|Bi||li|i Key LOS ANGELES STATE NORMAL SCHOOL LIBRARY By Ellen Key The Century of the Child The Education of the Child Love and Marriage The Woman Movement Rahel Varnhagen The Renaissance of Motherhood The Younger Generation The Younger Generation By Ellen Key Translated from the Swedish by Arthur G. Chater G. P. Putnam's Sons New York and London Ube Knickerbocker press 1914 ifl COPYRIGHT, 1914 BY ELLEN KEY Ubc Untcherbocftcr Drew, 1Uv> Borh Ha m CO HJALMAR BRANTING AND CARL LINDHAGEN IN SYMPATHY AND ADMIRATION CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. WHAT THE AGE OFFERS AND EXPECTS OF YOUTH ..... 3 II. ASSOCIATED ACTIVITY AND SELF- CULTURE 25 III. THE PEACE PROBLEM ... 59 IV. YOUTH, WOMAN, AND ANTIMILITARISM . 95 V. "CLASS BADGES" . . . .115 VI. THE CHILDREN'S CHARTER . .131 VII. RECREATIVE CULTURE . . . 137 VIII. THE FEW AND THE MANY . .189 I WHAT THE AGE OFFERS AND EXPECTS OF YOUTH WHAT THE AGE OFFERS AND EXPECTS OF YOUTH A MONO the empty sayings, which constitute ** at least half our stock of opinions, is this : that early youth is life's happiest time. On the contrary setting aside exceptions the age between, say, fifteen and twenty-five is probably that during which the majority of people suffer most. Not from this or that great sorrow, for such experiences usually come upon us in later years. But every young person who can both think and feel and it is only to such that I speak suffers during those years from the sorrows inherent in existence to a degree never reached in later life. Their elders seldom take the sufferings of the young seriously ; they see in them the inev- itable storms of the vernal equinox and rightly lay stress upon the great, the immeasurable good fortune of youth that of having one's life before one. It is true, the young com- 3 4 The Younger Generation plain of having "their whole long life before them, to suffer in." But soon from their subconscious ego wells up the triumphing, jubilant knowledge of being still in the morn- ing of life, of having, in fact, a whole long day before them. In this glad knowledge dwells a power to heal even the heaviest sorrows. Perhaps it is just because the old are aware that life stands smiling, with her arms full of gifts, before the youth who himself sees nothing, since he weeps with his head in his hands that these old ones take the sorrows of the young more lightly than they ought, the old are apt to forget the capacity for uffering in the young, which is great enough to quench even the will to live and to drive a young man to his death for what others call a- trifle. ") vDuring the years we are considering, the young are often called upon to solve their most difficult personal problems those of religious belief, of the choice of a career, of love with all the possibilities of conflict and pain that these problems involve^) But even Supposing these problems to be easily solved, every young person has to bear the burden heavier in proportion as the indi- viduality is richer of accommodating him- What the Age Expects of Youth 5 self to existence, now that it is no longer seen with the eyes of a child, the eyes to which everything is as it should be. Doubtful, groping, misunderstood, misun- derstanding, the young are tormented by their own ego ; by the errors of others concern- ing that ego; by the disproportion between their ideal longings and their weak actions; by the labour of creating a will for themselves, of forming opinions and shaping a mode of life: that is, on the one hand, an external attitude, a code of manners; on the other, a personal culture, a well-defined individuality. Even if we leave on one side the meta- physical problems of being, there remain difficulties enough in all the problems of human intercourse, against which youth runs its head from the moment it begins to discover the cracks behind the fine facades, the lofty walls that shelter abuses, the rag-shops that bear the sign-boards of social advantage. The young man who broods over these things is called by his neighbours insufferable, revolutionary, discordant. But we might as well expect a correct attitude of such a^ young man as of the inhabitants of Messina, when they were hurled by the earthquake from the fifth floor into the basement. The whole of 6 The Younger Generation existence rocks about these young people; everything seems to them insane, devoid of plan, rotten, empty. If they disclose their feelings, the usual answer is: "Such is life; one must accept the inevitable and conform to reality." Some of them follow the advice, harden their hearts, and endeavour for their own part to get as much as possible out of life. Others are landed in scepticism, avenge themselves by satire, and proclaim that this is the only "in- telligent and noble attitude." Others again declare a proud and gloomy despair to be the "heroic" bearing. I consider, however, that the strongest finally arrive at the only position which is worthy of a thinking and feeling human being: the position of the youth in Klinger's etching, who raises his care-worn face and his clenched hands to heaven with the cry: "And yet/ In spite of all I will not let myself be vanquished ; in spite of all, this existence, when I leave it, shall be changed in some respect. Even if they are right who say that life is not good, why have I entered life unless to make it better?" But a young man who has arrived at this point may be confronted in very various ways What the Age Expects of Youth 7 by the time he lives in. One age is poor in ideas and problems, another rich. Many lives, abounding in possibilities, have ended in futility, because the young, with then- strong desire of achievement, their seething powers, have found themselves in an age that demanded of them nothing more than a good university degree ! Such an age existed all over Europe in the middle of last century. The young man who then entered, for instance, upon university life, did not encounter there any rallying movement of the young, nor again did he meet with any of the currents of ideas that directed his own life. ^ Heavy drinking was thought the sign of manliness, and the fresh- man was warned against sexual abstinence for "the reward of virtue" was physical and mental disorder ."\Nothing was said about the education received by the student involving any social duty beyond that of becoming a serviceable State official. Those were the days when even thoughtful men dismissed Darwinism with a joke about our grandfather the ape and socialism with cheap phrases to the effect that, if everything were equally divided to-day, some would have drunk their share by to-morrow! 8 The Younger Generation Then came the 'eighties, with lively dis- cussion of the problems of European civilisa- tion ; with burning zeal for freedom of thought and speech ; with the education of the people, regarded as the task of the young, now awakened to a social sense. Then came the scientific temperance movement, sexual enlightenment, and social enlightenment; through all of which youth has now received in full measure from our time what youth above all needs knowledge and aims. No doubt many a young man may still be found who considers "living his life" to mean poisoning himself with alcohol and sexual excesses. But no one can now make the excuse that he has not been taught what this leads to. No doubt many a young man may still be found without a sense of social respon- sibility. But no one can make the excuse that he has lacked reminders on this subject. Nowadays, while still at school, boys and girls acquire a knowledge of their civil rights and duties and receive instruction in social problems. Indeed, our age gives the more receptive among the young such a sense of social respon- sibility that one is inclined at times to fear that social interests may encroach upon What the Age Expects of Youth 9 individual development, that a knowledge of all the ills affecting the community may act as too powerful a damper on the joys of youth. For youth is truly light-hearted only so long as it can forget all "questions" for the moment. The most serious among the young have eagerly hearkened to the demands of the time. The work of popular education, the temper- ance movement, the peace movement, are to a great extent carried on by the young. Their meetings show that the young understand one of their tasks, that of bringing together the different classes through social intercourse. However we may compare the present state of things with that of forty years ago, the comparison proves that our time has given youth weapons and implements that it pre- viously lacked. Until our day, earnest Christ- ians alone possessed both weapons and implements; but these were of an entirely different kind and served a purpose entirely different from the social one. Hitherto I have only been able to touch lightly upon the many things our age offers to youth and expects of it in return. The greatest of them remains to be dealt with. io The Younger Generation What this is, was known even a quarter of a century ago to a few among the young. For there are always some who are up at dawn, who have sharper ears and clearer eyes than the rest for the signs that herald daybreak. The young men and women of our time are able to enjoy the delight of being young just in one of the awakening periods of our race, one of its marvellous spring days; their privilege is the intoxicating knowledge of hav- ing their whole life before them, full of the problems of new creation. And yet there are many, even among the young, who have no inkling of this good for- tune ; nay, who see in the great ideas of the time nothing but "aberrations." Even in the richest periods of our race at the Renaissance, for instance similar elderly souls have been found, lamenting over the "disappearance of old landmarks" ... or of the old-fashioned Christmas! But the sociologist knows as well as the meteorologist that, if the "old landmarks" no longer hold good, this is not due to the "depravity of the times," but to changes in the atmosphere, terrestrial or social. To those who in the movements of the time see nothing but "tendencies to dissolution," What the Age Expects of Youth n I do not address myself; but assert instead, with the most immutable conviction, that the sun of a new religious view of life is in process of condensation from the nebulae of present- day ideas, and that a new order of society is organising itself out of the chaos of actual conflicts. When both these processes are complete, it will be seen how one has deter- mined the other. The ascent of our race towards ever higher forms of life, towards an ever richer completeness, this is the goal which the new individual piety and the new social conscience embrace in common with religious fervour. When the striving towards this goal becomes the "categorical imperative, " both for all individual ethics and for all social politics, then will the keys of all social "ques- tions" of to-day begin to shine around us as the primroses which are also called "keys of heaven" brighten the grass at Easter. This conviction, which the age has given to me, it offers to all who will receive it. And to him who once possesses this faith, the true line of action reveals itself spontaneously. I do not include in this line of action ad- herence to the Social-Democratic or any other party. In many cases as in my own per- sonal reasons may forbid one's joining any 12 The Younger Generation party. But the conduct which will be an inevitable consequence of adopting the great ideas of the time will consist in the first place of showing by word and deed one's under- standing of the path that social development must follow at the outset that of class warfare. The path is not the goal, and the more the path can be shortened and made even, the better. But the class war of the fourth estate can no more be avoided than any other of the class conflicts through which the social organism has acquired new forms; conflicts which, as in the present case of the fourth estate, have been evoked by unsatisfied needs of life and culture. Such needs are met in every age by the ruling strata of society just as the liberal middle class after it had won its own class conflict met the demands of the working- class: at first with obstinate resistance, then with promises of "reforms adapted to the times, " so far as they might be fitted into the framework of the "existing order of society." Even the Conservatives are aware that the profits of capital are increased by good con- ditions of labour; nor are they blind to the justice of certain measures of workmen's in- surance, etc. But every tendency to "dis- What the Age Expects of Youth 13 turb the existing order of society" is to the Liberal, as to the Conservative, "anarchical." That the liberal idea of society, founded on the freedom of labour and of competition, is already disturbed by the combinations of capital on one side and of labour on the other, is not perceived; nor again that the actual task of both powers in the State is to put an end by legislation to the anarchy of the la- bour market, to bring the war to a close, and to establish a labour peace on new bases. The "third power in the State," the Press, which during the Swedish general strike cried out against the "Socialists' attempt to stifle its freedom ' ' 1 is this power really free ? No ; it too has become a company concern, in which the influence of the financial director is predominant in determining the attitude of the paper. For he knows best to what extent the dividends may suffer from a boycott of advertisers against obnoxious views. Does even the liberal Press dare to defend with energy its own great principle, the right of free utterance? Liberalism thinks it still has time for moving pieces. That Capitalism has already upset the board, it fails to see. 1 By means of the strike of compositors. TR. 14 The Younger Generation Our immediate future depends largely on the clear-sightedness of the young in this matter. A great period of awakening makes immense demands of the young; above all that of recognising a great idea even when its battle is fought less nobly than they had hoped, when it does not march on "with white banners and lily-decked spears," but comes with red flags and heads upon its spear-points. 1 Will that section of the thinking and feeling youth of the present day, which takes no direct part in class warfare, be able to see that, however ugly the conflict may now appear, it is nevertheless being fought for the sake of a more perfect ordering of society, a greater social justice? That we live in social war time, we all know. As international war is recognised by the law of nations, so must social war be recognised. Sooner or later both will be abolished. Mean- while both will continue ; and one of the causes of their continuance is the view that a war "concerns" only the belligerent nations or classes. When the sense of solidarity has been developed to such a point that each one 1 The conservative Press of Gothenburg was not ashamed to accuse me, on the strength of these words, of inciting to a sanguinary revolution! What the Age Expects of Youth 15 feels the cause of all others as his own, we shall be drawing near to international and to social peace. This solidarity has attained its first form in class solidarity. This is forced to demand that the essential weapon of the workers the cessation of labour shall be as effective as possible. To judge, for instance, of a breach of contract, occurring during a defen- sive conflict, in the same way as one would judge of it in time of peace, betrays a method of reasoning like that of those who call the soldier a "murderer." An action by which the individual hazards great personal advantages has a different ethical standard from one by which he gains personal advantages. It was very fortunate for Gustavus Vasa that at least there were no papers to set forth his breach of faith, when in spite of his oath to the Church he outraged ancient laws and sacred feelings in order to establish the kingdom of Sweden on the ruins of the Church. The capacity of the Press for confusing ideas of justice shows itself in times of social strife in so disastrous a fashion that one is tempted to wish that the government, when forbidding the retailing of spirits, might also forbid the 16 The Younger Generation sale of papers, and that the public might be forced to content itself with telegrams about the state of the conflict. After this involun- tary abstinence from the stimulant of leading articles the public would find its independence of thought, its power of discernment, its sense of justice so much increased, that the solution of conflicts after these "self-denial weeks" would be considerably facilitated! The most astounding thing is to see workers who have replied to a general lock-out by a general strike treated by the Press as aggress- ors against the "third party," society, "which ought to stand outside it all." Do not the locked -out workers, then, with their wives and children belong to society? Does not the distress caused by the lock-out fall indirectly upon the third party? And even if this third party were unaffected by the distress, it ought at least to perceive that as consumer and taxpayer it suffers just as much when Capital forms its trusts and rings as when Trade-Unions declare their strikes; in other words, that the third party in reality never can be unaffected by the present state of war and never ought to be absolved of its share in the responsibility for it. To regard society as a third party involves a mechanical What the Age Expects of Youth 17 conception of the social structure, the organic nature of which was suspected even by the ancient Roman, when he related on the Mons Sacer the fable of the belly and its members. The conception of society as a piece of machinery leads to denunciations of the wheels and belts that are responsible for the partial stoppage of the machine. In the organic conception, however, we witness another phenomenon: the earliest, uncertain stirring of a new ethical conscience, the new morality of class solidarity. It shows itself as a power of good and evil, exactly as the morality of patriotism has shown itself. Neither the one nor the other is anything but a preparatory school for the final, perfect solidarity within the nation and between the nations. Neither the conservative nor the liberal middle-class Press understands this morality. It cries out for forcible measures to prevent the subversion of society, for police and military against the creators of disturbance. Many young people even join in this cry. They eagerly produce evidence from national economics and statistics that "socialism is on the wane," and that "the labour question indisputably admits of solu- tion on the basis of existing society." i8 The Younger Generation But perhaps there are to be found other young people, capable of testing psychologically the spiritual phenomena of the labour move- ment ; young people whose object is a complete social education, who seriously devote them- selves to some social problem. These will sooner or later be confronted with this ques- tion of conscience: whether they are willing to give their powers for the preservation of the social order as it now exists, or whether they will hazard those powers in the transformation of this order, according to which the majority, with its meagre primary schooling, serves a minority with the advantages of higher edu- cation; according to which the majority, liv- ing on or below the verge of poverty, forms the foundation for a minority's unreason- able accumulation of wealth. In other words, whether they wish to preserve a society in which money has become the end in itself instead of the means, in which the prosperity, not of human beings, but of companies and trusts, determines the actions of those in power; a society in which the welfare of a minority is declared to be that of the whole people. Before the young man or woman answers this question, he or she must glance at the What the Age Expects of Youth 19 remaining gifts, in the shape of knowledge and tasks, that the age offers to youth, and ask whether these have a chance of realisation in the actual order of society. The young receive, for instance, instruction about the sacred functions of sexual life and are exhorted to keep themselves healthy and pure for these. But, at the same time, the chances of marriage are reduced and prostitution is maintained, in a great measure, through starvation wages for female labour. The young work with zeal in the cause of temperance. But they know that prohibition will always be cir- cumvented so long as wretched dwellings, bad food, and a low state of culture cause a fierce desire for alcoholic stimulants. The young try to promote popular education. But the factory claims its victims at an early age, and the long hours of labour exhaust the mental elasticity of those who are grown up. The young occupy themselves with the relief of the poor. But at every step they meet with sufferers whose injuries have their origin in the existing economic system. With increas- ing zeal attempts are now being made to provide protection for mothers and infants. But they will be of small effect in a society where the labour of the mothers is exploited 20 The Younger Generation in industry. The young are working in the cause of peace; but peace can never be attained so long as greedy Capital, visibly or invisibly, directs the fate of nations. And even those measures which directly affect the conditions of labour unemployment in- surance, employers' liability, labour contracts, arbitration can become really effectual only in proportion as social policy is conducted upon new principles. When the young have considered these and other allied facts seriously and from every point of view, they will perhaps hesitate before answering Yes to the question, whether they are willing to devote their young powers to the work of repairing existing society. If the young man finally answers this question in the negative, he will probably become either a Social Democrat or demo- cratically social, which means that he will not march under the banner of class war, but will co-operate fully and freely with the Social Democracy in the transformation of society. At the same time he will be able to assert, on behalf of himself and others, that individual- ism to which class warfare does not allow free play, but which in the aesthetic interests of the society of the future must acquire an What the Age Expects of Youth 2 1 even greater value in the mind of each, before it can take its proper place in the ordering of society. Many other claims our age makes on the young, who have received its great gift the hope of a new society and a higher humanity. But with only the greatest of these demands will I now appeal with all my strength to the heart of the young not to grow weary, whatever experiences may come and however devious may be the path of development ; never to be tempted, because of the many obstacles one finds in the way, to say it is not worth while! It is not sufficient for the young to devote their enthusiasm, their courage, their ambition, their self-sacrifice to the great ideas of the time ; the young must not only preserve but increase their powers, if they are to be really equal to their eternal task, that of drawing the age in advance. Why else has youth its great, gleaming wings the wings of longing and of intuition if not to raise itself above obstacles? The young must be prepared to experience innumerable disappointments and yet not fail. Our victories are of significance to the sum 22 The Younger Generation of being. To ourselves the victories are not the supremely important matter. The great thing, upon which all else depends, is not to allow the greatest belief of one's life to be wrecked ; or, in the words of the poet : Canst thou through joy and grief preserve Thy childlike soul unto the last, Then gleams the rainbow through thy tears, Then shines a halo o'er thy grave. II ASSOCIATED ACTIVITY AND SELF-CULTURE II ASSOCIATED ACTIVITY AND SELF-CULTURE CVERY educated person knows that gen- * ' uine culture is only to be acquired by personal work and associated work. One form of the latter is the assimilation of the works of contemporary or former leaders of culture. Another form is our personal co-operation in the cultural movements of our time. In our day this co-operation is expressed above all in combination for public ends; or, in other words, in the formation of societies and associations. This has become one of the most important means of education for the younger generation. But this method makes such demands upon time and powers that an ever-diminishing proportion of either is left over for personal work, which alone provides a thorough and serious cultivation of the mind. The true relation between the two educational factors has been disturbed. While certain epochs 25 26 The Younger Generation have given too great a place to personal cul- ture at the expense of social activity, the re- verse is now the case. The danger to culture that has thereby arisen appears to me already so great that it ought to be noticed and, if possible, averted. The most obvious experience of our time is that a great variety of objects are advanced by means of combination. Above all, the power of combination has been shown in socialism, which fights and conquers under its banner. And I will at once emphatically declare that I am fully alive to the necessity of this, the mightiest associated movement of all times. Only by this means can socialism attain its most proximate and least contested goal : human conditions of life for all members of society willing to work or incapacitated for work. It is thus not combination in itself that can be blamed by those who like myself desire the victory of socialistic principles. The ill-informed think that the goal of social- ism is only new economic conditions; that the whole conflict is concerned with the method and division of production. These ill-informed ones do not know or will not Activity and Self-Culture 27 know that the struggle has finally to do with a greater and remoter object : a new and more beautiful life upon earth through the highest possible enhancement of the existence of each human individual and thereby of that of the whole race and thus also an enhancement of the value of life to each individual and to the whole of humanity. The dream of this enhancement of life is the innermost motive power of the socialist movement, a power of a religious nature. The current of emotion, which was formerly directed to gaining eternal bliss, is turned in socialism in the same degree as the latter is permeated by evolutionism towards the perfecting of earthly life. When Conservatives and Liberals alike point to this or that socialistic theory as refuted nay, abandoned by socialism itself and in consequence declare socialism to be dead, then there always appears to my inner eye a picture drawn by the pen of a great poet. The subject is the nocturnal visit of Nicodemus to Jesus. The colloquy has come to an end, after Nicodemus has expressed his doubts and Jesus has failed to dispel them. All is still in the little chamber; only the flame of the hanging lamp flickers in the spring 28 The Younger Generation wind. Suddenly Jesus breaks the silence with the words: "Nicodemus, dost thou not perceive the creative spirit, renewing its world in a mighty rushing wind? " In these two figures the poet has set forth the immemorial contrast between the intel- lectual and the religious natures ; the one who is only convinced by proofs and facts, and the one whose certainty rests upon faith, upon feeling, and upon intuition. The latter has the capacity for "feeling in the air" without seeing with the eyes that a new springtime has arrived. To natures of this kind it is certain that even if to take an example the majority of Marx's precepts lay as dead as mummies within the pyramid of his doctrine, yet the most essential part of his message would be just as ready to germinate as the grains of wheat that were found after thousands of years within the actual pyramids. This essen- tial part is precisely the idea of combination, the international combination of labour, from which has arisen an entirely new sense of solidarity, of mutual help and mutual respon- sibility; and with it also new ethical and intellectual forces within the working-class. Through their passionate devotion to and Activity and Self-Culture 29 boundless self-sacrifice for the idea of combina- tion, the workers have won a magnificent advance in culture, the value of which is not diminished by the acts of aggression, regret- table in themselves, that the principle of solidarity occasions here and there. It implies, therefore, no depreciation of the value of combination as an instrument of war, if I here insist that it is a one-sided instrument of education; nay more, that it involves a serious danger to the final goal of social strife the future, more perfect existence of the race. If in what follows I attack the socialist associations before all others, this is in the first place because their aim is also mine ; but also because one can best observe a movement of the time its dangers as well as its advantages by scrutinising it in its strongest, most pronounced form. What is here said about the associations of socialism may, however, be applied to all other forms of association. For just as it is the same element that is stirred by the wind in the great ocean and in the little pond, so it is the same human nature that is influenced by the spirit of combination in the interna- tional labour organisation and in the little schoolboys' club. 30 The Younger Generation When we look at the organisation of labour, we find in the first place that its associated life constitutes an education in discipline a necessary education. For the individual must be capable of subordination and self- command when he belongs to a fighting army. And this is easy when the object of the fight is to secure that henceforth everyone shall be able to attain the greatest possible develop- ment and the best possible application of his personal powers, the greatest possible freedom of movement and richness of life, or, in a word, happiness. The means of conflict separates socialism from liberalism, which calls this means thral- dom. The goal of conflict separates it from conservatism, which calls this goal a selfish desire of happiness, springing from material- ism's "frog-like view of existence." The occasional expressions of sympathy with socialism that one hears from Conserva- tives apply, in fact, to its weak side: its strict discipline, its rigid cohesion, its suppres- sion of the personal. For all this, which Socialists themselves often regard as a neces- sary evil, is precisely the social ideal of con- servatism: the complete subjection of the individual to the idea of the State. The Activity and Self-Culture 3 1 approval of conservatism ought therefore to be a serious warning to labour organisations, lest they develop obedience and self-control too one-sidedly at the expense of initiative and self-reliance. For the aim is to liberate, not to bind and break the individual powers. But unless the practice of association has found out how to preserve these powers, no co- operation can take place in the society of the future between free, creative, valuable human beings since the conflict will have produced only slavish souls, incapable of using their powers in freedom. We are here face to face with the fundamen- tal question of the influence of co-operation on the personality, of the habit of associa- tion on self-culture. And however difficult may be the problems of national economy that the present time has to solve, they are child's play in comparison with this question of spiritual economy. We shall long ago have done with the reign of monopoly and speculation, with unearned increment and the idle amassing of wealth, while the laws of the soul's movements and equilibrium, while the conditions of spiritual production and consumption will still remain problems for the solution of which we shall grope in the dark. 32 The Younger Generation Altered social conditions may remove cer- tain ailments and deformities in existing society. But the new and more beautiful society will not be formed exclusively or even mainly by improved conditions, but above all by more perfect human beings. Now someone may object that I have just acknowledged association to be valuable as a means of education, and to have had great ethical and intellectual results. Certainly. If we look at organised working- men, especially the younger ones, we find in them an encouraging development, particu- larly as regards their conduct in public. Self-control, accuracy, parliamentary tact, ability to give and accept reasons, to define and defend their point of view, and to listen calmly to that of their opponent, all this is evidence of a culture, the rapid growth of which is precisely a result of various forms of association for different purposes, and above all of socialistic association. But side by side with these good effects, recognised by all, I must point out some that are less desirable. First and foremost, that the system of association easily leads to the besetting sin of formality, the passion for red tape. Activity and Self-Culture 33 How much time and energy are wasted in endless discussions about rules, questions of form, and paltry trifles! How often does this unproductive and administrative work form the main part of the society's activity ! Those who would like to act, who possess initiative, who are hoping to come to the point, are fettered by the others' hair-splitting pedantry. And in all this fussing about trifles strength is frittered away; strength to see, to feel for, and to act for reality the three conditions without which nothing of consequence can be accomplished. The serious questions that are talked out or strangled with red tape are more numerous than those that are killed by silence; the number of people whose ideas are knocked on the head in societies is greater in our day than that of the solitary fighters who go under. It is of the highest importance that the young should be quite clear on this point, so that in all that concerns statutes and rules of procedure they may aim at the smallest possible compass and the greatest possible breadth which is only an apparent contradiction. The temperance societies and Social-Demo- cratic clubs for young people with their circles for study, their courses of lectures, their Sunday and evening classes, their news- 34 The Younger Generation papers and pamphlets are of great cultural significance. From the young members of such associations a renaissance of the social- istic labour movement may certainly be expected. But it is to be hoped they will let the storms of rebirth sweep away formality and sham importance, and substitute the joys of personal activity for the fussy routine of committees. And may no personal vanity prevent the saving of time and energy that comes of the promotion of several objects by one society. How often could matters, which now demand the calling together of four or five different committees, be despatched by a single one ! We, who fortunately have not to fight for our legal right of association, ought instead seriously to examine the social and individual right of forming and joining societies. Every- one knows that if he continues to cut chips off a piece of wood, it will finally be of no use for a joist. But it is just in this way that we treat our own spiritual forces. The air is full of the splinters of this shattered spiritual energy. But the complete souls, those who devote their whole power to a single life- work, these are becoming more and more rare. The typical disease of the time is platform Activity and Self-Culture 35 mania. Those attacked by this infirmity cannot sleep at night unless during the evening they have heard their own voices in some public assembly. They hurry from meeting to meeting and every day propose the forma- tion of new societies for all imaginable and unimaginable purposes. x Those who already have the disease are probably incurable. All the more important is it, then, to fortify ourselves against it in time. This may be done by laughing when- ever anyone assures us of our indispensability to this cause or that, when we know very well that, if we died, our place in the association would be filled in a few days. It is only the creative one, the man unique in his life's work, whose loss may in certain cases be called irreparable. Societies are never likely to run short of members. And, knowing this, we have a full right to decline with a smile all pressing invitations to squander ourselves on committee meetings. 1 Since it has been demonstrated that civilised man blows his nose unhygienically, I am daily expecting the formation of a Society for Rational Nasal Purgation ; a society which should not be satisfied with less than nine members of committee and nineteen statutes, the first of which, on the approved model, should run: "To blow one's nose freely is a great thing; to blow it properly is greater. " 36 The Younger Generation And above all the young have this right. The young man or woman who early con- tracts this disease of the platform easily loses the capacity for a useful activity in private. Habituation to publicity, to the approval of Press and public, often gives the brittle glass of the young soul one of those cracks that are not noticed until the wine has slowly trickled out and the glass is left empty. The most obvious danger involved in the system of association is that its machinery works blindly, without any safeguards to prevent those who work in it from being maimed in essential parts of their personality. And as the conscience of the individual is lulled to sleep under the hypnotism exercised by a party, a society, or a committee, the danger becomes still greater, since it is un- noticed. The man who stands outside a parliament, a party, an association, or a committee, often asks himself how the mem- bers of this body can be so stone-blind to the truth, when he knows that several of them as individuals are possessed of intelligence. How can they be so unjust, when several of them as individuals show a sense of justice? How can they be guilty of such gross errors, Activity and Self-Culture 37 when each is nevertheless actuated by good intentions? And the answer is always the same : Around every group working in common there forms an ever denser fog of involuntary ideas, such as "regard for the facts of the case," for the "possibility of accomplishing anything," for "what is expedient at the moment." For the sake of these misty visions the individual is ever more willing to sacrifice his own opinions, to surrender his own will, to corrupt his own conscience. And all this without a shadow of self-reproach! The atmosphere created by association makes those who live in it "devoid of responsibility and remorse," to borrow one of Kierkegaard's profound sayings of the dangers of shared activity. Through never acting in public life as individuals but only as "members," the con- sciences of many people become like the clappers of church bells in the Middle Ages during Lent which had straw wound round them to make them silent. The common weal is the straw that is wound round the clapper of the individual conscience; and so it re- mains dumb. In the end there is no injustice, no falsehood, no act of vengeance or oppres- sion that cannot be assented to with an easy 38 The Younger Generation conscience in common with the rest of the group all in the name of "discipline," "the spirit of fellowship," and "the public advantage." A Jewish sage declared that from every action a good or bad angel was born, but that confused or half-accomplished acts, deeds without meaning and without strength, gave birth to angels with deformed limbs, or lack- ing head or hands or feet. And to a healthy eye most political resolutions appear just in this way, as the deformed offspring of minds bewildered by politics. This malformation is the heaviest price that the race has to pay in every war of culture in our time in the socialistic conflict particularly. It is of the very greatest importance that this price should be reduced; that young Socialists should devote their will to the elevation of party morality and to a change of tactics in those cases where they now resemble those of the mediaeval Church, with compulsory baptism and judgment of heretics, with tor- ture and autos-da-fe. Unless this takes place, the nobler natures will more and more hold aloof from a movement in which acts of violence and injustice are committed in the name of ultimate justice. And although, no Activity and Self-Culture 39 doubt, this may be explained by the grounds of the conflict, it must nevertheless incontestably be deplored. Especially as it has deterred many, among the youth of the universities in particular, from definitely joining a movement to which they belong in sympathy. This loss to the movement can only in part be made good by the educational work of the young Social Democrats themselves, however rich in promise this may be. But after all the greatest danger is that in- justice in a conflict acts like rust on a weapon or tool; if the rust is allowed to wear away the steel unhindered, it will finally render the weapon useless for its purpose. The culture afforded by association in its present form acts, in short, like an education founded upon complete authority on the parents' side and complete obedience on that of the child: it breaks down the strength of individuality, it levels and makes uniform, it checks enterprise, strength of will, and resolution. What has been begun by home and school education is continued by the life of association; the different human elements are kneaded together into a homogeneous mass. 40 The Younger Generation Instead of the social aristocracy, which is the future ideal of the most highly developed, we are in this way moving towards mass rule as the future form of government. That is, if socialism remains true to the democratic ideal and does not end by adopting that of conservatism: the omnipotence of the State over an obedient herd subservient to the social idea. But neither by the path of mass rule nor by that of State rule can the race arrive at the ideal goal of socialism mentioned above. This we shall only approach in the degree in which the "mass" is more and more trans- formed into individuals, who will be willing, in and through the full development of their own best powers, to appreciate those of all the rest ; who will thus be in a position to make sure choice of a leader and follow him volun- tarily wherever there is need of a leader, but who will at the same time know how to pre- serve their own independence, their own characteristics, their own creativity within the sphere that belongs to them. The level- ling pressure exercised by private and party education has its ultimate origin in the ever- lasting error that the present moment must be sacrificed to the future whereas the value Activity and Self-Culture 41 of the future depends precisely upon the value of the whole succession of "present moments" that one thoughtlessly sacrifices to the future. For is not the present moment a part of that future? Does not the bread of the future take many days and nights to grow? Can we neg- lect the conditions of growth at the moment and still expect a harvest in the future? Can one hour by hour allow one's nature to be repressed and find it fairly grown in the future? Day by day silence one's conscience and find it eloquent in the future? Year by year starve one's soul and find it fully de- veloped in the future? The young man who becomes absorbed in social, above all in political work, lives on the false doctrine that the individual must sacrifice himself for the community; that a man gains himself by forgetting himself; that he is preparing the happiness of others in the future by renounc- ing his own in the present. And the spiritu- ally shallow rejoice in these young men, just as other shallow people rejoice in the sprigs of birch that are brought to market as soon as the fire of the hearth has coaxed out their tender leaves. To the thoughtful it is pitiful to see these branches, that will never wave in the winds of May or be wanned by the 42 The Younger Generation summer sun. And still more pitiful is the case of the young who anticipate the course of nature in their spiritual budding and flowering. Young people who throw themselves pre- maturely into the life of "social activity" and of associations forfeit the most important period for their own self-culture. These young people begin giving answers before they themselves have asked serious questions, and learn to question before they have listened in silence. They lose the repose needed for self -absorption, which perhaps can never af- terwards be regained. Their views become vague, their judgments precipitate, if they are in a hurry to announce them in discus- sions and addresses, instead of allowing them to mature slowly while exchanging ideas with a friend or an intimate circle. More solitude, less association, that is what young people require in their "teens, " if they are not to find themselves ten years later with a sense of great inward emptiness nay more, if they are not to look with disgust upon the social problems which they ought then to be ready and eager to attack. It is far too easily forgotten that the harvest is rich only when every ear of corn is so; that the community Activity and Self-Culture 43 acquires its collective value not merely through what its individual members accomplish, but through what they are. If the units wear themselves out or are exhausted for the sake of the whole, the result must be that the whole will sooner or later bear less fruit; this is so obvious an experience that it is astonishing to find it necessary to preach it again and again as a forgotten truth. The zeal of the younger generation of the working-class for temperance and education is one of the most promising signs of our time. But the will is not enough ; it is not sufficient that the external conditions of education should be available in increasing abundance; the inward qualifications are the all-important matter. Every agriculturist knows that sowing in stormy weather is an unprofitable proceeding. But it is equally fruitless to impart knowledge to a mind blown hither and thither by the demands of public life. Our education in other words, our growth and maturing is a slow process in each of its three departments ethical, aesthetic, and in- tellectual. There is now amongst the young a great deal of so-called "seriousness" in the handling of great questions, which is in fact nothing but frivolity. For true seriousness 44 The Younger Generation abstains from opinions and judgments upon subjects it has only dipped into and per- sons with whom it is imperfectly acquainted. True seriousness rebels against the demand for a ready-made, cut-and-dried view. True seriousness inquires into its right to feel resent- ment or enthusiasm in any given case. Only when such progress has been made in self- culture that the thoughts have begun to assume a certain degree of clearness and the feelings to concentrate themselves into a motive force, will it be time to take part in public life, which is now so confused and debased owing to this very want of self- culture in those who take part in it, whether they be among the seniors or the juniors. Another danger involved in the present-day habit of association and one that is irrespec- tive of class, age, or sex is that it reduces the inclination for professional work and home work. How much pleasanter, easier, more appreciated is our work for the "society" than our irksome daily round! The taste for work grows less as the meetings increase in number, and with the taste, the capacity for work declines. But if this goes on, how will it be possible one day, in the society of Activity and Self-Culture 45 the future, to meet the constantly growing needs of all more completely than at present? It is doubtless true that our vaunted mate- rial civilisation now produces innumerable superfluities to meet artificial needs. A higher culture will have to get rid of this kind of production and attach importance to things entirely different from those now demanded by "civilised life," even if we do not go so far in our repudiation as the celebrated sociologist, Professor Sombart, who would shatter the whole of "modern civilisation" to fragments. He asks, for example, what all Berlin's electric light is worth, if it does not shine upon any rambles so important from a cultural point of view as Goethe's walks at Weimar to and from Herder's house, walks that were undertaken by the light of a little lantern! Or what there is to boast of in our express trains, if they do not convey anything comparable in cultural value with the letters exchanged by Goethe and Schiller, letters that an old postwoman carried between Weimar and Jena. But even if we may hope for a new age in which material civilisation will form the foundation of a high spiritual culture, in which industry will supply its products for 46 The Younger Generation needs at once simpler and more refined work will still be wanted. And work that shows a constant advance in craftsmanship, if all are to enjoy the improved conditions of life for which we hope. For the sake of this work, a warning must be uttered against the growing tendency to devote one's self to "social work" at the expense of individual work. Here again we have to find a middle course between the excessive indifference of former days and the present excessive eager- ness to take part in public affairs. The least remarked, though not on that account the smallest danger involved by the system of association is that the external results attained by combined action are so vast as to deprive us of a standard for measur- ing the importance of the great single person- ality, the personality which operates through its solitary creative force, according to its own laws and therefore with a legitimate claim to special conditions of life. No doubt there are personal advantages which give one power over the moment, such as clearness, breadth of vision, promptness, presence of mind, or eloquence. But, on the other hand, public life is unfavourable to cer- Activity and Self-Culture 47 tain finer mental gifts, certain more solid qualities. And, above all, it is unfavourable to the highest value of culture, genius. Genius as a rule lacks the qualities that are applicable and appreciated in associations. Of course societies listen to many addresses about men of genius when they are dead. But in their lifetime they were still unintel- ligible to the collective mind, and the con- vincing power of genius has always been an effect of distance. A poet has described the nature of genius by saying of one who possessed it: "He looked upon the others, upon those who dwell in houses, with the same impenetrable, un- familiar eyes that the salamander has, the salamander that lives in fire." And fire will always remain the habitat of genius. A barrack in any sense is not the place for a genius. But the more the resolutions and administrative rules of societies gain the upper hand, the less freedom of movement is allowed to the creative will of genius. And thus we now have, it is true, democratic forms of the life of culture, but fewer and fewer significant creations of culture. The commit- tee boldly amends the ideas of the architect, 48 The Younger Generation the sculptor, and the painter; the committee but I say no more. For if I should begin to speak of the bungling of committees, there would be no end to the story. It amounts to this : that nothing but a cultural democracy is any good. "Practical politics" with increasing ruth- lessness allow the little laws to neutralise the great law: that all social policy ought to aim at placing the executive power in the best hands in every department. The little laws egoism, vanity, envy, revenge now render the influence of the few important ones inconsiderable and that of the many unim- portant ones significant. Has any experience been more frequently confirmed than that which the leader of the Roycroft colony, Elbert Hubbard, has thus put into words: That every great step in advance is the result of the supremacy of one man? And is any truth more frequently overlooked in our time? For, just because the effect of the mass is so powerful, one is easily misled into attributing to it an importance it has never possessed and can never possess. Thus many people think that the leader, who on some occasion or other enunciates a great solution, is only inspired to do so because Activity and Self-Culture 49 he is surrounded by minds already full of the question. But how much oftener is it the leader who has impelled all these others to ask that question? Many people think that the current of spiritual force, which sets the mass in motion, has also originated within the mass itself. But they forget that the spiritual force, which at a given historical moment sets the mass in motion, has accumu- lated from generation to generation through solitary souls having hungered for justice, suffered for truth, practised brotherly love, seen splendid visions of the future and served it with purity of will. Thus drop by drop has the stream of feeling been formed, of which socialism now avails itself for its motive power. And the stream requires constant replenishing from the heights if it is to main- tain its force: replenishing from the solitary souls who have in all times been the sources of great strength. The ceaseless co-operation of the present day in all departments even for the enjoy- ment of nature people now want a "society " has for its result that all degrees of talent, even that of genius, all ages, even the more advanced, and all religious beliefs, even the 50 The Younger Generation Christian, lack repose and inclination for serious self-examination, without which no sanctity is thinkable. Who will nowadays acknowledge this beauti- ful old word? The present age laughs at sanctity as at an old-fashioned garment. To every genuine Christian, however, this conception still implies that thoughts, words, and actions are to be tested by an example given once for all Jesus. To the non- Christian religious person the word has a different meaning. For he con- siders that only those, the properties of whose souls resemble those of Jesus himself, can and ought to develop those properties with Jesus as an ideal. The sad thing, then, is not that the word "sanctity" has acquired a new meaning in the minds of the little group of persons who still attribute significance to it. No, what is sad is that to the great majority the word has lost its meaning. For how can we hope to attain higher social conditions, unless each individual soul strives to reach its own highest possibilities; unless each one tries, first to form, and then step by step to approach, his own ideal of the supreme type of humanity? Activity and Self-Culture 51 This is sanctification in the new sense of the word. And in order to render it possible we must cease to spread ourselves over ever wider ranges of activity. We shall be com- pelled, in the sphere of mental culture also, to renounce the extensive in favour of the intensive system of cultivation. I address this advice in particular to the very young; for after the age of twenty- five, examples may assuredly be found of steady spiritual growth. But a deviation common to the whole time can only be cor- rected in the very young, in those who take their direction or misdirection before that age, those who by their "tendency" will decide the character of the succeeding period. Sanctification is only another name for intensification. And this implies resolutely turning aside from the thousand worldly things that split up the soul and make it superficial; the unproductive passions that burn it up, leaving it dry or empty; the pleasures or pains that make it narrow or weak. Only in this way can we extract from ourselves the highest value of which we are capable in our own degree and our own kind. And to make of one's self an ever greater 52 The Younger Generation life-value this alone is, in the essential mean- ing of the word, to live. But this is indeed the desire of all soulful youth really to live; a noble desire and strong enough to conquer the world if it were not combined with a tragic blindness in seeking the road to the goal of this longing. Therefore, I suppose, none of us elders can look upon a throng of young people without being touched by the deepest sadness; these young people who as yet only perceive the roar of life as one hears the roar of the sea by putting a shell to one's ear, but who are already drawing nearer and nearer to the sea itself. And, once there, they will either halt in dismay upon the shore, or senselessly throw themselves into the surf and go under; or finally here and there one will build him- self a boat and steer his course towards the shore of which they dreamed, when as yet they only heard the roar of life as we hear the sea roar in a shell. Those who stay upon the hither shore usually receive the congratulations of their elders, for having recognised in time the "claims of reality." As though anything were more real than the dream itself, the dream and those actions Activity and Self-Culture 53 that bring us even a single step nearer to the world of our dreams ! But when so-called realities hinder us outwardly in such actions, then our refuge from despair over intractable "reality" is, or ought to be, the knowledge that there is one sphere in which we can labour unceasingly for the future; nay, that this labour is actu- ally the most essential of all constructive effort. This sphere is our own soul. The neglect of this self -culture is the pro- f oundest of the causes that explain why a great movement is often so poor in results ; why it be- comes ineffectual long before it has implanted its ideas in customs and laws. Its adherents were too small for the conception, it had no real- ity within themselves and therefore had no pow- er to effect a profound transformation of reality. Yes, when this "reality" confronts them like a gigantic wave, then the heralds of the idea fall away in crowds. And there are even poets who console them by declaring their defection to be inevitable: Thou wilt fall away, as all of us have done, Even if thou fix thine eyes upon a star: For even the stars of heaven fall. STRINDBERG, Master Olof. 54 The Younger Generation We know that this thought is as untrue as its image. We may outgrow an earlier belief, but never desert the one we hold; we may perish, but never fall away. The consolatory truth has been expressed by another poet-artist in a relief, in which humanity young and old, strong and weak, men and women, lonely and united reaches up towards the stars, the stars that all these longing hands sometimes almost touch. But their hands ever encounter the "line of limita- tion" dividing them from the constellations which their longing eternally seeks but never reaches. Fortunately for then our longing would cease. And our longing is the breath of our soul, its very life. He who, either through the nature of his co-operation with others or through that of his self -culture, loses the force of this longing beyond himself, that man ap- plies neither the one nor the other to his edification. And the work of such a man will be of no essential value to the whole. Only when our longing lives, grows, and rises with an ever purer flame towards an ever higher goal, do we bring ourselves and our race nearer to that fairer future, of which we and many generations after us can only have a vague Activity and Self-Culture 55 glimpse, but which thanks to the longing and toil of our generation and of all before it and many to come one generation will finally behold, not as in a glass darkly, but face to face. Ill THE PEACE PROBLEM 57 Ill THE PEACE PROBLEM EVERY movement that transforms the world is begun by dreamers. Their prophecies are treated as crimes or condemned as mad- ness, until they have sunk so deeply into men's consciences as to dominate them with the power of a problem that must be solved. And this is also the history of the peace movement. When Shelley whose intuition divined all the problems that now agitate our race in the morning of last century sang of peace, he was looked upon as a criminal lunatic. And the two Americans, who in 1810 founded the first Peace Society, were judged to be great fools. For this humble first attempt to realise the peace on earth that had had its advocates even in the days of the prophets of Israel and the philosophers of antiquity, this attempt was made just at the time when, through Napoleon, the glory and honour of 59 6o The Younger Generation war had more than ever intoxicated the imagination of mankind. Can these dreamers have had even an inkling of the dimensions to which the peace movement would spread after the lapse of a century? A network of arbitration treaties and peace societies surrounds the earth. Congress after congress assembles to debate the question of peace. It is no longer looked upon as the madness of a feeble brain. No, the problem of peace is now one of the serious subjects of legal and social science, one of the great questions of practical politics ; the cause has passed through the phase of Utopian pro- posals and is now definitely within the sphere of the attainable. In spite of all this, it is neither the older peace movement nor the newer pacifism that works most powerfully for peace. The great pacific propaganda has been carried out by international co-operation and exchange of values; by traffic in ideas and material products ; which have formed an ever more intimate connection, an ever stronger community of interests, an ever closer de- pendence between nations. A hundred years ago a war might break out between two States ; now every war embraces the whole world, for The Peace Problem 61 nations have gone so far in their uninten- tional but incessant coalescence that a war has become a serious interference with the existence of all. This fact has rendered acute outbreaks of war less frequent, but in arma- ments the latent state of war continues. And it will continue, until the nations seek their safety in that economic and political organisa- tion which alone can put an end to the anarchy at present reigning within and between nations. Pacifists of the older school base their hopes of peace on arbitration tribunals, disarma- ment, refusal of military service, and so on. But none of these things can bring about peace, so long as the anarchy referred to per- sists. Arbitration will only be resorted to in such cases as in the words of the familiar reservation "do not affect the honour or the vital interests" of the States concerned. The disarmament of a single State would only mean its voluntarily becoming the prey of a fully-armed one. Wholesale refusal of mili- tary service would only result in a return to armies of mercenaries. For these reasons the newer pacifists con- sider that the propaganda in action which cannot fail to hasten on peace consists in promoting everywhere firm and binding inter- 62 The Younger Generation national institutions. With inevitable neces- sity these must finally be crowned by the superstructure of a confederation of States, which will really and permanently supersede the state of war and usher in the state of peace. This State of States would still be formed, even if the whole peace movement came to an end. For it will come about by the force of circumstances, which are doing more and more to abolish isolation and to create a solidarity among nations in the form of institutions. ' So long, says Dr. Fried, as the friends of peace hoped to gain their end by means of contrivances which had no vital connection with actuality, they were still in the Utopian stage. The moment they begin to promote the organic coalescence of nations and the natural conversion of men's minds, the peace problem will have quitted the domain of Utopia for that of reality. 2 1 The man who first brought the cause of peace within the province of science was the Swede, Gustaf Bjorklund, in his book, Nationernas sammanvaxande ("The Coalescence of Na- tions"). As this book has unfortunately never been translated into any of the European languages, Dr. A. Fried, the editor of Die Friedenswarte, was independent of Bj6rklund in arriving at the same point of view. This he has developed in his pamphlet, Die Grundlagen des revolutionaren Pazifismus, which deserves a wide circulation. 1 The difference may best be illustrated by a comparison with socialism, at the time when it was trying to solve its problems The Peace Problem 63 Although the pacifist knows that peace on earth will finally arrive even without his prayers, he is at the same time aware that the life and happiness of many generations de- pend in part on his conscious acceleration of the development that is now slowly taking place. And this conscious influence may be exerted either in the field of politics or in that of psychology, through the conversion of men's minds. Not such a conversion as Tolstoy hoped for one which would abolish all strife for strife is one of the conditions of develop- ment, but a transformation which would give strife nobler and more rational weapons than those of war. The lines of politics, like those of the spirit, began to take a different direction when the phase of industrialism succeeded that of militarism. And to-day it is not on account of a warlike disposition that the nations con- tinue their rivalry of armaments. No, it is because they now desire peace and look upon armaments as doubtless a costly, but excellent by the construction of ideal communities, and now, when it knows that the new society will grow organically out of the given con- ditions. 64 The Younger Generation form of insurance. If its premiums could be exchanged for cheaper and securer ones, the majority would prefer the latter. There are, of course, still to be found iso- lated advocates of war as a means to the ethical regeneration of peoples. But the peoples themselves are probably little in- clined for this reason to remain in a state of war, provided they can find an adequate sub- stitute for war as an agency of power. That capitalists and military men still prefer the old method is certainly not due to ethical motives, but to perfectly natural egoistic causes. There are a great many pacifists and social- ists who put their faith in new legal arrange- ments and hope that, when these have been introduced, they will have the effect of turn- ing men's minds. And no doubt what is legally enacted has a great power over the mental life of the masses. But until those in power adopt new views, no new legal mea- sures will be introduced. And thus it remains necessary to promote pacific opinions, and at the same time to strengthen the possibility of counteracting incitements to war and of furthering international coalescence, through the development of international arbitration, The Peace Problem 65 through treaties, and through other parlia- mentary or legal institutions. x Little else can be done to hasten forward the cause of peace. For the new discoveries which transform the economic and intellectual condition of each nation, the political events which give rise to new experiences, the con- sequences produced by prevailing circum- stances all these things demand patience and observation. The current opinions which have first of all to be influenced are undoubtedly those which at present retard economic organisation within and between nations. For until the anarchy of free competition is done away with and the economic democracy established by law, the international organisation of States cannot succeed. The avidity of capitalism for ex- 1 See A. Fried's pamphlet, Das Internationale Leben der Gegen- wart, in which he shows that the organisation of States has already some one hundred administrative bodies at its disposal. These are concerned with traffic, trade, civil rights, police, science, social policy, agriculture, and war. There are at this moment about forty international boards and commissions in existence. "The nations have long ago emerged from the phase of co-opera- tion that consists in congresses, conferences, etc. The solidarity of peoples has begun to condense from the nebulae of ideas and speeches into institutions, which already benefit all nations equally, without in any way disturbing national integrity, which the organisation of peace should aim, in fact, at preserving. " 5 66 The Younger Generation pansion and profit is even now the most dangerous motive for war. Before long uni- versal trusts will be able to order their wars in whatever form, colour, and size they require them. Armaments are actually kept up to defend the colonial interests of capitalists. So long as the capitalists lend money for war and make money out of armaments, they will contrive that the people shall be hypnotised into the belief that it is their welfare and honour the armaments are to defend. So long as two peoples exist within every nation and every nation is the economic rival of the rest, arbitration treaties will be like dams of shavings to keep out the sea, and there will be no prospect of combining the separate States into a higher unity. Only when their con- flicts are no longer the result of economic interests will it be possible to find their solu- tion in new legal expedients. Therefore the economic organisation can- not be the result of the political, but vice versa, as the socialists have often insisted. But in spite of this difference of opinion, which time will decide, pacifists and socialists are working indirectly for each other's ends. For both are trying to awaken the consciences and open the minds of men to the truth that solidarity The Peace Problem 67 within and between the nations promotes the advantage of all better than isolation. * Solidarity instead of isolation means: co-operation instead of competition; organisation instead of anarchy; economy of force instead of waste; harmony instead of confusion. By the path of solidarity humanity will also finally arrive at the justice and fraternity from which Tolstoy and his disciples expect peace but in vain. In the present state of economic and political anarchy men are able to show mercy to the downtrodden. But, speaking generally, no fraternity can be realised until our race has found a way of performing the first duty incumbent on every individual and every nation: that of prevailing in the struggle for existence. A Tolstoy, who does not reckon with human nature as it is, or with the development of civilisation in its present endless complications, who believes in the love 1 The insular people in its "splendid isolation" has given the principle its tersest formulas: In economics, "Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost"; In politics, "My country, right or wrong." The doctrine of solidarity, on the other hand, is "One for all and all for one"; its patriotism mani- fests itself above all in the desire to see one's own country lead the way with its sense of justice. 68 The Younger Generation of one's neighbour as a universal quality and in a return to primitive conditions as a means to happiness, may preach of brotherly love as the road to peace. The future will show brotherly love to be the latest fruit of that economic and political peace which can only be attained through an ever higher organisa- tion of economic and political life ; an organisa- tion which will realise in laws and customs the idea of mutual help, that is, of community of interests, that is, of solidarity. To win over men's brains to the idea of solidarity, that is the surest way of working for peace. But to implarit this idea in their brains involves what is just the difficulty. For in men's brains prejudices debar the entry of new ideas. The .majority is incapable of forming its opinions by means of its own observation, its own brain-work, its own selection. In other words, the majority is talked over. The power of suggestion explains why certain ideas are ineradicable. Every opportunity of testing the value of an opinion, of revising a judgment, of admitting a new view, is rejected. Brains become rigid, and in this rigidity superannuated prejudices are pre- The Peace Problem 69 served as freshly as the primeval mammoth in the polar ice. One of these ancient prejudices is that "war must always be the final arbiter between rival claims." It only needs a few bellicose newspapers to word the head-lines of their leading articles skilfully, for let us say the German Peter and the English Paul, who yesterday did not dream of any conflict between their two peoples, to shout to-morrow for war and armaments to defend the "vital interests" of their respective nations. War and armaments are inseparably con- nected in most minds with patriotism and sense of duty. It would require a very powerful shock to dissolve this association and prepare the way for the idea that the same motives patriotism and sense of duty may give rise to two series of actions, entirely different from each other. He who perceives that rivalry in armaments is just what stirs up unrest and ill-will; that nowadays the inanimate part of war material is obsolescent even before contracts are com- pleted ; that the cost of this apparatus of war deprives nations of the means of increasing their forces of life and culture in other words, 70 The Younger Generation their most important means of defence, he who perceives this will oppose outbreaks of war and demands for military preparations precisely on account of his deep feeling for the worth and security of his native land, which he regards as more firmly guaranteed by new means. If we would direct the attention of mankind to these new means, we must address ourselves to the young. Their minds are still plastic to impressions, open to new ideas, alive. But as soon as the average person is claimed by the duties of his calling and of society, he gradually becomes hardened to impressions, closed to ideas, and at last spiritually dead. His faculty of discernment has been com- pressed into a narrow receptacle for current opinions, which then with unfailing certainty glide along the well-worn tracks, and the automatic brain is complete. In so far as the average woman is taken up by professional and social work, perhaps she too becomes spiritually dead. But at present women, young and old, possess greater mental mobility than men of the corresponding age. And it is this greater spiritual animation in woman that has given The Peace Problem 71 her throughout the centuries her great import- ance as a converter of souls, an importance which can only be compared with that once possessed by the Church. So long as the latter was Christian, it exercised its influence both in a pacific and in a socialistic spirit. But since the State allied itself with the Church, the latter has dechris- tianised mankind by giving its sanction to the doctrine that might is right. Clericalism, capitalism, militarism now uphold, each in its own fashion, the principle of individual and national isolation against that of solidarity. And in so far as women are inclined to cleri- calism, capitalism, and militarism, they too are amenable to the suggestion that questions of national "honour and vital interests" coincide with the views of the capitalists, the cabinet, the generals, and the bishops on these questions. These women and they are not a few must at present be left out of the reckoning as regards the conversion of souls. If, on the other hand, women are really Christian, they feel that pacifism and social- ism possess more of the spirit of Jesus than capitalism and militarism, and they use their influence for solidarity against isolation. But it is not from the Christians whether 72 The Younger Generation women or men that we may expect a sweep- ing spiritual conversion to proceed. An influence powerful enough to transform the instincts, to turn immemorial feelings into new channels, to evoke new manifestations of will-power and establish new goals for our desire, such an influence only belongs to a new view of life, a new religious belief. A great many women and men are already inspired by such a belief. They know that they live in a world formed out of worlds that have passed away, and they know that they themselves are the descendants of in- numerable experimental forms, the result of the action of millions of years. They honour themselves as creatures of this cosmos of everlasting being and becoming, and as col- laborators in it. They thus hold an altogether new view of their solidarity with all other beings within their own race and outside it. The profound saying of the East, Tat twam asi that thou art is beginning to determine feelings also in western lands. And thereby the Occidental's repugnance to spreading de- struction around him is increased. If he is forced to do this within his own race, he feels it as a suicide. Side by side with this sense of solidarity The Peace Problem 73 grows the consciousness of the possible value of the individual to the race. A single human being may signify to the race a force that has never before existed and will never recur. The men of the new age look both to the sense of solidarity and to individualism, not only to preserve their own lives and raise them to their highest and noblest potentialities but also to enhance the nature of the life of the race and the energy with which it is lived. In that view of existence which saw in earthly life nothing but a respite and a pre- paration for eternal judgment, only the im- penitent could die prematurely. Otherwise death, even on the battlefield, always came at the right moment. Now, however, the belief that life itself is the meaning of life has penetrated so deeply into the consciousness of the time that a number of people uncon- sciously act according to it. Many social workers, for instance, believe themselves to be only actuated by the Christian motive of alleviating suffering. But the effect of their work is nevertheless precisely that of rais- ing the standard of life, of preserving and enhancing living values. And since women have long been the more active in the sphere of social aid, they are 74 The Younger Generation beginning to see more clearly than men that war stands in the most glaring opposition to all our best efforts during peace. This "anti- military agitation" is going on everywhere and with such rapidly growing strength that any legislation aimed against antimilitarist propaganda, to be logical, ought to begin by- suppressing works of charity! With increasing consciousness the present age longs to find a way of freeing our race from the insane contradiction by which the most zealous efforts of peace time the enhance- ment of life are destroyed by war time. Woman, through being shut up behind walls for ages, has been strengthened in her long- ing. Man has been able to translate his longing into action; woman has had to store hers up. Now she has this force of her longing to devote to the cause of peace. The desire of peace has found the strongest of its new motives in the hope of the develop- ment of the race which has been infinitely increased by the doctrine of evolution. So long as the classical idea of the State governed men's minds, fathers and mothers brought up their sons to be warriors as they do to this day in Japan without questioning the right of the State to sacrifice them to its The Peace Problem 75 ends. Mothers exhorted their sons to die bravely for the power and honour of the State, which were looked upon as the highest values, to be not only preserved but increased by every means. Christianity succeeded only in partially transforming this conception of the State, to which in spite of its own individ- ualism it was obliged to adapt itself. Only in our time has the idea of development made of the race a holier conception than the State. It is not, as some philosophers endeavour to make out, an exaggerated assertion of the ego, a severance of the individual from the common bond, that has given rise to the pre- sent hatred of war and desire for peace. No, it is our recognition of the fact that what have hitherto been called the ends of the State have often stood in opposition to certain higher ends, which individuals desire to serve in and through the race. The people of the present day are beginning to deny the unconditional right of the State to demand sacrifices. Whereas formerly the citizens existed exclusively in the interests of the State, a large number of men and a still larger number of women now consider that the State exists for the citizens. Whereas form- erly the State unhesitatingly directed its 76 The Younger Generation policy towards such ends as territorial expan- sion and colonial adventures, its right of sacrificing to such objects the highest values of the race the young lives, the protection and enhancement of which ought, on the contrary, to be the first duty of the State is now contested with increasing energy. Many men and women now regard it as their highest contribution to culture to be the parents of the new generation. They feel it to be a blasphemy against life another name for God that the beings their love has called into existence and fostered with infinite care, the beings who bear the heritage of all past generations and the potentialities of all those to come, should be prematurely torn out of the chain of development. Every such link that is wrenched away from unborn experiences, from unfinished work, was a beginning which might have had the most far-reaching effects within the race- since all its most excellent qualities were the creation of individual powers, individual claims and passions, individual joys and sorrows. In this view of life the loss of a promising or already valuable human life can only be The Peace Problem 77 counterbalanced by great gains to the race as a whole. T For it is not death that the men of the new age are afraid of, but only premature and meaningless death. The natural, calm extinc- tion in the evening of life, or a death in the morning or noontide of life, when it is the highest expression of life, that is the death they desire. That to die fighting for one's country was often a similar enhancement of life in former days may be believed. 2 But the wars of the present day seldom allow of such a death. At great distances and in the midst of madden- ing terrors war transforms living masses of men into heaps of mangled flesh and pools of blood. And this massacre does not fall upon the oldest of the nation, those who have already made their contribution to life, nor upon the 1 The sacrifices demanded by the conquest of the air may be mentioned as examples that conquest which is already being exploited in the service of war! or the sacrifices claimed by experiments with radium, X-rays, and electricity among scienti- fic men, especially surgeons. a But fair as the poets have sung it, the warrior's death can never have been. In this case the arts of painting and sculp- ture have been more truthful; I recall in particular the " masks of dying warriors" that bear witness in the very Arsenal of Berlin to the bitterness of death in battle. 78 The Younger Generation degenerates there would be some sense in that no, it is just the young that are mowed down, and among them the strongest, the most valuable for the works of peace, the best fitted to be the fathers of the new generation. * It is not only while performing their defen- sive military service that the young are placed in the cruel position of having to slay or be slain. This unsought duty may lead to their being involved in adventures of territorial conquest and colonial expansion. And during 1 The apologists of war now quote the sacrifices claimed by peaceful labour to prove that, in one form or another, the advance of civilisation demands human life and that it is immaterial whether the victims are claimed by the battlefield or the factory. Thus, for instance, German statistics show that during the period 1886-1906, 141,049 persons were killed in the field of labour, and 1,552,749 injured, of whom 871,490 were seriously injured. But these accidents are for the most part caused by absence of protective measures, by fatigue resulting from insufficient nourishment and excessive work, etc. And the number of these victims could be reduced to the minimum exacted by the powers of nature, if that moiety of the national revenue which is now applied to armaments were used to provide good conditions of life and labour for the whole people. At present there is a short- age of labour for those willing to work, of food for the hungry, of educational advantages for those thirsting for knowledge, of nursing for the sick, of care for the children. The circumstances of the majority are now such as to produce, directly or indirectly, crime, drunkenness, insanity, consumption, or sexual diseases in large sections of the population. The Peace Problem 79 their period of training the young are deprived of valuable time and still more valuable civil rights; since men liable to service are still subject to exceptional laws, which aim at turning them into instruments of war, not independent citizens, and result in killing them spiritually. Although compulsory service has thus acted as a wholesale hypnotising in the interests of militarism, it has had at the same time among the more thoughtful a powerful anti- militarist influence. It has thus become one of the many bypaths by which mankind is drawing near to peace. This is in the first place apparent from the fact that national service has so increased the size of armies as to make it extremely costly to set the apparatus of war in motion, for which reason the capitalists hesitate to use this machinery for the economic interests that are now the final concern of war. And every time two States recoil from war, peace has gained ground, for the peoples thereby accustom themselves to the idea that conflicts can be settled peaceably. In the next place, the fact that war may claim its victims from every family and every calling has caused warlike excitement to lose 80 The Younger Generation much of its power of inflaming men's minds. And with the waning of warlike enthusiasm, governments have lost something of their former courage for light-heartedly plunging their nations into war. Finally, the causes already mentioned are increasing the repugnance of the young for the possible duty of murder ; for the parade drill, still persisting in spite of reforms, and for the occasional indignities against which the conscript has no protection whatever. All these reasons have co-operated to make universal military service a leading factor both in the duration of European peace and in the antimilitarist trend of opinion. The young antimilitarist party is divided into two groups. One of these performs its military service and seeks by a conscientious fulfilment of duty to preserve its right to- subsequent criticism of the system. The other group avoids military service by leaving the country or refuses to perform it. Some, Tolstoy's disciples for example, refuse on religious grounds. They hold that a peace- ful national service should take the place of the military duty. For a State that calls itself Christian and respects the right of The Peace Problem 81 freedom of conscience cannot compel its citizens to sin against the sixth commandment of Moses and the whole doctrine of Jesus. On the other hand, many of those who refuse military service themselves use or approve of force in the social conflict and therefore do not hate war from religious motives. Their reasons for refusing service were sharply illuminated by a young working-man, whose dialogue with an older companion I heard in the People's House at Stockholm. The elder man ob- jected that everyone defended himself when personally attacked. The younger admitted that he would do so too, but that, on the other hand, he had no intention of going out to defend "a so-called nation." I asked him if he did not feel that the nation had given him anything. The answer was a curt No. I could not refrain from telling him that a man who does not see that he has received anything from his nation is one of those the nation can well do without. There are undoubtedly many, in Sweden as in other countries, who have suffered so much from unemployment, want, or injustice that they are tempted to forget what their country is to them; to forget that if, for instance, they came under Russian rule they 82 The Younger Generation would suffer not only as they do now, but far more in addition, through the loss of many advantages which they now enjoy as uncon- sciously as the air they breathe. The leaf can no more deny that the roots and the trunk have given it anything than the individual can deny that the nation has been of importance to him. Even if the soil has been poor and the leaves have thus received scanty nourishment, even if frost or drought has impaired their freshness or shade their full development, so long as they have not broken away from the branch, they still have more vitality than if they were blown hither and thither by the wind. And each individual possesses, as a member of a nation, a fulness of life which he can never enjoy when cut off from his stock. Therefore a peace movement that is to possess vitality cannot proceed from the error that our nation has given us nothing, but from the conviction that it has given us an infinite abundance; that it is of supreme importance to safeguard our language, our land, our constitutional freedom, and all other conditions necessary to the continued cultural development of our people in accordance with its own inherent character, a character that is The Peace Problem 83 of just as much importance to the other nations as is that of the individual to his own sur- roundings. It is, in fact, precisely the conviction that the millions spent on armaments provide a very ineffectual guarantee for all our highest national values together with the reflection that these millions, applied to peaceful pur- poses, might render possible an immense enhancement of life and culture within each separate nation that determines the action of the radical and revolutionary pacifist. He sees very well that a general strike of organ- ised labour in face of the prospect of a Euro- pean war is, in the present state of things, unavailing. Refusal of military service, on the other hand, as proposed to the working- men of Sweden by Z. Hoglund in 1905,' and as put in practice in Spain in 1909, may have some significance and justification. But the newer pacifism is most decidedly opposed to any such refusal of defensive service as might result in subjecting the more valuable culture to the less valuable, and making the higher human beings, nations or races the victims of those of smaller worth. 1 At the time of Norway's secession from the Union, when feeling ran high in Sweden. TR. 84 The Younger Generation The peace problem can no more be solved by the obliteration of nations than can that of socialism by making everyone uniform. Be- tween the nations and within each nation standards of power and tension of forces are required for national and individual ends. By sometimes involving a noble tension of strength, wars have also involved an eleva- tion of culture. And this elevation has been used as an illustration of the cultural value of war. That in other respects war has done immeasurable damage to culture and destroyed its values, has evoked swfc-human states of mind and barbarous actions, all this is sup- pressed by those who glorify war as a means of culture. In our day the work of culture offers many other opportunities for the noblest exertion, which do not involve any such cul- tural set-back as those just mentioned. Not merely the earth's surface, but the whole cosmos, now lies open to conquest. And the knowledge of this is gradually rooting out the superstition that the maintenance of manly courage and manly achievement depends on the continuance of the state of war, or that the growth of culture requires manuring now and then with human brains on the battlefield. In short, the spirit of the age is undergoing The Peace Problem 85 a change in its judgment of war. This change may be observed in innumerable effects, each small in itself, of influences often impercepti- ble; influences which, however, transform views, feelings, and dispositions as completely as the waves of light and heat, in which all things flow, transform our outward being. With ever-increasing consciousness mankind longs for nobler and surer means than war and armaments, to secure the existence of nations, both small and great. Assuredly there^is still need to influence public opinion, but especially in the way of enlightening and strengthening the opposition to war which already exists in thought and feeling. For to arouse such thoughts and feelings is now unnecessary outside certain "higher" circles. It is above all from the mothers that we may hope for a zealous activity in the spiritual conversion that must precede peace. The mothers, whose dearest treasures are the lives of the young, must use all their influence against war not by forbidding their boys to play at soldiers or by depreciating the warlike achieve- ments of bygone days, for the former would be unpsychological, the latter unhistorical; but by using all their powers of gladness in 86 The Younger Generation making life more valuable and all their powers of inducement in directing men's wills to the task of altering the conditions that favour the continuance of war and armaments. The mothers must teach their sons to hate the policy which may claim their lives for objects which they perhaps condemn both from a political and an ethical point of view. They must teach their sons to dream of giving their country, not a life, but a life's work; they must associate their sons' ambition and self-sacrifice with peace instead of with war. The mothers have it in their power, in the training of their children, to help in awakening the conscience and in forming the reason of the world. Thus by degrees mankind will become fully human, and thereby war will be made psychically and physically impossible. For the world's conscience will rebel against any attempt at injustice or violence; the world's reason against the irrational waste of power that war involves, even when defensive. Both will finally unite to form institutions in which the highest human force that of the brain will settle international disputes, and thus the nations will attain the greatest possible security with the least possible loss of The Peace Problem 87 power. And another direct gain will be that of a higher culture, if we define this, with W. Ostwald, as a transformation of energy, as an ennobling of raw material into human power. But as yet the power of the mothers, like that of other educators, is limited. Even if the child's heart is turned away from war, the influences of childhood are counteracted as soon as the boy goes to school, through the cadet corps, the patriotic celebrations, the drill and rifle practice. And later on, the man comes into the clutches of "the existing state of things." Only when women have the right to vote will they be able to work for peace with full seriousness if they then desire it. If they do not well, then their new privileges will not alter the destinies of mankind in any essential respect. Women ought to start their political work for peace by making a reality of defensive military service ; that is, by demanding assur- ance that the conscripts' period of training shall not be wasted in things that are meaningless for their task ; that the rules of discipline, which are often offensive to the feeling of citizenship and to personal self-respect, shall be altered, and finally that the conscript army shall never 88 The Younger Generation be employed in aggressive wars or in those civil conflicts in which a son may be opposed to his father or a friend to a friend. Further, women ought to insist that agita- tion for war be punished as antimilitarist agitation is now. And this new severity would possess all the justification which the antimilitarist laws lack. For the antimili- tarist agitation, in spite of its blunders, is a tentative beginning of a higher state of things. But warlike agitation is a survival from lower stages. Women ought not to be content until gov- ernments have been deprived of the power of plunging nations into war. Women ought to support all such inter- national arrangements as promote exchange and co-operation among nations : for example, commercial treaties, universal postage stamps, unity of coinage, weights and measures, etc. They ought to work for an international law of marriage and divorce, a law that is a cry- ing necessity in these days of international marriages. Further legislation in the direction of greater uniformity is required for the legal protection of private persons and for the treat- ment of criminals in foreign countries, and for other purposes which cannot be gone into here. The Peace Problem 89 All this, however, would only be prepara- tory for future international institutions, which will become real and effective when the co- alescence of nations through all indirect influ- ences has reached such a point that the nations desire to give direct expression to the unity they have attained. Until the time arrives when they will have their share of political power, women can promote a good understanding between the nations in many other ways. They can work for an international auxiliary language and international characters; for international ex- change of school children during the holidays ; for international correspondence, and many other things of the same nature. r In family life and in social life, in profes- sional work and public employment, in their homes and on their travels, women can spin the fine threads which will bind the nations together. In countless personal ways they can strengthen sympathies and promote re- ciprocity between peoples. They can tear the mask of patriotism from bellicose self-interest, prick the word -bubbles of nationalism and laugh away worked -up fears. They can set 1 The Dutch association, Kosmos, arranges the exchange of correspondence in all languages and on all subjects. 90 The Younger Generation up the highest goals for the political ambition of their fathers and brothers, their husbands and their sons. Above all, they can always and everywhere ennoble the feelings, refine the idea of justice, and sharpen the judgment of those who come under their influence. The indirect result of this influence will then be that war will become more and more insufferable to the feelings, repugnant to the sense of justice, and absurd to the intelligence. When thus the eyes of the best among the nation are opened to the true nature of war, they will finally be opened also to the way to real not armed peace. People who are impatient to see the results of their efforts are often dissuaded from devot- ing their energies to the peace movement by the thought that the time for the realisation of universal peace is so far distant. This is true. Not even the most sanguine among us believes that this realisation can take place earlier than in the extreme old age of those just born. All that we know with cer- tainty is that future generations will live in a state of peace which they will regard as natural and necessary, and that those genera- tions will be incapable of understanding how The Peace Problem 91 the present age looked upon the state of war as natural and necessary. We, on the other hand, who for years have believed in the final victory of right over might, we shall not see this victory during the brief moment we call our lifetime. But what can that matter to us? We are in all, all are in us. The dead triumph in us, as we shall triumph in those yet unborn. The dead and the unborn, whose behests we fulfil, are the mighty ones ; where- as the movement produced even by the strong- est of his time is only a wing-beat in the infinite ocean of air. But countless rapid wing-beats constitute the force that propels humanity forward and upward. We and our work are the longing of past generations that has now taken shape; our longing will take shape in future generations and their work. We who are now living and working will soon be shadows. But our dreams are already moving with white feet in the light of the dawn. IV YOUTH, WOMAN, AND ANTIMILITARISM 93 IV YOUTH, WOMAN, AND ANTIMILITARISM IN great souls, in tranquil hearts, the dream of * peace on earth lived long before it became, in the message of the angels, a promise from heaven to mankind. A promise which ever since, by generation after generation, has been brought out at Christmas with other heirlooms, to adorn the feast. But as soon as Christmas is over, the treasure is always put away again. For mankind has been expecting the promise of peace to be fulfilled in the millennium, as an act of heavenly grace, not as a work of men. Our age is the first to look upon peace, not as a gift of God, but as an earthly goal, which grows nearer as humanity strives towards it. The longer the peace movement continues the more it is supported, not by the Christian, but by the evolutionary view of life the clearer does it become that this goal is a distant one ; nay, that peace on earth will have to be 95 96 The Younger Generation attained by a development as slow as that through which our race itself has arisen. As regards the genesis of peace we are still in the first day of creation, the day when light is separated from darkness: that is, the light and warming elements in patriotism must be separated from the dark ones with which they are blended together in the chaos that still constitutes the mutual relationship of nations ; a chaos in which the instincts of the savage and the prejudices of the national supremacy still usurp the name of patriotism. This separa- tion of light from darkness takes place above all in those daily experiences of the "co- alescence of nations," which a Swedish thinker, the late Gustaf Bjorklund, showed with the prophetic vision of genius to be the way of the necessary, constitutional, organic genesis of peace. And this coalescence will result in the nations, themselves formed by the accre- tion of smaller units, being merged in an organic union that will finally include the whole of mankind. This union is accelerated by every advance in material and intellectual culture, above all by the intercourse of the present day by land, by sea, and in the air and by its great industrial undertakings. Mankind as a whole is becoming more and Youth, Woman, and Antimilitarism 97 more sensitive to interference with any of its parts, and each part is becoming more and more dependent on the organism as a whole. The following is an extract from the pro- spectus of Folkens framtid ("The Future of the Nations"), which Bjorklund began to publish in 1889: "Those movements and efforts of the pre- sent time, which the future will recognise as the most significant, are often just those that are most overlooked and underrated by con- temporaries, not only because these move- ments at their outset are feeble and impotent, but because they are opposed to the prevailing spirit of the age and thus have the appearance of Utopias or even of errors. . . . " Thus it is, he continues, with a movement that has commenced almost simultaneously in every civilised country, "the object of which is nothing less than the abolition of war and the settlement of international disputes by judicial means. Adherents of this move- ment are found in all classes and callings, from the manual labourer to members of legislative assemblies, scholars, and many of the most enlightened and practical statesmen in the world. "The attitude of the public at large towards 98 The Younger Generation these efforts is certainly not hostile; on the contrary, such a state of things as the friends of peace aim at is looked upon as highly desirable. But, they say, it is impossible. History shows us that wars will never cease. "No reading of history is more general or betrays more superficiality than this. The evidence of history goes in a diametrically opposite direction. It teaches us that the spheres within which a state of peace and judicial authority has become a necessity by the very force of development, are being steadily extended. Human communities be- gin as smaller units, which by development coalesce into groups and are merged into ever higher and more comprehensive units, in accordance with laws inherent in their nature. If we survey historical development from this point of view, we shall find that only a few centuries ago the nations now living did not exist. Each nation was then a group of independent provincial States, which stood in the same relation to each other as nations at the present day. A few centuries further back we find these provincial States in turn to be groups of still smaller units (hundreds, for instance), which then possessed a historical individuality. Further back again we find Youth, Woman, and Antimilitarism 99 these hundreds to be loosely connected aggre- gates of self-subsisting village communities, whose mutual relation was that of independent belligerent powers. "Thus history shows a slowly progressive extension of the spheres within which a state of judicial authority has become a necessity. And the national development of our day points also in the same direction. Nothing is more characteristic of our time than the serious exertions that are everywhere made to preserve peace in the midst of unexampled and steadily increasing armaments. The fear of war keeps the world in a constant uneasy state of excitement and the prospects of peace are unceasingly discussed in the Press. What is the cause of this? Has human nature, pos- sibly, undergone some radical improvement? Assuredly not. Doubtless it cannot be denied that our manners have become gentler, our way of thinking nobler and more humane, but on the whole we have the same faults and imperfections, the same passions and pro- pensities as former generations. The funda- mental causes are of an entirely different kind. Through development the interests of the separate nations are becoming more and more bound together in solidarity. Macaulay ioo The Younger Generation thought it no exaggeration to assert that one week's war on English soil would produce mis- fortunes and disturbances that would make themselves felt from the Hoang-ho to the Missouri, and of which traces would be per- ceptible for a period of a century. " But although the friend of peace knows with absolute certainty that the whole course of development is working indirectly for his ends, he knows at the same time that his own conscious and well-directed work can hasten the organisation of the nations into an inter- national constitutional commonwealth, and in an even higher degree influence that spiritual conversion which is the condition necessary for the establishment of such a commonwealth. For this conversion we ought to be able in the first place to count upon the preachers of that religion which taught two thousand years ago that we are all members of one body. And so long as the Church was Christian that is, possessed something of the spirit of Jesus it was also pacifist. The Fathers of the Church did not misinterpret the words of Jesus to show his approval of war. The air was then still full of the wave of warmth that Christ- ianity brought with it. Every Christian Youth, Woman, and Antimilitarism 101 felt that when Jesus spoke of rendering to Caesar the things that were Caesar's and to God the things that were God's, he meant by the latter the soul, but a soul liberated from the very passions that evoke and maintain the state of war among the nations. Now, in the time of the dechristianised Church a time in which a genuinely Christ- ian priest is the only great miracle that can still be witnessed it is not to the Church that we can look for the educational work by which men's minds are to be trained for the charter of all nations that is to supersede the present state of things. In our time war is only an acute attack of a disease, in which "armed peace" corresponds to a continued, progressive exhaustion; just as an attack of hemorrhage shows the presence of consump- tion, though it does not constitute the disease itself. No, it is from the women of the new age, and above all from the young mothers, that we may hope for a spiritual transformation. Not from the mothers of the present day, as yet uneducated for their calling, and often unfit for it; mothers who still bring up their children by the hand instead of by the head ; who in their system of the rod are guided by 102 The Younger Generation the same base and crude notions as the men in their policy of war such mothers can form no souls for peace. Nor yet those mothers who bring up their children in the double- faced morality ; who teach them as individuals rather to suffer wrong than to do wrong, rather to renounce their objects than to pursue them by unworthy means ; who bid them put away the thought of vengeance and forgive their enemies but who then with flaming eyes and inciting words exhort their sons, as "defenders of their country," to commit acts which, as private persons, they have learned to regard as base. Least of all can those mothers, who with all the breath of their bodies blow the flames of hate and fanaticism, prepare the minds of their children for peace. Only new mothers, guided by the evolutionary idea, penetrated by love of life, will be able to impart to the new generation an ever deeper veneration for the work of intellectual and material culture, an ever more burning hatred of the waste of life, the devastation of culture, the degrada- tion of souls which latent as well as acute war still forces upon mankind. The spiritual influence of these new mothers ought not to consist in a thoughtless depre- ciation of past times, when war was still Youth, Woman, and Antimilitarism 103 inevitable and the deeds it evoked were great personal contributions to the formation of society. Nor again ought the influence of the mothers to be exercised in the preaching of that doctrine which misinterprets the funda- mental laws of life : that all strife is evil, that unconditional surrender is the only conduct ethically justifiable. But they must teach their children to reverence, love, and serve life with such devotion that they will direct the whole force of their wills to that field of conflict which offers to the energy of man an ever-widening range as the universal common- wealth extends its sway ; precisely as reverence, love, and activity acquired a wider scope, a deeper meaning, when class and local feeling were expanded into national consciousness and love of country. The new mothers must direct their sons' emulation and ambition, their imagination and their will, to discoveries and inventions, to the fighting of disease and the perfecting of labour, to the saving of life instead of its destruction, but above all to the purposeful perfecting of the organisation of society. They must show them how we poor inhabit- ants of earth are not only exposed to dangers from fire, water, and air, but also from remote 104 The Younger Generation but inevitable cosmic revolutions. In the face of these catastrophes of the present and possibilities of the future the mothers ought to be able to make their children see what madness it is, that our race on the little lump of earth that it possesses so insecurely in the midst of the universe should contin- ually endeavour by means of gold and iron to enfeeble and ruin itself, to waste the means of culture, to destroy the treasures of culture, and to extinguish vital values. Ought not all the limbs and brains shattered on the battlefield, all the power and resources sucked up by armaments to have been utilised in making our race better fitted to hold its place in nature, in the face of whose terrestrial and extra-terrestrial revolutions it is still power- less? The mothers of the new age must teach their children that a world crowded with people struggling for space and for bread, teeming with States which in order to maintain their isolated sovereignty, their tariff barriers, their armed defences lower the conditions of life of their inhabitants that such a world is still a chaos, from which a new world must arise; a world with fewer but more perfect human beings, who shall possess richer oppor- Youth, Woman, and Antimilitarism 105 tunities, better conditions, greater security, and higher forms of life. And this will come about when all competition and all co-opera- tion takes place under the auspices of universal organisation. Within this organisation the unity of a nation will be determined, not by frontiers formed by conquest, but by inner necessity based on history, language, and race. In short, nations will not become complete individualities until the States have passed out of their present stage of territorial separa- tion and entered that of an international social relationship. This international organisation will protect the rights of all, including therefore the natives of those countries which the capitalist colonial policy of the present day turns into a hell. The political party which is everywhere retarding international social development that is, the capitalists, who see nothing but their own interests; the clergy, who comport themselves like the officers of God's general staff, with His plans of campaign in their pockets; the diplomatists, who, free from control, can go their own way or that of their governments; the military men, who want an outlet for their pent-up energy this party can at present create and keep up war panics 106 The Younger Generation with impunity. This party always mono- polises the name of the "nation," whereas it is actually only a small section of the people, which continually nullifies the efforts of the majority. Irresponsible rulers, unscrupulous capitalists, priests without spirit and diplo- matists without sense, combined with the "yellow" Press which lacks at the same time responsibility, conscience, spirit, and sense, are a perpetual menace to peace in every country. We must teach our children that "armed peace" exhausts the intellectual and material strength of nations that is, their foremost powers of defence just as surely as, though more slowly than, war; that the olive-branch of peace, held in the "mailed fist," does not afford that "security from attack" which is alleged to be the object of armaments. For, if A increases the number of his warships from ten to twenty, because B has increased his to the same extent, then B brings his up to thirty, and so the rivalry goes on, without altering the original situation at all. The small na- tions gain no increased security, but are impoverished and their countries depopulated by emigration. As all are arming to the full extent of their power, not only does the defen- Youth, Woman, and Antimilitarism 107 sive position remain the same, but the danger of war is increased by the rivalry that creates tension, breeds distrust, and stirs up hatred. And when things have gone so far, the wind called "popular opinion," blowing now from the conservative, now from the liberal quarter, soon fans into flame the heat engendered by the friction between two national interests. We must teach our children that in our time lasting peace, especially for the small nations, cannot be secured by armed force ; nor by such alliances as are never directed towards the preservation of peace, but always against some common enemy; nor even by treaties of arbitration. Peace is best assured by the conscious opposition which warlike agitation encounters in the majority of the people. Every thoughtful person now knows that wars are neither determined by circumstances over which men have no control, nor brought about in pursuance of a divine scheme, but that they are determined by circumstances which men are able to transform in proportion as they themselves acquire a clearer judgment, a higher reason, a nobler will, and a more delicate sensibility. In proportion as the con- sciousness grows in a people that the peri- odical slaughter of the most vigorous among io8 The Younger Generation the male population of two nations is nothing but criminal madness, will a place be prepared in the brains of that people for the opposite, the rational idea. And this idea is the uni- versal organisation, by means of which the new and nobler feeling of community the community of the nations and the wider spirit of citizenship citizenship of the world- will acquire a freedom of movement, a strength, and an extension, which they could never attain in the present state of international anarchy, in which each nation desires the supremacy, continuance, and expansion of its own country at the expense of and in opposi- tion to other countries. From this it follows that feelings, thoughts, actions, and laws are adjusted to national enmity as a permanent state and to sacrifices in armaments as the condition of safeguarding the integrity and independence of the individual State. Through socialism the mental attitude of large numbers of people towards militarism has begun to undergo a change and pacifism now finds its most numerous supporters in organised labour. The ' ' Pan-Idealism, ' ' which the Austrian thinker Holzapfel reduced to a system, influences an increasing number of Youth, Woman, and Antimilitarism 109 those minds which are at all capable of ideal- ism. That his book was read by Russian soldiers round the camp-fires of Manchuria is one of the many significant features of a recent great outbreak of human slaughter. This idealism ought to impel all women, not only those socialistically disposed, to attach themselves to the antimilitarist propaganda and to bring up their children in its spirit. The most effectual means of stimulating children and young people in the cause of peace is to make them familiar with those facts which prove that the nations, now so closely connected in their interests and so dependent on one another, require a greater security than that afforded by armaments ; a security which can only be achieved through the mutual protection provided by new international organisations for the regulation of labour and legal relations. To encourage the young, on the other hand, to refuse military service, is to encourage them to a breach of the law which will only result in a loss of power to the individual and in present circumstances a danger to the people. For any such international action on the part of the young would only result in the reintroduction of mercenary armies. no The Younger Generation Only those young men who have duly performed their military duties can possess the authority to urge the refusal of military service in those cases where their own country begins or seeks to provoke a war. This refusal of service in certain cases is a very different thing from the refusal of all military service on principle. By combating the warlike spirit the young can unquestionably contribute to diminish the danger of war. And in twenty- five years' time, when these young men have acquired the direction of political affairs, Europe might take up the problem of dis- armament with some prospect of success. This kind of antimilitarism appears to me at present the only one which meets the claims both of the moment and of the future; the only one in which the duty of the young to protect their own country's heritage of culture and their duty to assist in the elevation of the culture of mankind can simultaneously be fulfilled. The antimilitarist propaganda must be carried on by the women of every nation. Let the men see to the needs of actual defence. But let the women, who in their children bear the future on their bosoms, work with all their educative power to bring in the time Youth, Woman, and Antimilitarism in when the state of war between nations shall give place to that of mutual help and inter- national justice. Let them, from home to home, from district to district, from land to land, spread the enlightenment, change the ideas, intensify the feelings, and stir up the resistance by means of which the evolution of humanity from the state of war to that of peace will finally be accomplished. In this way women are fulfilling a mission just as important as that of giving birth to the new generation; the mission, namely, of bringing about the rebirth of humanity. V 'CLASS BADGES" "CLASS BADGES" ONE spring day I was walking in the neigh- bourhood of Stockholm with a friend who was in constant fear of murderers. The sight of a couple of working-men terrified her even at a distance, until I pointed out to her that they were picking anemones! For she saw at once that the state of mind, which induced the men to make a laborious search for the first anemones, could not very well be combined with evil designs on our lives. The anemones on that occasion served as a "class badge," by conclusively proving that those workmen could not belong to the category of hooligans ! And consciously or unconsciously we draw similar conclusions from the external to the internal every time we assume any mark of class to be either an excluding wall or a connecting bridge between ourselves and some group of our fellow -men. The talent of caricaturists often shows itself "5 ii6 The Younger Generation in this very faculty of catching and emphasis- ing class badges. In a hundred years' time our comic papers will be indispensable to anyone who wants to study certain human types, then presumably extinct ; just as skele- tons are indispensable for the reconstruction of extinct animal species. But new caricaturists will then find new class badges in new human types. For the socialists will hardly turn out to be true pro- phets in declaring that all class distinctions will disappear as soon as the class war has been carried to a victorious close. The stamp of a person's occupation will never entirely disappear. And this is a fortunate thing, as the variety of life is a source of gladness. Indeed, inner characteristics will then be perhaps more pronounced than now. Uni- formity will only appear in a number of external things, which at present divide the upper from the lower class. Cleanliness, for instance, which the working- man now frequently regards as "upper class arrogance," will doubtless then be public property nay, water and brushes of all sorts will be a necessity of life. But should this not be the case, then no victories of socialism will be able to efface the class distinction " Class Badges" 117 between those who take a bath and those who do not. For the nose is undoubtedly our most "class-conscious" organ. And this organ demands that Europe shall keep pace with America, where working-clothes are often left at the workshop and the traces of labour are removed in the bathroom of the factory. Increasing cleanliness and ap- propriateness in other words, increasing good taste will quite certainly tend to make the workman, instead of, as now, try- ing to conceal his occupation, accentuate it in such a way that every trade, for which a special dress is appropriate, will provide itself with a "working-uniform." The peasant girl, for instance, is nowadays far from looking "smart" when she works in the fields in shabby town finery, side by side with another girl in a cotton dress which is as appropriate as it is becoming. And our working-men, far from presenting a genteel appearance in their working-clothes, which are often cast-off "gentleman's clothes," look vulgar compared with the French workman in his blue blouse; while the latter at his cafe is treated by every- one as a gentleman so long as he himself behaves as one. Another badge of class is the lack of a re- n8 The Younger Generation fined sense for nature. Of course working- men are not the only ones who mark their visits to spots of natural beauty with greasy paper and broken bottles, with scattered orange-peel and snapped-off branches, with bawling and rowdiness; but they are never- theless the worst offenders. So long as the rabble whether of the lower or the upper class takes its bottles and its noise into nature's solitudes, no victories of socialism will be able to efface the class distinction between the masses and the refined minority who desire to enjoy the 'beauties of scenery in meditative calm. We often hear it said that the Swedes are more uncivilised than other people as regards acts of vandalism committed against nature or works of art. My observations abroad, however, have not led me to the conclusion that such vul- garities are more rampant in Sweden than in other countries. In Paris, for instance, several statues in public places were recently damaged ; that this was the work of young "Royalists" belonging to the highest society, and that it was due to political motives, does not improve the matter. In Rome I have seen names scribbled everywhere, from the dome of "Class Badges" 119 St. Peter's to the catacombs. My first im- pression of a Greek temple in Sicily was disturbed by a boy's school of the higher class, the members of which concluded a day's outing by smashing their empty lemonade bottles against the rocks. The Swedes can hardly come up to the Germans in their power of spoiling a beautiful scene with blatant up- roar. And a more awful rabble than that of London, on such occasions as Maf eking Night, I have never seen. With every people certain sorts of roughness are due to religious, patriotic, or other fanatic- ism. But these, together with all other forms of brutality, find their most repulsive expres- sion above all, brawling under the influence of drink. The campaign against alcohol and a ruthless confinement of all intoxicated per- sons no matter to what class they belong who show themselves in streets and public places these are the first and most im- portant means of suppressing outbreaks of rowdiness. Intoxication is still the decisive "class badge," though not between "upper" and "lower" class, but between men who are masters of themselves and those who are their own slaves a class distinction which 120 The Younger Generation unfortunately will hold its ground longer than any other. Promiscuous spitting, on the other hand, is now only a rude and unhygienic habit of the uneducated. Anyone who has seen how widespread this bad habit is in Italy, the very home of beauty, will admit that in this respect the Northern peoples show a comparative refinement. But a new pernicious practice not confined to any class is that of incon- siderately smoking in people's faces ; of poison- ing public places with tobacco fumes, and even smoking where it is forbidden, in defiance of regulations. I have noticed this mark of boor- ishness especially among "class-conscious" working-men, who, however, should be the last to adopt it, since they hope for a future society in which the rights of all will be pro- tected by the solidarity of all in the mainten- ance of lawful order. People returning from abroad often express the opinion that their own countrymen use worse language than other nations. They are apt to forget that in foreign countries their knowledge of the vocabulary is often de- fective. How many foreigners understand, for instance, that the words which disappointed Italian beggars call after one "May you be 4 'Class Badges" 121 murdered!" are one of the worst oaths in the Italian language? It cannot be denied, however, that swearing is a "class badge"; but how is a country lad to know any better, when corporals, and indeed officers of the army, frequently employ oaths as a stimulus? Many more marks of class might be cited, the nature of which may be summed up by saying that the uncultivated person grasps at the shadow and lets the substance go, chooses the frivolities, and overlooks the real values. But this mark of vulgarity also is to be found both in the upper and in the lower class. The rich merchant's wife with her bright and showy drawing-room, but dark and cramped nursery, shows her want of culture just as plainly as the workman's wife, who makes the family eat and sleep in the kitchen, in order that she may have a "genteelly" bedecked room to receive visitors in! And this very fact that there is a vulgar herd among the rich, as well as among the poor, ought to convince the socialists that the mark of class lies too deep to be reached by external class distinctions and class codes; that base feelings and vulgar inclinations form the real badge of the lower class, and that 122 The Younger Generation this can only be got rid of from within. This counteraction from within will have to con- tinue long after the broad social justice, for which we are now righting, has been won, and the outward disparities, against which we are now fighting, have disappeared. For even if we obtain for every member of society the opportunities of development, the conditions of labour, the enhancement of life, that we now dream of, there will always exist greater and smaller capacities for mental culture. And therefore we shall no doubt find again in the society of the future although on a higher plane a small number of thoroughly cultured people, beside a majority of average culture and an uncultured minority. No one will then lack time and opportunity for developing what is in him. But dare we suppose that for the next thousand years, at least all will make use of these chances? For we see now, for instance, that young "class-conscious" socialists too often resemble those young members of the upper class who vulgarise their existence in restaurants and music-halls, who squander their means and their health with alcohol and tobacco. We see, too, how the "class-conscious" working- man shows his self-esteem in the same "stuck- "Class Badges" 123 up" stiffness towards the "upper class" that the snobs of the latter show towards all those socially beneath them. We see, again, how the "class-conscious" working-man imagines himself to be playing the gentleman by lolling in cabs and adopting other and worse upper- class manners. When will the working-man see that in all this he is just exposing his lack of real refinement; that the "class badge" of boorishness is never so conspicuous as in this aping? And we see, too, that working-men, who have every reason to hate the upper-class badge of coarseness heartless oppression of the workers and have every reason to hate international wars, carry on their social war with oppression and cruelty. As, for instance, when small employers are reduced to ruin because they will not have incompetent or drunken workmen forced upon them; when working-men use personal violence for dis- seminating their opinions. But I will break off, for it is too painful to me to go on adducing evidence of the fact that a number of the workers have used the weapon of violence, while at the same time condemning war. And we see working-men, who have every 124 The Younger Generation reason to hate intolerance when shown to the doctrines of socialism, themselves exhibiting this "class badge." On the other hand, we already find many manual labourers showing, in the street and in the museum, on country excursions and in the lecture hall, at party meetings and at their work, that outward and inward refinement which is derived, not only from justifiable self-esteem, but also from consideration for others. As regards cleanliness and sobriety, speech and behaviour, regard for the rights of others, inward delicacy and outward con- sideration, these working-men are a long way above a great many drunkards and rowdies of the "upper class." The deepest-lying cause of coarseness, among ourselves as in other countries, is the fact that the culture of the young in spite of all the fine things that are said about it is not the end aimed at in the school curriculum, and that the behaviour resulting from com- pulsory measures of school discipline does not imply any acquisition of self-discipline act- ing from within. Thus, when school-days are over, coarseness returns. To this must be added the class division, already strongly marked by the different "Class Badges" 125 types of school, which excludes children of working-class homes from the refined com- panionship of children of cultured homes, and deprives grown-up people of all classes of the mutual education that manual workers and brain workers might give one another. This mutual education is, as Almqvist rightly pointed out, the fundamental condition for forming the various classes of a people into one nation. A thing that is indirectly to blame for the coarseness of the children of the people is the opinion still prevailing in many quarters that grinding at catechism is the proper means of educating the children of primary schools. For owing to this the real intellectual cultiva- tion, which might commence even in the primary school, has often to be sacrificed to a religious instruction that is fatal to religious feeling itself. No "class badge" is more profoundly marked than the difference in the attention and cultivation that children receive. And the only means of counteracting coarseness on a large scale and at the same time eradicating class divisions would be a common school for all the children of the country until reach- ing the age of, say, fifteen. But this school 126 The Younger Generation would have to be entirely freed both from clerical authority and from the system of compulsory examinations. This would be accompanied by the disappearance of the unfortunate differ- ence in cultivation between teachers in schools under public authority and other teachers. We should have only one type of school- masters and mistresses. These ought to be trained by the very best methods to become gardeners of young human minds; gardeners who would be allowed the leisure and the right to devote themselves wholly to the cultivation of those minds, and not to their preparation either for confirmation or for any kind of examination. But it looks as though we should have to wait a long time for such schools for the eradi- cation of class distinctions! The young Social Democrats must therefore continue the work of self -education that they have so well begun, and continue it above all within their own class, at their own meetings, in their own lectures. For, let us admit it, many of the character- istics of a cultured class are still lacking. And unfortunately we find false prophets who preach that the class struggle can best be carried on without the refinement which " Class Badges" 127 is one of those characteristics. But all we who in the great cause of socialism love the brighter future that we are trying to conjure up out of the present we know that this great cause has no worse enemies than these very preachers of ruthlessness, of barbarity, as necessary means of warfare. There is no symbol that socialism ought now to take to heart more earnestly than the pro- found fable of the giant who could only be slain with his own sword. On the other hand, socialism will become invincible on the day when it takes as its emblem the arch- angel Michael, who bears in one hand a flaming sword, but in the other the scales of justice. VI THE CHILDREN'S CHARTER 129 VI THE CHILDREN'S CHARTER' A YOUNG Italian artist sent me not long ** ago a drawing, representing a naked, new-born babe being lifted out of dark waters by a pair of woman's arms like flower-stalks, while the towers and smoking factory chim- neys of a great city loom in the murky background. We may venture to interpret the artist's idea in this way: as the stalk of the water- lily raises its white flower towards the sun, so must the flower of our race, the child, be raised by strong and tender hands towards the light and air, which the great city and its great industry are now rendering less and less accessible. Of the society of the future I know this with absolute certainty: 1 Written for " Children's Day," an annual event in Scandi- navia, when street collections, entertainments, etc., are held for philanthropic objects. TR. 132 The Younger Generation The first and most important article of its code will be that of the Rights of the Child. This article will establish: The right of all children to healthy parents, reared for the calling of parentage. The right of all children to protection for both soul and body against blows and drudg- ery, against hunger and dirt. The right of all children to physical and mental development during their whole period of growth, through full participation in a complete tutelary care in health and sickness, in an assimilation, free from examinations, of nature and culture, and in a professional training according to ability, not according to class. The right of all children to disinheritance ; in other words, their being placed in the beneficent necessity of making full use of their completely developed powers. But what chance is there of this Children's Charter being drawn up to say nothing of its being followed before grown-up people really begin to become as children; in other words, soulful instead of greedy for riches? One thing is certain, that legislation for the full human rights of the child cannot come about until those transformations have taken place The Children's Charter 133 which the present-day "guardians of society" term "revolutionary." The future will judge our present plane of culture as we now judge that of past ages, when new-born babes were exposed and the young children of conquered cities were dashed against the walls. Nay, the judgment upon our time will be even more severe. For the people of anti- quity knew not what they did, when they caused the blood of children to flow like water. But our age allows millions of children to be worn out, starved, maltreated, neglected, to be tortured at school, and to become degen- erate and criminal, and yet it knows the con- sequences to the race and to the community that all this involves. And why? Because we are not yet willing to reckon in life-values instead of in gold-values. One " Children's Day " in the year is like a cup of water among an army of the thirsty. Every day of the year ought to belong first and foremost to the children, so that the years of childhood might be lived in the conditions indispensable to the rearing \ of healthy strong, happy, and good human beings. \ 134 The Younger Generation That State which is the first to translate this demand into action will be foremost in the civilisation of the future, the "pedagogic province" desired by Goethe. VII RECREATIVE CULTURE 135 VII RECREATIVE CULTURE 'TD the nation as a whole recreative culture * is needful. But above all is it important to the hosts who have inscribed on their banners the just demand for eight hours' rest side by side with that for eight hours' work and eight hours' sleep. For, when this time of rest has been won, it will be employed not only in family life or in affairs of social politics, but also in self -education and in enjoyment. And the question will then be of even greater importance than now, how this need of enjoy- ment is satisfied. That enjoyment should be allotted an ample share of leisure time is desir- able, not only for the health and happiness of the individual, but also for the value of his work. Science has proved the inanity of the talk we still hear about "change of work" being the best form of rest, and confirmed the truth of the rhyme: 137 138 The Younger Generation Much work and no joy Make Jack a dull boy. But enjoyment may also make a man dull and indifferent. Not merely those pleasures which, with a growing consensus of opinion, are called worthless, but even those which are regarded as innocent, are harmful if prac- tised without restraint. But they are harm- ful above all if they are such as involve neither mental nor physical renewal, which is just what is implied in the admirably signific- ant word recreation. Only pleasures productive in this respect are, in the profoundest meaning of the word, noble pleasures. Recreative culture implies in the first place cultivation of the faculty of distinguishing be- tween the different kinds of pleasure, and, in the next place, the will to choose the produc- tive and reject the unproductive and harm- ful. A Danish author, now dead, has well illustrated the difference between productive and unproductive mental conditions generally by a simile taken from his profession, that of an engineer. He compares intellectual life with that of a machine, to which power in some form is conducted; a power which in- Recreative Culture 139 cessantly overcomes resistance and performs work, provided that the supply of power is kept up. But if force is expended without a constant fresh supply, or if, conversely, the supply is maintained without force being ex- pended, the same effects ensue in intellectual life as in the machine. Only when the supply and expenditure of power are in the right proportion is intellectual life free, mobile, re- ceptive, and productive. But if, on the other hand, the right proportion is disturbed either by insufficient supply or insufficient expendi- ture of force intellectual life becomes empty or torpid ; in one case it moves in an unproduc- tive circle, in the other it is obstructed and stationary. Pleasure may be of such a kind as to bring new strength to the body or the mind or both. But far oftener it exhausts or merely occupies one, without becoming a motive power in any direction. We should not heat a boiler with feathers or make bread of sawdust if we wanted motive power or nutriment, and just as little can we expect power and nourishment from nine tenths of the so-called "diversions" and "pastimes" of the present day. These words are appropriate, for while pleasures that have 140 The Younger Generation a meaning collect the intellectual powers, empty pleasures divert them in all directions. And while noble pleasure makes every moment golden, time is wasted like water when the object is to "pass" it. Whether pleasure be obtained from nature or art, from the theatre or from music, from intercourse with books or with men and women, from sports or games, from dancing or playing, noble pleasure is to be distinguished from ignoble both by its effect at the moment and by its after-effect. The former will have enhanced the powers of body and mind, if the bounds of moderation have not been exceeded. Ignoble pleasure, though it may not have been immoderately indulged in, leaves behind dul- ness, loathing, weariness, and emptiness, even in those cases where its evil effects have not reached the feelings and the will. Most signi- ficant in this respect is intoxication. Many people defend this as ''productive," since in its earlier phase it liberates certain natures from heaviness, shyness, and self-criticism; just as it increases the receptivity of the senses, promotes the wit, and fires the inspiration. But its effects in the later phases, as also its after-effects, prove the fallacy of this elevation. A lasting enhancement of life that is, one Recreative Culture 141 that brings growth to the mind and health to the body is only to be obtained from plea- sures which make a man happy and good, as a child is happy and good, in the present moment; or more mature in thought, feeling, and will; or refreshed and ready to wrestle anew with the tasks of life. If pleasure has had none of these effects, it has been bad, or at any rate empty. In every class the majority allows itself empty pleasures. But nowhere else is this so fraught with danger as in the working-class. For although of course it is equally disastrous to every individual in every class to suffer spiritual injury through base pleasures, it is far more disastrous to the whole community and to its future if the fourth estate in whose hands lie the problems of the immediate future suffers such injury. The working- class requires to use every means, even that of pleasure, for strengthening and increasing its powers for their tasks. It is therefore a question of supreme importance whether the scanty leisure working-men now enjoy, also the increased spare time they hope to gain, is wasted in worthless amusements or is em- ployed in true recreation, in renewal of physical and mental powers. 142 The Younger Generation Working-men like most other people seldom think about the pleasures they allow themselves, so long as these pleasures are not downright vicious or too expensive. The man who has a shilling to spend on a pleasure that is considered innocent throws down his coin without stopping to think whether he will get in return a pleasure that is full of renovating force, or one that is as sterile as the sand. There is no surer proof of a person's culture than his choice of pleasures. Indeed, we find out more about a person's intellectual quality by watching him at play than we should by observing him at work. Many a man can do a good day's work, whether mental or physical, and yet disclose his inward coarseness in his amusements. The latter set their stamp even upon the outward man. Observe, for instance, two working-men playing chess and two others sitting with their beer-mugs and handling a dirty pack of cards. The faces of the former show shrewdness and intelligence, those of the latter coarseness or lassitude. Or look at the educated man who enjoys himself in society without the stimulus of alcohol, and at him who owes his festive mood to an excess of this stimulus. One needs no psychology, but only Recreative Culture 143 a pair of seeing eyes, to know more about these souls than they themselves think they are revealing. Most people including both the socialist and the pillar of existing society foolishly overlook the vital necessities of the soul. What the body requires as a minimum for existence is beginning to be known. But that the soul may also descend below its minimum requirements is not yet even suspected. People allow themselves domestic habits, social cus- toms, and public amusements which yield no profit in the way of increased mental elasticity, or richer emotions, or a happier disposition, or strengthened will-power, or greater physical health. They do not ask themselves whether their mode of life gives them an ever higher view of life and an ever deeper sense of beauty. They ask nothing else of their pleasures but amusement. If they have been able to laugh and make a noise or tipple and stupefy themselves then they have "enjoyed" them- selves; they have "passed the time, " and they feel no sense of responsibility towards their souls. They would be very much annoyed with themselves if they chanced to drop their money into the sea. But they do not perceive that in such pleasures which have done 144 The Younger Generation nothing to ennoble thought and feeling, have strengthened neither the muscles nor the will, have yielded neither mental nor physical culture in any form they have not dropped but voluntarily thrown their money into the sea. II Those pleasures rank highest in cultural value, in which one takes an active part one's self, if not at first, then at second hand; since one's whole being is braced to take advantage of the pleasure that is offered. No cultural development takes place without personal participation; in fact, we may fully agree with another Danish thinker Carl Lambek that "the nature of culture is activity. " A pleasure then, to have cultural value, must in some way have made us active. The word must not be misunderstood. There is such a thing as active rest, and there is also empty apathy. There are active spectators and languid lookers-on. But in our days of high pressure people are often too tired for this activity of rest and vision. They therefore content themselves with the empty pastimes which demand no expenditure of force, and bring no contribu- \ Recreative Culture 145 tion of force either. This is especially true of the physically over-tired. And this is not the least of the reasons for wishing that the workers may obtain sufficient spare time to render them capable of the more productive pleasures. Only then can we hope that a culture will be within the reach of the majority which will penetrate their whole mode of life, which will proceed from the internal to the ex- ternal and form a unity; whereas in all classes culture is now limited to certain spheres, even if it is not confined to the exterior. The assertion made above that a great part of enjoyment consists in personal activity may be illustrated by a simple example. A work- ing-man who from a seat enjoys the view of a beautiful public park has not the same delight in bushes and flowers as when he has seen them growing in his own garden. The man who goes into the country alone to take his quiet pleasure there, brings home a far greater wealth of inner and outer expe- rience on account of his leisure for personal participation than does he who crowds on to a steamboat or a train for a "pleasure trip" with a number of others. Even if this pleasure trip does not result in a lasting aversion to the place visited owing to scattered paper and 146 The Younger Generation fruit-peel, broken bottles, flowers plucked and thrown away, snapped branches, etc., wit- nessing to the behaviour of the excursionists it leaves as a rule with the participants nothing but a memory of noise and racket, of crowding and hurrying, that has prevented their re- ceiving any deeper impression. Travelling is rightly placed in the front rank among pleasures as among means of education. But one may travel round the world without ac- quiring any increase of culture, while, on the other hand, one may, like a French author, make a "journey round one's room" and add greatly to one's intellectual wealth. Those Japanese who during the war with Russia graced their simple meal of rice, when they had the chance, with a few flowers, possessed a recreative culture many times superior to that of the European excursionists, who ruth- lessly despoil Nature's fairest spring garment and disfigure trees and monuments, tables and seats with their trivial names; nay, who often "amuse themselves" by breaking up and ruining what others have been at great pains to lay out and arrange. This brutality shows, however, that "activ- ity" is an essential part of enjoyment, and that the instinct of activity finds its outlet in Recreative Culture 147 destruction when it is not led into better channels. This then is precisely the point at which the cultivation of enjoyment ought to begin. Children of all classes must learn good behaviour in rural scenery. It should be possible to combine the desire of making natural history collections with a respect for nature. The Scout movement properly con- ducted may form an excellent means of arriving at a nobler and more considerate enjoyment of nature in this respect. Holiday camps may do the same. The microscope and camera should never be absent from such a camp. But even if the coarse way of enjoying one's self in the country gives rise to most annoy- ance in others, this coarseness is not the most harmful kind to the individual himself. For the impressions of nature may by degrees affect him profoundly, though unconsciously, so that his enjoyment of rural scenes will gradually be elevated. On the other hand, no potentialities of ele- v vation lie in the wretched amusements of the country fair, such as the ordinary waxworks with their crude horrors; exhibitions of freaks, silly conjuring tricks, and so on, which are to 148 The Younger Generation be found in their most vulgar forms in rural districts. There, too, such circus and variety programmes, farces and cinematographs are thought good enough which appeal only to a coarse love of sensation, low tastes, and vacant giggling. Even when this is not the case, such performances are often so devoid of meaning that they do not even leave behind a single definite mental image, much less an elevating idea or emotion. On this miserable mishmash which is rubbish when it is not poison hundreds of thousands spend their hard- earned pence and their still more valuable leisure. It is especially on the picture theatres that time and money are now squandered. Un- doubtedly the cinematograph has an increas- ing goodwill and capacity for communicating instincts and impressions of value. But even when the programme is good, the cinemato- graph, taken to excess, involves intellectual dangers just as much as intellectual impulses. For the observation is blunted and confused by a number of rapidly succeeding impressions ; the spectator becomes habituated to fleeting and undigested ideas, to the listless reception and speedy forgetting of matter with which he is crammed full without any personal co-opera- Recreative Culture 149 tion, without any extension of his intellectual life; nay, without even retaining any clear image in his memory much less any idea or emotion. Assuredly the cinematograph is no longer so brutalising and demoralising as it was in the beginning. But much has yet to be accom- plished by the public, the critics, and the censorship, before it becomes a thoroughly cultural enjoyment. The greater number of the films still show empty sensational pieces, vulgarly comic or sentimental dramas, meaningless everyday events, all equally poor in cultural value. For neither the emotions nor the inquiring mind derive any nourishment from them; only vacant curiosity and love of sensation are catered for. It is revolting to think of all the worthless stuff that thus flows day after day through the brains of the people, when the cinematograph might be so powerful an edu- cational factor. It is capable of giving faithful pictures of the age and its passions; living landscapes and views of city life with genuine local colour; objects and processes of natural history, as revealed by the microscope and by experiment; intimate peeps into animal and plant life. It can show us the operations 150 The Younger Generation of industries, handicrafts, and trades; it can present the achievements of engineering, sport, and traffic. And in all this it can not only give life to the education of the child, but also be a guide to the studies of the grown-up. Thus scientists now consider, for instance, that thanks to the film experiments on living ani- mals for purposes of study may be considerably reduced in number. Then the cinematograph has been able to show farmers the action of new agricultural machinery, and manufac- turers new methods in industry. It has also served to demonstrate model arrangements in the sphere of social aid, etc. It must of course be remembered that if, on the one hand, knowledge, discerning power, and depth of feeling may be increased by our thus obtaining true ideas and impressions of objects and phenomena which previously were only empty words, on the other hand, con- fused impressions result from the mixed pro- grammes of cinematograph displays. The suggested specialisation of these shows will therefore soon be necessary, if the cinemato- graph is to increase its influence as an instru- ment of culture. Here an objection may be raised, which applies not merely to films, but to all illu- Recreative Culture 151 strations: that there are some events and figures that the imagination itself illustrates better than any picture can. In such cases both the picture-book and the film will be disappointing, either because they do not at all correspond to the image of one's fancy, or by leaving behind them a great void, when they displace the creativeness of one's own imagination. From what has just been said it follows that the function of the film is above all to give strong impressions of such processes and phenomena in which neither accurate obser- vation nor free play of fancy is important. Those films which give dramatic pictures of human life are artistically justifiable only when the course of their action is really suited to pantomime. But from a literary point of view every film must be unconditionally con- demned which trespasses upon the works of the great dramatists; those works in which a course of psychological development is revealed, a process for which the author Ibsen, for example has delicately weighed every word that serves to disclose the psychological con- dition of his persons. On the other hand, living dramatists now have a new field for their invention, in the construction of plays 152 The Younger Generation intended for the film, in which words will be superfluous, since the comic or tragic action will speak sufficiently for itself. Furthermore, there are many novels that might be adapted into effective films. This appears to have been done with Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Last Days of Pompeii, Quo Vadis, and others. In Swedish literature, G. Janson's Abraham's Sacrifice may specially be pointed out as suited to similar treatment. Finally, the cinematograph ought to be turned to account in physical culture, and that in the way indicated by a Swedish author after seeing himself on the film in giving one a faithful picture of one's own "plastic incon- gruities." By this means bad habits or incon- sistencies of attitude, gait, and gesture might be counteracted. In conjunction with the gramophone the film might be to actors, clergymen, and other speakers what the metal mirror, the sword-point, and the pebbles were to Demosthenes. In conclusion, it may be emphasised that the cinematograph at its best has not merely had a direct influence on education and char- acter, but has also awakened a desire to read the books, or to become familiar through read- ing with the phenomena, of which the public Recreative Culture 153 has been given a notion through the film. The cinematograph has thus acted in the same way as cheap editions in fostering a love of reading. Statistics from American public libraries show a steady rise in the number of visitors and borrowers since the cinematograph became an element in American popular amusements. And this literary interest shows a constant improvement of taste in the choice of reading matter. ill The sins of the theatre are no less serious than those of the cinematograph. The former and this applies also to the "People's" theatres confines itself far too much to the field of low comedy. But the theatre, like music, ought to be recreation in the highest sense of the word, a renovation of the soul, if this aim were clear to all its leaders. The best effort that has been made in Sweden to give the majority good dramatic art has been that of the society known as Skadebanan. But side by side with the work of Skadebanan there should be another, that of encourag- ing people to act themselves, by writing and translating suitable plays; by furnishing 154 The Younger Generation catalogues of good dramatic works, both native and foreign, that would be suitable for the purpose; and finally by setting the right persons to work at staging the plays as well as performing them. Thus many opportunities of personal activity would be afforded: as authors, scene-painters, actors, costumiers, etc. In many places in Tyrol, Switzerland, and Bavaria; above all at Oberammergau not only the young people, but their elders, take part in the open-air plays for which certain districts are celebrated. And if we observe the people of these districts, we may see in their bearing, expression, and speech the refining effect that noble pleasure practised from generation to generation can bring about. Serious young people, who combine cultiva- tion with social interests, ought to devote all their intelligence and imagination to trying to find an increasing number of ennobling amusements for children and those young people who are exposed to the influence of coarse pleasures. Perhaps none of these nobler amusements is more important than the toy theatre and amateur acting. Recreative Culture 155 Those who are familiar with the life of Goethe know what a powerful influence on his development he ascribed to the acting of his childhood and boyhood. But from other sources there is also abundant evidence of the admirable educational instrument that amateur acting afforded to the young people of the close of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. Some schools in Sweden have already begun to adopt acting as a means of combining utility with enjoyment. But nowhere else in our time has this been done with so clear an aim as in America. An interesting book has been published on this subject. It gives much- needed guidance for making acting a real means of the education of youth. For the art of the theatre must be a pleasure which sets in motion the favourable forces in the personality of the young. x The author sets out from the idea that the joy of a productive activity is the strongest motive force in all true education. She rightly points out that much that is bad in young people has its cause in unemployed force, force that 1 The book is called The Dramatic Festival, and is written by Anne A. T. Craig (G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London, 1912). 156 The Younger Generation longs to find expression. But when it does not find it in a way that satisfies young people's imagination and need of movement healthily and beautifully, then this force expends itself in a coarse and ugly way. She regards the theatre as the best safety-valve for young people's joy of life and also as the best means of educating the young to purer and nobler feelings, of giving their will a loftier direction, and at the same time of imparting to them physical and aesthetic culture. She does not, however, wish the young to undertake the great dramatic masterpieces, nor yet to fall back upon the inferior current repertory of the theatres. She therefore shows how the history and literature, the legends and popular tales of one's own and other countries nay, even certain trades and call- ings and natural processes are suited for dramatisation, with dance, song, and panto- mime as auxiliaries. For the small children the result is dancing games of a more com- plicated kind; for the older ones, something more in the nature of drama. But in both cases the young learn to acquire a bearing at once graceful and controlled, besides giving their elders an excellent opportunity of dis- covering their aptitudes. She describes how Recreative Culture 157 some young people dramatise the material chosen by all; how others make and paint the scenery; some choose or compose appro- priate music and practise dances; others again make costumes, act as stage managers, and so on. And all this gives opportunity for developing originality, insight, and capacity in every possible direction. The young learn to work together for a definite object and to subordinate themselves freely to an authority they themselves have chosen. They feel that they are creating and are therefore happy. For even in little children's games the creative joy is the essential part of the pleasure. She tells us how the children began by "dramatising" the different seasons and em- ployments, rain and wind, etc. ; how they next "played" fables such as ^Esop's of the grasshoppers and the ants later on legends, and, finally, in their college time, dramas. The sooner the children themselves can put together their pieces, the better. For the author rightly insists that the most naive and clumsy home-made thing is better than one provided by others. It seems to me that young socialists and members of temperance societies could bring 158 The Younger Generation a fresh stream into their work of education if with the help of young people of literary culture they started a theatrical enterprise of this sort in the halls where they meet. A choice of good plays, easy to perform, might, I think, be made by the directors of their studies to begin with. And then it would be an easy step to the more independent theatre, in which the plays would come into being within the circle of the young actors themselves. Of course it is necessary that the idea should be taken up by the right persons, that is to say, by such as would never lose sight of the educational aim. But there are so many young people in the country with a conscious- ness of their responsibility that such leaders would not be difficult to find. In each par- ticular district the opportunities of seeing theatrical art are few. On the other hand, theatrical games might occupy many winter evenings in an entertaining and profitable way, first in preparation and afterwards in performance. I believe, with the American writer I have quoted, that in a district where this amuse- ment was regularly carried on, coarseness would decline and better manners, as well as Recreative Culture 159 a nobler way of thinking, would gradually take its place. IV Among the pleasures that dramatic art can give, a good play, performed by dramatic artists, obviously stands first. That our time has begun to provide the working-class with greater facilities for enjoying genuine dramatic art as well as good music is no new thing; the men of the great French Revolution, for instance, tried to arrange significant popular festivals and theatrical performances. Their inspiration came from Rousseau that Rous- seau whom it is the fashion in these reactionary days to disparage, together with the French Revolution itself although the leaders of culture of later centuries ought rather to use Tegner's words of Rousseau and of the Revolution: Hvar stodo vi, om de ej varit till ? " Where were we, had they not been? " It is unspeakably ludicrous of the reaction- aries to point to this or that in Rousseau, which was not "new," or to show that the men of the French Revolution derived some or other of their ideas from other countries. 160 The Younger Generation Everyone knows that the fuel for a great beacon is collected from all sides, but that it is the kindling flame that makes the fire. And it was this flame that Rousseau and after him the French Revolution supplied in the matter of popular festivals as in others. Rousseau gives a splendid motto for such festivals in these words: " They should be such, that each may see and love himself in all the rest, in order that all may thus be more closely united." Rousseau reminds us of the festivals of the ancients to show his meaning. And it was in the spirit of Rousseau and of the ancients that the best men of the Revolution wished to give the people national festivals and spectacles, the object of which was to " glorify those events of its past and present that are most precious to a free people." Plastic art, music, drama, athletic sports, and awards of prizes ought to form part of these festivals, which must be of such a kind as to "make the old happy through memories, the young through victories, and the children through the hope of similar triumphs" That this programme could only be imper- fectly realised during the stormy period of the French Revolution does not diminish the vital force of the idea. And nothing is more cer- Recreative Culture 161 tain than that a nobler society will fashion its festivals according to such programmes. The working-men who aspire to this society have al- ready shown themselves, in their Stadium festi- vals, alive to this need. But only when the new view of life, which is gradually penetrating mankind, has gained the force of a religion, can the highest festival performances be united as in antiquity with the religious cult and thus acquire all the renovating power that was possessed by the festivals of Hellas. In many quarters first in Germany and France the idea of a 4t People's Theatre" began to be realised at the close of the nine- teenth century. Among its enthusiastic pro- moters was the now world-famous author of Jean Christophe, Remain Rolland. Besides plays for the People's Theatre, he wrote arti- cles on it, and the latter have been collected in a volume. x He there maintains that what the people really desire and need is not the old, so-called classical drama; for the present age is foreign to the conflicts that furnished the material for the tragedies of the seventeenth 1 Remain Rolland, Le thedtre du peuple (Hachette et Cie., Paris, 1913). This book should be read by all who believe in the theatre as a means of popular education. His novel John Christopher has been translated into English. 162 The Younger Generation century, for instance, and to the comic in- trigues described in the old comedies. But still less fitting is it to give the people the drama of the present day, which lives on the conventions and vices of the middle classes. What the people need is a dramatic art which sets up great aims, which steels the will, which widens the view of life, which purifies and deepens the emotions. The people are too good to be put off with the inanities or immoralities of the middle-class drama. The People's Theatre must be a weapon against the decay- ing society of the present day; nay, it may be the voice of the coming society. A new world demands a new art. Only such an art, re- newing itself with the age, has any value for the people. Some of the great masterpieces of the past, of universal human interest, must find a place on the people's stage. Otherwise it must be the interpreter of our rich and agitated period. But not of those aspects which the plays of the middle class whether tragedies, comedies, or farces depict: adultery and sharp practice in business. This kind of drama should not be allowed to befoul that source of renewal which the theatre may be- come for the people. No, the people must have a drama which offers living, irresistible Recreative Culture 163 examples of a great spirit, a shining devotion, an unconquerable will which aims at lofty ends. Or again, plays with true comic power, in which laughter attacks what is base and u gly petty and contradictory, whether in individuals, in a class, or in society as a whole. But, Rolland continues, in order to obtain such a theatre for the people, we must first have a people with sufficient leisure to be able to devote itself to noble pleasures; a people con- scious of its great tasks and thus disposed to reject the dramas that are now offered to it. If, on the other hand, the fourth estate, when it has won its way, becomes simply the middle class over again equally coarse in its amuse- ments, equally hypocritical in its morality, equally unintelligent in its politics as the present middle class then there is nothing to be hoped for from the future. Only if the fourth estate carries through a moral as well as a social reformation can we obtain a really new society. And with it a new theatrical art, which will be at once a real enjoyment and a source of renewed moral energy; an art which will be a bath of rebirth; an art which will create a more intimate bond between human beings and a greater vigour in the individual. This does not imply that art is 164 The Younger Generation to preach morality; then it would no longer be art. But it must overflow with strength, health, and gladness. It need not restrict its choice of subject to the present day or to the people itself. It is not the outside of exist- ence that the people needs or even wishes to see in art. No, it is the inner music, it is the eternal elements in home life, the mystery in all that is, the tragedy of everyday existence, that must affect the people in art. That being so, the material may be taken from the life of the present or of the past, from the history of one's own or of a foreign nation, from reality or legend. The important point is that ideas and ideals, errors and prejudices, be represented so that they always concern us who are now living. . . . The aim of art is to multiply life a thousand fold. All art must make life greater, stronger, more moral, and more beautiful. May art arouse hatred of all oppression, all baseness, all malice! May it at the same time unite individuals in a better understanding of and a more intimate fellow- feeling with each other. Thus far Rolland. It is only through this new spirit that the theatre can be elevated, and certainly not by the censorship. Recreative Culture 165 What has been quoted above points to one of the foremost tasks of recreative culture, that of rendering valuable pleasures still more valuable by increasing their significance as vehicles of culture. Another sphere is that of athletics. The more these are turned into "sport" with competitions, records, and prizes the less do they contribute to culture. The more they aim at general physical development, inward as well as outward health and equilibrium; the more they are practised with the sole object of attaining increased self-control and presence of mind, increased capacity for method and co-operation, an enhancement of power and courage, the more cultural they will be. One-sided sport cannot even produce a graceful and supple body, which, however, ought to be a main consideration in physical culture. Our Swedish gymnastics rightly practised, as well as rhythmical gymnastics, folk-dances, and folk-games are, as regards style and graceful style more important in physical culture than certain forms of athletics. From a cultural point of view, those kinds of athletic sports must be put in the first rank which facilitate a greater familiarity with nature. From this point of view skiing and 1 66 The Younger Generation skating, rowing and swimming ought not even to be reckoned among "athletics," but to be taught to the young as indispensable acquirements. I have quoted Romain Rolland above be- cause I agree with every word of his and hope that these words may open the eyes of thought- ful young people to the task that lies before them, both in respect of the self-culture that demands noble pleasures, and of the recreative culture which I have already insisted upon as being so important a part of the mission of the young. It will not do to cast the whole blame for certain aspects of modern coarseness upon society. The thoughtful among us at least ought to acknowledge that the worthless cinematograph and theatre performances, as well as the wretched "Nick Carter" style of literature, bear a heavy responsibility for the demoralisation of youth which all deplore. Social Democrats ought to be the first to see that they cannot afford, either economically or intellectually, to allow themselves amuse- ments of a kind that makes the managers rich and the audience poor. The Social Demo- Recreative Culture 167 cracy must begin to turn its back upon this extortion of character, intelligence, and feel- ing as resolutely as it does upon all other capitalist extortion. Just as shamelessly as society offers alcoholic intoxication does com- mercial enterprise supply the amusements that may be compared with intoxication. Opposition to them can only be brought about by a new temperance movement, directed, like the old one, by the instinct of self-defence in the people themselves. Already working- men are to be found who feel that they cannot afford and have no right to waste their spiritual powers, their leisure, and their means upon empty pleasures. But what is wanted is that more and more shall become "class-conscious " in this sense. Only then will the new "tem- perance movement" just referred to begin and the great majority learn to test their pleasures by such questions as these: Have we gained an intellectual renewal? Has our laughter really gladdened the heart? Was it at the expense of stupidity and fool- ishness, or of goodness and honesty that we laughed? Have we experienced any emotion that gave the soul a new tension towards noble ends? Have we received any impres- sion of beauty to carry with us while at work? 168 The Younger Generation If the answer to some of these questions be not "yes," then the pleasure was an empty one, if not a bad one. Someone may object that it will be hard to find amusements if they are to be tested so severely. Nothing is further from the truth. The more a man turns away from stimulating pleasures such as whisky the more he will learn to enjoy a number of things previously overlooked as means of recreation. These are to be found in the realm of reality as well as in that of imagination ; in the world of nature as in that of man; in the children's sphere as in that of animals ; in the little world we domin- ate as in the great one we see glimpses of. These pleasures are to be won by means of the microscope, telescope, and camera, as well as by refined dancing, games, and sports; by good music, by art, and by poetry. A whole long human life will not suffice for the enjoyment of all the rich and pure sources of delight that nature and culture have to offer, and nowadays at a cheap price. But so long as people throw away time, money, and health upon gormandising, alcohol, nicotine, and similar "enjoyments"; so long as they are not ashamed of thus sinning against soul and Recreative Culture 169 body; so long as they do not feel a passion for their own physical and mental health and strength a passion which finds expression in a complete and purposeful art of life, rejecting everything that fetters health and strength so long can we have no hope of a recreative culture. Nor can we hope for any physical culture of real recreative value ; that is to say, with the power of making the individual more developed, more shapely, and more harmoni- ous in body and soul. It is strange how little men's moral ideas have to do with their pleasures. Professed pietists, it is true, abstain from dancing and the theatre just as much as from coarser pleasures since they regard these as incom- patible with a holy life. On the other hand, the majority of people in every class think they may take part with impunity in anything in the way of amusement. But this is just what is excluded by a genuine recreative culture and art of life. Instead of "taking part in anything," one must learn to discover just those pleasures which have most to offer. For even among noble pleasures there are some which give one kind of recreation but not the other. In order to find out what kind of profit one derives, it 170 The Younger Generation is really necessary to "try a little taste" of each. Then it will be possible to decide what one can and will allow one's self in the matter of enjoyment, as in every other department of life. Each ought to draw up a plan for his life for work and for repose, as a member of a family and as a citizen in order to arrive at a proper proportion between the different parts, as well as harmony between them and the inner personality. Most people are without a plan of this sort and therefore show themselves vague, desul- tory, and boorish in their habits. They make friends without any inner prompting; they eat far more than is good for them; they dress contrary to their own taste ; they amuse them- selves like the rest of the crowd; they spend more than they can afford all because they have never given an hour's thought to what they really need and wish for in their hearts in these and all other matters. VI For these and a thousand other reasons one is tempted to lose hope of human progress. That is, at those moments when one forgets that the discernment and will-power of the Recreative Culture 171 race cannot yet be mature. It is not many thousand years since we became reading beings; it was only a few millenniums earlier that we became talking beings. And it is probably inevitable that the race as a whole must require a few more thousand years to become cultured in thought and action. The majority is still ape-like in so many other respects that we cannot be surprised to find it so in the least serious part of its life its amusements! And yet in our days of specialised labour it is of increasingly serious importance that leisure should be employed in such amusements as may counteract the resulting one-sidedness. A many-sided work in itself involves culture; the man condemned to one-sided work re- quires to supply the inevitable gaps in his culture by means of his pleasures. It is therefore doubly painful to see manual labour- ers flocking round those places of amusement that only excite silly giggles or malicious grins, coarse fun or vulgar love of sensation. In the last instance, the women are the worst. It is the lowest instincts of the herd that find their outlet in the thirst for sensation which is fos- tered by the Press and in the law-courts, at notable funerals and weddings, accidents, etc. 172 The Younger Generation To follow the crowd is in every respect a proof of impersonality in culture. But nowhere does a man show himself so imper- sonal, so poor in invention, so much of a gre- garious animal, as in his choice of pleasures. As a proof of lack of recreative culture may be quoted the disposition to enjoy even noble pleasures in crowds. No doubt on festival occasions, at the theatre, at competitions, and musical festivals the feeling is heightened by passing from one to another in a great mass of people. But books, scenery, art, and often music are grasped in a more intimate way when only one or a few others are present. A large number are never so concentrated and quiet that each can assimilate the beauty of nature, or a reading, or a work of art as com- pletely as if he were alone. But not even when alone does a person derive real profit from any recreation unless he brings to it an open mind, a mind prepared for full reception, for giving itself up to the wealth of the moment without a side-thought. Those, for instance, who go into the woods with the discussion of the evening before in their thoughts, get very little of the sylvan scene. The main condi- tions of genuine enjoyment are that neither body nor mind be weary; that previous or Recreative Culture 173 present impressions do not hinder concentra- tion; that every approach be kept open for the pleasurable impressions one receives, and that it be possible to assimilate and adapt the new material in peace. For as the Danish author, Lambek, already referred to, has admirably shown only in stillness can one's impressions be precipitated, or in an even better metaphor be rooted so that they may grow. The same is true of social intercourse. This is only a real recreation when we bring into society a mind averted from the labours and cares of the day, a mind willing to give and to receive. A pleasure truly experienced becomes an addition to life, a growth, new leaves and branches on our tree of life. The more our soul is alive, the more will our plea- sures become real events in our existence, experiences which then in their turn make the soul still more alive, in that our pleasure has set new forces in motion or renewed those that already were in motion. The more impress- ible a person is, the more does he experience with body and soul and all his senses. The art of enjoying one's self depends upon the capacity for seeing the significance that lies concealed in everyday phenomena. Indeed, this is precisely the finest culture, which en- 174 The Younger Generation ables us to find pleasure in the most simple things. The emptier a soul is, the duller does it find life and the more does it seek a tem- porary stimulus in irritant pleasures. When a soulful person is dull, it means that the company or the entertainment in which he involuntarily finds himself is not capable of setting free his energy; when he has enjoyed himself it means that he has experienced the feeling of having lived completely and strongly at some point. When the soulless one is bored by a noble pleasure, this means that owing to defects in his nature or culture he is destitute of any connecting link between himself and the pleasure in question, which is thus incapable of setting his powers in motion. And when he is amused by what is coarse and low, this means that such things unite with and reinforce coarse and low instincts in himself. To illustrate what has been said I will take a working-class family on a Sunday excursion. The air and sunshine refresh the body; the song of birds and the murmur of waves, the scent of flowers and the whisper of the forest rejoice all the senses and awaken sweet memo- ries. The happy play of the children and the rested expression in the tired faces of husband Recreative Culture 175 and wife warm the hearts of the parents. Observations are made which give substance for thought. And on their return home all have been truly "renewed." Perhaps all they say is that they have "had a jolly day." But those few words imply that the whole being has obtained rest and strength for several days. Compare now this family with those who come home after a crowded bean-feast, at which quantities of food and drink have been the chief thing; and who finish the day mud- dled with alcohol and poisoned with smoke, to wake up tired, irritable, and disinclined for work. As long ago as 1896 I pointed out in a little essay the weakening effect, directly on home- feeling and indirectly on patriotism, of the dying out of the old festival customs. The present languid indifference as regards both these celebrations and the ordinary daily habits makes our homes devoid of style and poor in poetry. No artificial and pretentious customs can take the place with the children of the old, simple festival usages and amuse- ments. It is the children who are anxious to have everything "as usual"; the children who suffer when any prized custom is set aside. 176 The Younger Generation In this the children's instinct is entirely right as opposed to the apathy of their elders. For it is only constantly recurring habits that have the power, on work-days and holi- days, to impart deep and heartfelt impres- sions. From this point of view it is a pity when parents omit to give a fixed style to the great festivals of the year, as well as to family celebrations. That families in great cities are getting more and more into the way of keeping Christmas and other festivals at tourist hotels is one of the many symptoms of the degeneration of family life in cities. In the country, on the other hand, pietism has been largely to blame for the decay of the beautiful old festival customs. Thus in my young days I heard a clergyman compare the dance round the May-pole to that of the Israelites round the golden calf! To keep old festivals is not a meaningless piece of childishness, but a fine old custom which links us of the present day with our forefathers and their emotions. Even if city families try to keep up the recreations which formerly brought young and old together for music and reading aloud, for romps and games of skill, for story-telling and fireside chat, they have a very unequal Recreative Culture 177 fight with all the things that take the young away from home schools, sport, societies, and more or less healthy amusements. As regards working-class homes, we know that nowadays the mother as often as the father is employed out-of-doors and in such circum- stances it is of course impossible for her to provide the children with the innocent amuse- ments of former days. I wonder whether the children of the present day would even con- descend to the childish amusements of their grandparents, such as roasting apples or baking toffy? In the country perhaps, but in town? To this must be added the crowded state of working-class dwellings, unfortunate from every point of view, which forces the children and young people into the street, unless special institutions, such as clubs, libraries, and so on, are open to them. In this connection it must be remembered that the temperance movement counteracts coarseness and that socialist ideals elevate the minds of the people, so that many low amuse- ments are becoming repulsive to an increasing number. But, on the other hand, recreative culture is being counteracted by the specialisa- tion of labour, which does more and more to kill the joy of work. For the man who is 178 The Younger Generation weary and bored is the most likely to take to poor or worthless pleasures, unless he con- sciously struggles against this tendency in himself or his companions in other words, unless his eyes have been opened to the import- ance of recreative culture. If much is now being done in large towns, through private enterprise as well as through the schools and other public institutions, to teach the youth of both sexes while in their teens to spend their money and their leisure hours on nobler pleasures, in the country such provisions for the young are very few and far between. I heard the other day a young couple declare their intention of quietly throwing open a large room in their country house, with a fire and lamps, books, illustrated papers, and so on, where the boys and young men who hang about the cross-roads might meet on winter evenings. And how easily such resorts might be provided in parish-rooms as well as in country houses ! Of course with the proviso that cards, alcohol, and tobacco are strictly forbidden. How willingly those young people who have had greater educational advantages ought to devote an occasional evening to instructing the others in dancing, games, or choral singing ! How glad those working-men Recreative Culture 179 who themselves play the fiddle, mouth-organ, or concertina would be to have the chance of contributing to the entertainment. If some- one gave a backgammon board, dominoes, chessmen, spillikins, etc., and showed how they were to be used, a fresh amusement would be found. An occasional reading from an amusing, popular book, and special even- ings for music and dancing could easily be arranged. By these simple means the winter evenings the heavy boredom of which now does more than anything else to drive young people from the country to the towns would be transformed into bright spots in everyday life, and would serve at the same time to raise the tone of the whole district's amusements. In all intellectual culture of which recrea- tive culture forms part daily habits are what tell in the long run. Only with nobler daily pleasures can we get firm ground to build upon. VII I have already said that the young Social Democrats must not stop at the fight against "Nick Carter" literature and intoxicating liquors, but that, side by side with the struggle i8o The Younger Generation for increased leisure, they must strive to ob- tain the recreative culture without which that leisure will be ill-spent. Recreative culture ought to be a powerful factor in the splendid educational activity both of the young tem- perance workers and of the young Social Democrats, and in their awakening zeal for physical culture. The young must root out the prejudice in which the older generation grew strong but one-sided: that if the condi- tions of production and distribution be re- formed and intoxicating liquors forbidden, then all other social incongruities will cease of themselves. That view is a superstition. Nothing is more certain than that in a society thus reformed, new disparities will make life unbearable, unless new men with a loftier ethical and aesthetic, physical and intel- lectual culture take the new society in hand. It is true that with better conditions of production and distribution the majority will have more spare time and more means for real recreation; will be relieved from the pres- sure of economic cares. And all this is the qualification for what I have called recreative culture. But the use to which these advant- ages may be put may still be good or bad, according as the people are themselves. Recreative Culture 181 Side by side with the class war, the culture war must ceaselessly be waged by the young and among the young, upon whom rests the responsibility of making the new society better for all than the old could be. In the best of the young Social Democrats a sense of respon- sibility as regards this culture war is even now alive. But this sense must also be communicated to the majority with the hundredfold force of an agitation. Only when the Social Democrat shall ask himself every evening whether during the day he has worked, amused himself, or discussed politics in such a way as to make himself more efficient, more conscien- tious, mentally richer, happier and can reply to the question in the affirmative will the happiness which international socialism pro- mises to all appear on the horizon. If, on the other hand, he is obliged to answer no, then he will have reduced his party's chances of victory by just so much as he himself has that day declined in value. It is true enough that a strong party may win victories through the firm cohesion of all its parts; but only victories over opposition. As soon as the opposition is broken and the building of the new society commenced, cohe- 1 82 The Younger Generation sion will no longer be enough; it will then depend on the nature of every component part whether the whole is to be strong and beautiful. Social-Democratic articles of faith can no more abolish the laws of nature than can theological ones. And it is a spiritual law of nature that the greatest truths are bungled by inferior adherents. All slowness of development, all relapses, all reactions are explained by this fact, re- peated century after century. Thus, then, if Social Democracy intends to create anything lasting, each of its members must begin to shape his individual life accord- ing to a lofty ideal. Neither in love nor poli- tics, money matters nor work, education nor pleasures will it do to "take life as it comes." Every time a man sacrifices something valu- able for something worthless ; every time he is remiss with regard to a bad habit, lax in per- forming a duty, coarse in his pleasures, he lowers the power of his soul and reduces his standard of life. Every time he chooses a noble line of conduct rather than an ignoble one, a productive enjoyment rather than an empty one, he becomes not only a better man but also a better servant of his social ideal. This ideal implies, among other things, Recreative Culture 183 that one day we shall arrive at that freedom from care which Jesus symbolised in the images of the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. Now, on the contrary, taking thought for the morrow is what characterises the lives of the majority. But we may look forward with certainty to a society without these con- suming cares of subsistence, which now make most human lives so cheerless and empty. A better state of things, in which "money, money, money" will no longer be the chief question of life, that is the primary condition which must precede the creation of a higher spiritual existence. But the reforms which are necessary in order that this condition may be satisfied must never be regarded otherwise than as means to this higher spiritual existence of which we are speaking. It is not enough to introduce more common sense, coherence, system, appropriateness, and harmony into the production and distribution of the neces- saries of life; all these things must also enter into the conduct of the individual citizen. It is not enough to increase the resources and leisure of all; what is above all important is that their mode of life should acquire more perfect forms. I have already put forward in my Essays 1 84 The Younger Generation an idea which has become an ever firmer belief with me; that, the more rich and beautiful life becomes, the fewer will be the followers of the "liberal" arts. Only the great, crea- tive spirits will, I believe, continue to produce art in the proper sense of the word: the art that gradually makes the lives of all richer at the moment and awakens an intuition of a future reality, more perfect than the present. Great art is only produced by those who them- selves, with senses as with soul, have had an ardent and profound perception of the mani- fold richness of life, and who have so perfect a control of the sensuous means of expression belonging to their art that they are able to communicate the same perception to others. The artistic instinct of all other people and hardly any one is without it has its own proper and infinite sphere, in which the con- duct of life itself may become a great and noble exercise of art. And what is true of art is also true of pleasure. Special "entertain- ments" may become limited more and more to the great popular festivals and the highest artistic gratifications. But so long as labour uses up the powers of the majority; so long as leisure is lacking for personal exercise of energy in the way of re- Recreative Culture 185 creation; so long as innumerable things still distort and disfigure existence so long will recreations remain a necessary of life in the ordinary acceptance of the term. And there- with recreative culture becomes a crying need, in order that this claim may be satisfied in a healthy and becoming way. Then slowly but surely a race will be formed, to which working days and holidays alike, from the awakening with the morning light to falling asleep under the stars, will be full of pleasures reverently enjoyed. To those who scoff at these "fancies, impos- sible of realisation in an imperfect world," I will reply in the words of a great and true saying: Where there is no vision the people perish. No dream, however great, has ever injured a nation or a class. Dreaming is only harmful when it is indulged in at the expense of action, or when it is in irreconcilable opposition to the laws of existence. Only those who have not perceived that precisely humanity 's will to perfect itself is the highest law of earthly life can despair of a more perfect humanity. 1 86 The Younger Generation The final goal of this perfecting we do not know, nor do we need to know it. We know that we possess the perfecting instinct and that we have accomplished the task laid upon us in the scheme of the universe by this in- stinct, when all the best possibilities of our nature have co-operated with this, the highest of all our incentives. VIII THE FEW AND THE MANY 187 VIII THE FEW AND THE MANY I. Introduction. Egoism and Fellow- Feeling 'T'HE kernel of the history of human develop- * ment is the interaction of egoism and fellow-feeling. At certain periods egoism has been the stronger. The mere mention of the words "Hellenism," "Renaissance," calls up a vision of godlike figures passing in procession and filling the air with sound and colour. These periods have permanently enriched life by their profound, self-centred sense of life and surging creative joy. At other periods fellow-feeling has been predominant. Not the good fortune of the in- dividual, but the sufferings of the many, have occupied the minds of thinkers. Periods of powerful conflict arise, when both egoism and fellow-feeling have found forcible expression. Our time is one of these. On the one hand 189 The Younger Generation we have a Tolstoy, whose fellow-feeling led him to a remedy for human suffering which in its extreme is an annihilation of individual- ity, as in the Buddhist ideal of Nirvana. Even the remnant of individualism preserved by Christianity, namely the hope of salvation, is of no importance to Tolstoy, He only desires the establishment of that kingdom of God upon earth which was preached by the prophets of Israel and by Christianity. And he believes that this kingdom can be reached by a full realisation of the doctrine of Jesus, with a selflessness so complete that it finally results in the extinction of the race, and by a return to primitive conditions so thorough that it finally results in the destruction of civilisation. In his condemnation of the State and of laws Tolstoy is in complete agreement with anarch- ism, whose temporary weapon, violence, he, however, unconditionally abhors. Anarchism also had dreams of the millennium, but dreams of a more beautiful and spiritual kind than Tolstoy's. Its hope is to unite the need of social reform with individualism, the feeling of fraternity with cultural development, in a state of things in which laws and armies, property and government shall have disap- The Few and the Many 191 peared, and every one shall be able to follow his then purified impulses. Only thus will personality freely find expression in religion and science, in art and poetry, in work and repose. Krapotkin is in our time the purest and most eminent champion of this anarchism. As often happens, the extreme Left, Tolstoy and anarchism, meets with the extreme Right, individualism. The latter has in our time maintained the right of egoism in the face of fellow-feeling in a way that has never been seen before. And just as fellow-feeling found its great, personal spokesman in Tolstoy, so has egoism been voiced by Nietzsche. This mighty genius as every one now knows glorified individualism and the great person- ality with a Will to Power so strong, with an absorption in the ego so intense, that they led to the shattering of the thinker's own ego. Individualism has no dreams of reducing suffering on earth, which it regards as unavoid- able. It insists only that we ought to oppose the suffering that would arise, if the higher individuals were prevented from attaining their full development and enjoying full free- dom for their personalities. This obstruction might come from the many. Therefore in order to prevent these many from exercising 192 The Younger Generation pressure on the few, we must pitilessly sacri- fice the majority to the minority. These few show themselves to be in possession of the true "master nature" precisely in being able to go forward over the bodies of the slaves, whom they trample underfoot by the right of the stronger, if they themselves can only reach their goal by so doing. This out-and-out individualism rejects the claims both of Christianity and liberalism that they too represent the cause of personality. Christianity, which makes pity the first of duties and thereby encourages weakness and incapacity; Christianity, which depreciates genius and exalts the poor in spirit; which commends servility in the name of humility and makes self-obliteration its highest aim, is not able to develop free and noble spirits. On the contrary, through its doctrine of fraternity and the eternal value of every soul, it has opened the way to liberalism's demo- cratisation of social relations. This democra- tisation went with the Puritans to America, and from there came to Europe, where, since 1789, the mill-stones of equality and frater- nity have crushed personality between them. Since that time everything individual has been levelled down by something "universal": in- The Few and the Many 193 telligence by universal education; character by universal suffrage ; art by universal mechanical processes; nationality by universal brother- hood. Everywhere the universal effort, ac- cording to Nietzsche, is "with the least possible force to arrive at the greatest possible stupid- ity." And, in the opinion of individualists, the immediate result of the levelling work of Christianity and liberalism is socialism. This again demands of the individual the most extreme self-renunciation, that of no longer possessing property. And it demands this renunciation on the part of the few for the sake of the many, of humanity. It everywhere opposes what is peculiar, what is characteristic, egoism. If it is victorious, the few will be sacrificed to the many, the masters to the slaves; "herd-humanity" will trample the supermen under its bestial hoofs. In certain of the programmes of socialism, out-and-out individualism has, it is true, found its extreme opposite. These two extremes of self-esteem on the one hand and self-renunciation on the other deserve the closest attention, just because they are extremes. For we may be sure that, when each of them has worked out its extreme con- sequences, development will appropriate and 13 194 The Younger Generation preserve what each has most profoundly justi- fied. Any outcome of the struggle, which left one of them the victor, would bring develop- ment into a bypath, and we should be forced to go back and fetch the vanquished one. 2. Social Utopias and the Position of the Social Question in our Day Even at the beginning of the i88o's, social- ism was little feared, only ridiculed. All that some so-called "statesmen" knew about it was that a socialist had said that "property is theft." Occasionally they went so far in their thoroughness as to prove that if "as the socialists desired" everything were equally divided to-day, by to-morrow inequality would have reappeared! Sometimes, again, it was explained that the demands of socialism were extremely ancient, and that this was the best proof of their unreasonableness. However it may be with their irrationality, their antiquity is incontestable. The prophets of the Old Testament already had visions of justice, which like a mighty stream was to overwhelm those who oppress the poor. 1 In 1 See, for example, Amos, c. 2 and 5, and in Isaiah, c. 5 (and elsewhere), the description of contemporary conditions, or (in Pseudo-Isaiah) the visions of the future in c. 65. The Few and the Many 195 the same spirit spoke Jesus and the oldest Fathers of the Church, using expressions so violent that they can be compared only with those of the most extreme socialism. In the first centuries the Fathers of the Church called the earth the common property of all; they saw in riches the source of the greatest human injustice; the rich were called thieves and the inheritors of thieves; no one ought to own more than was sufficient for his needs, all the rest was to be given to those who had nothing. When the rich made private property of what God had made common to all, they were murderers; the few had taken for themselves the inheritance of all, namely the common gifts of nature; common property was the will of God, private ownership was a violation of that will. Genuine Christianity, of the revival of which we now hear so much, is expressed in part by what is quoted above. And in all periods during which this genuine Christianity again becomes living, the words of Christ to the young man, who asked him how he might be saved " Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor " have once more become a re- proachful exhortation in the minds of men. The Christian doctrine of brotherhood and the 196 The Younger Generation Jewish doctrine of justice have then acquired a revolutionary force. But the opponents of this force and its communistic claims have hastened to use not only the sword of civil order, but also the cross of the Christian religion against it. For Christianity on this point is divided against itself. It has inherited the Jewish ideal of justice, but side by side with this it has its own new ideal, that of human immor- tality. Christianity's greatest power over men's minds rests upon the fact that it has not only given consolation in suffering, which is the experience of all mankind, but has done more given a meaning and a sanctity to this experience. The symbol of Christianity was the cross, the story of the passion became the central point of its doctrine, poverty and sad- ness on earth were the basis of the hope of bliss in heaven. The effort to improve our earthly condition, on the other hand, was looked upon as a manifestation of the worldly mind; it is as a vale of tears that the earth becomes a preparation for the joys of eternity. Nay, Christianity in the same breath enjoins on us charity towards the suffering, and patience when we ourselves suffer. Most of the interpreters of Christianity have The Few and the Many 197 thus taken the substance out of the most unambiguous words of Jesus as to what is demanded by love of one's neighbour; indeed, one may even hear Christians speak scorn- fully of those who insist on the full import of Jesus' claims on neighbour-love. They think, these profound Christians, that quite different and greater sacrifices were demanded than the divison of loaves of bread. It is true enough that there are sacrifices that touch the personality far more nearly. But this ought surely not to prevent these Christians from also fulfilling the commands of Jesus, regarded by them as so easy, among which the division of all their property to the poor is undeniably one to which Jesus himself at- tached no small importance. For according to him "to love one's neighbour as one's self" is only a figure of speech, unless it involves allowing one's neighbour a full share of all one needs and desires for one's self. But not only in the Jewish and Christian world of ideas do we find the antecedents of socialism. In Hellas it was Plato who pro- phesied of a state of things in which the "two nations, rich and poor," would become one nation. The Renaissance also had its glowing Utopias, and the second Renaissance, the 198 The Younger Generation Goethe period, had one in Heine's glorious Ardinghello or the Happy Isles. 1 Even in those periods in which egoism has been strongest, such spirits as have been dis- turbed in their own harmony by the discord surrounding them, or have been seized by fellow-feeling for the suffering, have begun to dream dreams. And all these dreams, as well as the antiquity of them what is it that they prove? That humanity bears within itself an ideal of happiness and an ideal of justice, which it seeks to approach; that the Utopias are one expression of these ideal claims, which appear again and again in new forms and compel the gradual transformation of social conditions, which must be continued until we have arrived at a state of things which provides the out- ward conditions of happiness for all. While the demands for social reform are very ancient, the position of the social question in our time is, on the other hand, new. Every great idea has the same history as the Parsifal of the mediaeval legend, whose mother brought him up in solitude and, on the day when he wished to go out into the world, 1 Closely akin to the Utopias of the Renaissance is William Morris's News from Nowhere. The Few and the Many 199 put on him the dress of a fool, which in the course of his conflicts he finally exchanged for the trappings of victory. Socialism is another such child of the age, which under conflict has doffed the cap and bells. Socialism now confronts us in every news- paper and review; in the theatre and in Par- liament; in the Vatican under Leo XIII. and in the French Academy. Many distin- guished men within the Catholic Church have embraced the ideas of socialism as regards the reform of society. The Catholic priest is better prepared than the Protestant clergyman to recognise the connection between the social question and Christianity. For through celi- bacy the former is more easily liberated from worldly interests, and through administering the relief of the poor he is brought nearer to the enigma of hunger. But Christians of all denominations fear socialism when it comes to the transformation of religious opinions. For while, on the one hand, socialism finds support in the Christian sense of fraternity and justice, it brings at the same time the above-mentioned charge against Christianity that its preaching of patience and renuncia- tion, of unselfishness and unworldliness, stands in the way of a really powerful desire of reform 200 The Younger Generation where the incongruities of earthly life are con- cerned. And in addition to this there is the whole trust in providence that Jesus recom- mends to take no thought for the morrow, to imitate the birds of the air and the lilies of the field an idealism which, when it is genuine, must make Christians indifferent towards economic questions of every kind. The Social Democracy hopes for much, though far from everything, from the feeling of fraternity to which the Christians and Tolstoy appeal. The Social Democracy knows that in its essence it is the liberation of the strongest "Will to Power" that the history of the world has yet seen that of the fourth estate. The liberation of this will has been promoted in the first place by the greater equality in civil rights and education that resulted from the French Revolution. For increased civil equality has caused economic inequality to seem more unbearable to the lower classes. In the next place, these lower classes have been steadily increased owing to the existing conditions of production forcing one stratum after another of the upper classes down to an inferior economic standpoint. And these elements which bring with them better education and greater claims on life The Few and the Many 201 strengthen the discontent of the proletariat with the existing state of things. To intensify this discontent has been the task often unwisely performed, but necessary of social agitation. And the number of those is ever increasing who acknowledge that "the disparity between our external circum- stances and the needs of civilised life is one of the deepest causes of the melancholy of the present day"; and who perceive that "the satisfied sit still and do nothing, whereas the dissatisfied are the world's only benefactors." As the fourth estate's "will to power" is now once for all set free, it is bound by the laws of nature to reach its goal. A French working- man, who at a meeting some years ago was speaking about classes, was interrupted by the remark that the French Revolution had put an end to all classes. He went on, how- ever, to show with convincing logic that money has taken the place of privileges in forming class distinctions; nay, that the amount of liberty, equality, and fraternity a man ac- tually enjoys, depends to a great extent on his means. The increase of population, the growth of mechanical production, the rise of competition in the field of labour, intensify year by year 202 The Younger Generation that struggle of all against all which is the characteristic of existing economic conditions. The larger capitalists swallow up the smaller, and the latter therefore combine more and more into great companies, which make pro- duction and distribution collective. Among the wow-collective agriculturists those work- ing with small capital, or small manufac- turers and retailers, or literary men and artists, and others, the existing state of things claims daily victims. And these victims, as well as every new trust, every new company, every business crisis, every fight between free trade and protection, all witness to the social trans- formation which is taking place by a regular process of evolution. This transformation socialism seeks to carry out logically. Only in this way do socialists believe they will be able to change the con- ditions of life of the great majority, which is condemned by the present system to destruc- tion or to an unalterable subjection. It is this inevitable transformation to which liberalism its eyes bandaged with the tri- colour is blind. Liberalism and socialism, both children of the French Revolution, regard each other with that mutual resentment which usually The Few and the Many 203 results when the elder brother has received practically the whole inheritance. Liberalism, the elder brother, assumes a haughty attitude towards the younger. But this does not prevent liberalism from being constantly forced to preserve its power by concessions to the demands which whenever they have been first put forward by socialism have been called "infringements of personal liberty." In this connection it is only neces- sary to recall the normal working day, work- men's compensation, old-age insurance, and the regulation of female and child labour. But in making these concessions liberals insist that their object is to prevent the final trans- formation, the needlessness of which, they say, will become apparent when all these partial reforms have taken place. And in order to hinder the final transformation they show the same tendency in practical politics as did the corresponding "liberals" of the eighteenth century of doing everything for the people, but nothing through the people themselves. Meanwhile liberalism is becoming more and more hybrid. It becomes so, on the one hand, through being forced to adopt more and more of the claims of socialism in its programme; on the other, through assuming a more and 204 The Younger Generation more conservative attitude towards existing conditions. Now, however, as a hundred years ago, the only proof of true liberalism is being able to liberate one's self from the prejudices peculiar to one's own time not from those of another age. The truly liberal-minded man is no more frightened now than he was during the French Revolution, at seeing the waves of the time wash up bodies and wreckage. He does not stand on the beach, wringing his hands and cursing the sea, the life-giving sea, without which men would not be able to live and breathe on the dry land. "Now are we frightened," say these so- called liberals, "by a shipwreck or two. It is only the inundations of the sea, not its movement, that we hope to prevent. For if the waves of socialism are allowed to rise, they will wash away all the liberties we have laboriously won, all the best culture humanity has acquired. We do not fear the awakening of the fourth estate, but its social-democratisa- tion of society." With such apprehensions one is justified in building dams. It is only what is justifiable in these misgivings that can be the subject of an investigation. The Few and the Many 205 3. Liberalism and Socialism. Social and In- dividual Liberty. The Right to Work In their uneasiness liberals have forgotten that history has never shown us any perma- nent outward transformation except by an inward transformation: that of men's feelings and ideas regarding the values of life and the conditions of happiness. When no preceding inward transformation has taken place, the revolution is followed by a reaction. And the knowledge of this makes the Social Demo- cracy tend to become more evolutionary instead of revolutionary, more unwilling to force a new state of things upon society. Liberals, on the other hand, continue to as- sume that the new conditions would be im- posed by coercion, but at the same time they think that the members of society, oppressed by the socialists, would be squeezed into a homogeneous mass, from which the social "State" might knead whatever forms it pleased. History shows us, however, that nations have never behaved as a mass de- prived of force and will, except during certain limited periods before rulers who based their power upon divine authority. The Israelites, who did not acknowledge the divinity of 206 The Younger Generation Pharaoh, organised that well managed strike which is known as the deliverance of the children of Israel from the land of bondage. With the small acceptance the belief in divine authority finds in our day, it is not to be supposed that the Social Democracy will be able to rely for support on such a faith. And thus from the point of view of human nature a reaction is bound to succeed any conceiv- able attempt at transformation according to a fixed programme. Even if such a mis- fortune came about as that the savages of our lowest social strata seized power by the right of the stronger, the sons of these savages would be found to react against their fathers' encroachments on liberty and culture. We may be as certain of this as we are that when real savages are able to eat their fill in peace, they begin to feel impulses towards culture. Knowledge of this, however, does not get rid of the fact that such a period of savagery, even if transitory, would involve great sufferings on the few, without appreciably diminishing the old sufferings of the many. Such a trans- itional period, therefore, is the last thing desired by thoughtful Social Democrats. But even when the liberal is wise enough not to fear so violent a revolution, he is ap- The Few and the Many 207 prehensive lest the programme of liberalism political self-government and economic freedom should be exchanged in a socialist State for State absolutism and centralisation. But it is difficult to grasp how a despotic form of government could be possible in a society in which each individual citizen would feel that / am the State. Would not every law, every branch of labour, every official department then come into being through those to whom these laws and administrative arrangements applied? Only the old view, which sees in the State an independent ex- ternal entity, instead of an epitome of the citizens themselves, makes it possible to fear an absolute despotism in Social Democracy. Every law or arrangement disapproved by the popular will would infallibly be reformed. Not the immutability but the continual changeableness of the government is what may be feared in a society where all take part in making laws and electing administrators. To counteract this tendency to change is the very problem that statesmanship will have to deal with in a socialistically transformed State. The representation of minorities, the irremovability of judges and certain other officials, the complete distinction between 2o8 The Younger Generation legislative, judiciary, and administrative func- tions assuredly provide some, though far from sufficient means of guarding against demoral- isation under democratic forms of society. Pure, naked democracy has not unfrequently shown itself envious or suspicious of great personalities, has delighted in humiliating them, has been ungrateful, fickle, and domi- neering; sometimes even dishonest and unjust. There is, therefore, no thinking person who believes that universal suffrage is a final goal. It is the necessary first step to a gradual transformation of our whole social life into forms, compared with which all that we now call representation, parliamentarism, adminis- tration, and the press will appear as much out of date as absolutism and the censorship appear to us at the present day. We can see already how conscientious natures suffer from having to deal with the press or parliament- arism, since they have found these institutions swayed, not by ideas, but by love of power and above all of profit. But since absolutism, not of the government but of the majority, is the real danger of all democracy, it follows that every new majority that accidentally has the power, can use it for making regulations hostile to liberty, if the The Few and the Many 209 new society has been founded upon central- isation instead of self-government. And the socialists know this very well. Many of their leaders are therefore more and more inclined to abandon the idea of centralisation in favour of self-government within the different de- partments of labour, while they insist on co- operation between these departments only for the sake of the systematic regulation of all production. Socialists, like William Morris and others, are more and more becoming anarchists on this point, owing to the fear that State officials who can no more be expected in the future than in the present to be gods in omniscience may fetter the freedom both of production and of consumption. If all exchange and all production were to be regu- lated in detail by the State, it is obvious that not only would individual initiative be fet- tered, but the needs of the public could not be satisfied to the same extent as now, when the trader's business interest keeps him alive to these needs. The State as sole employer without a competitor, as sole customer and sole seller this hard-and-fast, barrack-life idea is being more and more abandoned by socialists in favour of that of a common State direction for the main features of production, 14 2io The Younger Generation but otherwise self -management ; thus, in every department, a democratic foundation with an aristocratic superstructure. No one need wonder at the word aristocratic. For an anarchist, management actually means an aristocratic one after a short time; that is, a management in which by psychological neces- sity the most efficient, the best, as a rule, come to the front. With regard to the different trades it will easily be seen that it is not only important to restrict the partial over-production to which the socialists rightly point, but also to promote that class of production which cannot be put into figures, since it depends on individual initiative; the production through which new forms, new patterns, new inven- tions make their appearance, without having been foreseen, inquired for, or indicated. And side by side with this freedom for individual initiative in every trade, it is desirable that the manager chosen by the board of direction or by the workers themselves should not be easily removable, but should possess strong and active powers. Otherwise the adminis- tration will be conducted with as much waste of time and force as is customary with "boards," whereas the single strong will can The Few and the Many 211 usually do great things within its own limits. Of course there will then as now be the danger that a manager may use pressure. He might have many ways of attacking a person he disliked ; moving him from one place to another, from a more leading to a more subordinate position, from a pleasant to an unpleasant kind of work. But it would not be possible to use any of these or similar means in so violently coercive a way as is now done. If we could measure the pressure that weighs upon every one who has to work for his livelihood; what endless precautions, what cowardice, what slackness and indiffer- ence are fostered by the need of daily bread; if we could trace all the economic causes of the want of character or the hopelessness that succeeds to the courage, the self-sacrifice, the love of truth, the devotion, with which so many young people begin life we should find at the back of all this the order of society which often brings an independent man face to face with the choice between submission against his conscience and loss of his means of livelihood. And this social order is not favourable to that development of the indi- viduality, about which people are always so 212 The Younger Generation scrupulous when socialism is mentioned. This order is hostile to the individuality in a far greater degree than a social arrangement could be, whose first principle was: Nobody can be made out-of-work. With this " Magna Charta" personal liberty would have made the greatest step in advance that had ever been made since protection of life and property was recognised as social rights. For at bottom protection of life and property is not fully operative when a man can be made out-of-work. And liberty of conscience and of thought does not exist in reality when on account of his words and thoughts, his belief or non-belief a man may lose the livelihood of himself and his family. 4. Can the Independence of the Individual be Maintained in a Socialistic Society? In order that every one may enjoy the right to work, the socialists, as is now known, con- sider that certain members of society the owners of the means of production must resign this private ownership. How and whether socialism will be able to abolish the right of private property in the means of The Few and the Many 213 production; how and whether it will then be able to provide work for all; how and whether it will succeed in so arranging collective pro- duction that it will continue to grow all this belongs to the national-economic side of the question. Into this I do not enter, since I do not understand it. And even were I to do so, I consider it scarcely possible to discuss this side of the question. For in these matters there are many different schools of socialism, and in every country appears the differentia- tion indicated above, which is one of the signs of development. New proposals are con- stantly being formulated, concerning which one can be sure of only one thing: that they will never be carried out in their entirety. Programmes of the future have no other sig- nificance than that of the scaffolding round a house. It helps the builders in their work, but is pulled down when the house is finished. And the building will be nothing like its scaffolding. As regards the shape that future conditions will take, there is now only one thing certain among evolutionary socialists : that the social- istic "State of the future" cannot come into being in its entirety. They know that we must "keep the sky in view in order to reach 214 The Younger Generation the brow of the hill." They recognise that much of the present order of things will be found applicable as a form, when its meaning has been changed. They understand that this new meaning will no doubt come into being partly by altered conditions, but above all by growth from within, out of the old conditions. They do not believe in a total reconstruction, and with reason. For how- ever longingly each new generation turns its eyes towards "the land of the future" no human foot ever yet trod its soil. A hundred years ago the revolutionaries then striving and suffering believed that we in the end of the following century should be living happily in the land of the future; just as we now hope that those who follow us will be happy, whereas they will certainly be occupied by new sufferings, mistakes, and demands of reform. But we know that, even if each new generation has fresh tasks and in more than one case has to do again the work of preceding reforms, yet these reforms have always left behind certain indestructible results. Thus the privileges of the nobility as they existed before 1789 are now for ever impossible. And thus some day the privileges of capitalists will be made impossible, through a social The Few and the Many 215 transformation which in other respects will perhaps undergo similar modifications to those of the reforms of 1789. The position of the mature socialist towards the State of the future has been expressed by Georg von Vollmar in the following simile: "He who would make new roads in society, meets with the same experience as the bold pioneer in unexplored regions. The latter knows that he must leave the lowlands and sees in the distance the high plateau over which he is to build his road. But whether its course will be straight or zigzag, its gradi- ents easy or steep, or at what point it will reach the heights all this he cannot know before- hand. He must examine the ground step by step, and in doing so he will always be coming upon something new which will cause him to alter his plans. But he must never keep his eyes fixed on the small piece of ground that lies immediately in front of him; by doing so he would get on no better than if he tried to build his road straight through the air. If, on the other hand, he keeps the continuity in view and fixes his eyes on the goal, his work will be accomplished. In many ways it will turn out differently from his original idea. Nor will the height he has reached prove to be 216 The Younger Generation the last, but before him new heights will rise, and new prospects, hitherto unsuspected, will open out. But along his road men will have made a certain advance; and thus the road-builder will not have worked in vain." There is only one thing of which we may be absolutely certain, and that is, that whatever changes may be made in the programmes for the solution of the social question and however socialism may be transformed a transforma- tion that takes place with psychological ne- cessity, the more socialism leaves the simple homogeneous phase of agitation and becomes complicated and differentiated under contact with reality the social question will always be with us, until a solution of it has been found for the few as well as for the many. My argument in the following pages will start from the assumption that for the present a solution of the social problem has been found in a reform based in its main features on the demands of socialism. And it is with this assumption that I will mention some of the points of view from which we have reason to hope that individuality will be more favoured in a society so transformed, as well as some points of view from which the contrary may be feared. The Few and the Many 217 The possibility of the suppression of indi- viduality by socialism has been to me, as to many others, the great and valid objection to socialism. Unless it can have the same, nay, a much greater regard for the interests of individuality than existing society, the social- istic society will not be permanent. Before we thus find cause for deciding our attitude to the work of social reform, we must make clear to ourselves the mutual relation of individual- ism and socialism. If, for instance, we assume that the right of private ownership of the means of production is the essential condition of individual development, then socialism is at once put out of court. But if, on the other hand, we consider how few among significant personalities have been owners of the means of production, we must immediately say to ourselves that the great number of those who have not owned these means proves their unessentiality to the development of person- ality in a far greater degree than the fact of one or two landlords or manufacturers having attained by their help a fine personal develop- ment proves the contrary. If this is reassur- ing even now to the many who, lacking the means of production, would otherwise be condemned to an undeveloped individuality, 218 The Younger Generation then it may also reassure us with regard to the future. In speaking of the rights of property, I will here only recall the fact that society has time after time claimed similar restrictions to those now demanded by social- ism, restrictions of the liberties of some, when these have proved incompatible with the liberty of all. Nothing is more significant in this respect than the case in which the sense of ownership was at least as deeply grounded in human nature as it is where property in the means of production is concerned ; I mean the father's right of property in his children. That part of this right which implies the liberty of the father to kill, sell, illtreat, and marry off his children, or to let them grow up ignorant, has been taken away from him step by step by society. And it is certain that each time the fathers have felt their liberty to be violated by this interference of the law with the "sacredness of private property." Now, on the other hand, every one sees that this interference has contributed to develop the relations between father and children into the rich and personal connection that we often see in modern life. At each such limitation of freedom, how- ever, it must be made a condition that it The Few and the Many 219 promotes a more essential liberty, by restrict- ing a less essential one. No other restriction of liberty can or ought to be tolerated. And unless the socialists provide a fully adequate compensation for the freedom they propose to abolish, they cannot count upon a long duration for their reforms. The strength of the socialist faith, however, rests precisely upon the certainty of being able to provide this adequate compensation. 5. The Adaptation of Egoism to a Society Socialistically Transformed The socialist's train of thought is this: Now the many are dependent on the few, the workers on the owners of the means of pro- duction. The majority work as wage-earners of the State or of private persons; in both cases the employer retains the greater part of what these wage-earners produce. They thus keep the wage-earners down to a minimum of subsistence, which is proportionate neither to their physical nor their intellectual needs, so long as they are capable of work. When they cease to be so, owing to illness or age, they are faced by complete destitution or dependence on charity. When, on the other 22O The Younger Generation hand, all become partners and fellow-workers in a common production, their ample wage, their certainty of wanting neither work nor provision for sickness and old age, and the consciousness of working one for all and all for one, will foster a much stronger sense of responsibility and honour than now exists. And this sense, together with man's natural need of work, when it is moderate and well paid, must increase the love of work. The extent and the value of production will be greatly multiplied compared with the present, for it is now stimulated only by a minority's hope of profit, while the majority knows that it is condemned to lifelong, hopeless drudgery. But this is not all ; the enhanced sense of life, which accompanies better conditions of exist- ence and increased intellectual development, will have a liberating effect on the personality. The assumptions of socialism in the present, as in other cases, rest upon the experience that feelings can be transformed. This ap- plies in particular to the feelings of those who now represent ability and talent in different departments. These must learn to find their pleasure in activity for the whole community instead of for their private profit. And such a transformation of feeling is not unthinkable. The Few and the Many 221 Thus, for instance, the warlike spirit is trans- formed during long periods of peace. Other equally profound instincts have changed in connection with a changed view of the values of life. And such a new view is incontestably in process of formation; a view which may result in a complete metamorphosis of the desire of profit. But there is another side to the matter. The desire of profit usually has a deeper cause than profit alone. It is not only possession that satisfies, but the effort itself; nay, often the effort more than the possession. For the effort enhances the sense of power, and in this happiness has its origin. Profit, moreover, has its great psychological significance as a measure of our expenditure of force, as an expression of our success or failure. Those on whose efficiency, inventiveness, mental work, and creative power it finally depends that culture shall not perish and the hard struggle with nature begin again, must acquire a new measure of the success of their efforts, if profit is no longer to ful- fil that function. And that other measures exist is all the more evident, as even now the creators themselves seldom become rich through their inventions, works of art, and 222 The Younger Generation books, but still their creative joy is not diminished. Just as the individual expresses in the family his nature as a member of the race, so does he express in work his nature as a member of society. In both spheres the demands of personality are freedom in the choice of what one loves; permanence of the relation, so that one is not separated by external agency from what one loves ; peace and the right to become more and more absorbed in what one loves. And finally, to be loved back by the object of one's love; which in the case of work means that it smiles upon one with the smile of success. Only on those conditions does one feel in work as in family life that liberation of forces, that rich sense of life, that impression of capability, which constitute happiness. In this sense the "will to power" is only equivalent to the will to happiness. The more highly developed an individual is, the more complicated all the above-men- tioned conditions of his happiness become. And the more highly developed an individual is, the more significant is his happiness, above all his happiness in work, to the community. Of the greatest minds, the creators, this is true in such a degree that a social transforma- The Few and the Many 223 tion which deprived a single such mind of the sense of freedom and thereby of the power of creation, but gave prosperity to everyday people, would finally prove to be a misfortune even to the everyday people. Not every socialist thinker is conscious of this danger, but many are so. They have therefore begun to abandon the proposition that all work is of equal value and that the hours of work are the only available standard of value. They are beginning to recognise that the hours of work vary with different kinds of work, different individuals, different moods of the same person, different work per- formed by the same person in different phases of the development of the methods of work; or with different places, so that the result (a building, for instance) may have a far greater value in one district compared with another and that thus the hours of work will not serve as a standard of value. It is also beginning to be acknowledged that every kind of work is not of equal value to society. One that lasts an hour (a surgical operation, for instance), but saves a valuable force for society, is worth more than years of work of an everyday kind, apart from the fact that this one hour's work is actually rendered possi- 224 The Younger Generation ble only by many years of preparatory study, and moreover wears out the nervous system more rapidly than less straining work, so that from these indirect points of view it is also worth more. A number of socialists have put forward similar views and in con- nection therewith have proposed the following desideratum: That, while security without work should be reserved only for children, invalids, and the aged, while the work of all ought to. be rewarded so that good conditions of life may be obtained by moderate work, greater efficiency and a more valuable kind of work ought nevertheless to be able to secure a maximum of the means of existence. This, however, should never differ from the minimum in such a proportion as, for instance, the high- est and lowest rates of salary in our existing government departments or companies. The strongest, most direct stimulus of the working energy of most people the hope of in some degree improving their conditions of life would thus be preserved in the socialist community. It is also frequently suggested that property in such things as are not means of production and cannot easily be made to produce interest, might very well be retained and be hereditary. Such objects are, for The Few and the Many 22^ instance, the furniture, the books, the works of art, through which I express my personality in my own home, or which I have learned to love in the home of my parents. The possi- bility of acquiring and keeping such objects, of being able to travel, of having more op- portunities for material and intellectual en- joyment all these things would remain to stimulate the effort to attain efficiency. If, on the other hand, all amusements were made freely accessible, as is proposed in certain socialistic Utopias, they would not only lose much of their power of heightening the sense of life, but society would also lose a strong stimulus to work. And if the gifted and capable member of society were held down to the same economic level as the dull, lazy, and inapt one, this would be not merely an injustice, it would be a loss of productive energy so immense that it would reduce the well-being of all, including the dull and stupid. Socialism is becoming increasingly alive to this, as well as to the importance of efficiency and experience in different departments of work. It is thus pointed out that the possibility of reaching a leading position, as well as the right of retaining the place that one's labour has endeared to one, will con- is 226 The Younger Generation stitute incentives to work. But, on the other hand, the socialists have not sufficiently re- marked that there is a far more important way of giving a man promotion; namely, by allowing him increased freedom in his work, through a gradual reduction of control. It is beginning to be more clearly seen that equality is not justice, either as regards punish- ment or reward. A punishment which would be intolerable to a finer nature, is indifferent to a coarser one, and vice versa. A state of things which would permit Wagner to make rules for Faust and Sancho Panza to keep Don Quixote in check would be martyrdom to Faust and Don Quixote. Nor does exist- ing society smooth the way for the exceptional nature, but the latter nevertheless has a chance of forcing its way to the front. On the other hand, an order of society which would force a Pasteur to observe the same normal hours of work as a shoemaker; which would provide a Michel Angelo with work on the same terms as a stonemason, and allow a Goethe the same household accommodation as a farm labourer; or would snatch a Pasteur, a Michel Angelo, a Goethe from their re- searches and inspirations for so many hours of "social" forced labour, such an arrange- The Few and the Many 227 ment would be anything but favourable to their powers of production. The more deeply a man is intellectually occupied, the more painfully he feels any interruption. All such proposals as an exchange between different employments; alternate physical and mental work at different times of year, thus making the intellectual worker earn his living by easy manual labour these proposals, which have so often been made by socialists, rest upon an entire misunderstanding of creative mental work and of the necessity of acquiring by pre- paration and practice the efficiency which can render a change of work a rest instead of a drudgery. Even if a more harmonious education than the present may render more variety of work possible, it is certain that a fundamental distinction will nevertheless per- sist between the physical and the intellectual worker, a distinction which rests upon psycho- logical and physical laws. If an exchange of activity may be a rest to a few men, to many it is only increased toil. Besides this, it would be an absurdity if that part of my work which is unessential to my personality should be what was socially valued and secured my existence as a citizen, while my essential creative work should be regarded as my private 228 The Younger Generation amusement. Such an inversion of all real values would involve a most profound depre- ciation of the powers of production of creative genius. It would make the man of science, the poet, and the artist endeavour to bring about a return to the present state of things, the uncertainty of which is doubtless painful, but the freedom is nevertheless great enough to render possible that tension of the powers which gives life colour and value. In a co- ercive society, again, a genius would lapse into disgust with life, although he would possess from the beginning what in some cases he does not attain in a whole lifetime security of livelihood and provision for old age. To these dangers must be added this, that in the socialist community the value of intel- lectual work would be determined by the opinion of the majority. The majority never wants what is original and new, but these things have to force themselves upon the majority by persistent attacks. If a majority were able entirely to preclude the possibility of these original efforts, the result would be at first a stagnation, then a retrogression in culture. In our existing society the value of intel- lectual work is depreciated partly by failure The Few and the Many 229 to recognise it, owing to insufficient culture; partly by economic compulsion which leads to weak productions being given to the world ; partly by taking advantage of the taste of the buying public, and finally by the temptation to leave intellectual work for more profitable speculations. In this field, as in all others, that of politics especially, our present society is demoralised by the economic struggle for existence. These existing dangers to intellectual work would to a great extent disappear in a reformed society. If this society were arranged by an uncultivated majority, the possibilities pointed out above would, on the other hand, oppress the intellectual upper class and to some extent become realities. And in that case the con- ditions for production would be impaired for the time being. If, on the other hand, the leaders of culture take part in the transforma- tion of society, they will certainly know how to provide incentives, security and freedom for intellectual work. Culture in the socialist State will be, as everywhere else, an expression . of the cultural needs of the community. And that these may be provided for in circum- stances entirely different from the present is proved by many examples in history, above 230 The Younger Generation all that of the monastery. We may hardly suppose that any socialistic community would leave us less personal liberty, introduce a more communistic mode of life, and retain fewer personal motives for work than was done by the monasteries. And yet the monas- tery was the chief vehicle of culture during the Middle Ages and individual propensities enjoyed great freedom of movement within its walls. It is significant in this connection that the most celebrated monastery of South Germany, Benediktbeuern, erected a little hermitage on the shore of one of the glorious mountain lakes of Bavaria, where the in- trospective, nature-loving, poetic, or artistic among the monks might retire from the bustle and regulations of the great convent and seek inspiration and leisure for work. It may be objected that it was piety that impelled the monks' pen and brush ; that their faith compensated for the absence of personal interest in their work. But piety was often only another name for personal desire of creation. And that the latter was so powerful in the monastery was due to a deeper cause than religious views, a cause to which I shall return later. Moreover it is not inconceiv- able that the social sense may one day become The Few and the Many 231 a religious motive force to the same extent as piety was in the monastery. We who are now living stand at the commencement of the epoch of solidarity and can have only a presentiment of the transformations this sense will be able to produce, the value of the new motives it will give humanity, and the height of the feelings of happiness it will create. 6. Intellectual and Material Labour. The Class Distinction Involved Therein Although some socialists recognise the ne- cessity of different conditions for intellectual and material labour, others think that such distinctions would also preserve the social inequalities in the community. Yes, they certainly would do so ; but only those inequalities which no altered circum- stances could abolish, inequalities in talent. And that these are the work of Nature herself, and not of external circumstances, is proved to us by life, when the same family produces the genius and the idiot. In the face of the intellectual upper and lower class created by Nature, no reform is of any avail, although a long course of outer and inner influences may contribute to adjust to some extent the natural 232 The Younger Generation inequality. And it can never seriously sug- gest itself to a reasonable person to preach revolution against the privileges of Nature. "Genius," says a Swedish writer, "cannot oppress . . . but wealth and rank can oppress. . . . The former cannot be owned by all, nor can it be alienated; the latter can be owned by all and can change owners. It is only these advantages that are the objects of envy and may become objects of hatred, nay, of violence and revolution." The unnatural class distinction on the other hand, which capital now creates, must be abolished just as surely as the unnatural class distinction once created by birth. Capital- ism still makes it possible for slave souls to tyrannise over master souls. Figaro is still a servant, though not to the Count but to the banker. The artistic spirit is often obliged to confine itself to the workshop while dilet- tantism holds sway in the drawing-room; the inventor not unfrequently has to keep his subordinate place in the factory, because he has not the capital to carry out his own inven- tion, the fruits of which enrich the manu- facturer and are squandered by his sons. But in an order of society not controlled by capital there would be a much greater The Few and the Many 233 possibility and a much greater inducement to afford every gifted man an opportunity of performing what he could do better than the rest. The many who have no marked apti- tude, or those who have a difficulty in making the value of their talents intelligible to all, would then as now be obliged to do some work which was not altogether to their taste. But the specially gifted man would have both the means and the time to work his way and finally to obtain acknowledgment for his peculiar talents, his new ideas. And it would be to the common interest of all to ease the conditions of labour of the manual workers by means of new inventions and new machin- ery; whereas in many cases new machinery now only increases the profit of the employers and reduces the earnings of labour. At the same time as the conditions of manual labour were made easier, every one, before entering upon it, would have received the general education and the opportunity for continued education that are now wanting. Thereby the present class distinction would be removed which consists in other feelings, other thoughts, and other life-values, so that each class has neither understanding nor respect for the values of the other. 234 The Younger Generation Above all, that mark of lower and upper class would be abolished which consists in one being the servants or employees of the other. All would know that they were fellow-workers dependent on each other's health. After all these sweeping changes the manual workers would acquire quite another view of the value of intellectual work than they can now possess, when they have little chance of enjoying the fruits of the inventions that are made indeed, are often thrown out of work by them and when, for want of education or time, they can seldom have a share in the book or work of art that is produced by the representatives of intellectual labour. With regard to the conditions of labour, I will venture the assumption that in the social- ist State where the wishes of all will be able to make themselves heard the extreme spe- cialisation of labour, which is the condition of existing production, will be compelled in the interests of individualism to give way. Owing to specialisation the individual has little joy in his work, since he cannot express himself in it. The most perfect happiness in work that I have seen was in the case of an old locksmith, who made keys and ornaments. Every wrinkle in his face was dug either by The Few and the Many 235 pondering over problems or by the delight of having solved them. He caressed every ob- ject with eye and hand before he let it go. In looking at him the idea occurred to me, which I afterwards found had been expressed by Ruskin, that the head, heart, and hand ought to share in every work, if it is to bring joy to the worker and be a living expression of his personality. No other hand than that of the artist himself, says Ruskin, can execute the jewel, the glass, the bowl that his imagina- tion has created. In this union of art and handicraft lay the superiority of antiquity and of the Renaissance. Household imple- ments just as much as works of art were then the expression of a person's creative joy and skill. Ruskin thinks that when all work becomes a happy exercise of art; when the workers are surrounded by healthy and beautiful con- ditions of life without which no true beauty can come into being then the quantity of production will indeed be decreased, but its quality will be immeasurably improved. Ruskin further insists that we must make political economy follow the sense of beauty. We must resolutely sacrifice all such convenience, cheapness, and beauty as 236 The Younger Generation depends on the degradation of the workers and grows out of the inhuman ugliness and poverty of the slums. Thus all will gradually be trained to understand true beauty, which is not a luxury, but a moderate, appropriate, personal, and tasteful way of satisfying real needs. It is easy to point to exaggeration in what is quoted above, and yet it is not inconceivable that Ruskin's ideas in certain cases are those of the future. Whereas, on the one hand, machinery will more and more perform such work with which head and heart have little or nothing to do, handicraft may reconquer those fields in which the personality can find a real expression. Even now the ornaments turned out by the dozen which unquestion- ably have had a certain importance in develop- ing and satisfying the sense of beauty are beginning to be replaced in refined homes by more artistic objects. And to a conscience aesthetically and socially awakened the cheap articles referred to are intolerable. They have the effect of spots of dirt upon festival attire, since one knows them to be products of hunger and sweating. Since the necessity pointed out above of entirely abandoning perfect equality which The Few and the Many 237 means perfect injustice has been put forward, a new objection has been made, that, with unequal conditions of labour, one man will find an opportunity of making his talents, his objects of art or other values "bear interest" at the expense of another. This is very probable. But the greatest temptation to the majority to allow themselves to be thus financially misused will disappear when every one has a safe livelihood in return for moderate work. Does not many a man even now re- fuse to sacrifice his leisure for insufficiently paid work? And above all we may assume that a new sense of justice will be developed, which will condemn such anti-social deeds as dishonourable, just as forgery is now con- demned in the capitalist society. To begin with, however, regulations will certainly be needed to hinder such abuses. In the Middle Ages, we may remember, the rulers used to forbid the erection of fortified castles, when they were used as centres of robbery. Now there are no such prohibitions, as in the present state of society it does not occur to any one to fortify a castle for himself. Thus too the robber customs of our time may die out in a future where everything will contribute to starve them out. 238 The Younger Generation It is obvious that new conflicts, at present unforeseen, must arise in a transformed so- ciety. As greed of gain decreases, desire of power, thirst for fame and other forms of ambition will probably increase. Ideal con- ditions can be realised only through ideal men. And in this case Christianity is always right life proceeds from the heart. Not merely from better conditions of life, but above all from ennobled souls will a greater happiness blossom. But at the same time we must not underestimate the importance of improved conditions of life to moral and intellectual development. Conditions of life have a great significance in the spiritual transformation which is to make other motives than the pre- sent ones decide the issues of life and other values the object of our endeavours. What is materialistic and one-sided in the socialist agitation in the course of which many socialists have called the social question a "question of the stomach," and asserted that the whole history of development is only the history of economy this one-sidedness has perhaps been useful to the agitation. A bow too finely carved breaks when it is bent. But now socialism requires above all to be spiritually deepened. It is therefore a for- The Few and the Many 239 tunate thing for socialism that anarchism is forcing it to "anarchise" its theories, just as socialism has forced liberalism to ' ' socialise' ' its policy. Anarchism has certain grave warnings to offer. It takes the part of individualism against the tyranny of the State; of self- government against centralisation; of initiative against control. Although the outrages of the anarchists are detestable, although their present theories if logically carried out would lead to the struggles of a state of savagery a life in which every man's hand would be against every man their ideal is nevertheless the pillar of fire that shows us where the land of promise lies: the land where the ideas both of individualism and socialism will finally be absorbed in a higher unity. 7. The Influence of Society on the Development of the Individuality But, even if all the necessary considerations for the rights of the individual pointed out above are provided for in the socialistic society, the protest of out-and-out individualism still remains. While the anarchist hopes that the indi- vidual will come into his full rights and happi- 240 The Younger Generation ness when every one receives according to his needs, when every one works according to his inclination and acts according to his will, when everything exists for all and humanity becomes one great family, in which the strong will protect the weak while the anarchist thus entertains a superstitious belief in the ennobling of human nature merely through altered circumstances the individualist, on the other hand, is profoundly sceptical. He is even more so with regard to the ennobling of the masses than he is about the transforma- tion of conditions. He assumes that a uni- versal equality in the conditions of life and in education would only flatten out originality and make the masses less willing to allow the superman to advance in unfettered freedom according to the demands of his nature. For the masses themselves will never be able to produce culture- values. They are the deep black soil, the prosaic anterior condition for the golden ears, the swelling grapes, the crimson roses that culture grows. Darwinism has been profoundly abused in being held up as an aristocratic principle applicable alike to the domain of culture and to that of nature. For Darwinism in reality has nothing to do with the formation of an The Few and the Many 241 upper and a lower class, such as we now see. Within this class system complicated condi- tions of property and production have done their best to upset the Darwinian law of the "survival of the fittest." In this, as in so many other cases, society has departed from nature, has hindered the selection of the best, and often preserved the worst instead. That the superman will be the result of a long succession of happy selections among fortunately placed men of culture is one of the sayings we often hear. Those who speak thus forget the old experience of the rapid degeneration of ruling classes or brilliant families. Especially when the passion for wealth has got the upper hand and exhausted all their strength, such families seldom con- tinue beyond the second or third generation without showing all the signs of degeneration. It is also forgotten that most men of genius have arisen directly from the lower class frequently with a clergyman or official as an intermediate link, among us in the North. All the uneducated "natural geniuses" are forgotten, of whom there are so many everywhere in mechanics especially, in our country. It is the fresh brains, hitherto un- used for the purposes of culture, that, as a 16 242 The Younger Generation rule, prove to be the most fertile, the most creative. On the other hand, it is true that there exists a physical and psychical refinement which is a mark of breeding, a product of long-continued culture. But these refined ones often enjoy far more keenly than they create. Nor is this refinement a consequence of upper class life alone. We may see, for in- stance, a child, born in the lower but adopted into the upper class, showing at once so intense an enjoyment of the beautiful, so natural a refinement, so delicate a sensitiveness to all that is ugly, that if it had remained within its own class, it would have been tempted to satisfy its craving for beauty by pernicious means, or forced to suffer through life from the incompatibility between its profoundest needs and the conditions of its life. A single child like this teaches us more of the deepest import of the social question than hundreds of essays. If individualism thus knows no more than any other theory about the genesis of the "superman," this does not prevent it from uttering deeply significant truths about his path through life. Individualism is right in its protest against The Few and the Many 243 the tendency of all democracy to promote the condition of the many more than that of the few, against its disposition to measure likes and dislikes according to the low standard of the majority. Individualism is right in de- manding ample space for the great personality. It is obliged to insist, with Nietzsche and many before him that the essence of genius is an overflow of forces, a rapture of inspiration, an infinity, which demands altogether differ- ent conditions for its creative power, especially in art, from those applicable to ordinary men. The spokesmen of individualism are indis- pensable and have been obliged to be one- sided in order to stir men's minds. Especially to awaken a perception of the fact that more small souls than great ones come into being, more unproductive minds than productive, and that it would be an abuse if the former were allowed to draw the latter down to their level. Emerson and Mill have pleaded the cause of the individuality; Carlyle has in- sisted on the supremacy of the hero, as has Browning on that of passion; Kierkegaard bases his hope on the individual and Ibsen on the solitary ; Stirner would make the unique one supreme, and Nietzsche dreamed of his superman as master of the world. Nietzsche's 244 The Younger Generation prophetic voice was heard at the right time, when there was a danger that the many, "the herd," would outvoice the few with their claims. This deep significance of Nietzsche may be fully acknowledged without our being obliged to accept one of his attributes for the superman: that of pitilessly and relentlessly passing over the herd. For more than one has become a "superman" through directing his "will to power" to making the many happy. More than one superman has ended as a man of the "herd," although or because his path lay over the existence of others. It is certainly by deeper signs than pitilessness that slave or master souls are to be recognised. That mighty superman Spinoza, who has perhaps given deeper impulses to the intel- lectual life of the nineteenth century than any other thinker, laid down once for all in his Ethics the limitations of the superman. He proclaims it as the foremost duty of every man to follow the first law of nature that every one should love himself and defend his own existence. Everything that physically or psychically promotes my existence, that calls forth a general development of force, and that leads from a lower to a higher degree of perfection, is happiness; everything that acts The Few and the Many 245 in the contrary direction is suffering. The stronger our spiritual life is, the greater our joy; the greater our joy is, the greater our perfection. Each has the right to everything, so far as his power extends. But as each man can best maintain his existence, develop his perfection, and exercise his power in associa- tion with other men, it becomes necessary that none shall obstruct the existence of others; that, on the contrary, each shall so far limit his rights, as not to demand of others that they shall do or submit to what he himself will not do or submit to. Our own interest, indeed, prompts us to this. For if we hinder the existence and development of others, our own existence will not be so rich and developed as it would be- come by reciprocal interaction with others. In this the absolute claim of the superman is attacked with a dialectic weapon as subtle as that which Nietzsche wielded against the claims of the herd. Even if the masses could be kept altogether down, this would result not only in an even greater loss of values to culture, values which the supermen who now not unfrequently emerge from the "herd" would then be alto- gether prevented from producing. No, the 246 The Younger Generation masters themselves, secure in their supremacy, would lead a more and more cramped exist- ence up on their heights, if they were not surrounded by the warm climate which the sympathy of the many provides. For it needs no proof that the produc- tion of culture- values always stands in a cer- tain relation to the spirit of the age, even if we have ceased to regard genius as merely a creature of that spirit. Genius is always a miracle, but one that has been prepared: we do not expect a Darwin from Tierra del Fuego or an Eskimo Dante. We know that when genius is born, it is from the womb of the nation's culture, and that the many who assimilate the work of a great genius and are enriched and refined by it, enhance in their turn the creative power of the genius. If individualism is easily refuted in its modern claims that the many exist to serve the few supermen its position is all the stronger in another respect, namely, in the assertion that the levelling of the conditions of life, of inequalities of education, and of social forms, which is now taking place through an increasing democratisation and uniformity, will crush out individuality itself and gradu- ally deprive culture of great minds, since it The Few and the Many 247 will be entirely impossible for great minds to appear. Our own time is already used as a proof of this; but it is forgotten that in all times proximity reduces the measure of great- ness in the eyes of contemporaries. It is quite certain that in a hundred years our time will be glorified in comparison with the paltri- ness then existing. But in spite of this evident injustice towards our contemporaries, every thoughtful person must see that there is nevertheless an increas- ing danger that the unique, intellectually aristocratic personality will become rare in a democratised community. America gives us an example of this. But this American demo- cracy is still one in which economic considera- tions are supreme. The calm acquisition of culture is in that country almost the greatest of luxuries. Life is nothing but a hunt for wealth, a hunt in which many fall, while a few become multimillionaires. All the politi- cally democratic institutions have for their real president the dollar. America is the great proof of the fact that democracy and capitalism together create tyranny. And therefore people in America are becoming increasingly alive to the necessity of social reform. Switzerland is another democratic 248 The Younger Generation example. Tranquillity prevails there, a general well-being and in the words of Laboulaye's apt definition of a democracy a self-govern- ment which operates incessantly within small circles for objects which even the least of the citizens understands. But there the people are absorbed in a narrow-minded local particu- larism; no rich movements occur to promote culture, no really great centres of culture exist; great geniuses are seldom born there, although many of the most original and vigorous of the talented men of our day have there seen the light. But, on the other hand, history shows demo- cracies in which the general level of culture was that of the high plateau, without this preventing bright summits from rising above the plain. For the culture of a people does not depend only upon its political forms. It depends upon whether the nation lives well in an intel- lectual sense, with a happily asserted inde- pendence, in a material prosperity which allows of cheerful sacrifices in the interests of culture; and upon its possessing an open eye and a real passion for its cultural tasks. A nation becomes cultured when, simultane- ously with the appearance of great creative The Few and the Many 249 minds, the lives of the many are also full of meaning, so that they receive from the few, and give to the few, impulses of cultural significance. In a community organised on social-democratic lines the individuality could thus be saved, if life in general were to be made more profound and manifold, instead of being reduced to a dead level. Thus this path also brings us back to the question already asked: whether there is a prospect that, in a new society, new life- values will also arise? 8. Enjoyment of Life in Existing Society and its Possible Enhancement in a Transformed Society Greed of gain and competition lead to a constantly increasing production. But the capacity for enjoying the values thus created declines almost in the same proportion as the values increase. From this period of financial swindles, stock- exchange panics, suicides, and nervous diseases rises a steadily growing desire for quietness, health, beauty even if it were within the walls of a convent. As at the beginning of the nineteenth century, romanticism has be- 250 The Younger Generation come a manifestation of this longing for rest from the feverish agitation of life. What is genuine in the symbolism and mysticism of modern literature and art is an expression both of the thirst for beauty and of the de- mand for reform felt by our time. Many of the symbolists of the 1890*5 were at the same time anarchists and attached themselves to Jesus' doctrine of fraternity with the same aesthetic enthusiasm and personal heterodoxy as the older romantic school attached them- selves to Catholicism. Even at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Rahel Varnhagen declared that "new means for the salvation of mankind must be discovered ; the old ones are worn out." And the nineteenth century was one in which Utopias of reform succeeded one another, all witnessing to humanity's increas- ing consciousness of the torments it was suffering in the existing state of things. Therefore it now clutches at the hope that a state of society may be attained in which every one will be able to use his now languishing vital energy. These sufferings have been called "the malady of the end of the century," as though the end of the century before had not been a period remarkable above all for vital force. But at the end of the eighteenth The Few and the Many 251 century, as at the end of the nineteenth, humanity found itself at the close of one phase of culture and in expectation of another. This is what makes us despondent our no longer being satisfied with what we possess. We no longer regard Christianity as a solu- tion of the problem of life; we no longer look upon the existing conditions of family life, the State, and economics as a basis for con- tinued development. The old society was shattered by the Revolution; the whole nine- teenth century was an expression of this dis- ruption and a preparation for a new society, from which we expect daylight, not merely "revolutionary lightnings and philanthropic shooting stars." If we call the great evil of the age weariness of life, we have certainly gained a name for the disease; but this does not help us to reach its manifold causes. The most significant of these is the impossibility of living that is everywhere produced by the struggle for life. For the few life is now concentrated upon the acquisition of wealth, for the many upon the maintenance of life. For those who amass the means of enjoyment, do so less for the sake of enjoying than for the sake of posses- sing; they wish to increase or manifest 252 The Younger Generation their wealth, not to heighten their joy in life. If all the spiritual energy which on both sides is thus confined to purely material ends, were set free, life would be transformed in a way we can scarcely divine. Many now believe that existence would lose all its strong forces, if the struggle for existence were to cease. But would not existence continue to be determined by the great, mysterious laws of nature; should we not still have the riddles of life and death, anxiety and grief, beauty and pain? Would not human beings, then as now, be born, love, suffer, and die? And an immense afflux of personal meaning would take place in all the great spheres of life, if men acquired what they do not now possess: leisure and peace to rejoice in their happiness, to feel their sorrows, to deepen their impressions of the glories of nature, art, and literature. To "have the right to idle- ness" is the psychological condition for lasting impressions and strong creative power, when the impressions have been assimilated at leisure. This was the secret of the productive energy of the cloistered life, while, on the other hand, the rareness of strong impres- The Few and the Many 253 sions involved a great limitation of that energy. The struggle for daily bread, the cares of livelihood the most harassing, blunting, and disfiguring of all worries are now the stamp of private as well as public life. Everywhere around us they check untold possibilities of loving, enjoying, and creating. Married people have no time to cultivate their feelings for one another, to follow the light and shade of each other's spiritual life, to make a mutual exchange of their develop- ment for any of those things which often made the period before marriage so rich. Through the cares of livelihood parents have no time to live with their children, to study them in order to be able really to educate them. The school has no time to develop personali- ties, only to prepare for examinations, those fishing-lines with which to catch one's food. And in this way life is everywhere wasted, while people wear themselves out to maintain life. Nothing hinders the development of the individuality to such an extent as the double influence under which it now lives from child- hood. On the one hand, Christianity's com- mandments of charity, the law of unselfishness, 254 The Younger Generation the importance of self-sacrifice are inculcated. On the other, the same growing person hears and experiences what is demanded by reality: a relentless struggle to get on in an existence in which competition sets each man's hand against all; in which he must strike or be struck, defend his prey like a wild beast or starve, and in which the ruin of one is the salvation of another. In such circumstances personal unity becomes an impossibility. We often hear the apprehension expressed that a social transformation would abolish the home and the family. Most certainly their forms would be to some extent altered, but a transformation which attacked the very essence of the relations of life in which human nature has hitherto found its greatest happiness, is unthinkable. Whereas existing society offers ever fewer opportunities of marriage and thus tends to the stunting or brutalising of the emotions connected there- with the new society would not merely render marriage possible to all; it would also assist the realisation of marriage in a more beautiful way. For when economic or other low considera- tions no longer have any bearing on marriage, men and women would seek and find one The Few and the Many 255 another from more or less personal motives. Marriage would be able in both sexes to de- velop new, undreamt-of possibilities of mutual happiness. To what extent such a develop- ment is possible is disclosed by a retrospect of erotic emotional life only a hundred, nay, fifty years ago; a retrospect which will show how materially that emotional life was already enlarged and refined, in spite of all incongrui- ties still prevailing. The optimism of Alfred Russel Wallace is thus not unfounded, when he bases his hope of the continued develop- ment of the human race on the erotic idealism of women in conjunction with socialism. In a socially transformed State, he thinks, no woman will be compelled by want to sell her- self, either in or outside marriage. And every woman will receive an education so universal and thorough, that the age of mar- riage will be advanced and woman may become a developed personality by the time she makes her choice of love. This will then be a real selection; most women will probably remain unmarried until they have found the man with whom they can unite themselves in full mutual and personal love; or, if they do not find him, they may prefer to abstain altogether from marriage. The man or woman physically 256 The Younger Generation or psychically diseased or defective would thus, as a rule, have no chance of rearing a family; whereas now, if they have the means, such people are able to propagate the race, while others, excellently qualified in body and mind, are prevented by poverty from mar- rying. When marriage comes to be contracted, as a rule, from mutual, sympathetic love between individuals who have reached full mental and physical maturity ; when marriage comes to be regarded as the highest form of life, which has been more and more perfected, and when at the same time the economic pressure of existing society, with its physically and psychically demoralising, stunting, and brutalising influences, has been removed- then a new race may arise. Then the selec- tion of the physically faultless and high- minded individuals must gradually result in the average man of the future reaching the height that is now occupied by genius. And the genius of that time will stand as high above these gifted average men as a Goethe, a Humboldt, a Shakespeare, and a Newton stood above the average men of their time. So far Wallace. If humanity arrived at economic peace, then, I hope, not only would spiritual life The Few and the Many 257 itself be made deeper, but its manifestations would become richer. The faculty of com- municating one's self, and of showing fine shades in one's intercourse, would not only recover the delicacy it possessed before the age of steam and electricity, but might be even further refined. An art critic has pointed out that the Japanese have developed their sense of touch so that their finger-tips enjoy soft, smooth, agreeable surfaces as keenly as we enjoy colours and forms and tones. All our senses, our whole temperament, ought to be able to attain a similar development, so that accents, expressions, gestures, sensations of every kind would acquire a fuller, more individual, and vivifying character. Psychico-physiological research in our time also gives forebodings of a hitherto unknown enhancement and extension of our personality, which however cannot take place so long as our energy is fettered by the struggle for existence and can only exceptionally be directed inwards. It is not to spiritualist superstition that I refer, but to natural, though as yet only exceptional manifestations of our psychi- cal and physical powers. This development will be connected with a return to nature, from which man has been more and more 17 258 The Younger Generation separated by the stress of work, while at the same time the finest beauties of nature are now destroyed for the many by the few, who again have often no choice in the present economic struggle and themselves not unfre- quently suffer from the destruction they set on foot. With a different order of society we may expect that all would regard it as a common right and duty to protect the beauty of nature, as instead of the meaningless luxury which is now the privilege of a few an ever-increasing intercourse with nature would be the source of redoubled joy and strength for all. And in the same way science, art, and litera- ture would become in an entirely new degree life- values to men who were no longer driven by the struggle for livelihood; men who can now only see that intellectual life has banquets in preparation, in which they will never have a chance of taking part. Just as our intellectual energy might be multiplied, so might our power of giving and receiving real values in social intercourse be developed. At present our social life is to a great extent an expression of our economic interests, our need of credit, our business or official connections, our class position. The Few and the Many 259 But when the economic motives were re- moved, we should have more power and cour- age to arrange our life as an expression of our nature, not of our income. Now it is, as a rule, only millionaires who are able to allow themselves the luxury of originality. The poor have no choice; the well-to-do often think themselves obliged "for their credit's sake" to imitate the rich, and these to imitate the richer. Thus, if poverty brutalises the personality, wealth makes it commonplace. His numerous "duties" to his position blunt the individuality of the rich man to such a degree that he becomes a peculiar type just as rarely as the day labourer, and neither the one nor the other has time for real personal life. 9. Luxury and Culture. Future Possibilities of Happiness We sometimes hear it asserted that the wealth of the few, who thereby have the op- portunity of developing luxury, is a condition of all higher culture, and that art in particular would languish without riches. If this were really so, the condition of enter- ing into the heaven of fraternity would be 260 The Younger Generation plucking out the eye of the sense of beauty and cutting off the creative hand. But it is not true that luxury is an indispensable con- dition of lofty culture. In Athens the State, not the private person, was the patron of art; the private home was simple, the public building magnificent. In Rome again, as everywhere else, it was finally shown that luxury that is, an inappropriate, unnatural, and expensive way of satisfying artificial wants did not develop a true sense of beauty. The latter endeavours in an appropriate, moderate, and beautiful way to satisfy real wants. Indeed, one of the greatest lovers of beauty that ever lived, Goethe, says that all real pleasure is simple; that luxury may do for people without ideas, whereas he himself felt all his mental elasticity relaxed in gor- geous surroundings. The enjoyment of beauty often stands in an inverse proportion to the elaborateness of the apparatus. The ancients already expressed the dangers of aestheticism in the subtle saying: "Where you want slaves, you must make music." Isolated enjoyment of beauty leads to the thraldom of the mind and hinders the de- velopment of character which really forms noble, free personalities. Over-refinement The Few and the Many 261 always ends in brutality, which is the final stimulus of exhausted nerves. Neither the frigid zone of paucity nor the torrid zone of luxury, but, in this case also, only the tem- perate zone is favourable to the growth of a lofty culture. In a society in which no one could indulge in luxury, its place would be taken by what is genuine and exquisite, that is, what bears the stamp of personality. Only that which cor- responded to one's true ego would be looked upon as worthy in every field. Only when each one lived by what he could perform bet- ter than others; when each one associated only with those with whom he was in sympathy; when every home was filled with objects which were fashioned lovingly and chosen and arranged according to the personal taste of their owner; when every one was esteemed, not according to his share in the means of production, but according to his own powers of production only then would the way be prepared for a really beautiful life. Of course, even in such conditions, it is not every one who would be able to make life beautiful. All hindrances to the realisation of happiness that proceed from the personality itself, hindrances that are derived either from 262 The Younger Generation a heavy or a light temperament, either from a hard or from an over-refined disposition, either from too much frost or from too much fire; all the complications arising from tem- perament or circumstances, between heart and duty, between thought and feeling, be- tween the individuality and society; all these hindrances and complications will still remain even when the economic stress is removed. In a word, psychical laws will continue to operate just as much as the physical laws of nature; and both psychical and physi- cal laws in their inflexible course will of- ten render happiness impossible or produce suffering. And new sufferings will arise as the conse- quences, at present unknown, of new condi- tions. These new forms of suffering as well as the old ones may, moreover, be felt more keenly, when we have more leisure for being impressed by pain. But all our sufferings might become more personal, more noble, when they were not, as is now so often the case, caused by or connected with the struggle for livelihood. In a reformed society nothing will prove to be perfect. But everything may acquire a starting-point, based upon more real values, The Few and the Many 263 for continued development. The belief that they were advancing towards something better would heighten every one's enjoyment of life, whereas now a doubt of all life's val- ues is one of the profoundest causes of weariness. It happens not unfrequently that the indi- vidual, after some serious crisis in his life, considers all his spiritual resources exhausted and thinks he has no more strength to suffer or to love. But to his surprise new powers grow up from the mysterious, unknown depths of his own soul. As with the individual, so it is with mankind. There have been periods of its history when men have believed themselves faced by a close, whereas they actually stood at a beginning. And those who were preparing this beginning were just the ones who were thought to be hastening the end. If at a Roman banquet under the Empire a Stoical philosopher turned the conversation to the abolition of slavery; or if the chaplain of a feudal castle hinted that the serfs could work better in different circumstances ; or if a philanthropist in a French court circle of the eighteenth century spoke of the rights of the people what answer did they receive? That 264 The Younger Generation any abolition of existing circumstances would destroy society and civilisation, which the speakers unconsciously identified with their own supremacy. But we know that all these conditions of labour and production have nevertheless been transformed; we know that each time new forces, till then unused, have appeared, and that the material has been cast into new shapes, till then unknown. And there is no reason to despair of humanity's continued power of renewal. Two artists have drawn for us what may be and what is. Every one knows Guido Reni's Aurora, in which the god of day advances across the sky, while the Hours move round him in a joyful, majestic, graceful dance. Our contemporary, Walter Crane, on the other hand, has repre- sented the Cavalcade of the Hours at the present time in the likeness of charioteers driving their teams with furious lashes of the whip and dashing past each other in a wild race. When the hours of the day again appear as the Renaissance artist saw them, treading the dance with ivory feet and beautiful, restrained gestures then will life once more be worth living. The Few and the Many 265 10. The Reconciliation of Egoism and Fellow- Feeling In a society in which, since the conditions of existence were secured, the aim was the creation not of capital but of culture, it would be possible to use all means for developing individuality if it was seen to be threatened by levelling and to use them as zealously as the education of home, school, and society is now used to extinguish individuality. When the wild competitive struggle for existence no longer snatches the women from home, the majority will once more find a field of work there. In a society in which every one could freely seek the work that he found most desirable, aptitude alone would draw a distinction between man's and woman's work. We should see all women taking some part in the government of society, and many devoting themselves to public affairs. But most of them would probably find they had work enough in the capacity of wives, mothers, and house- keepers. In the last-named case we may expect their work to be simplified, both by a more collective arrangement of labour and by constant improvements, but on the whole it would demand more personal work on the 266 The Younger Generation part of all, as there would be no special domes- tic servants. This does not, however, preclude the possibility of a practical field of work being found for many women in those homes from which the housewife herself was called away by some public employment. Most wives and mothers, however, would doubtless regard the realisation of married life and the bringing-up of their children as their great social work, their science and their art. The training of children must by degrees become as different from that of the present day as the latter is from that of the cave- dwellers. The parents at home, masters and mistresses at school, would all work together in finding out and developing individual apti- tudes, when once it had been seen that the present school system is their death, not their development. And the programme of social- ism the same schools for all must be altered in such a way that higher education became possible for all, but was communicated in a number of schools differing among themselves; or preferably no "schools" at all, but a num- ber of small groups, in which the teachers would have perfect freedom to work with different methods towards the same end the development of personality. The greatest The Few and the Many 267 freedom of choice, leisure for absorbing im- pressions and for private study, the best material and the most excellent personal assistance would co-operate towards this end. And it could be reached in a community whose whole endeavour was to cultivate indi- viduality, to discover special powers and put them in the place where they would be most effective. The task would then be, first to allow all to assimilate a certain measure of general education, in order thereby to develop the whole personality, but above all the strongest part of it, the individual aptitude; and then to direct this aptitude to its special object. Now general education is a hindrance to professional training, as it is to individual development, and vice versa. But the experi- ence that a weak general education to a certain extent impedes the progress of the technically trained, and a retarded special training that of the generally educated, must involve the most strenuous efforts to solve the problem in such a way that both branches of education may be given their full rights, when the time arrives at which the training of the younger generation becomes, in reality and not merely in school orations, the vital question of society. 268 The Younger Generation But only a society transformed from the foundation can afford the leisure and the means for thus at the same time promoting general education and cultivating individual- ity. Mistakes would of course occur even then. But he who, by the error of himself or others, had taken the wrong road, would have, after an individual training, far more reserve force for making a new road for him- self than he has now in similar circumstances. Besides all the possibilities here alluded to of a richer individual cultivation in altered conditions, there is that of enhancing our enjoyment of life by developing our fellow- feeling. Hereby, too, a prospect is opened up that our own enjoyment of life may be infinitely increased through sympathy with others' perceptions of life, a sympathy which is continually deadened by the present labour system based entirely on egoism and com- petition. This great and rich fellow-feeling is some- thing quite different from the pity which Nietzsche though unjustly asserts to be the mark of the slavish soul. We find this great fellow-feeling in the real heroes of humanity, who in some form or other have all been helpers of the weak. They have The Few and the Many 269 possessed both the individual and the social will, both originality and universality; they have been at the same time realists and ideal- ists, lovers of liberty and philanthropists, or, in a word, incarnate prophecies of the final harmony of humanity, shining proofs of its boundless possibilities of perfection. The hope of this final harmony, in the realisation of which socialism is only one of many transi- tional factors, this hope it is that at great, historic periods of renewal has shed its glory over the age. Men have heard again the voices of the prophets and of Christianity, promising a millennium in which those who have reaped the corn shall eat it and those who have gathered the wine shall drink it; where the voice of weeping shall be no more heard; where one shall not build and another inhabit, and where every man shall sit under his own vine. At such times the greatest spirits have been those who appeared in the noble image of a giant, forcing his own way with one arm, and with the other raising his wounded comrade instead of using both arms to cut his own passage, or both to carry and bind up the wounded. We live in one of these great epochs. The battle is still raging between individualism, 270 The Younger Generation which demands room for the few, and social- ism, which claims it for the many. When it comes to action in the existing phase, it is the spokesmen of the many who at present have the most important contribution to make. I will sum up my train of thought in an image, which I have used once before in another connection, but which is suggestive in more than one respect. A traveller in the desert was asked by his guide in the silence of the night whether he did not hear deep sighs. "Who should be sighing?" asked the traveller. "The desert," answered his guide; "the desert it is that sighs with longing to become a meadow." It is the sigh of this great, uniform desert, still unfertile for culture, that our time, with socialism as its guide, has learned to hear. When the desert has once been transformed into a meadow, there may be a danger that the solitary trees will be forced out by a dense wilderness of grass. But so long as the sandy waste extends between one oasis and another, the uneasy murmurs of the trees there growing are less important than the sighing of the desert. Jk Selection from the Catalogue of C. P. PUTNAM'S SONS Complete Catalogue sent on application The Renaissance of Motherhood By Ellen Key Author of " Love and Marriage," " The Century of the Child," etc. 72. $125 net In this volume, the author of " Love and Marriage" considers certain prob- lems connected with woman's most im- portant mission. She calls the attention of an age that is the victim of divergent interests to the ancient claim of the child upon the mother, a claim that represents the most elemental of altruistic bonds. Ellen Key points out that motherhood and the care of children is woman's pre- rogative, and that the division of labor between the sexes is a natural one. An interesting suggestion toward the solu- tion of certain social problems is made in the form of a proposed subsidizing of motherhood. G. P. Putnam's Sons New York London By ELLEN The Century of the Child O.6. With Frontispiece. Net $150. By mail $1.65 CONTENTS: The Right of the Child to Choose His Parents, The Unborn Race and Woman's Work, Education, Homelesstiess, Soul Murder in the Schools, The School of the Future, Religious Instruction, Child Labor and the Crimes of Children. This book has gone through more than twenty German Editions and has been published in several European countries. "A powerful book." N. Y. Times. "A profound and analytical discussion by a great Scandinavian teacher, of the reasons why modern education doe* not better educate." AT. Y. Christian Herald. The Education of the Child Reprinted from the Authorized American Edition of The Century of the Child. With Introductory Note by EDWARD BOE. Cr. 5. Net 75 cents. By mail 85 cents "Nothing finer on the wise education of the child has ever been brought into print. To me this chapter is a perfect classic; it points Che way straight for every parent, and it should find a place in every borne in America where there is a child." EDWARD BOK, Editor of the Ladies' Home Journal. "This book, by one of the most thoughtful students of child life among current writers, is one that will prove invaluable to parents who desire to develop in their children that strength of character, elf -control and personality that alone makes for* well-rounded use- ful and happy life." Baltimore Sun. G. P. Putnam's Sons New York London By ELLEN Love and Marriage Cr. 6. Net $150. By mail, $1.65 " One of the prof oundest and most important pronouncements of the woman's movement that has yet found expression. . . . Intensely modern in her attitude, Miss Key has found a place for all the conflicting philosophies of the day, has taken what is good from each, has affected the compromise, which is always the road to advance- ment, between individualism and socialism, realism and idealism, morality and the new thought. She is more than a metaphysical philosopher. She is a seer, a prophet. She brings to her aid psychology, history, science, and then something more inspiration and hope." Boston Transcript. The Woman Movement Translated by Namah Bouton Borthwick, A.M. With an Introduction by Havelock Ellis 72. Net $1.50. By mail, $1.65 This is not a history of the woman's movement, but a statement of what Ellen Key considers to be the new phase it is now entering on, a phase in which the claim to exert the rights and functions of men is less important than the claims of woman's rights as the mother and educator of the coming generation. Rahel Varnhagen A Portrait Translated by Arthur E. Chater With an Introduction by Havelock Ellis 12. With Portraits. Net $150. By mail, $1.65 A biography from original sources of one who has been described as among the first and greatest of modern women. The book is a portrait sketch of Rahel Varnhagen, and her characteristics, as " a prophecy of the woman of the future," are illustrated by copious extracts from her correspondence. G. P. Putnam's Sons New York London Ellen Key Her Life and Her Work A Critical Study By Louise Nystrom Hamilton Translated by Anna E. B. Friea 12. With Portrait $1.25 net. The name of Ellen Key has for years been a target for attacks of various kinds. Friends have in connection with the issues that have arisen in regard to the ^ influence of her work become enemies and friction has been caused in many homes. Her ideals and her purposes have been misquoted and misinterpreted until the very convictions for which she stood have been twisted so as to appear to be the evils that she was attempting to combat. Her critics, not content with decrying and distorting the mes- sage that she had to give to the world, have even attacked her personal character; and as the majority of these had no direct knowledge in the matter, strange rumors and fancies have been spread abroad about her life. The readers of her books, who are now to be counted throughout the world by the hundreds of thousands, who desire to know the truth about this much discussed Swedish author, will be interested in this critical study by Louise Hamilton. The author is one who has been intimate with Ellen Key since her youth. She is herself the wife of the founder of the People's Institute inStockholm,where for over twenty years Ellen Key taught and lectured. The volume gives an admirable survey of the purpose and character of Ellen Key's teachings and of her books. New York G. P. Putnam's SOUS London UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. LD-LRU f REC'O LD-f JUL 131984 REC'D LD-mC AUG 2 1984 /:, UMWL BRITTLE Form L9-Serie8 444 REJECTED BY BINDERY llbtS UUUcM 0492 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 001 454 537 o