103 a*.? 3& LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. Class No. Accessions STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. DAVID MAXWELL, C.E. UIXVIRSITY To the solid ground of Nature, Trusts the mind that builds for aye." Wordsworth. HULL: WILLIAM ANDREWS & CO., THE HULL PRESS. LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, & Co., LD. CONTENTS. PAGE FOREWORDS i THE POPULAR MEANING OF THE TERM SOCIALISM 3 LORD SALISBURY ON SOCIALISM - 6 WHY THERE is IN MANY MINDS AN ANTIPATHY TO SOCIALISM - 10 ON SOME SOCIALISTIC VIEWS OF MARRIAGE - 17 THE QUESTION OF PRIVATE PROPERTY - 21 THE OLD POLITICAL ECONOMY is NOT THE WAY OF SALVATION - - 30 "WHO is MY NEIGHBOUR?" - - - 34 PROGRESS, AND THE CONDITION OF THE LABOURER 36 GOOD AND BAD TRADE : PRECARIOUS EMPLOYMENT 44 ALL POPULAR MOVEMENTS ARE HELPING ON SOCIALISM 50 MODERN LITERATURE IN RELATION TO SOCIAL PROGRESS 62 PRUNING THE OLD THEOLOGICAL TREE - 73 THE CHURCHES, THEIR SOCIALISTIC TENDENCIES 80 THE FUTURE OF THE EARTH IN RELATION TO HUMAN LIFE - - 85 SOCIALISM is BASED ON NATURAL LAWS OF LIFE 95 HUMANITY IN THE FUTURE - - 106 PRELUDES TO SOCIALISM - 109 FORECASTS OF THE ULTIMATE FORM OF SOCIETY - 113 A PlSGAH-TOP VIEW OF THE PROMISED LAND - - 121 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. FOREWORDS: THE CONFLICTING SCHOOLS OF SOCIALISM. SOCIALISM, the dominant topic of the present day, has not had to emerge in its propagandism as an entirely new birth of time. Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip Sydney, and Lord Bacon were amongst its earlier precursors. Saint Simon, Charles Fourier, and Robert Owen, theorized and taught in a more recent period. Here, as in other things, the thoughts of the past are the inheritance of the present. Various socialistic standards are now reared, each the rallying point of its greater or lesser host of adherents : under which flag do we venture to enlist ? or, like Hal-o'-the- wynd, do we "fight for our own hand ?" Broadly speaking, the advocates of socialism, differ- ing far less in their ultimate aims than in their proposed methods of accomplishment, may be said to have had their prototypes in the two historic schools of geology. The earlier of these schools held that the heterogeneous 2 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. and distorted condition of the earth's crust was the outcome of convulsion and catastrophe, of earthquake and explosion, of abrupt upheavals and disruptions. The later school maintained that all the changes which have occurred in the crust, tiltings and dislocations of strata, the grooving out of water-channels, elevation here and submergence there, were results from agencies acting with steady persistence throughout long periods of time, " without haste and without rest." The Hebrew prophet, brooding by the river of Babylon over the lost Jerusalem of his fathers, his heart surcharged with patriotism, his high-strung idealistic temperament quivering with mystical aspirations, calls out in perplexity and bewilderment, " O Lord, what shall be the issue of these things ?" French revolutionists in the tumbrils, which through a lane of tigerish, blood- unsated eyes, were slowly wending to the Place de la Revolution : wished to each other that the Saturn then devouring his own children had spared them a little longer, "so they could have seen the end of it!" Ah, but there is no real issue or ending within the great drama of humanity. Each partial end or issue is but a fresh thread woven into the mighty web ; a thread which shall begin another change in the pattern and design be an opening out of new chapters, new characters, scenes, and incidents in the drama. THE POPULAR MEANING OF THE TERM SOCIALISM. 3 THE POPULAR MEANING OF THE TERM SOCIALISM. Nuttall gives the meaning of the word as : "A system which, in opposition to the competitive system at present prevailing, seeks to re-organize society on the basis, in the main, of a certain secularism in religion, of community of interest, and of co-operation in labour for the common good ; " and competition signifies : " Strife between those desirous of obtaining the same object ; contention for superiority ; rivalry." Passing for the moment the first-named item in the dictionary meaning of the term, with the others which are said to enter into the basis of socialism, there will be general agreement that they are well and fairly stated. All hypothetical systems of society differing essentially from those which have been drifted into fortuitously, without preconceived design have been planned on the understanding that in their establishment, and for their maintenance, there would be a concensus of intention, of mutual aid and co-operation. It having been assumed that, on the basis of competition, of antagonistic interests, no form of society can be raised which would be alike beneficial to all its members. But the advocates of competition assert its stimulative influences in calling out effort and invention ; that it increases the sum of the energies which are put forth in the production of wealth, and the facilities for its distribution; that the comparatively greater success of the more active, clever, or persevering is a spur and an incitement to the less clever, active, or persevering ; that STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. the former deserve their higher success, and are justly entitled to reap all its advantages ; and that their meaner rivals receive their due deserts in the disadvantages of their ill success. They say, moreover, that the con- sequent creation of a richer class, with its many requisites, is beneficial, gives more employment for labour, and a higher tone to society ; that as Nature gives inequality of aptitude in her human children as their starting-points in life, so the division of mankind into classes of higher and lower is in the natural order of things ; and that, as in the past, so throughout the coming ages, there shall ever be poverty and mean conditions of life in the land. The advocates of socialism say, on the other hand, that the wealth produced would, in quality and real value, if not in actual amount, be largely increased if those with higher and those with lower qualifications were to help each other in its production, and that its enjoyment ought to be not according to success in the production, but according to the needs of all who took part therein. They aver that over-reaching and chicanery, "jerry-work" and adulteration, are the natural outcome of rivalry and antagonism ; that, in a world teeming with abundance, poverty is not a natural necessity ; and that caste and its creation of factitious wants are productive of many serious evils. They further say that there are other elements in human nature than the desire for personal advantage over others, which would equally nay, would more effectually and reliably, call out effort and inventive skill, and this to the common advantage of all. On these different contentions, the conflicting systems THE POPULAR MEANING OF THE TERM SOCIALISM. 5 take their stands, and marshal their forces of argument ; they are now face to face, and the eyes of the world and the future of humanity await the issue. The social question is in the very air ; it disturbs us with discussions which cannot be evaded, and it asserts itself as a leading factor in every forecast of the future. No doubt the teachings of many professed advocates have conspired to saddle the lexicographer's definition of socialism with the rider of antagonism to religion ; but it is not very evident how any possible improvements in the art of social life necessarily imply a repudiation of, or a disbelief in, spiritual religion'; that is, in the being of God, in an inherent power, the law of the laws of the universe. Certainly, socialism is secular in its aims, just as the arts of government, of jurisprudence, of education, of medicine, and of sanitation are secular, "pertaining to this present world." The socialist advocate has here a rightful standing ; but not in doing what would be ultra vires, and a meddlesome usurpation of powers beyond his mandate ; not in placing a veto on thought and conscience, on matters outside his domain. The religion, or the lack of religion, of the far future is entirely a question for the men of that future ; as little need for us to trouble about it as about how they shall dress, or trim their beards, or in what speech new or old they shall bid each other " Good morning." We apprehend that the real essence of the Christian religion is in the teachings of its founder ; and certainly the animating spirit of these teachings is that of benevolence, of sympathy with the poor and the 6 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. distressed ; even the erring and sinful were not outside the pale of his pitiful regards. His supreme object was the establishment of a universal kingdom of righteous- ness, of peace and love upon the earth. He ever inculcated simplicity and moderation of life ; only one dish was needful for the supper at Bethany, " much serving " was merely cumbersome. The critically severe John Stuart Mill said that " in all questions of conduct there was no better rule than this : What would Jesus of Nazareth have done if he had been in my place?" We hardly see how regard for Christ's teachings should be a barrier or a hindrance to social amelioration. If, in the extraneous things which have been grafted into the popular faith, there are any erroneous views of man's nature, or of his ability to modify or to re-construct his forms of social life, a belief in these errors will be inimical to his progress they will be false lights tempting him to drift out of his true course; let these go and the sooner they go the better. ' LORD SALISBURY ON SOCIALISM. In the House of Lords, on the iQth May, 1890, the Earl of Wemyss made a speech, denouncing the "Socialism of the Senate," in passing or advancing measures which implied the confiscation of private property, and the curtailment of individual liberty in the right of Free Contract. This speech seemed like a far- off echo of the Duke of Newcastle's " Cannot I do what I like with my own ? " in the first Reform Bill campaign. The Marquis of Salisbury replied in substance as follows : LORD SALISBURY ON SOCIALISM. 7 "Every question has to be discussed, not on its philosophical origin or its technical classification, but on its own merits. He took socialism in its strict meaning to be for the State to do a thing which hitherto and usually was done by private people for the sake of gain. There was nothing so socialistic as the Mint and the Post Office. New dangers had arisen in consequence of the development of their civilization and industries, and for which they had to find new remedies. The socialistic proposals indicated the great evils which they were brought forward to remedy ; and nobody, who was not absolutely blind, could deny the existence of these evils. They were evils to the existence of which the Emperor of Germany testified in summoning the recent Conference. They had undoubtedly come upon an age of the world when the action of industrial causes and economic influences had produced great centres of misery, and had added a terrible catalogue to the ills which flesh was heir to. It was their duty to do all they could to find remedies for these evils. How far they could grapple with them, they could not know yet ; but they were bound to give to the task the best of their attention and the utmost of their ability, and even if they were called socialists in attempting to do so, they should be reconciled if they could find the remedies, knowing that they were undertaking no new principle, or striking^ out no new faith, but that they were pursuing the long and healthy traditions of English legislation." These were wise and bold words of the Prime Minister, of a man who, with many faults of temper STKI'IMNll-STONKS TO SOCIALISM. and of will, is yet, we trust, one in our roll of statesmen " Who know the season when to take Occasion by the hand, and make The bounds of freedom wider yet." But fully admitting the usefulness and importance of legislation ever keeping in touch with, and even leading in, the van of progressive thought, we may remark that legislative enactments do not, as a rule, effect all, or nearly all, the results which were hoped for by their advocates, or were feared by their opponents. To the old Chartist agitators, Universal Suffrage was to be the sure and certain panacea for all political evils ; to Conservatives it was to be a perilous "leap in the dark," "a shooting of Niagara," with a sequel of anarchy and confusion constitutional England lost for ever ! Now, after years of practical experience of what is virtually universal suffrage, protected by the ballot, a Conservative Government is in power, and there are yet some bad old laws on the Statute Book. The chief hopes for a better future, for an enlightened progress towards more bene- ficial social arrangements, lie in the education and moral advancement of all classes in the community ; but this education and higher morality will ever be largely aided by wise and sympathetic legislation, making it, on the whole, easier to do right and harder to do wrong. Note further, in the language of Lord Salisbury,' another confirmation of how easily, with what ready compliance/ utterly unconscious of wrench or of inconsistency, the old use-and-wont adapts itself to all the changes which are brought about by the whirligig of LORD SALISBURY ON SOCIALISM. 9 time. A new idea, whether in philosophy or in the business of common life, which has in itself the elements of truth or of adaptability, passes, as a rule, through three phases : first, of active opposition, or of silent, careless contempt ; secondly, it is worth investigating a little faint praise, and "almost thou persuadest me;" and lastly, of general acceptation, most people then thinking that they always thought it was the right thing ! And these three phases so run into and blend with each other that there is seldom any feeling of incongruity, of conversion or change of front. The Church which compelled Galileo to abjure as heretical his teaching of the earth's movements now numbers amongst its ecclesiastics many earnest and efficient practical astronomers. Beliefs in a literal six-days' creation and in a universal deluge were, within the memories of many of us, tests of orthodoxy ; such beliefs would now, as contrary to the generally-accepted method of creation, and of the ordinary course of nature, be accounted superstitious. When Robert Chambers wrote his " Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," he published it in strictest anonymity ; otherwise, social ostracism would have been the penalty. Now, the theory of evolution, as the all-prevading law of the universe, obtains general credence. The political party, which has not heretofore distinguished itself as a prime mover in the cause of comprehensive National Education, is to-day putting into practical shape what the rival and more pronouncedly popular party had ventured to suggest only with bated breath and feeble hopes of realisa- tion that the cost of this education should be 10 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM, borne by the State, that to the recipients it should be free ! So, when in the Imperial Parliament the old Norman- French words, " La Reine volante," or whatever form may then be in ordinary use, as the constitutional confirmation of Bills which had been thrice read in both Houses shall have been pronounced on measures, which would now be deemed wildly socialistic, they will fall as mere matter of course, and as if Parliament were still quietly "pursuing the long and healthy traditions of English legislation." WHY THERE IS IN MANY MINDS AN ANTIPATHY TO SOCIALISM. To many persons, the very word is a fearful spectre, a Frankenstein monster, the incarnation of all evil : and these persons are not generally the more ignorant or the weaker-minded ; they are often men of culture and high character. There are various reasons for such aversion, but chiefly these two : i. In the past history of human society, beneficial changes in the life conditions of some, have generally meant detrimental changes in the life conditions of others ; elevation here has been balanced, nay, often overbalanced, by depression there. The important, labour-saving invention of the power-loom cheapened sheets and shirting, but brought want and misery to the hand-loom weavers. There is thus a natural fear that similar oscillations between better and worse, between fortunate haves and unfortunate have-nots* must ever be WHY THERE IS AN ANTIPATHY TO SOCIALISM. 1 1 the rule in social life. It is not easy to instil into the minds of its own advocates and much less easy into the minds of others a thorough recognition of the central principle of socialism, a general elevation in the elements of wholesome human life. No doubt this principle is folded up within the unopened calyx of the future ; and it has to be unfolded by new wisdom and new experience. But such an all-embracing elevation is hardly a necessary deduction from the history of the past ; and faith in it, a faith of hope and confidence which will remove mountains of doubt and distrust, will be but a slow growth in the minds of men. 2. Many who have assumed the position of leadership in modern socialism, and proposing universal peace and goodwill, mutual helpfulness and common brotherhood as the ultimate goal, have yet indicated such a rough, dangerous, and altogether forbidding road towards that goal a propagandism like that of old Islam by the sword through violence and vindictiveness, confiscation and coercion, that quiet, peaceful, kind-hearted people have stood aghast in natural revulsion and dismay. One high-priest in the gospel of what is known as International Socialism, thus affirms in an authoritative Manifesto : " The Communists declare openly that their aims can be attained only by a violent overthrow of the existing social order. Let the ruling classes tremble before a Communistic revolution." Hardly a hopeful prospect this for the early advent of changes for the general good and welfare ; essential to which are the earnest faith, the cordial assent, and the hearty co- operation of every class in the community. And the 12 STKPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. avowed principles of other self-constituted leaders imply that the delicately-adjusted organizations, which are also essentials in a new and improved order of society, are to be based on universal anarchy, on " every human being having the right and the means of doing that which pleases him, without being controlled by any govern- mental power whatsoever, whether the origin of such power was elective or imposed. The best governments are the worst." That men in any one class of our present society, with all hereditary taints and strains towards evil in their blood, and having been nurtured in a world saturated with malice and chicanery, sensuous lust and selfish ambition, should, in their ignorance and un- bridled passions, be allowed " to do what pleases them," seems a proposition too absurd for discussion, and would in practice only the instinct of self-preservation in society will never allow it to reach that stage be simply moral and social confusion. Shall it ever be safe for, and beneficial to society, that it shall be without law, its individual members doing as they like ? Yes, when they have been all so nurtured and developed as that their every liking and their every desire is towards the good of their fellows ; when they are so enlightened as to be able to forecast the ultimate effect, for good or for evil, of every word and every action ; when love, the new commandment of the teacher, has so saturated their hearts, their every motive and every passion, that they have become towards all that is noble and worthy, "a law unto themselves." We are so far from disbelieving in the possibility of man going on towards perfection, that we have absolute WHY THERE IS AN ANTIPATHY TO SOCIALISM. 13 faith in his so doing. But when we think for a moment on what must be the essential elements in such a high condition of humanity, general, practically universal wisdom and nobility of character, the thorough discipline of the temper and the passions, the life-habit of duty, of spending and being spent for others, we can but wonder at the ignorance and infatuation of imagin- ing that such exaltation could ever be attained through the lowest and worst passions of savagery. All the teachings of history are against such a supposition. A stream, stained and polluted at its source, cannot yield the living waters of social redemption. No absurdest fetich in oldest or most barbarous superstitions, no wildest legend of the fabulous in history were more alien to the essential nature of things, or had less of reasonable probability, than the idea of a peaceful Eden of human regeneration, growing out of hatred and revenge, out of social conflict and convulsion. We know how, in the face of so much wrong in the world, it is natural for sympathetic hearts to burn with hatred of the wrong, and, unless they are enlightened by a knowledge of the springs of human action, to include in this hatred the wrong-doer : But we also know that the higher laws of wisdom and philantrophy will rise above the animosities and retaliations which are the instincts of savagery ; will go farther back than to the individual agent in eliciting the primary causes of evil and of wrong ; substituting for these causes other influences,, wherein the coincidence of individual with social good, shall operate only beneficially for all. 14 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. Another matter which many professed socialists think it is their place to meddle with, and to give their dicta upon, is the relative duties and privileges of the parents and the community of the future, in regard to children. In his recent Encyclical, the Pope has felt it to be his duty to re-affirm the rights of parentage, as against the claims made for the State. Older than any State, and more closely bound up with the life of the individual, the family cannot, he avers, be sacrificed to the new theorists, who are for setting aside the most sacred and most cherished traditions of human nature. The instinctive idea with parents is, that their children belong to them, are their very own ; and in many savage peoples, and even in peoples living in a quasi- civilisation, the parents have assumed the power of life and death over their offspring. But nature endows the child , with a magnetic power of inciting love and its beneficial influences in the minds of its parents. In the animal world, we find this principle to hold universally true, that, the greater the needs of the offspring for nurture and protection, the stronger is the parental instinct of careful affection ; the longer the period pf weakness, and of inability to sustain its own life in the young, so concurrently extended is the period of parental care. No young animal is more helpless to sustain of itself the life which it has inherited, than is the young humanity ; and in no other does the period of inability extend through so many years. In full equilibrium with this long continued helplessness is the parental affection, and its outcome in nurture and protection. This natural adaptation is the rule and tendency of WHY THERE IS AN ANTIPATHY TO SOCIALISM. 15 life ; but counter influences will interfere with, and weaken the instincts of, nature. A woman of fashion will often, in the pursuits of personal pleasure, neglect her own children, handing them over to hirelings. A drunkard will look upon his offspring as drags upon his sensuous gratifications, will starve or even desert them. The State has often to take upon itself parental duties ; and it has also to protect its own interests, by seeing that children are so brought up as to become good and proper citizens, instead of being burdens upon it, or, worse than mere burdens, cankers, eating into and corrupting its very heart. And so the State says that parents shall not be allowed to ill-use their children, to insufficiently feed or clothe them, to bring them up in ignorance, or send them too early to work. Lycurgus, the Spartan lawgiver, had the idea of making public principle and utility predominate over private interests and affections ; and on that idea he ordained that children were not to be the property of their parents, but of the State, which was to direct their education, and determine their modes of life. A better idea with the legislators of the future the number of whom will be equal with that of all wholesomely- developed men and women upon the earth will be to take fullest advantage of all natural instincts. The parents, their hearts ever yearning with love for~ their offspring, and the community, careful of its individual members, co-operating with each other in placing the children under all good influences towards that develop- ment, which, being the best for their individual lives, will also coincide with what is best for the general 1 6 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. welfare. For this end, the experience of the past, and the higher wisdom of their own times, will far better qualify them to judge of fitting means and methods than we can now either surmise or suggest. Another reason for a dislike to socialism, as commonly advocated, may be, that, in a question on which, above all others, there is sure to be a great diversity of opinions, and no one, however gifted, can possibly see clearly all round, many propagandists majce irritating assumptions of infallibility. The common rights of all men are proposed as the leading objects ; and yet these advocates would try to cramp and compress all other minds into the shapes and dimensions of their own necessarily circumscribed minds. " I am Sir Oracle," is ever an offensive dictum ; ever rouses opposition and resentment. Of all bigotries and intolerances, surely the worst, as most incongruous and out of place, are those which masquerade under guises of free thought and advanced opinion ; in which, with the noble word Liberty on the lips, the spirit of the Inquisitor is still lurking in the heart. The old Puritans sought the New World that they might there enjoy liberty of conscience, and alas for poor human nature they there denied that liberty to others. Diversities of opinion demand in our days something beyond that old condescending term toleration. Toleration of a man's honest thoughts by his fellow-men, does not imply equality of rights, or yield due respect to others, but is an assumption of superiority. Wrong opinions of any kind will, some- when and somehow, produce evil ; and it is ever a wise ON SOME SOCIALISTIC VIEWS OF MARRIAGE. 17 policy, as well as a high duty, for the better informed to endeavour, by frank and full discussion, to change them into right opinions. But, knowing how varied circumstances and springs of action mould thought and character into all their diversities, a true fraternity will treat discordant opinions with tenderness and discretion, with reverence even, not rudely plucking up the tares, lest thereby the good wheat also be uprooted. ON SOME SOCIALISTIC VIEWS OF MARRIAGE. On certain matters in the social life of the future which only concern that future, which do not at all affect present purposes and developments, and which it is simply a usurpation of future rights to meddle with, some of our modern Socialists have uttered their authoritative tironundamento. We have alluded to the questions of the future of religion and of the care of the young, we now instance that of marriage. The question of sex meets us, not merely in its broadest purpose and distinction, but at every turning in life. Its influence broods over society, over literature and art ; it enters with us into nature's solitudes ; monastery and nunnery walls cannot shut out this essential factor in the constitution of humanity. In the consideration of any proposed change, social or political, it is of equal importance to enquire how would this change affect women, will it raise or lower their character and position, will it expand or contract the development of their womanhood ? as it is to enquire how will it affect men ? 1 8 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. The relationship of the sexes has varied considerably in the historical past ; but the general rule, even in savage life, has been a persistent and an abiding union between one man and one woman, joining to each other in early maturity ; the man, as a rule, providing the necessary subsistence for the family, and protecting it from danger ; the woman cooking the food, rearing the offspring, and doing the necessary domestic work ; the pair Nature's unit of life sharing together all the fortunes of life. There have been divergences from the general rule. There has been polygamy, chiefly amongst Asiatic peoples, not a happy or very sensible modification, which Nature herself, in the numerical equality of the sexes, plainly repudiates. There have been savage nations where husband and wife had to be of different tribes, and the children were considered to belong to the mother's tribe. There have been different opinions, with their consequent customs, as to the degree of relationship by blood which was preclusive of marriage. And there have been different institutes and customs, regarding divorce, the dissolution of the marriage-bond, with more or less of motive and qualification. There can be very little doubt that the natural and instinctive union of the sexes, the kind which promises the greatest individual happiness and the best results for the community, is permanent marriage. Only to such a union does the strong, all-mastering passion of love ever with the advancement of civilisation and refinement, waning in sensuousness, waxing in ideality point and belong ; on any other foundation love is only mockery and pretence. The outflow of the family affections, ON SOME SOCIALISTIC VIEWS OF MARRIAGE. 19 parental, filial, fraternal, and the proper training of children, are all rooted and bound up in the permanency of the marriage-bond. No doubt, society will in the future, here as elsewhere in its economy of life, introduce what modifications it thinks fit and proper ; of these, its increased wisdom and experience will enable it to judge far better than we can now judge for it. Anyway, it will have the entire responsibility of its acts, and be its own Court of Appeal ; and whilst, in these days of free discussion, we cannot place any enquiry, however useless and inapplicable to present purposes, in an Index expurgatorious, it seems utter foolishness and a gratuitous dissipation of energy, to complicate social questions and create needless prejudice, by statements and assertions on matters entirely beyond the scope of present-day discussions. Yet it is natural for man to project himself into the future, to labour with hand and brain upon works which will long outlast his own little life ; the fruitage from which, indeed, may only appear when he himself has long ceased to be. We can only balance our own indebtedness to the past, and make our great heritage therefrom truly and justly our own, by working for the future. Let us, in science, place on record all discover- able data in astronomy ; the present heights of mountains, the contours of sea margins, the currents and soundings throughout the seas ; the climatic ranges, the isometrical lines of temperature, the magnetic variations, the prevailing courses of the winds. In art, let us bore tunnels, cut canals, and make our docks and bridges stable and lasting as the pyramids. For all these 20 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. things the future will be grateful to us, and speak well of us. But don't let us trouble ourselves about the social economy, the domestic habits, or the philosophy of the future. In its riper age, it will, in all such matters, be well able to think and to act for itself. We know, of course, that there are in present society many unsatisfactory marriages, uncongenialities, misfits, with consequent unhappiness, separation of heart, if not personal separation ; sometimes even unfaithfulness to the " each-to-the-other " marriage- vow. A nobler develop- ment, a higher-toned morale in the future, will do much to prevent such unhappy marriages, or to mitigate the detrimental results from the comparatively few which may prove unsatisfactory. " Falling in love " will then be less a haphazard boy and girl conceit ; more a result of mutual knowledge, of calm judgment and thoughtful consideration. The careful training of both sexes will have inculcated prudence, a weighing and balancing habit of mind, the desire for, and the enlightenment to discover mutual adaptability. And all the bents of mind and character in both sexes will be towards chastity before marriage, towards faithfulness to the future husband, or the future wife. One grossly deteriorating factor in present social life, the brand of servility to mere animalism, will then have vanished from the earth, have gone with the wolf and the tiger, the small-pox and the prison. Who can doubt this who has any faith at all in the capability of men and women rising above their meaner selves in the ultimate victory of the spirit over the flesh ? THP] QUESTION OF PRIVATE PROPERTY. 21 THE QUESTION OF PRIVATE PROPERTY. We read that in some of the Primitive Christian Fellowships, all property was held in common, "and distribution was made to every man according as he had need." This striking picture of a social phase in relatively ancient life, is sometimes referred to as fore- casting the climax of all our civilisations, the ultimate bourn of all our socialistic philosophies. Of course this early effort towards Communism was the outcome of enthusiasm in the new faith of a Heavenly Kingdom, to be forthwith established upon the earth. It was on a comparatively small scale, and probably did not continue very long, or spread very widely amongst the new proselytes. The idea, as a still binding duty from the early example, has been taken up in recent years, and worked out with fair success, but also on a small scale, and under religious zeal, by the American Shakers and some other sects. The Christian Communists of over eighteen centuries ago, did not think that the private retention of property was the main pillar in a nobler, more divine fabric of society. We read, " And not one of them said that ought of the things which he possessed was his own ; but they had all things common." And here questions arise : If all the trends of opinion, and the remorseless logic of events, point to the common use of all the products of nature and all the constructions of art, as being a better use than would be made of them under private owner- ship, is it only under the fervour of religious faith that such better use is practically possible ? -A&d if the fUHIVBRSITTl 22 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. future, in its ever increasing freedom of thought and its diminishing regard for old authority, gives but faint promise of such a faith being then prevalent ; are there any other elements in man's nature, any forces other than religious zeal which might then come into play, to make practicable a common ownership of all wealth, and its administration for the common good ? We know that whatever men set up as their summum bonum, their chief good will often absorb all the best energies of their nature, be the one earnest purpose in their minds, the master-motive in all their actions. The patriot, to whom his country or nationality is the highest good, will, for this ideal, freely give his life. John Brown's detestation of negro slavery so permeated every fibre of his being that he counted as nought all other evils, even death itself. And what we would account mean or even vicious ideals will often be the all-swaying influences of life. A miser's insatiable thirst for gold will be the ruling passion, stronger than love of life, for the sole gratification of which life is worth living. The gamester will, in his play-madness, fight death itself, his trembling fingers clutching at the cards, when the grim antagonist disputes with him for the final deal. Old feuds have passed on for generations from sire to son, and their consummation in one hour of vengeance has been the goal of highest purpose and endeavour. And doubtless, in man's social development, elements in his nature which, in a confusion of interests, have generally hitherto worked for evil, may be so trained and directed, as that their active operation shall be only towards the common good. THE QUESTION OF PRIVATE PROPERTY. 23 The two questions then Which of the two modes of holding property, individually and collectively, is more likely to be the better mode in an advanced society? and, If community of ownership appeared to be the better mode, is it possible, taking human nature as it is, and with no aids from faith, other than faith in man's will, ever to do what seems to him in the broadest sense best for himself to realise permanent Communism ? would thus be resolved into only the former question. For the more beneficial methods in all things relating to human society are entirely within men's own choice and discretion. Nothing is too good to be true ; man can attain to all his aspirations, the attainment to which would be well for him. And it needs no argument to prove, hypothetically at least, that in a world teeming with an abundance of all the elements of wealth, it is better that all should be share- holders and co-partners in this wealth, than that it should be in the hands of individuals, subject to their caprice or neglect, their waste, their hoarding up, or their misuse. Even now, the principle that every human being is, as such, entitled to a subsistence, is admitted amongst civilised nations. About one million of persons in England are thus, under the designation of paupers, maintained at the public cost. But it is often urged that the fear of want, or the discomfort and degradation of pauperism, is now the spur to individual effort ; take away this spur in the assurance of joint-ownership in the aggregated wealth of the country, and very many would abandon work, and serenely look on in lazy idleness at the industriously- 24 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. inclined doing all the work. Men, such as are here indicated, are a natural outgrowth from present society where so many non-workers are better off, and assume a higher caste than the workers ; where labour is often drudgery, often ill-paid, and individually precarious. Out of this condition of things, a growth of idlers, tramps, and paupers springs up as naturally as thorns and thistles in a neglected garden ; and, so long as there continues to be many such wastrels of life floating on the surface of society, or submerged in its slums and hidden recesses, so long will the advent of the longed for New Order of society be postponed. When labour is dignified by being shared in by all, as much a factor in daily life as eating and sleeping ; when, being within the amount due to healthy exercise, it is seldom other than pleasurable ; when, above all else, it has been grafted as duty into the character, as much a portion of being as eyesight and hearing, the shirking by capable men of their fair share of work will have become a tradition of the past. One professed socialist has asserted in a terse phrase, often quoted : "All property is theft." Of course, any- thing obtained wrongfully, by unjustifiable means, is theft. Jacob, taking mean advantage of famishing Esau, stole his elder brother's birthright ; but, on the face of it, surely property which has been acquired by personal labour, or by other means which have not been detrimental to others, may be said to be rightfully possessed. It is another question, opening up a new field for discussion, whether, under different social THE QUESTION OF PRIVATE PROPERTY. 25 arrangements, it would not be wisdom, for the general good, and even to the advantage of the individual owner, to throw such acquisitions into a common stock. Lord Bramwell says in a recent article in the Nineteenth Cen- tury: " Private property exists of right in such things, and to such extent, as is for the good of the community ; if it can be shewn that the existence of private property is not for the good of the community, then it ought to be abolished." So, according to the learned judge, the question of holding property is to be put to the touchstone test of how does its personal ownership affect others ? and we cordially accept the proposition. We are repeatedly told that we must respect the rights of others. We acknowledge this to be our bounden duty ; all true socialism must have this as one of its fundamental axioms ; but the term requires specific definition. A man's rights can only include things affecting his own being and personality. They are thus bounded and circumscribed ; they cease when they infringe upon the rights of others. I have a right to walk along the foot- path of a public street ; but I have no right, by racing along or by keeping on what is understood to be the wrong side of the footpath, to jostle against or to obstruct other travellers. A man's dwelling-house is said to be his castle ; but we send in the nuisance inspector to see that it is in a sanitary condition.* We say that a * In an article on gambling in the Nineteenth Century r , Sir James Stephen makes a remark which should be taken to heart by those who hold that gambling in private houses is the free exercise of individual liberty. "True as this answer is, it is very unwise to rest the defence of private habits upon a ground which involves an admission that they would be criminal if practised in public." 26 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. man has no right to bring up his children in ignorance, to train them in vice, or to corrupt them by bad example. We even deny the right of a man to do what he likes with himself to go naked, to starve himself, to mutilate his body, or destroy his own life. A magistrate fines a man for being " drunk and incapable." We hardly admit a man's right to destroy wholesome food, or to lock it away in a time of scarcity in expectation of higher prices ; and this although he could shew receipts in full for its purchase, or had grown it on land which was technically his own. And it is coming to be held that a man has no right to say that any portion of the soil, which is the natural heritage of the race, shall be left barren or com- paratively unproductive ; and the rich are themselves more and more feeling that they ought to be only stewards of their wealth, giving account to their fellow- men and to their own consciences how they use it. The millionaire, Mr. Andrew Carnegie, holds that no man has a right to die wealthy. Mr. Gladstone proposes a brotherhood of the rich, of those with surplus wealth beyond their wants as their consciences may determine these wants who should regularly set apart and expend the remainder for the good of their less-fortunate fellows. Accumulated wealth really means the power of commanding the labour of others, and it cannot be administered or dispensed without affecting others, with- out causing perturbations into ever-widening circles of influence. How it is administered is a pertinent public question a question which ought now to be put, which most certainly will be put in earnest in the future. Every expenditure of the products of mental and physical THE QUESTION OF PRIVATE PROPERTY. 27 labour will have to answer to the challenge Is this the wisest and best expenditure for the general good ; or, will it tend to perpetuate caste, class separations of interest, and an order of human beings with highest capabilities, the main business of whose life is personal pleasure ; will it induce idleness or cause profitless labour ; will it foster foolish wants and create useless occupations ? The individual right of holding private property is the prescriptive basis of present society. " This is mine \ that is thine " is the covenant, sealed by old usage, countersigned by mutual agreement. To peremptorily abolish this right would create general anarchy and confusion, the very worst condition from which to date a new and better era in social life. All attempts to out- march the spirit and development of the current age will be failures, as such attempts have ever been ; but historic marches to triumphant issues have often been through many failures, interspersed with re-action and disaster. Man is naturally conservative, slow to loosen his grip of the things to which he has by labour and difficulty attained ; and, although he may thus often seem to hinder his own progress, well for him he is so constituted. The New Order has to grow out of the Old Order, to grow as naturally as an oak grows out of an. acorn. If, as we firmly believe, individual holding of property will cease, or practically cease to be a factor in human society, it will not be by confiscation, or legal enactment, or a general relinquishment of individual rights, but from its having run itself fairly out, by the gradual absorption of private into public or collective property. 28 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. And such a process is now taking place, not perhaps with sufficient rapidity to satisfy the sanguine or the enthusiastic, but perhaps in the way in which Nature accomplishes her greater changes in the material world, " hastening not, resting not." The changes in opinions, the new driftings in our politics, the many discoveries in science, the general progress in the arts of life, the realistic tendencies in literature, the more humanitarian voices from the pulpit, and the more sympathetic tone of the daily press, which we have witnessed within 'the last quarter of a century, all foreshadow that the wheels of the great world's life will turn more swiftly in the future than they have ever done in the past. A compass of events which would formerly have been deemed the sufficient work of a century, will now be represented by the issues of a generation, and may yet represent the work of a single decade. We are to be less afraid of lethargy in the future than of feverish haste and over- excitement. What are all our ever-increasing public institutions our Board schools, colleges, and museums, our parks, public libraries, and lecture halls, our water and gas works, our docks and railways, our hospitals and churches, our army, navy, and police establishments, even our workhouses and lunatic asylums but advanced posts of socialism. They all asseverate, with ever firmer voice, the higher economy and efficiency of united interests, and that the care, the education, the welfare of the individual is the business of the community. There is Communism even in our National Debt ! Governmental laws are every day interfering more and THE QUESTION OF PRIVATE PROPERTY. 2 9 more with the right of Free Contract. Women and young persons are restricted within certain hours of labour. Employers cannot be released by the consent of their workpeople from the provisions of the Employers' Liability Act. Irish landlords are restrained from receiv- ing what Public Boards say are over-rents. A legislative restriction of the hours of adult male labour, in mines at least, is looming in the near future ; so are popular powers in restriction of the liquor traffic. The workers will themselves accomplish a general eight hours' day of labour. Some years ago, Government took over the telegraph system, managing it in conjunction with the admirably-conducted postal system. Probably there are those now living who shall yet travel over the country on Government railways. Whether we like it or not, bureaucracy governmental administration in depart- ments is in the ascendant, and it is working for socialism. And, when we speak of government in the future, let it be fully understood what we mean. The old idea of government was of a power apart from, and independent of, the governed. The fast-flowing tide of democracy implies government by the peoples themselves, through their chosen representatives. The State, under whatever name, will come to be more and more the expression of the popular mind and ideal. The term government will lose its old significance, and may become altogether obsolete. Perhaps the name chosen to designate society in its corporate capacity may be the old one, of grand significance the Commonwealth. 30 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. THE OLD POLITICAL ECONOMY IS NOT THE WAY OF SOCIAL SALVATION. The system of social philosophy, of argument and hypothesis here indicated, comes to us with an authority of high names, and of a host of elaborate treatises, replete with striking illustrations, interesting facts, and exhaustive statistics ; and yet we do not give it a cordial greeting ; it strikes no sympathetic chord in our hearts ; its com- plexities bewilder and its deductions alarm us ; we name it " the dismal science ; " we shirk its study, even whilst sneering at its pretensions. But, in our consideration of the problems of socialism, we ought to know something of the old political economy. The dictionary gives its meaning as "the science of the production and distribution of wealth, as created by human industry, and possessing exchangeable value." Political economy may be called a science, just as grammar and rhetoric, logic, jurisprudence, and theology are sometimes called sciences ; but these are all relative and contingent matters, not, as are the natural sciences, absolute and unconditioned. We are often, by words and phrases, misled from the true meanings of things. Political economists speak of the laws of trade and commerce, the laws of demand and supply, the laws which regulate wages and the labour market, jiut as a natural philosopher would speak of chemical, mechanical, and biological laws ; but, in all human affairs, the human will is the leading factor ; but this will is contingent on time and circumstance, on the moral aptitudes, on the state of knowledge and of civilisation. OLD POLITICAL ECONOMY WILL NOT SAVE US. 31 If there is now one of the many "voices from the crowd," which, more than any other voice, carries with it a conviction of its deep-seated earnestness, it is the growing protest against the dicta of that political economy which would place the mal-adjustments in social life to the action of laws, absolute and immutable as laws of gravitation and chemical composition. Men are seeing more clearly day by day that all fluctuations in trade, .gluts and panics, restricted employment and "sweating," rates of wages, are as men make them ; that they are the palpable effects of competition, of strength and ability lording it over weakness and docility. They are coming to see that it is possible for society in the aggregate, under the wisdom which is learned from experience, to control, to modify and direct all its elements. Then, is not the reign of law universal ? Is social life beyond its operations, the outcome of accident, chance, hap-hazard ? If it were so, we could have no reasonable hopes of regeneration. It is only our belief our certainty that here cause and effect act as immutably as in the firmaments, that certain results will necessarily come from certain conditions, which gives us heart and hope, and a high assurance of better things. Against the dictionary meaning, and the old ideals of political economy, we place the higher conception of John Ruskin, when he defines it as " a system of conduct and legislature, founded on the sciences, directing the arts, and impossible except under certain conditions of moral culture." We take Ruskin's definition of political economy as a summary and an embodiment of the creed of true 32 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. socialism. It introduces an element which had no place in the old ideals. Men, as men in the truest sense, for whose use and advantage all trade and all the accumula- tions of wealth ought only to exist, the very raison d'etre^ " the reason for their existence," were hardly, in the older systems, taken into consideration. They were simply as counters in the game, "hands" to labour in the produc- tion of wealth, to compete with each other for cheapness, rapidity, and precision in this production. Political economy was authoritative on the question of how many men ought, under a proper division of labour, to be employed in the manufacture of a pin ! But it did not think that it was any part of its business to explain why, with vastly improved means of production, the condition of the labourer remained unimproved ; or to consider, not at what minimum cost a pound of raw cotton can be made into cloth, but how, under what arrangements, cotton can be spun and woven, so that the human machines employed in the process could secure shirts for their backs, food for their bellies, and comfort- able homes to shelter in. All different phases of society have been each the expression and development of its own times, the in- carnated spirit of its age. The family, under its patriarch, settling which portion shall locate to the east and which to the west ; the tribe, under its chieftain, uniting for common defence ; the nation under its king ; the serf under his feudal baron ; and now, in the development of free, individualist competition, the labourer under the capitalist. Competition signifies " strife for the attainment of an OLD POLITICAL ECONOMY WILL NOT SAVE US. 33 object, contention for superiority, rivalry." Does such a foundation of antagonism amongst its elements bespeak a sound and lasting superstructure of human society ? In the very nature of things, a harmonious, noble, and enduring pile cannot be raised upon such a mean base. Nature will not be cheated ; as is the seed sown, so will be the fruitage. We have spoken of law reaching into the moral world. We know that justice, benevolence, industry, and forethought bring their rewards ; whilst injustice, malevolence, idleness, and unthrift insure their due penalties ; and caste and disunion, a clashing and conflict of interests, must necessarily result from "rivalry and a contention for superiority." Would a Solon or a Lycurgus, if called upon de novo to project a social constitution for an intelligent and progressive race, ever hit upon mutual antagonism as his first principle of action ? Certainly, this individualistic scramble, this pitting of strength against weakness, of cunning against stupidity, is not a true economy of the powers of life. Much wealth is lost in the scramble ; scamped and pretentious work is largely produced ; contracts are taken at un- remunerative prices ; in the execution, the work is often done disgracefully bad ; at other times, many innocent persons will suffer more than the contractor himself. The watchword for the whole crusade against the present order of society is : Get away from old competition ! " Devil take the hindmost," has to be changed into : Let us help the naturally hindmost to keep pace with others in the race of life. Oh, ye men of genius, with capable minds and sympathetic hearts, here is a problem 34 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. for you, worthy of your highest powers, How can we contrive so that no one man shall rise on another's fall ? And do not for one moment imagine that balance sheets of imports and exports, and tall talk about " the flood- gates of commercial prosperity," are any offset or equipoise to the festering sloughs of poverty, failure, and mean conditions of life, in the dim background. The old platitude, " the greatest happiness to the greatest number," is now put to the question, Can there ever be true happiness neighbouring with, and akin to, misery ? There cannot be ; Te deum laudamus ! the world has not been so constituted. "WHO IS MY NEIGHBOUR?" Than Christ's parable of the Good gamaritan, no grander utterance on our relations with, and our duties towards, our fellow-men, ever dropped from human lips. From this beautifully told little story told too on the spin of the moment, in the Oriental fashion of answering a question we have two great lessons in social life : First, the common brotherhood of the race ; and that in distress, in the clutch of physical or moral evil, all men are in closest neighbourhood. The old spirit of national patriotism has been a great factor in civilisation, a buckler against aggression, it has promoted settledness in social life, a unity of purpose, the better tillage of a country's soil, the opening out of its mineral storage, the construction of roads and harbours, the birth of native laws and institutions. But it also kept up narrow views on the kinship of the race ; national interests stood before the interests of humanity ; national rivalries "WHO IS MY NEIGHBOUR?" 35 begot national animosities, and from these sprang wars and oppressions. As the gentle Cowper wrote " Lands intersected by a narrow firth Abhorred each other ; mountains interposed Made enemies of nations, which had else, Like kindred drops, been mingled into one." Man will ever naturally love the land of his fathers and of his own birth, ever dear to him the play-fields of his childhood, the rural vale where he first whispered of love ; but the restricted patriotism of the past is too narrow a cloak for the future citizen of the world to wrap himself in. And, secondly, that true philanthropy will ever concern itself first with the nearest duty. The stranger, travelling there on his ordinary business, did the right thing, approved by the critical lawyer whose questioning suggested the parable, approved by the great heart of the world, down through all the centuries in which it has been on record, in "showing mercy" to the poor man who had fallen amongst thieves. But if the Samaritan had been a dweller in those parts, his philanthropy should not have ended with his thought- ful and kindly directions to the host of the inn. He would then be in duty bound to do his utmost for the establishment of officers of law and order on that road, so to prevent future outrages upon peaceful travellers. And, if his was an enlightened philanthropy, it would have gone farther still ; it would even have included the thieves themselves ; he would have tried to make honest men of them, to get them to quit the devil's army of idleness and disorder, of violence, robbery, and general 36 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. unwholesomeness of life, and to enlist them in the army of righteousness, of order, and industry and sobriety of life. Christ ever taught that in the most debased heart there was still a spark of goodness which the breath of love might fan into a living flame. Thus read and expanded, this glorious parable is the manifesto of true socialism. Succour the near misery, and mitigate the near evil ; as far as you can, prevent misery and evil ; trace misery and evil to their sources, and there arrest their growth, nurturing in their places the tender shoots of goodness, to blossom into healthful excellence of life. THE CONDITION OF THE LABOURER HAS NOT KEPT PACE WITH PROGRESS IN THE ARTS OF LIFE. Last century witnessed the advent of the steam-engine, the spinning-jenny, the jacquard loom, and other notable inventions. The present century has much improved on all the older mechanism, and added many new inventions and adaptations : as gas and electric lighting, the steam-vessel, the railway, the power-loom, the printing machine, photography, the electric telegraph, and the telephone, the hot blast in iron smelting, new processes of converting iron into steel, and self-acting tools in iron working. The chemical and mechanical powers of nature have been more and more submitting themselves as docile and untiring servants of man. In Great Britain, and belonging to her seaports, there are steam- engines doubling in total power the physical strength PROGRESS, AND THE STATUS OF THE LABOURER. 37 of the whole population. In other words, there are two obedient slaves to work for every man, woman, and child upon our Island ; for him or her to drain the deep, dark mine, and heave out its teeming riches, to smelt ores, forge iron, to spin and weave, to thresh and grind corn, to load and unload ships, to print books and newspapers, to transport ourselves and our commodities over sea and land. With these largely increased means of production, there has been the creation of new wants and require- ments ; things which erewhile were considered luxuries, have come to be held as common necessaries of life. If there is the new mechanism to produce superior clothing fabrics, the desire to wear finer clothes is more general. If there is the art of stereotyping and the printing machine, the taste for reading is now almost universal. No doubt education and refinement bring with them discontent with the meaner ways of life. We know that health, the soundness and efficiency of all the powers of life, physical and mental, has its roots in moderation and simplicity. A healthy appetite does not require for its full and pleasureable satisfaction a multiplicity of elaborately prepared viands ; such often act detrimentally on the digestion and assimilation ; but even were they innoxious, the merely sensuous pleasure in eating is dearly bought by the labour and time spent in their production. But it is well that even in the minds of working men there should be an earnest desire to attain to all the really good things in cultured and refined life; that they and their families should have a sufficiency of 38 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. palatable' food, with due change of diet, and a more or less frequent flavouring of wholesome dainties ; that they should live in well-furnished, commodious, and cheerful homes ; be able to wear good, tastefully-made clothes ; be enabled to read the best books, hear the best music, and see the best works of art ; that they should have a fair amount of holidays, in which they could place their feet on the daisied turf and walk by the blossoming hedge-rows, or could saunter on the sea- shore and watch the inrolling waves. Culture and art, philosophy and science, have heretofore been considered the privileges of a caste ; the great mass, excluded from their knowledge and enjoyment, have been as much a servile race as was Israel in Egypt, or the helots of old Sparta. Is it against the nature of things that taste and culture should be broad-based upon popular appreciation, and their general diffusion throughout society ? Are the old-time restrictions a sure foundation for the maintenance of the higher life, even of the few ? Would the absence of an idle class starve science and literature and art? Surely in the heirship of Shakespeare, of Milton and of Wordsworth, of Newton, and Faraday and Darwin, all their countrymen are co-legatees, entitled to share and share alike. We have said that education creates new wants ; but it also brings with it the means of largely satisfying these wants. It enables a man to derive fresh pleasures from the common things of nature and of life, discovering in them ever new beauties and relationships with his own being. The scarped cliff, the striated boulder, are PROGRESS, AND THE STATUS OF THE LABOURER. 39 phonographed voices from the far past ; the old cathedral has English history written on its every stone. The new birth of life in an opening bud, the markings on an insect's wing, the fleckings in the clouds, and the changeful hues of sunset, are all, to the educated eye, marvels of ever increasing interest and enjoyment. Sometime ago, a leader amongst the coal miners was taunted that when times were brisk and wages high, the colliers were having roast turkey and champagne for their Sunday dinner. He answered, that he did not know if the charge was true ; but if roast turkey and champagne were really good things, he did not know of any class of men who were more entitled to them than these miners. Whilst we thus claim for the workers a share in all the best things in civilised and refined life, we urge no plea against labour itself ; this would be the extreme of ignorance and folly ; the work of the world has ever to be done. But we are surely justified in demanding that, with our immense resources, the labour of every man should be reasonable in amount, should be somewhat near an equality with the work to be done, divided by the number of hands to do it ; always taking natural ability into account, the weaker not expected to do an equal amount of work with the stronger. And further, that the labour should be performed under as healthy and agreeable circumstances as science and experience can secure for it. In making these claims for labour, are we asking too much? What are the ends and purposes of all our brain-racking new inventions and improvements upon old methods, our time and labour-saving processes in 40 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. manufactures, our locomotives skimming at eagle speed over the land, our full-freighted steamships traversing all seas? Is the sole aim of all these things a result in arithmetic ? are they ultimately all resolvable into profits, premiums, percentages, and the sum-total of our annual exports ? A poor investment of mind and nerve, of life-purpose, and of life itself, if it be so. We do not say but what, taking the condition of the working classes all round, it has greatly improved within the last half century. The working time has been shortened generally, and the factories and workshops have been made more sanitary; as a rule, the rates of wages have been fully maintained, whilst the purchasing power of money has except perhaps in house rent considerably increased. These improvements have obtained more generally in those skilled trades which were better able to organize themselves into societies, for mutual aid and common protection. But, even in the lower grades of labour, there has been considerable amelioration. No wiser measure was ever passed into law by our Imperial Parliament than the Ten-hours' Factory Act ; and we well remember with what grave doubts and pessimistic forebodings, amongst even good men and progressive politicians, that Act was passed. It was an interference with, and a disturbance of, Free Contract of that let-aloneism which gave a free hand to competition, enabled us to undersell the foreigner, and allowed fullest play to the laws of political economy ! Yet, strange to say, with shorter hours to women and girls, and " half-time " and schooling to children employed in factories, came increased trade, higher profits to the PROGRESS, AND THE STATUS OF THE LABOURER. 41 manufacturers, and higher wages to the workpeople. Another notable lesson in social economy that the thing which common sense, common justice, and common humanity dictate as the right thing to do, it is, as a rule, and taking little heed of side issues and possible consequences, the best, safest, most profitable thing to do. To good measures, founded on justice and morality, all things will, sooner or later, loyally adjust themselves. The maintenance of wrong means the continuance of discord and mal-adjustment. But there is still in a multitude of instances very much of drudgery, poverty, and precariousness in the world of labour. How often is the physical frame worn down and brought to premature decay by over-work, by unwholesomeness in the working conditions, or by dull and tedious monotony in the occupation. Man is not so constituted in reference to the great round world, with its marvellous grandeur, its beauty and fertility, as that he with all aids from his arts and his sciences must spend the greater portion of his span of operative existence in painfully scratching out a bare subsistence. All nature the bright sunshine, the field flowers, the lambs at play in the meadows, the lark's blythe carol in the sky tells of abundance, and a joyous exuberancy of life ; but man has drifted into a form of society in which all men do not labour, and in which a great part of the labour performed is of no real utility. Labour which strikes out no scintillation of intellect, and awakens no invigorating gleams of thought, requiring only mechanical attention, spirit-deadening from its sameness and con- tinuity, is performed without heart, or soul, or sympathy 42 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. with the work. But the true labour of cultured, high- thoughted men ought to be spontaneous, congenial, and properly diversified ; every stroke of the smith's hammer ought to ring out music from his soul ; every delve of the spade ought to be a pulse-throb of joyous life in the husbandman. Who can imagine apathy or indifference about his work in Shakespeare, in Christopher Wren, or in Turner? But, it will be said, the meaner kinds of work have to be done, and those who follow mean occupations, do so by their own free choice ! To which we reply : No work ought to be considered mean or degrading which is necessary in the service of humanity. Old George Herbert avers that doing it in a true spirit " Makes drudgery divine Who sweeps a room as for His laws, Makes that and the action fine." And John Ruskin writes : " For there is no action so slight nor so mean but it may be done to a great purpose, and ennobled therefore ; nor is any purpose so great but that slight actions may help it, and may be so done as to help it much." The Theban general, Epaminondas, to whom Cicero assigned the first place amongst the heroes of Old Greece, was caballed against by rivals, and sentenced, as a mark of degradation, to superintend the cleansing and the sewers of the city. A meaner man would have sulked over this, would have shirked the duties, or performed them negligently ; Epaminondas went into these duties with such energy and zeal that he made the city sweet and wholesome. Nursing sick and wounded soldiers, amidst the unspeakable horrors of PROGRESS, AND THE STATUS OF THE LABOURER. 43 Scutari, was not refined or pleasant work for a high-bred lady ; yet when, in connection with this work, we pro- nounce one name, it quivers on our lips, and thrills through every fibre of our frames. In the many idiosyncrasies of our nature, there are persons with natural inclinations and adaptations for all kinds of work, who have their special hobbies in doing certain things which others have no desire to do, would rather shun doing. As to choice of occupation, it is in the present day, after a man has got into a special groove, generally that free-will which must choose between that and starving ! In a more matured state of society, when manual labour shall have lost all spurious, caste-branded marks of degradation, there will always be found willing hands to do all kinds of needful work. But, as an illustrious general and statesman of old Rome alternated between the chief conduct of public affairs and the labours of his home farm; or as a tent-maker of Tarsus varied his occupation by speaking and writing words which have been guiding lights of life down through the centuries, so will the smaller occupations of life, requiring less of mind, of skill, and culture, alternate with the highest form of work of which the individual nature is capable. One main object with every man will then be to give his very best for society, and a main object of society to get his very best out of every citizen. Swiftly the shuttle of individual life passes through the great web of humanity ; but, as it so passes, it weaves in its own special thread, which has its place and influence in that far-stretching pattern, which is ever shaping itself into more of beauty and of perfected design. 44 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. GOOD AND BAD TRADE : PRECARIOUS EMPLOYMENT. That the labour market is precarious and unstable ; that at all times there are, in almost every trade, numbers who could, and who most willingly ivould work, unable to find employment ; that these numbers are often, from the occurrence of commercial panic, glut, and crisis, suddenly augmented, whilst their decrease, even under renewed briskness, is gradual and protracted ; and that there is in the condition of the labouring class, a consequent uncertainty to all, and great wretchedness amongst those who are the particular sufferers, are facts, grievous but incontrovertible. It seems to be a necessary result from our modern civilization, from our rapid progress in science and art, from the enterprise and energy of our commerce, from our ambition to work for the world to almost force our commodities into every country, civilized or barbarous, under the sun that now shall the mechanism of trading industry act as under high-pressure, with turmoil and excitement, and then shall it slacken, deaden, and stagnate. At one time there exists a great demand, or there is the prospect of a great demand, for our goods, and every effort is made to produce these in quantity, and with all expedi- tion. A scrambling race ensues ; each capitalist or manufacturer is suspicious of his neighbours, fears they will reach the goal before him, that they will lead the market, and obtain a lion's share of the profits. In the domain of labour there is full employment ; wages are GOOD AND BAD TRADE : PRECARIOUS EMPLOYMENT. 45 raised, over-hours are worked, new mechanism is intro- duced, all goes " merry as a marriage-bell." What, sooner or later, then ensues ? A dark spot, no bigger than a man's hand, appears at the verge of the distant horizon ; a faint whisper of foreboding, a very breath of distrust is heard. By-and-bye, the dark spot has expanded into a lowering cloud, the whisper has become a threatening voice ; till at length the cloud spreads as a pall over the whole heavens, and the voice thunders of ruin, of confusion and dismay. Where now is the great demand ; the wild energy to produce ; the high wages, full employ, and over-time ? All gone ! all vanished ! The raw material is still abundant ; the workman is still there, nor hath his strength and skill deserted him ; the machines are still there, and ready for^action ; there are still many ill-clad backs in the wide world aye, even at home. But the animating spirit to work up the raw material, to employ the labouring skill and the ingenious machines, hath departed. As in a death by drowning, the corpse still contains the heart which so lately beat in warm fulness of life, bones and blood, limbs and muscles, brain and nerves, all are unimpaired ; but the animating spark hath fled, and all these things are but putrescent masses of dead matter. Then generally ensues a more or less lengthened period of stagnation. Many factories are closed, others are working short time ; furnaces are blown out ; steam- engines and machines a prey to rust ; ships are laid idle in the harbours ; many capitalists and employers are in a state of bankruptcy. And thousands of operatives are out of employment, not only for want of work, but the 46 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. machines, which were introduced when trade was brisk, now do much of the work which was formerly done by hand. And these unemployed operatives, by being a surplus in the market supply of labour, tend to depreciate its value, and to lower the wages of those who are in employ. The operatives know this well, and most trades have societies, the support of the funds of which, in bad times, falls heavily on the members. From these funds, a certain sum per week is given to unemployed members ; sometimes, indeed, to unemployed workmen of the trade who are not members of the society ; this not from charity or goodwill, but to prevent these men offering their services to employers at reduced wages. This self-taxation of the employed operatives may at times save their wages, but, in widely spread trades at least, which have a feeble organization, when the number of the unemployed becomes a considerable ratio, it is as inefficient and powerless as was Mrs. Partington's broom to stem the Atlantic. An over supply to the demand will effect its usual result, nothing within the power of the operative memorial, combination, turn-out will then prevent a fall in his wages. There is hardly a more distressing or humiliating picture in the whole range of social life, than that of a man with the acquired skill and cunning of his trade his deft fingers yearning for their accustomed work vainly searching for employment ; finding, as denial follows denial, that the great teeming world has no present use for him. "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick ;" and one common incident in the case may furnish matter for GOOD AND BAD TRADE : PRECARIOUS EMPLOYMENT. 47 curious reflection : It is not the best men, the sober, steady, home-loving men, the members of Institutes, the readers and thinkers, who, as a rule, have the best chance of obtaining employment. The more convivial, hail fellow-well-met sort of men, men, who, over pipe and pot, can talk about the odds on a particular horse, these have their chums in every neighbouring workshop ; and they, in a spirit of comradeship, will use their influence on behalf of their confreres. And, in the picture we have drawn, we ought, every one of us, to share in the humiliation and distress ; for it is a strong, heart-searching indictment against society, which has produced and now upholds the condition of things which includes such results. The " bad trade " has not come from an earthquake, a volcanic eruption, or a deluge of waters ; there has been no germination of microbes or bacteria to poison the social atmosphere and cause panic and disaster ; all the factors in the case are man-made, and could be man-altered. Burns wrote words which, coming from a true man's heart find sympathetic chords in every other true heart "See yonder poor, o'erlaboured wight, So abject, mean, and vile, Who begs a brother of the earth To give him leave to toil ; And see his lordly fellow-worm The poor petition spurn, Unmindful, tho' a weeping wife And helpless offspring mourn." But the "lordly fellow-worm," is only one little wheel in a complex, inter-geared train-work, to blame, as we all are, for the evils, the mal-adjustments in social life ; not 48 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. to blame individually, except so far as he may be individually deficient in benevolence, and the courtesies due from man to man, and more especially due to penury and misfortune. It is painfully interesting to watch the down-grade course of a family whose head has been struck by that social paralysis want of work. Neighbours may not for a time observe much change ; but, little by little, if employment comes not, whispers rise: "They are indebted to this and that other tradesman, they are back with their rent, the landlord has just been in ; the husband no longer shows a watch-chain, and did you notice, the wedding-ring is off the wife's finger ! The house appears scarce of furniture, they are often seen going to the pawn-shop, the children become ragged." Often the family all at once disappear, no one knows whither. And if such are the outward, visible evils, the moral evils are still more grievous. An idle artisan ! His right hand loses its cunning; a shiftless, lethargic look comes into his face ; his chances of obtaining work become ever fainter and fewer ; his time hangs heavy ; often he gets into evil company, becomes a drunkard, a mere loafer, careless of home, of family, of character. We do not say that nevermore can he redeem his life, and regain his old social standing ; there is ever hope that the root of goodness in every human soul, though stifled by foul weeds, and become arid and withered from neglect, may still possess some vitality some powers of recuperation. In the parable, the cares of this world, the deceitful- ness of riches, and the lusts of other things, were thorns GOOD AND BAD TRADE : PRECARIOUS EMPLOYMENT. 49 and thistles which choked the healthful growth of the good seed. But mean conditions of life will equally prevent a wholesome growth from that seed. The scrambling existence of so many of the wage-earners, now in, and now out of employment, the work often paid under the margin of a decent subsistence, this is not a condition favourable to the growth of pure morality, to the attainment of a high standard of character. The outward life ever re-acts upon, and largely moulds the inner life. On some strong natures, narrow means and uncertainty will develope thrift and economy, and more active endeavour ; but on the weaker natures, the pinch of poverty means loss of heart and endeavour ; unthrift when the weekly wage is coming in ; the pawn-shop and listless lounging at the street corners, in the first week of idleness. We quote some pregnant words from Mr. Tom Mann on the Royal Commission on Labour, in a recent number of the New Review : " We want work with regular wages, in order that food, clothing, and other commodities shall be always procurable ; and a com- mission made up of persons who believe this impossible had better not sit. To-day, at least 800,000 men are out of employment, and yet others are working over a hundred hours per week for ordinary wages. The Royal Commission have to point out the most practical way of altering this. There are season trades, as the tea trade, the Baltic trade, and the building trades, in the slack seasons of which, many thousands of workmen and their families are actually starving. Cannot a country like this make some better arrangement? For the well-fed 50 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. to declare that these matters right themselves, is but to foster the revolutionary proclivities of even the most possessed of men. These things do not right themselves, and, far better no commission, unless these questions are dealt with." ALL POPULAR MOVEMENTS ARE WATER- ING THE SEEDS OF SOCIALISM. Many of these movements do not on the surface appear as direct currents towards socialism ; but, observed more narrowly, thought over more deeply, it will be made evident that they all proceed from three ideas, which a trinity in unity together form the tap- root of socialism. i. That many things in present society are not right or satisfactory as they are ; 2. That it is possible, by new methods and regulations, to make these things better; and 3. That it is everybody's business, and will be seen to be for everybody's interest, to try to make them better. And so the advocates for higher education, open to all ; for temperance ; for social purity ; for increased protection for women and children ; for public libraries, art galleries, museums, parks, gymnasia, and baths ; for more restricted hours and ages of labour; for labour federations ; for co-operative institutions ; for Salvation Army schemes for the social redemption from the depths of the lost and fallen ; for mutual reduction in national armaments ; for international arbitration, are //, however varied in their objects, and each movement based on its own comparatively high significance, yet pulling in POPULAR MOVEMENTS HELPING ON SOCIALISM. 51 one direction. They are all shaking the dry bones of old isolation and let-aloneism ; they are all united in repudiation of, and protest against, that political economy which has so long lived on the falsity, that as things are, so for ever they are bound and fated to be ! The very latest of all the movements, that for work- men's pensions, to be provided for, partly by con- tributions from each workman during the working years of his life, partly by levies on his employers, and partly by State aid, is a very striking movement indeed. We do not call it a bid for popularity on the part of its pro- moters ; we have no doubt but what the majority of these are acting from good motives, are clearly seeing the tendencies of the times, and the trends of public opinion. Some of them may think that by giving what appear to be safe courses to the lesser streams of socialism, they may retard, divert, or even dam up the mightier currents which now seem sweeping irresistibly onwards. We think that in this they are entirely mistaken. Every fresh stage in the progress of socialism is a new Pisgah top, ever giving a clearer and nearer prospect of the promised land, ever raising fresh hopes and longings and strivings for its attainment ; every such stage will be a vantage ground towards reaching the next higher stage. Yes, and every new stage will be farther breaking down old prejudices, will be more and more shewing the hollowness of old fears. It never can be too much insisted on, until it penetrates the very inmost fibre of the socialistic propaganda, that the farther and more important stages can only be reached by the hearty 52 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. consent and the active aid and co-operation of all classes in the community. Before the realization of any scheme of society which claims to be a maturity in development, must be first a general conviction of its excellence, a general desire for its adoption. Once that conviction and that desire are rooted in the mind and conscience of a people, the mere machinery, the modus operandi, will be found without difficulty, will indeed be there, waiting at the door. Once it is felt to be essential for the welfare of the community that every one of its members should be cared for, then every one will be cared for. The ideal of the individual can seldom be attained ; life is short, its powers are limited, and circumstances are often adverse. But it is different with an ideal in politics or in social economy which has become rooted in a nation. The nation never dies ; its powers of effecting all of natural possibilities which it wills, are when it understands these powers and can use them aright unlimited, or limited only by its relations with other nations. When the general experience and tone of mind of the nations in the van of the world's civilisation have ripened into a knowledge of the true interests of social life, they shall decree, and shall be able to achieve general and abiding prosperity. When there has come to be a- general consensus of ideals, their realisation is as certain as is the continuance of the race. The present times may come to be known in social history as the age of Strikes. The word is hard and POPULAR MOVEMENTS HELPING ON SOCIALISM. 53 grating to the ear, and the idea which it conveys of conflict and disturbance is not a pleasant one, is not in consonance with that peace and goodwill amongst men which must be the prelude to the New Order in social life. A strike throws out of gear the mechanism of peaceful industry, produces personal and family suffering to the workmen engaged therein, cost and commotion to their fellow-w T orkmen, loss and business confusion to the employers, mutual irritation and mistrust, and even, at times, lawlessness, intimidation, and a weakened morale. What are the advantages? Perhaps, taken all round, and including all side issues, the monetary gains to the workmen would not shew very conspicuously on a general balance-sheet. And yet the workman knows that the strike is a weapon which he cannot let go ; he clings to it with an almost religious tenacity, persuaded that the loss and disaster which it frequently entails upon him, have their full equivalents in a more assured recognition of his status in the social domain, and of his purpose and his ability to maintain, or to further secure, his " rights." Through long ages, man has had to struggle for in- dividual freedom of action ; but he is finding out more and more in the business of life, the advantages of concerted action. Petty business concerns with small capitals have, with profitable economy, been giving place to great concerns with large capitals ; and the individual workman, finding that in these great concerns he had lost his relative importance, and that standing by him- self he was utterly insignificant, was driven to associate for the common safety with his fellow-workmen. United 54 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. labour was the natural set-off to accumulated capital ; and thus capital and labour, the twin-factors in profitable industry, have drifted into adverse com- binations ; too often breathing mutual vituperation and defiance, and striking at each other to their mutual detriment. Both forces are daily gaining experience, are testing their relative powers, and strengthening themselves for further conflicts. But it cannot always go on thus. The instinct of self-preservation will, in both employers and employed, seek for other ways out of their relative difficulties than mutual injury, conflict, and aggression. Their harmonious activities for the common good is a leading problem for the future ; and all attempts to solve this problem, as by courts of arbitration, and by the com- bination of profit-sharing with wage-earning, will be helping forward the great social movement. Trade- unionism is one of the many feeders of the ever ingathering stream of socialism ; its combinative powers will yet find other outlets of action than opposition to capital ; nay, there are signs now plainly discernible to the clearer-sighted, that, before very long, capital and labour will fraternize, will coalesce, and work in unison together. And when, in the spread of co-operative industries, there is this natural union, thriving under individual capabilities, in wholesome vigorous life, then is society within measurable distance from the confines of its promised land. Amongst the popular movements of the day, no one occupies a more prominent position than the movement POPULAR MOVEMENTS HELPING ON SOCIALISM. 55 for reduced working-hours, as a palliative to pre- cariousness of employment. A few years ago, any movement which would interfere with "free trade," which would attempt to regulate the production of wealth, would have been scouted by the popular school of political economy, as subversive of first principles. But the reign of Laisser faire, " let things alone, let them take their own course," is virtually over, very quietly it has passed away. It has now come to be considered reasonable that a more quiet and prudent system of trade would be better for the manufacturers, and would make the workmen's employment more regular, more equally diffused over the year; thus avoiding flushes of prosperity, dearly bought by succeed- ing periods of depression, by recurring gluts and panics, each crisis following the other at shorter intervals, and finding us less able to bear it than its predecessors. Too much of useful work is not now done on the whole, but it is done irregularly, by fits and starts ; by numbers of the working-class labouring long hours, or what is called "full time," whilst the remainder are either altogether unemployed, or are only in occasional work. Surely it would be much better for all to work in medium - } the wages would be more in proportion, that is, per hour of work, than at present, for .there would be fewer competing unemployed labourers. We are persuaded that, under a general system of working, say the popular eight hours per day, thus employing nearly all hands, the wages would, in a short time, be quite what they are at present, with ten hours of work. The profits also would be nearly what they are at present, 56 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. and more certain and equable ; whilst there would be a great saving in poor-rates, and in police, prison, and other public expenses. And the drain on the funds of the Trade Clubs in payments to their unemployed members, would be largely diminished. The "eight-hours' movement" holds the field at present, not only in our own country, but also on the continent, in the minds and the public activities of the working classes ; and, no doubt, this movement will, before long, be largely successful. There is a division of opinion amongst its leaders as to whether its purpose should be brought about by the action and general consent of the two parties who are more directly interested, the workmen and the employers, or made statutory by legislative enactment. Probably, it will virtually come in both ways. The workmen, if they are in earnest, and use aright their powers of combination, can achieve their purpose in most trades w r here numbers are employed together in workshops, on large under- takings, or on dock-sides. Parliament could modify the Factory Acts to meet the new requirements, and it could pass Acts regulating the working time in mines and on railways, and the police hours on duty ; and Government employees in dockyards and arsenals, in the Post-Office and the Coastguard, could be given the eight-hours' day ; but there are a great many trades and professions which it seems hardly possible for any restrictive enactment to reach the tailor, the shoemaker, the seamstress, and many others, working in their own homes, the sailor on the high seas, the physician in his practice, the " slavey " in the lodging-house, no possible inspectorship could POPULAR MOVEMENTS HELPING ON SOCIALISM. 57 oversee or control; but nearly all would in time come into touch with general opinion and example. And the supply in the labour market could well afford to allow the labourer a few more holidays to brighten and diversify his working-life. Heads of departments in businesses and public offices must and we do not blame them have their annual holiday-month ; junior clerks and foremen count on their summer fortnight in the country or by the sea-side. Every working-man ought to have at least a free week's remission from his daily task, for change of air and scene. It is interesting to read what Dr. Paley wrote more than a century ago, in advocating what no one would now ever think requires any advocacy the advantages of a seventh-day rest from labour : " Nor is there anything lost to the community by the intermission of public industry one day in the week ; for, in countries tolerably advanced in population and the arts of civil life, there is always enough of human labour and to spare. The difficulty is not so much to procure, as to employ it. The addition of the seventh day's labour to the other six would have no other effect than to reduce the price. The labourer himself, who deserved and suffered most by the change, would gain nothing." If, when Paley wrote his " Moral Philosophy," there was then " enough of human labour and to spare," there must now, with the ubiquitous steam-engine, and a multitudinous array of labour-saving mechanism in all the arts of civil life the prolific fruitage of a century be a far wider margin in the supply. And farther restrictions at each end of the life-term of 58 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. labour will also, with shortened hours, tend to render employment more uniform and less precarious. A few years ago, the legal age at which children are to begin work as half-timers in factories was raised from nine to ten years. A farther alteration, to raise the age to twelve years, was recently under Parliamentary discussion. The Bill will probably pass into law amended we query the amendment to eleven years ; but even this will be another step in the right direction. And the increase in Higher-grade Board Schools, supplementing by more advanced studies the ordinary seven standards, will tend to protract the educational period of life, and thus delay the entrance into the world of labour. And, promising to affect the farther end of the life- term of labour, there is, amongst other agencies, the new movement we have spoken of, for providing retiring pensions to workmen. It is suggested that, at say sixty- five years of age, a man shall cease from active work ; but shall thereafter, with the consciousness of having done his fair share in the work of the world, and with an assured income sufficient to keep his mind at ease against want and the workhouse be enabled to spend the evening of his days in serenity and peace. In a sense, the parish workhouse is the superannuation retire- ment for aged ratepayers, and ought to be a quiet and cheerful haven of well-earned rest ; but, to save the rates, the workhouse is made a restrictive and uncongenial retirement, is looked upon as a degradation, and instinctively shrunk from and disliked. It would be otherwise with the pension scheme now proposed; it would be carrying out generally, and under Government POPULAR MOVEMENTS HELPING ON SOCIALISM. 59 auspices, what is now done in many Friendly and Trade Societies so many years of membership entitling to a certain weekly amount during all the after life. And every improvement in the sphere of labour would tend to raise the status of labour itself. For manual labour is now considered if not a disgrace yet, as relatively, a lower and meaner plane of life than idleness. To get out, or to keep out of the rank and file of labour is looked upon as a high privilege, as an honour. The time-honoured behest to young manhood: "Do your best to succeed in life," is never, or very rarely, given on the supposition that success in life means being, or continuing to be, a workman. It means, " you are by fair means if possible, but by some means to do your best to evade the primeval mandate of life, ' in the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread.'" And so we have it that the learned professions are overstocked, our cities are thronged by mercantile adventurers, and crowds are hanging on to the skirts of what ought to be one of the smallest factors in social economy the mere distribution of wealth. When a suburb buds out into a dozen new houses, the corner-house must be a shop ! And so it has come to pass that, uhder this stampede from labour, out of some eight millions of able-bodied men and lads upon our island, who might all be effective producers of real wealth, either by their own hands' labour, or by usefully facilitating the labour of others, about three millions are either altogether idle, or are employed to little good purpose, many indeed mischievously employed. And this great host of non- effectives must, with all their belongings, be supported ; 60 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. their food must be produced, their clothing spun, woven, and made into garments, their dwelling-houses built and furnished, all by the work of other hands. Nay, more, although the " upper crust " of these non-effectives, like the lilies, "toil not, neither do they spin," they generally contrive to live in higher style than those who do the toiling and spinning for them. They fare more sumptuously, wear finer clothes, dwell in larger houses, have servants to wait on them, require expensive amusement, all of which must be provided from the only source of all human acquirement pride, pomp, and circumstance of affluence and magnificence labour ! Let us not be misunderstood. Under the present conditions of labour, we do not blame those who leave, or endeavour to leave, its ranks ; to do so would be both foolish and unjust; these are only following their reading of the natural instinct of self-preservation. To cope with this scramble from labour, we must enhance its relative position, make it more desirable, more respectable ; we must, as far as possible, root out all degrading and deteriorating influences ; preserve and foster every circumstance which tends to soften the asperities of working life, to relieve its hardships, and to assert its worthiness and dignity. But we may be told : " What does it matter although numbers do leave the working-ranks ? There is no lack in the supply of labour ; it is superabundant ; there are always many out of employment ; and, with their families, in poverty and distress. We ought to hail as benefactors of such, those who, by leaving the field of labour, make openings to be filled up from those whom no man had POPULAR MOVEMENTS HELPING ON SOCIALISM. 6 1 hired." Thus, the desertion from the army of labour, abstractly considered a great evil, entailing more work upon the remanent army, is yet declared to be, as things are, a great good a palliative to a still greater evil ! This anomaly furnishes matter for thoughtful reflection, as does that other common idea, when a ship is lost at sea, or a full warehouse burned to the ground : "No great matter, more work for working-men." There is something fundamentally wrong^ when evil is held to be a remedy for evil. And again, let us not be misunderstood. In speaking for usefulness in labour, we are not advocating bareness, or mere utility in the economy of life. Art and orna- mentation things dainty in design, costly in labour and material, are useful ; they educate the tastes, and make for refinement. The innate sense of beauty, which impels a savage to spend many moons in elaborately carving the paddles of his canoe ; or a Michael Angelo to, in his great temple, "raise the Pantheon on the Colosseum," will ever crave for its gratification. But the "joy for ever" from "a thing of beauty " ought to be a joy participated in by the many not monopolized by the few. We can hardly think of a poorer or more barren investment for genius, and the evolution of many generations of art, than for a painter to expend his very best of high thought,, of culture, and of technical skill on a picture, which, being sold, is thereafter immured in the seclusion of a rich man's gallery. 62 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. MODERN LITERATURE IN RELATION TO SOCIAL PROGRESS. There is a trite saying of the songs of a people, taking in the moulding of their national life precedence of the laws. National character and popular literature act upon and reflect each other. Rather strangely it seems that the literature, which has been one of the chief factors in modern civilization, should be one of ancient, oriental origin, adopted and naturalized in Europe. There can be no doubt that the long intimacy of our English people with the graphic pictures of life, the ever nearness to free open nature, the high tone of thought and aspiration, the fine imagery, and the grand diction of the book most generally found in the cottage homes, and familiar to all from childhood, has been a mighty influence in forming the character and directing the history of the nation. We are justly proud of our English heritage of native literature, stretching back for a thousand years. There are many world-renowned names in its annals names of men who have ennobled and enriched the language, and given it its impress and consolidation. But with its many excellencies, this literature has also had the trail of the serpent running through it. Much of the poetry and romance bright with wit, replete with clever portraiture and graphic scenes and descriptions have yet too frequently been ministrants to the lower passions, their tendency being to " exalt the brute and sink the man," as poor Burns writes. Amidst the many social changes in late years, there has been a growth in our ideas of MODERN LITERATURE, ITS WIDER HUMANITY. 63 sobriety, seemliness, and decorum. Not all the wit and literary talent of a Fielding or a Sterne although these would find it many readers would now insure a work through which a strain of impurity ran, or which made drinking deeply a manly art, a permanent place in the standard literature of England. Any success which sudden notoriety might seem to achieve, would be but short-lived. True, and " the pity of it," we have talented writers who appear to have a morbid liking for the unseemly ; and when these writers are of the sex to which we naturally look for the conservation and enforce- ment of delicacy in thought and expression, our regrets are the deeper. To the litterateur alike to male as to female writer the behest is : Thou shalt not profane the gift that is in thee, by throwing a false halo around grossness and impurity. Sensuousness is an essential factor in our humanity, and all natural functions and desires are wholesome, as they are necessary. But these functions and desires are apt to froth over into sensualism, when inflamed by circumstances which place them out of balance with corrective influences. In the old Greek legend, Ulysses would hear the fascinating songs of the sirens, but only when firmly bound to the mast, when under infrangible law ; the common seamen had their ears stopped so they could not hear, could not be placed under temptation ; only the diviner-souled Orpheus could listen free yet unscathed, his own finer harmonies drowned the siren-songs. The writer who, now-a-days, can take and keep firm hold of the world's heart, must have strong sympathies 64 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. with humanity, and a living faith in human progress. Of gentle Will Shakespeare it could be said, as was said of Milton, "his soul was like a star, and dwelt apart." Great men are the solitaires of the race. In his wonderful pictures of life, Shakespeare travelled beyond his own experience, into rose-tinted realms of fancy and fairyland. The courtiers, knights, and traders of his time, were comparatively uncultured, rude in speech and in action ; how much more so the common people. And thus he never so far broke through the realities of the ordinary life around him, as to depict a high-thoughted, noble-souled groundling ; he would in this have held no mirror up to nature. But there has been since Shakespeare's day a rising faith in man as man ; all on one level as to rights and duties, having like claims to social and political regard. Crabbe, who has been called " Nature's sternest painter, but her best," wrote in this faith of Isaac Ashford as " a noble peasant." So does Gray, when he suggests that amongst the rude forefathers of the hamlet, sleeping in the village God's acre, were " Hearts once pregnant with celestial fire, Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed, Or woke to ecstacy the living lyre." In this faith Walter Scott depicts homely Jeanie Deans ; she could not speak an untruth to save her sister's life ; but with this object she could face all personal perils, and undergo all hardships. As a sterling man a hero without fear and without reproach, Fenimore Cooper's Natty Bumpo ranks with the paladins of old romance. This faith was rooted in the heart of Charles Dickens ; and he lives in our hearts as the author with right MODERN LITERATURE, ITS WIDER HUMANITY. 65 instincts towards the true, the noble, and the good in our common humanity. By his loving genius, the lowly and common-place are raised into objects of high interest and regard. Perhaps Thackeray's genius was of a higher order in literature. But Thackeray sees humanity in its lower strata, from the view-points of gentility, and the windows of the Pall Mall Club : Jeames Plush, dropping his aspirates, always seems to get between him and his fellows at the base of the social pyramid. Tennyson sounds with the plummet of his genius into the depths and shoals of all phases of human life, throw- ing on all loveliness and grace, inciting to duty, giving courage and cheer to drooping hearts. Has he, in these later years, lost some of his earlier faith in humanity passed from the bright Jubilate of David into the vanitas vanitatum of David's pleasure-sated son ? In a measure, perhaps, although it may be unconsciously ; the lofty and rather exclusive social atmosphere in which he has lived and moved could not fail to influence. In his " Maud," the evils in society, the many falsities, the selfish hustling and competition, darken the 'whole social horizon. Than the peace of such general pick- pocket times, " Better war loud war by land and by sea War with a thousand battles, and shaking a hundred thrones." Ah, but moral evil is not the antidote and corrective for immorality. All departures from right can only be met by retracing the erring steps, and getting into true pathways. In his more hopeful moods, the poet hears the New Year bells of the future E 66 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. " Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace, Ring in the Christ that is to be." In the very foremost rank of living English writers, as one who has given grace and dignity to the language, has elevated the national taste, and, above all, who has been a very prophet in warnings against falsity and frivolity, and in trumpet-calls to truth and duty, stands John Ruskin. He is specially an art critic ; but his genius has a wide range. He is a great teacher of the books of Nature and of common life. In Nature, he often seems to have lifted the veil of the unknowable, and to have penetrated into the inner secrets of life and being. To him the great world, from its material dust, its diversified scenery, and its marvellous life, up to the summits of its snow-capped mountains and the wonders of cloudland, is one rich treasure-chamber of the Great King. In the economy of modern society, he has dared to question many things which are commonly held to be first principles ; to deny that the outcome of our civilisa- tion is fixed and determined ; to assert in firmest faith that man can attain to all conceivable real good; and that, when duty has come to be an instinct and a habit of life, a true golden age shall then dawn upon the race. To be for one hour in communion with the mind of Ruskin is to breathe the pure air of noble thought and lofty aspiration, is largely an education in the truest and highest purposes of life. We may not agree with all his views and opinions, but these are ever put with such earnest fidelity, and with such nobility of aim and purpose, as to command our best and most respectful, MODERN LITERATURE, ITS WIDER HUMANITY. 67 almost our reverential, consideration. He is one in our cloud of witnesses for righteousness, goodness, and truth. From its earliest dawn, literature has, in poetry and romance, assumed two distinctive phases ; one, an insight and depicture of things as they are; the other, an idealistic conception of things as, under certain con- ditions, they might be. Heretofore, authors have generally blended both phases in their writings ; now, as the mood has taken them, finding their characters and incidents in the realities of life, then, leaving these for the regions of imagination. But, at the present time, two distinctive schools in romantic literature are presented. The dictum of the realistic school claims that every fibre in man's being, every phase of his many-sided life, every outburst of passion, all complexities of tendency and motive, are theirs to portray, to analyse, to dissect. There are to be no fig-leaves to cover physical, moral, or mental nudities. The world is to be confronted by all its many ramifica- tions of life. It is to see and to know all its realities. And thus we have in literature the realistic is, the positive, pitted against and distinguished from the idealistic if, the subjective, the absolute. The hero of the idealistic writer acts from a certain type of character. An absolute standard of right and wrong is set up, or taken for granted, by which all motives and all actions are judged. The realistic writer, on the other hand, recognises no definite types of character, no absolute standards of conduct. He charges the idealist, who has a moral parable in his mind as he writes, with the error of the Aristotelian philosophers, who started from pre- 68 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. conceived hypotheses, instead of, as under the Baconian method of induction, from observation and experience ; and thus, restricted in his survey, and with eyes half-shut against the actual facts of life, the idealist's pictures are not true portraitures of real men and women, but shadowy figments of the imagination. The new realism taunts the old teachings with taking man out of his place in universal nature, and setting him up in unstable equilibrium on a pinnacle as above nature, beyond her laws and jurisdiction ; his mind, as that of a primal god, uncontrolled by circumstance or environment. The new teaching, on the contrary, regards man as a sensitive development out of the common material of the universe, all subjective to universal law. Yes, but the idealist may reply : How are we to be certain that what you present to us is pure and simple realism ? A man can only express his own conceptions of outward things. These conceptions are the percep- tions of such things through the senses, modified by the bent which is given to the impressions by his own judgment ; and this judgment has been formed under his special education and surroundings. Zola must see everything through Zola's eyes ; he, no more than Victor Hugo, can be relied upon as presenting to us the external fact in its naked simplicity. Graphic narration of the real, descriptions of the actual, become, in the hands of genius, a high art. But it is higher art to create ideals and aspirations which, based upon, and rising out of the actual, become realities of the imagination. Man is himself not simply the creature of to-day ; he is ever projecting himself into the unknown MODERN LITERATURE, ITS WIDER HUMANITY. 69 to-morrow; ever striving to be, and ever becoming, something different, different from his present self, his former realities cast-off as worn-out garments, and different from all other men, throughout all ages of time. No poet's dream has ever yet embodied the climax and consummation of human capabilities ; but each new dream is a prophecy of the future, and is freshly watering the seeds of realisation. It has been truly said : The poetic idealism of to-day will be the prose reality of to- morrow. The being of man, not merely of the individual, shooting his little thread across the loom of time, but of the race, is only as a speck in the universe, a drop in the illimitable ocean of eternity ; but in thought and aspiration, man dares to grasp infinitude. Plato spoke of the mind ascending from the contemplation of visible beauty, to the vision of beauty in its essence. Wordsworth speaks of " the gleam, the light which never was on sea or land." It is the high function of literature and of art to shed this gleam, this weird light over the common things in nature and in human life. The ancient sculptor is said to have combined in his goddess of love, separate portions of highest feminine loveliness : so does the poet select out of the wealth of all past experience, and of all new knowledge, their choicest qualities, and combine these in a harmony which is a glimpse and a forecast of that absolute perfection to which the soul aspires. But whilst the literature which emanates from the idealist's theory Tfman were so-and-so, he would thus 70 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. act, may assume a higher place than the literature of realism which is based upon As man is what he is, so he acts ; yet here, as in politics and philosophy, a sound general principle may be pushed into an absurdity. It is not safe to lay down in contingent matters, hard and fast lines. When literature has to speak to-day, as it has often had to speak in the past, with the voice of the prophet, the preacher of right, to lay bare the simple realities of things may be its wisest and most effective course. The picture of a woman 11 In unwomanly rags, In poverty, hunger, and dirt, Sewing at once, with a double thread, A shroud as well as a shirt," was, from the pen of Thomas Hood, a veritable Baptist's " Repent ye, and do the things meet for repentance." Graphic pictures of the realities of slavery, " truths embodied in a tale," were Harriet Beecher Stowe's contingent in the campaign for freedom, and might rank in effectiveness with the life-work of Lloyd Garrison, the martyrdom of John Brown, and Grant's army on the Potomac. We lately read Tolstoi's book, which he names "What is to be done?" Our Shakespeare has said, "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin." It is related of Crillon, the French general, whom Henry IV. named " the bravest of the brave," that when a monk was preaching on the passion of Christ, describing the mockings, the scourgings, the crown of thorns, and the fierce howlings of the blood-impatient crowd, he leapt to his feet, drew his sword, and exclaimed, " O Crillon, MODERN LITERATURE, ITS WIDER HUMANITY. 71 that thpu hadst been there to have struck one blow for him !" And in the perusal of Tolstoi's fearful indictments, the old Adam of conflict rises within us, suggests Nihilism, anarchy, blood, an ending of such a condition of things in any way which possibly could end them. We long to exchange for the wilderness of misery and the enormities of injustice, revolution death rather ; only our better angel whispers to us that this is not the way of salvation. The lessons of a century ago rise before us. The world had been moving on, science and philosophy advancing, caste and superstition losing ground, the spirit of progress and reform permeating Europe, America fairly started on its republican career. What beneficial changes might have operated naturally by the close of the century, we can now only surmise ; but in France a plunge was made into physical revolt, and the revolution became one of anarchy and bloodshed, of wars and imperialisms, the tremors from which have not yet passed away. Ah ! that ever startling question in face of the many ills of life : What is to be done ? How many ears are yearning for the answer how many hearts are burning to act on its behests. Honour and a respectful hearing to every man be his name Hyndman, or Booth, or any other, who, out of the fulness of his heart, honestly attempts an answer. Carlyle few with clearer eyes to see the evils yet had his great intellect no better plan of redemption than the iron sway of the autocrat : he would take us back from present-day agitation and unrest, to the rigid forces of the past. But as a solution to our social problems, these old forces are as vapid, as dead as 72 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. twelfth-century feudalism. Man must get away from his leading-strings, and walk his own free course, even although his steps may totter for awhile, and pitfalls are in the way. Russia is at present the leading problem of the civilized world. This mighty lone land, a continent, yet a prison, a huge, strong, fettered Samson, groping blindly, toiling aimlessly in his great mill, in line with others in the European family of nations in art and in arms, how is it to be brought into touch and harmony with modern civilization ? Under a rigid censorship of the journalistic press, and debarred from public con- ference and assembly in the discussion of social and political questions, romantic literature has become the outlet for opinion ; and, rather strangely, utterances which, otherwise expressed, would have immured their authors in fortress cells, or exiled them to Siberian deserts, have here passed unchallenged. Searching into the lowest depths of profligacy and injustice, of misery and despair, the Russian novel, if it cannot give guidance and little of hope, yet boldly uncovers the festering sores on every portion of the social frame, as crying aloud, Behold, O heaven ! hear, O earth ! this is the Niobe amongst nations, what other sorrow is like unto this sorrow ? And thus in circuits of action beyond the sphere of simple literature as a leading factor in the gospel of human amelioration as a sheaf of arrows for the unerring bow of the wise and sound-hearted, the realistic novel is a rising influence. " Lift up your eyes and look, behold I shew you the actualities of things," is the PRUNING THE OLD THEOLOGICAL TREE. 73 challenge of the strong man armed, who dares to keep his house against all adversaries. Strong in his position, inflexible in his purpose, he disdains such feeble weapons as if things were otherwise if they could be but so. The only postulate in his argument is : O that men were wise, that they understood these things ! And with all his energies he bends himself to the task of making them understood. PRUNING THE OLD THEOLOGICAL TREE. We have said that the principles of legitimate socialism are not in themselves subversive of Theism, nor preclusive of a high appreciation of the teachings of Christ. But round these fundamental and essential elements of the popular faith, many exotic dogmas have clustered, which, like parasitic growths, have choked and hidden the true ideals, and have indeed usurped the name and functions of religion. Many of these excrescences are gradually dying from inanition ; or the healthy breezes of clearer, fresher thought are blowing them into dust and ashes. We note a few of these moribund ideas, which have all been considerable factors in establishing and maintaining present society, with the verdicts which the newer science and philosophy have pronounced upon them. That religion largely consists in participating in certain ecclesiastical rites, in reading certain books, in repeating certain words, in observing certain days, in diverting the streams of life from their natural channels of thought and action. 74 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. The newer thought is, that such things are not religion at all ; that religion essentially means, the best, fullest use of all the powers and faculties of life, the growth of good thoughts in the heart, the issue of sweet words from clean lips, and the doing of right actions, helpful to others' well-being. It recognises all times and seasons as equally sacred, as every spot upon the earth is equally, with every other spot, a presence-chamber of the Great King ; and that the common life of man, its everyday business, its natural relationships, its duties and responsibilities, is the true sphere of religion. That men are divided into praise-worthy and blame- ivorthy, not on the basis of character, but of belief. It is generally now held that beliefs are formed in men's minds by what are, in their judgments, the strongest evidence ; acknowledged authority being ever a powerful influence in so moulding the judgment. That the beliefs being thus necessary and unavoidable, there can be no merit in holding one kind of opinions, nor demerit in holding others. But it is for men's ultimate advantage that they hold true opinions. That virtue and vice have other foundations or significance than their connection with human well-being. The old systems of ethics, based upon the idea that good and bad were absolute, not relative terms, are now challenged. It is maintained that virtue means the condition of mind and character leading to conduct, which, not perhaps in its immediate or apparent consequences, but in its inter-action with the many ramifications of life, will ultimately promote human happiness ; and that vice is the condition of mind PRUNING THE OLD THEOLOGICAL TREE. 75 generating conduct, which, although, perhaps, giving present gratification to others besides the man himself, will ultimately tend to produce human misery and social disorder. That human life, forming but a fractional portion of man's existence^ its concerns are comparatively unimportant. The newer thought about human life is, that it is the very greatest thing in the universe of which we have any definite knowledge. We may surmise, have faith in, and aspirations towards, something higher, grander, more abiding; but man's earthly life is the only foundation on which a social fabric can be built. Man is, as we see and know him, the noblest and most complete outcome of .creative energy of which we are cognizant ; it may be that there is no more perfected form of life and intelligence in the universe. When we say of such a one, he was merely a man ! what does that merely include? An illimitable grasp of knowledge, illimitable powers of love, without any limits in his thoughts and aspirations. The problem, how to live his life well, is the highest that can be placed before sage or philosopher, the man of science or the religious devotee.* * In his striking address on what he calls The greatest thing in the World, Professor Henry Drummond says : ' ' Paul, in three verses, very short, gives us an amazing analysis of what this supreme thing is. It is a compound thing, he tells us. As you have seen a man of science take a beam of light and pass it through a crystal prism, as you have seen it come out on the other side of the prism broken up into its constituent colours, red, and blue, and yellow, and orange, and violet, into all the colours of the rainbow. So Paul passes this thing, Love, through the magnificent prism of his inspired intellect, and it comes out on the other side broken up 76 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. That man is naturally depraved, ever more inclined towards evil than good. This strange hypothesis, devoid of any scientific basis, contrary to instinct and experience, and uncorroborated by any analogy in nature, has evidently been brought in to fill up a gap in systematized theology. We know that in common life, for every evil word or act, there are a hundred good words or acts. The smiles and prattle of childhood, "of such the Kingdom of Heaven," the love of woman, the fidelity of friendship, the patriot in the dungeon, the philanthropist in the lazar-house, the persistence through toils and privations in every-day work and duty, nay, the courtesies of common life all attest the predominance of good over evil in human life. The old doctrine was never of much practical account in social economies ; and its into its elements. Will you observe what these elements are ? Will you notice that they have common names ; that they are virtues which we hear about every day, that they are things which can be practised by every man in every place in life ; and how, by a multitude of small things and ordinary virtues, the supreme thing, the summum bonum, is made up ? The spectrum of love has nine ingredients: Patience ( Love suffereth long;' Kindness 'And is kind; 5 Generosity 'Love envieth not;' Humility 'Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up ; ' Courtesy ' Doth not behave itself unseemly ; ' Unselfishness ' Seeketh not her own ; ' Good Temper 'Is not easily provoked;' Guilelessness 'Thinketh no evil ; ' Sincerity ' Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in truth.' You will observe that these elements, which, together, make the supreme good, the stature of the perfect man, are all in relation to life, in relation to the known to-day and the near to-morrow, and not to the unknown eternity. Religion is not a strange or added thing, but the inspiration of the secular life, the breathing of an eternal spirit through this temporal world." PRUNING THE OLD THEOLOGICAL TREE. 77 tenure of life, even in what is called "the religious world," seems very insecure.* That the maintenance of a priestly caste is essential to religion. As, when the first king assumed the insignia of authority, and asserted his leadership of the nation, so, when the first priest put on his sacerdotal robes, and took his place at the altar of sacrifice, speaking the words which none other must utter, a big event for both weal and woe was inaugurated in human history. The king and the priest have ever been important factors in society. Nowadays, the doctrine that all men have equal claims to social regard, and equal claims in the measure of their fitness and capacity to social position amongst their fellows, is fast obtaining general recognition. The world, the country, the commune, will always have their foremost men ; there will ever be leaders and teachers in society. But these will hold their places in the future, not by the accident of birth, or the laying on of other men's hands, but more and more the best men, the men of larger capacity, of greater wisdom, of wider sympathy, will be chosen for, or rather, will naturally fall into, these foremost places. That laivs of right and wrong, which men have formed from experience, and the lights of reason and of conscience, and which are applicable in their mutual relations, are * The General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, which met in Edinburgh this year, issued a Declaratory Act, which, amongst other matters, affirms "the remaining nobility of man's nature even as fallen." A pity they could not give, in definite figures, the proportion between this "nobility" and the total depravity of their creed. 78 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. inapplicable in what has come to be called "sacred history" and in judging of what is declared to be " divine" When complex and extensive measurement has to be done, as in the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain, all aids from science and art are brought into requisition to lay down one exact mile. From a mile so laid down at Blackwall, every field, and every distance from point to point in the triangulations of England, were measured. Nay, more, that mile has been projected into the very heavens. The diameters of the sun and of all the planets, the distances of the moon from the earth and of the planets from the sun, the velocity at which Sirius is retreating from the earth, the velocity at which the Solar system is moving towards the constellation Hercules, and the velocities of sound and light, are all in terms of that Blackwall mile. And man can apply only his earthly- formed ideas of right and justice to things called " sacred," to things appertaining to the highest heavens. It is with him this criterion, or none.* That, under certain conditions and through certain instrumentalities, the natural laws may be broken Man's whole personal experience is of infrangible, changeless law. All of science is founded on the assump- tion that, at all times and in all places, like causes will * Dr. Edwin A. Abbot wrote recently in the Literary World: "Many, out of a false sense of reverence, say in effect: 'God's justice may be altogether different from our justice ; we are incapable of judging of or testing it.' Such people may consistently go on to say : * God's love is altogether different from ours ; ' and so of the rest of his attributes ; finally, reducing our Father in heaven to an unknown quantity, an algebraic x. We say, instead : ' God's justice must be more just and more merciful than the most just and the most merciful human justice.' :J PRUNING THE OLD THEOLOGICAL TREE. 79 produce like effects. The order, the stability of the universe, hangs upon this certainty ; otherwise than this would be disorder, chaos. We must have a mean idea indeed of the Infinite Wisdom, if we can imagine that, to prove the truth of some proposition, which was capable of proof by experiment, or by reason and argument, there had to be recourse to such incongruous procedure as breaking the continuity of natural laws. As essentially a portion of the universe, man is, in every grain of his constitution, in all his attributes, the subject of law, as much as is the fall of a stone, or the liquefaction of water. In every phase of his being, certain effects will necessarily be evolved from certain conditions, and it is on this certainty that the higher hopes of socialism are founded. And to our list of quasi-religious dogmas, which have been factors in moulding social life, but which the broadened thought of the present age is quietly passing by, we may add this other : That the more sacred times, and the more important events in human history, occurred in the far past, and in distant lands. The newer faith is, that the Infinite goodness and mercy are as near to us, as present with us to-day, here, in this England of ours, as they were in burning bush, in Sinai thunderings, or between the wings of the cherubims in the temple holy of holies ; and that the events and the life-conditions of to- day are, to the men and women now living upon the earth, the most significant and important of all within the range of human history. 8o STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. THE CHURCHES IN THEIR RELATINS TO SOCIAL PROGRESS. All the Churches are consciously or unconsciously, and with more or less of abruptness in the descent on what the remnant of sticklers for old-use-and-wont call the "down grade." This means, that their ancient formulas are being penetrated by the freer thought, the newer science, and the more incisive criticism of the present day. It is truly wonderful how elastic these formulas are found to be ; how, with little apparent strain, they quietly accommodate themselves to the inevitable. The lopping-ofF of the bind-weeds, which were choking out the healthy life, will let in the free winds of heaven, and give expansion, and fuller, more wholesome vitality. Churches are still to be important factors in modify- ing and giving form and pressure to social ideals/' As bonds of fellowship, for mutual edification in righteous- ness and goodness, they are doing, and must continue to do, useful work in the world. / They have been speaking out nobly and hopefully on the social questions of the day. Witness, the English Church Congress of last year, under the presidency of the Bishop of Durham. /In his opening address, he made the social problem the leading topic, and, in wise and sympathetic words, urged the necessity for changes and ameliorations. ^ In after discussions, the Congress took its tone from that of the good Bishop. At what might be called the opposite pole of ecclesiasticism, the Unitarian Triennial Conference, recently held in London, gave social questions a leading place on their agenda of THE CHURCHES : THEIR SOCIAL TENDENCIES. 8 1 procedure. Most of the Nonconformist bodies have, at their annual meetings, spoken out bravely for social progress. Whilst the Salvation Army, hardly yet recognised as in the roll of legitimate denominations, has, under its redoubtable chief, done more than utter kind words and sympathetic phrases. It is now endeavouring to pioneer the way out of England's Slough of Despond, by concrete action. The elaborate and extensive plans of General Booth have provoked much criticism and discussion, but also much of sympathy, very slight opposition, and hardly a shred of ridicule. * And the pulpit is still a living power in the land. The great body of the clergy, and of the ministers in all denominations, are men of rich culture. We believe they are honest and single-hearted in their high vocation. Lofty in soul and purpose, they zealously strive to carry out the spirit of the Master. As parish priests and as pastors, they see very much of the inner life of the people, the insufficient means, the precarious employment, the squalid homes, the drunkenness and unthrift. They have not been deaf to the voices of the day ; many of their own voices have been nobly raised for progress and * The Rev. Donald Fraser, D.D., thus writes in the Christian World: "An eminent scientist has been tilting with all his might at the General of the Salvation Army, and deploring the silliness and temerity of those who have subscribed ,100,000 to enable Mr. Booth to set on foot a comprehensive scheme on behalf of the lowest orders of our population. It would have looked better if Professor Huxley, and those who are of his mind, had tried to face, in their own way, the problem with which the wSalvation Army has stoutly resolved to grapple. The scientific lectures and public libraries, which seem to be their only resource, cannot touch ' Darkest England.' They are out of it when the question is of raising the sunken and saving the lost." F 82 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. amelioration, and many are penetrated with a startling sense of personal responsibility. It has been truly said that no one can live well who lives amidst evil. O, the frightful evil in the world frightful in its mighty mass aye, and frightful as lurking in a single heart ! And upon every awakened conscience weighs the responsibility of this evil ; against each, comes the stern denunciatory voice of the prophet of old " Thou art the man ! " In a sense, the foul word of the streets is my utterance ; / am the sweater who, vampire- like, is sucking the life-blood of women and children ; 7 am the owner of these mean fever-dens, less truly homes than the tents of nomadic, desert tribes ; it is / who licence the dram-shops, send opium along with bibles to the Chinese, maintain stews and gambling- houses. I am my brother's keeper. Many of the popular leaders in the socialist and labour movements are men, and also women, who have separated themselves from the old faith ; and that the masses follow and give heed to their leaders is often taken as a token that they also have, to a large extent at least, drifted away from the orthodox folds ; but the question of dogmatic faith has really very little to do in the matter. It is the heart of sympathy, the spirit of comradeship, and courageous efforts towards amelioration, which are the chief credentials for leadership. >When ministers and clergymen shew like sympathies and put forth like efforts, they, also, become popular leaders.^ Recently, the Trades' Unionists of Hull had a Sunday Church Parade. About 1,100 marched in procession to the largest Wesleyan Chapel in the town. The minister THE CHURCHES I THEIR SOCIAL TENDENCIES. 83 gave them warm welcome ; he would take them eighteen centuries back, and bring them face to face with the Carpenter of Nazareth, who gave his life for the poor and the suffering, and taught the brotherhood of man. Never since had that brotherhood been more earnestly re-taught tha-n in the present day, and the glorious principle was changing all hearts, and making a straight path for bettering the condition of the working classes. What must result from this doctrine when it was generally believed in, and practically followed out ? Why this it would be impossible for tyranny to exist, or drunkenness, or lust, or war. There would be a great uplifting power, which would revolutionize society, abolish slavery all over the world, and make one, in heart as in blood, all nations upon the earth. The Trades' Unionists who listened to such word, would hardly be inclined to interrogate the speaker about his views on the trinity, an eternity of punishment, or baptismal regeneration. Quoting an expression of Dr. Fairbairn, " The nine- teenth century will be known, theologically, as the age that re-discovered Christ," the. President of the Methodist New Connexion Conference, recently held in Leeds, said, in his opening address i^^The Church lost her Christ when she shut herself up to theologize con- cerning him, and to elaborate metaphysical theories concerning his person and work. She re-discovers him to-day in the slums of the city, the abodes of poverty, and the haunts of vice ; and there, with the living voice of tender pity and loving brotherhood, holding out his hand strong, but gentle to the drunkard, the lost woman, the perishing little ones, the oppressed victims 84 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. of the gorged capitalist and the sweater. The re-dis- covered Christ is not the Christ of the mediaeval cloisters of stillness and seclusion, but of the world of daily life, offering it his key of love to unlock all its social problems. Depend upon it, much history will be made in the next twenty-five years. In the material, social, and political world, vast forces are waiting to be born, that will tell mightily in the immediate future of humanity. Twenty- five years more of science, of the telegraph and telephone will have brought together the ends of the earth, and bound the human race into a brotherhood. Twenty-five years more, in which the leaven of socialism will have had time to work, in our national and ecclesiastical institutions, who dare predict what it means ?^ No one in high place and position in England has spoken out more boldly for the rights and dignity of labour, than his Eminence the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster. There is ever in his words such a ring of heartfelt sympathy, that the working men turn to him, in their hour of difficulty, as to a trusty guide, a wise counsellor, a kind and faithful friend. At a meeting of the Catholic Truth Society, held the other day in London, the leading topics were not Roman Catholic theology, but sanitation, temperance the care of young servants, and the protection of children Cardinal Man- ning said, " Social questions are the questions of the day." And surely no higher duties can be laid upon cultured and set apart exponents of religion and morality, than to help in making the conditions of life such that religion THE FUTURE OF THE GLOBE IN RELATION TO MAN. 85 and morality can find ready entrance, and have free course therein. It has been said that the Church from its calm elevation, above the business worries, and out of the scramble and the turmoil of common life, has a more excellent point of view, and can more clearly discriminate the different bearings in social questions, than those who are more directly involved therein. Just as the man on the bank of a river, wherein a fellow- creature is drowning, has a clearer view of all the pros and cons in the case than the other man below, who has scrambled into the water in an endeavour to save life ; and the man above may thus be able to shout down some wise and helpful directions. THE FUTURE OF THE EARTH IN RELATION TO HUMAN LIFE. " Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves play," writes Byron, of the Ocean ; but the word is inapplicable to any created thing. We speak of the everlasting hills ; " Sovran Blanc rears his bald, awful head " into the heavens " Its habitation from eternity : And its precipitous, black, jagged rocks, For ever shatter'd, and the same for ever. " " From eternity," when the geologist tells us that the upheaval of the Alpine range is in the later chronicles of the globe. "The same for ever," when every wind which ruffles through the lofty crags, and every shower upon the mountain's breast, are triturating its huge mass into dust. Each little descending rill, denuding it grain by grain, is murmuring a funeral march to its grave. 86 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. There are two things, and absolutely two things only, in the universe which for ever remain the same, matter and energy. No combustion or absorption, dissipation or decay, can drive one atom out of existence, or disfranchise it of its innate rights as a constituent of the universe. And the twin-factors of all natural force, heat and motion, are interchangeable, and the rate of exchange is always at par. The conservation of energy, through all permutations and circulative return to old conditions, is the eternal law, written alike on stars and systems of worlds, on the rising vapours, and on ivy leaves. And this great Earth, which, out of nebulous fire and meteoric dust, was formed into a solidly encrusted globe, shall go through the planetary life which is due to its conditions ; and there will then but in what manner we know not be resolution into mutually repulsive elements, flying from each other into space. But no resting there, again the trumpet-call to new activities, to new developments. And what of the universe ? Is it, throughout its multitudinous firmaments of glowing stars and revolving systems, with all its laws and energies, its attractions and repulsions, its incandescent heats and uttermost zeros of cold, tending towards some far-off, all-comprehensive event, the final completion of all epochs, the consumma- tion and very ending of the mighty whole ? Or is each partial ending, the completion of each separate cycle, but as a midnight in one region of the earth, answering to a sunrise or a noon-day in another region, and to be followed by a new dawn in its own ? The pathetic pleading of the Hebrew exile to be told the issue of THE FUTURE OF THE GLOBE IN RELATION TO MAN. 87 current events was answered by : " Go thy way, Daniel," do thou thine own proper work, fret not thyself about the future, waste not thy life-energies on the unknowable. We never can know anything of the origin of matter, or of how it became possessed of those properties which appear to be essential to it. And no more can we formulate in our minds an idea of the destruction of one atom of matter, or of its being dispossessed of its properties. But yet, eternal continuance is more easily imagined than no beginning the stream meandering through the rural vale, to human experience as to the poet's fancy, seems destined to "go on for ever." The transcendant mystery of a past eternity ! Out of universal void, nothing could, by any possibility, have proceeded ; and all the powers and potentialities in the universe could not add to it one atom of new matter ; and thus every particle of matter in stars and systems of worlds, in meteoric clusters, and in the ether of illimitable space, must have existed from all eternity ; and all essential properties of matter must have been co-existent with it. If matter had ever been devoid of gravitation, it could never have given itself, to its minutest atom, that property. And thus gravitation and energy and chemical affinity have had no beginnings ; from all eternity, the cohesion of molecules, the nebular confluence of meteors, the evolution of suns and systems, the permutations xDf matter through all phases of substance and of being. And, amidst all changes and permutations, the universe abideth for ever. Reason tells us that if, under the operation of natural laws, any final issue or consummation were possible, it would, through a past eternity, have 88 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. been reached untold ages ago. An infinitude of duration has "ample space and verge enough" to include all possibilities of relative position and mutual influence, of stars and firmaments. If there had been one collocation adverse to the stability of the universe, in which there would have been a general confluence, a rushing together into one incandescent mass, it would have been reached within an eternity of changeful development ; but, even then, the mass would have rotation and contraction, would throw off fragments, to re-develope into stars and firmaments. We conclude that the universe is an eternal continuity of changing dispositions ; its multitudinous cycles inter- woven with each other throughout all space and all time. Each system of stars and of worlds comes into being from the wreckage of older stars and worlds ; each has its evolution to the maturity due to its conditions ; and then it has its decay as a system, and a resolution into mutually repulsive elements, scattering in space ; and then, fresh gatherings into new systems, into other cycles of star and world developments. How bewildering, how awe-inspiring are these thoughts ! A mighty maze, but yet under the dominion of immutable law. The image and superscription of the Great King are alike upon the firmaments, on grains of dust, and on insects' wings. Do we ask for miracles ? The sublime order of Nature the stars in their courses, the waves breaking on the shores, the bud bursting into life and beauty, our own wondrous being, are all blazoned miracles. The divine presence-chamber is the infinitude of space. The divine Word has been the energy, the THE FUTURE OF THE GLOBE IN RELATION TO MAN. 89 inspiration, the very soul of an eternal universe. If we say God is power and wisdom, goodness and love, we imply that these attributes are the correlatives of concrete things, of objects for their exercise ; they could have no place or meaning, no existence even, in utter vacuity. The Great King has never been without his great kingdom ; the infinite goodness and mercy has ever been good and merciful ! But, so far as modern science can tell us, the Earth will continue for many thousands of years to be a fitting habitation for man. In the far past, long-reaching glacial and interglacial epochs have been important factors in changes in the crust and in the conditions of life. There will not within the next 100,000 years be such an increase in the ellipticity of the Earth's orbit as to cause even a moderately great glaciation. The Sun will, for far beyond that period, radiate light and heat without material diminution. The tidal movements due to solar and lunar attractions, acting as a brake upon the Earth's rotation, will, by the end of that period, have lengthened the Earth's day about four hours ; that is, there will then be only six evening and morning days in a period equal to that of a present week ; but the prolongation will come so imperceptibly slow about a minute .in 400 years that there will be ample time for life to adjust itself to the variation. But within the next 10,000 years there will be con- siderable physiographical changes on the Earth's surface. The eccentricity of the orbit is at present low, and for the next 24,000 years it will still diminish; but it is never 90 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. so low as to be without climatic influence. About the ist of January the Earth is in perigee, about three millions of miles nearer to the Sun, than when it is in apogee, about the 2nd of July. In accordance with Kepler's second law of planetary motion, the Earth moves more quickly through the perihelion than through the aphelion portion of its orbit ; and thus the equinoxes do not equally divide the year. The summer portion of the year in the northern hemisphere is about eight days longer than the winter portion ; and the reverse in southern latitudes. Stronger southern trade winds blow warm equatorial currents into the northern hemi- sphere ; and ocean currents are important factors in climatology. The sweep of the Gulf Stream through the North Atlantic, gives us moist and genial south-westerly winds, and raises the mean temperature of our islands about 15 degrees above the normal mean. The effects of the eccentricity of the orbit are thus accumulative, producing a marked distinction between the climates of the northern and southern hemispheres. Now, the point of perihelion has a movement round the orbit, completing a tropical revolution in about 21,000 years; it will be at our vernal equinox in about 4,650 years. There will then be nearly an equilibrium between the climatic conditions of the two hemispheres. For 10,500 years thereafter the present conditions will be reversed ; there will be greater extremes of temperature, but a diminished mean in the northern hemisphere ; the southern hemisphere will have a more equable climate, with a higher mean temperature. But these climatic changes between the two hemi- THE FUTURE OF THE GLOBE IN RELATION TO MAN. 9! spheres will not complete the comparative distinctions. The mighty ice-cap, nearly 3,000 miles in diameter, and supposed to have a mean thickness of about twelve miles, which now surrounds the South Pole, will, in the coming centuries, begin to dissolve ; part of it will become liquid water in the seas, raising their level, and flowing over much low-lying land ; and the remainder will go into north-polar ice accumulations thus dis- placing the ballast of the globe, and deepening the northern seas. The effect will be an extensive submer- gence of northern lands. Within the next 5,000 years one-half of Europe including our own islands, Canada, and Asiatic Russia, will disappear as continents ; their higher lands forming island archipelagoes. This immense loss of territory will be only partially made good by an emergence of islets and coral reefs from the deeper southern seas. There will probably thus be a consider- able diminution in the habitable land of the globe. Many social philosophers have largely exercised their minds on the question : If the human population of the globe doubles itself in so many years, and again, and yet again so doubles itself, how long will it be until the earth is unable to support its inhabitants, and starvation is the general doom ? It has been said that the gross amount of life on the earth is always nearly a constant. So much vegetation springing out of the soil ; so much animal life sustained directly and indirectly by this vegetation. When the human population begins to trench on the means of subsistence, man, at the expense of the lower life, will 92 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. economise for his own use the fruits of the earth. He will extinguish the larger carnivora, and also herbivorous animals which consume more food than their carcases repay, or which do not in utility recoup the value of their food. Man himself will probably become largely vegetarian in his food ; partly through finding such food better adapted to a more placid life, and partly that he will be curtailed in the use of food which has passed, with much waste, from its necessary origin in the soil, through intermediary animal life. Much land now considered barren will be brought into cultivation ; and the husbandry will be that of the kitchen and flower garden. All that ingenious mechanism, drainage, irri- gation, scientific fertilization, and rotation of crops can do to increase the yield, will be done. If found beneficial, any extent of land will be roofed in by glass, or protected by walling. Probably more nutritive cereals than we at present possess may be discovered and developed ; and the seas will be trawled to the safe limits of a full maintenance of the fish supplies. But man will ever be man, and master of his fate, capable, progressive, fore-seeing ; he will still bend his powers to conquer adverse circumstances, and to solve all the problems in his life. Human advancement must ever imply the subjection of the merely animal instincts to judgment and forethought. The common sense of the future will surely be able to maintain an equilibrium between the mouths to be fed, and a certain and safe commissariat.* If the world's population doubles itself * Even at present, a year of good trade means an increase in marriages and births ; of bad trade, their diminution. THE FUTURE OF THE GLOBE IN RELATION TO MAN. 93 in the coming thousand years, it would probably take half as long again for the next doubling ; and so on, with increasing periods. With an ever-widening civilization diffusing the arts of life over the entire globe, and making the forces of nature generally subservient to human requirements, the practical working out of the coal storage, as also of the bitumens and petroleums, will fall much within the probable existence of man on the globe. The full extent of the carboniferous area is not known, nor to what depths coal may be found ; but that area is limited ; and from the increasing heat in descending into the crust, it can only be worked to a limited depth. But coal is now used as recklessly as if there were an unlimited supply. It has been calculated that, at the present rate of consumption about 160,000,000 of tons annually our English coal-fields will be practically exhausted in about 250 years. Our steam-engines are even under their latest improvements very spendthrifts of fuel. A triple-cylinder marine engine, with surface condensation, and boilers of the best known construction, gives out in hard, practical work, only about one-tenth of what is due to the kinetic energy of the expended heat. A locomo- tive engine will thus account for about only one-twentieth of the theoretical energy of the fuel consumed. The steam-engine is a great factor in modern civilization, but another James Watt is needed to devise a less wasteful motive power ; and under all possible new inventions and appliances, there still remains the question, What is to be the future substitute for coal? 94 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. Electricity has been named as an available power ; and wonderful fancy-pictures have been drawn of the world under the motor forces of electricity. Touching a knob, or changing an index, is to summon at will the genii of perpetual motion, to obey all human behests. But there is never any use attempting to cajole Nature ! Electri- city, as natively diffused in the globe, is not in itself a kinetic force. It can, like hydraulic pressure, or a leather strap, be used for the storage or the transference of force ; but for this it has to be accumulated by the expenditure of theoretically equal but practically greater force. So accumulated, electricity will often be found a convenient motor, and may be largely used as an artificial light ; and natural forces, as tides, winds, and water- descents may be extensively used in its accumulation. But for his requisite fuel in the future, man will doubtless have to depend mainly on the source of heat in the coal, and of all our surface warmth, the sun. Through the action of sunlight, plant-life has the power of freeing the carbonic-acid in the atmosphere from its oxygen, and assimilating the carbon into plant substance. Certain conditions of plant-life in inter- glacial periods produced the coal measures. When these have been worked out until their yield becomes diminishingly less, and increasingly more difficult, then for his supplementary fuel man will have to fall back upon the chemistry of nature in the growth of forest trees. Woodlands will encroach upon corn-fields ; and the maximum population of the globe will thus be farther restricted. But the atmosphere will be more wholesome, the landscape more diversified, and the life more vigorous SOCIALISM BASED ON NATURAL LAWS OF LIFE. 95 than if a never-failing coal supply had enabled man to largely disforest the earth. THE ELEMENTS IN HUMAN NATURE ON WHICH ULTIMATE SOCIALISM MUST BE BASED. In every age, and in every clime, there has been in all men, from the legendary Adam down to his youngest son, one predominant instinct, passion, attribute, name it what we will, ingrained in the constitution, as much an essential portion of themselves as their hands or feet, the desire for happiness. To live an ideally best life ; but the ideal best has varied with the varied bias and training, the disposition and the environments of each individual. In one, it has simply meant bodily health and a sufficiency of the material necessaries of life ; in another, it has meant affluence, that superabundance of the means of life which is called wealth, and which brings with it the privilege of getting others to do things for the possessor, which he does not care to do for them, or for himself; in another, it has meant increased knowledge; in another, the power of doing good to others, or of inflicting injury upon others, or of influencing the minds or the conduct of others ; in many, it has meant unlimited pleasure, implying, from one point of view, baccarat, horses, and yachts, or personal adornments, settlements, and high society ; and from another point of view, unlimited ease, hard twist, "beer and skittles." Self-preservation is said to be the first law of nature. 96 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. Whether, as philosophers have argued, and do argue, selfishness, an exclusive regard for one's own interests, as such are regarded and are present in the mind, be the natural and absolute basis of all human action ; or whether it be only one powerful factor in our constitu- tion, it is there, ever assertive, ineradicable. We know, from sad experience, that all the social evils in the world, the wars of nations, and the conflicts of individual men with their fellow-men, slavery and oppression, over-reaching and theft, "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life," have been outflows from selfishness. Is this, then, a dissonant note in the harp of humanity, which must always make the music a jar and a discord; or can this note be attuned to harmonize with every other note. May it not even be made the key-note in a grand oratorio of life ? Surely there is some way out of the tangle ; surely there is, within the natural constitution of things, a possibility of unifying the individual good with the general good and welfare. Will not the probabilities of our own good health be increased, if all the neighbouring dwellings are as wholesome as our own ? Shall we less enjoy our dinners if we know that there are equally good dinners, smoking hot, in all the alleys and bye-lanes ? Will the novel and the poem please us less, that they are also read and appreciated by the men who build houses and sweep chimneys ? Would it not be a great ease to our minds that we were not required to scramble, with much jostling against others, up the hill of gentility, of caste and fashion ; but could walk in friendly companionship SOCIALISM BASED ON NATURAL LAWS OF LIFE. 97 with others along the quiet ways of natural freedom, of convenience, and moderation ? Would it not be a comfort to us to know that not a single human being had other than kind thoughts towards us ? Nay, will not every sweet word and thought, and every friendly act of our own towards others, be twice blessed, our- selves the greater recipients of the blessings ? The one great problem in social science is, how best to turn this long-time turbulent, and often destructive flood of selfishness, into a river of God, to cleanse, to beautify, to irrigate, and make fruitful. By our natural constitution, we must like what is what from our disposition and our life-conditions has come to be agreeable to us ; and in all our actions, we must, in correspondence with all natural law, obey the strongest motive power, towards the advantages which are, at the moment, present in our minds. But this does not mean that we are to act in the way which is most pleasant to the senses, or which is smoothest and easiest for ourselves, or which will gain the applause of others, or bring us material profit or advantage. Conscience, duty, manliness, principle, often predominate over sensuous gratification, personal ambition, and worldly aggrandizement ; they are then the strongest motives, the rulers of the will, as Pope says " The master passion in the breast Like Aaron's serpent swallows all the rest." With what scorn, even apologetically for naming such meaner things, does Paul speak of his infirmities and necessities, his scourgings and wild-beast fightings, when compared with the all-absorbing mission of his life. G 98 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. His friends are not to pray for his deliverance from bonds and imprisonment, but only that in the supreme moment of trial, utterance may be given him to speak boldly the things which are in his heart. To that Roman girl to whom was given the choice, "Diana or Christ?" On the side of the national goddess stood life, life sweetened by love and popular applause ; on the side of the despised Nazarene, death glared through cruel, tiger eyes ; death, tearing her from her love, from home and friends, and all the bright expectations of her young life, and embittered by popular execrations. And yet the choice, out of this same instinct of what was felt to be the greatest good, was Christ.* Epicurus taught that the pursuit of the greatest good in life, was the true end and aim of philosophy ; but this pursuit would best accomplish its purpose by running wide of sensual gratification, by ever being side by side with virtue, with temperance, magnanimity, and fidelity to conscience. Given then the prospective greatest good to ourselves as the basis of every motive and of every action, can there be such a development of individual character, as that the greatest personal good, present in the mind, shall coincide and be at one with the common good? This is a question of questions ; upon the answer hangs the welfare of future society. What is individual * Father Damien, companioned only by lepers on that lone isle in the seas, constant misery in his sight, foulness and disease in every breath of his nostrils, the shadow of death ever hovering near, was yet in that sphere, and doing that work in life which yielded most satisfaction to his heart, which was, to him, the highest good, for the accomplishment of which his life was worth living. SOCIALISM BASED ON NATURAL LAWS OF LIFE. 99 character? Is it a something made up of chance and haphazard, beyond the range of natural law ; a kind of will-o'-the-wisp, eluding the grasp of cause and effect; a very monstrosity in the universe? We can never have it too much urged and insisted upon, that in this universe, chance and haphazard have no place, that there is not, throughout its mighty domain, one inch of space beyond the grasp of inflexible law. The human character is as much a natural formation as is the composition of water from its essential elements. Like water, that character is formed by the blending and inter-action of two elements, namely : the special organization giving a certain quality of faculties and of tendencies, which has been inherited from parentage proximate, and more remote ; and the circumstances and conditions of life, which have, from birth, been acting upon, and influencing, these faculties and tendencies. There cannot possibly be any other factors in the production of any result, than the entity concerned, and the action upon it, of everything with which it has come into contact. Animated life, in even its simplest or minutest form, ever gives, as a first impression, the idea of its being a centre of inherent force of self-generated energy within its capabilities of action, a free, unfettered will. The eagle selects his prey, the bee chooses on which flower it shall alight. Does life, to some extent, free its possessor from the chain of natural causation, and endow with attributes of the uncaused, the absolute? Or, is law here acting as rigidly as in chemical affinity, 100 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. but now through the instincts, perceptions and desires of life ? Has not the life originated and been conditioned as a natural and necessary sequence of all the energies which have converged towards it from an infinite past? And thus determinate in its origin and constitution, can it ever operate otherwise than determinately ? We might, without much question, accept the principle of rigid law as dominating all the lower life of the world, and yet demur to its domination over our own lives. Are all of a man's actions determined by the impress from outer agencies combining with, modifying, and giving character to, his inherited individuality ? Must those things which are essentially personal, his very own, the thoughts of his mind, rise necessarily, and flow in a certain sequence? Our pride of manhood rebels against and repudiates such servility to arbitrary laws and mere outside conditions. Are we, with our grand intellects and lofty purposes, mere automata, wound up to act as within the limitations of springs and wheel- work, only so? Do we not feel our freedom, our independence of thought and will, and our ability to act, if we so choose, contrary to "strongest motive ?'\ Yes ! but there is still a whisper in our heart of hearts, Thou vain boaster, thou clay in the hands of the potter, what hast thou that thou didst not receive? We feel no curb of law ! No, the law is not an external force bearing down overtly upon us ; we act through the law, it is within us, inseparable from our being. " If we so choose," but in such choice, it may be one of contradiction, of perverseness or obstinacy, we are still obeying the strongest impulse. And what foolish- SOCIALISM BASED ON NATURAL LAWS OF LIFE. IOI ness to speak of a living being, replete with vitality, perception, judgment, and passion, as an automaton ; that is a dead thing, constructed to partially imitate, by mechanism, a living thing; the two things are utterly incommensurable. When, with earnestness of mind we face the problem of life, we find that consciousness, even in its lowest form, is to us an utter incomprehensibility. Strict analysis of the composition of a living thing, will give certain common elements, as nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, and phosphorus. Dead elements, and yet their molecules were so organized, so placed in relation to each other, that the thing knew of its separate existence,^// certain instincts and desires, and, in response to these instincts and desires, willed special movements. What was the vital principle which our analysis failed to detect ? With bated breath and whispered humbleness, we must confess our inability of conception. And surely before this insolvable mystery of life, our very last refuge should be in flippancy of speech, or in mean and incongruous metaphor. And further, we would submit to dissentients from the principle of the universality of natural law, that it is well not to be over presumptuous in their utterances, but to admit into their minds just the possibility that they may be in error ; lest, haply, they be found even fighting against the ordinance of God. We speak of education and training ; what do we mean thereby? Is education simply school and book learning, training merely moral instruction and good advice ? These are but fractional parts of the influence 102 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. of society and outer circumstances upon the individual life. The mother's smile, the father's voice, the toys, play-games, and discipline of the nursery, every word heard in the streets, every talk with young companions, every action it sees, are all training and education of the child humanity. Nay, every circumstance and event throughout life, every transaction with fellow-men and fellow-women, every book that is read, the theatre, the lecture-hall, and the church, are all in varying degrees giving their tone and impress to the character. A man's education ends only with his conscious life, with the last "more light" sigh of the octogenarian. We have all seen posted on the walls a cartoon, "The child, what will it become?" One series of various stages of life shew how, under good and wholesome influences, there is a development of high character ; its index being plainly written on the very countenance. Another series gives the results of malign influences in meanness of character and of countenance. No more plastic material in the arts of life, than is human nature. As the potter, out of the same lump, can fashion one vessel to honour and another to dishonour, so, out of the common material of humanity can be formed men, "but a little lower than the angels," and men, fit comrades for very devils of the pit. To separate the idea of Socialism from Individualism, to fancy that there ever can be such a perfect system instituted, as that the system itself, and not the units within it, shall be the permanent motive-power ; to think that there will then be less need for individual excellence, is a grievous and palpable mistake. No system of SOCIALISM BASED ON NATURAL LAWS OF LIFE. 103 society can be that of fullest maturity which is not the choicest possible nursery-ground of noble individualism. The problem of socialism depends entirely on that of individual life Dost thou live well? Dost thou do right actions, speak right words, think right thoughts? These are the crucial questions for every candidate for fellowship into this new church. To help to build up this higher personal life in a people, or, as one great teacher did, into a little circle of friends, or even into one other, is a fitting task for the fullest powers of a man ; be they powers of prophetic eloquence, or of the wayside word fitly spoken, or, it may be, only of quiet example. " Know thyself," was the striking precept of the ancient philosopher. "An impossible precept," says Carlyle, " until it be translated into this partially possible one : Know what thou canst work at ! " To know what we are best fitted to do materially is good ; good to be able to turn the barren moor into a fruitful corn- field, or, out of the rude materials which are laid about us, to make things of use and things of beauty. But better still, as seen in the clearer insight of the Christ, to till the garden of the soul ; to lay up in its treasure- chambers, personal riches. Honour and integrity, high thought and nobility of character, these are enduring possessions engrafted upon the life itself; these things moth and rust cannot corrupt, force or chicanery cannot despoil. So endowed, a man may truly say with Paul, " Having nothing outwardly, yet possessing all things." The cares of present-day life, its rivalries and business worries, waste the motor-powers of life in useless 104 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. friction, choke the growth of the true humanity, and crush down and repress Individuality. On the one hand, is poverty and precariousness. No man can give much place in his thoughts to the higher aims of life culture and refinement, knowledge and lofty aspiration who has to face the problem : How are I and mine to live through the coming winter? Money-getting must be ever more in the thoughts of the very poor than of the rich or the fairly prosperous. On the other hand, the acquisition and disbursement of wealth are very quick- sands, too often engulfing the Individuality, making shipwreck of the true purposes of life. In either case, there is slavery to outward things ; the greatest thing in the world, the personality, the man himself, has no healthy development, but is " crushed, cabined, and confined." In the New Society, government will not mean authoritative compulsion, or, as it has been put, " the forcible and complete subordination of the will of the half minus one, to the will of the half plus one." With even a large majority of votes for a proposed measure, but with a dissentient minority, there would be a pause in the legislation. Under free discussion, mutual respect, and the animating spirit of the commonweal, the right thing to do for the common welfare would, as a general rule, be in self-evidence ; and it would be felt that something was essentially wrong, when an idea did not commend itself to practically universal acceptation. In matured society, the functions of the State will be chiefly administrative, as the carrying out of arrangements for the production, exchange, and SOCIALISM BASP:D ON NATURAL LAWS OF LIFE. 105 distribution of commodities. But every individual will, after the best training then known, be largely left to choose his own path in life ; all will be so enfolded by wholesome environments, that industry and virtue will be natural outgrowths. The law of evolution in human life maketh for individual excellence. And this self-preservative instinct is the axis on which the whole frame-work of human society revolves. Like every other essential element in man's complex nature, it may be misdirected and abused, with results detrimental both to himself and to those within the sphere of his influence ; but, under the guidance of conscience and the sway of high character, it ever, and with undiminished power, maketh for ultimate good. Instead of its being an evidence of " total depravity, "- preclusive of any advancement towards perfectibility, and dooming man to be for ever a groveller in the dust, it is, when rightly understood, the grand certainty in human nature, on which, and on which alone, the individual, and the society which is made up of in- dividuals, can attain to a full maturity of growth. Once let the fact be thoroughly rooted and grounded in a man's innermost being, that it is, in the true sense of the words, best for himself to be industrious, -to be temperate in all things, to be of clean lips and of pure heart, to be thoughtful for, and helpful towards, others ; and he has been born again into full citizenship of the new kingdom of goodness and love; and that kingdom has advanced, by a farther stage, towards universality and perfection. 106 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. HUMANITY IN THE FUTURE. Like everything else in the wide universe, human life is a continuity. The pulse-beat of a hundred generations ago, has overlapped each new birth, and is to-day throbbing in ceaseless vibrations through our veins. In a sense, all that is, is everlasting ; at all times the then present is the lineal descendant of the past, and is the parent of all that comes after it. In art and science, in the experiences of life, in great thoughts and noble aspirations, the man of the future will be the heir of all the ages. He will not be a Cceur de Lion or a Wallace in bodily strength and physical endurance, such qualities will not then be essentials in his life, but in the higher attributes of his nature, his morale, his plane of character, there will be continuous progress and development. He will ever be capable, progressive, foreseeing ; bending all his powers to conquer adverse circumstances, and to solve all new problems in his life. The world and all its concerns will belong, in all coming time, to the men and women who are then living upon it. Man's reverence for the past is reverence for his own noble nature ; the past will ever be blest for what it has done for the present. " Other men laboured, and ye are entered into the fruits of their labours." But the dead hand of the past is not to hold its moveless sceptre over the living present. Each new generation has, with all its aids from past experience, and its own new wisdoms, to work out for itself, all its social, political, and philosophic problems. The HUMANITY IN THE FUTURE. 107 institutions, the modes and methods of life, which are fitted to one time, to one phase of civilisation, will be worthless in other times, or under other phases ; just as the huge battle-axe of the great Earl of Warwick would be a useless encumbrance in modern warfare. Certain abiding principles there will be : First, that no institution, form of government, or mode of society, can be in stable equilibrium, which is not broad-based upon general consent, and its adaptation to current require- ments ; secondly, that all institutions are merely stages in man's progressive development, and no final word is to be said here any more than in problems of science ; and thirdly, man can attain to all his reasonable that is to all his beneficial aspirations. A coming golden age has been the poet's dream, the prophet's inspiration. Out of primeval barbarism, with its stone hammers and flint-tipt arrows, a Zoroaster, a Plato, a Marcus Aurelius were evolved, "each in his own order." Shall there in the future be a higher type of manhood than in our foremost civilisations now stands upon the earth? It is only on this assumption that we can forecast an Eden in the future. Do we feel that there are in ourselves the elements of such nobler man- hood? Have we, "longings, yearnings, strivings," for the final victory of the spirit over the meaner Jife of sensuousness and pride ? If so, then there is hope, there is certainty of the better things. The future is at times spoken of forebodingly, as a more prosaic, dull, and spiritless age looming upon the race ; an age in which conventionalism and utility, and the calm pulse of realism, shall take the places of beauty 108 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. and sentiment, of imagination and romance, of soul- stirring difficulty and adventure. Is the current of human life to become one monotonous, smooth-flowing stream, within artificially-trimmed banks, with scarce a ripple on the surface or a swirl in the deeper waters ? Shall there be no more of wonder or enthusiasm, of bold achievement, or the equally noble, though unsuccessful, daring to achieve? What would then be left as incentives for men to rise above their meaner selves into higher efforts ; or in their thoughts to soar into fairy realms of art, of poetry, and romance ? Mighty nature, the unfathomable, the unsearchable universe will still be left ; the being of each single entity therein will, under every increase of knowledge, be an ever- increasing marvel. And man will be left ; his eyes still searching for things of beauty, his ears await for melody. Man, with his passionate nature, and his heritage of a strange eventful history, the strains of the Nimrod, the Leonidas, the Viking, the Crusader, and the Martyr in his blood ; the love-lyrics of Sappho and the Troubadours still vibrating in his heart. With wonderfully plastic powers of adaptation to his environments, the germs and first principles of humanity are constants ; they are strong cords of unity in all places and in all times. " In all ages, every human heart is human." In every life- story there is a forest of Ardenne with its community of soul, its bright welkin of serenity and love ; a Diet of Worms, with its trumpet-call to steadfastness and duty ; aye, and a Via Dolorosa, with its bloody-sweat, and its cross of suffering and isolation. PRELUDES TO SOCIALISM. 1 09 PRELUDES TO SOCIALISM. As the development of life upon the globe, from the simplest to the most complex, from the minutest diatoms to man, was a grand march, the mass ever moving onwards ; yet, not a march of continuous progress in all its parts, not uniform or always direct, but with many divisional retreats and many fallings-out from the ranks ; so has been the history of human society. It is a chronicle of distinctive civilisations, by the Nile, the Euphrates, and the Ganges, the Yellow-river of China, the Amazon of America, and by " the great sea in the middle of the earth." Legends and traditions, the ruins of tombs and temples, the root-words of languages, hieroglyphics, and inscriptions, tell, with more or less of definiteness and credibility, of empires and nations which attained to supremacy of power, and made considerable progress in the arts of life ; then, generally from their very success turning into a canker, and rotting inwards, they fell from their comparatively high estate, became effete, and were over-shadowed by clouds of barbarism ; and then, in time, man's innate instincts for order and progress again began to assert themselves. But no special phase in man's history has ever come abruptly, nor was it previously planned and laid out for him. Each new phase has been a growth from former conditions ; not always a more wholesome or luxuriant growth. As in natural history the "survival of the fittest " does not always mean the survival of the best ; but rather of those forms of life which will most readily adapt themselves to new conditions ; it may be that these 110 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. conditions are detrimental to the higher forms, and whilst the meaner forms survive intact, or even rise in the scale of life, the higher must retrograde or perish. And thus we predicate that the higher social life in the future will not be the outcome of any one elaborately prepared plan, of an experiment, or of a series of competitive experiments. It will be a natural develop- ment, a growth out of long-tried 'methods and activities, a confluence from all the various streams of experience. How did the race, in journeying through untold ages along its special line of life, become man ? Physiological experience is against the notion of an order of progressive creatures, culminating in the production of one super- latively developed pair, solely from whom a pre-eminent race afterwards proceeded ; the great mass of waste life in the production, all dying out without issue. Evolution is a rolling out, an expansion, not a contraction. The progressive stages towards human development must have been through the social habits, the mental friction, the growth of language, and the intermingling of blood, through hundreds of generations. It was throughout, from its earliest segregation as a species, the progress of a race : a progress so gradual, that of no single generation could it be specifically said, "The race has here become man !" And indeed the genus Homo has not yet reached its full maturity, has not attained to the measure of the stature of the fulness of manhood. And akin to the evolution of man will be that of the ultimate form of human society. It will not be one mighty bound into a new and strange kind of life, the adoption of a new invention of the study, charted PRELUDES TO SOCIALISM. Ill and designed to rule and hypothesis. "The Kingdom of heaven," said the teacher, "cometh not by observa- tion," it is within you, or it is nowhere ; it is the fulfilment the expansion and completion of old things, of things which are now here upon the earth. The advent of matured socialism will not be announced by notable signs and wonders ; it will not rise up out of the seas, nor like -the New Jerusalem in the seer's vision, be let down from the clouds : its herald angels will be matters of fact in the everyday life of the current times. "Then are we not to try experiments, but to sit under all our evils with folded hands, and make no endeavour to realize better things, until the time for the best things is fully ripe?" Yes, try every expedient ; you are now trying many and others will suggest themselves before long. Organize labour into a grand world-wide federa- tion ; say that spite of musty old saws about supply and demand, wages must be such as to ensure a decent living for the workman, and hours of labour shall not be too many for his strength, or for leaving a margin for the employment of all ; constitute efficient councils of arbitration in the conflicts of labour with capital ; extend the principles of profit-sharing and of co-partner- ship in manufactures and trading-enterprise ; found agricultural colonies, and encourage garden and field holdings by the labourers ; make the land of a nation the heritage of a nation ; work for temperance, for social purity, for free education, for sanitary towns and dwelling- houses. All these are as the meteoric streams from all 112 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. points in space, which, converging under the law of gravitation into an autonj^nous nebula, gave birth to the Solar system. Out of divergent streams and of competitive seethings and mutual disturbances, harmony and order were evolved. So, by giving them new directions, out of the old elements of social discord, concord and peace will be evolved. " Has mankind still to work through that great and ever increasing host of movements and expedients before the narrow way of life broadens out into the highway which leads into the promised land?" It may be. There must be a novitiate, a more or less lengthened period of probation ; as by purgatorial fire, humanity has to be purified from its dross and defilement before it is fitted to enter the inner courts of the temple. It is an oft-quoted proverb, " There is no royal road to knowledge." Incommensurable vulgar fractions can only be brought into comparative values by the rule of reduction to a common denominator ; the forty- seventh proposition of Euclid can only be safely reached through the previous forty-six propositions. The great thing is, to keep on the right road ; it may seem long, but is really the very shortest way to the goal. Side- tracks, which seem at first to be short cuts, will lead to sloughs and entanglements, and will have to be retraced. The chain of continuity cannot be broken ; we cannot join the golden links to the iron links, but must pass thereto through the bronze and the silver links. But all rightly directed endeavours towards the goal are in themselves forecasts and foretastes of it, as well as discipline and preparation for it. Each will bring FORECASTS OF THE NEW ORDER OF SOCIETY. 113 in its due tribute of amelioration. There is a verse in an old hymn, "The hill of Zion yields A thousand sacred sweets, Before we reach those heavenly fields, Or tread the golden streets." So all issues which have in them the seeds of truth and goodness, will in themselves bear wholesome fruit. All are necessary links in the mighty chain of social evolution. We hail, and bid good speed to every movement which carries reformation and improvement on the face of it ; which helps to break down old caste and exclusive- ness, and knits together human hearts ; or which sets up, as the great thing needful in all progress and amelioration, a higher standard of human life, To raise this standard will, in itself, and even under present mean conditions, be a benediction upon the life. And the present age is one of comparatively rapid progress. The old actuarial rates of advancement in science, art, philosophy, and social economy, are inapplicable to the present era. As we have previously said, What in former times it took centuries to accomplish, would now be the work, not of generations, but of decades. FORECASTS OF THE ULTIMATE FORM OF SOCIETY. We have said that the men of the future will be far better able to settle the things of that future than we are able to settle these things for them. The world, with all its heritage from the past, will then be theirs ; and in all matters pertaining to their own conditions 114 STEPPIXG-STONES TO SOCIALISM. of life, they will go their own way, and will be very little influenced by previous views and prognostications. Still we cannot help speculating, What is to be the denouement of the long-reaching drama of social life ? What for the final act will be the nature of the set-scene upon the great world-stage ? We may perhaps make some near guesses, especially on the negative side of the question. In the spirit then of the views and principles which we have submitted, we venture, but with due deference to the greater experience and the better judgment of these times, upon a few forecasts of the world, under ultimate or ripened socialism. And in the foremost place, it will not be an age of competition. Experience will have fully demonstrated both the economy from a material point of view, and the wisdom in a moral sense, of co-operation in the production and distribution of wealth and of the necessaries of life. As a rule, every capable man will, in some way, and generally in the way of his own choice and personal aptitude, earn his own living, and also contribute his fair share of actual work for the main- tenance of those who are themselves incapable of work. Very few will be so defective in conscience, in manliness, in the sense of right and justice, or even in the sense of following the prevailing modes and fashions of the times, as to live upon the labours of others. The old figment of living upon their means, will have departed hence, and be heard of no more. The wonder will be that it ever could have been believed in the world, that money, previously accumulated, was in itself a means of present subsistence, and not merely a talisman or FORECASTS OF THE NEW ORDER OF SOCIETY. 115 conjuror's wand, to compel that present labour, which is the only source of such means of subsistence. Any capable men who will then try to evade the general rule of personal labour, will be looked upon as mental or moral weaklings ; and if, after all kindly efforts to bring them to health, they are found to be incurable, they might be kept away from the young and the immature, lest, as by a contagious disease, or like a rotten grape in a bunch, they might contaminate others. And of the wealth so created by common labour, all will share in common ; not equally, for all will not have equal wants and requirements, all will not have equal capabilities of participation ; but " according to their needs." All the means of life, not only the necessaries, but also the comforts and refinements of the highest civilization, will be then so abundant there is not a general deficiency of these even in the ill-regulated present that there will be plenty of the best things for all, even for those who, from incapacity, or from moral defects, do not themselves produce an equivalent to their requirements. And society will charge itself with the conduct of all social affairs ; with the education of the young, so as to train them up in the way they should go, as good and reliable citizens of the commonwealth ; with the kindliest care of the aged and the infirm ; with the efficient regula- tion of production, and of trade and commerce ; with the means of social intercourse and commercial reciprocation, roads, railways, and canals, postal and telegraph services, docks, ships, and light-houses ; with food, water, fuel, and gas supplies ; with the preservation of history, Il6 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. of language, of records of the earth and of its varied forms of life ; with the means of recreation ; with means for the acquisition of knowledge ; for the maintenance of high physical, mental, and moral organisations ; for the most perfect sanitation of dwellings and employments, for the efficient counteraction of zymotic diseases, and for the disposal of the dead. In everything affecting the life and well-being of what would now be called the meanest of its citizens, there will be no aloofness, no let- aloneism in the society of the future. And here we may anticipate a stricture upon our programme of the general surveillance of society over the social affairs of its members that it interferes too much with individual liberty ! But it must ever be borne in mind that this ultimate state of society can only exist when the general voice, the general desire, the general conviction that it is for the best, will it to exist. And, after it has come into being, its sole raison tfetre will be that it expresses the wishes and fulfils the requirements of its individual members. True liberty never means the absence of order, of discipline, of an understanding of what it is for the common good should be the rule in social life. Men will then know what it is to sink, and willingly sink, personal likings to the general wishes of their neighbours. But what is to be the mechanism, the outward and visible form of this socialism? The world has seen many modes of domestic and social life the Bedouin in his tent, the feudal baron in his castle, the huts of his retainers clustering round its walls, the country village, FORECASTS OF THE NEW ORDER OF SOCIETY. Iiy the market-town, the great city, with its Belgravia and its " Grigg's Court " slums. Whatever models, modifications of old things, or entirely new designs men choose for their new homes and their belongings, they can very easily realize. Given a desire, a willing mind, a convic- tion of what is best in any factor of social life, and the accomplishment is not far distant ; the modus operandi will be found without much difficulty. We think we are very safe in prognosticating of the future socialism that men will not then huddle themselves together by tens and hundreds of thousands in towns, or by millions, as in some of the greater capitals, utterly divorced from the soil, the mother of terrestrial life ; but all will, to some extent at least, be in personal touch with free, open nature. It will be found that more restricted clusters of population, not exceeding the number in which all would know and have personal interest in each other, would be better for social intercourse, for the maintenance of character, of order, of an esprit de corps, and for the proper training of the young, than larger clusters would be. On the other hand, the population in any one cluster ought to be sufficient to ensure economy in the production of wealth, and to obtain diversity in choice of occupations ; as also to secure the best tuition for the young, congeniality in personal and more familiar intercourse, and to furnish adequate attendance at recreative, educational, religious, or other assemblies. Great towns and cities, with their scores or hundreds of miles of house-walled streets, will, except under special conditions, be known in the coming time only in histories of the past. The tendency of modern civilisation has, in Il8 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. the scrambles of competitive life and the eagerness to escape from manual labour, been to deplete the country, and drive population into the over-crowded towns. The recent census gives generally reduced returns for country villages and small market towns. Out of the twelve Welsh counties, nine shew a falling-off in the population. The rise of the towns has been a natural result in the evolution of society; to it we largely owe our political and religious freedom, the advancement of knowledge, of broadened thought, of education, of philanthropy, of commerce, and the arts of life ; but, under the very influences which the towns have themselves created, they are doomed to, sooner or later, pass away. Man's natural place on the earth is as a tiller of its soil, a teeming soil, but not of itself fruitful in man's requirements. He has, by labour, to change the, to him, barren wilderness into fruitful fields. Even a grass meadow occurs nowhere in nature, it is the outcome of art and industry. If a highly cultivated garden be left alone for a year or two, the carefully-reared and tended dahlias and lilies will have disappeared, and in their places, having choked them out, are thorns and thistles, coarse-leaved docks and stinging nettles. The "land hunger " which impels the poor cotter or crofter to cling so tenaciously, and against the cock-sure dicta of political economy, to the bit of the great mother's bosom which he and his fathers have tilled, is an instinct which it is not wisdom to despise or disregard. The cities of the far future are to be mostly at least country villages ! But does not this seem rather a mean proposition, a FORECASTS OF THE NEW ORDER OF SOCIETY. 119 degradation of the higher civilisation of the world, almost a reversion into semi-barbarism ? Can such a retrogres- sive notion be seriously given as the solution of the most difficult problem which has been exercising the highest intellects on the earth ; which is daily sending forth philosophic treatises, and leading articles from capable editors; which produces Royal Commissions, organises ,?jj monst* Hyde Park demonstrations, and is seething through the masses in all the more advanced nations? The term " country village " conjures up a picture of the typical clustering of a few cottages and houses of petty tradesmen, at cross-roads or by the wayside, of slouching, dull-eyed agricultural labourers, of tawdry, gossipy women and ill-tended children, of the ale-house, with its poacher- talk, whispered in the reek of bad tobacco, of the church, hardly in touch with the hearts and the daily lives of the "parishioners," and of the parish workhouse, looming large a little way off, and never far off from the daily life. Is such a picture a forecast of the social Eden of the future of the climax and consummation of highest hopes and aspirations ? Yes, and No ! The ground-work is there, but not the superstructure ; the stocks and the materials are there, on and from which a new ship will be built and launched; but it will be a very different kind of a vessel, to be manned by a very different kind of a crew. And here we may say a few words about the potency, in nature and in life, of what may appear little things. Our earth is swayed in its yearly orbit, not by the sun as a single mass, but by the sum of the attractions of each separate atom of matter in the mighty sphere. The 120 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. tilting of the axis of the earth out of the plane of the orbit seems a small matter, but it produces the changing seasons of the year, making the living world a possibility. It is the invisible, impalpable dust floating in the atmosphere which, furnishing nuclei for vapour particles, produces the wondrous realm of cloud-land. In human affairs, little things have swayed the moral world. The every-day life, the conversations with his friends, and the humiliating death of a Nazarene carpenter have been for nigh two thousand years the fulcrum on which have turned the life and thought of the higher civilisations of the world. "Go wash in Jordan, and thou shalt be clean," said the prophet to the Syrian leper. He, in expectation of strange ceremonial and mystical invoca- tion, contemned the simple precept, naturally thinking some great thing had to be done to effect the cure of his leprosy. "What shall we do?" asked the fearful, conscience-stricken people, publicans and soldiers, when the Baptist's denunciations sounded in their ears like a trump of doom ! " Do ? what else is there for you to do, but to be just and kind, to live in quietness and content, to cease to do evil, to learn to do well ? " The intricate and mysterious labyrinth of theological dogmas, which are too often called religion, has, by some simple but daring minds, been reduced to one idea long hid from the wise and prudent, dazed by their creeds and formularies, "Love and worship God, in love and reverence for your fellow-men." A PISGAH-TOP VIEW OF THE PROMISED LAND. A PISGAH-TOP VIEW OF THE PROMISED LAND. Do we mean to suggest that in the maturity of human society, every one shall personally plough, and sow, and reap, and gather into barns ? Very probably, every able- bodied man shall do so for a year or two of his earlier life ; just as every young German at present serves his period of military duty. But life-long sameness and monotony of labour will not be carried into the new era ; all will have wholesome change of occupation ; and diversity in aptitude and inclination will, when all kinds of labour are held to be equally honourable, always ensure the needful diversities in the leading occupations of life. There will ever be men whose natural leanings will be to make shoes, or watches, or steam-engines, to build houses, to write books, or to be instructors of the young; even, under proper arrangements, to be coal- miners, iron-smelters, or furnace-men. But every man will, as a rule, live in touch and close companionship with the soil. Like as on Esau's garments, the scent of the fields will be over his life : like Isaac, he will be able to meditate therein in the quiet eventide. The breeze from gardens and woodlands will be on his cheeks ; he will be able to name trees, and plants, and flowers, to tell their times and seasons, and their special characteristics. What will be the plan of a township in this new era, what the type of its architecture ? There will doubtless be great diversity in details, but certain leading features 122 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. may obtain pretty generally. The sites will be chosen for salubrity of soil and air, for partial shelter from bleak winds, or for fine or extensive prospects. The buildings will be laid out to the best ideas of sanitation, of comfort and convenience. They will not be thatched cottages, nor painfully prosaic rows of street-houses, nor a series of semi-detached villas. They will be palatial (that is "palace-like") piles, imposing and ornate, but in varied styles of architecture. Whilst no two may be exactly alike, many will, probably, be quadrangular in plan ; with schools and other common buildings in the inner garden square. For a typical structure, our thoughts suggest an enlarged Chatsworth, Somerset House, Magdalen College, Greenwich Hospital, or Balmoral. But the pavilion style of adjoining, corridor- connected blocks, may also obtain ; whilst Windsor Castle, the Alhambra, and the Escurial may also furnish suggestions in design. These buildings will be the later triumphs of architecture ; and the highest skill will be bestowed on the arrangement of halls and chambers, and on proper ventilation, lighting, drainage, and facility of communication. Smoke would probably, as at Chatsworth, be taken by a tunnel to a distant chimney ; and workshops and farm buildings would be somewhat removed. It will be said, " Have we not heard something like this before, it seems a resuscitation of the Phalanstery of the French social philosopher Fourier, or of the Community system of Robert Owen of New Lanark?" Probably, but even then it may not be wasted time to A PISGAH-TOP VIEW OF THE PROMISED LAND. 123 take it into avizandum^ as the Scotch judges say.* Owen advocated detached townships^ with from two to three thousand inhabitants ; with federative unions in circles of tens, hundreds, and thousands, till they should embrace the whole world in one common interest. These townships were to be what Fourier's phalansteries were only partially designed to be thoroughly Com- munistic. His expositions were at first favourably received ; many persons of position, including, amongst others, the Queen's father, the Duke of Kent, giving him countenance and encouragement. But, after a time, he lost popular favour by his avowed antagonism to religion, and by advocating what were considered lax views of marriage. His experiments at Orbiston, near Glasgow, New Harmony, in America, and Tytherly, in Hampshire, were failures ; they were like to be so on his own principles of a high development of character and favourable environments being the basis of Com- munistic life. The Encyclopedia Britannica thus sums up his character : " It would be unjust to measure his work and influence by these crude efforts. He was the founder of infant schools in England ; he was the first to introduce reasonably short hours in factory * The present writer, anxious to know if, at his birth, as at that of Owen Glendower, there were any special signs in the heavens or on the earth, looked through the Monthly Magazine of 1st October, 1819. He found the leading topic in the previous month to be the then recent Peterloo massacre. Then there were protests against the alleged bad treatment of Napoleon at St. Helena, by the governor, Sir Hudson Lowe. Also a eulogistic memoir of James Watt, who died in the preceding August ; and correspondence in reference to lectures being then delivered in London by Robert Owen, in exposition of his socialistic theories. 124 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. labour ; and he was the father of co-operative trading movements. In general education, in sanitary reform, and in his sound and humanitarian views of common life, he was far in advance of his times. In his personal character, he was without reproach ; frank, benevolent, and straightforward to a fault ; and he pursued the altruistic schemes, in which he spent all his means, with more earnestness than most men devote to the accumula- tion of wealth." The maximum population in a cluster will probably be about four thousand persons, that is, about eight hundred families. With men and women, adapted by education and training for such conditions of social life, this would be a sufficient number for municipal govern- ment, for furnishing pupils for first-class tuition, for the fellowship of a church, for audiences in the theatre, the concert-room, and the lecture-hall. Sufficient also for besides the necessary field and garden-work carrying on, economically, one or more special trades, and to warrant the employment of machinery with motor-power in the farm-work, and for laundry and other domestic purposes. Sufficient also for all to form congenial friendships, for there will ever be inner circles of spirits more akin to each other; the heart is ripened to wider sympathies when its finer cords of love are strongly drawn around the hearts which beat in nearest affinity. But not too numerous for intimate knowledge of each other, thus avoiding driftings-orT into separate sets and parties. The domestic economy of the cluster, its commissariat, A PISGAH-TOP VIEW OF THE PROMISED LAND. 125 culinary and dining-hall arrangements, its hours of work, of study, and of play, the conduct of its most precious possession, the children, its trading specialities and exchange arrangements with other clusters, all such things it will itself be far better able to devise and to do, than we, in our lesser experience, our more restricted views, and our meaner conditions of life, can possibly surmise or suggest. But there will be abundance of all whole- some, and what are then, desirable things, with moderation and economy in their use ; there will be personal freedom, but with due thoughtfulness and attention to the general ideals and the general welfare ; there will be privacy when the wish is for retirement, and also unrestrained social intercourse, without prudishness, but under recognised canons of courtesy and decorum ; and the inner autonimous state, the family, husband, wife, and children, will be an abiding institution. And woman ? She has ever been a poet's theme and an inspiration : " The best half of creation's best, Its heart to feel, its eye to see, The crown and complex of the rest, Its aim and its epitome." The old knighthood made a demi-goddess of her; the courtesies of modern life give her the first place in the formulas of society. But all this savours very much of lip-service and a petting condescension. There is neither a legal nor a heartfelt recognition of her rightful equality, in her individual or in her social phase of life, with man. The dominating brute forces of the past 126 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. have been gradually yielding up to intellect the governance of the world ; and when this intellect shall have taken as its equal partner on the throne and in the life, high sentiment, " thought prompted by feeling and by conscience," then shall woman, with her keener sense of purity and decorum, of the graces and the small sweet courtesies of life, which make its pathways pleasant, with her heart of love ever yearning for fullest reciprocation, with her richer sympathies, her more patient persistence in duty, her self-sacrifice and self- abnegation, assume for the first time in the long history of the race, her natural position as the true yoke-fellow, help-mate, life-comrade of man. There will then be no conventional Salic law against feminine pre-eminence in ability for direction, holding a foremost place in the design and conduct of the world's affairs. And yet her distinctiveness of womanhood will be deepened and broadened, her vital dissimilarities more accentuated, rather than tend towards submergence in the masculine. Under a true civilisation, for all marriageable persons, marriage will be the rule ; and the very apotheosis of womanhood is maternity, with its sweet rills of love, its duties and responsibilities. In heart and soul, and mind and will, in form of beauty, step of grace, and sweetness of mien, she will ever be more lady-like, ever more of a true woman, " nobly planned To warm, to comfort, and command." The land area of the United Kingdom is equal to about two acres for each of the present population. But A P1SGAH-TOP VIEW OF THE PROMISED LAND. I2J considerable portions of the land are not at present capable of remunerative cultivation ; and a good deal of it is taken up with roads, railways, and buildings ; say there are one-and-a-half acres of available land for each one of the inhabitants. Under the suggested new arrange- ments, for a cluster of 4,000 persons, about 6,000 acres would be allotted, or nearly ten square miles. The home buildings, if geometrically arranged at equal distances, would thus be about five miles apart ; but to better suit special industries, and for convenience of railway and canal communications, it would often be found advisable to have two or more of these townships within nearer distances of each other. Doubtless, by the efficient cultivation of its own special domain, each cluster could grow its own food requirements ; authorities say that under an increased expenditure of labour wisely directed, the arable land of England could easily be made to produce fifty per cent, above its present yield. But self-support is not a necessity, is not perhaps desirable. There is no true socialism in isolation ; isolation and sectional self-dependence would be detrimental elements in the new society. There will be a free interchange of commodities with neighbouring and national clusters, and with distant lands. England would still export goods of its special manufacture, as engines and machinery, hard ware and woollen cloths ; and in exchange it would import cotton, olive-oil, sugar, rice, fruits, etc., and tea and coffee (if still in dietetic use). The ocean steamship, or its then representative, would traverse all waters, a mighty shuttle weaving into one interest and one great brother- 128 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. hood all the nations of the earth. And whilst the country township would be the type of social life, there would still be sea-ports, with their warehouses and building-yards, still railway junctions and termini, still special seats of learning and science, and many specialities of arrangement, to suit the neighbourhood of mines, fisheries, and particular manufactures. And probably one capital of the world, in which the " parlia- ment of man," with representatives from " every nation, and kindred, and tribe, and tongue," would hold its sessions. Not a life of dull and listless uniformity, in which "it is always afternoon," do we forecast for the far future, but a brisk and busy life, a social system well knitted together, and yet freely elastic in all its parts, full of energetic movement, effecting healthful and invigorating change. In the individual man's brief occupation of the earth, he ought to see as much of it as he conveniently can ; and the many wonders of the world shall then be opened out by rapid but pleasurable travel, to all who choose to see them. An African may thus hear the roar of the mighty Niagara ; a Finlander see the sun set from the apex of the great pyramid ; a Hindoo look down into the Yosemite gorge of Colorado. The great mysteries of the universe will, as of old, shape varied thought in variedly constituted minds ; and there may still be different religious faiths and schools of opinion on matters which cannot be tested by observation or experiment ; but there will be mutual forbearance, even mutual reverence, under such differences. A PISGAH-TOP VIEW OF THE PROMISED LAND. 129 In the every-day life of the world there will always be found many subjects of common interest. Scientific research is exhaustless, and will ever result in fresh discoveries, in newly found harmonies and corres- pondences in nature, and in bringing in from natural forces and agencies new aids in the business of life. Mechanical invention will continue active ; the architect, the painter, the sculptor, and the musician, will still, with unabated avidity, pursue their various arts. There will still be new history and philosophy, poetry and romance. And a host of practical questions affecting the well-being of society will be continually cropping up : as medical remedies for various forms of disease ; the best regimen and government of life ; food, clothing, exercise, recreation ; the utilization of sewage, and the purity of streams and rivers ; new route-shortening canals ; railway tunnelling through mountain ranges ; the procuration or production of a sufficiency of fuel, and its most economic use ; the maintenance, or disuse, or amalgamation of certain languages ; the migrations from countries or districts which were approaching conges- tion ; storm warnings and meteorological forecasts flashed over the earth; all the news of the world will ever be of interest to the children of the world. It may be said, " This sounds so very strange, and is so beyond all historical experience, that although it does not appear so intricate or profound as from the floods of writing and of talking about socialism, we might have expected its denouement to be, we must yet ask: Is it not Utopian, is it really practicable?" IJO STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. Yes, it is simple ; and yet it is Utopian ! Oscar Wilde says, "A map of the world which does not include Utopia, is not even worth glancing at." It leaves out the one country for which the great ship of Humanity is always chartered ; the better country which men will continue to seek until they find it. And under conditions which are entirely within the grasp of the human will, it is practicable ; it is within the range of that human capability which has organised armies, mail services, and cotton factories ; which has tunnelled the Alps, and sent human speech in electric flashes across the ocean ; which has weighed the sun, and can name the material composition of the nebulae in Orion. Know- ledge, and intellect, and will can accomplish anything that is within the wide range of man's relationship with his fellows. The problem is, how to set the knowledge, intellect, and will in the right direction ! We quote a few pregnant words from Edward Car- penter, "No mere scientific adjustments will bring about the millennium. Granted that the problem is Happiness, there must be certain moral elements in the mass of mankind before they will even desire that kind of happiness which is attainable, let alone their capacity of reaching it, when these moral elements are present, the intellectual or scientific solution of the problem will be soon found, without them there will not really be any serious attempt made to find it." If, as we have said, the only real basis of socialism is in men coming to know and to understand that their only true good is indissolubly bound up with the good of others, then every deviation from this one straight pathway means so A PISGAH-TOP VIEW OF THE PROMISED LAND. 131 much more of hopes deferred, so much more of energies wasted. When this principle is rooted and grounded in the mind ; when it speaks in every word and modulates every tone; when it is the mainspring of every action, and even reaches to the thoughts an intents of the heart, then will come its incarnation in practice, and after long travail, the greatest birth in human time will be accomplished. And when the goal has been fully reached, and the world has struck its new era, shall there be an end to all care and endeavour in social life, and the very institution of a matured system of society, be as a self-propulsive, self-regulating mechanism, carrying on itself in perfect order and efficiency of movement, throughout all future times ? Alas, no ! or rather, well it is not so. The old strains of sensualism, of rivalry, and ambition will long abide in the blood ; the old weeds of envy, of suspicion, and distrust will long have their germs in the heart. The history of the past will ever sound a warning: Take ye heed of yourselves, that ye swerve not a hair-breath out of the narrow way of life ! And every new human life born into the world will be a new problem, How can this life, with all its own specialties of capability of temper and tendency, be best nurtured so as its possessor shall get the highest value out of it for himself, and become a good and valuable citizen of the world? The foundations of nobility of character have to be laid in the very cradle. A child ought never to see a sour or angry face ; ought never to hear an impure., a malicious, or 132 STEPPING-STONES TO SOCIALISM. an untruthful word ; its wilful ways and little tempers should be drawn by the cords of love into sweeter moods. In its play with its fellows, the spirit of emulation, so natural in youth, should not be allowed to degenerate into over-bearing or vanity, into envy or ill-will. And the same when it comes to its school- lessons and essays at useful work. As certainly as that water is formed by the explosive combination of oxygen and hydrogen is it that the character of each individual man and woman is formed by the fusion into their original organization of all the agencies in education, companionship, discipline, and environ- ment, which from their first breaths of life have been acting upon them. In the more matured social life of the future, the highest, the never-ending task, not merely of the institutions, but also and more directly of the men and women who are as the vital breath of these institutions, will be the continuous maintenance and ever fuller development of this life in their succeeding generations. Not through the gloom of pessimistic forebodings do we see the future. Relative to humanity, this old Mother Earth is yet in richest exuberance of life ; time has written no wrinkles on its verdant brow. So with a hearty "God speed," we bid the great world man's play-ground, his hearth-place, his workshop, his temple, and his monument still spins its courses "down the ringing grooves of change." WILLIAM ANDREWS &. 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 4=O- -dftN- ^h Berkeley VB 07759 %