{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_18788/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_18788","id":"gutenberg_18788","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18788","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Language & Communication","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Essays"],"text":"Produced by Clare Boothby, Turgut Dincer and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPOST-PRANDIAL\nPHILOSOPHY\n\n\nBy GRANT ALLEN\n\n\nAUTHOR OF\n\"THE EVOLUTIONIST AT LARGE,\" ETC.\n\nLONDON: CHATTO & WINDUS\n1894\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nThese Essays appeared originally in _The Westminster Gazette_, and have\nonly been so far modified here as is necessary for purposes of volume\npublication. They aim at being suggestive rather than exhaustive: I\nshall be satisfied if I have provoked thought without following out each\ntrain to a logical conclusion. Most of the Essays are just what they\npretend to be--crystallisations into writing of ideas suggested in\nfamiliar conversation.\n\nG. A.\n\nHind Head, _March_ 1894.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n\n                                                 PAGE\n\n    I. THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE AMONG LANGUAGES       1\n\n   II. IN THE MATTER OF ARISTOCRACY                9\n\n  III. SCIENCE IN EDUCATION                       18\n\n   IV. THE THEORY OF SCAPEGOATS                   27\n\n    V. AMERICAN DUCHESSES                         35\n\n   VI. IS ENGLAND PLAYED OUT?                     44\n\n  VII. THE GAME AND THE RULES                     53\n\n VIII. THE ROLE OF PROPHET                        61\n\n   IX. THE ROMANCE OF THE CLASH OF RACES          70\n\n    X. THE MONOPOLIST INSTINCTS                   79\n\n   XI. \"MERE AMATEURS\"                            87\n\n  XII. A SQUALID VILLAGE                          95\n\n XIII. CONCERNING ZEITGEIST                      104\n\n  XIV. THE DECLINE OF MARRIAGE                   112\n\n   XV. EYE _versus_ EAR                          122\n\n  XVI. THE POLITICAL PUPA                        130\n\n XVII. ON THE CASINO TERRACE                     138\n\nXVIII. THE CELTIC FRINGE                         147\n\n  XIX. IMAGINATION AND RADICALS                  156\n\n   XX. ABOUT ABROAD                              165\n\n  XXI. WHY ENGLAND IS BEAUTIFUL                  173\n\n XXII. ANENT ART PRODUCTION                      182\n\nXXIII. A GLIMPSE INTO UTOPIA                     190\n\n XXIV. OF SECOND CHAMBERS                        199\n\n  XXV. A POINT OF CRITICISM                      207\n\n\n\n\nPOST-PRANDIAL PHILOSOPHY\n\n\n\n\nI.\n\n_THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE AMONG\nLANGUAGES._\n\n\nA distinguished Positivist friend of mine, who is in most matters a\npractical man of the world, astonished me greatly the other day at\nVenice, by the grave remark that Italian was destined to be the language\nof the future. I found on inquiry he had inherited the notion direct\nfrom Auguste Comte, who justified it on the purely sentimental and\nunpractical ground that the tongue of Dante had never yet been\nassociated with any great national defeat or disgrace. The idea\nsurprised me not a little; because it displays such a profound\nmisconception of what language is, and why people use it. The speech of\nthe world will not be decided on mere grounds of sentiment: the tongue\nthat survives will not survive because it is so admirably adapted for\nthe manufacture of rhymes or epigrams. Stern need compels. Frenchmen and\nGermans, in congress assembled, and looking about them for a means of\nintercommunication, might indeed agree to accept Italian then and there\nas an international compromise. But congresses don't make or unmake the\nhabits of everyday life; and the growth or spread of a language is a\nthing as much beyond our deliberate human control as the rise or fall of\nthe barometer.\n\nMy friend's remark, however, set me thinking and watching what are\nreally the languages now gaining and spreading over the civilised world;\nit set me speculating what will be the outcome of this gain and spread\nin another half century. And the results are these: Vastly the most\ngrowing and absorbing of all languages at the present moment is the\nEnglish, which is almost everywhere swallowing up the overflow of\nGerman, Scandinavian, Dutch, and Russian. Next to it, probably, in point\nof vitality, comes Spanish, which is swallowing up the overflow of\nFrench, Italian, and the other Latin races. Third, perhaps, ranks\nRussian, destined to become in time the spoken tongue of a vast tract in\nNorthern and Central Asia. Among non-European languages, three seem to\nbe gaining fast: Chinese, Malay, Arabic. Of the doomed tongues, on the\nother hand, the most hopeless is French, which is losing all round;\nwhile Italian, German, and Dutch are either quite at a standstill or\nslightly retrograding. The world is now round. By the middle of the\ntwentieth century, in all probability, English will be its dominant\nspeech; and the English-speaking peoples, a heterogeneous conglomerate\nof all nationalities, will control between them the destinies of\nmankind. Spanish will be the language of half the populous southern\nhemisphere. Russian will spread over a moiety of Asia. Chinese, Malay,\nArabic, will divide among themselves the less civilised parts of Africa\nand the East. But French, German, and Italian will be insignificant and\ndwindling European dialects, as numerically unimportant as Flemish or\nDanish in our own day.\n\nAnd why? Not because Shakespeare wrote in English, but because the\nEnglish language has already got a firm hold of all those portions of\nthe earth's surface which are most absorbing the overflow of European\npopulations. Germans and Scandinavians and Russians emigrate by the\nthousand now to all parts of the United States and the north-west of\nCanada. In the first generation they may still retain their ancestral\nspeech; but their children have all to learn English. In Australia and\nNew Zealand the same thing is happening. In South Africa Dutch had got a\nfooting, it is true; but it is fast losing it. The newcomers learn\nEnglish, and though the elder Boers stick with Boer conservatism to\ntheir native tongue, young Piet and young Paul find it pays them better\nto know and speak the language of commerce--the language of Cape Town,\nof Kimberley, of the future. The reason is the same throughout. Whenever\ntwo tongues come to be spoken in the same area one of them is sure to be\nmore useful in business than the other. Every French-Canadian who wishes\nto do things on a large scale is obliged to speak English. So is the\nCreole in Louisiana; so earlier were the Knickerbocker Dutch in New\nYork. Once let English get in, and it beats all competing languages\nfairly out of the field in a couple of generations.\n\nLike influences favour Spanish in South America and elsewhere. English\nhas annexed most of North America, Australia, South Africa, the Pacific;\nSpanish has annexed South America, Central America, the Philippines,\nCuba, and a few other places. For the most part these areas are less\nsuited than the English-speaking districts for colonisation by North\nEuropeans; but they absorb a large number of Italians and other\nMediterranean races, who all learn Spanish in the second generation. As\nto the other dominant languages, the points in their favour are\ndifferent. Conquest and administrative needs are spreading Russian over\nthe steppes of Asia; the Arab merchant and the growth of Mahommedanism\nare importing Arabic far into the heart of Africa; the Chinaman is\ncarrying his own monosyllables with him to California, Australia,\nSingapore. These tongues in future will divide the world between them.\n\nThe German who leaves Germany becomes an Anglo-American. The Italian who\nleaves Italy becomes a Spanish-American.\n\nThere is another and still more striking way of looking at the rapid\nincrease of English. No other language will carry you through so many\nports in the world. It suffices for London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Belfast,\nSouthampton, Cardiff; for New York, Boston, Montreal, Charleston, New\nOrleans, San Francisco; for Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Hong Kong,\nYokohama, Honolulu; for Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Kurrachi, Singapore,\nColombo, Cape Town, Mauritius. Spanish with Cadiz, Barcelona, Havana,\nCallao, Valparaiso, cannot touch that record; nor can French with\nMarseilles, Bordeaux, Havre, Algiers, Antwerp, Tahiti. The most\ncommercially useful language in the world, thus widely diffused in so\nmany great mercantile and shipping centres, is certain to win in the\nstruggle for existence among the tongues of the future.\n\nThe old Mediterranean civilisation teaches us a useful lesson in this\nrespect. Two languages dominated the Mediterranean basin. The East spoke\nGreek, not because Plato and AEschylus spoke Greek, but because Greek was\nthe tongue of the great commercial centres--of Athens, Syracuse,\nAlexandria, Antioch, Byzantium. The West spoke Latin, not because\nCatullus and Virgil spoke Latin, but because Latin was the\nadministrative tongue, the tongue of Rome, of Italy, and later of Gaul,\nof Spain, of the great towns in Dacia, Pannonia, Britain. Whoever wanted\nto do anything on the big scale then, had to speak Greek or Latin; so\nmuch so that the native languages of Gaul and Spain died utterly out,\nand Latin dialects are now the spoken tongue in all southern Europe. In\nour own time, again, educated Hindoos from different parts of India have\nto use English as a means of intercommunication; and native merchants\nmust write their business correspondence with distant houses in English.\nTo put an extreme contrast: in the last century French was spoken by far\nmore people than English; at the present day French is only just keeping\nup its numbers in France, is losing in Canada and the United States, is\nnot advancing to any extent in Africa. English is spoken by a hundred\nmillion people in Europe and America; is over-running Africa; has\nannexed Australasia and the Pacific Isles; has ousted, or is ousting,\nDutch at the Cape, French in Louisiana, even Spanish itself in Florida,\nCalifornia, New Mexico. In Egyptian mud villages, the aspiring Copt, who\nonce learnt French, now learns English. In Scandinavia, our tongue gains\nground daily. Everywhere in the world it takes the lead among the\nEuropean languages, and by the middle of the next century will no doubt\nbe spoken over half the globe by a cosmopolitan mass of five hundred\nmillion people.\n\nAnd all on purely Darwinian principles! It is the best adapted tongue,\nand therefore it survives in the struggle for existence. It is the\neasiest to learn, at least orally. It has got rid of the effete rubbish\nof genders; simplified immensely its declensions and conjugations;\nthrown overboard most of the nonsensical ballast we know as grammar. It\nis only weighted now by its grotesque and ridiculous spelling--one of\nthe absurdest among all the absurd English attempts at compromise. The\npressure of the newer speakers will compel it to make jetsam of that\nlumber also; and then the tongue of Shelley and Newton will march onward\nunopposed to the conquest of humanity.\n\nI pen these remarks, I hope, \"without prejudice.\" Patriotism is a vulgar\nvice of which I have never been guilty.\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\n_IN THE MATTER OF ARISTOCRACY._\n\n\nAristocracies, as a rule, all the world over, consist, and have always\nconsisted, of barbaric conquerors or their descendants, who remain to\nthe last, on the average of instances, at a lower grade of civilisation\nand morals than the democracy they live among.\n\nI know this view is to some extent opposed to the common ideas of people\nat large (and especially of that particular European people which\n\"dearly loves a lord\") as to the relative position of aristocracies and\ndemocracies in the sliding scale of human development. There is a common\nthough wholly unfounded belief knocking about the world, that the\naristocrat is better in intelligence, in culture, in arts, in manners,\nthan the ordinary plebeian. The fact is, being, like all barbarians, a\nboastful creature, he has gone on so long asserting his own profound\nsuperiority by birth to the world around him--a superiority as of fine\nporcelain to common clay--that the world around him has at last actually\nbegun to accept him at his own valuation. Most English people in\nparticular think that a lord is born a better judge of pictures and\nwines and books and deportment than the human average of us. But history\nshows us the exact opposite. It is a plain historical fact, provable by\nsimple enumeration, that almost all the aristocracies the world has ever\nknown have taken their rise in the conquest of civilised and cultivated\nraces by barbaric invaders; and that the barbaric invaders have seldom\nor never learned the practical arts and handicrafts which are the\ncivilising element in the life of the conquered people around them.\n\nTo begin with the aristocracies best known to most of us, the noble\nfamilies of modern and mediaeval Europe sprang, as a whole, from the\nTeutonic invasion of the Roman Empire. In Italy, it was the Lombards and\nthe Goths who formed the bulk of the great ruling families; all the\nwell-known aristocratic names of mediaeval Italy are without exception\nTeutonic. In Gaul it was the rude Frank who gave the aristocratic\nelement to the mixed nationality, while it was the civilised and\ncultivated Romano-Celtic provincial who became, by fate, the mere\n_roturier_. The great revolution, it has been well said, was, ethnically\nspeaking, nothing more than the revolt of the Celtic against the\nTeutonic fraction; and, one might add also, the revolt of the civilised\nRomanised serf against the barbaric _seigneur_. In Spain, the hidalgo is\njust the _hi d'al Go_, the son of the Goth, the descendant of those rude\nVisigothic conquerors who broke down the old civilisation of Iberian and\nRomanised Hispania. And so on throughout. All over Europe, if you care\nto look close, you will find the aristocrat was the son of the intrusive\nbarbarian; the democrat was the son of the old civilised and educated\nautochthonous people.\n\nIt is just the same elsewhere, wherever we turn. Take Greece, for\nexample. Its most aristocratic state was undoubtedly Sparta, where a\nhandful of essentially barbaric Dorians held in check a much larger and\nHelotised population of higher original civilisation. Take the East: the\nPersian was a wild mountain adventurer who imposed himself as an\naristocrat upon the far more cultivated Babylonian, Assyrian, and\nEgyptian. The same sort of thing had happened earlier in time in\nBabylonia and Assyria themselves, where barbaric conquerors had\nsimilarly imposed themselves upon the first known historical\ncivilisations. Take India under the Moguls, once more; the aristocracy\nof the time consisted of the rude Mahommedan Tartar, who lorded it over\nthe ancient enchorial culture of Rajpoot and Brahmin. Take China: the\nsame thing over again--a Tartar horde imposing its savage rule over the\nmost ancient civilised people of Asia. Take England: its aristocracy at\ndifferent times has consisted of the various barbaric invaders, first\nthe Anglo-Saxon (if I must use that hateful and misleading word)--a\npirate from Sleswick; then the Dane, another pirate from Denmark direct;\nthen the Norman, a yet younger Danish pirate, with a thin veneer of\nearly French culture, who came over from Normandy to better himself\nafter just two generations of Christian apprenticeship. Go where you\nwill, it matters not where you look; from the Aztec in Mexico to the\nTurk at Constantinople or the Arab in North Africa, the aristocrat\nbelongs invariably to a lower race than the civilised people whom he has\nconquered and subjugated.\n\n\"That may be true, perhaps,\" you object, \"as to the remote historical\norigin of aristocracies; but surely the aristocrat of later generations\nhas acquired all the science, all the art, all the polish of the people\nhe lives amongst. He is the flower of their civilisation.\" Don't you\nbelieve it! There isn't a word of truth in it. From first to last the\naristocrat remains, what Matthew Arnold so justly called him, a\nbarbarian. I often wonder, indeed, whether Arnold himself really\nrecognised the literal and actual truth of his own brilliant\ngeneralisation. For the aristocratic ideas and the aristocratic pursuits\nremain to the very end essentially barbaric. The \"gentleman\" never soils\nhis high-born hands with dirty work; in other words, he holds himself\nseverely aloof from the trades and handicrafts which constitute\ncivilisation. The arts that train and educate hand, eye, and brain he\nignorantly despises. In the early middle ages he did not even condescend\nto read and write, those inferior accomplishments being badges of\nserfdom. If you look close at the \"occupations of a gentleman\" in the\npresent day, you will find they are all of purely barbaric character.\nThey descend to us direct from the semi-savage invaders who overthrew\nthe structure of the Roman empire, and replaced its civilised\norganisation by the military and barbaric system of feudalism. The\n\"gentleman\" is above all things a fighter, a hunter, a fisher--he\npreserves the three simplest and commonest barbaric functions. He is\n_not_ a practiser of any civilised or civilising art--a craftsman, a\nmaker, a worker in metal, in stone, in textile fabrics, in pottery.\nThese are the things that constitute civilisation; but the aristocrat\ndoes none of them; in the famous words of one who now loves to mix with\nEnglish gentlemen, \"he toils not, neither does he spin.\" The things he\n_may_ do are, to fight by sea and land, like his ancestor the Goth and\nhis ancestor the Viking; to slay pheasant and partridge, like his\npredatory forefathers; to fish for salmon in the Highlands; to hunt the\nfox, to sail the yacht, to scour the earth in search of great\ngame--lions, elephants, buffalo. His one task is to kill--either his\nkind or his quarry.\n\nObserve, too, the essentially barbaric nature of the gentleman's\nhome--his trappings, his distinctive marks, his surroundings, his\ntitles. He lives by choice in the wildest country, like his skin-clad\nancestors, demanding only that there be game and foxes and fish for his\ndelectation. He loves the moors, the wolds, the fens, the braes, the\nHighlands, not as the painter, the naturalist, or the searcher after\nbeauty of scenery loves them--for the sake of their wild life, their\nheather and bracken, their fresh keen air, their boundless horizon--but\nfor the sake of the thoroughly barbarous existence he and his dogs and\nhis gillies can lead in them. The fact is, neither he nor his ancestors\nhave ever been really civilised. Barbarians in the midst of an\nindustrial community, they have lived their own life of slaying and\nplaying, untouched by the culture of the world below them. Knights in\nthe middle ages, squires in the eighteenth century, they have never\nreceived a tincture of the civilising arts and crafts and industries;\nthey have fought and fished and hunted in uninterrupted succession since\nthe days when wild in woods the noble savage ran, to the days when they\npay extravagant rents for Scottish grouse moors. Their very titles are\nbarbaric and military--knight and earl and marquis and duke, early\ncrystallised names for leaders in war or protectors of the frontier.\nTheir crests and coats of arms are but the totems of their savage\npredecessors, afterwards utilised by mediaeval blacksmiths as\ndistinguishing marks for the summit of a helmet. They decorate their\nhalls with savage trophies of the chase, like the Zulu or the Red\nIndian; they hang up captured arms and looted Chinese jars from the\nSummer Palace in their semi-civilised drawing-rooms. They love to be\nsurrounded by grooms and gamekeepers and other barbaric retainers; they\npass their lives in the midst of serfs; their views about the position\nand rights of women--especially the women of the \"lower orders\"--are\nfrankly African. They share the sentiments of Achilles as to the\nindividuality of Chryseis and Briseis.\n\nSuch is the actual aristocrat, as we now behold him. Thus, living his\nown barbarous life in the midst of a civilised community of workers and\nartists and thinkers and craftsmen, with whom he seldom mingles, and\nwith whom he has nothing in common, this chartered relic of worse days\npreserves from first to last many painful traits of the low moral and\nsocial ideas of his ancestors, from which he has never varied. He\nrepresents most of all, in the modern world, the surviving savage. His\nlove of gewgaws, of titles, of uniform, of dress, of feathers, of\ndecorations, of Highland kilts, and stars and garters, is but one\nexternal symbol of his lower grade of mental and moral status. All over\nEurope, the truly civilised classes have gone on progressing by the\npractice of peaceful arts from generation to generation; but the\naristocrat has stood still at the same half-savage level, a hunter and\nfighter, an orgiastic roysterer, a killer of wild boars and wearer of\nabsurd mediaeval costumes, too childish for the civilised and cultivated\ncommoner.\n\nGovernment by aristocrats is thus government by the mentally and morally\ninferior. And yet--a Bill for giving at last some scant measure of\nself-government to persecuted Ireland has to run the gauntlet, in our\nnineteenth-century England, of an irresponsible House of hereditary\nbarbarians!\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\n_SCIENCE IN EDUCATION._\n\n\nI mean what I say: science in education, not education in science.\n\nIt is the last of these that all the scientific men of England have so\nlong been fighting for. And a very good thing it is in its way, and I\nhope they may get as much as they want of it. But compared to the\nimportance of science in education, education in science is a matter of\nvery small national moment.\n\nThe difference between the two is by no means a case of tweedledum and\ntweedledee. Education in science means the systematic teaching of\nscience so as to train up boys to be scientific men. Now scientific men\nare exceedingly useful members of a community; and so are engineers, and\nbakers, and blacksmiths, and artists, and chimney-sweeps. But we can't\nall be bakers, and we can't all be painters in water-colours. There is a\ndim West Country legend to the effect that the inhabitants of the Scilly\nIsles eke out a precarious livelihood by taking in one another's\nwashing. As a matter of practical political economy, such a source of\nincome is worse than precarious--it's frankly impossible. \"It takes all\nsorts to make a world.\" A community entirely composed of scientific men\nwould fail to feed itself, clothe itself, house itself, and keep itself\nsupplied with amusing light literature. In one word, education in\nscience produces specialists; and specialists, though most useful and\nvaluable persons in their proper place, are no more the staple of a\ncivilised community than engine-drivers or ballet-dancers.\n\nWhat the world at large really needs, and will one day get, is not this,\nbut due recognition of the true value of science in education. We don't\nall want to be made into first-class anatomists like Owen, still less\ninto first-class practical surgeons, like Sir Henry Thompson. But what\nwe do all want is a competent general knowledge (amongst other things)\nof anatomy at large, and especially of human anatomy; of physiology at\nlarge, and especially of human physiology. We don't all want to be\nanalytical chemists: but what we do all want is to know as much about\noxygen and carbon as will enable us to understand the commonest\nphenomena of combustion, of chemical combination, of animal or vegetable\nlife. We don't all want to be zoologists, and botanists of the type who\nput their names after \"critical species:\" but what we do all want to\nknow is as much about plants and animals as will enable us to walk\nthrough life intelligently, and to understand the meaning of the things\nthat surround us. We want, in one word, a general acquaintance with the\n_results_ rather than with the _methods_ of science.\n\n\"In short,\" says the specialist, with his familiar sneer, \"you want a\nsmattering.\"\n\nWell, yes, dear Sir Smelfungus, if it gives you pleasure to put it\nso--just that; a smattering, an all-round smattering. But remember that\nin this matter the man of science is always influenced by ideas derived\nfrom his own pursuits as specialist. He is for ever thinking what sort\nof education will produce more specialists in future; and as a rule he\nis thinking what sort of education will produce men capable in future of\nadvancing science. Now to advance science, to discover new snails, or\ninvent new ethyl compounds, is not and cannot be the main object of the\nmass of humanity. What the mass wants is just unspecialised\nknowledge--the kind of knowledge that enables men to get comfortably and\ncreditably and profitably through life, to meet emergencies as they\nrise, to know their way through the world, to use their faculties in all\ncircumstances to the best advantage. And for this purpose what is wanted\nis, not the methods, but the results of science.\n\nOne science, and one only, is rationally taught in our schools at\npresent. I mean geography. And the example of geography is so eminently\nuseful for illustrating the difference I am trying to point out, that I\nwill venture to dwell upon it for a moment in passing. It is good for us\nall to know that the world is round, without its being necessary for\nevery one of us to follow in detail the intricate reasoning by which\nthat result has been arrived at. It is good for us all to know the\nposition of New York and Rio and Calcutta on the map, without its being\nnecessary for us to understand, far less to work out for ourselves, the\nobservations and calculations which fixed their latitude and longitude.\nKnowledge of the map is a good thing in itself, though it is a very\ndifferent thing indeed from the technical knowledge which enables a man\nto make a chart of an unknown region, or to explore and survey it.\nFurthermore, it is a form of knowledge far more generally useful. A fair\nacquaintance with the results embodied in the atlas, in the gazetteer,\nin Baedeker, and in Bradshaw, is much oftener useful to us on our way\nthrough the world than a special acquaintance with the methods of\nmap-making. It would be absurd to say that because a man is not going to\nbe a Stanley or a Nansen, therefore it is no good for him to learn\ngeography. It would be absurd to say that unless he learned geography in\naccordance with its methods instead of its results, he could have but a\nsmattering, and that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. A little\nknowledge of the position of New York is indeed a dangerous thing, if a\nman uses it to navigate a Cunard vessel across the Atlantic. But the\nabsence of the smattering is a much more dangerous and fatal thing if\nthe man wishes to do business with the Argentine and the Transvaal, or\nto enter into practical relations of any sort with anybody outside his\nown parish. The results of geography are useful and valuable in\nthemselves, quite apart from the methods employed in obtaining them.\n\nIt is just the same with all the other sciences. There is nothing occult\nor mysterious about them. No just cause or impediment exists why we\nshould insist on being ignorant of the orbits of the planets because we\ncannot ourselves make the calculations for determining them; no reason\nwhy we should insist on being ignorant of the classification of plants\nand animals because we don't feel able ourselves to embark on anatomical\nresearches which would justify us in coming to original conclusions\nabout them. I know the mass of scientific opinion has always gone the\nother way; but then scientific opinion means only the opinion of men of\nscience, who are themselves specialists, and who think most of the\neducation needed to make men specialists, not of the education needed to\nfit them for the general exigencies and emergencies of life. We don't\nwant authorities on the Cucurbitaceae, but well-informed citizens.\nProfessor Huxley is not our best guide in these matters, but Mr. Herbert\nSpencer, who long ago, in his book on Education, sketched out a radical\nprogramme of instruction in that knowledge which is of most worth, such\nas no country, no college, no school in Europe has ever yet been bold\nenough to put into practice.\n\nWhat common sense really demands, then, is education in the main results\nof all the sciences--a knowledge of what is known, not necessarily a\nknowledge of each successive step by which men came to know it. At\npresent, of course, in all our schools in England there is no systematic\nteaching of knowledge at all; what replaces it is a teaching of the\nfacts of language, and for the most part of useless facts, or even of\nexploded fictions. Our public schools, especially (by which phrase we\nnever mean real public schools like the board schools at all, but merely\nschools for the upper and the middle classes) are in their existing\nstage primarily great gymnasiums--very good things, too, in their way,\nagainst which I have not a word of blame; and, secondarily, places for\nimparting a sham and imperfect knowledge of some few philological facts\nabout two extinct languages. Pupils get a smattering of Homer and\nCicero. That is literally all the equipment for life that the cleverest\nand most industrious boys can ever take away from them. The sillier or\nidler don't take away even that. As to the \"mental training\" argument,\nso often trotted out, it is childish enough not to be worth answering.\nWhich is most practically useful to us in life--knowledge of Latin\ngrammar or knowledge of ourselves and the world we live in, physical,\nsocial, moral? That is the question.\n\nThe truth is, schoolmastering in Britain has become a vast vested\ninterest in the hands of men who have nothing to teach us. They try to\nbolster up their vicious system by such artificial arguments as the\n\"mental training\" fallacy. Forced to admit the utter uselessness of the\npretended knowledge they impart, they fall back upon the plea of its\nsupposed occult value as intellectual discipline. They say in\neffect:--\"This sawdust we offer you contains no food, we know: but then\nsee how it strengthens the jaws to chew it!\" Besides, look at our\nresults! The typical John Bull! pig-headed, ignorant, brutal. Are we\nreally such immense successes ourselves that we must needs perpetuate\nthe mould that warped us?\n\nThe one fatal charge brought against the public school system is that\n\"after all, it turns out English gentlemen!\"\n\n\n\n\nIV.\n\n_THE THEORY OF SCAPEGOATS._\n\n\n\"Alas, how easily things go wrong!\" says Dr. George MacDonald. And all\nthe world over, when things do go wrong, the natural and instinctive\ndesire of the human animal is--to find a scapegoat. When the great\nFrench nation in the lump embarks its capital in a hopeless scheme for\ncutting a canal through the Isthmus of Panama, and then finds out too\nlate that Nature has imposed insuperable barriers to its completion on\nthe projected scale--what does the great French nation do, in its\ncollective wisdom, but turn round at once to rend the directors? It\ncries, \"A Mazas!\" just as in '71 it cried \"Bazaine a la lanterne!\" I\ndon't mean to say the directors don't deserve all they have got or ever\nwill get, and perhaps more also; I don't mean to deny corruption\nextraordinary in many high places; as a rule the worst that anybody\nalleges about anything is only a part of what might easily be alleged if\nwe were all in the secret. Which of us, indeed, would 'scape whipping?\nBut what I do mean is, that we should never have heard of Reinach or\nHerz, of the corruption and peculation, at all if things had gone well.\nIt is the crash that brought them out. The nation wants a scapegoat.\n\"Ain't nobody to be whopped for this 'ere?\" asked Mr. Sam Weller on a\ncritical occasion. The question embodies the universal impulse of\nhumanity.\n\nTracing the feeling back to its origin, it seems due to this: minds of\nthe lower order can never see anything go wrong without experiencing a\ncertain sense of resentment; and resentment, by its very nature, desires\nto vent itself upon some living and sentient creature, by preference a\nfellow human being. When the child, running too fast, falls and hurts\nitself, it gets instantly angry. \"Naughty ground to hurt baby!\" says the\nnurse: \"Baby hit it and hurt it.\" And baby promptly hits it back, with\nvicious little fist, feeling every desire to revenge itself. By-and-by,\nwhen baby grows older and learns that the ground can't feel to speak of,\nhe wants to put the blame upon somebody else, in order to have an object\nto expend his rage upon. \"You pushed me down!\" he says to his playmate,\nand straightway proceeds to punch his playmate's head for it--not\nbecause he really believes the playmate did it, but because he feels he\n_must_ have some outlet for his resentment. When once resentment is\nroused, it will expend its force on anything that turns up handy, as the\nman who has quarrelled with his wife about a question of a bonnet, will\nkick his dog for trying to follow him to the club as he leaves her.\n\nThe mob, enraged at the death of Caesar, meets Cinna the poet in the\nstreets of Rome. \"Your name, sir?\" inquires the Third Citizen. \"Truly,\nmy name is Cinna,\" says the unsuspecting author. \"Tear him to pieces!\"\ncries the mob; \"he's a conspirator!\" \"I am Cinna the poet,\" pleads the\nunhappy man; \"I am not Cinna the conspirator!\" But the mob does not heed\nsuch delicate distinctions at such a moment. \"Tear him for his bad\nverses!\" it cries impartially. \"Tear him for his bad verses!\"\n\nWhatever sort of misfortune falls upon persons of the lower order of\nintelligence is always met in the same spirit. Especially is this the\ncase with the deaths of relatives. Fools who have lost a friend\ninvariably blame somebody for his fatal illness. To hear many people\ntalk, you would suppose they were unaware of the familiar proposition\nthat all men are mortal (including women); you might imagine they\nthought an ordinary human constitution was calculated to survive nine\nhundred and ninety-nine years unless some evil-disposed person or\npersons took the trouble beforehand to waylay and destroy it. \"My poor\nfather was eighty-seven when he died; and he would have been alive still\nif it weren't for that nasty Mrs. Jones: she put him into a pair of damp\nsheets.\" Or, \"My husband would never have caught the cold that killed\nhim, if that horrid man Brown hadn't kept him waiting so long in the\ncarriage at the street corner.\" The doctor has to bear the brunt of most\nsuch complaints; indeed, it is calculated by an eminent statistician\n(who desires his name to remain unpublished) that eighty-three per cent.\nof the deaths in Great Britain might easily have been averted if the\npatient had only been treated in various distinct ways by all the\nmembers of his family, and if that foolish Dr. Squills hadn't so grossly\nmistaken and mistreated his malady.\n\nThe fact is, the death is regarded as a misfortune, and somebody must be\nblamed for it. Heaven has provided scapegoats. The doctor and the\nhostile female members of the family are always there--laid on, as it\nwere, for the express purpose.\n\nWith us in modern Europe, resentment in such cases seldom goes further\nthan vague verbal outbursts of temper. We accuse Mrs. Jones of\nmisdemeanours with damp sheets; but we don't get so far as to accuse her\nof tricks with strychnine. In the Middle Ages, however, the pursuit of\nthe scapegoat ran a vast deal further. When any great one died--a Black\nPrince or a Dauphin--it was always assumed on all hands that he must\nhave been poisoned. True, poisoning may then have been a trifle more\nfrequent; certainly the means of detecting it were far less advanced\nthan in the days of Tidy and Lauder Brunton. Still, people must often\nhave died natural deaths even in the Middle Ages--though nobody believed\nit. All the world began to speculate what Jane Shore could have poisoned\nthem. A little earlier, again, it was not the poisoner that was looked\nfor, but his predecessor, the sorcerer. Whoever fell ill, somebody had\nbewitched him. Were the cattle diseased? Then search for the evil eye.\nDid the cows yield no milk? Some neighbour, doubtless, knew the reason\nonly too well, and could be forced to confess it by liberal use of the\nthumb-screw and the ducking-stool. No misfortune was regarded as due to\nnatural causes; for in their philosophy there were no such things as\nnatural causes at all; whatever ill-luck came, somebody had contrived\nit; so you had always your scapegoat ready to hand to punish. The\nAthenians, indeed, kept a small collection of public scapegoats always\nin stock, waiting to be sacrificed at a moment's notice.\n\nMore even than that. Go one step further back, and you will find that\nman in his early stages has no conception of such a thing as natural\ndeath in any form. He doesn't really know that the human organism is\nwound up like a clock to run at best for so many years, or months, or\nhours, and that even if nothing unexpected happens to cut short its\ncourse prematurely, it can only run out its allotted period. Within his\nown experience, almost all the deaths that occur are violent deaths, and\nhave been brought about by human agency or by the attacks of wild\nbeasts. There you have a cause with whose action and operation the\nsavage is personally familiar; and it is the only one he believes in.\nEven old age is in his eyes no direct cause of death; for when his\nrelations grow old, he considerately clubs them, to put them out of\ntheir misery. When, therefore, he sees his neighbour struck down before\nhis face by some invisible power, and writhing with pain as though\nunseen snakes and tigers were rending him, what should he naturally\nconclude save that demon or witch or wizard is at work? and if he cares\nabout the matter at all, what should he do save endeavour to find the\nculprit out and inflict condign punishment? In savage states, whenever\nanything untoward happens to the king or chief, it is the business of\nthe witch-finder to disclose the wrong-doer; and sooner or later, you\nmay be sure, \"somebody gets whopped for it.\" Whopping in Dahomey means\nwholesale decapitation.\n\nNow, is it not a direct survival from this primitive state of mind that\nentails upon us all the desire to find a scapegoat? Our ancestors really\nbelieved there was always somebody to blame--man, witch, or spirit--if\nonly you could find him; and though we ourselves have mostly got beyond\nthat stage, yet the habit it engendered in our race remains ingrained in\nthe nervous system, so that none but a few of the naturally highest and\nmost civilised dispositions have really outgrown it. Most people still\nthink there is somebody to blame for every human misfortune. \"Who fills\nthe butcher's shops with large blue flies?\" asked the poet of the\nRegency. He set it down to \"the Corsican ogre.\" For the Tory Englishmen\nof the present day it is Mr. Gladstone who is most often and most\npopularly envisaged as the author of all evil. For the Pope, it is the\nFreemasons. There are just a few men here and there in the world who can\nsee that when misfortunes come, circumstances, or nature, or (hardest of\nall) we ourselves have brought them. The common human instinct is still\nto get into a rage, and look round to discover whether there's any other\nfellow standing about unobserved, whose head we can safely undertake to\npunch for it.\n\n\"It's all the fault of those confounded paid agitators.\"\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\n_AMERICAN DUCHESSES._\n\n\nEvery American woman is by birth a duchess.\n\nThere, you see, I have taken you in. When you saw the heading, \"American\nDuchesses,\" you thought I was going to purvey some piquant scandal about\nhigh-placed ladies; and you straightway began to read my essay. That\nshows I rightly interpreted your human nature. There's a deal of human\nnature flying about unrecognised. Yet when I said duchesses, I actually\nmeant it. For the American woman is the only real aristocrat now living\nin America.\n\nThese remarks are forced upon me by a brilliant afternoon on the\nPromenade des Anglais. All Nice is there, in its cosmopolitan butterfly\nvariety, flaunting itself in the sun in the very ugly dresses now in\nfashion. I don't know why, but the mode of the moment consists in making\neverything as exaggerated as possible, and sedulously hiding the natural\ncontours of the human figure. But let that pass; the day is too fine for\na man to be critical. The band is playing Mascagni's last in the Jardin\nPublic; the carriages are drawn up beside the palms and judas-trees that\nfringe the Paillon; the _sous-officiers_ are strolling along the wall\nwith their red caps stuck jauntily just a trifle on one side, as though\nto mow down nursemaids were the one legitimate occupation of the _brav'\nmilitaire_. And among them all, proud, tall, disdainful, glide the\nAmerican duchesses, cold, critical, high-toned, yet ready to strike up,\nshould opportunity serve, appropriate acquaintance with their natural\nequals, the dukes of Europe.\n\n\"And the American dukes?\"--There aren't any. \"But these ladies' husbands\nand fathers and brothers?\"--Oh, _they're_ business men, working hard for\nthe duchesses in Wall Street, or on 'Change in Chicago. And that's why I\nsay quite seriously the American woman is the only real aristocrat now\nliving in America. Everybody who has seen much of Americans must have\nnoticed for himself how really superior American women are, on the\naverage, to the men of their kind. I don't mean merely that they are\nbetter dressed, and better groomed, and better got up, and better\nmannered than their brothers. I mean that they have a real superiority\nin the things worth having--the things that are more excellent--in\neducation, culture, knowledge, taste, good feeling. And the reason is\nnot far to seek. They represent the only leisured class in America. They\nare the one set of people from Maine to California who have time to\nread, to think, to travel, to look at good pictures, to hear good music,\nto mix with society that can improve and elevate them. They have read\nDaudet; they have seen the Vatican. The women thus form a natural\naristocracy--the only aristocracy the country possesses.\n\nI am aware that in saying this I take my life in my hands. I shall be\nprepared to defend myself from the infuriated Westerner with the usual\nargument, which I shall carry about loaded in all its chambers in my\nright-hand pocket. I am also aware that less infuriated Easterners,\nchoosing their own more familiar weapon, will inundate my leisure with\nsardonic inquiries whether I don't consider Oliver Wendell Holmes or\nCharles Eliot Norton (thus named in full) the equal in culture of the\naverage American woman. Well, I frankly admit these cases and thousands\nlike them; indeed I have had the good fortune to number among my\npersonal acquaintances many American gentlemen whose chivalrous breeding\nwould have been conspicuous (if you will believe it) even at Marlborough\nHouse. I will also allow that in New York, in Boston, and less\nabundantly in other big towns of America, men of leisure, men of\nculture, and men of thought are to be found, as wide-minded and as\ngentle-natured as this race of ours makes them. But that doesn't alter\nthe general fact that, taking them in the lump, American men stand a\nstep or two lower in the scale of humanity than American women. One need\nhardly ask why. It is because the men are almost all immersed and\nabsorbed in business, while the women are fine ladies who stop at home,\nand read, and see, and interest themselves widely in numberless\ndirections.\n\nThe consequence is that nowhere, as a rule, does the gulf between the\nsexes yawn so wide as in America. One can often observe it in the\nbrothers and sisters of the same family. And it runs in the opposite\ndirection from the gulf in Europe. With us, as a rule, the men are\nbetter educated, and more likely to have read and seen and thought\nwidely, than the women. In America, the men are generally so steeped in\naffairs as to be materialised and encysted; they take for the most part\na hard-headed, solid-silver view of everything, and are but little\ninfluenced by abstract conceptions. Their horizon is bounded by the rim\nof the dollar. Nay, owing to the eager desire to get a good start by\nbeginning life early, their education itself is generally cut short at a\nyounger age than their sisters'; so that, even at the outset, the girls\nhave often a decided superiority in knowledge and culture. Amanda reads\nPaul Bourget and John Oliver Hobbes; she has some slight tincture of\nLatin, Greek, and German; while Cyrus knows nothing but English and\narithmetic, the quotations for prime pork and the state of the market\nfor Futures. Add to this that the women are more sensitive, more\ndelicate, more naturally refined, as well as unspoilt by the trading\nspirit, and you get the real reasons for the marked and, in some ways,\nunusual superiority of the American woman.\n\nThat, I think, in large part explains the fascination which American\nwomen undoubtedly exercise over a considerable class of European men. In\nthe European man the American woman often recognises for the first time\nthe male of her species. Unaccustomed at home to as general a level of\nculture and feeling as she finds among the educated gentlemen of Europe,\nshe likes their society and makes her preference felt by them. Now man\nis a vain animal. You are a man yourself, and must recognise at once the\ntruth of the proposition. As soon as he sees a woman likes him, he\ninstantly returns the compliment with interest. In point of fact, he\nusually falls in love with her. Of course I admit the large number of\nconcomitant circumstances which disturb the problem; I admit on the one\nhand the tempting shekels of the Californian heiress, and on the other\nhand the glamour and halo that still surround the British coronet.\nNevertheless, after making all deductions for these disturbing factors,\nI submit there remains a residual phenomenon thus best interpreted. If\nanybody denies it, I would ask him one question--how does it come that\nso many Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Italians marry American women, while\nso few Englishwomen, French women, or Italian women marry American men?\nSurely the American men have also the shekels; surely it is something\neven in Oregon or Montana to have inspired an honourable passion in a\nLady Elizabeth or a dowager countess. I think the true explanation is\nthat our men are attracted by American women, but our women are not\nequally attracted by American men, and that the quality of the articles\nhas something to do with it.\n\nThe American duchess, I take it, comes over to Europe, and desires\nincontinently to drag the European duke at the wheels of her chariot.\nAnd the European duke is fascinated in turn, partly by this very fact,\npartly by the undeniable freshness, brightness, and delicate culture of\nthe American woman. For there is no burking the truth that in many\nrespects the American woman carries about her a peculiar charm ungranted\nas yet to her European sisters. It is the charm of freedom, of ease, of\na certain external and skin-deep emancipation--an emancipation which\ngoes but a little way down, yet adds a quaint and piquant grace of\nmanner. What she conspicuously lacks, on the other hand, is essential\nfemininity; by which I don't mean womanliness--of that she has enough\nand to spare--but the wholesome physical and instinctive qualities which\ngo to make up a sound and well-equipped wife and mother. The lack of\nthese underlying muliebral qualities more than counterbalances to not a\nfew Europeans the undoubted vivacity, originality, and freshness of the\nAmerican woman. She is a dainty bit of porcelain, unsuited for use; a\ndelicate exotic blossom, for drawing-room decoration, where many would\nprefer robust fruit-bearing faculties.\n\nI dropped into the Opera House here at Nice the other night, and found\nthey were playing \"Carmen\"--which is always interesting. Well, you may\nperhaps remember that when that creature of passion, the gipsy heroine,\nwishes to gain or retain a man's affections, she throws a rose at him,\nand then he cannot resist her. That is Merimee's symbolism. Art is full\nof these sacrifices of realism to reticence. Outside the opera, it is\nnot with roses that women enslave us. But the American duchess relies\nentirely upon the use of the rose; and that is just where she fails to\ninterest so many of us in Europe.\n\nAnd now I think it's almost time for me to go and hunt up the material\narguments for that rusty six-shooter.\n\n\n\n\nVI.\n\n_IS ENGLAND PLAYED OUT?_\n\n\nBritain is now the centre of civilisation. Will it always be so? Is our\ncommercial supremacy decaying or not? Have we begun to reach the period\nof inevitable decline? Or is decline indeed inevitable at all? Might a\nnation go on being great for ever? If so, are _we_ that nation? If not,\nhave we yet arrived at the moment when retrogression becomes a foregone\nconclusion? These are momentous questions. Dare I try, under the mimosas\non the terrace, to resolve them?\n\nMost people have talked of late as though the palmy days of England were\nfairly over. The down grade lies now before us. But, then, so far as I\ncan judge, most people have talked so ever since the morning when\nHengist and Horsa, Limited, landed from their three keels in the Isle of\nThanet. Gildas is the oldest historian of these islands, and his work\nconsists entirely of a good old Tory lament in the Ashmead-Bartlett\nstrain upon the degeneracy of the times and the proximate ruin of the\nBritish people. Gildas wrote some fourteen hundred years ago or\nthereabouts--and the country is not yet quite visibly ruined. On the\ncontrary, it seems to the impartial eye a more eligible place of\nresidence to-day than in the stirring times of the Saxon invasion.\nHence, for the last two or three centuries, I have learned to discount\nthese recurrent Jeremiads of Toryism, and to judge the question of our\ndecadence or progress by a more rational standard.\n\nThere is only one such rational standard; and that is, to discover the\ncauses and conditions of our commercial prosperity, and then to inquire\nwhether those causes and conditions are being largely altered or\nmodified by the evolution of new phases. If they are, England must begin\nto decline; if they are not, her day is not yet come. Home Rule she will\nsurvive; even the Eight Hours bogey, we may presume, will not finally\ndispose of her.\n\nNow, the centre of civilisation is not a fixed point. It has varied from\ntime to time, and may yet vary. In the very earliest historical period,\nthere was hardly such a thing as a centre of civilisation at all. There\nwere civilisations in Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Etruria; discrete\ncivilisations of the river valleys, mostly, which scarcely came into\ncontact with one another in their first beginnings; any more than our\nown came into contact once with the civilisations of China, of Japan, of\nPeru, of Mexico. As yet there was no world-commerce, no mutual\ncommunication of empire with empire. It was in the AEgean and the eastern\nbasin of the Mediterranean that navigation first reached the point where\ngreat commercial ports and free intercourse became possible. The\nPhoenicians, and later the Greeks, were the pioneers of the new era.\nTyre, Athens, Miletus, Rhodes, occupied the centre of the nascent world,\nand bound together Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece,\nSicily, and Italy in one mercantile system. A little later, Hellas\nitself enlarged, so as to include Syracuse, Byzantium, Alexandria,\nCyrene, Cumae, Neapolis, Massilia. The inland sea became \"a Greek lake.\"\nBut as navigation thus slowly widened to the western Mediterranean\nbasin, the centre of commerce had to shift perforce from Hellas to the\nmid-point of the new area. Two powerful trading towns occupied such a\nmid-point in the Mediterranean--Rome and Carthage; and they were driven\nto fight out the supremacy of the world (the world as it then existed)\nbetween them. With the Roman Empire, the circle extended so as to take\nin the Atlantic coasts, Gaul, Spain, and Britain, which then, however,\nlay not at the centre but on the circumference of civilisation. During\nthe Middle Ages, when navigation began to embrace the great open sea as\nwell as the Mediterranean, a double centre sprang up: the Italian\nRepublics, Venice, Florence, Genoa, Pisa, were still the chief carriers;\nbut the towns of Flanders, Bruges, Ghent, and Antwerp began to compete\nwith them, and the Atlantic states, France, England, the Low Countries,\nrose into importance. By and by, as time goes on, the discoveries of\nColumbus and of Vasco di Gama open out new tracks. Suddenly commerce is\nrevolutionised. France, England, Spain, become nearer to America and\nIndia than Italy; so Italy declines; while the Atlantic states usurp the\nfirst place as the centres of civilisation.\n\nOur own age brings fresh seas into the circle once more. It is no longer\nthe Atlantic, the Mediterranean, or the Indian Ocean that alone count;\nthe Pacific also begins to be considered. China, Japan, the Cape; Chili,\nPeru, the Argentine; California, British Columbia, Australia, New\nZealand; all of them are parts of the system of to-day; civilisation is\nworld-wide.\n\nHas this change of area altered the central position of England? Not at\nall, save to strengthen it. If you look at the hemisphere of greatest\nland, you will see that England occupies its exact middle. Insular\nherself, and therefore all made up of ports, she is nearer all ports in\nthe world than any other country is or ever can be. I don't say that\nthis insures for her perpetual dominion, such as Virgil prophesied for\nthe Roman Empire; but I do say it makes her a hard country to beat in\ncommercial competition. It accounts for Liverpool, London, Glasgow,\nNewcastle; it even accounts in a way for Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds,\nand Sheffield. England now stands at the mathematical centre of the\npractical world, and unless some Big Thing occurs to displace her, she\nmust continue to stand there. It takes a great deal to upset the balance\nof an entire planet.\n\nIs anything now displacing her? Well, there is the fact that railways\nare making land-carriage to-day more important relatively to\nwater-carriage than at any previous period. That may, perhaps, in time\nshift the centre of the world from an island like England to the middle\nof a great land area, like Chicago or Moscow. And, no doubt, if ever the\ncentre shifts at all, it will shift towards Western America, or rather\nthe prairie region. But, just at present, what are the greatest\ncommercial towns of the world? All ports to a man. And the day when it\nwill be otherwise, if ever, seems still far distant. Look at the newest\ncountries. What are their great focal points? Every one of them ports.\nMelbourne and Sydney; Rio, Buenos Ayres, and Valparaiso; Cape Town, San\nFrancisco, Bombay, Calcutta, Yokohama. Chicago itself, the most vital\nand the quickest grower among modern towns, owes half its importance to\nthe fact that there water-carriage down the Great Lakes begins; though\nit owes the other half, I admit, to the converse fact that all the great\ntrans-continental railways have to bend south at that point to avoid\nLake Michigan. Still, on the whole, I think, as long as conditions\nremain what they are, the commercial supremacy of England is in no\nimmediate danger. It is these great permanent geographical factors that\nmake or mar a country, not Eight Hours Bills or petty social\nreconstructions. Said the Lord Mayor of London to petulant King James,\nwhen he proposed to remove the Court to Oxford, \"May it please your\nMajesty not to take away the Thames also.\"\n\n\"But our competitors? We are being driven out of our markets.\" Oh, yes,\nif that's all you mean, I don't suppose we shall always be able in\neverything to keep up our exclusive position. Our neighbours, who (bar\nthe advantage of insularity, which means a coast and a port always close\nat hand) seem nearly as well situated as we are for access to the\nworld-markets, are beginning to wake up and take a slice of the cake\nfrom us. Germany is manufacturing; Belgium is smelting; Antwerp is\nexporting; America is occupying her own markets. But that's a very\ndifferent thing indeed from national decadence. We may have to compete a\nlittle harder with our rivals, that's all. The Boom may be over; but the\nThames remains: the geographical facts are still unaltered. And notice\nthat all the time while there's been this vague talk about \"bad\ntimes\"--income-tax has been steadily increasing, London has been\nsteadily growing, every outer and visible sign of commercial prosperity\nhas been steadily spreading. Have our watering-places shrunk? Have our\nbuildings been getting smaller and less luxurious? If Antwerp has grown,\nhow about Hull and Cardiff? \"Well, perhaps the past is all right; but\nconsider the future! Eight hours are going to drive capital out of the\ncountry!\" Rubbish! I'm not a political economist, thank God; I never\nsank quite so low as that. And I'm not speaking for or against Eight\nHours: I'm only discounting some verbose nonsense. But I know enough to\nsee that the capital of a country can no more be exported than the land\nor the houses. Can you drive away the London and North-Western Railway?\nCan you drive away the factories of Manchester, the mines of the Black\nCountry, the canals, the buildings, the machinery, the docks, the plant,\nthe apparatus? Impossible, on the very face of it! Most of the capital\nof a country is fixed in its soil, and can't be uprooted. People fall\ninto this error about driving away capital because they know you can\nsell particular railway shares or a particular factory and leave the\ncountry with the proceeds, provided somebody else is willing to buy; but\nyou can't sell all the railways and all the factories in a lump, and\nclear out with the capital. No, no; England stands where she does,\nbecause God put her there; and until He invents a new order of things\n(which may, of course, happen any day--as, for example, if aerial\nnavigation came in) she must continue, in spite of minor changes, to\nmaintain in the main her present position.\n\nBut a truce to these frivolities! The little Italian boy next door calls\nme to play ball with him, with a green lemon from the garden. Vengo,\nLuigi, vengo! I return at once to the realities of life, and dismiss\nsuch shadows.\n\n\n\n\nVII.\n\n_THE GAME AND THE RULES._\n\n\nA sportive friend of mine, a mighty golfer, is fond of saying, \"You\nRadicals want to play the game without the rules.\" To which I am\naccustomed mildly to retort, \"Not at all; but we think the rules unfair,\nand so we want to see them altered.\"\n\nNow life is a very peculiar game, which differs in many important\nrespects even from compulsory football. The Rugby scrimmage is mere\nchild's play by the side of it. There's no possibility of shirking it. A\nmedical certificate won't get you off; whether you like it or not, play\nyou must in your appointed order. We are all unwilling competitors.\nNobody asks our naked little souls beforehand whether they would prefer\nto be born into the game or to remain, unfleshed, in the limbo of\nnon-existence. Willy nilly, every one of us is thrust into the world by\nan irresponsible act of two previous players; and once there, we must\nplay out the set as best we may to the bitter end, however little we\nlike it or the rules that order it.\n\nThat, it must be admitted, makes a grave distinction from the very\noutset between the game of human life and any other game with which we\nare commonly acquainted. It also makes it imperative upon the framers of\nthe rules so to frame them that no one player shall have an unfair or\nunjust advantage over any of the others. And since the penalty of bad\nplay, or bad success in the match, is death, misery, starvation, it\nbehoves the rule-makers to be more scrupulously particular as to\nfairness and equity than in any other game like cricket or tennis. It\nbehoves them to see that all start fair, and that no hapless beginner is\nunduly handicapped. To compel men to take part in a match for dear life,\nwhether they wish it or not, and then to insist that some of them shall\nwield bats and some mere broom-sticks, irrespective of height, weight,\nage, or bodily infirmity, is surely not fair. It justifies the committee\nin calling for a revision.\n\nBut things are far worse than even that in the game as actually played\nin Europe. What shall we say of rules which decide dogmatically that one\nset of players are hereditarily entitled to be always batting, while\nanother set, less lucky, have to field for ever, and to be fined or\nimprisoned for not catching? What shall we say of rules which give one\ngroup a perpetual right to free lunch in the tent, while the remainder\nhave to pick up what they can for themselves by gleaning among the\nstubble? How justify the principle in accordance with which the captain\non one side has an exclusive claim to the common ground of the club, and\nmay charge every player exactly what he likes for the right to play upon\nit?--especially when the choice lies between playing on such terms, or\nbeing cast into the void, yourself and your family. And then to think\nthat the ground thus tabooed by one particular member may be all\nSutherlandshire, or, still worse, all Westminster! Decidedly, these\nrules call for instant revision; and the unprivileged players must be\nsubmissive indeed who consent to put up with them.\n\nFriends and fellow-members, let us cry with one voice, \"The links for\nthe players!\"\n\nOnce more, just look at the singular rule in our own All England club,\nby which certain assorted members possess a hereditary right to veto all\ndecisions of the elective committee, merely because they happen to be\ntheir fathers' sons, and the club long ago very foolishly permitted the\nlike privilege to their ancestors! That is an irrational interference\nwith the liberty of the players which hardly anybody nowadays ventures\nto defend in principle, and which is only upheld in some half-hearted\nway (save in the case of that fossil anachronism, the Duke of Argyll) by\nsupposed arguments of convenience. It won't last long now; there is talk\nin the committee of \"mending or ending it.\" It shows the long-suffering\nnature of the poor blind players at this compulsory game of national\nfootball that they should ever for one moment permit so monstrous an\nassumption--permit the idea that one single player may wield a\nsubstantive voice and vote to outweigh tens of thousands of his\nfellow-members!\n\nThese questions of procedure, however, are after all small matters. It\nis the real hardships of the game that most need to be tackled. Why\nshould one player be born into the sport with a prescriptive right to\nfill some easy place in the field, while another has to fag on from\nmorning to night in the most uninteresting and fatiguing position? Why\nshould _pate de foie gras_ and champagne-cup in the tent be so unequally\ndistributed? Why should those who have made fewest runs and done no\nfielding be admitted to partake of these luxuries, free of charge, while\nthose who have borne the brunt of the fight, those who have suffered\nfrom the heat of the day, those who have contributed most to the honour\nof the victory, are turned loose, unfed, to do as they can for\nthemselves by hook or by crook somehow? These are the questions some of\nus players are now beginning to ask ourselves; and we don't find them\nefficiently answered by the bald statement that we \"want to play the\ngame without the rules,\" and that we ought to be precious glad the\nlegislators of the club haven't made them a hundred times harder against\nus.\n\nNo, no; the rules themselves must be altered. Time was, indeed, when\npeople used to think they were made and ordained by divine authority.\n\"Cum privilegio\" was the motto of the captains. But we know very well\nnow that every club settles its own standing orders, and that it can\nalter and modify them as fundamentally as it pleases. Lots of funny old\nsaws are still uttered upon this subject--\"There must always be rich and\npoor;\" \"You can't interfere with economical laws;\" \"If you were to\ndivide up everything to-morrow, at the end of a fortnight you'd find the\nsame differences and inequalities as ever.\" The last-named argument (I\nbelieve it considers itself by courtesy an argument) is one which no\nself-respecting Radical should so much as deign to answer. Nobody that I\never heard of for one moment proposed to \"divide up everything,\" or, for\nthat matter, anything: and the imputation that somebody did or does is a\nproof either of intentional malevolence or of crass stupidity. Neither\nshould be encouraged; and you encourage them by pretending to take them\nseriously. It is the initial injustices of the game that we Radicals\nobject to--the injustices which prevent us from all starting fair and\nhaving our even chance of picking up a livelihood. We don't want to\n\"divide up everything\"--a most futile proceeding; but we do want to\nuntie the legs and release the arms of the handicapped players. To drop\nmetaphor at last, it is the conditions we complain about. Alter the\nconditions, and there would be no need for division, summary or gradual.\nThe game would work itself out spontaneously without your intervention.\n\nThe injustice of the existing set of rules simply appals the Radical.\nYet oddly enough, this injustice itself appeals rather to the\ncomparative looker-on than to the heavily-handicapped players in person.\nThey, poor creatures, dragging their log in patience, have grown so\naccustomed to regarding the world as another man's oyster, that they put\nup uncomplainingly for the most part with the most patent inequalities.\nPerhaps 'tis their want of imagination that makes them unable to\nconceive any other state of things as even possible--like the dog who\naccepts kicking as the natural fate of doghood. At any rate, you will\nfind, if you look about you, that the chief reformers are not, as a\nrule, the ill-used classes themselves, but the sensitive and thinking\nsouls who hate and loathe the injustice with which others are treated.\nMost of the best Radicals I have known were men of gentle birth and\nbreeding. Not all: others, just as earnest, just as eager, just as\nchivalrous, sprang from the masses. Yet the gently-reared preponderate.\nIt is a common Tory taunt to say that the battle is one between the\nHaves and the Have-nots. That is by no means true. It is between the\nselfish Haves, on one side, and the unselfish Haves, who wish to see\nsomething done for the Have-nots, on the other. As for the poor\nHave-nots themselves, they are mostly inarticulate. Indeed, the Tory\nalmost admits as much when he alters his tone and describes the\nsympathising and active few as \"paid agitators.\"\n\nFor myself, however, I am a born Conservative. I hate to see any old\ncustom or practice changed; unless, indeed, it is either foolish or\nwicked--like most existing ones.\n\n\n\n\nVIII.\n\n_THE ROLE OF PROPHET._\n\n\nOne great English thinker and artist once tried the rash experiment of\nbeing true to himself--of saying out boldly, without fear or reserve,\nthe highest and noblest and best that was in him. He gave us the most\nexquisite lyrics in the English language; he moulded the thought of our\nfirst youth as no other poet has ever yet moulded it; he became the\nspiritual father of the richest souls in two succeeding generations of\nEnglishmen. And what reward did he get for it? He was expelled from his\nuniversity. He was hounded out of his country. He was deprived of his\nown children. He was denied the common appeal to the law and courts of\njustice. He was drowned, an exile, in a distant sea, and burned in\nsolitude on a foreign shore. And after his death he was vilified and\ncalumniated by wretched penny-a-liners, or (worse insult still)\napologised for, with half-hearted shrugs, by lukewarm advocates. The\npurest in life and the most unselfish in purpose of all mankind, he was\npersecuted alive with the utmost rancour of hate, and pursued when dead\nwith the vilest shafts of malignity. He never even knew in his scattered\ngrave the good he was to do to later groups of thinkers.\n\nIt was a noble example, of course; but not, you will admit, an alluring\none for others to follow.\n\n\"Be true to yourself,\" say the copy-book moralists, \"and you may be sure\nthe result will at last be justified.\" No doubt; but in how many\ncenturies? And what sort of life will you lead yourself, meanwhile, for\nyour allotted space of threescore years and ten, unless haply hanged, or\nburned, or imprisoned before it? What the copy-book moralists mean is\nmerely this--that sooner or later your principles will triumph, which\nmay or may not be the case according to the nature of the principles.\nBut even suppose they do, are you to ignore yourself in the\ninterim--you, a human being with emotions, sensations, domestic\naffections, and, in the majority of instances, wife and children on whom\nto expend them? Why should it be calmly taken for granted by the world\nthat if you have some new and true thing to tell humanity (which\nhumanity, of course, will toss back in your face with contumely and\nviolence) you are bound to blurt it out, with childish unreserve,\nregardless of consequences to yourself and to those who depend upon you?\nWhy demand of genius or exceptional ability a gratuitous sacrifice which\nyou would deprecate as wrong and unjust to others in the ordinary\ncitizen? For the genius, too, is a man, and has his feelings.\n\nThe fact is, society considers that in certain instances it has a right\nto expect the thinker will martyrise himself on its account, while it\nstands serenely by and heaps faggots on the pile, with every mark of\ncontempt and loathing. But society is mistaken. No man is bound to\nmartyrise himself; in a great many cases a man is bound to do the exact\nopposite. He has given hostages to Fortune, and his first duty is to the\nhostages. \"We ask you for bread,\" his children may well say, \"and you\ngive us a noble moral lesson. We ask you for clothing, and you supply us\nwith a beautiful poetical fancy.\" This is not according to bargain. Wife\nand children have a first mortgage on a man's activities; society has\nonly a right to contingent remainders.\n\nA great many sensible men who had truths of deep import to deliver to\nthe world must have recognised these facts in all times and places, and\nmust have held their tongues accordingly. Instead of speaking out the\ntruths that were in them, they must have kept their peace, or have\nconfined themselves severely to the ordinary platitudes of their age and\nnation. Why ruin yourself by announcing what you feel and believe, when\nall the reward you will get for it in the end will be social ostracism,\nif not even the rack, the stake, or the pillory? The Shelleys and\nRousseaus there's no holding, of course; they _will_ run right into it;\nbut the Goethes--oh, no, they keep their secret. Indeed, I hold it as\nprobable that the vast majority of men far in advance of their times\nhave always held their tongues consistently, save for mere common\nbabble, on Lord Chesterfield's principle that \"Wise men never say.\"\n\nThe _role_ of prophet is thus a thankless and difficult one. Nor is it\nquite certainly of real use to the community. For the prophet is\ngenerally too much ahead of his times. He discounts the future at a\nruinous rate, and he takes the consequences. If you happen ever to have\nread the Old Testament you must have noticed that the prophets had\ngenerally a hard time of it.\n\nThe leader is a very different stamp of person. _He_ stands well abreast\nof his contemporaries, and just half a pace in front of them; and he has\npower to persuade even the inertia of humanity into taking that one\nhalf-step in advance he himself has already made bold to adventure. His\npost is honoured, respected, remunerated. But the prophet gets no\nthanks, and perhaps does mankind no benefit. He sees too quick. And\nthere can be very little good indeed in so seeing. If one of us had been\nan astronomer, and had discovered the laws of Kepler, Newton, and\nLaplace in the thirteenth century, I think he would have been wise to\nkeep the discovery to himself for a few hundred years or so. Otherwise,\nhe would have been burned for his trouble. Galileo, long after, tried\npart of the experiment a decade or so too soon, and got no good by it.\nBut in moral and social matters the danger is far graver. I would say to\nevery aspiring youth who sees some political or economical or ethical\ntruth quite clearly: \"Keep it dark! Don't mention it! Nobody will listen\nto you; and you, who are probably a person of superior insight and\nhigher moral aims than the mass, will only destroy your own influence\nfor good by premature declarations. The world will very likely come\nround of itself to your views in the end; but if you tell them too soon,\nyou will suffer for it in person, and will very likely do nothing to\nhelp on the revolution in thought that you contemplate. For thought that\nis too abruptly ahead of the mass never influences humanity.\"\n\n\"But sometimes the truth will out in spite of one!\" Ah, yes, that's the\nworst of it. Do as I say, not as I do. If possible, repress it.\n\nIt is a noble and beautiful thing to be a martyr, especially if you are\na martyr in the cause of truth, and not, as is often the case, of some\ndebasing and degrading superstition. But nobody has a right to demand of\nyou that you should be a martyr. And some people have often a right to\ndemand that you should resolutely refuse the martyr's crown on the\nground that you have contracted prior obligations, inconsistent with the\npurely personal luxury of martyrdom. 'Tis a luxury for a few. It befits\nonly the bachelor, the unattached, and the economically spareworthy.\n\n\"These be pessimistic pronouncements,\" you say. Well, no, not exactly.\nFor, after all, we must never shut our eyes to the actual; and in the\nworld as it is, meliorism, not optimism, is the true opposite of\npessimism. Optimist and pessimist are both alike in a sense, seeing they\nare both conservative; they sit down contented--the first with the smug\ncontentment that says \"All's well; I have enough; why this fuss about\nothers?\" the second with the contentment of blank despair that says,\n\"All's hopeless; all's wrong; why try uselessly to mend it?\" The\nmeliorist attitude, on the contrary, is rather to say, \"Much is wrong;\nmuch painful; what can we do to improve it?\" And from this point of view\nthere is something we can all do to make martyrdom less inevitable in\nthe end, for the man who has a thought, a discovery, an idea, to tell\nus. Such men are rare, and their thought, when they produce it, is sure\nto be unpalatable. For, if it were otherwise, it would be thought of our\nown type--familiar, banal, commonplace, unoriginal. It would encounter\nno resistance, as it thrilled on its way through our brain, from\nestablished errors. What the genius and the prophet are there for is\njust that--to make us listen to unwelcome truths, to compel us to hear,\nto drive awkward facts straight home with sledge-hammer force to the\nunwilling hearts and brains of us. Not what _you_ want to hear, or what\n_I_ want to hear, is good and useful for us; but what we _don't_ want to\nhear, what we can't bear to think, what we hate to believe, what we\nfight tooth and nail against. The man who makes us listen to _that_ is\nthe seer and the prophet; he comes upon us like Shelley, or Whitman, or\nIbsen, and plumps down horrid truths that half surprise, half disgust\nus. He shakes us out of our lethargy. To such give ear, though they say\nwhat shocks you. Weigh well their hateful ideas. Avoid the vulgar vice\nof sneering and carping at them. Learn to examine their nude thought\nwithout shrinking, and examine it all the more carefully when it most\nrepels you. Naked verity is an acquired taste; it is never beautiful at\nfirst sight to the unaccustomed vision. Remember that no question is\nfinally settled; that no question is wholly above consideration; that\nwhat you cherish as holiest is most probably wrong; and that in social\nand moral matters especially (where men have been longest ruled by pure\nsuperstitions) new and startling forms of thought have the highest _a\npriori_ probability in their favour. Dismiss your idols. Give every\nopinion its fair chance of success--especially when it seems to you both\nwicked and ridiculous, recollecting that it is better to let five\nhundred crude guesses run loose about the world unclad, than to crush\none fledgling truth in its callow condition. To the Greeks, foolishness:\nto the Jews, a stumbling-block. If you can't be one of the prophets\nyourself, you can at least abstain from helping to stone them.\n\nDear me! These reflections to-day are anything but post-prandial. The\n_gnocchi_ and the olives must certainly have disagreed with me. But\nperhaps it may some of it be \"wrote sarcastic.\" I have heard tell there\nis a thing called irony.\n\n\n\n\nIX.\n\n_THE ROMANCE OF THE CLASH OF RACES._\n\n\nThe world has expanded faster in the last thirty years than in any\nprevious age since \"the spacious days of great Elizabeth.\" And with its\nexpansion, of course, our ideas have widened. I believe Europe is now in\nthe midst of just such an outburst of thought and invention as that\nwhich followed the discovery of America, and of the new route to India\nby the Cape of Good Hope. But I don't want to insist too strongly upon\nthat point, because I know a great many of my contemporaries are deeply\nhurt by the base and spiteful suggestion that they and their fellows are\nreally quite as good as any fish that ever came out of the sea before\nthem. I only desire now to call attention for a moment to one curious\nresult entailed by this widening of the world upon our literary\nproductivity--a result which, though obvious enough when one comes to\nlook at it, seems to me hitherto to have strangely escaped deliberate\nnotice.\n\nIn one word, the point of which I speak is the comparative\ncosmopolitanisation of letters, and especially the introduction into\nliterary art of the phenomena due to the Clash of Races.\n\nThis Clash itself is the one picturesque and novel feature of our\notherwise somewhat prosaic and machine-made epoch; and, therefore, it\nhas been eagerly seized upon, with one accord, by all the chief\npurveyors of recent literature, and especially of fiction. They have\nespied in it, with technical instinct, the best chance for obtaining\nthat fresh interest which is essential to the success of a work of art.\nWe were all getting somewhat tired, it must be confessed, of the old\nplaces and the old themes. The insipid loves of Anthony Trollope's\nblameless young people were beginning to pall upon us. The jaded palate\nof the Anglo-Celtic race pined for something hot, with a touch of fresh\nspice in it. It demanded curried fowl and Jamaica peppers. Hence, on the\none hand, the sudden vogue of the novelists of the younger\ncountries--Tolstoi and Tourgenieff, Ibsen and Bjornson, Mary Wilkins and\nHowells--who transplanted us at once into fresh scenes, new people:\nhence, on the other hand, the tendency on the part of our own latest\nwriters--the Stevensons, the Hall Caines, the Marion Crawfords, the\nRider Haggards--to go far afield among the lower races or the later\ncivilisations for the themes of their romances.\n\nAlas, alas, I see breakers before me! Must I pause for a moment in the\nflowing current of a paragraph to explain, as in an aside, that I\ninclude Marion Crawford of set purpose among \"our own\" late writers,\nwhile I count Mary Wilkins and Howells as Transatlantic aliens?\nExperience teaches me that I must; else shall I have that annoying\nanimalcule, the microscopic critic, coming down upon me in print with\nhis petty objection that \"Mr. Crawford is an American.\" Go to, oh, blind\none! And Whistler also, I suppose, and Sargent, and, perhaps, Ashmead\nBartlett! What! have you read \"Sarracinesca\" and not learnt that its\nauthor is European to the core? 'Twas for such as you that the Irishman\ninvented his brilliant retort: \"And if I was born in a stable would I be\na horse?\"\n\nNot merely, however, do our younger writers go into strange and novel\nplaces for the scenes of their stories; the important point to notice in\nthe present connection is that, consciously or unconsciously to\nthemselves, they have perceived the mighty influence of this Clash of\nRaces, and have chosen the relations of the civilised people with their\nsavage allies, or enemies, or subjects, as the chief theme of their\nhandicraft. 'Tis a momentous theme, for it encloses in itself half the\nproblems of the future. The old battles are now well-nigh fought out;\nbut new ones are looming ahead for us. The cosmopolitanisation of the\nworld is introducing into our midst strange elements of discord. A\nconglomerate of unwelded ethnical elements usurps the stage of history.\nAmerica and South Africa have already their negro question; California\nand Australia have already their Chinese question; Russia is fast\ngetting her Asiatic, her Mahommedan question. Even France, the most\nnarrowly European in interest of European countries, has yet her\nAlgeria, her Tunis, her Tonquin. Spain has Cuba and the Philippines.\nHolland has Java. Germany is burdening herself with the unborn troubles\nof a Hinterland. And as for England, she staggers on still under the\nincreasing load of India, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Africa, the West\nIndies, Fiji, New Guinea, North Borneo--all of them rife with endless\nrace-questions, all pregnant with difficulties.\n\nWho can be surprised that amid this seething turmoil of colours,\ninstincts, creeds, and languages, art should have fastened upon the\nrace-problems as her great theme for the moment? And she has fastened\nupon them everywhere. France herself has not been able to avoid the\ncontagion. Pierre Loti is the most typical French representative of this\nvagabond spirit; and the question of the peoples naturally envisages\nitself to his mind in true Gallic fashion in the \"Mariage de Loti\" and\nin \"Madame Chrysantheme.\" He sees it through a halo of vague sexual\nsentimentalism. In England, it was Rider Haggard from the Cape who first\nset the mode visibly; and nothing is more noteworthy in all his work\nthan the fact that the interest mainly centres in the picturesque\njuxtaposition and contrast of civilisation and savagery. Once the cue\nwas given, what more natural than that young Rudyard Kipling, fresh home\nfrom India, brimming over with genius and with knowledge of two\nconcurrent streams of life that flow on side by side yet never mingle,\nshould take up his parable in due course, and storm us all by assault\nwith his light field artillery? Then Robert Louis Stevenson, born a\nwandering Scot, with roving Scandinavian and fiery Celtic blood in his\nveins, must needs settle down, like a Viking that he is, in far Samoa,\nthere to charm and thrill us by turns with the romance of Polynesia. The\nexample was catching. Almost without knowing it, other writers have\nturned for subjects to similar fields. \"Dr. Isaacs,\" \"Paul Patoff,\" \"By\nProxy,\" were upon us. Even Hall Caine himself, in some ways a most\ninsular type of genius, was forced in \"The Scapegoat\" to carry us off\nfrom Cumberland and Man to Morocco. Sir Edwin Arnold inflicts upon us\nthe tragedies of Japan. I have been watching this tendency long myself\nwith the interested eye of a dealer engaged in the trade, and therefore\nanxious to keep pace with every changing breath of popular favour: and I\nnotice a constant increase from year to year in the number of short\nstories in magazines and newspapers dealing with the romance of the\ninferior races. I notice, also, that such stories are increasingly\nsuccessful with the public. This shows that, whether the public knows it\nor not itself, the question of race is interesting it more and more. It\nis gradually growing to understand the magnitude of the change that has\ncome over civilisation by the inclusion of Asia, Africa, and Australasia\nwithin its circle. Even the Queen is learning Hindustani.\n\nThere is a famous passage in Green's \"Short History of the English\nPeople\" which describes in part that strange outburst of national\nexpansion under Elizabeth, when Raleigh, Drake, and Frobisher scoured\nthe distant seas, and when at home \"England became a nest of singing\nbirds,\" with Shakespeare, Spenser, Fletcher, and Marlow. \"The old sober\nnotions of thrift,\" says the picturesque historian, \"melted before the\nstrange revolutions of fortune wrought by the New World. Gallants\ngambled away a fortune at a sitting, and sailed off to make a fresh one\nin the Indies.\" (Read rather to-day at Kimberley, Johannesburg,\nVancouver.) \"Visions of galleons loaded to the brim with pearls and\ndiamonds and ingots of silver, dreams of El Dorados where all was of\ngold, threw a haze of prodigality and profusion over the imagination of\nthe meanest seaman. The wonders, too, of the New World kindled a burst\nof extravagant fancy in the Old. The strange medley of past and present\nwhich distinguishes its masques and feastings only reflected the medley\nof men's thoughts.... A 'wild man' from the Indies chanted the Queen's\npraises at Kenilworth, and Echo answered him. Elizabeth turned from the\ngreetings of sibyls and giants to deliver the enchanted lady from her\ntyrant, 'Sans Pitie.' Shepherdesses welcomed her with carols of the\nspring, while Ceres and Bacchus poured their corn and grapes at her\nfeet.\" Oh, gilded youth of the Gaiety, _mutato nomine de te Fabula\nnarratur_. Yours, yours is this glory!\n\nFor our own age, too, is a second Elizabethan. It blossoms out daily\ninto such flowers of fancy as never bloomed before, save then, on\nBritish soil. When men tell you nowadays we have \"no great writers\nleft,\" believe not the silly parrot cry. Nay, rather, laugh it down for\nthem. We move in the midst of one of the mightiest epochs earth has ever\nseen, an epoch which will live in history hereafter side by side with\nthe Athens of Pericles, the Rome of Augustus, the Florence of Lorenzo,\nthe England of Elizabeth. Don't throw away your birthright by ignoring\nthe fact. Live up to your privileges. Gaze around you and know. Be a\nconscious partaker in one of the great ages of humanity.\n\n\n\n\nX.\n\n_THE MONOPOLIST INSTINCTS._\n\n\nIn the first of these after-dinner _causeries_ I ventured humbly to\nremark that Patriotism was a vulgar vice of which I had never been\nguilty. That innocent indiscretion of mine aroused at the moment some\nunfavourable comment. I confess I was sorry for it. But I passed it by\nat the time, lest I should speak too hastily and lose my temper. I recur\nto the subject now, at the hour of the cigarette, when man can discourse\nmost genially of his bitterest enemy. And Monopoly is mine. Its very\nname is hateful.\n\nI don't often say what I think. At least, not much of it. I don't often\nget the chance. And, besides, being a timid and a modest man, I'm afraid\nto. But just this once, I'm going to \"try it on.\" Object to my opinions\nas you will. But still, let me express them. Strike--but hear me!\n\nHas it ever occurred to you that one object of reading is to learn\nthings you never thought of before, and would never think of now, unless\nyou were told them?\n\nPatriotism is one of the Monopolist Instincts. And the Monopolist\nInstincts are the greatest enemies of the social life in humanity. They\nare what we have got in the end to outlive. The test of a man's place in\nthe scale of being is how far he has outlived them. They are surviving\nrelics of the ape and tiger. But we must let the ape and tiger die. We\nmust begin to be human.\n\nI will take Patriotism first, because it is the most specious of them\nall, and has still a self-satisfied way of masquerading as a virtue. But\nafter all what is Patriotism? \"My country, right or wrong; and just\nbecause it is _my_ country.\" It is nothing more than a wider form of\nselfishness. Often enough, indeed, it is even a narrow one. It means,\n\"My business interests against the business interests of other people;\nand let the taxes of my fellow-citizens pay to support them.\" At other\ntimes it is pure Jingoism. It means, \"_My_ country against other\ncountries! _My_ army and navy against other fighters! _My_ right to\nannex unoccupied territory over the equal right of all other people!\n_My_ power to oppress all weaker nationalities, all inferior races!\" It\n_never_ means anything good. For if a cause is just, like Ireland's, or\nonce Italy's, then 'tis the good man's duty to espouse it with warmth,\nbe it his own or another's. And if a cause be bad, then 'tis the good\nman's duty to oppose it tooth and nail, irrespective of your\n\"Patriotism.\" True, a good man will feel more sensitively anxious that\njustice should be done by the particular State of which he happens\nhimself to be a member than by any other, because he is partly\nresponsible for the corporate action; but then, people who feel deeply\nthis joint moral responsibility of all the citizens are not praised as\npatriots but reviled as unpatriotic. To urge that our own country should\nstrive with all its might to be better, higher, purer, nobler, juster\nthan other countries around it--the only kind of Patriotism worth a\nbrass farthing in a righteous man's eyes--is accounted by most men both\nwicked and foolish.\n\nPatriotism, then, is the collective or national form of the Monopolist\nInstincts. And like all those Instincts, it is a relic of savagery,\nwhich the Man of the Future is now engaged in out-living.\n\nProperty is the next form. That, on the very face of it, is a viler and\nmore sordid one. For Patriotism at least can lay claim to some\nexpansiveness beyond mere individual interest; whereas property stops\ndead short at the narrowest limits. It is not \"Us against the world!\"\nbut \"Me against my fellow-citizens!\" It is the final result of the\nindustrial war in its most hideous avatar. Look how it scars the fair\nface of our England with its anti-social notice-boards, \"Trespassers\nwill be prosecuted!\" It says, in effect, \"This is my land. God made it;\nbut I have acquired it and tabooed it. The grass on it grows green; but\nonly for me. The mountains rise beautiful; no foot of man, save mine and\nmy gamekeepers', shall tread them. The waterfalls gleam fresh and cool\nin the glen: avaunt there, you non-possessors; _you_ shall never see\nthem! All this is my own. And I choose to monopolise it.\"\n\nOr is it the capitalist? \"I will add field to field,\" he says, in\ndespite of his own scripture; \"I will join railway to railway. I will\njuggle into my own hands all the instruments for the production of\nwealth that I can lay hold of; and I will use them for myself against\nthe producer and the consumer. I will enrich myself by 'corners' on the\nnecessaries of life; I will make food dear for the poor, that I myself\nmay roll in needless luxury. I will monopolise whatever I can seize, and\nthe people may eat straw.\" That temper, too, humanity must outlive. And\nthose who can't outlive it of themselves, or be warned in time, must be\ntaught by stern lessons that their race has outstripped them.\n\nAs for slavery, 'tis now gone. That was the vilest of them all. It was\nthe naked assertion of the Monopolist platform: \"You live, not for\nyourself, but wholly and solely for me. I disregard your life entirely,\nand use you as my chattel.\" It died at last of the moral indignation of\nhumanity. It died when a Southern court of so-called justice formulated\nin plain words the underlying principle of its hateful creed: \"A black\nman has no rights which a white man is bound to respect.\" That finally\nfinished it. We no longer allow every man to \"wallop his own nigger.\"\nAnd though the last relics of it die hard in Queensland, South Africa,\nDemerara, we have at least the satisfaction of knowing that one\nMonopolist Instinct out of the group is pretty well bred out of us.\n\nExcept as regards women! There, it lingers still. The Man says even now\nto himself:--\"This woman is mine. If she ventures to have a heart or a\nwill of her own, woe betide her! I have tabooed her for life; let any\nother man touch her, let her look at any other man--and--knife,\nrevolver, or law court, they shall both of them answer for it!\" There\nyou have in all its natural ugliness another Monopolist Instinct--the\ndeepest-seated of all, the vilest, the most barbaric. She is not yours:\nshe is her own: unhand her! The Turk takes his offending slave, sews her\nup in a sack, and flings her into the Bosphorus. The Christian\nEnglishman drags her shame before an open court, and divorces her with\ncontumely. Her shame, I say, in the common phrase, because though to me\nit is no shame that any human being should follow the dictates of his or\nher own heart, it is a shame to the woman in the eyes of the world, and\na life of disgrace she must live thenceforward. All this is Monopoly and\nessentially slavery. As man lives down the Ape and Tiger stage, he will\nlearn to say, rather: \"Be mine while you can; but the day you cease to\nfeel you can be mine willingly, don't disgrace your own body by yielding\nit up where your soul feels loathing; don't consent to be the mother of\nchildren by a father you despise or dislike or are tired of. Let us kiss\nand part. Go where you will; and my good will go with you!\" Till the man\ncan say that with a sincere heart, why, to borrow a phrase from George\nMeredith, he may have passed Seraglio Point, but he hasn't rounded Cape\nTurk yet.\n\nYou find that a hard saying, do you? You kick against freedom for wife\nor daughter? Well, yes, no doubt; you are still a Monopolist. But,\nbelieve me, the earnest and solemn expression of a profound belief never\nyet did harm to any one. I look forward to the time when women shall be\nas free in every way as men, not by levelling down, but by levelling up;\nnot, as some would have us think, by enslaving the men, but by\nelevating, emancipating, unshackling the women.\n\nThere is a charming little ditty in Louis Stevenson's \"Child's Garden of\nVerse,\" which always seems to me to sum up admirably the Monopolist\nattitude. Here it is. Look well at it:--\n\n  \"When I am grown to man's estate\n  I shall be very proud and great,\n  And tell the other girls and boys,\n  Not to meddle with _my_ toys.\"\n\nThat is the way of the Monopolist. It catches him in the very act. He\nsays to all the world: \"Hands off! My property! Don't walk on my grass!\nDon't trespass in my park! Beware of my gunboats! No trifling with my\nwomen! I am the king of the castle. You meddle with me at your peril.\"\n\n\"Ours!\" not \"Mine!\" is the watchword of the future.\n\n\n\n\nXI.\n\n\"_MERE AMATEURS._\"\n\n\n\"He was a mere amateur; but still, he did some good work in science.\"\n\nIncreasingly of late years I have heard these condescending words\nuttered, in the fatherland of Bacon, of Newton, of Darwin, when some\nBates or Spottiswoode has been gathered to his fathers. It was not so\nonce. Time was when all English science was the work of amateurs--and\nvery well indeed the amateurs did it. I don't think anybody who does me\nthe honour to cognise my humble individuality at all will ever be likely\nto mistake me for a _laudator temporis acti_. On the contrary, so far as\nI can see, the past seems generally to have been such a distinct failure\nall along the line that the one lesson we have to learn from it is, to\ngo and do otherwise. I am one on that point with Shelley and Rousseau.\nBut it does not follow, because most old things are bad, that all new\nthings and rising things are necessarily and indisputably in their own\nnature excellent. Novelties, too, may be retrograde. And even our\ngreat-grandfathers occasionally blundered upon something good in which\nwe should do well to imitate them. The amateurishness of old English\nscience was one of these good things now in course of abolition by the\nfashionable process of Germanisation.\n\nDon't imagine it was only for France that 1870 was fatal. The sad\nsuccesses of that deadly year sent a wave of triumphant Teutonism over\nthe face of Europe.\n\nI suppose it is natural to man to worship success; but ever since 1870\nit is certainly the fact that if you wish to gain respect and\nconsideration for any proposed change of system you must say, \"They do\nit so in Germany.\" In education and science this is especially the case.\nPedants always admire pedants. And Germany having shown herself to be\neasily first of European States in her pedant-manufacturing machinery,\nall the assembled dominies of all the rest of the world exclaimed with\none voice, \"Go to! Let us Germanise our educational system!\"\n\nNow, the German is an excellent workman in his way. Patient, laborious,\nconscientious, he has all the highest qualities of the ideal\nbrick-maker. He produces the best bricks, and you can generally depend\nupon him to turn out both honest and workmanlike articles. But he is not\nan architect. For the architectonic faculty in its highest developments\nyou must come to England. And he is not a teacher or expounder. For the\nexpository faculty in its purest form, the faculty that enables men to\nflash forth clearly and distinctly before the eyes of others the facts\nand principles they know and perceive themselves, you must go to France.\nOh, dear, yes; we may well be proud of England. Remember, I have already\ndisclaimed more than once in these papers the vulgar error of\npatriotism. But freedom from that narrow vice does not imply inability\nto recognise the good qualities of one's own race as well as the bad\nones. And the Englishman, left to himself and his own native methods,\nused to cut a very respectable figure indeed in the domain of science.\nNo other nation has produced a Newton or a Darwin. The Englishman's way\nwas to get up an interest in a subject first; and then, working back\nfrom the part of it that specially appealed to his own tastes, to make\nhimself master of the entire field of inquiry. This natural and\nthoroughly individualistic English method enabled him to arrive at new\nresults in a way impossible to the pedantically educated German--nay,\neven to the lucidly and systematically educated Frenchman. It was the\nplan to develop \"mere amateurs,\" I admit; but it was also the plan to\ndevelop discoverers and revolutionisers of science. For the man most\nlikely to advance knowledge is not the man who knows in an encyclopaedic\nrote-work fashion the whole circle of the sciences, but the man who\ntakes a fresh interest for its own sake in some particular branch of\ninquiry.\n\nDarwin was a \"mere amateur.\" He worked at things for the love of them.\nSo were Murchison, Lyell, Benjamin Franklin, Herschel. So were or are\nBates, Herbert Spencer, Alfred Russel Wallace. \"Mere amateurs!\" every\nman of them.\n\nIn an evil hour, however, our pastors and masters in conclave assembled\nsaid to one another, \"Come now, let us Teutonise English scientific\neducation.\" And straightway they Teutonised it. And there began to arise\nin England a new brood of patent machine-made scientists--excellent men\nin their way, authorities on the Arachnida, knowing all about everything\nthat could be taught in the schools, but lacking somehow the supreme\ngrace of the old English originality. They are first-rate specialists, I\nallow; and I don't deny that a civilised country has all need of\nspecialists. Nay, I even admit that the day of the specialist has only\njust begun. He will yet go far; he will impose himself and his yoke upon\nus. But don't let us therefore make the grand mistake of concluding that\nour fine old English birthright in science--the birthright that gave us\nour Newtons, our Cavendishes, our Darwins, our Lyells--was all folly and\nerror. Don't let us spoil ourselves in order to become mere second-hand\nGermans. Let us recognise the fact that each nation has a work of its\nown to do in the world; and that as star from star, so one nation\ndiffereth from another in glory. Let each of us thank the goodness and\nthe grace that on his birth have smiled, that he was born of English\nbreed, and not a German child.\n\n\"Don't you think,\" a military gentleman once said to me, \"the Germans\nare wonderful organisers?\" \"No,\" I answered, \"I don't; but I think\nthey're excellent drill-sergeants.\"\n\nThere are people who drop German authorities upon you as if a Teutonic\nname were guarantee enough for anything. They say, \"Hausberger asserts,\"\nor \"According to Schimmelpenninck.\" This is pure fetichism. Believe me,\nyour man of science isn't necessarily any the better because he comes to\nyou with the label, \"Made in Germany.\" The German instinct is the\ninstinct of Frederick William of Prussia--the instinct of drilling. Very\nthorough and efficient men in their way it turns out; men versed in all\nthe lore of their chosen subject. If they are also men of transcendent\nability (as often happens), they can give us a comprehensive view of\ntheir own chosen field such as few Englishmen (except Sir Archibald\nGeikie, and he's a Scot) can equal. If I wanted to select a learned man\nfor a special Government post--British Museum, and so forth--I dare say\nI should often be compelled to admit, as Government often admits, that\nthe best man then and there obtainable is the German. But if I wanted to\ntrain Herbert Spencers and Faradays, I would certainly _not_ send them\nto Bonn or to Berlin. John Stuart Mill was an English Scotchman,\neducated and stuffed by his able father on the German system; and how\nmuch of spontaneity, of vividness, of _verve_, we all of us feel John\nStuart Mill lost by it! One often wonders to what great, to what still\ngreater, things that lofty brain might not have attained, if only James\nMill would have given it a chance to develop itself naturally!\n\nOur English gift is originality. Our English keynote is individuality.\nLet us cling to those precious heirlooms of our Celtic ancestry, and\nrefuse to be Teutonised. Let us discard the lessons of the Potsdam\ngrenadiers. Let us write on the pediment of our educational temple, \"No\nGerman need apply.\" Let us disclaim that silly phrase \"A mere amateur.\"\nLet us return to the simple faith in direct observation that made\nEnglish science supreme in Europe.\n\nAnd may the Lord gi'e us Britons a guid conceit o' oorsel's!\n\n\n\n\nXII.\n\n_A SQUALID VILLAGE._\n\n\nStrange that the wealthiest class in the wealthiest country in the world\nshould so long have been content to inhabit a squalid village!\n\nI'm not going to compare London, as Englishmen often do, with Paris or\nVienna. I won't do two great towns that gross injustice. And, indeed,\ncomparison here is quite out of the question. You don't compare Oxford\nwith Little Peddlington, or Edinburgh with Thrums, and then ask which is\nthe handsomest. Things must be alike in kind before you can begin to\ncompare them. And London and Paris are not alike in kind. One is a city,\nand a noble city; the other is a village, and a squalid village.\n\nNo; I will not even take a humbler standard of comparison, and look at\nLondon side by side with Brussels, Antwerp, Munich, Turin. Each of those\nis a city, and a fine city in its way; but each of them is small. Still,\neven by their side, London is again but a squalid village. I insist upon\nthat point, because, misled by their ancient familiarity with London,\nmost Englishmen have had their senses and understandings so blunted on\nthis issue, that they really don't know what is meant by a town, or a\nfine town, when they see one. And don't suppose it's because London is\nin Britain and these other towns out of it that I make these remarks:\nfor Bath is a fine town, Edinburgh is a fine town, even Glasgow and\nNewcastle are towns, while London is still a straggling, sprawling,\ninvertebrate, inchoate, overgrown village. I am as free, I hope, from\nanti-patriotic as from patriotic prejudice. The High Street in Oxford,\nMilsom Street in Bath, Princes Street in Edinburgh, those are all fine\nstreets that would attract attention even in France or Germany. But the\nStrand, Piccadilly, Regent Street, Oxford Street--good Lord, deliver us!\n\nOne more _caveat_ as to my meaning. When I cite among real towns\nBrussels, Antwerp, and Munich, I am not thinking of the treasures of art\nthose beautiful places contain; that is another and altogether higher\nquestion. Towns supreme in this respect often lag far behind others of\nless importance--lag behind in those external features and that general\narchitectural effectiveness which rightly entitle us to say in a broad\nsense, \"This is a fine city.\" Florence, for example, contains more\ntreasures of art in a small space than any other town of Europe; yet\nFlorence, though undoubtedly a town, and even a fine town, is not to be\ncompared in this respect, I do not say with Venice or Brussels, but even\nwith Munich or Milan. On the other hand, London contains far more\ntreasures of art in its way than Boston, Massachusetts; but Boston is a\nhandsome, well-built, regular town, while London--well, I will spare you\nthe further repetition of the trite truism that London is a squalid\nvillage. In one word, the point I am seeking to bring out here is that a\ntown, as a town, is handsome or otherwise, not in virtue of the works of\nart or antiquity it contains, but in virtue of its ground-plan, its\narchitecture, its external and visible decorations and places--the\nLouvre, the Boulevards, the Champs Elysees, the Place de l'Opera.\n\nNow London has no ground-plan. It has no street architecture. It has no\ndecorations, though it has many uglifications. It is frankly and simply\nand ostentatiously hideous. And being wholly wanting in a system of any\nsort--in organic parts, in idea, in views, in vistas--it is only a\nvillage, and a painfully uninteresting one.\n\nMost Englishmen see London before they see any other great town. They\nbecome so familiarised with it that their sense of comparison is dulled\nand blunted. I had the good fortune to have seen many other great towns\nbefore I ever saw London: and I shall never forget my first sense of\nsurprise at its unmitigated ugliness.\n\nGet on top of an omnibus--I don't say in Paris, from the Palais Royal to\nthe Arc de Triomphe, but in Brussels, from the Gare du Nord to the\nPalais de Justice--and what do you see? From end to end one unbroken\nsuccession of noble and open prospects. I'm not thinking now of the\nGrande Place in the old town, with its magnificent collection of\nmediaeval buildings; the Great Fire effectively deprived us of our one\nsole chance of such an element of beauty in modern London. I confine\nmyself on purpose to the parts of Brussels which are purely recent, and\nmight have been imitated at a distance in London, if there had been any\npublic spirit or any public body in England to imitate them. (But\nunhappily there was neither.) Recall to mind as you read the strikingly\nhandsome street view that greets you as you emerge from the Northern\nStation down the great central Boulevards to the Gare du Midi--all built\nwithin our own memory. Then think of the prospects that gradually unfold\nthemselves as you rise on the hill; the fine vista north towards Sainte\nMarie de Schaarbeck; the beautiful Rue Royale, bounded by that charming\nParc; the unequalled stretch of the Rue de la Regence, starting from the\nPlace Royale with Godfrey of Bouillon, and ending with the imposing mass\nof the Palais de Justice. It is to me a matter for mingled surprise and\nhumiliation that so many Englishmen can look year after year at that\nglorious street--perhaps the finest in the world--and yet never think to\nthemselves, \"Mightn't we faintly imitate some small part of this in our\nwealthy, ugly, uncompromising London?\"\n\nI always say to Americans who come to Europe: \"When you go to England,\ndon't see our towns, but see our country. Our country is something\nunequalled in the world: while our towns!--well, anyway, keep away from\nLondon!\"\n\nWith the solitary and not very brilliant exception of the Embankment,\nthere isn't a street in London where one could take a stranger to admire\nthe architecture. Compare that record with the new Boulevards in\nAntwerp, where almost every house is worth serious study: or with the\nRing at Cologne (to keep close home all the time), where one can see\nwhole rows of German Renaissance houses of extraordinary interest. What\nstreet in London can be mentioned in this respect side by side with\nCommonwealth Avenue or Beacon Street in Boston; with Euclid Avenue in\nCleveland, Ohio; with the upper end of Fifth Avenue, New York; nay, even\nwith the new Via Roma at Genoa? Why is it that we English can't get on\nthe King's Road at Brighton anything faintly approaching that splendid\nsea front on the Digue at Ostend, or those coquettish white villas that\nline the Promenade des Anglais at Nice? The blight of London seems to\nlie over all Southern England.\n\nParis looks like the capital of a world-wide empire. London, looks like\na shapeless neglected suburb, allowed to grow up by accident anyhow. And\nthat's just the plain truth of it. 'Tis a fortuitous concourse of\nhap-hazard houses.\n\n\"But we are improving somewhat. The County Council is opening out a few\nnew thoroughfares piecemeal.\" Oh yes, in an illogical, unsystematic,\nEnglish patchwork fashion, we are driving a badly-designed, unimpressive\nnew street or two, with no expansive sense of imperial greatness,\nthrough the hopelessly congested and most squalid quarters. But that is\nall. No grand, systematic, reconstructive plan, no rising to the height\nof the occasion and the Empire! You tinker away at a Shaftesbury Avenue.\nParochial, all of it. And there you get the real secret of our futile\nattempts at making a town out of our squalid village. The fault lies all\nat the door of the old Corporation, and of the people who made and still\nmake the old Corporation possible. For centuries, indeed, there was\nreally no London, not even a village; there was only a scratch\ncollection of contiguous villages. The consequence was that here, at the\ncentre of national life, the English people grew wholly unaccustomed to\nthe bare idea of a town, and managed everything piecemeal, on the petty\nscale of a country vestry. The vestryman intelligence has now overrun\nthe land; and if the London County Council ever succeeds at last in\nmaking the congeries of villages into--I do not say a city, for that is\nalmost past praying for, but something analogous to a second-rate\nContinental town, it will only be after long lapse of time and violent\nstruggles with the vestryman level of intellect and feeling.\n\nLondon had many great disadvantages to start with. She lay in a dull and\nmarshy bottom, with no building stone at hand, and therefore she was\nforecondemned by her very position to the curse of brick and stucco,\nwhen Bath, Oxford, Edinburgh, were all built out of their own quarries.\nThen fire destroyed all her mediaeval architecture, leaving her only\nWestminster Abbey to suggest the greatness of her losses. But\nbrick-earth and fire have been as nothing in their way by the side of\nthe evil wrought by Gog and Magog. When five hundred trembling ghosts of\nnaked Lord Mayors have to answer for their follies and their sins\nhereafter, I confidently expect the first question in the appalling\nindictment will be, \"Why did you allow the richest nation on earth to\nhouse its metropolis in a squalid village?\"\n\nWe have a Moloch in England to whom we sacrifice much. And his hateful\nname is Vested Interest.\n\n\n\n\nXIII.\n\n_CONCERNING ZEITGEIST._\n\n\nA certain story is told about Mr. Ruskin, no doubt apocryphal, but at\nany rate characteristic. A young lady, fresh from the Abyss of\nBayswater, met the sage one evening at dinner--a gushing young lady, as\nmany such there be--who, aglow with joy, boarded the Professor at once\nwith her private art-experiences. \"Oh, Mr. Ruskin,\" she cried, clasping\nher hands, \"do you know, I hadn't been two days in Florence before I\ndiscovered what you meant when you spoke about the supreme\nunapproachableness of Botticelli.\" \"Indeed?\" Ruskin answered. \"Well,\nthat's very remarkable; for it took me, myself, half a lifetime to\ndiscover it.\"\n\nThe answer, of course, was meant to be crushing. How should _she_, a\nbrand plucked from the burning of Bayswater, be able all at once, on the\nvery first blush, to appreciate Botticelli? And it took the greatest\ncritic of his age half a lifetime! Yet I venture to maintain, for all\nthat, that the young lady was right, and that the critic was wrong--if\nsuch a thing be conceivable. I know, of course, that when we speak of\nRuskin we must walk delicately, like Agag. But still, I repeat it, the\nyoung lady was right; and it was largely the unconscious, pervasive\naction of Mr. Ruskin's own personality that enabled her to be so.\n\nIt's all the Zeitgeist: that's where it is. The slow irresistible\nZeitgeist. Fifty years ago, men's taste had been so warped and distorted\nby current art and current criticism that they _couldn't_ see\nBotticelli, however hard they tried at it. He was a sealed book to our\nfathers. In those days it required a brave, a vigorous, and an original\nthinker to discover any merit in any painter before Raffael, except\nperhaps, as Goldsmith wisely remarked, Perugino. The man who went then\nto the Uffizi or the Pitti, after admiring as in duty bound his High\nRenaissance masters, found himself suddenly confronted with the Judith\nor the Calumny, and straightway wondered what manner of strange wild\nbeasts these were that some insane early Tuscan had once painted to\namuse himself in a lucid interval. They were not in the least like the\nCorreggios and the Guidos, the Lawrences and the Opies, that the men of\nthat time had formed their taste upon, and accepted as their sole\nartistic standards. To people brought up upon pure David and\nThorvaldsen, the Primavera at the Belle Arti must naturally have seemed\nlike a wild freak of madness. The Zeitgeist then went all in the\ndirection of cold lifeless correctness; the idea that the painter's soul\ncounted for something in art was an undreamt of heresy.\n\nOn your way back from Paris some day, stop a night at Amiens and take\nthe Cathedral seriously. Half the stately interior of that glorious\nthirteenth century pile is encrusted and overlaid by hideous gewgaw\nmonstrosities of the flashiest Bernini and _baroque_ period. There they\nsprawl their obtrusive legs and wave their flaunting theatrical wings to\nthe utter destruction of all repose and consistency in one of the\nnoblest and most perfect buildings of Europe. Nowadays, any child, any\nworkman can see at a glance how ugly and how disfiguring those floppy\ncreatures are; it is impossible to look at them without saying to\noneself: \"Why don't they clear away all this high-faluting rubbish, and\nlet us see the real columns and arches and piers as their makers\ndesigned them?\" Yet who was it that put them there, those unspeakable\nangels in muslin drapery, those fly-away nymphs and graces and seraphim?\nWhy, the best and most skilled artists of their day in Europe. And\nwhence comes it that the merest child can now see instinctively how out\nof place they are, how disfiguring, how incongruous? Why, because the\nGothic revival has taught us all by degrees to appreciate the beauty and\ndelicacy of a style which to our eighteenth century ancestors was mere\nbarbaric mediaevalism; has taught us to admire its exquisite purity, and\nto dislike the obstrusive introduction into its midst of incongruous and\nmeretricious Bernini-like flimsiness.\n\nThe Zeitgeist has changed, and we have changed with it.\n\nIt is just the same with our friend Botticelli. Scarce a dozen years\nago, it was almost an affectation to pretend you admired him. It is no\naffectation now. Hundreds of assorted young women from the Abyss of\nBayswater may rise any morning here in sacred Florence and stand\ngenuinely enchanted before the Adoration of the Kings, or the Venus who\nfloats on her floating shell in a Botticellian ocean. And why? Because\nLeighton, Holman Hunt, Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Madox Brown, Strudwick,\nhave led them slowly up to it by golden steps innumerable. Thirty years\nago the art of the early Tuscan painters was something to us Northerners\nexotic, strange, unconnected, archaeological. Gradually, it has been\nbrought nearer and nearer to us on the walls of the Grosvenor and the\nNew Gallery, till now he that runs may read; the ingenuous maiden,\nfished from the Abyss of Bayswater, can drink in at a glance what it\ntook a Ruskin many years of his life and much slow development to attain\nto piecemeal.\n\nThat is just what all great men are for--to make the world accept as a\ntruism in the generation after them what it rejected as a paradox in the\ngeneration before them.\n\nNot, of course, that there isn't a little of affectation, and still more\nof fashion, to the very end in all of it. An immense number of people,\nincapable of genuinely admiring anything for its own sake at all, are\nanxious only to be told what they \"ought to admire, don't you know,\" and\nwill straightway proceed as conscientiously as they can to get up an\nadmiration for it. A friend of mine told me a beautiful example. Two\naspiring young women, of the limp-limbed, short-haired, aesthetic\nspecies, were standing rapt before the circular Madonna at the Uffizi.\nThey had gazed at it long and lovingly, seeing it bore on its frame the\nmagic name of Botticelli. Of a sudden one of the pair happened to look a\nlittle nearer at the accusing label. \"Why, this is not Sandro,\" she\ncried, with a revulsion of disgust; \"this is only Aless.\" And\nstraightway they went off from the spot in high dudgeon at having been\nmisled as they supposed into examining the work of \"another person of\nthe same name.\"\n\nNeed I point the moral of my apologue, in this age of enlightenment, by\nexplaining, for the benefit of the junior members, that the gentleman's\nfull name was really Alessandro, and that both abbreviations are\nimpartially intended to cover his one and indivisible personality? The\nfirst half is official, like Alex.; the second affectionate and\nfamiliar, like Sandy.\n\nStill, even after making due allowance for such humbugs as these, a vast\nresiduum remains of people who, if born sixty years ago, could never by\nany possibility have been made to see there was anything admirable in\nLippi, Botticelli, Giotto; but who, having been born thirty years ago,\nsee it without an effort. Hundreds who read these lines must themselves\nremember the unmistakable thrill of genuine pleasure with which they\nfirst gazed upon the Fra Angelicos at San Marco, the Memlings at Bruges,\nthe Giottos in the Madonna dell' Arena at Padua. To many of us, those\nare real epochs in our inner life. To the men of fifty years ago, the\nbare avowal itself would have seemed little short of affected silliness.\n\nIs the change all due to the teaching of the teachers and the preaching\nof the preachers? I think not entirely. For, after all, the teachers and\nthe preachers are but a little ahead of the age they live in. They see\nthings earlier; they help to lead us up to them; but they do not wholly\nproduce the revolutions they inaugurate. Humanity as a whole develops\nconsistently along certain pre-established and predestined lines. Sooner\nor later, a certain point must inevitably be reached; but some of us\nreach it sooner, and most of us later. That's all the difference. Every\ngreat change is mainly due to the fact that we have all already attained\na certain point in development. A step in advance becomes inevitable\nafter that, and one after another we are sure to take it. In one word,\nwhat it needed a man of genius to see dimly thirty years ago, it needs a\nsingular fool not to see clearly nowadays.\n\n\n\n\nXIV.\n\n_THE DECLINE OF MARRIAGE._\n\n\nMen don't marry nowadays. So everybody tells us. And I suppose we may\ntherefore conclude, by a simple act of inference, that women in turn\ndon't marry either. It takes two, of course, to make a quarrel--or a\nmarriage.\n\nWhy is this? \"Young people nowadays want to begin where their fathers\nleft off.\" \"Men are made so comfortable at present in their clubs.\"\n\"College-bred girls have no taste for housekeeping.\" \"Rents are so high\nand manners so luxurious.\" Good heavens, what silly trash, what puerile\nnonsense! Are we all little boys and girls, I ask you, that we are to\nput one another off with such transparent humbug? Here we have to deal\nwith a primitive instinct--the profoundest and deepest-seated instinct\nof humanity, save only the instincts of food and drink and of\nself-preservation. Man, like all other animals, has two main functions:\nto feed his own organism, and to reproduce his species. Ancestral habit\nleads him, when mature, to choose himself a mate--because he loves her.\nIt drives him, it urges him, it goads him irresistibly. If this profound\nimpulse is really lacking to-day in any large part of our race, there\nmust be some correspondingly profound and adequate reason for it. Don't\nlet us deceive ourselves with shallow platitudes which may do for\ndrawing-rooms. This is philosophy, even though post-prandial. Let us try\nto take a philosophic view of the question at issue, from the point of\nvantage of a biological outlook.\n\nBefore you begin to investigate the causes of a phenomenon _quelconque_,\n'tis well to decide whether the phenomenon itself is there to\ninvestigate.\n\nTaking society throughout--_not_ in the sense of those \"forty families\"\nto which the term is restricted by Lady Charles Beresford--I doubt\nwhether marriage is much out of fashion. Statistics show a certain\ndecrease, it is true, but not an alarming one. Among the labouring\nclasses, I imagine men, and also women, still wed pretty frequently.\nWhen people say, \"Young men won't marry nowadays,\" they mean young men\nin a particular stratum of society, roughly bounded by a silk hat on\nSundays. Now, when you and I were young (I take it for granted that you\nand I are approaching the fifties) young men did marry; even within this\nrestricted area, 'twas their wholesome way in life to form an attachment\nearly with some nice girl in their own set, and to start at least with\nthe idea of marrying her. Toward that goal they worked; for that end\nthey endured and sacrificed many things. True, even then, the long\nengagement was the rule; but the long engagement itself meant some\npersistent impulse, some strong impetus marriage-wards. The desire of\nthe man to make this woman his own, the longing to make this woman\nhappy--normal and healthy endowments of our race--had still much\ndriving-power. Nowadays, I seriously think I observe in most young men\nof the middle class around me a distinct and disastrous weakening of the\nimpulse. They don't fall in love as frankly, as honestly, as\nirretrievably as they used to do. They shilly-shally, they pick and\nchoose, they discuss, they criticise. They say themselves these futile\nfoolish things about the club, and the flat, and the cost of living.\nThey believe in Malthus. Fancy a young man who believes in Malthus! They\nseem in no hurry at all to get married. But thirty or forty years ago,\nyoung men used to rush by blind instinct into the toils of\nmatrimony--because they couldn't help themselves. Such Laodicean\nluke-warmness betokens in the class which exhibits it a weakening of\nimpulse. That weakening of impulse is really the thing we have to\naccount for.\n\nYoung men of a certain type don't marry, because--they are less of young\nmen than formerly.\n\nWild animals in confinement seldom propagate their kind. Only a few\ncaged birds will continue their species. Whatever upsets the balance of\nthe organism, in an individual or a race tends first of all to affect\nthe rate of reproduction. Civilise the red man, and he begins to\ndecrease at once in numbers. Turn the Sandwich Islands into a trading\ncommunity, and the native Hawaiian refuses forthwith to give hostages to\nfortune. Tahiti is dwindling. From the moment the Tasmanians were taken\nto Norfolk Island, not a single Tasmanian baby was born. The Jesuits\nmade a model community of Paraguay; but they altered the habits of the\nParaguayans so fast that the reverend fathers, who were, of course,\nthemselves celibates, were compelled to take strenuous and even\ngrotesque measures to prevent the complete and immediate extinction of\ntheir converts. Other cases in abundance I might quote an I would; but I\nlimit myself to these. They suffice to exhibit the general principle\ninvolved; any grave upset in the conditions of life affects first and at\nonce the fertility of a species.\n\n\"But colonists often increase with rapidity.\" Ay, marry, do they, where\nthe conditions of life are easy. At the present day most colonists go to\nfairly civilised regions; they are transported to their new home by\nsteamboat and railway; they find for the most part more abundant\nprovender and more wholesome surroundings than in their native country.\nThere is no real upset. Better food and easier life, as Herbert Spencer\nhas shown, result (other things equal) in increased fertility. His\nchapters on this subject in the \"Principles of Biology\" should be read\nby everybody who pretends to talk on questions of population. But in new\nand difficult colonies the increase is slight. Whatever compels greater\nwear and tear of the nervous system proves inimical to the reproductive\nfunction. The strain and stress of co-ordination with novel\ncircumstances and novel relations affect most injuriously the organic\nbalance. The African negro has long been accustomed to agricultural toil\nand to certain simple arts in his own country. Transported to the West\nIndies and the United States, he found life no harder than of old, if\nnot, indeed, easier. He had abundant food, protection, security, a kind\nof labour for which he was well adapted. Instead of dying out,\ntherefore, he was fruitful, and multiplied, and replenished the earth\namazingly. But the Red Indian, caught blatant in the hunting stage,\nrefused to be tamed, and could not swallow civilisation. He pined and\ndwined and decreased in his \"reservations.\" The change was too great,\ntoo abrupt, too brusque for him. The papoose before long became an\nextinct animal.\n\nIs not the same thing true of the middle class of England? Civilisation\nand its works have come too quickly upon us. The strain and stress of\ncorrelating and co-ordinating the world we live in are getting too much\nfor us. Railways, telegraphs, the penny post, the special edition, have\nplayed havoc at last with our nervous systems. We are always on the\nstretch, rushing and tearing perpetually. We bolt our breakfasts; we\ncatch the train or 'bus by the skin of our teeth, to rattle us into the\nCity; we run down to Scotland or over to Paris on business; we lunch in\nLondon and dine in Glasgow, Belfast, or Calcutta. (Excuse imagination.)\nThe tape clicks perpetually in our ears the last quotation in Eries; the\ntelephone rings us up at inconvenient moments. Something is always\nhappening somewhere to disturb our equanimity; we tear open the _Times_\nwith feverish haste, to learn that Kimberleys or Jabez Balfour have\nfallen, that Matabeleland has been painted red, that shares have gone\nup, or gone down, or evaporated. Life is one turmoil of excitement and\nbustle. Financially, 'tis a series of dissolving views; personally 'tis\na rush; socially, 'tis a mosaic of deftly-fitted engagements. Drop out\none piece, and you can never replace it. You are full next week from\nMonday to Saturday--business all day, what calls itself pleasure (save\nthe mark!) all evening. Poor old Leisure is dead. We hurry and scurry\nand flurry eternally. One whirl of work from morning till night: then\ndress and dine: one whirl of excitement from night till morning. A snap\nof troubled sleep, and again _da capo_. Not an hour, not a minute, we\ncan call our own. A wire from a patient ill abed in Warwickshire! A wire\nfrom a client hard hit in Hansards! Endless editors asking for more\ncopy! more copy! Alter to suit your own particular trade, and 'tis the\nlife of all of us.\n\nThe first generation after Stephenson and the Rocket pulled through with\nit somehow. They inherited the sound constitutions of the men who sat on\nrustic seats in the gardens of the twenties. The second\ngeneration--that's you and me--felt the strain of it more severely: new\nmachines had come in to make life still more complicated: sixpenny\ntelegrams, Bell and Edison, submarine cables, evening papers,\nperturbations pouring in from all sides incessantly; the suburbs\ngrowing, the hubbub increasing, Metropolitan railways, trams, bicycles,\ninnumerable: but natheless we still endured, and presented the world all\nthe same with a third generation. That third generation--ah me! there\ncomes the pity of it! One fancies the impulse to marry and rear a family\nhas wholly died out of it. It seems to have died out most in the class\nwhere the strain and stress are greatest. I don't think young men of\nthat class to-day have the same feelings towards women of their sort as\nformerly. Nobody, I trust, will mistake me for a reactionary: in most\nways, the modern young man is a vast improvement on you and me at\ntwenty-five. But I believe there is really among young men in towns less\nchivalry, less devotion, less romance than there used to be. That, I\ntake it, is the true reason why young men don't marry. With certain\nclasses and in certain places a primitive instinct of our race has\nweakened. They say this weakening is accompanied in towns by an increase\nin sundry hateful and degrading vices. I don't know if that is so; but\nat least one would expect it. Any enfeeblement of the normal and natural\ninstinct of virility would show itself first in morbid aberrations. On\nthat I say nothing. I only say this--that I think the present crisis in\nthe English marriage market is due, not to clubs or the comfort of\nbachelor quarters, but to the cumulative effect of nervous\nover-excitement.\n\n\n\n\nXV.\n\n_EYE_ VERSUS _EAR_.\n\n\nIt is admitted on all hands by this time, I suppose, that the best way\nof learning is by eye, not by ear. Therefore the authorities that\nprescribe for us our education among all classes have decided that we\nshall learn by ear, not by eye. Which is just what one might expect from\na vested interest.\n\nOf course this superiority of sight over hearing is pre-eminently true\nof natural science--that is to say, of nine-tenths among the subjects\nworth learning by humanity. The only real way to learn geology, for\nexample, is not to mug it up in a printed text-book, but to go into the\nfield with a geologist's hammer. The only real way to learn zoology and\nbotany is not by reading a volume of natural history, but by collecting,\ndissecting, observing, preserving, and comparing specimens. Therefore,\nof course, natural science has never been a favourite study in the eyes\nof school-masters, who prefer those subjects which can be taught in a\nroom to a row of boys on a bench, and who care a great deal less than\nnothing for any subject which isn't \"good to examine in.\" Educational\nvalue and importance in after life have been sacrificed to the teacher's\nease and convenience, or to the readiness with which the pupil's\nprogress can be tested on paper. Not what is best to learn, but what is\nleast trouble to teach in great squads to boys, forms the staple of our\nmodern English education. They call it \"education,\" I observe in the\npapers, and I suppose we must fall in with that whim of the profession.\n\nBut even the subjects which belong by rights to the ear can nevertheless\nbe taught by the eye more readily. Everybody knows how much easier it is\nto get up the history and geography of a country when you are actually\nin it than when you are merely reading about it. It lives and moves\nbefore you. The places, the persons, the monuments, the events, all\nbecome real to you. Each illustrates each, and each tends to impress the\nother on the memory. Sight burns them into the brain without conscious\neffort. You can learn more of Egypt and of Egyptian history, culture,\nhieroglyphics, and language in a few short weeks at Luxor or Sakkarah\nthan in a year at the Louvre and the British Museum. The Tombs of the\nKings are worth many papyri. The mere sight of the temples and obelisks\nand monuments and inscriptions, in the places where their makers\noriginally erected them, gives a sense of reality and interest to them\nall that no amount of study under alien conditions can possibly equal.\nWe have all of us felt that the only place to observe Flemish art to the\ngreatest advantage is at Ghent and Bruges and Brussels and Antwerp; just\nas the only place to learn Florentine art as it really was is at the\nUffizi and the Bargello.\n\nThese things being so, the authorities who have charge of our public\neducation, primary, secondary, and tertiary, have decided in their\nwisdom--to do and compel the exact contrary. Object-lessons and the\nvisible being admittedly preferable to rote-lessons and the audible,\nthey have prescribed that our education, so called, shall be mainly an\neducation not in things and properties, but in books and reading. They\nhave settled that it shall deal almost entirely and exclusively with\nlanguage and with languages; that words, not objects, shall be the facts\nit impresses on the minds of the pupils. In our primary schools they\nhave insisted upon nothing but reading and writing, with just a\nsmattering of arithmetic by way of science. In our secondary schools\nthey have insisted upon nothing but Greek and Latin, with about an equal\nleaven of algebra and geometry. This mediaeval fare (I am delighted that\nI can thus agree for once with Professor Ray Lankester) they have thrust\ndown the throats of all the world indiscriminately; so much so that\nnowadays people seem hardly able at last to conceive of any other than a\nlinguistic education as possible. You will hear many good folk who talk\nwith contempt of Greek and Latin; but when you come to inquire what new\nmental pabulum they would substitute for those quaint and grotesque\nsurvivals of the Dark Ages, you find what they want instead is--modern\nlanguages. The idea that language of any sort forms no necessary element\nin a liberal education has never even occurred to them. They take it for\ngranted that when you leave off feeding boys on straw and oats you must\nsupply them instead with hay and sawdust.\n\nNot that I rage against Greek and Latin as such. It is well we should\nhave many specialists among us who understand them, just as it is well\nwe should have specialists in Anglo-Saxon and Sanskrit. I merely mean\nthat they are not the sum and substance of educational method. They are\nat best but two languages of considerable importance to the student of\npurely human evolution.\n\nFurthermore, even these comparatively useless linguistic subjects could\nthemselves be taught far better by sight than by hearing. A week at Rome\nwould give your average boy a much clearer idea of the relations of the\nCapitol with the Palatine than all the pretty maps in Dr. William\nSmith's Smaller Classical Dictionary. It would give him also a sense of\nthe reality of the Latin language and the Latin literature, which he\ncould never pick up out of a dog-eared Livy or a thumb-marked AEneid. You\nhave only to look across from the top of the Janiculum, towards the\nwhite houses of Frascati, to learn a vast deal more about the Alban\nhills and the site of Tusculum than ever you could mug up from all the\ngeography books in the British Museum. The way to learn every subject on\nearth, even book-lore included, is not out of books alone, but by actual\nobservation.\n\nAnd yet it is impossible for any one among us to do otherwise than\nacquiesce in this vicious circle. Why? Just because no man can\ndissociate himself outright from the social organism of which he forms a\ncomponent member. He can no more do so than the eye can dissociate\nitself from the heart and lungs, or than the legs can shake themselves\nfree from the head and stomach. We have all to learn, and to let our\nboys learn, what authority decides for us. We can't give them a better\neducation than the average, even if we know what it is and desire to\nimpart it, because the better education, though abstractly more\nvaluable, is now and here the inlet to nothing. Every door is barred\nwith examinations, and opens but to the golden key of the crammer. Not\nwhat is of most real use and importance in life, but what \"pays best\" in\nexamination, is the test of desirability. We are the victims of a\nsystem; and our only hope of redress is not by sporadic individual\naction but by concerted rebellion. We must cry out against the abuse\ntill at last we are heard by dint of our much speaking. In a world so\ncomplex and so highly organised as ours, the individual can only do\nanything in the long run by influencing the mass--by securing the\nco-operation of many among his fellows.\n\nMeanwhile, I believe it is gradually becoming the fact that our girls,\nwho till lately were so very ill-taught, are beginning to know more of\nwhat is really worth knowing than their public-school-bred brothers. For\nthe public school still goes on with the system of teaching it has\nderived direct from the thirteenth century; while the girls' schools,\nhaving started fair and fresh, are beginning to assimilate certain newer\nideas belonging to the seventeenth and even the eighteenth. In time they\nmay conceivably come down to the more elementary notions of the present\ngeneration. Less hampered by professions and examinations than the boys,\nthe girls are beginning to know something now, not indeed of the\nuniverse in which they live, its laws and its properties, but of\nliterature and history, and the principal facts about human development.\nYet all the time, the boys go on as ever with Musa, Musae, like so many\nparrots, and are turned out at last, in nine cases out of ten, with just\nenough smattering of Greek and Latin grammar to have acquired a\nlife-long distaste for Horace and an inconquerable incapacity for\nunderstanding AEschylus. One year in Italy with their eyes open would be\nworth more than three at Oxford; and six months in the fields with a\nplatyscopic lens would teach them strange things about the world around\nthem that all the long terms at Harrow and Winchester have failed to\ndiscover to them. But that would involve some trouble to the teacher.\n\nWhat a misfortune it is that we should thus be compelled to let our\nboys' schooling interfere with their education!\n\n\n\n\nXVI.\n\n_THE POLITICAL PUPA._\n\n\nI have picked up on the moor the chrysalis of a common English\nbutterfly. As I sit on the heather and turn it over attentively, while\nit wriggles in my hands, I can't help thinking how closely it resembles\nthe present condition of our British commonwealth. It is a platitude,\nindeed, to say that \"this is an age of transition.\" But it would be\ntruer and more graphic perhaps to put it that this is an age in which\nEngland, and for the matter of that every other European country as\nwell, is passing through something like the chrysalis stage in its\nevolution.\n\nBut, first of all, do you clearly understand what a chrysalis is driving\nat? It means more than it seems; the change that goes on within that\nimpassive case is a great deal more profound than most people imagine.\nWhen the caterpillar is just ready to turn into a butterfly it lies by\nfor a while, full of internal commotion, and feels all its organs slowly\nmelting one by one into a sort of indistinguishable protoplasmic pulp;\nchaos precedes the definite re-establishment of a fresh form of order.\nLimbs and parts and nervous system all disappear for a time, and then\ngradually grow up again in new and altered types. The caterpillar, if it\nphilosophised on its own state at all (which seems to be very little the\nhabit of well-conducted caterpillars, as of well-conducted young\nladies), might easily be excused for forming just at first the\nmelancholy impression that a general dissolution was coming over it\npiecemeal. It must begin by feeling legs and eyes and nervous centres\nmelt away by degrees into a common indistinguishable organic pulp, out\nof which the new organs only slowly form themselves in obedience to the\nlaw of some internal impulse. But when the process is all over, and--hi,\npresto!--the butterfly emerges at last from the chrysalis condition,\nwhat does it find but that instead of having lost everything it has new\nand stronger legs in place of the old and feeble ones; it has nerves and\nbrain more developed than before; it has wings for flight instead of\nmere creeping little feet to crawl with? What seemed like chaos was\nreally nothing more than the necessary kneading up of all component\nparts into a plastic condition which precedes every fresh departure in\nevolution. The old must fade before the new can replace it.\n\nNow I am not going to work this perhaps somewhat fanciful analogy to\ndeath, or pretend it is anything more than a convenient metaphor. Still,\ntaken as such, it is not without its luminosity. For a metaphor, by\nsupplying us with a picturable representation, often enables us really\nto get at the hang of the thing a vast deal better than the most solemn\nargument. And I fancy communities sometimes pass through just such a\nchrysalis stage, when it seems to the timid and pessimistic in their\nmidst as if every component element of the State (but especially the one\nin which they themselves and their friends are particularly interested)\nwere rushing violently down a steep place to eternal perdition. Chaos\nappears to be swallowing up everything. \"The natural relations of\nclasses\" disappear. Faiths melt; churches dissolve; morals fade; bonds\nfail; a universal magma of emancipated opinion seems to take the place\nof old-established dogma. The squires and the parsons of the\nperiod--call them scribes or augurs--wring their hands in despair, and\ncry aloud that they don't know what the world is coming to. But, after\nall, it is only the chrysalis stage of a new system. The old social\norder must grow disjointed and chaotic before the new social order can\nbegin to evolve from it. The establishment of a plastic consistency in\nthe mass is the condition precedent of the higher development.\n\nNot, of course, that this consideration will ever afford one grain of\ncomfort to the squires and the parsons of each successive epoch; for\nwhat _they_ want is not the reasonable betterment of the whole social\norganism, but the continuance of just this particular type of squiredom\nand parsonry. That is what they mean by \"national welfare;\" and any\ninterference with it they criticise in all ages with the current\nequivalent for the familiar Tory formula that \"the country is going to\nthe devil.\"\n\nSometimes these great social reconstructions of which I speak are forced\nupon communities by external factors interfering with their fixed\ninternal order, as happened when the influx of northern barbarians broke\nup the decaying and rotten organism of the Roman Empire. Sometimes,\nagain, they occur from internal causes, in an acute, and so to speak,\ninflammatory condition, as at the French Revolution. But sometimes, as\nin our own time and country, they are slowly brought about by organic\ndevelopment, so as really to resemble in all essential points the\nchrysalis type of evolution. Politically, socially, theologically,\nethically, the old fixed beliefs seem at such periods to grow fluid or\nplastic. New feelings and habits and aspirations take their place. For a\nwhile a general chaos of conflicting opinions and nascent ideas is\nproduced. The mass for the moment seems formless and lawless. Then new\norder supervenes, as the magma settles down and begins to crystallise;\ntill at last, I'm afraid, the resulting social organism becomes for the\nmost part just as rigid, just as definite, just as dogmatic, just as\nexacting, as the one it has superseded. The caterpillar has grown into a\nparticular butterfly.\n\nThrough just such a period of reconstruction Europe in general and\nBritain in particular are now in all likelihood beginning to pass. And\nthey will come out at the other end translated and transfigured. Laws\nand faiths and morals will all of them have altered. There will be a new\nheaven and a new earth for the men and women of the new epoch. Strange\nthat people should make such a fuss about a detail like Home Rule, when\nthe foundations of society are all becoming fluid. Don't flatter\nyourself for a moment that your particular little sect or your\nparticular little dogma is going to survive the gentle cataclysm any\nmore than my particular little sect or my particular little dogma. All\nalike are doomed to inevitable reconstruction. \"We can't put the\nConstitution into the melting-pot,\" said Mr. John Morley, if I recollect\nhis words aright. But at the very moment when he said it, in my humble\nopinion, the Constitution was already well into the melting-pot, and\neven beginning to simmer merrily. Federalism, or something extremely\nlike it, may with great probability be the final outcome of that\nparticular melting; though anything else is perhaps just as probable,\nand in any case the melting is general, not special. The one thing we\ncan guess with tolerable certainty is that the melting-pot stage has\nbegun to overtake us, socially, ethically, politically,\necclesiastically; and that what will emerge from the pot at the end of\nit must depend at last upon the relative strength of those unknown\nquantities--the various formative elements.\n\nBeing the most optimistic of pessimists, however, I will venture (after\nthis disclaimer of prophecy) to prophesy one thing alone: 'Twill be a\nbutterfly, not a grub, that comes out of our chrysalis.\n\nBeyond that, I hold all prediction premature. We may guess and we may\nhope, but we can have no certainty. Save only the certainty that no\nelement will outlive the revolution unchanged--not faiths, nor classes,\nnor domestic relations, nor any other component factor of our complex\ncivilisation. All are becoming plastic in the organic plasm; all are\nlosing features in the common mass of the melting-pot. For that reason,\nI never trouble my head for a moment when people object to me that this,\nthat, or the other petty point of detail in Bellamy's Utopia or William\nMorris's Utopia, or my own little private and particular Utopia, is\nimpossible, or unrealisable, or wicked, or hateful. For these, after\nall, are mere Utopias; their details are the outcome of individual\nwishes; what will emerge must be, not a Utopia at all, either yours or\nmine, but a practical reality, full of shifts and compromises most\nunphilosophical and illogical--a practical reality distasteful in many\nways to all us Utopia-mongers. \"The Millennium by return of post\" is no\nmore realisable to-day than yesterday. The greatest of revolutions can\nonly produce that unsatisfactory result, a new human organisation.\n\nYet, it is something, after all, to believe at least that the grub will\nemerge into a full-fledged butterfly. Not, perhaps, quite as glossy in\nthe wings as we could wish; but a butterfly all the same, not a crawling\ncaterpillar.\n\n\n\n\nXVII.\n\n_ON THE CASINO TERRACE._\n\n\nI have always regarded Monte Carlo as an Influence for Good. It helps to\nkeep so many young men off the Stock Exchange.\n\nLet me guard against an obvious but unjust suspicion. These remarks are\nnot uttered under the exhilarating effect of winning at the tables.\nQuite the contrary. It is the Bank that has broken the Man to-day\nat Monte Carlo. They are rather due to the chastening and\nthought-compelling influence of persistent loss, not altogether\nunbalanced by a well-cooked lunch at perhaps the best restaurant in any\ntown of Europe. I have lost my little pile. The eight five-franc pieces\nwhich I annually devote out of my scanty store to the tutelary god of\nroulette have been snapped up, one after another, in breathless haste,\nby the sphinx-like croupiers, impassive priests of that rapacious deity,\nand now I am sitting, cleaned out, by the edge of the terrace, on a\nbrilliant, cloudless, February afternoon, looking across the zoned and\nbelted bay towards the beautiful grey hills of Rocca-bruna and the\ngleaming white spit of Bordighera in the distance. 'Tis a modest\ntribute, my poor little forty francs. Surely the veriest puritan, the\noiliest Chadband of them all, will allow a humble scribbler, at so cheap\na yearly rate, to purchase wisdom, not unmixed with tolerance, at the\ngilded shrine of Fors Fortuna!\n\nFor what a pother, after all, the unwise of this world are wont to make\nabout one stranded gambling-house, in a remote corner of Liguria! If\nthey were in earnest or sincere, how small a matter they would think it!\nOf course, when I say so, hypocrisy holds up its hands in holy horror.\nBut that is the way with the purveyors of mint, cumin, and anise; they\nraise a mighty hubbub over some unimportant detail--in order to feel\ntheir consciences clear when business compels them to rob the widow and\nthe orphan. In reality, though Monte Carlo is bad enough in its way--do\nI not pay it unwilling tribute myself twice a year out of the narrow\nresources of The Garret, Grub Street?--it is but a skin-deep surface\nsymptom of a profound disease which attacks the heart and core in London\nand Paris. Compared with Panama, Argentines, British South Africans, and\nLiberators, Monte Carlo is a mole on the left ankle.\n\n\"The Devil's advocate!\" you say. Well, well, so be it. The fact is, the\nsupposed moral objection to gambling as such is a purely commercial\nobjection of a commercial nation; and the reason so much importance is\nattached to it in certain places is because at that particular vice men\nare likely to lose their money. It is largely a fetish, like the\nsinfulness of cards, of dice, of billiards. Moreover, the objection is\nonly to the _kind_ of gambling. There is another kind, less open, at\nwhich you stand a better chance to win yourself, while other parties\nstand a better chance to lose; and that kind, which is played in great\ngambling-houses known as the Stock Exchange and the Bourse, is\nconsidered, morally speaking, as quite innocuous. Large fortunes are\nmade at this other sort of gambling, which, of course, sanctifies and\nalmost canonises it. Indeed, if you will note, you will find not only\nthat the objection to gambling pure and simple is commonest in the most\ncommercial countries, but also that even there it is commonest among the\nmost commercial classes. The landed aristocracy, the military, and the\nlabouring men have no objection to betting; nor have the Neapolitan\nlazzaroni, the Chinese coolies. It is the respectable English\ncounting-house that discourages the vice, especially among the clerks,\nwho are likely to make the till or the cheque-book rectify the little\nfailures of their flutter on the Derby.\n\nObserve how artificial is the whole mild out-cry: how absolutely it\npartakes of the nature of damning the sins you have no mind to! Here, on\nthe terrace where I sit, and where ladies in needlessly costly robes are\npromenading up and down to exhibit their superfluous wealth\nostentatiously to one another, my ear is continuously assailed by the\nconstant _ping, ping, ping_ of the pigeon-shooting, and my peace\ndisturbed by the flapping death-agonies of those miserable victims. Yet\nhow many times have you heard the tables at Monte Carlo denounced to\nonce or never that you have heard a word said of the poor mangled\npigeons? And why? Because nobody loses much money at pigeon-matches.\nThat is legitimate sport, about as good and as bad as pheasant or\npartridge shooting--no better, no worse, in spite of artificial\ndistinctions; and nobody (except the pigeons) has any interest in\ndenouncing it. Legend has it at Monte Carlo, indeed, that when the\nproprietors of the Casino wished to take measures \"pour attirer les\nAnglais\" they held counsel with the wise men whether it was best to\nestablish and endow an English church or a pigeon-shooting tournament.\nAnd the church was in a minority. Since then, I have heard more than one\nAnglican Bishop speak evil of the tables, but I have never heard one of\nthem say a good word yet for the boxed and slaughtered pigeons.\n\nLet me take a more striking because a less hackneyed case--one that\nstill fewer people would think of. Everybody who visits Monte Carlo gets\nthere, of course, by the P.L.M. If you know this coast at all you will\nknow that P.L.M. is the curt and universal abbreviation for the Paris,\nLyon, Mediterranee Railway Company--in all probability the most gigantic\nand wickedest monopoly on the face of this planet. Yet you never once\nheard a voice raised yet against the company as a company. Individual\ncomplaints get into the _Times_, of course, about the crowding of the\n_train de luxe_, the breach of faith as to places, and the discomforts\nof the journey; but never a glimmering conception seems to flit across\nthe popular mind that here is a Colossal Wrong, compared to which Monte\nCarlo is but as a flea-bite to the Asiatic cholera. This chartered abuse\nconnects the three biggest towns in France--Paris, Lyon, Marseilles--and\nis absolutely without competitors. It can do as it likes; and it does\nit, regardless--I say \"regardless,\" without qualification, because the\nP.L.M. regards nobody and nothing. Yet one hears of no righteous\nindignation, no uprising of the people in their angry thousands, no\nmoral recognition of the monopoly as a Wicked Thing, to be fought tooth\nand nail, without quarter given. It probably causes a greater aggregate\nof human misery in a week than Monte Carlo in a century. Besides, the\none is compulsory, the other optional. You needn't risk a louis on the\ntables unless you choose, but, like it or lump it, if you're bound for\nNice or Cannes or Mentone, you must open your mouth and shut your eyes\nand see what P.L.M. will send you. Our own railways, indeed, are by no\nmeans free from blame at the hands of the Democracy: the South-Eastern\nhas not earned the eternal gratitude of its season-ticket holders; the\nchildren of the Great Western do not rise up and call it blessed.\n(Except, indeed, in the most uncomplimentary sense of blessing.) But the\nP.L.M. goes much further than these; and I have always held that the one\nsolid argument for eternal punishment consists in the improbability that\nits Board of Directors will be permitted to go scot-free for ever after\nall their iniquities.\n\nI am not wholly joking. I mean the best part of it. Great monopolies\nthat abuse their trust are far more dangerous enemies of public morals\nthan an honest gambling-house at every corner. Monte Carlo as it stands\nis just a concentrated embodiment of all the evils of our anti-social\nsystem, and the tables are by far the least serious among them. It is an\nInfluence for Good, because it mirrors our own world in all its naked,\nall its over-draped hideousness. There it rears its meretricious head,\nthat gaudy Palace of Sin, appropriately decked in its Haussmanesque\narchitecture and its coquettish gardens, attracting to itself all the\nidle, all the vicious, all the rich, all the unworthy, from every corner\nof Europe and America. But Monte Carlo didn't make them; it only gathers\nto its bosom its own chosen children from the places where they are\nproduced--from London, Paris, Brussels, New York, Berlin, St.\nPetersburg. The vices of our organisation begot these over-rich folk,\nbegot their diamond-decked women, and their clipped French poodles with\ngold bangles spanning their aristocratic legs. These are the spawn of\nland-owning, of capitalism, of military domination, of High Finance, of\nall the social ills that flesh is heir to. I feel as I pace the terrace\nin the broad Mediterranean sunshine, that I am here in the midst of the\nvery best society Europe affords. That is to say, the very worst. The\ndukes and the money-lenders, the Jay Goulds and the Reinachs. The\nidlest, the cruellest: the hereditary drones, the successful\nblood-suckers. But to find fault with them only for trying to\nwin one another's ill-gotten gold at a fair and open game of\n_trente-et-quarante_, with the odds against them, and then to say\nnothing about the way they came by it, is to make a needless fuss about\na trifle of detail, while overlooking the weightiest moral problems of\nhumanity.\n\nWhoever allows red herrings like these to be trailed across the path of\nhis moral consciousness, to the detriment of the scent which should lead\nhim straight on to the lairs of gigantic evils, deserves little credit\neither for conscience or sagacity. My son, be wise. Strike at the root\nof the evil. Let Monte Carlo go, but keep a stern eye on London\nground-rents.\n\n\n\n\nXVIII.\n\n_THE CELTIC FRINGE._\n\n\nWe Celts henceforth will rule the roost in Britain.\n\nWhat is that you mutter? \"A very inopportune moment to proclaim the\nfact.\" Well, no, I don't think so. And I'm sorry to hear you say it, for\nif there _is_ a quality on which I plume myself, it's the delicate tact\nthat makes me refrain from irritating the susceptibilities of the\nsensitive Saxon. See how polite I am to him! I call him sensitive. But,\nopportune or inopportune, Lord Salisbury says we are a Celtic fringe. I\nbeg to retort, we are the British people.\n\n\"Conquered races,\" say my friends. Well, grant it for a moment. But in\ncivilised societies, conquerors have, sooner or later, to amalgamate\nwith the conquered. And where the vanquished are more numerous, they\nabsorb the victors instead of being absorbed by them. That is the\nNemesis of conquest. Rome annexed Etruria; and Etruscan Maecenas,\nEtruscan Sejanus organised and consolidated the Roman Empire. Rome\nannexed Italy; and the _Jus Italicum_ grew at last to be the full Roman\nfranchise. Rome annexed the civilised world; and the provinces under\nCaesar blotted out the Senate. Britain is passing now through the\nself-same stage. One inevitable result of the widening of the electorate\nhas been the transfer of power from the Teutonic to the Celtic half of\nBritain. I repeat, we are no longer a Celtic fringe: at the polls, in\nParliament, we are the British people. Lord Salisbury may fail to\nperceive that fact, or, as I hold more probable, may affect to ignore\nit. What will such tactics avail? The ostrich is not usually counted\namong men as a perfect model of political wisdom.\n\nAnd _are_ we, after all, the conquered peoples? Meseems, I doubt it.\nThey say we Celts dearly love a paradox--which is perhaps only the\nsensible Saxon way of envisaging the fact that we catch at new truths\nsomewhat quicker than other people. At any rate, 'tis a pet little\nparadox of my own that we have never been conquered, and that to our\nunconquered state we owe in the main our Radicalism, our Socialism, our\ningrained love of political freedom. We are tribal not feudal; we think\nthe folk more important than his lordship. The Saxon of the south-east\nis the conquered man: he has felt on his neck for generations the heel\nof feudalism. He is slavish; he is snobbish; he dearly loves a lord. He\nshouts himself hoarse for his Beaconsfield or his Salisbury. Till\nlately, in his rural avatar, he sang but one song--\n\n  \"God bless the squire and his relations,\n  And keep us in our proper stations.\"\n\nTrite, isn't it? but so is the Saxon intelligence.\n\nSeriously--for at times it is well to be serious--South-Eastern England,\nthe England of the plains, has been conquered and enslaved in a dozen\nages by each fresh invader. Before the dawn of history, Heaven knows\nwhat shadowy Belgae and Iceni enslaved it. But historical time will serve\nour purpose. The Roman enslaved it, but left Caledonia and Hibernia\nfree, the Cambrian, the Silurian, the Cornishman half-subjugated. The\nSaxon and Anglian enslaved the east, but scarcely crossed over the\nwatershed of the western ocean. The Dane, in turn, enslaved the Saxon in\nEast Anglia and Yorkshire. The Norman ground all down to a common\nservitude between the upper and nether millstones of the feudal\nsystem--the king and the nobleman. At the end of it all, Teutonic\nEngland was reduced to a patient condition of contented serfdom: it had\naccommodated itself to its environment: no wish was left in it for the\nassertion of its freedom. To this day, the south-east, save where\nleavened and permeated by Celtic influences, hugs its chains and loves\nthem. It produces the strange portent of the Conservative working-man,\nwho yearns to be led by Lord Randolph Churchill.\n\nWith the North and the West, things go wholly otherwise. Even Cornwall,\nthe earliest Celtic kingdom to be absorbed, was rather absorbed than\nconquered. I won't go into the history of the West Welsh of Somerset,\nDevon, and Cornwall at full length, because it would take ten pages to\nexplain it; and I know that readers are too profoundly interested in the\nShocking Murder in the Borough Road to devote half-an-hour to the origin\nand evolution of their own community. It must suffice to say that the\nDevonian and Cornubian Welsh coalesced with the West Saxon for\nresistance to their common enemy the Dane, and that the West Saxon\nkingdom was made supreme in Britain by the founder of the English\nmonarchy--one Dunstan, a monk from the West Welsh Abbey of Glastonbury.\nWales proper, overrun piecemeal by Norman filibusterers, was roughly\nannexed by the Plantagenet kings; but it was only pacified under the\nWelsh Tudors, and was never at any time thoroughly feudalised.\nGlendower's rebellion, Richmond's rebellion, the Wesleyan revolt, the\nRebecca riots, the tithe war, are all continuous parts of the ceaseless\nreaction of gallant little Wales against Teutonic aggression. \"An alien\nChurch\" still disturbs the Principality. The Lake District and\nAyrshire--Celtic Cumbria and Strathclyde--only accepted by degrees the\nsupremacy of the Kings of England and Scotland. The brother of a Scotch\nKing was Prince of Cumbria, as the elder son of an English King was\nPrince of Wales. Indeed, David of Cumbria, who became David I. of\nScotland, was the real consolidator of the Scotch kingdom. Cumbria was\nno more conquered by the Saxon Lothians than Scotland was conquered by\nthe accession of James I. or by the Act of Union. That means absorption,\nconciliation, a certain degree of tribal independence. For Ireland, we\nknow that the \"mere Irish\" were never subjugated at all till the days of\nHenry VII.; that they had to be reconquered by Cromwell and by William\nof Orange; that they rebelled more or less throughout the eighteenth\ncentury; and that they have been thorns in the side of Tory England\nthrough the whole of the nineteenth. As for the Highlands, they held out\nagainst the Stuarts till England had rejected that impossible dynasty;\nand then they rallied round the Stuarts as the enemies of the Saxon.\nGeneral Wade's roads and the forts in the Great Glen, aided by a few\ntrifles of Glencoe massacres, kept them quiet for a moment. But it was\nonly for a moment. The North is once more in open revolt. Dr. Clark and\nthe crofters are its mode of expressing itself.\n\nNor is that all. The Celtic ideas have remained unaltered. Of course, I\nam not silly enough to believe there is any such thing as a Celtic race.\nI use the word merely as a convenient label for the league of the\nunconquered peoples in Britain. Ireland alone contains half-a-dozen\nraces; and none of them appear to have anything in common with the Pict\nof Aberdeenshire or the West-Welsh of Cornwall. All I mean when I speak\nof Celtic ideas and Celtic ideals is the ideas and ideals proper and\ncommon to unconquered races. As compared with the feudalised and\ncontented serf of South-Eastern England, are not the Irish peasant, the\nScotch clansman, the \"statesman\" of the dales, the Cornish miner, free\nmen every soul of them? English landlordism, imposed from without upon\nthe crofter of Skye or the rack-rented tenant of a Connemara hillside,\nhas never crushed out the native feeling of a right to the soil, the\nnative resistance to an alien system. The south-east, I assert, has been\nbrutalised into acquiescent serfdom by a long course of feudalism; the\nwest and north still retain the instincts of freemen.\n\nAs long as South-Eastern England and the Normanised or feudalised Saxon\nlowlands of Scotland contained all the wealth, all the power, and most\nof the population of Britain, the Celtic ideals had no chance of\nrealising themselves. But the industrial revolution of the present\ncentury has turned us right-about-face, has transferred the balance of\npower from the secondary strata to the primary strata in Britain; from\nthe agricultural lowlands to the uplands of coal and iron, the cotton\nfactories, the woollen trade. Great industrial cities have grown up in\nthe Celtic or semi-Celtic area--Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds,\nBradford, Sheffield, Belfast, Aberdeen, Cardiff. The Celt--that is to\nsay, the mountaineer and the man of the untouched country--reproduces\nhis kind much more rapidly than the Teuton. The Highlander and the\nIrishman swarm into Glasgow; the Irishman and the Welshman swarm into\nLiverpool; the west-countryman into Bristol; Celts of all types into\nLondon, Southampton, Newport, Birmingham, Sheffield. This eastward\nreturn-wave of Celts upon the Teuton has leavened the whole mass; if you\nlook at the leaders of Radicalism in England you will find they bear,\nalmost without exception, true Celtic surnames. Chartists and Socialists\nof the first generation were marshalled by men of Cymric descent, like\nErnest Jones and Robert Owen, or by pure-blooded Irishmen like Fergus\nO'Connor. It is not a mere accident that the London Socialists of the\npresent day should be led by Welshmen like William Morris, or by the\neloquent brogue of Bernard Shaw's audacious oratory. We Celts now lurk\nin every corner of Britain; we have permeated it with our ideas; we have\ninspired it with our aspirations; we have roused the Celtic remnant in\nthe south-east itself to a sense of their wrongs; and we are marching\nto-day, all abreast, to the overthrow of feudalism. If Lord Salisbury\nthinks we are a Celtic fringe he is vastly mistaken. But he doesn't\nreally think so: 'tis a piece of his ponderous Saxon humour. Talk of\n\"Batavian grace,\" indeed! Well, the Cecils came first from the fens of\nLincolnshire.\n\n\n\n\nXIX.\n\n_IMAGINATION AND RADICALS._\n\n\nConservatism, I believe, is mainly due to want of imagination.\n\nIn saying this, I do not for a moment mean to deny the other and equally\nobvious truth that Conservatism, in the lump, is a euphemism for\nselfishness. But the two ideas have much in common. Selfish people are\napt to be unimaginative: unimaginative people are apt to be selfish.\nClearly to realise the condition of the unfortunate is the beginning of\nphilanthropy. Clearly to realise the rights of others is the beginning\nof justice. \"Put yourself in his place\" strikes the keynote of ethics.\nStupid people can only see their own side of a question: they cannot\neven imagine any other side possible. So, as a rule, stupid people are\nConservative. They cling to what they have; they dread revision,\nredistribution, justice. Also, if a man has imagination he is likely to\nbe Radical, even though selfish; while if he has no imagination he is\nlikely to be Conservative, even though otherwise good and kind-hearted.\nSome men are Conservative from defects of heart, while some are\nConservative from defects of head. Conversely, most imaginative people\nare Radical; for even a bad man may sometimes uphold the side of right\nbecause he has intelligence enough to understand that things might be\nbetter managed in the future for all than they are in the present.\n\nBut when I say that Conservatism is mainly due to want of imagination, I\nmean more than that. Most people are wholly unable to conceive in their\nown minds any state of things very different from the one they have been\nborn and brought up in. The picturing power is lacking. They can\nconceive the past, it is true, more or less vaguely--because they have\nalways heard things once were so, and because the past is generally\nrealisable still by the light of the relics it has bequeathed to the\npresent. But they can't at all conceive the future. Imagination fails\nthem. Innumerable difficulties crop up for them in the way of every\nproposed improvement. Before there was any County Council for London,\nsuch people thought municipal government for the metropolis an insoluble\nproblem. Now that Home Rule quivers trembling in the balance, they think\nit would pass the wit of man to devise in the future a federal league\nfor the component elements of the United Kingdom; in spite of the fact\nthat the wit of man has already devised one for the States of the Union,\nfor the Provinces of the Dominion, for the component Cantons of the\nSwiss Republic. To the unimaginative mind difficulties everywhere seem\nalmost insuperable. It shrinks before trifles. \"Impossible!\" said\nNapoleon. \"There is no such word in my dictionary!\" He had been trained\nin the school of the French Revolution--which was _not_ carried out by\nunimaginative pettifoggers.\n\nTo people without imagination any change you propose seems at once\nimpracticable. They are ready to bring up endless objections to the mode\nof working it. There would be this difficulty in the way, and that\ndifficulty, and the other one. You would think, to hear them talk, the\nworld as it stands was absolutely perfect, and moved without a hitch in\nall its bearings. They don't see that every existing institution just\nbristles with difficulties--and that the difficulties are met or got\nover somehow. Often enough while they swallow the camel of existing\nabuses they strain at some gnat which they fancy they see flying in at\nthe window of Utopia or of the Millennium. \"If your reform were\ncarried,\" they say in effect, \"we should, doubtless, get rid of such and\nsuch flagrant evils; but the streets in November would be just as muddy\nas ever, and slight inconvenience might be caused in certain improbable\ncontingencies to the duke or the cotton-spinner, the squire or the\nmine-owner.\" They omit to note that much graver inconvenience is caused\nat present to the millions who are shut out from the fields and the\nsunshine, who are sweated all day for a miserable wage, or who are\nforced to pay fancy prices for fuel to gratify the rapacity of a handful\nof coal-grabbers.\n\nLack of imagination makes people fail to see the evils that are; makes\nthem fail to realise the good that might be.\n\nI often fancy to myself what such people would say if land had always\nbeen communal property, and some one now proposed to hand it over\nabsolutely to the dukes, the squires, the game-preservers, and the\ncoal-owners. \"'Tis impossible,\" they would exclaim; \"the thing wouldn't\nbe workable. Why, a single landlord might own half Westminster! A single\nlandlord might own all Sutherlandshire! The hypothetical Duke of\nWestminster might put bars to the streets; he might impede locomotion;\nhe might refuse to let certain people to whom he objected take up their\nresidence in any part of his territory; he might prevent them from\nfollowing their own trades or professions; he might even descend to such\npetty tyranny as tabooing brass plates on the doors of houses. And what\nwould you do then? The thing isn't possible. The Duke of Sutherland,\nagain, might shut up all Sutherlandshire; might turn whole vast tracts\ninto grouse-moor or deer-forest; might prevent harmless tourists from\nwalking up the mountains. And surely free Britons would never submit to\n_that_. The bare idea is ridiculous. The squire of a rural parish might\nturn out the Dissenters; might refuse to let land for the erection of\nchapels; might behave like a petty King Augustus of Scilly. Indeed,\nthere would be nothing to prevent an American alien from buying up\nsquare miles of purple heather in Scotland, and shutting the inhabitants\nof these British Isles out of their own inheritance. Sites might be\nrefused for needful public purposes; fancy prices might be asked for\npure cupidity. Speculators would job land for the sake of unearned\nincrement; towns would have to grow as landlords willed, irrespective of\nthe wants or convenience of the community. Theoretically, I don't even\nsee that Lord Rothschild mightn't buy up the whole area of Middlesex,\nand turn London into a Golden House of Nero. Your scheme can't be\nworked. The anomalies are too obvious.\"\n\nThey are indeed. Yet I doubt whether the unimaginative would quite have\nforeseen them: the things they foresee are less real and possible. But\nthey urge against every reform such objections as I have parodied; and\nthey urge them about matters of far less vital importance. The existing\nsystem exists; they know its abuses, its checks and its counter-checks.\nThe system of the future does not yet exist; and they can't imagine how\nits far slighter difficulties could ever be smoothed over. They are not\nthe least staggered by the appalling reality of the Duke of Westminster\nor the Duke of Sutherland; not the least staggered by the sinister power\nof a conspiracy of coal-owners to paralyse a great nation with the\nhorrors of a fuel famine. But they _are_ staggered by their bogey that\nState ownership of land might give rise to a certain amount of jobbery\nand corruption on the part of officials. They think it better that the\ndukes and the squires should get all the rent than that the State should\nget most of it, with the possibility of a percentage being corruptly\nembezzled by the functionaries who manage it. This shows want of\nimagination. It is as though one should say to one's clerk, \"All your\nincome shall be paid in future to the Duke of Westminster, and not to\nyourself, for his sole use and benefit; because we, your employers, are\nafraid that if we give you your salary in person, you may let some of it\nbe stolen from you or badly invested.\" How transparently absurd! We want\nour income ourselves, to spend as we please. We would rather risk losing\none per cent. of it in bad investments than let all be swallowed up by\nthe dukes and the landlords.\n\nIt is the same throughout. Want of imagination makes people exaggerate\nthe difficulties and dangers of every new scheme, because they can't\npicture constructively to themselves the details of its working. Men\nwith great picturing power, like Shelley or Robespierre, are always very\nadvanced Radicals, and potentially revolutionists. The difficulty _they_\nsee is not the difficulty of making the thing work, but the difficulty\nof convincing less clear-headed people of its desirability and\npracticability. A great many Conservatives, who are Conservative from\nselfishness, would be Radicals if only they could feel for themselves\nthat even their own petty interests and pleasures are not really\nmenaced. The squires and the dukes can't realise how much happier even\nthey would be in a free, a beautiful, and a well-organised community.\nImaginative minds can picture a world where everything is so ordered\nthat life comes as a constant aesthetic delight to everybody. They know\nthat that world could be realised to-morrow--if only all others could\npicture it to themselves as vividly as they do. But they also know that\nit can only be attained in the end by long ages of struggle, and by slow\nevolution of the essentially imaginative ethical faculty. For right\naction depends most of all, in the last resort, upon a graphic\nconception of the feelings of others.\n\n\n\n\nXX.\n\n_ABOUT ABROAD._\n\n\nThe place known as Abroad is not nearly so nice a country to live in as\nEngland. The people who inhabit Abroad are called Foreigners. They are\nin every way and at all times inferior to Englishmen.\n\nThese Post-Prandials used once to be provided with a sting in their\ntail, like the common scorpion. By way of change, I turn them out now\nwith a sting in their head, like the common mosquito. Mosquitoes are\nmuch less dangerous than scorpions, but they're a deal more irritating.\n\nNot that I am sanguine enough to expect I shall irritate Englishmen.\nYour Englishman is far too cock-sure of the natural superiority of\nBritons to Foreigners, the natural superiority of England to Abroad,\never to be irritated by even the gentlest criticism. He accepts it all\nwith lordly indifference. He brushes it aside as the elephant might\nbrush aside the ineffective gadfly. No proboscis can pierce that\npachydermatous hide of his. If you praise him to his face, he accepts\nyour praise as his obvious due, with perfect composure and without the\nslightest elation. If you blame him in aught, he sets it down to your\nignorance and mental inferiority. You say to him, \"Oh, Englishman, you\nare great; you are wise; you are rich beyond comparison. You are noble;\nyou are generous; you are the prince among nations.\" He smiles a calm\nsmile, and thinks you a very sensible fellow. But you add, \"Oh, my lord,\nif I may venture to say so, there is a smudge on your nose, which I make\nbold to attribute to the settlement of a black on your intelligent\ncountenance.\" He is not angry. He is not even contemptuously amused. He\nresponds, \"My friend, you are wrong. There is never a smudge on my\nimmaculate face. No blacks fly in London. The sky is as clear there in\nNovember as in August. All is pure and serene and beautiful.\" You\nanswer, \"Oh, my lord, I admit the force of your profound reasoning. You\nlight the gas at ten in the morning only to show all the world you can\nafford to burn it.\" At that, he gropes his way along Pall Mall to his\nclub, and tells the men he meets there how completely he silenced you.\n\nAnd yet, My Lord Elephant, there is use in mosquitoes. Mr. Mattieu\nWilliams once discovered the final cause of fleas. Certain people, said\nhe, cannot be induced to employ the harmless necessary tub. For them,\nProvidence designed the lively flea. He compels them to scratch\nthemselves. By so doing they rouse the skin to action and get rid of\nimpurities. Now, this British use of the word Abroad is a smudge on the\nface of the otherwise perfect Englishman. Perchance a mosquito-bite may\ninduce him to remove it with a little warm water and a cambric\npocket-handkerchief.\n\nTo most Englishmen, the world divides itself naturally into two unequal\nand non-equivalent portions--Abroad and England. Of these two, Abroad is\nmuch the larger country; but England, though smaller, is vastly more\nimportant. Abroad is inhabited by Frenchmen and Germans, who speak their\nown foolish and chattering languages. Part of it is likewise pervaded by\nChinamen, who wear pigtails; and the outlying districts belong to the\npoor heathen, chiefly interesting as a field of missionary enterprise,\nand a possible market for Manchester piece-goods. We sometimes invest\nour money abroad, but then we are likely to get it swallowed up in\nMexicans or Egyptian Unified. If you ask most people what has become of\nTom, they will answer at once with the specific information, \"Oh, Tom\nhas gone Abroad.\" I have one stereotyped rejoinder to an answer like\nthat. \"What part of Abroad, please?\" That usually stumps them. Abroad is\nAbroad; and like the gentleman who was asked in examination to \"name the\nminor prophets,\" they decline to make invidious distinctions. It is\nnothing to them whether he is tea-planting in the Himalayas, or\nsheep-farming in Australia, or orange-growing in Florida, or ranching in\nColorado. If he is not in England, why then he is elsewhere; and\nelsewhere is Abroad, one and indivisible.\n\nIn short, Abroad answers in space to that well-known and definite date,\nthe Olden Time, in chronology.\n\nPeople will tell you, \"Foreigners do this\"; \"Foreigners do that\";\n\"Foreigners smoke so much\"; \"Foreigners always take coffee for\nbreakfast.\" \"Indeed,\" I love to answer; \"I've never observed it myself\nin Central Asia.\" 'Tis Parson Adams and the Christian religion. Nine\nEnglish people out of ten, when they talk of Abroad, mean what they call\nthe Continent; and when they talk of the Continent, they mean France,\nGermany, Switzerland, Italy; in short, the places most visited by\nEnglishmen when they consent now and again to go Abroad for a holiday.\n\"I don't like Abroad,\" a lady once said to me on her return from Calais.\nForeigners, in like manner, means Frenchmen, Germans, Swiss, Italians.\nIn the country called Abroad, the most important parts are the parts\nnearest England; of the people called Foreigners, the most important are\nthose who dress like Englishmen. The dim black lands that lie below the\nhorizon are hardly worth noticing.\n\nWould it surprise you to learn that most people live in Asia? Would it\nsurprise you to learn that most people are poor benighted heathen, and\nthat, of the remainder, most people are Mahommedans, and that of the\nChristians, who come next, most people are Roman Catholics, and that, of\nthe other Christian sects, most people belong to the Greek Church, and\nthat, last of all, we get Protestants, more particularly Anglicans,\nWesleyans, Baptists? Have you ever really realised the startling fact\nthat England is an island off the coast of Europe? that Europe is a\npeninsula at the end of Asia? that France, Germany, Italy, are the\nfringe of Russia? Have you ever really realised that the\nEnglish-speaking race lives mostly in America? that the country is\nvastly more populous than London? that our class is the froth and the\nscum of society? Think these things out, and try to measure them on the\nglobe. And when you speak of Abroad, do please specify what part of it.\n\nAbroad is not all alike. There are differences between Poland, Peru, and\nPalestine. What is true of France is not true of Fiji. Distinguish\ncarefully between Timbuctoo, Tobolsk, and Toledo.\n\nIt is not our insularity that makes us so insular. 'Tis a gift of the\ngods, peculiar to Englishmen. The other inhabitants of these Isles of\nBritain are comparatively cosmopolitan. The Scotchman goes everywhere;\nthe world is his oyster. Ireland is an island still more remote than\nGreat Britain; but the Irishman has never been so insular as the\nEnglish. I put that down in part to his Catholicism: his priests have\nbeen wheels in a world-wide system; his relations have been with Douai,\nSt. Omer, and Rome; his bishops have gone pilgrimages and sat on Vatican\nCouncils; his kinsmen are the MacMahons in France, the O'Donnels in\nSpain, the Taafes in Austria. Even in the days of the Regency this was\nso: look at Lever and his heroes! When England drank port, County Clare\ndrank claret. But ever since the famine, Ireland has expanded. Every\nIrishman has cousins in Canada, in Australia, in New York, in San\nFrancisco. The Empire is Irish, with the exception of India; and India,\nof course, is a Scotch dependency. Irishmen and Scotchmen have no such\nfeelings about Abroad and its Foreigners as Londoners entertain. But\nEnglishmen never quite get over the sense that everybody must needs\ndivide the world into England and Elsewhere. To the end no Englishman\nreally grasps the fact that to Frenchmen and Germans he himself is a\nforeigner. I have met John Bulls who had passed years in Italy, but who\nspoke of the countrymen of Caesar and Dante and Leonardo and Garibaldi\nwith the contemptuous toleration one might feel towards a child or an\nAndaman Islander. These Italians could build Giotto's campanile; could\npaint the Transfiguration; could carve the living marble on the tombs of\nthe Medici; could produce the Vita Nuova; could beget Galileo, Galvani,\nBeccaria; but still--they were Foreigners. Providence in its wisdom has\ndecreed that they must live Abroad--just as it has decreed that a\ncomprehension of the decimal system and its own place in the world\nshould be limitations eternally imposed upon the English intellect.\n\n\n\n\nXXI.\n\n_WHY ENGLAND IS BEAUTIFUL._\n\n\nAs I strolled across the moor this afternoon towards Waverley, I saw\nJones was planting out that bare hillside of his with Douglas pines and\nScotch firs and new strains of silver birches. They will improve the\nlandscape. And I thought as I scanned them, \"How curious that most\npeople entirely overlook this constant betterment and beautifying of\nEngland! You hear them talk much of the way bricks and mortar are\ninvading the country; you never hear anything of this slow and silent\nprocess of planting and developing which has made England into the\nprettiest and one of the most beautiful countries in Europe.\"\n\nWhat's that you say? \"Astonished to find I have a good word of any sort\nto put in for England!\" Why, dear me, how irrational you are! I just\n_love_ England. Can any man with eyes in his head and a soul for beauty\ndo otherwise? England and Italy--there you have the two great glories of\nEurope. Italy for towns, for art, for man's handicraft; England for\ncountry, for nature, for green lanes and lush copses. Was it not one\nthat loved Italy well who sighed in Italy--\n\n  \"Oh, to be in England now that April's there?\"\n\nAnd who that loves Italy, and knows England, too, does not echo\nBrowning's wish when April comes round again on dusty Tuscan hilltops?\nAt Perugia, last spring, through weeks of tramontana, how one yearned\nfor the sight of yellow English primroses! Not love England, indeed!\nMilton's England, Shelley's England; the England of the skylark, the\ndog-rose, the honeysuckle! Not love England, forsooth! Why, I love every\nflower, every blade of grass in it. Devonshire lane, close-cropped down,\nrich water-meadow, bickering brooklet: ah me, how they tug at one's\nheartstrings in Africa! No son of the soil can love England as those\nlove her very stones who have come from newer lands over sea to her\nivy-clad church-towers, her mouldering castles, her immemorial elms, the\nberries on her holly, the may in her hedgerows. Are not all these bound\nup in our souls with each cherished line of Shakespeare and Wordsworth?\ndo they not rouse faint echoes of Gray and Goldsmith? Even before I ever\nset foot in England, how I longed to behold my first cowslip, my first\nfoxglove! And now, I have wandered through the footpaths that run\nobliquely across English pastures, picking meadowsweet and fritillaries,\nfor half a lifetime, till I have learned by heart every leaf and every\npetal. You think because I dislike one squalid village--\"The Wen,\" stout\nEnglish William Cobbett delighted to call it--I don't love England. You\nthink because I see some spots on the sun of the English character, I\ndon't love Englishmen. Why, how can any man who speaks the English\ntongue, and boasts one drop of English blood in his veins, not be proud\nof England? England, the mother of poets and thinkers; England, that\ngave us Newton, Darwin, Spencer; England, that holds in her lap Oxford,\nSalisbury, Durham; England of daisy and heather and pine-wood! Are we\nhewn out of granite, to be cold before England?\n\nUpon my soul, your unseasonable interruption has almost made me forget\nwhat I was going to say; it has made me grow warm, and drop into poetry.\n\nEngland, I take it, is certainly the prettiest country in Europe. It is\nalmost the most beautiful. I say \"almost,\" because I bethink me of\nNorway and Switzerland. I say \"country,\" because I bethink me of Rome,\nVenice, Florence. But, taking it as country, and as country alone,\nnothing else approaches it. Have you ever thought why? Man made the\ntown, says the proverb, and God made the country. Not so in England.\nThere, man made the country, and beautified it exceedingly. In itself,\nthe land of south-eastern England is absolutely the same as the land of\nNorthern France--that hideous tract about Boulogne and Amiens which we\ntraverse in silence every time we run across by Calais to Paris. Chalk\nand clay and sandstone stretch continuously under sea from Kent and\nSussex to Flanders and Picardy. The Channel burst through, and made the\nStraits of Dover; but the land on either side was and still is\ngeologically and physically identical. What has made the difference?\nMan, the planter and gardener. England is beautiful by copse and\nhedgerow, by pine-clad ridge and willow-covered hollow, by meadows\ninterspersed with great spreading oaks, by pastures where drowsy sheep,\ndeep-fleeced and ruddy-stained, huddle under the shade of ancestral\nbeech-trees. Its loveliness is human. In itself, I believe, the actual\ncontour of England cannot once have been much better than the contour of\nnorthern France--though nowadays it is hard indeed to realise it.\nJudicious planting, and a constant eye to picturesque effect in scenery,\nhave made England what she is--the garden of Europe.\n\nOf course there are parts of the country which owed, and still owe,\ntheir beauty to their wildness--Dartmoor, Exmoor, the West Riding of\nYorkshire, the Surrey hills, the Peak in Derbyshire. Yet even these\ndepend more than you would believe, when you take them in detail, on the\nart of the forester. The view from Leith Hill embraces John Evelyn's\nwoods at Wotton: the larches that cover one Jura-like gorge were set\nthere well within your and my memory. But elsewhere in England the hand\nof man has done absolutely everything. The American, when he first\nvisits England, is charmed on his way up from Liverpool to London by the\nexquisite air of antique cultivation and soft rural beauty. The very\nsward is moss-like. Thoroughly wild country, indeed, unless bold and\nmountainous, does not often please one. It is apt to be bare,\nunattractive, and desolate. Witness the Veldt, the Steppes, the\nprairies. You may go through miles and miles of the States and Canada,\nwhere the wildness for the most part rather repels than delights you. I\ndo not say everywhere; in places the wilderness will blossom like a\nrose; boggy margins of lakes, fallen trunks in the forest overgrown with\nwild flowers, make scenes unattainable in our civilised England. Even\nour roughest scenery is comparatively man-made: our heaths are game\npreserves; our woodlands are thinned of superfluous underbrush; our\nmoors are relieved by deliberate plantations. But England in her own way\nis unique and unrivalled. Such parks, such greensward, such grassy\nlawns, such wooded tilth, are wholly unknown elsewhere. Compare the\nblank fields and long poplar-fringed high roads of central France with\nour Devon or our Warwickshire, and you get at once a just measure of the\nvast, the unspeakable difference.\n\nAnd man has done it all. Alone he did it. Often as I take my walks\nabroad--and when I say abroad I mean in England--I see men at work\ndotting about exotics of variegated foliage on some barren hillside, and\nI say to myself, \"There, before my eyes, goes on the beautifying of\nEngland.\" Thirty years ago, the North Downs near Dorking were one bare\nstretch of white chalky sheep-walk; half of them still remain so; the\nother half has been planted irregularly with copses and spinneys, which\nserve to throw up and enhance the beauty of the unaltered intervals.\nBeech and larch in autumn tints set off smooth patches of grass and\njuniper. Within the last few years, the downs about Leatherhead have\nbeen similarly diversified. Much of the loveliness of rural England is\ndue, one must frankly confess, to the big landlords. Though the great\nhouses love us not, we must allow at least that the great houses have\ncared for the trees in the hedge-rows, and for the timber in the\nmeadows, as well as for the covert that sheltered their pheasants, their\nfoxes, and their gamekeepers. But almost as much of England's charm is\ndue to individual small owners or occupiers. 'Tis they who have planted\nthe grounds about villa or cottage; they who have stocked the sweet old\ngardens of yew and box, of hollyhock and peony; they who have given us\nthe careless rustic grace of the English village. Still, one way or\nanother, man has done it all, whether in grange or in manor-house, in\npalatial estate or in labourer's holding. Look at the French or Belgian\nhamlet by the side of the English one; look at the French or Belgian\nfarm by the side of our English wealth in wooded glen or sheltered\nhomestead. Bricks and mortar are _not_ covering the whole of England.\nThat is only true of the squalid purlieus and outliers of London,\nwhither Londoners gravitate by mutual attraction. If you _will_ go and\nlive in a dingy suburb, you can't reasonably complain that all the\nworld's suburban. Being the most cheerful of pessimists, a dweller in\nthe country all the days of my life, I have no hesitation in expressing\nmy profound conviction that within my memory more has been done to\nbeautify than to uglify England. Only, the beautification has been quiet\nand unobtrusive, while the uglification has been obvious and\nconcentrated. It takes half a year to jerry-build a dingy street, but it\ntakes a decade for newly-planted trees to give the woodland air by\nimperceptible stages to a stretch of country.\n\n\n\n\nXXII.\n\n_ANENT ART PRODUCTION._\n\n\nYesterday, at Bordighera, I strolled up the hills behind the town to\nSasso. It is a queer little cluster of gleaming white-washed houses that\ntop the crest of a steep ridge; and, like many other Italian villages,\nit makes a brave show from a distance, though within it is full of evil\nsmells and all uncleanness. But I found it had a church--a picturesquely\nugly and dilapidated church; and without and within, this church was\ndecorated by inglorious hands with very naive and rudimentary frescoes.\nThe Four Evangelists were there, in flowing blue robes; and the Four\nGreater Prophets, with long white beards; and the Madonna, appearing in\nmost wooden clouds; and the Patron Saint tricked out for his Festa in\ngorgeous holiday episcopal vestments. That was all--just the common\neveryday Italian country church that everybody has seen turned out to\npattern with manufacturing regularity a hundred times over! Yet, as I\nsat among the olive-terraces looking down the steep slope into the\nBorghetto valley, and across the gorge to the green pines on the Cima,\nit set me thinking. 'Tis a bad habit one falls into when one has nothing\nbetter to turn one's mind to.\n\nWe English, coming to Italy with our ideas fully formed about everything\non heaven and earth, naturally say to ourselves, \"Great heart alive,\nwhat sadly degraded frescoes! To think the art of Raphael and Andrea del\nSarto should degenerate even here, in their own land, to such a childish\nlevel!\" But we are wrong, for all that. It is Raphael and Andrea who\nrose, not my poor nameless Sasso artists who sank and degenerated. Italy\nwas capable of producing her great painters in her own great day, just\nbecause in thousands of such Italian villages there were work-a-day\nartisans in form and colour capable of turning out such ridiculous daubs\nas those that decorate this tawdry church on the Ligurian hilltop.\n\nWe English, in short, think of it all the wrong way uppermost. We think\nof it topsy-turvy, beginning at the end, while evolution invariably\nbegins at the beginning. The Raphaels and Andreas, to put it in brief,\nwere the final flower and fullest outcome of whole races of church\ndecorators in infantile fresco.\n\nEverywhere you go in Italy, this truth is forced upon your attention\neven to the present day. Art here is no exotic. It smacks of the soil;\nit springs spontaneous, like a weed; it burgeons of itself out of the\nheart of the people. Not high art, understand well; not the art of\nBurne-Jones and Whistler and Puvis de Chavannes and Sar Peladan.\nCommonplace everyday art, that is a trade and a handicraft, like the\njoiner's or the shoemaker's. Look up at your ceiling; it's overrun with\nfestoons of crude red and blue flowers, or it's covered with cupids and\ngraces, or it bristles with arabesques and unmeaning phantasies. Every\nwall is painted; every grotto decorated. Sham landscapes, sham loggias,\nsham parapets are everywhere. The sham windows themselves are provided,\nnot only with sham blinds and sham curtains, but even with sham\ncoquettes making sham eyes or waving sham handkerchiefs at passers-by\nbelow them. Open-air fresco painting is still a living art, an art\npractised by hundreds and thousands of craftsmen, an art as alive as\ncookery or weaving. The Italian decorates everything; his pottery, his\nhouse, his church, his walls, his palaces. And the only difference he\nfeels between the various cases is, that in some of them a higher type\nof art is demanded by wealth and skill than in the others. No wonder,\ntherefore, he blossomed out at last into Michael Angelo's frescoes in\nthe Sistine Chapel!\n\nTo us English, on the contrary, high art is something exotic, separate,\nalone, _sui generis_. We never think of the plaster star in the middle\nof our ceiling as belonging even to the same range of ideas as, say, the\nfrescoes in the Houses of Parliament.\n\nA nation in such a condition as that is never truly artistic. The artist\nwith us, even now, is an exceptional product. Art for a long time in\nEngland had nothing at all to do with the life of the people. It was a\nluxury for the rich, a curious thing for ladies' and gentlemen's\nconsumption, as purely artificial as the stuccoed Italian villa in which\nthey insisted on shivering in our chilly climate. And the pictures it\nproduced were wholly alien to the popular wants and the popular\nfeelings; they were part of an imported French, Italian, and Flemish\ntradition. English art has only slowly outgrown this stage, just in\nproportion as truly artistic handicrafts have sprung up here and there,\nand developed themselves among us. Go into the Cantagalli or the Ginori\npotteries at Florence, and you will see mere boys and girls, untrained\nchildren of the people, positively disporting themselves, with childish\nglee, in painting plates and vases. You will see them, not slavishly\ncopying a given design of the master's, but letting their fancy run riot\nin lithe curves and lines, in griffons and dragons and floral\ntwists-and-twirls of playful extravagance. They revel in ornament. Now,\nit is out of the loins of people like these that great artists spring by\nnature--not State-taught, artificial, made-up artists, but the real\nspontaneous product, the Lippi and Botticelli, the hereditary craftsmen,\nthe born painters. And in England nowadays it is a significant fact that\na large proportion of the truest artists--the innovators, the men who\nare working out a new style of English art for themselves, in accordance\nwith the underlying genius of the British temperament, have sprung from\nthe great industrial towns--Birmingham, Manchester, Leicester--where\nartistic handicrafts are now once more renascent. I won't expose myself\nto further ridicule by repeating here (what I nevertheless would firmly\nbelieve, were it not for the scoffers) that a large proportion of them\nare of Celtic descent--belong, in other words, to that section of the\ncomplex British nationality in which the noble traditions of decorative\nart never wholly died out--that section which was never altogether\nenslaved and degraded by the levelling and cramping and soul-destroying\ninfluences of manufacturing industrialism.\n\nIn Italy, art is endemic. In England, in spite of all we have done to\nstimulate it of late years with guano and other artificial manures, it\nis still sporadic.\n\nThe case of music affords us an apt parallel. Till very lately, I\nbelieve, our musical talent in Britain came almost entirely from the\ncathedral towns. And why? Because there, and there alone, till quite a\nrecent date, there existed a hereditary school of music, a training of\nmusicians from generation to generation among the mass of the people.\nNot only were the cathedral services themselves a constant school of\ntaste in music, but successive generations of choristers and organists\ngave rise to something like a musical caste in our episcopal centres. It\nis true, our vocalists have always come mainly from Wales, from the\nScotch Highlands, from Yorkshire, from Ireland. But for that there is, I\nbelieve, a sufficient physical reason. For these are clearly the most\nmountainous parts of the United Kingdom; and the clear mountain air\nseems to produce on the average a better type of human larynx than the\nmists of the level. The men of the lowland, say the Tyrolese, croak like\nfrogs in their marshes; but the men of the upland sing like nightingales\non their tree-tops. And indeed, it would seem as if the mountain people\nwere always calling to one another across intervening valleys, always\nsinging and whistling and shouting over their work in a way that gives\ntone to the whole vocal mechanism. Witness Welsh penillion singing. And\nwherever this fine physical endowment goes hand in hand with a delicate\near and a poetic temperament, you get your great vocalist, your Sims\nReeves or your Patti. But in England proper it was only in the cathedral\ntowns that music was a living reality to the people; and it was in the\ncathedral towns, accordingly, during the dark ages of art, that\nexceptional musical ability was most likely to show itself. More\nparticularly was this so on the Welsh border, where the two favouring\ninfluences of race and practice coincided--at Gloucester, Worcester,\nHereford, long known for the most musical towns in England.\n\nCause and effect act and react. Art is a product of the artistic\ntemperament. The artistic temperament is a product of the long\nhereditary cultivation of art. And where a broad basis of this\ntemperament exists among the people, owing to intermixture of\nartistically-minded stocks, one is liable to get from time to time that\npeculiar combination of characteristics--sensuous, intellectual,\nspiritual--which results in the highest and truest artist.\n\n\n\n\nXXIII.\n\n_A GLIMPSE INTO UTOPIA._\n\n\nYou ask me what would be the position of women in an ideal community.\nWell, after dinner, imagination may take free flight. Suppose, till the\ncoffee comes, we discuss that question.\n\nWoman, I take it, differs from man in being the sex sacrificed to\nreproductive necessities.\n\nWhenever I say this, I notice my good friends, the women's-rights women,\nwith whom I am generally in pretty close accord, look annoyed and hurt.\nI can never imagine why. I regard this point as an original inequality\nof nature, which it should be the duty of human society to redress as\nfar as possible, like all other inequalities. Women are not on the\naverage as tall as men; nor can they lift as heavy weights, or undergo,\nas a rule, so much physical labour. Yet civilised society recognises\ntheir equal right to the protection of our policemen, and endeavours to\nneutralise their physical inequality by the collective guarantee of all\nthe citizens. In the same way I hold that women in the lump have a\ncertain disadvantage laid upon them by nature, in the necessity that\nsome or most among them should bear children; and this disadvantage I\nthink the men in a well-ordered State would do their best to compensate\nby corresponding privileges. If women endure on our behalf the great\npublic burden of providing future citizens for the community, the least\nwe can do for them in return is to render that burden as honourable and\nas little onerous as possible. I can never see that there is anything\nunchivalrous in frankly admitting these facts of nature; on the\ncontrary, it seems to me the highest possible chivalry to recognise in\nwoman, as woman, high or low, rich or poor, the potential mother, who\nhas infinite claims on that ground alone to our respect and sympathy.\n\nNor do I mean to deny, either, that the right to be a mother is a sacred\nand peculiar privilege of women. In a well-ordered community, I believe,\nthat privilege will be valued high, and will be denied to no fitting\nmother by any man. While maternity is from one point of view a painful\nduty, a burden imposed upon a single sex for the good of the whole, it\nis from another point of view a privilege and a joy, and from a third\npoint of view the natural fulfilment of a woman's own instincts, the\ncomplement of her personality, the healthy exercise of her normal\nfunctions. Just as in turn the man's part in providing physically for\nthe support of the woman and the children is from one point of view a\nburden imposed upon him, but from another point of view a precious\nprivilege of fatherhood, and from a third point of view the proper\noutlet for his own energy and his own faculties.\n\nIn an ideal State, then, I take it, almost every woman would be a\nmother, and almost every woman a mother of not more than about four\nchildren. An average of something like four is necessary, we know, to\nkeep up population, and to allow for infant mortality, inevitable\ncelibates, and so forth. Few women in such a State would abstain from\nmaternity, save those who felt themselves physically or morally unfitted\nfor the task; for in proportion as they abstained, either the State must\nlack citizens to carry on its life, or an extra and undue burden would\nhave to be cast upon some other woman. And it may well be doubted\nwhether in a well-ordered and civilised State any one woman could\nadequately bear, bring up, and superintend the education of more than\nfour young citizens. Hence we may conclude that while no woman save the\nunfit would voluntarily shirk the duties and privileges of maternity,\nfew (if any) women would make themselves mothers of more than four\nchildren. Four would doubtless grow to be regarded in such a community\nas the moral maximum; while it is even possible that improved\nsanitation, by diminishing infant mortality and adult ineffectiveness,\nmight make a maximum of three sufficient to keep up the normal strength\nof the population.\n\nIn an ideal community, again, the woman who looked forward to this great\ntask on behalf of the race would strenuously prepare herself for it\nbeforehand from childhood upward. She would not be ashamed of such\npreparation; on the contrary, she would be proud of it. Her duty would\nbe no longer \"to suckle fools and chronicle small beer,\" but to produce\nand bring up strong, vigorous, free, able, and intelligent citizens.\nTherefore, she must be nobly educated for her great and important\nfunction--educated physically, intellectually, morally. Let us forecast\nher future. She will be well clad in clothes that allow of lithe and\neven development of the body; she will be taught to run, to play games,\nto dance, to swim; she will be supple and healthy, finely moulded and\nknit in limb and organ, beautiful in face and features, splendid and\ngraceful in the native curves of her lissom figure. No cramping\nconventions will be allowed to cage her; no worn-out moralities will be\ntied round her neck like a mill-stone to hamper her. Intellectually she\nwill be developed to the highest pitch of which in each individual case\nshe proves herself capable--educated, not in the futile linguistic\nstudies which have already been tried and found wanting for men, but in\nrealities and existences, in the truths of life, in recognition of her\nown and our place among immensities. She will know something worth\nknowing of the world she lives in, its past and its present, the\nmaterial of which it is made, the forces that inform it, the energies\nthat thrill through it. Something, too, of the orbs that surround it, of\nthe sun that lights it, of the stars that gleam upon it, of the seasons\nthat govern it. Something of the plants and herbs that clothe it, of the\ninfinite tribes of beast and bird that dwell upon it. Something of the\nhuman body, its structure and functions, the human soul, its origin and\nmeaning. Something of human societies in the past, of institutions and\nlaws, of creeds and ideas, of the birth of civilisation, of progress and\nevolution. Something, too, of the triumphs of art, of sculpture and\npainting, of the literature and the poetry of all races and ages. Her\nmind will be stored with the best thoughts of the thinkers. Morally, she\nwill be free; her emotional development, instead of being narrowly\nchecked and curbed, will have been fostered and directed. She will have\na heart to love, and be neither ashamed nor afraid of it. Thus nurtured\nand trained, she will be a fit mate for a free man, a fit mother for\nfree children, a fit citizen for a free and equal community.\n\nHer life, too, will be her own. She will know no law but her higher\ninstincts. No man will be able to buy or to cajole her. And in order\nthat she may possess this freedom to perfection, that she may be no\nhusband's slave, no father's obedient and trembling daughter, I can see\nbut one way: the whole body of men in common must support in perfect\nliberty the whole body of women. The collective guarantee must protect\nthem against individual tyranny. Thus only can women be safe from the\nbribery of the rich husband, from the dictation of the father from whom\nthere are \"expectations.\" In the ideal State, I take it, every woman\nwill be absolutely at liberty to dispose of herself as she will, and no\nman will be able to command or to purchase her, to influence her in any\nway, save by pure inclination.\n\nIn such a State, most women would naturally desire to be mothers. Being\nhealthy, strong, and free, they would wish to realise the utmost\npotentialities of their own organisms. And when they had done their duty\nas mothers, they would not care much, I imagine, for any further outlets\nfor their superfluous energy. I don't doubt they would gratify to the\nfull their artistic sensibilities and their thirst for knowledge. They\nwould also perform their duties to the State as citizens, no less than\nthe men. But having done these things I fancy they would have done\nenough; the margin of their life would be devoted to dignified and\ncultivated leisure. They would leave to men the tilling of the soil, the\nbuilding and navigation of marine or aerial ships, the working of mines\nand metals, the erection of houses, the construction of roads, railways,\nand communications, perhaps even the entire manufacturing work of the\ncommunity. Medicine and the care of the sick might still be a charge to\nsome; education to most; art, in one form or another, to almost all. But\nthe hard work of the world might well be left to men, upon whom it more\nnaturally and fitly devolves. No hateful drudgery of \"earning a\nlivelihood.\" Women might rest content with being free and beautiful,\ncultivated and artistic, good citizens to the State, the mothers and\nguardians of the coming generations. If any woman asks more than this,\nshe is really asking less--for she is asking that a heavier burden\nshould be cast on some or most of her sex, in order to relieve the\nminority of a duty which to well-organised women ought to be a\nprivilege.\n\n\"But all this has no practical bearing!\" I beg your pardon. An ideal has\noften two practical uses. In the first place, it gives us a pattern\ntowards which we may approximate. In the second place, it gives us a\nstandard by which we may judge whether any step we propose to take is a\nstep forward or a step backward.\n\n\n\n\nXXIV.\n\n_OF SECOND CHAMBERS._\n\n\nA Second Chamber acts as a drag. Progress is always uphill work. So we\nare at pains to provide a drag beforehand--for an uphill journey.\n\nThere, in one word, you have the whole philosophy of Second Chambers.\n\nHow, then, did the nations of Europe come to hamper their legislative\nsystems with such a useless, such an illogical adjunct? In sackcloth and\nashes, let us confess the truth--we English led them astray: on us the\nshame; to us the dishonour. Theorists, indeed (wise after the fact, as\nis the wont of theorists), have discovered or invented an imaginary\nfunction for Second Chambers. They are to preserve the people, it seems,\nfrom the fatal consequences of their own precipitancy. As though the\npeople--you and I--the vast body of citizens, were a sort of foolish\nchildren, to be classed with infants, women, criminals, and imbeciles (I\nadopt the chivalrous phraseology of an Act of Parliament), incapable of\nknowing their own minds for two minutes together, and requiring to be\nkept straight by the fatherly intervention of Dukes of Marlborough or\nMarquises of Ailesbury. The ideal picture of the level-headed peers\nrestraining the youthful impetuosity of the representatives of the\npeople from committing to-day some rash act which they would gladly\nrepent and repeal to-morrow, is both touching and edifying. But it\nexists only in the minds of the philosophers, who find a reason for\neverything just because it is there. Members of Parliament, I have\nobserved, seem to know their own minds every inch as well as earls--nay,\neven as marquises.\n\nThe plain fact of the matter is, all the Second Chambers in the world\nare directly modelled upon the House of Lords, that Old Man of the Sea\nwhom England, the weary Titan, is now striving so hard to shake off her\nshoulders. The mother of Parliaments is responsible for every one of\nthem. Senates and Upper Houses are just the result of irrational\nAnglomania. When constitutional government began to exist, men turned\nunanimously to the English Constitution as their model and pattern. That\nwas perfectly natural. Evolutionists know that evolution never proceeds\non any other plan than by reproduction, with modification, of existing\nstructures. America led the way. She said, \"England has a House of\nCommons; therefore we must have a House of Representatives. England has\nalso a House of Lords; nature has not dowered us with those exalted\nproducts, but we will do what we can; we will imitate it by a Senate.\"\nMonarchical France followed her lead; so did Belgium, Italy,\ncivilisation in general. I believe even Japan rejoices to-day in the\naugust dignity of a Second Chamber. But mark now the irony of it. They\nall of them did this thing to be entirely English. And just about the\ntime when they had completed the installation of their peers or their\nsenators, England, who set the fashion, began to discover in turn she\ncould manage a great deal better herself without them.\n\nAnd then what do the philosophers do? Why, they prove to you the\nnecessity of a Second Chamber by pointing to the fact that all civilised\nnations have got one--in imitation of England. Furthermore, it being\ntheir way to hunt up abstruse and recondite reasons for what is on the\nface of it ridiculous, they argue that a Second Chamber is a necessary\nwheel in the mechanism of popular representative government. A foolish\nphrase, which has come down to us from antiquity, represents the\npopulace as inevitably \"fickle,\" a changeable mob, to be restrained by\nthe wisdom of the seniors and optimates. As a matter of fact, the\npopulace is never anything of the sort. It is dogged, slow,\nconservative, hard to move; it advances step by step, a patient,\nsure-footed beast of burden; and when once it has done a thing, it never\ngoes back upon it. I believe this silly fiction of the \"fickleness\" of\nthe mob is mainly due to the equally silly fictions of prejudiced Greek\noligarchs about the Athenian assembly--which was an assembly of\nwell-to-do and cultivated slave-owners. I do not swallow all that\nThucydides chooses to tell us in his one-sided caricature about Cleon's\nappointment to the command at Sphacteria, or about the affair of\nMitylene; and even if I did, I think it has nothing to do with the\nquestion. But on such utterly exploded old-world ideas is the whole\nmodern argument of the Second Chamber founded.\n\nDoes anybody really believe great nations are so incapable of managing\ntheir own affairs for themselves through their duly-elected\nrepresentatives that they are compelled to check their own boyish ardour\nby means of the acts of an irresponsible and non-elective body? Does\nanybody believe that the House of Commons works too fast, and gets\nthrough its public business too hurriedly? Does anybody believe we\nimprove things in England at such a break-neck pace that we require the\nassistance of Lord Salisbury and Lord St. Leonards to prevent us from\nrushing straight down a steep place into the sea, like the swine of\nGadara? If they do, I congratulate them on their psychological acumen\nand their political wisdom.\n\nWhat the Commons want is not a drag, but a goad--nay, rather, a\nsnow-plough.\n\nNo; the plain truth of the matter is this: all the Second Chambers in\nthe world owe their existence, not to any deliberate plan or reason, but\nto the mere accident that the British nobles, not having a room big\nenough to sit in with the Commons, took to sitting separately, and\ntransacted their own business as a distinct assembly. With so much\nwisdom are the kingdoms of the earth governed! How else could any one in\nhis senses have devised the idea of creating one deliberative body on\npurpose to mutilate or destroy the work of another? to produce from time\nto time a periodical crisis or a periodical deadlock? There is not a\ncountry in the world with a Second Chamber that doesn't twice a year\nkick and plunge to get rid of it.\n\nThe House of Lords was once a reality. It consisted of the\necclesiastical hierarchy--the bishops and mitred abbots; with the\nofficial hierarchy--the great nobles, who were also great satraps of\nprovinces, and great military commanders. It was thus mainly made up of\npractical life-members, appointed by merit. The peers, lay and\nspiritual, were the men who commended themselves to the sovereign as\nable administrators. Gradually, with prolonged peace, the hereditary\nelement choked and swamped the nominated element. The abbots\ndisappeared, the lords multiplied. The peer ceased to be the leader of a\nshire, and sank into a mere idle landowner. Wealth alone grew at last to\nbe a title to the peerage. The House of Lords became a House of\nLandlords. And the English people submitted to the claim of\nirresponsible wealth or irresponsible acres to exercise a veto upon\nnational legislation. The anomaly, utterly indefensible in itself, had\ngrown up so slowly that the public accepted it--nay, even defended it.\nAnd other countries, accustomed to regard England--the Pecksniff among\nnations--as a perfect model of political wisdom, swallowed half the\nanomaly, and all the casuistical reasoning that was supposed to justify\nit, without a murmur. But if we strip the facts bare from the glamour\nthat surrounds them, the plain truth is this--England allows an assembly\nof hereditary nobodies to retard or veto its legislation nowadays,\nsimply because it never noticed the moment when a practical House of\nadministrative officers lapsed into a nest of plutocrats.\n\nMend or end? As it stands, the thing is a not-even-picturesque mediaeval\nrelic. If we English were logical, we would arrange that any man who\nowned so many thousand acres of land, or brewed so many million bottles\nof beer per annum, should _ipso facto_ be elevated to the peerage. Why\nshould not gallons of gin confer an earldom direct, and Brighton A's be\nequivalent to a marquisate? Why not allow the equal claim of screws and\npills with coal and iron? Why disregard the native worth of annatto and\nnitrates? Baron Beecham or Lord Sunlight is a first-rate name. As it is,\nwe make petty and puerile distinctions. Beer is in, but whiskey is out;\nand even in beer itself, if I recollect aright, Dublin stout wore a\ncoronet for some months or years before English pale ale attained the\ndignity of a barony. No Minister has yet made chocolate a viscount. At\npresent, banks and minerals go in as of right, while soap is left out in\nthe cold, and even cotton languishes. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer\nput up titles to auction, while abolishing the legislative function of\nthe Lords, there would be millions in it. But as we English are not\nlogical, our mending would probably resolve itself into fatuous\ntinkering. We might get rid of the sons, but leave the fathers. We might\nflood the Lords with life peers, but leave the veto. Such tactics are\ntoo Britannic. \"Stone dead hath no fellow!\"\n\n\n\n\nXXV.\n\n_A POINT OF CRITICISM._\n\n\nA few pages back, I ventured to remark that in Utopia or the Millennium\nthe women of the community would probably be supported in common by the\nlabour of the men, and so be secured complete independence of choice and\naction. When these essays first appeared in a daily newspaper, a Leader\namong Women wrote to me in reply, \"What a paradise you open up to us!\nAlas for the reality! The question is--could women ever be really\nindependent if men supplied the means of existence? They would always\nfeel they had the right to control us. The difference of the position of\na woman in marriage when she has got a little fortune of her own is\nsomething miraculous. Men adore money, and the possession of it inspires\nthem with an involuntary respect for the happy possessor.\"\n\nNow I got a great many letters in answer to these Post-Prandials as they\noriginally came out--some of them, strange to say, not wholly\ncomplimentary. As a rule, I am too busy a man to answer letters: and I\ntake this opportunity of apologising to correspondents who write to tell\nme I am a knave or a fool, for not having acknowledged direct their\ncourteous communications. But this friendly criticism seems to call for\na reply, because it involves a question of principle which I have often\nnoted in all discussions of Utopias and Millennia.\n\nFor my generous critic seems to take it for granted that women are not\nnow dependent on the labour of men for their support--that some, or even\nmost of them, are in a position of freedom. The plain truth of it\nis--almost all women depend for everything upon one man, who is or may\nbe an absolute despot. A very small number of women have \"money of their\nown,\" as we quaintly phrase it--that is to say, are supported by the\nlabour of many among us, either in the form of rent or in the form of\ninterest on capital bequeathed to them. A woman with five thousand a\nyear from Consols, for example, is in the strictest sense supported by\nthe united labour of all of us--she has a first mortgage to that amount\nupon the earnings of the community. You and I are taxed to pay her. But\nis she therefore more dependent than the woman who lives upon what she\ncan get out of the scanty earnings of a drunken husband? Does the\ncommunity therefore think it has a right to control her? Not a bit of\nit. She is in point of fact the only free woman among us. My dream was\nto see all women equally free--inheritors from the community of so much\nof its earnings; holders, as it were, of sufficient world-consols to\nsecure their independence.\n\nThat, however, is not the main point to which I desire just now to\ndirect attention. I want rather to suggest an underlying fallacy of all\nso-called individualists in dealing with schemes of so-called\nSocialism--for to me your Socialist is the true and only individualist.\nMy correspondent's argument is written from the standpoint of the class\nin which women have or may have money. But most women have none; and\nschemes of reconstruction must be for the benefit of the many. So-called\nindividualists seem to think that under a more organised social state\nthey would not be so able to buy pictures as at present, not so free to\nrun across to California or Kamschatka. I doubt their premiss, for I\nbelieve we should all of us be better off than we are to-day; but let\nthat pass; 'tis a detail. The main thing is this: they forget that most\nof us are narrowly tied and circumscribed at present by endless\nmonopolies and endless restrictions of land or capital. I should like to\nbuy pictures; but I can't afford them. I long to see Japan; but I shall\nnever get there. The man in the street may desire to till the ground:\nevery acre is appropriated. He may wish to dig coal: Lord Masham\nprevents him. He may have a pretty taste in Venetian glass: the flints\non the shore are private property; the furnace and the implements belong\nto a capitalist. Under the existing _regime_, the vast mass of us are\nhampered at every step in order that a few may enjoy huge monopolies.\nMost men have no land, so that one man may own a county. And they call\nthis Individualism!\n\nIn considering any proposed change, whether imminent or distant, in\npractice or in day-dream, it is not fair to take as your standard of\nreference the most highly-favoured individuals under existing\nconditions. Nor is it fair to take the most unfortunate only. You should\nlook at the average.\n\nNow the average man, in the world as it wags, is a farm-labourer, an\nartisan, a mill-hand, a navvy. He has untrammelled freedom of contract\nto follow the plough on another man's land, or to work twelve hours a\nday in another man's factory, for that other man's benefit--provided\nalways he can only induce the other man to employ him. If he can't, he\nis at perfect liberty to tramp the high road till he drops with fatigue,\nor to starve, unhindered, on the Thames Embankment. He may live where he\nlikes, as far as his means permit; for example, in a convenient court\noff Seven Dials. He may make his own free bargain with grasping landlord\nor exacting sweater. He may walk over every inch of English soil, with\nthe trifling exception of the millions of acres where trespassers will\nbe prosecuted. Even travel is not denied him: Florence and Venice are\nout of his beat, it is true; but if he saves up his loose cash for a\ncouple of months, he may revel in the Oriental luxury of a third-class\nexcursion train to Brighton and back for three shillings. Such\nadvantages does the _regime_ of landlord-made individualism afford to\nthe average run of British citizen. If he fails in the race, he may\nretire at seventy to the ease and comfort of the Union workhouse, and be\nburied inexpensively at the cost of his parish.\n\nThe average woman in turn is the wife of such a man, dependent upon him\nfor what fraction of his earnings she can save from the public-house. Or\nshe is a shop-girl, free to stand all day from eight in the morning till\nten at night behind a counter, and to throw up her situation if it\ndoesn't suit her. Or she is a domestic servant, enjoying the glorious\nliberty of a Sunday out every second week, and a walk with her young man\nevery alternate Wednesday after eight in the evening. She has full leave\nto do her love-making in the open street, and to get as wet as she\nchooses in Regent's Park on rainy nights in November. Look the question\nin the face, and you will see for yourself that the mass of mothers in\nevery community are dependent for support, not upon men in general, but\nupon a single man, their husband, against whose caprices and despotism\nthey have no sort of protection. Even the few women who are, as we say,\n\"independent,\" how are they supported, save by the labour of many men\nwho work to keep them in comfort or luxury? They are landowners, let us\nput it; and then they are supported by the labour of their farmers and\nploughmen. Or they hold North-Western shares; and then they are\nsupported by the labour of colliers, and stokers, and guards, and\nengine-drivers. And so on throughout. The plain fact is, either a woman\nmust earn her own livelihood by work, which, in the case of the mothers\nin a community, is bad public policy; or else she must be supported by a\nman or men, her husband, or her labourers.\n\nMy day-dream was, then, to make every woman independent, in precisely\nthe same sense that women of property are independent at present. Would\nit give them a consciousness of being unduly controlled if they derived\ntheir support from the general funds of the body politic, of which they\nwould be free and equal members and voters? Well, look at similar cases\nin our own England. The Dukes of Marlborough derive a heavy pension from\nthe taxes of the country; but I have never observed that any Duke of\nMarlborough of my time felt himself a slave to the imperious taxpayer.\nMr. Alfred Russel Wallace is justly the recipient of a Civil List\nannuity; but that hasn't prevented his active and essentially\nindividualist brain from inventing Land Nationalisation. Mr. Robert\nBuchanan very rightly draws another such annuity for good work done; but\nMr. Buchanan's name is not quite the first that rises naturally to my\nlips as an example of cowed and cringing sycophancy to the ideas and\nideals of his fellow-citizens. No, no; be sure of it, this terror is a\nphantom. One master is real, realisable, instant; but to be dependent\nupon ten million is just what we always describe as independence.\n\n\nTHE END.\n\n  PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.\n  EDINBURGH AND LONDON.","title":"Post-Prandial Philosophy","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":38978}