PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, 
 AND MORALS 
 
PROBLEMS OF MEN, 
 MIND, AND MORALS 
 
 BY 
 
 ERNEST BELFORT BAX 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 ; THE LAST EPISODE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION," ETC. 
 
 BOSTON 
 SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
PRINTED BY 
 
 NEILL AND CO., LTD., EDINBURGH 
 IQI2 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE series of essays comprised in the present 
 volume includes some pieces not before published, 
 together with others that have already appeared in 
 substance in periodical or journalistic form. These 
 latter, however, have all been either rewritten in 
 the main, or, where this seemed unnecessary, have 
 at least been carefully revised and brought up 
 to date. 
 
 In the first chapter, which deals with the pro- 
 blem of Ethical Evolution, I have endeavoured 
 once more to state succinctly and clearly what 
 (apart from my own previous writings) I take to be 
 an entirely new view of the development of the 
 moral consciousness, and one which I hold will 
 not prove unfruitful in results when worked out 
 in detail. 
 
 The second chapter treats of the application to 
 history of certain philosophical principles arrived 
 at in a previous work of mine, The Roots of 
 Reality. Originally designed as the introduction 
 to a volume on the " Philosophy of History," 
 the project of which I have for the time being 
 
 255421 
 
:*:> ;:. PREFACE 
 
 abandoned, it is now presented to the public in an 
 independent form. 
 
 The essay forming Chapter III. is an exception 
 to most of the others in the volume in its being 
 strictly educational in character, i.e. not only is it 
 non-controversial, but it does not even lay claim to 
 any specially new point of view. It took its origin 
 from the suggestion made to me as to the possibility 
 of giving a reasonably intelligent sketch of the 
 history of philosophy in the compass of a couple 
 of magazine or review articles. Its merit, if any, 
 consists in such success as may have been achieved 
 in the work of condensation. 
 
 The remaining chapters of the book treat of 
 various problems of a practical and speculative 
 character, but all of them, I take it, possessing 
 more or less of actual interest. As such they 
 will speak for themselves. 
 
 I may remark, however, that a certain overlap- 
 ping, and here and there repetition, in the chapters 
 specially dealing with Socialism in its several 
 aspects, which are due to the original conditions 
 of their publication, I have allowed to remain 
 the more so inasmuch as they are, I believe, all 
 concerned with points, or arguments, of special 
 importance. For this reason, if for no other, I 
 ask the reader's indulgence for any breach of the 
 etiquette of literary form that may strike him in 
 connection with them. E. B. B. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. THE PROBLEM OF ETHICAL EVOLUTION . 9 
 
 II. THE PROBLEM OF HISTORY AND METHODS FOR 
 
 ITS SOLUTION . . . .43 
 
 III. THE PROBLEM OF THE EVOLUTION OF SPECU- 
 
 LATIVE THOUGHT . . . .65 
 
 IV. THE PROBLEM OF SOCIALIST DEFINITION . 98 
 V. THE PROBLEM OF THE HEARTH, THE THRONE, 
 
 AND THE ALTAR . . . .113 
 
 VI. THE PROBLEM OF SOCIALIST FUNDAMENTALS . 146 
 
 VII. THE PROBLEM OF MISUNDERSTOOD SOCIALISM . 159 
 
 VIII. THE PROBLEM OF MODERN FEMINISM . . 187 
 
 IX. THE PROBLEM OF SEX AND SENTIMENT . 202 
 
 X. THE PROBLEM OF ALCOHOL . . .214 
 
 XI. THE PROBLEM OF LIBERTY AND LIBEL . 224 
 
 XII. THE PROBLEM OF BRITAIN AND THE HUMAN 
 
 RACE . . . . .232 
 
 XIII. THE PROBLEM OF THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY 247 
 
 XIV. THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY AS " VALUE " . 267 
 XV. THE PROBLEM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AS 
 
 THE DERELICT OF THE AGES . 281 
 
rr\ 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF ETHICAL EVOLUTION 
 
 THE root of all Ethic is to be found in the feeling 
 or alogical side of our consciousness. The moral 
 Trieb is an ultimate and irreducible factor in the 
 psychic system into which it enters. This Trieb, 
 this impulse, consists in the determination of the 
 individual mind to motives of action outside the 
 sphere of its own circle of interests qua individual, 
 and, it may be, even incompatible with that circle 
 of interests. But this irreducible potentiality of 
 the " moral sense," regarded per se, is, for the 
 thinker whose business it is to analyse the moral 
 consciousness, no more than an abstraction. In 
 order for it to become realised, it must acquire a 
 determinate content, and it is almost needless to 
 add that on the nature of this content the whole 
 problem of Ethic, in the concrete, hinges. The 
 original irreducible Trieb indicates indeed that the 
 meaning and implications of individual life are not 
 exhausted in the range of interests of the individual 
 as such, i.e. of the individual regarded as an auto- 
 
10 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 matic entity abstracted from the conditions of some 
 larger whole of which he, the individual, forms part 
 and parcel. But again, this alone, though as far as 
 it goes a consideration of first importance, and a 
 distinct recognition of which is essential to all clear 
 thinking on the fundamental ethical problem, does 
 not of itself carry us very far. The nature of that 
 larger whole into the organic system of which the 
 individual enters as subordinate element merely, 
 requires to be determined, if we are to analyse his 
 ethical consciousness, no less than does the ultimate 
 end which this ethical consciousness of the individual 
 presupposes. 
 
 Now in all its manifestations and throughout all 
 its phases of development, morality is concerned 
 directly or indirectly with the relation of the indi- 
 vidual to society, although in certain phases, to be 
 referred to presently, this relation has become so 
 indirect and attenuated as to be in appearance 
 little more than rudimentary. Briefly stated, the 
 following represent, I think, the chief and most 
 salient phases under which the ethical consciousness 
 has manifested itself: 
 
 1. In the earliest dawn of the moral conscious- 
 ness, the larger whole in which the individual 
 instinctively feels himself as a subordinate element 
 and which he instinctively regards as his truer and 
 larger self, is the society or kinship group the 
 horde, the tribe, the clan, the "people" out of 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 11 
 
 which he has arisen, and in which his whole being 
 centres. At this stage the individual has not yet 
 become conscious of himself as such; he merely 
 represents, in his person, the kinship society. He 
 is not conscious of himself as a personality in our 
 sense of the word. Hence for him, for the tribes- 
 man or clansman of early humanity, all conduct 
 has for its end the welfare and glory of the kinship 
 society. For this he fights, for this he lives, and 
 for this he dies. In this stage, therefore, con- 
 science or the moral consciousness realises itself 
 in an instinctive, although narrow and crude, 
 social ethic. 
 
 2. As civilisation supervenes on the conditions 
 of early society, more and more undermining its 
 institutions and sapping the old ethical sentiment 
 which corresponded to them, the centre of gravity, 
 so to say, of the moral consciousness, becomes 
 shifted. The larger whole which furnishes the 
 ultimate object and sanction of the individual 
 conscience gradually changes. The issue of this 
 change is, that from being the social body, out of 
 which the individual arose and in which in early 
 society he very literally lived and moved and had 
 his being, it becomes the divine essence or spiritual 
 principle of the universe with which the soul of the 
 individual human being is conceived as standing in 
 a more or less mystic relation. The welfare and 
 glory of this mystic relation becomes for the new 
 
12 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 religio-ethical consciousness the primary considera- 
 tion just as the welfare and glory of the kin- 
 ship society had been previously the ethical 
 relation of the individual to his fellow-men and 
 to society becoming indirect and subordinate. 
 The view just expressed represents at least 
 the theory and ideal of the phase in ques- 
 tion. The differentiation and ultimate separa- 
 tion of ethics from religion belongs to the stage 
 we are considering. The ultimate appeal is now 
 directly from the individual soul to God, as repre- 
 senting the order of the universe, and conceived of 
 as in direct relation to the individual soul, and no 
 longer to tradition and custom as representing the 
 continuity of social and tribal life. In so far, 
 therefore, as the theory of this form of the ethical 
 consciousness obtains, the basis of morality has 
 ceased to be social and has become individualistic 
 on the one side and mystical on the other. Where, 
 however, as is often the case, the religio-mystical 
 side has fallen into the background or is absent, so 
 far as practical relations are concerned, the sanction 
 and goal of conduct are alike frankly individualistic. 
 The individual is now conscious of himself as a 
 self-centred personality. The ethical value of 
 conduct is no longer gauged by a crude and half- 
 unconscious feeling for social utility, but by a more 
 or less conscious theory of personal happiness, 
 either in this life or one after death. The indi- 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 13 
 
 vidual thus becomes the centre of ethical conduct. 
 Of course all morality, however conceived, is con- 
 cerned either directly or indirectly with social 
 obligations. Such is the case, therefore, even in 
 the stage of ethical consciousness in question. But 
 here the moral relation of the individual to society 
 becomes indirect, and is conceived of from a totally 
 different point of view from that of the ethics of 
 primitive kinship or tribal society. For this 
 mystical introspective stage of ethical consciousness, 
 the salient antithetic categories are those of Sin 
 and Holiness. 
 
 The first of the above two organic phases of the 
 ethical consciousness to which we have referred is 
 realised, in its purity, in that prehistoric human 
 world which is the special domain of the modern 
 science of anthropology. The gradual transition 
 from the tribal or communal ethics of the early 
 world of barbarism to the individual and intro- 
 spective ethics of the later world of civilisation 
 and history, may be seen in the institutions and 
 intellectual progress of all the historic races and 
 is traceable even in the barbaric civilisations sur- 
 viving in the present day. The point alluded to is 
 brought out (to cite the most recent and certainly 
 one of the most masterly products of modern 
 English classical scholarship) in Dr Farnell's 
 Cults of the Greek States, notably in the case 
 of the Delphian Apollo cultus (cf. vol. ii. pp. 210- 
 
14 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 213, also vol. iii. ch. 2, on the Eleusinia 1 ). The 
 Orphic movement was also undoubtedly to a large 
 extent one of mystical introspection. But to the 
 historical and anthropological student it is unneces- 
 sary for the purpose of this essay to dilate at length 
 on the historical instances of the transition from 
 the ethics of the tribe, the clan, the people, to that 
 of the individual soul and the higher supernatural 
 power to whom it owes allegiance, or to indicate 
 in detail the steps and accompanying changes by 
 which this transition was signalised. It suffices 
 to remind the reader that, at a certain stage in 
 social progress, the old religio-ethical system which 
 in various forms dominated the prehistoric world 
 and the earlier periods of history and civilisation 
 themselves, loses its savour and becomes mean- 
 ingless and even morally repellent to the new 
 religio-ethical consciousness. The typical historic 
 expression of the transition spoken of would prob- 
 ably be regarded as embodied in the Hebrew race 
 and enshrined in the books of the Old Testament, 
 with the change there indicated from the Jahveh 
 of ritual and burnt-offerings, the symbol of the 
 intertribal unity of the Israelite people, whose care 
 is for the political and social whole Israel to 
 the Jahveh who rejoiceth not in burnt-offerings 
 
 1 The criticism might perhaps be made that Dr Farnell hardly 
 brings this crucial point into sufficient proportional relief in his 
 treatment of the evolution of Greek religio-ethical thought, as 
 against other subordinate changes. 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 15 
 
 and sacrifices but who is the searcher of hearts, the 
 symbol of the new ethical aspirations of the indi- 
 vidualised Israelite of the later time. 
 
 3. But there appears yet another stage of the 
 ethical consciousness, emphatically modern but as 
 yet inchoate and difficult to define in precise terms. 
 It differs alike from the old tribal or communal 
 ethic of the elder world and from the individual- 
 spiritual ethic which succeeded it. This new phase, 
 one might term a Humanist Ethic, or the Ethic of 
 Human Solidarity. The sanctions of this latter 
 are utilitarian in the highest and widest sense, 
 indeed but they are utilitarian, and they are so 
 with a full and definite consciousness of the impli- 
 cations of that word. Their ultimate appeal is to 
 social progress, as interpreted in the light of what 
 is, at basis, the old revolutionary principle of 
 liberty, equality, fraternity, in its modern applica- 
 tions. Hence, as I have just said, the new ethic 
 in question is emphatically utilitarian, but its 
 utilitarianism is definite and conscious. In this 
 respect it differs from the early communal ethic 
 of group-society which was also social as regards 
 its object, but was more instinctive than con- 
 sciously definite, and operated through naive and 
 animistic conceptions without a recognition of its 
 own implications. In addition to this, its object 
 is no longer confined to a kinship-community, as 
 was the ethic of the early world, but is coextensive, 
 
16 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 mutatis mutandis, with the human race and even, 
 in certain respects, with all sentient beings. It 
 differs, needless to say, from the individualist- 
 introspective ethic in that it is social, not indi- 
 vidual, in its immediate object, and that it is not 
 through the short cut of mysticism that it seeks 
 the pathway to its end, but in the creation or in 
 the furtherance of the evolution of a free and equal 
 human society. In this object and in the high 
 utility which this object implies it finds its ultimate 
 sanctions. Its minor and everyday manifestations 
 take the form of the prominence of the notions of 
 comradeship, loyalty to principle, integrity (apart 
 from supernatural sanctions) ; keenness of sym- 
 pathy, sensitiveness to injustice in all its forms ; 
 and finally, of the continual application of the 
 touchstone of social-utility to test the goodness or 
 badness of any given line of action or mode of 
 conduct, this being its only ethical standard. 
 
 The foregoing seems to the present writer to 
 represent the three chief phases exhibited by the 
 ethical consciousness in the course of its evolution 
 up to date. Absolute precision, of course, is not 
 to be expected in dealing with these matters. 
 There is much overlapping, and the precise 
 boundary lines between one phase and another 
 are not always clear. There are also subordinate 
 cross-divisions. But, broadly speaking, I think 
 the outline given will be found to correspond, 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 17 
 
 even more than roughly, with the facts of human 
 evolution in the sphere of ethics. Now the last- 
 mentioned and most recent of the phases of ethical 
 consciousness I take to represent the ethical stand- 
 point of Modern Socialism. At present it is, of 
 course, by no means confined to conscious and 
 avowed Socialists. But none the less does it 
 represent the ethical attitude of the vast majority 
 of Socialists throughout the world, and the only 
 possible standpoint on which a Socialist code of 
 morals can be based. 
 
 It is necessary, before going further, to discuss 
 the bearing upon ethics of the theory agitating the 
 thinkers of the Socialist party throughout the 
 Continent known as the " Materialist Doctrine 
 of History." This doctrine has for its originators 
 the late Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The 
 best short exposition of its general principle is 
 given by Marx himself in the introduction to his 
 work, Zur Kritik der Politischen Economic. This 
 is so important for an understanding of the Socialist 
 position generally that I give it in full. It is as 
 follows : 
 
 " In the social production of the environment of 
 their life, human beings enter into certain neces- 
 sary relations of production that are independent 
 of their will, and that correspond to a determinate 
 stage of development of their material productive 
 forces. The totality of these relations of produc- 
 
18 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 tion form the economic structure of the society, 
 the real basis upon which a juridical and political 
 superstructure raises itself, and to which deter- 
 minate forms of social consciousness correspond. 
 The mode of production of the material life of 
 society conditions the socio-political and intel- 
 lectual life-process generally. It is not the con- 
 sciousness of men that determines their existence, 
 but, on the contrary, their social existence that 
 determines their consciousness. At a certain 
 stage of their development the material productive 
 forces of society come into contradiction with the 
 existing relations of production, or, to speak in 
 juridical language, with the conditions of property- 
 holding, under which they have hitherto worked. 
 When this is the case, the forms of development 
 proper to the productive forces become suddenly 
 transformed into fetters for these forces. An 
 epoch of social revolution is then entered upon. 
 With the transformation of the economic basis, 
 the whole immense superstructure sooner or later 
 undergoes a complete bouleversement. In con- 
 sidering such revolutions as these, one must always 
 distinguish between the material revolution in the 
 economic conditions of production, and the juridi- 
 cal, political, religious, artistic or philosophical, in 
 short, the ideological, form, in which mankind 
 becomes aware of the conflict and under which it 
 is fought out. Just as little as one can judge an 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 19 
 
 individual by what he thinks of himself can we 
 judge such a period of revolution from its own 
 consciousness alone. On the contrary, we must 
 rather explain this consciousness by the contradic- 
 tions obtaining in the material life of the time, in 
 the conflict existing between the social forces of 
 production and the social relations of production. 
 A social formation never passes away before all 
 the productive forces immanent within it have had 
 time to develop themselves, and new and higher 
 relations of production never establish themselves 
 before the material conditions of their existence 
 have already been formed within the womb of the 
 old society. Hence mankind only sets itself tasks 
 that it can accomplish, for if we consider the 
 matter carefully we shall find that the problem to 
 be solved never arises except where the material 
 conditions of its solution are already present, or at 
 least where they are already in process of realising 
 themselves. In their broader outlines, oriental, 
 classical, feudal, and modern, modes of production 
 may be designated as progressive epochs in the 
 economic formation of society. The bourgeois 
 relations of production are the last of the antagon- 
 istic forms of the social process of production, 
 antagonistic, not in the sense of individual antag- 
 onism, but of an antagonism arising out of the 
 social conditions underlying the life of individuals. 
 These are created by the productive forces develop- 
 
20 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 ing themselves within the womb of bourgeois 
 society, which forces create at the same time the 
 material conditions for the resolution of the 
 antagonism thus created. With the present 
 social formation, therefore, the introductory period 
 of the history of human society is closed." 
 
 The above is the classical formulation of what 
 may be termed the orthodox Socialist doctrine of 
 the philosophy of history, as accepted in its main 
 features by the bulk of the Socialist party through- 
 out the world. It is scarcely necessary to say that 
 ethics, as pertaining to the ideological side of 
 human affairs, is, as regards its evolution, explained 
 by the doctrine in question with reference to the 
 economic phases of the various epochs of social 
 progress, and, more directly, as the outcome of the 
 class antagonisms which are the immediate product 
 of these economic forces and relations. 
 
 Now of the enormous amount of truth contained 
 in the above doctrine no impartial student of 
 history can be in doubt. The fact of the change 
 which takes place in all the relations of human life, 
 be they intellectual, aesthetic, or moral, concurrent 
 with, or following close upon, any great change in 
 the mode of the production and distribution of 
 the wealth of a given society, is undeniable. Marx 
 was the first thinker to recognise this crucial truth 
 of social progress. It is now taken account of by 
 all historians of importance. The only question 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 21 
 
 that may be raised is as to the universal appli- 
 cability of the category of cause and effect to 
 relations between the material-economic basis and 
 the "higher" aspects of human life a universal 
 applicability, which is apparently assumed by 
 Marx himself, and certainly by many of the pre- 
 sent-day exponents of the doctrine in question. 
 That a direct causal connection is legitimately 
 traceable in a large number of cases where it is 
 least suspected not only by the ordinary man but 
 also by many who lay claim to the appellation of 
 thinkers and scholars, is undoubtedly true. Yet 
 without in any way denying or minimising this 
 truth, it is also, I think, arguable that the totality 
 of social progress cannot be interpreted by any 
 theory of economic fact as the sole determining 
 cause, in the sphere of intellectual and moral re- 
 lations. This position has been maintained on 
 more than one occasion by the present writer, both 
 in this country and on the Continent, as against 
 the partisans of the more strictly orthodox Marxian 
 doctrine. The position I have contended for finds 
 throughout human development ab initio a double 
 line of causation, that of material, chiefly economic, 
 condition, and that of human intelligence per se, 
 or psychological condition. Progress has two 
 roots, not one. Each of these constitutes a causal 
 series of its own, but it is in the reciprocal action 
 (Wecliselwirkung) of both these elementary series 
 
22 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 on each other that the reality we call human 
 evolution, or social progress, is constituted. This 
 modification of the Marxian doctrine as originally 
 formulated is, I think, necessitated by a more 
 thorough-going analysis of the whole conditions, 
 To enter more fully upon the larger question in 
 all its ramifications would, however, carry us out- 
 side the scope of the present essay. Let us con- 
 sider the bearing of the foregoing considerations 
 on the problem of ethics, properly so-called, in its 
 relation to the general theory of modern Socialism ! 
 Ethics, i.e. the principle of moral relation, is, 
 we have said, always concerned, directly or in- 
 directly, with the social relations of men. This is 
 so even under the second phase of the ethical 
 consciousness alluded to in the earlier part of the 
 present chapter. The concern with human relations 
 it is which, in the first place, has come in the 
 course of evolution to mark off the sphere of ethics 
 from that of religion. Even where most under 
 the domination of mystical-religious influences of 
 an introspective character, the ethical consciousness 
 does not cease to concern itself, indirectly at least, 
 with the relations and conduct of men with each 
 other and toward society as a whole. It therefore 
 behoves us to consider the essential element in 
 all morality, i.e. in any theory of the duty of the 
 individual toward the society of which he is a 
 member, or, it may be, toward all other sentient 
 

 ETHICAL EVOLUTION 23 
 
 beings outside himself. This theory need not be 
 explicitly present as such to the ordinary mind ; it 
 may be rather instinctive than explicitly conscious. 
 But it is there none the less as the background 
 of conduct. 
 
 Now there are certain lines of conduct which 
 are essential in all societies whatever, however 
 rudimentary their organisation may be, while 
 others vary from age to age and from one form of 
 social organisation to another. The first represent 
 the root-principles of ethics, while the second are, 
 as we may term them, the phenomenal applications 
 of those principles as determined by the conditions 
 of the society in question. The problem here is 
 to find out the most general conception, so to say 
 the common denominator, in regard to which all 
 other ethical notions are derivative, together with 
 the principle which that conception presupposes. 
 Can we arrive at such a ground-principle? I 
 think we can, and that, in accordance with the 
 hints of Aristotle and the Greeks, we may track 
 down all ethical notions to being ultimately appli- 
 cations, direct or indirect, of the conception of 
 justice or equity. 1 
 
 1 Exception is to be made here, it should be said, of notions 
 special to the mystical-introspective phase of the ethical con- 
 sciousness and concerning, not the relation of the individual to 
 the society outside of him, but that of the individual to the 
 Divine Being who is assumed to be revealed within him. For 
 the essentially individualist morality of the mystical-introspective 
 
24 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 If it be asked from what the concept of justice 
 or equity itself is derived, the answer is : It has its 
 root in the principle of sympathy. But sympathy 
 is, au fond, an alogical principle. It cannot, any 
 more than any other emotion as such, be reduced 
 to logical terms. It is not translatable into thought 
 except in a symbolical manner. Justice, or equity, 
 on the other hand, is essentially a principle of rela- 
 tion, in other words, a logical principle. Basing 
 itself on the primal unreasoned emotional factor 
 of sympathy as its postulate, this being the prin- 
 ciple of all association in community whatever, 
 justice formulates equality in some sense as the 
 basis of social relations. (Aristotle speaks of justice 
 as being " a sort of equality." The Golden Rule 
 itself is but a statement of the principle in the form 
 of a categorical imperative.) The principle of 
 equality which is identifiable with that of justice 
 applies in the first instance solely, or mainly, to the 
 kinship group, be it larger or smaller, constituting 
 the early tribal community. From this cause the 
 notion of equality becomes obscured and often lost 
 in the subsequent evolution of society, barbaric and 
 civilised. The primal communal group of which 
 equality was the essential condition gets broken 
 
 phase referred to, while recognising and, in a manner, absorbing 
 notions derived from the earlier social ethics of tribal humanity, 
 often entirely changes their significance and incorporates with 
 them, as having an equal or even higher validity, notions peculiar 
 to itself. But to these we shall have occasion to refer later on. 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 25 
 
 up ; individualism enters ; distinctions of rank, of 
 wealth, arise, largely owing to the introduction of 
 the institution of slavery in the shape of captives, 
 the members of alien communities taken in war, 
 and other causes. Hence, as just said, the notion 
 of Justice, of equitable equality, though always 
 remaining as the groundwork of the ethical con- 
 sciousness, becomes obscured and distorted in vari- 
 ous ways, lapsing for the most part into the position 
 of a " pious opinion," an ideal which it is not even 
 attempted to realise. Or again, it may be con- 
 ceived as realised under forms altogether foreign 
 to its original conception. With the enlargement 
 and development in complexity of the economic 
 basis of social life, the notion of Justice, as above 
 defined, undergoes strange metamorphoses, in ac- 
 cordance with the conditions based on class distinc- 
 tion. With the modification of the idea of Justice, 
 the keystone of the whole, all ethical conceptions 
 become changed. 
 
 Still more important, perhaps, is the fact that 
 what I have termed in the early part of this chapter 
 the " larger whole," to which the individual looks 
 up as at once his completion and the supreme end 
 of his conduct, is no longer a natural society with 
 which his whole existence is interwoven, but the 
 supernatural divinity with whom his personality 
 is supposed to stand in direct relation. Hence the 
 ultimate ideal, the final test of all conduct, from 
 
26 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 being the maintenance and prosperity of a kinship- 
 society, has become the will and glory of a super- 
 natural being. The religious sanction of ethics, in 
 other words, from being social and human, has 
 become personal and theological. It is no longer 
 social custom that decides questions of right and 
 wrong, but sacred oracles, written or otherwise. 
 This is so nominally, at least. But even if in the 
 earlier stages of this phase of the ethical conscious- 
 ness it is also largely so in reality, it is an obvious 
 fact that during the period of civilisation (as dis- 
 tinguished from that of the tribal society which 
 preceded civilisation) it is the exigencies of the 
 dominant classes of a given society which mainly 
 determine the whole detail of its rules of conduct. 
 It is the morality which is most conducive to the 
 maintenance of the prevailing form of class-society 
 which is covered by the theological sanction and 
 enforced by law and public opinion. That included 
 in this class-morality of the civilised world we should 
 find principles of Justice common to all forms of 
 society, goes without saying. But even these are 
 interpreted or explained away in a sense favourable 
 to the needs of the dominant class-society, whenever 
 they come into conflict with the latter. This is one 
 of the important derivative truths emphasised in the 
 doctrine of history proclaimed by Marx and Engels. 
 The later aspects of this second phase of the 
 ethical consciousness Individualism which is 
 

 ETHICAL EVOLUTION 27 
 
 largely coterminous with the history of civilisation 
 up to its latest development in the " Manchester 
 school " doctrine of nineteenth- century capitalism, 
 exhibits various and some even apparently con- 
 tradictory aspects. The ethic of primitive society 
 was, as yet, undifferentiated from its religion. 
 Both were alike social and this-worldly, rather 
 than personal and other-worldly. The transition 
 from early social conditions to those of civilisation 
 is everywhere characterised in proportion to the 
 completeness of the change, by the separation of 
 aspects of human life into distinct and often 
 opposing interests. This appears in the material 
 as well as in the intellectual and moral worlds. 
 In the last-named, upon the demarcation of the 
 natural from the supernatural order and of the 
 human from the divine, the subordination of the 
 former to the latter logically followed. To early 
 man the gods were one with nature, and their 
 relations similar to those of human society, or, at 
 least, there was no clear line of cleavage between 
 the two. In the same way every member of the 
 tribal community was at once master and servant, 
 the equal of other members of the tribal whole, 
 having a share in the communal possessions and 
 a voice in the ordering of affairs, but at the same 
 time owing allegiance and duties to the tribe itself. 
 With the full disruption of the tribal idea by 
 civilisation, a form of religion, as already remarked, 
 
28 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 obtains, which claims the individual soul for its 
 own province and human morality for a mere 
 department of that province. At the same time, 
 with the division of society into classes, in the 
 main into a possessing class and a non-possessing 
 class, religion itself becomes a mere servant of 
 dominant class - interest and fashions morality 
 accordingly, though without, of course, entirely 
 suppressing the notion of Equity as its basis, the 
 latter always remaining as a background, however 
 obscured in practice. 
 
 In accordance with the foregoing, every social 
 formation, every economic change, implies a 
 modification of ethical no less than of religious 
 conceptions. Thus what was ethically defensible 
 to a feudal baron of the fifteenth century was not 
 so to a nonconformist manufacturer of the nine- 
 teenth century. What represented Equity to the 
 latter may be viewed with abhorrence by the 
 Socialist conscience of the twentieth century. The 
 striking illustration of the interdependence of ethical 
 ideas with the whole social and intellectual life is 
 afforded by the results of missionary efforts to 
 impose a bourgeois- Christian standard upon savage 
 races. The savage taken out of tribal conditions, 
 even though they may be of a more or less debased 
 sort, does not really appreciate the introspective 
 and personal morality proper to Christian civilisa- 
 tion, the net result being that having shed, at the 
 

 ETHICAL EVOLUTION 29 
 
 instance of the missionary, his tribal ethics and not 
 assimilating the mixture provided for him by his 
 new father-in- God, he ceases to have any moral 
 principles at all. The converted Kaffir is pro- 
 verbially to be shunned so far as intimate personal 
 or business relations are concerned. A corresponding 
 phenomenon may be observed in certain anarchists 
 who, while having broken with the morality of 
 the bourgeois world and being unable to act up 
 to a Socialist ethic, partly owing to the conditions 
 of the existing bourgeois society not admitting it, 
 and partly owing to their not having themselves 
 grasped the real distinctions between the two, 
 considers himself justified in committing deeds 
 oftentimes of the most undoubtedly criminal 
 character. (This remark, I may observe, is made 
 without prejudice to any view we may hold as 
 to the justifiability of a " terrorist policy " under 
 certain circumstances, which is another question.) 
 
 One of the characteristics of the ethical theory 
 proper to the period of civilisation is the double 
 character of its individualism. In its original 
 form, as based on mystical religion, it was intro- 
 spective and mystical in its character. And this 
 character it has continued to retain nominally up 
 to the present day. But with the growth of the 
 world of modern industry and commerce, another 
 individualist morality has grown up beside it, based 
 on the Manchester-school formula, of " every man 
 
30 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 for himself and the devil take the hindmost." 
 The original notion of Justice which the so-called 
 " ethical " or " universal " religions had taken under 
 their aegis in their own way is here almost com- 
 pletely cast to the winds in favour of the principle 
 of frank self-seeking. This principle is only modi- 
 fied by the sheer necessities of even a commercial 
 community, for no society whatever can hold to- 
 gether without a recognition of the ethical principle 
 of Equity in some shape. This Manchester-school 
 conception of individualist ethic, although only 
 formulated first in the early nineteenth century, 
 has been present tacitly, though not avowedly, in 
 different guises throughout the whole period of 
 civilisation. For the mystical-introspective ethic 
 was too indirect in its relation to everyday social 
 life to influence the conduct of the mass of men 
 continuously. Hence the attitude of these so- 
 called " spiritual " religions, of which Christianity 
 is the typical expression, though equally indivi- 
 dualistic in its own way, was, more often than 
 not, in practical life a dead letter, and its place 
 taken by this other individualist attitude of mere 
 personal self-seeking. 
 
 We have spoken of a new ethical attitude which 
 has begun to show itself, more or less noticeably, 
 within the last generation or thereabouts. It con- 
 sists in a rehabilitation of social life as the sphere 
 and object of ideal (or "religious," if you will) 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 31 
 
 sentiment and its resulting ethical principles of 
 conduct. Hence it is, as already said, utilitarian, 
 but in the broadest sense of the word. As such 
 it opposes itself to the narrow individualistic utili- 
 tarianism the business-morality of the Manchester 
 school. At the same time it is equally out of 
 sympathy with the introspective-mystical frame 
 of mind and the ethical attitude which immedi- 
 ately results from it. The self-communings and 
 aspirations toward the supersensible holiness of an 
 Augustine, or of the pietist generally in all ages, 
 have lost their savour, nay, have no meaning for 
 it. Its highest ideal is political and social rather 
 than personal and spiritual. In this, its immediate 
 aim is the realisation here below of that notion of 
 Justice which we have seen is the one immutable 
 centre in ethics, as being common, in some sense, 
 to all phases of the ethical consciousness. This 
 we may term the negative formulation by the 
 logical understanding of the intrinsically alogical 
 emotion of sympathy. But there is also a positive 
 representation in the sphere of the same logical 
 understanding of this basic emotion. It is ex- 
 pressed in the notion of Brotherhood. 1 This forms 
 
 1 It is necessary here to enter a word of caution against the 
 notion that " Brotherhood " (Fraternity) necessarily implies an 
 equally close personal affection for, or intimacy with, everybody, 
 which is manifestly absurd, and, moreover, does not as a rule 
 obtain even among brothers according to the flesh, who do not 
 always embrace each other promiscuously in Box and Cox fashion. 
 
32 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 the more positive ideal which it is also the aim of 
 the new ethic to realise. Finally, both of these 
 principles alike presuppose freedom, i.e. non-coer- 
 cion from without, of the individual as of society, 
 in the development of each. 
 
 Hence we have once more the old republical 
 triune-principle of Liberty, Equality, and Frater- 
 nity. This principle which I have endeavoured to 
 show forms the theoretical foundation of all ethical 
 conduct it is which Socialism makes its own in a 
 special sense. It does not do so merely in the 
 sense of accepting it as an ideal to be striven for, 
 well knowing the while that it is impossible of at- 
 tainment, in short, as a mere "pious opinion." In 
 this sense it has been adopted by the old Republi- 
 canism. But Socialism claims for the first time 
 in history to furnish the possibility of its realisa- 
 tion. Hitherto material circumstance, economic 
 condition, in short the constitution of society, 
 have stood in the way of this and condemned it to 
 remain no more than a phrase. 
 
 What I have termed the New Ethic, implicitly, 
 where not avowedly and in so many words, bases 
 the test of conduct and the standard of moral 
 aspiration upon social utility. That this is so is 
 illustrated by the fact that well-meaning people 
 
 The personal equation is even here recognised. Brotherhood 
 ethic means the practical recognition of mutual sympathy in 
 the affairs of life and in the recognition of the same ideal aims. 
 (See also note on p. 157.) 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 33 
 
 from out the various Christian sects are proclaim- 
 ing "true Christianity" to consist, not, as was 
 conceived aforetime, in a mystical relation of the 
 individual soul to the Divinity, but in working for 
 the amelioration of the masses and for a higher 
 social state, whatever may be the means by which 
 they think to further this state. The change 
 in the attitude of the religious sects in this con- 
 nection is very significant. It may be readily 
 tested by opening a modern up-to-date book by a 
 representative man of almost any of the leading 
 Christian bodies, and comparing it with a corre- 
 sponding book of homiletic reflections of a previous 
 age, even of half a century ago, when the new 
 wine with which it is nowadays attempted to 
 infuse the old bottles becomes strikingly apparent. 
 This new or third of the salient phases of the 
 ethical consciousness, which is noticeable in a 
 vague and indefinite way amongst serious-minded 
 persons in general, acquires in Socialism its full 
 content and a definite meaning. Its negative side 
 is as important to grasp as its positive that which 
 differentiates it from the other phases of the ethical 
 consciousness, as the positive tendencies of its new 
 point of view. Moral notions belonging to the 
 earlier phases must inevitably, as survivals, tend to 
 become rudimentary in this new phase, especially 
 when the material conditions which it implies, 
 and for which modern Socialism as a politico- 
 
 3 
 
34 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 economic movement stands, shall have become 
 realised. 
 
 This point is important in view of the accus- 
 ations brought by politically interested persons 
 against Socialism, anent " Atheism " and " Free 
 Love." Absurd as the statements often made by 
 these enemies of Socialism are in themselves, yet 
 the fact that they are sufficiently plausible to be 
 worth making at all is due to their having a certain 
 basis of truth. For example, on the one side, 
 Socialism, it is alleged, involves Atheism. On the 
 other hand, it is pointed out with perfect truth that 
 no declaration of speculative belief or disbelief is 
 demanded of Socialists by any party-programme. 
 But this disclaimer, although technically correct, 
 does not really dispose of the question. The fact 
 remains, not merely that the whole tradition of 
 Socialism and of the popular proletarian movement 
 which is the material basis of Socialism, as it is 
 understood to-day, is anti-theological, but that the 
 whole theoretical foundation on which Socialism 
 is built up is that of modern science, with its sole 
 recognition of fact and law, and the supreme 
 authority of human reason operating on the results 
 of experience, in the affairs of human life. Hence 
 it is necessarily altogether outside the introspective 
 supernaturalism which has played so prominent 
 a part in various periods of civilisation. No less 
 is it outside the naive supernaturalism of primitive 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 35 
 
 man. This attitude it shares in common with 
 what is known as the " modern spirit " and modern 
 thought in general. What distinguishes Socialism 
 in this respect is that while the average cultivated 
 bourgeois finds it necessary to give a certain out- 
 ward and formal homage to creeds and cults which 
 no longer represent his real convictions, the 
 Socialist frankly recognises the intellectual change 
 that has reduced these to absurdity. The hypoc- 
 risy and lip-homage of the bourgeois in this con- 
 nection, largely the result of the notion that the 
 old creeds are necessary bulwarks of existent 
 society, is naturally repellent to a Socialist who 
 aims at the radical transformation of existent 
 society. The difference in this respect between the 
 Socialist and the average educated bourgeois is not 
 so much one of real conviction as of the import of 
 that conviction in practical life. In a word, the 
 Ethic of Socialism has not only no need of a 
 personal Deity, but may well find a personal Deity 
 in the way. Hence naturally it cannot admit 
 religious dogma to be either necessary or desirable 
 for " the masses." 
 
 Similarly as regards the question of so-called 
 " Free Love." The theological ethic of introspec- 
 tion, whatever form it took, has always regarded 
 sexual relations, as such, with repulsion and hostility. 
 On the precise grounds and origin of this attitude 
 much may be, and has been, written. But these 
 
36 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 do not concern us here. It suffices for our purpose 
 to note the fact, which is incontestable, and to 
 point out that the reasons for this attitude un- 
 questionably flow from the general speculative 
 position occupied by introspective mysticism. Now 
 principles of conduct originating in a speculative 
 position that has been abandoned naturally lose 
 their force. But there is an additional reason, 
 corresponding to that just mentioned as regards 
 traditional creeds, why existing bourgeois society 
 should cling to these principles even apart from 
 the speculative theory which is their only logical 
 support, and that reason is setting aside inherited 
 sentiment purely economic in its nature. A 
 distinction has never yet been drawn between the 
 sexual relation per se and its social results in the 
 bringing of new members into the community, ft 
 is here that the politico-economic significance of 
 the matter comes in. In a society based on private 
 property-holding, it is clear that the production of 
 offspring must be taken cognisance of, or regulated, 
 with a view to the cost of maintenance, etc. The 
 confused state of public opinion as to the true 
 meaning of sexual ethics is appalling. The average 
 man mixes up sentiment derived from the intro- 
 spective-theological Weltansicht with considerations 
 having the reason of their being in the exigencies 
 of modern capitalistic civilisation. Yet to attain 
 a scientific view of the subject, the first necessity 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 37 
 
 is to clearly distinguish the several strains which 
 go to make up the sentiment of existing public 
 opinion on the subject. If we do this with im- 
 partial care we shall probably be driven to the 
 conclusion that the sexual relation per se, like any 
 other animal function, does not really come within 
 the province of ethics at all, understanding by 
 ethics the new phase of the ethical consciousness 
 for which the standard of conduct is direct social 
 utility. As tested by this standard, I repeat that 
 the sexual relation per se would seem to occupy 
 neutral ground. Of course any action, however 
 neutral in itself, may readily, owing to condition- 
 ing circumstances, be brought into the sphere of 
 ethical judgment and thus take on a definitely 
 moral or immoral colour, as the case may be. And 
 so it is here. The most obvious and comprehensive 
 of these conditioning circumstances in the domain 
 of sexual conduct is, of course, the production of 
 offspring. The difference between the logical 
 attitude of the older introspective-theological ethics 
 as regards this question, and the logical attitude of 
 the new social ethics, lies in the fact that for the 
 former the sexual relation was per se moral or 
 immoral, while for the latter it only becomes so 
 per aliud, i.e. owing to conditions external to itself 
 as such. 
 
 The change implied in the aim of Social Demo- 
 cracy involves then the shifting of ethical judgment 
 
38 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 in various directions. For example, so far from, as 
 is sometimes alleged, tending to weaken the moral 
 responsibility of the individual, it will tend in many 
 ways to give it backbone. As things are in the 
 present social order, organised, as it is, on a bureau- 
 cratic basis, for the coercion of men rather than 
 the administration of things, we find the bureau- 
 crat or functionary separated into two moral selves. 
 His character as man is entirely severed from his 
 character as functionary. Now a Socialistic society 
 organised primarily for the administration of things 
 rather than for the coercion of men would have 
 naught of such a severance as this, which is re- 
 pellent even to the aspirant to such a society. We 
 often hear it said, in exculpation of some act of 
 intrinsic cruelty or injustice, as dictated, it may be, 
 by law, policy, or expediency, such a one " was only 
 doing his duty " (as judge, military commander, or 
 what not). A Socialist would not recognise official 
 "duty" as ever having the priority over human 
 conscience or ethical duty. The judge who deprived 
 a fellow-creature, brought up before him in the 
 course of his functions, of liberty or life because 
 an evil law he was supposed to administer directed 
 him to do so, there is little doubt would be execrated 
 by a healthy Socialist public opinion. The public 
 opinion of the bourgeois world, by way of exception, 
 sanctioned this ethical position on one memorable 
 occasion. I refer to the trial and execution of 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 39 
 
 Fouquier Tinville for the part he had taken in his 
 official capacity as Procureur of the Revolutionary 
 Tribunal, in giving effect to Robespierre's law of 
 Prairial during the Terror. In this case, owing to 
 the exceptional circumstances, it suited the book 
 of the dominant classes to act in opposition to the 
 principle of ethical duality usually invoked by them. 
 This they carried to the length of criminally ar- 
 raigning Fouquier Tinville, refusing to accept his 
 plea that he acted as ordered by his government 
 in accordance with the duty imposed upon him by 
 his office. That they should have done this is ex- 
 tremely significant as a precedent. 
 
 The above is only one among many instances of 
 the manner in which the new ethic the Socialist 
 Ethic of human solidarity would traverse the 
 judgments and distinctions prevalent in the world 
 of modern Capitalism. The latter has moulded 
 the plastic substance of the individualistic ethic as 
 handed down to it, for its own purposes. There 
 are many other ways in which present-day moral 
 notions must inevitably be modified, as the reader 
 will see for himself. I have merely mentioned the 
 above as indicating one direction, at least, in which 
 increased responsibility would be placed upon the 
 individual conscience. 
 
 To sum up in a few words the leading positions 
 of the foregoing argument : The moral impulse, as 
 such, is irreducible to anything beyond itself. It 
 
40 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 is an alogical ultimate, indicating that the meaning 
 of the individual human being is not exhausted 
 within his own personality but reaches out beyond 
 this as an element of some larger synthesis. The 
 nature of any system of ethic is determined by that 
 of this larger whole into which the individual 
 conceives himself as entering, and which he feels 
 to be his truer life, in relation to which he, as 
 an individual, is subordinate. 
 
 There are, in the evolution of the moral 
 consciousness, three distinct stages traceable : 1. 
 The ethic of early tribal society, in which the 
 object of the moral relation is the community, of 
 which the kinship-group is the type. At this stage 
 the individual is merged in the social group to 
 which he belongs. 2. Concurrently with the 
 break-up of group-society and the rise of the 
 autonomy of the individual, the moral basis gets 
 shifted. Ethics, instead of implying the relation 
 of the individual to the society without him, tends 
 to become, primarily at least, based on a relation- 
 ship between the individual, conceived now as a 
 spiritual being or soul, and a spiritual Divinity 
 supposed to reveal himself directly to this 
 individual soul. Ethic now separates itself from 
 religion, while at the same time its ultimate 
 sanction rests in religion. This stage I have 
 termed the individualist-mystical, or the intro- 
 spective. Its ethical ideal is personal holiness as 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 41 
 
 opposed to the older tribal or civic " virtue." As 
 a consequence, in proportion as the mystical or 
 religious sanction is absent, or fallen into the 
 background, does all ethics in this stage tend to 
 become dissolved into mere atomistic individualism. 
 The latter finds its classical formulation in the 
 doctrine underlying the Manchester-school of 
 economics. This second phase of the ethical 
 consciousness has obtained, in one or other of its 
 forms, up to the present day. A change, however, 
 is even now making itself felt. 3. The change in 
 question consists in a view of ethics as essentially a 
 social matter. In this respect it represents a return 
 to the view of the early world. But it is a return on 
 a higher plane. The present social ethics has for 
 its object not any limited social whole, such as that 
 of early man, but humanity as such. 
 
 We have directed attention to the Marxian 
 doctrine, the so-called "materialist theory of 
 history," in its bearing on ethics. The point of 
 view as regards the detail of conduct in each social 
 formation, we have found to be as pointed out by 
 Marx, dictated mainly by the interests of the 
 dominant classes in any given society, though 
 purely ethical conceptions may also react on the 
 economic society itself. 
 
 We have traced the fundamental idea at the basis 
 of conscience and of moral conduct to be that of 
 Equality or of Justice. This again we have pointed 
 
42 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 out as the root-principle of the revolutionary 
 trinity Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. But 
 this idea of Justice itself we have traced back to its 
 origin in that alogical somewhat, or feeling, termed 
 Sympathy. This emotion is immediate and absolute, 
 and hence inexpressible j?r se in any logical formula. 
 As to the new ethical attitude we have referred 
 to as already showing itself in modern thought and 
 feeling, and which we have forecast as indicating 
 the dominant trend in the Ethics of Socialism, we 
 have seen it to be the recognition of social and 
 political life, as the object and as embodying the 
 only sanction of conscience. Under Socialistic 
 conditions, as we believe, this fact will be formally 
 acknowledged, and what I have termed the third 
 phase in the evolution of the ethical consciousness 
 will be definitively affirmed. What the detail of 
 the canons of action will be under the new condi- 
 tions we cannot, of course, foresee with any com- 
 pleteness. This much, however, we may venture 
 to predict that some courses of conduct which 
 are to-day regarded as coming within the purview 
 of ethics, will cease to have any moral bearing in 
 the society of the future, while other courses of 
 conduct, now regarded as indifferent or even 
 ethically commendable, will be condemned by the 
 moral law of the time to come. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF HISTORY AND METHODS 
 FOR ITS SOLUTION 
 
 HISTORY means the content of past social reality. 
 We may either treat this content descriptively, 
 endeavouring to reproduce in mental imagery the 
 reality of the past, its life and action, or we may 
 search out the general laws of historical change 
 and development, irrespective of concrete time or 
 place ; or we may combine the two methods in 
 taking history in the concrete, the history of a 
 given country, or people, or period ; or universal 
 history, understanding by this the evolution of 
 progressive humanity from the beginnings of 
 civilisation in Western Asia and Egypt up to the 
 present time, and connect the phantasmagoria of 
 particular events, incidents, and persons with the 
 abstract laws on which all history is based. The 
 present inquiry deals with history in the second 
 and third senses mentioned, the senses usually 
 understood by the phrase, the Philosophy of 
 History. 
 
44 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 Now it behoves us to consider on what the 
 possibility of these two ways of treating history 
 ultimately rests. The laws determining the his- 
 torical development we find embedded as part of 
 the reality of history. But what strikes the eye 
 at first sight is, not the laws but the phantasmagoria 
 itself, the events, incidents, and personalities in a 
 word, the phenomena of history. Now the infinite 
 phenomena of history, the play of incidents and 
 personalities, taken in their totality, are irreducible 
 to law, i.e. to any formulation based on the causal 
 category. This is shown by the impossibility of 
 foretelling concrete events. The action of any law 
 is constant, cue hypothesi, and can be foretold with 
 accuracy. But it is only where a law not merely 
 enters into, but absolutely dominates, a concrete 
 situation, that the issue of that situation can be 
 foreseen with any approach to accuracy, which is 
 certainly not the case with human history. In a 
 word, this phenomenal element in history is the 
 domain of the antithesis of law (i.e. of the formul- 
 able causal relation) is the domain of what we call 
 chance. We have then two primary elements in 
 history, the general or universal trend of things 
 in their several departments, economical, political, 
 intellectual, and we have the particular things 
 themselves persons, incidents, events constituting 
 the material in and through which the causal 
 relations, or laws of historical change, manifest 
 
. 
 
 4-V-lWICi^ll 
 
 HISTORY AND ITS SOLUTION 45 
 
 themselves. The particular phenomena of history 
 often modify, suspend, or deflect the law as given 
 in its universal formula, and, although the law 
 may, in the long run, rehabilitate itself, it is usually 
 the chance element, the play of individual character, 
 fortuitous incident, etc., which seems to dominate 
 history in any determinate period, limited geo- 
 graphical area, or ethnical section of the human 
 race. Our ultimate antithesis of history then is 
 that between the particular events and persons 
 constituting its raw material and the universal 
 tendencies expressed in what we call its laws, i.e. 
 the determination of the causal category governing 
 its movement. 
 
 But traversing this fundamental abstract anti- 
 thesis is a more concrete one. We may discover 
 in the historical process two sides, the unconscious 
 and the conscious, or the material and the psycho- 
 logical, as we may choose to term it. History may 
 either be treated from the point of view of the 
 conscious process as determining the unconscious, 
 or the unconscious process as determining the 
 conscious. We may either view the course of 
 man's conceptions and beliefs, etc., as conditioning 
 the course of the material facts of his life and the 
 development of his environment, or we may regard 
 the material facts of his life as determining his ideas, 
 beliefs, and general mental constitution. History, 
 until quite recently, was invariably written on the 
 
46 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 basis of the former hypothesis. The late Lord 
 Acton, even, had no hesitation in propounding it 
 as though it were a self-evident truth. The 
 tendency is now, on the contrary, to regard the 
 material environment as either wholly, or mainly, 
 conditioning the ideological (as it is sometimes 
 called) side of human life and social development. 
 There is a third view possible as regards this 
 problem, and that is, to conceive the unconscious 
 and the conscious process as reciprocally determining 
 each other. On this view neither is the cause of 
 the other, but each, at once, determines, and is 
 determined by, the other. The latter is, I take it, 
 the true and scientific view. But, even here, it 
 can hardly be denied that the unconscious factor, 
 the material conditions of life, has, up to the present 
 time, had a certain priority over the conscious 
 factor. The modes of the production of wealth, 
 which have shaped social life on its material side, 
 have, hitherto, on the whole, more directly in- 
 fluenced habits of thought and the conscious will 
 of men than ideas and habits of thought have 
 influenced material progress. 
 
 The tendency is for the conscious element of 
 human life more and more to acquire that deter- 
 minative power which formerly accrued to the 
 unconscious. External circumstances have, more- 
 over, hitherto often determined, not merely the 
 relations of men, but also their ideas of those 
 

 HISTORY AND ITS SOLUTION 47 
 
 relations, and have even modified their conceptions 
 of the meaning of reality in general. Yet, admitting 
 thus much, on the one side, not only do we notice, 
 at present, an increasing influence of the conscious 
 will of man in modifying his environment, but in 
 no past phase of the history of civilisation is pro- 
 gress entirely reducible to an unconscious factor : 
 understanding by this a factor outside the psycho- 
 logical element in human life. Side by side with 
 the series of material causation, there is always a 
 parallel series of psychical causation, and either 
 could be viewed in the abstract as relatively inde- 
 pendent of the other. 
 
 This is especially noticeable in certain sides of 
 intellectual development the history of specula- 
 tive opinion, for example, where we can distinctly 
 trace the evolution from one idea to another, 
 apart from all direct external influence. We can 
 follow one system of conception developing into 
 its successor without any direct modification from 
 outside. The order is purely psychological con- 
 sidered per se. Similarly, on the other hand, in 
 economical evolution we can often trace a chain 
 of cause and effect due to the force of circumstances, 
 apparently without any essential intervention of 
 the human mind. But viewing the historical 
 movement as a whole, we can see that its reality 
 consists in the mutual determination of its two 
 sides. One-sided causation, as between the un- 
 
48 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 conscious physical surroundings and conditions of 
 social life and the human intelligence and will as 
 such, no more obtains than does the one-sided 
 determination of physical conditions by the in- 
 telligently directed will of man. Each is at once 
 limited by, and limits the other. Conscious will 
 cannot effect change without the co-operation of 
 the unconscious forces constituting its environment. 
 The unconscious forces, though they may destroy 
 a given society, it is equally clear, cannot effect 
 evolutionary changes in it without the co-operation 
 of intelligent will as embodied in certain, at least, 
 of its members. It is only a question of which 
 factor is predominant in any given case. 
 
 But there are, again, still more concrete anti- 
 theses which an analysis of human development 
 presents to us. These we may term dynamic 
 antitheses. History implies the organic movement 
 of human society, with its economical, political, 
 juridical, its intellectual, ethical, emotional, aesthetic 
 sides. Now the question imposes itself what is 
 the most basal antithesis underlying the whole 
 progress of social life and manifesting itself in all 
 these departments ? The most salient antithesis 
 of this dynamic kind, the one which dominates all 
 others in the development of social life from the 
 dawn of history (or, which is the same thing, from 
 the dawn of civilisation), seems to the present 
 writer to be that between the individual and the 
 
HISTORY AND ITS SOLUTION 49 
 
 community into which he enters. There are, of 
 course, as remarked, other antitheses there is the 
 antithesis of race in its widest sense, there is the 
 great economic antithesis of civilisation issuing in 
 the struggle of classes. 
 
 These antitheses seem deep-lying, but however 
 deep-lying they may be in the very constitution 
 of society itself, as exhibited in the evolution of 
 civilised man in his present state, they are not 
 so deep-lying as the antithesis of the Individual 
 considered, on the one hand, as per se, and, 
 on the other, as the constituent merely of that 
 larger whole, the Community. The entire course 
 of history shows us the struggle of the individual 
 to emancipate himself from that close and organic 
 union with some social whole, be it clan, tribe, 
 people, or what not, that characterised pre-civilised 
 and pre-historic humanity. In the earlier periods 
 of civilisation and, indeed, till a considerable ad- 
 vance has taken place, the individual is still over- 
 shadowed in importance by the community, finally 
 in the form of the patriarchal family at one end, 
 and the city-state at the other. 
 
 Last of all the general, industrial, and economic 
 development, together with its accompanying in- 
 tellectual development, severs the individual from 
 his social group and from the community, as such, 
 and converts him into an independent self-subsistent 
 entity. At the other extreme, the State, becoming 
 
50 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 ever more impersonal and mechanical and extend- 
 ing itself over ever-increasing areas of population, 
 assumes the function of the government of men, at 
 the same time gradually undermining and destroy- 
 ing the administrative functions and powers of the 
 social groups, kinship, and otherwise, of the earlier 
 world. This relation of the individual to the com- 
 munity, determined, as it is, by the general current 
 of social evolution, we contend then to be the 
 most salient and the most deep-lying relation in 
 historical development. Let us now consider, for 
 a moment, the two other pairs of antitheses also, 
 that of higher and lower race and of possessing and 
 non-possessing class, the latter of which, at least, is 
 of supreme importance. Let us take, first of all, 
 the antithetic relation of higher race to lower race. 
 There are some historical thinkers who would 
 base the movement of history, or, otherwise ex- 
 pressed, the progress of civilisation, upon the 
 antagonism of colour or race. Thus it has been 
 argued that the condition of the rise of civilisation 
 out of barbarism is the duality of an intellectually 
 and physically superior dominant race and an 
 inferior dominated race, and the gradual fusion of 
 the two. But whatever part difference of colour 
 or of race may have played in history, I think a 
 very little reflection will show it is impossible to 
 regard the racial or colour relation as in any way 
 an ultimate one. For one thing, such an assump- 
 
HISTORY AND ITS SOLUTION 51 
 
 tion begs the question as to the real origin of 
 racial difference. It might be argued that such 
 difference is itself traceable to deeper-lying economic 
 or climatic causes, and hence was in no wise an 
 original element in social change. The second of 
 the antitheses, that between economic interests 
 within the social organism resulting in the class 
 struggle of the more developed phases of civilisa- 
 tion is, without doubt, more far-reaching and more 
 fundamental than the last mentioned, and on it, 
 in conjunction with the technical development of 
 industrial processes, is based the doctrine of the 
 economic interpretation of history of Marx and 
 Engels. But while conceding the immense range 
 of explanation which the opposition of economic 
 interests is capable of affording us in matters 
 historical, there are, unquestionably, regions in 
 human affairs of which it cannot exhaust the 
 explanation, even in its most extended sense. On 
 the other hand, the clash of economic interests can, 
 in most cases, be very obviously treated as a special 
 manifestation of the antagonism between individual 
 and community, resulting from the efforts of the 
 former to emancipate itself from its organic union 
 with the latter. One thing is clear, and that is, 
 that history viewed as a synthetic development of 
 society has, as its mainspring, the rise of oppositions 
 issuing from irreconcilable contradictions, in their 
 turn manifesting themselves as antagonisms within 
 
52 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 the social synthesis itself. That this is so, I say, is 
 clear, whatever view we may take as to the special 
 contradiction, the special antithesis, which we are 
 to regard as the turning-point of the whole process 
 of history. 
 
 In pre-historic society the principle of contra- 
 diction, and hence of antagonism, lay outside the 
 society itself. The primitive kinship-group and 
 its offshoots had no principle of internal opposition 
 in so far, at least, as it was free and independent ; 
 it had no contradiction of interest within itself. 
 It was opposed as a social whole to similar social 
 wholes, to similar kinship societies, outside itself. 
 Hence the origin of war. This external opposition, 
 or contradiction, was, at this stage, the only opposi- 
 tion of interest that it knew. With the rise and 
 progress of civilisation, opposition, contradiction, 
 and hence antagonism arose within the social 
 organism itself. And it is this principle of internal 
 contradiction and antagonism that constitutes the 
 lever of historical movement and progress. 
 
 We have now to consider what we mean by 
 Reality as applied to history, namely, in what sense 
 we are to regard history as real, considered as a 
 concrete series of events, in a concrete system of 
 social life. Now, how shall the content of the past 
 be represented ? What constitutes a true present- 
 ment of history as opposed to a true understanding 
 of history ? To obtain a true presentment of any 
 
HISTORY AND ITS SOLUTION 53 
 
 period of history we should, of course, have to 
 identify the content of our consciousness with the 
 content of a consciousness of a past age. This 
 is what the historical imagination endeavours to 
 attain. But such reconstruction as the historical 
 imagination by means of research and archaeological 
 lore can effect, must obviously remain, in its total 
 result, an artificial product, since its correspondence 
 with fact cannot be controlled by a reference to 
 the living reality. And, again, the living reality 
 itself is different, according to the facet from which 
 it is regarded. Each individual lives in his own 
 world, albeit that world at once conditions and is 
 conditioned by the conception which enters into 
 it of the general world of the time. And this 
 constitutes another difficulty of reproducing any 
 image of a past age, whether in the form of 
 descriptive historical narrative or of pure romance. 
 We merely call attention to this point here 
 (although it is susceptible of not unfruitful elabor- 
 ation), since it does not directly concern the 
 subject-matter of the present essay. We are here 
 concerned with historical truth from the stand- 
 point of the understanding of history, not with 
 the attempted reproduction in imagination of the 
 content of the past in our present-day minds, 
 which is the province of the historiographer and 
 of the historical romancist. The reproduction of 
 the past in this latter sense, we may observe, is a 
 
54 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 matter of feeling and, to a large extent, immediate 
 intuition. 1 The aim of all historical narrative and 
 historical romance should be, through the medium 
 of picture-writing, to do this in its own way. 
 
 But what we are here concerned with, we repeat, 
 is not the reproduction of the past in terms of 
 feeling, but its interpretation in terms of thought. 
 We are concerned with the endeavour to pluck 
 out the heart of history's meaning and present it 
 in the formulae of abstract reflection. Attempting 
 in this way to reconstruct history, we take as our 
 guide that antithesis, that particular pair of oppo- 
 sites, discoverable in the realisation of historical 
 progress, which seems the most fundamental, 
 understanding by this that opposition to which 
 others are to the greatest extent reducible. Now 
 this opposition or antithesis, which embraces 
 within itself more than any other single opposi- 
 tion traceable in the evolution of society, would 
 seem to be, as already pointed out, the opposition 
 between the Individual and the Community. This 
 relation of the Individual to the Community, as a 
 relation, seems as nearly as possible the central 
 one in the historical movement. 
 
 1 One of the most remarkable instances of this reproduction 
 of the atmosphere of a past age in the art of the present is 
 to be found in Wagner's Meistersinger. We feel, in some 
 inexplicable way, that the music brings us in contact with the 
 consciousness of the late mediaeval German city. We feel that 
 it touches in us some nerve in our consciousness that reawakens 
 an echo of the consciousness of that remote time. 
 
HISTORY AND ITS SOLUTION 55 
 
 The freeing of the individual from the bonds unit- 
 ing him with his community, in early pre-historic 
 society so closely knit as to constitute him a mere 
 element, so to say, a cell in the tissue of that society 
 itself, became, under various guises and in various 
 subsidiary forms, the battle-ground of human pro- 
 gress during the historical period. The aim of the 
 individual was to constitute himself a self-contained, 
 independent entity, his relations to society to be 
 reduced, as far as possible, to such as were neces- 
 sary for protection against other individuals. This 
 tendency has persistently maintained itself as a 
 crucial one throughout the whole historical period. 
 It is before all things traceable in the economic 
 development of society, but scarcely less so in its 
 intellectual development. Political and social con- 
 flicts have usually turned upon this question as their 
 raison d'etre, whatever form they may have more 
 immediately taken on. Alike in the production 
 and distribution of material wealth, in the political 
 ordering of society, in social custom, in philo- 
 sophical speculation, and in theological belief, we 
 find this crucial antithesis asserting itself. 
 
 It would be a mistake, however, to regard this 
 relation of Individual and Community, deep-lying 
 though it may be in the structure of historical 
 movement and historical reality, as what the 
 Germans would call a Schablone, i.e. as a magic 
 formula with which to conjure all other relations, 
 
56 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 or a procrustean bed into which the facts have to 
 be fitted. Pedantry of this kind always vitiates 
 the conclusions of historical investigation. The 
 object of the Philosophy of History is to find 
 formulae for the laws, or causal processes, under- 
 lying the reality of history. But these causal 
 relations do not exhaust, or even suffice to explain, 
 the whole of historical reality. They are, at best, 
 universal forms persisting throughout history. The 
 whole particular element, constituting the life of 
 history, the phantasmagoria of actual things, events, 
 and persons, cannot be absorbed by them without 
 remainder over. The alogical element maintains 
 itself stubbornly over against the logical. But 
 even regarding the theoretical element per se, it 
 may fairly be doubted whether it is possible to 
 find a formula that shall cover all causal relations 
 that disclose themselves on analysis. What is 
 claimed for the relation of Individual and Com- 
 munity is, that it is the most persistent, the most 
 salient relation in history, not that history cannot 
 be regarded from other points of view which traverse 
 more or less the lines of this relation, and hence 
 which cannot always be satisfactorily expressed in 
 its terms, taken by themselves. 
 
 It may be well now to summarise the results of 
 the preliminary investigation we have been engaged 
 upon. The reality of history, we have found, con- 
 sists of two elements: (1) the element of causal 
 
HISTORY AND ITS SOLUTION 57 
 
 relation giving us the universal laws, the general 
 trend of historic evolution ; and (2) the infinite mass 
 of facts, incidents, and personalities constituting 
 the particular element at the basis of these laws, 
 the material which the causal form presupposes. 
 Hence it is that any theory of history must neces- 
 sarily be in a sense a dead abstraction. No theory 
 of history, no formula defining the laws dominating 
 the sequence of historical phenomena, can ade- 
 quately explain the life of a society considered as 
 a living whole. The meaning of history, as pre- 
 sented in any theory of history, is hence never 
 more than approximative. 
 
 But beyond the above primary distinction of 
 factors in the content of historical reality, we have 
 seen that within social life itself, viewed concretely, 
 we can distinguish two aspects: (1) the material 
 aspect of material surroundings, modes of the pro- 
 duction and distribution of wealth, ways of life, 
 etc. ; and (2) the ideal side as represented by the 
 reaction of the human mind and will upon its 
 environment. The causal efficacy may accrue to 
 either of these sides, or to both, in conjunction. 
 In any given situation or in any given period, 
 either may be predominant. There are certain 
 periods in which the material, especially the 
 economic development, determines the whole social 
 content of that period. It suffices, in the main, 
 to explain even the intellectual, emotional, and 
 
58 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 moral characteristics of those periods. There 
 are, again, other periods when the course of social 
 life and the current of progress seem deter- 
 mined by an ideal, a belief. In truth, however, 
 there is always an interaction between these 
 two sides. Each, undoubtedly, has its own line 
 of causation up to a certain point, though in the 
 long run, in the total result, their co-operation 
 is manifest. But traversing these fundamental 
 antitheses we have sought for an antithesis, opera- 
 tive throughout the entire historical period, which 
 should afford us some sort of clue to the special 
 forms progressively assumed by the life of human 
 society during the course of history, and should 
 hence indicate to us a necessary, a universal form, 
 in which human society develops. Some have 
 found this cardinal historical relation in the racial 
 antithesis, that of higher and lower race. In the 
 conflicts and the fusions of such races they believe 
 themselves to have discovered the key to the 
 development from pre-historic barbarism to his- 
 toric civilisation, and therewith the impulse and 
 the direction of all subsequent changes. Others, 
 again, with much greater reason on their side, 
 would find the clue to those specific forms, 
 material, intellectual, and moral, which society has 
 assumed at different epochs, in the economical side 
 of social life, i.e. in the material conditions of the 
 epoch in question. According to this view, there- 
 

 HISTORY AND ITS SOLUTION 59 
 
 fore, the causes of every form of social life are 
 discoverable in technical development, but also and 
 chiefly in the antagonism and the resulting con- 
 flict of classes, which, arising within the economic 
 sphere, leaves its impress throughout the entire 
 range of social life, even in departments seemingly 
 most remote from economic interests. 
 
 The inadequacy of the first of the theories 
 mentioned is, I think, fairly obvious, more par- 
 ticularly since, as already remarked, it is open 
 to the criticism that racial and colour differences 
 themselves are not necessarily inherent from the 
 beginning, but may themselves be traceable to 
 differences of environment lying far back in pre- 
 historic time. As regards the second theory, every 
 advance in anthropological and historical research 
 tends to show, more and more, the enormous 
 measure of truth contained in it. The chief criti- 
 cism to which it is susceptible, as hitherto formu- 
 lated, turns upon its one-sidedness. Its advocates, 
 too often, handle it as a Schablone, a magic key 
 to unlock every secret and solve every problem 
 in the development of human life and thought. 
 They, as a rule, entirely ignore the independent 
 action of the mental life, no less than the reaction 
 of the mental life on the development and modi- 
 fication of its environment. According to the 
 so-called "materialist doctrine of history," the 
 whole content of the mental life is determined 
 
60 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 solely by economic conditions and by the class 
 struggles arising out of them. This is a point, 
 however, which requires to be discussed at greater 
 length than is here possible, and to which we, 
 therefore, merely refer in passing. The above, then, 
 however unequal in point of merit, are, I think, the 
 two leading standpoints as regards this problem. 
 
 For our part we would trace even the last-named 
 antithesis, that of classes having their origin in 
 economic relations of private property-holding, 
 down to a deeper antithesis still, namely, the anti- 
 thesis of Individual and Community as such. This 
 antithesis, which evolves in the fulness of time 
 into the opposition of Individualism and Socialism, 
 would seem the fountain-head whence spring those 
 very class conflicts themselves which have rent society 
 from within throughout the whole historical period. 
 The most salient intellectual tendencies in history 
 may, in the main, also be interpreted in terms of 
 the foregoing antithesis. 
 
 Besides the general laws of historical evolution 
 deducible from the antagonism latent within these 
 leading antitheses we have mentioned, there are 
 numerous empirical laws which it is difficult to 
 reduce to any comprehensive principle in the 
 present state of historical thought. These laws, or 
 apparent laws, are discoverable by a mere method 
 of induction from the facts of history. As yet, 
 however, the collation, the sifting, of the facts and 
 

 HISTORY AND ITS SOLUTION 61 
 
 the assignment of the true values of the respective 
 relations they present to us in other words, the 
 systematic study of the past has not advanced far 
 enough to allow us to view these empirical laws in 
 their just proportions, or in their bearing on those 
 wider principles already discussed. For the reduc- 
 tion of history to the simplest formula, or formulae, 
 to which in the nature of things it is capable of 
 being reduced, a much greater amount of spade 
 work has to be accomplished than has yet been 
 done. When greater advances are made in this 
 respect, we may hope, with reason, to acquire an 
 insight that will enable us to view these empirical 
 generalisations as special applications of the larger 
 principles in question. We have, of course, in all 
 cases to deal with the special difficulty attendant 
 on all theorising in the domain of history, namely, 
 the want of precision that all attempts to reduce 
 historical reality to a definite formula have to con- 
 tend with. The alogical element in the manifold 
 phenomena of history is more difficult to bring 
 under the definiteness of a thought-formula with 
 success than in the case of any other department of 
 the real world. The extreme concreteness of human 
 society as compared with these other more abstract 
 departments of science, as has been indicated by 
 Comte and other thinkers, though from a different 
 point of view, has rendered human society the last de- 
 partment of reality amenable to scientific treatment. 
 
62 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 After all, considered not merely from the point 
 of view of the totality or, if you will, of the 
 infinity of things, but even from that of the 
 existence of man on the earth, the span of 
 the filled content of time that we call history is 
 little more than infinitesimal. Yet, infinitesimal 
 though it be as compared with other real contents 
 of time and space, yet it none the less contains 
 infinity, infinite multiplicity within itself. This 
 point of the " infinitely little " in history is, seldom, 
 properly realised, even by scholars and thinkers, 
 and not at all by the world at large. History, to 
 the mind of the world at large, even including the 
 average educated man, is little more than a loose 
 congeries of symbols. Every epoch, every con- 
 nection of events appears to his mind merely in an 
 abstract symbolical form. And this is not merely 
 confined to the ordinary man. We all of us, in 
 looking back upon history, have present to our 
 minds ideas which are in truth mere symbols. 
 The difference between the scholar or thinker and 
 ordinary man, in this respect, is that the former 
 recognises the fact that his ideas of history are mere 
 symbols, whereas the latter does not. These sym- 
 bols often express the reality of history about as 
 much as a roughly sketched map does a landscape. 
 The limitless multiplicity of detail, an insight into 
 which alone brings us nearer to the life and reality 
 of the past, is unsuspected by the intelligence of 
 

 HISTORY AND ITS SOLUTION 63 
 
 the average citizen. Even to the scholar and 
 thinker, the insight spoken of belongs, in any posi- 
 tive degree, seldom to more than a limited portion 
 of history limited, that is, as regards time, or 
 space, or both. For the rest, he also has to be 
 content with the usual symbolic conceptions. 
 
 What the detail, the " infinitely little," in history 
 really means may be realised by a consideration of 
 the constitution of the small fraction of contem- 
 porary life which comes under the direct conscious- 
 ness of any given person. Every country, every 
 district, every city or village, every street, every 
 family, every social circle has its sequence of events 
 partly its own and partly not its own, as touching 
 and modifying the larger life at certain points. It 
 is too often forgotten or, at least, is not explicitly 
 apprehended, that every moment of the historical 
 past embraces such complexity of detail as this. 
 We speak of Augustus, of Charlemagne, of Napo- 
 leon as marking epochs, but do we adequately 
 apprehend that every obscure town, say in Asia 
 Minor, in the reign of Augustus, every manor of 
 the time of Charlemagne, every countryside of the 
 time of Napoleon, had each its own life and con- 
 temporary history, with its persons and events, 
 trivial daily rounds, etc., just as we have to-day in 
 a suburb of twentieth-century London ? Does, I 
 ask, any average educated man realise this ? Yet 
 it is this, the particular, the infinitely little, in 
 
64 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 history, which in the historical concepts of the 
 average man is not merely, as is natural, subordi- 
 nated to the essential features of the historical 
 movement, but is completely absent. In the mind 
 of the ordinary man the landmarks of history obtain 
 in the form of blurred and colourless images, sym- 
 bolic concepts of leading events and leading figures, 
 and that is all. That every period has a life of its 
 own, with all the infinite minutiae of which all life 
 mainly consists, though the fact would, of course, 
 be admitted formally by everyone if challenged in so 
 many words, is truly apprehended, at most, by a few 
 historical thinkers. This difficulty in the imaginative 
 reproduction of history is, in itself, a fruitful cause 
 of misconception, arising from the failure to take 
 into account in their relative proportion the forces 
 that give their direction to the main currents of 
 history. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE EVOLUTION OF 
 SPECULATIVE THOUGHT 
 
 IN the earliest phases of man's social and mental 
 life we find no trace of conscious reflection on the 
 conditions of his existence. His view of the world 
 is a vague fluid mass of assumptions arising without 
 conscious will or intention on his part out of a 
 welter of crude analogies, moulded in the forms in 
 which his mind operated, and accumulating from 
 untold generations. This was the era of myth- 
 ology, folk-lore, of primitive thought and imagina- 
 tion. It had as its counterpart in the material 
 sphere the world of a common tribal and clan life, 
 to which the individual human being was sub- 
 ordinated, and apart from which he had no 
 significance. As this material side of primitive 
 society yielded to civilisation, by which the old 
 social bonds became loosened and the independence 
 of the individual began to emerge, the intellectual 
 outlook also became gradually modified. The great 
 
 65 5 
 
66 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 factor in this modification was the awakening of 
 conscious reflection upon himself, his beliefs and 
 surroundings, on the part of the individual. 
 
 The awakening self- consciousness of the indi- 
 vidual took various forms, moral and intellectual, 
 and it passed through many phases, consisting 
 largely in a modification and systematisation of 
 myth and traditional modes of thought, before the 
 conscious attempt to explain the universe on 
 rational principles, as we now term them in other 
 words, before the dawn of philosophy properly 
 so-called. 
 
 But it was not given to every race of ancient 
 times to inaugurate philosophic inquiry in its true 
 sense. We can trace detached fragments of philo- 
 sophic thought at an early stage in more than one 
 of the Oriental civilisations of antiquity, while in 
 ancient India something like a definite line of 
 philosophic development is discoverable. But for 
 universal history that is, for history considered as 
 a continuous evolution of man from early beginnings 
 up to the present time there is only one classical 
 line of philosophic development, and that is the 
 one inaugurated by Ancient Greece in the sixth 
 century B.C., with which the modern thought of 
 the Western world is directly affiliated. 
 
 Before proceeding further it is necessary to define 
 more clearly what constitutes philosophy as such. 
 Philosophy is something more than a mere attempt 
 
of o 
 
 SPECULATIVE THOUGHT 67 
 
 at an explanation of things in general. The early 
 mythologies and theogonies were also, for that 
 matter, attempts to explain the nature of things ; 
 but what distinguishes philosophy from all earlier 
 ways of looking at man and the world is the fact 
 that it is the product of conscious reflection, that 
 it works through reason and its processes of logic, 
 and not by mere imagination or by the acceptance 
 of traditional authority. That it was a product of 
 conscious reflection, and that its methods were 
 those of observation and logical reasoning, as 
 opposed to naive imagination and tradition, clearly 
 differentiates philosophic thought from the thought 
 that preceded it. 
 
 When Thales asked the question, what consti- 
 tuted the ultimate physical substance of the 
 Universe, that to which all others are reducible, 
 and thought that the true answer to that question 
 was that water was that substance, he started a new 
 era in human thought of inestimable importance 
 for the intellectual future of mankind. This problem 
 of the primary and ultimate physical substance of 
 the Universe which occupied the Ionic School, of 
 which Thales was the reputed founder, and to 
 which his successors gave solutions differing from 
 his own, crude and futile though it may seem to 
 us, gave the impulse, directly or indirectly, to all 
 subsequent thought. New problems and their 
 attempted solutions problems of the nature of 
 
68 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 being and becoming, of the one and the many, and 
 (in a crude form) of reality and appearance, besides 
 those directly concerned with the origin, the struc- 
 ture, and the working of the material Universe- 
 rose successively, and exercised the subtlety of the 
 rapidly-expanding Greek intellect until the rise, in 
 the fourth century, of the Sophist Schools. 
 
 The comparatively sudden development of the 
 Greek world economically, politically, and in- 
 tellectually induced a movement of scepticism 
 in things speculative, and in self-seeking indi- 
 vidualism in things practical, in which the lecturers 
 called Sophist, who formulated these tendencies 
 and who taught their wisdom for money, found a 
 ready market for their wares. The significance of 
 this movement was that it implied a shifting of the 
 philosophic problem. Hitherto, for nearly two 
 centuries past, the inquiry had been into the nature 
 of things considered as existing per se ; first of all, 
 as to the ultimate physical nature of the Universe, 
 and then as to the meaning and implications of 
 its abstract conditions, these conditions themselves 
 being regarded as independent realities. An illus- 
 tration of the latter may be found in the hypostat- 
 isation of Number ascribed to Pythagoras, the 
 Numbers being conceived as real existences. 
 
 The inconsistencies, the impossibility of proof, 
 and the apparent insolubility of certain questions, 
 resulting in a general scepticism, led the way to 
 

 SPECULATIVE THOUGHT 69 
 
 a new statement of the philosophic problem. 
 Different thinkers had arrived at different con- 
 clusions. What to one man seemed true, to 
 another seemed false ; what the custom of one 
 city approved as good, the custom of another city 
 condemned as bad. The impetus taken by trade 
 and travel at this time enlarged the horizon of 
 everyone. Hence the Sophist movement, which 
 was summed up in the well-known formula of the 
 Sophist Protagoras : " Man is the measure of all 
 things." 
 
 Rhetorical arts, plausible speculation, and smart 
 tricks of controversy became the fashionable studies 
 in the leading Greek cities, and not the least so in 
 Athens. In the latter city there was, however, 
 one disciple of the new movement who did not 
 rest satisfied with the results taught him by his 
 Sophist instructor. This was Sokrates. With the 
 general decay of traditional standards of thought 
 and life Sokrates was not content to rest ; above 
 all, he was not content with the doctrine which 
 reduced virtue to a mere private or individual 
 opinion. On the other hand, he was by no means 
 disposed to be false to the current intellectual 
 movement of his time. He felt there was no going 
 back upon the prevalent Sophism. His aim was, 
 by means of the very principle which had under- 
 mined old sanctions and assumptions, to acquire a 
 new objective standard, as we should say in the 
 
70 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 present day, in the first instance of conduct (virtue), 
 with which he was chiefly concerned, but indirectly 
 of intellectual theory also. The famous saying that 
 Sokrates " brought down philosophy from heaven 
 to earth" meant that he definitely shifted the 
 problem from an inquiry concerning the principles 
 of existence to one concerning the principles of 
 knowledge. Man was the measure of all things, 
 it was true, yet not man considered as an indi- 
 vidual, but the reason or the logical faculty in 
 man, the instrument of " dialectic." Hence it was 
 Sokrates' aim, by means of question and answer, to 
 discover a definition of " virtue " and the " good " 
 that would be recognised as valid by all men. 
 
 If he was not successful in this, he was eminently 
 so in producing a stimulus in the minds of his 
 contemporaries, a stimulus that inaugurated a new 
 era in human thought. It was the dialectical 
 Sokrates that produced the thought of Plato, and 
 through Plato furnished Aristotle with the intel- 
 lectual training which enabled him to build up his 
 encyclopaedic system. The thought common to 
 all men, the insight or truth that Sokrates strove 
 to evolve by means of his dialectic, for practical 
 purposes, became with Plato the world of general 
 concepts, of which the world, as perceived by us, 
 is merely the imperfect copy or appearance. The 
 " good " of Sokrates became for Plato the supreme 
 idea, that which embraced all other ideas, and to 
 
SPECULATIVE THOUGHT 71 
 
 which they led up as their end and completion. 
 Plato's division of all things into the world of 
 intellect and the world of sense would, of course, 
 have been quite unrecognised by Sokrates himself; 
 but it may unquestionably be traced to Sokrates' 
 insistence on clearness of definition and on the 
 capacity for universal application of all valid mental 
 concepts. 
 
 With Plato the old problems of philosophy again 
 came to the front, but treated on the method 
 which Sokrates had employed for the attainment 
 of ethical truth. Plato's pupil, Aristotle, could 
 not accept Plato's sharp separation of the world of 
 sense from the world of ideas. For Aristotle the 
 universals of logic were already contained in the 
 particular objects of sense. There were not two 
 worlds over against each other, but one world 
 containing two elements : an element of sense 
 the particular sense-impression and an element of 
 thought the universal concept or idea. 
 
 For all this, Aristotle, no less than Plato, in- 
 sisted on the ideal element in the real world as 
 constituting its true " inwardness." The alpha 
 and omega of the real world, that which gave to it 
 its meaning and its final purpose, was the univer- 
 salising intellect. But none the less, to the realisa- 
 tion of the ideal purpose of the world the sense- 
 element was necessary. To the Platonic idea of 
 universalia ante rem, universal ideas prior to the 
 
72 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 things of sense, Aristotle opposed his universalia 
 in rebus, universal ideas as an inseparable element 
 in the world of things from which it is the function 
 of the reflective reason to disentangle them through 
 the logical process. The " creative intellect " of 
 Aristotle realised itself in, and through, the world 
 of appearance. The world was an eternal evolu- 
 tion from matter to form, from potential to actual 
 reality. The unformed matter of one stage be- 
 came the formed reality of the next which was its 
 essence. The antithesis of matter and form of 
 sense-material and its ideal determination is, in 
 the world perceived by us, relative. To employ a 
 crude illustration, the matter of the brass m-formed 
 by the idea of the sculptor, becomes the reality, the 
 essence, statue. But Aristotle distinguishes, as 
 the ultimate elements of the real world, a primal 
 matter and the primal intellectual activity. The 
 ideas, however, or the general concepts, formed by 
 this Creative Activity have not, as with Plato, 
 any independent reality in themselves. They are 
 realised only in indissoluble union with the sense- 
 impression. In the real world that we perceive 
 and know, there is no such thing as formless 
 matter or matterless form. Reality implies the 
 indissoluble union synthesis of both elements. 
 In the perceived object the creative idea is realised 
 as essence or substance (oucri'a). The above is the 
 root-principle of the Aristotelian philosophy, and 
 
SPECULATIVE THOUGHT 73 
 
 it is to Plato and Aristotle that the main stream of 
 subsequent thought may be traced. 
 
 In the period following the Macedonian con- 
 quest, when the whole basin of the Eastern 
 Mediterranean came under Greek influence the 
 so-called Hellenistic period under the auspices of 
 the dynasties founded by the generals of Alexander 
 the Great, the practical or ethical side of philosophy 
 again came to the fore, and philosophic schools 
 acquired prominence whose professed aim was to 
 teach the true guiding principles of life and con- 
 duct. The ostensible objects of these schools, it 
 may be surmised, would have been more congenial 
 to the temperament of Sokrates, with whom they 
 claimed a direct or indirect connection, than the 
 speculative systems of Plato and Aristotle. These 
 schools were the Stoic, the Epicurean, and the 
 Sceptic, which have their protagonists in those 
 founded a century or so earlier by direct disciples 
 of Sokrates and termed the Cynic, the Cyrenaic, 
 and the Megaric respectively. 
 
 The old independent life of the free cities had 
 for the most part disappeared, and the movement 
 of introspection, of self-brooding, already apparent 
 in Sokrates, became the dominant spirit of the age 
 It was no longer the social life and ideals of the 
 tribe or the city that appealed to men, it was the 
 ideal life of the individual and his happiness that 
 was their primary object of interest. At the same 
 
74 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 time originality in speculative thought died out. 
 Old positions were crudely restated, where they 
 were not taught in their original form. The 
 Lyceum at Athens remained the seat of Aris- 
 totelian teaching and the Academy of Platonic. 
 In the latter case the carrying out of the dialectical 
 methods of Plato's dialogues had resulted in a 
 general sceptical attitude. Rome entered the 
 political arena and began absorbing the Hellenistic 
 States of Eastern Europe. Philosophy in the 
 shape of the four recognised Schools, the Aris- 
 totelian, the Platonic, the Stoic, and the Epicurean, 
 not to mention the Neoscepticism of the school of 
 Pyrrho, got carried to Rome and struck root there. 
 The " philosopher " now became largely a profes- 
 sional moralist and sermoniser, corresponding to 
 the clergyman of modern times. It became the 
 fashion for great families to keep a philosopher, as 
 it was a few generations ago of aristocratic houses 
 to keep a chaplain. The Pagan priesthood and 
 ritual, it should be observed, were concerned ex- 
 clusively with ceremonial observances and not with 
 preaching or moral exhortation. 
 
 The next important development of Philosophy 
 proper, however, did not take distinct literary 
 shape till the third century of the Christian era. 
 This was the movement which gradually absorbed 
 all other philosophies, and ultimately the various 
 theories and cults generally of Pagan antiquity, 
 
SPECULATIVE THOUGHT 75 
 
 into itself, and which became known as the " new 
 Platonism " (Neoplatonism). Its first systematic 
 literary exponent was Plotinus, a native of Egypt, 
 hailing directly from Alexandria, who settled in 
 Rome. He is the author of numerous works 
 dealing with the great problem of the one and the 
 many, of the universe of thought and the manifold 
 of sense. Unlike the early Platonists, but fully 
 in accord with the religio-mystical movement of 
 which his writings may be regarded as the fullest 
 and most definite philosophical expression, Plotinus 
 assumed a faculty of intuition, rather than intellect 
 or logical reasoning, as the ultimate and highest 
 source of knowledge. In accordance with this 
 view the ultimate principle was not, as with Greek 
 philosophy at its zenith, vov$ (intellect or reason), 
 but that out of which reason arises, the infinite 
 unity which is its ultimate source and background. 
 This principle Plotinus calls variously the One, 
 the Being, the First Father, etc. The world of 
 thought, of logical universals, is an emanation from 
 this primal alogical principle. Our real world, 
 which, as Aristotle had shown, was a mixture of 
 thought and sense, of universal and particular, is 
 again an emanation from the second or logical 
 principle, the " intelligible world," as it was called. 
 The creative principle of the world of ordinary 
 reality is the world-soul, to which Plotinus ascribes 
 a dual character, on the one hand as reaching up 
 
76 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 toward the " intelligible world," the world of logical 
 forms, and on the other tending downward to the 
 purely negative matter of sense. 1 In the above we 
 have the celebrated Alexandrian Trinity with its 
 three hypostases, as they are termed. The human 
 soul, it is almost needless to observe, represented a 
 flash or efflorescence of the world-soul. After 
 Plotinus the Neoplatonic movement tended to 
 become more and more mere mysticism with a 
 Pagan religious character, absorbing finally the 
 whole of contemporary Paganism into one eclectic 
 system, under whose auspices the final intellectual 
 struggle with Christianity on the part of the 
 ancient world was fought out. 
 
 The last philosophic figure of antiquity with 
 which we need concern ourselves is Boethius, who 
 flourished at Rome early in the sixth century. He 
 is interesting as the very last representative of 
 ancient philosophy in the Western world, and 
 important for history as having laid the foundation 
 of the Aristotelianism which dominated the schools 
 of the Middle Ages. His works, although they 
 seemed to have produced no effect at the time, 
 became the text-books of early mediaeval learning. 
 
 The first figure in mediaeval Philosophy was 
 Johannes Scotus Eregina (John the Scot of Ire- 
 
 1 By this is, of course, not meant matter in the sense of 
 physical substance, which latter is already partly mformed by 
 the universalising reason, but matter in the special philosophical 
 or Aristotelian sense as the formless substratum of real existence. 
 
SPECULATIVE THOUGHT 77 
 
 land), who flourished in the ninth century, and 
 who wrote a metaphysical treatise of strong 
 Platonic or Neoplatonic tendencies. But the true 
 philosophy of the mediaeval schools, thence termed 
 Scholasticism, took shape later. Such writings of 
 Aristotle as were known and the works of Boethius 
 formed the text - books. From the eleventh 
 century onwards philosophy as Scholasticism formed 
 the main branch of mediaeval learning. The great 
 problem was still the relation of the universal of 
 thought to the particular of sense. Did ideas, did 
 logical forms, have an existence independently of 
 the real world, as Plato had asserted, or did they 
 only subsist as an element in a world of objects, or, 
 lastly, were they mere figments obtaining solely in 
 our minds ? These were the questions occupy- 
 ing the schools of the Middle Ages, especially 
 of the earlier Middle Ages, but their thought 
 was throughout dominated by the antithesis of 
 Philosophy and Theology, profane and sacred 
 learning. The aim of Philosophy for the School- 
 men was the provision of a rational basis for the 
 dogmatic structure of the Church. The elaborate 
 systems of Thomas Aquinas and of Duns Scotus 
 were primarily concerned with this problem, 
 though they brought within their range the whole 
 body of the learning of their age. The doctrine 
 known as Nominalism, originally the old Aristo- 
 telian doctrine of the universal as element in the 
 
78 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 object, became developed by William of Occam 
 into a thorough-going theory of existence as solely 
 attributable to the particulars of sense as per- 
 ceived. This doctrine grew and acquired popularity 
 as the philosophical side of the general tendency 
 of the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance 
 towards individualism, political, economic, and 
 social, grew. It had its full fruition, however, at 
 a later time. 
 
 Modern Philosophy, as distinguished from that 
 of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, is usually 
 dated from the French Descartes, on the one hand, 
 and the English Bacon on the other. These sharp 
 divisions are, of course, more or less arbitrary. 
 But there is a very good reason for regarding 
 Descartes as the starting-point of modern thought. 
 For, not unlike Sokrates in the ancient world, he 
 radically shifted the standpoint of Philosophy. It 
 had already become, during the Renaissance period, 
 freed from its slavery to dogma on the one side 
 and to the formulae of Aristotle on the other, but 
 only partially from its reliance on ancient models 
 generally. Descartes, in his well-known formula 
 Cogito ergo sum, which is as much as to say / exist 
 thinking, brought back Philosophy to the bed-rock. 
 At the same time the establishment of psychology 
 as the central problem of Philosophy became fixed. 
 Henceforth the problems of Philosophy began to 
 be treated psychologically. This was notably the 
 
SPECULATIVE THOUGHT 79 
 
 case with the English school, who applied the new 
 method of Bacon to inquiries concerning the 
 operations of the mind. Thomas Hobbes, of 
 Malmesbury, was the first to start in a systematic 
 form these investigations, which continue through 
 Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and the Scotch psycho- 
 logists. To this line of philosophic thought we 
 shall revert directly. 
 
 As for Descartes, notwithstanding that he had 
 started with pure self-consciousness, the criterion 
 of truth which he thought he had derived from it, 
 that a " clear and distinct idea " was the test of 
 truth, led him to postulate mind and matter as 
 separate substances, of which the attribute of one 
 was Thought and of the other Extension. He thus 
 lost his philosophical foothold, so to say, in dis- 
 cussions concerning the mutual relationship of the 
 two substances, matter and mind, the attributes of 
 which, extension on one side and thought on the 
 other, seemed to have nothing mutually in common. 
 That self- consciousness, considered not as an indi- 
 vidual, but as an ultimate fact, was the key to 
 the difficulty, never occurred to Descartes or his 
 followers. The difficulty, raised in the form it was 
 by Descartes, was solved in the only way possible 
 on the given conditions of the controversy by the 
 Dutch-Jewish thinker Spinoza, who proclaimed 
 " God " or the Absolute as the infinite and only 
 substance, of which Thought and Extension were 
 
80 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 the attributes. Matter and mind were reduced to 
 a position of mere modes of these two attributes, 
 whose only principle of unity was to be found in 
 the " One Substance." 
 
 In contradistinction to Spinoza, Leibnitz (born 
 at Leipsic, 1646) solved the problem of the relation 
 of Descartes' two substances, mind and matter, 
 with their two attributes, Thought and Extension, 
 by the assumption of an infinity of souls, each 
 individual soul being a self-contained unity or 
 universe within itself existing for itself alone. 
 This is the celebrated monadology of Leibnitz. 
 The God of Leibnitz was the supreme monad from 
 which all other monads or souls proceeded like 
 sparks from the fire. 
 
 The criterion of truth for Spinoza and Leibnitz, 
 as for Descartes, was the " clearness and distinct- 
 ness " of ideas, but the type of the clearness which 
 proclaimed the truth of a conception was to be 
 found in mathematics. Hence we find in Spinoza, 
 the most powerful original thinker of the seven- 
 teenth century, the exposition of his system carried 
 out on the model of a treatise on geometry. 
 Spinoza, as we have seen, postulated Thought 
 and Extension as the attributes, not of mind and 
 matter, but of his One Substance, or pantheistic 
 God. In the course of the working out of his 
 system, however, it is the attribute of Thought 
 with its universalising that comes to dominate the 
 
SPECULATIVE THOUGHT 81 
 
 whole, and we thus arrive at what is substantially 
 a new form of the old Platonic Idealism. 
 
 The battle of the British school during the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries turned largely 
 on the psychological question of the existence of 
 " innate ideas." Does the individual receive all his 
 experience from without, or is it partly derived 
 from ideas originally obtaining in his mind ? This 
 was another way of approaching the old question 
 of universals, but it had lost the comprehensive 
 metaphysical character that it possessed with the 
 ancients, and which to some extent clung to it 
 throughout the Middle Ages, and had become 
 reduced to the proportions of a purely psychological 
 issue. 
 
 The British school solved the problem in the 
 sense of the later " Nominalist " schoolmen. 
 Abstract ideas, universals, were names for figments 
 of the mind resulting directly or indirectly from 
 the experience of real things derived through the 
 senses. The theory of innate ideas assumed by 
 Descartes and his followers and the Continental 
 thinkers generally, to the effect that innate ideas 
 existed in the human mind, was inadmissible. 
 Out of this psychological problem the question 
 of the reality of the material world as perceived 
 through the senses emerged in a different form and 
 with an explicitness it had never acquired before. 
 The notion of substance as a substratum of the 
 
 6 
 
82 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 qualities of matter as also of those of mind (the 
 two substances of Descartes, in fact) was the only 
 innate idea corresponding to a reality beyond itself 
 that was admitted by Locke. 
 
 It was this substance of Locke, the substratum 
 of material qualities, which the celebrated Bishop 
 Berkeley set himself to demolish. The idea of 
 substance, he said, is, like other abstract concepts, 
 merely a figment of the mind, having no indepen- 
 dent existence corresponding to it any more than 
 any other universal concept. The general term 
 " matter " (i.e. physical substance) meant no more 
 than a sum of perceived qualities, i.e. a bundle of 
 affections of our senses perceived by the mind. 
 The conclusion was obvious, that matter exists 
 only as an idea in the mind, a mental concept. 
 
 David Hume took up the parable of Locke 
 and Berkeley, showing, however, that Berkeley's 
 criticism of the notion of substance as the sub- 
 stratum of qualities did not go far enough, for 
 that Berkeley, while he had legitimately de- 
 molished the validity of the notion of material 
 substance as the substratum of the qualities 
 perceived through the outer senses, had left un- 
 touched the notion of mind or soul as the mental 
 substance in which our thoughts and feelings 
 inhere. There is no more reason, said Hume, for 
 accepting this concept, this figment of the mind, 
 viz., substance, as an independent existence in the 
 

 SPECULATIVE THOUGHT 83 
 
 latter case than there is in the former. Psychical 
 substance has no more rational validity than physi- 
 cal substance. We can affirm the existence of 
 nothing, he contends, save a succession of impres- 
 sions and ideas ; all else is an unprovable assumption 
 having no rational justification. The psychological 
 philosophy of the British school becomes at this 
 point, therefore, dissolved in scepticism. 
 
 II 
 
 We have now reached the turning-point in 
 the history of modern philosophy. Five years 
 after Hume's death appeared the great treatise 
 (1781) of the Konigsberg professor, Immanuel 
 Kant. This treatise, the Kritik der reinen 
 Vernunft, was the product of the lifelong thought 
 of its celebrated author, one of the greatest in- 
 tellects of all time. The problem attacked by 
 Kant was the old problem, the problem of the 
 universal of thought and the particular of sense ; 
 or, to give it its wider signification, of the alogical 
 and the logical in knowledge or experience. But 
 he attacked it from a new standpoint, from the 
 standpoint won by the thought of the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries. Descartes had definitely 
 broken away from the philosophical traditions of 
 the Greeks and of the schoolmen, and had, with 
 his cogito ergo sum, brought philosophy to the 
 bed-rock of self-consciousness, though without 
 
84 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 grasping the implications of his own thought. As 
 a consequence he fell back upon " clear and distinct 
 ideas " as a test of truth, and placed in the forefront 
 of his system certain dead abstractions, substance 
 and accident, mind and matter, etc., as its prin- 
 ciples. The British school, as we have seen, had 
 reduced the philosophical problem to one of 
 psychology. The individual mind considered as 
 an independent existence over against an equally 
 independent material world were the principles 
 from which it started. The crisis arrived when 
 Berkeley on the one side and Hume on the other 
 destroyed the assumption of an independent 
 material substance and an independent mental 
 substance respectively. 
 
 In Kant the two lines of thought, that of Great 
 Britain and that of the Continent, met together. 
 The careful study of both lines of thinkers enabled 
 the genius of Kant to restate the philosophic 
 problem and to place its solution firmly on a new 
 basis. Kant once for all brought philosophy back 
 to self-consciousness as the ultimate principle and 
 ground of its problem. He once again brought it 
 back from being to knowing. And he not merely 
 stated the problem in greater definiteness and 
 completeness than had ever been done before, but 
 he discussed it in all its bearings with a view of 
 arriving at a solution. To this new way of looking 
 at the philosophical problem he gave the name of 
 
SPECULATIVE THOUGHT 85 
 
 "theory of knowledge," and the method he em- 
 ployed in its solution he called " criticism." The 
 test of truth for him was not, as with Descartes, 
 the loose and ineffectual one of " clear and distinct 
 ideas " in the mind, but the necessity of thought 
 as involved in the self-consistency of consciousness- 
 in-general. He thus, at a stroke, raised philosophic 
 discussion to a higher level. Neither the substances 
 and attributes of the Continental metaphysicians, 
 nor the psychological analysis of the British 
 thinkers, proved satisfactory to Kant as a starting- 
 point. The primary problem was the analysis of 
 the conditions of knowledge itself as such in 
 other words, philosophy implied for Kant primarily 
 an inquiry into the meaning of reality. 
 
 Kant was, of course, not the first to catch a 
 glimpse of the true problem of philosophy. Plato, 
 and still more Aristotle, in the ancient world, had 
 great and, in the latter case, sustained flashes of 
 insight in this connection, and the same may be 
 said in the modern world of Spinoza. But the 
 great merit of Kant, and what constitutes him an 
 epoch-making figure in philosophy, is the fact that 
 he was the first thinker to clearly grasp the 
 principle, and never to lose sight of it throughout 
 his investigations. It is not that Kant himself 
 was altogether free, on the one hand, from the 
 abstractions of the Continental schools, or, on the 
 other, from the too psychological point of view of 
 
86 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 the British school. He assumed " things-in-them- 
 selves " as the basis of the object world (of external 
 reality), while the perceiving Subject often appears 
 to coincide for him with the individual mind, the 
 " empirical ego," as it is sometimes termed. But, 
 in spite of his backslidings, Kant, in the main, 
 holds fast the position that all that is, that reality, 
 in the fullest sense of the word, implies conscious- 
 ness, possible or actual. 
 
 The influence of Kant and his great work showed 
 itself after a few years of polemical discussion in the 
 works of Kant's successors, foremost amongst whom 
 were Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, etc. 
 Fichte would have none of Kant's things-in-them- 
 selves. He recognised clearly what Kant also 
 recognised, although he sometimes faltered, at least 
 in his exposition, namely, that there is nothing out- 
 side Consciousness, which is another way of saying 
 there is nothing outside the Ego which all con- 
 sciousness implies. Here, again, Fichte emphasised 
 a point on which Kant had expressed himself 
 dubiously. Fichte was careful to point out the 
 now familiar distinction between the Ego as 
 subject of all consciousness, the " Moi premier et 
 eternal" as M. Jaures has it, and the Ego as object 
 of this consciousness, the individual object-self or 
 personal mind with which it is identified in ordinary 
 thought. 
 
 Fichte thus fixes and defines the philosophical 
 
SPECULATIVE THOUGHT 87 
 
 ground taken up by Kant. He shows that the 
 time-honoured problem of the One and the Many, 
 of the Universal of thought and the Particular of 
 sense, can be only properly understood, much less 
 solved, from this new point of view, that of the 
 method of the "transcendental philosophy," as it 
 was called. Fichte's one-time coadjutor and one- 
 time successor in the great philosophical movement 
 with which we are dealing, Schelling, introduced 
 a modification into the Fichteian system. The 
 unconditioned principle at the root of all Con- 
 sciousness or Experience he found neither in the 
 experiencing Subject (Ego) nor in the experienced 
 Object (perceived world) as such, but in the element 
 of identity between them, that in which each side 
 of this transcendental equation participated. This 
 principle of Indifference, as Schelling termed it, 
 i.e. the common element in the Ego experiencing 
 and that which it experiences, was for Schelling 
 the Absolute, viz., the ultimate principle of all 
 reality. Schelling sometimes identifies, or hints 
 at the identification of, this principle with Will or 
 Energy. 
 
 Schelling's contemporary (but in the order of 
 thought his successor), Hegel, propounded the 
 thesis that, not the subject of Consciousness, as 
 with Fichte, nor an indefinite element of Identity, 
 implicit alike in subject and object, as with 
 Schelling, but Thought itself, the Concept, or, as 
 
88 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 Hegel prefers to term it, following Plato, the Idea, 
 is the Absolute to which all things may be reduced. 
 Like Plato's supreme idea of the " Good," Hegel's 
 " Idea " at once embraced within itself all reality 
 under the forms of the logical concept, and is the 
 supreme end and purpose of all reality. In Hegel's 
 system the assumption postulated by Plato at 
 Athens in the fourth century B.C. first received its 
 final and complete development. For Hegel the 
 forms of thought taken in their totality are absolute. 
 The absolute Subject, the "I" of Fichte and the 
 " Absolute Identity " of Schelling themselves are 
 thus mere modes of the process of the self-thinking 
 of thought. Thought, or the categories of logic, 
 are, for Hegel, all in all. Hence his system has 
 been termed Panlogism, or, more correctly, from 
 the point of view of euphony, Pallogism. 
 
 The antithesis, in the great German philosophic 
 movement dating from Kant to Hegel, is typically 
 represented by the metaphysic of Schopenhauer. 
 For Schopenhauer the logical, the thought-element 
 in reality, was subordinate and derivative. The 
 true Absolute, of which Reality was the expres- 
 sion, and the thought-element, in Reality a mere 
 form of this expression, was that which we term, 
 in its highest phenomenal manifestation, i.e. in 
 ourselves, Will. It is this Will, the "will-to-live," 
 which expands itself and recognises itself in the 
 real world with its infinity of particulars. The 
 
SPECULATIVE THOUGHT 89 
 
 logical forms by which the understanding appre- 
 hends these particulars of sense are merely the 
 products of the primal Will for the purpose of its 
 own recognition of itself. As is well known, 
 Schopenhauer's pessimism assumed that the com- 
 plete recognition by itself of the Will would lead 
 to the renunciation of life altogether as futile, 
 worthless, and evil. 
 
 We have seen now how the old problem 
 formulated by the ancient Greeks of the One and 
 the Many, the abiding thought-form of the Intel- 
 lect, and the infinite flux of the particulars of 
 Sense, remained still a problem for the thinkers of 
 the great German philosophical movement of the 
 late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, 
 and received diverse solutions at their hands. The 
 point of view from which the problem is treated is, 
 however, not the same. For Plato, Aristotle, the 
 Neoplatonists, and the ancients generally, hypo- 
 statised these elements or aspects of reality, that 
 is, they treated them as, in themselves, independent 
 realities. Plato's ideas were reals in themselves. 
 Aristotle, also, although aware of the fallacy in 
 Plato's doctrine, and in spite of marvellous insights 
 at times, did not consistently maintain his grasp 
 of the wider point of view reached in modern times 
 by the German classical philosophy. This wider 
 point of view consists in regarding the whole 
 problem of metaphysic as having its root in 
 
90 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 Consciousness. All that is, it was recognised by 
 Kant and his successors, is but in and for conscious- 
 ness, of which self- consciousness is the apex. 
 There are no substances and attributes existing in 
 vacuo, but only as modifications of consciousness, 
 possible or actual. This point of view the ancients 
 never succeeded in reaching, with the exception, 
 perhaps, of Aristotle, and even he, as stated, failed 
 to retain it, and slid back into what may be termed 
 the old abstract-metaphysical attitude proper to 
 his time. Since Kant, it is impossible for any 
 serious thinker to philosophise on the lines of the 
 older metaphysics, whatever material he may draw 
 from them. The new standpoint has to be 
 reckoned with by everyone who aspires to be a 
 metaphysician. 
 
 Leaving out, for the sake of brevity, all that is 
 intermediate, we will now turn to the consideration 
 of the position of philosophy as regards this its 
 main problem, in the present day, more especially 
 in this country. This still turns mainly on the 
 relation of the Alogical to the Logical, of the flux 
 of sense-particulars (the matter of sense) to the 
 abiding concepts which give it meaning (the pure 
 forms of thought). Therewith is connected the 
 problem of the relation of the indeterminate, the 
 Potential, to the determinate, the Actual, both 
 alike being elements of the real world in time. 
 
 The problem is to find a formula of explanation 
 
SPECULATIVE THOUGHT 91 
 
 satisfactory to reflective thought, employing the 
 self- consistency of Consciousness as a test, which 
 shall explain the meaning of Reality, or, which is 
 the same thing, of Experience. We, as individual 
 minds, are born into a common experience, " con- 
 sciousness-in-general," as Kant termed it. The 
 task of philosophy as metaphysic is to re-read this 
 Experience, to analyse it, and to restate it in the 
 terms of reflective thought. 
 
 There are two main currents in the metaphysic 
 of the present day: (1) there is the old Hegelian 
 Pallogism for which Thought is the ultimate 
 principle of Reality, all Reality being in the last 
 resort the interweaving of thought-forms concepts 
 or categories. The sense-element in the Real is 
 but Thought in its lowest and barest expression, 
 from which we can trace it upwards till we arrive 
 at Thought in its fullest, conceived as the Absolute 
 and immanent Reason of the world-order. The 
 modern work in which this point of view receives 
 its best literary expression, is Lord Haldane's 
 Pathway of Reality. The old Hegelian principle 
 is subjected here to an admirable recasting in 
 modern English literary form. 
 
 (2) This pan-logical standpoint, or Intellectual- 
 ism, as it is now the fashion to call it, in its various 
 manifestations, is confronted by its opposite, the 
 alogical standpoint. While we can confidently 
 recommend Lord Haldane's book as the best all- 
 
92 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 round English exposition in modern terms of the 
 Hegelian Logism, it is difficult to fix upon any 
 one statement of Alogism, understanding by this 
 the doctrine of those who regard the alogical 
 principle of the world, Will-energy, the eternal 
 flux of the content of time, the particulars of sense, 
 in a word, the alogical in Reality, as the ultimate 
 rather than the logical it is difficult, I say, to 
 name any single book or presentation of this point 
 of view as representative, notwithstanding that it 
 may be regarded as the growing theory in modern 
 philosophy. 1 
 
 There is a movement very popular in Oxford 
 of recent years, which calls itself Pragmatism, 
 that would identify reality and truth with the 
 serviceable, with that which most adequately 
 subserves a given dominant purpose. This, it will 
 be seen, is little more than a present-day adapta- 
 tion of the doctrine of Schopenhauer, in which 
 Reality or Experience, with its logical forms, is 
 simply the expression of the means by which the 
 infinite Will-to-live manifests itself. In the newer 
 form of the doctrine the consistency of the older 
 statement of it seems wanting. It is, indeed, 
 somewhat difficult to arrive at any positive or 
 constructive doctrine from a perusal of the works 
 
 1 Since the above was written M. Bergson's L'Evolution 
 Creatrice may fairly be deemed to have conquered for itself this 
 position. 
 
SPECULATIVE THOUGHT 93 
 
 of the late Professor James, of Harvard, or of Mr 
 Schiller, of Oxford, who may be regarded as the 
 two leading exponents of " Pragmatism." Whether 
 their followers will make headway, or remain the 
 small academic sect they are at present, remains to 
 be seen. 
 
 Another recent exponent of the Alogical as the 
 ultimate principle of real existence is M. Henri 
 Bergson, who, in his work, LS Evolution Creatrice, 
 seeks to show that the logical forms in which 
 Reality clothes itself for the perceiving conscious- 
 ness, and still more for the reflective conscious- 
 ness, are secondary makeshifts, hiding rather than 
 revealing the true nature of the Real. The inner 
 meaning of Conscious Reality, of Life and evolu- 
 tion, cannot be expressed in any logical formula. 
 It is beyond logic, the thought-categories under 
 which reality is fixed for us are but its mask. For 
 Bergson, therefore, the logical, the conceptual 
 side of things, is something unessential to their 
 real nature, which is to be looked for in the infinite 
 and indivisible flux of sensible particulars in time 
 rather than in the universal concepts which seem 
 to give them their meaning and without which 
 they would appear to have no reality in any 
 comprehensible sense. 
 
 Bergson's doctrine has attracted considerable 
 attention in this country lately, and we have taken 
 him as a typical illustration of a direction of 
 
94 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 modern philosophic development ; but his doctrine, 
 like others that occupy the same general stand- 
 point, seems open to the objection that it ignores 
 the thought-element that obtains in the barest 
 sense-perception that can enter into Consciousness 
 at all, as object, i.e. as reality. The moment we fix 
 a given perception as this object, we can distinguish 
 in it the thought-category, otherwise, we could not 
 distinguish it as object at all. It would seem surely 
 as impossible to construct Reality out of a mere 
 alogical flux of time-content as it is to construct it 
 out of a mere bundle of logical forms (as the ortho- 
 dox Hegelian would do). This has been pointed out 
 by the present writer, in The Roots of Reality, in 
 which justice is sought to be done to both of these 
 antagonistic positions. The point of view taken is 
 that in the possibility of Consciousness as such, 
 both the Logical and the Alogical alike have their 
 roots and constitute the two elements in all Reality 
 but that taken per se either falls short of Reality, 
 inasmuch as it is an abstract element merely, and 
 not real, i.e. is not an independent whole, which 
 only obtains in the inseparable unity of these two 
 elements. The alogical and the logical are 
 indicated as the lowest or most abstract terms into 
 which Reality, i.e. consciousness as a systematic 
 whole, can be analysed. To these two factors 
 every content of consciousness may be reduced. 
 Every real has a universal (logical) and a particular 
 
SPECULATIVE THOUGHT 95 
 
 (alogical) side. The one cannot be deduced from 
 the other or merged into the other. The thinker 
 who would deduce the logical from the alogical 
 side of given Reality is on this view equally at 
 fault with the thinker who would regard the 
 alogical, as is the case with Hegel, as no more 
 than a low stage of the logical. That out of which 
 both alike emerge, if I may use a metaphor, is 
 the principle of Consciousness. In the unity 
 of Consciousness alone have they subsistence and 
 significance. For this view the world is not mere 
 Reason (logic), neither is it mere spontaneous 
 Flux. 
 
 In the foregoing very brief sketch it has been 
 impossible to do much more than trace in the 
 barest outline the historic evolution of one of the 
 main problems of philosophic thought. I have 
 been unable to follow even this out into some of 
 its leading bearings e.g. as exhibited in that 
 antithesis of Will and Intellect which has played 
 such an important part in the speculative thought 
 of the last two or three generations. In the 
 present essay I have had to content myself with 
 indicating the historic development of the antithesis 
 of the One and the Many, the Universal and the 
 Particular, in its more immediate form as problem. 
 Again, the desire for conciseness has induced me 
 for the most part to omit calling attention to 
 parallels Otherwise, I might have shown the close 
 
96 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 analogy in many respects traceable between the 
 present Oxford movement of "Pragmatism" and 
 the mid-nineteenth century philosophy of Ludwig 
 Feuerbach, or the century-end thought of Friedrich 
 Nietzsche, and many similar correspondences. 
 
 It may be remarked in conclusion, that the task 
 of modern philosophy is not merely to discover 
 entirely new problems or even entirely new solutions 
 of old problems Aristotle in the ancient world, 
 for that matter, left few problems and few possible 
 solutions entirely untouched but rather to open 
 out new aspects of old problems, and new formula- 
 tions of solutions of those problems which in a 
 cruder form may be by no means unfamiliar to 
 the student of the history of philosophic thought. 
 
 The original thinker shows himself mainly in the 
 adaptation to the modern outlook and the recasting, 
 in the light of modern knowledge, of problems, 
 and attempted solutions of those problems, which 
 in other guises have presented themselves in, it 
 may be, various periods of history. 
 
 The aim of philosophy is to formulate the 
 conditions and the meaning of Reality in the 
 terms of reflective thought, in a systematic guise 
 that must prove satisfactory to the mind when 
 adequately grasped. As yet, only a very few of 
 the foremost thinkers of the world's history have 
 succeeded in even approaching this ideal. Com- 
 pletely actualised it has never been as yet. The 
 
SPECULATIVE THOUGHT 97 
 
 history of philosophy shows us the varying fortunes 
 of the quest for the foregoing ideal in the evolution 
 of reflective thought. But given the accomplish- 
 ment of this task of philosophy, given the formu- 
 lation of a completely satisfactory system of 
 explanation of Reality, would speculative thought 
 necessarily become stationary and cease to have a 
 development ? By no means. Such a system 
 could, at best, only be completely satisfactory to 
 the age in which it was formulated. Sooner or 
 later, and sooner rather than later, though the 
 main positions might remain unshaken, the form in 
 which they were expressed would cease to appeal 
 to the new age new facets of the old truths would 
 have to be recognised and emphasised while their 
 applications and the details of their working-out in 
 the original statement would necessarily become 
 belated by the progress of knowledge, and hence 
 require indefinite modification as time went on. 
 Hence the problems of life and destiny first and 
 foremost the central one as to the meaning of our 
 Experience, the significance of what we term 
 Reality even though the general lines of their 
 solution were acknowledged once for all, must 
 inevitably continue to occupy their place in the 
 progressive intellectual life of mankind. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 DEFINITIONS OF SOCIALISM 
 
 THE term Socialism is usually supposed to date from 
 Robert Owen. It is doubtful, however, whether 
 Owen's claim to having invented the word is alto- 
 gether sustainable. Pierre Leroux, Louis Rey- 
 baud, and others have similar claims to have been 
 its originators. The truth would seem to be that 
 it came into being about the same time in more 
 than one quarter. It soon began to be applied in- 
 differently to the theories of the three great Utopian 
 systems which arose during the early part of the 
 nineteenth century, namely, those of Owen, Fourier, 
 and Saint Simon. Now these three systems had this 
 in common, they proposed to revolutionise human 
 life in its various aspects, primarily its economic 
 basis, the mode under which production and dis- 
 tribution of its wealth takes place. This economic 
 reconstruction was regarded as a lever for revolu- 
 tionary changes in other departments of human 
 life, notably in marriage and the family relation, 
 and in the mental and moral attitude of man 
 
DEFINITIONS OF SOCIALISM 99 
 
 towards society and the universe. As will be 
 seen, the word arose at a time when the new 
 capitalist class, based upon the machine industry, 
 was rising to power. It thus connoted on its 
 negative side the antithesis to the individualism 
 " each for himself and the devil take the hind- 
 most " which was the expression of the new 
 capitalist view of social life. 
 
 It should be remarked that the systems to which 
 the term Socialism was originally applied, one and 
 all included revolutionary changes in the relations 
 of the sexes and in religious belief, in addition to 
 economic reconstruction, as part and parcel of their 
 programme. In 1848, with the national workshops 
 scheme of Louis Blanc, the term Socialism first 
 came within the sphere of practical politics. The 
 principle of co-operative production at the basis of 
 all the Utopian systems to which the name of 
 Socialism had been hitherto applied, was now about 
 to enter the arena, as it seemed, of actual social and 
 political life. (Of course, as every man knows, who 
 cares to know at the present day, Louis Blanc's 
 scheme, defective as it was, never had a chance on 
 this occasion. But this has nothing to do with our 
 present subject.) 
 
 From the revolution of 1848 may possibly be 
 dated the tendency to narrow down the definition 
 of Socialism to an exclusively economic issue. In 
 1847, less than a year before the outbreak of the 
 
100 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 great revolutionary movement, Marx and Engels 
 drew up a document which may be regarded as the 
 literary inauguration of the Modern Socialist Move- 
 ment, to wit, the celebrated Communist Manifesto. 
 Under the name of Communism the word Social- 
 ism having by that time become somewhat use, 
 owing to its association not only with the three 
 great Utopian systems of the beginning of the 
 century, but with inferior imitations, and crude 
 theories emanating from them the two protagonists 
 of the modem movement drew up a statement of 
 the scientific and historical conditions of which the 
 co-operative commonwealth, which constituted the 
 essential ideal of what had hitherto gone under the 
 name of Socialism, would be the issue. The term 
 " Communism " adopted throughout the manifesto 
 soon fell into disuse and became supplanted by the 
 phrase Social Democracy, and by the old word 
 Socialism, which seems destined to triumph finally 
 over all competitors, In the Communist Manifesto, 
 as is well known, the point of view of historic 
 evolution of the class-struggle under the para- 
 mountcy of the economic side of human affairs, 
 was expounded for the first time in a succinct and 
 definite form. That democracy was the essential 
 condition of Communism (Socialism) was em- 
 phatically insisted upon, and that the transfor- 
 mation of the Civilisation of to-day into the 
 Socialism of to-morrow must be brought about 
 
DEFINITIONS OF SOCIALISM 101 
 
 through a political revolution involving a change in 
 the possessors of power, was made clear. Hence- 
 forward the Socialist movement in the modern 
 sense began slowly to shape itself. 
 
 We come now to the main question of this 
 chapter : namely, as to the definitions of Socialism 
 in its modern acceptation. A thoroughly super- 
 ficial definition is one quoted by Mr G. K. Chesterton 
 in an article in the Daily News a year or two 
 back. " Socialism," said Mr Chesterton, means 
 "the assumption by the State of all the means 
 of production, distribution, and exchange." Mr 
 Chesterton's aim was to discredit Socialism by 
 showing that it did not necessarily involve demo- 
 cracy, relative economic equality, or anything else 
 it is usually supposed to imply. This, of course, 
 was no difficult task, starting from the above 
 inadequate definition, and easily allowed Mr 
 Chesterton to assume with an affected naivete 
 that " the State " referred to might be a " despotic 
 State, an aristocratic State, or a Papal State." 
 This is, of course, merely a reductio ad absurdum 
 of the definition itself. And yet how many 
 persons who consider they know something about 
 the subject would not be disposed to accept, or at 
 least to acquiesce in, the above definition without 
 comment 1 
 
 The idea that all Socialism means is the 
 concentration of the means of production, etc., 
 
102 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 in the hands of any corporate entity that may 
 be called a State, irrespective of what that 
 State may be, is often regarded in the present 
 day as showing a well-informed and up-to-date 
 condition of mind on the subject. This notion 
 that the one and only salient point about Socialism 
 is the concentration of productive wealth in the 
 hands of a power supposed to represent the 
 community, has been fostered in recent years 
 by many adherents of Socialism as a counterblast 
 to the ascription to Socialism of certain definite 
 tendencies of a political, social, or religious char- 
 acter. In opposition to the latter it has been 
 sought to narrow the definition down to the 
 economic issue exclusively, and even to this 
 issue in its crudest and most abstract form. It 
 is manifest at a glance that the mere concentration 
 of production, etc., in the hands of a despot or an 
 aristocratic oligarchy would not be Socialism in 
 any sense under which the word has hitherto been 
 understood. 
 
 The idea of democracy has always formed 
 an essential element in the conception of Social- 
 ism as such. Where this has been absent and 
 the word Socialism has been retained in popular 
 usage, it has invariably been qualified as Christian 
 Socialism, State Socialism, "Socialism of the Chair," 
 etc., to distinguish what is meant from Socialism 
 proper. For the latter, the democratic basis and 
 
DEFINITIONS OF SOCIALISM 103 
 
 end is every whit as essential as the economic 
 concentration itself. Of course, anyone may define 
 a word as he pleases, but no one has any right to 
 claim general recognition for, or to argue from, 
 any definition that runs seriously counter to the 
 meaning attached to a term by the majority of 
 mankind, and which it has connoted from its 
 earliest historical use. Hence, to take the case 
 in point, we are bound to regard Mr Chesterton's 
 definition of Socialism, as given above, as inadmis- 
 sible, and any argumentation based upon it as 
 invalid. Every man in the present day knows 
 perfectly well that despotic, aristocratic, or papal con- 
 ditions exclude the notion of Socialism at the very 
 outset. But the significance of Mr Chesterton's 
 fallacious definition is not confined to the defini- 
 tion itself. When stated by him, together with 
 the consequences he draws from it, the absurdity 
 will be at once apparent to the majority of readers. 
 The real source and origin of the fallacy, however, 
 will be found, 1 think, to lie in the tendency before 
 spoken of, to narrow down the definition of Social- 
 ism too exclusively and too formally to the central 
 economic issue. This tendency is, more or less, 
 recent in origin. All the Utopian systems of the 
 first half of the nineteenth century, whilst placing 
 the economic re-organisation of society in the fore- 
 front, included far-reaching ethical, intellectual, 
 and social changes other than economic, as coming 
 
 \ 
 
104 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 under the definition of Socialism as they under- 
 stood it. 
 
 In the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels, 
 the standpoint of the Marxian historical materialism 
 is insisted upon in the sense that the other changes 
 in the " superstructure " of society, as they termed 
 it, the direction of which was foreshadowed in the 
 main by the early Utopian thinkers, must inevit- 
 ably follow on the economic revolution effected in 
 the Socialism or " Communism " they set forth. It 
 is well known that the modern movement of revolu- 
 tionary Socialism has been, in all its phases, more 
 or less openly hostile to, and invariably critical of, 
 the various institutions obtaining in the bourgeois 
 world of to-day, whether as regards religious beliefs 
 and churches, present forms of marriage and the 
 family, or the current ideas of duty, patriotism, 
 etc. At the same time, while the general trend 
 alike of the popular movement, as well as of its 
 literary and intellectual exponents, has been in 
 this direction, there has, nevertheless, been a 
 general hesitancy to identify the movement too 
 closely with matters other than politico-economic. 
 
 Yet, as 1 have more than once pointed out, it is un- 
 warrantable to limit the term Socialism to a purely 
 economic formula. It is, in fact, impossible to do 
 so without violating principles universally recog- 
 nised by modern Socialists as part of their ideal. 
 The definition of Mr Chesterton above referred to 
 
DEFINITIONS OF SOCIALISM 105 
 
 is a sufficient illustration of this. By omitting all 
 reference to the basis of democracy and the end 
 of economic equality, relative or absolute, it is easy 
 to infer a result the very opposite to that which 
 is really intended by those who use the word. 
 Democracy, for example, has primarily reference 
 to politics rather than economics, and yet it is as 
 essential to the modern conception of Socialism 
 as that of economic concentration in the hands of 
 an executive power. The whole question, indeed, 
 hinges upon what the administrative power is that 
 has the effective control over the public wealth. 
 Its concentration in the hands of a despot or an 
 oligarchy, with control amounting de facto to 
 possession, is no more Socialism than the Standard 
 Oil Trust is Socialism. (The foregoing remark 
 does not, of course, apply to such temporary con- 
 centration or control in the hands of an exceptional 
 Dictatorship designed to tide over a period of 
 revolutionary crisis.) Moreover, the economic 
 equality, which is the avowed aim of Socialism, 
 would be unthinkable were the productive wealth 
 of society given over to the control of despots and 
 oligarchists. In other words, the political question 
 is inseparably bound up with the economical. 
 
 The same might be said of other issues 
 questions of the family, of the principles of ethics, 
 etc. It is impossible to draw a ring-fence round 
 one department of human affairs, be it never so 
 
106 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 fundamental, and treat it as isolated from all 
 others. But the attempt to define Socialism by a 
 purely economic formula is not merely logically 
 invalid and unsupported by the attitude, if not by 
 the formal words, of the vast number of those who 
 call themselves Socialists. It is also historically 
 unjustifiable. The word, from its earliest use by 
 Owen, Leroux, Reybaud, etc., in the thirties and 
 forties of the last century, has always stood for 
 a revolution, along certain well-defined lines, in 
 human life generally. The attempt to limit it to 
 a technical economic formula, the reductio ad 
 absurdum of which we find in Mr Chesterton's 
 version, is, as I have said, quite late. 
 
 This attempt received one of its earliest expres- 
 sions in English literature in Mr Kirkup's article 
 on Socialism in the Encyclopaedia Britannica 
 (ninth edition). Mr Kirkup here labours to 
 impress upon his readers a definition somewhat 
 similar to Mr Chesterton's as against current 
 notions which assumed that Socialism had a 
 word to say on law, morals, marriage, family, 
 education, etc. His example has since been 
 followed by a large number of exponents, hostile 
 and friendly. It is difficult to say how, in view of 
 the history of the word, the exponents in question 
 justified this restriction of its meaning. The 
 " materialist doctrine of history " of Marx certainly 
 emphasises the economic basis of the social life of 
 
DEFINITIONS OF SOCIALISM 107 
 
 man as in a sense the cause of all other manifesta- 
 tions of that life, even those seemingly most remote, 
 but in practice even the strictest adherents of the 
 doctrine in question assume the results of the 
 economic change as taking place along definite 
 lines, alike as regards man's " view of the world," 
 as regards the family relation, and as regards 
 political issues, and do not hesitate to say so as 
 occasion arises. It is well known that they are in 
 favour of freer marriage relations, of the recognition 
 by society of the conclusions of science as opposed 
 to theological conceptions, and of democratic 
 republicanism as against all forms of monarchical 
 or oligarchic rule. 
 
 In these demands they undoubtedly carry 
 on the tradition of historical Socialism, and the 
 Marxian party, using the word in its larger mean- 
 ing in the present day, is practically conterminous 
 with the International Socialist movement. Yet, 
 this notwithstanding, it cannot be denied that 
 the Marxian thesis as regards the philosophy of 
 history, according to which economic forms and 
 relations are the causes in the long run of all 
 the phenomena of man's social and intellectual 
 life, when interpreted in its narrow and literal 
 signification, does give colour to the view that the 
 definition of Socialism may be reduced to that of 
 a purely economic change. But that this is so 
 more in appearance than in reality is obvious, if 
 
108 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 we admit, as most Marxians do admit, that these 
 other changes are involved in the economic change 
 itself, for as such they cannot fail to be regarded 
 as forming part and parcel of the changed con- 
 ditions of the new society, which is only another 
 way of saying that they must form an essential 
 element in the complete ideal of Socialism. 
 
 How then stands it in the matter of short 
 definitions of Socialism? Are such possible, and, 
 if possible, are they of any value as bases to be 
 argued from ? Plainly, I think they are not. 
 A world-historic movement like Socialism is too 
 big a thing to be fitted into the four corners of a 
 one-sentence formula. All such movements have 
 a central principle, but round this principle group 
 themselves a variety of implications, many of them, 
 it is true, indirect and not always deducible from it 
 at first sight, but which none the less belong to it, 
 and though formally and technically they may be 
 detached from it, yet always reassert themselves in 
 the long run. Every movement has, so to say, its 
 aura. Where you isolate the central principle 
 from its implications, logical, historical, or both, 
 you have lost touch with the concreteness of the 
 ideal, and have nothing but an abstract formula 
 before you. Now an abstract formula may be a very 
 useful thing for working purposes, but for those 
 who take a wider view it is only interesting in con- 
 nection with the larger whole of which it is the 
 
DEFINITIONS OF SOCIALISM 109 
 
 framework. A skeleton is all very well, but its chief 
 interest lies in the indication it affords of the nature 
 of the concrete animal of which it is the skeleton. 
 
 As a rule, the vaguer the definition of Socialism, 
 the less open to objection it is. Thus Socialism 
 has been described as "a whole range of ten- 
 dencies towards the reshaping of the social order 
 at the dictation of certain feelings and certain 
 lines of thought, which develops as it proceeds." 
 This is admissible, so far as it goes, and possibly 
 Socialism could not be better defined in the same 
 number of words, but the criticism cannot be 
 gainsaid that it is too vague for positive instruc- 
 tion. If, however, we are content to renounce 
 neat definitions for brief expositions, we can arrive 
 at something very much more positive and definite, 
 while at the same time acceptable to the vast 
 majority of the International Socialist party. I 
 do not propose to give one here, as I have already 
 done so more than once in the course of my literary 
 career. Hegel said that while previous thinkers 
 had sought to define the Absolute in a phrase, he 
 found that he could only do so in the exposition of 
 a science. If it is not quite so bad as this with 
 Socialism, it is certain that not even the semblance 
 of justice or accuracy as regards definition can be 
 attained in any form of words numerically less than 
 that of an average leading article in a daily news- 
 paper. 
 
110 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 One thing is more often than not lost sight of 
 in the attempt to define Socialism, and that is the 
 distinction between what the present writer has 
 termed " Socialism in the making," and " Socialism 
 as a realised ideal of society." In the first period 
 of Socialism there must undoubtedly be many 
 anachronisms, large fragments of the old order 
 of Society in the shape of institutions, customs, 
 and ideas, surviving. That such will be the case 
 no reasonable person, 1 take it, doubts at the 
 present day. No one nowadays believes in a new 
 heaven and a new earth arising in a perfect form 
 overnight. But this does not hinder the fact that 
 Socialism as a realised ideal, as no mere skeleton, 
 but a thing of flesh and blood, is not exhausted, 
 even in the most complete definition of its 
 economic side. Shaw and others used to be 
 fond of emphasising the fact of the impossibility 
 of forecasting the life of the socialised world. This 
 is perfectly just as against the attempt to describe 
 the details of such life as was done by the old 
 Utopists in one way, and by modern popular 
 romancists in another. 
 
 But admitting this does not mean denying the 
 possibility of indicating the tendencies which will 
 be dominant in the world of the future and the 
 main lines along which the institutions of that 
 world will work, and this not merely in economic 
 matters, but throughout the whole range of social 
 
DEFINITIONS OF SOCIALISM 111 
 
 affairs. For example, we may venture to assert 
 that the aim and tendency of a Socialist society 
 must be towards complete economic equality 
 throughout the whole of that society. We know 
 that in proportion as this aim is realised, the 
 aim of Socialism is realised. Again, the vast 
 majority of Socialists will agree that the greatest 
 possible extension of liberty, individual and social, 
 is a fundamental principle of Socialism, and that 
 the tendency of the society of the future would 
 be to abolish all direct coercion of the individual. 
 Hence, for example, that, pace Mr Ramsay 
 Macdonald, a society that sought to coerce its 
 members either by law or public opinion into 
 (say) an observance of lifelong monogamy or 
 lifelong celibacy would not be possible under 
 Socialism. Then again, as regards speculative 
 opinion, here also as in modes of private life, 
 Socialism implies, if nothing else, the most absolute 
 toleration. No form of coercion, such as the im- 
 pregnation of the immature minds of children with 
 dogma by the directing power of the community, 
 would be consistent with Socialism. Hence the 
 demand for secular education. The one thing of 
 which Socialism is intolerant is intolerance, and 
 there its intolerance is absolute. 
 
 I have given the above merely as instances of 
 questions constituting essential principles of Social- 
 ism, quite apart from its material foundation, to 
 
112 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 wit, the concentration of the productive wealth 
 of the community in the hands of the community 
 itself. If I be challenged as to my right to assert 
 these things to be involved in the definition of 
 Socialism, I answer the test of such definition 
 can only be historical and actual usage. In this 
 and in other cases we have to consider the con- 
 notation the word has generally borne hitherto, and 
 what it connotes to the majority of those who are 
 most interested in its definition at the present day. 
 As tested by this standard, any definition of Social- 
 ism isolating its economic side and erecting the 
 latter into a complete definition in itself, breaks 
 down. The fact that sundry litterateurs and 
 politicians have within the present generation 
 done their level best to crush it into such an 
 economic formula does not alter the question. 
 And this remark applies not only to obviously 
 absurd definitions such as that of Mr Chesterton 
 (which omits a universally recognised essential), 
 but even to the very best and broadest formula 
 of the economic basis per se. No ! the word 
 covers more than a mere economic transformation, 
 as does the movement, and the test of what it does 
 cover can only, I again insist, be the historical and 
 actual implications included under it, tacitly if not 
 avowedly, by the bulk of those who are best qualified 
 to define its use, namely, Socialists themselves. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE HEARTH, THE THRONE, 
 AND THE ALTAR 
 
 THERE is an unmistakable tendency at the present 
 time on the part of many of the champions of 
 Socialism in current political life, especially in the 
 rough and tumble of electioneering, to endeavour 
 to limit the definition of the term Socialism to 
 the politico-economic issue in the narrower sense, 
 in other words, apart from its bearing on other 
 departments of human life. The opponents of 
 Socialism among the reactionary political parties, 
 on the other hand, are just as eager to bring into 
 relief the extra-economic implications of Socialism 
 as the former are to suppress them or to keep them 
 in the background. From a vote-catching point 
 of view it is felt by Socialist wire-pullers of 
 electioneering to be disadvantageous to have 
 doctrines obnoxious to large sections of the middle 
 classes obtruded upon a free and independent 
 electorate. 
 
 Now there are three main questions of social 
 
 113 8 
 
114 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 and political import which are, per se, outside the 
 sphere of economic relations, yet upon which 
 Socialism, as most persons conceive, is called upon 
 to give a pronouncement, and respecting which, 
 as most logically-minded Socialists contend, the 
 general tenor, at least, of that pronouncement can 
 hardly be considered as doubtful. These three 
 subjects are what I have designated in the title 
 of this chapter by the well-known phrase, " The 
 Throne, the Hearth, and the Altar." By the first 
 of these designations, "Throne," I understand a 
 given national state-system into which one has 
 been born, in contra-distinction to other corre- 
 sponding and competing national state-systems 
 into which it so happens one has not been born. 
 The figure-head of such state-system, in most 
 existing countries, is the monarch, or sovereign, 
 as indicated by the word " Throne " ; but the form 
 of government is really immaterial in this con- 
 nection, though Socialism as such presupposes 
 Republicanism as its only true political form. The 
 term "Throne," in short, is for present purposes 
 taken to mean the sentiment of patriotism expressed 
 in the phrase, " my country, right or wrong ! " The 
 term " Hearth " is taken in the sense of indicating 
 the domestic relation of which, as at present con- 
 stituted, the institution of legalised and life-long 
 monogamic marriage is the corner-stone. The 
 expression " Altar," it is scarcely necessary to say, 
 
HEARTH, THRONE, AND ALTAR 115 
 
 covers religious belief and worship in the widest 
 acceptation of those terms. 
 
 Now let us first of all consider the general 
 implications of Socialism, i.e. of the Socialistic 
 idea, before dealing with these three subjects 
 separately. The primary demand of modern 
 scientific Socialism is, as we all know, an economic 
 one, to wit, the common ownership, control, and 
 management of the land and the means of pro- 
 duction. This is the material basis of human 
 life as re-constituted by Socialism. But, without 
 here entering, at length, into the knotty points 
 involved in the controversy respecting what is 
 termed the " materialistic theory of history " of 
 Marx and its interpretation, it will hardly be denied 
 by any modern student of history that a deep and 
 far-reaching revolution cannot take place in the 
 production and distribution of wealth, or, in 
 other words, in the material conditions of society, 
 without at the same time powerfully affecting its 
 thought and its mode of life generally. So much 
 I think will be conceded. Then, again, the term 
 Socialism, which dates from the early decades 
 of the nineteenth century, as embodied in the 
 great Utopian systems (as they are termed) of 
 Owen, Saint Simon, and Fourier respectively, 
 the term Socialism, I say, always implied the 
 reconstruction of human life generally a recon- 
 struction, conceived no less as involving the 
 
116 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 intellectual and moral, than the material, side of 
 life. That the Socialistic idea in its modern form 
 in the same way, mutatis mutandis, also involves 
 this, and, indeed, that these other aspects of life 
 are, in the long run, no less its concern than the 
 material basis which is its primary objective, is 
 shown by the vain attempts of time-serving 
 politicians to narrow it down to the pure and 
 simple politico-economic formula. Notwithstand- 
 ing the protestations of these time-serving poli- 
 ticians, neither friend nor foe seems disposed to 
 accept their assertions unreservedly in this respect. 
 It is well enough known what are the views, at 
 least in their general tendency, of the majority of 
 Socialists as regards the questions to which we are 
 referring. 
 
 It will be denied by few that Socialists are not 
 patriots in the ordinary sense of the term. It is 
 recognised that to the bulk of Socialists Socialism 
 implies a change in the present relations between 
 the sexes in the direction of greater freedom or, 
 I should rather say, perhaps, of the absence of the 
 coercion, legal or otherwise, at present exercised 
 by society over the individual in these matters. 
 Again, as regards religion, there can be no doubt 
 whatever that the enormous majority of Socialists 
 do not accept, in any sense whatever, the dogmas 
 of any traditional creed. It is an acknowledged 
 fact that most Socialists are atheists or agnostics, 
 
, 
 
 HEARTH, THRONE, AND ALTAR 117 
 
 or secularists, if the term be preferred. I am 
 referring, of course, to Socialists, sans phrase, not 
 to hybrids who may choose to label themselves 
 Christian Socialists, whatever that may mean. 
 While these foregoing statements, I think, are not 
 to be gainsaid, it is useless blinking the fact that 
 the Socialist for whom vote-catching is the one 
 thing needful is always desirous of keeping these 
 points of view in the background. Some, while 
 admitting them to be in the last resort inseparable 
 from Socialism, would have them treated as an 
 esoteric or secret doctrine not to be obtruded on 
 those not yet converted to the central economic 
 principle. Some there are, however, who would 
 maintain that there is no necessary connection at 
 all between them and Socialism. Such are those 
 who would confine the word Socialism within the 
 four corners of a purely economic definition. In 
 a word, they challenge the views of the majority of 
 Socialists on these subjects, as not being necessarily 
 deducible from the central principle of Socialism. 
 This brings us back to the consideration of what 
 constitutes the essence of the Socialistic principle. 
 It would be, of course, absurd to allege that the 
 adoption of any, or all, of the palliatives on the 
 programme of the Socialist party in most countries 
 involved the acceptance of any special views re- 
 specting patriotism or anti-patriotism, marriage or 
 free-love, theology or secularism, etc. But then, 
 
118 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 on the other hand, most, if not all, of these im- 
 mediate palliatives of the present system of society 
 (housing proposals, feeding school children, ex- 
 tension of old age pensions, etc., etc.) could be, 
 and undoubtedly are, accepted by many Radicals, 
 who would, nevertheless, not consider themselves 
 Socialists at all. It may be readily admitted that 
 for the purposes of any given election these ulterior 
 things are quite irrelevant, and, from this point 
 of view, there would be no reason why the most 
 devout Nonconformist or Churchman might not 
 vote for a Socialist candidate. But, I submit, the 
 matter is very different when we are dealing, not 
 with current Socialistic proposals, but with Socialism 
 as a coherent ideal of human life and society and 
 of the Socialist party considered as an organisation 
 whose final goal is the realisation of this ideal. 
 Here one has to consider the matter in all its 
 bearings. 
 
 Socialism, it is said, is an economic doctrine. 
 True, but it is an economic doctrine inseparably 
 bound up with an ideal concerning human life 
 and development. And if we analyse this ideal 
 we find it to involve, in the last resort, the 
 old triad, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, trans- 
 lated into the conditions of modern progress. 
 The modern Socialist recognises that only through 
 the economic change he postulates, from individual 
 to collective ownership of the means of production, 
 
HEARTH, THRONE, AND ALTAR 119 
 
 distribution, and exchange, can Liberty, Equality, 
 and Fraternity be realised. The old attempts to 
 realise them have conspicuously failed. The 
 liberty aimed at by Socialism is freedom of de- 
 velopment for the individual as for Society. This 
 liberty the Socialist sees to be impossible under a 
 regime of private property-holding in the means of 
 production. All the existing trammels on freedom, 
 alike for the individual and for Society, the 
 Socialist finds traceable, in the last resort, to the 
 system of private ownership in these means of 
 production. 
 
 The institution of private property, which, in 
 earlier stages of Society, played its part as a 
 guarantee of freedom and progress, has, in these 
 latter days, become a stumbling block and a 
 hindrance in a word, the enemy of progress. 
 But although this economic side of life is at the 
 centre, so to say, of things human, and although 
 nothing human can escape its influence, yet there 
 are, nevertheless, departments which do not lie 
 directly and immediately under its domination. 
 The modifications in these departments necessarily 
 affected by the economic change, real though they 
 be, are indirect and require time to work them- 
 selves out. The departments referred to are the 
 intellectual and ethical sides of human life. Now, 
 for our present purpose, these departments fall 
 mainly under the three headings of, as I have here 
 
120 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 termed them, "Throne, Hearth, and Altar" in a 
 word, the present ideals of patriotism, of marriage, 
 and of religion, together with the transformation 
 or modification of these ideals involved by 
 Socialism. 
 
 Let us, first of all, take the patriotic idea as 
 at present understood. This means that a duty 
 exists for every man to regard his country, that is, 
 the particular state-system into which he has been 
 born, together with the soil and its inhabitants, 
 with a devotion over and above that in which 
 he regards other countries and their inhabitants, 
 or humanity at large, and, as a consequence, to be 
 prepared to sacrifice everything, including life itself, 
 for this said country. Now, the Socialist criticism 
 of this sentiment of patriotism I take to be is as 
 follows : The existing state-systems with which 
 the sentiment of patriotism, as understood to-day, 
 is concerned, are really recent creations. In 
 antiquity, patriotism had sole reference to a very 
 circumscribed community, namely, the city which 
 had itself grown out of the tribal community. 
 Abydos, Thebes, Babylon, Jerusalem, Sparta, 
 Athens, Rome, were cities boasting a city- 
 patriotism, which was reflected in the ancestral 
 cults which constituted their religion. There was, 
 at this stage, no centralised power embracing huge 
 populations in vast extents of territory. The so- 
 called empires of the ancient world were, as a rule, 
 
, 
 
 HEARTH, THRONE, AND ALTAR 121 
 
 no more than loose confederacies, the bond holding 
 them together being usually forced on the tribes 
 and cities included in them, by right of conquest 
 and superior might, and imposed, not for the sake 
 of the internal organisation of Society, which was 
 under local and tribal jurisdiction, but solely for 
 the sake of enforced military service and of tribute. 
 Such confederacies were the so-called empires of 
 Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, Persia. Round these 
 amorphous heterogeneously composed aggregates 
 no serious and lasting sentiment of patriotism 
 either did, or could, gather. This sentiment, as 
 already said, obtained exclusively, as regards the 
 civic and tribal units comprised within them. 
 
 Turning to the Middle Ages, we find, as far 
 as this matter is concerned, substantially a similar 
 condition of things. The unit of political social 
 life in the Middle Ages was the manor and (especi- 
 ally in the later period of the Middle Ages) the 
 industrially organised township. Italy, Germany, 
 France, and even England (although the remark 
 applies less here than in the other cases), were 
 little more than assemblages of manors and town- 
 ships. And it was to these, rather than to what 
 we now term the nation, that the sentiment of 
 patriotism attached. The modern nation-state 
 grew up on the ruins of mediaeval feudalism con- 
 currently with the rise of the new conditions of 
 industry which subsequently developed into the 
 
122 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 modern system of capitalism. National patriotism 
 thus, as conceived to-day, first attained its zenith 
 under the aegis of the modern capitalist system. 
 Now, in these latter days, Socialists find this senti- 
 ment of national patriotism, itself a product of 
 the capitalistic period, is being exploited wholly 
 and solely in the interests of capitalistic schemes 
 of aggrandisement, expansion, acquirement of new 
 markets, of cheap native labour, of the mineral 
 wealth of undeveloped countries, etc., etc. 
 
 From this short historical excursus it will be 
 readily imagined that an antipathy should exist 
 between Patriotism and Socialism. This is the 
 more evident when we consider that the expansive 
 exploits of modern capitalism under the asgis of the 
 various national flags, for the most part carried on 
 with the blood and sinew of the proletariat, not 
 only subserve no other immediate purpose than 
 that of making rich men richer, but do actually 
 further what is for the Socialist a very sinister 
 ulterior purpose, namely, that of prolonging the 
 life of the capitalist system, which must either 
 continuously enlarge the sphere of its operations, 
 or perish, as a system, by becoming transformed 
 into Socialism. Add to this the further fact that 
 the economic tendency is towards the knitting 
 together in an indissoluble union of the whole 
 world, but more especially of the nations in the 
 van of progress, i.e. those under the domination 
 
HEARTH, THRONE, AND ALTAR 128 
 
 of the capitalist system Europe, America, the 
 European colonies, and now, Japan. Modern 
 commerce, industry, means of communication, 
 science and art, all of them are essentially inter- 
 national. As the local centre of old, the manor or 
 township, from being self-sufficing in its wants be- 
 came dependent on the province and then on the 
 nation, so now each nation is ceasing more and 
 more to be self-sufficing is becoming more and 
 more merely a semi-dependent section of the whole 
 civilised world. 
 
 But although this affords the economic clue to 
 the Internationalism of the modern Socialist party, 
 there is, also, as before pointed out, an ethical 
 expression of this Internationalism. This ethical 
 expression consists in the instinct, if you will, that 
 .Internationalism is an essential element in the re- 
 alisation of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. But 
 here comes the rub Is Socialism not merely Inter- 
 national, but also anti-national ? Is the antipathy 
 between Socialism and Patriotism so thorough- 
 going as to make of the logical Socialist an anti- 
 patriot ? This is the question for some time past 
 agitating the International Socialist Party. On the 
 one side, it is alleged that, though the tendency of 
 Socialism is towards the elimination, not merely 
 of national jealousies, but also of national barriers 
 generally, yet the Socialist, as a practical man, has 
 to make up his account with things as they are. 
 
124 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 Now national state - systems exist and colonial 
 empires based upon them. Nay, more than this, 
 the nation, being the modern political unit, having 
 its community of law, tradition, custom, language, 
 etc., etc., the Socialist party itself is organised on 
 the basis of nationality, and, therefore, the mainten- 
 ance of the integrity of the nation against aggres- 
 sion is, as things are at present, as much incumbent 
 on Socialists as on anyone else. 
 
 On the other hand, it is urged that while con- 
 ceding the point last mentioned, to wit, the right 
 of any existing nation to independence within 
 its own frontiers as against any other nation, 
 yet that this point is, to the proletariat and 
 to the Socialist, a somewhat "academic" one. 
 The existing national state-systems, it is pointed 
 out, represent class-interest and class-domination ; 
 hence, while not denying the right of one of 
 these state-systems to defend itself against an- 
 other, viewing the matter from the standpoint 
 of present society, it is nevertheless contended 
 that even such defence, justifiable though it may 
 be from the foregoing standpoint, is no affair of 
 the class-conscious proletariat or of the Socialist. 
 With this is involved, of course, the burning ques- 
 tion of anti-militarism now agitating the Inter- 
 national Socialist Party, and the discussion of which 
 played such an important part in the proceedings 
 at Stuttgart in 1907, where August Bebel took one 
 
HEARTH, THRONE, AND ALTAR 125 
 
 side and Gustave Herve' the other. Herve is the 
 most prominent exponent of the position that 
 the logical outcome of the Internationalism of 
 modern Socialist movement involves the adoption 
 of an anti-national and anti-patriotic attitude. For 
 Herve and his party, so powerful in France, patriot- 
 ism, in any shape or form, is incompatible with the 
 fundamental ethical postulate of Socialism. On 
 the other hand, Bebel and others, who take a differ- 
 ent view as regards the question of patriotism and 
 military service, draw a sharp distinction between 
 offensive and defensive war, a war of aggression 
 and a war of defence against invasion. There is a 
 wide-spreading feeling, however, in the party that 
 this distinction is in the present day dangerous in 
 tendency and largely illusory. I allude to sections 
 of the party who by no means adopt the extreme 
 views of Herve' in this matter. Karl Kautzy, for 
 example, in a recent number of the Neue Zeit, while 
 justly urging that the crucial point is, not whether 
 a war is offensive or defensive from a national point 
 of view, but whether it would subserve the interests 
 of the proletariat or democracy generally, remarks 
 that "in the existing political situation a war in 
 which a proletarian or democratic interest would 
 be concerned is hardly conceivable. The only 
 danger of war to-day," he says, "threatens from 
 the side of Colonial expansion, and to this the pro- 
 letariat is, in principle, opposed." In other words, 
 
126 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 modern military patriotism is hardly likely to be 
 called into requisition, save either for the depriva- 
 tion of some weaker or backward people of its 
 independence, or as regards a thieves' quarrel as 
 to the respective share of two or more capitalist 
 states in the plunder of this people. 
 
 The above is crucially illustrated, among recent 
 events, by the adventure of France in Morocco 
 not to speak of our own Boer War and other 
 Colonial complications. But if the foregoing be 
 true and that it is so in the main there can be, I 
 think, no doubt it follows surely that the funda- 
 mental contention of Herve is, to the logically 
 minded Socialist, justified. The question then re- 
 duces itself to one of means. And how far the 
 general military strike in the event of a declaration 
 of war as proposed by Herve in the case of France 
 is a possible, or, at least, the most suitable, weapon, 
 remains, of course, an open question, and one which 
 does not specially concern us here. My main 
 point is, that, looking at the matter all round, 
 even if we went so far as to justify participation by 
 Socialists in a war of national defence, where the 
 independence of a given nationality was seriously 
 threatened by an external Power even then, as 
 Kautzy says, this contingency is practically impos- 
 sible to arise in the present state of world-politics 
 as between any of the great world-powers in short, 
 it is hardly conceivable that one great Power 
 
HEARTH, THRONE, AND ALTAR 127 
 
 should be able to crush or enslave another great 
 Power in the present day. This we have seen 
 crucially illustrated as far back as the Franco- 
 German War of 1870. The most it could do 
 would be to steal some of that great Power's 
 over-sea possessions, a proceeding which, in the 
 general way, need not seriously perturb the 
 Socialists. What we have to remember is, that, 
 so far as it is genuine, the International character 
 of Socialism is no mere phrase. The Socialist feels 
 that he belongs first and foremost to the Inter- 
 national Socialist Party, and, as such, that his 
 Socialist comrades of other lands stand nearer to 
 him than his non- Socialist countrymen. He is a 
 Socialist first and an Englishman, Frenchman, 
 German, afterwards. As a consequence it seems 
 to me futile to deny that Socialism is, alike as 
 regards its economic basis, its historical evolution, 
 and its fundamental ethical postulates, inconsistent 
 with patriotism, according to any definition of that 
 word current at the present time. 
 
 Having dealt necessarily in a cursory manner 
 with what I conceive to be the relation of Socialism 
 to the Throne, understanding by this the idea 
 of country or nationality, we will now proceed 
 shortly to discuss its relation to the Hearth, i.e. 
 the question of the Family. One of the great 
 outcries against Socialism on the part of the 
 reactionary Press is that it would destroy the 
 
128 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 Family, break up the Home, introduce free-love, 
 etc. One opponent of Socialism, in the ardour of 
 his indignation, recently expressed his horror at the 
 fact that Socialism would destroy the institution 
 of marriage, as it existed throughout Christendom 
 to-day, " to replace it by something even worse ! " 
 Socialists, I am sure, will all hope and trust 
 that such a terrible result may be spared us. 
 However this may be, there is one thing that 
 strikes me somewhat painfully in the agitation 
 raised by reactionaries anent this question, and 
 that is, the cowardice of many professing Socialists 
 in their attitude towards it. I do not wish to 
 particularise, but to see the way in which well- 
 known Socialists, in replying to challenges on 
 this question, are literally tumbling over each other 
 in their efforts to abase themselves before the 
 shrine of Mrs Grundy, not hesitating to contradict 
 themselves, and to eat their own words the while, is, 
 to me, personally, not a pleasant spectacle, not to 
 use a stronger expression. 
 
 And what is meant by all this maundering 
 talk about the idyllic perfection for all time of 
 the enforced marriage relation as it exists at 
 present, irrespective of diversities of tempera- 
 ment and character ? what is meant by all these 
 protestations of an undying devotion to asceti- 
 cism as the ideal of life in this connection ? 
 what, I say, is the occasion of all this grovelling ? 
 
HEARTH, THRONE, AND ALTAR 129 
 
 I am afraid we must answer, it is the cant of 
 bourgeois respectability, in itself, on the one side, 
 but more especially as associated with the inordin- 
 ate desire for immediate success at the polls on 
 the other. Now I venture to think that all the 
 asseverations of unshakable and undying adhesion 
 to the current conventional views on the question 
 of sexual relations are, from the point of view of 
 logically thought-out Socialistic doctrine, hardly 
 less untenable than are the wild and one-sided 
 assertions of the reactionary Press to the effect 
 that Socialism advocates promiscuity in the rela- 
 tions of the sexes. I take it that Socialism has its 
 own point of view in this as in other matters, and 
 that this point of view is radically distinct from, 
 or even in some respects opposed to, that of the 
 bourgeois morality and its sanctions in this matter. 
 Let us look this question squarely in the face. 
 Say the opponents of Socialism, "You Socialists 
 would abolish Marriage and destroy the Family ! " 
 Now the first question which suggests itself here 
 is what form of Marriage and what form of the 
 Family ? He who makes the assertion, as a rule, 
 pretty obviously thinks that the only possible form 
 of the Family is the existing compulsory life-long 
 monogamy, as by law established, together with 
 the children resulting therefrom, if there are any. 
 But I need scarcely remind the educated reader 
 that this form of Marriage and the Family, as 
 
 9 
 
130 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 established amongst us, is itself the result of a 
 long evolution, for the various stages of which the 
 works of Maclennan, Morgan, Bachofen, Engels, 
 Gerard-Teulon, Hobhouse, Havelock Ellis, and 
 others may be consulted. Suffice it here to say 
 that this evolution, beginning in the far distant 
 past of early man (perhaps with promiscuity), 
 has passed through a variety of phases, various 
 forms of group-marriage (by which is to be under- 
 stood the men of one group having marital rights 
 over the women of another group, and vice versa) ; 
 polygamy in its various forms, culminating in the 
 so-called patriarchal family, through diverse stages 
 of transitory marital relation, till we come to the, 
 at least nominal, life-long monogamy as established 
 by law throughout Christendom in the present day 
 which last constitutes for the modern bourgeois, 
 not merely the final term of an evolutionary series 
 (beyond which farther evolution is impossible and 
 undesirable), but an institution obtaining by a kind 
 of Divine Right for all peoples and all times. 
 
 That the form of marriage and the family relation 
 in any given society is determined by the modes 
 that society produces and distributes its wealth is 
 a commonplace to students of anthropology and 
 the early history of institutions, and will, I think, 
 be denied by no scientific Socialist in the present 
 day. This, however, by the way. Now, un- 
 fortunately for the opponent of Socialism who 
 
HEARTH, THRONE, AND ALTAR 131 
 
 professes to regard the present form of the marriage 
 relation as the final limit of perfectibility, (as has 
 been often enough pointed out) the existing family 
 relations have already been destroyed by the very 
 conditions of their existence under the great 
 machine industry of Capitalism for the bulk of the 
 proletariat. They were eminently suited for the 
 small handicraft industry of former times, in which 
 all the family assisted one another. But with each 
 member of the family competing with each other 
 member in the factory, the old family relation has 
 been undermined. This at one end of the social 
 scale. At the other, amongst the higher strata of 
 the ruling classes in Europe at the present time, 
 the institution of the morganatic or left-handed 
 marriage (not to speak of various forms of non- 
 legitimate sexual relationship) is in direct contra- 
 vention of the monogamic principle. Such are the 
 facts, and they have often been stated. 
 
 In short, the old monogamic family relation is 
 already undermined in more than one direction. 
 (I do not know whether there are any who seriously 
 contemplate the possibility of its rehabilitation on 
 the old basis either with Socialism or without 
 Socialism. If there be such, I would only point 
 out to them that experience has not hitherto been 
 favourable to attempts to put back the hands of 
 the clock.) The historical Theory of Socialism 
 proclaims the more or less indissoluble connection 
 
132 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 of all forms of human life with the economic form. 
 It tells us that the forms assumed by the marital 
 and family relations throughout history are, like 
 other social forms, at least largely, if not entirely, 
 dependent upon the material, the economic con- 
 ditions of the life of a society, and change with 
 these conditions. So much for the evolutionary 
 side of the question. 
 
 We come now to the important practical point 
 whether an unconditional acceptance of the present 
 basis of the marital relation, with all its implica- 
 tions, in a word, of the current sexual morality, is 
 consistent with the fundamental ethical postulates 
 of Socialism. We have already signalised the 
 direct aim of Socialism as the realisation of the 
 principles of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. 
 Now with Equality and Fraternity this particular 
 question has perhaps only an indirect connection. 
 But with Liberty it has a very direct connection 
 indeed. Let us consider for a moment what 
 Liberty means for Socialism. Socialism, in spite 
 of the abusive assertions of its enemies, has for its 
 end, I say, the realisation of human liberty. It is 
 true the liberty it seeks to realise is a real liberty 
 and not a sham liberty, a concrete liberty and not 
 a merely formal and abstract liberty. Hence in 
 the attempt to achieve the real thing it is often 
 necessary to destroy the sham. In championing 
 true liberty, Socialism is prepared to demonstrate 
 
HEARTH, THRONE, AND ALTAR 133 
 
 the false liberty (e.g. the sham free contract between 
 capitalist and workman demanded by the Manchester 
 school) to be incompatible with liberty, in fact, the 
 negation of liberty (such liberty being, in fact, the 
 source and foundation of modern wage-slavery). 
 Socialism can further show that real human liberty, 
 for each and all, can only be secured by the 
 economic conditions of human life being in the 
 possession and under the regulation of the whole 
 community. Any apparent sacrifice of liberty which 
 this may entail on the part of some, Socialism can 
 prove is the sacrifice of a merely empty and formal 
 liberty in favour of a real liberty for each and all 
 alike. 
 
 The allegations of the enemies of Socialism to 
 the effect that Socialism implies the violent ruin 
 of the heart and the destruction of all existing 
 domestic relations (combined with the forcible 
 introduction of something they are pleased to call 
 "free-love"), is, of course, a false and grotesque 
 travesty respecting which an intelligent reader 
 need not concern himself. Socialism, I repeat, 
 stands for liberty. It means the emancipation 
 of mankind from all forms of slavery. In its 
 political and economic emancipation is included 
 the emancipation from all other forms of slavery. 
 Socialism, it has been said by Engels, implies the 
 substitution of the administration of things for 
 the direct coercion of persons. Now I do not see 
 
134 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 that we can draw the line here at the domestic rela- 
 tion. Socialism, I contend, while in no way hostile 
 in principle to the strictest life-long monogamy, is 
 also not necessarily hostile to forms of the sexual or 
 family relation deviating from the present theoreti- 
 cal standard in this matter. What I do say is in- 
 compatible with Socialism, is the coercion of men 
 and women in their private life. I do say that the 
 principle of toleration here, as elsewhere, in private 
 or self-regarding matters, is absolute with Socialism. 
 Those who think otherwise on this question simply 
 wish to maintain a system of tyranny over their 
 neighbour. Mr Ramsay Macdonald, in his preface 
 to the translation of Enrico Ferri's book. Socialism 
 and Science, in which Professor Ferri criticises the 
 present institution of marriage, while admitting 
 the impossibility of determining the precise form 
 the family relation is likely to take under Socialism, 
 nevertheless seeks to conciliate the orthodox view 
 generally by assuming the possibility of a Socialist 
 administration "frowning" upon any other form 
 of the marital relation than the conventional one. 
 Now if by "frowning" Mr Macdonald means to 
 imply, as I suppose he does, some form of legal or 
 moral coercion, then, I maintain, such an adminis- 
 tration would be, in spirit, as reactionary and as 
 anti- Socialistic as the Russian autocracy itself. 
 Any society which refuses elementary personal 
 liberty, no matter on what point, to its members, 
 

 HEARTH, THRONE, AND ALTAR 135 
 
 is, I maintain, doomed to perish sooner rather than 
 later. 
 
 I do not hesitate to say that any attempt, 
 whether by direct coercion in form of law or by 
 indirect coercion in the form of public opinion, to 
 compel two persons to remain together who wish 
 to separate or, having separated, to seek to deprive 
 them of the exercise of their personal liberty in 
 the formation of new ties, is an act of tyrannical 
 oppression, radically incompatible with Socialist 
 principle. I contend that toleration in this matter 
 is of the essence of Socialism. The contrary simply 
 amounts to coercion exercised in favour of a 
 particular opinion. For the persons who desire 
 this pretend to think, and they may be right, that 
 life-long monogamy is the ideal sexual relation. 
 They ignore the somewhat numerous cases in 
 which to the unsophisticated person its ideal nature 
 may seem somewhat to be lacking. They ignore 
 difference of character. But, whether rightly or 
 wrongly, having come to the conclusion that it is 
 ideal for all temperaments, they are not content to 
 rest the acceptance of this ideal on its intrinsic 
 excellence, but they seek to convert it into a 
 procrustean bed upon which to stretch unwilling 
 persons, i.e. persons who, upon practical or other 
 grounds, think differently. This is certainly un- 
 Socialistic. For, I repeat, I cannot but maintain 
 that while Socialism in no wise dogmatises on the 
 
] 36 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 subject of the marriage relation, it does imply 
 complete toleration in theory and practice. 
 
 The regulative function of society in this matter 
 should properly begin, not with cohabitation be- 
 tween man and woman, which is a personal matter 
 considered in itself, but with the appearance on the 
 scene of offspring. We must learn to separate the 
 two things. They are often in practice dissociated. 
 It is well known that about a third of the marriages 
 contracted in this country are childless. Now 
 while society in its corporate capacity has no right, 
 as I contend, either by law or public opinion, to 
 interfere with the sexual liberty of the individual 
 per se, it has an undoubted right to have a word to 
 say on the question of children nay, it has a duty 
 to perform in seeing that its future citizens are well 
 brought up and properly cared for. This, however, 
 is a wide and important question. My point lies 
 in emphasising the distinction between mere co- 
 habitation, which should be a matter of private 
 agreement, and the question of offspring. It is 
 with the latter alone that a society based upon 
 rational principles has the right to concern itself, in 
 the sense of practical interference with individual 
 liberty. The former is a matter of opinion and 
 private taste. To put my position in a few words. 
 Marriage under Socialism is a pure and free agree- 
 ment of cohabitation between two persons, with 
 which, as such, the State or community has no 
 
HEARTH, THRONE, AND ALTAR 137 
 
 more direct concern than with any other private 
 agreement. Not even the most liberal divorce laws 
 would amount to the same as this, since all systems 
 of divorce presuppose the right of interference by 
 the State in a private and personal arrangement. 
 So much on the question of the relation of Social- 
 ism to the Hearth. We now pass on to its relation 
 to the Altar, understanding thereby its attitude 
 towards Christianity and, for that matter, any 
 other traditional dogmatic creed. 
 
 Modern, or scientific, Socialism, claims to be a 
 doctrine based on the economic analysis of modern 
 capitalist production and on the facts of historic 
 evolution. It has for its ideal the realisation of, 
 as nearly as the nature of things permit, a perfect 
 society here below and not a heaven for the indi- 
 vidual soul up above. Now, a theory which bases 
 itself on reasoned conclusions, on science and law, 
 and is concerned with the relation of the individual 
 to his fellow-men and to society, can hardly be 
 altogether compatible with another theory claiming 
 to be a divine revelation and concerning itself 
 mainly, if not exclusively, with the relation of the 
 individual soul to an alleged Supreme Author of 
 the Universe. 
 
 That there is a certain opposition between 
 the two theories, alike in logic and in fact, seems 
 to many^of us self-evident. The man who bases 
 his view of things on the uniformity of nature 
 
138 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 and the law of evolution, and whose aims and 
 hopes are centred on the mundane affairs of human 
 society here below, if he be possessed of a logical 
 instinct, can hardly with sincerity accept a theory 
 for which mundane affairs are of necessity of very 
 secondary importance, since the one thing needful 
 is that each individual soul should look to the 
 squaring-up of its accounts with the Divinity who 
 is its Maker. As a matter of fact, we observe that 
 it is almost invariably the case that a man who 
 interests himself very seriously in the affairs of his 
 own soul is not very keen as to the mundane issues 
 of social progress ; while, conversely, a man who is 
 keen on political and social issues does not find 
 much time for the private affairs of his own soul. 
 I have often observed with that curious hybrid, 
 the Christian Socialist, that, beginning as such, he 
 almost invariably either becomes an out-and-out 
 Socialist, when his Christianity disappears, or be- 
 comes attenuated to little more than a name, 
 or he becomes an earnest Christian, when his 
 Socialism vanishes or evaporates into a few 
 phrases. 
 
 What we see at the present day as regards 
 this question of religion or, more properly, of 
 theology, among the masses of this country, is, 
 that they are completely indifferent in the matter. 
 There is a general feeling, implicit or explicit, 
 among them that religion, in the sense of theology, 
 
 / 
 
HEARTH, THRONE, AND ALTAR 139 
 
 is something not so much formally discarded, as 
 outgrown and left behind. It is under these 
 conditions that the religion of Socialism, the true 
 religion of humanity, makes appeal to them. The 
 class-conscious Socialist workman feels, as Lassalle 
 put it, that he is raising the ideal of his class to be 
 the ideal of his age, that he is working through his 
 classhood for humanity. I do not think, then, that 
 Socialism can be said to be other than very de- 
 finitely non-Christian and non-Theistic. 
 
 But if this be true, I cannot agree that it is 
 possible for Socialism to maintain an attitude of 
 sheer indifference, as some would have it, to 
 current religions, entrenching itself within the 
 water-tight compartments of its central economic 
 formula. The current creeds may be hard stricken, 
 but they are not as yet dead. They still have an 
 influence with not inconsiderable sections of the 
 population, and that influence is, from a Socialistic 
 point of view, almost invariably for mischief. 
 Hence I cannot regard the war against clericalism 
 and dogma, under certain circumstances at least, 
 as not a necessary side of Socialist propaganda. 
 Still less from the point of view of consistency and 
 straightforwardness can I reconcile myself to the 
 assertion so often repeated for electioneering pur- 
 poses, that Socialism is not opposed to any theo- 
 logical creed. Of course there are two things 
 to be distinguished here. Socialism is, correctly 
 
140 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 speaking, a scientific doctrine and ethical ideal of 
 social life ; but Socialism is also, though incorrectly, 
 identified with programmes of certain immediate 
 reforms to be carried out if possible in the next 
 Parliament. As I have before said, a man may 
 very well approve of and vote for measures, a legal 
 eight hours' day, the feeding of children in public 
 schools, a progressive income tax, old age pensions, 
 etc., etc., while remaining a conscientious Church- 
 man or Nonconformist. But, then, these things, 
 though advocated by Socialists as stepping-stones 
 and palliatives, are not Socialism and have no 
 pretensions to being so. They are merely Social- 
 istic legislation. For those who accept Socialism 
 itself as a doctrine and an ideal it is scarcely 
 possible, I think, to conscientiously describe them- 
 selves as Christians or even Theists, at least in any 
 sense of those words legitimated by either popular 
 or historical usage. They connote implicitly, if not 
 explicitly, a different order of ideas from that to 
 which the understanding Socialist has subscribed. 
 
 What, then, shall we say of the cry now being 
 dinned into our ears by reactionary politicians 
 on the platform and in the Press anent Socialism 
 being identified with Atheism ? Do these persons 
 pretend to believe that Socialists aim at a drastic 
 inquisition into private beliefs and sentiments, or 
 even at a rigorous suppression of all forms of public 
 worship ? To hear them and read them one would 
 
HEARTH, THRONE, AND ALTAR 141 
 
 think they did ; but they are too clever for this. 
 What they really profess to be indignant at, when 
 closely viewed, is seen to be the threatened aboli- 
 tion by Socialism of the tyrannical action of dogma, 
 cultus, and tradition, upon the thoughts and actions 
 of men. It is this complete freeing of the human 
 mind from the bondage of authority in these matters, 
 the complete secularisation of human life in this 
 sense, that they dread. 
 
 The scare and prejudice sought to be got up 
 by reactionary journals on the subject of Socialism 
 and Atheism is, as we all know, started with 
 the more immediate object of detaching the votes 
 of certain persons, Nonconformist and others, 
 from the Socialist candidate at elections. Now, 
 the psychological condition of these electors who 
 would otherwise vote for the Socialist, but who 
 are deterred from doing so by the cry of Atheism, 
 is impossible to explain on any other hypothesis 
 than either the dread of intellectual freedom afore- 
 said, or abject idiocy on the part of the said elector. 
 The Nonconformist voter, if he thought that the 
 return of Socialists to Parliament would tend 
 towards the forceable suppression of the Christian 
 faith, might be perfectly justified in refusing to 
 vote for them. But he knows perfectly well 
 that all that the Socialist proposes in this matter 
 is to place the Christian religion on the level 
 of other religions, of science, and of non- Christian 
 
142 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 theories generally. Admitting, then, that an 
 intimate connection between Atheism and Social- 
 ism were established from a theoretical point of 
 view, what is there in this to prevent a Non- 
 conformist or other Christian from recording his 
 vote for a candidate with whose immediate practical 
 programme, which is, after all, the main point at 
 issue, he agrees? (I can understand, perhaps, his 
 hesitating to definitely avow himself a Socialist, or 
 to formally join a Socialist organisation. But if he 
 really has faith in the merits of his creed to con- 
 quer by its own intrinsic qualities in the absence 
 of direct persecution or oppression, he has nothing 
 to fear.) However this may be, the practical atti- 
 tude of Socialism in this matter is perfectly plain. 
 Whether Socialism be identifiable with Atheism or 
 not, Socialism is undoubtedly identified with Free 
 Thought in the truest sense of the word. What- 
 ever Christians may be, Socialists are confident in 
 the triumph of the truth through free discussion. 
 Their programme must therefore embrace the 
 complete freeing of human life from the fetters 
 of traditional dogma. And what does this mean 
 other than the complete secularisation of the poli- 
 tical and social life of the community ? 
 
 As I have already indicated, I think, then, that 
 there is a theoretical opposition between Socialism 
 and Christianity. It will scarcely be denied that 
 most Socialists are non-Christians, where not 
 
HEARTH, THRONE, AND ALTAR 143 
 
 militant anti-Christians. Space will not allow of 
 anything approaching a full treatment of this in- 
 teresting question of the relations of Socialism, 
 considered as an economic doctrine and theory of 
 life, with a definite speculative theory or a phil- 
 osophic view of the universe. Enough has been 
 said, I think, however, to show that here also it 
 is impossible, except for election purposes, to sin- 
 cerely treat Socialism as absolutely disconnected 
 even with these purely speculative interests. 
 
 We have now considered, successively, the to-day 
 much vexed question of the relations of Socialism 
 in its narrower sense as a politico-economic doctrine 
 with Socialism in its broader sense, as including 
 the issues of patriotism and internationalism, of 
 marriage and the family, and of religion, as currently 
 understood. The instinct alike of friend and foe, 
 of Socialists themselves, and of the opponents of 
 Socialism, has, with a certain rough accuracy, 
 diagnosed the tendencies of Socialism in its rela- 
 tion to these questions. Even Socialists whose 
 whole attention since joining the movement has 
 been occupied with the central economic issue feel 
 instinctively, if I may say so, out of harmony with 
 the orthodox current views of these other matters. 
 The Socialist who takes a wider view, the Socialist 
 thinker, sees the grounds of this instinctively felt 
 incompatibility to exist in the nature of things. 
 
 Now a few words in conclusion as to the morality, 
 
144 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 and advisability for electoral purposes, of masking 
 the true state of the case. I say the true state of 
 the case advisedly, for, although I know that some 
 sort of technical show of argument may, by holding 
 to the letter and disregarding the spirit, be made 
 out for confining the term Socialism to its purely 
 economic definition, yet on a broad view of things 
 (and in practice the broad view is bound to have 
 to be taken account of in the long run) all such 
 artificial argumentation breaks down. All re- 
 pudiations and all asseverations to the contrary, 
 Socialism remains, among friend and foe alike, 
 associated with the views repudiated. 
 
 Now, I ask, is it not better even for the Socialist 
 candidate, in the long run, to grasp the nettle 
 rather than to shirk touching it, and while, of 
 course, exposing with a scathing hand the lying 
 and calumnious distortions of the enemy, to 
 acknowledge that in the last resort Socialism 
 as a theory of social life is not compatible with 
 the current bourgeois ideas on these subjects 
 in defence of which the reactionist professes such 
 zeal ? After all, votes, important though they 
 be, are not the only thing in social progress. 
 Better, I say, to lose a few votes for the moment, 
 for it will only be for the moment, rather than 
 compromise with principle and set an example 
 of prevarication. Personally, I must say I have too 
 much faith in the future of Socialism to regard such 
 
HEARTH, THRONE, AND ALTAR 145 
 
 arts as these as necessary or desirable. Socialism 
 is destined to conquer and, in its conquest, it will 
 assuredly supersede the Throne, the Hearth, and 
 the Altar in the forms in which they have existed 
 in history and survive at the present time. It will 
 assuredly make an end of the narrow views on 
 these subjects still largely obtaining, as of the 
 institutions themselves as at present existing ; and 
 in their place will arise other social forms and other 
 conceptions more consistent with the realisation of 
 that Freedom, Justice, and Brotherhood which is, 
 after all, the ethical standard that Socialism unfolds 
 before the eyes of men, and by virtue of which it 
 makes appeal to their hearts. 
 
 10 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF SOCIALIST FUNDAMENTALS 
 
 THE common theory that Socialism means no more 
 than a proposition in economics has been already 
 criticised in the two preceding chapters of the 
 present volume. I would not merely deny that its 
 definition is exhausted in the well-known economic 
 formula concerning the possession and exploitation 
 of the means of production, redistribution, and 
 exchange by and for the whole community, but 
 I would go further and affirm that this very 
 principle itself, constituting the central demand 
 of Socialism, is based on certain ethical postulates, 
 from which it derives its only possible ultimate 
 sanction. These ethical postulates are no other 
 than the Revolutionary Trinity Liberty, Equality, 
 and Fraternity. The aim and sanction of the 
 economic formula is, I contend, the effective realisa- 
 tion of these principles as essential to the purposes 
 of human life, individual and social. If this be so, 
 it follows that they, together with the principle of 
 justice which is involved in them, constitute the 
 
 146 
 
SOCIALIST FUNDAMENTALS 147 
 
 pillars alike of Socialist theory and polity, without 
 which Socialism ceases to be Socialism. 
 
 It behoves us to examine more closely the con- 
 sequences that ensue from a recognition of the 
 aforesaid ethical postulates as essential to Socialism, 
 devoting special attention to the first of them to 
 wit, Liberty. Now, Liberty may be socio-economic, 
 or it may be political, or it may be personal. 
 
 (1) Socio-economic Liberty may be defined as the 
 right of Society in its corporate capacity to freely 
 regulate all matters directly concerning the common- 
 weal without obstruction from other interests, 
 vested or otherwise. It involves the right of a 
 democratic state to organise production, redistribu- 
 tion, and exchange, to regulate the right of property- 
 holding in the best interests of the community, etc. 
 But it does not include the right of acting oppres- 
 sively to individuals as such ; for example, to single 
 out individuals of a class for the operation of 
 measures which do not apply to the class as a 
 whole, for this would involve the violation of 
 another ethical postulate, that of Equality. The 
 individualism of the Manchester school refuses to 
 recognise this form of Liberty at all, on the ground 
 that it conflicts with our third form of Liberty, 
 namely, personal Liberty. But of this more 
 directly. 
 
 (2) Political Liberty may be defined as the right 
 of every individual to have a voice in the manage- 
 
148 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 ment and criticism of the affairs of the community 
 directly or indirectly, either by voting, or by 
 speaking and writing, or by both. Freedom of 
 discussion and of demonstration at suitable times 
 and places is one of the first conditions of political 
 Liberty, which is, in the last resort, the main safe- 
 guard of the other forms of Liberty. 
 
 (3) Personal Liberty may be defined as the 
 right to freedom of thought and action on the 
 part of the individual, without let or hindrance, 
 moral or material, on the part of Society, in 
 all " self-regarding matters," to use Mill's expres- 
 sion, i.e. in all matters that only directly affect 
 himself and do not directly touch the community 
 as a whole, or other individuals, save, of course, by 
 their own personal free will and consent. It is 
 necessary to emphasise that, in order to take a 
 matter outside the sphere of self-regarding action, 
 it must be shown that the matter in question 
 must directly affect the community. It is not 
 enough to show that the act in question would 
 affect the community indirectly, still less that 
 it only conceivably might affect it. This is 
 essential, since otherwise it is not difficult, with 
 the aid of a little sophistry, to show that every 
 course of thought, expression, or action may 
 possibly affect the community, at least mdirectly, 
 and thus a door will be left open for the unlimited 
 oppression of the individual in his private life and 
 
SOCIALIST FUNDAMENTALS 149 
 
 the total destruction of personal freedom of conduct 
 and opinion. 
 
 Having thus defined the three chief forms of 
 Liberty, which means, after all, the primary con- 
 dition of self-development alike for Society and 
 the Individual, and hence is the condition of evolu- 
 tionary process, let us see how these three forms 
 work out in their practical application. Socio- 
 economic Liberty, the right of the community to 
 freedom of action as to its economic conditions, 
 is obstructed at every turn in our existing social 
 organisation by the property interests of individuals 
 and classes. This is abundantly clear whenever 
 any attempt at Socialistic legislation, however 
 mild in character, is made within the framework 
 of the existing State. It is then seen that every 
 proposal through which the bulk of the community 
 should be enabled to come by its own, in however 
 slight a measure, encounters an impregnable stone 
 wall of class interests. Hence the economic sub- 
 jection of the proletariat and hence the impossibility 
 of socio-economic Liberty so long as the capitalistic 
 State exists, which means, so long as the land and 
 the means of production remain private property. 
 
 Turning to the question of political Liberty, this 
 implies the greatest possible influence of all the 
 members of a given society in the regulation and 
 management of that society. This is what is known 
 as Democracy. But, as Friedrich Engels has 
 
150 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 pointed out, even Democracy, like every other 
 form of government, represents the possible or 
 actual coercion of human beings within its pale. 
 Socialism, on the contrary, has for its end the 
 substitution of the administration of things for the 
 government of persons. Such being the case, 
 Democracy itself can only be regarded as a transi- 
 tional phase tending to the true liberty of the 
 ultimate and ideal society of Socialism. From 
 this it follows that the weapons of Democracy are 
 not ends in themselves, but merely means to an 
 ulterior end. There is nothing intrinsically sacro- 
 sanct in these means. For example, take the 
 palladium of Democracy, the determination of all 
 questions by a count of heads majority of the 
 population ! Now, as I have elsewhere pointed out, 
 this method, whether it take the form of direct 
 decision (initiative and referendum), or of the 
 election of representatives, is simply the one that 
 experience has discovered to be the least objec- 
 tionable and the most effective on the whole in 
 the interests of the Commonweal. This does 
 not say that it is perfect or that under given con- 
 ditions other means intrinsically more objectionable 
 might not be more effective. 
 
 There is certainly no magic in the verdict of a 
 majority, and public opinion, as it is called, is often 
 a manufactured product of class interests, and, at 
 the best, only too frequently of a prejudice, tradi- 
 
SOCIALIST FUNDAMENTALS 151 
 
 tional or acquired, or of a one-sided sentimentalism. 
 We may often be inclined to think that an honest, 
 far-seeing, and disinterested "master of thirty 
 legions" might with advantage at times put his 
 heel on the neck of public opinion. But the in- 
 trinsic improbability of the occurrence, and still 
 more of the recurrence of a combination of wisdom 
 and honesty in your " master of thirty legions," is 
 quite enough to give pause to anyone who is in- 
 clined to take this view, and to convince him that 
 Democracy, with all its drawbacks, represents the 
 least of evils in this connection. As such every 
 Socialist must accept in general the conditions of 
 Democracy, including universal manhood suffrage 
 and the decision of the majority. 1 
 
 As regards the third form of Liberty, personal 
 Liberty, there is much confusion of thought, even 
 
 1 I have elsewhere given my reasons for not regarding woman 
 suffrage, whether it be right or wrong in itself, as many do, in 
 the light of a necessary corollary to the principles of Democracy. 
 The term Democracy, in accordance with sociological fact, has 
 always meant the manhood of the community. Its extensions 
 have always referred to the overthrow of class or of race 
 barriers, never to the obliteration of organic biological distinc- 
 tions. Now, in woman suffrage you have a new factor intro- 
 duced not sociological in its nature, as with class or with race, 
 but biological. This consideration, as I contend, quite apart 
 from its desirability or the reverse, cuts away the logical ground 
 for its being accepted merely as being the necessary logical 
 consequence of an acceptance of the principle of Democracy 
 as such. In other words, it is not necessarily implied in the 
 definition of Democracy, notwithstanding that its advisability 
 may be arguable on other grounds. 
 
152 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 among persons calling themselves Socialists, as to 
 the attitude of Socialism concerning it. Because 
 the organ of a Socialist community whether we 
 call it State or not would in the real interests of 
 Liberty be compelled to organise the process of 
 production, etc., and in doing so to regulate the 
 conditions of labour for the individual, there is an 
 idea in some people's minds that the great char- 
 acteristic would be the coercion of the individual 
 all round. Nothing could be more absurd. The 
 whole Socialist movement, either explicitly or im- 
 plicitly, points the contrary way, points, that is, 'to 
 a minimum coercion of the individual in all rela- 
 tions of life, while in all purely personal actions, 
 that is, actions not directly concerning the cor- 
 porate life of the community or the corresponding 
 liberty of other individuals, the liberty it accords 
 him is complete. It is only necessary to glance 
 at the writings of the recognised representatives 
 of Socialist thought or to the resolutions of 
 Socialist congresses to be assured that personal 
 freedom in the most complete sense compatible 
 with social existence at all belongs to the essence 
 of Socialism. 
 
 Let us take the well-known pronouncement that 
 "religion is a private matter." This pronounce- 
 ment, though often abused by being strained out 
 of its real meaning, is in itself simply the affirma- 
 tion of the most complete toleration of the indi- 
 
SOCIALIST FUNDAMENTALS 153 
 
 vidual in matters of opinion. It bars the way to 
 the imposition, by the moral or material pressure 
 of Society, of any form of dogma or article of 
 speculative belief on the individual conscience. 
 Socialism proclaims absolute freedom in matters 
 of opinion. Now, opinions on speculative matters 
 vary from the agnosticism of scientific thought to 
 the theosophy of mystical imagination. But this 
 individual freedom of opinion has of course its 
 obverse side. The Socialist Commonwealth would 
 have to guard the principle of personal freedom of 
 opinion, and hence would have to be severely 
 intolerant of any particular religious sect whose 
 dogmas involved the attempt to impose its creed 
 by any form of coercion, direct or indirect, on 
 Society at large or on unwilling individuals. 
 Socialist Society, in its collective capacity, can 
 only recognise ascertained scientific fact together 
 with the inferences necessarily ensuing from such 
 fact. This is the meaning of the uniform demand 
 for secular education by all Socialists as a first 
 condition of educational progress. 
 
 A logical consequence of this principle of absolute 
 toleration in matters- of personal opinion follows 
 on the much discussed question of sexual relations. 
 Here again views as to the best form of sexual 
 and family relations vary. In a word, they are, 
 like religion in the present day, largely a matter 
 of opinion, and as such ought to rank equally with 
 
154 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 religion as " a private matter " alike in theory and 
 practice. I am not forgetful that there is a point 
 where the question of marriage or cohabitation 
 ceases to be a matter of the carrying out of mere 
 individual opinion or taste, and that is in so far 
 as the question of children enters into it. Here, 
 of course, we strike a very important social relation, 
 and here undoubtedly the corporate power of 
 Society has a direct right of intervention. But 
 let us not mix up two things the right and duty 
 of the corporate power of Society to see to the 
 proper maintenance, regulation, and upbringing of 
 children, and its right to coerce individuals either 
 by moral or material pressure in their private 
 relationships. The law and morality alike of our 
 present Society confounds the two things in an 
 illogical and well-nigh inextricable tangle it ties 
 them up in a truly irrational knot. The practical 
 problem of Social Democracy in this regard is to 
 effectively disentangle this knot in carefully dis- 
 tinguishing between the legal and moral question 
 the duty towards offspring and that of the sexual 
 relation per se, which in its changes and per- 
 manencies is purely a matter of individual taste 
 and preference. It can never be too much insisted 
 upon that the question of personal liberty in matters 
 not directly affecting Society in its corporate 
 capacity, matters of individual opinion and taste, 
 needs strictly maintaining as an integral principle 
 
SOCIALIST FUNDAMENTALS 155 
 
 of Socialism. It must be recognised beyond gain- 
 saying that Society in its corporate capacity as 
 regards coercion, moral or material, has, in such 
 matters, no locus standi. 
 
 It is cheap and convenient to pander to vulgar 
 prejudice by offering up the principle of personal 
 freedom as a whole burnt-offering to the bourgeois 
 Philistine, as has been done on one occasion by 
 Mr Ramsay Macdonald when he sought to soothe 
 the feelings of the aforesaid Philistine with the 
 reflection that the Socialist Society of the future 
 might possibly institute a Draconian system of 
 life-long monogamy for fear lest the "stability" 
 of the social fabric should suffer from the admission 
 of any measure of personal liberty in sexual matters, 
 such being " too subversive." Perhaps in Mr 
 Macdonald's view his future Society might regard 
 other forms of human freedom as dangerous to its 
 " stability," or as " too subversive," and reintroduce 
 slavery, serfdom, etc., or, on the grounds that 
 humane methods of criminal law and administration 
 also threaten this precious " stability," might pro- 
 ceed to re-establish the rack and other concomitants 
 of the criminal court of a bygone era ! We ven- 
 ture to assert that few Socialists outside Mr Ramsay 
 Macdonald would admit the excuse of a practice 
 being " too subversive " as an adequate ground for 
 surrendering the basal Socialist principle of personal 
 liberty. Those who have once grasped the true 
 
156 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 inwardness of Socialism would undoubtedly be of 
 opinion that a Society that could not stand this 
 strain was unworthy to exist at all, and that the 
 sooner it perished the better. In fact, the future 
 Society of Mr Ramsay Macdonald that would not 
 scruple to dragoon its members in the way he 
 suggests I am convinced, as I have before said, 
 would be hardly less detestable to the majority of 
 thinking Socialists than the Russian autocracy itself. 
 However, we do not deny that Mr Macdonald's 
 suggestion might possibly serve the purpose of 
 attracting a few non- Socialist votes from the 
 amiable and self-righteous middle-class Philistine 
 who enjoys seeing his fellow humans bullied. 
 
 We need not linger long over the two other 
 ethical postulates included in the old Revolutionary 
 Trinity, since they are largely involved in the 
 first one we have just been considering, namely, 
 "Liberty." Equality, understanding by the term 
 social and economic Equality, is a condition of the 
 universality of real Liberty, and Equality in any 
 other sense is a chimera. Differences of tempera- 
 ment, of ability, and of character generally, must 
 exist, but these are not incompatible with the most 
 complete political and economic Equality. This 
 Equality, based as it is on equal economic advan- 
 tage and equal economic opportunity^ the Equality 
 demanded by Socialism. This Equality, it need 
 scarcely be said, in no way implies any dead level 
 
SOCIALIST FUNDAMENTALS 157 
 
 of mediocrity, such as haunts the imaginations of 
 so many critics of Socialism. On the contrary, 
 as I have elsewhere shown, it is the system of 
 Capitalism which produces, and must necessarily 
 produce, the dead level spoken of, a state of things 
 which would be completely changed by Socialism. 
 If to real Equality, Liberty in the three forms we 
 have above discussed is necessary, it is no less true 
 that to the full fruition of all forms of Liberty, 
 Equality in the sense we have just indicated is 
 equally essential. You cannot fully realise the 
 one without the other. 
 
 The same remark applies to our third Revolu- 
 tionary postulate, namely, that of Fraternity. 1 
 Without Liberty and Equality in the senses given, 
 real Fraternity is impossible. Social and Economic 
 Equality is the groundwork and material basis of 
 that social spirit of Fraternity which will knit 
 together Socialist society in a manner inconceivable 
 to us of the Individualist Bourgeois Society of 
 to-day. We already see adumbrations of this 
 
 1 The notion that Fraternity necessarily means mutual em- 
 bracing of everyone with eveiyone else is, of course, absurd. 
 Even the Fraternity of an actual blood relationship does not 
 necessarily imply this. Likes and dislikes between individuals 
 must always exist even in the closest communities. What it 
 does mean is " one for all and all for one," the spirit of common 
 interest, of mutual standing in with one another as a body, quite 
 irrespective of individual likes or dislikes. A man may be 
 prepared to sacrifice himself for a brother's just claims as a 
 member of the social whole, be it family or society, quite 
 apart from his special regard for that particular brother. 
 
158 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 spirit of Fraternity in the existing organised 
 working class in the matter of strikes. It is indeed 
 very strongly exemplified in what is known as the 
 "sympathetic strike. " Beginning with the members 
 of the International Social Democratic party, it 
 will form the ethical milieu under which the final 
 transition from the mere Political Society (civitas) 
 of to-day to the true Social Society (societas), in 
 which once more to quote Friedrich Engels 
 the government of persons shall have finally given 
 place to the administration of things, will be ulti- 
 mately accomplished and Socialism completely and 
 definitely realised. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF MISUNDERSTOOD SOCIALISM 
 A REPLY TO DR BEATTIE CROZIER 
 
 MODERN Socialism, in the strict sense of the word, 
 dates as a theory from the Communist manifesto, 
 written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 
 1847, and is the outcome of the principles laid 
 down in that document and developed in scientific 
 form and in the detail of a full and close analysis 
 in the subsequent works of its authors, but, above 
 all, in the magnum opus of Marx, Das Kapital, the 
 first volume of which, laying down the basis of 
 the Marxian economy, was published in 1867. 
 The above statement as to the fathership of Marx, 
 with respect to modern Socialism, so far as main 
 principles are concerned, I maintain is true with- 
 out any reserve whatever. I am fully aware that 
 there are not wanting English " Socialists " who 
 are very anxious to disclaim all connection with 
 the great founder of modern Socialism, and who 
 are apt, when it is said of anyone of them, " thou 
 too art of his disciples," to begin, I will not say 
 
 159 
 
160 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 precisely to " curse and to swear," but certainly to 
 protest very vehemently " I know not the man ! " 
 
 Of such as these a recent critic of Socialism in the 
 Spectator was thinking, I suppose, when he alleged 
 that time was when a criticism of the economic 
 principles of Socialism was virtually synonymous 
 with the criticism of Marx's Kapital, but now that 
 this basis is repudiated by so many it was difficult 
 for the critic to know the precise nature of the 
 doctrine he was dealing with. The critic may 
 reassure himself in respect of what constitutes the 
 theoretical basis of present-day Socialism. If he 
 will analyse the speeches and writings of those 
 true British Socialists who boast that they have 
 never read Marx, he will find that all those ideas 
 which differentiate them as Socialists from the 
 ordinary Radical Democrat come, directly or in- 
 directly, out of Marx. In fact, generally speaking, 
 we may define the Socialism of certain members 
 of Parliament and popular writers, for whom Marx 
 is a " back number," as a species of bastard Marxism. 
 The logical consequences and real bearing of the 
 main Marxian theses are ignored, while a determined 
 effort is made to reconcile them with all manner 
 of bourgeois prejudices. As practical men, members 
 of Parliament and popular writers, having seats and 
 circulations to be considered seats sometimes in 
 constituencies in which a Nonconformist element 
 in the electorate may readily turn the scale, and 
 
MISUNDERSTOOD SOCIALISM 161 
 
 circulations in respectable suburbs which are not 
 to be despised they hold that the wind must be 
 tempered to the prejudices of these shorn lambs. 
 Provincial Nonconformists sometimes have their 
 own opinions on the subject of German Jews and 
 of doctrines derived from them, while subscribers to 
 local libraries are apt to be strict disciplinarians as 
 to the views held by authors whose books are to be 
 read in their family circle. Hinc illce lacrimce. 
 
 If he will forgive me for saying so, Dr Crozier's 
 whole criticism of Marx is throughout based on 
 what logicians term an ignoratio elenchi. He sets 
 up a terrible bogey purely of his own construction 
 and device which he would have us take to re- 
 present Marx, and which he straightway proceeds 
 to hew in pieces with manifold objurgation, in 
 approved style. We expected in his last produc- 
 tion, which claims to be a direct challenge to Marx 
 himself, that Dr Crozier would deal systematically 
 with the main positions of the treatise on Capital, 
 rather than continue to harp upon the one or two 
 deductions of his own which he fastens on to Marx 
 in the course of the articles dealing with his 
 English opponents. In this we have certainly 
 been disappointed. Dr Crozier, I suppose, might 
 urge as an excuse for repeating himself, that neither 
 Mr Blatchford nor Mr Snowden, proud in their 
 ignorance of Marx's works, were in a position, or 
 were concerned, to deal with the subject from the 
 
 11 
 
162 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 Marxian point of view. This being so, it only 
 remains for the present writer to point out in 
 detail the misapprehensions under which Dr Crozier 
 is labouring on the subject of Marx's teaching, and 
 to endeavour to indicate the fallacy underlying his 
 chief counter-proposition. 
 
 Marx shows that value, as the fundamental 
 economic element running through all produced 
 and exchangeable articles of use, is the human 
 labour which has gone to their production. This 
 is, of course, a doctrine Marx has taken over from 
 the old classical British economy. In consequence 
 of the part it plays in Marx's system, this simple 
 and obvious truth, recognised by Adam Smith, 
 Ricardo, and all the older theorists, has come to be 
 viewed with abhorrence by the modern bourgeois 
 economist, who is never tired of decrying it as out 
 of date. Now, this principle of value being em- 
 bodied labour, Marx applies as the touchstone in 
 his analysis of the modern Capitalist system of 
 production. He points out that the value of 
 wealth produced under the conditions of the great 
 machine-industry of modern times, with all the 
 complexity of its processes, is au fond nothing but 
 the " congealed human labour " expressed in it. 
 The complexity of the economic forms may often 
 hide this fact from view, but, as Marx contends, 
 it remains a fact nevertheless. But now steps in 
 our critic. "No," says Dr Beattie Crozier, "it 
 
MISUNDERSTOOD SOCIALISM 163 
 
 is not labour, it is not the workman who produces 
 the wealth around us with its value ; it is the 
 powers of nature embodied in the machines ; these 
 are the real originators of all our wealth." How 
 the machines could produce wealth by themselves 
 without the application of human labour to them, 
 or how the machines themselves could come into 
 existence save as the product of human labour as 
 applied to the iron, wood, stone, in a word, to the 
 raw materials of nature, Dr Crozier does not tell 
 us. But, after all, it is not so much the machines 
 themselves that interest our learned critic as the in- 
 ventors of the machines, and thereby hangs a tale. 
 
 Dr Beattie Crozier bases his criticism on Marx 
 on the theory that the latter was chiefly con- 
 cerned in his analysis with the question of " strict 
 economic justice" in the division of the surplus 
 product, over and above what was necessary 
 to the maintenance of the labourer, a division, as 
 Dr Crozier informs us, "whereby each man gets 
 the fruits of his labour, neither more nor less." 
 Hence we are told " it became necessary as a pre- 
 liminary for him to inquire as to precisely what 
 men or body of men it was to whom this surplus 
 was due, and without whose special exertions it 
 could not have come into being at all." Here, 
 therefore, according to Dr Crozier, we have the 
 kernel of the Marxian system. Marx, of course, 
 insists that the whole of wealth production, the 
 
164 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 whole of economic value (and surplus value), is 
 the creation of labour, or, to put the matter con- 
 cretely, of the workman operating on the products of 
 nature. But herein, says Dr Crozier, Marx was a 
 subtle deceiver. The real creator, if not of all value, 
 at least of the surplus value, the surplus product, 
 over and above the labourer's means of subsistence, 
 now appropriated by the Capitalist, is neither the 
 labourer nor the Capitalist, but the inventor. 
 
 Now, before going any further, it may interest 
 Dr Crozier to learn that his statement of Marx's 
 position would be accepted by no Marxian and 
 would be certainly unrecognisable by Marx him- 
 self. The author of Das Kapital was led to his 
 Socialist conclusions as the logical outcome of his 
 analysis of Capitalist production, and was certainly 
 actuated by no intention either beforehand or 
 afterwards, of discovering " strict economic justice " 
 in the division of the surplus whereby each man 
 gets the fruits of his labour, "neither more nor 
 less." I defy Dr Crozier to produce any passage 
 in Marx which would justify the caricature of 
 Marx's position contained in the words above 
 quoted. It is a gloss put upon Marx by Dr 
 Crozier. The idea of " strict economic justice," in 
 Dr Crozier's sense, certainly never entered Marx's 
 mind, while as to " each man " getting " the fruits 
 of his labour, neither more nor less," it requires 
 but a very little consideration of the conditions of 
 
MISUNDERSTOOD SOCIALISM 165 
 
 modern industry to enable anyone to see such a 
 scheme to be preposterously chimerical. In the 
 complicated processes of modern production, the 
 impossibility of assigning the precise amount of 
 labour put by any given workman into the finished 
 product is obvious. If Dr Beattie Crozier was 
 really under the delusion that Marx was capable of 
 propounding such nonsense as this, there may have 
 been some excuse for his thinking him a Utopian 
 Schemer whom he could " dispose of as a serious 
 economist," and for his talk about getting " Marx 
 and his followers under hatches." In fact, Dr 
 Crozier's latest utterances look as though he were 
 anxious to confirm Hyndman's opinion as quoted 
 by him, as to his understanding of Marx. Take 
 for example the statement that Das Kapital is a 
 book not distinguished for its profundity, but that 
 " on the contrary, as we shall see, it is a most 
 simple and childlike piece of work." Now, none of 
 Marx's previous detractors of any mark in political 
 economy, that I am aware of, have denied either 
 depth or acumen to Das Kapital, or have claimed 
 to make their readers see that it is " a most simple 
 and childlike piece of work." What we do see, of 
 course, in Dr Crozier's case, is that, for some reason 
 or other, he has completely missed all the bearings 
 alike of Marx's method and conclusions. If Dr 
 Crozier asks me to make good the above contention 
 by extracts from Marx's writings, I must respectfully 
 
166 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 decline to take up the position of proving a negative. 
 On the contrary, I must, in my turn, call upon Dr 
 Crozier to justify his interpretation of Marx by the 
 ipsissima verba of Marx himself. 
 
 What, then, it may be asked, was the real gist 
 and intention of the labours of Karl Marx ? The 
 answer is, Marx took not things as they might be, 
 or things as they ought to be, but things as they 
 were the Capitalist system, in which we live and 
 move and have our being as the subject of his 
 investigation and analysis. He did not start with, 
 or call to his aid, any abstract " economic man." 
 What he sought to inquire was the meaning of, 
 and implications involved in, the present conditions 
 of production and distribution which we term the 
 Capitalist system. The course of his analysis brings 
 out at once its historical bearings, its roots in the 
 past of the evolution of human society and the ten- 
 dencies latent within it as regard the future of that 
 evolution. 1 This tendency, he finds, points inevit- 
 ably to the Communist ownership of the means of 
 production, distribution, and exchange, as the next 
 salient stage in the economic development of society. 
 
 But for Marx the economic side of human 
 
 1 It may be as well to point out here that the purely bogus 
 opposition, so popular with a certain order of politicians to-day, 
 between evolution and revolution, does not exist for Marx or his 
 followers. They recognise that every revolution forms a part, 
 usually the consummation, of an evolution, and that every 
 evolutionary process contains within itself revolutionary momenta. 
 
MISUNDERSTOOD SOCIALISM 167 
 
 affairs is that side which determines all the rest. 
 A fundamental economic change involves sooner 
 or later a corresponding change in all the other 
 departments of human life political, religious, 
 juridical, ethical, artistic. It may be that Marx 
 himself, and I certainly think that such is the 
 case with some of his followers, has unduly 
 exaggerated the direct causal efficacy, great as it 
 undoubtedly is, of the economic factor in some 
 aspects of human evolution. With this question I 
 have dealt elsewhere, but whether the above holds 
 good or not, the point is more academic than 
 practical. For the truth, established by Marx a 
 truth all but unrecognised before his time of the 
 stupendous import of economic development on 
 human development generally, whether, as with 
 some Marxians, we treat the economic development 
 as the sole cause of the rest, or whether we regard 
 the economic factor and the intellectual factor as 
 co-efficients in a common result (i.e., as reciprocally 
 determining and determined by each other), is in 
 any case undeniable. Now of criticism of Marx's 
 method or of any scientific treatment of the results 
 of his analysis, I can find no trace in Dr Crozier's 
 animadversions. Instead of this he sets up an 
 Aunt Sally of his own, consisting of fragments of 
 Utopian dogma, which he proceeds to demolish. 
 
 The great piece de resistance of Dr Crozier, and 
 also, I believe, of Mr Mallock, in the attack on 
 
168 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 Marx, namely, the trotting out of the " inventor," 
 can surely not be meant to be taken quite seriously ? 
 In the first place, the ideas of the inventor do not 
 as such enter into the sphere of economics. Marx 
 found in the great industry, as established, the three 
 factors the Workman, the Capitalist, and the 
 Machine. He did not find Dr Crozier's pet, the 
 inventor, " fooling round " (as the Americans would 
 say), and, therefore, not being there he was not in 
 a position to get him " huddled away," as alleged 
 by the learned doctor. Marx explains that in the 
 process of Capitalist production the workman is 
 necessarily docked of a portion of the product of 
 his labour, a portion which may be determined 
 with fair accuracy, in the long run, in the different 
 phases of Capitalist production, although it would 
 be impossible to assess the amount of surplus value 
 of which any given individual workman had been 
 deprived. In estimating the rate of the exploita- 
 tion of labour by capital we start from economic 
 value as defined by Marx and the older economists, 
 namely, embodied average labour, simple or com- 
 pound, as measured on a time basis. Hence the 
 value of the Machine for Marx's purpose is neither 
 the use-value nor the exchange-value, but the 
 economic-value as defined by Marx in the sense I 
 have just given. Such is my answer to Dr 
 Crozier's challenge as regards this point. 
 
 Let us now come back to Marx, not as the 
 
MISUNDERSTOOD SOCIALISM 169 
 
 analyst of Capitalist production, in other words, 
 not in his capacity as scientific exponent of 
 economic truths, but to Marx, the human agitator 
 for the rights of the working classes, to Marx in 
 his capacity as man with ethical impulses and 
 socio-political aspirations. As I have already 
 pointed out, sheer scientific analysis of the con- 
 ditions of Capitalist production had led Marx to 
 the conclusion that the present system of society 
 must inevitably become transformed into Socialism. 
 This, however, per se, is a purely theoretical de- 
 duction. It has, in itself, no immediate ethical or 
 other practical bearing. But Marx was more than 
 a mere theorist, he was also a Social Revolutionist 
 with human sympathies. He desired the realisa- 
 tion of that future human society which scientific 
 analysis showed him was already gestating within 
 the womb of modern Capitalist society, and he 
 desired its realisation as speedily as possible. His 
 economic and historical studies had shown him the 
 Proletariat as the heir of the ages in his connec- 
 tion, and as the class in and through which the 
 great change should be effected. They taught 
 him further that the entry upon the scene of the 
 Proletariat, as the dominant class, must mean the 
 crucial step towards the abolition of a society 
 based on classes altogether. Now here undoubtedly, 
 on the practical side of Marx's activity, the ethical 
 moment, the idea of justice towards a class which 
 
170 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 since entering the arena of history has been op- 
 pressed and disinherited, did assuredly play a strong 
 role. 
 
 That the producers of wealth have always been 
 those who have been the least enjoyers of wealth 
 is an undoubted fact. This fact, under the con- 
 ditions of modern Capitalist production, is daily 
 and hourly staring the whole world in the face. 
 But that portion of the world for which writers 
 like Dr Crozier and Mr Mallock have taken to 
 themselves a special brief, the portion which has 
 the good fortune to belong to the propertied classes, 
 is very unwilling to recognise in its true bearings 
 this same fact. Hence its advocates are compelled 
 to have resort to subterfuges. Across the great 
 patent fact of injustice inflicted on the working 
 classes by the present system of society it is accord- 
 ingly sought to draw a red-herring in the shape of 
 an imaginary counter-victim, to wit, the Inventor. 
 Now this poor fellow, it is contended, ought to have 
 the whole increment of wealth produced by the 
 machine-industry over earlier methods of produc- 
 tion to his own cheek. It is not the working-man 
 who slaves at laborious toil his eight, nine, or ten 
 hours a day who is unjustly treated by the present 
 system ! Oh dear, no ! It is a man who, probably 
 by the mere easy and agreeable exercise of natural 
 gifts with which he has chanced to be endowed by 
 *' nature," in the shape of ancestors, who themselves 
 
MISUNDERSTOOD SOCIALISM 171 
 
 have had to thank untold generations of men for 
 the faculties they possessed and for the whole social 
 environment which has made them what they were 
 he it is, forsooth, whose lot ought to be bewailed, 
 and not that of the workman who, by his toil, gives 
 effect to inventions which but for him would be 
 dead devices ! Dr Crozier himself admits, indeed, 
 the Socialist contention that "hundreds of thou- 
 sands of minor workers have been engaged in 
 building up the successive steps to every great 
 scientific discovery and invention, before the single 
 discoverer with whose name the great invention is 
 identified has planted his flagstaff on the summit." 
 And how is Dr Crozier going to find these out, 
 be they few or many ? No invention is isolated. 
 It is inextricably bound up with innumerable other 
 inventions and with the general scientific know- 
 ledge of its time. All this does not, of course, 
 alter the fact that, as things are in present society, 
 the actual inventor of any industrial process has a 
 greater claim in its results than the mere man of 
 money, the Capitalist, who exploits his invention. 
 But this is as far as I, or probably any other 
 Socialist, would be prepared to go. The idea of 
 the machine as elaborated by its inventor would 
 be as useless to him (the inventor) as the machine 
 itself would be to the Capitalist, without the labour 
 of the workman. Socialists can see no justice, 
 economic or other, in the man who has had the 
 
172 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 good fortune, without any exertion of his own, to 
 find himself in the possession of great natural gifts, 
 being allowed in addition to absorb, as an indivi- 
 dual, a disproportionate share of the world's wealth. 
 Dr Crozier affects to sneer at anything so im- 
 material as "honour" being a sufficient stimulus 
 or reward to any man for exercising natural 
 faculties which it would be probably a depriva- 
 tion to him not to exercise. And yet he can 
 hardly deny, one would think, that of all the 
 great inventions of the last century there is hardly 
 one in which ambition and honour did not play a 
 far larger part with the inventor than any hope of 
 mere material gain. It would be interesting, by 
 the way, to know precisely how Dr Crozier pro- 
 poses to indemnify his precious "inventor" after 
 all is done. I suppose a perpetual patent, trans- 
 missible to "heirs and assigns," etc., is what he 
 has in view. If so, would he make such a patent 
 law retro-active ? Would hypothetical claims to 
 patent rights in the plough-share or the loom be 
 admissible for examination ? Or, again, does Dr 
 Crozier's large heart open out equally to the 
 artist, the composer, and the author ? Would he 
 grant a perpetual literary copyright, for example, 
 likewise with retro-active effect ? In that case we 
 may expect some interesting points to arise when 
 the population of Whitechapel lays siege to the 
 High Court with its claims on the copyright of 
 
MISUNDERSTOOD SOCIALISM 173 
 
 the Old Testament. N T o, no, Dr Crozier, in vain 
 is the snare laid in sight of the bird ? Your plea 
 for the " inventor" is too thin. We can all see 
 through this pathetic figure. We can all appreciate 
 the fact that his theatrical entrance upon the scene 
 of controversy is an ingeniously conceived device 
 designed to confuse the issue by offering an object 
 of counter-interest to that accusing figure the 
 working-man. However, Dr Crozier is welcome 
 to canvass for all the crocodile tears the bourgeoisie 
 may have at its disposal, to be expended on the 
 man who considers he has a right to place an 
 indefinite charge for all time upon that labour 
 without which his invention would be as useless to 
 himself or to society as the fish that remain at 
 the bottom of the sea are to the fisherman. The 
 Socialist will certainly never discover any justice, 
 economic or otherwise, in his demand, still less 
 feel his heart moved to any sympathy with such 
 a fellow, or his "heirs and assigns." 
 
 Now let us consider the indications afforded us 
 by Dr Crozier of the extraordinary " scheme " he 
 seems to think Marx of all people in the world, 
 and with him all revolutionary Socialists, have up 
 their sleeve. In the first place, it may surprise 
 him to hear that modern Socialism, and least of all 
 Marx himself, does not offer any " scheme " at all. 
 Some individual Socialists may elaborate " schemes," 
 but these, whether right or wrong, good or bad, 
 
174 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 represent only their own personal opinions. Social- 
 ism as a doctrine, as recognised by the Socialist 
 party as a whole, proclaims tendencies, the main 
 lines upon which political and economic action 
 must take to be effective in bringing us nearer 
 the goal, namely, the complete communisation of 
 the means of production, distribution, and exchange, 
 which is the fundamental economic aim of Social- 
 ism. But as regards the immediate practice on 
 which the detail of action or policy rests at any 
 given time or at any particular phase of social 
 progress, the guiding maxim of Socialism is pre- 
 eminently solvitur ambulando always, of course, 
 within the limits of the economical, political, and 
 ethical bases of the party-programme. But I am 
 unaware of even any individual Socialist of any 
 note who has ever put forward a scheme involving 
 the absurdities attributed to the unfortunate Marx 
 and his followers by my respected opponent in the 
 present controversy. 
 
 As usual with the critics of Socialism, Dr Crozier 
 confuses between current Capitalist conditions and 
 Socialist conditions. He tacitly assumes the whole 
 framework of existing society and the existing state, 
 and interpolates into it a measure supposed to repre- 
 sent the carrying-out of some principle of Socialist 
 society. The incompatibility being obvious, it only 
 remains for him to exclaim, " Behold the absurdity, 
 behold the monstrosity, of this proposal ! " He can- 
 
MISUNDERSTOOD SOCIALISM 175 
 
 not see that just as a statement of the main features 
 of modern Capitalist society, rehearsed by some 
 prophetic seer to a feudal baron of the twelfth 
 century, would have involved preposterous absur- 
 dities to the mind of the latter simply because 
 he crudely judged them by the conditions and 
 standard of the society in which he lived ; so he, 
 Dr Beattie Crozier, finds a difficulty in placing 
 himself at the point of view of the principles 
 enunciated by the scientific- Socialist seer of to- 
 day, simply because he is equally incapable with 
 our hypothetical feudal baron of divesting himself 
 of the prepossessions derived from the social con- 
 ditions of the age in which he lives. 
 
 Let us take Dr Crozier's assumption, which 
 troubles him, like so many other would-be refuters 
 of Socialism, to wit, the assumption anent " pay- 
 ment " of labour, to the effect that a rigid beggarly 
 pittance is to be the lot of all, including even that 
 gentle and oppressed creature "the inventor." 
 Now here again we have a confusion between 
 Socialism as a realised ideal of Society and Socialism 
 in the making, between Socialism still militant and 
 Socialism triumphant. For a completed Socialist 
 society this question of payment does not arise; 
 for such a society it is an anachronism. A Socialist 
 society, as such, with its production for the use 
 of all its members and not for the profit of the 
 few, implies the requirements of life being equally 
 
176 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 within the reach of each and all. In such a society, 
 therefore, the bogey anent the amount paid in 
 wages will disappear since the wage-system itself 
 will have disappeared, the whole wealth of the 
 Socialised world being created for the needs of 
 the inhabitants of that world. Some may require 
 more of the " good things of life," others less, just 
 as some men now require three full meals a day, 
 while the present writer is content with what 
 amounts to about one and a half. Again, some 
 may require more in one direction, less in another ; 
 one may require things which minister to his intel- 
 lectual needs, but be indifferent to the quantity and 
 the quality of those things pertaining to his animal 
 requirements ; with another it may be just the 
 reverse ; a third may be a man of the juste milieu 
 all round. 
 
 But whatever the requirements of the Socialised 
 world may be, a communistic production, distri- 
 bution, and exchange, with the power man has 
 acquired, is acquiring, and must further acquire, 
 over the powers of nature, will afford abundant 
 means of satisfying each and all. Then for the 
 first time in history the mass of mankind will have 
 at least the opportunity of leading that higher 
 life of which we hear so much. Socialists hold 
 that they have grounds for believing that this 
 economic change will be followed by a corre- 
 sponding intellectual change, and that the " three 
 
 ^ 
 
MISUNDERSTOOD SOCIALISM 177 
 
 parts animal," of which Dr Crozier speaks, will 
 tend to disappear as the sphere of the human ex- 
 tends itself. Hitherto economic conditions have 
 effectually hindered this transformation of the 
 animal into the human. 
 
 But what Dr Crozier probably has in his mind 
 when he is troubled as to scales of payment is not 
 the completed Communistic Society above referred 
 to, but the earlier stages of the transformation 
 of Civilisation into Socialism. Here necessarily 
 a modified form of the wage-system, and hence 
 of payments, must continue to survive. It might 
 be alleged, of course, that it were incorrect to term 
 such a transitional state of Society Socialism at all. 
 In this I am unable to agree. I hold that as soon 
 as the conscious aim of the directive and administra- 
 tive forces of Society is towards Socialism, then 
 Socialism may be deemed to have begun. In this 
 I adhere to the statement in Socialism, its Growth 
 and Outcome (p. 285), which reads : " It is clear 
 that the first real victory of the Social Revolution 
 will be the establishment, not indeed of a complete 
 system of communism in a day, which is absurd, 
 but of a revolutionary administration whose definite 
 and conscious aim will be to prepare and further, 
 in all available ways, human life for such a system 
 in other words, of an administration whose every 
 act will be of set purpose with a view to Socialism" 
 This definition clearly shuts out mere Socialistic 
 
178 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 legislation, such as may obtain to-day within the 
 framework, economic and political, of present 
 Capitalist society, from the right to be described 
 as Socialism, as is often done by "practical 
 politicians." Well, it is to this earliest phase of 
 Socialism proper that, I take it, Dr Crozier is refer- 
 ring when he expresses himself with so much con- 
 cern as to his heart's love, the " inventor," having 
 to subsist on the wages of the unskilled labourer. 
 But who, I would ask, informed Dr Crozier of 
 any such hard and fast line as he supposes having 
 been drawn and decreed by Socialism ? Certainly 
 not Karl Marx, for nowhere in his writings does he 
 discuss points of constructive detail such as these. 
 
 So long as the work of Socialisation is incomplete 
 and the system of wage-payments for work done 
 continues, such payment would doubtless be deter- 
 mined, to some extent at least, by the conditions 
 of a still- surviving "market." And even apart 
 from this it would probably be regulated in some 
 proportion to the needs of the special class of 
 worker. That there would be a strong tendency to 
 " levelling up " on the one side and to " levelling 
 down" on the other is undoubtedly true. But 
 if it could be shown that a certain class of work, 
 owing to its being more exhausting or for any other 
 reason, required a different standard of living from 
 other classes of work, this fact would doubtless 
 be an element in the determination of the rate 
 
MISUNDERSTOOD SOCIALISM 179 
 
 of payment for such work. To each " according 
 to his needs " is a doctrine of the old Utopian 
 Socialism which will never intrinsically lose its 
 application. The dummy Marxian " street-corner 
 stalwart" of Dr Crozier's imagination may, not- 
 withstanding, possess his soul in peace as regards 
 the danger of any differences of actual remuneration 
 at this stage bringing back " all the old inequalities 
 of fortune and all the old exploitations again." 
 
 In proportion as the Socialisation of the means of 
 production, distribution, and exchange progressed, 
 the possibility of the Capitalisation of individual 
 savings, and hence of their becoming the nucleus 
 of a new exploitation of labour for private profit, 
 would diminish in an increasing ratio day by day. 
 Any positive material advantage that one man 
 had over another at this stage could for practical 
 purposes only take the form of consumable wealth, 
 which would be a matter of little consequence one 
 way or the other. 
 
 I cannot enter at length into Dr Crozier's 
 psychology of human nature or his dogmatic 
 assumptions as to the yearning of mankind, bien 
 entendu of all mankind, I suppose, that was, or is, 
 or is to come, for Inequality! I would only 
 remind him that early humanity lived for ages 
 under conditions of primitive communism without 
 experiencing, so far as we can see, any of that 
 yearning for that inequality which seems to be a 
 
180 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 "ground principle" in the "human nature" postu- 
 lated by Dr Crozier's psychology. The ideal 
 indicated by the latter is that of human life as based 
 universally upon the gambling principle, though 
 the intensive application of the principle may be 
 subjected to some sort of quantitative regulation. 
 Now, I am no sympathiser with the Nonconformist 
 conscience or with its ascetic theory of morals, 
 and in consequence I have not the smallest objection 
 to gambling as a pastime, any more than to any 
 other pastime not involving cruelty, and pursued 
 with reasonable moderation. I have no sympathy 
 with the hypocrisy which persecutes gamblers for 
 amusement and suppresses games of chance, while 
 tolerating and approving the gigantic system of 
 gambling involved in modern business life. But 
 it is precisely this principle of gambling which the 
 present organisation of Society involves as an 
 essential element that Dr Crozier would apparently 
 consecrate as being proper to human nature for all 
 time. Need 1 remind the reader that it is this 
 very condition out of which all the ethical elements 
 of our time, some of them not even avowedly 
 Socialistic, are professedly yearning to raise human- 
 ity. And yet this same appears to Dr Crozier, 
 who would probably, like a good Christian gentle- 
 man, regard roulette or baccarat as very wicked 
 and demoralising, as a source of moral strength 
 and joy in life. To base the whole principle of 
 
MISUNDERSTOOD SOCIALISM 181 
 
 human life, with all the serious issues it involves, 
 on chance plus cunning is as it should be ; to 
 speculate, as an occasional pastime, a few shillings 
 " upon the hazard of a die " is a terrible evil to be 
 promptly dealt with by drastic legislation. While 
 it is wicked to play a game of chance as an 
 occasional episode in life, it is right to treat life 
 itself as a game (Dr Crozier himself calls it the 
 "game of life"), so at least says the bourgeois 
 moralist of the Nonconformist persuasion. 
 
 Not only does Dr Crozier, like many of his pre- 
 decessors in the task of finding fault with Socialism, 
 read present conditions into a Socialist society, but 
 he sets himself to depict certain evils which are the 
 conspicuous and inevitable results of present-day 
 competitive society the dead-level of sordidness, 
 the "scraping together the few odd shillings," 
 broken-up family life, etc. and then, if he will 
 pardon me for saying so, by an astounding piece 
 of controversial " bluff," attempts to saddle them 
 on to a Socialist Society of his own imagining. 
 
 But if we examine the main drift of Dr Crozier's 
 dread of what he terms the " dead-level of economic 
 equality," we shall find that this consists not so 
 much in the fear lest he himself should not get 
 enough of the good things of this life, as in the 
 dislike of the "other fellow" having the same 
 advantages with regard to them as himself. That 
 the fecundity of economic production under Social- 
 
182 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 ism cannot fail to provide, not merely a sufficiency 
 but an abundance for each and all, I have already 
 pointed out. But this, I fear, would not satisfy 
 some of the critics of Socialism, Dr Crozier among 
 them. It matters not that they might have within 
 their reach enough to satisfy all their reasonable 
 requirements ; they would not be happy, or at least 
 they think they would not, without the knowledge 
 that others were worse off than themselves, with- 
 out the consciousness that others were suffering 
 from the want of those things which subserved 
 their own necessities and happiness in life. In a 
 word, if we may believe their own report about 
 themselves, their objection to Socialism rests upon 
 the most brutal and unqualified form of egoism, 
 on the confession that complete self-satisfaction 
 is impossible unless accompanied by a sense of 
 economic inequality, i.e. of the suffering of others. 
 Now this strikes me as about the rawest and 
 crudest exemplification of that so often mis- 
 applied concept selfishness which it would be 
 possible to imagine. In fact, so crass in their 
 brutality do the words of these critics strike me 
 that I am loath to " believe their own report " 
 about themselves, and am inclined to take their pro- 
 tests in the light of a dialectical device to cover up 
 the hollowness of their case. However this may be, 
 I have reasons to hope that the views in this sense 
 expressed by them would not be openly admitted by 
 
MISUNDERSTOOD SOCIALISM 183 
 
 any considerable section of " human nature " even 
 as it is at present, and would certainly not appeal 
 to the " under dog," to wit, the proletarian masses. 
 
 Once again let me point out that the inequality 
 and the scramble for wealth which is the essence of 
 competitive conditions, so far from furnishing an 
 incentive to the best human endeavour, is wholly 
 and solely productive of demoralised and bad work. 
 To place even genius in the position to give the 
 world of its best, the present accursed incentive of 
 immoderate material gain must be removed. This 
 it is which is the breeding-ground of all that is 
 trashy and worthless in literature, in music, in the 
 plastic arts, and in all the higher departments of 
 human activity. The man who has something to 
 give the world worth having feels he must give it 
 even though he suffer materially the while. The 
 charlatan who has nothing of worth to give, and 
 even the genius who has yielded to the temptation 
 to sell his birthright for the economic mess of 
 pottage by pandering to passing and usually de- 
 praved public taste, work naught but corruption 
 and degradation. In the case of the latter, indeed, 
 mankind is a positive loser, since genius is perverted 
 by the prospect of material gain from its true 
 function to the production of trash. 
 
 Of course, we are treated in this latest attack on 
 Socialism to suggestions as to the tyranny and 
 coercion the " Socialist State " would exercise over 
 
184 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 the individual. Of the tyranny exercised to-day 
 by the possessors of capital over the non-possessing 
 classes, nothing is said. The tyranny imposed by 
 the directive power of a Socialist Society would at 
 most amount to the obligation of every average man 
 to contribute a limited portion of his time to the 
 carrying on in some form or shape of the necessary 
 work of the world, by which a true liberty would 
 be ensured to all. Socialism means the administra- 
 tion of things, in contradistinction to our present 
 civilisation, which means the coercion of men. The 
 present state implies coercion in the interests, direct 
 or indirect, of private property, all round. 
 
 The ethical basis, which is the motive-power of 
 the movement for economical and political re- 
 construction, may be found in the motto of the 
 old revolutionaries of the eighteenth century 
 "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." It is, however, 
 pregnant with a new content. The sense in which 
 the earlier revolutionary took it has proved itself 
 illusory, but its ethical significance none the less 
 remains. 
 
 The conditions of Capitalism themselves suffice 
 to do the coercion in the economic sphere, 
 but there are other forms of coercion of men in 
 what Mill called " self-regarding actions," which 
 the State still exercises directly. It coerces men, 
 in many cases by military service, to fight its 
 battles with other States. This, again, is the 
 
MISUNDERSTOOD SOCIALISM 185 
 
 result of the desire of each national State-system 
 to get the better of its neighbour, and of them all 
 to enslave and plunder the savage and barbaric 
 peoples of the earth in the pursuit of new com- 
 mercial outlets and of fresh fields for the capitalistic 
 exploitation of natural resources. Modern wars 
 invariably take their origin in commercial or 
 colonial rivalry. 
 
 Again, in the purely personal relation of 
 marriage, the existing State claims rights over 
 the individual. Yet again, in the matter of 
 religion it is, as a rule, bound up with, and 
 favours some form of the dogmatic Christian 
 creed, which implies the coercion in various ways 
 of the individual intelligence. Now Socialism 
 stands for liberty in all these things. It stands for 
 equal rights for all nationalities, and for the freedom 
 of weak and backward peoples to pursue their own 
 life and to develop in their own way uncoerced 
 from without. It would free the individual from 
 the obligation to take up arms in defence of 
 the capitalist interests of the class-State to which 
 he happens to belong. With the sentiment of 
 patriotism or its opposite as a mere private emotion 
 it has nothing to do. It would free marriage from 
 coercive laws having their origin in property 
 relations or in superstitious beliefs, while in no way 
 dogmatising on the form which the institution of 
 marriage and the family will take in the future 
 
186 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 or as to what is the best form. In this respect 
 Socialism is no more opposed, as is sometimes 
 represented, to the principle of life-long monogamy 
 than it is to less stringent forms of the sexual 
 relation. What it is opposed to is coercion, either 
 by law or public opinion, of the individual in such 
 a self-regarding matter. The question of children 
 rests, of course, on a different basis, and ought to be 
 dealt with separately. 
 
 Similarly with theological beliefs and religious 
 cults. Socialism claims a secular and scientifically 
 up-to-date education for every child and young 
 person. It would not prevent any citizen from 
 amusing himself with, or persuading himself he 
 believes in, Christian theology, Buddhist theosophy, 
 or any other theory concerning the supernatural. 
 But a Socialist polity, as such, would undoubtedly 
 maintain a rigidly secular attitude, showing no 
 favour or affection for priestcraft, or for dogma 
 claiming supernatural sanctions, in any of its 
 forms. 
 
 In conclusion, I think I have said enough to 
 indicate the Socialist's grounds for believing that 
 under Socialism for the first time in history the 
 individual will have the opportunity of real freedom, 
 of real self-development, an opportunity he can 
 never possess under the dead level of sordid struggle 
 which characterises the Capitalist society in which 
 we live. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF MODERN FEMINISM 
 
 WE may trace the origin of modern Feminism in 
 a fairly continuous line back to the eighteenth 
 century to protagonists in revolutionary and pre- 
 revolutionary literature notably to Mary Woll- 
 stonecraft and William Godwin. From that 
 time onward the Feminist question has always 
 been present, though it only became prominent 
 during the second half of the nineteenth century. 
 
 It was about the end of the sixties that the 
 Woman's Suffrage plank first made its appearance 
 in the modern Socialist movement, in the original 
 International at the instance of Michael Bakounin 
 and his followers, and was one of the few proposals 
 emanating from that quarter that was accepted by 
 the Marx party. But for a long time the question 
 remained in the background, being hardly referred 
 to at all in the earlier programmes of the Con- 
 tinental parties. In fact, in the German party the 
 " Woman Question," as apart from the general 
 Social question, first received serious attention in 
 
 187 
 
188 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 1883 in Bebel's book, the first edition of which 
 was issued under the title of Woman in the Past, 
 Present, and Future, and contained very much 
 Woman and very little Socialism. (In the later 
 editions, under the title Woman and Socialism, 
 it is only fair to say, the proportions have been 
 altered.) In this work, Bebel, who virtually admits 
 in his preface that the bulk of the party at that 
 time was against him, maintained the dogma of 
 the equal capacity of woman with man, with its 
 corollary, the right of women to occupy all posi- 
 tions and exercise all functions hitherto controlled 
 by men. In France, Lafargue was active on the 
 Feminist side during the early eighties. 
 
 Since then the Feminist dogma has found much 
 favour with Socialists everywhere, and the demand 
 for Female Suffrage has been officially embodied 
 among the planks in the immediate political plat- 
 form of the Social Democratic party. At the 
 same time, it has been sought to exercise a pres- 
 sure within the party to prevent dissentient Social 
 Democrats from expressing an adverse opinion. 
 
 Time was when Manhood Suffrage was the 
 cry of all Democrats, and there are, doubtless, 
 plenty of Social Democrats to-day who would 
 be glad enough, if they did but dare, to take 
 their stand on the old Suffrage platform, which 
 was good enough for Chartists and earlier 
 Socialists. 
 
MODERN FEMINISM 189 
 
 The fact is, of course, this sex question cuts 
 athwart other issues. Hence it is that the con- 
 ventional bourgeois, unwilling as he is to admit 
 the sins of his class towards the proletariat, is often 
 perfectly ready to smite his manly breast and 
 deplore the assumed harshness of his own to the 
 opposite sex. There is no logical reason for 
 Socialism specially championing the position of 
 modern Feminism. That Socialism must bring 
 about changes in the position of women may be 
 allowed, but the special direction of these changes 
 must be the coefficient of the permanent physio- 
 logical structure and functions of the female sex, 
 with the new economic conditions and the resultant 
 new social forces. To dogmatise on the future as 
 to the precise nature of these changes at the present 
 stage is eminently unscientific. 
 
 Let us take the practical issue of the Suffrage. 
 People commonly talk as if the franchise was an 
 end in itself rather than what it is, simply a means 
 to other ends. But Feminists and Suffragists know 
 very well for what purpose they want the franchise. 
 They intend to use their new weapon to give a 
 further edge to what may be termed anti-man 
 legislation. They rightly think that this class of 
 law-making which they have been so successful in 
 promoting indirectly for a generation past, they 
 will in future, with the leverage of the vote, be 
 able to promote directly with a still greater success. 
 
190 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 This is what lies behind all protestations of sex 
 equality and the like. The equality desired is the 
 species of equality the chief characteristic of which 
 is to be " all on one side." 
 
 At the same time, some of the arguments adduced 
 against Female Suffrage do not strike me in them- 
 selves as altogether conclusive. For example, it 
 cannot be denied that the argument as to the 
 sphere of women being the home, though un- 
 doubtedly true in the past, and though containing 
 more truth to-day than the average Feminist would 
 admit, has undoubtedly lost some of its force owing 
 to the changed economic conditions of the present 
 time. Then, again, I have heard it argued that 
 contact with the rough and tumble of political life, 
 with its intrigue, ambitions, sordid rivalries, etc., 
 would defile the pure spirit of womanhood. Well, 
 here again I do not think the argument is alto- 
 gether convincing, since the rabid Feminist might 
 insist that the pet sex would, on the contrary, 
 infuse an elevating spirit into public life, that a 
 whiff of the breath of Womanhood (with a capital 
 W) would act like magic in disinfecting political 
 life and raising it to a uniform level of pure dis- 
 interested virtue. And although we may be 
 personally quite convinced that such would not 
 be the case, yet, seeing that the experiment has 
 not yet been tried on any large scale or for any 
 considerable length of time, it might not be easy 
 
MODERN FEMINISM 191 
 
 to prove our conviction to anyone choosing to 
 affirm the contrary. 
 
 Now the foregoing and some other arguments 
 are put forward, I think, by many men with the 
 unconscious desire to avoid acknowledging the 
 real ground of their objections to Female Suffrage. 
 They don't like to state this ground straight out. 
 Some, if hard pressed, will try to shuffle out of 
 admitting it, perhaps even to themselves. But 
 their secret conviction is that women, as a seoc, are 
 organically inferior to men, not only physically, 
 but intellectually and morally as well, and hence 
 not fit to be trusted promiscuously (i.e. barring 
 exceptions) with political power. Now, no man 
 likes to say this, because it sounds rude and 
 arrogant to " the ladies," even though the evidence, 
 physiological, psychological, historical, and common 
 observational for his conviction, is conclusive for 
 him. In my essay on "Female Suffrage and its 
 Implications," I have briefly indicated some of the 
 main heads of this evidence and do not propose to 
 enter into it again here. But I must insist on the 
 fact that for me (barring one other reason which, 
 though decisive for the moment, is not of a funda- 
 mental nature, and which I shall refer to directly) 
 there seems no logical ground for opposition to 
 the granting of the franchise to women save the 
 recognition of inferiority, at least, an inferiority 
 ad hoc. If one acknowledges complete equality 
 
192 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 in capacity between men and women, the case for 
 the Suffrage seems to me, in itself, unanswerable. 
 
 1 have said in itself, since, as things are at 
 present in this and most other countries, even if 
 the capacity for political and administrative judg- 
 ment were conceded, there is another ground on 
 which, so long as it obtains, it would be just to 
 refuse women the franchise. And this ground is 
 the fact that women at present constitute an almost 
 boundlessly privileged section of the community. 
 A woman may, in the present day, do practically 
 what she likes without fear of anything happening 
 to her beyond a nominal punishment. The English 
 marriage laws, with their right of the wife to 
 maintenance, give her almost unlimited power to 
 oppress her husband. (See a case reported in detail, 
 with names and witnesses, etc., in John Bull for 
 September 19, 1908.) 
 
 Not very long ago a case occurred in the north 
 of England where a workman, out of employment, 
 was about to be committed to prison at his wife's 
 behest for omitting to pay her the weekly allow- 
 ance ordered by the court. Exasperated, the poor 
 fellow struck his tyrant a fatal blow hanged ! 
 About the same time a wife, during an admittedly 
 trifling tiff with her husband, stabbed him fatally 
 with a hatpin released on her recognisances. 
 These two cases are typical. It is this practical 
 immunity of women from all consequences for their 
 
MODERN FEMINISM 193 
 
 actions upon which the crew of Suffragists traded. 
 Had they been liable to one quarter of the penalties 
 men incur they would have " thought " a good 
 many times before inciting to raid the House of 
 Commons or to commit other breaches of the law. 
 As it is, they knew the worst they had to fear 
 was a short term of pampered imprisonment. 
 Male Socialists have had to go to prison, not for 
 trying to raid the House of Commons, but for 
 merely breaking some local bye-law while main- 
 taining the right of free speech. 
 
 Do not let us forget that the women who are 
 loudest in bawling for the Suffrage do so on the 
 ground that they are not sufficiently privileged 
 already, and that, as we have said, to obtain 
 the supremacy over men, the savagely vindic- 
 tive laws against men and complete immunity 
 for women they consider their due, they require 
 the leverage the vote will give them. Under 
 the circumstances one would like to examine 
 with a very strong electric light the intellects of 
 those persons who profess to believe in equality 
 between the sexes, and who yet, as things are 
 to-day, can advocate Female Suffrage. Their idea 
 of equality is, I suppose, " All yours is mine and 
 all mine's my own." No military service for women, 
 and yet they shall dictate war or peace ! No 
 corporal punishment for them, and yet they shall 
 
 decide on the maintenance of corporal punishment 
 
 13 
 
194 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 for men in prisons, etc. ! No liability to maintain 
 husband or children, and yet the right to decree 
 laws relating to marriage ; and many more such 
 anomalies. For let us make no mistake no 
 Feminist has the smallest intention of abandoning 
 any one of the existing privileges of women. On 
 the contrary, the intention of increasing the power 
 and privileges of the sex is expressly declared 
 without any subterfuge. And be it remembered 
 the " adult suffrage" so much advocated by Socialists 
 means an excess of a million female over male 
 votes so far as Great Britain is concerned. 
 
 Socialist bodies proclaim "social and economic 
 equality between the sexes " as one of their aims. 
 Now, as a "stepping stone " towards this end, I 
 would suggest to the advocates of sex equality 
 (from the standpoint of our present society), be- 
 sides equal wages for equal work, which we are all 
 able to agree to, (1) obligation of wife to maintain 
 herself, also her husband if sick, and to contribute 
 something to the maintenance of the children of the 
 marriage ; and further (2) equal punishment for 
 equal crime as between men and women ; and (3) 
 abolition of all laws (e.g. the law as regards libe* 
 and slander} favouring women at the expense q 
 men ; and (4) the liability of women to all duties 
 imposed on men. I can imagine the sort of wry 
 face the Feminists would make at the bare sug- 
 gestion of these equitable demands. Otherwise, I 
 
 w 
 
 ?/ 
 
MODERN FEMINISM 195 
 
 would suggest that wherever " social and economic 
 equality" between the sexes is proposed a note 
 should be added that (to borrow a phrase from the 
 famous Rule in Shelley's case) the words be taken 
 as " words of limitation," in short, that the term 
 equality is to be understood in a non-natural sense 
 as implying all the kicks for the brute man and 
 all the halfpence for the angel woman. Otherwise 
 unsophisticated comrades might be disposed to 
 take it in a natural sense, which would involve a 
 grievous misconception. 
 
 Now, speaking as a plain man, surely it would 
 be unjust, quite apart from any question of intrinsic 
 suitability, for women to possess the Suffrage 
 until something like the conditions I have before 
 formulated obtain. If others think that giving 
 an already privileged order of human beings the 
 franchise spells equality, I do not. 
 
 But supposing the present balance of inequality 
 in favour of women were remedied, there would 
 then remain solely the question of the average 
 inferiority of women. Now here I must again 
 point out that the exercise of the vote is mainly 
 a means to an end the progress and well-being 
 of society. Hence, if women on the average show 
 an inferiority all round to men, or even an inferi- 
 ority in the power of practical and equitable judg- 
 ment in public affairs, then there is no injustice in 
 refusing them " in the bulk " the right of interfering 
 
196 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 in these matters, where they are ex hypothesi less 
 competent than men. Here we have to deal with 
 a question of fact and evidence. For those who, 
 like myself, regard the evidence for the inferiority 
 as conclusive, there is no possible alternative to 
 opposition to a disintegrative force such as can only 
 be harmful to progress. To discuss the question 
 as to the nature of the evidence would take us 
 outside the immediate purpose of this chapter, 
 but I deny that those to whom the evidence for 
 incapacity appears conclusive can consistently be 
 otherwise than opponents of Female Suffrage in all 
 its forms. For to favour it in the teeth of such a 
 conviction would mean sacrificing the interests of 
 society to a barren abstraction, to wit, the abstract 
 right to exercise a function whether fitted for it or 
 not. And to this no one who really values progress 
 ought surely to be prepared to consent. 
 
 The Feminism of modern public opinion, which 
 is reflected in recent statutes and judicial decisions 
 and in the administration of law generally, has been 
 very persistently and very subtly fostered for more 
 than a generation past. The Feminist attitude of 
 public opinion has been sedulously cultivated not 
 only by journalism but by modern literature and 
 art, especially such as is of a popular character. 
 The aim has been to portray Man as an ignoble, 
 mean creature, as a foil to the courage, resource, 
 and gentle virtues of Woman. Who has not seen 
 
MODERN FEMINISM 197 
 
 a well-known picture representing the Thames 
 Embankment at night, and the " unfortunate," 
 possessed of an improbably angelic face, being 
 taken from the river, with the gentleman and lady 
 in evening dress, who have just got out of the cab, 
 in the foreground, the gentleman with ostentatious 
 callousness brute that he is ! turning away and 
 lighting a cigarette, and the lady gentle creature ! 
 bending over the dripping form and throwing up 
 her arms in sympathetic horror ? It is by claptrap 
 of this sort, both literary and artistic, that senti- 
 mental Feminism is both evoked and nourished. 
 Some time ago I received a provincial Socialist 
 paper (I.L.P.) which contained a feuilleton con- 
 sisting of the story of a woman who had killed 
 her baby and died after a few weeks in prison the 
 moral being apparently the monstrous wickedness 
 of imprisoning such women at all, rather than 
 rewarding them with a comfortable pension for 
 life. There are well-known writers I could name 
 who seem to take peculiar pleasure in painting 
 their own sex in an abject light by way of pandering 
 to current Feminist prejudices. 
 
 The result of all this nurture of the public mind 
 in Feminist sentiment is everywhere noticeable. 
 An influential section of public opinion has come 
 to regard it as axiomatic that women are capable 
 of everything of which men are capable, and there- 
 fore they ought to have full responsibility in all 
 
198 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 honourable and lucrative functions and callings. 
 There is only one thing for which unlimited allow- 
 ance ought to be made on the ground of their 
 womanly inferiority, otherwise so strenuously 
 denied, and that is their own criminal or tortuous 
 acts ! In a word, they are not to be held respon- 
 sible, in the sense that men are, for their own 
 actions when these entail unpleasant consequences 
 for themselves. On the contrary, the obloquy 
 and, where possible, the penalty for the wrong- 
 doing is to be shifted on to the nearest wretched 
 man with whom they have consorted. I cannot 
 quote unlimited cases, but, by way of illustration, 
 I will mention two that occur to me at the 
 moment of writing. 
 
 A few years ago a woman deliberately shot at 
 and wounded a solicitor (a married man) with 
 whom she had had relations. The act was so 
 premeditated that it came out in evidence she 
 had been practising shooting with the revolver 
 for days beforehand. There was, moreover, no 
 question of a child in the case, and not even one 
 of financial embarrassment, as she was in receipt of 
 a quarterly allowance under a trust. Hence the 
 case presented itself as a cold-blooded one of at- 
 tempted murder without a single circumstance of 
 extenuation. The woman was sentenced to the 
 very lenient penalty of seven years' penal servitude. 
 (Had a man attempted to murder in this way a 
 
MODERN FEMINISM 199 
 
 jilting mistress he would have received, without 
 doubt, twenty years at least, if not a life sentence.) 
 Now it seems incredible, but it is a fact, that a 
 campaign was immediately started throughout the 
 whole of the press, largely by " advanced " women 
 and male Feminists, in favour of this dastardly 
 female criminal, who only fell short of being a 
 murderess by accident ! The second case is that 
 of Daisy Lord three or four years ago. To read the 
 gush on that occasion one might have thought that 
 the murder of new-born children represented the 
 highest ideal of motherhood. This Daisy Lord 
 became for the nonce a kind of pinchbeck Madonna 
 in the eyes of the Feminist public. Such women 
 as the above ought, of course, to have equal voting 
 rights with men, but equal consequences for their 
 actions oh dear, no ! If there is one demand 
 which is popular with the Feminists, it is for 
 raising the age of consent from sixteen to eighteen 
 or twenty-one years, at which latter age, presum- 
 ably, the right to the Franchise, if conceded, 
 would come into operation. They are therefore 
 evidently of opinion that the woman who has only 
 just ceased to need the protection of the law in 
 the control of her own body becomes immedi- 
 ately fully qualified to have a voice in the manage- 
 ment of public affairs! The extent to which 
 Feminist sentiment can fling justice to the winds 
 in these days is shown by the savage demand, in 
 
200 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 cases of infant murder, for vicarious vengeance on 
 one who, as regards the offence in question, is 
 wholly innocent to wit, on that vile and obnoxious 
 creature, " the man." 
 
 The way in which the modern Feminist is dead 
 to every sense of equity in the relations of the 
 sexes as regards elementary fairness to the man's 
 side of the sexual equation, is illustrated by such 
 documents as Lady Maclaren's "Woman's Charter." 
 One of the demands it contains is that " no married 
 woman should be bound to accept a foreign 
 domicile." This is delightful ! A poor man can- 
 not get work in this country and has to take a 
 position abroad. At her sweet whim his wife may 
 live apart from him as a single woman and compel 
 him to keep her all the same ! Here we have a 
 splendid example of " woman's right " to treat man 
 as a slave ! Suggestions of this sort, be it re- 
 membered, come from those who indignantly 
 repudiate any desire for female privilege. 
 
 As regards this point of the protestations of zeal 
 for equality between the sexes, when specially 
 challenged, I would suggest to the Feminist 
 advocate, male or female, that it would not be 
 amiss if this zeal for sex equality ceased to assume 
 the form of concocting bogus grievances on the 
 woman's side, and occasionally, at least, took shape 
 in protests against modern one-sided sex legislation, 
 and the favouritism uniformly shown to women 
 

 MODERN FEMINISM 201 
 
 in the courts, civil and criminal. To this might be 
 added a self-denying ordinance by which advanced 
 ladies should agitate for the abolition of reserved 
 seats for "ladies only" in the British Museum 
 reading room, reserved compartments in railway 
 carriages, etc. The New York elevated railway 
 has, I read, begun to reserve whole carriages for 
 women, from which men are rigidly excluded, no 
 matter how full the train may be otherwise. For 
 be it remembered that though all men are forbidden 
 access to female reserves, women in these cases, as 
 a rule, have the run of all available space, there 
 being usually no male reserves. Were they to 
 act thus, the advocates of Feminism would at least 
 give an earnest of their sincerity in the matter 
 of sex equality, which at present assumes such 
 a questionable shape in their agitation and 
 discourses. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF SEX AND SENTIMENT 
 
 WE are every day reminded of the vitality of 
 survivals in habits of thought no less than in ways 
 of life. With the insidiousness of black beetles 
 in an old house they return again and again to 
 the charge after you think you have finally extir- 
 pated them. What I have elsewhere termed the 
 " ethics of introspection " as opposed to the ethics 
 of social utility seems to have a most astonishing 
 vitality. Now the " ethic of introspection " finds its 
 sanction in some traditional sentiment, or mayhap 
 in some catch phrase or abstract formula, which 
 has probably had a meaning once, but which has 
 degenerated into a " canting motto." The ethic 
 of social utility, on the other hand, finds its sanction 
 solely in the definite and obvious demands of the 
 welfare of the social body, and recognises the 
 greatest possible free play of the individual in all 
 matters not directly conflicting with social interests 
 as a whole. The object of the introspective ethics 
 is to erect asceticism into a standard of conduct. 
 
 202 
 
SEX AND SENTIMENT 203 
 
 Though it will equally attack any of the wants 
 of the flesh, its special and favourite hunting-ground 
 has always been the sexual impulse. Here it takes 
 the most specious forms calculated to deceive the 
 very elect. We must not, however, be led astray 
 by the sweet reasonableness it may assume. Let 
 us remember that we have to do with a Melusina 
 that the fair-looking exterior is but a metamor- 
 phosed serpent the old serpent, asceticism, the 
 subtle enemy of human rights, father of hypocrisy, 
 and of every violation of nature the accursed 
 thing which to recognise should be to strike 
 down. 
 
 Now the touchstone of the ethics of Socialism 
 is that the " ought," though necessarily concerned 
 with motive, as opposed to mere outward act, is 
 none the less only concerned with it in so far as 
 its object is definitely social and not where its 
 subject matter merely concerns individual taste. 
 The latter belongs not to ethics, but to aesthetics, 
 two standpoints many persons seem to confound. 
 
 Believers in the old theological sanctions have 
 no difficulty in finding justification for asceticism. 
 Those, however, who, having abandoned the old 
 ethics of supernaturalism, still possess a hankering 
 after an ascetic ideal, are driven to forage about 
 for a new justification which has a semblance of 
 being based on rational considerations. I say a 
 semblance, since at bottom these considerations 
 
204 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 are not one whit more rational than the old ones. 
 Thus some years ago a pseudonymous writer 
 put forward the thesis that the sexual act was 
 " wrong," " degrading," " a prostitution of woman," 
 and I do not know what all else, when not followed 
 or at least not engaged in with the object of 
 being followed by offspring! Now if he had 
 been in a position to inform us that God Almighty, 
 Jesus Christ, the Holy Virgin, the angel Gabriel, 
 or other personages we in divers times and places 
 have been taught to love and reverence, had 
 miraculously revealed this ethical dogma to him, 
 his position would at least have been intelligible. 
 He made no pretensions of this sort, however, so 
 what remained was this pseudonymous gentleman's 
 assurance his ipse diocit that it was so " even as 
 he had said." I have quoted the above instance 
 not on account of its intrinsic importance, but as 
 an extreme example of the Introspective Ethics 
 as applied to sexual matters. There is a mass 
 of writing and thinking to be found not so 
 logical and hence so obvious in its absurdity 
 as the case quoted, but all tending in the same 
 direction. 
 
 Another example of the attempt to smuggle in 
 asceticism under cover of lofty ideals is furnished 
 by a writer on the subject of sexual ethics in a 
 Socialist periodical, also of some few years back. 
 This writer, after giving a sufficiently good general 
 
SEX AND SENTIMENT 205 
 
 sketch of the development of the sexual instinct, 
 concludes with the thesis that in its highest 
 development in man it is bound up with a " com- 
 plexity of psychological states which is covered 
 by the term love'' This is all right. But now 
 comes the extraordinary non-sequitur of the article. 
 Obviously, no one objects to the high idyllic senti- 
 ment which, from the context, is what the writer 
 evidently understands by the "complexity of states " 
 termed love. This may always remain the highest 
 ideal of sex relationship. And I have yet to learn 
 of any recent development of morality which, as 
 the writer alleges, " bids us divest ourselves of this 
 most important element of our spiritual nature.'* 
 If there be such, it must be so rare and sporadic a 
 development of " degeneracy " as not to be worth 
 serious consideration. 
 
 But here, as just said, comes in the extraordinary 
 logical gymnastic of our writer. From the above 
 unimpeachable propositions, to which we can all 
 subscribe, he draws the astounding conclusion that 
 love (in his sense) " alone can supply the neces- 
 sary ethical sanction" etc., for sexual connection. 
 Now, how by any ordinary rational method he has 
 succeeded in reaching this result, I submit, is 
 enough to puzzle the celebrated lawyer of Phila- 
 delphia. I for one, when I read this, was fain driven 
 to the hypothesis that he had been interviewing the 
 angel Gabriel or some other distinguished character 
 
206 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 from above, as to the sexually right and wrong. 
 The sexual act viewed on mundane principles, like 
 any other animal function, per se belongs to the 
 domain of aesthetics, not of ethics at all. In order 
 to be brought within the sphere of ethics it must 
 be connected in some way with a distinct social 
 relation outside the persons immediately concerned, 
 otherwise it is, what Mill would have called, "a 
 self-regarding action." We all admit that the 
 idyllic-love sexual relation is the most beautiful. 
 But according to the writer's own showing there 
 are a number of persons who, from temperament 
 or circumstances, are condemned to remain outside 
 it. All these poor creatures whose " complexity of 
 states of the psychological order . . . covered by 
 the term love," do not reach the prescribed sixth- 
 form standard with respect to each other, are to 
 be sent away howling into the wilderness. This is 
 clear since, in spite of his talk about " love in its 
 manifold manifestations," our moralist rules out 
 mutual consent, which to most of us would cover 
 one of the most common " manifestations " of love. 
 What he wants is, clearly, love a la Senta and the 
 Flying Dutchman the ich bin die dick durch Hire 
 Heil erlose sort of thing. Now I should much like 
 to know the percentage of married couples in 
 England who, supposing " the great white throne " 
 were set, the books were opened, and the writer 
 in question acting as heavenly attorney-general, 
 
SEX AND SENTIMENT 207 
 
 would not quail before his searching eye as he rose 
 to indict their morality on the principles of his 
 " ethics of sexual relationship." 
 
 No one is more alive than myself to the fact 
 that the idyllic love of the poets exists. But it 
 is an exception, rather than the rule, and will, 
 so far as we can see, remain so for a very long 
 time to come. To require of a man, to whom 
 circumstances have not granted this idyllic love, 
 sexual abstention, is about as reasonable as to 
 require him to stop breathing in the courts and 
 alleys of Whitechapel, where he cannot obtain 
 good air, or to tell him that since he cannot get 
 the highest class of French cookery, his " clear line 
 of conduct" ethically is to abstain from eating 
 altogether. For even in the affairs of the stomach 
 there is a higher and a lower, just as in those of 
 other organs. And more betoken this higher 
 and lower has its influence on character. Feeding 
 on "cagmag," London "fried fish," or such-like 
 abominations, under the filthy conditions that pre- 
 vail, future ages will probably recognise to have 
 defiled the men of to-day as much as what is 
 deemed the most degraded form of sexual in- 
 dulgence has ever done. The influence of food 
 and drink (apart, of course, from the well-worn 
 subject of excess in alcohol) has been far too much 
 neglected as a factor in the making or marring of 
 character. There is a sentiment in cookery as well 
 
208 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 as in love. If my analogy be objected to on the 
 ground that while we cannot live without food 
 we can without sexual satisfaction, I would point 
 out that this is only relatively true, since, as the 
 anchorites and the Hindoo Yogis have taught us, 
 we can do with a very exiguous minimum of food, 
 and, moreover, I have never heard of even partial 
 starvation being advocated by the modern Puritan 
 as sexual abstinence has been and is advocated by 
 the same individual. Again, when it is said we 
 can live without sexual satisfaction, that is also 
 only true very relatively. There are exceptions, 
 I am aware, but for the average man sexual satis- 
 faction is just as essential to a healthy life, i.e. to 
 the mens sana in corpore sano, as food is to bare 
 existence. " Continence " is, for the average man, 
 I do not hesitate to say unconditionally, to be 
 deprecated as directly producing an uncleanly habit 
 of body, usually accompanied by an uncleanly habit 
 of mind, if nothing worse. That the latter is the 
 case has been proved ad nauseam by the history 
 of religious movements. " Continence " may be 
 conducive to a " virtuously " ascetic life, but it 
 certainly does not conduce to a socially ethical life 
 (at least for the vast majority of men). Hence, I 
 can only again repeat that if you choose to seek 
 for an immediate ethical bearing in the sexual act, 
 you must find it in the duty of a man to be natural 
 (for the sake of his health and usefulness in society), 
 
SEX AND SENTIMENT 209 
 
 and natural in the obvious sense and meaning of the 
 word of living according to his nature. 
 
 Our pure and lofty moralist wants to be an angel 
 and with the angels sing. That is all right. But 
 then he should not wish to force his neighbours to be 
 angels also, and to make them sing, too, whether 
 they want to or not. The illogical attempt to take 
 back under the name of duty what he has conceded 
 under the name of right will not help him, since no 
 clear ethical thinker will admit that it can be a 
 "duty" to forego any "right," i.e. as a matter 
 of principle. (There may be, of course, special 
 occasions on which, for exceptional and clearly 
 defined reasons, it may be a duty to forego for the 
 moment the particular exercise of a right, but 
 never to surrender the right itself as such.) No, 
 no, my worthy friend, the attempt to force the 
 angelic wings on unwilling recipients has been tried 
 too long and too often throughout history, and has 
 uniformly resulted in failure ! 
 
 Asceticism (i.e. a false introspective view of duty) 
 has invariably proved the parent of hypocrisy and 
 corruption. Socialistic morality must once for all 
 break with it. Our watchword must be, "Let 
 us be natural ! " If we are destined to become 
 angels, the wings will grow in their own good time. 
 Surely ever so small a growth of true and genuine 
 angel's wing is of more worth than any amount of 
 
 the great flapping stage-property wing with which 
 
 14 
 
210 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 Asceticism would adorn us. Applying what is 
 here said to sexual ethics, what results do we 
 obtain? Clearly these: (1) Every human being 
 has a complete ethical right to the physical exercise 
 of his or her sexual instincts apart from anything 
 else whatever. This moral right is, per se, " full, 
 round, and orbicular." (2) It is also the duty of 
 every human being to exercise this faculty in pro- 
 portion to the needs of his or her physical constitu- 
 tion, in order to ensure a healthiness of mind and 
 body. (3) The ideal of sexual exercise may be 
 that it take place under the conditions of the love 
 of the idyllic poet. But the most usual condition, 
 and for most men and women a fairly satisfactory 
 one, is what the writer terms " mutual consent " 
 (be the marriage " free " or " legal "), which may 
 also develop into the idyllic love in time, or, least- 
 ways, into a very good imitation of it. The third 
 condition mentioned by the writer prostitution- 
 must be regarded as a pis oiler of capitalistic 
 society, a deplorable necessity sometimes within the 
 limits of that society, but in all cases the most un- 
 desirable form of sexual relation though, perhaps, 
 intrinsically not worse than the marriage for money. 
 It is necessary to come back from heaven to 
 earth in sexual matters, to recognise that the 
 " physical basis " has its own concrete rights apart 
 from aught else. By all means seek the highest 
 form of sexual relationship, but let us recognise 
 
SEX AND SENTIMENT 211 
 
 the ethical right of every man that he is not 
 immoral when, if he cannot have what he likes in 
 this connection, he makes himself content with 
 what he has. 
 
 As to the " pure-minded man and woman " (a 
 cold-blooded human entity unfortunately often- 
 times apt to degenerate into the insufferable prig), 
 he or she has a good deal to learn, and will have to 
 be educated. First of all, he or she will have to 
 be taught to clear his or her mind of cant, sexual 
 as well as other, and to recognise differences of 
 constitution as severally having their own justifica- 
 tion. He or she will further have to be taught 
 that it is as wrong to hate those who differ from 
 us sexually as those who differ from us in other 
 matters. Let me adjure our aspiring moralist to 
 take in hand the pure-minded man and woman of 
 his acquaintanceship lest a worse thing happen ! 
 For if "the pure-minded man and woman" be 
 allowed to rampage too much in their wild state, 
 the average sexually-minded man and woman may 
 eventually rise in riotous revolt, calling for three 
 cheers for the "old Adam and the old Eve" and 
 let him think what a shocking thing that would be ! 
 
 In the foregoing paragraphs I have dealt with an 
 extreme expression of a form of introspective ethics 
 which still lurks consciously or unconsciously in 
 a good many minds and still colours the views of 
 many persons on the subject of the ethical sanction 
 
212 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 of sex. Other aspects of the problem are here left 
 untouched. I have purposely, in the foregoing, left 
 the question of offspring on one side, in itself, un- 
 doubtedly, an ethical problem of deep import, and 
 this for the simple reason that I hold it to be, 
 per se, distinct from the problem of sexual conduct 
 considered as such. There exists a vast mass of 
 sexual intercourse into which the question of off- 
 spring does not enter at all. The two problems, 
 (1) love and sexual intercourse, per se, and (2) 
 the procreation of children, should be clearly 
 distinguished and threshed out apart from one 
 another. After having done this thoroughly, we 
 shall be in a position to consider clearly their 
 mutual bearings. This we certainly are not when 
 we incontinently mix up these two perfectly 
 distinct aspects of the great problem of sex with 
 one another, thereby hopelessly confusing the 
 issues involved. The first is, per se, an aesthetic 
 and personal self-regarding question ; the second is 
 pre-eminently an ethical and social question. The 
 recognition of this distinction is for me the primary 
 condition for adequate discussion of the subject. 
 The sexual relation, as such, is a thing of purely 
 personal taste. This is, as yet, not fully recognised. 
 Time was when the notion of toleration in religious 
 belief was unknown, when not merely Catholics 
 but every Protestant sectary thought of nothing 
 else than to impose his own set of dogmas and his 
 
SEX AND SENTIMENT 213 
 
 own theory of church organisation vi et armis on 
 the rest of the world. Then came the epoch when 
 the doctrine of toleration appeared, and finally gave 
 rise to a mutual resolve that, while each sectary 
 might maintain the belief in the superiority of his 
 own position, it should be regarded as " bad form " 
 to " damn " his neighbour for thinking otherwise 
 in a word, when the attempt to obtain religious 
 uniformity was abandoned. The world has yet to 
 learn toleration in sexual matters ; it has yet to 
 learn that various temperaments must have a 
 latitude of outlook in these things, that, however 
 estimable the current sexual theory of Christendom 
 may be, mechanical monogamy must be definitely 
 abandoned, and freedom of choice, within at least 
 certain limits, granted as just and righteous. The 
 endeavour to enforce sexual uniformity has hitherto 
 been productive of nothing but human misery, and 
 has proved the seed-ground of the worst form of 
 hypocrisy, a hypocrisy which has helped to sap 
 the moral fibre of one generation after another. 
 Whatever else may be natural, that is certainly 
 unnatural, and not merely unnataral, but also in 
 the highest degree immoral. These are thy fruits, 
 oh, misnamed " purity " ! When, I ask, will society 
 learn the lesson of toleration in sexual matters as it 
 has even now, as compared with past ages, learnt 
 it as regards intellectual matters ? 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF ALCOHOL 
 
 THE question of the use and abuse of alcohol is 
 one of those questions of the detail of social life in 
 which fanaticism seems to me eminently out of 
 place, and its presence to indicate the degeneration 
 of legitimate opinion or conviction into a fad. By 
 a " fad " (or a " crank " ), as I think I have else- 
 where explained, I do not mean an opinion (or the 
 champion of an opinion), which I hold to be errone- 
 ous in itself, but rather an opinion, whether true or 
 false, championed in a manner showing the lack of 
 all sense of proportion as to its relative importance. 
 As regards the Alcohol Problem, I must plead 
 guilty to adopting the tame and unheroic attitude 
 of, while condemning the abuse, defending the 
 use of alcohol, an attitude which, if tame and un- 
 heroic, strikes me as the only true and sane position. 
 Alcohol may be a poison, but, somehow or other, 
 mankind, as a whole, has got along well with it 
 from prehistoric times up to the rise of modern 
 capitalism, before which time distilled, as dis- 
 
 214 
 
ALCOHOL 215 
 
 tinguished from naturally fermented liquors, were 
 almost unknown. The rise of the later phases of 
 capitalism and the spread of dram- drinking are 
 practically synchronous. Not that I am prepared 
 unconditionally to condemn the use of distilled 
 forms of alcohol, under favourable circumstances 
 and with due moderation. It is necessary to point 
 out, however, that there is good evidence that a 
 not inconsiderable difference obtains between the 
 physical effects of these two classes of alcoholic 
 liquors, and therefore it is essential to distinguish 
 rather more carefully than do some of our teetotal 
 friends between them in different cases. Again, 
 no teetotal advocate that I have ever heard of has 
 taken the trouble to discriminate to any extent 
 worth speaking of between the action of pure 
 alcoholic drinks of all classes and that of the 
 adulterated products of latter-day unscrupulous 
 capitalism. A rich man with his well-stocked 
 cellar may indulge with impunity in a three or 
 more times greater amount of alcohol than his 
 poorer neighbour, who is ruining his constitution 
 with the vile decoctions available at public-house 
 bars. Even so, alcohol and its adulterations are by 
 no means the only, or perhaps not even the worst 
 poisons, eatable or drinkable, which the proletarian 
 is forced to consume under present conditions. To 
 my thinking the teetotal argument is completely viti- 
 ated by the indiscriminating and utterly unproven 
 
216 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 attribution to alcohol of all the bodily ills that 
 modern flesh is heir to, and through the almost com- 
 plete ignoring of the considerations just referred to. 
 
 My own " lay " observation leads me to the con- 
 clusions that while (1) there is a limit for every 
 man beyond which he cannot continue imbibing 
 alcohol without deleterious effects, (2) that this 
 limit is subject to such wide individual variation 
 that no hard and fast rule can be usefully formu- 
 lated concerning it. Each man must find this out 
 for himself by personal experience of the effects of 
 alcohol on his own constitution. His duty is, of 
 course, to see to it that he does not habitually 
 exceed this limit, it being a social duty not only 
 to avoid making a nuisance of himself to others, 
 as regular " boozers " do, but in addition to main- 
 tain himself in his normal standard of efficiency. 
 In my own case , I have been commonly in the 
 company of men who can take, without doing 
 themselves any noticeable harm, three or four times 
 the amount of alcohol that I can. These men, I 
 consider, have a right, therefore, to indulge in this 
 larger quantity, whereas it might well be deemed 
 reprehensible on my part to follow their example. 
 
 Now, as to the theory of the absolutely poisonous 
 nature of alcohol on which depends the present 
 anti-alcoholic mania among doctors and others 
 we must not forget that the present is the day of 
 the discovery of " death in the pot " everywhere. 
 
ALCOHOL 217 
 
 Time was when tea, as " the cup that cheers but 
 not inebriates," was held to be the most harmless of 
 beverages, and indeed was often enough played off 
 against alcohol as the sober poor man's drink. Now 
 tea is alleged by some of the self-same eminent 
 authorities who condemn alcohol to be almost, if 
 not quite, as deadly, while, in its very nature, more 
 insidious. Some time ago a journal was published 
 called Rational Food, the chief function of which 
 was to demonstrate the fatal effects on the health 
 of bread and potatoes ! Many of us will recollect 
 some years ago an eminent surgeon's list of foods 
 productive of appendicitis, which included, if I 
 remember rightly, almost every article of diet with 
 the exception of toast and water. We all know 
 that to the vegetarian every form of flesh food is a 
 highly baneful toxic in its physiological effect, and 
 unsuited to the human constitution. If we com- 
 bine the teachings of all the eminent authorities on 
 the subject of meat and drinks, we shall find our- 
 selves reduced in time to the nutriment afforded 
 by the dead bodies of microbes contained in well- 
 cooked London water, with, say, an occasional bite 
 of digestive biscuit to add solidity. 
 
 The allegation that alcohol, as such, and in how- 
 ever small quantities, is a poison, is usually sup- 
 ported by two sets of arguments : firstly, the 
 chemico-physiological argument, and, secondly, the 
 statistical. As regards the former, a careful read- 
 
218 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 ing of the evidence fails to disclose to me any proof 
 of toxic effects, save when alcohol is taken to excess. 
 This excess, I readily admit, may obtain in some 
 constitutions with an exceedingly small quantity 
 of alcohol. On the other hand, there are plenty 
 of constitutions where the evidences of toxic effect, 
 and hence of excess, are only shown after the con- 
 sumption of a relatively large amount. Of course 
 we know that there are universally admitted poisons 
 (e.g. arsenic) which may be taken without ill effects 
 in small or graduated doses. This, therefore, does 
 not prove that alcohol is not a poison. But all I 
 can say is, that if alcohol is to be reckoned a poison, 
 the range within which it may be taken with im- 
 punity is so immensely greater than in the case of 
 the more undoubted poisons as, for all practical 
 purposes, to take it out of the category of true 
 poisons altogether. 
 
 The argument from statistics, in most questions 
 an unreliable one, is especially so in the present. 
 As an illustration of this I may quote some of the 
 most recent figures on the subject. A few years 
 ago some elaborate statistics furnished, if I mistake 
 not, originally by Sir Albert Rollit, on the subject 
 of drink and longevity were given in the daily 
 press. Now mark the way in which the published 
 report was put together so as to produce the effect 
 desired. The accuracy of the figures themselves I 
 am not in a position either to impugn or to corro- 
 
ALCOHOL 219 
 
 borate. But the arrangement of the report is truly 
 significant of the manner in which figures, let them 
 be the most accurate in themselves, can, by a stroke 
 of the pen, be made to prove just what is wanted. 
 
 As we all know, the "business end" of the 
 present agitation is directed, not against drunken- 
 ness, but against moderate drinking. Accordingly 
 we find that the author of the report referred to 
 divides the population into three classes total 
 abstainers, moderate drinkers, and publicans. On 
 this basis of the report he readily succeeds in 
 proving that "publicans" have the shortest lives, 
 "moderate drinkers" the next, and "total ab- 
 stainers" the longest. 
 
 Now, it is obvious that publicans, as being a 
 class specially liable to temptation, will be likely 
 to contain a large percentage of excessive drinkers 
 to the extent of ruining their health. We are not 
 surprised, therefore, to find that publicans show 
 up unfavourably in this respect as against total 
 abstainers. It is in the second category that the 
 tricky nature of the arrangement comes out. We 
 need only note that men are not to be exhaustively 
 divided in potatorial matters into publicans, 
 moderate drinkers, and total abstainers. There 
 are, on the contrary, a number of extremely im- 
 moderate drinkers who are not publicans by trade, 
 any more than they are total abstainers by practice. 
 Now, on this division, where do they come in? 
 
220 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 Obviously they are included under the second, 
 vague and elastic, heading of "moderate drinkers." 
 In this way the second division, that of the 
 "moderate drinkers," swelled by all the non- 
 publican drunkards and semi-drunkards, can, of 
 course, easily be shown to present a higher death- 
 rate, and a shorter average life, than that of the 
 "total abstainers." "That's the way it's done," 
 and moderate drinking sought to be brought into 
 disrepute. 
 
 On the other hand, was it not the then Sir 
 Walter Foster who showed some time ago that 
 the really moderate drinker, who carefully kept 
 within the drinking capacities of his constitu- 
 tion, had a longer average life, not merely than 
 the drunkard, but also than the total abstainer? 
 Once more, the late Sir Wilfrid Lawson, a man 
 for whose integrity in public affairs I always 
 had a considerable respect, when on the anti- 
 drink lay, was not always exempt from tricki- 
 ness in argument. For instance, replying on one 
 occasion to the allegation I have myself often heard 
 medical men make to the effect that more persons 
 kill themselves through over-eating than through 
 over- drinking, Sir Wilfrid Lawson confined him- 
 self to making fun of the paucity of cases in which 
 death is certifiable as being directly due to over- 
 eating, omitting, of course, the thousands of cases 
 in which the constitution is weakened and life is 
 
ALCOHOL 221 
 
 shortened by the habitual practice of guzzling two 
 or three heavy meals a day. What would Sir 
 Wilfrid have thought of a champion, say, of the 
 Licensed Victuallers' Association, who confined his 
 argument to showing that the number of deaths 
 directly certifiable as due to delirium tremens were 
 comparatively few ? Yet this is precisely the line 
 he himself takes in endeavouring to minimise the 
 evils of over-eating in order to maximise those of 
 over-drinking. 
 
 In conclusion, one must not forget the role played 
 in the temperance agitation by the morality of 
 Puritanism and asceticism. This code of morals, 
 belonging to what I have elsewhere termed "the 
 introspective ethics," having survived its theo- 
 logical sanctions, seeks to buttress itself up with 
 appeals to self-sacrifice for its own sake. As if 
 there were not plenty of occasions for the exercise 
 of a self-denial issuing in real good to humanity 
 or in real immediate services to one's fellows, 
 without seeking out opportunities for the display 
 of objectless moral gymnastics such as delight the 
 heart of the anchorite and the Puritan. Hence, 
 not content in resting their case on the good or 
 bad qualities of alcohol as proved by experience, 
 the votaries of this school are apt, in default of 
 better arguments, to appeal to the motives of 
 Simon Stylites. As regards strengthening and dis- 
 ciplining the will power, surely to practise the 
 
222 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 requisite moderation in drinking is more conducive 
 to this end than weakly yielding to the fear of ex- 
 cess by total abstention. Surely the man who can 
 stop at the right moment shows more character 
 than the man who, from fear of not being able to 
 do so, gives up drinking altogether. 
 
 A similar line may be taken as regards the argu- 
 ment from example so often trotted out by tee- 
 totallers. The man, probably the average man, 
 whose constitution can stand a certain amount of 
 alcohol and whose will-power is sufficient to pre- 
 vent him exceeding the limits in this respect, 
 prescribed by his constitution, ought, it is said, 
 to forego the use of alcohol for the sake of the 
 example offered by his doing so to the exceptional 
 man who drinks to excess. Preachers of this 
 doctrine forget that to be consistent they must 
 give it a wider application than the alcohol ques- 
 tion. For instance, I am recovering from a broken 
 leg, or suffering from phlebitis, varicose veins, or 
 some other malady, for which exercise is a bad 
 thing; my inclinations, nevertheless, are to move 
 about and thereby injure myself. It follows, there- 
 fore, that my healthy but high-souled neighbours, 
 those with whom I am thrown in contact, ought 
 to forego all walking exercise in order to set an 
 example to me not to injure myself by the same. 
 
 The fact is, of course, that this theory of the duty 
 of a healthy man to forego something which his 
 
ALCOHOL 223 
 
 constitution and temperament permit and, perhaps, 
 even enjoin, as an example to some other weak 
 or unhealthy person not to do the same things, 
 because, in his case, the doing of them would be 
 prejudicial to him, is fundamentally wrong. Not 
 merely has no man a right to require another man 
 to pander to his weakness, but the pandering itself 
 is a direct encouragement to the cultivation of 
 weakness of will in the individuals for whose sake 
 this particular self- sacrifice of the healthy and 
 normal man is made. The weak and abnormal 
 man ought to learn to regulate himself off his own 
 bat, so to say, without exacting from his neigh- 
 bour a sacrifice on his behalf which is purely 
 irrelevant and unnecessary. The high - souled 
 Puritan who abstains from alcohol, not because it 
 is bad for him or because he is likely to be tempted 
 to take it to excess, but because some other person 
 for whom it is bad, or who may be liable to drink 
 too much, might conceivably be influenced by his 
 example not to drink at all, is simply helping to 
 promote moral backbonelessness in his weaker 
 brother. A truly virile personal morality in 
 alcohol, as in the other appetites, would strive for 
 the maintenance of the juste milieu, as opposed 
 alike to shrivelling in abstinence or wallowing in 
 excess. What is really behind the abstinence move- 
 ment is the old asceticism in a new guise, and for 
 this reason, if for no other, it is to be distrusted. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF LIBERTY AND LIBEL 
 
 WHAT is the raison d'etre of the law of libel, civil 
 and criminal, and in how far does such a law 
 infringe the principle of the liberty of the Press ? 
 The main purpose of a libel suit is supposed to be 
 the clearing of character of false and calumnious 
 aspersion. The effect of the English law of libel 
 in its administration as at present obtaining is to 
 draw into the net of the libel action practically 
 anything that may be said by way of criticism of 
 any person or group of persons. In other words, 
 the existing law of libel is a direct infringement of 
 the principle of liberty of the Press. No distinc- 
 tion is made between a definite allegation, such as 
 that A stole a 10 note from B's pocket in the 
 year 1910, and the statement of the writer's opinion, 
 as an opinion, without quoting facts in support of 
 it, that A is not a trustworthy person. Now, the 
 bringing to book of the maker of a false assertion 
 of a damaging character, as in the first case sup- 
 posed, may certainly justify the intervention of the 
 
 224 
 
LIBERTY AND LIBEL 225 
 
 law without involving any real infringement of the 
 liberty of the Press. The same remarks apply to 
 the insinuations of a writer that he has something 
 " up his sleeve," which, " if he listeth," etc. As 
 much cannot be said for the second of the cases 
 supposed. If liberty of the Press is not to be a 
 meaningless phrase, any writer clearly ought to be 
 allowed to publish an expression of opinion on any 
 person, at least if he be in any capacity before the 
 public. The opinion expressed may be utterly 
 wrong, unjust, and unwarranted, but that ought 
 not to hinder the absolute right of the holder of 
 such opinion to give expression to it. If it is 
 wrong, the remedy for this wrong lies with public 
 opinion. People of ordinary intelligence will not 
 accept an opinion of this sort without evidence. 
 And in so far as this elementary principle of justice 
 and fair play is observed, no harm can come from 
 the expression of any opinion as such, however 
 unjustified it may be. So much for the case of 
 an injurious opinion destitute of. all foundation 
 whatever. 
 
 But in nine cases out of ten a published opinion 
 of this nature is not entirely destitute of founda- 
 tion. Its justification may have varying degrees 
 of completeness, from a mere rebuttable suspicion 
 to something like moral certainty. Yet, however 
 great may be the grounds of justification of the 
 
 opinion expressed, this does not shield a writer 
 
 15 
 
226 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 expressing such opinion from the terrors of the law 
 of libel. A distinction which is obviously fair is 
 never drawn between the degree of evidence justi- 
 ficatory of the expression of an adverse opinion, 
 direct or indirect, regarding a person, and the 
 evidence that ought to be required before a prisoner 
 in the dock is convicted of an offence. It is a 
 very different thing to publicly express an adverse 
 opinion concerning a man, and to send him to gaol. 
 In the latter case it is undoubtedly right to exact 
 the most rigidly clinching evidence before convic- 
 tion. In the former case a very much lower degree 
 of probability ought to justify. 
 
 As regards the existing law of libel and the 
 way it is administered, there is no doubt whatever 
 that it acts as a powerful weapon for the shielding 
 and aggrandisement of rogues. Cases are known 
 of doubtful characters who have made a good living 
 out of libel actions. Any published statement not 
 laudatory of the subject of it is nowadays adequate 
 ground for taking proceedings for libel. The 
 matter, from the point of view alike of the liberty 
 of the Press and from what is known as the " public 
 interest," is getting serious. But what is the 
 remedy ? The remedy which lies nearest to hand 
 would seem to be to effectively render the average 
 plaintiff* in libel actions odious to public opinion. 
 No opportunity should be lost to pillory the 
 plaintiff in a libel suit. Those opposed to the 
 
LIBERTY AND LIBEL 227 
 
 present state of things should not tire of pointing 
 out that the winner of an action for libel is by no 
 means necessarily the injured innocent he makes 
 himself out to be. It should be ceaselessly im- 
 pressed upon the average man that the winning of 
 a libel suit does not mean the clearing of character, 
 and that there is not even any guarantee that the 
 statements complained of are not substantially 
 true. The aim should be to introduce a social 
 boycott of the plaintiffs in all frivolous and doubt- 
 ful cases. Until a sufficiently strong body of public 
 opinion is set in motion nothing will be done. 
 Such a prejudice against plaintiffs in libel actions 
 does, I believe, obtain in some of the states of the 
 North American Union, where the libel action, 
 although nominally existing, is practically inopera- 
 tive. The result is that the worst excesses of yellow 
 journalism in the matter of vilification do no harm 
 to honest men, as no one pays any attention to 
 them, while the rogue has no legal fence behind 
 which he can skulk, and by which the confraternity 
 of rogues can exercise a terrorism over the Press in 
 order to prevent the actual, if technically unprovable, 
 truth about themselves from being made known. 
 
 It must not be supposed, however, that the libel 
 action, with its casting in damages, is the only way 
 of dealing with an unjustifiable aspersion on char- 
 acter on the part of the Press. In the case of a 
 journal the law might very well compel an editor 
 
228 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 to insert a denial or exculpation of the defamatory 
 statement running (say) to two columns, and this 
 on the first issue of the publication after such com- 
 munication was received. Failing such immediate 
 publication, an injunction might be obtainable 
 preventing any further issue of the journal in 
 question not containing the rebutting communica- 
 tion. To an editor overcharged with important 
 matter awaiting publication this might in itself be 
 no light punishment. 1 
 
 The unfairness with which the precious "remedy" 
 provided by the English statute-book against 
 aspersed character acts is obvious. In the first 
 place, it compels persons whose character has been 
 in truth wrongfully attacked by some lying organ 
 of the Press to bring a libel action whether they 
 will or not on pain of the false allegations made 
 against them being accepted by the public in 
 default. The really innocent person would in 
 most cases much prefer it if the law would allow 
 him to treat the matter with contempt, relying 
 on his character and reputation as sufficient pro- 
 tection in the eyes of the public. But the legal 
 interest does not see the matter in this light, and 
 
 1 It may be remarked that the principle of the above 
 suggestion is already embodied in the French Code, in the 
 Press Law of 1881, Art. 12, which provides, under penalty of a 
 fine, for the insertion, within three days of its reception, of any 
 explanatory or rectificatory matter up to double the length of 
 the article complained of. 
 
LIBERTY AND LIBEL 229 
 
 has no intention, if it can be helped, of relinquishing 
 such a mine of professional profit as the libel action ; 
 and judges, acting apparently as guardians of the 
 interests of the great legal trade union, naturally 
 encourage the bringing of these actions. 
 
 The unfairness to non-litigious persons of the 
 present state of the law, forcing such willy-nilly 
 to bring libel suits in sheer defence, is bad enough, 
 but worse remains behind. For while any ordi- 
 nary person can obtain damages, often vindictive 
 damages, for some trivial statement or expression 
 of opinion concerning themselves which displeases 
 them, a man known to hold unpopular opinions 
 (say he is an atheist, a militant Socialist, an anti- 
 jingo, etc.) can obtain no redress for the most 
 serious allegations against his character, allegations 
 that would gain for an ordinary respectable Philis- 
 tine swingeing damages from a sympathetic and 
 indignant judge and jury. The cases of Mr J. M. 
 Robertson, M.P., of Mr W. E. Williams, and of 
 Mr Edmondson will bear out what is here said. Mr 
 Robertson, the Secularist lecturer, was wrongfully 
 accused of taking part in an improper publication by 
 a Conservative organ. Mr Williams, the Socialist 
 and Labour agitator, was described as a " loafer " 
 by a paper to whom his views were objectionable ; 
 and Mr Edmondson, also a well-known Socialist, 
 who had, of his own accord, gone out to fight 
 in the South African war, was designated a 
 
230 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 " coward " similarly by an organ of public opinion 
 opposed to his political principles. Needless to 
 say, verdict for the defendant in all these cases. 
 Now, for my own part, I don't think calling 
 a man a "loafer" or calling him a "coward" 
 either, both of which are mere expressions of 
 opinion, views widely differing as to their applica- 
 bility in any given instance, ought to be actionable, 
 or to render the person using these expressions 
 liable to pains and penalties ; in fact, in common 
 with many others, I should regard the act of 
 deliberately going out to fight against the Boer 
 Republics as more morally disgraceful than any act 
 of cowardice from the military point of view com- 
 mitted on the field. But the fact remains that, if 
 used of the respectable Philistine, the above expres- 
 sions would undoubtedly enable the latter to obtain 
 a heavy sum of money. Hence the remedy provided 
 by law as at present administered is practically only 
 available for him whose views are not known to 
 be distasteful to the ruck of middle-class " respect- 
 ability." On him the law of libel, and those who 
 administer it, smile with favour, rogue though he 
 may be. But woe betide the man of heterodox 
 views, however untarnished his honour ! 
 
 The protection of characters that are worth 
 anything does not in most cases require the inter- 
 vention of the law, which it can easily be seen does 
 more harm than good. The real remedy lies in 
 
LIBERTY AND LIBEL 
 
 231 
 
 ic education of public opinion to prove all things 
 relevant thereto before accepting allegations in 
 aspersion of character, and to be always mindful 
 of the fact that though A may have a perfect right 
 to express any opinion he likes of B, yet that the 
 fact of his expressing it does not prove his state- 
 ments to be of any value whatever. Public opinion, 
 if it sets its mind to it, is quite capable of dealing 
 with persons or journals carelessly or maliciously 
 publishing libels as it deals with other forms of 
 objectionable social conduct. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF BRITAIN AND THE HUMAN RACE 
 
 THE Democrat and Socialist of the Continent has 
 got so much into the habit of regarding Great 
 Britain as the home of freedom, that nothing, it 
 seems, will induce him to recognise that the 
 England of to-day and the England of even fifty 
 years ago are two utterly different countries. 
 The Fabian, Sidney Webb, has truly said (Nine- 
 teenth Century, September 1901) that in that space 
 "the English have become a new nation." He 
 further observes that " centuries separate us from 
 the first period of the reign of Victoria." Allowing 
 for hyperbolic exaggeration, there is a considerable 
 element of truth even in this last assertion. The 
 first period of the reign of Victoria was the period 
 when the proletariat of England was stirred to 
 its depths by the Chartist agitation, when it was 
 more self-conscious, notwithstanding its necessarily 
 strong infiltration with ideas essentially belonging 
 to the small middle class, then the leading class 
 of democracy, than it has ever been since. The 
 
 232 
 
BRITAIN AND THE HUMAN RACE 233 
 
 middle class itself, at that time, did not lack ideals. 
 Beyond a certain anti-French feeling, surviving 
 from the Napoleonic era, and the dread of imminent 
 invasion by the grande armee, there was no special 
 Chauvinism noticeable. Popular statesmen like 
 Molesworth and Roebuck could even wish success 
 to the French Canadian rebels. An unjust war 
 in Burmah was extremely unpopular. The mon- 
 archy itself was by no means in especial favour, 
 still less regarded as above criticism. Colonial 
 expansion as a policy was as yet not dreamt of. 
 The glory of the Englishman was then not his 
 "empire," but his alleged free institutions. 
 
 To-day it is far otherwise. Every month that 
 passes shows us clearly that the modern Briton 
 is a moral and political degenerate. The one 
 ideal of the modern Englishman and Scotchman 
 (the Welshman, maybe, is somewhat better in 
 this respect) is the autocracy of Britain over other 
 peoples, and the cheap glory accompanying it. 
 For this he is willing, if necessary, to barter his 
 free institutions, invite conscription, and sacrifice 
 the whole national tradition or legend. Unhappily, 
 one cannot say that the above applies exclusively 
 or even mainly to the well-to-do classes, the aris- 
 tocracy and bourgeoisie. The bulk of the un- 
 organised working classes, at least, are in the same 
 galley. 
 
 Britain is to-day in the grip of international 
 
234 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 "high finance." Therein lies its safety. No 
 continental nation fears the British army, while 
 the manning of the navy is said by experts to 
 leave much to be desired. The real reason of 
 England's comparative security is its being the 
 head-centre of the world's finance. The financial 
 interest in every country is always pro- British. 
 The money-lords (alias gold-bags) hold the key 
 of the capitalist fortress, and modern capitalism 
 tends to become, with the new era of trusts and 
 big combines, of Rockefellers and Pierpoint- 
 Morgans and Carnegies, more and more domin- 
 ated by its financial side. Now Great Britain has 
 been the centre of the world of finance from the 
 very beginning. Hence it is that she has become 
 the great bulwark in Europe of modern capitalism. 
 The financier knows what the overthrow of the 
 British power would mean to him and to the 
 order he represents. The British power, in fact, 
 represents capitalism pure and simple, and in its 
 most dangerous form, namely, capitalism with a 
 power of expansion, capitalism in a position to 
 prolong its own life. 
 
 But the British nation, including the bulk of 
 its working classes, stands in another and a special 
 sense for the capitalist system in that, of all civilised 
 nations, it is the one possessing the weakest class- 
 conscious proletariat. The English proletariat still 
 remains, in the great mass, slow to assimilate revolu- 
 
BRITAIN AND THE HUMAN RACE 235 
 
 tionary Socialism, and therefore there is no effective 
 check upon the worst excesses of market-hunting 
 and colonial labour exploitation. That this has its 
 origin in racial characteristics I have always main- 
 tained ; but there is the third sense above hinted at, 
 in which Great Britain may be described as the 
 great bulwark of modern capitalism, namely, in 
 the remarkable capacity possessed by the " Anglo- 
 Saxon " (or Anglo- Celtic) races for colonial expan- 
 sion, in the ability which they, and especially the 
 British themselves, both south and north, possess 
 for effectively occupying and settling new countries. 
 Now, modern Capitalism must either expand or 
 evolve rapidly into Socialism. If it can succeed 
 in conquering new markets and fresh fields for 
 industrial exploitation quickly enough, it may 
 sustain itself under the regime of trusts and com- 
 bines for some time yet. If not, the final phase 
 of its evolution being accomplished, it must make 
 way for the new world-order destined to succeed 
 it. Now the Anglo-Saxon, judging by experience, 
 as already said, is the only race capable of per- 
 forming the feat of opening up and settling the as 
 yet non- capitalistic portions of the earth's surface 
 within the period necessary. This, I repeat, is his 
 admitted forte. The Latin nations that have tried 
 their hand at it (not even excepting France) have 
 failed, and in most cases signally failed. Russia 
 has expanded enough in all conscience, but has 
 
236 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 hardly got beyond the phase of penal settlements 
 and military posts. Even Germany, with all her 
 Cameroons and Hereros, has no success in colonisa- 
 tion to signalise. For this reason Britain is that 
 power which presents the greatest obstacle to 
 Socialism. 
 
 I know this last statement always sounds like a 
 paradox. It may be asked, where do you have 
 such free institutions as in England ? Where 
 such fair play to all political views? Our 
 continental brethren are much impressed, I am 
 well aware, by this argument. But now let us 
 for a moment consider the question of these 
 free institutions. Firstly, what is the difference 
 between the methods of governmental repression 
 on the Continent and here ? It is mainly this on 
 the Continent the forces of reaction, as represented 
 by a class-government, use the police for the 
 repression of adverse opinions ; in England, with a 
 much greater astuteness, they use the non-official 
 mob. In using the police, they may be accused of 
 tyrannical oppression, but when, by employing 
 or, at any rate, encouraging a gang of venal 
 roughs, they can allege that it is " the people " 
 themselves who rise against their opponents, the 
 base Radicals and Revolutionists, and that they are 
 unable to stem the torrent of popular indignation 
 at the doings of the aforesaid wicked and traitorous 
 firebrands, what more can be said ? The result is 
 
BRITAIN AND THE HUMAN RACE 237 
 
 the same in either case. Freedom of speech is 
 suppressed. 1 
 
 But, even apart from this, we have in the present 
 day in Britain an absolute indifference to the pre- 
 servation of those liberties on which the English- 
 man has hitherto prided himself. For instance, 
 one of his proudest boasts has always been his 
 freedom from compulsory military service. And 
 now what do we see ? Societies established and a 
 condition of public feeling fostered that would 
 make that service inevitable 1 Does anyone believe 
 that the average modern Briton, if he saw his way 
 to enslaving other and weaker nationalities better 
 by means of conscription, would not gladly submit 
 to it ? No, the privileged classes of Great Britain 
 have succeeded in demoralising the lower middle 
 and working classes of the country with the cry, 
 or rather the cat-call, of " patriotism " to such an 
 extent that they will sacrifice anything for the 
 pleasure of seeing weaker peoples, barbaric and 
 civilised, trampled under their feet. Hence I 
 argue that the superstition that England is the 
 land of liberty ought by this time to be fairly 
 exploded. 
 
 But even if we grant the assumption that within 
 the four seas comprising this island there is greater 
 liberty than elsewhere, and that a similar liberty is 
 enjoyed in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, 
 
 1 Written during the Boer war. 
 
238 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 this can by no possible warranty be affirmed of 
 countries ruled over by Great Britain. Nobody 
 could assert that there is greater freedom, greater 
 absence of governmental and police coercion, in 
 Ireland, at the Cape, in India, than in the depend- 
 encies of other States. On the contrary, when 
 Britain has dominated over another race, the callous 
 brutality of the methods employed are notorious. 
 Again, another point is often forgotten in compar- 
 ing the relative internal conditions of Britain and 
 continental European countries. In Germany, 
 France, Russia, governments may be bad, but 
 the heart of the people the working classes and 
 even large sections of the middle classes is politi- 
 cally sound. The action of the Government is 
 abhorred by the people as a whole, or at least by 
 large sections of them. In England, on the con- 
 trary, at the beginning of this twentieth century, 
 the great mass of the people must needs applaud 
 all that its Government does for the new-style 
 patriotic reason, if for no other, that it is "the 
 Government of its country." 
 
 We hear much of Majestdtsbeleidigung in Ger- 
 many, and indeed it is an atrocious law of which 
 any nation ought to be ashamed. But does anyone 
 suppose that, were such a law sought to be intro- 
 duced into this country, the masses of the " loyal " 
 British people would protest ? Some would 
 doubtless issue indignant remonstrances and hold 
 
BRITAIN AND THE HUMAN RACE 239 
 
 meetings, but it would be the same small band of 
 stalwarts who protested against the Transvaal war, 
 and their protest would be about as effectual. As 
 it happens, for the moment, the governing classes 
 have sufficient sense remaining not to wish to 
 imitate the German model. They would doubtless 
 be very willing, however, on occasion, to patronise 
 any band of hooligans who would make it their 
 avocation to administer condign punishment to 
 anyone speaking disrespectfully of royalty. And 
 if the above be true, where is your security against 
 the enactment of a law against Majestatsbeleidi- 
 gung once you get a strong empire with a gilded 
 plutocratic government which declares it necessary 
 to the welfare of the said empire that captious 
 criticism should be suppressed? 
 
 On the causes of this corruption of the British 
 character much might be said. But for practical 
 purposes it suffices that it is there, that it has 
 taken its place as a factor in human develop- 
 ment. And what does this factor, viewed in 
 conjunction with the aforesaid capacity of the 
 British race for colonial expansion, by which the 
 ends of modern capitalism are best subserved, 
 imply? I answer that human progress has here 
 to face an enemy which is not merely one of 
 class or of caste, but one of race. By mere good- 
 natured optimists it is commonly said that England 
 with all her faults is not so bad after all. Look at 
 
240 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 Russia, look at Germany, look at Italy, we are 
 told ! True, in Germany, in Russia, in Italy you 
 may have a system of government which varies 
 in its badness from being merely police-ridden to 
 being inhumanly and atrociously tyrannical. But, 
 after all, you have only a system of government, 
 with its embodying caste, to deal with in these 
 cases, even in the worst of them. And a system 
 of government may change from one week to 
 another. The evils it entails are generally more 
 or less transitory and remediable. This is not 
 true of our economic system. The ascendancy of 
 other existing national states means at worst the 
 ascendancy for a period, of a bad government, de- 
 tested by large sections of the people of these 
 countries. The ascendancy of Great Britain, on 
 the other hand, means the heading back of that 
 great economic revolution which shall transform 
 modern Civilisation into Socialism, inasmuch as 
 the history of the nineteenth century has shown 
 that the Anglo-Saxon alone can effectively open 
 up new countries in the time modern capitalism re- 
 quires them to be opened up in order to save itself 
 from imminent revolution. 
 
 I have spoken of the degeneracy of the modern 
 Britisher. As an illustration of the physical and 
 moral decline of the race, it is almost sufficient 
 to point to such a mob as celebrated the relief of 
 Mafeking, a spectacle which I venture to assert 
 
BRITAIN AND THE HUMAN RACE 241 
 
 could be afforded by no capital in Europe other 
 than London. In Paris, in Berlin, in Rome, in 
 Venice, such a thing would be inconceivable. 
 You might have violent mobs, you might have 
 brutal mobs, you might have foolish fanatical mobs, 
 but the squalid inanity of a Mafeking mob you 
 would look for in vain. This unspeakable abomin- 
 ation is not, then, a product of Capitalism merely, 
 but of Capitalism plus Race it represents not 
 merely man, but Anglo-Saxon man in process of 
 decomposition. But lest it should be said that 
 the Mafeking mob is an unfair test of the physical 
 and moral depravity of the modern Briton, let us 
 take certain other circumstances connected with the 
 Boer war, things which were recited and defended 
 in cold blood, without a blush, by English-speaking 
 people, and which I maintain show a complete 
 moral atrophy such as can be found in no other 
 nation of European origin: (1) The sending out 
 of a quarter of a million men to crush a small 
 nation with an army of 30,000, without the smallest 
 sense of shame, a feat only paralleled by the 
 glorious deeds of the British Army at Omdurman, 
 which consisted in the slaughter of Arabs (who 
 either had no rifles, or who couldn't shoot straight) 
 from behind machine guns ; (2) the diabolical ex- 
 termination of the Boer children in the concentra- 
 tion camps ; (3) the sending of expansive bullets 
 to South Africa against the decision of the Hague 
 
 16 
 
242 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 Congress, and then shrieking with indignation 
 when the Boers, who had captured cases of these 
 bullets, intended to be used against themselves, 
 employed them against the British troops ; (4) the 
 systematic and brutal burning of homesteads out 
 of sheer wanton spite ; (5) the dastardly murder 
 of prisoners of war, notably the massacre at 
 Elandslaagte and the murder of S cheeping, who 
 fell into British hands accidentally through sick- 
 ness ; (6) the excuse that "war is war," used to 
 whitewash every violation of the laws of civilised 
 warfare, followed by a snivelling whine when the 
 Boers mildly ventured to pay the British soldier 
 back in his own coin ; (7) the refusal of medicine, 
 doctors and ambulances, to the Boer combatants 
 a piece of devilish and dastardly ferocity which 
 has not been approached since the worst episodes 
 of the Thirty Years' war. 1 
 
 Now I submit that a nation that approves or 
 even tolerates these things is not fit at the present 
 time to exist as a political entity wielding sway, 
 directly or indirectly, over dependencies in any 
 way alien in blood to itself. I contend, further, 
 that a race that can at the beginning of the 
 twentieth century condone such things must be 
 so morally corrupt that the mere consolidation of 
 
 1 Since the above was written events have shown that other 
 nationalities, e.g. the Italians in Tripoli, can emulate the class of 
 acts referred to in the text. 
 
BRITAIN AND THE HUMAN RACE 243 
 
 its power among men of its own blood is a serious 
 menace to humanity generally. 
 
 Let us make no mistake, I repeat we have to 
 do not with a bad government, as in Russia, but 
 with a morally corrupt people a people of which 
 whole sections exhibit the character of the coward, 
 the bully, and the braggart, for such it has shown 
 itself repeatedly within the last few years. Let 
 that heroic nation famous over all Europe for its 
 unconquerable habit, during the Boer war, of 
 surrendering before the slightest show of superior 
 force try conclusions with a single continental 
 army. No one fears England to-day. It is the 
 cosmopolitan financiers at the back of England that 
 are feared. The modern Briton is being discovered 
 now not to be of the heroic mould, in spite of his 
 bullying braggatorio on occasion. 
 
 And now, what of the other, the American section 
 of the Anglo-Saxon race ? Never having been in 
 America, I am unable to speak from first hand ; 
 but, so far as I can judge, the American people, 
 while possessing many of the aforesaid undesirable 
 characteristics of the British (some of them, indeed, 
 in an exaggerated form), have been saved from the 
 complete moral degeneracy of the latter by a 
 circumstance which I shall revert to again directly, 
 viz., by the fact that the population is not, as in 
 the other case, pure Anglo-Saxon (using the term 
 Anglo-Saxon for the original blend of Kelt, Roman, 
 
244 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 Jute, Angle, Saxon, Dane, and Norman, constitut- 
 ing in different degrees the population of England 
 and southern Scotland). This blend, which forms 
 the basis, has been to some extent modified by a 
 variety of supervening ethnical elements. As an 
 instance of the difference in the two national 
 " tones," the Americans showed a decidedly more 
 widespread and vigorous opposition to their own 
 government's infamous enterprise in the Philippines 
 than can be said of the English opposition to the 
 South African war. 
 
 This leads us to our concluding topic, viz., what 
 combination of circumstances would avert the 
 danger threatening human progress through the 
 ascendancy of the Anglo-Saxon as he is at present ? 
 First of all, there is the possibility of his changing 
 his Ethiopian skin and his leopard spots. As we 
 all know, changed circumstances often do cause 
 rapid changes in national character. As we have 
 pointed out, the English nation of to-day is very 
 different from the English nation of the forties 
 and fifties of the last century. But does the 
 England of 1912 show such a considerable advance 
 politically and ethically on the England that made 
 merry on Maf eking Day in May 1900? I fear 
 we have no indications of such being the case. 
 Barring, then, a speedy change in the nature of the 
 human Anglo-Saxon as represented in this island, 
 what external conditions would be likely to effect 
 
BRITAIN AND THE HUMAN RACE 245 
 
 the result spoken of? These conditions must lie 
 in the direction of the limitation of British power 
 and the disintegration of the British Imperial 
 system. In addition, they might well include the 
 bringing of a new race-blend into those countries 
 where, as in the British Colonies, this could effec- 
 tively be done owing to the, at present, smallness 
 of the population. The two sides of this question 
 are dependent on one another, since a consolidated 
 British power, with its tentacles stretched over all 
 the world, would be in a position to counteract 
 any such effective blending promoting rather 
 inter- Imperial migration. A consolidated British 
 empire, as things go at present, would mean an 
 impenetrable bulwark of capitalism in its most 
 effective form, under Anglo - Saxon auspices, 
 athwart progress. The only possibility of the new 
 race-blend arising would seem at present to lie in 
 foreign conquest. The conquest of Australasia by 
 Germany or Japan, however repellant to British 
 colonial feeling, would at least give a chance for 
 the production of the new race-blend, and from 
 this point of view could not be regarded as an 
 unmitigated evil. For the reasons above given a 
 strong rapprochement between this country and 
 the United States is to be deprecated as tending 
 to the increased power of the Anglo-Saxon element 
 in America and indirectly to the consolidation of 
 the British colonial power. Where the Anglo- 
 
246 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 Saxon rules, there you seem to have capitalism 
 entrenched in its securest stronghold. Modern 
 finance indispensably needs the Anglo - Saxon 
 power for its international operation. Interna- 
 tional Socialism, as I contend, imperatively calls 
 for the break-up of the British Imperial system, 
 and hence it should be the policy of the British 
 Socialist Party to favour all disruptive tendencies 
 within the Empire. In furthering the aim of local 
 or national independence unhampered by the suze- 
 rainty of a larger capitalist Power under their 
 respective flags, the Socialist Party would be taking 
 the first step towards realising the final ideal of the 
 international union in a world federation under the 
 Red Flag of Social Democracy. Meanwhile "he 
 that letteth will let," and the very strong letting 
 power in this case is British Imperialism ! 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 THE interest attaching to the task of attempting 
 the historico-critical reconstruction of that great 
 episode in universal history which, through a 
 combination of circumstances, became the landmark 
 of the turning point in the evolution of the civilised 
 world, namely, the origin of Christianity, never 
 seems to lose its fascination. Among the immense 
 number of scholars and thinkers who, for a century 
 past, have set their intellects and their pens to the 
 task there is no risk in affirming that few have 
 produced more remarkable results than Karl 
 Kautsky in his Ursprung des Christentums. On 
 a basis of fact well known to scholars and historical 
 students, but by no means familiar to the average 
 man of intelligence and culture whose culture is, 
 by the way, generally confined to literature and 
 literary criticism and recks little of history 
 Kautsky has succeeded in producing a volume of 
 absorbing interest. In fact, as a purely literary 
 production we would unhesitatingly pronounce 
 
 247 
 
248 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 Der Ursprung des Christentums to be the master- 
 piece of the great literary protagonist of Socialism 
 in Germany. This, notwithstanding that the 
 arrangement of the work we hold to be faulty. 
 The book is divided into four sections, the first 
 a short one on the sources of Pagan and Christian 
 tradition for the personality of Jesus. This is 
 followed by a long section containing a brilliant 
 and graphic summary of the social conditions of 
 the early Empire. The author then returns chrono- 
 logically in the third section to an equally brilliant 
 survey of Jewish history from its origin. The 
 latter part of this deals, it is true, with post-exilian 
 Judaism and the Jewish sects of the Christian era, 
 thereby leading on to the fourth and longest section, 
 which is concerned with the beginning of Chris- 
 tianity itself. The arrangement strikes us as 
 clumsy. The portion of the fourth section dealing 
 with the early history of Israel ought surely to 
 have come before the discussion on the sources of 
 the Jesus-figure and the description and analysis 
 of the society of the Augustan period. 
 
 Apart from the vigour and interest of its literary 
 presentation and marshalling of historical facts, 
 Kautsky's book is remarkable, as those who know 
 anything of the other works of the author will 
 scarcely need to be told, for its thorough-going 
 and consistent attempt to reduce Christian origins 
 and the phenomena connected with them to 
 
THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY 249 
 
 economic causes. The book represents, indeed, an 
 endeavour to apply practically the materialistic 
 doctrine of history of Marx. But, in addition to 
 this, many interesting points are brought out in 
 the course of the discussions of various historical 
 problems. What Kautsky has to say on the tra- 
 ditional Jesus-figure is practically summed up on 
 page 19, where the author insists that the historical 
 kernel of the Jesus legend amounts to no more than 
 what Tacitus reports, to the effect that during the 
 reign of Tiberius a Jewish prophet was executed, 
 from whom the Christian sect took its origin. 
 " What this prophet did and thought," observes 
 Kautsky, "we have not the slightest means of 
 ascertaining with any certainty. In no case could 
 he have aroused the attention alleged by the early 
 Christian writers, otherwise assuredly Josephus, 
 who relates many unimportant matters, would have 
 had something to say about him. 1 The agitation 
 and execution of Jesus unquestionably excited not 
 the least interest among his contemporaries." 
 
 The legendary figure which has come down to us 
 formed itself gradually, as the originally small and 
 obscure sect grew out of the aspirations and ideas 
 of the various successive layers of its increasing 
 adherents. How the sect came to grow in numbers 
 
 1 The single passage in our Josephus in which the founder 
 of Christianity is referred to is now universally admitted to be 
 a later forgery. 
 
250 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 and importance, ultimately occupying the place it 
 did in the Roman world, is the task Kautsky has set 
 himself to solve by aid of the Marxian key, as we 
 shall see later on. Meanwhile, we may linger a 
 moment over the Kautskian view of the titular 
 founder of Christianity and the nature of his 
 personality. For Kautsky, Jesus was simply one 
 of the numerous agitators and messiahs which the 
 two last generations of the Jewish State brought 
 forth. On the absurdities and contradictions of 
 the Gospel version of the events preceding the 
 execution of Jesus our author has much to say. 
 He points out the clumsiness with which probably 
 authentic scraps of tradition concerning the char- 
 acter of the historical rebel-zealot, opposed alike 
 to the Roman power and to the respectable Jewish 
 parties of the time, who were prepared to com- 
 promise with the former, were allowed to remain 
 in the Gospel narrative side by side with the later 
 conception of Jesus as the meek and lowly apostle 
 of non-resistance and passive obedience, which it 
 was one of the new Gospel's main objects to embody. 
 The unhistorical absurdity of the whole Gospel 
 narrative of the trial and crucifixion is well brought 
 out. Kautsky's view of the story of the arrest is 
 that it took place during, and was in consequence 
 of, a conspiracy started by Jesus and his band 
 against the authorities of Jerusalem the rendez- 
 vous of the conspirators being the Mount of Olives 
 
THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY 251 
 
 and which seems to have been planned to follow 
 on the disturbance in the court of the Temple 
 which resulted in the driving out of the bankers 
 and salesmen who were installed there. On an 
 impartial survey of the evidence, which will be 
 found well marshalled in the work under review, 
 no fair-minded reader, we think, will be able to 
 avoid the conclusion arrived at by Kautsky, to 
 wit, that the historical Jesus was simply the leader 
 of a not very important local attempt at insurrec- 
 tion, and that his seizure, trial, and execution 
 followed immediately on the suppression of the 
 revolt. The unimportance is attested by the fact 
 that, while other messiahs acquired sufficient 
 influence to have left a name in contemporary 
 historical testimony, Jesus of Nazareth did not 
 do so. How then, it may be asked, was it, if the 
 original movement of Jesus was of a local and 
 temporary character, that the Christianity of 
 history eventually arose out of it ? This is the 
 problem for which Kautsky has his own solution 
 to offer, and in respect to this solution some of us 
 may be inclined to part company with our dis- 
 tinguished author. 
 
 As already said, the idea of Kautsky in writing 
 the Ursprung des Christentums was, in the first 
 instance, to furnish a practical application of the 
 "materialistic doctrine of history." Now, in the 
 present case, Kautsky's trump card is to be found 
 
252 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 in the alleged communistic tendencies of the early 
 Christian communities. The far-reaching influence 
 acquired by the tradition of these communities, as 
 well as the growth and diffusion of the communi- 
 ties themselves in spite of their insignificant origin, 
 Kautsky attributes mainly, if not entirely, to their 
 association with the principle of communistic 
 property-holding. As against this, however, two 
 important considerations may be urged : (1) Is the 
 assumed communism of the early Christians 
 demonstrable as an historical fact ? and (2) Even 
 conceding this fact, is it possible to regard it as 
 even a remotely adequate cause of the very far- 
 reaching effects ascribed to it ? For my own part 
 I am constrained to answer both questions by a 
 decided negative. The so-called communism of 
 the primitive Christian community at Jerusalem, 
 when closely viewed, amounted to no more than 
 an exaggerated alms-giving called forth by special 
 circumstances. The principal, and indeed, only 
 original source we have for its existence at all, 
 seems specially to emphasise its voluntary, and 
 hence so far as the principles of the community 
 were concerned, its non-essential, character. Evi- 
 dence we have none of any organisation in the 
 early Church embodying real communism in 
 contradistinction to the charity of the richer 
 members towards the poorer brethren of the 
 community or certain forms of ceremonial obser- 
 
THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY 253 
 
 vance in common. Kautsky is, of course, anxious 
 to " rope in " every statement or tradition he can 
 to prove his thesis, to wit, that the Christian 
 Church was originally a communistic organisation ; 
 the dogmas that it embraced, or that grew up 
 around it being, in the first instance, little more 
 than " ideological " decorations and emblems of this 
 central economic fact. The circumstance recorded 
 of the Apostles that when on a journey they had a 
 common purse or " bag " is noted by our author as 
 evidence of the communistic doctrine and tend- 
 encies of primitive Christianity. At this rate there 
 should be plenty of communism going about in 
 Western Europe every autumn holiday season 
 (especially in connection with Cook's tours), con- 
 sidering the number of tourist parties whose 
 members find it convenient to have a common 
 account during their trip. I give this as an 
 instance of how perfectly commonplace statements 
 can be coloured by a pre-conceived theory. 
 
 But if, even in spite of the lack of evidence, we 
 concede the communistic character of the early 
 Christian churches, what necessary or probable 
 reason have we, I ask, for assuming this character 
 to have been even the central element in them, 
 much less the distinguishing feature in Christianity, 
 that which differentiated it from amid the welter 
 of religio- mystical cults, sects, and brotherhoods 
 with which it was surrounded in the world of 
 
254 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 the contemporary Roman Empire? Was the 
 admittedly crude and imperfect communism of 
 consumption (as opposed to that of production), 
 alleged to have been practised by the early 
 Christians, a sufficiently distinctive and important 
 phenomenon in that age to have by itself attracted 
 numbers to the Church, and to have acquired for 
 Christianity the influence it obtained? Kautsky, 
 himself, indirectly answers this question against 
 his own thesis. 
 
 A certain theologian, anxious to rescue primi- 
 tive Christianity from the charge of communism, 
 urged against Kautsky that, although a variety 
 of ugly accusations were brought by the con- 
 temporary Pagan world against the Christian sect, 
 nowhere do we find any indications that the early 
 Christians were ever charged with practising com- 
 munism. The fact of its not being mentioned 
 by contemporary critics of Christianity might 
 indeed militate against the theory that it formed 
 a very prominent side of the new sect, but the 
 argument from the silence of these opponents is, 
 we must agree with Kautsky, certainly not any 
 proof of its not having existed. For, as Kautsky 
 very pertinently points out, communism as it was 
 understood in the ancient world, did not, either in 
 theory or practice, imply any reproach. It was 
 not viewed as having any special connection with 
 revolutionary tendencies. On the contrary, it was 
 
THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY 255 
 
 associated, more or less, with many forms of 
 religious, social, and even political organisation that 
 were in high esteem and was traditionally con- 
 nected with the honoured names of Pythagoras 
 and Plato. But in pointing this out, Kautsky 
 does not seem to see that he is arguing against his 
 own main position, to wit, that communism was a 
 distinguishing feature of Christianity. 
 
 What may possibly be regarded as ceremonial 
 survivals of the traditions of communism in the early 
 forms of human society obtained in well-nigh all the 
 fraternities, guilds, and corporations of the ancient 
 world, so that, for that matter, it is quite likely, 
 notwithstanding the absence of affirmative evi- 
 dence, that the early Christians may have had cer- 
 tain tendencies pointing to communism in the life 
 of their organisation. As for the periodical social 
 feastings, these they undoubtedly had, though 
 probably no one but Kautsky would regard them 
 as any evidence of actual communism. On the 
 contrary, in their Love feasts, which, as pointed 
 out by the Rev. Baring- Gould (Strange Survivals, 
 pp. 161-162), were but an adaptation of the 
 feasts of Aphrodite, "the well-to-do brought 
 food and wine with them and ate and drank by 
 themselves," while the poorer brethren were often 
 compelled "to look hungrily on." But even 
 allowing the utmost latitude to the alleged com- 
 munistic tendencies of early Christianity, we are 
 
256 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 still a long way from the assumption that com- 
 munism was an essential part of Christian doctrine, 
 or even practice, still less that it was the ground of 
 its success over similar sects and doctrines. Even 
 if communism, in the sense of the dividing-up of 
 consumable wealth, obtained in the early Christian 
 Churches, this was quite certainly a purely side- 
 issue. It was not this which led Christianity to 
 victory over the Roman world. It was not mere 
 exaggerated alms-giving, such as that described in 
 the Acts, which effected this result. Moreover, the 
 first great successes of the new sect began after the 
 supposed communistic practices were admittedly 
 becoming obsolete in the Church. 
 
 What, then, was the distinctive feature in early 
 Christianity which gave it " the pull " over Judaism 
 and the various Pagan cults and mysteries pro- 
 fessing the same general intellectual and moral 
 outlook as Christianity ? The answer, I take it, is 
 in the main obvious. During the second century, 
 how and why we cannot at present trace, the 
 Christian Church discovered, and made its own, 
 the formula or formulas best adapted to express 
 a strong intellectual and moral current already 
 existing for some generations throughout the 
 East and the Mediterranean lands, while at the 
 same time it absorbed from the various Pagan 
 cults around it the ceremonies and ritual best 
 adapted to body it forth. 
 
THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY 257 
 
 How and why it managed to effect this by a 
 process of selection, conscious or unconscious, 
 as just said, it is impossible at this distance of 
 time to find out. That the purely materialistic 
 side of the organisation of the early Christian 
 communities, together with the general con- 
 ditions of life in the great cities of the Empire, 
 powerfully contributed in the general result is 
 undeniable. But neither the economic con- 
 ditions of the society out of which it grew nor 
 those which it shaped for itself within its own 
 communities, can, having regard to the historical 
 evidence, be located as the central or determining 
 factor in the evolution of the Christian Church. 
 What, then, was this central factor ? Undoubtedly 
 the doctrine of the relation of the individual human 
 soul to the central power of the universe. This 
 was the problem round which the thought of the 
 then civilised world had been circling for genera- 
 tions. This was the theme of the Mysteries, of 
 the new cults introduced from the East, and the 
 new interpretation of the old myths and ceremonies 
 of an earlier Paganism. It was the ideal content 
 of the dominant thought of the age which crystal- 
 lised in the Christian sect and around its central 
 figure, which came to serve, so to say, as the 
 tailor's block to set forth these tendencies. That 
 every doctrine and practice belonging to the 
 Christian religion is traceable in the contemporary 
 
 17 
 
258 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 and pre-existing Paganism and Judaism of the 
 time is a fact no longer disputed by any serious 
 student of history, and to enlarge upon it here, at 
 any length, would be superfluous. 
 
 Why these ideas, common as they were to the 
 serious-minded men of the age and expressed in a 
 detached form in the various cults and mysteries, 
 should have concentrated themselves, as in a focus, 
 precisely in the Christian sect rather than in any 
 other of the various cults then prevalent, I again 
 repeat, is, to a large extent, one of the secrets of 
 history to which our imperfect materials for a 
 knowledge of the time furnish us with no adequate 
 key. We can only explain it in general terms as 
 due to the fact that the Christian religion suc- 
 ceeded in finding the formula most suitable for 
 the growing monotheism and ever - intensifying 
 introspective spiritual and ethical tendencies of 
 the age, together with the form of organisation 
 best adapted to maintain material continuity and 
 independence for the Christian sect as a sect. 
 That the alleged element of communistic practice 
 in the Christian Church, if it ever existed, had 
 nothing to do with historical Christianity can 
 hardly be doubted when we reflect that the 
 Essenes, tne Therapeutae, the votaries of Serapis, 
 not to speak of other lesser communistic brother- 
 hoods and religious bodies existing at the time 
 whose communism is not a matter of doubt, and 
 
THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY 259 
 
 was developed, it will not be denied, to a much 
 greater degree than could have been the case with 
 the early Christian Churches nevertheless did 
 not maintain their independence as was the case 
 with the new sect. It may, perhaps, be conjectured 
 that the elaborate system of inter-communication by 
 wandering preachers and by letters in which inter- 
 course was kept up, and a uniformity of doctrine 
 and practice promoted among the Christian com- 
 munities of the Empire, and under the influence 
 of which gradually the imperium in imperio of the 
 Catholico-Christian Church was developed, was the 
 most powerful factor on the material side in the 
 success of the new religion. 
 
 As regards the ideal side of the latter, the essential 
 element in Christianity, so far from its being com- 
 munistic, was the very antithesis of communism. 
 The Christianity of history represents, primarily, 
 the quintessence of the individualism of a decadent 
 civilisation as far as possible removed from the 
 communism of primitive times, which had its 
 symbolical expression rather in those primitive 
 local Pagan practices with which Christianity 
 waged so deadly a war. The central point of 
 Christianity was the relationship of the individual 
 soul to God as the creative principle of the 
 universe, combined with the idea of a future life. 
 It was this mystical relation of the individual soul 
 to God who, in popular thought, came to be 
 
260 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 regarded as a preternatural superman, on which 
 the whole Christian theory turns. This it was, 
 and not any exaggerated almsgiving, in which 
 Kautsky discovers communistic tendencies, that 
 really gained over the Roman world of the 
 first three centuries. Kautsky, in his sacramental 
 devotion to the historical materialism of Marx, 
 fails altogether to recognise the importance of this 
 introspective individualism and mysticism as a 
 salient phase of human evolution. The latter, of 
 course, got overshadowed, among the great mass 
 of nominal Christians as soon as large populations 
 became converted and the Church waxed rich, by 
 interested motives ; while, with the acceptance of 
 the Christian creed by the barbarians, and, still 
 more, with the establishment of their kingdoms, 
 it became entirely overgrown with the crude 
 animistic beliefs of an earlier phase of social life 
 and thought. But, though this continued sub- 
 stantially throughout the Middle Ages, the mystic- 
 individualist idea remained always, nevertheless, the 
 motive power of the saint and the higher intellects 
 of the Church. 
 
 The above criticism must on no account be taken 
 to imply that the present writer underrates the 
 value of Kautsky 's investigations. His work 
 contains much historical suggestiveness of a very 
 high order. He may not have succeeded in proving 
 the existence of communistic tendencies in any 
 
THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY 261 
 
 legitimate sense of the word, in the early Church 
 not even in the primitive Church of Jerusalem, 
 and assuredly not in the Christian communities 
 which spread over the Mediterranean countries 
 after the fall of Jerusalem but he has succeeded, 
 nevertheless, in establishing an important fact in 
 connection with primitive Christianity. Kautsky 
 has shown, beyond all probable doubt, that the 
 little-noticed sect of rebel-zealots at Jerusalem who 
 claimed Jesus of Nazareth as their founder, was 
 predominantly of a proletarian-anarchist character 
 understanding the word proletarian in the 
 classical sense of the word, as denoting a rabble 
 of indigent or destitute freemen. That its objects 
 were substantially the same as that of the other 
 insurrectionary cliques then common throughout 
 Palestine is highly probable, to wit, the freeing of 
 the country from the Roman yoke and the re- 
 establishment of the Jewish religion on a demo- 
 cratic and popular basis, with the control of the 
 Temple and its vast treasures by their own leaders. 
 Unlike other bodies professing similar aims, the 
 above revolutionary society succeeded in holding 
 together after the death of its leader. The com- 
 munity at Jerusalem it was to which all the pro- 
 letarian associations of Christianity were attached, 
 and it came to an end soon after the year 70. 
 
 From this date Christianity assumes quite 
 another character; it ceases to be rebellious, and 
 
262 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 becomes a religion of non-resistance to evil, and 
 it is from this time forward that it begins to 
 absorb the mystical tendencies of the age. The 
 old messianic and rebellious doctrines of the 
 original Jerusalem community became soon a heresy, 
 the so-called "Ebionite" heresy. "True Chris- 
 tianity," if by this be meant the Christianity of 
 history, began its career. The figures most inti- 
 mately associated with the changed Christianity 
 of the closing period of the first century is that of 
 Paul the Apostle. Now the greatest blemish in 
 Kautsky's book is his complete ignoring of the 
 figure of Paul. A treatise on the origin of 
 Christianity which ignores the author of the four 
 great Epistles constituting the foundation of the 
 Christian theology, and therewith the Christianity 
 of history, certainly suggests the notorious perform- 
 ance of the play of Hamlet with the part of the 
 Prince of Denmark left out ; for, whatever may be 
 said for or against the historicity of the Jesus- 
 figure, the fact remains that it is to the author 
 of the Pauline Epistles that the origin of the 
 Christian dogmas are due. From the closing years 
 of the first century onwards Christianity began 
 absorbing elements of various Pagan cults and 
 tendencies of the age, and it is not too much to 
 assert that the bulk of the dogmas and ceremonies 
 constituting Christianity at the present time, in all 
 its various forms, and which have constituted it 
 
*V.T 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY 263 
 
 throughout its historical career, date from the first 
 half of the second century. This, the only Chris- 
 tianity with which, for practical purposes, we are 
 concerned to-day, is, in essence, neither communistic 
 nor proletarian, but, on the contrary, mystical, 
 introspective, and individualistic. 
 
 As has been recently pointed out, the mystical 
 Christ of the Pauline Epistles in the later theology 
 has nothing really in common with the patriotic 
 rebel leader of the reign of Tiberius. The former 
 is a supernatural or quasi-supernatural being, with 
 no essential relation to any mortal individual. 
 (Cf. Bruckner, Die Enstehung der paulinischen 
 Christologie, 1903, 12 ; also Drews' Christ my thus.) 
 For Paul, the historical existence of any human 
 being who played a part in the social and religious 
 struggles of contemporary Palestine, and to whom 
 the origin of the Christian sect could be traced, 
 would probably have been a matter of complete 
 indifference. What he was interested in was the 
 new mystical interpretation of the old corn-god 
 myth which meets us in so many guises in the 
 cults and legends of the ancient world. In its 
 new interpretation, the story of the god or 
 the god-man dying and rising again became 
 a symbol of the mediative agency between the 
 individual soul and the world-soul, between the 
 all-powerful creative persona and its imperfect 
 created image. It was the symbol of an eternal 
 
264 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 process. As Professor Drews has said, Paul would 
 not have regarded the execution of any individual 
 human being as being anything more than the 
 accomplishment of a symbolical rite, the person- 
 ality of the victim in any particular case being a 
 matter of indifference. The few passages in the 
 Pauline Epistles in which the historical Jesus is 
 referred to, the same writer shows good grounds for 
 regarding as later interpolations. In any case, an his- 
 torical mundane Christ-personality does not seem to 
 fit in with the main system of the Pauline theology. 
 Reverting to the Jesus-figure as portrayed in the 
 Gospels, assuming it be historical at all, it would 
 seem as though we had to do with something like 
 a composite portrait, combining the divergent and, 
 even in some cases, contradictory characteristics 
 of, at least, two or three distinct personalities. 
 The somewhat ferocious rebel leader, apotheosised 
 by the dissenting hymn-maker as "gentle Jesus, 
 meek and mild," the social guest at wedding feasts, 
 the companion of publicans and sinners, and the 
 introspective moral and religious Rabbi of the 
 Sermon on the Mount, may quite possibly indicate 
 the traits of distinct individuals. It is certainly a 
 very common phenomenon of legend-formation, 
 this merging of different types in one complex 
 legendary personality. In any case, with the 
 Jesus-figure alone as portrayed in our Gospels, it is 
 improbable Christianity would have got very far. 
 
THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY 265 
 
 The Christianity of history has, as its real founder, 
 Paul the Apostle, if by that name we may desig- 
 nate the author of the four great Epistles and the 
 missionary forming the central figure of the narra- 
 tive in the Acts. It was the theology, founded 
 originally on the mythical groundwork common 
 to the races of Western Asia and Egypt, and 
 elaborated with the help of Greek metaphysics, 
 that found a convenient rallying point in the 
 communities whose ensign was the figure of the 
 rebel prophet, the messiah - patriot of Galilee. 
 It was the satisfaction this theology afforded to 
 the spirit of an age whose chief serious interest 
 lay in questions concerning the individual's destiny 
 after death and his relation to the Supreme Power 
 of the universe, inasmuch as it offered a convenient 
 answer, on a basis not foreign to the general 
 speculative outlook of the age, to these questions. 
 Successful organisation, almsgiving, the duty of 
 mutual assistance and the like, undoubtedly con- 
 tributed their part to the successes of the early 
 Christian Church, but I contend it is at once un- 
 historical and unpsychological to regard them as 
 the chief even, not to say the sole, cause of those 
 successes. 
 
 What many persons, and it would seem Kautsky 
 among the number, seem to fail to realise is that 
 the really living belief in a speculative theory which, 
 because it is a really living belief, powerfully 
 
266 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 affects the imagination of its votaries, can form 
 fully as mighty a motive power for action as 
 is to-day constituted by economic interests. Now 
 such was the case amid large sections of the society 
 of the Roman Empire. It is a fact familiar to all 
 students of Pagan literature of the early Christian 
 centuries that the dread of death continually 
 appears as casting a gloom over the life of the 
 period. We meet with it even in the Augustan 
 age of classical literature, in Horace, Virgil, 
 Catullus, etc. The tendency, of course, increased 
 with the decadence of the Greece-Roman world. 
 According to Kautsky it was the economic 
 blessings afforded by its supposed communism 
 or its real dispensation of eleemosynary relief, 
 that accounts for the growth of the early Chris- 
 tian Church. For him the economic factor is 
 the exclusively determining one throughout every 
 period of history and in every stage of social evolu- 
 tion, all other interests being defined by it alone. 
 For the present writer the economic factor, though in 
 modern times, under the regime of a fully developed 
 capitalism, undoubtedly predominant well-nigh to 
 the exclusion of all else, and though in the main 
 dominant throughout history as the motive power 
 of change, may be, and has been, on occasion, 
 subordinated, as a motive-power, to the other, the 
 intellectual and emotional factor, in human affairs. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY AS " VALUE " 
 
 THE modern view of the reign of law in history, 
 and of the " historical relativity " which is its out- 
 come, often leads the unwary to a kind of 
 mechanical fatalism in the estimation of historical 
 phenomena. The truth that everything is relative 
 to the general conditions of a period leads with some 
 to a sort of sacramental necessity being assumed as 
 attached to the whole of the concrete reality of 
 an age which it is conceived must have happened 
 so, and could not have happened otherwise. 
 
 For example, in discussing the question of the 
 origin and success of the Christian propaganda in 
 the lands constituting the Roman Empire during 
 the first three centuries of the Christian era, the 
 average modern rationalist is apt to assume the 
 Christian religion in all its aspects to have been 
 the necessary form for the ethical and theological 
 thoughts of mankind to take at this period, and 
 hence that its success was, as it were, pre-ordained 
 by the general conditions of historical evolution. 
 
 267 
 
268 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 Now this view belongs to the order of ideas which 
 consciously or unconsciously treats the real world 
 as being wholly composed of, or dominated by, 
 determinate and determining concepts, rules, and 
 laws : in a word, by its logical aspect alone. It is 
 a view that ignores the truth elsewhere insisted 
 upon by me with considerable elaboration (cf. 
 The Roots of Reality) : to wit, that all reality 
 consists au Jond of two elements or aspects, an 
 alogical as well as a logical ; that the former can 
 never be completely absorbed by the latter or 
 legitimately treated as reducible under it, not- 
 withstanding that in our experience we find both 
 elements in indissoluble union. 
 
 Now, if we are to form a correct judgment 
 upon the content of history as a real process in 
 time, it is essential to distinguish between the 
 element in that content which is determined by 
 the inner necessity of the whole historical move- 
 ment at the period dealt with, and that other 
 element which, while forming part of the total 
 result, is nevertheless per se accidental, and hence 
 which might have happened otherwise, which, in 
 short, belongs to the alogical side of the historical 
 process. 
 
 Reverting to the instance before mentioned, 
 which forms the main subject of the present chapter, 
 as to the way in which we regard the functions of 
 the Christian religion in history, the problem would 
 
CHRISTIANITY AS VALUE" 269 
 
 seem to stand as follows : In how far are we to 
 attribute the success of the Christian Church in the 
 Roman Empire to its answering to certain intel- 
 lectual and moral aspirations (i.e. to its having a 
 certain value) forming part of the mental atmos- 
 phere of the then world, and hence in how far may 
 we regard it as a necessity of the historical process 
 itself, and in how far it was an event which, con- 
 sistently with the general trend of that process, 
 need not have happened or might have happened 
 otherwise ? 
 
 If we take an impartial view of the conditions 
 of the first three centuries, we shall find that the 
 general consciousness was moving along certain 
 lines, and was becoming dominated by certain be- 
 liefs and aspirations. The serious-minded man of 
 all classes and of all countries (in the first and 
 second centuries), coming within the range of the 
 civilisation of the ancient world, was eminently 
 introspective, i.e. his chief object of interest was 
 his own soul and its welfare after death, which he 
 connected with some mystical relation it bore to 
 the Supreme Power of the universe as personified 
 in him. His whole theory of life was based on the 
 supernatural and the belief in magic. Hence for 
 him questions of God and personal existence after 
 death were questions of very intense and practical 
 moment indeed, just as for the serious-minded man 
 of to-day are social and economic questions. Of 
 
270 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 the course of social life and thought from earlier 
 times which led up to this state of things, of the 
 contemporary political and economic condition 
 which contributed to intensify the general intel- 
 lectual attitude, it is unnecessary to speak here. 
 It is sufficient that it existed, that notions deriv- 
 able from this thought and atmosphere belonged 
 to the social consciousness of the time, and that 
 some religious system formulating them, together 
 with the needs and aspirations bred of them, was 
 inevitable. Every philosophical and religious theory 
 of the universe which was then current endeavoured 
 to meet these demands in its own way. Chris- 
 tianity did this, and gradually absorbed, or success- 
 fully competed with, the rest, owing to reasons 
 which, with our scant and imperfect data, it is 
 impossible at present fully to determine. 
 
 Now, the main point of interest for us here is 
 that the element of " inevitability " in the historical 
 success of Christianity consisted solely in its ex- 
 pression of the aforesaid tendency of thought and 
 aspiration. That which is logically given in the 
 general movement is inevitable ; that which is not 
 so given is not inevitable. But there were other 
 features specially characterising the Christian faith 
 and Church, which we have no reason to regard 
 as inevitable, i.e. as necessarily given in the con- 
 ditions of the time, but which might well have 
 been otherwise. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AS "VALUE" 271 
 
 First and foremost among the features which 
 from out all the creeds and cults of the Roman 
 Empire is peculiar to Christianity alone is the 
 idea of religious intolerance, of compulsory assent 
 to dogma, of a disbelief in a theory as being 
 criminal. There is no difficulty in conceiving that 
 (let us say) the religion of Mithras, that Neo- 
 platonism, that Manicheeism all of which systems 
 embodied the same general tendencies as Chris- 
 tianity might have succeeded in ousting their 
 rival. In fact, it is well known that there was a 
 time during the third century when, to the modern 
 scholar looking back, it seems to have been a mere 
 toss up which the world should become, Mithraic, 
 Manicheean, or Christian. Now, had the former 
 alternative happened had, indeed, any one of 
 these other claimants for the suffrages of the 
 serious-minded man of the three first centuries 
 succeeded in overcoming the Christian Church 
 the element of dogmatic intolerance, and with it 
 of religious persecution, which was otherwise alien 
 to the ancient world, would never have arisen to 
 stain the pages of subsequent history. 
 
 Another peculiarity of the Christian religion, 
 doubtless derived from the Judaism in which it 
 first originated, was the dogmatic aggressiveness 
 of its monotheism. The Trinitarian dogma which 
 it evolved later was a concession, of course, to 
 Pagan thought, but did not materially affect the 
 
272 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 issue. That issue was the direct responsibility of 
 the Supreme Being conceived of as personified and 
 as perfect, for the creation and the ordering of the 
 world. This was the main point at issue between 
 the Church of the second century and the Gnostic 
 systems. While the Church maintained that all 
 things evil no less than good had been called into 
 being by the direct fiat of the Creator, who was 
 identified with the Supreme God, the Gnostics 
 relegated the responsibility for the creation of a 
 world in which evil was predominant to an inferior 
 being or beings, partially at least the negation of 
 the higher spiritual powers, and in no sense the object 
 of adoration, Now it is by no means clear that 
 the late Judeo-Christian conception of a Creator- 
 God, the sum of all perfection in power, wisdom, 
 and goodness, and yet the Creator and Providence 
 of a world in which the element of evil is pro- 
 minent, was essential to the intellectual and 
 emotional aspirations of the first two centuries. 
 Other contemporary religious systems were spared 
 the immoral and illogical attempt to justify the 
 ways of the Creator-God. Paganism recognised 
 no special embodiment of the universal Creative 
 Power. Hence we have no reason for regarding 
 the erection into a supreme object of worship of the 
 author of this world as inevitably given in the specu- 
 lative thought of the age, and as such we may 
 fairly treat it as a speciality of the Christian faith. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AS "VALUE" 273 
 
 Yet another speciality of the faith propagated by 
 the Christian Church, but the inevitability of which 
 cannot be concluded from the general historical 
 process, is the imperfection of the character-ideal 
 embodied in its central figure. I am aware that 
 many hold the Jesus-figure to have been the great 
 piece de resistance of the Christian faith, that which 
 enabled it to successfully outbid rival systems and 
 cults. While it is often admitted that the morality 
 of the Gospel discourses is not original, since it 
 is to be found in earlier and elsewhere in con- 
 temporary thought, the Jesus-figure is supposed 
 to have exercised a unique charm on that most 
 uncritical stratum of the population of an uncritical 
 age, from among which the converts to the Chris- 
 tianity of the first and second centuries were mainly 
 drawn. Even if we admitted that there might be 
 something in this, the relative success of other 
 religious systems one, at least, very nearly ap- 
 proaching in numbers and influence Christianity 
 which had no historical or quasi-historical figure 
 as an object of devotion, would tend to show that 
 such a figure was not essential or inevitable to the 
 religious consciousness of the time. 
 
 Professor Bury, in his introduction to Mr Stewart 
 Hay's remarkable study of the Emperor Elagabalus 
 (xxvii.), speaking of the relation of Christianity to 
 other cults of the time, observes : " It is unproven 
 
 that Christianity is the best alternative." He 
 
 18 
 
274 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 further expresses the opinion that, had it succumbed 
 before one of its rivals, " we should be to-day very 
 much where we are." I therefore contend that 
 both the principle of religious intolerance, i.e. of 
 the culpability of disbelief, the cult of the Creator- 
 God, and the Jesus-figure, with all its imperfections, 
 belong to the accidental side of the history of the 
 time, and not to its essential and inevitable trend, 
 that they are special characteristics of the Christian 
 Church and its doctrine, and not given in the 
 general tendencies of the age ; and that hence we 
 are justified in charging them, for good or evil, 
 to the account of the Christian religion, per se, 
 namely, as a particular product of the human 
 mind, and judging it with regard to them as an 
 isolated phenomenon. It is from this point of 
 view that I hold we are further justified in pro- 
 nouncing Christianity as on the whole a bad religion 
 from the outset, just as I pronounce a man to be 
 a bad man who has certain bad personal qualities 
 over and above those attributable to his age, class, 
 or race. With the Christian religion the case 
 would seem to stand thus : Its good sides are not 
 original, but are shared by it in common with 
 other contemporary creeds and cults. What is 
 peculiar to it are three points named, i.e. dogmatic 
 intolerance, the cult of the Creator-God, and the 
 Jesus-figure of the Gospels. 
 
 If challenged as to the super-eminent human 
 
CHRISTIANITY AS "VALUE" 275 
 
 virtues of the Jesus-figure as presented in the 
 Gospels, I am ready with my answer. I do not 
 rest my case on my non-appreciation of particular 
 traits e.g. of a young person who at twelve years 
 takes to " disputing " with his learned elders, or of 
 the wisdom of heaven-sent teachers who use strong 
 language at trees for not bearing fruit at the wrong 
 time of year as a vent to their ill-humour at being 
 unable to satisfy their hunger. Neither do I press 
 home too severely the question as to the reason- 
 ableness of basing a dogmatic estimate of personal 
 character solely on an avowedly partisan recital l of 
 certain events and speeches selected out of a three 
 years' propaganda tour. What I do say is, that 
 
 1 The unscrupulously partisan nature of the Gospel narrative 
 is strikingly exemplified in the treatment of a rival agitator to 
 Jesus. " Barabbas," whose name is now a byword, but which 
 simply means the Son of Abba, is abusively styled a " robber," 
 and is accused of "committing murder" in an insurrection. 
 The data given would simply seem to indicate that this Son of 
 Abba was a leader of one of the numerous abortive emeutes 
 occurring in Jerusalem at the time, and that his worst crime was 
 probably an excess of patriotic zeal and religious enthusiasm. 
 Insurrections are not generally made with rose water, and that 
 lives were lost in street fighting is likely enough ; but to charge 
 "Barabbas" with "murder" looks like sheer malignancy. How 
 about the attack on persons lawfully engaged in earning their 
 livelihood in the forecourt of the Temple by Jesus and his 
 followers ? For, as Mr Sturt of Oxford has recently shown, it is 
 quite clear that this incident, if historical at all, implies the armed 
 raid of a band, by whom the Temple authorities were for the 
 time being overpowered. Would lives lost in this case have 
 meant "murder" ? It would seem from the narrative that the 
 parallel between the cases of Barabbas and Jesus was obvious 
 alike to Pilate and the Jerusalem mob. 
 
276 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 the character portrayed in the Gospel narrative, so 
 far as one can form a judgment on it from the data 
 given, conveys the impression of a real self-idolatry, 
 combined with a disingenuous humility which is 
 singularly unpleasing, and which, elevated to the rank 
 of a model, has, I conceive, been a fruitful source 
 of that vice of hypocrisy to which the Christian 
 religion in all ages has so readily lent itself. In 
 the above-mentioned impression I am so far from 
 being alone that an eminent divine of the Scottish 
 Church, in an article in a leading review some few 
 years ago, virtually admits the self-idolatry, but 
 saves his ecclesiastical face by trying to forge out 
 of it an argument for the dogma of the divinity of 
 Jesus. We are, says he in effect, on the horns of 
 a dilemma either Jesus was a vanitous person and 
 a quite imperfect character, or else he was God, 
 and as representing divinity in human form he had 
 a perfect right to "put on side" (so to say)! Our 
 Scotch theologian, if I remember rightly, even 
 adduces the case of an ambassador of a great power 
 who has to remind the foreigner perpetually of his 
 importance and dignity. The naive and childlike 
 suggestion of the eminent Scottish divine will 
 hardly fail to excite a smile with many persons. 
 The idea of God, of the divine government, sending 
 down to earth an envoy- extraordinary is to me 
 humorous, but it would certainly appeal to the 
 barbaric mind. Be this as it may, the recogni- 
 
CHRISTIANITY AS "VALUE" 277 
 
 tion of the imperfection of the character from a 
 human point of view is significant as coming from 
 a distinguished luminary of the Christian Church. 
 
 Who of us has not known, or known of, propa- 
 gandists of to-day who, alike without personal 
 exaltation, without parading the fact that they have 
 had no certainty of a night's lodging, and without 
 ostentatious " humility," have carried on their work 
 for a lifetime (e.g. the protagonists of the Russian 
 revolutionary movement) ? 
 
 There is a third point regarding Christianity as 
 a special and particular manifestation of the religious 
 tendency of the age in which it arose, over and 
 above the necessities of that tendency itself, and 
 which is also reflected in the recorded conduct of 
 its founder. I refer to the apparently unacknow- 
 ledged plagiarism of the precepts of the Gospel 
 discourses, precepts which we all (at least up to a 
 certain point) recognise. We all know that the 
 morality called Christian had been preached before, 
 and was being preached at the time by Stoics, 
 Buddhists, probably by the Essenes, and certainly 
 a little earlier by the Jewish Rabbi Hillel. Now, 
 whatever may be the case with the other sources 
 mentioned, it is hardly conceivable that a Jew of 
 Palestine in the time of Augustus, interested in 
 religious matters, should not have heard of the 
 Rabbi Hillel and his teaching. Hence it is very 
 difficult to acquit the author of the Gospel dis- 
 
278 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 courses of appropriating noble ideas without 
 acknowledgment ! 
 
 The foregoing are certainly defects in the Chris- 
 tian system viewed as a special phenomenon of 
 human culture. The reply of the Christian to such 
 a criticism (apart from personal abuse of the critic, 
 his usual weapon) I can very well foresee. " By 
 its fruits ye shall judge it," he will say. " (1) How 
 came it that such an imperfect creed, as you 
 picture it, gained over other systems also embody- 
 ing the general religious aspirations of the first 
 three centuries? and (2) how was it that such a 
 creed purified and regenerated the world ? " 
 
 The rejoinder to the first question is that in the 
 absence of any even approximately adequate data 
 as to the inner social and intellectual life of the 
 period, above all, our almost total absence of know- 
 ledge of the feelings and aspirations of the masses, 
 it is a sheer begging of the question to assume that 
 the success of Christianity was due to its intrinsic 
 merits. Even as it is, we can see many external 
 causes which undoubtedly contributed to that suc- 
 cess (e.g. a skilfully devised and carried out system 
 of agitation and organisation, the latter includ- 
 ing eleemosynary relief). The conversion of the 
 Roman world was a slow process ; moreover, its 
 greatest numerical extension, it should be noted, 
 took place precisely at a time when it is admitted 
 by most Christians themselves that their religion 
 
U^ T, 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AS "VALUE" 279 
 
 had lost its original purity, and was, indeed, advanced 
 far in the path of corruption. 
 
 The second question, as to the purifying and re- 
 generative effects of Christianity, may be answered 
 by a simple denial of the facts. To make good 
 this denial at the present time and place does not 
 lie within my present scope ; but the open-minded 
 reader may be referred to two popular and succinct 
 statements of the case from this point of view to 
 the late Cotter Morison's Service of Man, and to 
 Mr M'Cabe's recently published work, The Bible in 
 Europe. In short, it can be very easily and con- 
 clusively shown that not a single one of the bene- 
 ficent effects ascribed to the advent of the Chris- 
 tian religion in the Roman Empire are really due 
 to it, but, in so far as they rest on facts, are trace- 
 able to quite other causes causes in most cases 
 already in operation before Christianity dawned on 
 mankind. 
 
 On the other hand, three things Christianity has 
 undoubtedly given to mankind viz., religious per- 
 secution, an evil-producing world-creator as object 
 of worship, and religious hypocrisy. A Catholic 
 bishop had the effrontery, after the judicial murder 
 of Ferrer, to talk in an encyclical about the antag- 
 onism of the wicked world to "Christ and His 
 Church." Yes, there has been, is, and will con- 
 tinue so long as a vestige of organised Christianity 
 remains, an antagonism between all that is best in 
 
280 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 the world, all that is worth living and fighting for 
 in human affairs, and the solid phalanx of opposi- 
 tion to knowledge, backed by cruelty, toadyism to 
 wealth, privilege, and lust of oligarchic power, for 
 which in the main " Christ and His Church " have 
 always stood. The men of movements are, after 
 all, largely symbols. It may well be that the 
 Idealist, the Socialist, and the Free-thinker of the 
 future, will oppose to the memory of the self- 
 glorifying Galilean of what by an arbitrary conven- 
 tion (as reckoning from the 27th year of Augustus, 
 A.U.C. 753) we term the first century, that of 
 the self-effacing Catalonian of what by the same 
 reckoning we term the twentieth century. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 ( 
 
 PROBLEM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AS THE 
 DERELICT OF THE AGES 
 
 'HE collapse of all forms of dogmatic Christianity 
 during the latter half of the nineteenth century is 
 a matter that will repay the careful attention of 
 the student of history and sociology. The most 
 interesting example of this collapse, or decay from 
 within, is afforded by the Roman Catholic Church. 
 The great, co-equal, sometimes rival, sometimes 
 coadjutor, of the secular powers of the civilised 
 world during the Middle Ages is now left stranded, 
 a hollow wreck, imperfectly concealing in the 
 quasi-integrity of its outward forms the decaying 
 rottenness within. In a recent work the ex-Jesuit 
 father, Mr Joseph M'Cabe, has traced the fact of 
 this decay and shown it to be not confined to one 
 country or group of countries, but general through- 
 out all the nations comprising what is known as 
 Christendom. He shows it to have followed 
 closely in all cases the advance of education. In 
 
 281 
 
282 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 the Latin countries, Catholic religion is to all 
 intents and purposes dead in the large towns, 
 while even in the countryside its influence is not 
 a tithe of what it was half a century ago. In 
 France, with the exception of some of the districts 
 in the south-west, Catholicism can hardly be said 
 to exist any longer as a living faith. It would be 
 interesting, could we get at the facts as to the 
 number of "true believers," that is, persons for whom 
 the appellation Catholic is more than a mere label. 
 An eminent authority friendly to Catholicism 
 has estimated the number of French Catholics 
 at not more than "three or four millions," all 
 told, out of the nearly forty millions of the French 
 population. This estimate, which certainly con- 
 firms the impressions of those acquainted with 
 modern French life, even if it be only approxi- 
 mately true, would fully justify the statement that 
 Catholicism as a national faith in France is dead. 
 The same writer, Sabatier, puts the number of 
 French Catholics in the earlier part of the nine- 
 teenth century at thirty millions. These figures, 
 which, as Mr M'Cabe shows, cannot be much 
 exaggerated on either side, are indeed significant. 
 A similar state of things to the above is to be 
 found in the other Latin countries, with the ex- 
 ception that the hold of the Church on the 
 peasantry, who, in many cases, are wholly illiterate, 
 is proportionately stronger. 
 
MODERN CATHOLICISM 
 
 283 
 
 In the German Empire, in spite of appearances, 
 the strength of the " Centre " representation in the 
 Reichstag is demonstrably due to the inequality 
 of electoral districts. Mr M'Cabe points out 
 that while a Social Democratic deputy represents 
 70,000 votes, a Catholic deputy will only represent 
 21,000. The Catholic vote, moreover, is shown 
 to have fallen from 27 to 19 per cent, in twenty 
 years. In Austria the Romano-Christian faith, 
 while dead to all intents and purposes in the 
 large centres, retains a steadily diminishing hold in 
 many peasant districts of the Tyrol, Steiermark, 
 Karnthen, etc. In Hungary, the strength of the 
 Church lies exclusively in the illiterate peasantry. 
 As regards the smaller countries of Western and 
 Central Europe, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, 
 they all tell the same tale to wit, a heavy loss to 
 the Church in the number even of its nominal 
 adherents, while its real influence is reduced to a 
 fraction of what it was two generations ago, or even 
 less. The statistical and other details confirming 
 what is here said will be found set forth in Mr 
 M'Cabe's book, The Decay of the Church of Rome. 
 
 There is a general impression abroad that though 
 the Catholic Church may be losing in the Latin 
 countries, it is gaining in those occupied by the 
 Anglo-Saxon race. We commend to those who 
 think thus the chapters in which Mr M'Cabe 
 conclusively demolishes this notion. As regards 
 
284 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 the English-speaking world, Mr M'Cabe's verdict 
 is, after giving figures in support of his statement, 
 that, apart from France, the Roman Catholic Church 
 has lost as heavily in the English-speaking world 
 as it has done in the Latin world. Of the United 
 States the same story might be told as of Great 
 Britain and its colonies. A million of the " faith- 
 ful " is shown to have fallen away in the last decade 
 of the nineteenth century alone. The general loss, 
 as will be seen, is no less here than elsewhere, 
 notwithstanding the fact that of late years the 
 Church has undoubtedly effected some transfers to 
 itself from the dogmatic Protestant sects. The 
 change from one form of dogmatic Christianity to 
 another, it may be remarked, does not, of course, 
 touch the general decay of Christian theology all 
 along the line. 
 
 The remarkable rationalist movement within the 
 Roman Church which has sprung up during the 
 last ten years, corresponding to similar movements 
 in the Protestant Churches, and known as Modern- 
 ism, has rapidly grown to such proportions as to 
 throw the authorities at the Vatican into some- 
 thing like a panic. The only remedy the latter 
 seem to have been able to devise against it, in the 
 abjectness of their terror, is the exaction of a 
 special oath from its clergy pledging themselves 
 in advance not to accept or preach the doctrine 
 even before they have investigated it. Such a 
 
MODERN CATHOLICISM 285 
 
 measure will seem to most impartial persons to 
 partake of the nature of Mrs Partington's opera- 
 tion with her broom. Yet the anxiety of the 
 curia " bosses " respecting Modernism is not 
 without good ground. They feel that once the 
 dogmatic integrity of the traditional Church 
 system is gone, the whole raison d'etre of the 
 Church organisation will have gone too. 
 
 Up to the present time, while the Church has 
 lost in everything else, in numbers, influence, 
 character, there is one point in which it has not 
 lost namely, in money. Its real property and its 
 invested funds have gone on increasing. What 
 this is may be gathered when it is said that on a 
 moderate estimate over thirty years ago, i.e. in 
 1880, in France alone, the Jesuit property was 
 computed at seven hundred million francs, or 
 nearly three millions sterling, while the total value 
 of the real estate of the monastic orders has been 
 estimated approximately by good authorities at 
 80,000,000 (eighty millions sterling). This is 
 quite apart from the privileges enjoyed by the 
 Catholic hierarchy in France, by which they are 
 allowed the free use of the churches, i.e. the 
 national property, in itself equivalent to a large 
 state subsidy. Such being its financial condition 
 in one country alone, the prodigious wealth of the 
 Church as a whole may be fairly well gauged. 
 Its possessions in Spain, Italy, and Austria, and 
 
286 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MOEALS 
 
 in the Catholic parts of the German Empire, are, 
 on the average, certainly not less in proportion, 
 and in some cases much more. Altogether, the 
 present condition of the Catholic world points to 
 the probability that the moribund hulk of the 
 once mighty organisation is kept in being solely 
 by the aid of its material assets, and that, were 
 it deprived of these, or even were their amount 
 substantially reduced, the Catholic community 
 would in a very short time sink to the level of a 
 small sect. 
 
 Not the least striking point in Mr M'Cabe's 
 exposure of the decay of the Roman Church is his 
 proof of the fact that the enormous majority of 
 its nominal votaries are unable to read or write. 
 Of the Vatican's 190,000,000 followers, more than 
 120,000,000 are illiterate. The Latins and Slavs, 
 we are told, alone furnish more than 100,000,000 
 of these illiterate followers. This means, says Mr 
 M'Cabe, " that the majority of the Roman 
 Catholics in the world to-day consist of American 
 Indians, half-castes, negroes, and mulattoes ; 
 Italian, Spanish, Russian, and Slavonic peasants 
 of the most backward character ; and Indian, 
 Chinese, and African natives " (pp. 304-5). 
 
 In the following section I deal with the attempts 
 made by the Catholic interest to bluff the real 
 situation as regards the strength and influence of 
 Catholicism and to make the world believe that 
 
MODERN CATHOLICISM 287 
 
 the derelict carcase still shows signs of life, and, 
 indeed, of a reviving life, in endeavouring to make 
 the defence of Catholicism an up-to-date pose by 
 attracting to it, here and there, a smart journalist, 
 and as many dabblers in literature of the decadent 
 and intellectual dude type as can be roped in. 
 
 II 
 
 The question we have to consider now is the 
 inner meaning of the rapid decay of Catholicism 
 in its social, political, and personal influence. The 
 first and most obvious explanation is that Catho- 
 licism shares in the common fate which has over- 
 taken all traditional dogmatic faiths resting on 
 authority the "institutional religions" of the 
 world, as they are sometimes termed. The latter 
 respond to and are the products of a phase of 
 human culture which civilised mankind in modern 
 times is fast outgrowing where it has not already 
 outgrown it. The early and classical expression of 
 decaying belief is the familiar antithesis between 
 the devot and the honnete homme. The advance of 
 human knowledge and the condition of mind en- 
 gendered by modern thought generally, has, within 
 the last half century at least, caused the attitude 
 of the honnete homme to become the typical and 
 normal one for civilised mankind in general. Yet, 
 in spite of this, we see the forms of dogmatic 
 Christianity still outwardly subsisting, at the worst, 
 
288 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 in a state of decayed grandeur, and still nominally 
 exercising some influence. How is this? The 
 answer is, that the decay in the vitality of these 
 dogmatic creeds, the progress of the outgrowing 
 of them and of the fundamental conception of the 
 world on which they are based, is modified in its 
 manifestations by two important factors to wit, 
 (1) the conservatism of the human mind as regards 
 forms, even after all the vital meaning has left 
 them ; and (2) the instinctive conviction of the 
 dominant classes that their interests, i.e. the exist- 
 ing economic and political structure of society, is 
 bound up with their maintenance in, at least, 
 apparent outward integrity. 
 
 The first of these influences is a sociologic 
 phenomenon familiar to students of folklore and 
 kindred branches of inquiry. All interested in 
 these subjects know how prehistoric modes of 
 thought have survived in peasant communities up 
 to modern time. Or, to take a historical instance 
 interesting in point of view of our present subject. 
 St Benedict in the sixth century, more than two 
 centuries after the establishment of Christianity 
 as the imperial religion by Constantine, found at 
 Monte Cassino, not a hundred miles from Rome 
 itself, the old rites, ceremonies, and beliefs of 
 Paganism in full force without a trace of Chris- 
 tian influence being observable. In the secluded 
 valleys of Thessaly it is said that the rites of the 
 
MODERN CATHOLICISM 289 
 
 local Zeus, and other cults dating from classic 
 times and before, continued to be celebrated un- 
 interruptedly in their old forms far into the early 
 Middle Ages. Even to-day Mr Farnell, in his Cults 
 of the Greek States, is able to quote an instance of 
 peasant practices in the same districts, clearly de- 
 riving, with but little modification, from the ancient 
 cult of Dionysos. Taking this tendency of the 
 human mind into consideration, the wonder is not 
 the extent to which Christian observances continue 
 in vogue, but rather the extent to which they and 
 the beliefs of which they are the expression have 
 lapsed, and that within a comparatively short 
 period. 
 
 As regards the second of the causes mentioned 
 as tending to militate against the rapid extinction 
 of theological creeds and their cults namely, their 
 being so intimately bound up with the structure 
 and traditions of existing society, and hence with 
 the interests of the economically and politically 
 privileged classes of that society it is unnecessary 
 to do much more than call attention to the fact, 
 obvious as it is. This fact, however, renders it 
 improbable that the class-interests in question will 
 allow dogmatic theology and its cultural expres- 
 sions to die a natural death so long as modern 
 capitalist society continues to exist ; and hence so 
 long, in all probability, will institutional religion 
 
 survive, at least in its outward manifestations. It 
 
 19 
 
290 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 will be readily understood from this why the 
 policy of the Catholic Church is to pander to 
 modern capitalism even in its worst forms. It 
 may be said justly that the State Churches of 
 dogmatic Protestantism are no better in this 
 respect, being mere adjuncts of the economical 
 and political powers that be. But it cannot be 
 denied that the Catholic Church in its efforts to 
 ingratiate itself with these same powers often does 
 not scruple to go " one better " than its rivals. 
 The fact is, moreover, especially noticeable in the 
 case of Roman Ecclesiasticism, seeing that it has 
 always claimed an independence over and against 
 the secular power and secular interests, whereas 
 the Protestant Churches, in so far as they are 
 State Churches, have hardly professed to be much 
 more than spiritual satraps of the governing classes. 
 Add to this that Roman Catholicism, while quite 
 prepared to be up-to-date in making its peace with 
 all forms of modern capitalist unrighteousness, still 
 retains a mediaeval penchant for persecution and 
 cruelty. 
 
 It thus embodies in its present-day form often- 
 times the worst characteristics of two different 
 periods of history. While, on the one hand, it will 
 back up colonial expansion and aggressive wars 
 on backward races, market-hunting, and capitalist 
 exploitation generally, on the other it will champion 
 barbarous forms of punishment. There is no more 
 
MODERN CATHOLICISM 291 
 
 zealous advocate of the death-penalty in criminal 
 law than the Roman Church. It is generally 
 supposed by the modern man that the apparent 
 blood-lust of the Catholic Church in earlier periods 
 of history was largely attributable to the general 
 custom and spirit of those times, though a glance 
 into the writings of eminent modern Catholic 
 theologians hardly confirms this view. What, 
 however, opened the eyes of the world at large to 
 the hideous possibilities inherent even in modern 
 Catholic practice was the atrocious judicial murder 
 of Francesco Ferrer at Barcelona in the autumn 
 of 1909. The latter event afforded striking 
 evidence of the fact that the proceedings of the 
 Inquisition, etc., in the fifteenth and sixteenth 
 centuries are not wholly to be attributed to the 
 general character of the period in question, but 
 that, to put it moderately, a considerable share of 
 the iniquities perpetrated is deducible from the 
 intrinsic character of Catholic Christianity itself. 
 The Catholic Church can be modern enough in 
 currying favour with wealth and privilege, by 
 casting its aegis over current capitalism and its 
 methods, but it cannot be modern, it seems, in 
 adopting latter-day principles of toleration and 
 decent humanity. This is one small point the 
 apologist of Catholicism might do well to ponder. 
 
 The question now arises why given the enor- 
 mous "pull" that traditional belief and custom 
 
292 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 have, given the support, tacit or avowed, of power- 
 ful interests in modern society, and last, but not 
 least, the enormous wealth at its disposal the 
 Catholic Church has not made a better fight for 
 its numerical standing and its influence than it has. 
 Dead in the Latin nations amongst the entire 
 educated sections of the population, and with a 
 visibly waning influence even among the peasantry 
 in most districts ; even in Anglo-Saxon countries 
 fully sharing in the general decline of dogmatic 
 Christianity, mainly drawing recruits, where it does 
 so at all, from the other sects, and in no way 
 gaining on the advance of rationalist thought ; in 
 similar case, as regards the vast Germanic popula- 
 tions of Central Europe, with everything else in its 
 favour and only education and enlightened thought 
 against it, one would certainly have imagined that 
 such a great organisation would have succeeded 
 more effectively than it has in at least holding its 
 own. Certainly the facts suggest either a want of 
 ability or a gross mismanagement on the part of 
 the heads of the ecclesiastical hierarchy from their 
 own point of view. 
 
 And what has the Church got to show on the 
 other side ? How, it may be asked, has it suc- 
 ceeded in imbuing many not unintelligent persons in 
 this country, and elsewhere, with the notion that it 
 is making progress ? The answer is, bluff! We hear 
 sometimes talk of the " modern Catholic revival." 
 
MODERN CATHOLICISM 293 
 
 Where is this ' ' revival " to be sought ? The real truth 
 is this : in addition to the old logic-chopping Jesuit, 
 whose intellectual subtlety and profound cleverness 
 we are always hearing puffed, there does exist a 
 small " cultured " sect, mostly of literary decadents, 
 in London, Paris, and possibly elsewhere, who are 
 just now engaged in " running " Catholicism as a 
 " going concern." In this country these are mostly 
 young men of the " Yah ! early Victorian ! " type. 
 They need not necessarily be avowedly Catholics 
 themselves, but they make it their business to 
 adopt the Catholic pose, bowing respectfully to- 
 wards the Church as an organisation, and defend- 
 ing its dogma and practice in an indirect and 
 cryptic manner against the assaults of rationalism, 
 which are waved aside in a lofty manner. Such 
 also talk mysteriously and with awe of the mighty 
 progress and universal influence of the Holy 
 Catholic Church. The one thing these gentlemen 
 dislike is plain speech. Straightforward English is 
 for them too utterly " early Victorian." [They call 
 everything they don't like " early Victorian " !] 
 
 They may not say so outright, but these intellec- 
 tual dudes evidently wish to convey the impression 
 that the great truths established in the fifties and 
 sixties of the last century, and that have become 
 incorporated as matters of course in the intellectual 
 outlook of the present age, are, somehow or other, 
 no longer true. They belong to the same type, 
 
294 PROBLEMS OF MEN, MIND, MORALS 
 
 mutatis mutandis, that in the early eighties we 
 knew as the knights of the sunflower and the lily, 
 and as personified in Savoy opera in the character of 
 Bunthorne. The successors of this type are machin- 
 ing the imaginary "boom" of the present time. The 
 game of bluff can rarely be kept up for very long, 
 and this Catholic pose, we may safely assume, will 
 pass into some other before many years are over. 
 
 If it should be asked, Is Protestantism in any 
 better case than Catholicism ? the answer must 
 be emphatically in the negative. Indeed, it is the 
 collapse of the Protestant sects, or at least of their 
 dogmatic raison d'etre, which has given a super- 
 ficially plausible colour to the notion of the 
 increasing influence of Catholicism, especially in 
 Anglo-Saxon countries. Protestant Christian 
 dogma as such has ceased to count. The sects 
 still may remain, but under the auspices of " new 
 theologies," with their character completely 
 changed. The old theology which gave them 
 meaning is, in any case, explained away with 
 more or less ingenuity, where not openly re- 
 pudiated. To speak in "early Victorian" plain 
 language, the belief in the traditional Protestant 
 variations is no less moribund than in the dogmas 
 of the Catholic Church itself. 
 
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