phrases of party exposition--in
America just as in England-- date from the days of the limited outlook. They
display no consciousness of the new dissent. They are absorbed in the long =
standing
game, the getting in, the turning out, the contests and governments, that h=
as
just about the same relation to the new perception of affairs, to the real
drift of life, as the game of cricket with the wheel as a wicket would have=
to
the destinies of a ship. They find their game highly interesting and no dou=
bt
they play it with remarkable wit, skill and spirit, but they entirely disre=
gard
the increasing number of passengers who are concerning themselves with the =
course
and destination of the ship.
Those particular
passengers in the figure, present the New Republic. It is a dissension, an
inquiry, it is the vague unconsolidated matter for a new direction. "We
who are young," says the spirit of the New Republic, "we who are =
in
earnest can no more compass our lives under these old kingships and loyalti=
es,
under these old leaders and these old traditions, constitutions and pledges,
with their party liabilities, their national superstitions, their rotting
banners and their accumulating legacy of feuds and lies, than we can preten=
d we
are indeed impassioned and wholly devoted subjects of King Edward, spending=
our
lives in the service of his will. It is not that we have revolted from these
things, it is not that we have grown askew to them and that patching and
amendment will serve our need; it is that we have travelled outside them
altogether--almost inadvertently, but quite beyond any chance of return to a
simple acceptance again. We are no more disposed to call ourselves Liberals=
or
Conservatives and to be stirred to party passion at the clash of these name=
s,
than we are to fight again the battles of the Factio Albata or the Factio
Prasina. These current dramas, these current conflicts seem scarcely less f=
actitious.
Men without faith may be content to spend their lives for things only half
believed in, and for causes that are contrived. But that is not our quality=
. We
want reality because we have faith, we seek the beginning of realism in soc=
ial
and political life, we seek it and we are resolved to find it."
So we attempt to =
give
a general expression to the forces that are new at this time, to render
something at least of the spirit of the New Republic in a premature and
experimental utterance. It is, at any rate, a spirit that finds itself out =
of
intimacy and co-ordination with all the older movements of the world, that =
sees
all pre-existing formulae and political constitutions and political parties=
and
organizations rather as instruments or obstacles than as guiding lines and
precedents for its new developing will, its will which will carry it at las=
t irresistibly
to the conscious and deliberate making of the future of man. "We are h=
ere
to get better births and a better result from the births we get; each one o=
f us
is going to set himself immediately to that, using whatever power he finds =
to
his hand," such is the form its will must take. And such being its will
and spirit these papers will address themselves comprehensively to the prob=
lem,
What will the New Republic do? All the rest of this series will be a discus=
sion
of the forces that go to the making of man, and how far and how such a New =
Republic
might seek to lay its hands upon them.
It is for the
adversary to explain how presumptuous such an enterprise must be. But
presumption is ineradically interwoven with every beginning that the world =
has
ever seen. I venture to think that even to a reader who does not accept or
sympathize with the conception of this New Republic, a general review of
current movements and current interpretations of morality from this new
standpoint may be suggestive and interesting. Assuredly it is only by some =
such
general revision, if not on these lines then on others, that a practicable =
way
of escape is to be found for any one, from that base and shifty opportunism=
in public
and social matters, that predominance of fluctuating aims and spiritless
conformities, in which so many of us, without any great positive happiness =
at
all to reward us for the sacrifice we are making, bury the solitary talents=
of
our lives.
II - THE PROBLEM OF THE B=
IRTH
SUPPLY
Within the last
minute seven new citizens were born into that great English-speaking commun=
ity
which is scattered under various flags and governments throughout the world.
And according to the line of thought developed in the previous paper we
perceive that the real and ultimate business, so far as this world goes, of
every statesman, every social organizer, every philanthropist, every busine=
ss
manager, every man who lifts his head for a moment from the mean pursuit of=
his
immediate personal interests, from the gratification of his private desires,
is, as the first and immediate thing, to do his best for these new-comers, =
to
get the very best result, so far as his powers and activities can contribut=
e to
it, from their undeveloped possibilities. And in the next place, as a remot=
er,
but perhaps finally more fundamental duty, he has to inquire what may be do=
ne
individually or collectively to raise the standard and quality of the avera=
ge
birth. All the great concerns of life work out with a very little analysis =
to
that, even our wars, our orgies of destruction, have, at the back of them, a
claim, an intention, however futile in its conception and disastrous in its=
consequences,
to establish a wider security, to destroy a standing menace, to open new pa=
ths
and possibilities, in the interest of the generations still to come. One may
present the whole matter in a simplified picture by imagining all our
statesmen, our philanthropists and public men, our parties and institutions
gathered into one great hall, and into this hall a huge spout, that no man =
can
stop, discharges a baby every eight seconds. That is, I hold, a permissible
picture of human life, and whatever is not represented at all in that pictu=
re
is a divergent and secondary concern. Our success or failure with that unen=
ding
stream of babies is the measure of our civilization; every institution stan=
ds
or falls by its contribution to that result, by the improvement of the chil=
dren
born, or by the improvement in the quality of births attained under its
influence.
To begin these
speculations in logical order we must begin at the birth point, we must beg=
in
by asking how much may we hope, now or at a later time, to improve the supp=
ly
of that raw material which is perpetually dumped upon our hands? Can we rai=
se,
and if so, what can we do to raise the quality of the average birth?
This speculation =
is
as old at least as Plato, and as living as the seven or eight babies born i=
nto
the English-speaking world since the reader began this Paper. The conclusion
that if we could prevent or discourage the inferior sorts of people from ha=
ving
children, and if we could stimulate and encourage the superior sorts to
increase and multiply, we should raise the general standard of the race, is=
so simple,
so obvious, that in every age I suppose there have been voices asking in
amazement, why the thing is not done? It is so usual to answer that it is n=
ot
done on account of popular ignorance, public stupidity, religious prejudice=
or
superstition, that I shall not apologize for giving some little space here =
to
the suggestion that in reality it is not done for quite a different reason.=
We blame the popu=
lar
mind overmuch. Earnest but imperfect men, with honest and reasonable but
imperfect proposals for bettering the world, are all too apt to raise this
bitter cry of popular stupidity, of the sheep-like quality of common men. An
unjustifiable persuasion of moral and intellectual superiority is one of the
last infirmities of innovating minds. We may be right, but we must be prova=
bly,
demonstrably and overpoweringly right before we are justified in calling the
dissentient a fool. I am one of those who believe firmly in the invincible
nature of truth, but a truth that is badly put is not a truth, but an infer=
tile
hybrid lie. Before we men of the study blame the general body of people for
remaining unaffected by reforming proposals of an almost obvious advantage,=
it
would be well if we were to change our standpoint and examine our machinery=
at
the point of application. A rock-drilling machine may be excellently invent=
ed
and in the most perfect order except for a want of hardness in the drill, a=
nd yet
there will remain an unpierced rock as obdurate as the general public to so
many of our innovations.
I believe that if=
a
canvass of the entire civilized world were put to the vote in this matter, =
the
proposition that it is desirable that the better sort of people should
intermarry and have plentiful children, and that the inferior sort of people
should abstain from multiplication, would be carried by an overwhelming
majority. They might disagree with Plato's methods, [Footnote: The Republic=
, Bk.
V.] but they would certainly agree to his principle. And that this is not a
popular error Mr. Francis Galton has shown. He has devoted a very large amo=
unt
of energy and capacity to the vivid and convincing presentation of this ide=
a,
and to its courageous propagation. His Huxley Lecture to the Anthropological
Institute in 1901 [Footnote: Nature, vol. lxiv. p. 659.] puts the whole mat=
ter
as vividly as it ever can be put. He classifies humanity about their averag=
e in
classes which he indicates by the letters R S T U V rising above the average
and r s t u v falling below, and he saturates the whole business in
quantitative colour. Indeed, Mr. Galton has drawn up certain definite
proposals. He has suggested that "noble families" should collect
"fine specimens of humanity" around them, employing these fine
specimens in menial occupations of a light and comfortable sort, that will
leave a sufficient portion of their energies free for the multiplication of
their superior type. "Promising young couples" might be given
"healthy and convenient houses at low rentals," he suggests, and =
no
doubt it could be contrived that they should pay their rent partly or entir=
ely
per stone of family annually produced. And he has also proposed that
"diplomas" should be granted to young men and women of high
class--big S and upward--and that they should be encouraged to intermarry
young. A scheme of "dowries" for diploma holders would obviously =
be
the simplest thing in the world. And only the rules for identifying your gr=
eat
S T U and V in adolescence, are wanting from the symmetrical completeness of
his really very noble- spirited and high-class scheme.
At a more popular
level Mrs. Victoria Woodhull Martin has battled bravely in the cause of the
same foregone conclusion. The work of telling the world what it knows to be
true will never want self- sacrificing workers. The Humanitarian was her
monthly organ of propaganda. Within its cover, which presented a luminifero=
us
stark ideal of exemplary muscularity, popular preachers, popular bishops, a=
nd popular
anthropologists vied with titled ladies of liberal outlook in the service of
this conception. There was much therein about the Rapid Multiplication of t=
he
Unfit, a phrase never properly explained, and I must confess that the
transitory presence of this instructive little magazine in my house, month
after month (it is now, unhappily, dead), did much to direct my attention to
the gaps and difficulties that intervene between the general proposition and
its practical application by sober and honest men. One took it up and asked
time after time, "Why should there be this queer flavour of absurdity =
and
pretentiousness about the thing?" Before the Humanitarian period I was
entirely in agreement with the Humanitarian's cause. It seemed to me then t=
hat
to prevent the multiplication of people below a certain standard, and to
encourage the multiplication of exceptionally superior people, was the only
real and permanent way of mending the ills of the world. I think that still=
. In
that way man has risen from the beasts, and in that way men will rise to be
over-men. In those days I asked in amazement why this thing was not done, a=
nd
talked the usual nonsense about the obduracy and stupidity of the world. It=
is
only after a considerable amount of thought and inquiry that I am beginning=
to understand
why for many generations, perhaps, nothing of the sort can possibly be done
except in the most marginal and tentative manner.
If to-morrow the
whole world were to sign an unanimous round-robin to Mr. Francis Galton and
Mrs. Victoria Woodhull Martin, admitting absolutely their leading argument =
that
it is absurd to breed our horses and sheep and improve the stock of our pigs
and fowls, while we leave humanity to mate in the most heedless manner, and=
if,
further, the whole world, promising obedience, were to ask these two to gat=
her together
a consultative committee, draw up a scheme of rules, and start forthwith up=
on
the great work of improving the human stock as fast as it can be done, if it
undertook that marriages should no longer be made in heaven or earth, but o=
nly
under licence from that committee, I venture to think that, after a very br=
ief
epoch of fluctuating legislation, this committee, except for an extremely s=
hort
list of absolute prohibitions, would decide to leave matters almost exactly=
as they
are now; it would restore love and private preference to their ancient
authority and freedom, at the utmost it would offer some greatly qualified
advice, and so released, it would turn its attention to those flaws and gap=
s in
our knowledge that at present render these regulations no more than a theory
and a dream.
The first difficu=
lty
these theorists ignore is this: we are, as a matter of fact, not a bit clear
what points to breed for and what points to breed out.
The analogy with =
the
breeder of cattle is a very misleading one. He has a very simple ideal, to
which he directs the entire pairing of his stock. He breeds for beef, he br=
eeds
for calves and milk, he breeds for a homogeneous docile herd. Towards that
ideal he goes simply and directly, slaughtering and sparing, regardless
entirely of any divergent variation that may arise beneath his control. A y=
oung
calf with an incipient sense of humour, with a bright and inquiring disposi=
tion,
with a gift for athleticism or a quaintly-marked hide, has no sort of chance
with him at all on that account. He can throw these proffered gifts of natu=
re
aside without hesitation. Which is just what our theoretical breeders of hu=
manity
cannot venture to do. They do not want a homogeneous race in the future at =
all.
They want a rich interplay of free, strong, and varied personalities, and t=
hat
alters the nature of the problem absolutely.
This the reader m=
ay
dispute. He may admit the need of variety, but he may argue that this varie=
ty
must arise from a basis of common endowment. He may say that in spite of the
complication introduced by the consideration that a divergent variation from
one ideal may be a divergence towards another ideal, there remain certain
definable points, that could be bred for universally, for all that.
What are they?
There will be lit=
tle
doubt he will answer "Health." After that probably he may say
"Beauty." In addition the reader of Mr. Galton's Hereditary Genius
will probably say, "ability," "capacity," "genius,=
"
and "energy." The reader of Doctor Nordau will add
"sanity." And the reader of Mr. Archdall Reid will round up the l=
ist
with "immunity" from dipsomania and all contagious diseases.
"Let us mark our human beings," the reader of that way of thinking
will suggest, "let us give marks for 'health,' for 'ability,' for vari=
ous
sorts of specific immunity and so forth, and let us weed out those who are =
low in
the scale and multiply those who stand high. This will give us a straight w=
ay
to practical amelioration, and the difficulty you are trying to raise,"=
; he
urges, "vanishes forthwith."
It would, if these
points were really points, if "beauty," "capacity," &qu=
ot;health,"
and "sanity" were simple and uniform things. Unfortunately they a=
re
not simple, and with that fact a host of difficulties arise. Let me take fi=
rst
the most simple and obvious case of "beauty." If beauty were a si=
mple
thing, it would be possible to arrange human beings in a simple scale,
according to whether they had more or less of this simple quality--just as =
one
can do in the case of what are perhaps really simple and breedable
qualities--height or weight. This person, one might say, is at eight in the
scale of beauty, and this at ten, and this at twenty-seven. But it complica=
tes
the case beyond the possibilities of such a scale altogether when one begin=
s to
consider that there are varieties and types of beauty having very wide dive=
rgences
and made up of a varying number of elements in dissimilar proportions. There
is, for example, the flaxen, kindly beauty of the Dutch type, the dusky Jew=
ess,
the tall, fair Scandinavian, the dark and brilliant south Italian, the noble
Roman, the dainty Japanese--to name no others. Each of these types has its
peculiar and incommensurable points, and within the limits of each type you
will find a hundred divergent, almost unanalyzable, styles, a beauty of
expression, a beauty of carriage, a beauty of reflection, a beauty of repos=
e,
arising each from a quite peculiar proportion of parts and qualities, and h=
aving
no definable relation at all to any of the others. If we were to imagine a
human appearance as made up of certain elements, a, b, c, d, e, f, etc., th=
en
we might suppose that beauty in one case was attained by a certain high
development of a and f, in another by a certain fineness of c and d, in ano=
ther
by a delightfully subtle ratio of f and b.
=
A, b, c, d, e, F, etc. =
a,
b, c, d, e, f, etc. =
a,
b, c, d, e, F, etc.,
might all, for
example, represent different types of beauty. Beauty is neither a simple no=
r a
constant thing; it is attainable through a variety of combinations, just as=
the
number 500 can be got by adding or multiplying together a great variety of
numerical arrangements. Two long numerical formulae might both simplify out=
to
500, but half the length of one truncated and put end on to the truncated e=
nd
of the other, might give a very different result. It is quite conceivable t=
hat you
might select and wed together all the most beautiful people in the world and
find that in nine cases out of ten you had simply produced mediocre offspri=
ng
or offspring below mediocrity. Out of the remaining tenth a great majority
would be beautiful simply by "taking after" one or other parent,
simply through the predominance, the prepotency, of one parent over the oth=
er,
a thing that might have happened equally well if the other parent was plain.
The first sort of beauty (in my three formulae) wedding the third sort of
beauty, might simply result in a rather ugly excess of F, and again the fir=
st
sort might result from a combination of
=
a, b, c, d, e, F, etc., =
&nb=
sp; and
=
A,
b, c, d, e, f, etc.,
neither of which
arrangements, very conceivably, may be beautiful at all when it is taken al=
one.
In this respect, at any rate, personal value and reproductive value may be =
two
entirely different things.
Now what the elem=
ents
of personal aspect really are, what these elements a, b, c, d, e, f, etc., =
may
be, we do not know with any sort of exactness. Possibly height, weight,
presence of dark pigment in the hair, whiteness of skin, presence of hair u=
pon
the body, are simple elements in inheritance that will follow Galton's
arithmetical treatment of heredity with some exactness. But we are not even
sure of that. The height of one particular person may be due to an exceptio=
nal length
of leg and neck, of another to an abnormal length of the vertebral bodies of
the backbone; the former may have a rather less than ordinary backbone, the
latter a stunted type of limb, and an intermarriage may just as conceivably=
(so
far as our present knowledge goes) give the backbone of the first and the l=
egs
of the second as it may a very tall person.
The fact is that =
in
this matter of beauty and breeding for beauty we are groping in a corner wh=
ere
science has not been established. No doubt the corner is marked out as a pa=
rt
of the "sphere of influence" of anthropology, but there is not the
slightest indication of an effective occupation among these raiding
considerations and uncertain facts. Until anthropology produces her Daltons=
and
Davys we must fumble in this corner, just as the old alchemists fumbled for
centuries before the dawn of chemistry. Our utmost practice here must be
empirical. We do not know the elements of what we have, the human
characteristics we are working upon to get that end. The sentimentalized
affinities of young persons in their spring are just as likely to result in=
the
improvement of the race in this respect as the whole science of anthropolog=
y in
its present state of evolution.
I have suggested =
that
"beauty" is a term applied to a miscellany of synthetic results
compounded of diverse elements in diverse proportions; and I have suggested=
that
one can no more generalize about it in relation to inheritance with any hop=
e of
effective application than one can generalize about, say, "lumpy
substances" in relation to chemical combination. By reasoning upon qui=
te
parallel lines nearly every characteristic with which Mr. Galton deals in h=
is
interesting and suggestive but quite inconclusive works, can be demonstrate=
d to
consist in a similar miscellany. He speaks of "eminence," of
"success," of "ability," of "zeal," and
"energy," for example, and except for the last two items I would
submit that these qualities, though of enormous personal value, are of no
practical value in inheritance whatever; that to wed "ability" to
"ability" may breed something less than mediocrity, and that
"ability" is just as likely or just as unlikely to be prepotent a=
nd
to assert itself in descent with the most casually selected partner as it is
with one picked with all the knowledge, or rather pseudo-knowledge,
anthropology in its present state can give us.
When, however, we
turn to "zeal" or "energy" or "go," we do see=
m to
be dealing with a simpler and more transmissible thing. Let us assume that =
in
this matter there is a wide range of difference that may be arranged in a
direct and simple scale in quantitative relation to the gross output of act=
ion
of different human beings. One passes from the incessant employment of such=
a
being as Gladstone at the one extreme, a loquacious torrent of interests and
achievements, to the extreme of phlegmatic lethargy on the other. Call the =
former
a high energetic and the latter low. Quite possibly it might be found that =
we
could breed "high energetics." But before we did so we should hav=
e to
consider very gravely that the "go" and "energy" of a m=
an
have no ascertainable relation to many other extremely important
considerations. Your energetic person may be moral or immoral, an unqualifi=
ed
egotist or as public spirited as an ant, sane, or a raving lunatic. Your
phlegmatic person may ripen resolves and bring out truths, with the
incomparable clearness of a long-exposed, slowly developed, slowly printed =
photograph.
A man who would exchange the slow gigantic toil of that sluggish and delibe=
rate
person, Charles Darwin, for the tumultuous inconsequence and (as some people
think it) the net mischief of a Gladstone, would no doubt be prepared to
substitute a Catherine-wheel in active eruption for the watch of less
adventurous men. But before we could induce the community as a whole to mak=
e a
similar exchange, he would have to carry on a prolonged and vigorous
propaganda.
For my own part--=
and
I write as an ignorant man in a realm where ignorance prevails--I am inclin=
ed
to doubt the simplicity and homogeneity even of this quality of
"energy" or "go." A person without restraint, without
intellectual conscience, without critical faculty, may write and jabber and=
go
to and fro and be here and there, simply because every impulse is obeyed so
soon as it arises. Another person may be built upon an altogether larger sc=
ale
of energy, but may be deliberate, concentrated, and fastidious, bent rather
upon truth and permanence than upon any immediate quantitative result, and =
may
appear to any one but an extremely penetrating critic, as inferior in energ=
y to
the former. So far as our knowledge goes at present, what is popularly know=
n as
"energy" or "go" is just as likely to be a certain net
preponderance of a varied miscellany of impulsive qualities over a varied
miscellany of restraints and inhibitions, as it is to prove a simple
indivisible quality transmissible intact. We are so profoundly ignorant in
these matters, so far from anything worthy of the name of science, that one
view is just as permissible and just as untrustworthy as the other.
Even the
qualification of "health" is not sufficient. A thoughtless person=
may
say with the most invincible air, "Parents should, at any rate, be
healthy," but that alone is only a misleading vague formula for good
intentions. In the first place, there is every reason to believe that
transitory ill-health in the parent is of no consequence at all to the
offspring. Neither does acquired constitutional ill- health necessarily
transmit to a child; it may or it may not react upon the child's nutrition =
and
training, but that is a question to consider later. It is quite conceivable=
, it
is highly probable, that there are hereditary forms of ill-health, and that
they may be eliminated from the human lot by discreet and restrained pairin=
g,
but what they are and what are the specific conditions of their control we =
do
not know. And furthermore, we are scarcely more certain that the condition =
of "perfect
health" in one human being is the same as the similarly named conditio=
n in
another, than we are that the beauty of one type is made up of the same
essential elements as the beauty of another. Health is a balance, a balance=
of
blood against nerve, of digestion against secretion, of heart against brain=
. A
heart of perfect health and vigour put into the body of a perfectly healthy=
man
who is built upon a slighter scale than that heart, will swiftly disorganize
the entire fabric, and burst its way to a haemorrhage in lung perhaps, or
brain, or wherever the slightest relative weakening permits. The
"perfect" health of a negro may be a quite dissimilar system of
reactions to the "perfect health" of a vigorous white; you may bl=
end
them only to create an ailing mass of physiological discords.
"Health," just as much as these other things, is, for this purpos=
e of
marriage diplomas and the like, a vague, unserviceable synthetic quality. It
serves each one of us for our private and conversational needs, but in this
question it is not hard enough and sharp--enough for the thing we want it to
do. Brought to the service of this fine and complicated issue it breaks down
altogether. We do not know enough. We have not analyzed enough nor penetrat=
ed
enough. There is no science yet, worthy of the name, in any of these things.
[Footnote: This idea of attempting to define the elements in inheritance,
although it is absent from much contemporary discussion, was pretty evident=
ly
in mind in the very striking researches of the Abbé Mendel to which =
Mr.
Bateson--with a certain intemperance of manner--has recently called attenti=
on.
(Bateson, Mendel's Principles of Heredity, Cambridge University Press, 1902=
.)]
These considerati=
ons
should at least suffice to demonstrate the entire impracticability of Mr.
Galton's two suggestions. Moreover, this idea of picking out high-scale
individuals in any particular quality or group of qualities and breeding th=
em,
is not the way of nature at all. Nature is not a breeder; she is a reckless
coupler and--she slays. It was a popular misconception of the theory of the
Survival of the Fittest, a misconception Lord Salisbury was at great pains =
to
display to the British Association in 1894, that the average of a species i=
n any
respect is raised by the selective inter-breeding of the individuals above =
the
average. Lord Salisbury was no doubt misled, as most people who share his
mistake have been misled, by the grammatical error of employing the Surviva=
l of
the Fittest for the Survival of the Fitter, in order to escape a scarcely
ambiguous ambiguity. But the use of the word "Survival" should ha=
ve
sufficed to indicate that the real point of application of the force by whi=
ch
Nature modifies species and raises the average in any quality, lies not in
selective breeding, but in the disproportionately numerous deaths of the
individuals below the average. And even the methods of the breeder of cattl=
e,
if they are to produce a permanent alteration in the species of cattle, must
consist not only in breeding the desirable but in either killing the undesi=
rable,
or at least--what is the quintessence, the inner reality of death--in
preventing them from breeding.
The general trend=
of
thought in Mrs. Martin's Humanitarian was certainly more in accordance with
this reading of biological science than were Mr. Galton's proposals. There =
was
a much greater insistence upon the need of "elimination," upon the
evil of the "Rapid Multiplication of the Unfit," a word that,
however, was never defined and, I believe, really did not mean anything in
particular in this connection. And directly one does attempt to define it,
directly one sits down in a businesslike way to apply the method of elimina=
tion
instead of the method of selection, one is immediately confronted by almost=
as
complex an entanglement of difficulties in defining points to breed out as =
one
is by defining points to breed for. Almost, I say, but not quite. For here
there does seem to be, if not certainties, at least a few plausible
probabilities that a vigorous and systematic criticism may perhaps hammer i=
nto
generalizations of sufficient certainty to go upon.
I believe that lo=
ng
before humanity has hammered out the question of what is pre-eminently
desirable in inheritance, a certain number of things will have been isolated
and defined as pre-eminently undesirable. But before these are considered, =
let
us sweep out of our present regard a number of cruel and mischievous ideas =
that
are altogether too ascendant at the present time.
Anthropology has =
been
compared to a great region, marked out indeed as within the sphere of influ=
ence
of science, but unsettled and for the most part unsubdued. Like all such
hinterland sciences, it is a happy hunting-ground for adventurers. Just as =
in
the early days of British Somaliland, rascals would descend from nowhere in
particular upon unfortunate villages, levy taxes and administer atrocity in=
the
name of the Empire, and even, I am told, outface for a time the modest hera=
lds of
the government, so in this department of anthropology the public mind suffe=
rs
from the imposition of theories and assertions claiming to be
"scientific," which have no more relation to that organized syste=
m of
criticism which is science, than a brigand at large on a mountain has to the
machinery of law and police, by which finally he will be hanged. Among such
raiding theorists none at present are in quite such urgent need of polemical
suppression as those who would persuade the heedless general reader that ev=
ery
social failure is necessarily a "degenerate," and who claim boldly
that they can trace a distinctly evil and mischievous strain in that
unfortunate miscellany which constitutes "the criminal class." Th=
ey
invoke the name of "science" with just as much confidence and jus=
t as
much claim as the early Victorian phrenologists. They speak and write with
ineffable profundity about the "criminal" ear, the
"criminal" thumb, the "criminal" glance. They gain acce=
ss
to gaols and pester unfortunate prisoners with callipers and cameras, and q=
uite
unforgivable prying into personal and private matters, and they hold out gr=
eat
hopes that by these expedients they will evolve at last a
"scientific" revival of the Kaffir's witch- smelling. We shall ca=
tch
our criminals by anthropometry ere ever a criminal thought has entered their
brains. "Prevention is better than cure." These mattoid scientists
make a direct and disastrous attack upon the latent self-respect of crimina=
ls.
And not only upon that tender plant, but also upon the springs of human cha=
rity
towards the criminal class. For the complex and varied chapter of accidents
that carries men into that net of precautions, expedients, prohibitions, an=
d vindictive
reprisals, the net of the law, they would have us believe there is a fatal
necessity inherent in their being. Criminals are born, not made, they alleg=
e.
No longer are we to say, "There, but for the grace of God, go
I"--when the convict tramps past us--but, "There goes another sor=
t of
animal that is differentiating from my species and which I would gladly see
exterminated."
Now every man who=
has
searched his heart knows that this formulation of "criminality" a=
s a
specific quality is a stupidity, he knows himself to be a criminal, just as
most men know themselves to be sexually rogues. No man is born with an
instinctive respect for the rights of any property but his own, and few wit=
h a
passion for monogamy. No man who is not an outrageously vain and foolish
creature but will confess to himself that but for advantages and accidents,=
but
for a chance hesitation or a lucky timidity, he, too, had been there, under=
the
ridiculous callipers of witless anthropology. A criminal is no doubt of less
personal value to the community than a law-abiding citizen of the same gene=
ral
calibre, but it does not follow for one moment that he is of less value as a
parent. His personal disaster may be due to the possession of a bold and
enterprising character, of a degree of pride and energy above the needs of =
the
position his social surroundings have forced upon him. Another citizen may =
have
all this man's desires and impulses, checked and sterilized by a lack of
nervous energy, by an abject fear of the policeman and of the consequences =
of the
disapproval of his more prosperous fellow-citizens. I will frankly confess =
that
for my own part I prefer the wicked to the mean, and that I would rather tr=
ust
the future to the former strain than to the latter. Whatever preference the
reader may entertain, there remains this unmistakable objection to its
application to breeding, that "criminality" is not a specific sim=
ple
quality, but a complex that may interfuse with other complexes to give quite
incalculable results in the offspring it produces. So that here again, on t=
he
negative side, we find a general expression unserviceable for our use.
[Footnote: No doubt the home of the criminal and social failure is generall=
y disastrous
to the children born into it. That is a question that will be fully dealt; =
with
in a subsequent paper, and I note it here only to point out that it is outs=
ide
our present discussion, which is concerned not with the fate of children bo=
rn
into the world, but with the prior question whether we may hope to improve =
the
quality of the average birth by encouraging some sorts of people to have
children and discouraging or forbidding others. It is of vital importance to
keep these two questions distinct, if we are to get at last to a basis for =
effective
action.]
But it will be
alleged that although criminality as a whole means nothing definite enough =
for
our purpose, there can be picked out and defined certain criminal (or at any
rate disastrous) tendencies that are simple, specific and transmissible. Th=
ose
who have read Mr. Archdall Reid's Alcoholism, for example, will know that he
deals constantly with what is called the "drink craving" as if it
were such a specific simple inheritance. He makes a very strong case for th=
is belief,
but strong as it is, I do not think it is going to stand the pressure of a
rigorously critical examination. He points out that races which have been in
possession of alcoholic drinks the longest are the least drunken, and this =
he
ascribes to the "elimination" of all those whose "drink
craving" is too strong for them. Nations unused to alcoholic drink are
most terribly ravaged at its first coming to them, may even be destroyed by=
it,
in precisely the same way that new diseases coming to peoples unused to them
are far more malignant than among peoples who have suffered from them
generation after generation. Such instances as the terrible ravages of meas=
les
in Polynesia and the ruin worked by fire-water among the Red Indians, he gi=
ves
in great abundance. He infers from this that interference with the sale of
drink to a people may in the long run do more harm than good, by preserving=
those
who would otherwise be eliminated, permitting them to multiply and so,
generation by generation, lowering the resisting power of the race. And he
proposes to divert temperance legislation from the persecution of drink mak=
ers
and sellers, to such remedies as the punishment of declared and indisputable
drunkards if they incur parentage, and the extension of the grounds of divo=
rce
to include this ugly and disastrous habit.
I am not averse to
Mr. Reid's remedies because I think of the wife and the home, but I would n=
ot
go so far with him as to consider this "drink craving" specific a=
nd
simple, and I retain an open mind about the sale of drink. He has not convi=
nced
me that there is an inherited "drink craving" any more than there=
is
an inherited tea craving or an inherited morphia craving.
In the first plac=
e I
would propound a certain view of the general question of habits. My own pri=
vate
observations in psychology incline me to believe that people vary very much=
in
their power of acquiring habits and in the strength and fixity of the habits
they acquire. My most immediate subject of psychological study, for example=
, is
a man of untrustworthy memory who is nearly incapable of a really deep-root=
ed habit.
Nothing is automatic with him. He crams and forgets languages with an equal
ease, gives up smoking after fifteen years of constant practice; shaves wit=
h a
conscious effort every morning and is capable of forgetting to do so if int=
ent
upon anything else. He is generally self-indulgent, capable of keen enjoyme=
nt
and quite capable of intemperance, but he has no invariable delights and no
besetting sin. Such a man will not become an habitual drunkard; he will not
become anything "habitual." But with another type of man habit is
indeed second nature. Instead of the permanent fluidity of my particular ca=
se, such
people are continually tending to solidify and harden. Their memories set,
their opinions set, their methods of expression set, their delights recur a=
nd
recur, they convert initiative into mechanical habit day by day. Let them t=
aste
any pleasure and each time they taste it they deepen a need. At last their
habits become imperative needs. With such a disposition, external circumsta=
nces
and suggestions, I venture to believe, may make a man either into an habitu=
al
church-goer or an habitual drunkard, an habitual toiler or an habitual rake=
. A self-indulgent
rather unsocial habit-forming man may very easily become what is called a
dipsomaniac, no doubt, but that is not the same thing as an inherited speci=
fic
craving. With drink inaccessible and other vices offering his lapse may take
another line. An aggressive, proud and greatly mortified man may fall upon =
the
same courses. An unwary youth of the plastic type may be taken unawares and
pass from free indulgence to excess before he perceives that a habit is tak=
ing
hold of him.
I believe that ma=
ny
causes and many temperaments go to the making of drunkards. I have read a s=
tory
by the late Sir Walter Besant, in which he presents the specific craving as=
if
it were a specific magic curse. The story was supposed to be morally edifyi=
ng,
but I can imagine this ugly superstition of the "hereditary
craving"--it is really nothing more--acting with absolutely paralyzing
effect upon some credulous youngster struggling in the grip of a developing
habit. "It's no good trying,"--that quite infernal phrase!
It may be urged t=
hat
this attempt to whittle down the "inherited craving" to a habit d=
oes
not meet Mr. Reid's argument from the gradual increase of resisting power in
races subjected to alcoholic temptation, an increase due to the elimination=
of
all the more susceptible individuals. There can be no denying that those
nations that have had fermented drinks longest are the soberest, but that,
after all, may be only one aspect of much more extensive operations. The
nations that have had fermented drinks the longest are also those that have
been civilized the longest. The passage of a people from a condition of agr=
icultural
dispersal to a more organized civilization means a very extreme change in t=
he
conditions of survival, of which the increasing intensity of temptation to
alcoholic excess is only one aspect. Gluttony, for example, becomes a much =
more
possible habit, and many other vices tender death for the first time to the=
men
who are gathering in and about towns. The city demands more persistent, mor=
e intellectualized
and less intense physical desires than the countryside. Moral qualities that
were a disadvantage in the dispersed stage become advantageous in the city,=
and
conversely. Rugged independence ceases to be helpful, and an intelligent tu=
rn
for give and take, for collaboration and bargaining, makes increasingly for=
survival.
Moreover, there grows very slowly an indefinable fabric of traditional home
training in restraint that is very hard to separate in analysis from mental
heredity. People who have dwelt for many generations in towns are not only =
more
temperate and less explosive in the grosser indulgences, but more urbane
altogether. The drunken people are also the "uncivil" peoples and=
the
individualistic peoples. The great prevalence of drunkenness among the upper
classes two centuries ago can hardly have been bred out in the intervening =
six
or seven generations, and it is also a difficult fact for Mr. Reid that dru=
nkenness
has increased in France. In most of the cases cited by Mr. Reid a complex of
operating forces could be stated in which the appearance of fermented liquo=
rs
is only one factor, and a tangle of consequent changes in which a gradually
increasing insensibility to the charms of intoxication was only one thread.
Drunkenness has no doubt played a large part in eliminating certain types of
people from the world, but that it specifically eliminates one specific
definable type is an altogether different matter.
Even if we admit =
Mr.
Reid's conception, this by no means solves the problem. It is quite conceiv=
able
that the world could purchase certain sorts of immunity too dearly. If it w=
as a
common thing to adorn the parapets of houses in towns with piles of loose
bricks, it is certain that a large number of persons not immune to fracture=
of
the skull by falling bricks would be eliminated. A time would no doubt come
when those with a specific liability to skull fracture would all be elimina=
ted,
and the human cranium would have developed a practical immunity to damage f=
rom
all sorts of falling substances. But there would have been far more extensi=
ve
suppressions than would appear in the letter of the agreement.
This no doubt is a
caricature of the case, but it will serve to illustrate my contention that
until we possess a far more subtle and thorough analysis of the drunkard's
physique and mind--if it really is a distinctive type of mind and
physique--than we have at present, we have no justification whatever in
artificial intervention to increase whatever eliminatory process may at pre=
sent
be going on in this respect. Even if there is such a specific weakness, it =
is
possible it has a period of maximum intensity, and if that should be only a
brief phase in development--let us say at adolescence--it might turn out to=
be
much more to the advantage of humanity to contrive protective legislation o=
ver
the dangerous years. I argue to establish no view in these matters beyond a
view that at present we know very little.
Not only do ignor=
ance
and doubt bar our way to anything more than a pious wish to eliminate
criminality and drunkenness in a systematic manner, but even the popular be=
lief
in ruthless suppression whenever there is "madness in the family"
will not stand an intelligent scrutiny. The man in the street thinks madnes=
s is
a fixed and definite thing, as distinct from sanity as black is from white.=
He
is always exasperated at the hesitation of doctors when in a judicial capac=
ity
he demands: "Is this man mad or isn't he?" But a very little read=
ing
of alienists will dissolve this clear assurance. Here again it seems possib=
le
that we have a number of states that we are led to believe are simple becau=
se
they are gathered together under the generic word "madness," but
which may represent a considerable variety of induced and curable and
non-inheritable states on the one hand and of innate and incurable and
heritable mental disproportions on the other.
The less gifted
portion of the educated public was greatly delighted some years ago by a wo=
rk
by Dr. Nordau called Degeneration, in which a great number of abnormal peop=
le
were studied in a pseudo- scientific manner and shown to be abnormal beyond=
any
possibility of dispute. Mostly the samples selected were men of exceptional
artistic and literary power. The book was pretentious and inconsistent--the
late Lord Tennyson was quoted, I remember, as a typically "sane" =
poet
in spite of the scope afforded by his melodramatic personal appearance and =
his
morbid passion for seclusion--but it did at least serve to show that if we
cannot call a man stupid we may almost invariably call him mad with some sh=
ow
of reason. The public read the book for the sake of its abuse, applied the
intended conclusion to every success that awakened its envy, and failed alt=
ogether
to see how absolutely the definition of madness was destroyed. But if madne=
ss
is indeed simply genius out of hand and genius only madness under adequate
control; if imagination is a snare only to the unreasonable and a disordered
mind only an excess of intellectual enterprise--and really none of these th=
ings
can be positively disproved--then just as reasonable as the idea of suppres=
sing
the reproduction of madness, is the idea of breeding it! Let us take all th=
ese
dull, stagnant, respectable people, one might say, who do nothing but confo=
rm
to whatever rule is established about them and obstruct whatever change is
proposed to them, whose chief quality is a sheer incapacity to imagine anyt=
hing
beyond their petty experiences, and let us tell them plainly, "It is t=
ime
a lunatic married into your family." Let no one run away from this with
the statement that I propose such a thing should be done, but it is, at any=
rate
in the present state of our knowledge, as reasonable a proposal, to make as=
its
quite frequently reiterated converse.
If in any case we=
are
in a position to intervene and definitely forbid increase, it is in the cas=
e of
certain specific diseases, which I am told are painful and disastrous and
inevitably transmitted to the offspring of the person suffering from these
diseases. If there are such diseases--and that is a question the medical
profession should be able to decide--it is evident that to incur parentage
while one suffers from one of them or to transmit them in any avoidable way=
, is
a cruel, disastrous and abominable act. If such a thing is possible it seem=
s to
me that in view of the guiding principle laid down in these papers it might
well be put at the nadir of crime, and I doubt if any step the State might =
take
to deter and punish the offender, short of torture, would meet with opposit=
ion
from sane and reasonable men. For my own part I am inclined at times almost=
to
doubt if there are such diseases. If there are, the remedy is so simple and
obvious, that I cannot but blame the medical profession for very discredita=
ble
silences. I am no believer in the final wisdom of the mass of mankind, but =
I do
believe enough in the sanity of the English-speaking peoples to be certain =
that
any clear statement and instruction they received from the medical professi=
on,
as a whole, in these matters, would be faithfully observed. In the face of =
the
collective silence of this great body of specialists, there is nothing for =
it
but to doubt such diseases exist.
Such a systematic
suppression of a specific disease or so is really the utmost that could be =
done
with any confidence at present, so far as the State and collective action g=
o.
[Footnote: Since the above was written, a correspondent in Honolulu has cal=
led
my attention to a short but most suggestive essay by Doctor Harry Campbell =
in
the Lancet, 1898, ii., p. 678. He uses, of course, the common medical euphe=
mism
of "should not marry" for "should not procreate," and he
gives the following as a list of "bars to marriage": pulmonary
consumption, organic heart disease, epilepsy, insanity, diabetes, chronic
Bright's disease, and rheumatic fever. I wish I had sufficient medical
knowledge to analyze that proposal. He mentions inherited defective eyesight
and hearing also, and the "neurotic" quality, with which I have d=
ealt
in my text. He adds two other suggestions that appeal to me very strongly. =
He proposes
to bar all "cases of non-accidental disease in which life is saved by =
the
surgeon's knife," and he instances particularly, strangulated hernia a=
nd
ovarian cyst. And he also calls attention to apoplectic breakdown and prema=
ture
senility. All these are suggestions of great value for individual conduct, =
but
none of them have that quality of certainty that justifies collective actio=
n.]
Until great advances are made in anthropology--and at present there are nei=
ther
men nor endowments to justify the hope that any such advances will soon be =
made--that
is as much as can be done hopefully for many years in the selective breedin=
g of
individuals by the community as a whole. [Footnote: If at any time certainties should
replace speculations in the field of inheritance, then I fancy the common-s=
ense
of humanity will be found to be in favour of the immediate application of t=
hat knowledge
to life.] At present almost every citizen in the civilized State respects t=
he
rules of the laws of consanguinity, so far as they affect brothers and sist=
ers,
with an absolute respect--an enormous triumph of training over instinct, as=
Dr.
Beattie Crozier has pointed out--and if in the future it should be found
possible to divide up humanity into groups, some of which could pair with o=
ne
another only to the disadvantage of the offspring, and some of which had be=
tter
have no offspring, I believe there would be remarkably little difficulty in=
enforcing
a system of taboos in accordance with such knowledge. Only it would have to=
be
absolutely certain knowledge proved and proved again up to the hilt. If a t=
ruth
is worth application it is worth hammering home, and we have no right to ex=
pect
common men to obey conclusions upon which specialists are as yet not lucidly
agreed. [Footnote: It has been pointed out to me by my friend, Mr. Graham
Wallas, that although the State may not undertake any positive schemes for
selective breeding in the present state of our knowledge, it can no more ev=
ade
a certain reaction upon these things than the individual can evade a practi=
cal solution.
Although we cannot say of any specific individual that he or she is, or is =
not,
of exceptional reproductive value to the State, we may still be able, he
thinks, to point out classes which are very probably, as a whole, good
reproductive classes, and we may be able to promote, or at least to avoid
hindering, their increase. He instances the female elementary teacher as be=
ing
probably, as a type, a more intelligent and more energetic and capable girl
than the average of the stratum from which she arises, and he concludes she=
has
a higher reproductive value--a view contrary to my argument in the text tha=
t reproductive
and personal value are perhaps independent. He tells me that it is the prac=
tice
of many large school boards in this country to dismiss women teachers on
marriage, or to refuse promotion to these when they become mothers, which i=
s,
of course, bad for the race if personal and reproductive value are identica=
l.
He would have them retain their positions regardless of the check to their
efficiency maternity entails. This is a curiously indirect way towards what=
one
might call Galtonism. Practically he proposes to endow mothers in the name =
of
education. For my own part I do not agree with him that this class, any more
than any other class, can be shown to have a high reproductive value--which=
is
the matter under analysis in this paper-- though I will admit that an
ex-teacher will probably do infinitely more for her children than if she we=
re
an illiterate or untrained woman. I can only reiterate my conviction that
nothing really effective can be organized in these matters until we are much
clearer than we are at present in our ideas about them, and that a public b=
ody
devoted to education has no business either to impose celibacy, or subsidiz=
e families,
or experiment at all in these affairs. Not only in the case of elementary
teachers, but in the case of soldiers, sailors, and so on, the State may do
much to promote or discourage marriage and offspring, and no doubt it is al=
so
true, as Mr. Wallas insists, that the problems of the foreign immigrant and=
of
racial intermarriage, loom upon us. But since we have no applicable science
whatever here, since there is no certainty in any direction that any collec=
tive
course may not be collectively evil rather than good, there is nothing for =
it,
I hold, but to leave these things to individual experiment, and to concentr=
ate
our efforts where there is a clearer hope of effective consequence. Leave
things to individual initiative and some of us will, by luck or inspiration=
, go
right; take public action on an insufficient basis of knowledge and there i=
s a
clear prospect of collective error. The imminence of these questions argues=
for
nothing except prompt and vigorous research.]
That, however, is
only one aspect of this question. There are others from which the New
Republican may also approach this problem of the quality of the birth suppl=
y.
In relation to
personal conduct all these things assume another colour altogether. Let us =
be
clear upon that point. The state, the community, may only act upon certaint=
ies,
but the essential fact in individual life is experiment. Individuality is
experiment. While in matters of public regulation and control it is wiser n=
ot
to act at all than to act upon theories and uncertainties; while the State =
may
very well wait for a generation or half a dozen generations until knowledge
comes up to these--at present--insoluble problems, the private life must go=
on
now, and go upon probabilities where certainties fail. When we do not know =
what
is indisputably right, then we have to use our judgments to the utmost to do
each what seems to him probably right. The New Republican in his private li=
fe
and in the exercise of his private influence, must do what seems to him best
for the race; [Footnote: He would certainly try to discourage this sort of
thing. The paragraph is from the Morning Post (Sept., 1902):--
"Wedded in
Silence.--A deaf and dumb wedding was celebrated at Saffron Walden yesterda=
y,
when Frederick James Baish and Emily Lettige King, both deaf and dumb, were
married. The bride was attended by deaf and dumb bridesmaids, and upwards of
thirty deaf and dumb friends were present. The ceremony was performed by the
Rev. A. Payne, of the Deaf and Dumb Church, London."] he must not beget
children heedlessly and unwittingly because of his incomplete assurance. It=
is
pretty obviously his duty to examine himself patiently and thoroughly, and =
if
he feels that he is, on the whole, an average or rather more than an averag=
e man,
then upon the cardinal principle laid down in our first paper, it is his mo=
st
immediate duty to have children and to equip them fully for the affairs of
life. Moreover he will, I think, lose no opportunity of speaking and acting=
in
such a manner as to restore to marriage something of the solemnity and grav=
ity
the Victorian era--that age of nasty sentiment, sham delicacy and giggles--=
has
to so large an extent refused to give it.
And though the New
Republicans, in the existing lack of real guiding knowledge, will not dare =
to
intervene in specific cases, there is another method of influencing parenta=
ge
that men of good intent may well bear in mind. To attack a specific type is=
one
thing, to attack a specific quality is another. It may be impossible to set
aside selected persons from the population and say to them, "You are
cowardly, weak, silly, mischievous people, and if we tolerate you in this w=
orld
it is on condition that you do not found families." But it may be quit=
e possible
to bear in mind that the law and social arrangements may foster and protect=
the
cowardly and the mean, may guard stupidity against the competition of
enterprise, and may secure honour, power and authority in the hands of the
silly and the base; and, by the guiding principle we have set before oursel=
ves,
to seek every conceivable alteration of such laws and such social arrangeme=
nts
is no more than the New Republican's duty. It may be impossible to select a=
nd intermarry
the selected best of our race, but at any rate we can do a thousand things =
to
equalize the chances and make good and desirable qualities lead swiftly and
clearly to ease and honourable increase.
At present it is a
shameful and embittering fact that a gifted man from the poorer strata of
society must too often buy his personal development at the cost of his
posterity; he must either die childless and successful for the children of =
the
stupid to reap what he has sown, or sacrifice his gift--a wretched choice a=
nd
an evil thing for the world at large. [Footnote: This aspect of New Republi=
can
possibilities comes in again at another stage, and at that stage its treatm=
ent
will be resumed. The method and possibility of binding up discredit and fai=
lure
with mean and undesirable qualities, and of setting a premium upon the nobl=
er
attributes, is a matter that touches not only upon the quality of births, b=
ut
upon the general educational quality of the State in which a young citizen
develops. It is convenient to hold over any detailed expansions of this,
therefore, until we come to the general question, how the laws, institutions
and customs of to-day go to make or unmake the men of to-morrow.]
So far at least we
may go, towards improving the quality of the average birth now, but it is
manifestly only a very slow and fractional advance that we shall get by the=
se
expedients. The obstacle to any ampler enterprise is ignorance and ignorance
alone--not the ignorance of a majority in relation to a minority, but an
absolute want of knowledge. If we knew more we could do more.
Our main attack in
this enterprise of improving the birth supply must lie, therefore, through
research. If we cannot act ourselves, we may yet hold a light for our child=
ren
to see. At present, if there is a man specially gifted and specially dispos=
ed
for such intricate and laborious inquiry, such criticism and experiment as =
this
question demands, the world offers him neither food nor shelter, neither at=
tention
nor help; he cannot hope for a tithe of such honours as are thrust in profu=
sion
upon pork-butchers and brewers, he will be heartily despised by ninety-nine=
per
cent. of the people he encounters, and unless he has some irrelevant income=
, he
will die childless and his line will perish with him, for all the service he
may give to the future of mankind. And as great mental endowments do not,
unhappily, necessarily involve a passion for obscurity, contempt and
extinction, it is probable that under existing conditions such a man will g=
ive
his mind to some pursuit less bitterly unremunerative and shameful. It is a=
stupid
superstition that "genius will out" in spite of all discouragemen=
t.
The fact that great men have risen against crushing disadvantages in the pa=
st
proves nothing of the sort; this roll-call of survivors does no more than g=
ive
the measure of the enormous waste of human possibility human stupidity has
achieved. Men of exceptional gifts have the same broad needs as common men,
food, clothing, honour, attention, and the help of their fellows in
self-respect; they may not need them as ends, but they need them by the way,
and at present the earnest study of heredity produces none of these
bye-products. It lies before the New Republican to tilt the balance in this
direction.
There are, no dou=
bt,
already a number of unselfish and fortunately placed men who are able to do=
a
certain amount of work in this direction; Professor Cossar Ewart, for examp=
le,
one of those fine, subtle, unhonoured workers who are the glory of British
science and the condemnation of our social order, has done much to clarify =
the discussion
of telegony and prepotency, and there are many such medical men as Mr. Reid=
who
broaden their daily practice by attention to these great issues. One thinks=
of
certain other names. Professors Karl Pearson, Weldon, Lloyd Morgan, J. A.
Thomson and Meldola, Dr. Benthall and Messrs. Bateson, Cunningham, Pocock,
Havelock Ellis, E. A. Fay and Stuart Menteath occur to me, only to remind me
how divided their attention has had to be. As many others, perhaps, have
slipped my memory now. Not half a hundred altogether in all this wide world=
of English-speaking
men! For one such worker we need fifty if this science of heredity is to gr=
ow
to practicable proportions. We need a literature, we need a special public =
and
an atmosphere of attention and discussion. Every man who grasps the New
Republican idea brings these needs nearer satisfaction, but if only some day
the New Republic could catch the ear of a prince, a little weary of being t=
he costumed
doll of grown-up children, the decoy dummy of fashionable tradesmen, or if =
it could
invade and capture the mind of a multi-millionaire, these things might come
almost at a stride. This missing science of heredity, this unworked mine of
knowledge on the borderland of biology and anthropology, which for all
practical purposes is as unworked now as it was in the days of Plato, is, in
simple truth, ten times more important to humanity than all the chemistry a=
nd
physics, all the technical and industrial science that ever has been or ever
will be discovered.
So much for the
existing possibilities of making the race better by breeding. For the rest =
of
these papers we shall take the births into the world, for the most part, as=
we
find them.
[Mr. Stuart Mente=
ath
remarks apropos of this question of the reproduction of exceptional people =
that
it is undesirable to suggest voluntary extinction in any case. If a man,
thinking that his family is "tainted," displays so much foresight=
ed
patriotism, humility, and lifelong self-denial as to have no children, the
presumption is that the loss to humanity by the discontinuance of such a ty=
pe
is greater than the gain. "Conceit in smallest bodies strongest
works," and it does not follow that a sense of one's own excellence ju=
stifies
one's utmost fecundity or the reverse. Mr. Vrooman, who, with Mrs. Vrooman,=
founded
Ruskin Hall at Oxford, writes to much the same effect. He argues that people
intelligent enough and moral enough to form such resolutions are just the s=
ort
of people who ought not to form them. Mr. Stuart Menteath also makes a most
admirable suggestion with regard to male and female geniuses who are absorb=
ed
in their careers. Although the genius may not have or rear a large family,
something might be done to preserve the stock by assisting his or her broth=
ers
and sisters to support and educate their children.]
III - CERTAIN WHOLESALE
ASPECTS OF MAN-MAKING
§ 1
With a skin of infinite delicacy th=
at
life will harden very speedily, with a discomforted writhing little body, w=
ith
a weak and wailing outcry that stirs the heart, the creature comes protesti=
ng
into the world, and unless death win a victory, we and chance and the force=
s of
life in it, make out of that soft helplessness a man. Certain things there =
are
inevitable in that man and unalterable, stamped upon his being long before =
the
moment of his birth, the inherited things, the inherent things, his final a=
nd
fundamental self. This is his "heredity," his incurable reality, =
the
thing that out of all his being, stands the test of survival and passes on =
to
his children. Certain things he must be, certain things he may be, and cert=
ain
things are for ever beyond his scope. That much his parentage defines for h=
im,
that is the natural man.
But, in addition,
there is much else to make up the whole adult man as we know him. There is =
all
that he has learnt since his birth, all that he has been taught to do and
trained to do, his language, the circle of ideas he has taken to himself, t=
he
disproportions that come from unequal exercise and the bias due to
circumambient suggestion. There are a thousand habits and a thousand
prejudices, powers undeveloped and skill laboriously acquired. There are sc=
ars
upon his body, and scars upon his mind. All these are secondary things, thi=
ngs
capable of modification and avoidance; they constitute the manufactured man,
the artificial man. And it is chiefly with all this superposed and adherent=
and
artificial portion of a man that this and the following paper will deal. The
question of improving the breed, of raising the average human heredity we h=
ave
discussed and set aside. We are going to draw together now as many things as
possible that bear upon the artificial constituent, the made and controllab=
le
constituent in the mature and fully-developed man. We are going to consider=
how
it is built up and how it may be built up, we are going to attempt a rough
analysis of the whole complex process by which the civilized citizen is evo=
lved
from that raw and wailing little creature.
Before his birth,=
at
the very moment when his being becomes possible, the inherent qualities and
limitations of a man are settled for good and all, whether he will be a neg=
ro
or a white man, whether he will be free or not of inherited disease, whethe=
r he
will be passionate or phlegmatic or imaginative or six-fingered or with a s=
nub
or aquiline nose. And not only that, but even before his birth the qualities
that are not strictly and inevitably inherited are also beginning to be mad=
e.
The artificial, the avoidable handicap also, may have commenced in the
worrying, the overworking or the starving of his mother. In the first few
months of his life very slight differences in treatment may have life-long
consequences. No doubt there is an extraordinary recuperative power in very=
young
children; if they do not die under neglect or ill-treatment they recover to=
an
extent incomparably greater than any adult could do, but there remains stil=
l a
wide marginal difference between what they become and what they might have
been. With every year of life the recuperative quality diminishes, the init=
ial handicap
becomes more irrevocable, the effects of ill-feeding, of unwholesome
surroundings, of mental and moral infections, become more inextricably a pa=
rt
of the growing individuality. And so we may well begin our study by conside=
ring
the circumstances under which the opening phase, the first five years of li=
fe,
are most safely and securely passed.
Food, warmth,
cleanliness and abundant fresh air there must be from the first, and
unremitting attention, such attention as only love can sustain. And in addi=
tion
there must be knowledge. It is a pleasant superstition that Nature (who in =
such
connections becomes feminine and assumes a capital N) is to be trusted in t=
hese
matters. It is a pleasant superstition to which, some of us, under the
agreeable counsels of sentimental novelists, of thoughtless mercenary
preachers, and ignorant and indolent doctors, have offered up a child or so=
. We
are persuaded to believe that a mother has an instinctive knowledge of what=
ever
is necessary for a child's welfare, and the child, until it reaches the
knuckle-rapping age at least, an instinctive knowledge of its own requireme=
nts.
Whatever proceedings are most suggestive of an ideal naked savage leading a
"natural" life, are supposed to be not only more advantageous to =
the
child but in some mystical way more moral. The spectacle of an undersized
porter-fed mother, for example, nursing a spotted and distressful baby, is
exalted at the expense of the clean and simple artificial feeding that is o=
ften
advisable to-day. Yet the mortality of first-born children should indicate =
that
a modern woman carries no instinctive system of baby management about with =
her in
her brain, even if her savage ancestress had anything of the sort, and both=
the
birth rate and the infantile death rate of such noble savages as our
civilization has any chance of observing, suggest a certain generous
carelessness, a certain spacious indifference to individual misery, rather =
than
a trustworthy precision of individual guidance about Nature's way.
This cant of Natu=
re's
trustworthiness is partly a survival of the day of Rousseau and Sturm (of t=
he
Reflections), when untravelled men, orthodox and unorthodox alike, in
artificial wigs, spouted in unison in this regard; partly it is the half
instinctive tactics of the lax and lazy-minded to evade trouble and
austerities. The incompetent medical practitioner, incapable of regimen,
repeats this cant even to-day, though he knows full well that, left to Natu=
re,
men over-eat themselves almost as readily as dogs, contract a thousand dise=
ases
and exhaust their last vitality at fifty, and that half the white women in =
the world
would die with their first children still unborn. He knows, too, that to the
details of such precautionary measures as vaccination, for example, instinc=
t is
strongly opposed, and that drainage and filterage and the use of soap in
washing are manifestly unnatural things. That large, naked, virtuous, pink,
Natural Man, drinking pure spring water, eating the fruits of the earth, and
living to ninety in the open air is a fantasy; he never was nor will be. The
real savage is a nest of parasites within and without, he smells, he rots, =
he
starves. Forty is a great age for him. He is as full of artifice as his
civilized brother, only not so wise. As for his moral integrity, let the
curious inquirer seek an account of the Tasmanian, or the Australian, or th=
e Polynesian
before "sophistication" came.
The very existence
and nature of man is an interference with Nature and Nature's ways, using
Nature in this sense of the repudiation of expedients. Man is the tool-using
animal, the word-using animal, the animal of artifice and reason, and the o=
nly
possible "return to Nature" for him--if we scrutinize the phrase-=
-would
be a return to the scratching, promiscuous, arboreal simian. To rebel again=
st
instinct, to rebel against limitation, to evade, to trip up, and at last to
close with and grapple and conquer the forces that dominate him, is the fun=
damental
being of man. And from the very outset of his existence, from the instant of
his birth, if the best possible thing is to be made of him, wise contrivance
must surround him. The soft, new, living thing must be watched for every si=
gn
of discomfort, it must be weighed and measured, it must be thought about, it
must be talked to and sung to, skilfully and properly, and presently it mus=
t be
given things to see and handle that the stirring germ of its mind may not go
unsatisfied. From the very beginning, if we are to do our best for a child,
there must be forethought and knowledge quite beyond the limit of instinct'=
s poor
equipment.
Now, for a child =
to
have all these needs supplied implies certain other conditions. The constant
loving attention is to be got only from a mother or from some well-affected
girl or woman. It is not a thing to be hired for money, nor contrivable on =
any
wholesale plan. Possibly there may be ways of cherishing and nursing infant=
s by
wholesale that will keep them alive, but at best these are second best ways,
and we are seeking the best possible. A very noble, exceptionally loving an=
d quite
indefatigable woman might conceivably direct the development of three or fo=
ur
little children from their birth onward, or, with very good assistance, eve=
n of
six or seven at a time, as well as a good mother could do for one, but it w=
ould
be a very rare and wonderful thing. We must put that aside as an exceptional
thing, quite impossible to provide when it is most needed, and we must fall
back upon the fact that the child must have a mother or nurse--and it must =
have
that attendant exclusively to itself for the first year or so of life. The =
mother
or nurse must be in health, physically and morally, well fed and contented,=
and
able to give her attention mainly, if not entirely, to the little child. The
child must lie warmly in a well-ventilated room, with some one availably in
hearing day and night, there must be plentiful warm water to wash it, plent=
y of
wrappings and towellings and so forth for it; it is best to take it often i=
nto
the open air, and for this, under urban or suburban conditions at any rate,=
a
perambulator is almost necessary. The room must be clean and brightly lit, =
and
prettily and interestingly coloured if we are to get the best results. Thes=
e things
imply a certain standard of prosperity in the circumstances of the child's
birth. Either the child must be fed in the best way from a mother in health=
and
abundance, or if it is to be bottle fed, there must be the most elaborate
provision for sterilizing and warming the milk, and adjusting its compositi=
on
to the changing powers of the child's assimilation. These conditions imply a
house of a certain standard of comfort and equipment, and it is manifest the
mother cannot be earning her own living before and about the time of the
child's birth, nor, unless she is going to employ a highly skilled, trustwo=
rthy,
and probably expensive person as nurse, for some year or so after it. She or
the nurse must be of a certain standard of intelligence and education, trai=
ned
to be observant and keep her temper, and she must speak her language with a
good, clear accent. Moreover, behind the mother and readily available, must=
be
a highly- skilled medical man.
Not to have these
things means a handicap. Not to have that very watchful feeding and attenti=
on
at first means a loss of nutrition, a retarding of growth, that will either
never be recovered or will be recovered later at the expense of mental
development or physical strength. The early handicap may also involve a
derangement of the digestion, a liability to stomachic and other troubles, =
that
may last throughout life. Not to have the singing and talking, and the vari=
ed interest
of coloured objects and toys, means a falling away from the best mental
development, and a taciturn nurse, or a nurse with a base accent, means
backwardness and needless difficulty with the beginning of speech. Not to be
born within reach of abundant changes of clothing and abundant water,
means--however industrious and cleanly the instincts of nurse and mother--a
lack of the highest possible cleanliness and a lack of health and vitality.=
And
the absence of highly-skilled medical advice, or the attentions of over-wor=
ked
and under-qualified practitioners, may convert a transitory crisis or a pas=
sing
ailment into permanent injury or fatal disorder.
It is very doubtf=
ul
if these most favourable conditions fall to the lot of more than a quarter =
of
the children born to-day even in England, where infant mortality is at its
lowest. The rest start handicapped. They start handicapped, and fail to rea=
ch
their highest possible development. They are born of mothers preoccupied by=
the
necessity of earning a living or by vain occupations, or already battered a=
nd exhausted
by immoderate child-bearing; they are born into insanity and ugly or
inconvenient homes, their mothers or nurses are ignorant and incapable, the=
re
is insufficient food or incompetent advice, there is, if they are town
children, nothing for their lungs but vitiated air, and there is not enough
sunlight for them. And accordingly they fall away at the very outset from w=
hat
they might be, and for the most part they never recover their lost start.
Just what this
handicap amounts to, so far as it works out in physical consequences, is to=
be
gauged by certain almost classical figures, which I have here ventured to
present again in graphic form. These figures do not present our total failu=
re,
they merely show how far the less fortunate section of the community falls
short of the more fortunate. They are taken from Clifford Allbutt's System =
of Medicine
(art. "Hygiene of Youth," Dr. Clement Dukes). 15,564 boys and you=
ng
men were measured and weighed to get these figures. The black columns indic=
ate
the weight (+9 lbs. of clothes) and height respectively of youths of the to=
wn
artisan population, for the various ages from ten to twenty-five indicated =
at
the heads of the columns. The white additions to these columns indicate the
additional weight and height of the more favoured classes at the same ages.
Public school- boys, naval and military cadets, medical and university
students, were taken to represent the more favoured classes. It will be not=
ed
that while the growth in height of the lower class boy falls short from the=
very
earliest years, the strain of the adolescent period tells upon his weight, =
and
no doubt upon his general stamina, most conspicuously. These figures, it mu=
st
be borne in mind, deal with the living members of each class at the ages gi=
ven.
The mortality, however, in the black or lower class is probably far higher =
than
in the upper class year by year, and if this could be allowed for it would
greatly increase the apparent failure of the lower class. And these matters=
of
height and weight are only coarse material deficiencies. They serve to sugg=
est,
but they do not serve to gauge, the far graver and sadder loss, the invisib=
le
and immeasurable loss through mental and moral qualities undeveloped, throu=
gh
activities warped and crippled and vitality and courage lowered.
Moreover, defecti=
ve
as are these urban artisans, they are, after all, much more "picked&qu=
ot;
than the youth of the upper classes. They are survivors of a much more
stringent process of selection than goes on amidst the more hygienic upper =
and
middle-class conditions. The opposite three columns represent the mortality=
of
children under five in Rutlandshire, where it is lowest, in the year 1900, =
in
Dorsetshire, a reasonably good county, and in Lancashire, the worst in Engl=
and,
for the same year. Each entire column represents 1,000 births, and the blac=
kened
portion represents the proportion of that 1,000 dead before the fifth birth=
day.
Now, unless we are going to assume that the children born in Lancashire are
inherently weaker than the children born in Rutland or Dorset--and there is=
not
the shadow of a reason why we should believe that--we must suppose that at
least 161 children out of every 1,000 in Lancashire were killed by the
conditions into which they were born. That excess of blackness in the third
column over that in the first represents a holocaust of children, that goes=
on
year by year, a perennial massacre of the innocents, out of which no politi=
cal capital
can be made, and which is accordingly outside the sphere of practical polit=
ics
altogether as things are at present. The same men who spouted infinite misc=
hief
because a totally unforeseen and unavoidable epidemic of measles killed some
thousands of children in South Africa, who, for some idiotic or wicked
vote-catching purpose, attempted to turn that epidemic to the permanent
embitterment of Dutch and English, these same men allow thousands and thous=
ands
of avoidable deaths of English children close at hand to pass absolutely
unnoticed. The fact that more than 21,000 little children died needlessly i=
n Lancashire
in that very same year means nothing to them at all. It cannot be used to
embitter race against race, and to hamper that process of world unification
which it is their pious purpose to delay.
It does not at all
follow that even the Rutland 103 represents the possible minimum of infant
mortality. One learns from the Register- General's returns for 1891 that am=
ong
the causes of death specified in the three counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, a=
nd
Hereford, where infant mortality is scarcely half what it is in the three
vilest towns in England in this respect, Preston, Leicester, and Blackburn,=
the
number of children killed by injury at birth is three times as great as it =
is in
these same towns. Unclassified "violence" also accounts for more =
infant
deaths in the country than in towns. This suggests pretty clearly a delayed=
and
uncertain medical attendance and rough conditions, and it points us to still
better possibilities. These diagrams and these facts justify together a
reasonable hope that the mortality of infants under five throughout England
might be brought to less than one-third what it is in child-destroying
Lancashire at the present time, to a figure that is well under ninety in the
thousand.
A portion of infa= nt and child mortality represents no doubt the lingering and wasteful removal = from this world of beings with inherent defects, beings who, for the most part, ought never to have been born, and need not have been born under conditions= of greater foresight. These, however, are the merest small fraction of our inf= ant mortality. It leaves untouched the fact that a vast multitude of children o= f untainted blood and good mental and moral possibilities, as many, perhaps, as 100 in = each 1,000 born, die yearly through insufficient food, insufficient good air, and insufficient attention. The plain and simple truth is that they are born needlessly. There are still too many births for our civilisation to look af= ter, we are still unfit to be trusted with a rising birth-rate. [Footnote: It is= a digression from the argument of this Paper, but I would like to point out h= ere a very popular misconception about the birth-rate which needs exposure. It = is known that the birth-rate is falling in all European countries--a fall which has a very direct relation to a rise in the mean standard of comfort and the aver= age age at marriage--and alarmists foretell a time when nations will be extinguished through this decline. They ascribe it to a certain decay in religious faith, to the advance of science and scepticism, and so forth; it= is a part, they say, of a general demoralization. The thing is a popular cant = and quite unsupported by facts. The decline in the birth-rate is--so far as Eng= land and Wales goes--partly a real decline due to a decline in gross immorality,= partly to a real decline due to the later age at which women marry, and partly a statistical decline due to an increased proportion of people too old or too young for child-bearing. Wherever the infant mortality is falling there is = an apparent misleading fall in the birth-rate due to the "loading" o= f the population with children. Here are the sort of figures that are generally given. They are the figures for England and Wales for two typical periods.<= o:p>
=
Period 1846-1850 &=
nbsp;
33 8 births per 1000 =
Period
1896-1900 2=
8 0
births per 1000 =
&nb=
sp; -----=
-----------------------
=
&nb=
sp; =
5.8
fall in the birth-rate.
This as it stands=
is
very striking. But if we take the death-rates of these two periods we find =
that
they have fallen also.
Period 1846-1850<=
span
style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> 23 3 deaths per =
1000 =
Period
1896-1900 1=
7 7
deaths per 1000 =
&nb=
sp; -----=
-----------------------
=
&nb=
sp; =
5.6
fall in the death-rate.
Let us subtract
death-rate from birth-rate and that will give the effective rate of increas=
e of
the population.
=
Period 1846-1850
10 5 effective rate of increase =
Period
1896-1900 10 3
effective rate of increase =
&nb=
sp; -----------=
----------------------
=
&nb=
sp; =
.2
fall in the rate of increase.
But now comes a
curious thing that those who praise the good old pre- Board School days--the
golden age of virtuous innocence--ignore. The Illegitimate births in 1846-1=
850
numbered 2.2 per 1000, in 1896- 1900 they numbered 1.2 per 1000. So that if=
it
were not for this fall in illegitimate births the period 1896-1900 would sh=
ow a
positive rise in the effective rate of increase of .8 per thousand. The emi=
nent
persons therefore who ascribe our falling birth-rate to irreligion and so
forth, either speak without knowledge or with some sort of knowledge beyond=
my
ken. England is, as a matter of fact, becoming not only more hygienic and
rational, but more moral and more temperate. The highly moral, healthy,
prolific, pious England of the past is just another poetical delusion of the
healthy savage type.]
These poor little
souls are born, amidst tears and suffering they gain such love as they may,
they learn to feel and suffer, they struggle and cry for food, for air, for=
the
right to develop; and our civilisation at present has neither the courage to
kill them outright quickly, cleanly, and painlessly, nor the heart and cour=
age
and ability to give them what they need. They are overlooked and misused, t=
hey
go short of food and air, they fight their pitiful little battle for life
against the cruellest odds; and they are beaten. Battered, emaciated, pitif=
ul, they
are thrust out of life, borne out of our regardless world, stiff little
life-soiled sacrifices to the spirit of disorder against which it is man's
preeminent duty to battle. There has been all the pain in their lives, there
has been the radiated pain of their misery, there has been the waste of the=
ir
grudged and insufficient food, and all the pain and labour of their mothers,
and all the world is the sadder for them because they have lived in vain.
§ 2
Now, since our imaginary New Republ=
ic,
which is to set itself to the making of a better generation of men, will fi=
nd
the possibility of improving the race by selective breeding too remote for
anything but further organised inquiry, it is evident that its first point =
of
attack will have to be the wastage of such births as the world gets to-day.=
Throughout
the world the New Republic will address itself to this problem, and when a
working solution has been obtained, then the New Republican on press and
platform, the New Republican in pulpit and theatre, the New Republican upon
electoral committee and in the ballot box, will press weightily to see that
solution realised. Upon the theory of New Republicanism as it was discussed=
in
our first paper an effective solution (effective enough, let us say, to abo=
lish
seventy or eighty per cent.) of this scandal of infantile suffering would h=
ave precedence
over almost every existing political consideration.
The problem of
securing the maximum chance of life and health for every baby born into the
world is an extremely complicated one, and the reader must not too hastily
assume that a pithy, complete recipe is attempted here. Yet, complicated th=
ough
the problem is, there does not occur any demonstrable impossibility such as
there is in the question of selective breeding. I believe that a solution is
possible, that its broad lines may be already stated, and that it could very
easily be worked out to an immediate practical application.
Let us glance fir=
st
at a solution that is now widely understood to be incorrect. Philanthropic
people in the past have attempted, and many are still striving, to meet the=
birth
waste by the very obvious expedients of lying-in hospitals, orphanages and
foundling institutions, waifs' homes, Barnardo institutions and the like, a=
nd within
certain narrow limits these things no doubt serve a useful purpose in
individual cases. But nowadays there is an increasing indisposition to meet=
the
general problem by such methods, because nowadays people are alive to certa=
in
ulterior consequences that were at first overlooked. Any extensive relief of
parental responsibility we now know pretty certainly will serve to encourage
and stimulate births in just those strata of society where it would seem to=
be
highly reasonable to believe they are least desirable. It is just where the=
chances
for a child are least that passions are grossest, basest, and most heedless,
and stand in the greatest need of a sense of the gravity of possible
consequences to control their play, and to render it socially innocuous. If=
we
were to take over or assist all the children born below a certain level of
comfort, or, rather, if we were to take over their mothers before the birth
occurred, and bring up that great mass of children under the best conditions
for them--supposing this to be possible--it would only leave our successors=
in
the next generation a heavier task of the same sort. The assisted population
would grow generation by generation relatively to the assisting until the
Sinbad of Charity broke down. And quite early in the history of Charities i=
t was
found that a very grave impediment to their beneficial action lay in one of=
the
most commendable qualities to be found in poor and poorish people, and that=
is
pride. While Charities, perhaps, catch the quite hopeless cases, they leave
untouched the far more extensive mass of births in non-pauper, not very
prosperous homes--the lower middle- class homes in towns, for example, which
supply a large proportion of poorly developed adults to our community. Mr.
Seebohm Rowntree, in his "Poverty" (that noble, able, valuable bo=
ok),
has shown that nearly thirty per cent. at least of a typical English town
population goes short of the physical necessities of life. These people are
fiercely defensive in such matters as this, and one may no more usurp and s=
hare
their parental responsibility, badly though they discharge it, than one may
handle the litter of a she-wolf.
These considerati=
ons
alone would suffice to make us very suspicious of the philanthropic method =
of
direct assistance, so far as the remedial aspect goes. But there is another
more sweeping and comprehensive objection to this method. Philanthropic
institutions, as a matter of fact, rarely succeed in doing what they profess
and intend to do.
I do not allude h=
ere
to the countless swindlers and sham institutions that levy a tremendous tri=
bute
upon the heedless good. Quite apart from that wastage altogether, and speak=
ing
only of such bonâ fide institutions as would satisfy Mr. Labouchere, =
they
do not work. It is one thing for the influential and opulent inactive perso=
n of
good intentions to provide a magnificent building and a lavish endowment fo=
r some
specific purpose, and quite another to attain in reality the ostensible end=
of
the display. It is easy to create a general effect of providing comfort and
tender care for helpless women who are becoming mothers, and of tending and
training and educating their children, but, in cold fact, it is impossible =
to
get enough capable and devoted people to do the work. In cold fact, lying-in
hospitals have a tendency to become austere, hard, unsympathetic, wholesale
concerns, with a disposition to confuse and substitute moral for physical
well-being. In cold fact, orphanages do not present any perplexing resembla=
nce
to an earthly paradise. However warm the heart behind the cheque, the human=
being
at the other end of the chain is apt to find the charity no more than a rat=
her
inhuman machine. Shining devotees there are, but able, courageous, and vigo=
rous
people are rare, and the world urges a thousand better employments upon them
than the care of inferior mothers and inferior children. Exceptionally good
people owe the world the duty of parentage themselves, and it follows that =
the
rank and file of those in the service of Charity falls far below the standa=
rd
necessary to give these poor children that chance in the world the
cheque-writing philanthropist believes he is giving them. The great proport=
ion
of the servants and administrators of Charities are doing that work because=
they
can get nothing better to do--and it is not considered remarkably high-class
work. These things have to be reckoned with by every philanthropic person w=
ith
sufficient faith to believe that an enterprise may not only look well, but =
do
well. One gets a Waugh or a Barnardo now and then, a gleam of efficiency in=
the
waste, and for the rest this spectacle of stinted thought and unstinted giv=
ing,
this modern Charity, is often no more than a pretentious wholesale substitu=
te
for retail misery and disaster. Fourteen million pounds a year, I am told, =
go
to British Charities, and I doubt if anything like a fair million's worth of
palliative amelioration is attained for this expenditure. As for any perman=
ent
improvement, I doubt if all these Charities together achieve a net advance =
that
could not be got by the discreet and able expenditure of ten or twelve thou=
sand
pounds.
It is one of the
grimmest ironies in life, that athwart the memory of sainted founders shoul=
d be
written the most tragic consequences. The Foundling Hospital of London,
established by Coram--to save infant lives!--buried, between 1756 and 1760,
10,534 children out of 14,934 received, and the Dublin Foundling Hospital
(suppressed in 1835) had a mortality of eighty per cent. The two great Russ=
ian
institutions are, I gather, about equally deadly with seventy-five per cent=
.,
and the Italian institutes run to about ninety per cent. The Florentine boa=
sts a
very beautiful and touching series of putti by Delia Robbia, that does litt=
le
or nothing to diminish its death-rate. So far from preventing infant murder
these places, with the noblest intentions in the world, have, for all pract=
ical
purposes, organized it. The London Foundling, be it noted, in the reorganiz=
ed
form it assumed after its first massacres, is not a Foundling Hospital at a=
ll.
An extremely limited number of children, the illegitimate children of
recommended respectable but unfortunate mothers, are converted into admirab=
le bandsmen
for the defence of the Empire or trained to be servants for people who feel=
the
need of well-trained servants, at a gross cost that might well fill the min=
d of
many a poor clergyman's son with amazement and envy. And this is probably a
particularly well-managed charity. It is doing all that can be expected of =
it,
and stands far above the general Charitable average.
Every Poor Law
Authority comes into the tangles of these perplexities. Upon the hands of e=
very
one of them come deserted children, the children of convicted criminals, the
children of pauper families, a miscellaneous pitiful succession of
responsibilities. The enterprises they are forced to undertake to meet these
charges rest on taxation, a financial basis far stabler than the fitful good
intentions of the rich, but apart from this advantage there is little about
them to differentiate them from Charities. The method of treatment varies f=
rom a
barrack system, in which the children are herded in huge asylums like those
places between Sutton and Banstead, to what is perhaps preferable, the syst=
em
of boarding-out little groups of children with suitable poor people. Provid=
ed
such boarded-out children are systematically weighed, measured and examined,
and at once withdrawn when they drop below average mental and bodily progre=
ss,
it would seem more likely that a reasonable percentage should grow into
ordinary useful citizens under these latter conditions than under the forme=
r.
It is well, howev=
er,
to anticipate a very probable side result if we make the boarding out of pa=
uper
children a regular rural industry. There will arise in many rural homes a v=
ery
strong pecuniary inducement to limit the family. Side by side will be a cou=
ple
with eight children --of their own, struggling hard to keep them, and anoth=
er
family with, let us say, two children of their own blood and six
"boarded-out," living in relative opulence. That side consequence
must be anticipated. For my own part and for the reasons given in the secon=
d of
these papers, I do not see that it is a very serious one so far as the futu=
re goes,
because I do not think there is much to choose between the "heredity&q=
uot;
of the rural and the urban strain. It is nonsense to pretend that we shall =
get
the fine flower of the cottage population to board pauper children; we shall
induce respectable inferior people living in healthy conditions to take car=
e of
an inferior sort of children rescued from unhealthy disreputable
conditions--that is all. The average inherent quality of the resultant adul=
ts
will be about the same whichever element predominates.
Possibly this
indifference may seem undesirable. But we must bear in mind that the whole
problem is hard to cope with, it is an aspect of failure, and no sentimental
juggling with facts will convert the business into a beautiful or desirable
thing. Somehow or other we have to pay. All expedients must be palliatives,=
all
will involve sacrifices; we must, no doubt, adopt some of them for our pres=
ent necessities,
but they are like famine relief works, to adopt them in permanence is a cou=
nsel
of despair.
Clearly it is not
along these lines that the capable men-makers we suppose to be attacking the
problem will spend much of their energies. All the experiences of Charities=
and
Poor-Law Authorities simply confirm our postulate of the necessity of a
standard of comfort if a child is to have a really good initial chance in t=
he
world. The only conceivable solution of this problem is one that will ensure
that no child, or only a few accidental and exceptional children, will be b=
orn outside
these advantages. It is no good trying to sentimentalize the issue away. Th=
is
is the end we must attain, to attain any effectual permanent improvement in=
the
conditions of childhood. A certain number of people have to be discouraged =
and
prevented from parentage, and a great number of homes have to be improved. =
How
can we ensure these ends, or how far can we go towards ensuring them?
The first step to
ensuring them is certainly to do all we can to discourage reckless parentag=
e,
and to render it improbable and difficult. We must make sure that whatever =
we
do for the children, the burden of parental responsibility must not be
lightened a feather- weight. All the experience of two hundred years of cha=
rity
and poor law legislation sustains that. But to accept that as a first princ=
iple
is one thing, and to apply it by using a wretched little child as our instr=
ument
in the exemplary punishment of its parent is another. At present that is our
hideous practice. So long as the parents are not convicted criminals, so lo=
ng
as they do not practise indictable cruelty upon their offspring, so long as=
the
children themselves fall short of criminality, we insist upon the parent
"keeping" the child. It may be manifest the child is ill-fed, har=
shly
treated, insufficiently clothed, dirty and living among surroundings harmfu=
l to
body and soul alike, but we merely take the quivering damaged victim and po=
int
the moral to the parent. "This is what comes of your recklessness,&quo=
t;
we say. "Aren't you ashamed of it?" And after inscrutable meditat=
ions
the fond parent usually answers us by sending out the child to beg or sell
matches or by some equally effective retort. Now a great number of excellen=
t people
pretend that this is a dilemma. "Take the child away," it is argu=
ed,
"and you remove one of the chief obstacles to the reckless reproductio=
n of
the unfit. Leave it in the parents' hands and you must have the cruelty.&qu=
ot;
But really this is not a dilemma at all. There is a quite excellent middle =
way.
It may not be within the sphere of practical politics at present--if not, i=
t is
work for the New Republic to get it there--but it would practically settle =
all
this problem of neglected children. This way is simply to make the parent t=
he
debtor to society on account of the child for adequate food, clothing, and =
care
for at least the first twelve or thirteen years of life, and in the event of
parental default to invest the local authority with exceptional powers of r=
ecovery
in this matter. It would be quite easy to set up a minimum standard of
clothing, cleanliness, growth, nutrition and education, and provide, that if
that standard was not maintained by a child, or if the child was found to be
bruised or maimed without the parents being able to account for these injur=
ies,
the child should be at once removed from the parental care, and the parents
charged with the cost of a suitable maintenance--which need not be excessiv=
ely
cheap. If the parents failed in the payments they could be put into celibate
labour establishments to work off as much of the debt as they could, and th=
ey
would not be released until their debt was fully discharged. Legislation of
this type would not only secure all and more of the advantages children of =
the
least desirable sort now get from charities and public institutions, but it
would certainly invest parentage with a quite unprecedented gravity for the
reckless, and it would enormously reduce the number of births of the least
desirable sort. Into this net, for example, every habitual drunkard who was=
a parent
would, for his own good and the world's, be almost certain to fall. [Footno=
te:
Mr. C. G. Stuart Menteath has favored me with some valuable comments upon t=
his
point. He writes: "I agree that calling such persons as have shown
themselves incapable of parental duties debtors to the State, would help to
reconcile popular ideas of the 'liberty of the subject' with the enforcemen=
t as
well as the passing of such laws. But the notions of drastically enforcing
parental duties, and of discouraging and even prohibiting the marriages of
those unable to show their ability to perform these duties, has long prevai=
led.
See Nicholl's History of the Poor Law (1898, New Edition), i. 229, and ii. =
140,
278, where you will find chargeable bastardy has been punishable in the fir=
st
offence by one year's imprisonment, and in the second, by imprisonment until
sureties are given, which thus might amount to imprisonment for life. See a=
lso,
J. S. Mill, Political Economy, Bk. II., ch. ii., for extreme legislation on=
the
Continent against the marriage of people unable to support a family. In Den=
mark
there seem to be very severe laws impeding the marriage of those who have b=
een
paupers. The English law was sufficiently effective to produce infanticide,=
so
that a law was passed making concealment of birth almost infanticide."=
]
So much for the w=
orst
fringe of this question, the maltreated children, the children of the slum,=
the
children of drunkards and criminals, and the illegitimate. But the bulk of =
the
children of deficient growth, the bulk of the excessive mortality, lies abo=
ve
the level of such intervention, and the method of attack of the New Republi=
can
must be less direct. Happily there already exists a complicated mass of leg=
islation
that without any essential change of principle could be applied to this obj=
ect.
The first of the
expedients which would lead to a permanent improvement in these matters is =
the
establishment of a minimum of soundness and sanitary convenience in houses,
below which standard it shall be illegal to inhabit a house at all. There
should be a certain relation between the size of rooms and their ventilating
appliances, a certain minimum of lighting, certain conditions of open space
about the house and sane rules about foundations and materials. These
regulations would vary with the local density of population--many things are
permissible in Romney marsh, for example, which the south-west wind sweeps =
everlastingly,
that would be deadly in Rotherhithe. At present in England there are local
building regulations, for the most part vexatious and stupid to an almost
incredible degree, and compiled without either imagination or understanding,
but it should be possible to substitute for these a national minimum of
habitability without any violent revolution. A house that failed to come up=
to
this minimum-- which might begin very low and be raised at intervals of
years--would, after due notice, be pulled down. It might be pulled down and=
the
site taken over and managed by the local authority--allowing its owner a po=
rtion
of its value in compensation--if it was evident his failure to keep up to t=
he
standard had an adequate excuse. In time it might be possible to level up t=
he
minimum standard of all tenements in towns and urban districts at any rate =
to
the possession of a properly equipped bathroom for example, without which, =
for
hardworking people, regular cleanliness is a practical impossibility. This
process of levelling-up the minimum tenement would be enormously aided by a
philanthropic society which would devote itself to the study of building
methods and materials, to the evolution of conveniences, and the direction =
of invention
to lessening the cost and complication of building wholesome dwellings.
The state of repa=
ir
of inhabited buildings is also already a matter of public concern. All that=
is
needed is a slow, persistent tightening-up of the standard. This would ensu=
re,
at any rate, that the outer shell of the child's surroundings gave it a fair
chance in life. In the next place comes legislation against overcrowding. T=
here
must be a maximum number of inhabitants to any tenement, and a really sane =
law
will be far more stringent to secure space and air for young children than =
for adults.
There is little reason, except the possible harbouring of parasites and
infectious disease, why five or six adults should not share a cask on a dust
heap as a domicile--if it pleases them. But directly children come in we to=
uch
the future. The minimum permissible tenement for a maximum of two adults an=
d a
very young child is one properly ventilated room capable of being heated, w=
ith
close and easy access to sanitary conveniences, a constant supply of water =
and
easy means of getting warm water. More than one child should mean another r=
oom,
and it seems only reasonable if we go so far as this, to go further and req=
uire
a minimum of furniture and equipment, a fire-guard, for instance, and a
separate bed or cot for the child. In a civilized community little children
should not sleep with adults, and the killing of children by
"accidental" overlaying should be a punishable offence. [Footnote=
: In the returns I have quoted from
Blackburn, Leicester, and Preston the number of deaths from suffocation per
100,000 infants born was 232 in the first year of life. ]
If a woman does n=
ot
wish to be dealt with as a half-hearted murderess she should not behave like
one. It should also be punishable on the part of a mother to leave children
below a certain age alone for longer than a certain interval. It is absurd =
to
punish people as we do, for the injuries inflicted by them upon their child=
ren
during uncontrollable anger, and not to punish them for the injuries inflic=
ted by
uncontrolled carelessness. Such legislation should ensure children space, a=
ir
and attention. [Footnote: It is less within the range of commonly grasped
ideas, it is therefore less within the range of practical expedients, to po=
int
out that a graduated scale of building regulation might be contrived for us=
e in
different localities. Districts could be classed in grades determined by the
position of each district in the scale of infant mortality, and in those in
which the rate was highest the hygienic standard could be made most stringe=
nt
and onerous upon the house owner. This would force up the price of house- room, and that would force =
up the
price of labour, and this would give the proprietors of unwholesome industr=
ies
a personal interest in hygienic conditions about them. It would also tend to
force population out of districts intrinsically unhealthy into districts
intrinsically healthy. The statistics of low-grade districts could be exami=
ned
to discover the distinctive diseases which determine their lowness of grade,
and if these were preventable diseases they could be controlled by special
regulations. A further extension of these principles might be made. Direct
inducements to attract the high birth-rates towards exceptionally healthy
districts could be contrived by a differential rating of sound families with
children in such districts, the burthen of heavy rates could be thrown upon
silly and selfish landowners who attempted to stifle sound populations by u=
sing
highly habitable areas as golf links, private parks, game preserves, and the
like, and public- spirited people could combine to facilitate communications
that would render life in such districts compatible with industrial occupat=
ion.
Such deliberate redistribution of population as this differential treatment=
of
districts involves, is, however, quite beyond the available power and
intelligence of our public control at present, and I suggest it here as
something that our grandchildren perhaps may begin to consider. But if in t=
he
obscurity of this footnote I may let myself go, I would point out that, in =
the
future, a time may come when locomotion will be so swift and convenient and
cheap that it will be unnecessary to spread out the homes of our great
communities where the industrial and trading centres are gathered together;=
it
will be unnecessary for each district to sustain the renewal and increase o=
f its
own population. Certain wide regions will become specifically administrative
and central--the home lands, the mother lands, the centres of education and
population, and others will become specifically fields of action. Something=
of
this kind is to a slight degree already the case with Scotland, which sends=
out
its hardy and capable sons wherever the world has need of them; the Swiss
mountains, too, send their sons far and wide in the world; and on the other
hand, with regard to certain elements of population, at any rate, London an=
d the
Gold Coast and, I suspect, some regions in the United States of America,
receive to consume.]
But it will be ur=
ged
that these things are likely to bear rather severely on the very poor paren=
t. To
which a growing number of people will reply that the parent should not be a
parent under circumstances that do not offer a fair prospect of sound
child-birth and nurture. It is no good trying to eat our cake and have it; =
if
the parent does not suffer the child will, and of the two, we, of the New
Republic, have no doubt that the child is the more important thing.
It may be objecte=
d,
however, that existing economic conditions make life very uncertain for many
very sound and wholesome kinds of people, and that it is oppressive and lik=
ely
to rob the State of good citizens to render parentage burthensome, and to
surround it with penalties. But that directs our attention to a second sche=
me
of expedients which have crystallized about the expression, the Minimum Wag=
e.
The cardinal idea of this group of expedients is this, that it is unjust and
cruel in the present and detrimental to the future of the world to let any =
one
be fully employed at a rate of payment at which a wholesome, healthy, and, =
by
the standards of comfort at the time, a reasonable happy life is impossible=
. It
is better in the long run that people whose character and capacity will not
render it worth while to employ them at the Minimum Wage should not be empl=
oyed
at all. The sweated employment of such people, as Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb =
show
most conclusively in their great work, "Industrial Democracy,"
arrests the development of labour-saving machinery, replaces and throws out=
of
employment superior and socially more valuable labour, enables these half
capables to establish base families of inadequately fed and tended children
(which presently collapse upon public and private charity), and so lowers a=
nd keeps
down the national standard of life. As these writers show very clearly, an
industry that cannot adequately sustain sound workers is not in reality a
source of public wealth at all, but a disease and a parasite upon the public
body. It is eating up citizens the State has had the expense of educating, =
and
very often the indirect cost of rearing. Obviously the minimum wage for a
civilized adult male should be sufficient to cover the rent of the minimum
tenement permissible with three or four children, the maintenance of himself
and his wife and children above the minimum standard of comfort, his insura=
nce against
premature or accidental death or temporary economic or physical disablement,
some minimum provision for old age and a certain margin for the exercise of=
his
individual freedom. [Footnote: An excellent account of experiments already
tried in the establishment of a Minimum Wage will be found in W.P. Reeves'
State Experiments in Australia and New Zealand, vol. ii., p. 47 et seq.]
So that while tho=
se
who are bent on this conception of making economy in life and suffering the
guiding principle of their public and social activity, are seeking to brace=
up
the quality of the home on the one hand, they must also do all they can to
bring about the realization of this ideal of a minimum wage on the other. In
the case of government and public employment and of large, well-organized
industries, the way is straight and open, and the outlook very hopeful.
Wherever licenses, tariffs, and any sort of registration occurs there are
practicable means of bringing in this expedient. But where the employment i=
s shifting
and sporadic, or free from regulation, there we have a rent in our social
sieve, and the submissive, eager inferior will still come in, the failures =
of
our own race, the immigrant from baser lands, desperately and disastrously
underselling our sound citizens. Obviously we must use every contrivance we=
can
to mend these rents, by promoting the organization of employments in any way
that will not hamper progress in economic production. And if we can persuade
the Trade Unions--and there is every sign that the old mediaeval guild
conception of water-tight trade limitations is losing its hold upon those o=
rganizations--to
facilitate the movement of workers from trade to trade under the shifting
stress of changing employment and of changing economy of production, we sha=
ll
have gone far to bring the possibilities of the rising operative up to the
standard of the minimum home permissible for children.
These things--if =
we
could bring them about--would leave us with a sort of clarified Problem of =
the
Unemployed on our hands. Our Minimum Wage would have strained these people =
out,
and, provided there existed what is already growing up, an intelligent syst=
em
of employment bureaus, we should have much more reason to conclude than we =
have
at present, that they were mainly unemployed because of a real incapacity in
character, strength, or intelligence for efficient citizenship. Our raised =
standards
of housing, our persecution of overcrowding, and our obstruction of employm=
ent
below the minimum wage, would have swept out the rookeries and hiding-place=
s of
these people of the Abyss. They would exist, but they would not multiply--a=
nd
that is our supreme end. They would be tramping on roads where mendicity la=
ws
would prevail, there would be no house-room for them, no squatting-places. =
The
casual wards would catch them and register them, and telephone one to the o=
ther
about them. It is rare that children come into this world without a parent =
or
so being traceable. Everything would converge to convince these people that=
to
bear children into such an unfavourable atmosphere is an extremely inconven=
ient
and undesirable thing. They would not have many children, and such children=
as
they had would fall easily into our organized net and get the protection of=
the
criticised and improved development of the existing charitable institutions.
[Footnote: "I wonder whether there is any legal flaw in the second sec=
tion
of the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act of 1894, which may have been s=
pecially
aimed at beggars with offspring. It is specially punishable to beg having an
infant in their arms, quite apart from teaching the infant in question to b=
eg.
Or is this law insufficiently enforced through popular apathy?"--C. G.
STUART MENTEATH.] This is the best we can do for those poor little creature=
s.
As for that increasing section of the Abyss that will contrive to live
childless, these papers have no quarrel with them. A childless wastrel is a
terminating evil, and it may be, a picturesque evil. I must confess that a =
lazy
rogue is very much to my taste, provided there is no tragedy of children to=
smear
the joke with misery. And if he or she neither taints nor tempts the childr=
en,
who are our care, a childless weakling we may freely let our pity and mercy=
go
out to. To go childless is in them a virtue for which they merit our thanks=
.
These are the fir=
st
necessities, then, in the Making of Men and the bettering of the world, this
courageous interference with what so many people call "Nature's
methods" and "Nature's laws," though, indeed, they are no mo=
re
than the methods and laws of the beasts. By such expedients we may hope to =
see,
first, a certain fall in the birth-rate, a fall chiefly in the birth-rate of
improvident, vicious, and feeble types, a continuation, in fact, of that fa=
ll
that is already so conspicuous in illegitimate births in Great Britain;
secondly, a certain, almost certainly more considerable fall in the death-r=
ate
of infants and young children, and that fall in the infantile death-rate wi=
ll
serve to indicate, thirdly, a fall no statistics will fully demonstrate in =
what
I may call the partial death-rate, the dwarfing and limiting of that
innumerable host of children who do, in an underfed, meagre sort of a way,
survive. This raising of the standard of homes will do a work that will not=
end
with the children; the death-line will sag downward for all the first twent=
y or
thirty years of life. Dull- minded, indolent, prosperous people will say th=
at
all this is no more than a proposal to make man better by machinery, that y=
ou
cannot reform the world by Board of Trade Regulations and all the rest of i=
t.
They will say that such work as this is a scheme of grim materialism, and t=
hat
the Soul of Man gains no benefit by this "so-called Progress," th=
at
it is not birth-rates that want raising but Ideals. We shall deal later with
Ideals in general. Here I will mention only one, and that is, unhappily, on=
ly
an Ideal Argument. I wish I could get together all these people who are so
scornful of materialistic things, out of the excessively comfortable houses
they inhabit, and I wish I could concentrate them in a good typical East Lo=
ndon
slum--five or six together in each room, one lodging with another, and I wi=
sh I
could leave them there to demonstrate the superiority of high ideals to pur=
ely
material considerations for the rest of their earthly career while we others
went on with our sordid work unencumbered by their ideality.
Think what these
dry-looking projects of building and trade regulation, and inspection and
sanitation, mean in reality! think of the promise they hold out to us of te=
ars
and suffering abolished, of lives invigorated and enlarged!
[Endnote 1
I am greatly obli=
ged
to Mr. J. Leaver for a copy of the following notice:
"DEATHS OF CHILDREN FROM BURNI=
NG.
"TO PARENTS =
AND
GUARDIANS.
"Attention is
drawn to the frequency with which the death of young children is caused owi=
ng
to their clothing taking fire at unprotected firegrates. During the years 1=
899
and 1900 inquests were held on the bodies of 1684 YOUNG CHILDREN whose death ha=
d resulted
from burning, and in 1425 of these cases the fire by which the burning was
caused was unprotected by a guard.
"With a view=
to
prevent such deplorable loss of life it is suggested to Parents and Guardia=
ns,
who have the care of young children, that it is very desirable that efficie=
nt
fire-guards should be provided, in order to render it impossible for childr=
en
to obtain access to the fire- grates.
=
&nb=
sp; =
"E. R. C. BRADFORD, =
&nb=
sp; "The
Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis. "Metropolitan Police Office,=
"New Scotland Yard=
, "=
;January
28th, 1902."]
IV - THE BEGINNINGS OF THE
MIND AND LANGUAGE
§ 1
The newborn child is at first no mo=
re
than an animal. Indeed, it is among the lowest and most helpless of all
animals, a mere vegetative lump; assimilation incarnate--wailing. It is for=
the
first day in its life deaf, it squints blindly at the world, its limbs are
beyond its control, its hands clutch drowningly at anything whatever that
drifts upon this vast sea of being into which it has plunged so amazingly. =
And imperceptibly,
subtly, so subtly that never at any time can we mark with certainty the
increment of its coming, there creeps into this soft and claimant little
creature a mind, a will, a personality, the beginning of all that is real a=
nd
spiritual in man. In a little while there are eyes full of interest and
clutching hands full of purpose, smiles and frowns, the babbling beginning =
of
expression and affections and aversions. Before the first year is out there=
is
obedience and rebellion, choice and self-control, speech has commenced, and=
the
struggle of the newcomer to stand on his feet in this world of men. The pro=
cess
is unanalyzable; given a certain measure of care and protection, these thin=
gs come
spontaneously; with the merest rough encouragement of things and voices abo=
ut
the child, they are evoked.
But every day the
inherent impulse makes a larger demand upon the surroundings of the child, =
if
it is to do its best and fullest. Obviously, quite apart from physical
consequences, the environment of a little child may be good or bad, better =
or
worse for it in a thousand different ways. It may be distracting or
over-stimulating, it may evoke and increase fear, it may be drab and dull a=
nd
depressing, it may be stupefying, it may be misleading and productive of
vicious habits of mind. And our business is to find just what is the best
possible environment, the one that will give the soundest and fullest growt=
h, not
only of body but of intelligence.
Now from the very
earliest phase the infant stands in need of a succession of interesting thi=
ngs.
At first these are mere vague sense impressions, but in a month or so there=
is
a distinct looking at objects; presently follows reaching and clutching, and
soon the little creature is urgent for fresh things to see, handle, hear, f=
resh
experiences of all sorts, fresh combinations of things already known. The
newborn mind is soon as hungry as the body. And if a healthy well- fed child
cries, it is probably by reason of this unsatisfied hunger, it lacks an
interest, it is bored, that dismal vacant suffering that punishes the failu=
re
of living things to live fully and completely. As Mr. Charles Booth has poi=
nted
out in his Life and Labour of the People, it is probable that in this respe=
ct
the children of the relatively poor are least at a disadvantage. The very p=
oor
infant passes its life in the family room, there is a going and coming, and=
interesting
activity of domestic work on the part of its mother, the preparation of mea=
ls,
the intermittent presence of the father, the whole gamut of its mother's
unsophisticated temper. It is carried into crowded and eventful streets at =
all
hours. It participates in pothouse soirées and assists at the busine=
ss
of shopping. It may not lead a very hygienic life, but it does not lead a d=
ull
one. Contrast with its lot that of the lonely child of some woman of fashio=
n,
leading its beautifully non-bacterial life in a carefully secluded nursery
under the control of a virtuous, punctual, invariable, conscientious rather=
than
emotional nurse. The poor little soul wails as often for events as the slum
baby does for nourishment. Into its grey nursery there rushes every day, or
every other day, a breathless, preoccupied, excessively dressed, cleverish,
many-sided, fundamentally silly, and universally incapable woman, vociferat=
es a
little conventional affection, slaps a kiss or so upon her offspring, and g=
oes
off again to collect that daily meed of admiration and cheap envy which is =
the
gusto of her world. After that gushing, rustling, incomprehensible passage,=
the
child relapses into the boring care of its bored hireling for another day. =
The
nurse writes her letters, mends her clothes, reads and thinks of the natural
interests of her own life, and the child is "good" just in propor=
tion
to the extent to which it doesn't "worry."
That, of course, =
is
an extreme case. It assumes a particularly bad mother and a particularly
ill-chosen nurse, and what is probably only a transitory phase of sexual de=
basement.
The average nurse of the upper- class child is often a woman of highly
developed motherly instincts, and it is probable that our upper class and o=
ur
upper middle-class is passing or has already passed through that phase of
thought which has made solitary children so common in the last decade or so.
The effective contrast must not take us too far. We must remember that all =
women
do not possess the passion for nursing, and that some of those who are
defective in this direction may be, for all that, women of exceptional gifts
and capacity, and fully capable of offspring. Civilization is based on the
organized subdivision of labour, and, as the able lady who writes as
"L'amie Inconnue" in the County Gentleman has pointed out in a ve=
ry
helpful criticism of the original version of this paper, it is as absurd to
require every woman to be a nursery mother as it is, to require every man to
till the soil. We move from homogeneous to heterogeneous conditions, and we
must beware of every generalization we make.
For all that, one=
is
inclined to think the ideal average environment should contain the almost
constant presence of the mother, for no one is so likely to be continuously
various and interesting and untiring as she, and only as an exception, for
exceptional mothers and nurses, can we admit the mother-substitute. When we
admit her we admit other things. It is entirely on account of such an ideal
environment, we must remember, that monogamy finds its practical sanction; =
it
claims to ensure the presiding mother the maximum of security and self-resp=
ect.
A woman who enjoys the full rights of a wife to maintenance and exclusive a=
ttention,
without a complete discharge of the duties of motherhood, profits by the
imputation of things she has failed to perform. She may be justified by oth=
er
things, by an effectual co-operation with her husband in joint labours for
example, but she has altered her footing none the less. To secure an ideal
environment for children in as many cases as possible is the second of the =
two
great practical ends--the first being sound births, for which the restricti=
ons
of sexual morality exist. In addition there is the third almost equally
important matter of adult efficiency; we have to adjust affairs, if we can,=
to
secure the maximum of health, sane happiness and vigorous mental and physic=
al activity,
and to abolish, as far as possible, passionate broodings, over-stimulated
appetites, disease, and destructive indulgence. Apart from these aspects,
sexual morality is outside the scope of the New Republican altogether. . . =
. Do
not let this passage be misunderstood. I do not mean that a New Republican
ignores sexual morality except on these grounds, but so far as his New
Republicanism goes he does, just as a member of the Aeronautical Society, so
far as his aeronautical interests go, or as an ecclesiastical architect, so=
far
as his architecture goes.
The ideal environ=
ment
should, without any doubt at all, centre about a nursery--a clean, airy,
brightly lit, brilliantly adorned room, into which there should be a freque=
nt
coming and going of things and people; but from the time the child begins to
recognize objects and individuals it should be taken for little spells into
other rooms and different surroundings. In the homely, convenient, servantl=
ess
abode over which the able-bodied, capable, skilful, civilized women of the
ordinary sort will preside in the future, the child will naturally follow i=
ts mother's
morning activities from room to room. Its mother will talk to it, chance
visitors will sign to it. There should be a public or private garden availa=
ble
where its perambulator could stand in fine weather; and its promenades shou=
ld
not be too much a matter of routine. To go along a road with some traffic is
better for a child than to go along a secluded path between hedges; a street
corner is better than a laurel plantation as a pitch for perambulators.
When a child is f=
ive
or six months old it will have got a certain use and grip with its hands, a=
nd
it will want to handle and examine and test the properties of as many objec=
ts
as it can. Gifts begin. There seems scope for a wiser selection in these ea=
rly
gifts. At present it is chiefly woolly animals with bells inside them, wool=
ly
balls, and so forth, that reach the baby's hands. There is no reason at all=
why
a child's attention should be so predominantly fixed on wool. These toys are
coloured very tastefully, but as Preyer has advanced strong reasons for
supposing that the child's discrimination of colours is extremely rudimenta=
ry
until the second year has begun, these tasteful arrangements are simply an
appeal to the parent. Light, dark, yellow, perhaps red and "other
colours" seem to constitute the colour system of a very young infant. =
It
is to the parent, too, that the humorous and realistic quality of the animal
forms appeal. The parent does the shopping and has to be amused. The parent=
who
ought to have a doll instead of a child is sufficiently abundant in our wor=
ld
to dominate the shops, and there is a vast traffic in facetious baby toys, =
facetious
nursery furniture, "art" cushions and "quaint" baby
clothing, all amazingly delightful things for grown-up people. These things=
are
bought and grouped about the child, the child is taught tricks to complete =
the
picture, and parentage becomes a very amusing afternoon employment. So long=
as
convenience is not sacrificed to the æsthetic needs of the nursery, a=
nd
so long as common may compete with "art" toys, there is no great =
harm
done, but it is well to understand how irrelevant these things are to the r=
eal
needs of a child's development.
A child of a year=
or
less has neither knowledge nor imagination to see the point of these animal
resemblances--much less to appreciate either quaintness or prettiness. That
comes only in the second year. He is much more interested in the crumpling =
and
tearing of paper, in the crumpling of chintz, and in the taking off and
replacing of the lid of a little box. I think it would be possible to devis=
e a
much more entertaining set of toys for an infant than is at present procura=
ble,
but, unhappily, they would not appeal to the intelligence of the average
parent. There would be, for example, one or two little boxes of different
shapes and substances, with lids to take off and on, one or two rubber thin=
gs
that would bend and twist about and admit of chewing, a ball and a box made=
of
china, a fluffy, flexible thing like a rabbit's tail, with the vertebr&aeli=
g;
replaced by cane, a velvet-covered ball, a powder puff, and so on. They cou=
ld
all be plainly and vividly coloured with some non-soluble inodorous colour.
They would be about on the cot and on the rug where the child was put to ki=
ck
and crawl. They would have to be too large to swallow, and they would all g=
et
pulled and mauled about until they were more or less destroyed. Some would =
probably
survive for many years as precious treasures, as beloved objects, as powers=
and
symbols in the mysterious secret fetichism of childhood--confidants and
sympathetic friends.
§ 2
While the child is engaged with its=
first
toys, and with the collection of rudimentary sense impressions, it is also
developing a remarkable variety of noises and babblements from which it will
presently disentangle speech. Day by day it will show a stronger and strong=
er bias
to associate definite sounds with definite objects and ideas, a bias so
comparatively powerful in the mind of man as to distinguish him from all ot=
her
living creatures. Other creatures may think, may, in a sort of concrete way,
come almost indefinably near reason (as Professor Lloyd Morgan in his very =
delightful
Animal Life and Intelligence has shown); but man alone has in speech the
apparatus, the possibility, at any rate, of being a reasoning and reasonable
creature. It is, of course, not his only apparatus. Men may think out things
with drawings, with little models, with signs and symbols upon paper, but
speech is the common way, the high road, the current coin of thought.
With speech human=
ity
begins. With the dawn of speech the child ceases to be an animal we cherish,
and crosses the boundary into distinctly human intercourse. There begins in=
its
mind the development of the most wonderful of all conceivable apparatus, a
subtle and intricate keyboard, that will end at last with thirty or forty or
fifty thousand keys. This queer, staring, soft little being in its mother's
arms is organizing something within itself, beside which the most wonderful=
orchestra
one can imagine is a lump of rude clumsiness. There will come a time when, =
at
the merest touch upon those keys, image will follow image and emotion devel=
op
into emotion, when the whole creation, the deeps of space, the minutest
beauties of the microscope, cities, armies, passions, splendours, sorrows, =
will
leap out of darkness into the conscious being of thought, when this interwo=
ven
net of brief, small sounds will form the centre of a web that will hold
together in its threads the universe, the All, visible and invisible, mater=
ial
and immaterial, real and imagined, of a human mind. And if we are to make t=
he
best of a child, it is in no way secondary to its physical health and growth
that it should acquire a great and thorough command over speech, not merely
that it should speak, but, what is far more vital, that it should understand
swiftly and subtly things written and said. Indeed, this is more than any p=
hysical
need. The body is the substance and the implement; the mind, built and comp=
act
of language, is the man. All that has gone before, all that we have discuss=
ed
of sound birth and physical growth and care, is no more than the making rea=
dy
of the soil for the mind that is to grow therein. As we come to this matter=
of language,
we come a step nearer to the intimate realities of our subject--we come to =
the
mental plant that is to bear the flower and the ripe fruit of the individual
life. The next phase of our inquiry, therefore, is to examine how we can get
this mental plant, this foundation substance, this abundant mastered langua=
ge
best developed in the individual, and how far we may go to ensure this best
development for all children born into the world.
From the ninth mo=
nth
onward the child begins serious attempts to talk. In order that it may lear=
n to
do this as easily as possible, it requires to be surrounded by people speak=
ing
one language, and speaking it with a uniform accent. Those who are most in =
the
child's hearing should endeavour to speak--even when they are not addressing
the child --deliberately and clearly. All authorities are agreed upon the m=
ischievous
effect of what is called "baby talk," the use of an extensive sham
vocabulary, a sort of deciduous milk vocabulary that will presently have to=
be
shed again. Froebel and Preyer join hands on this. The child's funny little
perversions of speech are really genuine attempts to say the right word, an=
d we
simply cause trouble and hamper development if we give back to the seeking =
mind
its own blunders again. When a child wants to indicate milk, it wants to say
milk, and not "mooka" or "mik," and when it wants to
indicate bed, the needed word is not "bedder" or "bye-bye,&q=
uot;
but "bed." But we give the little thing no chance to get on in th=
is
way until suddenly one day we discover it is "time the child spoke
plainly." Preyer has pointed out very instructively the way in which t=
he
quite sufficiently difficult matter of the use of I, mine, me, my, you, you=
rs,
and your is made still more difficult by those about the child adopting
irregularly the experimental idioms it produces. When a child says to its
mother, "Me go mome," it is doing its best to speak English, and =
its
remark should be received without worrying comment; but when a mother says =
to
her child, "Me go mome," she is simply wasting an opportunity of
teaching her child its mother-tongue. One sympathizes with her all too read=
ily,
one understands the sweetness to her of these soft, infantile mispronunciat=
ions;
but, indeed, she ought to understand; it is her primary business to know be=
tter
than her feelings in this affair.
In learning to sp=
eak,
the children of the more prosperous classes are probably at a considerable
advantage when compared with their poorer fellow children. They hear a clea=
rer
and more uniform intonation than the blurred, uncertain speech of our
commonalty, that has resulted from the reaction of the great synthetic proc=
ess,
of the past century upon dialects. But this natural advantage of the richer
child is discounted in one of two ways: in the first place by the mother, in
the second by the nurse. The mother in the more prosperous classes is often
much more vain and trivial than the lower-class woman; she looks to her
children for amusement, and makes them contributors to her "effect,&qu=
ot;
and, by taking up their quaint and pretty mispronunciations, and devising h=
umorous
additions to their natural baby talk, she teaches them to be much greater
babies than they could ever possibly be themselves. They specialise as char=
ming
babies until their mother tires of the pose, and then they are thrust back =
into
the nursery to recover leeway, if they can, under the care of governess or
nurse.
The second
disadvantage of the upper-class child is the foreign nurse or nursery
governess. There is a widely diffused idea that a child is particularly apt=
to
master and retain languages, and people try and inoculate with French and
German as Lord Herbert of Cherbury would have inoculated children with
antidotes, for all the ills their flesh was heir to--even, poor little
wretches, to an anticipatory regimen for gout. The root error of these atte=
mpts
to form infantile polyglots is embodied in an unverified quotation from Byr=
on's
Beppo, dear to pedagogic writers--
"Wax to rece=
ive
and marble to retain"
runs the line--wh=
ich
the curious may discover to be a description of the faithful lover, though =
it
has become as firmly associated with the child-mind as has Sterne's
"tempering the wind to the shorn lamb" with Holy Writ. And this i=
dea
of infantile receptivity and retentiveness is held by an unthinking world, =
in
spite of the universally accessible fact that hardly one of us can remember
anything that happened before the age of five, and very little that happened
before seven or eight, and that children of five or six, removed into forei=
gn
surroundings, will in a year or so--if special measures are not
taken--reconstruct their idiom, and absolutely forget every word of their
mother-tongue. This foreign nurse comes into the child's world, bringing wi=
th
her quite weird errors in the quantities, the accent and idiom of the mothe=
r-tongue,
and greatly increasing the difficulty and delay on the road to thought and
speech. And this attempt to acquire a foreign language prematurely at the
expense of the mother-tongue, to pick it up cheaply by making the nurse an
informal teacher of languages, entirely ignores a fact upon which I would l=
ay
the utmost stress in this paper-- which, indeed, is the gist of this
paper--that only a very small minority of English or American people have m=
ore
than half mastered the splendid heritage of their native speech. To this
neglected and most significant limitation the amount of public attention gi=
ven
at present is quite surprisingly small. [Footnote: My friend, Mr. L. Cope C=
ornford,
writes apropos of this, and I think I cannot do better than print what he s=
ays
as a corrective to my own assertions: "All you say on the importance of
letting a child hear good English cleanly accented is admirable; but we thi=
nk
you have perhaps overlooked the importance of ear-training as such, which
should begin by the time the child can utter its first attempts at speech. =
By
ear-training I mean the differentiation of sounds--articulate, inarticulate,
and musical-- fixing the child's attention and causing it to imitate. As ev=
ery sound
requires a particular movement of the vocal apparatus, the child will soon =
be
able to adapt its apparatus unconsciously and to distinguish accurately. An=
d if
it does not so learn before the age of five or six, it probably will never =
do
so. By the age of two--or less-- the child should be able to imitate exactly
any speech-sound. Our youngsters can do so; and, consequently, the fact that
they had a nurse with a Sussex accent ceased to matter, because they learne=
d to
distinguish her talk from correct English. So in the case of a foreign nurs=
e;
the result of a foreigner's influence would be good in this way, that it wo=
uld
train a child to a new series of speech-sounds, thus enlarging its ear capa=
city.
Nor need it necessarily adopt these speech-sounds as those which it should =
use;
it merely knows them; and if the foreigner have a good accent, and speaks h=
er
own tongue well, the child's ear is trained for life, irrespective of
expression. Experience shows that a child can keep separate in its mind two=
or three
languages--at first the speech-sounds, later the expression. Modes of
expression need not begin till after five, or later. With regard to music,
every child should begin to undergo a simple course of ear-training on the
sol-fa system as elaborated and taught by McNaught, because the faculty of =
so
learning is lost--atrophied--by the age of twelve or fourteen. But, beginni=
ng
early--as early as possible-- every child, 'musical' or not, can be trained,
just as every child, 'artistic' or not, may be taught to draw accurately up=
to
a certain point."]
There can be litt=
le
or no dispute that the English language in its completeness presents a range
too ample and appliances too subtle for the needs of the great majority of
those who profess to speak it. I do not refer to the half-civilized and
altogether barbaric races who are coming under its sway, but to the people =
we
are breeding of our own race--the barbarians of our streets, our suburban
"white niggers," with a thousand a year and the conceit of Imperi=
al
destinies. They live in our mother-tongue as some half-civilized invaders m=
ight
live in a gigantic and splendidly equipped palace. They misuse this, they w=
aste
that, they leave whole corridors and wings unexplored, to fall into disuse =
and
decay. I doubt if the ordinary member of the prosperous classes in England =
has
much more than a third of the English language in use, and more than a half=
in
knowledge, and as we go down the social scale we may come at last to strata
having but a tenth part of our full vocabulary, and much of that blurred and
vaguely understood. The speech of the Colonist is even poorer than the spee=
ch
of the home-staying English. In America, just as in Great Britain and her
Colonies, there is the same limitation and the same disuse. Partly, of cour=
se,
this is due to the pettiness of our thought and experience, and so far it c=
an only
be remedied by a general intellectual amplification; but partly it is due to
the general ignorance of English prevailing throughout the world. It is
atrociously taught, and taught by ignorant men. It is atrociously and meanly
written. So far as this second cause of sheer ignorance goes, the gaps in
knowledge are continually resulting in slang and the addition of needless
neologisms to the language. People come upon ideas that they know no Englis=
h to
express, and strike out the new phrase in a fine burst of ignorant discover=
y.
There are Americans in particular who are amazingly apt at this sort of thi=
ng. They
take an enormous pride in the jargon they are perpetually increasing--they
boast of it, they give exhibition performances in it, they seem to regard i=
t as
the culminating flower of their continental Republic--as though the Old Wor=
ld
had never heard of shoddy. But, indeed, they are in no better case than that
unfortunate lady at Earlswood who esteems newspapers stitched with unravell=
ed
carpet and trimmed with orange peel, the extreme of human splendour. In tru=
th, their
pride is baseless, and this slang of theirs no sort of distinction whatever.
Let me assure them that in our heavier way we in this island are just as bu=
sy
defiling our common inheritance. We can send a team of linguists to America=
who
will murder and misunderstand the language against any eleven the Americans=
may
select.
Of course there i=
s a
natural and necessary growth and development in a living language, a growth
that no one may arrest. In appliances, in politics, in science, in
philosophical interpretation, there is a perpetual necessity for new words,
words to express new ideas and new relationships, words free from ambiguity=
and
encumbering associations. But the neologisms of the street and the saloon
rarely supply any occasion of this kind. For the most part they are just the
stupid efforts of ignorant men to supply the unnecessary. And side by side =
with
the invention of inferior cheap substitutes for existing words and phrases,=
and
infinitely more serious than that invention, goes on a perpetual misuse and
distortion of those that are insufficiently known. These are processes not =
of
growth but of decay--they distort, they render obsolete, and they destroy. =
The
obsolescence and destruction of words and phrases cuts us off from the nobi=
lity
of our past, from the severed masses of our race overseas, far more effectu=
ally
than any growth of neologisms. A language may grow--our language must grow-=
-it may
be clarified and refined and strengthened, but it need not suffer the fate =
of
an algal filament, and pass constantly into rottenness and decay whenever
growth is no longer in progress. That has been the fate of languages in the
past because of the feebler organization, the slenderer, slower
intercommunication, and, above all, the insufficient records of human
communities; but the time has come now--or, at the worst, is rapidly
coming--when this will cease to be a fated thing. We may have a far more
copious and varied tongue than had Addison or Spenser--that is no disaster-=
-but
there is no reason why we should not keep fast hold of all they had. There =
is
no reason why the whole fine tongue of Elizabethan England should not be at=
our
disposal still. Conceivably Addison would find the rich, allusive English of
George Meredith obscure; conceivably we might find a thousand words and phr=
ases
of the year 2000 strange and perplexing; but there is no reason why a time
should ever come when what has been written well in English since Elizabeth=
an
days should no longer be understandable and fine.
The prevailing
ignorance of English in the English-speaking communities, enormously hampers
the development of the racial consciousness. Except for those who wish to b=
awl
the crudest thoughts, there is no means of reaching the whole mass of these
communities to- day. So far as material requirements go it would be possibl=
e to
fling a thought broadcast like seed over the whole world to-day, it would b=
e possible
to get a book into the hands of half the adults of our race. But at the han=
ds
and eyes one stops--there is a gap in the brains. Only thoughts that can be
expressed in the meanest commonplaces will ever reach the minds of the majo=
rity
of the English-speaking peoples under present conditions.
A writer who aims=
to
be widely read to-day must perpetually halt, must perpetually hesitate at t=
he
words that arise in his mind; he must ask himself how many people will stic=
k at
this word altogether or miss the meaning it should carry; he must ransack h=
is
memory for a commonplace periphrase, an ingenious rearrangement of the
familiar; he must omit or overaccentuate at every turn. Such simple and
necessary words as "obsolescent," "deliquescent,"
"segregation," for example, must be abandoned by the man who would
write down to the general reader; he must use "impertinent" as if=
it
were a synonym for "impudent" and "indecent" as the equ=
ivalent
of "obscene." And in the face of this wide ignorance of English,
seeing how few people can either read or write English with any subtlety, a=
nd
how disastrously this reacts upon the general development of thought and
understanding amidst the English- speaking peoples, it would be preposterous
even if the attempt were successful, to complicate the first linguistic
struggles of the infant with the beginnings of a second language. But people
deal thus lightly with the mother-tongue because they know so little of it =
that
they do not even suspect their own ignorance of its burthen and its powers.=
They
speak a little set of ready-made phrases, they write it scarcely at all, and
all they read is the weak and shallow prose of popular fiction and the dail=
y press.
That is knowing a language within the meaning of their minds, and such a
knowledge a child may very well be left to "pick up" as it may. S=
ide
by side with this they will presently set themselves to erect a similar
"knowledge" of two or three other languages. One is constantly
meeting not only women but men who will solemnly profess to "know"
English and Latin, French, German and Italian, perhaps Greek, who are in
fact--beyond the limited range of food, clothing, shelter, trade, crude
nationalism, social conventions and personal vanity--no better than the deaf
and dumb. In spite of the fact that they will sit with books in their hands,
visibly reading, turning pages, pencilling comments, in spite of the fact t=
hat
they will discuss authors and repeat criticisms, it is as hopeless to expre=
ss
new thoughts to them as it would be to seek for appreciation in the ear of a
hippopotamus. Their linguistic instruments are no more capable of contempor=
ary
thought than a tin whistle, a xylophone, and a drum are capable of rendering
the Eroica Symphony.
In being also
ignorant of itself, this wide ignorance of English partakes of all that is =
most
hopeless in ignorance. Except among a few writers and critics, there is lit=
tle
sense of defect in this matter. The common man does not know that his limit=
ed
vocabulary limits his thoughts. He knows that there are "long words&qu=
ot;
and rare words in the tongue, but he does not know that this implies the
existence of definite meanings beyond his mental range. His poor collection=
of everyday
words, worn-out phrases and battered tropes, constitute what he calls
"plain English," and speech beyond these limits he seriously beli=
eves
to be no more than the back-slang of the educated class, a mere elaboration=
and
darkening of intercourse to secure privacy and distinction. No doubt there =
is
justification enough for his suspicion in the exploits of pretentious and
garrulous souls. But it is the superficial justification of a profound and
disastrous error. A gap in a man's vocabulary is a hole and tatter in his m=
ind;
words he has may indeed be weakly connected or wrongly connected--one may f=
ind
the whole keyboard jerry-built, for example, in the English-speaking Baboo-=
-but
words he has not signify ideas that he has no means of clearly apprehending,
they are patches of imperfect mental existence, factors in the total amount=
of
his personal failure to live.
This world-wide
ignorance of English, this darkest cloud almost upon the fair future of our
confederated peoples, is something more than a passive ignorance. It is act=
ive,
it is aggressive. In England at any rate, if one talks beyond the range of
white-nigger English, one commits a social breach. There are countless
"book words" well-bred people never use. A writer with any tender=
ness
for half-forgotten phrases, any disposition to sublimate the mingling of
unaccustomed words, runs as grave a risk of organized disregard as if he
tampered with the improper. The leaden censures of the Times, for example,
await any excursion beyond its own battered circumlocutions. Even nowadays,=
and
when they are veterans, Mr. George Meredith and Mr. Henley get ever and aga=
in a
screed of abuse from some hot champion of Lower Division Civil Service pros=
e.
"Plain English" such a one will call his desideratum, as one might
call the viands on a New Cut barrow "plain food." The hostility to
the complete language is everywhere. I wonder just how many homes may not be
witnessing the self-same scene as I write. Some little child is struggling =
with
the unmanageable treasure of a new-found word, has produced it at last, a n=
ice
long word, forthwith to be "laughed out" of such foolish ambition=
s by
its anxious parent. People train their children not to speak English beyond=
a threadbare
minimum, they resent it upon platform and in pulpit, and they avoid it in
books. Schoolmasters as a class know little of the language. In none of our
schools, not even in the more efficient of our elementary schools, is Engli=
sh
adequately taught. And these people expect the South African Dutch to take =
over
their neglected tongue! As though the poor partial King's English of the
British Colonist was one whit better than the Taal! To give them the realit=
y of
what English might be: that were a different matter altogether.
These things it is
the clear business of our New Republicans to alter. It follows, indeed, but=
it
is in no way secondary to the work of securing sound births and healthy
childhoods, that we should secure a vigorous, ample mental basis for the mi=
nds
born with these bodies. We have to save, to revive this scattered, warped,
tarnished and neglected language of ours, if we wish to save the future of =
our
world. We should save not only the world of those who at present speak Engl=
ish,
but the world of many kindred and associated peoples who would willingly en=
ter into
our synthesis, could we make it wide enough and sane enough and noble enough
for their honour.
To expect that so
ample a cause as this should find any support among the festering confusion=
of
the old politics is to expect too much. There is no party for the English
language anywhere in the world. We have to take this problem as we took our
former problem and deal with it as though the old politics, which slough so
slowly, were already happily excised. To begin with, we may give our attent=
ion
to the foundation of this foundation, to the growth of speech in the develo=
ping
child.
From the first the
child should hear a clear and uniform pronunciation about it, a precise and
careful idiom and words definitely used. Since language is to bring people
together and not to keep them apart, it would be well if throughout the
English-speaking world there could be one accent, one idiom, and one
intonation. This there never has been yet, but there is no reason at all wh=
y it
should not be. There is arising even now a standard of good English to which
many dialects and many influences are contributing. From the Highlanders and
the Irish, for example, the English of the South are learning the possibili=
ties
of the aspirate h and wh, which latter had entirely and the former very lar=
gely
dropped out of use among them a hundred years ago. The drawling speech of
Wessex and New England--for the main features of what people call Yankee
intonation are to be found in perfection in the cottages of Hampshire and W=
est
Sussex--are being quickened, perhaps from the same sources. The Scotch are
acquiring the English use of shall and will, and the confusion of
reconstruction is world-wide among our vowels. The German w of Mr. Samuel
Weller has been obliterated within the space of a generation or so. There i=
s no
reason at all why this natural development of the uniform English of the co=
ming
age should not be greatly forwarded by our deliberate efforts, why it should
not be possible within a little while to define a standard pronunciation of=
our
tongue. It is a less important issue by far than that of a uniform vocabula=
ry
and phraseology, but it is still a very notable need.
We have available=
now
for the first time, in the more highly evolved forms of phonograph and tele=
phone,
a means of storing, analyzing, transmitting, and referring to sounds, that
should be of very considerable value in the attempt to render a good and
beautiful pronunciation of English uniform throughout the world. It would n=
ot
be unreasonable to require from all those who are qualifying for the work of
education, the reading aloud of long passages in the standard accent. At
present there is no requirement of this sort in England, and too often our
elementary teachers at any rate, instead of being missionaries of linguistic
purity, are centres of diffusion for blurred and vicious perversions of our
speech. They must read and recite aloud in their qualifying examinations, i=
t is
true, but under no specific prohibition of provincial intonations. In the
pulpit and the stage, moreover, we have ready to hand most potent instrumen=
ts
of dissemination, that need nothing but a little sharpening to help greatly
towards this end. At the entrance of almost all professions nowadays stands=
an
examination that includes English, and there would be nothing revolutionary=
in
adding to that written paper an oral test in the standard pronunciation. By
active exertion to bring these things about the New Republican could do muc=
h to
secure that every child of our English-speaking people throughout the world
would hear in school and church and entertainment the same clear and defini=
te
accent. The child's mother and nurse would be helped to acquire almost
insensibly a sound and confident pronunciation. No observant man who has li=
ved
at all broadly, meeting and talking with people of diverse culture and trad=
ition,
but knows how much our intercourse is cumbered by hesitations about quantity
and accent, and petty differences of phrase and idiom, and how greatly
intonation and accent may warp and limit our sympathy.
And while they are
doing this for the general linguistic atmosphere, the New Republicans could
also attempt something to reach the children in detail.
By instinct nearly
every mother wants to teach. Some teach by instinct, but for the most part
there is a need of guidance in their teaching. At present these first and v=
ery
important phases in education are guided almost entirely by tradition. The
necessary singing and talking to very young children is done in imitation of
similar singing and talking; it is probably done no better, it may possibly=
be
done much worse, than it was done two hundred years ago. A very great amoun=
t of
permanent improvement in human affairs might be secured in this direction by
the expenditure of a few thousand pounds in the systematic study of the most
educational method of dealing with children in the first two or three years=
of
life, and in the intelligent propagation of the knowledge obtained. There e=
xist
already, it is true, a number of Child Study Associations, Parents' Unions,=
and
the like, but for the most part these are quite ineffectual talking societi=
es,
akin to Browning Societies, Literary and Natural History Societies: they at=
tain
a trifling amount of mutual improvement at their best, the members read pap=
ers
to one another, and a few medical men and schools secure a needed
advertisement. They have no organization, no concentration of their energy,=
and
their chief effect seems to be to present an interest in education as if it
were a harmless, pointless fad. But if a few men of means and capacity were=
to
organize a committee with adequate funds, secure the services of specially
endowed men for the exhaustive study of developing speech, publish a digest=
ed
report, and, with the assistance of a good writer or so, produce very cheap=
ly,
advertise vigorously, and disseminate widely a small, clearly printed, clea=
rly written
book of pithy instructions for mothers and nurses in this matter of early
speech they would quite certainly effect a great improvement in the mental
foundations of the coming generation. We do not yet appreciate the fact that
for the first time in the history of the world there exists a state of soci=
ety
in which almost every nurse and mother reads. It is no longer necessary to =
rely
wholly upon instinct and tradition, therefore, for the early stages of a
child's instruction. We can reinforce and organize these things through the=
printed
word.
For example, an
important factor in the early stage of speech-teaching is the nursery rhyme=
. A
little child, towards the end of the first year, having accumulated a really
very comprehensive selection of sounds and noises by that time, begins to
imitate first the associated motions, and then the sounds of various nursery
rhymes--"Pat-a-cake," for example. In the book I imagine, there w=
ould
be, among many other things, a series of little versicles, old and new, in
which, to the accompaniment of simple gestures, all the elementary sounds of
the language could be easily and agreeably made familiar to the child's ear=
s.
[Footnote: Messrs. Heath of Boston, U.S.A., have sent me a book of Nursery
Rhymes, arranged by Mr. Charles Welsh, which is certainly the best thing I =
have
seen in this way. It is worthy of note that the neglect of pedagogic study =
in
Great Britain is forcing the intelligent British parent and teacher to rely
more and more upon American publishers for children's books. The work of
English writers is often very tasteful and pretty, but of the smallest
educational value. ]
And the same book=
I
think might well contain a list of foundation things and words and certain
elementary forms of expression which the child should become perfectly fami=
liar
with in the first three or four years of life. Much of each little child's
vocabulary is its personal adventure, and Heaven save us all from system in
excess! But I think it would be possible for a subtle psychologist to trace
through the easy natural tangle of the personal briar-rose of speech certain
necessary strands, that hold the whole growth together and render its later=
expansion
easy and swift and strong. Whatever else the child gets, it must get these
fundamental strands well and early if it is to do its best. If they do not
develop now their imperfection will cause delay and difficulty later. There=
are,
for example, among these fundamental necessities, idioms to express compari=
son,
to express position in space and time, elementary conceptions of form and
colour, of tense and mood, the pronouns and the like. No doubt, in one way =
or
another, most of these forms are acquired by every child, but there is no
reason why their acquisition should not be watched with the help of a wisel=
y framed
list, and any deficiency deliberately and carefully supplied. It would have=
to
be a wisely framed list, it would demand the utmost effort of the best
intelligence, and that is why something more than the tradesman enterprise =
of
publishers is needed in this work. The publisher's ideal of an author of an
educational work is a clever girl in her teens working for pocket-money. Wh=
at
is wanted is a little quintessential book better and cheaper than any
publisher, publishing for gain, could possibly produce, a book so good that
imitation would be difficult, and so cheap and universally sold that no
imitation would be profitable.
Upon this foundat=
ion
of a sound accent and a basic vocabulary must be built the general fabric of
the language. For the most part this must be done in the school. At present=
in
Great Britain a considerable proportion of schoolmasters and schoolmistress=
es--more
particularly those in secondary and private schools--are too ill-educated t=
o do
this properly; there is excellent reason for supposing things are very litt=
le
better in America; and, to begin with, it must be the care of every good New
Republican to bring about a better state of things in this most lamentable
profession. Until the teacher can read and write, in the fullest sense of t=
hese
words, it is idle to expect him or her to teach the pupil to do these thing=
s.
As matters are at present, the attempt is scarcely made. In the elementary =
and
lower secondary schools ill-chosen reading-books are scampered through and
abandoned all too soon in favour of more pretentious "subjects," =
and
a certain preposterous nonsense called English Grammar is passed through th=
e pupil--stuff
which happily no mind can retain. Little girls and boys of twelve or thirte=
en,
who cannot understand, and never will understand anything but the vulgarest
English, and who will never in their lives achieve a properly punctuated
letter, are taught such mysteries as that there are eight--I believe it is
eight--sorts of nominative, and that there is (or is not) a gerundive in
English, and trained month after month and year after year to perform the
oddest operations, a non- analytical analysis, and a ritual called parsing =
that
must be seen to be believed. It is no good mincing the truth about all this
sort of thing. These devices are resorted to by the school teachers of the =
present
just as the Rules of Double and Single Alligation and Double Rule of Three,=
and
all the rest of that solemn tomfoolery, were "taught" by the
arithmetic teachers in the academies of the eighteenth century, because they
are utterly ignorant, and know themselves to be utterly ignorant, of the
reality of the subject, and because, therefore, they have to humbug the par=
ent
and pass the time by unreal inventions. The case is not a bit better in the
higher grade schools. They do not do so much of the bogus teaching of Engli=
sh,
but they do nothing whatever in its place.
Now it is little =
use
to goad the members of an ill-trained, ill- treated, ill-organized, poorly
respected and much-abused [Footnote: Peccavi.] profession with reproaches f=
or
doing what they cannot do, or to clamour for legislation that will give more
school time or heavier subsidies to the pretence of teaching what very few
people are able to teach. We all know how atrociously English is taught, bu=
t proclaiming
that will not mend matters a bit, it will only render matters worse by maki=
ng
schoolmasters and schoolmistresses shameless and effortless, unless we also
show how well English may be taught. The sane course is to begin by
establishing the proper way to do the thing, to develop a proper method and
demonstrate what can be done by that method in a few selected schools, to
prepare and render acceptable the necessary class-books, and then to use
examination and inspector, grant in aid, training college, lecture, book and
pamphlet to spread the sound expedients. We want an English Language Societ=
y,
of affluent and vigorous people, that will undertake this work. And one chi=
ef
duty of that society will be to devise, to arrange and select, to print han=
dsomely,
to illustrate beautifully and to sell cheaply and vigorously everywhere, a
series of reading books, and perhaps of teachers' companions to these readi=
ng
books, that shall serve as the basis of instruction in Standard English
throughout the whole world. These books, as I conceive them, would begin as
reading primers, they would progress through a long series of subtly graded
stories, passages and extracts until they had given the complete range of o=
ur
tongue. They would be read from, recited from, quoted in exemplification an=
d imitated
by the pupils. Such splendid matter as Henley and Whibley's collection of E=
lizabethan
Prose, for example, might well find a place toward the end of that series of
books. There would be an anthology of English lyrics, of all the best short
stories in our language, of all the best episodes. From these readers the p=
upil
would pass, still often reading and reciting aloud, to such a series of
masterpieces as an efficient English Language Society could force upon every
school. At present in English schools a library is an exception rather than=
a rule,
and your clerical head-master on public occasions will cheerfully denounce =
the
"trash" reading, "snippet" reading habits of the age, w=
ith that
defect lying like a feather on his expert conscience. A school without an
easily accessible library of at least a thousand volumes is really scarcely=
a
school at all--it is a dispensary without bottles, a kitchen without a pant=
ry.
For all that, if the inquiring New Republican find two hundred linen-covered
volumes of the Eric, or Little by Little type, mean goody-goody thought dre=
ssed
in its appropriate language, stored away in some damp cupboard of his son's
school, and accessible once a week, he may feel assured things are above th=
e average
there. My imaginary English Language Society would make it a fundamental du=
ty,
firstly to render that library of at least a thousand volumes or so special=
ly
cheap and easily procurable, and secondly, by pamphlets and agitation, to
render it a compulsory minimum requirement for every grade of school. It is=
far
more important, and it would be far less costly even as things are, than the
cheapest sort of chemical laboratory a school could have, and it should cost
scarcely more than a school piano.
I know very littl=
e of
the practical teaching of English, my own very fragmentary knowledge of the
more familiar clichés of our tongue was acquired in a haphazard fash=
ion,
but I am inclined to think that in addition to much reading aloud and
recitation from memory the work of instruction might consist very largely of
continually more extensive efforts towards original composition. Paraphrasi=
ng
is a good exercise, provided that it does not consist in turning good and
beautiful English into bad. I do not see why it should not follow the rever=
se
direction. Selected passages of mean, stereotyped, garrulous or inexact pro=
se might
very well be rewritten, under the direction of an intelligent master. Retel=
ling
a story that has just been read and discussed, with a change of incident
perhaps, would also not be a bad sort of exercise, writing passages in
imitation of set passages and the like. Written descriptions of things
displayed to a class should also be instructive. Caught at the right age, m=
ost
little girls, and many little boys I believe, would learn very pleasantly to
write simple verse. This they should be encouraged to read aloud. At a later
stage the more settled poetic forms, the ballade, the sonnet, the rondeau, =
for
example, should afford a good practice in handling language. Pupils should =
be encouraged
to import fresh words into their work--even if the effect is a little start=
ling
at times--they should hunt the dictionary for material. A good book for the
upper forms in schools dealing in a really intelligent and instructive way =
with
Latin and Greek, so far as it is necessary to know these languages in order=
to
use and manipulate technical English freely, would, I conceive, be of very
great service. It must be a good exercise to write precise definitions of
words. Logic also is an integral portion of the study of the mother-tongue.=
But to throw out
suggestions in this way is an easy task. The educational papers are full of
this sort of thing, educational conferences resound with it. What the world=
is
not full of is the capacity to organize these things, to drag them, struggl=
ing
and clinging to a thousand unanticipated difficulties, from the region of t=
he
counsel of perfection to the region of manifest practicability. For that th=
ere
is needed attention, industry, and an intelligent use of a fair sum of mone=
y.
We want an industrious committee, and we want one or two rich men. A series=
of
books, a model course of instruction, has to be planned and made, tried ove=
r,
criticised, revised and altered. When the right way is no longer indicated =
by
prophetic persons pointing in a mist, but marked out, levelled, mapped and
fenced, then the scholastic profession, wherever the English language is
spoken, has to be lured and driven along it. The New Republican must make h=
is
course cheap, attractive, easy for the teacher and good for the teacher's
pocket and reputation. Just as there are plays that, as actors say, "a=
ct themselves,"
so, with a profession that is rarely at its best and often at its worst, and
which at its worst consists of remarkably dull young men and remarkably dre=
ary
young women, those who want English well taught must see to it that they
provide a series of books and instructors that will teach by themselves,
whatever the teacher does to prevent them.
Surely this
enterprise of text-books and teachers, of standard phonographs and cheaply
published classics, is no fantastic impossible dream! So far as money goes-=
-if
only money were the one thing needful-- a hundred thousand pounds would be a
sufficient fund from first to last for all of it. Yet modest as its proport=
ions
are, its consequences, were it done by able men throwing their hearts into =
it,
might be of incalculable greatness. By such expedients and efforts as these=
we might
enormously forward the establishment of that foundation of a world-wide
spacious language, the foundation upon which there will arise for our child=
ren
subtler understandings, ampler imaginations, sounder judgments and clearer
resolutions, and all that makes at last a nobler world of men.
But in this
discussion of school libraries and the like, we wander a little from our
immediate topic of mental beginnings.
§ 3
At the end of the fifth year, as the
natural outcome of its instinctive effort to experiment and learn, acting
amidst wisely ordered surroundings, the little child should have acquired a
certain definite foundation for the educational structure. It should have a
vast variety of perceptions stored in its mind, and a vocabulary of three or
four thousand words, and among these, and holding them together, there shou=
ld
be certain structural and cardinal ideas. They are ideas that will have been
gradually and imperceptibly instilled, and they are necessary as the basis =
of a
sound mental existence. There must be, to begin with, a developing sense and
feeling for truth and for duty as something distinct and occasionally
conflicting with immediate impulse and desire, and there must be certain cl=
ear
intellectual elements established already almost impregnably in the mind,
certain primary distinctions and classifications. Many children are called
stupid, and begin their educational career with needless difficulty through=
an unsoundness
of these fundamental intellectual elements, an unsoundness in no way inhere=
nt,
but the result of accident and neglect. And a starting handicap of this sort
may go on increasing right through the whole life.
The child at five=
, unless
it is colour blind, should know the range of colours by name, and distingui=
sh
them easily, blue and green not excepted; it should be able to distinguish =
pink
from pale red and crimson from scarlet. [Footnote: There could be a set of
colour bands in the book that the English Language Society might publish.]<=
span
style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> Many children through the neglect =
of
those about them do not distinguish these colours until a very much later a=
ge.
I think also--in spite of the fact that many adults go vague and ignorant on
these points--that a child of five may have been taught to distinguish betw=
een
a square, a circle, an oval, a triangle and an oblong, and to use these wor=
ds.
It is easier to keep hold of ideas with words than without them, and none of
these words should be impossible by five. The child should also know famili=
arly
by means of toys, wood blocks and so on, many elementary solid forms. It is
matter of regret that in common language we have no easy, convenient words =
for
many of these forms, and instead of being learnt easily and naturally in pl=
ay,
they are left undistinguished, and have to be studied later under circumsta=
nces
of forbidding technicality. It would be quite easy to teach the child in an=
incidental
way to distinguish cube, cylinder, cone, sphere (or ball), prolate spheroid
(which might be called "egg"), oblate spheroid (which might be ca=
lled
"squatty ball"), the pyramid, and various parallelepipeds, as, for
example, the square slab, the oblong slab, the brick, and post. He could ha=
ve
these things added to his box of bricks by degrees, he would build with them
and combine them and play with them over and over again, and absorb an inti=
mate
knowledge of their properties, just at the age when such knowledge is almost
instinctively sought and is most pleasant and easy in its acquisition. These
things need not be specially forced upon him. In no way should he be led to=
emphasize
them or give a priggish importance to his knowledge of them. They will come
into his toys and play mingled with a thousand other interests, the fortify=
ing
powder of clear general ideas, amidst the jam of play.
In addition the c=
hild
should be able to count, [Footnote: There can be little doubt that many of =
us
were taught to count very badly, and that we were hampered in our arithmetic
throughout life by this defect. Counting should be taught be means of small
cubes, which the child can arrange and rearrange in groups. It should have =
at
least over a hundred of these cubes--if possible a thousand; they will be
useful as toy bricks, and for innumerable purposes. Our civilization is now
wedded to a decimal system of counting, and, to begin with, it will be well=
to teach
the child to count up to ten and to stop there for a time. It is suggested =
by
Mrs. Mary Everest Boole that it is very confusing to have distinctive names=
for
eleven and twelve, which the child is apt to class with the single numbers =
and
contrast with the teens, and she proposes at the beginning (The Cultivation=
of
the Mathematical Imagination, Colchester: Benham & Co.) to use the words
"one-ten," "two-ten," thirteen, fourteen, etc., for the
second decade in counting. Her proposal is entirely in harmony with the gen=
eral
drift of the admirably suggestive diagrams of number order collected by Mr.
Francis Gallon. Diagram after diagram displays the same hitch at twelve, th=
e predominance
in the mind of an individualized series over quantitatively equal spaces un=
til
the twenties are attained. Many diagrams also display the mental scar of the
clock face, the early counting is overmuch associated with a dial. One might
perhaps head off the establishment of that image, and supply a more service=
able
foundation for memories by equipping the nursery with a vertical scale of
numbers divided into equal parts up to two or three hundred, with each deca=
de
tinted. When the child has learnt to count up to a hundred with cubes, it
should be given an abacus, and it should also be encouraged to count and ch=
eck
quantities with all sorts of things, marbles, apples, bricks in a wall,
pebbles, spots on dominoes, and so on; taught to play guessing games with
marbles in a hand, and the like. The abacus, the hundred square and the
thousand cube, will then in all probability become its cardinal numerical
memories. Playing cards (without corner indices) and dominoes supply good
recognizable arrangements of numbers, and train a child to grasp a number a=
t a glance.
The child should not be taught the Arabic numerals until it has counted for=
a
year or more. Experience speaks here. I know one case only too well of a ma=
n who
learnt his Arabic numerals prematurely, before he had acquired any sound
experimental knowledge of numerical quantity, and, as a consequence, his
numerical ideas are incurably associated with the peculiarities of the figu=
res.
When he hears the word seven he does not really think of seven or seven-nes=
s at
all, even now, he thinks of a number rather like four and very unlike six. =
Then
again, six and nine are mysteriously and unreasonably linked in his mind, a=
nd
so are three and five. He confuses numbers like sixty-three and sixty-five,=
and
finds it hard to keep seventy-four distinct from forty-seven. Consequently,
when it came to the multiplication table, he learnt each table as an arbitr=
ary
arrangement of relationships, and with an extraordinary amount of needless
labour and punishment. But obviously with cubes or abacus at hand, it would=
be
the easiest thing in the world for a child to construct and learn its own
multiplication table whenever the need arose.] it should be capable of some
mental and experimental arithmetic, and I am told that a child of five shou=
ld
be able to give the sol-fa names to notes, and sing these names at their pr=
oper
pitch. Possibly in social intercourse the child will have picked up names f=
or
some of the letters of the alphabet, but there is no great hurry for that
before five certainly, or even later. There is still a vast amount of things
immediately about the child that need to be thoroughly learnt, and a premat=
ure
attack on letters divides attention from these more appropriate and educati=
onal
objects. It should, for the reason given in the footnote, be still ignorant=
of
the Arabic numerals. It should be able to handle a pencil and amuse itself =
with
freehand of this sort:--and its mind should be quite uncontaminated by that
imbecile drawing upon squared paper by means of which ignorant teachers des=
troy
both the desire and the capacity to sketch in so many little children. Such
sketching could be enormously benefited by a really intelligent teacher who
would watch the child's efforts, and draw with the child just a little above
its level. For example, the teacher might stimulate effort by rejoining to =
such
a sketch as the above, something in this vein:--
The child will
already be a great student of picture-books at five, something of a critic
(after the manner of the realistic school), and it will be easy to egg it
almost imperceptibly to a level where copying from simple outline illustrat=
ions
will become possible. About five, a present of some one of the plastic
substitutes for modelling clay now sold by educational dealers, plasticine =
for
example, will be a discreet and acceptable present to the child--if not to =
its
nurse.
The child's
imagination will also be awake and active at five. He will look out on the
world with anthropomorphic (or rather with pædomorphic) eyes. He will=
be
living on a great flat earth--unless some officious person has tried to mud=
dle
his wits by telling him the earth is round; amidst trees, animals, men, hou=
ses,
engines, utensils, that are all capable of being good or naughty, all fond =
of
nice things and hostile to nasty ones, all thumpable and perishable, and all
conceivably esurient. And the child should know of Fairy Land. The beautiful
fancy of the "Little People," even if you do not give it to him, =
he
will very probably get for himself; they will lurk always just out of reach=
of his
desiring curious eyes, amidst the grass and flowers and behind the wainscot=
and
in the shadows of the bedroom. He will come upon their traces; they will do=
him
little kindnesses. Their affairs should interweave with the affairs of the
child's dolls and brick castles and toy furniture. At first the child will
scarcely be in a world of sustained stories, but very eager for anecdotes a=
nd
simple short tales.
This is the hopef=
ul
foundation upon which at or about the fifth year the formal education of ev=
ery
child in a really civilized community ought to begin. [Footnote: One may no=
te
here, perhaps, the desirability too often disregarded by over-solicitous
parents, and particularly by the parents of the solitary children who are n=
ow
so common, of keeping the child a little out of focus, letting it play by
itself whenever it will, never calling attention to it in a manner that awa=
kens
it to the fact of an audience, never talking about it in its presence. Soli=
tary
children commonly get too much control, they are forced and beguiled upward
rather than allowed to grow, their egotism is over-stimulated, and they miss
many of the benefits of play and competition. It seems a pity, too, in the =
case
of so many well-to-do people, that having equipped nurseries they should not
put them to a fuller use--if in no other way than by admitting foster child=
ren.
None of this has been very fully analyzed, of course (there are enormous ar=
eas
of valuable research in these matters waiting for people of intelligence an=
d leisure,
or of intelligence and means), but the opinion that solitary children are
handicapped by their loneliness is very strong. It is nearly certain that a=
s a
rule they make less agreeable boys and girls, but to me at any rate it is n=
ot
nearly so certain that they make adult failures. It would be interesting to
learn just what proportion of solitary children there is on the roll of tho=
se
who have become great in our world. One thinks of John Ruskin, a particular=
ly
fine specimen of the highly focussed single son. Prig perhaps he was, but t=
his
world has a certain need of such prigs. A correspondent (a schoolmistress o=
f experience)
who has collected statistics in her own neighbourhood, is strongly of opini=
on
not only that solitary children are below the average, but that all elder
children are inferior in quality. I do not believe this, but it would be
interesting and valuable if some one could find time for a wide and thorough
investigation of this question.]
V - THE MAN-MAKING FORCES=
OF
THE MODERN STATE
So far we have concerned ourselves =
with
the introductory and foundation matter of the New Republican project, with =
the
measures and methods that may be resorted to, firstly, if we would raise the
general quality of the children out of whom we have to make the next
generation, and, secondly, if we would replace divergent dialects and parti=
al
and confused expression by a uniform, ample and thorough knowledge of Engli=
sh
throughout the English-speaking world. These two things are necessary
preliminaries to the complete attainment of the more essential nucleus in t=
he
New Republican idea. So much has been discussed. This essential nucleus, th=
us
stripped, reveals itself as the systematic direction of the moulding forces
that play upon the developing citizen, towards his improvement, with a view=
to
a new generation of individuals, a new social state, at a higher level than=
that
at which we live to-day, a new generation which will apply the greater powe=
r,
ampler knowledge and more definite will our endeavours will give it, to rai=
se
its successor still higher in the scale of life. Or we may put the thing in
another and more concrete and vivid way. On the one hand imagine an average
little child let us say in its second year. We have discussed all that can =
be
done to secure that this average little child shall be well born, well fed,
well cared for, and we will imagine all that can be done has been done.
Accordingly, we have a sturdy, beautiful healthy little creature to go upon,
just beginning to walk, just beginning to clutch at things with its hands, =
to
reach out to and apprehend things with its eyes, with its ears, with the
hopeful commencement of speech. We want to arrange matters so that this lit=
tle
being shall develop into its best possible adult form. That is our remaining
problem.
Is our contempora=
ry
average citizen the best that could have been made out of the vague extensi=
ve
possibilities that resided in him when he was a child of two? It has been s=
hown
already that in height and weight he, demonstrably, is not, and it has been
suggested, I hope almost as convincingly, that in that complex apparatus of
acquisition and expression, language, he is also needlessly deficient. And =
even
upon this defective foundation, it is submitted, he still fails, morally, m=
entally,
socially, aesthetically, to be as much as he might be. "As much as he
might be," is far too ironically mild. The average citizen of our great
state to-day is, I would respectfully submit, scarcely more than a dirty cl=
out
about his own buried talents.
I do not say he m=
ight
not be infinitely worse, but can any one believe that, given better conditi=
ons,
he might not have been infinitely better? Is it necessary to argue for a th=
ing
so obvious to all clear- sighted men? Is it necessary, even if it were
possible, that I should borrow the mantle of Mr. George Gissing or the forc=
e of
Mr. Arthur Morrison, and set myself in cold blood to measure the enormous
defect of myself and my fellows by the standards of a remote perfection, to=
gauge
the extent of this complex muddle of artificial and avoidable shortcomings
through which we struggle? Must one, indeed, pass in review once more, buco=
lic
stupidity, commercial cunning, urban vulgarity, religious hypocrisy, politi=
cal
clap-trap, and all the raw disorder of our incipient civilization before the
point will be conceded? What benefit is there in any such revision? rather =
it
may overwhelm us with the magnitude of what we seek to do. Let us not dwell=
on
it, on all the average civilized man still fails to achieve; admit his
imperfection, and for the rest let us keep steadfastly before us that fair,
alluring and reasonable conception of all that, even now, the average man m=
ight
be.
Yet one is tempte=
d by
the effective contrast to put against that clean and beautiful child some v=
ivid
presentation of the average thing, to sketch in a few simple lines the mean=
and
graceless creature of our modern life, his ill-made clothes, his clumsy,
half-fearful, half- brutal bearing, his coarse defective speech, his dreary
unintelligent work, his shabby, impossible, bathless, artless, comfortless
home; one is provoked to suggest him in some phase of typical activity,
"enjoying himself" on a Bank Holiday, or rejoicing, peacock feath=
er
in hand, hat askew, and voice completely gone, on some occasion of public
festivity --on the defeat of a numerically inferior enemy for example, or t=
he decision
of some great international issue at baseball or cricket. This, one would s=
ay,
we have made out of that, and so point the New Republican question,
"Cannot we do better?" But the thing has been done so often witho=
ut
ever the breath of a remedy. Our business is with remedies. We mean to do
better, we live to do better, and with no more than a glance at our present
failures we will set ourselves to that.
To do better we m=
ust
begin with a careful analysis of the process of this man's making, of the g=
reat
complex of circumstances which mould the vague possibilities of the average
child into the reality of the citizen of the modern state.
We may begin upon
this complex most hopefully by picking out a few of the conspicuous and typ=
ical
elements and using them as a basis for an exhaustive classification. To beg=
in
with, of course, there is the home. For our present purpose it will be
convenient to use "home" as a general expression for that limited
group of human beings who share the board and lodging of the growing imperi=
al
citizen, and whose personalities are in constant, close contact with his un=
til
he reaches fifteen or sixteen. Typically, the chief figures of this group a=
re mother,
brothers and sisters, and father, to which are often added nursemaid,
governess, and other servants. Beyond these are playmates again. Beyond the=
se
acquaintances figure. Home has indeed nowadays, in our world, no very defin=
ite
boundaries--no such boundaries as it has, for example, on the veldt. In the
case of a growing number of English upper middle-class children, moreover, =
and
of the children of a growing element in the life of the eastern United Stat=
es,
the home functions are delegated in a very large degree to the preparatory
school. It is a distinction that needs to be emphasized that many so-called
schools are really homes, often very excellent homes, with which schools, o=
ften
very inefficient schools, are united. All this we must lump together-- it i=
s,
indeed, woven together almost inextricably--when we speak of home as a
formative factor. The home, so far as its hygienic conditions go, we have
already dealt with, and we have dealt, too, with the great neglected necess=
ity,
the absolute necessity if our peoples are to keep together, of making and
keeping the language of the home uniform throughout our world-wide communit=
y.
Purely intellectual development beyond the matter of language we may leave =
for
a space. There remains the distinctive mental and moral function of the hom=
e,
the determination by precept, example, and implication of the cardinal habi=
ts
of the developing citizen, his general demeanour, his fundamental beliefs a=
bout
all the common and essential things of life.
This group of peo=
ple,
who constitute the home, will be in constant reaction upon him. If as a who=
le
they bear themselves with grace and serenity, say and do kindly things, con=
trol
rage, and occupy themselves constantly, they will do much to impose these
qualities upon the new- comer. If they quarrel one with another, behave
coarsely and spitefully, loiter and lounge abundantly, these things will al=
so
stamp the child. A raging father, a scared deceitful mother, vulgarly actin=
g, vulgarly
thinking friends, all leave an almost indelible impress. Precept may play a
part in the home, but it is a small part, unless it is endorsed by conduct.
What these people do, on the whole, believe in and act upon, the child will
tend to believe in and act upon; what they believe they believe, but do not=
act
upon, the child will acquire also as a non-operative belief; their practice=
s,
habits, and prejudices will be enormously prepotent in his life. If, for
example, the parent talks constantly of the contemptible dirtiness of Boers=
and
foreigners, and of the extreme beauty of cleanliness and--even
obviously--rarely washes, the child will grow to the same professions and t=
he
same practical denial. This home circle it is that will describe what, in m=
odified
Herbartian phraseology, one may call the child's initial circle of thought;=
it
is a circle many things will subsequently enlarge and modify, but of which =
they
have the centering at least and the establishment of the radial trends, alm=
ost
beyond redemption. The effect of home influence, indeed, constitutes with m=
ost
of us a sort of secondary heredity, interweaving with, and sometimes almost=
indistinguishable
from, the real unalterable primary heredity, a moral shaping by suggestion,
example, and influence, that is a sort of spiritual parallel to physical
procreation.
It is not simply
personalities that are operative in the home influence. There is also the
implications of the various relations between one member of the home circle=
and
another. I am inclined to think that the social conceptions, for example, t=
hat
are accepted in a child's home world are very rarely shaken in afterlife.
People who have been brought up in households where there is an organized
under-world of servants are incurably different in their social outlook from
those who have passed a servantless childhood. They never quite emancipate =
themselves
from the conception of an essential class difference, of a class of beings
inferior to themselves. They may theorise about equality--but theory is not
belief. They will do a hundred things to servants that between equals would=
be,
for various reasons, impossible. The Englishwoman and the Anglicised Americ=
an
woman of the more pretentious classes honestly regards a servant as physica=
lly,
morally, and intellectually different from herself, capable of things that
would be incredibly arduous to a lady, capable of things that would be incr=
edibly
disgraceful, under obligations of conduct no lady observes, incapable of the
refinement to which every lady pretends. It is one of the most amazing aspe=
cts
of contemporary life, to converse with some smart, affected, profoundly
uneducated, flirtatious woman about her housemaid's followers. There is suc=
h an
identity; there is such an abyss. But at present that contrast is not our
concern. Our concern at present is with the fact that the social constituti=
on
of the home almost invariably shapes the fundamental social conceptions for
life, just as its average temperament shapes manners and bearing and its mo=
ral
tone begets moral predisposition. If the average sensual man of our
civilization is noisy and undignified in his bearing, disposed to insult and
despise those he believes to be his social inferiors, competitive and
disobliging to his equals; abject, servile, and dishonest to those he regar=
ds
as his betters; if his wife is a silly, shallow, gossiping spendthrift, unf=
it
to rear the children she occasionally bears, perpetually snubbing social
inferiors and perpetually cringing to social superiors, it is probable that=
we
have to blame the home, not particularly any specific class of homes, but o=
ur
general home atmosphere, for the great part of these characteristics. If we
would make the average man of the coming years gentler in manner, more deli=
berate
in judgment, steadier in purpose, upright, considerate, and free, we must l=
ook
first to the possibility of improving the tone and quality of the average h=
ome.
Now the substance=
and
constitution of the home, the relations and order of its various members, h=
ave
been, and are, traditional. But it is a tradition that has always been capa=
ble
of modification in each generation. In the unlettered, untravelling past, t=
he
factor of tradition was altogether dominant. Sons and daughters married and=
set
up homes, morally, intellectually, economically, like those of their parent=
s.
Over great areas homogeneous traditions held, and it needed wars and conque=
sts,
or it needed missionaries and persecutors and conflicts, or it needed many
generations of intercourse and filtration before a new tradition could repl=
ace
or graft itself upon the old. But in the past hundred years or so the home
conditions of the children of our English-speaking population have shown a
disposition to break from tradition under influences that are increasing, a=
nd
to become much more heterogeneous than were any home conditions before. The
ways in which these modifications of the old home tradition have arisen will
indicate the means and methods by which further modifications may be expect=
ed and
attempted in the future.
Modification has =
come
to the average home tradition through two distinct, though no doubt finally
interdependent channels. The first of these channels is the channel of chan=
ging
economic necessities, using the phrase to cover everything from domestic
conveniences at the one extreme to the financial foundation of the home at =
the
other, and the next is the influx of new systems of thought, of feeling, an=
d of
interpretation about the general issues of life.
There are in Great
Britain three main interdependent systems of home tradition undergoing
modification and readjustment. They date from the days before mechanism and
science began their revolutionary intervention in human affairs, and they
derive from the three main classes of the old aristocratic, agricultural, a=
nd
trading state, namely, the aristocratic, the middle, and the labour class.
There are local, there are even racial modifications, there are minor class=
es
and subspecies, but the rough triple classification will serve. In America =
the
dominant home tradition is that of the transplanted English middle class. T=
he
English aristocratic tradition has flourished and faded in the Southern Sta=
tes;
the British servile and peasant tradition has never found any growth in
America, and has, in the persons of the Irish chiefly, been imported in an
imperfect condition, only to fade. The various home traditions of the
nineteenth century immigrants have either, if widely different, succumbed, =
or
if not very different assimilated themselves to the ruling tradition. The m=
ost
marked non- British influence has been the intermixture of Teutonic
Protestantism. In both countries now the old home traditions have been and =
are
being adjusted to and modified by the new classes, with new relationships a=
nd new
necessities, that the revolution in industrial organization and domestic
conveniences has created.
The interplay of =
old
tradition and new necessities becomes at times very curious. Consider, for
example, the home influences of the child of a shopman in a large store, or
those of the child of a skilled operative--an engineer of some sort let us
say--in England. Both these are new types in the English social body; the
former derives from the old middle class, the class that was shopkeeping in=
the
towns and farming in the country, the class of the Puritans, the Quakers, t=
he first
manufacturers, the class whose mentally active members become the dissenter=
s,
the old Liberals, and the original New Englanders. The growth of large
businesses has raised a portion of this class to the position of Sir John
Blundell Maple, Sir Thomas Lipton, the intimate friend of our King, and our
brewer peers; it has raised a rather more numerous section to the red plush
glories of Wagon-Lit trains and their social and domestic equivalents, and =
it
has reduced the bulk of the class to the status of employees for life. But =
the
tradition that our English shopman is in the same class as his master, that=
he
has been apprentice and improver, and is now assistant, with a view to pres=
ently
being a master himself, still throws its glamour over his life and his home,
and his child's upbringing. They belong to the middle class, the black coat=
and
silk-hat class, and the silk hat crowns the adolescence of their boys as
inevitably as the toga made men in ancient Rome. Their house is built, not =
for
convenience primarily, but to realize whatever convenience is possible after
the rigid traditional requirements have been met; it is the extreme and fin=
al
reduction of the plan of a better class house, and the very type of its own=
er.
As one sees it in the London suburbs devoted to clerks and shopmen, it stan=
ds
back a yard or so from the road, with a gate and a railing, and a patch,
perhaps two feet wide, of gravel between its front and the pavement. This is
the last pathetic vestige of the preliminary privacies of its original type,
the gates, the drive-up, the front lawn, the shady trees, that gave a great
impressive margin to the door. The door has a knocker (with an appeal to
realities, "ring also") and it opens into a narrow passage, perha=
ps
four feet wide, which still retains the title of "hall." Oak stai=
ning
on the woodwork and marbled paper accentuate the lordly memory. People of t=
his
class would rather die than live in a house with a front door, even had it a
draught-stopping inner door, that gave upon the street. Instead of an ample
kitchen in which meals can be taken and one other room in which the rest of
life goes on, these two covering the house site, the social distinction from
the servant invades the house space first by necessitating a passage to a s=
ide-door,
and secondly by cutting up the interior into a "dining-room" and a
"drawing-room." Economy of fuel throughout the winter and economy=
of
the best furniture always, keeps the family in the dining-room pretty
constantly, but there you have the drawing-room as a concrete fact. Though =
the
drawing-room is inevitable, the family will manage without a bath-room well
enough. They may, or they may not, occasionally wash all over. There are pr=
obably
not fifty books in the house, but a daily paper comes and Tit Bits or Pears=
on's
Weekly, or, perhaps, M.A.P., Modern Society, or some such illuminant of the
upper circles, and a cheap fashion paper, appear at irregular intervals to
supplement this literature.
The wife lives to
realize the ideal of the "ladylike"--lady she resigns to the
patrician--and she insists upon a servant, however small. This poor wretch =
of a
servant, often a mere child of fourteen or fifteen, lives by herself in a
minute kitchen, and sleeps in a fireless attic. To escape vulgar associates,
the children of the house avoid the elementary schools--the schools called =
in
America public schools--where there are trained, efficient teachers, good
apparatus, and an atmosphere of industry, and go to one of those wretched d=
ens
of disorderly imposture, a middle-class school, where an absolute failure to
train or educate is seasoned with religious cant, lessons in piano- playing,
lessons in French "made in England," mortarboard caps for the boy=
s,
and a high social tone. And to emphasize the fact of its social position, t=
his
bookless, bathless family tips! The plumber touches his hat for a tip, the =
man
who moves the furniture, the butcher-boy at Christmas, the dustman; these
things also, the respect and the tip, at their minimum dimensions. Everythi=
ng
is at its minimum dimensions, it is the last chipped, dwarfed, enfeebled st=
ate
of a tradition that has, in its time, played a fine part in the world. This
much of honour still clings to it, it will endure no tip, no charity, no
upper-class control of its privacy. This is the sort of home in which the m=
inds
of thousands of young Englishmen and Englishwomen receive their first indel=
ible
impressions. Can one expect them to escape the contagion of its cramped
pretentiousness, its dingy narrowness, its shy privacy of social degradatio=
n,
its essential sordidness and inefficiency?
Our skilled
operative, on the other hand, will pocket his tip. He is on the other side =
of
the boundary. He presents a rising element coming from the servile mass.
Probably his net income equals or exceeds the shopman's, but there is no
servant, no black coat and silk hat, no middle-class school in his scheme of
things. He calls the shopman "Sir," and makes no struggle against=
his
native accent. In his heart he despises the middle class, the mean tip-give=
rs,
and he is inclined to overrate the gentry or big tippers. He is much more
sociable, much noisier, relatively shameless, more intelligent, more capabl=
e,
less restrained. He is rising against his tradition, and almost against his=
will.
The serf still bulks large in him. The whole trend of circumstance is to
substitute science for mere rote skill in him, to demand initiative and an
intelligent self-adaptation to new discoveries and new methods, to make him=
a
professional man and a job and pieceworker after the fashion of the great
majority of professional men. Against all these things the serf element in =
him
fights. He resists education and clings to apprenticeship, he fights for ti=
me- work,
he obstructs new inventions, he clings to the ideal of short hours, high pa=
y,
shirk and let the master worry. His wife is a far more actual creature than=
the
clerk's; she does the house herself in a rough, effectual fashion, his chil=
dren
get far more food for mind and body, and far less restraint. You can tell t=
he
age of the skilled operative within a decade by the quantity of books in his
home; the younger he is the more numerous these are likely to be. And the
younger he is the more likely he is to be alive to certain general views ab=
out his
rights and his place in the social scale, the less readily will his finger =
go
to his cap at the sight of broad-cloth, or his hand to the proffered
half-crown. He will have listened to Trade Union organizers and Socialist
speakers; he will have read the special papers of his class. The whole of t=
his
home is, in comparison with the shopman's, wide open to new influences. The
children go to a Board School, and very probably afterwards to evening
classes--or music-halls. Here again is a new type of home, in which the Eng=
lish
of 1920 are being made in thousands, and which is forced a little way up the
intellectual and moral scale every year, a little further from its original
conception of labour, dependence, irresponsibility, and servility.
Compare, again, t=
he
home conditions of the child of a well-connected British shareholder
inheriting, let us say, seven or eight hundred a year, with the home of exa=
ctly
the same sort of person deriving from the middle class. On the one hand, one
will find the old aristocratic British tradition in an instructively distor=
ted
state. All the assumptions of an essential lordliness remain--and none of t=
he
duties. All the pride is there still, but it is cramped, querulous, and und=
ignified.
That lordliness is so ample that for even a small family the income I have
named will be no more than biting poverty, there will be a pervading qualit=
y of
struggle in this home to avoid work, to frame arrangements, to discover che=
ap,
loyal servants of the old type, to discover six per cent. investments witho=
ut
risk, to interest influential connections in the prospects of the children.=
The
tradition of the ruling class, which sees in the public service a pension
scheme for poor relations, will glow with all the colours of hope. Great sa=
crifices
will be made to get the boys to public schools, where they can revive and
expand the family connections. They will look forward as a matter of course=
to
positions and appointments, for the want of which men of gifts and capacity
from other social strata will break their hearts, and they will fill these
coveted places with a languid, discontented incapacity. Great difficulty wi=
ll
be experienced in finding schools for the girls from which the offspring of
tradesmen are excluded. Vulgarity has to be jealously anticipated. In a per=
iod
when Smartness (as distinguished from Vulgarity) is becoming an ideal, this=
demands
at times extremely subtle discrimination. The art of credit will be develop=
ed
to a high level.
Now in the other
family economically indistinguishable from this, a family with seven or eig=
ht
hundred a year from investments, which derives from the middle class, the
tradition is one that, in spite of the essential irresponsibility of the
economic position, will urge this family towards exertion as a duty. As a r=
ule
the resultant lies in the direction of pleasant, not too arduous exertion, =
the
arts are attacked with great earnestness of intention, literature,
"movements" of many sorts are ingredients in these homes. Many th=
ings
that are imperative to the aristocratic home are regarded as needless, and =
in
their place appear other things that the aristocrat would despise, books, i=
nstruction,
travel in incorrect parts of the world, games, that most seductive developm=
ent
of modern life, played to the pitch of distinction. Into both these homes c=
omes
literature, comes the Press, comes the talk of alien minds, comes the
observation of things without, sometimes reinforcing the tradition, sometim=
es
insidiously glossing upon it or undermining it, sometimes "letting
daylight through it"; but much more into the latter type than into the
former. And slowly the two fundamentally identical things tend to assimilate
their superficial difference, to homologize their traditions, each generati=
on
sees a relaxation of the aristocratic prohibitions, a "gentleman"=
may
tout for wines nowadays--among gentlemen--he may be a journalist, a fashion=
able
artist, a schoolmaster, his sisters may "act," while, on the othe=
r hand,
each generation of the ex-commercial shareholder reaches out more earnestly
towards refinement, towards tone and quality, towards etiquette, and away f=
rom
what is "common" in life.
So in these typic=
al
cases one follows the strands of tradition into the new conditions, the new
homes of our modern state. In America one finds exactly the same new elemen=
ts
shaped by quite parallel economic developments, shopmen in a large store,
skilled operatives, and independent shareholders developing homes not out o=
f a
triple strand of tradition, but out of the predominant home tradition of an
emancipated middle class, and in a widely different atmosphere of thought a=
nd suggestion.
As a consequence, one finds, I am told, a skilled operative already with no=
eye
(or only an angry eye) for tips, sociable shopmen, and shareholding familie=
s,
frankly common, frankly intelligent, frankly hedonistic, or only with the m=
ost
naïve and superficial imitation of the haughty incapacity, the mean pr=
ide,
the parasitic lordliness of the just-independent, well-connected English.
These rough
indications of four social types will illustrate the quality of our
proposition, that home influence in the making of men resolves itself into =
an
interplay of one substantial and two modifying elements, namely:--
(1) Tradition.
(2) Economic
conditions.
(3) New ideas,
suggestions, interpretations, changes in the general atmosphere of thought =
in
which a man lives and which he mentally breathes.
The net sum of wh=
ich
three factors becomes the tradition for the next generation.
Both the modifying
elements admit of control. How the economic conditions of homes may be
controlled to accomplish New Republican ends has already been discussed wit=
h a
view to a hygienic minimum, and obviously the same, or similar, methods may=
be
employed to secure less materialistic benefits. You can make a people dirty=
by
denying them water, you can make a people cleaner by cheapening and enforci=
ng
bath- rooms. Man is indeed so spiritual a being that he will turn every mat=
erialistic
development you force upon him into spiritual growth. You can aerate his ho=
use,
not only with air, but with ideas. Build, cheapen, render alluring a simple=
r,
more spacious type of house for the clerk, fill it with labour-saving
conveniences, and leave no excuse and no spare corners for the
"slavey," and the slavey--and all that she means in mental and mo=
ral
consequence--will vanish out of being. You will beat tradition. Make it easy
for Trade Unions to press for shorter hours of work, but make it difficult =
for
them to obstruct the arrival of labour-saving appliances, put the means of
education easily within the reach of every workman, make promotion from the
ranks, in the Army, in the Navy, in all business concerns, practicable and
natural, and the lingering discolouration of the serf taint will vanish from
the workman's mind. The days of mystic individualism have passed, few people
nowadays will agree to that strange creed that we must deal with economic
conditions as though they were inflexible laws. Economic conditions are made
and compact of the human will, and by tariffs, by trade regulation and
organization, fresh strands of will may be woven into the complex. The thing
may be extraordinarily intricate and difficult, abounding in unknown
possibilities and unsuspected dangers, but that is a plea for science and n=
ot
for despair.
Controllable, too=
, is
the influx of modifying suggestions into our homes, however vast and subtle=
the
enterprise may seem. But here we touch for the first time a question that we
shall now continue to touch upon at other points, until at last we shall cl=
ear
it and display it as the necessarily central question of the whole matter of
man-making so far as the human will is concerned, and that is the preservat=
ion
and expansion of the body of human thought and imagination, of which all co=
nscious
human will and act is but the imperfect expression and realization, of which
all human institutions and contrivances, from the steam-engine to the ploug=
hed
field, and from the blue pill to the printing press, are no more than the
imperfect symbols, the rude mnemonics and memoranda.
But this analysis=
of
the modifying factors in the home influence, this formulation of its
controllable elements, has now gone as far as the purpose of this paper
requires. It has worked out to this, that the home, so far as it is not
traditional organization, is really only on the one hand an aspect of the
general economic condition of the state, and on the other of that still more
fundamental thing, its general atmosphere of thought. Our analysis refers b=
ack
the man-maker to these two questions. The home, one gathers, is not to be d=
ealt
with separately or simply. Nor, on the other hand, are these questions to b=
e dealt
with merely in relation to their home application. As the citizen grows up,=
he
presently emerges from his home influences to a more direct and general con=
tact
with these two things, with the Fact of the modern state and with the Thoug=
ht
of the modern state, and we must consider each of these in relation to his
development as a whole.
The next group of
elements in the man-making complex that occurs to one after the home, is the
school. Let me repeat a distinction already drawn between the home element =
in
boarding-schools and the school proper. While the child is out of the schoo=
l-room,
playing--except when it is drilling or playing under direction--when it is
talking with its playmates, walking, sleeping, eating, it is under those
influences that it has been convenient for me to speak of as the home
influence. The schoolmaster who takes boarders is, I hold, merely a substit=
ute
for the parent, the household of boarders merely a substitute for the famil=
y. What
is meant by school here, is that which is possessed in common by day school=
and
boarding-school--the schoolroom and the recess playground part. It is somet=
hing
which the savage and the barbarian distinctively do not possess as a phase =
in
their making, and scarcely even its rudimentary suggestion. It is a new ele=
ment
correlated with the establishment of a wider political order and with the u=
se
of written speech.
Now I think it wi=
ll
be generally conceded that whatever systematic intellectual training the
developing citizen gets, as distinguished from his natural, accidental, and
incidental development, is got in school or in its subsequent development of
college, and with that I will put aside the question of intellectual
development altogether for a later, fuller discussion. My point here is sim=
ply
to note the school as a factor in the making of almost every citizen in the
modern state, and to point out, what is sometimes disregarded, that it is o=
nly
one of many factors in that making. The tendency of the present time is eno=
rmously
to exaggerate the importance of school in development, to ascribe to it pow=
ers
quite beyond its utmost possibilities, and to blame it for evils in which it
has no share. And in the most preposterous invasions of the duties of paren=
t,
clergyman, statesman, author, journalist, of duties which are in truth scar=
cely
more within the province of a schoolmaster than they are within the provinc=
e of
a butcher, the real and necessary work of the school is too often marred, c=
rippled,
and lost sight of altogether. We treat the complex, difficult and honourable
task of intellectual development as if it were within the capacity of any
earnest but muddle-headed young lady, or any half- educated gentleman in
orders; we take that for granted, and we demand in addition from them the
"formation of character," moral and ethical training and supervis=
ion,
aesthetic guidance, the implanting of a taste for the Best in literature, f=
or
the Best in art, for the finest conduct; we demand the clue to success in
commerce and the seeds of a fine passionate patriotism from these necessari=
ly
very ordinary persons.
One might think
schoolmasters and schoolmistresses were inaccessible to general observation=
in
the face of these stupendous demands. If we exacted such things from our
butcher over and above good service in his trade, if we insisted that his m=
eat
should not only build up honest nerve and muscle, but that it should compen=
sate
for all that was slovenly in our homes, dishonest in our economic condition=
s,
and slack and vulgar in our public life, he would very probably say that it
took him all his time to supply sound meat, that it was a difficult and hon=
ourable
thing to supply sound meat, that the slackness of business- men and statesm=
en
in the country, the condition of the arts and sciences, wasn't his business,
that however lamentable the disorders of the state, there was no reasonable
prospect of improving it by upsetting the distribution of meat, and, in sho=
rt,
that he was a butcher and not a Cosmos-healing quack. "You must have
meat," he would say, "anyhow." But the average schoolmaster =
and
schoolmistress does not do things in that way.
What a school may=
do
for the developing citizen, the original and the developed function of the
school, and how its true work may best be accomplished, we shall discuss la=
ter.
But it may be well to expand a little more fully here the account of what t=
he
school has no business to attempt, and what the scholastic profession is, a=
s a
whole, quite incapable of doing, and to point to the really responsible
agencies in each case.
Now, firstly, with
regard to all that the schoolmaster and schoolmistress means by the
"formation of character." A large proportion of the scholastic
profession will profess, and a still larger proportion of the public believ=
es,
that it is possible by talk and specially designed instruction, to give a b=
oy
or girl a definite bias towards "truth," towards acts called
"healthy" (a word it would puzzle the ordinary schoolmaster or
schoolmistress extremely to define, glib as they are with it), towards hono=
ur,
towards generosity, enterprise, self-reliance, and the like. The masters in=
our
public schools are far from blameless in this respect, and you may gauge th=
e quality
of many of these gentlemen pretty precisely by their disposition towards the
"school pulpit" line of business. Half an hour's "straight t=
alk
to the boys," impromptu vague sentimentality about Earnestness,
Thoroughness, True Patriotism, and so forth, seems to assuage the conscienc=
e as
nothing else could do, for weeks of ill- prepared, ill-planned teaching, and
years of preoccupation with rowing- boats and cricket. The more extreme
examples of this type will say in a tone of manly apology, "It does the
boys good to tell them plainly what I think about serious things"--when
the simple fact of the case is too often that he does all he can not to thi=
nk
about any things of any sort whatever, except cricket and promotion.
Schoolmistresses, again, will sometimes come near boasting to the inquiring
parent of our "ethical hour," and if you probe the facts you will
find that means no more and no less than an hour of floundering egotism, in
which a poor illogical soul, with a sort of naive indecency, talks nonsense
about "Ideals," about the Higher and the Better, about Purity, and
about many secret and sacred things, things upon which wise men are often
profoundly uncertain, to incredulous or imitative children. All that is nee=
ded
to do this sort of thing abundantly and freely is a certain degree of aggre=
ssive
egotism, a certain gift of stupidity, good intentions, and a defective sens=
e of
educational possibilities and limitations.
In addition to mo=
ral
discussions, that at the best are very second-rate eloquence, and at the wo=
rst
are respect destroying, mind destroying gabble, there are various forms of
"ethical" teaching, advocated and practised in America and in the
elementary schools of this country. For example, a story of an edifying sor=
t is
told to the children, and comments are elicited upon the behaviour of the
characters. "Would you have done that?" "Oh, no, teacher!&qu=
ot;
"Why not?" "Because it would be mean." The teacher goes
into particulars, whittling away at the verdict, and at last the fine point=
of
the lesson stands out. Now it may be indisputable that such lessons can be
conducted effectively and successfully by exceptionally brilliant teachers,
that children may be given an excellent code of good intentions, and a
wonderful skill in the research for good or bad motives for any given cours=
e of
action they may or may not want to take, but that they can be systematicall=
y trained
by the average teacher at our disposal in this desirable "subject"=
; is
quite another question. It is one of the things that the educational reform=
er
must guard against most earnestly, the persuasion that what an exceptional =
man
can do ever and again for display purposes can be done successfully day by =
day
in schools. This applies to many other things besides the teaching of ethic=
s.
Professor Armstrong can give delightfully instructive lessons in chemistry
according to the heuristic method, but in the hands of the average teacher =
by
whom teaching must be done for the next few years the heuristic system will
result in nothing but a pointless fumble. Mr. Mackinder teaches
geography--inimitably--just to show how to do it. Mr. David Devant--the
brilliant Egyptian Hall conjuror--will show any assembly of parents how to
amuse children quite easily, but for some reason he does not present his
legerdemain as a new discovery in educational method.
To our argument t=
hat
this sort of teaching is not within the capacity of such teachers as we hav=
e,
or are likely to have, we can, fortunately enough, add that whatever is
attempted can be done far better through other agencies. More or less unkno=
wn
to teachers there exists a considerable amount of well-written literature, =
true
stories and fiction, in which, without any clumsy insistence upon moral poi=
nts,
fine actions are displayed in their elementary fineness, and baseness is se=
en
to be base. There are also a few theatres, and there might be more, in which
fine action is finely displayed. Now one nobly conceived and nobly rendered
play will give a stronger moral impression than the best schoolmaster
conceivable, talking ethics for a year on end. One great and stirring book =
may
give an impression less powerful, perhaps, but even more permanent. Practic=
ally
these things are as good as example--they are example. Surround your growing
boy or girl with a generous supply of good books, and leave writer and grow=
ing
soul to do their business together without any scholastic control of their =
intercourse.
Make your state healthy, your economic life healthy and honest, be honest a=
nd
truthful in the pulpit, behind the counter, in the office, and your children
will need no specific ethical teaching; they will inhale right. And without
these things all the ethical teaching in the world will only sour to cant at
the first wind of the breath of the world.
Quite without eth=
ical
pretension at all the school is of course bound to influence the moral
development of the child. That most important matter, the habit and disposi=
tion
towards industry, should be acquired there, the sense of thoroughness in
execution, the profound belief that difficulty is bound to yield to a resol=
ute
attack--all these things are the necessary by-products of a good school. A
teacher who is punctual, persistent, just, who tells the truth, and insists
upon the truth, who is truthful, not merely technically but in a constant
search for exact expression, whose own share of the school work is faultles=
sly
done, who is tolerant to effort and a tireless helper, who is obviously mor=
e interested
in serious work than in puerile games, will beget essential manliness in ev=
ery
boy he teaches. He need not lecture on his virtues. A slack, emotional,
unpunctual, inexact, and illogical teacher, a fawning loyalist, an incredib=
le
pietist, an energetic snob, a teacher as eager for games, as sensitive to
social status, as easy, kindly, and sentimental, and as shy really of hard =
toil
as--as some teachers--is none the better for ethical flatulence. There is a
good deal of cant in certain educational circles, there is a certain type of
educational writing in which "love" is altogether too strongly
present; a reasonably extensive observation of school-children and
school-teachers makes one doubt whether there is ever anything more than a =
very
temperate affection and a still more temperate admiration on either side.
Children see through their teachers amazingly, and what they do not underst=
and
now they will understand later. For a teacher to lay hands on all the virtu=
es,
to associate them with his or her personality, to smear characteristic phra=
ses
and expressions over them, is as likely as not to give the virtues unpleasa=
nt
associations. Better far, save through practice, to leave them alone
altogether.
And what is here =
said
of this tainting of moral instruction with the personality of the teacher
applies still more forcibly to religious instruction. Here, however, I enter
upon a field where I am anxious to avoid dispute. To my mind those ideas and
emotions that centre about the idea of God appear at once too great and rem=
ote,
and too intimate and subtle for objective treatment. But there are a great
number of people, unfortunately, who regard religion as no more than geogra=
phy,
who believe that it can be got into daily lessons of one hour, and adequate=
ly
done by any poor soul who has been frightened into conformity by the fear of
dismissal. And having this knobby, portable creed, and believing sincerely =
that
lip conformity is alone necessary to salvation, they want to force every
teacher they can to acquire and impart its indestructible, inflexible recip=
es,
and they are prepared to enforce this at the price of inefficiency in every
other school function. We must all agree--whatever we believe or
disbelieve--that religion is the crown of the edifice we build. But it will
simply ruin a vital part of the edifice and misuse our religion very greatl=
y if
we hand it over to the excavators and bricklayers of the mind, to use as a =
cheap
substitute for the proper intellectual and ethical foundations; for the eth=
ical
foundation which is schooling and the ethical foundation which is habit. I =
must
confess that there is only one sort of man whose insistence upon religious
teaching in schools by ordinary school teachers I can understand, and that =
is
the downright Atheist, the man who believes sensual pleasure is all that th=
ere
is of pleasure, and virtue no more than a hood to check the impetuosity of
youth until discretion is acquired, the man who believes there is nothing e=
lse
in the world but hard material fact, and who has as much respect for truth =
and
religion as he has for stable manure. Such a man finds it convenient to pro=
fess
a lax version of the popular religion, and he usually does so, and invariab=
ly
he wants his children "taught" religion, because he so utterly di=
sbelieves
in God, goodness, and spirituality that he cannot imagine young people doing
even enough right to keep healthy and prosperous, unless they are humbugged
into it.
Equally unnecessa=
ry
is the scholastic attempt to take over the relations of the child to
"nature," art, and literature. To read the educational journals, =
to
hear the scholastic enthusiast, one would think that no human being would e=
ver
discover there was any such thing as "nature" were it not for the
schoolmaster--and quotation from Wordsworth. And this nature, as they prese=
nt
it, is really not nature at all, but a factitious admiration for certain
isolated aspects of the universe conventionally regarded as
"natural." Few schoolmasters have discovered that for every
individual there are certain aspects of the universe that especially appeal,
and that that appeal is part of the individuality--different from every hum=
an
being, and quite outside their range. Certain things that have been rather =
well
treated by poets and artists (for the most part dead and of Academic standi=
ng)
they regard as Nature, and all the rest of the world, most of the world in =
which
we live, as being in some way an intrusion upon this classic. They propound=
a
wanton and illogical canon. Trees, rivers, flowers, birds, stars--are, and =
have
been for many centuries Nature--so are ploughed fields--really the most
artificial of all things--and all the apparatus of the agriculturist, cattl=
e,
vermin, weeds, weed-fires, and all the rest of it. A grassy old embankment =
to
protect low-lying fields is Nature, and so is all the mass of apparatus abo=
ut a
water-mill; a new embankment to store an urban water supply, though it may =
be
one mass of splendid weeds, is artificial, and ugly. A wooden windmill is N=
ature
and beautiful, a sky-sign atrocious. Mountains have become Nature and beaut=
iful
within the last hundred years--volcanoes even. Vesuvius, for example, is gr=
and
and beautiful, its smell of underground railway most impressive, its night
effect stupendous, but the glowing cinder heaps of Burslem, the wonders of =
the
Black Country sunset, the wonderful fire-shot nightfall of the Five Towns,
these things are horrid and offensive and vulgar beyond the powers of
scholastic language. Such a mass of clotted inconsistencies, such a wild
confusion of vicious mental practices as this, is the stuff the schoolmaster
has in mind when he talks of children acquiring a love of Nature. They are =
to
be trained, against all their mental bias, to observe and quote about the
canonical natural objects and not to observe, but instead to shun and conte=
mn
everything outside the canon, and so to hand on the orthodox Love of Nature=
to
another generation. One may present the triumph of scholastic nature-teachi=
ng,
by the figure of a little child hurrying to school along the ways of a busy
modern town. She carries a faded cut-flower, got at considerable cost from a
botanical garden, and as she goes she counts its petals, its stamens, its
bracteoles. Her love of Nature, her "powers of observation," are
being trained. About her, all unheeded, is a wonderful life that she would =
be
intent upon but for this precious training of her mind; great electric trai=
ns
loom wonderfully round corners, go droning by, spitting fire from their ove=
rhead
wires; great shop windows display a multitudinous variety of objects; men a=
nd
women come and go about a thousand businesses; a street-organ splashes a sp=
ray
of notes at her as she passes, a hoarding splashes a spray of colour.
The shape and
direction of one's private observation is no more the schoolmaster's busine=
ss
than the shape and direction of one's nose. It is, indeed, possible to cert=
ain
gifted and exceptional persons that they should not only see acutely, but
abstract and express again what they have seen. Such people are artists--a
different kind of people from schoolmasters altogether. Into all sorts of
places, where people have failed to see, comes the artist like a light. The
artist cannot create nor can he determine the observation of other men, but=
he
can, at any rate, help and inspire it. But he and the pedagogue are tempera=
mentally
different and apart. They are at opposite poles of human quality. The pedag=
ogue
with his canon comes between the child and Nature only to limit and obscure.
His business is to leave the whole thing alone.
If the interpreta=
tion
of nature is a rare and peculiar gift, the interpretation of art and litera=
ture
is surely an even rarer thing. Hundreds of schoolmasters and schoolmistress=
es
who could not write one tolerable line of criticism, will stand up in front=
of
classes by the hour together and issue judgments on books, pictures, and all
that is comprised under the name of art. Think of it! Here is your great ar=
tist,
your great exceptional mind groping in the darknesses beneath the surface of
life, half apprehending strange elusive things in those profundities, and
striving--striving sometimes to the utmost verge of human endeavour--to give
that strange unsuspected mystery expression, to shape it, to shadow it in f=
orm
and wonder of colour, in beautiful rhythms, in phantasies of narrative, in
gracious and glowing words. So much in its essential and precious degree is
art. Think of what the world must be in the wider vision of the great artis=
t.
Think, for example, of the dark splendours amidst which the mind of Leonard=
o clambered;
the mirror of tender lights that reflected into our world the iridescent
graciousness of Botticelli! Then to the faint and faded intimations these g=
reat
men have left us of the things beyond our scope, comes the scholastic
intelligence, gesticulating instructively, and in too many cases obscuring =
for
ever the naive vision of the child. The scholastic intelligence, succulently
appreciative, blind, hopelessly blind to the fact that every great work of =
art
is a strenuous, an almost despairing effort to express and convey, treats t=
he
whole thing as some foolish riddle--"explains it to the children."=
; As
if every picture was a rebus and every poem a charade! "Little childre=
n,"
he says, "this teaches you"--and out comes the platitude!
Of late years, in
Great Britain more particularly, the School has been called upon to conquer
still other fields. It has become apparent that in this monarchy of ours, in
which honour is heaped high upon money- making, even if it is money-making =
that
adds nothing to the collective wealth or efficiency, and denied to the most
splendid public services unless they are also remunerative; where public
applause is the meed of cricketers, hostile guerillas, clamorous authors,
yacht-racing grocers, and hopelessly incapable generals, and where suspicion
and ridicule are the lot of every man working hard and living hard for any =
end
beyond a cabman's understanding; in this world-wide Empire whose Government=
is entrusted
as a matter of course to peers and denied as a matter of course to any man =
of
humble origin; where social pressure of the most urgent kind compels every
capable business manager to sell out to a company and become a
"gentleman" at the very earliest opportunity, the national energy=
is
falling away. That driving zeal, that practical vigour that once distinguis=
hed
the English is continually less apparent. Our workmen take no pride in their
work any longer, they shirk toil and gamble. And what is worse, the master
takes no pride in the works; he, too, shirks toil and gambles. Our middle-c=
lass
young men, instead of flinging themselves into study, into research, into l=
iterature,
into widely conceived business enterprises, into so much of the public serv=
ice
as is not preserved for the sons of the well connected, play games, display=
an
almost oriental slackness in the presence of work and duty, and seem to
consider it rather good form to do so. And seeking for some reason and some
remedy for this remarkable phenomenon, a number of patriotic gentlemen have
discovered that the Schools, the Schools are to blame. Something in the nat=
ure
of Reform has to be waved over our schools.
It would be a wic=
ked
deed to write anything that might seem to imply that our Schools were not in
need of very extensive reforms, or that their efficiency is not a necessary
preliminary condition to general public efficiency, but, indeed, the Schools
are only one factor in a great interplay of causes, and the remedy is a much
ampler problem than any Education Act will cure. Take a typical young Engli=
shman,
for example, one who has recently emerged from one of our public schools, o=
ne
of the sort of young Englishmen for whom all commissions in the Army are
practically reserved, who will own some great business, perhaps, or direct
companies, and worm your way through the tough hide of style and restraint =
he
has acquired, get him to talk about women, about his prospects, his intimate
self, and see for yourself how much of him, and how little of him, his scho=
ol
has made. Test him on politics, on the national future, on social
relationships, and lead him if you can to an utterance or so upon art and
literature. You will be astonished how little you can either blame or praise
the teaching of his school for him. He is ignorant, profoundly ignorant, and
much of his style and reserve is draped over that; he does not clearly unde=
rstand
what he reads, and he can scarcely write a letter; he draws, calculates and
thinks no better than an errand boy, and he has no habit of work; for that =
much
perhaps the school must answer. And the school, too, must answer for the fa=
ct
that although--unless he is one of the small specialized set who
"swat" at games--he plays cricket and football quite without
distinction, he regards these games as much more important than military
training and things of that sort, spends days watching his school matches, =
and
thumbs and muddles over the records of county cricket to an amazing extent.=
But
these things are indeed only symptons, and not essential factors in general
inefficiency. There are much wider things for which his school is only
mediately or not at all to blame. For example, he is not only ignorant and
inefficient and secretly aware of his ignorance and inefficiency, but, what=
is
far more serious, he does not feel any strong desire to alter the fact; he =
is not
only without the habit of regular work, but he does not feel the defect bec=
ause
he has no desire whatever to do anything that requires work in the doing. A=
nd
you will find that this is so because there is woven into the tissue of his=
being
a profound belief that work and knowledge "do not pay," that they=
are
rather ugly and vulgar characteristics, and that they make neither for
happiness nor success.
He did not learn =
that
at school, nor at school was it possible he should unlearn it. He acquired =
that
belief from his home, from the conversation of his equals, from the behavio=
ur
of his inferiors; he found it in the books and newspapers he has read, he
breathed it in with his native air. He regards it as manifest Fact in the l=
ife
about him. And he is perfectly right. He lives in a country where stupidity=
is,
so to speak, crowned and throned, and where honour is a means of exchange; =
and
he draws his simple, straight conclusions. The much- castigated gentleman w=
ith
the ferule is largely innocent in this account.
If, too, you rans=
ack
your young Englishman for religion, you will be amazed to find scarcely a t=
race
of School. In spite of a ceremonial adhesion to the religion of his fathers,
you will find nothing but a profound agnosticism. He has not even the faith=
to
disbelieve. It is not so much that he has not developed religion as that the
place has been seared. In his time his boyish heart has had its stirrings, =
he
has responded with the others to "Onward, Christian Soldiers," the
earnest moments of the school pulpit, and all those first vague things. But=
limited
as his reading is, it has not been so limited that he does not know that ve=
ry
grave things have happened in matters of faith, that the doctrinal schemes =
of
the conventional faith are riddled targets, that creed and Bible do not mean
what they appear to mean, but something quite different and indefinable, th=
at
the bishops, socially so much in evidence, are intellectually in hiding.
Here again is
something the school did not cause, the school cannot cure.
And in matters
sexual, in matters political, in matters social, and matters financial you =
will
find that the flabby, narrow-chested, under- trained mind that hides in the
excellent-looking body of the typical young Englishman is encumbered with an
elaborate duplicity. Under the cloak of a fine tradition of good form and f=
air
appearances you will find some intricate disbeliefs, some odd practices. You
will trace his moral code chiefly to his school-fellows, and the intimates =
of
his early manhood, and could you trace it back you would follow an unbroken=
tradition
from the days of the Restoration. So soon as he pierces into the realities =
of
the life about him, he finds enforcement, ample and complete, for the secret
code. The schoolmaster has not touched it; the school pulpit has boomed over
its development in vain. Nor has the schoolmaster done anything for or agai=
nst
the young man's political views, his ideas of social exclusiveness, the
peculiar code of honour that makes it disgraceful to bilk a cabman and
permissible to obtain goods on credit from a tradesman without the means to
pay. All this much of the artificial element in our young English gentleman=
was
made outside the school, and is to be remedied only by extra-scholastic for=
ces.
School is only one
necessary strand in an enormous body of formative influence. At first that =
mass
of formative influence takes the outline of the home, but it broadens out as
the citizen grows until it reaches the limits of his world. And his world, =
just
like his home, resolves itself into three main elements. First, there is the
traditional element, the creation of the past; secondly, there is the
contemporary interplay of economic and material forces; and thirdly, there =
is literature,
using that word for the current thought about the world, which is perpetual=
ly
tending on the one hand to realize itself and to become in that manner a
material force, and on the other to impose fresh interpretations upon things
and so become a factor in tradition. Now the first of these elements is a t=
hing
established. And it is the possibility of intervening through the remaining=
two
that it is now our business to discuss.
We left the child whose development
threads through this discussion ripe to begin a little schooling at the age=
of
five. We have cleared the ground since then of a great number of things that
have got themselves mixed up in an illegitimate way with the idea of school,
and we can now take him on again through his "schooling" phases. =
Let
us begin by asking what we require and then look to existing conditions to =
see
how far we may hope to get our requirements. We will assume the foundation
described in the fourth paper has been well and truly laid, that we have a
number of other similarly prepared children available to form a school, and
that we have also teachers of fair average intelligence, conscience, and
aptitude. We will ask what can be done with such children and teachers, and
then we may ask why it is not universally done.
Even after our
clarifying discussion, in which we have shown that schooling is only a part,
and by no means the major part, of the educational process, and in which we
have distinguished and separated the home element in the boarding-school fr=
om
the schooling proper, there still remains something more than a simple them=
e in
schooling. After all these eliminations we remain with a mixed function and
mixed traditions, and it is necessary now to look a little into the nature =
of this
mixture.
The modern school=
is
not a thing that has evolved from a simple germ, by a mere process of
expansion. It is the coalescence of several things. In different countries =
and
periods you will find schools taking over this function and throwing out th=
at,
and changing not only methods but professions and aims in the most remarkab=
le
manner. What has either been teachable or has seemed teachable in human
development has played a part in some curriculum or other. Beyond the fact =
that
there is class instruction and an initial stage in which the pupil learns to
read and write, there is barely anything in common. But that initial stage =
is
to be noted; it is the thing the Hebrew schoolboy, the Tamil schoolboy, the
Chinese schoolboy, and the American schoolboy have in common. So much, at a=
ny
rate, of the school appears wherever there is a written language, and its
presence marks a stage in the civilizing process. As I have already pointed=
out
in my book "Anticipations," the presence of a reading and writing
class of society and the existence of an organized nation (as distinguished
from a tribe) appear together. When tribes coalesce into nations, schools
appear. This first and most universal function of the school is to initiate=
a
smaller or greater proportion of the population into the ampler world, the =
more
efficient methods, of the reading and writing man. And with the disappearan=
ce
of the slave and the mere labourer from the modern conception of what is ne=
cessary
in the state, there has now come about an extension of this initiation to t=
he
whole of our English-speaking population. And in addition to reading and
writing the vernacular, there is also almost universally in schools instruc=
tion
in counting, and wherever there is a coinage, in the values and simpler
computation of coins.
In addition to the
vernacular teaching, one finds in the schools--at any rate the schools for
males--over a large part of the world, a second element, which is always the
language of what either is or has been a higher and usually a dominant
civilization. Typically, there is a low or imitative vernacular literature =
or
no literature at all, and this second language is the key to all that
literature involves-- general views, general ideas, science, poetic suggest=
ion
and association. Through this language the vernacular citizen escapes from =
his
parochial and national limitations to a wide commonweal of thought. Such was
Greek at one time to the Roman, such was Latin to the Bohemian, the German,=
the
Englishman or the Spaniard of the middle ages, and such it is to-day to the=
Roman
Catholic priest; such is Arabic to the Malay, written Chinese to the Canton=
ese
or the Corean, and English to the Zulu or the Hindoo. In Germany and France=
, to
a lesser degree in Great Britain, and to a still lesser degree in the United
States, we find, however, an anomalous condition of things. In each of these
countries civilization has long since passed into an unprecedented phase, a=
nd
each of these countries has long since developed a great living mass of
literature in which its new problems are, at any rate, approached. There is
scarcely a work left in Latin or Greek that has not been translated into and
assimilated and more or less completely superseded by English, French, and
German works; but the schoolmaster, heedless of these things, still arrests=
the
pupil at the old portal, fumbles with the keys, and partially opens the doo=
r into
a ransacked treasure-chamber. The language of literature and of civilized i=
deas
is, for the English-speaking world to-day, English--not the weak, spoken
dialect of each class and locality, but the rich and splendid language in w=
hich
and with which our literature and philosophy grow. That, however, is by the
way. Our point at present is that the exhaustive teaching of a language so =
that
it may serve as a key to culture is a second function in the school.
We find in a broad
survey of schools in general that there has also been a disposition to deve=
lop
a special training in thought and expression either in the mother tongue (a=
s in
the Roman schools of Latin oratory), or in the culture tongue (as in Roman
schools of Greek oratory), and we find the same element in the mediaeval
trivium. Quintilian's conception of education, the reader will remember, wa=
s oratory.
This aspect of school work was the traditional and logical development of t=
he
culture language-teaching. But as in Europe the culture language has ceased=
to
be really a culture language but merely a reasonless survival, and its teac=
hing
has degenerated more and more into elaborate formalities supposed to have in
some mystical way "high educational value," and for the most part
conducted by men unable either to write or speak the culture language with =
any
freedom or vigour, this crown of cultivated expression has become more and =
more
inaccessible. It is too manifestly stupid--even for our public schoolmaster=
s--to
think of carrying the "classical grind" to that pitch, and, in fa=
ct,
they carry no part of the education to that pitch. There is no deliberate a=
nd
professed training at all in logical thought--except for the use of Euclid's
Elements to that end--nor in expression in any language at all, in the great
mass of modern schools. This is a very notable point about the schools of t=
he
present period.
But, on the other
hand, the schools of the modern period have developed masses of instruction
that were not to be found in the schools of the past. The school has reached
downward and taken over, systematized, and on the whole, I think, improved =
that
preliminary training of the senses and the observation that was once left t=
o the
spontaneous activity of the child among its playmates and at home. The
kindergarten department of a school is a thing added to the old conception =
of
schooling, a conversion of the all too ample school hours to complete and
rectify the work of the home, to make sure of the foundation of sense impre=
ssions
and elementary capabilities upon which the edifice of schooling is to rise.=
In
America it has grown, as a wild flower transferred to the unaccustomed rich=
ness
of garden soil will sometimes do, rankly and in relation to the more essent=
ial
schooling, aggressively, and become a highly vigorous and picturesque weed.=
One
must bear in mind that Froebel's original thought was rather of the mother =
than
of the schoolmistress, a fact the kindergarten invaders of the school find =
it
convenient to forget. I believe we shall be carrying out his intentions as =
well
as the manifest dictates of common sense if we do all in our power by means=
of
simply and clearly written books for nurses and mothers to shift very much =
of
the kindergarten back to home and playroom and out of the school altogether.
Correlated with this development, there has been a very great growth in our
schools of what is called manual training and of the teaching of drawing.
Neither of these subjects entered into the school idea of any former period=
, so
far as my not very extensive knowledge of educational history goes.
Modern, too, is t=
he
development of efficient mathematical teaching; so modern that for too many
schools it is still a thing of tomorrow. The arithmetic (without Arabic
numerals, be it remembered) and the geometry of the mediaeval quadrivium we=
re
astonishingly clumsy and ineffectual instruments in comparison with the
apparatus of modern mathematical method. And while the mathematical subject=
s of
the quadrivium were taught as science and for their own sakes, the new
mathematics is a sort of supplement to language, affording a means of thoug=
ht
about form and quantity and a means of expression, more exact, compact, and
ready than ordinary language. The great body of physical science, a great d=
eal
of the essential fact of financial science, and endless social and political
problems are only accessible and only thinkable to those who have had a sou=
nd
training in mathematical analysis, and the time may not be very remote when=
it
will be understood that for complete initiation as an efficient citizen of =
one
of the new great complex world-wide states that are now developing, it is as
necessary to be able to compute, to think in averages and maxima and minima=
, as
it is now to be able to read and write. This development of mathematical te=
aching
is only another aspect of the necessity that is bringing the teaching of
drawing into schools, the necessity that is so widely, if not always very
intelligently perceived, of clearheadedness about quantity, relative quanti=
ty,
and form, that our highly mechanical, widely extended, and still rapidly
extending environments involve.
Arithmetic and
geometry were taught in the mediaeval school as sciences, in addition the q=
uadrivium
involved the science of astronomy, and now that the necessary fertilizing
inundation of our general education by the classical languages and their
literatures subsides, science of a new sort reappears in our schools. I must
confess that a lot of the science teaching that appears in schools nowadays
impresses me as being a very undesirable encumbrance of the curriculum. The=
schoolman's
science came after the training in language and expression, late in the
educational scheme, and it aimed, it pretended--whatever its final effect
was--to strengthen and enlarge the mind by a noble and spacious sort of
knowledge. But the science of the modern school pretends merely to be a
teaching of useful knowledge; the vistas, the tremendous implications of mo=
dern
science are conscientiously disregarded, and it is in effect too often no m=
ore
than a diversion of school energies to the acquisition of imperfectly analy=
zed misstatements
about entrails, elements, and electricity, with a view--a quite unjustifiab=
le
view--to immediate profitable hygienic and commercial application. Whether
there is any educational value in the school-teaching of science we may dis=
cuss
later. For the present we may note it simply as a revived and developing
element.
On the other hand,
while these things expand in the modern school, there are declining element=
s,
once in older schemes of scholastic work much more evident. In the culture =
of
the mediaeval knight, for example, and of the eighteenth-century young lady,
elegant accomplishments, taught disconnected from the general educational
scheme and for themselves, played a large part. The eighteenth-century young
lady was taught dancing, deportment, several instruments of music, how to p=
retend
to sketch, how to pretend to know Italian, and so on. The dancing still
survives--a comical mitigation of high school austerities--and there is als=
o a
considerable interruption of school work achieved by the music-master. If t=
here
is one thing that I would say with certainty has no business whatever in sc=
hools,
it is piano- teaching. The elementary justification of the school is its or=
ganization
for class-teaching and work in unison, and there is probably no subject of
instruction that requires individual tuition quite so imperatively as
piano-playing; there is no subject so disadvantageously introduced where
children are gathered together. But to every preparatory and girls' school =
in
England--I do not know if the same thing happens in America--the music-mast=
er
comes once or twice a week, and with a fine disregard of the elementary
necessities of teaching, children are called one by one, out of whatever cl=
ass
they happen to be attending, to have their music-lesson. Either the whole o=
f the
rest of the class must mark time at some unnecessary exercise until the mis=
sing
member returns, or one child must miss some stage, some explanation that wi=
ll
involve a weakness, a lameness for the rest of the course of instruction. N=
ot
only is the actual music-lesson a nuisance in this way, but all day the sch=
ool
air is loaded with the oppressive tinkling of racked and rackety pianos.
Nothing, I think, could be more indicative of the real value the English
school- proprietor sets on school-teaching than this easy admission of the =
music-master
to hack and riddle the curriculum into rags. [Footnote 1: Piano playing as =
an
accomplishment is a nuisance and encumbrance to the school course and a
specialization that surely lies within the private Home province. To learn =
to
play the piano properly demands such an amount of time and toil that I do n=
ot
see how we can possibly include it in the educational scheme of the honoura=
ble
citizens of the coming world state. To half learn it, to half learn anythin=
g,
is a training in failure. But it is probable that a different sort of music
teaching altogether--a teaching that would aim, not at instrumentalization,=
but
at intelligent appreciation--might find a place in a complete educational
scheme. The general ignorance that pervades, and in part inspires these pap=
ers,
does, in the matter of music, become special, profound, and distinguished. =
It
seems to me, however, that what the cultivated man or woman requires is the
ability to read a score intelligently rather than to play it--to distinguish
the threads, the values, of a musical composition, to have a quickened ear
rather than a disciplined hand. I owe to my friend, Mr. Graham Wallas, the
suggestion that the piano is altogether too exacting an instrument to use as
the practical vehicle for such instruction, and that something simpler and =
cheaper--after
the fashion of the old spinet--is required. Possibly some day a teacher of
genius will devise and embody in a book a course of class lessons, sustaine=
d by
simple practice and written work, that would attain this end. But, indeed,
after all is said and done, music is the most detached and the purest of ar=
ts,
the most accessory of attainments.] Apart from the piano work, the special
teaching of elegant accomplishments seems just at present on the wane. And =
on
the whole I think what one might call useful or catchpenny accomplishments =
are
also passing their zenith--shorthand lessons, book-keeping lessons, and
such-like impostures upon parental credulity.
There is, however=
, a
thing that was once done in schools as a convenient accomplishment, and whi=
ch has--with
that increase in communication which is the salient material fact of the
nineteenth century--developed in Western Europe to the dimensions of a
political necessity, and that is the teaching of one or more modern foreign=
languages.
The language-teaching of all previous periods has been done with a view to
culture, artistic, as in the case of Elizabethan Italian, or intellectual as
with English Latin. But the language- teaching of to-day is deliberately,
almost conscientiously, not for culture. It would, I am sure, be a very pai=
nful
and shocking thought indeed to an English parent to think that French was
taught in school with a view to reading French books. It is taught as a vul=
gar
necessity for purposes of vulgar communication. The stirring together of th=
e populations
that is going on, the fashion and facilities for travel, the production of =
the
radii from the trading foci, are rapidly making a commonplace knowledge of
French, German, and Italian a necessity to the merchant and tradesman, and =
the
ever more extensive travelling class. So that so far as Europe goes, one may
very well regard this modern modern-language teaching as--with the modern
mathematics--an extension of the trivium, of the apparatus, that is, of tho=
ught
and expression. [Footnote: In the United States there is less sense of urge=
ncy
about modern languages, but sooner or later the American may wake up to the
need of Spanish in his educational schemes.] It is an extension and a very
doubtful improvement. It is a modern necessity, a rather irksome necessity,=
of
little or no essential educational value, an unavoidable duty the school wi=
ll
have to perform. [Footnote: In one way the foreign language may be made
educationally very useful, and that is as an exercise in writing translatio=
ns
into good English.]
There are two
subjects in the modern English school that stand by themselves and in contr=
ast
with anything one finds in the records of ancient and oriental schools, as a
very integral part of what is regarded as our elementary general education.
They are of very doubtful value in training the mind, and most of the matter
taught is totally forgotten in adult life. These are history and geography.
These two subjects constitute, with English grammar and arithmetic, the fou=
r obligatory
subjects for the very lowest grade of the London College of Preceptors'
examinations, for example. The examination papers of this body reveal the
history as an affair of dated events, a record of certain wars and battles,=
and
legislative and social matters quite beyond the scope of a child's experien=
ce
and imagination. Scholastic history ends at 1700 or 1800, always long befor=
e it
throws the faintest light upon modern political or social conditions. The
geography is, for the most part, topography, with a smattering of quantitat=
ive
facts, heights of mountains, for example, populations of countries, and lis=
ts of
obsolete manufactures and obsolete trade conditions. Any one who will take =
the
trouble to run through the text-books of these subjects gathered together i=
n the
library of the London Teachers' Guild, will find that the history is genera=
lly
taught without maps, pictures, descriptive passages, or anything to raise it
above the level of an arid misuse of memory; and the highest levels to which
ordinary school geography has attained are to be found in the little books =
of
the late Professor Meiklejohn. These two subjects are essentially
"information" subjects. They differ in prestige rather than in
educational quality from school chemistry and natural history, and their
development marks the beginning of that great accumulation of mere knowledge
which is so distinctive of this present civilization.
There are, no dou=
bt,
many minor subjects, but this revision will at least serve to indicate the
scope and chief varieties of school work. Out of some such miscellany it is
that in most cases the student passes to specialization, to a different and
narrower process which aims at a specific end, to the course of the College=
. In
some cases this specialized course may be correlated with a real and present
practice, as in the case of the musical, medical, and legal faculties of ou=
r universities;
it may be correlated with obsolete needs and practices and regardless of mo=
dern
requirements, as in the case of the student of divinity who takes his orders
and comes into a world full of the ironical silences that follow great
controversies, nakedly ignorant of geology, biology, psychology, and modern
biblical criticism; or it may have no definite relation to special needs, a=
nd
it may profess to be an upward prolongation of schooling towards a sort of
general wisdom and culture, as in the case of the British "Arts"
degrees. The ordinary Oxford, Cambridge, or London B.A. has a useless
smattering of Greek, he cannot read Latin with any comfort, much less write=
or
speak that tongue; he knows a few unedifying facts round and about the
classical literature, he cannot speak or read French with any comfort; he h=
as
an imperfect knowledge of the English language, insufficient to write it cl=
early,
and none of German, he has a queer, old-fashioned, and quite useless knowle=
dge
of certain rudimentary sections of mathematics, and an odd little bite out =
of
history. He knows practically nothing of the world of thought embodied in
English literature, and absolutely nothing of contemporary thought; he is
totally ignorant of modern political or social science, and if he knows
anything at all about evolutionary science and heredity it is probably matt=
er
picked up in a casual way from the magazines. Art is a sealed book to him.
Still, the inapplicability of his higher education to any professional or p=
ractical
need in the world is sufficiently obvious, it seems, to justify the claim t=
hat
it has put him on a footing of thought and culture above the level of a sho=
pman.
It is either that or nothing. And without deciding between these alternativ=
es,
we may note here for our present purpose, that the conception of a general
upward prolongation of schooling beyond adolescence, as distinguished from a
specific upward prolongation into professional training, is necessary to th=
e complete
presentation of the school and college scheme in the modern state.
There has always =
been
a tendency to utilize the gathering together of children in schools for
purposes irrelevant to schooling proper, but of some real or fancied benefi=
t.
Wherever there is a priestly religion, the lower type of religious fanatic =
will
always look to the schools as a means of doctrinal dissemination; will alwa=
ys
be seeking to replace efficiency by orthodoxy upon staff and management; an=
d,
with an unconquerable, uncompromising persistency, will seek perpetually ei=
ther
to misconduct or undermine; and the struggle to get him out and keep him ou=
t of
the school, and to hold the school against him, will be one of the most
necessary and thankless of New Republican duties. I have, however, already
adduced reasons that I think should appeal to every religious mind, for the
exclusion of religious teaching from school work. The school gathering also
affords opportunity for training in simple unifying political conceptions; =
the
salutation of the flag, for example, or of the idealized effigies of King a=
nd
Queen. The quality of these conceptions we shall discuss later. The school =
also
gives scope for physical training and athletic exercises that are, under th=
e crowded
conditions of a modern town, almost impossible except by its intervention. =
And
it would be the cheapest and easiest way of raising the military efficiency=
of
a country, and an excellent thing for the moral tone and public order of a
people, to impose upon the school gathering half an hour a day of vigorous
military drill. The school, too, might very easily be linked more closely t=
han
it is at present with the public library, and made a means of book
distribution; and its corridors may easily be utilized as a loan picture
gallery, in which good reproductions of fine pictures might bring the silent
influence of the artist mind to bear. But all these things are secondary ap=
plications
of the school gathering; at their best they are not conducted by the
school-teacher at all, and I remark upon them here merely to avoid any
confusion their omission might occasion.
Now if we dip into
this miscellany of things that figure and have figured in schools, if we tu=
rn
them over and look at them, and seek to generalize about them, we shall beg=
in
to see that the most persistently present, and the living reality of it all=
, is
this: to expand, to add to and organize and supplement that apparatus of
understanding and expression the savage possesses in colloquial speech. The
pressing business of the school is to widen the range of intercourse. [Foot=
note:
This way of putting it may jar a little upon the more or less explicit
preconceptions of many readers, who are in reality in harmony with the tone=
of
thought of this paper. They will have decided that the school work is to
"train the mind," to "teach the pupil to think," or upon
some similar phrase. But I venture to think that most of these phrases are =
at
once too wide and too narrow. They are too wide because they ignore the
spontaneous activity of the child and the extra-scholastic forces of
mind-training, and they are too narrow because they ignore the fact that we=
do
not progress far with our thoughts unless we throw them out into objective
existence by means of words, diagrams, models, trial essays. Even if we do =
not
talk to others we must, silently or vocally or visibly, talk to ourselves at
least to get on. To acquire the means of intercourse is to learn to think, =
so far
as learning goes in the matter.] It is only secondarily--so far as schooling
goes--or, at any rate, subsequently, that the idea of shaping, or, at least,
helping to shape, the expanded natural man into a citizen, comes in. It is =
only
as a subordinate necessity that the school is a vehicle for the inculcation=
of
facts. The facts come into the school not for their own sake, but in relati=
on
to intercourse. It is only upon a common foundation of general knowledge th=
at
the initiated citizens of an educated community will be able to communicate=
freely
together. With the net of this phrase, "widening the range of intercou=
rse,"
I think it is possible to gather together all that is essential in the
deliberate purpose of schooling. Nothing that remains outside is of suffici=
ent
magnitude to be of any importance in the small-scale sketch of human
development we are now making:--
If we take this a=
nd
hold to it as a guide, and explore a scheme of school work, in the directio=
n it
takes us, we shall find it shaping itself (for an English-speaking citizen)
something after this fashion: --
A. Direct means of
understanding and expression. 1. Re=
ading.
2.
Writing. 3.
Pronouncing English correctly.
Which stud=
ies
will expand into--
4. A thoro=
ugh
study of English as a culture language, its origin, =
development,
and vocabulary, and 5. A =
sound
training in English prose composition and =
versification.
And
in addition--
6. Just as=
much
of mathematics as one can get in.
7. Drawing=
and
painting, not as "art," but to train and develop =
the
appreciation of form and colour, and as a collateral =
means
of expression.
8. Music [perhaps] to =
the
same end.
B. To speak the
ordinary speech, read with fair intelligence, and write in a passably
intelligible manner the foreign language or languages, the socia=
l,
political, and intellectual necessities of the time require.
And C. A division
arising out of A and expanding in the later stages
of the school course to continue and replace A: the acquisition
of the knowledge (and of the art of acquiring further
knowledge from books and facts) necessary to participate in
contemporary thought and life.
Now this project =
is
at once more modest in form and more ambitious in substance than almost any
school scheme or prospectus the reader is likely to encounter. Let us (on t=
he
assumption of our opening paragraph) inquire what is needed to carry it into
execution. So far as 1 and 2 in this table go, we have to recognize that si=
nce
the development of elementary schools in England introduced a spirit of end=
eavour
into teaching, there has been a steady progress in the art of education.
Reading and writing are taught somehow or other to most people nowadays, th=
ey
are frequently taught quickly and well, especially well, I think, in view of
the raw material, in many urban Board Schools in England, and there is noth=
ing
to do here but to inquire if anything can be done to make this teaching, wh=
ich
is so exceptional in attaining its goal, still quicker and easier, and in b=
ringing
the average up to the level of the present best. We have already suggested =
as
the work of an imaginary English Language Society, how much might be done in
providing everywhere, cheaply and unavoidably, the best possible reading-bo=
oks,
and it is manifest that the standard of copy-books for writing might also be
pressed upward by similar methods. In addition, we have to consider--what i=
s to
me a most uncongenial subject--the possible rationalization of English
spelling. I will frankly confess I know English as much by sight as by soun=
d,
and that any extensive or striking alteration, indeed that almost any alter=
ation,
in the printed appearance of English, worries me extremely. Even such little
things as Mr. Bernard Shaw's weakness for printing "I've" as
"Ive," and the American "favor," "thro," and
"catalog" catch at my attention as it travels along the lane of
meaning, like trailing briars. But I have to admit this habit of the old
spelling, which I am sure most people over four-and-twenty share with me, w=
ill
trouble neither me nor any one else who reads books now, in the year 1990. =
I have
to admit that the thing is an accident of my circumstances. I have learnt to
read and write in a certain way, and I am concerned with the thing said and=
not
with the vehicle, and so it is that it distresses me when the medium behave=
s in
an unusual way and distracts my attention from the thing it conveys. But if=
it
is true--and I think it must be true--that the extremely arbitrary spelling=
of
English--and more especially of the more familiar English words--greatly
increases the trouble of learning to read and write, I do not think the men=
tal comfort
of one or two generations of grown-up people must be allowed to stand in the
way of a permanent economy in the educational process. I believe even that =
such
a reader as I might come to be very easy in the new way. But whatever is do=
ne
must be done widely, simultaneously, all over the English-speaking communit=
y,
and after the fullest consideration. The local "spelling reform" =
of a
few half-educated faddists here and there, helps not at all, is a mere
nuisance. This is a thing to be worked out in a scientific way by the stude=
nts
of phonetics; they must have a complete alphabet settled for good, a dictio=
nary
ready, reading-books well tested, the whole system polished and near perfec=
tion
before the thing passes out of the specialists' hands. The really practical
spelling-reformer will devote his guineas to endowing chairs of phonetics a=
nd
supporting publication in phonetic science, and his time to study and
open-minded discussion. Such organisations as the Association Phonét=
ique
Internationale, may be instanced. Systems concocted in a hurry, in a
half-commercial or wholly commercial and in a wholly presumptuous manner,
pushed like religious panaceas and advertised like soap--Pitman's System,
Barnum's System, Quackbosh the Gifted Postman's System, and all that sort o=
f thing--do
nothing but vulgarize, discredit, and retard this work.
Before a system of
phonetic spelling can be established, it is advisable that a standard
pronunciation of English should exist. With that question also these papers
have already dealt. But for the sake of emphasis I would repeat here the
astonishment that has grown upon me as I have given my mind to these things,
that, save for local exceptions, there should be no pressure even upon those
who desire to become teachers in our schools or preachers in our pulpits, to
attain a qualifying minimum of correct pronunciation.
Now directly we p=
ass
beyond these first three elementary matters, reading, writing, and
pronunciation, and come to the fourth and fifth items of our scheme, to the
complete mastery of English that is, we come upon a difficulty that is all =
too
completely disregarded in educational discussions--always by those who have=
had
no real scholastic experience, and often by those who ought to know better.=
It is
extremely easy for a political speaker or a city magnate or a military refo=
rmer
or an irresponsible writer, to proclaim that the schoolmaster must mend his
ways forthwith, give up this pointless Latin of his, and teach his pupils t=
he
English language "thoroughly"-- with much emphasis on the
"thoroughly," but it is quite another thing for the schoolmaster =
to
obey our magnificent directions. For the plain, simple, insurmountable fact=
is
this, that no one knows how to teach English as in our vague way we critics
imagine it taught; that no working schoolmaster alive can possibly give the
thing the concentrated attention, the experimental years necessary for its
development, that it is worth nobody's while, and that (except in a vein of
exalted self- sacrifice) it will probably not be worth any one's while to d=
o so
for many years unless some New Republicans conspire to make it so. The teac=
hing
of English requires its Sturm, its energetic modern renascence schoolmaster=
s,
its set of school books, its branches and grades, before it can become a
discipline, even to compare with the only subject taught with any shadow of
orderly progressive thoroughness in secondary schools, namely, Latin. At
present our method in English is a foolish caricature of the Latin method; =
we
spend a certain amount of time teaching children classificatory bosh about =
the
eight sorts of Nominative Case, a certain amount of time teaching them the =
"derivation"
of words they do not understand, glance shyly at Anglo- Saxon and at Grimm's
Law, indulge in a specific reminiscence of the Latin method called parsing,
supplement with a more modern development called the analysis of sentences,
give a course of exercises in paraphrasing (for the most part the conversio=
n of
good English into bad), and wind up with lessons in "Composition"
that must be seen to be believed. Essays are produced, and the teacher noses
blindly through the product for false concords, prepositions at the end of
sentences, and, if a person of peculiarly fine literary quality, for the wo=
rd "reliable"
and the split infinitive. These various exercises are so little parts of an
articulate whole that they may be taken in almost any order and any relative
quantity. And in the result, if some pupil should, by a happy knack of
apprehension, win through this confusion to a sense of literary quality, to=
the
enterprise of even trying to write, the thing is so rare and wonderful that
almost inevitably he or she, in a fine outburst of discovered genius, takes=
to
the literary life. For the rest, they will understand nothing but the flatt=
est
prose; they will be deaf to everything but the crudest meanings; they will =
be
the easy victims of the boom, and terribly shy of a pen. They will revere t=
he
dead Great and respect the new Academic, read the living quack, miss and
neglect the living promise, and become just a fresh volume of that atmosphe=
re
of azote, in which our literature stifles.
Now the schoolmas=
ter
is not to blame for this any more than he is to blame for sticking to Latin=
. It
is no more possible for schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, whose lives are
encumbered with a voluminous mass of low-grade mental toil and worries and
reasonable and unreasonable responsibilities, to find the energy and mental
freedom necessary to make any vital changes in the methods that text-books,
traditions, and examinations force upon them, than it is for a general medi=
cal practitioner
to invent and make out of the native ore the steel implements some operatio=
n of
frequent occurrence in his practice may demand. If they are made, and
accessible by purchase and not too expensive, he will get them; if they are=
not
he will have to fumble along with the next best thing; and if nothing that =
is
any good can be got, then there is nothing for it, though he be the noblest
character, the finest intelligence that ever lived behind a brass plate, bu=
t either
to shirk that operation altogether or to run the chance of making a disastr=
ous
mess of it.
Scolding the
schoolmaster, gibing at the schoolmaster, guying, afflicting and exasperati=
ng
the schoolmaster in every conceivable way, is an amusement so entirely
congenial to my temperament that I do not for one moment propose to abandon=
it.
It is a devil I have, and I admit it. He insults schoolmasters and bishops =
in
particular, and I do not cast him out, but at the same time I would most
earnestly insist that all that sort of thing does nothing whatever to advan=
ce
education, that it is a mere outbreak of personal grace-notes so far as this
discussion goes. The real practical needs in the matter are a properly
worked-out method, a proper set of school books, and then a progressive
alteration of examinations in English, to render that method and that set o=
f school
books imperative. These are needs the schoolmaster and schoolmistress can do
amazingly little to satisfy. Of course, when these things are ready and the
pressure to enforce them begins to tell on the schools, schoolmasters and
schoolmistresses, having that almost instinctive dread of any sort of change
that all hard-worked and rather worried people acquire, will obstruct and h=
ave
to be reckoned with, but that is a detail in the struggle and not a questio=
n of
general objective. And to satisfy those real practical needs, what is wante=
d is
in the first place an organizer, a reasonable sum of money, say ten thousand
pounds for ten years, and access for experimental purposes to a variety of
schools. This organizer would set himself to secure the whole time and ener=
gy
and interest of a dozen or so of good men; they would include several expert
teachers, a clear-headed pedagogic expert or so, a keen psychologist perhaps
with a penetrating mind--for example, one might try and kidnap Professor
William James in his next Sabbatical year--one or two industrious young
students, a literary critic perhaps, a philologist, a grammarian, and set t=
hem
all, according to their several gifts and faculties, towards this end. At t=
he
end of the first year this organizer would print and publish for the derisi=
on
of the world in general and the bitter attacks of the men he had omitted fr=
om
the enterprise in particular, for review in the newspapers and for trial in
enterprising schools, a "course" in the English language and
composition. His team of collaborators, revised perhaps, probably weeded by=
a
quarrel or so and supplemented by the ablest of the hostile critics, would
then, working with all their time and energy, revise the course for the sec=
ond
year. And you would repeat the process for ten years. In the end at the cos=
t of
£100,000--really a quite trivial sum for the object in view--there wo=
uld
exist the scheme, the method, the primers and text-books, the School
Dictionary, the examination syllabus, and all that is now needed for the pr=
oper
teaching of English. You would have, moreover, in the copyrights of the cou=
rse
an asset that might go far to recoup those who financed the enterprise.
It is precisely t=
his
difficulty about text-books and a general scheme that is the real obstacle =
to
any material improvement in our mathematical teaching. Professor Perry, in =
his
opening address to the Engineering Section of the British Association at
Belfast, expressed an opinion that the average boy of fifteen might be got =
to
the infinitesimal calculus. As a matter of fact the average English boy of =
fifteen
has only just looked at elementary algebra. But every one who knows anythin=
g of
educational science knows, that by the simple expedient of throwing overboa=
rd
all that non-educational, mind- sickening and complex rubbish about money a=
nd
weights and measures, practice, interest, "rule of three," and all
the rest of the solemn clap-trap invented by the masters of the old Academy=
for
Young Gentlemen to fool the foolish predecessors of those who clamour for c=
ommercial
education to-day, and by setting aside the pretence in teaching geometry, t=
hat
algebraic formulae and the decimal notation are not yet invented, little bo=
ys
of nine may be got to apply quadratic equations to problems, plot endless
problems upon squared paper, and master and apply the geometry covered by t=
he
earlier books of Euclid with the utmost ease. But to do this with a class of
boys at present demands so much special thought, so much private planning, =
so
much sheer toil on the part of the teacher, that it becomes practically imp=
ossible.
The teacher must arrange the whole course himself, invent his examples, or =
hunt
them laboriously through a dozen books; he must be not only teacher, but
text-book. I know of no School Arithmetic which does not groan under a weig=
ht
of sham practical work, and that does not, with an absurd priggishness, exc=
lude
the use of algebraic symbols. Except for one little volume, I know of no sa=
ne
book which deals with arithmetic and elementary algebra under one cover or
gives any helpful exercises or examples in squared paper calculations. Such=
books,
I am told, exist in the seclusion of publishers' stock-rooms, but if I, enj=
oying
as I do much more leisure and opportunity of inquiry than the average
mathematical master, cannot get at them, how can we expect him to do so? And
the thing to do now is obviously to discover or create these books, and for=
ce
them kindly but firmly into the teachers' hands.
The problem is mu=
ch
simpler in the case of mathematical teaching than in the case of English,
because the educational theory and method have been more thoroughly discuss=
ed.
There is no need for the ten years of experiment and trial I have suggested=
for
the organization of English teaching. The mathematical reformer may begin n=
ow
at a point the English language reformer will not reach for some years. Sup=
pose
now a suitably authenticated committee were to work out--on the basis of Pr=
ofessor
Perry's syllabus perhaps--a syllabus of school mathematics, and then make a
thorough review of all the mathematical textbooks on sale throughout the
English-speaking world, admitting some perhaps as of real permanent value f=
or
teaching of the new type, provisionally recognizing others as endurable, but
with clear recommendations for their revision and improvement, and condemni=
ng
the others specifically by name. Let them make it clear that this syllabus =
and
report will be respected by all public examining bodies; let them spend a h=
undred
pounds or so in the intelligent distribution of their report, and the
scholastic profession will not be long before it is equipped with the
recommended books. Meanwhile, the English and American scholastic publishers
will become extremely active, the warned books will be revised, and new boo=
ks
will be written in competition for the enormous prize of the committee's fi=
nal
approval, an activity that a second review, after an interval of five or six
years, will recognize and reward.
Such measures as
these will be worth reams of essays in educational papers and Parents' Revi=
ews,
worth thousands of inspiring and suggestive lectures at pedagogic conferenc=
es.
If, indeed, such essays and such lectures do any good at all. The more one
looks into scholastic affairs the more one is struck not only by the futili=
ty
but the positive mischievousness of much of what passes for educational lib=
eralism.
The schoolmaster is criticised vehemently for teaching the one or two poor
useless subjects he can in a sort of way teach, and practically nothing is =
done
to help or equip him to teach anything else. By reason of this uproar, the
world is full now of anxious muddled parents, their poor brains buzzing with
echoes of Froebel, Tolstoy, Herbert Spencer, Ruskin, Herbart, Colonel Parke=
r,
Mr. Harris, Matthew Arnold, and the Morning Post, trying to find something =
better.
They know nothing of what is right, they only know very, very clearly that =
the
ordinary school is extremely wrong. They are quite clear they don't want
"cram" (though they haven't the remotest idea what cram is), and =
they
have a pretty general persuasion that failure at examination is a good test=
of
a sound education. And in response to their bleating demand there grows a f=
ine
crop of Quack Schools; schools organized on lines of fantastic extravagance=
, in
which bee-keeping takes the place of Latin, and gardening supersedes
mathematics, in which boys play tennis naked to be cured of False Shame, and
the numerical exercises called bookkeeping and commercial correspondence are
taught to the sons of parents (who can pay a hundred guineas a year), as
Commercial Science. The subjects of study in these schools come and go like=
the
ravings of a disordered mind; "Greek History" (in an hour or so a=
week
for a term) is followed by "Italian Literature," and this gives p=
lace
to the production of a Shakesperian play that ultimately overpowers and
disorganizes the whole curriculum. Ethical lessons and the school pulpit
flourish, of course. A triennial walk to a chalk-pit is Field Geology, and
vague half-holiday wanderings are Botany Rambles. "Art" of the co=
pper
punching variety replaces any decent attempt to draw, and an extreme
expressiveness in music compensates for an almost deliberate slovenliness o=
f technique.
Even the ladies' seminaries of the Georgian days could scarcely have produc=
ed a
parallel to the miscellaneous incapacity of the victim of these
"modern" schools, and it becomes daily more necessary for those w=
ho
have the interests of education at heart to disavow with the most unmistaka=
ble
emphasis these catch-parent impostures.
With the other
subjects under the headings of A and B, it is not necessary to deal at any
length here. Drawing begins at home, and a child should have begun to sketch
freely before the formal schooling commences. It is the business of the sch=
ool
to teach drawing and not to teach "art," which, indeed, is always=
an
individual and spontaneous thing, and it need only concern itself directly =
with
those aspects of drawing that require direction. Of course, an hour set asi=
de from
the school time in which boys or girls may do whatever they please with pap=
er,
ink, pens, pencils, compasses, and water-colour would be a most excellent a=
nd
profitable thing, but that scarcely counts (except in the Quack Schools) as
teaching. As a matter of fact, teaching absolutely spoils all that sort of
thing. A course in model drawing and in perspective, however, is really a
training in seeing things, it demands rigorous instruction and it must be t=
he backbone
of school drawing, and, in addition, studies may be made from flowers that
would not be made without direction: topography (and much else) may be lear=
nt by
copying good explicit maps; chronology (to supplement the child's private
reading of history) by the construction of time charts; and much history al=
so
by drawing and colouring historical maps. With geometrical drawing one pass=
es
insensibly into mathematics. And so much has been done not only to
revolutionize the teaching of modern languages, but also to popularize the
results, that I may content myself with a mere mention of the names of
Rippmann, S. Alge, Hölzel, and Gouin as typical of the new ways.
There remains the
question of C, the amount of Information that is to take a place in schooli=
ng.
Now there is one "subject" that it would be convenient to include,
were it only for the sake of the mass of exercise and illustration it suppl=
ies
to the mathematical course, and that is the science of Physics. In addition,
the science of physics, since it culminates in a clear understanding and us=
e of
the terminology of the aspects of energy and a clear sense of adequate caus=
ation,
is fundamentally necessary to modern thought. Practical work is, no doubt,
required for the proper understanding of physical science, and so far it mu=
st
enter into schooling, but it may be pointed out here that in many cases the
educational faddist is overdoing the manual side of science study to a
ridiculous extent. Things have altered very much at the Royal College of
Science, no doubt, since my student days, but fifteen years ago the courses=
in
elementary physics and in elementary geology were quite childishly silly in
this respect. Both these courses seemed to have been inspired by that emine=
nt educationist,
Mr. Squeers, and the sequel to spelling "window" was always to
"go and clean one." The science in each course in those days could
have been acquired just as well in a fortnight as in half a year. One muddl=
ed
away three or four days etching a millimetre scale with hydrofluoric acid on
glass--to no earthly end that I could discover-- and a week or so in making=
a
needless barometer. In the course in geology, days and days were spent in
drawing ideal crystalline forms and colouring them in water-colours, appare=
ntly
in order to get a totally false idea of a crystal, and weeks in the patient
copying of microscopic rock sections in water-colours. Effectual measures o=
f police
were taken to prevent the flight of the intelligent student from these tire=
some
duties. The mischief done in this way is very great. It deadens the average
students and exasperates and maddens the eager ones. I am inclined to think
that a very considerable proportion of what passes as "practical"
science work, for which costly laboratories are built and expensive benches
fitted, consists of very similar solemnities, and it cannot be too strongly
urged that "practical" work that does not illuminate is mere wast=
e of
the student's time.
This physics cour=
se
would cover an experimental quantitative treatment of the electric current,=
it
would glance in an explanatory way at many of the phenomena of physical
geography, and it would be correlated with a study of the general principle=
s of
chemistry. A detailed knowledge of chemical compounds is not a part of gene=
ral
education, it keeps better in reference books than in the non-specialized h=
ead,
and it is only the broad conceptions of analysis and combination, and of the
relation of energy to chemical changes, that have to be attained. Beyond th=
is,
and the application of map drawing to give accurate ideas and to awaken int=
erest
in geography and history, it is open to discussion whether any Fact subject
need be taught as schooling at all. Ensure the full development of a man's
mental capacity, and he will get his Fact as he needs it. And if his mind is
undeveloped he can make no use of any fact he has. The subject called
"Human Physiology" may be at once dismissed as absurdly unsuitable
for school use. One is always meeting worthy people who "don't see why
children should not know something about their own bodies," and who are
not apparently aware that the medical profession after some generations of
fairly systematic inquiry knows remarkably little. Save for some general
anatomy, it is impossible to teach school-children anything true about the
human body, because the explanation of almost any physiological process dem=
ands
a knowledge of physical and chemical laws much sounder and subtler than the
average child can possibly attain. And as for botany, geology, history, and=
geography
(beyond the range already specified), these are far better relegated to the
school library and the initiative of each child. Every child has its specif=
ic
range of interest, and its specific way of regarding things. In geology, for
example, one boy may be fascinated by the fossil hunting, another will find=
his
interest in the effects of structure in scenery, and a third, with more
imagination, will give his whole mind to the reconstruction of the past, and
will pore over maps of Pleistocene Europe and pictures of Silurian landscape
with the keenest appreciation. Each will be bored, or at least not greatly =
interested,
by what attracts the others. Let the children have an easily accessible
library--that is the crying need of nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a
thousand schools to-day, a need every school- seeking parent may do somethi=
ng
to remedy--and in that library let there be one or two good densely illustr=
ated
histories, illustrated travels, bound volumes of such a publication as Newn=
es'
Wide World Magazine (I name these publications haphazard--there are probabl=
y others
as good or better), Hutchinson and Co.'s Living Animals of the World, the R=
ev.
H. N. Hutchinson's Extinct Monsters, the Badminton volumes on big game
shooting, mountaineering, and yachting, Kerner's "Botany,"
collections of "The Hundred Best Pictures" sort, collections of v=
iews
of towns and of scenery in different parts of the world, and the like. Then=
let
the schoolmaster set aside five hours a week as the minimum for reading, and
let the pupils read during that time just whatever they like, provided only
that they keep silence and read. If the schoolmaster or schoolmistress come=
s in
at all here, it should be to stimulate systematic reading occasionally by
setting a group of five or six pupils to "get up" some particular
subject--a report on "animals that might still be domesticated," =
for
example--and by showing them conversationally how to read with a slip of pa=
per
at hand, gathering facts. This sort of thing it is impossible to reduce to =
method
and system, and, consequently, it is the proper field for the teacher's
initiative. It is largely in order to leave time and energy for this that I=
am
anxious to reduce the more rigorous elements in schooling to standard and
text-book.
Now all this
schooling need not take more than twenty hours a week for its backbone or
hard-work portion, its English, mathematics, science, and exact drawing, and
twelve hours a week for its easier, more individual employments of sketchin=
g,
painting, and reading, and this leaves a large margin of time for military
drill and for physical exercises. If we are to get the best result from the
child's individuality, we must leave a large portion of that margin at the =
child's
own disposal, it must be free to go for walks, to "muck about," as
schoolboys say, to play games, and (within limits) to consort with companio=
ns
of its own choosing--to follow its interests in short. It is in this direct=
ion
that British middle-class education fails most signally at the present time=
. The
English schoolboy and schoolgirl are positively hunted through their days. =
They
do not play--using the word to indicate a spontaneous employment into which
imagination enters--at all. They have games, but they are so regulated that=
the
imagination is eliminated; they have exercises of various stereotyped sorts.
They are taken to and fro to these things in the care of persons one would =
call
ushers unhesitatingly were it not that they also pretended to teach. The re=
st
of their waking time is preparation or supervised reading or walking under
supervision. Their friendships are watched. They are never, never left alon=
e.
The avowed ideal of many boarding schoolmasters is to "send them to bed
tired out." Largely this is due to a natural dread of accidents and sc=
rapes,
that will make trouble for the school, but there is also another cause. If I
may speak frankly and entirely as an unauthoritative observer, I would say =
it
is a regrettable thing that so large a proportion of British secondary scho=
olmasters
and mistresses are unmarried. The normal condition of a healthy adult is
marriage, and for all those who are not defective upon this side (and that
means an incapacity to understand many things) celibacy is a state of unsta=
ble
equilibrium and too often a quite unwholesome condition. Wherever there are
celibate teachers I am inclined to suspect a fussiness, an unreasonable
watchfulness, a disposition to pry, an exaggeration of what are called
"Dangers," a painful idealization of "Purity." It is a =
part
of the normal development of the human being to observe with some particula=
rity
certain phenomena, to entertain certain curiosities, to talk of them to tru=
sted
equals--never, be it noted, except by perversion to parents or teachers--and
there is not the slightest harm in these quite natural things, unless they =
are
forced back into an abashed solitude or associated by suggestion with
conceptions of shame and disgust. That is what happens in too many of our
girls' schools and preparatory schools to-day, and it is to that end mainly
that youthful intimacies are discouraged, youthful freedom is restricted, a=
nd
imagination and individuality warped and crippled. It is astonishing how mu=
ch
of their adolescence grown-up people will contrive to forget.
So much for schoo=
ling
and what may be done to better it in this New Republican scheme of things. =
The
upward continuation of it into a general College course is an integral part=
of
a larger question that we shall discuss at a later stage, the larger questi=
on
of the general progressive thought of the community as a whole.
VII - POLITICAL AND SOCIAL
INFLUENCES
There can be few people alive who h=
ave
not remarked on occasion that men are the creatures of circumstances. But i=
t is
one thing to state a belief of this sort in some incidental application, and
quite another to realize it completely. Towards such a completer realizatio=
n we
have been working in these papers, in disentangling the share of inheritanc=
e and
of deliberate schooling and training, in the production of the civilized ma=
n.
The rest we have to ascribe to his world in general, of which his home is
simply the first and most intimate aspect. In every developing citizen we h=
ave
asserted there is a great mass of fluid and indeterminate possibility, and =
this
sets and is shaped by the world about him as wax is shaped by a mould. It is
rarely, of course, an absolutely exact and submissive cast that ensues; few=
men
and women are without some capacity for question and criticism, but it is o=
nly
very rare and obdurate material--only, as one says, a very original persona=
lity--that
does not finally take its general form and direction in this way. And it is
proposed in this paper to keep this statement persistently in focus, instea=
d of
dismissing it as a platitude and thinking no more about it at all after the
usual fashion, while we examine certain broad social and political facts and
conventions which constitute the general framework of the world in which the
developing citizen is placed. I would submit that at the present time with =
regard
to such things as church and kingdom, constitution and nationality, we are
altogether too much enslaved by the idea of "policy," and altoget=
her
too blind to the remoter, deeper, and more lasting consequences of our publ=
ic
acts and institutions in moulding the next generation. It will not, I think=
, be
amiss to pass beyond policy for a space, and to insist--even with
heaviness--that however convenient an institution may be, however much it m=
ay,
in the twaddle of the time, be a "natural growth," and however mu=
ch
the "product of a long evolution," yet, if it does not mould men =
into
fine and vigorous forms, it has to be destroyed. We "save the state&qu=
ot;
for the sake of our children, that, at least, is the New Republican view of=
the
matter, and if in our intentness to save the state we injure or sacrifice o=
ur
children, we destroy our ultimate for our proximate aim.
Already it has be=
en
pointed out, with certain concrete instances, how the thing that is, asserts
itself over the thing that is to be; already a general indication has been =
made
of the trend of the argument we are now about to develop and define. That
argument, briefly, is this, that to attain the ends of the New Republic, th=
at
is to say the best results from our birth possibilities, we must continually
make political forms, social, political and religious formulæ, and all
the rules and regulations of life the clearest, simplest, and sincerest
expression possible of what we believe about life and hope about life; that=
whatever
momentary advantage a generation may gain by accepting what is known to be a
sham and a convention, by keeping in use the detected imposture and the fla=
wed
apparatus, is probably much more than made up for by the reaction of this
acquiescence upon the future. As the typical instance of a convenient
convention that I am inclined to think is now reacting very badly upon our
future, the Crown of the British Empire, considered as the symbolical
figurehead of a system of hereditary privilege and rule, serves extremely w=
ell.
One may deal with this typical instance with no special application to the
easy, kindly, amiable personality this crown adorns at the present time. It=
is
a question that may be dealt with in general terms. What, we would ask, are=
the
natural, inseparable concomitants of a system of hereditary rulers in a sta=
te,
looking at the thing entirely with an eye to the making of a greater mankin=
d in
the world? How does it compare with the American conception of democratic
equality, and how do both stand with regard to the essential truth and purp=
ose
in things? . . .
To state these
questions is like opening the door of a room that has long been locked and
deserted. One has a lonely feeling. There are quite remarkably no other voi=
ces
here, and the rusty hinges echo down empty passages that were quite
threateningly full of men seventy or eighty years ago. But I am only one ve=
ry
insignificant member of a class of inquirers in England who started upon the
question "why are we becoming inefficient?" a year or two ago, and
from that starting point it is I came to this. . . . I do not believe there=
fore
that upon this dusty threshold I shall stand long alone. We take most calmly
the most miraculous of things, and it is only quite recently that I have co=
me
to see as amazing this fact, that while the greater mass of our English- sp=
eaking
people is living under the profession of democratic Republicanism, there is=
no
party, no sect, no periodical, no teacher either in Great Britain or Americ=
a or
the Colonies, to hint at a proposal to abolish the aristocratic and monarch=
ical
elements in the British system. There is no revolutionary spirit over here,=
and
very little missionary spirit over there. The great mass of the present gen=
eration
on both sides of the Atlantic takes hardly any interest in this issue at al=
l.
It is as if the question was an impossible one, outside the range of thinka=
ble
things. Or, as if the last word in this controversy was said before our
grandfathers died.
But is that really
so? It is permissible to suggest that for a time the last word had been sai=
d,
and still to reopen the discussion now. All these papers, the very concepti=
on
of New Republicanism, rests on the assumption--presumptuous and offensive
though it must needs seem to many--that new matter for thought altogether, =
new
apparatus and methods of inquiry, and new ends, have come into view since t=
he
early seventies, when the last Republican voices in England died away. We a=
re enormously
more aware of the Future. That, we have already defined as the essential
difference of our new outlook. Our fathers thought of the Kingdom as it was=
to
them, they contrasted with that the immediate alternative, and within these
limits they were, no doubt, right in rejecting the latter. So, to them at a=
ny
rate, the thing seemed judged. But nowadays when we have said the Kingdom i=
s so
and so, and when we have decided that we do not wish to convert it into a
Republic upon the American or any other existing pattern before Christmas,
1904, we consider we have only begun to look at the thing. We have then to =
ask what
is the future of the Kingdom; is it to be a permanent thing, or is it to
develop into and give place to some other condition? We have to ask precise=
ly
the same question about the American democracy and the American constitutio=
n.
Is that latter arrangement going to last for ever? We cannot help being
contributory to these developments, and if we have any pretensions to wisdo=
m at
all, we must have some theory of what we intend with regard to these things;
political action can surely be nothing but folly, unless it has a clear pur=
pose
in the future. If these things are not sempiternal, then are we merely to p=
atch
the fabric as it gives way, or are we going to set about rebuilding-- piece=
meal,
of course, and without closing the premises or stopping the business, but,
nevertheless, on some clear and comprehensive plan? If so, what is the plan=
to
be? Does it permit us to retain in a more or less modified form, or does it
urge us to get rid of, the British Crown? Does it permit us to retain or do=
es
it urge us to modify the American constitution? That is the form, it seems =
to
me, in which the question of Republicanism as an alternative to existing
institutions, must presently return into the field of public discussion in
Great Britain; not as a question of political stability nor of individual r=
ights
this time, but as an aspect of our general scheme, our scheme to make the w=
orld
more free and more stimulating and strengthening for our children and our
children's children; for the children both of our bodies and of our thought=
s.
It is interesting=
to
recall the assumptions under which the last vestiges of militant Republican=
ism
died out in Great Britain. As late as the middle years of the reign of Queen
Victoria, there were many in England who were, and who openly professed
themselves to be, Republicans, and there was a widely felt persuasion that =
the
country was drifting slowly towards the constitution of a democratic republ=
ic. In
those days it was that there came into being a theory, strengthened by the
withdrawal of the Monarch from affairs, which one still hears repeated, that
Great Britain was a "crowned republic," that the crown was no more
than a symbol retained by the "innate good sense" of the British
people, and that in some automatic way not clearly explained, such old-time
vestiges of privilege as the House of Lords would presently disappear. One
finds this confident belief in Progress towards political equality--Progress
that required no human effort, but was inherent in the scheme of things--ve=
ry
strong in Dickens, for example, who spoke for the average Englishman as no
later writer can be said to have done. This belief fell in very happily with
that disposition to funk a crisis, that vulgar dread of vulgar action which=
one
must regretfully admit was all too often a characteristic of the nineteenth
century English. There was an idea among Englishmen that to do anything
whatever of a positive sort to bring about a Republic was not only totally
unnecessary but inevitably mischievous, since it evidently meant street
fighting and provisional government by bold, bad, blood-stained, vulgar men=
, in
shirt sleeves as the essential features of the process. And under the
enervating influence of this great automatic theory--this theory that no one
need bother because the thing was bound to come, was indeed already arriving
for all who had eyes to see--Republicanism did not so much die as fall asle=
ep.
It was all right, Liberalism told us--the Crown was a legal fiction, the Ho=
use of
Lords was an interesting anachronism, and in that faith it was, no doubt, t=
hat
the last of the Republicans, Mr. Bright and Mr. Joseph Chamberlain,
"kissed hands." Then, presently, the frantic politics of Mr.
Gladstone effected what probably no other human agency could have contrived,
and restored the prestige of the House of Lords.
Practically the C=
rown
has now gone unchallenged by press, pulpit, or platform speaker for thirty
years, and as a natural consequence there is just now a smaller proportion =
of
men under forty who call themselves Republicans even in private than there =
ever
was since Plutarch entered the circle of English reading. To-day the
Aristocratic Monarchy is an almost universally accepted fact in the British
Empire, and it has so complete an air of unshakable permanence to contrast =
with
its condition in the early nineteenth century that even the fact that it is=
the
only really concrete obstacle to a political reunion of the English-speakin=
g peoples
at the present time, seems merely a fact to avoid.
There are certain=
consequences
that must follow from the unchallenged acceptation of an aristocratic monar=
chy,
consequences that do not seem to be sufficiently recognized in this connect=
ion,
and it is to these that the reader's attention is now particularly drawn. T=
here
are a great number of British people who are more or less sincerely seeking=
the
secret of national efficiency at present, and I cannot help thinking that
sooner or later, in spite of their evident aversion, they will be forced to
look into this dusty chamber of thought for the clue to the thing they need.
The corner they will have to turn is the admission that no state and no peo=
ple
can be at its maximum efficiency until every public function is discharged =
by
the man best able to perform it, and that no Commonweal can be near efficie=
ncy
until it is endeavouring very earnestly to bring that ideal condition of
affairs about. And when they have got round that corner they will have to f=
ace the
fact that an Hereditary Monarchy is a state in which this principle is repu=
diated
at a cardinal point, a state in which one position, which no amount of
sophistication will prevent common men and women regarding as the most
honourable, powerful, and responsible one of all, which is indeed by that v=
ery
fact alone a great and responsible one, is filled on purely genealogical
grounds. In a state that has also an aristocratic constitution this repudia=
tion
of special personal qualities is carried very much further. Reluctantly but
certainly the seeker after national efficiency will come to the point that =
the aristocracy
and their friends and connections must necessarily form a caste about the K=
ing,
that their gradations must set the tone of the whole social body, and that
their political position must enable them to demand and obtain a predominat=
ing
share in any administration that may be formed. So long, therefore, as your=
constitution
remains aristocratic you must expect to see men of quite ordinary ability,
quite ordinary energy, and no exceptional force of character, men frequently
less clever and influential than their wives and lady friends, controlling =
the
public services, a Duke of Norfolk managing so vital a business as the Post
Office and succeeded by a Marquis of Londonderry, and a Marquis of Lansdowne
organizing military affairs, and nothing short of a change in your political
constitution can prevent this sort of thing. No one believes these excellen=
t gentlemen
hold these positions by merit or capacity, and no one believes that from th=
em
we are getting anything like the best imaginable services in these position=
s.
These positions are held by the mere accident of birth, and it is by the me=
re
accident of birth the great mass of Englishmen are shut out from the remote=
st
hope of serving their country in such positions.
And this evil of
reserved places is not restricted by any means to public control. You cannot
both have a system and not have a system, and the British have a system of
hereditary aristocracy that infects the whole atmosphere of English thought
with the persuasion that what a man may attempt is determined by his caste.=
It
is here, and nowhere else, that the clue to so much inefficiency as one fin=
ds
it in contemporary British activity lies. The officers of the British Army =
instead
of being sedulously picked from the whole population are drawn from a really
quite small group of families, and, except for those who are called
"gentleman rankers," to enlist is the very last way in the world =
to
become a British officer. As a very natural corollary only broken men and u=
nambitious
men of the lowest class will consent to become ordinary private soldiers,
except during periods of extreme patriotic excitement. The men who enter the
Civil Service also, know perfectly well that though they may possess the mo=
st
brilliant administrative powers and develop and use themselves with relentl=
ess energy,
they will never win for themselves or their wives one tithe of the public
honour that comes by right to the heir to a dukedom. A dockyard hand who us=
es
his brains and makes a suggestion that may save the country thousands of po=
unds
will get--a gratuity.
Throughout all
English affairs the suggestion of this political system has spread. The
employer is of a different caste from his workmen, the captain is of a
different caste from his crew, even the Teachers' Register is specially
classified to prevent "young gentlemen" being taught by the only =
men
who, as a class, know how to teach in England, namely, the elementary teach=
ers;
everywhere the same thing is to be found. And while it is, it is absurd to
expect a few platitudes about Freedom, and snobbishness, and a few pious ho=
pes
about efficiency, to counteract the system's universal, incessant teaching,=
its
lesson of limited effort within defined possibilities. Only under one condi=
tion
may such a system rise towards anything that may be called national vigour,=
and
that is when there exists a vigorous Court which sets the fashion of hard w=
ork.
A keen King, indifferent to feminine influence, may, for a time, make a keen
nation, but that is an exceptional state of affairs, and the whole shape of=
the
fabric gravitates towards relapse. Even under such an influence the social
stratification will still, in the majority of cases, prevent powers and pos=
ts
falling to the best possible man. In the majority of cases the best that ca=
n be
hoped for, even then, will be to see the best man in the class privileged in
relation to any particular service, discharging that service. The most
efficient nation in the world to-day is believed to be Germany, which is--r=
oughly
speaking--an aristocratic monarchy, it is dominated by a man of most unking=
ly
force of character, and by a noble tradition of educational thoroughness th=
at
arose out of the shames of utter defeat, and, as a consequence, a great num=
ber
of people contrive to forget that the most dazzling display of national
efficiency the world has ever seen followed the sloughing of hereditary
institutions by France. One credits Napoleon too often with the vigour of h=
is opportunity,
with the force and strength it was his privilege to misdirect and destroy. =
And
one forgets that this present German efficiency was paralleled in the
eighteenth century by Prussia, whose aristocratic system first winded
Republicans at Valmy, and showed at Jena fourteen years after how much it h=
ad
learnt from that encounter.
Now our main argu=
ment
lies in this: that the great mass of a generation of children born into a
country, all those children who have no more than average intelligence and
average moral qualities, will accept the ostensible institutions of that
country at their face value, and will be almost entirely shaped and determi=
ned
by that acceptance. Only a sustained undertone of revolutionary protest can
prevent that happening. They will believe that precedences represent real s=
uperiority,
and they will honour what they see honoured, and ignore what they see treat=
ed
as of no account. Pious sentiment about Equality and Freedom will enter into
the reality of their minds as little as a drop of water into a greasy plate.
They will act as little in general intercourse upon the proposition that
"the man's the gowd for a' that," as they will upon the propositi=
on
that "man is a spirit" when it comes to the alternative of jumping
over a cliff or going down by a ladder.
If, however, your
children are not average children, if you are so happy as to have begotten
children of exceptional intelligence, it does not follow that this fact will
save them from conclusions quite parallel to those of the common child. Sup=
pose
they do penetrate the pretence that there is no intrinsic difference between
the Royal Family and the members of the peerage on the one hand, and the
average person in any other class on the other; suppose they discover that =
the
whole scale of precedence and honour in their land is a stupendous sham;-- =
what
then? Suppose they see quite clearly that all these pretensions of an invio=
late
superiority of birth and breeding vanish at the touch of a Whitaker Wright,
soften to a glowing cordiality before the sunny promises of a Hooley. Suppo=
se they
perceive that neither King nor lords really believe in their own lordliness,
and that at any point in the system one may find men with hands for any man=
's
tip, provided it is only sufficiently large! Even then!--How is that going =
to
react upon our children's social conduct?
In ninety-nine ca=
ses
out of a hundred they will accept the system still, they will accept it with
mental reservations. They will see that to repudiate the system by more tha=
n a
chance word or deed is to become isolated, to become a discontented alien, =
to
lose even the qualified permission to do something in the world. In most ca=
ses
they will take the oaths that come in their way and kiss the hands--just as=
the
British elementary teachers bow unbelieving heads to receive the episcopal =
pat,
and just as the British sceptic in orders will achieve triumphs of ambiguit=
y to
secure the episcopal see. And their reason for submission will not be
absolutely despicable; they will know there is no employment worth speaking=
of
without it. After all, one has only one life, and it is not pleasant to pass
through it in a state of futile abstinence from the general scheme. Life,
unfortunately, does not end with heroic moments of repudiation; there comes=
a
morrow to the Everlasting Nay. One may begin with heroic renunciations and =
end
in undignified envy and dyspeptic comments outside the door one has slammed=
on
one's self. In such reflections your children of the exceptional sort, it m=
ay
be after a youthful fling or two, a "ransom" speech or so, will f=
ind
excellent reasons for making their peace with things as they are, just as if
they were utterly commonplace. They know that if they can boast a knighthoo=
d or
a baronetcy or a Privy Councillorship, they will taste day by day and every=
day
that respect, that confidence from all about them that no one but a trained
recluse despises. And life will abound in opportunities. "Oh, well!&qu=
ot;
they will say. Such things give them influence, consideration, power to do =
things.
The beginning of
concessions is so entirely reasonable and easy! But the concessions go on. =
Each
step upward in the British system finds that system more persistently about
them. When one has started out under a King one may find amiable but whom o=
ne
may not respect, admitted a system one does not believe in, when one has ru=
bbed
the first bloom off one's honour, it is infinitely easier to begin peeling =
the
skin. Many a man whose youth was a dream of noble things, who was all for
splendid achievements and the service of mankind, peers to-day, by virtue of
such acquiescences, from between preposterous lawn sleeves or under a tilted
coronet, sucked as dry of his essential honour as a spider sucks a fly.
But this is going=
too
far, the reader will object! There must be concessions, there must be confo=
rmities,
just as there must be some impurity in the water we drink and flaws in the
beauty we give our hearts to, and that, no doubt, is true. It is no reason =
why
we should drink sewage and kneel to grossness and base stupidity. To endure=
the
worst because we cannot have the best is surely the last word of folly. Our
business as New Republicans is not to waste our lives in the pursuit of an
unattainable chemical purity, but to clear the air as much as possible.
Practical ethics is, after all, a quantitative science. In the reality of l=
ife
there are few absolute cases, and it is foolish to forego a great end for a
small concession. But to suffer so much Royalty and Privilege as an English=
man
has to do before he may make any effectual figure in public life is not a s=
mall
concession. By the time you have purchased power you may find you have give=
n up
everything that made power worth having. It would be a small concession, I
admit, a mere personal self-sacrifice, to pretend loyalty, kneel and kiss
hands, assist at Coronation mummeries, and all the rest of it, in order, le=
t us
say, to accomplish some great improvement in the schools of the country, we=
re
it not for the fact that all these things must be done in the sight of the
young, that you cannot kneel to the King without presenting a kneeling exam=
ple
to the people, without becoming as good a teacher of servility as though yo=
u were
servile to the marrow. There lies the trouble. By virtue of this reaction i=
t is
that the shams and ceremonies we may fancy mere curious survivals, mere kin=
ks
and tortuosities, cloaks and accessories to-day, will, if we are silent and
acquiescent, be halfway to reality again in the course of a generation. To =
our
children they are not evidently shams; they are powerful working suggestion=
s.
Human institutions are things of life, and whatever weed of falsity lies st=
ill
rooted in the ground has the promise and potency of growth. It will tend
perpetually, according to its nature, to recover its old influence over the=
imagination,
the thoughts, and acts of our children.
Even when the who=
le
trend of economic and social development sets against the real survival of =
such
a social and political system as the British, its pretensions, its shape and
implications may survive, survive all the more disastrously because they are
increasingly insincere. Indeed, in a sense, the British system, the pyramid=
of
King, land-owning and land-ruling aristocracy, yeomen and trading middle- c=
lass
and labourers, is dead--it died in the nineteenth century under the wheels =
of
mechanism [Footnote: I have discussed this fully in Anticipations, Chapter
III., Developing Social Elements.]--and the crude beginnings of a new system
are clothed in its raiment, and greatly encumbered by that clothing. Our
greatest peers are shareholders, are equipped by marriage with the wealth of
Jews and Americans, are exploiters of colonial resources and urban building=
enterprises;
their territorial titles are a mask and a lie. They hamper the development =
of
the new order, but they cannot altogether prevent the emergence of new men.=
The
new men come up to power one by one, from different enterprises, with vario=
us
traditions, and one by one, before they can develop a sense of class
distinction and collective responsibility, the old system with its organized
"Society" captures them. If it finds the man obdurate, it takes h=
is
wife and daughters, and it waylays his sons. [Footnote: It is not only Brit=
ish
subjects that are assimilated in this way, the infection of the British sys=
tem,
the annexation of certain social strata in the Republic by the British crow=
n,
is a question for every thoughtful American. America is less and less separ=
ate
from Europe, and the social development of the United States cannot be a
distinct process--it is inevitably bound up in the general social developme=
nt
of the English-speaking community. The taint has touched the American Navy,=
for
example, and there are those who discourage promotion from the ranks--the
essential virtue of the democratic state--because men so promoted would be =
at a
disadvantage when they met the officers of foreign navies, who were by birth
and training "gentlemen." When they met them socially no doubt was
meant; in war the disadvantage might prove the other way about.] Because th=
e hereditary
kingdom and aristocracy of Great Britain is less and less representative of
economic reality, more and more false to the real needs of the world, it do=
es
not follow that it will disappear, any more than malarial fever will disapp=
ear
from a man's blood because it is irrelevant to the general purpose of his
being. These things will only go when a sufficient number of sufficiently
capable and powerful people are determined they shall go. Until that time t=
hey
will remain with us, influencing things about them for evil, as it lies in
their nature to do.
Before, however, =
any
sufficiently great and capable body of men can be found to abolish these sh=
ams,
these shams that must necessarily hamper and limit the development of our
children, it is necessary that they should have some clear idea of the thing
that is to follow, and the real security of these obsolete institutions lies
very largely in the fact that at present the thing that is to follow does n=
ot
define itself. It is too commonly assumed that the alternative to a more or=
less
hereditary government is democratic republicanism of the American type, and=
the
defence of the former consists usually in an indictment of the latter,
complicated in very illogical cases by the assertion (drawn from the French
instance) that Republics are unstable. But it does not follow that because =
one
condemns the obvious shams of the British system that one must accept the s=
hams
of the United States. While in Great Britain we have a system that masks and
hampers the best of our race under a series of artificial inequalities, the
United States theory of the essential equality of all men is equally not in=
accordance
with the reality of life. In America, just as in England, the intelligent c=
hild
grows up to discover that the pretensions of public life are not justified,=
and
quite equally to be flawed in thought and action by that discovery.
The American
atmosphere has one great and indisputable superiority over the British: it
insists upon the right of every citizen, it almost presents it as a duty, t=
o do
all that he possibly can do; it holds out to him even the highest position =
in
the state as a possible reward for endeavour. Up to the point of its equali=
ty
of opportunity surely no sane Englishman can do anything but envy the Ameri=
can
state. In America "presumption" is not a sin. All the vigorous
enterprise that differentiates the American from the Englishman in business
flows quite naturally from that; all the patriotic force and loyalty of the
common American, which glows beside the English equivalent as the sun besid=
e the
moon, glows even oppressively. But apart from these inestimable advantages =
I do
not see that the American has much that an Englishman need envy. There are
certainly points of inferiority in the American atmosphere, influences in d=
evelopment
that are bad, not only in comparison with what is ideally possible, but eve=
n in
comparison with English parallels.
For example, the
theory that every man is as good as his neighbour, and possibly a little
better, has no check for fools, and instead of the respectful silences of
England there seems--to the ordinary English mind--an extraordinary quantit=
y of
crude and unsound judgments in America. One gets an impression that the sor=
t of
mind that is passively stupid in England is often actively silly in America,
and, as a consequence, American newspapers, American discussions, American
social affairs are pervaded by a din that in England we do not hear and do =
not want
to hear. The real and steady development of American scientific men is mask=
ed
to the European observer, and it must be greatly hampered by the copious
silliness of the amateur discoverer, and the American crop of new religions=
and
new enthusiasms is a horror and a warning to the common British intelligenc=
e.
Many people whose judgments are not absolutely despicable hold a theory that
unhampered personal freedom for a hundred years has made out of the British
type, a type less deliberate and thorough in execution and more noisy and
pushful in conduct, restless rather than indefatigable, and smart rather th=
an wise.
If ninety-nine people out of the hundred in our race are vulgar and unwise,=
it
does seem to be a fact that while the English fool is generally a shy and
negative fool anxious to hide the fact, the American fool is a loud and pos=
itive
fool, who swamps much of the greatness of his country to many a casual obse=
rver
from Europe altogether. American books, American papers, American manners a=
nd customs
seem all for the ninety and nine.
Deeper and graver
than the superficial defects of manner and execution and outlook to which t=
hese
charges point, there are, one gathers, other things that are traceable to t=
he
same source. There is a report of profounder troubles in the American social
body, of a disease of corruption that renders American legislatures feeble =
or
powerless against the great business corporations, and of an extreme demora=
lization
of the police force. The relation of the local political organization to the
police is fatally direct, and that sense of ordered subordination to defined
duties which distinguishes the best police forces of Europe fails. Men go i=
nto
the police force, we are told, with the full intention of making it pay, of
acquiring a saleable power.
There is probably
enough soundness in these impressions, and enough truth in these reports and
criticisms, to justify our saying that all is not ideally right with the
American atmosphere, and that it is not to present American conditions we m=
ust
turn in repudiating our British hereditary monarchy. We have to seek some b=
etter
thing upon which British and American institutions may converge. The Americ=
an
personal and social character, just like the English personal and social ch=
aracter,
displays very grave defects, defects that must now be reflected upon, and m=
ust
be in course of acquisition by the children who are growing up in the Ameri=
can
state. And since the American is still predominantly of British descent, and
since he has not been separated long enough from the British to develop
distinct inherited racial characteristics, and, moreover, since his salient=
characteristics
are in sharp contrast with those of the British, it follows that the differ=
ence
in his character and atmosphere must be due mainly to his different social =
and
political circumstances. Just as the relative defects of the common British,
their apathy, their unreasoning conservatism, and their sordid scorn of
intellectual things is bound up with their politico-social scheme, so, I
believe, the noisiness, the mean practicalness, and the dyspeptic-driving r=
estlessness
that are the shadows of American life, are bound up with the politico-socia=
l condition
of America. The Englishman sticks in the mud, and the American, with a sort=
of
violent meanness, cuts corners, and in both cases it is quite conceivable t=
hat
the failure to follow the perfect way is really no symptom of a divergence =
of
blood and race, but the natural and necessary outcome of the mass of sugges=
tion
about them that constitutes their respective worlds.
The young American
grows up into a world pervaded by the theory of democracy, by the theory th=
at
all men must have an equal chance of happiness, possessions, and power, and=
in
which that theory is expressed by a uniform equal suffrage. No man shall ha=
ve
any power or authority save by the free consent and delegation of his
fellows--that is the idea--and to the originators of this theory it seemed =
as
obvious as anything could be that these suffrages would only be given to th=
ose who
did really serve the happiness and welfare of the greatest number. The idea=
was
reflected in the world of business by a conception of free competition; no =
man
should grow rich except by the free preference of a great following of
customers. Such is still the American theory, and directly the intelligent
young American grows up to hard facts he finds almost as much disillusionme=
nt
as the intelligent young Englishman. He finds that in practice the free cho=
ice
of a constituency reduces to two candidates, and no more, selected by party
organizations, and the free choice of the customer to the goods proffered b=
y a
diminishing number of elaborately advertised businesses; he finds political
instruments and business corporations interlocking altogether beyond his po=
wer
of control, and that the two ways to opportunity, honour, and reward are ei=
ther
to appeal coarsely to the commonest thoughts and feelings of the vulgar as a
political agitator or advertising trader, or else to make his peace with th=
ose
who do. And so he, too, makes his concessions. They are different concessio=
ns
from those of the young Englishman, but they have this common element of
gravity, that he has to submit to conditions in which he does not believe, =
he
has to trim his course to a conception of living that is perpetually bending
him from the splendid and righteous way. The Englishman grows up into a wor=
ld
of barriers and locked doors, the American into an unorganized, struggling
crowd. There is an enormous premium in the American's world upon force and =
dexterity,
and force in the case of common men too often degenerates into brutality, a=
nd
dexterity into downright trickery and cheating. He has got to be forcible a=
nd
dexterous within his self-respect if he can. There is an enormous discount =
on
any work that does not make money or give a tangible result, and except in =
the
case of those whose lot has fallen within certain prescribed circles, certa=
in
oases of organized culture and work, he must advertise himself even in scie=
nce
or literature or art as if he were a pill. There is no recognition for him =
at
all in the world, except the recognition of--everybody. There will be neith=
er
comfort nor the barest respect for him, however fine his achievement, unles=
s he
makes his achievement known, unless he can make enough din about it, to pay=
. He
has got to shout down ninety-nine shouting fellow-citizens. That is the
cardinal fact in life for the great majority of Americans who respond to the
stirrings of ambition. If in Britain capacity is discouraged because honours
and power go by prescription, in America it is misdirected because honours =
do
not exist and power goes by popular election and advertisement. In certain =
directions--not
by any means in all--unobtrusive merit, soundness of quality that has neith=
er
gift nor disposition for "push," has a better chance in Great Bri=
tain
than in America. A sort of duty to help and advance exceptional men is
recognized at any rate, even if it is not always efficiently discharged, by=
the
privileged class in England, while in America it is far more acutely felt, =
far
more distinctly impressed upon the young that they must "hustle" =
or
perish.
It will be argued
that this enumeration of American and British defects is a mere expansion of
that familiar proposition of the logic text- books, "all men are
mortal." You have here, says the objector, one of two alternatives, ei=
ther
you must draw your administrators, your legislators, your sources of honour=
and
reward from a limited, hereditary, and specially-trained class, who will ho=
ld
power as a right, or you must rely upon the popular choice exercised in the
shop and at the polling booth. What else can you have but inheritance or el=
ection,
or some blend of the two, blending their faults? Each system has its
disadvantages, and the disadvantages of each system may be minimized by
education; in particular by keeping the culture and code of honour of your
ruling class high in the former case and by keeping your common schools
efficient in the latter. But the essential evils of each system are--essent=
ial
evils, and one has to suffer them and struggle against them, as one has to
struggle perpetually with the pathogenic bacteria that infest the world. The
theory of monarchy is, no doubt, inferior to the democratic theory in stimu=
lus,
but the latter fails in qualitative effect, much more than the former. Ther=
e,
the objector submits, lies the quintessence of the matter. Both systems need
watching, need criticism, the pruning knife and the stimulant, and neither =
is
bad enough to justify a revolutionary change to the other. In some such
conclusion as this most of the English people with whom one can discuss this
question have come to rest, and it is to this way of looking at the matter =
that
one must ascribe the apathetic acquiescence in the British hereditary syste=
m,
upon which I have already remarked. There is a frank and excessive admissio=
n of
every real and imaginary fault of the American system, and with the proposi=
tion
that we are on the horns of a dilemma, the discussion is dismissed.
But are we indeed=
on
the horns of a dilemma, and is there no alternative to hereditary government
tempered by elections, or government by the ward politician and the polling
booth? Cannot we have that sense and tradition of equal opportunity for all=
who
are born into this world, that generous and complete acknowledgment of the
principle of promotion from the ranks that is the precious birthright of th=
e American,
without the political gerrymandering, the practical falsification, that
restricts that general freedom at last only to the energetic, and that
subordinates quality to quantity in every affair of life? It is evident that
for the New Republican to admit that the thing is indeed a dilemma, that th=
ere
is nothing for it but to make the best of whichever bad thing we have at ha=
nd,
that we cannot have all we desire but only a greater or a lesser moiety, is=
a
most melancholy and hampering admission. And, certainly, no New Republican =
will
agree without a certain mental struggle, without a thorough and earnest inq=
uiry
into the possibility of a third direction.
This matter has t=
wo
aspects, it presents itself as two questions; the question first of all of
administration, and the question of honour and privilege. What is it that t=
he
New Republican idea really requires in these two matters? In the matter of
administration it requires that every child growing up in a state should fe=
el
that he is part owner of his state, completely free in his membership, and
equal in opportunity to all other children--and it also wants to secure the
management of affairs in the hands of the very best men, not the noisiest, =
not
the richest or most skilfully advertised, but the best. Can these two thing=
s be
reconciled? In the matter of honour and privilege, the New Republican idea
requires a separation of honour from notoriety; it requires some visible and
forcible expression of the essential conception that there are things more
honourable than getting either votes or money; it requires a class and
distinctions and privileges embodying that idea--and also it wants to ensure
that through the whole range of life there shall not be one door locked aga=
inst
the effort of the citizen to accomplish the best that is in him. Can these =
two
things be reconciled also?
I have the temeri=
ty
to think that in both cases the conflicting requirements can be reconciled =
far
more completely than is commonly supposed.
Let us take, firs=
t of
all, the question of the reconciliation as it is presented in the
administration of public affairs. The days have come when the most
democratic-minded of men must begin to admit that the appointment of all ru=
lers
and officials by polling the manhood, or most of the manhood, of a country =
does
not work--let us say perfectly--and at no level of educational efficiency d=
oes
it ever seem likely to work in the way those who established it hoped. By
thousands of the most varied experiments the nineteenth century has proved =
this
up to the hilt. The fact that elections can only be worked as a choice betw=
een two
selected candidates, or groups of candidates, is the unforeseen and unavoid=
able
mechanical defect of all electoral methods with large electorates. Education
has nothing to do with that. The elections for the English University membe=
rs
are manipulated just as much as the elections in the least literate of the
Irish constituencies. [Footnote: There is a very suggestive book on this as=
pect
of our general question, The Crowd, by M. Gustave le Bon, which should inte=
rest
any one who finds this paper interesting. And the English reader who would =
like
a fuller treatment of this question has now available also Ostrogorski's gr=
eat
work, Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties.] It is not a
question of accidentals, but a question of the essential mechanism. Men have
sought out and considered all sorts of devices for qualifying the present
method by polling; Mills's plural voting for educated men will occur to the
reader; Hare's system of vote collection, and the negative voting of Doctor
Grece; and the defects of these inventions have been sufficiently obvious t=
o prevent
even a trial. The changes have been rung upon methods of counting; cumulati=
ve
votes and the prohibition of plumping, and so on, have been tried without a=
ny
essential modification of the results. There are various devices for
introducing "stages" in the electoral process; the constituency
elects electors, who elect the rulers and officers, for example, and there =
is
also that futile attempt to bring in the non-political specialist, the meth=
od
of electing governing bodies with power to "co-opt." Of course th=
ey
"co-opt" their fellow politicians, rejected candidates, and so on.
Among other expedients that people have discussed, are such as would make it
necessary for a man to take some trouble and display some foresight to get
registered as a voter or to pass an examination to that end, and such as wo=
uld confront
him with a voting paper so complex, that only a very intelligent and
painstaking man would be able to fill it up without disqualification. It
certainly seems a reasonable thing to require that the voter should be able=
at
least to write out fully and spell correctly the name of the man of his cho=
ice.
Except for the last, there is scarcely any of these things but its adoption
would strengthen the power of the political organizer, which they aim to
defeat. Any complication increases the need and the power of organization. =
It
is possible to believe--the writer believes--that with all this burthen of =
shortcomings,
the democratic election system is still, on the whole, better than a system=
of
hereditary privilege, but that is no reason for concealing how defective and
disappointing its practical outcome has been, nor for resting contented wit=
h it
in its present form. [Footnote: The statement of the case is not complete
unless we mention that, to the method of rule by hereditary rulers and the
appointment of officials by noble patrons on the one hand, and of rule by
politicians exercising patronage on the other, there is added in the British
system the Chinese method of selecting officials by competitive examination=
. Within
its limits this has worked as a most admirable corrective to patronage; it =
is
one of the chief factors in the cleanhandedness of British politicians, and=
it
is continually importing fresh young men from outside to keep officialdom in
touch with the general educated world. But it does not apply, and it does n=
ot
seem applicable, to the broader issues of politics, to the appointment and
endorsement of responsible rulers and legislators, where a score of qualiti=
es
are of more importance than those an examination can gauge.]
Is polling really=
essential
to the democratic idea? That is the question now very earnestly put to the
reader. We are so terribly under the spell of established conditions, we are
all so obsessed by the persuasion that the only conceivable way in which a =
man
can be expressed politically is by himself voting in person, that we do all=
of us
habitually overlook a possibility, a third choice, that lies ready to our
hands. There is a way by means of which the indisputable evils of democratic
government may be very greatly diminished, without destroying or even
diminishing--indeed, rather enhancing--that invigorating sense of unhampered
possibilities, that the democratic idea involves. There is a way of choosing
your public servants of all sorts and effectually controlling public affair=
s on
perfectly sound democratic principles, without ever having such a thing as =
an election,
as it is now understood, at all, a way which will permit of a deliberate ch=
oice
between numerous candidates--a thing utterly impossible under the current s=
ystem--which
will certainly raise the average quality of our legislators, and be infinit=
ely
saner, juster, and more deliberate than our present method. And, moreover, =
it
is a way that is typically the invention of the English people, and which t=
hey use
to-day in another precisely parallel application, an application which they
have elaborately tested and developed through a period of at least seven or
eight hundred years, and which I must confess myself amazed to think has not
already been applied to our public needs. This way is the Jury system. The =
Jury
system was devised to meet almost exactly the same problem that faces us
to-day, the problem of how on the one hand to avoid putting a man's life or
property into the hands of a Ruler, a privileged person, whose interest mig=
ht
be unsympathetic or hostile, while on the other protecting him from the
tumultuous judgments of a crowd--to save the accused from the arbitrary wil=
l of
King and Noble without flinging him to the mob. To-day it is exactly that
problem over again that our peoples have to solve, except that instead of o=
ne
individual affair we have now our general affairs to place under a parallel
system. As the community that had originally been small enough and intimate
enough to decide on the guilt or innocence of its members grew to difficult
proportions, there developed this system of selecting by lot a number of its
common citizens who were sworn, who were then specially instructed and
prepared, and who, in an atmosphere of solemnity and responsibility in abso=
lute
contrast with the uproar of a public polling, considered the case and conde=
mned
or discharged the accused. Let me point out that this method is so universa=
lly
recognized as superior to the common electoral method that any one who shou=
ld
propose to-day to take the fate of a man accused of murder out of the hands=
of
a jury and place it in the hands of any British or American constituency
whatever, even in the hands of such a highly intelligent constituency as on=
e of
the British universities, would be thought to be carrying crankiness beyond=
the
border line of sanity.
Why then should we
not apply the Jury system to the electoral riddle?
Suppose, for exam=
ple,
at the end of the Parliamentary term, instead of the present method of elec=
ting
a member of Parliament, we were, with every precaution of publicity and with
the most ingeniously impartial machine that could be invented, to select a =
Jury
by lot, a Jury sufficiently numerous to be reasonably representative of the
general feeling of the community and sufficiently small to be able to talk =
easily
together and to do the business without debating society methods--between
twenty and thirty, I think, might be a good working number--and suppose we
were, after a ceremony of swearing them and perhaps after prayer or after a
grave and dignified address to them upon the duty that lay before them, to
place each of these juries in comfortable quarters for a few days and isola=
ted
from the world, to choose its legislator. They could hear, in public, under=
a
time limit, the addresses of such candidates as had presented themselves, a=
nd
they could receive, under a limit of length and with proper precautions for=
publicity,
such documents as the candidates chose to submit. They could also, in publi=
c,
put any questions they chose to the candidates to elucidate their intention=
s or
their antecedents, and they might at any stage decide unanimously to hear no
more of and to dismiss this or that candidate who encumbered their
deliberations. (This latter would be an effectual way of suppressing the
candidature of cranks, and of half- witted and merely symbolical persons.) =
The
Jury between and after their interrogations and audiences would withdraw fr=
om
the public room to deliberate in privacy. Their deliberations which, of cou=
rse,
would be frank and conversational to a degree impossible under any other co=
nditions,
and free from the dodges of the expert vote manipulator altogether, would, =
for
example, in the case of several candidates of the same or similar political
colours, do away with the absurdity of the split vote. The jurymen of the s=
ame
political hue could settle that affair among themselves before contributing=
to
a final decision.
This Jury might h= ave certain powers of inquest. Provision might be made for pleas against partic= ular candidates; private individuals or the advocates of vigilance societies mig= ht appear against any particular candidate and submit the facts about any doub= tful affair, financial or otherwise, in which that candidate had been involved. Witnesses might be called and heard on any question of fact, and the implic= ated candidate would explain his conduct. And at any stage the Jury might stop proceedings and report its selection for the vacant post. Then, at the expiration of a reasonable period, a year perhaps, or three years or seven years, another Jury might be summoned to decide whether the sitting member should continue in office unchallenged or be subjected to a fresh contest.<= o:p>
This suggestion is
advanced here in this concrete form merely to show the sort of thing that m=
ight
be done; it is one sample suggestion, one of a great number of possible sch=
emes
of Election by Jury. But even in this state of crude suggestion, it is
submitted that it does serve to show the practicability of a method of elec=
tion
more deliberate and thorough, more dignified, more calculated to impress the
new generation with a sense of the gravity of the public choice, and infini=
tely
more likely to give us good rulers than the present method, and that it wou=
ld
do so without sacrificing any essential good quality whatever inherent in t=
he
Democratic Idea. [Footnote: There are excellent possibilities, both in the
United States and in this Empire, of trying over such a method as this, and=
of
introducing it tentatively and piecemeal. In Great Britain already there are
quite different methods of election for Parliament existing side by side. In
the Hythe division of Kent, for example, I vote by ballot with elaborate
secrecy; in the University of London I declare my vote in a room full of pe=
ople.
The British University constituencies, or one of them, might very readily be
used as a practical test of this jury suggestion. There is nothing, I belie=
ve,
in the Constitution of the United States to prevent any one State resorting=
to
this characteristically Anglo-Saxon method of appointing its representative=
s in
Congress. It is not only in political institutions that the method may be
tried. Any societies or institutions that have to send delegates to a
conference or meeting might very easily bring this conception to a practical
test. Even if it does not prove practicable as a substitute for election by
polling, it might be found of some value for the appointment of members of =
the specialist
type, for whom at present we generally resort to co-option. In many cases w=
here
the selection of specialists was desirable to complete public bodies, jurie=
s of
educated men of the British Grand Jury type might be highly serviceable.] T=
he
case for the use of the Jury system becomes far stronger when we apply it to
such problems as we now attempt to solve by co-opting experts upon various =
administrative
bodies.
The necessity eit=
her
of raising the quality of representative bodies or of replacing them not on=
ly
in administration but in legislation by bureaucracies of officials appointe=
d by
elected or hereditary rulers, is one that presses on all thoughtful men, an=
d is
by no means an academic question needed to round off this New Republican
theory. The necessity becomes more urgent every day, as scientific and econ=
omic
developments raise first one affair and then another to the level of public=
or
quasi-public functions. In the last century, locomotion, lighting, heating,
education, forced themselves upon public control or public management, and =
now
with the development of Trusts a whole host of businesses, that were once t=
he
affair of competing private concerns, claim the same attention. Government =
by
hustings' bawling, newspaper clamour, and ward organization, is more perilo=
us
every day and more impotent, and unless we are prepared to see a government=
de facto
of rich business organizers override the government de jure, or to relapse =
upon
a practical oligarchy of officials, an oligarchy that will certainly declin=
e in
efficiency in a generation or so, we must set ourselves most earnestly to t=
his
problem of improving representative methods. It is in the direction of the
substitution of the Jury method for a general poll that the only practicable
line of improvement known to the present writer seems to lie, and until it =
has been
tried it cannot be conceded that democratic government has been tried and
exhaustively proved inadequate to the complex needs of the modern state.
So much for the
question of administration. We come now to a second need in the modern stat=
e if
it is to get the best result from the citizens born into it, and that is the
need of honours and privileges to reward and enhance services and exception=
al
personal qualities and so to stir and ennoble that emulation which is, under
proper direction, the most useful to the constructive statesman of all human
motives. In the United States titles are prohibited by the constitution, in
Great Britain they go by prescription. But it is possible to imagine titles=
and
privileges that are not hereditary, and that would be real symbols of human
worth entirely in accordance with the Republican Idea. It is one of the sto=
ck
charges against Republicanism that success in America is either political or
financial. In England, in addition, success is also social, and there is, o=
ne
must admit, a sort of recognition accorded to intellectual achievement, whi=
ch
some American scientific men have found reason to envy. In America, of cour=
se,
just as in Great Britain, there exists that very enviable distinction, the
honorary degree of a university; but in America it is tainted by the freedo=
m with
which bogus universities can be organized, and by the unchallenged assumpti=
ons
of quacks. In Great Britain the honorary degree of a university, in spite of
the fact that it goes almost as a matter of course to every casual Prince, =
is a
highly desirable recognition of public services. Beyond this there are cert=
ain
British distinctions that might very advantageously be paralleled in Americ=
a,
the Fellowship of the Royal Society, for example, and that really very fine
honour, as yet untainted by the class of men who tout for baronetcies and p=
eerages,
the Privy Council.
There are certain
points in this question that are too often overlooked. In the first place,
honours and titles need not be hereditary; in the second, they need not be
conferred by the political administration; and, in the third, they are not
only--as the French Legion of Honour shows--entirely compatible with, but t=
hey
are a necessary complement to the Republican Idea.
The bad results of
entrusting honours to the Government are equally obvious in France and Great
Britain. They are predominantly given, quite naturally, for political servi=
ces,
because they are given by politicians too absorbed to be aware of men outsi=
de
the political world. In Great Britain the process is modified rather than
improved by what one knows as court influence. And in spite of the real and=
sustained
efficiency of the Royal Society in distinguishing meritorious scientific
workers, the French Academy, which has long been captured by aristocratic
dilettanti, and the English Royal Academy of Arts, demonstrate the essential
defects and dangers of a body which fills its own gaps. But there is no rea=
son
why a national system of honours and titles should not be worked upon a qui=
te
new basis, suggested by these various considerations. Let us, simply for
tangibleness, put the thing as a concrete plan for the reader's considerati=
on.
There might, for
example, be a lowest stage which would include--as the English knighthood o=
nce
included--almost every citizen capable of initiative, all the university
graduates, all the men qualified to practice the responsible professions, a=
ll
qualified teachers, all the men in the Army and Navy promoted to a certain
rank, all seamen qualified to navigate a vessel, all the ministers recogniz=
ed
by properly organized religious bodies, all public officials exercising com=
mand;
quasi-public organizations might nominate a certain proportion of their sta=
ffs,
and organized trade-unions with any claim to skill, a certain proportion of
their men, their "decent" men, and every artist or writer who cou=
ld
submit a passable diploma work; it would be, in fact, a mark set upon every=
man
or woman who was qualified to do something or who had done something, as
distinguished from the man who had done nothing in the world, the mere comm=
on
unenterprising esurient man. It might carry many little privileges in public
matters--for instance, it might qualify for certain electoral juries. And f=
rom
this class the next rank might easily be drawn in a variety of ways. In a m=
odern
democratic state there must be many fountains of honour. That is a necessity
upon which one cannot insist too much. There must be no court, no gang, no
traditional inalterable tribunal. Local legislative bodies, for example,--in
America, state legislatures and in England, county councils,--might confer =
rank
on a limited number of men or women yearly; juries drawn from certain speci=
al
constituencies, from the roll of the medical profession, or from the Army, =
might
assemble periodically to nominate their professional best, the Foreign or
Colonial Office might confer recognition for political services, the univer=
sity
governing bodies might be entrusted with the power--just as in the middle a=
ges
many great men could confer knighthood. From among these distinguished
gentlemen of the second grade still higher ranks might be drawn. Local juri=
es
might select a local chief dignitary as their "earl," let us say,
from among the resident men of rank, and there is no reason why certain gre=
at
constituencies, the medical calling, the engineers, should not specify one =
or
two of their professional leaders, their "dukes." There are many
occasions of local importance when an honourable figure-head is needed. The
British fall back on the local hereditary peer or invite a prince, too often
some poor creature great only by convention--and what the Americans do I do=
not
know, unless they use a Boss. There are many occasions of something more th=
an
ceremonial importance when a responsible man publicly honoured and publicly
known, and not a professional politician, is of the utmost convenience. And
there are endless affairs, lists, gatherings, when the only alternative to =
rank
is scramble. For myself I would not draw the line at such minor occasions f=
or
precedence. A Second Chamber is an essential part of the political scheme of
all the English-speaking communities, and almost always it is intended to p=
resent
stabler interests and a smaller and more selected constituency than the low=
er
house. From such a life nobility as I have sketched a Second Chamber could =
be
drawn much as the Irish representative peers in the House of Lords are drawn
from the general peerage of Ireland. It would be far less party bound and f=
ar
less mercenary than the American Senate, and far more intelligent and capab=
le
than the British House of Lords. And either of these bodies could be brought
under a process of deliberate conversion in this direction with scarcely any
revolutionary shock at all. [Footnote: In the case of the House of Lords, f=
or example,
the process of conversion might begin by extending the Scotch and Irish sys=
tem
to England, and substituting a lesser number of representative peers for the
existing English peerage. Then it would merely revive a question that was
already under discussion in middle Victorian times, to create non-hereditary
peerages in the three kingdoms. The several Privy Councils might next be ad=
ded
to the three national constituencies by which and from which the representa=
tive
peers were appointed, and then advisory boards might be called from the var=
ious
Universities and organized professions, and from authoritative Colonial bod=
ies
to recommend men to be added to the voting peerage. Life peers already exis=
t.
The law is represented by life peers. The lords spiritual are representative
life peers--they are the senior bishops, and they are appointed to represen=
t a
corporation--the Established Church. So a generally non-hereditary function=
al
nobility might come into being without any violent break with the present c=
ondition
of things. The conversion of the American Senate would be a more difficult
matter, because the method of appointment of Senators is more stereotyped
altogether, and, since 1800, unhappily quite bound up with the political pa=
rty
system. The Senate is not a body of varied and fluctuating origins into whi=
ch
new elements can be quietly inserted. An English writer cannot estimate how
dear the sacred brace of Senators for each State may or may not be to the
American heart. But the possibility of Congress delegating the power to app=
oint
additional Senators to certain non-political bodies, or to juries of a spec=
ific
constitution, is at least thinkable as the beginning of a movement that wou=
ld
come at last into parallelism with that in the British Empire.]
When these issues=
of
public honour and efficient democratic administration have begun to move
towards a definite solution, the community will be in a position to extend =
the
operation of the new methods towards a profounder revolution, the control of
private property. "We are all Socialists nowadays," and it is
needless, therefore, to argue here at any length to establish the fact that=
beyond
quite personal belongings all Property is the creation of society, and in
reality no more than an administrative device. At present, in spite of some
quite hideous and mischievous local aspects, the institution of Property, e=
ven
in land and the shares of quasi- public businesses, probably gives as effic=
ient
a method of control, and even it may be a more efficient method of control =
than
any that could be devised to replace it under existing conditions. We have =
no
public bodies and no methods of check and control sufficiently trustworthy =
to justify
extensive expropriations. Even the municipalization of industries needs to =
go
slowly until municipal areas have been brought more into conformity with the
conditions of efficient administration. Areas too cramped and areas that
overlap spell waste and conflicting authorities, and premature municipaliza=
tion
in such areas will lead only to the final triumph of the private company.
Political efficiency must precede Socialism. [Footnote: See Appendix I. ] B=
ut
there can be no doubt that the spectacle of irresponsible property is a
terribly demoralizing force in the development of each generation. It is id=
le
to deny that Property, both in Great Britain and America, works out into a =
practical
repudiation of that equality, political democracy so eloquently asserts. Th=
ere
is a fatalistic submission to inferiority on the part of an overwhelming
majority of those born poor, they hold themselves cheap in countless ways, =
and
they accept as natural the use of wealth for wanton pleasure and purposes
absolutely mischievous, they despair of effort in the public service, and f=
ind
their only hope in gambling, sharp greedy trading, or in base acquiescences=
to
the rich. The good New Republican can only regard our present system of
Property as a terribly unsatisfactory expedient and seek with all his power=
to develop
a better order to replace it.
There are certain
lines of action in this matter that cannot but be beneficial, and it is upon
these that the New Republican will, no doubt, go. One excellent thing, for
example, would be to insist that beyond the limits of a reasonable amount of
personal property, the community is justified in demanding a much higher de=
gree
of efficiency in the property-holder than in the case of the common citizen=
, to
require him or her to be not only sane but capable, equal mentally and bodi=
ly
to a great charge. The heir to a great property should possess a satisfacto=
ry
knowledge of social and economic science, and should have studied with a vi=
ew
to his great responsibilities. The age of twenty- one is scarcely high enou=
gh
for the management of a great estate, and to raise the age of free
administration for the owners of great properties, and to specify a
superannuation age would be a wise and justifiable measure. [Footnote:
Something of the sort is already secured in France by the power of the Cons=
eil
de Famille to expropriate a spendthrift.] There should also be a possibilit=
y of
intervention in the case of maladministration, and a code of offences-- hab=
itual
drunkenness, for example, assaults of various kinds--offences that establis=
hed
the fact of unfitness and resulted in deposition, might be drawn up. It mig=
ht
be found desirable in the case of certain crimes and misdemeanours, to add =
to
existing penalties the transfer of all real or share properties to trustees.
Vigorous confiscation is a particularly logical punishment for the proven
corruption of public officers by any property owner or group of property
owners. Rich men who bribe are a danger to any state. Beyond the limits of
lunacy it might be possible to define a condition of malignancy or ruthless=
ness
that would justify confiscation, attempts to form corners in the necessitie=
s of
life, for example, could be taken as evidence of such a condition. All such
measures as this would be far more beneficial than the immediate improvement
they would effect in public management. They would infect the whole social =
body
with the sense that property was saturated with responsibility and was in
effect a trust, and that would be a good influence upon rich and poor alike=
.
Moreover, as publ=
ic
bodies became more efficient and more trustworthy, the principle already
established in British social polity by Sir William Vernon Harcourt's Death
Duties, the principle of whittling great properties at each transfer, might=
be
very materially extended. Every transfer of property might establish a state
mortgage for some fraction of the value of that property. The fraction migh=
t be
small when the recipient was a public institution, considerable in the case=
of
a son or daughter, and almost all for a distant relative or no kindred at a=
ll.
By such devices the evil influence of property acquired by mere accidents w=
ould
be reduced without any great discouragement of energetic, enterprising, and
inventive men. And a man ambitious to found a family might still found one =
if
he took care to marry wisely and train and educate his children to the leve=
l of
the position he designed for them.
While the New
Republican brings such expedients as this to bear upon property from above,
there will also be the expedients of the Minimum Wage and the Minimum Stand=
ard
of Life, already discussed in the third of these papers, controlling it from
below. Limited in this way, property will resemble a river that once swampe=
d a
whole country-side, but has now been banked within its channel. Even when t=
hese
expedients have been exhaustively worked out, they will fall far short of t=
hat "abolition
of property" which is the crude expression of Socialism. There is a
certain measure of property in a state which involves the maximum of indivi=
dual
freedom. Either above or below that Optimum one passes towards slavery. The=
New
Republican is a New Republican, and he tests all things by their effect upon
the evolution of man; he is a Socialist or an Individualist, a Free Trader =
or a
Protectionist, a Republican or a Democrat just so far, and only so far, as
these various principles of public policy subserve his greater end.
This crude sketch=
of
a possible scheme of honour and privilege, and of an approximation towards =
the
socialization of property will, at any rate, show that in this matter, as in
the matter of political control, the alternative of the British system or t=
he
American system does not exhaust human possibilities. There is also the
Twentieth Century System, which we New Republicans have to discover and dis=
cuss
and bring to the test of experience. And for the sake of the education of o=
ur children,
which is the cardinal business of our lives, we must refuse all convenient
legal fictions and underhand ways, and see to it that the system is as true=
to
the reality of life and to right and justice as we can, in our light and
generation, make it. The child must learn not only from preacher and parent=
and
book, but from the whole frame and order of life about it, that truth and s=
ound
living and service are the only trustworthy ways to either honour or power,=
and
that, save for the unavoidable accidents of life, they are very certain way=
s.
And then he will have a fair chance to grow up neither a smart and hustling=
cheat--for
the American at his worst is no more and no less than that-- nor a sluggish
disingenuous snob--as the Briton too often becomes--but a proud, ambitious,
clean-handed, and capable man.
VIII - THE CULTIVATION OF=
THE
IMAGINATION
§ 1
In the closing years of the school =
period
comes the dawn of the process of adolescence, and the simple egotism, the
egotistical affections of the child begin to be troubled by new interests, =
new
vague impulses, and presently by a flood of as yet formless emotions. The r=
ace,
the species, is claiming the individual, endeavouring to secure the individ=
ual
for its greater ends. In the space of a few years the almost sexless boy and
girl have become consciously sexual, are troubled by the still mysterious
possibilities of love, are stirred to discontent and adventure, are reaching
out imaginatively or actively towards what is at last the recommencement of
things, the essential fact in the perennial reshaping of the order of the
world. This is indeed something of a second birth. At its beginning the chi=
ld
we have known begins to recede, the new individuality gathers itself togeth=
er
with a sort of shy jealousy, and withdraws from the confident intimacy of
childhood into a secret seclusion; all parents know of that loss; at its en=
d we
have an adult, formed and determinate, for whom indeed the drama and confli=
ct
of life is still only beginning, but who is, nevertheless, in a very serious
sense finished and made. The quaint, lovable, larval human being has passed
then into the full imago, before whom there is no further change in kind sa=
ve
age and decay.
This development =
of
the sexual being, of personal dreams, and the adult imagination is already
commencing in the early teens. It goes on through all the later phases of t=
he
educational process, and it ends, or, rather, it is transformed by insensib=
le
degrees into the personal realities of adult life.
Now this second b=
irth
within the body of the first differs in many fundamental aspects from that
first. The first birth and the body abound in inevitable things; for exampl=
e,
features, gestures aptitudes, complexions, and colours, are inherited beyond
any power of perversion; but the second birth is the unfolding not of shaped
and settled things but of possibilities, of extraordinarily plastic mental
faculties. No doubt there are in each developing individual dispositions
towards this or that--tendencies, a bias in the texture this way or that--b=
ut
the form of it all is extraordinarily a matter of suggestion and the influe=
nce
of deliberate and accidental moulding forces. The universal Will to live is
there, peeping out at first in little curiosities, inquiries, sudden disgus=
ts,
sudden fancies, the stumbling, slow realization that for this in a mysterio=
usly
predominant way we live, and growing stronger, growing presently, in the gr=
eat
multitude of cases, to passionate preferences and powerful desires. This fl=
ow
of sex comes like a great river athwart the plain of our personal and egois=
tic schemes,
a great river with its rapids, with its deep and silent places, a river of
uncertain droughts, a river of overwhelming floods, a river no one who would
escape drowning may afford to ignore. Moreover, it is the very axis and cre=
ator
of our world valley, the source of all our power in life, and the irrigator=
of
all things. In the microcosm of each individual, as in the microcosm of the
race, this flood is a cardinal problem.
And from its very
nature this is a discussion of especial difficulty, because it touches all =
of
us--except for a few peculiar souls--so intimately and so disturbingly. I h=
ad
purposed to call this paper "Sex and the Imagination," and then I=
had
a sudden vision of the thing that happens. The vision presented a casual re=
ader
seated in a library, turning over books and magazines and casting much
excellent wisdom aside, and then suddenly, as it were, waking up at that ti=
tle,
arrested, displaying a furtive alertness, reading, flushed and eager, nosing
through the article. That in a vignette is the trouble in all this discussi=
on.
Were we angels--! But we are not angels; we are all involved. If we are you=
ng
we are deep in it, whether we would have it so or not; if we are old, even =
if
we are quite old, our memories still stretch out, living sensitive threads =
from
our tender vanity to the great trouble. Detachment is impossible. The neare=
st
we can get to detachment is to recognize that.
About this questi=
on
the tragi-comic web of human absurdity thickens to its closest. When has th=
ere
ever been a lucid view or ever will be of this great business? Here is the
common madness of our species, here is all a tissue of fine
unreasonableness--to which, no doubt, we are in the present paper
infinitesimally adding. One has a vision of preposterous proceedings; great,
fat, wheezing, strigilated Roman emperors, neat Parisian gentlemen of the
latest cult, the good Saint Anthony rolling on his thorns, and the piously
obscene Durtal undergoing his expiatory temptations, Mahomet and Brigham Yo=
ung receiving
supplementary revelations, grim men babbling secrets to schoolgirls, enamou=
red
errand boys, amorous old women, debauchees dreaming themselves thoroughly
sensible men and going about their queer proceedings with insane
self-satisfaction, beautiful witless young persons dressed in the most amaz=
ing
things, all down the vista of history--a Vision of Fair Women--looking thei=
r conscious
queenliest, sentimentalists crawling over every aspect and leaving tracks l=
ike snails,
flushed young blockheads telling the world "all about women," int=
rigue,
folly--you have as much of it as one pen may condense in old Burton's
Anatomy--and through it all a vast multitude of decent, respectable bodies
pretending to have quite solved the problem--until one day, almost shocking=
ly,
you get their secret from a careless something glancing out of the eyes. Mo=
st
preposterous of all for some reason is a figure--one is maliciously dispose=
d to
present it as feminine and a little unattractive, goloshed for preference, =
and
saying in a voice of cultivated flatness, "Why cannot we be perfectly
plain and sensible, and speak quite frankly about this matter?" The an=
swer
to which one conceives, would be near the last conclusions of Philosophy.
So much seethes a=
bout
the plain discussion of the question of sexual institutions. One echoes the
intelligent inquiry of that quite imaginary, libellously conceived lady in =
goloshes
with a smile and a sigh. As well might she ask, "Why shouldn't I keep =
my
sandwiches in the Ark of the Covenant? There's room!" "Of course
there's room," one answers, "but--As things are, Madam, it is
inadvisable to try. You see --for one thing--people are so peculiar. The
quantity of loose stones in this neighbourhood."
The predominant
feeling about the discussion of these things is, to speak frankly, Fear. We
know, very many of us, that our present state has many evil aspects, seems
unjust and wasteful of human happiness, is full of secret and horrible dang=
ers,
abounding in cruelties and painful things; that our system of sanctions and
prohibitions is wickedly venial, pressing far more gravely on the poor than=
on
the rich, and that it is enormously sapped by sentimentalities of various s=
orts
and undermined and qualified by secret cults; it is a clogged and an ill- m=
ade
and dishonest machine, but we have a dread, in part instinctive, in part, no
doubt, the suggestion of our upbringing and atmosphere, of any rash
alterations, of any really free examination of its constitution. We are not
sure or satisfied where that process of examination may not take us; many m=
ore
people can take machines to pieces than can put them together again. Mr. Gr=
ant
Allen used to call our current prohibitions Taboos. Well, the fact is, in t=
hese
matters there is something that is probably an instinct, a deeply felt nece=
ssity
for Taboos. We know perhaps that our Taboos were not devised on absolutely
reasonable grounds, but we are afraid of just how many may not collapse bef=
ore
a purely reasonable inquiry. We are afraid of thinking quite freely even in
private. We doubt whether it is wise to begin, though only in the study and
alone. "Why should we--? Why should we not--?" And the thought of=
a
public discussion without limitations by a hasty myriad untrained to think,
does, indeed, raise an image of consequences best conveyed perhaps by that =
fine
indefinite phrase, "A Moral Chaos." These people who are for the
free, frank, and open discussion assume so much; they either intend a sham =
with
foregone conclusions, or they have not thought of all sorts of things inher=
ent in
the natural silliness of contemporary man.
On the whole I th=
ink
a man or woman who is no longer a fabric of pure emotion may, if there is
indeed the passion for truth and the clear sight of things to justify resea=
rch,
venture upon this sinister seeming wilderness of speculation, and I think, =
too,
it is very probable the courageous persistent explorer will end at last not=
so
very remote from the starting-point, but above it, as it were, on a crest t=
hat
will give a wider view, reaching over many things that now confine the lowe=
r vision.
But these are perilous paths, it must always be remembered. This is no publ=
ic
playground. One may distrust the conventional code, and one may leave it in
thought, long before one is justified in leaving it either in expressed opi=
nion
or in act. We are social animals; we cannot live alone; manifestly from the
nature of the question, here, at any rate, we must associate and group. For=
all
who find the accepted righteousness not good enough or clear enough for the=
m,
there is the chance of an ironical destiny. We must look well to our compan=
y,
as we come out of the city of the common practice and kick its dust from our
superior soles. There is an abominable riff-raff gone into those thickets f=
or
purposes quite other than the discovery of the right thing to do, for quite
other motives than our high intellectual desire. There are ugly rebels and =
born
rascals, cheats by instinct, and liars to women, swinish unbelievers who wo=
uld
compromise us with their erratic pursuit of a miscellaneous collection of
strange fancies and betray us callously at last. Because a man does not find
the law pure justice, that is no reason why he should fake his gold to a
thieves' kitchen; because he does not think the city a sanitary place, why =
he should
pitch his tent on a dust-heap amidst pariah dogs. Because we criticize the =
old
limitations that does not bind us to the creed of unfettered liberty. I very
much doubt if, when at last the days for the sane complete discussion of our
sexual problems come, it will give us anything at all in the way of
"Liberty," as most people understand that word. In the place of t=
he
rusty old manacles, the chain and shot, the iron yoke, cruel, ill-fitting,
violent implements from which it was yet possible to wriggle and escape to
outlawry, it may be the world will discover only a completer restriction, w=
ill
develop a scheme of neat gyves, light but efficient, beautifully adaptable =
to
the wrists and ankles, never chafing, never oppressing, slipped on and worn
until at last, like the mask of the Happy Hypocrite, they mould the wearer =
to their
own identity. But for all that--gyves!
Let us glance for=
a
moment or so now, in the most tentative fashion, at some of the data for th=
is
inquiry, and then revert from this excursion into general theory to our more
immediate business, to the manner in which our civilized community at prese=
nt
effects the emotional initiation of youth.
The intellectual
trouble in the matter, as it presents itself to me, comes in upon this, that
the question does not lie in one plane. So many discussions ignore this fac=
t,
and deal with it on one plane only. For example, we may take the whole busi=
ness
on the plane of the medical man, ignoring all other considerations. On that
plane it would probably be almost easy to reason out a working system. It n=
ever
has been done by the medical profession, as a whole, which is fairly unders=
tandable,
or by any group of medical men, which is the more surprising, but it would =
be
an extremely interesting thing to have done and a material contribution to =
the
sane discussion of this problem. It would not solve it but it would illumin=
ate
certain aspects. Let the mere physiological problem be taken. We want healt=
hy
children and the best we can get. Let the medical man devise his scheme
primarily for that. Understand we are shutting our eyes to every other
consideration but physical or quasi- physical ones. Imagine the thing done,=
for
example, by a Mr. Francis Galton, who had an absolutely open mind upon all
other questions. Some form of polygamy, marriage of the most transient
description, with reproduction barred to specified types, would probably co=
me
from such a speculation. But, in addition, a number of people who can have =
only
a few children or none are, nevertheless, not adapted physiologically for c=
elibacy.
Conceive the medical man working that problem out upon purely materialistic
lines and with an eye to all physiological and pathological peculiarities. =
The
Tasmanians (now extinct) seem to have been somewhere near the probable resu=
lt.
Then let us take =
one
step up to a second stage of consideration, remaining still materialistic, =
and
with the medical man still as our only guide. We want the children to grow =
up
healthy; we want them to be taken care of. This means homes, homes of some
sort. That may not abolish polygamy, but it will qualify it, it will certai=
nly
abolish any approach to promiscuity that was possible at the lowest stage, =
it
will enhance the importance of motherhood and impose a number of limits upo=
n the
sexual freedoms of men and women. People who have become parents, at any ra=
te,
must be tied to the children and one another. We come at once to much more
definite marriage, to an organized family of some sort, be it only Plato's
state community or something after the Oneida pattern, but with at least a
system of guarantees and responsibilities. Let us add that we want the chil=
dren
to go through a serious educational process, and we find at once still furt=
her
limitations coming in. We discover the necessity of deferring experience, o=
f pushing
back adolescence, of avoiding precocious stimulation with its consequent ar=
rest
of growth. We are already face to face with an enlarged case for decency, f=
or a
system of suppressions and of complicated Taboos.
Directly we let o=
ur
thoughts pass out of this physical plane and rise so high as to consider the
concurrent emotions--and I suppose to a large number of people these are at
least as important as the physical aspects--we come to pride, we come to
preference and jealousy, and so soon as we bring these to bear upon our
physical scheme, crumpling and fissures begin. The complications have multi=
plied
enormously. More especially that little trouble of preferences. These emoti=
ons
we may educate indeed, but not altogether. Neither pride nor preference nor=
jealousy
are to be tampered with lightly. We are making men, we are not planning a
society of regulated slaves; we want fine upstanding personalities, and we
shall not get them if we break them down to obedience in this particular--f=
or
the cardinal expression of freedom in the human life is surely this choice =
of a
mate. There is indeed no freedom without this freedom. Our men and women in=
the
future must feel free and responsible. It seems almost instinctive, at leas=
t in
the youth of the white races, to exercise this power of choice, not simply =
rebelling
when opposition is offered to it, but wanting to rebel; it is a socially go=
od
thing, and a thing we are justified in protecting if the odds are against i=
t,
this passion for making the business one's very own private affair. Our
citizens must not be caught and paired; it will never work like that. But i=
n all
social contrivances we must see to it that the freedoms we give are real fr=
eedoms.
Our youths and maidens as they grow up out of the protection of our first
taboos, grow into a world very largely in the hands of older people; strong=
men
and experienced women are there before them, and we are justified in any
effectual contrivance to save them from being "gobbled up"--again=
st
their real instincts. That works--the reflective man will discover--towards
whittling the previous polygamy to still smaller proportions. Here, indeed,=
our
present arrangements fail most lamentably; each year sees a hideous sacrifi=
ce
of girls, mentally scarcely more than children--to our delicacy in discussi=
on.
We give freedom, and we do not give adequate knowledge, and we punish inexo=
rably.
There are a multitude of women, and not a few men, with lives hopelessly
damaged by this blindfold freedom. So many poor girls, so many lads also, do
not get a fair chance against the adult world. Things mend indeed in this
respect; as one sign the percentage of illegitimate births in England has
almost halved in fifty years, but it is clear we have much to revise before
this leakage to perdition of unlucky creatures, for the most part girls no
worse on the average, I honestly believe--until our penalties make them
so--than other women, ceases. If our age of moral responsibility is high
enough, then our age of complete knowledge is too high. But nevertheless,
things are better than they were, and promise still to mend. All round we r=
aise
the age, the average age at marriage rises, just as, I believe, the average=
age
at misconduct has risen. We may not be approaching a period of universal
morality, but we do seem within sight of a time when people will know what =
they
are doing.
That, however, is
something of a digression. The intelligent inquirer who has squared his
initially materialistic system of morals with the problems arising out of t=
he
necessity of sustaining pride and preference, is then invited to explore an
adjacent thicket of this tortuous subject. It is, we hold, of supreme
importance in our state to sustain in all our citizens, women as well as me=
n, a
sense of personal independence and responsibility. Particularly is this the
case with mothers. An illiterate mother means a backward child, a downtrodd=
en mother
bears a dishonest man, an unwilling mother may even hate her children. Slav=
es
and brutes are the sexes where women are slaves. The line of thought we are
following out in these papers necessarily attaches distinctive importance to
the woman as mother. Our system of morals, therefore, has to make it worth
while and honourable to be a mother; it is particularly undesirable that it
should be held to be right for a woman of exceptional charm or exceptional
cleverness to evade motherhood, unless, perhaps, to become a teacher. A wom=
an
evading her high calling, must not be conceded the same claim upon men's to=
il and
service as the mother-woman; more particularly Lady Greensleeves must not
flaunt it over the housewife. And here also comes the question of the quali=
ty
of jealousy, whether being wife of a man and mother of his children does not
almost necessarily give a woman a feeling of exclusive possession in him, a=
nd
whether, therefore, if we are earnest in our determination not to debase he=
r,
our last shred of polygamy does not vanish. From first to last, of course, =
it
has been assumed that a prolific polygamy alone can be intended, for long
before we have plumbed the bottom of the human heart we shall know enough to
imagine what the ugly and pointless consequences of permitting sterile poly=
gamy
must be.
Then into all this
tangle, whether as a light or an added confusion it is hard to say, comes t=
he
fact that while we are ever apt to talk of what "a woman" feels a=
nd
what "a man" will do, and so contrive our code, there is, indeed,=
no
such woman and no such man, but a vast variety of temperaments and
dispositions, monadic, dyadic, and polymeric souls, and this sort of heart =
and
brain and that. It is only the young fool and the brooding mattoid who beli=
eve
in a special separate science of "women," there are all sorts of
people, and some of each sort are women and some are men. With every stage =
in
educational development people become more varied, or, at least, more consc=
ious
of their variety, more sensitively insistent upon the claim of their indivi=
dualities
over any general rules. Among the peasants of a countryside one may hope to
order homogeneous lives, but not among the people of the coming state. It is
well to sustain a home, it is noble to be a good mother, and splendid to be=
ar
children well and train them well, but we shall get no valid rules until we=
see
clearly that life has other ways by which the future may be served. There a=
re
laws to be made and altered, there are roads and bridges to be built,
figuratively and really; there is not only a succession of flesh and blood =
but
of thought that is going on for ever. To write a fruitful book or improve a
widely used machine is just as much paternity as begetting a son.
The last temporary
raft of a logical moral code goes to pieces at this, and its separated spars
float here and there. So I will confess they float at present in my mind. I
have no System--I wish I had--and I never encountered a system or any unive=
rsal
doctrine of sexual conduct that did not seem to me to be reached by clinging
tight to one or two of these dissevered spars and letting the rest drift
disregarded, making a law for A, B, and C, and pretending that E and F are =
out
of the question. That motherhood is a great and noble occupation for a good
woman, and not to be lightly undertaken, is a manifest thing, and so also t=
hat
to beget children and see them full grown in the world is the common triump=
h of
life, as inconsequence is its common failure. That to live for pleasure is =
not only
wickedness but folly, seems easy to admit, and equally foolish, as Saint Pa=
ul
has intimated, must it be to waste a life of nervous energy in fighting down
beyond a natural minimum our natural desires. That we must pitch our lives =
just
as much as we can in the heroic key, and hem and control mere lasciviousnes=
s as
it were a sort of leprosy of the soul, seems fairly certain. And all that
love-making which involves lies, all sham heroics and shining snares, assur=
edly
must go out of a higher order of social being, for here more than anywhere
lying is the poison of life. But between these data there are great
interrogative blanks no generalization will fill-- cases, situations,
temperaments. Each life, it seems to me, in that intelligent, conscious, so=
cial
state to which the world is coming, must square itself to these things in i=
ts
own way, and fill in the details of its individual moral code according to =
its
needs. So it seems, at least, to one limited thinker.
To be frank, upon
that common ground of decent behaviour, pride and self-respect, health and =
the
heroic habit of thinking, we need for ourselves not so much rules as wisdom,
and for others not, indeed, a foolish and indiscriminate toleration but at
least patience, arrests of judgment, and the honest endeavour to understand.
Now to help the imagination in these judgments, to enlarge and interpret
experience, is most certainly one of the functions of literature. A good
biography may give facts of infinite suggestion, and the great multitude of
novels at present are, in fact, experiments in the science of this central
field of human action, experiments in the "way of looking at" var=
ious
cases and situations. They may be very misleading experiments, it is true, =
done
with adulterated substances, dangerous chemicals, dirty flasks and unsound
balances; but that is a question of their quality and not of their nature, =
they
are experiments for all that. A good novel may become a very potent and
convincing experiment indeed. Books in these matters are often so much quie=
ter
and cooler as counsellors than friends. And there, in truth, is my whole mi=
nd
in this matter.
Meanwhile, as we =
work
each one to solve his own problems, the young people are growing up about u=
s.
§ 2
How do the young people arrive at
knowledge and at their interpretation of these things? Let us for a few mom=
ents
at least, put pretence and claptrap aside, and recall our own youth. Let us
recognize that this complex initiation is always a very shy and secret proc=
ess,
beyond the range of parent and guardian. The prying type of schoolmaster or=
schoolmistress
only drives the thing deeper, and, at the worst, blunders with a hideous
suggestiveness. It is almost an instinct, a part of the natural modesty of =
the
growing young, to hide all that is fermenting in the mind from authoritative
older people. It would not be difficult to find a biological reason for tha=
t.
The growing mind advances slowly, intermittently, with long pauses and sudd=
en
panics, that is the law of its progress; it feels its way through three mai=
n agencies,
firstly, observation, secondly, tentative, confidential talk with
unauthoritative and trusted friends, and thirdly, books. In the present epo=
ch
observation declines relatively to books; books and pictures, these dumb
impersonal initiators, play a larger and a larger part in this great awaken=
ing.
Perhaps for all but the children of the urban poor, the furtive talk also
declines and is delayed; a most desirable thing in a civilizing process that
finds great advantage in putting off adolescence and prolonging the average
life.
Now the furtive t=
alk
is largely beyond our control, only by improving the general texture of our
communal life can we effectually improve the quality of that. But we may be=
ar
in mind that factor of observation, and give it a casting vote in any decis=
ion
upon public decency. That is all too often forgotten. Before Broadbeam, the
popular humorist, for example, flashes his glittering rapier upon the County
Council for suppressing some vulgar obscenity in the music-halls, or tickles
the ribs of a Vigilance Association for its care of our hoardings, he shoul=
d do
his best to imagine the mental process of some nice boy or girl he knows,
"taking it in." To come outright to the essential matter of this
paper, we are all too careless of the quality of the stuff that reaches the
eyes and ears of our children. It is not that the stuff is knowledge, but t=
hat
it is knowledge in the basest and vulgarest colourings, knowledge without t=
he
antiseptic quality of heroic interpretation, debased, suggestive, diseased =
and
contagious knowledge.
How the sexual
consciousness of a great proportion of our young people is being awakened, =
the
curious reader may see for himself if he will expend a few pennies weekly f=
or a
month or so upon the halfpenny or penny "comic" papers which are
bought so eagerly by boys. They begin upon the facts of sex as affairs of
nodding and winking, of artful innuendo and scuffles in the dark. The earne=
st
efforts of Broadbeam's minor kindred to knock the nonsense out of even youn=
ger
people may be heard at almost any pantomime. The Lord Chamberlain's attempt=
s to
stem the tide amaze the English Judges. No scheme for making the best of hu=
man
lives can ignore this system of influences.
What could be don=
e in
a sanely ordered state to suppress this sort of thing?
There immediately
arises the question whether we are to limit art and literature to the sphere
permissible to the growing youth and "young person." So far as sh=
op
windows, bookstalls, and hoardings go, so far as all general publicity goes=
, I
would submit the answer is Yes. I am on the side of the Puritans here,
unhesitatingly. But our adults must not walk in mental leading strings, and
were this world an adult world I doubt if there is anything I would not reg=
ard
as fit to print and publish. But cannot we contrive that our adult literatu=
re
shall be as free as air while the literature and art of the young is sanely=
expurgated?
There is in this
matter a conceivable way, and as it is the principal business of these pape=
rs
to point out and discuss such ways, it may be given here. It will be put, as
for the sake of compact suggestion so much of these papers is put, in the f=
orm
of a concrete suggestion, a sample suggestion as it were. This way, then, i=
s to
make a definition of what is undesirable matter for the minds of young peop=
le,
and to make that cover as much suggestive indecency and coarseness as possi=
ble,
to cover everything, indeed, that is not virginibus puerisque, and to call =
this
matter by some reasonably inoffensive adjective, "adult," for
example. One might speak of "adult" art, "adult"
literature, and "adult" science, and the report of all proceedings
under certain specified laws could be declared "adult" matter. In=
the
old times there was an excellent system of putting "adult" matter
into Latin, and for many reasons one regrets that Latin. But there is a rou=
gh
practical equivalent to putting "adult" matter into Latin even no=
w.
It depends upon the fact that very few young people of the age we wish to
protect, unless they are the children of the imbecile rich, have the spendi=
ng
of large sums of money. Consequently, it is only necessary to state a high
minimum price for periodicals and books containing "adult" matter=
or
"adult" illustrations, and to prosecute everything below that lim=
it,
in order to shut the flood-gates upon any torrent of over-stimulating and d=
ebasing
suggestions there may be flowing now. It should be more clearly recognized =
in
our prosecutions for obscenity, for example, that the gravity of the offenc=
e is
entirely dependent upon the accessibility of the offensive matter to the yo=
ung.
The application of the same method to the music-hall, the lecture-theatre, =
and
the shelves of the public library, and to several other sources of suggesti=
on
would not be impossible. If the manager of a theatre saw fit to produce
"adult" matter without excluding people under the age of eighteen,
let us say, he would have to take his chance, and it would be a good one, o=
f a prosecution.
This latter expedient is less novel than the former, and it finds a sort of
precedent in the legislative restriction of the sale of drink to children a=
nd
the protection of children's morals under specific unfavourable circumstanc=
es.
There is already a
pretty lively sense in our English-speaking communities of the particular
respect due to the young, and it is probable that those who publish these
suggestive and stimulating prints do not fully realize the new fact in our
social body, that the whole mass of the young now not only read but buy rea=
ding
matter. The last thirty or forty years have established absolutely new
relations for our children in this direction. Legislation against free art =
and
free writing is, and one hopes always will be, intensely repugnant to our p=
eoples.
But legislation which laid stress not on the indecorum but on the accessibi=
lity
to the young, which hammered with every clause upon that note, is an altoge=
ther
different matter. We want to make the pantomime writer, the proprietor of t=
he
penny "comic," the billsticker, and the music-hall artist extreme=
ly
careful, punctiliously clean, but we do not want, for example, to pester Mr.
Thomas Hardy.
Yet there is dang=
er
in all this. The suppression of premature and base suggestions must not
overleap itself and suppress either mature thought (which has been given its
hemlock not once but many times on this particular pretext) or the destruct=
ion
of necessary common knowledge. If we begin to hunt for suggestion and indec=
ency
it may be urged we shall end by driving all these things underground. Youth
comes to adult life now between two dangers, vice, which has always threate=
ned
it, and morbid virtue, which would turn the very heart of life to ugliness =
and shame.
How are we, or to come closer to the point, how is the average juryman goin=
g to
distinguish between these three things; between advisable knowledge and
corruptingly presented knowledge, and unnecessary and undesirable knowledge=
? In
practice, under the laws I have sketched, it is quite probable the evil wou=
ld
flourish extremely, and necessary information would be ruthlessly suppresse=
d.
Many of our present laws and provisions for public decency do work in that
manner. The errand-boy may not look at the Venus de Medici, but he can cram=
his
mind with the lore of how "nobs" run after ballet girls, and why =
Lady
X locked the door. One can only plead here, as everywhere, no law, no succi=
nct
statement can save us without wisdom, a growing general wisdom and conscien=
ce,
coming into the detailed administration of whatever law the general purpose=
has
made.
Beside our project
for law and the state, it is evident there is scope for the individual. Cer=
tain
people are in a position of exceptional responsibility. The Newsagents, for
example, constitute a fairly strong trade organization, and it would be easy
for them to think of the boy with a penny just a little more than they do.
Unfortunately such instances as we have had of voluntary censorship will
qualify the reader's assent to this proposition. Another objection may be u=
rged
to this distinction between "adult" and general matter, and that =
is
the possibility that what is marked off and forbidden becomes mysterious and
attractive. One has to reckon with that. Everywhere in this field one must =
go
wisely or fail. But what is here proposed is not so much the suppression of
information as of a certain manner of presenting information, and our inten=
tion
is at the most delay, and to give the wholesome aspect first.
Let us leave noth=
ing
doubtful upon one point; the suppression of stimulus must not mean the
suppression of knowledge. There are things that young people should know, a=
nd
know fully before they are involved in the central drama of life, in the
serious business of love. There should be no horrifying surprises. Sane, cl=
ear,
matter-of-fact books setting forth the broad facts of health and life, the
existence of certain dangers, should come their way. In this matter books, I
would insist, have a supreme value. The printed word may be such a quiet co=
unsellor.
It is so impersonal. It can have no conceivable personal reaction with the
reader. It does not watch its reader's face, it is itself unobtrusively
unabashed and safer than any priest. The power of the book, the possible
function of the book in the modern state is still but imperfectly understoo=
d.
It need not be, it ought not, I think, to be, a book specifically on what o=
ne
calls delicate questions, that would be throwing them up in just the way one
does not want them thrown up; it should be a sort of rationalized and not t=
oo
technical handbook of physiological instruction in the College Library--or =
at home.
Naturally, it would begin with muscular physiology, with digestion, and so =
on.
Other matters would come in their due place and proportion. From first to l=
ast
it would have all that need be known. There is a natural and right curiosit=
y on
these matters, until we chase it underground.
Restriction alone=
is
not half this business. It is inherent in the purpose of things that these
young people should awaken sexually, and in some manner and somewhere that
awakening must come. To ensure they do not awaken too soon or in a fetid
atmosphere among ugly surroundings is not enough. They cannot awaken in a v=
oid.
An ignorance kept beyond nature may corrupt into ugly secrecies, into morose
and sinister seclusions, worse than the evils we have suppressed. Let them
awaken as their day comes, in a sweet, large room. The true antiseptic of t=
he soul
is not ignorance, but a touch of the heroic in the heart and in the
imagination. Pride has saved more men than piety, and even misconduct loses
something of its evil if it is conceived upon generous lines. There lurks a
capacity for heroic response in all youth, even in contaminated youth. Befo=
re
five-and-twenty, at any rate, we were all sentimentalists at heart.
And the way to br=
ing
out these responses?
Assuredly it is n=
ot
by sermons on Purity to Men Only and by nasty little pamphlets of
pseudo-medical and highly alarming information stuffed into clean young han=
ds
[Footnote: See Clouston's Mental Diseases, fifth edition, p. 535, for insan=
ity
caused by these pamphlets; see also p. 591 et seq. for "adolescent&quo=
t; literature.]--ultra
"adult" that stuff should be--but in the drum and trumpet style t=
he
thing should be done. There is a mass of fine literature to-day wherein love
shines clean and noble. There is art telling fine stories. There is a
possibility in the Theatre. Probably the average of the theatre-goer is und=
er
rather than over twenty-two. Literature, the drama, art; that is the sort of
food upon which the young imagination grows stout and tall. There is the
literature and art of youth that may or may not be part of the greater
literature of life, and upon this mainly we must depend when our children p=
ass
from us into these privacies, these dreams and inquiries that will make them
men and women. See the right stuff is near them and the wrong stuff as far =
as possible
away, chase cad and quack together, and for the rest, in this matter--leave
them alone.
IX - THE ORGANIZATION OF =
THE
HIGHER EDUCATION
When we digressed to the general qu=
estion
of the political, social, and moral atmosphere in which the English-speaking
citizen develops, we left the formal education of the average child, whose
development threads through these papers and holds them together, at about =
the
age of fifteen and at the end of the process of Schooling. We have now to c=
arry
on that development to adult citizenship. It is integral in the New Republi=
can
idea that the process of Schooling, which is the common atrium to all public
service, should be fairly uniform throughout the social body, that although=
the
average upper-class child may have all the advantages his conceivably better
mental inheritance, his better home conditions, and his better paid and less
overworked teachers may give him, there shall be no disadvantages imposed u=
pon
the child of any class, there shall be no burking of the intellectual educa=
tion
for any purpose whatever. To keep poor wretches in serfdom on the land by d=
epriving
them of all but the most rudimentary literary education, as a very consider=
able
element in the new Nature Study Movement certainly intends, is altogether
antagonistic to New Republican ideas, and there must be no weeding out of
capable and high-minded teachers by filtering them through grotesque and
dishonouring religious tests--dishonouring because compulsory, whatever the
real faith of the teacher may be. And at the end of the Schooling period th=
ere
must begin a process of sorting in the mass of the national youth--as far as
possible, regardless of their social origins--that will go on throughout li=
fe. For
the competition of public service must constitute the Battle for Existence =
in
the civilized state. All-round inferiority in school life --failure not sim=
ply
at this or that or at the total result (which, indeed, may be due very ofte=
n to
the lopsidedness of exceptional gifts) but failure all along the line--is a
mark of essential inferiority. A certain proportion of boys and girls will =
have
shown this inferiority, will have done little with any of their chances in =
or
out of school during their school life, and these--when they are poorer-cla=
ss children--will
very naturally drop out of the educational process at this stage and pass i=
nto
employment suited to their capacity, employment which should not carry with=
it
any considerable possibility of prolific marriage. A really well-contrived
leaving-school examination--and it must be remembered that the theory and
science of examinations scarcely exists as yet--an examination which would =
take
account of athletic development and moral influence (let us say provisional=
ly
by the vote of fellow-pupils) and which would be so contrived as to make
specially high quality in one department as good as all-round worth--could
effect this first classification. It would throw out the worst of the duffe=
rs
and fools and louts all along the social scale. What is to become of the
rejected of the upper and wealthy class is, I admit, a difficult problem as
things are to-day. At present they carry a loutish ingredient to the public
schools, to the Army, to Oxford and Cambridge, and it is open to question
whether it would not be well to set aside one public school, one especially
costly university, and one gentlemen's regiment of an attractively smart ty=
pe, into
which this mass of expensive slackness might be drained along a channel of
specially high fees, low standards, and agreeable social conditions. That,
however, is a quite subsidiary question in this discussion. A day may come,=
as
I have already suggested, when it will be considered as reasonable to insist
upon a minimum mental qualification for the administration of property as f=
or
any other form of power in the state. Pride and their many advantages--of w=
hich
one is quite conceivably an average essential superiority--will probably en=
sure
a satisfactory result from the Schooling process in the case of a much grea=
ter
proportion of better-class than of lower-class boys and girls. [Footnote: In
most big public schools, I am told, there is a system of superannuation abo=
ut
sixteen, but I know nothing of the provision for those who are weeded out.]=
From the mass who
show a satisfactory result at the end of the Schooling process, the functio=
nal
manhood and womanhood of our peoples have to be developed, and we have now =
to
discuss the nature of the second phase of education, the phase that should =
be
the mental parallel and accompaniment of physical adolescence in all the
citizens who are to count for strength in the state. There is a break in the
whole development of the human being at this age, and it may very well be p=
aralleled
by a break in methods and subjects of instruction. In Great Britain, in the
case of the wealthier classes, schooling and puerile discipline is prolonged
altogether too far, largely through the gross incapacity of our secondary
teachers. These men are unable, boring away day after day, week after week,
year after year, with vain repetitions, imbecile breaks and new beginnings,
through all the vast period from eleven or twelve until twenty, to achieve =
that
mastery of Latin and Greek which was once the necessary preliminary to
education, and which has become at last, through the secular decline in
scholastic energy and capacity due to the withdrawal of interest in these
studies, the unattainable educational ideal. These classical pedagogues,
however, carry the thing up to three or four and twenty in the Universities=
-- though
it is inconceivable that any language spoken since the antediluvian age of
leisure, can need more than ten years to learn--and if they could keep the =
men
until forty or fifty they would still be fumbling away at the keys to the r=
oom
that was ransacked long ago. But with educated men as teachers and practical
handbooks to help, and practical examiners to guide them, there is no reason
whatever why the great mass of the linguistic training of the citizen, in t=
he
use of his own and any other necessary language, should not be done for good
and all by fourteen, why he should not have a fairly complete mastery of fo=
rm
and quantity through mathematical training and drawing, and why the way sho=
uld
not be clear and immediate for the development of that adult mental edifice=
of
which this is the foundation.
By fourteen the p=
ower
of abstract reasoning and of an analytical treatment of things is in existe=
nce,
the learner is now less to be moulded and more to be guided than he was. We
want now to give this mind we have established, the most stimulating and
invigorating training we can, we want to give it a sane coherent view of ou=
r knowledge
of the universe in relation to itself, and we want to equip it for its own
special work in the world. How, on the basis of the Schooling we have
predicated, are these ends to be attained?
Now let us first =
have
it perfectly clear that this second stage in development lies no more compl=
etely
within the idea of College than the former lay completely within the idea of
School. In the general discussion of these things we are constantly faced by
the parallel error to that we have tried to dissipate in regard to schools,=
the
error that the Professor and his Lecture and (in the case of experimental
sciences) his Laboratory make, or can make, the man, just precisely in the =
same
way that the Schoolmaster or Schoolmistress is supposed to be omnipotent in=
the
education of the boy or girl. And, unhappily, the Professor, unless he is a=
man
of quite exceptional mental power for a Professor, shares this groundless
opinion. The Schoolmaster is under-educated in regard to his work, and
incapable of doing it neatly; the Professor is too often over-specialized a=
nd incapable
of forming an intelligent, modest idea of his place in education; and the s=
ame
consequence flows from the defect of either, an attempt to use an improperly
large portion of the learner's time and energy. Over-direction, and what one
may call intellectual sectarianism, are faults from which few College cours=
es
are free to- day. The Professor stands between his students and books, he s=
ays
in lectures in his own way what had far better be left for other men's book=
s to
tell, he teaches his beliefs without a court of appeal. Students are kept
writing up their notes of his not very brilliant impromptus, and familiariz=
ing
themselves with his mental constitution instead of the subject of study. Th=
ey
get no training in the use of books as sources of knowledge and ideas, albe=
it
such a training is one of the most necessary of all acquisitions for an
efficient citizen, and whatever discussion the modern student indulges in is
all too often treated rather as presumption to be discouraged than as the m=
ost necessary
and hopeful of mental processes. Our Universities and Colleges are still but
imperfectly aware of the recent invention of the Printed Book; and its
intelligent use in this stage of education has made little or no headway
against their venerable traditions. That things are only understood by being
turned over in the mind and looked at from various points of view is, of
course, altogether too modern a conception for our educationists. At the Lo=
ndon
Royal College of Science, for example, which is an exceptionally new and
efficient College, there is no properly organized escape from the orthodoxy=
of the
lecture-theatre, no circulating library whatever available to the students,=
no
library, that is, which will ensure a copious supply and exchange of the be=
st
books on each subject, and, consequently, even to look up an original paper
that has been quoted or discussed, involves an expenditure of time that is
practically prohibitive of the thing as a general practice. [Footnote: There
are three very fine libraries in the adjacent South Kensington Museum,
especially available to students, but, like almost all existing libraries, =
they
are managed in most respects on lines conceived when a copy of a book was an
almost unique thing made specially by the copyist's hand. However much a bo=
ok
is in demand, however cheap its price of publication may be, no library in =
England,
unless it is a modern subscription library, ever gets duplicate copies. Thi=
s is
the cause of the dearness of serious books; they are bought as rarities, and
have to be sold in the same spirit. But when libraries learn to buy by the
dozen and the hundred, there is no reason why the sort of book now publishe=
d at
10s. 6d. should not be sold at a shilling from the beginning.] The Professo=
rs,
being busy and important men, lecture from their particular standpoints, and
having lectured, bolt; there is no provision whatever for the intelligent d=
iscussion
of knotty points, and the only way to get it is to buttonhole a demonstrator
and induce him to neglect his task of supervising prescribed
"practical" work in favour of educational talk. Let us, therefore=
, in
view of this state of affairs, deal with the general question how a branch =
of
thought and knowledge may be most beneficially studied under modern conditi=
ons,
before discussing the more particular question what subjects should or shou=
ld
not be undertaken.
Now the full
statement not only of what is known of a subject, but of its difficulties, =
dark
places, and conflicting aspects should be luminously set forth in the Colle=
ge
text-books, large, well-written, well-illustrated books by one or several
hands, continually revised and kept abreast of the advance of knowledge by
capable and critical-minded young men. Such books are essential and cardina=
l in
proper modern teaching. The country may be speckled with universities until
they are as thick as public-houses, and each may be provided with its score=
or so
of little lecturers, and if it does not possess one or more good general
text-books in each principal subject then all this simply means that a great
number of inadequate, infertile little text-books are being dictated, one by
each of these lecturers. Not the course of lectures, but the sound, full
text-book should be the basis of College instruction, and this should be
supplemented by a greater or lesser number of more or less controversial
pamphlets or books, criticising, expanding or correcting its matter or putt=
ing
things in a different and profitable way. This text-book should be parallel=
ed
in the case of experimental science by a hand-book of illustrative and
explanatory laboratory work. Portions of the book could be set for preparat=
ion
at each stage in the course with appropriate experiments, students could su=
bmit
difficulties in writing to be dealt with by the Professor in conversational
lectures, and the reading of the students could be checked by periodic
examinations upon cardinal parts, and supplemented, if these examinations
showed it to be necessary, by dissertations upon special issues of difficul=
ty.
Upon the matters that were distinctively his "subject," or upon h=
is
points of disagreement with the general issues of the book, the Professor m=
ight
lecture in the accepted way. This is surely the proper method of work for
adolescent students in any subject, in philology just as much as in compara=
tive
anatomy, and in history just as much as in economics. The cheapening of
printing, paper, and, above all, of illustration has done away with the las=
t excuse
for the vocal course of instruction and the lecturer's diagrams. But it has=
not
done away with them.
It is one of the =
most
curious of human phenomena, this persistence of tradition against what one
might have imagined the most destructive facts, and in no connection is this
aspect more remarkable than in all that concerns the higher stages of
education. One might think that somewhere in the seventeenth century it wou=
ld
have been recognized at the Seats of Learning that thought and knowledge we=
re
progressive things, and that a periodic revision of courses and syllabuses,=
a periodic
recasting of work and scope, a re-arrangement of chairs and of the applianc=
es
of the faculties, was as necessary to the continued healthy existence of a
University as periodic meals and sleep and exercise are necessary to a man.=
But
even today we are founding Universities without any provision for this
necessary change, and the chances are that in a century or so they will pre=
sent
just as much backwardness and illiteracy as do the ordinary graduation
organizations of Oxford and Cambridge today, that a hundred years from now =
the
past graduates of ripe old Birmingham, full of spite against newfangled thi=
ngs
"no fellow can understand," will be crowding up to vote against t=
he
substitution of some more modern subject for "Huxley"--"Huxl=
ey"
they will call the subject, and not Comparative Anatomy, on the model of
"Euclid"--or for the retention of compulsory "Commercial
Geography of the Nineteenth Century," or "Longhand Bookkeeping&qu=
ot;
in the Little Go. (And should any germinating noble founder read these page=
s I
would implore him with all the earnestness that is possible in printed matt=
er,
to provide that every fifty years, let us say, the whole of his prospective
foundation shall go into solution, shall re-apportion its funds and reorgan=
ize
the entire mechanism of its work.)
The idea that a
text-book should be regularly reset and reprinted is still quite foreign to=
the
Professorial mind, as, indeed, is the idea that the care of text-books and
publications is a University function at all. No one is startled by a propo=
sal
to apply £800 or £1000 a year to a new chair in any subject, bu=
t to
apply that sum yearly as a standing charge to the revision and perfection o=
f a
specific text-book would seem, even today, quite fantastically extravagant =
to most
University men. Yet what could be more obviously helpful to sound and thoro=
ugh
teaching than for a University, or a group of Universities, to sustain a
Professor in each of the chief subjects of instruction, whose business woul=
d be
neither teaching as it is now understood, nor research, but the critical and
exhaustive editing of the College text- book of his subject, a text-book wh=
ich
would stand in type at the University Press, which would be revised annually
and reprinted annually, primarily for the use of the matriculated students =
of
the University and incidentally for publication. His business would be not =
only
to bring the work up to date and parallel with all the newest published
research and to invite and consider proposals of contributions and footnotes
from men with new views and new matter, but also to substitute for obscure
passages fuller and more lucid expositions, to cut down or relegate to smal=
ler
type passages of diminishing importance and to introduce fresh and more
efficient illustrations, and his work would be carried on in consultation w=
ith the
General Editor of the University Press who would also be a specialist in mo=
dern
printing and book-making, and who would be constantly taking up, trying, and
adopting fresh devices of arrangement, and newer, better, and cheaper metho=
ds
of printing and illustration. It would not merely raise the general efficie=
ncy
of the College work of adolescents very greatly to have this series of text=
books
living and growing in each subject at one or (better) at several Universiti=
es
or grouped Universities, but in each subject the periodic change in these b=
ooks
would afford a most valuable corrective to the influence of specialized wor=
k by
keeping the specialist worker easily in touch with the current presentation=
of
his science as a whole.
The text-book,
however good, and the lecturer, however able, are only one of two necessary
factors in College work, the reciprocal element is the students' activity.
Unless the students are actively engaged not simply in taking in what they =
are
told, but in rearranging it, turning it over, trying and testing it, they a=
re
doing little good. We recognize this quite abundantly in the laboratory
nowadays, but we neglect it enormously in the more theoretical study of a
subject. The facts of a subject if it is a science may be got at in the mos=
t thorough
way by handling in the laboratory, but the ideas of a subject must be handl=
ed
in discussion, reproduction and dispute. Examinations, examinations by teac=
hers
who understand this very fine art, in which the student is obliged to resta=
te,
apply, and use the principles of his subject, are of the utmost value in
keeping the mind active and not simply receptive. They are just as good and=
as
vitally necessary as examination papers which merely demand definitions and
lists and bald facts are bad. And then there might be discussions--if the
Professor were clever enough to conduct them. If the students of a class co=
uld
be induced to submit propositions for discussion, from which a topic could =
be
selected, and could then be made to prepare for a disputation to which all
would have to contribute, with the Professor as a controlling influence in =
the
chair to check facts and logic and to conclude, it would have the value of a
dozen lectures. But Professors who are under the burthen of perhaps ninety =
or a
hundred lectures a year cannot be expected to do anything of this sort.
Directed reading, conferences on knotty points, special lectures followed by
the questioning of the lecturer, discussions upon matters of opinion,
laboratory work when needful, fairly frequent test examinations, and a final
examination for places, are the proper ingredients of a good modern College
course, and in the necessity of leaving the Professor's energies free for t=
he direction
of all this really educational work, lies another reason for that complete,
explicit, well-arranged text-book upon which I am insisting.
Coming back now f=
rom
these general propositions about books and teaching to our mass of young pe=
ople
about fifteen years old, our adolescent nation, who have accomplished their
Schooling and are ready for the College phase, we have to consider what
subjects they are to be taught, and how far they are to go with these subje=
cts.
Whether they are to give all or part of their time to these College studies,
whether they are going to pursue them in evening classes or before breakfas=
t in
the morning or during the livelong day is a question of secondary convenien=
ces
that may very well be disregarded here. We are concerned with the general
architecture now, and not with the tactical necessities of the clerk of the
works. [Footnote: But I may perhaps point out here how integral to a sane
man-making scheme is the raising of the minimum age at which children may w=
ork.
A day will come, I hope, when even the partial employment of children under
fifteen will be prohibited, and when, as Mr. Sidney Webb suggested some time
ago, employment up to the age of twenty-one will be limited to so few hours=
a
week--his suggestion was thirty--as to leave a broad margin for the more or
less compulsory college work and physical training that are becoming essent=
ial
to the modern citizen.]
We need waste lit=
tle
time nowadays, I submit, in disposing of Encyclopaedic conceptions of Colle=
ge
Education, conceptions that played a part in almost all educational
schemes--Bentham's stupendous Chrestomathia is the fearful example--before =
the
middle nineteenth century. We are all agreed in theory, at any rate, that to
know one subject or group of subjects exhaustively is far better than a uni=
versal
smattering, that the ideal of education is more particularly "all about
something" with "something about everything" in a very subor=
dinate
place. The fact remains that the normal curriculum of our higher schools and
colleges is a pointless non-educational miscellany, and the average graduat=
e in
Arts knows something, but not enough, of science, mathematics, Latin, Greek,
literature, and history; he has paid tribute to several conflicting schemes=
of
education, and is a credit to none. We have to get rid of this state of
affairs, and we have to provide (i) a substantial mental training which sha=
ll
lead at last to a broad and comprehensive view of things, and which shall b=
e a training
in generalization, abstraction, and the examination of evidence, stimulating
and disciplining the imagination and developing the habit of patient,
sustained, enterprising and thorough work, and (ii) we have to add a general
culture, a circle of ideas about moral, aesthetic, and social matters that
shall form a common basis for the social and intellectual life of the
community. The former of these two elements must at some stage develop--aft=
er
two or five or seven or some such period of years, which may be different in
different cases--into the special training for the definite function of the
individual in the social body, whether as engineer, business manager, docto=
r,
priest, journalist, public administrator, professional soldier, or what not=
. And
before we ask what must constitute (i) it may be well to define the relation
between the first and the second section of the College stage of education.=
It is (i) that wi=
ll
constitute the essential work of the College, which will be the especial
concern of the Professorial staff, which will "count" in examinat=
ions,
and I conceive it as occupying typically four full working days in the week,
four good, hard-driving days, and no more, of the students' time. The remai=
ning
three, so far as they are not engaged by physical exercise, military traini=
ng,
and mere amusement, must be given to (ii), which I imagine an altogether mo=
re
general, discursive, various, and spontaneous series of activities. To put =
the
thing briefly, with the use of a convenient slang word (i), is
"grind," and (ii) is general culture, elements that are altogether
too greatly confused in adolescent education. A large number of people will
consider it right and proper that (ii) on the seventh day of the week should
become devotional exercise or religious thought and discussion. I would sub=
mit
that under (ii) there should be formally recognized certain extremely valua=
ble
educational influences that are at present too often regarded as irregular =
or
improper invasions of school and college work, the collegiate debating soci=
ety,
for example, private reading, experimental science outside the curriculum, =
and
essays in various arts. It should be possible to provide a certain definite
number of hours weekly in which the student should be required merely to sh=
ow
that he was doing something of a developmental kind, he would have his choi=
ce
between the Library--every College ought to have a good and not too priggis=
hly
conceived Library, in which he might either read or write--or the music mas=
ter,
the debating society, the museum, the art studio, the dramatic society, or =
any
concern of the sort that the College authorities had satisfactory reason for
supposing to be alive and efficient. In addition (ii) should include certain
minor but necessary studies not included in (i), but pursued for all that w=
ith
a certain insistence, taught or directed, and controlled perhaps by
examinations. If, for example, the acquisition of a foreign language was a =
part
of the preliminary schooling, it could be kept alive by a more fastidious s=
tudy
in the higher grade. For the making of the good, all-round, average citizen=
(i)
will be the essential educational factor, but for the boy or girl with a da=
sh
of genius (ii) will rise from the level of culture to that of a great oppor=
tunity.
What subject or g=
roup
of subjects is to constitute (i)? There are at least three, and quite proba=
bly
beyond the very limited range of my knowledge there are other, arrangements=
of
studies that can be contrived to supply this essential substantial part of =
the
College course. Each suffices completely, and I would hesitate to express a=
ny preference
for one or the other. Each has its special direction towards certain sorts =
of
adult function, and for that reason it may be suggested that the secondary
education of an English-speaking country might very well afford all three (=
or
more) types of secondary course. The small schools might specialize upon the
type locally most desirable, the larger might group its triplicate (or
quadruplicate) system of sustained and serious courses about a common Libra=
ry
and the common arrangements for Section ii. of the College scheme.
The first of these
possible College courses, and the one most likely to be useful and fruitful=
for
the mass of the male population in a modern community, is an expansion of t=
he
Physics of the Schooling stage. It may be very conveniently spoken of as the
Natural Philosophy, course. Its backbone will be an interlocking arrangemen=
t of
Mathematics, Physics, and the principles of Chemistry, and it will take up =
as illustrative
and mind-expanding exercises, Astronomy, Geography, and Geology conceived a=
s a
general history of the Earth. Holding the whole together will be the theory=
of
the Conservation of Energy in its countless aspects and a speculative
discussion of the constitution of matter. A certain minimum of Historical a=
nd
Political reading and of general "Library" would be insisted upon=
in
Section ii. This could be made a quite noble and spacious course of instruc=
tion
extending over from three to five years, from fourteen or fifteen up to
eighteen or twenty-one (or even longer in the case of those partially
employed); its less successful products would drop out--it might be before =
completion--to
take up the work of more or less skilled artisans and technical workers, and
its more successful ones would pass some of them into the technical colleges
for special industries with a view to business direction, into special study
for the engineering trades, for the profession of soldiering, [Footnote: I =
may
perhaps explain that my conception of military organization is a universal
service of citizens --non-professional soldiers--who will be trained--possi=
bly
in boyhood and youth, to shoot very well indeed, to ride either horses or b=
icycles,
and to take up positions and move quickly and easily in organized bodies, a=
nd,
in addition, a special graduated profession of soldiers who will be in their
various ranks engineers, gunners, special-force men of various sorts, and, =
in
the higher ranks, masters of all the organization and methods necessary for=
the
rapid and effective utilization of the non-professional manhood of the coun=
try,
of volunteers, militia, or short-service enlistment levies, drawn from this
general supply, and of all the machinery of communication, provisioning, an=
d so
forth. They will not be necessarily the "social superiors" of the=
ir
commands, but they will naturally exercise the same authoritative command in
warfare that a doctor does in a sick-room.] or for the naval and mercantile
services, or into research and the literature of science. Some also would p=
ass
on to study for the profession of medicine through more special work in
Chemistry and Physiology, and some with a proclivity for drawing and design
would become architects, designers of appliances, and the like. The idea of=
the
ordinary development of this course is not so very remote from what already
exists in Great Britain as the Organized Science School, but, as with all t=
hese
courses, it would be done in varying degrees of thoroughness and extension
under varying conditions. This is the first of my three alternative College
courses.
The second course
will probably seem less acceptable to many readers, but all who are qualifi=
ed
to speak will testify to its enormous educational value. It is what one may
speak of as the Biological Course. Just as the conception of Energy will be=
the
central idea of the Natural Philosophy course, so the conception of Organic
Evolution will be the central idea of the Biological Course. A general revi=
ew
of the whole field of Biology--not only of the Natural History of the prese=
nt
but of the geological record--in relation to the known laws and the various
main theories of the evolutionary process will be taken, and in addition so=
me
special department, either the Comparative Anatomy of the Vertebrata chiefl=
y,
or of the plants chiefly, or of several Invertebrated groups chiefly, will =
be
exhaustively worked out in relation to these speculations. The first of the=
se
alternatives is not only probably the most invigorating mental exercise of =
the
three but bears also more directly upon the practical concerns of life. Phy=
siology
will be taken up in relation to this special exhaustive study, and the
"Elementary Physics of the Schooling" stage will be prolonged up =
into
a treatment of Chemistry with especial reference to biological problems.
Through such a course as this students might pass to the study of medicine =
just
as well as through Natural Philosophy, and the medical profession would pro=
fit
by the clash of the two types of student. The biological course, with its
insistence upon heredity and physiological facts, would also give the very =
best
and gravest preparation in the world for the practical concerns of motherho=
od.
From it students would pass on illuminated to the study of psychology, phil=
osophical
science, and educational method. The training in the discussion of broad
generalization, and much of the fact involved, would be a most excellent
preliminary to special theological study and also to the advanced study of
economics and political science. From this course also artists of various s=
orts
would escape through the avenue of Section ii. which, by the by, would have=
to
involve Historical Reading. So much for my second suggested College course.=
The third of these
three alternative courses is the History course, done extensively in relati=
on
to general geography, economic theory, and the general evolution of the wor=
ld,
and intensively in relation to British or American history, and perhaps to =
some
particular period. Out of it would spring a thorough study of the developme=
nt
of English literature and also of the legal systems of the English-speaking=
peoples.
This course also would be a way of approach to philosophical science, to
theology, to the thorough study of economic and political science, and poss=
ibly
it would contribute a larger proportion of its students to imaginative
literature than either of the two preceding courses. It would also be the
natural preliminary course to the special study of law and so a source of
politicians. In the Section ii. of this course a light but lucid treatment =
of
the great generalizations of physical and biological science would be
desirable. And from this course also the artist would break away.
Conceivably there=
are
other courses. The course in Mathematics as one sees it given to the Cambri=
dge Tripos
men, and what is called the Classical course, will occur to the reader. Few
people, however, are to be found who will defend the exclusively mathematic=
al
"grind" as a sound intellectual training, and so it need not be
discussed here. The case, however, is different with the classical course. =
It
is alleged by those who have had the experience that to learn Latin and Gre=
ek
more or less thoroughly and then to stumble through one or two Latin and Gr=
eek authors
"in the original" has an educational value surpassing any conceiv=
able
alternative. There is a mysterious benefit from one's private translation
however bad that no other translation however good can impart. Plato, for
example, who has certainly in the very best translations, quite perceptibly=
no
greater mind than Lord Bacon, Newton, Darwin, or Adam Smith, becomes god-li=
ke
to all who pass beyond the Little-Go. The controversy is as old as the Batt=
le
of the Books, a quite interminable wrangle, which I will not even attempt to
summarize here. For my own part I believe all this defence of the classics =
on
the part of men with classical education is but one more example of that hu=
man
weakness that splashes Oxford metaphysical writings with needless tags and
shreds of Greek and set Demetrius the silversmith bawling in the streets. If
the reader is of another opinion there is no need to convert him in this
present argument, provided only that he will admit the uselessness of his h=
igh
mystery for the training of the larger mass of modern men. By his standards=
they
are beneath it. A convention upon this issue between the two parties theref=
ore
is attainable. Let us admit the classical course for the parents who like a=
nd
can afford this sort of thing for their sons and daughters. Let us withdraw=
all
objections to its endowment, unless it is quite excessive endowment. Let the
classical be the senior service, and the classical professor, to use his own
queer way of putting things, primus inter pares. That will make four courses
altogether, the Classical, the Historical, the Biological, and the Physical,
for one or more of which all the secondary schools and colleges in that gre=
at
English-speaking community at which the New Republic aims should be organiz=
ed.
[Footnote: One may, however, suggest one other course as possible under spe=
cial
conditions. There is one sort of art that requires not only a very rigorous=
and
exhaustive training, but also an early commencement, and that is music, at =
once
the most isolated and the most universal of arts. Exceptional gifts in the =
direction
of music will have appeared in the schooling stage, and it is quite conceiv=
able
that the college phase for those who are destined for a musical career shou=
ld
have as its backbone a "grind" in the theory and practice of musi=
c,
with languages and general culture relegated to a Section ii.]
It may be objected
that this is an idealized proposal, and that existing conditions, which are=
, of
course, the material out of which new conditions are to be made do not pres=
ent
anything like this form. As a matter of fact, if only the reader will allow=
for
a certain difference in terminology, they do. What I have here called Schoo=
ling
is, so far as the age of the pupils go, typically presented in Great Britai=
n by
what is called the elementary school, and in America by the public school, =
and
certain schools that unanalytical people in England, mistaking a social for=
an
educational difference, seem disposed to class with secondary schools, the
inferior Grammar Schools, the cheaper private schools, and what are called =
Preparatory
Schools, [Footnote: As things are, there is no doubt a considerable advanta=
ge
in the child from a good home going on to a good preparatory school instead=
of entering
a public elementary school, and the passage above must not be misread as a =
sweeping
condemnation of such establishments.] are really also elementary schools. T=
he
latter have more social pretension and sometimes far less efficiency than a
Government Elementary School, but that is all the difference. All these sch=
ools
admit of a gradual approximation to the ideal of schooling already set fort=
h in
the sixth of these papers. Some are already within a measureable distance of
that ideal. And above these elementary schools, above the School grade prop=
er,
and answering to what is here called College, there is a great variety of d=
ay
and evening schools of the most varied description which agree all of them =
in
the presentation of a second phase in the educational process beginning abo=
ut
the age of thirteen to sixteen and going on to nineteen and twenty. In Great
Britain such institutions are sometimes called secondary schools and someti=
mes
colleges, and they have no distinct boundary line to separate them from the
University proper, on the one hand, or the organized Science Schools and th=
e Higher
Grade Board Schools and evening classes of the poorer sort. The Universities
and medical schools are, indeed, hampered with work quite similar to that of
secondary schools and which the secondary schools have failed to do, the
Cambridge undergraduate before his Little-Go, the London University medical
student before his Preliminary Scientific Examination, are simply doing the
belated work of this second stage. And there is, I doubt not, a similar vag=
ue
complexity in America. But through the fog something very like the boundary
line here placed about fourteen is again and again made out; not only the
general requirements for efficient education, but the trend of present tend=
ency
seems to be towards a scheme of three stages in which a first stage of nine=
or
ten years of increasingly serious Schooling (Primary Education), from a very
light beginning about five up to about fourteen, is to be followed by a sec=
ond
stage of College education (Secondary Education), from fourteen or sixteen =
to
an upward boundary determined by class and various facilities, and this is =
to
be succeeded by a third stage, which we will now proceed to consider in det=
ail.
Let us make it cl=
ear
at once that this third stage is a much ampler thing than the graduation or
post graduation work of a university. It may or it may not include that as =
an
ingredient. But the intention is to express all those agencies (other than
political, social, and economic forces, and the suggestions that arise from
them), that go to increase and build up the mental structure of the man or
woman. This includes the pulpit, so far as it is still a vehicle for the im=
portation
of ideas and emotions, the stage, books that do anything more than pass the
time, newspapers, the Grove and the Agora. These all, in greater or lesser
degrees, work powerfully together to make the citizen. They work most
powerfully, of course, in those plastic unsettled years that last from
adolescence to the middle twenties, but often in very slowly diminishing
intensity right into the closing decades of middle age. However things may =
have
been in the quieter past when newspapers did not exist, when creeds were ri=
gid,
plays mere spectacles to be seen only "in Town," and books rare, =
the
fact remains that to-day everybody goes much further and learns far more th=
an
any of the professedly educational agencies can be held accountable for. Th=
ere was
a time, perhaps, when a man really did "settle down" intellectual=
ly,
at the end of his days of learning, when the only way-- outside the librari=
es
and households of a few princely personages--to go on thinking and to
participate in the secular development of ideas, was to go to a University =
and
hear and dispute. But those days have gone for a hundred years at least. Th=
ey
have gone by, and the strange thing is that a very large proportion of those
who write and talk about education have not discovered they have gone by, a=
nd
still think and talk of Universities as though they were the only sources a=
nd repositories
of wisdom. They conjure up a vision in my mind of an absent-minded
water-seller, bearing his precious jars and crying his wares knee-deep, and
going deeper into a rising stream. Or if that does not seem just to the
University in the past, an image of a gardener, who long ago developed a no=
vel
variety of some great flower which has now scattered its wind-borne seed
everywhere, but who still proffers you for sale in a confidential,
condescending manner a very little, very dear packet of that universal
commodity. Until the advent of Mr. Ewart (with his Public Libraries' Act), =
Mr.
Passmore Edwards, and Mr. Andrew Carnegie, the stream of endowment for rese=
arch
and teaching flowed just as exclusively to the Universities as it did in Tu=
dor times.
Let us deal, then,
first with the finally less important and more formal portion of the third
stage in the educational process; that is to say, with the University Cours=
e.
One may conceive that so far as positive teaching and learning go, a
considerable proportion of the population will never pass beyond the second
stage at all. They will fail to keep up in the course of that stage, or they
will branch off into the special development of some special aptitude. The
failures will gravitate into positions a little better perhaps, but analogo=
us
to those taken up by the failures of the Schooling phase. The common clerks=
and
common shop-hands, for example, would come out here. The others, who fall o=
ut
without completing their College course, but who may not be College failure=
s at
all, will be all sorts of artists and specializing persons of that type. A
great many girls, for economic and other reasons, will probably never get
beyond the College stage. They will pass from the Biological and Historical
courses into employment, or marry, or enter domestic life. But what may fin=
ally
become a much larger proportion of New Republican citizens will either from=
the
beginning, taking the College course in the evening, or after a year or so =
of
full attendance at the College course, start also upon the third- grade wor=
k,
the preparation for the upper ranks of some technical and commercial
employment, for the systematic and liberal instruction that will replace the
old rule-of-thumb apprenticeship. One can imagine a great variety of method=
s of
combining the apprenticeship phase of serious occupation with the College
course. Many waking up to the demands of life may do better for themselves =
with
a desperately clutched College course of evening classes than others who wi=
ll
have progressed comfortably in day Colleges. There should be opportunity by=
means
of scholarship openings for such cases of a late awakening to struggle back
into the higher education. There may be every gradation from such students =
to
those who will go completely and exhaustively through the College and who w=
ill
then go on at one and twenty or two and twenty to equally complete and
exhaustive work in the third grade. One imagines the third grade in its
completeness as a most varied choice of thorough studies carried on for thr=
ee
or four years after eighteen or twenty-one, special schools of medicine, la=
w,
engineering, psychology, and educational science, economics and political
science, economics and commercial science, philosophy and theology, and
physical science. Quite apart from the obvious personal limitation, the dis=
cussion
of the method of dealing specifically with each of these subjects would be =
too
diversified and special a theme to occupy me now. The larger fact to which
attention has to be given is this: that all these studies and all the techn=
ical
study and such like preparation at lower levels of the third stage must be =
as
it were floating in a common body of Thought, which is the unifying princip=
le,
the common initiative, the real common life of the truly civilized state, a=
nd
that this body of Thought is no longer to be contained within the form of a=
University.
It is the larger of the two things. And the last question, therefore, in th=
ese
speculations is the general organization of that body of Thought, that is to
say of contemporary literature, using the word in its widest sense to cover=
all
that is good in journalism, all untechnical speculative, philosophical writ=
ing,
all that is true and new in the drama, in poetry, fiction or any other
distinctly literary form, and all scientific publication that is not purely=
a
matter of recording or technical working out, all scientific publication th=
at
is, that deals with general ideas.
There was a time =
when
the higher education was conceived of as entirely a matter of learning. To
endow chairs and teachers, and to enable promising scholars to come and hear
the latter was the complete organization of the higher education. It is wit=
hin
quite recent years that the conception of endowing research for its own sak=
e,
leaving the Research Professor free altogether from direct teaching or with
only a few good pupils whose work consisted chiefly in assimilating his ide=
as and
helping with his researches, has become at all widely acceptable. Indirectl=
y,
of course, the Research Professor is just as much a teacher as the Teaching
Professor, because his results become accessible as he writes them. Our work
now is to broaden both the conception of research and of teaching, to recog=
nize
that whatever imports fresh and valid ideas, fresh and valid aspects--not
simply of chemical and physical matters, but of aesthetic, social, and
political matters, partakes of the honour and claims of research--and that
whatever conveys ideas and aspects vividly and clearly and invigoratingly, =
not
simply by word of mouth but by book or picture or article, is teaching. The
publication of books, the whole business of bringing the contemporary book =
most
efficiently home to the general reader, the business of contemporary critic=
ism,
the encouragement and support of contemporary writers, is just as vitally
important in the modern state as the organisation of Colleges and Schools, =
and
just as little to be left to the enterprise of isolated individuals working
primarily upon commercial lines for gain.
There are two asp=
ects
of this question. There is the simpler one of getting an abundance of good
books, classical and contemporary, and of good publications distributed
everywhere through the English-speaking world, and there is the more subtle=
and
complex problem of getting, stimulating, and sustaining the original writers
and the original critics and investigators upon whom the general developmen=
t of
contemporary thought, upon whom indeed the progress of the world finally
depends. The latter problem may be reserved for the next paper, and here we
will deal simply with the question of access and distribution.
For the present we
must assume the quality of the books; all that sort of question must be
deferred for our final discussion. We will simply speak of good books, seri=
ous
books, on the one hand, and of light and merely amusing books on the other,=
in
an intentionally vague way. The former sort of books is our present concern;
pleasure as an end, pleasure except as necessary recuperation, is no affair=
for
the state.
Books are either
bought or borrowed for reading, and we have to consider what can be done to
secure the utmost efficiency in the announcement, lending and selling of bo=
oks.
We have also to consider the best possible means of distributing periodical=
s.
We have particularly to consider how books specifically "good," or
"thorough," or "serious," and periodicals that are
"sound" and "stimulating" are to be made as widely and
invitingly accessible as possible. The machinery we have in hand are the
booksellers and the newsvendors, the circulating libraries, the post-office,
and the free public libraries that are now being energetically spread
throughout the land [by men who, in this aspect, answer very closely to the
conception of New Republicans as it is here unfolded], and to bring and keep
all this machinery to the very highest level of efficiency is integral to t=
he New
Republican scheme of activity.
It may be objected
that the organization of bookselling and publishing is the discussion of
trivial details in the intellectual life of a people, but indeed that is not
so. It is a constant trouble, a perpetual drain upon the time and energy of
every man who participates in that life, to get the books that are necessar=
y to
the development of his thoughts. The high price of books, burthensome as it=
is,
is the lesser evil, the great trouble is the trouble of access. There are a=
great
number of people now who read nothing at all, or only promiscuous fiction, =
who
would certainly become real readers were books of any other sort attractive=
ly
available. These things are not trivial. The question of book distribution =
is
as vitally important to the intellectual health of a modern people as are o=
pen
windows in cases of phthisis. No nation can live under modern conditions un=
less
its whole population is mentally aerated with books.
That allusion to =
the
predominance of fiction brings one round to the question of the Public Libr=
ary.
One is constantly reading attacks on these new and most promising instituti=
ons,
and always these attacks base themselves on the fact that the number of nov=
els
taken out was so many times, so many hundred times greater than the number =
of
"serious books." Follows nonsense about "scrappy" readi=
ng,
shallowness of the public mind, and so forth. In Great Britain public
pomposities take up the strain and deliver large vague, foolish discourses =
on
our intellectual decline. It occurs to none of these people--nothing, indee=
d,
ever does seem to occur to this sort of people--to inquire if a man or woman
can get serious reading from a public library. An inspection of a Public Li=
brary
Catalogue reveals, no doubt, a certain proportion of "serious" bo=
oks
available, but, as a rule, that "serious side" is a quite
higgledy-piggledy heap of fragments. Suppose, for example, an intelligent
mechanic has a proclivity for economic questions, he will find no book what=
ever
to guide him to what literature there may be upon those questions. He will
plunge into the catalogue, and discover perhaps a few publications of the
Cobden Club, Henry George's Progress and Poverty, J. S. Mill's Autobiograph=
y,
Ruskin's Unto This Last, The Statesman's Year Book for 1895, and a text-book
specially adapted to such and such an examination by the tutors of some
Correspondence College. What can you expect from such a supply but a pitiful
mental hash? What is the most intelligent of mechanics likely to secure for
himself from this bran pie? Serious subjects are not to be read in this wild
disorderly way. But fiction can be. A novel is fairly complete in itself, a=
nd
in sticking to novels, the Public Library readers show, I submit, a better =
literary
sense and a finer intellectual feeling than the muddle-headed, review-inspi=
red,
pretentious people who blame them.
But manifestly the
Public Libraries ought to be equipped for serious reading. Too many of them=
are
covers without meat, or, at least, with nothing to satisfy a respectable mi=
nd
hunger. And the obvious direct method to equip them is to organize an
Association, to work, if possible, with the Librarians, and get this
"serious" side of the Libraries, this vitally important side, into
better order. A few men with a little money to spend could do what is wanted
for the whole English-speaking world. The first business of such an Associa=
tion
would be to get "Guides" to various fields of human interest writ=
ten,
guides that should be clear, explicit Bibliographies, putting all the vario=
us writers
into their relationships one to another, advising what books should be first
taken by the beginner in the field, indicating their trend, pointing out the
less technical ones and those written obscurely. Differential type might st=
amp
the more or less important works. These Guides ought to go to every Public
Library, and I think also that all sorts of people would be eager to buy th=
em
if they were known to be comprehensive, intelligent, and inclusive. They mi=
ght
even "pay." Then I would suggest this Association should make up
lists of books to present an outline course or a full course corresponding =
to each
Guide. Where books were already published in a cheap edition, the Associati=
on
would merely negotiate with the publisher for the special supply of a few
thousand copies of each. Where books were modern and dear the Association w=
ould
negotiate with publisher and author, for the printing of a special Public
Library Edition. They would then distribute these sets of books either free=
ly
or at special rates, three or four sets or more to each Library. In many ca=
ses
the Association would probably find it preferable to print its editions afr=
esh,
with specially written introductions, defining the relationship of each boo=
k to
the general literature of the subject. [Footnote: In America Mr. George Ile=
s is
already organizing the general appraisement of books for the public library
reader in a most promising manner. The Bibliography of the Literature of
American History, with an appraisal of each book, which has appeared under =
his
direction, is edited by Mr. Larned, and is a most efficient performance; it=
is
to be kept up to date by Mr. P. P. Wells, librarian of the Yale Law School.=
It
includes an appendix by Professor Channing, of Harvard, which is on the lin=
es
of the "Guides" I suggest, though scarcely so full as I should li=
ke
them. This appendix is reprinted separately for five cents, and it is almost
all English public librarians and libraries need so far as American history
goes. The English Fabian Society, I may note, publishes a sixpenny bibliogr=
aphy
of social and economic science, but it is a mere list for local librarians,=
and
of little use to the uninitiated reader.]
Such an Associati=
on
in the present state of publishing would become--in Great Britain, at any
rate--quite inevitably a Publishing Association. A succession of vigorous,
well-endowed Voluntary Publishing Associations is a quite vital necessity in
the modern state. A succession is needed because each age has its unexpected
new needs and new methods, and it would not be a bad idea to endow such
associations with a winding-up clause that would plump them, stock, unspent
capital, and everything except perhaps a pension fund for the older
employés, into the funds of some great Public Library at the end of
thirty or forty years. Several such Associations have played, or are still =
playing
a useful part in British affairs, but most of them have lost the elasticity=
of
youth. Lord Brougham's Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was on=
e of
the earliest, and we have today, for example, the Society for the Promotion=
of
Christian Knowledge, the Catholic Truth Society, the Rationalist Press
Association, and the Fabian Society. There is a real need to-day for
one--indeed there is room for several--Publishing Associations that would s=
et
themselves to put bright modern lights into these too often empty lanterns,=
the
Public Libraries. So lit, Great Britain and America would have in them an i=
nstrument
of public education unparalleled in the world, infinitely better adapted to=
the
individualistic idiosyncracy of our peoples than any imitation of German
colleges can possibly be. Propaganda of all sorts could be diverted to this
purpose. Persons of imperialistic tendencies might well consider the
advisability of Guides to good geographical and historical reading and sets=
of
travel books, and of geographical and historical works. Americanisers might
consider the possibility of sets that would help the common British to a
clearer idea of America, and Americans to a realization that the British Is=
lands
are something more than three obscure patches of land entirely covered by a
haughty peerage and a slightly absurd but historically interesting Crown. .=
. .
Indeed, whatever you want thought or believed, I would say, give books!
But the good New
Republican would have a wider scope for his Publishing Association than to
subdue it to this specific doctrine or that. It is not the opinion makes the
man; it is not the conclusion makes the book. We live not in the truth, but=
in
the promise of the truth. Sound thinking, clearly and honestly set forth, t=
hat
is the sole and simple food of human greatness, the real substance and the =
real
wealth of nations; the key that will at last unlock the door to all we can
dream of or desire.
X. - THOUGHT IN THE
MODERN STATE
These speculations upon the possibi=
lities
and means of raising the average human result have brought us at last to the
problem of increasing the amount of original intellectual activity in the
state, as a culminating necessity. That average child who threads our specu=
lations
has been bred and fed, we now suppose, educated in school and college, put
under stimulating political and social conditions and brought within reach =
and
under the influence of the available literature of the time, and he is now
emerging into adult responsibility. His individual thought and purpose has =
to
swim in and become part of the general thought and purpose of the community=
. If
that general flow of thought is meagre, his individual life will partake of=
its
limitations. As the general thought rises out of its pools and narrow chann=
els
towards a wide flood, so each individual becomes more capable of free movem=
ents
and spacious co-operations towards the general end. We have bred our citizen
and trained him only to waste all his energy at last; he is no better than =
the
water in an isolated dry-season pool in the bed of a tropical river, unless=
he
can mingle in the end with the general sea of thought and action.
Thought is the li=
fe,
the spontaneous flexibility of a community. A community that thinks freely =
and
fully throughout its population is capable of a thousand things that are
impossible in an unthinking mass of people. The latter, collectively
considered, is a large rigid thing, a lifeless thing, that will break rather
than bend, that will die rather than develop. Its inevitable end is dust and
extinction. Look at the thing from the baser level of political conceptions,
and still that floating tide of thought is a necessity. With thought and
gathered knowledge things that mean tumult, bloodshed, undying hatreds, sch=
isms
and final disaster to uncivilized races, are accomplished in peace; constit=
utional
changes, economic reorganizations, boundary modifications and a hundred gra=
ve
matters. Thought is the solvent that will make a road for men through Alpine
difficulties that seem now unconquerable, that will dissolve those gigantic
rocks of custom and tradition that loom so forbiddingly athwart all our fur=
ther
plans. For three thousand years and more the Book has been becoming more and
more the evident salvation of man. If our present civilization collapse, it=
will
collapse as all previous civilizations have collapsed, not from want of wil=
l but
from the want of organization for its will, for the want of that knowledge,
that conviction, and that general understanding that would have kept pace w=
ith
the continually more complicated problems that arose about it. [Footnote: D=
r.
Beattie Crozier, in his most interesting and suggestive History of Intellec=
tual
Development, terms the literary apparatus that holds a people together to a
common purpose, the "Bible" of that people, and suggests that the
"Bible" of a modern people should be the History of Civilization.=
His
work expresses by very different phrases and methods a line of thought clos=
ely
akin to the thesis of this paper.]
One writes "=
our
present civilization" and of previous civilizations, but indeed no
civilizations have yet really come into existence. Tribes have aggregated i=
nto
nations, nations have aggregated into empires, and then, after a struggle, =
has
come a great confusion of thought, a failure to clarify a common purpose, a=
nd
disintegration. Each successive birth has developed a more abundant body of
thought, a more copious literature than the last, each has profited by the
legacy of the previous failure, but none have yet developed enough. Mankind=
has
been struggling to win this step of a permanent civilized state, and has ne=
ver
yet attained any sort of permanency--unless perhaps in China. And that sole
imperfect permanency was based primarily upon a literature. A literature is=
the
triumphant instrument of the invincible culture of the Jews. Through the wh=
ole
volume of history the thoughtful reader cannot but exclaim, again and again,
"But if they had only understood one another, all this bloodshed, all =
this
crash, disaster, and waste of generations could have been avoided!" Our
time has come, and we of the European races are making our struggle in our
turn. Slavery still fights a guerilla war in factory and farm, cruelty and =
violence
peep from every slum, barbaric habits, rude barbaric ways of thinking,
grossness and stupidity are still all about us. And yet in many ways we see=
m to
have got nearer to the hope of permanent beginnings than any of those previ=
ous
essays in civilization. Collectively we know a great deal more, and more of=
us
are in touch with the general body of knowledge than was ever the case at a=
ny earlier
stage. Assuredly we know enough to hope that we have passed the last of the
Dark Ages. But though we hope, we deal with no certainties, and it is upon =
the
broadening and increase of the flow of ideas that our hope depends.
At present this
stream of thought and common understanding is not nearly so wide and deep a=
s it
might conceivably become, as it must become if indeed this present civiliza=
tion
is to be more than another false start. Our society [Footnote: Anticipation=
s,
Chapter III. Developing Social Elements.] has ceased to be homogeneous, and=
it
has become a heterogeneous confusion without any secure common grounds of a=
ction,
under the stress of its own material achievements. For the lack of a suffic=
ient
literature we specialize into inco-ordinated classes. A number of new social
types are developing, ignorant of each other, ignorant almost of themselves,
full of mutual suspicions and mutual misunderstandings, narrow, limited, and
dangerously incapable of intelligent collective action in the face of crise=
s.
The medical man sees nothing beyond his profession; he misunderstands the
artist, the divine, and the engineer. The engineer hates and despises the p=
olitician,
the lawyer misses the aims of the medical man, the artist lives angrily in a
stuffy little corner of pure technique; none of them read any general
literature at all except perhaps a newspaper. Each thinks parochially in his
own limits, and, except for his specialty, is an illiterate man. It is
absolutely necessary to the progress of our civilization that these isolati=
ons
should be overcome, that the community should become aware of itself
collectively and should think as a whole. And the only thing that can overc=
ome
these isolations and put the mass of intelligent men upon a common basis of
understanding, is an abundant and almost universally influential contempora=
ry literature.
We have already
discussed the possibility of developing the innervation of the state, the
distribution of books, the stimulation and direction of reading, and all the
peripheral aspects of literature, and we come now to the difficult and
intricate problem of whether we can do anything, and what it is we may do, =
to
stimulate the central thought. Can we hope to improve the conditions of
literary production, to make our literature more varied, quintessential and
abundant, to enforce it with honour and help, to attract to its service eve=
ry
man and woman with gifts of value, and to make the most of these gifts?
Quite a number of
people will assert that those things that constitute literature come and go
beyond the control and will of man, they will speak of Shakespeare as being=
a
sort of mystical consequence, of Roger Bacon or Newton as men independent of
circumstances, inevitably great. And if they are by way of being comic
writers--the word "humorist," as Schopenhauer long since pointed =
out,
is a stolen lion's skin for these gentry--they will become extremely faceti=
ous
about the proposed school for Bacons and Shakespeares. But a little reflect=
ion
will convince the reader that none of the great figures of the past appeared
without certain conditions being added to their inherent powers. In the fir=
st place,
they had to be reasonably sure of a sympathetic and intelligent atmosphere,
however limited in extent--there was no Plato in the heroic age, and no New=
ton
during the Heptarchy--and in the second, the medium, language or what not, =
had
to be ready for their use. In the third place they needed personally a cert=
ain
minimum of training and preparation, and in the fourth they had to feel that
for some reason--not necessarily a worldly one--the thing was "worth
while." Given a "developer" of these ingredients, and they
appeared. But without this developer they would not have appeared, and it is
therefore reasonable to suppose, first, that a great number of men of a qua=
lity
as rare as were those who constitute the unparalleled roll of English
intellectual greatness, lived and died undeveloped before ever the developer
was compounded at all, and that even in the last few hundred years the nece=
ssary
combination has fallen upon so small an area of our racial life as to have
missed far more than it has hit. The second of these papers is, indeed, an
attempt to present quite convincingly what the comic man will probably rega=
rd
as his effectual objection, that inherent tendency cannot be produced at wi=
ll.
But that the developer may conceivably be made in much greater quantities a=
nd
spread much wider than it is at present is an altogether different thing. T=
here
are, one submits, enormous reserves of intellectual force unworked and scar=
cely
touched, even to-day.
We have already
discussed the means and possibilities of a net of education that should swe=
ep
through the whole social body, and of the creation of an atmosphere more al=
ert
and active than our present one. We have now to consider how the greatest
proportion of those born with exceptional literary powers may be picked out=
and
induced to exercise those powers to the utmost. Let us admit at once that t=
his
is a research of extraordinary subtlety and complexity, that there are ten =
thousand
ways of going wrong, and perhaps mischievously wrong. That one may submit, =
is
not a sufficient reason for abandonment and despair. To take an analogous c=
ase,
it may be a complex and laborious thing to escape out of a bear-pit into wh=
ich
one has fallen, but few people will consider that a reason for inaction. Ev=
en
if they had small hope of doing anything effectual they might find speculat=
ion
and experiments in escape, a congenial way of passing the time. It is the s=
ort
of project one should only abandon at the final and conclusive proof of its=
impossibility.
Exactly the same principle applies to human destinies and the saving of oth=
er
lives than our own. As a matter of fact, the enterprise is not at all a
hopeless one if it is undertaken honestly, warily, and boldly.
Let us consider t=
he
lines upon which men must go to ensure the greatest possible growth of orig=
inal
thought in the state, original thought of which what scientific men call
Research is only one phase.
Before we can con=
sider
how we may endow him and equip him and help him, we have to consider how we=
may
find the original thinker, and we have, if we can, to define him and to
discover whatever we can of his methods and habits, his natural history as =
it
were. We are attempting generalization about a class of remarkably peculiar=
and
difficult persons. They are persons either of great intellectual power or
simply of great imaginative power, whose bias and quality it is to apply th=
ese exceptional
powers not directly and simply to their personal advancement and enrichment,
but primarily through philosophical, scientific, or artistic channels, to t=
he
increase of knowledge or of wisdom or of both. And here is the peculiar poi=
nt
in this problem, they are men who put, or who wish to put the best of
themselves and most of themselves into occupations and interests that do not
lead to practical results, that often for the individual in open competition
and the market fail more or less completely to "pay." Their
activities, of course, pay tremendously at last for the race, but that is n=
ot
their personal point of application. They take their lives and their splend=
id powers,
they waste themselves in remote and inaccessible regions and bring back
precious things that immediately any sharp commercial-minded man will turn =
into
current coin for himself and the use of the world.
There are certain
things follow naturally from this remote concentration, and we must
persistently keep them in mind. These men of exceptional mental quality, if
they are really to do what they are specially fitted to do, with all their
power, will be unable to give their personal affairs, their personal
advancement, sustained attention. In a democratic community whose principle=
is
"hustle," in a leisurely monarchy where only opulence, a powerful
top-note, and conspicuous social gifts succeed, they will have either to
neglect or taint their special talent in order to survive. It does not foll=
ow
that because a man's special qualities and inclinations are towards, let us=
say,
illuminating inquiries into the constitution of matter, or profound and
beautiful or simply beautiful renderings of his individual vision of life, =
that
he is indifferent to or independent of honour, of all the freedoms to do an=
d to
rest from doing that come with wealth, or of the many lures and pleasures of
life. Posthumous Fame is losing its attractiveness in an age which has
discovered excellent reasons for doubting whether after all ære peren=
nius
was not rather too strong a figure. However powerful the impulse to think, =
to
state and create, there comes a point--often a point a long way from
starvation-- at which a genius will stop working. Your man of scientific,
literary, or artistic genius will not work below his conception of the
endurable minimum, the minimum of hope and honour and attention as well as =
of material
things, any more than a coal-heaver will--and we live in a period when the
Standard of Life tends to rise. To secure these things which most men make =
the
entire objective of their lives is, or should be, an irrelevancy to the man=
of
exceptional gifts. This means an enormous handicap for him. Unless, therefo=
re,
we endow him and make life easy for him so long as he does his proper work,=
he
will have either to pervert his powers more or less completely to these irr=
elevant
ends, or if his powers do not admit of such perversion, he will have no use=
for
them whatever. He will take some subordinate place in the world as a rather
less than average man and, it may be, find the leisure to give just an amat=
eurish
ineffectual expression of the thing he might have been.
Now this is the c=
ase
with a great deal of scientific and artistic work, and with nearly all
literature at the present time, throughout the English-speaking community.
There are a few sciences slightly endowed, there are a few arts patronized =
with
some intelligence and generosity, and for the rest there is nothing for it,=
for
the man who wants to do these most necessary and vital things, but to hammer
some at least of his precious gold into the semblance of a brass trumpet an=
d to
devote a certain proportion of his time and energy to blowing that trumpet =
and with
that air of conscious modesty the public is pleased to consider genuine,
proclaiming the value of his wares. Some men seem able to do this sort of t=
hing
without any deterioration in quality and some with only a partial
deterioration, but the way of self-advertisement is on a slippery slope, an=
d it
has brought many a man of indisputable gifts to absolute vulgarity and
ineffectiveness of thought and work. At the best it is a shameful business,
this noise and display, for all that Scott and Dickens were past masters in=
the
art. And some men cannot do it at all. Moreover, what the good man may do w=
ith
an effort, the energetic quack, whose only gift is simulation, can do
infinitely better. It is only in the unprofitable branches of intellectual =
work
that the best now holds the best positions unchallenged. In the really popu=
lar branches
of artistic work every honourable success draws a parasitic swarm of imitat=
ors
like fish round bread in a pool. In the world of thought, far more than in =
the
world of politics, the polling method, the democratic method has broken dow=
n,
the method that will only permit an author to write--unless his subject is =
one
that allows him to hold a Professorial Chair--on condition that he can get a
publisher to induce the public to buy a certain minimum number of copies of
each of his works, a method that will give him no rest, once he is in the f=
ull swing
of "production," until the end, no freedom to change his style or=
matter,
lest he should lose that paying following by the transition or the pause.
Now before we can
discuss how else we can deal with those who constitute the current thought =
of
the community, we must consider how we are to distinguish what is worth
sustaining from what is not.
This is the public
aspect of Criticism. It is the mineralogy of literature and art. At present
Criticism, as a public function, is discharged by private persons, usually
anonymous and frequently mysterious, and it is discharged with an astonishi=
ng
ineffectiveness. Nowhere in the whole English-speaking world is there anyth=
ing
one can compare to a voice and a judgment--much less any discussion between=
reputable
voices. There are periodicals professing criticism, but most of them have t=
he
effect of an omnibus in which disconnected heterogeneous people are continu=
ally
coming and going, while the conductor asks first one of his fluctuating load
and then another haphazard for an opinion on this or that. The branch of
literature that has first to be put on a sound footing is critical literatu=
re.
The organization into efficiency of the criticism of contemporary work one =
is
forced to believe an almost necessary preliminary to the hopeful treatment =
of
the rest of the current of thought.
There is, of cour=
se,
also the suggestion that an English Academy of Letters might be of great
service in discounting vulgar "successes" and directing respect a=
nd
attention to literary achievements. One may doubt whether such an Academy a=
s a
Royal Charter would give the world would be of any service at all in this
connection. But Mr. Herbert Trench has suggested recently that it might be
possible to organize a large Guild of literary men and women, which would
include all capable writers, and from which a sort of Academy could be elec=
ted,
either by a general poll or, I would suggest, by a Jury of Election or
successive Juries confirming one another. The New Republican would like to =
see
such a Guild not purely English, but Anglo-American, or in duplicate for th=
e two
countries. With a very carefully chosen nucleus and some little elaboration=
in
the admission of new members--whose works might be submitted to the report =
of a
critical jury--such a Guild might be made fairly representative of literary
capacity. Election, one may suggest, should be involuntary. There would be a
number of literary men, one fears--great men some of them--who would absolu=
tely
refuse to work with any such body, and from the first the Guild would have =
to
determine to make such men unwilling members, members to whom all the honou=
rs
and privileges of the Guild would be open whenever they chose to abandon th=
eir
attitude of scorn or distrust. Such a Guild would furnish a useful
constituency, a useful jury-list. It could be used to recommend writers for
honours, to check the distribution of public pensions for literary services,
perhaps even to send a member or so to the Upper Chamber. It is, at any rat=
e,
an experiment worth trying.
But such a Guild =
at
best is only one of many possible expedients in this matter. Another is for=
a
few people of means to subsidize a magazine for the exhaustive criticism of
contemporary work for a few years. Quite a small number of people, serious =
in
this matter, a couple of thousand or so, could float such a magazine by the
simple expedient of guaranteeing subscriptions. [Footnote: It may be sugges=
ted
that among other methods of putting the criticism of contemporary literatur=
e upon
a better footing is one that might conceivably be made to pay its own expen=
ses.
There is so much room for endowments nowadays that where one can get at the
purse of the general public one should certainly prefer it to that of the
generous but overtaxed donor. The project would require a strong endowment,=
but
that endowment might be of the nature of a guarantee fund, and might in the=
end
return unimpaired to the lender. The suggestion is the establishment of a
well-planned and reasonably cheap monthly or weekly critical magazine, writ=
ten
on a level at present unattainable--chiefly because of the low rate of paym=
ent
for all literary criticism. There can be no doubt among those who read much
among literary and quasi-literary periodicals in English that there is a ve=
ry
considerable amount of high critical ability available. Buried and obscured=
to
an ineffectual degree among much that is formal, foolish, and venial, there=
is
to be found to-day a really quite remarkable number of isolated reviews,
criticisms and articles in which style is apparent, in which discrimination
shines fitfully, in which there is the unmistakable note of honest enthusia=
sm
for good work. For the most part, such criticism bears also the marks of
haste-- as, indeed, it must do when a review as long as the column of a dai=
ly paper,
a day's work, that is, of steady writing, earns scarcely a pound. But the s=
tuff
is there. Scarcely a number of the Academy, or the Spectator, scarcely a we=
ek
of the Morning Post, the Daily News, or the Daily Chronicle, but there is a=
review,
or a piece of a review, that has the stigmata of literature. And this
suggestion is that some of these writers shall be got together, shall be pa=
id
at least as well as popular short-story writers are paid, shall each have a
definite department marked out under a trustworthy editor, and be pledged to
limit their work to the pages of this new critical magazine. Their work wou=
ld
be signed, and there they would be, conspicuously urged to do the best that=
was
in them, apropos of more or less contemporary books and writers. They would
have leisure for deliberate judgments, for the development of that consiste=
ncy
of thought which the condition of journalism renders so impossible. This re=
view
would mean for them status, reputation, and opportunity. They would deal wi=
th
contemporary fiction, with contemporary speculative literature, and with the
style, logic, methods and vocabulary of scientific and philosophical writer=
s.
Their work would form the mass of the magazine, but there would also be (hi=
ghly
paid) occasional writers, towards whose opinions the regular staff would ve=
ry
carefully define their attitude. The project, of course, in foolish hands,
might be very foolishly misinterpreted. It might be quite easy to drive a t=
eam
of egregious asses in this way over contemporary work, leaving nothing but
hoof-marks and injuries, but we are assuming the thing to be efficiently do=
ne.
It is submitted that such a magazine, patiently and generously sustained fo=
r a
few years, would at last probably come to pay its way. Unless the original =
selection
of the staff was badly done, it would by sheer persistent high quality win =
its
way to authority with the reading public, and so fill its covers with a
swelling mass of advertisement pages. And once it paid, then forthwith a do=
zen
rivals would be in the field, all of them, of course, also paying highly for
critical matter and competing for critics of standing. Such an enterprise w=
ould
be a lever for criticism through the whole of our literary world.]
Then it should al=
so
be possible to endow university lectureships and readerships in contemporary
criticism, lectureships and readerships in which questions of style and met=
hod
could be illustrated by quotation (not necessarily of a flattering sort) fr=
om
contemporary work. Why should there not be an endowment which would enable a
man of indisputable critical capacity to talk through an illuminating cours=
e, to
sit before a little pile of marked books and reading sometimes here and
sometimes there and talking between, to distinguish the evil from the good?
What a wholesome thing to have Mr. Henley, for example, at that in the plac=
e of
some of the several specialists who will lecture you so admirably on the
Troubadours! How good to hear Mr. Frederic Harrison (with some one to follo=
w)
adjusting all our living efforts to the scale of the divine Comte, and Mr.
Walkley and Mr. Herbert Paul making it perfectly clear that a dead dog is
better than a living lion, by demonstrations on the lion. Criticism to-day =
is
all too much in the case of that doctor whose practice was deadly, indeed, =
but
his post- mortems admirable! No doubt such lectures would consist at times =
of highly
contentious matter, but what of that? There could be several chairs. It wou=
ld
not be an impossible thing to set a few Extension Lecturers afloat upon the=
same
channel. We have now numerous courses of lectures on the Elizabethan Dramat=
ists
and the evolution of the Miracle Play, and the people who listen to this so=
rt
of thing will depart straight away to recreate their souls in the latest
triumph of vehement bookselling. Why not base the literary education of peo=
ple
upon the literature they read instead of upon literature that they are scar=
cely
more in touch with than with Chinese metaphysics? A few carefully chosen pa=
ges
of contemporary rubbish, read with a running comment, a few carefully chosen
pages of what is, comparatively, not rubbish, a little lucid discussion of
effects and probabilities, would do more to quicken the literary sense of t=
he
average person than all the sham enthusiasm about Marlowe and Spenser that =
was
ever concocted. There are not a few authors who would be greatly the better=
and
might even be subsequently grateful for a lecture upon themselves in this
style. Let no one say from this that the classics of our tongue are depreci=
ated
here. But the point is, that for people who know little of history, little =
of
our language, whose only habitual reading is the newspaper, the popular nov=
el,
and the sixpenny magazine, to plunge into the study of works written in the
language of a different period, crowded with obsolete allusions, and satura=
ted
with obsolete ideas and extinct ways of thinking, is pretentious and
unprofitable, and that most of such Extension Lecturing is fruitless and
absurd. And I appeal to these two facts in confirmation, to the thousands of
people who every year listen to such lectures and to the hundreds of thousa=
nds
of copies of our national classics sold by the booksellers, on the one hand,
and on the other to the absolute incapacity of our public to judge any new =
literary
thing or to protect itself in any way from violently and vulgarly boomed
rubbish of the tawdriest description. Without a real and popular criticism =
of
contemporary work as a preliminary and basis, the criticism and circulation=
of
the classics is quite manifestly vain.
By such expedients
very much might be done for the literary atmosphere. By endowing a critical
review or so, by endowing a few chairs and readerships in contemporary
criticism, by organizing a Guild of Literature and a system of exemplary
honours for literature, by stimulating the general discussion of contempora=
ry
work through lectures and articles, criticism could, I believe, be made
"worth while" to an extent that is now scarcely imaginable, and t=
here
might be created an atmosphere of attention, appreciation, and judgment tha=
t would
be in itself extraordinarily stimulating to all forms of literary effort. Of
course all this sort of thing may be done cheaply, stupidly, dishonestly, a=
nd
vulgarly, and one imagines the shy and exquisite type of mind recoiling from
the rude sanity of these suggestions. But, indeed, they need not be done any
other way than finely and well. People whose conception of what is good in =
art
and literature is inseparable from rarity ought, I submit, to collect stamp=
s.
At an earlier phase in this series of discussions there was broached a proj=
ect
for an English Language Society, which would set itself to do or get done a
number of services necessary to the teaching and extension of the language =
of
our universal peoples. With such a Society those who undertook this project=
for
the habilitation of criticism would necessarily co-operate and interlock.
It is upon this b=
asis
of an organized criticism and of a well-taught and cherished language that =
the
English literature of the Twentieth Century, the literature of analysis and
research, and the literature of creative imagination, has to stand. Upon su=
ch a
basis it becomes possible to consider the practicability of the endowment of
general literature. For to that at last we come. I submit that it is only b=
y the
payment of authors, and if necessary their endowment in a spacious manner, =
and
in particular by the entire separation of the rewards of writing from the
accidents of the book market, that the function of literature can be adequa=
tely
discharged in the modern state. The laws of supply and demand break down
altogether in this case. We have to devise some means of sustaining those w=
ho
discharge this necessary public function in the progressive state.
There are several
general propositions in this matter that it may be worth while to state at =
this
point. The first is that both scientific generalization and literature prop=
er
have been and are and must continue to be the product of a quite exceptiona=
lly
heterogeneous aggregation of persons. They are persons of the most various =
temperaments,
of the most varied lop-sidedness, of the most various special gifts, and the
most various social origins, having only this in common, the ability to add=
to
the current of the world's thought. They are not to be dealt with as though
they were a class of persons all of exceptional general intelligence, of
exceptional strength of character, or of exceptional sanity. To do that, wo=
uld
be to hand over literature from the man of genius to the man of talent. A
single method of selection, help, honour, and payment, measurement by one
general standard cannot, therefore, be accepted as a solution. There must n=
ot be
any one single central body, any authoritative single control, for such a b=
ody
or authority would inevitably develop a "character" in its activi=
ty
and greet with especial favour (or with especial disfavour) certain types. =
In
this case, at any rate, organization is not centralization, and it is also =
not
uniformity. The proposition may indeed be thrown out that the principle of =
Many
Channels (a principle involving the repudiation both of the monarchical and=
the
democratic idea) is an essential one to go upon in all questions of honour =
and promotion
in the modern state. And not only Many Channels, but Many Methods. Whatever=
the
value of that as a universally valuable proposition, it certainly applies h=
ere.
And next we may
suggest that we must take great care that we pay for the thing we need and =
not
for some subsidiary qualification of less value. The reward must be directly
related to the work, and independent of all secondary considerations. It mu=
st
have no taint of charity. The recipient must not have to show that he is in
want. Because a writer or investigator is a sober, careful body and quite
solvent in a modest way, that is no reason why we should not pay him
stimulatingly for his valuable contributions to the general mind, or becaus=
e he
is a shiftless seeker of misfortunes, why we should pay him in excess. But =
pay
him anyhow. Almost scandalous private immorality, I submit, should not bar =
the
literary worker from his pay any more than it justifies our stealing his bo=
ots.
We must deal with immorality as immorality, and with work as work. Above al=
l,
at the present time, we must keep clearly in view that popularity has no
relation to literary, philosophic or scientific value, it neither justifies=
nor
condemns. At present, except in the case of certain forms of research and in
relation to the altogether too charitable-looking British Civil List, we ma=
ke popularity
the sole standard by which a writer may be paid. The novelist, for example,
gets an income extraordinarily made up of sums of from sixpence to two
shillings per person sufficiently interested to buy his or her books. The
result is entirely independent of real literary merit. The sixpences and
shillings are, of course, greatly coveted, and success in getting them on
anything like a magnificent scale makes a writer, good or bad, vehemently h=
ated
and abused, but the hatred and abuse--unaccompanied as they are by any
proposals for amelioration--are hardly less silly than the system. And for =
our present
purpose it really does not matter if the fortunate persons who interest the
great public are or are not overpaid. Our concern is with the underpaid, an=
d with
all this affair of mammoth editions and booming only as it affects that asp=
ect.
We are concerned with the exceptional man's necessities and not with his
luxuries. The fly of envy in the True Artist's ointment may, I think, very =
well
stop there until magnanimity becomes something more of a cult in the litera=
ry
and artistic worlds than it is at the present time.
This, perhaps, is
something of a digression from our second general proposition, that we must=
pay
directly for the work itself. But it leads to a third proposition. The whole
history of literature and science abundantly shows that no critical judgmen=
t is
more than an approximation to the truth. Criticism should be equal to the
exposure of the imitator and the pure sham, of course, it should be able to=
analyze
and expose these types, but above that level is the disputed case. At the
present time in England only a very few writers or investigators hold high
positions by anything approaching the unanimous verdict of the intelligent
public--of that section of the public that counts. In the department of
fiction, for example, there is a very audible little minority against Mr.
Kipling, and about Mr. George Moore or Mr. Zangwill or Mr. Barrie one may h=
ear
the most diverse opinions. By the test of blackballing, only the unknown wo=
uld
survive. The valuation is as erratic in many branches of science. The
development of criticism will diminish, but it certainly will not end, this
sort of thing, and since our concern is to stimulate rather than punish, we=
must
do just exactly what we should not do if we were electing men for a club, we
must include rather than exclude. I am told that Americans remark in relati=
on
to University endowments, "we speculate in research," and that wi=
ll
serve for only a slight exaggeration of this third proposition. So long as =
we
get most of the men of exceptional mental gifts in the community under the =
best
conditions for their work, it scarcely matters if, for each one of them, we=
get
four or five shams or mere respectabilities upon our hands. Respectabilities
and shams have a fatal facility for living on the community anyhow, and the=
re
is no more reason in not doing these things on their account than there wou=
ld
be in burning a house down to get rid of cockroaches and rats. The rat pois=
on
of sound criticism--to follow that analogy--is the remedy here. And if the
respectability lives, his work at any rate dies.
But if the reward
must be directly for the work, it must not have any quantitative relation to
the output of work. It is quality we want, not quantity; we want absolutely=
to
invert the abominable conditions of the present time by which every exercis=
e of
restraint costs an author a fine. It is my personal conviction that almost
every well-known living writer is or has been writing too much. "No bo=
ok,
no income" is practically what the world says to an author, and the ne=
edy
authors make a pace the independent follow; there is no respect for fine si=
lences,
if you cease you are forgotten. The literature of the past hundred years is=
unparalleled
in the world's history in this feature that the greater portion of it is or=
has
been written under pressure. It was the case with Scott, the case with Dick=
ens,
Tennyson, even with Browning, and a host of other great contributors to the
edifice. No one who loves Dickens and knows anything of the art he practised
but deplores that evil incessant demand that never permitted him to revise =
his
plans, to alter, rearrange and concentrate, that never released him from the
obligation to touch dull hearts and penetrate thick skins with obtrusive pa=
thos
and violent caricature.
Once embarked upon
his course, he never had a moment for reconstruction. He had no time to rea=
d,
no time to think. A writer nowadays has to think in books and articles; to =
read
a book he must criticize or edit it; if he dare attempt an experiment, a ne=
w departure,
comes his agent in a panic. Every departure from the lines of his previous
success involves chaffering, unless he chance to be a man of independent me=
ans.
When one reflects on these things it is only amazing that the average book =
is
not more copious and crude and hasty than it is, and how much in the way of
comprehensive and unifying work is even now in progress. There are all too =
many
books to read. It would be better for the public, better for our literature,
altogether better, if this obligation to write perpetually were lifted. Few
writers but must have felt at times the desire to stop and think, to work o=
ut
some neglected corner of their minds, to admit a year's work as futile and =
thrust
it behind the fire, or simply to lie fallow, to camp and rest the horses. L=
et
us, therefore, pay our authors as much not to write as though they wrote;
instead of that twenty or thirty volumes, which is, I suppose, the average
product, let us require a book or so, worth having. Which means, in fact, t=
hat
we must find some way of giving an author, once he has proved his quality, a
fixed income quite irrespective of what he does. We might, perhaps, require
evidence that he was doing some work now and then, we might prohibit alien =
occupations,
but for my own part I do not think even that is necessary. Most authors so
sustained will write, and all will have written. We are presupposing, be it
remembered, the stimulus of honours and criticism and of further honours and
further emoluments.
Finally, in making
schemes for the endowment of original mental activity, we must not ignore t=
he
possibility of a perversion that has already played its part in the histori=
es
of painting and music, and that is the speculative financing of promising
candidates for these endowments. If we are going to make research, criticis=
m,
and creation "worth while" we must see to it that in reality we a=
re
not simply making it worth while for Solomons and Moses to "spot"=
the
early promise, to stimulate its modesty, to help it to its position, and to=
draw
the major profits of the enterprise. The struggling young man of exceptional
gifts who is using his brains not to make his position but to do his destin=
ed
work, is by that at a great disadvantage in dealing with the business man, =
and
it is to the interest of the community that he should be protected from his=
own
inexperience and his own self- distrust. The average Whitechapel Jew could
cheat a Shakespeare into the workhouse in no time, and our idea is rather to
make the world easy for Shakespeares than to hand it over to the rat activi=
ties
of the "smart" business man.
Freedom of Contra=
ct
is an idea no one outside a debating society dreams of realizing in the sta=
te.
We protect tenants from landlords in all sorts of ways, our law overrides a=
ll
sorts of bargains, and in the important case of marriage we put almost all =
the
conditions outside bargaining and speculative methods altogether by insisti=
ng
upon one universal contract or none. We protect women who are physically an=
d economically
weak in this manner, not so much for their own good as the good of the race.
The state already puts literary property into a class apart by limiting its
duration. At a certain point, which varies in different circumstances,
copyright expires. It is possible for an author, whose fame comes late, to =
be
present as a row of dainty volumes in half the comfortable homes in the wor=
ld,
while his grandchildren beg their bread. The author's blood is sacrificed t=
o the
need the whole world has of cheap access to his work. And since we do him t=
his
injury for the sake of our intellectual life, it is surely not unreasonable=
to interfere
for his benefit also if that subserves the greater end.
Now there are two
ways at least in which the author may be and should be protected from the
pressure of immediate necessities. The first of these is to render his
copyright in his work inalienably his, to forbid him to make any bargain by
which the right to revise, abbreviate, or alter what he has written passes =
out
of his hands, and to make every such bargain invalid. He would be free hims=
elf
to alter or to endorse alterations, but to yield no carte blanche to others=
. He
would be free also to make whatever bargain he chose for the rights of publ=
ication.
But, and this is the second proposal, no bargain he made should be valid fo=
r a
longer period than seven years from the date of its making. Every seven yea=
rs
his book would come back into his control, to suppress, revise, resell, or =
do whatever
he liked to do with it. Only in one way could he escape this property, and =
that
would be by declaring it void and making his copyright an immediate present=
to
the world. And upon this proposal it is possible to base one form-- and a v=
ery
excellent form--of paying for the public service of good writing and so
honouring men of letters and thought, and that is by buying and, more or le=
ss,
completely extinguishing their copyrights, and so converting them into
contemporary classics.
Throughout these =
papers
a disposition to become concrete has played unchecked. Always definite
proposals have been preferred to vague generalizations, and here again it w=
ill
be convenient to throw out an almost detailed scheme--simply as an illustra=
tion
of the possibilities of the case. I am going to suggest to the reader that =
to
endow a thousand or so authors, as authors, would be a most wise and admira=
ble proceeding
for a modern statesman, and I would ask him before he dismisses this sugges=
tion
as absurd and impossible, to rest contented with no vague rejection but to =
put
to himself clearly why the thing should under present conditions be absurd =
and
impossible. Always in the past the need of some organ for the establishment=
and
preservation of a common tone and substance of thought in the state has been
recognized; commonly this organ has taken the form of a Church, a group of
Churches (as in America) or an educational system (as in China). But all pr=
evious
schemes of social and political organization have been static, have aimed a=
t a
permanent state. Our modern state we know can only live by adaptation, and =
we
have to provide not a permanent but a developing social, moral and political
culture. Our new scheme must include not only priests and teachers but prop=
hets
and seekers. Literature is a vitally necessary function of the modern state=
.
Let us waive for =
the
moment the subtle difficulty that arises when we ask who are the writers of
literature, the guides and makers of opinion, the men and women of wisdom,
insight, and creation, as distinguished from those who merely resonate to t=
he
note of the popular mind; let us assume that this is determined, and let us
make a scheme in the air to support these people under such conditions as w=
ill
give us their best. Suppose the thing done boldly, and that for every hundr=
ed
thousand people in our population we subsidize an author--if we can find as
many. Suppose we give him some sort of honour or title and the alternative =
of
going on writing under copyright conditions--which many popular favourites
would certainly prefer--or of giving up his copyrights to the public and
receiving a fixed income, a respectable mediocre income, £800 or
£1000 for example.
That means four
hundred or more subsidized authors for Great Britain, which would work out,
perhaps, as eighteen or twenty every year, and a proportionate number for
America and the Colonial States of the British Empire. Suppose, further, th=
at
from this general body of authors we draw every year four or five of the
seniors to form a sort of Academy, a higher stage of honour and income; this
would probably give something under a hundred on this higher stage. Taking =
the
income of the two stages as £1000 and £2000 respectively, this
would work out at about £500,000 a year for Great Britain--a quite
trivial addition to what is already spent on educational work. A scheme that
would provide for widows and children whose education was unfinished, and f=
or
the official printing and sale of correct texts of the books written, would=
still
fall within the dimensions of a million pounds. I am assuming this will be =
done
quite in addition to the natural growth of Universities and Colleges, to the
evolution of great text-books and criticism, and to the organization and
publication of special research in science and letters. This is to be an
endowment specifically for unspecialized literature, for untechnical philos=
ophy
that is, and the creative imagination.
It must not be
imagined that such an endowment would be a new payment, by the community. In
all probability we are already paying as much, or more, to authors, in the =
form
of royalties, of serial fees, and the like. We are paying now with an unjust
unevenness--we starve the new and deep and overpay the trite and obvious.
Moreover, the community would have something in exchange for its money; it
would have the copyright of the works written. It may be suggested that by a
very simple device a large proportion of these payments could be recovered.=
Suppose
that all books, whether copyright or not, and all periodicals sold above a
certain price--sixpence, let us say--had to bear a defaced stamp of--for
example--a halfpenny for each shilling of price. This would probably yield a
revenue almost sufficient to cover these literary pensions. In addition the
books of the pensioned authors might bear an additional stamp as the equiva=
lent
of the present royalty.
The annual select=
ion
of eighteen or twenty authors might very well be a dispersed duty. One or t=
wo
each might be appointed in some way by grouped Universities, or by three or
four of the Universities taken in rotation, by such a Guild of Authors as we
have already considered, by the British Academy of History and Philosophy, =
by
the Royal Society, by the British Privy Council. The Jury system would prob=
ably
be of very great value in making these appointments.
That is a rough
sketch of a possible scheme--presented in the most open-minded way. It would
not meet all conceivable cases, so it would need to be supplemented in many
directions; moreover, it is presented with hideous crudity, but for all tha=
t,
would not something of the sort work well? How would it work? There would
certainly be a great diminution in the output of written matter from the
thousand or more recognized writers this would give us, and almost as certa=
inly
a great rise in effort and deliberation, in distinction, quality, and value=
in their
work. This would also appear in the work of their ambitious juniors. Would =
it
extinguish anything? I do not see that it would. Those who write trivially =
for
the pleasure of the public would be just as well off as they are now, and t=
here
would be no more difficulty than there is at present for those who begin
writing. Less, indeed; for the thousand subsidized writers, at least, would=
not
be clamorously competing to fill up magazines and libraries; they might set=
a
higher and more difficult standard, but they would leave more space about t=
hem.
The thing would scarcely affect the development of publishing and book
distribution, nor injure nor stimulate--except by raising the standard and
ideals of writing--newspapers, magazines, and their contributors in any way=
.
I do not believe =
for
one moment the thing would stop at such a subsidized body of authors, such a
little aristocracy of thought, as this project presents. But it would be an
efficient starting-point. There are those who demand a thinking department =
for
Army and Navy; and that idea admits of extension in this direction, this
organized general literature of mine would be the thinking organization of =
the
race. Once this deliberate organization of a central ganglion of interpreta=
tion
and presentation began, the development of the brain and nervous system in =
the
social body would proceed apace. Each step made would enable the next step =
to
be wider and bolder. The general innervation of society with books and book
distributing agencies would be followed by the linking up of the now almost
isolated mental worlds of science, art, and political and social activity i=
n a
system of intercommunication and sympathy.
We have now alrea=
dy
in the history of the world one successful experiment in the correlation of
human endeavour. Compare all that was accomplished in material science by t=
he
isolated work of the great men before Lord Verulam, and what has been done
since the system of isolated inquiry gave place to a free exchange of ideas=
and
collective discussion. And this is only one field of mental activity and on=
e aspect
of social needs. The rest of the intellectual world is still unorganized. T=
he
rest of the moral and intellectual being of man is dwarfed and cowed by the
enormous disproportionate development of material science and its economic =
and
social consequences. What if we extend that same spirit of organization and
free reaction to the whole world of human thought and emotion? That is the
greater question at which this project of literary endowment aims.
It may seem to the
reader that all this insistence upon the supreme necessity for an organized
literature springs merely from the obsession of a writer by his own calling,
but, indeed, that is not so. We who write are not all so blinded by conceit=
of
ourselves that we do not know something of our absolute personal value. We =
are
lizards in an empty palace, frogs crawling over a throne. But it is a palac=
e,
it is a throne, and, it may be, the reverberation of our ugly voices will p=
resently
awaken the world to put something better in our place. Because we write
abominably under pressure and for unhonoured bread, none the less we are ma=
king
the future. We are making it atrociously no doubt; we are not ignorant of t=
hat
possibility, but some of us, at least, would like to do it better. We know =
only
too well how that we are out of touch with scholarship and contemplation. We
must drive our pens to live and push and bawl to be heard. We must blunder
against men an ampler training on either side would have made our allies, we
must smart and lose our tempers and do the foolish things that are done in =
the
heat of the day. For all that, according to our lights, we who write are tr=
ying
to save our world in a lack of better saviours, to change this mental tumult
into an order of understanding and intention in which great things may grow.
The thought of a community is the life of that community, and if the collec=
tive
thought of a community is disconnected and fragmentary, then the community =
is
collectively vain and weak. That does not constitute an incidental defect, =
but
essential failure. Though that community have cities such as the world has
never seen before, fleets and hosts and glories, though it count its soldie=
rs by
the army corps and its children by the million, yet if it hold not to the
reality of thought and formulated will beneath these outward things, it will
pass, and all its glories will pass, like smoke before the wind, like mist
beneath the sun; it will become at last only one more vague and fading dream
upon the scroll of time, a heap of mounds and pointless history, even as are
Babylon and Nineveh.
XI - THE MAN'S OWN SHARE<=
/span>
In this manner it is that the initi=
al
proposition of New Republicanism works itself out. It shapes into the rough
outline of an ideal new state, a New Republic, a great confederation of
English-speaking republican communities, each with its non-hereditary
aristocracy, scattered about the world, speaking a common language, possess=
ing
a common literature and a common scientific and, in its higher stages at le=
ast,
a common educational organization, and it indicates in crude, broad suggest=
ions
the way towards that state from the present condition of things. It insists=
as
a cardinal necessity, not indeed as an end but as an indispensable instrume=
nt
by which this world state must be made and sustained, upon a great, a
contemporary, and a universally accessible literature, a literature not sim=
ply
of thought and science but of power, which shall embody and make real and
living the sustaining dreams of the coming time, and which shall draw toget=
her
and bring into intelligent correlation all those men and women who are work=
ing
now discontentedly and wastefully towards a better order of life. For, inde=
ed,
a great number of men and women are already working for this New Republic,
working with the most varied powers and temperaments and formulæ, to
raise the standard of housing and the standard of living, to enlarge our kn=
owledge
of the means by which better births may be attained, to know more, to educa=
te
better, to train better, to write good books for teachers, to organize our =
schools,
to make our laws simpler and more honest, to clarify our political life, to
test and reorganize all our social rules and conventions, to adjust propert=
y to
new conditions, to improve our language, to increase intercourse of all sor=
ts,
to give our ideals the justice of a noble presentation; at a thousand points
the New Republic already starts into being. And while we scattered pioneers=
and
experimenters piece together our scattered efforts into a coherent scheme,
while we become more and more clearly conscious of our common purpose, year=
by
year the old order and those who have anchylosed to the old order, die and =
pass
away, and the unhampered children of the new time grow up about us.
In a few years th=
is
that I call New Republicanism here, under I know not what final name, will =
have
become a great world movement conscious of itself and consistent within its=
elf,
and we who are making now the crude discovery of its possibility will be
working towards its realization in our thousand different ways and position=
s.
And coming to our help, to reinforce us, to supersede us, to take the growi=
ng
task out of our hands will come youth, will come our sons and daughters and=
those
for whom we have written our books, for whom we have taught in our schools,=
for
whom we have founded and ordered libraries, toiled in laboratories, and in
waste places and strange lands; for whom we have made saner and cleaner hom=
es
and saner and cleaner social and political arrangements, foregoing a hundred
comfortable acquiescences that these things might be done. Youth will come =
to
take over the work from us and go on with it in a bolder and ampler manner =
than
we in these limited days dare to attempt.
Assuredly youth w=
ill
come to us, if this is indeed to be the dawn of a new time. Without the high
resolve of youth, without the constant accession of youth, without recupera=
tive
power, no sustained forward movement is possible in the world. It is to you=
th,
therefore, that this book is finally addressed, to the adolescents, to the
students, to those who are yet in the schools and who will presently come to
read it, to those who being still plastic can understand the infinite plast=
icity
of the world. It is those who are yet unmade who must become the makers. Af=
ter
thirty there are few conversions and fewer fine beginnings; men and women g=
o on
in the path they have marked out for themselves. Their imaginations have be=
come
firm and rigid even if they have not withered, and there is no turning them
from the conviction of their brief experience that almost all that is, is
inexorably so. Accomplished things obsess us more and more. What man or wom=
an
over thirty in Great Britain dares to hope for a republic before it is time=
to
die? Yet the thing might be. Or for the reunion of the English- speaking
peoples? Or for the deliverance of all of our blood and speech from those
fouler things than chattel slavery, child and adolescent labour? Or for an
infantile death-rate under ninety in the thousand and all that would mean in
the common life? These and a hundred such things are coming now, but only t=
he
young know how near they may be brought to us. As for us others, we plant a
tree never believing we shall eat the fruit, we build a house never hoping =
to
live therein. The desert, we believe in our hearts, is our home and our
destined grave, and whatever we see of the Promised Land we must see through
the eyes of the young.
With each year of
their lives they come more distinctly into conscious participation with our
efforts. Those soft little creatures that we have figured grotesquely as
dropping from an inexorable spout into our world, those weak and wailing lu=
mps
of pink flesh more helpless than any animal, for whom we have planned better
care, a better chance of life, better conditions of all sorts, those laval
souls who are at first helpless clay in our hands, presently insensibly have
become helpers beside us in the struggle. In a little while they are beauti=
ful children,
they are boys and girls and youths and maidens, full of the zest of new lif=
e,
full of an abundant, joyful receptivity. In a little while they are walking
with us, seeking to know whither we go, and whither we lead them, and why. =
Our
account of the men-makers is not complete until we add to birth and school =
and
world, the increasing element of deliberate co-operation in the man or woma=
n we
are seeking to make. In a little while they are young men and women, and th=
en
men and women, save for a fresher vigour, like ourselves. For us it comes at
last to fellowship and resignation. For them it comes at last to responsibi=
lity,
to freedom, and to introspection and the searching of hearts. We must if we
would be men-makers, as the first and immediate part of the business, corre=
ct
and finish ourselves. The good New Republican must needs ask and ask
repeatedly: What have I done and what am I doing with myself while I tamper
with the lives of others? His self-examination will be no monstrous egotism=
of
perfectibility, indeed, no virtuosity of virtue, no exquisite retreat and
slinking "out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run fo=
r,
not without dust and heat." But he will seek perpetually to gauge his
quality, he will watch to see himself the master of his habits and of his
powers; he will take his brain, blood, body, and lineage as a trust to be a=
dministered
for the world. To know all one can of one's self in relation to the world a=
bout
one, to think out all one can, to take nothing for granted except by reason=
of
one's unavoidable limitations, to be swift, indeed, but not hasty, to be st=
rong
but not violent, to be as watchful of one's self as it is given one to be, =
is
the manifest duty of all who would subserve the New Republic. For the New R=
epublican,
as for his forerunner the Puritan, conscience and discipline must saturate
life. He must be ruled by duties and a certain ritual in life. Every day and
every week he must set aside time to read and to think, to commune with oth=
ers
and himself, he must be as jealous of his health and strength as the Levite=
s of
old. Can we in this generation make but a few thousands of such men and wom=
en,
men and women who are not afraid to live, men and women with a common faith=
and
a common understanding, then, indeed, our work will be done. They will in t=
heir
own time take this world as a sculptor takes his marble and shape it better
than all our dreams.
THE END
APPENDIX - A PAPER ON
ADMINISTRATIVE AREAS READ BEFORE THE FABIAN SOCIETY
[Footnote: I am
indebted to Mr. E. R. Pease for some valuable corrections.--H. G. W.]
Let me begin this paper upon the qu=
estion
of Scientific Administrative areas in relation to municipal undertakings by
defining the sort of Socialism I profess. Because, you know, it is quite
impossible to conceal that there are very many different sorts of socialism,
and your society is, and has long been, a remarkably representative collect=
ion of
the various types. We have this much in common, however, that we insist upon
and hammer home and never lose sight of the fact that Property is a purely
provisional and law-made thing, and that the law and the community which has
given may also, at its necessity, take away. The work which the Socialist
movement has done is to secure the general repudiation of any idea of
sacredness about property. But upon the extent to which it is convenient to
sanction a certain amount of property, and the ways in which existing exces=
ses
of property are to be reduced, Socialists differ enormously. There are cert=
ain
extreme expressions of Socialism that you will connect with the names of Ow=
en and
Fourier, and with Noyes's "History of American Socialism," in whi=
ch the
abolition of monopoly is carried out with logical completeness to the aboli=
tion
of marriage, and in which the idea seems to be to extend the limits of the
Family and of intimate intercourse to include all humanity. With these
Socialisms I have nothing in common. There are a large number of such quest=
ions
concerning the constitution of the family upon which I retain an open and
inquiring mind, and to which I find the answers of the established order, if
not always absolutely incorrect, at any rate glaringly incomplete and total=
ly
inadequate; but I do not find the answers of these Socialistic Communities =
in
any degree more satisfactory.
There are, howeve=
r,
more limited Socialisms, systems which deal mainly with economic organizati=
ons,
which recognize the rights of individuals to possessions of a personal sort,
and which assume without detailed discussion the formation of family groups
within the general community. There are limited socialisms whose repudiatio=
n of
property affects only the common interests of the community, the land it
occupies, the services in which all are interested, the necessary minimum o=
f education,
and the sanitary and economic interaction of one person or family group upon
another; socialisms which, in fact, come into touch with an intelligent
individualism, and which are based on the attempt to ensure equality of
opportunity and freedom for complete individual development to every citize=
n.
Such socialists look not so much to the abolition of property as to the
abolition of inheritance, and to the intelligent taxation of property for t=
he
services of the community. It is among such moderate socialists that I would
number myself. I would make no hard and fast rule with regard to any portio=
n of
the material and apparatus used in the service of a community. With regard =
to
any particular service or concern, I would ask, Is it more convenient, more=
likely
to lead to economy and efficiency, to let this service rest in the hands of
some single person or group of persons who may offer to do the service or
administer the concern, and whom we will call the owners, or to place it in=
the
hands of some single person or group of persons, elected or chosen by lot, =
whom
we will call the official or group of officials? And if you were to suggest
some method of election that would produce officials that, on the whole, we=
re
likely to manage worse than private owners, and to waste more than the priv=
ate
owner's probable profits, I should say then by all means leave the service =
or concern
in private hands.
You see upon this
principle the whole question of the administration of any affair turns upon=
the
question, Which will give the maximum efficiency? It is very easy to say, a=
nd
it stirs the heart and produces cheering in crowded meetings to say, "=
Let
everything be owned by all and controlled by all for the good of all,"=
and
for the general purposes of a meeting it is quite possible to say that and
nothing more. But if you sit down quietly by yourself afterwards and try an=
d imagine
things being "owned by all and controlled by all for the good of
all," you will presently arrive at the valuable discovery in social and
political science that the phrase means nothing whatever. It is also very
striking, on such rhetorical occasions, to oppose the private owner to the
community or the state or the municipality, and to suppose all the vices of
humanity concentrated in private ownership, and all the virtues of humanity
concentrated in the community, but indeed that clear and striking contrast =
will
not stand the rough-and-tumble of the workaday world. A little examination =
of
the matter will make it clear that the contrast lies between private owners=
and
public officials--you must have officials, because you can't settle a railw=
ay
time-table or make a bridge by public acclamation--and even there you will =
find
it is not a simple question of the white against black order. Even in our s=
tate
to-day there are few private owners who have absolute freedom to do what th=
ey
like with their possessions, and there are few public officials who have no=
t a
certain freedom and a certain sense of proprietorship in their departments,=
and
in fact, as distinguished from rhetoric, there is every possible gradation
between the one thing and the other. We have to clear our minds of misleadi=
ng
terms in this affair. A clipped and regulated private ownership--a private
company, for example, with completely published accounts, taxed dividends, =
with
a public representative upon its board of directors and parliamentary power=
s--may
be an infinitely more honest, efficient, and controllable public service th=
an a
badly elected or badly appointed board of governors of officials. We may--a=
nd I
for one do--think that a number of public services, an increasing number of
public services, can be best administered as public concerns. Most of us he=
re
to-night are, I believe, pretty advanced municipalizers. But it does not fo=
llow
that we believe that any sort of representative or official body pitched in=
to any
sort of area is necessarily better than any sort of private control. The mo=
re
we are disposed to municipalize, the more incumbent it is upon us to search
out, study, and invent, and to work to develop the most efficient public bo=
dies
possible. And my case to-night is, that the existing local government bodie=
s,
your town councils, borough councils, urban district boards, and so forth, =
are,
for the purposes of municipalization, far from being the best possible bodi=
es,
and that even your county councils fall short, that by their very nature al=
l these
bodies must fall far short of the highest possible efficiency, and that as =
time
goes on they must fail even more than they do now to discharge the duties we
Fabians would like to thrust upon them. And the general reason upon which I
would have you condemn these bodies and seek for some newer and ampler ones
before you press the municipalization of public concerns to its final trial=
, is
this--that their areas of activity are impossibly small.
The areas within
which we shape our public activities at present, derive, I hold, from the n=
eeds
and conditions of a past order of things. They have been patched and repair=
ed
enormously, but they still preserve the essential conceptions of a vanished
organization. They have been patched and repaired first to meet this urgent
specific necessity and then that, and never with any comprehensive anticipa=
tion
of coming needs, and at last they have become absolutely impossible. They a=
re
like fifteenth-century houses which have been continuously occupied by a
succession of enterprising but short-sighted and close- fisted owners, and
which have now been, with the very slightest use of lath-and-plaster partit=
ions
and geyser hot-water apparatus, converted into modern residential flats. Th=
ese
local government areas of to-day represent for the most part what were once
distinct, distinctly organized, and individualized communities, complete mi=
nor
economic systems, and they preserve a tradition of what was once administra=
tive
convenience and economy. To-day, I submit, they do not represent communitie=
s at
all, and they become more wasteful and more inconvenient with every fresh
change in economic necessity.
This is a double
change. Let me first of all say a word in justification for my first assert=
ion
that existing areas do not represent communities, and then pass to a necess=
ary
consequence or so of this fact. I submit that before the railways, that is =
to
say in the days in which the current conception of local government areas
arose, the villages, and still more the boroughs, and even the counties, we=
re practically
complete minor economic systems. The wealth of the locality was, roughly
speaking, local; rich people resided in contact with their property, other
people lived in contact with their work, and it was a legitimate assumption
that a radius of a mile or so, or of a few miles, circumscribed most of the
practical interests of all the inhabitants of a locality. You got rich and =
poor
in visible relationships; you got landlord and tenant, you got master and
workman all together. But now, through a revolution in the methods of
locomotion, and chiefly through the making of railways, this is no longer t=
rue.
You can still see the villages and towns separated by spaces of fields and
physically distinct, but it is no longer the case that all who dwell in the=
se
old limits are essentially local inhabitants and mutually interdependent as=
once
they would have been. A large proportion of our population to-day, a large =
and
an increasing proportion, has no localized interests at all as an
eighteenth-century person would have understood locality.
Take for example =
Guildford,
or Folkestone, and you will find that possibly even more than half the weal=
th
in the place is non-local wealth--wealth, that is, having no relation to the
local production of wealth--and that a large majority of the more educated,
intelligent and active inhabitants derive their income, spend their energie=
s,
and find their absorbing interests outside the locality. They may rent or o=
wn houses,
but they have no reality of participation and little illusion of participat=
ion
in any local life. You will find in both towns a considerable number of hot=
els,
inns, and refreshment places which, although they are regulated by local
magistrates upon a basis of one license to so many inhabitants, derive only=
a
small fraction of their profits from the custom of the inhabitants. You find
too in Folkestone, as in most seaside places, a great number of secondary
schools, drawing scarcely a pupil from the neighbourhood. And on the other =
hand
you will find labour in both towns, coming in by a morning train and going =
out at
night. And neither of these instances is an extreme type. As you come in
towards London you will find the proportion of what I would call non-local
inhabitants increasing until in Brixton, Hoxton, or West Ham you will find =
the
really localized people a mere thread in the mass of the population. Probab=
ly
you find the thinnest sham of a community in the London boroughs, where a c=
lerk
or a working man will shift his sticks from one borough to another and move=
on
to a third without ever discovering what he has done. It is not that all th=
ese
people do not belong to a community, but that they belong to a larger commu=
nity
of a new type which your administrators have failed to discover, and which =
your
working theory of local government ignores. This is a question I have alrea=
dy
written about with some completeness in a book published a year or so ago, =
and
called "Anticipations," and in that book you will find a more len=
gthy
exposition than I can give here and now of the nature of this expansion. But
the gist of the argument is that the distribution of population, the method=
of
aggregation in a community, is determined almost entirely by the available
means of locomotion. The maximum size of any community of regular daily
intercourse is determined by the length of something that I may best sugges=
t to
your mind by the phrase--the average possible suburban journey in an hour. =
A town,
for example, in which the only method of progression is on foot along crowd=
ed
ways, will be denser in population and smaller in area than one with wide
streets and a wheeled traffic, and that again will be denser and compacter =
than
one with numerous tubes, trams, and light railways. Every improvement in
locomotion forces the suburban ring of houses outward, and relieves the
pressure of the centre. Now, this principle of expanding communities holds =
not
only in regard to towns, but also on the agricultural country side. There,
also, facilities for the more rapid collection of produce mean finally the
expansion and coalescence of what were previously economic unities.
Now if, while this
expansion of the real communities goes on, you keep to the old boundary lin=
es,
you will find an increasing proportion of your population straddling those
lines. You will find that many people who once slept and worked and reared
their children and worshipped and bought all in one area, are now, as it we=
re,
delocalized; they have overflowed their containing locality, and they live =
in
one area, they work in another, and they go to shop in a third. And the only
way in which you can localize them again is to expand your areas to their n=
ew scale.
This is a change =
in
human conditions that has been a very distinctive event in the history of t=
he
past century, and it is still in progress. But I think there is excellent r=
eason
for supposing that for practical purposes this change, made by the railway =
and
the motor, this development of local locomotion, will reach a definite limi=
t in
the next hundred years. We are witnessing the completion of a great develop=
ment
that has altered the average possible suburban journey in an hour from one =
of
four or five miles to one of thirty miles, and I doubt very much whether, w=
hen
every tendency of expansion has been reckoned with, this average hour journ=
ey
will ever get much beyond sixty or seventy miles an hour. A radius of four =
or
five miles marked the maximum size of the old community. A radius of a hund=
red
miles will certainly mark the maximum of the new community. And so it is no=
effectual
answer to my general argument to say that a revision of administrative areas
always has been and always will be a public necessity. To a certain extent =
that
always has been and always will be true, but on a scale in no way comparabl=
e to
the scale on which it is true to-day, because of these particular invention=
s.
This need in its greatness is a peculiar feature of the present time, and a
peculiar problem of the present time. The municipal areas that were conveni=
ent in
the Babylonian, ancient Egyptian, or Roman empires were no larger and no
smaller than those that served the purpose of seventeenth- century Europe, =
and
I believe it is highly probable--I think the odds are in favour of the
belief--that the most convenient administrative areas of the year 2000 will=
be
no larger and no smaller than those for many subsequent centuries. We are, =
in
this respect, in the full flow of a great and permanent transition. And the
social and political aspect of the change, is this steadily increasing
proportion of people--more especially in our suburban areas--who are, so fa=
r as
our old divisions go, delocalized. They represent, in fact, a community of a
new sort, the new great modern community, which is seeking to establish its=
elf
in the room of the dwindling, little, highly localized communities of the p=
ast.
Now what are the
practical consequences of this large and increasing non-local element in yo=
ur
old local government areas? First, there is this. The non-local people do n=
ot
follow, have neither the time, nor the freedom, nor the stimulus of suffici=
ent
interests to follow, local politics. They are a sort of Outlanders. Local
politics remain therefore more and more in the hands of the dwindling secti=
on
of people whose interests really are circumscribed by the locality. These a=
re usually
the small local tradesmen, the local building trade, sometimes a doctor and
always a solicitor; and the most energetic and active and capable of these,=
and
the one with the keenest eye to business, is usually the solicitor. Whatever
you put into the hands of a local authority--education, lighting,
communications--you necessarily put into the hands of a group of this sort.
Here and there, of course, there may be variations; an organized labour vote
may send in a representative, or some gentleman of leisure and philanthropic
tastes, like Mr. Bernard Shaw, may confer distinction upon local deliberati=
ons,
but that will not alter the general state of affairs. The state of affairs =
you
must expect as the general rule, is local control by petty local interests,=
a
state of affairs that will certainly intensify in the years to come, unless
some revision of areas can be contrived that will overtake the amplifying
interests of the delocalized section of the population.
Let me point out =
what
is probably the result of a dim recognition of this fact by the non-local
population, and that is the extreme jealousy of rates and municipal trading=
by
the less localized paying classes in the community. That is a question we
Socialists, believing as we do all of us at least in the abstract theory of
municipalization, must particularly consider. The easy exasperation of the
£1000-a-year man at the rates and his extreme patience under Imperial
taxation is incomprehensible, unless you recognize this fact of his
delocalization. Then at once it becomes clear. He penetrates the pretences =
of
the system to a certain extent; and he is infuriated by the fact of taxation
without representation, tempered by a mysteriously ineffective voting paper
left at his door. I myself, as one of the delocalized class, will confess he
has my sympathy. And those who believe in the idea of the ultimate
municipalization of most large industries, will continue to find in this
non-localized class, working especially through the medium of Parliament, a
persistent and effective obstruction to all such projects, unless such a
rectification of areas can be contrived as will overtake the delocalization=
and
the diffusion of interests that has been and is still going on. I will conf=
ess
that it seems to me that this opposition between the localized and the non-=
localized
classes in the future, or to be more correct, the opposition between the man
whose ideas and life lie in a small area, and the man whose ideas and life =
lie
in a great area, is likely to give us that dividing line in politics for wh=
ich
so many people are looking to-day. For this question of areas has its Imper=
ial
as well as its local side. You have already seen the Liberal party split up=
on
the Transvaal question; you yourselves have--I am told--experienced some sl=
ight
parallel tendency to fission, and it is interesting to note that this was,
after all, only another aspect of this great question of areas, which I wou=
ld
now discuss in relation to municipal trading. The small communities are
fighting for existence and their dear little ways, the synthetic great
communities are fighting to come into existence, and to absorb the small
communities. And curiously enough at our last meeting you heard Mr. Belloc,
with delightful wit and subtlety, expounding the very antithesis of the
conceptions I am presenting to-night. Mr. Belloc--who has evidently never r=
ead
his Malthus--dreams of a beautiful little village community of peasant
proprietors, each sticking like a barnacle to his own little bit of propert=
y,
beautifully healthy and simple and illiterate and Roman Catholic and local,
local over the ears. I am afraid the stars in their courses fight against s=
uch pink
and golden dreams. Every tramway, every new twopenny tube, every light rail=
way,
every improvement in your omnibus services, in your telephonic services, in
your organization of credit, increases the proportion of your delocalized
class, and sucks the ebbing life from your old communities into the veins of
the new.
Well, you may say=
, no
doubt this is right so far as it goes; existing local government areas do n=
ot
represent real countries, but still these local government devices are of
service for cutting up and distributing administrative work. But that is
exactly what they are not. They are worse when you consider them in regard =
to
function, than when you consider them in regard to representation. Since our
conceptions of what constitutes a local administrative area were developed
there has arisen the problems of water supply and of organized sewage, of r=
ailways,
tramways, and communications generally, and of lighting and telephonic
intercourse; there hangs over us, though the average local authority has no
eyes to see it, the necessity of adapting our roads to accommodate an
increasing new traffic of soft-tyred vehicles, and it is not improbable that
heating by wholesale, either by gas or electricity, will presently be also
possible and desirable. For all these things we need wide views, wide minds=
and
wide areas, and still more do we want wide views for the business of educat=
ion
that is now also coming into the sphere of local administration.
It happens that I
have had an object-lesson in this matter of local government; and indeed it=
is
my object-lesson that has led to this paper to-night. I live upon the bound=
ary
line of the Sandgate Urban District Board, a minute authority with a bounda=
ry
line that appears to have been determined originally about 1850 by mapping =
out
the wanderings of an intoxicated excursionist, and which--the only word is =
interdigitates--with
the borough of Folkestone, the Urban District of Cheriton, and the borough =
of
Hythe. Each of these bodies is by way of being a tramway authority, each is=
at
liberty to secure powers to set up generating stations and supply electrici=
ty,
each is a water authority, and each does its own little drainage, and the
possibilities of friction and litigation are endless. The four places
constitute an urban area greatly in need of organized intercommunication, b=
ut
the four authorities have never been able to agree upon a scheme; and now F=
olkestone
is concerning itself with the project of a little internal tramway system a=
ll
of its very own. Sandgate has succumbed to the spell of the South Eastern
Railway Company, and has come into line with a project that will necessitat=
e a
change of cars at the Folkestone boundary. Folkestone has conceded its
electrical supply to a company, but Sandgate, on this issue, stands out
gallantly for municipal trading, and proposes to lay down a plant and set u=
p a
generating station all by itself to supply a population of sixteen hundred
people, mostly indigent. In the meanwhile, Sandgate refuses its inhabitants=
the
elementary convenience of the electric light, and when, quite inadvertently=
, I
connected across the convolutions of the boundary with the Folkestone suppl=
y,
my life was darkened by the threat of impossible litigation. But if Folkest=
one
repudiates municipal enterprise in the matter of lighting, I gather it does=
not
do so in the matter of telephones; and there has been talk of a neat little
Folkestone telephonic system competing against the National Telephone Compa=
ny,
a compact little conversazione of perhaps a hundred people, rate sustained.=
And
how is the non-local inhabitant to come into these things? The intelligent
non-local inhabitant can only save his two or three pounds of contribution =
to
this folly or that by putting in twenty or thirty pounds' worth of work in
local politics. He has no local connections, no local influence, he hasn't a
chance against the plumber. When the house I occupy was built, it was a mere
interposition of Providence that the drain did not go southward into a
Folkestone sewer instead of northward into Sandgate. Heaven knows what would
have happened if it had! I and my neighbours are by a special concession pe=
rmitted
to have water from the Folkestone source. By incessant vigilance we do, I
believe, usually succeed in deducting the Folkestone water rate from the
Sandgate general rate which covers water, but the wear and tear is enormous.
However, these are details, dear to my heart, but the merest marginal comme=
nts
to my argument. The essential fact is the impracticable silliness of these
little divisions, the waste of men, the waste of nervous energy, the waste =
of
administrative energy they involve. I am convinced that in the case of almo=
st any
public service in the Folkestone district with our present boundaries, the
administrative waste will more than equal the profit of a private company w=
ith
parliamentary powers overriding our local authorities; that if it is simply=
a
choice between these little bodies and a company (of the common type even),
then in lighting, locomotion, and indeed in almost any general public servi=
ce,
I would say, "give me the company." With companies one may hope to
deal later; they will not stand in the way of developing saner areas, but an
obstinate little authority clutching everything in its hands, and led by a
clerk naturally interested in litigation, and who is also something of an
expert in political organization, will be an altogether harder thing to sup=
ersede.
This difficulty in
greater or lesser degree is everywhere. In the case of poor law administrat=
ion
in particular, and also in the case of elementary education, the whole coun=
try
displays what is another aspect of this same general phenomenon of
delocalization; the withdrawal of all the wealthier people from the areas t=
hat
are specializing as industrial centres, and which have a rising population =
of
poor workers, to areas that are specializing as residential, and which have=
, if
anything, a falling proportion of poor labourers. In a place like West Ham =
or
Tottenham you find starved schools and an abundant delocalized industrial
population, and, by way of contrast, at Guildford or Farnham for example, y=
ou
will find enormously rich delocalized people, belonging to the same great
community as these workers, who pay only the most trivial poor rate and sch=
ool
rate for the benefit of their few immediate neighbours, and escape altogeth=
er
from the burthens of West Ham. By treating these places as separate communi=
ties
you commit a cruel injustice on the poor. So far as these things go, to cla=
im convenience
for the existing areas is absurd. And it is becoming more and more evident =
that
with tramways, with lighting, with electric heating and force supply, and w=
ith
the supply of water to great populations, there is an enormous advantage in
large generating stations and large areas; that these things must be handle=
d in
areas of hundreds of square miles to be efficiently done.
In the case of
secondary and higher education one discovers an equal stress and
incompatibility. At present, I must point out, even the boundaries of the
projected educational authority for London are absurdly narrow. For example=
, in
Folkestone, as in every town upon the south coast, there are dozens of seco=
ndary
schools that are purely London schools, and filled with London boys and gir=
ls,
and there are endless great schools like Tonbridge and Charterhouse outside=
the
London area that are also London schools. If you get, for example, a vigoro=
us
and efficient educational authority for London, and you raise a fine
educational system in the London area, you will find it incomplete in an al=
most
vital particular. You will give the prosperous middle class and the upper c=
lass
of London the alternative of good teaching and bad air, or of what very
probably, under tolerant local authorities, will be relatively bad teaching=
and
open air and exercise out of London. You will have to tax this influential
class of people for the magnificent schools they in many cases will be unab=
le
to use. As a consequence, you will find again all the difficulties of their=
opposition,
practically the same difficulties that arise so naturally in the way of
municipal trading. I would suggest that it would be not only logical but
politic, for the London Educational Authority, and not the local authority,=
to
control every secondary school wherever it happened to be, which in an aver=
age
of years drew more than half its attendance from the London area. That,
however, by the way. The point more material to my argument here is that the
educational organization of the London area, the Thames valley, and the
southern counties are inseparable; that the question of local locomotion is
rapidly becoming impossible upon any smaller basis than such an area; that
roads, light railways, drainage, water, are all clamouring now to be dealt =
with
on the big scale; and that the more you cut this great area up, the more you
leave it in the hands of the localized men, the more you sin against effici=
ency
and the light.
I hope that you w=
ill
consider this first part of my case proved. And now I pass on to the more
debatable question--the nature of the new divisions that are to replace the
old. I would suggest that this is a matter only to be answered in detail by=
an
exhaustive analysis of the distribution of population in relation to econom=
ic
standing, but I may perhaps just indicate roughly what at a first glance I
imagine would be one suitable local government area. Let me remind you that
some years ago the Conservative party, in an outbreak of intelligence, did =
in a
sort of transitory way see something of what I have been trying to express
to-night, and created the London County Council--only to quarrel with it and
hate it and fear it ever since. Well, my proposal would be to make a much
greater area even than the London County, and try to include in it the whole
system of what I might call the London- centred population. I believe If you
were to take the whole valley of the Thames and its tributaries and draw a =
line
along its boundary watershed, and then include with that Sussex and Surrey,=
and
the east coast counties up to the Wash, you would overtake and anticipate t=
he delocalizing
process almost completely. You would have what has become, or is becoming v=
ery
rapidly, a new urban region, a complete community of the new type, rich and
poor and all sorts and aspects of economic life together. I would suggest t=
hat
watersheds make excellent boundaries. Let me remind you that railways,
tramways, drain-pipes, water-pipes, and high-roads have this in common--they
will not climb over a watershed if they can possibly avoid doing so, and th=
at population
and schools and poor tend always to distribute themselves in accordance with
these other things. You get the minimum of possible overlap--such overlap as
the spreading out of the great midland city to meet London must some day
cause--in this way. I would suggest that for the regulation of sanitation,
education, communications, industrial control, and poor relief, and for the
taxation for these purposes, this area should be one, governed by one body,
elected by local constituencies that would make its activities independent =
of
imperial politics. I propose that this body should replace your county
councils, boards of guardians, urban and rural district councils, and all t=
he rest
of them altogether; that you should elect it, perhaps triennially, once for
all. For any purpose of a more local sort, local water-supply systems, local
tramway systems--the tramways between Brighton and Shoreham, for example--t=
his
body might delegate its powers to subordinate committees, consisting, it has
been suggested to me by Mrs. Sidney Webb, of the members for the local
constituencies concerned, together with another member or so to safeguard t=
he
general interests, or perhaps with an appointed expert or so in addition. T=
hese
committees would submit their detailed schemes for the approval of committe=
es appointed
by the general body, and they would be controllable by that body. However,
there is no need for detailed scheming here and now. Let us keep to the main
idea.
I submit that suc=
h a
mammoth municipality as this will be, on the one hand, an enormously more
efficient substitute for your present little local government bodies, and on
the other hand, will be able to take over a considerable proportion of the
detailed work and a considerable proportion of the detailed machinery, of y=
our
overworked and too extensive central machinery, your local government board,
education department, and board of trade. It will be great enough and fine
enough to revive the dying sentiment of local patriotism, and it will be a =
body
that will appeal to the ambition of the most energetic and capable men in t=
he
community. They will be picked men, to a much greater extent than are your
guardians, your urban district councillors and town councillors and so on, =
at
present, because there will be perhaps a hundred or a couple of hundred of =
them
in the place of many thousands. And I venture to think that in such a body =
you
may confidently hope to find a collective intelligence that may be pitted
against any trust or board of directors the world is likely to produce.
I suggest this bo=
dy
as a sort of concrete sample of the thing I have in mind. I am quite open to
hear and accept the most far-reaching modification of this scheme; it is the
idea of the scale that I wish particularly to enforce. Municipalize on this
scale, I would say, and I am with you altogether. Here is something distinc=
tly
and clearly subserving that making of mankind upon which all sane social an=
d political
proposals must ultimately base themselves. But to put more power, and still
more power in the hands of these petty little administrative bodies that we
have to-day, is, I submit, folly and darkness. If the existing areas are to
remain the same, then, on the whole, my vote is against municipal trading, =
and
on the whole, with regard to light, to tramways and communications, to
telephones, and indeed to nearly all such public services, I would prefer to
see these things in the hands of companies, and I would stipulate only for =
the maximum
publicity for their accounts and the fullest provision for detailed regulat=
ion
through the Board of Trade.