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 PREFACE 
 
 This is a book about the enduring conditions of 
 peace, and the production of an atmosphere un- 
 favourable to war in the future ; but it is not a 
 book about the ending of the present war, or about 
 diplomatic arrangements for providing directly against 
 its recurrence. Its thesis is in a word that the nature 
 of our patriotism is what creates the peaceful or 
 the warlike atmosphere ; and that the nature of 
 our patriotism is displayed and operates primarily 
 through the degree in which rights are organised within 
 the social and political community. This is its 
 operation ; but what it ultimately depends on is our 
 conception, whether implicit or explicit, of the good 
 we chiefly desire, and whether it lies in the things 
 which diminish by sharing or those which have the 
 opposite character. The warlike atmosphere means 
 disease within the State ; the healthy State, how- 
 ever strong, is non-militant in temper. Such is 
 Plato's diagnosis ; I hold it to be eternal truth. The 
 philosophical theory of the State, so far as it has 
 been diverted from this path, has missed its goal ; 
 but it has not been so far diverted from it as under 
 the influence of resentment many are assuming to-day. 
 The greater part of these studies deal therefore 
 with purely social problems. They were not written 
 in view of war complications, and may seem irrelevant 
 
 v
 
 vi SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 to them. My point in bringing them together is to 
 display the organising power which belongs to a 
 belief in the supreme values — beauty, truth, kind- 
 ness, for example — and how a conception of life 
 which has them for its good is not unpractical, but 
 in its unbiassed many-sidedness of working is the 
 most effective and practical purpose the world has 
 seen or can conceive. 
 
 It is a life like this, I suggest, which is the only 
 sound and solid foundation for the will to peace. 
 For no other will is directed to peace for its own sake, 
 and no other, therefore, is proof against new com- 
 binations, new temptations, new alarms. To increase 
 the number of persons who value things in this way, 
 and to adapt political forms to the expression of 
 their will, is, I suggest, the only infallible road, however 
 long, to the immense diminution, if not to the aboli- 
 tion of war. Perhaps only to its immense diminution ; 
 for war means after all that there are things which 
 man values more than his life or the life of others. 
 And while this is so — and could we wish it to be 
 otherwise ? — can war be abolished absolutely and in 
 principle ? For, although the highest values are not 
 competitive and cannot set men fighting, you can 
 never be sure that mistakes as to the conditions of 
 their attainment may not do so. 
 
 Our view of patriotism is not quite familiar, and 
 seems to me much profounder and more pregnant 
 than that commonly current. In their patriotism, 
 their feeling for the community, Hegel tells us, 
 people are apt to follow their custom of being generous 
 before they are just, and excuse themselves by a 
 potential romantic magnanimity for a lack of prosaic 
 everyday loyalty to the commonwealth. But it is 
 this latter, the sense of dailv dutv, which is real
 
 PREFACE vii 
 
 patriotism — the foundation and seed - plot of the 
 former. This ought we to have done, and not to 
 leave the other undone. 
 
 My point is throughout, then, that the really 
 important thing is also the thing open to all of us ; 
 the amelioration of the social spirit and social detail 
 here where we live ; and that this is the principal 
 ground on which the victory of all humanity is to be 
 won, because it alone can furnish a solid foundation 
 on which extended unities of will can be built up. 
 I shall recur to the reasons for this in the conclusion. 
 But I repeat here that the essential thing in all 
 international agreements is the quality and real aim 
 of the will that sustains them ; and that throughout 
 great communities and systems of these, this will 
 can only be in stable harmony in so far as it possesses 
 that outlook on life which takes the supreme values 
 as its criterion and embodies them in a well-ordered 
 community. 
 
 All the papers except the concluding essay have 
 been previously published ; — fourteen of them (I. -XI. 
 (3)) in the Charity Organisation Review, one (XII.) in 
 the International Journal of Ethics, and one (XIII.) in 
 the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. I have to 
 thank in every case the proprietors of these journals 
 for permission to reprint them. 
 
 BERNARD BOSANQUET.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 i. 
 
 ii. 
 in. 
 
 IV. 
 
 v. 
 
 VI. 
 VII. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IX. 
 
 X. 
 
 XI. 
 
 XII. 
 XIII. 
 
 XIV, 
 
 The Teaching of Patriotism 
 
 Atomism in History .... 
 
 Is Compensation necessary to Optimism ? 
 
 The Quest of the Real Thing . 
 
 True and False Idealism . 
 
 The Meaning of "Ideal" and " Charity 
 
 The Meaning and Relation of " Politics " and 
 
 " Charity "....... 
 
 Selection by Maintenance of a Social Standard 
 The Affinity of Philosophy and Casework 
 " Reflections on Violence" .... 
 
 Three Lectures on Social Ideals — 
 
 (I.) Justice ...... 
 
 (II.) Ownership and Management . 
 (III.) What Every One Wants 
 A Moral from Athenian History 
 The Function of the State in promoting the Unity 
 
 of Mankind ..... 
 The Wisdom of Naaman's Servants . 
 Index ...... 
 
 1 
 
 20 
 41 
 65 
 84 
 
 97 
 
 115 
 136 
 161 
 183 
 
 195 
 211 
 229 
 250 
 
 270 
 302 
 321 
 
 IX
 
 THE TEACHING OF PATRIOTISM 1 
 
 I presume that the first necessity in teaching a 
 subject is to set our own ideas in order. And an 
 attempt in this direction is what I have principally 
 in mind this evening. The technique of teaching I 
 must leave to those who have made it their special 
 duty. But it has occurred to me that certain passages 
 from great writers to which I shall call your attention 
 might conceivably be made useful in the actual work 
 of schools. That, however, is not for me to say. 
 
 1. First, then, as to the current ideas of patriotism. 
 
 I remember a distinguished naval officer observing 
 to me : "Of course, patriotism should be taught in 
 all the schools." My response was not too eager, 
 because I did not feel sure what he might mean by 
 patriotism. I have since noted with pleasure that 
 he has taken as an example of patriotism the arduous 
 and courageous work of an elementary school-teacher 
 in remote and thinly populated districts of our 
 colonies, offering to them a well-merited meed of 
 praise. It seems, therefore, that I was too sceptical, 
 and that his conception of the patriot's temper was 
 not militant or self-seeking, but large and sound. 
 
 But again, in conversation with a very well-known 
 
 1 Address given in 1911. 
 
 i B
 
 2 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS i 
 
 soldier, it occurred to me to remark upon the high 
 qualities which, as he had just told me, were becoming 
 necessary for the simplest work of the private in the 
 ranks — qualities as high as those which in previous 
 warfare had been demanded of an officer — and it 
 seemed to me that this raising of the standard might 
 have an important influence on our future attitude 
 to war. We could make, I thought, and should be 
 obliged to make, a better use of such men than as 
 food for powder at a shilling a day. Here I did not 
 gain my point. The officer responded that no man 
 could be too good to die for his country. True, of 
 course, but if it is fine to die for a cause, it is finer, 
 perhaps, to live for one. 
 
 Not that I disparage the old traditional patriotism 
 — the dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. We have 
 it already in Homer conjoined with a wonderful 
 elevation of mind, when Hector, threatened with 
 adverse omens, brushes aside the superstition with 
 the answer : " The one best omen is to be fighting 
 for your country." Faced in the spirit of the civilised 
 man, death is no doubt a splendid test of character. 
 
 They were mere chance remarks, of course ; but 
 so far, I think, my sailor had deeper notions than my 
 soldier. 
 
 Then, again, the " patriot " in politics has not 
 always been a creditable figure. Hear what one of 
 the wisest and truest-hearted of Englishmen had to 
 say about them. " Patriotism having become one 
 of our topics, Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong, 
 determined tone, an apophthegm at which many will 
 start, ' Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.' . . . 
 I maintained that certainly all patriots were not- 
 scoundrels. Being urged (not by Johnson) to name 
 one exception, I mentioned an eminent person. But
 
 i THE TEACHING OF PATRIOTISM 3 
 
 Johnson argued that his political honesty might be 
 only apparent." (Of course, this has to do with the 
 mixed faction that took the name of " patriots " 
 when in opposition against Sir Robert Walpole.) 
 
 Well, then, evidently we have in patriotism an 
 immense natural force and magic traditional watch- 
 word which you may appeal to with less or more 
 justice and common sense, and which is easily made 
 capital of by foolish or unscrupulous politicians. The 
 question is how to deal with this great force so as to 
 keep it alive against coldness and pessimism while 
 making it a serviceable spring of good life instead of 
 a source of brainless and often fraudulent clamour, 
 or at best a dangerous fanaticism. 
 
 2. Patriotism, we have said, is an immense natural 
 force, a magical spell. It rests, I suppose, mainly on 
 three things : your family and kindred — the tie of 
 blood — which extends to the nation as a whole ; your 
 home — the actual place and land with which you have 
 ties of custom and affection ; and, what includes these 
 two and more, your whole power and means of 
 acting upon the world — language, ideas, modes of 
 life, social habits. 
 
 Broadly speaking, the limit of a country or nation 
 is the limit of a common experience, such that the 
 people share the same mind and feeling, and can 
 understand each other's ways of living and make 
 allowance for each other so that the same laws and 
 institutions are acceptable and workable for all of 
 them. It is not race ; it is a de facto problem. You 
 have extreme cases, of course, in England and Ireland 
 or India, Germany and Alsace-Lorraine. In what 
 degree have they this common experience, and what 
 institutions correspond to the amount of it they 
 have ? And so with the British Empire in general.
 
 4 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS i 
 
 And, of course, there are cases of freemasonry 
 going outside what is clearly a nation, say England. 
 There is a freemasonry between, perhaps, the most 
 prosperous classes of all countries, and again between 
 the wage-earners of all or many countries. They are 
 tending to make common cause independent of 
 nationality, and a very good thing too. And it would 
 be madness to construe patriotism in such a way as 
 to set it in antagonism to these results of a common 
 civilisation and common problems. We want them, 
 I take it, to increase and multiply. We want men 
 to come together more and more on any sound and 
 genuine basis of sympathy. 
 
 All places that the eye of heaven visits 
 
 Are to the wise man ports and happy havens, 
 
 and still more so, I suppose, to the wage-earner who 
 has a good trade in his hands, unless there is a labour 
 exclusion policy. 
 
 We can see, then, from all these exceptions and 
 limits to the sense of common life on which patriotism 
 rests that it must be intelligent if it is to be useful 
 and not a source of conflict. It is really stronger and 
 stronger as we learn to appreciate our inheritance — 
 e.g. our literature ; but it is an increasing danger 
 unless, while it grows stronger, it also grows wiser. 
 
 3. So it is all-important how you care for your 
 country. 
 
 Compare it with the case of the family — i.e. 
 consider that your family is to your country as your 
 country to mankind. 
 
 The family is just such another problem. Some 
 people will tell you that the family is the root of all 
 morality and civilisation ; and others will tell you 
 that it is the root of all selfishness and narrowness
 
 i THE TEACHING OF PATRIOTISM 5 
 
 and jobbery. And I should say beyond a doubt they 
 are both of them right. The family may be the 
 nursery of manhood (including womanhood) and 
 citizenship, or their grave. It all depends on how 
 you care for it — that is, whether your family affection 
 is influenced by a true standard of what makes life 
 worth living ; whether what you desire for the 
 members of your family is a life worth living ; and 
 whether, if you mean to desire that, you know 
 how to desire it. For the great thing in life is 
 that we have to learn what to desire and how to 
 desire. 
 
 Well, then, your family may either unite you with 
 your country or may cut you off from it. And just 
 so your country may either unite you with mankind 
 or cut you off from it. It all depends on whether 
 your love of country is penetrated with a just sense 
 of what makes life worth living. 
 
 I will take two fundamental points and illustrate 
 them by passages from great writers. 
 
 First, your love of country is not to be presented 
 in the light of a yearning for occasional acts of heroism, 
 but as a daily sober loyalty ; the recognition that the 
 working centre and purpose of life lies in our duty to 
 our fellow-citizens and in the law-abiding citizen 
 spirit. Here is the passage in which Plato represents 
 the citizen loyalty of Socrates, when he rejects the 
 proposal of his friends that he should escape from 
 the prison and evade the sentence of the law. You 
 may think that if you were asked some of the questions 
 which he imagines himself asked you would answer 
 more critically than he did. Well, no one could be 
 a sharper critic than Socrates. But when his own 
 civic loyalty is in question he accepts the social order 
 with a generous largeness of spirit.
 
 6 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS i 
 
 " See now, if we depart from this prison without the 
 city's leave, are we or are we not doing wrong to some one, 
 and that some one whom least of all we ought to wrong ? " 
 
 I do not understand. 
 
 Look at it in this way. Suppose, when we are on the 
 point of running away, or whatever you call it, from this 
 prison, the laws and the genius of our city were to stand 
 before us and ask us, " Tell me, Socrates, what it is that 
 you intend to do ? Are you not intending, by this action 
 which you take in hand, to destroy us the laws and the 
 entire commonwealth so far as in you lies ? Or do you 
 imagine that any community can continue to exist and 
 not be overturned, in which the judgments of the law 
 courts have no force, but are invalidated and undone by 
 the action of individuals ? " What are we to answer, 
 my friends, to such and suchlike arguments ? A man 
 who was a barrister would find a good deal to say on 
 behalf of this ordinance, which we are trying to annul, 
 which ordains that judicial decisions shall take effect. 
 Or are we to answer them that our reason is that the city 
 did wrong to us, and did not decide our trial justly ; is 
 that to be our reply ? 
 
 " Yes, that is so, Socrates." 
 
 But what if the laws make answer, " But, Socrates, was 
 not that just the covenant between us and you, that you 
 would abide by the sentence which the commonwealth 
 should pronounce ? " If we were to stare at them when 
 they said this, perhaps they would continue, " Pray, 
 Socrates, do not stare at us when we speak, but answer our 
 question, especially as you are in the habit of asking and 
 answering questions. Come now, what fault do you find 
 with us and with the commonwealth that justifies you in 
 going about to destroy us ? Were not we the authors of 
 your being, and by our means your father took your mother 
 to wife and you became their child ? Have you any 
 fault to find with those of us which preside over marriages, 
 that they are not good laws ? " I have no fault to find,
 
 i THE TEACHING OF PATRIOTISM 7 
 
 I should reply. " Well, and after you were bom, what 
 about the laws of nurture and education, according to 
 which you, like others, were educated ? Were they not 
 good laws, those of us which deal with those matters, and 
 which enjoined upon your father to educate you in art 
 and literature and in bodily serviceableness ? " They 
 were good laws, I should make answer. " Well, and after 
 you were born and bred and educated, can you maintain 
 in the first place that you are not our offspring and our 
 servant, both you and your progenitors ? And if this is 
 so, do you think there is equality of rights between you 
 and us, and it is just for you to retaliate upon us whatever 
 we go about to inflict upon you ? And whereas against 
 your father you had no such equal right as to retaliate 
 what he might do to you, to chide again when chidden, 
 to strike again when struck, or any such disobedience ; 
 yet shall you have such a licence against your country 
 and the laws that if we go about to put you to death, 
 believing it to be just, you will endeavour to retaliate 
 so far as in you lies, by undoing the laws and your country, 
 and will you maintain that in thus acting you are acting 
 right, you who so sincerely are a professor of morality ? 
 Or are you so clever, that you cannot understand, that far 
 above your father and mother and all your progenitors 
 there is a more precious and august and diviner thing, 
 that is, your country, a thing held in greater esteem both 
 among the gods and among all intelligent men ; and that 
 you ought to reverence her and give way and bow before 
 her when she is angry much more than to your father ; 
 and you must either gain excuse or perform what she 
 commands ; and you must suffer in silence what she 
 orders you to suffer, though it be stripes or imprisonment ; 
 and if she sends you to the war, to wounds or to death, 
 you must do it, and it is right ; and you must not yield, 
 nor give back, nor leave your place in the ranks ; but in 
 war and in the law court and everywhere else you must 
 perform what your state and your country shall command
 
 8 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS i 
 
 if you are not excused by her in the way prescribed. 
 But to use force is an unholy thing against your mother 
 or your father, and very much more so against your 
 country ? " What are we to say to this, my friend ? 
 Do the laws speak the truth or not ? 
 
 That is one thing ; true patriotism is the law- 
 abiding spirit ; the recognition that to fail in normal 
 citizen duty is so far as in you lies to make war upon 
 and undo the society and the State to which we 
 belong. 
 
 And then comes more positively the problem what 
 it is that particularly forms the guide and standard 
 of patriotism ; what it is that, if we desire it, will 
 keep straight our other desires ; and if we set our 
 hearts on it, like the kingdom of God and His 
 righteousness, then all other things will be added 
 unto us. 
 
 I wish to put before you at some length the passage 
 in which a great philosopher answers this question. 
 I speak of Fichte's addresses to the German nation 1 
 at the time, after Jena, 1806, when Prussia was 
 actually under the heel of Napoleon. The foundation 
 of the great University of Berlin, now perhaps the 
 w r orld's premier University, followed w r ithin five years 
 of Fichte's addresses in connection w r ith his plan for 
 establishing it, and he himself was the first Rector or 
 Principal. The plan of general education which he 
 refers to represents on the whole the impression made 
 on his mind by the work of Pestalozzi, but culminating, 
 of course, in the Universities. 
 
 Fichte's Works, vii. p. 265. — A country that has lost 
 its independence has lost therewith the power of inter- 
 
 1 See p. 317 below for an explanation and defence of taking my 
 description of patriotism from Fichte.
 
 i THE TEACHING OF PATRIOTISM 9 
 
 vening in the stream of time, and independently deter- 
 mining its course. So long as it remains in this condition 
 its destiny and its very chronology are measured off by 
 the foreign Power that rules its fate ; and from henceforth 
 it has not even a history of its own, but reckons its years 
 according to the incidents and epochs of foreign peoples 
 and kingdoms. There is but one condition on which it 
 can emerge from its present state, in which the whole 
 existing world is withdrawn from its operation. And this 
 is, that a new world should be created, which should 
 initiate a new period of history, the property of its creator. 
 . . . And if there is to be a world so created, the instru- 
 ment of a new ego and a new age for a generation that 
 has lost its former ego and its former history and universe, 
 it would be the duty of a broad interpretation of this 
 possible epoch to indicate what that world could be. 
 
 Now I, in my position, maintain that there is such a 
 world. And it is the aim of these addresses to demon- 
 strate to you its reality and its true possessor, and to 
 designate the means of its creation. 
 
 P. 274. — The result then is, that the remedy, which I 
 have promised to indicate, consists in the formation of a 
 new personality, such as has previously perhaps been 
 present in individuals, but never certainly as the self of 
 the whole and of the nation. And this means the educa- 
 tion of the people, whose former life has been extinguished 
 and become the accident of an alien history, into a life 
 completely new, such as either will remain its own exclu- 
 sive possession, or, should it pass from them to others, 
 will continue whole and undiminished, 1 though subjected 
 to infinite subdivision. In one word, it is a complete 
 alteration of the existing educational system which I 
 propose as the only means of maintaining the German 
 nation in existence. 
 
 P. 276. — . . . That which was lacking in the old educa- 
 
 1 Observe the reference here to the supremacy of those values 
 which are not diminished by being shared.
 
 10 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS i 
 
 tion was the power of penetrating to the roots of vital 
 action and emotion. This is what the new education has 
 to bring to the completion of the old ; and, whereas the 
 previous educational system at the outside educated 
 some faculty in the man, this will have for its task to 
 educate the man as a whole, and to make its culture no 
 longer a something that the learner has, but rather a 
 constituent factor of his personality. 
 
 Moreover, this previous education, limited as it was, 
 was applied only to a very small minority, who, therefore, 
 were termed the educated class. But the great majority, 
 on whom, strictly speaking, the commonwealth is based, 
 were almost wholly neglected by the educational art and 
 abandoned to blind accident. It is our intention, by 
 means of the new education, to form the Germans into 
 a unity which shall be inspired and animated throughout 
 all its members by this single aim. For if, once again, 
 we were to permit the separation between an educated 
 and an uneducated class, this latter would for certain 
 fall away and be lost to us. Nothing, therefore, remains 
 for us but to apply the new education absolutely without 
 exception to every creature that is German, so that it 
 may not be the culture of a class, but the culture of the 
 nation absolutely as such and of all sections of it without 
 exception. Thus all difference of classes, which other 
 grounds may tend to perpetuate, will in the province of 
 culture absolutely vanish and disappear ; and in this 
 way there will arise among us not an education of the 
 people, but a characteristically German culture of the 
 nation. 
 
 P. 283. — Further, man can only will what he loves ; 
 love is the sole, but yet the infallible, stimulus of his will 
 and of all his vital activity and movement. The states- 
 manship of the past, even in educating the social man, 
 presupposed, as a rule, secure and without exception, 
 that every one loved and willed his own sensuous well- 
 being ; and with this natural desire it associated artificially
 
 i THE TEACHING OF PATRIOTISM 11 
 
 through hope and fear the good will which it aimed at 
 producing, the interest for the common weal. Needless 
 to say that in presence of such an educational method the 
 man who had in externals become a harmless or useful 
 citizen remained, nevertheless, inwardly a worthless man. 
 For this is the very meaning of worthlessness, that a man 
 cares only for his sensuous comfort, and has no motives 
 but hope and fear for it, whether in a present or in a 
 future life. 
 
 Putting this out of sight, we have already seen that 
 such a method is useless for our purpose. Hope and fear 
 act not in our favour, but against us, and sensuous self- 
 love can in no way be drawn to our advantage. We are, 
 therefore, downright compelled by necessity to try to 
 produce good men, since it is only in such that the German 
 nation can continue to exist, while so far as the men are 
 bad it must be absorbed into an alien population. [The 
 more selfish classes were accepting office under Napoleon.] 
 
 We, therefore, have the task of replacing that self-love, 
 to which we can no longer attach any purpose serviceable 
 to the country, by another love which is directed im- 
 mediately and absolutely to the good for its own sake. 
 And this we have to plant and establish in the characters 
 of all whom we mean to count members of our nation. 
 
 In the Germany of to-day, 1 after the lapse of 
 over a century, many of these anticipations have 
 been fulfilled ; others, again, have not. But then is 
 it not in a large measure true that the cares of this 
 world and the deceitfulness of riches and the lust of 
 other things entering in, are in the Germany that we 
 know in a great measure choking the word and 
 making it unfruitful ? What we see there, however, 
 as among ourselves, is no doubt a struggle of ideas 
 and purposes, and it is not courteous or indeed 
 possible to pass judgment on the patriotism of a 
 
 1 1911.
 
 12 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS i 
 
 great neighbouring nation. We have enough to pass 
 judgment on if we look at home. 
 
 But enough has been said to elucidate the point 
 I want to make, which is this. No patriotism and no 
 politics are trustworthy unless they are kept sweet 
 and clean by a real and fundamental love for the 
 things that are not diminished by being shared — such 
 as kindness, beauty, truth. It may seem an un- 
 practical standard, but it is really the most practical 
 of all. Nothing else will lead you straight and 
 liberate you from class interests at home and from 
 national selfishness abroad. The whole mind, the 
 individual's and the nation's, is a system of ideas 
 and purposes ; and if the leading ideas are false, 
 narrow, and bitter, the rest of the system is neces- 
 sarily poisoned and distorted. The guardians or 
 garrison of Mansoul, Plato said, are to build their fort 
 " in music " — that is to say, in the universal love and 
 appreciation of the highest values of life. Is this 
 unpractical ? But just consider one only of a hundred 
 consequences. Think of the economic effect if all 
 consumption were guided by intelligent desires. 
 
 4. Have we got away from " the teaching of 
 patriotism " ? I think not. Let us draw out one 
 or two results. 
 
 Let us think of the question of national strength 
 in contrast with military predominance. 
 
 Of course it is the duty of a nation, as of an in- 
 dividual, to be strong. It is more than a mere pre- 
 caution or insurance ; it is part of an individual's 
 manhood and development, and it is part of a nation's 
 dignity. In a very imperfect and uncertain world it 
 is necessary to be prepared to repel force by force, and 
 at times to support by the ultima ratio a good cause 
 that is endangered. No one has more sternly insisted
 
 i THE TEACHING OF PATRIOTISM 13 
 
 on the duty of a State to be strong than have Plato 
 and Eichte, two of the greatest idealists of the world. 
 
 Now, of course, all the question of armaments and 
 military service is a very special and difficult question, 
 and I have not the least intention of entering upon it 
 in detail. All I say is this : you have to distinguish 
 between the demands of manhood, with national 
 dignity and security, and the lust of military pre- 
 dominance and interference. 
 
 And the way to be sure of keeping straight is to 
 cherish a patriotism which really and sincerely desires 
 for your country the best things in life, and others 
 only as a means to them. Because then we shall ask 
 ourselves in every doubtful decision, " Is this that is 
 proposed really necessary for the promotion of the best 
 life by means of my country and her dependencies ? " 
 Or is it an outcome of jealousy and selfishness and 
 the desire to play a conspicuous military part ? Of 
 course, the problems will always be difficult and 
 complicated. But if we approach them, and instruct 
 our experts to approach them, in that spirit, we shall 
 at least always keep our heads, and the main lines 
 of our policy will be sane and not aggressive, though 
 the nation will be formidable to aggressors. 
 
 It would perhaps border too closely on politics if 
 I were to discuss in the same light the conditions of 
 national wealth. But perhaps I may fairly suggest 
 that there is a heavy presumption against any 
 patriotism which holds the prosperity of one country 
 to be a disadvantage to another. Only a real devo- 
 tion to the values of which I have spoken can keep our 
 judgment straight in this respect. The reason is, 
 that it puts us in the attitude of welcoming the co- 
 operation and even the competition of other nations 
 in the sphere of truth and beauty and social im-
 
 14 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS i 
 
 provement ; and having adopted this attitude in 
 respect of the things which we value most highly, 
 we are not disposed to be jealous and suspicious 
 about other kinds of success. We believe that as a 
 principle it is sound to say that civilised nations at 
 least are contributors to a common good, and their 
 success is our success. 
 
 5. We may go on to apply these ideas to the con- 
 nection between patriotism and our duty to humanity. 
 
 We know that patriotism and humanitarianism are 
 apt to be thought antagonistic. And the reason of 
 this is interesting. For the fact is, humanitarianism 
 is not a very distinct idea. It has two sources which 
 are not in agreement. 
 
 Firstly, humanity as a fact, the existence of man- 
 kind, is no doubt a much wider fact than our country, 
 and commands our attention and our good will. But 
 then, as a mere fact, it gives us little or no guidance 
 and tells us little or nothing of what is desirable to 
 be done. The best for all these people, certainly ; 
 but what is the best ? This is a perplexity, for, 
 secondly, humanity as a quality, either as = culture 
 or as = a sensitiveness to the claims of mankind, is a 
 very rare quality, and least of all common to all the 
 human race. A great proportion of the human race 
 lead lives which give us no guidance as to what is 
 desirable for mankind. We cannot get any common 
 purpose out of them, and say "this is the humanity 
 we have to realise." 
 
 So one notices perhaps something weak-kneed in 
 humanitarianism. It wants to set up against patriot- 
 ism the common good of mankind. But there is not 
 very much that it can set up on this basis. For the 
 fact is, that the quality of humanity — whether culture 
 or humaneness — is rather to be discovered in the life
 
 i THE TEACHING OF PATRIOTISM 15 
 
 of the great civilised nations, with all their faults, 
 than in what is common to the life of all men. 
 
 No doubt you may have a horrible exploiting 
 patriotism which is in conflict with the few simple 
 things which we can say about our duty to mankind 
 as such ; I mean common honesty and kindness and 
 justice. Then no doubt the humanitarian is right. 
 
 But I think he soon comes to the end of what he 
 has to say, for after all our ideal of man is not taken 
 from the mass of mankind. 
 
 So we are brought back to this. Practically, if we 
 belong to one of the great civilised nations, our highest 
 sense of humanity is drawn from our own national 
 culture and kindness, only tempered by a respect 
 and sense of justice for the masses of mankind. Thus 
 in our best humanitarianism we do not really discover 
 a duty to mankind that is beyond, much less in 
 conflict with, our patriotism. Our nation, after all, 
 remains our instrument for doing service to humanity 
 and our main source of the ideal of humanity itself. 
 We may be ready to learn, of course, from the other 
 civilised nations, and also to gather hints from the 
 backward races themselves. The noble savage is not 
 altogether a fiction. But in the main our duty to 
 mankind will be dictated by that sort of patriotism 
 which values above all things kindness, truth, and 
 beauty, and this cannot be in conflict with whatever 
 services are possible to actual mankind. Only we 
 cannot say that in serving actual mankind in the 
 mass as it exists we are devoting ourselves ipso facto 
 to the highest humanity we know. Therefore it is 
 our nation which is our clue and ideal, even in the 
 service of man, and therefore again it is doubly 
 important here that our patriotism should be of the 
 purest kind. Nothing else will save us from turning
 
 16 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS i 
 
 our humanitarianism into exploitation. As an African 
 chief said, " First the missionary, then the trader, 
 then the gunboat, and then — oh Lord ! " 
 
 So then a true patriotism is in the first place a 
 daily and sober loyalty, which recognises the root of 
 our moral being in the citizen spirit and citizen duty ; 
 and in the second place is a love for our country as an 
 instrument and embodiment of truth, beauty, and 
 kindness, or, in the largest and profoundest sense of 
 the word, of religion. And this, I say, is the most 
 practical of ideals. The dominant question in all 
 practice is, What is worth having and at what price ? 
 And no one can answer this rightly unless his mind is 
 occupied by a sound and clear conception of what 
 is really best. I am positively convinced that it is 
 a mistake to suppose such a habit of mind to be un- 
 practical in commerce and industry. On the con- 
 trary, it is the basis of disinterested judgment and 
 the antidote to fanaticism and partisan bias and 
 blind self-deception, all of which moods are disastrous 
 in great affairs. What millions of money and oceans 
 of inefficiency a true love of health and beauty in our 
 towns might have saved us — yes, and in the country 
 too ! Yet if we had cared more for truth and know- 
 ledge we should have had all these ideas about kindness 
 and beauty. They all come from the Greeks. I give 
 you a single sentence, an expansion of Aristotle, by 
 one of his disciples of his own day, which contains the 
 whole doctrine in a nutshell. " So whatever choice 
 or distribution of worldly resources, whether of bodily 
 qualities or of wealth or of friends or of other goods, 
 will be most helpful toward the contemplation of 
 God ; that is the best and that is the most beautiful 
 standard of organisation ; and whatever arrangement, 
 whether by defect or by excess, hinders men from
 
 i THE TEACHING OF PATRIOTISM 17 
 
 glorifying God and enjoying Him, that arrangement 
 is bad." 
 
 6. One word of suggestion as to our own condition 
 in respect of those matters to which true patriotism 
 is devoted. What grounds has our patriotism for 
 hope ? What is the explanation of our frequent 
 pessimism about ourselves, and the disparagement 
 which we acquiesce in on the part of foreigners ? I 
 was a few days ago in the company of several men, 
 students of great distinction, one of them a very 
 learned foreigner who knows England well. The 
 conversation turned upon culture, and two things 
 struck me as interesting apart, and as forming a most 
 significant combination. 
 
 It seemed to be the European opinion, and to be 
 pretty well admitted by the English, that English 
 culture is defective, and more especially — and this 
 you may see any day in our own newspapers and in 
 the most friendly and sympathetic Continental litera- 
 ture — that the English mind is fundamentally lacking 
 in logical capacity. 
 
 That was one thing, and the other thing was that 
 politics and culture had no intrinsic connection. 1 
 That appears to be the Continental view, and admitted 
 on the whole at least by the English specialists. 
 
 Now what struck me at once was this, that this 
 disconnection of important spheres was in the first 
 place extraordinarily unfavourable to a reasonable 
 estimate of the British mind and attitude, and in the 
 next place was in itself, at bottom, a gross piece of 
 Philistinism, and absolutely opposed to the funda- 
 
 1 This seems opposed to what we have heard so much of lately, 
 the State-drill aspect of " Kultur." But when I was talking of 
 politics, I was referring to the study and practice of " self-govern- 
 ment," and what struck me was that between this and the liberal 
 arts no connection was seen by the scholars in question. 
 
 C
 
 18 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS i 
 
 mental notions of culture, as we draw them, say, from 
 the Greeks. The disconnection of things is in itself 
 a Philistine and pessimistic doctrine. No doubt de 
 minimis non curat lex, and we may applaud a successful 
 specialism up to a certain point. We all think it 
 rather fun, and perhaps sound in a limited sense, when 
 some one sings — 
 
 II y a dans la nature, il y a de belles choses, 
 De rossignols oisifs, de paresseuses roses, 
 De poetes reveurs, et de musiciens, 
 Qui s'inquietent peu d'etre bons citoyens. 
 
 But if you press it home, it is — is it not ? — the depth 
 of prose and Philistinism. Read it beside Homer or 
 Dante or Milton, and it becomes either a pretty little 
 joke or a poisonous fallacy. 
 
 But it is this untrue doctrine which is largely 
 responsible for the unfavourable estimate of the 
 English mind. Our unquestioned achievements are, 
 I suppose, in two directions : in poetry and in politics ; 
 and what we primarily care about are poetry, politics, 
 and religion where the two come together. When 
 people deny logical capacity to the English mind I 
 always take a distinction. I say, Yes, distaste 
 amounting to incapacity for formal logic, if you 
 please. 1 Leave that to others. But for concrete 
 logic, the creative spirit of things, what is really the 
 common basis of politics and poetry, I am convinced 
 there is not, and never has been, a national mind 
 more highly endowed than the English. I point to 
 the great organised institutions which have sprung 
 unaided from the brain of our wage-earning class. I 
 ask if the civilised world can show a practical logic 
 
 1 This is a concession for the sake of argument. I suppose Mr. 
 Bertrand Russell and his friends hold their own to-day with any 
 formal logicians in the world.
 
 i THE TEACHING OF PATRIOTISM 19 
 
 to match them. In a word, then, our patriotism may 
 rightly claim, I am convinced, an unequalled capacity 
 for the higher logic and for the higher culture, as 
 rooted, after the manner of the Greeks, in the genius 
 of organisation and a connected view and feeling of 
 the world. 
 
 But this is not all ; and it is true, I think, that 
 there is something wrong. We have been too com- 
 fortable, too self-satisfied. Our culture is not worthy 
 of our capacity. We have not been thrown back 
 upon our bare faith in spiritual things, such as Fichte 
 gives utterance to, as the sole condition of survival. 
 We pay in lack of mobility for our tranquillity and 
 security. We have not, at least the middle class has 
 not, understood and believed in education. Our old 
 reputation in arms and in wealth has stood in our 
 way and given an isolated and selfish aspect to our 
 patriotism which really misrepresents it. It has been 
 difficult for us to realise that " one good custom may 
 corrupt the world," and that to develop our capacities 
 we must study in more schools than one. 
 
 So then a true and pure patriotism is what above 
 all things we need, and there is no race that has for 
 it a greater capacity. But it is not to be got without 
 pains and labour.
 
 II 
 
 ATOMISM IN HISTORY 1 
 
 1. I suppose that the interest which brings us to- 
 gether in this room, and which animates the work 
 of the School whose session we are opening, may be 
 described in the widest sense as a sociological interest. 
 To what methods, to what general course of ideas, we 
 are pledged by this description of our interest is a 
 further question, which I propose this evening — cer- 
 tainly not to determine, hardly even to discuss, but, 
 perhaps, to illustrate. 
 
 Many of us are aware that within the great Uni- 
 versity of Paris, and echoing throughout the whole 
 system of primary, secondary, and superior education 
 in France, a controversy is proceeding in which 
 sociology figures on the one side as the hero of reform, 
 on the other as the incubus and evil genius of true 
 national culture. Many problems, almost all problems, 
 affecting the deeper aspects of learning and education 
 are at issue in this dispute. To all of these we have, 
 I think, in England analogous problems to-day ; none, 
 perhaps, exactly the same. It would therefore not 
 be becoming in me, nor indeed at all within my 
 competence, to take sides sharply in internal con- 
 
 1 An address delivered to the London School of Sociology and 
 Social Economics, 1911. 
 
 20
 
 ii ATOMISM IN HISTORY 21 
 
 troversies affecting the details of the educational 
 system, examinations, diplomas, degrees, as organised 
 by our great neighbour. My effort will be, while here 
 and there not concealing my sympathies, rather to 
 indicate and touch the nerve of certain questions 
 of method and ideal which must and do raise them- 
 selves also for us in shapes determined by our own 
 development. 
 
 The issue is one of historical, philosophical, and 
 educational method and ideal. We will try to de- 
 scribe and understand it in order to draw suggestion 
 from it ; not to take sides on the whole. 
 
 2. I will state as the point of departure the difficult 
 question, which must have occurred in the simplest 
 form to all those of us whose education took place a 
 long time ago, What is history ? Perhaps it took 
 what is now stigmatised as the childish shape, " Is 
 history a science or an art ? " We must all of us have 
 observed — I owe the observation to my old teacher, 
 W. L. Newman, of Balliol — that the professional or 
 literary historian, the man who writes a narrative of 
 the remote past, is in a peculiar position. He is soon 
 superseded ; for touching but a few points in a vast 
 fabric of life, he soon has to yield to deeper and more 
 complex researches. Now our first resource perhaps 
 is to prefer to him the contemporary historian, who 
 in a sense can never be superseded, being himself a 
 document, a part of all that he has met. A narrative 
 of the remote past is to the work of the contemporary 
 writer — it was Mr. Newman's remark to me — " as 
 moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine." 
 Thucydides, Clarendon, the MSmoires de Retz, can 
 never cease to be read, when Grote and Macaulay, 
 and even their better-furnished successors, have met 
 the champion who is to overthrow them. " It's
 
 22 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 11 
 
 pretty much our myth, isn't it ? " a veiy competent 
 friend once said to me, of the most recent English 
 history. It expresses, that is, the view of the past 
 which interests and fascinates us at the moment. It 
 has points of kinship with the glorious lie which 
 Plato desired to have taught to the citizens of his 
 Republic. 
 
 What does the narrative historian really give you ? 
 I can furnish no short answer. 1 A suggestion which 
 attracted me for a time was that he brings to your 
 notice in an orderly way a number of documents and 
 achievements of intense human interest, the con- 
 nection and interpretation of which must always be 
 in some degree doubtful, but in each of which, as a 
 whole, the spirit of humanity speaks to your spirit. 
 
 And I still think there is something in this view. 
 But of course it is obvious that the contemporary 
 narrative is in a thousand ways undermined and 
 " pulverised " (to use a term which will recur) by 
 later knowledge. Till the historical day of judgment, 
 when the archives of nations shall be opened, the 
 truth will not be known of the astonishing events 
 which are happening to-day. 
 
 3. So then we come to a further stage. Is there at 
 all such a thing as history ? Or is it destined to be 
 absorbed into science, and to consist on the one hand 
 in formulae of evolution, on the other hand in social 
 and economic detail embodied in enormous manuals, 
 rather of the type of encyclopaedias than of narratives, 
 and also, of course, in collections of documents like 
 the great Corpora of Inscriptions ? I imagine that 
 the manual and the Corpus have come to stay ; and 
 that for narrative history the co-operative work will 
 play a great part in the future. The narrative is, I 
 
 1 See, e.g., Mr. Bradley's Presuppositions of Critical History.
 
 ii ATOMISM IN HISTORY 23 
 
 think, to some extent threatened. It is becoming 
 more and more purely provisional. 
 
 With this shape of the problem, viz. " Can there 
 be history?" including the former "What is history? " 
 we enter upon our immediate theme. 
 
 4. In 1898 there appeared in an English translation, 
 with a preface by Professor York Powell, the Intro- 
 duction to the Study of History, by MM. Langlois and 
 Seignobos, both of them Professors in the Faculty of 
 Letters at the Sorbonne, the leading institution of the 
 University of Paris, possessing by tradition a lofty 
 rank as the exponent of French culture, and also, as 
 I understand, decisive powers in the preparation and 
 selection of the personnel of the secondary education 
 of France. 
 
 This book, by a chance which stands me in good 
 stead to-day, it fell to me to review. And I remember 
 well the conflicting impressions which the treatise 
 left upon my mind. I saw, of course, that I was con- 
 fronted with a breadth and depth of learning, not 
 merely to which I had myself no claim, but such as I 
 had scarcely been aware of before as existing in the 
 world of letters. The book, known no doubt to most 
 of my hearers, is in the main an explanation of the 
 processes introductory to the composition of history — 
 the processes of ascertaining the existence and the 
 contents of documents, and when that is ascertained, 
 the process of criticism by which the true metal of 
 historic fact is to be separated from the errors, the 
 bias and other defective elements due to the com- 
 pilers of documents. To these several processes are 
 assigned special titles, e.g. Heuristic, and special 
 provinces of work, and they present themselves as 
 severally of enormous magnitude. There is also a 
 treatment of the construction of history from the
 
 24 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS n 
 
 results of documents so prepared. I will venture to 
 cite a few sentences from my notice of this work written 
 at the time, 1898, and therefore unbiassed by the 
 more recent controversy to which I shall later draw 
 your attention : 
 
 " The first two books deal with the discovery of 
 documents and with the analytic operations of 
 external and internal criticism by which an aggregate 
 of trustworthy facts is elicited from the statements 
 of authors. In this discussion there is embodied 
 much valuable detail with reference to the accessi- 
 bility of documents as they now exist, and the means 
 which are being taken, and which should be taken, 
 to improve it. The problem of division of labour as 
 between the critical scholar and the constructive 
 historian also presents itself ; and what is said on 
 this subject should be carefully weighed by students 
 who are choosing their life-work. It is shrewdly 
 pointed out how the intending' historian may find 
 himself fixed for life to the work of preliminary criti- 
 cism, if he has not chosen his subject with due reference 
 to the state of the documents. When the statements 
 of authors have been criticised and interpreted, and 
 reduced by this analysis to a ' powder of facts ' — it 
 is the writers' own metaphor — there begins the work 
 of re-moulding this powder into coherent know- 
 ledge. . . . The account of the constructive process, 
 which forms the third book, is more theoretical than 
 the first two books, and although full of suggestion, 
 may seem to the English reader not altogether con- 
 vincing. It is perhaps incidental to every detailed 
 work on method that the different parts of what 
 ought to be a unity appear to be divorced from one 
 another by too long an interval. Here, for instance, 
 the arch-historian, to whom the final construction of
 
 ii ATOMISM IN HISTORY 25 
 
 the fabric is to be entrusted, may seem to be too 
 far from his documents. The proposed method has 
 something of the same unreal air which clings to 
 Bacon's Theory of Induction. We can follow M. 
 Langlois' contention that history cannot be written 
 from documents which the historian has to put into 
 a condition in which they can be used ; but M. Seig- 
 nobos' more extreme version of this principle, when 
 he says that ' historical work cannot be done with 
 documents,' challenges the observation that, after all, 
 an historian ought surely to live with the actual relics 
 of the life which he desires to reproduce. The valu- 
 able warnings which the authors have given to the 
 interpreters of documents seem to us to become mere 
 mechanism if dissociated from a devoted personal 
 study of the documents themselves. There is, for 
 example, a footnote about Demosthenes and Aristo- 
 phanes which sounds to us, we must confess, a little 
 external and uncritical. The question of personal 
 study becomes still more urgent when we ask our- 
 selves, ' What is a document ? ' Our authors do not 
 ignore the study of civilisation in other sources than 
 books and papers, but the impression left upon the 
 reader's mind is, as it seems to us, that ' writing on 
 paper ' is the only kind of serious historical document, 
 and that this is valuable to history solely for the 
 ' facts ' which can be elicited from it. There is 
 something beneath this way of looking at the matter 
 which is connected with the writers' obviously hostile 
 attitude to the connection of history with ' meta- 
 physical hypotheses ' such as the notion of the spirit 
 of a people, and we wonder a little how their analysis 
 would deal with such a document as the Parthenon. 
 Like them, but still more strongly, Mr. York Powell 
 reveals the desire to identify history with a branch of
 
 26 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS n 
 
 science. M. Seignobos is well aware of the rocks 
 ahead on this course, since he clearly sees that science 
 can deal only with generalities, and he points out the 
 difficulties which arise from the hybrid nature of 
 history as partly science and partly narrative. But 
 yet the reader cannot dismiss from his mind the 
 question whether history, as here understood, will 
 not be better realised by manuals which deal in 
 encyclopaedic fashion with the various sides of life, 
 than by connected narratives such as tell the story 
 of a nation. And it is not wholly reassuring to learn 
 that ' histories still have a reason for existence even 
 after the multiplication of methodical manuals.' We 
 suspect that a fundamental problem as to the precise 
 delimitation of ' history ' will soon be raised by the 
 ' scientific ' line which our authors are adopting." 
 
 Perhaps I ought to confess that the Appendices, 
 describing the change then recently effected in the 
 French method of historical education, in the sense 
 of the authors' view, led me to remark that we here 
 see a true historical education at work. I am inclined 
 to-day to think that that piece of courtesy may have 
 been rash. 
 
 5. The peculiar characteristics of this treatise, 
 apart from the great mass of valuable warning which 
 it certainly contains, lie, then, in three kindred doc- 
 trines with their corollaries : 
 
 i. The doctrine of the pulverisation of documents 
 into facts, with its corollaries of an immense mechani- 
 cal subdivision of labour, and with the great im- 
 portance attached to the method of " slips," " fiches," 
 the bits of card or paper on which you note the facts 
 or references which are the dust to which you reduce 
 your documents. It is a very natural and necessary 
 method — I remember using it in 1868 to get up my
 
 ii ATOMISM IN HISTORY 27 
 
 Herodotus for Greats, by W. L. Newman's advice. 
 But, of course, it risks the loss of context, and I have 
 known the suggestion made in an English controversy 
 that some of the slips must have fallen under the 
 table. 
 
 Let me give an instance on each side — one of the 
 bathos which accompanies these methodic regulations, 
 another of the important bearing which may attach 
 to the most apparently trivial researches. The first 
 is a footnote in this book which the later contro- 
 versialists do not allow to be forgotten. The point is 
 that pictorial monuments are not always literal repre- 
 sentations. " Mediaeval miniatures show us persons 
 lying in bed with crowns on their heads ; this is to 
 symbolise their royal rank ; the painter did not 
 mean that they wore their crowns to sleep in " (p. 151). 
 A platitude like this argues ill for the critical spirit. 
 
 The second case is not from this book, but from a 
 memoir of Leopold Delisle — I reproduce it from 
 memory. The leaden seals of the Popes' bulls have 
 a circle of dots round the margin, and, on the effigies 
 of Peter and Paul which form the device, the beard 
 of Peter is also represented by dots. To count these 
 dots, how futile ! one might say. But it seems that 
 for each Pope the number of these dots is fixed, and 
 constitutes a precaution against forgery ; in one case, 
 seventy-three dots in all, twenty-eight in Peter's 
 beard, is the right number. A bull whose seal has 
 the wrong number is forged. This brings you across 
 very important matters ; the danger of forgery of 
 such documents, and the care used in the Papal 
 chancelleries to avert it. I have no doubt at all 
 that the knowledge of facts obtained by the minute 
 subdivision of labour which the authors inculcate 
 is something relatively new and very marvellous,
 
 28 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS n 
 
 and may have on any point the most important 
 bearings. 
 
 ii. A strong individualistic animus, I was about to 
 say, but it really is rather an atomic animus ; for 
 the individual as the author of ideas and interpreter 
 of phenomena, as the bearer of mind, is rather what 
 it slurs over. It is a doctrine reconcilable with belief 
 in collective action, though not with belief in the mind 
 or soul of a people. It is really a doctrine of the 
 hard fact. Your bedrock is the particular hard fact, 
 and the individual or group qua hard fact. The 
 genius of a race or nation, for instance, is entirely 
 denied to exist (p. 290). Professor York Powell does 
 not go so far. 
 
 iii. The equivocal verdict as to whether there can 
 be history, depending on the failure to distinguish 
 clearly between history and science, and also on the 
 extreme uncertainty revealed in the region of histori- 
 cal evidence. Narrative history, the suggestion is, is 
 the story of events which happen only once and which 
 greatly affect evolution, while Science deals with laws 
 and causes and general facts. I am inclined to think 
 that you got a better distinction by considering 
 History as the treatment of what has human interest, 
 while Science deals with nature abstracted from man. 
 Then you would have to admit an element of philo- 
 sophy in dealing with those human interests which 
 are not mere events — which by the other division 
 would fall to Science. 
 
 This book then represents for us what Carlyle 
 would have called the victorious analysis of 1898, 
 with a revolution in the same sense which has since 
 been further pursued in the highest educational and 
 cultural centre of France. From the authors' own 
 account, together with the more recent controversy,
 
 ii ATOMISM IN HISTORY 29 
 
 one gathers that what happened amounted to this. 
 A diploma called a Diplome d'Etudes Superieures, 
 involving a thesis on the new method, had recently 
 been made a sine qua non of the agrSgation — the 
 examination which admits to the highest posts in 
 the whole of the secondary education, and is held and 
 prepared for under the supervision of the Faculty of 
 Letters at the Sorbonne. This amounts to the 
 adoption by the Sorbonne of the methods, valuable 
 in mediaeval research, so famous in the practice of the 
 Ecole des Chartes. Since that time, a policy has also 
 been pursued of diminishing the importance of classical 
 training, which means in this context not only the study 
 of Greek and Latin, but of the great French writers 
 themselves, both in the baccalaureat or school-leaving 
 examination, and in the agregation itself. Even the 
 Dissertation for the Doctorate, as I understand, is 
 affected by the same tendency. 
 
 6. Now we come to the rebellion. 
 
 Like many English readers, I only became aware 
 this spring, through a notice in the Morning Post, of 
 the volume to which I now have to refer. It is called 
 U Esprit de la nouvelle Sorbonne, and consists primarily 
 of a number of very able articles which appeared in 
 L'Opinion from July to December 1910, over the 
 signature " Agathon," a nom de plume whose bearer 
 claims to represent the feelings and opinions of the 
 elite among the students of the University of Paris. 
 The campaign had a great success ; it elicited support 
 from many distinguished personalities, notably, for 
 instance, from M. Boutroux, a very well-known 
 philosopher, himself formerly one of the most eminent 
 Professors of the Faculty of Letters. It also had the 
 success of drawing more or less direct and full-dress 
 rejoinders from M. Croiset, the doyen of the Faculty
 
 30 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS n 
 
 of Letters, and from other leading members of the 
 Sorbonne. All these pieces are included in the volume, 
 and many questions of the first importance are 
 treated either directly or by the way. 
 
 I wish, as I said, not to take sides, yet not to 
 conceal my sympathies ; but mainly to indicate the 
 ground and nature of the questions at issue. 
 
 For the purpose of this controversy the Sorbonne 
 means, I take it, the Faculty of Letters of the Uni- 
 versity of Paris, housed in the Sorbonne building, 
 and reinforced in its present tendencies by the Ecole 
 des Chartes, which, I believe, all scholars admire for 
 its special work, and other institutions now housed 
 in the same buildings. 
 
 It is contended in the main, to put the gist of the 
 matter brutally, that the influence of M. Durkheim, 
 his sociology, and the pedagogic on which he now 
 lectures, reinforcing and reinforced by the mechanical 
 and pseudo-scientific view of historical procedure, has, 
 in the Faculty of Letters, banished philosophy, is 
 strangling literary culture, and is embarrassing his- 
 torical study itself. The matter is put in this way ; 
 but so far as it is a question of personal influence, 
 it is not one on which I can offer any opinion. I 
 have a high esteem for M. Durkheim, and believe 
 myself to have learned a great deal from him. And 
 if it is true that he carries all before him, that is 
 what a strong and enthusiastic man is likely to do, 
 unless and until a stronger than he shall come upon 
 him. I should be disposed, however, to think it 
 possible that a somewhat dogmatic tone may, as is 
 alleged, accompany the particular type of opinion of 
 which we now have to speak. 
 
 The contentions of " Agathon " are expounded 
 under three main heads — the Sorbonne against
 
 ii ATOMISM IN HISTORY 31 
 
 classical culture ; the Sorbonne against philosophy ; 
 the Sorbonne against secondary education. 
 
 The allegation is substantially the same in all 
 three cases : that alike in the teaching, and in the 
 approval of dissertations, pseudo- science pursuing a 
 mechanical routine and ideal is allying itself with a 
 pseudo-democratic spirit, which aims at a culture 
 accessible to all minds, by levelling down and not by 
 levelling up. 
 
 A very noticeable proportion of " Agathon's " 
 satire is directed against the abuse of the method of 
 slips, which Anatole France has already pilloried. It 
 is connected with the immense scope and importance 
 assigned by the victorious method to researches which 
 are properly preliminary, such as bibliography in 
 literature and in history, and in philosophy to the 
 victory of historical erudition over philosophical 
 exposition and interpretation. 
 
 P. 38. — " Every research begins with a collection 
 of slips, and they esteem you at the Sorbonne accord- 
 ing to the number of your slips. He is a great savant, 
 worthy of your respect, who has before him thousands 
 of these coloured bits of pasteboard, the infinitesimal 
 dust of knowledge " (note the reference to M. Seig- 
 nobos' idea of pulverisation). " For the ' Diplome 
 d'Etudes Superieures,' the preparation for which 
 occupies a whole year, the candidate employs over 
 six months in putting down the bibliography of the 
 subjects on slips. In forcing a task so essentially 
 passive on youthful minds, is there not the risk of 
 choking for ever their individuality and their in- 
 telligence ? " Form, it is complained, is becoming a 
 thing of the past. The candidate simply " tumbles 
 his box of slips into his book." 
 
 The false analogy with natural science is perhaps
 
 32 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS n 
 
 active here. Here, it is said, you have real work, 
 production, not exercises of translation or exposition. 
 " Agathon " joins issue. It is not really analogous 
 to the work of discovery and experiment in natural 
 science. They call it practical work, they call the 
 room where it is done a laboratory, they speak of 
 " cleaning your instruments " when they mean using 
 reliable texts. But this accumulation and copying 
 of minute facts and references is really an indolent 
 and depressing occupation ; and being made a sub- 
 stitute for the reading and interpretation, the trans- 
 lation or criticism of great authors in literature, for 
 the exercise of judgment and insight in history, for 
 thought and appreciation in philosophy, is really a 
 substitution of deadening mechanical labour for the 
 true toil and expression of the intelligence. The results 
 are said to be causing great uneasiness ; style, quality 
 of thought, precision of expression, are said to be 
 falling off among the candidates, and it is being widely 
 alleged that French, real French, is ceasing to be 
 written. 
 
 I think the whole question of the thesis and original 
 work at an early stage of education needs careful 
 consideration. 
 
 The raison d'etre is not the same in our sciences as 
 in natural knowledge. There you are dealing with 
 the material world itself, and you have every chance 
 of doing something fresh by simple methods. Our 
 world, that of human life, is more difficult of access. 
 You are not dealing with it by these methods, and I 
 believe that, as Ruskin said of art, a long discipline 
 under exponents of the great masters is necessary 
 to secure your effective entrance into the world of 
 mind. I think the dissertation should come pretty 
 late in social and philosophical training. One must
 
 ji ATOMISM IN HISTORY 33 
 
 remember, to have published a thesis is to have 
 acquired a past, and to have acquired a past is apt 
 to be an encumbrance for the future. That is one 
 of the questions of principle which this controversy 
 illustrates by the way. 
 
 7. I return to the main point. Here is 
 " Agathon's " summary of the state of things which 
 the revolution of method has produced in the Faculty 
 of Letters. " There is no longer a single course that 
 is strictly philosophical. There is nothing but 
 specialities. ... In the least important Lyceum of 
 Paris or even of the provinces, philosophy is more 
 efficiently taught, is assigned a higher rank, than in 
 the Faculty of Letters. How is the teaching staff 
 occupied ? M. Durkheim, a narrow sociologist, con- 
 temptuous adversary of all philosophy, is preaching 
 a sort of social catechism ; M. Levy Bruhl is studying 
 savages ; M. Georges Dumas the insane, and so 
 on. . . . Psycho-physiology, methodology, history of 
 doctrine, such are the branches into which the old 
 philosophy, no longer living, is broken up. ... If a 
 common spirit unites them, it is just the abhorrence 
 of all philosophy. Since the death of Brochard, 
 Rauh, and Hamelin, and the retirement of Boutroux, 
 there is no longer a philosopher in the Faculty of 
 Letters." " M. Bergson," a footnote adds, " has 
 twice been rejected as a candidate at the Sorbonne." 
 
 It appears (p. 96) that this state of things is in 
 substance admitted by the spokesmen of the Sorbonne, 
 and hopes are held out of some amendment. 
 
 The views of M. Durkheim' s book, De la Division 
 du Travail Social, are impeached in this context, with 
 reference to his morality of specialisation, and his 
 attacks upon the ideal of a general humane culture 
 and goodness. His view goes so far as to suggest 
 
 D
 
 34 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS n 
 
 that a new morality has to be founded on the ideal of 
 the division of labour, but this view seems to his 
 critics antagonistic to the conception of human 
 culture, especially to the French tradition of great and 
 lucid ideas, and to any complete ideal of human 
 excellence. Here we must be careful. Those of us 
 whose philosophy has been formed in sympathy with 
 Green's Prolegomena or with Bradley's Ethical Studies 
 will not be ready hastily to condemn a morality of 
 my Station and its Duties, any more than, on the 
 other hand, to admit the point of view from which it 
 claims to be a new and revolutionary conception. 
 But we should so far perhaps sympathise with M. 
 Durkheim's critics as to say that what is required to 
 give a vision of the social soul and spirit as realised 
 in my Station and its Duties — the universal in the 
 individual — is either a sound philosophy or a solid 
 common sense. The student of great masters has 
 the one ; the plain man has the other ; the man 
 who is obsessed in sociology by the ideal and method 
 of natural science in the wrong place — is it possible 
 that he has neither ? I certainly think that there is 
 a great truth in the idea of collective production and 
 creation even in the world of mind and of art, as you 
 find it represented, for example, in Professor Murray's 
 Rise of the Greek Epic. And the idea that a recogni- 
 tion of the general mind involves social despotism, 
 an idea which bulks largely in the criticism to which 
 I refer, seems in principle unjustified. But if it is 
 not the collective mind, but the collective hard fact — 
 e.g. the density of population — which is alleged as a 
 cause, then perhaps the critic has a good deal of right 
 on his side. " The teaching of ethics," M. Durkheim 
 is reported to have said (November 1898), " is a 
 lacuna in our instruction. I propose to fill it up.
 
 ii ATOMISM IN HISTORY 35 
 
 Let us set to work, and in three years we shall have 
 an ethics (une morale) " (L'Esprit, p. 101). It is in 
 essence, I suppose, the old idea of a natural history 
 of Ethics. 
 
 One more set of problems must be referred to. It 
 is what " Agathon " summarises under the head of 
 " The Sorbonne against Secondary Education." It is 
 in essence, as I said by anticipation, the question of 
 levelling down against levelling up, and the particular 
 points at issue are the position of Greek, Latin, and 
 literary French in the various examinations and 
 diplomas which lead up to the profession of secondary 
 teaching. It is in part the problem of classical 
 studies, too familiar to ourselves ; but it is to be 
 noted that throughout, under the head of classics, 
 there is included, as I understand, the study of the 
 masters of French literature and the practice of French 
 composition. The term crise du frangais — the peril 
 of the French language — is freely used in the dis- 
 cussion, and it seems to be admitted on both sides 
 that the great tradition of beauty and lucidity in 
 French writing is gravely endangered to-day ; though 
 how far this danger is due to educational " reform " 
 is a matter in dispute. 
 
 8. The connection of this great question with our 
 previous subject lies in the alleged prejudice which 
 brings a mechanical pseudo-science to the support of 
 a levelling pseudo-democracy, and, so the critics 
 allege, under the disguise of opening the higher 
 education to the people, is destroying the essentials 
 of this higher education itself. The standard of 
 primary education is invading the secondary — that 
 is the gist of the complaint. Of course we have the 
 problem here both in the old question of Greek and 
 Latin studies and in such special controversies as that
 
 36 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS n 
 
 raised by the Holmes circular. But as I said at the 
 beginning, they are far too vast for treatment in a 
 passing reference. I will, however, make mention, 
 for its independent interest, of one very remarkable 
 piece of evidence, a parallel to which we have known 
 in England in some remarks of the Master of Trinity, 
 Cambridge, on the English work of scientific candi- 
 dates, I think, for matriculation. 
 
 The evidence I refer to is nothing less than a 
 deprecation of a change introduced by Governmental 
 order in the standard of secondary education, which 
 removed an advantage previously given in the ad- 
 mission to the Polytechnic School to students who 
 held a certificate for Latin in the baccalaureate 
 (leaving-certificate). This deprecation emanates from 
 no less and no other a personage than the President 
 of the Comite des Forges — the Representative Com- 
 mittee of the Ironworks of France. As to the change 
 having been initiated by Ministerial order, it is 
 alleged all through the controversy that along with 
 pseudo-science and pseudo-democracy you have 
 pseudo-politics introduced into educational questions. 
 I really think I will read the whole letter, addressed 
 by M. Guillain to the Minister of Education. 
 
 Monsieur le Ministre, — A certain number of those 
 whom we represent having drawn our attention to the 
 disadvantages attending the suppression of the superiority 
 in marks, hitherto conceded to candidates for the ficole 
 Polytechnique who possessed the certificate for the first 
 portion of the baccalaureat with distinction for know- 
 ledge of Latin ; the Administrative Commission of the 
 Committee of Ironworks of France placed upon its agenda 
 an inquiry into the training received at the present 
 moment by our young engineers, both in the leading 
 schools and during their time spent at the University.
 
 ii ATOMISM IN HISTORY 37 
 
 It is in fulfilment of the mandate which has been 
 imposed upon us that we proceed, M. le Ministre, to 
 express to you the serious anxieties for the future of 
 industry which are aroused in us by the continuously 
 progressive enfeeblement of general culture among our 
 young assistants. 
 
 Although those who have the honour to be to-day the 
 leaders of French industry, and who therefore have to 
 play an important part in the charge of the present and 
 the future of our country, are not called upon to parti- 
 cipate in the elaboration of university programmes, and 
 are obliged to accept their assistants and successors such 
 as the University has trained them, they consider, never- 
 theless, M. le Ministre, that they are fulfilling their duty 
 in designating to you the disadvantages and the defects 
 which the working of these programmes has displayed in 
 practice. 
 
 We cannot too strongly invite your benevolent atten- 
 tion to the extreme importance of secondary education 
 from the point of view of the culture of our great scientific 
 colleagues. The instruction which is imparted in our 
 great scientific or technical schools, in the Polytechnic 
 School, in the Schools of Mines and of Roads and Bridges, 
 in the Central School of Arts and Manufactures, can only 
 operate on the foundation which it finds ; if it is purely 
 technical, it cannot impart general culture, and is ob- 
 structed even in its special object by the insufficient 
 preparation of its students ; if it consists in general 
 scientific culture, it is unable to initiate into this culture 
 minds which have not been trained or which have been 
 hurriedly specialised. 
 
 Now the chiefs of all our great industries pronounce, at 
 the present moment, that from whatever school they 
 emerge — Polytechnic School, Higher School of Mines, 
 School of Roads and Bridges, Central School of Arts and 
 Manufactures — our young engineers are for the most part 
 incapable of utilising to good advantage the technical
 
 38 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS n 
 
 knowledge they have received, because of their inability 
 to present their ideas in reports which are clear, well 
 composed, and expressed in such a manner that a reader 
 can grasp precisely the results of their researches or the 
 conclusions to which their observations have led them. 
 
 This incapacity has not merely the effect of diminishing 
 the value and the serviceableness of our assistants ; it 
 has, moreover, the great disadvantage of remarkably 
 diminishing the number of men whom the breadth and 
 precision of their intelligence, the depth and justice of 
 their judgment, mark out for the management of great 
 businesses, for the creation of new ones, and for the task 
 of maintaining France in that leading position in the 
 progress of the industrial arts and sciences, which, in spite 
 of her weakness in natural resources, her lucid genius has 
 hitherto secured her. 
 
 It appears to us, M. le Ministre, that this enfeeblement 
 of the general culture of our youth must have its cause, 
 not merely in the various reforms of secondary instruction 
 which we have seen taking place within a certain number 
 of years, and which have found their complete expression 
 in the programme of 1902, but still more in the spirit 
 which is carrying with it the whole of university education, 
 and which, with the view of increasing the number of 
 branches of knowledge accessible to our youth, is more 
 and more releasing them from the irksome but fruitful 
 discipline of personal effort. At the present moment, 
 while modern education is failing to furnish us with what 
 it promised, young people well armed for life, with full 
 command of the ordinary sciences and of foreign languages, 
 what survives of classical instruction is no more successful 
 in securing to the great schools, which have the task of 
 training the future captains of national industry, students 
 with the ample and vigorous culture essential to receiving 
 with advantage the higher instruction which they afford. 
 
 Consequently, M. le Ministre, we venture to invite 
 your most serious attention to the necessity of recasting
 
 ii ATOMISM IN HISTORY 39 
 
 the programmes of secondary education, and to the 
 danger of all measures, such as that which has occasioned 
 this letter, which may tend, by unjustified equivalences of 
 standard, to withdraw from secondary classical education 
 the preponderating part which it ought to play in the 
 training of the youths who are destined to recruit our 
 great technical schools. 
 
 (Signed) The President of the Committee of 
 the Ironworks of France. 
 
 9. Of course, throughout the controversy we can 
 see, and there is explicitly admitted, a certain reaction 
 against the methods of German scholarship and 
 research, accompanied, however, by a recognition that 
 an analogous reaction in favour of style, lucidity, 
 power of expression, is taking place in the German 
 universities themselves. Naturally, the French ideal, 
 which noticeably admits that its genius is rather 
 readily embarrassed by any extreme weight of learn- 
 ing, may not obtain from us quite the absolute homage 
 which it commands at home. Still, the whole con- 
 troversy, concerning as it does the intellectual and 
 practical life of a leading civilised nation from top to 
 bottom is, I think, of the highest suggestiveness. 
 For our part, in the immediate matter which brings 
 us together to-day, there are one or two points at 
 which it touches us. 
 
 In History I do not much doubt that co-operative 
 narrative, directed so far as may be to the main 
 connection of events which seem to have determined 
 evolution, will play a greater and greater part, accom- 
 panied by the manual and the Corpus. But we will 
 not, I think, admit a mere pulverisation of great 
 writings into a diamond dust of facts — or rather, we 
 will observe the great works and the actual spirit of 
 de facto peoples as leading achievements of humanity,
 
 40 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS n 
 
 whatever the anthropologist — and we will listen to 
 him attentively — may tell us about the realities of 
 race. And we shall not forget, I hope, that history, 
 after all, like other intellectual constructions, must 
 depend on the quality of the historian's mind. 
 
 And in Sociology we shall not, I presume, adopt the 
 methods which embody the prejudice that natural 
 science is the model of research. We shall realise that 
 mind is nearer to mind — an acute remark made in 
 the present controversy — mind is nearer to mind than 
 to matter, and in copying the methods of science we 
 are abandoning the advantage of our object of study 
 being not matter but humanity. We shall not, I 
 hope, be doctrinaire philosophers, but we shall remain 
 familiar with the world's leading ideas and retain our 
 freedom to employ those which we find illuminating. 
 
 And last and best of all ; it was, in a word, the 
 want of context, of a pervading life, that we saw 
 reason to dread and to deplore. From this, I think, 
 our studies are finally and absolutely preserved so 
 long as we remain faithful to our tradition of what 
 is in the full sense a practical training — work and 
 invention vitalised by its direct bearing on humanity 
 and not copied from a mechanical routine. I take it 
 that the spirit of our practical method is essentially 
 a spirit of context ; you cannot deal with human life 
 by slips which may fall under the table. Ours, I 
 think, is vital work, and in vital work and free ideas 
 we shall find the safeguard of our teaching.
 
 Ill 
 
 IS COMPENSATION NECESSARY TO 
 OPTIMISM ? l 
 
 1. Optimism and pessimism are current names for 
 opposite attitudes to life, and we are apt to think of 
 these attitudes as matters of temperament and cir- 
 cumstance, as just tendencies and occasions to look 
 upon the bright and upon the dark side of things 
 respectively. And no doubt this is in a measure 
 true. There are such moods and temperaments, and 
 health has a good deal to do with them, and success 
 and worldly prosperity also play a part. But if I 
 believed that optimism and pessimism meant this and 
 nothing more — a rose-coloured or sombre view of life 
 depending upon mood and circumstance — I should 
 not venture to stand up before you for an hour in 
 order to express what would then be just my fancies 
 — whether sick fancies or healthy. Such arguments 
 are always more or less like those of Tartarin of 
 Tarascon, clinging to the side of a crevasse, and roped 
 to a disciple of Schopenhauer, who has just expressed 
 the view that it would be a fine opportunity to be 
 done with life, by letting go and pulling the whole 
 party down. Tartarin appeals to him " L'existence 
 
 1 Inaugural address to King's College for Women, October 11, 
 1912. 
 
 41
 
 42 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS m 
 
 a du bon, que diantre ! a votre age, un beau garcon 
 comme vous." That is optimism in fear of its life. 
 It is a clever old joke that whether life is worth 
 living depends upon the liver ; but only one of its 
 meanings is true, and that very imperfectly so. It 
 depends on the man who lives, whether he lives 
 worthily, but not whether life is worth living. 
 
 I said that success and worldly prosperity have 
 something to do with these attitudes. But certainly 
 they have not everything to do with them. And this 
 truth, universally recognised, begins to take us a 
 little deeper into our subject. The facts do not bear 
 out our first commonplace idea, that optimism and 
 pessimism are just moods induced by health and 
 ill-health, by success and failure respectively. Think 
 of Wordsworth and the lesson he learned from the 
 leech-gatherer on the lonely moor. There is a deeper 
 secret underlying facts like these. There is a real 
 difficulty in what we might call the interpretation of 
 life. Its values seem not to reveal themselves quite 
 simply. The " pros " and " cons " and their sources 
 do not range themselves as we might have expected. 
 Both for instinct and for reflection there is a good 
 deal of perplexity. We not only get opposite judg- 
 ments about the worth of life, but we get judgments 
 on the same side which show very different degrees 
 of appreciation. We often have to sympathise with 
 our opponent more than with our partisan. 
 
 If we could even begin to trace the source of this 
 paradox, it would well repay an hour's consideration. 
 For superficial answers are not without danger, 
 especially in social work and problems, which I 
 suppose interest all of us ; it is all-important to have 
 our heads in the right direction on these matters. It 
 makes a difference, I am convinced, to every detail
 
 in OPTIMISM 43 
 
 of our everyday effort, to the spirit of our endeavour, 
 to our sense of value, and therefore to our dominant 
 aims. 
 
 In truth, the facts themselves, the facts of the 
 value of life, are paradoxical — that is, they are two- 
 sided ; and to hold the two sides together, to accept 
 the paradox and work it out, is essential for sanity of 
 judgment. 
 
 I will outline at once in two or three words the 
 conclusion I mean to suggest. I believe, then, in 
 optimism. But I add that no optimism is worth its 
 salt that does not go all the way with pessimism and 
 arrive at a point beyond it. This, I am convinced, 
 is the true spirit of life ; and if any one thinks it 
 dangerous, and an excuse for unjustifiable acquiescence 
 in evil, I reply that all truth which has any touch of 
 thoroughness has its danger for practice. It must 
 be many-sided ; and what is many-sided is always 
 liable to be wrongly grasped, and is quite easy to 
 caricature. But that is just why it seems worth 
 while to take a little trouble to find the right way of 
 approaching it. Great truths are great forces, and 
 great forces are apt to be dangerous ; but that is an 
 argument not for neglecting them, but for handling 
 them attentively and with precision. But I am lead- 
 ing you to expect too much, and I daresay — I almost 
 hope — that when I have come to an end you will 
 say, " Is that all ? " I almost hope it, for if you can 
 say that, why then some important things are matter 
 of more general agreement than I had supposed. 
 
 2. The use of the superlative in the words " opti- 
 mism " and " pessimism " is extraordinarily bold, 
 and seems obviously to imply things that go beyond 
 our knowledge. I will say a little about their history, 
 to explain this use, though I do not assert that it
 
 44 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS in 
 
 can be justified. It is connected, of course, with the 
 phrase " the best of all possible worlds." I take it 
 that the word pessimism embodies a retort provoked 
 by this. The former phrase has become common- 
 place, and I suppose is generally thought a little 
 ridiculous. In using it we think of the word 
 " possible " as an enlarging term, an equivalent to 
 imaginable, or " something that one could dream of." 
 The best of all possible worlds means, then, in popular 
 use, a world so obviously delightful and superexcellent 
 to our simplest apprehension that our dreams and 
 wishes could in no way go beyond it. And then we 
 think this a ridiculous thing to say of the world as 
 we fancy that we know it. We often meet with this 
 impatient denial that our world can be the best 
 possible world — the world we should like best. Now 
 I by no means admit that this denial is right — that 
 is, I do not think people always know what a tremend- 
 ous pretension they are making when they think that 
 their dreams and fancies can figure something better 
 than the world as it really is. But at all events it is 
 worth noticing what Leibniz probably meant by the 
 words we are apt so impatiently to deny. When he 
 said this world was " the best of all possible worlds," 
 he did not mean chiefly that we could dream of 
 nothing better. His word possible was a restricting, 
 not an enlarging, epithet. I think we may put what 
 he meant in this way. It is no use talking about a 
 world being the best unless it is at least possible. 
 And possible is not an idle word ; it does not mean 
 anything you can dream or fancy ; it fixes a distinct 
 condition without which no world can so much as 
 be a claimant for reality. The condition is this : 
 For a world to be possible, all the things in it must 
 be such as can fit together — what Leibniz called
 
 in OPTIMISM 45 
 
 " compossible." You cannot just imagine one thing 
 or another that you would like, and say that that is 
 part of a possible world. No world is so much as 
 possible unless all its parts — that is, supposing it to 
 be real, everything — are such as to belong together, 
 no one feature excluding any other. When you have 
 seen this condition fulfilled, so we seem to hear 
 Leibniz saying, then you may begin to talk about 
 what is best — what presents most perfection or 
 satisfaction to spiritual beings. " The best of all 
 possible worlds," then, was for him not an idle phrase. 
 This tremendous condition of possibility — the coher- 
 ence, compossibility of all that is— being presupposed, 
 then, within the universes that might fulfil it, the 
 creative will, he thought, would surely choose the best. 
 I am not saying that the view commends itself to us 
 to-day. All I say is that the words were not used 
 lightly. They had for their author a grave meaning, 
 to the effect that a real system is not like a capricious 
 fancy ; things must have their consequences, and a 
 world of our dreams would be sure to contradict 
 itself. The extraordinary point to us is the notion 
 of a number of possible universes. What is possible, 
 I suppose we think, is a part of or depends on what 
 is real, and not vice versa. Let us, then, give effect 
 to this idea. Strike out then the possible universes 
 which never became real. Then only one universe 
 was ever possible, and that is the universe which is 
 real — the universe in which we live. With this altera- 
 tion the meaning of our superlative is gone ; or, if 
 you like, both superlatives, both optimism and pessi- 
 mism, become true. For I suppose that if the real 
 world is the only possible world, we may call it, if 
 we like, at once the best world and the worst world 
 that is possible, the best and the worst of all possible
 
 46 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS in 
 
 worlds being the only possible world. And this bit 
 of pedantry gives us two suggestions which are not 
 valueless : that the use of the superlatives is un- 
 necessary, as involving comparisons for which we 
 have no material ; or else that we have to find what 
 both of them meant to express, our best and our 
 worst, within the single universe we know. 
 
 3. Thus, giving up the idea of comparing our world 
 as it is with something different which might have 
 existed, we come to ask the question which interests 
 us in a more modest form. Our superlatives, if they 
 still mean anything, mean now something different 
 from what they did before. We are no longer speak- 
 ing of the best or worst among a number of worlds 
 supposed possible. We are asking for a guide to the 
 study and understanding of the world in which we 
 live — we are asking what our attitude to it is to be. 
 And that, after all, is what we wanted from the 
 beginning. The comparison with other possible 
 worlds was only a roundabout way of expressing our 
 inquiry what the governing intention, so to speak, in 
 our own world really was ; and that is only an indirect 
 way of asking what the nature of our own world at 
 bottom really is. Thus, as I said, our superlatives 
 have changed their meaning. What they mean, when 
 we look at our difficulty in this way, is much more 
 practical and direct. It is this : We accept the 
 position that our ideas both of what is best and of 
 what is worst must be drawn from the world in which 
 we live. And we want to know, in a word, which of 
 these we are to believe in. The question of optimism 
 and pessimism now means : Are we to believe in the 
 best as our guide to judgment and as typical of what 
 we can expect, or are we to frame our views and 
 anticipations on the type of the worst that we meet
 
 in OPTIMISM 47 
 
 with ? Optimism and pessimism, then, mean belief 
 in the best we know and belief in the worst we know. 
 Belief in, not belief of. I will return to this. Why 
 not, it may be said, believe in just what we seem to 
 find — that is, in a mixture of the best and worst ? 
 Why not suppose that they just exist side by side as 
 they seem to, like the urns beside Homer's Zeus, into 
 which he dipped at random, scattering blessings out 
 of the one and plagues out of the other ? Well, I 
 mean to set aside this third alternative. I think 
 absolutely good reasons can be given for disregarding 
 it, but for to-day it is enough to say that it means 
 giving up our inquiry. We are interested to know 
 and believe something more than we can gather at 
 first sight. But if we are told just to take things as 
 they come — and there is no more to it than that — we 
 are being told to give up the use of our minds, and 
 to behave as we never do in face of any difficulty 
 whatever of all those which confront us in life. We 
 never believe in any ordinary case that contradictory 
 appearances just lie side by side in the world without 
 any possibility of in the smallest degree getting behind 
 or understanding their inconsistency, and it is not 
 likely we are going to believe it in this case either. 
 We all have an attitude to the world, and we must 
 have one. The world is not a world if we cannot. 
 But here just a word of caution is necessary. In 
 these great questions, in a sense, every belief is true 
 that has ever influenced mankind, and all depends on 
 understanding how and in what precise sense any 
 belief is true. And so even this alternative has a 
 good meaning if you know what you mean by it, as 
 we shall see directly. I will state it at once in a 
 word or two, for clearness' sake. It is perfectly true 
 that we do not know what to expect of the world, if
 
 48 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS in 
 
 we mean by that that we cannot foretell the particular 
 circumstances and destinies of particular persons or 
 of nations or of our globe. The chapter of accidents 
 is a necessary chapter in human life. Poetic justice 
 is not the rule of events ; and a great deal of what 
 we call justice is merely poetic justice — a gratifying 
 but artificial scheme of retributions. It is true that 
 you cannot explain the world by any scheme so simple 
 as that. The sun shines on the evil and on the good. 
 Nevertheless, it is impossible to believe that things 
 are really disconnected, and that the " happenings" 
 which seem to us so opposite have at bottom no 
 coherence in their nature. There is not the least 
 presumption in favour of first appearances. There 
 is no branch of experience in which we accept them. 
 
 Well, then, we reject the idea of a mixed or in- 
 coherent world and return to the two first alternatives. 
 And if we think only of them, then, as I said, the 
 question comes to this : Are we to believe in the best 
 or the worst ? Belief in, we said just now, means 
 more than belief of, or belief in the existence of. I 
 believe a great many things and persons to be facts 
 which and whom I do not believe in. To believe in 
 a person or a fact or a way of thinking is in some 
 degree to take it for your guide, to accept it as 
 typical, to accept it as important and as likely to 
 prevail. 
 
 Thus we seem to have brought down the problem 
 of optimism and pessimism to a simple statement. 
 Within our own world, the world of our own experi- 
 ence, what is it that we believe in ? Do we believe 
 in the best or in the worst ? 
 
 But we are not yet at the end of our preliminaries. 
 We have to recall something that we noticed quite 
 at the beginning. We found that cheerful and
 
 in OPTIMISM 49 
 
 sombre views were not distributed as first appearances 
 would have suggested. We found cheerful views with 
 a hard life, and sombre views with an easy one. 
 And now we know that what we are discussing is 
 within our own experience, and not the difference 
 between our world and others, this fact comes back 
 upon us. We were asking, as if it was a simple 
 question, " Which are we to believe in, the best or 
 the worst '* of what we meet with in the world ? But 
 now we see that there is a prior question. Do we 
 know, at starting, what is the best and what is the 
 worst among the things we meet with ? All of us, 
 I take it, modify our judgments of value as we go 
 through life. So that, since our best and our worst 
 are both of them within our own world, and since 
 we all admit that first judgments and first appear- 
 ances are usually wrong, our problem seems likely to 
 be a good deal more fertile than it seemed at first. 
 It seems not to be merely a question whether things 
 might have been better than they are, nor yet whether 
 what we like or what we dislike is commonest in our 
 experience, but a question of where we are to look 
 for our best and worst — for our values — within the 
 varied experiences which make up our lives. 
 
 4. And this brings me to the first of the two 
 principal points which I should like if I could to 
 leave with you for your consideration. It is the 
 danger of hasty answers, or, what is the same thing, 
 of taking sides under first impressions. The root of 
 this attitude, I am convinced, lies terribly deep. It 
 lies in a misunderstanding of a claim which in a sense 
 is quite real and just. Man has a right to take a 
 part, and a free and critical part, in the activities of 
 the universe. But he is apt to construe this as 
 meaning that as he first finds himself in the world he 
 
 E
 
 50 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS in 
 
 is a fully created being, and has only to go forward 
 to assert himself and to judge. But experience 
 suggests something else : it suggests that he is a 
 soul only in process of creation, and essentially a 
 learner, though a learner by acting as well as by 
 suffering. So when he takes sides under his first 
 impression, and picks and chooses within reality what 
 suits him and has no use for the rest, he is very 
 probably carrying out a necessary phase of the 
 creation of his soul, but yet his judgments, which 
 express it, may have but a trifling place in the true 
 valuation of things. Perhaps we might even say that 
 the great work of the universe is soul-making, and 
 that the central significance of soul-making is just 
 that we have slowly forced upon us the truth about 
 values, and that in learning it we learn to maintain 
 them. Then our best and our worst become problems 
 rather than data, and our optimism and pessimism 
 have a chance to become different sides within our 
 single appreciation of the world in which we live. 
 But our first picking and choosing, whichever side 
 we believe in, is the root of the hasty answers that I 
 deprecate. I will sketch three main types of these, 
 as pairs corresponding with one another. 
 
 First, some have started from the most obvious 
 and apparently simplest of standards, and asked 
 whether the world has in it more of pleasure or of 
 pain. It is a question that could not possibly be 
 settled by direct experience, by counting or measur- 
 ing ; but there are arguments on both sides which 
 are interesting and important. For instance, it may 
 be urged on the one side that pleasure is a condition 
 of life, and must be as universal as life itself ; and 
 on the other side, that desire, too, is essential to life, 
 and is painful and insatiable — so-called satisfaction
 
 in OPTIMISM 51 
 
 being only momentary, and the pain of desire in its 
 nature recurrent. 
 
 This first pair of alternatives is on both sides a 
 flagrant case of what I call the hasty answer. And 
 so I only mention it to deny that, taken either way, 
 it gives an answer to our question. It is, to begin 
 with, very hard to say whether pleasure and pain can 
 be compared in magnitude at all. But our difficulty 
 is deeper. We shall say the question of value is not 
 whether you have had, or think you have had, more 
 of pleasure or of pain. It is rather of this kind : 
 whether the continued making of your soul, whatever 
 instruments the universe may have used, has on the 
 whole advanced its perfection. That is, we shall say 
 that both answers — (i.) there is more of good because 
 pleasure predominates, and (ii.) there is more of evil 
 because pain predominates — are hasty and premature, 
 and neither reveals a sense of the real question at 
 issue. 
 
 Secondly, we find, throughout all the region of 
 reflective common sense, an enormous influence exer- 
 cised by the idea that the existence of failure and 
 suffering is somehow counterbalanced by compensa- 
 tion ; or on the other side, if not so, is a demonstrative 
 proof in favour of pessimism. It is to me, I must 
 confess, most painful and terrible to observe through- 
 out our serious fiction and popular philosophy an 
 apparent inability to conceive that endurance or self- 
 sacrifice can have a value if they are genuine realities 
 and not recompensed or paid for. I refer to the 
 perpetual wail and clamour after some form of com- 
 pensation for every suffering and endurance and self- 
 sacrifice, by a simple overbalance in the way of 
 happiness ; so that, for instance, the fact of bearing 
 one another's burdens may be made an illusion and
 
 52 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS in 
 
 wholly removed from the universe. Compensation 
 theories, of course, take many forms. There is the 
 reward of goodness in common life and the future 
 millennium or the Utopia on earth ; and there are 
 conceptions extending into another world. Of all 
 this I will only say that the theoretical reliance on such 
 conceptions, or the introduction of them as essential 
 props of the belief that good is stronger than evil, is 
 strictly self-contradictory. I will explain this directly. 
 And also it leaves a terribly heavy bill to pay should 
 they at any time become doubtful in fact. That very 
 discontent of to-day and the clamour for poetic 
 justice arises, I suspect in the main, from our minds 
 having for centuries been trained and fashioned upon 
 theories which deal with suffering on the basis of 
 compensation. And I emphasise the point that the 
 idea of progress as such, the idea of a millennium or 
 a Utopia, if alleged not as an anticipation grounded 
 on facts but as in principle an indispensable prop for 
 your belief in the best, is not much more certain or 
 more relevant than doctrines of a hereafter. 
 
 The real point to be noted here, I suggest, is that 
 you cannot compensate for evil except in so far 
 as you can transform it. Or rather, compensation 
 means accepting the evil as what it is and trying to 
 make up for it in another coin. It throws no light 
 on it, and does not pretend to show how it can 
 be undone. It is an expedient for such evil as is 
 admittedly irreparable. That is why I say that as 
 a theory of optimism it is self-contradictory. You 
 compensate a man for the loss of his leg or arm by 
 giving him money. That, of course, is a makeshift. 
 The loss is irreparable, but you do your best by giving 
 him something quite different to make up for what he 
 has lost. You compensate just because it is impossible
 
 in OPTIMISM 53 
 
 to undo. Thus, in appealing to compensation, you 
 are saying there is incurable and irreparable evil. It 
 is an over-hasty answer ; and the pessimist hardly 
 needs to point out that your compensation is uncertain 
 in fact, in order to show that your answer has in 
 principle admitted his case. And if his answer at 
 this point is no less over-hasty than the optimist's, 
 it is only because he accepts the ground the optimist 
 has taken. 
 
 Thirdly, then, you are driven up to the pitch of the 
 old optimistic contention : evil, suffering, failure is 
 an illusion ; it does not exist ; it is nothing. " The 
 evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound." It 
 is somehow good in disguise. We remember Dr. 
 Pangloss in Voltaire's Candide : " Les malheurs par- 
 ticuliers font le bien general, de sort que plus il y a 
 de malheurs particuliers et plus tout est bien." 
 
 This is really the climax of the hasty answers, and 
 it sets their principle in the clearest light. Beyond 
 a doubt you have two overwhelming impressions — 
 of good and of evil. And each of you, Optimist and 
 Pessimist, has been trying to make believe all through 
 these alternative answers that one or the other is 
 somehow not to count. The impression he does not 
 approve of is somehow to be outvoted, so to speak, 
 or overbalanced, or covered up and hidden away by 
 the other. And in this third alternative you get the 
 real position plump and plain. Each disputant says 
 the other's impression is simply an illusion ; his facts 
 do not exist ; they are to be conjured away. The 
 plain English of this is that you run off with a first 
 impression, and try to explain away everything else. 
 Those which we have considered, I say, are three pairs 
 of hasty answers, in which the one side simply says, 
 " It is all A, and B (which is there) is not to count,"
 
 54 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS in 
 
 and the other, " It is all B, and A (which is there) is 
 not to count." 
 
 Unquestionably this irrepressible instinct for ex- 
 plaining away one or other experience does point to 
 a truth. It points to the truth that we cannot and 
 will not tolerate a flat contradiction in the nature of 
 things. We will stand anything, any makeshift, 
 however transparent, rather than that. And so far 
 we are right. Our world is one world. Only this 
 irrepressible instinct lays a task upon us which so 
 far we have shirked. We have not tried to see whether 
 our ideas of the best and worst are sound and right. 
 We have taken them from first impressions and found 
 that they conflicted. But the real task, as both 
 life and logic tell us, is to revise our valuation, and 
 see whether this double-edged experience of ours has 
 not some significance which we have missed. 
 
 5. We have seen so far, I hope, two simple things : 
 first, that the question is one of learning to construe, 
 learning to read, as Plato so simply and splendidly 
 put it, the world of our experience — learning, that is, 
 to see where its values lie ; and, secondly, that in this 
 learning we are really and honestly to be ready to 
 learn — to learn by action and enjoyment, but no less, 
 if occasion offers, by suffering and endurance. No 
 optimism, we said, is worth its salt that has not 
 gone all the way with pessimism, and beyond. The 
 paradox, the double-edgedness of life, we said, has 
 not to be rejected at starting, but to be accepted as 
 a problem to work through. 
 
 And now, what leader, what Virgil, shall we rely 
 on to take us by the hand through the Inferno of 
 suffering and failure ? Shall we turn to some 
 Browning or Tennyson, possessed with a robust or 
 partly sentimental faith in the happy ending of the
 
 in OPTIMISM 55 
 
 story ; or shall we entrust ourselves to some rationalist 
 with a workmanlike prospectus of compensation like 
 John Locke or Bishop Butler ? No ; we will try, 
 I think, to be faithful to our logic, and we will go all 
 the way with pessimism, and see where it brings us 
 out. 
 
 Let us put before ourselves, then, shortly and in 
 general, the thoughts which we can gather from the 
 arch-pessimist of Germany, from a brilliant mathe- 
 matician and philosopher who is a leader among the 
 younger men to-day, and from the Russian apostle 
 of humanity who, whether pessimist or optimist, has 
 more seriously perhaps than any other of his day 
 made his own the labour and sorrow of humanity — 
 Schopenhauer, Mr. Bertrand Russell, and Tolstoi. 
 Let us follow their lead, and see where they will 
 take us. 
 
 All pessimistic writing is pale before the fourth 
 book of Schopenhauer's famous treatise on " The 
 World as Will and Idea," the book which is entitled 
 Assertion and Denial of the Will. 
 
 The reality of human nature — here is the sum and 
 substance of the book — is the will to live ; and the 
 reality of the will to live is inherently pain and failure. 
 For will is insatiable ; so-called satisfaction is but 
 recurrent disappointment. " Optimism," Schopen- 
 hauer writes, " when it is not merely the thoughtless 
 talk of such as harbour nothing but words under 
 their low foreheads, appears not merely as an absurd, 
 but also as a really wicked way of thinking, as a 
 bitter mockery of the unspeakable suffering of 
 humanity." The will to live, we said, is for him the 
 root of all evil, of that unending deception, to use 
 the extraordinarily pregnant French word for dis- 
 appointment, which is the character of all satisfactions.
 
 56 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS in 
 
 But there is, he tells us, a remedy. And what is 
 the remedy ? Necessarily, the denial of the will to 
 live. Not suicide, for that is an extreme manifesta- 
 tion of the yearning and discontent which are the 
 essence of that will. The denial of the will to live 
 has many forms and degrees. It begins with justice 
 and sympathy, when you penetrate the illusion of 
 separation, when you see that the suffering of all is 
 one, and that to inflict misery is to endure it. 
 
 If the red slayer thinks he slays, 
 And if the slain thinks he is slain, 
 They know not well the subtle ways 
 I keep and pass and turn again. 
 
 It continues when you. grasp the central nature of the 
 vital illusion, and annihilate it in its essence through 
 renunciation and spiritual discipline. I quote : " He 
 who has attained to the denial of the will-to-live, 
 however poor, joyless, and full of privation his con- 
 dition may appear when looked at externally, is yet 
 filled with inward joy, and the true peace of heaven." 
 But there is more than this. The denial of the 
 furious and passionate will to live is found once more 
 in the contemplation of the beautiful. In other words, 
 the insatiate craving which is the source of our 
 suffering is " quieted," to use Schopenhauer's favourite 
 word, in so far as in any mood or any degree we have 
 a grasp of the deep reality with which our true nature 
 is at one. 
 
 Or let us turn to the radical pessimism of the 
 modern philosophical mathematician. It is striking 
 how, in the essence of the matter, Mr. Russell's 
 remarkable essay, " The Free Man's Worship," 
 follows, I should think involuntarily, the track of 
 Schopenhauer ; and both, I may add, follow a part
 
 in OPTIMISM 57 
 
 of the track of greater philosophers before them. 
 " Only," we read, " only on the firm foundation of 
 unyielding despair can the soul's habitation hence- 
 forth be safely built." " In this way," he continues, 
 " mind assures its subtle mastery over the thoughtless 
 forces of Nature. The more evil is the material with 
 which it deals, the more thwarting to untrained desire 
 [notice the expression], the greater is its achievement 
 in inducing the reluctant rock to yield up its hidden 
 treasures, the prouder its victory in compelling the 
 opposing forces to swell the pageant of the triumph. 
 Of all the arts, Tragedy is the proudest, the most 
 triumphant, for it builds its strong citadel in the very 
 centre of the enemy's country, on the very summit of 
 his highest mountain." 
 
 Of what nature the soul's habitation is to be we 
 may partly see from that account of its supreme 
 achievement. But here is more : "To abandon the 
 struggle for private happiness, to expel all eagerness 
 of temporary desire, to burn with passion for eternal 
 things — this is emancipation, and this is the free 
 man's worship. And this liberation is effected by 
 the contemplation of Fate ; for Fate itself is subdued 
 by the mind which leaves nothing to be purged by 
 the purifying fires of Time." 
 
 True knowledge we find — the recognition of eternal 
 things — is "the quieter of desire." It was originally 
 Dante's phrase. It is Schopenhauer's watchword. 
 It is Mr. Russell's firm foundation of despair. It is 
 not easy to remember that with the two latter we are 
 supposed to be in the world of pessimism. Let us 
 look round us in the country to which we have 
 been guided, and see if it has no familiar features. We 
 were told that we should reach a land where the will 
 to live was annihilated ; where the universe would
 
 58 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS in 
 
 seem accidental in origin and regardless of our values ; 
 where the only resource remaining was the firm 
 foundation of despair. But what do we actually find 
 in the new landscape ? The air has been cleansed as 
 by a storm, and the outlines are abrupt and austere ; 
 but the great features of man's inheritance stand out 
 all the more distinct. Here we have sympathy and 
 self-sacrifice, love, duty, and beauty, courage, endur- 
 ance, and eternal truth. Assuredly we would leap 
 to the side of such a pessimism, in contrast with 
 many an over-hasty optimism. 
 
 What is it that has really happened to us in our 
 pilgrimage, to some extent without our understanding 
 it ? The answer is not difficult. We have sur- 
 rendered our first impressions ; we have become 
 disciples of the universe ; we have transformed our 
 standard, and tried to adjust it to the whole instead 
 of a part. In a word, we have seen what it is to 
 pass through the furnace in which souls are made, 
 and to feel some little touch of real values. We made 
 our pilgrimage, as we promised, hand in hand with 
 pessimism, and we have reached a point at last where 
 optimism is founded on the rock. The path through 
 despair to security is an old beaten track in philosophy, 
 as in religion, and the pessimist has led us by it, 
 because there is no other road, and because he could 
 not help himself. Is it argued that our gains are 
 but accidents in an indifferent universe ? It is 
 difficult not to smile at the suggestion. What we 
 have seen is the very necessity of things, and that it 
 inevitably reveals itself in irrefragable and eternal 
 values. Or are we, you and I, with our proper names 
 and separate biographies, perhaps — we do not know — 
 to come to an end ? Who cares ? You remember 
 the song of Chevy Chase : —
 
 in OPTIMISM 59 
 
 I trust I have within my realm 
 Five hundred good as he. 
 
 The universe is well able to carry forward what it has 
 expressed in little through us by better men and 
 better worlds and races. 
 
 For one further point we may turn to Tolstoi. 
 What, in the main, he gives us is this. The saving 
 knowledge which we have spoken of does not come 
 solely in intellectual form, nor is confined to a clan 
 or caste. That it may come in this form, and indeed 
 has done so without any exception whenever a great 
 thinker has appeared among mankind, is a plain and 
 obvious fact which I fear that Tolstoi denies: But 
 we forgive him this for his championship of the mass 
 of humanity. I borrow a passage of Tolstoi from 
 William James x : — 
 
 The more I examine the life of these labouring folks, the 
 more persuaded I become that they veritably have faith 
 and get from it alone the sense and the possibility of life. 
 . . . Contrariwise to those of our own class, who protest 
 against destiny and grow indignant at its rigour, these 
 people receive maladies and misfortunes without revolt, 
 without opposition, and with a firm and tranquil confi- 
 dence that all had to be like that, could not be otherwise, 
 and that it is all right so. . . . The more we live by our 
 intellect, the less we understand the meaning of life. We 
 see only a cruel jest in suffering and death, whereas these 
 people live, suffer, and draw near to death with tran- 
 quillity, and oftener than not with joy. . . . There are 
 enormous multitudes of them happy with the most perfect 
 happiness, although deprived of what for us is the sole 
 good of life. Those who understand life's meaning, and 
 are content to live and die thus, are to be counted not by 
 
 Talks to Teachers, p. 280.
 
 60 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS in 
 
 twos, threes, tens, but by hundreds, thousands, millions. 
 They labour quietly, endure privations and pains, live and 
 die, and throughout everything see the good without 
 seeing the vanity. I had to love these people. 
 
 Here again is optimism founded on a rock. 
 
 Now, I said, in handling these high explosives in 
 the way of truth, we were to be careful and precise. 
 And here is a point that needs great care. Our hard- 
 won optimism seems so powerful as to make us 
 independent of any particular facts and destinies, of 
 success and failure, of pleasure and pain. But can it 
 be right to be indifferent to the material progress of 
 humanity, and to the increase of justice and mercy 
 and common sense in social arrangements ? Can an 
 optimism be justified which does not rest on a definite 
 faith in positive ameliorations of life, to be realised in 
 the future ? If we say there is more nobility and a 
 higher optimism the more there is to endure, are we 
 not dangerously near the charming creed of Dr. 
 Pangloss ? 
 
 Now, first, I want to insist on a distinction. Our 
 nature binds us to work for progress, that is for 
 removing all definite evils that we can see and feel ; 
 and we must believe that they can be removed, and 
 that so far the world and mankind will be the better. 
 But if we rest our optimism on progress, instead of 
 resting our progress on optimism — that is, if we 
 believe that the deep-laid grounds of pessimism will 
 disappear because of changes still in the future, and 
 that these changes in the future are what justify us 
 in believing in the best, then I think we are plainly 
 wrong. We are getting back towards the notion that 
 the future can compensate for the past ; and also we 
 are assuming that on the whole, and all round, the
 
 in OPTIMISM 61 
 
 future will be better than the past, and that the 
 rooted evils of man's condition can totally and in prin- 
 ciple be got rid of, and that it is desirable and necessary 
 to our optimism that they should be got rid of, and 
 further, that the sufferings of some are to be the 
 joy of others who are not to suffer — a most medieval 
 doctrine. 
 
 I take it, the real betterment will be other. It 
 will lie in the experience by which the relative failure 
 of mechanical civilisation will lead man to that true 
 sense of values which we have indicated. But we 
 must add, to be precise, that this sense of failure in 
 mechanical civilisation to offer the highest values will 
 itself be the condition of the adaptation of our in- 
 creased resources in the service of such values. Yet, 
 I believe, we shall always be fighting new and probably 
 subtler evils. Our faith ought to promote progress 
 and betterment, but it ought not to be one which the 
 persistence of evil can stultify. 
 
 Next, I will put the case against progress, such 
 progress as we most easily anticipate, by a quotation 
 from William James, out of his work already referred 
 to. It is a suggestive passage. I dare say you all 
 know it. 
 
 " A few summers ago," James writes, " I spent a 
 happy week at the famous Assembly Grounds on the 
 borders of Chautauqua Lake. The moment one treads 
 that sacred enclosure one feels one's self in an atmosphere 
 of success. Sobriety and industry, intelligence and good- 
 ness, orderliness and ideality, prosperity and cheerfulness 
 pervade the air. It is a serious and studious picnic on a 
 gigantic scale. Here you have a town of many thousands 
 of inhabitants, beautifully laid out in the forest and 
 drained, and equipped with means for satisfying all the 
 necessary lower, and most of the superfluous higher,
 
 62 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS m 
 
 wants of man. You have a first-class college in full blast. 
 You have magnificent music — a chorus of seven hundred 
 voices, with possibly the most perfect open-air audi- 
 torium in the world. You have every sort of athletic 
 exercise, from sailing, rowing, swimming, bicycling to the 
 ball-field and the more artificial doings which the gym- 
 nasium affords. You have kindergartens and model 
 secondary schools. You have special religious services, 
 and special club-houses for the several sects. You have 
 perpetually running soda - water fountains, and daily 
 popular lectures by distinguished men. You have the 
 best of company, and yet no effort. You have no zymotic 
 diseases, no poverty, no drunkenness, no crime, no police. 
 You have culture, you have kindness, you have cheapness, 
 you have equality, you have the best fruits of what 
 mankind has fought and bled and striven for, under the 
 name of civilisation, for centuries. You have, in short, 
 a foretaste of what society might be if it were all in the 
 light, with no suffering and no dark corners. 
 
 " I went in curiosity for a day. I stayed for a week, 
 held spellbound by the charm and ease of everything, 
 by the middle-class paradise, without a sin, without a 
 victim, a blot, without a tear. 
 
 " And yet what was my own astonishment, on emerging 
 into the dark and wicked world again, to catch myself 
 quite unexpectedly and involuntarily saying, ' Ouf ! 
 What a relief ! Now for something primordial and 
 savage. . . . Let me take my chances again in the 
 big outside worldly wilderness with all its sins and 
 sufferings.' " 
 
 And then he recurs to the unidealised heroic life 
 of the working classes, the heroic element of which 
 such a civilisation as he has just described is tending 
 to abolish, and, as we seem bound to say, is rightly 
 tending to abolish. I suppose the answer is that evil 
 can take care of itself. We may quite safely, and
 
 in OPTIMISM 63 
 
 should, abolish all the evil we can ; but if we think 
 this means that there will one day be a life on earth 
 with no ground for pessimism, and still more if we 
 rest our optimism on this anticipation of history, it 
 looks very much as if we must be wrong. It looks as 
 if true bedrock optimism not merely is undefeated by 
 pessimism, but actually depends in part upon the 
 grounds of pessimism, and would vanish if they were 
 withdrawn. And I have no doubt that this is some- 
 where near the truth. Some failure is essential to our 
 best success. Nothing else will teach us where the 
 true gold lies. 
 
 If these things, or anything like them, are true, 
 they have a serious bearing on social work. They 
 would govern our attitude and direct our aims and 
 our sympathy. There is no fear of any one inspired 
 by them neglecting to set right offences against good 
 management and good sense and humanity. But yet 
 — the difference is difficult to describe — but some of 
 us know it well at work — they would take up ground 
 more akin to that of the working class themselves 
 than to that of the ordinary helper or philanthropist. 
 They would accept with simplicity their courage and 
 self-denial and kindliness, adopting its high level as 
 natural, and not spoiling it by treating it as heroic. 
 The spirit that went out from them would be one not 
 so much of commiseration for hardship as of sym- 
 pathy in fortitude and cheerfulness. If you meet a 
 person with endurance and nobility greater than your 
 own, the least you can do for him is to play up to 
 it, and not to pull it down. By the help of such 
 workers the people may be made happier, without 
 diminution of the great qualities that seem only to 
 be guaranteed by hardship. " Seem," I say, for 
 irrational hardship clamours to be abolished ; there
 
 64 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS in 
 
 will always be enough to bear. If the best things in 
 life are what we really value, if we have arrived at 
 our optimism through a due schooling in pessimism, 
 our faith will shine through us, and communicate 
 itself to all we touch.
 
 IV 
 
 THE QUEST OF THE REAL THING 1 
 
 It is an honour to be invited to give the inaugural 
 lecture at a School of Social Science. The growth and 
 influence of schools like this, and their close con- 
 nection with the universities, point to the fulfilment 
 of an ancient aspiration. It is with a smile or a sigh 
 that we are apt to receive the famous oracle of Plato, 
 that a better day can never dawn for humanity till 
 kings shall be philosophers or philosophers shall be 
 kings. But Plato was a man of extraordinary 
 practical insight, and the facts are bearing witness 
 every day to the substantial truth which his pictur- 
 esque expression intended. Two things, as he plainly 
 tells us, he meant by it ; and their conjunction was 
 prophetic : first, social management demands the best 
 of science ; and, further, the best of science cannot 
 be produced apart from an actual training in the 
 responsibilities of social management. The second of 
 these is to us a hard saying ; but I have no doubt 
 of its truth. For the highest efforts of thought the 
 abstract mind is fatal ; and you get the abstract mind 
 where you have no sort of training in social responsi- 
 bility. Only, mankind has found that the throne of 
 
 1 Inaugural Lecture given at the Liverpool Social Science School, 
 October 27, 1913. 
 
 65 F
 
 66 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS iv 
 
 the philosopher-king is too great to be filled by any 
 individual ; his office, we may say, is in commission, 
 and lies in the co-operation of thousands of social 
 workers, officials, experts, students. But it was an 
 integral part of Plato's great aspiration, we must 
 bear in mind, that in all these things an equal share, 
 at least, must be assigned to women. 
 
 We are met together to-day, then, to take part in 
 the inaugural function of a school. And therefore I 
 shall not apologise if I ask you, old and young, to join 
 me for a few minutes in the consideration of that 
 flame-like force, that central spring and motive, which 
 we may call the student spirit. If experts and 
 officials are present to-day, the masters of their craft, 
 who are conscious of having behind them years upon 
 years of successful administrative experience, will 
 they bear with us for part of a short hour while we 
 endeavour to search out the interest and the method 
 from which their own activity has won its sense of 
 progress and its fertility of adaptation ? 
 
 We all of us, I think, make use at times of some 
 such expression as " the real thing." We say it of 
 anything we see or hear or do that seems to take us 
 deeper into the heart of life than we had been before. 
 Sincerity, courage, love, the effective mastery of 
 situations or of persons, have power when we meet 
 with them to draw us out of ourselves, and set us 
 facing our difficulties with new efficiency and ardour. 
 The inspiration may be momentary and fade away, 
 but it is an experience worth all the rest. " When I 
 worked under that man," we say, or " when I realised 
 that poor woman's bravery and unselfishness," or 
 " when I learned what had been achieved," perhaps 
 at Duxhurst, or perhaps at Sandlebridge, then I felt 
 for a moment that I was in contact with the real
 
 iv THE QUEST OF THE REAL THING 67 
 
 thing. Something was there of the secret of life 
 and strength, something of what goes to make life 
 worth living and possible to be lived. 
 
 So I bring together these two phrases from which 
 we start. The student spirit should accompany us 
 through the whole of life, but more especially here, 
 where we confess that all of us together are come to 
 school, older and younger, tutors and pupils alike — 
 for the teacher, especially in a university, is but the 
 senior fellow-student — more especially here we may 
 remember that the student spirit is one and the same 
 with the quest of the real thing. 
 
 Now what I want to suggest this afternoon is just 
 a hint — not perhaps amounting to much, but the best 
 I have to give — about a point of method in the quest 
 of the real thing, suitable, and indeed necessary, to 
 the genesis of the student spirit. And, of course, 
 what I have to say will be a generality, and a gener- 
 ality can always be received as a platitude. And so 
 it may be worth while to remark beforehand that 
 what we take for platitudes may be in truth very 
 vital and important things, of which we miss i the 
 vitality because our experience or imagination is a 
 little slack and passive. I will give an instance of 
 what I mean. The late Lord Avebury was rather 
 given to aphorisms, and I once heard an address of 
 his at St. Andrews which did seem at the time to 
 consist rather of platitudes. And there was a witty 
 and wicked parody of it in Punch under the heading 
 " Lord Hivebury Speaks Out" which certainly made 
 us all laugh. 
 
 Well, now, when Lord Avebury gave that address 
 he was an old man of great experience, and one thing, 
 for example, that he said was, quoting from some 
 famous person, " I have suffered from many mis-
 
 68 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS iv 
 
 fortunes, but most of them did not happen." That 
 is, you incur needless suffering if you are always 
 expecting calamities. And it seems rather a platitude. 
 But I, for one, have come round to think that the 
 platitude was partly in the hearers. It is a truth, as 
 true as can be, and of the very gravest importance. 
 It is the meaning, I suppose, of a great passage in the 
 New Testament, which in a school like this it is 
 specially important to interpret rightly, " Take no 
 thought for the morrow, for the morrow, etc.," and 
 Shakespeare thought it worth putting into the mouth 
 of Julius Caesar : — 
 
 Cowards die many times before their deaths, 
 The valiant never taste of death but once. 
 
 The thing is literally and most acutely true. I 
 believe the old man, Lord Avebury, was giving us 
 a profound and valuable lesson, won by severe ex- 
 perience, and we had not the imagination to enter 
 into it. 
 
 The fact is, that a truth is quite a different thing, 
 according as you just glance at it and pass by on the 
 other side, or as you apply it in the interpretation of 
 experience and draw out all that it will give you in 
 practice. 
 
 And with this preface I pass to the simple truism 
 which I seem to have found out anew by experience 
 of its weight and value, and which I should like to 
 pass on to you as a hint about the nature of the 
 student spirit and the method of the quest for the 
 real thing. 
 
 It just comes to this : Every predominant want 
 and tendency of an age presents itself to us in many 
 shapes at once. The connection of all these shapes 
 is hard to recognise ; yet each of them is valuable
 
 iv THE QUEST OF THE REAL THING 69 
 
 as a criticism on all the rest. The real thing, though 
 it lives in some shapes more than in others, lives more 
 or less in all, and the quest of the real thing lies in 
 the unwearying effort to track out and analyse the 
 underlying need which they all embody, and to build 
 up line upon line and stone upon stone the many-sided 
 activity which the whole situation demands. Then, 
 of course, comes the danger I spoke of. " Oh yes," 
 some one may say, " we know ; it is the great modern 
 discovery ; there is some truth in everything, and 
 nothing is quite true ; so comforting ; you do not 
 need to believe anything definite, or do anything in 
 particular." 
 
 Well, if any one likes to take it in that way I have 
 no heart to argue with him. But perhaps those who 
 have felt the student spirit and are enamoured of the 
 quest for the real thing — I had almost said the quest 
 of the Holy Grail — will try another path with me for 
 a moment. 
 
 Let us take an example that will lead us towards 
 the problem of our school. What we want to notice 
 is how our quest sends us from one experience to 
 another, tracking and building as we go. 
 
 Suppose our interest is in the health of the com- 
 munity, and we read in the papers about the tenets 
 of Christian Science and are rather shocked. I could 
 not possibly discuss them as a whole, but I take it 
 that in practice they stand for two main things — 
 doing without the professional doctor, and trusting 
 to the power of mind over body. Now when we find 
 a great number of people red-hot about ideas affecting 
 their lives and willing to run all sorts of risks for them, 
 it is wise and right, I suggest, to consider whether 
 they have not a perception, it may be a caricatured 
 perception, of something really valuable to the age in
 
 70 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS iv 
 
 which we live, something from which we may learn 
 in our quest for the real thing. 
 
 For instance, set the Christian Scientists' ideas 
 over against the simple faith in drugs and " seeing 
 the doctor," and one may be led to suppose that a 
 violent protest of this kind is natural and necessary, 
 and that each of the extremes throws light on the 
 absurdity of the other, not that we may smile at both, 
 but that there is something underneath which we 
 shall not be happy till we understand. 
 
 Now, take in another odd set of notions of to-day — 
 the notions of those who advocate in many forms a 
 return to Nature — life in the open air, simple food or 
 vegetarianism, no alcohol, bare feet or sandals, no 
 hats. Then take a third propaganda — eugenics in 
 all its forms, reminding us more or less remotely of 
 the methods of the stud-farm. 
 
 Let us first try, with reference to some of these 
 notions, alongside of the accepted traditions of society, 
 a little of the tracking out and building up we 
 suggested. 
 
 We may start from the return to Nature. It 
 sounds like a thing flat in the face of our civilisation ; 
 but yet nothing is more remarkable than the sort of 
 simplicity which may spring out of the very marvels 
 of our applied science and the triumphs of our bio- 
 logical research. I suppose the bicycle, for example, 
 is a miracle of metallurgy and handicraft ; but what 
 a simplifier it is ! The man or woman with a bicycle 
 is all but as independent as the pedestrian, and with 
 what a power of returning to Nature or of searching 
 out the unfrequented paths of humanity. So with 
 electric light and power if drawn from a head of water, 
 as we shall see it some day on the large scale in 
 Norway and Sweden. It is so versatile and so facile
 
 iv THE QUEST OF THE REAL THING 71 
 
 in use that it seems at home with the most dispersed 
 and unartificial ways of living and working, like air 
 or water, a force furnished by Nature at our own 
 simple will and choice. Or, take the ideal house, the 
 conclusion of all our complex biological and sanitary 
 studies, as I once heard a great doctor describe it — 
 a sort of bungalow in a garden, with a good water 
 supply, but no underground drains, letting you live 
 as far as possible in open air and sunlight, and care- 
 fully avoiding the costly forms of ventilation which 
 are meant to supply air chemically pure without 
 anything approaching a draught. It sounds rather 
 like a Red Indian's establishment, or that, perhaps, 
 of an ancient Greek. Just the good water and perfect 
 cleanliness make the difference. 
 
 It is quite plain that the " Return to Nature " 
 theorists are possessed with a truth which is not 
 directly opposed to our civilisation, as it might seem, 
 but is in the subtlest way necessary to us, and har- 
 monious with the very best and latest of our science. 
 It is well worth understanding, and the student 
 spirit would be ill-advised to neglect it. 
 
 We may pass on to the Christian Science people, 
 whose views are somewhat akin to the last-mentioned. 
 I take it that the enlargement of the ideas of modern 
 medicine has been in a great measure due to heresies 
 of this type, from homoeopathy onwards. Only the 
 other day a doctor said to me, " Undoubtedly we 
 think now that the real thing is to teach people how 
 to live." The power of mind over body, not in a 
 magical sense, but in the sense of wise living, is more 
 and more recognised. And all the open-air and 
 sunlight treatment and what goes along with it — the 
 establishment of home tuberculosis treatment, for 
 example — are akin both to the return to Nature
 
 72 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS iv 
 
 theories and to the doctrine of the power of mind 
 over body. 
 
 And I think there is more in it than this. A good 
 doctor to-day knows that wise living is the great 
 secret ; but he knows something more besides. He 
 knows that it is not in his own medical wisdom that 
 wise management of life resides. He knows that in 
 the patient's interest he must repress his own inter- 
 ference. Nothing is more remarkable to-day than 
 how a good doctor withdraws himself as soon as he 
 possibly can, and makes the patient resume self- 
 government. This is what the Christian Scientist has 
 such a red-hot conviction of. It is better for your 
 health not to be under a doctor if you can possibly 
 help it. This is quite a recognised point in the 
 recovery from tuberculosis. The method of recon- 
 stituting the patient's self-dependence is found to be 
 a very serious problem. I quote from Dr. Cabot's 
 excellent book, no doubt well known to you. 
 
 I hope to see social workers devote more research and 
 energy to the study of how to prevent the doctors from 
 hurting the souls of their tuberculous patients while busy 
 in the attempt to make them live by bread (with milk 
 and eggs) alone. The importance of properly chosen 
 work for the tuberculous patient in different stages of 
 the disease has, I think, been greatly underestimated. 
 The doctor's attention is directed elsewhere. It should 
 be the special business of the social worker to point out 
 that not for economic, but for spiritual, reasons it is a 
 dangerous experiment to take a man away from his work 
 and put him on his back in a steamer chair for months 
 at a time. 
 
 And all of us have heard of cases where the younger 
 doctor, more ardent and acute, has simply com- 
 manded out of bed and into self-governing health
 
 iv THE QUEST OF THE REAL THING 73 
 
 patients from whom an older colleague had been 
 drawing a steady income. 
 
 Dr. Cabot's book, to which I referred, on Social 
 Service and the Art of Healing, deals to a great extent 
 with this self-repression of the doctor, considered 
 primarily as a limitation of his province in favour of 
 the social worker, insisting, of course, at the same 
 time on the absolute necessity of a positive co-opera- 
 tion between the two — " team work " he calls it. 
 But he considers it also from two other points of 
 view : as a division of labour and co-operation with 
 public preventive medicine, keeping the latter, as I 
 understand him, sharply distinguished from private 
 medical practice — he actually brings figures to prove 
 that the number of doctors is decreasing in the U.S.A., 
 as public hygiene has made them less necessary — and 
 also, what we have already noted, as a co-operation 
 and division of labour with the patient himself. This 
 latter point presented itself primarily to him through 
 the question, how far truth should be told to the 
 patient and the deceptions customary in medical 
 treatment should be discontinued ? We see at once 
 that the question here is one of freedom and self- 
 government on the patient's part — -whether or no he 
 is to be trusted with the control of his own condition. 
 And when eugenic theory shall come to its own 
 (Professor Pearson seems to think that this will not 
 be for some time yet) the same problem will arise in 
 a very acute form. How far and under what re- 
 strictions will the highest interests of the community 
 demand or admit of direct or indirect interference 
 with the most intimate and important of all the 
 concerns of life ? We have seen the passing of the 
 Mental Deficiency Act, the only definite policy which 
 the eugenists in general have adopted, and one, of
 
 74 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS iv 
 
 course, not really due to them but to a much older 
 agitation based on specific experience. I think we 
 can say little more to-day than that the extreme 
 eugenic theories have to be adjusted to the same 
 world of experience which contains the facts appealed 
 to by the Christian Scientists and by the few per- 
 sistent opponents of the Mental Deficiency Bill. The 
 reconciliation of them is a problem which will tax the 
 knowledge and judgment of the social worker of the 
 future. 
 
 So far we have taken as an example the health of 
 the community. And what suggests itself is that we 
 find the real thing — the method and treatment which 
 would satisfy our hearts and our heads alike — seeming 
 to expand as we touch it, and to carry us away beyond 
 the first imperative need we felt, or the first routine 
 we learned, which may have seemed so splendid. We 
 are carried on to take up and reconcile combina- 
 tions at first sight inconsistent with one another, and 
 to construe the full need of our time at once as it 
 appears to the Christian Scientist and the return to 
 Nature theorist, to the Eugenist, and the doctor in 
 private practice, and to the expert dealing with 
 preventive medicine and sanitation ; yes, and even 
 to the sort of person who obstructed the Mental 
 Deficiency Bill. We have to follow out and build up 
 for ourselves an intricate scheme of division of labour, 
 co-operation, and freedom. And if we have been 
 fascinated at first by some other shape of the real 
 thing, perhaps there is some little difficulty in main- 
 taining our enthusiasm when we find how, after all, 
 it seems to elude us, always demanding something 
 more than we saw at first, and something rather 
 different. So that it really might be helpful to 
 understand from the beginning that this is a way the
 
 iv THE QUEST OF THE REAL THING 75 
 
 real thing has ; it is always on ahead of us, as well 
 as in our hands ; and what of it we have got in our 
 hands is not worth very much unless, while devoting 
 thorough work to it, we are prepared to see its limits 
 and perpetually recognise new divisions of labour, 
 new co-operations, new forms of freedom. And the 
 faith and power to do this thoroughly are no ordinary 
 gifts, and they make up just what I have called the 
 student spirit, which, therefore, is a spirit not only of 
 ardent positive achievement, but also of continuous 
 self-denial and self-criticism. It makes our work 
 rather arduous, but it is the only spirit in which really 
 good work can be done. The real thing is a severe 
 taskmaster ; but it is the only master worth following. 
 
 I pass on to quite a different example which 
 illustrates the same point in a smaller compass. It is 
 drawn from the question of working-class holidays. 
 
 When I began social work in London I was told by 
 my chief that the Children's Country Holiday Fund 
 was the best charity in London. It existed, as its 
 full title and No. 1 of the Fund's rules informs us, to 
 provide fresh air for ailing London children. 
 
 The word ailing, which appeals strongly to the 
 public, was, in times which I can remember, the centre 
 of a conflict between narrower and broader views of 
 the Fund's object. The earliest practice, at least 
 in some districts, was to have a doctor's opinion, and 
 confine the operation of the Fund to children of whom 
 he could say that they were definitely in need of a 
 fortnight in the country. But, naturally enough, the 
 theory and practice enlarged themselves. The Report 
 for 1890 quoted a speech of Lord Hartington, which 
 insisted on the need of a change into the country, for 
 reasons of education as well as of health, for all town 
 children of the poorer class. The rule says, " ailing
 
 76 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS iv 
 
 or requiring change of air," which lends itself to 
 expansion. And the Report went on to regret that 
 though the Country Holiday Fund movement had 
 been spreading, yet there still were thousands of 
 children ignorant of country life. This, of course, 
 means that the managers were really making it their 
 object that all London children attending the ele- 
 mentary schools should have a fortnight's holiday 
 provided for them, whether ailing in the medical sense 
 or not ; or, if we like to put it so, that all town 
 children are sufficiently ailing for want of the country 
 to justify a special fund being raised to send them 
 there. Of course, most of my hearers know that 
 efforts are made to get the parents to bear part of 
 the expense ; in 1910 they contributed about half as 
 much as was raised from the public — i.e., about one- 
 third of the total expenses. This proceeding, though 
 in many ways desirable, has its own dangers— a good 
 deal of fraud and jealousy. I do not know if you have 
 similar funds up here ; but no doubt the whole matter 
 is quite familiar to you. 
 
 However, the main point is this : A vast charity 
 exists, extending its operations year by year, for 
 sending to the country for a fortnight's holiday as 
 many London children attending the elementary 
 schools as it can possibly get funds to deal with. 
 The idea of a special urgency in the cases dealt with 
 has altogether dropped away. " Won't you give ten 
 shillings ? Ten shillings will send a child to the 
 country for a fortnight." That is the nature of the 
 appeal. 
 
 This is a routine in which its patrons and promoters 
 seem absolutely to find the real thing. And, of 
 course, it does an immense quantity of good. We 
 see the little creatures in our Surrey village ; one
 
 iv THE QUEST OF THE REAL THING 77 
 
 sees them following the gardener at his heels and 
 learning to enjoy a garden, which is a delightful thing 
 to watch. 
 
 Still the absolute naivete with which the advocates 
 of this scheme throw themselves into it and its in- 
 definite extension " gives one furiously to think." 
 Parents like to have holidays, too ; and it is not a 
 bad thing for parents and children to have them 
 together. So that, without denying the immense 
 beneficence of the Country Holiday Fund, one is 
 just led to put side by side with it, as a mere sugges- 
 tion, a well-known Lancashire institution. I mean 
 what is most widely known as Oldham Wakes ; but 
 it exists, I believe, throughout all the cotton- working 
 towns in the North Country. Some of us may know 
 that I am alluding to a discussion which I raised many 
 years ago. I do not want, however, to be at all 
 controversial to-day, and it is not my point to deny 
 the benefit conferred by Children's Country Holiday 
 Funds in general. My point is rather the opposite — 
 to suggest that while there certainly is a positive 
 benefit, that ought not to arrest our thoughts from 
 travelling further afield and picking up ideas from 
 other social phenomena. Social facts criticise each 
 other, if we only have the courage and patience to 
 attend to them. That is the gist of what I am saying. 
 
 I suppose every one here knows more than I do 
 about the " wakes " in northern factory towns. The 
 facts were brought up to date by the Manchester 
 Guardian in a special article on August 30 of the year 
 1913. In thirty-six centres of Lancashire and ad- 
 jacent factory towns about a million pounds were 
 saved, as, I understand, within the year, and were 
 available at the time of the yearly holiday, though 
 not by any means the whole of this sum was expended
 
 78 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS rv 
 
 on the actual holiday time ; the stock of clothes, for 
 instance, is renewed, and some of the savings go to 
 more permanent investments — shares in a cotton-mill 
 or the like. I think there are four points to observe. 
 
 1. The system is said to have grown up with the 
 demand. In earlier times of the cotton industry the 
 holidays were on scattered days ; it was the persistence 
 of the workers in pooling the off days that led up 
 to the present arrangement with the employers, by 
 which the mills close down for more than a week, 
 making the regular annual holiday possible. 
 
 2. The holiday is taken by whole families together, 
 usually at the seaside, for a week or ten days. 
 
 3. The young people and children take part in the 
 saving, through school banks and otherwise. How 
 far this practice is mixed up with the half-timer 
 system I do not know. But everywhere children and 
 young people have more command of money than 
 one would think — it is an old story about the con- 
 fectioner being the children's public - house. The 
 co-operative system of dividends has much to do 
 with the effectiveness of the saving. 
 
 4. According to the Manchester Guardian, drunken- 
 ness among the holiday people is becoming rare, and 
 the character of their enjoyment is rising. 
 
 Now this system is rooted in very different con- 
 ditions from the Country Holiday Fund or Fresh Air 
 Funds of all kinds ; and it is possible to hold that the 
 one offers no sort of criticism of the other. I could 
 not myself altogether take such a view, and I feel 
 myself fortified by the kind of rejoinder I have met 
 with when I have brought these facts to the notice 
 of persons deeply interested in charities of this type. 
 
 Of course, the absence in London of a regimented 
 industry like that of the cotton factories, and the
 
 iv THE QUEST OF THE REAL THING 79 
 
 corresponding absence of a really strong co-operative 
 movement, makes a great difference of detail ; and 
 the question of wages has some bearing on the subject, 
 though the amount of money coming into a London 
 household, especially in the poorer quarters, where 
 there are small industries, would surprise many of us. 
 
 But I have been struck by the fact that people 
 familiar with the subject did not seem to base their 
 arguments on differences of wages ; and, indeed, 
 the position of the families concerned is so very 
 various that no general distinction could be drawn 
 on this head between north and south. 
 
 The sort of answer which I got turned rather on 
 such points as the difference of character between 
 northerners and southerners, the greater develop- 
 ment of the co-operative movement in the north, and 
 the greater holiday facilities offered by northern as 
 compared with southern railway companies. But all 
 these points seemed to me just restatements of the 
 fact that the holiday movement in London was not 
 a creation of the working class itself, and showed 
 none of the energy and organising capacity which 
 their creations display. If it had sprung from them 
 the detailed conditions would soon have altered, that 
 of character included. As we saw, the Oldham Wakes 
 are not an original fact. They and the habits and 
 character belonging to them arose out of the free 
 development of the workers' necessities. 
 
 I am very much inclined to believe that the great 
 underlying reason why no systematic family holidays 
 — unless you call the hop-pickers' exodus a holiday — 
 exist in London for those whose children attend 
 elementary schools, is just the presence in enormous 
 numbers of a residential class, whose Philistine ideas 
 are enforced by their immense pecuniary power. If
 
 80 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS iv 
 
 that class had been present in the same proportion 
 in the Lancashire towns, I do not myself believe the 
 Wakes would ever have come into existence. 
 
 But thus we are led to an important point which 
 is new in our argument. If one social routine criticises 
 another, you can often adapt the working of the 
 second to the ideas suggested by the other. So much 
 so, indeed, that part of the principle which I am 
 emphasising is that the same institution can be 
 worked with completely opposite social tendencies, 
 and so made harmonious or discordant with general 
 social needs. Whether it is harmonious or discordant 
 just depends on whether those responsible for it have 
 seen beyond their traditional routine along the road- 
 way of the quest for the real thing. Thus one hardly 
 sees why the Fresh Air Funds should not work a 
 little towards inducing whole families to manage a 
 week's outing on their own, so that perhaps, through 
 realising what their children have enjoyed one year 
 by means of the Fresh Air Fund, the parents might 
 be induced to make their own arrangements for 
 sharing the enjoyment another year. But, of course, 
 that sort of thing would require the modification of 
 routine by a more human type of management. 
 
 One more example, which illustrates particularly 
 this same point, of the different ways of working the 
 same institution. I may say, in passing, that the 
 history of the school feeding problem also illustrates 
 it very completely. The work of a Children's Care 
 Committee, if it is competent and does its duty 
 thoroughly, is altogether a different thing from the 
 old careless system which distributed meals at random 
 and did nothing more. Of course, Miss Frere's work 
 at the Tower Street School in Seven Dials, out of 
 which the real inspiration of the Care Committees
 
 iv THE QUEST OF THE REAL THING 81 
 
 sprang, was primarily directed against the school 
 feeding system of the day. In all these cases what 
 you want is to do not less, but more ; though as we 
 saw with the doctor, the " more " may take the form 
 of wisdom in self -repression. 
 
 But what I was going to speak of, as an excellent 
 example of this modified working of an institution 
 open to criticism, is the ancient question of outdoor 
 relief under the Poor Law. We know that, to the 
 surprise of some of us, the Majority Report did not 
 recommend the abolition of out-relief, and the old 
 abolition theory looks perhaps from our present 
 position a little doctrinaire. This because of what 
 we have just insisted on, that the value of an in- 
 stitution is relative to the resources and the spirit 
 with which it is worked. The gist of the old argument 
 against out-relief really came to this, that the nature 
 of the institution was such that, apart from a degree 
 of efficiency then quite out of sight, it could not 
 possibly be well administered, for reasons familiar to 
 all who are interested in the Poor Law. So what the 
 Majority Report said was in fact : You may keep 
 your out-relief if you can work it efficiently, pointing 
 out at the same time what a gigantic " if " this was. 
 For, as we all know, both Reports insisted on the 
 evil condition of the out-relief children, as well as on 
 other terrible signs of inefficiency. I almost seem 
 to remember that the name of Liverpool was to be 
 met with in the report of Dr. Williams, the special 
 investigator. 
 
 This is just a case in point ; to people who were 
 red-hot about proper social management the old out- 
 relief routine seemed quite intolerable and anti-social. 
 But if you can cure it by doing more and not less 
 (I do not mean by giving larger allowances without 
 
 G
 
 82 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS iv 
 
 superintendence), if you can make it an adequate 
 mode of reforming the whole life of families which 
 are breaking down, why then the issue is transformed. 
 I have seen with pleasure in the Poor Law Officers' 
 Journal that the officials themselves are taking up 
 the matter. And, of course, a highly trained and 
 sufficient staff, such as we are getting, and hope more 
 completely to get, is altogether a different affair from 
 a single untrained relieving officer with more cases 
 than he can go round in a quarter. 
 
 Our point, then, at the moment is that the result 
 of social criticism of an inadequate routine may not 
 be its abandonment, for indeed all routines are in 
 some degree inadequate, but rather to re-create it 
 with a new spirit. 
 
 In conclusion, I will apply to the necessity for 
 schools like this what I quoted from Plato at the 
 beginning. You cannot get the best of science, I said, 
 without a training in the responsibilities of social 
 management. Otherwise your mind is not a con- 
 crete ; you do not get the true student spirit, the 
 feeling of how each routine has to criticise itself in 
 view of the purpose which runs through all social 
 arrangements. To gain and train this spirit the 
 peculiar constitution of these schools is essential. The 
 practical work is the special and fundamental element. 
 It is much like walking the hospitals to a medical 
 student ; but I imagine it goes even deeper than this. 
 It is not enough to look on at work being done, to 
 visit or to be shown round institutions. You must 
 have experience of being a responsible unit in the 
 machinery. You can only see what the workers really 
 do when you are a recognised worker among them ; 
 when you play a real part yourself, answering to the 
 real part which you find that the others have to play,
 
 iv THE QUEST OF THE REAL THING 83 
 
 you then feel by actual contact the attitude of the 
 doctor and the nurse and the health authority and 
 the school manager and the Poor-Law people, and 
 also of all the persons who are themselves in trouble 
 or difficulty. You have to take part in decisions and 
 feel the results of what you do. In this way you learn 
 what you can learn in no other way, and this learning 
 is necessary for real knowledge, even if it is not your 
 plan to become a social worker by profession. Indeed, 
 with all the enthusiasm and esprit de corps of a great 
 profession there is also a tendency to some narrowing 
 of routine ; and as social work itself becomes a 
 profession I fancy that its wisest friends experience 
 some anxiety lest the student spirit should lose its 
 elasticity. 
 
 But this is a digression. At all events, through 
 the connections it possesses, the school, as we saw, 
 can place its students where they will be accepted 
 as fellow- workers. This no university as such, no 
 purely lecturing body, can do. And yet for the 
 promotion of the student spirit nothing can be more 
 helpful than the connection with a great university. 
 What we have to learn throughout life, and especially 
 in social work, is the double lesson which we have 
 tried to insist upon to-day, the lesson of a thorough 
 loyalty to the work nearest our hand, together with 
 a readiness to adapt it and ourselves to the teaching 
 conveyed by other shapes of social demand. It is 
 just a hint of method. It insists on what we might 
 call the responsiveness of the student spirit and the 
 patience of the quest for the real thing.
 
 TRUE AND FALSE IDEALISM 1 
 
 I have not come here to lecture social workers on the 
 details of their work. I do not doubt that the science 
 of social help has advanced since I was practically 
 concerned with it. All that I wished or hoped to do 
 was to give assistance, perhaps, against some general 
 difficulties, by returning, in a general form, to social 
 workers, some ideas that I had gathered from them 
 in particular experiences. In these matters this is 
 really the student's function : to interpret back to 
 others what he has first learned from them. If he 
 has good luck, his doing so may be suggestive ; it 
 may put matters in some new light or new connection. 
 1. The word " idealism " is something of a spell. 
 It possesses the magic of a spell, and its danger. All 
 these great watchwords of humanity, that represent 
 predominant leanings and accumulating histories of 
 man's mind, have in them something of an enchant- 
 ment. When we use them we are drawing upon 
 powers that are greater than our own, and we are 
 liable to the fate of the wizard's apprentice who 
 roused immense forces which he could not direct or 
 control. Idealism is a word to conjure with ; but a 
 
 1 An address to some social workers. 
 84
 
 v TRUE AND FALSE IDEALISM 85 
 
 wizard who does not know what he is about is 
 dangerous to himself and others. 
 
 The magic of idealism lies, I suppose, in its promise 
 of victory for the human mind. Somehow mind is to 
 triumph; to subdue the " real " or the " actual." It 
 is to achieve the best we can think, to make a new 
 world. 
 
 But danger lies in all these expressions which 
 indicate a contrast : good and evil, beautiful and 
 ugly, true and false. They seem to indicate a battle, 
 but they may indicate a flight, and often there is 
 really a flight where the victory seems to be surest. 
 Take, for instance, a " truth " that leaves outside it, 
 standing and unexplained, all the falsehood in the 
 world. Such a truth may seem militant and triumph- 
 ant, but really it can have very little range and very 
 little strength. 
 
 2. May I illustrate this point in a way that might 
 seem far - fetched ? We all know Wordsworth's 
 
 splendid lines : — 
 
 The gleam, 
 The light that never was on sea or land, 
 The consecration and the poet's dream. 
 
 I wonder if others, like myself, have felt uneasy in 
 them, supposing, that is, that they were meant to 
 describe the poet's inspiration at its best. It was only 
 the other day, in reading Professor Raleigh's book on 
 Wordsworth, that I really came to understand what 
 is their true content and bearing. (What a penalty 
 one pays for neglect and inaccuracy in reading a 
 poet ! This observation bears on the main moral of 
 what I am saying.) One only needed to read the 
 poem through and the thing was plain at once. 
 
 The poem is called " Elegiac Stanzas : Suggested 
 by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm." It refers
 
 86 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS v 
 
 to the death of the poet's brother, who was drowned 
 at sea. It opens by alluding to a time when Words- 
 worth had lived near Peele Castle in calm summer 
 weather, and here occur the famous lines, which must 
 be given with their context : — 
 
 Ah, then, if mine had been the Painter's hand 
 To express what then I saw ; and add the gleam, 
 The light that never \^as on sea or land, 
 The consecration and the poet's dream ; 
 
 I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile, 
 Amid a world how different from this ; 
 Beside a sea that could not cease to smile, 
 On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss. 
 
 This is the idealism that escapes — a " fugitive and 
 cloistered virtue." But after the deeper experience, 
 the poet goes on to say he has won a stronger stand- 
 point, and that a more human one, from which he 
 cannot go back : — 
 
 Such, in the fond illusion of my heart, 
 Such Picture would I at that time have made, 
 And seen the soul of truth in every part, 
 A stedfast peace that could not be betrayed. 
 
 So once it would have been — 'tis so no more ; 
 I have submitted to a new control : 
 A power is gone which nothing can restore ; 
 A deep distress hath humanised my soul. 
 
 Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone, 
 Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind. 
 Such happiness, wherever it be known, 
 Is to be pitied ; for 'tis surely blind. 
 
 But welcome fortitude and patient cheer, 
 And frequent sights of what is to be borne ; 
 Such sights, or worse, as are before me here ; 
 Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.
 
 v TRUE AND FALSE IDEALISM 87 
 
 Here we have the idealism not of escape but of 
 comprehension, and so of conquest. 
 
 3. I will give another instance of the spirit of true 
 idealism, this time coming nearer home. 
 
 Have we ever noted the stages of our " compre- 
 hension " of a great city ? When I was a boy I was 
 taken to hear Lord Shaftesbury speak, and, like a 
 boy, I remembered only one thing he said, an anecdote. 
 
 He said that when he first came to London a 
 thing which soon struck him was that there were 
 parts of the pavement that dried after rain much 
 sooner than the rest. These were mainly, he soon 
 noticed, at street corners, and then he saw that they 
 were before the bakers' shops. This put him on 
 inquiring into the conditions of the underground 
 bakeries and of the people who worked in them. 
 That was one route which took him into the heart of 
 things. And all of us have in our own way passed 
 through a similar training. Every one must, more 
 or less, I suppose ; though the interests that guide it 
 must be different in kind and intensity. When they 
 are wide and intense they lead to a true idealism. I 
 mean that when we first begin to take notice, the 
 great city is perhaps just the frame of our business 
 and pleasure. The streets that take us from one to 
 the other are meaningless, insignificant to us, but 
 then gradually — from one suggestion or another, from 
 one starting-point or another — our insight is awakened 
 and our interest expands. We become able, more or 
 less, to interpret the look of the streets and of the 
 people. The walls become transparent to us ; we 
 see through them into the homes, or no homes, and 
 become alive with the great life around us. We see 
 the weakness of the poor and their strength ; their 
 goodness and courage and fun. I don't think J ever
 
 88 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS v 
 
 knew a really good social worker who had not the gift 
 of sympathetic humour. 
 
 The life which we have learned to respond to, and 
 to feel ourselves a part of, imposes its purposes and 
 standards upon us ; we are united with it in its 
 dangers and in its hopefulness. 
 
 Now it is a feeling of this kind which suggests 
 itself to me as the path towards a true idealism of 
 social work. Note how Mr. Stephen Reynolds has 
 recently spoken of the cruelty of intellectual people. 
 The best which we hope for must spring out of the 
 life we are learning to know ; it must not be brought 
 to_it or stuck upon it from without. We must learn 
 from the people before we can teach, and as a con- 
 dition of teaching. More especially we should know 
 the life of the working people at their best and 
 strongest, or else we can have no conception of what 
 it is that we want them to be. 
 
 This is what I call idealism ; when, instead of 
 turning away from the life around us, we have so 
 learned it that it speaks to us at every point, and the 
 streets, and the houses, and shops, and people have 
 all " come alive " to us, and indicate human wants, 
 and hopes, and powers. 
 
 Our main point is, then, that idealism is not an 
 escape from reality ; but, first, a faith in the reality 
 beneath appearances, which, secondly, works by 
 " comprehension," and not by opposition, and confers, 
 thirdly, a power of transforming the appearance in 
 the direction of the real reality. 
 
 You often begin, I suppose, by remarking a pale 
 child at a school. Then you try to pierce beneath 
 this surface fact and work the matter out, till you have 
 a whole network of conditions before you, by dealing 
 with which you may be able to rescue a whole family
 
 v TRUE AND FALSE IDEALISM 89 
 
 from some misfortune which is affecting them all, or 
 from some foolish habit ; and to help them to do 
 what you find they really want. A man must be 
 saved, some wise writer has said, on his own decalogue, 
 and not on somebody else's. 
 
 We should observe that true idealism is optimistic, 
 because it grasps things, and does not leave them 
 outside to become a terror. False idealism, some- 
 times called " pure," " lofty," " exalted," is pessi- 
 mistic, because it is conscious of something which it 
 has not the courage to face and overcome. Plato 
 has a joke against this kind of idealism, which, oddly 
 enough, people are for ever ascribing to him. He 
 depicts an over-zealous disciple chiming in to Socrates' 
 praise of astronomy, with the addition that it is a 
 study which leads the mind upwards — to a higher 
 world. Socrates answers that the question is whether 
 you use your intelligence or not ; and if you do not 
 do this, your mind will not be looking upward, even 
 if you float on your back in the sea. 
 
 So, with this incomplete idealism, we have a wave 
 of pessimism in England to-day — almost always in 
 people who are not active social workers. All through 
 life the weaker mind recoils from what it will not 
 grasp. It is so much easier to condemn than to 
 comprehend. We have an output of pessimistic 
 fiction, and then a description of the state of England 
 founded upon it ; what Plato would call, I think, 
 two removes from the facts. 
 
 One point in this prevailing temper is well worth 
 reflecting upon — the use made of the idea of justice. 
 Almost all pessimism rests on the thoroughly in- 
 dividualistic question : Why this particular suffering ? 
 in the sense of asking, Is this man's suffering due to 
 this man's fault ? The novels are quite full of it ;
 
 90 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS v 
 
 after the manner of " Did this man sin, or his parents, 
 that he was born blind ? " We should note the 
 answer, which they do not give. It was that the 
 works of God should be revealed in him. 
 
 Justice, of course, may mean that the best should 
 be done for every body and soul that they can receive ; 
 and, as a rule for our action, is in this sense obviously 
 right. But to the popular pessimist it means : " The 
 world is all askew if any one suffers, except by his 
 own fault " ; and this principle, the root of bad 
 individualism, would make man's life as cheap as 
 beast's — nay, very much cheaper, for the beasts will 
 on occasion suffer for each other. We should rather 
 think of the great idea which, as Professor Bradley 
 tells us, occupied the mind of Keats, that the world is 
 a place for the making of souls ; and consider what 
 part the suffering not by one's own fault may play 
 in that. 
 
 Our conclusion then, so far, is this : Idealism is 
 not the power or habit of escaping from, or, in a 
 customary sense of the words, raising oneself above 
 reality. It is the power and habit of diving into the 
 core of appearance, until the real reality discloses 
 itself. Its appropriate epithets are not so much 
 " pure," " lofty," as " thorough," " comprehensive " 
 — the latter word in its double sense of inclusion and 
 understanding. 
 
 This idealism is not a matter of the dreaming 
 imagination ; but of what Ruskin once called the 
 penetrative imagination — what Wordsworth was un- 
 matched in. " Love had he seen in huts where poor 
 men lie." 
 
 4. A word about the kind of emotion, the passion 
 or enthusiasm, that goes with true idealism. 
 
 Notice that we are quite right to be modest about
 
 v TRUE AND FALSE IDEALISM 91 
 
 our personal work, our own performance ; but we are 
 not right if we entertain a discouraging idea of the 
 rank and quality of our work. In fact, the higher 
 the idea of it that we cherish, the more personally 
 modest we shall tend to be. But it is not right to 
 admit, or to pass without protest, any notion that our 
 work goes along with a cold heart and a lack of 
 human love. There is really a point here in which 
 explanation may be of use. 
 
 There is a vulgar prejudice, which appeals to all 
 of us in our weaker moments, that it is one thing 
 to be reasonable, and quite another thing to be full 
 of love or devotion. This is wholly false. It arises 
 from taking the terms compared at their most common- 
 place level ; reason, perhaps, as addition and sub- 
 traction, which really have only a little emotion, 
 because they have only a little reason ; love or 
 devotion as blind desire or foolish sentiment, which 
 again have only a little reason, because as emotion 
 they awaken none of the depths of our nature. 
 Foolish sentiment goes very well with false idealism. 
 Neither of them need any strength or effort ; they 
 have nothing to comprehend, nothing which feeds 
 their ardour by being overcome. But what is so 
 cheap cannot be really dear. 
 
 If you go to any of the world's great men, you do 
 not find them talking like that. What you find is 
 that they bring together reason and love in a way 
 that puzzles us, though we find it true in proportion 
 as we are anywhere near doing our best. The two 
 moods come together in the yearning for complete- 
 ness, for the escape from contradiction ; the longing 
 to find something which achieves or expresses the 
 consummation which we want. We do not know, 
 indeed, what it is we want. But the working of
 
 92 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS v 
 
 reason is just the way we build it up or track it out ; 
 and feeling is the response of the whole mind and 
 body — the joy or depression, the sense of life or of 
 failure to live, which goes along with this seeking, 
 and with the expansion of rinding or the privation of 
 failing to find. And this feeling, this aspiration, is 
 good and valuable in proportion as it means a vitality 
 of our entire soul, an utterance of all that we want. 
 The yearning for completeness, in a word, is at once 
 the spur of logic and the wings of love. Plato called 
 it, in both senses, " Passion " (Eros). But there is 
 something more, and it bears on our practical diffi- 
 culties. To do or to feel things thus completely is 
 exacting work. We are not always up to it. And 
 then it may seem rather flat ; that is to say, we may 
 feel rather flat in presence of it. Mountain-climbing 
 is a fine thing, but we are not always in the mood for 
 it. And this is why we may find ourselves dull and 
 cold, not merely in presence of addition and sub- 
 traction, but in presence of very great works of reason 
 and of passion. We cannot get at them. We are 
 like the people who mock at classical music — so dull, 
 they say. That is literally because it has more 
 emotion in it than they are able to receive. Give 
 them a music-hall tune and they would be happy. 
 But, of course, in a great work of a great master there 
 is actually present immensely more of what they 
 want ; but it is like a food that a man cannot digest, 
 it is too much for them and they cannot receive it. 
 
 So people are always telling you that primitive 
 language, or primitive songs or primitive sketches, 
 are so much more " expressive," or have so much 
 more feeling in them, than the language, or music, or 
 art of civilisation. Or a savage blind desire seems 
 as much more passionate than the devotion of an
 
 v TRUE AND FALSE IDEALISM 93 
 
 educated mind. It is the old story of preferring the 
 noble savage to the civilised man. Such things are 
 easier to get hold of because there is so much less in 
 them. 
 
 The whole problem may best be explained by a 
 comparison with fine art. Many years ago a friend 
 told me that I could not think of Charity Organisa- 
 tion Society work in an artistic light. The remark 
 cut so wholly at the root of all my convictions that 
 I could never forget it. 
 
 What it meant, I take it, was that first-rate social 
 work seems to some people (and perhaps to ourselves 
 when we are feeling flat) cold and dull, hard and 
 austere, dirty and ugly. It is so full of planning, con- 
 triving, carefully observing, sticking to the point, 
 severity, exploring unlikely corners for a ray of light 
 or hope. 
 
 But all this is just like the austere demand of great 
 art. It springs from the same cause ; which is, that 
 a great eagerness or a great vitality demands to 
 construct something which is careful and complete, 
 and precise and well-ordered throughout. A blind 
 desire smothers and chokes utterance ; a loose senti- 
 mentalism issues in nerveless and sloppy productions. 
 But a really strong and healthy emotion demands for 
 its embodiment an orderly variety, a precise and 
 careful fitting of part to part, the accurate and living 
 logic that constitutes the austerity, which is an aspect 
 of all great beauty. Let me read a passage from a 
 writer who stated all this far better than any one else 
 could state it. 1 
 
 What seems to me to be true ... is that feeling is 
 worthless or precious in proportion as it is not or is trans- 
 
 Nettleship, Philosophical Lectures and Remains, i. GO.
 
 94 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS v 
 
 lated into something which by an extension might be 
 called action. The ordinary form of trouble about it . . . 
 is that either I feel, and nothing comes of it, or I do, and 
 there is no self, no life, in what is done. . . . But it is 
 true — isn't it ? — that action is good just according to the 
 amount of feeling which, speaking chemically, is set free 
 in it. The most perfect illustration seems to me to be 
 art. In any art, the more artistic the work is, the more 
 form is there — i.e. the more measurable, definable, calcu- 
 lable is it — the more rational or intellectual. Yet, on the 
 other hand, everybody since the world began has associ- 
 ated with art, strength of feeling and unconsciousness of 
 effort. A great piece of music can be taken to pieces like 
 a clock ; a great poem, compared with any other piece 
 of language, is intensely artificial ; and yet the amount 
 of feeling which they represent is stupendous when com- 
 pared with the song of a bird or a simple story. And 
 this relation of feeling seems to hold good both of the 
 artist and of his public. Nobody doubts that artists are 
 more emotional than other men ; nobody ought to doubt 
 that they apply more intellect than other men. And as 
 to the audience, I think what you say is frightfully true, 
 that if you go to art to get your own feeling reproduced, 
 you find it useless and flat, just because mere feeling 
 can't find expression, and your feeling must be, at any 
 rate potentially, endowed with form before you can be 
 emotionally receptive of real form. 
 
 Doesn't the same apply to action in the ordinary sense ? 
 A strong man is always a man who feels strongly, and who 
 can get his feeling out ; and it may seem fanciful, but as 
 far as I can see, if you are asked to describe action, you 
 have to do it in some such way as you would do in the case 
 of art. I mean any act, like any work of art, is measurable 
 in time and space, and the more of an act it is, the more 
 measurable is it, the more form there is in it. 
 
 Does all this sound mere pedantry ? I do not
 
 v TRUE AND FALSE IDEALISM 95 
 
 know ; but it seemed to me that it might help to cut 
 up by the root a dangerous and recurrent fallacy, 
 that which arouses the fear of measurableness and 
 co-ordination and precision in social work. 
 
 This fallacy is a great danger. For our social 
 work only lives in the doing, and changes if and as 
 our faith and courage change. If a reader thinks 
 George Meredith dull, or prefers Ouida's tales to 
 Antony and Cleopatra, he can do little harm, except 
 to himself. Fortunately, so far, Meredith and Shake- 
 speare are dead, and he cannot get at their works to 
 put his own faint-heartedness into them. But with 
 our social work, if we let ourselves be over-persuaded 
 that it is hard, and cold, and dull, because it is precise 
 and systematic ; why, then we shall make it so. 
 Wordsworth, we are told, spoilt several passages in 
 his poems by changing them to meet his friends' 
 objections ; because his friends could not understand 
 the poetry of them. That is what we are being 
 constantly urged to do ; to change something essential 
 in our work, not in the way of growth, to remedy any 
 defect exhibited to us, but to bring it down to the 
 minds of people who will not take the trouble to get 
 abreast of it. 
 
 " Precision," you know ; " you can't have feeling 
 and the passion for humanity if you will be so precise." 
 Why, what is the precision of our case papers, say, 
 to the precision of the rhythm of a great poem, or to 
 the adjustments of the parts of a flower ? No great 
 feeling can be uttered, nothing can really live and be 
 strong, without extreme precision of adjustment. This 
 is the simple secret of Aristotle's doctrine that virtue 
 lies in an adjustment governed by a right ratio. We 
 all know it — we know how a secret stinginess or 
 jealousy spoils the act of generosity, or ostentation or
 
 96 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS v 
 
 evil temper the act of courage. In some one of its 
 numerous adjustments to external circumstance the 
 imperfect motive betrays itself and the act breaks 
 down, rings false ; we give, for instance, too much or 
 too little, or in the wrong way, or at the wrong time, 
 or to the wrong person. You only get the perfect act 
 when it is " the flower and native growth of noble 
 mind." 
 
 A distinguished speaker has said that St. Paul, if 
 he were now alive, would add another verse to 1 
 Corinthians xiii., to say that " Charity cannot be 
 organised." Did the speaker not perceive that he 
 was putting in the mouth of St. Paul the assertion 
 that Charity could never be a living thing ? Anything 
 that is not organised must be dead ; anything that 
 cannot be organised must be more brute than the 
 brutest matter. 
 
 What we have to do is just to go on, perfecting 
 the adjustments of our work as occasion arises or as 
 defects appear, in the confidence that that is the 
 way to find utterance for all the poetry and all the 
 religion that are possible to social feeling.
 
 VI 
 
 THE MEANING OF "IDEAL" AND 
 " CHARITY " 1 
 
 The word " Ideal " or " Ideals " is one for which 
 I have always felt a certain distaste. It seems to 
 suggest a prima facie contrast with reality ; and 
 reality, real reality, is to me what especially fires the 
 heart and the imagination. But the lovers of the 
 ideal would make out a case. They would say that 
 an ideal is a clear presentment of fundamental aims ; 
 they would say that in the multitudinous facts of the 
 day's work it is always some single thought or hope 
 which inspires and moves us ; they would say that 
 real reality itself lies in some fiery core of spreading 
 life, and not in the bare expanse of what at any 
 moment merely exists. They would repudiate the 
 impeachment which some of us are inclined to level 
 against ideals, by reason of what has usurped their 
 rank and title. They would deny that ideals need be 
 superficial, divorced from the grasp of fact, Utopian, 
 News from Nowhere. And they would even become 
 aggressive. They would say that in the last resort 
 all persons who profess to be rational ought to be 
 
 1 An address to the Council of the London Charity Organisation 
 Society, January 25, 1915. 
 
 97 II
 
 98 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vi 
 
 prepared to express in brief words and plain the sum 
 and substance of the faith that is in them, the essence 
 of the cause they have at heart. 
 
 Here the votaries of the ideal have, I think, about 
 half the right on their side. It is well, I hold, now 
 and again, to raise fundamental issues in a few plain 
 words. But, probably, a few plain words may not 
 at all suffice to solve them. A brief indication of a 
 problem and its paradox need not be superficial. A 
 brief resolution of it can hardly be otherwise. Yet 
 here again, perhaps, a sort of general clue may be 
 suggested in few words. 
 
 I remember, as a simple-minded and over-confident 
 young man, in conversation with a wily and humorous 
 senior upon the conception of a perfect life, to have 
 stepped into a trap by observing that the question 
 did not seem to me so difficult, that the best and ideal 
 life was surely one of active beneficence. " Well, 
 now," was the reply, " that ideal has always seemed 
 to me to be one of such profound selfishness." Now, 
 of course, there is an answer to this ; the answer lies 
 in the idea of reciprocal service. But all the same I 
 must admit to have been a good deal impressed and 
 somewhat taken aback. 
 
 Here we confront the paradox of all ideals. Prima 
 facie they present you with a dilemma. Either the 
 ideal includes the imperfection which it hopes to 
 transcend, or it omits it. If it includes it, sustains 
 and maintains it, as active beneficence implies pre- 
 serving such miserable objects as it needs, then the 
 ideal seems no longer to be an ideal. For it includes 
 its opposite with all its imperfections on its head. 
 But if the ideal omits the evil which is its opposite, 
 then again it seems to have dropped out one half of 
 its world, to be bankrupt and futile in dealing with
 
 vi " IDEAL " AND " CHARITY " 99 
 
 its antagonist, to be irrelevant and superficial, and 
 so once more to be no longer the ideal. 
 
 My friend's remark applied this general paradox 
 to the ideal of charity. Does the ideal of charity 
 include the horrors which now in great measure 
 seem its necessary counterpart, and which to a great 
 extent even bear its name, or does it altogether 
 exclude them, both from its occasions and from its 
 manifestations ? With them, it seems nothing at 
 all ideal ; without them, it seems a Utopia, highly 
 incredible, and in no way akin to what we think of 
 as the full revelation of charity. So neither with its 
 evils, nor without them, can we easily find an ideal 
 which we recognise as the ideal of charity. What are 
 we to say ? 
 
 Are we reduced to what in intimate thought we 
 must often have been brought up against ? 
 
 Are we to find comfort in the conviction that there 
 will always be evil enough to go round ; that the 
 supply of misery will survive our time, and that 
 therefore the possibilities of practical beneficence will 
 outlast our coal, and even receive a fresh stimulus 
 from its exhaustion ? I believe there is a truth of 
 some kind hidden in this ghastly consolation. The 
 source of evil is strangely akin to that of good, and 
 simply to annihilate the one would be apt to make the 
 other unrecognisable. But we cannot take it for our 
 answer as it stands. We cannot boldly pray for the 
 continuance of sin and misery in order that charity 
 may have scope. We are bound to believe that the 
 charity of our ideals is not dependent for its existence 
 on its own or on others' diseases. 
 
 We all of us, indeed, know too well that there 
 is a charity which is so dependent, and that on 
 such charity again depend the diseases to which it
 
 100 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vi 
 
 has become adapted. Such charity and its mischiefs 
 are 
 
 As two spent swimmers that do cling together 
 
 And choke their art, 
 
 or like the blood-supply to some horrible tumour. 
 
 This is what you acquiesce in when you let the 
 evil, in its character as evil, either persist alongside 
 of your ideal, or, as it is sure to do if tolerated, even 
 infect its character. We have such an admission in 
 its coarsest form from any one who says, " There may 
 be better plans than mine ; but meantime the people 
 are hungry." Here you have the paradox very clear 
 and simple. You confess to an ideal which bars what 
 you are doing ; but you also confess and maintain 
 that your ideal is bankrupt in face of the need for 
 what you are doing. You separate the evil and the 
 ideal, and assert both side by side. Then, as my 
 friend said, your life of active beneficence becomes 
 an outrageous selfishness which creates evil to ensure 
 its own perpetuation. 
 
 Yet, as we see in this case, one element in this 
 outrageous selfishness actually lies in the false purity 
 of the ideal, an ideal so pure that, as I said, in presence 
 of evil it is bankrupt. It is a perfection which fails 
 of perfection by not including imperfection. 
 
 We see, then, where the dilemma of the ideal has 
 brought us, and always must bring us, in charity as 
 in all goodness, in beauty as in truth. 
 
 The ideal must not sustain the evil ; but it must 
 not ignore the evil. It must include it, but include it 
 by transmutation. 
 
 This is in brief, as a few words can give it, the clue 
 to what an ideal must be if it is not to be destroyed 
 by the paradox of its own nature. 
 
 Let us restate the root of the paradox in other words.
 
 vi " IDEAL " AND " CHARITY " 101 
 
 The difficulty is this. Is it possible to frame a 
 single ideal, say, of charity, which, being one and the 
 same ideal, will serve to handle our present misery 
 and degradation, and will also hold good, and be the 
 same thing, as a principle of healthy living if and in as 
 far as that misery and degradation were removed ? 
 
 Illustrate it by the case of truth. We all of us 
 hold a rather limited set of beliefs as true, over against 
 which other people, taken all together, hold an 
 immense array of opinions which we take to be in the 
 main erroneous. Now suppose a clean sweep to be 
 made of all the errors which other people hold, and 
 nothing to be left standing, nothing to be thought of 
 or to help in apprehending the world, except what we 
 believed to be indisputable truth. Would not our 
 array of indisputable truths look rather scanty and 
 meagre ? Most of the things in the universe would 
 not be mentioned in them at all. We should find 
 that without the familiar errors held by other people 
 we simply should not be able to get on ; the work 
 of the world would not be done. On most matters 
 we should have nothing at all to say. Our ideal of 
 truth, in short, must not be to sustain our own beliefs 
 and simply make a clean sweep of what seems to us 
 other people's error. It must be something quite 
 different from that. It must be, somehow — the 
 actual solution would be infinitely detailed and 
 certainly cannot be given in a few plain words — but 
 it must be, somehow, that our little grain of truth 
 should expand, and leaven the lump, and unite itself 
 with the whole enormous mass of what we believe to 
 be error. It must include the error, but include it by 
 transmutation. 
 
 And so with charity. We have stated in brief the 
 clue to the nature of the ideal. The ideal itself is not
 
 102 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vi 
 
 a thing to be expressed in a few plain words, though 
 its paradox, and some clue to its nature, can be so 
 expressed. But the paradox is what we have seen, 
 and, to repeat, the brief clue to its nature is this. 
 The ideal of charity must be such that one and the 
 same structure and function of the common soul 
 which is the purest and highest we can imagine, may 
 be perceived as proving its height and purity in its 
 very contact and intermixture with the degradation 
 of to-day and in its adaptation to it. Otherwise your 
 ideal is split in two. The part which operates in 
 adaptation to present conditions is making things 
 worse ; while the part which you think pure and 
 lofty is doing no work at all. To use a good old 
 comparison, your ideal, if it is to be a single ideal at 
 all, must represent at once the principle of the healthy 
 body as it adapts itself to the combat with disease, 
 and at the same time the structure and function 
 which is to be right and normal when the disease is 
 vanquished, or in as far as it ever will be so. 
 
 Then the ideal must be two-sided, and yet one 
 and the same in its two sides. It must be an adapta- 
 tion to human weakness founded on the principle of 
 human strength. 
 
 Now from this clue, which the demands of the 
 ideal afford, we can pass to the different lights in 
 which people view the nature of charity, and finally 
 to that light in which we may see, I hope, something 
 of its living and working ideal, or what I should prefer 
 to call its real reality. 
 
 First we have the ideal split in two and the one- 
 sided views which correspond to it. " Charity is 
 demoralising." Well, we have no great doubt about 
 this. There is a demoralising charity which some 
 believe in and others condemn, and others again both
 
 vi " IDEAL " AND " CHARITY " 103 
 
 condemn and practise, which is a common thing. It 
 is a charity " like the dyer's hand Subdued to what 
 it works in." It has adapted itself so completely 
 that it sustains and no longer combats this present 
 evil world. It is half of the ideal torn asunder. 
 
 And there is the other half, upheld, strangely, by 
 some who practise the first, and also by their adver- 
 saries whose clamour is to the effect " Charity is 
 demoralising ; give us justice " ; " The rich will do 
 anything for the poor except get off their backs " ; 
 or, in circles, I fear, nearer home, " Nothing is needed 
 but good business ; there cannot be a bad employer." 
 Here all the doctrinaires, collectivist and individualist 
 alike, agree to condemn what they see as demoralising 
 charity, and set up against it the other half-ideal, 
 some automatic perfection of society or of the economic 
 world. 
 
 But now, secondly, corresponding to that complete 
 ideal which, though two-sided, is in both its sides one 
 and the same, we find the charity which has learned 
 in another school, neither that of the empiric nor that 
 of the doctrinaire. The clue to it, as we have seen, 
 is the ideal of a function and structure based on the 
 principle of strength, but true to itself in the utmost 
 adaptation to weakness. Here, and here alone, is 
 the self-consistent ideal and the comprehensive spirit 
 of charity, which divines strength in weakness and 
 cares for weakness as discerning in it the elements of 
 strength. 
 
 We recognise this same paradox in what we some- 
 times say ourselves, that it is the duty of charity to 
 make itself unnecessary. So far as concerns certain 
 outward adaptations of charity this is surely true, as 
 it is true that health makes unnecessary certain 
 methods by which the organism combats disease.
 
 104 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vi 
 
 But charity itself is more than such adaptations, and 
 yet we have seen that it must be the same out of them 
 as in them, and in them as out of them. 
 
 Now we saw that the paradox of the ideal could 
 be stated in a sentence, and so too we thought could 
 some brief clue to its solution. But the solution 
 itself, the actual ideal which would solve the paradox 
 — this we saw could not be stated in a sentence. The 
 reason is plain, and we have seen it. It is that a true 
 ideal must unite opposites in itself ; and such unions 
 can only be realised in living growths ; that is, in a 
 very highly disciplined moral temper, correlative to 
 long and complicated historical achievements. 
 
 And such a true ideal, or what I call the real reality, 
 is a hard thing to recognise. There is a passage I am 
 very fond of in Goethe's Gotz von Berlichingen. His 
 son, who has been educated apart from him for some 
 time, is brought to him and wants to show off how 
 much he has learned. So he begins to recite " Jaxt- 
 hausen is a village and castle on the Jaxt, which has 
 been for two hundred years a hereditary appurtenance 
 of the Lords of Berlichingen." Gotz asks him, " Do 
 you know the Lords of Berlichingen ? " and the boy 
 stares, bewildered. Gotz mutters to himself, " For 
 sheer learning the boy does not know his own father. 
 I knew every path and road and ford before I knew 
 the name of the village or the river." 
 
 And that is why I confessed a certain repugnance 
 against the ideal — against the plain, clear statement 
 in a single sentence. It savours so much of rattling 
 off the names of things which you do not know by 
 sight. I granted that the idealists might have half 
 the right on their side, for it is well, of course, to 
 have the use of phrases that are short and simple and 
 clear. But so often the clear and simple watchword
 
 vi " IDEAL " AND " CHARITY " 105 
 
 turns out to be blatant nonsense ; and to learn of the 
 real reality we have to call in the men who had made 
 painful trial of all the paths and fords and ditches 
 before they troubled about their names. 
 
 Let us try in our own way then to set about ap- 
 proaching some real reality, some genuine solution 
 of the paradox of charity, or at least let us try to see 
 in what sort of dusty and laborious and common- 
 place activity, not in a simple sentence or simple 
 watchword, a genuine ideal, with its two or many sides 
 and the same through all of them, is to be looked for. 
 
 " Let us now praise famous men and our fathers 
 that begat us." 
 
 It is true that the ideal is not anywhere exactly 
 the same as historical fact. If it were so, it would 
 not be an ideal ; and even from our point of view, 
 which favours the facts, it would be an error not to 
 distinguish them from the " real reality." Neverthe- 
 less, even to begin solving the problem of the ideal, 
 which we stated in five words as " a perfection that 
 includes imperfection," involves, as we saw, the 
 creation externally of a whole system and method of 
 living, and inwardly the growth of a spirit which is 
 ardent, expert, and disciplined. 
 
 The ideal, then, or the real reality, is not itself the 
 mere letter, the mere history, of all that has been 
 done for the achievement of social health, nor yet the 
 total record of the lives of the workers, yet it is 
 something which lives in all that, and can hardly 
 be conveyed in less. And, of course, a difficulty 
 which presses particularly on a view like ours, and 
 really demonstrates its justice, is the difficulty of 
 drawing the line. For the being of charity is for us 
 not separate from the inward and spiritual grace 
 which animates the entire fabric of a healthy social
 
 106 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vi 
 
 institution. So that to convey our ideal of charity 
 it might seem that we should have to handle the 
 total history of civilisation. And, indeed, in Sir 
 Charles Loch's great article in the Encyclopaedia 
 Britannica something of the kind has been achieved. 
 
 So that when we begin to speak, for example, of 
 our own Society's work during the past half century 
 as typical of what we mean by the real reality or the 
 true ideal of charity, we must walk carefully, and 
 must understand that we are nearing a slippery 
 inclined plane — the inclined plane down which we 
 slide towards the prejudice that charity lies in a sort 
 of special adaptation mixed up with social evils and 
 infected by them. And with this would come the 
 very narrow-minded superstition that only ourselves 
 and those who work in our peculiar way have in them 
 the true spirit, and we should be back in all the errors 
 of the ideal torn asunder, and the notion that charity 
 is a life of service of special beneficence directed upon 
 a miserable class of beings who are necessary to it. 
 
 But with this warning, that ultimately you cannot 
 draw the line, we may use the special movement of 
 the last half century to show what sort of thing is 
 needed for the full solution of the problem and paradox 
 which we stated in five words. 
 
 It is not unnatural to-day, after near half a century 
 of work, to look back leniently on the generation of 
 our founders, and to say to ourselves, " Really it is 
 wonderful how much they foresaw and how near 
 they came to the truth which we, of course, possess." 
 But — I am speaking of a difficulty which I myself 
 experience — could we not for a moment look at it all 
 from the other end, from the point where the track 
 starts over the moor, remembering that at first there 
 was no track there ; could we not consider the mean-
 
 vi " IDEAL " AND " CHARITY " 107 
 
 ing of the fact that so many able and experienced 
 men had to spend such time and labour just merely 
 to find the starting-point ? Dr. Hawkesley, we think, 
 saw some very essential points ; Mr. Solly contributed 
 excellent ideas ; Mr. Alsager Hay Hill was extraordi- 
 narily advanced on labour questions ; Lord Lichfield 
 was wonderfully steady in keeping a definite aim 
 before him ; Sir Charles Trevelyan was always full 
 of original suggestions ; Charles Bosanquet was a 
 loyal and devoted servant of the cause. But we can 
 hardly help feeling as if the point where the work now 
 stands was something which it was a sort of failure 
 on their part, though a pardonable and even meri- 
 torious one, not to have attained and stood upon as 
 we do. 
 
 Yet the truth seems to me to be somehow — it is 
 not quite easy to express — the other way on. It was 
 they that were just finding the first track over the 
 moor. It was they who made the first part of the 
 road which we have traversed ; they erected and 
 established a large portion of that position which we 
 now occupy. The fact that it took so many lives of 
 first-rate men and women to find and make it — that 
 any one of these lives alone contributes only a part, 
 perhaps a small part, of the whole movement and 
 position — just shows what is the costliness, the pro- 
 fusion, the magnificent extravagance of the ideal or 
 the real reality ; it shows how little of it you can 
 express in five words or in six. Why, as we see, a 
 dozen or two— really, indeed, more like hundreds— 
 of splendid life-histories go to every little bit of the 
 task of finding the track or building up the fabric. 
 It is the same, in essence, with what is so close to all 
 our hearts to-day ; it is the same as in a war, at any 
 rate, in a war for an idea. The ideal, the real reality,
 
 108 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vi 
 
 uses up individual lives as a fire burns up fuel. But 
 then these lives are not past and gone ; we, in as far 
 as we are in any degree worthy of them, are re-living 
 all of them as we maintain and amplify the faith and 
 tradition and experience, and the outward organisa- 
 tion and mode of social living which they have be- 
 queathed us. So, when we talk of ideals, we must 
 not think simply of crisp sentences and simple watch- 
 words. We must learn from the Scottish fishwives 
 who think, quite truly, that they enhance the value 
 of their wares when they reiterate the ancient appeal, 
 " It's no fish ye're buying ; it's men's lives." 
 
 This is, then, the first thing. The ideal is not 
 made up of words ; it is made up of lives. It is the 
 single spirit in them which outlives the perishing 
 individuals. Not all that has gone to make it up 
 survives in our actual remembrance : it is well that 
 it should not ; we should be oppressed, as men have 
 been before now, by the weight of tradition and of 
 the past. But it is well to reflect sometimes what 
 sort of thing the real reality is, where it all came from, 
 and what it all cost. 
 
 And, further, to see that this is the make and stuff 
 of the ideal is a very great help to seeing more or less 
 the sort of way in which its problem and paradox are 
 not merely to be stated, but to be solved. The solu- 
 tion cannot be given in mere words, except more or 
 less in science or in poetry, if you call those mere 
 words. It can only be given in the growth of habits 
 of mind and body, of unselfishness, considerateness, 
 healthiness, cleanliness, and in the development of 
 external arrangements which correspond to these 
 habits. It is only in realities of this kind that you 
 can find the double adaptation which we saw to be 
 essential to the ideal ; a spirit both good in itself and
 
 vi " IDEAL " AND " CHARITY " 109 
 
 strong in the conflict with misery and degradation. 
 The matter is not so hopeless as it has been painted. 
 The people need not remain hungry because the 
 better plans are followed. There is a place in Anthony 
 Trollope where he expatiates on the theme that you 
 can both eat your cake and have it if you will only 
 be a little sensible. I am not speaking of mere 
 frugality ; I am speaking of sense and considerateness 
 in the whole conduct of life. What are elements of 
 strength and goodness for the better life of the future, 
 are strength and goodness no less in the troubles of 
 the present. 
 
 Something I have just said may seem not clear ; 
 but I think it explains itself when we pursue our line 
 of thought. We were to speak about charity, you 
 may say, and charity is a quality belonging to chari- 
 table people. But in talking about sense and con- 
 siderateness in the conduct of life, and habits of 
 cleanliness, and so on, we seem to have passed from 
 describing what we want of charitable people to 
 describing what we want of the people who are the 
 objects of charity. Are we not confusing things ? 
 
 I think not ; I think this is rather our point. The 
 qualities of the charitable people [how I hate the 
 phrase] must be the same as the qualities to be 
 brought to light in the people they are trying to help. 
 Their task is to build up a good world, such as can 
 stay, and the distinction of helpers and helped is 
 subordinate and ought to go. In other words, charity 
 must be judged by the response it elicits. Trouble 
 cannot be removed by a class of donors over against 
 a class of recipients. I think I am right in saying 
 that this principle is dear to the heart of Sir Charles 
 Loch. 
 
 After this word of explanation I will take a couple
 
 110 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vi 
 
 of instances, one from an important page of social 
 history, another from a change in verbal usage among 
 ourselves, to indicate the mere beginning of a solution 
 demanded by one of the paradoxes and problems 
 which the ideal of charity involves. 
 
 First, then, a brief word on the problem of the 
 children since 1870. What I wish here to lay stress 
 on is the fact that on the whole, admitting all the 
 mistakes that have been made, a new world has been 
 brought into existence of attentiveness to children's 
 peculiar needs, among parents and other persons 
 alike, along with external arrangements which will 
 make such attentiveness a part of normal life both 
 in the family and in society. I suppose that four 
 great necessities in child life have presented them- 
 selves as emergencies clamouring to be met : Educa- 
 tion, nutrition, hygiene, eugenic precaution. And 
 round about these rough necessities there has in the 
 last half century been waged a conflict, a sort of 
 triangular duel between the factors which we found 
 by analysis in the ideal. There has been the elee- 
 mosynary view, tending simply to recognise and 
 sustain the evil ; the automatic Utopian view, which 
 would consider it abolished by a system that ignored 
 it (we have already noted a meeting of extremes 
 between this and the eleemosynary view) ; and there 
 is the complete organic point of view, which labours 
 to promote new growths and responses of mind, 
 backed by adequate institutions such that the rough 
 emergencies will be dealt with and transformed by 
 a new attentiveness and sense of responsibility on 
 the part of all concerned. This will at once deal 
 healthily with the evil, and constitute an integral and 
 valuable part of social and family life in the future. 
 We have actually felt, one might say, these factors
 
 vi " IDEAL " AND " CHARITY " 111 
 
 of the ideal conflicting and co-operating as rough-and- 
 ready methods were proposed for application to this 
 or that emergency, and people such as ourselves, 
 helped by the plain reason of the case, subtilised and 
 developed these rough methods until out of them 
 there sprang something which may some day become 
 a decent organisation of parental and social responsi- 
 bility. It is the growth of such organisation with 
 the habits of mind which belong to it, as opposed to 
 a marked distinction between classes of donors and 
 of recipients, which I point to as involving the devotion 
 of innumerable lives and the lapse of long chapters 
 of history, but also as promising some approximation 
 to a true solution of the paradox of the ideal ; the 
 attainment, we said, of a perfection which includes 
 and assimilates imperfection. 
 
 The second point is a matter of verbal usage among 
 ourselves, the use of the word " deserving " to describe 
 a qualification for the receipt of relief. I have ob- 
 served this usage as late as 1878 in a motion made 
 at Council, and the phrase " worthiness or unworthi- 
 ness " in a published letter of the Council in that 
 year, while a year later the term " deserving " occurs 
 in a report of a District Committee on exceptional 
 distress measures. I am not suggesting that it was 
 used in a pharisaical or censorious way. I presume 
 that all it was intended to mean was that character 
 was a necessary condition for help to be of any use, 
 and that a deserving case was one in which there 
 was evidence of character. Still, it did to some 
 extent echo the old distinction between a class of 
 donors who were to sit in judgment and a class of 
 recipients who were to be judged. I should suppose 
 that soon after 1879 the usage began to change ; but 
 I have made no exhaustive search. In 1893, however,
 
 112 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vi 
 
 a paper was read at the Charity Organisation Con- 
 ference in London which pointed out that the word 
 " deserving " was open to misconception, and that 
 it was strange that we had developed no more fitting 
 term for what we really intended to say than the 
 barbarism " helpable." And I should think that the 
 term " deserving " was largely passing out of use 
 before 1893, and is probably not to be found in the 
 later utterances of the Society. 
 
 Here I think we see just a formal note of the full 
 transition from the half ideal of something to be 
 conferred by a richer class on a poorer, to the com- 
 plete ideal of a life to be worked out in common by 
 all persons of good will — an ideal which represents, 
 as we have urged throughout, a force and spirit of a 
 kind which we can hope and pray shall be permanent 
 in any human group to which we belong. 
 
 I have tried to bring out both the fullest meaning 
 of the word charity as the loving and persistent good- 
 will implied in every part and member of every human 
 group, and the kind of real reality in which alone the 
 paradox of its ideal can be solved. We must not, I 
 think, limit the spiritual meaning of the word charity 
 by its technical usage for a particular class of in- 
 stitutions or for something incompatible with the 
 service of the State. We must not deny the full spirit 
 of charity to any who have the full spirit of service. 
 Our old terms — voluntary and volunteer — were per- 
 haps a little misleading. We must not deny the heart 
 of a volunteer to a man or woman either because he 
 is an official of the State or because he accepts from 
 some other source a salary barely perhaps sufficient 
 to keep body and soul together. Our war is teaching 
 us this. 
 
 On the other hand, the contrast with State institu-
 
 vi " IDEAL " AND " CHARITY " 113 
 
 tions does imply some part of what we have found in 
 the ideal. We have found that charity cannot be in 
 " ironclad " form, as the Americans say ; it cannot be 
 purely statutory, though it may co-operate with a 
 statutory committee. This is because, from its nature 
 as a spring of life, it loves above all things flexibility 
 and growth, and is necessarily imaginative, inventive, 
 experimental. It is thus that it protects itself from 
 the distinction of classes and the sustentation of 
 morbid growths, and is enabled to link its remedial 
 adaptations to normal and progressive life ; and 
 instead of sustaining and retaining an evil past, 
 anticipates in its operation and arrangements what I 
 will call after our explanation an ideal future. 
 
 All that I have been trying to say is much better 
 expressed in the famous Indenture of Apprenticeship 
 of Wilhelm Meister, part of which I will conclude by 
 reading to the Council. " Art " here means, of course, 
 your life work, whatever definite thing you have to do. 
 
 Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, opportunity 
 fleeting. To act is easy, to think, hard ; to act according 
 to our thought, troublesome. All beginning is cheerful ; 
 the threshold is the place of expectation. The boy stands 
 astonished, his impressions guide him ; he learns in play, 
 earnest overtakes him. Imitation is born with us ; what 
 should be imitated is not easy to discover. The excellent 
 is rarely found, more rarely valued. The height charms 
 us, the steps to it do not : with the summit in our eye, we 
 love to walk along the plain. 
 
 Only a portion of art can be taught ; the artist needs 
 it all. Who knows it half, speaks much, and is ahvays 
 wrong ; who knows it wholly, inclines to act, and speaks 
 seldom or late. The former have no secrets and no 
 strength ; their teaching is like baked bread, savoury and 
 satisfying for a day ; but flour cannot be sown, and the 
 
 I
 
 114 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vi 
 
 seed corn must not be ground. Words are good, but they 
 are not the best. The best is not to be explained by 
 words. The spirit in which we act is the highest thing. 
 Action can be understood and again represented by the 
 spirit alone. . . . Whoever works with symbols only is a 
 pedant, a hypocrite, or a bungler. There are many such, 
 and they like to be together. Their babbling impedes the 
 scholar ; their obstinate mediocrity vexes even the best. 
 The instruction which the true artist gives us opens the 
 mind, for when words fail him, deeds speak.
 
 VII 
 
 THE MEANING AND RELATION OF 
 "POLITICS" AND "CHARITY" 1 
 
 I have come to see you to-day in answer to an 
 invitation, and because it is pleasant, and perhaps a 
 duty, to meet one another from time to time and 
 exchange ideas. The subject which I have chosen 
 was in part suggested to me by a very able and 
 striking article in the September Review " On the 
 place of Organised Charity during the War," and also 
 by my own recollection of opinions within and without 
 the Society. But after studying the Provost of 
 Oriel's delightful paper in the October Review, I feel 
 two things. First, that my main argument will seem 
 to you, who are accustomed to his highly expert 
 guidance, as breaking in an open door ; and, secondly, 
 that it is for a comparison of ideas, and not as having 
 anything new to teach, that I visit a Society with 
 such old experience and having him for one of its 
 instructors. 
 
 I can only hope that my brief discussion will, so 
 far as it goes, confirm the point of view he has taken, 
 and perhaps a little insist upon the demands which 
 
 1 An address delivered before the Oxford Charity Organisation 
 Society. 
 
 115
 
 116 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vn 
 
 are made by such a point of view both upon those 
 who stand outside us, and upon ourselves. 
 
 " The fact that the call for service on the part of 
 charitable workers has been put on a civil and 'muni- 
 cipal basis has already worked wonders." " We may 
 hope that the tendency to consider the city as a whole 
 for charitable purposes will grow in strength as time 
 goes on " (October Review, pp. 324-5). These texts 
 from the Provost's paper bring before us as successful 
 just that large co-operation about which I want to 
 consider in what precise form and through precisely 
 what ideas it is likely to be permanent and valuable. 
 
 The relation of the Charity Organisation movement 
 — originally one of private initiative in the work of 
 social helpfulness and amelioration — to public ad- 
 ministrative agencies has been a problem from the 
 beginning of that movement, and it looks as if after 
 the war that problem might become very acute in the 
 question of the position of the Local Representative 
 Committees and all along the frontier of co-operation. 
 What I wished to do was to discuss in principle the 
 obstacles to such co-operation presented by current 
 ideas of politics and of charity, and to indicate how 
 far an apparent antagonism between them could be 
 removed, and how far it might be best that a certain 
 division of labour should continue. 
 
 In the half-century, more or less, since the begin- 
 ning of the great movement for the improvement of 
 the condition of the poor, which rested on private 
 initiative, a relation to public agencies has become 
 more and more inevitable. The very success and 
 consequent magnitude of the movement has made it 
 so. And so the temper of the two sets of workers, 
 speaking quite broadly, of the social workers on the 
 one hand, and of the political workers on the other,
 
 vii "POLITICS" AND "CHARITY" 117 
 
 has become very important. The Charity Organisa- 
 tion movement did from the first essentially pronounce 
 private charity — the most private of private initia- 
 tives — to be a public interest, and therefore open to 
 public criticism and interference. So the London 
 Society in the first report of Council : " The proper 
 administration of all sums contributed by the bene- 
 volent is a matter of public policy rather than of 
 private privilege, and as such ought to be secured by 
 co-operative action of all charitable agencies." The 
 direction indicated by the last six words is a matter 
 to which we may return. 
 
 But this attitude plainly contained a spring both 
 of conflict and of co-operation between the new 
 movement and any authority which should really 
 represent the public, and during the last half-century 
 the public authorities have been extending the scope 
 of social interference in the name of civic right and 
 duty, and disaccustoming the ordinary citizen to 
 welcome or even tolerate what might appear to be 
 the intrusion of private initiative. 
 
 Thus the temper of the Charity Organisation 
 movement, as starting on the whole from private 
 initiative, and also that of the public authorities and 
 the citizens who thought of civic right and duty from 
 the political side, has been inclined to suspicion. The 
 relation has been characteristic in the case of the Poor 
 Law authorities, whose work had all along a common 
 frontier with the Charity Organisation movement, and 
 therefore was to a great extent in conflict with it, 
 while occasionally, as here in Oxford, showing ex- 
 amples of highly successful co-operation. 
 
 I want to consider what the suspicion depends 
 upon on both sides ; how, it at all, it can be removed 
 and co-operation made effective ; and whether, grant-
 
 118 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vn 
 
 ing all feeling of antagonism to be removed, some 
 forms of social service still demand a greater remote- 
 ness than others from directly political control. 
 
 1. What I have called the inclination to suspi- 
 ciousness depends on both sides in part on a narrow 
 notion of " politics," and especially of democratic 
 politics. We are apt to identify politics with the 
 electoral machinery and party organisation of repre- 
 sentative bodies chosen on a very inclusive franchise. 
 Such bodies are jealous of encroachment on their 
 powers, and their elector, the typical elector, is jealous 
 of encroachment on his powers as exercised by them. 
 Why should anything of public importance be done 
 but by their orders ? Why should they, the general 
 public, depend for anything important upon any one 
 whom they have not empowered to deal with it ? 
 This idea of democratic politics restricts it to exceed- 
 ingly direct governmental action. It is indeed action 
 by representatives of the electors and by their officials, 
 and so far of selected persons and not of the citizens 
 en masse. But it is not altogether removed from the 
 temper which believed that the whole multitude of 
 citizens together was the true legislative body, and 
 even, in the ancient world, the true executive. 
 
 Now the point seems to me to be that, as is natural 
 in the same civilisation and the same country, you 
 find these current ideas on both sides. As I have just 
 said, they make public bodies, and the electors who 
 look to them as their representatives, very jealous of 
 their powers ; direct political action seems to them 
 to be the natural mode of action in the public interest. 
 On the other hand, people who are enthusiastic for 
 particular forms of highly skilled work are apt to be 
 jealous of elective public bodies. They say that 
 these are elected on a cry, with all sorts of other aims
 
 vii "POLITICS" AND "CHARITY" 119 
 
 and qualifications than to do careful detailed service 
 or cause it to be done, especially such service as needs 
 long acquaintance and training ; they say that the 
 best workers may be turned out any day on a cry 
 either false or irrelevant to their work. And in fact 
 our movement, in the main, has elaborated its methods 
 and gathered its experience pretty much by itself 
 and in comparative privacy. Of course, as I have 
 said, a reference to public interests and problems was 
 always implied and continually recognised in practice. 
 Still, expertness was won, in the main, without the 
 participation of elective bodies, and there was and 
 is a feeling that it is better so. 
 
 2. So much for narrow notions of politics, held by 
 both sides, and making each distrust the other. 
 
 The same thing, I suggest, holds true about 
 " Charity." 
 
 I confess to being impressed by what I have often 
 experienced and what was reported to me with 
 emphasis the other day. " The wage-earning class 
 won't look at you as long as you have the word 
 charity in your title." Of course, this is only a 
 general presumption. Men who have once seen what 
 the thing is will not shy at the name. I have sat for 
 years myself on a Charity Organisation Committee 
 with Trade Union men — and admirable Committee- 
 men they were — and we have plenty of such experi- 
 ence as that which Mr. Shairp, of Leeds, described 
 at the Conference in a speech I shall refer to again. 
 
 Still, I believe the wage-earners entertain this 
 objection, and it seems to me natural. Charity 
 suggests to them " almsgiving." And this means to 
 them a violation of their independence, an admission 
 that wages are inadequate for proper life, and that 
 supplementation of them is to be at the discretion of
 
 120 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vn 
 
 a different class. They feel that almsgiving, besides 
 indicating economic dependence, is morally dis- 
 honest, being in the main for the almsgiver's good and 
 not for the recipient's (" Don't come saving your soul 
 on me "). Few of them know perhaps that we feel, 
 or profess to feel, exactly the same, and loathe no 
 less than they do the connection of charity with 
 almsgiving. And if they know we say so, they think 
 we do not act up to our professions, and that if we 
 did we should give up our movement. 
 
 Turning to our own ideas of charity, are they above 
 suspicion ? I believe that they are, and that our 
 enthusiasm for the art and spirit of helpfulness, of 
 which we shall speak below, has altogether outgrown 
 any historical connection which charity has had with 
 the selfish side of almsgiving. 
 
 Nevertheless, we on our side cannot be too careful 
 to have our ideas clear and to make them clear to 
 others. There are, it occurs to me, three main usages 
 of the term " Charity " according to context and 
 history, which it would be well to free from ambiguity. 
 
 a. Charity as almsgiving. This has, I fear, on the 
 whole, a bad ecclesiastical tradition behind it, in spite 
 of Francis of Assisi and Dr. Chalmers and, no doubt, 
 many wise and capable ecclesiastics besides, in all the 
 Churches, who may have made it in action a better 
 thing than it was in theory. I cannot speak of the 
 history on my own authority, but as I understand 
 Sir Charles Loch's Encyclopedia article, the poor of 
 Christ whom the Church took under its care were 
 really, in Rome at any rate, the Roman plebs as 
 demoralised by distributions of corn, which the Church 
 took over and continued. The good of the recipient 
 was not really in the forefront, and the popular 
 traditional meaning of the word charity was fixed, I
 
 vn "POLITICS" AND "CHARITY" 121 
 
 should say, by the ecclesiastical conception of alms. 
 This usage, with the practice corresponding to it, 
 indicated, I suppose, the state of things and of thought 
 out of which the Charity Organisation movement 
 intended to raise the whole matter. I note that, facing 
 such a usage as this, we might welcome the reproach 
 that we have more organisation than charity. I hope 
 we have more organisation than almsgiving. Our title 
 is not exactly charity, but charity organisation, and 
 the second word defines the meaning of the first. 
 
 (3. Then there is quite a different usage of the 
 word, which will recur in our argument below. This 
 is the legal use by which certain non-private purposes, 
 in older days anything from education to maintenance 
 of a bridge, when made the object of endowments, 
 came under the class " charities " as a legal category. 
 The Charity Commissioners deal with charity in that 
 sense. And to some extent I think that this usage 
 has affected the ideas of the Charity Organisation 
 movement, through the obvious right and duty of the 
 public to see converted or adapted to the best use 
 what are confessedly institutions or benefactions with 
 a public aim. 
 
 y. And then there is the ideal charity, St. Paul's 
 charity, of which the other forms are the caricatures, 
 or at best the occasional instruments. This is the 
 spirit of the Christian community, the body in the 
 description of which Plato and St. Paul are so nearly 
 at one. I have heard of it being said that St. Paul, 
 if he were here to-day, would say that charity could 
 not be organised. This was an unhappy remark, 
 because St. Paul's charity was certainly living, and 
 whatever is not organised is dead ; and, moreover, 
 the whole idea of organism and organisation descends 
 to us from Plato's description of the community as
 
 122 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vn 
 
 a living body, which St. Paul repeated in his account 
 of the Body of Christ. 
 
 But the two other meanings, more on the level of 
 prosaic daily life, tend to disguise this fundamental 
 meaning and frustrate all attempts to make it current 
 coin. 
 
 3. In order that co-operation and division of 
 labour, which are sides of the same thing, may be 
 thorough and effective, we need, I suggest, wider 
 ideas of politics and more precise ideas of charity. 
 The liberation of mind which I have in view seems to 
 me to be needed in both respects by both the sets of 
 people who are enthusiastic for social improvement — 
 by those who start from the political, civic, or muni- 
 cipal idea on the one hand, and by those whose care 
 is primarily for the art of helpfulness, not of course 
 apart from its wider social conditions, on the other. 
 The wider idea of politics is more particularly neces- 
 sary, I should say, for those whose main interest is 
 civic and political, although it is also necessary for 
 ourselves to prevent us from seeing an antagonism 
 where none exists, or, at all events, needs to exist. 
 The more precise idea of charity is advisable, perhaps, 
 for ourselves, although I do not believe that the 
 worst of the superstitions attached to the word have 
 now any hold on the movement to which we belong. 
 Yet, even if it is merely putting definitely to ourselves 
 the meaning of our own practical ideals, such a 
 thing is generally worth attempting ; and it may 
 help us to see and to avoid sources of misconstruction. 
 And also to politicians and the public the more 
 distinct conception of charity would be of service ; it 
 would help them to understand in general what, as 
 I have said, they see immediately when they come into 
 effective contact with any such movement as our own.
 
 vii " POLITICS " AND « CHARITY " 123 
 
 (i.) It has long been observed, not less I venture to 
 assert by students of theory than by practical men 
 concerned with very various interests, that the 
 popular conception of democratic politics needs 
 widening and deepening. Dissatisfaction has pre- 
 vailed among enthusiasts for fine art and for education, 
 for expert social service, for military efficiency, and, 
 as we see in syndicalism, for the autonomy of labour. 
 We are told that in the U.S.A. the mere procedure of 
 voting for a long list of officials, whom no one knows 
 or cares about, is enough to make pure and efficient 
 civic government impossible. A good way of stating 
 the necessary reform is to substitute the term "public" 
 for " political," in order to indicate those functions 
 and interests which are more than private, and demand 
 in some way the best attention of the community, 
 and then to distinguish within the class so indicated 
 the functions which are strictly political from those 
 which might rather be described as social or as public 
 without being political. Then the term political 
 would have mainly to do with the determination of 
 the main direction of national and local endeavour, 
 with all such matters and machinery as are most 
 conveniently conducted on the party system. I do 
 not myself believe that this method of bringing 
 fundamental questions to an issue can be dispensed 
 with in a great country by any electoral contrivance. 
 The State then, and politics proper, would be one 
 aspect of the community, that in which it exercises 
 sovereignty by making and enforcing laws and 
 policies which embody its main intention and line of 
 progress. And this is what comes to our minds when 
 we think of democratic politics ; responsibility of 
 representatives to electors, short terms of office, all 
 expenditure under the vote of an elective body, all
 
 124 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vn 
 
 administration conducted by its official servants. It 
 is, as I said, not wholly dissimilar in spirit to the 
 ancient primary democracy, or to the small popular 
 governments which Rousseau had in mind. The idea 
 is that the people alone can be trusted to look after 
 its own affairs. 
 
 Now it is important to notice that the true theory 
 of representative government, as it takes us away 
 from government by mass meetings, also takes us 
 away from the idea that democratic principle requires 
 everything to be done by directly elective bodies and 
 their officials. We have come to see that the " general 
 will " is a thing which has to be constructed in 
 executing it. It means the achievement of social 
 welfare in an immense diversity of ways, and with a 
 degree of skill and detailed knowledge which is not only 
 not present in the electors — that is the very point of 
 representative government — but is moreover, as con- 
 cerns an enormous area of public interests, not present 
 in the representatives themselves. All sorts of con- 
 trivances are employed in great modern countries to 
 secure efficiency in public functions by making their 
 subordination to representative bodies indirect in- 
 stead of direct. You have committees co-opted and 
 selected in various ways for special functions, some- 
 times with statutory regulations ; you have more or 
 less independent commissions for special duties ; you 
 have responsible directors of various services, with a 
 staff selected for competence; you have the bench of 
 judges. All this is not a derogation from democratic 
 politics. It is developing the tendency which lies 
 at the root of representative government itself — that 
 is to say, that the enormous diversity of public 
 interests and functions demands a great variety of 
 methods and institutions in order to the due and
 
 vii "POLITICS" AND "CHARITY" 125 
 
 skilful discharge of the duties concerning them, that 
 is, in order to the efficient execution of the people's 
 real will. 
 
 Are we not, it may be asked, in talking thus, 
 edging away from popular government ? No, I 
 reply ; the more confidence popular government has 
 in its own strength the more it recognises that efficiency 
 demands a very free delegation of functions. Bona 
 fides throughout and a sound public opinion, and, to 
 secure it, a free Press, complete publicity, a firm 
 control over expenditure, and methods which make 
 intelligent participation feasible for the general 
 public — these are the kind of arrangements which 
 safeguard the essential democratic control. I refer 
 again to the American " long ballot," which, on the 
 pretence of perfect electoral control, makes the in- 
 telligent participation of the elector absolutely im- 
 possible. He has to vote for perhaps 500 officials of 
 whose offices he knows nothing, with a list of candi- 
 dates whose names he never heard before and never 
 wishes to hear again. 
 
 These safeguards being presupposed, I draw atten- 
 tion again to the distinction between political functions 
 in the narrower sense — i.e. wherever the party 
 machinery has to be applied — and public functions 
 or interests which one might also call social, or political 
 in the wider sense — that is to say, things of the 
 deepest concern to the community and not managed 
 by individuals for private profit, but by corporations, 
 associations, public bodies, as we call them, of all 
 possible kinds, ancient and modern. These are re- 
 cognised by the governmental machine and often 
 subjected to regulation by it, but are not immediately 
 operated by it ; and they exhibit all degrees of 
 dependence and of independence with regard to it.
 
 126 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vn 
 
 Such are the great educational corporations of Oxford 
 and Cambridge, which pursue their functions with a 
 good deal of freedom to follow their own judgment 
 and traditions, although in a certain contact with 
 statutory control, which is on the whole a guarantee 
 of bona fides and against corruption. So you have 
 the Churches, the trade and professional organisations, 
 the charities in the Charity Commissioners' sense of 
 the word, " movements " such as the Anti-Tuber- 
 culosis and Dispensary Movement, and a whole system 
 of learned and scientific bodies or bodies existing for 
 the sake of art or literature, some of which, like the 
 Royal Society, have very great influence and great 
 public value. The relation of the newer and of the 
 Scottish universities to Government regulation as 
 compared with Oxford and Cambridge is an interest- 
 ing study in constitutional methods, and I should 
 suppose that the diversity is educationally valuable. 
 Now all these bodies and movements stand for 
 functions and interests which in a wide sense might 
 be called political, and which we certainly ought to 
 think of as valuable and essential functions of the 
 community. But in the language which I have 
 suggested that Ave might adopt, they would be called 
 public or social functions in contrast with those which 
 are more narrowly political — that is to say, in which 
 our system of party government is explicitly recog- 
 nised. We are always to remember that the division 
 between social and political is a distinction of degree 
 only ; that they are points of view from which one 
 and the same community can be regarded, and that 
 the political fabric would be meaningless apart from 
 the social community, while the social community 
 could not exist for a day unsupported by the political 
 fabric.
 
 vii "POLITICS" AND "CHARITY" 127 
 
 We hear a great deal of talk, both on the left and 
 on the right of political doctrine, about the failure 
 and incompetence of democratic politics. This means, 
 I believe, for the most part, that the democratic 
 principle is not understood, and that current political 
 notions both on the part of the enemies of democracy 
 and on that of its friends fail to appreciate the width 
 and depth which belong to the real or general will in 
 a modern nation. Much of this talk is found in 
 second-rate works of fiction, and I confess it to be 
 my belief that, like many current catchwords, it has 
 become a literary convention, which passes on from 
 one inferior writer to another without ever being 
 tested by a glance at actual life. "It is easiest to 
 criticise, harder to understand, hardest to construct." 
 There is nothing hostile to democratic politics in the 
 view of public functions which I have just been 
 expressing ; nothing, for example, in the independ- 
 ence of our judicial bench or of the Royal Society. 
 The real point of importance is the political con- 
 stitution by which in a free and intelligent nation a 
 very wide choice of methods and organs may and 
 should be left open within the necessary safeguards 
 against sinister and corrupt interests. 
 
 Therefore I say that in the matter of larger and 
 freer political ideas, 
 
 a. First, politicians must recognise that there are 
 everywhere political or social functions in various 
 degrees external to the province of purely political 
 machinery, and that these are not subordinate, but 
 in great part represent those higher activities which 
 presuppose and make use of the community in 
 achieving the ultimate human purposes. To these, 
 politics in the sense of the political machine, is, as a 
 follower of Aristotle finely said, like the major-domo
 
 128 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vn 
 
 to the master of the house, who may be a scholar or 
 a soldier. It determines the arrangements necessary 
 on the whole to the functions, but the functions 
 themselves it cannot perform. As I have said, many 
 modern political contrivances recognise this fact — 
 such a contrivance, for instance, as the permanent 
 Statutory Committee, which is withdrawn from direct 
 election and has a special function of its own. This 
 and many other types of delegation of special functions 
 are essential to the complex life of a modern nation, 
 and a large and liberal view of politics must neces- 
 sarily make room for them. Syndicalism is an 
 extreme suggestion of an analogous type. 
 
 /?. Secondly, if those who start from the civic or 
 political basis are to take, as I have claimed, a more 
 liberal view of the methods appropriate to great 
 public functions, so we, who began with private 
 initiative, are bound to recognise that in dealing with 
 high interests of the community our efforts neces- 
 sarily take on a public character, though not neces- 
 sarily one that is in the narrower sense political. 
 And we must recognise that such public interests and 
 functions are in their nature continuous with the 
 political fabric, and grow into it by the same necessity 
 by which they also grow out of it. Certainly we must 
 have, and we always have recognised that we must 
 have, a common frontier, if not a debateable land, 
 with the work of elective bodies and their officials ; 
 and how far we actually work on or under them, or 
 on different sides of the same problems, or on bodies 
 specially constituted by some of the contrivances 
 mentioned above, seems to me to be a matter of 
 convenience and efficiency in each special branch of 
 service, and not a matter of essential principle. Of 
 course, there is such a thing as representation of a
 
 vii "POLITICS" AND "CHARITY" 129 
 
 whole set of kindred institutions, by which the 
 advantages of publicity and responsibility may be 
 gained without forfeiting those of special training and 
 experience. For some kind and degree of organisa- 
 tion and co-operation with kindred institutions as 
 well as with strictly political bodies we must be 
 prepared ; it is indeed the very thing we set out to 
 achieve. 
 
 (ii.) Both sides need more precise ideas about 
 charity. Here we shall naturally believe that it is 
 rather our critics' ideas than ours which lack pre- 
 cision, and I hope it is so. But to make our position 
 clear to others it is important that our own notions 
 as well as our practice should be unimpeachable ; and 
 there is the further question whether our practice is 
 always up to our principles. So here as before I 
 think we must say that precision is or may be wanting 
 in both the principal streams of social thought. 
 
 a. I spoke above of the wage-earner's point of 
 view as partly justified by old misconceptions which 
 hang about the name of charity. These misconcep- 
 tions we must get rid of chiefly by living them down. 
 But there are two positive points belonging to a 
 precise notion of charity in the modern sense which it 
 is necessary that working men, and those who with 
 them take primarily the civic point of view, must 
 learn to appreciate as outstanding facts which no 
 social doctrine can ignore. 
 
 First, in every large modern community it is a 
 public interest of the first rank that there should be a 
 function of helpfulness for very various occasions of 
 need and emergency, not primarily economic. The 
 need is intensified by un-coordinated efforts on an 
 enormous scale instinctively made to meet it, the 
 mere dealing with which so as to hinder them from 
 
 K
 
 130 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vn 
 
 becoming a serious social evil is an essential part of 
 the public interest and function referred to. The 
 comparative absence or inadequacy of such a function 
 has been proved over and over again to involve serious 
 social diseases. 
 
 Secondly, there exists a special form of experience 
 and training relative to this function and verifiable in 
 the same way as are the services of the medical and 
 nursing professions, though less universally indis- 
 pensable. It is the outward shape taken by charity 
 in the Pauline sense, and involves neither almsgiving 
 nor institutionalism, though on occasion it may make 
 either of them its instrument. 
 
 The public interest in question, with its two aspects 
 of a conspicuous social need and a special spirit and 
 capacity of service, is on the same footing in political 
 theory as the other great social or public interests of 
 education, religion, literature, the organisation of 
 labour, or the medical and nursing organisations. It 
 is a fact of the same order, and combines in itself, 
 like each of the others, the two sides of public interest 
 and special enthusiasm and experience. No social 
 student or reformer with his eyes open can neglect 
 its importance. Its necessity and the special ability 
 and inventiveness monopolised by it were fully 
 recognised, for example, in the Minority Report of 
 the Poor Law Commission of 1905. 
 
 /3. But, then, on our own side we need to be quite 
 clear about the same double aspect of our work. It 
 necessarily claims a public status, not merely, as I 
 said above, because of its magnitude, but because of 
 the interconnection of the problems with which it 
 deals. We all know how we are driven from a family 
 in a mean street to housing and tuberculosis cam- 
 paigns and demands for efficient local government.
 
 vii "POLITICS" AND "CHARITY" 131 
 
 We must be ready to bring the forces of our experi- 
 ence to bear on wider and wider problems, and to 
 co-operate with any bodies or authorities who will 
 take our questions up. In principle, the work is a 
 public interest, in the same high sense as education 
 or medicine ; some of us would say as fine art or 
 literature ; but though this comparison has much 
 truth in it, yet as the work has more directly to do 
 with the life of the particular citizens it falls more 
 naturally into the strictly social sphere. 
 
 It does not follow that its public rank should be 
 that of a body directly representing the electorate, 
 or subject to such a body. Public rank has many 
 forms, and we trust to have shown how a free political 
 thought might contrive or recognise what would be 
 suitable to the very various functions which exist in 
 a great community. Mr. Shairp (Conference number 
 of Review, p. 155) speaks of " what I would call 
 tentatively a Charities Board for the district," an 
 idea familiar on a large scale from the Majority Report 
 of the Poor Law Commission, of which the Provost 
 was so important a member. The whole passage of 
 Mr. Shairp' s speech is well worth reading. I do not 
 venture to dogmatise, but the suggestion illustrates 
 at least in how many forms public value might receive 
 recognition. 
 
 I conclude that our strong point, all opposition to 
 which we must simply live down, is the highly trained 
 work, with its double aspect, the art of helping and 
 the organisation of public agencies which it involves. 
 I take it that we will co-operate heartily with any 
 agency which will recognise or embody these essentials, 
 and that, while never abandoning our own name, we 
 will grudge its own chosen name to no society or 
 authority which will take these essentials seriously.
 
 132 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vn 
 
 They mark the kind of service into which our move- 
 ment has developed the old " almsgiving." The 
 spirit of helpfulness is the same as in St. Paul, but it 
 has developed a body more adequate to it by thought 
 and experience. But even here it is necessary that 
 we should be thoroughly clear in mind and method 
 if we are to demand that our critics should be so too. 
 I do not know whether we are absolutely above the 
 imputation that we sometimes fall back into unprofit- 
 able relief work. I remember sitting on a Committee 
 which, after introducing the special case system and 
 acquiring an energetic Secretary, increased the money 
 raised on cases from, say, £150 to near £1000 a year. 
 But I remember our Treasurer, a man of great acute- 
 ness of mind, observing as he looked at the accounts, 
 " Here we are pouring £800 a year into this district 
 
 more than before. We may be doing good ." Of 
 
 course, if it was all money that would otherwise have 
 been badly spent in the district, that would be well. 
 But these things are not easy to prove. 
 
 The relation of views very current among us to 
 misconceptions entertained about us makes it our 
 duty to be precise. There is a delicate problem here. 
 We are, of course, non-political. Our members have 
 a right both to their own general opinions, and to 
 any opinions which they may have formed as to the 
 connections between political ideas and the goodness 
 or badness of methods for improving the condition 
 of the people. But we have to remember, as an 
 argument for extreme care and distinctness in tracing 
 such connections, that any antagonism to the " civic " 
 point of view hi ends prima facie in our critics' eyes 
 with the errors of almsgiving, to which we are opposed, 
 but from which they do not readily believe us to be 
 free. Our cry of " independence," which is verbally,
 
 vii "POLITICS" AND "CHARITY" 133 
 
 and also I believe in spirit, the same as theirs, assumes 
 to them a different complexion when it is directed 
 against civic supervision or industrial combinations, 
 and not, as in their mouths, against what they think 
 private interferences founded upon class relations. 
 
 Against appearances of this kind, while we all have 
 an indisputable right to our opinions, it is up to us 
 to exhibit with perfect distinctness and precision the 
 spirit of our trained service as a necessary function 
 discharged in the public interest without fear or favour 
 by the methods which experience has approved and 
 further may approve, and in such co-operation with 
 public authorities or subservience to them as may 
 appear practically desirable at any moment. This, 
 I believe, has always been our line, and I am sure 
 that no sound charity organisationist has ever been 
 influenced by prejudice in matters of practical co- 
 operation. " No society can be constituted of 
 similars." " It takes all sorts to make a world." 
 The first saying is Aristotle's. The second came to 
 me through an old Lancashire nurse. There is no 
 truth more necessary for all who do practical work. 
 
 Such a question of method as I have in mind was 
 stated in Mr. Shairp's Conference speech, to which I 
 referred above, and was represented, as I said, by the 
 Majority Report of the Poor Law Commission and by 
 the long effort of the London Charity Organisation 
 Society to obtain the establishment of a representative 
 Hospitals Board, while in another form it is now being 
 worked out upon the London School Care Committees, 
 which all of us are watching, I suppose, with intense 
 interest and some anxiety. Is the work here being 
 pulled right by the skilled workers, or is their effort 
 being swamped and frustrated by its conditions ? 
 How is the difficulty overcome about the handling of
 
 134 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vn 
 
 public money by or through agents who are not fully 
 official ? * 
 
 The best school inspector I ever knew or heard of 
 used to tell me that he put great faith for the future 
 in the method of Statutory Committees — i.e. com- 
 mittees of a public body, appointed under by-laws 
 with Parliamentary sanction for a special service, 
 probably with power of co-option. He thought that 
 the ordinary representatives would be glad to be rid 
 of onerous special work, and a habit would form itself 
 of leaving certain branches of administration con- 
 tinuously in the hands of those who cared about them. 
 
 For all these problems the proof of the pudding is 
 in the eating, and I am confident that the job will 
 come to those who can tackle it. What we have to 
 stand by, it seems to me, is a clear conception of 
 charity organisation in that highest sense which it 
 gives to the word charity, never forgetting its double 
 implication of skilled individual treatment and a 
 public interest and policy into which it ramifies. I 
 see some new lights inform us from time to time that 
 " casework " alone is to be left to the Charity Organ- 
 isation Society. The idea would make our founders 
 turn in their graves. Casework which is not handled 
 as an engine of social improvement is not, I should 
 have said, Charity Organisation Society work at all. 
 
 So I conclude — and it is little better than a plati- 
 tude—that we should all of us always be endeavouring 
 
 1 The London School Care Committees use public money for 
 certain specific expenditures — viz. meals, medical and dental treat- 
 ment, and visiting and inspecting staff. They have no funds for 
 general casework, and do not raise any *" on the case." They can of 
 course refer cases to other agencies — e.g. Charity Organisation 
 Committees. It seems as if this system would hardly be adequate 
 apart from a network of voluntary agencies doing less limited 
 casework with voluntary funds.
 
 vii "POLITICS" AND "CHARITY" 135 
 
 to keep our position clear and defensible, founding it 
 definitely upon the facts and necessities of our work 
 at its best and always bearing in mind its importance 
 as a public function and the need of co-operation which 
 this involves ; and then, if there is still prejudice 
 against a movement so convincingly a high public 
 interest and so transparently a special social service 
 of unique value, we have simply, having done our best 
 to be distinct and sympathetic, to live the prejudice 
 down.
 
 VIII 
 
 SELECTION BY MAINTENANCE OF A SOCIAL 
 STANDARD 
 
 1. What right have we who are not expert students 
 of the sciences of physical life to approach this difficult 
 problem, involving, as it must, so much of the theory 
 of evolution ? We answer that we are compelled to 
 act, and therefore it is inevitable that we should 
 judge. Who are we that are compelled to act ? In 
 the first place, every one, in some degree, aspires to 
 influence, or at least to criticise, the behaviour of the 
 social authority in face of fundamental social problems. 
 Secondly, every individual has to govern his personal 
 conduct and to frame his share of public opinion, and 
 ought to desire to do it upon rational grounds ; and, 
 last but not least, the typical example of civic re- 
 sponsibility, the heads of every household, and the 
 parents of every family, have to take action on all- 
 important matters of the kind in question. Consider 
 for a moment this last-mentioned case. It is at once 
 the type and the justification of the citizen's con- 
 tinuous effort to subordinate to the general uses of 
 life a complex of sciences and services which he is 
 inevitably incapable of mastering in his own person. 
 Every householder, more particularly if he is a 
 parent, has to deal with a great variety of specialists, 
 
 136
 
 viii MAINTENANCE OF SOCIAL STANDARD 137 
 
 with none of whom he can compete upon their own 
 ground. Clergymen, educators, doctors, dentists, 
 architects, builders, sanitary engineers, or inspectors, 
 all providers of special commodities, you may say — 
 with all of these the citizen has to help himself to 
 construct his life and that of his dependents. The 
 ultimate judgment rests, and must rest, with him. 
 It is impossible that he should allow any specialist to 
 run, as the phrase is, his household or his family. 
 In this respect the citizen is the type of the statesman 
 and the social reformer. They, like him, stand for 
 the main conduct and purposes of life. In view of 
 these, they have to act, and inevitably, therefore, 
 they must be allowed to judge. And the same 
 thing is true of the social student, who is, as Aris- 
 totle would have regarded him, in training to be a 
 statesman. 1 
 
 What he has to do, in problems where science most 
 obviously impinges upon social practice, is to note 
 and to survey the information which it appears to 
 him to furnish, to point out the practical questions 
 which it appears to him to raise, and further questions 
 which in the light of social knowledge it seems to 
 force him to ask, and ultimately to indicate the 
 general line of social action which seems at the 
 moment to meet the greatest part of the requirements 
 which the discussion has brought to light. 
 
 Nothing could be more modest than the attitude 
 required of him, but, also, nothing could be more 
 
 1 This, and not the unscrupulous adventurer of our third-rate 
 literature, is the true type of the politician. He represents the 
 ordinary citizen in the task of framing a good life out of the innumer- 
 able special suggestions which are offered him. And he is maligned 
 by all the experts, because he will not surrender control of the 
 community to any one of them.
 
 138 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vm 
 
 decisive. He need not say he is right ; but he must 
 say that in the use of his discretion, from which he 
 cannot escape, he is, in view of all considerations, 
 acting for the best. 
 
 2. Following the method I have indicated, I will 
 begin by trying to survey what we seem to learn from 
 what is unambiguous in the utterances of recent 
 science on the problem of selection in human society, 
 and by trying to point out that the position of the 
 thoughtful reformer is in some ways made more and 
 not less perplexing by recent views of heredity. This 
 point is only noticed to illustrate our need of self- 
 consistent information from the scientific side, and 
 the sort of perplexity to which thoughtful men are 
 liable in turning to practical account such information 
 as they can obtain. 
 
 Forty years ago it seemed plainer sailing than now. 
 Everything, we believed, might be inherited, and there 
 was a rising feeling for abstaining from marriage in 
 the case of any defect which medical opinion pro- 
 nounced " hereditary." I cite some sentences from 
 Jowett's Introduction to Plato's Republic, published 
 in 1871. 
 
 Owing to the very conditions of their existence (people) 
 become emaciated, and hand on a similar life to their 
 descendants. When, again, in private life we see a whole 
 family one by one dropping into the grave under the 
 Ate of some .inherited malady, and the parents perhaps 
 surviving them, do our minds ever go back silently to 
 that day, twenty-five or thirty years before, on which, 
 under the fairest auspices, amid the rejoicings of friends 
 and acquaintances, a bride and bridegroom joined hands 
 with one another ? — The late Dr. Combe is said by his 
 biographer to have resisted the temptation to marriage 
 because he knew that he was subject to hereditary con-
 
 vin MAINTENANCE OF SOCIAL STANDARD 139 
 
 sumption. One who deserved to be called a man of 
 genius, a friend of my youth, was in the habit of wearing 
 a black ribbon on his wrist, in order to remind him that, 
 being liable to outbreaks of insanity, he must not give 
 way to the natural impulse of affection ; he died un- 
 married in a lunatic asylum. These two little facts 
 suggest the reflection that a very few persons have done 
 from a sense of duty what the rest of mankind ought to 
 have done under like circumstances, if they had allowed 
 themselves to think of all the misery which they were 
 about to bring into the world. — The prohibition (of such 
 marriages) in course of time would be protected by a 
 horror naturalis similar to that which in all civilised ages 
 and countries has prevented the marriage of near relations 
 by blood. 
 
 We should certainly have counted alcoholism among 
 these hereditary taints. 
 
 I cite these sentences only to show how relatively 
 simple the problem then appeared, when we held that 
 practically everything was inherited, and how ready 
 thoughtful men were to act as scientific opinion ap- 
 peared to indicate. To-day, with an equal readiness 
 to be guided on the part of thoughtful men, the 
 matter has become to the layman rather more difficult 
 to grasp. I suppose that no disease depending on a 
 micro-organism can be called strictly hereditary in 
 the sense of being a character inhering in the con- 
 tinuous root-stock — the germ-plasm — on which all 
 individuals are buds. (Of course, certain terrible 
 infections are transmitted direct to offspring, but that 
 is another story.) So that our old simple faith in 
 hereditary disease has now to be replaced by a belief 
 in inborn immunity on the one hand, or susceptibility 
 on the other, to the assaults of the microbes. You 
 do not inherit consumption ; you may inherit a want
 
 140 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vm 
 
 of immunity against it, and this has to be the support 
 of our good old conviction that people with phthisical 
 tendencies had better not marry. So with other 
 defects than zymotic disease ; it is not so easy to 
 obtain a unanimous verdict that alcoholism and 
 lunacy, and feeble-mindedness itself, are inborn 
 peculiarities, root-stock attributes of particular strains, 
 heritable in the normal course of things. Even if 
 we are clear that a susceptibility "to the charm 
 of alcohol" (Dr. Archdall Reid's poetic phrase) is 
 existent in certain strains, and can only be extirpated 
 by selection, we are discouraged on the whole from 
 believing that the effects of alcoholism are handed 
 down to children in the form of degeneracy, e.g. of 
 mental defect. 
 
 We may take as a type of the advice now offered 
 to us the conclusions of the Royal Commission on the 
 Feeble-minded. As regards congenital mental de- 
 fectives, you can condemn — whether or no you legally 
 prohibit — fertile marriages absolutely. As regards 
 lunatics, you can justify no general prohibition, and 
 you cannot set out clearly in general terms the 
 conditions under which marriage is permissible. The 
 practical instruction is more complicated by conditions 
 than it was forty years ago. 
 
 The three great cases in which multiplication is 
 now accepted as undesirable are, as I gather, those of 
 people very susceptible to tuberculosis, those of 
 people very susceptible to " the charm of alcohol," 
 and those of congenital mental defectives. 1 About, 
 e.g., the " emaciation," to use Jowett's word, of slum- 
 dwellers, we have lost the simple faith that it naturally 
 survives in the children of those who suffer from it, 
 
 1 And, of course, that of the terrible infections I spoke of. But 
 these are not, strictly, characters of the stock.
 
 vin MAINTENANCE OF SOCIAL STANDARD 141 
 
 and this is replaced, as it seems to me, by no clear 
 showing whether the fault is degeneracy and the 
 remedy selection, or the fault is too little to eat and 
 the remedy more food. 
 
 The light we have to-day seems certainly to spring 
 from a deeper truth than we possessed forty years 
 ago. But its range is very decidedly narrower, and, 
 surveyed as a whole, the unanimous guidance to be 
 obtained from science on the principles of social 
 selection is not enough to constitute a theory of the 
 subject adequate to direct social practice. We can 
 all see, we have all long seen, the enormous importance 
 of carrying it into action by the discouragement or 
 prevention of multiplication in such cases as those 
 already spoken of. But when we get beyond these 
 rather simple points we find that the guidance is no 
 longer unanimous. 
 
 3. Passing beyond the attempt to arrest the multi- 
 plication of strains that are definitely defective in 
 marked characters, taken with good reason to be 
 inborn, we come to a further demand for a positive 
 policy of social selection. I am glad here to quote 
 with the heartiest agreement a sentence from Major 
 Leonard Darwin's inaugural address to the School of 
 Sociology : " In all cases where different lines of advance 
 are open to us there is a danger in attaching too much 
 importance to any contrast between them ; for the 
 citadel of evil should be attacked on all sides at once 
 if our forces are sufficient for such a movement." 
 
 Still, our instructors, even those of them who most 
 clearly maintain the non-inheritance of acquired 
 characters and the general principle of natural selec- 
 tion, do not speak at all with one voice when they 
 come to deal with problems of human society. Within 
 their ranks, and without in any way reviving the
 
 142 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vm 
 
 problem whether or no the parents' acquirements are 
 reproduced in the natural growth of the offspring, 
 there is a division of opinion which for social practice 
 seems to the layman to be absolutely fundamental. 
 
 (i.) Starting from the doctrine that nothing but 
 inborn characters are transmitted from parents to 
 children, we yet know next to nothing for practical 
 purposes unless we also can estimate the differences of 
 reaction to which the same set of inborn characters 
 will give rise under different surroundings. Do inborn 
 characters, for example, determine the physical and 
 mental development of persons with the same sort of 
 fatality with which they determine the colour of their 
 eyes or their power of twitching their ears ? I will 
 state the problem in a pre-scientific form in order to 
 suggest that as a consequence of the work of science 
 up to to-day we have it upon us again. Robert Owen, 
 at a public dinner given in Glasgow to Lancaster, the 
 educationist, in the year 1812, expressed the follow- 
 ing opinion : "If any number of children were 
 exchanged at birth between the Society of Friends, 
 of which our worthy guest, Joseph Lancaster, is a 
 member, and the loose fraternity of St. Giles' in 
 London, the children of the former would grow up 
 like the children of the latter, prepared for every 
 degree of crime, while those of the latter would become 
 the same temperate, good, moral characters as the 
 former." 1 The passage does not mention physical 
 characters ; but, in fact, such physical characters as 
 depend upon use for their development are included 
 in the corresponding modern view, and I shall treat 
 the problem as concerning them no less than mental 
 and moral properties. 
 
 The question then is this : Ruling out definite 
 1 Lloyd Jones, Robert Owen, i. 100.
 
 viii MAINTENANCE OF SOCIAL STANDARD 143 
 
 inborn defect, with which we have already dealt, can 
 it be said that the general difference of mind and body 
 between one social stratum and another is a difference 
 depending on inborn qualities, due to social sifting, 
 and only to be removed by selection ; or is it simply 
 a difference produced by the environment, e.g. want 
 of proper food and housing and parental care, in 
 generation after generation as it arises, and capable 
 therefore, prima facie, of being removed by alteration 
 of the surroundings within the period' of growth of 
 any one generation ? Could the members of one 
 social stratum be transformed into members of 
 another, mentally and physically, by an alteration 
 of their circumstances from birth upwards ? Or does 
 the inborn nature, which it is now agreed that all 
 creatures inherit, tie down the so-called inferior classes 
 to a narrow groove of capacity and behaviour which 
 distinguishes them permanently and inevitably from 
 their so-called superiors ; almost, indeed, as a different 
 variety of the human species ? In yet another form 
 of words : Can we judge from the social position and 
 the actual fortunes of a man or woman — a pauper or 
 a casual labourer, or a starveling — whether they are 
 desirable physical parents for the coming generation, 
 or are social misery and misfortune compatible with 
 an inborn nature capable of very different responses to 
 wholly different stimuli ? 
 
 The question is, as I said, how far the same inborn 
 characters may be capable of giving rise to widely 
 different responses under widely different stimuli. 
 When we believed that practically the whole parental 
 life-history tended to be inherited by, to pass into, 
 the child, the answer was a foregone conclusion. 
 Now that we are taught that the child rather starts 
 where the parent began, in consequence of a common
 
 144 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vm 
 
 germinal basis, than carries over character out of 
 the parents' actual development of brain and body, 
 the question has to be re-stated. We now have it 
 suggested that a leading inborn character of human 
 beings, acquired by selection, actually consists in the 
 ability to acquire by use enormously different dex- 
 terities and convictions and forms of intelligence. 
 Thus, as I said, the layman appears to encounter 
 within the ranks of the purest selectionist orthodoxy, 
 and altogether apart from any revival of doctrines 
 of use-inheritance, a difference of opinion which for 
 his purposes is fundamental. Is all solid and per- 
 manent social improvement to be dependent on 
 selection, and on such selection as shall favour the 
 classes now considered " superior " in character and 
 ability ? Or has selection, except in case of the 
 definite defects above dealt with, really little to say 
 to the development of characters socially and humanly 
 desirable ? 
 
 Here is a significant quotation from Mr. De Morgan's 
 novel, Alice-for-Short : 
 
 " How came you to go in for Mental Cases ? " she 
 asked. . . . 
 
 " I was a Mental Case myself. 1 Here. Acute suicidal 
 mania. Then I married one of the attendants. . . . 
 Mr. Gaisford is at Witley just now. That's the Con- 
 valescent Home. That's where I met him. We've no 
 children. But I shouldn't have been the least afraid. 
 I saw you thought of inheritance ? " Alice nodded. 
 
 " There was nothing to inherit. I was as sane as you 
 are now. But under the same circumstances you would 
 try to kill yourself. It was the only thing a girl of sixteen, 
 
 1 The nurse who speaks is a nurse in Bethlehem Hospital — 
 " Bedlam."
 
 vni MAINTENANCE OF SOCIAL STANDARD 145 
 
 in her senses, could try to do, that I can see." Then, 
 dropping her voice, though there was no one near, the 
 nurse told Alice her story. 
 
 I think common-sense tells us that there must be 
 cases like this. What proportion of the cases are 
 like this is a further question. 
 
 I will cite a characteristic passage from Huxley : x 
 
 In a large proportion of cases crime and pauperism 
 have nothing to do with heredity ; but are the conse- 
 quences, partly of circumstances and partly of the pos- 
 session of qualities which under different conditions of 
 life might have excited esteem and even admiration. . . . 
 The benevolence and open-handed generosity which adorn 
 a rich man may make a pauper of a poor one ; the energy 
 and courage to which the successful soldier owes his rise, 
 the cool and daring subtlety to which the great financier 
 owes his fortune, may very easily, under unfavourable 
 conditions, lead their possessors to the gallows or to the 
 hulks. Moreover, it is fairly probable that the children 
 of a " failure " will receive from their other parent just 
 that little modification of a character which makes all the 
 difference. 
 
 Dr. Archdall Reid, I gather, practically agrees. Bar 
 the consequences of feeble-mindedness and suscepti- 
 bility to alcohol, and certain terrible infections, and 
 we may say that the lowest population has descended 
 " through sheer misfortune, including the great mis- 
 fortune of a bad mental training." 
 
 And, of course, we cannot help noticing for our- 
 selves such extraordinary sudden changes as the 
 adoption of a new civilisation by the Japanese within 
 a single generation. So that, while by no means 
 asserting that all men are equal in inborn capacity, 
 
 1 Evolution and Ethics, p. 39.
 
 146 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vm 
 
 we cannot help wondering whether the limitations 
 of character and ability are so strictly drawn by 
 inheritance as a purely selectionist policy would 
 imply. 
 
 (ii.) This line of thought suggests interesting con- 
 siderations regarding the recent diminution of the 
 birth-rate, and its selective operation which is alleged 
 to be unfavourable to the superior stocks. 
 
 I will take the second point first. The inferior 
 stocks, we are told, are less affected by the diminution 
 of the birth-rate than the superior stocks, and there- 
 fore the inferior type of man and woman is tending 
 to predominate and the superior is tending to extinc- 
 tion. Now, I suppose that we are not to doubt the 
 existence of stocks of superior capacity, and if we 
 knew which they were, and if we knew in what degree 
 their capacities were socially desirable, and those of 
 others which we should call inferior could without 
 danger be dispensed with, all possible discouragement 
 of the multiplication of the latter and encouragement 
 of that of the former would be a desirable social 
 policy. But at this point there is a suggestion that 
 strikes me very forcibly. This argument about the 
 selective birth-rate is surely an old one, and originated 
 in a controversy within the limits of which it was an 
 obvious truism. But in its present and wider applica- 
 tion it is no longer a truism, but an allegation of fact 
 which demands to be supported by strictly relevant 
 evidence. 
 
 When the older Malthusian ideas were in the air, 
 and prudence and self-control were held to be equiva- 
 lent to the avoidance of a long family, it was a simple 
 truism to retort : " Then the selective birth-rate must 
 always be unfavourable to the classes endowed with 
 prudence and self-control." And this was an un-
 
 vni MAINTENANCE OF SOCIAL STANDARD 147 
 
 answerable objection to the pure prudential theory. 
 But when we have come to consider that the question 
 of population is not so much quantitative as qualita- 
 tive (because there are some people who would always 
 be superfluous, and others who never could become 
 so), then, if we are going to identify the inferior stocks 
 with the lower social strata, we have our work cut 
 out for us. If we are convinced that the poorer 
 classes, either by having long families or simply by 
 being the poorer, have ipso facto established their 
 lesser inborn capacity — their lesser degree of fitness 
 — then we may lament the appearance of a selective 
 birth-rate in their favour. But in the allegations 
 current on this subject I seem to myself to see far too 
 little discrimination, and I suspect this want of 
 discrimination descended from the times when it 
 seemed a truism that a long family proved inferiority. 
 " The feeble-minded are highly prolific, though with 
 a high death-rate." Well, their case and that of one 
 or two more types is clear, and we have dealt with it 
 and ruled it out. 
 
 But when we go on to speak, for example, of casual 
 labourers and criminals in the same breath with the 
 feeble-minded as a class whose relative fertility is a 
 danger to society, we wonder to what precise pro- 
 position we are to be committed. Criminals are a very 
 large class ; we saw what Huxley said of some of 
 them. Casual labourers are a class including very 
 many and varied elements. Bear in mind that we 
 no longer hold the parent's acquirements during his 
 life - history to be transmitted to the child. From 
 the point of view of heredity his fortunes only concern 
 us as evidence of his transmissible qualities. From 
 other points of view, of course, they concern us in 
 other ways. But here we are speaking of heredity
 
 148 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vm 
 
 alone. I do not think we can be sure that our rough 
 classification of types of labour corresponds with any 
 sets of inborn qualities, desirable or undesirable. We 
 must remember the history of the English labouring 
 class. Their position is not the result of a general 
 social sifting from an equal start. Historically, they 
 have been handicapped, 1 and I do not believe that the 
 social position of individuals among the body is a 
 trustworthy index to their transmissible qualities. 
 Besides, unless a man's inborn qualities are very 
 highly independent of the stimulus to which they 
 have to respond, any favouritism, so to speak, exer- 
 cised in encouragement of the fertility of the so-called 
 superior classes or stocks would tend to disturb and 
 might destroy that very utterance of their capacities, 
 which has made us think them desirable types of 
 citizens. We will return to this below. 
 
 And when the fear of the selective birth-rate is 
 dispelled, the diminution of the rate of increase of 
 population loses its principal terrors. Its true moral 
 seems to me to be the extraordinary sensitiveness of 
 the population rate, and its amenability to fashion 
 and prevalent conviction. Huxley, writing in 1894, 
 still thought the increase of population a leading 
 perplexity of statesmen. We had been taught this 
 doctrine for nearly one hundred years, and in the life- 
 time of the older among us a whole-hearted crusade 
 and propaganda sprang up to enforce the doctrine. 
 You will still find many people, who ought to be well 
 informed, in the grip of the old population scare, and 
 quite unaware of the diminishing birth-rate, or else 
 welcoming it. The new state of things has hardly 
 been for five years distinctly before the mind of 
 
 1 T. H. Green, Principles of Political Obligation, sect. 229 ; and I 
 now may add Mr. Maurice Hewlett's " Song of the Plow."
 
 vni MAINTENANCE OF SOCIAL STANDARD 149 
 
 society. 1 My point is that though many factors, 
 some of selfishness, have co-operated, the facts and 
 the fashion have, on the whole, adapted themselves 
 to the doctrines and convictions long prevalent 
 throughout society. Now that these doctrines and 
 convictions are being, by the logic of facts, seriously 
 modified, I see every reason to expect that the 
 sensitiveness which has shown itself in one direction 
 will show itself under modified influences in another. 
 And considering the ultimate difficulties of the problem 
 in both directions, it appears to me that this extreme 
 sensitiveness of the social reaction is a thing to be 
 glad of. Its moral is, I believe, that the growth of 
 population is very capable of adjusting itself to the 
 needs and prospects of the human race, as presented 
 to the social mind for any fairly continuous period. 
 
 (iii.) Thus no need is made out, I venture to submit, 
 for applying, in any direction, the method of positive 
 artificial selection or encouragement of multiplication. 
 I cite a judgment of extreme importance from Pro- 
 fessor Bateson's work on Mendel's Principles of 
 Heredity : 2 
 
 To the naturalist it is evident that, while the elimina- 
 tion of the hopelessly unfit is a reasonable and prudent 
 policy for society to adopt, any attempt to distinguish 
 certain strains as superior, and to give special encourage- 
 ment to them, would probably fail to accomplish the 
 object desired, and would certainly be unsafe. 
 
 The distinction is created partly by the fact that 
 
 1 It must be remembered that the actual total increase of popula- 
 tion, as distinct from the percentage rate, is so far — e.g. for England 
 and Wales — markedly greater in the last decade than it ever has been 
 before. Written in 1910. This is true of the decennial increase 
 1901-1911. 
 
 2 Principles of Heredity, 305 ff.
 
 150 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vm 
 
 whereas our experience of what constitutes the extremes 
 of unfitness is fairly reliable and definite, we have little 
 to guide us in estimating the qualities for which society 
 has or may have a use, or the numerical proportions in 
 which they may be required. But specially important 
 are the indications that in the extreme cases unfitness is 
 comparatively definite in its genetic causation, and can, 
 not infrequently, be recognised as due to the presence of 
 a single genetic factor. There is as yet nothing in the 
 descent of the higher mental qualities to suggest that they 
 follow any single system of transmission. It is likely 
 that both they and the more marked developments of 
 physical powers result rather from the coincidence of 
 numerous factors than from the possession of any one 
 genetic element. 
 
 I will only repeat that if the qualities which it is 
 desired to promote are, as we have seen to be suggested, 
 capable of widely different developments according 
 to difference of stimuli, the means employed to 
 promote selection or to endow motherhood — with 
 whatever object — might very well be found to destroy 
 the responses in the way of more excellent parentage 
 which they were intended to elicit. The physical 
 heritage might be the same, but its consequences 
 different, both in parents and children. 1 
 
 4. Our instructors seem then to have brought us 
 to this point. They advise, unanimously, a definite 
 acceptance of a policy of elimination, so far as parent- 
 age is concerned, with regard to certain very strictly 
 limited types of unfitness. And we see every reason 
 to put their instruction in practice. When we further 
 ask whether the conceptions of the unfit and the fit 
 can safely be applied in the comparison of social 
 
 1 I am glad to find myself here in agreement with Dr. Saleeby, 
 Sociological Review, October 1910, p. 278.
 
 viii MAINTENANCE OF SOCIAL STANDARD 151 
 
 strata, with a view to the discouragement of certain 
 strains as inferior apart from defects specially diag- 
 nosed, and of the encouragement of others as superior, 
 there seems to be a fundamental division of opinion. 
 And according to our attitude towards these opinions 
 there would also be raised certain further problems 
 as to the scare of the falling birth-rate, at least in 
 English-speaking populations, 1 and of the alleged 
 selective birth-rate which is held to be operating 
 unfavourably to the superior strains. It is presup- 
 posed that here, as throughout, we treat separately 
 the question of defects that can be diagnosed and 
 that of presumptions drawn from social position and 
 good or ill " success." We concede the fertility of 
 the feeble-minded, and are prepared to take them out 
 of the problem. But when this is done, it seems to 
 us that a question remains whether other selective 
 birth-rates are as bad as they are painted. 
 
 Evidently we are in a difficulty when we try to go 
 beyond the elimination of certain very definite un- 
 fitnesses. A man's or woman's life-history does not 
 tell us for certain what their inborn qualities are. 
 We do not know how much is to be attributed to 
 variation of environment. Nor do we know what 
 inborn qualities are in the long run socially desirable. 
 It is to some of us a repulsive idea that we should try 
 to breed up a society of the general type of " successful 
 men." The roots of good life, we feel, probably lie 
 somewhat deeper than that. 
 
 In this uncertainty, then, we are recommended by 
 very good advisers to operate on the individuals of 
 
 1 Because for them we can date the rise and expansion of a cer- 
 tain propaganda. The American pamphlet which popularised the dis- 
 cussion in England was circulated by Mr. Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant, 
 mainly as a protest in favour of free speech, from 1876 onwards.
 
 152 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vm 
 
 each generation through the environment. Huxley 
 and Dr. Archdall Reid urge this policy ; and Major 
 Darwin, as we saw, was careful not to repudiate it 
 utterly. True, by this policy you primarily touch 
 the individual only and the one generation only. But 
 suppose the individual to be suffering, not from want 
 of inborn qualities, but from want of the environment 
 necessary for their favourable development ! And we 
 do not seem to know that it is not so ; or that it is 
 not so in a certain proportion of instances. A man 
 may be thin because he is one who can never get fat, 
 or because he has not enough to eat. If there are 
 both kinds of cases, it is a serious matter to neglect 
 the second kind. Then it would seem that a policy 
 of improving the environment is necessary, certainly 
 in some cases, and we cannot really tell in how many. 
 Well, then, why not ? Improve the housing, the 
 feeding, the sanitation, and the medical treatment 
 of the people. Build up a perfect environment by 
 force. This is what, in our doubt, we seem to be 
 driven to ; and the authorities, who have brought us 
 so far, leave us, we are inclined to think, without much 
 further guidance. 
 
 But here we remember that there are other con- 
 siderations — partly urged by some of our authorities, 
 partly within our own experience. 
 
 (i.) Outside the definite unfitnesses which we have 
 admitted and supposed to be dealt with, every one, as 
 I understand, would agree that there would probably 
 be a large, though unknown, amount of defective- 
 ness and inferiority, which is really due to inborn 
 characters, and can be amended by no variation of 
 surroundings. This factor, whatever its amount, can 
 only be dealt with by selection. 
 
 It would be foolish to take up a method which
 
 vni MAINTENANCE OF SOCIAL STANDARD 153 
 
 should wholly abandon all regard for selection, i.e. 
 to make no attempt at all to favour the predominance 
 of good stocks in so far as they may be presumed to 
 fulfil certain general conditions. Can we then lay 
 down general conditions which will tend to differ- 
 entiate our social methods in favour of good stocks, 
 even when we cannot say precisely in what inborn 
 characters the excellence of the stocks consists ? I 
 believe that we can, and I shall endeavour to explain 
 this possibility. 
 
 (ii.) Our authorities x have named the modus oper- 
 andi through the environment, but have not told us 
 much about its nature. But it is plain, from what 
 has just been said, that it cannot be without influence 
 on the general problem of selection. If we proceed 
 by guaranteeing the best surroundings equally and 
 unconditionally to all comers, we shall lose every 
 chance of differentiating in favour of the better 
 element which we presume to exist, and we shall incur 
 the dangers of promoting parasitism. Now we are 
 not advocating a general regime of hardship. It is 
 clear, I suppose, that where general hardship stamps 
 out the weak, it often weakens those who would have 
 been strong ; so that as a selective agency it is 
 wasteful and ineffective. But we are saying that 
 in human society, when you set to work improving 
 surroundings, there are many things to be thought 
 of. You must secure certain safeguards. You must 
 obtain certain responses and reactions. You must, in 
 a word, maintain a standard demand on the objects 
 of your treatment ; and this standard demand, as 
 we are now to see, will keep you straight from the 
 point of view of selection, while guiding you, or by 
 guiding you, in your operations on environment. 
 
 1 E.g. Huxley and Dr. Archdall Reid.
 
 154 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vm 
 
 5. I suggest, then, in conclusion, that there is a 
 social policy and attitude which will guide us fairly 
 right in the main over the whole area of the problem 
 of social selection, which is very much wider than the 
 question of the elimination of the definitely unfit. 
 To this policy and attitude I should give the name 
 of maintenance of the struggle for existence in the 
 social sense, or the maintenance of natural selection 
 in the social sense of that term. 
 
 The conception is definite, and requires definite 
 explanation. With a view to this we must revert to 
 the full meaning, as Darwin laid it down, of the 
 phrase, " struggle for existence." 1 The important 
 point is that the expression does not, as is often 
 stated, primarily imply the alternative of life or death 
 for the individual. The struggle for existence, he 
 tells us, is really a struggle for success in leaving 
 progeny. And in dealing with creatures to whose 
 progeny parental care is essential, we may surely at 
 our own risk add to Darwin's words, " success in 
 leaving progeny," the further qualification, " them- 
 selves likely to be successful in leaving progeny." 
 
 Now in the animal world, and also in a great 
 degree among the human race, there are two kinds at 
 least of success in leaving progeny. There is a high 
 fertility, without special command of the resources 
 of life or special parental care, and there is a high 
 degree of parental care and command of the resources 
 of life, with often a more moderate, but not necessarily 
 a low fertility. It is plain that the former is relatively 
 
 1 When Darwin says in the passage here referred to, Origin of 
 Species, sixth ed. p. 48, that he uses the phrase in a metaphorical 
 sense, he obviously means that it has a wide and pregnant significance. 
 I think it is to be regretted that Dr. Ward has laid hold of the term 
 " metaphorical," and relied on it to disparage the significance of 
 Darwin's usage (Naturalism and Agnosticism, i. 275).
 
 viii MAINTENANCE OF SOCIAL STANDARD 155 
 
 likely to fail in the second qualification of success, 
 that the progeny left shall be likely themselves to 
 succeed in leaving progeny. In other words, such 
 fertility will be liable to a high rate of unsuccess, 
 though not necessarily one which will destroy the 
 whole preponderance given by the fertility. For that 
 result we are looking to other causes. 
 
 The former kind of fertility is what we admit to 
 exist in the feeble-minded, and perhaps in some other 
 and analogous types. 1 But these types we have 
 urged throughout, so far as definable, should be taken 
 out of the problem by segregation. We could then 
 go forward to lay down the nature of the social 
 struggle for existence, with a view to the promotion 
 of the other type of fertility (with its greater chance of 
 success in leaving progeny themselves successful) on 
 the basis of Darwin's statement. Success in the 
 struggle for existence, in the social sense, would then 
 mean success in leaving progeny, such as themselves 
 to be successful in leaving progeny, And, mere 
 excessive animal fertility being ruled out, we could 
 say that on the whole the means to this success would 
 be, on the one hand, such discharge of social function 
 as would confer a command over the resources of 
 life ; on the other hand, the capacity for sound family 
 relations and adequate parental care. 
 
 On this basis we could advocate a policy and 
 attitude of what I have already called natural selection 
 in the social sense, consisting in the maintenance of 
 the struggle for existence in the social sense. This 
 policy and attitude, conformably with the meaning 
 which we have ascribed to the struggle for existence, 
 has nothing to do with the maintenance of a hardship 
 
 1 We saw that it is a very doubtful proceeding to apply this idea 
 of undesirable fertility to whole social strata indiscriminately.
 
 156 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vm 
 
 of conditions such as to endanger individual life. It 
 is not true, as is often asserted, that natural selection 
 operates exclusively through the destruction of in- 
 dividual existence. The point is not existence, but 
 parentage. Social natural selection and the social 
 struggle for existence operate essentially through the 
 prevention or discouragement of mating, and may be 
 brought into action through the most various forms 
 of policy in matters of public assistance, through 
 public opinion, and the education of the public mind, 
 passing also into the province of private opinion and 
 conduct. 
 
 The attitude and policy here advocated would be, 
 in a word, in every way to maintain and enforce the 
 normal social demands as test-conditions of parentage. 
 The normal social demands, I mean, on both sides ; 
 both in the discharge of social function as instrumental 
 to an adequate command of the resources of life, and 
 in the apparent will and capacity to enter upon 
 parentage as a matter involving the foundation and 
 government of a household, and complete parental 
 care. 
 
 It is objected, I know, that these are not normal 
 social demands ; that as things are the individual 
 has no difficulty in mating without conforming to any 
 test-conditions whatever. To this I reply that the 
 most frequent and alarming cases of such multiplica- 
 tion are ruled out by the policy which all through we 
 have presupposed ; and that though sound family 
 life with high parental care may be outstripped in its 
 results by this and that excessive fertility, yet it 
 always tends to give a reliable birth-rate with a low 
 death-rate — a strong probability of the progeny being 
 themselves successful in leaving progeny — and must 
 tend to become the normal and adequate source of
 
 vin MAINTENANCE OF SOCIAL STANDARD 157 
 
 sound population in as far as the lower types of 
 fertility are socially discouraged and ruled out. 1 And 
 it presupposes capacities and conditions which are 
 perfectly well understood, and which have a sound 
 claim to be recognised as the normal social conditions 
 of mating. Such recognition, public and private, 
 would constitute the healthy social policy and attitude 
 which is here advocated. 
 
 The point in this conception which I am particu- 
 larly anxious to insist upon, and to distinguish from 
 other views, lies in the acceptance of actual social 
 functions — of the power and will to render service in 
 the given social commonwealth — as a condition pre- 
 cedent of fitness for mating. This point makes our 
 conception fundamentally distinct from all, of what- 
 ever school, which set up theoretical judgments, 
 ethical or biological, of qualities of persons, as grounds 
 for accepting and endowing them with a view to 
 mating ; whether by endowment of motherhood 
 (otherwise than through fatherhood), 2 or by bonuses 
 to selected families, or simply by a lavish policy of 
 public assistance to those who without it could not 
 maintain a household. This is why we insist on the 
 term " natural " in our definition of social selection. 
 We do not imply an infra-social struggle by remorse- 
 less competition ; we do mean a maintenance of 
 normal-social responsibilities and demands. Society 
 is not itself perfect, nor a perfect standard of human 
 capacity. But it is the best we have, and infinitely 
 more to be trusted than the theory of any individual. 
 It springs out of our manifold needs and powers, and 
 
 1 We saw above what a sensitive thing the birth-rate is, and how 
 capable, according to all analogy, of recovering itself, if the desir- 
 ability of a recovery should be urgent. 
 
 2 Here I agree with Dr. Saleeby, Sociological Review, I.e.
 
 158 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vm 
 
 is far more liberal, many-sided, and natural than the 
 knowledge and judgment of any man, or of any 
 science. It is here maintained, then, that we shall 
 be right on the whole if we demand that the individual 
 who aspires to parentage shall be voll, complete or 
 adequate, as tested by de facto will and capacity to 
 give a value in the way of social service for which 
 a return adequate to self-support is received from 
 society. This will and capacity, as tested in life, and 
 the apparent will and capacity to found and govern 
 a household, are the tests and pre-conditions of 
 mating according to the policy and attitude of natural 
 selection in the social sense. 
 
 This policy and attitude, as it appears to me, meets 
 the requirements both of improvement through 
 selection and of improvement through the environ- 
 ment. It maintains a standard, a social demand, as 
 the pre-condition of mating. It rejects those who 
 cannot come up to it, presumably owing to inborn 
 defect, and so far, I suppose, satisfies the selectionist. 
 It also adjusts the improvement of surroundings so 
 as to reject those who, in spite of offered opportunities, 
 will not, as we commonly say, come up to it. That is, 
 those who, having nothing apparently to prevent 
 them but a lack of their own exertions, fail de facto 
 to meet the requirements which it imposes. In this 
 way it prescribes the right course for those who try to 
 effect improvement through surroundings. 
 
 Thus it is the only kind of selection which is 
 really practicable in the case of moral beings of appar- 
 ently full calibre. At the same time, it is the only 
 guide to the true method of amelioration through 
 the environment. You cannot select or reject moral 
 beings by mere inspection at a given moment ; you 
 cannot possibly judge in that way of their capacities
 
 viii MAINTENANCE OF SOCIAL STANDARD 159 
 
 for development, always supposing the unfitnesses, of 
 which there are clear and direct physical or mental 
 signs, to have been eliminated by other methods. 
 Again, you cannot make moral beings into what you 
 want by modifying their surroundings. They must 
 co-operate ; and to make them do this you must hold 
 up a demand before them. 
 
 Thus the simple and adequate policy is to set the 
 standard which you hold socially necessary, and which 
 we say is provided for you by normal society. Then 
 you " select " by rejecting those who cannot come up 
 to it ; and you " improve through environment " by 
 requiring all who are to profit by your improvements 
 to meet them by certain reactions and responses, 
 and by rejecting those who will not. And for the 
 application of the method it is not necessary to be 
 able to distinguish those who cannot meet the standard 
 because they have not the capacity, from those who 
 will not, because they will not use the capacity. 
 Whether they cannot or whether they will not, they 
 are unfit for the social right and duty of parentage. 1 
 And selection, or the right kind of improvement 
 through environment, takes place automatically if 
 only the standard is maintained. 
 
 How is it possible to maintain a standard which 
 requires you to reject people from mating ? Well, all 
 sorts of means of discouragement, public and private, 
 are in our power. And it is all-important to note this, 
 and not to fancy that you can do nothing unless you 
 can kill the unsatisfactory individual. I have had 
 
 1 Therefore I am not so much alarmed as many good judges have 
 been, if it is to be doubtful whether alcoholism is a cause of filial 
 degeneracy. No one has said that an alcoholic person is a good head 
 of a family, whether or no he may be a safe parent physically. And, 
 not being likely to be a good head of a family, a social standard would 
 reject him.
 
 160 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS vm 
 
 in mind to a great extent the policy of public assist- 
 ance authorities, and various proposals for the artificial 
 encouragement of population. Against all these I 
 advocate our " natural " standard of selection. 
 Then there is the action of parents and guardians 
 dependent on the education of general opinion ; and 
 ultimately the action of the women themselves. Let 
 them raise the standard which they demand of their 
 mates, 1 and the battle is won. 
 
 1 It will be said "fastidiousness is difficult; there are too few 
 men to go round." Here there is a practical point insufficiently 
 noticed. More male children are born than female ; but more die 
 during childhood. To arrest this cause of disparity would strike at 
 one great reason of the falling birth-rate.
 
 IX 
 
 THE AFFINITY OF PHILOSOPHY AND 
 CASEWORK 
 
 To begin with, you may ask why drag in Philosophy ? 
 Casework is difficult enough ; why study it in the 
 light of something else which is, if possible, still more 
 difficult ? I will try to explain my reason, and it will 
 make an introduction to the subject. 
 
 It is not that I want to lay down doctrines. I 
 only want to suggest an analogy, which I have- found 
 helpful to myself. There is a close affinity between 
 philosophy and the higher kinds of practical work, 
 such as our casework, though, of course, they are 
 not the same thing. I should think we have all, one 
 way or another, come across the old notion of the 
 three stages of experience ; call them " Common 
 sense," " Science " (like mathematics, economics, 
 biology, where you have to do with " laws " and 
 " principles "), and in the third stage back again to 
 common sense, carrying your laws and principles 
 with you, like an engineer with his mathematics or a 
 doctor with his biology. 
 
 Philosophy belongs par excellence to this third 
 stage. It needs an eye for facts and a sense of values. 
 And our casework is the same in this respect. It 
 needs a good eye — a sound common sense — to begin 
 
 161 M
 
 162 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS ix 
 
 with, then a study of causes and principles, and then 
 back to your common sense, with a trained judgment 
 of values — a trained judgment, that is, of what makes 
 life worth living — and a common-sense insight, also 
 trained by science, as to how to help people to get it. 
 
 I will carry this point further by an illustration 
 which, I hope, takes us into the heart of our subject. 
 Look at the stages of one's knowledge of a great city. 
 There is no better example of what a philosopher 
 means by knowledge, and it just fits in with what we 
 want in casework. 
 
 When you first come to a great city it is all strange 
 to you : streets and great buildings and bewildering 
 crowds. Then the outside of things becomes familiar, 
 and you begin, if you have an eye, to notice significant 
 details. 
 
 You begin from the outside, things in the streets 
 attract your attention ; and gradually you begin to 
 see how they hang together — the ways different 
 people make their living, and the character thus 
 impressed on different neighbourhoods. You begin 
 to probe a little deeper, and to study the people 
 themselves, and also all that devoted students have 
 written and taught about the causes of what you see : 
 about economics, social reform, housing, Poor Law, 
 and the rest of it. That is your second stage of ex- 
 perience. Many and many Londoners never reach it. 
 
 Then, if you keep up your interest, the third stage 
 of experience begins to open up before you. You 
 come back to the life of the streets and shops, and the 
 crowds who besiege the tramcars at night, and the 
 influences that work upon the homes of the people, 
 some of whom you have learned to know intimately. 
 And the face of the great city has become expressive 
 to you — like a friend's face, from which you know if
 
 ix PHILOSOPHY AND CASEWORK 163 
 
 he is ill or in. distress or if he is well and happy ; the 
 look of the streets and houses speaks to you ; streets, 
 houses, gardens, the surface of the civilised earth, 
 are members of society, people will tell you now. In 
 a word, what you see has become symbolic ; it reveals 
 to you a great life behind it ; and you live with the 
 currents of this life, and are at home in it, seeing and 
 feeling the causes of its happiness and unhappiness 
 or its worthiness or unworthiness. That is the sort 
 of thing a philosopher means by knowledge, and that 
 is the sort of thing, I take it, you want as a basis for 
 casework. 
 
 We used to be told, the first thing is to chart your 
 district. I suppose, now, you find this pretty much 
 done to your hand, through the registration system, 
 and through the widespreading knowledge and friend- 
 ships of those who are your guides. All the same, it 
 remains to be done by each one for him- or herself. 
 You have to make the knowledge your own ; in the 
 long run you cannot work on other people's know- 
 ledge, nor on other people's friendships. " Charting " 
 your district does not mean merely having a list of 
 agencies stuck up on the wall ; it means a spiritual 
 chart ; a chart of influences, temptations, resources, 
 true help and false help, and above all things, surely, 
 a plan of friendships. Your mind must be a spiritual 
 focus of your district. 
 
 Every case, that is, every person and family who 
 needs your help, will, I suppose, have two main 
 aspects. He or she will be, like yourself, a meeting- 
 point of all or some of these influences of your district ; 
 and others as well, for he has perhaps not lived there 
 always ; and will also be a human being. You are in 
 relation with him in both ways ; of course, I do not 
 mean that they are separate. Humanity responds to
 
 164 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS ix 
 
 the influences immediately round it ; but this is not 
 all there is in a man, there is much in him that has 
 not been brought out — that is what I mean to say. 
 
 Now here, I think, we come to the main thing I 
 can suggest about casework. It is nothing new — only 
 a little bit of theory which is more use as an encourage- 
 ment perhaps than as a guide ; for the guidance in 
 detail must come mainly from your trained common 
 sense. 
 
 But I will approach it in this way. I asked an 
 experienced worker, " What is the chief thing I ought 
 to say to them about casework ? " and I got the 
 answer, " Individualise the case ; don't classify." I 
 am impelled here to digress, and put before you the 
 three rules laid down for interpreting the ancient 
 classics by the great teacher Moritz Haupt, of Berlin. 
 They are so sound that I think they apply to the 
 whole of every attempt to understand the life of 
 others. He said : (1) " Man soil nicht iibersetzen," 
 " You are not to translate," i.e. you are to fix your 
 mind on the expression before you in its own context, 
 and not to accept ready-made equivalents for it. 
 One notices how different case-papers are that are 
 taken down by different people, some pointed, some 
 inexpressive. (2) " Grammatische Kunstausdrucke 
 soil man nicht brauchen," " You are not to employ 
 grammatical formulae " — that is our " not to classify " 
 — not to let names and phrases come between you 
 and the life you have to interpret, " a subjunctive 
 mood " or " a chronic unemployed " ; (3) " Man soil 
 nicht logisch sondern psychologisch verstehen," ' You 
 are to interpret psychologically and not logically." 
 Did you ever happen to read, for instance, an old 
 Review article called " An Apology for False State- 
 ments," reprinted in the large edition of Mrs.
 
 ix PHILOSOPHY AND CASEWORK 165 
 
 Bosanquet's Standard of Life ? False statements, as 
 we call them, are so very natural, and by no means 
 always show " intent to deceive." 
 
 Of course you must know the classification ; Moritz 
 Haupt did not mean that an interpreter of the classics 
 should be ignorant of grammar. He meant, I take 
 it, what we mean when we say that all these things 
 — rules, forms, headings, red-tape even — are good 
 servants but bad masters. In a word, you must 
 subordinate classification to individualisation. 
 
 The reason of this ? Well, it is, in principle, that 
 an individual human being, a mind, is inexhaustible ; 
 and this is true both of yourself and of the person you 
 are trying to help, and because it is true of both of 
 you, it is true of the resources of the world which 
 surrounds you both. 
 
 You may say, this does not seem the fact in 
 practice ; on the contrary, one appears very quickly 
 to get to the end of most people, and more particularly 
 of oneself. I know I used soon to get to the end of 
 myself, sitting on a committee with numberless cases 
 before it of people who seemed helpless and hopeless. 
 
 This is true also ; one does soon get to the end of 
 oneself and others. But it is a good thing to see the 
 reason ; and the reason is just our own weakness and 
 the weakness of those whom we are trying to assist. 
 Mr. Gage Gardiner, one of our very best secretaries, 
 to whom I was sent as a beginner to get some sense 
 put into me, impressed me greatly by saying, " Of 
 course, you know, among the reasons for non-assist- 
 ance there ought to be a heading, ' Incompetence of 
 the Committee.' " 
 
 It remains true, then, that there is a whole world 
 of resources open to you and to your case ; each of 
 you has, or is, a mind which can be always finding
 
 166 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS ix 
 
 out and practising new things, and though you are 
 very limited, yet your limit is not ironclad or un- 
 removable ; it is just the limit of your faith and 
 courage and ingenuity and painstaking. I remember 
 a worker dealing with a slippery customer who didn't 
 want to repay a loan, and would not name a time 
 when he would be found at home. The worker 
 pressed him, " Well, when can I find you at home ? " 
 The man growled out, " At 12 o'clock midnight." 
 " All right," the worker said, and went cheerfully, 
 having a long journey to make, at the time appointed, 
 and got his repayments. Now, I am not saying one 
 should make a rule out of that. The worker just saw 
 it was the thing to do in that case. Another man 
 might have done something else, and succeeded 
 equally well. All one knows is that he did not give 
 in, and that he scored. The point is merely that 
 there is always some resource, if you can only see it. 
 
 One needs to think of this, and it brings out the 
 point very well, when you meet the incorrigible 
 commonplace objector to our work — the man who 
 tries to prove that you mostly don't and can't be of 
 use to any one under present social conditions. He 
 says this sort of thing : " Suppose you meet with a 
 case of hopeless unemployment, and illness in the 
 house, what are you going to do about it ? You can't 
 help except by brute force, i.e. simply supporting the 
 family, and that is what ought to be done, but only 
 a State agency can do it for the numbers who 
 need it." 
 
 Now, if you allow that sort of statement to pass, I 
 think the enemy has got you. You have then allowed 
 three inexhaustible living forces to be reduced to a 
 barren formula, and a very poor one at that. The 
 three living forces are the man in need, yourself, and
 
 ix PHILOSOPHY AND CASEWORK 167 
 
 the world in which you both are, of which your 
 charted district is the nearest part, or, still nearer, 
 his family. I think you must answer : "The assump- 
 tion is impossible. A living person with his family, 
 with the world about him, and myself a human being 
 representing a whole network of human beings 
 interested in him, must have much more in him and 
 open to him than the sort of x and y you offer me. 
 What more I cannot say till I have seen him and made 
 inquiry. And I quite admit that I may not be able 
 to say anything to the point even then. But certainly 
 there is more there, whether I can see it or not." 
 
 I often think in this connection of the stories of 
 detectives and of adventures. You know the sort of 
 thing ; there is some one locked up in a prison with 
 walls twelve feet thick, and the impossibilities of 
 escaping are all piled up against him. But you know 
 it is going to be all right when the hero comes along ; 
 he will perhaps tap the wall and find a hollow place 
 and a passage, and will walk off with the prisoner as 
 comfortable as you please. The thing is coarsely 
 pictured, but the moral is true enough in general ; 
 the hero succeeds because he has thought of some 
 pretty obvious idea that has occurred to no one else, 
 or has pluck and ingenuity to try some simple device 
 no one else ventured to try. Your inquiries are just 
 tapping the prison wall ; and you do find a hollow 
 place and a way out. You can't do it by rule ; it is 
 in the individual case and individual conditions that 
 there lies some clue, if you are clever and painstaking 
 enough to find it. I say you can't do it by rule ; but 
 it helps immensely, of course, to know all the rules, 
 i.e. all the hints taken from ways and means that are 
 often successful and that point out dangers. And 
 above all, it helps, nay, it is almost the whole game,
 
 168 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS ix 
 
 to know the people and their world, and to care for 
 them very much. 
 
 This is the full meaning of charting your district, 
 and the full use of our registration work. The in- 
 dividualising, the adapting yourself, by help of the 
 resources, is the thing. Here is a little case, quite 
 simple, but just fresh in my mind. A girl, doing 
 dressmaking at home, but the custom very small and 
 irregular ; a good chance, owing to the war, of regular 
 clerk's work at good regular pay, but training needed, 
 and to leave the old groove. The girl was funking it. 
 I should probably have let it go at that if it had been 
 my case, and thereby have qualified for an entry 
 under Mr. Gage Gardiner's heading. But there was 
 a better judgment at work— a rather sharp letter was 
 written, pointing out what a disappointment and 
 failure it would mean to lose this chance. Of course 
 the writer had long-standing influence over the girl. 
 The girl agreed to try the training, succeeded better 
 than she expected, and now is on the way to regular, 
 well-paid employment under fairly human conditions. 
 Perfectly simple, as I said. Any secretary here would 
 do it with his or her little finger ; yet it means the 
 rescue of a life from ill-paid drudgery, and, I suppose, 
 two men set free to serve — the brother who was 
 keeping the family, and the clerk whose place she 
 takes. We may note that the acquaintance with the 
 family which gave the knowledge and power to do it 
 arose from the careful observance of our habit of 
 visiting our pensioners. The case was in the family 
 of an old city charities pensioner, handed over to some 
 of us outside London some fourteen years ago. The 
 pensioner died long since, but the family have become 
 our friends. 
 
 Well, then, this idea of individualising our casework
 
 ix PHILOSOPHY AND CASEWORK 169 
 
 I call a serviceable idea, and the bit of theory behind 
 it, if it sustains our faith in it, I consider a useful 
 little bit of theory. You may call the theory by any 
 name you like. Call it the principle of the infinity 
 of mind. But in these words alone it is not of the 
 least use to you. And the workers who apply it best 
 have probably never heard that name for it. What 
 they would say, I suppose, would be something like 
 this, "It's no earthly use talking about what can be 
 done until you have gone carefully into the case." 
 But there is no harm in having a reason for the faith 
 that is in you ; only the reason is futile without its 
 application. 
 
 Well, then, this is the way in which casework 
 requires you to look at things, and, as I said, it is 
 rather like the way in which philosophy looks at 
 them. Both represent the third stage of experience. 
 First common sense, then science, then science plus 
 common sense. To philosophise is to vitalise, to 
 individualise ; so is treating a case. 
 
 This rather forces on us the question how far we 
 rely on rules or principles in the Charity Organisation 
 Society. It comes up to be talked of every now and 
 then. The old thing we used to say was, we have 
 principles but no rules. That meant, I suppose, that 
 the rules "don't pay back-rent"; "you can't help 
 chronic unemployed," " you should always see the 
 man," are hints about the best way to work, founded 
 on reason and experience, but our servants, not our 
 masters. Even our one rule which is almost infallible, 
 " Do nothing without thorough inquiry," of course 
 admits of exception in case of interim relief. I re- 
 member Sir Charles Loch saying, when we were accused 
 of slowness, that it lay absolutely with the district 
 committees ; they might give guineas upon guineas in
 
 170 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS ix 
 
 interim relief if they thought right — of course taking 
 the risk of doing very serious mischief. Even interim 
 relief, however, would, I presume, hardly ever be 
 given without the home visit. But this is not because 
 of a rule, but because it is so reasonable. Why not 
 visit the home? It may be a false address. Even 
 so, I do not know about homeless cases referred to a 
 refuge pro tempore. There will be no home visit there. 
 They might be an exception even to this rule. 
 
 Even " principles," we were told in Council the 
 other day, should not be recommended to us as 
 Charity Organisation Society principles, but only as 
 the right principles. They should not be a shibboleth, 
 dividing us from the rest of humanity, and they should 
 be supported because they are right, not because they 
 are ours. That seems to me all very true, but only 
 half the truth. We have our flag, which we believe 
 to be the flag of humanity; we inscribe upon it the 
 things which, it is our faith, are most important to 
 man. It is "ours" in particular, it is "Charity 
 Organisation Society," only because we are banded 
 together to put in practice a certain attitude towards 
 life, which is not as yet recognised by every one as 
 right, though we believe that it ought to be, and is so 
 much more than people know. And we might do 
 well to speak of an attitude to life sometimes as well 
 as of principles, or even in place of them. Because in 
 a great concerted work like ours the feeling and spirit 
 of it, though you can more or less put them in clear 
 statements, are yet much more than you can put in 
 clear-cut words. This is very important, I think. 
 Our work is of the third stage of experience. We 
 don't start with bare doctrines or principles and 
 derive our actions from them. We start with common 
 sense and a spirit of thorough service, and the reasons
 
 ix PHILOSOPHY AND CASEWORK 171 
 
 of things come to us, to all of us, by each other's help, 
 and that of those who have gone before, as we join 
 hands in the work, and learn by experience ; some 
 being more of students, some more practical people. 
 So, I mean, it is really a life or an attitude or a spirit 
 that we share, and if you understand principles as 
 the spirit of a life and the banner of a great human 
 cause, then we have principles, and they are Charity 
 Organisation Society principles, because they interpret 
 a human good which is certainly the common posses- 
 sion of mankind, but which not every one recognises 
 as clearly as we believe we recognise it. Only, of 
 course, sometimes you must try to express yourself in 
 word, as you are always doing in action. And then 
 you say that you are trying to make clear your 
 principles — the central point or the fulcrum of your 
 practical attitude. 
 
 Therefore, accepting the need of sometimes crystal- 
 lising our attitude into words, one might suggest that 
 the principle underlying our work is that we value 
 mind above body ; that we value character and 
 intelligence above comfort and external regulation. 
 But this statement would be quite misleading without 
 the reason why ; because we refuse, I take it, to set 
 the one thing against the other ; that is, we say that 
 the one includes the other — mind includes body— but 
 not the other the one — body does not include mind. 
 We place mind above body only in the sense that (1) 
 it is mind that feels and judges the value of the whole 
 arrangement together, mind and body and the world ; 
 and (2) it is mind that governs the whole arrangement 
 with a view to the values that can be got out of it. 
 Anything that can be done for our bodies, or for 
 any one else's, can only be desired and achieved by 
 the excellence of our minds and of theirs. So, as a
 
 172 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS ix 
 
 mere test of success, I should be quite willing to have 
 our work judged by its consequences in permanent 
 and general bodily well-being. Because I am abso- 
 lutely sure that such well-being cannot be separated 
 from control by character and intelligence. 
 
 Now, I am not saying that Council has ever passed 
 a resolution in terms like these, e.g. " that mind is 
 infinite and is the ultimate power of all powers." 
 There would be some derision in Council if one 
 proposed it. I am suggesting it at my own peril, 
 as an interpretation of the attitude which it seems 
 to me that all of us implicitly share in the work 
 which is our living bond — an attitude from which 
 such expressions as we use in the Manual naturally 
 flow. 
 
 One word more about " rules." Long ago we 
 banished the phrase " undeserving " from our case- 
 papers, though I believe the novelists all imagine it 
 to be our favourite category. (In speaking of the 
 novelists let me digress for a moment to protest 
 against the nonsensical phrase " charitable organisa- 
 tion," which is coming to be used as an equivalent 
 for " society engaged in relief work." It is obviously 
 a misconstruction of our title, using the words which 
 indicate our general purpose, extending over the 
 whole field of social work, as a mere descriptive 
 phrase for a single association.) 
 
 But to return. We have got rid of the category 
 of " undeserving," but I suppose we have an idea 
 that bad character is apt to make a case " unhelp- 
 able." So it is apt to ; but we must not, I suppose, 
 take it as a fixed rule, only as a hint, and we should 
 always judge on the possibilities of the particular case. 
 Here is a case ; it has been in print ; I daresay most 
 of you know it, but some may not. A man's brother
 
 ix PHILOSOPHY AND CASEWORK 173 
 
 was charged before a magistrate with stealing sausages. 
 This so greatly annoyed the man — he was having 
 his glass of a Saturday — that he went down to the 
 police-court and assaulted the principal witness 
 against his brother, and was promptly sent to prison 
 for two months. His wife, who had children, applied 
 to the Guardians, who offered the house. She came 
 to the Charity Organisation Society — Shoreditch. I 
 don't know whether they thought the man had shown 
 laudable family feeling, but they had him interviewed 
 in prison, and arranged to keep his wife and children 
 while he was away, and he to repay them, which he 
 did. I daresay this would be thought a very simple 
 case now, but I think in those days some com- 
 mittees would have shied at it. It would read oddly, 
 " Applicant, wife of a man in prison for assault 
 committed in state of intoxication." I should think 
 the committee were right, were they not ? 
 
 But I don't suppose I have anything to teach you 
 in casework. I should imagine that the machinery 
 at your command is enormously improved and 
 extended to-day from what it was in my time. And 
 I should think that your minds are freer, expanded 
 by the general movement of ideas and by the necessity 
 of co-operation with other agencies. I notice a 
 feeling — we had a striking expression of it one day in 
 Council — that the level of our very best workers is 
 not too good for all the work of a district office, and 
 that all the details of receiving applicants and making 
 inquiries in the district need to be carried out with a 
 discretion and considerateness which we have been 
 too apt to restrict to the very most important and 
 difficult work — that there should be no roughness or 
 treatment of applicants de haul en has, anywhere in a 
 Charity Organisation Society office. I think this is a
 
 174 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS ix 
 
 sign of the times, and a very good one so far as my 
 judgment goes. 
 
 I should suppose that to-day you are more likely 
 to be embarrassed by the number of agencies on the 
 ground than by the lack of them, and that your 
 difficulties really must be in avoiding competition and 
 in securing a sufficiently high standard of work while 
 maintaining friendly co-operation. I should think 
 there must be statesmanship as well as skilled relief 
 work in dealing with every case. Organising on the 
 case, which was rather at its beginning in my time — 
 rather an ideal — must now, I should think, be an 
 ever-present necessity. It just means — does it not ? — 
 analysing and working out your case on the basis of 
 your chart of the district, calling in the agencies 
 according to your judgment of their different functions. 
 And it involves, I suppose, a reaction back from the 
 cases upon the various agencies, and upon the life 
 of the districts and the great city, and the whole 
 country, which implicates both your work in the 
 district, and ultimately the Council office and the 
 whole system of societies in sympathy with us. I 
 mean, it is from your casework, your experience of, 
 say, the needs of children, or of housing, of the Poor 
 Law, or of tuberculous cases, that there radiate the 
 influences which end in better co-operation of agencies, 
 in great national movements, in the policy of the 
 Council, in legislative and administrative changes. 
 It is important to realise what comes up from our 
 casework, as well as what goes down into it. 
 
 Returning to the problem of co-operation, I should 
 think you must have questions of over-visiting and 
 of over-relief which must tax all your judgment to 
 deal with. I remember working with the district 
 nurses, who had a most able and zealous representa-
 
 ix PHILOSOPHY AND CASEWORK 175 
 
 tive on our local committee. They helped us quite 
 immensely, both with information and with active 
 assistance. But there was one limit. They would 
 not co-operate negatively. Their point was to get 
 their patient well. If we wanted to impose conditions 
 on our sick-relief in their cases, they would not assent. 
 They would be perfectly good-humoured and straight- 
 forward, but they would simply get the relief from 
 other sources, which through their numerous friends 
 they were well able to do. This is a general question 
 which was becoming acute about the time when I 
 ceased to work locally. We used to say, the question 
 of money does not come in ; decide the treatment on 
 the merits, and then raise the money. (And certainly 
 it is wrong to spend money because you have it to 
 spend. But it is often done.) But then we found 
 that people organised us, instead of our organising 
 them. They brought us the cases they knew we 
 should raise money for, and spent their own money 
 on cases which they knew we should not approve of. 
 This was a serious matter, because it meant a sort of 
 organisation for the benefit of bad relief work ; and in 
 1898 Council suggested to committees that they might 
 decline to proceed with a case where the referring 
 agency, being able to contribute, refuses to do so. 
 This is a sort ot reciprocity bargain, a sort of hostile 
 tariffs, but obviously does not go to the root of the 
 matter. Plainly, the ultimate cure is only in a higher 
 standard of relief work on the part of all agencies, in 
 friendship and conversion. 
 
 So, again, you are brought across such general 
 questions as that of school feeding, and in all these 
 things the method of charting the district develops 
 into suggestions for better general organisation. The 
 important point is that the very chaos of agencies,
 
 176 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS ix 
 
 whose overlapping and overstraining leads to bad 
 work, contains, when you consider them all together 
 with reference to cases, the suggestion for a scheme 
 of better work, which is the organisation at which we 
 aim. The order lies implicit in the disorder ; you 
 have to evolve it out of the given material. 
 
 We were talking at Council the other day about 
 influence in a district, and very strong opinions were 
 expressed in favour of a certain reticence, an abstin- 
 ence from preaching, and talking like superior persons. 
 I feel about this, as I said at the time, that considerate- 
 ness, and, to put it plainly, good manners and 
 cordiality, which are absolutely necessary, do not 
 exclude taking a decided line and letting it be known. 
 I do feel that great influence has often attached to a 
 man or woman who never lowers the flag. I think 
 of Mr. Albert Pell, and our old friend Mr. Mackay, 
 and the weight which they and others like them have 
 carried through their resolute and decided front. Mr. 
 Pell was best known as a Poor Law man, but it seems 
 to me the same kind of thing. If he were accused of 
 hard treatment of cases, he challenged publicity, and 
 fought the imputations, he said, as you would fight 
 a parliamentary election, by meetings and speeches, 
 and I think he always carried his point. Mr. Price, 
 I believe it was, used to say, in the days of our great 
 unpopularity, " the working people may hate you, 
 but they trust you ; they know you don't tell them 
 lies." I think all this should be borne in mind. 
 There is power in courage and decision. And with 
 regard to applicants, it is a great thing to have your 
 line thoroughly known in a district. Raising ex- 
 pectations and disappointing them is the fatal thing, 
 even for popularity. But my main argument is that 
 there is no conflict between the two lines ; good
 
 ix PHILOSOPHY AND CASEWORK 177 
 
 manners and absence of pretension may go along with 
 perfect decision and a readiness to give reasons. 
 
 One of these questions of tact came up at Council 
 the other day ; the question of taking a clergyman's 
 cases together at a certain time, so as to spare him 
 sitting through the whole committee. I am not sure 
 — it was my fault perhaps — if we raised the question 
 whether the clergy whose time was thus to be spared 
 were to be members of committee or not. It strikes 
 me as perhaps not altogether healthy that members 
 of committee should come as a rule for their own cases 
 only. Great evils are said to have arisen in that way 
 on Boards of Guardians. It tends to pass into wishing 
 just to get help for your own case and then go. I 
 merely mention the point. Of course it is quite 
 natural now and then to take a case out of its order 
 to suit any very busy man or woman on a committee. 
 
 I hope that the main lines of our casework follow 
 from what I have said. Chart the district, work 
 towards a division of labour — every agency having a 
 distinct province and keeping within it, knowing that 
 if it trespasses it must do harm — e.g. if the hospitals 
 do the General Practitioner's work ; organise on the 
 case, remembering also that in every person, especially 
 every family, there is infinitely more than you can see, 
 and that all depends on how much you can see in him 
 and his world — -your inquiries are auxiliary to that. 
 And carry the case up to the state of the district and 
 the country, as you carry the agencies down to the case. 
 And your practical common sense is to be of the third 
 stage, i.e. it is to have science behind it and in it ; and 
 the passion for the improvement of the condition of 
 the people by the triumph of character and intelligence 
 is the life-blood of all your action. And I should 
 be inclined to add, absolute friendliness with other 
 
 N
 
 178 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS ix 
 
 workers and with all who are interested in cases, 
 considerateness, and good temper, and never to 
 preach, except when challenged or summoned as I 
 am to-day. But yet, never to lower the flag ; always 
 to be ready to point out respectfully but distinctly 
 your reasons for the faith that is in you. I think, you 
 know, it is well not to talk too loftily. But all the 
 same, we have a faith, and, I believe, a strong feeling 
 of comradeship and trust in one another. I know 
 nowhere where I feel so sure of unity in the good 
 cause and of trustworthy friendship as in the Charity 
 Organisation Society. 
 
 One word in conclusion about this, about the value 
 of our faith. I know it is a danger to speak too 
 gushingly. There was a time at which, in connection 
 with some of the great public schools, one used to 
 hear a great deal about spirituality and purity, and 
 it rather tended to make one feel ill. All the same, 
 I suspect that young workers, otherwise desirous to 
 help us and throw in their lot with us, are apt to be 
 put off by a certain slur which may be cast on our 
 work, and I should like to say a word about it, because 
 I am prepared to fight this point to the death. I 
 suspect that our work and methods are often com- 
 pared unfavourably with ideas which favour more 
 complete social reconstruction. Our work may be 
 held " second best," a palliative, not the real thing, 
 not "drastic " — an attractive word. I would, in pass- 
 ing, recognise that we have had very good service from 
 people who regarded it so; a convinced Socialist 
 curate was one of the very best Charity Organisation 
 workers I ever saw. He knew the life of the people 
 and saw the need for our work, but believed in 
 Collectivism beyond. He was absolutely straight, 
 and never tried to get round us in any way, but
 
 ix PHILOSOPHY AND CASEWORK 179 
 
 worked very hard and most thoroughly. I honoured 
 him. 
 
 Still, the idea of doing what is second best is 
 disagreeable, and we find that people are naturally 
 attracted by what seems to promise more brilliant 
 and universal results — social reconstruction of one 
 kind or another. To work for this seems like working 
 for a new heaven and a new earth, while we seem 
 content with the old ones. 
 
 I believe this difference of feeling rests on a pro- 
 foundly contrasted view of life and the world. And 
 I believe that our attitude is nearer the right, and 
 the other more akin to the wrong. I speak moder- 
 ately, for the subject is very difficult. 
 
 I think, then, that the root of the view which 
 demands complete change by way of external recon- 
 struction lies in the idea that pain and badness are 
 somehow a mistake in the world, and a mistake prima 
 facie of our making, something not meant to be, so 
 to speak. Undo our mistake and all will be well. 
 Along with this goes the idea that all is wrong now. 
 All is wrong now because of some great mistake. 
 Find out the mistake and put it right, and all will be 
 well. Or even if you are a total pessimist, and think 
 the mistake is in the making of the world, still the 
 idea is the same — to put it right by a few strong 
 measures. A naive view, childish in fact. 
 
 I believe that our attitude is founded on an instinct 
 and experience which point to a much deeper view — 
 I don't mean we philosophise — much deeper and very 
 complicated, but very far more nearly true — the view 
 which all take who see and feel profoundly. I must 
 put it in successive statements to be clear. 
 
 First, we have no doubt that pain and badness are 
 to be fought against and overcome so far as in any
 
 180 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS ix 
 
 way possible. There we agree with the other side. 
 And we must never let this go. 
 
 But, second, along with this, we see that good and 
 bad hardly seem to be meant (so to speak) to be 
 separated. It is impossible to cut out the bad and 
 leave the good, like cutting out a decayed beam from 
 a building. And we do not feel that this depends on 
 a great mistake somewhere. The others feel, I think, 
 with Moses Wardle in De Morgan's When Ghost 
 Meets Ghost, " If only they'd a-let me be God A' mighty 
 for five minutes at the first go-off, I'd a seen to it no 
 such a thing shouldn't happen." But for us the fact 
 is that the power to do well and the power to do ill 
 are at bottom the same thing ; and if you have one 
 you must have, and will always have, the other. 
 
 So we do not think the presence of great badness 
 shows everything is all wrong. We don't believe you 
 can have great goodness without it. Are we having 
 to-day the worst time of our lives, or the most 
 splendid ? Both, surely. 
 
 These difficult things, however, are dangerous. 
 This quite true insight, that bad goes with good and 
 the conflict is a condition of human life, has perhaps 
 made some of our people too content with things as 
 they are. They see the existing good that the other 
 side do not see, and the connection of bad and good, 
 and do not realise that the conflict and struggle 
 towards the better is as necessary as the existence of 
 bad and good which is part of it. 
 
 So, thirdly, we are sworn, we said, in the first place 
 to the fight for the better. But we add : it is foolish 
 to think of cutting out the pain and badness by an 
 operation. The conflict is permanent, and bad and 
 good must always be there ; the only way to help is 
 something quite different from any external recon-
 
 ix PHILOSOPHY AND CASEWORK 181 
 
 struction or regulation. It depends on the nature of 
 the problem. You cannot remain outside the con- 
 flict of good and bad, like a superior person, or put 
 an end to it by some great change, like an omnipotent 
 despot. The only possible way of helping is to throw 
 yourself into the conflict and attempt to direct the 
 power which does both the good and the harm — 
 that is the human mind — towards doing good rather 
 than harm. It will not cease from doing harm, but 
 it will learn to do higher good as it fights against more 
 puzzling forms of harm, those which come with what 
 we call civilisation. The good and harm have become 
 more moral, less merely animal — less like a fight with 
 nature, and more like a fight with the devil. I mean, 
 largely, a fight with fallacies and delusions, which is 
 always a more worthy conflict. 
 
 Then, when you are well into the fight, working to 
 strengthen character and intelligence — then, any out- 
 ward reconstruction which you see to be auxiliary to 
 the relative success of good is quite a fair thing to try 
 for ; and I do not think we should be biassed against 
 it. Only you notice how it comes in. It can never 
 be the central thing — no law or regulation can possibly 
 be the central thing or the valuable point. It is our 
 method, and our method only, that goes to the centre 
 of the great fight, and aims at directing that power 
 on which alone success depends. And this is, I 
 suggest, because we feel, by our experience and contact 
 with life, the great double truth. Pain and evil, we 
 see, are certainly to be fought and overcome ; but 
 for all that they are not a slip in the arrangement of 
 things, which can be rectified by a few strong measures. 
 They are for us and here part of the permanent way 
 of working of a certain power — the mind of man ; and, 
 whether we like it or not, whether we rebel against
 
 182 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS ix 
 
 the world or not, the only practical course is to 
 modify the action of that power which is in us and in 
 all human beings. 
 
 Rebel as much as you like, and say it would be 
 much finer to do it by a few great strokes, and make 
 a new heaven and a new earth. But there is no new 
 heaven and new earth, except by a change in the mind 
 of man, and therefore there is no way but this, and 
 there cannot be anything more " drastic." Drastic 
 means effective — what does something ; and there 
 can be nothing drastic in changes which go nowhere 
 near the central point, and leave the great operative 
 power unmodified. 
 
 But, as I have said, we should, in my private view, 
 admit no general bias against legislative and adminis- 
 trative change. Whatever of this kind comes, in 
 social experience, as auxiliary to a change of mind, 
 or as consequential upon it, is an instrument of our 
 work. Only it can never be the main thing ; it is 
 always subordinate, and apart from a change of mind 
 it will be wrongly conceived and executed.
 
 X 
 
 "REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE" 1 
 
 I may say at once that M. Sorel appears to me to have 
 worked out for himself a fine philosophy of life and 
 social fo;ces. Whether or no he has seen to the end 
 of it, either as a gospel of humanity or as a motive in 
 social process, at all events his attitude is one which 
 commands respect. 
 
 In his preface of seven pages, the translator applies 
 himself to explain the general misconception of Sorel' s 
 work. His point is, in a word, that Sorel, while at 
 the very heart of the working-class movement, is 
 absolutely hostile to " democratic " theory. But in 
 saying this, he proceeds, we must know what we 
 mean. " Democratic " ideology here stands for 
 " Liberal " doctrine, the pacific, rationalist, and 
 hedonist temper of social democracy ; and is insepar- 
 ably bound up with the conception of man's natural 
 goodness, 2 his perfectibility, and the necessary pro- 
 gress of the species. Against all this, in Mr. Hulme's 
 view, Sorel stands for " classical pessimism," which 
 is to mean, not the mere disillusionment of the shallow 
 optimist, but the belief that man's nature has in it 
 
 1 Reflections on Violence. By Georges Sorel. Translated by T. E. 
 Hulme. Pp.xvi. + 299. Price 7s. Gd. George Allen & Unwin, Ltd. 
 
 2 Cf. a similar characterisation of certain movements for social 
 reconstruction, p. 179 above. 
 
 183
 
 184 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS x 
 
 a radical evil, and can only come to good by heroism 
 and the sublime, in short, by war. 
 
 It is not necessary here to enter upon the doubtful 
 speculations with which Mr. Hulme has interwoven 
 his exposition. The reader must not accept his dicta 
 either about Rousseau or about Hegel — his reference 
 to Condorcet seems more justifiable. And I hop? it 
 will not be believed that because some progress-of- 
 the-species humanism has been shallow, therefore ve are 
 to look for the higher faith in an anti-humanistic ethics. 
 
 For a first introduction to Sorel it is enough to 
 note the thesis that " the transformation of society is 
 not likely to be achieved as a result of peaceful and 
 intelligent readjustment on the part of literary men 
 and politicians." The whole region of literal and 
 democratic politics, it may be added, Sorel regards 
 as a mere hotbed of corrupt compromise, where the 
 true Socialist temper cannot live, and the virility of 
 the middle class itself is bound to die. 
 
 At the close of the introductory letter to Halevy, 
 an excellent resume of his position in some fifty pages, 
 he accepts a simile thrown out by the litter in which 
 the legend of the Wandering Jew is taken as the 
 symbol of man's highest aspirations, fated as he is to 
 wander for ever without repose. And his social gospel 
 frames itself consistently with this atiitude. The true 
 position of the working class, at once their hope and 
 their destiny, is the " marche vers la delivrance " ; 
 the " delivrance," the great catastrophic liberation 
 by the general strike, being to chem what Christ's 
 Second Coming was to the early Christians, what the 
 final restoration is to the Jews, 1 or the unity of Italy 
 
 1 One can almost hear M. Sorel quoting : 
 
 " Thy face took never so deep a shade, 
 JJut we fought them in it, God our aid."
 
 x « REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE " 185 
 
 was to the Mazzinians. This is what M. Sorel describes 
 as a true myth — a conception absolute, single, un- 
 analysable, not proposed for discussion, but one thing 
 with the class-gospel which expresses and inspires the 
 class's soul. 
 
 The myth, it is to be carefully observed, is not 
 to be confused with a Utopia. A Utopia is a thing 
 of shreds and patches, an intellectual imagination 
 botched together out of old material, and intended 
 for piecemeal fulfilment. (M. Bergson's idea of in- 
 telligence has had an influence here.) The myth is 
 essentially a faith in a total transformation, not 
 intended for piecemeal fulfilment, nor for analysis nor 
 discussion. It is like the hope of victory over the 
 world entertained by the Catholic Church. It cannot 
 be refuted, and conveys undying inspiration. A 
 Utopist, on the contrary, is ipso facto a reactionary. 
 When Professor Beesly, in 1869, wrote an article on 
 the future of the working class, Karl Marx (the story 
 comes through Brentano) wrote to him that he had 
 hitherto regarded him as the only revolutionary 
 Englishman, but henceforward he should hold him a 
 reactionary, " for any one who composes a programme 
 for the future is a reactionary." 
 
 Thus when the critic, whether parliamentary 
 Socialist or wholly anti-Socialist, objects that Sorel 
 tells one nothing of the future social organisation, 
 Sorel, I imagine, admits and defends his silence. 
 What we gather comes to this, I think. The faith in 
 the general strike is a faith in the future of free men, 
 capable of taking up the highest organisation of the 
 workshop at the point at which they will force the 
 capitalist employer to lay it down. Art at its best 
 is but an anticipation of the spirit in which they will 
 live, produce, and invent.
 
 186 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS x 
 
 But it is not prediction, but the necessary* present 
 condition of a better future, on which his mind is 
 bent. The essence of this necessary condition is the 
 avoidance of the gospel of social peace, which means 
 degeneration of the middle class, enfeeblement of 
 the wage-earner's spirit, and a corrupt compromise 
 between the two, constructed by the politician as 
 broker, who does nothing for nothing. A masterful, 
 virile, and competent middle class over against a strong, 
 improving, and industrially very capable working 
 class, fanatically inspired by its gospel of the great 
 deliverance — this is the class war which is the con- 
 dition of social health, and will, by the victory of the 
 workers, one day regenerate the world. 
 
 And the "violence" — what about that? The 
 poison of violence — the horror which attends the 
 revolutionary memories — all came from the presence 
 of the idea of the State first on one side and then on 
 the other. The very red flag of the revolutionist was— 
 so we are told — the symbol of martial law under the 
 ancien regime ; and its adoption by the revolutionist 
 meant that the State was now to be on his side, and 
 his opponents were to be traitors who merited ex- 
 termination. With the rejection of the idea of the 
 State all this poison vanishes. A degree of roughness 
 will survive in the self-defence of the workmen by 
 means of strikes ; and it will be desirable to mishandle 
 the emissaries of the corrupt politicians who will try 
 to mislead the wage-earners into the primrose path 
 of the quid pro quo. The ingenuity with which this 
 parallel is drawn out — the parallel between the actual 
 bribing — the pot-de-vin by which the contractor buys 
 advantages from the politician, and the transaction 
 by which the democratic politician, with his hand on 
 the throttle-valve of labour agitation, sells peace and
 
 x "REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE" 187 
 
 protection to a cowardly middle class — this ingenuity 
 backed by a bitter confidence in the fidelity of the 
 loathsome picture, makes the argument very painful 
 reading. ** I assume," he writes, " that no one is 
 ignorant that no considerable transaction takes place 
 without a pot-de-vm." 
 
 But to return to violence. It is better than ruse, 
 than corruption and the furthering of private interests 
 by this skilful handling of " politico - criminal " as- 
 sociations which systematically terrorise the middle 
 class at the politicians' instigation. Parnellism is cited 
 as a type. The working class, left to themselves and 
 to their gospel, will use roughness to protect their 
 strikes ; but they will not enter upon these calculated 
 terrorisms, nor cherish the envenomed malice which 
 is associated with the idea of revolution, and which 
 springs from rival claims to the control of the State. 
 
 The modern history of the Catholic Church in 
 France is a demonstration that politics and com- 
 promise do not even pay. It is characteristic of 
 Sorel's whole position that the relation of the Church 
 to the democratic State is analogous for him to that 
 of the workers. Concessions invite further pressure ; 
 an aggressive policy is the only one that is safe. 
 
 It is natural that from such a standpoint English 
 Collectivism and the whole English temper, both in 
 internal and in external politics, are very severely 
 judged ; and the English attitude to international 
 arbitration is attributed to want of sensitiveness on 
 the point of honour rather than to the motives which 
 we should claim for it. On all this, of course, as on 
 the general question of English democracy, and the 
 alleged essential corruptness of the democratic regime, 
 I am at the opposite pole to M. Sorel. It would be 
 interesting to know whether on this and analogous
 
 188 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS x 
 
 questions — e.g. the anti-patriotic bias of Syndicalism 
 — the war has affected the author's views. So lately 
 as on the publication of the third French edition he 
 expressly observed that he had seen no reason to 
 modify them. But it may be noted that even should 
 those who think with him have followed the whole of 
 France in its rush to the country's defence, this would 
 not necessarily be a serious inconsistency in their 
 position. They might well maintain that while aiming 
 at the abolition of national exclusiveness they were 
 justified in championing their country against a worse 
 exclusiveness than any she ever symbolised. 
 
 To the present writer the true thing in M. Sorel's 
 speculations is his insistence on the necessity of 
 suffering and conflict ; although the solution by a 
 future event, about which we have seen that M. Sorel 
 himself speaks uncertainly, seems inadequate and 
 indeed self-contradictory, and a deeper explanation 
 is demanded. 
 
 And the practical thing in M. Sorel's attitude is 
 his concentration on the actual conditions of present 
 social health and virility, as opposed to dreaming of 
 the future. Give us, we are inclined to cry, in every 
 class or functioning organ of the community, such a 
 faith and inspiration as he claims for the workers and 
 their gospel, and we could have confidence in the 
 future, not because we could predict the detail of 
 what must come, but because whatever comes, under 
 the influence of such inspiration, and to a people so 
 prepared to suffer and be strong, could not be other 
 than good.
 
 XI 
 THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 1 
 
 Preface to the Course 
 
 I will begin by one or two observations which may 
 be taken as a Preface to the course of lectures as a 
 whole. 
 
 1. I hope my hearers will dissociate me, while I 
 am lecturing to them, from the accident of the chair- 
 manship of Council. My work is not at all to lay 
 down Charity Organisation Society doctrine, nor 
 indeed to teach anything authoritatively. Where 
 one's treasure is, there, no doubt, one's heart will 
 be ; but what I should like to do, if I could succeed in 
 it, would be to break paths for thought, and leave you 
 curious and inquiring into some of these troublesome 
 social ideals, though not without a sort of direction 
 or most general criterion, holding to which one cannot 
 go absolutely astray. 
 
 2. The subject of the first lecture, " Justice," 
 though it seems easy and obvious, is really, I think, 
 
 1 Special literature recommended : T. H. Green, Principles of 
 Political Obligation, sect. 211 ff., The Right of the State in Regard to 
 Properly ; Sir A. Clay, Syndicalism and Labour ; Sorel, Reflections 
 on Violence ; Lagardelle (edited by), Syndicalisme el Socialisme. The 
 Herald, National Guild Pamphlets. 
 
 189
 
 190 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 very hard ; and I know very little useful that has 
 been written about it. Here especially my hope is 
 chiefly to break a way into the subject that we might 
 move about within it and investigate it freely for 
 ourselves. It is, as it seems to me, the first thing in 
 people's feelings to-day and the last thing in their 
 thoughts. If we could clear it up ever so little it 
 would be worth our while. 
 
 3. The literature that I have put on the syllabus * 
 is, of course, not all that I hope you will have read. 
 You have no doubt read much, and you know where 
 to look for current economics and the experience of 
 the Charity Organisation Society. What I have re- 
 commended, excepting T. H. Green and Sir A. Clay, 
 looks mostly in one direction; and I have just explained 
 why I am taking this line. I want to free our ideas, 
 and to bring our interest in contact with very signifi- 
 cant movements, which are influential among the 
 dissatisfied class to-day, and yet are not quite what 
 we might have anticipated some twenty years ago. I 
 begin with T. H. Green and Sir Arthur Clay because 
 in the former you will find, I think (I commit myself 
 so far as this), the permanent basis in philosophical 
 common sense of the social doctrine of ownership — a 
 broader doctrine than is always recognised — and in 
 the latter you will find a mine of information upon 
 recent developments of ideas, and also upon the 
 actual history of the corresponding movements. 
 
 4. It is my own experience that makes me 
 insist on the value of studying labour journals and 
 propagandist literature of that stamp. Nothing 
 impresses me more when I take up any publication of 
 this kind than the fact that as regards mere informa- 
 tion its authors and our ordinary Press seem to live 
 
 1 See note on p. 189.
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 191 
 
 in different worlds. You might say the same, up to 
 a certain point, of different organs of the middle-class 
 Press according to their party divisions ; but the news 
 agencies and reporters and correspondents on which 
 these rely are after all of the same general type, and 
 present things on the whole from the same social 
 angle. In the other literature of which I speak you 
 are at once in touch with a different facet of the 
 social mind. You hear of, I am sure, many facts 
 which we do not hear of, or only most faintly or 
 hurriedly, in our chosen organs. And the whole tone 
 and spirit and reading of social life are new to us. 
 One of these pamphlets begins, " ' The real aim of the 
 miners,' complained the Morning Post in April 1915, 
 ' is to make mining not a profitable industry but a 
 source of living to the miners.' ' It is well to see how 
 this extract looks when thus set by itself for Labour 
 readers ; and even supposing the difference to be 
 wholly due to bias and misrepresentation, we ought, 
 if we wish to understand what is going on, to be 
 pretty thoroughly soaked in the medium in which 
 the majority of our fellow-citizens pass their lives. 
 There are also very capable organs which make an 
 attempt, from a scientific point of view, to hold the 
 balance. Omitting one which I must not mention, I 
 may instance the Economic Journal (Journal of the 
 Royal Economic Society), whose article, e.g., on the 
 " Dilution of Skilled Labour," in the March number 
 for 1916, seems to me extraordinarily illuminating. 
 
 5. And as with facts, so with feelings. If we could 
 once penetrate to the centre of feeling which animates 
 this or that movement, and so far make it our own 
 as to realise the natural human demand which lies 
 beneath it, then we shall never again present to it 
 the blank face of non-comprehension and amazement,
 
 192 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 not to speak of the grimace of active misinterpretation 
 which creates the fury and malice of social collisions. 
 Every one, of course, must in the end get less than 
 he set out to demand, though the half may, and we 
 know it will, prove more than the whole. But there 
 is no possibility of any one getting anything, except 
 frustration, unless we all make it our first duty to 
 understand and feel with one another. Here is a 
 passage which any Charity Organisation worker, any 
 ardent specialist, going ahead in the full tide of life 
 and experience, might make his own : — 
 
 Syndicalisms et Socialisme, p. 8. — " Plus de dogmes 
 ni de formules ; plus de discussions vaines sur la 
 societe future ; plus de plans compendieux d'organisa- 
 tion sociale ; mais un sens de la lutte qui s'avive par 
 la pratique, une philosophic de Taction qui donne la 
 premiere place a l'intuition, et qui proclame que le 
 plus simple ouvrier engage dans le combat en sait 
 davantage que le plus abscous doctrinaire de toutes 
 les ecoles." This is a paragraph from the most 
 definite manifesto of syndicalism. 
 
 Let us take as an illustration the conception of the 
 class war. We shall return to it in its place in Lecture 
 III. But here I will say merely a word or two on 
 the possibility of realising how it presents itself to 
 those who hold it. We have to connect it with such 
 ideas as, on the one side, that of direct action, in 
 opposition to indirect action through parliamentary 
 representatives. This is an idea familiar in Rousseau, 
 and to-day seeming to command the adhesion of both 
 political extremes. And, on the other side, we have 
 to connect it with the conceptions of class loyalty 
 and class consciousness. I can here only say a word 
 or two of the latter aspect. 
 
 To us of the middle class this feeling was first
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 193 
 
 widely interpreted, I believe, by George Eliot's Felix 
 Holt. On myself, personally, at about the same date, 
 the same message was enforced through an intimate 
 friend, a Balliol undergraduate of working-class ex- 
 traction, the only undergraduate, we used to say, for 
 whose intelligence Jowett ever showed signs of respect. 
 I can see the same message, defined and exasperated, 
 in the spirit of the Syndicalists and of the National 
 Guilds. 
 
 To begin with, we have to realise that the career 
 ever so open to talents does not satisfy the class-loyal 
 and class-conscious workman, any more than I should 
 be satisfied that philosophy was winning its battle if 
 a philosopher were sometimes made a peer. The 
 class of the workshops is a permanent group, with its 
 own raison d'etre. It is not a career for himself, but 
 recognition, security, status, and power for his class 
 that the loyal and class-conscious working man 
 desires. He knows he has much to learn. He wants, 
 of course, an education and a philosophy, but he 
 wants them of his own. He does not want to draw 
 them from the substance of the middle class, any 
 more than he wants to wear our cast-off clothes. I 
 have noticed a spirit of this kind at a meeting of the 
 Workers' Educational Association. It seemed self- 
 contradictory ; but perhaps it was less so than it 
 looked. " What economics will they teach us ? " 
 was the feeling. Names of economists were men- 
 tioned, and were received with applause or with 
 hesitation. It looked as if the student were going to 
 begin by instructing the teacher what the latter was 
 to say to him. But the demand has a meaning. 
 All our worlds — artistic, literary, political, financial, 
 philanthropic, scientific — have in the spirit of the 
 passage I read just now a creed and culture of their 
 
 o
 
 194 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 own. All of them overlap, but no one would consent 
 to replace his own by that of another kind. His vital 
 experience is different, and moulds his life and action 
 inevitably. And the working class want at least to 
 be like this. They are not to be as such at the bottom 
 of society. They are not to be fed with the crumbs 
 that fall from the rich man's table, material or spiritual. 
 They believe instinctively that their peculiar ex- 
 perience, their creative activity (there is Bergson 
 somewhere about, I think), their vigour and intuition 
 alone can regenerate society. Do we not all think 
 something of the kind about our class, whose life 
 pulses in us, and whose excellence we feel from day 
 to day in all the vitality we possess ? 
 
 Why call such a demand a war ? Because it is a 
 struggle for a definite recognition with definite conse- 
 quences, which on the whole is refused. For it is the 
 class as such, in the workshops, that makes the 
 demand ; it is definitely direct, and averse from the 
 indirect methods of representation and political party. 
 Fairly to open and accommodate our minds to it, to 
 put off the attitude of condescension, is the first 
 step — I do not say to ending, I might rather say to 
 rationally beginning, the class war. 
 
 Of course, the old difficulty is, and will be, present, 
 on which Socrates put his finger. The working class, 
 he said, knew all sorts of fine things that other people 
 did not, but, because of that, they fancied that they 
 knew all sorts of things which they did not know. 
 But that is surely the case with all of us, and more or 
 less, I suppose, it always will be. To some extent, 
 plainly, it must be. And it is no worse with them 
 than with us. 
 
 At any rate, here is the point. They want recogni- 
 tion as a class, and they do not admit that any
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 195 
 
 political party represents, or possibly can represent, 
 them. They claim their own function, their own 
 culture, their own duty, their own ambitions for a 
 worthy and influential life. When I say " they," I 
 speak of those who stand for the class war. I imagine 
 the idea has influence beyond its outspoken advocates. 
 That, I take it, is the essence of what at least the 
 class war means to them, though no doubt it may 
 mean a great deal besides. 
 
 If we can think of things in some way like this, 
 perhaps we may get nearer to our fellow human 
 beings ; at least it seems worth trying. But now it 
 is more than time to enter upon our opening lecture. 
 
 Lecture I. — Justice 
 
 1. The appeal for " Justice" is urgent in the social 
 literature of the day. It is one that goes straight to 
 every human heart. No one who has read it can 
 forget how Dante tells of the poor widow who con- 
 vinced the reluctant Emperor Trajan that he must 
 do her justice before he stirs from the spot. 
 
 What is the nature of this appeal ? What is its 
 precise demand ? How does it find its place among 
 other human necessities ? 
 
 It seems to be based on the fact that human nature 
 lives in a multitude of individuals, who have a common 
 quality which demands that they should be treated 
 by a common rule. Thus the cry for justice is effective 
 at once through a direct comparison. Whenever a 
 difference of treatment appears, Justice will ask 
 " Why ? " It is always the opposite of dealing with 
 human beings differently without a reason for the 
 difference. So Justice has to do with " rights." 
 Right is the rule, the straight or undeviating line
 
 196 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 (droit, diritto). It is just to protect all men's life and 
 liberty, because it is the rule, the right, for human 
 beings. What makes it the right or rule ? That, 
 I hope, we shall see directly ; but that it is recog- 
 nised as the rule is what makes the doing of it just. 
 Injustice, in the simplest sense, is to recognise a 
 rule, but only to follow it in some cases and not in 
 others. 
 
 Plainly, there are different rules or standards. The 
 letter of the law is not the only rule ; Shylock had 
 law apparently on his side and then against him ; both, 
 I should think, we all feel were unjust by the better 
 rule. Summum jus, summa injuria. The extreme 
 of law is the extreme of wrong. 
 
 So Justice has two factors : one constant, the 
 other variable. First, it is keeping the rule you 
 profess to keep and allowing nothing to interfere 
 with its application. Secondly, it depends on what 
 rule you recognise. Some rules are shallower, some 
 are deeper. But with all, if you profess them, it is 
 so far unjust to depart from them. 
 
 If it is ordered that every tenth man is to be shot, 
 it is unjust for the officer carrying out the order to 
 shoot a ninth man and spare a tenth man for private 
 reasons. 
 
 But, also, such an order may be itself called unjust 
 as compared, e.g., with a more adequate rule for 
 treating human beings, such as to proceed only on 
 proved individual guilt. The former is, then, seen 
 to be a rule which is itself a single large violation of 
 the rule, and so unjust. You are not even professing 
 the rule which you are forced to admit to be the rule 
 you ought to profess. 
 
 We must distinguish the two forms of injustice. 
 If you make arbitrary exceptions to your rule, you
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 197 
 
 break the rule, and so far as it is concerned, you are 
 unjust, though you may be just by a higher rule. 
 You are treating in different ways cases which your 
 rule calls the same— e.g., again, if you make exceptions 
 at your discretion in levying a universal tax. You 
 can only be just by your rule if you treat all cases 
 under its terms in the same way. 
 
 But there is another alternative : you may not 
 break the rule, but the rule itself may break down by 
 proving itself unjust. This is when it treats in the 
 same way cases which for its purpose are different — 
 e.g. if it levies the same tax on people who can afford 
 to pay and people who cannot. 
 
 The reason for insisting on this distinction is to 
 show how a rule can break itself, so to speak, by 
 ordering very dissimilar cases to be treated in a 
 similar way ; and that this is at bottom the same 
 injustice as breaking a rule by treating its similar 
 cases in a dissimilar way. If you treat two quite 
 different sets of cases in a similar way, you are really 
 treating them differently for the purpose of your rule ; 
 e.g. if you give the same amount of food to a child 
 and a man, the purpose or controlling rule being to 
 nourish each sufficiently. In the end this " breaking 
 down " will show how Justice proves itself an im- 
 perfect point of view. 
 
 It is noteworthy that Justice has a good side 
 even in strictly applying bad laws. They would 
 seldom survive if they were applied in their full 
 rigour. President Grant said to the United States 
 Congress : "If you make bad laws I shall enforce 
 them." 
 
 Equity may seem to be contrasted with strict 
 justice, as if it were not a rule. But it only means a 
 more adequate rule ; one that goes deeper into the
 
 198 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 cases. No one would call it equity to treat two 
 quite different cases similarly. 
 
 Then we come to this : Justice lies in impartial 
 distribution of advantages and disadvantages to in- 
 dividuals. In that sense it is " individualistic." It 
 depends altogether on there being individuals who 
 have claims to similar treatment. The claim is urged, 
 we said, by direct comparison of cases. A is rich, 
 B is poor. Why ? So it is much more impressive at 
 first sight than a claim like that of patriotism or the 
 common good, which requires you to give all you can 
 and not compare your burdens or your advantages 
 with those of others. These are demands on behalf 
 of a unit which is not present to the bodily eye. 
 Justice, as commonly spoken of, is a demand on 
 behalf of a case which strikes the eye forcibly. 
 
 Justice is certainly not the highest point of view ; 
 but if it is in a sense the lowest of social claims, that 
 is a way of saying that it is the basis of all social 
 dealing. A universal human claim may be trans- 
 formed by higher claims, but cannot be cancelled. 
 Individual human beings have to be taken account 
 of ; each is one among others, having a bodily and 
 spiritual life of his own, which cannot even be genuinely 
 sacrificed or surrendered unless it is first his own to 
 sacrifice or to surrender. 
 
 2. We saw there were two factors in Justice : first 
 keeping the rule — that needs no further comment — 
 and, secondly, the rule itself which is to be kept. 
 
 There are many possible rules, we saw, lower and 
 higher — i.e. less and more adequate, according to the 
 degree in which each of them takes account of people's 
 circumstances and capacities, and so is less or more 
 likely to be adequate — i.e. not to break down. 
 
 We will consider some of these. They are what
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 199 
 
 express people's different ideas of the standard accord- 
 ing to which the individual's right to be recognised 
 and considered should be given effect in a human 
 commonwealth. 
 
 (i.) Equality. " All men are equal " ; usually 
 " equal by nature." This sounds like an attempt to 
 make a rule out of the mere need of having a rule. 
 Deal in exactly the same way with all men, and then 
 you are sure of going by the rule you profess, which 
 we saw to be the essence of Justice. 
 
 But we saw that a rule of Justice can itself break 
 down if you apply it without modification to cases 
 which differ beyond a certain point. And the equality 
 of man was never asserted by serious thinkers in the 
 sense that all men were so equal as to demand the 
 same treatment all round. It was asserted with a 
 perfectly good meaning by Roman law, by the English 
 seventeenth century, and by Rousseau. And by 
 being taken to mean too much, it has been deprived 
 of the perfectly sound meaning which really belonged 
 to it. No one meant that all men were equally good 
 or equally capable. What they did mean, and rightly, 
 was that all rational beings were " equal " in having 
 within them a principle of self-government. Sooner 
 or later the thinking creature will rebel against mere 
 force. He will evade, or resist, or question it. 
 Equality in this sense, as was lucidly explained, say, 
 by Hobbes or Locke, is one with freedom or reason. 
 It is the quality of man as such. The capacity of 
 self-government is in him, and, on the whole, it will 
 come out. He will, in the end, accept no law but one 
 which recognises him, on the same footing with others 
 who have the same capacity, as making it or assenting 
 to it. The domesticated, I believe, is the highest 
 animal, but the slave is the lowest man.
 
 200 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 It is a practical and disputable question how far 
 sheer equality may be pushed, and on what lines. 
 It is plain that there cannot be all-round identity of 
 function, at any rate in a civilised society ; and, 
 therefore, the apparatus possessed by individuals for 
 their functions, what we call property, must be 
 different. But this by itself does not suffice to prove 
 that there could not possibly be, for example, equality 
 of incomes. In as far as it is impossible, this seems 
 to be a corollary of permitting free acquisition of 
 property. We shall return to this. As to the general 
 problem of equality and similarity in a community, 
 it is well to keep in mind two texts of Aristotle, " No 
 community can be constituted of similars " and " A 
 community should be constituted of equals and 
 similars so far as possible." Rousseau remarks that 
 if equality is impossible in modern society, that is all 
 the more reason for trying to promote it. There 
 seems to be something in this. And then we shall 
 see in Lecture III. that some inequalities may be and 
 ought to be ignored— i.e. ought not to affect power or 
 prestige. That is a suggestive topic. 
 
 (ii.) But it is really common ground that all-round 
 equality is a rule which breaks down, and some kind 
 of proportion has usually been advocated as the 
 standard of Justice ; that is, equality in the shape of 
 equality of ratios ; so that advantages permitted to 
 individuals should remain in the same ratio to some 
 other term, some feature found in the individuals. 
 Plato and Aristotle are fond of insisting on this, that 
 true equality is equality of ratios- — i.e. proportion. 
 The worst inequality, they say, is equal treatment of 
 unequal terms — e.g. the same lifting force to different 
 weights, or the same taxation to different taxable 
 capacity.
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 201 
 
 We will look at some of the proportional standards 
 of Justice currently discussed. 
 
 a. Advantages proportional to moral excellence. 
 Existing society is often criticised for not fulfilling 
 this standard ; it is said not to bring to the top a 
 good ethical type. In general it is a conclusive 
 objection to such a standard that it cannot possibly 
 be applied by man. There is no safe moral judgment 
 except our own on ourselves, and not really that. 
 You may say, " It must be a bad system that brings, 
 e.g., place-hunters to the top." But, first, does it ? 
 Can we know men's motives ? And then, supposing 
 it does, the men's immorality does not seem the right 
 reason for condemning the system. Because many 
 other faults are quite as immoral as place-hunting, 
 faults which we should not think mattered nearly 
 so much in a statesman — e.g. unkindness to one's wife. 
 So it is not the mere immorality we object to, it is 
 something else. 
 
 (3. We seem to get nearer to it if we say " Advan- 
 tages should be proportional to contributions to 
 public good." The public good does seem a possible 
 standard. But the same question recurs. Can we 
 really judge what are the greatest contributions to 
 the public good ? Are we to go by labour expended 
 or by value attained ? It seems hardly possible to 
 find a single standard by which to judge. You may 
 have immense labour with very little value that we 
 can detect, and great value almost by luck. A 
 recognition of the individual on this basis would be 
 arbitrary and uneven. And, in case we agreed on 
 the really greatest contribution — e.g. the work of a 
 great poet — are your " advantages " comparable with 
 it or suitable to it ? All you can give — rank, wealth, 
 and power — seem too little ; yet so alien in character
 
 202 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 to the poet's service as to promise disaster both to 
 the recipient and to the community. 
 
 y. Proportion to the capacity for acquisition. This 
 is alleged about and against our present system. Of 
 course, it must not be assumed that all acquisition is 
 at others' expense ; it may be so, or may be the 
 instrument of acquisition to them also. We shall 
 hear more of this in the Third Lecture. It has been 
 pointed out — e.g. by Durkheim — that in an old 
 society all forms of contract are more or less socially 
 determined, so that acquisition is more or less con- 
 strained toward the public good. 
 
 Waiving this for the moment, the rule has two 
 merits. It can within certain limits be really carried 
 out, which cannot be said of the others we have 
 considered. And it is compatible with an automatic 
 system of freedom in appropriation, avoiding con- 
 tinual discretionary interference, which is almost im- 
 possible in a huge modern community. It seems 
 worth while to pay a high price for an automatic 
 arrangement ; but, of course, some prices may be 
 too high. 
 
 8. Proportion to necessities of individuals with a 
 view to the realisation of human capacity in them. 
 This seems to unite many of the good points of the 
 other suggestions, and to be fairly workable. We 
 should note the substitution of " necessities " for 
 " merits," because necessities can be judged and 
 merits cannot. And the former demand adaptation 
 to the type of function, which the latter overlooks. 
 Proportion to merits, even if possible, neglects the 
 question whether any purpose is promoted by such 
 an assignment. It may frustrate its own apparent 
 aim. Advantages which the community can com- 
 mand are instruments, each of which has its special
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 203 
 
 value for some special end, and should be used in 
 view of this. Power, e.g., may be obviously an unfit 
 attachment to ethical merit. But if you say not 
 " merits " but " necessities," it is different. Power, 
 e.g., is necessary for certain social functions, and so, 
 perhaps, is wealth. And note the substitution of 
 " human capacity " for " public good," avoiding the 
 possible error of measuring by de facto contribution 
 to public service, which may be much short of a true 
 human capacity. There is always the danger of 
 dropping into the argument which Miss Austen so 
 delightfully caricatures in Sense and Sensibility, prov- 
 ing that people who have little must need next to 
 nothing. " What does a man need to make him a 
 good scavenger ? " But, then, it is also his function 
 to be a man. The reference to " human capacity " 
 bars that evasion. Only, if the rule is to hold, the 
 word necessities should be construed to include the 
 objects of activity as well as its instruments. Of 
 course, in a sense they are its instruments, or its 
 material. We must not rule out ab initio the desir- 
 ability of, say, private ownership of capital on a large 
 scale as a field of charge and responsibility. We 
 shall hear more of this in Lecture III. 
 
 Looking back on all these suggested statements 
 which more or less bear the character of Justice, we 
 note a characteristic peculiarity in all of them. None 
 of them can be said to be laid down or constituted or 
 contrived exclusively for the sake of Justice, except 
 perhaps the rule of equality, which is chimerical. 
 We saw that no doubt a rule can be just or unjust 
 in itself, and not merely in its impartial or partial 
 observance, in as far as the cases it deals with in a 
 similar way are really similar or really dissimilar. 
 But this being just or unjust is not in general the
 
 204 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 reason why the rule is made. Even in those social 
 formulae, public welfare is also aimed at ; but in 
 ordinary rules this is clearer. A tax, e.g., is imposed 
 in order to get money, not in order to treat people 
 fairly or unfairly. It is a fault in it if it is unjust, 
 because it contradicts the claim of human beings to 
 be treated according to reason and right — to be 
 treated similarly where the reason is similar, and 
 dissimilarly where it is dissimilar. But that is a 
 condition of all treatment of human beings, not in 
 general the purpose of it, or not the immediate purpose. 
 You can have rules in ordinary use made for the 
 purpose of Justice, I think, in two senses, (a) Often 
 you have them made by way of amending rules made 
 for quite other purposes, which are seen to involve 
 Justice. When all men of military age were first 
 appealed to to enlist, the purpose was, I suppose, purely 
 and simply to get soldiers. Then it was noticed that 
 this rule put very dissimilar cases on the same footing, 
 and it was urged that there were some who ought to 
 be taken before others. So a new rule was made 
 that " a certain class must go first," and this teas 
 made, I suppose we might say, for the sake of Justice 
 — i.e. to carry out the proportion between disadvan- 
 tages and the power to bear them, by neglecting which 
 the first invitation, considered as a rule, seemed to 
 break down. But still, all this was only a condition 
 imposed on the positive purpose of the whole arrange- 
 ment, which was to get soldiers. The condition was 
 imposed by the inherent claim or right of human 
 individuals to reasonable treatment — i.e. similar for 
 similar, dissimilar for dissimilar. It is, we saw, the 
 human being's nature to ask why : and if you can 
 give him a reason which is to the point, he is satisfied. 
 But it is his right to be satisfied, and if he is not
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 205 
 
 satisfied he will be dissatisfied, and argue or rebel 
 according to his character and the case. In other 
 words, the management must spring, directly or in- 
 directly, from himself. That is his equality, freedom, 
 reasonableness, the " quality of man." 
 
 Then later it came to be thought that the attempt 
 to distinguish cases was too complicated, and that 
 equal sacrifice for all would be best attained by a 
 uniform rule, a rough Justice. All this discussion 
 about Justice may have been desirable or necessary ; 
 but it was really a sort of appendage to the purpose of 
 the whole proceeding — viz. to get soldiers. 
 
 In still the same sense it might be said that certain 
 parts of the civil and criminal law are specially in- 
 stituted for the purpose of Justice. I mean all those 
 arrangements which are intended to obviate bias or 
 corruption in judge or jury, or to secure that a poor 
 suitor shall not be placed at a disadvantage. But it 
 does not seem that Justice is the primary purpose of 
 the whole system of law, because every law, excepting 
 those which guard against corruption and undue in- 
 fluence, must surely have its primary purpose in some 
 particular good to be secured or evil to be repressed, 
 and these purposes cannot be directly got under the 
 head of equality or fairness between man and man. 
 The law, if I am right, exists not for the sake of 
 Justice, but to make certain transactions possible 
 which men are found generally to demand — e.g. 
 transactions between landlord and tenant ; or, again, 
 to prevent certain nuisances — e.g. smoky chimneys. 
 But such laws being necessary to life, it is a defect in 
 them if they are not both just and justly administered. 
 You may say that all law is there to maintain rights, 
 the rules of fairness between man and man ; and so 
 is aimed at Justice. But still, there is always the
 
 206 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 special motive for every law, which is its primary 
 aim. 
 
 There is, however, another sense (/?) in which the 
 whole system of social and political institutions might 
 be said to aim at Justice, and that is if we allow our- 
 selves to use the conception of " Ideal Justice." 
 
 For instance, a newspaper said, in commenting on 
 the problem of the married men, " The problems which 
 face us cannot be solved on any principle of ideal 
 Justice." I presume it meant that it was practically 
 impossible to frame a rule or a set of rules which 
 would provide differential treatment for every different 
 case. The social call was imperative, and furnished 
 a rough rule of Justice — a sort of social lynch law — 
 because there was a very large definite group, those 
 capable of military service, who came under it quite 
 simply. But an ideal Justice — that is, a comparative 
 weighing of the difficulties of every individual case, and 
 a nice adjustment of the obligation to serve to every 
 inequality of situation and of mental and bodil) r fitness 
 — that was an impossible thing. The rough Justice of 
 the social necessity must in the main be acquiesced in. 
 
 Still, the newspaper implied that there is such a 
 thing as ideal Justice, though it is very difficult to 
 realise. You might take the whole social system as 
 an attempt to do this — to arrange that for every 
 difference or distinction in human capacity which 
 seriously affected anyone's function and happiness, 
 there should be found a different external furniture 
 such as to adjust itself to that difference of function 
 or capacity and give it scope. And then ideal Justice 
 would practically coincide with a perfect social system. 
 Everybody's advantages and burdens would be exactly 
 apportioned according to what he needed for the 
 function suitable to him. This would be our com-
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 207 
 
 pletest rule, but carried out with an impossible 
 perfection. And still the function comes first and 
 dictates the whole arrangement. 
 
 Now, if you let yourself be carried on and on by the 
 demand for Ideal Justice and by watching how simple 
 rules break down or break themselves, into demanding 
 the right conditions for every function, where will you 
 be at the end of it ? You will have set up a new 
 rule for every serious difference in individuals, and 
 you will have got a complicated social system involv- 
 ing all sorts of reservations and distinctions, so that 
 the character of a general rule will have vanished 
 from it, and it will have taken on an appearance 
 opposed to primary Justice — to any simple rule of 
 treating people alike. We saw this beginning in the 
 case of the married men's service, and how the attempt 
 seemed likely to be thrown over as too difficult, and 
 the first simple rule gone back to. Ideal Justice, we 
 often say, is only for God to use, not for man. Or we 
 say it is ultimately one with mercy or love or regard 
 for the public good. 1 " Tout comprendre, c'est tout 
 pardonner." Every strength and weakness is allowed 
 for. It is not what we commonly mean by Justice. 
 
 So we find that practically there is a recognised 
 opposition between the maxims of common Justice — • 
 the general rule of equal treatment of individuals — 
 and the maxims of political efficiency or the public 
 good or safety, or love, or mercy — anything in which 
 the individual is absorbed. " Fiat justitia, ruat 
 coelum " (Do Justice, if it ruins the country) ; " One 
 to count for one and never for more than one " ; 
 contrasted with " Salus populi suprema lex " (which 
 has won a bad reputation as the tyrant's plea ; cp. 
 
 1 These three principles are alike in scorning equality. They 
 ask you for all you can, not for the same as your neighbour.
 
 208 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 Committee of Public Safety in the French Revolution), 
 or " Ye are members one of another " — i.e. thinking 
 of yourselves as separate particular individuals 
 making claims, you have only a very imperfect appre- 
 hension of what you really are. 
 
 It is a strange meeting of extremes in many cases ; 
 Ideal Justice — the supreme duty — or a pressing 
 emergency, or a strong devotion to the community, 
 or any overwhelming purpose, may make a rough call 
 on the individual, very much like that which the 
 first rude sense of lynch justice makes. The difference 
 is that rough-and-ready Justice does not know what 
 the right claim on the individual is, and lumps his 
 case along with very dissimilar cases, as in taxation, 
 which is unfair merely through the ruler's lack of 
 economic knowledge or experience ; while Ideal 
 Justice, or the passion for social or human service, 
 may know well enough the inequality it is imposing, 
 but it does not care to insist upon it in presence of 
 more important issues. If you can do it you must, 
 never mind whether some one else could do it as well ; 
 and therefore, again, the man who recognises it finds 
 its demand the hardest and sharpest claim he can 
 conceive. His Ideal Justice holds that he has done 
 nothing while there is anything left for him to do. 
 We are unprofitable servants. But, then, with this 
 you have given up what is peculiar in Justice. You 
 have left the world of claims. 
 
 This is why, when you approach the great thinkers 
 on the topic of Justice, you are apt at first sight to be 
 puzzled. Instead of finding some direct rule operating 
 by comparison of cases between man and man, you 
 are met by such a sentence as this of Rousseau : * 
 
 1 This is no doubt directed against Locke, who had maintained 
 that the law of justice and reason was one with the golden rule, " Do
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 209 
 
 " C'est done dans la loi fondamentale et universelle 
 du plus grand bien de tous, et non dans les relations 
 particuliers d'homme a homme, qu'il faut chercher 
 les vrais principes du juste et de l'injuste. . . . En 
 un mot, il y a mille cas ou c'est un acte de justice de 
 nuire a son prochain, au lieu que toute action juste 
 a necessairement pour regie la plus grande utilite 
 commune ; cela est sans exception." 1 That really 
 dissolves away what we commonly call Justice. In 
 the same way we find Plato, in his treatise " On the 
 Commonwealth or on Justice," identifying the law of 
 Justice with the discharge by every member of his 
 function as prescribed by the purpose of the whole, 
 and he embodies within his systematic plan the 
 hardest and sharpest contrasts of mode of living — 
 the severest rule being assigned to the governing class 
 to whom, in a sense, the whole city belongs. If you 
 complain of this, he says in a very famous passage, 
 it is like complaining that in colouring a statue you 
 paint the eyes, which are the most beautiful feature, 
 not with purple, which is the most beautiful colour, 
 but with black. For you must not make them so 
 beautiful that they are not like eyes at all. And so it 
 is the whole system that dictates his functions to every 
 individual ; and the law of Justice is that he should 
 be what his special duty demands, however hard or 
 humble may be the place so assigned. We may add 
 that every sovereign community (and, as is commonly 
 held, the ultimate ruler of the universe) reserves to 
 itself the right of pardon, that is to say, the right of 
 
 to others — " Rousseau has pointed out that, strictly interpreted, 
 this will not hold. It would, for instance, not allow a judge to do 
 his duty. The true end must operate harshly in some cases. 
 
 1 First draft of Conlrat Social, II. iv. Vaughan's Rousseau, i. 
 495. 
 
 P
 
 210 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 treating the direct justice of general rules as not being 
 the final or highest law. 
 
 All this, it will be said, is commonplace and familiar, 
 and has to a great extent been perverted, as in the 
 doctrine of salus populi, to be a mere plea for tyranny, 
 or in the most recent times for the absoluteness of the 
 State, or of such a principle as nationality, in opposi- 
 tion to the rights of simple humanity whether within 
 or without a given society. All this has its truth. I 
 am merely making use of this recognised opposition 
 to enforce the nature and urgency of our problem — 
 which lies in the truth that the breakdown of simple 
 rules is always inevitable, carrying you beyond the 
 simple, direct justice of comparison of individuals ; 
 while in complex systems and high imperatives of 
 public good or something even greater you have a 
 goal to which you are obliged to go forward, but in 
 which what we commonly mean by justice is too liable 
 to be submerged without good reason, just because 
 it is destined in the end to be transformed with the 
 best of all possible reasons. This best of all possible 
 reasons, if I am challenged to state it plainly, is that 
 in the end the individual's true nature lies beyond 
 his visible self— e.g. in religion the individual, as such, 
 is absorbed. A " claim " becomes blasphemy. But, 
 I repeat, I am not using these high principles to 
 support one contention against the other, to advocate, 
 i.e., the absolute State against simple human justice. 
 I am using them only to illustrate the difficulty and 
 urgency of the problem in which all social dissatis- 
 faction probably has its root — the problem of simple 
 individualistic justice over against the imperative 
 public welfare. The lines of solution which our 
 discussion suggests appear to be two. In the first 
 place, the claims of individuals based on Justice must
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 211 
 
 be recognised in the structure of any social system 
 which is to be satisfactory ; and although by pro- 
 portion, and not by sheer equality, yet by proportion 
 to a standard which is necessary and unambiguous, 
 and affords the minimum scope for using the public 
 safety as a tyrant's plea. In the second place it is 
 quite impossible to avoid recognising that there are 
 higher claims than that of simple justice to individuals 
 as such, whether we find these in the transformation 
 of a direct rule of similar treatment into Ideal Justice, 
 or in those greater commands before which the in- 
 dividual repudiates his separate claim and even his 
 separate being. Only it is necessary to remember, 
 as we saw above, that in order truly to sacrifice him- 
 self a man must first have possessed himself. It is 
 true in the most literal sense that justice comes before 
 generosity, though not above it. A man can only 
 surrender what is recognised as his. 
 
 Lecture II. — Ownership and Management 
 
 We have been brought by the consideration of Justice 
 to a plain statement of the problem which all social 
 ideals must attempt to solve. There are individual 
 rights, prima facie equal or tending to equality, and 
 there is the imperative public good, enjoining func- 
 tional differences with differences of equipment (what 
 we call property) as their corollaries. These two 
 features of the world, real hard facts, embodied in 
 necessary arrangements and meeting us at every turn 
 in law, history, and social relations, are what social 
 ideals have to face and reconcile. They may be held, 
 as we saw, to blend in ideal justice or in ideal good ; 
 but in truth the characteristics of these two, though 
 in principle reconcilable, are different, and so long as
 
 212 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 we think more of justice, good loses something of its 
 unconsidering unity ; while so long as we think more 
 of good, individual right loses something of its hard 
 equality. Nevertheless, the problem is to obtain the 
 fullest measure of the two : to let neither become a 
 pretext for disregarding the other, seeing that each is 
 fullest where the other is most complete. " Fullest " 
 in real truth, but unrecognisable perhaps to the 
 normal eye. 
 
 I want in the present lecture to look sympathetically 
 at two or three of the social ideals which are influential 
 to-day among the most critical and least satisfied groups 
 within our European civilisation. 
 
 We may start with popular Collectivism, and try 
 to consider it at its best, and to note the points in it 
 from which something is to be learned ; both the 
 points within itself and its difference from other ideals. 
 You must not think I am inclined to vote for it, if 
 I speak of it with patience, in attempting to see it at 
 its best ; omitting, if only to save our time, unessential 
 popular criticisms. I suppose, of course, that you 
 are pretty familiar with its outline, which I shall 
 merely resume in a few words to give a foundation 
 for our comments. 
 
 1. The idea is, as we know, that the means of 
 production are to be in the exclusive ownership of 
 the public — say, the State as the organised public. 
 Then no private persons would, as a matter of course, 1 
 draw profit from commercial or industrial enterprise, 
 nor indeed from loan capital invested in any such 
 enterprise. 
 
 We can illustrate the effect of such an arrangement, 
 and its limits, by referring in a word or two to what 
 has become a commonplace, the causes which have 
 
 1 See below on loan capital as a possible convenience to the State.
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 213 
 
 made it conceivable. While production and distribu- 
 tion were a matter of spades and handlooms, and 
 blacksmiths' forges and shops in the lower rooms of 
 the shopkeeper's house, and of village carriers' carts, 
 no one would be likely to suggest the taking over of 
 these things to be owned by the public authority. 
 The divorce between ownership and management 
 would be too hopeless. The public owner would have 
 to appoint every worker to be manager of his own 
 little business, and the ownership would collapse into 
 a tax. This shows us at once the enormous import- 
 ance of management, and suggests that the real utility 
 of systems of ownership is to promote management 
 which is efficient, and efficient in view of all the re- 
 quirements concerned, which may be summed up in 
 the two extremes from which we started, the rights of 
 individuals and the public good. 
 
 The situation has been revolutionised by the growth 
 of large-scale business and distribution, and by the 
 concomitant introduction of the limited company. 
 Huge masses of business have now, as it were, only 
 one neck apiece, and management is connected with 
 ownership only, so to speak, at the top. This divorce 
 of management and ownership is a very serious matter, 
 and cannot but influence both factors for good or evil. 
 Of course, there is an immense amount of business — 
 especially, I take it, the more active and growing 
 business — where ownership and management still 
 coincide, and the existence and function of this kind 
 of business is one of the very important features of 
 the problem before us. 
 
 2. But just to illustrate what we called the con- 
 nection of management and ownership only at the 
 top. 
 
 I never enter, for example, the Army and Navy
 
 214 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 so-called Co-operative Stores in Victoria Street with- 
 out thinking how like they are to a public department. 
 If they were to become so, there is no change that 
 I know of which need result so far as the great shop 
 and its factories and its relations to its customers are 
 concerned. I take it that all the employees, from the 
 manager to the cash-boy, are on salaries or weekly 
 wages. If they have any commission on sales or 
 profits, that makes no difference of principle. It 
 gives them no ownership of the business. If the 
 undertaking were purchased or confiscated by the 
 State, their position would not be necessarily or self- 
 evidently affected. There would be some transaction 
 between the Treasury and the shareholders, the nature 
 of which would be all-important for them ; but the 
 clerks and the salesmen and the factory hands would 
 not prima facie be affected either for evil or for good. 
 It is arguable, of course, that the character of the 
 management might in the long run be affected by the 
 change. But there is no direct and obvious necessity 
 for alteration. Thus, as has of course been pointed 
 out over and over again, it is the large-scale character 
 of modern industry and the frequent divorce of 
 management from ownership that suggests Collectiv- 
 ism, and would greatly facilitate its introduction. 
 
 I may add that, assuming the extreme hypothesis 
 of a general conviction arising in favour of Collectiv- 
 ism, I should not myself rely on the mere difficulty 
 of transition — the alleged aspect of confiscation — to 
 bar the revolution from taking place. If the system 
 were approved as likely to be permanently valuable, 
 I do not think that the difficulty of transition could 
 or would or ought to arrest the change. Means of 
 adjusting it to individual necessities for a time could 
 readily be contrived.
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 215 
 
 Practically, then, the effect of establishing col- 
 lective ownership with as little further change as 
 possible — the popular idea of Collectivism as fashion- 
 able, say, twenty years ago — would be to make all 
 the great businesses like what the Army and Navy 
 Stores would be without shareholders but with an 
 official board of management. The same with the 
 railways, and the land, and all the bigger industrial 
 and commercial concerns. The only difference in 
 principle would be that every one in the great pro- 
 ductive industries at least would be a salaried employee 
 or wage-earner, as nearly every one is now. Only 
 they would all be employees of public departments- 
 members of an enormous Civil Service. And, of 
 course, ultimately the service might be immensely 
 reorganised and unified. 
 
 3. Note the resulting relation to what we commonly 
 call private property. It need not be divided up and 
 equalised ; people's private avocations or industrial 
 recreations, so to speak, need not be interfered with ; 
 employments that come nearer to personal service 
 than to productive industry — gardening, tailoring, 
 dentistry, the small skilled businesses — e.g. profes- 
 sional avocations — with their tiny plant need not 
 necessarily undergo a change. But the general rule 
 would be, I suppose, " no private production of 
 commodities for profit." It would be enforced much 
 as the rules against Sunday entertainments for profit 
 are or were enforced. In a sense, your freedom of 
 action is not interfered with ; you can have Sunday 
 entertainments if you like and open them to the 
 public, but you must not take money for them. I 
 suppose the rule about producing wares would be the 
 same. Difficulties no doubt would occur, especially 
 if there were an animus in the administration. There
 
 216 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 is Bradlaugh's question, " Will you print at the public 
 press my criticisms and censures of your official 
 system ? " The answer ought to be, of course, 
 " Certainly, if they are worth reading." And to 
 suppose it would not be so is not fundamental criti- 
 cism but malicious hypothesis. 
 
 Private property, then, need not be equalised or 
 divided up or abolished. But in the main and in 
 principle it could only be property in objects of con- 
 sumption — I will return to this point — not in the 
 means of production, certainly not in means of pro- 
 duction used for private profit. 
 
 4. Therefore, in the main and in principle no one 
 would be able to live without giving some such service 
 as the governing power might either remunerate, or 
 permit to seek private remuneration, as in the case 
 of the professional businesses I spoke of. Thus there 
 would be no difference of fortune except from differ- 
 ence of salaries, and this, whatever people might 
 anticipate, would probably in fact represent current 
 public opinion. Society might look much more uni- 
 form, or might look not so very different from what 
 it does now. Fears have been expressed that the 
 possessing classes might capture the machine, and that 
 Dukes, e.g., might remain much as they are now, as 
 high bailiffs or State agents for large areas of territory. 
 But all this, as also arrangements for sickness, holidays, 
 old age, education, would be matters of detail depend- 
 ing entirely on the public authority. Obviously, if 
 it were found advisable in the public interest, this 
 authority might open accounts for loan capital with 
 individual citizens. Such an arrangement might be 
 a mutual convenience, and could easily be restricted 
 within limits which would keep quite remote the 
 domination of capitalism as alleged to exist to-day.
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 217 
 
 5. Now what, fundamentally speaking, do the 
 advocates of such a system hold that the public 
 stand to gain by it ? 
 
 Setting aside all ideas of the class war, all trifling 
 and malicious objections, and supposing the system 
 to be run as nearly in the public interest as an honest 
 and capable bureaucracy could run it, two gains are 
 anticipated which I take to be the sum and substance 
 of the matter, while others, of course, follow from 
 them. 
 
 (i.) To abolish in a great measure that mismanage- 
 ment of the community's resources which comes 
 under the head of mistaken personal expenditure. 
 No doubt there is enormous misdirection of expendi- 
 ture due to the magnitude of personal resources, 
 though there is also equally or more enormous waste 
 due to the mismanagement of resources which are 
 severally by comparison small. The former would 
 in the main be got rid of, and this would be a con- 
 siderable social gain. 
 
 (ii.) Besides this, there is a much more controversial 
 and questionable proposition, the main proposition of 
 Collectivism, that the mismanagement of resources 
 devoted to production of commodities,, that is, of 
 capital, would thus be put an end to. No one denies, 
 I take it, that at present you have frightful mis- 
 direction in the expenditure of capital, owing to 
 private caprice, irresponsibility, and, above all, to 
 competition. There is no doubt that two competing 
 railways between the same places may each of them 
 by itself alone run sufficient trains to serve the public, 
 so that half the trains run are sheer waste of the 
 community's resources. 
 
 (iii.) They would claim further, as corollaries of 
 these two fundamental gains, not an equal division
 
 218 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 of property, but a more equitable system of salaries 
 and wages. Waste being avoided, there would be 
 more for all, and especially for those who now have too 
 little. For the sake of argument, one may admit this, 
 subject to what is to be said below. If it were so, it 
 would be so. 
 
 (iv.) So with unemployment and all the hardships 
 of poverty and neglect. Your bureaucracy has the 
 whole province of labour under its eye and hand ; it 
 has the whole productive resources of the community 
 in its control. Surely by foresight and organisation 
 it can wisely distribute labour, enforce precaution 
 against hardship, prevent the first steps towards 
 destitution. All this is speculation on the method of 
 management of an untried system. It is not without 
 plausibility. I shall state below the single point of 
 principle that arises. 
 
 6. That is the roughest possible reminder of the 
 nature of these proposals. They are in every one's 
 mind to-day. All of us to be salaried ; all civil 
 servants ; nothing inheritable except objects bought 
 with our salaries ; the question of houses would settle 
 itself pretty much as it does now in most cases. A 
 man's children after his death might or might not be 
 able to keep on the lease of his house, just as is the case 
 to-day. And, as I said, it might be held a mutual 
 benefit to permit a moderate savings bank account, 
 so to speak, which might also be inherited. 
 
 Now let us look at the difficulties of principle 
 strictly inherent in the scheme. We are not to pre- 
 suppose any special weakness or class animus in the 
 public authority. We are to take the plan on its 
 merits, as if carried out by the best heads in the 
 nation sincerely with a view to the public good. 
 
 The point might be generally stated, I think, in
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 219 
 
 this form, following a hint in an old but honest and 
 direct criticism of the plan (Schaffle, Quintessence of 
 Socialism). 
 
 An enlightened and honest bureaucracy is hence- 
 forward to direct for the public good a system of 
 production and distribution. Hitherto our system 
 has run itself, within a framework of social guidance, 
 by means of the various motives and ideals of indi- 
 viduals, conditioned and largely determined by the 
 need and desire of individuals for profits and for 
 earnings. It is necessary for truth's sake to state the 
 latter member of the contrast in this rather cumbrous 
 way. To say " by means of the mere desire and need 
 of individuals for profits and for earnings " would be 
 absolutely untrue to fact. The sense of vocation is 
 powerful from the top to bottom of the productive 
 world, and is conditioned, not initiated, by economic 
 necessity and desire. But it is economic necessity 
 and desire that force the system to work — i.e. force 
 the things that on the whole are wanted on the whole 
 to be produced. 
 
 Now the point may be stated thus. How far, in 
 order to make their system work, will the supposed 
 administration have to imitate or reproduce the 
 operation of economic necessity in directing pro- 
 ductive activity to what is wanted, and diverting it 
 from what is not, or is no longer, needed or in demand ? 
 
 If, to put an extreme case, the operation of economic 
 factors is to be imitated or reproduced quite exactly, 
 and production directed or discouraged by economic 
 means in sensitive agreement with popular demand, 
 it would seem that there could be no change at all 
 affecting either the fortunes of labour or the direction 
 of capital. A certain amount of suicidal competi- 
 tion would be avoided — e.g. the railway department
 
 220 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 would hardly compete against itself. But productive 
 departments on the whole would be judged by their 
 enterprise and success, so that they would drive hard 
 bargains, mistaken ventures would occur as before, 
 and social hardship, the system of what is called 
 " wage-slavery," would not practically be mitigated. 
 We shall see that this latter point is now admitted 
 to be established by experience, and with it, I think, 
 the doom of popular Collectivism is sealed. No one 
 would agree to abandon an automatic system for one of 
 complete authoritative supervision, if the compulsion 
 of the latter is going to be content with practically 
 no better results than the freedom of the former. If, 
 on the other hand, the present operation of economic 
 motive is to be very sharply modified by discretionary 
 intervention with a view either to what is bona fide 
 held to be the public good, or to the realisation of a 
 greater measure of individual right or equality within 
 the wage-system, will it be possible, unless through 
 continual autocratic and discretionary interference, to 
 direct labour and production to the points at which 
 the public good demands their services ? You will 
 no longer turn men off as a branch of production 
 slackens, or as you think it pro bono publico to shut it 
 down ; you will tell them to do something else. But 
 will they do it, and how are you to make them ? 
 And are wc all to depend on your judgment, and 
 not on our demand, for determining what is to be 
 produced ? 
 
 7. Thus the fundamental difficulties of principle 
 which attach to popular Collectivism centre round 
 the question of management without effective 
 ownership. It was, we saw, the incipient divorce of 
 management and ownership that made Collectivism 
 conceivable. And nominally this divorce, in itself,
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 221 
 
 I think, a bad thing, and demanding amendment 
 (Lecture III.), is to be obliterated by Collectivism. 
 Ownership and management are henceforth to be in 
 the same body, viz. the public, and this seems to link 
 them intimately together. But really the contrary 
 is the case. The want of understanding between 
 ownership and management, which characterises a 
 limited company to-day, is not removed but enor- 
 mously aggravated under the Collectivist scheme. 
 The ownership, being generalised, is in practice 
 abolished. There is no longer anywhere any special 
 interest of ownership attached to the success or utility 
 of special industrial concerns. Management has slid 
 into the seat of general owner, and is itself general, as 
 over against the special managing organisations, say 
 the Trade Unions, by which production is carried on. 
 Thus there is no special guide or guarantee either 
 for the rights of the craftsman — the non-technical 
 management is too generalised for that, like the 
 Postmaster-General — or for the good of the public 
 — the bureaucratic management is too narrow for that, 
 like the War Office. 
 
 I will state the points which seem to me to arise 
 inevitably, under three headings : adjustment ; the 
 moral of ownership ; the provision of capital. 
 
 (i.) The problem of adjustment I have touched 
 upon already. It is to adjust production to public 
 need, and labour to production. The special neces- 
 sities, rooted in a modified form of competition, which 
 have hitherto, directly and indirectly, enforced this 
 adjustment on all concerned, are ex hypothesi gone. 
 Is it possible for the management itself to know, and 
 to cause the productive world to execute, what is 
 necessary for the public good and for the craftsman's 
 security and independence ?
 
 222 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 It would no doubt be urged that by removal of 
 waste in production a surplus far exceeding that of 
 the present system might be secured, so that a certain 
 slowness in adjusting employment might safely be 
 faced ; and that by a survey of demand, such as is 
 now carried out in the working-class co-operative 
 movement (see Mrs. Webb's excellent book, The 
 Co-operative Movement), production can be guided 
 otherwise than by mere experience of actual popular 
 demand. 
 
 These points are certainly arguable. I have no 
 doubt of the conclusion, but every one must judge 
 for himself. I have no doubt whatever that a gener- 
 alised management on behalf of the public as sole 
 owner must find itself between the upper and the 
 nether millstone — between justice on the one hand, 
 especially and typically justice to the craftsman ; 
 and, salus populi, the welfare and economic con- 
 venience of the public, on the other. 
 
 It must be borne in mind that in industry creative 
 management is everything. One man will make a 
 fortune for himself and his employers, and deal 
 liberally with his workpeople ; another will sweat 
 his workpeople, starve himself, and ruin his em- 
 ployers. There is far too much tendency to speak 
 as if business consisted in cheating — the game of 
 grab, we hear. The essence of business is creation. 
 With this in our minds we may say a word on the 
 moral of ownership. 
 
 (ii.) Before speaking of the moral of ownership in 
 general, we should note the point that public owner- 
 ship of the means of production may be held to satisfy 
 a sentiment of justice. We have considered justice 
 mainly as a problem of management ; but there is 
 no doubt that the recognised participation of all in
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 223 
 
 ownership of the community's capital would gratify 
 a certain sentiment of equality, even if real access to 
 the use of it remained as unequal as it is to-day. 
 And Collectivism counts on this. But if no reality 
 corresponds to the sentiment, it amounts to a fraud. 
 
 Now as to the moral of ownership in general. A 
 completely new distinction would be introduced into 
 the world of property by the Collectivist scheme ; 
 viz. an earmarking of all private possessions for con- 
 sumption only. This is a very serious matter indeed. 
 We should note the radical contrast with Plato's 
 conception of Collectivism. For him, the responsi- 
 bility of production remains in the hands of the 
 producers ; ownership and management are not 
 divorced. His Collectivism lies in an austere rule 
 imposed on the governing classes, who represent a 
 political and ethical purpose superimposed on the 
 productive strata of the society, but are themselves 
 cut off from free consumption and from temptation 
 to an ill use of power by a sort of monastic system. 
 In modern Collectivism the accent is laid on free 
 consumption for all ; responsibility for production is 
 not with the producer, but with the public authority ; 
 there is nowhere any check to the suggestion that all 
 income is for enjoyment alone. Property bears no 
 plain indication of an instrumental function, either 
 in the producer or in the higher administrative class. 
 
 This^ clean cut between consumption and produc- 
 tion endangers the whole character of private life. 
 The continuity of consumption, production, and 
 invention is severed. As it is, at any moment an 
 invention or initiative springing out of a recreation 
 or a private experiment may rise up into a new 
 contribution to production. No one thinks of his 
 possessions as being there simply for his enjoyment
 
 224 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 and with no reference to the general output. His 
 " things " are materials for activity, and whether 
 they carry him into the public market or not is 
 a matter of degree. A man conscious of his own 
 powers or able to inspire confidence in others may all 
 but sacrifice his life in obtaining resources, and may 
 then throw them away on an audacious adventure, 
 as Schliemann did at Troy, which may enrich the 
 world for ever. No authority controlling production 
 can do this for him. You cannot take hazards for 
 a man as he can take them for himself. A man who 
 has to begin by approving himself to an official 
 authority is choked off at starting. Imagine Wm. 
 Morris laying before a local board the first sketch of 
 the pomegranate paper. Morris was rich ; but what 
 another man does is to live on bread and water till 
 he can make some way with his invention or demon- 
 strate it to some capitalist. In short, I believe in 
 the old theory of property as a means of expression 
 of the will. The idea of private property as ear- 
 marked for mere consumption, and as incapable of 
 being transformed into employers' capital by a 
 resolution of the will, seems to me a very serious 
 matter for the moral of the community. 
 
 (iii.) The provision of working capital on a Col- 
 lectivist system would be a matter for the manage- 
 ment. It would have to be arranged for in the budget 
 of the community. This seems difficult and perilous. 
 All incomes being earmarked for consumption, and 
 nothing that had once f passed into an income being 
 again available as a means of production, there would 
 be a frightful waste, besides the severance of con- 
 tinuity between private life and productive activity. 
 But I do not lay very great stress upon this ; for it 
 would be open to the public authority to arrange for
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 225 
 
 the contribution of loan capital on reasonable terms, 
 and I feel certain that this would be done. I merely 
 draw attention to the fact that the provision of capital 
 is a social function, which is needed on an enormous 
 scale, and which it is therefore in the public interest 
 to remunerate. At the same time, it is an element 
 in maintaining the continuity of life, both within a 
 single lifetime and from generation to generation. I 
 do not say that inheritance and bequest should be 
 unlimited. 
 
 8. Popular Collectivism is most simply criticised 
 by passing on to the consideration of later ideals. 
 These take as their starting-point its admitted failure 
 to give hopes of a change of status for the wage- 
 earner, and the fact that, prima facie, it makes the 
 management of production an affair of the State — i.e. 
 of departments controlled by politicians. I cited in 
 the Preface to Lecture I. a characteristic pronounce- 
 ment of Syndicalism. It claims, so to speak, to be 
 the incarnation of the class war, and it will not admit 
 that the class war proper is advocated by any move- 
 ment except itself. We saw what the class war 
 meant. It meant at the lowest that the people of 
 the workshops are to compel recognition, to become 
 organic, to become a power, to be as good a class — as 
 permanent, as self-nurtured, as independent — as the 
 artists, say, or the students, or the doctors. The idea 
 of the general strike embodies, so to speak, the virility 
 and solidarity of this class-consciousness. They are 
 to abstain from the compromises involved in de- 
 mocracy and in government by politicians. They 
 are to live, like the early Christians, in a faith which, 
 whether fulfilled or not fulfilled, will justify itself by 
 the sublime fanaticism of its votaries. The self- 
 sufficingness of the class is signed and sealed, so to 
 
 Q
 
 226 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 speak, for their mind by the gospel of the coming 
 catastrophe and their self-preparation to play their 
 part in it. Before the war they were anti-patriotic. 
 I have not seen if they have modified their position 
 since it began. They might reasonably urge that, 
 though anti-patriotic, they might justly defend their 
 country against a lower patriotism than its own. 
 We saw in the passage I quoted that their temper 
 excludes a rationalised social plan. The myth, or 
 gospel, is wholly different from an Utopia. 
 
 To some extent we can enter into this mood and 
 should learn from it. Things will happen as we make 
 them happen by our work. Our intellectual plans 
 and arguments are, I hope, a part of our work, but 
 quite certainly they are only a part. What we all of 
 us do is having social effects from day to day greater 
 perhaps than what we think or say. • And we have, or 
 ought to have, a common faith : a faith in the strength 
 of which we work, without expecting to see it realised 
 in tangible shape. I think it a little commonplace 
 as to say, as a great French writer who contributes 
 to Sabatier's book has said, that this war must end 
 the class war. If the class war means the affirmation 
 of the class-soul in the class-gospel, it cannot wholly 
 cease. 
 
 Yet another form of Collectivism — it does not, I 
 think, call itself so — is again important as recognising 
 that public ownership by itself is no cure for the 
 injustices of which labour complains. It points out 
 that labour has the same difficulties when the State, 
 or the Municipality,- or even the Co-operative Asso- 
 ciation is the employer, as when the private capitalist 
 is so, and needs the Trade Union just as much. For 
 it, as for Syndicalism, the wage system is the enemy, 
 and the demand of labour is for freedom — for a certain
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 227 
 
 status — rather than for increased wages. It retains 
 the demand for public ownership of the means of 
 production, but separates management from owner- 
 ship. The mere owner is the State, but the manage- 
 ment rests with labour organised according to in- 
 dustries — not merely according to crafts, a matter of 
 dispute in the labour world to-day. Industries are 
 such enormous units as the coal-miners' industry, the 
 shipping industry, the building industry ; crafts are 
 such units as carpentry, blacksmithing, plumbing, 
 and the like. 1 The first step, it is urged, is to get 
 Trades Unions organised according to industries ; 2 
 next, to get them recognised as managing units of 
 industry, for which the name of National Guilds has 
 been suggested. Then the management of production 
 is to be with the organisations of these units over 
 against the State, which is the mere owner of the means 
 of production, and in the settlement of prices speaks 
 for the consumer, having as a weapon in its hands 
 the power of taxation. This question of the repre- 
 sentation of the consumer otherwise than by the mere 
 higgling of the market in face of competing producers 
 is certainly an important one ; see again the account 
 of such an arrangement in the working-class co- 
 operative movement. 3 
 
 1 For a clear account of this intricate matter of " Trade Union 
 Structure," see an article under that heading by Mr. G. D. H. Cole 
 in the Herald for January 13, 1917. 
 
 2 See Labour Year-book for 1916, article on " Industrial Unions 
 and Craft Unions." 
 
 3 Cf. again Miss Potter's (Mrs. Webb's) book on the Co-operative 
 movement. It is one of Professor Patrick Geddes' extraordinarily 
 ingenious apergus that he correlates this characteristic of the co- 
 operative movement with the possibility of a better architecture in 
 our shopping streets than is now admissible. Where you produce 
 for a known market, determined otherwise than by advertisement, 
 it is not necessary to make the street your showroom by building
 
 228 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 In terms of our problem we may say that here the 
 social ideal is to secure justice — recognition, freedom, 
 equality — for labour by assigning to it the main 
 control of management, while direction to the public 
 good is to be secured by public ownership, represented 
 elsewhere than in the management, which, we are to 
 observe, remains specialist, and not generalised like 
 the ownership, as it is in popular Collectivism. 
 
 This ideal is of great interest to us, as recognising 
 status — self-government, freedom, and security, in the 
 productive world — as more important than wage, and 
 as something which is not secured through public 
 ownership per se. The plan, so far as it concerns the 
 organisation of production, is founded on the analogy of 
 democratic government. But this, rightly understood, 
 involves very serious conditions. It is becoming 
 plainer and plainer that democratic regulation cannot 
 be successful on the basis of direct mass-government ; 
 that it never was so, and that its theory does not 
 demand such a regime. To advocate any such method 
 is to surrender democracy into the hands of its enemies, 
 who are well aware of the advantage which incon- 
 siderate theory offers them at this point. But, in 
 truth, democracy can afford to delegate powers of 
 administration in proportion to the breadth and 
 freedom of its basis, and the reconciliation of rights 
 with efficient organisation is here as everywhere the 
 test of the ideal. 
 
 This reconciliation, we have seen, is not guaranteed 
 by the mere union of management and ownership in 
 the hands of the State. Taking this result with us, 
 we can appreciate those ideals which make justice, 
 
 your shop-front entirely of plate-glass. Thus the co-operative 
 shops, in some places at least, display a decent and dignified civic 
 architecture with a solid stone front.
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 229 
 
 in the shape of a free status and self-government for 
 labour, the principal aim. But difficulties appear 
 to arise as to the other factor of the problem — the 
 public good — when we either with the Syndicalists 
 preach the annihilation of the State, or with the 
 " National Guilds " theorists treat it as a partial 
 association — a society with a geographical basis, as 
 opposed to the functional units — units of occupation 
 — in which productive interests are centred. We feel 
 ourselves oddly thrown back to the language of 
 Individualism, when we are called upon to consider 
 the State as only a part within the community. 
 
 All these suggestions have their lessons for us ; 
 and we can hardly expect to produce as against them 
 a more generally convincing Utopia. And in the 
 concluding lecture we shall not attempt to do so ; 
 but we shall attempt to come to an understanding 
 upon the fundamental features of any society that 
 man or woman can genuinely desire, and also to 
 develop what we have learned both from others 
 and from our own experience as to the place and 
 limits of planning for the future — of "Utopianism" ; 
 and as to the real forces and processes which are 
 determining and must determine the social world that 
 is to be. 
 
 Lecture III. — What Every One Wants 
 
 1. " What every one wants " includes two things 
 at least : to satisfy the demands of justice by making 
 possible an impartial development of human capacity, 
 and to guarantee the public welfare by an efficient 
 management, securing from individuals the necessary 
 social performances. These we have seen to be the 
 objects which determine the most recent social ideals,
 
 230 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 as they did the earliest in the world. The differences 
 between these most recent ideals depend on the relative 
 amounts of attention bestowed on justice and on the 
 common good, and those between the most recent 
 and the earliest on the difference between belief and 
 disbelief in the equality of man. But, in principle, 
 these two necessities, justice and the public good, 
 have inspired every sane sentence that has ever been 
 written or spoken upon society or politics. 
 
 At a further point we come upon a paradox which 
 it will be useful to us to develop. Would not every 
 sane man and woman be further agreed in desiring 
 the abolition of the class war, and an end of the 
 suspicion which keeps classes apart ? Yet we know 
 that it is not so. The class war is the banner of a 
 modern movement which defends itself in literature 
 and commands a fairly wide sympathy in the labour 
 world. What does this phenomenon mean ? 
 
 2. The conception of class on which that oi the 
 class war depends is founded on the facts of function, 
 and not, for example, on the superficial contrast of 
 wealth and poverty. The workman's function of 
 creative production, so I read the view, is held to 
 be something whose nature is as yet unrecognised 
 not only by the community as a whole, but by the 
 producers themselves. It involves a claim and an 
 antagonism which none but those familiar with it 
 can appreciate, and which even these as yet do not 
 appreciate. They have as yet no class-consciousness, 
 and therefore no class-loyalty, no class-pride nor 
 class-dignity. We saw in the Preface to these lectures 
 the essence of the weakness alleged, and of the remedy 
 advocated. They, the productive class as a whole, 
 must learn to possess a common creed, a faith, or a 
 myth, what we sometimes call in colloquial language
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 231 
 
 a gospel of their own. They must unite in a hope and 
 belief that one day they will come into their birth- 
 right, and they must embody this belief in a definite 
 image which will guide and inspire their conduct. 
 In the strength of this faith they must train and 
 discipline themselves as soldiers train for war ; they 
 must fit themselves for freedom, for self-government, 
 for the day when alien and selfish control shall be 
 ousted from the workshop by the general strike. And 
 there is more in this than a mere economic rebellion. 
 They want to realise an ethos and a culture of their 
 own ; not to live on the ideas of the middle class at 
 second-hand, any more than to wear their second- 
 hand clothes. There may be more in it than all this, 
 but there is all this at least, and it is something we 
 can appreciate and respect. We note the difference 
 of accent between it and popular Collectivism, our 
 criticism of which has always been that it tended to 
 spread dry-rot among the productive class. 
 
 Here we have much to learn. A class, as deter- 
 mined by its function, is dead if it has not its faith, 
 its gospel, and its pride. It should not live at second- 
 hand, nor copy the manners and ideas of others whose 
 life is differently determined. It must live for a 
 great deliverance, towards which it is always striving, 
 and which, though, as dreamed of, it may never be 
 realised, may yet lead to the realisation of something 
 better than itself. 1 We may think of the Churches' 
 belief in a religious restoration of mankind, of the 
 student's belief in a triumph of his convictions, the 
 artist's in an epiphany of beauty, and even of our 
 own, the social workers', certainty that the more 
 
 1 Goethe, Hermann und Dorothea : " Our very wishes veil from 
 us their objects ; the things we prayed for come to us, but not in 
 the forms we chose."
 
 232 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 excellent way which is our inspiration must some day 
 and somehow find complete fulfilment. Feelings of 
 this kind, which are not only justifiable but necessary, 
 are at the root, I think, of the conception of the class 
 war. There is something you have in common with 
 your comrades of the same function, something you 
 will fight for to the death, and which you do not believe 
 that any one can understand except those who have 
 experienced it. 
 
 3. When you come to confine it to a single class, 
 and wholly to reject the unity of the human group 
 within which it lives, the idea turns against itself. 
 The very first thing which we are to learn from it, 
 as its advocates point out with real insight, is that 
 two can play at that game. We are told that the 
 very point of the class war is to restore the virility 
 of the middle class. All of us have our myth and our 
 gospel, and, with all respect to others, we are not 
 going to see it trampled on. You say that you can 
 do without us but that we cannot do without you. 
 The ultimate answer can only be " Try." And the 
 trial never ceases. Man, as Kant has said, can get 
 on neither with his fellow-men nor without them, and 
 that is why he progresses. 
 
 But this brings to us a further point. The class 
 war does not, as its advocates suppose, reject the 
 unity of society. It establishes it. War means unity. 
 The heat of conflict is a consequence of the central 
 life which holds opposites in collision, always seeking 
 and never wholly finding a modus vivendi. If the 
 earth, Kant once more has said, were not a globe, 
 but an endless plain, there need be no war between 
 nations. It is the unity that makes the conflict. 
 
 And that this is so is easily seen in society. The 
 mind of every class sees life from its own angle ; but
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 233 
 
 this by itself would not produce the bitterness of class 
 conflict. This bitterness arises from the fact that 
 every mind claims to be, and in some degree is, the 
 social mind, and therefore resents the pretension of 
 any other to represent the community in a superior 
 or even in an equal degree. But for this very reason, 
 though every class-mind is right to stand up for 
 itself, it contains in miniature, besides its own, the 
 features which are writ large in others, and therefore 
 it is reinforced and expanded by contact with them. 
 All of us, for instance, are to-day inspired in our own 
 very different duties by the qualities of the Army. 
 And thus we embody in ourselves the social unity 
 which, from a class standpoint, we are tempted to 
 deny. We deny it only because we claim ourselves 
 to be the whole of it. 
 
 4. In looking closer at this question of the class- 
 structure of society there is a fundamental point of 
 method to be borne in mind. Utopias and ideals 
 are valueless unless they recognise ineradicable ten- 
 dencies of human nature. We shall find that Plato, 
 for example, however widely his suggestions may 
 seem to diverge from what we see in modern life, 
 really recognises the profoundest tendency which 
 through clouds of controversy and satire affirms itself 
 to-day. Great principles are great powers ; and if 
 we are attracted by anything which gives no sign of 
 being a power, we are probably wrong in taking it 
 to be a principle. What we might hope to do is to 
 liberate important tendencies from the errors which 
 spring up within them or over against them, just 
 because their significance is not simply and candidly 
 admitted. 
 
 Now the most fundamental and ineradicable ten- 
 dency of class-structure is the distinction between
 
 284 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 wealth-production and personal service. It coincides 
 on the whole — time and space forbid my particu- 
 larising — with the distinction between the world of 
 production and the world of action ; in everyday 
 language, between the world of business and industry 
 and that of politics and the professions. On the 
 whole, and allowing for the continuity between class- 
 minds, what characterises the former class is the 
 pre-occupation with bodily things, the capacity for 
 production, acquisition, enjoyment, and control of 
 them, and for steering a course in the personal re- 
 lations which attach to them ; while the professional 
 classes are occupied with functions which are largely 
 theoretical and, so far as practical, involve a large 
 theoretical element. Theirs is, on the whole, a life 
 of action and not of production ; a life whose creations 
 are not material objects, but solutions of problems 
 in the realm of ideas or in the circumstances and 
 relations of persons. And they have not the same 
 command, control, and enjoyment of the material 
 world as naturally comes to the productive class who 
 are pre-occupied with it. In spite of what are called 
 the prizes of the professions and of politics, their 
 position to-day is that, on the whole, which Plato 
 assigned to his guardians— that of men who work 
 directly for the community on the basis of receiving 
 from it just what is necessary for their function and 
 no more. Of course I am well aware of the exceptions 
 to this rule, and of the impossibility of making the 
 distinction absolute. But if we consider the matter 
 on the large scale we shall find that it is in the main 
 as I say. 
 
 And the point I am coming to is this : it is an 
 ineradicable tendency that as wealth and its control 
 and enjoyment go to the productive class, so power
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 235 
 
 and prestige go to the professional and political class. 
 And this ineradicable tendency is also a fundamental 
 principle, for it is essential to a decent society that 
 prestige and ultimate power should not belong to 
 wealth. 
 
 The tendency is disguised no doubt by social 
 appearances, which it is necessary to see through. 
 The wealth-producing class, as it exists to-day, is in 
 a great measure deprived of comfort and security ; 
 but for all that it holds in its hands the productive 
 functions of the community, and we can trace even 
 to-day the recognition that bodily labour and hazard 
 on the one hand, and the captain of industry's abilities 
 on the other, demand and justify enjoyments which 
 are neither open nor necessary to the bulk of what are 
 disparagingly called " the intellectuals." 
 
 Again, the professional and the political class, 
 exceptionally or for a time, may attain to wealth, 
 but on the whole its life is simple and its claims are 
 modest, as is right for a class which is busied directly 
 with the central needs and the most serious interests 
 of mankind. 
 
 5. This is a state of things which, being, as I think, 
 continually misunderstood, causes much confusion 
 and bitterness, the root of which I find in the entirely 
 groundless prejudice that material advantages are, 
 or should be, distributed in society according to 
 ethical or social merits. We are therefore apt to 
 grudge such advantages to labour or to captains of 
 industry, or again to suspect that they are claimed 
 and desired on behalf of the intellectual professions. 
 This suspicious attitude is very marked in Sorel. 
 But if we view the matter rightly (see Lecture I.) 
 this whole conception is preposterous. There is no 
 question of merit or reward. The railway king
 
 236 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 acquires wealth and houses and land, because on the 
 whole he is able to handle things of that kind, and 
 enjoys doing it ; and because he is capable and enjoys 
 it, he probably does it relatively well. Men of science, 
 artists, statesmen, would be apt to have their lives 
 altogether spoiled if such responsibilities were cast 
 upon them, and doubtless would in consequence spoil 
 the lives of others. It is not merit but capacity for 
 this or that function which determines on the whole 
 the apparatus with which a man is equipped by the 
 community. Even on this basis the adjustment is 
 no doubt constantly abusive by exaggeration of a 
 real claim ; but there is a real principle in it, and the 
 tools go, on the whole, to him who can use them. 
 
 We may set aside, then, the groundless prejudice 
 that success in wealth-production and command of 
 material things indicates anything more or other 
 than capacity for one special function within the 
 community ; that it is a sign of merit, or merit a 
 claim to it. We are able to understand how it is 
 possible and right that power and prestige should 
 belong in the main to those who deal directly with 
 the public good as a whole, although, as Plato saw, 
 their function, capacities, and enjoyments are widely 
 separated from wealth and wealth-production. Like 
 all fundamental necessities, this has a physical basis. 
 No normal man or woman mainly concerned with 
 wealth - production, manual or other, can possibly 
 qualify for a great profession except by an exacting 
 process which separates him from his wealth-pro- 
 ductive activity. A man may go back from the 
 ministerial Bench to the Bar, but, if he has done his 
 duty as he ought, he cannot go back to the factory 
 or the mine. The highest professional man, who is 
 called with a touch of irony the professional politician,
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 237 
 
 has to-day, what Plato assigned him, the finest, the 
 hardest, and the least rewarded profession in the 
 world. And in spite of its own prejudices, and with- 
 out knowing why, society is forced to recognise the 
 prestige attaching to the great professions, and to 
 this the greatest of them. 
 
 Even a skilled economist may misjudge the prob- 
 able effect of a special economic measure in a very 
 complex society. But a serious man or woman can- 
 not well be mistaken about the type of community 
 which he desires to see in being. And it is the latter 
 question rather than the former that I am trying to 
 think out to-day. 
 
 We have just seen that political leadership is a 
 function unsuited to the wealth-producing world as 
 such, whether in its captains or in its rank and file. 
 Politicians are representatives, and we think of repre- 
 sentatives as members of the world they represent. 
 But in the nature of things this can only be true in 
 part. To be a representative is a function in itself, 
 and demands, if seriously undertaken, a very special 
 training and capacity — a need which in any man who 
 aspires to be a political force is very gravely intensified. 
 
 On the other hand, those Socialist critics of popular 
 Collectivism appear to have much reason on their 
 side, who inveigh against the direct organisation of 
 industry by the political leaders acting for the State. 
 In the interests of justice and free human develop- 
 ment, industry demands for itself a recognised status 
 and a high degree of self-government — a control of 
 management and conditions wherever the ownership 
 may be. A single instance will explain, as well as 
 a whole chapter, what it should have power to avert. 
 A first-rate bricklayer, who under a first-rate builder 
 and a first-rate architect had just laid first-rate drains
 
 238 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 in a house, told the owner that once, when compelled 
 to work for an inferior employer, he had been using 
 some precaution — working with a spirit-level, I think 
 — which he held essential to proper drain-laying ; 
 and the employer came round and asked him what 
 on earth he was about — " We have no time to lay 
 drains in that way." I need not explain to such an 
 audience the double and treble reactions of such 
 immorality upon individuals and upon the com- 
 munity. I do not see how anything but a develop- 
 ment of Trade Unionism in the direction of self- 
 government is to be of effective service here. It 
 represents what I call the claim of industry to manage- 
 ment, wherever ownership may reside. 
 
 We noted this claim in Lecture II., and we saw 
 that popular Collectivism does not guarantee it. With 
 the considerations of that lecture before us, is there 
 anything further we can say about desirable relations 
 of management and ownership ? 
 
 The distinction which forced itself upon us through- 
 out Lecture II. seems to me to govern the whole 
 problem. It is the distinction between managing 
 ownership and ownership divorced from management. 
 We had assumed indeed that production is to be more 
 and more self-governing. This must be so, it appears 
 to me, as its quality becomes higher and its creative 
 effort more intense. Once more the principle is first 
 visible as a physical necessity. The management 
 must come back to the skill. Going forwards, then, 
 from this principle, it would seem as if the most 
 desirable form of ownership were that of managing 
 ownership ; when the owner of the means of pro- 
 duction is also the inventor and undertaker, and is 
 himself a mainspring of the skilled self-government — 
 in other words, is in heart and soul and mind one with
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 239 
 
 the labour organisation and inspires it. Such owner- 
 ship we think we ought to see, but we do not see it 
 perfectly, in the working-class co-operative move- 
 ment ; and we see it, I suppose, in the early stages of 
 great undertakings, while they still are animated by 
 the inventive and creative spirit that originated them. 
 Such a creative spirit, I take it, both must and can 
 blend itself with the self-governing system of industry. 
 And if ownership could all have been of this class, 
 Collectivism, I should suppose, would never have been 
 invented. For it, we say, is a mere pretender to the 
 unity which here is an actual fact. 
 
 But we saw in Lecture II. that modern production 
 is always deviating from this type. It soon becomes 
 too huge for individual ownership of the productive 
 unit, or effective partnership in it, to be possible. 
 But when ownership becomes multiple or co-operative 
 it inevitably slides beyond the managing organisation ; 
 the sleeping partner or the shareholder makes his 
 appearance, and ownership becomes a new kind of 
 thing. Then ultimate control is divorced from man- 
 agement, and the owner becomes, as it were, an 
 absentee landlord ; and too frequently Keats' s words 
 come to be applicable : 
 
 Half-ignorant, they turned an easy wheel, 
 
 That set sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel. 
 
 This, as we saw, is the problem that set going the 
 schemes of Lecture II. And it does seem to me that 
 they brought out a genuine point. For the reasons I 
 gave, I am against State ownership. But if and since 
 there is to be some kind of ownership distinct from 
 the management, as in every limited company, then 
 I agree that management — the self-government of 
 labour — ought to be very strong.
 
 240 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 The modern difficulty springs out of ownership 
 divorced from management. We saw in Lecture II. 
 how the problems arise. I will explain my point by 
 help of a personal experience. When I first met the 
 problem of non-managing ownership, feeling acutely 
 the investor's responsibility both as part employer of 
 labour and for the general results of his business, I 
 was inclined to the view that there should be no 
 ownership that was not blended with management ; 
 that is, that no man ought to hold an investment in 
 an undertaking without entering personally into the 
 labour conditions of the enterprise and its bearing 
 on the general welfare. And I still think there is 
 something in this, and that limited companies — it 
 is my old contention — should be obliged to publish 
 in their reports certain details regarding the life of 
 their employees and the results of their enterprise. 
 
 But it soon became clear to me that modern 
 specialisation of function would not admit of such a 
 forcible reunion of the roles it had put asunder. 
 Every man might exhaust his life in amateur director- 
 ship, and effect no good by it, while hindered by it 
 from being effective in anything else. The invest- 
 ment market, I recognised (assisted by some observa- 
 tions of Mr. P. Wicksteed 1 ), is within certain limits a 
 social necessity as such ; that is, as collecting capital 
 for enterprises, and as enabling individuals to adjust 
 their resources to a plan of life by exchanging present 
 power of consumption for future income. This is, 
 within limits, a bargain which meets a social need, 
 and is profitable to both sides. It is worth noticing 
 how this arrangement avoids the cut between con- 
 sumption and production, which we found to be a 
 
 1 Who, of course, is in no way responsible for my application of 
 his argument.
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 241 
 
 sinister feature in Collectivism. Every one has thus 
 a potential interest in production, and the varying 
 margins of income, instead of being monotonously 
 earmarked for consumption only, become social values 
 available for production and for the general good. 
 
 This consideration suggests that the ineradicable 
 tendency of the modern world to separate ownership 
 from management is a principle which must be 
 accepted for a certain stage in the development of 
 business. 
 
 But, as it seems to me, our discussion shows that 
 three reservations on this acceptance are indispensable. 
 
 First, the earlier stage of business, in which manage- 
 ment and ownership coincide, before a concern is 
 ripe to be " taken over " by a limited company or a 
 public authority, is of special social value ; and it 
 would be against public policy to generalise, at its 
 expense, the later stage in which they are separate. 
 
 Secondly, what we might call absentee ownership 
 — the position of the shareholder class — which is quite 
 a late and peculiar development of ownership, should, 
 so far as public policy and opinion can assert them- 
 selves, be made to take an inferior rank in the control 
 of production. It seems to me that one would view 
 with satisfaction every approximation on its part to 
 the position of mere loan capital ; that is, of capital 
 borrowed at a settled rate of interest, and without 
 any claim to control over management. 
 
 Thirdly, the detailed control of production, where 
 ownership is separated from management, should be 
 closely bound up with producers' organisations in the 
 interests of justice to the individuals engaged in 
 production. It seems to me that the freedom of 
 investment, as a social convenience, is only defensible 
 on some such condition ; that is to say, if the detailed 
 
 R
 
 242 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 care for the status and well-being of the producers, 
 which, as we saw, it is chimerical for the individual 
 owners of investments to attempt to exercise, can be 
 relied on as within the power of the productive class 
 itself. To speak plainly, if investors did not know 
 that powerful labour organisations are at least be- 
 ginning and attempting to supervise the conditions 
 of labour and to stimulate Government activity in 
 inspection and regulation, I hardly see how they 
 could sleep in their beds. For personally they know 
 nothing at all of the conditions under which their 
 employees are living. 
 
 Thus as regards management and ownership a 
 variety of systems would be current together, and 
 would, I am inclined to think, give openings for 
 necessary and complementary modes of welfare and 
 satisfaction. Justice would be secured by the strength 
 of the producers' organisations, and it would be 
 recognised that the career open to talents — which 
 would be maintained in the interest of inventive 
 progress and the public good — does not by itself 
 satisfy the just demands of the producers' class- 
 consciousness as a whole. We have seen in the 
 Preface and elsewhere what it is that true class- 
 feeling demands, and that every class, as determined 
 by function, has such a feeling, and insists on its 
 satisfaction. There would be the truest private 
 ownership wherever it was fused with management, 
 while the wide distribution of the more facile and less 
 responsible form of ownership which is divorced from 
 effective control would favour competition, so far as 
 demanded by the public interest, within the wealth- 
 producing world itself. Public ownership, we have 
 seen, is absentee ownership at its worst. If absentee 
 ownership is, as it seems to be, inevitable owing to
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 243 
 
 the element of expansion in modern business, at least 
 its wide distribution would preserve some elements of 
 widespread initiative and competition against undue 
 enhancement of price. 
 
 6. Our subject is supposed to be " social ideals," 
 and in the last few paragraphs we have thrown out 
 suggestions regarding some features of the future. 
 But the value of ideals, considered as schemes of 
 society in the future, as Utopian formulae, is itself a 
 problem which is not new to us, and in which recent 
 Socialism finds a strange meeting-point with ourselves. 
 I cited some of its phrases in the Preface : " No 
 dogmas or formulae ; no vain discussions on the 
 society of the future." M. Sorel tells us, 1 on Brentano's 
 authority, that when our Comtist Radical, Professor 
 Beesly, had published an article on the future of the 
 working class, Karl Marx wrote to him that hitherto 
 he had taken him for the only revolutionary English- 
 man, but in future he should hold him to be a re- 
 actionary ; for any one is a reactionary who makes 
 programmes for the future. Programmes — so at least 
 M. Sorel expands the idea in terms suggesting Bergson 
 — programmes can only be made by patching together 
 bits of the past ; but the future, I understand him 
 to imply, will be all of a piece, though of course 
 continuous with the past. This future for him in- 
 volves the great deliverance, the revolution ; but still 
 the attitude to ideals and Utopias has much in 
 common, for example, with what I urged in an 
 address to the Society (Charity Organisation Review, 
 February 1915) as following from the nature of our 
 work. 
 
 We shall find it instructive, I hope, to press this 
 point further. The social progress, with which we 
 
 1 P. 185 above.
 
 244 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 are dealing, is too large and deep and concrete to be 
 contained in any one's sketch of an ideal. It is the 
 whole solid world of life, breaking out into bud and 
 branches at every point, and including while trans- 
 forming the growths of previous years. Compare, 
 for example, the world of social care and regulation 
 half a century ago with the same world as it is to-day. 
 You could hardly count the changes ; but if you had 
 counted them, and more or less estimated their direc- 
 tion, your comparison would not be half completed. 
 The real point is, surely, that the social consciousness 
 is being transformed pari passu with the emergence of 
 new social creations ; and new social creations are 
 emerging at every point in the social world. 
 
 Now to avoid misrepresenting facts, I must say 
 that all this new creation, so far as it works by com- 
 promise with the State and points to social unity and 
 peace with the help of the middle class, is just what 
 our advocates of the class war detest and despise. 
 To them it appears as the silliness (niaiserie) of phil- 
 anthropy, as a substitution of ruse for violence, and 
 they think that, of the two, honest and unmalicious 
 violence is to be preferred. Understanding this quite 
 clearly, I still say that we meet them, fundamentally, 
 on their own ground. The new social creations and 
 the transformed social spirit are not merely principles 
 but facts ; and not merely facts, but powers. The 
 social process is greater than any one's formula ; and 
 what we have to think of is how causation is working, 
 and how we can throw ourselves into it in union with 
 the real forces of the day. It is true that if our views 
 are quite short and our insight quite superficial, we 
 shall stultify ourselves like inconsiderate charity. 
 Still, it is better to think of our task as discover- 
 ing and meeting genuine social necessities than as
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 245 
 
 imposing on the social process a goal contrived out 
 of our own heads. 
 
 Thus, for example, it may make much more differ- 
 ence to the future what we do than what we say or 
 even think. How we manage our household, how we 
 spend our money, what we care for and pursue in 
 our actual daily life, what we read and what amuse- 
 ments we enjoy — all these things are causes in the 
 social process, and very conceivably may be operating 
 to other ends than what we call our ideals. I do not 
 believe that we can tell how a present social phase 
 will turn out ; but so far as we join in the process 
 with a right sense of the values of the principal things 
 in life, we must be contributing an element which 
 will make for betterment in the result. Work 
 thoroughly done with care and sympathy will not be 
 lost ; but no one can tell in what precise form it will 
 survive. Such a break as should really obliterate the 
 work of the past would be fatal indeed, but it is also 
 impossible. Man is dependent on his tradition ; and 
 those who are most pledged to novelty are for that 
 very reason obliged to borrow most from the past. 
 Because you can have nothing new unless you start 
 on the shoulders of the past. 
 
 What I am trying to say is really very simple ; it 
 is that when we are taught to swear that salvation 
 depends, so to speak, on this, that, or the other special 
 arrangement being originated or preserved in the 
 future, it would be wiser to reflect on the immense 
 mass of experience and method developed during the 
 past, and especially the past half-century, and to feel 
 sure that though we cannot say exactly what will 
 come out of it, yet all this growth of mind and method 
 — say in the case of children or in the relief of distress 
 — cannot possibly be obliterated.
 
 246 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 But if this is our point of view, our ideals will be 
 present to us rather as a set of values, a faith, or a 
 gospel of our function than as a clear-cut scheme of 
 what is to be. We shall, as a great writer has said, 
 remember " What the world is, and what we are." 
 We shall try to understand it, and co-operate with it, 
 rather than to remould it. We shall seek for what is 
 deepest in it, knowing we shall find there a power 
 which will respond to what is deepest in ourselves. 
 And by taking these deepest things as our guide and 
 criterion, we shall always be working in a direction 
 which will at once be practicable and good. 
 
 To take an instance, economic equality will appear 
 rather as a " regulative idea " than as a rigid con- 
 dition. So long as, while striving for equality of 
 opportunity, we insist, as of course we shall, on 
 combining with it some measure of freedom in the 
 development of capacity, there will necessarily result 
 certain relatively advantageous positions as between 
 family and family. Even if economic continuity by 
 inheritance should be greatly diminished, the wiser 
 and more energetic family will always confer upon its 
 members an advantage which will have an economic 
 aspect no less than one that is social and educational. 
 In a progressive society there must and will be, as 
 there ought to be, those who take the lead and those 
 who bring up the rear. In the confusion and dis- 
 traction of to-day the invention of modes of life is 
 more important, perhaps, than any other invention. 
 And the pioneers in such invention, whether in the 
 professional or in the wealth-productive class, and 
 however slight their economic resources, will always 
 hold a position of pre-eminent security and stability. 
 
 7. As the typical guide, which is capable of a 
 wider interpretation than might appear, I should be
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 247 
 
 inclined to select the well-known opposition between 
 art and luxury ; and I select it with the more em- 
 phasis that high and respected authorities have not 
 always acknowledged it. The question is whether 
 in framing our lives we are guided by foolish fashion 
 and tradition, and accumulation of what the market 
 most easily affords, or whether we set before us the 
 ideal of human service, the expression of genuine needs 
 and likings, and rejection of what belongs to neither 
 of these classes. The pioneers, I believe, will find it 
 unnecessary to choose between the life of the rich 
 and the hardly less repulsive life of the poor. There 
 will be, as there always, I suppose, has been, a con- 
 tinual effort after simpler and more reasonable forms 
 of life and of association ; and along with mechanical 
 invention and the revival of architecture there will 
 be progress towards living which may be simple 
 without being sordid, and beautiful without being 
 extravagant — the immortal motto of the Athenian, 
 " Beauty with frugality, and culture without luxury." 
 Art, we remember, means expression ; luxury means 
 accumulation, and is essentially unexpressive. 
 
 And I deny, if it is suggested, the criticism that in 
 thus talking of lofty things we are shirking the funda- 
 mental economic problem. If nothing is produced 
 but what is wanted for a genuine " expression " or 
 a genuine necessity, the healthiness of the economic 
 system is in the main secure. Waste is the economic 
 enemy ; and with such a production waste is pre- 
 cluded and the status of the workman assured. Art, 
 M. Sorel tells us, is an anticipation of the character 
 of the highest production on which the productive 
 class can fix their hopes. 
 
 I ventured to call this lecture " What Every One 
 wants." What I had in mind was the familiar point,
 
 248 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xi 
 
 that what we want in the sense of what would satisfy 
 us if we had it, is not the same thing with the everyday 
 objects of our desire. We saw from the beginning 
 that prestige instinctively rests with the activity 
 which begins to take us beyond material necessities. 
 We have just carried the matter one step further, in 
 taking art, as the character of precisely self-expressive 
 life, for our typical guide in social aspiration. But 
 if we were to speak without disguise of the true 
 ultimate guide and the desire of humanity, we should 
 find ourselves dealing with matters which you might 
 think out of place in such an argument as the present. 
 And they are dangerous matters, easy to misinterpret, 
 and when misinterpreted fertile of hypocrisy and of 
 social and political evil. But, none the less, it is 
 true that there is an ultimate guide for social ideals, 
 and a universal desire of humanity, meaning by that 
 the only desire whose satisfaction would be satis- 
 factory. And this is out and away beyond the State, 
 and beyond the social community itself, even if we 
 take that, after the growing tendency of the day, as 
 something wider and deeper than the political fabric. 
 And yet, though beyond society and the State, it is 
 not indifferent to them, nor they to it. And when we 
 are pondering the gospel of our function, or plunging 
 deeper into social causation in order to affect for the 
 better the unknown future to which the whole process 
 is tending, I do not say these great ideas should be 
 reflectively present to us, but I am sure that if they 
 do not on the whole express our leading aims and 
 purposes, then those purposes are not what they 
 ought to be. I summarise them in a passage from 
 an Aristotelian writer, which I have often quoted 
 before, but which I cannot cease from quoting, be- 
 cause it seems to me to sum up the complete truth of
 
 xi THREE LECTURES ON SOCIAL IDEALS 249 
 
 the matter. It is necessary to remember, in inter- 
 preting it, how little the Greek had our habit of 
 circumlocution, and how we have seen that every 
 class and function in a community is tinctured with 
 the spirit of every other. 
 
 " So whatever choice or distribution of worldly 
 resources, whether of bodily qualities or of wealth 
 or of friends or of other goods, will be most helpful 
 towards the contemplation of God, that is the best, 
 and that is the most beautiful standard of organisa- 
 tion ; and whatever arrangement, whether by defect 
 or by excess, hinders men from glorifying God and 
 enjoying Him ; that is a bad arrangement." 
 
 To bring out the full meaning of this passage in 
 its bearing on the life of a community, I will cite a 
 few words of interpretation : 
 
 ' You do not, in the view of Plato and Aristotle, 
 when aspiring to intellectual excellence and to re- 
 ligious contemplation, tread a separate and diverging 
 path from that of the ordinary good citizen. You 
 follow his path, but pursue it further, and what the 
 saint or the poet or the thinker may attain at the end 
 is only the quintessence of what every citizen has 
 been practising from the beginning," and, I will add, 
 except as the inspiration of that common life, loses 
 nearly all its substance and value. 
 
 [Note on p. 248. — If art should come to impart its character to 
 the main productive activities, would the antithesis indicated above 
 (p. 234) between the productive and professional classes continue to 
 hold good? I answer that it would be progressively decreased in 
 intensity, and the harmony of the social mind would increase in the 
 same ratio.]
 
 XII 
 
 A MORAL FROM ATHENIAN HISTORY 
 
 There are two problems of human life in com- 
 munities which have eternal interest. The first of 
 these is how far the higher achievements of life are 
 determined by material conditions ; the problem, in 
 short, which, though by no means new, has been 
 forced upon the world afresh through what is known 
 as the economic or materialist view of history. And 
 the second is how far the truest greatness of man is 
 bound up with national self-assertion involving the 
 forcible maintenance of unity in societies against dis- 
 ruption within and hostility without. The problems 
 are, perhaps, the same problem repeated at two 
 different levels. The first, it might be said, asks 
 how far the forces of nature control the destinies of 
 man ; the second, how far the relatively natural force 
 of society, its ability to threaten and to exercise 
 physical compulsion, is an agency essential to its 
 highest functions. 
 
 On these two problems, it has always appeared 
 to me, very important suggestions may be drawn 
 from the history of Greece. The schism which has 
 hitherto existed between modern sociology and classi- 
 cal studies has had the effect of depriving the theory 
 
 250
 
 xii A MORAL FROM ATHENIAN HISTORY 251 
 
 of society of a set of examples which display, in the 
 clearest and simplest shape, the connection between 
 determinate physical conditions and a singularly lofty 
 social achievement. 
 
 In general, and with reference to both problems, 
 we are to note the very high individuality of the 
 Greek race, and the greatness of the results which it 
 achieved within narrow boundaries of space and time. 
 Thus on the one hand the effects are highly deter- 
 minate, and on the other hand the conditions, both 
 material and political, are tolerably simple and 
 limited ; so that both conditions and effects are 
 capable of a fuller correlation than is usually possible 
 in sociological inquiry. And the subject of the 
 present lecture has been suggested by the fact that 
 both as regards material and economic conditions, 
 and as regards the type and degree of political co- 
 hesion, the minds of Greek statesmen and thinkers 
 reflect the circumstances of their world with extra- 
 ordinary directness and precision. We seem to see 
 the policy of this and that great mind growing out of 
 the soil and the geographical relations, and completing 
 and emphasising their suggestions, just as wild plants 
 or cultivated crops, or even the dwelling-places of 
 man, follow and mark the lines and surfaces of a 
 favourable habitat. 
 
 1. As regards the connection of Hellenic life and 
 character with soil, climate, and geography, we may 
 start from an interesting antithesis which makes itself 
 felt in the simplest economic interpretation of history. 
 Is a very fertile country, or one which demands much 
 care and labour for its returns, more favourable to 
 civilisation ? Neither side of the alternative, of course, 
 cuts off the connection between conditions and char- 
 acter ; but at the same time a certain bias as to the
 
 252 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xn 
 
 relative importance of factors in the problem reveals 
 itself in the answer which we give. Buckle is inclined 
 to insist upon the fact that the oldest civilisations 
 belong to countries of extreme natural fertility, — 
 India, Babylonia, Egypt. But it seems also import- 
 ant to point out that progressive civilisation, in the 
 modern European sense, has seldom if ever arisen 
 outside the temperate zone. A nature that affords 
 occasions for struggle, producing definite achieve- 
 ments by success, does more for man in the end than 
 one that seems to do all. Professor Geddes has 
 pointed out how the conditions which induce parasitic 
 degeneration are " freedom from danger, abundant 
 alimentation and complete repose, etc. ; in short, the 
 conditions commonly considered those of complete 
 material well-being." x 
 
 The sides of the above antithesis correspond with 
 the marked feeling of the Greeks as to the material 
 basis of their own life when contrasted with that of 
 the Asiatics with whom they came in contact. From 
 the Homeric description of Ithaca, " a rugged country, 
 but a good breeder of men," to the saying of the 
 Spartan in Herodotus, " Poverty is always at home 
 in Greece," 2 a whole series of anecdotes and observa- 
 tions — brought to a climax in the splendidly imagined 
 interview of Solon and Croesus — show a deep-rooted 
 sense of the sparingness of nature in Greece as com- 
 pared with her bounteousness in Asia. More parti- 
 cularly, no doubt, the Greek mind was influenced by 
 
 1 Encycl. Brit., art. " Parasitism." 
 
 2 Herodotus, vii. 102. The whole passage illustrates the Greek 
 feeling in question. " In Greece poverty is native and virtue is 
 artificial, being achieved by wisdom and the strength of law ; 
 and by its help Greece defends herself against both poverty and 
 despotism."
 
 xii A MORAL FROM ATHENIAN HISTORY 253 
 
 the immediate contrast between the territory of 
 Greece proper and that of the Greek cities of the 
 Levant, which in the age of mature political ex- 
 perience were always tributary either to Greece proper 
 on the one hand or to Persia on the other. The real 
 reason for their defencelessness was rather their 
 position on the coast-line of a continent than the 
 mildness of their climate or the wealth of their terri- 
 tory ; but it is remarkable to find an agreement 
 between the historian and the physician that an 
 energetic and spirited disposition could not be ex- 
 pected in a climate so pleasantly tempered. 1 
 
 Not that the Greeks of Greece proper were dis- 
 contented with their own country. On the contrary, 
 they believed it to be the best in the world as a 
 breeder of men, whose type was equally remote from the 
 untamable rudeness of Northern Europe and from the 
 cringing trickiness which they ascribed to the Asiatic. 
 
 And it is true that their territory had an extra- 
 ordinary aptness, of which its inhabitants were partly 
 aware, to suggest and respond to definitely specialised 
 forms of civilised achievement. 
 
 The maritime character of Greece proper, the 
 ethical and intellectual importance of which was first, 
 I believe, pointed out by Winckelmann, the great 
 student of Greek plastic art, is too familiar to be 
 enlarged upon. It is enough to note how it is sug- 
 gested by the character of Greek territory — a coast- 
 line of bays and peninsulas, the latter carried on in 
 lines of islands ; much like portions of the Scotch 
 coast, where you send a boat if you need the doctor 
 or minister as naturally as elsewhere you might send 
 a carriage. Look at the peninsula of which Salonika 
 stands at the north-west and Mount Athos at the 
 
 1 Herodotus, i. 142. Stein's note, quoting Hippocrates.
 
 254 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xn 
 
 south-east angle ; note how it reproduces on a small 
 scale the outline of the Morea ; and then read its 
 history during the lifetime of Demosthenes, how, as 
 an isolated bit of Hellenic ground, it was the first to 
 fall under the dominion of the non-Hellenic * powers. 
 
 Consider again the cantonal character of the Greek 
 territory ; how the greatness of the several states 
 followed from the size of the plains which were en- 
 closed within their respective mountain walls ; and 
 how the structure of the Achaean league, the earliest 
 Federal Government, was prefigured by the row of 
 valleys, attached to each other side by side and not 
 rounded into a centralised unity, which made up the 
 state of Achaia. A classical example of this kind of 
 study was given by the historian Curtius in his great 
 work on the Peloponnese ; and those who desire 
 an object lesson in the correlation of character and 
 circumstance might do worse, if prepared to familiarise 
 themselves with Greek history, than take him as 
 their guide. 
 
 The position of Greece proper in the Mediterranean, 
 and in relation to the Levant and the islands of the 
 iEgean, is no less significant for history than its in- 
 ternal structure. The whole country is, so to speak, 
 turned towards the East. The bays and natural 
 harbours of Greece proper, and the lines of islands 
 which guide and encourage the voyages of early 
 mariners, lie to the East ; and the basin of the 
 iEgean, as the well-known opening sentences of 
 Curtius' s history point out, is rather a bond 2 than a 
 
 1 This illustration, as all in these remarks that is worth anything, 
 I owe to my teacher, Mr. W. L. Newman, of Balliol, the editor of 
 Aristotle's Politics. 
 
 2 Cf. the relation of the Hanse towns to the North Sea, pointed 
 out by Professor Geddes in lectures.
 
 xii A MORAL FROM ATHENIAN HISTORY 255 
 
 division between Europe and Asia. Here in this 
 predetermined focus of life, commerce, and ideas, 
 continuous with the Euxine, with Asia Minor, and 
 with Syria, Egypt, and Cyrene, we have the central 
 area of the Greek dispersion, the basis of leagues and 
 empires under Athens, Sparta, Alexander, and Rome, 
 forming a homogeneous world of civilisation, the field 
 of Hellenistic and of Greco-Roman culture, and ulti- 
 mately the seed-plot of Christianity. 
 
 Turning to our immediate problem, the natural 
 endowments of Attica in particular, in relation to the 
 conceptions of Athenian statesmen, we note in them 
 simply an intensification of the characteristics belong- 
 ing to Hellenic ground as a whole. 
 
 First of all we have to observe the central position 
 of Athens in the world of maritime commerce of the 
 fifth century B.C. She lay in the centre of the water- 
 ways of the Mediterranean much as England lies in 
 the centre of the maritime world to-day ; and her 
 natural harbours, of ample extent according to ancient 
 standards, though not comparable with the vast 
 harbour spaces of London, of New York, or of modern 
 Marseilles, made it possible for her to use her position 
 to the full. 
 
 In the next place, the internal resources of Attica 
 point in the same way to an artificial — a commercial 
 or industrial — type of life. The soil was not first-rate 
 cornland, and no large population could have been 
 maintained upon it by agriculture. The home corn- 
 supply was probably enough for from half to two- 
 thirds * of the year, when the population was at its 
 
 1 It is interesting to see Socrates putting this question to the 
 young would-be statesman as one of the first things he ought to 
 know. But the young man has not given it his attention. Xen. 
 Mem. iii. 6, 13.
 
 256 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xn 
 
 maximum ; in the United Kingdom the supply of 
 foreign wheat began to exceed the home product 
 about 1870. What Attica did possess was a good soil 
 for olive, vine, and fig culture, 1 an inexhaustible store 
 of the choicest marble, a supply of clay adapted for 
 pottery, a sea well stocked with fish, a flora which 
 gave the choicest honey, and above all, silver mines, 
 from which a considerable revenue was drawn, and 
 owing to which the Attic silver coinage had a general 
 currency like that of English gold, and Athens could 
 always pay for her imports in specie if commodities 
 suitable for export were not forthcoming. 
 
 Now the instructive point is that we observe, 
 from the beginning of recorded history, a perfectly 
 definite grasp of these conditions in the minds of 
 Athenian statesmen. It would lead us too far to 
 furnish details of the legislation and government of 
 the sixth century B.C. But it may be taken as well 
 known that the great legislator and the great prince 
 who are the prominent figures of that century at 
 Athens felt themselves to be dealing with a com- 
 munity whose future lay in industry, commerce, art, 
 and letters. The admission to citizenship of foreigners 
 exercising a trade, which is ascribed to Solon's legisla- 
 tion, stands out as an act of far-sighted liberality 
 against the policy advocated in many quarters even 
 to-day. 
 
 By the end of the sixth century, then, what we 
 may call the suggestions of nature had already found 
 their response in the Athenian mind. Athenian 
 sculpture and building were fast rising into fame ; 
 Athens was becoming noted for pottery and for other 
 products depending for their value upon skill in 
 
 1 The soil of Greece requires irrigation, and it is interesting to see 
 the process going on to-day just as it is described by Homer.
 
 xii A MORAL FROM ATHENIAN HISTORY 257 
 
 manufacture, such, for example, as olive oil ; and the 
 silver mines were producing a revenue to the State and 
 to individuals, though the later and fateful application 
 of that revenue had not yet been devised. Further, 
 the city had already stations and factories oversea, 
 and more particularly had laid on the region of the 
 Hellespont the grasp which it afterwards tightened 
 with economic results of the highest importance. 
 
 Thus the mind of Athens is from the beginning a 
 mind racy of the native ground and the native sea ; 
 and when we look at the cutting and setting of the 
 marble blocks and drums on the sacred hill of Athene, 
 we feel that above all things we have to do with a 
 people to whom the working of marble and the build- 
 ing of walls and columns came as naturally as farming 
 to an Englishman or horse-breaking to an Australian. 
 
 Omitting many things which would illustrate our 
 point of view if it was possible to go into them — for 
 example, the decisive democratic reforms which closed 
 the century in question — let us look for one moment 
 at the inherent logic of the Athenian mind as its world 
 shaped itself further in the two great fifth-century 
 statesmen, Themistocles and Pericles. 
 
 In the first thirty years of the fifth century, or 
 thereabouts, the attempt of the Persian Empire to 
 extend itself over European Greece was defeated, 
 very greatly by the services of those poorer classes at 
 Athens who formed the crews of the Athenian war- 
 galleys. 
 
 Now, according to the story, which there is no 
 reason to doubt, the existence of this powerful fleet of 
 galleys was first made possible by the success of 
 Themistocles in persuading the people to abandon 
 the annual distribution per head of the silver revenue 
 and apply it to building year by year a certain quota 
 
 s
 
 258 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xn 
 
 of ships. And the creation of this powerful fleet 
 involved three closely connected results : first, the 
 defeat of Xerxes and the liberation of the Levantine 
 cities from his power ; secondly, the maritime su- 
 premacy of Athens among the Greeks, and conse- 
 quently her leadership and ultimately her empire ; 
 and, thirdly, the intimate and inherent connection 
 of the democracy at home and the empire abroad, 
 inasmuch as the latter rested on the skill and energy 
 of the maritime populace who rowed the galleys. 
 
 But such a war fleet, not to speak of the commerce 
 which it was to support, needed a defensible harbour. 
 Here, again, the mind of the statesman revealed itself 
 at the critical moment as penetrated with the in- 
 dividual and determinate capacities of his native 
 territory. The selection and fortification of the head- 
 land of Peiraeus with its three natural harbours, one 
 of them a bay three-quarters of a mile in its greatest 
 length, may seem no very gigantic conception to us 
 who reckon our wharf frontages by miles and miles. 
 But it was enough to secure a sea-power to Athens 
 adequate to deal with anything that could be brought 
 against it within the Greek and Phoenician world, and 
 it presented itself with extraordinary felicity as the 
 complement of the other capacities of Attica and the 
 condition of their being effectively realised. The 
 harbour town which grew up round the new harbours 
 was the favourite work of Themistocles. It was to 
 Athens what the East End is to London, because of 
 its including the harbours and docks, the commercial 
 and democratic centre. Themistocles, we are ex- 
 plicitly told, thought the Peiraeus more valuable than 
 Athens itself, and constantly advised the Athenians, 
 if they should ever be overborne in a war on land, to 
 take refuge in its fortifications and hold the sea.
 
 xii A MORAL FROM ATHENIAN HISTORY 259 
 
 In this there was something of the peculiar stamp 
 of Themistocles's mind : a want of balance, of com- 
 pleteness, characteristic of one who, it is said, was not 
 of full citizen birth, and reminding us of his answer, 
 when invited to join in the music at a party — this 
 being an ordinary social accomplishment of an 
 Athenian gentleman — that " he could not fiddle, but 
 he could make a petty town into a great city." 
 
 However this may be, if we summon before our 
 mind's eye the appearance of Attica, say, ten years 
 after the repulse of Xerxes, with Athens and Peirseus 
 both successfully fortified by Themistocles's sugges- 
 tion and contrivance, and the growing energies of the 
 city making their mark triumphantly in art and 
 industry, in war and external politics, we shall per- 
 ceive in every characteristic of the busy scene at once 
 a gift of nature and the stamp of great intelligences, 
 working, through the logic of events, as a single 
 intelligence. 
 
 And now, bearing in mind that we are only selecting 
 a point here and there out of a mass of material, let 
 us turn to Pericles. 
 
 Comparing his characteristic policy with that of 
 Themistocles, we find it written on the face of the 
 country by the famous Long Walls, impregnable 
 fortifications extending a distance of five miles from 
 the fortified city to the fortified harbour. Pericles, 
 then, was resolute to sacrifice neither element of 
 Athenian life, neither power nor splendour, neither 
 democracy nor the pride of culture. He was deter- 
 mined, as it seems, to give a national value to his 
 ancient city, which had such capacities for magnifi- 
 cence and refinement ; and to do this he was aware 
 that he must weld it into inseparable unity with the 
 instruments of its maritime supremacy.
 
 260 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xn 
 
 And in the great works by which he gave this 
 imperishable value to the life of his city we may trace 
 once more a wonderful continuity between the gifts 
 of nature and the creations of genius. Pericles, of 
 course, was not the first to deal with that rocky eleva- 
 tion in the centre of the Athens v of his day, which 
 became under his direction the most glorious sanctuary 
 of art in the whole world. From time immemorial 
 its surface had been used as a fort or palace or both ; 
 it had, indeed, been the ancient city. And in the 
 course of centuries, by the work of kings and states- 
 men, the sloping rock had been built up and levelled 
 into a spacious surface, bounded by sweeping curves, 
 supported upon huge retaining walls, whose varied 
 workmanship indicates the succession of generations 
 occupied upon the construction. 
 
 So, then, when we see to-day the vast marble 
 floors, the walls and columns, with their blocks and 
 drums fitted to a hair's-breadth, standing on a 
 spacious and grandly outlined surface, we should call 
 to mind that while part of this surface is the living 
 rock, part of it again is the work of man. 1 And we 
 may say without a paradox that if the greatness of 
 Athens is in one sense a gift of nature, yet the central 
 endowment of its nature, the very ground in which 
 its glory is rooted, is a creation of the national mind. 
 Thus the life of Greece and of Athens is an em- 
 phatic object-lesson in the relation of natural data 
 to genius and character. A great life is, as it were, 
 the flowering of nature in the medium of great intelli- 
 gence. The highest genius does not make the least 
 but the most of the nature which is its world. Aspects 
 
 1 The Parthenon, with its thousands of tons of marble, showing 
 no trace of settlement, stands at one side on the living rock ; at the 
 other, on thirty to forty feet of made earth and foundations.
 
 xii A MORAL FROM ATHENIAN HISTORY 261 
 
 and characteristics of material things, which are 
 silent to others, tell their secret to the gifted race or 
 to the great statesman. But in making the most of 
 nature, we must not forget that genius transforms 
 nature. Nature, we may say, ceases to be mere 
 nature when it becomes " a world " for mind. Its 
 rough circuitous selection is replaced by an ideal 
 selection which is rapid and direct. Its imperfect 
 forms of unity are replaced by the forms of intelligence, 
 making possible, for instance, such a transformation 
 as that of the animal brood into the human family. 
 The very surface of the earth becomes, as we have 
 seen, not, indeed, something which is other than 
 nature, but a larger nature charged with mind. 
 
 The error of commonplace materialist views of 
 history seems to lie in the old blunder of separating 
 two inseparable factors and then trying to substitute 
 the one for the other. Mind and its world are in- 
 separable correlatives ; the wealth of its world is the 
 wealth of mind, is its very substance, and the driving 
 force of its logical or ethical operation. Mind, it 
 might be said, is the world taken as alive and focussed. 
 " Circumstances " are " what stand around " ; they 
 stand around a centre ; the centre is the unity of 
 consciousness, and when we speak of " circumstances " 
 we are already within a sphere which is not merely 
 " natural," but transformed by presentation to in- 
 telligence. Cut the correlatives apart at a line which 
 must be arbitrary, and the world or circumstances are 
 dead, and the mind is nothing. And then it is natural 
 to exclaim that here is nothing left but dead circum- 
 stances, material data, conditions ; and they must be 
 the essence of life, for we can find nothing but them 
 in life. This is because at some arbitrary level of 
 their unity you have killed them by dissociating them
 
 262 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xn 
 
 from mind, and now you say that they " really " are 
 what they happened to be when you killed them. 
 But in truth they are not a dead structure, prior to 
 mind ; they are a living fabric whose variety, as 
 penetrated with a conation towards unity, is the 
 mainspring of mind itself. Such an economic factor 
 as the " standard of life " shows in a moment how 
 futile is the attempt to represent economic conditions 
 as mechanical or material, in the sense in which 
 material or mechanical means external to intelligence. 
 
 The Greek thinkers knew better. They knew that 
 the function of the statesman is to elicit the idea that 
 lies in the conditions, as the artist finds the statue in 
 the marble. They knew that the matter of life is not 
 alien to the aims of mind, nor a fetter upon it, but 
 rather is the individual form or idea in its less explicit 
 phases, pressing forward and springing up into higher 
 shapes of unity. And they knew that economic 
 structure is not a sort of iron framework or foundation, 
 affecting life but unaffected by it ; but is simply one 
 way in which the characteristic unity of any system 
 of life expresses itself, partaking of the nature and 
 degree of completeness of the unity attained. 
 
 The idea to be got rid of is the idea that specialised 
 circumstances are a fetter upon individuality and 
 genius. Homer and Shakespeare, for instance, are 
 characteristic individual voices each of his country, 
 race, and climate. Do we wish that it were not so ? 
 Do we think that they would be more themselves if 
 they were not ? What is the world there for if it is 
 not, with all its rich individuality, to come to utter- 
 ance in mind ? 
 
 2. With the Periclean works on the Acropolis we 
 pass naturally to our second problem, the place of 
 force in the maintenance of a national unitv. For
 
 xii A MORAL FROM ATHENIAN HISTORY 263 
 
 all this splendour of Athens, all the culture and 
 comfort of the democracy, meant imperialism ; the 
 position of a national capital maintained by force. 
 
 I will try to summarise the familiar story in a 
 few lines. After the repulse of the Persian invasion 
 by the services of the rowers, and at the cost of a 
 retirement which left the property of the wealthy 
 classes a prey to the enemy, Athens had become, by 
 the force of events, head of a naval alliance, offensive 
 and defensive, against Persia. In time, as the object 
 of the alliance was attained, a tendency grew in 
 the allied cities to commute their personal services 
 for money payments. This commutation Athens 
 accepted, following, it is said, a far-sighted policy. 
 But she would permit no further relaxation of obliga- 
 tions ; and, in short, within a lapse of twenty years 
 the alliance was transformed into an empire of some 
 five or six hundred tributary cities, held together by 
 overwhelming force, the fleet of the alliance being 
 now simply the Athenian fleet maintained in part 
 at the cost of the allies, the treasury being at Athens 
 and under Athenian officials, and the Diet or Congress 
 having ceased to exist. The splendour and comfort 
 of Athenian life was greatly dependent on this relation. 
 Athenian commerce " followed the flag." The corn 
 trade was concentrated at Peiraeus. Athens became 
 the judicial and political centre of a large part of 
 Greece, and was necessarily, therefore, a place of 
 constant resort, besides being, in consequence of the 
 Periclean works, partly paid for by the " tribute," a 
 centre of artistic industry. 
 
 Undoubtedly there was a serious risk of selfishness 
 in this state of things. Every Athenian citizen might 
 be the better in purse and was the better in prestige 
 because of the empire. A few sentences from a
 
 264 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xn 
 
 contemporary pamphlet, obviously written by a 
 shrewd anti-democrat, and not the work of Xenophon, 
 among whose writings it has come down to us, will 
 tell us more than pages of inference and discussion : 1 
 
 Some people think that the Athenian democracy is ill- 
 advised in forcing the allies to come to Athens for their 
 law-suits ; but others reckon up the advantages which 
 this brings to the democracy ; first, they get their fees 
 as jurors throughout the year out of the costs ; then, 
 again, they can sit at home and control the allied cities 
 without sending out ships ; for they favour the democrats 
 and ruin the other side in their law courts ; now, if the 
 allies had kept their law work at home, as they dislike 
 the Athenians, they would have ruined those of their own 
 people who favour the Athenian democracy. In addition 
 to this, the Athenian democracy profits by the system in 
 the following ways. The percentage (harbour dues) at 
 Peirseus is increased ; every one who has lodgings to let 
 is advantaged ; so is every one who has a horse or a 
 workman (slave) to hire out ; the public attendants are 
 profited by the allies coming to town. . . . The shortage 
 of the corn crops, which depends on the weather, matters 
 less to a sea power than to a land power. For the shortage 
 is not all over the world at once ; and the corn from the 
 districts where there is a full crop comes to those who 
 have the sea power. . . . Whatever desirable product 
 there is in Sicily, in Italy, in Cyprus, or in Egypt, in Lydia, 
 or in Pontus, or in Peloponnese, or anywhere else, it is all 
 concentrated into one spot by the operation of the Athenian 
 sea power. . . . So, too, as regards sacrifices and temples 
 and festivals and consecrated grounds ; the democracy 
 understands that it is impossible for each individual of 
 the poorer classes to have sacrifices and banquets and 
 temples of his own and to live the life of a great and 
 beautiful city ; and it has devised how this difficulty 
 
 Be Itcpubl. Athen., C. 1, 1G.
 
 xii A MORAL FROM ATHENIAN HISTORY 265 
 
 may be overcome. For they conduct their sacrifices on 
 the method that great numbers of victims are provided 
 by the city at the public expense ; and it is the common 
 people that banquets and has the breaking up of the 
 victims. And so with gymnasia and dressing-rooms and 
 baths. Some of the wealthy have these of their own ; 
 but the democracy itself builds on its own account many 
 gymnasia and dressing-rooms and baths, and is better 
 off in these respects than the few and the wealthy. 
 
 Then follows a passage pointing out that all the 
 various requisites for shipbuilding — metals, timber, 
 flax, etc. — are not produced in any one country, and 
 that consequently the city which has sea power is 
 the only one which can make sure of having them all 
 at its disposal, and can hinder any other country 
 from acquiring them, and so from creating a fleet. 
 We should note in addition that the free entrance to the 
 theatre for those who chose to claim it was a character- 
 istic point of Pericles' s policy towards the democracy. 
 
 His idea evidently was that the citizens of Athens 
 should accept the great position which was open to 
 them, and should make themselves worthy of it by 
 energy, justice, culture, and bravery. He would 
 tread on the dangerous path of profit from depend- 
 encies, partly direct but especially indirect, so far as 
 to secure the realisation of conditions which would 
 make these qualities possible for all Athenians. There 
 are signs that if he could have found political forms 
 adequate to the creation of a citizenship of the empire 
 he would have tried to make use of them. But the 
 thing, whether attempted or not, was impossible, 
 and he turned to the other pole of government ; not 
 to be representative, or based upon consent, but to 
 be worthy and efficient. That the immediate objects 
 of the alliance were carried out under the Athenian
 
 266 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xn 
 
 Empire is certain. No hostile ship nor any pirate 
 showed its beak in the eastern Mediterranean while 
 Athens retained her power. No account was rendered 
 of the tribute, but the work was done. And if the 
 artificial pre-eminence of Athens in trade was op- 
 pressive to the greater powers among the subject 
 states, it was probably advantageous to the lesser. 
 The trader from a small island would do better for 
 himself at Peiraeus, than if there had been no such 
 central market, and might also obtain better justice 
 in the Athenian courts against a member of a powerful 
 state than he could have done apart from such a 
 system. 
 
 Probably the position of Athens, attained at the 
 cost of a certain aspect of selfishness, was far more 
 deeply connected with her services to the world than 
 has generally been admitted. The question is not 
 merely whether the works on the Acropolis were paid 
 for by the tribute of the allies. It affects the whole 
 concentration of experience, the whole brilliance of 
 life and variety of intercourse, and sense of political 
 headship, which gave its peculiar note to the Athenian 
 mind. Plato belonged to the Athens which had been 
 imperial as characteristically as Ruskin to imperial 
 England. The work of Athens was national, not 
 merely in the cost and style of her buildings — the 
 Parthenon was a Doric temple — but in the varied and 
 representative quality of her thought. Even Sparta, 
 the silent sister, bequeaths her spirit to us through 
 Athenian writings. Athens, said Pericles, was the 
 school of Greece ; and it is worth observing that the 
 four great cultured nations of the world — France, 
 Germany, the United States, and Great Britain — are 
 to-day maintaining schools at Athens. It is a great 
 thing that men and women who mean to play their
 
 xii A MORAL FROM ATHENIAN HISTORY 267 
 
 part in modern life should think it worth while to-day 
 to put themselves in contact for a time with the 
 spirit and memories of the Greeks. 
 
 " I have lengthened out my account of the city " 
 because it is important to approach our problem in 
 no half-hearted spirit. It is easy to pretend, of course, 
 that the services rendered by Athens to the world 
 might equally well have been achieved without the 
 aspect of force, absolutism, and selfishness, which by 
 universal consent attached to her empire. To me 
 this seems quite incredible, and the suggestion savours 
 of running away from the difficulty. Her services 
 rested on a basis of national unity ; and when men's 
 minds were wedded to the politics of the city-state, 
 it was inconceivable that national unity should find 
 a genuine political expression. It was a choice be- 
 tween such a unity — brief and fragile — as could be 
 realised by force, and the privation of those achieve- 
 ments which Athens has given to the world. And 
 we must say, I think, that Pericles was right, and 
 that, if the choice was what it seems to have been, 
 it would have been wrong and cowardly to take any 
 other part. 
 
 But are we, then, subscribing to the gospel of 
 " blood and iron " ? What is the theoretical justifica- 
 tion of the judgment I have suggested if it is not that 
 for a laudable end you need stop at no oppression ? 
 And as all ends are laudable to those who desire them, 
 it would be held to follow simply and absolutely that 
 might is right. 
 
 I venture to put forward an explanation which at 
 least would give room for applying criticism to such 
 an evangel. Force, it may be suggested, is necessary 
 and permissible in inverse ratio to political maturity. 
 The substantive capacity of a race or people for unity
 
 268 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xn 
 
 and achievement may be much in advance of the 
 formal development of their political consciousness. 
 Then, if force is applied to break through to the 
 latent unity and realise the full powers of the group, 
 its members will not be more aggrieved than some- 
 body always is under the most reasonable self- 
 government. The force is justified or not, and on 
 the whole is justified or not even for those subjected 
 to it, according as it breaks through to a life worth 
 living — a substantive unity of will — or fails to do so. 
 For example, it can hardly be said that the subjects 
 of Athens resented a strong ruling hand when her rule 
 was at its best. The errors and weaknesses incident 
 to absolute rule brought the system to an end, and it 
 is well that this should generally happen, and that 
 absolutism should be incapable of permanence. 
 
 But what is justifiable when the political conscious- 
 ness is immature, is monstrous in face of a developed 
 political capacity. Force, indeed, I believe that 
 there will always be in a state, as the mere fly-wheel 
 of the machine, to ensure regularity and carry out 
 what has become automatic in the general mind. 
 But absolute government becomes irrational in as far 
 as self-government becomes possible. Self-govern- 
 ment, however, depends on the permeation of men's 
 minds by forms of political co-operation adequate to 
 the task imposed upon the community. Minds which 
 are not thus permeated are as solid a barrier against 
 unity as a range of mountains. What was a states- 
 man to do with five hundred towns, united for common 
 defence and possessed of a markedly national mind. 1 
 
 1 When the dependencies of the imperial democracy are of a 
 different race, and on a different level of political capacity, from the 
 democracy, we have a complication which did not exist in the case 
 of Athens.
 
 xii A MORAL FROM ATHENIAN HISTORY 269 
 
 which had no conception of representative govern- 
 ment, and would have rebelled if a common citizen- 
 ship had been imposed upon them ? 
 
 If men cannot work out the obvious problems of 
 the time for themselves, owing to the inadequateness 
 of their mental machinery, some one else must and 
 will do it for them. But they learn, in time, to deal 
 with their own affairs, and I trust that our conclusion, 
 therefore, is not so bad as it might seem. We accept, 
 indeed, the priceless gift which Athenian statesmen 
 gave us, without turning up our eyes and regretting 
 that they won it by force ; but we understand for 
 ourselves that the alternative to violence is education, 
 and that absolutism x becomes progressively less justi- 
 fiable as men's minds become capable of expressing 
 themselves effectively in the forms which constitute 
 true political unity. 
 
 1 Absolutism, I mean, of the ruler ; not " absolutism " of the 
 constitutional state as a whole, which is discussed in the following 
 paper.
 
 XIII 
 
 THE FUNCTION OF THE STATE IN PRO- 
 MOTING THE UNITY OF MANKIND 1 
 
 I wish to present a brief positive account of the 
 theory of the state as I understand it, more par- 
 ticularly with reference to the state in its external 
 relations, and the conditions essential to federations 
 or a world-state. 
 
 It seems to me that much misconception is pre- 
 valent as to the views which in fact great philosophers 
 have held upon this problem. But I do not wish to 
 raise mere questions in the history of philosophy, but 
 to meet the issue as it seems to me to stand to-day. 
 The ideas which I express are therefore my own, 
 in the sense that no one else is responsible for the form 
 I give them. But, to the best of my judgment, they 
 represent the Greek tradition as renewed by Hegel 
 and by English thought. 
 
 1 Cf. the lectures by Professor A. C. Bradley on " International 
 Morality : the United States of Europe," and Mr. B. Bosanquet on 
 " Patriotism in the Perfect State," in The International Crisis, 
 Oxford University Press, 1915 ; and Lord Haldane's Montreal 
 address, " Higher Nationality." In speaking of the critics, I have 
 had in mind, besides the writers in the Aristotelian Proceedings for 
 1915-16, Mr. A. D. Lindsay's lecture in the Bedford College volume, 
 Theory of the State, and some remarks of Professor Jacks in From the 
 Human End, together with the general reaction against what is sup- 
 posed to be the " German " theory of the state. 
 
 270
 
 xm FUNCTION OF THE STATE 271 
 
 In considering any problem affecting the state I 
 take the primary question to be how self-govern- 
 ment is possible. For anything which interferes with 
 the possibility of self-government destroys altogether 
 the conditions of true government. The answer is 
 drawn, I take it, from the conception of the general 
 will, which involves the existence of an actual com- 
 munity, of such a nature as to share an identical mind 
 and feeling. There is no other way of explaining how 
 a free man can put up with compulsion and even 
 welcome it. 
 
 Here then we have the universal condition of 
 legitimate outward authority. City-state, Nation- 
 state, Commonwealth, Federation, World-state, it 
 makes no difference. Behind all force there must be 
 a general will, and the general will must represent a 
 communal mind. 1 All other contrivances for govern- 
 ment are external and tyrannical. 
 
 1. This is the reason of the unique relation between 
 the state and the individual which is caricatured by 
 critics as state absolutism. Of course the state is 
 not the ultimate end of life. The ultimate end, if we 
 avoid religious phraseology, which would probably 
 furnish the truest expression of it, is surely the best 
 life. I understand by the state the power which, as 
 the organ of a community, has the function of main- 
 taining the external conditions necessary to the best 
 life. These conditions are called rights. They are 
 the claims recognised by the will of a community as 
 the sine qua non of the highest obtainable fulfilment 
 of the capacities for the best life possessed by its 
 members. 
 
 Now the relation between the state and the in- 
 dividual is the external equivalent of that between 
 
 1 See Lord Haldane's address referred to above.
 
 272 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xm 
 
 the community and the individual. And it is a 
 unique relation, because there is no other body that 
 bears the same relation to the individual's will as that 
 community which is represented by a state in the 
 external world. 
 
 This can be said with as much precision as human 
 affairs admit, because there is reason to expect that 
 the community which organises itself as a state will 
 be for every group the largest body which possesses 
 the unity of experience necessary for constituting a 
 general will. There is, as we shall see, no other body 
 at all comparable with it in intensity of unity. " A 
 national purpose is the most unconquerable and 
 victorious of all things on earth." x And the indi- 
 vidual's private will, we must bear in mind, is cer- 
 tainly and literally a part of the communal will. 
 There is no other material of which his will can be 
 made. If he rejects the communal will in part, he 
 rejects it on the basis of what it is in him, not from 
 any will of his own which has a different source. 
 This is the ground of the duty of rebellion. 
 
 This unique relation between the individual and 
 the community which the state represents — it may 
 be a nation or any other community — is what seems 
 to me to dominate the whole problem. It is further 
 determined when we add the consideration that the 
 state is an organ of action in the external world. 
 In this sphere, which is its special sphere as an organ 
 exercising force, it may really be called absolute, 
 that is, if power extending to life and death and 
 complete disposal of property can be called absolute. 
 This does not mean that it is the whole end of life, 2 
 
 1 A. E., Imaginations, etc., p. 107. 
 
 2 Hegel in one place calls the state an end-in-itself, when he is 
 contrasting his view of it with the reduction of its purpose to the
 
 xin FUNCTION OF THE STATE 273 
 
 nor that it is the only object of loyalty. 1 It means, 
 as I understand it, that, being the special organ of 
 arrangement in the external world, corresponding to 
 that particular community whose will is our own 
 will when most highly organised, it has the distinctive 
 function of dictating the final adjustment in matters 
 of external action. This is the only sense in which 
 I have called it absolute, 2 and the ground is obvious 
 and simple. It lies in the tendency of the world of 
 action to bring into collision factors which, apart 
 from action, might never conflict. However purely 
 non-political two associations may be, and however 
 cosmopolitan, if they claim the same funds or the 
 same building they must come before a power which 
 can adjust the difference without appeal. And if such 
 a power were not single in respect of them, obviously 
 there could be no certainty of adjustment without 
 a conflict between the two or more powers which 
 might claim jurisdiction. Cases like that supposed 
 are frequent, of course, with churches. 
 
 Thus there are two connected points, which, I 
 think, the critics confuse under the name of absolut- 
 ism. One is the power of the state as sustainer of all 
 adjustments in the world of external action, on the 
 ground which has just been explained. The other is 
 the unique relation to the individual of such a com- 
 munity as is at present exemplified by his nation- 
 state, because it represents, as nothing else in the 
 
 protection of property or the right of the stronger. He regards it 
 as having in it some of the end of life, viz. the embodiment of liberty ; 
 of course, not the whole end. It is for him the basis of the further 
 more specialised achievements (art, philosophy, and the like). — 
 Rechlsphilosophie, Sect. 258. 
 
 1 See below, p. 283. 
 
 2 Philosophy of the State, ch. viii. 3, and Introduction to 2nd 
 edition. 
 
 T
 
 274 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xm 
 
 world does, that special system of rights and senti- 
 ments, the complement of his own being, which the 
 general will of his group has formed a state to maintain. 
 
 It is the result, I take it, of these two grounds of 
 unity co-operating, that in times of stress the state, 
 as the organ of the community, will suspend or 
 subject to conditions any form of intercourse between 
 its members and persons or associations within or 
 without its territory, and will require any service that 
 it thinks fit from any of its members. It does, in 
 Mr. Bradley's words, " with the moral approval of all 
 what the explicit theory of scarcely one will morally 
 justify." x That it does not exercise such powers 
 to anything like the same degree in ordinary times, 
 and that it recognises the rights of conscience even in 
 times of stress, flows from the fact that its primary 
 end is the maintenance of rights, and it will override 
 no right by force where an adjustment is possible 
 compatibly with the good life of the whole. And of 
 this possibility it is the sole judge. What it permits, 
 it permits by reason of its end, and no theory can 
 stand which will not justify in principle its habitual 
 action in time of stress. 
 
 2. " The state," as I understand the words, is a 
 phrase framed in the normal way, to express that one 
 is dealing with the members of a class strictly accord- 
 ing to the connotation of the class-name. If a plural 
 noun is used, there can be no certainty whether we 
 are speaking of characteristics which belong to the 
 class-members as such, or of circumstances which 
 may occur in each of them for independent reasons. 
 " The state," in a word, is a brief expression for 
 " states qua states." I confess that I am a good deal 
 surprised that nearly all recent critics have stumbled, 
 
 1 Ethical Studies, p. 166.
 
 xiii FUNCTION OF THE STATE 275 
 
 as it seems to me, in this simple matter of interpre- 
 tation. 1 Would they find the same difficulty in the 
 title of a book on " the heart " or " the steam- 
 engine " ? It would be urged, perhaps, that a heart 
 does not imply other hearts, but that a state does 
 imply other states ; but if the thing implies other 
 things its name implies the reference to them. 
 
 And, indeed, the whole raison d'etre of our theory 
 is to show why, and in what sense, there must be 
 states wherever there are groups of human beings, 
 and to explain for what reasons men are distin- 
 guished into separate adjacent political bodies instead 
 of forming a single system over the whole earth's 
 surface. 
 
 Our theory has told us, for example, that states 
 represent differentiations of the single human spirit 
 (Hegel), whose extent and intensity determine and 
 are determined by territorial limits. They are 
 members, we are told by Plato and Hegel, of an 
 ethical family of nations, so far, at least, as the 
 European world is concerned ; they are character- 
 ised — it is Mazzini's well-known doctrine — by in- 
 dividual missions 2 or functions which furnish for 
 every state its distinctive contribution to human 
 life. They have a similar task to achieve, each 
 within its territory allotted by history, so Green 
 
 1 Hegel pointed out this ambiguity, Th. des Rechts, Sect. 258 ; 
 cf. also A. C. Bradley, International Crisis, p. 47. With the phrase 
 " philosophy of men," which is offered as a counter-example as 
 against " philosophy of the State,'''' we may compare the two expres- 
 sions "knowledge of man " and " knowledge of men." The former 
 means something like philosophy ; the latter means the knowledge 
 of individual peculiarities and defects, gathered by the experience of 
 a worldling. The former belongs to Plato or Shakespeare, the latter 
 to Major Pendennis. 
 
 2 The term I have myself selected to describe the ethical unity of 
 a nation-state (Phil, of State, p. 321).
 
 276 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xni 
 
 argues, and the more perfectly each of them attains 
 its proper object of giving free scope to the capacities 
 of all persons living on a certain range of territory, 
 the easier it is for others to do so. 1 Obviously they 
 are co-operating units. This is throughout the 
 essence of the theory. 
 
 Now it is not, I think, unfair to point out that my 
 critics, dealing unguardedly with " states " and not 
 with "the state" or with "states qua states," have 
 on the whole founded their account of states not upon 
 what they are, so far as states, but just upon what, 
 qua states, they are not ; upon defects which appear 
 unequally in the several communities, consisting in 
 those evils which the organisation of the state exists 
 in order to remove, and does progressively remove 
 in so far as true self-government is attained. Such 
 evils are war, exploitation within or without, class 
 privilege, arbitrary authority, discontent directing 
 ambitions to foreign conquest and to jealousy of 
 other states, the doctrine that one state's gain is 
 ipso facto another's loss. 
 
 3. Space and time do not permit me to discuss, 
 what I should be interested in discussing at some 
 length, the continuous relations which extend beyond 
 the frontiers of individual states, their importance 
 compared with that of other continuities which are 
 co-extensive with the area of the states and constituent 
 of them, and why it is necessary to recognise, in spite 
 of the former, separate sovereign political units which 
 undoubtedly, while imperfect, tend to break down 
 at the frontier, in a regrettable way, the continuities 
 which pass beyond it. 2 Broadly speaking, the 
 
 1 Green, Principles of Political Obligation, p. 170. 
 
 2 This problem is suggested by the opening sentences of Curtius' 
 History of Greece, with reference to the unity of continental Greece
 
 xm FUNCTION OF THE STATE 277 
 
 reason lies, I take it, in the exceptionally intense unity 
 and concreteness of certain group-minds, 1 in which 
 innumerable continuities coincide, while other con- 
 tinuities, which extend beyond the group, neverthe- 
 less do not coincide with any marked rival unity. 
 
 4. It follows from our theory, as we saw, that the 
 normal relation of states is co-operative. 2 Their 
 influence on each other's structure and culture is 
 mainly a question of wants and materials. The 
 characteristic dealing with them depends after all 
 upon the national mind, as we see in the contrast 
 of Athens and Sparta, the two leading states of one 
 and the same civilisation. It is a curious fallacy in 
 the disparagement of the state that the recognition 
 of a debt to foreign culture has been pushed so far 
 as to suggest that nothing great originates in any 
 state because everything is imported from some 
 other. 3 
 
 Further, it follows that the maintenance of this 
 normal relation, or its attainment where unattained, 
 depends on the right discharge by states of their 
 internal function — the maintenance of rights as the 
 conditions of good life. War, as Plato showed, is not 
 
 and Ionia, or by the natural unity of the basin of the North Sea (in 
 the Hanseatic League). The case of England and Scotland, com- 
 pared with that of England and Ireland, repays study. 
 
 1 See above, p. 272. I do not say " national " minds, because I 
 observe that the phrase is used with various unduly restricted 
 meanings ; cp. Lord Acton, who considers nationality a mere physical 
 kinship. Plato shows the right line, surely. The group must have 
 the same myth, i.e. the same consciousness of unity. It does not 
 matter how they got it. 
 
 2 Hobbes, it must be remembered, with kindred theorists, is far 
 removed from the philosophy of which we are speaking. 
 
 s Compare the malevolent gossips in Middlemarch, who referred 
 the husband's book to the wife's special knowledge, and vice versa, 
 so that they did not need to give credit to either for the books they 
 wrote.
 
 278 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xm 
 
 of the essence of states, but has its causes in their 
 internal disease and distraction, leading to policies of 
 " expansion." Therefore, in this sense, to begin 
 with, we want more of the state and not less. In 
 order to reinforce the organisation of rights by other 
 states, the main thing it has to do is to complete its 
 own. This fundamental truth none of the critics 
 seem to have observed, and to have emphasised it 
 appears to me a very great merit in our philosophy. 1 
 The fundamental principle is that states qua states 
 are — " the state " is— the human mind doing the 
 same work in different localities with different 
 materials. Obviously, in as far as it succeeds, its 
 efforts assist each other. 
 
 5. Thus every state as such — that is, " the state " 
 — is " the guardian of a whole moral world," main- 
 taining the peculiar contribution of its community 
 to the total of human life and of human mind. We 
 shall see why this double expression is necessary. 
 And it is very important to observe that this moral 
 world includes a whole distinctive attitude to life 
 and humanity. It is an attitude of the community, 
 but to the world. Thus you cannot get away from 
 it. All individuals share it, more or less, and every 
 relation of the group, external or internal, is brought 
 to a meeting point within their consciousness, and 
 elicits a response from it. 
 
 It is easy to discern how such guardianship on 
 the part of bodies so highly individualised, so deeply 
 
 1 Cf. especially Green, Principles of Political Obligation, Sect. 
 167 ff. The root of venom in the present conflict lies surely in two 
 things : (a) In the mediaeval condition of the Prussian franchise, 
 which the Monistic League of several hundred thousand members, 
 with Ostwald at its head, was pledged to see reformed, and (/S) the 
 false political economy of " your gain is my loss," which such an 
 internal situation promotes.
 
 xiii FUNCTION OF THE STATE 279 
 
 conscious of a function and as yet so imperfectly 
 organised, may lead, from time to time, to differences 
 which can only be resolved by force. It is a profound 
 mistake, I am convinced, to direct the moral of the 
 present calamity against the communal sense of a 
 function and a mission ; against, in a word, the 
 belief that a community has a conscience. Yet this 
 belief is the root of the doctrine caricatured under 
 the name of state absolutism. It seems to me foolish 
 to take a hostile attitude to a general truth because 
 it displays the root of serious evils. For, indeed, 
 what displays their root is the only indication of the 
 remedy. The true moral is, surely, not that a com- 
 munity should have no overmastering purpose, no 
 consciousness of a mission and no conscience, but 
 simply that its conscience should as far as possible 
 be enlightened. Enlightened consciences, I venture 
 to assume, cannot bring actions into conflict. But, 
 being internally ill organised, and correspondingly 
 biassed and unenlightened, communities enter into 
 conflicts from time to time with their whole heart 
 and soul, just because they have consciences and have 
 moral worlds to guard. It happens naturally to 
 them as to private persons that they throw their 
 whole sense of right into what is wrong. In order 
 to produce a disastrous collision, we must bear in 
 mind, the aspirations of two communities need not 
 be in conflict at every point. It is like two trains 
 running side by side, where an encroachment of an 
 inch is enough to produce a calamity. Aspirations 
 may be irreconcilable in practice which have a very 
 large factor of agreement. This factor is the ground 
 for hope, which consists in their being, after all, 
 aspirations of communities which possess reason and 
 conscience. Reconciliation of them bv harmonious
 
 280 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xm 
 
 adjustment, though impracticable at certain moments, 
 is never inconceivable. 
 
 Now it is surely plain that no power on earth can 
 deal with such a cause of conflict, except something 
 that enables the biassed and erroneous factors of the 
 conflicting claims to be eliminated. And this can 
 never be done by external force, but must mainly 
 depend on a better organisation of rights by every 
 state at home, with a consequent correction of its 
 ambitions and outlook on the world. A healthy 
 state is not militant. 
 
 But the mischief is, that the popular mind, observ- 
 ing that the present trouble has arisen through aspira- 
 tions in others which we pronounce perverse, is 
 inclined to attribute to a false philosophy the whole 
 conception of national aspirations as representing 
 the conscience of a people and its overmastering sense 
 of duty. Men do not reflect that precisely such 
 aspirations are determining their own group-action 
 at every step. They say, as our critics are saying, 
 that the theory of the unity of a people in the moral 
 consciousness of a pre-eminent duty, and the prin- 
 ciple of its expression through an organ supreme in 
 practical life, are absolutism, and ought to be weakened 
 or abandoned. The unique obligation of the private 
 person to the community as incomparably the fullest 
 representative of himself is to be put on a level with 
 isolated abstract obligations arising in the course of 
 this or that special relation, although it is on the 
 communal mind that the task of harmonising them 
 must ultimately fall. In short, the whole moral 
 status and moral being of the community is to be 
 indefinitely but considerably lowered. 
 
 All this seems to me to point exactly the wrong 
 way. We all know, in modern society more especi-
 
 xin FUNCTION OF THE STATE 281 
 
 ally, that we pay for the existence of great organising 
 agencies by the possibility of their conflicting. But 
 that does not make us desire to weaken them ; it 
 makes us desire to amplify their members' faith in 
 them, and to get them to do their work more com- 
 pletely. The remedy for disorganisation is not less 
 organisation, but more. All organisation, of course, 
 brings a concurrent risk of conflict. You bring 
 claims together, and you find points which for the 
 moment cannot be adjusted. It is a flat contra- 
 diction to maintain that the state is morally respons- 
 ible, and also that it must not face an actual conflict 
 where its conscience is concerned. Even within the 
 community, where obligations to the common will 
 are so high and so determinate, the conscientious 
 objector will follow his conscience to the end, and if 
 we believe him to be sincere we all respect him for it. 
 Why should the community, an individual in a far 
 deeper sense than the citizen, being the nearest ap- 
 proach to a true individual that exists upon the earth, 
 be expected not to follow its conscience ? The clause on 
 which I have just insisted is, as Rousseau pointed out, 1 
 the fundamental issue. The point to be remembered 
 is that the individual only has his individuality 
 through the social consciousness. The nearer he 
 approaches to being himself the more he approaches 
 identification with the communal mind. 2 This mind 
 can only be expressed as what the individual would 
 be if he possessed in completeness all that his actual 
 consciousness implies regarding the group-life. If 
 he sees reason to rebel, it is still as a social duty. It 
 cannot be in virtue of some right of his own, as he 
 would be, per impossibile, apart. 
 
 1 Rousseau, Contrat Social, I. vii. 
 2 Cf. Bradlev's Ethicul Studies, Essavs II. and V.
 
 282 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xm 
 
 No doubt, when there is strife between com- 
 munities, a wrong is being committed somewhere. 
 But the way to right it is not for the conscientious 
 group to make a rule of yielding on points which it 
 holds fundamental to its function. 
 
 Now I think that the critics of our theory speak 
 uncertainly here. Is our fault in saying that the com- 
 munity which asserts itself through the state is a 
 moral being, and has a conscience, or is not a moral 
 being and has not a conscience ? They seem to me 
 in effect to say both at once. But only one can be 
 true. 
 
 It is clear, I think, that we are accused of denying 
 the moral responsibility of the community which has 
 the state for its organ. But it can hardly be doubted 
 that we are also accused of putting this moral responsi- 
 bility much too high. Thus the critics find them- 
 selves driven to treat the community which is a 
 state as a mere association of individuals, which 
 cannot possess an organic moral conscience nor 
 general will. Though in one passage disclaiming 
 individualism, 1 the argument breathes its spirit. 
 If you call the state an association, you speak the 
 language of individualism, and still more so, if you 
 speak of individual rights which can be asserted 
 
 1 In Mr. Cole's paper. Mr. Russell, I think, does not disclaim it, 
 seeing, if I understand him, no common mind in men capable of a 
 common will. I am prepared to receive what comes from him with 
 great respect, and I agree with his disbelief in the likelihood of an 
 international authority being established after this war ; and I take 
 it that he agrees with me that Si vis pacem, para bellum, is self- 
 contradictory. But his view of the state and its aim seems to me 
 just introspective in the bad sense. It represents the conscious 
 reflections of minds unappreciative of the actual work done in 
 legislation and administration. It is quite extraordinarily akin to 
 Horace Walpole's attitude, e.g. letter to Sir H. Mann, November 2, 
 1765.
 
 xiii FUNCTION OF THE STATE 283 
 
 against it, and of the individual judgment as ultimate. 
 To call it an " association " is contrary, I think, both 
 to usage and to truth. The word is, I presume, 
 employed intentionally as paradoxical and aggressive. 
 
 It is really, then, the moral being and moral re- 
 sponsibility of the state which we affirm, and which 
 the main attack desires to undermine. The opposite 
 suggestion, that we do not recognise the moral re- 
 sponsibility of the members of a group for its action, 
 is, as we shall see, a mere misconception, derived from 
 the fact that we observe the moral action of a com- 
 munity not to be capable of being criticised by the 
 method of comparison with that of an individual. 
 
 The unique position of the state springs, as I said 
 at starting, from the fact that it is moulded, as no 
 mere association is, by and for the special task of 
 maintaining in a certain territory the external con- 
 ditions of good life as a whole. Its territorial area 
 adjusts itself to that unity of communal experience 
 which is most favourable to the maintenance of an 
 organised will, so that it tends to cover the largest 
 area within which, for a certain group, the conditions 
 of such an experience exist. 
 
 It is an error, I think, resting on a confusion regard- 
 ing the sphere of the state, to suggest that obedience 
 to it can conflict with the existence of loyalty to 
 associations — I refuse to say other associations — at 
 home or abroad. The state's peculiar function is in 
 the world of external action, and it does not inquire 
 into the sentiments of men and women further than 
 to establish the bona fide intention which the law 
 includes in the meaning of an act. But whatever 
 loyalties may exist in the mind, the state will un- 
 doubtedly, when need arises, of which it through 
 constitutional methods is the sole judge, prohibit and
 
 284 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xm 
 
 prevent the expression, in external acts, of any loyalty 
 but that to the community which it represents. 
 Absoluteness in this sense is inherent in the state, for 
 the reason which we have noted. 1 
 
 But even for loyalties which we inwardly cherish, 
 and which appear to us irreconcilable with the con- 
 crete communal will, we pay a severe penalty in a 
 felt contradiction which is a constant sore in our mind. 
 It forms a continual demand for reconciliation by 
 adjustment, and so for a new response and an en- 
 larged and not restricted operation of the social 
 consciousness, which if it passes into action will 
 reflect itself in a new and ampler initiative on the part 
 of the state. Every conflict as a matter of course is 
 a stimulus to fresh reaction. 
 
 6. So much for the rationale of the so-called 
 absolutism of the state, which is in the main a cari- 
 cature of its position as sole organiser of rights and 
 as guardian of moral values. 
 
 I believe that the principal difficulty which is felt 
 about the view which I am trying to explain arises 
 from its denial that the moral obligations of a state 
 can be deduced from the consideration of those which 
 attach to a private person under what are taken to 
 be analogous circumstances. 2 This difficulty seems to 
 depend on the crude belief that morality consists in 
 the observance of abstract absolute rules, unmodi- 
 fied by relations and situations, such that you can 
 paint the world of outward actions, as it were, with 
 two colours only, right and wrong, which will stand 
 
 1 Pp. 272-3, above. Even the duty of rebellion is not in principle a 
 limit upon this power ; for it does not rest on a non-social right, but 
 on a recognition that the state is divided against itself. 
 
 2 See Professor A. C. Bradley's lecture, above referred to, pp. 
 02 ff.
 
 xiii FUNCTION OF THE STATE 285 
 
 fast for all moral beings under all conditions. I do 
 not think it could possibly be felt by any mind which 
 had once grasped the point that duty is a systematic 
 structure, such as to bring home its universal demand 
 in a particular and appropriate form to every moral 
 being according to its conditions, and that the best 
 brief summary of it is " to be equal to the situation." 
 
 When this is grasped, I think that the moral 
 criticism of our view is easily seen to rest on mere 
 misunderstanding. We assume ab initio that the 
 state has a mission or a function, a contribution to 
 make to the life of the world such as no other body 
 or person can pretend to. The question is whether 
 comparison with the moral task of a private person 
 can throw light on our judgment of what it does or of 
 what it ought to do. 
 
 A word on the case of the private person himself 
 will, perhaps, make the matter plainer. Even his 
 morality is ultimately a very different thing, not from 
 what common sense recognises, but from what 
 popular theory assumes. There is no such thing in 
 ethics as an absolute rule or an absolute obligation, 
 unless it were that of so far as possible realising the 
 best life. In every action the moral agent confronts 
 a conflict of duties, and has in some degree to steer 
 an uncharted course. Every situation is in some 
 degree, however slightly, new ; and his moral duty 
 is to be equal to it, to deal with it, to mould it, in 
 accordance with the moral spirit which is in him, into 
 a contribution to the realisation of the best life. There 
 is perhaps no act that we can think of which, if we 
 do not set it down by definition as an act of the bad 
 will, could not conceivably be a duty. The room for 
 immoral casuistry is infinite, and there is no security 
 but to grasp so far as possible the actual obligations,
 
 286 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xm 
 
 which in accordance with the ethical spirit acquired 
 from social discipline and applying itself anew in a 
 similar sense, are plainly incumbent upon the par- 
 ticular moral agent. With all the aids of moral 
 convention, of a life organised in extreme detail 
 within a framework of social and legal obligations, of 
 the communal sentiment engrained and embodied in 
 his habitual will, the private individual has still in 
 principle a new morality constantly to create, though 
 in practice, assuming bona fides, he has in general 
 little difficulty in discerning his duty at the moment. 
 A strictly moral judgment of others is scarcely open 
 to him at all. 
 
 Now turn to the community organised as a state. 
 In quiet times, and over a great part of its conduct, 
 its course, like that of the individual, may be con- 
 sidered as plainly marked. 1 But at any moment 
 some huge new problem may crop up, involving, one 
 might say, a whole philosophy or prophecy of the 
 future history of the world. 2 Suppose the British 
 Empire confronted by an opponent or by an inter- 
 national Peace League or Tribunal with some pro- 
 posed regulation which it (the Empire) judged fatal 
 to sea power. 3 Is it not plain what we mean by 
 saying that there is no organised moral world within 
 which a course of duty under such conditions is 
 prescribed to the state ? Even assuming a disin- 
 terested tribunal — which at present would be quite 
 impossible — who could determine with authority the 
 
 1 I am quite aware of the immense amount of international co- 
 operation, for desirable ends, which goes on in normal times. 
 
 * Conflicting philosophies of history are ultimately, one might 
 say, the root of bitterness between the Germans and ourselves. 
 They sincerely think one course of things best for the world, and we 
 sincerely think another. We are fighting for our faiths. 
 
 8 The hypothesis is taken from 27ie War and Democracy, p. 376.
 
 xiii FUNCTION OF THE STATE 287 
 
 effect on the world's future of any such regulation ? 
 Of course such a question is not justiciable. But 
 when you get beyond justiciable questions you are 
 in the ocean of speculation as to elements of future 
 welfare. As to the really effective type of world- 
 wide authority, I will say more below. 
 
 But at present the point is this. In the case sup- 
 posed the unit in question has one great certainty. 
 It has the moral world of which, so far, it has been the 
 guardian, which is the source of the mission or function 
 which its conscience and general will recognise as its 
 own, and of the view of humanity and the world at 
 large which it holds to be the highest. If it believes 
 itself to see clearly that the proposed regulation must 
 destroy or gravely endanger that form of good life 
 and that attitude to humanity with which it has so 
 far identified itself, it will possess in this conviction 
 the only definite element in this moral problem. I 
 do not mean that it must be so in the case of every 
 innovation ; but it very well may be so. In as far 
 as it is so, the consideration of this certainty would 
 probably present itself as an overwhelming ground 
 of action. 1 There is nothing here analogous to the 
 tissue of obligation within which the individual lives. 
 It is not the mere absence of a sanction that makes 
 the difference ; an external sanction cannot affect 
 your own moral obligation. It is partly, no doubt, 
 the absence of an external order on the maintenance 
 of which you can rely ; but it is still more, and more 
 intimately, the absence of a recognised moral order 
 such as to guide the conscience itself. 
 
 In the case suggested it is proposed to reshape the 
 
 1 See Professor Bradley, loc. cit., comparing the right of a state 
 and of an individual to sacrifice themselves or risk their own sup- 
 pression.
 
 288 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xm 
 
 world ; and it may well happen that in dealing with 
 the proposal the unit has no guide but to defend the 
 best thing it knows. This is what we mean by saying 
 that it is the guardian of a whole moral world, but 
 does not itself act within a moral world. Say, if you 
 like, that it is within the society of states. But the 
 life of this society, as a whole, has up to the present 
 no moral tradition, imposing adapted and appropriate 
 obligations on all units, comparable with the social 
 consciousness which constitutes the whole basis and 
 material of the normal individual will. In any case 
 analogous to that just supposed, it is not likely to 
 afford any help whatever. There is no middle term, 
 so to speak, between the unit which has to act, and 
 the general obligation of realising what is best — 
 none, that is, except the form of good life with which 
 the unit is already identified. And we have seen that 
 its special form of good life, being a moral conscious- 
 ness, is not merely a self-contained habit of conduct 
 in the members of a group, but is an attitude and 
 moral outlook which, though existing in them, has 
 for its object the whole world, and is determined by 
 the view and spirit which the group has evolved for 
 itself, implying its conception of the best thing for 
 the world. Devotion to humanity as a best, as a 
 supreme quality, is, unless and until the organism of 
 mankind becomes actual, better represented by the 
 moral world of the highest communities than by any- 
 thing common to the whole multitude of mankind. 1 
 
 7. After these explanations, I hope it may be 
 hardly necessary to refute the charge of immorality 
 brought against the thesis that a state simply cannot 
 do all immoral acts which a single human being can. 
 We have seen that morality is relative to the special 
 
 1 See p. 291, below.
 
 xiii FUNCTION OF THE STATE 289 
 
 obligation of the particular moral being, and it is 
 obviously also relative to his capacity for action. 
 Now a community simply cannot express its will 
 directly, as a man or woman can, in a bodily act. 
 To act is to make a will pass into fact, and how a 
 community can do this is an old question and not an 
 easy one. Rousseau held that nothing but a law, a 
 decision dealing with something of general interest, 
 could be an act of the sovereign power, and, in the 
 main, I believe he was right. It is plain surely that 
 even a mere aggregate of men cannot commit a single 
 bodily act as one man can. It may be answered, 
 " They may be accomplices before or after the fact." 
 But we should consider what would have to be proved 
 to bring in a nation as accomplices in a breach of the 
 Decalogue. An act of attainder is, I should think, 
 the nearest thing to murder by a state, and such an 
 act, like all privilegia, is, I believe, now considered 
 abhorrent to the spirit of law. 1 Surely it is better 
 and even more impressive to recognise obvious dis- 
 tinctions and call things by their right names. The 
 fundamental point is in the defective individuality 
 of human beings. If a man could be inspired by the 
 whole living system of the communal mind, then the 
 community as active — the state— might be fully 
 responsible for what he does. And in practice we 
 make a great distinction, which nothing else can 
 account for, between the degrees of its responsibility 
 for the sayings and doings of its different agents. A 
 Cabinet minister acts for the state in a different degree 
 from a police constable. For, as any man or woman's 
 mind is always but a fragment of the general mind 
 and will, it is plain that the community which acts 
 
 1 Cf . the decision of the Athenian Assembly to put the Mityleneans 
 to death, and its recall.
 
 290 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 xiii 
 
 through them can only answer for as much of their 
 act as represents the degree of its will which it can 
 fairly be said to have succeeded in communicating 
 to them ; that is, in practice, for their appointment 
 and dismissal, their instructions, and the general 
 system under which they work. And the recognition 
 of this is enough, and more effective in practice than 
 an attempt to impute something more, which would 
 always fail. " Power can be delegated, but not will." 
 You may order special acts to be done by another, 
 but you cannot transfer to him the general exercise 
 of your will. 
 
 I admit that recent events have done something 
 to show that the responsibility of a community for 
 single wicked actions of men may be more intimate 
 than I had thought possible. But I still think that 
 all this will look very different when the conditions of 
 such action come to be criticised in cold blood. And 
 in any case I have rightly stated the hypothetical 
 conditions of such responsibility. 1 
 
 If agents thought of their duty more in terms of a 
 community's obligations and less in terms of private 
 conscience, much evil would be avoided. It has been 
 the private conscience that has been responsible, very 
 largely at least, for religious persecution and active 
 intolerance of all kinds, which have been not an 
 advantage, but a distinct obstruction to the com- 
 munity in its function. 
 
 8. I will pass on to the question of a wider loyalty, 
 or a larger political unit than those which centre in 
 the nation-state. 
 
 It is natural to infer from the social organism to 
 an organism of humanity, and to look for the supreme 
 authority or object of devotion in this as the in- 
 
 1 Phil. Theory of State, p. 324.
 
 xiii FUNCTION OF THE STATE 291 
 
 elusive unit. But here, again, is a difficulty in the 
 facts — a double difficulty, which our theory is framed 
 to meet, and which its critics seem not to have heeded. 
 
 The first thing that strikes us is that, in fact, at 
 present there is no organism of humanity. For such 
 anorganism, consciousness of connection is necessary. 
 Mere causal connection exists in the mere physical 
 world. And putting aside the question of past and 
 future human beings, will any one say that even the 
 existing multitude of humanity possesses any con- 
 nected communal consciousness whatever ? But if 
 not, there is at present no community outside those 
 which speak through the state, which can at all pretend to 
 be a moral purpose or to be endowed with a conscience. 
 
 And secondly, considering as an aggregate all the 
 human beings on the earth's surface, we can find in 
 them no common character in which the values to 
 which we are devoted as the qualitative essence of 
 humanity are adequately represented. I do not say 
 that something of humanity in the highest sense is not 
 present wherever there are human beings. But it 
 is plain that neither the main values which govern 
 our aspirations to the best life, nor the valuation of 
 them, are possessions common to mankind. It is 
 not to the multitudes of all mankind that we go for 
 " love and beauty and delight." At their best they 
 are possessions of particular communities, and form 
 elements in the diverse moral worlds which states 
 exist to guard. Thus, to put it bluntly, a duty to 
 realise the best life cannot be shown to coincide with 
 a duty to the multitude of mankind. Our primary 
 loyalty is to a quality, not to a crowd. If you see the 
 two as one, it is by faith only, and at any given 
 moment they may conflict. This makes the moral 
 alternative between, say, the self-defence of a highly
 
 292 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xm 
 
 civilised state and submission in the interests of the 
 whole world's peace, a really tragic crisis, and entitles 
 us to say that there is nothing in the interstate world 
 to guide its units in moral choices. 
 
 It is not unnecessary to guard ourselves, as we 
 are doing, against the assumption that humanity is a 
 real corporate being, an object of devotion and a 
 guide to moral duty. This formed the central 
 doctrine of Comtism, and, seeming to correspond to a 
 natural expansion of our interest, tends to make us 
 fancy that we apprehend an ultimate visible com- 
 munity to which our devotion is due, and with which 
 we can have a will in common. It is conceivable, 
 of course, that such a community may one day come 
 into being. But there are suggestions which point 
 elsewhere. M. Romain Rolland has spoken of our 
 only dwelling-places being our earthly fatherland and 
 the City of God. 1 I do not know whether by the 
 second phrase he understands a visible community. 
 The antithesis seems to suggest a different idea, and 
 the truly complete community, which religion, for 
 instance, assumes as ultimate, cannot possibly be 
 that with Avhich the Comtist confused it, the multitude 
 of human beings either alive at any given moment, 
 or including all that have been and that will be. 
 
 However this may be, whatever may prove to be 
 the extent of the effective unity which at any time 
 may be realised among mankind, the condition of its 
 realisation, if our theory is sound, admits of no dis- 
 pute. The body which is to be in sole or supreme 
 command of force for the common good must possess 
 a true general will, and for that reason must be a 
 genuine community sharing a common sentiment 
 and animated by a common tradition. With less 
 
 1 See The War and Democracy, p. IS.
 
 xin FUNCTION OF THE STATE 293 
 
 than this the supreme authority must become an 
 administration of general rules, external to the needs 
 and consciences of the communities which it is meant 
 to unite, and incapable therefore of appreciating the 
 more serious problems which will confront them, or 
 those needs of their lives which demand a certain 
 social structure. This is why I view with appre- 
 hension the tendency to minimise the function of the 
 state which is current to-day, owing, as I believe, to 
 a too special explanation of causes which led to the 
 present conflict. The first thing needed is the better 
 adjustment and maintenance of rights within the 
 communities which form states at the present 
 moment. That is to say, the more complete dis- 
 charge of their functions by existing states, and, if 
 need be, the formation of new ones, adapted to similar 
 tasks. More of the state, that is, and not less, is 
 required within communities. And so, too, without. 
 If larger units are needed and can be realised, they 
 too must fulfil the conditions of states. Here, also, 
 more of the state is needed, and not less. Leagues, 
 alliances, united states, which have not the spirit 
 of true communities, carry the germs of disruption 
 within them, and the probability, as Hegel explained, 
 of antagonism without. External antagonism, and 
 not a deep - seated general will, is, as a rule, their 
 binding force. Here I am thoroughly at one with 
 Mr. Russell as to the improbability of an international 
 authority being createcf as an outcome of the present 
 war. I confess that I see something of the same 
 danger in the unit which has been spoken of as 
 the commonwealth — say, the British Empire in its 
 present stage of development. For it is its essence, 
 as I understand the doctrine, that its constituent 
 members are to be on an unequal footing, unified
 
 294 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xm 
 
 only by a reign of external law which leaves their 
 national consciousness untouched and unreconciled. 1 
 I cannot believe that this is satisfactory. If the 
 members remain heterogeneous and unequal, there 
 is no general will. If the point is that they are to be 
 trained to freedom and equality, then it seems to 
 me to matter little whether in the end they go their 
 own way in peace, or choose to form an effective unity 
 with the other members, which shall be a true state. 
 But the " commonwealth " as described is neither 
 one thing nor the other, and is justified, I should 
 have said, only by its possible future. 
 
 9. Thus it seems clear to me that the organisation 
 of rights can only be complete in a community which 
 satisfies the conditions necessary to the possession 
 of a general will ; that is to say, a very high degree 
 of common experience, tradition, and aspiration. 
 Such communities are not now to be found except 
 in the nation-state. The commonwealth of nations 
 alluded to above does not, I believe, fulfil the con- 
 dition in respect of the dependencies included in it. 
 But I do not suggest that larger units than nation- 
 states can never come to fulfil these conditions ; only 
 that, if they do, they must have achieved a unity 
 comparable to that which we now experience in nation- 
 ality alone. I do not say this is impossible to be 
 realised at some remote period even in a world-state. 
 But in so far as it is not realised, any unitary authority 
 which it may be attempted to set up will be super- 
 ficial, external, arbitrary, and liable to disruption. 
 
 And this contemplation of remote possibilities is 
 
 1 Lord Acton, Freedom and other Essays, p. 290 ; see The War 
 and Democracy, p. 370. Lord Acton does not use the term Common- 
 wealth in the sense referred to by the latter writer. It is discussed, 
 of course, in Mr. Curtis' works.
 
 xiii FUNCTION OF THE STATE 295 
 
 making people neglect the plain facts and the nearer 
 remedies. Whatever may happen in the future, 
 there is nothing in the world to-day that can compare 
 for a moment in power and intimacy and concrete- 
 ness with the type of corporate being which we call 
 the nation-state. The organism of humanity, though 
 conceivable, is at present as we saw a mere possi- 
 bility, and the idea of it contains a serious contra- 
 diction between quality and totality. 
 
 A system of nation-states or of commonwealths 
 (I have said why I cannot recognise the distinction 
 as one of principle) each internally well organised, 
 would not perhaps give us all that a world-state might 
 give us, but it would place the world in a wholly 
 different ethical position from that which it occupies 
 to-day. It would involve, I assume, universal free- 
 dom of trade and intercourse. Interference with 
 this I take to be the result of internal distraction, 
 giving rise to the doctrine of " your gain my loss," 
 which is the principal source of war. 
 
 There is no reason that I can see for considering 
 it a defective arrangement that world-wide relations 
 or associations shall pass under the dominion of 
 different sovereign powers in different regions of the 
 earth. It seems to me that a very doubtful assump- 
 tion is made when we are told that economic relations 
 have outstripped political relations. This is actually 
 to assume that there cannot be friendly and efficient 
 co-operation between different political bodies in 
 respect of world-wide relations. It is a pessimistic 
 view, for which our theory recognises no ground 
 whatever. Each local power, we consider, has ex- 
 pressly evolved itself from the need and demand for 
 an organisation of rights in a certain territory. And 
 it is quite arguable that every world-wide relation
 
 296 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xm 
 
 or association — say, for example, the Roman Catholic 
 Church — is better protected and developed by co-opera- 
 tion with such a local power in every region, than it 
 would be by a world-wide political unit. The fear 
 that this will not be so is itself a relic of that barbarous 
 suspicion directed against foreign communities which 
 belongs to the identification of states with agencies 
 for war and exploitation. 
 
 The case of relations to units outside a state makes 
 no difference of principle. It is quite plain that if 
 our mind and will are to be at one with themselves, 
 our loyalty and co-operation with, say, an inter- 
 national labour movement or an association in a 
 foreign country, must be reconciled with that system 
 of our mind which is our national x consciousness and 
 conscience. If not, there must be a constant sore 
 in our moral being, and, of course, there are many 
 such sores, and while we live in this world they are 
 not likely altogether to cease. 
 
 But there is no reason in principle why a system 
 of states, each doing with fair completeness its local 
 work of organisation, and recognising, with or without 
 active modification, the world-wide relations which 
 pass through them, should not result in a world as 
 peaceful as one under a more unitary system, and 
 much richer in quality. 2 Those who think it cannot 
 be so, must believe that states are naturally at war, 
 
 1 I take the term " national " as adjective of any sovereign 
 community which has a general will. 
 
 2 I cannot see the least relevance in the suggestion that our 
 theory requires relations which pass beyond the frontier to be 
 suppressed (Lindsay, Theory of State, p. 101). The group-mind, 
 we saw, is a species of world-mind, and has not the group for its sole 
 object. All external relations, therefore, are focussed in it along 
 with the group-relations proper, and constitute, of course, a demand 
 for unification by a response.
 
 xiii FUNCTION OF THE STATE 297 
 
 and do not, so far as I can see, understand what the 
 nature of the state is, nor how a group-mind (like 
 every mind) is an attitude to the world at large, nor 
 for what reasons it is that communities are apt to be 
 hostile. 
 
 I do not think it necessary that such a system of 
 states should form an explicit federation. Federa- 
 tions are apt to be unsuccessful unless they possess, 
 like the United States of America, an obvious and 
 increasing tendency to assume the national type. 
 Those who think federation necessary for the sake of 
 a central force, obviously believe in force rather than 
 in friendship. But without friendship the force is 
 dangerous, and with it, perhaps, hardly necessary. 
 I am assuming that the experience and tradition of 
 states remain as they are to-day, too highly individual 
 to permit of a thoroughly common mind and of a true 
 general will, but that they remain peaceful neighbours 
 with their full national differences, because they have 
 every reason for friendship and none for enmity, and 
 are united in all sorts of common enterprises. 
 
 It seems to me an advantage of this conception 
 that it leaves room for the widest diversity in the 
 contributions of the several communities to the life 
 of the world, and it confronts the difficulty which 
 arises as we saw from the fact that the higher gifts 
 of humanity have hitherto, at any rate, sprung from 
 localised minds, and have not been characteristic of 
 mankind at large nor acceptable to it. It might be 
 that this is the law of life ; and that reciprocal good 
 will, with understanding and appreciation, even 
 intensified by the sense of foreignness and mystery, 
 are all that the different types of mankind are ever 
 to have in common ; that the great gifts are still to 
 be, as they have been, achievements of diversely
 
 298 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xm 
 
 intensified life-centres, which seem to leave the rest 
 behind. 
 
 The opposite ideal, that of a world - state, is, of 
 course, conceivable. The point of interest is, I think, 
 whether the identification of spirit and experience 
 necessary as the basis of a general will could be 
 achieved without the sacrifice of the valuable indi- 
 vidual qualities of national minds. 
 
 Is our love of local peculiarities — of local dialects, 
 for example — purely an obscurantist superstition ; 
 and how far do local styles and traditions of beauty 
 depend upon conditions like those of local dialects ? 
 Certainly it appears as if anything ought to go which 
 keeps people barbarous and makes mutual under- 
 standing impossible. 
 
 This analogy of language, I think, is helpful. 1 We 
 should desire, I suppose, to preserve the languages of 
 the world in all their glory and individuality, but that 
 they should become for mankind a means of entrance 
 into each other's minds and not a bar to it. If we 
 compare this ideal with that of a universal artificial 
 language, we shall see perhaps the true distinction 
 between what we desire and what we should reject. 
 
 But the problem still returns upon us. Will the 
 high civilisation of the future be a single thing, fusing 
 into one the individualities of all regions and of all 
 former nations ? Or will national and local genius 
 develop new internal resources, and even diverge into 
 fresh and several types of greatness, instead of merging 
 in a homogeneous character ? 
 
 I do not think that the future of political organisa- 
 tion can be treated apart from the consideration of 
 questions like these. And there is a homely remark 
 which occurs to me as very relevant. Many people 
 
 1 Cf. Philosophical Theory of the Slate, p. 330.
 
 xin FUNCTION OF THE STATE 299 
 
 are very good friends apart who would quarrel if they 
 kept house together. Is not this likely to be true of 
 nations ? 
 
 And, in conclusion, I wish to draw attention to an 
 assumption of popular philosophy which I suspect of 
 having a serious bearing upon current ideas of the 
 international future. I mean the popular belief in a 
 progress of the species which is to end in a condition 
 of the world that shall compensate for the wrongs 
 and sufferings of the past ; in a word, in the evan- 
 escence of evil. We have had it explicitly argued 
 by Herbert Spencer ; and there is hardly any popular 
 writing about the future which does not assume it. 
 Now I am inclined to think that the notion of a 
 necessary advance towards the inclusion of mankind 
 in a single political body is an offshoot of this naive 
 form of optimism. The nature of consciousness in 
 retaining the past as a basis for the future, together 
 with its imperative demand for improvement, does 
 make it fairly certain that man must tend on the 
 whole to add to his moral and social achievements. 
 But it is clear, I think, that any progress of future 
 generations towards happiness could not compensate 
 for the wrong and suffering of the past, and there- 
 fore this widely operating motive for assuming its 
 likelihood must be dismissed, while in itself the evan- 
 escence of evil seems altogether self-contradictory. 
 Therefore, while I believe in a nobler future, I do not 
 believe in any simple advance towards comfort and 
 tranquillity. 
 
 Another ancient superstition comes to my mind 
 which illustrates the same popular tendency. The 
 idea of a Millennium — of the reign of Christ on earth 
 — passed gradually into the more modern conviction 
 that at least the whole world was one day to be
 
 300 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xm 
 
 brought under the sway of Christianity, or perhaps 
 of Western enlightenment as typified by nineteenth 
 century science. 1 All this, I take it, is gone by. The 
 development of opinion has been in the contrary 
 direction. The best Churchmen will admit, I believe, 
 that to a great extent at least the peoples of the world 
 have already the religions that suit them best. And 
 we all see that the gospel of Western science, valuable 
 as it is, has no exclusive claim to be the doctrine even 
 of civilised man. A number of great systems, very 
 profoundly differing in life, mind, and institutions, 
 existing side by side in peace and co-operation, and 
 each contributing to the world an individual best, 
 irreducible to terms of the others — this might be, I 
 do not say must be, a finer and higher thing 2 than a 
 single body with a homogeneous civilisation and a 
 single communal will. 
 
 And what about war ? It is certain, to my mind, 
 that evil and suffering must be permanent in the 
 world, because man is a self-contradictory being, in 
 an environment to which he can never be adapted, 
 seeing that at least his own activity is always trans- 
 forming it. And in principle there can be no reason 
 for treating war as an exceptional case, as if presided 
 over by a special devil apart from every other form 
 of wrong. Neither the possibility of eradicating 
 war, nor the incidental good that comes of it, can 
 reasonably be discussed, as they commonly are, apart 
 from the general problem of evil in the world. While 
 man has a conscience, and things he values above life, 
 
 1 E.g. of Positivism, as Comte held. 
 
 2 Cf. the sentence from A. E., quoted above, p. 272. I do not mean 
 that the nation-unit is final. But I think any change would be a 
 grave loss which did not, if it had to go, give us something as rich in 
 qualities in its place.
 
 xiii FUNCTION OF THE STATE 301 
 
 and yet his conscience is liable to err, the root of war 
 exists. Issues may arise between group and group 
 which cannot be compromised. Within the state 
 itself, which is cited as the convincing analogy for a 
 universal reign of law, both civil war and individual 
 rebellion remain possible. 
 
 But man is bound, with this evil as with any other, 
 to do what he can for its removal. And I do not doubt 
 that its occasions may be immensely diminished by 
 the reform of states, and their reconstruction in 
 certain cases, and by, what this will promote, a truer 
 economic creed. 
 
 The critics' confusion of the character of the state 
 with the vices of states has led them into hopeless 
 dilemmas. They argue from these vices that it should 
 be weakened, while admitting a character which 
 implies that it can hardly be too strong. It is quite 
 impossible to unite a demonstration of growing de- 
 mands on the state for organising activity, with a 
 demonstration that its rank and authority already 
 demand diminution. 
 
 It is quite impossible to unite a demonstration 
 that the state has a conscience and moral responsi- 
 bility with a demonstration that it shows itself non- 
 moral when it throws itself heart and soul into its 
 individual duty. 
 
 Ultimately, it seems to me, the critics' error is just 
 that which they believe themselves to be attacking. 
 Having misconceived the real spring of organisation 
 and enlightenment, they are driven to put their faith 
 in external force.
 
 XIV 
 THE WISDOM OF NAAMAN'S SERVANTS 
 
 " My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, 
 wouldest thou not have done it? How much rather then, 
 when he saith to thee, Wash, and be clean ? " 
 
 When the greatest forces of human nature are 
 operating to the public danger, there are always, I 
 presume, two main lines of action between which the 
 friends of order have to choose. They can oppose 
 the threatening elements from without, or they can 
 approach them from within. They may suspect the 
 operative forces, and endeavour to obstruct them ; 
 or they may trust them, and aim at modifying the 
 influences which make them dangerous. The former 
 attitude relies on external regulation, and ultimately 
 on force ; the latter, on loyalty to supreme values, 
 and ultimately on freedom. I do not deny that in 
 both attitudes some complexity and compulsion are 
 inevitable ; but in the former they are at a maximum, 
 and characterise the principle ; in the latter they are 
 at a minimum, and are purely instrumental. 
 
 I believe that to-day the civilised mind, especially 
 as expressed through men of theory and learning, is 
 perplexed between these two attitudes in respect to 
 the forces which make for war. Such a force, of 
 overwhelming intensity, has disclosed itself in the 
 
 302
 
 xiv WISDOM OF NAAMAN'S SERVANTS 303 
 
 spirit of communities possessing a peculiar kind and 
 degree of unity, commonly identified with states, or 
 at least taken as represented by them, each to each, 
 in practical affairs. The hope that the danger of 
 war would be diminished as the grosser personal 
 interests of monarchs and statesmen ceased to be 
 among its causes, has no more been fulfilled than the 
 kindred hope that representative self-government 
 would ipso facto bring happiness to peoples. Granting 
 that nations are still in part deluded into war by 
 their rulers, there is yet no room for doubt that at 
 times a central principle of their own consciousness 
 acts violently in the same direction. Thus, if we 
 consider the state as the executive unity of a people, 
 we must admit that the spirit of the state is a force 
 of human nature which is found on occasion to make 
 powerfully for war. 
 
 And when this is admitted we are thrown into the 
 dilemma which I began by urging. We are forced 
 either to repudiate the spirit of the state, and work 
 towards fettering it without or enfeebling it within ; 
 or to seek to apprehend its true place in human 
 nature, in order to offer it the satisfaction without 
 which it remains a danger. 
 
 A modification of the general dilemma has inten- 
 sified our bewilderment to-day. Always, when human 
 nature wars upon itself, prejudice and perversion are 
 at work upon its particular motives. But here and 
 now they have been at work on the very principle of 
 the group-will or spirit of the state itself ; and have 
 partly poisoned it at the root, and partly convinced 
 the world that it is poisonous in itself. The idea is 
 not simply that the spirit of a state is apt to be 
 perverse through selfishness and ignorance ; that is 
 a human failing which we can readily recognise and
 
 304 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xiv 
 
 endeavour to control and amend. But the mischief 
 lies deeper to-day. It is that one of the selfish 
 perversions which are setting human nature at war 
 consists, not in contending, as all disputants are liable 
 to contend, that an unimpeachable principle supports 
 their own very doubtful claim ; but in misrepresent- 
 ing the nature of the unimpeachable principle itself. 
 For it is argued, not merely that human nature, being 
 liable to err, is prone to go to war ; but that to be 
 at war is just what human nature means and demands. 
 We all knew that we were apt to fight for our own 
 hand ; but we hoped and believed that our habit 
 was wicked and mistaken, and that some day we 
 should give it up. But when one of the disputants 
 tells us, or we believe that he tells us, not only that we 
 all fight for our own hand, but that it is right to do 
 so and no one can do otherwise, the mischief is raised 
 from the level of a fact to that of a principle. 1 Not 
 only is the great central force of the group -will 
 polluted in a particular case, but there is an attempt 
 to represent it as tainted in its essence. 
 
 Thus in the great dilemma the scales are loaded. 
 If we accept the state as a fundamental fact and 
 central force of human nature, we are held to be 
 bound by the doctrine which takes it to be essentially 
 militant. And to this we may incautiously assent. 
 The two ideas have been audaciously identified, and 
 our writers do not question the identification. The 
 very idea of "the state" has taken on an enemy 
 colour. 
 
 Hence the dilemma from which we began regarding 
 the militant forces of human nature, comes to be 
 
 1 " We all know that young men must go to the devil," Jowett 
 is reported to have said, " but it is intolerable that they should 
 make a theory about it.*'
 
 xiv WISDOM OF NAAMAN'S SERVANTS 305 
 
 governed by a new assumption, namely, that the 
 spirit of the state is essentially a war spirit. It 
 follows that we must set aside the alternative of 
 co-operating with this force as potentially moral and 
 rational ; and what is left of the dilemma recurs 
 under one of its former branches. " As this force of 
 human nature is harmful, are we to behave towards 
 it as powerful, but malignant, or as an unreal creature 
 of theory ? In the former case the only hope lies 
 in forcible regulation ; if the latter clause is true, 
 what is needed is a new social analysis and criterion 
 to establish the state's limitations." 
 
 This dilemma in its new form, ignoring the positive 
 function and principle of the group-will, governs the 
 attitude of our theorists to-day. All of them believe 
 at least that what is needed in dealing with the state 
 is some degree, moderate or not, of disparagement, 
 obstruction, and limitation ; something opposed to 
 its positive development into the flower of its inborn 
 function. 1 
 
 I will return below to the secondary and con- 
 ditional values of the proposed limiting contrivances 
 — peace-leagues, federations and "commonwealths," 
 or the world-state. What I am arguing just now is 
 that taken by themselves, as following from a doctrine 
 aimed at restricting and disparaging the vital group- 
 will, the vaster they become the more enormous are 
 
 1 The attitude of our thinkers to nationhood is very curious and 
 instructive. Some are frankly hostile ; many who are aware of the 
 value of the principle, wish nevertheless to get away from it to some 
 less intense form of state unity, e.g. the " commonwealth." All trust 
 ultimately in some external combination. They do not see what 
 appears to me so obvious, that the point is to find support, say, for 
 your peace policy, in a solid and persistent communal will ; and that 
 this in the nature of things can only be done through a unity as 
 intense as that of a nation, even if more comprehensive. 
 
 X
 
 306 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xiv 
 
 the hazards they bring with them. Is it not a prin- 
 cipal condition of our trouble to-day that huge federa- 
 tions and alliances have extended far beyond the 
 power of any existing vital and intimate group-will 
 to control them ? If these huge systems of bodies 
 encroach on one another's track by a single inch, 
 disaster becomes inevitable. They have not the 
 sagacity nor flexibility nor single purpose of a true 
 communal mind and will. We are told that economic 
 relations have outstripped political organisation. I 
 see the danger rather in this, that political and inter- 
 state organisation has outstripped the mind of the 
 vitally coherent community, which finds through it 
 but an inaccurate and insensitive expression. Very 
 probably it is well to extend the area of interstate or 
 federative organisation. But the extension is only 
 nominal if a vital will and sentiment of unity is not 
 expanded pari passu with it. Yet our thinkers are 
 preoccupied, it seems to me, with ideas of mechanical 
 extension, and are hostile on the whole to the only 
 force which could endow their creation with genuine 
 unity and a power of fine adjustment. 
 
 No one of our publicists of to-day, so far as I am 
 aware, has made an unambiguous attempt to challenge 
 this whole prejudice and biassed dilemma regarding 
 the state, and to point out not only that there is 
 a different line which is truer and more natural, but 
 that this other set of ideas is of the profoundest 
 practical importance in its bearing on peace and the 
 welfare of mankind. 1 
 
 For in fact, in this will of a community, we are 
 really dealing, as we first assumed, with a fundamental 
 force of human nature, but it is a force primarily 
 
 1 See T. H. Green, Principles of Political Obligation, Sect. 166, 
 and The International Crisis, 191. '5, 46 ff. and 182 ff.
 
 xiv WISDOM OF NAAMAN'S SERVANTS 307 
 
 rational and moral, not militant at all. It is, in 
 truth, the same thing as conscience ; it is the desire 
 of social man to bring order into himself and his 
 world. This is why it makes him fight so furiously, 
 whether he is right or wrong. It is, in principle, 
 man seeking his birthright. 
 
 Now, if we once recognise what it is that we are 
 dealing with, it is plain what we have to do. We 
 have to enter upon the task of satisfying this claim 
 of man. And, being human, we do ipso facto attempt 
 it. The only real question is whether we are attempt- 
 ing it in the right way or the wrong. The clue to 
 the right way is given by what we have said, and in 
 principle, one would think, it could not be missed. And 
 if, as I have urged, nearly all our writers have missed 
 it, this is because they are looking for something 
 less kindred to the group-will, and therefore more 
 artificial and more ambitious. Whereas the point 
 is really that if man has a tolerable set of rights and 
 duties in his community he is in the main satisfied, 
 and starts fair and unbiassed towards the outside 
 world. If otherwise, he is distracted ab initio, and 
 at war with himself and others, seeking especially 
 by unfair means abroad what he cannot find by fair 
 means at home. 1 
 
 Thus the simple fact is that the spirit of the 
 community, brought to consciousness and practice 
 in its executive organ, the state, is the great moral 
 force of the world. Like every moral force, it can, 
 when biassed or perverted, make wrong its right. 
 
 1 I suspect that harm is done here by an idea that duty must be 
 " altruistic." If my memory serves me right, a little book called 
 Le Devoir prisent, speaking for the French Ethical Societies, after 
 saying excellent things about the duty and functions of nations, 
 ended up with the remark that France might find hers in — Central 
 Africa ! I simply gasped.
 
 308 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xiv 
 
 But the confusion of such perversions with its nature 
 explains how it comes to be misconceived. 
 
 Now the point of this simple way of looking at the 
 matter is that the primary objective of the com- 
 munity's will is normally the attainment of values 
 in the life which it moulds freely for itself. This is 
 so, because the organisation of rights within its own 
 fabric is a work which belongs first and foremost to 
 the home community which lives in doing it. But 
 the community's will being one, governed by the 
 interests which it really cares for, must affirm the 
 same type of behaviour in external relations as in 
 home affairs. The only difference is that its field of 
 action abroad is primarily under the control of others, 
 and not under its own. Hence the connection be- 
 tween these two regions of the same endeavour is 
 inevitable but differentiated. What the group does 
 at home, in the basis which it creates for its action, 
 is the clue to what it will do abroad, and the principal 
 cause of it, but is itself more free and complete. 
 
 For there is no one but the group-mind to organise 
 rights at home, while there is, at least nominally 
 and presumably, some one else to do the work in 
 every region abroad. It is for this reason, and not 
 as a matter of caprice, that we maintain the dis- 
 tinctive function of the community through its 
 practical organ the state, to be chiefly and centrally 
 the guidance of its own internal relations. This is 
 not a nihilism of external relations ; it flows from 
 the plain positive type of interdependence which 
 obtains between the two provinces, owing to the 
 secondary control which is all that the home group 
 possesses in the one, as contrasted with the primary 
 control which it possesses in the other. 
 
 Now states are dangerous to each other by reason
 
 xiv WISDOM OF NAAMAN'S SERVANTS 309 
 
 of their biassed consciences, and biassed consciences 
 come of inequality * in the community. No state 
 can exhibit an unperverted conscience abroad which 
 is not bent on freeing itself from sinister interests 
 at home, and on making itself an equal instrument 
 of the best life for all its members. 
 
 Therefore I urge that the way to peace and security 
 is simple in principle. If it is intricate in detail this 
 is due to the complications which past evil policies 
 have engendered. But the royal road to peace is 
 to do right at home, and banish sinister interests 
 and class privileges from the commonwealth. Then 
 the inherent aim of the state will be clearly displayed, 
 and will operate causally throughout in the sense of 
 its habitual objective ; and its entire operative 
 machinery, within and without, will stand solidly on 
 the purposes which consecrate its common life. Such 
 an attitude will not leave us without a foreign policy, 
 but it will leave us without what a foreign policy is 
 often taken to mean. 2 It will leave us without plans 
 for outwitting and circumventing other countries, 
 and securing gains which we hope and believe to be 
 at their expense (and which in some cases may really 
 be so), and ruining their trade and industry. I 
 fervently trust that this country has not of late 
 pursued such adventures. That it has talked of 
 them, and still talks of them, is certain ; and no less 
 
 1 I use the term inequality in a general sense for differences 
 between citizens for which there is no relevant social need. 
 
 2 T. H. Green once remarked to the writer, with reference to 
 some example of what is called an enterprising foreign policy, " I 
 would almost go so far as to say that a government in this country 
 which appeals for support primarily on its foreign policy, stands 
 self-condemned." Of course he did not mean that we were not to 
 have purposes and machinery abroad ; but that all this was to be 
 instrumental to the same supreme aims which should be plain in our 
 home life.
 
 310 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xiv 
 
 certain that in as far as it does enter upon them it 
 is giving a militant meaning to every combination of 
 powers in which it may participate, and promoting 
 the temper which is the native atmosphere of war. 1 
 
 Now, to be instrumental in building up a life 
 directed by and to such supreme values as are im- 
 plied in the account just given, is the inherent aim 
 and " nature " of the state. To say that " the nature " 
 of " the state " is an ideal in the sense opposed to a 
 fact, and that we have no evidence what it is as 
 distinct from the vices and narrownesses of " states," 
 is really to say that you cannot distinguish a function 
 from its derangements. The state has a nature as 
 much as the brain or the railway system — what we 
 mean to imply when we use the word, and what is 
 present in particular states in so far as they succeed 
 in being what analysis shows that they claim to be, 
 and pretend to be even when they are not. And 
 more ; you may make a good state or a bad one, or 
 a good state into a bad one, but you can no more 
 make the nature of the state other than it is, 2 than 
 you can make a pony-carriage the same thing as a 
 motor-car, or good the same as evil. If it means 
 anything to be a citizen, to recognise civic relations 
 and the interdependence of rights and duties in a 
 life with common purposes, and if the community is 
 more of what it claims to be where these things are 
 more completely present, and less where they are 
 
 1 Cf. Bernstein in New Statesman, October 14, 1916 : " Militarism 
 is in Germany most intimately connected with the fiscal question. 
 The class which is interested in high import duties is the same which 
 is also interested in the present form of militarism. You cannot 
 uphold the policy of high import duties without perpetuating the 
 worst forms of rivalry and strained relations between respective 
 nations — which would again make for militarism." 
 
 2 See A. C. Bradley, International Crisis, 1915. p. 48.
 
 xiv WISDOM OF NAAMAN'S SERVANTS 311 
 
 present less completely, then the nature of the state 
 is an everyday fact of civilised life, as easy to recognise 
 as that of a law-court or a university. It does seem 
 an open secret to the eye of civilised man that in 
 proportion as " states " show more of " the state " — 
 in proportion as communities develop an orderly 
 political system — the organisation of rights goes 
 forward. 
 
 I recapitulate in a few words. The relation of 
 the state to war is simple and obvious. Its spirit is 
 the human consciousness at its intensest pitch — the 
 content which more than any other makes man's 
 mind a mind. It may, as man constantly does, 
 set its heart upon something that involves fighting ; 
 and then, as we said, it fights furiously, because, 
 right or wrong, it fights as for the right, and so has 
 the weight of moral convictions behind it. But, as 
 we have seen, it is not its nature to grasp at objects 
 that involve aggression ; this is merely an incident, 
 common to man because of his frequent failure to 
 appreciate the things that can be had without fighting. 
 These things themselves again may at times need 
 armed defence, not in themselves, but in the external 
 conditions of their maintenance, and such defence 
 may come within the function or mission of a state ; 
 the duty which a state truly conceives to be called 
 for under certain circumstances. Thus the state may 
 be engaged in war by its own wrong, or by another's. 
 But the full nature of the state is in the maintenance 
 of the best life, of life embodying supreme values, 
 in the self-governing community. And so far as its 
 action reveals such a principle there, and is true to 
 it in external relations, so far the state is realising its 
 " nature," in antagonism to selfishness and aggression. 
 The soundness of external relations therefore depends
 
 312 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xiv 
 
 first and foremost not on powerful and skilful com- 
 binations of states or communities, but on the spirit 
 of equality, and the recognition of the best things in 
 life, within the social and political system at home. 
 This is what I call, as a preventive against war, the 
 wisdom of Naaman's servants ; and it is expressed 
 otherwise in the same book, " Seek ye first the 
 kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these 
 things shall be added unto you." 
 
 But now we can go further. It is one thing to 
 regard concerted combinations of powers as a security 
 in themselves, and altogether another thing to employ 
 them as instruments and expressions of a solid per- 
 vading purpose. Once you have a vitally coherent 
 community, intimately bound together by feeling and 
 type of experience, and allegiance to the same values 
 and aspirations, then you possess the constituents 
 of a true general will, and how you go to work to 
 realise its aims become a purely practical matter. 
 At present the difficulty is to find such common 
 constituents throughout any area exceeding what has 
 usually been called the territories of a nation. How 
 far in fact there could be a true general will in a 
 whole, such as has been called a "commonwealth," 
 whose essence is to include dependencies on a lower 
 level of culture, or again in a Peace League or a 
 World State, is a problem for the future. What I 
 desire to emphasise is that the whole question is 
 wrongly approached unless we understand that we 
 are speaking of fundamental questions of fact, prob- 
 lems of human nature which a theory can only be 
 sound by recognising, but cannot, if it finds them 
 inconvenient, modify or explain away. How can 
 an effective unity of or within mankind come to 
 exist ? And the answer is, by devotion to the things
 
 xiv WISDOM OF NAAMAN'S SERVANTS 313 
 
 in which man, at his best, is at one. The mind of 
 a community which is at one with itself is the 
 type without approximation to which all leagues and 
 combinations must be sources of danger. 
 
 Neglect of this simple wisdom brings about a 
 curious meeting of extremes. Not merely the ex- 
 treme Pacifist, but the moderate and statesmanlike 
 advocate of a Peace League, may be found, unless 
 he carefully guards himself, to be joining hands with 
 the extreme militarist. Minorities, we are told, must 
 learn to give way, as the individual once had to 
 learn within the state. Yes, but unless the substan- 
 tive objects of the will that yields are to be guaranteed 
 in the will that prevails, the analogy fails absolutely, 
 and the interstate relation comes back to force, 
 while that of state and individual rests on will. In 
 fact the suggestion of a separate obligation as between 
 internal and external relations reproduces in politics 
 the opposition of egoism and altruism, which has 
 been banished as meaningless from ethics. These 
 arrangements ab extra, not manifestly derivative from 
 supreme objects of the communal life, have in them 
 no immanent guide nor constructive spirit, and re- 
 spond very unreadily to the influence of what a 
 high-minded community really wants to be done. 
 All who are satisfied with machinery of this kind are 
 practically together in being votaries of force, 1 for 
 take away the general will and nothing but force is 
 left. 
 
 1 As I write (Nov. 11, 1916) there comes an apt illustration. 
 Germany, Herr Bethmann-Hollweg assures us, will be glad to take 
 her place at the head of an international peace league. Now I do 
 not want all the assent that such an example will bring me. If you 
 are not going to scrutinise the quality of the unity to be constructed, 
 why not set Germany at its head ? If you are, it must grow out 
 of a pervading will.
 
 314 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xiv 
 
 And the tactlessness to which this trust in mechan- 
 ism leads ! Here, for instance, is a huge empire, the 
 growth of successful centuries, dominating a quarter 
 of the earth's surface, and likely, by no fault of its 
 own, as it urges, to dominate much more. Now 
 without, I will not say apology, but without any 
 pledge and explanation of readiness to meet the 
 convenience and interest of other peoples, or sugges- 
 tion of how it might be done, the peace-maker, 
 speaking for this empire, will propose some form of 
 arrangement aimed at making it less likely that 
 countries in future will have to fight for their posses- 
 sions. Is it not plain that as things stand to-day, 
 such proposals for the ending of war must to less 
 fortunate powers look like the behaviour of a player 
 who, after a run of luck, desires not only to leave off 
 playing, but to be seen safe home by the company ? * 
 
 All this is of course obvious in fact. But the 
 reason for it has not, I think, as a rule been made 
 clear, and it is on this that I am anxious to insist, as 
 following from what I have said. 
 
 All action is force, when it is not recognised to 
 spring from the supreme objects truly desired in 
 common by those whom it affects. Thus, you may 
 find several communities desiring peace. And they 
 may make a league to enforce it. But their " general 
 wills" taken together are not one will, 2 that is, they 
 have not in common the same principal objects, or 
 
 1 I agree that our position is very difficult. But I think the least 
 we can do is to recognise where our advantages are galling to others, 
 and contrive every conceivable step to remove the annoyances. It 
 looks to me as if Viscount Grey was alive to this necessity. 
 
 2 Hegel is blamed for saying this. But surely, up to now, this 
 is a great fact, of the kind which philosophy stands or falls by 
 stating truly. He does not say the wills could not become one, and 
 we are showing, on a basis derived from him, how they can.
 
 xiv WISDOM OF NAAMAN'S SERVANTS 315 
 
 views of life, and therefore they are likely to diverge 
 in their desire for peace, under different conditions. 
 Peace thus proves to have been a side issue to many 
 of them, and really to have been desired perhaps for 
 the sake of profit, so that if a chance of more profit 
 by a successful war should suddenly appear, peace will 
 no longer be preferred. Thus the apple of discord 
 could easily be thrown among such a league, because 
 there is no solidity in the unity of their wills, nor the 
 same fineness of quality in them all. Their real bond 
 was force. 
 
 If, on the other hand, there were to exist, in one or 
 more communities, a prevailing general will, that is, 
 a concordant sense of supreme objects which, by a 
 plain derivation, demanded a certain concerted action 
 — in favour of peace, for example ; then there would 
 so far be a solid foundation for practical steps towards 
 international or cosmopolitan unity. It cannot be 
 done by setting up a machinery, though to do it 
 would need a machinery. This would be the conse- 
 quence, not the cause. It can only be done by making 
 evident in the inner life of groups a devotion to the 
 great ends of humanity, such as to offer a sure founda- 
 tion for precautions to be taken in their relations 
 with each other against the obstruction of those ends 
 which all of them genuinely desire and mould their 
 lives upon. 
 
 This is why I have ventured, in the present volume, 
 to consider social methods and ideals in intimate 
 connection with the true fundamental patriotism and 
 the function of the state in promoting human soli- 
 darity. 1 In the view I desire to present, the whole 
 complex of a community's behaviour within and 
 without is a single thing, determined by the nature 
 
 1 Cf. also International Crisis, 1915, p. 151.
 
 316 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xiv 
 
 of the objects and satisfactions which, consciously or 
 unconsciously, it has at heart. With a true sense of 
 values and a devotedness to those things which are 
 not diminished by sharing, it is not too much to say 
 that we should be safe against the more disastrous 
 form of conflict and exploitation within and without. 
 
 If we had the wisdom of Naaman's servants, 
 we should concentrate our efforts on thus cleansing 
 our patriotism. Not that this would involve a 
 policy of non-interference outside our own borders ; 
 although, as we have in substance argued above, it 
 is a very extraordinary thing to observe those who 
 are most opposed to war demanding a policy of 
 adventure, based on a permanent threat of armed 
 interference, which transcends, I should imagine, in 
 audacity any enterprise ever dreamed of by Napoleon. 
 
 But although we know that to put in act our higher 
 patriotism we shall have to take steps in concert 
 with other communities, and affecting others still, 
 the unity of whose wills with our own nothing but 
 participation in such a patriotism can guarantee, yet 
 " non-interference " must in a certain typical sense 
 remain our ideal of international conduct. We must 
 again insist that for every community there is only 
 one territory in which the duty of organisation falls 
 primarily and in principle upon itself, and that terri- 
 tory is its own. All uninvited action elsewhere is 
 duplication of others' action, or interference with it. 
 The presumption against such acts may of course be 
 defeated by special circumstances, but prima facie it 
 is fatal. On the whole, then, it is in home policy that 
 the mind and aims of a state are plainly revealed, and 
 its basis of action established. In external relations 
 it expresses itself always under some obstruction. 
 But the mind is the same in both.
 
 xiv WISDOM OF NAAMAN'S SERVANTS 317 
 
 This must not be construed as a limit on cosmo- 
 politan intercourse and co-operation. As I have 
 pointed out in Essay XIII., the idea that this is so 
 implies irrational distrust of communities other than 
 our own. There is not the smallest reason why, under 
 such a policy as is here outlined, every individual and 
 society should not find communication and co-opera- 
 tion with every other on the earth's surface as easy 
 and convenient as within his own country. This would 
 be more probable, not less, if the special facilities in 
 every region are controlled and adapted by an 
 administration native to that region and of special 
 competence for it. The main difficulties in these 
 matters come from regulations in restraint of trade, 
 which are necessarily also regulations in restraint 
 of human intercourse. 1 But these are in principle 
 irrational. 
 
 I regard it as fortunate, though it may be imputed 
 to me as a fault, that in the first of these addresses, 
 five years ago, I made use of Fichte's language to 
 express what is fundamental in patriotism. Judg- 
 ments of Fichte highly inconsistent with my estimate 
 have been published since 1914. 2 As I read the 
 matter, they form a part of the misconception to which 
 I referred above, by which the philosophical recog- 
 nition of the group-will as the central force and right 
 of human nature— a recognition impossible to refuse, 
 alike in logic and in fact — has been treated as equi- 
 valent to a doctrine that the state is above morality 
 and is militant in essence. It would be impossible 
 here to attempt any complete analysis of Fichte's 
 
 1 With the best will in the world, it is impossible to prevent the 
 experiences of travellers in passing customs' barriers from being at 
 times quite inhuman, as the writer has himself observed. 
 
 2 Vaughan's Rousseau, ii. 518-526. Sorley, in Theory of Slate, 
 1915, p. 34 ff.
 
 318 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xiv 
 
 life-long effort to utter adequately his complex political 
 creed. He wrote much that was unguardedly bor- 
 rowed from historical generalisations which have 
 only a partial truth, though not at all a negligible 
 one, such as the idea that a civilised state in contact 
 with uncivilised ones cannot help extending its 
 borders ; or the idea that the bringing new blood into 
 Europe by the christianisation of the Teutonic nations 
 conferred a unique benefit on the world. The moral 
 of these facts he drew out in his rhetorical manner, 
 and no doubt overestimated. 
 
 Nevertheless, and although Fichte was by no 
 means at the top of the political philosophy of his 
 time, I must think that our savants, and the modern 
 Germans too, if they say the same things, have here 
 committed the error which I analysed above. They 
 have treated the recognition of a primary life-force 
 as one in principle with the perversion which fixes 
 on it a militant character. And they fail to observe 
 that by thus welding the two ideas together they 
 themselves are carried into the atmosphere of that 
 hostility with which current opinion to-day regards that 
 great central force of law, organisation, and morality 
 which expresses itself most definitely in the state. 
 
 Any one who reads Fichte, and still more Hegel, 
 whose doctrine was less overdrawn and one-sided — 
 but still any one who reads Fichte, with an eye to the 
 direction of his advance, and to the factors which 
 strengthened with his development — sees that for him 
 the state, which is man's nature as executive in a 
 self-governing community, is in the main an em- 
 bodiment of freedom and a means to the development 
 of personality. 1 And by Fichte especially both true 
 
 1 Cf. I. H. Fichte (son of the great philosopher) in Fichte's Werke, 
 vol. vii. p. xviii.
 
 xiv WISDOM OF NAAMAN'S SERVANTS 319 
 
 national greatness and abiding peace among the 
 countries of Christendom are foreseen as the remote 
 results of an education which he conceives as gradu- 
 ally supplanting all necessity for government by force. 
 What I have cited from the Reden an die Deutsche 
 Nation is only a fraction of the wise and splendid 
 thoughts which they contain. And it seems to me 
 to be due to a misconception bred of temporary re- 
 sentment if we ignore both their particular greatness, 
 and the fundamental trend of German thought in that 
 period, which was simply the recognition of that 
 central fact of human nature on which I have been 
 insisting. 
 
 In my belief the essential foundation of all sane 
 political thinking is the supremacy of absolute values 
 in the self-moulded life of the community. And not 
 Plato himself has insisted on this necessity with more 
 single-heartedness than Fichte. 1 
 
 1 Fichte's views passed no doubt through very quaint stages, 
 though always in the one direction. About Hegel's attitude, on the 
 other hand, there can be to the serious student no doubt at all. 
 The state is for him on the level of " objective mind," of law, order, 
 and morality. Towards " Absolute " Mind — that is, what appears 
 in Religion, Art, and the higher regions of thought — it is related as 
 a substructure or foundation, not exactly a " means," because it is 
 the earlier part of the same growth. Obviously, in respect to such 
 a view, you can manoeuvre such expressions as means and ends 
 just as you please ; and obviously also the view incorporates the 
 plain fact and common sense of the matter in refusing to separate 
 factors as " mere means " or " mere ends." 
 
 The selection of texts and phrases is wearisome and unconvincing. 
 But I feel bound to point out one or two matters usually mis- 
 represented or ignored. Hegel, it has been said, calls war " a 
 game." This, I take it, depends on a paraphrastic rendering by 
 Wallace, Encycl. Sect. 547. The sentence merely says in the common 
 idiom that in war the independence of states is at stake. 
 
 It may be as well also to mention here Hegel's passionate and 
 crushing criticism on the doctrine of the right of the stronger (Rechts- 
 philosophic, Sect. 258), which I never see alluded to in any current
 
 320 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS xiv 
 
 It is this conception of patriotism as one with the 
 social ideal, and of both as representing our best ideas 
 of humanity and our devotion to their service, which 
 is the spirit that connects together the studies which 
 are here collected. The simple doctrine which they 
 repeat in various forms or applications, is that nothing 
 can guide us right but a genuine devotion to the great 
 eternal values, and that if we can succeed in clearing 
 the vision of these from confusion and caricature, and 
 applying it as a criterion in all social relations, we shall 
 not go far wrong either in our life within the community 
 or in our international behaviour. An example on 
 which I rely — one only of innumerable cases — is 
 that which I have all my life striven to enforce, 
 the love of art, and the opposition of beauty and 
 refinement on the one hand to luxury and sensuous 
 pleasure on the other (Lecture III. of No. XI.). How 
 would such a feeling and recognition help us in 
 practice ? If wide enough and strong enough, there 
 is nothing it might not do. It might change our 
 social stratification, reform our economic system, 
 wipe out our drink bill and make London a paradise, 
 and make us love and understand the minds of other 
 nations. There is nothing, I repeat, that cannot be 
 done by a change of interests ; there is very little 
 indeed that can be done without it. 
 
 estimate of him, partly, I imagine, because it is contained in a long 
 footnote in small print. And, following Mr. A. C. Bradley, we should 
 observe the audacious verdicts in the same sense which enter into 
 Hegel's estimate of Napoleon's achievements. " No greater victories 
 were ever won ; no greater genius was ever displayed in campaigns ; 
 but also the impotence of victory was never set in a stronger light. 
 . . . Superior force from without can effect nothing enduring." 
 Philos. d. Geschichte, pp. 540, 542 ; International Crisis, p. 76.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Absentee ownership, 241 
 Absolutism of State, 273 
 Action, when it is force, 314 
 Acton, Lord, 294 n. ' 
 Adventure, tales of, their moral, 
 
 167 
 A. E. quoted, 272 
 " Agathon " in IS Opinion, 29 
 Alcoholism, in any case an 
 
 unfitness for headship of 
 
 a family, 159 n. 
 Almsgiving a bad tradition, 120 
 " Apology for False Statements," 
 
 164 
 Architecture of co-operative 
 
 shops, 227 n. 
 Army and Navy Stores, 214 
 Art the typical social guide, 
 
 opposed to luxury, 247 
 Athens, her work national, 266 
 
 Bateson, Professor, on heredity, 
 quoted, 149 
 
 Beauty, precision in, 95 
 
 opposition to luxury, 247, 320 
 
 Beeslv, Professor, and Karl 
 Marx, 185 
 
 Bernstein, quoted from New 
 Statesman, 310 n. 
 
 Birth - rate, selective, fallacies 
 about, 146 
 
 Boys, more born than girls, 160 
 
 Bradlaugh and a certain propa- 
 ganda, 151 n. 
 
 Bradley, A. C, 275, 284, 310, 320 
 
 Bradley, F. H., 22 n., 34, 281 
 
 Capital, misdirection of, 217 
 " Casework," what comes up 
 from it. 174 
 
 Catholic Church in Sorel, 187 
 
 Characters, hereditary. See In- 
 born 
 
 Charity, brief clue to its nature, 
 102 
 contrast of with State in- 
 stitutions, 112 ff. 
 meanings of, 120 
 necessary public function and 
 
 special experience, 130 
 wage-earners' repugnance to, 
 120 
 
 " Charting " a district, 163 
 
 Children's Country Holiday 
 Fund, 75 ff. 
 
 Choice of mates by women, all- 
 importance of, 160 
 
 Christian Science, 70 ff. 
 
 Christianity, Greek colonies as 
 seed-plot of, 255 
 
 Claims, where they vanish, 210 
 
 Class war and class loyalty, 192 
 ff., 225, 230 
 
 Classification of cases, danger of, 
 164 
 
 Cole, G. D. H., 282 n. 
 
 in Herald on " Trade Union 
 Structure," 227 
 
 ' ; Commonwealth " in recent 
 usage, its dangers, 293 
 
 Comprehension of a great city, 
 87 
 
 Comtism, 292 
 
 Conscience of a community, 279 
 
 Contracts socially determined, 
 202 
 
 Contradictions in critics' argu- 
 ments about the State, 301 
 
 Co-operative Movement (Mrs. 
 Webb), 227 n. 
 
 321
 
 322 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 Curtius, Ernst, on union by the 
 sea, 276 n. 
 
 Darwin, Charles, quoted, 154 n. 
 
 Darwin, Major Leonard, quoted, 
 141 
 
 Delisle, Leopold, 27 
 
 Demand for world-state springs 
 from irrational distrust of 
 foreign communities, 317 
 
 Democratic " ideology," Sorel 
 on, 183 
 
 Democratic regulation, nature 
 of, 228 
 
 De Morgan, William, on inherit- 
 ance of insanity, quoted, 144 
 on evil in the world, 180 
 
 " Deserving case " in relief 
 work, obsolete phrase, 111 
 
 Desire of humanity, the univer- 
 sal, 248 
 
 Dilemma concerning militancy 
 of group-will, 301 ff. 
 
 Direct action, opposition to par- 
 liamentary politics, 192 
 
 Durkheim, M., 30 
 
 Ecole des Chartes, 30 
 Electoral control, how made 
 
 self-defeating, 125 
 Emotion and logic, 95 
 English collectivism in Sorel, 187 
 Environment and selection, 152 
 Equality of man, 199 
 
 economic, 246 
 Error of our savants, same as 
 
 that of recent Germans, 318 
 Evanescence of evil a fallacy, 299 
 Evil in the world, 179 
 Extremes meet — pacifism and 
 
 militarism, 313, 316 
 
 Fads, how to learn from them, 74 
 Federations and peace leagues, 
 
 dangers of, 306 ; and see 
 
 German v 
 Felix Holt, 193 
 
 Fichte on Patriotism, 8 ff., 317 ff. 
 Flag of humanity, an attitude 
 
 to life, 267 
 Force, votaries of, 313 
 and friendship, 297 
 
 Force and political maturity, 
 267-8 
 
 Foreign policy, " enterprising " 
 evils of, 309 
 
 Free Man's Worship, The (Rus- 
 sell), 56 
 
 Freedom, 205. See Equality. 
 
 Frere, Miss, 80 
 
 Geddes, Professor Patrick, 227 
 n. 
 
 General Practitioner and hospi- 
 tals, 177 
 
 General strike, 231 
 
 " General will," what it means 
 in practice, 124 
 
 Germany, glad to head a peace 
 league, 313 n. 
 
 Goethe, Golz von Berlichingen, 
 104 
 Hermann u. Dorothea, 231 n. 
 Wilhelm Meister, 113 
 
 Green, Principles of Political 
 Obligation, 148 n., 189 «., 
 276 n., 278 n., 306 n. 
 on foreign policy, 309 
 
 Grey, Viscount, 314 n. 
 
 Group-mind or general will, its 
 first duty why at home, 
 308 
 
 Group-will, false dilemma con- 
 cerning, 305 
 
 Guide to social ideals, the ulti- 
 mate, 247-8 
 
 Guilds, national, 227 
 
 Hanse towns and Ionia com- 
 pared, 255, 277 n. 
 Hasty answers on optimism, 49 
 Hegel, 275, 293, 314 n. 
 
 condemnation of right of 
 
 stronger, 319 n. 
 Helpers and Helped, a bad 
 
 classification, 109 
 Herald, The (Labour journal), 
 
 189 n. 
 Herbert Spencer on evil, 299 
 Hereditary and non-hereditarv 
 
 defect, 144 ff. 
 Herodotus on poverty in Greece, 
 
 252 n. 
 Hewlett, Maurice. " Song of the 
 
 Plow," 148
 
 INDEX 
 
 323 
 
 History, what is it ? 21 
 
 Introduction to the Study of, 23 
 
 Householder as type of the 
 statesman, 137 
 
 Human demand, a, at heart of 
 every movement, 191 
 
 Humanity as a best not = man- 
 kind, 288 
 no organism as yet, 291 
 
 Huxley on heredity, quoted, 145 
 
 Ideal = the real reality, 105 
 its costliness in lives, 106 
 paradox of, 98 
 
 Inborn character, what is its 
 range of response to stimuli? 
 143 
 
 " Incompetence of the Com- 
 mittee," 168 
 
 Individuality and circumstance, 
 262 
 
 Industries and crafts, 227 
 
 International Crisis, The, 306 n., 
 310 n., 315 n., 320 
 
 Introduction to the Study of 
 History (MM. Langlois and 
 Seignobos), 23 
 
 Investment and control of pro- 
 duction, 242 
 
 James, William, 61 
 
 Jowett, Introduction to Plato's 
 
 Republic, 138 
 Justice, xi. (i.), 89 
 factors of, 198 
 ideal, v. simple rule, 206 ff. 
 " individualistic," 198 
 proportional standards of, 
 201 ff. 
 
 Labour journals, value of study- 
 ing, 190 
 
 Labour Year-book for 1916, 227 n. 
 
 Lagardelle, 189 n. 
 
 Language, analogy of, for inter- 
 national ideals, 298 
 
 Le Devoir Present and Central 
 Africa, 307 
 
 Leibniz, 44 
 
 VEsprit de la nouvelle Sorbonne, 
 29 
 
 Lindsay, A. D., 296 n. 
 Living," aim of the miners to 
 
 make mining a source of, 
 
 191 
 London School Care Committees, 
 
 how financed, 134 n. 
 Long ballot in U.S.A., 125 
 Love and reason, 91 
 
 Machinery of international peace 
 
 useless per se, 315 
 Majority Report of Poor Law 
 
 Commission, 81 
 Management, creative, in in- 
 dustry, 222 
 claim of producers to, 237 ff. 
 Manchester Guardian, 77 
 Materialism in history, 261 
 Mazzini, 275 
 Meeting of extremes, pacifist and 
 
 militarist, 313 
 Middlemarch, 277 n. 
 Might and right, 267 
 Millennium, dangerous influence 
 
 of the idea, 300 
 Mind, the abstract, 65 
 the English, 18 
 includes body, 171 
 Morality of State compared with 
 
 that of individual, 285 ff. 
 Morea and the Athos peninsula 
 
 compared, 254 
 Morning Post quoted, 191 
 Myth and Utopia in Sorel, 185, 
 
 243 
 
 Narrow notions of politics, 118 
 National Guild pamphlets, 189 n. 
 
 Guilds, 193, 227 
 Nation-state, not final itself, 
 
 but its condition (general 
 
 will) final, 294 
 Natural conditions, how focussed 
 
 in mind, 256 
 fertility and civilisation, 252 
 Nature of objects of general will, 
 
 ultimate determinant of 
 
 community's behaviour, 
 
 315-316 
 Nettleship, R. L., cited, 93 
 Newman, W. L., 21 
 Non-managing ownership, 240 
 
 Oldham Wakes, 77 ff.
 
 324 SOCIAL & INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 Outdoor relief, 81 
 
 Owen, Robert, quoted, 142 
 
 Pain and evil, attitudes to, 181 
 
 " Parasitism," Encycl. Brit. 
 (Geddes), 252 n. 
 
 Patriotism, vi, I. 
 
 and humanity, 15, 291, 299 
 the standard of, 12, 16, 320 
 
 Paul, St., 96 
 
 Peace, social, Sorel on, 187 
 
 Pessimism, the higher, 60 
 
 Pioneers in modes of living, 247 
 
 Plato, " Crito " cited 6, 65, 275 
 Republic cited, 209 
 
 Policy of ancient Athens, grew 
 out of the soil, 251 
 
 Politicians, maligned by experts, 
 137 n. 
 the highest of professional 
 men, 237 
 
 Politics, vii., 118, 123 
 
 " Powder " of facts, 24 
 
 President of the Comite des 
 Forges, letter from, on Edu- 
 cation, 36 
 
 Professional classes and produc- 
 tive class, 249 
 functions of, 234 
 
 Progress and optimism, 60 
 
 Public or social functions v. 
 political, 126 
 non-political bodies, 125 
 
 Publicists to-day, attitude to 
 nationhood, 305 and n. 
 
 Quintessence of citizen life, 249 
 
 Reid, Dr. Archdall, on heredity, 
 
 quoted, 145 
 Representative government. See 
 
 Electoral control 
 Representatives have a special 
 
 function, 237 
 Research in natural and social 
 
 science, 40 
 Responsibility of State, critics 
 
 on, 282 
 Return to Nature, 70 
 Romain Rolland, 292 
 Rousseau, 208 n., 281 
 Rules v. principles, 170. See 
 
 Flag of humanity 
 
 Ruse and violence in Sorel, 244 
 Russell, Hon. Bertrand, 18 n., 55, 
 282 n., 293 
 
 Schaffle, Quintessence of Social- 
 ism, 219 
 Schopenhauer, 55 
 Science, recent, has made pro- 
 blem of selection harder, 141 
 and social management, 82 
 Seals of the Popes' Bulls, 27 
 Secondary education in France, 
 
 35 
 Self - government of Trade 
 
 Unions, 238 
 Shaftesbury, Lord, 87 
 Social selection by standard of 
 
 parenthood, 156 
 Social Service and the Art of 
 
 Healing (Dr. Cabot), 73 
 Sociology at the Sorbonne, 20 
 
 and natural science, 40 
 Sorbonne, the, n. passim 
 Sorel, Georges (review), x. 
 Sorley, Professor, 317 n. 
 Standard of social organisation, 
 
 the ultimate, 16, 249 
 State, xm. 
 
 " geographical basis of," 229 
 not an association, 283 
 philosophical theory of, v 
 poison in use of force by, 186 
 " the," meaning of, 278, 274 ff. 
 war a sign of disease in, v 
 Status of wage-earner, 225 ff. 
 Student spirit, iv. 
 Suspiciousness. See Narrow 
 notions 
 of foreign States, 296 
 Syndicalism, 128, 193, 225 
 Syndicalisme et Socialisme, 191 
 
 Tactlessness of trust in mechan- 
 ism, 314 
 
 Tartarin and the pessimist, 41 
 
 Things not diminished by shar- 
 ing, v ff., 61 
 
 Tolstoi, 55 ff. 
 
 Trade Union structure, 227 n. 
 
 " Unhelpable " or " undeserv- 
 ing," 173
 
 INDEX 
 
 325 
 
 Utopia. See Myth 
 
 Vaughan's Rotisseau, 209 n. 
 317 
 
 War a case of evil, 300 
 
 a proof of unity, 232 
 
 and the State, 311 
 Wicksteed, Rev. P., 240 
 
 Will to peace, vi 
 
 and the communal conscience, 
 279 
 
 Wordsworth and idealism, 85 
 
 Workers' Educational Associa- 
 tion, 193 
 
 World-state v. local states, 295 ff . 
 
 Worlds, the best of all possible, 
 44 
 
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