5 THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA GIFT OF Thomas Condit k ^k 5, f : v TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND By ARTHUR M. LEWIS CHICAGO CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 1010. CONTENTS Page PREFACE 3 I. BENJAMIN KIDD 7 II. HENRY GEORGE 28 III. IMMANUBL KANT 47 IV. PROF. RICHARD T. ELY 65 V. CESARE LOMBROSO S3 VI. MAX STIRNER 102 VII. THOMAS CARLYLE : 120 VIII. ALBERT SCHaFFLE 142 IX. AUGUST COMTE 162 X. BISHOP SPALDING 181 LOAM STACK OTFT PREFACE. If this second volume of Garrick Lectures meets with the same enthusiastic and wide- spread appreciation as greeted the first the author will be more than satisfied. "Evolu- tion, Social and Organic," kept the printers rushing for three editions and had the largest advance sale of any Socialist book written in this country. Whatever criticisms have been made against the Garrick lectures generally have not been directed against them as they appear when published in a book but against their being delivered on a public platform. This criticism will probably continue, as the alleged cause for it is not likely to be very materially abated. These lectures attempt something new in Socialist lecturing in this country. Hitherto all our public speaking has been purely of the propaganda order and with a strong campaign flavor. This was justified by the numerical weakness of the movement and the necessity for securing new converts. Nowadays, how- ever, it is different. We have a large army S 138 4 PREFACE of Socialists which is especially numerous in the cities and this army provides a field for lectures designed to educate Socialists them- selves in the full scope of their own philoso- phy. While all that is necessary to learn before one votes the Socialist ticket or joins the party, may be learned at a single meeting, all students of the Socialist philosophy know that its mastery means many years of hard study, and brings with it an excellent general education. These Garrick Lectures are deliv- ered with a view to this latter development and they should not be judged by the stand- ards which apply to a campaign propaganda speech. The main criticism is that the anti-theo- logical note is too pronounced. I may say here that it has always been my aim to give this note the same strength and quality which it possesses in our accepted standard Socialist literature. This criticism usually comes from comrades to whom this literature is wKolly unfamiliar, and eventually, as they become acquainted with it, through the medium of these lectures, their criticism is replaced by thanks — thanks especially that I did not yield to their advice. I might occupy pages in an effort to explain PREFACE the specific object which these lectures have in view without succeeding nearly so well as I now do by quoting the following from Fer- dinand Lassalle's speech in defense of his work, made before the court in reply to the charge of arousing class hatred by the public prosecutor : "The Egyptian fellah warms the earth of his squalid mud hut with the mummies of the Pharaohs of Egypt, the all-powerful build- ers of the everlasting pyramids. Customs, conventions, codes, dynasties, states, nations come and go in incontinent succession. But, stronger than these, never disappearing, for- ever growing, from the earliest beginnings of the Ionic philosophy, unfolding in an ever- increasing amplitude, outleaping all else, spreading from one nation and from one peo- ple to another, and handed down, with devout reverence, from age to age, there remains the stately growth of scientific knowledge." And again: . "The great destiny of our age is precisely 1 this — which the dark ages had been unable to conceive, much less to achieve — the dis- semination of scientific knowledge among the body of the people. The difficulties of this task may be serious enough, and we may mag- nify them as we like, — still, our endeavors are 3 PREFACE ready to wrestle with them and our nightly vigils will be given to overcoming them. "In the general decay which, as all those who know the profounder realities of history appreciate, has overtaken European history in all its bearings, there are but two things that have retained their vigor and their propagat- ing force in the midst of all that shriveling blight of self-seeking that pervades European life. These two things are science and the people, science and the workingman. And the union of these two is alone capable of invigor- ating European culture with a new life. "The union of these two polar opposites of modern society, science and the workingman, — when these two join forces they will crush all obstacles to cultural advance with an iron hand, and it is to this union that I have re- solved to devote my life so long as there is breath in my body." To this I might add, what Lassalle believed, but which it would hardly have been wise to tell his prosecutors, that the union of these two forces, science and the workingman, will crush all obstacles, not only to "cultural ad- vance" but also to "revolutionary advance." ARTHUR M. LEWIS. New York, Aug. 20, '08. TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND I. Benjamin Kidd. All students of social questions of any pen- etration have observed the backward condition of sociology. Kidd observed this and bewailed it all the more as he believed himself destined to change it. The manner in which he sets about his task is full of promise. He is an implicit believer in biological science. He knows why sociology is at sea. It is because the sociologist has not paid sufficient attention to biology and its methods. His book "Social Evolution" con- tains no finer passage than the one in which he expresses this idea: "By these sciences which deal with human society it seems to have been for long forgotten that in that soci- ety we are merely regarding the highest phenomena in the history of life, and that consequently all departments of knowledge which deal with social phenomena have their 7 8 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND true foundations in the biological sciences." How Kidd could begin so well and end by describing all progress in terms of religion we shall see later. Since there is a lengthy chapter about the middle of the book, explaining the danger of Socialism, we are more than a little surprised to find the following on the second page of the volume. "Despite the great advances which science has made during the past century in almost every other direction, there is, it must be con- fessed, no science of human society properly so called. "What knowledge there is exists in a more or less chaotic state scattered under many heads ; and it is not improbably true, however much we may hesitate to acknowledge it, that the generalizations which have recently tended most to foster a conception of the unity of underlying laws operating amid the complex social phenomena of our time, have not been those which have come from the orthodox scientific school. They have rather been those advanced by that school of social revolution- ists, of which Karl Marx is the most command- ing figure." Kidd is a thorough Darwinian; he is an ad- mirer of Weismann and accepts his views; BENJAMIN KIDD 9 he is thoroughly convinced that the theories of these two great savants are destined to prove the salvation of sociology. There are two rather grave deficiencies how- ever, in Kidd's biological education. He worked out his theory too early to get the benefit of Krapotkin's "Mutual Aid" and De Vries' "Mutation." Had he looked up even the earlier of Krapotkin's articles, which were then appearing in the Nineteenth Century Review, he would probably have had less to say about the "ceaseless and inevitable strug- gle and competition" which seem to him' to be in operation always and everywhere. He rejects, of course, the old cataclysmic geology, and magnifies the slowness of evolu- tion, after the fashion of the Darwinians of twenty years ago. Could he have known of De Vries' experiments and their results he might have modified his views about the "slow- ness" of organic evolution. He is quite positive that the fundamental law of social progress can be found in Darwin- ian science as he knows it, and he plunges boldly in. The search is brief and successful ; he finds it at the very threshold. It is nothing less than Darwin's great principle of natural selection. In the lower forms of organic life the inferior members are sacrified so that the 10 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND few superior individuals might alone propagate and thus preserve the highest possible effici- ency of the species. If the struggle for ex- istence could be suspended here, the inferior as well as the superior would propagate, there- fore the progress of the species would cease and almost immediately, degeneracy would set in. It is clear then that progress among these lower creatures is due to the struggle for ex- istence in which the unfit are invariably weeded out in the interest of a few superiors. Kidd lifts this theory bodily over into the domain of human society. Here it means that the mass of men must consent, in the interests of progress, to be driven to the wall in order that a few more excellent individuals may be selected to rule society and keep it at the max- imum of efficiency. Had Kidd known how thoroughly Krapotkin proved his case in his contention of the superiority of mutual aid against mutual struggle as a factor in prog- ress, his confidence in his own theory would have been much less pronounced. Then he would have known that as we rise in the organic scale co-operation usually takes the place of competition to an ever increasing de- gree. Even though Kidd overlooks this or fails to appreciate its force, he still sees a great difference between the lower organic world and human society. BENJAMIN KIDD 11 This difference which he sees is the differ- ence between the play of blind, unconscious forces, and the power of human reason. It was precisely this difference which Lester F. Ward observed and made the basis of his soci- ology. Between Kidd and Ward the contrast is complete. Ward believes that future prog- ress depends on the increased use of reason; Kidd believes such a course would be fraught with disaster, and that progress depends on our not meddling with the forces of nature in general and the struggle for existence in partic- ular. Huxley maintained that those societies are most nearly perfect in which "the struggle for existence is most strictly limited." Darwin said : "Those communities which included the greatest number of sympathetic members would flourish best and rear the greatest num- ber of offspring/' Krapotkin even disputes the value of struggle among animals, asserting that even here "no progressive evolution of the species can be based upon periods of keen competition." This is a phase of evolution which never -came within Kidd's limited vision — unfortunately for his whole theory. Kidd therefore takes the astounding position that the continuance of human progress de- pends on the mass of men refusing to use their reason for the alleviation of present hardships. 12 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND He concedes that for men in society to con- tinue the bitter struggle for existence is con- trary to reason. He admits also that the pos- session of reason gives men the power to su- spend or abolish that struggle. Why then do they not abolish it? It is Kidd's answer to this pertinent question which constitutes the foundation of his system. In the first place, if they did progress would cease. His interesting chapter on the "Condi- tions of Human Progress" is devoted to the development of this theory. We are presented with a resume of the history of man which might well have been written in answer to Krapotkin's treatment of the same theme in "Mutual Aid." He says of man: "Looking back through the glasses of modern science we behold him at first outwardly a brute, feebly holding his own against many fierce compe- titors." And again: "Looking back through the history of life anterior to man, we find it to be a record of ceaseless progress on the orfe hand and ceaseless stress and competition on the other. This orderly and beautiful world which we see around us is now, and always has been, the scene of incessant rivalry be- tween all the forms of life inhabiting it — rivalry too, not chiefly conducted between dif- ferent species but between members of the BENJAMIN KIDD 13 same species. The plants in the green sward beneath our feet are engaged in silent rivalry with each other, a rivalry which if allowed to proceed without outside interference would know no pause until the weaker were exterm- inated." And, he concludes, "Other things being equal, the wider the limits of selection, the keener the rivalry, and the more rigid the selection, the greater will be the progress." When Kidd comes to human society he still sees this "rivalry" unabated. "It is necessary to keep the mind fixed on a single feature of man's history, namely, the stress and strain under which his development proceeds. His societies, like the individuals comprising them, are to be regarded as the product of the cir- cumstances in which they exist, — the sur- vivals of the fittest in the rivalry which is constantly in progress." The divergence be- tween Kidd and Krapotkin is not as to the struggle between societies, though even here there is some difference, but in that Krapotkin maintains that victory falls to those societies which most thoroughly suspend the struggle and competition within their own borders, while Kidd holds the exact opposite. However this controversy may be ultimately decided, it cannot be denied that existing soci- ety, which marks the highest point yet reached 14 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND in the history of civilization, is still ramified with the struggle for existence between the majority of its members. And Kidd freely acknowledges that this struggle is responsible for that appalling poverty which is the de- spair of all reformers. There is no disposition on his part to gloss this over. He is, on the other hand, anxious to prove its existence and produces witnesses of great importance. He is careful to show that the demand for im- provement is not limited to demagogues. Al- though Huxley opposed Individualism and Socialism both, he was heartily sick of things as they are. He said: "Even the best of modern civilizations appears to me to exhibit a condition of mankind which neither embodies any worthy ideal nor even possesses the merit of stability. I do not hesitate to express the opinion that if there is no hope of a large im- provement of the condition of the greater part of the human family; if, it is true that the in- crease of knowledge, the winning of a greater dominion over nature which is its consequence, and the wealth which follows upon that do- minion are to make no difference in the extent and intensity of want with its concomitant physical and moral degradation among the masses of the people, I should hail the advent of some kindly comet which would sweep BENJAMIN KIDD 15 the whole affair away." Again Huxley says: "What profits it to the human Prometheus that he has stolen the fire of heaven to be his servant, and that the spirits of the earth and air obey him; if the vulture of Pauperism is eternally to tear his very vitals and keep him on the brink of destruction ?" And Kidd himself puts this question into the mouth of the Socialists: "The adherents of the new faith ask, What avails it that the waste places of the earth have been turned into the highways of com- merce, if the many still work and want and only the few have leisure and grow rich? What does it profit the worker that knowledge grows if all the appliances of science are not to lighten his labor ? Wealth may accumulate, and public and private magnificence may have reached a point never before attained in the history of the world; but wherein is society the better, it is asked, if the Nemesis of poverty still sits like a hollow-eyed spectre at the feast?" It was the observance of these terrible con- ditions which led John, Stuart Mill to say that if he had to choose "between communism with all its chances and the present state of society with all its sufferings and injustices.... all 16 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND the difficulties, great and small, of communism would be but as dust in the balance." Kidd is willing to acknowledge that the de- mand for the abolition of this struggle for existence and its consequent poverty is reason- able and that Socialism would abolish it. He says : "It is necessary, if we would un- derstand the nature of the problem with which we have to deal, to disabuse our minds of the very prevalent idea that the doctrines of social- ism are the heated imaginings of unbalanced brains. They are nothing of the kind ; they are the truthful, unexaggerated teaching of sober reason. ,, He also regards the critics of Socialism as having failed to meet its arguments: "No greater mistake can be made than to suppose," says he, "that the arguments of these writers have been effectively answered in that class of literature which is usually to be met with on the other side." He not only admits but contends that: "The lower classes of our population have no sanction from their reason for maintaining ex- isting conditions." Even if the abolition of the struggle for ex- istence, with its consequent poverty, should result, as Kidd claims, in the cessation of prog- ress and the sufferers knew it would bring BENJAMIN KIDD 1? that result, would that knowledge alone be enough to restrain them from so doing? Kidd himself thinks not. He thinks any such sup- position unreasonable. In his estimation men are not influenced by such remote considera- tions. He quotes Mallock who asks: "Do any of us deny ourselves a single scuttle of coals so as to make our coalfields last one more generation ?" Of course not. Future genera- tions will know how to keep warm without our worrying about it. This then is the problem as it presents itself to Kidd: If the working class, by using its reason and adopting Socialism, could thereby abolish its poverty and misery, and the only penalty would be a remote one, and it is not really influenced by remote considerations, why does not the working class act in the mat- ter and secure emancipation from present ills ? This is the question which rises in the minds of Mr. Kidd's readers with increasing persist- ence. It is indeed to Kidd himself a great mystery, and once more history repeats itself — mystery becomes the mother of religion. Kidd explains that this unreasonable, inexplicable submission of the working class is the handiwork of re- ligion. How can it be explained otherwise? If the phenomenon is not natural it must be 18 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND supernatural. If it is not reasonable it must be religious. Now that the theory comes into full view, we perceive that it is simply a modernized revival of the "categorical imperative" of Emanuel Kant — that our duty, no matter how difficult or distasteful, must be regarded as the will of God. Before we go further with our analysis let us follow Kidd in his pitiful efforts to interpret history by means of this precious principle. In the ancient world, before Christianity ap- peared, the lower classes were always crushed without mercy whenever they attempted to im- prove their miserable lot. This was because the ruling class acted according to the dictates of reason only and were not influenced by con- siderations of religion. The great and, as it appears to Kidd, the only religion, Christianity not having appeared yet, it is difficult to see how they could have been. After the advent of Christianity however it is another story. At the close of the Roman Empire chattel slavery disappeared. This must have been because the slaves revolted, although the records are not very explicit. But now the ruling class, in- stead of putting down the rebellion in a sea of blood, surrenders. This is due to the action of Christianity which has by this time gener- BENJAMIN KIDD 19 ated and conserved an "immense fund of al- truistic feeling" which by "softening the char- acter" of the slave-owners made them unwil- ling to vigorously defend the institution which gave property rights in human flesh. The abolition of that atavistic revival of chattel slavery which covered the Southern states was accomplished by the teaching of "The doctrine of salvation and the doctrine of the equality of all men before the Deity," and not by the action of reason, for neither of these doctrines are founded in reason, but in faith — » as Mr. Kidd sees it. This religfious interpreta- tion of history is altogether too shallow and unreal to call for any extended criticism, but one might remark in passing that it hardly jibes with Mr. Kidd's view that this Southern slave-owning class which had its "character softened" by the influence of religious teach- ing until it surrendered, should only do so after a bloody and prolonged struggle and when surrender was by no means a matter of choice. Our philosopher stoutly maintains that any ruling class must be victorious unless its blows are half-hearted through the influence of religion. Mr. Kidd does not possess the historical vision to be able to perceive that this Southern ruling class was measuring blades, not with its slaves but, with a Northern ruling 20 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND class, and although this Northern ruling class had also experienced the benign influences of religion there was no apparent weakness in its blows. Kidd would probably have explained this, had he perceived it, by the justice of their cause, for it is hardly likely that so purblind a thinker would have seen that the brave Northerner w r as only defending another slave system of his own. The French revolution is to Kidd not a struggle between two robber classes but a struggle between the rulers and the people. The hearts and characters of the ruling classes had been affected — "softened" — by "the great body of humanitarian feeling which had been slowly accumulating" through the influence of religion. "It was in the hearts of these classes," says the ingenuous Kidd, "and not in the streets, that the cause of the people was won." And so it came to pass that the French ruling class, humanitarianized and heart-softened by religion, gave in — after a fierce and sanguinary fight. We are not surprised to find after this that Kidd is opposed to Socialism. Of his numer- ous objections only one is vital to his system. That is, that Socialism would suspend the struggle for existence, thereby abolishing that BENJAMIN KIDD 21 operation of natural selection which he regards as the prime cause of all progress. It is enough to say here that the idea of the demoralizing struggle for existence, which curses existing society, being necessary to future progress, is an ideological phantasm of Kidd's bourgeois brain; it has no esesential place in modern positive science. As to whether this struggle, as it now exists, secures the survival of those who are fittest in any socially desirable sense, I have fully considered in my "Reply to Haeckel" in "Evolution, So- cial and Organic." When Kidd sees the exploited working class subordinating its own present interests to the future interests of the race his mind is playing him a scurvy trick — a trick which has victim- ized better men than Kidd. What he conceives to be the future interests of the human race are nothing more than the sublimated, idealized interests of the present ruling class. What Kidd's position really amounts to at bottom is, that the working class is kept quiet and submissive in the interests of the ruling class, and as this submission is neither sensible nor reasonable, it must be due to religion. When Kidd's philosophy is thus stripped of its metaphysical trappings there is a great deal to be said in its favor. 22 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND It will hardly do however, in the twentieth century, to give the sole credit for the con- tinued subjugation of the working class to religion. It may be freely conceded that this curbing of the oppressed class in society has always been the main function of all religions. It is from this point of view that Ruskin, speaking as one of the well-to-do, defines the English national religion as : "The performance of church ceremonies, and the preaching of soporific truths (or untruths) to keep the mob quietly at work while we amuse ourselves." In earlier times, before science had demoral- ized theology, religion was able to accomplish this result almost unassisted. There is also a considerable grain of truth in Kidd's contention that this repression was of service to the race, distasteful as this may be to the average free-thinker. It is a well known and essential tenet of the evolutionary philosophy that the mere exist- ence of anything proves it to have some real place in the general scheme of things, and that which has existed for centuries must have had some useful function to perform. Even chattel slavery may be successfully defended on this ground. The reason why the Red Indian can- not adapt himself to European civilization is probably to be found in the fact that his race BENJAMIN KIDD 23 has not been subjected to those long centuries of slavery and serfdom which has developed in the white races that capacity for sustained and continuous labor which is indispenable to modern civilization. In so far as religion assisted in that painful discipline by promising fantastic and visionary rewards in some future cloud-land, thus render- ing the slavery more endurable, it has functioned usefully in the development of so- ciety. While this may justify religion in the past, it is hardly a good reason for its pre- servation in the future, and it is encouraging that only an insignificant handful of very poorly informed Socialists consider it worth while to spend their energies bolstering up exploded superstitions which are useful only in a slave society. That this is the real function of re- ligious belief, the ruling class has always been quick to apprehend. A fine example of this appeared in the German parliament when Mr. Windhorst, member of the Clerical Party, ap- pealed to the bourgeois legislators not to en- courage the spread of irreligion among the masses. In a moment of anger, he forgot the listening Social Democrats and the listening world. Said he: "When the people lose their faith they will no longer bear their intolerable 24 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND misery, they will rebel." This is really what Kidd took three hundred pages to say. Those who, accepting this view, conclude that freethought is sufficient to accomplish the liberation of the working class, are the victims of a great delusion. The time has long passed when the ruling class depended solely on the priest for the quiescence of their victims. Except among catholics, the priest has ceased to be an effective policeman. The protestant churches no longer contain any considerable proportion of wage workers. The protestant worker has come to recognize the antediluvian nature of biblical teaching and he refuses even to listen to it. When the protest- ant church conceded the occupant of the pew the right to use his own judgment, it signed its own death-warrant. The catholic church has always seen the danger of this, and it owes its great power among its working men to its logical and consistent policy of refusing to allow them to think for themselves. In the twentieth century the ruling class has weapons much more effective than the anti- quated vaporings of preachers. The news- paper has usurped the functions of the pulpit and this is why editors are well paid while the majority of preachers are almost starving. Now that the preacher cannot "deliver the BENJAMIN KIDD 25 goods" the capitalist refuses to foot the bills. Time was when the priest was the most valuable of all the intellectual hirelings of the ruling class, but with capitalism this is not so, for the preacher's method of enslavement de- stroys the intelligence of the slave and renders him incapable of useful service in a mode of wealth production which requires in its work- ers an active brain, able to comprehend the complex processes of machine production. The schoolmaster is able to produce a slave psychology and at the same time develop this necessary intelligence. The editor is able to contribute to the impregnation of the worker's brain with bourgeois ideas, while he preserves his own influence by sprinkling his effusions with scientific ideas. Therefore the schoolmaster and the editor, and for similar reasons the professor, are rated above the preacher, and the preaching pro- fession is fast becoming a negligible quantity. In the past weeks, we have had a notably clear demonstration of this. At a meeting of the Pittsburg Ministerial Union, Jan. 13, '08, the Rev. Joseph Cochrane of Philadelphia de- livered himself as follows : "Ministers are underpaid and the scale of their pay and advancement in the last ten 26 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND years does not begin to compare with the average hodcarrier." "Conditions existing to-day in the educa- tional institutions of the country are exactly the reverse of what they were twenty-five or thirty years ago. Where formerly 80 per cent of the students graduated from the great Eastern colleges left their studies to enter the ministry, while 20 per cent took up the practice of law, medicine or business, of the students graduated by the Eastern universities last year only 2V 2 per cent were trained for the ministry. This meant only one minister for every twenty- five pupils in the East. "The majority of students who now enter colleges to study for the ministry leave their studies to take up law, medicine, dentistry or business. The atmosphere of the institutions in which they receive their training is to be lamented. "In this materialistic age, the dearth of ministers is due, at least to some extent, to the small salaries to be had." And so Mr. Kidd's theory that religion is alone responsible for the continued submission of the working class is steadily and rather rapidly losing ground, so that propaganda lim- ited to modern liberalism — free-thought — has already become an anachronism. Capital- BENJAMIN KIDD 27 ism has filled its armory with intellectual wea- pons that are more effective because more modern. Among its choicest are the press and the lecture platform. The workers are begin- ning to realize more than ever that the only remedy for this is a platform and a press of their own. As this realization becomes more vivid new Socialist platforms are established and Socialist papers are born over-night. Thus does the working class fight fire with fire. It develops its own social intelligence and promotes a revolutionary psychology ; a psych- ology which grows out of the economic world, the world of real things, freed from supersti- tions theological and otherwise, a psychology which when it has gathered sufficient force and begins to find mass-expression will relegate to history the last form of economic slavery. II. Henry George. Few theories have been more thoroughly discredited than the "great man" theory. And yet, there is no more convenient method of arranging in one's mind the great discoveries of positive science than to link them by mental association with the names of those who dis- covered or most conspicously advocated them. Of all the aids to the memory this is perhaps the most valuable to the student. In dealing with the complex mass of theories which con- stitute modern thought it is not enough to know what was said, but who said it and when the statement was made. The practical utility of linking these things together has unduly prolonged the existence of the idea that the great rnan created the great idea or movement with which his name is join- ed. But the introduction of scientific methods into the domain of history and sociology is destroying whatever remains of this theory, in spite of that advantage. It is now generally accepted that the great man is the creature of his epoch and that his greatness is founded in his ability to register 28 HENRY GEORGE 29 more correctly, and express more clearly, the fundamental tendencies of his day. Thus, while we aid the memory, and, in some mea- sure, assist the understanding by consulting the great man's biography, we must look for the real origin of his ideas in the historical period in which he appears and the social en- vironment by which he is surrounded. In seeking the origin and tracing the genesis of the theory with which the name of Henry George is most closely and distinctively as- sociated, we are obliged to go back to feudal- ism. Metaphorically speaking, feudalism may be described as a "land society." Its chief laborer was the serf, and he was chained to the soil. Its ruling class was a landlord class, and the main body of its laws related to landed pro- perty. Its kings were the puppets of the own- ers of fiefs and baronies, and they reigned in comparative peace only so long as they did not insist on too large a share of the incomes which those noble gentlemen derived from land. The medieval church owed its immense power to its extensive participation in those revenues, owning, as Draper says, "one-third of the soil of Europe." The present pontiff is perfectly logical when he casts a longing eye backward to what was for his ecclesiastical corporation 30 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND the golden age and wages a valiant but des- pairing warfare against "modernism." Feudalism, however, was no more immortal than any other social form; the seventeenth century saw signs of change ; early in the eight- eenth it was marked for destruction, and before the close it was finally overthrown. But land was too important a material and social factor to lose all its influence, and although the lords of land were compelled to abdicate as social rulers to the lords of capital, they retained enough power to survive as troublesome and, sometimes, formidable rivals. For some de- cades after the advent of capitalist society, the main class struggle was, as it had been before the change, between the capitalist and the land- lord, but in the matter of social supremacy the tables were turned. This struggle found its most graphic presen- tation in England. While the English working class had not as yet developed revolutionary ideas, it played an important role, and it played shrewdly for its own hand. The landlords had their own political party — the conservative party; the capitalists were represented by the liberal party. The ideal candidate of the conservative party was a scion of the landed nobility; the liberals preferred a bourgeois manufacturer. The land- HENRY GEORGE 31 lord candidates received their votes mainly from the city victims of the capitalist, and when elected they passed factory acts which curtailed manufacturers' profits. The capitalists obtain- ed their votes from the farmers and farm labor- ers in the counties, and, when in office, passed land laws to get even with the landlords. Thus, while the thieves fell out, English workers im- proved the shining hour. When English capitalists waxed fat and bought fine estates from impoverished land- lords, and these same landlords bought stocks and embarked into industry, the class line was wiped out and the struggle ceased. The two large parties were now one, except in name; the workers found it impossible to get further concessions by voting for either, so they pro- ceeded to elect representatives of their own, chosen from their own ranks. But this later development is a discursion from our theme — what concerns us here is the struggle between the decreasing landlord and the increasing capitalist which raged back and forth during the earlier and greater part of the nineteenth century. The landlords enacted the corn laws (tariff on wheat), and this more than doubled the price of bread. This compelled the capitalists to pay higher wages to meet the increased cost of living. Then the capitalist 82 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND carried on a great anti-corn law agitation, led by Cobden and Bright. They succeeded in repealing the corn tariff, and English wheat land, unable to compete with the United States, went almost entirely out of cultivation. While the struggle lasted each side blamed the other for all the social ills that existed. As the capitalist increased in wealth, his intellectual defenders became more numerous. Against the landlord the capitalist had two main complaints. First, the landlord reduced his profits by limiting child labor by passing factory acts. Second, when the worker had been exploited in the factory, instead of the capitalist being allowed to put all the plunder in his own pocket, he was obliged to divide up with the landlord in the form of ground rent. In voicing his first complaint, the capitalist se- cured the services of one of the greatest philos- ophers then living — no less a person than Herb- ert Spencer. Spencer stoutly maintained that any interference with the child labor would re- sult in the coming of slavery . As to the capitalists' effort to cut off the land- lord's share of the plunder, a champion made his appearance on the other side of the world. This was none other than the now renowned Henry George, the prophet of San Francisco. Henry George saw clearly that there was HENRY GEORGE 33 nothing the matter with the capitalist. What the capitalist received he came by honestly and according to the laws of God and nature. Labor and capital were Siamese twins, their interests were identical — high interest meant high wages, and vice versa, low wages meant a small return for capital. There was but one robber preying on society — the landlord. The capitalist and the laborer should unite their forces, stop the exactions of this plunderer and thereby introduce the millenium. Certain sim- ple-minded persons argued that if rent was rob- bery, the thing for the robbed community to do was to take the land away from the land- lord and thus put an end to his income from rent. But Henry George refused to be a party to any such proceedings. He had a scheme which his few remaining dis- ciples still imagine to have been original with him, but which, as a matter of fact, had been considered and condemned by Marx a quarter of a century before. This was that the landlord should keep his land but should be compelled to turn his rent over to the state. As this would give the state an income sufficient to meet all its expenses, no other tax should be levied and the capitalist could be relieved of all further payments. In 1847, in an article against Proudhon, Marx 34 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND wrote : "We can conceive how economists such as Mill the elder, Cherbullez, Hilditch and others, have demanded that rent be turned over to the state to the end of removing taxation. This is the frank expression of hatred which the industrial capitalist entertains for the land owner, who seems to him a useless and super- fluous entity in the scheme of bourgeois or cap- italist production." In a letter to a friend in New York, who had sent him a copy of "Progress and Poverty," Marx says : "The whole thing is simply an at- tempt to rescue the rule of capitalism — in fact, to rear it anew upon a firmer basis than its present one. This cloven hoof, together with the donkey's ears, peeps unmistakably out of the declamation of Henry George." George's defense of the capitalist left him under the necessity of explaining the source of the capitalist's income. This task is shouldered in the third chapter of the third book of "Pro- gress and Poverty." Nowhere in George's work does the "cloven hoof" or the "donkey's ears" stick out so visibly as in this chapter. It is here that the Georgian philosophy meets its Waterloo and goes down to ignominious defeat. As Marx said of George : "He has no inkling of the nature of 'surplus value.' Following the example of English writers, but following even HENRY GEORGE 85 these far in the rear, he takes up his time with speculation upon the component parts of sur- plus value — profit, rent, interest, etc." George begins, two chapters earlier by reduc- ing the size of his task. He rails like a fishwife or a Roosevelt at Buckle, Adam Smith and Stuart Mill, men who, in political economy, are giants compared with his pigmy self, be- cause they classify the distribution of wealth as "the rent of land, the wages of labor and the profits of capital. ,, In this passage "profits" is printed in capitals because this term is ex- tremely objectionable to our capitalist retainer. Not all the wealth received by the capitalist is unearned, George maintains, and much of it that is described as profit should be called "wages" — the wages of superintendence, com- pensation for risk, etc. Thus he declares, "With profits this inquiry has manifestly nothing to do. We want to find what it is that determines the division of their joint produce between (1) land, (2) labor, (3) and capital." The figures are interpolated. All this because George wishes it to be understood that the maligned capitalist is very much of a laborer and much of his .profits should be labeled "the wages of labor." But even after this rattle of tin cans, George is obliged to admit that the capitalist receives 30 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND much wealth which he does not earn by "per- sonal exertion." In order to escape the "utter bewilderment" caused by such stupid persons, as Stuart Mill, all the unearned revenue of ca- pital is brought under the head of "interest." Thus the problem is narrowed to ascertaining "the cause of interest." Bastiat's theory is examined and rejected. Bastiat's illustration of a plane loaned by one carpenter to another, in which the borrower is supposed to get the advantage of the productiv- ity of the plane as against working without one, is given in detail. It is rejected on the ground that the borrower could have made a plane of his own. This paves the way for the introduction of his own luminous theory. If all the means of increasing the quantity of wealth were planes, or similarly inanimate things, interest would be impossible. And this because the plane can only give forth an amount of value equal to the value put into it by the labor of making it, and here George, by way of variety, blunders on a truth, but a truth that} refuses to carry his astonishing conclusions. And now listen to this Daniel come to judg- ment: "But all wealth is not of the nature of planes, or planks, or money, which has no pro- ductive power; nor is all production merely the turning into other forms of this inert matter of HENRY GEORGE 37 the universe. It is true that if I put away money it will not increase. But suppose, in- stead, I put away wine. At the end of the year I will have an increased value, for the wine will have increased in quality. Or, supposing that in a country adapted to them I set out bees ; at the end of the year I will have more swarms of bees, and the honey which they have made. Or, supposing, where there is a range, I turn out sheep, or hogs, or cattle ; at the end of the year I will, upon the average, also have an increase. "Now, what gives the increase in these cases is something which, though it generally re- quires labor to utilize it, is yet distinct and separable from the labor — the active power of nature; the principle of growth, of reproduc- tion, which everywhere characterizes all the forms of that mysterious thing or condition which we call life. And it seems to me that it is this which is the cause of interest, or the increase of capital over and above that due to labor." And so the good capitalist does not exploit labor at all. Part of his income he earns by his own labor, the rest he draws from the breed- ing powers of sheep, rabbits, etc. "Seems to me" has proven prophetical, for it has never even "seemed" so to anybody else. Even George's uncritical followers have re- 38 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND fused to swallow this grotesque absurdity. All that remains now is to decide who shall be acclaimed the official clown of political economy and awarded the cap and bells — Stanley Je- vons, who ascribed panics to the spots on the sun, Prof. Mallock, who accounts wealth as the reward of ability, or Henry George, who de- rives the capitalist's income from the aging of wine and the swarming of bees. At the risk of seeming to waste good space, we might ask: If the landlord is a robber be- cause he extracts "rent" from something which is not produced by human labor, but which is, in George's own language, the "gratuitous of- fering of nature," viz., land, how does the cap- italist happen to be an honest man when he draws "interest" from "the active power of nature," which is in no sense produced by labor, but is just as much a "gratuitous offering of nature" as is land. In fact, this active power of nature is "land," according to George's own definition, for he says: "A house and the lot on which it stands are alike classed by the law- yers as real estate. Yet in nature and relations they differ widely. The one is produced by human labor, and belongs to the class in pol- itical economy styled wealth. The other is a part of nature, and belongs to the elass in pol- itical economy styled land.." HENRY GEORGE 39 Thus, according to his own definition, if George had possessed the logical powers of a well-trained schoolboy, he would have seen that his own explanation of the "cause of interest" makes the capitalist a landlord deriv- ing his income from "a part of nature/' which, according to George, is a form of land. The truth of the whole matter is that here, as always, George is a true lackey of capital. He had the vision of a hawk where the land- lord is under criticism ; he is as blind as a bat when the capitalist is being considered. He never for a moment endangered the interests of those petty exploiters who have always paid the bills of his propaganda, including the pub- lication of his volumes of twaddle. It is no wonder that when Socialists came into direct contact with George, although they were at first sometimes fooled by what Hux- ley calls George's "superfluous rhetorical con- fectionery," as soon as they saw the real bent of his teaching they began to oppose. In 1883, when he visited England to lecture on the invitation of the Land Reform Union, the. treasurer, Mr. Champion, and the secretary, Mr. Frost, both Socialists, waited on George and told him that, unless he advocated the nationalization of capital as well as land, the Socialists in the organization would be com- 40 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND pelled to oppose his campaign. To this George sharply and justly replied that they should have been able to find out from his books what he stood for before they invited him. In 1886, when George was nominated for Mayor of New York, Daniel De Leon was on his platform and spoke at the meeting which indorsed his nomination, and the Socialists generally gave him their support. But a year later when George ran for Secretary of State for New York, the Socialists had learned their lesson and made their support conditional on their principles being put to the front, declar- ing "that the burning social question is not a land tax, but the abolition of all private prop- erty in the instruments of production." To this George replied that there could be no place for the Socialists in the new party if they pressed their principles. When the convention met at Syracuse, the Socialist delegates from New York City "pressed their principles" and were refused seats. The whole movement ended in thor- ough reaction, kicking out everything at all progressive — from a workingman's point of view. Henry George, Jr., says of these debarred Socialists: "They consisted of a compara- tively few men in New York City, but what HENRY GEORGE 41 they lacked in numbers they made up in ear- nestness and activity/' George's conventional and reactionary pro- clivities appeared in the matter of the Chicago anarchists. Louis F. Post had written an article in which he said that the accused men had not had a fair trial. George said: "The opinion there expressed was my opinion, sim- ply because I had received it from him, until I found that the Supreme Court of Illinois had made a unanimous decision. Our bench is not immaculate, but I could not believe that every one of seven men, with the responsibility of life and death hanging over him, could unjustly condemn these men. In spite of all pressure, I refused to say anything about the matter until I had a chance to somewhat examine it for myself, and a reading of the decision of the Supreme Court convinced me, as it did everyone else I got to read it, that the men had not been condemned, as I had previously supposed, for mere opinion and general utter- ances. Not satisfied, however, with this, I sought the opinion of Judge Maguire (of Cal- ifornia). * * * At my earnest request, he said he would read the papers." Judge Maguire "read the papers" and reached a conclusion which George fully in- dorsed — that the condemned anarchists were 42 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND "all guilty of willful, deliberate, premeditated murder/' After this George had no more twinges of conscience about "refusing to say anything" in behalf of these victims of a citi- zenship which, by newspaper lies and screams, had been transported into a frenzied mob. George and his chief western disciple, Maguire, were a pretty pair of social redeem- ers. Compare these respectable, conventional, press-believing, court-sustaining, mental inver- tebrates, with the Socialist revolutionists who spent half their lives in jail and exile, because they held in contempt the lies of a purchased press and the decisions of venal courts. Nothing would do for George but he must venture into philosophy. He did not possess even the rudiments of an equipment for such an excursion. But Herbert Spencer had dis- pleased him in the matter of "Social Statics" and now the day of judgment was at hand. Not only should this recanting miscreant be taught a lesson on the land question, but the deplorable weakness of the synthetic philoso- phy should be exposed to a deceived public. When th£ more intelligent of George's friends learned that he was serious in his intention of attempting to overthrow Spencer's evolu- tionary theories they were aghast. One of the most anxious of these, Dr. Taylor, advised HENRY GEORGE 43 him to "leave any review of the Spencerian system of philosophy to those who are in that special field and who have special training for such work. In your own particular field I am satisfied you are invincible; but I should not feel so sure of you in metaphysics, philosophy or cosmogony. Remember that life is short and the powers of the human mind limited. ,, This excellent advice fell on stony ground and George proceeded to give the world an exhibition of the limited powers of the human mind which has few parallels in the contro- versial literature of science and philosophy. Here more than elsewhere George vindicated the opinion Marx had expressed of him : "The man is a back number." But fools must needs rush in, and wherever George touched modern science he displayed the intellectual acumen of a Salvation Army Adjutant. Thirty-three years after the publication of the "Origin of Species," when every man who knew anything at all about it, had accepted Darwinism, George wrote with great candor and simplicity: "I simply don't see evolution from the animal as the form in which man has come." And this was the man who felt called upon by destiny to reconstruct human thinking on a newer and sounder foundation. When Professor Huxley criticised his revi- 44 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND val of the exploded eighteenth century doc- trine of "Natural Rights," George wrote to Taylor: "What do you think of him as a philosopher? I am itching to get at him, and will as soon as I get a little leisure." This raises in the mind the picture of a foolish goat "itching" to butt its thick skull against a stone wall. When Lamarck attempted to explain the processes of biological evolution, he vaguely hinted at a factor which his admirers in gen- eral, and his biographer, Packard, in particu- lar, have always been eager to separate from his great work. This was expressed by Lamarck in the word "besoin," about the exact meaning of which there has been some rather warm controversy. What it would appear to mean in Lamarck's usage of it is "desire" and his idea seems to have been that animals acquired new organs because they willed or wished or "desired" to have them. This ab- surdity biology has destroyed. But the unsus- pecting Schopenhauer made it the foundation of his "World as the Will and Idea," and George, looking for a heavy weapon against Spencer, seized this theory about the merits of which he had no shadow of knowledge. When George replied to the Pope's encylcli- cal, he labored at length to find favor for his HENRY GEORGE 45 ideas by showing that they had nothing in common with Socialism. He pointed out that Socialism "ignores the individual nature of man," seeks the undue extension of govern- mental powers, and the usual catalogue of objections one hears in a street car and which for lack of a better name may be called "street- car objections to Socialism." To-day the Single Tax camp splits into two wings, which drift off one to Anarchism and the other to Socialism. Those who have been saturated by its utopianism and are attracted by illustrations from primitive society, such as the savage catching fish with his naked hand, become Anarchists. Those who are attracted to George by his dissertations against poverty become Socialists. The one great truth which George saw and which he made it his life work to explain — and, alas ! signally failed — is that expressed in the title of his "Progress and Poverty." This is, that modern civilization brings, in the trail of increasing wealth, a relatively in- creasing amount of poverty. This Marx showed to be due to the diminishing share which the wage laborer receives, as compared with the increased productivity of his labor. But, as a moment's reflection clearly shows, this increased productivity is due, not to land, 46 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND but the development of machinery. Thus the solution of this problem must be sought in the analysis of machine industry. This is what Socialism does, and this is why Socialism suc- ceeds where Single Tax has so miserably failed. The coming social revolution, peaceful or otherwise, as the ruling class may determine, will be fought around the machine — it wilt have the machine for its storm-center. The question is, not shall we put all taxes on land, but shall the "fairy-like" powers of modern production enrich all society or only a few of its parasitic members? Its battle-cry will be — the ownership by those who produce of the means and machinery of social production. Only by such a change shall we ever reach a social order where "the slave shall cease, and the master of slaves shall cease." III. Immanuel Kant. The history of philosophy records a series of defeats, resulting in final and' complete dis- aster. Twenty centuries of herculean labors, performed by the greatest intellects the race produced* during that period, and philosophy ends where philosophy began — the will-o'-the- wisp it pursues is as far beyond the reach of Kant as it was of Plato. Round and round it moves in a fatal circle from which there is no exit. It builds its imposing temples on foundations of sand, and no sooner is the capstone planted in triumph than the entire superstructive falls into ruin. Philosophy, never daunted, rolls her Sisy- phus stone to the very summit of the moun- tain and then, when victory seems assured, back it tumbles to the starting point. Her aims are lofty; her head is among the clouds; she despises science, which grovels among sordid facts, but science, content to investigate that which has been gathered from experience, and which can be verified by obser- vation and experiment, moves forward in a 47 48* TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND line, not always straight, but forever advanc- ing. To-day systematic, speculative philosophy is abandoned and science holds the field triumph- ant and unchallenged. Science has succeeded in the search for truth where philosophy failed. Where philosophy o'erstretched the chasm with a rainbow, science spanned it with a steel bridge. Philosophers have piled speculation on speculation, they have erected system after system, every system claiming to give the sum total of human knowledge, and yet they are no nearer an agreement on first principles than were the philosophers of ancient Greece. The cry, "Back to Kant," has no more relevance than back to Paracelsus, or, back to Plato. In fact, philosophy always gets "back" to where it starts from without being urged. Science, on the other hand, moves on from one conquest to another, refusing to accept that which cannot be tested, wasting no time in idle speculation on matters beyond verifica- tion, she achieves more in ten years than phi- losophy has to show for two thousand. When philosophy rejected the only sure ground of knowledge — -experience — it con- demned itself to perpetual sterility. Joseph Dietzgen says: "After the repeated creation of giant fantasmagorias, it found its solution IMMANUEL KANT 49 in the positive knowledge that so-called pure philosophical thought, from which all concrete contents have been abstracted, is nothing but thoughtless thought, without any real object back of it." So thoroughly discredited had mere specula- tion become by the middle of the last century that Ludwig Feuerbach boasted: "My phi- losophy is no philosophy." If, however, posterity should forget the pon- derous labors of the philosophers the name of Emanuel Kant will still be entitled to a fore- most place among the thinkers of the world. In 1755, long before he constructed his sys- tem of philosophy, he published a book of two hundred pages, which deserves a place by Newton's "Principia" and Darwin's "Origin of Species," a book which will more and more in the future constitute Kant's chief claim to live in the memories of men. It was entitled "A General Theory of the Heavens," etc., and gave to the world the famous theory of "nebu- lae," which has done more to emancipate astronomy from theology than even the epoch- making discoveries of Newton himself. This epoch-making theory is too often as- cribed to Laplace, who did not publish his "Systeme du Monde" until forty-one years later, in 1796. It is conceded that Laplace dis- 50 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND covered the theory independently, although subsequently, as Kant's book seemed to go straight to oblivion, when it was published. Born in Konigsberg, son of a saddler, in 1724, he lived there eighty years, never leaving it further than a walk into the country. Twice he contemplated marriage, but in the first in- stance he reflected so long, the lady married another, while by the time he made up his mind in the second case, the object of his con- sideration had left town. After nine years as private tutor to various families, he began to win recognition, and after fifteen years as "Privat-Docent" he obtained the professorship he desired, the Chair of*. Logic and Metaphysics. He set himself as his life task the solution of the world-old prob- lems of philosophy. Undeterred by the fate of his predecessors, he believed it possible to succeed where they had failed. He believed he had discovered a new method, an open sesame to the hitherto insoluble mysteries of the universe. Above all, his philosophy was to be critical —"The Critical Philosophy." This criticism was to be aimed at the very organ of knowl- edge itself — the faculty of reason. Like all other philosophers, Kant believed he had blazed out a new path, destined to lead to the IMMANUEL. KANT 51 promised land of certitude. In this, however, Kant deceived himself. He published his celebrated book, "A Cri- tique of Pure Reason," which contained the first half of his philosophy. It was an exam- ination of the powers and limitations of rea- son and the sense perceptions. This book made a great stir in Germany in spite of its clumsy and difficult terminology. The main position established in the "Cri- tique of Pure Reason" is that the understand- ing is not capable of perceiving things as they really are, but only as they appear to be. What we behold is the "phenomena," behind that, and wholly invisible and imperceptible to us, there is the "noumena" or "things in them- selves" — the things as they are in reality. So far Kant lands in complete skepticism. Hume had landed in skepticism, because he held that the understanding was treacherous and its conclusions could not be relied on; therefore, philosophy and religion became alike impossible. What appeared to be the same result was reached by Kant, asserting as he did, not that the understanding was too treach- erous to be trusted, but that it was unable by reason of its own limitations to penetrate beyond appearances and ascertain those cer- 52 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND tainties which are essential to philosophy and religion alike. It seemed as if Kant was to give skepticism the philosophic status in Germany which Hume had already obtained for it in Britain. The "powers that be" were hardly disposed to accept this without protest. The censor allowed the book to pass on the ground that it would "only be read by deep thinkers." It is said that Frederick II protested and was assured by Kant that his fears were ground- less, that he intended to give religion a new foundation and would defend the existing order. The manner in which he accomplished this is seen in his "Critique of Practical Reason," which presented the second and supplementary half of his philosophy. In this work the skep- ticism of the former volume is totally annihi- lated. It is accomplished thus : We must not despair of ever knowing the eternal verities, because this knowledge cannot be obtained by means of the understanding. We are, as human beings, equipped with a power of ascer- taining truth wholly independent of reason or experience. By this means we are able to place great truths which have hitherto been disputed upon a solid foundation, which will render them impervious to all future criticism. IMMANUBL KANT 53 Thus Kant raised the question of questions : Have we any ideas that are independent of experience? Again he fought upon a battle- ground which had always proved philosophy's field of Waterloo. The hopeless futility of Kant's philosophy came out clearly in his "Practical Reason." His great "Critical Philosophy" turned out to be a re-hash of theories which even in his day were beginning to be discredited, and which were destined a century later to be pulverized to powder by positive science and the Socialist philosophy. In the previous century John Locke in his "Essay Concerning the Human Understand- ing" had anticipated the conclusion of nine- teenth century science that all our ideas are the result of experience. This, however, Kant stoutly disputed, as he must needs do, his whole philosophy being directly at stake. According to Kant, there are two sources of knowledge. Karjt himself denied this and tried to show that according to his own teaching there is only really one. He maintains that water cannot be said to have two sources, because it is composed of oxygen and hydro- gen. Water, according to Kant, is not caused by oxygen and hydrogen — two things, but by the "union" of oxygen and hydrogen, which is 54 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND one thing. This kind of word-juggling was a large part of the stock in trade of the phi- losophers, and went far to bring discredit on their fanciful conclusions. In spite of his efforts to give it an appearance of unity — monism — to which it is by no means entitled, he falls into the most flagrant dualism. He acknowledges that we have ideas drawn from experience — a posteriori. These ideas, he thinks, are to be trusted, Hume to the con- trary notwithstanding. But the trouble is, these ideas are so limited — they teach us so little. This painful and humiliating limitation of reason dependent on experience is remedied by Kant's discovery of an infallible source of truth separate from and independent of all experience. This he finds in human conscious- ness. As this is of supreme importance, Kant now undertakes to show that we possess many great truths which we cannot by any possi- bility derive from experience, but which we must, nevertheless, accept because they are bound up with the very nature of our being, ingrained in the laws of our mind, an integral part of our very consciousness. As we might expect, these truths derived from consciousness are necessary and univer- sal. If we wish to know what they are we IMMANUEL, KANT 55 must interrogate our own consciousness, much as though a man who wished to know the name of a street which he had never heard mentioned, nor seen in writing, instead of ask- ing someone or consulting a map or some out- side source of information, should shut him- self up in a room and try to get it by cudgell- ing his brains. We know that such an adventure could never succeed. The human consciousness can only give up what has previously been com- mitted to it, and the effort to draw out from it anything else must be as unavailing as though we asked the memory for a line of poetry which it never possessed. This criti- cism is destructive of Kant's whole philosophy, as we shall see. He says: "How far we can advance inde- pendently of all experience * * * is shown by the brilliant example of mathematics." Kant's idea is that the mathematical truth that two and two make four is not derived by experience, but is one of those necessary, universal, unconditional truths which are at once clear to all because they are founded in the human consciousness itself. This seems plausible enough until it is examined more closely. It is true that when asked to give the total of two and two the response of con- 56 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND sciousness is instantaneous. But is this because the truth is necessarily universal and uncondi- tional, or is it because the sum is so simple and we have been over it so often by "experi- ence." If the former is the case, as Kant con- tends, how is it that when the average man is asked to give the total of twice two hundred and eighty-three his "consciousness" does not respond with quite the same alacrity? That the result of this addition is five hundred and sixty-six is just as necessary, universal and unconditional as that twice two are four. But when the average man is confronted with the more complex sum, instead of find- ing the answer waiting in his consciousness, he is obliged to revert in his mind to certain rules which he learned at school by the most toilsome kind of "experience." Even the sim- pler sum is insoluble to the consciousness of the child that has not learned the relation of numbers. True, children learn to count rap- idly, but only by "experience." They are quick to perceive that the ability to count is neces- sary to the preservation, intact, of certain pre- cious properties, and when a certain stage of proficiency has been reached, it is surprising how great an outburst may be brought on by the insidious abstraction of one or two ginger- bread cakes. IMMANUEL KANT 57 It is worthy of note, that when Alfred Rus- sell Wallace wished to find an unoccupied area in Darwinism, where the ghosts of spir- itualism might live and move and have their being undisturbed by "Natural Selection," he sought the same refuge as Kant — mathemat- ics. He too maintained that the mathematical faculty could not be accounted for on purely rational grounds, and as Kant had ascribed it to a metaphysical (beyond-physical) source, he declared it to be an "influx" from the spirit- world. At bottom, Kant and Wallace are at one ; they are both seeking to protect the fun- damental belief of the theology current in their time from the encroachment of science. It is quite clear that if nothing was being sought beyond the establishment of this non- physical origin of the methematical faculty, neither Kant nor Wallace would have given it a second thought. Wallace as co-discoverer of "natural selection" had, so his colleagues thought, closed the front door of science against belief in the supernatural, and he found it necessary to look for some rift or crevice by which it might re-enter. But Wallace had to contend with a much more formidable science in the nineteenth century than had Kant in the eighteenth. In fact, he had to show that the 58 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND mathematical faculty could not be accounted for by "natural selection." He must, therefore, prove that mathematical ability was not a useful variation, leading itt possessor to victory in the struggle for exist- ence. To this end he maintained that the great mathematical powers of a senior wran- gler in an English university, were so little in demand, and withal so rare as not to consti- tute a material factor in the struggle for exist- ence. As Professor Ritchie pointed out, in this controversy, Wallace overlooked the fact that the special powers of a senior wrangler are invariably accompanied by, and are the result of, a highly organized and well-trained brain, which undoubtedly is a very important factor in the struggle for existence, as it is fought out in modern society. Reduced to simpler and more primitive in- stances the alleged difficulty at once disap- pears. It does not require great insight to see that an animal with a family of five, and pos- sessing the ability to count them all and at once detect the loss of one, would be much more likely to rear all her young than another animal with a family of the same number, but unable to count above three, and which, there- fore, would not search for missing offspring until more than two were lost. IMMANUEL, KANT TO In the attempt to place mathematics on a supernatural footing Kant and Wallace alike completely failed. The only important differ- ence is that in the eighteenth century when Kant tried it, the thinkers of his day, still in the grip of metaphysical philosophy, received the assertion with great solemnity and ac- claimed its propounder the greatest genius of his age. Kant himself had the temerity to compare his own work in philosophy with that of Copernicus in physics. Had he made this claim for his own work in the same field as Copernicus — his nebular theory — posterity would have upheld the analogy. Instead of furthering the brilliant results of his work in physics, his work in philosophy tended to undo them. In physics he did much to destroy the useless theology of the middle ages, while in philosophy he labored to re-es- tablish it on a better foundation. So clear had the impossibility of this become by the middle of the nineteenth century that a similar attempt on the part of Wallace to achieve the same object, provoked among his contemporaries a tolerant and pitying smile. As an illustration of the subterfuges by which the Kantian "independent" truths were established take this: "All men are mortal," everybody believes this, but they do not believe 60 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND it from "experience," because it is quite clear that we cannot know this from "experience" so long as any of them are living. If from this general proposition we deduce the par- ticular statement, "Thomas is mortal," before we could know from "experience" that this statement is true we should be obliged to wait until Thomas died. This ingenuous reasoning was considered acute in the eighteenth century, but it calls for no extensive reply in the twentieth. The real process by which such conclusions are reached has been laid bare by science ; not by means of criticism so much as by con- sciously adopting that very method as a means of finding the truth. Science seeks to explain the unknown by the known. Whether the people who are now alive will all die belongs to the future, and is therefore unknown. But as everybody who ever lived in the past did die, we argue from this known fact of experi- ence that the people now alive, being of the same species and the same in every other way, so far as this matter is concerned, will also die. The first and most essential method of modern science is to proceed in this way from the particular facts to the general law. After a laborious but unsuccessful effort to prove the idea of causation to be independent IMMANUEL KANT 61 of experience, like the mathematical faculty, he takes another plunge into the depths of his consciousness, and to the great satisfaction of Frederick II and the public censor, he brings up a personal God, the freedom of the will, a future life, and that much-lauded idea of duty, to which he gave the philosophical title : "The Categorical Imperative." Although these things are all welded to- gether in the Kantian system, we shall here confine ourselves as far as possible to his ethics. When Kant listened to his consciousness he heard a voice saying: "Thou shalt!" Thus duty, besides belonging to a certain category, was also "imperative." "Thou shalt" would be absurd if he were not able to respond to the mandate, from which he concludes that man has a free will, a doctrine which biolog- ical science has completely exterminated. If Kant had possessed the cautious mind of the present-day scientist he would have lis- tened to the "Thou shalt" of his conscious- ness with some considerable suspicion. It may have occurred to him that the very words might be only an echo of his memory, rem- iniscent of the days when he sat at his moth- er's knee and the ten "Thou shalts" of the decalogue were impressed on his mind. 62 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND Could he have known what modern anthro- pology has since revealed, he would have known that he would only find in his con- sciousness, a jumbled mass of things put there in various ways during his childhood, boy- hood, and youth. When we remember that Kant had spent six years studying theology, and, had he not been disappointed in his application for a certain position, would probably have spent his life preaching, we are not surprised that the net result of the search of his consciousness was a collection of the theological ideas which were current in his time. The very formula in which he states his "Categorical Impera- tive" contains little more than the golden rule decked out in the verbal trappings of phi- losophy. It reads: "Act at all times so that the maxim of thy action may serve as the prin- ciple of a universal law." The idea is that it is possible for all men to be actuated by the same motive and act in the same way. Eth- ical science, even without the aid of Social- ism, has demonstrated that there is as yet no such thing as universal ethics. "On that theory," says Haeckel, speaking of Kant's formula above quoted, "all normal men would have the same sense of duty." And he IMMANUEL KANT 63 adds: "Modern anthropology has ruthlessly dissipated that pretty dream ; it has shown that conceptions of duty differ even more among uncivilized than among civilized nations. All the actions' and customs which we regard as sins or loathsome crimes (theft, fraud, mur- der, adultery, etc.) are considered by other nations in certain circumstances to be virtues, or even sacred duties." In the domain of ethics the victory of Social- ism has been signal and complete. True it was anthropology that "dissipated that pretty dream" of the theological and intuitional eth- icists, but it was left for the Socialist philoso- phy to explain "why" men had different eth- ical codes in different countries and different historical epochs. It was not Lubbock or Tylor or Spencer, but Marx, who proclaimed the economic and social origin of all moral beliefs and ethical codes. Every new economic system' brings with it new problems and as it develops, its social processes impress themselves on the consciousness of those living within it. These problems call for new ethical concepts and the moral codes of a past epoch will not serve. The problems that confront modern society are not those which faced the Syrian village of two thousand years ago, and the ethics that 64 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND sprang out of the social life of the Syrian vil- lage will not meet the social needs of the twentieth century. Quite as useless to-day are the Kantian Intuitional ethics, which repro- duce medieval theology, with some bourgeois modifications. The ethics of modern Socialism are not taken either from the preserved literature of ancient peoples, or the befuddled conscious- ness of eighteenth century philosophers; they have their roots in the world of economic real- ity. They grow out of the present needs of an exploited working class. The formula of their imperative reads: "Act so that all thy deeds shall redound to the emancipation of the class that labors, and the furtherance of the evolutionary process which gave it birth and which at this moment urges it on to cer- tain victory," IV. Prof. Richard T. Ely. Prof. Ely is a fair opponent and his treat- ment of Socialism has done much to obtain a hearing for it among the unreasonable. When Bismarck suppressed the writings of Social- ists in Germany by means of his famous "ex- ceptional laws," the Social Democrats pub- lished a half million cheap edition of a book by a critic of Socialism — "The Quintessence of Socialism," by Albert Schaffle. In any sim- ilar circumstances in this country, Ely's book, "The Strength and Weakness of Socialism/* or at least many of its chapters, would be admirably adapted to meet the emergency. The chapter on "Alleged Objections to Socialism," while defending things Socialistic rather than Socialism, would, as a propaganda pamphlet, compare very favorably with many of the productions of our own pamphleteers. He opens the second paragraph of this chap- ter thus : "It may first of all be well to give some little attention to the arguments against Socialism which cannot be regarded as valid. Of course, it would require a book much 65 66 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND longer than the present work to take up one after another all these fallacious and mislead- ing arguments. ,, He points out that an argument which seems to have force against Socialism in one country has just the opposite effect in another, and he gives several cases in point. He says : "German writers, and until recently Eng- lish writers, have regarded the proposal of the Socialists to abolish tuition fees as decidedly objectionable. There may be differences of opinion among Americans, but undoubtedly a vast majority of the citizens of the United States give to free schools their cordial in- dorsement, regard them as one of the bul- warks of the republic, and attack vigorously any one who attempt to undermine them." He then cites a case in which it is the American who lags behind the European: "The idea of public ownership and manage- ment of railways is regarded by many Ameri- cans as the chief weakness in the program of Socialism, while Germans, as a rule, regard such ownership and management as some- thing desirable. They tell us that the test of experience has settled the question for them." Then, again, in Germany one of the widely current objections to Socialism is that in a PROF. RICHARD T. ELY 67 Socialist society every one would have to black his own shoes. Even if this were granted, it would have small weight with an American, who cannot see how the blacking of one's own shoes would interfere with his intellect- ual development or in any way lower his char- acter. When an Englishman told Lincoln that in England no gentleman blacked his own boots, Lincoln asked, "Whose boots does he black, then?" Ely shows very clearly that Socialism is in no way responsible for those colonies, the failure of which has often been urged against it by those who were ready to use any argu- ment without regard to its merit. He argues that communistic experiments grow out of production on a small scale, and I that "when production is carried on, on a vast national and international scale, the Socialism proposed must be national and international." He says that Socialists discountenance "pro- posals to establish Utopian communities, and have never seen reason to alter their opinion. Modern Socialism does not preach a doctrine of separation, but aims to change the whole structure of modern society." In the appendix he gives Socialism credit 68 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND for having diverted attention from mere effects to a consideration of causes. ' "It is doubtless/' he says, "as a result in part of Socialistic criticism that we are less inclined than formerly to boast of large sums given in alms, or of the provision made for the relief of distress. We are now more in- clined to inquire whether or not this need for alms and asylums could not have been in large measure obviated. We admit that it is all very well to furnish wooden limbs to those who have lost their arms and legs in the rail- way service, but we think it is far better to enforce upon railways those well-known meas- ures which will prevent accidents to railway employes." As Ely moves from the Socialism of Sidney Webb and the Fabian Society toward Marx and the revolutionary Social Democracy, praise dwindles and criticism begins. One thing, however, he has in common with all the later critics of Socialism — a profound respect for the capacity of its chief exponents, Marx and Engels. "Karl Marx/' says Ely, "is recognized by friend and foe as one of the most learned and gifted economic thinkers of the present cen- tury; Friedrich Engels is one with whom eco- nomic philosophy must deal, and it is said, PROF. RICHARD T. ELY 69 besides, that he has been more than ordinarily successful in business." Engels' ability to make money has always appealed very powerfully to his bourgeois critics, making them hesitate to call him a mere dreamer. Again: "The chief writer of modern So- cialism is unquestionably Karl Marx. . . , Karl Marx is regarded, even by many who are not Socialists, as one of the greatest thinkers of the century, and few others have influenced the development of economic thought as he has." The professor also perceives what their achievement consisted of, for he observes : "It is recognized that Marx and Engels have put Socialism on a scientific basis." Alas, it is just this "scientific" Socialism which lands the professor in hopeless confu- sion and proves his undoing. After having warned his readers against the confusion which Christian Socialism leads to, he falls into the very blunder which constitutes the Christian Socialist's main argument. On Christian Socialism he delivers himself thus: "Sometimes Christian Socialism means So- cialism with a protest against the materialism which the Marxists have most unfortunately 70 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND associated with Socialism. It may also have reference to methods of agitation, and mean that only those methods will meet with ap- proval which are compatible with Christian ethics. Christian Socialism would thus imply a protest against violent measures. But as Socialists have generally renounced anything but peaceful, legal and constitutional methods, Christian Socialism as thus used would not carry with it anything very distinctive. It would seem, perhaps, best to drop the use of the expression Christian Socialism as some- thing which leads to confusion rather than to clearness of thought/' The real point of difference between Chris- tian Socialism and Marxian Socialism com- pletely escapes him, so completely, in fact, that his own definition of Scientific Socialism is in reality a statement of the Utopian posi- tion of the Christian Socialist. Here is the definition: "The word Socialism, as generally em- ployed, has a far narrower meaning than So- cialism in the broad sense already described. It calls to mind an industrial society which, in its main features, is sufficiently clear and pre- cise. It is not a theory which embraces all departments of social activity, but is confined to the economic department, dealing with oth- PROF. RICHARD T. ELY «ft crs simply as connected with this and influ- enced by it. This Socialism is frequently des- ignated as 'scientific Socialism.' " The Socialism of Marx — which is really sci- entific Socialism — is just what Ely cannot en- dure. His lamentations are loud and contin- uous. "Socialism in England and America, ,, he maintains, "can be appreciated in its full strength only when it becomes entirely eman- cipated from the materialistic conception of history advanced by Karl Marx, for in neither country can Socialism meet with favor when it puts its basis in materialism." Again: "Unfortunately his (Marx's) fol- lowers in Germany and other countries have not yet been able to emancipate themselves from his materialistic conception of history, as a natural evolution determined by eco- nomic conditions." And again : "Socialism, to the strict Marx- ist, means a conception of religion, of litera- ture and of science, as well as an economic philosophy. It is thus that Socialism in coun- tries like Germany has raised needless antag- onism because it has seemed to be opposed to Christianity and to many received institutions which have no necessary connection with in- dustry," 79 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND If the professor is correct, and these institu- tions "have no necessary connection with in- dustry," the case for scientific Socialism is gone and the materialistic conception of his- tory is a delusion. Ely's regret that the followers of Marx "have not yet been able to emancipate them- selves from his materialistic conception of his- tory," is another way of saying that now, when Marx and Engels have placed Socialism on a scientific basis, their followers ought to throw it back to the Utopian stage. Ely's favorite Socialist author is Bellamy, and lengthy pass- ages are cited from "Looking Backward" in proof of the "moral" strength of Socialism — Bellamy's Socialism, the Socialism which Ely really admires. Marxian Socialism is woefully deficient in this matter of ethics. He says: "While a non-ethical system of Socialism, based on a materialistic conception of his- tory, has most unfortunately for Socialism found favor on the part of a large faction of Socialists, Socialism has probably found its main strength on its ethical side." When we turn to his chapter on "The Prog- ress of Socialism," we find him calmly using that deplorable Marxian theory which he has been at such great pains to disclaim. If a Marxian Socialist had written this chap- PROP. RICHARD T. ELY 73 ter, using the historical materialism of Marx as the principle of interpretation, he would, of course, have explained the vigorous condition of Socialism in some countries as being due to those countries having reached an advanced stage of capitalist production, giving those material conditions from which, according to Marx, the Socialist idea develops. The absence of those material conditions in other countries would, of course, explain the backwardness of the Socialist movement there. Now we will listen to Ely's explanation: "Of the Scandinavian countries, Denmark and Sweden alone have displayed any consid- erable Socialistic activity, although Socialism has made some little progress in Norway, where, however, the backward industrial con- dition has been unfavorable to its growth." And so Ely discovers that the development and spread of an "idea" in Norway was checked by such "material" factors as "back- ward industrial conditions." ' Ely also recognizes that material factor called race and which is an integral part of the Marxian conception. He says: "Socialism is known and is working else- where in Europe, but has not become a great force. The countries to which reference is made are those in the southern part of Europe, 74 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND which arc more or less Asiatic in their charac- teristics, and in which the industrial develop- ment has been slow." So dependent does Ely become on the mate- rialist conception of history, that when he comes to Switzerland and forgets how to ap- ply it he is obliged to begin guessing : "Switzerland has been the home of foreign agitation and Socialists from all parts of the world ; and yet pure Socialism, while it doubt- less has its adherents, has never become a prominent political factor." As to why this is so, he begins to tell us what "seems" to be the reason — and his con- jectures are very trivial. While it had not become quite clear when Ely wrote his book, it is well known that Socialism has not developed in Switzerland because when the ruling class discovered its desirability as a pleasure resort, they perma- nently arrested its industrial development by turning it into one huge hotel. After this one failure, however, he comes back to Marx again and sums up with the confidence of a man who feels the solid ground beneath his feet: "We may say that Socialism is known wher- ever modern industrial civilization exists. It is one expression of this industrial civiliza- tion/' PROF. RICHARD T. BLT 75 This is as if he said : I don't believe in the struggle for existence, but everybody knows the fittest must survive. What he does virtually say is: I cannot accept the unfortunate theory of Marx which says that ideas grow out of eco- nomic conditions, but it cannot be disputed that the idea of Socialism only appears where industrial civilization appears, and is an ex- pression of it. Although he has thus unconsciously adopted the Marxian theory in his own narrative, he still continues to argue against it. To make his criticism effective he realizes he must find some form of mental activity which is not governed by material factors. The only case he can think of is religion. He says: "One must be blind to historical and actual phenomena who would make reli- gion merely a product of economic life. Reli- gion is an independent force, often sufficient to modify and even shape economic institu- tions." Here we have once more the unfounded sup- position that Marx limited "material" factors to the merely "economic." Also the mistaken idea that Marx denied the reaction upon the economic world of ideas, religious or other- 76 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND wise. These two considerations destroy what little force the argument has. What shall we say of the blindness to "his- torical and actual phenomena" which said as recently as fourteen years ago: "Religion is an independent force." Independent of what? Is it independent of race, climate, and mode of life? According to Marx, all these factors play an important part in the story of religion. But Marx is by no means alone in this view. Modern anthropology holds to this opinion. If religion were an independent force in any real sense, all men would have the same sense of duty, the same ideas of right and wrong. Ely takes the position of the intuitionalist and this is one of the main conclusions of that position. Haeckel says: "Modern anthropology has ruthlessly destroyed that pretty dream. . . . All the actions and customs we regard as sins or loathsome crimes, . . . are considered by other nations, in certain circumstances, to be virtues, or even sacred duties." Independent! indeed! The Turcoman has a religion which approves of stealing. Does Ely suppose that this religion is independent of the material and economic fact that the Turco- man makes his living by stealing? If Ely had ever been able to assimilate Darwinism PROF. RICHARD T. ELY 77 he would have known that any race which accepted and conscientiously followed a reli- gion which condemned the method by which it made its living would either have to make its living in some other way or disappear. Was the religion which dictated the wor- ship of the sacred bird Ibis independent of material and economic facts? This bird al- ways came down the Nile valley in advance of the approaching overflow without which Egypt could have no crops. The Egyptians concluded that the bird was the cause and the overflow the effect — that the bird was not only the harbinger, but that it actually brought the water. Thus they regarded it as a tremen- dous economic factor — the source of all their wealth. The Methodists had and have two churches, a North and a South. Is this "independent" of the historical fact that in the civil war the south stood for chattel slavery, by which it produced its wealth, while the north stood against that and for wage-slavery by which it created its commodities ? The Jews have a religious law commanding abstention from pork. Is this "independent" of material factors, or is it due, as Dietzgen says, to the fact or general belief, that in Syria pork carried the contagion of leprosy? 78 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND The real reason why Ely cannot accept the Marxian form of Socialism is that he was never able to absorb the evolutionary science of his time. Marx was a thorough Darwinian and he kept fully abreast of the progress of positive science. This is the real difference at bottom between Marx and Ely. Having repudiated the materialistic concep- tion of history, Ely is quite logical when he denies the class struggle. He says: "What is called an 'all-classes Socialism' is stronger than a working-class Socialism. Socialism has been made largely a working-class movement in Germany, but this has had a most unfortunate effect. Every well-wisher of the United States and England will hope that Socialism, in these two coun- tries, may lack the narrowness as well as the bitterness which accompanies it if it becomes a working-class movement." This is a typical and instructive example of what we may expect from those "Socialistic" persons who reject Marxian materialism. Here is another instance of what we may expect from those bourgeois intellectuals who are so anxious to help us, but are, alas, not sufficiently intellectual to be able to grasp the nature of our position: PROP. RICHARD T. ELY 79 "While socialistic agitation has had a benefi- cent influence in drawing the wage-earning classes together, and creating among them a feeling of fraternal solidarity, it has, on the other hand, tended to separate them from other classes in society, depriving them of the help which they could derive from these other classes, and giving them an unwarranted con- fidence in their capacity for political and indus- trial leadership. This has been the inevitable outcome of the Marxist Socialism, which treats Socialism as a class problem, telling the work- ers that their emancipation must come entirely from their own efforts, and employing the war cry, 'Workmen of all countries, unite !' Social- ism will become stronger when it loses its class character and looks for leadership to men of superior intelligence and wide experience." Against the charges here presented against "Marxist Socialism/' no defense is offered. Its chief est glory is that they are quite true. As for those who come to our ranks from above, experience has taught us that, with some brilliant exceptions, they are men of inferior and not superior intelligence. The professor is anxious that we be very gentle in our attacks on capital, and not dis- play any disposition to hurt people's feelings. "It is really a great weakness in a presenta- 80 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND tion of Socialism to call rent, interest, and profits robbery, although they are appropri- ated by capitalists and other classes than wage- earners." This disposition on the part of the uncouth workers to call things by their real names is reprehensible enough, and when our recruits of "superior intelligence" come among us in suf- ficient numbers they will no doubt teach us better manners. The breeding and training of bull pups is not a suitable occupation for maiden ladies and the fierce struggle of contending classes has little to offer such nice gentlemen. The professor says: "Those who advocate Socialism should do so fully conscious of the services which capitalists render in their per- sonal efforts, and in the risks which they take, and also be well aware of the difficulties ac- companying general social action." While we are remembering the "risks'' which capitalists take we might also remem- ber those taken by burglars, whose methods have much in common with theirs but whose remuneration is less substantial. The professor thinks we should not be too pessimistic about the present regime. We should remember that the general darkness is relieved to some extent by the operation of PROP. RICHARD T. ELY 81 the "caritative principle." This means that certain persons who throw all scruples aside in the mad rush to get wealth, although while doing so they trample on the widow and the orphan, yet when wealth has been achieved these same persons are quite likely to change the principle of their lives and devote them- selves to philanthropy. Says Ely: "After men have acquired prop- erty through the primary processes of pro- duction and distribution, they frequently dis- tribute it according to quite different methods. A man who enjoys an income of one hundred thousand dollars a year may use a large por- tion of this income to ameliorate the inequal- ities and injustices which result from the pri- mary economic processes. He may, for exam- ple, educate a poor but promising young per- son, and give him every opportunity to develop all his talents; and with another part of his surplus income he may relieve the necessities of the aged and infirm." It is no doubt a very great pity that we are unable to appreciate the full weight and value of these considerations. As our author him- self observes earlier in his book and as already cited, Socialists direct their main attention to the cause and seek the prevention of poverty, rather than its relief later by charity. 82 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND The Socialist has failed to note any great degree of gentleness on the other side, in the waging of the class war. He realizes that only through his triumph in that war can he ever hope to have an opportunity to live a really human life. And so he waves the professor's mincing words and baseless objections aside and turns his attention to that real world where capital shows no quarter to any of its victims but ruthlessly strikes down anyone or anything that gets in its juggernaut path. The gage of war thrown down by capital he cheerfully takes up and stretching hands across the seas and continents he calls upon his fellow workers everywhere, in the words of his own poet, William Morris, "Come, join in the only battle in which no man can fail; Where whoso fadeth and dieth, yet his deed shall still prevail." V. Cesare Lombroso. "The truths of science/' it is said, "are uni- versal ; they are true alike for the ruling class and the class they rule." This is undoubtedly so, but there is much to be said which this statement does not con- tain. When a new truth is discovered, the ques- tion of its general acceptance and recognition will depend, not on its clearness or obscurity but on its relation to the interest of the class which dominates the economic and therefore the intellectual life. When any new depart- ure in thought meets with wide and immedi- ate approval in a class society it, is quite safe to conclude that the new idea meets the needs of the social rulers and in some way justifies, or at least excuses, their rule. During the last thirty years new sciences have sprung up overnight like mushrooms. One of the most important of these is crimi- nology. Italian writers have contributed so heavily to the literature of this new science that it may almost be called an Italian science. 84 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND The writer whose name is most conspicu- ous in the general mind is Cesare Lombroso. The European and American press with one voice proclaim him the herald of the new sci- ence. This is precisely what we might expect, and the explanation is close at hand. Not only is criminology a special science, but within the limits of that science even, Lom- broso is a specialist and only deals with one branch. That branch does not carry him to the root of the bulk of the crime that afflicts our civilization. That branch does not oblige him to threaten the position of the ruling class. This ( is the reason why Lombroso's name always looms up in the venal press when criminology is the theme. Italy possesses, however, a greater than Lombroso ; a criminologist whose theories pen- etrate to the very core of the problem. But just because they do so, and because in doing so they indict the existing social order, his name is never mentioned, his works are passed over in silence, and only the earnest student knows of their existence. This exponent of a revolutionary criminology is Enrico Ferri, the Socialist Deputy in the Italian Chamber. We will first deal with Lombroso. His spe- cial field is criminal anthropology. Quarter- fages defined anthropology as "the natural his- CESARE LOMBROSO 85 tory of man;" Ferri defines criminal anthro- pology as "the natural history of criminal man." The title of Lombroso's first and chief book is "The Criminal Man." This branch of criminology in the hands of Lombroso, recalls- the phrenological methods of Dr. Gall. The critics of phrenology com- plain that it has degenerated in the hands of Gall's disciples into mere cranioscopy. Cra- nioscopy has never proved sufficiently convinc- ing to win a recognized place in the scientific world. Yet it plays an important role in Lom- broso's researches. George Henry Lewes, the biographical his- torian of philosophy, says: "We may point to Dr. Gall as having formed an epoch in the history of philosophy by inaugurating a new method." Gall's service to psychology resem- bles Buckle's contribution to sociology. Just as Buckle sought to give sociology a physical foundation by finding its chief fac- tors in the climate, geography and geology of the country, so Gall endeavored to give psy- chology a material basis by discovering a dependence on the brain as it was supposed to manifest itself in the size and shape of the skull. The reason Buckle has left a greater name than Gall is that he has never been cursed by 86 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND disciples who insisted that his crude but val- uable suggestions were a perfect system. Buckle's suggestions have been incorporated in the wider theory of Marx; and proper credit has been given. Gall's theories have been diverted by his superficial disciples from the broad stream of advancing science and formed into an isolated, stagnant pool. It must therefore be understood that the cranioscopy of Lombroso is not the cranio- scopy of the phrenologist who displays his unconvincing model head, covered with a mul- titude of small pictures illustrating his gro- tesque theory, that the brain of man is divided into small squares like a waffle, each square containing one faculty, and undertakes to tell you all about your past and future by "feeling your bumps." Lombroso's cranioscopy has no chart and deals only with general measurements of the skull, and even this is not isolated but taken in conjunction with all the physiological and pathological data that can be obtained. Even then it is open to a good deal of legitimate criticism, and if it is put forward as explaining the greater part of existing crime, it breaks down completely. Criminal anthropology in the hands of Lom- broso, has done much to advance the gen- CESARE LOMBROSO 87 eral science of criminology. Its most valuable service has been in the direction of destrov- ing the supposition that the criminal is respon- sible for his acts and therefore at the same time destroying the notion that crime can be cured by the stupid method of punishing the criminal. It, should be clear, even to the undeveloped intellect of a police judge, that if society has no right to punish a man for com- ing into the world with a misshapen head, neither can it have a right to punish him for what that head may compel him to do. Mr. Dally, addressing the Medico-Psycho- logical Society of Paris in 1881, said : "All the criminals who have been subjected to autopsy (after execution) gave evidence of cerebral injury." He includes, of course, injury by disease. A typical instance of crime due to accidental injury of the brain is the following case given by Ferri: "When I was a professor in Pisa, eight years ago, I took my students to the penitentiaries and the asylum for the criminal insane in Montelupo, as I always used to do. Dr. Algi- eri, the director of this asylum, showed us among others a very interesting case. This was a man of about 45, whose history was shortly the following: He was a bricklayer 83 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND living in one of the cities of Toscana. He had been a normal and honest man, a very good father, until one unlucky day came, in which a brick falling from a factory broke a part of his skull. He fell down unconscious, was picked up, carried to the hospital, and cured of his external injury, but lost both his phys- ical and moral health. He became an epilep- tic. And the lesion to which the loss of the normal function of his nervous system was due transformed him from the docile and even- tempered man that he had been into a quar- relsome and irritable individual, so that he was less regular in his work, less moral and honest in his family life, and was finally sen- tenced for a grave assault in a saloon brawl. He was condemned as a common criminal to I don't know how many years of imprison- ment. But in prison, the exceptional condi- tions of seclusion brought on a deterioration of his physical and moral health, his epileptic fits became more frequent, his character grew worse. The director of the prison sent him to the asylum for the insane criminals at Mon- telupo, which shelters criminals suspected of insanity and insane criminals. "Dr. Algieri studied the interesting case and came to the diagnosis that there was a splinter of bone in the man's brain which had not been CESARE LOMBROSO 89 noticed in the treatment at the hospital, and that this was the cause of the epilepsy and demoralization of the prisoner. He trepanned a portion of the skull around the old wound and actually found a bone splinter lodged in the man's brain. He removed the splinter, and put a platinum plate over the trepanned place to protect the brain. The man improved, the epileptic fits ceased, his moral condition became as normal as before, and this brick- layer (how about the free will?) was dis- missed from the asylum, for he had given proofs of normal behavior for about five or six months, thanks to the wisdom of the doc- tor who had relieved him of the lesion which had made him epileptic and immoral." Last summer the Chicago newspapers called attention to the case of a boy who underwent an operation on the brain, after which, al- though previously well-behaved, he committed 144 thefts in a few weeks. The distinctive feature of Lombroso's de- partment of criminology is that it seeks the explanation of crime in the physical and psy- chological condition of the criminal, whether that condition has developed during the life- time of the criminal or been handed down by heredity from afflicted .ancestors. Its great merit is that it has added to the 90 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND mass of evidence against the exploded doc- trine of free-will and thereby exploded the essential stupidity of the penal treatment of crime. Its great weakness is that it appears to remove not only the responsibility of the criminal, but also the responsibility of society. Nothing could be more to the taste of the present ruling class than to be informed that the bulk of crime is due to tumor on the brain or the hereditary transmission of the insanity taint, for it is hardly likely that they can be held responsible for troubles that are organic. This is why Lombroso is the social lion and is proclaimed by the bourgeois press as the founder of criminology, while Ferri, who has advanced beyond this step and penetrated to the very heart of the question, proving this bourgeois complacency to be premature, is practically ignored. Ferri's criminology recognizes three factors in the causation of crime : The anthropologi- cal factor (Lombroso's field), the telluric fac- tor and the sociological factor. While these are sufficiently distinct for the purposes of a working theory they are often found in com- bination, sometimes two, and sometimes all three. Telluric is from the Latin tellus, — uris, meaning the earth, and is used by Ferri to CESARE LOMBROSO 91 name those "earth influences" which make for crime. An excellent example is to be found in the observations of Garibaldi taken while with his soldiers on the pampas in South America. He noticed that when the pampero blew the sand in their faces, they became irri- table and violent quarrels sprang up, while good behavior was at once restored when the wind ceased. Murro has pointed out that in prisons where the social life is the same the year round, breaches of discipline are most frequent in the hot months. Crimes of sex are more frequent in hot countries, and more frequent in all countries in the hot season. As a combination of the telluric factor with the anthropological factor Ferri mentions that there are 3,000 cases of manslaughter in Italy annually, while England, with relatively the same population, has only 300. This may be ascribed to the hotter climate — telluric, — and, difference of race — anthropological. Jules Verne showed that a high altitude produced hilarity, and it has been argued that the Dutch are slow because they are low. Ferri cites two clear examples of the com- bination of the telluric and sociological fac- tors. Brigandage is a crime that has its roots in geographical conditions. Death penalties 92 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND were of no avail against it; but when these conditions were modified by the appearance of railroads, the brigands' occupation was gone. In the same way, the pirate disappeared on the introduction of that social product, the steamship. Important as are the anthropological and telluric roots of crime they dwindle into com- parative significance when we come to that vast and prolific breeding ground called "social conditions." Here Ferri and Lombroso part company. Ferri accepts and applauds Lombroso's work in criminal anthropology, but if Lombroso in- dorses Ferri's conclusions in the domain of criminal sociology he keeps it a secret in his own bosom. Where Lombroso mentions the social factor and refers to poverty as a cause of crime — usually suicide — he evidently does so as a concession to a fact too glaring to be wholly ignored. His science, like that of Haeckel, is used to vindicate the existing order. Haeckel implies that economic class divisions in human soci- ety are as irremovable as physiological class barriers among bees and ants; Lombroso seeks the causes of crimes clearly due to social conditions, in the size of the skull and the color of the hair. Nowhere does Lombroso CESARE LOMBROSO 93 display that penetration into primary causes of crime which Ferri reveals in this fine pass- age: "Want is the strongest poison for the human body and soul. It is the fountain head of all inhuman and antisocial feeling. Where want spreads out its wings, there the sentiments of love, of affection, of brotherhood, are impos- sible. Take a look at the figures of the peas- ant in the far-off arid Campagna, the little government employe, the laborer, the little shopkeeper. When work is assured, when liv- ing is certain, though poor, then want, cruel want, is in the distance, and every good senti- ment can germinate and develop in the human heart. The family then lives in a favorable environment,, the parents agree, the children are affectionate. And when the laborer, a bronzed statue of humanity, returns from his smoky shop and meets his white-haired mother, the embodiment of half a century of immaculate virtue and heroic sacrifices, then he can, tired, but assured of his daily bread, give room to feelings of affection, and he will cordially invite his mother to share his frugal meal. But let the same man, in the same environment, be haunted by the spectre of want and lack of employment, and you will see the moral atmosphere in his family changing 9i TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND as from day into night. There is no work, and the laborer comes home without any wages. The wife, who does not know how to feed the children, reproaches her husband with the suffering of his family. The man, having been turned away from the doors of ten offices,' feels his dignity as an honest laborer assailed in the very bosom of his own family, because he has vainly asked society for honest employ- ment. And the bonds of affection and union are loosened in that family. Its members no longer agree. There are too many children, and when the poor old mother approaches her son, she reads in his dark and agitated mien the lack of tenderness and feels in her mother heart that her boy, poisoned by the spectre of want, is perhaps casting evil looks at her and harboring the unfilial thought: 'Better an open grave in the cemetery than one month more to feed at home !' " Of course it is not contended that the mere fact of being hungry in itself makes a man commit murder, but want, long-continued, breaks down the moral forces and scruples by demoralizing the physical organism, then when the temptation arises, the deed is done. Debs tells of a peaceful, law-abiding citizen who worked on the railroad before the A. R. U. strike. He was a member of the union and CESARE LOMBROSO 95 went out with the rest. After the strike he managed, by concealing his identity, to go back to work in spite of the blacklist. He was well known, however, to one of the foremen of the road and, time after time this man hunted him out and had him discharged. He eudured the hardships of unemployment and want until finally he became desperate. Then this hitherto peaceful workman bought a six- shooter and went to interview the cause of his misfortunes. He took him aside and explained to him that he had secured one more job and was going to make one more attempt to earn a living. He explained that if he lost t this job as he had lost the others there would be two deaths, a murder and a suicide, and displayed his weapon as a token of good faith. The foreman concluded that discretion would be the better part of valor and the working man continued to work and obey the law which says, "Thou shalt not kill." If this case had taken another course, as was possible, Lombroso would have discov- ered that the murderer had certain cranial anomalies which, together with certain defi- ciencies of cranial capacity, revealed by his measurements which would, in his estimation, be amply sufficient to explain this departure from normal conduct. These anthropological 96 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND factors would no doubt be there, and some other man might not have committed murder even under those circumstances. Some other man with a different cranium might have been satisfied with suicide, which is nevertheless listed as a crime ; another might have taken up the profession of kidnapping or picking pock- ets for a living. But the point is that when this particular working man had persuaded his tormentor not to stand between him and his bread supply, he refrained from crime of any kind. This case given by Debs is an apt illustra- tion of that crime of crimes, the fountain which spouts 90 per cent of all the crime that curses our civilization. That great crime consists in the fact that one relatively small class in society stands between the mass of the people and its bread supply and dictates whether they shall work, beg, starve, or steal. It is quite clear to the unprejudiced mind that so long as the means of the life of all — the machinery of production and distribution — remains the proper^ of a few, any treat- ment of the anthropological and telluric fac- tors of crime will leave almost untouched the great problem of applied criminology. From this great root grow other contrib- uting branches of crime. The capitalist class, CESARE LOMBROSO 97 in order to protect its private property in the means of life, maintains a vast military organ- ization to prevent any interference on the part of its victims. The members of this organiza- tion are trained solely in the art of human butchery and it would be indeed strange if such a profession did not engender brutality in the community generally. The spectacle of a policeman marching back and forth, swinging a club, and ready to beat any citizen who may be nursing the delusion that he has a right to talk back to a luminary of the law, is not calculated to inculcate gen- tleness or loving kindness. It is hardly a matter for great surprise if the youth of the slums, with this picture constantly before him, and untrained in the art of detecting fine dis- tinctions, should sneak out of a dark alley and strike down some wayfarer with a piece of lead pipe. A reader of the newspaper — that great ve- hicle of popular education — is driven to the conclusion that the most important current event is some bloody murder, and that what the public mind most needs is the prominent display of all the horrible details. An impor- tant matter of public policy is disposed of in a few lines ; the particulars of some insane mur- der are spread over as many pages. 98 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND When Edmund Burke attacked the French revolution he inveighed bitterly against the outrages perpetrated by the revolutionists. He says nothing about the terrible outrages which had provoked them. When the people were actually starving, Foulon said : "Let the peo- ple eat grass." This excites no horror in the mind of Burke, but when the people of Paris caught Foulon and in their desperation hung him to a lamp post and choked him with grass, and afterwards carried his head and that of the governor of bastile around the city on pikes, Burke is properly shocked. Such crimes were not to be thought of, let alone sympathized with. In reply to Burke, Paine wrote "The Rights of Man" and in the following passages he reminds Burke of where the desperate pop- ulace had learned to place heads on pikes : "They learn it from the governments under which they live; and retaliate the pun- ishments they have been accustomed to behold. The heads stuck upon pikes which remained for years on Templebar (England) differed nothing in the horror of the scene from those carried about on pikes in Paris ; yet this was done by the English government. It may, perhaps, be said, that it signifies nothing to a man what is done to him after he is dead, but it signifies much to the living; it either tor- CESARE LOMBROSO 99 tures their feelings or hardens their hearts, and in either case, it instructs them how to punish when power falls into their hands. ... In England the punishment in certain cases is by hanging, drawing and quartering* the heart of the sufferer is cut out and held up to the view of the populace. In France, under the former government, the punish- ments were not less barbarous. Who does not remember the execution of Damien, torn to pieces by horses? The effect of these cruel spectacles exhibited to the populace is to de- stroy tenderness or excite revenge ; and by the base and false idea of governing men by terror instead of reason, they become precedents. ,, Of all the forms of crime so-called, that afflict present civilization, the one in which social conditions are most plainly the leading cause is surely prostitution. This is by no means clear to Lombroso. His book dealing with this question is entitled "The Female Offender." To all but the intellectual hire- lings of the bourgeoise it is clear that society is the real "offender" and not the unfortunate creature who is more sinned against than sin- ning. « Two cases Lombroso cites which in them- selves should have taught, him the truth. They are both cases of suicide. He says: 100 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND "A beautiful young girl left a letter saying that she had nothing left, all she possessed being in pawn. 'I might have had a well stocked shop, but I prefer death to the exist- ence of a fallen woman/ " The other is that of a young woman who left behind her the following letter: "I have tried in a thousand ways to find work and I have only met with hearts of stone or vile characters to whose infamous proposi- tions I would not listen." But Lombroso learns nothing from these cases. He fills page after page explaining that prostitutes have smaller skulls, lighter hair, darker eyes, heavier bodies, and shorter feet than normal women. Those who have probed this question are heartily sick of all this nonsense. Suppose we concede that the prostitute has on the average a smaller brain, what has been proven? What, indeed, but that they live in a damn- able society which drives its weakest and most defenseless members ruthlessly to the wall. How can prostitution be abolished in a society where thousands of women are paid wages on the calculation that they can obtain the bal- ance of their living expenses by the sale of their bodies? If any brains are to be mcas- CESARE LOMBROSO 101 ured it is time we measured the brain of society. Let us have a criminology that lays the axe to the root and by giving all men and women an opportunity freely to exercise all their fac- ulties in the supply of all their needs, abol- ishes the greatest of all the causes of crime. The annals of the working class have been a long-drawn-out tragedy, every scene replete with blood and murder, but at last we are pre- paring to ring down the curtain and reset the stage for a brighter epoch in the Drama of History. VI. Max Stirner. One of the most, universally accepted prov- erbs is that which says, "It is the unexpected which happens." Herbert Spencer, arguing against what he conceived to be the Socialist tendencies of his day, elevated this idea to the position of a general principle. So impor- tant does it seem to him that it is invoked as a great sociological law. He calls attention to the mass of laws which had to be repealed because they failed to have the expected effect or had an opposite effect to the one expected. He fails to see that many of these laws were only experiments in certain directions and were in reality abandoned, not for the reason he assigns, but because they were then supplanted by other laws based on riper experience, which accomplished the samn end more effectively. Spencer's argument is that the attempt to remedy social abuses by "meddling" legisla- tion, not only fails in the great majority of cases, but that it very often aggravates the very evil it was intended to cure. 102 MAX STIRNER 103 One of his most striking illustrations is the case of a certain early English king who under- took to reduce the drunkenness among his subjects by special legislation. He enacted that all the tankards used in the alehouses should be fitted with pegs on the inside at a certain distance from each other. The quan- tity of beer contained between two of these pegs was to be the maximum for a legal draught. Anyone imbibing more than one peg at one swig became a criminal before the law. For a time this law had the desired effect. Presently, however, a very strong public sen- timent grew up against those persons who gave information to the authorities. Like the publicans of old, these "informers" became largely social outcasts. As there was no com- mensurate compensation, evidence ceased to be obtainable and the law fell into disuse. Like rudimentary organs, however, the pegs remained and eventually entered upon a new career of usefulness. It became a practice to test one's drinking capacity by swallowing the greatest possible number of pegs of beer at one effort. Men who valued this kind of celebrity became known by the number of pegs they could dispose of at one draught. This even developed a new aristocracy, as Six- Peg Bill would put on airs before Four-Peg 104 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND Tom, who belonged to an inferior social stratum. Then it became popular to hold con- tests in the alehouses, in which prizes were given to those who gulped down the most pegs without stopping. As an example of how missionary activity sometimes miscarried, Spencer cites the Malay- ans, who when they were expostulated with for their barbarous practice of crucifixion, ex- plained they had learned it from the sacred books of the English. To the long list of unexpected developments compiled by Spencer, history has added at least one more. The anarchists of all schools have always been impatient of the slow and non-revolutionary methods of all Social Dem- ocrats. They were to be the revolutionists par excellence. All revolutionary pretentions that did not carry the anarchist brand were only pretentions. And now, alas! the anarchist movement — what there is left of it — has become, as was its destiny, one of the most hopelessly reac- tionary forces in society. Tolstoy, the Chris- tian communist anarchist, with his doctrine of non-resistance, becomes a chief buttress of the Russian Autocracy. The individualist anar- chist who follows Stirner, learns to sneer at the unemployed or unfortunate workers as MAX STIRNER 105 incompetent egos who should be weeded out because they are not able to "stand on noth- ing but themselves." In order to trace Stirner's philQSOphical genealogy and at the same time that of Marx, we will begin at 1830. In the world of philosophy from 1830 to 1840 the scepter was held by Hegel. Hegel's philosophy was taught in the German univer- sities, and had the approval of the Prussian throne. Frederick William III regarded it as a very excellent philosophy — in fact, an intellectual bulwark of the crown. He reached that com- placent conclusion in a very simple way. Hegel said : "All that is real is reasonable, and all that is reasonable is real." The Emperor interpreted this as follows: All that exists is real, therefore reasonable, therefore right. As Alexander Pope, the English poet, put it, "Whatever is, is right." As this seemed to be a philosophical justi- fication of police-government, the censorship, and the star-chamber, the Hegelian philosophy flourished under royal patronage. The Lib- erals, who claimed to be progressive, were greatly exercised that the country should fall urder the spell of a philosophy so thoroughly reactionary. 106 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND And jet all these wise persons were de- ceived. That seeming benediction of the exist- ing regime hid a revolutionary principle, which in the hands of Marx became the fundament of the Socialist philosophy. Hegel's idea as to what constituted reality differed very widely from the Emperor's. With him reality included necessity — that only was real which was at the same time necessary. For example : If the monarchy was a "nec- essary" part of feudal society, its necessity made it real and therefore reasonable, and in that sense, right. If, on the other hand, when feudalism began to break up, the monarchy ceased to be a necessity, it thereby lost its attribute of reality and ceased to be either rea- sonable or right. About the only man who saw the immense significance of this besides Marx was Heinrich Heine. At one time the government of America by England was real because at that time it pos- sessed the element of necessity; but by 1776 its necessity had disappeared and its reality went with it. The trouble with Hegel, however, was that this revolutionary principle was confined to, his method and could not penetrate his system. His system of philosophy, being idealistic, could not absorb this evofutionary concept MAX STIRNER 107 without committing logical suicide. In Hegel's system the material world is derived from the idea — the absolute idea. This problem, as is well known now, is at bottom theological. Hegel's system is the presentation in philosophical garb of the theological view that the material universe is the realization of the idea of Deity. On the other hand, according to Hegel's method, the "idea" of reasonableness grows out of material reality. This constitutes the Hegelian contradiction. This contradiction caused the Hegelians to split into two camps — tjie left, and the right. The right held to the idealistic system and were reactionary. The left took the revolu- tionary method, which culminated in the his- torical materialism of Marx. The immortal honor of solving the Hegelian contradiction fell, not to Marx but to Ludwig Feuerbach. Feuerbach, in his "Essence of Christianity," showed that, as Engels states it, "Outside man and nature nothing exists, and the higher beings which our religious phantasies have created are only the fantastic reflections of our individuality." Philosophically stated, this means that the idea grows out of the material world. This solution by Feuerbach of the Hegelian con- tradiction greatly rejoiced Marx and Engels. 108 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND Engels says of it: "It placed materialism on the throne again without any circumlocution. . . . The cord was broken, the system was scattered and destroyed, the contradiction, since it had only existed in the imagination, was solved. One must have felt the deliver- ing power of this book to get a clear idea of it. The enthusiasm was universal; we were all for the moment followers of Feuerbach. How enthusiastically Marx greeted the new idea, and how he was influenced by it, in spite of all his critical reservations, one may read iii his 'Holy Family.' Feuerbach had gone as far as he could go; the work of carrying his great discovery to its ultimate and fruitful conclusion, fell to Marx. This Marx at once did. As the material world gave forth the idea, theological or phi- losophical, the material world is the only real- ity. Man is a product of the material world — nature. Society is the product of two mate- rial causes — man, and nature. The founda- tion of society consists of the material means by which it produces the material things by which it satisfies its material needs. There- fore, if one section of society has exclusive ownership or control of the material means of producing material wealth, those who are shut MAX STIRNER 109 out will only be able to supply their material needs as the owners may dictate — a material slavery. As the intellectual grows out of the material, this material slavery carries with it intellectual slavery. This material slavery, and the intellectual slavery growing out of it, can only be abol- ished by the removal of its material cause, the abolition of that limited ownership and con- trol of the material means of producing mate- rial things, and the establishment in its place of ownership and control by the whole of soci- ety, social democracy, in one word — Social- ism. Such is the pedigree of the Socialist, phi- losophy. Now, let us trace the development of Stir- ner's Egoism. Stirner accepts Feuerbach's explanation of the imaginary origin of the theological idea. But he complains that as Feuerbach only abolishes one abstraction — Deity — to set up in its place another abstrac- tion — humanity — we are really no better off than we were before. We are rescued from the tyranny of one abstraction to be under the obedient slavery of another. Says Stirner: "Let us, in brief, set Feuer- bach's theological view and our contradiction over against each other ! 'The essence of man HO TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND is man's supreme being; now by religion, to be sure, the supreme being is called God and regarded as an objective essence, but in truth it is only man's own essence; and therefore the turning point of the world's history [ac- cording to Feuerbach] is that henceforth no longer God, but man, is to appear to man as God.'" Stirner contends that this, instead of abol- ishing the slavery of the individual, only gives him a new master. Although this new mas- ter is conceived as being inside the individual, it is no more the individual than the master who was outside: "It is all one in the main whether I think of the essence as in me or outside me." Nay even this distinction breaks down : "For the 'Spirit of God' is, according to the Chris- tian view, also 'our spirit,' and 'dwells in us.' " And so, where Marx and Engels saw a great liberation, Stirner saw only the exchange of one theological myth for another. This is by no means all. In addition to this abstraction Humanity, the individual is to be enslaved by a host of others; justice, freedom, the fatherland, the good, the true, and the beautiful. All these have great causes which must be served. The only cause which a man must not serve is his own cause. MAX STIRNER 1U But, demands Stirner, do these tyrants prac- tice any of the self-abnegation they require from us? Not in the least; they serve only themselves. As tjiis is the pith of Stirner's position, and as it is very strikingly presented in the pro- logue to his book, "The Ego and His Own," we will let him speak for himself by quoting it in full : "What is not supposed to be my concern! First and foremost, the Good Cause, then God's cause, the cause of mankind, of truth, of freedom, of humanity, of justice; further, the cause of my people, my prince, my father- land; finally, even the cause of Mind, and a thousand other causes. Only my cause is never to be my concern. 'Shame on the egoist who thinks only of himself!' "Let us look and see, then, how they man- age their concerns — they for whose cause we are to labor, devote ourselves, and grow en- thusiastic. "You have much profound information to give about God, and have for thousands of years 'searched the depths of the Godhead/ and looked into its heart, so that you can doubtless tell us how God himself attends to 'God's cause,' which we are called to serve. And you do not conceal the Lord's doings, 112 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND either. Now, what is his cause? Has he, as is demanded of us, made an alien cause, the cause of truth or love, his own? You are shocked by this misunderstanding, and you instruct, us that God's cause is indeed the cause of truth and love, but this cause cannot be called alien to him, because God is himself truth and love ; you are shocked by the assump- tion that God could be like us poor worms in furthering an alien cause as his own. 'Should God take up the cause of truth if he were not himself truth?' He cares only for his cause, but, because he is all in all, there- fore all is his cause! But we, we are not all in all, and our cause is altogether little and contemptible ; therefore we must 'serve a high- er cause/ — - Now it is clear, God cares only for what is his, busies himself only with him- self, thinks only of himself, and has only him- self before his eyes ; woe to all that is not well pleasing to him! He serves no higher per- son, and satisfies only himself. His cause is — a purely egoistic cause. "How is it with mankind, whose cause we are to make our own? Is its cause that of another, and does mankind serve a higher cause? No, mankind looks only at itself, man- kind will promote the interests of mankind only, mankind is its own cause. That it may MAX STIRNER 113 develop, it causes tiations and individuals to wear themselves out in its service, and, when they have accomplished what mankind needs, it throws them on the dung-heap of history in gratitude. Is not mankind's cause — a purely egoistic cause? "I have no need to take up each thing that wants to throw its cause on us and show that it is occupied only with itself, not with us, only with its good, not with ours. Look at the rest for yourselves. Do truth, freedom, humanity, justice, desire anything else than that you grow enthusiastic and serve them ? "They all have an admirable time of it when they receive zealous homage. Just observe the nation that is defended by devoted patriots. The patriots fall in bloody battle or in the fight with hunger and want; what does the nation care for that? By the manure of their corpses the nation comes to 'its bloom!' The indi- viduals have died, 'for the great cause of the nation/ and the nation sends some words of thanks after them and — has the profit of it. I call that a paying kind of egoism. "But only look at the Sultan who cares so lovingly for his people. Is he not pure unsel- fishness itself, and does he not hourly sacrifice himself for his people? Oh, yes, for 'his peo- ple/ Just try it; show yourself not as his, 114 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND but as your own; for breaking away from his egoism you will take a trip to jail. The Sul- tan has set his cause on nothing but himself; he is to himself all in all, he is to himself the only one, and tolerates nobody who would dare not to be one of 'his people/ "And will you not learn by these brilliant examples that the egoist gets on best? I for my part take a lesson from them, and propose, instead of further unselfishly serving those great egoists, rather to be the egoist myself. "God and mankind have concerned them- selves for nothing, for nothing but themselves. Let me, then, likewise concern myself for my- self, who am equally with God \hc nothing of all others, who am my all, who am the only one. "If God, if mankind, as you affirm, have substance enough in themselves to be all in all to themselves, then I feel that I shall still less lack that, and that I shall have no com- plaint to make of my 'emptiness/ I am noth- ing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing, the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything. "Away, then, with every concern that is not altogether my concern! You think at least the 'good cause' must be my concern? What's good, what's bad? Why, I myself am my MAX STIRNER U5 concern, and I am neither good nor bad. Neither has meaning for me. "The divine is God's concern ; the human, man's. My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is mine, and it is not a gen- eral one, but is — unique, as I am unique. "Nothing is more to me than myself." This leads Stirner to preach "self-owner- ship." The individual should free himself from the domination of all things outside himself and serve himself alone. And now we see how completely Stirner has severed himself from the world of real things — the world as it actually is. How would this self-owned, self-centered, self-dependent individual dress? Not in cloth, surely. The man who dresses in cloth does so because he is being "served" by thousands who toil in the textile industry, and instead of indepen- dently severing himself, he interdependently serves them in return — or he is a social Para- site. How would he learn the time of day? At least not by a watch. Watches cannot be made by independent egoists, but only by co- operating workers. A little reflection shows that a watch, or a pair of shoes, or any other of the common articles that have become nee- 110 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND essities in the twentietji century, so far from being individual productions, are the result of the labor of all society and of many genera- tions. In the midst of this great ever-increasing material and intellectual interdependence, Stir- ner's concept of a "self-owned individual" wanders like a homeless ghost. Of all the "abstractions" which he has contemptuously discarded, none were as thin and unreal as this one. This self-owned individual could be no bet- ter than a naked gibbering savage. Individ- ual forces are nothing until by combination, they become social forces. Apart from this fatal weakness of Egoism as an individual philosophy, it could have no application or force in a class society. To a man who must work eight or ten hours a day for another man, any talk about self- ownership is mockery. No man can really own his own mind so long as some other man owns his body. And how shall a man own his own body in a society where others own the means by which alone that body can be kept alive. The truth there is in Egoism is not indi- vidualistic but Socialistic. Stirner blunders hopelessly when he thinks there is any differ- MAX STIRNER uy ence in the principle which actuates the Sul- tan and that which actuates the meanest of his subjects. The one is just as egoistic as the other. The reason for the apparent difference is due to the difference in their social condition. The sub- ject abjectly serves the despot, not as a man- ifestation of altruism but because he believes he is thereby most effectively serving him- self — under the conditions. If Stirner wishes the subject to behave dif- ferently he should propose a change in the conditions. The working man is just as egoistic in the principle of his action as anyone else. If, when he has produced $10 in wealth he makes no protest against the confiscation of $7 of it by useless loafers, it must not be construed as an act of altruistic generosity. This same worker will discuss at great length, and with much heat, the chances of increasing his part by a tiny fraction. He is egoistic enough as far as he can see. The reason he does not rise up in his egoism and stop the confiscation altogether is that the possibility of doing so has not yet come within the scope of his intel- ligence. His slave condition is not due to any lack of desire for self-service or self-ownership even 118 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND in a rational sense. It is due to what Loria describes as the "perversion" of his ego by a vast army of teachers — unproductive labor- ers, Loria calls them — whose function in soci- ety is to surcharge his brain with the ideas of a class above him, so that he will act accord- ing to their interests instead of his own. Just in proportion as he escapes that "per- version" by establishing a press and platform of his own, he learns that the way to freedom lies, not in standing on himself, as individual- ism suggests, but in the victory of his class, as Socialism holds. The worker who is of a student turn of mind and fails to perceive this great truth and becomes impregnated with the sterile ideas of individualist anarchism, ends by feeling him- self isolated from the real pulsing world, and retiring into himself and leading thenceforth a life of morbid introspection, much after the fashion of a medieval devotee. He will tell you that he is above all forms of that vulgar thing called propaganda, and is devoting him- self entirely to "art" — which usually means painting pictures nobody will hang, or writing verses nobody will print. So far as the battle for future progress is concerned, you may count him out. Like his own philosophy, he has fallen by the wayside. MAX STIRNER 119 Walt Whitman, who represents individual- ism at its best, writes: "I sing the song of myself." To this the Socialist replies : "Inas- much as my redemption is bound up in that of my class, 'I sing the song of my class.' And as my class has been called upon by destiny to be the instrument of liberation from the last form of human slavery, when I sing oppression and the dawn-song of the race." VII. Thomas Carlyle. Whatever may be said for and against So- cialism by its critics or defenders, it must be conceded by all impartial readers of its stand- ard literature that Socialism has at least given us the foundation of a true science and phi- losophy of history. Before Socialism, by sheer merit and the- conspicuous ability of its exponents, compelled recognition in the bourgeois world of science and letters, the question was: "Is a science of history possible ?" As to the answer, bourgeois thinkers were divided. The poets, essayists and historians, floating in the cloudlands of idealism, said no. The scientists, working in close contact with the real world, were inclined to the affirma- tive. As it is the function of history to record the story of society, a science of history and a science of society are practically the same. As an example of those who deny the pos- sibility of a science of history and society we may take the English historian Froude. 120 THOMAS CARLYLE 121 Froude argues that the existence of a free will in man makes such a science impossible. He says: "When natural causes are liable to be set aside and neutralized by what is called volition, the word science is out of place. If it is free to a man to choose what he will do or not do, there is no adequate science of him. . . . It is in this marvelous power in men to do wrong . . . that the impos- sibility stands of forming scientific calcula- tions of what men will do before the fact, or scientific explanations of what men have done after the fact." There is no disputing Froude's logic. Granted the existence of free will and the rest follows. The free will myth stood in the path of science, and science swept it into oblivion. A still greater bar to the growth of historical science was that theory associated with the name of Thomas Carlyle, and very generally accepted, called "The Great Man Theory." It was the great misfortune of Carlyle to be forever writing criticisms of other people which applied with far greater force to him- self. Sir Walter Scott had written some Scot- tish annals under the title of "Tales of a Grandfather." Carlyle, after reading them, made the following criticism: "An amusing narrative, clear, precise, and I suppose accu- 122 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND rate ; but no more a history of Scotland than I am Pope of Rome. A series of palace in- trigues and butcheries, and battles, little more important than those of Donnybrook Fair; all the while that Scotland, quite unnoticed, is holding on her course in industry, in arts, in culture, as if 'Langside' and 'Clean-the-Cause- way' had remained unfought. Strange that a man should think he was writing the history of a nation while he was chronicling the amours of a wanton young woman called queen." Strange indeed! And strange how vividly this criticism brings up his own pseudo-his- torical narrative of the French revolution and especially his longer work, the "History of Frederick." His history of the French Revo- lution is simply a series of brilliant sketches. Instead of making his narrative follow history, the facts are made to bend to his craving for striking scenes and sensational effects. He anticipated the methods of yellow journalism. Instead of persuading his reader he constantly seeks to astonish until, having created an ap- petite for the astonishing he is obliged to neg- lect what he shall say in the search for some grotesque or unusual way of saying it. Any fact of history that could not be fitted into one of his pictures was thrown aside as of no THOMAS CARLYLE 123 importance. Yet, he would describe the shoe buckles and buttons of one of those principal figures which he regarded as the mainsprings of history. Carlyle's failure as an historian is due to his inability to grasp the nature of his theme and therefore the proper function of the real historian. In "Heroes and Hero Worship," he formulates his main thesis as follows : "As I take it, Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is ' at bottom the history of the great men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, these great ones ; the modelers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or attain; all things that we see standing accom- plished in the world are properly the outer material result, the practical realization and embodiment, of thought that dwelt in the great men sent into the world : the soul of the whole world's history, it may justly be con- sidered, was the history of these." Because Carlyle occasionally expressed rad- ical sentiments (usually in private) his uncrit- ical admirers have failed to note how reaction- ary he is at bottom, though his defense of the brutal treatment pf prisoners should have warned them. 124 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND Here is another statement of his shallow and now obsolete theory of history, together with some of its vicious consequences: "The spiritual will always body itself forth in the temporal history of. men; the spirit is the beginning of the temporal. And now, sure enough, the cry is everywhere for Liberty and Equality, Independence and so forth; instead of kings, ballot-boxes, and electoral suffrages ; it seems made out that any hero-sovereign, or loyal obedience of men to a man, in things temporal or spiritual, has passed away forever from the world. I should despair of the world altogether, if so. One of my deepest convic- tions is, that it is not so. Without sovereigns, true sovereigns, temporal and spiritual, I see nothing possible but an anarchy; the hate- fullest of things." A pretty example of the working of this theory is his application of it to Luther and the reformation. According to Carlyle, the whole reforma- tion hinges on Luther. He relates how when Luther went to appear before the Diet at Worms, the people, from windows and house- tops, begged him not to recant. Carlyle (says: "Was it not our petition too, the petition of the whole world, lying in dark bondage of soul, paralyzed under a black spectral night- THOMAS CARLYLE 125 mare and triple-hatted chimera, calling itself 'Father in God* and what not; Tree us, it rests with thee ; desert us not V " The picture presented here and throughout the narrative, is of one man fighting the battle of his world and ours, alone. Had Carlyle striven less for sensation and paid more atten- tion to the facts of history, he might have made several discoveries very damaging to this view. The noble rulers of Germany were ripe for a revolt against Rome. It was what Loria calls a case of the "bi-partition of the rev- enue." The historian Swinton says they were "angered at seeing large quantities of money drained from their own country to be expended on works of art in Italy." When Luther vis- ited Rome he saw that the expending of this income was by no means limited to "works of art." The German princes believed themselves fully able to spend any money that could, on any pretext, be wrung from the German peas- antry. This attitude had found sufficient ex- pression to make it impossible for any one to live in Germany, as Luther did, without know- ing that revolt was in the air. Luther's pro- test was simply a spark which fell into a powder magazine. The moment the battle 126 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND began Frederick, Duke of Saxony, followed by a great crowd of nobles, rushed to his support. While at Worms he was protected by a "safe- conduct" given by Charles V. It is quite clear to everybody but Carlyle, that had it not been for the material interests of these German nobles, Luther would either not have revolted in the first place, or he would have been shipped to Rome and burned at the stake as a meddling disturber. As this economic factor did not fit with Carlyle's romantic picture, it is passed over in silence. Either this, or so patent a fact was invisible to him. Some historians have been so little im- pressed with Luther as a "Hero-priest" as to have pointed out certain possible motives which would be badly out of place in Carlyle's melodrama. Swinton for instance remarks that Tetzel, who sold the obnoxious revenue-raising in- dulgences, belonged to the Dominican order, which had been given the monopoly for Ger- many. Luther was an Augustinian monk and there was a good deal of bitter rivalry between the two orders. Carlyle himself relates how Luther had been disgusted by what he saw at Rome, but de- cided to keep quiet. When Tetzel came to THOMAS CARLYLE 127 Wittenberg, Carlyle says : "Luther's own flock bought indulgences: in the confessional of his own church people pleaded to him that they had already got their sins pardoned." Thus, even according to Carlyle, it was only when Tetzel trenched on the functions of Luther's office, "at the very center of the little space of ground that was his own and no other man's, that he had to step forth against in- dulgences." Carlyle's own narrative clearly carries the inference, to which he himself seems to be blind, that had Tetzel passed by Wittenberg and left Luther in the undisturbed possession of his own flock, there might have been no reformation. And this defender of his own order and his own office, is proclaimed to the world as a disinterested hero. He marched right bravely to Worms — with the Emperor's "safe-con- duct." He flouted the terrible power of the Papacy — with the ruling class of his own and some other important countries almost solidly behind him. All this counts for nothing with Carlyle who is intent on finding in Luther the main- spring and sole cause of everything. Hence we are prepared for the following extravagant eulogy: 128 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND "I will call this Luther a true great man: great in intellect, in courage, affection and integrity ; one of our most lovable and precious men." Again, "A right spiritual hero and prophet; once more a true son of nature and fact, for whom these centuries and many that are to come yet, will be thankful to Heaven." It is worth while to note what this "true son of nature and fact," and "great in intellect" had to say about certain important questions of " nature and fact." By this time "every schoolboy knows," as Macaulay would have said, that the founder of modern astronomy was a cetrain Prussian named Copernicus. With this man's name modern science begins. For fourteen hundred years. Ptolemy's system of the universe had held its ground unchallenged. But this Prussian, by a close scrutiny of "nature and fact," for twenty years, overthrew that system by reversing it. He was a contemporary of Luther's and a very illustrious one. This is what Luther said of him and his discovery : "People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to 'show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever THOMAS CARLYLE 129 must devise some new system, which of all systems is, of course, the best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, not the earth." The truth is that when it came to a case of "nature and fact," Luther was an ignorant fanatic. His colleague and favorite disciple, the mild Melanchthon, gave his view of the theory of Copernicus thus : "Now it is want of honesty and decency to assert such notions publicly, and the example is pernicious. It is the part of a good mind to accept the truth as revealed by God and to acquiesce in it." Melanchthon proposed that severe measures should be taken against such subverters of accepted opinions, and one can easily imagine that he and Luther would have made a happy pair of spectators could they have been present at the burning of Bruno. As to Luther being "a lovable and precious man," we may recall his remarks as recorded by himself in his autobiography anent the peasants' revolt. When the peasants, who had applauded Luther, rose against their terrible conditions of existence, Luther said: "No mercy, no toleration is due to the peasants: on them should fall the wrath of God and of man." 130 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND And he recommended that they be "treated like mad dogs." A lovable man, indeed, and about the most "precious" thing about him is that he is dead. None of these things moved Carlyle and he made a consistent application of his great man theory by making all subsequent history de- pend on what Luther did at the Diet of Worms. "It is, as we say, the greatest moment in the modern history of men. English Puritanism, England and its parliaments, Americas, and vast work these two centuries ; French revolu- tion, Europe and its work everywhere at present; the germ of it all lay there: had Luther in that moment done other, it had all been otherwise." It is, of course, impossible to say just what would have happened if Luther had "done other," but the overwhelming probabilities are that some other torch would have blazed forth in that inflammable air, and that the result would have been about the same. Luckily there is one field of human activity where this point can be put squarely to the test. This is the history of the sciences. In 1609 two Dutch spectacle makers, Jansen and Lippershey, invented the telescope. The telescope has done great things for astronomy ; THOMAS CARLYLB 131 and astronomy has made possible the art of navigation ; and upon navigation depends the great bulk of modern commerce. It would require very little application of Carlyle's historical method to make out a case that all modern history depended on these twin heroes inventing the telescope. It is a little against the theory that there should be two of them but unfortunately the record seems to be hazy as to which was first, although tradition favors Jansen. It is quite certain, however, that the inven- tion of the telescope did not depend on either or both of them; for in the following year Galileo made one of his own without seeing theirs or knowing anything about their partic- ular method. Bacon and Porta had foreseen the possibility and if none of these three had succeeded, there is no doubt that about that time some one else would have done so. Few sciences have achieved so greatly as chemistry. Among its most brilliant feats must be placed the discovery of oxygen. Stahl had maintained that all burnable bodies contained an invisible substance which he called "phlogiston," and that during com- bustion they gave this phlogiston out into the air. This theory was contradicted by the fact which Geber had observed 1500 years before 132 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND that many bodies are heavier after combustion than before, showing that something has been added rather than lost. Lead for instance is heavier when molten than when solid. Priestly succeeded in proving that mercuric oxide was composed of mercury and a gas. This gas he managed to separate and breathe into his own lungs with very pleasant results. Lavoisier, suspicious of Stahl's theory, proved not only that when metals are heated until they turn into powder they weigh heavier than before, but also that the air in which they were heated lost just as much weight as the metal had gained. He was at a loss to understand what was the element thus drawn from the atmosphere until he reflected upon the experiments of Priestley. He then proved that this element was the same gas as Priestley had separated from mercury and used in breathing. This gas, discovered by Priestley, Lavoisier christ- ened "oxygen" from the two Greek words which mean "I produce acid/' because he found that most substances were acid after they were united with it. If Carlyle had applied his hero theory to Priestley as the discoverer of oxygen he would have easily been able to show that had Priest- ley "done other," oxygen would have been un- THOMAS CARLYLE 133 known and its many benefits would have been lost to the world. Then the whole course of the history of chemistry and many other re- lated matters "had been otherwise. ,, Alas, for this dramatic effect, while Priest- ley was busy making his discovery in England, the same experiments were being carried on by a poor apothecary at Kjoping, a little village in Sweden, who had never heard of Priestley, but nevertheless arrived inde- pendently at precisely the same result — oxygen. In 1775 Immanuel Kant gave the world a book of two-hundred pages which contained a new conception of the universe. This was that famous nebular theory which revolution- ized our ideas of the origin of heavenly bodies. Although this unpretentious volume, "A Theory of the Heavens," will always preserve the fame of Kant it cannot be held that we had to depend on him for the great truth it contained. Almost as soon as it was written it was forgotten, and its importance was never realized until forty-five years later when Pierre Laplace published in 1799 his "Mecani- que Celeste" in which the theory re-appeared, independently discovered. In 1871 Sir William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus moving outside all the 134 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND planets then known. The peculiar thing about this new planet was that it did not move as it should according to the law of gravitation. A calculation of the attraction of the sun and all the other known bodies failed to explain why Uranus strayed so far off into space, and out of what appeared to be its proper orbit. Here was a splendid opportunity for some "Hero as Scientist," "sent into the world" to solve this mystery and add thereby to the sum of human knowledge. England possessed a man who had mastered algebra when a boy of ten. As soon as he had taken his degree at Cambridge he set about the solution of this problem, not by ob- servation, but by mathematical calculation. In October of 1845 he sent a paper to the Astronomer-Royal, Mr. Airy at Greenwich, telling him that if he would turn his great telescope upon a certain part of the heavens at a certain time he would discover an un- known planet which would fully explain the mysterious movements of Uranus. Owing to red tape, bungling, and want of a proper star map, nothing came of it at that time. Later it was found that Adams was correct and the new body thus discovered is now the planet Neptune. If Carlyle had written the history of this THOMAS CARLTLE 1^5 development he would have found no room for his "great man theory." It would have been useless for him to argue that but for Adams the history of astronomy would have been otherwise. A French mathematician, Leverrier, had been working on this problem and the very month after Adams sent his paper to Airy, Leverrier published his conclusions , which were the same within one degree as to posi- tion, in "The Journal of the Academie des Sciences." The following year the Astron- omer-Royal Airy, reading this journal, was surprised to see that Leverrier had agreed so closely with Adams as to the position of the new planet. He and Prof. Challis of Cam- bridge then set about the search for it and on August 4 they discovered it, but for want of a star map of that part of the heavens were unable to properly identify it. Meanwhile Leverrier published another paper in the latter part of that same August, the 31st, stating the new planet's position still more accurately. This paper he sent to his friend, M. Galle, of the Berlin Observatory, asking him to look in the part of the sky indicated. M. Galle did so that very night and discovered the new planet seen nearly a month before by Prof. Challis, but as he had a proper chart he made the first 136 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND proper identification and record. Thus, al- though the priority really belongs to Adams it has always been popularly given to Lever- rier, much as the "nebular theory" is by many regarded as being first discovered by Laplace. The collapse of the "great man" theory is nowhere so clearly seen as in the circum- stances of the discovery of the great scientific generalization which will be forever linked with the great name of Darwin — natural selection. If any man could be called "The Hero as Scientist," to use Carlyle's phrase, it must surely be Darwin. As Newton had waited sixteen years for more convincing proof of the truth of the gravitation theory before announcing it, Dar- win worked twenty, and would have worked longer if he had not been interrupted. Alfred Russell Wallace, who was pursuing his studies as a naturalist in the Malay archipelago, sent home a paper to Darwin, asking him to be so kind as to read it Tor him at the meeting of the Linnean Society. When Darwin read this paper to himself he discovered that here was a clear description of that very theory upon which he had been working in secret so many years. On the advice of his friends, Lyell the famous geologist, and Dr. Hooker, he read Wallace's paper and one of his own written THOMAS CARLYLE 137 years before at the meeting of the society the 1st of July, 1858. One year later he published his famous "Origin of Species." The part played by Wallace is wholly fatal to the great man theory. His presentation was clear and unmistakable. Robert Rives La Monte thinks it was even clearer than Dar- win's own. And so the theory which revolutionized' all our thinking did not depend on Darwin doing as he did, and if "he had done other" we can- not say that "it had all been otherwise." There is one more signal instance of the failure of the great men theory which should be noted here. Those Socialists who imagine there would have been no scientific Socialism but for Marx are clearly in the wrong. We know beyond question that what Wallace was to Darwin, Engels was to Marx. In the preface to the Communist Manifesto Engels, speaking of that "materialistic con- ception of history," which is the core of scientific Socialism, says: "The proposition which, in my opinion, is destined to do for history what Darwin's theory has done for biology, we both of us, had been gradually approaching for some years before 1845. How far I had independently progressed towards it is best shown by my 'Condition of the Work- 138 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND ing Class in England/ But when I again met Marx at Brussels, in spring, 1845, he had it ready worked out, and put it before me in terms almost as clear as those in which I have stated it here." Thus have science and the history of science completely demolished Carlyle's theory. There is also another weapon which has been used with disastrous effect against Carlyle. The man who handled this weapon most brilliantly was Herbert Spencer, who is only an individualist when he steps out of his evolutionary philosophy into the field of politics. In his "Study of Sociology" Spencer proves conclusively that even if we concede the great man's greatness we must look for his origin in "that aggregate of conditions" out of which he came. As it seems impossible to improve either Spencer's argument or his statement of it we will here quote at length : "Even were we to grant the absurd supposi- tion that the genesis of the great man does not depend on the antecedents furnished by the society he is born in, there would still be the quite sufficient facts that he is powerless in the absence of the material and mental accumula- tions which his society inherits from the past, and that he is powerless in the absence of the THOMAS CARLTLE 139 co-existing population, character, intelligence, and social arrangements. Given a Shakspeare, and what dramas could he have written with- out the multitudinous traditions of civilized life — without the various experiences which, descending to him from the past, gave wealth to his thought, and without the language which a hundred generations had developed and enriched by use? Suppose a Watt, with all his inventive power, living in a tribe ignorant of iron, or in a tribe that could get only as much iron as a fire blown by hand- bellows will smelt; or suppose him born among ourselves before lathes existed; what chance would there have been of the steam engine? Imagine a Laplace unaided by that slowly developed system of mathematics which we trace back to its beginnings among the Egyptians; how far would he have got with the Mecanique Celeste ? Nay, the like questions may be put and have like answers, even if we limit ourselves to those classes of great men on whose doings hero-worshippers more par- ticularly dwell — the rulers and generals. Xenophon could not have achieved his celebrated feat had his Ten Thousand been feeble, or cowardly, or insubordinate. Caesar would never have made his conquests without disciplined troops, inheriting their prestige 140 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND and tactics and organization from the Romans who lived before them. And, to take a recent instance, the strategical genius of Moltke would have triumphed in no great campaigns had there not been a nation of some forty millions to supply soldiers, and had not those soldiers been men of strong bodies, sturdy characters, obedient natures, and capable of carrying out orders intelligently." Spencer concluded: "If you should wish to understand these phenomena of social evolution, you will not do so though you should read yourself blind over the biographies of all the great rulers on record, down to Frederick the Greedy and Napoleon the Treacherous." The explosion of the great man theory has led to absurd reactions in certain quarters. The stupidity of the man who maintains that all the processes of history depend on great men is only equaled by the stupidity of those who think that every person with unusual ability should be knocked on the head as a menace to the community. Because we have discovered that the window does not produce the light, is hardly a good reason for throwing a brick through it. The discovery that the boiler does not generate the steam, does not logically imply that we should punch a hole in it. f THOMAS CARLYLE 141 The Socialist movement itself has surely gained something from its clever and able men: Marx, Engels, Liebknecht and Bebel, in Germany; Lafargue, Guesde, Longuet and Jaures, in France ; Labriola and Ferri, in Italy ; and a host of the clearest thinkers and the soundest scholars of all countries. "Great" and "greatness" are words much too valuable to be thrown aside because they happen to have been associated with an abandoned theory. We may still say that certain men or women were "great" while others were "small" with- out wrenching our philosophy. As to what constitutes "greatness" in any acceptable sense the following suggestion may be of some value: Throughout the history of society men have taken one of two positions ; either they have labored to aid the progressive forces of evolu- tion, or they have lent their activities to check it, in the cause of reaction. By this standard should men be judged in the twentieth century. The man who in his acts and words in- carnates social progress and labors greatly to accelerate its processes may be pronounced, in the name of Evolution and the Socialist phil- osophy, to meet the standard and requirements of a really "great man." vm Albert Schaffle. The most tremendous problem now con- fronting the bourgeoisie is how to stem what Schaffle calls "the rising flood of communism." Everywhere its statesmen and politicians, and its vast army of apologists, realize the increas- ing gravity of the situation. If one country seems to lag behind the rest in the growth of Socialism, and its enemies begin to take cour- age, some incident occurs and they learn they have been nursing a shallow delusion. This is precisely what happened in Eng- land. Year after year the English press main- tained a "conspiracy of silence" in all that related to Socialist propaganda. A public meeting so large that it would have received three columns had it been held by any other body was ignored or dismissed with as many lines, because it was arranged and addressed by Socialists. The comfortable and easy-go- ing English business man, reading his solemn and stolid morning paper at the breakfast table, would note the account of lively Social- 142 ALBERT SCHXFFLE 143 ist doings in France or Germany and thank God for the English Channel which separated him so effectively from those restless and pecu- liar people on the continent. Of course, there was not or ever could be any such foolishness in England; if the "red specter" hovered over the tight little island his infallible paper would warn him of it. Then came the Taff Vale decision of the courts, which struck at the very life of English labor unions, and convinced every union man whose eyes were in his head that the political action advocated by the Socialists was the only effective reply. Then followed the gen- eral election, and England woke up to find over thirty "reds" sitting in her Parliament, proposing measures from the floor which had previously been vainly begged for in the lobby. The silence of the press was broken; stunned and bewildered editors begged their readers to send in suggestions of the best way to stem "the rising flood of Socialism" in Eng- land. A similar situation had arisen in Germany thirty years earlier. In 1874 the Gerrnan So- cialists had unexpected success at the Reichs- tag elections. The representatives of the ex- isting regime wailed in distress and prayed for a savior. X44 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND The former Minister of Finance of Austria, Dr. Albert Schaffle, entered the arena and undertook to show that alarm was unneces- sary. He began with a series of articles which appeared in the "Deutsche Blatter" and were later published in book form as "The Quintessence of Socialism." When this work was translated into English it was pronounced by its English editor, Bernard Bosanquet, as "The clearest account of Socialism that can be obtained in anything like the same com- pass." A few uncritical Socialists have shown a disposition to partially endorse this view. True, Schaffle in this work takes Socialism seriouly and speaks very highly of its expon- ents. He recognizes the great ability of Marx as displayed in "his bitingly critical and unde- niably clear-sighted work, 'Das Kapital\" The second chapter gives a fairly good exposition of the Marxian theory of "Surplus Value" and throughout the book he effectively demolishes the shallower arguments which were by many supposed to dispose of the case for Socialism. He explains that while Socialists regard the capitalist form of wealth appropriation as robbery, they do not consider capitalists "as thieves in the criminal sense of the word" nor rank them "with the persons who appropriate other people's belongings by the aid of dark ALBERT SCHaFFLE 145 lanterns and false keys." Schaffle enlightens those who think that Socialism holds the cap- italist personally responsible for the evils of capitalism and he quotes the following excel- lent passage from Marx in proof of this : "My standpoint, from which the evolution of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any other make the individual responsible for rela- tions whose creature he socially remains, how- ever much he may subjectively raise himself above them." Schaffle has no patience with the shallow- pates who argue that because Socialists speak of the abolition of capital, that "Socialism in- tends to have no economic capital, no means of production ; it proposes to produce without land, factories, machines, tools, raw material or fuel; for it condemns capital and hence the continuance, accumulation, maintenance and renewal of the plant of labor." Schaffle says, "I must emphatically warn my readers against this claSs of opponents to Socialism," and he explains that it is not the instruments of pro- Suction that Socialists propose to abolish, but only the "private ownership" of them. To those who charge that Socialism would destroy individual freedom and break up the family, he responds: "There is nothing in 146 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND the main principle of abolition of private own- ership in the means of production which would necessitate the disappearance of free demand and free household arrangements, nor yet the destruction of family life." He concludes his argument against those who think that in a Socialist society individual wants would be suppressed by officials, by saying, "There is, on the whole, no reason why in a system of united collective production the wants of indi- viduals should be regulated by the State or limited by its officials." Says Schaffle, "There is another false rep- resentation which is even more widely spread. It is said that the well-known defects of pub- lic administration today would be universal under Socialism. This argument must not be relied on," and he shows why at some length. One of the things Socialism would do seems to have Schaffle's strong approval. He says: "There would no longer be a stock exchange. * * * The monstrous actual abuses of public and private credit and the unclean brigand- aristocracy of the exchange are things which it positively desires to cut up by the roots." Schaffle believes that the way to combat Socialism is to attack it as it is and not set up a lot of straw effigies in order to show how easily they may be overthrown. He therefore ALBERT SCHaFFLE 147 says toward the end of this book: "Would that people would at least desist from the dan- gerous self-deception of attacking mere wind- mills/' Having cleared the ground of superficial objections, Schaffle prepared to show in a suc- ceeding work what were the real difficulties of Social Democracy and how its propaganda could be effectually checkmated. Four years later, in 1878, he promised a friend in Austria that this work should be at once forthcoming. Something took place in this year, however, which resulted in the post- ponement of its appearance. Prince Bismarck had arrived at the con- clusion that he knew how to combat Social Democracy without anybody's advice, and he proceeded to put his theories into practice forthwith. He secured the passage of the famous "Exceptional Law." It was called "ex- ceptional" because aimed at the Social Demo- crats alone. It was terribly drastic and in- tended to exterminate Social Democracy in Germany. If police government and police legislation could have done this Bismarck would have succeeded. As it proved, he gave the world, once and for all, a perfect demon- stration of the utter futility of police repres- sion as a weapon against Socialism. 148 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND Among other things, this law provided that anyone found to be active in Socialist propa- ganda was given twenty-four hours to get across the German boundary line. It was observed that during this period there was a notable increase in the number of sick and death benefit societies. This was not easy to account for, as there was no increase in the mortality rate, calling for increased caution, neither did there seem to be any great wave of "thrift" to explain the phenomenon. It was very difficult for strangers to gain admission to the meetings of these societies, but once inside the mystery was solved. A notice would appear to the effect that the "Sons of St. Joseph Sick and Death Benefit Association" would hold its regular meeting for the transaction of its business, giving time and place. When the meeting assembled and its promoters were sure that no police agents were present, a speaker who had been pre- viously appointed for that purpose would mount his chair and deliver a Socialist address. If news came of the approach of the police, the speech ended as abruptly as it began and the officers of the law were admitted in the middle of a discussion as to whether Fritz Schultz, who had been sick five weeks, was entitled to benefits in view of the fact that he ALBERT SCHXFFLE 149 was two months in arrears when he was taken ill. If they decided to pay Schultz under these circumstances, the police would carry away the impression that "The Sons of St. Joseph" were a very generous body. Those who were caught and exiled found refuge in London and Zurich. As it was im- possible to publish a Socialist paper in Ger- many, an attempt was made to get one in from London, but the first edition was intercepted and confiscated at Hamburg. Then a paper was published at Zurich with Bernstein, not at that time a revisionist, as editor. It was printed on very fine paper and circulated in Germany in sealed envelopes. As Bismarck had closed up all other Socialist papers, in- cluding the muddled publications of petty busi- ness men who imagined they were Socialists and preached a Socialism of their own, this one paper, edited by a Marxian scholar, was the only paper read during this period by the Socialists of Germany and this is one of the reasons why they came out of the persecu- tion with greater clearness of view and soli- darity of aim than when they went in. Writ- ing just after the repeal of the "Exceptional Law" in 1890, SchafHe says: "There has probably never before been an instance of so comprehensive a revolutionary idea repre- 150 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND sented by so great, so well organized, so ably conducted a party as Social Democracy became after twelve years of exceptional legislation. " Schaffle had promised his friend in Austria to refute Social Democracy in 1878, but the attempt did not appear until six years later, in 1884. He gives two reasons for this delay. First, "The Quintessence ,, had stood for two days on the index of the "exceptional law" as a prohibited book. Its tone of fairness had led Herr Von Quadt, a member of the admin- istration at Oppeln, to regard it as a mild form of advocacy. Schaffle felt that if he then published his broadside attack on Socialism he would be thought to have been intimidated by the government. His second reason for delay he states as follows: "In yet another direction I was thwarted at that time by the German Socialist legislation. It had the effect of a muzzling order; it bound down the Social Democracy so fast, when strictly enforced, that it could not even rattle its chain, still less bark or bite or repulse an attack — greatly to the profit of the 'Freisinnige' (one of the rad- ical parties), who immediately proceeded to bark and try to bite more vigorously than before. It is not my way, however, to fall upon an opponent the moment the gag is on his mouth-" ALBERT SCHaFFLB 151 Writing of six years later, he says: "The Social Democracy is once more upon the ros- trum, * * * once more it preaches in a tone confident of victory, 'the alteration of the whole system/ The aim and end of the 'Quintes- sence' is attained. The world knows now from many other sources what Social Democracy means. But what the world even yet does not by any means know, is how this Socialism is to be met and combatted, both critically and practically." Therefore, in order that the world might know how "this Socialism was to be met and combatted, both critically and practically/' Schaffle took up his chivalrous pen and wrote "The Impossibility of Social Democracy." It is impossible to read both these works without detecting the changed tone of the sec- ond volume. Our author is no longer scrupu- lously anxious to be fair and he hurls at Social Democracy charges against which he himself had defended it in his first work. The prob- able explanation of this is to be found in the fact, which he greatly bemoans, that many of his best friends, following the error of the government in their estimate of "Quintes- sence," had held him to have become a traitor to his class — a Social Democrat. His mani- fest anxiety to dispel this illusion is plainly 152 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND responsible for the deterioration of his style in the second book. The "Impossibility" is more than twice the size of "Quintessence" and takes the form of three letters written to his friend in Austria. The friend's name is not given, but the letters show that he was a very backward old gentle- man on all social questions and Schaffle is anxious to convince him that where Socialism is concerned he himself is no less conserva- tive. By the time we close the second vol- ume we know that they were a very pretty pair of "old fogies." The first of the three letters which consti- tute the "Impossibility" is entitled, "Charac- teristics of Social Democracy." It is evidently intended to supplement and complete the de- scription already given in the "Quintessence." The second letter is called, "Criticism of Social Democracy," and the third and last, which is longer than the two others combined, "The Positive Method of Combatting Social Democ- racy." In the "Quintessence" Schaffle had confined his examination of Socialism to its economic and social aspects, leaving its philosophical side strictly alone. His English editor, Bosan- quet, agreed with his economics and greatly praised the work. ALBERT SCHaFFLB 158 In the first chapter of the "Impossibility," however, SchafHe ventures to explain the phi- losophical ancestry of Socialism. In this at- tempt he makes the one greatest blunder it was possible to make, thereby revealing his total and colossal incapacity in the field of philosophy, and Bosanquet is properly dis- gusted. Nobody denies that the Socialist philosophy finds its roots in the work of Hegel. As this will be the theme of a future lecture we will pass it quickly here. The merest tyro in phi- losophy knows that Hegel's work fell into two divisions — the "system" and the "dialectic." In his "system" he is an idealist. When he comes to develop a philosophy of history and a criticism of social institutions he breaks away from his own idealism and adopts a dialectic, evolutionary method, which is its complete contradiction. This split Hegel's disciples into two wings — "right" and "left." The right wing defended the idealism of his system and became reac- tionary. The left wing championed his "dia- lectic" and became revolutionary. This dia- lectic, in the hands of Marx, finally became "the materialistic conception of history." Thus Schaffle was right in tracing Socialism back to Hegel, but he makes the stupid blum 151 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND der of placing Marx in the idealist right wing! Speaking of Socialism, Schaffle says: "Its philosophy is in reality the offspring of the subjective speculation of Hegel. * * * Even a superficial acquaintance with Hegel's teach- ings makes it clear that his system of philoso- phy lends itself very readily to Socialism." The word "superficial" in the last sentence is made the occasion for a footnote by Bosan- quet, which consists of the derisive exclama- tion, "Just so!" The explanation of his deri- sion is to be found in his editorial preface, where he regrets Schaffle's "countenancing the ridiculous fallacy which derives Socialism from the idealism of Hegel." A blunder of this proportion, committed in the opening chapter, while it probably did not shake the faith of his uncritical Austrian friend, went far to discredit the whole volume in the estimation of the more scholarly, Bosan- quet included. The closing pages of the first chapter deal with the difference between two kinds of So- cialism: Communistic Socialism, which says "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" ; and Proportional So- cialism, which proposes to proportion the re- ward to the labor performed. The contempla- tion of the communistic formula brings on a LBERT SCHAFFLE 155 burst of righteous indignation which finds expression as follows : "The appropriation by the Society of the results of unequally produc- tive labor for a uniformly equal distribution according to needs is a universal and mon- strous appropriation by one set of persons of the surplus value belonging to others." He closes the chapter by announcing that he will take as the basis of his criticism "that Proportional Social Democracy which is alone conceivable in practical working." He opens his second and critical chapter by waiving for the present his Austrian friend's request for a treatment of the relation of Socialism to Christianity, saying: "We must first clear up the industrial side of Socialism." He paves the way for this performance with the following excellent statement: "Social Democracy as a party is the party of the pro- letariat. To their social inclinations and long- ings its whole teaching, its whole agitation, is expressly suited. Collective production is to fulfill the very desires of their hearts, it is to overthrow the capitalists and rid the world of business crises and wage slavery." So much for the aims of Social Democracy. As to whether they can be realized, he gives his Austrian correspondent the following as- surance: "I, for my part, hope to be able to 156 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF' THE BLIND bring you striking proof that Social Democ- racy, in all its democracy and in all its radi- calism, can never fulfill a single one of all its glowing promises ; and, further, that each and all of the preliminary points above mentioned, over which its fanatics rave so wildly, will, if rightly considered, afford evidence of the impossibility of Democratic Collectivism." Schaffle then proceeds to propound ten rea- sons why Social Democracy is and must for- ever be impossible. Some of them are very interesting. This is the first: "It is, to begin with, a delusion to imagine that collective pro- duction could be organized and administered at all in a republic which from base to summit of the social pyramid was reared on demo- cratic principles." As an objection to Social- ism, this will rather startle the American reader, who believes, or thinks he believes, in democratic principles — not meaning here the principles (?) of the Democratic Party. It is necessary to remember that Schaffle elsewhere describes himself as a "monarchist" and that he maintains that Socialism can not succeed because it will lack the effective authority of a King. This is another of the criticisms which called forth the disdain of his English editor. "In the second place," says Schaffle, "Col- ALBERT SCHAFFLE I57 lectivism eliminates both nature and private property as determining factors from the prob- lem of the distribution of income." This notion shows that notwithstanding his denunciation of them in "Quintessence," Schaffle had "wind- mills" of his own. Marx insisted on the rec- ognition of Nature as a source of wealth and Socialism proposes to distribute wealth on the basis of "private property," according to ser- vice rendered. His third objection is that "Social Democ- racy promises an impossibility" in undertak- ing to unite all forms of industry into one great unwieldy body, whereas some of them, such as agriculture, may need to be left in local self-complete branches. To which it is a sufficient answer to say that Socialism has not decided on anything of the kind, and that this is Social Democracy according to Schaffle and not according to Socialists. Fourth, "Social Democracy promises to. the industrial proletariat a fabulous increase in the net result of national production." He is willing to concede that "This increased pro- ductivity of industry would perhaps be con- ceivable if a firm administration could be set over the collective production." By "firm ad- ministration" he means, of course, a 'king'." Schaffle could not conceive that the develop- 158 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND ment of machinery might go on after the mon- archy had disappeared. "The fifth, and the most one-sided promise" of Socialism, which promises the workers a reward equal to the exact value of his labor "is a pure delusion." This is a pure delusion because "It is wholly impossible to decide how much is contributed by labor and how much by capital to the value and .amount of the joint product; for the product is the indivisible result of the joint work of capital, labor and the gratuitous co- operation of nature." This is a pretty example of Schaffle's back- handed reasoning. He uses "capital" here as being synonymous with "capitalist," which is quite correct. But he is criticising a society in which there would be neither capital nor capitalist, for when the instruments of pro- duction become social property they cease to be capital, and for the same reason the cap- italist is abolished, although, of course, the "man" who was a capitalist remains. There- fore, in a Socialist society, the instruments of production will be on the same footing as nature; they will contribute to the produc- tion of wealth "gratuitously" and, like nature, will make no trouble about the settlement of any claims. All that will be necessary will ALBERT SCHaPFLE 159 be to maintain and increase their efficiency, just as the same may be necessary in the case of nature by developing fisheries, etc. Difficulty six is that, even if the trouble about the proper share of capital and nature should be overcome there would still remain the impossible task of finding out the precise share of each individual laborer. As this is the same objection that is raised as number eight we will take them together. Under number eight he says: "The private capital- ist, of course, could no longer exploit the wage laborer, since all private capital would be over and done with. But laborer could very really exploit laborer." There may be some truth to this contention, for example : If two men worked a day of the same length and produced an amount o£ wealth equivalent to, let us say, twenty dol- lars. But one man worked more effectively than the other and he produced of this value, let us say, $10.25, while the other only pro- duced a value of $9.75. Therefore, if each is paid at the rate of $10 the most effective laborer would be "exploited" 25 cents. If the difference became much greater than this it would be detectable and could be adjusted. This terrible injustice weighs heavily on the sensitive feelings of the justice-loving doctor. 100 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND He has no such heart-rending laments about the existing social order, where one man works a day to produce $10 and instead of being overpaid with $10.25, or underpaid with $9.75, he receives less than $2, while more than $8 goes, not to another laborer who has worked harder, but to an idle loafer who has not worked at all. Instead of weeping over this crying robbery of the present, Schaffle saves his crocodile tears for the camel-hair injustices of Social Democracy. Objection seven, which is sliced between these two, is that if a fair distribution could be established somebody would want to change it. He says: "The consistent stickler for equality and practical brotherhood would de- mand a distribution to the weak also, accord- ing to their needs." And, be it remembered here, that Schaffle is as orthodox a Christian as he is a monarchist, and that a little later he makes a great noise about the atheism of Social Democracy. But, he maintains, as a result of these stick- lers for "practical brotherhood" (Social Dem- ocratic atheists, if it please you), these defend- ers of the weak, behaving in this ridiculous fashion, "Everything would get out of hand and a hopeless confusion would ensue, the ALBERT SCHAFFLE 161 only way out of the difficulty being to declare a universal equality of need. ,, And this, quoth our good Christian doctor, is "a solution most unjust, most wearisome, and most conducive to idleness. ,, We have already dealt with objection eight in conjunction with objection six. Nine and ten call for no extended consideration, being mere denials of Socialism's ability to fulfill its promises to avoid panics and abolish all exploitation of labor. What Schaffle wants instead of "practical brotherhood" is the capitalist, a little more considerate, and the wage laborer a little bet- ter cared for, and the weak treated to doles of charity. This pious old person would hardly find life worth living if he could not have some unfortunate soul to whom he could give his small change, thereby keeping his Christian virtues in practice — some aged woman, thinly clad, sitting on the frozen pavement, shiver- ing in the blast, with lead pencils in one hand and a tin cup in the other. IX. August Comte. The appearance of August Comte marks the final collapse of philosophy and the long-hin- dered triumph of Science. For twenty-five centuries they had struggled side by side, phi- losophy proud of her supposed superiority, holding her head in the clouds and occasion- ally looking pityingly down upon science, hum- bly grovelling on the ground. But pride was only the forerunner of a fall, and the lowly was at last exalted. Slowly but surely the truth dawned in the minds of men that philosophy was a rudderless ship on an uncharted sea, with neither port of embar- kation nor possibility of reaching any destina- tion. .Meanwhile science forged ahead, solv- ing one by one the riddles of the universe, directing her course by the unchanging stars and drawing all men unto her. Then science, graciously forgetting past amenities, endowed her humbled sister with a new function and set her forth upon a new and glorious career. No more should philos- 162 AUGUST COMTE 163 ophy dissipate her energy speculating about the unknown and building castles sans foun- dations; now she should take the precious truths science had gleaned and systematize them into a unity. Among the first philosophers to undertake this task and lead philosophy forth on her new mission was August Comte. With him philosophy is the philosophy of the sciences; the synthesis, the unification of all science in one all-embracing system. What each science did for the facts in its own domain — classify and arrange them — philosopbhy should now do for all the sciences, each science constitut- ing a single fact in the subject matter of "the science of the sciences." This establishment of philosophy as the sci- ence of the sciences marked a turning point in human thought which has been revolutionary in its consequences. Comte has contributed two things to mod- ern knowledge that mark him as a great thinker and will give him a place among the immortals ; his analysis of the intellectual de- velopment of the race, and his classification of the sciences. He appears in this catalogue of "Blind Leaders of the Blind" because of the puerility of his ideas in the domain of sociol- ogy, of which science he is the reputed founder, 164 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND and his fatuous effort to saddle the world with a new religion. As Comte's merits, however, overshadow these defects, this lecture will be largely appreciative. Comte's division of the intellectual develop- ment of man into three stages slWs light in many dark places for the student who meets with it for the first time. One phase of Com- tek position on this question seems like an anticipation of the discovery made in another field, later in the century, by Ernest Haeckel. So closely related do these two ideas seem that tr^ey serve to illustrate each other. As Haeckers theory applies, at least mainly, to the story of the body, while Comte's deals exclusively with the mind, Comte's priority in discovery seems to reverse the natural order, psychology being one of the later sciences to give up its truths. As an understanding of Haeckers theory paves the way for a proper appreciation of Comte, we will take Haeckel first. Haeckel calls his discovery the "Biogenetic Principle." It is deduced from a comparison of two sciences, ontogeny and phylogeny. Phylogeny deals with the history of the devel- opment of the species — the race. As this history is contained chiefly in the fossils that have been preserved in geological strata — AUGUST COMTE 165 the crust of the earth — it falls under the head of palaeontology — the science that deals with the fossil remains of organic life ; — it is palae- ontological history. Ontogeny, on the other hand, deals with the life history of the individual ; beginning at conception, and dealing mainly with the em- bryo as it develops before birth. Haeckel's theory consists of the now proven fact that these two developments go over the same ground. All the stages and phases that the race has passed through before it reached the human, are briefly reproduced during the nine months' embryonic period before birth — the whole story, with paragraphs omitted and the chapters condensed, is repeated in those few months. As Haeckel states it: "The history of the individual development, or ontogeny, is a short and quick recapitulation of the slow and gradual palaeontological development, or phylogeny. Professor Bolsche, one of Haeckers most brilliant contemporaries in the same field, who has expounded Haeckers theory in "The Evo- lution of Man" — a very treasure-trove of pop-* ular evolutionary science — says on page 96 : "The biogenetic law recognizes in the embryo the portrait of its ancestor." Again says Bolsche : "No matter what em- 16G TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND bryo we may study, whether it is that of a lizard, a snake, a crocodile, a turtle, ostrich, stork, chicken, canary, duckbill, marsupial, whale, rabbit, horse, or finally a long-tailed American monkey or anthropoid (man-like) gibbon — the embryo at a certain stage of its development always shows a perceptible tad- pole or fish stage. Its neck shows the mark of the gills. Furthermore, the limbs which the embryos are just forming at this stage have likewise the plain outlines of fins." All of which proves that if the great Greek Anaximander was only guessing two thou- 1 sand five hundred years ago, he was guessing very shrewdly when he said: "Man is like another animal, namely, a fish, in the begin- ning." Haeckel justly regarded this biogenetic law or principle as a clinching proof of the descent of man from other forms and he triumphantly declares: "No opponent of the Theory of Descent has been able to give an explanation of this extremely wonderful fact whereas it is perfectly explained according to the Theory of Descent (evolution) by the laws of inher- itance and adaptation." This is not the place for further exposition of this theory, but the more it is examined the greater becomes its significance and the more AUGUST COMTE 167 are we disposed to admire the intellect that worked it out. If one has read Haeckel before Comte it is something of a surprise to find that what appears to be the most ingenious part of the theory had already been applied in another direction by the brilliant Frenchman. While we cannot for a moment forget the tremen- dous and wholesome part which Haeckel has played in the intellectual life of the modern world, it may be conceded that in originality the French philosopher was his master. Comte begins by dividing the intellectual history of mankind into three periods, the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive. The "theological" period covers the mental infancy of man; the "metaphysical" begins when the human mind emerges from its cruder superstitions and philosophy assumes com- mand, and ends with the downfall of philoso- phy before the onslaughts of science. The "positive" period is contemporary with the reign of science and the scientific method. The word "positive" is used by Comte in the common sense of something we are sure of, or positive about, and refers to the scien- tific method of experimentation and demon- stration. Any attempt to fix definite dates at which 163 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND any one of these periods began or ended — > especially ended — would be contrary to the spirit of Comte's conception. Between them there is a borderland of transition as shadowy and uncertain as that between the inorganic and the organic, or between the plant or ani- mal kingdoms. There is a good deal of overlapping which, however, is caused mainly by the former stages lingering on in the latter, though occa- sionally this is reversed when a later stage reaches back into the former in the case of some thinker who anticipated the future. The principal overlapping, however, is caused by metaphysical ideas living on in a scientific age, and theological beliefs being artificially galvanized into an appearance of life long after the breath has left their bodies, by an army of reactionaries paid for the perform- ance. These outworn myths appear in the twentieth century as stone implements were still in use in the bronze age and horse-cars still run in the city of New York. This "Theory of Human and Social Devel- opment, ,, as Comte styles it, is thus described by him : "It lays down, as is generally known, that our speculations upon all subjects whatso- ever, pass necessarily through three successive AUGUST COMTE 169 stages: the Theological stage, in which free play is given to fictions admitting of no proof; the Metaphysical stage, characterized by the prevalence of personified abstractions or enti- ties; lastly, the Positive stage, based upon an exact view of the real facts of the case. The first, though purely provisional, is invariably the point from which we start; the third is the only permanent or normal state; the sec- ond has but a modifying or rather a solvent influence, which qualifies it for regulating the transition from the first stage to the third. We begin with theological Imagination, thence we pass through metaphysical Discussion, and we end at last with positive Demonstration. Thus by means of this one general law we are enabled to take a comprehensive and simul- taneous view of the past, present and future of Humanity." The point wherein this luminous theory of Comte's resembles the later one of Haeckel is this: Comte maintains that this order of the intellectual development is reproduced in the mental development of the individual. Says Comte: "The progress of the indi- vidual mind is not only an illustration, but an indirect evidence of that of the general mind. The point of departure of the individual and the race being the same, the phases of the 170 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND mind of man correspond to the epochs of the mind of the race. Now each of us is aware, if he looks back upon his own history, that he was a theologian in his childhood, a meta- physician in his youth and a natural philoso- pher in his manhood. All men who are up to their age can verify this for themselves. ,, This analogy of Comte's is usually regarded as merely fanciful and suggestive, deriving whatever force it has from the facts often or usually being as the theory implies. This attitude is probably largely justified by the probability that we are approaching a time when theological thinking, at any rate, will be eliminated from the mental life-story of the individual — when we shall teach our children the truth in the first place, and if Adam and Eve are to be retained as characters they shall occupy their proper places as co-equals of Jack the Giant-killer and the venerable King Cole. And yet it would seem that Haeckers theory not only resembles Comte's in this par-* ticular but also provides a physical basis for it. According to Haeckel, a child in its infancy is, in its body, nearer by thousands of years to our primitive ancestors than is the adult. This being so, the brain, being a physical organ, is of course involved. Thus a child, having the brain of this primitive order, would AUGUST COMTE 171 only be able to apprehend, by reason of that limitation, the theological superstitions which so firmly gripped our prehistoric progenitors. Later research may prove that it is just as well to feed the child mind on fairy-tales, but, of course, it will never justify our insistence on any of them being solemnly regarded as truths in later years. Whatever may ulti- mately prove to be the truth in this particular the main generalization, which states the three successive- stages of human mental develop- ment, stands impregnable. We shall return to this theory later for we have by no means exhausted its significance, but we shall do so in connection with Comte's second great contribution to modern thought — »the classification of the sciences. Readers of Herbert Spencer, unfamiliar with Comte, would find in the latter more than one anticipation of important features of the Syn- thetic Philosophy. As Lester F. Ward has successfully contended, Spencer rebutting to the contrary notwithstanding, Comte's and Spencer's classification of the sciences are fun- damentally the same. Comte's idea was to arrange the sciences in an order which would proceed from the simple to the complex; from the general to the particular. Disciples of Spencer will recognize this conception. 172 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND Here is the order as it appears in Comte's Phiosophy : (1) Astronomy. | (2) Physics. (3) Chemistry. (4) Biology. (5) Sociology. (6) Ethics. Those who do not find ethics enumerated in "The Positive Philosophy" are reminded that he made this addition in his "Politique Positive." , The details of a comparison of this order with Spencer's would take far too much space here and the reader who wishes further infor- mation on this head will do well to consult Lester F. Ward's "Pure Sociology," pages 66-67. In the above list mathematics is sometimes given at the head — before astronomy. And Comte himself sometimes names them in that way, but he is careful to make clear that he does not regard mathematics as a separate sci- ence but rather as the method and founda- tion of all the sciences. Thus his "hierarchy" of the sciences really begins with astronomy. A careful consideration of this classifica- tion shows that each succeeding science grows AUGUST COMTE 173 out of the one that precedes it and is depend- ent on it as a child on its mother. Astronomy deals with celestial bodies and the laws relating to them and includes Phys- ics, which deals with molar forces, just as Physics includes chemistry, which deals with molecular forces. In the natural order of things all these come before life, which is the subject of biology. Mind is a later manifesta- tion of life and although it is not separately listed as Spencer lists it under the head of Psychology, it is fully treated as a department of biology — cerebral biology. Later, social life appears and becomes the foundation of Sociology, and moral relations accumulate and give birth to the latest member of the series, Ethics. Another theory which Comte regards as im- portant and for which he claims complete originality is as follows: The three principal methods of science are observation, experi- ment, comparison. As we proceed in Comte's hierarchy from Astronomy at the beginning to Ethics at the end there is, as Comte argues, a progressive application of these methods of research. In Astronomy, the most general and simple of the sciences, observation alone is available; in Physics, which comes next, experimentation is possible as well as obser- 174 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND vation. When we reach chemistry, experi- ment is the chief weapon, while in biology, sociology and ethics we depend mainly on comparison. Comte made some very striking blunders, due to his great self-confidence and the limita- tions of his age. Comte maintained that this natural order of the sciences is also the his- torical order in which the sciences themselves appeared and our knowledge of them devel- oped. Here Comte was clearly wrong, although there are some appearances of truth in the contention. This gave Spencer a chance to show Comte's error, and although the point is of small importance, many of Spencer's unin- formed admirers thought that the French- man's philosophy was hereby overthrown. In discussing the science we now call Psy- chology, Comte became unfortunately entan- gled with Phrenology. It should be remem- bered, however, that in Comte's day Phrenol- ogy had not become the disgraced, unscien- tific charlatan it now is. Again, Comte had become so flatly opposed to unfounded metaphysical speculations that he went to lamentable extremes and declared insoluble, problems that were in process of solution as he sat writing his denunciation of the attempt. He declared dogmatically the AUGUST COMTE 175 utter impossibility of ever ascertaining the chemical constitution of the heavenly bodies — and this when Fraunhofer and Wollaston had already laid the foundations for this dis- covery, which, as everybody knows, has since been made. We now come to one of the most valuable of Comte's theories. He insists that another test of the validity of his scientific categories is to be found in the state of positiveness at which any science has arrived. Each science, like each individual and like the race itself, passes through the three successive stages, theological, metaphysical and positive. Astronomy, the most general of all, has passed through the theological and metaphys- ical stages and has now reached the positive or scientific stage. This is undoubtedly the case even though the uninformed often make their first appeal in behalf of religious beliefs to the majesty and grandeur of the heavens. There is in reality no department of human thought where the supernatural has been so completely abolished and natural law recog- nized as supreme, as in astronomy. It is a long time since any scientist of repute tried to find in astronomy a niche in which to hide his gods. Lester F. Ward well says : "About the last instance of this kind was that of 17(3 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND Newton, who brought in the divine agency to account for so much of observation as his the- ory failed to explain, and this is now set down as one of the unfortunate weak points in his biography to be forgotten as fast as possible." Physics, which comes next in generality and next in the classification, although next most positive, is still in the grip of metaphysical conceptions. In biology metaphysics and the- ology still have a losing hold and every day sees the biological sciences become more posi- tive and less theological and metaphysical. Now we come to that science of which Comte is generally conceded to be the founder, the science of society — sociology. Comte justly declares this late-born and highly com- plex science to be still in the theological and metaphysical stage, with theological ideas dominating. This is in itself proof that the science is in its infancy, just as a theological type of mind was inseparable from the infancy of the race, and seems to be inseparable from the infancy of the individual. In ethics the case is even worse. The whole development of society is popu- larly supposed to be subject to providence; to control of a divine will which is independent of law and the fiats of which cannot be pre- vised or even understood. This means death AUGUST COMTE 177 to science wherever it may be found and the history of science is the story of the over- throw of this theological position in one field after another. This was accomplished by the discovery of those laws of nature — or "meth- ods of nature" as Lewes, Comte's great disci- ple, called them, — which really prevail every- where in the universe. Newton, Kant and Laplace drove theology out of astronomy by discovering gravity and nebulae. Mayer, Helmholtz and Lavoisier emancipated chemistry from superstition with the conservation of energy and the indestruct- ibility of matter. Lamarck, Darwin and a great army of their colleagues and disciples have since Comte's day driven the shadowy spectres of theology out of biology with evo- lution and natural selection. Comte struggled to do as much for Sociology and failed com- pletely. His great merit is that he saw the need of such a science and foresaw the nature of its task. The actual accomplishment of that task was left to men whose training in social and polit- ical philosophy was vastly superior to that of the Frenchman. Two Germans, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, two of the clearest and most cogent thinkers the last century pro- duced, took up this labor where Comte laid 178 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND it down — or rather, where Comte broke down. These two men by their joint labors carried sociology out of its theological infancy and its metaphysical childhood into the full man- hood of science. These men gave us the great social law which makes all theological notions and metaphysical speculations henceforth as obsolete in sociology as they have long been in astronomy and physics. This law is called "The Materialistic Conception of History" by some, and "Economic Determinism" by others. It is to sociology what Natural Selection is to biology or the Law of Gravitation to astron- omy. By this discovery Marx becomes the Newton of political economy and historical philosophy and the Darwin of Sociology. It is hardly necessary here to go at great length into the absurd Utopian social scheme which Comte advanced. It has been aban- doned everywhere except by here and there a belated follower. v He was opposed to the use of that powerful weapon which the working men of his day were already looking toward — political action. His condemnation of this method was aimed at the precursors of the present Social Demo- crats. He naively explains that he expects the rich to support him in this attitude — as they AUGUST COMTE 179 did, of course, so long as it only meant political action by their opponents. In Comte's positivist society there was to be four social orders. Capitalists to supply the direction of industry; workers to give their labor for production; women who were to provide social feeling; and a new priest- hood of philosophers who were to provide education and arbitrate all difficulties between capital and labor, and persuade labor not to resort to force or political action but always give heed to the moral suasion of their supe- riors. Comte wrote a great deal of extravagant and senseless flattery of women in general and his own wife in particular, but he never- theless proposes to leave about their wrists that old and cankering chain — economic de- pendence. Women are to be supported like all the other orders, by the labor of the workers, who are to be men only. Capitalists are to have an honored place as directors of indus- try, and there is some considerable space and effort devoted to the folly of Socialists who propose to abolish them. The evolution of the capitalist from a useful director to a use- less parasitic owner, although it had begun, was, as yet, invisible to Comte. All this was to be brought about by posi- 180 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND tivist clubs, which were to be established in all the cities of the civilized world and have for their object the propaganda of this philos- ophy with its new-old social order. It is another case of the irony of fate that such clubs and groups have been established in almost every town and city in the civilized world — but alas they are not composed, as Comte dreamed, of the advocates of a four- class society; they are made up of the Social Democrats he so fluently condemned. And these Social Democrats advocate a society that will be classless, where women will be eco- nomically independent of men or each other, where the capitalist will be transformed into a worker, no matter how much he may protest against the metamorphosis, and the workers will direct their own affairs without requiring hierarchies of alleged superiors to do it for them. ■■■ X. Bishop Spalding. The Bishop, in his book, "Socialism and Labor/' presents a very interesting study of the past trying to reconcile itself with the present and stave off the future. There is much flowery language and specious argument which might give the superficial reader the impression that the reverend author is pro- gressive. But whenever he sounds a clear note and presents what are obviously his real convictions he is invariably bewailing the de- parture of feudal pietism before the rising sun of modern science. When it comes to analyzing the causes of this revolutionary and distressing change, he displays considerable insight. He says: "The social organism is so vast and so com- plex that it seems hopeless to attempt to inter- fere, and so we permit things to take their course, abdicating the freedom and the power of will in the presence of an idol which we call Destiny. The more public opinion is shaped by the ideals of evolution as the su- 181 182 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND preme law of life, the less capable we become of bringing reason and conscience to bear on human affairs and of recognizing God's pres- ence in the world." This clear recognition of the destructive ten- dencies of evolutionary science where ortho- dox religion is concerned is wholly refreshing. When Spalding insists that the theory of evolution abolishes free will, and makes dif- ficult the recognition of God's presence in the world, he is on solid ground. When we rec- ognize human actions as due to environment or heredity, or any specific cause, and per- ceive that here, as everywhere else in the uni- verse, there is the operation of natural law, the freedom of the will becomes a chimera. While the doctrine of evolution may leave ample room for the deity outside the universe, the Bishop makes no mistake when he asserts its tendency to abolish him from the interior. For example, since we have had a science of meteorology it has been much more difficult to find men who will pray for rain, and, as Huxley said, our prayers for rain are very half-hearted when the wind blows from the wrong quarter. Even the pious regard prayer for the victim of a slight cold as unnecessary, and for one in the final stages of tuberculosis or cancer as useless, and as to just where its BISHOP SPALDING 183 value begins or ends is a question of scientific training. The more one knows of science the more he is disposed to depend on work and the less will he rely on prayer. The Bishop also regards evolution as respon- sible for the suspension of progress, when he says, as quoted, that under its influence "we become less capable of bringing reason and conscience to bear on human affairs." The premise on which he founds this con- clusion is not far to seek. He argues that Christianity has applied "reason and con- science" — especially conscience — to human affairs," and that this has been a main factor in the development of civilization; evolution destroys this factor, therefore it suspends the further development of society. If we concede the premise, it is very diffi- cult to see how we are to escape the conclu- sion. Wherever the weakness may lie, it is certainly not in the Bishop's logic. He says: "Wherever influences have been active in the abolition of slavery, in securing popular rights, free government, protection for chil- dren and the poor, in bringing knowledge within the reach of all, and thereby spreading abroad juster and more humane principles of conduct, have also wrought for the welfare 134 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND of woman; and it is not necessary to point out how intimately all this progress is asso- ciated with the social action of the Christian religion." Whoever has read history for himself, and not by proxy, through a priest, will be some- what taken aback at the Bishop's cool assump- tion that the good things catalogued above, owe their origin or increase to the "social action of the Christian religion," especially Spalding's particular brand of it. When he says "it is not necessary" to point out the relation of these two things to each other, he is right; it is not necessary, and not until we forget the humiliation of Galileo, or the fate of Vesalius and Bruno, will it ever become necessary. Speaking of the nineteenth century the Bishop says: "It shall stand forth as the one in which the Christian peoples made the greatest and most real progress in knowledge, in freedom and in power." Here, of course, the inference is that the progress of the modern nations is due to their being Christian. This question of the cause of national pro- gress is of great importance and it is one about which the Socialist philosophy has a good deal to say. BISHOP SPALDING 185 The Bishop's view has the merit of clear- ness. The Orientals are Mohammedans, or Buddhists, or Brahmins, therefore unprogress- ive. The western nations are Christian, there- fore progressive. We must not, however, be misled here by the use of, Orientals — of the East and Christians of the West, and thereby make the Bishop's concept geographical, for, be it remembered, Christianity itself is of Oriental origin. Besides this theory which ascribes progress to creed, there is another which imputes it to race. The ethnologist, who deals with racial differences, points out that the non-progressive races are black, or yellow, or red, or brown; the progressive races are white. So that Truth- ful James' question, "Is the Caucasian played out?" was equal to "is progress exhausted?" In the Marxian conception, this race factor is recognized as having importance, and is given a place, though not the first. The creed theory it totally rejects; regarding any creed as belonging almost entirely to the domain of effect rather than of cause. But Socialism advances a cause which neither of these schools recognize ; it regards those social changes which constitute social progress as due to changes in the mode by which the peoples affected produce and dis- 186 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND tribute their wealth. Although this is n.ot the only factor recognized by the Marxian con- cept, including as it does due recognition of race, climate, fertility of soil, mineral wealth, geographical position, etc. — all "material" factors — yet this "economic" factor is, and must remain the "chief" factor in our theory, as it is in fact. We ask where is there a nation which has reached modern civilization without adopting the capitalist mode of production? If we are asked where is the nation which has achieved our civilization without being white, or accept- ing Christianity, we answer — Japan. Not by our sending missionaries, but by the Japanese importing our machinery, has Japan become one of the leading bourgeois powers. There are not lacking those who contend that the western nations have advanced, not because of creeds, but in spite of them. These people do not rest their arguments against the creed-makers merely on the past behavior of the latter, they maintain that the theologian is today, as aiways, a reactionary. As an example of this, we may observe the Bishop's opposition to public schools. He says: "The State has taken control of education, and is thereby weakening one of the most BISHOP SPALDING 187 essential and vital social forces — the sense of responsibility in parents. It has, in conse- quence, been led- to exclude religious instruc- tion from the process of education ; has, in- deed, abandoned the work of education, and contented itself with some sort of mental train- ing which sharpens the intellect but leaves the moral nature untouched and unraised. As a result, the young lose reverence, lose the power of discerning what is high and noble, and are only a more enlightened sort of bar- barians. Had the State confined itself to en- couraging and assisting the religious denom- inations to found and maintain schools, and to giving aid to private educational enter- prises, it would have acted in harmony with our theory of government, and we should be today a worthier, more religious and not less enlightened people ; while, from an economic point of view, education would have been made vastly cheaper." Whatever truth there may be in the conten- tion as to the greater cheapness of parochial school education, may be safely set down to the inferior quality of the parochial article. The crowding of too many children into one class is a vice of the public schools; it is still worse in the parochial schools. Again, in the public schools teachers' sal- 188 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND aries are too low so that the best brains seek other professions. In the parochial schools the wages of teachers are still smaller and their mental equipment correspondingly lower. The mental status of teachers is not increased by regarding as important the ability to recite catechisms and count beads. Happily the Bishop is a voice crying in the wilderness when he says that education should be limited to private enterprise. We have not forgotten what a tragedy-farce the private schools were in the good old days when they had the field to themselves. Their funeral knell rang when Charles Dickens wrote "Nich- olas Nickleby ,, and gave the world a glimpse of the ill-starred Smike. He bemoans the exclusion of religious in- struction from the schools, but seems to rea- lize its inevitability after the schools were once taken charge of by the State. Here again he is right. The various attempts of the authorities to allow religious teaching in the schools have always given the public a chance to observe how farcical it was. Especially has this been the case in Protestant countries where the church itself is split into so many small pieces. The moment the school door is thrown open to religious teaching, a bitter and disgraceful BISHOP SPALDING 189 quarrel begins as to which of these fanatical sects shall do the instructing. Presently the fur flies in a way that would make a Kilkenny cat fight look like a peace conference. Then a disgusted public speaks up and says there shall be no more of it. Thus is progress achieved through the internecine strife of its enemies. To say that the public school weakens par- ental responsibility is a rather mild and polite way of saying that the public school tends to break up the home. If the Bishop believed that all children should be educated at home by their parents themselves this objection might have some weight, but it is not easy to see how parental responsibility is weakened by sending them out to a public school any more than by sending them out to a parochial school in the next block. The argument that in the latter case the parent has more to say about the kind of education given is more specious than true. The truth is that it is the priest who is served and not the parent; wherever the wishes of the priest and the parent conflict the priest's will prevails. [At this point in the lecture a priest sitting about the middle of the main floor interrupted and asked to be allowed to ask a question. Mr. Lewis agreed. He said: "When the 190 TEN BLIND LEADERS OP THE BLIND Catholic church undertakes the work of edu- cation through its parochial schools, does it not shoulder a heavy burden?" Mr. Lewis replied : "Yes, the burden is indeed too heavy for them ; they have our sympathy ; they have it to such an extent that we propose to befriend them by relieving them of that great burden."] On this question of leaving children to the tender mercies of private enterprise, Spencer and Spalding stand on common ground. Spen- cer foresaw what Spalding overlooked, viz.: that the logical outcome of the State's train- ing the child's mind would eventually be the State's feeding the child's body. Spencer was appalled at the idea of so far interfering with the rights of the individual (in this case the right of parents to starve their children if they could not afford to give them food, and the right of the child to starve should its parents be poor). It is clear that Spalding would have agreed with Spencer on this point also, for he says : "The tendency is now to give the State control of the public charities and works of reform, whereas the proper method to pursue is to have the State encourage and assist de- nominational and private beneficence." And so it comes to pass that the only cities in the world where school children are prop- erly fed, bathed and clothed are those Euro- BISHOP SPALDING 191 pean municipalities such as Lille, Ivry, Mont- lucon, etc., where Socialists are in a majority on the city council. The agitation for simi- lar provisions in the public schools of England has greatly increased since the Socialists in- creased their strength. For these provisional measures, pending the establishment of a saner social order, Social- ists are proud to be held responsible. We believe with John Ruskin: "Whether there be one God or three; no God or ten thousand, children should be fed, and their bodies should be kept clean." There is another reason for the abolition of theological education from the public schools, and the triumph of the schools so emancipated over their theological competitors. This rea- son goes to the core of the problem. A stupid slave was good enough for feudal- ism. This because the feudal mode of pro- duction was exceedingly simple, being really nothing but the daily repetition of a few acts. The serf required very little instruction to make him an efficient slave, and the less he received, consistent with this efficiency, the less likely was he to revolt. So his masters, lay and spiritual, kept his mind enshrouded in darkness. To reduce education to this happy mean has 192 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND also been the constant aim of the bourgeoise. But the standard for an effective wage-slave is vastly higher than it was for the serf. The wage-slave must handle, and indeed create, complex machinery, he must understand intri- cate processes. If his labor is to produce a maximum of surplus value, reading and writ- ing can only be the beginning of his educa- tion. Many skilled mechanics require and pos- sess an education that is essentially superior to that of the average university man. These workers the capitalist must have and a theological atmosphere fails to produce them. The capitalist is willing to have his workers kept sufficiently ignorant to keep them from rebelling, but he must have a sys- tem of education that will not wholly destroy their natural intelligence and render them hopelessly stupid. Bourgeois nations, which have retained the theological education of the parochial schools, have paid the penalty; they have been driven to the wall in the struggle for existence. The capitalist's present need for an educated slave reveals one of the inherent contradictions of bourgeois society. "Educated slave" is a con- tradiction of terms, and the rule of capital is doomed to meet defeat at the hands of a soda' force of its own creation. BISHOP SPALDING 193 No matter what happens the Bishop is deter- mined that the State should keep its hands off education and everything else. He says : "There is in innumerable minds, who have a horror of the current Socialistic doctrines, an unconscious leaning toward Socialism, which is seen in the tendency to enlarge the powers of the State. The founders of the Republic held that the State should assume no authority over the individual, save such as is indispensable to the general welfare. " That is precisely the point at issue, that question as to what is and what is not "indis- pensable to the general welfare." The major- ity of Americans regard the public schools as "indispensable to the general welfare ,, and are little disposed to give any serious considera- tion to the Bishop's opinions to the contrary. The Socialist is just as well satisfied with this premise as the Bishop seems to be. He be- lieves the abolition of private property in the instruments of production, is "indispensable to the general welfare." This argument places the whole matter on a utilitarian basis, which experience has shown to be very dangerous ground to take for a Bishop, who is committed in advance to a certain position, no matter what facts may develop later. 194 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND How thoroughly reactionary the Bishop is on this whole question of education comes out in his statement as to what should be its chief aim. He formulates it thus: "The proper nourishment of our spiritual being is not knowledge or speculative truth. What we merely know hardly enters into the fiber of our higher nature. Hence the infor- mation we get in school about the surface of the earth and the stars, about kings and wars, about algebraic and geometric problems, about philosophies and literatures, neither makes a deep impression nor is long remembered. Such information does not so attract us as to cause us to live with it and find in it our habitual nourishment. It has therefore little to do with the formation of character. When we ask what kind of man one is, we do not mean to inquire about his information or his pos- sessions, but about his character; and to get insight into his character we wish to learn, not what he knows, but what in his inmost soul he believes, hopes and strives for." There is no mistaking the meaning of this. It means the superiority of faith over knowl- edge, of gullibility and credulity over scien- tific caution and a determination to get at the facts. It is the proclamation of the supe- riority of the priest over the scientist, and, BISHOP SPALDING 195 quite naturally, by a priest. If we allow Hux- ley to speak for the other side of this ques- tion, he boldly asserts that to believe without good evidence is immoral. One of the shrewdest tricks of every ruling class, and particularly the present one and its intellectual lackeys, is to glorify poverty. It is here that bourgeois hypocrisy rises to its high-water mark. Here the Bishop is in his native element. Speaking of the social gulf between rich and poor he says: "That the cause of this disparity of condi- tion is moral rather than economic, whoever observes may see; and this fact gives empha- sis to the great truth that all real ameliora- tion in the lot of human beings depends on religious, moral and intellectual conditions. Money does not make a miser rich nor its lack a true man poor." Again : "For the most fortunate men life is full of difficulties and troubles ; for the poorest it may be filled with light, peace and blessedness." Be it observed that the light here referred to is spiritual light, "the light that never shone on sea or shore." Other kinds of vulgar and largely unnecessary (though not for Bishops) light such as electric light, and gas light, and \cQ TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND sunlight, "the poorest" usually contrive to dis- pense with. Experience also shows that the bishops have always been willing to take the money, and leave "the poorest" all the bless- edness. Really, Socialism would not be so obnoxious to this kindly old gentleman if it did not pro- pose to abolish that poverty which he regards as "indispensable to the general — and spir- itual — welfare of those who suffer it — though he himself wants none of it. Poverty is a very good thing — for somebody else. Any- body is welcome to Spalding's share. He says: "In a Socialist State, in which the universal ideal is that of physical well-being and com- fort, the sublimer moods which make saints, heroes, and men of genius possible would no longer be called forth. If all should receive the same reward, whatever their labor, spon- taneity would come to an end and progress cease, and such an equality would finally come to be a universal equality in indolence, pov- erty and low thinking; while from an ethical point of view, it would seem to be unjust that the same reward should be given to ever kind of labor." All men are convinced of the value to soci- ety of men of genius, so long a* they do not BISHOP SPALDING 197 come before we are rea^dy for them, which, unfortunately, they usually do. Anyhow our children repair the wrong with monuments of stone for the loaves of bread which we denied them. Now comes Socialism with a proposal to make the bread supply independent of any particular degree of brightness or dullness, so that even a genius need not necessarily starve to death. But the Bishop will have nothing to do with any such unprecedented innovation. Every- body knows that genius and a garret are in- separably joined, and what providence has thus put together let not sacriligious persons take apart. Away with these hare-brained Utopian enthusiasts who imagine that genius might be able to thrive without being starved in a garret. What malformed brain was that which gave forth the idea that all labor might or should receive the same reward? Why should society treat two men alike? Why should a man who makes bricks have as good food as a man who makes sermons? Why should the man who shingled the Bishop's dwelling live in as good a house as the Bishop himself? The Bishop asks why and his own answer is — prepos- terous ! And now we feel at liberty to ask the indig- 198 TEN BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND nant follower of the lowly Nazarene what he and his like have meant by this two thousand years of cant about the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man? What kind of a brotherhood? A brotherhood in which the brother with a weaker body or less cunning brain, shall be fed on poorer food and wear inferior clothing, and live in a less desirable house? Is this the mouse your mountain has brought forth after all these centuries of labor? Nay, gentlemen, you are not in earnest. You have found for yourselves that "physical com- fort and well-being" which you are afraid would be so harmful to others, and now in your easy chairs, in your comfortable parlors, you have forgotten your mission — if you ever had one. The world is weary of your pretenses. It no longer fears your fulminations. You have had your chance and you have always brought ridicule upon the best there is in your faith, and now it requests you to step aside and give room to earnest men and sincere women,, who really believe in, and labor to realize that doctrine of human brotherhood which you have preached so long in sniffling tones, and which in your hearts you have always despised. U. C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES CDMba3MTm