i 
 
T. H. BELL 
 
 The author at the time of this publication is finishing a 
 book on "OSCAR WILDE, FRANK HARRIS, ALFRED 
 DOUGLAS and myself. " He knew them well and will pre- 
 sent a "Wilde" entirely difFerent to the wretched, spineless 
 creature presented by Harris. 
 
 Later, A Libertarian Interpretation of History. 
 
EDWARD CARPENTER 
 
 The English Tolstoi 
 
 By 
 
 T. H. BELL 
 
 Published by 
 THE LIBERTARIAN GROUP 
 504 North Soto Street 
 Los Angeles, Cal. 
 1932 
 
PUBLISHERS^ INTRODUCTION 
 
 In furtherance of the advocacy of Freedom for All Mankind the Libertarian 
 Group of Los Angeles publish this as the first of a series of studies of Great 
 Libertarians. 
 
 It is issued as a Testimonial Edition in honor of Thomas H. Bell's fifty 
 years of social activity, all but the first three or four devoted to the Libertarian 
 Movement. At a Testimonial Dinner held for him under the auspices of all the 
 local Libertarian organizations February 27, 1932, it was decided to publish 
 this output of his trenchant pen. 
 
 The best evidence of what this movement stands for is contained in the 
 teaching of its leading advocates. The story of their lives is often equally 
 significant and illuminating because the outstanding advocates of liberty are 
 greatly influenced in their life careers by the principles they propound. 
 
 Men act as they think. 
 
 They think as they are taught. 
 
 The printed word is a most efi^ective teacher, always ready, never tiring. 
 
 Short biographical studies and expositions of the main teachings of the 
 world's leading Libertarians in this condensed, inexpensive but permanent form 
 will broadcast knowledge and create an increasing desire to know more. 
 
 Love of life and self-preservation are said to be the first law of nature, but 
 love of liberty and preservation of freedom are surely the second. All sentient 
 organisms struggle to free themselves from restraint as soon as — or even be- 
 fore — they succeed in securing sufiicient nourishment for the preservation of life. 
 
 Desire determines what we do, but our desires are determined by our 
 ideals. If this were not true, all education would be useless. The born slave 
 is unconscious of his chains; he is not galled by them. All are born ignorant, 
 whether slave or free. Education and freedom create the difi^erences. The need 
 for freedom is the most powerful motive force in the world — except to the 
 slave-minded or those whose minds are centered on economic needs alone. 
 
 The free-minded man desires liberty for himself and extends it to his 
 fellows. That is why, invariably, he is a propagandist. He would persuade, 
 not force. 
 
 This pamphlet is submitted for your keenest consideration. If it appeals 
 to you, send $1.00 for a dozen to H. YafFe, 504 N. Soto St., Los Angeles, and 
 pass a good thing along. Indicate also if you would subscribe to further 
 numbers and state what biographical studies would most appeal to you. I 
 name only a few: William Godwin, John Stuart Mill, Benjamin R. Tucker, 
 Voltairine De Cleyre, Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Ricardo Flores 
 Magon, Michael Bakunin, Leo Tolstoi, Peter Kropotkin, Pierre J. Proudhon, 
 Louise Michel, Elisee Reclus, Errico Malatesta. 
 
 CASSIUS V. COOK. 
 For the LIBERTARIAN GROUP of LOS ANGELES. 
 
I 
 
 pp 
 
 EDWARD CARPENTER 
 
 The ^n(^\^ Tolstoi 
 
 Edward Carpenter died June, 1929, a great Englishman and 
 the greatest of modern British Anarchists. (I take care to say 
 "modern" because of Godwin and Shelley.) At 85 he had lived 
 so long that his name was perhaps less known than when he was 
 still in full activity — when his ideas were arousing most strenuous 
 opposition among his fellow radicals. All along, anyhow, his 
 influence was rather upon the intellectuals than upon the people 
 direct. He was a poor speaker and his ideas were always away 
 ahead of the time. Even in the case of the intellectuals, their 
 attitude toward him was quite often one of surprise and incred- 
 ulity that such an able man could seriously put forward such 
 "outrageous" views. Only in the last few years have I read 
 criticism of "science" such as he was making forty years ago — 
 to a radical movement puzzled and indignant. 
 
 I have called him the English Tolstoi. 
 
 Like Tolstoi, he was born an aristocrat. His father was a 
 naval officer; his grandfather was an admiral, and one of his 
 nephews is an admiral now; the family was "well connected" 
 among the aristocracy; two of his sisters acquired the title of 
 "Lady." 
 
 Like Tolstoi, after beginning a career he had his mind opened 
 to the evils of present-day society and abandoned his foolish, arti- 
 ficial, useless life for a reasonable, natural and useful one. 
 
 Like Tolstoi, in his work he showed an extraordinary origin- 
 ality. He scoffed at many of the doctrines most firmly held by the 
 other radicals of his day. As I have already indicated, he was 
 as skeptical about many of the claims of "science" as Tolstoi him- 
 self — and with a better knowledge of them. 
 
 Like Tolstoi, he appealed first of all to his own class. And, 
 like Tolstoi, he presented that appeal in a style that made it 
 literature. 
 
 Like Tolstoi, he dealt largely with the sex question — with 
 equal courage, with more common sense and with much better 
 success. 
 
 Like Tolstoi, he was a good deal of a mystic. His mysticism, 
 like Tolstoi's, was free from superstition; but unlike Tolstoi's, it 
 was also free from reference to authority and reverence therefor. 
 
 Some part of his temperament came evidently from that 
 father, who, as a naval officer, found himself horrorstricken when 
 he had to fire on a boatload of "enemy" human beings and felt 
 
 3 
 
 520949 
 
an immense relief, when he missed, to find his duty done and 
 nobody any the worse for it. It is significant of the world's 
 progress that this intelligent, serious and studious father did not 
 even finally arrive at anything nearer rationalism than "Broad 
 Church" (the comparatively tolerant and enlightened section of 
 the state Church of England). 
 
 The Scholar 
 
 At Cambridge University, after devoting the first year or 
 two almost entirely to rowing, as a young man active and vigor- 
 ous. Carpenter set himself to study, at first merely to pass his 
 examinations but soon with real interest and before long with 
 remarkable success. At twenty-seven he found himself a recog- 
 nized scholar. He was given the hint that he would be made a 
 "Fellow" of his college if he took "orders" (became an ordained 
 clergyman of the Church of England). Well, that seemed all 
 right, he had no objection, he had no recognized rationahstic 
 views; it was not until he was being examined on his faith in the 
 Articles of the Church that he realized having gone a step further 
 than his father's "Broad Churchism." But he was accepted de- 
 spite his hesitation, and was even appointed a curate under the 
 then famous Rev. F. D. Maurice, a man who could talk very 
 beautifully about religion without any clear doctrine at all. It 
 was about this time that he was invited by Queen Alexandria to 
 become the tutor of her two sons, one of them the present King 
 George. 
 
 Here he was then, a highly successful and promising young 
 man on his way to being a Bishop, at least. And then, alas, the 
 disaster came. A fellow student with a book he could make 
 nothing out of, passed it over to Carpenter — and the whole career 
 went smash, for the book was one of Walt Whitman's. 
 
 Carpenter soon saw that his whole life had to be placed upon 
 a different basis. He insisted first on being "defrocked" (being 
 unmade a "priest"), obstinately disregarding the advice of his 
 friends about such Quixotic conduct. 
 
 He tried at first for some years to make an honest living by 
 lecturing on science and on music for the University Extension. 
 But gradually he saw his way to a better course. Finally he 
 bought a little piece of land and started in as a market gardener. 
 He learned to use the pick and shovel, the spade and the hoe. He 
 raised his own stuff and sold it in the Sheffield market himself. 
 
 Does It Pay? 
 
 His friends were not so sure about it being a better course. 
 Here is the beginning of an article of his, "Does It Pay?": 
 "Having lately embarked in an agricultural enterprise on a small 
 scale, I confess I was somewhat disconcerted, if not actually 
 annoyed, by the persistency with which — from the very outset 
 and when I had been only two or three months at work — I was 
 
 4 
 
met by the question at the head of this paper. Not only sisters, 
 cousins and aunts but relatives much more remote, and mere 
 acquaintances, at the very first suggestion that I was engaged in 
 trade, always plumped out with the query. Does it pay? And this 
 struck me the more because though I knew that the point was 
 important, I had in the innocence of my heart fancied that there 
 might be other considerations of at least comparable weight. 
 But I soon found ouc my mistake; for none of my well-to-do 
 friends asked whether the work I was doing was wanted, or 
 whether it would be useful to the community, or a means of 
 healthy life to those engaged in it, or whether it was honest and 
 of a kind that could be carried on without interior defilement; or 
 even (except one or two) whether I liked it, but always: does it 
 pay?" 
 
 The venture was a great success — in Carpenter's way of 
 looking at things. The active, creative, physical work, yielding a 
 plainly useful result, was to him greatly preferable to a sedentary 
 life spent in studying matters of very small interest to present-day 
 humanity, infinitely preferable to spending life in going through 
 what had now become to him a silly and hypocritical rigmarole. 
 To him, anyhow, it was a great success. He did not go as far 
 as Tolstoi, who wanted to live in all things like a peasant. Car- 
 penter was not an ascetic; he lived simply but without any idea of 
 cutting things down to the utmost limit. By this time he had 
 become, of course, a vegetarian; but he did not deny himself the 
 little pleasures of ordinary life, enjoying life heartily all through, 
 I am sure. He had not till then read Thoreau's Walden, but when 
 he did, though he appreciated it, it made no change in his ways. 
 In his mode of living there was, you see, no "sacrifice." Tolstoi 
 went much further. But then, alas, the story goes that Tolstoi, 
 though he adhered to peasant fare in the daytime, sometimes could 
 not resist the temptation of rummaging his wife's pantry at night. 
 It is a very risky business going too far in sacrifice; if the English- 
 man, as is usual with Englishmen, did not go as far as the Rus- 
 sian, did not go the limit, he did live his life consistently, and 
 none the less consistently for its being cheerful. 
 
 Socialism 
 
 He had by this time come in touch with the modern Socialist 
 movement, just being established in Great Britain. He was soon 
 using his leisure in its propaganda. I met him in it for the first 
 time in or about 1884. He had come to Edinburgh on a visit 
 to his mother's relations (she was Scotch, while his father's people 
 were Cornish) and we got him to give a lecture to us of the 
 Scottish Land and Labor League. (We had become affiliated 
 with the Socialist League of which William Morris was the out- 
 standing figure.) With his hesitant style, something like that of 
 a college professor, hemming and hawing till he got just the correct 
 words for his statement, I thought him then just about the poorest 
 
 5 
 
speaker I had ever listened to, yet there was something about him 
 of a charmingly comradelike personality and a man strikingly 
 original, which made a very deep impression upon my youthful 
 mind. He says, in "My Days and Dreams," speaking of 1883: 
 "From that time forward I worked definitely along the Socialist 
 line, with a drift, as was natural, towards Anarchism. I do not 
 know that at any time I looked upon the Socialist program as 
 final, and it is certain that I never anticipated a cast-iron regula- 
 tion of industry, but I saw that the current Socialism afforded an 
 excellent text for an attack upon the existing competitive system, 
 and a good means of rousing the slumbering consciences — espe- 
 cially of the rich; and in that way I have worked for it and the 
 Anarchist ideal consistently." 
 
 His writings were not received with any great enthusiasm 
 by the leaders of the Socialist movement. Why, in "England's 
 Ideal" there was not a single quotation from the gospel of Saint 
 Marx, and surplus value was scarcely mentioned! So Carpenter 
 remained an outsider. He did not address himself at first to the 
 working men at all. Probably he had sense enough to realize that 
 he knew but little about their lives and their psychology; and so 
 he addressed himself to the people he did know, to whom he could 
 really give good counsel, to his own class, people in the difficulties 
 from which he had extricated himself. He spoke to them of their 
 foolish and empty lives, unnatural, unhealthy, unhappy, wasted, 
 empty of everything worth having or worth striving for, circum- 
 scribed by prejudice and by the necessity of holding prestige, 
 spent in working — when they did work — at something in which 
 they could take no real interest and which was of no real use, 
 forbidden by the custom of their caste to take any active physical 
 part in the honestly useful work of the world, parasites, unhappy 
 themselves, living upon people poor and suffering. 
 
 The Young Woman Then 
 
 It is difficult for the younger generation in these days to 
 realize how empty indeed that life was. In the case of the woman 
 the change has been revolutionary in the highest degree. (The 
 Anarchist revolution is not one of the distant future, you know; 
 it is taking place now and a great part of it has already taken 
 place. ) 
 
 Carpenter himself had six or seven sisters and he tried to 
 emancipate young women like them from the stupid prejudices and 
 caste customs by which their lives were being wasted. Those 
 were still the days when a young lady was dressed in skirts that 
 swept the street; her waist was tightly cramped in a corset; her 
 mind carefully confined to what was strictly proper. Physical 
 outlet for her energy or her emotions there was none. The only 
 game allowed was croquet, in which a nicely dressed-up young 
 lady gave a ball some gentle taps with a mallet — about as much 
 
 6 
 
exercise as in marbles. The bicycle had not yet come and she 
 would not have been allowed to ride it if it had. She might live 
 near the beach, but she must not think of swimming any more 
 than of flying. If she was allowed to bathe it was from a bath- 
 ing-coach on wheels, in which she was drawn by a horse into 
 the water as far as possible from the eyes of the young male. 
 Then she could play around a little, but with decorum and in a 
 dress that came right down to her heels. The jollity of hiking 
 and the sport of athletics were not for her. "Sex!" What did 
 you say? Why, in those days a properly brought-up young lady 
 did not have any sex at all! 
 
 Carpenter's first propaganda, then, was addressed to those 
 who needed only courage and determination to free themselves. 
 He wrote with understanding, with sympathy, with style and 
 with humor. And it is plain now that his propaganda was not 
 without its effect; that class of his has been reached after all. 
 Many individuals in it have been much influenced; even as a class 
 it is not what it was. Stanley Baldwin was the Tory premier, but 
 his son stands for Labor. No, he does not go as far as Carpenter, 
 but his position is just as significant. We have such aristocrats 
 as Bertrand Russell (Earl Russell) going all the way; and we 
 have had such writers as H. G. Wells pointing it out. We have 
 now, in Carpenter's country, a whole young generation in revolt, 
 throwing away the taboos of their fathers and mothers. I never 
 pick up a new English novel depicting the young generation in 
 England without being astonished once again. For all of that, 
 the work of Carpenter, directly or indirectly, went for something. 
 
 Civilization: Its Cause and Cure 
 
 The Socialist leaders of that day were not pleased at all that 
 he should bother about the parasites; the revolution seemed 
 then to be much too close at hand to waste time or sympathy 
 upon them. But Carpenter went quietly upon his own way, and 
 some years later published another book, "Civilization: Its Cause 
 and Cure." In this second one Marx was not even mentioned. 
 The leaders of Socialist thought had been willing to pass over 
 a first mistake, but this second book was really too much. They 
 did want a man to stick to the point, to explain to the workers 
 that all the trouble lay in the class control of the means of pro- 
 duction and the simple remedy was to vote into power the able 
 middle-class men who would take possession of these means and 
 administer them properly. Be careful above all not to bring in 
 free thought or free love to frighten the voter. Nothing but the 
 economic cause and the political remedy. Simple and easy. 
 
 Whereas this Carpenter fellow plunges right overhead into 
 the deepest water. He begins: 
 
 "We find ourselves today in the midst of a somewhat peculiar 
 
 7 
 
state of society, which we call civilization, but which even to the 
 most optimistic among us does not seem altogether desirable. 
 Some of us, indeed, are inclined to think that it is a kind of disease 
 which the various races of mankind have to pass through — as 
 children pass through measles or whooping-cough; but if it is a 
 disease then there is this serious consideration to be made: that 
 while history tells of many nations that have been attacked by it, 
 of many that have succumbed to it, and of some that are still in 
 the throes of it, we know of no single case in which a nation has 
 fully recovered from it and passed through it to a more normal 
 and healthy condition. In other words, the development of human 
 society has never yet (that we know of) passed beyond a certain 
 definite and apparently final stage in the process we call civiliza- 
 tion; at that stage it has always succumbed or been arrested." 
 
 (This was written a long time before Spengler wrote his 
 famous book, "The Decline of the West," about civilization being 
 the final stage of a people's development, after which comes 
 decline. ) 
 
 Carpenter explains: "But the word Disease is applicable to 
 our social as well as to our physical condition. For, as in the 
 body. Disease arises from the loss of the physical unity which 
 constitutes health and so takes the form of warfare or discord 
 between the various parts, or of the abnormal development of 
 individual organs, or the consumption of the system by predatory 
 germs and growths, so in our modern life we find the unity gone 
 which constitutes true society, and in its place warfare of classes 
 and individuals, abnormal development of some to the detriment 
 of others, and consumption of the organism by masses of social 
 parasites." 
 
 You see. he does not use the word Civilization "in a kind 
 of ideal sense, as to indicate a state of future culture towards 
 which we are tending — the implied assumption that a sufficiently 
 long course of top hats and telephones will in the end bring us to 
 the ideal condition, while any little drawbacks in the process — 
 are explained as being merely accidental and temporary." He 
 prefers to Hmit its use to a definite historic stage, in which we 
 actually find ourselves at present. 
 
 "In all this the influence of Property is apparent enough. It 
 is evident that the growth of Property through the increase of 
 man's power of production reacts upon the man in three ways: 
 to draw him away namely, ( 1 ) from Nature, ( 2 ) from his true 
 self, (3) from his fellows. With the advent of a Civihzation 
 then founded upon Property the unity of the old tribal society is 
 broken up — at last society itself becomes an organization by 
 which the rich fatten upon the vitals of the poor, the strong upon 
 the murder of the weak. And then arises the institution of Gov- 
 
 8 
 
ernment. * * * force has to be used by the possessors in order 
 to maintain the law barriers against the non-possessors . . . and 
 finally the formal Government arises mainly as the expression of 
 such force." 
 
 His remedy then is not a mere affair of voting into power 
 the proper party. It is nothing less than a return to nature and 
 to community of hump.n life — "towards a complex human Com- 
 munism and towards individual freedom." It is, in fact, though he 
 does not mention the word Anarchism, an Anarchist-Communism 
 — presented not quite as it is usually presented, but presented by 
 a man of letters, a man of bold originality, a man intensely a 
 humanitarian, and a poet. 
 
 Here is an extract from his "Towards Industrial Freedom": 
 "I have sketched rather roughly the evils which arise from 
 the industrial arrangements. In the later chapters I endeavor to 
 infer what further transformations we may expect in the future. 
 These transformations will, I take it, be largely of a psychological 
 character — that is, they will depend upon a changed mental atti- 
 tude towards life, on a changed estimate of values, even more 
 than on a change of institutions. When people come to value 
 beauty in their daily life more than they do now, when they long 
 intensely for that kind of industrial freedom which causes man's 
 handiwork to become an art and a joy, when they perceive that 
 the glory and the sweetness of the blue sky and a clean air arc 
 assets which we cannot neglect without peril to our souls and 
 bodies, when they understand that cooperation is not only valu- 
 able because it increases the industrial freedom of men, but much 
 more valuable when it liberates their dormant instinct of mutual 
 helpfulness and love — when they see that all these inner things 
 and many others are of more importance for human happiness 
 than the mere increase of external riches — then indeed the Shop- 
 keeping Age will have passed away. 
 
 "It becomes increasingly evident, I think, that over and be- 
 yond any formula of reform what is needed is a new spirit of 
 social and industrial life. Without that even the best institutions 
 will be of little avail. . . . only on the condition of spiritual and 
 creative freedom can a society be really human and healthy." 
 
 No radical publication of that time was so fiercely assailed as 
 "Civilization: Its Cause and Cure." Even the Anarchists of 
 that day failed to recognize their own idea in such different dress. 
 We could not, of course, present it today quite in that fashion; 
 most of us see now that Carpenter's presentation of property 
 breaking up the unity of the old tribal society is not true histor- 
 ically; exploitation and slavery arose not through gradual differ- 
 entiation between the rich and the poor, but suddenly out of war 
 and conquest. His emphasis on property was just the emphasis 
 of that day, accepted then even by most Anarchists. 
 
 9 
 
Modern Science 
 
 The objection to his "Civihzation" blew over after a while. 
 After all, they said, the man is a poet. Yes, but confound it, 
 they had forgotten that he was also a scientist. The next thing 
 with which he startled the radical world was "Modern Science — 
 A Criticism." Was it possible? Had the lunatic turned religion- 
 ist, or what? To criticize Science! The one thing sacred, to 
 attack which was blasphemy! 
 
 Yes, it really did seem blasphemy in those days when the 
 fight was still on in regard to evolution, and when, morevoer, we 
 were so close to a solution of everything — how much nearer, alas, 
 than we are now! 
 
 I need hardly tell you that Carpenter was not attacking 
 Science in the good work it had done. Of course not. What he 
 was doing was to scoff at the pretensions of many of its adepts 
 and the certainty they attributed to the hyphotheses of the day — 
 useful enough for practical purposes, no doubt, nay, even valuable, 
 if not indispensable, but final — ah, no! 
 
 "The various theories and views of nature which we hold 
 are merely the fugitive envelopes of the successive stages of 
 human growth — each set of theories and views belonging organ- 
 ically to the moral and emotional stage which has been reached 
 and being in some sort the expression of it; so that the attempt at 
 any given time to set up an explanation of phenomena which shall 
 be valid in itself and without reference to the mental condition 
 of those who set it up, necessarily ends in failure — the notion has 
 so far gained ground that the 'laws" of science are immutable 
 facts and eternal statements of verity — that it may be worth 
 while to treat the subject a little more in detail." 
 
 Time has proven him a prophet; the criticism which brought 
 forth such indignation then has been so justified by the progress 
 of science herself that it is now almost commonplace. 
 
 It is surprising how little Anarchists know of the brilliant 
 work of their comrade. It is due partly to the fact that it is so 
 much easier for the non-learned reader to appreciate such work 
 as Kropotkin's Mutual Aid than to estimate the value of Car- 
 penter's criticism of the ultimates of science, which, anyhow, was 
 justified by degrees so slow that it never at any time caught the 
 attention. 
 
 He was moved to his criticism in part, perhaps, by his 
 mysticism : 
 
 "Science has failed because she has attempted to carry out 
 the investigation of nature from the intellectual side alone — 
 neglecting the other constituents necessarily involved in the prob- 
 lem. She has failed because she attempted an impossible task; 
 for the discovery of a permanently valid and purely intellectual 
 representation of the universe is simply impossible. Such a thing 
 does not exist." 
 
 10 
 
But there is nothing mystical about such a paragraph as this: 
 "This therefore is the dilemma of Science and indeed of all 
 human knowledge, that in carrying out the process which is 
 peculiar to it, it necessarily leaves the dry ground of reality for 
 the watery regions of abstractions, which abstractions become 
 ever more tenuous and ungraspable the farther it goes, and ulti- 
 mately fade into mere ghosts. Nevertheless the process is a 
 quite necessary one, for only by it can the mind deal with things." 
 
 He criticizes keenly some of the most pompous declarations 
 of the "laws of nature" put forth in his day. Some of them arc 
 still being repeated, but not by people who are up-to-date. The 
 complacent attitude of so many scientists of that day, as if we were 
 going very soon to find out all about everything is no longer that 
 taken in well-informed circles; the man of science stands no longer 
 complacent; just now, in fact, he appears almost bewildered. 
 Think of how the discovery of radium a little while ago played 
 the deuce with "immutable law." And think how Einstein pushed 
 over the very basis of the sacred Newtonian system — the system 
 which more than anything else in science represented authority 
 itself! Carpenter has been justified indeed. 
 
 Scientific Socialism — Pedantic Marxism 
 
 In one of his criticisms. Carpenter is directly interesting to 
 Libertarians. The leaders of Marxist thought in those days ( just 
 like those of the Marxists in Russia today), the writers, the 
 economists, were as pompous, pedantic and pretentious about 
 their dogmas as the big-bugs in any other line. Some of my 
 older readers will remember how arrogantly they divided them- 
 selves from their ignorant predecessors, "mere Utopians"; what 
 they were teaching was now "Scientific" Socialism based upon the 
 irrefutable laws of economics — upon Lassalle's Iron Law of 
 Wages, upon Marx' exposition of the Theory of Value. A lot 
 of useless scholasticism, as valuable as the Chinese Classics, is 
 still being doped out to young workers who naively imagine they 
 are learning modern science when they attend classes in which 
 the text-book used was written seventy years ago, intellectually 
 as dead as its writer. The teachers themselves do not follow 
 their own teaching. Why humbug the workers by urging them 
 to strike if it be true, as Lassalle taught, that workers, no matter 
 what they do, must, so long as they are wageworkers, come down 
 to the subsistence point — that Iron Law of Wages? Or what 
 good our struggling for a new society if the whole thing depends 
 upon the economic progress, upon advance in technique? Since the 
 matter does not depend on us but upon the technicians, why not 
 just sit down on our posteriors and wait for the good time coming 
 in due course? 
 
 Lassalle's Iron Law has been so overwhelmingly discredited 
 by the events that he is not often mentioned in these days, as he 
 
 11 
 
used to be when Carpenter was writing. The co-operative move- 
 ment at which Lassalle scoffed and which he assailed so furiously 
 in his famous attack on Schultze-Delitsch is now put forward 
 as a movement to be captured and dominated by the brilliant 
 people who are still supposed to be his followers. 
 
 As for the famous Theory of Value, one of the most timely 
 and most effective pieces of work done by Carpenter was done 
 when he wrote his article on "The Value of the Value Theory" 
 in the Fabian magazine, To-Day. The Fabians, in Great Britain, 
 with all their faults and their middle-class assurance of them- 
 selves as the only people to direct the workers, nevertheless did 
 good service in their day. As intellectuals they were ultimately 
 dethroned by the Guild Socialists (saying very much the same 
 thing that some of us Anarchists had said long years before.) 
 but in their youth they were supreme in their common-sense 
 refusal to be tied up by mere verbalisms or by statements strong 
 only because they had been so long unchallenged. As regards 
 The Value Theory, at the start they were orthodox. I remember 
 how George Bernard Shaw, backed up by Hyndman, readily 
 undertook to demolish a fellow named Wicksteed who actually 
 had the nerve to attack the irrefutable theory, as explained by 
 Marx. The debate, Shaw, with his ready wit, won easily — at 
 least, in the opinion of the still orthodox. Imagine the astonish- 
 ment then of those who had backed him up so enthusiastically 
 when a week or two later Shaw announced that no matter who 
 had won he had been convinced! This was the beginning of a 
 serious examination by British Socialists of Jevons' theory of 
 final utility (marginal utility it is called in the United States), 
 which ultimately led to the general abandonment of the Marxian 
 theory (properly speaking the Ricardian) on that matter. In 
 the midst of the row Carpenter sent in his article on The Value 
 of the Value Theory. He pointed out that the Marxian definition, 
 speaking of "socially necessary labor" implies "socially useful 
 labor" and thus gives its case away, since it brings in that element 
 of utility upon which the Jevonian theory is based, and that it 
 was just as easy to reduce different kinds of utility to abstract 
 utility as to reduce different kinds of labor to abstract labor. 
 Why trouble so much anyhow about any theory of value? Let 
 the economists fight it out if they wanted to, but why bore the 
 working man with this abstract theorizing merely to convince him 
 that he was being robbed, when the facts of everyday life proved 
 it so overwhelmingly? Drop this pedantic stuff, he urged, 
 abandon your "scientific" jargon; if you want to reach the 
 workers talk to them in a language they understand on matters 
 which to them seem of real importance. 
 
 Those of my readers who interest themselves in that kind 
 of thing are aware that quite apart from "labor" and "utility" 
 theories of value the development of psychology has compelled us 
 
 12 
 
all to regard economic problems in a different light altogether. 
 Even in the old days the intelligent economist knew well 
 enough that the abstraction necessary to his science, "economic 
 man", was something very different to the real human. To-day 
 when psychology shows us the real human moved by his emotions 
 so much more than by his reason, moved so constantly by his 
 traditions, his habits, his pipe-dreams, his prejudices, so little 
 really by his economic interest, the abstraction is seen to be so far 
 away from reality that the science founded on it has lost its former 
 high place: the modern economist no longer dogmatically lays 
 down iron laws as immutable as those of mathematics, he tells 
 us merely of certain tendencies, and in regard to value he now 
 defers to the psychologist very respectfully. 
 
 Carpenter's article "In Defense of Criminals", an examina- 
 tion of law, respectability, the virtues and vices and the moral 
 codes, is very fine. I think it a wretched business that even 
 Anarchists, like all the other radicals, will insist on republishing 
 old stuff, revered antiquities, instead of new, fresh, up-to-date 
 matter suitable for present-day purposes; but I admit that though 
 as I have said (and as Carpenter himself said), much of Car- 
 penter's work long ago lost its timeliness, his Defense of Crim- 
 inals as a piece of propaganda is as good as ever. 
 
 Evolutionary Theories 
 His "Exfoliation," beautifully written, also I thought very 
 fine. Biological science at the present time is not supporting his 
 views, his Neo-Lamarckism. You know the two evolutionary 
 theories over which the battle raged in those days — the "Dar- 
 winian", in which progress was made through the struggle for 
 existence and the survival of the fittest, and the other, the "La- 
 marckian", in which function, will, desire, and the heredity of 
 acquired characteristics play their part. In the Darwinian theory, 
 the giraffe, for instance, has a long neck because those giraffes 
 with long necks were able to reach the food high up in a dry 
 season, while the short-necks died. In the Lamarckian theory 
 the giraflFe grew his long neck because he was so often stretching 
 it to the utmost after food. The cause of progress in the Darwin- 
 ian theory is a change of external conditions allowing the survival 
 only of those whose chance variation makes them best fitted; 
 in the other it would be a change internally, an inward growth, 
 expressing itself first in the form of an intense desire and develop- 
 ing the body accordingly. Neither of these theories in its entirety 
 is generally accepted today. Yet I think the Lamarckian theory, 
 in so far as it is tenable, ought not to be forgotten by the Anarch- 
 ists. If we leave biological evolution to consider the evolution of 
 society it is evident that the Marxians who talk of nothing but 
 external change are in that matter Darwinians, while we who, like 
 Carpenter, while accepting that, put stress also upon the power of 
 ideas and ideals are in accord so far with the Lamarckians. 
 
 13 
 
I myself had, not long ago, a discussion with one of our 
 ablest comrades, who thought otherwise. He had started to write 
 a book on Anarchism. To make sure that he was not passing 
 up anything he went back as far as the Desiccation of Central 
 Asia. It was this desiccation (drying-up), he said, which, in the 
 first place, as the trees were dying off, made the apes come down 
 to the ground. They had not come down, he insisted, until they 
 just had to. I wanted to argue with him that some of them prob- 
 ably came down a little earlier — to try it out, to enjoy the 
 adventure. He would not have that. I finally compromised by 
 admitting that the ancestors of the mass of humanity did not 
 come down till they just had to; but I stuck to it that the 
 Anarchists were descended from those who did not wait but 
 •came down a little earlier and set an example. 
 
 Love's Coming of Age 
 
 Much of Carpenter's work, written for the times, has been 
 pretty well forgotten, so complete has been the triumph of com- 
 mon-sense. But his work on the sex question is so well-known 
 to everybody who reads at all — even to the Anarchists who 
 know so little of his other stuff — that it is not necessary for me 
 to give an account of it. "Love's Coming of Age" has been read 
 by many thousands who never heard anything of his other ideas. 
 It has been translated into all the European languages and sold 
 abroad up to the hundred thousand. It was, for the last genera- 
 tion, the book to be placed in the hands of youth; some other 
 good books on the subject had caused shock and alarm when first 
 looked into; this one was written with tact, with delicacy and 
 with sentiment. Ellen Key's work did have a similar success, but 
 she came in later than Carpenter. The success to which they 
 both contributed — with many others — may be judged by the 
 following extract from his book, "My Days and Dreams," writ- 
 ten when he was seventy, in 1915: "It is curious to think that 
 that was not twenty years ago — and what a landslide has oc- 
 curred since then! In 1896 no "respectable" publisher would 
 touch the volume, and yet today (1915) the tide of such hterature 
 has flowed so full and fast that my book has already become 
 quite a little old-fashioned and demure!" 
 
 On one point in particular he was a pioneer. Homo-sex- 
 uality is now being freely discussed — in the literature of psycho- 
 analysis, for instance. When Carpenter first dealt with it, it had 
 always been strictly taboo. His pamphlet, "A PecuHar People," 
 called attention to the fact that there existed in the body of 
 society quite a number of individuals whom the sex feeling 
 attracted not to the opposite sex but to their own; and he asked 
 the public to re-examine its judgment that these people were 
 necessarily disgusting criminals who must be punished to the 
 utmost limit, assuring the public that as a matter of fact such a 
 
 14 
 
tempprament might be associated with refinement and intellect 
 and^he found in people of obvious social value. 
 
 There is no doubt that very often — generally, probably — 
 homo-sexuality is environmental. Armies, navies, prisons, the 
 separation of the sexes, are its usual origin, and temperament in 
 such cases has probably but little to do with it. But that it is in 
 many cases temperamental, constitutional, congenital, is, I be- 
 lieve, fully established. The judgment of the educated public 
 has been softened and Carpenter was the first to plead for that. 
 
 Though Carpenter never in so many words, so far as I know, 
 said that he himself was of that temperament it was pretty well 
 understood that he was. 
 
 This work of his, this plea for a milder judgment of the 
 homo-sexualists, pleased few of his friends. I remember Ernest 
 Crosby, when I came to New York, asking me about Carpenter. 
 I said I had not seen him for a long time but that I had heard 
 that he was working on a new book dealing with friendship 
 between two people of the same sex, that in fact I had mentioned 
 it to Kropotkin when he had asked me the same question and 
 Peter had rather turned up his nose at it. "Ah, no," said Crosby, 
 very decidedly, "not even Peter Kropotkin has the right to turn up 
 his nose at anything written by Edward Carpenter." 
 
 His Mysticism 
 
 As I have said. Carpenter was a good deal of a mystic. 
 
 Myself I will have no compromise with authoritarian 
 religion, whether it be that of the Roman Catholic Church, of the 
 Jewish Law, of the Hindu Vedas, or of the Book of Mormon. We 
 Libertarians are not against state authority only; we are not less 
 against that authority from which at one time state authority 
 claimed its origin and its sanction. If the job of exposing it 
 were not being attended to so well by others we should have to 
 tackle it seriously ourselves. But it seems to me that mysticism 
 is another affair. It may be right or wrong; it may be useful or 
 at least interesting or it may be merely misleading. But as a 
 movement we are not called upon to deal with it, whatever we 
 may think of it as individuals. I am not a mystic myself. But 
 it seems to me that a man like Carpenter, who has freed his mind 
 from the superstitions, who rejects all authority but his own 
 reason, may be a mystic without departing from Libertarianism, 
 just as he may believe that Mars is inhabited regardless of what 
 the most of us think. 
 
 Of course, there are mysticisms dominated by the old super- 
 stitions and some presented in the old language — as Tolstoi's 
 was to a great extent; but Carpenter's was not. And there are 
 some mysticisms even more childish and silly than the old super- 
 stitions themselves. But Carpenter's mysticism was to me the 
 most reasonably presented one and the most poetic I had come 
 
 15 
 
across. For his theory about Cosmic Consciousness he argued 
 ably and wrote most beautifully. He pointed out that as humans 
 we had already developed a stage beyond the simple conscious- 
 ness of the animals; we had developed self-consciousness, in 
 which we were conscious not only of the sensation but of the 
 being who felt it. He thought that some individuals among us 
 had become conscious of their unity with all nature, of being 
 at one with the universe, and that in time more and more of us 
 would become so conscious, cosmic-conscious. He wrote books 
 about it (see "The Art of Creation," if you are interested). 
 Sometimes he put forward arguments which few of us could 
 accept and made statements which I think showed him to be too 
 credulous. But I have a notion that what he wrote on the matter 
 will be read a long time after this and that more will be written 
 on it. 
 
 Social Theories 
 
 As a prophet. Carpenter was not always right; no matter 
 how keen a prophet's insight some prophecies are bound to go 
 wrong badly; all sorts of things unthought of at the time of the 
 prophecy develop afterwards. For instance, when Carpenter 
 wrote his "Non-Governmental Society" he felt sure that we must 
 be close to the introduction of a society in which these would be 
 the beginning of an approach to the communal ideal. He argued 
 that the question of the unemployed in Britain was becoming too 
 serious (even then), so serious morally as well as economically 
 that something would have to be done, and that the solution 
 when found would be the beginning of a time when the actual 
 needs of life would be available in some measure for everybody, 
 and that the industrial arrangements assuring them would inevit- 
 ably tend towards some measure of communism. The unemployed 
 situation in Britain has indeed had to be dealt with, as he said 
 it would; but who the dickens would have dreamt then that even 
 the powers that be could be so stupid as to deal with it on a 
 mere dole basis, with no effort made at all to use the men's pro- 
 ductive capacity, none whatever! 
 
 I do not mean that his program dealt only with the unem- 
 ployed; he dealt with them in that article because at that time the 
 solution of the problem was a burning question. He thought also 
 that municipal socialism (public ownership as it is called in the 
 United States) then being so rapidly introduced, would help to 
 provide and to stabilize employment and to develop a sense of 
 common interests. But his own particular faith was placed in 
 the possibilities of the Co-operative Movement, which in Britain 
 is very strong, and steadily, though not rapidly, progressive. 
 Before ever the modern Socialist movement was really started 
 in Britain, Carpenter had written a pamphlet dealing with co- 
 operation at the Leclaire works in France. To most of the early 
 Socialists, the Co-operative Movement was — as it still is, I am 
 
 16 
 
afraid, to many of our own Libertarian comrades — a delusion if 
 not a snare. To some it is even anathema. Carpenter then got 
 no hearing at all. 
 
 The Co-operative Movement 
 
 When, years later, I was engaged in a campaign to bring 
 into better understanding and closer connection the Anarchists 
 and the old co-operators ( the stout old anti-statists who controlled 
 it before the Socialists finally took it up), Carpenter sent me, 
 through a friend, his heartiest good wishes; and when I met 
 him still later I found him completely in accord with me — that 
 if the Anarchists were to join the Co-operators and give their 
 movement real and serious study (not simply join to blow oflF 
 at business meetings a lot of sentimental poppycock about com- 
 munism) backing up the old co-operators with a more definite 
 anti-statist theory, encouraging the development of production 
 by producers' organizations and not merely by the consumers' 
 wholesales, and explaining the possibility of the organization of 
 exchange without gold currency, by something like what the 
 Individualist — Anarchists call Mutual Banking, the nucleus of 
 the new society could be created and shown — not merely ex- 
 plained, but shown — in action — an object lesson of the greatest 
 importance. 
 
 No, he was not an authority on co-operation. He did not 
 know much about its practical questions; they were not in his 
 line, you know; but he could see in it clearly enough a great and 
 most successful effort made by the workers; he recognized it as 
 Libertarian in its methods; and he was sure that the path to 
 emancipation lay through it somehow. What he had was not a 
 program but a vision. 
 
 It proved impossible, however, to interest the Anarchists at 
 that time. Kropotkin had an entirely mistaken conception of the 
 British co-operative movement and would not listen. And though 
 many of the others did give it a little polite attention and even a 
 little tepid approval all of them had the same thing to say about 
 it — that it seemed hardly much use pottering about the co-oper- 
 ative movement when the Revolution was evidently just around 
 the corner and would be upon us before we could get properly 
 started. 
 
 In vain we elaborated on Kropotkin's own teaching about the 
 Paris Commune, how it had failed largely because the people had 
 just elected a government and then waited for it to organize the 
 new society, whereas in the next revolution the people must not 
 wait but proceed themselves to the organization which takes so 
 much more time than the revolt. We argued that if that teaching 
 was right it would be still better if as much as possible of the 
 organization was done before the revolt, if the experiment had 
 been worked out, if a nucleus had been estabhshed, and a reserve 
 
 17 
 
obtained of men who as co-operative directors had had some real 
 practical experience in administration. We talked in vain. Ulti- 
 mately the Socialists woke up, trimmed their dogmas a bit, went 
 in and captured a large influence in the Co-operative Movement 
 for themselves. Under the leadership of Sidney Webb they pooh- 
 poohed the old idea of productive workshops organized by the 
 producers themselves, to be linked with the distributive stores 
 organized by the consumers, and they strengthened the officials 
 of the consumers wholesale societies in their struggle to keep 
 all production within their own hands, thus making any organi- 
 zation of exchange unnecessary. They made the movement, 
 in short, as far as possible, a little model of the Socialist State 
 and even in time brought the co-operators a little bit into politics. 
 The Anarchists had lost their opportunity. Not till the rise of the 
 Guild Socialists, many years afterwards, were any of these issues 
 revived. 
 
 A Bloody Revolution 
 
 Carpenter, be it remembered, though I have spoken of his 
 strong communistic sentiment never accepted Anarchist-Com- 
 munism in the form presented by Kropotkin. He was a very 
 typical Englishman, who, however high his vision, wants to keep 
 his feet on the ground and who when he decides to go forward 
 goes with deliberation, step by step. To Carpenter, moreover, 
 intensely a humanitarian, the idea of a bloody revolution full of 
 bitter class hatred, introducing a new society of brotherhood was 
 unthinkable. I feel sure that to his countrymen this Anarchism of 
 his, which did not advocate "non-resistance" yet sought for non- 
 violent means, would have made a great appeal if he had had a 
 more practical acquaintance with industrial questions. On these 
 matters he did not dare to say much; and his countrymen do not 
 ask a propagandist, as the French people do, or the Jewish: 
 What is your theory? but rather. What is your proposal? Not, 
 What do you think about it? but. What are you going to do 
 about it? 
 
 No. he was not a non-resistant. I had myself in 1889 put 
 out a little manifesto in which, while attacking militarism and 
 governmental violence I deprecated among Anarchists the preach- 
 ing of hatred, violence and revenge as a gospel (this was in France 
 just before the epidemic of bomb-throwing) . So far as was humanly 
 possible in the struggle, I urged, we should try to retain goodwill 
 in our minds even to our opponents. That did not mean that we 
 should allow ruffians to terrorize everybody, but merely that in 
 whatever measures we found it necessary to take we should as 
 intelligent people keep in mind the fact that philosophically the 
 ruffians were but creatures of circumstances and that acts of 
 savagery or ferocity on our part also had an evil social effect. 
 Hate might indeed be a more powerful motive than love, but 
 intelligence would say that in the case of people who aimed at a 
 
 18 
 
better society hate should be directed against institutions and not 
 against individuals. Well, Carpenter mentioned to me once that 
 he had read the manifesto and was entirely with me. But he 
 would not have any dogma about it. He told me that he himself 
 not long before had resorted to strong measures and administered 
 a good thrashing to a friend of his. The friend had been indulging 
 in long drinking bouts at the expense of his wife and children. 
 Carpenter had sometimes before got him sobered up by talking 
 to him, but the fellow was drinking more than ever. So Car- 
 penter, in cold blood, as an experiment, thrashed him. He was so 
 startled by a thrashing from a man so gentle in nature as Car- 
 penter that he kept sober — no, no, not permanently, but for a 
 much longer time than before. 
 
 Carpenter was not silly and could not tell the workers that 
 when they were being beaten it would be a crime for them to put 
 in a blow in return. He knew well enough that in the struggle 
 of the workers against the exploitative system there would be hot 
 blood and hard blows on both sides in plenty, no matter what was 
 preached. But cruelty in cold blood, the ill-treatment of human 
 beings continued after the excitement and danger had gone by, he 
 could not tolerate. And he knew well, too, that the workers 
 were at their best as workers, not as fighters, that they were 
 strongest in the workshop and not on the battlefield and that they 
 should seek therefore for economic methods and not turn to vio- 
 lence wilfully when other courses were open. 
 
 His Range 
 
 He certainly dealt with a great range of subjects, a quite 
 extraordinary range. One of his books would deal with the in- 
 fluence of art upon religion, another with the "Drama of the 
 Future," the next tell in detail how in his own neighborhood the 
 common lands were stolen from the people and who got them. 
 He wrote upon "Empire and Imperialism" and upon "Smoke- 
 Preventing Appliances." The song "England Arise," his own 
 words and music, is now in the British radical movements second 
 to Jim Connell's Red Flag only. It is significant that the two 
 British writers who have dealt with China most ably before she 
 came into her modern prominence were both of them our com- 
 rades, Bertrand Russell and Edward Carpenter. His little drama, 
 "The Promised Land," (Moses), is just the thing for a Jewish 
 comrade interested in his race's story to place in the hands of 
 his son. 
 
 With all this there was not the slightest trace of the pedant, 
 no pose, no affectation. No man made so many friends; if he 
 took a walk anywhere he was sure before he got back to have 
 encountered some poor fellow in trouble who had relieved him- 
 self by giving Carpenter his whole life history and receiving in 
 return a little of that sympathy and comradeship in which Car- 
 penter was so rich. 
 
 19 
 
He was not merely sympathetic, he was always cheerful and 
 he could be very jolly and gay. His humor helped him greatly, 
 and a bit of fun seemed always welcome. I met him once when 
 he was taking a vacation, as he was passing through Monte Carlo 
 — of all the places in the world for two Anarchists to meet! He 
 had been with his friend George (I forget his name) to the 
 Casino, wanting to see the gambling with his own eyes; but 
 admission had been denied them. They were dressed in their 
 loose shirts, knickers and sandals, handsome fellows; and the 
 Casino men evidently recognized them as personages. But, good 
 gracious, they could not go into the Casino dressed like that! 
 They must wear black coats, and put on trousers and collars. 
 So they came to me. I had a position in which I had occasionally 
 to appear in respectable togs, so I fixed them up as well as I could. 
 The trouble was that I was four or five inches taller than Car- 
 penter. I have forgotten what we did about the trousers — 
 tucked them up and stitched them, I suppose — ^but I remember 
 that my long frock coat when Carpenter put it on was not like a 
 frock coat at all but an overcoat. Carpenter in his own costume 
 looked every inch what he was — the scholar and the poet; but in 
 my togs he looked like nothing so much as an old-clothes man! 
 We shouted with laughter. Carpenter as loudly as the others; he 
 added to the grotesquerie by refusing to wear my collar and 
 buying a paper one. I am sure that alone he could never have 
 got by the horror-stricken guardians at the door; but fortunately 
 George was more my height and in my clothes he saved the day. 
 While Carpenter wore a full beard, George had a military-looking 
 moustache and he was very straight in the back and broad in the 
 shoulders; nobody could take him for anything less than a lieu- 
 tenant-colonel. So George went first, with dignity enough for a 
 duke (though he had really been born in the slums), and Car- 
 penter sneaked modestly in behind him. 
 
 There is a fine poem about the gambling in his "Towards 
 Democracy." But, of course, no trace of the fun; there was no 
 humor in his poetry. 
 
 His Poetry 
 
 I have left his poetry to the last, partly because I am not 
 quite a competent critic in that matter. An Anarchist, to be 
 consistent, ought to be ready in his welcome to the new forms of 
 literature and poetry, typical of emancipation from long-accepted 
 conventions. But alas, a man cannot be just what he likes, and I 
 have to confess that the older forms still appeal to me more 
 strongly. His "Toward Democracy" ( he was using the word 
 Democracy in the sense of a society of equals, not thinking of 
 democratic government) is a collection of beautiful thoughts and 
 aspirations presented in the form familiarized to us by Walt 
 Whitman — without rhyme and without definite metre — rhetorical 
 
 20 
 
prose to many of us. He stands below Whitman to most people, 
 if only because he comes later and was obviously much influenced 
 by the older man; but in one way his stuflF is superior to Whit- 
 man's. Even those of us who get great inspiration from Walt 
 must admit that often in the midst of beautiful and inspiring 
 thought we come across a word or a phrase so incongruous that 
 one feels like laughing. Whitman's stuff is that of a man of the 
 people, whose taste has not been highly cultivated, who just had 
 the poetry in him; Carpenter's is, of course, that of a highly edu- 
 cated man, familiar with poetry from the Greeks down, whose 
 taste is always flawless. Walt's is sometimes indeed a "barbaric 
 yawp," as he says himself, though loud and strong, while Car- 
 penter's is always sweet, gentle, thoughtful and musical. He 
 has many followers who insist on placing him first. The two 
 are different anyway, in origin, in tradition, and in temperament. 
 
 Judge for yourself, here is a bit of his in rhyme: 
 
 All down the ages comes a cry of anguish. 
 
 Where workers toil and sweat without release, 
 That others may grow rich the while they languish 
 
 In poverty and pain till life shall cease. 
 Always a cry of men in desperation, 
 
 Of women, ay, and children, stung beneath 
 The slaver's whip — the chain, the scanty ration. 
 
 The goad of hunger, and the fear of death. 
 
 Always the Land, the one means of existence, 
 
 Snatched from the peasant-folk by guile and force; 
 Always brave hearts of manhood and resistance 
 
 Crushed by machine-like Law without remorse; 
 Always the seamstress in her attic dreary, 
 
 The miner in his murky tomb immersed. 
 The factory hand, the clerk — ill, worn and weary — ■ 
 
 By those for whom they toil, unknown, ignored. 
 
 Ah yes! and always through the strife and tangle. 
 
 Through all the cries and counsels of despair, 
 A music heard that silences the jangle, 
 
 A rising chord of Hope that fills the air. 
 Always the song — despite the world's derision 
 
 Of suffering hearts that welded into one. 
 In dream prophetic, self-fulfilling vision. 
 
 Of days to be — the City of the Sun. 
 
 Always of things unseen one surest token — 
 Their deep foundation in the human breast; 
 
 The words, now dark within, that shall be spoken — 
 Freedom and Comradeship from East to West. 
 
 21 
 
Always from weakness a new strength emerging. 
 
 From sorrow shared a greater ecstasy; 
 Always the common soul and purpose urging 
 
 To Life and Love and Power and Victory. 
 
 The Address 
 
 Here is a Congratulatory Address presented to him on his 
 seventieth birthday by a large body of admirers, among them 
 many with names known all the world over: 
 
 ". . . . Your books with no aid but your own originality and 
 power have found their way among all classes of people in our 
 own and other lands, and they have everywhere brought with 
 them a message of fellowship and gladness. At a time when 
 society is confused and overburdened by its own restlessness and 
 artificiality, your writings have called us back to the vital facts 
 of Nature, to the need of simplicity and calmness, of just dealing 
 between man and man, of free and equal citizenship, of love, 
 beauty and humanity in our daily life. 
 
 "We thank you for the genius with which you have inter- 
 preted great spiritual truths, for the deep convictions underlying 
 all your teaching that wisdom must be sought not only in the 
 study of external nature but also in a wider knowledge of the 
 human heart, for your insistence upon the truth that there can be 
 no real wealth of happiness for the individual apart from the wel- 
 fare of his fellows, for your fidelity and countless services to the 
 cause of the poor and friendless, for the light you have thrown 
 on so many social problems, and for the equal courage, delicacy 
 and directness with which you have discussed various questions 
 of sex, the study of which is essential to a right understanding of 
 human nature. 
 
 We have spoken of your many readers and friends, but in 
 your case to a degree seldom attained by writers your readers 
 are your friends, for your books have that rare quality which 
 reveals 'the man behind the book,' and that personal attraction 
 which results only from the widest sympathy and fellow-feeling. 
 For this, most of all, we thank you — the spirit of comradeship 
 which has endeared your name to all who know you and to many 
 who to yourself are unknown." 
 
 His Funeral 
 
 For some years before his death he had not been able to 
 reply to inquiries. He had gone, or been taken, from his old home 
 near Sheffield to a place in the South of England — I presume for 
 the sake of the milder climate. I cannot make out how it was 
 that when he died the Church was able to get possession of his 
 body for a religious burial service. The idea of Carpenter, of 
 all men, being buried in such fashion! I always carry Carpenter 
 in my mind with two other men, personal friends of his. poets 
 
 22 
 
both, men of much the same views and character, with }. William 
 Lloyd and with Ernest Crosby. Lloyd is still thinking and writ- 
 ing, much loved by a circle of friends, at Freedom Hill. Roscoe, 
 in California. Crosby died twenty years ago. He had had an 
 experience much like Carpenter's: When an international judge 
 in Egypt he had come across a book of Tolstoi's and he too had 
 to change his life entireiv. A while after his death, Michael 
 Monahan, in the name of his friends, wondering what had become 
 of the book we knew he had been writing, went to see his widow 
 and was told that the book had been burned. And the Church, 
 you see, captured Carpenter's body; though after its ceremonies 
 were over the friends who had been unable to stop them came 
 forward and bade him, in their own fashion, a last farewell. The 
 principal speaker was H. W. Nevinson, whose books, including 
 the two volumes of his reminiscences and his anthology of liberty, 
 have been so widely read by intellectual people. I met him last, 
 forty years ago in London, at a meeting of the Freedom Group. 
 
 Were His Efforts Wasted? 
 
 A few days ago I received a letter from another old com- 
 rade who had seen about Carpenter's death and been deeply 
 affected by it. He writes me: "Another link with the past gone. 
 It saddens me doubly. Carpenter, Morris, Kropotkin and others 
 like them once meant so much to me. Their writings, their preach- 
 ing and teaching seemed as if they would mould the world into 
 a better shape, kindle a more human fire in men's minds. But, 
 alas, it seems to me now that their efforts were largely wasted. 
 What effect they had was only in the few more or less of the same 
 type as themselves. Henry Ford introducing cheap reliable autos 
 has made more change in men's minds and lives than all the 
 preachers, educators and poets." 
 
 Why, my dear old comrade, you are too deeply depressed 
 just now. It was part of Carpenter's own teaching that this very 
 progress in science and invention, though it gave us greater 
 opportunity, brought danger with it and called for greater respon- 
 sibility. More than ever, in face of such material progress do we 
 need the voice of a Carpenter. As H. G. Wells put it some time 
 ago, "In social affairs we are witnessing a race between education 
 and catastrophe." It may be, though I myself do not feel so 
 despondent, that our own society is not going to get beyond that 
 stage of "civilization" of which Carpenter wrote, and that we 
 shall fall back like the old societies or stay stagnant as China 
 did so long. But some day, some society will get beyond it, I am 
 sure. And I am also sure that the struggle now is entirely worth 
 while, even if we of our generation do not achieve success. Why 
 be so blue about Carpenter? I know of no mein whose life was 
 more reasonable, more consistent, more inspiring, more successful, 
 better lived. Henry Ford made a good mechanical job and got 
 
 23 
 
his reward for it, including the millions. Carpenter had no desire 
 to be a Ford; what he hoped was that his teaching and his life 
 would lead others like you and me, to. think and act as he did 
 and so affect others in their turn. If there is any nobler or more 
 useful way to spend one's life I do not know of it. We cannot be 
 absolutely sure that we are right even in the main; we know that 
 in some part we must be wrong; we cannot be certain at all of 
 success, nor of our personal happiness; but if we are to make the 
 best we can of our lives that surely is the sensible way to use them. 
 
 You say further that, "if those men of genius who taught and 
 preached have had so little effect, if they do not agree, and if 
 we are not sure even now which one of them was right, it ill be- 
 hooves one of the mediocre majority like myself to put forth 
 opinions." 
 
 It is evident, old comrade, that you have forgotten the main 
 lesson of Carpenter's life, of that Carpenter whom you so ad- 
 mired. Carpenter, as I sized him up, was not a man of giant 
 intellect — and I am sure did not so consider himself — ^but a man 
 like you and me. The endowment that made him great was not 
 a superhuman brain capacity — though what capacity he had he 
 certainly used very actively — it was his intense sincerity, his 
 intellectual honesty, his splendid mental courage. When awak- 
 ened by Whitman he did not halt to consider that intellectual 
 giants hke Adam Smith and Karl Marx, Auguste Comte and 
 Herbert Spencer had gone over the ground before he, a mere 
 mediocrity, arrived at it. No, he went forward modestly but 
 boldly, and reported to us what he saw himself, using — here is the 
 secret of his "genius", as you call it — not the eyes of those who 
 had gone before, though they had been good ones, still less the 
 excellent spectacles one or two of them had left behind, but his 
 own eyes, his own eyes, such as they were. He looked at things 
 for himself and told us what he saw. Now and again, no doubt, 
 he did not see the whole thing, once in a while his eyes deceived 
 him and he saw things which were not there. What of it? We 
 have to keep our own eyes open. Is it any argument why you 
 should not in your turn use yours and then speak out your mind 
 boldly as he did, not as that of an oracle conveying to the world 
 the dictates of a deity, merely as that of a man who sees and 
 thinks for himself. The man who does that, my dear fellow, 
 ceases to be a mediocrity. No matter how deficient he may be in 
 a scholastic education, or lacking in other advantages, no matter 
 how obscure he has been and how obscure he remains, he has 
 nevertheless, in that noble comradeship of which Edward Car- 
 penter sang, achieved full membership. 
 
 T. H. BELL. 
 
 24 
 
LIBERTARIAN LITERATURE 
 
 Vanguard Press Scricss (mostly 75 cents.) 
 
 Kropotkin's Conquest of Bread. 
 
 (The earliest and fullest exposition of his Anarchist-Communism: 
 now very old, remember, but a great book.) 
 Revolutionary Pamphlets. 
 The Great French Revolution. (2 vols.) 
 
 Love's Coming of Age. Edward Carpenter. 
 
 War — Patriotism — Peace. Leo Tolstoi. 
 
 The State. Franz Oppenheimer. 
 
 (A study of its origins by Germany's greatest sociologist.) ^ 
 
 Individual Liberty. Benjamin R. Tucker. 
 
 (Selections from the brilliant American's famous "Instead of a Book.") 
 
 What is Mutualism? C. L. Swartz. 
 
 (An excellent exposition of Anarchist-Mutualism, as developed in 
 America.) 
 
 Proudhon's Solution of the Social Problem. 
 (Valuable for the historical student.) 
 
 The Remedy for Over-Production and Unemployment. Hugo Bilgram. 
 (For the student of the money question.) 
 
 What Is Co-operation? J. P. Warbasse. 
 
 (An up-to-date presentation of the Consumers' Co-operative Movement.) 
 
 Other Publisherst 
 
 KROPOTKIN'S ANARCHIST-COMMUNISM 
 
 Mutual Aid. (The work that made his reputation as a scientist.) 
 Ethics; Origin and Development. 
 
 Fields, Factories and Workshops. (Apart from its theories, full of the most 
 
 valuable information on this subject.) 
 In Russian and French Prisons. 
 Modern Science and Anarchism. 
 Memoirs of a Revolutionist. (Intensely interesting.) 
 The Terror in Russia. 
 
 Pamphlets: 
 
 Anarchism, Its Philosophy and Ideal. 
 
 Anarchist-Communism. 
 
 Anarchist Morality. 
 
 An Appeal to the Young. 
 
 The Commune of Paris. 
 
 Expropriation. 
 
 Law and Authority. 
 
 The Place of Anarchism in Socialist Evolution. 
 
 Revolutionary Governments. 
 
 Revolutionary Studies. 
 
 The State: Its Historic Role. 
 
 The Wage System. 
 
 War. 
 
 War and Capitalism. 
 
 (Yes, he was too optimistic, undoubtedly. If you are too hard-headed and 
 hard-boiled for Kropotkin's Communist-Anarchism, try Tucker's Individualist- 
 Anarchism. And if that is too cold for you — or if you like them both and 
 cannot decide between them — just take your Anarchism without any chaser — 
 Anarchism straight.) 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 Los Angeles 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 SEP 2 - 1958 
 
 161 
 
 nmn NOV 16 
 cr 27 mt 
 
 an. No 
 
 hings of 
 
 Form L9-25m-8,'46 (9852)444 
 
 The Two Communisms. M. Corn. 
 Will You Make War Again? E. D. Morel. 
 The Kronstad Rebellion. Alexander Berkman. 
 
 Read the poets — Burns, Shelley, Byron, Swinburne, Morris, Wilde — 
 hosts of othem. And the novelists and dramatists — Morris' News from No- 
 where, Ibsen's E,nemy of the People, France's Revolt of the Angels — 
 swarms of them. Libertarianism is flowing full and free in all modern 
 literature. 
 
 Write for literature or information to 
 
 THE ROAD TO FREEDOM, Box 486 Madison Square Sta., New York City 
 JOHN TURNER, 17 Woburn Square, London, W. C. 1, England 
 THOMAS H. KEELL. Whi|c^ay, nr. Stroud, Englapd. 
 
 o 
 lieati 
 
 H* Yaffe, Secretary 
 
 THE LIBERTA^IAIKF 
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