HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
Photograph by Gertrude Kasebier 
 
 DR. FREDERIK VAN EEDEN 
 
HAPPY 
 HUMANITY 
 
 BY 
 DR. FREDERIK VAN EEDEN 
 
 GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 
 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 1912 
 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION 
 INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 
 
 COPYRIGHT, igog, igio, igii, igi2, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS 
 GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction vii 
 
 PART I. In the Old World 
 
 I. Dreams of Youth 3 
 
 II. Poet and Doctor 28 
 
 III. A Literary Experiment .... 50 
 
 IV. Curing by Suggestion .... 64 
 V. The Influence of Some Friends . . 82 
 
 VI. The Great Strike 91 
 
 VII. The Breakdown 117 
 
 PART II. In the New World 
 
 I. The Scheme for America . . . . 141 
 II. Co-production: Its Moral Motives and 
 
 Results 153 
 
 III. What I Said to the American People . 176 
 
 IV. What I Said to American Business Men 195 
 V. A Lay Sermon on the Plain. "What I 
 
 Would Say to the Average American 
 
 Reader" 208 
 
 VI. Conclusion 229 
 
 Appendix I 251 
 
 Appendix II 259 
 
 242403 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE following pages want some apology. 
 They are autobiographical in a degree not 
 corresponding with my intention nor 
 justified by the eventfulness, the adventurousness, 
 the narrative importance of my life. Yet, as the 
 editors of this book kindly suggested, they may 
 have a value and an interesting quality, by showing 
 how private events brought me to my present at- 
 titude and convictions. I tell these individual 
 particulars reluctantly, for what really is of worth 
 and value is only their general significance. Things 
 personal are bound to vanish, and the less attention 
 we pay them the better, and in telling this story I 
 beg to observe that I do not think my facts im- 
 portant in themselves but only instructive in show- 
 ing the influence that outward and personal events 
 exist on our inward struggle for light, for freedom, 
 and for universality. 
 
 Vll 
 
PART I 
 IN THE OLD WORLD 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 DREAMS OF YOUTH 
 
 HOLLAND, in the middle of the nineteenth 
 century, was in a peculiar condition. It 
 had gone over heights of wealth and glory, 
 and through depths of misery and humiliation; it 
 had seen its commerce ruined by England; it had 
 been brutally bullied and exploited by Napoleon; 
 it had lost its fleet, its colonies, its influence; it had 
 seen the houses of its towns stand empty, and the 
 number of its subsidized paupers increased terribly. 
 Only by the grace of mightier powers it had been 
 put upon its legs again, and established as a "buf- 
 ferstate" between Germany and England. It had 
 all the qualities of an old man rumbling and musing 
 over the vicissitudes of life, sneering mildly at the 
 hopes and illusions of younger people. Its patriot- 
 ism, though still alive and kept up in a formal and 
 rhetorical way, had a sour taste of skepticism in it; 
 its great art seemed lost and it considered the in- 
 terest of the foreigner principally from the lu- 
 crative sides after the manner of the old peasant 
 that welcomes the pedler who is interested in his 
 
 3 
 
4 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 crockery and china; its architecture was a horrid 
 imitation of Italian Renaissance; its literature had 
 for its best quality a mild and gentle irony, a pro- 
 vincial humour. 
 
 Then, in the sixties, we woke up. The revival 
 was due largely to the pushing influence of the 
 powerfully rising antagonist of France and England 
 the great "Hinterland," Germany. We were 
 in the way of Germany in her path to the sea, 
 and we had to stir, whether we wanted to or 
 not. 
 
 This waking up was anticipated, however, by a 
 hidden and unnoticed revival of our special art, 
 the art of painting. We had our splendid artistic 
 dreams just before we woke up at a new daybreak. 
 A group of mighty painters, the brothers Maris, 
 Anton Mauve, Jozef Israels, began their work, and 
 in the sixties had already made their masterpieces, 
 although their fame was not established before the 
 end of the century. 
 
 Now, when we consider the progress of architec- 
 ture over the whole world, it seems as if the low 
 watermark of taste was reached about that time 
 in all countries. The time of the second French 
 Empire, the time of the crinoline, was also the 
 period in which the ugliest buildings ever made by 
 human hand were erected in Europe and America. 
 Then by some mysterious reason the pendulum 
 swung back and another Renaissance began. 
 
DREAMS OF YOUTH 5 
 
 What we had to struggle for in Holland was to 
 get out of provincialism and narrow, self-satisfied 
 dulness, to return into the great universal current 
 of life; we did not recognize real art when we saw it. 
 
 When I was born the great masterpieces of my 
 famous townsman, Frans Hals, now the principal 
 pride of Haarlem, had just been recovered from the 
 mould and dust of some dark attic, where they had 
 been lying rolled up, if you please for about 
 a century, as worthless rags. Most striking it is to 
 observe that Jozef Israels, the Nestor of modern 
 Dutch painters, who is over eighty now, and still 
 vigorously working, had to go through a very 
 long struggle before he could break the bonds of 
 conventionalism and bad taste, reach artistic free- 
 dom, and become the man of world-wide renown 
 he is now. 
 
 It was hard and painful work to get out of the 
 mire of dulness, laxity, and complacency in which 
 we struggled. My whole life up to this day has 
 been one long and difficult progress from provincial- 
 ism to universality, carried on in the hope of sharing 
 the renewed vitality of the human race of this most 
 eventful and significant age. 
 
 As a nation we were not poor. We had been 
 humiliated and impoverished, but we had still some 
 sources of wealth left; there was Java of our colonies; 
 and there was interest on the money we had lent 
 to foreigners. We were not penniless but worse, 
 
6 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 we were a nation of a few well-to-do rentiers and of 
 many paupers living by charity. Rich and poor 
 were satisfied in their lot, and had lost all inclina- 
 tion for improvement. 
 
 When you come to my native town, Haarlem, the 
 most curious things to see besides the paintings 
 of Hals are the so-called Hofies. Hofies are chari- 
 table institutions founded by some wealthy donor 
 who gave his name to the foundation, as a sure way 
 to gain salvation in Heaven, and a long and hon- 
 oured reputation on earth. Poor old people live 
 there in neat little ivy-covered mansions grouped 
 round a quiet green square where there are flowers 
 and a well. There were more than twenty of these 
 "havens of rest" in Haarlem when I was a boy. 
 I like to think of the picturesque quiet, the atmos- 
 phere of pensive peacefulness of these secluded 
 squares, where old women with their pussies on 
 the floor beside them, and their canaries hanging 
 in the windows, looked on the rare visitor from 
 behind their well-scoured panes. 
 
 Around Haarlem, flower-growing has become at 
 this day a most prosperous trade, extending rapidly, 
 and bringing in millions of dollars. For generations 
 my ancestors had been florists and at the time of 
 my birth my grandfather held the estate owned now 
 by the well-known firm Krelage & Son. He was 
 representative of the condition of his trade and of 
 his country at the time. 
 
DREAMS OF YOUTH 7 
 
 He was rather well-off and had no cares. He 
 was a modest, mild, gentle, humorous man with a 
 considerable literary talent and no sense of business 
 at all. He loved his hyacinths and his tulips, but 
 especially his dahlias, which were then called 
 Georginas and his great delight was not to sell 
 them at a good price, but to sit among them on a 
 sunny day to muse and smoke. 
 
 He left us many unpublished volumes of drama 
 and poetry, all written out by himself in clear and 
 neat handwriting, without a mistake or correction. 
 Moreover, he left the estate in a very low condition. 
 In his narrow, timid, tender frame of mind he 
 educated his children timidly and sentimentally. 
 My father, his only son, was allowed no sport, no 
 physical exercise; he could not swim, or ride, or 
 skate for fear it would hurt his constitution. For 
 when all incentive for progress and development is 
 stifled by the quiet and comfort of a contem- 
 plative life, what is the use of running risks, 
 courting dangers, and exposing your health? My 
 grandfather felt no terror of the abyss of dulness 
 and provincialism into which he and his race were 
 slowly sinking. 
 
 In my father, however, the spark of life and energy 
 began to scintillate again. The worst thing I can 
 say of him is that he had not the quality of heroism. 
 If he had possessed it, he would have been one of the 
 great men of his country, even of the world. For 
 
8 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 he was an extremely clever man, a profound and 
 original thinker, a well-known scientist, a good 
 author, and, moreover, a practical and energetic 
 worker. 
 
 To those who knew him superficially his sense 
 of humour was his prominent quality. His sar- 
 castic irony, his Voltairean spirit, made his con- 
 versation so brilliant and paradoxical that many 
 even of our respectable Dutchmen did not take him 
 seriously. His professed human ideal was the 
 "laughing philosopher," and he founded a club 
 called the "Democritus," in which every member 
 had always to speak in rhyme; the greatest nonsense 
 was most appreciated, provided there was wit in it. 
 All worldly events, no matter how serious, were 
 there matters for jokes and farcical poems. My 
 father's study as it is still left piously untouched 
 showed an almost incredible collection of cartoons, 
 masks, caricatures, and funny bric-a-brac. 
 
 Yet this passionate jester possessed a deeply 
 earnest and religious mind. He discovered the 
 merits of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche long before 
 their works were known in their own country, and 
 he entered into correspondence with both phi- 
 losophers. He was a great reader and admirer of 
 Plato, Lucretius, Spinoza, and of the religious 
 mystic, Madame de la Motte-Guyon. His fa- 
 vourite book was that old treasure of oriental wis- 
 dom: Bhagavad-Githa. He was the real free- 
 
DREAMS OF YOUTH 9 
 
 thinker, able to find the pold of {pith in tfre ore of 
 every religion. 
 
 From a bulb-grower he became a botanist. He 
 had a disdain for all cultivated plants, which he 
 called coarse, gaudy, pretentious, strong-scented 
 things, bred to suit the taste of vulgar and com- 
 monplace people; and he turned all his love and 
 interest to the wild plants of his country, the 
 "weeds," as he called them. He wrote the Flora 
 Batava, a compendium of all our native plants, and 
 a manual of popular botany, called "Weeds," which 
 is still read all over Holland, besides other scientific 
 and philosophical writings. 
 
 In the meantime he did good practical work 
 for the welfare of his country, and was especially 
 interested in our large colonies. "Holland has 
 forty million inhabitants," he used to say, refer- 
 ring to the population of Java, "and a grave 
 under the palms is better than a useless life at 
 home." 
 
 What he did was a great advance on the ancestral 
 laxity. Privately he made a large collection of 
 colonial products, armory, and works of art, which 
 formed the foundation of what has now become the 
 National Colonial Institute. He started also a 
 museum for applied art, with a school attached to 
 it; he was the first to introduce the Scandinavian 
 Sloyd, the educational manual work, from Sweden 
 into Holland; and he did all he could to further the 
 
io HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 scientific exploration of our neglected American 
 possession, Surinam. 
 
 My father did not like his contemporaries, though 
 he did so much for their benefit. He loved nature 
 passionately and sneered sarcastically at man. 
 "Man is a blot on nature," he said. "Look at his 
 build. Did you ever see such a clumsy arrange- 
 ment? Everything hung up on a spinal cord, like 
 an umbrella-stand with a top-heavy globe upper- 
 most. A perfect being ought to be spherical." 
 And then he made funny drawings of a society of 
 globular beings. One of his last sayings was a grim 
 Voltairean joke at the expense of man: "The 
 creator made an awful blundering mess of human- 
 ity," he said, " and if I happen to meet him, you may 
 be sure I will tell him so straight to his face." 
 
 My first years were spent at the bulb farm, in a 
 long one-storied house just outside the gate of 
 Haarlem. There was then still a real mediaeval 
 gate, which was shut at nine in the evening. I 
 remember how we used to hurry out from town to 
 get there before nine; for otherwise we had to pay 
 a penny to the gate-keeper for opening the door. 
 
 The farm was a delicious place for a dreamy, 
 romantic sort of child. The endless square beds of 
 gayly coloured fragrant flowers, the long airy barns 
 where the bulbs, laid out to dry, spread their pe- 
 culiar pungent smell; the hothouses, the orchard 
 it was a little world full of interest and wonder. 
 
DREAMS OF YOUTH n 
 
 Haarlem is situated on what is called in Holland 
 a "river," though I could never tell in which direc- 
 tion the water is flowing. We, like other respectable 
 families, had a little tea-house on the border of that 
 river, whereto we went on Saturday afternoons. I 
 can still see our little procession, father, mother, and 
 the two boys carrying baskets with victuals, fol- 
 lowed by the family cat with tail erect. There on 
 the riverside we drank tea, plucked raspberries, and 
 enjoyed life, I do not remember exactly how. But 
 everything was eminently peaceful and provincial. 
 
 My father with his philosopher's disdain for bus- 
 iness and commercialism, and his botanical con- 
 tempt for cultivated flowers, soon sold the farm 
 and removed to a spacious, old-fashioned house in 
 town. Rural life, to my great regret, was at an end, 
 and I have hated town-life ever since. My father 
 took me with him on his botanical excursions around 
 Haarlem; and in the woods and parks of private 
 country-seats, and especially in the uncultivated 
 dunes between the town and the sea, we had our 
 dreams of unspoiled nature. 
 
 To an American our wilderness would seem but a 
 small area, but to my father and me it was a whole 
 world of savage and lovely scenery. We had our 
 Switzerland there, with her lakes and mountains to 
 explore, and we knew the spots where rare flowers 
 grew. And my father's boyish delight, his real 
 ecstasy, in discovering a new plant, or in the punctual 
 
12 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 reappearance of an expected flower at some secret 
 spot known only to us, was a thing never to be 
 forgotten. 
 
 There and then, like him, I began to love nature 
 above humanity. This wonderful distinction be- 
 tween the totality of animals and plants, including 
 earth and sea and sun and stars, which we call 
 "Nature," and which is always beautiful and 
 sympathetic even in its cruelty and inexorableness, 
 and that particular and so much less sympathetic 
 animal which we call man was a puzzle to me from 
 my earliest years. I questioned my father constantly 
 and he answered patiently as best he could. I es- 
 pecially remember his hardly perceptible smile, im- 
 mediately subdued in order not to hurt my childish 
 pride,whenl,aboyof ten, walking hand in hand with 
 him, started the conversation in this way: "Now, 
 father, let us talk again on nature and humanity." 
 
 In fact, I did not like towns, nor schools which 
 were then indeed, by some incomprehensible or- 
 dinance, the barest, ugliest, most unattractive 
 buildings in town. I did not like my fellow man. 
 Of course I had my class chum, and, earlier, my 
 sweetheart; but these were glorious exceptions, and, 
 I am sorry to say, cruel deceptions also. To all 
 other human creatures I felt very strange, like an 
 exile among foreigners, and I was aware that this 
 was my father's feeling also. But where he laughed 
 and jested and sneered, I felt more inclined to kick 
 
DREAMS OF YOUTH 13 
 
 and cry. It was to me a serious puzzle of sad and 
 mysterious significance; it was no matter for amuse- 
 ment at all. 
 
 I found man coarse, vulgar, brutal, and eminently 
 ugly. There was no self-conceit or self-elation in 
 this feeling; I did not consider myself an exception 
 and was not at all conscious of being finer than they. 
 But my feelings were hurt by the individuals of my 
 own race, constantly, and I could not help it. 
 
 Perhaps all this will be called morbid. But here 
 I beg the kind reader to consider. Morbidity is 
 a deviation from the healthy, normal constitution 
 of man. Ought a healthy, normal human being 
 to be vulgar, coarse, egotistic, dirty, uncivilized, 
 dull, ugly? And if not, is it then a token of mor- 
 bidity to be very keenly conscious of these defects ? 
 Will not the healthy mind be more keenly aware 
 of them than the unhealthy? Compare mankind 
 with any other race. Take wild flowers or animals 
 - take violets, rabbits, sea-gulls, swallows, butter- 
 flies. All are subject to diseases. But out of every 
 thousand individuals, how many will you find ab- 
 normal, deformed? Hardly a dozen. Every moth, 
 every fly, is perfection in its kind. 
 
 And now look at man. You will find the pro- 
 portion exactly reversed. How many out of a thou- 
 sand are well-formed, beautiful, noble-minded, gen- 
 erous, wise, honest, high-spirited? How many are 
 perfection in their kind? 
 
i 4 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 Human perfection means more, is more difficult 
 to reach, you will say. Very well, but we were talk- 
 ing of morbidity i.e., abnormality, deviation from 
 the healthy. You know Luther Burbank, the great 
 breeder, the improver of races, the creator of new 
 forms. Suppose we came to him with a race in the 
 same condition as mankind in its present stage, and 
 asked him to improve it what would he have 
 to do? 
 
 The answer is clear. He would have to select 
 and to destroy destroy, destroy, kill, burn, stamp 
 out just as he did with millions of weeds. Out 
 of every thousand he would have to select a dozen, 
 perhaps one or two, and destroy the rest. He would 
 select the well-built, the beautiful of countenance, 
 the high-minded, the noble-spirited and from 
 these few he would breed a new race. Then we 
 should see for the first time a really healthy human- 
 ity. We should see undreamed wonders of mate- 
 rial prosperity united with spiritual elevation and 
 brotherly love, we should see the kingdom of God 
 remarkably close by. For this is our latest scien- 
 tific discovery in the matter of heredity and breed- 
 ing, that a race can be improved only from the 
 inside that is to say, not by improving outer con- 
 ditions for a great many, but by breeding carefully 
 from a few select parents. 
 
 Of course I do not advocate this wholesale de- 
 struction as a practical measure. It would offer 
 
DREAMS OF YOUTH 15 
 
 some difficulties, and would find much opposition, 
 especially in a democratic age like ours. We have 
 to trust in the final efficacy of a much longer, round- 
 about method, consisting principally of education, 
 self-control, and self-insight. 
 
 But I wanted to point out that morbidity must 
 not be spoken of where there is incipient recovery. 
 For self-insight, consciousness of disease, is the first 
 condition for restoration of health 
 
 I might have been called "morbid" if my sen- 
 sitiveness had led me to bitter despair and hate. If 
 I had become an enemy of society, if I had become 
 a monk, a hermit, a crank, an anarchist, an apache, 
 a cambrioleur, a robber, a tramp, or a burglar, I 
 might with justice have been accused. 
 
 As I grew older, I began to disagree with my 
 father because of his light-hearted, jocular way of 
 taking such a serious matter as life. Here came 
 in some qualities of my maternal ancestry. My 
 mother was descended from an old Dutch family 
 that counted many clergymen of the Dutch Re- 
 formed Church among its members. Her own father 
 was a tall, earnest, sturdy preacher. Her brother, 
 a man of the same stamp, went to South Africa as 
 a clergyman and was the only preacher of the Trans- 
 vaal who responded at the call of the insurgent 
 Boers, and joined the meeting at Paardekraal where 
 war was declared against England in 1880, Decem- 
 ber 1 2th. Another of her brothers went to Java as 
 
16 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 a soldier, and was wounded and won the cross in the 
 war against the Balinese. I remember my pride 
 in his beautiful uniform; I remember his scarred, 
 martial, sunburned face when he came home on 
 furlough. And I remember my despair a few months 
 later, when I ran across the street crying and sob- 
 bing loudly, in order to tell my poor grandmother 
 the sad news, just arrived, that he was shot and 
 killed. 
 
 I was born a philosopher like my father, but be- 
 cause of my inheritance from my mother I did not 
 want to be only a laughing philosopher, I wanted 
 to be a fighting one. 
 
 When asked what my profession would be, my 
 answer was: "poet and painter." My father used 
 to amuse the family, or rather to amuse himself, 
 at the cost of the family, by making facetious rhymes 
 at every festive occasion or gathering. And I was, 
 at an early age, considered a worthy successor in 
 his quality as a family rhymer. Drawing carica- 
 tures and landscapes was my favourite occupation. 
 Yet I never thought of these activities as a means 
 of "making a living." 
 
 Money-getting was a thing that did not enter 
 much into our conversation or our thoughts. My 
 parents lived extremely simply and soberly rather 
 too primitively as it seems to me now. Money- 
 matters were not considered interesting. There 
 was a spirit of thrift, especially in my mother, 
 
DREAMS OF YOUTH 17 
 
 but that of accumulation seemed absent. When 
 my love for nature and natural science awoke, I 
 wished to become a zoologist. And, in imitation of 
 my father, I made collections of beetles, butter- 
 flies, shells, birds' eggs, and other naturalia. 
 
 During the fourteenth year of my life I was 
 unable to read or write, because of a painful disease 
 of the eyes, which obliged me to stay in a dark room. 
 I spent that year quite patiently shut off from the 
 world, dictating verses to my mother and dream- 
 ing. With all its physical suffering, this year is 
 not at all unpleasant in my memory. 
 
 When I recovered, I began to raise silkworms 
 as an occupation that needed no exertion of the 
 eyes. Soon I filled the spacious attic of our house 
 with large, low, open wooden boxes in which my 
 thousands of cream-white caterpillars gnawed their 
 mulberry leaves; and I was busy the whole day in 
 keeping them clean and in collecting their daily 
 food from all the mulberry trees I could reach in or 
 near Haarlem. When you entered the room the 
 sound of their voracious feeding was like a summer 
 rain on the foliage. Then thousands of little paper 
 boxes had to be made and hung up on strings, and 
 the worms, as they became ready to spin, were 
 selected and housed to let them make their cocoons. 
 I had the satisfaction to get a prize medal for my 
 home-made silk. 
 
 To complete the cure of my eyes I went to a Ger- 
 
i8 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 man watering-place. And there I came in touch 
 with English people. I have a suspicion that some 
 of my Anglo-Saxon readers, when I expressed my 
 juvenile dissatisfaction with humanity, said some- 
 thing like this: "Of course, poor boy! to be born 
 and bred among Dutchmen! not the right place, 
 indeed, for learning to admire humanity! How 
 different it would all have been to him if he had 
 been born in England or at least in some Anglo- 
 Saxon country." 
 
 In fact, when I had made my first English friends, 
 and had seen English children, who happened to 
 be remarkably pretty, I began to reconsider my 
 verdict on humanity. If there existed a country 
 where such lovely and graceful beings were the rule, 
 and where the plain and vulgar ones were the 
 exception, then I felt I could live there and be happy. 
 Gladly I would prefer their company to that of my 
 school friends and my caterpillars. 
 
 I decided to go to England and have a look at 
 English people and a taste of the English hospitality 
 that was kindly offered me by my new friends. 
 The necessity to get money for my passage to Lon- 
 don aroused in me an atavistic renewal of the an- 
 cestral business capacity. I sold a watch chain 
 for outlay capital and started at once a little 
 trade in soap, buying it from a factory and 
 selling it to friends and relations. In a few 
 weeks I had what I wanted I think about 
 
DREAMS OF YOUTH 19 
 
 forty dollars and I went to England. After 
 the goal was reached, the soap business collapsed 
 at once and for good. 
 
 I have my doubts whether it is needless to say 
 that I did not find Happy Humanity in Great 
 Britain and returned home disappointed. What 
 struck me most in England was not the healthier 
 race and the finer human individuals though 
 these were surely more conspicuous there than in 
 my own degraded fatherland but the intense self- 
 complacency, the general feeling of racial superi- 
 ority, the want of insight into defects of their own 
 which were just as bad as those of other nations. 
 London seemed to me a terrible place, gloomy, 
 dingy, dark and melancholy, notwithstanding its 
 grand aspects, its vigorous life, its sporadic beauty. 
 Compared to clean, neat, bright little Holland, with 
 its transparant air and its gayly coloured houses, 
 London seemed little better than Niflheim, the 
 Scandinavian Hell. And yet this same city of 
 gloom, fog and squalor, of horrid poverty side by 
 side with reckless luxury, was considered by its 
 inhabitants a wonderful production and a proof of 
 human greatness and power. At the home of my 
 English friends, who were orthodox high-church 
 people, I had my first taste of that terrible spirit 
 of religious formality that lays particular stress on 
 reading the Bible at all possible hours of the day, 
 fit or unfit, with or without understanding, on sing- 
 
20 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 ing hymns and being bored in church, and on doing 
 nothing and looking dull on Sundays. 
 
 Being educated without any spiritual com- 
 pulsion I had never understood until that time the 
 bitter invectives of a poet like Lucretius against 
 religion. After my visit to England I felt the 
 meaning of that line so often quoted by my father: 
 
 Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum. 
 
 I had seen how the minds of these pretty and 
 graceful English children were twisted and cor- 
 rupted by the petrified dogmas of a lifeless faith, 
 how they were taught to consider themselves as 
 belonging to the elect because they followed mean- 
 ingless prescriptions and repeated things they could 
 not understand. I had seen the pure, simple 
 spirit of the genuine Christian faith turned into a 
 narrow, harsh, forbidding doctrine. I saw the 
 message of Jesus, meant as a liberation, used as a 
 means for spiritual slavery. 
 
 When I was sixteen, my bodily eyes being healed 
 and my spiritual soul's eyes beginning to open, I 
 entered the lists, determined to fight for Happy 
 Humanity. 
 
 At that time my favourite authors were Heine and 
 our Dutch poet-freethinker Multatuli. I refused to 
 become a member of any church, though all my 
 family, and even my father, wanted me to do so. 
 They tempted me to do as they wished by the 
 
DREAMS OF YOUTH 21 
 
 promise of a gold watch and chain. But I said: 
 Fade retro! and have worn a silver one until this day. 
 
 I never was a materialist, however, and my first 
 dramatic production was a fantastic comedy 
 influenced by the reading of Aristophanes in 
 which I showed an "Empire of the learned" founded 
 by a very clever professor on an uninhabited 
 island. There everything was done scientifically 
 and mathematically; Logic and Reason were the 
 only Gods; Sentiment was not allowed unless 
 rationally justified, and the Founder and Ruler of 
 the Empire had a right to submit every citizen to 
 an instantaneous examination concerning the sound- 
 ness of his scientific knowledge and principles. Of 
 course the Deus ex Machina whom I introduced was 
 Amor. Love proved stronger than Reason, and 
 at the moment when the Learned Tyrant invited 
 one of his female subjects to write down at once 
 the formula for maternal Love, after a glowing 
 speech by the insurgent woman, rebellion broke 
 out. The play was never performed and was of 
 course only a juvenile attempt. At this present 
 moment, however, thirty three years after I wrote 
 it, it seems to me not at all out of date. 
 
 Life began now to show me its tragic side. A 
 friend of our home, whom we all liked, and whose 
 merry company I particularly enjoyed, was found 
 by me in his room with a bullet in his head and the 
 pistol in his hand. 
 
22 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 A school friend of mine, a few years older than I, 
 who studied medicine at the Amsterdam University, 
 fell ill. I went to his room and nursed him for some 
 weeks, until he died of consumption. He lived in 
 a back room in one of the poorest streets of Amster- 
 dam; and for me, accustomed to the life in nature, 
 among woods and dunes and the beautiful country 
 around Haarlem, this stay in the dingy boarding- 
 house, in the dull street, with the sad company of 
 my dying friend, was the depth of gloom and mel- 
 ancholy. Surely life was not a matter for jokes 
 and amusement. 
 
 Instead of becoming a poet and a painter, I 
 resolved to be a doctor. To my mind, mankind 
 seemed to be more in need of doctors than of poets 
 and painters. I was mistaken there, as I have 
 come to see after a long and troublesome experience, 
 but the mistake seems to be still pretty general. 
 No doubt there is something the matter with human- 
 ity, but doctors will never cure it. At least not the 
 ordinary doctors as they are now. 
 
 Yet I shall never regret the scientific education 
 I got at the University of Amsterdam. For a poet, 
 of all men, it is most desirable to acquire a scientific 
 spirit. Rationalistic science at our days may be 
 only a poor guide in active life; the ethics of science, 
 however, its impersonality, its freedom from all 
 lower bias, its humble submission to truth, its un- 
 selfish perseverance in one great common endeavour 
 
DREAMS OF YOUTH 23 
 
 all this is pure blessing for the human mind, and 
 it is too often neglected by the emotional poet or 
 man of action. 
 
 It is true that our present scientific spirit is 
 materialistic and rationalistic. It leads astray by 
 trying constantly to explain the higher by the lower, 
 by seeking to understand the divine order of the 
 universe, by analyzing the material and animal part 
 of things which is of course like trying to read a 
 book by analyzing chemically the paper and the ink. 
 
 But all that will come right by its own tendency 
 toward truth. The pendulum had to swing in that 
 direction, and it will return, brought back by man's 
 indomitable desire for truth and beauty. Many 
 suppose still, as I did when a boy, that man's goal 
 will be reached when he is healthy and prosperous 
 
 with a sound body, no cares and enough to feed 
 and clothe him. 
 
 I know now, as a man of fifty, that all this will 
 leave us thoroughly dissatisfied; that this material 
 earthly paradise, when reached, will leave us un- 
 happy, discontented, sinking either into over-refine- 
 ment and degeneration or into dulness and laxity. 
 
 I know also that this valley of scientific materi- 
 alism has to be crossed in order to reach the glorious 
 heights of unexpected and unconceivable beatitude 
 beyond. And I do not regret that I sought my way 
 through it, first as a doctor, then as a social reformer, 
 ending as I began, as a poet. 
 
24 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 What I learned in the first two activities found 
 its explanation in the last. The practical career 
 did not stifle my ideals or aspirations, but gave me 
 solid matter to build with and prevented me from 
 losing contact with earth and my fellow men, from 
 trying to soar too high and too quickly. 
 
 Student life in Holland is probably the most un- 
 constrained in the world. It has nothing like the 
 discipline of the German universities, and keeps 
 up no religious formality such as makes English 
 and American colleges look so absurdly old-fash- 
 ioned. The student in Holland is simply a citizen, 
 as free as any other, who pays a certain small sum 
 for the instruction he wants. His private life is 
 of no concern to the professors; his religion is a 
 matter of his own conscience. 
 
 This may seem an all too liberal treatment for 
 young men between eighteen and twenty-five; 
 yet it is the only thing the Hollander could stand. 
 Our desire for individual freedom is so inveterate 
 that we prefer taking the risks to curtailing it. As 
 a matter of fact I do not believe that licentiousness 
 is worse among students in Holland than in England. 
 The Bohemian way, as it prevails in Paris, where 
 every student lives with his grisette, is just as ex- 
 ceptional in Holland as in England. These things 
 depend on custom and character far more than on 
 compulsion and rules, or on religious formalities. 
 
 Although this time of a man's life is usually con- 
 
DREAMS OF YOUTH 25 
 
 sidered the most happy and careless I did not 
 particularly enjoy it. I took part in the usual fun 
 and jollity as much as any one else; but I hated the 
 town, and town life. I could never reconcile our 
 amusements with the dulness, the ugliness, the mis- 
 ery around, and I had no spiritual satisfaction. The 
 fashionable students forming what might be called 
 the "club" showed in my time very little sign of 
 spiritual life. They were a rather insignificant set; 
 their entertainments and amusements were com- 
 monplace, without having wit or purpose. The 
 few young men I knew of real wit and genius were 
 poor, and lived a more or less Bohemian life in 
 dingy rooms, in sordid streets. I felt repulsion 
 toward both types; and my ideals of a glorious 
 period of ardent youth, full of beauty and enthusi- 
 asm, of high aims and noble aspirations, were never 
 realized. Among my contemporaries were poets of 
 remarkable genius, yet they lived a narrow, pro- 
 vincial life. The great stream of the world with 
 its freshness and vigour did not touch them. 
 They formed little stagnant pools, very beauti- 
 ful at first, but soon dirty and putrescent. They 
 made wonderfully fine verses, while living in mis- 
 erable surroundings, leading morbid lives. High 
 ideals of practical value they did not foster. Human- 
 ity was strange to them, they felt themselves the 
 elect, self-satisfied in individualism, untouched by 
 what moved the multitude. 
 
26 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 I was allied to these men, however, in one im- 
 portant matter literature. We all together went 
 in for a revival of our beautiful language and for 
 the liberation of literature from the old bonds of 
 conventionalism and bad taste. To accomplish this 
 we started a review that had in this one respect a 
 deep and beneficial influence. 
 
 In those student days I wrote several plays and 
 had them performed successfully on the stage. Yet 
 I never thought of making writing my profession. 
 Multatuli, then a man nearing sixty, to whom I 
 sent my work for approval, advised me to use my 
 time better than by seeking rhymes and inventing 
 stories about how John fell in love with Mary and 
 how they got each other. "Better study some useful 
 science," he said. And this I tried to do, settling 
 myself as a physician in a village near Amsterdam 
 yet never ceasing to be interested in the way 
 John got his Mary, and spending my leisure hours 
 in seeking rhymes and inventing stories that never 
 happened. 
 
 I had then all that a young man ought to be con- 
 tent with, health and a happy home life in a pleas- 
 ant village, burdened by no cares and no wants. 
 Yet I felt thoroughly unhappy and dissatisfied. 
 I was vaguely and dimly conscious of the great 
 wants of struggling humanity. I could hear the 
 distant roar of human life in its strife for justice 
 and happiness: I knew I could never feel satis- 
 
DREAMS OF YOUTH 27 
 
 faction in merely alleviating the physical troubles 
 of a few sick people and in living by the price for 
 which I could sell my cures to those who could 
 afford it. I wanted to join the real current of 
 actual life and take part in the important events 
 of our wonderful time. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 POET AND DOCTOR 
 
 MY LIFE as a medical student in Amster- 
 dam, which I have already briefly men- 
 tioned, brought me my first thoroughly 
 disillusionizing and heart-breaking impressions. 
 Often there comes back to my memory, and more 
 vividly and painfully also in my dreams, the sen- 
 sation I felt when entering for the first time the 
 dissecting room. 
 
 Think of the feelings of a romantic boy with a 
 tender character and an imagination constantly 
 wrapped up in the beauties of wild nature, of flowers 
 and birds and butterflies when he comes into a 
 low, bare room filled with a slight haze of tobacco 
 smoke, oppressive with smells of carbolic acid and 
 putrefying flesh where on black tables, the ghastly 
 remnants of what once were men were visible in 
 vague and horrid confusion while an apparently 
 unconcerned crowd of young men in long, blood- 
 soiled robes were busily active, chattering and 
 sometimes loudly laughing, like workmen inter- 
 ested in a wonted but not unpleasant task. 
 
 28 
 
POET AND DOCTOR 29 
 
 I did not want to be sentimental, however. I 
 did not swoon, or grow pale, or shudder, or turn 
 sick, as I have seen the newcomers do. I always 
 could control my nerves fairly well, and I felt bound 
 to take all this stoically, looking at it from the lofty 
 viewpoint of the philosopher. Yet the impression 
 must have been deep and terrible, for its horror 
 never left me until this day. On the fresh and 
 tender soul of a boy of eighteen, hungry for beauty 
 and poetry, this gruesome aspect of what human 
 beauty becomes in the end is like a heavy blow. 
 The shock left a deep scar on my soul. We mod- 
 erns are no Greeks and Dutchmen least of all. 
 The glories of the well-shaped human body are not 
 a daily sight and constant joy for us. In this awful 
 place, while my imagination was still pure and un- 
 touched, I saw for the first time the mystery of 
 womanly beauty unveiled in a way horrible to be- 
 hold. I felt it sometimes like an unpardonable 
 insult, a crime never to be forgotten or forgiven, 
 a shameful arrangement of life, of the world, to 
 spoil and pollute a young, impressionable soul like 
 this. 
 
 And yet, where was the wrong? Anatomy has 
 to be learned in this way; there is no other. Whom 
 could I call responsible unless it be the Creator who 
 made us flesh? 
 
 There was, however, the indignity of it. These 
 students looked like butcher boys, and had a light- 
 
3 o HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 hearted businesslike way; sometimes they even 
 affected an air of unconcernedness. Seeing them 
 at work was like seeing flies or ants busy on a 
 corpse. The solemnity of death was utterly dis- 
 regarded. The facts that we are subject to all sorts 
 of disease that have to be studied and cured, that 
 what remains of our bodies, however graceful and 
 beautiful, must become so horrible, loathsome, and 
 ugly Q\\ th^ is a Jeep, sad truth, and has to be 
 approached with awe and earnestness. Nothing can 
 be more revolting to the mind of the poet than to 
 see this solemn and terrible study of anatomy and 
 pathology brought down to the level of banality 
 and everyday business. 
 
 This is only one side of what made my medical 
 career so painful to me. The medical students in 
 Holland, thirty years ago, were not a very high- 
 minded or refined set. Medicine was then a busi- 
 ness that promised an income, and the state paid 
 allowances to medical students who signed for the 
 Colonial army. This attracted many poor young 
 men, who took up the study for no other reason than 
 to make a living. 
 
 I once overheard one of my professors, rather an 
 aristocrat and somewhat of a swell, saying with a 
 sneer to a colleague who stood near him, as the two 
 were watching the slovenly and ill-mannered crowd 
 leave the lecture room: "Would one not say that 
 I had given a bread and coffee distribution?" 
 
POET AND DOCTOR 31 
 
 Numerous and various were the ways by which 
 this coarse and vulgar company offended my finer 
 feelings. Their attitude in the lecture room, when 
 a sick person from the hospital was brought in for 
 demonstration, was shocking. They smoked and 
 laughed and chattered, while the poor, pale sufferer 
 
 - of course a pauper was lying in their midst, 
 sometimes looking around with shy, anxious glance 
 
 - sometimes staring blankly, and sadly lost in his 
 own troubles and cares. 
 
 Once a poor man was brought in affected with a 
 very strange and rare disease of the spine, that 
 caused him, by involuntary spasms of the legs, to 
 jump and to continue hopping when he tried to 
 stand on his legs. Our professor wanted to show 
 this to his students and he requested the patient 
 to stand on his feet. The poor man looked 
 at the crowd around and said, with a pathetic, 
 imploring look: "If the gentlemen will please 
 not laugh." The professor promised they would be 
 serious. 
 
 And yet, when the man began to hop, the " gentle- 
 men" roared. And I felt the tears come to my eyes 
 and my fists close in my pockets. 
 
 Of course nobody could be justly blamed 
 neither these sons of farmers and shopmen for not 
 being refined and for trying to make a living, nor 
 the professors, who did all they could to educate 
 them and to make them as little dangerous as 
 
32 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 possible before they were, as the saying ran, " turned 
 loose upon humanity." 
 
 One question, however, presented itself to my 
 mind more strongly every day and could not be 
 discarded : Why was it that the rich man who was 
 sick was surrounded by the most respectful silence 
 and protected from all intrusion of strangers or 
 of noisy or indifferent people whereas the poor 
 sufferer, because he had no money, was submitted 
 to public demonstrations and used as a welcome 
 and legitimate material for instruction ? Would we 
 suffer our ailing mother or sister to serve as an 
 object on which a young and nervous candidate 
 should pass his examination? If clinical practice 
 is absolutely necessary for the student, why must it 
 be the poor, and the poor only, to whose miseries, 
 already so hard to bear, this new ordeal is added? 
 Was it justice to make the poor workman, who had 
 served society during health, continue serving it 
 during sickness, and even after death in the dis- 
 secting room? 
 
 The dark and cruel phantom of social iniquity 
 began to show itself. Was there indeed no man to 
 blame and could responsibility be thrown on the 
 Creator only? I felt the wrong keenly, but I saw 
 no explanation, no issue, no way to help. The 
 tremendous power of social convention, the all-per- 
 vading influence of general opinion that took these 
 things as customary and right, veiled my true 
 
POET AND DOCTOR 33 
 
 judgment just as it did that of the majority and 
 it took me ten years at least of lonely struggle before 
 I got true insight and saw the full extent of the 
 evil, and the only way out of it. 
 
 The professor who had to give me my degree was 
 a man of renown and a clever practitioner, but not 
 much of a poet. He did not care for things unusual 
 or for ways eccentric. He made me go to Paris in 
 order to study the problem of nutrition in the 
 disease of tuberculosis. In Paris I attended the 
 lectures of Charcot and became acquainted with 
 the wonders of hypnotism and suggestion, which 
 were then only recently discovered. I saw how a 
 blister could be raised on the skin of a sensitive 
 person simply by sticking a glued piece of paper 
 on it and by telling him positively that it was a 
 cantharid plaster. I saw people put to sleep by a 
 single word of command; merely by the power of 
 verbal suggestion, they could be made to see pic- 
 tures on blank walls, to feel a cold spoon glowing hot, 
 to drink water and take it for wine. This interested 
 me mightily, and on coming back to Amsterdam I 
 wished to continue my study of this matter and to 
 take my degree in it. My professor, however, con- 
 sidered it far too fantastical and extraordinary for 
 a serious scientific work. He would not permit me 
 to specialize in hypnotism, and I had to go on with 
 the subject chosen by him. 
 
 In the meanwhile I could not give up writing 
 
34 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 poetry and dramatic work. I never made any 
 more effort than was strictly necessary to get 
 through my examinations, and consequently I did 
 not cut a brilliant figure. 
 
 When I was twenty-three I succeeded in getting 
 my first comedy on the stage at the principal theatre 
 of Amsterdam. It was a light and somewhat 
 satirical play, in which I attacked, with a very 
 characteristic want of diplomacy, exactly that 
 power on which the career of a young playwright 
 is depending i.e., the press. It showed a big 
 journalist, who had just torn to pieces the work of 
 a young poet, praising another poem of that same 
 poet highly, because he supposed it came from a 
 rich young cad whom he considered a welcome 
 suitor for his daughter. 
 
 Notwithstanding this rather reckless way of pro- 
 ceeding, the thing was a success. I even dare say 
 that I never afterward could boast of anything 
 so much like a decisive victory. Never, when in 
 later years my claims to appreciation were much 
 greater, have I received such an ovation. At that 
 time I was young, unknown, and supported only 
 by my student friends, and yet I was honoured with 
 wreaths and presents and speeches attentions 
 which never were repeated when I began to do what 
 I consider real work. 
 
 In April, 1886, I passed a busy few days: I 
 celebrated my twenty-seventh birthday; and in the 
 
POET AND DOCTOR 35 
 
 same week presented the finished copy of my dis- 
 sertation to my professor, married, and conducted 
 the guests of my wedding party, by way of an extra 
 treat, to the first night of my second play at the 
 Municipal Theatre of Amsterdam. By good luck 
 for me and the party the play did not fall through. 
 
 The life of a village practitioner did not satisfy 
 me in the least. I have great respect for those who 
 can do their daily rounds year after year and feel 
 satisfaction in this career of useful drudgery. Yet 
 I was not made for it. As soon as I felt free from 
 all academical bonds I. went again to France and 
 studied hypnotism and suggestion in Paris and 
 Nancy. When I came home I was in the highest 
 spirits and radiantly told my friends that I had 
 found the true cure for humanity. I had seen now 
 that the body could be cured by the mind, and this 
 I felt to be the only true and lasting cure. And I 
 was not mistaken. I still think it is true and 
 in a far deeper and wider sense than I understood 
 it at that time. 
 
 There was then only one other doctor in Hol- 
 land interested in the same matter. And in order 
 to act fairly and not to start a somewhat undignified 
 competition, I proposed to found a common clinic 
 at Amsterdam to be conducted by both of us and 
 to be called by the new name Psycho- therapeutic. 
 This enterprise turned out to be a great success 
 but principally for my colleague, not for me. He 
 
36 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 is still conducting it and he sees a great number of 
 patients every day. I left him after seven years 
 of practice. 
 
 Why? Was there a serious reason for disap- 
 pointment? We succeeded in curing many people, 
 sometimes quite wonderfully and unexpectedly. 
 Of course we failed very often, but the constant 
 stream of visitors showed the increasing confi- 
 dence of the public and the efficiency of our method. 
 What could a doctor want more? In the begin- 
 ning the vogue of our clinic grew so rapidly 
 as to become embarrassing. The public was then 
 not yet alarmed by the supposed or real dangers of 
 hypnotism, and the rumours of some happy cures 
 were widely spread. All those sufferers who went 
 from one specialist to another seeking relief 
 especially from nervous troubles now flocked 
 to us. Our waiting rooms were crowded; our 
 orthodox colleagues in the town became suspicious 
 and began to talk of quackery and humbug. Every 
 day we had a fair pile of coins to share. My com- 
 panion, a better business man than I, took care of 
 that department. To me it was the most disgusting 
 part of the proceedings, however pleasant its final 
 effect might seem. Once, when a patient, whose 
 cure had cost me endless patience and trouble, 
 given with all my heart, handed over to me the 
 usual envelope with money, I felt so humiliated 
 and ashamed that I tore the money from her hand 
 
POET AND DOCTOR 37 
 
 and threw it into the waste paper basket, with a 
 gesture that must have seemed rather theatrical 
 and foolish. Yet it came from a deep and real 
 feeling. Of course I had to swallow my pride 
 and humiliate myself still further by fishing the 
 money carefully out from among the waste papers. 
 
 But this awful money question never stopped 
 spoiling my fun in the work. It was like a dis- 
 dainful penstroke through my finest efforts of char- 
 ity. It was a refusal and an annulment of my 
 gifts of love. The sufferer did not care to accept 
 my kindness, he wanted to buy it so much for 
 every bit of good advice, so much for every kind 
 word, so much for every hour of patience and effort 
 the tariff was in the waiting room. 
 
 And then these absurd distinctions of classes! 
 We treated our poor patients gratis, as most doctors 
 do, or at a very low fee. In order to do this we had 
 to burden our richer patients more heavily. Broad- 
 minded people did not object to this method. They 
 had the sense of honour to give what they could 
 spare for such an important service as the res- 
 toration of their health. They gave in a delicate 
 way as if they were offering a gift which could never 
 equal our services and for the acceptance of which 
 they kindly thanked us. 
 
 But broad-minded people are rare, especially in 
 Holland, and our task often became the loathsome 
 task of the tax-collector. We had to tax our clients 
 
38 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 and make them pay, sometimes even with the 
 assistance of the strong hand of the law. To the 
 poor I was free to be kind and good; to the rich I 
 had to be a merchant in charity. To my good 
 colleague this was no objection at all. He thought 
 of his family, of the education of his children, 
 and he knew how to combine these interests with 
 those of science and of suffering humanity. To me 
 such a confusion of sentiments was a sad and hope- 
 less muddle. For that pride of the poet, which is 
 his most delicate and at the same time his most 
 stubborn quality, I found no place in present soci- 
 ety. It was entirely useless and troublesome. I may 
 add that I went through the same experience with 
 regard to my artistic productions. It was just as 
 disgusting to me to barter my poetry for so many 
 cents a line to publishers as it was to sell my acts 
 of love and service to invalids. 
 
 The result was that I preferred to live on the 
 money given to me by my wealthy relations, exactly 
 the state of affairs that is considered most humiliat- 
 ing in our present society why, more so than 
 other things, I failed to see. 
 
 Having retired from our clinic in Amsterdam 
 and being once more free to have my own way, 
 I still continued to see patients. But I told them, 
 in a printed pamphlet, that I helped them for love's 
 sake and refused to sell my services or to tax their 
 financial power. I said, however, that I would 
 
POET AND DOCTOR 39 
 
 accept any gift they would offer me, seeing no 
 humiliation in the acceptance of one cent or of a 
 million. I would rather be a beggar and live on 
 alms than be a dealer in things that have no equiva- 
 lent in money. 
 
 Useless to say that my patients did not like this 
 sort of idealism! They wanted to buy my services 
 at fashionable prices, and even to haggle over them 
 and make a good bargain. Until this day I have 
 not come to an understanding with them, either in 
 matters of charity or of art. And I know that only 
 a better organization of society can bring about 
 the settlement of this quarrel. Now and then, how- 
 ever, as a pleasant exception, I am able to help 
 somebody or to do some good without the money- 
 question spoiling my fun. In the English language 
 there is a very characteristic word for the payment 
 given to a doctor. It is called a "fee." I often 
 wondered how those proud British physicians could 
 endure so gracefully to be treated like a waiter or 
 a valet. 
 
 In the course of time, however, the force of cir- 
 cumstances bent my idealistic sentiments in a new 
 direction. I wanted money because I had a family 
 to take care of. I wanted the necessities of life 
 that money can buy. And I saw no shame at all 
 in exchanging material things, food and clothes, 
 for their equivalent in money. Commerce was all 
 right when limited to material production. So 
 
40 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 if I objected to selling art and charity, and did not 
 want to live on alms, I had only one way out: taking 
 part in material production. 
 
 And this is indeed what I then tried to do. I 
 realized perfectly well that it would be impossible 
 to subsist entirely in that way. In Holland the aver- 
 age wage of the land labourer the man whose 
 labour is most certainly and entirely productive 
 amounted to three or four dollars a week. I saw 
 no possibility of sustaining my family on less than 
 five times that amount. 
 
 If the ideal could not be attained in that way, at 
 least it could be approached. By living soberly 
 and doing my very best I would lessen at least the 
 amount of alms I had to accept. Though perhaps 
 not able to compete with the trained land labourer, 
 I felt healthy and strong and liked outdoor work. 
 Moreover, intelligence might come in and make up 
 for the want of muscular strength. And then the 
 poor land labourer, as I knew perfectly well, was 
 cheated out of his full earnings by landlord and 
 middleman. I would buy my own piece of land, 
 and use my own products, eliminating in that way 
 to a certain extent the landlord and the middleman. 
 
 I remember very clearly my condition of mind 
 when I resolved to follow up this plan, now some 
 twelve years ago. I had a clear presentiment of 
 what it would mean. It looked very simple and 
 sensible yet it was a jump into the dark, and a 
 
POET AND DOCTOR 41 
 
 declaration of independence that is, of war 
 against society. Until that day I had been a suc- 
 cessful and fashionable doctor and man of letters 
 with a few queer but quite pardonable eccentricities. 
 After that day I was a crank, an enemy of the exist- 
 ent social order, a lost sheep, a welcome object 
 for derision or pity. And the worst of it was that 
 I was not the only sufferer. I had to draw my fam- 
 ily with me. And by unforeseen complications 
 this responsibility became hardest of all to bear. 
 
 My literary career had been quiet and not un- 
 successful. Considering conditions in Holland my 
 books sold rather well and brought me between 
 $400 and $1000 a year. Of course I had the usual 
 experiences of young authors and made the usual 
 blunders. I sold the copyright of my first book 
 to a publisher for $60, and he made me believe, in 
 all faith, that I had made a good bargain. Several 
 years later when I wanted to buy that copyright 
 back he would not give it under $10,000. The good 
 bargain was evidently on his side. I had given up 
 writing for the stage because the managers wanted 
 me to do what I thought inferior work and refused 
 to present what, in my opinion, was really good art. 
 I resolved to do without managers and theatres and 
 wrote two great plays, a tragedy and a drama, which 
 I consider my best productions; the staging of them, 
 however, would hardly have been possible in the 
 form they were then, because I did not count with 
 
42 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 the theatre. In later years I came down from my 
 proud attitude and adapted both plays for the 
 German stage. 
 
 By this time my position in the literary world 
 had become quite isolated. The success of my 
 earlier years had died away. I was now striking 
 another note and giving my real, deeper self. The 
 poet true to his mission cannot avoid being a 
 prophet, a reformer, an enemy of the present by 
 proclaiming the beauty of the future. Those of 
 my former literary friends who were mere artists and 
 aesthetes denounced me as a moralist, a preacher, 
 a hypocrite, a poser. 
 
 One of them, the most gifted and influential, lost 
 his moral balance entirely. In his temporary mad- 
 ness he heaped on me an amount of invective, and 
 delivered, in the most inferior sort of poetry, a 
 torrent of such abominable abuse as was probably 
 never equalled in any civilized country. And such 
 is the servility of some people to the autocracy of 
 genius that these aberrations were taken seriously 
 by his admirers and created a sphere of animosity, 
 a prejudice, against me which has endured until 
 this very day. From that date he and his adherents 
 maintained that my force was spent, my talent lost, 
 and that nothing was to be expected from me any 
 more. As I continued, however, though wiped out 
 by this verdict, to produce and to be read, they had 
 to repeat their assertions every time a new work 
 
POET AND DOCTOR 43 
 
 of mine was issued. In this way I got an excellent 
 training, and it is very difficult for any critic now 
 to tell me anything worse than what I have heard 
 many times before. 
 
 A remarkable incident may be mentioned here. 
 That same man of genius who saw in me his worst 
 opponent or competitor I am not quite sure 
 which he really considered me now surrounded 
 only by blind admirers, became an alcoholist of the 
 worst description. It was indeed one of the most 
 terrible cases I ever saw. He tried to commit sui- 
 cide and was at last put into the lunatic asylum 
 of Utrecht. From there he wrote imploring letters 
 to me whom he had insulted more than any living 
 person that I might come and deliver him. I 
 went and saw him a few times and was convinced 
 that the man could be cured. His friends and re- 
 lations, however, who had locked him in, strongly 
 opposed any such experiment. The doctors who 
 had treated him unanimously declared his case in- 
 curable. Among them was one of our first experts 
 in nervous diseases. 
 
 All this only stimulated my medical instinct. 
 On my own responsibility and against the wish and 
 advice of all his friends and doctors I took him out 
 of the asylum and brought him to my own home. 
 There I kept him for about six months and had the 
 satisfaction to cure him entirely. Until this day, 
 which is about twenty years later, he has been a 
 
44 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 total abstainer and has had good health. His 
 wonderful genius, however, was broken forever. 
 Nevertheless so great is the inertia of the human 
 mind he and his old friends still continue their 
 former attitude toward me, though with somewhat 
 more caution, telling the public, which is ignorant 
 of what really happened, that it was not his but my 
 talent that had suffered, and that I did not fulfil 
 the fine promise of my youth because I did not 
 acknowledge his superiority. 
 
 I have never given publicity to this incident until 
 now, and only a few people in Holland know it. 
 I am informed that those few explain my conduct 
 as hypocritical affectation, as posing and wanting 
 to play the Christ. It seems to me, however, that 
 any good physician who saw such an opportunity 
 as clearly as I did then would have seized it. At 
 any rate if there was affectation the patient had all 
 the benefit of it. 
 
 Not all my literary friends were bitter individual- 
 ists and aesthetic egoists like this one. There were 
 a few who felt the emptiness and provinciality of 
 his sort of literary refinement. They wanted to get 
 into touch with the principal current of life and to 
 close up with the living stream of humanity. Yet 
 they did not find the way out of their spiritual 
 captivity by following the light of their own soul. 
 They were swept by that side current known as 
 Marxian social-democracy. Not able to free them- 
 
POET AND DOCTOR 45 
 
 selves by their own force they submitted to the 
 influence of the powerful personality of Marx. 
 
 Karl Marx was certainly a man of enormous power 
 and intellectual strength. Yet he stood with both 
 feet in the swamp of materialism. In this he was 
 representative of his time. In the middle of the 
 nineteenth century, rationalism and materialism 
 were at their highest point and pervaded all human 
 thought and activity. Never could I submit to a 
 mind, however great its energy and eloquence, that 
 was entangled in such erroneous conceptions of life. 
 To me it was turning truth upside down, explain- 
 ing the higher by the lower, and taking all sense 
 and significance out of the world. 
 
 In this resistance I stood alone among all my 
 literary and artistic contemporaries. After the at- 
 tacks of the aesthetic individualists I had to bear 
 those of the fanatic Marxians. They are known 
 the world over for the passionate violence, the party 
 spirit in its worst sense, with which they condemn 
 and abuse those who do not bend to their dogmas 
 or kneel before their altars. I had my full share 
 of their scorn, and was called Utopian, bourgeois, 
 and the like. When I began my campaign as a 
 social reformer by trying to reform myself, 
 and by calling for helpmates and sympathizers, 
 I was denounced at once and unanimously by the 
 social-democratic press as a foolish idealist and a 
 deceiver of the people. The helpmates came 
 
46 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 nevertheless and I was soon surrounded by a few 
 enthusiasts who wanted to support my plan and to 
 share my endeavours. But alas! there are friends 
 more dangerous than enemies. 
 
 The thing I was about to do I had never done 
 before. I was going into business. The strength 
 of a business man lies in his social relations. He 
 must know many people, and select them according 
 to their value. Now the people I knew could be 
 of no service to me. They had come to me as to a 
 poet or a doctor; they were artists or invalids. 
 Therefore when, in my fortieth year, I made a new 
 move and went in for production and commerce, 
 I found that I had no friends whatever in the world 
 of business. This explains a great many of my 
 troubles. 
 
 The distance between the different "sets" in soci- 
 ety is enormous. In the world of poets and artists 
 things are discussed and believed that would never 
 enter into the mind of a business man. On the 
 other hand, the business man in his narrow sphere 
 of interest has no idea of the delights, the free- 
 dom of mind, the wide vistas of the poet or ar- 
 tist. They neither understand nor trust each other. 
 
 My plan was folly in the eye of the business man. 
 Not one, of course, tried to help me. Yet I wanted 
 their help most of all. For living by personal pro- 
 ductive labour is made the easier according as more 
 producers join on common ground. 
 
POET AND DOCTOR 47 
 
 Those who wanted to join me were the most unfit 
 for the work. There was a poor painter with a 
 large family who wanted to paint of course 
 and live as cheaply as possible. In his leisure hours 
 he would plant and dig. There were some young 
 poets attracted by the romantic side of living in a 
 hut in the woods; there were some delicate persons, 
 neurasthenics or overworked people, who thought 
 that a country life would benefit their health; there 
 was a kind of shipwrecked genius with great elo- 
 quence, lofty ideas, and very little efficiency, with 
 debts and half a dozen ill-bred children; there were 
 downright scoundrels who tried to fool me and to 
 have an easy life at my cost; there were poor land 
 labourers, so poor that the simple life I could offer 
 them seemed a luxurious existence; there were 
 worst of all social fanatics, with a number of 
 "principles" for which they were ready to suffer 
 but which resulted in making others suffer more 
 than they did themselves. 
 
 From the very beginning my dealings with busi- 
 ness men were unlucky. I bought the place, which 
 is still in my possession, from a man who was at 
 that time my patient. I had cured him in a very 
 short time from a painful disease that made him 
 unable to walk more than a few paces. He had 
 sought in vain for a remedy during several years with 
 the most renowned doctors, spent great sums of 
 money for cures, and had even submitted to a 
 
48 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 dangerous operation, all without result. So when 
 I had cured him and the cure has lasted to this 
 very day he professed the utmost gratitude and 
 expressed his desire to give me a princely reward. 
 I had no capital at that time, but I induced a friend 
 of mine, a lady of great wealth who was an enthu- 
 siastic idealist, to buy the estate for me. I said I 
 would buy it back as soon as I got money myself. 
 I asked my patient, the business man, what sum 
 he wanted for his estate. I knew that he was in 
 bad straits then, and I supposed he would be glad 
 to accept a fair offer, and I counted on his gratitude 
 not to cheat me. The sum he named was rather 
 high, but I concluded the bargain at once, without 
 bartering. This conduct seemed to him so extra- 
 ordinary that he grew very much excited. I saw 
 his face grow pale and his eyes glitter. He supposed 
 I must be mad or very rich, and then he tried by all 
 means of tricks to get more out of me. He made an 
 exorbitant note of extras, old furniture and so on. 
 I grew indignant at this sort of gratitude and re- 
 fused to give in. From that moment my grateful 
 patient became my bitterest enemy, who did me all 
 the damage he could. 
 
 The wealthy lady, who had bought the estate, 
 married, and her marriage seemed not to increase 
 her idealism. First her relations, and then her 
 husband, came to the conclusion that she had done 
 a very foolish thing. Her original plan to come and 
 
POET AND DOCTOR 49 
 
 live at the estate herself she had given up, and as 
 I had not insisted on a very strict contract, they 
 threatened to drive me off. After some trouble I 
 succeeded in finding another friend who enabled me 
 to buy the place for myself. Until to-day I have not 
 been able to pay the money back; for, though some 
 years later I got a rather considerable sum by in- 
 heritance, my role as a capitalist lasted only a few 
 months. By that time I had started the big co- 
 operative experiment in Amsterdam which is de- 
 scribed in another chapter. And just at the mo- 
 ment when I became rather well-to-do, and when 
 the productive settlement was beginning, an unfore- 
 seen catastrophe descended upon the big organiza- 
 tion and swallowed every cent I had. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 A LITERARY EXPERIMENT 
 
 IT HAS been for a long time a serious puzzle to 
 me how it came that, although I tried honestly 
 to employ my powers in the most useful and 
 efficient way, I found myself one of the most iso- 
 lated, most violently attacked and insulted per- 
 sonalities in my own country. Until my thirty- 
 second year I was rather popular in Holland 
 more so than my contemporaries. I had practically 
 no enemies. In my forty-fifth year I stood entirely 
 alone; whatever I did was ridiculed; whatever I 
 wrote was vehemently denounced; whether I had 
 supporters I could not tell, because they kept cau- 
 tiously silent, and those few who pretended to be 
 my friends did more to ruin me than my enemies. 
 
 The public said of course that it was all my own 
 fault. No doubt they were right. If I had wanted 
 to keep my popularity I ought to have acted dif- 
 ferently. The question was whether the way they 
 wanted me to go was the right one for me. 
 
 In regard to this matter I may relate a little 
 psychological experiment which I made just at the 
 
 so 
 
A LITERARY EXPERIMENT 51 
 
 time when the star of public favour seemed to be 
 setting, and which led me to very curious and in- 
 structive results. It gave me, once for all, an 
 astonishing revelation about the value of literary 
 judgment and public opinion. 
 
 The first men who had turned against me were 
 my literary friends. The most prominent and 
 influential of them, in fact the acknowledged leader, 
 who is still considered by many as Holland's greatest 
 poet, is the man whom I mentioned in the last chap- 
 ter as having eventually become my patient. I will 
 call him X. 
 
 X. had apparently the qualities of a genius. He 
 could write beautiful verses and excellent critical 
 prose. He represented the revolutionary spirit in 
 our rather dull, conventional literary world. The 
 great public of course did not appreciate him, but 
 he was the hero of the select few among the younger 
 generation. He and I were of the same age, and 
 he called me his best friend. I did not know that 
 my greater popularity was soon to make him jeal- 
 ous of me and cause him to assume an attitude of 
 critical superiority. 
 
 After a few years of collaboration I perceived, 
 however, that there were deep and essential dif- 
 ferences between us which could never be overcome 
 and which would lead inevitably to a separation. 
 Though he held up the great figure of Percy Bysshe 
 Shelley as his ideal poet, he lacked entirely Shelley's 
 
52 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 burning love for humanity, his fiery passion for 
 right and equity, his ethical beauty. That finest 
 quality of the poet, the prophetic strain, I failed to 
 see in my friend. 
 
 To be a prophet means also to be a moralist. 
 And the moralist is always a hateful sort of individ- 
 ual. The conventional moralist is indeed the worst 
 enemy of the true prophet. At a youthful age 
 it is exceedingly difficult to distinguish between 
 the two, and still more so to vindicate the right of 
 true ethics to exist in the prophet and in the poet 
 without taking the unpleasant and unsympathetic 
 attitude of a preacher of morals. The disadvantage 
 of my position as an opponent to X. was that I was 
 the preacher of morals. 
 
 X. considered himself, like Nietzsche, "beyond 
 good and evil." This may mean that the poet, 
 the true prophet, has not to take into account the 
 morals of the multitude. So far he is right. But 
 in that case he has to show that he possesses his own 
 standard of ethical perfection, the power to stand 
 alone by his own moral code, the gleam of intel- 
 lectual beauty that may give a new lead to mankind. 
 I could find nothing of the sort in my friend. He 
 denied all necessity of restraint; the expression "a 
 good man" he declared to be meaningless; he exalted 
 hate against love; his life was a display of reckless 
 egotism and debauchery; he drowned his wonderful 
 talents in alcohol. And yet his admirers did not 
 
A LITERARY EXPERIMENT 53 
 
 forsake him. On the contrary, his unconvention- 
 ality impressed them not merely as the mark but as 
 the prerogative of true genius. Such is the ten- 
 dency of youth to break conventional bonds and to 
 follow the prophets of Liberty. 
 
 At first, one of our circle resisted one of the 
 best. He was rewarded with a torrent of invective 
 in wild, passionate poetry. The rest of us did not 
 well know the origin of the quarrel and believed in 
 X., who said he had been cruelly wronged. But it 
 was very remarkable that from this time his atti- 
 tude as a critic changed and that he condemned 
 and ridiculed every new line of that other poet who 
 had dared to quarrel with him. 
 
 Then I felt that it was to be my turn. I per- 
 sisted in writing in our review what I considered 
 right and true. And I felt that by the influence of 
 X. a spirit of animosity was awakened. A silent 
 tension grew daily around me. I got warnings of 
 a change in the general feeling toward me in our 
 literary circle. I expected an attack and I thought 
 it wisest to make it myself. 
 
 I wrote an article of rather sharp criticism against 
 myself. It was done in full earnest. Every author 
 can do it. We all have our moods of self-reproach, 
 of self-correction, in which we sit trembling before 
 the judgment seat of our own conscience. 
 
 I wrote without pity, sternly and unflinchingly. 
 I analyzed my deepest motives, I compared my 
 
54 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 avowed faith with my actual deeds, my high ideals 
 with my unsuccessful attempts. I wrote like a well- 
 meaning friend who, though unsparing, believed 
 in me and wanted me to be what I wished my- 
 self to be. I did not write in a despondent or 
 morbidly bitter mood, so there was nothing in my 
 tone of that deadly poison of disbelief and distrust 
 that sometimes makes an apparently gently written 
 page paralyzing and murderous. It was the sort 
 of criticism that I ought to have welcomed and 
 enjoyed, however harsh in appearance, had it come 
 from somebody else. Moreover, it was well written, 
 a very creditable piece of clear and fluent prose. 
 
 Through the mediation of an accomplice in The 
 Hague I sent this article to our review with a po- 
 lite letter, under the assumed name of Lieven Ny- 
 land. 
 
 The meeting of the editorial staff of the magazine, 
 in which the article was discussed in my presence, 
 was for me exquisitely and delightfully amusing. 
 They all took the matter very seriously, as a most 
 unpleasant event for myself, and they did what they 
 could to attenuate the blow. Yet it was only too 
 clear that they enjoyed that piece of prose far better 
 than they cared to show me. 
 
 "Rather impudent," said one, "to send this to 
 us!' 
 
 "Not so bad, though, in the matter of style," 
 said another, with a glance toward me, to see whether 
 
A LITERARY EXPERIMENT 55 
 
 I was hurt by this partial compliment to my sup- 
 posed foe. 
 
 "Ever heard of this man?" asked X. But no- 
 body had. "Of course we won't take it," he con- 
 tinued. 
 
 "Why not?" I ventured to remark. 
 
 "You don't mean to say that you would agree 
 to our bringing out this article?" said X. in the ut- 
 most astonishment. 
 
 "Surely I do. It is a good piece of work." 
 
 "That's fine! that's very fine!" they all exclaimed. 
 
 The article was accepted with general satisfaction, 
 my satisfaction having a very different cause from 
 what they supposed, and theirs being concealed under 
 an assumed air of polite indignation and opposition. 
 I am sure they did not believe then in the sincerity 
 of my approval. They took it either for a strata- 
 gem to make them refuse the article, or for a piece 
 of posing, a sham magnanimity. This certainly 
 was the case with X., for, ever since then, it has 
 been his tactics to represent me as a hypocrite, a 
 preacher, a poser, and a very vain "man. In this way 
 he could always explain away my dangerous sin- 
 ce^ity. 
 
 When the number of the review was issued, with 
 the article in a conspicuous place, I had a good time, 
 all by myself. Nobody, not even my own fam- 
 ily, knew the secret, except my accomplice in The 
 Hague. Everybody expected me to be very much 
 
5 6 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 depressed and beaten down by such a violent attack 
 in my own review. 
 
 "How well you bear it!" they said to me. "But 
 it is an awful shame of your staff to let that thing go 
 into print. It is low and treacherous." 
 
 "But I agreed myself." 
 
 "Of course. You could not oppose it. But 
 they ought to have refused it. It is a great 
 shame." 
 
 Then I asked as many people as I could speak to, 
 including even the patients in my clinic, whether 
 they had read the article and what they thought 
 about it. The notes I took of their answers made 
 a very interesting and instructive record. Most 
 people, meaning to please me, said that it was an 
 abominable and worthless piece of writing. It was 
 clear to them that the writer could not even write 
 our language, that he was an arrogant, ignorant, 
 unfeeling brute, and that his article was rubbish. 
 Among all the readers I found only one whose judg- 
 ment was fair and right. This was a young girl of 
 eighteen, not at all a literary person, and as far as I 
 knew not unkindly disposed toward me and my 
 work. She alone astonished and pleased me by say- 
 ing simply: 
 
 "You must excuse me for my frankness, Doctor, 
 but I think the article very good. That man means 
 well, and in your place I should feel obliged to him. 
 And I think his article is admirably written. It is 
 
A LITERARY EXPERIMENT 57 
 
 a splendid piece of criticism, and I can well under- 
 stand that you did not refuse it." 
 
 I shook her hand warmly and said: "This is the 
 best praise I ever got in my life." Then I told her 
 that I was the writer. 
 
 To all others, however, I kept the secret carefully. 
 Perceiving the blindness and insincerity of so many 
 on whose judgment I had laid value thus far, I 
 resolved to play the trick a little farther. 
 
 I had ready in manuscript a new work of art, 
 a prose poem, now well known under the title of 
 "Johannes Viator." It was done in a new style 
 and was quite unlike anything I had written. It 
 was a vigorous and ample vindication of my opinions 
 about the ethical mission of the poet. It had in 
 it the prophetic strain and was in direct opposition 
 to the opinion and -attitude of X. and his partisans. 
 
 Of this work I selected two chapters, character- 
 istic of the book as a work of art, but not yet dis- 
 playing its whole tendency, and I sent them to 
 X., the secretary of our editorial staff, as a contri- 
 bution to our review. I again used the assumed 
 name, Lieven Nyland and acted through the me- 
 diation of my accomplice in The Hague. Soon 
 afterward I got a letter from X. telling me that 
 he had received a contribution from my enemy, 
 Lieven Nyland; that this man proved to be a very 
 remarkable writer, and that his work was excellent. 
 He hoped that my personal feelings would not 
 
58 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 induce me to oppose this contribution, though it 
 came from a man who had treated me so severely. 
 He expected me to be broad-minded and mag- 
 nanimous. I asked him in return to send me the 
 manuscript. As soon as I got it I locked it up and 
 kept silence. I knew enough. 
 
 At the next meeting of our editorial staff there 
 was something of a row. 
 
 "Did you not get the Lieven Nyland manuscript 
 I sent you?" asked X. 
 
 "Oh, yes," I said indifferently. 
 
 "Well, where is it?" 
 
 "Where is it? In the hands of the author I 
 suppose." 
 
 "In the hands of the author? What does that 
 mean? We want it." 
 
 "I don't think so," I replied. 
 
 " You may not think so, but you are prejudiced 
 of course. It is a very good work indeed, and you 
 had no right to send it back." 
 
 All the others expressed their disapproval of my 
 high-handed and arbitrary conduct. 
 
 "Well, then, gentlemen, if you think that work 
 so valuable and want it so much for our review, 
 you had better try to get it back from the author." 
 
 After that I left the meeting. 
 
 My accomplice at The Hague, who was a lady, 
 had given her own address for the Lieven Nyland 
 correspondence. One morning, looking from her 
 
A LITERARY EXPERIMENT 59 
 
 window, she saw, to her great dismay, the well- 
 known figure of X., accompanied by a devoted 
 friend, coming down the street toward her house. 
 She had just time to hide herself and to give orders 
 to the servant that when the gentlemen came to 
 ask for Mr. Nyland the answer should be that 
 Mr. Nyland was abroad. 
 
 The gentlemen inquired indeed after Mr. Nyland; 
 they asked about his situation and occupations; they 
 wanted to know where he was and when he would 
 come back. The servant could give them but scant 
 information, and certainly not the object for which 
 they came, the so much desired manuscript. At 
 last they went back disappointed, and my accom- 
 plice left her hiding place. 
 
 At the next meeting of our staff I told X. that he 
 would lose his time and his money by hunting up 
 Mr. Nyland and his manuscript, because Lieven 
 Nyland was an assumed name of my own. I told 
 him that the manuscript was safely locked up in 
 my desk and that I felt no inclination to publish it 
 in our review. 
 
 The effect of my words was very curious. In 
 the first astonishment X. did not realize that he had 
 given himself away entirely, and that I had him, so 
 to say, in my pocket. His immediate feeling was 
 admiration for the successful trick. He patted me 
 on the shoulder and said: "Well done! Good 
 for you!" in full sincerity. And all the others, un- 
 
60 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 consciously obedient to their leader's mind, compli- 
 mented me warmly. 
 
 This was the last editorial meeting I attended. 
 
 Very soon X. began to see that he had been badly 
 worsted in the game. I suppose he expected me to 
 publish the whole story and make him and his 
 partisans ridiculous. Such a thing, however, had 
 never entered my mind. What I did was done for 
 my own instruction. I had acquired the knowledge 
 that I wanted. I had got the purest criticism on 
 my work that I could wish for, and a clear insight 
 into the state of mind of X. So I simply took my 
 dismissal as an editor of the review, and published 
 my book on my own account. The truth about the 
 Lieven Nyland incident became known only to a 
 few immediately related to it. 
 
 And then this is the worst part of the story 
 X., feeling safe again and seeing that I took no ad- 
 vantage of my position, filled a whole number of 
 the review with the most sordid and violent abuse 
 of me and my new book. All his pent-up hatred 
 and jealousy, all his bitterness and rancour he 
 poured out in the most vulgar and brutal way, 
 assisted by some of his supporters, who went, of 
 course, still farther than their master. 
 
 I was called Johannes Violator instead of Viator; 
 my book was called filth and rubbish which con- 
 tained not one single page of merit. For months 
 at a stretch X. published a series of what he later 
 
A LITERARY EXPERIMENT 61 
 
 called "ironical poetry," but what was in fact the 
 lowest and most miserable kind of rhymed abuse a 
 poet ever indulged in. In fact he was then in a 
 condition of irresponsibility produced by constant 
 intoxication. To those who had, after his example, 
 complimented me, he explained later that I had done 
 it all out of sheer \anity and desire for notoriety; 
 and he has succeeded in maintaining this reading of 
 the case among his admirers until this very day. 
 
 Relating the story now, after twenty years, for 
 the sake of its psychological interest, I think I am 
 to be blamed for not having fought the fight rig- 
 orously to an end at that time. I did not defend 
 myself nor did I make a legitimate use of the things 
 I knew in order to show the insincerity and worth- 
 lessness of the criticism of my antagonist. My 
 attitude was that of philosophic pride disdaining to 
 enter into combat with antagonists so undignified 
 and so little responsible for their words. I felt sure 
 that all people of good taste and common sense 
 would distinguish on whose side was the truth and 
 the right. But in this expectation I was sorely 
 mistaken. I did not know then, as I do now, the 
 spiritual servility of the human mind, the general 
 desire of men to submit to authority as much in 
 purely aesthetic matters as in social activity. I had 
 not yet learned to see mankind as essentially a 
 gregarious race, submitting to any leadership that 
 declared itself with sufficient determination, and 
 
62 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 unheeding whether the dominance was due to real 
 superiority or to reckless arrogance. 
 
 X. was considered at that time the aesthetic 
 leader, not by the great public of course, but by 
 the select few of the younger generation, and his 
 wild outburst against me, his brutal condemnation 
 of my work, sufficed to spoil my reputation as a 
 poet and an artist for at least twenty years. In 
 spite of the indignity of the attack and the pitiful 
 condition of the critic himself, all respect for me and 
 for my work was entirely shattered, and the most 
 insignificant writers felt themselves entitled to speak 
 of it with utter contempt. 
 
 To this original attack and to my deplorable 
 neglect of a vigorous self-defence I can trace back all 
 my subsequent difficulties not only in literary mat- 
 ters but also in social reform. I had seriously weak- 
 ened my position and had given occasion to every 
 opponent to make sport of me. 
 
 X. afterward made amends in private, never 
 openly. After his recovery from the malady caused 
 by his debauchery he succeeded in reestablishing, 
 to a greater or less degree, his literary influence 
 and position. He became an ordinary, fashionable 
 critic and reviewer of literary art. He still conducts 
 his review. His aberrations are all forgiven, though 
 he never tried to retract or correct them. As a 
 poet he is more popular than he was in his best 
 time, and few people are able to see that his literary 
 

 A LITERARY EXPERIMENT 63 
 
 powers have left him, and that because of his lack 
 of self-restraint he never deserved the name of great 
 poet and spiritual leader. 
 
 This was the great lesson I had to learn : that man- 
 kind wants authority, even in spiritual matters; that 
 the great majority follow the few, and that those 
 few follow the leader who energetically maintains 
 his superiority and fights for his position. And this 
 also I learned: that we should not be too superior, 
 too disdainful of self-defence, or too Christian-like, 
 too generous and forgiving, especially when we have 
 to defend our art, our' ideas, which are general 
 and belong to mankind. For the unscrupulous will 
 take advantage of us, and it is not only ourselves 
 but mankind that we are thereby causing to suffer. 
 
 I have been too much of a Tolstoyan. And I 
 made Tolstoy's mistake in my experiments for social 
 reform with the same undesirable results, as I will 
 presently relate. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 CURING BY SUGGESTION 
 
 I HAVE mentioned the fact that when I was 
 a boy of fourteen I suffered for some months 
 from an ulcerous inflammation of the eyes. 
 My parents took me to our specialists, but without 
 any result. Seeing no betterment and hearing the 
 report of wonderful cures effected by a certain un- 
 titled and unaccredited doctor, they resolved to try 
 him and I won't blame them for it. 
 
 This doctor was a quack, an ignorant old fellow 
 who examined his eye-sore patients with a huge cigar 
 in his mouth; he had a row of mysterious bottles 
 on his table, with big Roman figures on the labels, 
 but they all probably contained the same stuff. 
 
 He said that he would give my eyes "beefsteak" 
 in order to strengthen them, and he bathed the eyes 
 with some cool liquids from the bottles. More- 
 over, he prescribed salt to be taken in great quan- 
 tities, because salt " preserves," as he expressed it. 
 And yet, wonderful enough, I never left his dark, 
 dingy, crowded little consultation room without 
 great relief. My eyes became better. 
 
 64 
 
CURING BY SUGGESTION 65 
 
 The conversation in that room, during the long 
 hours that I sat there and waited and listened, turned 
 upon the wonderful cures effected by the old quack, 
 and the infinite harm done by the great, renowned 
 doctors of the medical profession. Every one of 
 the sufferers had a tale to tell about an eye spoiled 
 or lost by the operations and the vicious poisons 
 used by the men of official science. When his 
 "beefsteak" and salt did not benefit the clients who 
 had first visited the regular doctors, the little old 
 quack cleverly said that it was only because they 
 came too late for him to undo the harm inflicted 
 by his titled colleagues. My relatives came to 
 believe later that the little scar left on my eye was 
 due to the scientific treatment, and would not be 
 there if I had gone first to the quack. 
 
 That the old man cured some of his patients there 
 is no doubt, however many eyes he spoiled. Cer- 
 tainly he did to me what the learned specialists had 
 not been able to do. Twelve years later, when I 
 went to study the method of Dr. Liebeault at Nancy, 
 I learned what power it was that worked these 
 wonders. 
 
 Dr. Liebeault used this same power, but scientifi- 
 cally. He gave no "beefsteak" and salt, but he 
 treated every patient in the presence of all the 
 others, the conversation always turning upon the 
 wonderful cures effected, though with much less 
 abuse of official science, for Dr. Liebeault never de- 
 
66 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 nounced his colleagues. He thus produced in his 
 consultation room a suggestive atmosphere. 
 
 When Liebeault retired as a practitioner, in 1891, 
 a dinner was given in Nancy in his honour. Phy- 
 sicians came from all parts of Europe to honour the 
 founder of the famous school of Nancy, the initiator 
 of suggestion as a method of curing disease. A 
 bronze statue, representing David and Goliath, was 
 presented to him, and the modest man was assured 
 of the veneration and gratitude of thousands of 
 disciples. 
 
 And yet the way in which Liebeault was treated 
 by his academical colleagues is thus described by 
 Dr. Hilger: 
 
 "Though Liebeault never indulged in complaint or bitter- 
 uess on account of the neglect he suffered from his aca lemical 
 fellow-workers, and only quietly insisted that his results should 
 be investigated thoroughly and without prejudice, they had 
 nothing for him but a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders 
 and shake of the head. For fourteen years the patient doctor 
 worked on, under neglect, contempt, and derision, until in 1880 
 an old college friend of his, Dr. Lorrain, visited him and fixed 
 the attention of Professor Bernheim on his remarkable cures. 
 Bernheim, who at first was as skeptical as the others and could 
 hardly suppress a pitying smile at his first visit, became soon 
 deeply interested in what he saw, and then felt the greatest 
 admiration for the good and simple man who had endured for 
 so many years the foolish misjudgment of his colleagues with- 
 out one word of bitterness. " 
 
 Then Bernheim wrote his standard work on the 
 application of suggestion to the cure of diseases. 
 
CURING BY SUGGESTION 67 
 
 One instance of his application is that of a cure 
 effected by Professor Hirt, the famous neurologist 
 of Breslau, in 1890, on the son of the Privy Coun- 
 sellor, Professor Dr. Klopsch. The boy had been 
 suffering for eight years from attacks of coughing, 
 which were so bad that the patient weakened and 
 became exhausted; he could not attend school, nor 
 follow any regular occupation; rest at night was im- 
 possible for the family as well as for the sufferer. 
 Every method of treatment was tried in vain - 
 electricity, baths, cauterization of the nose and 
 finally the best authorities declared it a case of in- 
 curable disease of the lungs. 
 
 One afternoon Professor Hirt tried the method 
 of Liebeault; by a few passes of the hands and by 
 verbal suggestion he brought the patient into a 
 light slumber and assured him that he would sleep 
 well that night and that the cough would stop. 
 This one simple treatment sufficed for a complete 
 cure. The boy slept that night, his cough stopped, 
 and never reappeared. He became a completely 
 healthy man. 
 
 If this boy had been surrounded by people who 
 believed the newspaper advertisements and had 
 talkative neighbours, and had not been treated by 
 a broad-minded man like Professor Hirt, the parents 
 would have dismissed the doctor and spent their 
 money on patent-medicines; then they would have 
 hunted up all sorts of quacks, faith-healers, and 
 
68 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 more or less obscure miracle-workers until they 
 struck one who did by accident what Professor Hirt 
 did by scientific knowledge. And the result would 
 have followed that the parents, and the neigh- 
 bours, the boy himself, and hundreds of people 
 would have testified to the wonderful powers of 
 that quack who could cure by one stroke a case 
 considered hopeless by the greatest authorities. 
 And no derisive denial could have had the slightest 
 effect upon one of the many who had seen it. 
 
 Doctors talk of "the dangers of suggestion." 
 But the real danger, if anywhere, lies in the use 
 of suggestion by the quacks, and in its unstudied 
 denial by men of science. 
 
 This instance happened nineteen years ago. The 
 attitude of the medical profession of Europe is wiser 
 now. My colleague, Van Renterghem who twen- 
 ty-three years ago started with me the first clinic 
 in Amsterdam for the treatment of diseases by 
 suggestion, according to Dr. Liebeault's method 
 (called Psycho-therapy by us for the first time) 
 sees more patients now than ever and finds no 
 opposition worth mentioning among his fellow- 
 doctors. Cases were referred to our clinic by our 
 colleagues; we even had several doctors as patients; 
 and we treated successfully the wife of one of the 
 professors at the University of Amsterdam. A 
 more remarkable case was treated lately by Van 
 Renterghem at a university clinic, where a serious 
 
CURING BY SUGGESTION 69 
 
 operation was performed without any anaesthetic 
 except suggestion. The same change in attitude is 
 observed in Germany, England, Sweden, and other 
 countries, where the method has been adopted by 
 men of the highest standing. 
 
 In America there seems to be a curious mixture 
 of backwardness and advancement. Psychotherapy 
 was studied in America years ago, and yet the med- 
 ical profession as a whole seems to be either entirely 
 ignorant of the subject, or indifferent to it. The 
 only doctor of high standing who took up the prac- 
 tice in New York tells me that his colleagues have 
 just ignored the whole matter, with an attitude of 
 "lofty indifference." One of them said: "Doctor, 
 if you would only discover something about a brain 
 tumour or describe some organic cord lesion, that 
 would really be doing something worth while." 
 
 When I lectured in a city of the Middle West 
 before an audience of university students and re- 
 minded them of the errors of official science and 
 the danger in entirely denying the cures of quacks 
 instead of investigating them, a doctor stood up, 
 white with indignation, and said in a tremulous 
 voice: "Sir, you are trying to make quacks of all 
 of them!" 
 
 This sort of emotional opposition is raised to its 
 highest pitch when one dares to maintain that 
 suggestion may have influence on diseases generally 
 called organic, physical, or anatomical. The case 
 
70 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 of the coughing boy will not make the conservative 
 doctor angry. He will only say: "That was but 
 a nervous trouble; I also have seen such cases and 
 cures." But when it comes to the possibility of 
 curing an inflammation of the eye, an ulcer of the 
 leg, or malaria, or pneumonia this is downright 
 heresy. 
 
 If we admit that the trouble of the boy was en- 
 tirely nervous, had he therefore no right to be helped 
 in the only way that could help him? There are 
 thousands of patients who, like this boy, can be 
 helped only by suggestive treatment. And be- 
 cause the medical profession considers this treat- 
 ment below its dignity, who can blame the patients 
 when they go to the quacks; and who can blame the 
 quacks when they eagerly make use of the advan- 
 tage given them by scientific prejudices, and practise 
 the treatment that cures, though they do not know 
 how and why? The heaviest responsibility falls 
 upon the men who ought to know better the dog- 
 matists among men of science and it is nothing 
 but dogmatic superstition to deny, a priori, the cure 
 of organic diseases by suggestion. 
 
 It can be safely maintained that where there is 
 any chance of cure at all, that chance may be in- 
 creased by the use of suggestion. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the doctor never cures a dis- 
 ease; he enables the body to cure itself by assisting 
 it in the struggle against hostile influences or dis- 
 
CURING BY SUGGESTION 71 
 
 turbances. Even the surgeon does no more than 
 remove obstacles; the cells of the body do the really 
 curative work. And in this work they are directed 
 and assisted by what we call the psyche, that part of 
 the body which is not directly perceptible by the 
 senses. 
 
 There is no breach between physical and psy- 
 chical functions; all are in constantly related action 
 and counteraction. It has been demonstrated that 
 sight of food by a dog immediately stimulates the 
 secretion of the different glands necessary for the 
 digestion of that special kind of food, not only in 
 the mouth but also in the stomach. Now, if the 
 visual image alone can have such very material 
 effects, in such appropriate selection, what can be 
 the scientific objection to the possibility of the cells 
 being stimulated in their curative work, appropri- 
 ately and effectively, by imagination, by emotion, 
 or by volition ? 
 
 This is the way in which suggestion works. By 
 verbal persuasion, by exciting the imagination of 
 the patient, by raising his expectation, by giving 
 him confidence, by strengthening his own power 
 of volition, the idea of cure is fixed in his mind and 
 the curative action of the cells is increased and 
 lengthened even in such a " physical" case as 
 a broken leg, or an ulcer, or a wound. In this 
 there is nothing unscientific, nothing contradictory 
 to our present knowledge of the human body. In 
 
72 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 fact, psychical things are just as real as physical 
 things; but as the chain is long and the links 
 are very complicatedly connected, we are not ac- 
 customed to realize the first influence of one upon 
 another. 
 
 There are certainly dangers in suggestive treat- 
 ment. I know of unscrupulous doctors who, for 
 the sake of experiment, have entirely enslaved 
 their patients and even tried, in order to see how 
 far suggestion could lead, to make them do abnor- 
 mal and immoral things. They ordered them, for 
 instance, to steal some object. And the theft was 
 committed without the criminal knowing who put 
 this idea into his head. This sort of human vivisec- 
 tion cannot be too severely condemned. I make 
 it a strict rule never to treat a patient against his 
 will, nor to give any suggestion- that might lead to 
 abnormal consequences, and never to weaken his 
 will-power or lessen his independence. The patient 
 ought never to be put into a deeper sleep than is 
 necessary for effective treatment, and he must be 
 taught to become independent of the doctor. The 
 doctor is only the guide who indicates the way to 
 self-cure, and should not step in unless the patient 
 is absolutely unable to get out of trouble himself. 
 Some hold that it is always better to bring about 
 the deepest form of sleep and the highest degree 
 of suggestibility; they believe that such a complete 
 control of the patient enables them always to restore 
 
CURING BY SUGGESTION 73 
 
 a perfect normal balance after the treatment. But 
 I have found that this complete control generally 
 leaves a greater aptitude to being controlled, and 
 in this way diminishes the stability of the psychic 
 balance. 
 
 Psycho-therapy is dangerous in the hands of un- 
 skilled, ignorant, or unscrupulous persons, be they 
 doctors or laymen. But is this not the case in all 
 branches of the medical profession? Is there no 
 danger in poisonous drugs, in chloroform, and the 
 knife? Do we not trust ourselves entirely in the 
 hands of the surgeon, and is there not just as great 
 a chance of his being ignorant or unskilful or un- 
 scrupulous? It maybe replied, not unjustly, that 
 we can more easily find a reliable surgeon than a 
 trustworthy expert in psycho-therapy. But if this 
 be so, who is to blame? A few centuries ago sur- 
 gery was considered below the dignity of a physician, 
 and left to the barber, the market-crier, and the 
 quack. The poor patients paid the penalty, but 
 who was to blame? So long as official medical sci- 
 ence refuses to study the science of psycho-therapy, 
 with all its powers and dangers, they will leave 
 the field to the mountebank, the fake, and the 
 quack. 
 
 The mischief done by ignorance of psychology 
 the ignorance of well-established facts by men who 
 ought to know is enormous. 
 
 It is now more than nine years since Binet pub- 
 
74 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 lished his standard work on Suggestibility, and yet 
 I found the most crude notions prevailing in Amer- 
 ica on this important subject. Suggestion is still 
 confused with hypnotism. Suggestibility is still 
 looked upon as an abnormal and morbid quality 
 found only in hysterical women, more or less con- 
 nected with spiritualism, mysticism, and other dis- 
 reputable isms therefore better left alone and 
 unstudied. 
 
 Binet experimented with healthy children of an 
 ordinary school class. He found that suggestibil- 
 ity the aptitude of taking and realizing sugges- 
 tions is a normal faculty of the human mind, but 
 greatest in youth. He was able to express this 
 faculty for every child in a certain figure, which he 
 called the coefficient of suggestibility. In one of 
 his remarkable experiments with these children he 
 submitted to their attention several familiar ob- 
 jects, such as a stamp, a coin, a picture, a portrait, 
 and then asked them to describe these objects from 
 memory. He found that by a certain impressive 
 way of questioning he was able to falsify their 
 memory to such an extent that the great majority 
 described things which they had not seen. He 
 asked place and date of the postmark that was on 
 the stamp though the real stamp was clean and 
 unused and more than 98 per cent, of the children 
 were unable to resist this mild form of suggestion: 
 they described the postmark which they had not 
 
CURING BY SUGGESTION 75 
 
 seen at all. Of 143 children, only two had enough 
 independence of judgment to answer directly in the 
 negative. The 141 others had not the originality 
 to rely on their own observation and memory, and 
 not the courage to suppose that the professor would 
 ask a misleading question. 
 
 You are, in your turn, invited to reflect on what 
 is happening daily in courts and in police head- 
 quarters when some of those whose suggestibility 
 coefficient is high some of the 98 per cent, non- 
 resistants are submitted to the "mild sugges- 
 tions" of a questioning police officer, a coroner, a 
 judge, or a lawyer. I remember quite well that 
 when I was a boy of ten I was questioned into a 
 guilt, being entirely innocent. And though it may 
 be true that suggestibility lessens in riper years, we 
 may be quite sure that at least 50 per cent, of the 
 average of men retain enough of it to be entirely 
 unreliable as witnesses under the suggestive pressure 
 of a headstrong policeman, a pompous judge, or a 
 shrewd lawyer. 
 
 And your juries is not the jury the safeguard 
 of democracy, the pillar of justice? We have no 
 juries in Holland, and I never met a Hollander who 
 wished to have that democratic institution back. 
 The makers of our constitution have cleverly fore- 
 stalled this result of modern psychology, that the 
 coefficient of suggestibility of a body of men like a 
 jury is greater than that of the best individuals 
 
76 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 among them. The judgment of one judge is gen- 
 erally more reliable than that of a jury. 
 
 The soul of a child, and in lesser degree of the 
 grown-up man, can be shaped by suggestive in- 
 fluence in any form; it can be bent, crooked, twisted, 
 adulterated morally and mentally to an extent 
 depending on its degree of plasticity, its inborn 
 original force of resistance, and the power of sug- 
 gestive forces at work. The definition of sugges- 
 tibility, as given by Bernheim, is "the aptitude of 
 the mind to receive an idea, and the tendency to 
 transform it into action." 
 
 Now, every phenomenon of consciousness (emo- 
 tion, expectation, imagination, reflection, volition) 
 is a suggestion; and there is a rule in modern psy- 
 chology which says that every idea tends to become 
 active. So the latent possibilities of effect, to good 
 or to evil, are always there. 
 
 Another general mistake is to consider sugges- 
 tibility as an entire mental and pyschical quality, 
 and to confuse it with credulity. But suggestibility 
 is not credulity. I have had very skeptical patients, 
 who mentally did not believe in suggestion 
 at all. They were entirely incredulous and yet 
 they could feel physical relief by suggestion easily 
 enough. Nor is there always exact relation between 
 strong-mindedness, robustness of health, inde- 
 pendence of character, and that important plas- 
 ticity which we call suggestibility. 
 
CURING BY SUGGESTION 77 
 
 Bernheim has succeeded in accelerating or slacken- 
 ing the pulse of a normal individual simply by count- 
 ing to him. The pulse was registered by the sphyg- 
 mograph without the person seeing it and 
 it quickened from 80 to 90 when Bernheim counted 
 1 20 a minute, and it fell to 74 or 73 when he counted 
 60 a minute. 
 
 Not only the personal will of another but also 
 routine, expectation, fear, and imagination can act 
 as suggestions and have physical effects. 
 
 The method of Dr. Liebeault is based on the fact 
 that plasticity is greater during sleep, or even light 
 slumber, and that the physical, curative effect of 
 suggestion is increased when you succeed in reaching 
 the patient's mind, or soul, during his sleep or half- 
 slumber. That this is possible is known to every 
 mother who talks to her child in half-slumber or 
 even in deep sleep. She can often get an answer 
 from a child apparently unconscious, and implant 
 a simple idea or a command which will be duly fol- 
 lowed, though the child seems to have wholly for- 
 gotten it after waking up. In old age many pe- 
 culiarities of the child come back, and I have ob- 
 served old people sometimes accepting suggestions 
 with a childlike docility, though of course not with 
 the physical plasticity of youth. 
 
 Old people, though in all appearance still inde- 
 pendent and responsible, are often entirely under 
 the suggestive influence of some masterful or in- 
 
78 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 terested person. I have seen cases of rich old men, 
 apparently normal, who acted entirely against their 
 original character, against their true inclinations, 
 against their own interests, under the influence of 
 some nurse or attendant who had succeeded in 
 mastering the master's mind. In such cases the 
 intriguer knew how to apply his suggestions so as 
 to rule at last the whole household, cheating the 
 legitimate heirs out of their rights or bringing about 
 a marriage contract. 
 
 Here again we see the abuse of a powerful and dan- 
 gerous instrument in the hands of an unscrupulous 
 person. And there is no possibility of guarding soci- 
 ety against this, unless these forces are thoroughly 
 studied and methodically handled by the men of 
 science. 
 
 I was often asked what I thought of all the various 
 movements, now springing up everywhere in Amer- 
 ica, all more or less connected and held together 
 by the great principle that the Mind can heal the 
 Body such as the Emmanuel movement, Chris- 
 tian Science, faith cure, the now extinguished move- 
 ment of the Zionists of John Alexander Dowie, and 
 several more or less secret associations. My answer 
 was that religion and science to me are one, and 
 that I must consider all these movements to be 
 aberrations in so far as they deviate from the great 
 common scientific unity of human wisdom. But 
 in the same way as the Church must be held re- 
 
CURING BY SUGGESTION 79 
 
 sponsible for all heresies because it was narrow, 
 blind, and dogmatic, instead of alive and universal 
 so our modern science is the direct cause of all 
 these aberrations, because it has been dogmatic and 
 prejudiced. 
 
 The Emmanuel movement may keep contact with 
 science, yet it is not scientific and would be super- 
 fluous if science were what it ought to be. The 
 other movements mentioned are all tinged by the 
 influence of some powerful but not always well- 
 balanced or overscrupulous personality. This 
 means suggestion, personal suggestion, spreading 
 over hundreds and thousands, making use of the 
 gregarious quality of mankind. 
 
 Man is a herd-animal, and suggestibility is a 
 necessary condition of the gregarious habit. This 
 enables some individuals of a masterful, energetic 
 character, even without really great qualities, to 
 become the leaders of numerous followers, and often 
 the healers by suggestion. 
 
 These movements are extremely deplorable, be- 
 cause they generally bring a sort of spiritual des- 
 potism, servility, and fanaticism, and because they 
 lead thousands and thousands astray from the safe 
 ways of universal science. 
 
 But it is entirely futile to combat these people 
 simply by haughty contempt. Their cures are facts, 
 sometimes, and science can do their creed and their 
 leaders no greater service than by stupid denial. 
 
8o HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 The only way to correct these aberrations is to use 
 their weapons better than they do. So long as the 
 doctors doggedly stick to their drugs and pills, to 
 their electricity and operations, denying and neg- 
 lecting the psychical treatment, just so long will 
 quacks and faith-healers and the like flourish, to 
 the detriment of mankind. And patent medicines 
 will enrich their advertisers just so long as the power 
 of suggestion is not understood. Any advertise- 
 ment is a suggestion. Repeat it sufficiently and it 
 will tend to become action in the reader. He can't 
 resist; he will try it, if only for once. 
 
 But expectation is also a very strong suggestion. 
 What a sufferer has read about the pills or drugs, 
 what some friend or neighbour or relative has told 
 him about their wonderful effect that will be the 
 result, to a greater or less extent. He will experi- 
 ence relief, perhaps a total cure, and his testimonial 
 will help to enforce the suggestion on others. Let 
 the doctors thunder against these cures and call 
 them the result of imagination; what is the use? 
 "Let it be imagination!" said a patient to a doctor. 
 "If it cures me, when you could not, then I prefer 
 imagination!" Look at the tremendous sums spent 
 on advertisements: you may be sure they pay, but 
 it is the suffering public that pays. And they would 
 certainly rebel, if the results did not reinforce the 
 suggestion. 
 
 Even the doctors themselves are sometimes dupes. 
 
CURING BY SUGGESTION 81 
 
 Every year scores of new proprietary medicines come 
 from the chemical manufactories, endorsed by a 
 number of favourable testimonials from physicians. 
 After some time they are forgotten and replaced 
 by something else with still more striking endorse- 
 ments. Are these physicians all bought to give false 
 testimonials? No; but nobody thinks of the part 
 that suggestion plays. Nobody, not even the doc- 
 tor himself, asks for test-conditions which exclude 
 suggestive influence. Expectation gives the first 
 suggestion; a favourable result based thereon en- 
 forces it; and advertisements do the rest exactly 
 the same as with patent medicines. The difference 
 is in the long chemical formula and the scientific 
 label. 
 
 Psycho-therapy is no panacea. It is only an 
 accessory force which must be combined with sur- 
 gery, hygiene, electro-therapy, hydro-therapy, and 
 the rest. 
 
 It is to be hoped that American science, which 
 counts so many illustrious names in all branches, 
 will soon atone for the long years of prejudice and 
 neglect, protect society from the dangers of sug- 
 gestive influence, and serve it by its wonderful 
 powers. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF SOME FRIENDS 
 
 A PER my first lecture in London, on psycho- 
 therapy, a lady wanted to speak to me and 
 invited me to her home in the country. 
 This home proved to be one of those magnificent 
 country-seats which may be considered as one of 
 the highest achievements of culture and refinement 
 to which human civilization has attained. A splen- 
 did house, built in noble style, furnished with ex- 
 quisite taste, containing priceless works of art and 
 an unlimited number of books. It displayed quiet 
 luxury, which, without extravagance, afforded not 
 only comfort but also real intellectual and artistic 
 delights. There was nothing to shock the eye; a 
 well-established order, a truly aristocratic atmos- 
 phere, the evidences of self-control, and of mental 
 labour and healthy sport were at hand to balance 
 all the dangers of wealth. 
 
 This beautiful home seemed indeed to come as 
 near human perfection and the earthly paradise as 
 man could hope for. Yet, notwithstanding its daz- 
 zling appearance of beauty and happiness, I never 
 
 82 
 
INFLUENCE OF SOME FRIENDS 83 
 
 forgot that it could not be built on foundations of 
 equity and justice. I knew that, at the bottom of this 
 glorious estate, there must exist something rotten, 
 even though it could not be perceived, in the stately 
 manor or in the thousands of acres around it, or 
 in the seemingly happy and contented population 
 just as I know that the same must be the case in all 
 that the powerful English nation has achieved and 
 in all that the still more powerful American na- 
 tion is going to achieve. Piracy, parasitism, clever 
 extortion is at the bottom of great ownership. 
 Thousands of poor wretches have to pay, with all 
 the miseries of a sordid, incomplete life, for the 
 perfection of these few. I knew this, and I said it. 
 This will not be considered exactly the right sort 
 of conversation for a week-end guest at an English 
 country house. It might not seem likely that the 
 invitation would be repeated. Yet it was repeated. 
 
 During the time of the Boer War, which was a 
 terrible time for a Hollander who had beloved Eng- 
 lish friends, I wrote a letter to that same hostess of 
 mine, who belonged to the highest English aristoc- 
 racy and of course to the Tory side, a letter so free- 
 spoken that a friend of mine to whom I showed it 
 exclaimed: "If she stands that, she must be a very 
 extraordinary woman." 
 
 And she stood it, for she is a very extraordinary 
 woman indeed. It hurt her grievously, and so it 
 did me, for there is nothing so painful as to see how 
 
84 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 the deepest friendship cannot prevent the deepest 
 misunderstanding. Yet it brought no separation, 
 no animosity. Our conclusive sentiment was that 
 of Professor Richet, who exclaimed at the occasion 
 of that horrible war: "Pauvres etres humains!" 
 Poor human brutes! entangled in error and mis- 
 understanding, killing each other, killing poor in- 
 nocent women and children, convinced of the jus- 
 tice of their cause on either side. Error and mis- 
 understanding these are indeed the common 
 enemies we have to fight. And to that tremendous 
 struggle is devoted the entire life and strength of 
 Lady Welby, my hostess at the magnificent country 
 house. 
 
 Though she is now over seventy, and frail and 
 ailing, she never relaxes but continues her work 
 with unbroken energy. After the death of her 
 husband she left the manor, where she had to fulfil 
 her duties as the wife of a wealthy English aristocrat, 
 and she retired to a smaller house with her books 
 and her papers, sparing all the strength left to her 
 for her great task, seeing nobody but those whom 
 she hopes to interest in her work and those who are 
 to benefit by it. 
 
 Forty years ago, while living in an atmosphere of 
 courtly splendour, traditional state and formal 
 religion, this woman, who was of a deeply religious 
 nature, struck upon this great truth, the funda- 
 mental truth of the present period in human history 
 
INFLUENCE OF SOME FRIENDS 85 
 
 that we human creatures are miserable because 
 we have not sufficient means of communion with 
 each other. 
 
 We suffer, hate, and quarrel, because we can 
 neither rightly think, nor communicate our thoughts. 
 For in order to think and speak we use words and 
 language. And words and language in their present 
 state are absolutely insufficient means for what we 
 try to do with them. They are corrupt, petrified, 
 stale, full of snares and pitfalls, full of antiquated 
 images, dead and stony, instead of living and spirit- 
 ual. 
 
 This is indeed the clue to most of the present 
 human miseries. It explains all the religious quar- 
 rels which led to so much cruelty and bloodshed, it 
 explains the political struggles, the wars of nations, 
 the social and economical troubles. For at the bot- 
 tom of all is the want of communion between man 
 and man, not only between strangers, but even 
 between brothers of the same house. They all 
 fight because they think differently. And yet these 
 differences of thought and feeling, of volition and 
 intention, can all be traced back to the inadequacy 
 of language. 
 
 To prove this has been the life-work of Lady 
 Welby. The amount of evidence she has collected 
 for that purpose is gigantic. Men who have known 
 Darwin and his methods say that his work only 
 can be compared to the labour done by this extra- 
 
86 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 ordinary woman. She has published a few books, and 
 her branch of science, which she calls "Signifies,"* 
 begins now to gain official recognition. But the 
 fruits of her tremendous labour are as yet stored up 
 in her library at Harrow. Let mankind take care 
 lest this great treasure be lost or scattered unused. 
 For in the face of the facts contained there it can- 
 not be denied that men have been fools indeed, and 
 that they are now only slowly growing aware of 
 their foolishness. And is it not the first condition 
 of improvement to get insight into one's faults? Is 
 not a true diagnosis the first requisition for a cure? 
 To me the friendship of Lady Welby and the acquain- 
 tance with her work have been of immense importance. 
 
 As a poet one must have intuitive knowledge of 
 the fact that our mind is outgrowing our language^ 
 that our implements for thinking and communica- 
 tion are ridiculously primitive and clumsy in com- 
 parison with the subtle realities we have to deal 
 with. Every true poet feels this and his longing 
 is, more or less vaguely, for some better means of 
 understanding, for a transcendent language, meeting 
 our needs of transcendent knowledge. 
 
 Yet it is a different thing from feeling all this 
 vaguely to go at it with full conviction and show it 
 with forcible arguments to poor, struggling mankind. 
 
 A universal insight of this truth, with all the 
 authority of an acknowledged science, would mean 
 
 ^Signifies and Language, by V. Welby [Macmillan, 1911). 
 
INFLUENCE OF SOME FRIENDS 87 
 
 more than a thousand peace conferences, it would 
 unite the now contending forces of religion and 
 natural science, it would do more to establish a 
 higher human wisdom than all psychical research 
 or theosophical teaching. For in truth, according 
 to my experience, we can divide all humanity into 
 two classes: Those who are enlightened enough to 
 recognize the inadequacy of language, and those 
 who are not. The first class only can build up the 
 future of the human race. On them only, and their 
 consequent action, depends the hope of our salva- 
 tion. For is it not true that the teachers of religion 
 and the teachers of science are both working for the 
 truth? They use the same word. And yet do they 
 know with perfect clearness what they both mean 
 by that recklessly abused word? 
 
 All political leaders, all social reformers are 
 struggling for the sake of human happiness. But 
 have they the faintest notion what the word "happi- 
 ness" really can signify for all who use it? 
 
 How far Lady Welby's proposals for a remedy 
 will be successful, I consider for the moment an 
 irrelevant question. What I hold to be of the very 
 highest importance is the insight she tries to bring 
 into the intricate mazes of our endless errors, into 
 the deep confusions of our troubled selves. 
 
 Welby's life-work and activity is the highest 
 example of what the world may expect from women. 
 It is the best and the final answer to the woman 
 
88 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 question. It shows how a woman, after fulfilling 
 her duties as wife and mother, may enter a new and 
 far more important field of activity at a time when % 
 according to the old opinion, she was spent and 
 useless: it shows how she may add to the store of 
 human wisdom her own special treasure of intuitive 
 knowledge. And this without losing any of her 
 essentially feminine qualities, or trespassing unduly 
 upon what belongs to the male. Was this fact not 
 anticipated in antiquity, when deeper insight into 
 matters human and divine was ascribed to saintly 
 women, who, in losing their physical maternal 
 powers, became like holy mothers of the race? 
 
 Without doubt the Western civilization of our 
 days is too rational and intellectual. It wants 
 correction by intuitive insight not by the wisdom 
 that knows but by the wisdom that is. We are 
 overconfident in our learning and in our technical 
 power; yet we are lacking in the highest human 
 qualities, in the poetry of life, in transcendental 
 wisdom. We shall have to correct and complete 
 our modern acquirements according to the standard 
 of former ages and of other nations that possessed 
 the advantages which we have lost. The human 
 beings of antiquity and of the Middle Ages, and also 
 the Oriental people of to-day, are our superiors in 
 inner accomplishments, in transcendental perfec- 
 tion, in those individual qualities that we are re- 
 placing now by a materialistic science and a formal, 
 
INFLUENCE OF SOME FRIENDS 89 
 
 clerical religion. Yet our gain is a better outward 
 union of the nations, brought about by our mastery 
 over the forces of nature, by our swifter communion, 
 our stronger physical unity, our universal scientific 
 insight of nature. 
 
 In a very remarkable speech at the Psychological 
 Congress in Paris in 1900, a noble representative 
 of Oriental civilization expressed the rightful wish 
 that Occident and Orient might understand each 
 other and might learn from each other's methods. 
 Both clauses of this wish are incomplete, the Orient 
 is stagnant, the Occident is pushing on through 
 blocked road. Only by combining the two civil- 
 izations can mankind reach that real culture which 
 has been lacking until now. The man who said 
 this was called Yagadisha Chattopadyaya, and he 
 made upon me the impression of a complete and 
 finished man, because thus far I had seen either in- 
 valids, unfinished specimens, or caricatures of the 
 human race. 
 
 This Indian, a Bramin of Benares, was still a 
 young man, and he had good looks, a fine build, 
 and perfect grace in manners and movements. In 
 the midst of the horrid black coats, unshapely 
 trousers, and ridiculous top hats of the learned men 
 at the congress, his exquisitely beautiful and graceful 
 dress made him look like a lily among cabbages. I 
 had been myself a vegetarian for some years, and 
 had found it difficult to remain so. This Indian had 
 
9 o HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 never polluted his lips with flesh nor with alcoholic 
 drinks. His gentleness, his mild, quiet ways, his 
 distinction and the depth of his thoughts made me 
 feel ashamed for the presumption of our Occidental 
 people who claim the highest place in human civil- 
 ization. In the short time of our acquaintance 
 we were daily together and I became very much 
 attached to him. Of course, as I do always, I saw 
 his best qualities first. I have no doubt he has 
 defects to counterbalance them. But he went to 
 his fatherland without showing his weaknesses, leav- 
 ing me only the remembrance of his virtues. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE GREAT STRIKE 
 
 I HAD entered now into the labour movement, 
 into what may be called militant socialism. I 
 never cared for labels, nor for party programmes, 
 but it seemed that by my own development I had 
 landed in the midst of tlie class-war. 
 
 For the first three or four decades of my life I had, 
 like most other people of the leisure class, been only 
 dimly aware of the way in which our comfortable 
 life was made possible. We live, it seems more or 
 less, in a state of somnambulism. We may be said 
 to know but not yet to feel or to realize the injustice 
 of our position. A slight shock to our mind is some- 
 times able to wake us up and open our eyes to the 
 disagreement between our confessed morals and our 
 actual mode of living. 
 
 It is a curious fact to me that this shock did not 
 come in my case through so-called "scientific" 
 German social-economical theories, nor through the 
 writings of the great Russians, Tolstoy and Kro- 
 potkin, but from the American side, through Bellamy's 
 "Looking Backward" and Thoreau's "Walden." I 
 
 91 
 
92 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 sometimes felt a little humiliated that such a super- 
 ficial and unpoetical book as "Looking Backward" 
 was the instrument of my evolution. Alfred Rus- 
 sell Wallace, however, the famous explorer and 
 biologist, one day told me to my consolation that 
 he also was made a socialist by that same simple, 
 silly, little book. It was the clear common sense, 
 the cheerful optimism of the American author, that 
 gave the slight shock wanted. And however dif- 
 ferent in many respects my views were from those 
 of Thoreau, it was by the touch of his strong char- 
 acter, of his sincerity, uprightness and determination, 
 that my thoughts became deeds. For this transi- 
 tion is not at all a scientific, rational process, but a 
 moral event. Its motives are not knowledge and 
 learning, but freedom of mind and cheerful hope. 
 The pushing force comes from the men of faith and 
 of force of character. The mind may be prepared 
 intellectually, but it wants ethical incitement to 
 change its potential energy into active movement. 
 
 I delivered at that time two addresses which 
 were my declarations of War and Independence. 
 The first was spoken before a public of fashionable, 
 peaceful citizens of Rotterdam, in an old-fashioned, 
 respectable lecturing society bearing the proud name 
 of the "Company for the Promotion of Common 
 Welfare." 
 
 I had given as a title of my lecture "On What Do 
 We Live?" And a large audience crowded the room 
 
THE GREAT STRIKE 93 
 
 expecting to hear from me, the well-known doctor 
 and specialist, a useful and instructive speech on the 
 mysteries of nutrition, on what a man ought to eat 
 and not to eat, on protein and nuclein, on fat and 
 starch. Great was their surprise when I told them 
 frankly and forcibly that all men, the lecturer in- 
 cluded, lived on theft and deceit, on piracy and 
 robbery, on usury and monopoly. For the moment 
 they were impressed, even to the point of applaud- 
 ing, and the chairman told me they hoped to see me 
 again. He was much blamed for that saying after- 
 ward. The papers next-morning flamed with indig- 
 nation, and the "Company for the Promotion of 
 Common Welfare" had no use for me after that 
 day. 
 
 Later on, in the country of Bellamy and Thoreau, 
 I had many experiences of the same kind. My 
 ability to promote physical health met with more 
 approval than my power of promoting spiritual 
 welfare, and audiences stood with much more ease 
 and patience any remarks about hygienic trespasses 
 than about social inequity. 
 
 The second lecture was intended for the labourer 
 and was named "For Whom Do You Work?" In 
 that one I pointed out that it was very unreasonable 
 and foolish for the workingmen to blame and abuse 
 the idle usurer, and yet continue to work for him. 
 If their contention was true that the members of 
 the leisure class did live like useless parasites on 
 
94 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 the work of the labourer, then it was a shame and a 
 sin to build houses, make clothes, raise food for them. 
 There was no use in calling them names, I said; the 
 only right way was to leave them alone to work for 
 themselves. Is it true that the labourers are the 
 only useful members of society? Well, then, their 
 device ought to be to work only for those who work 
 for them workers for workers and let the idler 
 starve. 
 
 The labourers listened and cried "Hear! hear!" 
 The social-democrats called me a bourgeois-utopist, 
 and other murderous names, but nobody could show 
 me in what I was mistaken, nor why my rational 
 advice could not be followed. I had to find that out 
 all by myself. 
 
 Of course the labourers wanted me to show them 
 how they could manage to work only for workers. 
 My answer was simple enough: "Produce yourself 
 what you want, and live on what is produced by 
 you and your fellow-workers." The same method 
 I had recommended to our Government when it 
 was embarrassed by the unemployed: "Give them 
 the opportunity to produce what they want." This 
 advice was also utterly disdained and ridiculed, 
 though nobody could tell me why it was so absurd 
 or impossible. 
 
 I knew quite well that there would be many diffi- 
 culties in the execution of my plan, yet the idea I 
 knew also to be quite sound. If the practice was 
 
THE GREAT STRIKE 95 
 
 difficult, all the more reason why we should go to 
 work and try to face the difficulties. 
 
 This was the theoretical basis of my social ex- 
 periment. And I can honestly declare now that it 
 brought me all the knowledge I wanted, however 
 much of a failure it seemed to the outsider. I 
 wanted to know why my simple maxim had not yet 
 been put into practice, what was in the way, and how 
 it could be realized. I daresay that I do know at this 
 time. 
 
 The trouble was with most people who agreed 
 with the truth of my proposal, that they had no idea 
 of a gradual transition. They supposed that a few 
 men could at once live up to the theory entirely. 
 This could be done only if the men were heroes and 
 strong characters like Thoreau. If a few men could 
 either reduce their wants or extend their productive 
 power sufficiently they would make both ends meet. 
 To them even the difficulty of acquiring sufficient 
 means for producing would not be insurmountable. 
 They would have to reduce their wants a little to 
 bring them within the scope of their productive power 
 and in that way create a surplus, a margin of what 
 might be called "profit" or "extension-capital." 
 This surplus would increase at a growing rate, as 
 they drew more fellow-workers into their circle, and 
 in the end it would enable them to buy as much 
 land and as many implements as they needed to 
 produce all the necessities of modern life. 
 
96 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 What I had yet to learn was that the power of 
 mankind, either to reduce their wants or to extend 
 their productivity is extremely limited. I did not 
 realize then that men are, for the most part, gre- 
 garious animals, who cannot reduce their wants 
 unless it is done collectively, and who cannot extend 
 their production, unless their activity is cleverly 
 directed by superior minds. 
 
 The labourers had no idea of this either. Most 
 of them who listened to my advice and agreed with 
 my idea did not believe at all in the necessity of 
 authority and discipline. They were fed on the 
 idealistic wisdom of Tolstoy and Kropotkin, who be- 
 lieved in the superfluity of all authority and in the 
 beauty and blessing of full anarchism; or else they 
 were flattered and spoiled by the speeches and 
 pamphlets of social-democratic and anarchistic 
 demagogues who had told them that they needed 
 no practice and no help from superior minds. The 
 only thing for them was to have political power, 
 the power to rule by law or to do away with all laws; 
 then everything would come right by itself. 
 
 From such glaring absurdities I tried to lead them 
 to practical experiments. This was why the social- 
 democrats called me a misleader, an "enemy of the 
 people." It was natural that they should distrust 
 me because, when the people followed my way, the 
 absurdity of the plan of the demagogues would be- 
 come rather too obvious. If the labourers could 
 
THE GREAT STRIKE 97 
 
 not, by their own effort, organize effectively so as 
 to extend their productive power and to meet their 
 wants, even on a small scale, there was little hope 
 that they would be able to do so as a whole, at once, 
 after having acquired political powers. It would 
 be clear then that they need the help of superior 
 individuals of the ruling class, of organizing minds 
 that could direct their activity and maintain author- 
 ity and discipline. 
 
 I succeeded in starting a company called the 
 "Company for the Common Possession of the Soil." 
 Its aim was to acquire, in the first place, the means 
 of production the soil, source of all wealth by 
 the efforts of well-organized productive labour. 
 My plan was to start small groups of workers, who 
 should produce those necessities of life that all the 
 others wanted, and who should reserve the profits 
 of their business, or at least a part of them, for the 
 acquisition of land and implements, and for the 
 starting of new groups. The end would be a large 
 cooperation, productive and distributive, consisting 
 of workers who lived on their own soil and who 
 themselves supplied all they wanted. 
 
 To me it was clear and is so still that such a 
 body would be economically the most powerful on 
 earth, able to cope with every trust and even with 
 every political power, a constant source of unlimited 
 wealth, having in its midst none of the worst evils 
 of our present society, no pauperism, no unemploy- 
 
98 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 ment, no theft, and a good deal less crime, disease, 
 insanity, and despair. 
 
 It is interesting to know that this company, which 
 was started in 1901, still exists. Hollanders are a 
 curious people. They are very slow and suspicious. 
 You may offer them a bone of truth a long time before 
 they will take it, but when they do seize it, they 
 cling like a bulldog, however bare it may prove to be. 
 The "Company for the Common Possession of the 
 Soil" has not yet any possessions at all; it even lost 
 the soil which was given to it. It consists of a few 
 producing groups, who are struggling hard for ex- 
 istence, but who nevertheless have faith and hope, 
 as may be seen in the monthly paper that they 
 publish, The Pioneer. 
 
 Of course their trouble is the lack of able leaders, 
 of clever, experienced business men, as every Ameri- 
 can understands. I have told them so over and over 
 again since I came to see it myself. They do not, 
 however, seize upon the new bone I offer them; 
 they are unwilling to give up their old, bare dogmas 
 of socialism; they still believe that the labourer has 
 to liberate himself without help from the intellect- 
 uals who belong to another class, and that authority 
 and discipline in business matters always lead to 
 abuse and extortion. 
 
 Nobody who joined me in 1901, not even the 
 intellectuals, understood the experimental char-, 
 acter of my work. Nobody had that spirit of scien- 
 
THE GREAT STRIKE 99 
 
 tific exploration that is always ready to give up old 
 tactics, to make a new move, to leave a hypothesis 
 that proves useless for a better one, to seek inces- 
 santly new methods, new ways along the line of 
 least resistance, and that finds in negative results 
 no reason for discouragement, but useful instruction 
 and suggestions for new and better plans. 
 
 In January, 1903, when my experiment at Walden 
 was going on fairly well, when we had just begun to 
 find a source of increasing revenue in the baking 
 and selling of an excellent sort of whole-meal bread, 
 a railway strike took place, which almost entirely 
 isolated the capital of the Netherlands for two days 
 from the rest of the country. A most curious sight 
 it was to see the business men of Amsterdam who 
 had their homes in suburbs or villages some ten or 
 twenty miles from town crowding the country roads 
 on foot, on bicycles, or in hired vehicles of various 
 descriptions all looking very cross and out of 
 temper because they could not reach their offices 
 in time. To most of them it was an astonishing 
 revelation of the importance of railway workers. 
 The leaders of the strike, who had been able in 
 this way to stop business at the capital, became 
 at once men of note, though of a most unpopular 
 sort. 
 
 As the blow came unforeseen, and found the 
 Government unprepared, the strike was eminently 
 successful. The railway company and the Govern- 
 
ico HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 ment gave in and agreed to the rather moderate 
 wishes of the strikers. Engine-drivers decorated 
 their locomotives with roses after the victory. 
 
 As soon as peace was settled, the prime minister 
 proceeded to establish a law that would in the future 
 prevent such humiliation of the highest authority. 
 When this law was discussed in Parliament, another 
 strike broke out, this time meant to be general, in 
 order to oppose the passing of the bill. 
 
 As chairman of the "Company for the Common 
 Possession of the Soil" I was supposed to be on the 
 side of the striking labourers and I was invited to 
 take part in the organizing of the great strike. And 
 I agreed to do what I could not because I had any 
 great expectations concerning the practical results 
 of the strike, as I knew that many of the socialists 
 had, who hoped for a total overturn of the social 
 system but because I expected that many of the 
 best strikers would come to my conclusions namely, 
 that it was necessary for the labourer to tackle the 
 great problem of the organization of production 
 before he looked for the possession of political power. 
 In this expectation I was not disappointed. 
 
 At the preliminary meetings all the socialistic 
 groups forgot their differences and met like brothers 
 on the field of battle. Anarchists, social-democrats, 
 and free-socialists all promised to stand together. 
 It was a complete rally. My most violent op- 
 ponents, the Marxists, shook hands with me, and a 
 
THE GREAT STRIKE 101 
 
 fine spirit of brotherhood and hopeful enthusiasm 
 prevailed. 
 
 About forty of us were sent as delegates to different 
 towns to lead and encourage the strikers there. 
 The password was given and a date and hour secretly 
 appointed. On Monday morning, the sixth of April, 
 1903, no train was to run on any railway in the 
 Netherlands. 
 
 Sunday evening I set out, as one of the forty 
 delegates, on the warpath. I took leave of my 
 family, filled a suit case with pamphlets and fly- 
 leaves, and arrived in the middle of the night at 
 the little town of Amersfoort, an important railway 
 junction, to bring my message from headquarters 
 that a strike would be declared that night in the 
 whole country. Expecting the Government to be 
 very active and energetic and not unlikely to arrest 
 me, I took an assumed name, and was dressed like a 
 labourer. 
 
 The attitude of the railway-men at the night- 
 meeting where I presided was very fine. I was much 
 struck by the unwavering courage, the generous 
 sentiments, the cheerful energy of these people, who 
 all knew that the existence of their wives and chil- 
 dren was at stake, and who, having just come from 
 a strenuous and long day's labour, went to work the 
 whole night to prepare the great blow. I saw what 
 excellent material these men would make under a 
 strong and clever leadership. 
 
102 'HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 But alas! no such leadership directed that great 
 strike in Holland in 1903. The organization of the 
 movement was poor, there were no funds, Govern- 
 ment and railway company had made their prepa- 
 rations, there was a great display of military forces, 
 though only one shot was fired, and that by acci- 
 dent, and there was a sufficient reserve of blacklegs. 
 The strength of the labour union of railway workers 
 was thoroughly undermined by methods of intimi- 
 dation and bribery. 
 
 I stayed a week in that little town, living in the 
 houses of the strikers, sharing their meals and their 
 hours of suspense and anxiety. There was a dark, 
 dingy meeting room where they all preferred to 
 gather, rather than to stay at home. The women 
 also regularly attended these meetings, sometimes 
 bringing their children, and they all sought the 
 comfort of being in company, talking of hopes and 
 fears, cheering each other up by songs, and trying 
 to raise each other's spirits during the long days of 
 inaction. I addressed them, three or four times a 
 day, trying to give them sound notions on social 
 conditions and preparing them for the defeat which 
 I soon knew to be inevitable. I may say, however, 
 that, though I was of all the forty delegates the 
 least hopeful of ultimate success, my little party 
 was the last to surrender and showed the smallest 
 percentage of fugitives. 
 
 I saw in those days of strife that of the two con- 
 
THE GREAT STRIKE 103 
 
 tending parties, the stronger, the victorious one, was 
 by far the least sympathetic in its moral attitude and 
 methods. The strikers were pathetically stupid 
 and ignorant about the strength of their opponents 
 and their own weakness. If they had unexpectedly 
 gained a complete victory they would have been 
 utterly unable to use it. If the political power had 
 shifted from the hands of the Government to those 
 of the leading staff of that general strike, the result 
 would have been a terrible confusion. There was 
 no mind strong enough, no hand firm enough among 
 them to rule and reorganize that mass of workers, 
 unaccustomed to freedom, untrained to self-control, 
 unable to work without severe authority and dis- 
 cipline. Yet the feelings and motives of that mul- 
 titude were fair and just they showed a chivalry, 
 a generosity, an idealism and an enthusiasm with 
 which the low methods of their powerful opponents 
 contrasted painfully. 
 
 Every striker had to fight his own fight at home. 
 Every evening he had to face the worn and anxious 
 face of his wife, the sight of his children in danger of 
 starvation and misery. He had to notice the hidden 
 tears of the woman, or to answer her doubts and 
 reproaches, with a mind itself far from confident. 
 He had to fight in his own heart the egotistical 
 inclination to save himself and give up what he felt 
 to be his best sentiment, solidarity, the faith toward 
 his comrades. 
 
io 4 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 I believe no feeling man of the leisure class could 
 have gone through a week in those surroundings 
 and taken part in a struggle like this without ac- 
 quiring a different conception of the ethics of social- 
 ism and class war. 
 
 For on the other side there were the Government, 
 the companies, the defendants of existing order, 
 powerful by their wealth, by their routine, by their 
 experience, and supported by the servility of the 
 great public and the army. They had not to face 
 any real danger (the strikers showed no inclination 
 to deeds of violence), and the arms they used were 
 intimidation and bribery. The only thing for them 
 to do was to demoralize the striker, to make him an 
 egoist, a coward, a traitor to his comrades. And 
 this was done quietly and successfully. 
 
 Demoralizing the enemy may be the lawful object 
 of every war the unavoidable evil to prevent a 
 greater wrong; yet in this case, where the method of 
 corruption could be used only on one side, it showed 
 the ugly character of the conflict. This was no fair 
 battle, with common moral rules of chivalry and 
 generosity; it was a pitiful and hopeless struggle 
 between a weak slave and a strong usurper, between 
 an ill-treated, revolting child and a brutal op- 
 pressor, who cared only for the restoration of his 
 authority, not for the morals of the child. 
 
 Every day when I walked through the streets of 
 the little town, at the head of my strikers, we saw 
 
THE GREAT STRIKE 105 
 
 the inhabitants look at us with derision and pity. 
 They called us stakkers (poor fellows) instead of 
 stakers (strikers). We were in connection with head- 
 quarters by messengers on bicycles. We had also 
 post-carrying pigeons, but they were of little use, 
 and once an automobile brought news from head- 
 quarters all sorts of doubtful information: for 
 instance, that the Government was going to sur- 
 render, that a large gift was expected from a 
 wealthy man, and so on. 
 
 In the meanwhile trains were running on the track 
 busily every day. We heard the rumble and the 
 whistles day and night, and I remember how every 
 whistle in the night used to wake me up, as it meant 
 another blackleg or fugitive returned to his post. 
 The strikers, however, told each other that this 
 whistling was only a trick of the company making 
 empty locomotives run up and down the track with 
 as much noise as possible, in order to impress the 
 strikers with the notion that regular service was 
 restored. 
 
 On Tuesday every striker got a note from the 
 company saying that, unless he called at his post 
 within twelve hours, he would be irrevocably locked 
 out. At the next meeting all my men came, not 
 one missing, and the notes were solemnly burned. 
 This was like the burning of their ships by the 
 Greeks. It was now victory or starvation- 
 
 On Friday I felt that all was lost. No tidings 
 
106 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 from headquarters, no money-supply, the service 
 notwithstanding the rumour of several wrecks by un- 
 trained officials apparently running as regularly 
 as usual. At noon a man came, by train, with a 
 message from headquarters, bearing the word that 
 all was lost and that we must give up the strike. A 
 foreman of the strikers who had stood by me all 
 the time with the utmost energy, cheerfulness, and 
 enthusiasm, broke down at the news and sobbed 
 with his head on his arms. The others were quiet 
 and resigned. No word of bitterness or despair 
 was heard, no blame to me or to the leaders. On the 
 contrary, at my request they all stood up and sang 
 the socialist march. 
 
 I went at once to the station-master to try what 
 I could do for the locked-out victims. The man 
 played his little comedy. When I spoke of the lost 
 strike, he said: 
 
 " Strike? What are you talking about, sir? I do 
 not know of any strike. The service is going as well 
 as ever. There have been a few fools who left their 
 posts, but they have been warned, and are now 
 replaced by others." 
 
 The man was not so bad as he looked, however; 
 he felt more in sympathy than he was allowed to 
 show. Yet he could do nothing. He wired to the 
 board of the railway company, and got an audience 
 for me the next day. There I went, with an address 
 in my pocket, signed by all my strikers, and worded 
 
THE GREAT STRIKE 107 
 
 as submissively as the circumstances made necessary 
 and as their pride would allow. I pleaded with all 
 my eloquence for the forty families who were led 
 by me into starvation. In the whole country the 
 number was over two thousand. I spoke about the 
 noble sentiments and the good cause of these strikers, 
 about their attachment to the company and the rail- 
 way, about the danger to the service in taking un- 
 trained novices, about generosity and pity. 
 
 But the gentlemen of the board had their hour 
 of revenge. They had not forgotten the humiliation 
 of January. They wanted to rub it in thoroughly 
 this time. To have me, one of the socialist leaders, 
 in their midst seemed to give them great satisfaction. 
 It was something of a treat to them to see how heavily 
 I felt the burden of responsibility, full as I was of 
 the impressions of those days spent among the vic- 
 tims of the unequal struggle. 
 
 Yet they were not the stone-hard, brutal sort of 
 business men that I have met in other countries. 
 They spoke of humanity, of order and duty, of 
 patriarchal relations between employers and work- 
 men they were more narrow and hypocritical 
 than coarse and cruel. The result, however, was 
 thoroughly negative, and when I felt that any appeal 
 to generosity was as useless as if I were speaking to 
 some feline animal, I told them a bit of my mind 
 and the scene ended rather dramatically. 
 
 After that I had an audience with a minister of 
 
loS HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 the Government, who was exceedingly urbane and 
 polite, and whose talk drifted into sociological and 
 philosophical currents, without bringing any more 
 hope. 
 
 And I had to return again to my forty families, 
 who had placed their confidence in me, and who were 
 looking anxiously for my return, gathered in the 
 dark dingy meeting-room, each time that I had set 
 forth on another fool's errand. 
 
 From a practical point of view the company 
 received advantages from the strike. They 
 ran some danger, and had indeed a few wrecks, 
 because of their untrained workers, but on the 
 other hand they had the opportunity to get 
 rid of a number of aged and half-efficient per- 
 sons, without obligation to give them the pension 
 for which they had contributed all their years of 
 service. 
 
 The leaders of the defeated army and the forty 
 delegates then got together in another meeting which 
 became notorious in Holland as the "night-meeting" 
 after the strike. It lasted from twilight till day- 
 break, and came nearer to my conception of a 
 " pandemonium" than anything I have seen in my 
 life. As an experience of crowd-psychology it was 
 unrivalled. During the first three or four hours 
 there were regular speeches, wherein of course each 
 leader of his party threw the blame of the defeat on 
 the other party, the anarchists and free-socialists 
 
THE GREAT STRIKE 109 
 
 being particularly violent in ascribing the whole 
 debacle to treason of the social-democrats. The 
 fact was that the social-democrats, being more 
 practical and clear-sighted, had sooner realized the 
 hopelessness of the struggle and covered their re- 
 treat. The anarchists, however, who had fought to 
 the end, found it bitter to state the pitiful result of 
 the best chance they ever had. 
 
 And then, after these speeches, the rest of the 
 meeting was one continuous uproar for hours at a 
 stretch. I saw men grow so excited that they did 
 nothing but howl invectives with the regular rep- 
 etition of a machine, tears streaming down their 
 drawn, pale faces. I suppose in America the end 
 would have been shooting and killing. In Holland 
 it was only howling, threatening, and breaking of 
 chairs. 
 
 In thinking it over now, the most wonderful thing 
 to me is that, although I was present at that meeting 
 all the while it lasted, it did not seem particularly 
 long. It continued full ten hours, and most of the 
 time nothing happened but howling and shouting. 
 One would think this beyond the power of endurance 
 of a normal nervous system, at any rate too much 
 for human patience. Yet in the first light of morn- 
 ing I rode on my bicycle to my home fifteen miles 
 away and did not feel especially tired; I was able 
 to go to my daily work as if I had had a good night's 
 sleep. There seems to be something bracing in an 
 
no HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 atmosphere of extraordinary excitement, however 
 useless and confused it may be. 
 
 I had succeeded, however, in the very last hour of 
 the meeting in mastering the clamour for a while 
 and in making myself heard. I pointed out what 
 had to be done next, as the most urgent duty - 
 namely, to seek help for the two thousand starving 
 families. 
 
 This was agreed to, and I was appointed, with 
 two others, to form a committee of support. 
 
 His feliciter peractis, as Caesar would say, the 
 shouting done, and the committee nominated, the 
 generals and captains of the lost battle felt their 
 minds relieved and went back to their wonted busi- 
 ness, each according to his party programme, the 
 social-democrats preaching politics, the anarchists 
 preaching anarchism and general strikes, while the 
 care of the victims was left to me and my two fellow- 
 members. 
 
 One of these fellow members was the keeper of a 
 small restaurant in Amsterdam, a shrewd, funny 
 Jew, rather popular among the labouring class be- 
 cause of his good humour, his jokes and cunning 
 stratagems. He had made a reputation by out- 
 witting the fiscal officials to the advantage of 
 poor taxpayers, and he had all the lively eloquence, 
 the tender-heartedness, the vanity, and the swagger- 
 ing propensities of his race. Apparently much 
 flattered at having been given, in companionship 
 
THE GREAT STRIKE in 
 
 with me, the enormous task of providing two thou- 
 sand families with means of subsistence, he went to 
 work with a really astonishing energy and inventive- 
 ness. 
 
 We began with Amsterdam, and divided the town 
 into five districts, in each of which we organized 
 a meeting, addressed the people in order to explain 
 our plan, and appointed a sub-committee. Then 
 in each district we selected some of the locked-out 
 strikers and made them call at every workman's 
 house, and also at the houses of the wealthier people, 
 and ask them to give a* regular contribution every 
 week, with a minimum of five cents, for the relief 
 of their locked-out comrades. In this way we got 
 a list of contributors varying in number between 
 two and three thousand, who provided us every 
 week with a total contribution of about a hundred 
 dollars. This was not much, but it was something. 
 We could establish a head office and use several 
 of the unemployed as agents, collectors, and clerks. 
 
 When this canvassing had gone on successfully 
 for some time we felt that we ought to do something 
 more. The number of contributors had reached its 
 maximum and would surely decrease after the first 
 impulse of generosity had relaxed. We wanted 
 to keep our subscribers, and I saw in this loose 
 organization the possibility of establishing a market 
 for the products of my cooperative and productive 
 groups. 
 
ii2 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 My fellow member, the inventive restaurant 
 keeper, who, as he said, knew Amsterdam and its 
 population as he knew his own pocket, recommended 
 the following device: Instead of simply collecting 
 the weekly money and distributing it to the poor 
 families, we should keep it and do business with it, 
 after the manner of a savings bank. Every con- 
 tributor was to receive a stamp representing the 
 value of his contribution; he was to stick this 
 stamp in a small booklet. When his booklet con- 
 tained a sum of at least two dollars he would be 
 able to exchange it for some article of his choice, 
 some piece of household furniture, which we could 
 offer him in the showroom of a store established by 
 us. 
 
 This idea worked successfully so successfully 
 that it would seem marvellous to some one not 
 acquainted with the habits, the way of living, and 
 the psychology of an Amsterdam household. The 
 lower classes of Amsterdam that is, by far the 
 majority of the population have to live on a 
 weekly salary that is never quite sufficient for their 
 wants. With the strictest economy they have to 
 spend at least seven dollars a week, although the 
 average wages are about five. How they manage 
 to live is in most cases a mystery, but it is quite 
 clear that they can never save in the form of money. 
 They always have small debts to landlord, baker, 
 and so on. Yet they want from time to time some 
 
THE GREAT STRIKE 113 
 
 household goods, a new carpet, a chair, a clock. 
 They buy these in small stores on credit, having 
 to pay them off in small payments during many 
 months, paying of course exorbitant prices for bad 
 goods. In the same way young couples who estab- 
 lish a household bring themselves into debt some- 
 times for years to come. 
 
 Now our method offered them the occasion to get 
 these goods by small payments in advance. Sav- 
 ing five cents a week at home is an impossibility, 
 because the five cents is always wanted ere the week 
 is at an end. Bringing five cents a week to a savings 
 bank is not worth while, the housewife has no time 
 to spare. But our collectors came every week and 
 took the five cents and stuck the stamp in the book- 
 let, and then after some months, without feeling the 
 expense, the so much desired chair or table or 
 carpet could be chosen in our store at a reasonable 
 price. 
 
 The readiness with which the people gave their 
 money implied confidence in our solidity and honesty, 
 although, as the appointed committee for the support 
 of the locked-out, we got this confidence in full 
 measure anyway. My name was well known, and 
 the trust in me, alas! so great that I felt it heavy 
 to bear. My shrewd fellow-member realized the 
 value of my name better than I did myself. During 
 my absence abroad for a few weeks he used that 
 name freely, with a characteristic lack of discretion, 
 
ii 4 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 and with only too great success. In the space of a 
 few months the organization grew as a snowball 
 grows to an avalanche. The number of contributors 
 rose to more than forty thousand nearly 8 per 
 cent, of the population of Amsterdam and soon we 
 had to establish agencies in all the principal towns 
 of the Netherlands. 
 
 Thus far I had not felt the slightest misgiving, or 
 seen any imminent danger. On the contrary, I 
 approved entirely of all that was done and saw a 
 chance for brilliant success, a market for our pro- 
 duction, a source of increasing capital. For our 
 calculation showed clearly that we ought to make 
 profits. We were doing business with advanced 
 money, having to pay no interest, and being bur- 
 dened with no expense except that of collecting. 
 
 What I did not foresee was that business people 
 would not be interested in what interested me, would 
 not share my faith, and would absolutely refuse to 
 help in any way. 
 
 What I wanted now was the assistance of a firm, 
 experienced business man. We had to buy and sell 
 goods of all descriptions, furniture, clothes, boots 
 and shoes, fuel, and so on; and we had to rule a 
 rather unruly and untrained band of employees, 
 consisting of railway-guards, engine-drivers and 
 men of all trades whom we had turned into shop- 
 keepers, clerks, collectors, and the like. 
 
 My acute restaurant keeper began to grow nervous. 
 
THE GREAT STRIKE 115 
 
 His favourite expression was "gigantic," and he had 
 always been talking of the gigantic things we were 
 going to do. But when the proportions of our 
 undertaking began to grow in full earnest it was 
 rather too gigantic for him. In the beginning, so 
 long as the organization had a more familiar char- 
 acter, he could manage to keep his authority, with 
 his jovial ways and his jokes. But now he felt that 
 he lost his hold on the men. They would not obey 
 him and grew impertinent. Once a man to whom 
 we had refused a coveted appointment began to 
 swear and shout for twenty minutes at least, threat- 
 ening to kill my poor fellow-director and drink his 
 blood. 
 
 After this scene he lost his nerve altogether. 
 With a pale face he said to me: "It requires a 
 Napoleon to conduct this business. I think we 
 better stop." To this proposal I did not agree. I 
 preferred to go on and look out for a Napoleon. 
 Even if I had wished to show my heels and fly, it 
 would have been very difficult. For my worthy 
 fellow-member had taken care to put my name and 
 person forward on all occasions and to shift all 
 responsibility on me. For I had some financial 
 credit and he had none. 
 
 So one day my companion wrote to me that he 
 resigned his post, and he returned to his restaurant, 
 where he sat all day and brooded and talked to his 
 customers, foretelling my inevitable ruin. Half a 
 
n6 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 year later, probably recovered from the shock, he 
 started another organization of the same sort, enter- 
 ing into a most relentless competition. 
 
 The care of the original organization was now 
 resting entirely on me, and I went in search of the 
 Napoleon. This was no easy task, for reasons which 
 I will presently explain. And when I got him at last, 
 he skipped Marengo, and Austerlitz, and began with 
 Waterloo. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE BREAKDOWN 
 
 IN 1897, when there was in Holland a general cry 
 for help to the unemployed, the number of 
 which then became alarming, as it has done and 
 will continue to do in every crisis, I made a proposi- 
 tion to my countrymen that they should establish 
 farms, owned and supported by the state, where 
 every man out of work should be able to find useful 
 employment, under good supervision and manage- 
 ment. 
 
 They should produce principally those goods that 
 they could use themselves, and work more for their 
 own consumption than for the market, forming in 
 this way a sort of productive cooperation. I fore- 
 saw of course that this would imply an annual de- 
 ficit to the Government, but I considered this well- 
 spent money. 
 
 This idea of productive cooperation as the only 
 way to get out of our social troubles has indeed 
 arisen in numerous minds and was brought forward 
 several times. The difficulty does not lie in the 
 way, which is easy to find and not so hard to go, but 
 
 in getting people to try it. 
 
 117 
 
n8 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 State farms were recommended in Blatchford's 
 well-known booklet "Merry England," but no 
 Government ever dared to try the experiment. In 
 Holland my proposal was haughtily declared ridic- 
 ulous. 
 
 In 1830 William Thompson wrote a book called 
 "Practical directions for the Needy and Economical 
 establishment of communities on the principle of 
 mutual cooperation, united possessions and equality 
 of exertions and of the means of enjoyment." 
 
 It is still worth reading, as a sensible and natural 
 answer of an unsophisticated, undogmatic mind to 
 the alarming cry of the social miseries. It is full 
 of good, even practical, sense. When Thompson 
 died he left all his property in the hands of a board 
 of trustees in order that they should try a practical 
 experiment with it, according to his views. But 
 Thompson's relatives interfered and started a law- 
 suit before the ill-famed "Chancery" of Ireland. 
 The lawsuit lasted for seventeen years and then all 
 the money was gone. The moral of this being that 
 we should not try experiments after our death, with 
 relatives and lawyers still alive. What Thompson 
 wanted to do was a repetition of what had been tried 
 by several social reformers, my countryman Plock- 
 hoy, who colonized in the seventeenth century in 
 America, among the number. That so many ex- 
 periments failed was no reason not to try once more. 
 Yet Thompson's excellent advices were entirely for- 
 
THE BREAKDOWN 119 
 
 gotten by the uproar of dogmatists; by the Chartists 
 movement in England, by the fierce, bigoted disci- 
 ples of Marx in Germany. 
 
 I wanted to try my experiment during my life- 
 time, and the advantage of this was that I got the 
 benefit of the instructive experience. 
 
 My reasoning went like this : It is impossible for 
 any man. in present society to give up all unfair 
 means of getting his subsistence. He is dependent, 
 in a thousand trifles, on the work of others. He can- 
 not free himself entirely from the intricate tissue of 
 social institutions and activities. He has to partake, 
 more or less, and more or less directly, in all sorts of 
 foul and mean devices used by merchants, land- 
 owners, industrial leaders, and others. The only 
 way of keeping entirely free from direct or indirect 
 swindle would be to live, like Robinson Crusoe, on 
 your own patch of land, by the work of your own 
 hands. 
 
 This was done, so far as I knew, by only one man, 
 as the logical outcome of his severely just character. 
 That man was David Henry Thoreau. And in 
 honour of his high-minded example I called my place 
 Walden. 
 
 But even Thoreau had to give up his heroic effort, 
 and I did not at all agree with his contempt of 
 machinery and modern industry. On the contrary, 
 I wished to try, by bringing together several people 
 with the same desire for justice as Theorau had, to 
 
120 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 alleviate the hardships of a sober life and to start, 
 on a small scale, a newer, better organization. 
 
 It would be, of course, no complete change, but a 
 transitional form, going as far as our personal en- 
 deavours would enable us. We would lessen the 
 burden of social guilt weighing on our shoulders, by 
 living as plainly and soberly as possible, and by try- 
 ing to produce as much as we could of the necessities 
 of our life. 
 
 We were to have the soil in common, to produce 
 only useful goods that we could consume ourselves, 
 to sell in the market what we could not use, and live 
 as plainly as we could. My hope was that others 
 would follow our example and by mutual coopera- 
 tion would enable us to get more comfort, better 
 production, and a larger market, among our fellow 
 workers, for our produce. 
 
 There was a big house on the Walden estate, 
 where one or two families and the unmarried people 
 could live. Moreover, we built some six or seven 
 smaller and larger habitations for the married people. 
 Our principle produce was, in the beginning, vege- 
 tables. We also baked, in a very primitive oven, a 
 pure kind of wheat bread, which proved to be excel- 
 lent and was soon in demand by many customers 
 in the near village of Bussum. By and by we ex- 
 tended the bakery and it grew very quickly into a 
 fairly prosperous business which could keep the 
 whole colony afloat. We began by giving wages on 
 
THE BREAKDOWN 121 
 
 a communistic basis, not according to the work given, 
 but according to the wants of the worker and his 
 family. This was kept up for several years, but it 
 proved to be unsatisfactory. The bakers complained 
 that the gardeners reduced their income by their in- 
 efficiency. We had soon to separate the two ac- 
 counts and pay each man in his own trade what the 
 sale of the goods would afford. 
 
 It lasted several years before the colony was self- 
 supporting. And we had endless troubles and quar- 
 rels, most of them caused by the doctrinaires, 
 who objected to all business methods as being 
 " capitalistic," and who used all the power of in- 
 sinuation and slander, when I had to compel them 
 to leave. 
 
 As an experiment it was indeed very instructive, 
 and it cured many a hot-headed idealist from his 
 illusions about the possibility of immediate demo- 
 cratic or anarchistic regime. 
 
 In fact it very soon became clear to me that de- 
 mocracy and common ownership could not be realized 
 at once, but had to be learned by a long, severe, and 
 careful education. 
 
 The whole place, being considered as common 
 property though still practically my own was 
 badly neglected, everybody leaving the care to 
 somebody else, and putting the blame on the others. 
 I now saw and could demonstrate, plainly, how good 
 and strict management is wanted even among 
 
122 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 those who pretend to be socialists and upholders 
 of liberty and democracy. Their idea of liberty 
 amounted very often to doing as they pleased, which 
 is not always as it pleases others. 
 
 I saw that they needed authority, that they had 
 not yet become of age in the full human sense. They 
 lacked the feeling of responsibility, the true knowl- 
 edge of their own capacities, and the full self-pos- 
 session that entitles to claim the rights of true 
 liberty. 
 
 So, in order to keep the experiment going, I had to 
 use my own authority, with the natural result that 
 I was called a tyrant and a despot. 
 
 In all this, however, there was no real danger. 
 Our deficit did not amount to more than what I 
 could supply by my literary work. As I had kept 
 the title in my own hands I could, one after another, 
 supplant the useless workers by better ones. This 
 was of course called a violation of the democratic 
 constitution. But as I was paying the deficit, all 
 were aware that I had a certain right to do this. 
 In 1905, after three or four difficult years, things 
 began to brighten up, and we commenced to make 
 profits, especially through the bakery. 
 
 The little community at Walden then counted 
 about fifty persons, women and children included; 
 the whole area amounted to not more than twenty- 
 five acres. Moreover, I bought a dairy farm of 
 about fifty acres, and in the meanwhile started 
 
THE BREAKDOWN 123 
 
 the distributive cooperation in Amsterdam, called 
 "De Eendracht" ("Unity"), which had become so 
 alarmingly prosperous and for which I was seeking 
 my Napoleon. 
 
 In my mind all this was one concern. I wanted to 
 organize it all in one group, the products of bakery, 
 market gardening and dairy farm, rinding a market 
 among the thousands of consumers of the "Eend- 
 racht," and the "Eendracht," on the other hand, 
 procuring capital for the extension of the productive 
 business. 
 
 This did not look unpractical or Utopian at 
 all. If conducted on safe business lines it would 
 surely have succeeded. I had 40,000 contributors, 
 a weekly collection of $2,000, paid in advance, 
 for which we provided the customers with shoes 
 and boots, household articles, furniture, goods and 
 clothes, fuel and other articles. We produced for 
 them bread and vegetables, butter and milk. 
 We had stores in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and 
 The Hague, and agencies all over the country. 
 
 But this union, as it existed in my mind, was not 
 understood and realized by the workers. The group 
 at Walden did not care for the "Eendracht," which 
 they considered too businesslike. There was no 
 centralization, and there were no expert managers 
 in the different branches. I had only locked out 
 railway-men, engine-drivers, conductors, and the 
 like. These were not even of the most efficient sort, 
 
124 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 as the railway companies obviously had not un- 
 loaded their best men. 
 
 The result was that only a few branches of the 
 business showed profits. The deficit at Walden 
 never amounted to more than a few hundred dollars. 
 I could afford to pay that. But after the first year 
 the "Eendracht" showed a deficit of over $6,000, 
 and this was rather too much for me. Bad manage- 
 ment, slovenliness, theft, in a big commercial con- 
 cern, can make away with more money than I could 
 procure by literary efforts. 
 
 I had regular meetings with all the workers and 
 tried to make them understand that this was an 
 educational experiment, and that as their theories 
 proved false, we had to steer another course. I had 
 now full proof that average people, even if they call 
 themselves socialists, cannot make up, by common 
 effort, for the want of commercial experience and 
 authoritative management. So I told them I had 
 decided to run the concern on strict business lines, as 
 I could not afford to pay another deficit. 
 
 Many would think that I was fully justified, after 
 this loss, to stop the business and withdraw. Yet this 
 would have been extremely difficult. For not only 
 would it have brought my employees out of employ- 
 ment again, but thousands of small contributors 
 who had put their trust in me would have lost their 
 savings. I could not have shown my face in Amster- 
 dam after that. Moreover, as I told in another 
 
THE BREAKDOWN 125 
 
 chapter, I had just then become a capitalist, and I 
 felt bound to pursue. 
 
 But then my employees, the locked-out strikers, 
 began to obstruct me in my endeavours to help 
 them. They called themselves socialists and were 
 opposed to all "outsiders," as they called them. 
 They were educated by platform-socialists, social- 
 democrats, and anarchists alike, in the notion of 
 "class-war," and this notion, whereto they clung 
 fanatically, proved to be their own undoing. Any 
 manager, being more or less a gentleman, a "bour- 
 geois" was considered as a wolf in the sheeps' 
 stable. The good managers wanted of course a 
 good salary and the employees objected to that. 
 They all wanted the same salary whatever work 
 they did. And this salary, in a concern that was 
 not even self-supporting, could not attract first-rate 
 managers. 
 
 In some respects these people showed admirable 
 qualities. For instance, they all voted for reduction 
 of their salaries when I told them that they had to 
 choose between that and reduction of the number of 
 employees. On the other hand, they were obsti- 
 nately stupid in their opposition to "outsiders." 
 When I had succeeded in getting a capable man 
 and I found more than one willing to work for a 
 lower price than he could get in the ordinary labour 
 market the other employees began a regular war 
 of obstruction against the hated outsider, until he 
 
126 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 gave up the job in despair. These strikers used 
 their old striker tactics against me, who worked only 
 for their own benefit. This was the result of the 
 teachings of the class-war socialists. 
 
 I struggled for three years, but of course the 
 customers were ill served and the credit of the whole 
 thing was badly shaken. The second year gave 
 another deficit, though a smaller one. Then a man 
 came who promised to set matters all right and he 
 looked the man to do it. There was my Napoleon, 
 turning up at the critical moment. 
 
 He was a fine young fellow, strong and energetic, 
 with a face and manners inspiring confidence. He 
 had been in different trades, and showed experience 
 in all sorts of business. He was an expert in book- 
 keeping and administration. His working power, 
 as he told me and I had occasion to verify, was un- 
 limited. He came to me offering me his assist- 
 ance, out of sympathy and devotion to my cause, 
 as he had perceived the straits wherein I was 
 struggling. 
 
 As an autodidact he had rather a good opinion 
 about himself and his abilities, but this I could easily 
 forgive. 
 
 I began to use him as a private secretary, and in 
 that occupation I could not find that he had over- 
 rated himself, nor that his appearance was belied 
 by his qualities. 
 
 He was accurate, active, full of initiative, thor- 
 
THE BREAKDOWN 127 
 
 oughly honest and disinterested, and his zeal to serve 
 me was really touching. 
 
 Then I introduced him into the management of 
 the "Eendracht" business. 
 
 Now this is a remarkable fact that subordinate 
 workers have generally a very keen and quick in- 
 tuition about the qualities of their leaders. They 
 cannot formulate it, nor criticise justly, but they 
 feel uneasy as soon as the man who is to lead them 
 lacks the real power to do it. 
 
 In this case there was a strong opposition from a 
 part of the workers to my young Napoleon. Only 
 a few submitted willingly to his authority and be- 
 came devoted to him. At Walden, where I tried 
 him first, the opposition was so strong that he felt 
 obliged to resign. - But as these people objected to 
 any leadership, it was not proof that they were right 
 in this case. 
 
 In the "Eendracht," where anarchy had brought 
 matters to such dangerous excesses, I felt obliged to 
 maintain authority with a strong hand. 
 
 At a meeting of the workers I explained that they 
 had to choose between my immediate withdrawal 
 with all its consequences or absolute submission to 
 the measures I felt necessary to take. 
 
 And all these men who had been so eager to take 
 part in the management of the business now at once 
 gave up all their rights, in order to leave the respon- 
 sibility entirely to me. They submitted meekly and 
 
128 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 my young ruler took the reins and began his work of 
 reorganization. 
 
 In the first weeks all went marvellously. Some of 
 the worst characters were dismissed, and perfect 
 order began apparently to reign. My admiration 
 for my helpmate increased, his activity was really 
 astonishing. One other man of administrative power 
 who had helped me thus far let me call him M. 
 expressed his satisfaction at the new rule, and I felt 
 confident that everything would come right at last. 
 
 Able business men who had dealings with our con- 
 cern complimented and congratulated me with my 
 young manager. He had winning ways and his as- 
 surance and decision convinced most people of his 
 real abilities. 
 
 But fate was preparing a well-contrived and con- 
 cealed pitfall for me. 
 
 I was well aware that the weakness of my young 
 Napoleon consisted in his too great self-confidence. 
 I also perceived his propensity to rather reckless and 
 all too energetic measures. Yet there was the other 
 man M., who was very intelligent, and though he had 
 not the commanding and pushing force of the other, 
 was the more careful, the more prudent, and in fact 
 the more far-sighted of the two. 
 
 I succeeded in establishing good relations between 
 these two, appointing to each his function, and then 
 at last I felt relieved and at liberty to take a few 
 weeks' vacation, devoted to my literary work. 
 
THE BREAKDOWN 129 
 
 I had a big drama in my head, a drama wherein 
 the great struggle of humanity, the struggle between 
 the two parts of mankind, the rich and the poor, 
 the masters and the slaves, was represented. 
 
 This drama is called "Minnestral" ("Ray of 
 Love") and was written in Langenschwalbach in 
 Germany, in the six weeks during which my Napo- 
 leon was preparing his Austerlitz, which proved to 
 be Waterloo. 
 
 The second manager M. was of a delicate con- 
 stitution. The great strain of his work was too 
 much for him. He fell ill after the first weeks of 
 the reorganization and had to go to a sanatorium for 
 consumption. He has died since. My young Na- 
 poleon was left entirely to his own devices. When 
 I came back with the finished drama in my pocket 
 I saw at once that instead of setting matters all right 
 again he had struck the final blow and that the end 
 was near. 
 
 My new general manager, instead of carefully 
 limiting the business until the leaks were stopped, 
 had extended it in a most reckless way, establishing 
 a splendid new storehouse and buying up another 
 firm, which had started a similar organization in 
 order to run us down. 
 
 This competitive firm was started a year ago by 
 the restaurant keeper who had been in our own con- 
 cern but had deserted me. He knew our method 
 and organization and imitated it with some apparent 
 
i 3 o HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 success. As a matter of fact their structure was still 
 less solid than ours. Not trusting my own capac- 
 ities as a business man I had refused the temptation 
 to buy up other firms, though I had several offers. 
 And I had warned my new general manager. But 
 he, conscious of his power and ability, was exuberant 
 when our rivals, who called themselves " Volharding" 
 (" Persistence"), came to him and wanted to sur- 
 render, as they felt they could not fight him. Very 
 much flattered, he agreed to conditions which proved 
 a monstrous swindle. 
 
 These two moves the new storehouse and the 
 buying up of our rivals proved fatal. Moreover, 
 the new general-manager had allowed the heads of 
 some departments to buy on their own responsibility, 
 without control, discarding the rule imposed by my- 
 self that all buying had to be executed or O.K.'d 
 by headquarters. 
 
 Within six months of the new management the 
 debts of the firm had grown from twenty thousand to 
 a hundred thousand dollars, the weekly contribu- 
 tions did not increase, to raise capital under these 
 circumstances was out of the question, and payments 
 were stopped. In order to continue the sale of 
 goods to the poor people who would have made a 
 tremendous rush to get back their small savings, I 
 could by earnest entreaty induce a meeting of the big 
 creditors to give me a delay. They even consented 
 to supply a part of their account as new capital. I 
 
THE BREAKDOWN 131 
 
 myself ventured another ten thousand to save the 
 situation. I was then in my short career as a cap- 
 italist. 
 
 But it was too late. In another few months bank- 
 ruptcy was declared. The judges convinced of my 
 disinterestedness treated me fairly. They allowed a 
 transaction which would have seemed very suspicious 
 in any other case. The case was indeed difficult, as 
 the 40,000 contributors who had all given small sums 
 in advance had to be considered as creditors. Most 
 of them were labourers, and to pay them off with 
 30 per cent, like the big creditors would have caused 
 something like an uproar and would have discredited 
 me forever as they all had trusted in me. So I 
 was allowed to buy from the firm all the stores and 
 goods on my private name, promising thereby to pay 
 off the big creditors with 30 per cent, and the small 
 contributors with 100 per cent. Then the bank- 
 ruptcy was raised. This transaction cost me $100,- 
 ooo, but the small savings-holders were all paid off 
 until the last cent and the confidence in me remained 
 unshaken. I sold the shops and goods to different 
 people, and the organization, in the form of a savings 
 bank, to the young general-manager, in whose 
 honesty I had always continued to believe. He is 
 running that business still, and after the severe 
 lesson which he had, at my cost, he now manages to 
 make it pay. The stores are still prosperous, in 
 other hands, and without any cooperative character. 
 
132 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 The lesson was not less severe to me, as the sum I 
 had to pay surpassed my means by more than half, 
 and I, who had never any debt worth mention in my 
 life, will be obliged to work very hard and live very 
 soberly if I will see my debts paid off before I die. 
 
 The property of Walden became of course heavily 
 mortgaged in the course of this affair. It never 
 rains but it pours. An excellent manager for the 
 Walden plant whom I had succeeded in getting ac- 
 cepted by the colonists took his leave the next day 
 after my risky situation had become known. Then 
 the colonists themselves began to make trouble. Out 
 of my legacy I had built a fine new installation with 
 electric power, providing the whole colony with light, 
 which cost me some $20,000. But the bakers for 
 whom I had built it secretly established a smaller 
 concern of their own in the village close by, and on 
 the given day they removed, taking with them their 
 savings and, what was more important, their cus- 
 tomers, leaving on my hands a costly installation 
 without workmen and without a market. In this 
 way the only source of revenue which was left to me 
 besides my own labour was dried up also. My short 
 career as a capitalist had lasted about nine months 
 and I had to begin anew, with a considerable account 
 on the wrong side of my bank book. 
 
 All this was of course supremely unpleasant, especi- 
 ally because it touched my nearest relatives, whom I 
 could not keep out of the trouble, and who were not 
 
THE BREAKDOWN 133 
 
 consoled by my belief that I had done something of 
 importance and instruction for the benefit of man- 
 kind. They had to share my responsibility without 
 sharing my convictions. 
 
 Had I been a young business man I would have 
 considered it all as belonging to the necessary vicis- 
 situdes and hardships of the struggle for success. 
 Many an experienced man of business, when I told 
 my story, said, smiling: "Well, this is the usual 
 apprenticeship, the ordinary school we all had to 
 pass before we learned how to select and manage 
 men, and to make a business successful." 
 
 To me, being devoted to art and science and be- 
 yond the middle of my life, it was a different thing. 
 Most of all I was annoyed by the attitude of the 
 public, who could not see, of course, that all this 
 misfortune had nothing to do with the truth of my 
 contentions, with the guiding principles of my en- 
 deavours, with the possibility of the thing I had in 
 mind. They simply rejoiced because it all seemed 
 to them, most unjustly, a decisive and convincing 
 proof that I had been entirely wrong, that my ideas 
 and aims were impossible and unattainable, and 
 that I was nothing but a well meaning but thoroughly 
 unpractical dreamer and schemer. 
 
 On the other hand, exactly because I was not a 
 business man, but a man of science, and because I 
 felt conscious of the purity of my aims, I found it all 
 easier to bear. 
 
i 3 4 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 In my medical practice I often had occasion to 
 treat business men who were entirely broken down 
 by the same sort of misfortune. Having worked 
 strenuously for their own benefit, a serious failure 
 made them lose all interest in life and see no other 
 end but suicide. I had known such cases, being 
 sometimes unable to keep them from the final act 
 of despair. And I had smiled at them, wondering 
 how a man could want to die in such an interesting 
 position. This was what I said literally to the man 
 from whom I bought the Walden estate. 
 
 And how far more interesting was this position 
 to me who had never given much attention before 
 this experiment to the financial part of life. It was 
 all full of instruction, widening my views, testing 
 my convictions, and surely not shaking in the least 
 my faith in the ultimate success of future similar 
 efforts. 
 
 I had failed, simply because I was found wanting 
 as a business manager. But expert business mana- 
 gers are not lacking in our days, so if I, an amateur, 
 could yet do as much and succeed thus far, why in 
 the world could my plan not be carried through 
 most successfully when the necessary able men were 
 secured? 
 
 The most wholesome and direct result of my work 
 was the impression it made on the labouring class. 
 Of course the partisans of the different socialistic 
 creeds believed their leaders and put the blame on 
 
THE BREAKDOWN 135 
 
 me. A good partisan must be proof against facts 
 and arguments however irreputable. 
 
 But the labourer of average common sense and 
 independent judgment now saw it demonstrated 
 that in matters of business on which we all have 
 to rely for our subsistence good intentions, honest 
 principles and strenuous effort are not sufficient. 
 Minds of organizing power are wanted, and they are 
 not to be found among the labouring class, because 
 the great demand for their abilities makes them 
 quickly rise above it, and come to wealth and 
 power. 
 
 The clear-minded' labourer now saw the stupid 
 absurdity of a "class hatred" which beforehand 
 excluded those powerful men whose capacities were 
 absolutely needed to make a new productive organ- 
 ization successful. 
 
 He saw the suicidal character of a "class war" as 
 preached by social-democrats and anarchists. He 
 also saw proven before his eyes how absurd the con- 
 tention was of those idealists who supposed that by 
 a general strike, by abolishing all authority and all 
 law, mankind as it is now could come to order and 
 efficiency by itself. 
 
 He understood that a careful training in demo- 
 cratic and cooperative methods was wanted, and 
 that even a political overthrow, a majority of social- 
 democrats in the Government and a socialistic leg- 
 islature would be entirely unable to bring about at 
 
i 3 6 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 once, as by miracle, what only a long, patient edu- 
 cation could effect. 
 
 Of course this had been said many times before. 
 But it had been said by more or less interested people 
 by business men, politicians, economists, all under 
 suspicion of conservative or egotistic tendencies. In 
 my case there could be no such suspicions. I had 
 given ample proof of my devotion to the cause of the 
 poor and the struggling workers. There never was 
 good reason to doubt my sincerity. So these con- 
 victions, freely expressed by me as the result of my 
 personal experience and published in a small 
 weekly paper originally started by me, and called 
 De Pionier struck both labourers and business men 
 with new light and force. 
 
 I agreed to the necessity of able management, 
 severe discipline, businesslike methods, but at the 
 same time I did not deviate one hair's breadth from 
 the indicated course, the liberation of the oppressed 
 poor, the abolishment of the social abuses, the end 
 of the empire of rank plutocracy. 
 
 There appeared to me, however, no chance to make 
 another effort in Holland. All that I could do there, 
 and what I am actually doing there now, Is to keep 
 the concern of Walden going, under its heavy obli- 
 gations, to reorganize it, now under my personal 
 ownership and direction, in order to satisfy my 
 creditors. 
 
 But for the next experiment I looked toward the 
 
THE BREAKDOWN 137 
 
 great country of experiments, where freedom is in 
 the make, where there is no lack of energy, plenty of 
 good-will and optimism, and a great number of able, 
 well-intentioned men. 
 
 America, moreover, offers opportunities like no 
 other country in the world, and though an organiza- 
 tion of the kind I had in mind could be carried 
 through anywhere, if the right men were found to 
 do it, the chances of success would be greatly in- 
 creased if we could find one of those favourable 
 occasions where business is known to prosper even 
 in average hands. We want lines of least resistance 
 in all respects. In America there are still millions 
 of acres of cheap fertile soil, there is still a constant 
 influx of fresh, sober, unspoiled, unsophisticated 
 workers and I felt sure that there could also be 
 found a few great business leaders, captains of in- 
 dustry, who would use their intellectual gifts not 
 only for the benefit of themselves and their families, 
 but also for humanity at large, when their own wants 
 were sufficiently provided for. 
 
 So I came to America, and I felt that if I could 
 make my troubles and sorrows useful and fruitful 
 here there would be no loss of money nor of effort. 
 It would make all good what I had suffered and I 
 would not repent what I had done nor complain of 
 what I had undergone. 
 
PART II 
 IN THE NEW WORLD 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE SCHEME FOR AMERICA 
 
 IN GIVING the details of my new plan for 
 realizing Happy Humanity, after the failure 
 made in Holland, I hope the reader will allow 
 me to point out its significance. 
 
 The new organization will be called the Coopera- 
 tive Company of America, or some such name. 
 The title indicates that it is a business concern. No 
 creed or political doctrine will be associated with it, 
 except the creed tha.t every normal hi? air-being 
 holcjs^-- that of honesty and fairness. 
 
 We will start with ITgroup ol market-gardeners, 
 and the land selected for that purpose lies in North 
 Carolina, near the city of Wilmington. The op- 
 portunity there is exceptionally favourable. Col- 
 onization has been tried there, for several years, 
 with much success. Italian, Dutch, and German 
 settlers have there attained prosperity by truck- 
 gardening. It is a great strawberry-raising country, 
 and the soil is fit for the culture of the most varied 
 plants and vegetables. The climate is like that of 
 Italy, and the rainfall abundant. Excellent fast 
 
 141 
 
142 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 trains, with refrigerator-cars, place the country 
 within easy reach of the greatest markets of the 
 whole continent. 
 
 The preliminaj-j^jwprk for colonization, which 
 would have given us great expense, is already done, 
 and we can take advantage of the experience of 
 others. 
 
 Here, if anywhere, are lines of least resistance, 
 and we have secured an option on about twenty- 
 thousand acres of land at a price of from $15 to 
 $20 an acre. After a few years of cultivation the 
 value should increase to $200 or #300 an acre, and 
 more. 
 
 Our intention is to select a group of high-class 
 gardeners, experts in intensive farming, and let 
 them have this land as tenants. We shall be able 
 to select twenty-five families, of the very best, and 
 locate them next to one another on plots of about 
 ten acres each. 
 
 These people should be immigrants, as yet un- 
 spoiled by contact with city life. Since Hollanders 
 have a high reputation as intensive gardeners and 
 generally excellent qualities for settlers, it was con- 
 sidered best to select this advance guard from my 
 own country. And I know now, after some months 
 of investigation in Holland, that I can get hundreds 
 of families, willing and eager to come. In fact, 
 a little group of half a dozen first-rate men have 
 already answered my call and have settled there at 
 
THE SCHEME FOR AMERICA 143 
 
 their own expense. They will do excellent work 
 as prospectors and advisers. 
 
 They will pay no more than a fixed rent, which 
 will never be increased to them. The settler will 
 have the full reward of his efforts. When, after 
 one or two years, he proves to be a desirable member 
 of the new organization, he will become a condi- 
 tional owner and stockholder of the company. 
 
 Therein lies the essential and vital point of the 
 whole experiment. This is the one feature which 
 distinguishes it from all similar enterprises and its 
 effect has to be tried. 
 
 The usual form of colonization is simply to sell 
 the land to the settler, the price to be paid from his 
 earnings in a certain number of years. Then the 
 man becomes a landlord, and is left entirely to his own 
 devices, his own sense of justice and responsibility. 
 What this means, with the raw material of immi- 
 grants annually let loose on American soil, is shown 
 clearly and sadly enough by the immense waste 
 and reckless spoliation of the vast resources of this 
 rich country. 
 
 So what we are going to try now is conditional 
 ownership, under control of a cooperatively organized 
 company, in the following way: 
 
 The tenant will have full freedom in the cul- 
 tivation of his farm. He may have all the rights of 
 practical ownership, with the exception of selling, 
 renting, and neglecting the property. He will be 
 
144 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 able to leave the property to his heirs, if these accept 
 the same conditions. If he wants to leave, the com- 
 pany will pay for his improvements. He need never 
 pay more rent than a small sum, amounting to a 
 percentage of the original amount paid by the 
 company. This might be considered as a tax a 
 truly just and fair single tax, levied by the company 
 for the benefit of the whole organization. 
 
 We believe that the compensation we can give 
 for the want of the full title will prove to be more 
 attractive to the intelligent farmer than uncon- 
 trolled rights of possession. This compensation will 
 consist in the right to hold the dividend-paying 
 stock. The tenant who may become a stockholder 
 will then not be an owner of the land; but in common 
 with the other members he will own the stock repre- 
 senting it. And he will profit by all the activities 
 of the whole company, whether agricultural, in- 
 dustrial, or commercial. The company will, more- 
 over, act as a disinterested agent and market his 
 products for him, so that he may give all of his 
 attention to his farm. The company will also buy 
 for him at wholesale his supplies, seeds, fertilizer, 
 implements, household goods, etc., and share with 
 him the benefits of this community of interests. 
 All these advantages are given in compensation for 
 a limitation of his ownership, which is, in fact, noth- 
 ing but a control. 
 
 It is worth trying, and more so than any social 
 
THE SCHEME FOR AMERICA 145 
 
 improvement I know of. If, well conducted, it 
 should fail, then we have a reason for giving up our 
 belief in democracy. 
 
 This sort of cooperation has been tried in Europe 
 and America, and generally very successfully. It 
 is often said that cooperation abolishes the middle- 
 man. But this is untrue. It simply gives the 
 middleman his fair due, and no more. When, as in 
 France, shirts are made at a cost of twenty-five 
 cents for material and labour, and sold wholesale 
 for fifty-five cents, giving the labourer seven cents 
 wage for two hours' work and the merchant twenty 
 cents net profit -nobody can call this fair. It 
 would be impossible to get such profits if all people 
 concerned, producers and consumers alike, were 
 consulted in the matter. In order to make such 
 profits, the merchant has to cheat his labourers and 
 his clients. This is what cooperation corrects. 
 
 The company will employ middlemen, of course, 
 and pay them a fair remuneration, but it will tell 
 both producer and consumer what its prices are 
 cost price, wholesale and retail price and how 
 much percentage it has to take as commission for 
 its service. 
 
 By this commission the company will make its 
 profits, besides the single tax on the tenants before 
 mentioned. This implies that increasing produc- 
 tion, and also increased prosperity with increasing 
 requirements of its members, will increase its budget 
 
i 4 6 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 and its profits. The more goods it sells, either to 
 outsiders or to members, the wealthier it will be- 
 come. And from these profits, which would be 
 regulated within the margin of the outside market, 
 will be formed, in the first place, a sinking fund for 
 the amortization of the original debt; then one part 
 as a dividend for preferred stock, another for div- 
 idends to common-stock holders, a third part for 
 invalid and old-age pensions and insurance, and a 
 part for the extension of the business. A banking 
 department will be established as soon as possible. 
 
 The company will be constituted of two sorts of 
 members tenants who work entirely independ- 
 ently, and the employees who receive regular wages, 
 according to the labour market. My experiments 
 have plainly shown that it is entirely impractical 
 and ruinous to bring an entire change into the 
 ordinary remuneration of wage-earning employees. 
 We shall have to follow the outside labour market 
 however unfair that may be for the present, 
 because we cannot otherwise attract men of ability 
 to our enterprise. 
 
 On the other hand, it will never do to pay a farmer 
 a fixed wage for his labour. It invariably lessens 
 his efficiency. He must be dependent on his pro- 
 duction and even liable to eviction if he is not able 
 to make his farm pay. This, also, was the positive 
 outcome of my own experiment. 
 
 Only the distinction of tenant members and in- 
 
THE SCHEME FOR AMERICA 147 
 
 dustrial and administrative employees, as proposed, 
 will meet all the difficulties. 
 
 The immense concerns of distributive cooper- 
 ation in England and Belgium show what can be 
 done even with average management. The annual 
 net profits of the Cooperative Wholesale Societies 
 in the United Kingdom amount to twenty million 
 dollars. These societies, however, do not under- 
 take agriculture and real-estate ownership, as we 
 propose. They divide their profits among the mem- 
 bers, making it a profit-business without wider 
 scope. Their trouble is that they do not know how 
 to invest, which sounds rather paradoxical. Their 
 profits bother them, because their organization is 
 incomplete. 
 
 Distributive wholesale cooperation is compara- 
 tively easy for ordinary business management. 
 These huge wholesale societies are made up of 
 ordinary labourers or middle-class people, and their 
 managers are selected from among themselves, 
 doing wonderfully well in their position, but not 
 being organizers of great ability. 
 
 It is exactly this feature in which our plan will 
 surpass them. It will be complete cooperation, 
 including the production of the goods wanted by its 
 members on the soil and in the factories owned by 
 the company itself. 
 
 This greater conception can be executed only by 
 organizers and leaders of great ability. I do not 
 
148 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 see that there can be imagined a task more worthy 
 of a great genius, a "captain of industry." 
 
 But the rare discernment needed to discover 
 business abilities is certainly lacking in the mul- 
 titude, and business organization by democratic 
 method is at the present time utterly impossible. 
 I have myself suffered from its pernicious effect. 
 
 For this reason it will be necessary to leave the 
 authority in our company in the beginning entirely 
 in the hands of those who initiated it. The board 
 of trustees will appoint the manager, who is re- 
 sponsible only to them. The stockholding mem- 
 bers will be chosen on recommendations of the 
 manager, by the same board. 
 
 Gradually, however, education in democracy will 
 begin. The settlers, who will have no part in the 
 management in the beginning, will later acquire the 
 right to vote and choose new members of the board 
 of trustees, to whom they will always have access. 
 
 The safeguard for fair treatment and good man- 
 agement must be found in confidence in the initia- 
 tors of the plan and the open discussion of its scope 
 and aims. 
 
 Moreover, there is a safeguard in the public 
 opinion and the public attention. Enterprises like 
 this, with a motive of general interest, are always 
 supported by public opinion. It was public opinion 
 which caused the all-too-rapid boom of my coop- 
 erative enterprise in Amsterdam, but it was public 
 
THE SCHEME FOR AMERICA 149 
 
 faith in my disinterestedness that made the final 
 blow less hard than it would otherwise have been. 
 
 Since our board of trustees will be constituted 
 by men of high standing and reputation, the public 
 will back the company whenever possible by 
 buying its products or protecting it by legislation. 
 If, however, the original aim is disregarded, the 
 support of the public will surely be withdrawn. 
 
 I dare maintain that the chances for survival in 
 the struggle for existence will always be greater 
 in the organization proposed by me than in any 
 other. Given the same outward circumstances and 
 the same good management, this form of organi- 
 zation will always win, simply because it is 
 more complete and more fair. For one thing, it 
 keeps all the profits within the business, as soon as 
 the debt to the investors is paid off. There are no 
 leaks. Nothing is wasted to land-owners, to uncon- 
 trolled and irresponsible middlemen, nor to inactive 
 outsiders. The stockholders who get the dividends 
 will themselves work to increase them, and they will 
 spend their dividends in buying goods from the 
 company and so increase its prosperity. 
 
 The incentive for work will be greater than in any 
 other concern, because the company will give not 
 only the usual rewards, like any other business, but 
 every member is sure that his production will not be 
 wasted by outsiders, and all his efforts will strike 
 home in the full sense. 
 
150 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 The larger the concern grows, the less will be the 
 waste in competition and advertising. An organi- 
 zation of producers and consumers need not ad- 
 vertise; its members can look, themselves, after the 
 methods of production and the quality of articles 
 produced. 
 
 The prosperity of the members will increase the 
 prosperity of the company, because they will want 
 more and buy more, and vice versa; because higher 
 dividends will mean wealthier members. There 
 will be no vicious circle, like in the present defective 
 organization, where waste is engendering idleness 
 and idleness waste; but a beneficial circle which will 
 increase wealth and efficiency in a measure unknown 
 thus far. It will grow after the first difficult 
 years have passed like a rolling snowball. Its ac- 
 cumulation will accelerate at a rate that has never 
 been seen before, and can never be seen elsewhere - 
 simply because its organization is more perfect. 
 
 That all this is true theoretically, no one can 
 deny. The objection will be that it has not yet 
 been shown in practice, and that the plan in work- 
 ing will reveal unforeseen difficulties. 
 
 The only thing wanted is experiment, repeated 
 tenaciously and methodically. 
 
 And I cannot conceive an object for experiment 
 more important, more eagerly wanted by struggling 
 humanity, than a better form of organized produc- 
 tion and distribution. 
 
THE SCHEME FOR AMERICA 151 
 
 It will not only correct idleness and waste; it 
 will have immense moral and educational value. 
 It will enable us to stop making paupers, criminals, 
 and spendthrifts. It will enable us to prevent un- 
 employment, for unemployment is the result of 
 production at random, without thorough control 
 and knowledge of the market. A well-organized 
 company will take care to regulate production for 
 its own market, so that no unemployment can set 
 in, and it will shift its unskilled and half-skilled 
 workers from one department to another, according 
 to season or circumstance. Overproduction will 
 not create enforced idleness and starvation, but in- 
 creased leisure and prosperity to all. 
 
 To be strongly and effectively organized must be 
 and remain its first concern. All philanthropic or 
 sentimental considerations are to come after that. 
 The best philanthropy is that which shows men how 
 to help themselves. So the company will not start 
 with inefficient workers, and will not extend more 
 rapidly than proper organization allows. It will 
 take care of its own invalids who become so in 
 working for the company, but it will not begin to 
 take care of the victims of present social disorder, for 
 those invalids are made so by the existing system. 
 It will never stop growing so long as it may expand 
 safely, nor consider its final perfection reached so 
 long as there is one necessary article of life not pro- 
 duced by its own members, or one poor worker 
 
i 5 2 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 eager to join. This means, of course, that final per- 
 fection will be practically unattainable, and would 
 signify nothing less than a state within a state. 
 But there lies no serious objection in this. States 
 within states we see everywhere; and provided they 
 keep on good terms with each other and strive for 
 the good, they cannot be considered dangerous or 
 undesirable. 
 
 The comprehensiveness of the plan need scare 
 nobody, surely not an American. Even if the goal 
 were approached halfway, the benefit to mankind 
 would be enormous; and no doubt a very useful 
 emulation would ensue, giving rise to similar 
 organizations of different degrees of perfection. 
 
 All this is theoretically possible, and whatever 
 may be the difficulties to overcome or the failures 
 we may have to "make good," no effort and no 
 amount of money can be considered wasted given 
 to a project so high and beneficial. 
 
 I, for one, would not deem my life ill-spent if I 
 could contribute only a small share to the attain- 
 ment of such a great aim. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 CO-PRODUCTION 
 
 Its Moral, Motives, and Results 
 
 THE greatest difficulty encountered by me 
 in my endeavours to carry through my 
 plans was the habitual inertia of the hu-^ 
 man mind. There is no lack of good-will, no lack 
 of strength, no lack of ability. But people do not 
 see that the present system in which they are 
 working is wrong. They do not see that it is in con- 
 tradiction with their own inmost feelings of justice 
 and fairness. They do not see that the defects of 
 this system are the cause of most human misery, 
 and that they in continuing to work in it and to 
 profit by it actually bear, and load upon their 
 wives and children who are dependent upon their 
 work, the heavy burden of responsibility for those 
 social sores and wrongs which they nearly all hate 
 and want to mend. 
 
 The first thing that is needed is an insight into 
 the fact that social evils are corrigible and that they 
 are still existent only because we all tolerate and 
 refuse to change a corrupt system of production. 
 
 153 
 
i 5 4 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 The lack of such insight accounts for the curious 
 inefficiency of so many philanthropic efforts and for 
 the futility of so many eloquent words. For under- 
 standing cannot be acquired simply by communica- 
 tion. You may shout the truth in people's ears, 
 yet they will not believe you. The great weight of 
 custom and convention, biased by individual in- 
 terests, and well furnished with all sorts of sophisms 
 and subterfuges, is continually opposed to it. And 
 only very slowly and by repeated efforts can you 
 succeed in clearing up individual minds and in over- 
 coming their inertia. 
 
 Few things in my life have caused me greater 
 astonishment than the obstinate unwillingness or 
 incapacity of honest, clear-minded men to see what 
 seemed to me so perfectly obvious, and to do what 
 would appear so very natural, simple and necessary. 
 
 Yet their condition of mind has been mine also. 
 I know by my own experience how we can live on 
 in that sort of fool's paradise, accepting a comfort- 
 able life as our due and as a matter of course, never 
 once dreaming that our comfort means the dis- 
 comfort of others, never giving a deeper thought to 
 the actual methods by which our comforts are 
 secured. We take the existence of pauperism and 
 crime and degeneration as Unavoidable evils like 
 earthquakes or cyclones, and the division into rich 
 and poor as a result of natural causes, beyond the 
 influence of human power a thing that we may 
 
CO-PRODUCTION 155 
 
 alleviate by philanthropy, but never by any chance, 
 as a thing that can be abolished by wisdom and 
 justice. 
 
 It may be interesting, therefore, to my readers 
 to know how my eyes were opened, how it came to 
 me that the division of mankind into rich and poor, 
 with all its subsequent evils, is not a divine and 
 inevitable institution, but the result of human 
 wickedness and foolishness, of bad customs and bad 
 organization, and that not only the poor, but espe- 
 cially the rich, are sorely in want of a better system. 
 
 I first came into conflict with existing customs 
 because of my original personal sentiment about 
 money. I wanted to have the good things of life, 
 as any other healthy boy does, but I did not want 
 them without deserving them, unless they were 
 given to me out of love and good-will, as by my 
 parents for instance. 
 
 But then I learned that the good things of the 
 earth can be gotten only by money, and the natural 
 conclusion is that money must be in some way or 
 other an equivalent of service done. The world 
 does not give out of love and good-will; so any money 
 I got ought to represent some service of mine ren- 
 dered to the world. This was my natural feeling, 
 as it will be the feeling of any unspoiled, unsophis- 
 ticated, morally healthy human being. 
 
 I found I had two ways of getting money 
 either as a doctor or as a poet. And both ways 
 
156 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 were entirely unsatisfactory to me; they clashed 
 against my natural feelings. Helping a sick, un- 
 happy person out of trouble and then sending him 
 a bill never failed to give me a sense of shame and 
 humiliation. It was to me like saving a drowning 
 child and then holding out my hand for a dollar. 
 We must not call this sentimental or overscrupulous. 
 It is quite a healthy, natural and normal feeling. 
 Every fair-minded, honest doctor has had it. He 
 overcomes it, saying, "One has to live," the mean- 
 ing of which is that it is a bad system of retribution, 
 but that we have to accept it for want of a better. 
 
 The deep fault of the system indicated by this 
 feeling of humiliation and shame is that we measure 
 out deeds of love, which are only indirectly produc- 
 tive, by dollars, which are supposed to be equiva- 
 lents of productive labour. The doctor is a very use- 
 ful member of society, and society ought to remu- 
 nerate him largely, but it is absurd and shocking to 
 his feelings to exact this remuneration from the poor, 
 suffering individual himself. In a well-ordered 
 society the sick man should be helped by the whole 
 community. Certainly the invalid himself, losing 
 his productivity, ought not to be the one to pay, in 
 equivalents of productive labour, for help in his 
 misfortune. This is the logical, natural way, and 
 the repulsion felt by every medical man in the be- 
 ginning of his career against asking his patients for 
 money is the logical, natural, human feeling. 
 
CO-PRODUCTION 157 
 
 The same can be said, in a still deeper way, about 
 the activity of the poet and the artist. The poet 
 and the artist are eminently useful members of 
 society. They furnish society with goods of in- 
 comparable value. So they should be rewarded 
 amply, and their desires should be abundantly 
 satisfied. But to measure out their contributions 
 to the world by dollars, the equivalents of material 
 production, never fails to arouse in the finely sen- 
 tient, artistic soul a feeling of humiliation, shame 
 and disgust. Of course they have to overcome it 
 and they do, alas ! but there has been no true artist, 
 just as there has been no good doctor, to whom 
 the feeling has always been entirely unknown. 
 
 Multatuli tells us that he was once accosted by 
 a prostitute in the street, and that at his movement 
 of contempt and disgust he heard a voice in his 
 heart saying: "Thou art worse than she is, for she 
 sells her body, but thou sellest thy soul!" 
 
 And we all know what it means to Art itself, if 
 the devotion to it becomes mixed, as it has to be- 
 come in our present system, with the greed for 
 money. How few are the artists, even among the 
 greatest, who keep their art and their souls free from 
 the pernicious influence of mercantilism! When 
 society is in a state of confusion the best thing 
 we can do is to cling tenaciously and patiently to 
 what we feel to be our inmost sense of right and 
 wrong. 
 
158 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 Of course I had to give in to some extent, prac- 
 tically, in order to live. I got money for my books, 
 and I got money for my consultations. But I 
 never did it without inward protest and without 
 trying to escape from what seemed to me a constant 
 insult to my finer feelings. The only way to avoid 
 it was to be rich, and to write and help out of sheer 
 love, without taking money. 
 
 I was not rich, but I had relatives who were well- 
 to-do, and they contributed an annual sum to my 
 household. In this way it seemed as if I were 
 approaching the ideal way of serving mankind. 
 There, however, another difficulty came in: We 
 all know the feeling of delicacy when it comes to 
 accepting somebody else's gifts. We have no ob- 
 jection to being rich, but we object to taking money 
 from another man so long as we can help ourselves. 
 What does this feeling of delicacy mean? It means 
 that we consider the money we get the equivalent 
 of somebody else's work, and we don't want to live 
 on that so long as we are able ourselves. Every 
 man who is not corrupt and depraved has that 
 feeling of honour. Being pensioned by another 
 individual, however good a friend or near a relative, 
 hurts our pride, jars against our feelings of honour. 
 Our ethical instinct, so to speak, makes a just and 
 nice distinction. No doctor and no artist would 
 make an objection to being remunerated by any 
 board or committee representing Society as a whole. 
 
CO-PRODUCTION 159 
 
 He would feel justified in taking his livelihood from 
 society, because he knows he serves society. But 
 living by the favour of any individual man humiliates 
 him. It is like taking alms, like living by charity. 
 Why? Because he cannot feel that any individual 
 man, who is not commissioned by the community, 
 has the right to dispose of the common property. 
 
 This was my feeling, and I believe Americans 
 will understand it as a true democratic feeling. 
 
 After this my thoughts went deeper. I began 
 to reflect on the power given to my relatives, who 
 were able and willing to help me, and whose help 
 I could not feel otherwise than humiliating. Society 
 seemed to be paying them, though they were not 
 more useful servants than I was. They could pay 
 me out of their own abundance. Would it make 
 much difference if I were rich myself? Some day 
 the wealth of these people would come to me, by 
 legal means. Would then my scruples all be dis- 
 carded? Who would be paying my annual income, 
 if their money became mine? Was it society, or 
 any just representative of society? 
 
 By no means. I would be rich and remain rich, 
 not using up my wealth at all, but getting more 
 wealth, more comfort, for the only reason that I 
 had wealth already. The only difference would 
 be that the money would not come from any in- 
 dividual I know, but in an obscure way, through the 
 medium of bankers or of brokers from absolutely 
 
160 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 unknown sources. Would this be less humiliating, 
 less shameful, even supposing that these unknown 
 sources were clean? 
 
 Surely not. And if we do not feel it so, it is only 
 because our sense of honour and shame has been 
 generally stunned by the immense universality of 
 the custom, by the obscure and complicated way in 
 which the money the equivalent of somebody 
 else's productive labour comes to us. 
 
 I went on investigating. And soon it became 
 clear to me that the sources were not clean at all. 
 The money, got by wealth alone, was surely not the 
 sort of remuneration that my conscience as a doctor 
 or an artist, as a servant of the community, would 
 willingly accept. It was not at all a just tribute paid 
 for my services by an appreciative community. It 
 was got by practices which I could not define other- 
 wise than as low and deceitful, from people who were 
 for the most part poorer than I, and who were surely 
 not appreciative of my value as a public servant, 
 as an artist, or as a man of science. And worst of 
 all, this way of being paid could be practised by any 
 dunce, any rascal, by the most dangerous enemies 
 of the community. 
 
 Could any form of remuneration be more humili- 
 ating, more shameful, more unworthy? I could not 
 see it then and I cannot see it now. However un- 
 usual and eccentric it may sound to the average 
 unreflective mind, I do not think that it is more 
 
CO-PRODUCTION 161 
 
 honourable to live on the interest of a large capital 
 than to live by alms, by running a gambling house, 
 a saloon, or a brothel. The mischief in the latter 
 cases is more obvious, that's all. 
 
 This will be called a very hard verdict, but I beg 
 the gentle reader to observe that it is less hard to 
 him who probably does not believe it than to the 
 present writer, who is convinced of its truth and yet 
 cannot escape it any better than the reader. 
 
 The usual method by which the generous and fair- 
 minded physician tries to escape the dilemma is 
 by taxing the wealthy very highly and by treating 
 the poor gratuitously by forcing, so to speak, the 
 well-to-do to help the less fortunate. This amounts 
 to the method of Karl Moor in Schiller's "Brig- 
 ands," who robbed the rich in order to give freely 
 to the poor. It may be pardonable in times of 
 general disorder and confusion; it is none the less 
 unlawful and barbarous. 
 
 Such difficulty, such scruples were the deepest and 
 most poweful motives for the change of life of which 
 I have told in a previous chapter. I agree that I was 
 guilty of pride, but a pride I deem legitimate the 
 difference between me and other people being only 
 this, that I, with inborn obstinacy, did not allow 
 my pride to bend before the almost universal pres- 
 sure of custom and convention. 
 
 I tried then, as the reader knows, to contribute my 
 personal share to the production of material wealth. 
 
162 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 I reduced my expenses to a minimum, and took part 
 in all sorts of productive labour. I plowed and dug, 
 planted cabbage and potatoes, tried to be useful as 
 a market gardener, a beekeeper, a baker, a mer- 
 chant, and a storekeeper. My former clients and the 
 readers of my writings shook their heads and deplored 
 what they not unjustly considered as a sad waste 
 of my time and talents. It was a waste, surely. 
 But I got something in return : I got insight and ex- 
 perience. I learned the complication of modern 
 production, the need of high efficiency, the immense 
 importance of good management, the value of the 
 organizing mind. 
 
 I had to give in, at the end, forced by misfortune. 
 I had failed in my attempt to form a self-supporting 
 community, prosperous enough to give to the artist 
 or the man of science living in its midst a life free 
 from material care. But my conviction that such 
 a community of honest and fair-minded workers was 
 possible, and that it was the only real solution of the 
 problem this conviction was strengthened to the 
 utmost certitude. 
 
 And so I once more accepted the humiliation of 
 selling my writings, and making a merchandise of 
 my art; but I resolved at the same time to devote 
 all the energy and strength I could spare to the fur- 
 therance of that community which is sure to come 
 and which will enable us all to live in material com- 
 fort without shame, without taking alms from the 
 
CO-PRODUCTION 163 
 
 powerful, and without taking part in obscure de- 
 vices of problematic honesty. 
 
 I know what remarks will be made and I will 
 meet them in advance. Some will say: "This is 
 socialism!" But I have nothing to do with that 
 remark. Call it what you like, is it therefore less 
 true, less real, less obvious? I am no doctrinarian, 
 I hold no special creed or dogma. I know that this 
 pride of mine, which forbids me as an able, healthy 
 man to live by the grace of others, to live on alms, 
 on gambling, investing, or on the fruit of other more 
 or less dishonourable practices this pride is the 
 normal feeling of every morally healthy man. And 
 women, though they are accustomed through the 
 course of centuries to live in dependence on the 
 work of husbands and fathers, have the same pride, 
 as is shown clearly in our days wherever women 
 become economically independent. 
 
 Another remark will be, that I want the state to 
 pay doctors and artists. But this is a mistake. 
 Certainly the position of professors and artists 
 salaried by the Government is an easy and gratify- 
 ing one. But except in the matter of education it 
 cannot be a general solution of the problem, prin- 
 cipally because the present governments are not 
 representative of true commonwealths. In a true 
 commonwealth it would not be possible for an able 
 man either to live luxuriously without labour, or to 
 live on alms for want of work or of payment. No 
 
164 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 artist, no man of science who had given proof of his 
 ability, would be left to the necessity of bartering 
 and bargaining with his art or his science in order 
 to get a living. 
 
 Let us consider now whether this plan of mine, this 
 cooperative, or, rather, co-productive, company which 
 is being started in North Carolina, is really a better 
 form of organization and whether it may not, if well 
 managed and if favoured by happy circumstances, 
 even be a germ of a better social system. May it 
 not either become a tiny model of other similar and 
 greater structures, or develop itself into a full-grown 
 and powerful body, a state within a state, or, rather, 
 a true commonwealth within a state? 
 
 Suppose we succeed in attracting to the initial 
 group, to the nucleus of the company, a fine set of 
 first-rate producers experts in intensive agri- 
 culture and in making these people see the ad- 
 vantage of having all the members of the com- 
 munity buy together and sell together, and become 
 joint owners of all the stock, including the real estate, 
 instead of serving as tenant to a private landlord. 
 According to our experience so far, this seems not 
 at all too optimistic a supposition. 
 
 Then after the first few difficult years, the pre- 
 ferred stock will be paid back to the original inves- 
 tors, or used for further extension. The dividends 
 will enrich all the producers, increase their wants, 
 and at the same time increase their output and their 
 
CO-PRODUCTION 165 
 
 profits. Small industries, dairy factories, canning 
 factories, will be established to work the products 
 and sell them more profitably. Every producer will 
 then be interested in the prosperity of his neighbours, 
 and instead of keeping his methods a private secret, 
 he will communicate them freely to the others. En- 
 terprises of common interest, a bank, bakeries, and 
 shops will be established. Every newcomer will also 
 be a consumer, and will enlarge the market. 
 
 No money will be wasted in rent, in interest, in 
 undue profits to middlemen. No slackening of effort 
 or efficiency will be tolerated by the others. Every 
 department will have to be under the direction of a 
 manager, responsible to the general board, which in 
 turn will be under the control of the members. The 
 waste in advertisement will be gradually reduced, the 
 producers being also consumers, and the quality of the 
 products under their control. Unemployment will 
 be done away with, as the production will be directed 
 to articles of general use which have a fixed market, 
 and the unskilled labour will be kept busy, shifting 
 from one thing to another according to the season- 
 work. The invalids within the community will be 
 provided for and no able man will be allowed to 
 starve in enforced idleness. 
 
 Then, when the system beings to work to its full 
 extent, we shall see the leaks stopped, and such an 
 annual increase of profits as has never been possible 
 in any other concern. There will be an annual sur- 
 
166 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 plus growing so fast as to become actually alarming. 
 Why? For this simple reason that, in a group of 
 men producing in common from a common source of 
 wealth, their productive power increases at a faster rate 
 than their number. This is a fact that no economist 
 denies.* 
 
 But the tremendous significance of the fact is 
 realized by few. It will be understood only when 
 the theory has been put into practice. 
 
 Man, under proper conditions, produces more than 
 he consumes, and this surplus increases with the in- 
 crease in the number of those with whom he cooperates. 
 
 Whenever, with intelligence and sagacity, with 
 firmness of moral principle, this great truth is put 
 into practice, men will attain to a condition in which 
 it shall be more blessed for every one to give than to 
 receive, because every one will have enough. We 
 shall then be as guiltless of greedy grasping in social 
 life as we now are when we sit at the table of a pros- 
 perous, well-bred family. The steadily increasing af- 
 fluence and the moral pressure of the members will 
 compel the authorities of such a company to perform 
 acts that would seem to us to-day magnanimous to 
 an unheard of and inconceivable degree. Even 
 now instances may be seen in which great prosperity 
 and an elevation of the general ethical tone have 
 led to the performance of such acts. How much 
 more imposing they will be when the property is 
 
 "Exhaustion of the sources of wealth is left out of account, as we are practically too far 
 from it as yet. 
 
CO-PRODUCTION 167 
 
 really collective common wealth, in the full sense 
 and when the general morality is purified of the 
 fearful corruption and unreality with which it is 
 now infected. 
 
 We have been frightened, especially by the dog- 
 matic socialistic party, with the remark that such 
 a small group can never compete with the big monop- 
 olies. We shall be fought down, they say, crushed 
 in an instant by the tremendous power of the big, 
 parasitical bodies. 
 
 But the concentration of capital in a parasiti- 
 cally organized group is merely apparent. The 
 accumulated wealth comes into the hands of indi- 
 viduals and is in a short time dispersed again. The 
 essential and permanent characteristic of the great 
 industrial and commerical bodies is not the wealth 
 that can be measured in gold, in real estate, in 
 goods, but the knowledge accumulated in the heads 
 of managers and workmen, the experience and the 
 organization. It is Andrew Carnegie himself who 
 has emphasized this fact. If a higher moral prin- 
 ciple can be added to this, the whole structure is 
 invincible; if not, it may fall to pieces in a twinkling, 
 with all its power and wealth. 
 
 In no single respect, then, does the honest pro- 
 ducer stand actually powerless in face of the para- 
 sitic groups. Their gold and silver and banknotes he 
 does not need, their tools and factories he can make, 
 he wants nothing but a certain amount of fertile 
 
i68 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 soil, courage, cooperation, and an organizing leader- 
 ship. But his energy must be directed toward 
 production, production of his own necessities, so that 
 he may become independent and self-supporting in 
 the shortest time. 
 
 What could happen to a group of co-producers, 
 living on their own lands, having their own mines, 
 producing their own food and clothes, building 
 their 'own houses what could crush them ? 
 Who could attack them? They would be invin- 
 cible, inviolable, in the midst of a hundred hostile 
 trusts. 
 
 Well-organized production of the first necessities 
 of life, from common sources this is to be the 
 basis of our company; it is the only basis of a true 
 commonwealth. This and this alone will give it 
 unconquerable strength, however small its origin. 
 This is the only untarnishable source of real power. 
 He who controls the production of the necessities 
 of life controls the world. The lack of this prin- 
 ciple is the weakness of all other schemes for social 
 reform. Social legislation, single tax, agricultural 
 education, credit banks, distributive cooperation, 
 consumers' leagues, back-to-the-land movements - 
 they may all help, but they are all palliative, begin- 
 ning somewhere in the middle or at the top. The 
 real basis of the social structure is production of 
 life's necessities. We are all dependent on these, 
 artist and scientist and banker alike, and until their 
 
CO-PRODUCTION 169 
 
 production is well organized, all social reform will 
 only alleviate and never cure the social diseases. 
 
 The accumulation of capital in an anti-parasitic, 
 co-productive federation must, other conditions 
 being equal, proceed far more rapidly than such 
 accumulation in a parasitic system. Where all ele- 
 ments work together and nothing is wasted, where 
 no idlers and drones are tolerated to weaken the 
 course of industry, where producer is at the same 
 time consumer in one and the same federative body, 
 the surplus of production must increase at an in- 
 comparably more rapid rate. 
 
 Though the parasitic groups have now, appar- 
 ently, a tremendous handicap, once the pure anti- 
 parasitic federation arises, they will be overtaken 
 in an astonishingly short time. They will be out- 
 run, just as in a plantation the trees of slower growth, 
 however big, give place to those that grow more 
 quickly. As soon as there grows up in America, 
 where the conditions are most favourable, an organi- 
 zation of workers who will produce for each other; 
 shut out inefficiency, idleness, and parasitism; re- 
 tain the surplus, interest and profits, as well as the 
 land and mines and factories, as collective prop- 
 erty this organization, if well managed, will at- 
 tain in a few decades to a power and wealth that 
 will far exceed anything that we have hitherto seen, 
 even in America. It will eclipse Standard Oil, which 
 thrives on one not even indispensable article and 
 
170 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 which can at any moment be killed by a new in- 
 vention; it will eclipse financial coalitions which live 
 by clever plotting, and waste far more than they 
 even indirectly produce. The benevolent acts of mil- 
 lionaires that are now reputed princely will be 
 child's play in comparison with the gigantic and 
 fabulous acts of general utility and ethical enlighten- 
 ment that such a federation will put into execution. 
 Enterprises from which poweful states now shrink 
 will be taken up by it as a matter of course. There 
 will not be a scientific enterprise for which it shall 
 not furnish all the means, not a need in the world 
 that it shall not alleviate of its own free motion. 
 Libraries, schools, academies it will establish and 
 maintain, even far beyond the borders of its terri- 
 tory. Having no selfish aims in view and having to 
 dispose every year of a constantly growing surplus, 
 it will cause valuable works to be executed by for- 
 eign peoples. No politcal king and no money king 
 shall be able to emulate its immense economical 
 power. No war shall be carried on without its 
 assistance or consent. No strike will be possible 
 anywhere in the world without its powerful support. 
 Simply by its unlimited wealth it will hold the 
 balance of peace and war as well in the political as 
 in the economical domain. The honour and priv- 
 ilege of belonging to such a commonwealth will 
 be greater than that of any citizenship in the world. 
 All this is irrefutable in theory. To prove its 
 
CO-PRODUCTION 171 
 
 practical possibility by tenaciously repeated ex- 
 periments I consider the foremost duty of those 
 who have the necessary talents and oppor- 
 tunity. 
 
 The first result of common prosperity in the 
 small initial group will be that country life will be 
 made attractive. The co-producers will begin to 
 make their farms and homes pleasant to look at 
 and comfortable. They will improve the means of 
 communication, and so take away the sense of lone- 
 liness, of backwardness that now drives so many 
 young people from the farms to the cities. The 
 garden city will grow up, not as an artificial scheme 
 planned by the philanthropic effort of rich people, 
 but as a natural outcome of common wealth and 
 common wants. 
 
 The only way of bringing the producer "back 
 to the land" is to make the land attractive and a 
 centre of civilization. All other methods are artificial 
 and will fail. The surplus of the farmer's labour 
 now flows to the cities and draws the young farmer 
 after it. Keep that surplus on the land and the 
 farmer will stay there too. 
 
 Another remark that I often hear is that "man- 
 kind is not yet ripe" for this sort of co-production. 
 Men are not yet good enough; they want moral 
 education first. In answer to this I may remark 
 that moral education is impossible so long as chil- 
 dren grow up in a wrong system of production. It 
 
172 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 is not only by books and teachers that children are 
 educated, but by facts and deeds which they daily 
 see around them. All children in our present town- 
 life, in surroundings of modern society, are educated 
 on false principles. They learn to respect the idle 
 rich, and to see in them models to emulate. They 
 are brought up with the idea of getting rich as soon 
 as possible, no matter how, and to be able to let 
 other people do the work. They learn to accept 
 charity from powerful individuals, and to admire 
 their benevolent acts as glorious deeds. They are 
 educated to give up the best pride of the honour- 
 able man, the pride that makes him refuse any 
 profit that he did not earn fairly by his service 
 to .society. What are class-books and Bibles in 
 the face of this enormously suggestive education in 
 evil? 
 
 According to my experience men are sufficiently 
 ripe rather overripe. They want education by 
 practice, by a better method of production. Their 
 defects are the defects of the uneducated, of chil- 
 dren that is, greed and short-sightedness. 
 
 They all would be better off, rich and poor alike, 
 if they produced fairly together, and did not try 
 wildly to run down their rivals. 
 
 Short-sightedness is the only great danger we have 
 to guard against in our co-productive enterprise. 
 The one criticism of our plan which I consider not 
 unfounded is that some day the members of the 
 
CO-PRODUCTION 173 
 
 group, out of short-sighted greed, will stop exten- 
 sion, buy up the preferred stock and become a closed 
 company. This is a possibility against which we 
 have to take careful measures. First of all, the 
 moral trend of the company must be well laid down 
 in 1 the* rules and openly discussed. The public, 
 who can do much in the beginning for the support 
 of the plan, simply by becoming customers and con- 
 sumers of our products, must know what we are 
 aiming at, and be able to withhold their support 
 when the rules are violated or changed in essential 
 points. 
 
 And then, no experiment is without dangers, no 
 success was ever attained without a certain amount 
 of optimistic belief. I, for one, believe in the 
 possibility of adding a few more drops of morality 
 to business, and of not spoiling but improving it 
 thereby. 
 
 From the high and wide viewpoint of biological 
 science the great change that I have indicated as 
 taking place in the human race is obvious and un- 
 mistakable. The numerous small quarrelling, fight- 
 ing, and robbing groups are gradually melting into 
 one big tightly interwoven mass, united by com- 
 merce and swift communication. At the same 
 time, the standards of reciprocal violence, extortion, 
 and deceit are slowly but surely changing into those 
 of mutual understanding, fair dealing, and honest 
 exchange. 
 
i 7 4 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 Science and knowledge are now binding all human- 
 kind together by invincible power, the advantages 
 of mutual aid and equity are becoming daily more 
 manifest. The tremendous transition from politi- 
 cal state to commonwealth goes on, steadily and 
 irresistibly, like a great stream obeying gravitation. 
 For this transition obeys the strongest impulse of the 
 race self-preservation. 
 
 This does not mean that the change is entirely 
 unconscious and instinctive. It is true that millions 
 of units, the majority of mankind, act their part in 
 the great performance without knowing what is 
 going on, or to what end they live. But man is an 
 animal that is bound to think and reflect, and he 
 will act on conscious reflection. He may be under 
 all sorts of delusions, but he will never give up try- 
 ing to get away from them. And so the great change 
 that I mean will come about by conscious voluntary 
 effort, by the intelligent direction of the great in- 
 born impulses of the mass. 
 
 This is what we have to try. And we have to 
 repeat our endeavours and our experiments in- 
 cessantly, tenaciously, undaunted by manifold fail- 
 ures. For the scientific mind finds as much instruc- 
 tion in failure as in success. And what amount of 
 failure, of trouble and expense can be too high a price 
 for this greatest of all human achievements, a great 
 commonwealth, covering the whole planet, held to- 
 gether by laws of morality and justice and good-will, 
 
CO-PRODUCTION 175 
 
 based on science, on wisdom, and on the right per- 
 ception of the unchangeable, the true, the everlast- 
 ing, the Divine? 
 
 The full triumph may seem unattainable, but I 
 think we can wish for no better aim in life than to 
 have fought for it. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 WHAT I SAID TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 DDRESSING an audience in Carnegie Hall, 
 New York, on the 4th of March, 1908, I 
 spoke as follows: 
 
 I hope you have not come here to amuse yourselves or to 
 admire a fine display of brilliant eloquence. 
 
 For I am not likely to satisfy you therein. It may even be 
 that I shock you by saying unpleasant things in a foreign sort 
 of English. 
 
 But I have come because I have something very serious to 
 tell you which lies as a burden on my soul, and Emerson has 
 said that when a man feels the burden of truth in his soul that 
 truth will become eloquent by itself, though the man may 
 stutter and stammer. 
 
 I confess that I, for one, believe that when a man is on a 
 great errand there is a "guidance" for him showing him the 
 things he has to take note of. I shall tell you how I felt that 
 "guidance" on this visit to America. 
 
 I came here on board the greatest and fastest ship known, 
 travelling first class. We were a very "swell" party indeed and 
 had a good time, with eating and drinking and musical enter- 
 tainment unless a big Atlantic swell put us off our feet. 
 
 And I had a little chat with one of the ship's officers and he 
 told me that we should go still faster if the men down below 
 were not such a bad lot. The men down below were 300 firemen, 
 working deep under in the bellows of the gigantic steamer. 
 
 176 
 
TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 177 
 
 Imagining what it meant to stand day and night before huge 
 fires under the cold draught, I asked, "Well, I hope, when we have 
 arrived, these people will have something of a good time also." 
 
 "To be sure they will," said the man; "they will be drunk in 
 no time." And while we were eating and drinking and hear- 
 ing music in our splendid first-class dining-room I thought of 
 those 300 men below. 
 
 Now the Mauretania is an English ship and belongs to the 
 Old World, and I was going to a New World. And among the 
 swells on board was pointed out to me the biggest swell of all, 
 a very tremendous swell indeed. This was a New World swell, 
 and they called him a Steel King. Now it had struck me that 
 people in the Old World used to have only one King at a time, 
 but America seems to entertain a whole crowd of them: Steel 
 Kings, Oil Kings, Sugar Kings, Railway Kings, ever so many. 
 We know that America .wants everything on a large scale. Well, 
 this King looked very humorous and amiable; he made a little 
 speech about money and munificence; they all sang out that he 
 was a jolly good fellow. I hope he is. 
 
 Then just before we entered the Bay of New York I took up 
 a book in the beautiful library, a book on New World philosophy, 
 by Prof. William James, and there I came across a foreign item 
 quoted from a newspaper: 
 
 "A young workman from New York, having sought for em- 
 ployment in vain, week after week, and unable to bear the 
 sight of his] starving wife and children, killed himself by drink- 
 ing carbolic acid." 
 
 At that very moment, that very moment, the great ship 
 swung around into New York Harbour and we saw the metrop- 
 olis of the New World, and to the left the majestic Statue of 
 Liberty illumining the world. This was my "guidance," people 
 of America. The beautiful, imposing statue seemed to me a 
 horrible, cruel mockery. Do you know what its lofty gesture 
 seemed to signify? 
 
 "Do you look for liberty and justice? Well, then, seek for 
 it in Heaven; don't expect to find it here." That is what the 
 uplifted hand said to me. 
 
178 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 Killed himself by carbolic acid because he wanted to work and 
 could not and was unable to bear the sight of his starving family, 
 and I am told this is one case out of many. Now I want to ask 
 you one question, people of America. How is it that, when 
 some poor slave on the coast of Africa is flogged to death, you 
 all cry out for shame, and when one man is condemned unjustly 
 for high treason the whole civilized world is in uproar but 
 when an honest workman in the richest country of the world, 
 in a democratic commonwealth, feels himself compelled to 
 drink carbolic acid simply because he wants to do his duty 
 you all shrug your shoulders and say, "What shall we do?" 
 
 He was but one sufferer out of many, but imagine his agony, 
 his mental and moral tortures, that he preferred this horrible 
 death. I declare to you the vision of that one man pouring 
 the burning liquid down his throat to escape the sight of his 
 starving children is haunting me day and night. And I say 
 it ought to haunt you, members of the same community 
 which you call a commonwealth you and all your magis- 
 trates, your statesmen, and your kings. It ought to haunt 
 you more than does the vision of the poor negro slaves in Africa. 
 These are not members, workers, of your boasted common- 
 wealth. 
 
 Common wealth indeed! I tell you, so long as you are not 
 able to prevent horrible iniquities like these going on in the 
 midst of you, you had better speak of common misery. And 
 so long as there is one honest, capable worker in your midst, 
 driven to despair because he cannot find even the liberty to 
 do the first duty of every citizen that is, to work then you 
 had better be silent about Liberty. You had better make a 
 large wooden case of blackboards and put that over your 
 Goddess of Liberty and paint on it in big while letters: LIB- 
 ERTY IN REPAIR. 
 
 Now once more I ask you, how is it that a book of fiction 
 written some fifty years ago by Mrs. Beecher Stowe about the 
 misery of a negro slave set your whole nation aflame and made 
 you fight a long and bloody war to abolish slavery, while this 
 far more terrible and unjust slavery, bringing with it unheard of 
 
TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 179 
 
 sufferings, going on in your very midst, is met, if not with 
 indifference, with a hopeless, helpless passivity? Where is the 
 Mrs. Beecher Stowe of to-day and her novel about The Man 
 Who Drank the Carbolic Acid? Are your hearts hardened to 
 such horrors? No. For sure you are as kind-hearted, as 
 sensitive to misery, to iniquity, to injustice as your fathers 
 were half a century ago. Only you do not know! You 
 do not know what to do, how to help, where to begin. It is 
 knowledge you lack, not sentiment. 
 
 I am not a sentimentalist; I know how to suffer and to sub- 
 mit to unavoidable suffering in the world. But I tell you this 
 suffering is not unavoidable. There is a remedy; there must 
 be a remedy; it would be an eternal shame to mankind if, 
 having achieved so many wonders of science and intelligence, 
 it could not find a way out of these horrors. There is enough 
 feeling of justice, enough good-will, enough power enough 
 and to spare. It is intelligence that we lack; understanding in 
 the first place, and then patient endeavour and unwavering 
 faith. 
 
 Now the fact is that you pretend to have established a great 
 commonwealth, but you have thus far done nothing of the sort. 
 You have political states, you have a certain order, you have a 
 government, you have private business concerns, but you have 
 no commonwealth. Private wealth you have, and too much 
 of it, but no common wealth. You know how to gain money, 
 but you do not know how to distribute it, nor how to spend it. 
 You are wasting it for the most part. 
 
 Now don't call me names and say I am a communist, a 
 socialist, an anarchist, a collectivism or what you like. I am 
 nothing but a man who wants to live a just and righteous life 
 in the midst of a just and righteous community, but I am 
 aware that this is impossible and you are all of one mind with 
 me, I have no doubt. Don't bother over words; don't be afraid 
 of communism, 'of socialism, or any other ism; look for what is 
 right and try to do it. If communism means the possession of 
 goods in common, do we not see communism, real practical 
 communism, springing up everywhere? I ask you, is a public 
 
i8o HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 library not communism? is a museum not communism? is 
 Yellowstone Park not communism? 
 
 We all know that Yellowstone Park is a beautiful reality 
 and that it is good and possible to have things in common, but 
 what we do not know is the answer to the following questions: 
 what things do we have in common, can we have in common, 
 and ought we to have in common ? 
 
 I consider these among the greatest, the most urgent, the 
 most important questions of our present life. And mind! 
 They cannot be solved by clever reasoning nor by any amount 
 of reading and theories. They can be solved only by practice, 
 by facts, by careful investigation and patient experiment, not 
 by words alone, but by deeds, deeds, deeds! 
 
 Only to contribute my small part to the solution of these great 
 questions I have sacrificed many years of my life, a good deal 
 of my strength, my whole fortune, and, most precious of all, 
 time and effort that I could have given to my art. And though 
 everybody may disagree with me, I do not consider the issue 
 of the enterprise a failure, because, most decidedly, the desired 
 solution has been brought nearer by it. 
 
 In the first place, my experience taught me in a decisive way 
 that our original form of communism as practised by the ancient 
 Christians, according to the Gospel, is not only utterly impos- 
 sible, but also undesirable. We all have met people who main- 
 tain that even in the present condition of society we ought to 
 follow the example of Christ and His Apostles to the letter and 
 do away with private property. This sort of people also flocked 
 to me at the beginning of my experiments, and it is a fact of 
 which you may easily assure yourselves that it is no use at all 
 to tell these people that history teaches us over and over again 
 that idealism is untenable. You may point out to them the 
 instance of Saint Francis, whose heroic efforts all came to 
 nothing, in a short time, even during his lifetime. You may 
 show that his followers soon gave up their scorn of money and 
 that all those sects or little groups that tried to do what he did 
 and to live a life of poverty and absolute communism failed 
 it is no use. The only way to convert these fanatics is the way 
 
TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 181 
 
 that I choose that is, to give them a fair trial in hard earnest 
 in practical life. 
 
 In my experiment it soon came to light that the most fanatical 
 communists were the first to complain of this painful and arti- 
 ficial situation. They wanted back their private home life, 
 their own family circle, their private possession of house and 
 furniture, even of money; they realized very soon that this so- 
 called liberty was worse than slavery. Of course, they threw 
 the blame on others, considering themselves, each of them, as 
 the only person fit for this sort of life; but there is no need to 
 explain that their arguments were not very convincing. 
 
 We want to know, first of all, what goods ought to become public 
 property in a well-ordered community. We want to know how 
 we are to deal in a just and rightful way with capital and rent. 
 
 Not to do away with them, as these fanatics would have us to 
 do, for civilized mankind could not exist without them but to 
 handle them ably, fairly, and justly. 
 
 We want to know how to deal with wealth so as to give it an 
 equitable distribution, not to do away with wealth, for poverty 
 is not at all a venerable and holy thing, as any man with sound 
 reason and open eyes may know. It is rather a dreadful curse, 
 in violent opposition to the higher gifts of the race, to art, 
 science, wisdom, and culture. Poverty is degrading, brutaliz- 
 ing, nursing all sorts of lower animal instincts, suppressing 
 the more spiritual and divine human faculties. It is always 
 akin to squalor. Whereas wealth is and has always been the 
 source of art, of science and culture, of beauty and wisdom. 
 No great civilization has come into bloom without wealth. 
 Wealth was the immediate cause of the glory of those famous 
 centres of human development, of Egypt, of Athens, of Rome, 
 of Florence, of the Netherlands, of England. 
 
 But, mind you, the good effect is caused only by common 
 wealth. Common wealth is a blessing and a necessity for 
 higher spiritual development. No high spiritual mark can be 
 reached without leisure and no leisure without common wealth. 
 
 But private wealth, without restriction or limitation, as we 
 know it in our present disordered society, is a curse, and a 
 
182 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 cause of deprivation and ruin, of idiotic and suicidal waste. 
 The slightest knowledge of the fate of the great civilizations 
 will teach you this. Wherever the private individual has been 
 allowed to accumulate unbounded riches for his own use only, 
 for extending his own private power, the result has been a fatal 
 luxury, resulting in deprivation and demoralization, to the com- 
 plete ruin of the community. 
 
 And I lay this question before you Americans: Do you really 
 think that this rule, so clearly taught by human history, no 
 longer holds good? Do you really think, citizens of this great 
 Republic, that you will escape the fate of the great Roman 
 Empire if you continue to neglect the most obvious lesson of 
 history? Well, I am a citizen of a small kingdom which has 
 no longer any predominant voice in the assembly of nations, 
 but Holland, now an insignificant kingdom, was once a power- 
 ful republic, and it had its dreams of imperialism just as much 
 as you have now. And by neglecting this great principle, that 
 common wealth is a blessing, but unbounded private wealth is 
 a curse, my poor country has fallen to depths of humiliation 
 and shame which might be something of a warning to you. 
 
 Do you really believe that your present social institutions are 
 more truly democratic and a better guarantee against common 
 dissolution and ruin than were those of the Athens of Pericles 
 and the Rome of the elder Cato? Do you even pretend to have 
 realized the idea of a democratic republic as it lived a little more 
 than a century ago in the minds of the great founders of the 
 American nation? Do you think that if Franklin or Washing- 
 ton could return at this day they would exclaim, "That is it! 
 there we are! that is the sort of thing we have dreamt of and 
 struggled for!" 
 
 Are you really not aware that you, the Republic par excel- 
 lence, where no titles, no aristocracy, no decorations, are said to 
 be allowed that you are not a bit farther from becoming a 
 monarchy, with all its attributes, than the Roman Republic 
 was at the beginning of the Christian era, or than the first 
 French Republic was at the beginning of the last century? 
 Do you not realize that in your present condition you deserve 
 
TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 183 
 
 to become a monarchy, and that your fate is therefore imminent, 
 because every nation gets the government that it deserves and 
 nothing better? If you do not see this or believe it, I daresay 
 the sad experience of my own poor nation gives me a right to 
 smile at your optimism. We also fought one big tyrant and we 
 got a lot of little ones instead. 
 
 Not only from human history, but also from natural history, 
 can we learn some useful lessons about wealth, common wealth 
 and private wealth, and the only safe and lasting relation between 
 the two. 
 
 Among the many trades that I took in hand for a practical 
 study of sociology was that of beekeeping, and by observation 
 of the bee community we may find some fundamental principles 
 which are valuable in human society as well as in that of bees. 
 Bees are capitalists; they accumulate immense stores; the bees 
 born in spring die in autumn, and during their short summer 
 life they not only work for themselves, but they perform an 
 incredible amount of extra labour, and the fruits of this labour, 
 the surplus value, as socialists would call it, they leave to the 
 community, for the benefit of the bees born in autumn, in order 
 that they may live out the winter and reach the next spring. 
 
 This fact is remarkable enough and a grand lesson for man- 
 kind, but still more remarkable and a constant source of won- 
 der and admiration for the observer is this fact: that every 
 single bee is constantly in immediate contact with vast quanti- 
 ties of honey and yet never uses more for his private want than 
 is strictly necessary. Yea, its self-control and self-denial go 
 so far that, when want and famine come in, the last drop of 
 honey is rigorously preserved for the queen bee, the mother of 
 the race, and every private individual gives itself up to volun- 
 tary starvation. This wonderful economy is well worth pon- 
 dering over. Is there not something in it that ought to make 
 mankind blush for shame? 
 
 Here, then, we see capitalism in combination with communism, 
 and more than that, we see that this combination is the only 
 way to make both capitalism and communism practicable and 
 useful for individual and community. 
 
184 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 And last, not least, we find the answer to the questions how 
 and when a just and righteous commonwealth can be established. 
 The answer is, only when the individuals of the human com- 
 munity have acquired the self-control of the bees and know 
 how to live in private soberness, in the immediate presence of 
 vast common wealth. Do you doubt the possibility of such 
 self-denial? Well, then, I declare myself in this respect the 
 optimist, and there smile at your pessimism. More faith than 
 in the so-called democratic institution of the America of to-day 
 have I in the ultimate sound reason of the human race, and above 
 all in its instinct of self-preservation. 
 
 For nothing else than sound reason and the instinct of self- 
 preservation will teach mankind, all of it, that individual self- 
 control, limited private wealth, are the only means to keep 
 community and individual from demoralization and destruction. 
 It is so very clear that the present social institutions of man- 
 kind are suicidal, being pernicious for the individual and the 
 race, that if we did not know the power of convention, the per- 
 tinacity of certain errors, and the inertia of the mind of the 
 masses, we could hardly understand how man can so thought- 
 lessly work for his own undoing. The great danger I see in 
 your American life is that the most capable individuals are 
 allowed to accumulate for their own private use such a quantity 
 of wealth that, long before they lose their working power, they 
 have lost every stimulus to work on, and can, if they like, live 
 in the greatest luxury, they and their children, simply by 
 doing nothing. 
 
 I pray you to mark this well: I don't see any danger in the 
 fact that the most capable and ablest men are remunerated very 
 highly, so as to give them full satisfaction. But the imminent 
 peril for us all, for society and individual, for us and our 
 children, lies here that every man has before him the possi- 
 bility of giving up his labour altogether and of living on his 
 money that is to say, on usury and parasitism without giving 
 any equivalent in useful work. 
 
 Must it not be clear, even to the mind of a mere child, that in 
 this way society is gradually losing its best forces, that in our 
 
TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 185 
 
 present social order the highest premium is given not for good 
 work but for sheer idleness, and that, inevitably, this idleness 
 will grow and grow, and this general ideal will become more and 
 more to grow very rich and do nothing at all but enjoy and in- 
 vent fresh forms of excitement and pleasure? 
 
 It is true that the accumulating instinct, the activity of 
 money-getting, works on in many individuals, though they may 
 have become millionaires. But it will soon die out in their 
 children who are born rich. And anybody who is well ac- 
 quainted with the psychology of the Dutch nation will know 
 that we were just as active, two centuries ago, just as smart, 
 acute, go-ahead, as the Americans of to-day and yet these 
 faculties have been lost in a few generations by the influence 
 of private wealth, and it is only by the example of the nations 
 around us that we have been stimulated or compelled more or 
 less to regain something of our former energy. Only think of 
 this: A society, obliged to rely on the working capacities of its 
 members and having for its general ideal the ambition to be 
 very rich and do nothing at all, except squandering the products 
 of common activity! If this may not be called suicidal, what 
 may? 
 
 People talk of egotism, and tell me that human egotism is too 
 strong to make a better social order possible. But I should like 
 to ask if you call it egotism to set your own house on fire and 
 poison your children. Are we not acting just as foolishly by 
 allowing every individual to be spoiled and demoralized by 
 extravagances and idleness, paying them simply because they 
 are rich and do nothing? This is not egotism; it is folly and 
 self-destruction. 
 
 If we only nourished, by common labour and consent, a set of 
 worthless parasites, who spent the common goods in idleness 
 and luxury, the harm would not be so great. It would be only 
 ridiculous, for an industrious community could easily afford the 
 extravagance just as it can afford to keep zoological gardens. 
 But we are constantly pushing our best men, our most capable 
 workers, into this whirlpool of luxury and extravagance, ruin- 
 ing them and their families, by allowing them to live on the 
 
i86 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 fruits of accumulated wealth, without any labour. And this 
 is draining society of its best powers, bleeding it slowly to death. 
 Slowly, I say but in the history of human civilization the 
 rate is relatively quick. Two centuries sufficed to bring the 
 once glorious Dutch Republic to the verge of extinction. 
 
 You will ask me, of course, if I have found a remedy; if I 
 see a way out of this difficulty. My answer is: Have you, who 
 ask me, ever sought it, in hard earnest? Surely not, for if you 
 had, you would not put that question to me. You might just 
 as well ask me if I see a way out of New York. It is very hard 
 to see it if you don't look for it. 
 
 For many years I have sought for a way out of the social 
 disorder, or rather the imperfect order, in which we live at 
 present. I have looked and sought for it in hard earnest. 
 And I have found that it is extremely easy to see and point out 
 just as easy as to see and to point out the waterway between 
 Atlantic and Pacific. But to make that way and to use it, is 
 another question. For nobody can do" that alone! Of this I am con- 
 vinced, that if there were as many men who went to work with a 
 will and set all their heart and energy to it as are now working 
 at that great waterway the way out of our social confusion 
 would be traced and completed sooner than the canal of Panama. 
 But we should not only need the hands for digging and shovel- 
 ling, but also the engineers and the great leading minds to 
 organize the work. 
 
 Let us consider what the task would mean. It would mean 
 the formation of a community which would keep in common 
 possession those goods that, for the welfare and preservation 
 of all, ought to remain common property, and which moreover 
 would not allow any of its capable members to squander the 
 common goods without giving useful work a community 
 which would restrict the possibilities of extravagance, usury, 
 parasitism and idleness and which on the other hand would 
 suffer no pauperism, and would never let any capable and 
 willing member starve for want of work. Do you believe the 
 formation of such a community a miracle? a greater miracle 
 than the Panama Canal? Well, then, I assure you that human 
 
TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 187 
 
 society must have nothing less than such a miracle, or it will 
 go to a bad place in an astonishingly short time. 
 
 In this address I can give you no theories. I can give only 
 short hints and opinions, based on lifelong study and hard 
 experience. But I am ready to explain and discuss those 
 opinions at any time as explicitly as you like. In this country, 
 the country of Henry George, I need not be explicit on the 
 injustice of private land-ownership, and the advantages of com- 
 mon possession of the soil. 
 
 I started in Holland, six years ago, a Society for the Common 
 Possession of the Land. This society still exists, and I consider 
 its experimental work extremely important and instructive. But 
 I have, in the course of my personal experiments, found that 
 common possession of the soil is utterly worthless, even per- 
 nicious, if the community to which the soil belongs is not 
 well organized. Private ownership in the hands of a good 
 landlord is eminently preferable to common ownership in the 
 hands of a badly trained and poorly organized community. 
 This is the clue to that puzzling but generally acknowledged 
 fact, that land-communism as it still exists in Russia, Java, and 
 other countries, is no advantage but a strong impediment to 
 the welfare of the population. 
 
 Organization, strict, powerful, perfectly functionating or- 
 ganization, that is the all-commanding condition of communism 
 in general and of land-communism in particular. I might even 
 go so far as to say that the better organized a community is, 
 the more complete will be the form of communism which it 
 can stand. In an absolutely perfect organization, to which 
 the human race will perhaps adapt itself in a thousand years, 
 the idea of private property or possession would have lost its 
 meaning altogether. A faint hint of this condition we have 
 on a very small scale in the well-to-do household of a wise and 
 loving family circle. 
 
 But it would be a sad mistake to think that because we can 
 never expect the wisdom, culture, love, and intelligence neces- 
 sary for a perfect form of communism in the great mass of the 
 humanity of our days that therefore every nearer approach 
 
i88 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 to communism is impossible. Have we not made gigantic 
 steps in advance toward it in the last century? 
 
 The most important step, however, which I, after my expe- 
 rience, still think necessary, possible, and even imminent is 
 the communization of the means of production. Capital itself 
 and its investment must be communized. 
 
 But capital in another form, and its accumulation, rent, 
 ought to come first. The communization of capital and rent, 
 the transferring of the accumulation of goods to the hands of 
 the community, that is the first and more important step we 
 have to make in the interest of all humanity. In a way this is 
 done already in the cooperative societies which are existing in 
 Europe. But it is not done methodically and rigorously. We 
 may distinguish two schemes of organization. The first is 
 that of the fanatic communist: His rule is: Labour according 
 to inclination, award according to want. I say, by the right 
 of my personal experience, that this rule is, at this momen 
 absolutely impossible, untenable, and pernicious. 
 
 The other rule, generally called that of the cooperator, is 
 this: Labour according to capacity, award according to the 
 work done. That is to say: Means of production, common 
 property; accumulation capital and rent in the hands of 
 the community; wages given according to the given work, 
 after the standard of general appreciation shown by supply 
 and demand; not doing away with rent and capital, but taking 
 it out of the hands of the private individual, because no individ- 
 ual is strong enough to bear the freedom and the power of 
 unbounded wealth. The rule includes free and ample reward 
 of the most capable. Give the workman what he asks for 
 his work, with this restriction only, that he shall work on so 
 long as he is in full working condition, and that he shall never 
 amass so much wealth as to free himself and all his offspring 
 from the obligation to be useful to the community. 
 
 And here the great question presents itself: What sort of 
 community shall that be in whose hands we trust the owner- 
 ship of common goods? How shall it be localized? Who shall 
 form it? How shall it be organized ? Who shall be its members? 
 
TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 189 
 
 I have no space here to go deeper into this question. I can 
 give only a few preliminary hints. 
 
 In the first place, we must not make the general mistake of 
 identifying the community with the political state. We must 
 remember the origin of the state, and the character resulting 
 from that origin. The original state was formed for two pur- 
 poses, for defence and conquest. And our present political 
 state is a remnant of those times when every nation was also an 
 economical entity, subsisting by its own means, and trying to 
 subsist, if possible, by the conquest of other nations and the 
 rapine of goods, taken or extorted by violence. This is the most 
 important distinction we have to make in our present days. 
 It has never been rightly and clearly made until now. On 
 this distinction depends the coming solution of all social 
 problems. 
 
 There are two forms of human groupment: The older form 
 is the Empire held together by political means. Its aims are 
 rapine, conquest, and defence. It tries to subsist on the work 
 of subjects, subjugating workers, who are compelled to sur- 
 render a part of the fruit of their own labour. It implies 
 the existence of a dominating group and a submissive, exploited 
 group. Its power rests on armed force, on violence, and iniquity. 
 Its symbols are the eagle and the lion beasts of prey. 
 
 The other, newer form, is the Commonwealth held together 
 by economical means. Its aims are a fair and honest exchange 
 of goods for goods, a peaceful commerce, an organized cooper- 
 ation for the common benefit, for the full development of 
 human life and powers. It does not imply absolute equality, 
 but it advocates no greater difference than is necessitated by 
 different inclination, aptitude, and capacities. Its powers are 
 science, mutual aid, good-will, and understanding. Its symbol 
 is the bee, the animal of communistic capitalism not defence- 
 less, forsooth, but doing no harm where no harm is intended. 
 
 And this new organization is everywhere growing over and 
 surpassing political, even national, boundaries. A great net of 
 commerce and traffic is overspreading the world, and the com- 
 mercial bonds of people of the most widely different nations are 
 
i 9 o HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 often stronger than those of the members of one political nation. 
 By the light of this fact we may easily see that the human 
 community of the future will not be outlined by our present 
 political boundaries. 
 
 It is true that the administrative and legislative order of 
 society is yet entirely in the hands of the political state, and it 
 is right and necessary that it should remain so for a long time; 
 for this order at present may not slacken for one moment. But 
 it need not always remain so; there may one day be organized 
 an international commercial body which shall surpass all our 
 political states in power and strength. 
 
 In the second place I think it utterly useless to wait for the 
 political state to make laws for us, before we attempt to alter 
 the present form of social organization. I should like to ask 
 if all those who firmly believe in the necessity and possibility 
 of a better social order are not absolutely free at any moment 
 to join hands all over the world, and to form a body or corpora- 
 tion with exactly those experimental rules and institutions that 
 they think just and rightful? 
 
 I put this question before all malcontents, before all socialists, 
 all revolutionaries, all communists and class fighters. Why 
 do you not all join hands and make laws and institutions and 
 rules after your own heart, doing business in the way you 
 think just, bringing capital into common possession, outgrow- 
 ing and outwitting the political states and your opponents? 
 
 My practical experiments have given me the answer, which 
 the theorists could not give me. The reason is that men are 
 not at all the independently and rationally acting animals 
 they think themselves to be. They are acting and thinking 
 always more or less herdwise, under the influence of great 
 leading minds, and strong spiritual currents. If they were 
 thinking and acting rationally and independently, a great 
 commercial body with a just and righteous social organization 
 could easily and quickly be formed; and it would, because of its 
 greater self-preservation and strength, easily outgrow all other 
 human corporations and organizations. But in the present 
 condition of mankind such a community will not be formed un- 
 
TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 191 
 
 less a great, powerful mind, a commercial and organizing genius, 
 takes the matter in hand and sets all his life and heart to it. 
 The fact is humiliating, but we must accept it. 
 
 Now, two things are very clear to me: In the first place, 
 that I am not this genius; in the second place, that I may be 
 able to find him, even to inspire him to his glorious task, at any 
 moment of my life. That such a man may arise any day, and 
 that his name will be more glorified by posterity than that of 
 Carsar or Napoleon, I firmly believe. 
 
 Have we not dazzling instances of the swift achievements of 
 one single commercial or organizing genius. But we need not 
 confine ourselves, in our search for examples, to the captains 
 of industry, who worked with more or less selfish and narrow 
 aims. We have the instance of a very generous-minded man 
 who surely did not work for personal benefit, and who achieved 
 a wonderful feat of organization that extended over the whole 
 world. Whatever we may think of the Salvation Army we 
 cannot deny that as an example of organization with unselfish 
 purpose it stands unique in the history of civilization. This 
 great body is the work of one leading mind. And we must all 
 agree that it has done much good, on a gigantic scale, for the 
 rescue 'of the destitute and the fallen. 
 
 But now, if you will allow me to say so, I should far more 
 highly appreciate the creation of a Salvation Army which 
 prevented the making of destitutes and sinners. For if one thing 
 wants salvation at the present time, it is labour. On one hand 
 we see the capacity for labour threatened by demoralizing ex- 
 travagance. On the other hand we see thousands of men who 
 are able and willing to work, starving and hungry, spending 
 their time in enforced idleness in meetings and demonstrations, 
 embittered by their own uselessness, spreading discontent, and 
 disturbing the peace of the community. And all for want of 
 organization! 
 
 To call this evil unavoidable would be a shame for human 
 intelligence. Where thousands of hands are ready to work 
 there ought to be bread, there .must be bread. The only thing 
 wanted is the brain to guide these thousands of hands. A 
 
i 9 2 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 former speaker, when asked about unemployment, said: "God 
 knows, I see no help." 
 
 Well, 7 dare to say I see it clearly enough. But it cannot 
 be given like a drug, with immediate effect. 
 
 Often, when I was practising medicine, patients came to me, 
 asking my help, wanting to be cured patients who were ill 
 in consequence of a disordered, dissolute Jife. And when I told 
 them that I could certainly cure them, if they would give up 
 their way of living, eat no big meals, drink less wine, and live 
 more soberly and wisely altogether, then they said, "Oh, no! I 
 want you to cure me at once with medicine, and without chang- 
 ing my way of life." These people I sent to another doctor. 
 
 And so it is with the question of the unemployed. Surely 
 their condition is not their fault, but the fault of the community; 
 and that fault has to be bettered methodically and slowly. 
 
 In the first place, no help for the unemployed can begin with 
 the unemployed themselves. I once tried to help two hundred 
 unemployed by starting a business enterprise with them; but it 
 failed, and now I know why it was bound to fail. Any business 
 man here will understand the reason; those workmen who 
 get first out of work are never the most capable. They may be 
 good, honest, useful, average workers; they are never the best 
 of their set. Employers are shrewd enough to keep the best for 
 the last. Any new scheme started with those middling forces 
 is bound to fail. 
 
 No, the only way of definitely dealing with the great evil is 
 to start a business organization wherein unemployment is 
 methodically prevented an organization that never turns off 
 its workmen a Labour-Salvation Army. Such an organization 
 is possible if it produces only, or principally, for the fixed market 
 of its own consumers; if it starts no trades on speculation; and 
 if it combines such different trades as to secure an employment 
 for all its members by shifting the unskilled hands or adjusting 
 the half-skilled for different work, according to seasons or 
 temporal want. 
 
 And this sort of organization, this commercial body, it is that 
 shall form the real commonwealth of the future. This is the 
 
TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 193 
 
 complete form of cooperation as Owen had it in his mind in 
 England seventy-five years ago. This shall be the economical 
 commonwealth that shall slowly outgrow and finally supplant 
 the political one. 
 
 I know it is difficult for most people to accept this prediction, 
 because it demands an effort of the imagination, and most 
 people have little or no imagination. But all new ideas have 
 needed that effort and have suffered from the absence of it. 
 
 This is why I bring before you the image of that widespread 
 and powerful organization, the Salvation Army. The Salva- 
 tion Army is not localized here or there, in small communities, 
 as people expect the new social form of life to be. It is spread 
 everywhere in the midst of the active world. Similarly the 
 organization of honest and righteous workers and of business 
 men must be universal, working everywhere, in the midst of 
 the old society growing up among it until it outgrows and 
 overspreads it, as a young, strong, fast-growing tree outgrows 
 and overspreads the underbrush. We don't want to cut down, 
 we simply want to grow. The rest will come by itself. 
 
 And like the Salvation Army we have to start small and grow 
 slowly in the beginning like the seed of the coming tree. We 
 need not be destructive, we may be only constructive. By 
 growing, the healthy tree will kill the thorns and poisonous 
 underbrush, and posterity will rest in its shade and bless those 
 that confided the seed to earth. Such a Salvation Army is far 
 more wanted than the existing one. What we need is a Salvation 
 Army which would save the good character, the capacities, the 
 morals, the intellect of mankind from wholesale destruction, 
 by unbounded private wealth and its consequent extravagance, 
 idleness and luxury; which would do business, hard, serious 
 business, without falling into the snare of self-destruction that 
 now awaits every prosperous business man; which would ac- 
 cumulate unbounded capital by trade and commerce, but 
 never allow it to be squandered by private individuals turned 
 into fools by too much liberty and power; which by a few 
 strict, simple rules would exclude the usurer and the parasite, 
 allowing no one of its members still fit for work to spend his 
 
194 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 time in idleness or the common goods in insipid amusements; 
 which would suffer neither spendthrifts in its organization, nor 
 capable men starving for want of work; which would take care 
 of its old workers and invalids in an honourable, not humilia- 
 ting, manner; which would encourage art and science with un- 
 bounded liberality as the great uplifting factors of mankind; 
 which would take care, with broad-minded generosity, of the 
 education of its younger members as the great well-spring of 
 human perfection. 
 
 Such a Labour-Salvation Army I am dreaming of. I am not 
 the man to bring it about, for I am only a dreamer of dreams. 
 But I pray you to recollect that all present reality had for its 
 father a dream in past ages; and that the dreamer of dreams, 
 in days gone by, was called a fool, just as I am often called now. 
 
 And again I want you not to be the slave of a word. You are 
 free to call my dream communism, collectivism, socialism, co- 
 operation, anti-parasitism, or to invent a brand-new label for it. 
 But this I maintain, that it has the creative power of vitality, 
 that it is no personal hobby of mine, but lives in the souls of 
 thousands and millions; and even that there may be some of 
 the youngest among you who shall see it turn some day into 
 glorious Reality. 
 
 Vide "Questions," in Appendix II. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 WHAT I SAID TO AMERICAN BUSINESS MEN 
 
 A DRESSING a number of business men at 
 a dinner of the Economic Club of New 
 York, at the Hotel Astor, New York City, 
 April, 1908, I said: 
 
 I will assume that I am speaking here to the most powerful 
 men of this great and busy country; to the minds that lead its 
 real activity, its restless activity of preparing food, clothing and 
 housing, safety and free development for the millions of their 
 race. I am speaking to the great American business men. I 
 may be mistaken, but I assume such men to be here, and I will 
 address myself to them. 
 
 And you, business men, are the great centres of spiritual 
 activity in the present period; exactly because that period is a 
 shifting and preliminary one. The house of material ease and 
 comfort, wherein mankind is to live for centuries and aeons 
 perhaps, and wherein he is to work for the attainment of his 
 higher aims, that house is in process of being built. It is not 
 yet finished; and you, business men, are the builders. You are 
 at this moment the most important men in the world, more im- 
 portant than artists, men of science, or thinkers. These all have 
 to make way for you, just as the tenant who is to live in the 
 house has to make way for the builders, masons, carpenters. 
 There is danger of their getting bricks on their heads, or of 
 tumbling into the lime. The tenants are in the way and are 
 treated as nuisances. 
 
196 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 But mind you, business men! There will come a day, when 
 the house is finished, when there will be a change, when the final 
 stage of human society the stage of real freedom and full 
 opportunity for development is attained; then we shall be ex- 
 tremely grateful for your work, but your importance will dimin- 
 ish, and your merit will be measured by this standard: in how 
 far you did business for the sake of business alone or for the 
 higher goals of human kind. .....,..... 
 
 Now there may be some of you who still think that every- 
 thing is going on as it ought to go.<^" God's in His heaven and 
 all's right with the world I "/But the fact that we this evening 
 are discussing the influence of socialism shows that the quotation 
 must be somewhere in error. 
 
 Socialism means for some of you a wild theory, expressing 
 stupid envy and discontent. For others, in other ranks, it 
 means the only good and real organization of society, just what 
 democracy is now meaning to most of you. But to all of you 
 socialism means something that is spreading, be it for good or 
 for ill, be it a danger or a blessing; it is spreading and it can be 
 no longer looked on with contempt or indifference. 
 
 There are two attitudes toward socialism, which to me are 
 equally unconvincing. The first is a sort of nervous, cowardly 
 fear, crying for strong measures and the law, wanting a whole- 
 sale destruction by the electric chair; the other, a light-hearted 
 contempt, waving off the question with a lofty gesture as some- 
 thing not worth worrying about. Both attitudes will simply in- 
 crease the tension and, if continued, will bring on some deplora- 
 ble outburst, which could have been prevented. If you are 
 hostile toward socialism, well never despise an enemy. There 
 are no more terrible wars than unprepared wars, where the 
 enemy is underrated. 
 
 And there is a form of socialism creeping now into the country 
 we are all too familiar with it in Europe which is preach- 
 ing war and provoking war. I mean the narrow, dogmatic 
 form of Marxist social-democracy. And I believe it to be my 
 special mission to bring before the American mind the falsity 
 of the assumption of these sectarians that they cover the whole 
 
TO AMERICAN BUSINESS MEN 197 
 
 field of socialism. A few days ago I had a conversation with 
 your President. And it struck me as an instance of his sharp 
 insight into the condition of the country that he fully realized 
 what the spreading of the Marxist dogma of class-conscious- 
 ness meant. He had especially wanted to see me because he 
 knew I was fighting against the dogma. And I have been 
 fighting it for nearly twenty years. Do not underrate the dan- 
 ger. It may be quite true that the American people will never 
 stand anything like a violent revolution; I agree that the hope 
 of an immediate overthrow of the present system, which some 
 of these fanatics profess, is more illusory here than anywhere. 
 Yet do not forget that even an attempt would be extremely 
 deplorable, and would cost certainly a great amount of money 
 and very likely blood. So if we can do anything to prevent it 
 I think the effort worth while. 
 
 And I know that something can be done to diminish the ten- 
 sion, to lessen the sentiment of bitterness, to give an outlet to 
 the pent-up feeling that social condition must be improved, 
 whether by good-will or by hate. That there is a pent-up feel- 
 ing of this sort, I reiterate; it would be folly to deny. The floods 
 are at the top of the dykes. By wise measures they may be 
 drawn into the right channel and become a blessing to all; or 
 through stupid contempt or neglect they may break through 
 and spread ruin and destruction. 
 
 Now let us begin by discarding any names and "isms" and 
 look to the real heart of things. What is it that is wanted and 
 generally approved, apart from party programmes and sec- 
 tarian creeds? 
 
 /Not equality of conditions but equality of opportunity. No 
 
 /nan an absolute master of his fellow men, no slavery indi- 
 
 / vidual freedom, but freedom limited and restricted by common 
 
 "K interest, so that no man's freedom shall infringe upon another 
 
 \ man's freedom. 
 
 Is there any man in this gathering who dares oppose this view? 
 And if you want to call me a socialist, do; all of my socialism 
 is in that simple proposition. So according to my view if you 
 endorse this proposition you are all socialists. 
 
ig8 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 And do you maintain that this limitation of individual free- 
 dom is not to your liking, and that you want to have it larger 
 in your own behalf, with no restriction upon your power to ag- 
 grandize yourself or to maim the liberty of others well, then, I 
 will take my revenge, and will label you anarchists, if you please! 
 
 Now, President Roosevelt warned me of the visionary man, 
 and I have some suspicion that he meant me. But if I am 
 visionary, I want you to be very practical. And you will per- 
 haps agree that the practical man is sometimes not the worse for 
 listening to the visionary. I know for instance a visionary who 
 has had some slight influence on the destinies of this very prac- 
 tical country. I trust I may mention the name of Christopher 
 Columbus without being suspected of trying to compare myself 
 with him. But I, too, like the visionary Columbus, once sailed 
 in my small and frail craft into the rough waters of business 
 life. I did not reach the land of promise, but I did undoubtedly 
 signal it, and you need not go very far to see what I have seen. 
 
 The great defect that I see in your social organization is 
 that it works badly. It is a leaking pump. Wealth is not 
 economically and justly distributed, but wasted for the most 
 part; and Mr. Hamilton Emerson, an American authority on 
 shop efficiency, has calculated that the United States is run on a 
 5 per cent, efficiency basis. 
 
 So I am looking for an organization that works better, with- 
 out waste. I want a pump that does not leak one that, 
 simply because it does not waste, will engender no despots or 
 slaves, no paupers, no unemployed, no malcontents, no drunk- 
 ards. And the way to stop the leak is cooperation. Now, may 
 I quote a few lines from history? Hoiyoake, writing of an event 
 which all the world now remembers as epoch-making, thus 
 describes a gathering of spinners at Rochdale, England, sixty- 
 five years ago: 
 
 At the close of the year 1843, on one of those dark, dense, disagreeable days 
 of our English December, a few poor weavers, out of employment and nearly 
 out of food, and quite out of heart with the social state, met together to dis- 
 cover what they could do to better their industrial condition. Managers had 
 
TO AMERICAN BUSINESS MEN 199 
 
 capital and shopkeepers had the advantage of stock; how could they succeed 
 without either? 
 
 They would commence the battle of life on their own account. They 
 would, as far as they were themselves concerned, supersede tradesmen, 
 mill owners and capitalists. Without experience, or knowledge, or funds, 
 they would turn merchants and manufacturers. The subscription 
 list was handed round the Stock Exchange would not think much 
 of the result. A dozen of the Lilliputian capitalists put down two pence each. 
 
 So this wild, pitiful dream was launched set adrift in mid-ocean, on the 
 stormy waters of the nineteenth century. 
 
 Thus writes the historian. And was it a pitiful dream? Well, 
 there is a movement known as the cooperative movement 
 in England. This movement comprehends a vast chain 
 of productive and distributive centres, which year by year 
 and inch by inch has elevated the standard of living of 
 all the lower middle class of England. In 1906 the whole- 
 sale department alone did a business of a hundred and four 
 millions; and this is an item only in the budget of the unified 
 cooperative movement of Europe. And from six nations of 
 Europe look back in retrospect to the Rochdale Pioneers of 
 1843, who caught the vision, and dared, and won, and as truly 
 founded the cooperative movement as Washington and his 
 compatriots founded your republic. The original Rochdale 
 enterprise still exists. It has an annual trade of one and a 
 quarter million, and employs three hundred workmen in its 
 workshops and stores. 
 
 But the Old World's cooperation is only partial. Productive 
 cooperation is somewhat developed, cooperative purchase and 
 distribution is largely developed, and to a certain extent you 
 have the same thing among your own Western farmers. This 
 sort of cooperation excludes the middleman. It stops one leak 
 an important one. But it stops only one, and I want you to 
 do better and stop all leaks. 
 
 I tried a practical experiment myself to show how far this 
 could be done. I tried to stop all leaks, and to have all pro- 
 duce go direct to the consumer, the consumer and producer 
 being unified by common interest, so that there should be no 
 
200 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 waste. The enterprise went wrong for one very simple reason; 
 bad management, which could not keep pace with the rapid 
 extension of business. But it furnished me ample proof of what 
 could be done by good management. 
 
 By good management on strict, severe business lines, a com- 
 pany can be started that goes in for production and distribution 
 of all the wants and commodities of life without waste. It can 
 stop all leaks, exclude all middlemen whose function is not 
 really necessary, exclude even the stockholder who draws from 
 the concern without giving of his effort in return, who sucks the 
 producer, who bleeds the business and weakens its growth. 
 And it would strive to keep the profits, above the liberal wages 
 and dividends to producers and consumers implied in the co- 
 operative system, within the business. 
 
 I say all wants and commodities of life. This is much in- 
 deed, and means a big thing, but you in America are not much 
 afraid of big things. On the contrary, I should be ashamed to 
 come before you with a mere trifle. Your cooperative business 
 must also exclude the landlord and private landowner, who 
 makes indeed a terrible leak and dangerous waste, especially 
 in America. And yet you must take care that the feeling of 
 ownership by the industrious tenant is kept; this can be 
 done by withholding the sale of real estate, but letting it 
 on long lease, even hereditary lease, under such conditions 
 that the tenant may use it as his full property on condition 
 that he shall not abuse his rights of ownership. I have quoted 
 the Rochdale Pioneers to show how a rich forest of coopera- 
 tion has grown from an acorn planted in the stern soil of mod- 
 ern industrialism. And now shall I attempt a local illustra- 
 tion? Just one, and only an illustration, I beg you to under- 
 stand. 
 
 Here I am told there are three or four hundred thousand 
 Italian immigrants banked up too many for your city's 
 needs. These Italians are in very large part from the agricul- 
 tural districts; their hereditary status is agricultural. Yet 
 your philanthropists look with doubt if not with despair 
 on propositions to assist, or even compel, these immi- 
 
TO AMERICAN BUSINESS MEN 201 
 
 grants to pass on to the interior of your vast country and 
 there, as farmers, assimilate with the body of sound American 
 life. 
 
 Well, gentlemen, I have talked with some of your experts on 
 immigration problems. They tell me the Italian will not go 
 to the interior because he gets lonely there; because he misses 
 his religion, his gaiety, his friends, and because he cannot under- 
 stand the social customs and cannot learn the American farming 
 methods quickly enough. But suppose the Italian went South 
 or West or right out here into New York state; suppose he went 
 not as a lonely individual, nor even as one family, but went 
 with scores of his kindred to a farm village, such as he remem- 
 bers in the lovely valleys of the Apennines or on the Lombardy 
 Plains of his native land. And suppose he went so capitalized 
 by 5 per cent, philanthropists that he could spend a year 
 learning, and would have the incentive of early proprietorship, 
 under perpetual lease, of his land. Would the Italian as an 
 American settler then fail? 
 
 He would not fail, I am sure. And he is clannish, and has 
 already many of the instincts of the cooperator; he could apply 
 such principals as I am speaking of to you; he could realize a 
 better form of society, and would have an inestimable advan- 
 tage, of an immediate sort, in his competition with the waste 
 and spoils and partial anarchy which prevail in the neighbour- 
 hood to which he can go. 
 
 This example I have quoted as an illustration. I quote it to 
 suggest the superiority of cooperation, or economic socialism, 
 over your present social machinery, even for the tackling of 
 recognized and pressing problems with which your present 
 machinery is confessedly unable to cope. 
 
 And now for the larger plan. For the sake of defmiteness we 
 will call it here "The Cooperative Company of America." 
 Complete theoretical detail can be had by anybody who is 
 interested detail applied to America as far as my own ex- 
 cessively limited experience with America goes. I will divide 
 the plan into "Theory," "Practical Problems," and "Pro- 
 posed Solutions." 
 
202 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 THE COOPERATIVE COMPANY OF AMERICA 
 
 1. Theory. 
 
 To provide a BUSINESS whose object will be to har- 
 monize the demands of producers and consumers 
 and to eliminate waste. 
 
 To increase gradually its activities and scope until 
 it takes in all industries. 
 
 To make this business economic exclusively entirely 
 divorced from religious or political entanglements. 
 
 2. Practical Problems. 
 
 1. To obtain capital. 
 
 2. To provide wise, intelligent, and able direction of 
 
 the company's affairs. 
 
 3. To insure continuous or practically continuous 
 
 activity and employment for all the members. 
 
 4. To arrange for an indefinitely extended existence 
 
 and extension. 
 
 3. Proposed Solutions. 
 
 1. Invite capital and offer inducements for its co- 
 
 operation and use. Offer stock and pay divi- 
 dends the larger the better but make a pro- 
 vision that the stock may be replaced within a 
 limited period by 5 per cent, first mortgage 
 bonds, in an amount equal to the book value of 
 the stock. This reduces the dividend outgo 
 and loss to the corporation to an interest ex- 
 pense; and a sinking fund should be provided to 
 retire the bonds ultimately and to retain the 
 ownership in the entire property, real estate 
 and personal, in the hands of the workers, 
 directive as well as productive. 
 
 2. Obtain and control the very highest order of 
 
 intelligence and skill, professionally and me- 
 chanically, and the very best directive ability 
 by providing the opportunity to satisfy am- 
 bition, present and future, and then to satisfy 
 as to remuneration. If rightly conducted the 
 
TO AMERICAN BUSINESS MEN 203 
 
 organization should be able to do this without 
 difficulty. 
 
 3. (A) Produce the various commodities and offer 
 the production by improved and cooper- 
 ative methods, in the most economical 
 manner and of the finest and best qual- 
 ities i. e., be able to produce for less 
 than any one else. 
 
 (B) Cooperate with the customer, the client. 
 Share profits with him, retaining only 
 enough to insure that the business of the 
 organization and the interests of its 
 members are in constantly bettering con- 
 dition. To be unselfish with your own 
 organization you have to appeal to the 
 selfish interest of your source of revenue 
 your customer. 
 
 4 Provide for the relinquishment of a member's 
 stock on the severance of his connection with 
 the organization. This stock to be purchased 
 by the company and so to be available for 
 new members. 
 
 So much for the outline. I leave it to you whether there is a 
 fundamental error or an essential impracticability in it. None 
 has been pointed out to me yet, and I have discussed the plan 
 with some of the best business men in America. There are a 
 few concerns in America working along such lines now, and they 
 are eminently prosperous. But they apply the principals only 
 in a special branch. The great strength and tremendous pros- 
 perity can be obtained only by the combination of various 
 trades and agriculture, gradually established and extended along 
 the lines of least resistance. The margin between actual cost 
 and retail price is very high in this country; rents are very high; 
 the waste of leakage in the form of divided profits, advertise- 
 
 *Vide, Appendix I. Also Mr. William T. Hoggson's article, "The Co-productive 
 Company of America, " in the Survey, September, 1909. 
 
204 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 ment and the like is enormous; and an intelligent stoppage 
 of the leaks, foregoing high immediate profits, will have astonish- 
 ing results. 
 
 You see, if you call my philosophy socialism, you must at 
 least admit that it is a socialism that pays. And at this 
 point I may give my reasons for thinking economic action 
 preferable to political action, and for believing that economic 
 action is absolutely necessary in addition to any legislation, if 
 violent antagonisms are to be avoided. 
 
 The simple reason is that legislation implies the formation 
 of a majority and the compulsion of a minority. Now, let a 
 better social organization be never so desirable, never so possible, 
 there will not soon be won over a majority who will believe in it 
 without proof; and there will always remain, for a long time 
 to come, a minority who will prefer the old private freedom with 
 its liberty to transgress upon the freedom of others. Legis- 
 lation would mean compulsion to these latter, and would require 
 a majority which would believe without proof or practice. 
 
 Whereas by my plan, any minority may try and test its opin- 
 ions by practice; it can give proof and example without com- 
 pulsion, and will work educationally and not by force. On the 
 other hand, when, later on, the majority has been won over to 
 the newer system, if there is a minority which prefers the old 
 freebooter's and pirate's freedom, it can be free to do so, and 
 any individual may be free to abstain from cooperation and may 
 fight his fight single-handed. All this is impossible if reliance 
 is placed entirely or primarily on legislative methods. 
 
 The idea at once occurs: Why has not a system that will pay 
 so well been tried ere now? The answer is simple: Because man- 
 kind is apt to look more for immediate private gain than for 
 indirect advantage in the long run. And the short-sightedness 
 of men is the reason why so many measures, as for example the 
 taking of small profits on a large scale, the liberal payment of 
 workers, the policy of interesting them in the business, have had 
 to wait until quite recently to be tried. And yet they have 
 proved eminently profitable. There is nothing so costly as 
 egoism, and nothing pays better than a little unselfishness. 
 
TO AMERICAN BUSINESS MEN 205 
 
 For the rest, most of the objections which I have heard raised 
 have grown out of preconceived and utterly erroneous ideas 
 of what was really wanted. I do not advise equal wages for 
 the workers, but would liberally give to every man what his 
 labour is worth in the labour market. I do not propose an im- 
 mediate entrance of the workers into the control of the business, 
 but a gradual and prudent education in the democratic handling 
 of business. I do not advocate any kind of extreme, but a 
 businesslike procedure along American lines, and this includes 
 everything that legitimate business legitimately does in the effort 
 to aggrandize itself with only this difference, that the profits 
 will be kept as far as possible within the business and used for 
 extension and for the common good of all those who are engaged. 
 I want no sacrifice of the incentive toward efficiency, but only a 
 combination of material gain with moral satisfaction, and the 
 elimination of the useless and superfluous. Only one objection 
 with real force has to my knowledge been raised; it is that such 
 a company, after becoming prosperous, would be tempted to 
 close its doors and to cease expanding. This has to be antici- 
 pated by careful rules and the preservation of a high moral 
 standard. 
 
 Now, gentlemen, I should wish you to you can, if you will 
 beat all the great cooperative organizations of the Old World. 
 The other day I got a letter from one of you, a great business 
 leader in this country and a very wealthy man. He said: 
 "I do not believe that you will ultimately get much satisfaction 
 as the result of your effort to interest rich people in social mat- 
 ters worth doing." Thus says one of yourselves, gentlemen. 
 Yet this same rich man offered ten thousand dollars toward 
 this plan of mine. 
 
 Now I am going to challenge you. What this man said has 
 been repeated to me from all ranks, especially from the lower 
 ranks. "Don't be a fool or expect valuable social action from 
 wealthy American business men." But, gentlemen, I want to 
 be that fool; and I throw the challenge in your face. Are you 
 going to put my faith to shame? Or are you going indeed to 
 start a great and magnificent commercial structure, a wonder 
 
206 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 and astonishment to the whole world and a blessing and source 
 of eternal gratitude to posterity? 
 
 That is my challenge. To me personally it is all the same, 
 for I should have no interest in the enterprise beyond the pride 
 of having contributed a little toward its realization. I shall 
 leave the work entirely to you; it is not my affair, but yours. 
 
 But to you it is everything. It is your opportunity to show 
 whether the cynics are right when they say that you wealthy 
 men have a different morale from other human beings, a class- 
 morale as they say; that your only satisfaction lies in the pleasure 
 of accumulation and the power of possession, and in nothing 
 higher or better. 
 
 That is what these dogmatists, these class-fighters, these fan- 
 atics are accustomed to say. This is their strength, their 
 power to make the dogmas spread lies in the doctrine that 
 sooner can blood be drawn from a stone than fundamentally 
 beneficial social action from a wealthy business man. This is 
 the doctrine that I have spent twenty years in the effort to 
 combat. 
 
 So, gentlemen, the glove falls at your feet. Will you smile 
 at it scornfully and put these class-fighters in the right? 
 
 I believe not. I know, for sure, that all of you have more or 
 less of religious sentiment. You want to be religious men, you 
 want to serve God in your own way. But do you know what 
 is the true and only test of whether you are serving God? I 
 will tell you. The test is the inward, deep and indubious 
 feeling of the sublime. You know what I mean. We all know 
 what this feeling means, we have all felt some glimmer of thai 
 holy sentiment. 
 
 But now I ask you again : Have you ever felt that sentiment 
 of the sublime in your daily actions, in your business activity? 
 If not, well, then, I assure you that you have not been serving 
 God with a conscience. For there is no other test; and this 
 holy sentiment can be felt and ought to be felt in all human 
 activity. I have felt it, sometimes, in the smallest of business 
 matters, because I have known in large manner why I did them. 
 And this sentiment is so precious that I would not exchange 
 
TO AMERICAN BUSINESS MEN 207 
 
 it for all your millions, no, not for all the millions you could 
 offer together. And the poorest man on earth I deem him to 
 be who never felt it. 
 
 But now I offer you a chance to feel that sentiment, and with- 
 out any sacrifice. You need not lose, you need not give, you 
 may keep all you have. I propose only an investment of a 
 safe and sane sort, and you have only to use some of your best 
 business ability and long experience to set this enterprise in 
 motion and to keep it straight in the lines of a higher business 
 morality. than hitherto. 
 
 And then you will feel a sentiment of the sublime going along 
 with customary business actions, and you will feel that you serve 
 God even in your life and your work of every day. And why? 
 Simply because you will be doing what that profoundly relig- 
 ious man, the founder of this Republic, George Washington, 
 urged you to do. And 'when you pass the triumphal arch at 
 Washington Place and look up at the words carved thereon 
 they will flame on you with a new meaning. And you will 
 perceive what in business is possible and is needed: to raise a 
 standard to which the wise and honest may repair. 
 
 And then also, gentlemen, I trust that we may add that the 
 event lies in the hand of God. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 A LAY SERMON ON THE PLAIN WHAT I WOULD SAY 
 
 TO THE AVERAGE AMERICAN READER 
 
 I AM impressed very strongly, dear American 
 reader, with the notion that you do not like 
 deliberation at least not in abstractions. You 
 want hard facts, something concrete and tangible, 
 and you have no time for dreams and reflective 
 musings. 
 
 Very well, but what are you in such a hurry for? 
 For your own happiness? Not so; for Happy 
 Humanity, if you please, though you may not be 
 aware of it yourself. All of you, business men, 
 statesmen, men of science, you are working for 
 something beyond the individual, though most of you 
 work under the delusion that it is personal happiness 
 which is your aim. But think of the absurdity of 
 working and worrying until your last breath for 
 something that slips off with that very same last 
 breath! People say you care mainly for dollars. 
 Nonsense! it is the fun of the game you care for. 
 But what makes you enjoy the game? Instinct, in- 
 born qualities, driving you on, whether you are 
 aware of it or not, to accomplish something be- 
 
 208 
 
A LAY SERMON 209 
 
 yond yourself, something for the benefit of Happy 
 Humanity. It is the bee's fun to make honey 
 but not for himself. He will never taste what he 
 gathers. He works for the race, like you. 
 
 Sometimes you call it "Progress"; lately you have 
 been talking of "Evolution." It all comes to the 
 same thing. It is some grand, glorious Future, 
 worth living for and dying for. Call it the mil- 
 lennium if you like, call it the Kingdom of God ? 
 though this is said to be "not of this world." The 
 American Kingdom of God must have some con- 
 nection with this world, I am sure. And so must 
 Happy Humanity. 
 
 But leave the goal aside. What is material to us 
 is that the road to that great Future is momentarily 
 blocked. And when there is a thick block in London 
 City the policeman raises his hand and you have 
 to wait. You may either swear, or joke, or meditate, 
 but you have to wait. Hurry would not do. 
 
 Every entanglement demands some deliberation. 
 Sherlock Holmes, before a very dark puzzle, sits 
 down, lights his pipe, and muses. It's no use going 
 ahead. It would be dangerous and ruinous. 
 
 And yet this is what America is doing. It is 
 pushing on frantically in a blocked road. I will show 
 you the fitness of this metaphor. It is appallingly 
 true. 
 
 There are a hundred remarkable features of our 
 present social condition, all denoting the same thing. 
 
210 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 They all show absurdity, inner contradiction, the 
 result of confusion. If you will have a little patience 
 and follow my story, I will give you instances. 
 
 What do you think, to begin with, of starvation 
 as the result of over-production! Charming, isn't 
 it? Most delicious. 
 
 But this is rather hackneyed. Another less con- 
 spicuous absurdity is the wickedness of philanthropy 
 - terrible thing when you come to realize it. It 
 makes one's head reel and one's fingers tingle. When 
 we try to be very good, exceptionally good, Christ- 
 like, then we are sure to do more harm than in any 
 other way. It is the one reproach I have been used 
 to hear since I tried to mend my life and do some- 
 thing for mankind, the one bitter, scathing, scornful 
 reproach and alas ! how well deserved that I 
 was too philanthropic. Philanthropy the word 
 intended to mean "love of mankind!" now de- 
 notes a vice, and a philanthropist is a dangerous and 
 harmful individual. Every business man knows 
 that philanthropy in business is wrong. It engenders 
 all sorts of evil, laziness, corruption, deceit. It 
 brings ruin and disorder. It slackens progress. The 
 business man is quite right. He has to be clever 
 and hard, not philanthropic. 
 
 But here again I come into confusion: is not 
 all human activity business? And how can any- 
 thing be wrong in business and right outside of it? 
 
 Philanthropy in our days, at least the usual com- 
 
A LAY SERMON 211 
 
 monplace form of it, is never right. It is always 
 pernicious. It is like covering up dirty wounds with 
 sweet paste. It is like the tenderness of a careless 
 mother who leaves her baby alone with a pincushion, 
 and when the pin is well sticking in baby's throat 
 and the poor thing crying for mercy, soothes it and 
 hugs it and gives it sweets, and never looks for the 
 pin. It is like perfuming instead of washing. It is 
 like burning incense in a stinking room instead of 
 cleaning it up and opening the windows. It is to 
 society what a deep drink is to the miserable poor. 
 It is a highly anti-social indulgence in the gratifica- 
 tion of personal sentiment. 
 
 Philanthropy is a social narcotic, dulling society's 
 pains, giving illusions and visions of goodness and 
 generosity, of charity and gratitude, where there is 
 really nothing but injustice, sentimentality, servility, 
 humiliation, and hypocrisy. And yet Christ taught 
 us to be liberal to the poor, and to be charitable. 
 True, but He did not teach us to be liberal to the poor 
 of our own making. Nor did He teach us to be 
 charitable at the cost of others. 
 
 There is no good in commonplace philanthropy, 
 because it is unjust, unwise, and misleading. 
 
 There is no good in giving alms, because it makes 
 people look for alms. 
 
 There is no good in bread-lines, because it creates 
 the bread-line loafer. 
 
 There is no good in making city slum life attractive 
 
212 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 or tolerable, because it will attract people to the 
 cities who ought not to be there. 
 
 It is exasperating to see the waste of millions of 
 dollars, the waste of high-minded effort, of noble 
 self-denial even, in a struggle that makes the confu- 
 sion only worse. 
 
 While I was looking for the root of the evil, thor- 
 oughly disposed to apply the axe there when I should 
 have found it, I failed because I was too philan- 
 thropic. I had not the hardness, the sharpness of 
 the business men. I indulged too much in personal 
 sentiment. 
 
 In the first place, I was not careful enough in my 
 selection of the men who were to help me. This was 
 my first important blunder, the principal cause of 
 my failure, a mistake which I shall most rigorously 
 guard against in my next experiment. 
 
 Let us look at the problem in the clearest, simplest 
 form. I wanted to live as a socialist, as a social 
 being, as a comrade among comrades. The rules of 
 such a life are nothing but: "Do not cheat your 
 fellow man. Do not keep him away from the sources 
 of wealth, in order to dominate and exploit him." 
 Nobody, nobody I ever met, dared to object openly 
 to these rules. This shows that they belong to true 
 human nature, and are universal. They are the 
 only way to Happy Humanity. But how can any 
 man, nowadays, be sure that he does not deceive 
 his fellow man, or dominate him? For if he is not 
 
A LAY SERMON 213 
 
 doing it consciously and on purpose, he is doing it 
 by proxy. 
 
 When I put my money in a bank, the bank is 
 handling it in some way I do not know. Yet it is 
 my money and my responsibility. If I give it to a 
 broker and let him buy and sell, he will enrich me, 
 at the cost of others, or make me lose, to the profit 
 of others; but all with my responsibility. If I buy 
 and sell, or let others buy and sell for me, I am always 
 trying to cheat somebody out of his money. It is 
 done for me, to my profit or my loss, and I share the 
 responsibility. 
 
 Whatever occupation I have, I get my money, 
 and by means of it the necessities of life, through 
 the hands of others, and I do not know whether they 
 keep the rules of humanity. They may cheat and 
 gamble and exploit. And I have to live by the 
 money or, in other words, by the power which I get 
 from them. I share the profits of their activity, but 
 also I share the responsibility of their misdoings. I 
 may be the most useful, the most disinterested, the 
 most generous of men; I get my money that is, 
 my power from unclean sources and I participate 
 therefore in the most objectionable practices. 
 
 As a poet or an artist I may get a high price for 
 my creations, and I may feel the satisfaction of living 
 by honourable means. But this is very likely a 
 delusion. For my books and paintings may be 
 bought by swindlers and gamblers and oppressors. 
 
214 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 They pay those high prices out of their ill-gotten 
 power; they make me their accomplice by making 
 me use that power to my benefit. 
 
 The clothes I wear may be made by poor, under- 
 paid workmen; the bread I eat may come from the 
 harvests stolen from starving Asiatic natives or 
 Russian peasants. All the work necessary to keep 
 me alive in comfort may be underpaid, wrung out 
 of miserable serfs or wage-slaves somewhere on the 
 globe. I do not know, I do not care, and yet I share 
 the dreadful responsibility by profiting by it. There 
 is no escape from this burden not for the moder- 
 ately paid professor, nor for the better remunerated 
 statesman, minister, lawyer, or doctor. 
 
 Some will say: "I neither get nor spend more 
 than is my due." But who knows what is " his due " ? 
 Who can say what a man's activity is worth? It is 
 worth what he can get for it. In this age of con- 
 fusion a man may get millions for the most useless, 
 base, and pernicious activity. And any rich, danger- 
 ous scoundrel may direct all our activities by the 
 power of his money and make us his accomplices 
 and his lackeys, simply by buying whatever work 
 we have to sell. 
 
 Stop! Here we are in the middle of the block. 
 Confusion right and left! Voices rising in all direc- 
 tions out of the muddle "I am not a swindler!" 
 "I am an honest worker!" "I am useful!" "I do 
 not speculate!" "I do not gamble!" "I gained 
 
A LAY SERMON 215 
 
 my money by hard work!" "I am paid for good 
 service!" "I give large sums to educational pur- 
 poses!" "I am a Christian!" "And how do you 
 live, if you please?" "And what do you propose 
 then?" 
 
 This chorus of indignation shows clearly that these 
 people are all socialists, and want to keep the social- 
 istic rules. Even the doubt of their integrity irri- 
 tates them. They all want to be honest, useful, and 
 to get nothing more than their due. So do I; but I 
 know, what they don't seem to perceive, that there 
 is not the faintest possibility of an approximately 
 fair valuation of our activity. We get what we can, 
 by means fair or foul. And our fair means are only 
 apparently fair. We are doing our foul deeds by 
 proxy. We let them be done by others in such a way 
 that it seems as if nobody were to blame. 
 
 The managers do their duty, raising the dividends; 
 the brokers do their duty, buying and selling to your 
 advantage; you do your duty, taking care of the 
 fortune of your family. Everything is for duty! 
 Duty and honesty all round as far as the eye can 
 reach. 
 
 On the top of the rock of social structure, in the 
 broad sunlight of justice, you dine with your family, 
 a happy, innocent crowd. Those who are crushed 
 underneath, you don't perceive. Yet it is your 
 weight as much as anything else that crushes them. 
 Meanwhile you are radiating Christian virtues, 
 
216 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 loving your enemies. . . . This is the ugly part 
 of it. 
 
 In saying such things as I am saying now, one 
 always irritates people, because they take it as a 
 reproach. They look at you as if you were teaching 
 them morals from a sinless altitude. But, with your 
 leave, dear American readers, it is not my moral 
 code, but yours, that you are violating. I don't talk 
 of "loving my enemies." I very rarely go to church 
 and I never call myself a Christian. But you do. 
 
 I cannot blame any man because he lives on the 
 booty of the swindlers. We all have to do it. We 
 all have to share the responsibility of the social evils. 
 We all sit on the rock crushing the weak and the 
 poor. But you cannot blame me for smiling at your 
 " Christian virtues," can you? 
 
 Christian virtues, however, we may safely put off 
 till the millennium. Happy Humanity will grow 
 them not we. 
 
 I think it is pardonable at this moment to allow 
 swindling, cheating, extortion, exploitation of the 
 poor to go on with our sanction and to our benefit. 
 We are all practising the evil, no class excepted. All 
 classes are scrambling for the top of the rock, rich 
 and poor alike. They are all afraid of being crushed. 
 The eagerness, the unscrupulous rush for money and 
 power, is equally strong among the lowest and the 
 highest. It is strongest among those who are in the 
 way of transition from the bottom to the top. All 
 
A LAY SERMON 217 
 
 try to get as much as possible, as soon as possible, 
 in any way possible. 
 
 But what I think unpardonable, and very, very 
 objectionable indeed, is to profess, at the very time 
 that you are trampling down your rivals, such im- 
 possible virtues as loving your enemies, and pre- 
 tending that you agree with the Sermon on the 
 Mount.. This is the worst obstruction in the block, 
 the thick of the muddle. How can we ever join in 
 an honest effort for a higher moral standard of 
 society so long as we practise the hypocrisy of con- 
 fessing a creed of such unattainable loftiness? 
 
 No, I am not getting my livelihood in a better way 
 than you. I too am profiting by the booty of the 
 swindler; I am crushing the poor under my weight; 
 I am living at the cost of the weak. I tried to 
 escape, but it is no good. 
 
 But, indeed, I have something to propose, if you 
 will kindly listen. But the exasperating thing is 
 that although I have told it over and over again, 
 and although it is so simple, so clear, so obvious that 
 I never found a man who could bring a plausible 
 argument against it, and although they have all said, 
 "Of course, but , " they have nevertheless all 
 stopped and turned the other way their own way. 
 
 I proposed that those of us who really want to live 
 without cheating our neighbours and without monop- 
 olizing the sources of wealth should join and work 
 together, and try to find our livelihood by our own 
 
218 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 work and mutual aid, until all our needs should be 
 supplied by ourselves and our comrades, under just 
 and fair conditions; and cheating, swindling, extor- 
 tion, and deceit should be entirely eliminated from 
 our group. I proposed to the labourer, the honest 
 worker, who is complaining and envious of the idle 
 rich, that he should work only for those who work 
 for him, leaving the idle rich alone. 
 
 "Of course! of course! that's it! that's very 
 fine," they say. And then all those enemy-lovers 
 and those caring-for-their-neighbours-as-for-them- 
 selves altruists, and those hungry-and-thirsty-for- 
 justice judges, and those fervent upholders of fair 
 play and equity, those advocates of peace in the 
 world, those followers of the prophet of meekness 
 and humbleness, those every-Sunday-praying-for- 
 the-Kingdom-of-God enthusiasts they turned on 
 their heels and went to their business, to fight 
 for their families, at the cost of their neighbours' 
 families. Fighting for as much as possible, as soon 
 as possible, in any way possible, or, to be accurate, 
 in any safe way possible. 
 
 This is so extremely exasperating, because it is so 
 absurd. Why in the world is a thing, so reasonable 
 as my proposal, not done and carried through long 
 ago? Nobody could explain it to me. They said: 
 "It has been tried and always failed." 
 
 Now, this is not at all a convincing argument. 
 Steamboats had been tried and always failed before 
 
A LAY SERMON 219 
 
 Fulton. Railways had been tried and always failed 
 before George Stephenson. Airships and aero- 
 planes had been tried and always failed before Zep- 
 \ pelin and Wright. 
 
 \ Are all these millions of Christ-adorers not able 
 to bring about something so fundamentally desir- 
 able according to their creed? 
 
 Besides, their argument is not true. I know the 
 history of about two hundred little groups, in Europe 
 and in America, which started with somewhat the 
 same idea. They were not all failures. About half 
 of them showed clearly that there was nothing es- 
 sentially impossible in the idea. 
 
 Why is not at least one third of the civilized world 
 energetically busy trying to realize a thing so fine and 
 so necessary that it ought to come before all our 
 other activities? Nobody could explain it. I know 
 now the reason. But the whole thing is so wonder- 
 fully, so miraculously absurd that I cannot help 
 feeling still a little exasperated when I see you 
 Americans rush and push and crush, and nobody 
 seeming to perceive what ought to be done first of all. 
 
 "You are naive," said the Hollanders. "The 
 world is too wicked." The result of the latest poll 
 in Holland shows that at least two thirds of these 
 Hollanders are believers in the Sermon on the Mount. 
 At least two thirds are praying for the Kingdom of 
 God every Sunday and doing their best to keep 
 the world wicked the six other days. It ought to 
 
220 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 be wicked, you know, because it's in the Holy 
 Scriptures. 
 
 "You are a bourgeois-idealist," said the Marxist 
 social-democrats. This label is on annulment of all 
 argument. It wipes you out. After this you may 
 go "pipen in an ivy-leaf," as Father Chaucer used 
 to say. 
 
 The Marxists are no idealists. They too have their 
 Holy Scripture, which is the most ingenuously elabor- 
 ate tissue of abstruse nonsense ever written. They 
 believe in class-war, historic materialism, and in the 
 scientific valuation of human activity by the 
 measure of time. This dogma is just as inscrutable 
 to the outsider and as clear to the adept as the 
 dogma of predestination. But though it is beyond 
 human understanding, there are thousands of poor- 
 in-spirit who believe in it, through grace, quia 
 absurdum. 
 
 But the Marxists are a strong and restlessly active 
 body. They spend thousands of dollars and tremen- 
 dous amounts of energy in getting their dogmas 
 accepted and their candidates elected. And they 
 succeed because they know how to use the important 
 forces of authority and discipline exactly as the church 
 does. They use the authority of a doctrine and the 
 discipline of a party. And they bring into service 
 that important quality of men that we lately learned 
 to call suggestibility, and that other, called gre- 
 gariousness, that makes them run with the crowd. 
 
A LAY SERMON 221 
 
 In my efforts to spread my doctrine of co-produc- 
 tion, I had failed to take these qualities into account, 
 and that is the reason I was so much puzzled at the 
 general inertia with regard to my simple and reason- 
 able proposal. 
 
 No proposal, however obviously excellent and 
 necessary, will find followers by the mere force of 
 its reasonableness. There must be some authorita- 
 tive pushing man behind. No ordinary man will be 
 drawn out of the sphere of his own activity by the 
 force of reason alone. He wants some exceptionally 
 strong influence to push him, or some general cur- 
 rent to draw him. He may suppose he always acts 
 rationally; the truth is that he is always following 
 irrational impulses of suggestion or belief. And 
 because nobody is very acutely conscious of this 
 peculiarity himself, nobody could explain what 
 seemed such a puzzle to me. 
 
 Now I know that if I wished to make people move, 
 I ought to have pushed them, and to have used dis- 
 cipline and authority. I was not only too much of a 
 philanthropist in my first experiment, I was also 
 too much of an anarchist. I made my proposal, met 
 with no argument of any value against it, and con- 
 sequently waited till people came to join me. And 
 when some came I supposed that they had rightly 
 understood me, and would know what they were 
 about and would do what was wanted without my 
 selecting them or commanding or pushing them. 
 
222 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 I see the business men among my readers smile. 
 They can exactly foretell the sequel of my story. 
 This sort of proceeding can only lead to inefficiency, 
 quarrelling, disorder, loss of money, bankruptcy, 
 general distrust, and disappointment. Quite so, 
 gentlemen; you are right. This was the sequel. 
 But you have no right to blame me or to smile. 
 It was that counfounded "love-your-enemy" and 
 " give-good-for-evil " talk of yours that was to 
 blame. It was your cant about Brotherhood and 
 Humility and other Christian virtues. 
 
 I was an artist and a man of science. How could 
 I realize, without learning it by hard experience, that 
 these Christian virtues, on which our whole civilized 
 society is said to be based, are at this moment en- 
 tirely worthless and pernicious when it comes to 
 actual doings and -facts? How could I suppose, 
 without having it rubbed in roughly, that you, 
 though knowing all this, would be so devilishly ab- 
 surd as to go on confessing and preaching these vir- 
 tues every seventh day? 
 
 And here I have struck another confusion, not yet 
 mentioned before, the confusion about anarchism. 
 
 The cartoons of Punch represent anarchy as an 
 unpleasant sort of female lunatic in disorderly dress, 
 with snakes for hair, a bloody dagger in one hand, 
 the torch of destruction in the other, and a very 
 black background of smoke, thunderclouds, and 
 ruins behind. I suppose this belongs to the excep- 
 
A LAY SERMON 223 
 
 tional things that Americans like in Punch. Proud- 
 hon, one of the first upholders of anarchistic philoso- 
 phy, said: "/' anarchie, c'est I'ordre!" Not so bad 
 this either, in the way of confusion, I should say! 
 
 Now let me show you how easily this knot may be 
 unravelled. Anarchy means absence of authority - 
 but not of all authority, only human authority. 
 
 It is true that the anarchists of the last century 
 said: "Ni Dieu, ni maitre!" But they never 
 added "ni Verite" And we must remember that 
 in the beginning of the last century the ideas Truth 
 or Reason were often used when people wanted 
 to speak of God. Indeed, anarchistic philosophy 
 never meant anything else than to proclaim the 
 exclusive authority of Reason or Truth, which we 
 may thus interpret: "No man another man's mas- 
 ter, but all men obedient to one higher authority." 
 Tolstoy says, "to the authority of God and Jesus." 
 That other great Russian, Kropotkin, his fellow 
 apostle of anarchism, says, "to that of Truth, Rea- 
 son, and Science." According to my view the two 
 are not so far apart. 
 
 No human authority, only the Divine authority of 
 
 Truth. 
 No man another man's master, all obedient children 
 
 of one God. 
 
 This is the true anarchistic Ideal as understood, to 
 mention only one name, by a poet like Shelley. 
 
224 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 Now I should like to ask you, American readers, 
 declared adorers of the Prophet who said that no 
 man can serve two masters, you who call yourselves 
 democrats and who have shed torrents of blood to 
 abolish the mastership of man over man, what your 
 objection is to this Ideal? 
 
 / have an objection, which I will tell you. 
 
 I have found by personal experience, by a practical 
 test, that ordinary humans of the present day, when 
 you set them free from human authority, run wild. 
 They begin by doing what they like, which is very 
 rarely what you like; then they take from you what 
 they can, and when you object to being fleeced en- 
 \ tirely, they call you a despot. 
 
 I have also observed that, when you tell people to 
 
 / disregard all human authority and to trust only to 
 
 Higher Authority, they turn crazy. If you call that 
 
 Higher Authority Jesus or God, they generally be- 
 
 \ come impossible and ridiculous monks, ascetics, 
 
 \or cranks; if you call it Truth, Reason, or Science, 
 
 then they blow you up. 
 
 This is my objection. But you see, I never pre- 
 tended to be a Christian like you, American reader! 
 I never declared solemnly, as you do or as you ought 
 to do every Sunday, my willingness to offer my right 
 cheek when beaten on my left. If I were a Christian, 
 my objection would be inconsistent. I should have 
 to let myself be fleeced and blown up meekly. And 
 to the only man of our time who has been, to my 
 
A LAY SERMON 225 
 
 knowledge, something like an approach to a real 
 Christian, the venerable Tolstoy, this was no ob- 
 jection. Also my excellent friend Kropotkin, that 
 gentlest of gentlemen, seems to put such an unlimited 
 trust in the power of Divine Authority that he 
 would run the risk of letting all mankind loose, sure 
 that no pandemonium would ensue and that all 
 would turn to order and discipline by itself. 
 
 It was the opinion of these philosophers that 
 anarchy, though it resulted in quarrels and disorder 
 when tried by a few score of men, would neverthe- 
 less lead to supreme peace and harmony when the 
 whole of Humanity tried it all at once. This ap- 
 pears to me like saying that, though a jump from the 
 first floor window might result in disaster, a jump 
 from the top of the Singer Building would be quite 
 safe, because we should grow wings on the way. It's 
 only a question of daring. Or this that if a trio 
 or quartette of unskilled musicians was not a success, 
 this was no proof that a full orchestra of them would 
 not be harmonious. 
 
 Now, musical people will understand me when I 
 say that I consider a rendition by a string quar- 
 tette or quintette among the highest, most perfect of 
 musical performances, provided the performers are 
 masters on their instruments. Then they need no 
 leader, no authority. Music is their authority, Har- 
 mony and Rhythm are their leaders, Divine Beauty is 
 their master. This is an instance of ideal anarchism. 
 
226 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 But a full orchestra, where all the performers are 
 not great masters, needs a leader, and a good one. 
 On the power of his strict discipline depends the 
 beauty and harmony of the whole. His personality 
 commands and pervades the performance. 
 
 I agree, however, that, if we could imagine a 
 great chorus, or a great orchestra, entirely com- 
 posed of artists so great that they would need 
 no leader at all this orchestra would surely form 
 the most perfect Harmony and achieve the Highest 
 Beauty. 
 
 Now I have good reasons for my opinion that, in 
 the field of practical activity, there are still very few 
 consummate artists among men. From which it is 
 clear to me that they do want, for a long while to 
 come, strong and strict leaders who know how to 
 keep discipline. They want Human Authority, like 
 the people of Israel, to whom was given a king, 
 because of their sins. 
 
 But, on the other hand, realizing that human 
 nature is essentially plastic and Humanity not yet 
 full grown, I see no reason to deny beforehand the 
 possibility of some better arrangement. Men may 
 become some day all perfect players in the orchestra 
 of Life; they may all grow to have the same delicate 
 sense of rhythm and harmony and the same perfect 
 obedience to One Divine Authority. That would 
 mean that all grown-up individuals were of age in a 
 broader sense than merely in years it would mean 
 
A LAY SERMON 227 
 
 that Mankind had outgrown its infancy, that Happy 
 Humanity was attained. 
 
 My idea about Ideal Anarchy, therefore, is to post- 
 pone it till the millennium. Here the American 
 reader and I agree, I suppose. But with a difference. 
 
 In the American vernacular "till the millennium" 
 is tantamount to ad kalendas Grcecas, which seems 
 to imply a very unchristian doubt of what is so 
 decidedly predicted by the founder of Christianity. 
 I fear that from your lips the phrase would mean the 
 eternal continuation of an enslaved and confused 
 mankind, which would go once a week into special 
 buildings called churches, for the purpose of indulg- 
 ing in the illusion of future Liberation. It would 
 mean the everlasting absurdity of a Society toiling 
 under the whip of envy and greed, wearing for six 
 days the convict dress, with its shameful marks of 
 deceit and malice and donning on Sundays the 
 borrowed angel-garb of brotherly love, justice, and 
 boundless gentleness. 
 
 To me the words mean a glorious promise, for 
 which I am willing to give the best of my life, though 
 I shall never see the realization of it with these eyes 
 of mine. For though I do not at all pretend to be a 
 Christian, and though I do not believe in the ap- 
 propriateness of Christian virtues at this time, I 
 believe most certainly in their gradual growth, and 
 in their future perfection. And however "naive" 
 or "bourgeois-idealistic" it may be called, I dare to 
 
228 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 believe in the millennium, in the coming of age 
 of mankind, in his final Liberation in Happy 
 Humanity. 
 
 I believe in a Golden Age, as it has been vaguely 
 forefelt by the Ancients, the Golden Age of the 
 Future, Virgil's Saturnia Regna. I believe in a 
 future of this our race, on this globe, which shall 
 surpass in glory, beauty, harmony, and wisdom all 
 dreams of poets and of prophets. I believe in it, 
 and I believe that it will come to be, because I be- 
 lieve in it. 
 
 And then, only then, mankind will grow like a 
 field of wheat, every stem standing independently, 
 protecting its neighbours, but not leaning on them, 
 nor supporting them; every stem rooted in the solid 
 soil, and drawing its nourishment from the earth; 
 every stem striving straight toward the sky, not 
 pointing to its neighbours, but upward to the One 
 Spender of Light, until it finally bows down in 
 humility, heavily laden, and yields up its ripe 
 harvest. 
 
 For like every tiny green sprout in the field points 
 anew straightly skyward, so in every newborn babe 
 the desire is renewed for Happy Humanity. 
 
 And this may be the reason why it was said that 
 we could not enter the Kingdom of God unless we 
 became like the little children. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 I WISH I could convey to my readers in these last 
 few pages my conviction of the immense, un- 
 heard-of spiritual revolution that has now begun 
 in humanity, unprecedented in any age, uncon- 
 ceivable in its consequences. 
 
 It has begun in religion, in science, in language. 
 All social and material changes are only accessory 
 to it, though springing from the same mysterious 
 source. 
 
 It began with the better knowledge of nature a 
 few centuries ago. Natural science has shaken the 
 foundations of every religion. 
 
 Of course, for there has been no founder of any 
 religion who knew so much about nature and the 
 material world as we do now. 
 
 No religion of Orient or Occident can satisfy us. 
 Nor Buddha, nor Jesus, knew what we know about 
 the universe, about life, about natural phenomena, 
 about man. This is obvious from their words. 
 Had they had our knowledge, they would have 
 spoken differently. 
 
 229 
 
2 3 o HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 Yet natural science could not supplant religion and 
 religious wisdom. Principally by the snares and 
 pitfalls of language it became misleading, dogmatic, 
 and created what is known as the materialistic con- 
 ception of life and universe. 
 
 Like a ship in a squall, natural science is righting 
 itself now from this fierce error, by its own tendency 
 toward truth. First of all, in mathematics, the pur- 
 est of all sciences. 
 
 Through the long, patient and obscure work 
 of mathematicians a conclusion was reached for 
 which I may use the words of an American, 
 Cassius J. Keyser, "that any universe is a compo- 
 nent of an extra-universal, that above every nature 
 is a supernatural, beyond every cosmos a hyper- 
 cosmic."* 
 
 Let it be well considered what this means: the 
 existence of the supernatural indubitably proven by 
 that purest and strictest of all sciences, mathe- 
 matics. 
 
 Physics and chemistry, by constant development, 
 outgrow the childish conceptions of materialism. 
 The discovery of radium and its emanations, of the 
 relation between electric, chemical, and optical phe- 
 nonema, brought new light about the constitution 
 of what is called "matter." It reminded the en- 
 lightened scientist that "matter" was only a hypoth- 
 
 *The Universe and Beyond; the Existence of the Hypercosmic. Hibbert Journal, 
 January, 1905. Among the founders of the new mathematical science may be men- 
 tioned the American, Benjamin Pierce. 
 
CONCLUSION 231 
 
 esis, a more or less fanciful image, useful, but insuf- 
 ficient for any final explanation. 
 
 The wonderful law of entropy was discovered, 
 showing that the natural phenomena are not turning 
 round in a circle, like a cat chasing its tail, but 
 changing in a definite direction. 
 
 Then the dark problem of time and space 
 was tackled, and the science of modern mechanics 
 has actually turned upside down all the accepted 
 old ideas and conceptions, by introducing the rela- 
 tivity of time into our mathematical considera- 
 tions. 
 
 There is no time absolute, nor is there any absolute 
 measure of space. No "matter" can be conceived 
 as a means for the conveyance of light. There is 
 thought and movement, and the world as we know it 
 is only so because of our way of perceiving it and 
 moving in it." * 
 
 The world changes as we change. And we are 
 not the same, one second and the next. The world, 
 nature, and our cosmos are what we made it out to 
 be, and will change according to our movement 
 that is, our will. 
 
 In psychology the same enlightenment took place. 
 Not only by the work of great psychical researchers, 
 but also by the pure theoretical work of philoso- 
 phers like Henri Bergson, who proved irrefutably 
 that memory cannot be a sort of storage in the 
 
 * I have to name here, Lorentz, Einstein, Poincare 1 , Minkowsky. 
 
232 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 brain, and that a human being must be something 
 more than a body. 
 
 The structure of the cosmos became better known 
 and the remarkable analogy between the innumer- 
 able suns of heaven, floating in definite streams, and 
 the atoms building up all what is called matter, 
 brought forward the thought, whether atoms could 
 not be suns with planets and life on them, and the 
 stars of heaven atoms of another matter. 
 
 The work of Darwin was completed in unexpected 
 ways and the power of life, which materialists con- 
 sidered superfluous in the economy of the universe, 
 reestablished in its significance as a directing en- 
 ergy.* 
 
 All this, and there is much more that I cannot 
 even mention, shows what a great, unprecedented 
 mental revolution is going on. And I must point it 
 out, because it is clear that our strife for happiness 
 cannot be definite, stable and effective before that 
 great revolution has taken place. 
 
 For one half of mankind is still bound by old, 
 formal religions, teaching us to despise the world, 
 and placing all bliss in what an Indian friend of 
 mine, the Buddhist priest Anagarika Dharmapala, 
 used to call scornfully "the post-mortem heaven of 
 Christians." 
 
 And the other half, educated by materialistic 
 science in the belief that a human being is bound to 
 
 *Sir Oliver Lodge, Life and Matter. 
 
CONCLUSION 233 
 
 vanish with the decay of his body, and the human 
 race with the decay of this planet, cannot have a 
 higher ideal, nor a deeper incentive for its endeav- 
 ours, than a pleasant and comfortable material life, 
 of eating, drinking, and being merry, with the device: 
 " Apres nous le deluge!" 
 
 There are extensive, spiritual currents, like theos- 
 ophy, that try to unite mankind into one wisdom, 
 without dogma, priests, and churches. Of these I 
 can only say that they seem to me premature. They 
 are too explicit, trusting on means of communion 
 that are imperfect, and science that is still too 
 young. They tell us so exactly what we cannot 
 yet know, that we must foster serious doubts about 
 their sources of information. 
 
 Mankind wants facts, not idle speculation based 
 on sheer intuition or fancy. We expect a new wis- 
 dom, not a new religion, nor another natural science, 
 but a transcendental wisdom, valid for all men, 
 Oriental and Occidental, uniting them by new, un- 
 known means of communion. That will be the 
 dawn of the new era of social equity, wherein man- 
 kind will use its earthly career for the foundation of 
 a kingdom of God that is not of this world. 
 
 The current called socialism has taken the form 
 of social-democracy and thereby entered a channel 
 without outlet. 
 
 Social-democracy was based on scientific concep- 
 tions of half a century ago, that are now nearly en- 
 
234 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 tirely abandoned. And this false start, this germ 
 of materialism, proved to be its undoing. 
 
 Perhaps this is not yet clear in America, but in 
 Europe the failure of social-democracy becomes more 
 obvious every day. 
 
 It has lately been said by a German socialist,* not 
 unjustly, that capitalism has no better ally than 
 social-democracy. For they are working both to 
 the same end, making the position of master and 
 slave more tolerable, and thereby more tolerated 
 and more stable. 
 
 Class war, trade unionism, both are thoroughly 
 capitalistic phenomena, and their effect goes to a 
 constant strengthening of society as a capitalistic 
 structure. 
 
 The worker gets higher wages, old-age pensions, 
 all sorts of protection by law and government; the 
 capitalist is obliged to treat his subordinates fairly, 
 to be more careful, more humane and philanthropic. 
 And so the old order, with its debasing results of 
 idle rich and subsidized pauper, becomes more and 
 more permanent. 
 
 Fatal consequences ensued from the fundamen- 
 tal, or, rather, germinative, mistake of Karl Marx, 
 who expected matter to set the mind right, instead 
 of mind to arrange matter. 
 
 When socialism is to become a glorious reality it 
 will not be by letting things go their own way, or by 
 
 *Gustav Landauer. 
 
CONCLUSION 235 
 
 bringing political power in the hands of the prole- 
 tariat, but only by the supremacy of the spirit of 
 wisdom, equity, and love. 
 
 What I proposed in the way of practical reform 
 is very feasible, very easy, and simple even. Far 
 greater miracles have been achieved by human 
 beings. 
 
 Why was it not done and brought to success long 
 ago? 
 
 Because every material growth is impossible with- 
 out a spiritual germ, and that germ has to develop 
 in an organic way. . 
 
 What we call civilized mankind is apparently 
 well organized. The king or president at the top, 
 the responsible government next, the judge, the 
 lawyer, the police, the citizen, each with his 
 private sphere of power, all in their respective 
 places. 
 
 But all this is only apparent; this is the material, 
 political organization. 
 
 Money, the economic power, comes between, and 
 we see a contest between money owners and political 
 rulers, in which the economic power often proves 
 victorious. 
 
 Yet political kings and economic kings are both 
 subject to spiritual powers, to knowledge and wis- 
 dom, no matter whether they are aware of it or 
 not. 
 
 And the real, lasting organization of mankind will 
 
236 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 be the spiritual organization, wherein the kingdom 
 of mental and spiritual superiority will supplant 
 hereditary royalty. 
 
 True democracy cannot mean anything else but 
 that the great majority of grown-up citizens con- 
 sciously approve of and submit to the rule of the 
 wisest and the best. 
 
 Its realization depends entirely upon the power of 
 discernment of the average citizen. 
 
 Appointing a king by heredity is a poor hap- 
 hazard method, a pis aller^ an avowal of the 
 multitude that it is not yet of age, unable to 
 distinguish and to elect. Everybody knows that 
 heredity does not give any certainty about the 
 ability to rule. 
 
 Granting power to the owner of money, according 
 to his wealth, is sheer folly in a society where every 
 scoundrel is allowed to gather an unlimited amount of 
 it, and the sources of wealth are placed at the dis- 
 posal and left to the greed of any unscrupulous 
 individual. 
 
 In a society the majority of which wants this sort 
 of private piracy and irresponsibility, even the re- 
 publican method of electing the ruler is powerless 
 and a sham. 
 
 The citizens of such a society are still in a state 
 of semi-barbarism; they lack elemental wisdom, and 
 they cannot have the discernment to elect the wise, 
 the just, and the good. 
 
CONCLUSION 237 
 
 Such is a condition of things in what we are call- 
 ing now civilized countries. 
 
 Yet this is not civilization as it was understood 
 and foreseen by the best of humanity. 
 
 Nay, even the average citizen will agree, when his 
 best self and profoundest conviction come to light, 
 that this state of affairs does not respond to his 
 ideal of a commonwealth. 
 
 He does not know, however, how it could be 
 changed, nor does he see any opportunity for per- 
 sonal endeavour to change it. 
 
 The reason of this is that human beings are 
 gregarious and must follow the principles and 
 movements of the herd, otherwise they could not 
 exist. They must be moral that is, they must 
 obey the "mores," the customs of the multi- 
 tude. 
 
 Yet the change will come, because we all want it. 
 The tendency is universal, the pent-up energy is 
 enormous and daily increasing. 
 
 Not by legislation can the change begin, for this 
 would mean coercion of the majority, who do 
 not see that the present "mores" are wrong and 
 against the individual conscience, by a minority 
 whose conviction is not reinforced by the proof 
 of practice. 
 
 Nor can the multitude, by election, grant power to 
 an individual whose conviction deviates from exist- 
 ing customs. 
 
238 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 And yet such individuals are wanted, who will not 
 submit to the principles of the herd, but show new 
 ways. 
 
 To establish a better and lasting organization we 
 want the authority of superior minds, who elect 
 themselves, just like Cromwell, Washington, Na- 
 poleon elected themselves, but in a higher plane of 
 spiritual activity. The multitude cannot find them 
 out before they have shown their superiority by 
 practical proof. After that they will be followed 
 and supported enthusiastically, more so than either 
 Cromwell, Washington, or Napoleon. 
 
 This leadership needs not to be confined to 
 one man, it may belong to a group of men and 
 women. What moves them must be the germ 
 of transcendental wisdom, the spirit of equity and 
 love. 
 
 American social-democrats, though they may not 
 be so dogmatic and materialistic as the Germans, 
 still believe in the power of the multitude to dis- 
 cern and elect those leaders that are wanted for 
 the reorganization of society. They believe that 
 socialists can be made beforehand, before any so- 
 cialistic activity takes place, by reasoning and 
 argument, in sufficient number to choose a truly 
 socialistic leader, able to reorganize human activity 
 according to socialistic ideals. 
 
 My experience, and the political events in France 
 and Germany as well, have taught me that this 
 
CONCLUSION 239 
 
 is an illusion, resulting from a want of insight in 
 the psychology of the masses. A true socialist is 
 quite a different person from a socialist voter, and a 
 socialist organizer is still more different from a so- 
 cialist political leader. Millions of socialist voters 
 with scores of political leaders have not produced 
 one single truly socialistic organization. 
 
 The man of genius able to change the human 
 activity according to socialistic ideals cannot be 
 found out by a host of socialistic voters. They 
 would never elect him, and would very probably 
 oppose his leadership if he were in power. 
 
 On my lecturing tours through America I ad- 
 dressed many thousands, and sometimes met with 
 the most hearty sympathy and enthusiasm. I 
 spoke to a number of people sufficient to form a 
 splendid organization. Yet they all went home to 
 their wonted business and followed the beaten track 
 of custom, simply because there was no leading 
 genius to organize them and to point out to each a 
 new and better form of activity. A clever American 
 friend of mine even laid a wager that I would never 
 find, among successful business men in America, a 
 single one who would deviate from his wonted course 
 of work to initiate a new scheme, however easy and 
 acceptable it might be to him. 
 
 I have not yet lost that wager, though I readily 
 acknowledge the psychological truth in my friend's 
 contention. Human beings are not only gregarious, 
 
2 4 o HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 but also essentially customary animals, addicted to 
 habit, tradition, and convention. 
 
 I found indeed clever and successful business men 
 inclined, even determined, to carry out my plan. 
 They were exceptional men, however, and the way 
 I pointed out lay very near the track on which they 
 had been advancing themselves. 
 
 I will not mention their names here, because 
 the work itself, if it is successful, will make them 
 known soon enough. They have to begin single 
 handed, and will not find adherers and supporters 
 before they can show results and successful deeds. 
 So strong is human gregariousness and adherence 
 to habit. 
 
 Freedom of mind, perception of new possibilities, 
 can be found easiest among poets and artists. They 
 also have the keenest consciousness of the present 
 want and misery of the human race. Their im- 
 agination shows them what humanity could be and 
 makes them feel painfully the contrast with what it 
 is now. In them, if they belong to the true, genuine 
 sort, burns the shame for human degradation and 
 the fiery impulse of love to help and restore. 
 
 It was said in ancient times that the poet ought to 
 go with the king, and it was Plato who looked for 
 the rule of the philosopher-king. 
 
 In our time we want the artist, the poet, to go with 
 the man of economic power. 
 
 The man who is to restore justice and equity in 
 
CONCLUSION 241 
 
 human society has to be a poet as well as a busi- 
 ness man. 
 
 Humanity can only look for happiness that 
 is, for movement in the true direction by trusting 
 to the leadership of practical men with transcen- 
 dental wisdom. 
 
 The Emperor of the Chinese, two thousand years 
 ago, was also supposed to be the man of supreme wis- 
 dom who took upon himself the burden of all the 
 sins and transgressions of his millions of subjects. 
 
 This is the sort of kingship we want. Not 
 crowned figureheads who distribute titles and or- 
 ders, but great men of organizing genius and poetical 
 temperament, with hearts heavy from the sorrows 
 of mankind, and restless from the burning love to 
 help them, seeing farther than their fellow men in 
 the glorious transcendental future of the race, when 
 nature will be conquered and this world will make 
 place gradually for the next. 
 
 I found such poetical minds, pregnant with the 
 coming glories of the future, but I found them not 
 yet, as they ought to be, associating with the man 
 of economic power and organizing genius. 
 
 And I found also that the idea is ripening of a 
 High Court of Humanity establishing itself on its own 
 account, voluntarily and forcibly, out of men who 
 are conscious to possess, all alone or in combina- 
 tion with others, the organizing ability, the poetical 
 imagination, the self-sacrificing love, necessary to 
 
242 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 direct human activity and lead it toward salvation. 
 During the latter part of the life of Tolstoy we had 
 in him, who was a poet and a true king of humanity, 
 full of royal love, a sort of individual conscience of 
 mankind whose voice was listened to whenever he 
 spoke. 
 
 But Tolstoy's influence was insignificant in com- 
 parison with what it would have been if he could 
 have associated and worked together with men of 
 transcendental insight and practical ability. As it 
 was, he stood alone, unsupported and uncorrected, 
 and said many things that we can hardly take 
 seriously. 
 
 Wandering as I have been, on lecturing tours 
 through Europe and America, I felt how necessary 
 it is to bring into contact with each other those 
 few individuals who could form by their combined 
 qualities and activities the germ, or nucleus, of a 
 better human organization. 
 
 It was G. S. Lee, the clever and humorous writer 
 of "Inspired Millionaires," who called this way of 
 working "Spiritual engineering" And that most 
 fervent and gifted American enthusiast, Upton Sin- 
 clair, wrote to me with nearly the same intention. 
 
 I have been indeed prospecting for human hap- 
 piness, and after long experience I found this the 
 most promising way of using my energy efficiently. 
 
 If this nucleus consists of the right elements 
 and who can say beforehand that these elements are 
 
CONCLUSION 243 
 
 absent among the millions of living men? it will 
 develop a power stronger than all political or eco- 
 nomic groups. For its energy will be "directing 
 energy," which is also the energy of Life, the energy 
 that changes, by one tiny germ, a desert into a 
 wood. It ought to include the best individuals of 
 mankind. But not therefore the most renowned, 
 nor the most intelligent, nor those of best parentage. 
 
 For what they should possess in the first place 
 are royal love and transcendental wisdom, and these 
 qualities do not always bring high renown, nor do 
 they appear only in distinguished circles, or in 
 special nations and peoples. 
 
 These qualities are prerogatives of genius, and 
 genius is more than a crown and sceptre, a symptom 
 of divine grace which can show itself unexpectedly 
 among all sorts and conditions of men, in all parts 
 of the globe. 
 
 Human beings who combine deep wisdom with 
 self-sacrificing love and practical ability are very 
 rare. Yet men of genius have always been rare, 
 and human progress nevertheless depended on them. 
 
 And where no single individual can be found 
 uniting all these necessary qualities, it might still 
 be possible to find different individuals who act as 
 one being, united by brotherly love and the common 
 feeling for mankind and its misery. 
 
 The average American is not aware of the depth 
 and extent of human misery. Taking a good look 
 
244 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 in the Old World, in Europe, in Russia with its 
 millions of starving peasants, in India with three 
 hundred millions living in the most dreadful des- 
 titution, in teeming, toiling China, he could see at 
 the cost of what physical and moral suffering hu- 
 manity exists and the few people of leisure live their 
 comfortable lives. 
 
 And then, what sort of "happiness" is reached 
 after all? How shallow and commonplace is it what 
 the few rich gain by the toil and drudgery of the 
 many poor! 
 
 I know wise people Lady Welby among the 
 number who entirely reject the word "happiness" 
 as indicating that supreme good that humanity 
 needs. 
 
 They would rather speak of "enthusiasm," or 
 "spirituality," or use that fine German word " Be- 
 geisterung" A high-minded contemporary Dutch 
 author, speaking of Bellamy's "Looking Backward," 
 called the material happiness depicted therein a 
 "most horrible nightmare," and expressed his sat- 
 isfaction that he would surely not live to see it. 
 
 I wonder whether the majority of New World cit- 
 izens will understand that feeling. In the old coun- 
 tries, Europe and Asia, we have seen enough of the 
 emptiness and insufficiency of material comfort and 
 welfare to despise it as a final goal. 
 
 Most striking to the visitor from the Old World 
 is the cheerful activity of Americans, their happy 
 
CONCLUSION 245 
 
 belief in material prosperity as a worthy aim to live 
 and die for. 
 
 In comparison with the American mental atmos- 
 phere that of Europe is gloomy and oppressive. 
 Notwithstanding the numerous symptoms of prog- 
 ress, the increasing wealth of France, Germany, 
 England, and the other countries, there is a general 
 sadness, a lack of idealism and enthusiasm, a bitter, 
 cynical, skeptical spirit pervading the more civilized 
 parts of these nations. 
 
 England is quite representative in this respect. 
 It is eminently successful, wealthy, formidable, and 
 gloomy. It keeps a proud and brilliant counte- 
 nance, hiding in a display of imperial glory the hor- 
 rible sores of its civilization. In this sort of sham- 
 ming the English are unrivalled. Nowhere is the 
 capitalistic rule established more surely, or has 
 entered more deeply into the souls of the people, 
 rich and poor alike. The rich are moderate, phil- 
 anthropic, intelligent, sportive, knowing how to 
 balance the dangers of wealth; the poor are polite, 
 servile, loyal, enjoying the alms of the rich and the 
 splendour of pageants and festivities, like the Roman 
 people their circus performances. 
 
 Where is, however, the great art corresponding 
 to this political greatness? The greatest English 
 author of to-day, indeed the only living English 
 author of more than national importance, B. Shaw, 
 is so brimful of bitterness and sarcasm that it is 
 
246 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 considered the best policy among Englishmen not 
 to take him seriously. 
 
 And I may point out as a very significant fact that 
 the poet of fashion now in English society, perhaps 
 the most widely read poet in pious, Christian, church- 
 going, Sunday-keeping England, is a man who sang, 
 a thousand years ago, the glory of wine and women, 
 having no notion of something worthier to live for. 
 
 On board an Atlantic steamer I met a most charm- 
 ing, high-bred English lady who boasted that she had 
 made presents to her lady friends of over fifty copies 
 of the "Rubaiyat" of Omar Khayam. And not less 
 significant is this fact which I found true for nearly 
 all the rest of European nations, that the man who 
 is now rising in fame among them as the greatest 
 author of the last century is that terrible, unspar- 
 ingly lugubrious Russian, Dostoiewsky. 
 
 Omar Khayam, the sincere prophet of frivol- 
 ity, and Dostoiewsky, the relentless explorer of the 
 darkest of human woes and shames, these two mark 
 the extremes between which modern mankind is 
 wavering. 
 
 And socialism, looked upon half a century ago as 
 the dawn of liberation, is now increasing in exten- 
 sion, as social-democracy, but losing in true social- 
 istic power and character, leaving a dreary sense of 
 disappointment and fatigue in the hearts of the 
 once zealous and enthusiastic adherers. 
 
 This characterizes the present gloom of Europe. 
 
CONCLUSION 247 
 
 It will not do for America to scorn and scoff and 
 call the Old World superannuated and dull, passing 
 into extinction. 
 
 America is still feeding upon the remnants of 
 Oriental and European wisdom. It has not yet 
 developed its own philosophy. It is walking the 
 same way as England, and when it has come to the 
 summit of prosperity it will see the same precipices 
 of extravagance and pauperism, of gloom and de- 
 spondency, all around. 
 
 Then it will come to contemplation, and sit brood- 
 ing, like the Old World is doing now, wanting wings, 
 the wings of a higher spiritual life. 
 
 An American publisher said of one of my books 
 that it was too disagreeable for the American reader. 
 
 But when the American will refuse to see the 
 disagreeable reality in the pure mirror of art he 
 will soon have to face it, far more disagreeable, in 
 life. 
 
 When I used the word "happiness" in regard to A 
 humanity, I meant that state of mind that ensues 
 from the consciousness of being on the right track ^ 
 not any final condition. 
 
 I do not believe in "final" conditions of humanity. 
 We never see an "end" to anything real. Where- 
 ever we see finality either the end or the thing itself 
 proves to be unreal. And if I had to believe in 
 evolution as it is understood by materialistic science, 
 being a sort of see-saw between birth and death, 
 
248 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 ending in its starting point and there beginning anew, 
 I would rather prefer to stop at once and have done 
 with all the trouble. 
 
 Once more I will lay stress on that tremendous in- 
 sight whereto our present generation has come, and 
 which is the essential feature in the spiritual revo- 
 lution now begun, the critical insight in the inade- 
 quacy of language as an instrument for thought and 
 communion. 
 
 This insight is entirely new to the human race, 
 that suffered so long under the tyranny of the word. 
 
 I found it, as told, in the life-work of Lady 
 Welby; I found it in the remarkable book of a young 
 German writer of genius;* I found it also in a witty 
 and deep work by Allen Upward, called "The New 
 World." 
 
 We are only in the very beginning of a new era 
 of human civilization. Science, as Norman Lockyer 
 expressed it, is not yet born, it is only conceived. 
 
 And language, the means of exploring the human 
 mind and of binding human beings together in one 
 union, has entirely to be regenerated. 
 
 This process is organic and cosmic and has to grow 
 slowly, like all cosmic phenomena. And the first 
 requisite for a scientific explorer and a wise man is 
 patience. 
 
 We know that words and language are mislead- 
 ing, and yet we have only words, words, words. 
 
 *Siderische Geburt (Sideric birth), by Volker, Berlin. 
 
CONCLUSION 249 
 
 All that I have said I know to be preliminary and 
 approximative. Yet a German socialist* has re- 
 marked very truly that we have to reckon with 
 approximative values in every science and most of 
 all in sociology. 
 
 Allen Upward, in the book just mentioned, tells 
 us how a boy once came up to him wanting him to 
 "make his hoop round." He smiled at the appall- 
 ing request that even God, though He might per- 
 haps have been able to do it, never had fulfilled. 
 But then he gave, instead of the unattainable exact 
 roundness, the approximative one, sufficient for the 
 boy to use his hoop and play with it. 
 
 I tried to make the hoop just round enough to 
 play with it. I tried to give as much concreteness as 
 Americans want in order to "see" a thing, and not 
 more philosophy than they can patiently stand. 
 
 In fact, I am afraid that I gave too little phil- 
 osophy. That is, I spoke more of material and less 
 of spiritual concreteness than a wise man, aware of 
 the far greater reality of the latter, ought to do. 
 
 Let there be then no mistake. It was not material 
 comfort that I had in view, but something far above 
 and beyond something for which we have not 
 yet words nor language to express it. Yet it must 
 be reached through material prosperity. 
 
 The great thing is to keep in motion, to move on, 
 though the wheels may not be perfectly round. 
 
 Otto Effertz. 
 
250 HAPPY HUMANITY 
 
 Motion is the secret of love, as was expressed by 
 that Oriental tale about the ring which was always 
 lost by him who wore it, unless kept in motion. 
 
 So it is about deeds, practical deeds that I have 
 spoken, for the happiness always attainable for man- 
 kind is the feeling to move on in the direction of 
 Right and Truth. 
 

 APPENDIX I 
 
 THE COOPERATIVE COMPANY OF AMERICA 
 
 Suggested Outline of Programme and Constitution 
 
 THEORY 
 
 To provide a business whose object will be to harmonize the 
 demands of producers and consumers, and to eliminate waste. 
 
 To increase gradually the activities and scope of the business 
 until it shall include all industries. 
 
 To make the business economic exclusively entirely di- 
 vorced from religious or- political entanglements. 
 
 PRACTICAL PROBLEMS 
 
 To obtain capital. 
 
 To provide wise, able and intelligent direction for affairs. 
 To insure continuous or practically continuous employment 
 for those engaged in the company. 
 To arrange, for an indefinitely extended existence. 
 
 DETAIL 
 Capital and Shares 
 
 A. Capital will be raised by offering stock. This stock will 
 be dividend-producing; but provision will be made that it can 
 be replaced within a given time by 5 per cent, first mortgage 
 bonds, in an amount equal to the book value of the stock. 
 This reduces the dividend-outgo of the corporation upon its 
 initial capital to an interest expense; and a sinking fund will be 
 provided in order that the bonds may be ultimately retired and 
 the ownership of the entire property be left in the hands of the 
 workers, directive workers as well as productive workers. 
 
 B. Permanent profit-producing stock to members only; 
 this stock paying dividends and being amortized by lot. This 
 
 251 
 
252 APPENDIX 
 
 stock will be personal and not transferable. The share itself 
 will become the property of the company by inheritance on the 
 death of the holder, except that the dividends will be paid to 
 the direct family of the deceased so long as his widow lives or 
 the children are minors. 
 
 The number of shares any member will be allowed to hold 
 will be limited, but at a high limit a hundred shares of $500, 
 for instance, or five hundred shares at #100. Any amount of 
 shares will give one vote only. 
 
 Shares will be bought back by the company when a member 
 leaves, at once, or gradually within a given limit of time. The 
 member on forfeiting his membership will have no right to divi- 
 dends or to a vote; if his shares are not purchased promptly, 
 they will be regarded as a loan, and interest will be paid him 
 until such loan is liquidated. 
 
 The members will purchase their shares outright or receive 
 them as reductions in wages. Or they will be entitled to higher 
 wages and no shares; in this case they will not be entitled to a 
 vote and will receive no dividends. So the shares will be a vol- 
 untary investment. 
 
 DIVISION OF PROFITS 
 
 All net profits will be apportioned as follows: 
 
 Not less than 40 per cent, will be kept as a fund for the ex- 
 tension of the business and for purposes of general interest to 
 the members, after the liquidation of the original debt, with its 
 dividends and interest as previously specified. 
 
 Forty per cent, will be divided among the members, in pro- 
 portion to the amount they may hold in shares; this being over 
 and above their wages. 
 
 Twenty per cent, will be paid as dividends or rebates to the 
 associates, to be later specified. 
 
 ORGANIZATION OF THE COMPANY 
 
 A. Trustees. General Management 
 
 The Board of Trustees will be the original constituents of the 
 company. They will constitute themselves by incorporation, 
 and will have entire control of the business. 
 
APPENDIX 253 
 
 When the number of members shall grow to one thousand, 
 or after seven years shall have elapsed since the incorporation 
 of the company, the members will elect one new member to 
 the Board of Trustees, to succeed an original member whose 
 resignation shall have been determined upon by lot. After 
 this every member of the Board of Trustees resigns, one each 
 year, by lot, and the members of the company will choose his 
 successor by ballot, whether from within or without the com- 
 pany, the choice being absolutely free. Membership will be for 
 a term of years, and the members will have the right of recall 
 of any trustee by a three fourths vote, after complaint shall 
 have been publicly registered for a specified length of time. 
 
 The Board of Trustees, within the limits of the impeachment 
 power of the members, will be the highest court of appeal, and 
 will appoint the general manager for the company, and fix his 
 salary. The members of the Board of Trustees itself will re- 
 ceive no salary. 
 
 The general manager will appoint all sub-managers and will 
 nominate to the Board of Trustees all candidates for member- 
 ship. Every sub-manager will be responsible for the depart- 
 ment of which he is the head. The wages or salaries of the 
 sub-managers, and ultimately of every working member of the 
 company receiving a wage, will be fixed by the general manager. 
 
 Every member of the company will be bound to strict obe- 
 dience to his superiors as far as business is concerned. The gen- 
 eral manager will have the right to fine or dismiss any member, 
 but the delinquent will have the right of appeal to the Board 
 of Trustees. 
 
 B. Membership 
 
 The company will be composed of members and of appren- 
 tices, and the members will be divided into two classes, voters 
 and non-voters. 
 
 As a preliminary to membership, an apprenticeship of one or 
 two years will be required. Only vigorous and thoroughly 
 healthy individuals will be considered for apprenticeship 
 individuals with good antecedents; and no one will be allowed 
 more than a two years' apprenticeship, except by special dis- 
 
254 APPENDIX 
 
 pensation of the Board of Trustees. If after two years the 
 apprentice is rejected as a member he must leave. While an 
 apprentice he will receive a standard wage, according to the 
 class of work that he does. 
 
 The apprentice will become a member through election by the 
 Board of Trustees on nomination by the general manager, who 
 will consider the report which the immediate sub-manager in 
 contact with the apprentice will make. The opinion of the 
 members associated with the apprentice will likewise be con- 
 sulted in the choice of members. 
 
 Apprentices will be dismissable on short notice, for definite 
 or indefinite reasons, on the suggestion of the general man- 
 ager concurred in by the Board of Trustees; members, only on 
 proved charges of misconduct. 
 
 Admission to membership will be without distinction of sex. 
 But the wife and children of the member will not be considered 
 as members unless so constituted independently. 
 
 Members will be voters or non-voters according as they are 
 holders of shares. A member, not a shareholder, will have 
 passed his apprenticeship regularly and will be entitled to the 
 acquisition of shares without preliminaries. 
 
 C. Associates 
 
 Besides members and apprentices, who will work in the com- 
 pany, there will be associates, who will be the customers of the 
 articles produced by the company. These associates will have 
 no control over the business, but will receive, according to the 
 amount of their purchases, the 20 per cent, of the total net 
 profits previously specified. The sale of goods will be granted 
 impartially to all who may wish to buy. 
 
 GENERAL POLICY OF THE COMPANY 
 
 The company will work, legitimately but aggressively, on 
 strict business lines. It will begin in some department of in- 
 dustry or commerce offering as varied employment as possible 
 and where with good management success will be quickly as- 
 sured; it will then, especially in its early stages, proceed along 
 
APPENDIX 255 
 
 the lines of least resistance. Its policy will be to expand con- 
 tinuously, embracing as many trades as possible, in such man- 
 ner as to avoid the necessity of unemployment for any member 
 by shifting the unskilled hands and training the half-skilled hands 
 for different work, according to season and opportunity. The 
 positive aim of the company will be to embrace all trades and 
 all branches of commerce necessary to produce and distribute 
 the commodities for all real wants; real wants here including 
 the more spiritual as well as the more material wants. Give-and- 
 take will be sought with the supply and demand of the general 
 market, in order that the company may never become a closed 
 enterprise but may always have an inflow of money-capital; 
 40 per cent, or more of the profits being reserved, according to 
 the constitution, for purposes of extension and of general wel- 
 fare. Gradually will be formed a community, an organized 
 whole of workers who are at one and the same time producers 
 and consumers, and in this community none will be able to live 
 on the products of the common activity without having con- 
 tributed to it in the form of work, unless this is consciously 
 and voluntarily allowed, as in the case of invalids, children, 
 and those workers whose work is recognized not to be of 
 direct material utility but of higher import as artists, thinkers, 
 men of science. 
 
 The company will as soon as possible take in hand the educa- 
 tion of the children of all its members, in so far as this is not 
 done by the state, and it will, as its means allow, take in hand 
 the further education of promising young children or of mem- 
 bers, in a liberal and broad-minded manner. It will, moreover, 
 as soon as its means allow, further in a liberal way those move- 
 ments of science and art which can be considered as generally 
 approved. It will not confine its activity in these directions to 
 its own organization, but will work outside as well. In its pro- 
 duction the company will draw the line at really dangerous and 
 harmful commodities, such as strong drinks. 
 
 As the company will permit none of its members, without 
 good reason, to live without actual work on the products of 
 the common activity, so it will not allow its members to suffer 
 
25.6 APPENDIX 
 
 for the want of employment. The leading concern of the com- 
 pany will be the distribution of employment and its proper 
 remuneration. After having become firmly established, the 
 company will be conservatively liberal in its admission of 
 members, and will never shut out from membership those who 
 may be willing to join and cannot be said to offer a danger to 
 the whole. 
 
 In the arrangement of a wage-scale, union wages and the 
 price given for labour in the common market will be considered, 
 but the payment in the form of shares will be encouraged. 
 
 In the case of the invalidism of a member, the number of 
 years of service will be taken into account. Sixty-five years' 
 age will entitle the member to a pension, again determined by 
 the years of service and the wage received during the working 
 period. 
 
 The company will have no political or dogmatic colour what- 
 ever, leaving all questions of politics, like those of religion, to 
 the individual conscience of its members. 
 
 It will always respect the laws of the state in which it is obliged 
 to work, and will avail itself of their advantages. 
 
 It will admit the utmost freedom possible in matters of spirit- 
 ual import. 
 
 OUTLINE OF THE ACTUAL BUSINESS WORKINGS OF THE COMPANY 
 
 The company will be divided into several departments: 
 General Department (banking, administrative). Under the 
 general department will be such departments as bear only in- 
 directly on business, as departments of education, of hygienic 
 supervision, etc., 
 
 Industrial Department. 
 Agricultural Department. 
 Real Estate Department. 
 Distributive and Commercial Department, etc. 
 General Department. Savings bank for members and non- 
 members. Loans of personal credit to members only. All 
 speculating finance strictly barred. Net profits on banking 
 dividend with other net profits. Insurance of life, against fire, 
 
APPENDIX 257 
 
 invalidism, etc. General direction, coordinating all depart- 
 ments. 
 
 Industrial Department. Bakeries, dairy manufacturers, fac- 
 tories of preserved food, etc., all conveniently placed to the 
 sources of production of raw material; mills, sugar, factories, 
 etc.; shoes, clothing, etc., the arts and crafts. 
 
 Agricultural Department. Market gardening in deserted 
 tracts in the neighbourhood of large cities; dairy farms, etc. 
 
 Real Estate Department. At least 50 per cent, of the 
 initial and accumulating capital should be turned into real 
 estate. Land or habitation given to members on short lease, 
 with longer terms later on, after capacity shall have been shown, 
 so that the property will become practically the member's 
 own during his life, and after, so long as the family continues to 
 work in the company; or should the member desire to transfer 
 within the company, or to it altogether, his leased property 
 would be practically bought back from him, deducting the un- 
 earned increment and the initial value of the property, but 
 taking into consideration such improvements as he may have 
 made. 
 
 The farms will be limited in area (to fifty acres, for example), 
 and will be united with cooperative buildings where the com- 
 pany will provide the fertilizer, etc., at wholesale prices and 
 will rent out the machinery; moreover, dairy manufactory and 
 canning apparatus. In this way every lease-holder will work 
 independently, but with the facilities and economy of coopera- 
 tion. 
 
 Distributive and commercial departments. The formation 
 of a market by enterprising business methods; careful lists of 
 associates. 
 
 Cooperative stores, to operate as previously specified. The 
 dividend-receiving member or shareholder who is also a pur- 
 chaser at the cooperative store will receive the rebate, or divi- 
 dend, of an associate, and thus will receive dividend from both 
 ends of the operation. 
 
 The commercial department will purchase wholesale for the 
 needs of all the departments of the business. 
 
258 APPENDIX 
 
 FIRST MEASURES IN LAUNCHING THE COMPANY 
 
 Formation of a Board of Trustees of high standing and un- 
 doubted honesty and popularity. 
 
 Choice of a very capable general manager. 
 Announcement to the public that the company: 
 
 Goes in for the production of unadulterated food and of 
 
 articles of general and real use and of first-rate quality. 
 Is based on the principle of the prevention of unemploy- 
 ment and mal-employment. 
 Has no political or sectarian colour whatever. 
 Aims at the general welfare of society. 
 Demands no other support than that of regular customers. 
 
APPENDIX II 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 At the close of Doctor Van Eeden's address at Carnegie Hall 
 (see Chapter III, Part II) questions were received from the 
 audience in writing, and were answered as follows: 
 
 Question: After all, is not communism an outworn theory 
 which has been replaced by modern socialism, appealing to 
 political methods? The trust can crush communistic settle- 
 ments like flies, but the law can dispossess even a trust. 
 
 Van Eeden: You are welcome to call communism an outworn 
 theory then it is not my theory. I don't know what you 
 understand by communism. Communism as I describe it to 
 you is not an outworn theory. A public library is not an out- 
 worn theory, nor is Yellowstone Park. "Which has been re- 
 placed by modern socialism." Well, replace it by what you 
 like, call it to-day communism, the next day socialism. "The 
 trust could crush communistic settlements." There you are! 
 Colonies again, communistic settlements I don't want 
 communistic settlements. I want large organizations. "The 
 law can dispossess even a trust. " Quite well, but then the men 
 who constitute a trust, they will begin anew; they are not the 
 better for the law. The law, yes, can help a new organization, 
 but never, I am convinced, can it run counter to an organization 
 that tries to do right, that tries to work in a just and equitable 
 way, that tries to bring about a peaceful reorganization. JMever, 
 never would public opinion stand for that. (Applause.) At 
 least, not in my country, and you may be sure, not in yours 
 either. Perhaps in Russia, I don't know about that. 
 
 Question: It has been stated that you yourself have loaned a 
 hundred thousand dollars to communistic enterprises in Hol- 
 
 259 
 
260 APPENDIX 
 
 land. Has the moral sense of these communists ever led them 
 to repay the loan? 
 
 Van Eeden: This is a charming question. The statement is 
 not strictly true. I have not loaned a hundred thousand dol- 
 lars I have loaned it until eternity. I have lost it. And I 
 don't regret it. People who take only money into account will 
 say, "There is so much money gone to waste"; but there are 
 people, too, who will tell you that good has been done; and I 
 believe that there are such people here too. (Applause.) 
 These will agree that I have gained more than I have lost. 
 
 As for the moral sense of these communists, who spent the 
 money, they of course cannot repay it. And if their moral sense 
 was not sufficient to make them see that they should at least 
 try to repay it, as it was not in some of them, then it is only a 
 warning, when you begin again, to choose only picked men 
 with sufficient moral sense. 
 
 Question': You are an artist, Mr. Van Eeden. Have you 
 found that in Europe socialism tolerated art? And is not art 
 essentially individualistic, so that it can never tolerate socialism? 
 
 Fan Eeden: I utterly disagree with the sentiments expressed 
 in this question. As I conceive socialism, it will mean the great 
 reconstruction of art. (Applause.) An organization, such a 
 community as I see before me, will give the artist real liberty 
 to devote himself to his art. I have myself the feeling that art 
 is very intimately connected with socialism. After my social 
 experiments I have gone back to art, because I still consider art 
 as the greatest power in regenerating humanity. (Apolause.) 
 
 Question: How will communism dispose of wealth as it stands 
 in America to-day and do justice to the holders of it? 
 
 Fan Eeden: Communism will not dispose of wealth by sum- 
 mary means. At least not communism as I conceive it. Such 
 wealth as communism cannot win for itself by just means, by 
 honest work, it will leave in the hands of individuals. It will 
 accumulate wealth by working hands and working brains, and 
 lay that wealth in the hands of a better community. "And do 
 justice to the holders of it?" Well, they will get justice quite 
 by themselves they will get it without any effort from us. 
 
APPENDIX 261 
 
 I believe that justice rules the world, and I believe that the man 
 who uses his wealth rightfully will find just remuneration in 
 the end. 
 
 Questions: (a) Please tell us your position on woman suf- 
 frage, (b) Would it be possible that a woman should be the 
 leader of your Labour-Salvation Army? 
 
 Fan Eeden: Well, ladies and gentlemen, I confess that I 
 made a certain blunder on first reaching this country. Coming 
 for the first time into contact with an American audience, I 
 found that they were very fond of a little humour. And the 
 first time that I spoke to an American audience I feared that I 
 had been too serious, because I had felt serious; and the second 
 time that I came before an American audience, an audience of 
 American women, I tried to make a little joke. I told them 
 that perhaps it would be better if they left the situation as it 
 was, because they ruled 'in fact where the men were said to rule. 
 It was a little joke, and I believe that most of the audience 
 understood it for that. But some of your newspapers seemed 
 to be very serious about it. They called me stupid an ass. 
 They styled me an ignoramus because I didn't want votes for 
 the women. Now, all the while my position as to woman 
 suffrage is absolutely neutral. (Laughter and applause.) I 
 wouldn't have the impudence to influence the women on their 
 own question. If they really want votes, let them have them 
 why not? And if they don't want them, why all right. Now, 
 you are amused, but I am very serious. And as to the possi- 
 bility of a woman for leader of such a great cooperative army 
 as I speak of well, it may be possible. I doubt it. (Laugh- 
 ter.) I have heard here of women who have great business 
 ability and are great business leaders. There are some who 
 have not yet the training for such leadership. At any rate there 
 may be also in such a great community a department for the 
 sake of women and their work, and for their interests, and at 
 the head of such a department must be a woman, I am quite 
 sure of that. 
 
 Question: How can the individual employer of labour put 
 communistic principles into practice? 
 
262 APPENDIX 
 
 Fan Efden: According to my idea, individual employers who 
 are absolutely serious, and are devoted to the whole question, 
 must start anew. Such an employer might go along with his 
 own concern and give his employees everything they wanted, 
 but that would not serve. He has to start anew, and I believe 
 that it would in the beginning be very difficult to transform an 
 existing concern into a communistic one. And from my own 
 experience I believe that such a concern will grow only from 
 small beginnings, like a seed, and that afterward it will absorb 
 the existing concerns, and that by no means could you begin 
 right off to change the existing concerns to communistic enter- 
 prises. 
 
 Question: In your comparison to the bee-life you fail to 
 mention the custom of killing the drones. Shall we do likewise 
 to solve the problem of providing sufficient bread? 
 
 Van Eeden: I am inclined to take this as a joke. But it gives 
 me the opportunity of saying one thing: that we must in a way 
 be cruel to be kind. That is what I have learned after hard 
 experience. I have been too kind, too meek, too tender, and I 
 have paid for it dearly. And just as a clever surgeon will be 
 cruel often when his patient is suffering, so must we, too, in a 
 way, be cruel in order to start a new community. We must not 
 expect communistic communities to be started with weak men. 
 We must begin with strong men, and only later take in the weaker 
 persons. We must be very severe in the beginning. And the 
 lack of this severity I consider the reason for the failure of most 
 of those experiments which have regarded socialism as merely 
 a too-great kindness and tenderness. And this teaches that, 
 for hard and cruel diseases, hard and cruel measures are sometimes 
 necessary. 
 
 Question: How is the organization you speak of to go to 
 work? 
 
 Van Eeden: I would gladly keep you here all night, but of 
 course I have my thoughts and schemes which I cannot give you 
 here in detail. It would be nonsense, for I have been only five 
 days in this country, and how can I judge of local conditions? 
 No, I will throw out some germs, and when there is a response, 
 
APPENDIX 263 
 
 then, in some small company, I will explain as much as I can. 
 But here everybody would say "Impossible"; everybody would 
 say, "You can do that on the other side but not here." I want, 
 first, men who are willing. The scheme must be a cooperation, 
 and embrace as many trades and businesses as possible; it must 
 have a general department for banking, and it must have an 
 agricultural, an industrial, a real-estate department, a depart- 
 ment for distribution and commerce. This is only a brief sum- 
 mary, a very general idea. You can readily understand that, 
 before a large audience such as this, I can give only hints, not 
 details. 
 
 Question: How many members are there now in your 
 socialist community? How many have deserted? In what 
 industries are they chiefly engaged? Do they accumulate 
 wealth, and if so, what becomes of it? How many of 
 them are married? -Are they strong characters, or mere 
 followers, uneducated, and not capable of taking care of 
 themselves? 
 
 Van Eeden: Well, I dare say that to answer this question 
 now would put me in the way of being misunderstood by you. 
 The facts are rather complicated. I have given a description 
 of my experiments, in The Independent, and I hope to give still 
 further explanations. But to answer these questions now I 
 do not believe would be very useful. For instance, "How many 
 members are there?" Well, there is only the beginning of an 
 organization, and this has had bankruptcy and has now started 
 anew. These experiments are only in their infancy, and a 
 bankruptcy under such circumstances is like the coming down 
 of an airship. We know now what has caused the first 
 failures, and are prepared to go ahead in a better-instructed 
 way. 
 
 The industries that I started were a bakery, a candy manu- 
 factory, market gardening, a farm, a distributive branch in 
 Amsterdam, and all were to form one great organization. For 
 the moment the enterprise is very weak and young, because we 
 have not yet accumulated any notable wealth. We have only 
 liabilities. 
 
264 APPENDIX 
 
 Question: Why do you come to America? Do you believe 
 that any form of communism would settle our problem of the 
 unemployed here and now? 
 
 Van Eeden: This is a very serious question. No, I have told 
 you already that no form of communism would settle anything 
 here and now. But it is the only attempt that we can make, 
 as far as I can see. It is the only way we can go to work to 
 change the present conditions of society. You know some of 
 your best men have said, "God knows, I don't." I know quite 
 well that communism won't succeed right now. It will succeed 
 only after long years of difficulty and hardship, and there must 
 be fought a fight against despotism, and I have come to America 
 because I know that this country is inclined to fight against 
 despotism. And you are in the same straits as we. We fought 
 one big tyrant and we got a hundred small ones instead. You 
 fought a tyrant many years ago, and you have gotten many 
 hundreds of big ones instead. I know you will fight these hun- 
 dreds on their own ground, and along their own lines, if only you 
 know how, and that is what I want to show you. I want you 
 to understand my true motive. When a man has undergone 
 in his life more hardships, more difficulties than he 
 intended to, then he feels, "I want something to make up 
 for that." And that is my motive here. I have undergone 
 suffering over in my own country, and I will be consoled^ 
 and glad and contented, and regard it as nothing, if only I 
 can make this hardship fruitful and useful for humanity. It 
 is for that reason that I have come here. Could I know 
 that my words would grow like germs here in this country, I 
 would gladly return home and you would never see anything 
 more of me. 
 
 I have come, in fact (and let me say it to you, for I believe 
 that you will believe me), I have come for God's sake. I have 
 felt that there is only one activity that satisfies, only one activ- 
 ity that gives real rest and contentment; and that activity is not 
 what we do for ourselves, not what we do for any material pur- 
 pose, and not what we do even for humanity, but what we do 
 for God. And I know there is something of that feeling in you, 
 
APPENDIX 265 
 
 too, for I have seen it. So once more I beseech you, I entreat 
 you. let not my words be an empty wind to you, and when you 
 go home, do not say, "Very curious, how nice, how interesting!" 
 but let my words turn you to action, and let that be not for my 
 sake, not for the sake of yourselves, but for the sake of God. 
 I thank you. 
 
 THE END 
 

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