SOCIALISM AND CHARACTER SOCIALISM AND CHARACTER BY VIDA D. SCUDDER BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY re&$ Cambridge 1912 COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY VIDA D. SCUDDER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published March IQI2 TO FLORENCE CONVERSE COMRADE AND COMPANION HEEE on this holy Tuscan mountain sanctified by the Passion of St. Francis, where brown-robed broth- ers move about in an exceeding peace among their peasant-friends and white sheep-flocks, the rumor of the modern struggle sounds from very far away. Yet since the first pages of this book were written, the phe- nomenon it signals, as you and I are aware, has be- come more and more evident. Socialism is now making itself felt in every Anglo-Saxon country, not merely as an academic theory, but as a political force. Asso- ciations enlisting the joint support of high finance and high ideals are formed against it; local victories, in the United States, increase with each election. Shall this socialism remain purely political ? Or shall its rich moral possibilities be fostered and utilized ? Shall it be allowed to develop mainly as a negative move- ment of revolt from an intolerable situation, or should men rather stress in it the constructive elements related less to the attainment of material decencies than to the upbuilding of character? These are the questions we have wanted to help people to think out, having first in much perplexity thought them out for ourselves. We have known what it is distrustfully to content ourselves with " near-so- 241214 TO FLORENCE CONVERSE cialism " ; to take refuge in timid platitudes concerning brotherhood and democracy ; to assuage inward unrest by philanthropic zeal and social service. For us, for many, none of these things suffice. In full allegiance to political socialism, in alliance with the international socialist party, we find a satisfaction which they were powerless to afford, and it is a satisfaction which we should like to share. The unreserved translation of democratic sympathies into economic creed and polit- ical program is a result well worth the cost ; though that cost, involving as it does the sacrifice of fastidious class-provincialism in ethics, is, frankly speaking, not small. To separate accidental from permanent in the act- ual socialist party is no easy task. It demands vigor- ous mental effort, which many persons of refinement are too lazy to make, finding it more convenient and more consonant with prejudices of which they are unaware, to accept the blatantly materialistic tone of some current socialism at face value as representative of the whole movement. The task calls also for no slight degree of moral courage. For we converts to political socialism, if gently nur- tured and college bred, may at first be sadly puzzled. Our situation resembles that of a social worker in a country like the United States, inhabited by different races. Such a person, passing from group to group, learns that there is little possibility of common national life till a common speech be established, and is help- lessly conscious that severance lies deeper than speech, vi TO FLORENCE CONVERSE in ineradicable distinctions of racial impulse. Yet he may tell himself that all blood circulates perforce to the same rhythm, and that only when the contributions of the races shall blend in one can his country attain her destiny. In like manner conservative Christian and revolutionary socialist may seem not only to speak a different language but to think in different categories, | yet you and I are convinced that in the reconciliation of these categories lies the one chance for escape from an ominous future. Since I was certain that such reconciliation is the only hope for democracy, it became necessary for me to write this book which expresses our common thought. May some readers, lifting their eyes from its pages, gaze as from this lovely Italian height over a sweep of horizon that encircles opposite regions, and see in- tersecting hill ranges as parts of the same uplift above the plain ! And as they resolve to possess the rich her- itage outspread below, may they remember that in the secret places of the cliffs which create their vantage- ground is the perpetual memorial of Love consum- mated through sacrifice and pain ! LA VERNA, CASENTINO, ITALY. CONTENTS PART I: THE DILEMMA CHAPTER I : THE MODERN ADVENTURE ** . I. PLAN AND POINT OF VIEW 3 II. THE SOCIAL CRUSADE 8 The Summons 8 The Experiment of Philanthropy ..... 10 III. SOCIAL EFFICIENCY 13 " Earning Heaven " outgrown 13 The new Aim, Achievement 15 IV. CHECK-MATE! 16 Reform supplements Philanthropy 16 Defeat of Philanthropy and Reform 18 The Social Tragedy . . 21 CHAPTER II : OUR WOULD-BE GUIDES i I. MODERN SOCIAL IDEALISTS 23 II. THE INDICTMENT OF CIVILIZATION 26 Points of View 27 The Revolt of the Ego 29 Schools of Pity 36 III,- SOLUTIONS 38 i i Moralize Civilization 38 Abandon Civilization 40 Abandon to Moralize 42 IV. AN IMPASSE 48 Nietzsche against Tolstoy 48 Discouragement 49 CHAPTER III: A PROMISE OF LIGHT I. A NEW FORCE , 51 CONTENTS II. SOCIALISM: AN HISTORIC REVIEW 52 The Preparation 52 The " Communist Manifesto " 55 "* -III. REVIEW CONTINUED: 1850-1900 57 ^-IV. SOCIALISM AND THE IDEALISTS 60 Repudiation 60 Points of Contact 61 V. THE DIVIDING POINT 63 Socialist Attitude toward Property 63 . * Conservative Radicalism 64 The Socialist Challenge 67 VI. AN EXULTANT MOMENT 67 CHAPTER IV: "THE TUG'S TO COME" I. HOSTILITY BETWEEN SOCIALISM AND RELIGION . 71 New Fellowship 72 New Loneliness 72 The Paradox of Distrust 73 II. HISTORIC PERSPECTIVES 74 Socialism and the Church 74 A Vicious Circle 77 III. ZONES OF OPPOSITION TO SOCIALISM .... 81 Zone of Prejudice: Class-Interests 81 Zone of Appearances : Historic Circumstance . 83 IV. LAST ZONE OF OPPOSITION 85 Moral Incertitudes 86 Socialism and the Soul 88 V. RELIGION ON GUARD! 89 CHAPTER V : THE APOLOGIA OF RELIGION I. ON THE LEVEL : AVERAGE ETHICS 93 Wanted, an Apologia 93 Spirit or Machine ? 94 Moral Assets of the Old Order 95 A Defense for Conservatism . . y CONTENTS II. ON THE HEIGHTS : COUNSELS OF PERFECTION . 98 Franciscanisra 99 Modern Parallels 102 The Summons of Sanctity 104 III. ANTITHESES . . , 104 The Freedom of Love versus Automatic Justice 105 The Stage of Eternity versus the Stage of Time 106 IV. THE WAITING CHOICE 109 -^*The Greek View of Life 109 The Socialist View of Life 110 The Christian View of Life 110 V. THE WORK BEFORE Us , .112 PART II: FIRST PRINCIPLES CHAPTER I: ECONOMIC DETERMINISM I. "E PUR si MUOVE" 115 II. A CONTROVERSY 118 Mazzini and Bakunin 118 The Base of Life : Economic or Spiritual ? . . 121 Persistent Contradiction 122 III. THE DETERMINIST VICTORY 126 Freedom's Last Stronghold 126 Economic Necessity 128 The Idealist Fallacy 130 The Socialist Contention 133 THE RISE OF THE PROLETARIAT 136 The Workers : their Role 137 A Moral Opportunity 138 V. DEMOCRATIC APPLICATIONS 141 VI. SYNTHESES 145 Idealism Triumphant 146 Idealism Obedient . 147 CONTENTS CHAPTER II: CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS I. CONSCIENCE AND THE CLASS- STRUGGLE . . . 149 II. MILITANT NECESSITIES 153 Parallels 154 Provisional Values 155 III. MORAL ADVANTAGES OF THE CLASS- STRUGGLE 156 In Trade-Unions 157 In Socialism 159 Class-Feeling as a Liberating Power .... 162 IV. LOYALTIES IN CONFLICT 163 Under Feudalism 164 In Contemporary Life 165 The Socialist Menace . . < 166 Adjustments 168 V. LOYALTY TO THE WHOLE, THE END OF THE CLASS- WAR 169 VI. BEYOND THE CLASS-STRUGGLE 173 The Sanctity of Nature 173 Place for Disinterestedness f ....... 174 A Body Prepared for Us 178 VII. THE NEXT STEP 179 PART III: THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER CHAPTER I: "FREE BECAUSE IMBOUND " I. THE SPIRIT IN THE WHEELS 183 n. VIRTUES IN FLUX . 188 Moral Shifting 190 The Modern Emphasis 191 III. SOCIALIST SELF-DISCIPLINES 193 Lassalle's Summary of Progress 193 Future Checks on License 194 Why needed 195 How possible 197 The Authority of the Common Will .... 198 xii CONTENTS IV. SOME PROBABLE REACTIONS 200 On the Malcontent 200 On the Genius 203 On the Average Man 204 V. SOCIAL LIBERTY AT LAST 204 CHAPTER II: THE ETHICS OF INEQUALITY I. COMPARISON INCUMBENT 207 "SSf II. ON THE LEVEL : THE ETHICS OF PRIVILEGE . . 208 " Scientific " Charity 210 Other Pit-falls 213 III. ON THE LEVEL : THE ETHICS OF WANT . . . 216 Are the Poor Blessed ? 216 Poverty in Chains 219 IV. ON THE HEIGHTS : COUNSELS OF PERFECTION . 221 * Franciscanism Once More 221 A Story of Defeat 224 Defeat Persistent through History 227 t^ V. FAILURE OF ETHICS UNDER SOCIAL INEQUAL- ITY 231 Demonstrated practically 232 Demonstrated spiritually 233 A Dangerous Paradox 233 The Case for Self-Protection 234 Christianity versus Civilization 235 Reductio ad Absurdum 238 CHAPTER III: THE ETHICS OF EQUALITY I. HOLINESS AND EFFICIENCY 239 Forever at Odds 239 _ Reconciled under Social Equality 240 II. THE SOCIALIZED STATE . . . 241 Services and Rewards 242 No Thought for the Morrow ! 243 Normal Incentives 244 III. ON THE LEVEL: THE VIRTUES TRANSFIGURED . 246 CONTENTS IV. EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY IN ETHICS .... 251 \ Chivalry for All 252 I Poverty for All 254 / Sympathy as a Fine Art 255 V. SHADOWS 258 VI. ON THE HEIGHTS : THE COUNSELS AGAIN . . 262 The " Economic Base " of Sanctity 263 Love Gains the Right of Way 264 VII. THE RETURN TO NATURE 266 Field-Flowers and Economics 267 Natural and Social Law 270 Economic Harmonies ^ . 272 Social Equality the One Hope for the Ideal of Jesus 272 CHAPTER IV: THE CHOICE: AND AFTER I. A " REAL ASSENT " TO SOCIALISM 273 II. WITNESSES TO LIFE 276 Contrary Attacks 276 Conflicting Sects 277 Opposite Interpretations . . 281 III. PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY 282 CHAPTER V: RECOVERIES I. THE VALUE OF TRADITION 284 II. SOCIALISM THE GUARDIAN OF PROPERTY . . . 288 The Property-Instinct Sacred 289 The Property-Instinct Trained by Industrialism 291 The Property-Instinct Travestied 292 The Socialist Corrective 293 Group-Ownership : its Joy and Power .... 294 III. SOCIALISM THE FULFILLMENT OF IDEALISM . . 298 IV. SOCIALISM THE GOAL OF PHILANTHROPY AND REFORM 302 Their Trend Toward Socialism 303 Their Training for Socialism 305 ziv CONTENTS V. SOCIALISM AND LEADERSHIP 307 Leaders : Where to be Found ? 308 Among Socialists ? 309 Among Financiers ? 310 Among Social Reformers ? 311 r Socialism a Conservative Force 312 PART IV: THE FUTURE OF RELIGION CHAPTER I: SOCIALISM AND THEISM I. RELIGION INDISPENSABLE 315 II. THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION 318 Religion in Bondage 318 Socialism to the Rescue 321 III. PRESENT-DAY FACTORS 323 Western Science : Social Reconstruction . . . 323 Contacts of East and West 324 The Gift of the Orient 326 IV. THE RELIGIOUS FUTURE 327 Dogma versus Sentiment 328 Conformity versus Progress 329 The " Economic Base " in Religion 330 The Divine Origin 331 V. SOCIAL DEMOCRACY AND THE CONCEPT OF GOD 331 Personal or Impersonal ? 332 Ideas of Immanence 332 Ideas of Transcendence 333 VI. SOCIAL DEMOCRACY AND THE CONCEPT OF IM- MORTALITY 337 CHAPTER II: SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY I. CHRISTIANITY : Is IT PERMANENT ? 341 II. CHRISTIANITY: ITS FUTURE RIVALS 345 On Lines of Hedonism 346 On Lines of Asceticism 347 xv CONTENTS III. CHRISTIANITY : ITS ESSENCE 343 IV. DOCTRINES OF THE TRINITY AND THE INCARNA- TION UNDER SOCIALISM 350 The "Social Thought of God" 351 Love the Alpha 352 The Incarnation the Sanction of Social Hope . 353 V. DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT UNDER SOCIALISM 356 Superficially Repugnant to Socialism .... 356 Profoundly Essential to It 357 Vicarious Atonement the Sacrament of Brother- hood 361 Social Remorse and Redemption 362 Love the Omega 364 VI. ECONOMIC DETERMINISM AND AN HISTORIC REVE- LATION 366 VII. CHURCH FORMS OF THE FUTURE 367 CHAPTER III: THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND THE SOCIALIST STATE I. THE SOCIAL PURPOSE OF JESUS 372 II. THE KINGDOM OF GOD : ITS NATURE .... 376 Personal, Ecclesiastical, Social ? 37<5 Present or Future ? 377 III. THE EARLY TEACHING : EVOLUTION 380 Some Aspects of Citizenship 381 Brotherhood and Detachment : how Reconcile ? 383 The Mediaeval Misunderstanding 385 Socialism and the Kingdom 386 IV. THE LATER TEACHING : REVOLUTION .... 386 The Change in Tone 387 Logic of the Sequence 388 Catastrophe Essential to Progress 390 Millennial Hope for Earth 391 V. POINTS OF CONTACT WITH SOCIALISM .... 392 VI. THE FATE IN HISTORY OF JESUS' IDEAL . . . 395 Disintegration : the Church and the Parousia . 396 xvi CONTENTS Past Achievements of Christianity 398 Future Task : Recovery of the Kingdom-Idea . 399 The Philosophical Anarchist 400 CONCLUSION : "A WISE BEHAVIOR" I. CONVERSATION IN HEAVEN 403 II. OLD MORALS, NEW INCENTIVES 406 III. ORGANIC FILAMENTS 410 IV. SOCIALISM AND THE SIMPLE LIFE 416 Irrelevant Connection 417 The Rich Christian an Anomaly 418 The Rich Socialist a Possible Mistake .... 419 Incentives to Simplicity 420 Ascetic : ^Esthetic : Social. Contemporary Incentive Social 421 Future Incentive ^Esthetic 422 Practical Considerations 424 V. THE RELIGION OF A SOCIALIST 425 Expiation 425 Aspiration 427 U.-T- VT THE LAST WORD : FELLOWSHIP AND HOPE . . 429 *** For permission to reprint portions of this book, thanks are due to The Hibbert Journal, The Atlantic Monthly y and The Harvard Theological Review. PART I THE DILEMMA SOCIALISM AND CHARACTER PAKT I. THE DILEMMA CHAPTER I THE MODERN ADVENTURE WHAT is the excuse for adding a voice to the con- fused chorus that accompanies the swift social changes in process everywhere? Why present another book on socialism ? The nai'f apology is the truest : one writes to relieve one's mind. And probably the best chance of contrib- uting something valuable to the eager conversation is frankly to strike the personal note. For these same changes are not merely external. In last analysis, they proceed from within : in final reaction, they transform character. The creation of old age pensions, the evalu- ation of English land, the capture of an American city government by socialists, are not only objective facts : they connote interesting things happening to our souls, which we may well like to confide to one another. For what happens to the individual soul is the only matter of real consequence in the world. Many middle-aged persons to-day havepassed through 3 THE DILEMMA a succession of great and searching emotions, unre- lated to what we usually consider personal affairs. Such emotions ennoble or belittle according to the wel- come they receive. They are part of that larger con- sciousness which is sweeping the concerns of the whole race into its private orbit: the gift of democracy, quickening marvelous new instincts in the dull old world. They are sure to come faster in the quarter- century before us. Whether we will or no, a shudder- ing plunge into new social experiences awaits our gen- eration. The magnitude of the changes may well daze us for a time ; quite possibly, we shall be more aware of the sweep of the planet on its way through space, than of that serene succession of sowings and reapings in the promotion of which it behooves us to bear our part. In the mere prospect of probable severance from many accustomed institutions, with their warm com- forts of use and want, does not a salutary but confusing excitement already begin to stir among thoughtful people ? And if so, may we not grow stronger in spirit by considering together those more intimate reactions on personality by which the whole process must be judged ? Moral preparation for a New Order ! It might well be the watchword of the hour : it is the last thing of which one ever hears. The Socialist Party in Germany gains a million votes in five years. A great scheme suggesting state socialism is launched in England. If the movement in the United States is less concentrated than in older or more autocratic countries, socialist 4 THE MODERN ADVENTURE sentiment is perhaps still more widely diffused. " Shoot- ing Niagara, and After," was the title of one of Carlyle's alarmist pamphlets over half a century ago. The stream is broad, and we have not shot Niagara yet, but may not the increasing roar we hear be the sound ef dangerous rapids, to which we are drawing near, even though no cataract threaten us with destruction ? It is of course still possible to stop one's ears : it is also feasible to try to work upstream, and many thinkers and some statesmen are to-day engaged in this pursuit. Meantime, everybody is talking. A great dis- cussion is " on," which throws all other interests tem- porarily into the shade. While it rages, the socialist vote continues to increase, and the idea should occur to an impartial observer that the sober-minded public might well be getting ready for the possible plunge. But the militant socialists are too busy with propa- ganda to think about this, and the conservatives are absorbed in rebuttal. This book proposes to discuss in some detail the probable moral and spiritual results of the social change that^seems to be impending. The task is un- dertaken in the double hope of so clarifying the issues that some people now hesitant may be helped to de- cide where to take their stand, and of suggesting some points in the practical training of mind and con- science which the transformation in ethics accompany- ing any serious economic change should immediately demand. The point of view of the book is that of a socialist, a class-conscious, revolutionary socialist, 5 DILEMMA if you will, to whom none the less the spiritual harvest, the fruits of character, are the only result worth noting in any economic order. To demonstrate the approach of socialism, or to discuss socialist theory on customary lines, is apart from the scope of this study. Many important matters germane to our theme such as the endlessly stimulating topic of incentive in the socialist community will be treated only obliquely, because so much has been said about them already. No assertion will be made concern- ing the exact ultimate forms society will assume, nor the desirable balance of competitive and cooperative forces in the socialized commonwealth ; but it will be taken for granted that this balance is changing, and that civilization is engaged in evolution from earlier and purely individualistic forms, toward a socialized order. The word socialism, moreover, glows to the writer, not with the delicate rose-pink so pleasantly popular, but with a deep uncompromising red. Be it remembered nevertheless that the hue of blood and flame is the hue for the Feast Days of "the Lord, and Giver of Life," the Spirit of Pentecost. Sound evolutionary thought finds retrospect its first duty. To retrospect, then, let us bend ourselves ; to the review of a personal experience it may be yours, it happens to be mine during the quarter- century behind us. The background must be sketched too, that private consciousness may be related to the general psychical life born of the changing order : 6 THE MODERN ADVENTURE therefore a study will be made of those contending schools in social idealism which sought our suffrages during the nineteenth century and seek them still : this study to be based less on the impersonal specula- tions of economists than on the more tentative and human experience reflected in letters. Having gained power intelligently to face the past, some broad per- ception may emerge of relations and tendencies : issues will grow clearer ; certain possibilities will be rejected ; and in due time two main alternatives in social theory and attitude will present themselves for discussion. When these alternatives are thoroughly understood, choice between them will be incumbent. But it must be long deferred; for first, inquiry must penetrate to fundamentals. Ajways_.kepping i'u-mifl4-ffi*esk~for the social order_mostjayorable_tQ character .> the basic assumptions of the opposing schools must be consid- ered. This process will lead on, to such forecast as prescience can venture of the probable socialist reac- tions on morals and religion, and to comparison of the finer assets of the society familiar to us with those to be expected in the future. In the course of these comparisons, choice will define itself; at their close, a backward glance will compare the social ideals of the Founder of Christianity with the modern socialist schools. For those already inclined to accept socialist theory in the abstract, the note of preparation will have been stressed throughout the discussion : and before the book ends, a conclusion of practical applica- 7 THE DILEMMA tions will try plainly to define personal duty during these days of transition in which our lot is cast. The book will fulfill its aim if it make the lines of that duty clearer, and if it also bring light here and there to an honest seeker for the type of civiliza- tion which shall best foster moral and spiritual values r as he stands between the clamorous schools of a socialism too often materialistic and a Christianity toooften short-sighted. II What did the spirit experience, when, a quarter of a century or more ago, it first became aware that life to be found must be lost in the whole of humanity's well-being ? Dreams first : high dreams and fair, such as young men must dream in any age if old men are to see vis- ions. Dreams of fellowship and sacrifice, of a demo- cracy coming to its own, of a Holy City of Brotherhood descending from the heavens. Born largely from the words of the great nineteenth-century idealists from Shelley to Tolstoy, these dreams stirred in us the sense of a society in bonds and of a great liberation entrusted to our age to accomplish. The very thought of that bondage was part of the dream, as, moved alternately by imaginative distress over the evils suggested and by literary pleasure in the stinging eloquence, we pondered in seclusion the splendid invectives against modern civilization penned by the great masters. The captivity of the workers, the apathy of the privileged, the maui- 8 THE MODERN ADVENTURE fold miseries and deformities of modern life, were seen as through a haze. But the realities that inspired the invectives were never far away in Victorian England or modern America ; and the sharp shock of waking contact with them was sure to come. It might be given by the sight of the stream of faces pouring sullen and sodden from some factory door of an evening, or by revulsion from the hideous squalor of the approach to some great city watched through train windows ; or it might well reach us through relation to some individual in distress, some human derelict, impossible to place in the whirring machine of production, a gruesome, pitiful product of social conditions so inexorable that no sentimental platitude nor casual benevolence had any bearing on the case. So, in one way or another, dreams led out to the waking spectacle of civilisation as it is ; incredibly wasteful, impossibly cruel, so complex and seemingly inevitable a thing that the mind was forced to accept as a necessity what revolted the heart as a monstrosity. The Social Problem was before us, and life had begun. And out of the region where dreams and realities blend, came clear and strong the Call of the Open Road : the summons to action, confusedly but with ever-increasing emphasis voiced by our most honored masters from the time of Carlyle. This might sound from the lips of Ruskin, of Mazzini, of some young preacher unknown to history, or of a mere grave-eyed acquaintance. It bade us leave the perplexities of speculation and reflection, and bend us to the deed: 9 THE DILEMMA what deed, but the sacred Service of the People ? By dozens and by hundreds, young men and women heard and obeyed the call. Those were the days of the eighties and the nineties which witnessed in Europe and the United States a gradual introduction of new life into the dry science of political economy, a quickening of the civic conscience, and an active development of social service in manifold forms. That gentle, fiery spirit, Prince Kropotkin, noted in those days among the flower of young English men and women a movement akin to that Return to the People which had lately stirred Young Russia to the depths and been so delicately depicted by Tourgenieff in " Virgin Soil " ; albeit Kropotkin observed the decorous English movement to call for less fervor of martyrdom. Did it indeed call for martyrdom at all, this modern impulse toward social service ? Certainly, the happiness of release was more than any pain of renunciation, when first we learned to escape the barriers of class, breathe the free air of human fellowship, and regard those terrors of disease and poverty which we confronted, no longer as a mere horrid Darkness blackening the sky and baffling the fighter, but as a substantial stronghold of wrongs that could be attacked, and perhaps overcome. So the great appeal to the conscience of the privi- leged classes which had during all the nineteenth cen- tury kept pace with the rise of capitalism and indus- trialism bore fruit in action ; and it came to pass, curiously enough, that by the end of the century the word " social " had changed its connotation, and 10 THE MODERN ADVENTURE III If personal peace were the end of conduct, our story might end here. But it is only begun. For such peace can satisfy no one born anew in the spirit of democracy. Only a fulfillment of the angelic prophecy, " Peace on Earth," can meet our need. Here we touch one of the widest differences separat- ing the idealism of the modern western world from that of the Orient or of medieval Catholicism. The way of sacrifice has always been known to the initiate as the only way of life. But that sacrifice has been subtly interwoven with egotism, to be recognized no less in the Buddhist, winning by deeds of charity the " merit " to speed him on his journey to Nirvana, than in the Catholic ascetic, " earning Heaven," though it were the pure heaven of union with his crucified Lord, through self - mortification and mercy. Who would deny that fine impulses of love and pity blended in both cases with the individualist motive of exalted self-realization ? To console the afflicted, to rescue the perishing, to minister to the sick, has ever brought holy delight and satisfied deep needs of affection. Yet these tender ministries have been habitually exerted as ends in themselves, destined to find ultimate value less in the bodily good of him who received them than in the spiritual salvation of him who gave. Certainly they were included in no larger scheme of general social rehabilitation. Nor could they be so ; for a personal and self-centred point of view was im- 13 THE DILEMMA posed by the limitations of the contemporary outlook. The larger tides of human destiny formerly either ebbed and flowed unnoted, or were considered to be 'independent of human control. In such days, the an- gijiished compassion which has always filled noble hearts at the spectacle of mortal misery could be assuaged only by devotion to the individual leper, the special case of need. That suffering as a whole was an evil to be attacked, that our aim should be less to serve than to abolish it, would have been an attitude incon- ceivable to the medieval mind. Times have changed. A sense of power, troubling, im- perious, has descended upon us. We do not yet know very well what to do with it, but we cannot escape it. Belief in the divine possibilities of men quickens our expectant wills : " Thou art a man : God is no more : Thine own humanity learn to adore," cried William Blake at the beginning of the modern democratic epoch. Conscious of mystical union with the proletarian and the outcast, assured that they and we united can shape the world as we will, we rise to the splendid summons. Reinforcement comes from our recently acquired knowledge that the only sure fact is ceaseless flux, in the social as in the natural order. The simple, depressing instincts of pre-democratic, pre-evolutionary days still largely dominate our social creeds and deeds. We talk much of brotherhood : but 14 THE MODERN ADVENTURE from suggesting the gayeties of the drawing-room! came currently to imply the ardors of a new crusade. The " Social Movement " ! How swiftly it developed, adopted by countless organizations, religious and sec- ular, offering scope for every type of capacity, and accepting all degrees of service, from a languid sub- scription to a consecrated life ! And here we well may pause for an instant : for here is the last point which we are likely to reach in this book, of positive unchallenged gain to the uneasy social conscience. Very great is that gain, surely. It means that an epoch and an anguish lie behind us. No one to-day, longing to join the task of social ameli- oration, lacks opportunities for work. In some com- pany of the valiant hosts attacking the forts of folly, in some phase of the fourfold service enjoined by Ruskin, dressing people, feeding people, housing people, or rightly pleasing people, every tempera- ment and capacity can find effective place. Through the fifties and sixties of the last century, men eager for social service echoed half-paralyzed the baffled cry of Clough, written in the memorable year 1848 : l If there is battle, 't is battle by night, I stand in the dark- ness. O that the armies indeed were arrayed ! O joy of the onset ! Sound, thou Trumpet of God, come forth, Great Cause, to array us, 1 The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich. 11 THE DILEMMA King and leader appear, thy soldiers sorrowing seek thee. Would that the armies indeed were arrayed ! Oh where is the battle ! Neither battle I see, nor arraying, nor king in Israel, Only infinite jumble and mess and dislocation, Backed by a solemn appeal, For God's sake, do not stir, there. We may be grateful that those days are over, and that the plain path to practical service has been opened by the modern movement of philanthropy to whosoever wills to tread it. It is the old path, of course, trodden in every age, not only by the saints, but by throngs of their nameless fol- lowers. And now as always he who follows it enters into that inheritance which only the meek can know. So far as the attainment of peace at the centre and joy that is not fugitive is concerned, no other path through experi- ence has ever been blazed. Throngs are seeking this path to-day : a few embracing Lady Poverty in the city slums with an ardor equal to that of the first Franciscans, and devoting themselves to the service of "Our Lords the Poor," with a tenderness no less keen than that of the Catherines of Siena and Genoa, because more guarded in method and more efficient in result. Even the world hails them as fortunate ; for while it pur- sues its own way, it has always in a dim theoretical fashion recognized selfless devotion to be the highest good, and paid fullest honors to the servants of hu- manity, at least after they have died. 12 THE MODERN ADVENTURE our democratic faith seldom penetrates below the surface of our theories or actions. Evolutionary lan- guage is always on our lips : but we direct our social activities as if change on broad lines were inconceivable, and we condemned helplessly to minister to the end of time, within the limits of a static stratified society, to the same old needs forever generated by the same old situation. Yet we are growing restive. Through these fatalistic instincts the wind of a larger hope has begun to blow. As it revives us, the old concep- tion of "earning Heaven" ceases to interest, while at the same time we cannot stay content with help- ing the individual here and there. Modern times have not abolished the old ideal of sanctity, but they have made a distinct addition to it. They put stress on a new " note " : efficiency, with which we may be sure none of the older saints ever bothered themselves. We " children of process " have been rising, during the last twenty-five years, to the conviction that (it is our task, not only to relieve the wretched but to fight the causes of wretchedness. Even while the modern Good Samaritan binds the wounds of the wayfarer, he med- itates how to free the road from robbers. He can no longer be content to soothe his own soul by lavishing personal devotion while a mountain of social injustice awaits the potent faith that shall speak the liberating word. 15 THE DILEMMA IV And thus the question rose, as to the value and efficiency of those ministries so ardently pursued. Did they meet the situation ? Putting mind as well as heart on the matter, could we honestly feel that the indefinite multiplication of such agencies as oc- cupied us, whether these happened to be organized charities, peoples' institutes, soup-kitchens or missions, would ever bring effectual satisfaction to the needs we sought to relieve? To put the question marked a new stage of progress. Then as now it received an- swers which divided men into opposing schools. But those were many, and they increased daily, who in the light of it found their most ardent social efforts chilled by doubt. These efforts, as the years went on, tended to change in character. For the social movement deepened as it advanced. From works of mercy and relief on conventional lines, it developed phases ever more democratic and more iinbued.with a demand for justice. At the outset it was prone to regard the unfortu- nate as weaklings, to be saved from the logical results of their moral and practical feebleness by a pity peril- ously near to impatience and not untouched with contempt. But as time passed, men were forced to the startling perception that the poverty which was the destruction of the poor was created less by them- selves than by the society in which they played their helpless part. 16 THE MODERN ADVENTURE This was a great discovery. It meant the gradual abandonment of philanthropy for reform, an aban- donment still half-conscious, but unmistakably to be traced as we look back. Reform, giving up hope that the individual could ever be set on his feet within an unchanged situation, faced in a new direction, and demanded, that in large or in little this situation be changed. Did the new start mean effectual advance toward a land of justice? Whether or no, the application of moral force to social conditions went on merrily and earnestly. The words of the great teachers were not unheeded. Compunction became more and more poignant, driving increasing numbers to social service through sheer discomfort. Even that much-scouted agency, the Church, played a modest but growing part in quickening such compunction and diverting energy into selfless channels. So before the end of the cen- tury here were scientific charity, standing for more or less intelligent care of our victims, and sundry attempts at deeper fellowship, ending in that most sig- nificant expression of social chivalry, the settlement movement. Many another constructive activity, initi- ated and administered by those children of privilege who respond to moral stimuli, began to crystallize. New every morning, fresh every evening, leagues were formed, committees appointed, for fighting salient evils : for protecting childhood, cleansing politics, eliminating disease, for regulating in myriad ways the unbridled passions of self-interest and greed that have created 17 THE DILEMMA our unlovely civilization. That new crusade whose call we had answered gathered its hosts to fight the ser- ried forces of industrial and social wrong ; every day new members joined it, valiant spirits, happiest of modern men and women, on pilgrimage to the Holy City of social peace. It was splendid, it was inspiring : it was by all odds the best thing that the modern world had to show. But what did it achieve ? What had they done, all the laborious committees? Their appeals loaded our breakfast tables, seeking to squeeze a little more reluctant money from those comfortable classes who groaned and gave, and meantime changed not one iota, whether nominal Christians or not, the source of their incomes or their standards of living. Did the reforms get accomplished ? Improvement here or there might be noted in detail. Many individuals lived happier and better lives, thanks to the friendship that reached them. Yet the hard laws of industry went on unchecked, or were checked if at all less by the efforts of enlightened philanthropy than by the outraged self-interest of the general public or the rising demands of the workers. Placed in the balance against the ugly facts of modern civilization, the total results of our philanthropy and our reform made a pretty pitiful show ! It was easy to say that sacrifice must not count re- sults. But we lived in an age when labor was not con- tent to spend itself in the void. We toiled for a cleaner and more decent world, where industrial slavery should press less heavily, where childhood should have chance 18 THE MODERN ADVENTURE and manhood scope ; and if in the long run we achieved little toward this result visible to the naked eye, it was our plain duty to pause and inquire whether we were not on the wrong tack. We stood off therefore, scru- tinized the landscape of modern life in its great masses of light and shade, and asked honestly whether the scene had been perceptibly brightened by the efforts of our social artists. The answer was plain. The great mass of misery, corruption and injustice remained practically unaf- fected by our efforts. With the conviction, our activi- ties lost half their interest ; and it came to pass that the generation of 1890 stifled within the opportunities which would have exhilarated the generation of 1848. To-day if we may transport ourselves for a mo- ment to the twentieth century there are still many who cling to philanthropy and many who cling to re- form. Yet even laggards in the procession may be noted, one by one, abandoning their old posts. Perhaps no one is left cheerfully to hold with Dickens that the rectification of a few definite abuses, such as bad schools, workhouses and prisons, would clear the social air and leave a Merrie England where haphazard Good Nature could be Master of the Revels. Doubtless, many still entertain a like pleasant optimism on more advanced lines ; and there are yet more to believe in a program of gradual changes in detail which shall repair the so- cial structure while leaving its main lines and founda- tions undisturbed. It is probable however that all these groups, especially the last, are steadily diminishing in 19 THE DILEMMA size. For as the outlook widens, sadness deepens, and the conviction spreads that no multiplication of specific or local remedies will bring healing to our social ills. From the time that this conviction first struck in- ward, a disillusion graver far than the discouragements of youth settled on men's spirits. As they probed ever deeper into the causes of misery, and initiated ever more vital measures of relief, a sense of paralysis bound them. They came to despise themselves as free lances engaged in light skirmishes with the enemy, while the main body of the attacking army had not yet decided on its line of march. It is not too strong to sum up the situation by saying that when the twentieth century opened, the inadequacy of mere philanthropy was generally confessed, while a considerable propor- tion of the more thoughtful and liberal minds of the day confronted the failure of reform. It was a depressing moment. For to beat about the bush at the foot of the hill is one thing, and it is quite another to fear lest one have mistaken the road after long climbing in the heat of the day. Nor did we get much help from our friends. The Voice of the Church murmured in suave consoling accents that the poor we have always with us, while the Voice of Respectable Society added in light crescendo the reassuring asser- tion that human nature would never be changed, and that men would always require the fear of starvation for an incentive. Refuted by that faint strange hope that would not down, abhorred in the depths of our being, yet echoed by our dreary fears, the cold voices 20 THE MODERN ADVENTURE numbed our endeavors. The dark modern spectacle of poverty and waste rose before us unaltered in the main by all those compassionate activities which not only in our generation but throughout the Christian ages had shed upon it a faint phosphorescent shining. In Lon- don, every fourth person or at a conservative esti- mate, every fifth 1 was dying a pauper, in workhouse, hospital, or asylum : not to count the throngs receiv- ing out-door relief. Thirty per cent of the whole popu- lation of the city were earning less than a guinea a week per family, and were classified below the " pov- erty line." Tracts of tenement-house streets were pro- scribed en Hoc by the insurance societies. Over eight hundred and thirty thousand people in East London alone were living more than two in one room ; nearly fifty thousand school-children were going hungry ; and the " unearned increment " of the city amounted to four million pounds a year. Where was comfort to be found ? Not in personal sacrifice : this last resort of self-deception was only a final indulgence. Not in philanthropy or reform. While the mass of the proletariat languished in- a slavery worse than that of the serf because accompa- nied by a mocking delusion of freedom, while the hor- rors of those slums and factories where were created these material values by which we lived cried aloud to heaven, such painstaking relief as we could afford an 'individual here or there, such pursuit of evil from one lair to another as constituted the usual program of 1 Facts for Socialists, Fabian Tract, 1899. 21 THE DILEMMA reform, only brought out into clearer light the hideous extent of untouched misery. The whole heart was sick, the whole man faint, and the situation seemed a device to rouse the derisive laughter of the fiends who jeer at human endeavors from their aerial theatre. While the steerage quarters of the Ship of State presented sights of so squalid a wretchedness to first-cabin pas- sengers idly gazing down from above, and the forgot- ten stokers plied their fearsome trade in the bowels of the vessel, we found scant consolation in regarding the path of the moon on the waters of eternity, or in toss- ing sweetmeats, purloined from our meals in the upper cabin, to the children on the decks below. CHAPTER II OUR WOULD-BE GUIDES As we halted in these straits, it was natural that we should peer back into the century we were leaving, and interrogate more sharply than ever before those guides of our youth who had sent us on our way. Since the Industrial Revolution, all thinkers had faced prac- tically the same situation as our own, and they spoke to us as contemporaries.^ The goodly fellowship on quest for justice in what Carlyle called " the wilder- ness of a wide world in an atheistic century " included members from every European country and from the United States. If we had listened most readily to those of English speech, to Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, to Carlyle, Ruskin, George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, Edward Carpenter, none the less had we lent an ear to compelling accents from across the Channel* The melancholy music of Leopardi, Heine, and their generation was still faintly audible ; the earnest tones of Mazzini, the sonorous harmonies of Victor Hugo, were to be caught with no strain to the listener. Yet we were perhaps more insistently held by the mordant words of Ibsen, Hauptmann, Sudermann, while we found it hard to say whether that dubious measure of Nietzsche which frightened and arrested us rose from 23 THE DILEMMA daemonic depths or floated down from the heights attained by the victorious Superman. Overmastering all other tones, however, something of " the large utter- ance of the early gods " reached us from Eussia. The great novels Dostoief sky's pained and poignant studies of the world's anguish, Tourgenieff's sensitive delineation of the stupor of the oppressed and the self- consuming fever of the would-be redeemers had prepared us for a greater message ; for the accusing, revealing voice of the one man who had traveled be- yond our modern complex bewilderments into a region of assured conviction deserving the name of faith, for the gospel of Leo Tolstoy. At the bidding of these men we had long ago left our own people and our father's house, to enter on the quest for justice and brotherhood. The quest evaded us. Had our masters, in this sad juncture, no word of cheer? One significant encouragement did meet us instantly. We saw that to these moderns of imaginative vision, the social problem and the religious ase inextricably blended ; and we could not fail to welcome this union as a triumph of democracy, for in its intensity and uni- versality it marked something new to the history of thought. A theology soaring above the earth, occupied with metaphysical abstractions, such as had impas- sioned the ages from Augustine to Calvin and beyond, had ceased to interest though it might still be pursued among specialists. John Bunyan, like Jonathan Ed- wards, had beheld the soul as a separate entity, awfully alone in the universe with its God. But it was man 24 OUR WOULD-BE GUIDES yearning toward fellowship whom Mazzini and Tolstoy contemplated, man reaching out to the Divine and Infinite chiefly if not wholly through relations to his brother-men. People were as much concerned with re- ligion as ever; but Carlyle's " Sartor Resartus " passed abruptly from the breathless mysticism of a chapter on Natural Supernaturalism to a scathing study of modern Helotage ; it was Tolstoy's social conscience that spurred him to formulate afresh his religious faith ; in Nietzsche, the denial of God brought in its train the denial of democracy and compassion. In all this, there might conceivably be loss : there was also assured gain. For it meant that the deep unity of life began to be perceived, and that while in the outer world class-barriers might be high and hard as ever, in the world within distinctions were vanishing, and " water- tight compartments " becoming a thing of the past. As- piration, in the pre-Revolutionary schools, might have been pictured as a Blake - like figure, hands clasped above its head, struggling to free its feet from earth and to sweep upward into the deeps of celestial air. The type of nineteenth - century aspiration was sug- gested rather by the relief made by George Barnard the sculptor for the tomb of a Swedish philanthropist, two comrades, pressing toward each other through an inert mass of opposing rock, just touching finger-tips, yet straining with a power that must prevail. Their heads are bent earthward with the intensity of their effort ; when the embrace they crave is attained at last they may look up together to the stars. 25 THE DILEMMA This union of religious and social passion in all the great masters reinforced and comforted our own in- stincts ; for it was the very condition of our activity, the medium in which our being moved. Yet it was only a condition and a medium. It simply gave us the key to which our music must be pitched. We who longed to achieve harmony, who were producing only discords, turned to listen to our leaders. What unison among them ? What suggestions, for the music of the future, did they offer our attentive ears ? II Alas, we found agreement enough, but in ne- gation only ! Discontent with civilization marks to an astonishing degree the higher reaches of nineteenth- century thought. Social criticism is no new thing ; but in earlier times it had attacked foibles, not found- ations. The greater the age, the more it has exulted in its own glory. Elizabethan England, the Florence of the Renascence^ the Greece of Pericles, felt a proud and eager patriotism thinly disguised by the captious- ness of social censors and leading to delighted self- glorification. Complacency has not been lacking to the Age of Steam, but it has not come from the men of imagination and vision. In the utterances of gen- ius coming from every European country, restlessness deepens into dissatisfaction, and abhorrence at times into despair. Looking back, and gathering our impressions, we could distinguish in this general revulsion two re- 26 OUR WOULD-BE GUIDES current strains, often blended, yet originally distinct. Through the decades, from the days of Byron and Leo- pardi, rose the exasperated protest of the stifled Ego, clamoring, and in vain, for power under modern con- ditions to attain a man's full stature, to achieve sincer- ity, fulfillment, peace. We heard outraged hatred of restraint and defiance of convention, voiced so haught- ily by Byron, ringing sardonic and brilliant at a later date through the work of Ibsen and the Northerners. In thought like that of Edward Carpenter it allied itself to Oriental mysticism, paradoxically drawing the soul aloof into isolation in the very name of unity. In Emerson had been its mildest, most spiritual ex- pression. In Nietzsche it found its apogee. The indi- vidualistic revolt ! Germinated in that denial of sin, that arrogant confidence in the sanctity of natural life, which marked the pre-Revolutionary schools, it was tossed, a strong ferment, into the world of the Revolution. If, as we were bidden, we were to adore our own humanity, why not indulge it? Why not trust its every impulse, resenting all that fettered the free play of desire ? Challenging marriage, reacting from all social forms of religion, never satisfied and never stilled, expressing itself indifferently through music, philosophy, letters, and life, this Spirit of Re- volt has roamed, an unquiet guest, through the stern ways of modern civilization : and where is the man or woman who has never listened to its lure? Yet in our breasts it has encountered, now to embrace, now to oppose, anothe^orce, centrifugal 27 THE DILEMMA where it is centripetal; bringing absolution from egotism, tending to minimize rather than to stress all personal claims on the universe : that pity for human- ity, ever latent, sometimes potent, in the press and clamor of self-seeking modern life. In the spasmodic pages of Rousseau, in the measured lines of Cowper, in pages not to be numbered as the century goes on, a great compassion has contemplated with heartache not to be quieted the manifold miseries of proletariat and privileged alike, and has cried aloud that its brothers, rich and poor, are so fast in prison that they cannot get out. Restless compunction has accompanied the cry; and just as self-assertion has exalted itself into a defiant philosophy, self-effacement has focused itself in a devoted religion. A blind but disinterested grop- ing after the happiness of all was as clear to the dis- cerning mind from the time of Shelley all down the century, as the grasp at the happiness of each. Many a man who has spoken the word of power has had, like Victor Hugo, like William Morris, like John Ruskin, no personal grievance against the world. In the English school after the days of Byron and the Romantic Revolt, social and chivalric feeling may be said on the whole to dominate the individualistic note ; in the French group of Forty-eight social aspiration was lambent but helpless ; in Mazzini it soared in flaming ideals of social and political freedom. In the great Russians we noted for once an all but com- plete fusion of the two impulses, for there individual- ism at its intensest is motived by purest compassion, 28 OUR WOULD-BE GUIDES and leads to a solution of the social problem that though private would fain hold itself to be the solu- tion for all men. So egotism and altruism found themselves allies for the time being in revolt against a social order in which both instincts were cruelly thwarted ; and so the call to sacrifice and the call to dominate met confus- edly in the literature of the century as they met in our own hearts, and united to challenge civilization as it was. Over this revolt we felt impelled to make a longer pause. And first we glanced at the individualistic schools, where the indictment is most sharply defined, though not most intensely felt. Here was Ibsen, for instance : a startling presence, recently discovered at the close of the last century, whose audacity in manner as well as message was pro- ducing hot discussion in artistic circles no less than in those preoccupied with ideas. His work had passed from symbolic mysticism to experiments in the far- thest reaches of dramatic realism, yet through both methods the spirit of negation spoke alone. Sympathies were consistently routed by the stern perception of fact. Brand, refuser of compromise, dear to the author's heart as he shouts " All or Nothing ! " is mercilessly worsted in the battle of life. From Julian, indignant champion of Pagan glories, is wrested reluctant defer- ence before the religion of defeat. Peer Gynt, the man capable of maintaining superb delusions in the face of supreme degradations, is no hero of idealism but a 29 THE DILEMMA poor creature after all. The curious verse, hot with symbolic imaginings, yields to ironical prose, which arraigns our mean conventions with an honesty and vigor that brought a nervous shock to a whole decade. It passes in scornful review the worthlessness of the Pillars of Society, the awful curse of inheritance, the Dolls' House in which women live, the rout of sen- timent by that modern Vittoria Corombona, Hedda Gabler, a lady whom no one in love with life would find interesting enough to describe, the will-o'-the- wisp Aspiration that leads a Master-Builder to fling himself from the apex of his own building. Through the tame bourgeois society that Ibsen pictures in all its in- credible flatness, pulse the same demands of suffocated persons for warmth, life, freedom, that break in the Jacobean drama like the roar of cosmic surge and surf against the silence of eternal law. Times have changed surely for the worse between the days of the " White Devil " and those of Hedda Gabler." For the breakwater against which desire now hurls itself in vain is erected rather by society than by nature, and an ex- asperated sense of its artificiality raises the struggle to the point of madness. Domestic amenities, political moralities, artistic aspirations, crumble to dust touched by the finger of the satirist. What survives is a thwarted Will, vicious or honest, one is never quite sure which, asserting itself in helpless defiance above the debris of a civilization viewed with unmitigated con- tempt. In view of this steady trend of Ibsen's art, it was no surprise to find Brandes writing of him, that 30 OUR WOULD-BE GUIDES " full-blooded egoism " " forced him for a time to re- gard what concerned himself as the only matter of any consequence." When the dramatist writes in his own person he is equally pessimistic, whether he con- sider the destiny of individuals or the fate of nations. There was a change in his political views. He aban- doned the ardent faith in the principle of nationality, which fanned Scandinavian patriotism, and became " a Teuton," preferring that the life of his fatherland should blend with that of Germany. Such a change might conceivably arise from a widening international enthusiasm. Ibsen's general attitude however suggests a surrender rather than a broadening of faith : and this view is strengthened as we realize the deep hos- tility to the State, the political unit, that breathes through his later work. " The State must be abol- ished," he writes : " in that revolution I will take part." Once in a while there is a sad but noble note : " So long as a people can sorrow, so long will that people live." But pessimism in regard to reforms is habitually absolute : " From special reforms I hope ; nothing ; the whole race is on the wrong track." In another passage, he speaks his mind with character- istic brevity : " There are actually moments when the whole history of the world appears to me like one great shipwreck, and the only important thing appears to be to save oneself." Art of this temper may clear the air, but it hardly helped us to find our way through life's tangle. Influenced by Ibsen, the Northern schools of novel 31 THE DILEMMA and drama rarely got beyond him. In realism or ro- mance, the inward conflicts of an Ego that claims gratification as its right, yet finds this very gratifica- tion deadly to itself as well as to others, is the reiterated theme. We saw it in Magda, cruelly gentle, failing to keep her own soul alive and dubiously benefiting the soul of any one else; in Heinrich of "The Sunken Bell," lured by the bewitchments of Rautendelein as the Master-Builder by Hilda, only to doom that spirit of natural joy to coldest nuptials with the Nickelmann, and to break his own heart because he has murdered domestic affection through his flight from the warm dull ways of human fellowship. Had not the English race caught the infection ? Till close on our day, this revel of revolt has gone on unchecked in problem- play and story. It passes with alarming swiftness from literature to life and back again ; centring as is natural in rebellion against the convention of marriage, but widening its scope, to view all restraining tradi- tion with annoyed and supercilious distaste. The Jolly Beggars of Burns need no longer troll their outra- geous ditty from the friendly shelter of a dilapidated barn : " A fig for those by law protected, Liberty 's a glorious feast : Courts for cowards were erected, Churches built to please the priest." Persons of the best breeding and most delicate man- ners on every hand are repeating in private a refined and intellectualized version of the same song. 32 OUR WOULD-BE GUIDES This individualistic passion has at times used demo- cratic language ; but on the whole the leveling instincts of democracy are obnoxious to it, for its central im- pulse is separatist and hence aristocratic. And it was left to a more daring genius even than Ibsen to push its logic to an extreme. In Friedrich Nietzsche, vault- ing negation certainly overleaps itself, and " falls on the other," into a topsy-turvy world, where the most drastic denials suddenly appear as supreme affirma- tions. With how alluring a play of feeling and im- agery did he attack the smug assumptions of a nomi- nal democracy and a faded Christianity ! With what splendor, what audacity, he asserted the aristocratic ideal, in its repudiation of pity as weakness, and its faith in dominion as the end of life ! There is always cause for gratitude when a tendency comes out into the open ; in Nietzsche, we welcomed with relief the justification of our uneasy fears concerning the ulti- mate logic of these schools of revolt : Grant me, O divine protecting Muses, if beyond good and evil you exist, a glance that I may cast on some being absolutely complete, successful, happy, powerful, trium- phant, from whom there is still something to be feared. For here is where we are : the leveling and diminishing of man in Europe conceals our greatest danger. . . . Nothing incites us to become greater to-day : we foresee that every- thing is humbling itself, to be reduced more and more to something more inoffensive, slighter, more prudent, more mediocre, till the superlative insignificance of the Christian virtues is reached. . . . There is the fatal doom of Europe : having ceased to fear man, we have ceased to love him, to 33 THE DILEMMA venerate him, to hope in him, to will with him. The very aspect of man bores us to-day. We are tired of humanity. And again : When will the schools of compassion triumph in their bad work ? When they shall succeed in forcing into the conscious- ness of happy people the misery of others so that they will blush for their happiness [was this not precisely what we had been doing ?] and say to one another : It is a disgrace to be happy in the presence of so many miseries. What a portentous error, for the fortunate, the happy, the power- ful, to doubt their right to happiness ! Away with this up- turned world ! Away with this shameful weakening of feel- ing ! Let not the sick infect the well ! Is it their duty to make themselves into nurses and doctors? Not at all! The superior element must not lower itself to become the instru- ment of the inferior, the pathos of distance must separate duties to all eternity. . . . They are the only guarantee of the future, the only people responsible for humanity. But if they are to be competent for what they have to do, they cannot be allowed liberty to act as physicians, saviors, con- solers. Let in pure air ! Create solitude if you must. But flee the neighborhood of humanity's hospitals. Thus, my friends, we can still protect ourselves, at least for a time, against the two most terrible contagions that menace us : deep disgust, and deep pity for men. ... I understood that this ethic of compassion which was spreading con- stantly was the most disquieting symptom of our European culture. So Nietzsche taught us to burn what we had adored: and this reversal of our moral standards carried with it the social and political implications to be expected. In the state, " the slow suicide of all calls itself life." 34 OUK WOULD-BE GUIDES " Far too many men come into the world : the state was invented for the sake of those who are super- fluous." "The state? What is that? Open your ears, for I am going to speak to you of the death of the peoples." " Where the state ends, look my bro- thers! Do you not see the rainbow and the bridge to the superman ? " Contempt for the many followed of course : " See those superfluous ! They steal . . . the treasures of the wise, and call their theft civilization." How about brotherly love ? " Do I advise you to love your neighbor? Rather would I advise you to flee your neighbor, and pursue that which is afar." Man, to take refuge from this far beauty, this phantom of the Ideal, " runs away to his neighbor." How about that " Eldest of things divine Equality," so passion- ately hymned of Shelley ? To Nietzsche, she is a poi- sonous tarantula, with the revolutionary triangle on her back. With these preachers of Equality I will not be confused. Men are not equal, and they must not become so. By a thousand bridges and a thousand roads they must hasten toward the future : and between them ever more wars and more inequalities must intervene. . . . My brothers, I place before you a new Table of the Law : Harden yourselves. Let us be candid : it brought refreshment and relief when first we met it, this brutally potent and poetic revulsion from the social idealism born of democracy. But the refreshment was short-lived, for the virus of compassion hated by Nietzsche was too inward to expel. He had felt this himself. "Woe! Bitten by 35 THE DILEMMA the tarantula, my old enemy ! " he cried. " With her certitude and her divine beauty, she has bitten my finger ! " Assuredly she had bitten ours, and no anti- dote availed to set our system free and turn us into aristocrats again. The trouble with most of us was that we were mean-spirited. We did not want to be supermen, at least not unless everybody else had a fair chance of getting to be supermen too. Our heart went with Paracelsus : Make no more giants, God, But elevate the race at once, a sentiment which Nietzsche would have considered quite worthy of that mediseval fanatic. If we followed the movement of individualistic re- volt to an extreme, we could hardly avoid ending in the Nietzschean attitude. If we tossed defiance at it, and yielded ourselves to the schools of pity in de- spite, the spectacle offered us was no more reassur- ing. Indeed, the indictment of modern life from this new point of view was even more heart-racking than from the old. The flash-light turned by Ibsen and his compeers on the discontents and diseases of the priv- ileged classes, certainly did not help us to consider these classes, in which we were for the most part included, as a worthy product of great sacrifice. We passed now to contemplate the sacrificed, the pro- ducers of the world, the purveyors to its physical needs, as literature during the century had very grad- ually awaked to them and revealed them. At first 36 OUR WOULD-BE GUIDES the revelation had been absurdly inadequate : even in our own days it was superficial enough : yet as demo- cracy advanced, sympathetic insight into the life of the poor had become more and more enlightened. What need to pause over the picture? In France, Russia, England, Germany, fiction had inexorably shown "Les Miserables," " The People of the Abyss," to the leisured and comfortable classes : and every revealing touch was corroborated by our own experi- ence. Shame kindled to fire the relentless analysis of the results of the social revolution given on broader lines by the great social essayists. Wherever we turned to literature, we were called to contemplate a world where Helots and Dandies divided the stage and where Mammonism and Dilettantism shared the throne. True, there were more cheerful aspects. Even in fiction, certainly out of it, many modern people were living healthy and happy lives, and this was a fact always wholesome to remember. But for us it did not silence the Voice of the Accuser. It is of little avail to tell a man whose lungs are diseased that there is nothing the matter with his digestion ; in the social body as in the physical the wrong of a part incommodes the whole. The centres of disease in modern life were so many that it was small wonder if we rose from the pages of our critics crying out again with the old pain born of personal adventure. What point to diagnosis unless it lead to remedies? To the schools of egotism and the schools of compassion we put the old, the never-silenced question, Show us the Way of Health ! 37 THE DILEMMA III Answers were by no means wanting : but the pre- scriptions were as many as the speakers. At first, the attempt to classify them brought only discouragement ; yet earnest thinking, if it persevered, found through endless diversity of detail two chief constructive principles, to one or the other of which all the best social idealism of the nineteenth century in its more positive phases was at one point or another related. On one of the banners around which idealism ral- lied was inscribed the motto, Civilization must be moralized ! On the other, Civilization must be aban- doned ! The plea to moralize was superficial enough at times. There had been many to believe with Dickens and Victor Hugo that all the world needed to set it right was a lavish application of sentiment. Yet much thought that rallied round this banner was of a better type, searching, rich in suggestion, and supplemented by an immense amount of ardent action. The infusion of moral idealism into a situation unchanged if not unchallenged was looked to by many wise men all through the century as the one sure path to social welfare. Carlyle had united with his still vital denun- ciations a rousing call to act, accompanied by no clear hint of the way to follow. His disciples, notably Ruskiii, pushed his teachings further, laid down a new chivalry of sacrifice and service for all men, especially those " captains of industry," the great manufacturers 38 OUR WOULD-BE GUIDES hailed by Carlyle as masters of the future, and sum- moned the children of privilege to a new ascesis, a disciplined life that should return to the Platonic counsel of the simplification of wants, and refrain, not in the name of asceticism but in that of love, from all that luxury by which human existence was wasted or ravaged. Still distrustful of democracy, the writers of this school evoked for us an attractive picture, an or- ganized feudalism with communistic features, a society " in layers," like Mr. Galsworthy's Chinese pagoda, where heaven-born inequalities gave scope for right interplay of obedience and authority, in a frame of immutable justice that protected the world it gov- erned from either growth or decay. Less logically worked out, similar ideals underlay nearly all cur- rent philanthropy or reform. Mazzini, though he wel- comed the democracy which Englishmen still viewed with distrust, had the same faith in moral passion as the one lever in the emancipation of the world. The twentieth century would hardly consider him a radical. Afire with Republican zeal, he was possessed by the superseded belief in the mystic potency of political forms ; private property represented to him "the activity of the body, just as thought represents the activity of the mind." His ardent aspiration still has power to thrill ; his program is forgotten. Preach- ing, experiment on the same lines, filled the century. Let the system stand as it was, unmodified at least by any outward change ; let the employer deal justly 39 THE DILEMMA and kindly, having less regard to balances of expe- diency than to those of justice ; let the employed give faithful service, helping his master to govern aright even to the extent, as oddly suggested by Matthew Arnold, of improving middle-class schools; let the landlord keep his property in repair, and the tenant be induced by some mysterious means to become clean instead of dirty : in a word, leave the old relations alone, but promote a moral revival within them, and the miracle would be accomplished and our social wrongs be healed. Thus the conscience, with little assistance from the mind, was to solve our difficulties. The plan was simple, it was even magnificent, but it did not work. Of that fact, we, with an increasing number of people, had become painfully aware. Statesmen, economists, reformers, social workers, had been doing their best for well-nigh half a century with these solutions; and the onward movement of life had, not to all minds but to an increasing number, simply discredited their hypothesis. Men seeking to apply these hypotheses found themselves hurtling against vast forces, faintly understood, not to be thwarted nor conquered by their most gallant efforts. This very attempt to moralize the present order by means of individual conversions or detail reforms, had brought us into the impasse in which we stood baffled. Was there any alternative ? Yes ! Many people, like ourselves, turned away saddened or indifferent from all efforts to moralize the world as it was, as 40 OUR WOULD-BE GUIDES from an impossible task ; and with cheerful alacrity, they bade us abandon it. " Civilization : its Cause and Cure," was the text of their teaching, and its burden was " The Call of the Wild." Very fascinating is the appeal of the anarchists from Thoreau to Edward Car- penter as they bid us shake the dust of society and artifice from our feet, and in joyous liberty take on our lips the Song of the Open Road. The Return to Nature ! that summons has never ceased to echo through the heart since the days of Rous- seau. It is a finer form of personal revolt than that which agitates the forlorn and sullen folk of Ibsen's drama, for it is touched with poetry, hope, and fresh- ness. Clear and musical, it rang through the best so- cial idealism of the new world, whether with Emerson it allured to a delicate spiritual detachment only, or through the heartier accents of Whitman braced to courageous rejection of the conventional and false, and a vigorous reshaping of the visible life. A myriad voices in the old world take up the siren strain. Its allurements can never be forgotten. And yet, the more we thought the more sadly we perceived that it is a call to fettered men. For unless one retreated to a tropical climate, as Carpenter indeed somewhere suggests that we all do, one would have to wear clothes. And every fibre of those clothes would sing persistently in the ear the modern Song of the Shirt : recalling the intermin- able array of men and women, clerks, dressmakers, sewing-girls, weavers, back to the tenders of silk- 41 THE DILEMMA worms or gatherers of cotton, who have given life and labor, often under cruelly unjust conditions, that we may be clad. The same message, silent to sense, clam- orous to imagination, rises from all the simplest and most inalienable trapping of life. Abandon ? We can- not. Our every movement precludes the possibility. Separate ourselves as we will from our brothers, with- draw to whatever depth we will into the wilderness, we may not, short of suicide, refuse the gifts they offer. To fall back on a wholesome and normal personal existence, and rest there satisfied, is to reject that reciprocity of sacrifice which is the first law of de- cent life. And what said Tolstoy, the pathetic Titan, who rose head and shoulders above all the other guides of the nineteenth century, the only spiritual leader of our day who can be said to have attained international importance ? Here was a man whose searching simplicity had power to touch our most inward wounds. From the story of Levin to that of Nekhludoff, it was given him to write large, with honesty only equaled by his sub- tlety, the spiritual autobiography of his age. In Tol- stoy alone all the forces potent in the social idealism of the last century appear united. The personal re- volt from modern civilization has rarely been so elo- quently phrased, yet it was inspired by no egotism but by purest passionate pity. His was a nature so exalted that the most private needs and cravings could be satisfied only when love should be freed 42 OUR WOULD-BE GUIDES from remorse; and individual aspiration and social compunction were thus woven in one strand. In the expression of the deep and complex suffering that results from the union, he has surely no equals in the literature of this or any time. And as egotism here soars till it is one with altruism in the freedom of the upper air, so the two constructive impulses pressing toward personal harmony and social redemption which as we have seen severally dominate one or another seeker of the century, are here indistinguishably harmonized. To moralize society was the one central aim of Tol- stoy : but his method was to abandon it. The escape from civilization including even its finest assets of art and manners was the constant theme of his philosophy, the experiment of his noblest characters, the spur to the final tragedy of his last days and death. But in such escape, indefinitely repeated, he saw not merely the way to personal peace, but the one salvation for society. The rich organic fullness of Tolstoy's life, thought, and art, gives us the most significant social solution the last century had to offer, apart from the one great solution which we have not yet approached : and with eagerness we turned to him in our hour of need. It is in the inimitable pages of " What Is To Be Done " that he most fully traces his experience. The story he tells is in large degree the same that we fol- lowed from a personal point of view in the last chap- ter. Nor is it possible to read without deep response the graphic narrative. Coming from the country, hor- 43 THE DILEMMA rifled by the pauperism of Moscow, he sets himself to the work of relief : and chronicles for us the sudden horrible shame he experienced when he had yielded to his first impulse of indiscriminate almsgiving : With a sense of having committed some crime, I re- turned home. There I entered along the carpeted steps into the rug-covered hall, and having taken off my fur coat sat down to a meal of five courses. ... I realized not only with my brain but with every pulse of my soul, that while there were thousands of such sufferers in Moscow, I ... filled myself daily to repletion with luxurious dainties of every description. Whatever the wise and learned of the earth might say about it, however unalterable the course of life might ap- pear to be, the same evil was continually being enacted, and I, by my personal habits of luxury, was a promoter of that evil. I might have given away, not only the drink, and the small sum of money I had with me, but also the coat from off my shoulders and all that I possessed at home. I had not done so, and therefore felt and feel and can never cease to feel myself a partaker in a crime which is constantly being committed, so long as I have superfluous food while others have none, so long as I have two coats while there exists one man without any. From this familiar starting-point the tale goes on : describing with grave irony, first the personal minis- trations, then the effort, more or less successful, to rouse the conscience of friends ; the organized philan- thropy, and the startling discovery that the misery of the poor went back to causes so deep that " their 44 OUR WOULD-BE GUIDES misfortunes could not be met by exterior means," that " in order to help them, it was necessary not to give them food, but to teach them how to eat." Driven from one vantage-ground to another, helpless before the problem of Rzanoffs', the tenement house which had been the centre of his efforts, feeling that he was " like a man trying to help others out of a morass who was himself stuck fast in it," Tolstoy is driven frankly to face the situation in words that have become classic : " It is as if I were sitting on the neck of a man, and having quite crushed him down I compel him to carry me, and assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him, and wish to ease his condition by every means in my power, except by getting off his back." And again : " The theory by which men who have freed themselves from personal labor justify themselves, in its simplest form, is this : We men, having freed our- selves from work, and having by violence appropriated the labor of others, find ourselves in consequence bet- ter able to benefit them." But " If I wish to help men, I must avoid sharing in the enslaving of men." And the means not to share in the enslaving ? The practical conclusion ? Here, where Tolstoy turns from confession to reparation, we listened breathless. Could we think it wise to follow ? And if we surmised that his was indeed the path of wisdom, had we cour- age to set our feet therein ? " I came to the following simple conclusion : that in order to avoid causing the sufferings and depravity of men, I ought to make other men work for me as little 45 THE DILEMMA as possible, and to work myself as much as possible." The dust of the city shaken off ; the withdrawal to country life ; the dress, the food, the pursuits, of peasants ; the making of perishable shoes substituted for the making of immortal books. In a word, the old Platonic, Ruskinian doctrine of the simplification of wants and the return to manual labor. The union, as we have already said, of the two recipes with which we are familiar : life to be moralized, but by aban- doning it. It is an alluring path. But does it not lead out into the desert ? And if in the desert peace is waiting, what relation has that peace to Rzanoffs', left behind? There was a relation in Tolstoy's mind. His healthy existence in the quiet of the fields held the clue as'lie believed to the conquest of the tenement-house evils. Let all who prey upon the labor of others the privi- leged, the leisure, the capital-owning classes follow his example : purify their lives, refrain from luxury, and share in physical toil. Two results,- he believed, would follow. First, the crushing labor involved in the production of luxuries would be eliminated and a large amount of other labor would be lifted from the shoulders of the poor; next, and perhaps even more important, among those self-subjected to this Spartan discipline, would be born and developed by degrees a deep, ingrained distaste for the possession of any property at all. A free communism, voluntary, Christian, gentle, to be reached through no organ- ized movement for social reconstruction, but as an 46 OUR WOULD-BE GUIDES ultimate result from the moralizing of individual con- duct, will spread among all right-minded people ; by holy contagion, men will become more and more right- minded ; and the end, of which the old prophet never despaired, will be a world released and redeemed. No thinking person, if religiously disposed, can dis- miss this conception lightly. It will remain to the end operative in the inmost fibres of his social be- ing. Again and again we shall have to recur to it : for there is some reason to suspect in it if not the logi- cal culmination of the social seeking of the century, at least the most complete personal answer to the trou- ble of the social conscience. Yet the deep sadness that invaded us as we brooded over it was not wholly due to personal recoil from a call that we had not courage to follow. It sprang rather from our thought of ulti- mate reactions, and the wider our outlook the keener it grew. Tolstoy does not shrink from the repudiation of art and science : he treats modern ideas of progress with scorn: the life of the peasant is to him the model of excellence, and his honor for poverty has in mind not the factory-worker,, but the agricultural la- borer alone. But over the suicide of civilization most of us pause hesitant. The Gospels themselves seem to us richer, wider, than in the Tolstoyan version. Despite our dissatisfactions and our revulsions, some reverence for the world as it is, and as it is becoming, is ingrained within us. We cannot believe that to abandon life will ever avail either to moralize or to save it. 47 THE DILEMMA Nor could we feel anything new in the solution. To lure as many elect individuals as possible out of the world as the best thing that can be done for them, is a method at least as old as the days of St. Benedict. It was in its time a great and effective stroke for hu- man perfection ; but that time is over. Twenty, thirty years ago, while still within the horizon of the nine- teenth century, we felt with prescient instinct the affili- ation which the sharp approach of death was to reveal. Tolstoy fled when the end approached, to his true home. Nor has history a more impressive scene in its private annals than the picture of the white-bearded patriarch wise with all modern culture, to whom wistful pilgrims eager for a social gospel had for long years journeyed from East and West, most notably from the United States, at last forced by an inward stress to retire as the drama of his life drew to closing, to those half- Oriental monasteries where, conversing with his recluse sister or with ancient sages rapt in contemplative calm, he might at last be one with the immemorial tradition of purity in abnegation, and find his solution by deny- ing the will to live. IV Between the superb arrogance of Nietzsche, with his clamor for fullness of life regardless of the fate of the weak, and this new anarchist asceticism, so ten- der, so difficult, so aimless, we might then choose if we would ; and the choice is still before us. What do we see in their exponents ? On the one hand a heart-rend- 48 OUR WOULD-BE GUIDES ing figure, dying in an insane asylum. On the other, one who for many years had sought consistency in vain and had been driven by puzzled affection to com- promise with his conscience ; who had sought to attain a fallacious peace by imitating the more external fea- tures of the peasants' life, while that real sting of pov- erty, the terror of dependence and want, remained unknown ; who sadly endured the tender ministries which, as Merejowski contemptuously records, slipped sachets of his favorite perfume surreptitiously among his linen ; who wrote no more Anna Kareninas ; and who at the point of death triumphantly vindicated his spiritual honor only by violating the ties of human devotion; one who died worsted and pitiful, in his effort to escape the burden of communal guilt, the most significant, most appealing, most futile figure of this strange modern world. Were hidden things revealed, the honest followers of Nietzsche would probably appear more numerous than the thorough followers of Tolstoy. But both are to be found. Indeed, one would not deprecate the in- fluence or value of any phase in the sincere teaching at which we have all too briefly glanced. At every point, troubled spirits have found rest : at some they have found healing and freedom. Throngs of workers, philanthropists and reformers are still laboring val- iantly and not all unf ruitf ully to moralize the present order : an occasional rare spirit, steeped it may be in Emerson, it may be in the wisdom of the East, still flees from the press to dwell with soothfastness. And 49 THE DILEMMA yet, apart from these fortunate ones, how great that throng of the unsatisfied among whom we were forced to take our place ! The aristocratic solution is impos- sible to us, simply because we are made on another pattern. To abandon the world may be an attractive proposition ; but perhaps we exhausted its possibilities in a previous incarnation. In one way or another, all individualistic solutions, not least that of Tolstoy, ap- pear to us to make the Great Refusal, which is the re- fusal of life itself, either in its richest aspect of sacrifice or in its more obvious aspect of fulfillment. As for moralizing, the failure of our attempts to make any headway on that line, either through philanthropy or reform, was precisely what had driven us to this dis- heartening review. So from our most inspiring leaders came tragic voices, uttering a summons that few indeed would follow, and that when followed led to no country of social salvation, but to solitary and erratic paths, where personal satisfaction might perhaps be won, but where social utility in the broader sense was wholly dubious. The further we proceeded, the more did the application of moral idealism to the social problems of our age appear invested with unreality. We had begun this retrospect because we were at a standstill ; we ended it with no consolation except such as came from per- ceiving that the wisest and most vital thinkers of the nineteenth century were in the same impasse as our- selves. CHAPTER III A PROMISE OF LIGHT AT this juncture, help was waiting ; it had been waiting all the time. We raised our eyes from the brilliant pages of the theorists, we turned them to the field of life. There we saw a force at work, alien in some ways to all other ideals of social redemption ; curiously unnoted in most educated circles, yet active through all the century: appearing, vanishing, pre- senting itself repeatedly in a new guise, and shaping formula progressively enriched and clarified. This force differed from all those just passed in review, in that it sought neither to moralize nor to abandon but to transform our existing civilization. It rested in no barren defiance, it was indifferent to schemes of personal escape, it had slight interest in the application of palliatives and panaceas. It presented for consideration a synthetic conception of past human progress, it looked with prescient au- thority into far reaches of the social future, and it outlined constructive principles that would lead to action on a vast scale, to be carried out, not through the multiplication of isolated efforts, but through the coordination of the collective will. This force was Socialism. A surprising recognition 51 THE DILEMMA grew on us of its persistence, its adaptability, its intimate relation to the changing order. The various gospels of our nineteenth-century writers would have been as possible in any other age as in our own. For instance, the Pagan attitude of Nietzsche merely touched with self-consciousness the ideals implicit in every Hellenic renascence, Leon Alberti in the six- teenth century being as good a superman as our age is likely to produce. No guiding word which might not have been spoken in the thirteenth century came from those true heirs of medieval Christianity, Rus- kin and Tolstoy. But the language of these new thinkers, true or false, fell fresh on our ears. They had learned it, not before the throne of an abstract Justice enskied in distant heavens, but close to the great earth-murmur that rises confusedly from the act- ual life of men. Their gospel was a modern product ; and in its modernity and actuality, we who had found general moral truths, unrelated to temporal phenomena, alluringly easy to formulate and distressingly hard to apply, felt the first strength of the socialist appeal. II We set ourselves to review the history of socialism ; and looking back, we noted a long preparation. We saw the eighteenth century, stagnant on the surface, a -quiver beneath with new life engendered by the union of the emotional revolt initiated by Rousseau, with the critical philosophy of France and what has been called the rediscovery of the inner life in Ger- 52 A PROMISE OF LIGHT many. This in the sphere of ideas. Meantime, in the outer world, the Industrial Revolution is accomplished : machines, supplanting hand-labor, fall into the hands of the fortunate, the few, the strong ; and the modern proletariat, the modern bourgeoisie, are marshaled be- fore us. This secret process, soon to generate its Apologia in the Manchester School, goes on all but unnoted ; and presently the whirlwind of the political revolu- tion sweeps over Europe. Thrones fall, political demo- cracy is born. In the earlier stages at least of the Revolution, middle and working classes are united in attack on the aristocrat, their common enemy, though Kropotkin's brilliant history of the epoch en- ables one to distinguish the roles. As the nineteenth century goes on, cleavage gaps plain, though for a time unnoted. The Napoleonic storm changes the map of Europe, and a chaotic society experiences a dis- comfort and bewilderment in which the restless ego- tism of youth mistakes itself for the exhaustion of age. u Don Juan " and "Vanity Fair" are excellent social documents to picture the period. Passing on, we find a monarchical and aristocratic reaction on the Con- tinent; but it hardly affects the swift rise of Lib- eralism to power. Child of the dominant forces in both industrial and political revolution, this liberalism masks itself as the champion of freedom, and the period of its triumph is rightly described by Marx as " the most infamous and reactionary epoch in English history." Culminating in the Reform Bill of 1832, it 53 THE DILEMMA controls the day in politics, industry, and religion. This is the period of the worst exploitation of labor, coupled with such complacent self-satisfaction in ma- terial advance as expresses itself in letters through Lord Macaulay. The conservative parties, opposed to the riot of in- dividualism, coquet more or less feebly with the deeper instincts of the inchoate social democracy, as may still be seen in those curious books "Sybil" and " Con- ingsby," and in the dazzling career of their author. Yet on the whole aristocratic ideas are fading, and by the midale of the century it has become evident to some people of insight that the significant struggle of the future is not to be between the survivors of feudalism and the middle class, but between this domineering class, cArying with it so lusty and forceful a concep- tion of solLal relations, and the confused powers of the land-less, pital-less man, without whose strength both land and capital are helpless. It is in the social ferment of 1848 that the new opposition becomes clear. France experiences, though only for a moment, a true proletarian revolution, and under^ Louis Blanc actually attempts to extend demo- cracy beyond political to industrial relations. Germany, Italy, feel more faintly the same stir, and the brave, brief experiment of Mazzini at Rome focuses the gaze of Europe. In England, the failure of Chartism, the first agitation distinctively proletarian in character, is accompanied by a growing protest against liberalism as the sum of wisdom, and competition as the safe- 54 A PROMISE OF LIGHT guard of freedom. KiDgsley and Maurice grope their way in the dark ; yet such a book as " Alton Locke," such effort as that of the Christian Socialists, blunder- ing and bourgeois as they now appear, mark the advent of a new conviction that society has got to be saved by other means than reform or philanthropy, that the in- dustrial system as a whole obviously cannot be mor- alized by changes in detail, but must be transformed in its foundations. In Mrs. Browning's "Aurora Leigh," that neglected potpourri of ancient fragrances, one may still breathe with delightful fullness the social aspirations of the time. Precisely at this point appears a modest document called the " Communist Manifesto." Nobody in Eng- land pays any attention to it ; it does not rise into the air of polite letters, and one finds no evidence that the public which was delighting in Ruskin's early art-books and protesting against the social diatribes of Carlyle had ever heard of it. , Nevertheless it was there : writ- ten in German, published from London, apparently doomed to oblivion for a time by the defeat of the Revolution in France, but through " The International " making its way by degrees into every European lan- guage and country, till by 1888 Friedrich Engels couH call it " the common platform acknowledged by millions of workingmen from Siberia to California." If our pil- grim came across it at the end of the nineteenth cen- tury, it probably gave him a curious shock. Reading it to-day, we find it full of the exact ideas, some of them crudely enough put, with which the twentieth century 55 THE DILEMMA is busy. Its appearance signals the advent of social- ism in the modern sense as a force to reckon with. There had been hints enough of socialism earlier. It had glanced forth, only to be suppressed, in certain audacious and obscure phases of speculation in 1793, regarded with sincere horror by those bourgeois radi- cals who would fain have been considered the only friends of freedom. It had woven a fair tissue of doc- trinaire fantasies in the earlier " Utopists," and had developed more practical and prophetic theory and experiment in the work of Robert Owen. But only in the middle of the century, after a conservative reaction had worn out its strength, after middle-class liberalism had reached its flaunting zenith, do we find its theo- ries assuming a modern character : The bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence on so- ciety as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state that it has to feed him instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words its existence is no longer compatible with society. The essential condition for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital ; the condition for capital is wage-labor. Wage labor rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the laborers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, there- 56 A PKOMISE OF LIGHT fore, cuts from under its feet the very foundations on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces above all are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable. Such are the ideas which in the " Communist Mani- festo " emerge into the daylight, and which from that day to our own are never to be wholly obscured again. Ill As we feel the modern quality in the stinging sen- tences, we may well marvel at the unconsciousness of the age into which they crept. Yet, to continue our re- view into the second half of the century, in England we have again to chronicle reaction. " The shouting and the tumult dies " ; the agitation for social reform fades and recedes. On one point, indeed, the prophecy of Marx finds swift fulfillment. The " isolation of the laborers, due to competition," is quietly supplemented by their " combination," and the class-conscious trade- union movement, heir of Chartism, precursor of labor in politics, develops with Anglo - Saxon persistence, displaying its power to protect the interests of the workers, while at the same time it trains them in soli- darity. But the trade-union, true to its English blood, deals at first little in theories. It is for deeds, not for speculation or speech. So far as current thought and letters go, interest in social questions flags after the Forty-eight for twenty years or more. In the sixties, comes an intellectual revolution. 57 THE DILEMMA Under the influence of science, men's attitude toward the natural universe undergoes a fundamental change. Evolution was in the air before this decade. Brown- ing in the thirties, Tennyson at the exact turn of the century in 1850, had expressed the idea with a vivid- ness and precision such as only poets command. But not till now, after the publication of the epoch-making book of Darwin, did the conception fill the public mind ; and a glance at the table of contents of the great reviews during the decade shows easily how it drove all other interests into the background. Meantime, social radicalism was in special disrepute. For had not The International been formed, after the great world - exposition in the Crystal Palace? And did not the mere report of this association in the Un- derworld a red spectre, a phantasmal horror fill educated and privileged minds with shocked dis- tress, and check dispassionate thinking? With scant surprise, people hailed in the Parisian Commune of 1870 the natural and disastrous outcome of a move- ment which they had ludicrously misconceived, and which had filled them with as much dismay as if echo- ing rumors from a conclave in Pandaemonium had penetrated the decorous circles that gathered around Queen Victoria. None the less, and largely through the internal struggles of this very International, radicalism had been gradually disentangling itself from its old revo- lutionary traditions of violence and intrigue, and emerging into another phase. The dark method of 58 A PROMISE OF LIGHT conspiracy and secrecy charged with a romantic tone thoroughly in keeping with the tastes of mid- nineteenth-century Jiterature and art were to be known less a,nd less. Indeed, they were before long to be driven for refuge to that half-feudal Russia where they still flourish. Socialism too was learning its lesson from evolution, and Karl Marx the revolutionist was its teacher. Marx's great work, "Das Capital/' tne first volume of which appeared scarcely five years after the " Origin of Species," fulfilled the most original promise of his "Communist Manifesto"; for it set out to interpret economic theory strictly in the light of historic development. Current social ideals, even so late as the mid-nineteenth century, had gazed upward for guidance into the open sky of Platonic eternity ; the Manchester School pursued its cheerful observa- tions within the limited horizons of a supposedly perma- nent present. It was left for the scientific socialism founded by Marx to lure the eye to further adventures and bid it choose its path toward a true human future through exploration of the actual past. Not till ten years and more after the collapse of the Commune and the consequent reaction,- did the full force of the new method of attack begin- to be grad- ually realized. Many causes, among which must be counted the inveterate Hebraism of the English, ac- count for the extraordinary slowness with which Eng- land awoke to the import of the new alliance between evolutionary science and sociology. By the eighties, however, preliminaries were over. Democracy, which 59 THE DILEMMA all through the century had been either repudiated or distrusted by the wisest idealists, had finally won, at least as an experiment, the right of way. And not only individuals, but groups of men, arose to assert that the union of evolutionary and democratic ideals spelled socialism. This salient decade of the eighties, in which our imaginary pilgrim is still stationed, witnessed then at last the rise in England of a genuine socialist move- ment. Many English students might repudiate Marx. None the less, they profited by his unrelenting demand for the substitution of economic analysis for ethical v fantasy. Through the valiant work of the Fabians, of William Morris and the Social Democratic Federation, and of the Independent Labor Party a little later, socialism before the end of the century was out in the open and not to be ignored. During this decade, though it held even in England a larger proportion than to-day of violent and anarchical elements, it already tended to justify the prediction of Marx, that in this one country it might be able to prevail without revolu- tion. None the less startling was its message. It rose, a vast Presence, extending arms of invitation ; appearing to some shadowy and baleful, to others illumined with the light of a yet unrisen sun. So it still stands to-day : less and less shadowy, more and more compelling. IV Our idealists would have none of it. They thought it "dangerous," they thought it "materialistic," or 60 A PROMISE OF LIGHT they never thought of it at all. Yet no small factor in the relief with which many a mind toward the end of the century welcomed the socialist ideal, was the per- ception that the instincts at play in piteous confusion among the idealists found satisfaction and coherence in the socialist synthesis. This synthesis presented, to begin with, an indict- ment in no wise unfamiliar, save as it gathered together and related to a centre the vivid impressions of the imaginative writers. Here was the same revulsion from a society sordid and soiled as that which inspired Haupt- mann's " Weavers " or Zola's " Germinal," here the same force of veiled and baffled pity. The socialist movement, like the literature of the age, included men impelled by personal revolt and others inspired by chivalric and disinterested rage. On the positive side, the points of contact were even more suggestive, till it was hard not to feel that the diverse groping and baffled instincts of our leaders would have found their home in this synthesis, and there alone. Had not the desire \ to moralize society led even Ruskin to a faint vis- ion of a cooperative order, albeit an afterglow from the set sun of feudalism illumined the country of his dreams? What socialist could demand a more drastic statement than his bold words, " All social evils arise from the pillage of the laborer by the idler " ? Did not Mazzini, in some ways greatest among the modern prophets, place an almost mystic stress on the future of " Association " ? " True liberty," said he, " cannot exist without equality, and equality can only exist 61 THE DILEMMA among those who start from a common ground." Strange to say, Matthew Arnold, a thinker all but si- lent concerning social misery, preoccupied rather with the intellectual defects of our civilization, had spoken in the same sense : " Our inequality," said he, in the memorable phrase that smacks of purest socialism, " Our inequality materializes our upper class, vulgar- izes our middle class, brutalizes our lower class." The i socialist program could be summed up as the reduc- ' tion of economic inequality, and if we remembered in addition Arnold's constant stress on the need for extension of the functions of the State, what prevented our hailing him as comrade ? The grim old sage of Chelsea had cried in distress, as he faced the individ- ualistic Victorian chaos : " How in connection with inevitable democracy, indispensable sovereignty is to exist, it is the question of questions!" Socialism alone had an answer to that question in its conception of a social democracy, no longer chaotic, but organized. As for Tolstoy, withheld as he was from socialism by his distaste for that direct external compulsion to labor which a socialist state would involve, his emphasis on the universal duty of manual toil was yet quite in the socialist vein, and that communistic society which he foresaw as the far goal of voluntary sacrifice, singu- larly resembled the civilization predicted by many a socialist as the final outcome, to be reached on strict lines of necessary economic evolution, beyond an in- termediate stage. Nor would Marx himself have dis- avowed the brave words: "Property is the root of G2 A PROMISE OF LIGHT all evil, and at the same time property is that toward which all the activity of modern society is directed, and that which controls the activity of the world." These words of Tolstoy might well serve as text to the new faith. For the attitude toward property is the dividing point between the socialist schools and aD philanthropy and reform. This point had been hinted by almost every constructive thinker of the nineteenth century ; but the world had not caught it, nor can we be surprised, for half the time these thinkers had not caught it themselves. Socialism however never blurred nor missed it. Now noisily, now with dogged quiet, it reasserted the conviction that only by limit- ing the right to private wealth could our social wrongs be cured. It would hear no talk of moralizing a social structure that it held to be immoral ingrain : in aban- doning the common lot, it felt no interest. Swiftly or slowly, a radically new social order must be achieved. And the one necessary factor in its achievement was the denial of the individual's inalienable right to pri- vate property, and the substitution of social for private ownership in the case of at least the greater portion of wealth socially produced. Now this was a/conception, in the immortal words of Dogberry, most tolerable* and not to be endured. All liberties may be taken with an Angora cat so long as her sacred tail is not disturbed : touch that, and spit- ting and scratches are your portion. In like manner, 63 THE DILEMMA the principle of private property may not be handled, however gently ; it is sacrosanct, surrounded by mys- tic awe, connected in some undefined manner with the proprieties of marriage and the ardors of religion. Socialism all through the nineties was of course affect- ing far more people than accepted it. Its doctrines were coloring the ideas even of its opponents and aid- ing immensely in the process already described, by which philanthropy itself underwent a democratic trans- formation. None the less alien was its essential point. However far the reform movement might sympathize with the aims of socialism and even accept its immedi- ate measures, this heart and centre of socialist faith, this conviction that our social and economic evils can never be ended till land and capital be socially owned, remained anathema. Indeed, for a long time the most fiery radicalism had refrained quite as much as conservative orthodoxy from attacking the principle of property. In the dra- matic days of that bourgeois revolution at the end of the eighteenth century which introduced the modern world, and unconsciously instituted a new tyranny where it sought to destroy the old, the leaders who sang the Marseillaise with most energy protested their vociferous loyalty to the holy and unlimited right of men to personal possessions. Kropotkin's history of the epoch enables us to follow the shocked correctness with which messieurs les revolutionnaires protest their religious adherence to the principle. The National Assembly, when soon after the taking of the Bastille 64 A PKOMISE OF LIGHT it drew up its famous Declaration of Rights, followed its model, the American Declaration of Independence, in omitting all reference to the economic relations of citizens, except that it affirmed property to be " invio- lable and sacred." The Girondists inscribed the words " Liberty " and " Property " on the base of their stat- ues. The Constitution of 1793 in its second article defined the rights of man as " Equality, Liberty, Se- curity, and Property," and it was no less a man than Danton who said at tlfe first sitting of the Convention, " Let us declare that all properties, territorial, individ- ual and industrial, shall be forever respected." Com- munistic theories, inevitably born of the stirring times, countenanced by the Montagnards and yet more vig- orously by the Enrages, were sternly frowned down^ The Revolution accomplished the end which the lead- ers had from the very first more or less clearly pro- posed to themselves : upon the ruins of feudalism, it laid the foundations for government by those middle classes then rapidly growing through the development of trade and commerce, and dependent on free access to wealth and secure possession of it. This government naturally rested on respect for private property as its very base. The liberalism in economics and politics which was the immediate outcome of the Revolution, and the concomitant of middle-class rule, consequently invested Property with a religious awe greater far than that with which it was regarded in the Middle Ages. Plenty of moral talk was current on the matter : it grew clearer, 65 THE DILEMMA shriller, year by year, especially as the under-world be- gan to grow a little deaf. It continues to our own day, with increasing emphasis and earnestness. Property is a sacred trust ; it is to be administered after our own comfort is assured for the advantage of our brethren. The word "ethics" and this is surely a gain is quite habitually mentioned in connection with it ; books are even published that bring the two words together in the title. The suggestions that result are troubling to the fierce passion of acquisitiveness which modern life has let loose, and however vehemently they are scouted, they prove hard to forget. It has never been really denied that men have a moral responsibility toward the distribution of their wealth ; even within the nine- teenth century, the theory emerged which the twenti- eth seems inclined to emphasize, that they have also responsibility toward their methods of making it. This is a notion as alien to the psychology of the modern financier as it would have been to Robin Hood ; but on the whole, its exponents and champions are ap- plauded by the public. Blatant graft, cruelty in the com- petitive game, are grist to the mill of popular magazines.; Even luxury of the more extreme type is condemned, particularly by those who cannot command it. A fairly definite ideal floats before the general mind. It includes justice in gain, moderation in use, generosity in expenditure. This ideal is obviously safe, attract- ive and desirable, and though current practice is wr enough from conforming to it, it receives the lip hoin- 66 * A PROMISE OF LIGHT age of all. But we go no further. Hint for one mo- ment that civilization must be altered from the roots, touch at any point that nervous system of society, the rights of private property, then the galled jade winces, and complacency is at an end. Nevertheless, the thought of the proscribed and ob- scure has ended by coming out into the light of day. Preached from Plato on by an occasional fanatic, working as it were underground and in silence through successive epochs, emerging from time to time with new emphasis and fortified with new relations, it is at last before the eyes of all thinking men. It has en- tered practical politics : it compels general attention and rouses widespread challenge. People may loathe it. They may repudiate and refute it. They cannot ignore it. The principle that private property is a sacred, primary and inalienable right is no longer an assumption to build on : it is a thesis to be proved. VI The establishment of socialism in a conspicuous position before the seeking mind of the age, was then the most important intellectual event of the past quarter-century. Those who accepted the new gospel in the early days left their own people and their father's house, and their nearest were likely to turn against them. The searching quality of the new force was indicated by the antagonism it roused. One might labor forever to moralize the situation, and meet with sentimental applause. One might defy 67 THE DILEMMA civilization if one liked, go barefoot, turn vegetarian, or even fling away from marriage and the Church, nobody took very seriously a policy which left the social machine to creak along as usual, only persuad- ing the believer to get out of its way. But socialism was a different matter: here a large proportion of those whose mental and material life flourished under things as they are scented the arch-enemy. And people who ranged themselves on its side, had at last the coveted satisfaction of standing in notorious op- position to the system they most abhorred. It had patronized them and even given them funds, when they founded settlements and served on charity-boards ; it had applauded them when they made personal sacri- fices, and viewed them with nothing worse than mild disapproval when they tried to remedy some crass superficial results of the competitive system. But let them repudiate that system as a whole and summon men to renounce the greed for private gain which was at the root of it, and straightway they could enter a claim to the Beatitude promised the persecuted. They knew such exaltation as St. Francis must have known, when he threw his garments in the face of his astonished father, and faced in triumphant naked- ness a World in Clothes. For how beyond measure were the compensations ! i t v Socialism quieted that ache of the heart which had never before found comfort. By bitter experience we had learned that the destruction of the poor is their poverty, and that handicaps increased automatically 68 A PROMISE OF LIGHT from one generation to another, till whole classes were bound hand and foot. Now, rightly or wrongly this is not the place to consider, we were shown a fu- ture in which by adjustments equally unconscious, all children should start free from automatic disabilities in a fair and open field. Not Plato nor More nor any other Utopian had sketched in Cloud-Cuckoo Land a more sensible world than that which the socialist soberly believed to be on the way. And the wonderful thing was, that it was the theory habitually dismissed as most fantastic, which now assured us that the hope of escape from " the exploitation of the worker by the idler " was born of no sentimental revolt, but of the sternest interpre- tation of history. Times and seasons no one knew. The process might be slow or swift, on this point, as on many others, we saw at once that socialists differed among themselves. What matter ? We were told to believe that the hour was striking, and that the whole civilization we hated, with its ugly extremes of greed and want, its emphasis not even on physi- cal force but on mere pelf, as a measure of value, its tempting incentives to cruelty masked as enterprise and mean - spiritedness masked as resignation, was doomed. After the cutting disappointment inflicted by the feebleness of philanthropy and the failure of reform, after our saddened revolt from the per- sonal solution pressed on us by religion, after our discovery that the guides we most trustee! were lost in the same maze with ourselves, came socialism like a THE DILEMMA new evangel: and we felt such relief as a trapped creature may feel, when a sudden movement sets his foot free from the spring, and the world awaits his choosing. CHAPTER IV " THE TUG *S TO COME " " ALL to the very end is trial in life." We have conducted our pilgrim simultaneously to socialism and to the end of the last century. But the doom of the quest is on him still, and his further adventures are those which chiefly concern us. For this book is not written to review a past experience, but, against the background now lightly sketched, to study a present situation. The joy the convert to socialism knew held many factors. There was a sobering as well as an exalting ele- ment in it ; for to join the socialist movement demanded then as now no small degree of moral audacity. It meant abandonment of familiar paths ; it called one to brand as inadequate the conceptions which had for centuries sufficed the noblest spirits. Doubtless, socialism was a product of the same conditions as the philanthropy and reform which had claimed the al- legiance of our youth ; but it sprang from a deeper level, of which one was less conscious, and in its aspect there was something alien and menacing, no less than alluring. To embrace it involved a subtle renuncia- tion : and in this very renunciation the seeker found a secret delight. 71 THE DILEMMA Swiftly this delight passed into another : the bright inspiration of " the dear love of comrades." Already, socialism had gathered its adherents by thousands in many lands. They formed a great international party, rolling up votes, gaining power, and presenting, along with much diversity in type, one permanent diagnosis of the evils we deplored, one undeviating conviction of the only path of escape. Every great imaginative leader of the nineteenth century had groped his way in profound loneliness ; and however affectionate the relations our pilgrim had knowniu earlier life, he like his masters had been solitary within. Now it seemed that he was to know this pain no longer. He who joins the socialist movement feels himself a member of a marching host of comrades, and as they advance against the Forts of Folly there 's music in the air. Yet this new joy, too, has its heart of pain ; for it is likely to be succeeded by a loneliness more poignant than any experienced before. The recruit longs to share his new-found faith and freedom with his old friends ; but to his sorrow he finds that the majority of them stay stubbornly aloof. Among the new, he soon discovers himself to be an alien. Their whole mental atmosphere is strange to him ; conversing with them, he finds the point of view native to him from childhood impatiently disavowed. Misconceived by his former fellows, ill at ease among the unfamiliar terms and assumptions of the socialist camp, he learns with grieved surprise how wide a gulf divides the ad- herents of the ideals he has always cherished from 72 THE TUG 'S TO COME the champions of the doctrines that have renewed his social faith. It is useless to evade fact. Between the finer ethical schools and the central socialist movement, distrust per- sists. Although socialist ideas are affecting more or less all theory and politics, and vague socialist sym- pathies are the order of the day, the division below the surface is sharp. Almost everywhere, to be sure, especially in English-speaking lands, we find socialist groups with religious or even with Christian affilia- tions. But they are curiously slight in numerical or intellectual importance. " Christian Socialism " draws to itself sentimentalists, cranks, and an occasional stray saint or philosopher ; but organized socialism and organized religion agree in ignoring it. Spiritually minded people either without or within the churches remain, in their attitude toward socialism, generally unaroused, frequently hostile, or, in numbers tmsus- pectedly large, perplexed and hesitant. It is a strange situation. When one considers how obvious is the appeal of socialism to the followers of that Carpenter who preached glad news to the poor and urged his disciples to abandon earthly possessions, the ardor with which many individual Christians embrace the new creed seems a matter of course : the spectacle of the vast majority of honest religious people standing aloof is almost bewildering. Their attitude is among the chief paradoxes of contemporary life, and it be- hooves religiously disposed socialists to probe the sit- uation. Let us bend ourselves to the task. 73 THE DILEMMA History is excellent at explanations: and in analyz- ing the modern distrust of socialism on the part of the religious world, it is well to begin by looking back. At once we face the significant fact that socialism was born of revolt from religion, as relig- ion was presented by the contemporary ecclesiastical system. The Church has always given birth to communists ; but she has always systematically disavowed them. When socialism arose, she was at her worst. Glancing back once more to the birth of democracy in America and France at the end of the eighteenth century, we can see that the new power, which with all its individ- ualistic stress carried in it the incipient socialist chal- lenge, encountered the stubborn opposition of the whole ecclesiastical system. The Church had long abandoned the democratic passion of her youth, and ensconced herself comfortably under the wings of property and privilege ; now at the crisis she put herself in position, honestly and instinctively, as champion of the existing order. Therefore the radical forces, which had origin- ated apart from organized religion, developed a con- scious and defiant opposition to it. Inspired by intense distaste for Christianity as encountered in politics, stung to scorn by the laissez-faire attitude of a Church which was allowing the appalling phenomenon of modern wage-slavery to reach its lusty prime with 74 THE TUG 'S TO COME scarcely a whispered word of protest, the social radi- cals expressed their reaction in* terms uncompromis- ing and violent. Through all the nineteenth century, the situation persisted. As the socialist movement crystallized by degrees out of the confused and contradictory ele- ments of radicalism and advanced steadily in passion and purpose, it has confronted steady and deliberate hostility from the Church on the Continent, disheart- ening indifference from the Church in England. Small wonder if it has taken defiant stand, not only anti- Christian but anti-religious ! It reacted against more than an ecclesiastical in- stitution, it challenged the ideals of which that insti- tution was the guardian. Jts exponents, friends and foes, are inclined to find its intimate source in the dying out of Christian theology. Allied by the neces- sities of origin with the forces of self-assertion and re- volt, it fought the church teaching of submission, for it saw in such teaching the reproduction on the moral plane of that aristocratic and feudal view of the uni- verse which it had arisen to destroy. It reacted in- dignant from the mediaeval emphasis on the salvation of the soul : had not such emphasis with its attend- ant hope for the reversal of earthly values in a safe eternity been used from time immemorial to keep the lower classes tame? As the movement acquired animus, it experienced that inveterate need of a Credo with which not even the most opportunist utilitarianism can dispense. At 75 THE DILEMMA this point, the theories of economic determinism and the class-struggle appeared upon the scene : In every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of eco- nomic production and exchange and the social organization necessarily following, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch ; consequently the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class-struggles ; contests between oppressed and ruling classes ; the history of these class-struggles forms a series of evolutions in which, nowadays, a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed class the pro- letariat cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class, the bourgeoisie, without at the same time and once and for all emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class-distinctions and class-struggles. Such was the " fundamental proposition" which, as Engels wrote in his preface to the " Communist Mani- festo," " is destined to do for history what Darwin's theory has done for biology." Nothing could seem more remote from the attitude which sees in the soul the only moving force in the universe, and would dissolve class- bitterness in the solvent of brotherhood. The Uto- pians, from St. Simon down, had been bred in the same school as the theologians and used the same termino- logy, however different their ideas. This new language, more deeply disquieting, clinched the anti-orthodox character of the socialist movement. It is easy, it is also futile, to frame an apologia for 76 THE TUG 'S TO COME socialism which shall leave these doctrines out. To be sure, that desire to limit private property which we have described as the central socialist tenet is inde- pendent of them. Plato would have scored economic determinism well, and one does not see Wyclif or More hobnobbing with an advocate of the class-strug- gle. Nevertheless, only as these clear-cut doctrines came to its aid did socialism enter the arena of world- forces. Its Utopian schools still afford attractive read- ing, full of imaginative beauty and aspiration : in life they counted for nothing. When the ideas of the " Communist Manifesto " were launched, true socialism began its career : for economic determinism gave the socialist dream a scientific basis, and the class-struggle furnished it with a practical lever. From 1848 to our own day, these doctrines, deemed both fatalistic and inflammatory outcome of scientific materialism, have filled the religious world with hor- ror and alarm. We know that in building a railroad, moral forces have no direct function ; but we love to think that in building civilization they must hold the leading role. So the alienation of the Church from socialism was completed ; and so we were all caught in a vicious circle, within which we still gyrate. Mov- ing distracted within it, we find the blame difficult to fix ; but if we look back to origins we can hardly evade fastening it on the Church, for sfre was first in the field. Did she wish to undo the effect of her past, she would have to express radical sympathies with uncom- promising and conspicuous clearness. This she has 77 THE DILEMMA never yet been ready to do. Increasingly restless, haunted by social compunction, at times in the Prot- estant world opening her doors cautiously to socialist speakers and her mind to socialist thought, she has yet never to this day, either through her leaders or through any widespread movement on the part of her more spiritual children, frankly abandoned her old alliance with monopoly and privilege, and ranged her- self openly on the side of the People and of radical social change. Until she does so, the historic situation must in the main persist. The underworld, and those who throw in their lot with it, will continue to view her with sullen distaste as an enemy instead of welcom- ing her as an ally. Any one who keeps perspective in mind, therefore, apprehends contemporary conditions without surprise. None the less does he find them disconcerting, if he be religiously disposed. To be sure, the official 1 socialist movement scrupulously proclaims religious neutrality. That is matter of words and diplomacy. Latin countries, where logic is relentless if not pro- found, take antagonism between socialism and Chris- tianity for granted as the key to the modern drama. One can hardly exaggerate either the anti-religious animus in the effective sections of the socialist party, or the anti-socialist virus of the Roman Catholic Church. The social democratic press, both comic and serious, spits and claws at the Church, the religious organs spit back. Life in any French or Italian town convinces one in a month of the sharp alignment of 78 THE TUG 'S TO COME conviction. If you claim to be both Christian and socialist, you will be told by any intelligent citizen that you cannot be both black and white at f.he same moment. A social democrat will refuse to serve on the committee of an industrial school if he finds that the exercises are to be opened by prayer. Why multiply in- stances ? Does not the Roman Church in any country, for that matter, officially announce that she refuses ab- solution to any known member of the socialist party ? Says that delightful Catholic, M. Hilaire Belloc : The Catholic Church is throughout the world opposed to the modern theory of society which is called socialism. That is a plain fact which both parties to the quarrel rec- ognize, and which third parties, though they often explain it ill, recognize also. It is further evident that the nearer the socialist theory comes to its moment of experiment, the larger the number of souls over which it obtains possession, the more definite and the more uncompromising does Cath- olic opposition to it become. In Protestant countries, the situation is milder ; yet here too the instinct of separation persists. Even in the United States, where political complications are tra- ditionally unknown in religion, a local socialist victory at the polls, as the recent victory in Milwaukee, will rally all the Catholic forces to bitter and often successful fight, while the Protestant Churches pursue the tactics of masterly indifference. In the socialist schools, the anti-religious current sets strong beneath all decorous disclaimers. " I took my own course years ago," writes Robert Blatchford in " The Clarion " : " Believing that 79 THE DILEMMA all supernatural religions were inimical to human pro- gress, and foreseeing that a conflict between socialism and religion so-called was inevitable, I attacked the Christian religion. It had to be done and will have to be finished." A Unionist paper retorts : " Here is the blasphemous creed of the socialists, who deny the existence of God and the truth of all religion. These quotations are circulated with shame and regret, but in the present crisis there is no alternative but to show what the socialist doctrines really mean." Well- informed people may srnile at the crudity of Blatchford and his opponents ; but really, we receive no different impression when we turn from socialism, popular and practical, to the more intellectual phases of the move- ment. Through the writing of the leaders, increasingly guarded though it be, from Marx to Jaures, runs an undertone of bitter revolt from the older spiritualities. These men delight in assuming that the scientific atti- tude is materialistic, and that their determination to conquer the resources of this world derives its energy from the loss of interest in another. Physical progress is the one means they recognize of promoting moral values. What wonder if people who believe these values to be independent of economic circumstances are outraged? Who can blame those who feel deli- cately and deeply the things of the Spirit if when they find socialists everywhere violently proclaiming their intention to replace the religion of the soul by a religion of the healthy flesh, they take them at their word and hesitate before the socialist creed ? 80 THE TUG 'S TO COME III We must keep our historic perspective in mind if we set ourselves to analyze that modern aversion to socialism which still obtains so much more generally than the acceptance of it. Even so, our task will not be easy. " Mixed, man's existence," especially mod- ern man's. Brave thought to-day can rarely hope for the sort of certainty which men attained in simpler times. Instead of choice between plain right and wrong, true and false, we face the duty of subtle discrimina- tion. In the contemporary distrust of socialism, so far as that distrust is based on moral grounds as distinct from questions of feasibility, we may distinguish three strata, or zones. In the first we encounter the vast solid opposition of all the interests which would suffer did social equal- ity win the day. Bourgeois class-consciousness; the forces of privilege and monopoly ; the tenacious respect for property per se as sacrosanct : the angered con- servatism of all those to whom the present order is friendly and fostering; these view socialism with stubborn hate that glows hotter year by year. We may add to these forces so virulently positive others as heavily negative : the apathetic indolence, the timid- ity in anticipation of change, the incredulity in con- fronting it, which clog life always, mere barnacles if you will on the keel of the Ship of State, but thick- encrusted enough to retard her progress. 81 THE DILEMMA Orthodox socialists of the older type consider this the only opposition that counts. And they respect while they fight it. It is precisely what we were bidden to expect by Engels's famous " proposition." The in- veterate impulse of the Haves to defend their posses- sions is the certain outcome of the economic order. It is a natural force, met by the opposing tide, now stead- ily rising, the demand of the proletariat for econo- mic expansion. We witness on both sides the instinctive urge of life, non-moral, irresponsible, mighty, as the pressure of the sea up the sands. And the socialists tell us that it is only a question of time when the forces of capitalism shall be routed, just as certainly as the feu- dal aristocracy retreated before the invasion of these forces themselves. .Men cannot prevent the inevitable change, but they can accelerate it, by educating the workers to understand the nature of the struggle in which they are unconsciously engaged. To increase their impetus, to develop their confused and more or less mis- guided instincts into conscious intelligent pressure, strong enough to overwhelm by mere might and mass the opposition of the other classes, is the one policy by which the socialist advance to triumph can be assured. Proletarians of all lands, unite ! It is the only war-cry. In that world-drama controlled by economic necessity, the self - assertion born of industrial pressure is the sole protagonist, and those gross obstacles to social advance proceeding from the outraged passion of self- protection on the part of the privileged classes are the only obstacles to be feared. 82 THE TUG 'S TO COME This is naturally the whole story to the economic de- terminist of the cruder sort. But probably no one ever really sums up life in these formula, though many people think they do. There is a spiritual dynamic in the world, and we all know it. Economic conditions may be the rail determining the route over which the engine rushes, but psychical force is the electricity which carries it on. Those finer impulses, subtle as they are all-pervading, which play their part in impel- ling to social change, are indubitably a product in their turn of economic life : as electricity, no less than iron and steel, belongs to the natural order. But they can be most effectively studied and wisely utilized if they are put in a category by themselves. From the zone of ingenuously harsh opposition to socialism on the part of the forces of self-interest we penetrate readily and swiftly into that second region where a nobler distrust obtains. In its more obvious phases, however, this distrust is due less to any study of the essential socialist philosophy than to observation of current socialist affiliations. It is born of the prac- tical situation. People do take things at their face value. When they note the clash between clericalism and social democracy all over Europe, when they read such passages as we have quoted from " The Clarion," or the insolent clever pages of a writer like Jack Lon- don, or catch the undertones in the current socialist press, still more when they realize the considerable num- ber of socialists who set marriage at defiance, and assert temperament and desire unrestricted except by hygiene 83 THE DILEMMA to be the guides in sex relations, they pause and fear. To throngs of people, the word socialism connotes first and foremost antagonism to religion and the fam- ily. The conception is encouraged by all Catholic priests, and by some persons, like an ex-President of the United States, who certainly ought to know bet- ter ; and it does receive color from the convictions and language of many socialists. It has been our contention that all this tone in con- temporary socialism is due to accident ; and if this be true, the opposition to socialism in this second zone ought to be stopped as rapidly as possible. Fortunately, many people agree with us, and so, while the majority perhaps still hold aloof on these grounds, we see a steady accession of idealists to the socialist ranks. They are received with more or less kindly contempt, but they hold their own till they have vindicated their loyalty and grit. These converts disentangle elements born of circum- stance from the essential points. They know that a great movement of revolt must take long to work clear of violent and anarchical elements ; so the rev- olutionary talk still lingering in socialist circles feebler and fainter from year to year, for that matter, even in the extreme factions does not disturb them. Neither does the animus against religion and marriage, unpleasant though it be. They perceive the fact simple enough, one would think that a man may want to limit his neighbor's right to private property without desiring to go shares ^in his wife. And they 84 THE TUG 'S TO COME are also aware, as socialists indeed are never weary of asserting, that religion is a private matter, and that I socialism is purely an economic proposition. So far as that goes, they are clear that the destruction of privi- lege for which it calls is far more in harmony with the terror of wealth evinced by Jesus and other re- ligious leaders than are the cheerfully acquisitive ways of the modern world. So they have faith to believe that only time is want- ing to clarify the issues. The objections to socialism most common to-day, being due to the politico-ecclesi- astical confusions of the last century, they hold to be transitory. Socialism will win the suffrages of all dis- interested people, as its true nature appears by de- grees : and these, whom your idealist is always inclined to believe in the majority, will unite with an educated proletariat in overcoming those crass enemies of the new day, misconceptions, conventionality, cowardice and greed. IV It is a delightful picture, and we should like to con- firm it at the end of our study. But that end is not yet. There is another, still more central, zone of oppo- sition. Deeper than the region where the powerful bonds of interest and class-prejudice prevail, or that second region where conscientious scruples born of obvious and superficial phenomena are the order of the day, lies another circle. It fades into the last as belt into belt of the rainbow, but the colors are distinct. 85 THE DILEMMA In the second circle, historical and practical consider- ations govern, in the third, abstract and philosophical. The first zone was that of Prejudice ; the second, that of Appearances ; the third is that of Kealities. Here, within the innermost, the old struggle still persists ; for here inhabit those finer spirits who are genuinely dis- interested, competent to escape the superficial delusions of history, and to discern aright the trend of deeper forces so often contradicted by the eddies on the surface of the stream. The ultimate fate of movements and nations is determined, not in either of the other zones, but in this, seemingly so remote from the practical world. Each of us by necessity of his nature and education moves in the first circle, and also in the second ; but not in these only. To our credit be it spoken, there is no rest for some of us till we have entered the third and met our problems frankly, in that sphere of final real- ities where, so far as our finite powers admit, the false relations, due to accidents of propinquity and origin, into which things so often fall in the world, are seen in all their absurdity, and ideas confront each other, friendly or hostile as the case may be, but honest and unmasked. When all masks have fallen, when delusions are outgrown, and prejudice and appearance alike discred- ited, what have socialism and the religious conscience to say to each other ? Will they discover abashed that they are allies after all ? Many are the people who long to think so. But unwelcome questions will intrude. Appearances some- 86 THE TUG 'S TO COME times contradict reality, but sometimes they reflect it. Perhaps the antagonism we deplore is due not to his- toric circumstances alone, but to a divergence at the heart, of which those very circumstances are the prod- uct. The Roman Church, in which that antagonism centres, has often proved short-sighted ; yet not even her enemies can deny that her flair is keen. It may be that her attacks on socialism spring from a deeper cause than distaste for a party which happens to-day to be fighting the hierarchy: possibly these attacks imply perception just and warranted of a rival at the centre, whose promises to satisfy the ageless hunger of the secret heart may prove more alluring than the Gospel of Christ. Listen to that clever essayist, Price Collier, as he expounds what he calls the " Pagan doctrine " of social- ism: It is the ghastly portent of the times that social and politi- cal forces are demanding that men shall work less, instead of making it wholesome for them to work more. ... It is easy to see how this new doctrine has arisen. As the belief in the supernatural, or to put it in the common parlance of the street, the belief in God has grown less strong, there has come a preposterous belief in man. ... It has per- colated down through the masses in the coarse form of a mere vulgar and frankly selfish socialism. . . . The fundamental philosophy underlying all forms of socialism, disguise it as you will, is the worship of man. The pandering to this new doctrine in the name of Christian socialism is simply loose- minded. The pith of Christianity and the pith of socialism are as the poles apart. . . . Christianity is at least virile 87 THE DILEMMA enough to crucify its God, and to announce that pain points the way to salvation. This new god is to be fed and edu- cated for nothing as a child, is to work only eight hours as an adult, is to be pensioned at seventy, and never to bear a cross, much less be nailed upon one, if by any means it may be avoided. . . . Whenever the individual or any class in the community, rich or poor, balks at labor, at pain, at sacrifice, at the Cross in short, you have in that individual or that class a menace to the community and to the State, and it is tbis very individual and class that the professional philosopher, the political and economic senti- mentalist, is doing his best to encourage. 1 This socialist civilization, so ardently desired, would it really be good for us if attained? What reason have we to suppose that widespread ease, and freedom from the inequalities and anxieties that hedge our path to-day, would further our higher interests? Are the socialists perhaps correct when they scent an enemy to their avowed aim of universal well-being in that strong inward conviction of the religious conscious- ness, alike in East and West, that subjection and suffer- ing are the higher law and the path to fullness of life? And are the Catholics perhaps correct in turn, when they foresee that impending conflict described by Father Hugh Benson in his disconcerting story, " The Lord of the World," when the forces of evil shall ap- pear under the banner of humanitarianism and fr^e- dom, while the armies of the Lord apparently indorse all the sordid miseries and futile strife of the civilization we know, on the plea that the soul can best find itself 1 England and the English. Scribner, 1909. THE TUG 'S TO COME in a world whose very horrors lead it to distrust nature, and to flee from the temporal to an eternal refuge ? Deep in many religious hearts lies a fear lest that whole effort to rehabilitate the natural order of which socialism is the climax be founded in falsity. In the attempt to check from without private greed and so- cial misery, they suspect a gallant blunder, springing unconsciously from the very materialism it deplores. Let us be bold, let us speak our full mind. The threads of the flesh have always run athwart the threads of the spirit, and if we seek to run them paral- lel we shall find that the whole social fabric drops to pieces. These fears may seem heroic to the verge of callousness ; yet we must respect their inner motive. They rise from a level hidden to the gaze of the mere sociologist, #nd spring from a protecting jealousy for the truths that are the safeguard of the soul. Beneath the crust of matter-of-fact heathenism which appalls Oriental observers of our non-Christian- ity, religious earnestness has never perished. True, for many generations social idealism has been at low ebb within the Church. This ebb is a modern phenome- non, which would have seemed strange in earlier days. During more than two thirds of its career, an impas- sioned reverence for poverty had differentiated the standards of the Church from those of the world, and its summons of elect spirits to the corporate monastic life had dramatically preserved at least the shadow and 89 THE DILEMMA symbol of fraternal and communal relations. Long before socialism or even democracy appeared, these things were past. The radicals moreover are right in saying that all through the revolutionary epoch, and far into the nineteenth century, the Church retained that aristocratic view of the universe which had been, as already noted, the natural reproduction on the spiritual plane of the social assumptions of feudalism. This in itself was sufficient to inhibit its power to welcome democratic ideals. But if it had divorced Lady Pov- erty and wedded Respectability, if it thought little of brotherhood and freedom, if indeed it never thought at all in social terms, none the less did its instinct tell it that it had something inestimably precious to defend. This was its conception of personal holiness, the one indestructible achievement of organized religion. And through all quaint transformations of the Church's social attitude, this achievement had remained intact. Even in the eighteenth century flourished a Wesley and a Law ; even in the nineteenth, a Newman and a Robertson. As the last century wore on and issues cleared, the religious consciousness gradually awoke to the challenge of the socialist ideal. And the bewilderment it expe- rienced was not ignoble. Socialism exercised a strange attraction ; for pity was the most conspicuous modern product of Christian ethics, and here was promise of healing for many of the evils it found most intolerable. Yet the distrust which we have seen mingling with attraction from the beginning was rooted, at least 90 THE TUG 'S TO COME partly, in what was noblest and purest in Christian life. Even when most drawn to the new gospel, the spirit, in its own despite, felt ill at ease. And it asked its own persistent question, What protection to per- sonal holiness does your new ideal afford ? Young social democracy, as we know, impatiently refused to answer, and Religion was driven to formu- late her own reply. In the midst of many incertitudes, one thing she knew : if the chance of spiritual attain- ment were to be lessened for one human soul by the proposed changes, then decent houses and adequate nourishment for the entire race would be to her no compensation at all. Since, rightly or wrongly, she saw reason to doubt the new thinking, and to fear, strange though the paradox sound, that economic servitude might be the best condition for spiritual freedom, only one course was open to her. With extreme yet dimin- ishing hesitancy, she has been formulating her doubts and finding her bearings. We dare, then r no more attribute the anti-socialist movement to a shallow reading of circumstance past and present than to the dread of upheaval or the dis- like to lose the perquisites of the present order. It rests on the honest belief that socialism is identified with a materialistic conception ; that it proposes a mechanical solution for spiritual ills ; that the pas- sions it utilizes spring from the lower and more danger- ous reaches of life ; and that if its goal were attained the resultant condition would be such as to imperil if not destroy the finer values of character. 91 THE DILEMMA The difficulties met in the first and second zone could be discussed and dismissed in a couple of pages. Those which we have now briefly summarized must occupy us through the rest of the book. For it is natural that the movement Religion has refused to in- dorse should have drawn farther and farther from her ; how should the champions of the dispossessed fail to regard with shocked disgust a power which claims to save the world through love, and at the same time timidly acquiesces in a social order best described as the legalization of hate ? We shall never escape the vicious circle of mutual repulsion between religion and socialism by pursuing and fleeing in the old round. If there is any hope, it must be found in the new art of aviation ; we must try to fashion wings. CHAPTER V THE APOLOGIA OF RELIGION RELIGION is well aware that mere rebuttal is poor business. Whatever its faults, when there is any life in it at all, it seeks the positive. To attack social- ism as a living political movement hostile to church and family is simple enough, but to stop there is to leave hosts of devout and sincere people unsatisfied. They cry, What next? They remind their leaders that they are in desperate need of guidance and com- fort ; and, pointing out that a new apologia of Christ- ianity is demanded by every age, they insist that if the Church rejects socialism it must present some coun- ter-philosophy, which shall silence the specious claims before which Religion was at first so stubbornly dumb. And year by year, as difficulties become focused and vision clears, such an apologia is shaping itself in the minds of serious thinkers. Its first definite expression was perhaps the Encyclical issued by Leo XIII in 1891, its last word is not yet uttered. But we can already see the general lines on which it will be fash- ioned and the ideal it will seek to present. Fully to apprehend the code deemed competent in religious quarters to counteract the allurements of socialism is our next duty. We have already sug- 93 THE DILEMMA gested its point of departure. While far from com- placent defense of things as they are, it is yet on the whole indifferent to social change. On large lines, it disclaims responsibility for the present social order, partly holding civilization as we have it to be the expression of a human nature never likely to be altered, partly scornful of the expectation that the soul can^be profited by a change in circumstance. It holds the^modern stress on the trappings of life to be ignominious and craven, and claims that under any con- ditions whatever, of wealth or poverty, the free spirit can hold its own : We may not hope by outward change to win The comfort and the joy whose sources are within. Why aspire to a state mechanically regulated by an ingenious system, instead of created from within by vital spiritual force? How indorse an ideal to be reached, by its own confession, through stimulating that selfish assertion of natural rights which it is the very aim of religion to check by supernatural grace ? Produced by the class war, maintained by repressive legislation, the socialist state would be sheer travesty of that loving brotherhood we all desire, born of vol- untary sympathies and sacrifice. Through the equal- ization of property it might indeed attain a superficial semblance of justice ; but is that end worth attaining by the cowardly expedient of impoverishing life through blotting out the factor of struggle which experience has proved essential to personality and invaluable to 94 THE APOLOGIA OF RELIGION the training of manhood? The monotonous level of external well-being which socialism proposes would for- feit tlje finest moral results that civilization has won. And as the advocates of religion dwell on these results, their enthusiasm rises : while with wistf ulness and terror they perceive the present order threatened with dissolution, the assets, both moral and spiritual, of that order appear infinitely precious. To hear the modern demagogue, we should suppose that all employers were brutal, all dependents cowed into sub- mission or roused to rage, and society divided into warring classes, controlled exclusively by the fierce laws of economic greed. Leave the lecture hall where agitators are declaiming, move out into the normal world where men meet in countless interwoven rela- tions, and grant the falsity of the picture. Life is never easy. Cruelty and injustice abound. Yet in the main, human relationships as evolved through the ages con- stitute not only potentially but actually the finest among fine arts. The sweet ministries of charity, the heroic sweep of effort and aspiration, the upward flight of sacrificial passion, greet us on every hand. These are all, we shall be told, the results of social inequality, and inconceivable in the socialist state. Protecting chivalry shown by the strong toward the weak, loyal service rendered by the weak toward the strong, are realities common and sweet. Countless employers care for their employees with a disinterested devotion that costs not only thought and sentiment, but the surrender of profits. Countless dependents 95 THE DILEMMA show a touching fidelity to their masters. In spite of the intricacies of the modern domestic problem, affec- tion between mistresses and servants continually out- runs business considerations, and shines with a grace and light peculiarly its own. True, in the industrial world the personal note grows harder to maintain as centralization proceeds, and a certain loss in sympa- thies seems inevitable. Yet only lately did we not witness the inspiring sight of a great monopoly sur- rendering its patent in harmless phosphorus, with the result that every excuse for the use of the harmful varieties was removed from its rivals ? On every hand we may find such patience, generosity, and true un- worldliness as triumph alike over the temptations of riches and the buffets of poverty. A voluntary self- restraint both in the use and the acquisition of wealth has a tonic quality, such as socialism can never furnish. For were there no prizes to be striven for, were worldly success so to speak disavowed by law, how could we have the inspiring spectacle far from unknown to- day, though it evades publicity of those who refuse the contest ? All these pleasant fruits indeed are fos- tered by our present industrial system and inconceiv- able apart from it. They may be rare, but they are choice in quality. And shall we not do better to graft them with a view to increase, than to destroy the stock and change the soil? Religion after all has the whole matter in her own hands. All we need is to counteract the agitating and insidious teaching of the social radicals and yield our- 96 THE APOLOGIA OF RELIGION selves to the religious appeal. If we labor patiently to increase the spirit of gentleness and brotherliness in each individual heart we shall have as good a world as we deserve. Convert careless landlords, infuse shame into the hearts of greedy capitalists, check political and industrial graft, rebuke luxury and self -indulgence, hold high before the eyes of men the pure vision of moral beauty, and we can do no more. For the trouble is not with the system, but ,with the men who run it, and wherever horizons are widened and Good Will is quickened by the quiet work of religion any system will prove satisfactory enough. So does the highest optimism generated by spiritual faith turn to the defense of the conservative, and re- place that gloomy picture of civilization on which the socialist likes to dwell, by a landscape which however defaced by cruel scars and blackened by shadows is none the less suffused with passages of delicate and lovely light. It opposes to the socialist vision of auto- matic righteousness the warmth and freedom of the world we know, where, with all irregularities and cruel- ties, the very prevalence of selfishness clamors on every hand for the energy of redeeming love, and rough in- equalities in condition serve at once as spur to the ar- dent and discipline to the humble. With all the wrongs our world can show, it is a world of liberty. Generosity, modesty, energy, sacrifice, are educed by the very con- ditions which the socialists seek to ameliorate or over- come. Jerusalem above, the mother of us all, is our true model, that free city wherein spiritual powers 97 THE DILEMMA have won the victory of brotherhood. Let us never dare to prefer the promised socialist metropolis : that Pandaemonium, City of Lucifer, well constructed of costly materials, within the bowels of the earth, and planned to exclude by rote the suffering that sancti- fies, the temptations that are the gauge of freedom, and the inequalities that spur while they sting. II Even on the quiet levels of everyday life, the reli- gious critic then finds the moral possibilities of a civil- ization based on economic incertitude too good to forfeit. And probably most of us are content to pause there, for the religious world moves contentedly on these levels nowadays for the most part, and likes to preach " nothing too much " even in the way of zeal, almost as well as the Greeks did. Yet the Apologist for Things as they Are feels an impulse to press further. For after all, Religion must always be conscious of possible heroisms in the back- ground. Tenderly solicitous to preserve all humdrum virtues, she yet hungers for romance^ and even while her lips incite to fidelity in the daily task, a longing gleams within her eyes for disciples eager to follow those Counsels of Perfection which have through all ages summoned their own elect. It is when we turn to these higher ranges that we gain clearest assurance that the modern palaestra is one approved of the gods. To show this, we need only appeal to the facts of history, for such appeal is by 98 THE APOLOGIA OF KELIGION no means to be abandoned to the socialists as their sole prerogative. In the long story that specially con- cerns us, that of the western world during the past two thousand years, how many inspiring moments, how many great examples, give us pause ! Exquisite prod- ucts in character, all alike inconceivable under the socialist order, flash before our vision. Contemplate the great pageant of religious passion throughout the ages, especially in those illumined moments when the path of the soul has shone most clear in the light carried by saintly hands. This joy which counts the world well lost for spiritual gain is hard enough to picture should that world no longer be within any man's grasp for the taking. This faith born triumphant out of experienced injustice could never shine with so fair a light were justice the order of the day. Limit- less sacrifice, service that costs, holy recklessness de- fying prudence at risk of outlawry and social death, what should compensate us for the loss of these? And how may these blossoms of the heights, which flourish only near the perpetual snows, spring from the rich flat socialist soil ? On one reach of Christian history in particular, modern religious thought loves to dwell, not because it is unique, but rather because it is typical. This is that Way trodden by the Poverello of Assisi and his companions, singing as they go their Canticle of Per- fect Joy, a music known only to those who renounc- ing have attained, and as servants of all have become lords of the visible world. THE DILEMMA Contemporary life really affords few more curious symptoms than the revival, in diverse religious schools, of interest in St. Francis. Sometimes this interest con- tents itself with the facile sentiment of the luxurious traveler, journeying whether literally or through books to the lovely Franciscan shrines of Umbria and Tus- cany. Sometimes it assumes more scholarly forms ; it is producing a varied criticism, and is rendering a more important service in reprinting the exquisite literature which flowered during a century or more after the death of the saint. Sometimes and when interest reaches this stage it ceases to be purely a source of imagina- tive refreshment and acquires an anguish of its own it aspires to renew in our own days the spirit of the Bridegroom of Poverty. The full force of the Franciscan revival is only revealed when this stage is reached. It is the social idealism of our time which turns back, with so wistful an eagerness, to pluck out the heart of Francis's mys- tery. Other saints were more searching theologians ; many had as romantic careers, suffered as much, be- lfcv r ed as passionately. No other so holds the modern heart. The ascetic impulse which drove the finest spirits to flee from life to the shelter of the cloister makes little appeal to modern men, though in ever-new disguises it is likely to reappear as long as history shall last. But the Little Poor Man and his followers did not flee from life, rather they wooed it. They repudiated without abandoning that world which they lost but to find and serve. And modern thought finds their brief 100 THE APOLOGIA OF KELIGION episode in the Christian story the most perfect expres- sion since the first century of the social ideals of the Gospels. Francis and his followers had learned the divine wisdom : " Who despises, he possesses : who desires, is possessed." The words of the ecstatic poet Jacopone da Todi express the inner passion which Christianity from the days of the Beatitudes has held at her heart : Povertade alto sapere, disprezzando possedere 4 quanto avvilia il suo volere tanto sale in libertade. 1 This cult of poverty sprang from no ascetic distrust of natural good, but from a passionate recognition that only the meek possess the earth, and from such love of the brethren as could only be contented in sharing the lot of the least. The Church, in the persons of the excellent Ugolino and the devoted Elias, broke the heart of Francis ; at a later date, she dispersed his followers as heretics. Nevertheless, when she scents danger from another quarter, she is very likely to revive their language. Let the basis of her power be questioned by a rising materialism, and we find her repeating those precepts which in more ardent days she had been the first 1 Poverty, thou wisdom deep, Holding all possession cheap, Thy will that thou fast bound dost keep, Springs up in liberty. From A. MacDonald's paraphrase of the poem quoted above. 101 THE DILEMMA either to repudiate or to damn with the caution of her assent. So we may now hear her reminding the faithful that they need turn to no disquieting radical doctrine to soothe their conscience. Sacrifice to the uttermost, service without reserve, form an ideal, so she tells us ; sufficient to satisfy the most restless compunction and the most ambitious desires for social regenera- tion. Nor is it official religion only which falls back on this message. The most penetrating modern thought has rediscovered the wisdom of fools, and the old vibra- tions thrill through the words of our noblest leaders. It could have been no surprise to John Ruskin to find himself in dreams girt with the Franciscan cord. That in his message which stands the test of time most firmly merely reinforces the longing of the saint for personal salvation by a more enlightened social com- punction and enlarges instinctive Franciscan feel- ing into a whole code of social action. " Wherever there is pressure of poverty to be met, all production should confine itself to useful articles." "Live with as little help from the lower trades as possible." " Whatever our station in life may be, those of us who mean to fulfill our duty ought first to live on as little as we can ; second, to do all the wholesome work for it we can, and to spend all we can spare in doing all the sure good we can." The pithy sentences have the true old ring, though a more intellectual note is added to the mediaeval impulse. True, a reverence for manual labor, more stressed in the school of Langland 102 THE APOLOGIA OF KELIGION than in that of Francis, though not neglected by the saint himself, has enriched the thought of Ruskin; yet the fair if foolish plans of St. George's Company would have appealed mightily to John of Parma. As for Tolstoy, Giles and Leo surely smiled lovingly at him across the centuries, and not least in his last sad days. Save that in him that social motive for absti- nence which was only implicit in the Franciscans becomes central and primary, the gospel is the same ; and pilgrims who kneel in August at the Portiuncula in Assisi might well prolong their journey, to resume the same devotions in that little hut at Yasnaya Polyana, where the self -exiled prophet of the nineteenth century died in tragic triumph. In the end of Tolstoy and of Ruskin-, no less than in the end of Francis, the tragedy may often seem to overtop the triumph. Nevertheless, their teachings, to a discreet and moderate measure, are truly operative in modern life. We live in sensible times when the most flaming ideals must be softened to a pleasant domestic warmth before we bring them home to our business and our bosoms. We do not fling our gar- ments in our parents' face and rush to the tending of lepers, but we do develop social service to a point of complexity and efficiency hitherto unknown. We do not embrace Lady Poverty ; but a tame little sister of hers, named The Simple Life, moves demurely among us, serious in her way, though perhaps not parting company completely with Prudence or with Sloth. She finds many a person to praise her if but few to 103 THE DILEMMA woo; and it is even said that an increasing number are seeking her secretly, and contemplating a union one of these days, when family circumstance shall permit. Joking aside, it is in suggestions of this order, how- ever cautiously applied and faintly followed, that we must look to-day for the climax of the Apologia of Religion. She has to be sure a certain defense even on lower grounds to offer ; but here, in the suggestion that the way to absolute sacrifice is always open, is the only ultimate satisfaction she offers to the ancient question of Cain. The high road is open as well as the low road ; the pleasant path of gentleness and tem- perance in ordinary dealings receives due religious sanction ; but see the more difficult way, that leads to heights crowned with the Cross ! Against the allure- ments of the socialist scheme, religion presents a double picture : opportunity for a fairly satisfactory exercise of virtue on the average levels for rich and poor alike ; and, for the fiery spirits who cannot rest content with the code that bears the Imprimatur of Our Lady Prudence, the chance to take social service for their cloister and, valorously defying the laws of both nature and society, seek the goal the saints have won. Ill In two final points, the attitude of religion would seem opposed to that of socialism. First, socialism apparently desires to establish civ- ilization on a basis never yet approved by any religion, 104 THE APOLOGIA OF EELIGION Occidental or Oriental, for it proposes to supplant love by justice. The Counsels of Perfection and the humdrum scheme of daily life agree in implying that what makes the world worth while is the opportunity it offers, however often neglected, for the free energies of good will. They bid their votaries scorn the spirit of bargain and the exercise of rights. Again we turn to the Franciscans for a singularly perfect illustration of this Christian ideal. See them discarding all bal- ance of values, inheriting and giving all ; begging with frank audacity, and receiving gifts, whether of a mountain or a crust, with as royal a grace as they desired to find in the lepers to whom they ministered or the peasants whose vines they pruned ; heavenly anarchists, to whom the love that can only thrive under free skies was the light of daily living. Far enough their divine ecstasy may seem from the routine of our every day, yet our whole social life is defensible only as it implies their ideal as its culmination. Against this ideal, socialism presents the image of a world in which free giving and uncalculating sacri- fice appear to have no place : where human relations are regulated, not by intimate choice and personal emotion, but by an automatic justice, impersonal and inevitable as gravitation. The religious soul rejects the image ; seeking the social ideal most conducive to spiritual welfare, and confronted by what well may seem the self-centred ease and softness of the promised socialist land, it turns back and chooses the ancient battlefield, with all its blood, with all its wounds. 105 THE DILEMMA Francis himself had no desire to convert all men to his way ; a world of Franciscans would have given the Brothers Minor no scope at all ! He aimed simply to train a militia for the relief of suffering humanity : the poor should always be present that they might be ten- derly cared for, and the respectabilities of possession and privilege forever flaunt attractions which holy ecstasy might forever flout. Religion, since the secret drama of the spirit is the only one in which it is interested, finds in our civili- zation the best stage it can imagine : a stage wonder- fully adapted to give full play to freedom, and so to further, "through stress and strain and battle-pain," the formation of character, the development of person- ality. Only and here is the second final point of issue between our two attitudes religion contemplates civ- ilization as it were from behind the scenes. To the automatically perfect universe of the socialist, it op- poses, to be sure, our present imperfect world ; but this world is seen from the point of view, no longer of time but of eternity. Thus contemplated " sub specie seternitatis," every circumstance, trivial or painful when viewed in the usual fashion, acquires new dig- nity. The story that we watch yields its meaning only as we see it in relation to that endless, timeless life, which is hidden from scientist and sociologist but is the only reality to the man of faith, and the only matter that concerns us. So we may say at once that the socialists are right in taunting religion with pre-occupation with the eter- 106 THE APOLOGIA OF RELIGION nal ; only be it noted that eternity is construed to-day in a new lighfc, and is no longer mainly concerned with a heavenly future : rewards and punishments to compensate for present injustice in a world to come are rarely suggested by modern religion. Eternity is here and now, and endless duration is merely a corol- lary from the perception of a quality in mortal deeds that lifts them out of the category of time. It is this quality that Religion cares for ; and in the dissatisfac- tions and inequities that obtain in the visible world, she sees means marvelously calculated to evoke it. Only a civilization foundoid on private property could afford such spiritual opportunities as set men free from the delusions of time, for the value of those opportun- ities consists in the difficulty of embracing them and the defeat to which they doom us on the natural plane. When the socialists fling the bitter taunt of failure at us, Religion retorts with mystic exaltation that by failure the world is saved. For through failure and defeat alone can we know ourselves and all our tran- sient race to be heirs of eternity. With Eternity, current socialism is, as maybe at once confessed, little preoccupied. Its concern is with time, and if the appeal of Religion fails to convince our pil- grim, it is because the memory of the sights of time still haunts him. Well and wondrous the mystery of La Verna, but what of the laborer in the sweat- shop ? Touching the generosity of the rare employer who protects his working people with fatherly care, but myriads of gaunt faces pouring from factories at 107 THE DILEMMA eventide rise wanly before the mind. Lady Poverty is a fair if austere bride to the pure in heart, but has she not other aspects ? " Time was I loved and wooed her," says the social evangelist, Alexander Ir- vine : " but as I walked by her side and watched her works, it was revealed to me that Lady Poverty was a murderess." Even that past country, which looks so fair in retrospect, held wide tracts of desert, where children knew no joy in childhood, where the life of women was consumed through the cruel stress of the unwatered way, where strong men by the thousand fell enfeebled by burdens they should never have been asked to bear. Looking straight at life, we cannot wonder if mod- ern schools seek to eliminate that poverty which Francis sought to sanctify, and setting at defiance the words of a greater than Francis, cry aloud, " Cursed are ye poor ! " Oppressed by the fearful human waste around us, we cannot escape the terror lest we be Pharisaical aristocrats in the things of the Spirit, if we find compensation in the spiritual victories of the strong among rich or poor for the moral devastations that have always accompanied a social order founded in inequalities of privilege. So long as there is sac- ramental unity between flesh and soul, a civilization which drains life from thousands cannot be excused because an individual here and there has strength to reach the hidden springs and to attain the beauty of holiness. Contemplating a world in which love, on individ- 108 THE APOLOGIA OF KELIGION ualistic lines, has had its innings for many a long cen- tury, perhaps we should not be sorry to see a chance given to Justice after all. IV To which range of uplands shall we lift our eyes, that which rises to westward, or to eastward ? Behind us are the manifold spiritual achievements of the past, most luminously exalted perhaps in those high places where Francis loved to abide with his companions, and in whose hidden recesses his humble soul was made one with the mystery of eternal sacrifice. Be- yond us, so distant still that we may readily mistake them for cloudland, soar the ranges of socialism, allur- ing but untrodden and unknown. Is there any other high country that invites our pilgrim feet? One perhaps the mind descries. It is the Pagan, more especially the Greek ideal, a calm self-sufficiency, an intellectual and a3Sthetic life ful- filled in disciplined delights, and renouncing the goods of earth only in so far as the finest personal develop- ment demands an ascesis of its own. This ideal has had its advocates in every age : on these level and se- rene heights many a great nature has moved, and still calls on us to follow. Yet these are few in proportion to the total number of those who seek to walk in the Spirit; and are we not safe in saying that they are fewer than ever to-day ? This tranquil and remote ideal was the product of times before a troubling love and a compassion that can know no rest, had come to make 109 THE DILEMMA their abode with men. A helot class made possible the , absorption of the Greek in beautiful living. His art, philosophy, poetry, flourished in a civilization where the sacrifice of the many to the good of the nobler few was taken as a matter of course. But only those who exile the modern sense of the Whole from the intricacies of consciousness can entertain the Greek view of life to-day. The inveterate instinct of compunc- tion and brotherhood born when the angels sang at Bethlehem is a force astonishingly potent, say what we or what Nietzsche will. From quite another point of view, moreover, a scientific attitude toward social evo- lution shows with reasonable clearness that a larger degree of real democracy, and a more fluid conception of progress than are compatible with any reversion to the Greek ideal, must be involved in any future social forms. We turn away our eyes therefore from these Pagan uplands, as from a fair region traversed once but now rightly abandoned. The two remaining ranges, toward one of which alone a path is blazed, wait tempting our adventure. After our long pilgrimage from dream through experience, a clear alternative confronts us. We have been led by the logic of life from vague compunction to the concrete deed, ardent but casual and opportunist ; and discontent with our superficial energies has forced us to the quest for some sound and broad theory by which our activities may be tested and guided. Our choice has narrowed itself to social- ism on the one hand, to that apologia of the conserv- 110 THE APOLOGIA OF RELIGION ative which we have just outlined, on the other. Is the religious answer to the social conscience the last forlorn hope of a cause that is lost? Or, as has so often happened in history, will it prove the triumphant reasserfckm against a new foe, of that ancient faith which its votaries claim has been competent to reveal the deeper meaning in each historic development of the past two thousand years, and to open victoriously in each fresh life-sources for the human spirit? The socialism opposed to it speaks clear and unmis- takable language. It has sloughed off the Utopian sentimentalities of its youth, and is crystallized and firm, including as necessary elements those doctrines of economic determinism and the class-struggle so un- welcome to the more languid and sentimental among its own adherents. It takes its stand on a realistic interpretation of history, encourages instincts which Christianity has always viewed with distrust and fear, and points to a social order which would place the free energies of love at a seemingly hopeless discount. Between the mystic defenders of the old order and the realistic champions of the new stands our genera- tion ; perplexed, expectant ; aware of a certain fusion in process to unite the older religious consciousness and the new social creed, yet suspecting this fusion to be superficial and unreal, and dreading to discover, as time goes on, a deadly antagonism between the two ideals. It longs to reach a reconciliation, not of com- promise but of synthesis, and would fain see the ideals united, in a message that shall spell both individual 111 THE DILEMMA and social salvation. But it holds back, awestruck, resisting the first eager impulse that pressed it toward the socialist ranks, fearful lest by gaining the world even for its brethren's sake it should lose its soul, and theirs. V In this situation, vigorous thinking is a necessity: the immense production of books and articles is a sign that it is going on. There will always to be sure be many valuable and contented people to take a cheerfully opportunist attitude toward social duty, but many others are temperamentally unable to do this, nor can the world at large rest in opportunism in the long run. Till we know in what direction to move, we are inclined to stand still. The choice we face involves, as every important choice must do, both a theory of social order and an ideal of personal duty. The latter depends on the former, and until we gain a right con- ception of the aims in social advance and the path to follow, every active power in us is paralyzed at the root. So, as Matthew Arnold would have bidden us many a year ago, this book betakes itself to reflection. And first, we must examine those obnoxious assumptions which underlie all effective socialist schools : economic determinism and the doctrine of the class -struggle. For there is no use in proceeding to a discussion of personality in the socialist state until we decide whether socialism permits us that spiritual view of the uni- verse which alone gives personality any scope. PART II FIRST PRINCIPLES PART II. FIRST PRINCIPLES CHAPTER I ECONOMIC DETEEMINISM THERE is one point in which the conservative must agree, whether he will or no, with the socialist conten- tion : he must abandon the image of a fixed stage for the human drama. The "Divine Comedy," epitome of the medieval mind, shows a pilgrim soul wending his way through all depths and heights of being. From the Earthly Paradise on the summit of the Mount of Purgatory, he is rapt upward and outward through the circling spheres of which the earth is centre, till, beyond the last concentric ring of matter, he gazes on that Un- created Light within whose depths he sees ingathered, " bound by love in one volume, the scattered leaves of all the universe." Through the whole sweep of this environment there is no hint of change. The universe through which Dante moves from the depth of Hell to the Heaven of the Fixed Stars and the Primum Mobile can never alter. To the poet, his con- ception was not only parable but scientific fact, and as he conceived the system of Nature, so he conceived the historic stage. Civilization must reproduce the majestic aspect of eternity. As the earth clings at the 115 FIRST PRINCIPLES centre of spheres forever returning in their rhythmi- cal orbits, so the centralized powers of papacy and empire form the permanent foci around which rightly ordered society must forever move. It is one of the most marvelous creations ever formed by the human mind, and we can never think it again. There is no heaven of the fixed stars. Those stellar systems themselves are rushing through space at an inconceivable rate, bearing us with them toward a goal of which we know nothing. Our own planet may circle for a time in its accustomed orbit, but meanwhile glaciers recede, green things appear, the animal creation passes through extraordinary trans- formations, and man, from the date of his recent ad- vent, moves through the centuries, a changing creature in a changing world. As for eternity, we have seen that modern thought is little concerned with it ; but when we do try to escape the bonds of time, and to penetrate behind the sense-world we know, we instinct- ively dissociate eternity itself from the concept of immobility, and see, in the invisible as in the visible, no permanence, but a perpetual Becoming. Civilization is static no more than nature: that social order within which our contemporary drama must be played is no fixed stage but an evolving life. Whether it be evolving toward socialism or no, per- haps no one is in a position to assert. On the other hand, it is preposterous to claim that anything about us our misfortunes or our prosperities, our social inequalities or our respect for property, our charities 116 ECONOMIC DETERMINISM or our incentives is indorsed by the eternal nature of things. " E pur si muove," whispers the obstinate Galileo-voice within. The modern industrial order will vanish as surely as feudalism has vanished, or those other civilizations, nomadic, agricultural, tribal, which the mental eye discerns in faint retreating per- spective till it loses itself in the abyss of prehistoric time. So far as defending the old order is concerned, our generation has then no choice at all, for that order vanishes while we debate. And as we bow before the majesty of a law of economic change, inexorable as any law of nature, it is no wonder if fatalism waves us toward the prison of the materialistic interpretation of history. Where may we find place in this scheme of things for our ardent purpose and our shaping power ? Must we not rather turn economic determin- ists without more ado, and yield assent to those sharp verses by Clough, in which Cosmocrator, the Spirit of this world, rouses the young soul from his dreams ? This stern Necessity of things On every side our being rings. Our sallying eager actions fall Vainly against that iron wall. Where once her finger points the way, The wise thinks only to obey. Submit ! Submit ! 'T is common sense, and human wit Can claim no higher name than it. Submit! Submit! 117 FIRST PRINCIPLES " The wise thinks only to obey " ; nevertheless, it would be folly to accept the sweeping dictum of the determinist at the very outset. An illustration from history may serve to clear our thinking. We will take it from the period when preevolutionary idealism was coming to its first desperate grapple with a new method, within the socialist camp itself ; and it will serve to impress on us the tremendous recoil occasioned among the idealists in early days by the scientific and positive point of view in sociology. II In the year 1871 an interesting discussion, recorded in the pages of a quaint old pamphlet, was carried on between Giuseppe Mazzini and Michael Bakunin. Mazzini noble old champion, arch -conspirator in Europe for the past quarter-century, identified with all political audacities and radical ideals had pro- tested in bewilderment and anger against the new rad- icalism gathering under the leadership of Marx. The time had not come for that definite break between Marx and Bakunin which was to dissolve the Inter- national ; and the future leader of the anarchist party in the socialist camp was, at this point, the chosen defender of Marxian doctrines. The scoffer might watch for a certain unconscious jealousy to color the pained feeling with which Mazzini saw a new school of independent origin superseding his influence with the European youth. He might ex- pect the impatient hunger for novelty of a rising gen- 118 ECONOMIC DETEKMINISM eration to creep into the utterances of Bakunin. But the records on either side are free from any lower strain. In the brilliant Russian, reverence and ten- derness are evidently unfeigned ; and no one can fail to feel in all the words of Mazzini that unfaltering devotion to the pure Idea which, whatever lapses his great character may have known, is the essential trait that gives him place in the noble army of Truth's martyrs. The point which he is defending is assuredly impor- tant ; it is no less than the sanctity and the operative power of moral passion in social advance. The social- ists were crying in full pack their new-found slogan, the materialistic interpretation of history. Class- conscious, revolutionary socialism was in its vigorous youth expressing itself more crudely and uncompro- misingly than to-day. The religious conceptions of the past were bitterly repudiated, and with them all belief in disinterested motives as a factor in the actual life of the world. Marx's "Capital " had been out less than a decade, but it had already rallied an army of follow- ers, in whose minds the conviction was crystallizing that the class-interest of the rising proletariat was the only driving force with sufficient impetus to count in improving social conditions, since all seemingly moral impulses were the product of an inevitable economic order. " Mazzini reproaches us with not believing in God ! " cries Bakunin. We in our turn reproach him with believing. Who is found under the banner of God nowadays ? Napo- 119 FIKST PRINCIPLES leon III to Bismarck ; the Empress Euge'nie to Queen Isa- bella, with the Pope between them gallantly presenting the mystic rose to each in turn. All the emperors, all the kings, all the official and noble world of Europe, all the great teachers of industry, commerce, banking ; all patented pro- fessors and state functionaries ; all the police force, includ- ing the priests, those black policemen of souls who guard the profits of the state ; all the generals, pure defenders of public order, and all editors of the venal press, pure repre- sentatives of official virtue. There is the army of God. And in the opposite camp ? Revolution ! The audacious men who deny God, a divine order, and the principle of authority, but who on that very account are believers in humanity, affirmers of a human order and of human liberty. Discussing the accusation of materialism brought against his school, he heartily accepts it, but explains matter as including the whole range of known phe- nomena. A luminous definition follows : As in the world rightly called material, inorganic matter is the determining base of organic, so in the social sphere, which can only be considered the last phase of the material, the advance of economic forces has always been, and is still, the determining base of all advance, religious, philosophic, political, and social. Mazzini since he began his propaganda has kept on say- ing to the proletariat : Moralize yqurselves, accept the moral law I teach, and you will have glory and power, prosperity, liberty, and equality. Socialism says on the contrary that the economic slavery of the worker is the source of all his servitude, and of all social misery ; and that therefore economic emancipation of the working classes is the primary end of all social agitation. 120 ECONOMIC DETERMINISM So, with hard clang of word on word, with infinite relish and the ardor of a great consecration, Bakunin puts the central thought which he and his comrades were presenting to the working classes of Europe, and which, ever since the " Communist Manifesto," had been working like a ferment in their minds. With certain points in this thought Mazzini must have sympathized. His had been the chief voice to appeal to workingmen as the leaders of the future. He had deplored and denounced " that deep social in- equality that insults the Cross of Christ." " It is clear that you ought to labor less and to gain more than you do now," he said to the workingmen. " The remedy for your suffering is to be found in the union of labor and capital in the same hands. You were once slaves, then serfs, then hirelings. You need but to will it, in order shortly to become free producers and brothers through association." If the writer of words like these viewed the rising movement to rouse the proletariat as an early Christ- ian might have viewed Antichrist, the reason must be sought in the materialistic trend of the words of Bakunin. Neither opponent converted the other, for they represented contrary assumptions : on the one hand, the deliberate theory, shocking then, familiar to-day, that the economic system is the " base " of all moral and spiritual passion ; on the other, the diametrically opposed assertion that in Wordsworth's phrase " by the soul only the nations shall be great and free " ; 121 FIRST PRINCIPLES that "all material progress," to use Mazzini's own words, " is the infallible result of moral progress." Were the controversy finished, our interest in it would be purely academic. But it is not. During the forty years since its occurrence the two attitudes, here crisply presented by picturesque opponents, have been struggling to win control. Year by year the struggle intensifies ; under our eyes the adversaries are closing for what may well be the final grapple. To refuse to face the issue is to lose our chance to play a part in the most far-reaching and practical controversy which the twentieth century is called upon to settle. As we look back, one fact must strike us. Mazzini lived and died alone ; gathering around him, indeed, during his lifetime many a disciple, by virtue of his exalted ideas and magnetic personality, but founding no fruitful tradition. His reader to-day is baffled and saddened by the mingling of philosophic breadth with much that is arrogant and fantastic, the product of an arbitrary mind that imposes its own inventions on the universe. In Mazzini's eloquent, broken, tin- gling prose, intuitions startlingly creative and justified by time, concerning the necessity of supplanting a political by social and industrial conception of demo- cracy, jostle wild notions concerning the mystic destiny of Rome, and false classifications of historical ages after the style of Saint-Simon or Comte. We are deal- ing with a glorious nature in unstable equilibrium, which treads too often, not the terra firma of the act- ual, but a tight-rope gossamer, spun spider-like from 128 ECONOMIC DETERMINISM within. Here is a great man ; here is no founder of a great or living school. And we have already had occasion to notice that Mazzini's opponents have succeeded where he failed. Over-great reliance on his own mind led this noble genius, consecrated to the service of the People, astray into a vaporous region where he too often mistook the mirage of glories long left behind for a smiling land of promise. Marx, on the other hand, a nature far less sympathetic, deduced from his keen scrutiny of the actual sweep of economic history a synthetic concep- tion of the laws governing social advance, which, whether or no it end by commending itself, colors to-day every contribution to social thought. He and his followers have fait ecole. We may not say that this is due to superior method in organization : Mazzini too organized inveterately from youth to age. In the avowedly scientific analysis of Marx and his succes- sors there has proved to be something more vitally competent to hold men together than in the pure moral ideals of Mazzini. But if in one sense Bakunin and his colleagues had the future on their side, we may not say that the ex- ponents of idealism are routed. True, they have failed to satisfy us ; but we cannot forget them. The accents of Carlyle, of Victor Hugo, of Kuskin, of Tolstoy, still echo down the decades. Matthew Arnold's sharp, concise warning is still in order. " Moral causes govern the standing and the falling of men and nations. They save or destroy them by a silent, inexorable fatality." 123 FIRST PRINCIPLES The Church reiterates a similar conviction as a platitude which she does not even stop to prove. Still, passing from the fertile literature of the theologian, philoso- pher, poet, to the arid books of the socialists, one is shocked by a change of atmosphere as sudden as that encountered by the traveler from the plains of Lom- bardy to the Alpine heights. It is noteworthy that the latter school, whether it speak through popular organs like " The Clarion," or the New York Call," through the moderate voice of Mr. Hillquit or the powerful intellects of Europeans like Kautsky or Jaures, makes its appeal to the workers, expressing not indeed a majority, but an intensely convinced minority, of that vast proletariat. One fears, on the other hand, that Matthew Arnold and the theologians are perused by the privileged alone ; and the conviction is forced upon one that in the midst of a remarkable and growing uni- formity as to the need of deep social change, a radical cleavage as to fundamental diagnosis and practical method of attack tends roughly to correspond to the cleavage between classes. Will the idealists, with their balance of fine feeling and cultured instincts, and the age-long tradition be- hind them, win the day and rout the determinist ? Or will the latter gain his somewhat tragic triumph, and manifest in the highest psychical activity of the world only a blossoming lovely to see but useless for practi- cal purposes? The questions involved cut deep. If the Marxian extremist be right, the call to sacrifice and service 124 ECONOMIC DETEEMINISM which rings clear in increasing volume through the modern world is delusion. The change implied in the necessary progress of economic evolution is destined by itself to destroy classes, and to insure a general welfare based on the elimination of wealth-producing property from the range of private ownership. The only effective aid we can render is to educate the thought and quicken the passions of the working class, thus hastening the process by which the great result must be achieved. But in the eyes of the older idealist, the Paradise which these thinkers hold out is a fool's Paradise in- deed. And let us confess at the outset that it would be an evil day when the cruder socialist view should triumph: a day when the deepest intuitions won by the travail of the past must be lightly tossed on the waste- heap, and the feet of humanity set in a grim new path, looking toward an unillumined future. Many a man will instinctively adhere to one or the other school, dub the other folly or knavery, and rest content. But there are others who feel that no doctrine was ever believed by a number of men with- out having some value. To such, the effort to find the abiding truth in opposed attitudes seems not only an entertaining but a fruitful pursuit. The moments when two ideas, thought to be irreconcilable, are per- ceived to be supplementary, are the most radiant in one's inner history. Let the hope of gaining even a glimpse of such a reconciling light incite us to our quest. 125 FIRST PRINCIPLES III The " scientific socialism " proclaimed with so defi- ant a fanfare of materialism by Bakunin is, of course, only one phase of the revolutionary movement which crystallized in the last century. It gave the social applica- tion to that emphasis on life as ascending from below instead of descending from above, which was already dazing and distressing men in other fields. As early as 1830 Carlyle had quoted with scorn not untouched by fear the pregnant phrase, "The brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile," and the transform- ation of psychology was under weigh. While Baku- nin and Mazzini contended, " Darwinism " was holding theology at the bar. The Marxians may have blundered badly in analyses and conclusions, but so far as at- titude went they simply transferred the philosophy fighting all along the line to a new department, and in so doing completed the alarmist cycle which confronted thought at every point with an evolving universe, ruled rather through inevitable law than through sporadic activity on the part of God or man. The dogged struggle in which theology and psycho- logy both yielded the field was the chief intellectual achievement of the last century. But in sociology, the fight begun in the days of Mazzini is not yet over ; and the Marxian will tell you that the victory of what he is pleased to call " historical materialism " is to be the feat of the twentieth century. Like the hero of TourgeniefFs " Fathers and Sons " he will cheerily 126 ECONOMIC DETERMINISM announce that the distaste of the classes fed on ideals of social chivalry for this gospel of the disinherited, is the last recoil of bigotry and superstition from a posi- tive and enlightened view of life. We hesitate to accept his plausible contention. In regard to the physical universe, we are willing to re- gard man as a product, and we may even grant that theology has lost to win in assenting to the spectacle of evolution. But the situation alters when our vision shifts from nature to civilization, for here is our own domain. Man is the child of nature, but he is the creator of society : shall he abdicate his control, and accept the docile role of slave to a " determining eco- nomic base"? We are reluctant to think so, and idealism clings with tenacity to what may well seem the last stronghold, the jealously guarded sanctuary of our freedom. All the myriad forms of the universe below us may be passively evolved in their successive phases ; but as soon as man enters the scene, he intro- duces a new factor into the situation. He is not only a necessary product but a conscious cause, and exerts in his turn a shaping influence over the very mate- rial conditions that have produced him. And we are aware that the comfort of the entire race could not repay the loss of that light of effective purpose which, if extinguished, would leave a universe in gloom. Not preference nor prepossession, but the steady scru- tiny of facts, must align us. To such scrutiny, socialism summons, and if we enter its camp and see through its eyes, we shall hardly avoid at least a partial assent 127 FIRST PRINCIPLES to its theories. For the further we press analysis, the more does individual freedom recede, and to find the origin either of characters or of crises we are habitu- ally driven back upon the economic factor. The older attitude, which treated the passions of princes as the significant force in history, has long been left behind : we have almost equally outgrown the school of transition, which with Carlyle found such force mainly in the personalities of strong men. We cannot even agree wholly with later writers, who seek the chief spur to progress in collective passions and desires, not at least till we recognize to how amazing a degree these passions are generated in so- cial conditions, and determined by the imperious pres- sure of economic exigencies. At the time of the centenary of Lincoln and Dar- win a New York paper had some pertinent comments, prefaced by a reverent tribute to the two heroes : Nothing can be more certain to the thoughtful student of history than that even if these two individuals had died in their infancy the course of events would have been essen- tially the same. Had Seward or Chase been elected to the presidency, the South would have seceded just the same ; the national government would have been forced to use its power ; it would have triumphed just the same because it had a more efficient economic system as well as a stronger moral incentive on its side ; and it would have been com- pelled, whether it liked or not, to use its powers to do away with chattel slavery. . . . Had Darwin not lived to maturity, or had he turned his powers in other directions, the illum- inating and revolutionizing idea of the origin of species 128 ECONOMIC DETERMINISM and the survival of the fittest would have been developed and accepted almost if not quite as soon, and in much the same form. Individuals are of immense importance ; but things are done through, not by them. Look at history with open eyes : do we not seek in vain for men who have achieved anything permanent, unless as they worked in harmony with a larger movement of which they were probably but half aware ? The effort to impose a personal view on the world fails as completely as that to revive a dying tradition. How melancholy, how disconcerting, is that perception we reached of the waste involved in the long story of social idealism, from the days of Plato, master of the dreamers to fol- low ! During the last hundred years, ideals of social regeneration have steadily multiplied ; they have ex- pressed themselves with exquisite beauty in letters, with sacrificial passion in life. They have inspired the dreams and dominated the actions of all whom the mod- ern world can claim as spiritual leaders. And when we turned to them for guidance, they had nothing but disappointment to offer. The explanation for this disappointment now begins to dawn on us. Our idealists are too often ideologists. Heirs of preevolutionary sociology, reluctant to accept democracy, they endeavored, as Carlyle might have said, to view the universe as it is not. Moreover, they have overestimated their own importance : for they have expected to discover the solution for social ills, not from watching the actual facts of progress on this 129 FIRST PRINCIPLES life-giving even if unsatisfactory earth, but from anx- ious personal theorizing. Theirs is a gallant fallacy; but it is subtly aristocratic and full of spiritual pride. Slow indeed has been the process by which idealism has been liberated from its dreams. Down the ages from the time of Plato, the deductive and personal method has held sway. To a salutary breath of reality, which begins intermittently to blow through the great nineteenth - century writers, is due whatever power and value their appeal may have ; but their use of the positive method was at best half-hearted and sporadic. In the main, they were convinced that it was incum- bent on them to invent the right plan for managing the universe ; in so deeming, nay, further, in claim- ing that no gain was worthy save such as the soul directly inspired and decreed, they turned from the method of progress imposed by Nature herself. The sentence passed on them is their failure to convince, to illuminate, or to guide. In this light, how easy it becomes, for instance, to understand the failure of the work of Ruskin ! Full appreciation has never yet been given to this greatest of the Victorian idealists ; yet his wisdom mingles re- peatedly with obstinate theories which the advance of the race must quietly lay aside. " Fors Clavjgera " and " Unto this Last " are weak in the underpinning. Rus- kin's sensitive intelligence wavers, to be sure, between fact and dream. At times he discerns reality with singular clearness ; at others he is capable of seriously picturing a class of benevolent landowners living in 130 ECONOMIC DETERMINISM poverty and devoting themselves to the interests of a docile peasantry occupied with handicraft. Even the best in him, his stirring appeal to the conscience of the privileged, takes scant account of actual class- psychology, and " the most analytical mind in Eu- rope," as Mazzini not untruly called it, gets persist- ently off the track because it never gives itself to the study of what, in the social organism, happens really to occur. His followers are left in a perpetual impasse wistfully admiring, seeking blindly to follow. Is it not the same with the whole appeal to social chivalry in which was focused the imaginative and ethical pas- sion of the noblest nineteenth - century writers, whether in France, Italy, Germany, Russia, England, or the United States? If we consider the matter bravely, apart from all delight in eloquent phrasing or fine feeling, if we abandon the love of good literature for that practical point of view which these men all sweat blood to press v upon us, are we not obliged to recog- nize that between their ideal teaching and the main lines of social and economic progress the connection is cut, the wires are down ? What is true of literature holds also in the brave helpless experiments of philanthropy and reform. These multitudinmis works are inspired in the main by moral passion and social compunction of the purest. But the plain fact is that they have the feebleness of reflex action. They spring, not from life itself, but from the pitying contemplation of life, which is a very different thing. They inspire reverence, they even play an essen- 131 FIRST PRINCIPLES tial minor part in modern life ; but we can never look to them, for adequate social regeneration. Take the working girl, for example, and gather up in imagination the total effect of all the benevolent agencies which exist to help her: the girls' club, the settlement, the vacation house, the Associated Chari- ties, if worst comes to worst, and even the Woman's Trade-union League. Measure the force of their reac- tion on her personality in comparison with that of two crude economic facts, the wage she receives and the duration of her working day. The worth of our eager efforts dwindles both comically and tragically in our eyes, and the broad economic condition bulks out of all proportion as the real master of that woman's life. On the surface, our sympathies may tinker away pleas- antly and our charities may afford relief : in the depths, her life will never be affected till the economic factor be altered. Widen the vision, look through history ; where can we point to social sacrifice or service on a scale sufficiently large radically to alter the course of events ? The answer may be painful ; let it at least be honest. The deep, the basal, the creative forces, have in nine times out of ten been rooted in the economic principles of self-interest or class-expediency. Through the indomitable pressure of life itself, craving for sat- isfaction and expansion, and in no other wise, effective advance has been achieved. Thus we are forced however reluctantly to side with Bakunin and face the truth. Economic necessity is the determining base of permanent social change. The 132 ECONOMIC DETERMINISM appeal to moral incentive can accomplish splendid work in detail ; it can bring blessed help to unnum- bered individuals, comforting, inspiring, and achieving once in a while under the most depressing economic circumstances miracles of rehabilitation, practical and spiritual. But unaided, it is in the main helpless to compass that decent society we crave, and which to our shame two thousand years of Christianity have failed to realize. Turn now to the socialists: and in proportion to our disappointment in the futility of idealism, savor the exhilaration with which we find among them firm ground for the foot and clear distance for the eye. Tolstoy, Ruskin, Ibsen, were all on the wrong tack. Close these authors ; open your Engels, your Bebel, your Jaures ; and, even though you may not agree with their doctrines, enjoy to the full the relief afforded by their method and attitude. For here at last we meet minds free from sentimentality or personal obsessions, seeking eagerly to be at grip with the actual facts of human progress. The situation calls, not for theorists who seek to impose gracious ideals upon a stubborn world, but for scientific observers, who can reveal and thereby expedite a natural process. As we read them it becomes perfectly clear why socialist propaganda swept forward swiftly as a torrent which has found its true channel when the vaporous socialist schemes which had floated so long in space were reinforced and precipitated as it were by eco- nomic determinism. We cease to wonder* that the 133 FIKST PRINCIPLES great socialist and labor parties of the twentieth cen- tury are attaining results beside which all the radiant idealism and the fastidiously chosen social service of the privileged classes sinks into insignificance. For we are ready to accept with these parties the severe principle that social progress, like natural, is rooted not in personal choice but in the necessities of law. But have we here, in any strict sense, "historic materialism " ? Or rather, that old story which we are so slow to learn, that the sanctuary of life is in the heart of natural fact, not remote in distant heavens ? The attitude on which we have been dwelling asserts that those forces which for sweep and mass count the most in progress are not generated apart from the common experience, in the heart or conscience of the exceptional individual, but out of the very conditions of life itself. The determinist has perceived, what the idealist has too often ignored, that the most effective type of spiritual power always arises as the natural product of a concrete situation. All history shows us the truth of this principle. Moral forces, if fruitful, are not static; they are re- lated to the economic necessities of their respective pe- riods. Obedience, for instance, so inoperative to-day, was rightly the chief virtue of mediaeval society. Reac- tionary virtues existed ; they always exist. Men died unseasonably, and all but uselessly, for freedom ; but the men who were on the right side were those who accepted the necessity of authority and found in obe- dience the path of life. There are always inconvenient 134 ECONOMIC DETEKMINISM persons who wish to stress a virtue at the wrong time, but their efforts, though picturesque, are barren. The valuable people are those docile in the school of life, yet sufficiently sensitive to ideals to discern and aid the trend of their own times in its noblest aspects. Let Dante rightly bear high though late witness to the need of centralized authority; while Thomas Jef- ferson, also rightly, stands for the widest decentral- ization of power. Let Mohammed stress the glory of military force as a religious discipline, to the immense gain of the Orient of his time ; while the Pilgrim Fa- thers make their stern way across the sea, pioneers, however inconsistent, of a civilization founded on reli- gious liberty. The most stirring times are of course those of tran-1 sition, when it is hardest to distinguish the notes or living forces from the notes of the passing age. Mis-! taken loyalties to causes of extinguished glory trail 1 their mournful light across the pages of history, as ' the rays of dead stars wander forever through space. Who would dare so to pry into the secret of law as to say that they are wasted utterly, who refuse to their adherents a place among those remembered and beloved? But he is the strong man, the wise man, the leader of power, whose humility in the presence of facts has bestowed on him the gift to read the mind of his age aright and to cooperate with its true purpose. No one could put the case better than Professor Commons. He writes, in his " Documentary History of Labor in the United States " : 135 FIRST PRINCIPLES We hear much to-day of the economic interpretation of history. Human life is viewed as a struggle to get a liv- ing and get rich. The selfishness of men hustling for food, clothing, shelter, and wealth determines their religion, their politics, their form of government, their family life, their ideals. Thus economic evolution produces religious, political, domestic, philosophical evolution. All this we may partly concede. But certainly there is something more in history than a blind surge. Men act together because they see together and believe together. An inspiring ideal, as well as the next meal, makes history. It is when such an idaJL_florre&ponds with a. stage in pp.nnnmif* eimlnt.ion, and the two corroborate each other, that the mass of men begin to move. The crystals then begin to form, evolution quickens into revolution ; history reaches one of its crises. . . The great man is the man in whose brain the struggling ideas of the age fight for supremacy, until the survivors come out adapted to the economic struggle of the times. IV Economic determinism, or the eager appeal to social realities for guidance, led socialism at once to the sis- ter doctrine of the class-struggle. It. involved "that view of history," to quote from Engels, " which seeks the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all important events in the changes in the mode of pro- duction and exchange, in the consequent division of society into distinct classes, and in the struggle of these classes against one another." One need be no specialist in sociology to discern the chief " note " of social change during the modern epoch. The main economic phenomenon of the nine- 136 ECONOMIC DETERMINISM teenth century was the rise of the great working class, joint product of the political and of the industrial revolution. The main fact of the twentieth century is bound to be the advance of this class into conscious power. As democracy extends from the political sphere in which it made its first tentative way, and reaches out for an industrial and ultimately for a social appli- cation, this vast class must in the nature of things develop a psychology distinctive as that of the priest or of the feudal baron. From its rising protest against its conditions must spring the great driving force in social change. We may like the fact or dislike it : our liking or disliking matters not one whit. In vain we stand apart, arrogating to ourselves a judicial attitude. Class-consciousness is growing with fierce rapidity from the soil of our economic order ; one of those living forces, necessary products, which have a majesty allied to the movement of tides or planets. If the only sound basis of social action be the study of the forces natu- rally engendered by economic progress, the great blun- der of modern philanthropy, and too often of modern reform, is the frequent failure to enter the psychical life of the people whose conditions we seek to improve. The new class is evoked ; the role it has to play is not yet fully accepted, but that role will be a determining one. This is a stern saying, but " God wills it," as the old cry ran. And there is truth in the ancient riddle, that out of the strong comes forth sweetness. In this advance of the workers, moral forces are sure to play a part. 137 FIRST PRINCIPLES The discomfiture of the idealist, at least on the prac- tical levels of life, is only apparent ; and responsibility is no illusion. Moral forces, like physical, are out of our power to create, and refusal to recognize our help- lessness is responsible for our chief blunders. But, like the physical, they are within our power to con- trol, direct, and transform : and in this fact lies the justification for that hesitant instinct which, when it con- fronts scientific determinism in the sociological sphere, feels more strongly impelled than ever before to stress the reality of freedom. Man's function on this planet is not to make, but to reshape. The strictest Marxian is no fatalist in practice ; every word of his propa- ganda is a tribute to the free power of moral passion. He differs from the ideologist simply in perceiving that the forces to which he can make most effective appeal are those confusedly presented to him by the Great Master, Life. In his turn, he too often ignores the important fact that it is within our province not only to accelerate, but to modify a process. Wise men do not destroy their natural impulses ; they moralize them. The advance of the People is as truly a natural product as the passion for reproducing the species. That too may be left a natural rage, or it may be transfigured till it shines with a light from Heaven in the eyes of consecrated motherhood. The Magdalen became the woman who still loved much, but purely. So the awakening demand of the working people for power, freedom, and well-being can be translated into life in terms either of crude self - assertion or of the 138 ECONOMIC DETERMINISM achievement of a common good ; the proletarian ex- perience of depletion and denial can be turned into a force either for barren revolt or for healthful growth. What must not be done is to seek to suppress these rising passions, for the sacred hunger for life speaks in them. Passively to ignore them and to allow the race to drift on an unregulated current of impulse is folly; actively to repudiate them is worse than folly; it is the unpardonable sin, blasphemy against life itself. "In the idealistic interpretation of history," so says Professor Commons again, discussing the career of Horace Greeley, " there are two kinds of idealism, a higher and a lower. . . . The higher idealism came to Greeley through the transcendentalist philosophers of his time. The lower came from the working classes. The higher idealism was humanitarian, harmonizing, persuasive : the lower was class-conscious, aggressive, coercive. The higher was a plea for justice, the lower was a demand for rights." The antithesis persists, and if we are wise we cannot afford to reject idealism, of any type or from any quarter. It is probable that the more democratic reading of history for which we still wait, and wait mostly in vain, will show us that the lower has on the whole been more operative than the higher at many unexpected junctures. " The vitality of tax-supported schools" to borrow another illus- tration from Professor Commons,, and from the form- ative period of American life u was derived, not from the humanitarian leaders, but from the growing 139 FIRST PRINCIPLES class of wage -earners." That the advance in labor legislation is due far more to trade-unions than to philanthropic agitation is a contemporary common- place. Why hesitate, why shrink, before this rising power? Why resent the summons to the cultured, the ease- ful, to follow the lead of the poor ? This was what democracy planned in the beginning, from the time when it set forth on its great unfinished ad venture J May it not also be exactly what Christianity means, when translated into plain terms and given a modern application? This is hard to deny if we agree that Jesus meant what he said. He did not bid his follow- ers to patronize the poor, nor to minister to the poor, but to identify themselves with the poor. Poverty of spirit was the rich term that he used. Whether this identification was to be literal has always been sub- ject of debate ; that it was not to be purely sentimen- tal is less rarely asserted than it might be. No one who thinks can question that it was to be, in a search- ing and revolutionary sense, spiritual and intellectual. Yet many are ready to rhapsodize over St. Francis embracing Holy Poverty in the outward life, who would shrink from following the leaders of the work- ing classes in the holy task of social regeneration. We have not yet begun to fathom the full meaning of the Carpenter of Nazareth. Democracy, imperfect though it be, has taught us a little. Possibly there is even now in the world a power, natural heir of de- mocracy, that can teach us still more. 140 ECONOMIC DETERMINISM We shall then be more Christian as well as more . scientific if, instead of forming our social program out of our own heads, or from superficial observation, we study how to direct aright the great forces arising from life. Identification of ourselves with the People must be the keynote of sound social advance ; it af- fords the only hope of checking the habitual waste of social effort. Let us hasten to say how often the prin- ciple is accepted and practiced, with fine and fruitful results. But let us also not shrink from confessing how large a proportion of philanthropic and social work, occasionally at least, violates it. Why not glance at a few practical examples? Here is the settlement movement, at its best the highest expression of social compunction. How often it draws naively on that very class-psychology it seeks to transcend ! What is the usual procedure in establishing a settlement? An uptown committee ; funds raised, a plant prepared, by uptown money; a salaried staff, drawn certainly not from the neighborhood itself, which proceeds with devotion and energy to " uplift " that neighborhood by a cheerful application of uptown art, music, hy- giene, morals, and manners. Often the workers act as if they were dealing with an inert mass ; nor indeed is it easy to learn to work "with" instead of "for." Yet every district pulsates with a life of its own. What failure to profit by forces for good stronger than we can furnish when festivities are put on the 141 FIRST PRINCIPLES date of a mission at the Roman Catholic church round the corner ! What folly to seek to please a mass of homesick Italians, fresh from the land of Garibaldi, with an illustrated lecture on Bunker Hill ! The wis- est leaders well know that the first aim should be less the initiation of accredited lines of social service than the close study of forces already at work. The apa- thetic boy who, responds so dully to the Club may be a political leader out in the street. Too often the real life of a neighborhood is sealed from the contact of even the social expert, who may live there for years, administering pure milk to the babies, and enticing people to save their pennies in the stamp-bank, igno- rant of the somewhat significant fact that the same re- gion is a hot-bed of anarchism from which are directed transactions that stir Europe to horror. If social workers need to identify themselves more deeply with forces of popular birth, working people should have a share, through their representatives, in all movements of reform and relief. The movements of real value will usually be found to be those most read- ily indorsed or initiated by the workers. Trades-unions have done more to remove the shame of child-labor than all other agitation to that end has yet to show. If the privileged classes have their consumers' league, the unions have their label leagues ; a little deeper demo- cracy, and the two could be fused. Not till workingmen serve on our organized charities and our diverse reform associations more freely than now, will these agencies take their due and right place in social advance. 142 ECONOMIC DETERMINISM To speak plainly, is it not over -true that the first instinct among the philanthropically disposed is distrust of any movement of truly popular origin? Three great forces not imposed from without, but born from within are to - day affecting the in- tellectual and emotional life of the working people: trades - unions, socialism, and the Roman Catholic Church. These forces do not agree among themselves any more than the forces which affect the upper classes agree ; but they all operate with power, they seek in one sense no support from without or from above. In all, there is the note of genuine democracy. And to all three alike the attitude of the world of privilege academic, commercial, religious is one of distaste and suspicion. It is no wonder that the socialists claim that class - psychology dominates .the situation, for all the stirring of our social compunction and our administration of Morrison's Pills. Our salvation, as we have contended, is to accept and utilize all move- ments of truly popular origin ; instead of this we habitually distrust and oppose. We repudiate these living powers, and our futility is our punishment. A salient instance is the reluctant acceptance of trades-unions. No one can claim that the unions, to use their own pet phrase, do their work in kid gloves ; but they have the immense advantage of being, not an invention, but a natural growth, born of sheer necessity from the exigencies of economic pressure. Twenty-five years ago they were fighting for recogni- tion ; the run of literature, and preaching, showed 143 FIRST PRINCIPLES clearly the general animus against them. To-day, they are accepted by the public, though still fought, as is natural, by the interests to which they are opposed. One strong trade-union, if controlled by the better ele- ment, may be worth more as a force in moral education in a given city than all the settlements and people's institutes combined. Tardily, and surprised at their own temerity, the churches are recognizing the fact and appointing " fraternal delegates." Had they acted more promptly they, and possibly organized labor also, would have been saved from some mistakes. The Roman Church presents problems of its own, apart from the line of our discussion. But what shall we say of this third force, socialism, young still, making its way with difficulty in our country, on ac- count of special conditions, but offering a wider solu- tion of our social ills than can anywhere else be found ? We can of course repudiate it if we like. Or we can patronize it in an expurgated edition. Or, identifying ourselves with the passion and the purpose whence it emerges, we may divest our minds of prejudice and give it in its entirety a fair, full hearing. An increasing number of thinkers become warm advocates of socialism, yet eliminate the theory of class-consciousness and the class-struggle. And in so doing they are well within their rights. In a partially democratic society, socialism is not, and cannot be, the movement of one class alone. It must make its appeal broad enough to reach all classes. Yet if the trend of our thought be right, the theory of the func- 144 ECONOMIC DETERMINISM tion of the class-struggle is one which the central socialist army can never abandon. Dangerous and misleading in its cruder forms, gravely disturbing at best, it nevertheless expresses a truth that our reluc- tance cannot ignore, if the forces of emancipation must be the natural correlative of the economic phenomena of the day. Socialism is in essence a working-class movement, and those who adhere to it should recognize that in the designs of Providence the time has come for the class that, though disinherited, yet serves hu- man need in most essential ways, to be the leaders of the whole race toward substantial freedom. VI Half a century ago, cheap materialistic talk, on the part of men who had misread the popularizers of Darwin, was noisily at work confusing issues, and al- most smothering a rational synthesis of the old thought with the new. To-day, the same thing is going on in sociology. But the most positive scientific minds are now reverting unabashed to a mystical view of the universe, and we who cling to our idealism may well take comfort from the analogy. If with Bakunin we recognize that " in the social sphere the advance of economic forces ... is the determining base of all advance, religious, philosophic, political and social," we need in no wise on account of the concession " repudiate the army of God." On the contrary, a little mysticism blended with ' .-/ our economic determinism makes a very satisfactory 145 FIRST PRINCIPLES mixture. WTiy be daunted by the fact that the forces with which we deal are presented to us instead of ini- tiated by us ? Our opportunity is not on this account less, but greater and more hopeful. Life would suddenly become very dull if the ancient quarrel between materialism and idealism were settled ; nor can we imagine such a consummation, unless as result of some general vision blinding and revealing as that which greeted Saul on the road to Damascus, or else of an astronomical cataclysm that should throw our little star quite out of the cosmic running. Meantime, schools draw together. Where our fathers found con- futation, we find reinforcement to faith. The evolu- tionist can at his will see in the law that governs the unfolding of the natural order blind force, or the speaking mind of God. The psychologist can either reduce thought to nervous reaction, or hail in the very physical basis of life an elusive spiritual phenomenon. Is not the same alternative open in that economic sphere, last to be studied by exact science ? The eco- nomic conditions that seemingly create our strongest loves and aims are imperious and impassive as were those Assyrian tyrants whose insolent images confront us from the past. But what if these great lords of life are themselves living? These " determined," these automatic forces, which mechanically generate our passions and powers, may they not themselves be messengers, fulfilling a central Will? It were imper- tinent to assert the contrary. The angels of the Apo- calypse proclaimed woes as well as blessings. The 146 ECONOMIC DETERMINISM class-struggle which rises from the insistent demand for such general well-being as shall give the soul its room may be the trumpet-blast of an angel of God. The priest who condemns, and the revolutionist who exalts, socialism because it is materialistic are equally wrong ; Bakunin and Mazzini needed each the other. For the great economic order, with its steady trend toward a goal that we perhaps begin to discern, is no dead thing because its movements are not in our keep- ing. The material universe, forever evolving into new likeness through forces in which our conscious efforts , have so limited a share, is neither an evil to fight or ignore, nor an ultimate end to rest in. It is a sacra- ment ordained to convey spiritual life to us. This is what neither mystic nor revolutionary has learned. But those reformers, those idealists, who often, at the cost of needless waste, dedicate themselves in ever- increasing numbers to the healing of social disorders, must learn it. We would-be re-creators of the earth must follow, for we cannot lead. This earth is indeed ours to shape ; but only when we have understood that meekness alone inherits it. So long as we seek to force on it separatist and fantastic ideas of our own inven- tion, however lofty and plausible, we shall stumble and fail. H-We must gain our clue from close study of the unfolding purpose in the economic order. To dream .of altering or interrupting this order is the folly in which anarchist and philanthropist unite. In natural science, and in psychology, men are now wisely evading in- quiry into the ever-vicious circle of precedence and 117 FIRST PRINCIPLES origin, and turning to the more fruitful study of rela- tions. Only in sociology, the new quest is hardly begun. Economic determinism and social idealism continue to give each other the lie over contemptuous shoulders. The need of the hour is to make them turn around, join hands, and together face the future. CHAPTER II CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS WE have already touched on the burning question of class-consciousness and the class-struggle, but we are not yet ready to dismiss it. For the stubborn moral sense still recoils from many implications of the doctrine, saying that the cooperation with demo- cratic forces for which we have pleaded may be all very well while these forces are innocent and pacific, but that class-consciousness, in many cases, is neither. On the contrary, the class-struggle spells obstinate hate. The avowed desire of the central socialist army is to fan antagonistic impulses toward separateness, now smouldering among the unprivileged, to a con- suming blaze. To encourage the class-struggle is to foment revolt, to glorify self-interest, and to applaud all the instincts which a nobler ethic seeks to discredit. The actual industrial spectacle intensifies the hor- ror which the doctrine inspires. For the class-war is a fact, and a stern one. It lurks in every factory, it flares out in every instance of extortion and oppres- sion. We perceive it in the cruel and vile instinct to distrust the poor, still common among the privileged, even in their philanthropic moments. It is to be seen no less in the rising indignation and unrest of 149 FIRST PRINCIPLES the awakened workers. Strikes, lock-outs, boycotts, are its ominous weapons. In skirmishes now and again red blood has been shed. True, it is more and more likely that the socialist weapon of the future will be ballot rather than bomb ; none the less, even in Anglo-Saxon countries, we may possibly find that Kropotkin's searching reminder that revolutionary crises are a normal part of evolutionary advance is to find illustration once more. For class is more and more consciously pitted against class, and the closely organ- ized ranks are closing fast. Under these circumstances it certainly takes cour- age of no simple type to indorse the doctrine of the class-struggle. To do so means that at lowest we wel- come discontent ; it may mean that we are called to rejoice in revolt. It demands that we hail with sat- isfaction, instead of dismay, the steady dogged rise of proletariat claims to higher wages, shorter hours, larger compensations in injury. It means that while we may be mildly pleased with the announcement of a new profit-sharing scheme on the part of employers, our hearts leap with more confident gladness when an increase of wages has been won by a group of em- ployees. We shall approve of any shrinking in the ranks of free labor, any accession to the ranks of the organized ; shall encourage the spread of radical and subversive teaching among the working people, make an act of thanks for Milwaukee, note with joy the socialist propaganda in New York, and desire by all rightful means to persuade the helpless unthinking 150 CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS mass of the workers that power and responsibility are in their hands. The majority of educated men are obviously not yet at this point. What we find to-day, on the part of most honest people, is a general claim to non-partisan- ship in case of industrial disturbance : a virtuous if platitudinous plea that the public stand off while the matter is decided on its merits. And of course in a sense this is quite the right attitude. Only it is not the whole story. It never was, it never will be ; the convictions that control and create life are not gener- ated in this way. Pure disinterestedness never occurs. It belongs to equations, not to men ; at best it is aca- demic, not human. In a given crisis, the undertow of sympathy, not the estimate of right in detail, is the big thing, the thing worth noting. Nor is this any more lamentable than the fact that a special episode in a drama must be justly judged, not on its own merits, but in its relation to the whole drift of the play. The undertow is changing, the tide is at the turn. It is disquieting or inspiriting, according to one's prejudices, to observe the extraordinarily slow shift- ing of sympathy in matters industrial, during the past twenty - five years, toward the side of the workers. True, men still like to demand a clear case, a miracle that has perhaps never yet been seen. But here is the change : of old, when the workers were proved in the wrong, the public exulted ; to-day, it is disappointed. The change is amazing, but it is still wavering ; nor do men yet recognize the underdrift of sympathy in 151 FIRST PRINCIPLES which they are caught. This drift is the recognition that the working classes must achieve their own sal- vation, and that such salvation demands not only frag- ments of improvement grudgingly bestowed, but a general pressure, if not toward social equality, then at least to the point where a " living wage " shall secure the chance for all manhood to rise to its highest level. As the drift slowly becomes conscious, people grow troubled. For they see that it involves two things : First, the sharp belief that privilege must be cut down before our general life can flourish. Now, the finer idealism does not shrink from this idea in itself. Disinterested men, including some who have a stake in the game, are coming to admit it ; many are even inclined to accept the central socialist tenet, that no effective cure for our social evils will be found until a large proportion at least of wealth-producing wealth be socially owned. Most people disagree with this pro- position, but it no longer shocks the common mind. But there is that other implication from which the moral sense recoils : the encouragement of class-con- sciousness as a militant weapon. For are we not com- ing to object to any weapons at all ? Just when the old political militarism is coming to be at a discount in the idealist ranks, this new form of war conflict in industrial relations makes its appearance among pitiable mortals ; and our enthusiasm is enlisted to foster in the working people the very traits which civilization is struggling to leave behind ! True, phy- 152 CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS sical violence is honestly deplored by both sides, and even extremists ardently hope that we may spell our Revolution without the R. None the less are the pas- sions educed by the whole situation essentially those of the battlefield ; men exult in wresting advantages from their antagonists, they are trained to regard one another as adversaries, not brothers. And this in the very age theoretically agog for peace ! The good peo- ple who would fain see all social progress proceed from the growing generosities of realized brother- hood, find a mere travesty of their desires in gains won through self-assertion. Shall the lovers of peace sym- pathize with a movement for quickening discontent and making hatred effective ? Shall we lend our approval to destroying whatever meekness the poor may have, and summon them to curse that poverty which a cer- tain word calls blessed? It is time to call a halt! There is doubtless some unconscious prejudice on the side of privilege in all this. But there is some- thing better too, and every honest socialist knows it. The theory of class-consciousness does offend the con- science of the moralist as often as the sister doctrine of economic determinism offends the intellect of the phi- losopher. II Frank confession behooves us at the outset. Class- consciousness is a weapon, and to applaud it does involve a militant attitude. If people say that it is ip so facto discredited thereby, we can only enter 153 FIRST PRINCIPLES a plea for consistency. Virtuous disapproval of the working-class struggle sits ill on the lips of those who point out with zest the stimulating qualities of the competitive system and vote enthusiastically for the increase of armaments. It is a curious fact that the man who talks Jingo politics most loudly, and defends with most vigor the admirable necessity to commerce of the triumph of the strong, is habitually the very person most outraged at the pressure of a united pro- letariat group toward freedom. Yet he may be hard put to it to persuade the man from Mars that to fight for one's country is glorious while to fight for one's class is an inspiration of the devil. Good Paterfamilias, sweating to discomfit your competitors for the sake of your darlings at home, how convince our visitor that in defending the interests of your family you fulfill a sacred duty, while your employee, fighting for the in- terests of his industrial group, flings a menace at so- ciety ? There is only one ground on which the distinc- tion can be maintained: the assumption that family and nation are holy things to be protected at any cost, while class is an unholy thing which deserves no pro- tection. The position has force ; but, curiously enough, those ready to agree to it are the stubbornly " class- conscious." However, the matter is too serious to be met by an oblique argument. The instinct which considers class-feeling to be inferior to family feeling or pa- triotism probably rests on the opinion that the forces which create class are not only divisive, but selfish 154 CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS and material. Mazzini proffered an interesting plea for the superiority of political over social passion on the ground that the first alone was idealist and disinter- ested. Although threatened, belief that the family is a spiritual and sacramental unit is deeply ingrain. And yet must we not recognize the same foundation in all three cases? Patriotism rests upon reliance on the protection afforded by the State ; the family is created by the craving for self -perpetuation. Class-feeling, too, has its sacramental sweetness. Of the strands from which it is woven many derive no color from personal advantage. As for warfare, we all agree that its moral values are provisional, and look eagerly to that promised time " when war shall be no more." But while the vision tarries, no one who accepts that provisional value in one field should disallow it in another. Most of us moreover hold it to be a real value, and still thrill unabashed to martial strains. Why did Thack- eray present soldiers as the only men among the weak egotists of Vanity Fair to preserve a standard of self- less honor ? Why did Tennyson hail the clash of arms as the only means of transforming the smug clerks of England into her patriots ? Not because these authors approved a militant ideal, but because they knew such an ideal to be nobler than prosperous sloth and self- absorption. Battle is deep embedded in our finiteness. As Helen Gray Cone nobly puts it, In this rubric, lo ! the past is lettered : Strike the red words out, we strike the glory : 155 FIRST PRINCIPLES Leave the sacred color on the pages, Pages of the Past that teach the Future. Ou that scripture Yet shall young souls take the oath of service. God end war ! But when brute war is ended, Yet shall there be many a noble soldier, Many a noble battle worth the winning, Many a hopeless battle worth the losing. Life is battle : Life is battle, even to the sunset. The Apocalypse which ends with Jerusalem, Vision of Peace, is chiefly occupied with chronicling in suc- cession of awesome symbols the eternal Wars of the Lord. In the teachings of Christ there are three bitter sayings against smooth conventionality for one against violence, since the context shows that the saying about non-resistance is personal, not social, in application. We may not dismiss class-consciousness as evil on the mere score that it arouses the passions of war. To determine its value, its end must be questioned, and the qualities evoked by the conflict must be scanned. Ill Let us take the last task first, for in fulfilling it we may almost hope to reassure those gentle folk, notably on the increase even while nominal Quakerism declines, the lovers of peace at any price. We may not approve war for the sake of its by-products alone, but when these are valuable we may find in them some consolation for such war as is bound to exist. The 156 CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS class-conscious movement has two precious results : its inner disciplines, and its power to widen sympathies. Even the most recalcitrant grant the value of an army from the first point of view. Military life affords a unique training in the very virtues most needed by a democratic state : humility and self-effacement ; courage, and swift power of decision, the qualities of subordination and of leadership. We all hope to foster these qualities through the opportunities of peace, but so far our success is so imperfect that we can hardly disregard the help presented by the crises of war. Nowhere is this help more striking than in the class-conscious movement. Consider those class- conscious groups called trade-unions. Seen from with- out, especially in time of stress, a union may appear actuated by the worst impulses : ruthless in pressing unreasonable demands, callously indifferent to incon- veniencing the public, stubbornly self-seeking. Seen from within, the aspect alters. Here is no longer a compact unit fighting for selfish ends, but a throng of individuals, each struggling no more for himself than for his neighbor. In such an organic group com- posed, be it remembered, of very simple and ignorant people you shall see each member submitted to severe discipline in the most valuable and difficult thing in the world, team-work. Wordsworth found in Nature the over-ruling power "to kindle and restrain," and it is not far-fetched to say that this same double function, so essential to the shaping of character, is performed for working people 157 FIRST PRINCIPLES by the trade -union. It kindles sacrifice, endurance, and vision ; it restrains violent and individualistic im- pulse, and fits the man or woman to play due part in corporate and guided action. Those who have stood shoulder to shoulder with the women during one of the garment - workers' strikes that have marked the last few years, have watched with reverence the moral awakening among the girls, born of loyalty to a collect- ive cause. It was the typical employer, defending the American fetish of the Open Shop, who remarked, when his clever Italian forewoman asked him, " Ain't you sorry to make those people work an hour and a half for twelve cents ? " " Don't you care. You don't understand America. Why do you worry about those peoples ? Here the foolish people pay the smart." And it was the spirited girl who replied to him, " Well, now the smart people will teach the foolish," and led her shop out on strike. Which better understood America and its needs ? There is no question which had learned the truth that freedom consists, not in sep- arateness but in fellowship, not in self-assertion but in self-effacement. The employer of so-called " free labor " denies this sacred truth ; for the liberty he defends is that of the disintegrating dust, not that of the corpuscle of living blood. By his vicious doctrine, " each man is free to make his own bargain," he is doing his best to retard the evolution of the workers toward the citizen- ship of the future. To note the services of the unions in the quickening of international sympathy, we need only point to the 158 CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS situation in one of our mining communities. For in the union is the only power competent to fuse the be- wildered immigrant masses into some unity of aim. Where else may we look for a fire to dissipate selfish- ness, misunderstanding, and distrust in our] melting- pot, in the heat of common aspiration ? Trades-unions are no homes of sentiment. Yet beneath their frequent corruptions and tyrannies is an extraordinary under- tow of just such idealism as the United States most needs. Struggling for harmony within, pitted against the capitalist class without, the union finds its gallant work full of dramatic terror and promise. Again and again the strain is over-great. Like all other group- passions, class-feeling tends easily to the bitterness of clique or the tyrannies of oligarchy. The scab is un- able to rise above the idea of self -protection. Irishman will not work with Italian, nor Gentile with Jew. The union, finding a feeble response to disinterested mo- tives, resorts to intimidation to build and hold its membership. Corruption, fierce enough to incline one toward an anarchistic return to nature, is as much in evidence as in politics. Violence and crime may be com- mitted in the union's name. None the less, with slow serious searching, the process goes on by which a ship or a state finds itself, as each atom becomes dimly infused with the holy sense of its relation to the Whole. Socialism, the other great class-conscious force, is as yet little found among us except when imported. Menacing enough, the anarchical type that drifts to us from southern Europe ; as ignorant as indifferent 159 FIRST PRINCIPLES concerning American conditions ; expecting, like many another creed, to save the world outright by the ap- plication of a formula. Yet, here too, we may already discern assets to be cherished. Memory rises of illu- mined eyes belonging to a young Italian. Brought up, or rather kicked up, in a stable at Naples, a young animal when twenty, unable to read, careless of all ex- cept the gratification of desire, he found himself errand- boy in a restaurant frequented by a small socialist group. Then came the awakening : " How behave longer like a beast, signora ? I could not disgrace the comrades ! How should Luigi get drunk ? There was the Cause to serve. I served it there, I serve it here. I now live clean. Life is holy. " Luigi had experienced that purifying, that rare, that liberating good, alle- giance to an idea ! Thinking goes on in all class-con- scious groups : and while we feebly try to moralize and educate the poor, forces are rising from their very heart, generated by the grim realities of the industrial situation, competent to check self -absorption and widen horizons. Nor in our straits can we afford to despise the international passion of socialism, for it is a strong force at work among the people, capable of kindling in them the sense, so needed here, of universal brother- hood. Adjustment of loyalties between old countries and new is a delicate problem sure to be increasingly pressing among us. No good American wants the old forgotten; no right-thinking immigrant should wish the new ignored. 160 CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS True love in this differs from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away. He who loves two countries is richer than he who loves one only ; but as a matter of fact our newcomers usually end in loving none. These spiritual exiles pre- sent the pathetic spectacle, not of one man without a country, but of great throngs. At the North End in Boston, Denison House con- ducts a Sunday lecture course for Italians. The con- trol disclaims responsibility for opinions presented on this practically free forum ; yet American members consented with some reluctance to invite a speaker representing a society organized to strengthen the bond to Italy, and suspected of discouraging natural- ization. With anxiety of another type, it asked a socialist club to send the orator for our next meet- ing. But what the speaker did was to talk with fire and eloquence, grateful to his grave Latin audience, on the theme of the necessity to the Italian in the United States of a new patriotism broad enough to disregard old lines, and to express itself in loyal American citizenship, and in cooperation with all that was progressive in the life of the United States. The inspiration of class-conscious internationalism was plain in the speech, and it did more to quicken a civic conscience than any words of ours could have achieved. But why stress, perhaps selfishly, the peculiar gift of such faith in one special national situation ? The gain is broader, deeper ! Class feeling quickens that 161 FIRST PRINCIPLES imaginative power which democracy most needs. The tired workman, absorbed in his machine, suddenly finds far horizons open to his spirit. He hears the heart-beats of his brothers in Italy, in Russia, in Bo- hemia, in Denmark; and behold! a new means for accomplishing the central work of the ages, for releas- ing him from that self-centred egotism which is at once the condition of his finite existence and the barrier that he must transcend if he is to know himself a partaker of the infinite. What must, in conclusion and summary, be broadly asserted against clap-trap, whether that clap-trap be talked in the name of Marx or of his opponents, is that the socialist movement alike in Europe and America, taken in the large, fosters disinterestedness in its adherents to a degree realized by no other mod- ern force. No sensible socialist expects a personal gain from his creed, since he cannot look for a triumph of his cause during his own lifetime, complete enough to affect his private destiny. What he is consciously fighting for is the welfare of men unborn. As for the leaders of the movement, they are neither demagogues nor anarchists. With a few exceptions, they are men so able that if they chose to leave the proletarian ranks, they could easily mount to success on accredited lines. If, as in the cases of Millerand and Briand, so- cialism rightly or wrongly suspects them of a personal ambition, it promptly discredits them. If one contrasts the grave emotions that inspire alike the leaders and the rank and file with the dreary barrenness of psychi- CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS cal life and the welter of individualistic preoccupations that obtains among the unorganized and unaroused working masses, one thrills to the sense of something high and noble, and can hardly fall short of hailing in the class-struggle whether it express itself through trades-unionism or socialism one of those inspiriting forces that are the glory of history. Abraham Lincoln had probably never heard the famous phrase of Marx, but he had his own version of it : " The strongest bond of human sympathy outside the family," said he, " should be one uniting all working people of all na- tions and tongues and kindreds." On what grounds rests this surprising and deliberate statement of our greatest American ? On his intuition of the sanctity of labor, and probably also on his perception of a vast liberating power in this feeling for class.- IV From tribal days, group-consciousness has always involved a defiant attitude toward those outside the group, yet it has always been one of the chief forms of moral education. The larger the group toward which loyalty is evoked, the greater the emancipation from pettiness ; and if class-consciousness is the most im- pressive form of group-consciousness up to date, it is because the working people include a majority of the human race. Until economic development had reached its present point, class-consciousness could not have risen to the status of a world-power. Those whom it affects are the 163 FIRST PRINCIPLES masses, voiceless through the long historic story : with- out coherence, other than that of trampled dust ; with- out common aim, other than such as animates a herd of terror-driven cattle. Only occasionally, under stress of some sharp immediate oppression, has a brief sense of fellowship sprung into transient flame, soon sinking into ashes. To-day that healthful fire is creeping stead- ily and stealthily on, spreading from land to land, from speech to speech. We shall do well to welcome it, for what it will burn is dross, not gold. Yet the very newness of the force shocks and terri- fies. Race and nation have long broken humanity into groups on perpendicular lines. Class introduces a broad horizontal division. The mighty emotions it generates move laterally, so to speak, interpenetrating the other groups. They may be competent to overcome in large degree, as we have claimed, the deep-seated antagonisms racial, political, religious that sepa- rate men and hinder brotherhood. But is not a grave danger involved in this very power? These older loyalties were subject to abuse, but after all they were in their essence sacred. Should we welcome loyalty to class if it threatens them ? Will not this loyalty dull the allegiance men rightly and jealously cherish, to family, to nation, and to Church ? This is no invented fear. It is quick, operative, and in certain measure justified. The conflict of loyal- ties is the persistent tragedy of civilization. Look at the ages of feudalism. The threefold passions that inspired and sustained chivalry at its height were 164 CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS loyalty to the Over-Lord, to the Lady, and to God, How brilliantly do all three shine in that mirror of the chivalric ideal, Malory's " Morte Etarthur " ! The splendor of unflinching fidelity to King Arthur illum- inates the figure of Gawain until his death. High service of Iseult nerves the arm of Tristram. ? v" O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent," Galahad fol- lows the receding, alluring vision of the Holy Grail. But where do we find the three united and at peace ? Tristram betrays Mark his king. Gawain, the light o' love, is equally heedless of religion. Galahad, the as- cetic, is allowed no earthly lady, and his obedience to the heavenly vision is occasion for the disruption of the earthly realm. In one heart only do the three loyalties meet, and it is the heart of Lancelot, where they fight as fierce contending flames. Spiritual passion conquers in the end, but only when the other two are routed, when Arthur lies in helpless trance in Avalon, and Guinevere is clothed with the religious habit. Sin and remorse have been the portion of the protagonist whose soul has been the battlefield. Here is the sym- bol of the hurtling strife, never settled, never ceasing, which occupied those Middle Ages that aimed and aimed in vain at a harmonious synthesis of political passion, religious devotion, and earthly love. Not only in the Middle Ages have those loyalties best accredited by time been hard to reconcile, even among themselves. Contemporary France and Italy may witness to the distress entailed by the immemo- rial clash between religion and the State. How can we 165 FIRST PRINCIPLES welcome a new appeal, which runs counter to all the others? Does not the class-loyalty to which socialism summons an already distracted race complicate the situation past endurance ? Socialists themselves well illustrate the danger. The inimical attitude toward family ties, marked enough among some socialist groups, springs indeed from other sources and is not relevant here to consider. But as to religion, it is true enough that socialism is replacing everything else for many of its adherents and filling the only need they experience for faith and an ideal. " The one, the only religion of the future, socialism," writes an enthusiastic comrade in a socialist daily that falls at this moment under the hand. We may in fairness as we have already done ascribe this situation to temporary causes. But we have still to reckon with the indifference of the move- ment to patriotism, an indifference which rose to antagonism in early socialist history. Marx in the " Manifesto " said that the working people have no fatherland. Bakunin could write : " From the point of view of humanity and justice, patriotism is an evil thing, for it is the direct negation of the equality and solidarity of mankind. The social question can be sat- isfactorily solved only by the abolition of frontiers." In view of the large degree to which similar talk may still be heard, we can hardly wonder if so searching a thinker as Mr. Herbert Croly, not to speak of many others, should find the chief threat of socialism to consist in its menace to the national principle. Strong 166 CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS language, like that quoted above, however, marked the infancy of the movement and is increasingly dis- carded. Patriotism has deep roots, and socialists are men. The issue has been hotly discussed in those so- cialist conventions where a rare and refreshing interest in great intellectual issues obtains. And "the view is gaining ground among socialists," says Sombart, 44 that all civilization has its roots in nationality, and that civilization can reach its highest development only on the basis of nationality. 1 ' It is this growing conviction which makes the socialists sympathetic champions of oppressed peoples like the Poles and Armenians. 44 The socialist purpose," says a promin- ent leader, 4t is to give to the proletariat an opportun- ity of sharing in the national life at its best. Socialism and the national idea are thus not opposed : they supplement each other. Nationality in its present form is a precious possession." It is comfortable to know that such utterances are increasing. So far as the practical situation goes, there are no better Americans than trade-union men, and the possible service in the next act of our national drama of the very internationalist feeling of social- ism has been already signaled. Meanwhile, we cannot wonder if the movement, entranced with its new vision of a universal brotherhood of workers, has for the time disparaged other ties. That is human nature. On account of the narrowness of our capacities, loyal- ties, as we have seen, conflict, and the large tragedies of history go on. We in our blindness would again 167 FIRST PRINCIPLES and again meet the situation by suppressing one of the rival forces. That is not Nature's way : wiser than we, who would destroy life in the saving it, she goes on adding system to system, claim to claim, till, through the very anguish of adjustment and coordin- ation, life deepens and unfolds. The complexity of the physical systems which control us does but cor- respond to the complexity of the body. The lungs breathe all the better because at the same time the heart is beating, the hair growing, and digestion going on. Progress consists in the addition of new functions. The delicate apparatus may easily get out of gear ; one system may interfere with another. This is not health, but disease, equally dangerous whether it affect the body physical or the body politic. But it cannot be cured by retrogression in the scale of being. Health, physical, mental, or social, consists in the harmonious interaction of a number of activities practically unde- fined and constantly on the increase. We find it hard to realize the full wealth of our own nature, but there is no more limit to the loyalties a man may profess than to the corporate activities he may share. As Chesterton remarks, he can be at once an Englishman, a collector of beetles, a Roman Catholic, and an en- thusiast for cricket. He may also without difficulty, when once adjustment is completed, be class-conscious, nation-conscious, and religion-conscious ; the more his affiliations, the richer his possibilities, for through these avenues only can he escape from the prison of self. And the advent on a large scale of a new loyalty 168 CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS and a new system of attraction signals, not the destruc- tion of the old, but the enriching of all social life and its advance to a higher level in the scale of being. Class-consciousness then can be dismissed on the score neither of its militant implications, nor of the menace it offers to older devotions. Both in its political aspect and in its more intimate reaches of private ex- perience, we find it to be at once a disciplinary and an awakening force ; it kindles and restrains. But now we must go further. We have been dwell- ing mainly on the qualities it evokes, and the oppor- tunities it offers. We have not yet asked ourselves squarely the final, the crucial question, What end does it propose? To answer, we must turn from its inner reactions to its outer relations, and take into account the other combatants in the class-war. By common consent, the term class-conscious is usually applied to the working people. But in accur- ate speech, it should not be so limited, for it describes quite as truly the stubborn struggle of the employing class to maintain supremacy. The persistence of this class in defending its prerogative is as natural a prod- uct of the industrial situation as the pressure of the proletariat. Why is not the emotion as right and admirable when experienced by employer as by em- ployed ? It is more admirable, many will hasten to reply. 169 FIRST PRINCIPLES We need not at this point answer the obviously parti- san cry. But if we are to convince the dispassionate man, our supposed interlocutor, that our own cry is less partisan, if we are to justify that strong undertow of sympathy toward the popular cause of which we spoke at the outset, we must lean on an instructive assump- tion. This is the conviction that the time when the defense of prerogative was valuable to society as a whole is nearing its end, and that the ideal of the pro- letariat, not that of the capitalist, is implicit in the truly democratic state. Do we or do we not want to put an end to class in the modern sense? This is the real, if paradoxical is- sue. The situation is curious and interesting. As we have already hinted, those who deplore most angrily the rise of class-consciousness in the proletariat foster it most eagerly in their own camp, and would with the greatest reluctance see class-distinctions disappear. On the other hand, the leaders who labor most ear- nestly to strengthen working-class solidarity do so be- cause they hate class with a deadly hatred, and see in such solidarity the only means of putting an end to it altogether. If we agree with them to the point of hold- ing that class, like war, is provisional, it would seem that these are the people to whom our sympathy is due. Professor Royce has well shown us that the aim of all minor loyalties is to bring us under tlhe wing of that mother of all virtues, loyalty to the Whole. One draws a long breath at this grandiose, appealing image of the unachieved end of all human striving. Which 170 CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS serves it better, socialism with its class-conscious con- notations, or capitalism with its repudiation of the new bond ? The question implies the answer. The cap- italist movement has avowedly no aim beyond self- protection and the maintenance of a new type of bene- volent feudalism. The working-class movement, on the other hand, is probably the only form of group- consciousness yet evolved in history, to look beyond its own corporate aim. It is inspired by a passion of good will for all men, and never loses sight of a univer- sal goal. Nay, it is concerned with the welfare of the very enemies whom it is fighting, for it is aware that rich as well as poor are to-day so fast in prison that they cannot get out. Have we not good reason then to honor it and to exalt it above even patriotism in our thoughts ? Frenchman or German fighting for his country can rarely indeed look beyond that country's triumph. Modern conflicts, to be sure, like the Boer War or the American struggle in the Philippines, have a trick of self-deception in the matter ; this is both amusing and irritating, yet may be taken to mark a curious advance from the honest brutal old days, when it occurred to no one to proffer as an excuse for his conduct his belief that he was really benefiting his enemy ! Fundament- ally and popularly, though, war is still frankly selfish. But the wider outlook which it does occasionally claim does actually exist, in the case of class-conscious- ness. The popular movement marches to the tune of Burns : 171 FIRST PRINCIPLES It 's coining yet for a' that That man to man the warld o'er Shall brithers be for a' that. " L'Internationale Sera le genre humain, " is the rallying cry of the people. What they seek is not the transfer of privilege, but the abolition of privilege ; and while they work first for the emanci- pation of their own class, they believe not only that this class comprises the majority of mankind, but that its freedom will enable all men alike to breathe a more liberal air. With the disappearance of privi- lege, all possibility of the class-war would of course vanish, for the very sense of class as based on distinc- tion in industrial assets and opportunities would be replaced by new groupings founded, one would sup- pose, on more subtle and intimate affinities of pursuit, capacity, and taste. In all history-creating movements, the urge of life has been the impelling force ; nor can we deny that it has on the whole worked for good to the whole as well as to the part. But it is the great distinction of socialism that, while frankly accepting and fostering such primal passion, it is at the same time more or less clearly aware of a more disinterested aim. Class will never become to our minds a permanent factor in social life, on a level with nation or country. In this fact we may find a legitimate reason for the distrust of class-consciousness that prevails. But, thinking more deeply, in the very transitional nature of class is the indorsement and justification for the only move- 172 CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS ment which is to-day setting its face toward the de- struction of class distinctions, and which has thus for its very object the annihilation of that sense of sepa- rateness which as a weapon it must temporarily use. VI The real basis of our faith in class-consciousness must be religious. Its awakening, dependent on a maturing of the economic order, was dependent also on a change in theological thought. The epoch of revolutions swept into the background the old empha- sis on original sin quite as surely as it discredited asceticism ; and that confidence in humanity which as a result overtook the surprised world is not only the soul of democracy, it is the ultimate justification of class-consciousness. It does more than carry with it a faith in the plain people : it relates this faith to the new reverence for that natural order to which it is their function to minister. When nature and the flesh were conceived as the seat of hostility to the spirit those whose energy is absorbed in physical toil and in supplying physical needs were inevitably relegated to an inferior position in the scheme of things, as happened from the time of Plato on. Rising to the modern conception, however, granting that the very physical basis of life has its sacra- mental sanctity, we should ascribe new dignity to those who maintain this basis for us, and should be ready as never before to hail them as masters of the future. Mazzini did well when he turned to the work- 173 FIRST PRINCIPLES ers as the hope of the new age and told them that their duties were more* important than their rights : he should have added, that in claiming their rights they are performing the most disinterested of duties, since they are thereby asserting the sacredness in the universe of functions which have too long worn the badge of servitude but which are in truth as suffused with spiritual meaning as the achievements of saint or sage. Rising to this altitude, we have made a great dis- covery ; as Moody's lovely lyric has it, we have found a sky " behind the sky." The materialistic interpreta- tion of history tries in vain to hold us within the zone of the lower heavens, for there are always new heavens waiting. Nor is it denied us to fly much higher than we have ventured yet into the upper air of pure spiritual passion. We have done full justice to the teaching that expounds the importance of the economic base, and vindicates the forces rooted in economic necessity and self-interest. We have shown, too, that freedom has its place in directing and coloring these forces. But another question is waiting, nor can we close with- out asking once more whether all productive forces are directly related to this base, or whether we may re- serve a place for the effective power of pure altruism. Whether we look out or in, the question for most of us is answered in the asking. Heroic devotion springing from ranges quite out of the economic sphere fills the human annals ; and this not least in the case of social progress. From the days of John Ball to 174 CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS those of John Howard, philanthropists who have waged brave successful battle against abuses, reformers who have lifted the general life to a higher level, have appeared from any and every social stratum, drawing their inspiration from depths greater than class can reach. All through history, the pressure of the unpriv- ileged toward freedom has been supplemented at criti- cal moments by the undercurrent of sympathy in the hearts of the privileged, and the one group has sup- plied leaders to the other. It would almost seem that the socialist movement is particularly rich in such leaders. Marx, if you come to that, was not a working- man ; nor Lassalle, nor Morris, nor Kropotkin, nor many another who in prison or exile has proved him- self true to the worker's cause. Among contemporary leaders it is safe to say that the large majority are from the middle class. Looking at the high proportion of " intellectuals " among effective socialists, one is even a little bewildered. Yet the situation is simple. It is evident, whatever radicals may say to the con- trary, that if the proletariat could produce its own leaders there would be no need of social revolution. The cry of the dispossessed is compelling. The working classes must show the way to social advance. They alone, free from sentimentality, the curse of the privileged, and from abstract theorizing, the curse of the scholastic, have that grim experience of the reac- tion of economic conditions on the majority from which right judgment can be born. But if their func- tion be to furnish momentum, and corporate wisdom, 175 FIRST PRINCIPLES the power of individual initiative and directorship will often in the nature of things be generated among those governing classes in whom these gifts have been fostered. If education and administrative experience are valuable enough to share, it is obvious that the dumb proletariat must to a certain extent look to the classes that possess them for the revelation of its own sealed wisdom and the guidance of its confused pow- ers. The enlightened energy of those who come from other groups to serve it should not be slighted. Their high impulses, their rich devotions, are also, to ulti- mate vision, within, not without, the evolutionary process, a process broader, deeper than current Marxianism admits. In them that wider loyalty, to- ward which class-consciousness itself is groping, has been born already, and to assert that they have no part in social advance and that the working class must produce unaided the new society, would be to deny democracy at the root. Ordinary socialist analysis over-simplifies, by con- struing all life in terms of class-psychology. This psychology has been foolishly neglected. But man is far too complex to be controlled by class-feeling alone. Class takes its place a place so far in the past too little recognized beside the other two great powers of religion and of race ; there is no reason for suppos- ing it is ever to supplant them. And around religion, race, and class is something larger to which in last analysis we must appeal, that general life in which we are all sharers. This in the long run is the con- 176 CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS straining reality ; this, as civilization slowly, painfully, inevitably grows democratic, becomes increasingly the source of the impulses that create the future. In giv- ing us the full Freedom of this City of the Common Life will consist the final and crowning work of demo- cracy. And already the " we " who labor for social righteousness are neither exclusively " we the privi- leged " nor " we the oppressed." The time was, when, like Matthew Arnold's "remnant," we were few, baffled, all but helpless. As the days pass and de- mocracy works its secret silent miracle, our numbers multiply, and we dare to lift our eyes and proclaim ourselves victorious heirs of the Kingdom of Good Will to be. This all Americans know in theory. Let us beware lest we disprove it in deed, by withholding our faith from that great class movement of the working people, which alone holds in practical and effective form the ideal of a world where divisions based on arbitrary economic accident shall be obliterated, and life be lifted to new levels of freedom. The instinctive sym- pathy with proletarian movements should cast aside timidity and incertitude, and realize how deep its roots strike into the true philosophic and religious conception of social advance. So only can the effective reality of our modern assumptions be vindicated, and the Greater Loyalty become master of the world. For the powers of progress which are working their slow sure way to victory spring from two sources : First, and more obviously, from the primal urge of life for 177 FIRST PRINCIPLES self-realization : then from that more profound source, equally though less obviously part of the natural order, the undying passion for self -obliteration and sacrifice. Only when the two forces act in harmony can progress be sane and sound. But the powers of sacrifice must learn the ancient lesson: if they are to be saved and saviors, their life must be lost that it may be found. Their ardor and purity are what lift us from the brutes toward the angels. Yet their too frequent helplessness in the past to affect the trend of things should teach them wisdom. If they would be operative to any extent in the social field, they must subordinate themselves to the more massive though not more normal forces to which the age gives birth. So may they have their share in translating what life offers into a higher likeness. So may we all attain a courage that is never fatuous, a wisdom that is never academic. For we shall gain the ability to read an Intention greater than our own, expressed not in the abstruse language of theological mystery, but in the warm if terrible terms of this ever-chang- ing universe, our home. " A Body hast Thou prepared for me," wrote the psalmist in old days, inspired and exalted by the vision of sacrifice. In the trend toward socialism, in the rise of the proletariat, in all the grim and repellent reality of the class-struggle, would seem to be the Body evidently prepared for us of the twentieth century. Into this Body, it is our high part to infuse what soul we will. The task is difficult as great. Those who have courage to risk a great Adven- 178 CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS ture of Faith, and those only, can rise to the oppor- tunity and in the spirit of solemn consecration give the old and ever new response : " Lo, I come, to do Thy Will, O Lord." VII We have probed the assumptions of socialism, and now we are ready to turn to its promises. Economic determinism and class-consciousness turn out to belong to the large and respected family of the Bogies : the interpretation of history which the first implies is just as much and just as little materialistic as the modern interpretation of nature, and the second, with all its repellent features, actually promises to lead us into that region beyond classes of which idealism has always dreamed. I wish that my room had a floor, I don't so much care for a door, But this crawling around Without touching the ground Is getting to be quite a bore. So runs the plaintive ditty of the sentimentalist. The earlier socialist school might well have sung it, but the doctrines of economic determinism and the class-strug- gle have put a firm floor beneath socialism at last. Now that 'our first scruples are quieted, however, others at once arise to take their place. Some unfortunate mortals, mournfully apprehensive that socialism is on the way, expect to hate it. If we hold this uncomfortable position, we had better fight the progress of the new 179 FIRST PRINCIPLES creed, if only with the bitter energy of those who de- fend lost causes. It is all very well to consider the cooperative commonwealth probable : unless we also consider it desirable, we shall soon find ourselves in as false an attitude as the sad believers in the divine right of kings, who lingered through the epoch of revolutions, and are still to be found in obscure cor- ners, burning incense to the memory of King Charles the Martyr. Let us betake us, then, to a discussion of the ethical reactions of socialism, so far as we can foresee them ; for however socialists may sneer at prophecy, none of them dispense with it ; and the forecasting imagination has a large part to play in piling up the socialist vote. PART HI THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER PART III. THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER CHAPTER I "FREE BECAUSE IMBOUND " LET no one delude himself that the acceptance of economic determinism justifies him in lying back lazily while he watches destiny fulfill itself and the class-struggle take its course. The advocates of the doctrine sometimes use a language which would logic- ally reduce our actions to the helpless circling of star- dust, and a Shelley may even get poetry out of this kind of thing. In the. "Prometheus Unbound" an exquisite little lyric of fatalism accompanies as a chant the progress through the world of the redeem- ing Spirit of Love : Those who saw Say, from the breathing earth behind There streams a plume-uplifting wind Which drives them on their path, while they Believe their own swift wings and feet The sweet desires within obey. A delicate phrasing of a bitter doctrine : and it is true that the wise, who see, behold the "plume-up- lifting wind " streaming from the earth, awakening the destined, and bearing them on toward waiting heights, despite their assurance that "sweet desires 183 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER within " impel them. The more one contemplates history, the larger does the role of necessity appear. None the less are wings as well as wind essential to purposeful flight. Every scrap of socialist propaganda, like all other human activity, witnesses to the instinct- ive disregard of fatalism by the mind. When Marx uttered his thrilling call, " Proletarians of all lands, unite ! " it was a call to free men. True, when we assume our power to affect social progress, we may be under a great delusion. So we may in behaving as if we moved at will in space, while really an incredible weight of atmosphere is pressing from every point upon us. Yet it would be foolish to worry about that weight when we are catch- ing a trolley : fatalistic ideas, whether they attack us from the side of theology, science or sociology, are best cheerfully disregarded the moment we enter the race of life. In every historic crisis, external or intellectual, we may discern at once the control of unescapable fate and the directing power of the free spirit. It is true, as our quotation from a New York paper stated, that slavery in the United States could not, in the nature of things industrial and political, have endured many generations more : it is true that evolutionary theory was bound to come, whether Darwin had been born or not. Does his name or the name of Lincoln therefore lose in glory? Let us say rather that to the great movements of which they were the instru- ments, these men were exactly what the force of 184 FREE BECAUSE IMBOUND the will is to that bewildering resultant of interac- tions which constitutes a person. Elements of which we are but dimly aware, focused in the will at a given moment, unite to energize it into conscious purpose. So at historic junctures the needs of the race find their focus in agents quite unaware of the deep necessity that works through them. Thus our reverence for the heroes of the race is not weakened but enhanced by true reading of the inevitable trend of things. What is that trend, after all, but the "tendency not ourselves, by which all things seek to fulfill the law of their being"? Be it remembered that this famous definition was meant to define, not the economic necessity of the socialists, but the Eter- nal worshiped by the Hebrews. To the grown child as to the small, Law may well be another name for Parental Will, and such law, which in one sense de- termines all our efforts, yet finds its best triumph in our free activity. Determinism, then, simply puts civilization under that reign of law which it is always open to us to con- strue as the reign of love. It assures us that the threads of moral purpose are knit into the woof of the uni- verse instead of trailing vacuously through space. The postulates of socialism are as susceptible of religious interpretation as the postulates of nature, and just as we have deeper faith in the spirituality of the world than the old belief in special creations could in- spire in our fathers, so our children may find the privilege of cooperating with the Will revealed in the 185 THE FUTUKE OF CHARACTER changing order, to be higher than the attempt to im- pose on that order methods or plans of their own in- vention. As soon as we escape our old arrogance, the role of freedom can hardly be too strongly stressed. Paradoxical though it seems, we can become intelli- gent co-workers with destiny only when we abandon belief that we are responsible for creating it. And because men are learning this, social evolution begins to-day to include, as it has never done before, the fac- tor of foresight and conscious purpose, a gain com- pared with which the conquests of science appear in- significant. Consciousness, which in last analysis must always find itself in terms of free purpose, is the final blossoming of both physical and economic life. Cut the flowers of will and purpose, whether to put them in glass with the idealist, or to throw them on the ash-heap with the extreme Marxian, and growth will perish. But let the Mazzinis, the Tolstoys of the fu- ture simply look to it that their fragrant dreams be rooted in the soil of reality, and the day of rich har- vestings will be sped. " Cercando liberta " was Dante's motto ; and it is still our own. We shall compass that liberty which is forever the end of the ceaseless human quest, only in such measure as we penetrate the meaning of Wordsworth's noble phrase, and come to know ourselves " free be- cause unbound." Moral and natural forces are thus in perpetual in- terplay ; and as we enter our discussion of the reac- tion of socialism on character, the first thing to say 186 FREE BECAUSE IMBOUND is that character is sure to react on socialism in turn. The success and stability of any civilization depend on the degree to which it expresses the realities of the psychical life. The socialist state may be coming through forces beyond our control ; but it will take the best manhood we have to run it successfully when it gets here. For should socialistn arrive otherwise than as the result of an inward transformation, affecting the deep springs of will and love, it would prove the worst disaster of any experiment in collective living that the world has seen. Matthew Arnold, wisest of Victorian critics, pointed out years ago the perils with which the advance of democracy is fraught, unless it be achieved through a common enlightenment and a pervading social passion. Socialism is democracy pushed to an extreme. It would involve immensely elaborated machinery. Unless the spirit of the living creature be in the wheels, one foresees them grinding destruc- tion. Should the cooperative commonwealth be other than the expression of a general will very different from that of to-day, it would be an unbearable tyranny. The only comfort is that it could not endure. It might quite conceivably be ushered in suddenly, forced by revolution or by the proletariat vote on an unpre- pared world which had undergone no inner change ; it could never be so maintained. For no social order can be even relatively stable if mechanically intro- duced. It must be a growth ; and growth has to root deeply under-ground before it shows much in the 187 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER light of day. No one could enforce laws against stealing in a community in which two thirds of the citizens had kleptomania. Picturing a social democracy intro- duced by violence, with its ranks of reluctant citizens undergoing the industrial conscription, and of auto- cratic officials running a state enemy to all free self- expression, one perceives the very " coming slavery " of standard dread. The critics who echo Spencer down the decades are right enough from their point of view : far more right, in any case, than the old- fashioned doubters who saw in socialism a future riot of license. II The truth is that we are forced to agree with our tedious friends who insist that we must " alter human nature " if socialism is to be a success. But is the prospect so staggering? Call history to the witness-stand ! Human nature alters perpetually, before our very eyes. The stuff is malleable, nay, fluid, and its changes are the soul of progress. A moral transformation has accompanied every new social order since the story of the race began. Each vanishing civ- ilization has been at once cause and product of distinct ethical types. Nomadic life yields to agricultural; states rise and fall ; a great imperialism gathers the nations into its folds, disintegrates, disappears; a feudal system rises, thrives, decays. Last in the series, up to date, capitalistic industrialism follows, and con- trols the world. The imagination, brooding on these 188 FREE BECAUSE IMBOUND various social orders, recognizes them less by their outward traits than by the personal types which they produced. The consciousness of those delightful young Athenians, disciples of Socrates, friends of Plato, is what first rises to thought when Greece is mentioned. That consciousness created Greece as much as Greece created it. It differed from the mind of the Puritan as that differs from the mind of the man on the street to-day, and both from the mind of the Napoleonic general. When once the mental eye awakes to this vision of ceaseless flux, the moral products of the old order suddenly appear incidental. Our discussion has not yet brought us to accept the moral connotations of socialism. But we must already agree with the social- ists that the moral order, for instance, of those Ages of Faith to which the religious mind turns for its most convincing argument, was the ethical correlate of a civilization irretrievably passed. The ideals of the Middle Ages have vanished with the feudal sys- tem ; they were the invisible counterpart of castles and cathedrals, of Arthurian romance, primitive paint- ings, and similar delights. To the moderns who nod easy assent, yet hesitate to bid farewell to the present hour, we must whisper " De te Fabula." We can be sure of only one thing concerning our industrial and competitive civilization, and that is, that its hour will strike. As the Age of Violence was succeeded by the Age of Greed, so the Age of Greed will be succeeded by some other age, in which neither physical force nor 189 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER commercial cleverness will be the keynote of the per- sonal ideal. As of the bad, so of the good : the condi- tions which have produced a Jane Addams or a Lord Shaftesbury are as surely passing as those have passed which produced a Francis or a Benedict. Emphases change as the ages go ; ideals shape themselves like clouds, and like clouds depart. Now these virtues, now those, are fostered: now these sins, now those, run rank. The pioneer in that almost untried science, evo- lutionary psychology, has a fascinating field before him. So dramatic is this moral shifting, that the virtues of one age sometimes become the vices of another. In the days of chivalry, the most popular virtue was to run at your neighbor, spear in hand, when you met him on the road, and cheerfully to knock him off his horse, in accordance with a courteous code of etiquette. We do not approve of this practice to-day, and chiv- alry is gone. A new ethics has replaced it. The most popular virtue now is to accumulate money enough to educate one's family decorously, with a surplus on which to be generous, though by so doing one push one's neighbor's family to the wall. Further contem- plating modern ideals, we note that this central virtue of Acquisitiveness is surrounded by attendant nymphs : Thrift, Energy, and Foresight. Certain old-fashioned traits once considered to be virtues are now commonly counted to men for vices. Non-resistance, for example, now considered cowardice in men or states ; meekness, to-day usually spelled weakness ; taking no thought 190 FREE BECAUSE IMBOUND for the morrow, now known as improvidence ; unworldli- ness, now generally viewed as a phase of sentimental- ity. A perfunctory verbal admiration is accorded these qualities in some quarters, but no one looking straight at life can fail to see that the person who allowed them to rule his conduct consistently and exclusively, would not only be likely to ruin the lives of those dear to him, but would in the long run become a public charge. In all seriousness, the virtues fostered and applauded by our present commercial civilization are the self- regarding ones. Many subtle causes have conspired during the last hundred and twenty-five years to pro- duce an ideal in which militant violence is at a discount and force is replaced by greed, but in which the indi- vidual is the centre more exclusively than in any pre- ceding phase of history, and the defense of personal rights in an indifferent or hostile world is the first O canon of duty. Till this canon is satisfied, all else must be deferred. A glance at a literary authority, the novels of Thackeray, shows the difference of at- mosphere between a non-commercial society like that pictured in his eighteenth-century story, " Henry Es- mond," and the thoroughly commercialized Victorian world of " The Newcomes." Between the two epochs, the Industrial Revolution had intervened. It had handicapped at the outset all but the very few born to privilege of wealth or capacity, and at the same time it had thrown on every individual the onus of creating his own place in the economic scheme. What more ingenious system could be devised, to blast unworldli- 191 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER ness ? By the employer who scrutinizes the output of the laborer to the last atom, as by the workman who tosses aside his tools at the stroke of the clock, the scales of justice are so fiercely watched and narrowly balanced that all the more selfless qualities which should play their part in creating values draw back affrighted. This state of things grows more acute year by year. The moral code which emerges, approved and enticing, is one in which integrity is at least nom- inally honored, and justice, far from being nominally ignored, is loudly invoked ; but is also one in which alertness and prudence, energy and practical judgment, point the way to victory, while mercy, humility, and indifference to personal gain spell social failure and breed contempt. Is this instinct of defiant self-protection destined always to remain the master-passion in the social struct- ure? Surely not in its present form. What the empha- sis in the new age will be we cannot know with cer- tainty. It is always the unexpected that happens, and the forces that control history work out into surprising results, spiritual and external. We use the term social- ism as a sort of algebraic expression, ignorant what truth may lie behind the symbol. Algebraic formulae, however, do truly express laws of relation ; and the f ormula3 of socialism legitimately enable us to forecast certain results in the future order, to be expected on the ethical side of the equation between economics and morals. 192 FREE BECAUSE IMBOUND III The first important matter to dwell upon is the probable modification of freedom, in that socialist civil- ization in which many timid souls foresee a mechanical bureaucracy. A suggestive historic summary by Fer- dinand Lassalle may help us at the outset : The ancient world, and also the mediaeval period down to the French Revolution of 1789, sought human solidarity and community in bondage, or subjection. The Revolution, and the historical period controlled by it, rightly incensed at this subjection, sought freedom in the dissolution of all solidarity and community. Thereby, how- ever, it gained not freedom, but license, because freedom without community is license. The new, the present period, seeks solidarity in freedom. Which is to grant with Carlyle, that " liberty requires new definitions." The strict preservation of individual freedom has been the chief watchword of that compet- itive and capitalistic order from which we are just emerging. So far as we can see, the incoherent forces now at work the slow sure growth of proletarian class-consciousness, the consolidation of industry, the spread of social compunction converge toward a centralization of power and an equalization of wealth likely to impose sharp checks on such freedom. Per- haps it is true that capitalism gained " not freedom but license " : but to seek freedom in community, or solidarity in freedom, is a process which will call for many readjustments. The functions and privileges of 193 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER the common life will assume an importance which we can hardly imagine ; many enterprises now run for private profit will be run for public good ; many incen- tives to work, now operative, will be limited or with- drawn. The individual, in a word, will find his outward life prepared for him in advance, to a degree greater than happens to any one to-day except proletarians or hereditary legislators. The reactions of such a state of things on the interior life must inevitably be radical and profound ; and we could hardly describe them bet- ter than by a fresh application of our chapter-heading. For the first patent factor in the situation is that socialism is going to bring with it a penetrating disci- pline, perhaps the most universal in pressure of any that history has evolved. " Doing as one likes," that distinctively British ideal flouted of Arnold, will be at a discount. In important and new respects, we shall all have to do what the State likes. We shall have to acquiesce in laws of life and labor that may inhibit impulse and check achievement at a thousand unsuspected points. We shall want to go a-fishing; the stern necessities of the industrial conscription will stand in the way. Our tastes may lie in farming, and an over-supply of farmers reported from Government may send us behind the counter. We may feel within us the capacity to accumulate millions and bounteously to scatter them abroad ; matters will be so managed that neither our generosity nor our acquisitiveness can have free scope. All this, of course, on the assumption that we now belong to those privileged classes, the 194 FREE BECAUSE IMBOUND members of which have such really choice tastes to indulge, and who do so very much like to suit them- selves. The chaotic independence that we now enjoy will vanish like a mist, replaced by an orderly social organization in which individuality, trammeled in va- rious ways where it is now free, will have to express itself, if at all, through new channels. And in all probability we shall not enjoy this con- dition of things at all. Distaste for discipline is innate in the human breast. We all wail in unison with the little boy in " Peter Pan," who cries, " I don't want to take my bath ! " as good Nana trots him sternly to the tub. Certainly, the present world affords an espe- cially bad introduction to that future state. For never was there a period which so shrank from disciplines and restrictions of every kind, and so far succeeded in throwing them off, as the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. See where we stand to-day! The churches have candidly abandoned all disciplinary functions: a religion of good-humor has taken the place of the old religion of fear : nay, the horror of discipline has led to the foundation of a new popular faith, which regards pain, not as a taskmaster, but as an illusion. Ethical restraints, especially in the matter of marriage, are weakening with the religious. The substitution of indulgence for discipline in the education of children, and the triumphant march of the free elective system, point the same way ; while until very lately restraints on "individual enterprise" in the industrial sphere were viewed with keen suspicion. 195 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER This relaxation of discipline, in the name of free- dom and of natural good, which has been going on ever since the Revolutionary upheaval, has resulted in a curious state of things. Many a critic, from Car- lyle down, has not hesitated to describe modern life as an organized anarchy. To-day, the outcry against so- cial restraint in any form still rises vigorously, from dramatists and philosophers as well as from the man in the street, and Spencer's lugubrious prophecy of the bureaucratic tyranny threatened by socialism still finds many an echo. At the same time, he who lis- tens can hear an increasing volume of voices in a dif- ferent song. For Carlyle, with his bewildered cry, " Wanted, an autocrat," was only the first prophet of a strong reaction. A line of thinkers down the dec- ades has protested against the riot of individualism, and demanded a principle of effective authority for the salvation of the modern world. Comparatively late, Mr. Irving Babbitt 1 ably points out the intellectual laxity that has resulted from the sway of humanitari- anism in its two phases, inaugurated, so he says, by Bacon and Rousseau, the extension of knowledge and the extension of sympathy. He shows with convinc- ing logic how humanitarianism slips either into senti- mentality or into scientific accumulation, in neither of which is found that power to train in selection and t judgment which is the basis of sound education.. Mr. Babbitt would propose to restore this decaying power by a revival of humanistic and classical training in 1 In Literature and the American College. 196 FREE BECAUSE IMBOUND schools and colleges. One indorses and applauds, per- ceiving at the same time that there is small chance of effectively restoring the intellectual disciplines in a so- ciety where the moral disciplines are undermined. The educational world does but reflect in its tendencies the larger world without. Contemplating the relaxation of all effectual restraints that has gone on for over a hun- dred years, one is assured that a change more pro- found than a revival of classical studies will be needed, if the world is to become in the good old sense a school for character. Nor can this needed discipline ever be regained by mere revivals of any kind. History does not repeat itself. Carlyle's hero-autocrat will never bless our eyes again. He has gone with the feudal system, and it may be feared that the classical curriculum has disap- peared with him, to be " happy in the past." What, then, if we looked forward ? What if the prophesied tyranny of th,e socialist state, being ful- filled, should prove itself to be not curse but bless- ing? It is possible, at least. The humanitarian move- ment, which is surely one of the main currents sweeping us toward socialism, may in time become humane. Through all vapors of sentimentality and materialism,, it may flow on and out into a clearer air. Out of its own necessities it may generate that power to restrain, select, subdue, in which modern civilization most clearly fails. The discipline supplied by socialism may con- ceivably prove to be that very discipline competent to shape human life to nobler likeness, for which our 197 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER wisest clamor ; and when the " coming slavery " is here, we may find in it that service which is perfect freedom. But only on one condition : that this authority, with the discipline it entails, be the result of the gen- eral and enlightened will of the community. That old terror felt by religion lest the voluntary element be sacrificed in the proposed socialist order, must be in- dorsed with all our hearts. Virtue established by rote would be no virtue at all. Autocracy is one thing, however ; voluntary self-control is another. Better our present chaos than a state without poverty or disease, established against the free will of its members ! A "benevolent despotism" imposed from outside, no matter how excellent its results, is repudiated by the spirit of democracy ; but discipline self-imposed is the first requisite of noble manhood. Limit personal inde- pendence through external tyranny of mob or czar, you produce the slave ; limit it by the choice of the common will, you gain the w only citizen who is truly free. The advance of civilization is measured by its self-imposed restrictions. Already to-day, such restric- tions for the sake of the social welfare are thickening on every hand. We may no longer spit in the street- cars, nor take more than a given number of lodgers to the cubic feet of air that we control. In countless matters the enlightened conscience is limiting its prero- gatives, in that spirit of joy which transforms sacrifice from mutilation to redemption. The one chance for the well-being of the great coming experiment to which, apparently, we are all 198 FREE BECAUSE IMBOUND but committed, is that it shall express a general aspi- ration and a common choice. We may as well be frank. Socialism is going to mean a new degree of author- ity, not over this class or that class, but over every last man. And the one thing that can make this authority not only enduring, but salutary and life-giving, will be that it is bestowed by the communal will, to the en^ of the common welfare. In how many ways has human- ity sought to achieve this welfare ! It has tried despot- isms ; they ended in disaster : it has tried anarchies ; they have left us in our chains. What if the times were ripe to try a new way, the way of illumined and reasonable sacrifice of individual rights to a wider good ? Neither the Russian autocracy nor the riot of individualistic laissez-faire has conquered conditions under which the majority has been able to attain the full stature of manhood. But now democracy, inevit- able product of economic change, is coming to its own at last. Does it not whisper the new possibility, a social order in which equality of opportunity shall not only be educed by natural necessity, but be main- tained by the deliberate choice of people brought up under a discipline in moderation and selflessness com- petent to prohibit personal powers from impeding the full welfare of one's fellows ? The voluntary surren- ders involved would be incumbent on all alike, on the manual worker as much as on the artist or the ruler of men. Surely socialism so conceived might be our moral salvation. It might afford the God-appointed means 199 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER to check the self-indulgence that enervates the mod- ern world and the egotism that blasts us like disease. Neither reform in education nor moralizing at large is likely to afford the needed corrective. But a reor- ganization of the whole basis of society can do it. To say that it is impossible for the race at large to gain sufficient self-control to adopt an order planned for attaining the most general diffusion of well-being and opportunity at the expense of " those spendthrift liber- ties that waste liberty " is to despair of human nature. Let the Potter's Wheel, as the ages pass, twirl faster ; let it mould the clay into forms increasingly complex, by pressure increasingly heavy, involved, and severe. If the vessel emerge in greater and more serviceable beauty, the gain is clear ; and the clay will sing to the pressure of the wheel. IV We cannot expect, of course, that the will which creates the socialist order should be universal. It may suffice if it be as common as the will that to-day keeps honesty and decency as the general and outward rule in social life. One sees immediately that there will always be some types of people miserable in the so- cialist state. Chief among them are a number of those who are to-day agitating most loudly for socialism. Your born malcontent will be extremely ill at ease in the social order for which he clamors, and it is amus- ing to contemplate him there! One foresees him kicking angrily against the pricks, and organizing 200 FREE BECAUSE IMBOUND reactionary movements in the sacred name of personal independence. The windy demagogue, the man of words, the restless rebel, it is by a curious history that he is in the socialist ranks at all. For socialism, as we all begin to see, really means an unparalleled degree of law and order. Those who promote it are, though against their wills, the friends of law; and Mr. Chesterton's " Man who was Thursday" is en- tirely correct in suggesting that the Central Council of Rebels is in reality composed of members of the secret police. Self-assertion and self-effacement, individualism and chivalry have been, as we know, the two impel- ling forces in the modern revolt against civilization. Despite the Marxian with his scorn for the second, and the Churchman with his distrust of the first, both are potent, positive, and essential. From Leopardi to Heine, to Tolstoy, to Ibsen, to Nietzsche ; from Maz- zini to Ruskin, to Morris, to Jaures, the two forces pull side by side, yoke-fellows looking askance each on each, but ploughing the furrow together. Philan- thropists and revolutionists, idealists and material- ists, socialists and anarchists, confusedly work together toward an unseen end. To trace the action and re- action of the two forces is a study in distinctions awaiting the social psychologist aforesaid. They are still united for attack. When this work is done, and the " forts of folly fall," the testing of the ranks will be swift and sure. Then it will be seen who is the true socialist, for we shall learn which man is really at home 201 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER in the world he has evoked. Who can doubt that it will be he who has trained himself spiritually for the new order who by watchful self-control has developed the new social intuitions, the swift perception of that deli- cate point where the pressure of his own claims and pow- ers might inflict injury rather than help on others? This is the man who will make the inner strength of the new state ; and it is he who will rejoice in it, not the impatient man intent on self -development who is the chosen hero of certain schools in letters and philosophy. We shall know then that the real socialist is he who has been actuated all along, not by egotism or the instinct of revolt, but by the resolute longing for a state in which each individual shall be competent to attain the high- est point of development consistent with the general welfare. The barren self-assertion, the helpless and violent temper of rebellion, the outcry against all that checks private self-gratification, which for over a hun- dred years have been mistaking themselves for a passion for freedom, will find their logical executioner where they think to find their patron. Byronism and Nietz- scheism will languish miserably or else, and quite conceivably, will form in the new socialism a danger- ous element that will be allowed just enough freedom to act as safety-valve. But there are others besides the malcontents who are likely to feel painfully the gentle discipline of the socialist state. At a word, the pressure will probably be most severe on originality and self-indulgence : on the brilliant and the weak. Consider for a moment 202 FREE BECAUSE IMBOUND the probable fate of genius under socialism. Genius ! that erratic gift so notoriously reluctant to submit itself to any disciplines whatever, so confident that the needs of its own soul sometimes, alas, con- founded with its senses are the one light by which it must walk I Well, one does foresee a hard time for the artists, in particular for the minor men, artists by temperament rather than by power. Many a man convinced that he is born to be a poet may die with all his music in him, having served the community in bitterness of soul as cook and bottle-washer to the end. As one contemplates this elimination of minor poets, one congratulates the community while commiserating the singers. But what about the really great men ? There will be pensions, of course, and exemptions. The new order will be very eager to discover genius : as soon as a man has justified himself in its eyes it will free him from other pursuits, bidding him paint and write for the rejoicing world. But will the world make its selection wisely ? Ah, there 's the rub. It never did yet. One pictures Martin Tupper content- edly pouring forth platitudes on a pension, while John Milton writes the "Paradise Lost" of the future in odd moments, when his quota of work is done. Perhaps the epic will be none the worse for it. Eating one's bread with tears, and learning in suffering to teach in song, may help in the future as in the past to deepen the music. Injustice and neglect have been foster-parents of the muse. But of course one does believe that a mighty saving of creative power will be 203 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER effected by the new order. A Thomas Chatterton will not commit suicide when that good day has dawned. For we have to remember the immense amount of social waste involved in the present system. Imagining a time in which the majority of children will not be assigned before birth to an industrial slavery in which all artistic instincts are stifled, we see the unpredict- able gain that may result. When we contemplate the life of the average man to-day, we are to think, not of the university student or the successful merchant, but of the factory hand, or the clerk. Our despotisms and our anarchies have alike failed miserably to give this man a chance. After a century and a quarter of the industrial individualism plus political equality in- augurated with such glowing hopes, we face, broadly speaking, a world in bondage. And if social reorgan- ization on broad lines is called for more and more loudly, even at the evident cost of some surrender of private independence, it is from the growing convic- tion that such surrender is the price to be paid for a rich and full life for the majority. V Our new hope of social welfare was not possible be- fore the advent of democracy ; nor was it possible until democracy had had time to work for several generations as a leaven within the souls of men. For the self-con- trol and sacrifice for which it calls, on the part of the strong, can find motive only in that loyalty to the whole which democracy brings, and which we feel 204 FREE BECAUSE IMBOUND to-day tingling in every nerve of the social body. Freedom ! It is indeed a holy name, in which more crimes are committed than those known to Madame Roland. Only to-day are we beginning to realize that it is a term of social rather than of individual import, never to be realized by the one while the many are still bound. True liberty is positive, not negative, dealing less with the removal of restriction than with the imparting of power. It consists, not in the license of each person to indulge desire, but in the power bestowed by the community upon its every member to rise to the level of his richest capacity by living in harmony with the whole. Of this freedom, Dante knew more than the schools of the Revolution ; for he placed it at the end, not the beginning of humanity's journey, and showed it to be a gift awaiting the climber at the summit of the mount of discipline rather than a companion of the pilgrim way. Social welfare is a wider term than personal liberty, but it develops to include that liberty. The joyous surrender of personal rights which the socialist state, in accordance with the common will, must demand from its citizens will be in itself the evidence of a high degree of private freedom. For the crowning glory and the only thorough proof of freedom has always been a willing submission ; and the capacity for living in harmony with the whole may again and again prove a kenosis or self -empty ing. " I will run the way of Thy commandments when Thou hast set my heart at liberty," said the psalmist. The fruit of inner liberty 205 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER is ever obedience to law. Only he possesses who re- frains, and the way of renunciation is always the way of freedom. When this lesson shall have been learned we shall have compassed that " solidarity in freedom" which Lassalle foretold, and know ourselves in the new and deepest sense " free because imbound." And the change in emphasis from self-assertion to self-restraint will imply a scale of honor among the virtues widely dif- ferent from what obtains to-day. CHAPTER II THE ETHICS OF INEQUALITY IN seeing that the " Coming Slavery " of the socialist state may become the " service that is perfect freedom," we have dissipated one of the strongest elements in the religious distrust of socialism. But our pilgrim, pausing between two ideals, can hardly be ready to accept the new faith yet. For he cannot forget the lovely light in which the Apologia of Eeligion placed the moral achievements of the old order, too fine to abandon without regret even on lower levels, and offering a counsel of perfection full of rare spiritual beauty. The unexplored country ahead is more allur- ing than we had anticipated ; yet from the dear land in which we are abiding, how well we have discerned the stars ! We will not move on while our hearts would still be drawn to wistful retrospect ; rather let us look around us once more, and scrutinize the moral assets of our present-day civilization more closely, on the lower levels first and then on the higher. The primary fact about our civilization is that it is founded, like all others from time immemorial, on social and industrial inequality. This broad point of agreement between capitalism and former society, notably in the Middle Ages, is our reason for not re- 207 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER jecting at once that Apologia of Religion which points us to the spiritual victories of the past as a reason for refusing to change the basis of the social structure in the future. It is of course the socialist aim to diminish such inequalities, and what we have to do is to inquire whether such a change would help or hinder spiritual life : we must compare the ethics actually attendant on social inequality with those which equality is likely to engender. Just because our present ethics are rooted in eco- nomic inequality, the first phase of our inquiry is com- plex ; for social grades have their moral counterparts. There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon, and there is one virtue of the superior and an- other of the dependent. We must examine both types, on the ordinary levels, the ethics of privilege, and the ethics of want. When we come to the heights, however, our task will be simplified ; for in that purer air, virtue creates, as it were, its own aristocracy, and escapes any evident relation to the " determining eco- nomic base." II First, then, the ethics of privilege, the best quali- ties of those who Have : and we see at once that at their choicest they are the direct result of those social inequalities we deplore. It may be true, as the last chapter claimed, that only the coarser virtues flourish under our competitive regime, and that the finer such as humility, non-resistance, and charity are 208 THE ETHICS OF INEQUALITY tolerated only as exceptions. None the less, religion is likely to rest its case on the latter rather than on the former, and logically, for they spring apparently from the very environment that condemns them. Blake puts the case with his usual cogency : Mercy would be no more If there were nobody poor, And pity no more would be If all were as happy as we : And mutual fear brings peace : Misery's increase Are mercy, pity, peace. These virtues, born of social superiority, carry with them a whole code of chivalry, sanctified by the ten- derest and most lofty instincts of the past, and it cer- tainly looks as if social equality would cripple or de- stroy them. But if we clear our minds of cant, we note a curious thing. The more the virtues of chivalry, as we may call them, develop, the worse they fare. Never were " mercy, pity, peace" more in evidence than now, and in de- fiance of Nietzsche, most of us are glad of it. " The cruelest man living could not sit at his feast unless he sat blindfolded," cried Ruskin, and helped the nine- teenth century to its great work, of tearing off the band- age which we can never put on again. But just in proportion as our pity becomes enlightened, the situ- ation becomes grim. Generous impulse, because it seeks efficiency, calls calculation and investigation to its aid. And they suffocate it. 209 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER Personal joy in giving is fast disappearing. Once it was fun to surprise with a shilling the beggar who asked for a penny, but we can never know that joy again without a sense of guilt. We are even advised to refrain from giving the penny, lest pauperism be increased. Examples less obvious crowd the mind. How natural to feed hungry school-children ; but wait ! Shall we run the risk of making a shiftless father still more irresponsible ? Worse yet, if the need be effectively met, of lowering wages ? So problem replaces impulse : the administration of relief becomes an intellectual exercise rather than a moral adventure, and amateurs in despair find it so hard to help their fellow men without hurting them that if they are wise they dele- gate the task of dispensing their benefits to a brisk army of salaried officials, habitually underpaid, "ex- perts" in their several lines, who, according to temper- ament and function, develop in curious mixture the qualities of the saint and the detective. " Charitable Work ! " What does the phrase sug- gest? Free and tender devotion, such as so joyously ministered to the poor in the Middle Ages? Yes, thank God, sometimes ; but surely it also suggests long weary hours spent in committee meetings, and the ungrateful, endless task of " investigation." Love and pity are stronger than in past ages, but their be- wildered feet are habitually entangled in mazes of red tape. Like Wordsworth's cloud we must " move alto- gether if we move at all," and our benevolences must be " associated " like the rest of our energies. 210 THE ETHICS OF INEQUALITY Organized Charity, scrimped and iced, lu the Name of a cautious, statistical Christ, is the order of the day. We shall waste our time if we grumble. The old casual, uncritical generosity was not only demoral- izing but inadequate. Its day is past, with that of machicolated battlements and Byzantine mosaics. Sporadic revivals are to be found, even we in our weakness may be subject to them, yet if we are self- indulgent we despise ourselves for emotional dilet- tantes. Even the Salvation Army sends out more tentacles of a " scientific " nature than it cares to ac- knowledge. We must all accept and approve the new methods brought about by our clamor for efficiency ; yet with the personal note vanishes the spiritual value, - and shyly, apologetically and sadly must we present the activities of our charity agents or the faithful labors of the philanthropic people who tread the endless round of committee meetings, as moral as- sets fair enough to justify the atrocities of modern life. Indeed, if we are candid, most of us confess that we could see the philanthropic attitude vanish out of the world without regret. As correlative to feudalism, it had its beauties : as correlative to democracy, it is out of place. Moreover, the police duty to which it is now called is terribly bad for its morals. It is an odd psychological fact that to give life usually makes a man better, while to give money makes him worse. Modern scientific charity is not always good for the 211 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER poor: cringing greed, dishonesty, shiftlessness, are painful realities, though they may loom less porten- tous in the eyes of the Recording Angel than in those of the charity agent or of the millionaire. But these products fade into insignificance as com- pared with the influence of charity upon the well-to-do. " Judge not " runs the word of Wisdom ; but a philan- thropy that does not judge has been tried and found wanting, and the professional philanthropist forced often against his will into the judgment seat is a de- pressing sight. So far as he is noble of heart, there is no sadder man : so far as he is ignoble, none so hard. Alas, how constantly we see generosity engendering suspicious pessimism, disillusion, and self-complacency ! At best, the qualities of high finance are strange con- comitants of mercy; at worst, the motives of our donors are in danger of becoming painfully mixed. There is something which revolts the inmost fibre in the spectacle of those vast benevolences of modern life which are too often ostentatious returns from se- cret cruelties. As for the numerous ladies who sit so vigorously on diverse Boards indefatigably collecting and disbursing funds, despite their praiseworthy ac- tivities they are often either as worried or as unlovely types as civilization produces. The attitude of organi- zations becomes a by-word of reproach in freer forms of social effort, while the unhappy conscientiousness of those gentler rich who cling to old-fashioned ways, and are of course exploited on all sides, is pitiable to behold. 212 THE ETHICS OF INEQUALITY It is a queer and false situation. Sweet Charity is with us still, larger, more enterprising than ever. But the joy has died out of her eyes. She no longer dances rose - red beside the Chariot of the Church, attendant on Heavenly Wisdom, but treads gingerly, like a modern lady in a hobble skirt, nervous, self- distrustful, conscientious, and a little discouraged. When she relaxes and amuses herself for a moment, she regains a trifle of her old charm ; but as soon as she settles to serious business, and leaves the do- mestic hearth for a public career, there is no more womanly softness about her than about a militant suf- fragette. What we say of Charity, we must also say in a measure of all relations on the side of superiors which accompany industrial inequalities. These rela- tions are still full of delicate beauty when exercised by good people. But two insidious enemies are under- mining them : industrial centralization, and demo- cracy. The " Grande Industrie " places the employer at an indefinite number of removes from his work- men, and the personal touch between them must dis- appear. Such fellowship as we see in Dekker's jolly old comedy, " The Shoemaker's Holiday," between the kindly head of the shop and his loyal apprentices, seems as romantic to us to - day as the relation of squire to knight or knight to lady. Its place is taken at best by " welfare work," impersonally planned, ex- cellent in its way, but hardly competent to purify the , soul. For it is decreed that the best moral opportuni- 1 213 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER ties live face to face and man to man, not corporation to union ; still less, organized capital to helpless and unorganized labor. All the time, the ferment of democracy is secretly at work vitiating confidence and comfort. The situation tends to the most harmful type of moral confusion. For the employer knows that the utmost reach of his consid- eration will never satisfy those more and more doggedly class-conscious groups which will not pause content short of social equality itself. If he indorses the unions, he encourages the force that is trying, consciously or not, to drive him out of existence. If he opposes them and endeavors to reconcile his men by ingenious devices, bonuses, garden cities, and the like, he cannot blame them if they suspect his motives to be mixed. Prob- ably honest self-examination will show him that they are. The chivalry of labor and the responsibility of the employer was the word of the advanced radical when it was propounded by Carlyle and developed by Ruskin : to-day, as it more and more fascinates employers, it is the last expedient of the high-minded conservative. The time is rapidly approaching when its logic and sin- cerity will be swept away by the tide of democratic ambitions and organization. Such are some of the pitfalls encountered by the ethics of privilege in a shifting society which through all irregularities is leaving the aristocratic order be- hind, and advancing toward new and more democratic society. The mediaeval code of chivalry based on the re- sponsibility of superiors did more or less effectively sus- 214 THE ETHICS OF INEQUALITY tain justice in its day, and really at times succored the oppressed. But its essentially undemocratic character is evident from the absence of the common people and their wrongs from the ordinary run of its records. Our modern code is in a like predicament. Its life depends on the continuation of the system which gave it birth ; and as that system changes, we can watch it under our eyes losing its quality as an instrument of justice and mercy, and becoming, even when most hon- estly self -deceived, tyrant in guise of champion, and , enemy of the progress it seeks to serve. Far be it from us to ignore the disinterested values that exist both in our charity and in our business. Adorning the names of our noblest citizens, they leap to the protesting mind. There are direct and demo- cratic types of social ministration open to none of our strictures. There are experiments, constantly more frequent, in business ethics, which testify to the eager and thorough desire of our most distin- guished leaders of privilege to attain industrial jus- tice. Intelligence as well as feeling is at the inspiring work. But these more uncompromising and single- hearted attempts at readjustment are curiously sug- gestive, for with one accord, whether in philanthropy, business, or reform, they tend beyond themselves, and point to that debatable land, whence the heights of socialism are visible. The broader our vision, the more clearly we see that the ethics of inequality, so far as privilege is concerned, are wearing very thin. When genuine, they lead to their own undoing. When col- 215 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER ored by self-deception or worse, they hinder the accept- ance of the new garments desperately needed, by con- cealing the hopeless rottenness of the old fabric with the attractiveness of its design. Ill So much for wealth, and now for want. Let us look at the back side of the weave, the morals of modern poverty. At once we encounter an odd but sincere difficulty, proffered by certain good people : Poverty is a state, not only sought by such as Tolstoy and Francis, but commended by Christ himself. Socialism would hound poverty out of the world. Does it do well ? Let us hasten to agree that the poor are in a much safer moral condition to-day than the rich. Their ob- vious defects, such as dirt, irresponsibility, thrift- lessness, extravagance, irrilate their well-groomed crit- ics ; but it is a disconcerting fact that these defects have never vexed the great moralists half so much as have the prim virtues of the worshipers at the shrine of Stevenson's " bestial goddesses, Comfort and Re- spectability." Indeed, none of them are incompatible with the traits of the True Citizen, as enumerated by Jesus, poverty of spirit, meekness, purity of heart, aspiration toward justice, and the rest. Poverty, even at its most perverted, carries with it to some slight degree that deliverance from worldly temptation which has caused it to be counseled the world over by de- votees of the Eternal. He would be a bold man who 216 THE ETHICS OF INEQUALITY should deny to the dwellers in tenements and sweat- shops the promise that so tenderly concludes both the first Beatitude and the last : and the more intimately he knows their patient, daily life, the more reverently he will perceive them to deserve it. Yet that the conditions of our proletariat as a whole are spiritually desirable can be maintained only at a distance from them and from reality-. And when one finds persons who live softly adducing the words of Jesus as a reason for leaving these conditions un- touched, one recoils with a shudder. Before we pro- ceed to discussion with these sentimentalists, let us see them embrace the opportunity they commend, unclass themselves, and live in an unclean tenement on a starvation wage. Till then the dispassionate dare to assert that the moral effects of extreme poverty, while less dangerous than those of extreme wealth, are none the less evil. In the one case life perishes of satiety, in the other of inanition. Thank God, it is the unconquerable glory of the scheme of things that an amazing secret force is in the world, competent to educe permanent spiritual good from all transitory material evil. The opportunity is open to valiant souls, in every industrial situation as in every private crisis, to turn cruel restriction and poignant agony to highest gain. But this blessed fact does not exonerate us from trying to conquer evil. The endurance of cancer may turn a frivolous woman into a saint, yet the community would not regret the discovery of a cancer-cure. 217 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER Valiant souls in plenty are to be found under the yoke of modern poverty. Yet that yoke is not easy and the burden imposed is not light. Lady Poverty walks to-day in chains. Once, hosts of exultant lovers followed her, singing the song of the Free, to that high Paradise of which they hailed her citizen and queen. To-day, myriad reluctant victims are dragged along the weary flats oOfe, entangled in her bonds : itsoOi ^ler her on the Umbrian Hills, hair unbound, her feet unshod; As one whom secret glory fills She walked alone with God. I met her in the city street: Oh, changed was her aspect then ! With heavy eyes and weary feet She walked alone with men. Let us not be deceived by a word. Poverty in itself is neither good nor bad. Its moral power is measured by the psychical conditions it connotes, and these dif- fer widely. Looking behind word to fact, no condition could possibly be more inimical at all significant points to the ideal of the Beatitudes than that of the modern wage-earner. That considered the lilies, and took no thought for the morrow, ours, by duty and neces- sity, is harassed by ceaseless care. That was comrade of love, ours is companion of suspicion. The poverty of the Franciscans went on its way singing, " Receive my all ! " Modern poverty clamors forever, " Give me more ! " and, far from abandoning its claims on the universe, with those meek who are to inherit the earth, struggles doggedly and constantly to wrest from an unwil- 218 THE ETHICS OF INEQUALITY ling world the minimum necessary to animal existence. Poverty, as seen in the New Testament and in certain mediaeval records, conveys an extraordinary impres- sion of buoyant vitality and inward peace ; apathetic languor and harassed restlessness are habitual products of the modern type, for the wage-worker to-day is caught in the toils of a system which crushes him into list- lessness when it does not sting him into rage. At a word, the poverty commefc not only by Jesus, but in precept and example by sH^reat religious teachers alike of the East and West, is a stat* of free- dom from worldly interests ; the poverty ftwli rests an incubus on modern society ever sine? the In- dustrial Revolution is a state of helpless bondage to these interests. We may wistfully suspect that the old ideal should not be allowed to fade or perish : of that, hereafter. But let us not make the mistake of looking for it in the modern slum, for there it does not exist. Over those regions presides a wizened spectre, hideous caricature of the Bride whose stern beauty was so life- communicating ; and that true Lady wanders in exile, far from these our wars. No honest person, looking at the average public-school child from a tenement district, or anaemic working-girl from candy or biscuit factory, can complacently hint that to destroy such poverty as theirs is to imperil the ideal of Jesus. Love and detachment from the world are the cen- tral points of that ideal. They are the two forces to which Religion looks to transform the social order, and which she opposes to the socialist plan of equity founded 219 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER in necessary law. She praises them with so high elo- quence that our pilgrim bent on eternal values is not yet able to follow the lure of the socialist song. Yet as he studies the play of these forces in that actual order which religion is so loath to abandon, he has met successive disappointments. For the largesse of love, we naturally look first to the privileged classes, who have the most to sacrifice: for indifference to worldly cares, we look to those driven by earthly want to seek for heavenly gain. As a matter of fact, how- ever, we have found that love among the privileged classes has set up a business office, and works largely through salaried agents, while unworldliness is a forbidden luxury to the self-respecting poor. Perhaps the trouble is simply with our half-heart- edness. Now let Religion stand on guard for we ap- proach the sanctuary of her Apologia ! We abandon for the moment the democratic attitude in spirituali- ties for that aristocratic attitude which has always been more or less native to her : we turn from the common lot, to consider the Counsels of Perfection. By watching them at work, we shall discover whether in a civilization based on social inequality the ethics Religion preaches can ever be an effective redeeming force. To put the matter boldly : does history give us any ground to hope that so long as we leave our pres- ent social organization intact, a more perfect obedi- ence to the ideals of Jesus would achieve our social salvation ? 220 THE ETHICS OF INEQUALITY IV We interrogate history because ours is an unheroic age. The religious apologia has a right to its fullest advantage ; it may show us what it can in those ages of faith when, as it loves to tell us, its sway was more complete than now. And as we turn to watch the fate of the attempts literally to follow to the uttermost the social teachings of Jesus, Franciscanism once more invites us ; not only because it is the fairest flower of social Christianity, but because it expresses with sin- gular completeness the impulse operative in every purely religious quest for social redemption down to our own day. For the peculiar attraction Francis exerts over us is due to the comparative modernity of his message. In one most, important respect, as we have already hinted, he broke completely with the monastic ideal behind him. That ideal had expressed itself in isola- tion ; Francis insisted on expressing his in fellowship. When his followers took Lady Poverty to the top of a high hill and gleefully bade her behold as their cloister all Italy outspread below, they voiced what was at once the fulfillment and the abrogation of the vast secret travail in spirit which had realized itself in the monastic orders. These orders had bidden men save their souls by fleeing from an evil world. Francis pushed his demands further than they had done, for he required absolute renunciation not only of personal but of corporate possessions, and claimed absolutely 221 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER the whole life without reserves for love and service. Yet he sent men back into the world again. They were to reconcile sacrifice to the uttermost with a free and natural existence in the open : to outlaw calculation from their audacious code, welcome with magnanimous joy alms, be they of crusts or mountains, and render services unmeasured, unstinted, in the free largesse of reckless affection. Thus in fellowship and liberty they were to realize that entire heedless- ness toward personal need and the decencies of self- protection, which had never before been deemed pos- sible except through aloofness to natural ties and subjection to personal bondage. And we, to whom the natural order is sacred, to whom as to Francis the call of Love comes first from the suffering faces of our brothers, and who crave with him a cloister that shall embrace the world, we for whom love must be fulfilled in freedom hail in the more human ideal of the Franciscans a social adven- ture which we can understand. The great monastic compromise had the advantage of being entirely prac- ticable, as its extent and persistence show ; for still to-day its echoes haunt our dreams. But it had little organic connection either with the intention of Christ or with our own quest for social justice, for it de- spaired of the world and deserted it. The adventures which interest us more deeply to-day are those which refuse to meet the situation by running away, and among those Franciscanism is the greatest though not the first. 222 THE ETHICS OF INEQUALITY That Franciscanism was a natural product of the times is proved by the amazing record of those early years. Not by hundreds, but by thousands, men from every civilized country ran to embrace Madonna Poverty, sang her praises to a new music full of magic sweetness, abandoned all claims to the universe as they gave it no promises, and throwing aside prudent bal- ances of give and take, entered into the heritage of the meek, the Treasure of the Humble. Even in our degenerate days, faint pleasant traces of the ideal linger in the Franciscan Order. At the holy Mount of La Verna, where the forests and hill pastures still seem refreshed by the wings of remem- bering angels, the old spirit survives. Unlimited hos- pitality is merrily offered. Throngs of bright-kerchiefed peasants wend their way on Sundays to feast on the abundant bounties prepared free by the sweating Brothers, and the cold tourist feels sadly convicted of ill-breeding if he inquires the price of his enter- tainment. The Brothers are quite aware that they have technically no property. Ask to whom the pretty white shepherd dog belongs, and you will be told with a twinkle : " Not to us poor brothers minor. But he is a pleasant dog, and friendly ; it is here that he comes for his alms." Who would stay at an inn, where matter-of-fact bargaining obtains, when this lavish loving-kindness is waiting? And if on depar- ture he expresses gratitude by an offering which shall help to feed the next penniless guest, he still knows that he has been breathing a better air than that of 223 THE FUTURE OF CHAEACTER the valley, where chaffer and bargain hold their cus- tomary way. Even at La Verna, conventions are to-day not absent. But in thirteenth-century Italy, with feudal- ism as a background and a simple agricultural life in the foreground, the Franciscan life was for a time an absolute and uncompromising reality. That time, how- ever, was brief. Even in Umbria, even during the life of Francis, we see the brave experiment fail. The blinded leader dies, his five wounds testifying silently not only his devotion to his Lord's Passion, but the anguish with which his own experience has repeated that Passion, as he has watched the failure of his dream. Behold to the fore that valuable person, Brother Elias, fussy about his food, sincerely enthu- siastic concerning the true interests of religion, labor- ing with zeal and success to transform that hilarious family, which had lived with such absurd and child- ish recklessness, into a conventionally efficient mo- nastic army. In vain the Spirituals protest and strug- gle ; in vain the old spirit flares pathetically like the leaping flame in an expiring lamp, in John Parenti, John of Parma, and their desperate followers during more than a century. Branded as heretics, snubbed of the popes, disowned by an honestly puzzled Church, they expiate, in prison and exile, nay, even at the stake, the crime of having taken literally Francis and Jesus. It is well to dwell for a moment on the struggle of the Spiritual Franciscans to be true to their vows ; 224 THE ETHICS OF INEQUALITY for here is no dead tale, but a record of reality, ever- living, ever-renewed. Theirs was simply the climax of many similar attempts during the Middle Ages lit- erally to apply the teachings given by the Sea of Gal- ilee. Shortly before the time of Francis, not to go further back, the Apostolics of Milan, the Poor Men of Lyons, the audacious Arnold of Brescia, all sought, as simply as he had done, to live in the world the care- free life the Master bade, fulfilled in love so exalted that justice should be pardonably superseded. The pathetic beauty of these experiments illumines the gray pages of church history with a brief but ineffec- tual radiance ; for their story is an unbroken record of defeat. It was left to the followers of Francis to carry the fight to a finish ; and a gallant fight it was. The most modern experience may find its echo in the books which were its product, " Our Lady Poverty,'* the "Mirror of Perfection," the " Fioretti," and the wonderful " Lauds." If we are prone to sentimentalize over the thirteenth century and to think that the "religious life " would have been easier then, the keen scornful insight of these quaint old books may well rebuke us ; for in old Latin or modern English, the voice of the world speaks a language quite unchanged. If we read the cogent arguments presented by Avarice disguised as Prudence to the followers of Lady Pov- erty, we shall see that those who " rejoiced more in the nobility of want than if they had had an abundance of all things," found it as difficult as now to defend their common sense : 225 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER In what could it hurt you to have the necessaries of life, so long as you lack all superfluities ? For in peace and quiet- ness could you work out your salvation and the salvation of mankind, if you were supplied with all things needful to you. Therefore while you have time provide for your- selves and them that shall come after you. . . . "Would God reject you because you had wherewith to give to the needy, when He Himself has said, It is more blessed to give than to receive ? . . . You need fear no harm from the posses- sion of riches so long as you all count them as nought. There is no evil in things themselves but only in the soul of man, for God saw all things and they were good. To the good all things are good. . . . Oh how many, having possessions, use them evilly, which had they been yours would have been put to a good use, for holy is your purpose, holy is your desire! . . . Clever Avarice ! She was hard put to it for a time by the saint's personal friends, sharp-tongued Giles, and that fanatical Pecorello of Francis, Brother Leo, who certainly showed a flash of " the wrath of the Lamb " when he knocked down the marble vase placed by Elias at Assisi to receive offerings for that church in which the ideal as well as the body of Francis was buried. But she won out in the end. Early in the four- teenth-century days of Michael of Cesena she was thoroughly indorsed by the sensible Church shall I we say of Christ, or of Peter? which found good and sufficient the very arguments that the Francis- cans had put into her mouth. Evangelical Poverty, officially repudiated after a sharp controversy, retired from the scene. She kept, to be sure, a little of her 226 THE ETHICS Ol INEQUALITY old honesty in academic seclusion for a time, as may be seen by any one who, searching the curiosities of literature, runs across the startling communistic theo- ries of Marsiglio of Padua or the young Wyclif ; but for the most part she was travestied by the hosts of friars parading in her name and in the habit of Fran- cis. Within less than two centuries, the bravest adven- ture to follow the social ethics of Jesus which history has ever known had made total shipwreck ; the Church was richer by a new monastic order, destined in its turn to be a parasite on society, and the world was poorer by the loss of an ideal. Nevertheless, in the fourteenth century, the sturdy and amazingly interesting ideals of the schools of Langland outpass Franciscanism itself in one respect. They still cling to that standard of voluntary poverty and unstinted service which was the steady Counsel of Perfection to the medieval mind. But in the con- \ fused poems of this new school, we hear for the first time the Voice of the Laborer, and it dares greatly. For it asserts that the leader of the haughty feudal world to Truth must be the Ploughman, and that the holiest poverty is that which spends its time not in contemplative ecstasy but in productive labor. The horny hands of the workman are here honored more than the pierced hands of the mystic, and it is Peter the common man, not Peter the Pope, who holds the keys of spiritual power and advances in the likeness of the Saviour himself with the marks of the Passion upon him. The startling originality of this conception 227 THE FUTURE OF CHAKACTER was so far in advance of its day that we cannot won- der if it was soon completely forgotten, as the Middle Ages drew to their close. For the Renascence dawns ; and its proud worldli- ness and individualistic passion put back for many a long day the dial of poverty and labor. No one, not even himself, took seriously Sir Thomas More, Catho- lic martyr and socialist philosopher, when at the outset of the period he dreamed his brave dream of a Utopia where all are very rich by virtue of all being poor; and More's curiously blended inspiration, from Plato, from Jesus, and from the exhilaration of brave dis- coveries in distant lands, was to wait many an age for renewal. From this time to the generation of our own fathers, the social conscience slipped into the background, and the Counsel of Perfection in social ethics was quite forgotten. The worldly enthusiasms of the Renascence had inhibited it, the disgust for asceticism in the Ref- ormation had discredited it. By the eighteenth century, Respectability in Crinoline had become the accredited running-mate of Religion; and as for Avarice, she had worn the disguise of Prudence for so many years that she had really forgotten her own name, and moved through society, as she still does, at ease as its most valued member. Yet vibrations once caught by the air can never die. The Quakers, for instance, expressed with gentle obstinacy the old uncompromising ideal of detach- ment and love. In good middle of this most unprom- THE ETHICS OF INEQUALITY ising eighteenth century, their view finds perhaps its best exponent in the sober, dauntless appeal of that quaint hero, John Woolman. Was an early Francis- can conceivably reincarnate in this broad-hatted and gentle dispeller of illusions, the American colonist? Heading the record of his "concerns," one is al- most tempted to think so. Only it imports us to ob- serve that another new note has by this time entered the siren song of Poverty, it is the note of com- punction. Not only through her intrinsic beauty does she now call men to follow her: Woolman expe- riences to the full that horror of sharing in social guilt which we are wont to deem wholly modern. With no notion of running away from civilization, remaining in ordinary industrial and social relations, he bent his energy to avoid injuring his brother. To this end, he traveled steerage in unimaginable horrors, because his ship's cabin had been decorated by slave-labor; walked from end to end of England to avoid coun- tenancing the cruelty shown the post-boys in the chaises; and on his death-bed refused medicines till assured that none had suffered in compounding them. As amusing as pitiful were his efforts to abstain from evil and to lead the Christian life of "plainness," mercy, meekness, in a world where all the threads ran the other way. But Quakerism, too, outgrew its " con- cerns," and reduced itself by degrees to an affair of speech and manner, quite compatible with the pleasant conventionalities of existence. The suave materialism of the nineteenth century 229 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER beard no troubling echo from the Gospel, to disturb the comfortable church-going of Vanity Fair. As its decades passed, the failure of all attempts literally to follow the commands of Jesus became more marked. The last attempt to realize the absolute Christian ideal, in a society founded on economic inequalities, was probably that of the old man in Russia, trying so earnestly to live out love in a civilization based on self-defense, and breaking away at the last moment like a wounded creature, to die as he dared not live. The Portiuncula at Assisi is at least a shrine of effec- tive prayer, once built by living hands. The hut at Yas- naya Polyana does but commemorate a death. In the painful futility of that death we may see the symbol of all modern efforts to shake off the social fetters that bind us, and to escape into a purer air where we may be free from the burden of communal guilt. So, as regards the Counsels of Perfection no less than on the levels of everyday life, the ideals, for the sake of which religion condones the present order, do but suffer, as the ages pass, an increasing bitter defeat. Defeat is the glory of Christianity ; but there is defeat and defeat. Mere dashing one's self to pieces against law and fact is not in the beneficent purpose of nature nor of that God who reveals himself in na- ture. And when we find no single period of history in which we can point to success in the attempt to submit the whole of conduct to Christ's commands, we pause and think. 230 THE ETHICS OF INEQUALITY For the more ordinary virtues, so fortunately if illogically prevalent, must, after all, stand or fall with the possibility of the Counsels of Perfection. Hunger after the Absolute is in all of us. Domestic ameni- ties, moderation in self-seeking, the graces of charity, are pleasant things ; but unless they prophesy a practi- cable life dedicated without reserve or limit, no justi- fication of our social atrocities can be based on them. Feeble though they be, they might reconcile us to civil- ization could we hope that to increase them would lead us out of bondage. But if their increase be their de- struction we must conclude that an ignoble tragedy of waste sums up the social idealism of the past. Let us moreover be candid. There is something to be said for the worldly point of view in the matter. Evolving good has united with evil in discrediting the effort to follow the Gospels literally. Under present circumstances, that vital and cen- tral impulse of the Christian ideal, the substitution of uncalculating love for bargaining justice, is not only baffled ; it fails, even when it gets a chance, to help the world on in any substantial way. This dis- appointing fact is true even of the field where if any- where pure love might be supposed to reign, the relief of distress. An Associated Charity paid agent is a less sympathetic figure than an early Franciscan, but the sick and poor to whom she ministers fare better than the lepers of old. It is often said that 231 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER modern religious orders furnish less effective nurs- ing than businesslike secular agencies. If we look be- yond the limited appeal of those whom we cheerfully describe as the " dependent, defective and delinquent classes " to the wider social and industrial field, the same thing holds. To live on free gifts, demanding nothing and giving that trifle, one's life, in return, is a thrilling proposition ; but it has never made head- way in getting much work done. It was all very well for Francis to command his brothers to labor with their hands, in simple Umbria. Masseo might justify existence by picking up jobs as a water-carrier, and Giles earn his rapts by lending a hand at the harvest ; the good will that tossed them alms had no scruples about pauperizing the casual laborer. Yet a host of mendicants, however eager for odd jobs, could never have formed an integral part of the industrial army even in the simply articulated medieval days ; and persons who had the habit of falling into ecstasy on the highroad, or suddenly retiring to a mountain for prayer, would be a still more doubtful asset in a mod- ern democracy. Services, to be effective, can be haphazard as little as alms ; and industrial democracy itself has taught us that only an external necessity has ever saved them from being haphazard. Justice may be inferior to love as an impulse, but it is far superior as a social regulator, and the " business efficiency " which we are just beginning to master, involving as it must the nicest conceivable calculation of reciprocity in serv- THE ETHICS OF INEQUALITY ices and rewards, will help us to a satisfactory world far more swiftly than spontaneous enthusiasm. Bar- gaining, individual and collective, is at the present moment a necessity of economic health. In reply to those heavenly anarchists, Francis, Tolstoy, and their fellows, sound thought has one final answer. So far as meeting the actual situation is concerned, their code is a failure practically because it will not work. Spiritually also it is a failure because it presupposes for its existence the very conditions it condemns. Zeal in amassing and maintaining property is the back- ground without which it could have no force. The individual practice of detachment and service has always implied a society founded on inequalities and organized by selfish interests. In such society, the Counsels of Perfection afford a delightful contrast ; but they can never save it, for they run counter by the very terms of their existence to its most fundamental and creative laws. So long as present conditions per- sist, we may expect repeatedly to contemplate the spectacle of a sorrowing Francis handing over the reins of government to Brother Elias ; and we might as well applaud the instinct which deters the people who write most eloquently about the saint from trying to follow him or his Master. So we have been forced, by the mere recognition of facts, to face the profound paradox and puzzle which from the dawn of Christianity has weakened the reli- gious sense of Europe, and tended to make the precepts of religion food for the hypocrite and the cynic. There 233 THE FUTURE OF CHAEACTER is a logical reason for the failure of these precepts just as soon as they come out into the open and seek to save the world. For it was not in jest but in earnest that we pointed out in the last chapter the stress laid by modern society on the virtues that constitute practical efficiency and create self-regarding success. This practical stress is at present a necessity. Though it has now reached a climax, it has been prominent in the whole course of western civilization ; and it differentiates our ethical and social conditions from those of the East, where the utilitarian virtues have always been at a discount. Under fixed social institutions, the individual who felt the craving for the religious life could gratify it, torn by no agonizing conflict between his duty to the State and his duty to his own soul. But how are " the pride of life, the tire- less powers," in which the West has gloried, sustained? Through the pushing eagerness of every man to dis- tance his fellows, and to achieve ownership of posses- sions great or small. Self-assertion has been more than the condition of personal success ; it has been the oil on the wheels, nay, we may go farther, the motive power of the whole social machine. The passivity of the non-resistant has been recognized by thinkers as a peril to social progress. Mercy, humility, poverty of spirit, are endearing traits in weakling or parasite ; they may even be permitted to the strong as a deco- rative adjunct when the serious business of life has been attended to. But that business is the watchful 234 THE ETHICS OF INEQUALITY care of one's own interests, not only for selfish reasons, but because only through such care can general equi- librium and progress be secured. Therefore, while our present social basis lasts, the only honest solution for religion is the monastic theory which asserts perpetual inconsistency and antagonism between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of so- ciety and nature. Eastern thought has always been clear in the matter. Centrally fatalistic, and unable to conceive of social progress, it has from time im- memorial found the opportunity of sanctity in the de- nial of life. This position the instinct of the western world has always repudiated. It has persisted in giving supreme respect to the principles which create and sus- tain society ; but while it so persists it can give lip- homage only to the religious ideals of self-effacement, and the time has come for it to face facts and declare frankly that people who should apply the Sermon on the Mount with thoroughness could have no produc- tive function, under present conditions, in the social whole. Yet it is worth noting that while emphasis on the self-regarding virtues is bolder in our industrial de- mocracy than ever it was before, it is at the same time left far more than in the past without philosophic foundation. During the Middle Ages, this emphasis was checked by several causes. In the first place, a system of hereditary social distinctions, in which each man found himself moving in as fixed an orbit as a star, evidently favored obedience to the spirit of the 235 THE FUTUEE OF CHARACTER Master and escape from industrial self-consciousness. In the second, the philosophy which underlay monas- ticism, as it underlay the Oriental theories with which monasticism was allied, sanctioned the divorce of virtue from practical usefulness. When the world was pop- ularly viewed as a creation of the Devil and an enemy of the soul, it was reasonable and right that religious virtues should be assumed to contribute to the destruc- tion rather than to the prosperity and permanence of the social order. The Christian did well to withdraw as far as was practicable from action : the law of re- nunciation and sacrifice was expected naturally to lead to social inefficiency ; and we face without surprise as we look back the curious phenomenon of two powers confronting each other in opposition not logically sus- tained but always latent, the World, going on its ancient way of lust and chaffering, and Christianity, drawing its most ardent disciples away from Vanity Fair, into the hush of an existence where action was suspended and self was lost, that it might find itself in God. There were perplexity and inconsistency enough in that situation. But we face greater perplexity and inconsistency to-day, as the Manichaean attitude has become discredited, and we have ceased to regard na- ture and social life as lures of the Devil. For we are learning to consider social well-being a sacred thing, and, as a primary duty, so to shape our activities that they may minister to it. This well-being must be the product of the sum total of human normal energies, 236 THE ETHICS OF INEQUALITY and to attain it by restoring their earth-heritage to all men has become a religious aim. No ideal, therefore, which contradicts the sustaining principles of society can have religious worth, especially if its existence depends on the permanence of the forces it condemns. As the instinct of the West thus intrenches itself in reasoned conviction, the paradox by which the virtues which religion most honors are seen to function as a destructive or at best a negative force flashes out in all its naked cruelty to thinking minds ; and the con- flict between the ideals of personal holiness and of social efficiency undermines faith and drives men to despair. Leave the present order intact, and no im- pulse subsisting as a tolerated exception within it can ever to an appreciable degree possess regenerative force. But if religion be not a regenerative force, what is it ? So long as social inequalities prevail, the produc- tive individual must make self - protection his first object. If he refuses to do so, he is at best a futile fanatic, at worst he dislocates the social structure. Therefore it is that, making literally a virtue of necessity, we laud the measuring spirit without which it would seem impossible to prosper, and encourage Benevolence itself to nestle under the wing of Calcu- lation. Therefore it is that the more clamorous grow our claims on the universe, the more solemnly we proffer them in the name of social duty, and point out that the welfare of the race depends on our pur- suing them undisturbed. That the logic of the situa- 237 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER tion is becoming frankly recognized is at least an advantage. The time has come for the social conserv- ative to take open stand on a philosophy to which unworldliness and unselfishness are at most a mere by-play. He should join fearless and honest radicals like Lowes Dickinson and Laveleye in their assertion that the victory of Christianity would mean the sui- cide of civilization. So do the ethics of inequality refute the very ideal which it was claimed that they alone could foster. And so does the Apologia of Religion end in a reductio ad absurdum. CHAPTER III THE ETHICS OF EQUALITY THE ethics of inequality have proved on inspection always unsatisfactory, progressively rotten. Where these have so signally failed, can the ethics of equality hope to succeed ? The thing is thinkable. "Were Religion, even at her most exacting, to find her needs more fully met in the new order than ever before, it would not be the first time that the foe she had bitterly fought has turned out to be a friend competent to reveal to her " new depths of the divine." For what if we were moving toward a state of things in which the laws of religious ethics were to become the fundamental laws of social health? Nothing less than this is the transformation contemplated by social- ism. It proposes to translate the deepest principles of religious achievement into terms of social efficiency, and to achieve a true reconciliation and harmony between two ways of life always heretofore deemed incompatible. The way of renunciation the way of freedom ! That was the last word in our discussion of socialist self-dis- ciplines. How long Religion has uttered it ! With what desperation, and against what heavy odds, at least 239 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER in the western world, has she clung to it! Sacrifice, renunciation, are a necessity to self-realization so in- ward that they can never be rejected nor exhausted ; it has been left for the cooperative commonwealth to place them on a firm basis by revealing them as the law of social no less than of individual welfare. For that commonwealth as we have already seen will sum- mon men to practice them, not as a private luxury and not as an act of self-immolation to a Setebos, but in the name of the larger social self, of which the func- tions can only be performed as the individual joyously surrenders all claim to special privilege, and finds in subordination his true liberty. He who loses his life shall find it ! Even in nature we begin to perceive this hidden law, and we shall probably discover it more and more clearly there as science advances. But in the life of humanity we may look for its perfect triumph, humanity, that has clung to it with passion even when it most seemed to contradict all social progress, and to lead its votary toward a self-centred and cloistered virtue, that dwelt afar from the habitations of men and from all pro- ductive power. This law, gradually accomplishing its secret work within the hearts of men, even while eco- nomic change transforms their environment, must in due time so reshape the social structure that individ- ual sin need no longer be a social merit, nor individual holiness be, socially speaking, a negative and unfruit- ful source. Such reshaping implies social equality ; for inequality must forever thwart the operation of the law. 240 THE ETHICS OF EQUALITY II Now let us transport ourselves by an act of imagina- tion into the socialized state, bearing in mind as we do so the obstinate inconsistency between the Christian craving for a social order in which services and rewards shall have been released from bondage to reasoned equity, and the experience of the ages that only such equity of the sternest type can maintain social well- being. We are in a civilization which has for the first time in history planted itself on sustained equality of eco- nomic opportunity. Not that either equality or in- equality can ever be absolute ; but socialists work for so steady a check on the accumulated and inherited privilege which has marked society up to date that we may assume a change in balance and emphasis marked enough to justify us in thinking of equality as the keynote of the future. In this new order, men, not profits, have become the end of production, and we have learned that " there is no wealth but life." The probable conditions of labor are best suggested by an industrial conscription, exact as military con- scriptions are now: it will be based on enlightened observation of the youth during his vocational training, and on close tests aimed to secure the highest degree of "scientific efficiency " ; and it will of course admit, as a primary, though not as an exclusive factor, his own desires. When once he is settled in his post, the quota of service to be rendered will be determined 241 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER by a far-seeing policy, destined to supply a man's due share toward the ascertained needs of the community, and to gain from him the largest product compatible with his well-being of mind and body. While he works, he will receive from the general store, with no personal haggling, what he needs to keep him at this point. The amount will vary accord- ing to the personal factor and the social cost. It will differ greatly in different cases, but it will probably be more equal and will certainly be more ascertain- able than we now suppose. It must be determined through scientific study of the art of living, not as now through frantic balancing of values in themselves incommensurable. The man may choose to work more than his quota ; if so, let him receive more. He may be recalcitrant and lazy ; if so, let him receive less, as he would do under like circumstances to-day, unless he happen to be a member of the parasitical classes. Thus, in the world to which our imagination has transported us, the anxious task of measuring serv- ices and rewards will not be ignored, but it will be removed from the shoulders of the individual to those of the community, and carried on by collective decisions, resting of course on democratic control. And soon it will come to pass that a system where every man foraged for his own job will look as bar- barous in retrospect as the still more primitive and individualistic law of the jungle. The compulsion under which men will work will be steady, but it will 242 THE ETHICS OF EQUALITY be unobtrusive, and consistent with a sense of effective freedom, and an Hellenic " spontaneity of conscious- ness." They can deflect their interests as much as they choose from self-seeking and material cares ; for they will no more attempt to make industrial bargains than to determine the amount of fresh air required by their lungs. Nature will decide in the one case, society in the other ; and people will find it far easier than now to carry into their appointed work the ener- gies of free service, while in whatever supererogatory energies they may choose, they can help and not hinder the large activities by which civilization is sustained. That justice which is to-day the central demand of socialism will be the informing principle of the whole cooperative commonwealth, inevitable as the control of gravitation over material atoms. It will replace the free fierce conflict between self-interest and love in which love gets so systematically the worst of it through the ages. But the individual will no longer be under the degrading necessity of determining his own rela- tions toward justice ; and in the predetermined rhythm pervading all social relations, he can find, if he will, the highest opportunities of love. Would not such a state satisfy the blind groping of the ages better than any which has preceded ? Never mind for the moment just how it is to be brought about. So far as outward methods go, income and inheritance taxes could inaugurate it in three generations. But we know that the real power to educe it must be the enlightened common will. And that 243 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER the time of our preparation is not accomplished is proved by the incredulity with which the average man receives the suggested picture. Our modern abnor- mal conditions have so dulled his imagination that he cannot conceive labor faithfully performed except under the whip. As matters go now, he is right. Adam Bede, working cheerily at his door when all his mates have struck work at the click of the clock, is a de- lightful spectacle which George Eliot rightly bids us admire ; but Adam will always be the exception under wage -slavery. When the boarder in "The Thiid Floor Back " insists on paying his landlady more than she asks, we think it quite right that his coming should be heralded by a halo. Yet the instincts of Adam and " The Third Floor Back " are entirely normal. Wherever they have a chance and that is wherever the industrial blight has not struck us they obtain to-day. It is this blight which sickens all voluntary energies and spon- taneous gratitudes, and almost deludes us all into thinking that the chief end of man is to do as little and get as much as he can. The vicious lie is refuted whenever the more wholesome instincts, the desire to create and to share, have permission to flourish. Granted sufficient incentive, men always work hardest when there is no master to drive them : the most effect- ual service in all higher ranges of activity, such as science, art, letters, inventions, explorations, is ren- dered by people whose economic background is secure. Would it not be worth while to watch what happens 244 THE ETHICS OF EQUALITY in the lower ranges under the same security ? To try the brave experiment, we need only shift the centre of consciousness from reward, where it now must be focused if a man is to respect his manhood, to those other factors, pleasure in the process and in the re- sult, always present in all normal labor, and dom- inant when they get a chance. Is there another objection ? Is it feared that condi- tions so inevitable will carry with them no moral power ? In rejoinder we may note that as society evolves the test of character is increasingly found less in the crea- tion than in the use of conditions. Back to our economic determinism again ! Acquiescence in what life offers may be an expression of either servile bondage or spir- itual liberty. Under like bereavements, one mourner becomes a pitiable egotist, another " buys up the op- portunity " to be perfected in sympathy and patience. Our freedom is never substantial nor secure till we have learned that its true measure is not circum- stance, favorable or adverse, but the spirit which we infuse into circumstance. Doubtless many people will fail to realize the moral opportunities of the new order. They will miss the point, forfeit their chance, and perform their appointed functions in the socialist state with as dogged a stu- pidity as their fellows show in our industrial chaos to-day. But others will be of keener flair. It will be open to men to carp and cavil at the whole system, and to smart under a constant sense of injustice. So there will always be dyspeptics, fussily measuring 245 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER the fate of every mouthful they eat. But we may trust that social health will be the rule, and self- scrutiny in productive activities the morbid excep- tion. And who can doubt that in a system where the haphazard parries of employers and employed should be replaced by social estimates of the worth of labor, healthful influences would prevail? When we have eliminated that craving for private wealth which is so largely born from fear of want, yet so corrosive, every service may be rendered as a voluntary gift, and every reward accepted as an act of thanks to the general bounty; and the pleasant reciprocities al- ready current in artistic and intellectual spheres may be repeated in the sphere of industry. "Forsooth, brothers, fellowship is heaven and lack of fellowship is hell," said William Morris. From that hell, only so- cialism can set us free, for only under socialism can the meek effectively inherit that earth which shall nourish them unstintedly from the resources which it will be their privilege, in the serious and instinctive joy of fellowship, to maintain and to increase. Ill Now let us consider more closely how the virtues of the lowlands will thrive in the new country. How about the sweet ministries of charity, a little soured to-day, but cherished still ? Sir Thomas Browne, beloved philosopher, may bring us cheer : " I hold not soe narrow a conceit of this vertue as to 246 THE ETHICS OF EQUALITY conceive that to give almes is onelie to be charitable, or thinke a piece of Liberality can comprehend the Totall of Charitie. . . . There are infirmities not onelie of body but of Soule and fortunes, which doe require the mercif ull hand of our abilities. ... It is no greater Charitie to cloath the Body than to aparell the Nakedness of the Soule." It is an index to our modern degradation that money doles occur first when charity is mentioned. Not with such largesse did the Franciscans deal. Not of such was Paul thinking when he praised a power which forbears patiently, knows neither envy nor vanity, never tolerates bad manners, and rejoices only in the truth. Pure charts, contemplated by the apostle, is a quality that may or may not inspire the more limited charity of our acquaintance ; but it transcends that pedestrian virtue and has far broader field for exercise. It is less an activity which we exert than a spiritual atmosphere ; and " to live in perfect charity with all men " is an exercise sufficiently interesting and varied to keep every one healthfully busy. If the hymn be right, charity will continue with us into eternity, and still have ample range when faith and hope are ended and material gifts no longer have any point, among the fair equities of that New Jerusalem which is still illumined by the light of sacrifice pro- ceeding from the Lamb as It had been slain. William Blake has a curious suggestion in one of his pictorial meditations on the Book of Job. The patriarch, on whom the disasters robbing him of all 247 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER his wealth have already fallen, sits in idyllic peace, and with gracious gesture hands a part of his last loaf to a blind beggar, while gentle angels on either side clasp hands in admiration. We should say, a touch- ing delineation of generosity to the uttermost. But why, then, in that upper half of the picture which represents through the series the world of heavenly realities corresponding to the world of appearance below, are angels affrighted, the heavens racked, the Throne shaken by the Adversary Satan, who circles around it in a whirlwind of flame, while the halo about the head of God turns black ? Nowhere else in the series does evil threaten to overthrow the equilibrium of the celestial sphere. The motto around the picture is that of material charity : " Did not I weep for him who was in trouble ? Was not my soul afflicted for the poor ? " And we are forced by the context to agree with the interpretation of the engrav- ing given by Mr. Wicksteed, who bids us believe that Job here commits an error that almost turns heaven into hell : " This error of Job's is itself an effect of his materialism. It is Job's belief that we can have property in the material necessities of life 4 in what is common to all in Christ's kingdom/ to quote Blake once more that misleads him. . . . The arrogation of the right to bestow on our fellow men the material necessities of life is a usurpation by the Satanic selfhood of the bounty of heaven." " He who performs works of mercy," says Blake again somewhere, "is punished and if possible destroyed not 248 THE ETHICS OF EQUALITY through envy, hatred, or malice, but through self- righteousness, that thinks it does God service, which God is Satan." Startling comments on a startling picture ; but does not life indorse them ? We have already suggested that to dispense material charity does all but habit- ually coarsen and blunt, and tends to engender either false complacency or mean distrust. The largesse of self to impoverished hearts and minds is subject to no such dangers ; it renders more humble, more delicate, more reverent, more trustful. The endless possibilities in such largesse are revealed by the growing intui- tions of democracy. They can be opened only as class is overcome and mechanical barriers between men destroyed. The external manifestations of charity to-day are at their best but hints and shadows of that more spiritu- alized generosity for which the ethics of social equality will call. Compassion is probably the finest expres- sion charity knows ; it is the fairest flower of Christ- ianity, a virtue all but unknown to paganism, and it is the dominant mood to-day with people who have eyes and ears. Socialism promises to relieve us at first from the burden of an intolerable pity. We shall be no longer haunted in summer by the aching conscious- ness of the poor in great cities, of the thronged fac- tories, the dying sick, the languishing children. It is conceivable that when these horrors shall be ended reaction may set in ; tenderness may droop for a time as well-being spreads, and a reckless indifferentism 249 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER invade us. But the instincts which the sharp modern stress has developed as its noblest product will not be so lightly lost. They will revive, and work in subtler ways than we now experience. For of course suffering will not be eliminated by socialism, and just as pangs that ravage modern souls would have been strange to a contemporary of Virgil, so new sorrows will torture the sensitive race to be. Take, for instance, the most obvious and external of woes. As people in general grow healthier and there- fore more comely, and we may note that doctors are promising us this pleasant change, independently of economic systems, each lapse from personal beauty will be more keenly felt, and quicken more distaste in the vulgar, more pity in the refined. Nowa- days ugly men or women are in too large a majority to suffer unduly; but should the extraordinary sor- didness of our .average aspect be replaced by an alert radiance bespeaking health and good -breeding, the exceptional person will need courage to adjust him- self, and will evoke varying treatment from his fel- lows. Mental and moral defects also will offer a new scope for chivalry. For it is foolish to suppose that psychical inequalities will disappear with economic. In our fevered generation, the non-productive and irresponsible person provided only that his money comes from the dead hand encounters little con- tempt. Often we envy him, for we are possessed our- selves by hunger for repose. But hunger to create will 250 THE ETHICS OF EQUALITY dominate the world in the better time to be ; and since opportunities are to be roughly equal while powers remain unequal, people who fail will no longer be able comfortably to shelter themselves under the enervating delusion of circumstance. A fine chance, theirs, for humility, and for their abler fellows, for all delicacies of respectful pity. One hopes, at least, that the pity will remain respectful, but foresees risk of suotle temptations on both sides. The clear light of the socialized state will thus dispel many con- fusions that now obscure real values, and sweep away the cherished consolations of weaklings; and men will carry on under more searching conditions than ever before the ceaseless dual battle against self-contempt and self-conceit. Meantime, bereavement, separation, thwarted affec- tion, the struggle of the spirit forever seeking and forever missing its goal, the very pain of fmiteness, will stab as cruelly as now, and call for perpetual efforts to enlighten, console, and heal. Indeed, the pathos Of human existence shivering between two eternities will become constantly plainer, as the accidental and pre- ventable are eliminated from our lot. IV Starting to consider the aristocratic virtues that stoop, we have been led to consider the humble virtues that endure. This is not strange, for the qualities of privilege and of want will be less separate under social democracy than now. 251 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER As already noted, modern morals are as subject to class divisions as are manners or men. It would be as inadvisable for a poor man to develop an autocratic temper as for a rich man to practice non-resistance in his business. One type of virtue the more Christian has been considered becoming to the lower classes ; another, more Pagan, has been the chief adornment of the upper. Now even democracy does not countenance this sort of thing, and as for socialism, it looks forward to equality of opportunity in ethics as well as economics. It demands that attitudes proved admirable in the specialized product of either poverty or privilege be thrown open as the common heritage. Take, for instance, the most aristocratic of virtues, a high magnanimous scorn of material rewards. This is not unknown among the poor, yet, apart from plutocrats and nouveaux riches, it has always been the hall - mark of a genuine and stable aristocracy. Spenser voices the mood through his Sir Guyon. Thus the knight replies with chivalric impatience to the allurements of " Great Mammon," " God of the world and wordlings," who sits in his gloomy glade surrounded by great heaps of gold : " Mammon," said he, " thy godhead's vaunt is vain, Aud idle offers of thy golden fee : To them that covet such eye-glutting gain Proffer thy gifts, and fitter servants entertain I " Me ill besits, that in der-doing arms And honour's suit, my vowed days do spend, 252 THE ETHICS OF EQUALITY Unto thy bounteous baits and pleasing charms With which weak men thou witchest to attend. Regard of worldly muck doth foully blend And low abase the high heroic sprite That joys for crowns and kingdom to contend: Faire shields, gay steeds, bright armes, be my delight These be the riches fit for an adventurous knight I " Contempt for the God of Greed has always been the prerogative of your true aristocrat, as it still is in the professional strata of society ; but we find it hard to associate with our hewers of wood and drawers of water. Yet why? Should not the very aim of a demo- cracy be to put this splendid attitude within the reach of those whose services are not associated with fair shields and gay steeds, but with ploughshares and tools? Is there any intrinsic reason why a man who digs potatoes or tends machines should not dwell in as lofty a region of self -disregard as he who teaches the nation's youth or fights the nation's wars ?- The past would have said, Yes. Behind our old social inequalities, and sustaining them, lay the ancient instinct to regard the natural world as common and unclean, and those who ministered to physical necessi- ties as naturally inferior. Even Plato felt an inherent vulgarity in manual pursuits. So long as this instinct persisted, the best in the attitude of the aristocrat was of course closed to the world's workers. Slowly, im- perceptibly, we moderns are learning to spiritualize our conception of nature, and as we do so, we begin to accord to labor, at least verbally, the respect which is its due in a universe where every common bush is 253 THE FUTUKE OF CHARACTER afire with God. There is even danger lest our talk of the dignity of labor degenerate into cant. The only way to prevent this catastrophe is to gain a more demo- cratic conception of the virtues, and to insist on putting within the reach of all that care-free chivalric atti- tude once supposed to be the prerogative of a favored class. In like fashion, might not the socialist state open to every one the virtues chiefly fostered to-day in pov- erty? One would suppose so: for in this state, the type of serene poverty which Jesus blessed and en- joined would be practically Ihe self-respecting common lot. Moreover, those searching disciplines to be ex- pected would place a high premium on the qualities of obedience and submission, once scornfully dubbed the virtues of slaves, now considered as the highest glory of those whom the Truth has made free. Nothing, indeed, which has enduring value in the ethics of inequality on either side need be forfeited by equality of opportunity. The old morality will be the same as ever ; but it will be put on a basis of truth in- stead of accident, subjected to more searching tests than before, and made in its rich entirety the heritage of all. " Enrichment " is the chief word that occurs to one, in thinking of the ethical life of the future. Despite our fond delusion of freedom, class-barriers now hamper us at a thousand points. We are too used to them to realize our bondage ; but we need only imagine a world where all share the same class-traditions and similar education is open to all, to foresee a wider and 254 THE ETHICS OF EQUALITY richer culture of the Fruits of the Spirit than ever before. Sympathy which is the Greek form of the Latin compassion is the chief psychic force leading us toward the socialist state, and sympathy must be the central inspiration when we get there. Our current use touchingly reflects our impression that to feel with a fellow mortal must be to grieve with him ; but social- ism hopes to revive a larger implication. Sympathy might illumine every "virtue of delight " with a new beauty ; each detail of daily behavior could be trans- formed from a triumph of bargaining to a sacrament of service. One may almost say that the practice of this single virtue must include a whole new art of living. On the moral side, to overcome antipathies of temperament, on the mental, to maintain intellectual fellowship in face of the extreme specialization of interests seem- ingly impending, here are two of our opportunities. One foresees grave moral perils. We shall make ship- wreck of the socialist state unless we learn to be more steadily generous and affectionate toward one another : habitual captiousness would upset a cooperative civil- ization in a twinkling. If the thought sobers, we may reflect that when the nervous strain of living is less- ened, we shall all be less inclined to captiousness than now. The difficulties, on the other hand, will be never to let tolerance slip into indifferentism, and to main- tain uncompromising standards of truth and conduct, while identifying one's self instinctively with myriad 255 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER forms of thought and feeling. The adventure of the noble life will certainly be harder than to-day; but who would not eagerly undertake it, for the sake of deepening that loyalty to the whole which is the other definition of sympathy, and is, as we already know, the goal of our desires ? This loyalty will bring its own disciplines, for it will force us to condemn all forms of self-indulgence, gross or fine, that separate us from our fellows ; but it will become a fruitful source of capacities which we can but dimly foresee. It is a temptation to pause a moment on those lesser morals known as manners, for the details of behav- ior are simply the codified expression of the intuitions of sympathy. No one can develop these when he is breathlessly afraid that his neighbor is going to tread on his toes, and we need not wonder if modern manners are too often bad when frank, and false when good. With humorous difficulty, an individualistic civ- ilization maintains a social code. In etiquette, we still hold the theory that each is to prefer others to himself, whether the point be a comfortable chair or patience with a bore : since in serious affairs, the contrary prin- ciple obtains, the notorious degeneration of manners, especially among the young, is a tribute to our honesty. The industrial revolution is our only hope ; perhaps when it is over manners may regain the grace and charm of the pre-commercial epoch. Here, too, one craves equality. Refinement has always been mainly a hot-house growth, and it would be a great thing if we could plant it out in the open. Let us hope that the 256 THE ETHICS OF EQUALITY social democracy may extend gentle breeding beyond the limits of class, and dower the shop-girl or the laborer with as fine a mastery of the art of living as is possessed to-day in the rare circles free from the black magic of commercialism and the necessity of industrial self-defense. Even nowadays, everybody really finds humility and brotherliness more attractive than energy or thrift. This preference is a little hard to understand since the aggressive virtues have so far possessed so much higher social value ; but, after all, these are an over- flow from the productivity of nature on the ordinary plane, while the gentler breathe faint airs from another country, also in the order of nature, but lying on a level to which we have not yet ascended. When we get there, we may decide to our surprise that the ag- gressive and self-seeking virtues have comparatively slight relation to the higher reaches of personality. Religion has always surmised this to be the case. It has insisted paradoxically that the centre of character is a focus not for centripetal but for centrifugal forces, a mere point whence radiate the instincts of love and service. The lover is the only man who truly lives ; and the lover, like the poet conceived by Keats, has no separate existence : he is " forever in and filling some other body." In both manners and morals, it should prove a great help to this point of view, though a queer reversal of our present standards, to have the lovable virtues the passport to success. 257 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER But we may be accused of mixing socialism up with the millennium. And that would be a silly thing to do, not only because it is not going to be the millen- nium, but also because a great many people would lose all interest in it if it were. So it may be well for us to glance at the dark side of the picture. The new world will be inhabited by just the same sort of men and women that we know to-day, and they are not going to create a Fra Angelico paradise, pretty, but devoid of shadows. On the contrary there may possibly be more real wickedness in the socialist state than in our own. A civilized man can be a great deal viler than a savage when he sets about it, and the more civilized the order, the worse types it may produce. The very fact that there will be less moral confusion than at present will brush away many an excuse and bring out into the open plenty of evil to do away with monotony and give spice to life ! When certain paradoxes that now render our pursuit of virtue half-hearted shall have vanished, bad impulses will flourish with new lustiness. Greed and self-seeking, for instance, will not cease when they are put in their true relation to the social organism, and recognized as destructive rather than productive powers. At first, indeed, they may be strengthened, and we may see a fine crop of new hypo- crisies, for which corporate industry, whether managed through government or through voluntary cooperation, 258 THE ETHICS OF EQUALITY will afford rich opportunity. The bad man will know himself to be bad, and will therefore become at once more insolent and more secretive than to-day. His dishonesty will seek more ingenious evasions ; in pro- portion as he sins against light, will his sin react on his own character more gravely. As the modern thug is a more unlovely person than that gallant lover of the poor and servant of ladies, good Robin Hood, so will the embezzler of the future be more unpleasant than his predatory brother of to-day. New perils, new emphases, will appear on every hand. There is as surely a root of evil in all things good as a root of good in all things evil. For instance, the fate of purity in the socialist state is certainly a grave question. Quite conceivably, it may have a des- perate struggle to maintain even the nominal respect now accorded it. The reaction from individualism may here work out curiously complex results. Theories of free love, in spite of the foolish current confusion in the socialist ranks and outside of them, have obviously nothing whatever to do with economic socialism ; yet one foresees that as the idea of the sacredness of pri- vate property dwindles, one inferior and adventitious support to the monogamic marriage, which, historically, rests so largely on this idea, may be withdrawn. If purity, as the Christian world understands it, is to hold its own, it must do so in a twofold strength. First, through the development of that social instinct which shrinks from sinning against love, and then through a ready submission to discipline and restraint 259 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER which should be instinctive to the new citizen and help him in every department of life to a temperate and chaste existence. Love, to the instinct of the natural man, is an indulgence ; to the man evolved and spiritualized, it is primarily a discipline, the fierc- est and most compelling in the law of self-subordina- tion and the subjugation of desire that life affords. When the social instinct shall have triumphed, this truth should be better understood than it has ever been understood before, and should work mightily to prevent divorce. Of course, also, that growth in com- prehension of social hygiene and of eugenics, which is already beginning, will help to overcome the cruder forms of the sins of the flesh. Sloth, again, may threaten for a time to be wide- spread under socialism. Should the New Order come as swiftly as some indications suggest, let us say within two generations, reaction from the fearsome nervous strain of our own day may well breed contagious indolence for a season. Probably there will always be inert people who do their daily stint reluctantly, evade it as far as they can, and sink back in their free time, shall we say on the bridge whist of the future ? A leisure class would be no new phenomenon, nor could socialism be accused of having brought it into exist- ence. The instincts of such a class might for a time be ex- tended over a wider area than before. Yet it is hard to think otherwise than that they would be checked by degrees. For our modern indolence is largely the 260 THE ETHICS OF EQUALITY shadow cast by the general economic insecurity. Men, like horses, balk when afraid, and Fear is lurking among us. When hard masters speed men up, moreover, a sullen " soldiering " policy is sure to result. A basis for more logical prediction is found in the conditions that obtain in the more healthy sections of our pres- ent leisure class, and when one notes the energy that the young sons of privilege put to-day into football and mountain-climbing, one is inclined to give up worrying lest energy become emasculated in the socialist state. We must not forget that we have a right to hope in a few generations for a more vigorous race, less depleted than we by overwork on the one hand and surfeit on the other. The average workman will no longer be worn out at fifty, and the gilded youth will not exist. In such a race, freed from the exhausting tyranny of economic fear, endowed with tranquil nerve and vigorous mus- cle, it seems not unreasonable to expect that the great incentives ambition, pleasure in creation, zest of service may develop the primal delight in activity strong in every human being to a point of healthy in- tensity never seen yet. But predictions pressed too far are folly, for unim- agined factors are sure to appear in any new system of social relations. We must not rest in the cheerful point of view, nor revert too confidently to the hypothesis of optimism. The future is veiled, and unsuspected elements of evil as well as of good are surely waiting among its secrets. That energy can ever be disentan- gled from barter without a resolute struggle is hardly 261 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER to be looked for. Yet the changing order seems at least to promise a time in which our poor tenacious ideal of spontaneity in lower as in higher services need no longer be stared out of countenance in the name of prudence and self-respect. VI Thus we dare to dream that all the dear virtues of the meadow-lands will flourish in the good days to be: And such plenty and perfection too of grass Never was as we may find beneath our feet in that sweet climate. How now about the virtues of the heights, the Coun- sels of Perfection ? We cannot forget them, we cannot achieve them. How renounce the world when consumed with steady terror lest it renounce us and we be left jobless ? How obey the call of love to surrender ourselves wholly to the passion of giving when we are likely to render ourselves social parasites and nuisances thereby ? Our noblest, confronted by these questions, die heart- broken, while our weaklings lose the very spring of faith, and waste in sentiment what should brace them to the deed. But a change is coming. Mercantile and commer- cial self-consciousness will fade under the light of so- cialism, as feudal and aristocratic self-consciousness is fading under the light of democracy. And when the THE ETHICS OF EQUALITY change is consummated and industrial peace shall reign, sanctity may have a rebirth such as our unheroic days can never hope to see. A definite and inspiring piece of work waits the leisure of better days : it is the untried study of the social environment most favorable to the production of the highest types of character. In a way, to discuss the matter now is guesswork; yet we may already venture to say that the graces of unworldliness and contemplation have rarely flourished either in extreme wealth or in extreme poverty. The great lovers of men, the lovers of Lady Poverty, the lovers of the Unseen, have all but invariably come from the ranks of the reasonably well-to-do. Bernard the Blessed was a prosperous Assisi merchant, Angelo a youth of noble birth. Alone among the first Franciscans, Elias the traitor, who was to claim all luxuries in the name of his sensitive organism, sprang from the peasant class. One finds corroboration of the impression in running through the story of all in whom religion has most nearly realized its ideal. The highest virtues of de- tachment, like the highest qualities of genius, have rarely blossomed from the soil of bitter want or rank abundance ; they have sprung from those conditions of reasonable economic security which already obtain and have always obtained through the middle strata of society. When we notice that these are the condi- tions which socialism hopes to make the common her- itage, have we not the right to hope that in a socialized -community the spiritual life may mightily thrive ? 263 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER If our thoughts were no longer centred in making a living, we could press detachment and devotion to any point we like. A socialist state would afford con- ditions in which the perpetual conflict in temperament and philosophy between the schools which seek per- fection through fulfilling the flesh and those which seek perfection through scourging it could be fought to a finish. Voluntary asceticism may be a good or a bad thing; we are inclined to think it bad to-day, but we shall never find out surely until it has free scope. Under socialism, men impelled by that terror of ma- terial values which has always haunted the race at mo- ments even in the most cheerfully efficient phases of Occidental life, and which dominates the East, will have their chance. Free as air to seek reality through the repudiation rather than the pursuit of natural good, they can live, if they like, austerely as any Guru, for the sake of a clearer vision of the unsubstan- tial Good. And the puzzled world may conceivably find itself in a position at last to choose definitely for the first time between their ideal and the other. Wise Sir Thomas More, seer and martyr, foresaw the prosperity of both schools in his socialist state. Listen to the account of religion among his Utopians, where the "conspiracy of the rich," as he serenely defines contemporary society, has been defeated, and " every man has a right to everything, for among them there is no unequal distribution, so that no man is in necessity, and though no man has anything, yet are they all rich." 264 THE ETHICS OF EQUALITY There are many among them that upon a motive of reli- gion neglect learning, nor do they allow themselves any leisure time, but are perpetually employed. . . . Some of these visit the sick : others mend highways, clean ditches, repair bridges, or dig turf, gravel, or stones. . . . Nor do these only serve the public, but they serve even private men ; for if there is anywhere a rough, hard and sordid piece of work to be done, from which many are frightened by the labor and loathsomeness of it, if not the despair of accomplishing it, they cheerfully and of their own accord take that to their share. . . . Of these there are two sorts : some live unmarried and chaste and abstain from eating any sort of flesh ; and thus weaning themselves from all the pleasures of the present life, which they account hurtful, they pursue, even by the hardest and painfullest methods possible, that blessedness which they hope for hereafter. Another sort of them is less willing to put themselves to much toil, and therefore prefer a married state to a single one ; nor do they avoid any pleasure that does not hinder labor, and therefore eat flesh the more willingly, as they find that by this means they are the more able to work. The Utopians look upon these as the wiser sect, but they esteem the others as the more holy. Clever people, the Utopians! Well aware of the endless diversity required in the expression of the re- ligious ideal! We can see at once how simply the lives of the "more holy" sect, if more holy they be, could work themselves out under social equality. The adept would render his due quota of service ; and this we may well believe that no Oriental Guru or mediaeval friar would have grudged, had he lived in that New Order, from which the idea will surely have 265 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER vanished once for all that an aptitude for ecstasy should exonerate a man from work. This duty once performed, he would be free to reject his share of the perquisites and pleasures to be so evenly offered, preferring a lodging under the stars, and the mere bread and water required by Brother Body. In such a world Francis would not die broken-hearted nor Ruskin insane, nor need Tolstoy pass away in pathetic endeavor to bear full witness at the last to that love universal from which love particular had all his life withheld him. Saints might spend their time, accord- ing to their mystic will, in contemplation or ministra- tion, singing in clear tones the Lauds of Poverty. Those who have possessed all created things in despising them have always spoken of their state as a third heaven. Into this heaven only the few will ever seek to enter; but at least under socialism the way thither will no longer be barred by social compunction or the dread of shirking one's responsibility for push- ing the world along. VII We are ready for our climax ; for answer to that obstinate question whether, in any reasonably conceiv- able social order, perfect obedience to the precepts of Jesus could be practiced without social waste. Among the most authentic sayings by the Master there are many beside the Beatitudes which practical men have always dismissed with a smile. Not to take thought for the morrow, never to worry about being THE ETHICS OF EQUALITY clothed and fed, were commands indorsed by what seems a peculiarly unworldly appeal to the life of the lily of the field and the bird of the air ; and we can hardly wonder if the parallel has always been scouted as a pretty fantasy. Yet Jesus, even when most po- etic, is never sentimental. If he presented the life of birds and flowers as the true model for human existence, it is because he actually believed that their freedom from anxious self-consciousness and their peaceful fulfillment of function were conditions that ought to be reproduced in economic relations. And it is worth noting that some people have always been found to agree with him, and to believe that we should never rest till what we may call the "field-flower" ideal in sociology should really be achieved. How can we fail, indeed, to watch with wistful envy the charming ways of birds and blossoms, concerned with no anxious balancings in the struggle for self-sup- port ? How can we fail to long that human relations might be put on a basis as healthfully instinctive as the interchange of energy in the life of nature? No bother- ing about preliminary contracts here, for so much cal- oric received, so much perfume due when the note of the season matures ; for so much wage in hydrogen, so much work in pushing force! The plant draws its juices from the earth and blossoms at the touch of distant sun in ever-renewed miracle of dainty exacti- tude, shapes into ever new modes the atoms of energy so freely bestowed on it by Natura Benigna, and when its service is rendered droops peacefully to earth at 267 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER the appointed hour, bequeathing its life to seasons yet to be. Shall human existence always present a spec- tacle of false waste and futile conflict, compared with that of the flower? To reproduce the laws of nature in human society has been a dream never abandoned by the Christian consciousness. Further than that, the wider and non- religious thought of the world reverts to it with star- tling constancy. The poet sighs after it, the philosophic anarchist pleads for it, and schools of thought reap- pearing in every century present it as the sum of wisdom. When civilization has become most complex, the de- sire to escape and to share in those lovely harmonies where man is not has become keenest : ever since the time of Jean Jacques Rousseau and his followers the ideal has been vividly before men's eyes. Rousseau and his kin would have been surprised indeed to be accused of Christianity ; yet the source and archetype of the whole movement which we sum up in the form- ula, the " return to nature," is to be found in the Ser- mon on the Mount. The ideal has had a bitter struggle, however, to maintain itself against the realities of economic life. And we may wonder what mysterious purpose turned it, as first expressed in the Gospel, rather to the West than to the East. For that Gospel, born at the meeting-point of East and West, might, ifc would seem, have moved more naturally eastward than westward. In the Orient, the ideas of Jesus might have won a facile and immediate victory ; for there THE ETHICS OF EQUALITY was much in them to harmonize with the intuitions and experience of the Oriental tradition. Yet the as- sent accorded them would doubtless have ended at last in the Great Refusal, and a new emphasis on the joys of Nirvana. In the Occident, on the other hand, the ideal had to achieve its triumph, if at all, in the life practical, not in the life contemplative. For as we have already noted, among the Romans of the Empire and the vigorous Northern races who succeeded them, any help which religion might offer existence had to be ful- filled in normal activities, and to manifest itself, not by repudiation, but by sanctification of natural life. Under European conditions, religion would count for nothing in the long run unless it could make itself at home in the world of men. We know how valiantly it tried, how sorrowfully it failed ! how it met a partial but solid success as soon as it lapsed into Orientalism, as in the monastic move- ment ; how it was routed worse and worse when it fol- lowed the Master's method, and tried to penetrate the natural order. In the Middle Ages, with their com- parative social stability, the ideal of taking no thought for the morrow was to a certain extent implicit, and awaited only such touch of romantic spiritual passion as Francis gave, to blossom in brief fragrant beauty. Yet feudalism was at heart as inimical to such instincts as any other civilization founded on inequality must be ; and the partial success of the ideal, then as later, was the signal for its doom. Where shall we look to-day for its effective presence ? 269 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER In the leisure class we find, to be sure, especially among women, some very flower-like persons, who take no thought for the morrow, and spend their lives among fine emotions and religious dreams. But such graceful triumphs leave the spirit restive. The lilies we were bidden consider were field-flowers, not greenhouse ex- otics, and one has only to follow in imagination the labors which sustain these gentle parasites, to reject the thought that their spirituality is an asset to the race. Meantime, in the serious business of modern life, Carlyle's great Goddess of Getting On presides nervously over an uncomfortable world. Yet that old desire for harmony, simplicity, and peace continues obstinately to haunt the mind. And since it is now pretty well proved that we can never rightly return to nature by running away from civiliz- ation, we begin to ask whether it be not possible to in- clude civilization itself in the natural order. Time was, to be sure, when the model always dimly discerned in that order seemed to indorse all the horrors of the competitive system. "Red in tooth and claw with ravine," Nature shrieked against the creed of progress through fellowship ; and the en- couragement of the weak to perish seemed the only principle she countenanced. We hear little of such talk to-day, for we are penetrating deeper into her secrets. In the perpetual systole and disastole of crea- tion and destruction creation wins out on the whole. The endless evolution of form and life, through chaos and inertia, is the reality to which decay is but 270 THE ETHICS OF EQUALITY incidental. This evolution proceeds, indeed, partly through sacrifice, since dying, rightly construed, is an episode in living, but mainly through attraction, propagation, increase. It is for us to imitate the life of Nature, not her death, and that life is fulfilled not in antagonisms but in reciprocity of ordered service. "From harmony, from heavenly harmony this uni- versal frame began " ; and despite all appearances to the contrary, science and philosophy bring us ever new confidence that the diapason shall yet close full in man. We find ourselves, through no will of our own, in a material universe where the productive and sustain- ing activities depend on the exquisite adjustment of natural forces, toward which our main responsibility is so to use them that they be not disturbed. Accord- ing to the socialist philosophy, the task laid on us is to create for ourselves an economic universe to corre- spond, through which the same laws may be extended, till the interchange of services becomes spontaneous and unconscious as the intake and outgo of the breath and the rise and fall of tides. In this state the per- formance of necessary functions would be subject to no such dislocations as now rack our social being, and no such waste of power as now appalls us. They would proceed with the inevitable and august simplic- ity which marks the energies of the bodily organism, or the circling of the never-resting stars. Civiliza- tion would have found its " cure," not by suicide, as in the desperate proposals of anarchists whether mys- 271 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER tical or practical, but by growth into a maturity which should conform at last to the large harmonies of the physical order, and cause the uniformity of law to be more than a convenient phrase. In such a civilization, parallels drawn from the life of flower and bird would lose their apparent absurdity ; the true " return to nature " would be realized at last, and the ideal of Jesus could be translated, just so far as men desired, into sober fact. Then it would be our happy privilege to understand the poets when they sing of a heaven " where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing." We could take our place among those "glad souls without reproach or blot" who do the work of Justice, not knowing what they do. For the Power which preserves the stars from wrong, and through which the most ancient heavens are fresh and strong, would at last have become the control- ling principle within the body politic, as within the individual heart. So the vision of socialism proves to be the ancient vision to which faith has clung throughout the ages. It is the fulfillment, not the contradiction, of the demand which Religion has most steadily proffered through all baffling discouragement even in the house of her friends. CHAPTER IV THE CHOICE : AND AFTER WE have worked our way through all the zones where distrust of socialism prevails, and have pushed to the centre. There we have found full confirmation of our early hope that the distrust may be rejected. Religion has defended a spiritual ideal throughout the ages against desperate odds. To-day, at the precise juncture where her battle might seem hopelessly lost, help comes from a new quarter ; and religious minds honestly scanning the situation may well discern the most powerful of allies in the socialism which has been feared as the most dangerous of their foes. If we are ever to be in a position to realize the full aspirations of the saints without involving society in suicide, it is the cooperative commonwealth that will give us the chance. Down the ages, the captive people of God raise their Advent plea for rescue, " Oh, come, oh, come, Emmanuel ! " and down the ages they deny Emmanuel when He answers their summons. Will the blunder be repeated ? Or will the stronger spirits of our generation gain insight to welcome the New Order toward which the Mind revealed in eco- nomic history seems clearly pointing the way? Our pilgrim may no longer stand hesitant at the 273 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER parting of the roads. The hour for his choice has come. And as usual at such crises, he finds this choice already made for him, be it by the unconscious self within, or by the God above. He cannot say complacently, with the arrogance of over-responsible and dogmatic youth, " Having thoroughly weighed arguments and sifted objections, I do herewith embrace the socialist creed " ; rather, it may be in the solitudes of some white night, it may be in a great assembly where angry opinions clash and passions are tossing hearts like spray, he will become amazedly aware of a new inun- dating certitude ; and " with that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises it too," will discover that, apart from his ken or his volition, socialist faith has taken possession of him. Life can never be the same again. It is experiences like these, in which the spirit dies to live, that re-create personality and transform civilization. Opinions may fade like a spring breeze, convictions even may sweep tempestuously over the soul, and subside at their appointed hour ; but these " real assents," so vividly described by John Henry Newman, can never alter. They are knit into the sub- stance of the soul and " form the mind out of which they grow." Till we have them', in spite of a full apprehension and assent in the field of notions, we have no intellectual moor- ings, and are at the mercy of wandering lights, whether as regards personal conduct, social and political action, or religion. . . . They create, as the case may be, heroes and saints, great leaders, statesmen, preachers and reformers, 274 THE CHOICE: AND AFTER the pioneers of discovery in science, visionaries, fanatics, knights-errant, demagogues, and adventurers. They have given to the world . . . men of immense energy, of adaman- tine will, of revolutionary power. They kindle sympathies between man and man, and knit together the innumerable units which constitute a race or nation. They become the principle of its political existence : they impart to it homo- geneity of thought and fellowship of purpose. 1 Socialism is inspiring these " real assents " on every hand. Silently, secretly, among all temperaments and traditions, it is claiming its own ; and the fact is the best warrant for its future power. So our pilgrim, with the Advent anthem, it may be, on his lips, faces the open country and sets his feet with solemn cheer on the path to the untraveled socialist heights, confident that they are no dissolving cloud- land but 'the appointed future home of happy genera- tions, and that the race must advance straight toward them would it pursue aright its journey On, to the bounds of the waste, On, to the city of God. He is a socialist now, not with the eager surface en- thusiasm of first allegiance, but with the sober con- viction of a mind that " has kept watch o'er man's mortality," has tested, weighed, and won. Adding a final act of will to the long process of his conversion, he proceeds from faith to action, sets him- self to inhabit Time and Eternity at once, and finds the feat not impossible. For assurance has come to 1 A Grammar of Assent. 275 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER him that only in the frank acceptance of the material and evolving can a revelation of the spiritual and eternal be attained. He is too well aware that history always holds surprises in reserve to expect that the civil- ization of the future will assume the exact cast which his theories predict ; but in his resolve to rehabilitate the natural order and to establish social equality, he believes that he follows the call of the Spirit no less than the desire of the healthy sense. Hazard waits on the steps of all who leave well-trodden paths to blaze a trail toward far and unexplored regions. Socialism is adventure, not achievement ; but it is surely the noblest adventure, and undertaken hi the surest expec- tation of attaining a righteous goal, of any quest that has summoned the human spirit since history began. II From the citadel of his security, the socialist con- vert listens with more amusement than chagrin to the assaults on his creed from various quarters. Now that he has exorcised fear lest the historic antagonism be- tween socialism and religion be rooted in permanent truth, neither political oppositions nor ethical criti- cisms distress him. Accusing voices cry, on the one hand, that socialism rests on the fatal delusion that hu- manity may be re-created by external means, assert on the other that the New Order demands an im- possible change in human nature. His faith is attacked, now as a product of scientific materialism, now as Utopian sentimentality. Some foresee in it a lax state of self- 276 THE CHOICE: AND AFTER indulgent ease, others an intolerable despotism. These accusations cannot all be true ; and socialists, blown on from directions so diverse, find it pertinent to remem- ber that a system which incurs contradictory criticisms at the same moment, probably has its source in that region below logic where all contradictions are united. This is the region whence living forces proceed; and that socialism is a living force rather than a doctri- naire theory could not be better demonstrated than by the opposing animosities it awakes. These animosities are to be sure the central intellectual tragedy of our day ; but instead of disheartening us, they may neutral- alize each other, and nerve us to the effort at dispel- ling the misconceptions on which they rest. Such effort is the chief opportunity of the modern thinker, states- man, revolutionist, or man of prayer. In like manner the dissensions encountered within the socialist movement become welcome tokens of its vigor. Numerous and virulent, these dissensions ! A man may give patronizing academic allegiance to socialist theory, and abide in peace ; if he identifies himself with social- ist action, it behooves him to be firm of soul. For in this vast movement which has left the closet of the phi- losopher for the open field of politics there is as much tumult and clash as in a racing tide. One need only look over the collection l of documents edited by R. C. K. Ensor, to see the varied reactions of social- ism on a picked lot of brilliant minds. The records of socialist congresses display the refreshing vehemence 1 Modern Socialism. 277 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER with which people divided by tenuous distinctions can sling language at each other. The issues are practical and vital. How far shall patriotism be recognized ? May peasant proprietorship be indorsed? How about op- portunist policy ? Shall some social reforms be encour- aged, or must all alike be repudiated as flank move- ments on the part of privilege ? To what extent will private ownership be tolerated in the socialized com- munity? Questions are theoretical to-day, practical to- morrow ; to follow socialist propaganda is to realize the amazing rapidity with which they pass from the field of speculation on to that of debatable issues, and the passionate acrimony of the discussions they educe. In- deed, the lusty bitterness of socialist factions is a pop- ular scandal and cause of many a pleasant scoff at the implications of the name. Socialism in truth has as many sects as Christianity, each abusing the other, as usual, in direct proportion to the closeness of their resemblance. Nor is a uniform socialist theory any more likely to emerge than a uni- form.Christianity emerged from the quarrels of the early Church. The Marxians frequently remind one of their master's description of Lord Palmerston, for they well " know how to conciliate a democratic phraseology with oligarchic views " and methods. But in vain do they try to impose as rigid a uniformity on the party as the Curia is just now pressing, on its unlucky priests, and show like alacrity in scenting heresies. Differences intensify as the movement grows strong. Theories cherished in one decade are scouted in another. For 278 THE CHOICE: AND AFTER instance, a tendency can be discerned, even among Marxians, to evade the theory of surplus value. Nor for that matter was the master always consistent with himself. Jaures has cleverly pointed out the simplicity with which Marx at times contradicted and even dis- avowed his own pet theory of the widening gulf be- tween proletariat and bourgeoisie. If we look beyond the more solidified and coherent phases of the political movement, to the nebulous mat- ter that after all affords part of its illumination as it sweeps onward through space, the divergences increase. They centre of course around our old issue. Some men are socialists because they believe the race to be grow- ing so altruistic that people will by degrees volunta- rily abjure privilege ; others because they believe it to be developing so swiftly in enlightened selfishness that the dispossessed will soon be able to claim their own. The first group desire to see the end achieved by the appeal to moral idealism alone ; the other depends with equal confidence on the rising pressure of class-interests. So marked is the growth of this second group, to be sure, that the idealist is forced in self-defense to trans- plant his optimism into the soil of economic reality; yet socialism lends itself with entire ease to the theo- ries of either school. No sensible man would deny the title of socialist to thinkers like Lowes Dickinson or Walter Eauschenbusch ; yet these, and many others who stand to lose that the cause may win, hold the doctrines of economic determinism and class-struggle in horror. This book accepts these doctrines; but 1 279 THE FUTURE OF CHAEACTER the construction here put on them will be foolishness and irritation to many a good Marxian into whose hands it may happen to fall. Whether in matters of tactics, of programs, or of ideals, the bitter conten- tions among socialists give color to the common view so complacently reiterated, that socialism means anything or nothing, and that the public may defer consideration of it till its exponents are agreed among themselves. Yet in all the shifting play of opinion and speculation, the central socialist principle, the necessity to social welfare that a large proportion at least of wealth-pro- ducing wealth be socially owned, stands solid as a rock. As time goes on, as the idea escapes from mere deductive idealism and relates itself more and more intimately to the realities of economic evolution, its solidity becomes increasingly apparent. And all this circling of thought around the central point, these free and contradictory energies of contradictory assertions, what are they but index and proof of the vitality of the whole conception ? The intensity of inconsistent emotions is a sign of immaturity, but it is a sign of growth. Socialism to its adherents is not merely theory but faith, and the doom of faith is upon it : faith, which does not wing its flight afar in distant skies, but is ever tossed about like a little ship on the stormy sea of what Newman calls " the wild, fierce, restless intel- lect of man." If we have here no small wizened man- made theory but a faith of God's ordaining, all history goes to show that the slow process of its victory must be exactly what we witness in our generation. THE CHOICE: AND AFTER A movement finds itself as it matures, and we may look for increasing liberality and coherence within the socialist ranks. At the same time we may be assured that so long as the movement thrives, new differences will arise as the old are settled. What we' are engaged in is no less than the conscious evolution of a new world, and the process will involve more and larger conflicting issues than men have ever had to settle before. This process will have a value, in the educa- tion and stimulus of the common will and mind, greater than we can possibly imagine. Meanwhile, we may be fairly certain that the two chief ways of interpreting socialism, Utopian and idealist on the one hand, ma- terialistic and fatalist on the other, will be as conspic- uous when the time has come for retrospect as they now are in forecast. The future historians to whom falls the inspiriting task of recounting the great change will constitute two opposing schools: "Note," say the more severe, "how impersonal and inevitable were those august economic forces which in the fullness of time necessitated revolution, and by a process sure as the circling of the earth, transformed the irrational capitalistic civilization of the nineteenth century into the better-organized industrial democracy in which our lot is cast ; and admire the majesty of natural law, unaffected by the petty whims or plans of men " ; " Nay ! It was the free will of man and his spiritual passion that wrought the whole change ! " retort the Carlyles and Greens of the future : " See in the liter- ature of the times of transition how rich and poor alike THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER chafed restlessly under their bondage. Watch the birth and growth of the pure impulse of brotherhood, fal- tering and visionary at first, increasingly practical and efficient as it advances, till it dares greatly, and com- mits democracy to the last venture of faith. See the social compunction of the privileged hastening to meet more than halfway the developing intelligence of the unprivileged, till men enter into pact with a divine reck- lessness to retrieve the crimes and absurdities of the past, and to establish the reign of Fellowship, through the cooperative commonwealth." $ So will each school bend itself, according to its lights, to the stirring narrative of the great process. The theme will be the same, the tales will differ in empha- sis and interpretation. Yet both will be true, and neither true without the other. m In that double interpretation which socialism invites, religious and liberal socialists must find their strength, their peace, and their incentive. They will welcome their creed as a partial but real fulfillment of the hopes of the world's dreamers ; they will see in it also the scientific summary of a process with which dreamers or idealists have had singularly little to do, except as they have learned to identify themselves with the will of that Great Idealist who both hides and reveals Himself behind the veil of natural law. So they will arise and play their parts like men ; for at this point we must reassert once more the responsibility of the THE CHOICE: AND AFTER individual, of you, and you, and me. The 'sense of personal duty clinches the conviction of the religious socialist. He still appreciates intensely the cogency of the doubts that torment the critic. None feels so vividly that socialism might and may be a moral dis- aster, a triumph of false legalism, denying the soul, and establishing itself in the arrogant, and dangerous power of the flesh. But should so melancholy a consum- mation occur, religion will have only itself to blame; for it has opportunity to infuse its own dynamic into the new order so evidently on the way, and to make socialism an expression of its own soul. The citizen whom the socialized community will most deeply need is the man so alive to the values of the Spirit that he would accept no escape from social ills, however alluring, did he not see in it the best promise for the future of character. It is this man, when after heart-searching inquiry, he finally dedicates himself loyally and with religious consecration to the socialist ideal, who can both prepare the way rightly for the cooperative commonwealth, and rightly maintain it. Socialism, like all saviors of the race, may come either to condemn or to bless, to judge or to redeem. What aspect its advent shall bear is for us to determine ; for the type which the inevitable social changes of the future will assume depends fundamentally on the sort of people who decide to further those changes, and on their attitude and work during the period of transition. CHAPTER V RECOVERIES TIME was when our flight into the future might have been judged of the Icarus variety, borne by wings sure to melt as they soared. But we are less scornful of flying than we were. Long was the way from Icarus to Leonardo da Vinci, who schemed and dreamed wings for men through his whole thwarted life ; long also from Leonardo to the triumphant aeroplane. Icarus was a sentimentalist if you will, but in the marvel- ous Renascence brain of Leonardo the science of the future was teeming. That science had to wait its hour ; now that the times are fulfilled, dreamers may set them- selves with fresh courage to fashioning on scientific principles wings that shall carry them toward the good land To-Be. We socialists feel ourselves borne through the sky serenely and securely by the white wings of vision and purpose. As we look off, the luminous prospect of present and future is spread before us, revealed in true relations and proportions. And not least of our joys is the discovery of the real value in much that we had left behind. We had turned in sorrow and perhaps impatience from the enthusiasms of our youth and the convictions of the elder generation. But "there shall 284 RECOVERIES never be one lost good," and all we had once cherished awaits us at a further stage of our journey. Iconoclasm has its place. We have needed the cour- age to bid the most stable and treasured institutions a glad care-free farewell ; but we must at the same time honor the heritage they bequeath, for unless the past lives in us we shall not live at all. It is the fas- cinating task of the social psychologist to discover the point of growth in each tentative social expression, each tenacious moral code ; he must discriminate in their perpetual dying the eternal living. Socialists have been peculiarly slow to learn this lesson. The Revolution tossed the past to the dust- heap ; the liberalism of the succeeding epoch let it lie there for the most part ; and the more violent social- ist schools to this day frequently amuse themselves by kicking it where it lies. Yet the wiser vision of evo- lutionary days knows that we must obey tradition if we would insure progress. We must remember that socialism as an economic theory got its grip only at the moment when Marx taught it to outgrow the rev- olutionary dogmatisms of its youth and to recognize its true strength as a necessary product of capitalism itself. Socialism as a spiritual passion can prevail only when in like manner it claims organic union with the spiritual evolution behind it. For example : the word " mediaeval " is a term of contempt or reproach on most socialist lips. Yet the mediaeval revival in literature, religion, and art, which has persisted against such heavy odds for the^past 285 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER hundred years, has had a real significance ; and we need to learn that the ages of romance have as much to teach to the sociologist as to the artist or the priest. We shall never get at their worth to us through prim or sentimental imitations; we cannot profit by the past through copying it, whether in Pre-Raphaelite pastiches, picturesque rituals, or artificially fostered handicrafts. We may no more hope to revive mediaeval trade-guilds than to renew the quaint charm of the Primitives, or to encounter in real life a Giles or a Leo. None the less, we should seek and nourish the liv- ing force which inspired these early types. We want no dilettante Pre-Raphaelitism in ethics ; yet the curi- ously common union of mediaeval enthusiasm with so- cial radicalism is no sentimental folly ; and all good socialists should catch the point of that orthodox Marx- ian, William Morris, who contended that ever since the Middle Ages the race has been on the wrong tack, and that we must go back to recover the trail. What Morris cared for was the joy in life and labor, independent of worry about reward ; such was in those days a prerogative no less of religious than of indus- trial life. Monasticism held distinct prophetic hints for socialists. Its vast services to agriculture and build- ing show how far it was in its best phases from for- bidding active life, and prove impressively the immense productive force inherent in communal organization of labor. The throngs, including so many choice spirits, who through protracted centuries withdrew happily to the shelter of the monastery, were seeking less a 286 EECOVERIES chance for meditative indolence than such freedom from worldly cares as the Master had enjoined. Mo- nastic life did for the few what we hope socialism will do for the many ; it assigned them fixed place, in an organic group which regulated socially all economic balances that affected the individual, and so released him from responsibility for measuring his own serv- ices. Despite that value of its hints, however, monasti- cism had two defects which prevent its interesting modern democracy: contemplation was after all cen- tral to it, action incidental ; and it attained its ends through the corporate segregation of elect individuals. The Franciscan movement, on the other hand, carries us out into the open. But we cannot rest even with Francis ; for the goal of our desires is no militia, how- ever voluntary, of spiritual aristocrats trained to fight a losing battle against perpetual odds, but a universal fellowship of effective service. Yet if we combine the principle of monasticism, the communal organization of life and labor, with the Franciscan standards of un- worldliness and devotion carried on spontaneously among normal men, we gain a light that may well illumine our path. To profit by it, we must add thought to sympathy ; for it takes thinking to apply the prin- ciple of conduct which has been proved best for the individual, to social and collective life. This is what we have to do. Certain principles have been tested by the ages, and absolutely proved to point the way to productive life and peace. This demonstration is 287 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER concluded ; what remains is to create conditions in which these principles shall no longer contradict the economic structure, but shall penetrate and transform it. The call to perfection is ever the same ; it is the function of the twentieth century to reach the point where not only an elect few but the whole race shall be free to follow it. n The nearer we approach the heart of things, the more we shall recognize that socialism is a true con- servative force. Let us take up this thesis at the point where it appears most paradoxical, the socialist at- titude toward property. According to socialists, the next step in human pro- gress is to hound the instinctive respect for the sacred- ness of private property till it shrink abashed and worsted to its lair. Hideous, unclean instinct, chief source in our analysis of the manifold oppressions in the world ! How rich an anthology of invective against greed for ownership can be culled from all wise saints and sages, past Plato and the early Church Fathers even to our own day! How keen the longing to be rid of this passion, which is the root of that desire to escape from civilization, at work in modern life since the time of Rousseau ! What wonder if our sympathies are all with those brave spirits who have revolted from the love of property, with Tolstoy, with Thoreau, with Francis, with all who hate and flee ? We are past the point of invective, past the point 288 RECOVERIES of flight. The cooperative commonwealth is on the way ! In preparation for it, what more heartening task than to eradicate the old tenacious pleasure in exclu- sive possessions? We must put the property-greed to shame by appeal to that noble joy in sharing which must supplant the joy in owning before the will that obtains in paradise can be realized on earth. So star- tling a reversal of standards calls simultaneously for legislative enactment and for inner .discipline; with " serious faith and inward glee," and with the inspir- iting sense of adventure, we bend ourselves to the achievement. Yet any attempt to criticize the accepted ethics of property occasions a terrified recoil. And social radi- cals make a bad mistake if they hear in such recoil merely the insulted outcry of crass egotism. Their analysis must get deeper than that; for Carlyle's "Adamites" can never hold the heart of the world again. No instinct so potent throughout history as the prop- erty-sense can have been in itself either evil or delu- sive. It has developed at too great cost and has had by-products too deplorable, that we should lightly re- nounce the goods for the sake of which Nature has judged these sorrows worth enduring. Desire for property has been the chief force that has led man on from savagery to civilization. It has been the incentive in progress, the base of marriage, the bond of religion. It appears as soon as the cave- man shapes his tools or the nomad nurtures his flocks ; THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER it differentiates man from beast. At bottom, this pas- sion represents both man's accepted responsibility toward the resources of Nature and his grateful de- pendence on her. It gives him his rightful place in the scheme of things: no parasite or observer, but a guardian, fulfilling the command given him from the beginning, to dress and keep the earth with jealous care. He is not, like the animals, to pass over her sur- face like a shadow, appearing unnoted and vanishing unmissed ; wherever his touch falls she responds, and we may picture her waiting through the long ages, of- fering her inhabitants an abiding-place but hardly a home, till the impulse be born, competent to transform the wilderness into the fertile field and the jungle into the city. Her wealth increases and her glory brightens as during the centuries man's craving to possess spurs him to enhance and develop to the uttermost the gifts she brings. This craving leads to the extension of per- sonality, for a man's possessions are the outward ex- pression of the slow-growing precious sense of selfhood. He could not have realized his own existence otherwise than through such extension of his own being to the inanimate which he has been able to gather into his em- brace ; not otherwise could the earth have become his in- timate friend and in a certain true sense his creation. Property is then as sacred as the most sententious conservative conceives. It is the gauge and witness of our fellowship with the Creator, and we must learn to reverence it more, not less, deeply as civilization goes on. 290 EECOVERIES One hardly sees, moreover, how this reverence could have been developed except on individualistic lines. Certainly to strengthen it has been the chief function of ( that industrial democracy under which we live. It is fashionable to decry our phase of social development, partly because we are honestly shocked by its attend- ant evils, partly because it fails to satisfy our hunger for romance, and largely because its emphasis on material values and resources fills the idealist with distaste. Yet to invest the passion for the acquisition of wealth with a religious sanctity is at bottom a superb achievement. The industrial age, so inferior at first sight to the feu- dal and militant ages, has displaced from the centre of our admiration the man who destroys by the man who creates, and it has done well. Scientific efficiency, the conservation of natural forces, the study, how to increase riches most sanely, abundantly, and swiftly, these are not in last analysis materialistic aims. They are engendered by the magnificent modern trust in nature as a friend and not a foe to the spirit, and are charged with the deepening intuition of the im- manence of the divine in the natural. It is not only the practical experience but the spiritual vision of the last two centuries which has helped us to comprehend more fully the sacredness of wealth and to master the secrets of its production. This training we must never disavow ; and the time will come when we shall do jus- tice to that individualistic democracy under which mastership over the processes of production and power in gathering riches has come for the first time to 291 THE FUTUKE OF CHARACTER constitute as high a title to honor as the achievements of physical force. Meanwhile, this idealist side of plutocracy is not the only one : the hand of Mammon rests heavily, as in Watts's awful picture, on the heads of youth and maiden ; and socialists are not alone in shrinking hor- rified from the evils that follow in the train of un- checked permission to pursue personal gain. They be- come, however, audacious scouts of a thought not yet accredited, when they propose to limit this permission, demanding that free competition be displaced by co- operation, and that the power of the individual to amass wealth be regulated sharply by the collective will. Nor can we wonder if people who revere prop- perty on the high dispassionate grounds just indicated find this demand alarming. But wait! Is it really. the socialists who threaten property ? Listen to our old friend, the " Communist Manifesto " : You are horrified at our proposition to do away with pri- vate property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine tenths of the population. Its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the neces- sary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority. Some force to that. In a society in which every tenth man still dies a pauper, outcries concerning the sacrosanct rights of property ring strangely on the ear. 292 RECOVERIES We socialists seek not to destroy but to fulfill. We want to strike out the adjective " private " that the full force of the noun " property" may be realized. The property-instinct is holy and creative ; but we perceive that it must die to live, obeying the secret, universal law. The very keenness with which we feel the value of property privileges makes us desire that they be no longer restricted to the few, but thrown open widely as the gifts of the good earth. This is why we hold that a time has come to begin a process, which can be carried on as slowly as wisdom dictates, for the socialization of all wealth-producing wealth, confi- dent that only as this process advances will the moral as well as physical benefits of possessions be put within the reach of the majority. Socialism, scrupulously preserving that instinct of responsibility toward mother earth which, as we have seen, is the crowning prerogative of manhood, seeks to enlarge its scope and purify its aim. For ownership is none the less ownership because it is collective. De- mocracy is reacting in an extraordinary way on the idea of self, at once deepening and widening it. The property-instinct is, as we have just seen, an intrinsic part of this idea, and it must share in that deepening and widening. Like many instincts inherited from the childhood of the race, carefully nurtured, yet to a de- gree held in abeyance during the individualistic phase of development, it will not come to its own till it has found itself in the larger life. Progress is spiral ; some day the prophetic promise of the old days of tribal 293 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER communism will be fulfilled. When this happens, and not till then, the craving for property will be an un- mixed force for good in the protection and advance- ment of civilization. V Meantime the long divisive experience through which respect for property has been developed has been a necessary training-school; nor does any reasonable so- cialist expect that the principle of private ownership can ever be wholly dispensed with. The disciplines af- forded by the more intensive forms of possession will not be lost to us ; for as far as the eye can penetrate, such wealth as can be held for consumption will be privately owned. Nor is it likely that even as regards production the private factor will wholly disappear. The complete arrival of socialism is no more a fixed point than the full leaving of a tree. Nature never completes one evolutionary process before starting in on another ; her methods seem painfully ragged and untidy to a precise mind ; she is content if a principle be firmly rooted as a social force and widely even if not exclusively operative. But it is a very educational moment when growth is first visible, and at such a moment we live : the instinct for communal as distin- guished from private ownership is already at work with triumphant success in limited areas ; it increases under our eyes. Looking back, to days when it was more embryonic than now, we can see that it has never been absent. Modest yet not insignificant achievement has always been inspired by the impulse to add to the common RECOVERIES stock ; this not only in such forms as, let us say, " Par- adise Lost " or the Wagnerian cycle, but on more prac- tical lines such as scientific discoveries. Under the modern stress of the most individualistic stimuli ever experienced by society, all ownership that has savor for respectable people is still common to a limited degree. Not only shame but a deeper instinct would destroy a man's pleasure in a delicate dish set before him alone while his comrades at the table ate coarsely. Few women like to wear an expensive dress while their own sisters are poverty-stricken. The family remains largely a communal group, and we may notice that the impulse to share which it engenders reaches far beyond the immediate or the visible. There is something potent, religious, in the feeling of the scion of an ancient house toward that abode in which he is for a brief moment sojourner and guardian, while knowing that it belongs to no paltry son of a day but to an unbroken line. Ancestral houses are at a discount in a democracy ; but the impulse of stewardship, so nobly successful when developed along hereditary lines, may well be a power equally strong when we extend it laterally, so to speak, beyond those of a man's own blood, to all his brethren and successors in the spirit. It is delightful to see how freely the best members of the fortunate classes are coming to confess that they can no longer take the simple pleasure of their fore- bears in personal possessions or immunities. On the other hand, among evolved and sensitive people, group- ownership affords a peculiarly pure type of happiness, 295 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER and enjoyment of possessions increases almost geomet- rically in proportion to the copartnership of others. The British Museum is more lovingly tended than any private library ; and bibliophiles even now collect with as much zest for communal uses as for their own. The feeling of a civilized man for his church or his uni- versity is certainly more liberating and radiant than that for his yacht or his automobile. One of the best things, indeed, about an institution like a college is the opportunity for such experience that it offers. The joy of sons or daughters returning to their alma mater emancipates and uplifts : the college is a part of their personality; it is entwined with the very fibres of their being ; theirs for use and delight, theirs for service and fostering. And the best of their pleasure is that hosts of comrades, dead, living, and unborn, share the pos- session with them. In like manner, the rapture aroused by visiting a great public reserve like the Yosemite is touched by a religious joy which the more egotistic sat- isfaction in one's own lawn or garden is impotent to stir. The pleasure we take in egotistic forms of pos- session is increasingly shadowed by restlessness, com- punction, and distrust ; the pleasure inspired by com- munal goods has a vitality that belongs to what in us is immortal. True, there is ground enough for discouragement. Any one scanning ruefully the mess left in a private park thrown open to the mob for a holiday may well feel that the irresponsibility of the beast is not far from us, and may be pardoned if he vows to defer the 296 RECOVERIES cooperative commonwealth as long as possible. Yet parks in Switzerland, bearing the pretty inscription, " Put under the Protection of the Public," suffer no such devastations ; is the contrast possibly due to the presence of the real property-instinct in the one case, and the peculiar absence of it when people are let loose in a region owned by some remote Olympian, toward which they bear no personal relation whatever ? A sense of ownership is a sobering thing. Students in a new college library, rebuked for shaking ink over the floors, naively defended themselves on the score that the library was not theirs. Patient instruction in collective ownership bore its fruit, and floors in " our " library are now kept imnfaculate even by freshmen. It is obvious that a long and sharp discipline awaits us before we shall be ready for common possessions: many a generation must pass before we outgrow ex- travagance, greed, irresponsibility, and the sheer wicked habit of waste. But this is a reason for pressing rather than delaying the training. So does the passion for ownership slowly sink deeper, enlarge its scope, and lose life to find it again in a so- cialized transformation. When thoroughly exalted into a common privilege and sobered by the consciousness of a common duty, it will come for the first time to its own. For it is not sentimental cant but scientific fact that nothing is really possessed till it be shared ; and the wider the sharing the truer the possession. The one thing we all surely possess is the sky ; and if we had to choose between the roof-tree and the 297 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER open heaven, the roof -tree, for most of us, would have to go : Nichts anders sturzet dich in Hollenschlund hinein Als der verhazte Wort, (merk's wohl !) das Mein uud Dein. 1 Only the meek inherit the earth, and so long as we guard the goods of earth for that common inheritance we cannot be too acquisitive. Let us enhance our sense of the sacredness of property till it shall become im- possible for the least or weakest to find himself a homeless wanderer in this heritage which is his own. Ill Among the other restorf tions that await the good socialist is renewal of faith in the guides of his youth. Let him re-read his Mazzini, his Ruskin, his Nietzsche, his Tolstoy: the familiar pages gain a new signifi- cance in addition to their old charm. They had disap- pointed him sorely when he sought finality in them ; they acquire immense and permanent worth now, as the unconscious revelation of process ; for that quest of social justice through the " wilderness of a wide world in an atheistic century/' of which they are the bril- liant record, led straight to the socialist goal, and every positive ideal which the Masters urged falls into place as a vital factor in that great socialist synthesis where alone it can be fulfilled. True, one hardly hopes at first to lure the regiment which marches under the banner, " Abandon civiliza- 1 Angelus SUesius. RECOVERIES tion ! " into the socialist camp. For socialism refuses to give civilization up as a bad job, with either the recluse or the anarchist. Yet have we not seen that socialism promises the only true Return to Nature, albeit its Golden Age lie before and not behind ? Is not its final aim that power to achieve an unfettered individuality for which Ibsen, Nietzsche, and the rest were clamoring? In the socialist state we hope that the way will be open for all of us to become supermen, and we may advance on the road thither with solemn gayety equal to that of Zarathustra, untroubled by compunction, since assured that neither we nor society is to blame if the majority are too lazy to follow. So- cialism may heal society in its inward parts, for it may cure that disease of self-consciousness which has for so long affected our industrial vitals, and may render the performance of economic function as majestically auto- matic as the large and liberal harmonies of nature. So it may meet in a practical and sensible way the cravings to regain the simplicities of Eden, may reconcile at last individual freedom with social usefulness, and may pro- vide a social order in which all the more decent people in Ibsen's dramas might actually be reconciled to life. But of course the clearest previsions of socialism are to be found in that nobler group among modern idealists who have sought not to abandon civilization but to moralize it. Gather their various counsels to- gether : one has practically drawn up the socialist pro- gram. In view of the extraordinary fullness with which the most detached and fertile minds of the last 299 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER century anticipated the very creed they disavowed, their rejection of socialism appears astonishing. The explanation, however, has been anticipated by the whole course of this discussion. As we saw at the outset, socialism could not find a firm foothold till the social structure and the mental life were saturated with evo- lution and democracy; and not one of these men of imagination and vision gave his allegiance to both principles. Their social cosmology was Ptolemaic rather than Copernican, and they all agreed in trying to reconcile their disturbing and awe-inspiring glimpses of a new order pressing toward the light, with a mystical and static view of the universe. Nor can we blame their recoil from the new ideas. Democracy was confounding itself, now with that cheap liberalism which all clear-sighted men denounced as the very source of our social evils, now with anarchy and revo- lution. Evolutionary doctrines carried with them in the economic as in the physical sphere a connotation of materialistic fatalism. Time had to accomplish its work. When the true bearing of these doctrines had been made plain, their trend toward socialism was mani- fest. Just in proportion as social idealists approach the democratic and evolutionary point of view does their work to-day ring modern ; and by the same sign, just in this proportion does it draw near to socialism. Dec- ade by decade, from Carlyle in the thirties to Arnold in the opening eighties, one can watch the slow growth of confidence in the plain people. It is the glory of 300 EECOVERIES Mazzini that this faith was native to him, and had he supplemented it by the evolutionary vision there would have been nothing antiquated about his writing to- day. Even Kuskiii, losing heart in his gallant effort to arouse the conscience of the privileged, presented during the seventies in " Fors Clavigera " an appeal to the masses for help in social redemption, at once comic in its misapprehension of working-class psychology and touching in its forlorn hope. But it was Matthew Arnold, audacious and illumined spirit, who finally set the aristocratic tradition at defiance in both lines. Himself aristocrat ingrain, he was yet borne onward by the tide, and first among the dreamers bade wel- come, sober if terrified, to that flux in human affairs which was carrying us, beyond the epoch of concen- tration when aristocracies are in order, into the demo- cratic age. Despite his ignorant and contemptuous treatment of the People in " Culture and Anarchy," a " Power not himself " forced him to recognize the growing importance of their role ; and the title of a late essay, " Ecce Convertimur ad Gentes," may be taken as a significant turning-point, to mark the very moment when English thought abandoned its reluc- tant fears and in the person of its keenest critic and most civilized son, turned from privileged to proleta- riat as the hope of the future. By his passion for equality, his faith in the State, his quest for a social as distinguished from a political program, Arnold is a socialist in all but name. His social criticism be- longs mainly to the decade of the seventies; it marks 301 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER the culmination of the long unconscious process by which, ever since the days of " Sartor Resartus " just before the dawn of the Victorian era, the honest but always deliberate Anglo-Saxon mind has been log- ically impelled toward the very faith from which it shrank. A few years more, and William Morris was preaching at street -corners, the Fabians had begun their stimulating crusade, and Continental socialism was invading the British Isles, to receive inevitable local modifications even while it taught an invaluable lesson. We socialists, who take keen interest in survey- ing letters from the social point of view, love to look back over the whole process from our post in the twentieth century, and we find in the vivid tentative literature of the century that precedes us a record singularly complete and impressive of the great tran- sition which has ended in the clearer outlook and more inspiring conviction of these good later days. IV Renewal of comradeship with theorists is much ; better still is renewal of comradeship with men of ac- tion. This joy also awaits the socialist if he is a reasonable being. Socialists are not always reasonable ; they are prone bitterly and impatiently to decry phi- lanthropy and reform. Nor can we wholly blame them, since our own zeal for both grew sadly lukewarm when we tried to consider them an adequate remedy for industrial wrong. And so far as philanthropy is simply a sedative to the public conscience, and reform a mere 302 RECOVERIES series of palliatives, we must still regard them as a force inhibiting progress, and their valiant devotees as laborers all unwittingly on the side of darkness. But while these dangers are not imaginary, it is obvious that philanthropy and reform have other more permanent and valuable functions. Considered as ends, they may be misleading fallacies ; considered as means, they are necessary instruments. As social develop- ment goes on, they prove more and more to be no com- forting anodyne but a quickening stimulant. They educate where no socialist propaganda can reach, and for one person whom they lull, they awaken a dozen. Even the most shallow surface philanthropy plays an enlightening role. How establish a hospital for blind babies without being forced to turn a searchlight on that dark region where questions of sexual morality are so inextricably tangled with industrial problems? How enter on a campaign to insure the workman against industrial accidents without encountering that dogged meanness on the part of a certain class of manufacturers, which calls for wider-spread protective legislation ? One watches this process on every hand. We need not haggle over a name. When our desired social order arrives, it may have been approached so unconsciously that it will refuse to call itself socialist at all. Nevertheless, if the historian, looking back from its pleasant leisure, tries to retrace the path that led men there he will be able to tell dramatically enough how swift and steady was the logic of the process. Once, poverty was construed as result of the sin or 303 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER weakness of the poor. Soon, as pitying passion swept into broader channels under the influence of evolution and democracy, the cause was traced farther back and found in the sins of the rich. Presently this imperfect diagnosis was discarded in turn, in favor of the ex- igencies of that industrial order to which all men were captive. Presently it is seen that to transform this order is within our power ; and when this inspiring conviction is reached, modern methods supplant me- diaeval, philanthropy yields to reform, and reform itself passes through swiftly changing phases till it leads to that other country across the socialist border, where already we happy pilgrims stand with a goodly and increasing host. The philanthropic movement, then, is quickening the hearts of all its chosen to see beyond its own con- fines. And it has further values also. Surely, for one thing, its reactions on the poor need not wholly be de- spised. Even at their simplest face value, they are blessed ; why should the most ardent socialist sneer at the help and comfort given to individuals? To trans- plant pallid little flowers of the slums for a week to country soil, to help tenement-house mothers make the best of their slender resources, is a pursuit at lowest as innocuous as golf or bridge. So long as battles exist, the wounded must be cared for, and Red Cross work may well be sustained even by the most vigorous sup- porters of the Peace Movement. Moreover, these ex- pressions of the art of pity have more than face value. They bear a real if limited relation to the deeper task 304 EECOVERIES of social reconstruction. For philanthropy, as it be- comes democratized, does in detail at least afford some effective help to misery ; and just in proportion as the burden is lifted off the poor, however slightly, by ac- cident insurance, housing reform, or what you will, we shall gain a proletariat more enlightened and vig- orous and better equipped for its God-given task of leading the social revolution. But the ultimate function of our activities in philan- thropy and reform is wider than we have yet signaled : they are training all their advocates practically for the good day in which they do not believe. We made melancholy fun a while ago of that spirit of organization which to an almost ludicrous degree suppresses personal impulses in both charity and in- dustry. Yet if that spirit has taken away from us a beloved past, it owes us the promise of a fairer future ; if the complex mechanism which a social democracy will call for is to operate smoothly, success will be largely due to this very development ; for with all its trying disciplines, all its unlovely features, such devel- opment is no mechanical fact ; it is a spiritual necessity. Kropotkin's idea, that voluntary associations will in time prove competent to administer all social interests and will take the place of any central government, may well seem extreme ; yet the informal groups form- ing on every hand for social service surely prefigure such types of voluntary cooperation to public ends as may some day control large social interests. Our phi- lanthropic activities not only purge the vision : they 305 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER train the powers ; they are phases in the swift rise of a social ethic which is transforming not merely the face of our civilization but the habits of our souls. We are learning to live together ; and when the lesson shall have been thoroughly learned, socialism will present no difficulties, for it will operate as a matter of course. It is possible that those innumerable fibres of red tape, which seem to entangle our very souls, are the "organic filaments" which Carlyle saw weaving the new web while the old is rotting. Let us take heart of grace. Committees multiply, oppressing us cruelly, suppressing us sadly ; yet through the very cumber- someness and seeming futility of their machinery they offer the best possible occasion for mastering the methods and attitude called for by the coopera- tive commonwealth. When we are bored with our meticulous fellow members, rasped by temperamental antagonisms, depressed by the discrepancy between means and aims, we may remember that we are under a necessary drill in collective activity. Yes, though we chafe like wild creatures pinioned in a net of motions and amendments, though we gasp like a swimmer submerged in oceans of words, let us lift our weary eyes toward that coming state whose success or failure will depend on our power to work together harmoni- ously. Our handling of the situation is the test of our fitness to be socialist citizens. All the capacity we can develop is useful now, the delicacies of self- subordination, the audacities of self-assertion, the 306 RECOVERIES power to reach our ends through the seeming initi- ative of others, the tact, forbearance, tenacity, but these traits will be more useful later. Each discovery of means to expedite the movements of large bodies, each graceful compromise in non-essentials, each cheer- ful persistence in essentials, all open-mindedness, all fidelity to truth have their part in strengthening our loyalty to the Whole, and preparing us for harmonious and effective living in a social democracy. And if the rank and file of social workers on organ- ized lines become unconsciously trained in socialized living, no less than in the disinterested and social point of view, still more striking is the development by this means of the qualities of leadership impera- tively demanded by the future. Whither shall the socialist state look for its leaders? The question is constantly asked and skeptically an- swered. Of a bureaucracy we will have nothing. Un- less leadership can be a natural growth, vital, sensi- tive, disinterested, democratic, the whole structure of our cooperative commonwealth will collapse like a house of cards. Now the art of leadership grows more difficult as civilization advances ; and the savage who can play the part of chief quijbe effectively to his sim- ple tribe would be hardly more at a lo^s than, let us say, Gladstone or Cavour, if asked to guide the im- mensely sensitive and complicated social organization of the future. 307 THE FUTUKE OF CHARACTER One is obliged to confess that current skepticism is more or less justified if one looks for possible leaders to the ranks of the socialists themselves, at least as they have been in the United States until recently. Indeed, it may be even questioned whether they would make the best citizens in a social democracy. That sympathetic critic, Mr. Herbert Croly, has a pertinent remark in " The Promise of American Life " : Professional socialists may cherish the notion that their battle is won as soon as they can secure a permanent pop- ular majority in favor of a socialist policy ; but the con- structive national democrat cannot logically accept such a comfortable illusion. The action of a majority composed of the ordinary type of convinced socialists could and would in a few years do more to make socialism impossible than could be accomplished by the best and most prolonged efforts of a majority of malignant anti-socialists. Socialists may preach the socialist state with elo- quence ; they may even bring it in. But it is highly questionable whether, at least in the United States of America, they would be able to manage it. They are occupied with denunciation and propaganda rather than with the problems of constructive statesmanship ; at their best the stamp of the doctrinaire and the theo- rist is still upon them ; at their average, it must be confessed that they are sometimes sadly lazy about self -discipline and quarrelsome in action. Miss Addams, in " Twenty Years at Hull House," describes with vivid sympathy the group of eager thinkers who used to wile away the nights a quarter-century ago with 308 RECOVERIES clever visionary discussions of social theory. Very quietly she remarks that as the years went on, and practical movements for social amelioration got act- ually under weigh, the effective and self-sacrificing leaders appeared, not from among these stimulating theorists, but from the ranks of plain Chicago business men. The same story is repeated still. The mental traveler who leaves the camp of the reformers for that of the socialists is dazed, delighted, invigorated, so long as simple propaganda and discussion are the order of the day. Let the test of action come, and he watches, too often in vain, for the patient and far- seeing qualities of practical leadership. Yet why not in vain? It is in a different school from expectation and restless theory that these qualities are developed ! He must also echo the popular distrust of the usual type of leader evolved in contemporary politics ; and at this moment of discouragement he may well revert in love and relief to his old friends the reformers, who have known the discipline of the task while the new have rested in the joy of the vision. In the groups associated for definite ends of reform both the social conscience and the capacity for effective social action are growing with astonishing rapidity. Where shall we look for the destined leaders of the cooperative commonwealth ? Where, better than to the men and women trained in disinterested administra- tion of matters concerning social welfare : here and now fighting tuberculosis, building garden cities, plan- ning improved tenements, creating playgrounds, 309 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER administering settlements, organizing " Consumers' Leagues " and " Pittsburg Surveys " ? To these people, brotherhood has been more than a name. They are working practically and patiently to realize it in one little sphere or another, while the socialists have rev- eled in political propaganda and spicy journalism, and current commercialized politics have been chiefly pro- lific in graft. There is one other direction to which we may turn. Our curious generation is evoking the qualities of leadership on two lines diametrically opposed, social service and high finance ! The powers of generalship possessed by the Rockefellers and Morgans of the future will assuredly find plenty of scope in directing the vast energies of the cooperative commonwealth; nor need we doubt that pleasure in enterprise and fame will afford quite as much satisfaction to gentle- men of this order as they gain to-day from the fact even now more or less incidental to the best of them of accumulating money. But though the financier is being trained to-day pour cause, and will doubtless have his function, most of us turn with more sense of confidence to those other leaders of men, the social workers, who are probably the most characteristic as they are certainly the finest product of our modern democracy. For these have the exact traits that will be needed to head the communal governments of the future : the social point of view, involving keen in- sight into the necessities of healthy social and civic life ; the administrative experience and business ef- 310 KECOVERIES ficiency ; the ready intuition into social reactions and the quick and practiced powers of associated action toward impersonal ends. To these men, who practice fellowship while others talk of it, to these, who already obey what must be the guiding code of the New Order, even although faith in that order be not yet vouch- safed them, we must turn rather than to theorists or dreamers to administer that society which will rest on fellowship as on its corner-stone. Surely it is by a wonderful provision, albeit one proceeding like all else from the necessities of economic progress, that while the theorists are preaching the socialist state and indulging at times in very individualistic practices the segregation of philanthropic and social activities is producing the precise types to which that state must look for its leaders. So religious socialists regain reverence for their old comrades, even to the point of hailing them as mas- ters of the future. Apart from the passive movement of economic forces which drives us toward political so- cialism, their methods would never right our wrongs. The recognition of this fact has driven us out from the ranks of the reformers, to take our place frankly under the red flag. Yet those who sneer at philan- thropy and reform are out of touch with the realities of the unfolding order, and their doom may come when the civilization for which they so eagerly clamor shall reject their leadership and turn to those who, having been faithful over a few things, are fitted to be rulers over many. 311 THE FUTURE OF CHARACTER Thus a series of joyful surprises awaits in the full- ness of time the seeker who has left his own people and his father's house, yet is still a little wistful about the good things he has turned from. First, he finds that the future of his dreams holds promise of fulfill- ment to all the fairest aspirations and tradition of the religious past ; then, that the deepest instincts and reactions which have sustained the social order will remain the permanent props of life. The best elements in the teachings of his honored masters, precipitated from chaos, shine in ordered crystalline significance ; the old pursuits which he had sorrowfully abandoned renew more than their former value. Finally, appre- ciation of his former comrades in the social struggle is restored fourfold. They may not raise their eyes to his East ; none the less are they working in the cause of sunlight, as they pull away the piled-up corruptions that hide the heavens, and flash their lanterns at one point or another on the great task which all must unite to achieve. When that task shall be accomplished none will rejoice more earnestly than these ; and they who have learned in such intimate detail what building in- volves will be prepared perhaps better than any other men to be architects of the social structure of the future. PART IV THE FUTURE OF KELIGION PART IV. THE FUTURE OF RELIGION CHAPTER I SOCIALISM AND THEISM IT might seem that our story was finished ; for we have surely vindicated the chances of character under socialism when we have shown that the principles of the Beatitudes will no longer have to maintain them- selves against the trend of things, but will become as truly the law for social progress as they are now the law for individual holiness. Yet, wonderful though this change promises to be, it will not content us in itself. For ethics alone will never satisfy the human soul so long as the stars shine overhead. Socialists cannot be exonerated from the charge of stupidity on this point. It is natural enough that, impatient of the long tradition which preached a smug heaven to a proletariat in chains, crude spirits should in reaction deify the flesh and coin religion from revolt. Perhaps it is natural also that those who think on a higher level should claim to find in their creed a religious inspiration, an impelling power, a sustaining hope, a purifying emotion* Yet how can we help reminding them that no theory or system of purely human relations can in the long run offer a religion ? No thinker was ever yet satisfied with the 315 THE FUTUKE OF RELIGION description given by St. James. To do justly and love mercy is all very well. But how about walking humbly with one's God ? The quest for union with the Eternal is no delusion of the childhood of the race, to fade with the advance of day ; it is the deepest necessity of humanity's manhood. Socialism has derived much of its power from the fact that it supplied the need for ideal passion in a century when theological and mystical interests were driven into far recesses of existence by the ardor of scientific progress and the quest for material prosperity. So, grateful to a civilization wearily dominated by licensed greed is that image of a pacific and fraternal order which it holds steadily before us, that we can hardly wonder if people possessed by the vision confound their sense of release and relief with the peace that passeth understanding. Yet in vain did Leigh Hunt say to Shelley that humanity would find its true re- ligion when charity supplanted faith as a working force. In vain does that fine spirit, John Spargo, in his book on " The Spiritual Significance of Social- ism," tacitly assume with how many others that fraternal feeling translated into life is the Alpha and Omega of the religious consciousness. The burden of proof rests on the school of these thinkers, not on those of us who follow the evidence of all human history, in holding that the love of the brother seen does but spur man on to the love of the Unseen God. The listening ear of the race can never cease to hearken to a Voice that speaks out of the silences beyond the range of 316 SOCIALISM AND THEISM time and sense. The illation of economic and social forces to the travail of the soul is, we freely admit, more intimate and fundamental than pre- modern thought surmised ; yet spiritual activity is the blossom- ing of humanity's garden, at once the end of all en- richment of soil and culture of root, and the promise and parent of what fruit the race has to present. The desire to liberate the religious life is accordingly the highest if not the most compelling reason we have for socializing our democracy ; and we should regard that justice which our best powers are now bent to attain, less as an end in itself than as the preface to a higher religious evolution. For religion, like ethics, languishes to-day in bond- age. The imperative necessity of putting an end to the infamous conditions under which the majority are living, and of achieving a reasonable degree of social justice, more and more diverts the devout instincts of the heart from other aspiration. In spite of the just grievance of the radicals that the followers of the Great Revolutionist take no part in the work of emancipa- tion, the churches themselves feel the trend of the times. They shrink from drastic reform, but they oc- cupy themselves increasingly with practical ministra- tions. Preaching tends to mere humanitarianism, often empty enough. Institutional work, secular in type even if carried on in a guild-house, claims the energies of the faithful, and the clergy lament that executive duties leave them scant time to say their prayers. Who can wonder that a counter-cry to the socialists arises in 317 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION quarters where mystical traditions linger? In the general " social " crusade that now obtains in the churches, a relentless logic suspects no sign of quicken- ing life, but a deluded conformity on the part of the very strongholds of idealism to the general material- ism that threatens to engulf us. On the other hand, how honor the mystic who should shut his ears to the cry of the oppressed in a modern city, and dedicate himself to the pursuit of a meta- physical ideal or to the solitary Practice of the Presence of a heartless God ? St. Teresa is organizing settle- ments instead of convents ; St. Catherine of Genoa is head of a training school for nurses, which leaves her little leisure for ecstasies of " Pure Love." If by mate- rialism is meant a troubled preoccupation with bodily and social needs, the situation forces it on us all. II It is surely wise to speak out frankly. Were we permitted to read the secrets of that vast psychical activity which is coextensive with history, we should not be surprised to find that religion in the sense of direct experience by the spirit of man of the Spirit of God has been fainter during the last two centuries than at any preceding time in Christian story. If we may trust the records of the inner life, an immediate consciousness of God let us use the great term in all simplicity was far more common in the twelfth, thirteenth, or seventeenth century than it is to-day. Such a statement must of course be hazarded with 318 SOCIALISM AND THEISM full knowledge of its unverifiable nature. But even very devout people who live much in prayer now ha- bitually confess with sorrow that this consciousness is rarely attained. The sense of loss so common among the Victorians pointed to a real desolation : He is not risen, no ! He lies and moulders low ! Christ is not risen ! For one who expressed, many must have felt, many continue to feel, this hidden tragedy. " Doubtless thou art a God that hidest thyself," is the deep cry of the age. This prevalent blindness and blankness has been assigned to various causes. Is it fantastic to ascribe it in part to the miasma that' rises from the industrial condition of the masses, crushed and stifled under the brutalizing influences of the competitive system ? Re- ligion, with all its privacy, is not only the most per- sonal but the most social of phenomena , the spiritual atmosphere is as all-pervading as the physical, and is equally sensitive to social pollution. The spiritual ex- halations of our vulgar and cruel democracy have ac- curately corresponded to the physical, and are equally noxious. Where there is keen economic distress, re- ligion is always overclouded. Some men will be drawn to sheer revolt, others dominated by physical depletion. Others still, including the best, will find an all-engrossing religion in the service of the sick and sorry. But between all men and the heavens will rise a dim and vaporous pall, impalpably thin, impene- trably dusked, like the veil of smoke belched forth by 319 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION the myriad chimneys of a manufacturing town. To be sure, the stars can be discerned through the murk. Even the dweller in a modern city may rejoice in the ceaseless pageant of day and night that silently en- velops our shrieking human activities. But let him escape from the town and rest on some low headland, over the lapping waters of the Atlantic, where the breeze blows salt and clean, and shadows lie purple on the green shallows of the bay, where the sky is the real blue that nature meant, softened only by low lines of half-invisible cloud-pearls at the horizon; he will rediscover a new heaven that will perhaps give him a promise of a new earth. It is not in cities that modern astronomers build their towers. We modern folk are likely to be increasingly a race of city-dwellers ; but good hopes are held out to us that the cities of the future may be smokeless. There are equally valid reasons for believing that the social democracy will clear the spiritual air. The crisis in which we find ourselves is inevitable, but it never could last. The brief interval of reli- gious indifferentism, covering a trifle over two centu- ries, draws to a close. At its height it was partial ; the eighteenth century produced a Wesley and a Law, and the doubt of the Victorian age, as Chesterton points out, was as faithful as its faith was doubtful. As the twentieth century sweeps us on with one of those ac- celerated historic movements of which the pace is dizzy- ing, a conscious reaction awakens, and the quest after the ultimate meaning of Jife revives on every hand. SOCIALISM AND THEISM Strange mysticisms, turning often to the East, rise and thrive where modern materialism is hottest. Phi- losophy presses eagerly on its lonely way toward new aspects of idealism. "Wild Religions I have known," as the college boys irreverently describe them, haunt the more dubious thoroughfares of our cities, and specu- lative movements of more dignified type bear witness everywhere to the inextinguishable thirst of the soul. If it fares thus with our generation, what of that to come? Will spirituality under socialism wane and perish? Will a satisfying and passionate love of "the very skin and surface of this fair earth on which we dwell," as William Morris puts it, replace all longing for a better country, in those fortunate citizens of the future to whom the world shall be indeed the " Alma Parens " of our dreams ? One foresees subtle perils, old temptations endued with new power. When the whips and scorpions which have driven man God-ward through the ages Want, Fear, Slavery cease their cruel work, it may well be that he will be tempted to abide no longer as a pilgrim but as a lord, feasting fat and full, and joyous in the present till the Eternal fade from his earth-bound vision. But ever -sharper temptation is the measure of growth ; for religion, as for ethics, socialism means, not achievement but opportunity. The firm disciplines which will press on every one in the socialized com- munity may not in themselves tend to heavenly- mindedness ; but they must develop such qualities of 321 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION self - subordination and such regulated capacity as should form an excellent preliminary to the graces and activities of the soul. The emphasis on practical helpfulness and charity which, however right, now distracts men from more religious aspirations, will fall into its true secondary place ; and the race we seek to create, heirs of liberty social rather than individual- istic, freemen because bound in ordered service, should possess powers in advance of our own and preempted no longer by lower needs. In a world where that com- mand of the Master to take no thought for the mor- row, which is so irritating to-day, could be literally fol- lowed, the soul could mightily expand. The churches would be free from that ignominious duty to serve tables which they can escape to-day only by denying their Lord ; the philosophers would breathe a clearer air ; and the whole sullen fog-bank which blocks our vision might roll triumphantly away. In that good future the interest in theology, one- time queen of arts and sciences, would probably be renewed ; and plain men and women might bend themselves to ardent study of the Great Mysteries. For even to our mortality converse is not forbidden with the things that, being unseen, abide. Beatrice again will take her rightful place, long usurped by Matilda ; and gazing into her eyes we may see as Dante saw the Image of the Most High. If there be a God, the socialized community should give Him a better opportunity than the western world has ever afforded Him before to draw men's hearts to Himself. 322 SOCIALISM AND THEISM III The path on which society is impelled is always the resultant of complex forces ; no one who isolates a single phenomenon, even so great as socialism, can rightly apprehend its direction. Intelligently to in- quire into the reaction of the rising social democracy on religion, we must view the situation of the west- ern world as a whole. If we do so, we find two other phenomena, equal in dramatic quality to the impending economic change. One is the advance of western science, the other the influence of eastern thought. As science advances, its temper changes. Sixty years ago it was, to the popular mind, indorsing material- ism ; to-day, it is enhancing mysticism. We may ven- ture to say that the theological dogmatizing of our grandfathers was no farther from our more generous religion than the instinctive skepticisms of nineteenth- century science were from the reverent expectancy of science to-day. Meantime, the treasures of the Orient and of the Occident are blending. Eacial immobility is at an end. The East opens her arms, perforce or no, to the eager onrush of the "West, and, while she zealously studies our scientific acquirements and tries to adopt our methods, we, on our side, begin to medi- tate in amazed humility upon that ancient philosophic wisdom which she has preserved intact. The rising passion for social reconstruction, the advance of science, the new fellowship between East 323 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION and West, is it by accident that these three forces are at play on western civilization at the same time ? It seems more likely that the future will discern among the three some necessary relation. Sixteenth- century scholars absorbed in Greek manuscripts were probably not over-much concerned with the reports of adventurers from far untraversed lands ; nor were men of either type necessarily excited over the struggle for religious freedom in Germany. Yet scholar, discov- erer, reformer, were parts of one movement of expan- sion, and we see to-day how the revival of letters combined with the new geography, and with the Re- formation, to produce that bright new civilization be- fore which feudalism fled like a vanishing cloud. The relations between western science and eastern philosophy are stirring the East to the depths and be- gin to impress the West as well. The relations between science and socialism are fundamental and evident ; we have already dwelt upon them. That there is also a relation between the thirsty gaze which men begin to turn to the founts of eastern wisdom and their craving for social reconstruction is seldom stressed ; yet this too if we are wise we must begin to discern. For it cannot be without meaning that the western world, even while it suffers the birth-pangs of the new cooper- ative order, begins to realize for the first time the spir- itual treasures harbored by civilizations which through long ages we have despised. The East bowed low before the blast In patient, deep disdain : 324 SOCIALISM AND THEISM She let the legions thunder past, And plunged in thought again not alone for her own sake, surely. In the great Pro- vidence that rules the destinies of the peoples East and West are meeting at the exact moment when the vista opens of a society gradually evolving so high a degree of industrial peace and social justice that spirit may seek for Spirit, driven back no longer on pressing anxieties or clamorous compassions. The great gift of the Orient is an ever-present sense of the Eternal. The heyday of competition, intoxicated with its own unlovely successes, would have scouted this gift as absurd. In a community in which material production, being socially organized, no longer absorbs attention, its influence may well be healthful, perti- nent, and deep. We can easily imagine the religious historians of the socialist state noting with delight the special preparation of the West, by drastic changes in the social order, to receive what the more contem- plative races have to offer. Does some ingenious person threaten us at this point with the danger of sinking like the Orient into an ageless dream? It is amusing to picture Europe and the United States in this connection ! We may trust to the very temperament of the West, to the growing call of the adventures of science, to the unre- laxing industrial disciplines of the socialist state, for our protection. Indeed, the passion of the new society for activity and efficient achievement is likely enough to need supplementing. What social order has ever 325 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION yet offered equal incentive to vigorous interest in the phenomenal world and ardent search for the reality behind phenomena? Noble action and noble contem- plation have seldom indeed flourished together. Yet both are essential to fullness of life. In the thoughtful words of Baron von Hugel : 1 " The movement of the Christian life is not a circle round a single centre, detachment, but an ellipse round two centres, de- tachment and attachment. And precisely in the difficult but immensely fruitful oscillation and rhythm between the two poles of spiritual life, in this fleeing and seek- ing, and not in either of these two movements taken alone, consists the completeness and culmination of Christianity." And, we may add, of religion. We have good reason to hope that the new society will offer the most favorable conditions yet found for this "fruitful oscillation." The socialist state, intent on far-sighted organization of the greater industries, and on conquest of the material resources of the globe, is not likely to weaken in that " attachment " which has always marked civilization in the West ; yet we have dared to predict that the release from nervous strain, and the tranquillity that it should insure, may foster the cor- relative increase of those powers of detachment which have been the specialty of mystics in those ancient lands where the spirit gazes, more fixedly than we are wont to do, on the countenance of Truth. Under these cir- cumstances no one can calculate the depth and worth that may accrue to the influences of the East. To 1 The Mystical Element in Religion. 326 SOCIALISM AND THEISM these influences we well may look to complete the proc- ess of counteracting that new hedonism, that acqui- escence in a natural life all too pleasant to lure the spirit on, which we have predicted as the special peril of a social democracy. A cooperative society, gaining a continually greater insight into natural law and greater control over natu- ral forces, while at the same time it is free from racial or national provincialism and is open to influences from all quarters of the globe ; here, then, is the stage on which the spiritual drama of the future must be played. ; - IV What types of religious life are likely to obtain upon this stage ? To English readers, at least, the question presents itself under three aspects : the future of religion at large ; the probable future of Christianity ; and the possible fate of the forms of Christianity, in particular of the two great divisions, Protestantism and Cathol- icism. To be of any value the discussion must be frankly personal. One can only present these matters from his own angle of vision, basing his answers care- fully on his perception of the new spiritual life already pushing its restless way toward the light, no less than on forecasts of growth in the new order. The larger religious future is inevitably bound up with certain primary questions. Will religion be a matter of dogma, or of intuition and unformulated 327 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION sentiment? Will it hold to its belief in a personal God? What will be its attitude toward death and immortality ? The present reaction against dogma is a very com- plex affair. Our widespread distaste is determined some- what by our pleasure in escape from bigotry, somewhat by a genuine broadening of sympathies and a quick- ened perception of the relative nature of religious formulae. But with these healthy and right instincts blend others which might inspire us with less com- placency. A certain haziness and laziness in thinking has been the natural concomitant of that deep and subtle materializing of our inner life consequent on our commercial civilization. The blight that has rested on the general religious consciousness during the mod- ern epoch may be, at least in part, responsible for the reluctance of people to adhere with any ardor to old creeds or to evolve new ones. For, after all, religious dogma only represents man thinking, and thinking on those high themes concerning which indifference is unnatural. His thoughts have not been tedious or puerile or empty; they have been noble, lofty, and profound. If it is unfortunate to cling to one's thought on Unseen Mysteries and our relation to them as final, it is more unfortunate to refuse to think at all. Victo- rian agnosticism only too often masked its indolence or discouragement as reverence, and expressed simply an intellectual cowardice where it thought to achieve a philosophic depth. The dogmatizing ages were great and glorious ages in the history of the mind. We may 328 SOCIALISM AND THEISM hope to have escaped permanently the evil by-products of their ardors, religious persecutions and spiritual arrogance ; but in times of greater intellectual leisure and freedom it is quite probable, as we have already suggested, that, while retaining the precious heritage of broad sympathies which the closing age bequeaths, we may also revive that passion for high spiritual ad- venture, that audacious yet worshipful endeavor to translate the elusive experiences of the spirit into terms that shall fix them as social possessions, which marked the great ages of faith and of the creeds. Will these creeds be the old creeds, rediscovered, reasserted ? Will they be new ones, inconceivable to us at present ? Such questions no one can answer. We notice on the one hand in most modern religious movements, Catholic and Protestant, the striking em- phasis on the instinct of continuity. Iconoclasm is no longer valued for its own sake ; the escape from old shackles intoxicates no more. It is safe to predict that reverence for tradition will continue to increase, and that the creeds of the future will bear an organic re- lation to those of the past. Yet while the religious con- v sciousness is, in one sense, permanent, it is, in another, constantly progressive. To press on bravely, rever- ently, seeking to reconcile loyalty with courage, in the new reaches of life that await us, is a duty arduous enough to preserve the future race from complacency, and to stimulate that ceaseless labor of the mind which is at once agony and life. One guiding principle is plain. Thought is con-, 329 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION strained to-day, whether it will or no, to place new emphasis on the human side of religious evolution, and to perceive the large measure of control exercised by social and economic conditions over religious formula. Disinterested scholarship has no more vital task be- fore it than to analyze and follow this control. To call faith the mirror of life would be inaccurate ; but at least that far glory on which the eyes of faith are ever fixed is seen by men through the life they share and of which they are the product. The time has come for even the most orthodox to accept this point of view boldly, and to recognize that, whatever happens to formula, concepts change from age to age, such change being largely though obscurely determined by the char- acteristics of the social structure. Now humanity has never yet realized itself as a social democracy, and we may be sure that whatever may be the fate of reli- gion in the socialist state new experiences are await- ing it. In thus acknowledging the power of social institu- tions to control if not to generate religious ideas, we must not be thought necessarily to imply a purely human origin for religion. Religion itself is not born from below, but from above. Of this that ultimate criterion of knowledge, the experience of the race, as- sures us even more clearly than metaphysical inquiries. All positive definitions and intuitions of spiritual truth have pointed to a great Reality. This confidence pro- tects and reassures us in days when thoughts of process too often overpower those of ultimate origin. Formula 330 SOCIALISM AND THEISM alter, theologies change, determined largely by the phases of social growth ; yet they are all alike attempts, not to give a body to illusion, but to portray experi- enced fact. Once assured of this, the soul can rest secure, however winds may strain and waves may rage. Keligion has from the first been no mere translation of desire into metaphor; it has been the progressive effort, less crude as the generations pass, to describe ex- perience. This experience deepens and widens through the ages, and formulae slowly follow it, but the " God, Creation's secret Force," is forever "Himself Un- moved, all motion's Source," and through all groping and temporary obscuration we move ever nearer to the Uncreated Light. A profound religious transformation must then ac- company every social transformation. Nowhere is this law more evident than in regard to the greatest of all objects of human thought, the concept of Deity. We see with increasing clearness that the great word, " God," greatest that mankind has ever uttered, con- notes a different concept in every age. The God of nomadic tribes is a tribal chieftain. The God of feu- dalism, as imaged in the superb mosaic that overlooks ruined Messina from the fallen glory of its shrine, is a masterful feudal overlord. That this conception of ultimate being will be deeply if subtly affected by the social forms of the future, till it assumes a character which we can only dimly predict, is indubitable. How, 331 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION then, are men likely to think of God in the socialist state? Shall we be able still to use the dear forms and emotions of childhood? May we retain the idea of Personality as an attribute of the Informing Spirit of the world ? No question is more crucial, none more unanswer- able. Yet we may gain pregnant hints from the life we know. For democracy is already affecting as deeply as it is unconsciously the general conception of God. Looking within, we are aware that to us the Final Reality that controls the secret thought is no distant Monarch, the natural ruler of a world aristocratically organized, but a pervading Spirit, so manifest in the life of nature and the social whole that it is easy to confuse Him with that very world which He inspires. Immanential rather than transcendental ideas of Deity have proved the natural product of modern life. They rose unmistakably coincident with the rise of demo- cratic feeling, its earliest correlative and its crowning glory, overpowering formal creeds in the mind even of so orthodox a poet as Wordsworth, and supplementing all other religious conceptions for a Shelley or a Rous- seau ; and they are rising still to ever greater domi- nance. Now, socialism is simply democracy coming to its own. If, even in the present individualistic chaos, de- spite the picture of scrambling egotism which it pre- sents, the intuition of the Immanent God keeps pace with the growth of feeling for the social whole, we must believe that this intuition will prevail increas- 332 SOCIALISM AND THEISM ingly, as such growth goes on and develops an organic harmony in which the reflection and working of a Divine Life are more easily to be perceived. Already, more- over, immanential ideas are, as we have seen, empha- sized by the influx of pantheistic influences from the East, and by the recent suggestions of science. Realiz- ing how deeply the society to be may be penetrated by these influences, and how native the intuition of im- manence may be to it even superficially, we may safely predict that a vital, illuminating, and sustaining mode of thought among the devoutly disposed in the social- ist state, will be an intensified form of the modern faith in a God revealed through His universe rather than apart from it, and manifested in ail that we in our ignorance call impersonal, as well as in human consciousness and after the fashion of a man. Yet we must beware of thinking that this is the whole stor^r. The conception of a God " sustaining the world by the immanence of His Will "/is certain to grow clearer : it would be rash to assert that the other conception of One who " transcends the world in the glory of His Being " 1 will necessarily fade away. For we cannot question that in modern society the sense of personality is constantly growing more acute. De- mocracy from its birth had ja marvelous perception of the glory and significance of the individual ; this per- ception js starting-point and foundation of that collec- tive ideal which is coming to dominate our thought. We remember how at the outset of the democratic perioi" 1 Hibbert Journal. 333 THE FUTUKE OF KELIGION the piercing accents of Blake, summing up all that the most daring anthropomorphism could express, left us breathless : Thou art a man : God is no more : Thine own humanity learn to adore. From Emerson to Browning the lesson has been re- echoed in exaltation. And as democracy develops, this feeling for the miracle of personality is likely to deepen. If socialism, by enhancing the common consciousness and emphasizing collective action, withdraws, as it well may do, some props round which the separatist ideal of life has twined, it may, none the less, if only from the fact that it will mark the highest stage yet of social evolution, teach us to value and experience the mystery of our own personal being as never before. The larger freedom for individual development toward which we look when our brutalizing conditions shall have yielded to a more generous fostering of human aptitudes, will inevitably bring with it a growing delight in that ulti- mate marvel of character which is, so far as we know, the last triumph, as it is the last mystery, of the uni- verse. However much farther the analysis of multiple personality may be carried, the man must always remain one, and finally the only, actor in his own inner world. Self-consciousness, which has become infinitely deeper and more intricate since the days of Homer, will become continually more intense and subtle : known by each man in himself, inferred by him in others, it may re- main while he lives, if not when he thinks, the surest fact on his horizon. Now, no matter what wide reaches 334 SOCIALISM AND THEISM of unsounded being alien or akin to his own man may dimly discern in the Infinite, he can never exclude from that Infinite the highest and surest mode of existence that he knows. Still spirit will seek to meet with Spirit ; and, after all, to protect the possibility of that meet- ing was all which the theologians ever meant with their insistence on the much-battered, largely misun- derstood, highly unsatisfactory, and wholly indispen- sable term, a personal God. That the very conception of personality, whether human or divine, is, however, to be immensely enlarged and enriched, partly through the advance of psychology, partly through a. widening social experience, partly through new insight into the spiritual life of nature, we cannot doubt. Not without meaning is symbol the syn- onym for creed. The symbol for Infinite Reality cher- ished by the cooperative commonwealth must contain a wider majesty than is known to-day. We are not likely to apprehend God more intensely than the psalmist or St. Augustine ; in dwelling on the evolutionary aspects of religion we must not forget that it is in one sense the most static of phenomena, enabling us more than aught else in history to measure our own littleness and the slowness of our advance. But though we may not feel more intensely, that which we feel will be more in ac- cordance with the depths of the riches of the unsearch- able Being of God. Forms of religious thought are the final test of every civilization ; in the new society, the Voice of the Beloved, speaking to the disciple as it has spoken from the beginning, may rise from regions 335 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION of consciousness before unsounded, and echo from a range of experience coextensive with a universe ever more holy because ever more alive. Those social conceptions which are already so inti- mately affecting the springs of thought must, when per- fected, lead to religious conceptions in which ideas of transcendence and immanence may be at least partially fused, and which will be as far removed from the empty monotheism of the eighteenth century or the lower ranges of Unitarianism as from the crass tri theism of current orthodoxy. Orient and Occident will contribute to the idea. The God of the East is perceived from the vast silences of nature ; the God of the. future democracy must rather be the God of them that dwell in cities. Yet if we are really to build " in England's green and pleas- ant land " a nearer image than heretofore of the " Ci- vitas Dei," it may well be that the heavens and He that dwelleth therein shall be as well discerned from its streets thronged with comrades as from the lonely sweep of the desert or the peaks of farthest Himalay. Of one thing we may be sure ; no ideal that, bearing the test of time and social change, has proved permanently life- giving will ever be discarded from religious concepts. And among such ideals we must give first rank to faith in a God who forever assures His creatures that before they call He will answer, and while they are yet speaking He will hear. SOCIALISM AND THEISM VI Let us pause for a moment only over the probable attitude of our socialized community toward death and immortality. One sometimes hears it said with a little sneer that the desire for eternal life is selfish ; but this curious fallacy may be dismissed with a word. It is as possible to crave paradise for other people as to crave anything else for them. In the ages of individualism, immor- tality was individualistically conceived, as current hymnody bears abundant witness. In social ages, it can be conceived in a purely social way. The egotist or the craven may still whine selfishly for a lazy heaven, in which he pictures himself basking as the special pet of the Higher Powers ; but the man of broad sym- pathies will aspire toward a future in which, not only his own failures may be retrieved, but all the unful- filled beginnings which he sees on every hand may sweep onward into fulfillment. The loss of hope for a time when tears shall be wiped away from all eyes that mourn would be in some ways a greater tragedy to one who here knows full meed of personal joy, mingled with the constant anguish of social compunc- tion, than it could be even to the starved and sorrow- ful. We shall never again tolerate the injustice and oppression of earth in the tranquil expectation of celes- tial reprisals : our philosophy and our instincts are too deeply penetrated by the perception that the Eternal is here and now, as well as hereafter. But to take 337 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION away the faith in immortality, to assert that the an- guish of the generations since the birth of time has passed unretrieved, and that the drama of individual lives ends abruptly unfinished in the impasse of death, is for many of us to knock the very bottom out of optimism and to replace the heart by a stone. Yet of course one foresees men divided into differ- ent groups as regards their attitude toward the great Mystery. As life grows sweeter, and this world more dear, horror of departure may be intensified, and Death play with new poignancy his role as King of Terrors. Modern theories, however, if verified, offer help and consolation. For longevity may be prolonged till the signal to depart is grateful. When the term of natural life, which we are told is now never reached, shall be generally attained, cessation may be as gentle as the fall of the leaf, as much desired as sleep after a long and joyous day. Yet how imagine men incurious concerning the awakening ? Surely no development or refinement of resources can ever make this world other than an inn, a resting-place, to the nobly tempered soul. Many motives interplay to create the desire for immortality. Among these it is quite conceivable that the mere longing for physical continuance, now natural to a healthy organism, may weaken ; but revolt against separation from loved ones, hatred at leaving unfin- ished tasks, and indeed the sheer dramatic passion for living, are not likely to fade. An impulse different from all these is, however, at 338 SOCIALISM AND THEISM the heart of the craving for immortality. This is the desire of the God-intoxicated for the unveiled vision of Him seen darkly here through the glass of nature and humanity, but there, if the Apostle be trusted, face to face. It is strange and startling to note how currently the craving for a life to come is discussed to-day apart from any question of faith in God. Even so reverent a thinker as Mr. Lowes Dickinson speaks in his In- gersoll lecture as if the desire that the Good may be strengthened and more knowledge attained were our noblest incentive to hope for immortality. But thought of this type can never satisfy. It follows the disastrous advice of the Boyg to Peer Gynt, and " goes round about," till the very point and centre is never reached. If separated from interest in our relation to a living God, speculations concerning immortality would have run a course quite different from the fact. The noblest Christian men and women have always desired to sur- vive death chiefly that they might see His countenance. What are all other desires compared to this ? It is no verbal invention ; it has been, to chosen spirits, a con- trolling fact for nearly two thousand years. True, not all men experience it; but neither do all men respond to the motives of Mr. Lowes Dickinson. What rea- son is there for supposing that it will weaken as time goes on? No quickening intuition of the divine present in the natural order, no rise of pantheistic passion, can ever satisfy the longing for unhampered and perfect 339 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION fellowship with Him who was "before all worlds." As Herbert Spencer pointed out, our contact with un- known mystery constantly widens with the increase of the circumference of our knowledge. The more the circle expands, the more will be our need to escape from all relation to "the wheel" of phenomena into conscious union with the Uncreated and the Uncon- fined. The craving for the beatific vision will never die. If reincarnations must multiply before it be at- tained, and this view is sure to gain vogue as east- ern influences increase, why, death will be the portal to another stage in the long pilgrimage. If the older Christian orthodoxies persist, death will be the signal for the plunge into those purifying fires which, as be- lieved by Dante, by Catherine of Genoa, by the Catholic world at large, do darkly reveal to the soul the light of the countenance of God. Shrinking from death and longing for death va- riously motived, functioning on various planes will then coexist in the future as they do to-day. Specula- tions concerning immortality may quite conceivably be merged in a clearer knowledge than we now pos- sess ; but however this may be, the " Vera Patria " will always shed its light from beyond the horizon, and the dream of its glories will continue to summon men to nobler and sterner living in the midst of the allure- ments of a world fairer than the one we know. CHAPTER II SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY MANY readers will resent any effort to show that Christian concepts will be peculiarly harmonious with the deeper needs of socialism. And, indeed, the more definite our speculations concerning the religious future become, the more rash they must appear. At the same time it does us no harm to remember that the west- ern world which we considers still currently known as Christendom : some countries indeed, like Italy, imply that every man is a Christian as matter of course, by offering as popular excuse for the ways of a donkey the fact that the poor beast " non e cristiano." And we socialists do well to reflect that our creed is, after all, the product of a civilization soaked in Christian teaching ; curious as . it may seem, the western world has always clung to at least a nominal connection with the young Jew who lived obscurely in Palestine close on two thousand years ago. All this does not commit us to Christianity in the future. But, at least, the course of our discussion has made two points clear. In the first place it has si- lenced the outcry against the religion of the Carpen- ter on the score of its impracticability. The socialist Christian quotes with exultation instead of despair 341 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION the famous remark of Laveleye, " If Christianity were taught and understood to-day in the spirit of its Founder, the existing social organism could not last a day," and finds in it a strong argument, not only for social revolution, but for the vital force of that religion which has never let go its tug at the world's heart-strings even when it has seemed to appeal from a region infinitely removed from reality. And again, our discussion has thrown into insignificance the sharp tem- porary hostility between some official forms of Christ- ianity and the socialist faith. It has shown us that we shall have a perfect right, in despite of popes on the one hand and demagogues on the other, to hold, if logic so lead us, that Christianity, and of a Catholic type at that, is the religion best suited to endure in a social democracy. It is not uninteresting to notice at the outset that the religion of Christ has manifested constantly, through all social changes, new phases of moral and spiritual power. Marvelous in versatile adaptability has been its course under skies mostly untoward! For fifteen hundred years European society presented an aristocratic structure founded upon force. Despite its naturally democratic instincts, Christianity made the most of the moral opportunities offered by this regime. It placed its emphasis on obedience to au- thority, religious and secular, and by this means gave the young races the discipline essential to their pro- gress. At the same time it called its chosen to a com- 342 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY plete withdrawal from a world it could modify but not subdue, and held up through the great monastic orders an uncompromising standard of humility and non-resistance. Slowly the social situation changed: to the Ages of Violence succeeded the Age of Greed. Feudalism died : Capitalism entered upon the scene. During the period of transition the Renascence brought with it, correlative to the expanse of com- merce, a new passion for liberty and intellectual light. Christianity discovers the necessity for these things on the religious side : Protestantism is born and in- tellectual courage and inward freedom become the gifts which Christianity gives the changing order. The last two centuries in which industrialism has come to its own witness the gravest check yet experi- enced by the religious consciousness. We instinctively feel that the deliberate self-seeking encouraged as our basal virtue is in more dangerous antagonism to the teachings of Jesus than that plain acceptance of the rule of the strongest which shaped mediaeval society. He rebuked violence always less severely than greed. Yet, during the control of this industrial system, a control from which we hope that we may soon es- cape, we see the Christian temper, while tempo- rarily powerless to overcome the evils and experienc- ing in consequence an ebb tide of spiritual passion, at least utilizing modern social misery and terror to en- gender a resolute sympathy, a devotion to social serv- ice, that are both good in themselves and must rank high among the forces of emancipation. 343 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION In such various ways has the religion of Christ penetrated the heart and mind, wresting from the false and the imperfect in every stage of development ever fresh means of education and discipline, while with con- stant firmness it has pointed to the ideal city where the will of its Lord shall be more perfectly manifest. If we may judge from the past, there is no reason to fear lest Christianity fail in power to adapt itself to a new order, or to furnish what correctives and stimuli such an order may be able to receive. Force and greed die hard, nor does any one expect that they will ever be eliminated from human nature. But the civilizations definitely founded on them do seem to be passing away. Armaments still absorb the wealth of nations ; yet, broadly, military organiza- tion has yielded to industrial, and warfare, in the West, is reduced more and more, like the orthodox hell, to a logical necessity in the background. Com- merce continues its Moloch -like career; yet mere economy in production begins to demand the elimi- nation of the human and material waste that it now entails. The basis of our discussion is the assumption that a new society, industrial rather than militant, co- operative rather than competitive, is coming to the birth, f Can we expect that the religion which has shown so great vitality while existing on sufferance is likely to disappear when its ethics have permeated the social structure? It is hardly thinkable. And yet people are not lacking to claim that the very triumph of Christian 344 SOCIALISM AND CHEISTIANITY principles means that the work of Christianity is done. For these principles will in the days to come, they claim, no longer need the support of definite creeds. Christianity is fading out of conscious life even as'it comes ethically to its own. II There are grave reasons for supporting this posi- tion. Apart from that non-Christian origin and anti- Christian animus of the socialist movement, with which we are so familiar, influences quite outside of Christianity are exerting an increasing power. An immense amount of virtual paganism both underlies and overrides our nominal faith: Christian doctrines are apparently disintegrating, Christian conduct is scornfully neglected, the historic foundations of Christian belief are challenged. Other religions, surg- ing in from the East, some more or less patronizingly allied to it, others defiantly separating themselves from its terminology, appeal clamorously on every hand ; and a general sense of upheaval from the depths renders the solid surface of life, as it were, insecure to our tread. One fact is certain. Religious authority in the old sense is a vanished illusion. Under its fostering care, as given by the Church Catholic, mediaeval Europe was nurtured. It has fought hard to hold its own ; it has ceased to exist. " I went by, and lo ! it was gone, and the place thereof shall know it no more." These are plausible and powerful considerations. But the future holds its secrets well. One certitude is 345 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION forced on us : it is unlikely that Christianity will re- tain so nominally exclusive a sway as it has hitherto done in western Europe. In all probability, the day of its conventional social control is passing and will soon be forgotten. The time will come when the Christian faith will have to fight for right of way among crowd- ing antagonists as vigorously as in the times of Atha- nasius and Augustine. And in thoughts like these all genuine Christians must rejoice. Without the call to high adventure, the faith has never flourished. A wise leader has pointed out that Christianity is to-day suffering from diffusion at the cost of intensity. The believer draws a deep breath of relief in forecasting a society in which it will have lost all artificial prestige, and must meet its rivals face to face on fair terms, contending with them in an open field. What prospect could so release us from those modern languors which debili- tate our souls ? We may already discern two chief attitudes, which may or may not crystallize into systems, but which will surely draw to themselves a large proportion of religious feeling in the social democracy. The first, and perhaps the dominant, will be a new hedonism, strengthened probably by the revelations of science and informed by the mystical pantheism for which democratic forms of society have a special affinity. A Whitman-like religion it will be, instinct with undis- criminating reverence for all manifestations of life, crying, with William Blake, " Everything that lives 346 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY is holy," and assigning to natural impulses a control- ling role. Iinmanential ideas will entirely have super- seded transcendental. Somewhat checked, perhaps, by the social principles that will demand protection for the physical well-being of the race, this attitude will, on the whole, tend to obliterate the older moral cate- gories in favor of a religion emotional, tolerant, more or less fatalistic, in which the sympathies will be strongly developed and the disciplines ignored. Much of the defiant feeling generated in the schools of re- volt flows already into this channel. One foresees new throngs of devout adherents in a state where the fiercer passions will be held more in leash than now, and a generally diffused well-being will tend to re- produce in human society, to a superficial view, the non-moral harmonies of nature. The faith may well be organized, and assume varying forms, some crass and crude, others exquisitely alluring. Various sects will probably appear, some repudiating with distaste all form and ceremony, while others develop a sump- tuous ritual rich in symbolic rites. This new hedonism will be the natural outcome of the scheme of things, exhaling without effort from the social or.der. By its side there may well arise, in reaction, more ascetic schools, repudiating the life of the flesh as wholly evil. Inspired by ancient eastern tradition, and reinforced, perhaps, by psychical science, these schools will take advantage of the ever-persistent craving to work out the perfection of the soul through the disciplines of mortification. They will summon 347 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION men swiftly to disencumber themselves of all earthly preoccupations that their pilgrimage to eternity may be more sure. These moods, not yet crystallized, are of course even now prevalent, both within and without the Christian Church. That they have valuable elements no one would deny. That they are, when taken in exclusive emphasis, unchristian, though for different reasons, is equally clear. Against all such theories Christianity is even now half consciously struggling. On what grounds must she base her future appeal against these rivals of hers ? To answer, we must seek that in Christianity which is distinctive and central. The Christian who finds his own religion supremely life-giving will hold that all which gives life in any faith is found in his own creed, free from over-emphasis. But apart from this inclu- siveness, he must find in the Christian formula some permanent and unique norm or germ of power. Ill Every thinker naturally makes his own attempt to analyze and define this essence of Christianity. Loisy, Harnack, Tolstoy, has each his formula. Matthew Arnold, a keen precursor of these schools, perhaps did as well as any when he declared the essence of Christianity to consist in the method and secret of Jesus : the method of inwardness, the secret of self- renunciation. Yet with all respect to that lucid and honest thinker, how unsatisfactory any such formulae 348 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY appear ! Inwardness, self -renouncement has Christ- ianity proclaimed these more loudly than any other religion has done? More modern definitions on the same lines fare no better. Are we not driven to feel that the distinctive strength of a religion is not found in ethical suggestions such as these, sure to be held in common with other faiths ? Must we not rather find that distinctive strength in the -help the religion affords our whole thinking and feeling being to relate itself to the eternal ? So the great saints have thought ; they ought to know better than we. Looking at the matter, not abstractly, but in the light of Christian history, what gifts have been judged most precious ? What have men defended with most ardent passion, illustrated in their characters and lives? The greatest gift of Christianity to the world is the Image of Jesus, that personality which, " lifted up on the Cross, lifted up into glory," draws all men to himself. This is not the place to discuss the his- toric support for that Image, nor the process, made constantly clearer by modern scholarship, through which It came to represent to the faithful all they could know of God, and became, as It still remains, central to the obedience and the adoration of the Christian world. But looking into the life of the Christian ages, we should not be far wrong if we noted twofold conceptions guarding and preserving that gift : on the side of the daring effort to reveal something of the nature of ultimate reality, that start- ling, misused, profoundly original hypothesis, the doc- 349 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION trine of the Trinity ; on the safer side of man's direct experience of the divine working through the human, the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Atonement. These ideas, of course, have their parallels in other religions. Perhaps the distinctive thing in Christian- ity is the relation they bear to the historic Jesus ; at all events, the fate of Christianity is bound up with them, for they have proved central to devotion and been es- teemed essential by Christian life as well as thought, throughout the ages before the modern eclipse of faith. Narrow applications and interpretations of these an- cient doctrines are exhausted; yet even to-day, in spite of liberalizing tendencies, they hold a sway sur- prisingly wide. As we recognize the power they have shown, as history went on, to meet new needs, it will surely be pertinent to dwell on their probable future. If these are to be swept away, it is hard to assert that religion would be, in any specific sense, Christian, however it might retain that common fund of persist- ent ethical ideals which Christianity shares with all other life-giving religions. IV Is the doctrine of the Trinity, for instance, becom- ing a historic curiosity, the mere expression of past pseudo-metaphysical speculation ? Or is it conceivable that this symbol of the inexpressible will appear less arbitrary, more satisfying to man thinking religiously, as time unfolds ? Theological terms are notoriously evasive. Yet perhaps it is not fantastic to believe that 350 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY in the future, " that social thought of God," as Phillips Brooks used to say, " which we call the doctrine of the Trinity," may be more clearly interpreted, nay, demanded, by the constitution of society and the modes of human life than ever before. Why should not its message come with new force to a generation nurtured in every nerve and fibre of its mental being by the social democracy? Certainly the conception of the Divine implied in it is more richly and closely related to human life than that of a barren and aristocratic monotheism. William James restlessly insisted that pluralistic or polytheistic beliefs would afford a better intellectual attack than monotheism on the ultimate realities. Why should not what he means find satis- faction in that Christian thought of the Final Mystery in which not only diverse aspects of One Being, but also centres of consciousness diversely related to the uni- verse even while interdependent, are dimly discerned ? Tritheism has become absurd ; but can the older mono- theism content a generation possessed by the growing sense of multiplicity in unity, both in regard to the study of nature and to human experience? The de- velopment of the social consciousness, which will be the chief psychical result of the new society, will in- evitably react upon the idea of God. Do we not begin to perceive a possible trend of such reaction ? Probably we cannot imagine how far the new social intuition may lead us toward the destruction of separateness, even while individuality is maintained, so that men will divine each the mind and the heart of the other, 351 THE FUTUKE OF RELIGION feeling, acting in unison, while forfeiting in no degree the miracle of individual life. May not the trinitarian formula be a natural outcome in devout minds of such experience ? But let us turn from these inexpressible hints to simpler thoughts. By the doctrine of the Trinity, Christian thought was struggling to express its superb perception that love was eternal, and belonged in its origin, not to the contingent, the transitory, but to the essence of Infinite Being. Save for the clumsy phrases concerning a division of persons in the Godhead, how coidd this great truth have been expressed? Pressing behind the visible and temporal universe, in the depths of the Uncreated, thought divined Love present from the beginning. Faith in a Son, " begotten before all worlds," through a relation conceived as the archetype to the most sacred human experience, in a Spirit ever " proceeding from the Father and the Son," and in that eternal procession excluding from Deity the least possibility of limitation or self-absorption, represented the final triumph of religious thought. It lifted over a world ravaged by hate and selfishness its desperate, glorious assertion that the abiding reality was found, not in isolation, but in fellowship ; not in self-seeking, but in a giving of self to the uttermost ; not in person- ality shut in upon itself, but in an equal interchange of love attaining that highest unity which only differen- tiation can produce. Such, doubtless, was the impulse underlying the trinitarian formula. It is an impulse likely, in the future, as we have seen, to be strength- SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY ened ; that it will cling to the old formula we] cannot assert, yet we may say that the full meaning of that formula should be revealed as never before while the meaning of human fellowship grows more intense and our power deepens to realize the vast complex of cen- tres of experience which are yet mystically and abso- lutely one. These are high matters. Thought gropes and stum- bles less in turning to other ideas, closely interwoven with the effort to express the farthest reaches of the Divine Nature, yet more directly and tenderly within the range of human experience. Faith in Incarnation and Atonement has been through Christian history central to the devotion of the faithful. The extent of the need to which they minister is evidenced by their presence in other religions, but their association with the historic life of Jesus would seem to have given them new permanence and honor. For nowhere else have they passed from theory so deep into the very heart of life and become so effectively operative. Now, " incarnational" ideas would find logical place and development in the socialist commonwealth as they have never done before. These social institutions would afford the natural soil in which they and the kindred doctrine of a Holy Spirit, indwelling in nature, and more especially in consecrated humanity, could flour- ish; the doctrines in their turn would give exactly the needed sanction to democratic and yet more to social- istic theory. It would seem that these doctrines must have had a severe struggle to commend or maintain 353 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION themselves during the Middle Ages and earlier, when the natural order was regarded by the spiritually minded as an asset of the powers of evil. And indeed, from the days when early gnosticisms, shrinking af- frighted and disgusted from the idea of a real Incar- nation, forced Catholic thought to the great affirma- tions of the Athanasian Creed, we can plainly watch the struggle. It was a struggle never abandoned. The Christian who is also a socialist can say that, despite su- perficial appearances to the contrary, it has really been the belief in the Incarnation, working in the depths, misunderstood by its most ardent adherents, that has led the western nations on to their present strong and clear demand for the rehabilitation of the natural order. Much confusion obtains at this point, and people from both camps will cry out against us. Yet surely the Christian who reproaches the socialist with material- ism, because he wants to begin the process of social redemption with the establishment of right physical conditions, is disloyal. Belief that the spirit must and can be revealed only through the instrument of flesh is natural to one who has knelt at Bethlehem. In the doctrine of the Incarnation is the warrant to all think- ing Christian men for the socialist hope, so scouted by many followers of a false idealism, that the effective protection of bodily health and material decencies will emancipate the higher life of mind and spirit. And we may surely picture to ourselves this doctrine, so closely associated with the most effective Teacher of the ethics that must underlie the very foundations of 354 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY the socialist state, commending itself more completely in that state than ever before. And further : in the faith in the Incarnation and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit apprehended as they have always been within western Christendom, but with increasing clearness may lie the corrective for those exclusively immanential ideas which already threaten to become current. For this faith presents the point of union for transcendental and immanen- tial thought. To the Christian that power which ex- presses God through man is no mere product of an evolving nature ; it must descend from above. That Spirit who is the Lord and Giver of life is not only the soul That wields the world with never-wearied love, Sustains it from below and quickens it above, as the all but inspired verse implies ; it flows in upon us from a region beyond the universe we know or sur- mise. These ideas will doubtless be modified and en- riched as thought goes on and experience deepens. Yet if, on large lines, they can hold their own, they will counteract the risk always involved in purely pan- theistic schemes, which tend, first to weaken the moral sense; and second, to blur the vision of an absolute perfection beyond the changing order, and thus, in the long run, to destroy the possibility of progress and produce, as in the East, a civilization that does not move onward, but returns upon itself from age to age. 355 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION Among all ideas potent in historic Christianity, that of the Atonement is to-day the most unpopular. Ugly travesties and crude forms, long abandoned by all thinking people, are still attacked as if they were liv- ing faiths, with a repugnance which measures the whole- some horror they have inspired. Yet apparently there is something in the idea which will not be ignored. Still, though all thought of propitiating an angry god or buying off a malignant devil has faded, the faith in redemption as essential, as accomplished, works secretly at the heart of all which lives in the old re- ligion. Types of Christianity that evade it grow pallid, formal, and cold. Still the Cross crowns the pinnacles of our churches, rises from countless altars, is hidden in the hearts of the faithful. Still the Eucharistic Feast shows forth the Lord's death till he come and summon his disciples to " fill up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ." The ideal of sacrifice, deeply implanted in all great religions, has been trans- figured by Christianity with strange new glory. Should it perish, whatever name the religion of the future may bear, this will not be the Christianity known to Europe for nigh two thousand years. But it is against this very ideal that the psychical forces of the socialist state are sure to rally with most antagonistic vigor ; here we may say, in all reverence, the crux of the coming struggle will be found. For what the doctrine of the Atonement implies is the re- 356 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY pudiation of all easy-going hedonism. A growing re- volt against sacrificial ideas has been coincident with the rise of democracy. In the cooperative common- wealth a yet more pervading reverence for life in its fullness, a deepening confidence in human nature, will involve a loathing of mutilation in any form which may well seem incompatible with the teaching of the Cross. The religion of Christ, if this teaching be indeed its cen- tre, may look forward to the fiercest struggle that it has ever yet known. Other leading doctrinal concep- tions those of the Trinity and of the Incarnation may, as we have seen, find response from the deeper instincts born of the New Order. Faith in this final mystery, which completes the ministry of Christianity to the soul and its power as an educating force, will run athwart the surface impulses of civilization and must be maintained, if at all, in contradiction to its apparent laws. Yet, unless the teaching of the Cross can endure, our labor, from the Christian point of view, will have been all in vain. For in no soft civilization can the soul attain its growth ; and opportunity for martyr- dom is essential to fullness of life. Christianity will not, indeed, be alone in recogniz- ing the need for expiation and atonement. Those as- cetic types of religion which, as we have seen, are likely to come flooding in from the East, offering cor- rectives to the general ease, will summon their votaries to strange self-mortifications. But these religions will form a current opposed, not only to the superficial 357 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION dangers, but also to the creative and healthful forces by which the new society will be nourished. For they are all alike founded on ingrained distrust and re- pudiation of the world of sense. Now the value of pure asceticism is over. The distinctive mark and crowning honor of Christianity is the clearness with which it combines perception of the necessity for sacri- fice with full faith in the sanctity of the natural order when once redeemed by love. If a religion of sacrifice is to hold its ground at all, we should surely wish it to prevail in the Christian form rather than in forms that run counter to the best instincts and gains of democracy. Love holds the key to the situation. Why is it true that martyrdom is life at its height ? Not because suf- fering is in itself good, we may hope that this ugly fallacy will never be believed again, but because only through suffering can love, which is the end of all personal and social striving, be manifest and per- fected. Not all suffering is sacrifice. But we should not be far wrong if we said that only suffering which is sacrifice can ennoble, though one hastens to add that the mere endurance of inflicted pain may acquire sacri- ficial quality through voluntary submission. It should, then, be the aim of social advance to reduce as much as possible all pain that is not sacrificial, but only in order that sacrificial pain may shine forth as the crowning glory to which character can attain. Unless the future offer opportunity for such glory we must account it failure. A community in which, to 358 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY quote one socialist theory, " the good of the individual and the good of the whole can never be at odds," might be the meanest ever known, for love might know no heroisms there. The summons to that Way of the Cross which is the Way of Life must sound through all the amenities and melodies of the gentle civilization of our dreams ; otherwise our boasted commonwealth of life will be a commonwealtn of death, and a race l With ghastly smooth life, dead at heart, Tame in earth's paddock for her prize, will cruelly mock the martyrdoms through which its freedom has been won. The true test of a religion of sacrifice is to come. During those early Christian centuries, so racked by violence, men clung desperately to the Cross as the only refuge from a world of pain. The sign of re- deeming agony, erected at the centre of the market- place, rising from sweet country ways, taught every- where its silent lesson and led men on to ardors of mortification and devotion in which egotistic fears and false theories of life often mingled with nobler things. Those days, with their special incentives and confusions, will never return. When their stern j)rops are removed, when life on the surface shall have become pacific, productive, easily fraternal, will it become selfish and enervating too ? No, for the goal of perfection is infinitely far, and advance will show new reaches of the way. The true greatness of Christianity then as now will consist in 1 Browning, Easter Day. 369 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION revealing the restrictions and refusals of life as its greatest positive opportunities. The salutary disci- plines of the socialist state will put people in an attitude to understand this perhaps better than they do now, for, as we have seen, the principles that regulate the general conduct will point in those days to the Way of Renunciation as the only way of freedom. Many will never get beyond the general recognition of this principle in the acceptance of what society enforces on every one. Yet those who are called will penetrate still deeper, and obedience in the name of pure love to the law of sacrifice to the uttermost, in a civiliza- tion where that law will be no longer enforced but voluntary, will afford the precise test of faith which the Apologia of Religion demanded, loyalty to a mandate from above, at cross-purposes with the more superficial aspects of the natural order. For those who can receive it, the teaching of the Cross will meet the last needs of the socialized community. It will have taken close on two thousand years perhaps quite two thousand to achieve the social acceptance of the ethical ideals of Christianity. This victory will be no signal for pause. From the begin- ning a sterner teaching was implicit in the words of the Founder of the Faith ; but it was revealed only to those who had received the elementary laws of the Kingdom. Not to the crowds of the Mount of Beati- tudes, but to a straggling group of foot-sore apostles, was the command issued to take up the Cross and follow him ; and only in the upper chamber, probably 360 SOCIALISM AND CHEISTIANITY after the traitor had withdrawn, was the full force of the command, with its implications of life given for the Beloved, made wholly plain. So, in the long un- folding through history of the teaching given in sym- bol and miniature during the earthly life of Jesus, the time may come for a harder struggle just where vic- tory seems reached, And where we look for crowns to fall, We find the tug 's to come that 's all. The true idea of disinterested sacrifice can only come to its own when cruder theories of self-centred ascet- icism have been outgrown, and when the external con- ditions of life shall no longer force misery and endur- ance on the majority of a passive humanity. Scouted on the surface, the Law of the Cross must be the inner strength of a society that would realize brotherhood. Vicarious atonement! It has been the most scorned of all Christian doctrines ; it is viewed to-day with cold incredulity. Yet it is entirely and superbly democratic, and the slow education of the race is bringing us to the point where it must come to its own, rediscovered, reasserted, the culminating ex- pression of the deepest intuitions fostered by the New Order. Through Christian history the doctrine has been a germ of growth, training the selfish peoples to a dim and confused perception that no man liveth or dieth to himself, and that there are no depths, spiritual or physical, at which he is powerless to help his brother. To-day, democracy and psychical science are 361 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION combining to show us the unbelievably intimate unity of the life of the whole race, a unity so close that our own spiritual state undoubtedly sends its vibra- tions through the whole unseen universe, making at every moment for the salvation or destruction of the whole. And in so combining they show us the actuality and meaning of the ancient doctrines. Beyond what beckoning ways the Cross may rise is not for us to see. Many opportunities for sacrifice will obviously be unchanged. Industrial relations do not constitute the whole of life ; the region of personal ties, for instance, will be unaffected, so far as chances for self-abnegation go, by changes in the social order. We cannot doubt, moreover, that the new society will offer new occasions. In repudiation of easily accessi- ble opulence for the sake of a higher good ; in sub- ordination, always a harder task than rejection ; it may be in lonely adventure into far realms of psychical experience from which the pioneer may bring back messages of hope for all, the law may be fulfilled. But chiefly we must trust the very fact of social advance to engender an ever-new anguish that will call for an ever -new redemption. We cannot, even casually, contemplate sacrifice without encountering an obstinate phenomenon the consciousness of sin. Sin ! The modern world evades the word. Doctor Eliot has no place for it in his new religion. A clergyman, writing in the " Hibbert Journal," avows, with a can- dor that claims respect, that it is to him repellent and meaningless. Yet conviction of sin is the first 362 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY condition of growth. The thought of sacrifice implies not only a giving but a receiving, and the race that produces saviors must also need to be saved. The holiest men have always experienced the most bitter penitence; nor can we imagine it otherwise with the nobler community of our dreams. A humanity that, through the joint pressure of economic and moral forces, has at last achieved social forms which express the alphabet of Christian ethics, must be increasingly sensitive to its moral failures if its success is to mean progress. One shrinks from imagining a society de- void of the life-giving sting of remorse. There will always be some to feel this sting. We cannot here sound, but we may at least recognize, the power of Christianity to meet their need. We saw it competent to correct the moral superficiality that may be all too prevalent, by holding up its inexorable ideal of ab- solute holiness; we see it now competent to heal the wound of these souls of deeper insight ; for in that very ideal which is the Judge, it beholds, by miracle of grace, the Redeemer. The Supreme Sacrifice to which its eyes are turned has, as it claims, riot risen from the natural order, but been manifest from above. So it is that the religion of the Cross has proved com- petent throughout history to quicken at once that sense of failure and that confident hope of renewal, from the union of which comes power to go on. O Love of God! sin of man ! In this dread hour your strength is tried, And victory remains with love ! 363 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION It seems unlikely that in any living civilization these lines should lose their force. That vision of perfection which Christian teachers hold aloft will always be needed. But the shadow of the Cross must always 'fall along a path where the vision of perfection sheds its light. So thorny is this path of life that the only strength which has enabled man to tread in it is the belief that God has trodden it first. If the doctrine of the Trin- ity means that love was at the beginning, so Calvary means to the Christian heart that love is at the end also. A Deity who did not stoop to the last agony would be a God surpassed by man " in the one way of love," man, so eager to die for his beloved, and so, no God at all. The Cross is necessary to the full conception of Godhead. So awfully compelling is the vision of the Way of Sorrows with one despised and rejected moving along it to Calvary, that the most rebellious eyes must see it wherever they turn. In Ib- sen's " Emperor and Galilean," Julian the Apostate fights a lifelong, losing battle against the Galilean, in the name of the fair glories of the Pagan world. On the night before his last conflict, he recounts a dream : Where is He now ? Has He been at work elsewhere, since that happened at Golgotha ? I dreamed of Him lately. I dreamed that I ordained that the memory of the Galilean should be rooted out on earth. Then I soared aloft into infinite space till my feet rested on another world. 364 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY But behold there came a procession by me, on the strange earth where I stood. And in the midst of the slow- moving array was the Galilean, alive, and bearing a cross on His back. Then I called to Him and said : " Whither away, Galilean ? " But He turned His head toward me, smiled, nodded slowly, and said : " To the Place of the Skull." Where is He now? What if that at Golgotha, near Jerusalem, was but a wayside matter, a thing done as it were in passing, in a leisure hour ? What if He goes on and on, and suffers, and dies, and conquers, again and again, from world to world ? From world to world, also from age to age. The great doctrine of the Atonement, like all the other Christian doctrines, is viewed more and more " sub specie seternitatis." Under the growing perception of the divine fulfilled in the human, we come to know that redemption is achieved, not by a God working apart from His creation and performing isolated mir- acles, but by the union in sacrificial passion of all who would spend themselves for the world's need and rescue it from its sins by the very anguish of their peni- tence, following the Captain of their salvation. That such sacrifice is eternally necessary to progress has always been clear to the Christian vision. That it will be less generally acknowledged in the coming age is highly probable. That it will ever die from the hearts of the faithful is not to be conceived. Oppor- tunities for new martyrdoms will rise from the very conditions of the society we seek to evoke. For Cal- vary is ever near to the metropolis. We labor to build 365 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION Jerusalem, and hope to succeed in part. But though we obtain a better image than our fathers of that "Ci vitas Dei " for which their eyes have longed, we may rest in no complacency. Beside our New Jerusa- lem, as beside the Old, will rise the Hill of Golgotha. So it will be till we attain that Jerusalem which is above and free, the mother of us all: through all im- aginable social transformations, Christ, in the person of his followers, will still be despised and rejected of men, and still the despised and rejected may be the saviors of the race. VI Such gifts have the old doctrines to bring the new society. We have hinted that the distinctive point in these doctrines is their relation to the historic person- ality of Jesus. It is belief in this Personality, as the one vision of perfection revealed to human gropings, which has given them their persistent power through changing social forms, and has placed a rock beneath the feet of the faithful. To assert what is likely to be- fall our views concerning the authenticity of the re- cords which enshrine this Personality would be pre- sumption in the present agitated juncture ; it would in any case fall outside the scope of this book. But it is in line with our discussion to suggest that a religion which shall commend itself to a period in which eco- nomic determinism with its inexorable respect for ex- ternal historic fact gives the clue to social advance and to interpretation of the past, will thrive best if it rests 366 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY on a foundation of acknowledged historical reality ; and that the claim to such a basis, which some Christ- ian apologists are to-day inclined to evade as weak- ness, may be considered in more scientific days to clinch the distinctive power of Christianity as com- pared with other religions. Such religions are coined in plenty from a mingling of taste and theory, and it is the modern instinct to feel that subjectivism of this' order is the only sure ground for faith. Yet prag- matism itself may some day lead us to feel that our old friend, an historic revelation, needs no apology, and that the theological conceptions and ideals which so marvelously meet the needs of each new stage in the social and psychical drama are in last analysis only sustained by the evidence they receive from a Life once lived on plain earthly soil and at a definite point of the world's story. VII We may look forward, then, to a society in which Christianity will still be a living force. Many rivals may dispute the ground with it. Its scope and the number of its adherents may be smaller; the life- giving principle at its heart may have to encounter insidious and sharp opposition from many directions. Yet, so far as we can see, it alone will have the power to furnish the secret strength without which the very civilization that discards it could never survive. As of old, so forever, its dying may be the life of the world. 367 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION If in conclusion we ask what form of historic Christ- ianity seems best fitted to survive the deep changes imminent, and to commend themselves in the new so- ciety, a paradoxical answer forces itself upon us. Catholicism and socialism are violent opponents to-day. Yet it has happened before now in history that dearest foes in seeming have been dearest friends in truth : retrospect, indeed, reveals again and again a curious unity in fundamental tone and aim between opposing forces in a given epoch. Thus, Cavaliers and Round- heads denounced each the other in the seventeenth century as vehemently as Catholics and socialists to-day : yet the theology of Bunyan the Puritan runs on practically the same lines as that of Her- bert the Anglican or Crashaw the Roman, and the fervent, stately prose of Baxter is indistinguishable at times from that of Browne. It is not a priori impossible that the future will discern a like unity, in spirit and essential aim, between the Catholic and socialist schools of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It would seem logical to suggest that Catholicism, as the more social form of Christianity, is more likely than Protestantism to adapt itself to the socialized state ; for it will have more in common with the instincts and habits which this state will foster. Catholicism and socialism unite to subordinate yet deepen that individ- ual life which Protestantism exalts without probing. The discipline of the secular state will find its exact religious counterpart in the Catholic system ; and citi- SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY zens trained on the lines of the commonwealth should make excellent sons of the Church. Still further, the frank acceptance of evolutionary principles on which a social democracy is based would find a perfect cor- relative in Catholicism. It may seem humorous to speak of that church, which of all modern powers clings most resolutely to the pas-t, as a progressive force. Yet nothing can grow that is not rooted ; where are the roots of Protestantism, considered, not as an individual attitude, but as a social religion ? We may not forget that the great names which flashed the evolutionary idea on the nineteenth century were not two, but three, the principle which Darwin enunciated in natural science and Karl Marx in economics was proclaimed in the central sphere of religion, and at an earlier date, by John Henry Newman. There are deeper points of contact still. For certain minds of no super- ficial order the sacramental system will afford the very interpretation of life for which a perfected democracy must yearn. If, finally, Matthew Arnold be right in saying that Catholicism has a firmer hold than Pro- testantism on the secret of Jesus, on that necessity for sacrifice which we have seen to be central to Christ- ian thought, then, in a civilization where the religion of Christ can alone rightly supply this need, Catholi- cism should prevail. We can, indeed, plainly foresee various forms of nominal Christianity, more or less closely affiliated to humanitarian or pantheistic schemes, which will disregard the intellectual travail of the Catholic ages, while yet they award to Christ a leading 369 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION place in the pantheon of the world's heroes. But the more austere Church, which, singing forever its " O Salutaris Hostia ! " steadfastly elevates the Host in benediction above a sinful world, is likely to draw to itself, with few exceptions, those for whom Christianity is not a relative theory, but a revelation of absolute though unfolding truth. True, this Church herself must undergo sweeping and searching modifications before she can fulfill such a function. But do we not already, to-day, see her in the agony of inward transformation? If the nobler forces in which she so abounds can only conquer, it is not difficult to picture the august Church Catholic pursuing a life-giving and sacrificial way within that cooperative society which will bless Christianity at once with a fuller chance to expand and with more powerful foes to fight than ever it has known before. Thus, all the more on account of the probable prev- alence of other religions, Christian doctrine no less than Christian ethics may find freer play and win deeper understanding in the coming days. But a truce to spec- ulation ! Out of its mazes we need to hold one clue only : the assurance that the race of the future, released from the languor and material bondage that weigh our spirits down, may care for Truth with a new intensity, and know more anguish than we in the search for her, more joy in the possession. In the new society as in the old, religious passion will rise out of the very substance of life itself. During this time of transition it is our high privi- lege to keep the flame from which the new altars shall be 370 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY kindled alit from the old and eternal source. For only if the flame can burn more brightly on the altar of the Spirit will it be worth while for human labor to have built the altar better and to have adorned it more beautifully. CHAPTER III THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND THE SOCIALIST STATE WHATEVER we may think of the theology of his followers, the ideals of Jesus himself are of vital in- terest to us all. It is by no means easy to apprehend these ideals aright. Jesus of Nazareth has been claimed by republicans and anarchists, by revolutionaries and conservatives. Submission the most servile, rebellion the most audacious, have been preached in his Name. He has been represented in art as the severe feudal overlord, as the womanish sentimentalist, as the vio- lent fanatic. More than a hundred years ago, when the Christ of Things as They Are was most compla- cently invoked, AVilliam Blake sang in stinging words the Christ of the Revolution : The vision of Christ that thou dost see Is my vision's greatest enemy. Both read the Bible day and night, But thou readst black where I read white. He scorned earth's parents, scorned earth's God, And mocked the one and the other rod; His seventy disciples sent Against religion and government; He left his father's trade to roam A wandering vagrant without home, 372 THE KINGDOM OF GOD And thus he others' labor stole, That he might live without control. The God of this world raged in vain; He bound old Satan in his chain, And bursting forth, his furious ire Became a chariot of fire. Where'er his chariot took the way The gates of death let in the day. I 'm sure this Jesus will not do Either for Englishman or Jew. Nobody paid much attention to "The Everlasting Gospel." But as modern life went on, the oppressed and the restless began to be more and more aware of the paradoxical contrast between that Tidings to which the common people had once listened so gladly and the Christianity of the churches. Revolutionary assemblies which hissed the Church clapped the name of Christ, and the idea that Jesus and his gospel are a disturbing rather than a conservative force made more and more headway. To-day, thanks to the devoted labor spent on sources and documents, the human Jesus is coming out of the past to meet us. As Rauschenbusch remarks in his noble book, " Christianity and the Social Crisis," we are better equipped to comprehend what manner of man he was, and to what end he lived, than any gen- eration since his contemporaries. It is strangely in- teresting that this should happen at the precise crisis when that Orient from which his religion was deflected 373 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION begins to be brought into vital relations with the Oc- cident which is superficially so much more alien to his ideas, and when the social order, which has for centu- ries sheltered itself under his name, seems on the point of passing away. The clearest certainty which a fresh reading of the Gospels brings to a modern mind is that Jesus, at the lowest estimate, was one of the chief social idealists of the world. To be this, a man must be more than a dreamer or a haphazard benefactor of others. He must have definite purpose steadfastly followed, wide vision vividly announced. Jesus had these in full meas- ure. The old conception of a compassionate Saviour, wandering gentle and aimless among the ways of Gali- lee and the streets of Jerusalem, healing the sick who came in his way, uttering almost at random parable and sermon, and as it were centring interest, all through life, in that death by which he was to redeem his world, must yield to another image : that of a man of power, inspired by one permanent relentless purpose which shapes all his activities of word and deed. In the Gospels we confront no victim, passively await- ing martyrdom, but a protagonist, fighting even unto death a desperate battle to insure the continuity of such a purpose in the world. The purpose of Jesus is the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. This Kingdom sug- gests a social utopia, which may be compared, not of course in economic structure, but in principles in- volved and modes of life suggested, with any other 374 THE KINGDOM OF GOD ideals of a perfect society, from Plato to More. In particular, it may to our great profit be studied in re- lation to the moral and spiritual aspects probable in the socialist state. The central importance of the conception of the Kingdom in the mind of Jesus is only recently receiv- ing adequate recognition. Here is the one continuous thread carried through the narrative. With the glad tidings of the Kingdom of God, he opened his minis- try. The Sermon on the Mount, epitome of his early teaching, begins and ends with the Kingdom's laws. The homely illustrations of the parables reveal its na- ture. Time passes, the tone of the teaching alters, and perspective lengthens ; but through changes and mis- conceptions the " note " of the Kingdom persists. The solemn theme is stressed even at the Last Supper ; and after the tragedy of the Cross, it is given by the tradition as chief subject of the instructions of the Risen Lord, who was " with them by the space of forty days, speaking the things concerning the King- dom of God." So does the " Social Ideal " irradiate the story, from the first dawn in Galilee to the light of Eastertide. So far we are on sure ground. When we ask, how- ever, the nature of this conception, so salient and sig- nificant, we enter a region of hot controversy. Was Jesus of that apocalyptic school which indulged in wild dreams of a millennial future, mingled with fa- natical conspiracies against the Roman power? Or is this suggestion, so marked in the eschatological dis- 376 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION courses, due to a later editing, and unfair to the pure spiritual ideals of the Prophet of Nazareth? Which represents his true teaching, the Sermon on the Mount, with its assumption of a tranquil society where marriage, law courts, and other homely phenomena are the order of the day, or the visionary ardors and violent denunciations of certain chapters in Luke and Matthew ? To reply, aji understanding of national con- ditions is evidently called for ; but even those who possess it disagree. The gentle ethical teacher and the vehement apocalyptic prophet are opposed as rivals between whom Christendom must choose. That choice no layman is equipped to make, and any discussion of the problem from such may seem arrogant. Yet even a lay intelligence, honestly bent on the texts, and daring to take their story as it were at face value, is impelled to trust its own impressions. And it can hardly fail to per.ceive both unity and se- quence, natural as they are dramatic, in the evolution through the Gospels of the Kingdom idea. II What did Jesus mean by the Kingdom of God ? Various theories have deeply affected Christian his- tory. Was he thinking merely of the power of the Spirit to evoke in the individual heart love, joy, and peace ? a personal, wholly inward matter, having no direct bearing on the laws of collective social life ? So Protestantism has for the most part assumed. Or, as the Roman Church steadily claims, was his concep- 376 THE KINGDOM OF GOD tion rather ecclesiastical? Is the Kingdom the Church Catholic, unrelated to the political or economic order, persisting immutable through social change, militant on earth, triumphant in heaven, composed of those born again in the mystical waters of baptism and nourished by the Food of Immortality ? Or was the Idea of Jesus different from either of these, though involving both ? Did he contemplate as he talked an actual objective society, definite, natural, a fellow- ship, realized in the normal order of everyday life, inspired from above, but expressing itself quite sim- ply through social, domestic, and civic relations, and having no concrete existence apart from them ? If this last be the true conception, another question immediately follows. Was this Kingdom of Righteous- ness to be expected on earth ? Or were men to look for it only in an Eternity past death and judgment when the Son of Man should return in glory among the clouds of heaven ? Now, if we take Christ's teaching in its historical setting we are forced to discard the Protestant view at once. For in his day the mention of the Kingdom I ^ evoked to every Jewish breast asocial and visible con- f ception. The idea did not originate with him. It was the creation of his race, product of long years of exile and anguish, during which the sorrowing Jewish mind had found strength in the lofty yearning for a Holy Nation where those severed comrades, Mercy and Truth, should meet together and Righteousness and Peace kiss each other at last. The yearning was inti- 377 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION mately connected with the Messianic hope. It dealt now with time, now with eternity, and the expres- sion of it in its later phases mingled with strange apocalyptic dreams. It was provincial in scope, and breathed at times the longing of an oppressed people not only for liberation but for vengeance. But through it always pulsed the passionate faith in a social order where justice and righteousness should effectually be attained. In the time of Christ, this idea was everywhere latent ; he took it up, adopted it, indorsed it. What it meant may be seen in that marvelous song ascribed to the Maid Mary, brooding over her prevision that of the Kingdom of the Babe she was to bear there should be no end. This Kingdom should mean the reign of justice and social equality, the satisfaction of the hungry, the exaltation of the poor, while the powerful should be degraded and the rich sent empty away. It is probable that to Mary or her poet thig hope was rather national than social ; none the less did it pertain to things visible, not to things unseen. The predecessor of Jesus, that picturesque social reformer, John the Baptist, had made the approaching Kingdom the burden of his teaching. That teaching has a dis- tinctly leveling and socialistic note : " Every valley shall be exalted and every height laid low," had been the text of his searching and practical counsel, ad- dressed to political employees and religious leaders, to soldiers and plain folk. Jesus formally and officially indorsed this teaching 378 THE KINGDOM OF GOD and made it his own starting-point. In two great ways he illumined and enlarged the national hope. His great and original contribution to the Kingdom idea is his emphasis on its spirituality and inward- ness. Conventional chronology and the Fourth Gospel suggest that even before he took up the theme of the Baptist, he had said to slow, learned Nicodemus that a man must be " born again " before he could see the Kingdom of God : certainly, he preached this truth with patience to the end of his life. Again, at mid- career, he said with solemn emphasis that the King- dom should be taken from the Jews, and that men should come from east and west and south and north to sit down at its festival. The words mark an epoch in human thought. All the more striking, in view of this deep double transformation of the Jewish ideal, is the fact that Jesus never discourages the fixed be- lief of his hearers that the Kingdom is a substantial social and visible reality. If his social teaching con- sistently presupposes the spiritual and personal, so does the personal find actuality only in the outward and social. Had Jesus wished to supplant the social idea current in his time by the idea of a reign of the Spirit within the heart, he could hardly have chosen a phrase that would have involved his hearers in so grave a misconception; certainly none that should cost him so dear. However he modifies crude con- temporary ideas, he ratifies the faith of his people that a visible society, holy unto the Lord, is the ideal for which they are to work and pray. His teaching 379 THE FUTURE OF EELIGION consistently aims to create not mystics nor recluses, but brothers. 1 Nor, if we reject the sentimental idea of the indi- vidualist, can we any more truly limit the thought of Jesus to an ecclesiastical system. From the time of Ezekiel, the ecclesiastical note had been stressed in Hebrew thought. Jesus, who never discarded any true or vital insight of the past, fused this idea with his conception. It is also obvious that he worked deliber- ately to provide for the permanence of the life he came to impart, through training and consecrating a special body of followers. Nevertheless, the broader teaching concerning the Kingdom of Heaven cannot be held within the church idea. During those early months of teaching in Galilee, the thought of the Kingdom is large as the liberal air : intimate study of later phases makes clear that the Church is never to be an end in itself. It is conceived as the instrument of the King- dom, or if Kingdom and Church are ideally one, the Church is no mere mystical society living its hidden life independent of normal relations ; it is humanity turned Godward, controlled in its natural necessary pursuits by the Spirit of the Master. m We are then pressed back on the third or social conception. And in truth it is central and intentional in all the teachings of the prophet from Nazareth: so obviously both foundation and framework of the 1 See Kauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis. 380 THE KINGDOM OF GOD Sermon on the Mount that, were it not for the lapse of this conception at an early date from Christian con- sciousness, it would seem impossible that critics like Mill, Mazzini, and others should ever have accused Christianity of an individualistic bent. Without the social assumption, the counsels to the individual are not only paradoxical, but, as we have seen already, exasperating. The ideal is a fellowship, and only in a fellowship can the counsels be obeyed. The effort to construe the teaching otherwise has landed generations of Christians in unreality or despair. The Sermon opens with that great series of para- doxes known as the JBeatitudes, describing the qualities of the citizens of the Kingdom. We have dwelt on these in an earlier stage of our discussion. Having described the citizens the Discourse pro- ceeds in well-indicated divisions to state the collective principles which they are to observe. First, they are to be conspicuous. Far from hiding their light modestly, they are to let it shine before men, that their good works may be seen and God be glorified. It is a disconcerting passage to those who feel that humility and laziness combine to enjoin the apologetic disguise of their virtues. The irritated anger of the world against pushing religion to extremes unites with a natural distaste for being peculiar to make many a Christian limit the expression of the Beatitudes in so- ciety and business to the innocuous good nature and pleasant bearing consistent with a decorous conven- tional career. There, however, is the command: and 381 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION though we belittle and degrade it by mumbling it in church when the collection is taken up, it stands ob- stinately, clinching for all time the plain intention of Christ, that the society which obeys him shall be a city set on the hill, before the eyes of men, and from that eminence shining as the light of the whole world. The next principle is no less significant : for Jesus goes on to warn men that all the moral precepts of the past are to be fulfilled, not destroyed. Any one who ignores the least point in them will be the least in the Kingdom. People pay no attention to this re- mark and act as if Law and Prophets had no importance for us nowadays. But Christ's troubled emphasis gains cogency when we reflect what his Hebraic background implies. The passion for social justice was fundamental in it. An aristocratic respect for the rights of property inspired that Roman law under the tradition of which we are still living. In sharp contrast, as Rauschenbusch points out, the whole trend of the Hebraic law was to- ward social equality and the protection of the rights of the poor. As for the Prophets the case is clear. That ideal of personal holiness which rose late, after the Exile, supplemented but never superseded the great vision of national and civic righteousness which is as distinctly the contribution of Judaea to the world as the ideal of the good, intelligent, and beautiful in- dividual is the contribution of Greece. The fulfillment of the Law involved its penetration to the innermost springs of conduct. Social justice can be achieved and equal opportunity preserved, Jesus THE KINGDOM OF GOD teaches, only through the transformation of the human heart. He fulfills by spiritualizing. The Sermon is deeply and intimately personal, for only a humanity born " from within " can sustain a regenerate state. But to construe this stress on the personal life into in- difference to the social whole, and to think that one loves one's neighbor as one's self and fulfills the Law by an attitude of passive amiability toward the world and ardent tenderness toward one's family, is strangely to misread the Master's mind. Life in the society he contemplates has its wellspring in the heart ; but the waters are to flow forth for the healing of the nations. For again we must note the full social completeness of the life presupposed. The searching power of the words of Christ as he speaks of purity and fellowship has never ceased to pierce the vital parts like swift shafts of light. But these words concern marriage, go- ing to law, showing hospitality. None are addressed to men withdrawn in seclusion. Their point and pith is that they contemplate a humanity going about its usual business, and insist that an absolute ideal of brotherliness shall control this business. There is con- stant stress on ideals of service and brotherhood, which can only be carried out in a highly evolved so- ciety. In the recorded sayings of Jesus it is hard to find the slightest justification for the modern conten- tion that he belonged to the school of the Essenes. The reason for this impression, however, and for the frequent assumption that Jesus at heart sanctioned an almost Oriental withdrawal from life, is found in 383 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION the astonishing force of the sayings that plead for what we may call Detachment. No ascetic of the desert ever spoke in one way more strongly than Jesus. A distressed dread of private property, a conviction that it is positively safer as well as more blessed to be without it, is an obstinately persistent strain in his teaching. Woe is proclaimed to rich people. Posses- sions are described as subject to theft and corruption, wholly insecure : they justify note the accuracy of the verb in the sight of men, but are an abomination in the sight of God. \Ve are distinctly bidden not to seek or accumulate them, and are told that it is all but impossible for a rich man even to enter that social utopia, the Kingdom of Heaven. The three things that choke the "\Vord of God in a heart not indisposed nor unfertile are, first, the pleasures, then the cares of this world, where is keener analysis ? and finally, riches, stigmatized in one sharp word, deceitful. This is plain speaking, nor can we wonder if the disciples were astonished at it and asked who then could be saved. Yet all the time it is blended with the social assumption. The Sermon ends as it began, with the theme of the Kingdom. A certain attitude is enjoined, or, to speak perhaps better, permitted : Judge not, that we be not judged. And the last stress is then placed on conduct as the only passport of the citizen. Only he who " does " that Will of the Father which the Discourse has explained shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Historical conditions and the play of Oriental in- 384 THE KINGDOM OF GOD fluences during the formative period of Christianity account in a measure for the extraordinary mediaeval misunderstanding which construed the teaching of Christ in a separatist and individualistic sense. But there was a more permanent reason. We have seen that no civilization based on social inequality has ever been able to conceive such a degree of detachment from worldly care as he sternly enjoins, unless through an ascetic retirement. The imagination of the past simply could not compass his thought. Yet the teaching about unworklliness could not be passed over by honest minds : and so it came to pass that the people who tried to take the Gospels, not in the free and easy manner of the average sentimentalist, but in sincerity and truth, came falsely to fancy that Christ when he talked of the Kingdom was contemplating, not a leaven that should work in the social lump till the whole be leavened, not the ideal of a righteous society which his every word would suggest to his Jewish hearers, but a number of regenerate individ- uals unable to express the love within them through their business relations and therefore struggling in painful isolation to achieve a lonely perfection sur- rounded by an immutable and hostile world. We need dwell on only one point in the early par- ables concerning the Kingdom ; but it is a point of primary importance. Almost all the images are taken from living growth. The sown field, the mustard tree, expanding from a tiny atom of organic life till the birds take shelter in its branches, the seed growing 385 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION secretly, unguessed by those who tread the soil be- neath which the miracle of germination goes on, the leaven, also a living organism, these are the homely, vital parallels used to suggest the advance of the Kingdom of God. This constant reversal to fig- ures and metaphors of growth shows the ever-present sense of process the evolutionary nature, to use the modern phrase of Jesus' conception. The picture of a society, to be gradually realized, in which fighting for one's rights is to be abolished, and physical necessities are to be " added unto us " while we think first of the communal whole and its righteousness and take no thought for the morrow, has always charmed ; it has always, as we know, been dismissed with a sigh. Nor can we wonder if thinking men, under prevalent industrial conditions, have seen in it simply a denial of the will to live. Yet to-day, thousands in every country are awakening to effective belief in this very picture, for it is the picture of the socialist state. Careless of Jesus' teachings though most socialists may be, the civilization they work for, with its equality of economic opportunity, its law of non-resistance and its protection of the individual from fear, bears the same relation which body bears to soul to the social ideal enjoined by the Master. IV Before we answer the final question, whether the Kingdom belongs to time or to eternity, we must ap- proach more closely the development of Jesus' thought. 386 THE KINGDOM OF GOD We find two widely differing types of utterance, corresponding to successive periods in his career. The earlier is represented by the Sermon on the Mount and the closely related series of parables. The later centres in those eschatological discourses so ignored at certain times in church history, so all but insanely stressed at others, and in our own day so vivid a centre of critical uncertainties. There is a dramatic change of tone between the earlier and the later portion of Jesus' life. Probably the common people have never in the course of history been privileged to experience such joy as filled their hearts in the first days of the Galilean teaching. Jesus was happy himself ; that happiness fills the re- cord. In the later period, joy has vanished ; stern cautions take its place. Those who ask to sit on either side of him in his Kingdom receive a sad reply, bidding them share his cup of anguish. Ever clearer, ever nearer, the Cross rises before our eyes. The Kingdom is not forgotten, but it shines now be- yond that Cross, beyond the present age, in far-reced- ing glory. The King has gone into a distant land, his subjects are to occupy till he come. All the virgins, wise and foolish, succumb to slumber while they wait ; but the central command rings clear : " Watch therefore, for ye know not at what hour your Lord shall come." This coming shall be a judgment. After the cumu- lative distress of nations has caused men's hearts to fail in fear, suddenly, awfully, the Sign of the Son of Man shall appear in the heavens. There shall be a 387 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION great winnowing of the gathered peoples, and the test will be no dogmatic loyalty nor mystical emotion but the plainest fulfillment of social duty. The gospel of the Kingdom meantime shall have been preached in the whole world, and after the judgment the Kingdom shall shine forth clear. Critics bid us reject either the early or the later type of teaching as unauthentic. Surely the demand is strange ! Any imaginative reader sees that each type is wholly natural at the precise point where it appears. Glance at the circumstances. In the outset Jesus had rejected in the desert the temptation native to the im- petuous idealist, to save society by hasty or spectac- ular means. But society could not understand him. The misapprehension grew as the power of his word became greater. In mid-life, he had to flee the ex- cited crowds who sought to make him king. Fancy likes to dwell on what would have happened had these succeeded. They would have ushered in the noblest social experiment history has seen : yet it would have presented a sad travesty of the vision of the seer. The desire to force on violent and political lines that so- cial development which must be preceded by psycholo- gical change has been the tragedy of many a reformer besides Jesus. It drove him to a change in method and to a new reserve. He altered the whole tone of his teaching and turned from public instruction to the training of a small group. The disciples were still sent forth with the message of the Kingdom, but with un- relenting plainness the disaffected people were made 388 THE KINGDOM OF GOD to understand that this Kingdom could never be at- tained by political means and would never fulfill their provincial hopes. As this perception came confusedly home to the Jews, all hope of external success in the plans of Jesus was destroyed. Prototype of many reformers, he saw the people fall away from him because he refused political power, while the authorities were hounding him to death on the ground that he sought it. Facing Calvary, his purpose was not weakened, but his expectation of fulfillment was deferred. The eschatological discourses are doubtless colored by edi- torial memories of the first century. But that Jesus, familiar as he must have been with popular apoca- lyptic literature, did look beyond his own day and project the Messianic reign and the victory of the Kingdom into a millennial future, no simple-minded reader of the Gospels can question. Yet the new emphasis is not inconsistent with the old. The Sermon on the Mount itself had ended with prediction of a judgment to come. In these later teachings, judgment, so to speak, occupies the centre of the stage, but it inaugurates a kingdom which is still to be on earth. The Jewish hope, we must re- member, had originally dwelt not on heaven as we use the phrase, but rather on the reign of Messiah over men in the body, in some mystic age to be. The Millennium was the social utopia of the Jews, and was conceived in some ways very practically. Jesus en- larged this hope beyond mere national boundaries; 389 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION but he clung to it till the end. Over all the teaching of both periods shines the great Petition which rises still from the heart of Christendom : Thy Kingdom come on earth. To this coming of the Son of Man, however, catas- trophe is now seen as a necessary introduction. The progress of the Kingdom had been treated as the gentlest of natural growths. Now the point of view has changed, and the Kingdom is to be ushered in by convulsion and crisis. The destruction of nations, the upheaval of nature, the strange invasion of time by eternity, are its precursors. This element in Christ's teaching has been evaded and forgotten : when noted, it has led often to strange bewilderments. Yet is it not profoundly true to fact? Mingled with contemporary reminiscences and illustra- tions, these later teachings contain solemn recognition of an essential and permanent principle in all social progress. It is the correlate to the principle stressed in the earlier teaching. Evolutionary ideas control the Sermon on the Mount : later, the great mind of Jesus faced the necessity of revolution. The Kingdom is planted like a seed and like a seed grows secretly. But in its advance there is another aspect, and Christ gives us the clear and fearless statement that in a dislocated and imperfect world not only must growth be fostered, but catastrophe must be watched for and welcomed. Judgment as well as progress is essential to the further- ance of the Kingdom of God. It takes the world a long time to learn this lesson. Social theorists constantly 390 THE KINGDOM OF GOD slur one of the principles or shrink from the other. Calm, patient minds despise and fear the advocates of catastrophe : temperaments prone to disregard the slow travail of the ages continually press for revolutionary methods. Only now and then a man like Prince Kro- potkin quietly calls history to witness to the apparent necessity of revolutionary crises in all sound evolution- ary advance. The all-comprehending thought of Jesus grew to include both elements, held them in perfect balance, and bequeathed them to the gradual appre- hension of his followers as the slow, sure lessons of history should be learned. And clear beyond slow process and sudden crisis lies the complete fulfillment of the ancient hope. Judgment is no mere solemn conclusion to the present age: it is an episode, introducing a new era. The climax of the eschatological discourses is found in the splendid words: " Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the Kingdom of my Father." In this promise culminates the ideal that strengthens and in- forms the whole teaching of Christ. The Kingdom of God is the goal of history ! The thought gives the clue to all Christian duty. By the last command, as re- corded in the tradition, the disciples are to preach the gospel of this Kingdom through all the world. For its coming on earth they are steadfastly to watch and pray. They must labor for it " till he come," in feed- ing the hungry, visiting the sick, caring for those in prison, and in fulfilling those Beatitudes which, as we have seen, imply not haphazard emotion but regulated 391 THE FUTUKE OF KELIGION social action. Jesus was infinitely patient, for he was well aware that only secret change working slowly, from within out, could produce the society of his desires. He was infinitely courageous, for he did not shrink from predicting the awful destruction of all conventional security before the triumphant ideal could shine forth as the sun in its strength. There are mystical and spiritual elements in his inexhaustible teaching on which we have not touched : they carry the vision behind the visible world, to a plane of being concerning which the sociologist is silent. But none of these elements invalidate the precision of his out- look over the alternation of gradual growth and sud- den catastrophe by which, on the human and visible side, social transformation must be attained. Jesus is, then, as suggestively near to the modern socialist in his view of method as we have seen him to be in his social ideal. His thought may well be said to wait through the ages for social and economic evolu- tion to catch up with it. Its marvelous inclusiveness is its strength in the long run, but it prevents him from being fully apprehended by any one generation. There is an interesting parallel between those Jew- ish ideas which consistently opposed and finally killed him, and the cruder socialist schools. The Jews had their own type of economic determinism. There were plenty of materialistic fatalists among them ; plenty of people who sought to impose the social change violently 392 THE KINGDOM OF GOD from without instead of fostering it quietly from within. There were also others who, shrinking from cataclysm, saw no alternative but inaction. Class-con- sciousness and the doctrine of the class-struggle have moreover close analogue in the haughty race-feeling of the Jews, and their jealous belief that of them only came salvation. Now, Jesus did not wholly deny any of these ideas ; he repudiated only what was exclusive and partial in their emphasis. He saw, as we must learn to see, that idealism is worth nothing unless it trans- late' itself into tangible social progress and express itself in positive terms of human relationship ; his faith in the sacramental unity of body and spirit taught him that such progress must largely come from the natural urge of life ; he believed in action as in pa- tience. Again, his thought transcended all barriers of race, as it transcended those barriers of class which had imprisoned even the mind of Plato ; and he re- jected the race-feeling of the Jews, as we cannot doubt that he would to-day reject what is false and bitter in class-consciousness ; yet he respected and retained the vital element in the national pride. In his plan the Jews were truly the Chosen People, the chief instru- ment through whom the religion of the world should be renewed. Why, then, should he have shrunk to-day from hailing the proletariat as leaders toward social freedom, and welcoming the class-struggle, so far as a high idealism suffuses it, as the destined instrument for the abolition of classes ? The Jews put Jesus to death. It was his own who 393 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION rejected him, the men of faith, the men of an ideal. Intent on asserting a part to be the whole, they con- spired with the Romans, who had no ideal at all, in opposition to the man who held all ideals together ; and Pilate condemns reluctantly him whom the rabbis denounce with howling rage. History repeats itself, and it is never the erroneous so much as the partial enthusiasm which hates the more synthetic and pro- found. Jesus understood this well. Therefore the Cross held its place in the evolution of the Kingdom, and holds that place to-day. But it rises not at the end but in the middle of the drama. Jesus placed it at its true historic point when he environed his followers with eternity, insisting at the same time that the far- thest fulfillment of his dream of brotherhood in an eternal future was no mere phantom nor promise of heavenly consolation for the individual, but a kingdom of effective justice to be possessed on earth by bodily men. To claim Jesus as a socialist in the modern sense is a sentimental fallacy. His words could in the nature of things take no account of the economic forces which must bring about socialism, as every other social change. But he planted in the heart of the world an ideal, unfulfilled but never forgotten, which bears a subtly intimate relation to each successive stage of social progress ; nor shall we be wrong if we say that each stage is nearer to it than the last. In some fundamen- tal respects modern conditions have released for the first time the power of his ideal. Cruelly individual- THE KINGDOM OF GOD istic though democracy has been in its earlier phases, miserably though self-government up to date has failed in politics, we still believe that the chief democratic achievement, the assertion of the dignity of the indi- vidual, is worth all it has cost. This assertion is the very starting-point of the faith and method of Jesus; and it is also the starting-point of the socialistic belief in the wise power of the common will. It is safe to say that as democracy becomes socialized, its economic forms, result of this will, must for the first time work in harmony with the deeper teaching of the Gospels. VI The idea of the Kingdom was never lost, but it faded from the present age. We can see that the early Church held to it for a time, for in the book of the Acts of the Apostles it is mentioned again and again as the burden of apostolic teaching. In the Pauline Epistles, however, it has already dropped almost en- tirely out of sight, or, to speak more correctly, has disintegrated, retaining two of its elements. These ele- ments have grandeur and life-giving power. One ia that conception, so essentially Pauline, of the Church, the Mystical Body of the Lord. In Paul's treatment, the conception retains much of the beauty and moral stringency of the Kingdom-idea ; yet much is lost from the breadth and penetration of the thought of Jesus, to whom, as we have seen, the Church was rather in- strument than end. The other element corresponds to the later teaching of the Master : it is that constant 395 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION expectation of a Parousia, a swift second coming of the Lord in glory, which dominated the first age of Christianity and sustained the early Christians, through all persecution at the hand of the Roman Empire, with a millennial hope of which the fulfillment was all but immediately expected. In different ways these two conceptions of the Church and the Parousia have been central and vital through Christian history : but they have remained separated. In the other chief document of the early Church, that strange book the Apocalypse, the same separa- tion is evident. Yet through all the play of Hebrew symbol, we seem to discern here an ideal nearer than Paul's to that of Jesus. For the writer foresees a new earth as well as a new heaven. He is intensely preoccupied with the actual facts of history. The mystical drama which the book presents is the pro- jection of these facts on the spiritual plane. It is a book, says the Rev. D. S. Cairns, 1 "resonant with the great voices of history," " the cry of the Christian heart, harassed, burdened, and tortured by the pres- sure of the Roman Empire, for a Christian environ- ment," " the expression of revolt against a worn-out world-order, a civilization of custom, armament and law." The thought of the Church and the thought of the Parousia are both present, but they unite to gener- ate a hope of social redemption here on earth which is not far from the Master's Vision. That Jerusalem which is above is no mere heavenly city safely en- 1 Christianity in the Modern World : Hodder & Stoughton. THE KINGDOM OF GOD sconced in eternity. It is beheld forever coming down to abide on earth, with its four even walls, the type of equity, its gates through which all the peoples of the world shall pass, its Tree of Life whereof the leaves are for the healing of the nations. Among all the dreams of an ideal future with which literature is rich there is no greater social document than the Apocalypse attributed of old to the apostle of the inner life. The Vision was too great for succeeding generations to compass or understand. The result in history of the shrinking of the idea of the Kingdom into two only of its component parts is well known. The ecclesi- astical narrowness entailed too often in the first and the fantastic eccentricities resultant on the second were due to the failure to unite them both in the broader ideal of the Founder. On the one hand, Europe developed a church organization where the social ideal, though never quite obscured, was at best tragically blurred and misread, and which at its worst encouraged the elect to flee into cloister or desert, leaving the world to go on its weary way unredeemed. On the other, that great hope of the final victory of justice through cataclysm and anguish lost its hold, or else was spasmodically revived in hysterical and fantastic forms unrelated to the real progress of his- tory. Meantime Christianity as a whole underwent an individualistic change ; it retained immense potency to inspire and purify the private heart, but lost all im- pulse to sustain an all-embracing social hope. That 397 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION hope was transferred to a heaven beyond the wars of earth and the realities of the flesh, and perfection was pictured not in the terms of that natural, living, eager society so tenderly imaged by Jesus, but by rows of solemn saints standing at gaze in perpetual isolation, related only by a dreary monotony of pose and ges- ture. The heavenly Jerusalem itself became as it were individualized, shunted firmly back into eternity, and regarded mainly as a comforting vision for the mourner and the blase. How impoverished, how partial, the ideas most operative in Christian history appear when placed be- side the rich ideal of the Kingdom of Heaven as it lay in the mind of Jesus ! Economic expansion and racial progress have at last in the fullness of time brought us to the point where we may recover that ideal if we will. Behind us lie the great doctrinal age, the great liturgical age, and the age preoccupied with personal religion. All had their necessary tasks in the evolution of the Christian consciousness, nor was the order of these tasks without meaning. The first duty of the Church was through the councils of the first centuries, to formulate the revelation latent in the depths of her heart, of the relations of man to the Eternal. Doctrine was never afterward lost to sight ; but during the Middle Ages it was given her to con- tinue and amplify another work : the expression of corporate religious passion through her glorious art of worship. This work, too, was never superseded ; but the generations passed, and a reaction from formal THE KINGDOM OF GOD religion, a deepening of the individual life, became called for. The Reformation accomplished its appointed task. It isolated man and his Maker. At the dawn of the epoch which was to penetrate with new awe and freedom the secrets of personality, it brought out into fuller light than any earlier age the unescapable ne- cessity of private judgment and the subjective element in religion. Nothing in all this work of the past can be ignored. Each phase has emphasized a vital element, implicit in the teaching of the Founder, nor is any phase ever outgrown. But the time has come to add to the achieve- ments of the past. Doctrine, liturgy, personal religion must now be supplemented and sustained by a large social conception of a regenerate humanity; and to accomplish this splendid task we must recover that idea of the Kingdom of God, so curiously ignored through Christian history, which the Master held steadily before his disciples as the inspiration of their way and the goal of human striving. For centuries, while the seed slowly ripened underground, the amaz- ing thought of Jesus has waited for realization. With the simultaneous advent of democratic and evolution- ary conceptions, its social significance is disclosed as never before ; with the maturing of these conceptions will come its opportunity. The unlovely, unchristian aspects of modern life mean only that the disease and evil which contradict the Divine Will have worked their way, out from the social depths, to the surface where they can be seen and fought. To-day the Christ- 399 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION ian experiment confronts a better chance of victory than at any time since the days when its superb ex- altation of humility converted the Roman Empire. It may be that in the long run the religion of Jesus will survive only if it embraces this opportunity, and by infusing a soul into the body of socialism, transforms the rising social democracy from the " coming slavery n to the likeness of the free City of the Great King. Yet socialism will never truly be that city, for it cannot realize the Kingdom of God on earth. The consummation of that Kingdom is in eternity and not in time. Sight grows dim and speculation falters, peer- ing down the vista of the ages to be. But there are people, and active socialist thinkers among them, who gain already glimpses of another possibility, beyond the socialist state. They hint at a time when the func- tions of government shall be no longer needed: when the State shall have died to live and voted itself out of existence in favor of a more instinctive harmony controlling human relations. In that far future, indi- vidualism at its intensest shall at last be perfectly one with social welfare. We can hardly evoke the picture without a shrug and sigh. But the philosophical anarch- ist can. It is conceivable that he reads to a greater depth than we the ultimate hope in the Mind of Jesus. CONCLUSION "A WISE BEHAVIOR" CONCLUSION PEOPLE are not unknown to assume that a creed is a wall, and a prison wall at that. Keally, though, creeds are not walls but doors, through which one may enter a new world. Dogmatic convictions, if worth anything, are not ends but beginnings. They open the way into new re- gions of vital experience. We cannot end without discussing the effect socialist faith should have on private conduct ; for no one of a religious cast of mind can be quite the same man after he has turned social- ist. His creed soaks into his character ; and by most people he meets that creed will be largely judged from the sort of person it has made him. Indeed, the jeers poor socialists have to endure are a witness to the high conception of socialism enter- tained by its antagonists. If socialists are not sociable, if they live without scattering their goods abroad, if they draw interest on their money, they are clamorously charged with inconsistency. The criticisms are exas- perating and remote from the point. Nevertheless there is some force to them, if socialism be, as we perpetually contend, not only future promise but present growth. New institutions, however good, will never last unless 403 CONCLUSION they be created, not by the policy of rulers, whether individual autocrats or democratic majorities, but by the pressure of transformed characters. Now socialists, more's the pity, frequently keep their socialism in cold storage, like certain bulbs in the winter, waiting to plant till the socialist spring shall have arrived. But an act of faith is always involved in spring planting; and since the spring is at hand, and personality is the only soil in which convictions can flourish, we must take our socialist principles out of our mental cellar and plant them deep in the pleas- ant warmth of heart and will. " Our wilderness is the wide world in an atheistic century," Diogenes Teufels- drock remarked ; if we are going as we hope to make that wilderness blossom as the rose, it is high time to attend to our seedlings. " Let your conversation be in heaven," said the apostle quaintly, meaning by conversation all inter- course with our fellow men. Socialism will not be heaven, but we do hope that it will have some features in com- mon with the Holy City which is forever " coming down " out of the unseen ; and only if we obey the apostolic exhortation can we ever expect that City to stand firm on earth. But how abide in celestial places while our feet tread modern streets ? In trying to be a citizen of the socialist community before it gets here, one encounters heavy odds. Here is that instinctive hatred of restraint which has cap- tured our education and our religion, and is fighting hard to capture our domestic ethics ; here is the spirit 404 A WISE BEHAVIOR of revolt engendered by socialism itself in its present militant phase; and here that old handicap of the System, discouraging at every turn the virtues which alone can sustain the cooperative commonwealth. Can we have our conversation in the heaven of good will, while called to play our part in a world which admits good will only as an appendix to the serious business of living? The task seems impossible, a crusade for a living perfection more hopeless by far than that which sought to rescue the tomb of the dead Saviour. And it is true that we must not expect too much of our- selves or of our comrades, for nobody can be an entirely good socialist in an individualistic regime. " Nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh makes soul," said wise old Ben Ezra : the sacramental re- action is continuous, and we have no corporate body yet in which the socialist soul can attain to its full growth. But we" can do our best ; and that somewhat dis- credited pursuit, the culture of the interior life, cer- tainly gains fresh interest from the new point of view. " I wish you to open the New Year with a sacrifice to the Graces ; to put off the old and put on the new man," wrote that amazing old worldling, Lord Ches- terfield, to his much-enduring son. Seeing the great New Year a-tremble at the point of dawn, it behooves us to follow Chesterfield's good advice ; to endue our- selves, so far as in us lies, with the new Adam who can thrive in the socialist state to be. 405 CONCLUSION II Not that the new citizenship calls for new virtues; the qualities which must create and maintain it are as old as morality itself. We are never likely to outgrow those Beatitudes, which have been called " the touch- stone of every social and political order." Let us de- velop in ourselves that loss of self in the general life which is poverty of spirit ; that noble sorrow over the sufferings of the world which will lead to the world's consolation; that indifference to self - advancement which is evangelical meekness, and which shall in the new day literally inherit the earth. Let us hunger and thirst as the Vulgate translation has it after jus- tice. Let us practice mercy, purity of heart, and that positive passion of the peacemaker which, far from being passive, is truly the master-passion that must evolve from the present world, the world we long to see. If we do all this, we shall indeed in all certainty in- herit the last blessing, and be persecuted for right- ousness' sake ; but we shall also be hastening the day when these virtues will be the natural soul and the impelling motive -power of the social and economic organism. Yet if we have no new virtues to offer, we do have what most men crave and need, a new incentive. " For their sakes I sanctify myself," said the Lord Jesus, and in the great word reconciled forever the vexed claims of self-culture and social devotion. The race must learn to use that word more fully as a 406 A WISE BEHAVIOR lamp unto its feet. Thank God, the Beatitudes are practiced already up to a certain point. They have created personal types unknown to the Pagan world, and through all generations myriads of quiet people have experienced their inner sweetness and their su- pernatural power. The passion for moral beauty, the longing for inward peace, have always impelled men to be humble and loving. They spring from the in- eradicable logic of theJieart, offering each man, a per- sonal solution of his life's mystery. But to-day, rein- forced by the logic of the mind, they flash upon us the glory of a larger vision. There is no stimulus like hope ; and never in the long sad story of social evolu- tion has there been a hope like ours. Have we not in this hope inspiration for a great moral revival ? Must we not, in the light of it, be incalculably strengthened in our inner disciplines, here and now ? To fight on the fierce battle-ground of one's own na- ture to develop the new ethics is one of those hidden labors, those potential martyrdoms, by which the world is saved. If one turns the pages of those manuals of devo- tion popular in certain circles, he will be struck by the curious absence of any attempt to scrutinize the social reactions of our words and deeds. Stimuli and criteria are all mystical: they relate to experiences which the ordinary person finds elusive if not unreal. The socialist is likely to feel a contemptuous revulsion from these little books if he ever opens them ; he would do better if he set himself to rewrite them. 407 CONCLUSION For they are a monument of the supreme psycholog- ical achievement of the Church Catholic, her power to regulate and purify the interior life. The new order, no less than the old, will need this power. The fine art of daily living is sometimes neg- lected by the most exalted natures, and as nervous or- ganizations become more complex, it grows constantly harder ; it also grows more essential. Socialism teaches us to practice it with a new zest. How salutary, to realize that every indulgence in dictatorial word or act, every snub administered to virtuous tediousness, every yielding to temperamental distaste, retards the day of the new social order ; while each temptation to these things is a chance to win a victory for democracy and to educe the future citizen ! And, far more sub- tle than any control of behavior, comes the call to watch those springs of conduct, the motions of the heart. A little self-examination every night, quite after the old devotional pattern, would be of service : Should I have been a good citizen of the socialist state to-day? Have I cultivated in myself the impulses that will be abiding incentives to life and labor, when incentives born of self-interest will be at a discount? Have I desired honor, achievement, serviceableness, rather than mere profit ? Have I loved my work (pro- vided it be in any wise lovable), for work's sake, not for gain's sake ? Have I been as sorry over the suffer- ings of my neighbor as of myself, as watchful of his interest as of my own ? Has my spirit been free from evil suspicion, or pleasure in getting ahead of others, 408 A WISE BEHAVIOR and full of brotherly trust in men ? Have I found my joys less in what I call " mine " than in the bounties and blessings we call " ours " ? It is all extremely simple. But if we can say " Yes," then in our hearts at least the New Order has been born. Why should not the new point of view be taught systematically in socialist and Christian Sunday schools? It would furnish an inspiriting program. Frank handling of the ideals of Jesus with the young has always been a delicate matter; for even small children, discovering that the conduct enjoined by the Master works badly in daily life, are likely to put awk- ward questions. They will go on doing so till the tran- sition is over, but we have no right to evade their per- plexities. We may as well be candid and confess to the rising generation that it is not possible to-day to be thoroughly faithful to Christian ethics, and we ought to explain why not. But we can make it feel how fascinating and romantic it is to be faithful as far as we can. In that endless tussle to get the better of self, which grows so tedious that we are all tempted some- times to give it up from its sheer monotony, our young people can be sustained by the assurance that they are not only obeying a mysterious Divine Will, and purifying their own souls, but are also helping the whole race to a happier and better state of things. They can be trained to translate the old code of the Beati- tudes into new social power just so far as they possibly can ; and to undertake the great Christian adventure, 409 CONCLUSION not as apologetic and half-hearted exiles in a world run on contrary lines, but as joyous heralds of a free society, in which the Kingdom of God shall have come not in word but in power. And, as it is useless to teach what one does not practice, our own incentives will be sharpened in proportion as we bend ourselves to the work of education. Ill The transformation of character which socialism will call for is a stupendous thing to contemplate. But the glad marvel is that in the secret depths of life the sign is given, the miracle begins to be wrought. Socialism when it comes will arrive as no imposition of an alien yoke, but as the satisfaction of a deep desire, which has had a causal potency. At point after point the leaven of democracy working among us ren- ders our moral disciplines practicable and our hope assured. Because the Kingdom is already within us, we dare to labor for its visible advent. What else means our determination that the average man shall have his fair chance, a determination so in- grained that in the teeth of obvious fact it makes some people insist that he has it already? This determination is the germ of the new moral order, and it has been at work in the social organism for more than a hundred years. Planted by the French Revolution, it was tersely expressed by Napoleon in his memorable phrase, "La carriere ouverte aux talents." Its promise has actually been fulfilled to a limited degree. Class-barriers have 410 A WISE BEHAVIOR become no longer fixed, but fluid; the exceptional though not the average workman has been able under some circumstances, though not under all, to rise into prosperous freedom. We have been so excited over this novel phenomenon that we have congratulated ourselves on it altogether too warmly ; for on the large scale and in the long run, the promise has been a wretched delusion, as it must always be under a com- petitive regime. Meantime this promise has struck in- ward ; and now that we are learning that it can never be effectively fulfilled till democracy is socialized, we can and must set to work with zest at constructing and adopting the new code which will express in all relations of life, from manners to morals, the new, the socialized man. From manners to morals. Looking for what we can seize on in the present to guide us toward the future, we shall not do amiss to glance again at that obvious athletic field, so to speak, the exercise* of courtesy. Here at least the tradition of a non-competitive atti- tude lingers. We have a code which we only need to practice. How awkward we are at it, especially in de- mocratic and unconventional relations, is evident if we watch the bearing of most uptown people oscillate between constraint and patronage at for instance a settlement party ; yet we do know good manners when we see them, and so, it is salutary to recall, do shop- girls and workmen. Syr Calidore, Spenser's young Knight of Courtesy, has as honorable a place among the virtues as Temperance or Justice, and in choosing 411 CONCLUSION him for elect lover of the shepherdess Pastorella and comrade of her boorish mates, the most aristocratic of our poets hints delicately that true courtesy creates its own atmosphere of equality. Democracy on the de- fensive has bred vicious manners ; democracy triumph- ant will revive, we trust, the graces of other days. It is for us to bridge the transition, and we can only do this if we cultivate in ourselves, from this moment, toward dependents, employees, persons of dirty hands and ugly speech, sharers of the same trolley, casual ac- quaintances, and members of the family circle, the " gentle heart that gentle manners breeds." Another task to be undertaken without delay is the transformation of the attitude of the rising generation toward property, a feat only possible, we remember, if we succeed in transforming our own. Here, too, there are many points of which we can take advantage. As we saw in discussing the matter, pure egotism is rarer than we think, and nearly all forms of property passion have a social element which can be increased. We must simply deepen the shadow which is coming to rest for sensitive people on most forms of private own- ership, and train ourselves in regard to material ob- jects, to care supremely for " joy in widest commonal- ity spread.'' To do this the instincts of culture must be turned upside down : could we once become apolo- getic rather than complacent over fastidious and ex- clusive tastes, we should be a little farther on the way. Meantime, to test our satisfactions by a social criterion is capital drill : 412 A WISE BEHAVIOR I have a golden ball, A big, bright, shining one, Pure gold, and it is all Mine. It is the sun. I have a silver ball, A white and glistering stone That other people call The moon, my very own ! And everything that 's mine Is yours, and yours, and yours, The shimmer and the shine ! Let 's lock our wealth outdoors ! l Again, we have an interesting work before us in de- ciding how far we may wisely open the ear of young people to that militant summons which socialism utters just now. But the difficulty is less than that which a nation faces in wartime. We can point out that the bravest fighters have been the greatest lovers of peace, and that he whose advent was heralded by the promise, Peace on earth, did not hesitate to announce at the due time that he came to bring not peace but a sword. And we can set all students of justice, old and young, to the stimulating and feasible, if paradoxical, endeavor to remain in perfect charity with all men, even while they bind themselves to resolute action and to un- flinching fellowship in that class-struggle which alone can reestablish the evangelical ideal. These are mere casual hints : as we look more widely abroad, over the hopeful signs which even now witness 1 F. Converse, A Masque of Sibyls. 413 CONCLUSION to the possibility of the new order, more than can be mentioned flash on the vision. We must pause an instant over the indestructible power of the family. For in spite of the sinister increase of divorces, and the loud fussing over marital unhappiness, the family group persists, presenting a cooperative commonwealth in miniature. Its health and vitality even in these blight- ing days is the best evidence we can have of the force of association. In the midst of public and industrial life where quite opposite standards obtain, it in the main continues successfully to holdlip an ideal involving the loving self-subordination of every member to every other. If the homes of the nation are indeed its true altars, they afford a proof that centrifugal forces are stronger than centripetal, that the power, which drives men away from their egotism and combines them in self-effacing harmonies is stronger than that which marshals them as hostile independent atoms. And already, how many groups are forming which like the family offer no barriers to affection and good will ! The immense modern development of organiza- ation, with all its unlovely features and trying disci- plines, is no mechanical fact, but a profoundly signi- ficant spiritual necessity. There are still many people who rebel, but they are a minority, and even our most inveterate hermits are likely to find themselves in their own despite " restored to social neighborhood." Out- side the charmed circle of industrial relations, most people gravitate more and more into friendly groups. They storm Parnassus fifty abreast ; they study the in- 414 A WISE BEHAVIOR timacies of religion and literature in the women's club rather than in the closet ; they visit Europe by prefer- ence in "personally conducted " droves. It is easy to laugh at the tendency ; but, after all, the meaning of the instinct is good, and the more deeply socialized we are the more we shall yield our- selves to it. For as we experience the disciplined de- lights of the fine art of fellowship, social feeling and action will gain a potency which more individualistic days were unable to divine, and the varying types of in- tercourse will increasingly exhale fragrances as varied and delectable as those of a summer garden. The voluntary centres of the common life, forming within that infinitely rich and varied consciousness, the nation, are the hope and promise of democracy. For the rhythms of existence are coming more and more to connote harmony rather than melody, and everywhere men rally to the call of a new music, rich in orchestral glory, the beat of which to a sensitive ear is the under- tone of all our active life. So, at point after point, in province after province, we can find our opportunity to foster the new life. It is Inferno where "without hope, men live on in desire " ; but desire is creative, where it is touched with hope, and hope is our special twentieth-century blessing. Talk with friends, look into our own hearts : do we not find the social compunction everywhere astir, shot through with strange flashes and pulses of expec- tation ? Do we not know it to be true, however we fail or stumble, that if the prospect of release from the 415 CONCLUSION burden of communal sin and shame could be effectively offered, a large proportion of plain men and women would leap to welcome it more eagerly than to any prospect of personal gain ? The ideal on which Christ- ianity has insisted during two thousand weary years " is at last penetrating every nerve centre of the com- mon life. The maturing powers of democracy are achieving the amazing fact ; and he who fails in his own inner battles is false to Christianity and to de- mocracy alike. IV There is one problem in personal morals that bids us linger: it concerns the right attitude of the so- cialist toward personal expenditure. As we have hinted, the public is sensitive on this point. Perhaps nothing more discredits the socialist movement than the lack of any special self-denial in the use of money, among socialists at large. For although none of us obey Tol- stoy, we all read him. Thoreau and Carpenter has each his following, and even our old worthy, John Woolman, is reprinted in fresh editions. We ourselves may have no idea of adopting the views, far less the practice, of any of these gentlemen : but we feel that people who pretend to want to turn the world upside down, in the name of social justice, ought to do so. This book has cast slurs on poor Simplicity, that bourgeois sister of St. Francis's aristocratic dame, Madonna Poverta. But we live in bourgeois days and many feel that the little sister has a useful part to play : " May it not be 416 A WISE BEHAVIOR the psychical hour," asks Professor Laughlin, of Chi- cago, " to call for the creation of a new aristocracy of the Simple Life, of those who care for the true inward pleasure of the mind rather than evanescent show ? " Bishop Westcott, of blessed memory, tried to form a sort of ascetic militia from among the courtiers of Queen Victoria ; H. G. Wells presents a similar al- luring type in the Samurai of his modern Utopia ; and the talk about Simplicity even degenerates into cant and is fair game for ridicule. One does not observe that socialists are more in- clined than other folk to join the " new aristocracy," or become Samurai : and disappointed people say in consequence that they would be more ready to embrace the creed if its adherents practiced what they preach. It is a superficial statement. There is no logical rea- son why a socialist should share his possessions or deny himself, any more than any one else. A man may hate and deprecate the system which makes swollen fortunes possible, and may fight it hard, while recognizing at the same time that under present circumstances it would not do the cause or any one the least good for him to distribute his money to the poor. Since now- adays wealth has to change from one private hand to another, socialists think that, other things being equal, it is better in the hands of a good socialist than it would be elsewhere. They entirely agree with the sages who inform us that if a private property were equally divided, even the largest would spread too thin to be of any use, and that if we make things equal 417 CONCLUSION to-day they would be unequal to-morrow. William Morris was a socialist who died rich. He was an hon- est and disinterested man, and it is probable that dis- tasteful labors in the cause of socialism hastened his death, but he was endowed with good Anglo-Saxon shrewdness. The keen discussion of his point of view in Mackail's excellent biography is instructive reading. The economic doctrine of socialism has nothing to do with the use of private property here and now ; and from the intellectual side there is nothing in so- cialist principles to oblige a socialist to give up the luxuries and pleasures of life. The constant sneers at rich socialists are only one symptom of the mental confu- sion in which we are entangled. If sneers are in order, they should be directed, not against the rich socialist, whose theories have no connection with his place in the economic scale, but against the rich Christian, claiming to follow a Master who explicitly tells him that his position is perilous and in gentle words that permit no evasion advises him to renounce it. No one, however, hears the wealthy church warden charged with inconsistency in respectable circles. Ever since the mediaeval attitude toward poverty as a virtue has yielded to the modern attitude which regards it as a vice or a disgrace, Christian profession and large worldly possessions have hobnobbed cheerfully. Yet, all the tune, the appeal for self-restraint and simplic- ity comes straight from the heart of Christianity ; and the most individualistic Christian, who acknowledges the authority or even the wisdom of Jesus, is under 418 A WISE BEHAVIOR far heavier bonds in this respect than the most dras- tic socialist. The great modern preachers of the simple life, for that matter, culminating in Tolstoy, have not been socialists at all. At the same time the socialist who does practice self-restraint commends his message infinitely more than he who lives conventionally. Delicate living on the part of advocates of the new creed is a rock of of- fense in the way of hundreds. When a young clergy- man, laboring in a tenement-house district through the summer heats, and mystically ardent to spare him- self at no point where his people suffer, encounters a group of political socialists on a holiday, drinking choice vintages and demanding loudly the best accom- modations in hotels, it is only human nature that he should turn away sad and disappointed from the mes- sage to which he had been drawn. Nor is his disappointment sentimental. On the in- tellectual side, to be sure, the self-indulgent socialist is beyond the reach of argument. But how about the moral side, and that preparation of will and conscience for the new order which we must never forget to stress ? Not only our minds but our habits must be put in training for the socialist state ; and to limit our re- sources severely to what would be available for every one if justice ruled is one of the most necessary parts of the training. Once accept this postulate and we shall be constrained to feel that no socialist Christian to-day has any business to gain or to use for personal ends more than is necessary to keep him mentally and 419 CONCLUSION physically efficient. How much this may be can be determined only by intimate self-examination. In no field is the permission, Judge not, more salutary and comforting. There is no doubt that luxury beyond a certain point suffocates personality, just as poverty beyond a certain point atrophies it ; but in search for the point we encounter a sliding scale. The amount necessary to educe full joy and power differs with tem- perament, capacity and the stage of development. One man may conceivably need three motors for his soul's health, while his neighbor thrives on trolley trips : one woman perhaps cannot live harmoniously without Per- sian rugs, while another keeps her heart cleanest with bare floors. Let us be tolerant toward others, severe toward ourselves. In this matter close discrimination is in order. We have to distinguish between present duty, incumbent on us while we are as now in a sort of social siege, and ul- timate ideals. Three factors have impelled men to self- restraint in the use of material goods. There is the ascetic instinct of the East and the Middle Ages, which holds the flesh as intrinsically dangerous. There is the good taste of the Greeks, convinced that only a severe ascesis can enable us to know the Beautif ul-and-Good. And, finally, there is that social compunction which cannot rejoice in abundance or pleasure while one of "the least of these " feels want. The ascetic impulse is at a discount to-day; many people believe that the world has permanently out- grown it, though we have seen some reason to doubt 420 A WISE BEHAVIOR this opinion. Meanwhile, and until the time of our transition is accomplished, social compunction must indubitably be the strongest modern motive impelling men to simplicity of life. Between the lapse of asceti- cism and the rise of this compunction, intervened the most vulgarly self-indulgent period the Christian world has ever known. Here and there, even during this period, a man possessed of the good taste that comes from living in the Spirit, arose to protest. Thus Wordsworth, at the outset of the nineteenth century, sang his deli- cately classical ideal of a simple life chosen from sheer preference of economy in joy. We need -only compare the poetry of Wordsworth with the prose of that great modern teacher of simplicity, John Ruskin, to see how swiftly and markedly a new emphasis appeared. For in Ruskin, lover of all rich beauty in life and art, the passion of pity became a constraining force, and the most cogent portions of his social teaching are those which enjoin us not to abound while others suffer, and to refrain from even the most legitimate forms of lux- ury which it may have injured our brothers to produce. 1 Sir [says the tutor to the rich boy in Raskin's splendid words], you are so placed in society, it may be for your misfortune, it must be for your trial, that you are likely to be maintained all your life by the labor of other men. You will have to make shoes for nobody, but some one will have to make a great many for you. You will have to dig ground for nobody, but some one will have to dig through every summer's hot day for you. You will build houses and 1 Time and Tide, Letter xxi. 421 CONCLUSION make clothes for no one, but many a rough hand must knead clay and many an elbow be crooked to the stitch, to keep that body of yours warm and fine. Now, remember, whatever you and your work may be worth, the less your keep costs the better. It does not cost money only. It costs degrada- tion. You do not merely employ these people. You also tread upon them. It cannot be helped : you have your place and they have theirs ; but see that you tread as lightly as possible, and on as few as possible. What food and clothes and lodging you honestly need, for your health and peace, you may righteously take. See that you take the plainest that you can serve yourself with, that you waste or wear nothing vainly, and that you employ no man in furnish- ing you with any useless luxury. That is the first law of Christian or human economy. But it is the same Ruskin who tells us : " Luxury indeed shall be possible and innocent in the future, luxury for all and by the help of all." We, who accept democracy and welcome the help of machinery, have firmer ground than he for this belief. We repudiate the sad, mid-Victorian statement : " It cannot be helped: you have your place and they have theirs." We be- lieve that it can be helped, and that the time is com- ing when no labor that costs degradation need be de- manded of any son of man. And so we look forward to a period when questions concerning the ethics of con- sumption can be disentangled from social remorse and put on an independent basis. Simplicity of life, if then practiced, will stand on its own merits, free from ad- ventitious aids, whether ascetic or altruistic. When this time comes, it may well be that the Greek 422 A WISE BEHAVIOR ideal will be that to which we shall revert. In the just commonwealth of our desires, the sweets of life will be no longer tainted for fastidious palates by their rarity. Simplicity will no longer be called for as a private and self-conscious virtue : for it will be as it were socialized into an instinctive and steadying prin- ciple of the whole organization. We shall understand why Plato appointed for guardians of his state, men who accepted his motto : " The less men have, the more they are like the gods who want nothing." Our greedi- ness for luxury to-day is a natural obverse of our teas- ing fear of want : under socialism, a distinct preference for simplicity in itself may be hoped for. The system will depend for its success less on the diffusion of ma- terial goods than on the diffusion of happiness, and we shall all have mastered for our ideal of happiness the lesson of Sill's familiar lines : To be only, like the rest, With heaven's common comforts blest, To accept in humble part Joy that shines on every heart Never to be set on high Where the envious curses fly, To be lost, except to God, As one grass-blade in the sod, Underfoot with millions trod. The Japanese as well as the old Greeks can help us to our ideal, if they do not become hopelessly com- mercialized and westernized before the West reforms. Noticing how all the frugal necessities of life turn into graces among them, we perceive that true grace in- 423 CONCLUSION heres rather in the indispensable than in the super- fluous, and we shall bend ourselves to expressing this fact more and more, in precise proportion as we grow more civilized. And even now, while social compunction constrains the sensitive to abstentions and restraints which might well be as severe as those practiced by the Middle Ages, reflection on the more sane and permanent ideal has its value. Experiments as to what possessions men really need are as entertaining as the popular experi- ments in diet, and certainly have more social impor- tance. They might well be carried beyond the present casual and personal stage, to the corporate and scien- tific. There is no reason why " business efficiency " should not be as carefully studied in consumption as in production. There is an excellent selfish reason for beginning investigations, and submitting ourselves to disciplines, immediately. No one can tell when it may be very inconvenient to us to be as " soft " as most of us are now. Swift changes are before us ; and when the pro- cess of socialization shall become accelerated to the degree that even middle-aged people may quite possi- bly witness, a temporary lowering of general prosper- ity, and in consequence of our entire standard con- cerning possessions, may possibly be forced upon us. In the early stages of the profound readjustments sure to follow the removal of the competitive spur, the stream of collective wealth may shrink between its banks to a mere trickle. At the same time the concen- 424 A WISE BEHAVIOR tration of riches will be broken up, and the process of equalization resolutely encouraged. If one thinks out the resultant situation, it appears quite likely that the immediate descendants of our present privileged classes may find themselves, to their disconcerted surprise, in a hard world where life will rather resemble the con- ditions of our forefathers in early New England days than the easy-going opulence familiar to Americans during the last fifty years or so. Then will be the time of test. May we be strong to meet it ! The religion of the modern man, socialist or not, is entirely a personal matter. It is to be hoped that the socialist of the future will be sufficiently " pragmatic " to adopt by instinct that order of spiritual thought and discipline most likely to meet the needs of effec- tive social democracy. Meantime the socialist of the present may be Protestant or Catholic, Bahaist or Christian Scientist ; he may hold to a materialistic in- terpretation of history and nature, or he may soar among mystical nebulae; but by whatever avenue, Christian or other, he approaches his sanctuary, there must be two notes persistent in the worship he proffers there if his conception of eternity be affected by the forming social life of our day. These two notes are expiation and aspiration. Conviction of sin is an increasingly rare experience. Perhaps for the majority it is merely a dark mirage, which vanishes as they approach it. This change is 425 CONCLUSION due partly to our modern faith in the Ascent of Man, partly to the fading-out of that Calvinism which de- rived remorse from our failure rather toward the un- seen God than toward the known and visible brother. As immanential ideas become more general, and pan- theism in gross or subtle forms permeates our con- sciousness, it is natural that the sense of guilt toward an anthropomorphic Deity, dimly discerned and infi- nitely distant, should acquire unreality, should faint and fade. Meantime, however, the social conscience is restor- ing the sense of sin to us, with how awful a gravity we know, at times like the Triangle fire when over a hundred young girls lost their lives through the stingy refusal of the employing firm to take decent precau- tions for safety. This sense of communal guilt must strike more inward ; as it does so it will generate pen- itence, which is the only seed of such purity as mortal men are allowed to know ; it will demand atonement. We are all called to repentance ; but the call rings with special clearness to those who feel themselves mem- bers of a corporate Christianity. Not that we may blame the Church too much, or join in cheap invective against her because it was not given her to play a pioneer part in evolving that new social theory which proves so much to the advantage of her aims. Christ- ian distress and socialist contempt on this score rest partly on a misconception. Intellectual light has never yet come from the quarter of the Church. Her function is not to furnish such light, nor even to accept it in a 426 A WISE BEHAVIOR hurry ; but rather, when once it has taken possession of the human mind, to utilize it for the ends of the Spirit. But if we may not blame the Church in history for hesitating over socialist theory, we can find nowhere in the range of her psychology an explanation, other than sin, for her undemocratic sympathies, her truck- ling to conventionality, and that deep prejudice in favor of things as they are which ever since the fatal Gift of Constantino has been bemoaned by all her noblest children. The time for moaning is over and the time for action has come. The beginning of action is the call to repentance. In her prayers as in her deeds, let her accomplish her expiation, longing for her Master to come with the whip of small cords which shall purify her precincts at last. And with penitence, the socialist must cultivate as- piration : Nostrum est interim mentes erigere, Et totis patriam votis appetere, Et ad Jerusalem a Babylonia Post longa regredi tandem exilia. We are Babylonian exiles, indeed ; but we may hasten the Kingdom by living " with hearts raised on high " as citizens of the True Country, maintaining loyalty even at risk of persecution and failure, and conspiring indefatigably to further its interests. Some day the very basis of life will be religious and the earning of our daily bread a sacrament of fellowship. Then and now, let us not lose sight of the higher reaches. Above brotherhood and beyond morality they tower, incon- 427 CONCLUSION ceivably distant, awful in radiance, so all but invisible in our murky air that people deny their existence. Concerning these heights it is not lawful for us to say much, nor perhaps would most of us who live in the plains be able very clearly to describe them. Yet they wait forever, and they will be more and more visible as we hold on our pilgrim way toward that City encircled by the four walls of equity and illumined by the light of sacrifice. The pilgrim knows as well as any one that this city will never be trodden by earthly feet. But he knows also that history is the record of progress toward it ; and he believes that the socialist state will approach more nearly than any civilization yet witnessed the type of Jerusalem. Through that city of the future shall flow the River of Life, whose waters are for the healing of the nations that pour their glory and honour into it : and the realized Pres- ence of the Holiest shall make a sanctuary thereof, wherein abides the Presence of God and of the Lamb. While men during long centuries have sung their wist- ful songs about the Heavenly City, that Vision of Peace has continued its perpetual Becoming. Bernard of Cluny sang the vision for his generation ; but William Blake has sung it for ours. Here, if anywhere, here in contemporary life, here among "our dark Satanic mills," the City of the Great King must be builded: I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant land. A WISE BEHAVIOR VI The intellectual theories of socialism are passing out under our eyes into that arena of practical politics be- set with pitfalls for the idealist. On the one hand, he is confronted by the danger of fastidious inaction, on the other, by that of coarsening compromise. A diffi- cult period, which English-speaking countries, more particularly the United States, are late in entering, awaits us all. The question concerning membership in the socialist party must be confronted and settled by every person convinced of socialist principles, no mat- ter how alien to his training and temperament some features in that party may be. To suggest the right decision is no duty of this book. On the one hand, the movement is indubitably wider than any political ex- pression of it. On the other hand, some of us would rather be soldiers under drill, in a righteous warfare, than camp-followers or sympathizers at large. Whatever decision be made, it will be a pity if our pilgrim whose conversation is in the socialist heaven fails, provided he have time and energy to spare, to join the good fellowship of those engaged in practical social service. The socialist organization will perhaps do well to refuse compromise however tempting, but the so- cialist individual needs the opportunity social service affords to practice cooperation and to manipulate the stuff of life itself. In the synthesis of his creed he may find the comfort of a sure principle of selection ; among the lines of work open for indorsement or 429 CONCLUSION activity, he will choose such as afford real training in democratic fellowship and true steps toward social equality; these he will seek to relate more and more with those efforts of the workers to achieve their own salvation in which the strongest and surest force for progress is to be found. Be it noted, however, that only because he is a so- cialist is the power of social service restored to him. The effort to save his own soul or perfect his own character is more than ever an apple of Sodom from a mummy tomb. The impulse to relieve 'suffering is a better thing, and unless he obeys it he is likely to be restless. Yet this, too, would be intolerable unless -sus- tained by the light of his larger vision. If^this vision fails him for a moment, he will instantly seem to himself again to be rowing upstream as it were in a nightmare, pulling with breathless exhaustion, but aware whenever he lifts his eyes that the banks are slipping in a wrong direction, and that the current is carrying him and all the human race, down, down, to an ever greater misery and a more cruelly surging injustice. Sometimes, as he continues his dogged efforts to ameliorate, to console, to reform in detail, the old horror is upon him, the rage of helplessness possesses him. At such moments let him withdraw for a brief space from the conflict, and make his Act of Faith, de- voutly as worshipers kneeling at the Incarnatus. Again ne will breathe free and lift his eyes toward the beckon- ing hills of hope. And with relentless constancy, in season and out of 430 A WISE BEHAVIOR season, the religiously minded socialist will seek to share his faith. " Education toward socialism,'* that formula beloved by William Morris, will be his motto, whether he be engaged in political action, in journal- ism, in business life, in conversation, or in saying his prayers. To exultant and open adherence to the so- cialist creed, he will add a watchful self-discipline, intent on preparing himself, and all who may come within the sphere of his authority or influence, for con- tented and efficient citizenship in the cooperative com- monwealth. Socialism is not a theory on paper ; it is a forming life, still embryonic, to be brought to the birth at the appointed hour. And solemnly, as the wise mother prepares soul as well as body for her high destiny, should our age perform its similar duty to that heir of the worlds to come which already is car- ried hi its bosom. 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