{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_29639/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_29639","id":"gutenberg_29639","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29639","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Sociology","Civilization","Social problems"],"text":"Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at\nhttps://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images\ngenerously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian\nLibraries)\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBarbara Weinstock Lectures on The Morals of Trade\n\nIS CIVILIZATION A DISEASE? By STANTON COIT.\n\nSOCIAL JUSTICE WITHOUT SOCIALISM. By JOHN BATES CLARK.\n\nTHE CONFLICT BETWEEN PRIVATE MONOPOLY AND GOOD CITIZENSHIP. By\nJOHN GRAHAM BROOKS.\n\nCOMMERCIALISM AND JOURNALISM. By HAMILTON HOLT.\n\nTHE BUSINESS CAREER IN ITS PUBLIC RELATIONS. By ALBERT SHAW.\n\n\n\n\nIS CIVILIZATION A DISEASE?\n\n\n\nBy\n\nSTANTON COIT\n\n\n\nBOSTON AND NEW YORK\nHOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY\nThe Riverside Press Cambridge\n1917\n\nCOPYRIGHT, 1917, BY THE REGENTS OF THE\nUNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA\n\nALL RIGHTS RESERVED\n\n_Published May 1917_\n\n\n\n\nBARBARA WEINSTOCK\nLECTURES ON THE MORALS OF TRADE\n\n\nThis series will contain essays by representative scholars and men of\naffairs dealing with the various phases of the moral law in its bearing\non business life under the new economic order, first delivered at the\nUniversity of California on the Weinstock foundation.\n\n\n\n\nIS CIVILIZATION A DISEASE?\n\n\n\n\nI. TRADE TYPICAL OF CIVILIZATION\n\n\nIn choosing \"The Morals of Trade\" as the general title of the Weinstock\nLectureship, I am informed that its founder meant the word \"Trade\" to\nbe understood in its comprehensive sense, as commensurate with our\nwhole system of socialized wealth--at least, upon the present occasion\nI shall interpret it in this broad way.\n\n\nI shall furthermore ask you to consider our system of socialized\nwealth--its practice and principles--in relation to the whole of that\nvast artificial structure of human life which is labelled\n\"Civilization,\" and which began to prevail some ten thousand years ago.\nSuch a comprehensive sweep of vision is, in my judgment, necessary if\nwe are to view trade in true human perspective; nor can we estimate the\ndegree of praise or blame we ought to confer upon it until we have\ndetermined the worth of civilization itself. For trade is not only\nbound up inextricably with the whole of our social order, but, as it\nseems to me, manifests in a most acute form the universal character of\ncivilization in general. We must therefore discover the structural\nprinciple which began to co-ordinate the lives of any group of human\nbeings when their tribe finally passed out of barbarism. Having\ndiscovered this, we shall be able to judge whether by its\never-advancing application to the life of men, and its ever-increasing\ndomination over their wills, it has furthered the cause of ideal\nhumanity or not. If we find that it has been essentially humane, we\nshall have arrived at the conclusion that its offspring, trade, is\nmoral. If, however, we unearth in the very principle of historic\ncivilization something radically wrong, anti-human and inhuman, and if\nwe can discover another co-ordinating principle which is humane and\nfeasible, civilization will then be seen to be a thing to be\n\"superseded\"--as Nietzsche thought man himself was--and trade, its\nlatest and lustiest issue, will be felt to be a usurper deserving to be\ndisinherited in favor of some true economic child of the \"Holy Spirit\nof Man.\"\n\n\n\n\nII. IS CIVILIZATION JUST?\n\n\nIn order to open such lines of anthropological investigation and\nethical reflection, I have raised the question: \"Is Civilization a\nDisease?\"\n\nHad I asked, \"Is Civilization Christian?\" I should have defeated my own\nend. You would have answered \"No\" as soon as you saw the subject of my\ndiscourse announced, and would have stayed at home. But you might still\nhave given your ethical sanction to trade. You might have said, \"It\ndoes not pretend to be Christian; but that is nothing against it, for\nthe vital principle of Christianity is sentimental and impracticable:\nand what won't work can't be right.\"\n\nHad I raised the question in the form, \"Could trade ever have emanated\nfrom an intelligent motive of universal love--of deference for the\nhumanity in every man?\" you would have replied, \"Never!\" But you might\nhave consoled yourself with the thought that it is only a small part of\nour boasted civilization. We have art and education and family life and\nmonogamy and religion; and these come in as correctives, so that trade,\nalthough not conceived of benevolence and not bearing the stamp of\nhumanity in its character, is comparatively harmless under the\nrestraints laid upon it. Then, too, the idea of universal love savors\nof theology, and would have put my lecture under that general ban which\nin philosophical circles has been set up against theological ethics.\n\nIndeed, I even shrank from asking, \"Is civilization unethical, or\nwrong, or bad?\" For nowadays we find moral judgments more attractive\nwhen they are disguised or at least slightly veiled. When we are really\ncurious to know what is good, we become shy; we are not sure that our\nneighbors may not put a cynical interpretation upon any appearance of\nenthusiasm in our effort to find out what is right. Anticipating such\ndelicacy in my prospective audience of to-night, I threw a\nphysiological drapery, not to say pathological, over the ethical\nbareness of my theme, by introducing into it the idea of disease. For\nwhile it may no longer be a stigma to be un-Christian, and while some\nhave been trying to break all the traditional tables of moral values\nand prevent any new ones from being inscribed, nobody, so far as I have\nbeen able to learn, has denied that disease, whether physical or only\nmental, is an evil and a thing which it would be wicked to spread for\nthe mere delight in spreading it. Happily, there is still astir\nthroughout the community an active, virile, and unashamed desire--and\nnot only among women--for health. And in alertness and resourcefulness\nit is second only to the desire for wealth itself. The result is, that\nif anything which we have admired and been proud of has been discovered\nby experts to be of the nature of disease, we want to be notified, so\nthat we may reverse our sentiments towards it, and if possible destroy\nit. The word \"disease\" is still plainly one of reproach.\n\nOn the other hand, the very term \"civilization\" sets emotions vibrating\nof deference and awe towards the institution it signifies. Indeed,\npride in being civilized is still so nearly universal--especially among\nAmericans--that many persons upon hearing the point mooted whether\ncivilization be a disease or not, are disposed to resent the bare\nsuggestion as smacking of whimsicality.\n\n\n\n\nIII. A METAPHORICAL USE OF THE WORD \"DISEASE\"\n\n\nI, therefore, hasten to hide myself thus early in my discourse behind\nthe man, bigger than I, who many years ago first aroused this question\nin my mind, a question which, having once fastened itself upon the\nsoul, may allow one no rest and may prevent one from ever again going\non gayly through life singing with Browning's _Pippa_:--\n\n    God's in His Heaven--\n      All's right with the world.\n\nIt is now twenty-six years since I first read Mr. Edward Carpenter's\npenetrating essay, then but recently published, entitled _Civilization:\nIts Cause and Cure_. The very name of the book made one ask: \"Is\ncivilization then a disease?\" And if one deigned, as I did, to read\nthe essay carefully, one found the author defending the affirmative\nin all seriousness and with much thoroughness, and displaying acute\nanalytical power throughout his argument. The charge of whimsicality\ncould not hold against him. The author showed an adequate insight into\nthe social structure which is called civilization. What was equally\nessential, his knowledge of the latest speculations as to the nature\nof disease,--theories which have not yet been superseded and which\nwhen applied by Sir Almroth Wright proved to be most fruitful working\nhypotheses,--Carpenter's knowledge of these was comprehensive and\ndiscriminating. He accordingly never pressed the analogy between\ncivilization and disease unduly--he knew that it could not be made to\nfit all particulars. And he never fell into any confusion of thought;\nhe easily avoided being caught in his own metaphor. He employed it only\nwithin limits and only when it rendered the moral issue more concrete\nand vivid. Because he had a scientific knowledge both of civilization\nand of disease, he could safely use language which appealed to the\nmoral emotions as an aid to our moral judgment.\n\nIndeed, Mr. Carpenter showed himself not only scientific in his ethics,\nbut what is much rarer in these days, ethical in his science. For it is\nquestionable whether one can ever arrive at any moral judgment except\nthere be a deep and strong emotional accompaniment to one's rational\ninvestigation. If we do not take sides with humanity at the outset, if\nwe eliminate all preference for certain kinds of conduct and goals of\npursuit which grew up in the human mind before we began our scientific\ncriticism of morals, how shall we ever get back again into the sphere\nof distinctively ethical judgment? For instance, how could we strike\nout from the field of observation the something which we count the\nmoral factor in life, and then proceed to investigate the morals of\ntrade? Evidently we must in every ethical enquiry start by taking sides\nwith that trend of the Race-Will in us, which moves plainly towards an\never-increasing self-knowledge, self-reverence and self-control on the\npart of man. For it is this race-will in us whereby we have the\ncapacity and interest to call any line of conduct or any disposition of\nthe mind good or bad, right or wrong.\n\n\n\n\nIV. OUTLINE OF MY ARGUMENT\n\n\nNor do I simply mean that we must show loyalty to life as opposed to\ndeath, or to health as against disease. It is more than that. The\nlifeward effort of some beings clashes with the corresponding attempt\nto live on the part of others, and the actualization of one impersonal\nideal of beauty, truth, or society exacts the sacrifice of one set of\nhuman lives and favors the survival of another, so that an opposition\nin ideals may mean an antagonism in the struggle of classes and masses\nof men for existence. There is a combat, and we are called upon to\nchoose which side to encourage and support. One and the same state of\nthings often spells disease and death to the one party and life and\nhealth to the other. I shall be able on this account to show that\nwhether civilization appears to us as a disease or not depends upon\nwhat sort of a person we are, and to which side we are constitutionally\ndisposed to attach ourselves. To show this, I will first draw an\nanalogy on the biological plane and then I will cite the judgment of\ngreat humanists who have sided against civilization. After that, I will\nsubmit instances in civilization itself for your own judgment. Only\nthen shall I return to Edward Carpenter, to give a _resume_ of his\nposition, and to point out how far and why I agree with him, and at\nwhat stage I part company with him and for what reasons. Then I shall\nattempt to present a bird's-eye view of the steps in human advancement\ntowards civilization as the best anthropologists have traced them.\nThus, we shall be able to see our historic social order in right\nrelation to that ideal humanity which our own spiritual constitution\nprojects prophetically above the threshold of our consciousness. Then,\nif ever, we shall be in a state of mind to judge whether the thing\nwhich civilization has begotten after its own kind and named \"trade\" is\ngood or bad.\n\n\n\n\nV. MAN _VERSUS_ CIVILIZATION\n\n\nNow to my biological analogy: It was recently my privilege to be\nconducted over the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New\nYork City. You will remember that to it some millions of dollars have\nbeen assigned, for the purpose of discovering the cause and cure of\nbacterial diseases. In one department of the Institute a Japanese\nprofessor showed under the rays of the ultra-microscope specimens of a\nremarkable bacillus, the existence of which he had been the first to\ndetect. It was that kind of bacillus which, if it is present in the\nmarrow of a man's spinal cord, induces a state of the body that is\ncalled locomotor-ataxy. This state is one in which the man who\nmanifests it is unable to control properly the movements of his feet\nand legs. He has lost command from the supreme cerebral centre; the\nlower nerve ganglia seem to have become insubordinate and to act on\ntheir own initiative. But is locomotor-ataxy a disease? Clearly your\nanswer will depend upon whether you are on the side of the man or the\nmicrobe. If you sympathize with the man and are thinking of him, it is\na disease; but if your heart is with the microbe there in the spinal\ncord, the locomotor-ataxy will be to you life and health abundant, and\nthat not only for the individual specimen whom you pick out for\nobservation, but for his whole family which, as the ataxy advances,\nreproduces itself proportionately, and with an inconceivable rapidity.\n\nWhat is to determine whether you are on the side of the man or the\nmicrobe? Surely the constitutional bent of your emotional and\nvolitional preference. It is not a matter for the science of fact to\nconsider. Mere intellect, mere reason, knows nothing of health and\ndisease, unless it assumes this distinction as its starting-point. It\nknows only the order of sequences. Suppose, then, we were to find that\ncivilization had pitted itself against Man, so that it was a case of\nMan _versus_ Civilization, as Herbert Spencer conceived an antagonism\nbetween Man and the State. Should we not be compelled, in order to\ndecide what condition of things was one of health, to open up conscious\nrelations with our deepest trend of heart and will, and find out\nwhether we flowed with humanity or with civilization? Nor would there\nbe any escape from the necessity of remaining true to our own trend and\nfavoring whatever flowed the same way. In case of a clash between the\nsocial order and humanity, the health of each is to the other as a\ndisease and, therefore, the question inevitably arises, \"Which is in\nour judgment to be preserved?\" and each one's answer must depend on\nwhether he finds himself after full deliberation irresistibly drawn to\nthe one side or the other. Civilization may be to man as the microbe to\nthe locomotor-ataxy subject; but innate civilizationists would delight\nin the surrender of humanity to the social order. To them what would\nhumanity be but civilization's opportunity, its habitat, its\nfood-supply? I am saying that, to prove trade immoral it is not enough\nto show that man is a sacrifice to the economic order; you would be\nrequired also to demonstrate that man ought not to be sacrificed to any\nsocial order, that he must always be the final end, and never a mere\nmeans. But that is exactly what you can never demonstrate to any one\nwho is not innately, spiritually, naturally, on the side of man against\nall other objects of interest. I mean that there is no arguing with any\none who constitutionally hesitates to side with man. You might pray for\nsuch a one; but it would be folly to reason with him, for the\nfoundation is not in him upon which your reasonings could mount. All\nthis seems to me necessary to say, because I get the impression from\nbooks on political economy that most writers and readers first\ndehumanize themselves as a prerequisite to a discussion of the morals\nof trade.\n\n\n\n\nVI. THE LIVING FOUNDATIONS\n\n\nIn one of his allegorical poems, James Russell Lowell depicted the\nantagonism of sentiment to which I am referring as existing between\nChrist and his conventional worshippers. The poem is a slight thing:\nalthough strict in metre and perfect in rhyme, it is too flowing and\nfantastic to be classed high in literature. But if we view it as a\nscientific essay in dynamic sociology, it is admirable beyond\ncriticism. As its meaning is quite separable from its form and sensuous\ncontents, I therefore ask you not to think of it as poetry or Christian\nmythology, but to regard it only as a compact treatise in ethical\neconomics. Because this poem is familiar to you all, it will serve my\nobject the better. It represents Christ as coming back to earth after\neighteen hundred years, and all the grandees as rendering Him elaborate\nhomage. Nor do they omit to direct His attention to His own image set\nup in the places of highest honor. But still, according to our dynamic\nsociologist:--\n\n            ... wherever his steps they led,\n    The Lord in sorrow bent down His head,\n    And from under the heavy foundation stones\n    The Son of Mary heard bitter groans.\n\n    And in church and palace and judgment-hall,\n    He marked great fissures that rent the wall,\n    And opened wider and still more wide\n    As the living foundations heaved and sighed.\n\n    \"Have ye founded your thrones and altars, then,\n    On the bodies and souls of living men?\n    And think ye that building shall endure\n    Which shelters the noble and crushes the poor?\"\n\n          *      *      *      *      *\n\n    Then Christ sought out an artisan--\n    A low-browed, stunted, haggard man,\n    And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin\n    Pushed from her faintly Want and Sin.\n\n    These set He in the midst of them,\n    And as they drew back their garment-hem\n    For fear of defilement, \"Lo, here,\" said He,\n    \"The images ye have made of Me!\"\n\nTo-day no one denies that the foundations are alive and that they heave\nand sigh. In our age one need not be of the order of Christ to have\nears to hear the bitter groans. Everybody hears them, if one may judge\nfrom the universal reports of the daily papers. Indeed, how to suppress\nthe groans or to prevent them from becoming more articulate and\ncoherent is the most vexing problem of the government of the most\ncivilized state in the world. At least Prince von Buelow so represents\nthe case in his book entitled _Imperial Germany_. And the party leaders\nof the United States have all been alert for two decades to discover\nhow to render impossible an upheaval of the living foundations of\nAmerica. There is, as I say, no denying the fact that the foundations\nare alive, and that they not only groan bitterly, but--what is more\nserious--heave threateningly. Whether any one person, however, is on\nthe side of the living foundations, as according to Lowell Jesus Christ\nwas, or on the side of the thrones and altars, as his conventional\nworshippers are depicted to be by Lowell and many another American\nwriter since, depends upon what the special person's innate taste is.\nThe thrones and altars have become more and more magnificent in beauty,\ncostliness, and splendor, with the progress of civilization; but not so\nthe mob, the rabble, the \"underworld,\" whose stirrings have rent the\nwalls. Christ's taste, it would seem, was not primarily aesthetic. But\nthen not every one is a son of Mary, and not every carpenter's son\nsides with the class to which his father belonged.\n\n\n\n\nVII. CIVILIZATION CONDEMNED BY CHRIST AND ALL SONS OF MAN\n\n\nI said that after my biological analogy I should cite the judgments of\nsome great sages who saw in civilization an enemy of man. Of these I\nhave just been mentioning the greatest. The Founder of Christianity set\nHis Will dead against the established order of society, rebuking the\nupholders of thrones and altars, and becoming the champion of the\noutcasts. The kingdom, He announced, was not to be of this our world of\nmoneylenders. No wonder the rulers of His day gave Him short quarter,\nso that after three years of agitation this speaker of rousing parables\nto the multitude, who had no bank account, was silenced forever.\nLikewise, it was a foregone conclusion that every disciple of Christ\nwhose spirit was to be set aflame by His--like St. Francis, and\nSavonarola, Wycliffe, Luther (at the first), and John Wesley--should\nturn in pity to the living foundations and in horror of spirit from the\nentombing thrones.\n\nBut the protest against the sacrifice of man to mammonized society has\nbeen no monopoly of Christ and those spiritually descended from Him.\nThe ancient Hebrew prophets taught equally a kingdom that was to be\ndiametrically the opposite in principle from that which prevailed in\nthe Jewish State or in Babylon, and later in Macedon or Rome. It should\nbe noted that the prophets and Christ accompanied their censure of the\nformative principle, upon which nations and traders had built up their\ndealings with one another, with a proposed substitute. But if we go\nback to Gautama and the India of his time, we find that the Buddha's\nprotest against civilization was still more extreme; for he did not\nwait to submit a new principle before condemning the old. Indeed, he\nfelt that self-conscious existence for the individual, as he beheld it\neverywhere, was a tragic calamity, and altogether unendurable.\nPreferable would be the extinction utterly of all individualized\nselfhood. He would isolate the individual and submit him to a\ndiscipline, the object of which was escape forever from the wheel of\nexistence. He advocated not mere individualistic anarchy, but the\nannihilation of individuality as preferable to civilized life. A third\nof the human race still believe in his discipline, and in the\nalternative he proposed to the highly developed type of social order\nwhich prevailed in his time in India.\n\nNor do Gautama, the prophets, and Christ stand alone. All the great\nhumanists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, although\nprofessing no discipleship of earlier teachers, were at one with them\nin condemning the root-principle of the existing co-ordination of human\nlives in politics, economics, and education. The cry of Rousseau, \"Back\nto Nature!\" and all the watchwords of Voltaire and the encyclopaedists,\nwere so many summonses to revolt against the entire order of organized\nsociety. The same meaning underlay all the writings of Fourier and\nPrudhomme, of Owen and the other English communists. It was as if they\nall said, \"Civilization is a disease; let us rid ourselves of it.\" With\nthe socialists, Marx and Lassalle, and the anarchists, like Stepniak\nand Kropotkin, the condemnation of society, as it is and always had\nbeen, was equally radical and sweeping. Even humanists less violent in\ntheir protest, not so negative in their criticism, nor so positive in\ntheir offered substitutes, like Carlyle and Emerson, like Shelley and\nWhitman and Swinburne, like Henry George and Henry Demorest Lloyd, all\naim to create in us the judgment that civilization, as it has been from\nthe first, is no friend to the best in any man. No lover of humanity\nseems ever to have worshipped the god who rules over the things that\nare established. They all agree with the mediaeval theologians that this\nworld has been given over to the Prince of Darkness.\n\n\n\n\nVIII. TWO INSTANCES OF CIVILIZATION\n\n\nWe may come to wonder the less at this adverse judgment when we have\nconsidered two instances of the effects which the highest types of\ncivilization have had upon the masses of mankind who were brought under\nits sway. Take ancient Egypt and ancient Athens. Go back to the\nbuilding of the pyramids. Although they are among the earliest\nmonuments of civilization, they are yet among the most marvellous\nillustrations of the mastery of the human mind over matter. Scarcely\nthree had passed of the ten thousand years which have constituted the\nepoch that superseded barbarism, before these vast tombs, or whatever\nthey are, began to be erected. Lost in admiration as he stands before\nthe Great Pyramid, how can any one but resent the suggestion that the\nsocial order, which made it at last possible, was a disease, preying\nupon the body and spirit of men?\n\nAnd yet, if one turns from it to examine that organization of human\nlabor and that control of the wills of the masses of Egypt which made\nit possible, and then again looks up at it, one marks great fissures\nthat rend the whole mass and one hears the foundations groan. To speak\nthus is only an imaginative way of saying, what all the anthropologists\nand archaeologists tell us, that to the building of any one of the\ngreat pyramids went the enforced labor of upwards of a million men for\nmany years, who were literally driven by the lash of the whip. There is\nno ground for supposing that the feel of the whip, when the back of an\nEgyptian slave began to bleed, was different from what we should suffer\nif the stroke fell now on us: nor that cries of pain were any the less\nnatural then. And we must remember that, according to the unanimous\nopinion of anthropologists, the organization of enforced labor is one\nof the essentials of civilization. Picturesque and vivid, but not\nexaggerated, is the saying of the author of that able book, _The\nNemesis of Nations_: \"Civilization begins with the crack of the whip.\"\nLord Cromer quotes this dictum in his work on Egypt as giving an\nepitome of the kind of power behind the civilizing process as it has\nalways manifested itself in the land of the Nile; and then, lest those\nof his readers who live in the glass house of English history should\ncommit the ridiculous sin of unconscious hypocrisy, he gently but\nfirmly reminds us that many inhumanities of a similar spirit,\nespecially towards offenders against the laws of property, were not\nsuppressed in England till the beginning of the nineteenth century.\n\nIn these comments of mine upon Egypt, I may seem to have appealed to\nyour sentiment of humanity; but I have never for a moment forgotten\nthat no instance from history can prove civilization a disease except\nto those who are intuitively on the side of the man instead of the\nmicrobe, of the people instead of the pyramid. Such instances, however,\nare of value in bringing those who listen to them to a clear\nself-consciousness of their own primal preference--and that is a\ndistinct gain, even when the preference is for the pyramid.\n\nIt cannot be denied that the masses of Egypt were a sacrifice--and not\nwillingly--to civilization. In the preceding periods of savagery and\nbarbarism, there had been no such enslavement; the organization of\nenforced labor had not proceeded so far. The crack of the whip was\nstill as yet intermittent. According to Lewis Morgan, civilization is\nthe progress of man from beast to citizen. Well, until ten thousand\nyears ago, man was more beast than citizen; but, happily for him, among\nthe beasts of the field there is nothing parallel to this organization\nof labor through the will of one by means of the stroke of the courbash\nupon the backs of the many.\n\n\nSome students who shrink in horror from the Egyptian type of\ncivilization plead nevertheless for the type which was manifested in\nancient Greece. Let us go, then, to Athens in the age of Pericles, that\nperiod of her glory concerning which Professor Freeman somewhere says\nthat to have lived but ten years in the midst of it would have been\nworth a hundred of modern mediocrity. Who can think otherwise as he\nrecalls the Athenian drama, eloquence and philosophy, architecture and\nsculpture? But when one turns to the organization of society, as it was\nin Athens, to find out at what human price the splendor was bought of\nthat dazzling decade when the Parthenon was being built, one finds that\nof the inhabitants of that City of the Light scarcely more than thirty\nthousand were free men, while two hundred thousand were slaves. Again,\nthe living foundations groan! And if our heart, by its nature, insists\non going out to the sacrificed, our delight in Athenian _Kultur_ will\nbe henceforth shot through with anguish. Our only way of escape will be\nby absorbing Nietzsche into our system until the poison paralyzes our\nimpulse to pity. But you may think that if we shift our investigation,\nwe shall find relief. Let us enquire, then, into the position of woman\ninstead of the man-slave in Athens. Alas! we are now confronted with\nfacts which reveal, on the part of one whole half of Greek mankind, the\nsurrender of their distinctive humanity to civilization, to that\nprocess whereby sentient beings are transformed from beasts into\ncitizens. Professor Westermarck sums up the attitude of civilization to\nwomen in these terms:--\n\n    Nowhere else has the difference in culture between men and women\n    been so immense as in the fully-developed Greek civilization. The\n    lot of a wife in Greece was retirement and ignorance. She lived in\n    almost absolute seclusion, in a separate part of the house,\n    together with her female slaves, deprived of all the educating\n    influence of male society, and having no place at those public\n    spectacles which were the chief means of culture.\n\nHe then calls attention to the startling absence from the whole of\nGreek literature of any evidence that any man who had received the\ntraining which Greek culture gave ever fell in love with any woman. In\nhis chapter on the \"Subjection of Wives,\" Professor Westermarck further\nsays:--\n\n    The status of wives is in various respects connected with the ideas\n    held about the female sex in general. Woman is commonly looked upon\n    as a slight, dainty, and relatively weak creature, destitute of all\n    nobler qualities. Especially among nations more advanced in culture\n    she is regarded as intellectually and morally inferior to man. In\n    Greece, in the historic age, the latter recognized in her no other\n    end than to minister to his pleasure and to become the mother of\n    his children.\n\nThis author finds the Greek subjection of wives, as you will have\nnoted, no exception to the universal rule as to the relation of culture\nto womanhood. After speaking of the status of woman among the ancient\nHebrews, and the position assigned her by that greatest instrument of\nEuropean civilization called the Roman Catholic Church, he repeats his\ngeneralization in these terms:--\n\n    Progress in civilization has exercised an unfavorable influence on\n    the position of woman by widening the gulf between the sexes, as\n    the higher culture was almost exclusively the prerogative of the\n    men. Moreover, religion, and especially the great religions of the\n    world, has contributed to the degradation of the female sex by\n    regarding woman as unclean.\n\n\n\n\nIX. THE AGE OF THE FOUNDATIONS AT HAND\n\n\nIs this degradation an inevitable outcome of the animating principle at\nthe heart of the process whereby sentient beings have thus far been\ntransformed from beasts into citizens? We are forced to answer \"Yes.\"\nOtherwise, why has the relative degradation of woman deepened\nuniversally with the progress of civilization? If Westermarck is right,\nit would seem that the lowest foundations of highly developed society\nhave always consisted of the bodies and souls of women. If such be the\nhistoric fact, it may seem strange that only in our day, but now the\nworld over, is heard the wail of women crying to be freed. Perhaps the\nreason, however, that we for the first time hear the wail is because\nnever before had the fissures grown wide enough to allow the fainter,\nbut more piteous, sighs to escape.\n\nThe fact, too, of which there is no doubt, that at last in our age even\nwomen are beginning to be revered as responsible moral and spiritual\nagents may be a sign that the Day of the Foundations is come, that the\nage of civilization is nearing its close, and that a new era, animated\nby a fresh principle of human co-ordination, is at hand. There is at\nleast evidence that many women are asking: \"Are the products of\ncivilization worth the price which we women have been compelled to pay,\nin order that they may exist? Is our subjection justifiable?\" In reply,\nthe men who entertain an innate contempt for woman answer, \"Yes\"; those\nwho are moved by the extreme opposite of sentiment have arrived at the\nbitter, though chivalrous, thought, \"Better the non-existence of the\nhuman race than the continued sacrifice of its womankind\"; while even\nthe sons of the golden mean in judgment go so far as to say that not\nonly the already acquired benefits of civilization, but finer ones and\nmore abundant, can from now on be attained by some other process, which\nwill involve no degradation either to workingman or to woman, and which\nin structural principle and human effects will differ as much from\ncivilization as civilization itself differed from the barbarism and\nsavagery which preceded it.\n\nMy own judgment is, that civilization is nearing its close. Four or\nfive deadly blows were dealt out to it by four or five events which\nhappened in the middle of the fifteenth century after Christ, and it\nhas been staggering ever since. In that century, certain things\noccurred which produced the very opposite effect upon the masses of\nmankind to that produced by the wonderful thing which had happened ten\nthousand years ago and by its occurrence had changed radically the\nrelation of men and women to the community and to the physical universe\nin which they lived. What was begun in the fifteenth century by the\nevents that took place then, and what was continued as a destructive\nprocess until recently, is, in my judgment, being finished now through\na constructive process which has been set up by certain other\nthings--some ten or twenty--which have happened since the beginning of\nthe present century.\n\n\n\n\nX. A NEW STRUCTURAL PRINCIPLE\n\n\nIt has seemed to me necessary at this point in my argument to call\nattention to the introduction into social life in the fifteenth century\nof a new working principle which has been in direct antagonism to the\nbasic idea of civilization, because it must be borne in mind that\nduring the last four centuries the history of Europe and the New World\nfurnishes illustrations of two conflicting processes of social\nintegration. Not everything that has happened since the New World was\ndiscovered can be set down to the credit of that process which is still\nascendant in Prussia. Instances, therefore, from modern history which\ngo against my account of civilization have no weight against my\ncontention and cannot be raised against me; modern instances must not\nonly be shown to be facts, but to be vital outputs of the same\nprinciple that animates the old order. To account every co-ordination\nof modern social life as an instance of civilization is as if any one\nshould cite the turbine engine and its achievements and set these down\nto the credit of the piston engine. But the idea of the one is wholly\nnew and not a further evolution of the old. Or it is as if one should\nassign the glory of the motor-car to the inventor of the bicycle, or of\nthe bicycle to the originator of the horse-cart; or as if one should\npoint to an aeroplane as an illustration of a further stage in the\nevolution of the motor-car. It is a fact that the aeroplane came after,\nbut not a fact that it came _from_, the motor-car. If, as I believe,\nthe new order which began to manifest itself in the fifteenth century\nstands to civilization as the aeroplane to the motorcar, and as the\nmotor-car to the bicycle and the horse-cart, or as the turbine to the\npiston engine, then I am right in claiming that we ought not to call it\ncivilization. If we do, we should be acting like any one who insisted\nupon calling an airship a horse-cart. There might be reasons for so\ndoing: and there may be reasons for calling things civilization which\nare something quite different. For instance, I can conceive that the\nnew order might be more easily insinuated into general acceptance if\nthose whose interests are all vested in the old are not informed that\nit is new. But tonight I am treating not of words, but of things; and\nif it will hasten the triumph of the new order to pretend that it is\ncivilization, let us by all means do so--just as we call six o'clock\nseven in order to gain an extra hour of sunlight during the waking day.\n\nI know that to many the idea will appear grotesquely naive, that an\ninstitution as old as civilization and so wide-spreading should come to\nan end and be superseded by something else, and that this change should\nbe taking place under our very eyes. But, happily for me, the\nworld-conflict which is now devastating Europe has begun to undermine\nin the soul of many the fetish-worship of civilization. And to assist\nfurther in breaking the spell which civilization may have cast over the\nimagination of most of my audience, I would remind you that\ncivilization is, after all, a mere mushroom growth, and that what has\nsprung up only overnight cannot have taken deep root (as if it were a\nthing practically eternal), and could not be very difficult to replace\nby something more deliberately thought out--by something learned\nthrough ten thousand years of the tragic effects experienced by\nthousands of millions of human beings. Civilization, I say, is a mere\nmushroom growth, as compared with the whole life-period of man's\nexistence on earth. It is only ten thousand years old; while, by the\nmost modest and cautious calculation, man has existed one hundred\nthousand years; and during the ninety thousand which preceded the last\nten, he made gigantic progress towards self-knowledge and\nself-reverence. Let us, therefore, not be browbeaten by civilization on\naccount of its antiquity.\n\n\n\n\nXI. EDWARD CARPENTER'S INDICTMENT OF CIVILIZATION\n\n\nEqually must we guard against the fallacy of attributing only the\nbeneficent effects of civilization to its inherent principle, while we\ntrace all the evils which have arisen in its train to extrinsic\ncauses--to human nature, or to superficial and local obstructions. This\nword of warning brings me back to Mr. Edward Carpenter's essay on\n_Civilization: Its Cause and Cure_; for when I first read it he\nappeared to me to exaggerate out of all proportion the evils in modern\nlife as compared with the good in it: especially did I feel that he\nerred in that he accounted the evils as permanent and organic\ncharacteristics of the civilizing process itself, and believed that\nthey must increase with its development and could not be eradicated\nexcept with its extinction. During the last twenty-six years, however,\nI have learned a thing or two. I have not lost one jot or tittle of my\nearly faith in man, and I have even gained fresh hope for a speedy\nissue of the human race out of most of its sufferings and sins; but I\nhave gained this fresh hope only because I have been drawn by wider and\ncloser observation of economic events--and especially of the new\ndevelopments of trade and politics the world over--to the conclusion\nthat the evils, however great, are to be traced to the false principle\nthat animates the civilizing process, and that they will fall away of\nthemselves when once that principle has been exchanged for another that\nis already well known, and which, as I have remarked, began four\ncenturies ago to disintegrate the established order.\n\nCarpenter's indictment of civilization seems to me incontrovertible.\nThe best way for me to present it briefly will be by means of a number\nof typical quotations, in which he indicates the nature of disease and\nshows that such is the state--mental, physical, social, and\nmoral--induced in man by the organization of enforced labor and the\nwhole of the adopted method of making citizens out of wild beasts:--\n\n    When we come to analyze the conception of disease, physical or\n    mental, in society or the individual, it evidently means ... loss\n    of unity. Health, therefore, should mean unity. ... The idea should\n    be a positive one--a condition of the body in which it is an\n    entirety, a unity, a central force maintaining that condition; and\n    disease being the break-up--or break-down--of that entirety into\n    multiplicity.... Thus in a body, the establishment of an\n    insubordinate centre--a boil, a tumor, the introduction and spread\n    of a germ with innumerable progeny throughout the system, the\n    enlargement out of all reason of an existing organ--means disease.\n    In the mind, disease begins when any passion asserts itself as an\n    independent centre of thought and action.... What is a taint in the\n    mind is also a taint in the body. The stomach has started the\n    original idea of becoming itself the centre of the human system.\n    The sexual organs may start a similar idea. Here are distinct\n    threats, menaces made against the central authority--against the\n    Man himself. For the man must rule, or disappear; it is impossible\n    to imagine a man presided over by a Stomach--a walking Stomach,\n    using hands, feet, and all the other members merely to carry it\n    from place to place, and serve its assimilative mania. So of the\n    Brain, or any other organ; for the Man is no organ, resides in no\n    organ, but is the central life ruling and radiating among all\n    organs, and assigning them their parts to play. Disease, then, in\n    mind or body, is ... the abeyance of a central power and the growth\n    of insubordinate centres--life in each creature being conceived of\n    as a continual exercise of energy or conquest, by which external or\n    antagonistic forces (or organisms) are brought into subjection and\n    compelled into the service of the creature, or are thrown off as\n    harmful to it. Thus, by way of illustration, we find that plants or\n    animals, when in good health, have a remarkable power of throwing\n    off the attacks of any parasites which incline to infest them;\n    while those that are weakly are very soon eaten up by the same. A\n    rose-tree, for instance, brought indoors, will soon fall a prey to\n    the aphis, though when hardened out of doors the pest makes next to\n    no impression on it. In dry seasons when the young turnip plants in\n    the field are weakly from want of water, the entire crop is\n    sometimes destroyed by the turnip-fly, which then multiplies\n    enormously; but if a shower or two of rain comes before much damage\n    is done, the plant will then grow vigorously, its tissues become\n    more robust and resist the attacks of the fly, which in its turn\n    dies. Late investigations seem to show that one of the functions of\n    the white corpuscles of the blood is to devour disease-germs and\n    bacteria present in the circulation,--thus absorbing these\n    organisms into subjection to the central life of the body,--and\n    that for this object they congregate in numbers toward any part of\n    the body which is wounded or diseased.\n\n\n\n\nXII. CARPENTER'S FALSE REMEDY\n\n\nTo cast Carpenter's metaphor, according to which civilization is a\nthing to be cured, into the form of an analogy, we might say that the\ncivilizing process has been to man what the bringing indoors is to a\nrose-tree, or the coming of a drought to the turnips in a field. And I\nask you to assume with me that this is so; as it will help me to get on\nwith my argument, which, as it advances, will reveal more and more\nwhether it be inherently weak or strong. Nor do I anticipate much\nopposition to Carpenter's mere indictment of civilization. At least it\nis only when he outlines his remedy that my own protest is aroused. And\nI suspect that many a reader will feel with me, that while to cure a\nrose-tree or a turnip plant may require only the taking of the one out\nof doors again and the falling of the kindly showers upon the other,\nthe restoration of civilized man to health would necessitate something\nmore than a mere return on his part to Nature and savagery. Indeed,\nsuch a return may be altogether impossible, and even undesirable. In my\njudgment, man having (as Carpenter himself points out) become\n\"self-conscious,\" can never go back to Nature, since he is no longer\nthe same being he was when he emerged from his more primitive state.\nYet what Carpenter recommends so far as he recommends any cure, is\nexactly this: Human beings are to wear less clothes--if any at all; man\nwill again live out of doors, for the most part, instead of in houses;\nhe will return to the eating of uncooked food--mainly fruit and grains;\nhe will begin to feel himself one again with Nature; he is to lose his\nsense of sin; every man will do the work he likes--and presumably not\ndo the work he does not like. \"As to External Government and Law, they\nwill disappear,\" says Carpenter, \"for they are only the travesties and\ntransitory substitutes of Inward Government and Order.\" In religion,\nthere is to be a like return to Nature. The author says:--\n\n    And when the civilization-period has passed away, the old\n    Nature-religion--perhaps greatly grown--will come back.... Our\n    Christian ceremonial is saturated with sexual and astronomical\n    symbols; and long before Christianity existed, the sexual and\n    astronomical were the main forms of religion.... On the high tops\n    once more gathering he will celebrate with naked dances the glory\n    of the human form and the great processions of the stars....\n\nCarpenter sees signs already here and there of the beginning of this\nreturn:--\n\n    The present competitive society is more and more rapidly becoming a\n    mere dead formula and husk within which the outlines of the new and\n    _human_ society are already discernible. Simultaneously, and as if\n    to match this growth, a move toward Nature and Savagery is for the\n    first time taking place from within, instead of being forced upon\n    Society from without. The Nature-movement, begun years ago in\n    Literature and Art, is now among the more advanced sections of the\n    civilized world rapidly realizing itself in actual life, going so\n    far even as a denial, among some, of machinery and the complex\n    products of Civilization, and developing among others into a gospel\n    of salvation by sandals and sunbaths!\n\nIn order to help us to judge aright whether a return to Nature and a\nprimitive communism would restore to man that centrality and health of\nwhich we assume that civilization has deprived him, we should do well\nto consider what it was that happened ten thousand years ago and proved\nso sinister in changing the relation of men and women to the community\nin which they lived, and to the physical universe. But of that event we\ncannot gain an adequate appreciation unless we view it in perspective\nalong the line of analogous events, some six, which had occurred from\ntime to time during the ninety thousand years preceding.\n\n\n\n\nXIII. SPEECH AND FIRE\n\n\nA hundred thousand years ago, among our ancestors, who then were only\ninarticulate mammals, living in trees and caves, one of them by\nhimself, or a little group of them together, hit upon the use of\narticulate vocal signs as a means of conveying to his mates his needs,\nhis fears, his desires and threats. It was probably by a happy fluke\nthat he hit upon this use, or by some transcendent flash of insight due\nto a spontaneous variation of ability above that of the average ape; or\nelse some unusual stress of hunger or danger of attack drove even a\nmediocre individual to an unwonted exercise of ingenuity. In any case,\nby inventing articulate speech, he brought into existence a new species\nof mammal--man. I must leave to your imagination the thousand\ntransforming effects of this new device for communicating perceptions,\nfeelings, and intentions. The speaking ape stood to his own species,\nand through them to other kinds of animals and to the material\nuniverse, in a different relation from that in which the speechless\nstood. The power of combined action among the members of any group\nbecame immeasurably greater than it had previously been. A social unity\nof will was possible that could never have existed on earth hitherto.\nFor all we know, thirty thousand years may have passed away before any\nother event occurred among human beings comparable in practical\nimportance to the invention of spoken language. This, however, was all\nthe time being gradually perfected under the stress of new experiences\nin general and of trying predicaments in particular.\n\nThen, in the fulness of time, and once more by a happy fluke, or by a\nstroke of spontaneous genius, or under the pressure of some\nunprecedented danger, or through the educative influence of some new\norder of experience, one of the speaking apes hit upon the use of fire,\nand thereby introduced a new era in the advancement of man. Practically\ninfinite was the increase of man's new mastery over Nature. Into\ntemperate and even icy regions he could now penetrate and, as it were,\ncreate around him a little temporary zone of tropical warmth. With\nspeech had come social unity; with fire at man's disposal came mastery\nover matter. But the unity thereby suffered a change. With the\ninvention of means of creating artificial warmth the social homogeneity\nof the tribe began to be broken. Whoever controlled fire controlled the\nrest of his group, since no other way for the tribal appropriation of\nthe blessings of regulated fire was possible among talking apes, except\nthat one individual, or a very few, should assume the office of owner\nof the sticks or flints for igniting the fire, and should become\ndispenser of the flame. The group thus was divided into the controller\nand the controlled, the owner and the owned, the master and the man,\nthe governor and the governed, the chief and his followers.\n\n\n\n\nXIV. THE TWO MARKS OF ALL CIVILIZATION\n\n\nSuch a differentiation of society was, among apes, the condition for\nany sort of social unity; but control by the few could at the first\nhave been only rudimentary and intermittent. Fire is not everything,\nand was indispensable only on certain occasions, as when the group\nwere caught unexpectedly in some wintry region. Then the choice for\nany man might lie between freezing or obeying. Be it observed that\nfire under such circumstances would be shared by all, but the power of\nsocial control would be monopolized by one. Had you been there, but\nnot the mightiest of your group, the condition of your surviving the\ncold would have been that you surrendered whatever individual\ninitiative you had had. You gained fire, but lost freedom. At this\npoint, by some innate sense of logical identity, my mind is carried\nforward a hundred thousand years to that centre of to-day's highest\ncivilization--Detroit, and to its very palladium, the Ford Motor\nWorks. For in that far-famed institution is to be found a very\nstriking similarity to the primeval monopoly of initiative which arose\nwith the first control of fire. Mr. Henry Ford has been magnanimously\nready to share profits with his men, but, so far as I can learn, no\niota of the industrial control.\n\nBefore I go to the next step towards citizenship, I would call\nattention to the fact that thus, near to the beginning of things human,\nwhen the use of fire was introduced, we are able to detect the two\ndistinguishing characteristics of all civilization, and of trade in\nparticular, which are the sharing by the tribe of the blessings of\nman's mastery over Nature, but, as the condition of the sharing, a\nmonopoly of power and initiative by the few who dispense the blessings.\nSo much of good and of goods--but no more--could the mass of men enjoy\nas was compatible with the continuance of the master's ascendancy over\nthe men and over the public. We shall find no other than these marks in\nall future civilization, to distinguish it from savagery and barbarism.\nThe only difference will be that in the period of civilization\nproper--that is, from ten thousand years ago to the end of the\nfifteenth century after Christ, when the established social order began\nto break up--the monopoly of initiative and control is practically\nabsolute. As we trace the future steps in human evolution, we shall see\nhow this concentration of power in the hands of rulers occurred. But it\nmust be further observed that it is not only rudimentary civilization\nwhich we detect as ensuing upon the introduction of the use of fire: it\nis trade, socialized wealth, the division of the community into the\n\"haves\" and the \"have-nots,\" the introduction of the working of the\nlaw, that to him that hath shall be given and that from him that hath\nnothing but his labor to offer shall be taken with it his liberty also.\nIt should likewise be borne in mind that with the stealing of fire from\nheaven came also that coalition of government with trade, of politics\nwith commerce, of the monopolists of economic power with the dictators\nof life and death, of peace and war, which is manifested to the highest\nconceivable degree to-day in the states most assertive of their\nleadership in the vanguard of civilization. I said that with the use of\nfire came the enslavement of men; but government and enslavement were\none and the same thing. Neither, however, was as yet dominant over\nsocial life.\n\n\n\n\nXV. ARROWS AND EARTHENWARE\n\n\nThe talking, fire-using anthropoid in the course of time invented the\nbow and arrow. So great and so enduring were the benefits of this new\ndevice that it is almost impossible for us, who have profited by them,\nto imagine the state of human society when men could kill animals or\ndestroy enemies only by throwing stones or clubs, or by striking with\nthe fist. But it is easy to see that the chief of a tribe of men\nreceived an incalculable increase of power when, besides the\ninstruments of ignition, bows and arrows were in his possession to deal\nout at his will. Whatever equality of initiative and diffused\nsovereignty had existed before the use of fire was known, it now began\nto vanish, and the men of any tribe saw power concentrated in the will\nand word of the chief and those nearest him, while submission to his\ncommand was the condition of survival. And no doubt, with the loss of\nthat individual liberty and that self-reliance which characterize the\nlower animals, there also died away a certain joyousness and zest of\nspontaneous self-fulfilment, such as we observe in wild creatures so\nlong as they are free from hunger and thirst and secure from the\npursuit of enemies.\n\nIt was perhaps another ten thousand years before one more new link in\nthe chain of man's mastery over Nature and the chief's mastery over his\nmen was forged. This time it was probably a woman who--again by a happy\nchance or by necessity of maternal solicitude--noticed the effect of\nheat upon clay and introduced the art of pottery. Until then men had no\nutensils that could withstand the action of fire; they could not boil\nwater except by dropping hot stones into some receptacle of wood or\nskin. Now, by the new device of boiling, the food-supply was enormously\nincreased. The blessing of another mastery over matter was henceforth\nshared by all the members of the tribe. But, at the same time, there\nwas a corresponding force added to the chief's grip upon his men. We\nsee the law illustrated, that every new invention, owned by the few,\nbecomes one more trap for the many. The differentiation between the\nowner of the tribe's wealth and the propertyless became with the\nintroduction of pottery fixed and hopeless. The master dealt out not\nonly fire and arrows, but cooking-utensils; or he withheld all these if\nhe saw fit; and if you had been there, but not in command, you, too,\nwould have tamely submitted or have died.\n\n\n\n\nXVI. ANIMALS TAMED AND IRON SMELTED\n\n\nThe word \"tamely\" which I have just used, brings me to the next great\nevent which moved mankind perceptibly nearer to civilization proper.\nIt is an event which was not only a literal fact of prime importance,\nbut which is eternally a symbol of man's own fate. It was probably\nfirst the dog that lent himself to the imagination of the speaking,\nfire-making, arrow-shooting, clay-baking, anthropoid ape, as a\nstimulus to the idea that captive animals might be of service to human\nbeings. Man began to tame not only the dog, but the sheep, the ox, the\ncamel, the goat, the horse, and the elephant. The gain to all the\ntribe was enormous. The men all shared in the profit, but once more\ntheir master appropriated the new increment in power. He became the\nowner of the domesticated animals as well as of the inanimate pot and\narrow and flame. But at this stage it must have seemed to all the\nother members of the tribe that they also were owned, soul and body,\nby their chief. They could not help seeing, nor could he, that they\nwere _his_ men. And how natural it was for them to rejoice in the fact\nthat they belonged to some one who was mightier than themselves, and\nwho identified his own prosperity with that of the tribe, and of every\nindividual in it who served it according to his will. Loyalty to the\nbeloved community became loyalty to the chief. But it is evident that\nwhat mankind had caused to happen to the dog and the horse, the chief\nhad accomplished in regard to the human beings who had come under his\npower. He had tamed them; they were no longer wild animals. They had\nrendered up individual liberty and self-reliant independence such as\nwe see among many species of wild beasts. But instead, as the price of\nobedience to a will outside their own, they had received a thousand\ncreature-comforts.\n\nOnly one more invention was needed to lift them to the highest and\nlatest stage of barbarism. Some one now hit upon the art of smelting\niron--the first invention that had not directly to do with the\nsupplying of food. By leaps and bounds the art of smelting iron\nadvanced man in the equipment of war, in the building of houses, roads,\nand vehicles of transportation. Now what magnificent returns\nindividuals received for having surrendered their original liberty to\ndo as they pleased! After all, what would independent initiative have\nbeen worth without fire or arrow or earthern kettle, or cow or horse or\nwheel, or sword and shield? Who would not have forfeited the bare\nbirthright of empty (although healthy) independence for participation\nin the ever richer conquest over the physical resources of Nature?\n\n\n\n\nXVII. CIVILIZATION PROPER\n\n\nBut now at last, only ten thousand years ago, the event occurred which\nput forever out of the question any possibility of prudence in any\nwaywardness of individual whim, or any deviation from the rule dictated\nby the owner of things. This time the something that happened did not\ncause an increase of man's mastery over physical Nature. It was,\ninstead, like that initial invention which turned apes into men. And\nagain, like spoken language, it was a device to facilitate\ncommunication of mind with mind. In some one of the many groups of\nbeings who had learned the use of fire, arrows, pots, sheep, and\nswords, some genius hit upon the idea of written signs as a medium of\ncommunication with those distant in space, and as a means of\nperpetuating a knowledge of the will of the dead among his survivors.\nBut be it observed that only the master, never the man, only the owner\nof things, the controller of circumstances, was in a position to embody\nand preserve his judgment and desire in written signs. The new art of\nwriting enhanced the power of rulers, of chiefs. The Pharaoh, not the\nfellah, dictated the inscription that was to be engraved. Thus all the\nrulers of the past were now able to perpetuate their power by adding\ntheir sanction to the word of the living chief, while no voice from the\nranks of the governed would be allowed to immortalize itself in written\nspeech. This is the reason that written language introduced\ncivilization proper. There was no longer any chance for the wildness of\nthe beast to crop out. Here began the empire of the dead over the\nliving; but it was the empire of dead rulers over living slaves. The\nmastery over Nature and the monopoly of social power thereby became\npractically infinite. The tamers were now omnipotent in comparison with\nthe tamed. It must be noticed that the process of transforming beasts\ninto citizens was one to which only the tamed, but not the tamers, were\nsubjected. The ruler stood outside of and above the rule he made. The\nlaw was for his subjects. This was the case with Henry VIII at the acme\nof civilization as it had been with the first of the Pharaohs.\n\nNot only the blond beast of prey, but the swarthy also dictated an\nethic for his subjects in order to keep himself in ascendancy. It was\nbecause Nietzsche admired all beasts of prey and felt contempt for\ntheir victims that he hated Jesus Christ and proudly assumed the title\nof Anti-Christ. For Christ had set up an ethic which encouraged the\nvictims to protest and attempt to win back their primeval initiative,\nto take over the sovereignty which had been concentrated in the hands\nof the mighty and to diffuse it among the nobodies of the tribe. St.\nLuke goes so far as to assert that even before Jesus was born his\nMother entertained levelling ideas. Into her lips he puts a song in\nwhich she magnifies the Lord because she believed her Son would bring\ndown the mighty and exalt them of low degree. But alas! civilization\nwent on for fifteen hundred years and succeeded in tying Christianity\nto the chariot-wheel of monopolized initiative.\n\n\n\n\nXVIII. THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY AFTER CHRIST\n\n\nChristianity had to wait for something to happen that would lend force\nto its Gospel. That something did not occur until the middle of the\nfifteenth century. Then, as I have already said without specifying what\nthey were, a number of unforeseen events took place which opened the\ndoor to the divine bridegroom of humanity.\n\nI have said that in the fifteenth century after Christ a new principle\nbegan to work in society; but I did not say that it was then for the\nfirst time promulgated. Civilization was the organization of man's\nmastery over Nature on a basis of self-interest; it was the giving\nonly so much of wealth and power to the many as was compatible with\nthe retention of one's own ascendancy. To be civilized, then, is\nevidently not to be Christian any more than it is to be Buddhistic or\nJudaic, socialistic or democratic. Everybody admits that one can be\ncivilized and be none of these things: just as one may be \"cultured\"\nwithout being kind. In other words, it is consistent with being\ncivilized to be highly selfish; one need only be rationalized in one's\negoism. Indeed, civilization is the incarnation of self-interest. If\nself-interest, its basic principle, should give way to social\ninterest; if the monopoly of social power should be broken and the\npower transferred to the general will of the community; if the\ncommunity should relegate its administration to representatives, but\nshould prevent these by some social device from ever usurping the\npower entrusted to them, then something new--something as different\nfrom civilization as the airship from the horse-cart--would have begun\nto establish itself. A new species of social order can be nothing\nother than an order whose basic principle is totally new; and what\ngreater difference could exist in structuralizing tendencies than that\nbetween self-interest and the interest of the community? Whenever the\nlatter gets the upper hand, it will be because Fate, the Cosmos, the\nUniverse, the force within unconscious evolution, has caught up the\nsong of the _Magnificat_. No such consummation of humanity has taken\nplace, but it is undeniable that in the fifteenth century the Word\nentered like a seed into the soil of Fact. The Virgin's prophecy began\nto fulfil itself.\n\n\nFamiliar to everybody, and quickly to be specified, are the wonderful\nevents which turned the vision into reality. One of these events was\nthe invention of gunpowder; another was the mariner's compass; a third\nwas the invention of paper; a fourth, the printing-press; a fifth was\nthe discovery that the earth goes round the sun once a year, and whirls\non its own axis once a day; a sixth was that indiscretion of\nChristopher Columbus, whereby instead of over-populated India he opened\nup a way to the vast and sparsely denizened Americas.\n\nThese events, each and severally and all together, produced in one\nparticular the same sort of effect as the use of fire and of the bow\nand arrow, of pottery, the domestication of animals, and the smelting\nof iron: they enhanced incalculably the mastery of man over matter. But\nin the other particular characteristic of civilization they acted in\nthe very opposite direction from all preceding inventions. Instead of\nentrenching the master in his monopoly of social power, instead of\nfurthering the differentiation of society into master and man, they all\nplayed into the hands of the man. For the first time since the\nbeginning of human evolution, inventions checked the monopolization of\ncontrol over others. But the initiative that now flowed to the\nmultitude of nobodies was not that puny freedom and narrow scope of\nself-realization which the talking ape had enjoyed. It was the\naccumulated foresight and control of the universe outside of man which\nhad been storing itself up more and more for ninety thousand years in\nthe intellects and wills of the favored few. The floodgates were opened\nfor the first time in the fifteenth century, and this godlike energy\nflowed in among the people at large, so that man, the many, the\nmultitude, were quickened by it into hope on earth, unto life here and\nnow, into liberty, creative originality, and the joy of\nself-realization.\n\nBut it was only the beginning: the effects of the introduction of\ngunpowder, the compass, the printing-press and paper, and the new ideas\nabout the heavens, and the opening-up of relatively uninhabited lands,\nwere scarcely discernible for two centuries, and then only as a\ndestructive force. Indeed, for still another hundred years the process\nwas one chiefly of disintegration. There was taking place a\ntransference of power from the few to the many; a diffusion of\nsovereignty, as well as a redistribution of wealth; and the change was\naccompanied by an awakening of the masses to the meaning of the\ntransformation which they were undergoing. The people began to realize\nthat the invention of gun-powder had raised the peasant as a fighter to\nthe level of the armed knight; that the compass and the opening-up of\nthe Western hemisphere made it possible for the poor to escape from\nEuropean masters whom they were unable to vanquish; and that the\ncheapness of books was linking the minds of the masses to the sources\nof learning and of religious tradition. It cannot but excite our mystic\nwonder that for nearly one hundred thousand years every new mastery of\nman over physical Nature was such that it inevitably played into the\nhands of rulers by strengthening their monopoly of initiative; and that\nthen, at last, and ever since the fifteenth century after Christ, each\nnew mechanical invention or discovery has had the unintended and\nundesired effect ultimately of scattering among the many the pent-up\npower of owners and rulers, and of creating in the many fresh psychic\nenergy and a new capacity of invention.\n\nThis great process of levelling-up took again an enormous leap forward\nin the middle of the nineteenth century. The steam-engine advanced it\nalmost as much as all the fifteenth-century inventions and discoveries\ntogether. The new facilities of travel brought new experiences, and\nthese, by the psychological law of contrast and novelty, stimulated\nintelligence many-fold. The new speed in transportation made it\npossible for thousands to escape from oppression where scarcely one had\nbeen able to do so in former generations. The Irish peasants began to\npour into America; then followed the Germans; soon Russians and Latins\nwere helped to leave the Old World; sometimes in all came a million-odd\nin one year. Wealth was multiplied and scattered to a degree that had\nnever been dreamed to be possible. Not only in the United States, but\nin France, Italy, Scandinavia, the British Empire, and South America,\nthe diffusion of social initiative was taking place. First, power\nspread from the few to the many severally; but now, for a quarter of a\ncentury, the many, without surrendering, have been pooling their new\npower in the general will of the nation. There, in the unified and\nunifying purpose of nations like America, and of each of her federate\nStates, the power is being safeguarded for the community and for its\nmembers severally by political devices which render public servants\nincapable of prolonged usurpation.\n\n\n\n\nXIX. CIVILIZATION FACES ITS SUCCESSOR\n\n\nStill, the new order is far from being in the ascendant. As\ncivilization began with the introduction of the use of fire, but was\nnot triumphant until the invention of written language, so the new\norder--call it what you will: Christianity, the Meaning of America, the\nDream of California, the Wisconsin Idea, Social Democracy,\nHumanity--this new order has only entered in as yeast which has not yet\nhad a chance to leaven the whole lump. But the fermentation now goes on\napace. The World-War is perhaps best understood when it is looked upon\nas a struggle of civilization against its successor. Alarmed and armed\nto the teeth, civilization (applied science organized on a basis of\nreasoned self-interest) is attempting to expand itself over territory\nwhich had been preempted and mapped out by social democracy, and was\nbeing devoted, in the spirit of the ideal commonwealth foreshadowed in\nChristian sentiment and Jewish prophecy, to the co-ordination of wealth\nand power on the principle of deference to the humanity in every man.\n\nBut more significant than the World-War of the passing away of the old\norder and its supersession by a new are the ten or twenty inventions,\nideas, discoveries, and new social contacts which marked the first\ndecade of the present century. No doubt even the World-War has been\nprecipitated by the sudden inrush of these unprecedented forces, and\nthe realization of their trend by the self-centred leaders of\ncivilization.\n\nIt would seem that the civilized, anticipating a move on the part of\nthe humanized, and fearing an appropriation of the benefits of new\ninventions, stole a march upon the unsuspecting. The result is, that we\nsaw at the outset of the war the latest appliances seized upon by the\nupholders of arbitrary power, and only now, after the first shock of\nattack, are the builders of an earthly paradise demonstrating their\nability and intention to turn all the forces of Nature and devices of\nreason to the service of each in the brotherhood of the common life. We\nare beginning to see, also, that every one of the latest inventions is\nsuch in its nature that soon victory must come to the cause of economic\nand political equality.\n\nEven the cheapness of motor-cars will overtake the champions of\nindustrial monopoly, who at the first used them for the hoarding of\nsocial power. The submarine can at the first only be turned against the\nfreedom of the seas during times of peace. The aeroplane and the\nairship, more than any other instruments of locomotion, will assist in\nthe diffusion of initiative among all the outlying and small nations of\nthe earth. More than anything else they will assist the weak and the\nmeek of the earth to rush together to one another's rescue; and\nwireless telegraphy, as soon as it is established universally, will\nsound to them the alarum in the twinkling of an eye. All the new\ninventions are, as it were, God's detectives for the exposing of the\nsubtle and disguised crimes of the great; or they are God's captains\nfor the mobilization of the scattered forces of the meek when the plot\nof an oppressor has been unearthed. The people need only to realize\nthat the new inventions are by their very nature breakers of\npower-monopolies, in order to find in them an irresistible incentive to\nrise and act in the cause of world-wide democratic initiative. High\nexplosives, the gas-engine, the giant gun, sheets of flame, deadly\ngases, all these are within the reach of Christ's little ones to\nencircle their kingdom-that-is-coming against the attacks of inhuman\nhumans. The new inventions are humanity's destructors to annihilate\ncivilization's destroyers.\n\n\nI have specified some of the twentieth century's inventions to show\nthat, like the compass and the printing-press, they will be scatterers\nof privileges to the masses. I might go on indefinitely adding to the\nlist, but I will cite only one more. It was only in the last decade of\nthe nineteenth century that a new way of making cheap paper was\ndiscovered--so cheap that it became possible to sell great dailies for\none cent. But this practice was not established until the twentieth\ncentury. And it was only a few years ago that the greatest newspaper of\nthe world--and a very stronghold of upper-class monopoly--was able, or\ndriven, to reduce its price from threepence (six cents) to a penny. But\nI specify the case of the London _Times_ because, like a miracle of\ndivine healing, but entirely due to the cheapness of paper, is the\nchange of its policy from that of brutal imperialism to the democratic\none of transforming the British Empire into a commonwealth of equal\nstates. Now that the _Times_ has been converted, we may be sure that\nthe universe itself has come round to the side of the right, and has\ntaken up the cause of the poor. By the pricking of my thumbs I know\nthat something better than civilization this way comes. Dull indeed\nmust be that man whose blood does not tingle with anticipation. Yet the\nphysical inventions of the twentieth century are not to be compared in\npregnancy of good with its less palpable, its spiritual, novelties.\n\n\n\n\nXX. AGAINST THE MATERIALISTIC VIEW OF HISTORY\n\n\nBefore passing, however, from the physical inventions to the new moral\nideas and mental contacts, I must interpolate a comment to save myself\nfrom misunderstanding. Generally, those who trace to mechanical\nutilities new epochs in the development of mankind proceed upon the\nmaterialistic theory of history. But this theory I have in no wise\ncommitted myself to, for I count it to be false. It is true that I have\ntraced all the great steps in human advancement to physical inventions,\nbut I have in no word implied that the inventions themselves were\ncaused by anything material whatsoever. And if they themselves were, as\nI believe, the result of man's mental and spiritual activities reacting\nagainst events, then my tracing of human advancement to them implies no\nbelief in the materialistic theory of history. Every effect of the\ninventions must be set down ultimately not to them, but to their\ncauses; and their causes were mental. Casually I have said as much, in\nremarking several times that they took place by a happy chance, or by a\nstroke of insight on the part of some rare genius, or by the reaction\nof some mediocre person's intelligent volition against some\nextraordinary experience which made the idea of the invention so\nobtrusively evident that even a mind not unusually gifted could\nscarcely have avoided lighting upon it.\n\nThe only phrase I have used by which I cannot absolutely stand is the\nexpression \"by a happy chance\"; for I believe that the mental\nproductions of each person are due not to uncaused chance, or to\naccident, but to trends of the social mind that have been set in motion\nby mental exigencies arising out of current events. As primitive\npeoples, however, have left no record of their mental sequences, we\ncannot say with confidence what were the exact experiences that led to\nthe idea of using fire, or to any other device that transformed the\nrelation of human beings to one another or to their material habitat. I\nonly repeat that whatever caused the inventions caused all the remote\neffects of these, and that if the causes of the inventions were mental\nand spiritual, then an interpretation of history is not materialistic\nmerely because it traces advancement to mechanical utilities. That I am\nright in tracing these to mental and spiritual causes is proved at\nleast in the case of recent inventions. For we know that their causes\nwere psychic; we know the mental atmosphere, and how it arose, that\nbrought forth the telephone and aeroplane and submarine. We know that\nthese were not due to physical necessities or to any material causes.\nThey arose from the brooding of creative imaginations disciplined in a\nmethod learned by reflection upon former successes in discovery. We\nalso know in what main particulars this modern atmosphere differs from\nthat of former centuries. But such questions are not germane to my\ncentral theme, and so I pass them over lightly. Let me then return\nwithout further delay from this digression which has been made in the\ninterests, not of my argument, but of my self-respect as a student of\nsocial facts.\n\n\n\n\nXXI. CONTACT OF PEOPLES\n\n\nConsider, for instance, that at the beginning of our century, for the\nfirst time in more than fifteen hundred years, the Christian nations\ncame into contact with a mighty pagan power, and were compelled to\nacknowledge it as not only a political, but a moral, equal. Whoever\nknows the magical effect in the quickening of intellectual and\nspiritual life due to new contact with a contrasting type of national\nculture will agree that the meeting thus of Christendom with the\nso-called \"heathen\" world is a fact of prime significance in the\nhistory of man.\n\nNor is it simply the contact of heathen and Christian on terms of moral\nequality. There is another aspect to Japan's ascendancy and her\nrecognition by the West. The East and the West meet at last. The\npsychic invasion of each by the other must be epoch-making and in the\ndirection of the completeness and unification spiritually of all\nmankind in a brotherhood of nations and nation-states. The new contact\nof heathen and Christian, and of white and colored, of East and West,\nmeans that the exploitation of the dark races by nations more highly\norganized on a basis of self-interest is about to cease forever. With\nthe humanization of the West will come the salvation of those tribes\nwho never divided themselves so absolutely into the \"haves\" and the\n\"have-nots,\" or who never attained a high mastery over the physical\nuniverse.\n\nAre there persons in America who say what, until the present war, many\nin Old England thought--that there is nothing new under the sun? Then I\nwould call their attention to the unprecedented and revolutionary\ncharacter of the contact in the United States, on a basis of relative\npolitical and social equality, of immigrants from some fifty-one\ndifferent nations of the Old World. These people will mix their blood,\ntheir temperaments, and their traditions, and not only will a new\nvariety of human being emerge, but the mixing of opposites in idea and\ntemperament will quicken self-consciousness and heighten mental power\nand speed up its activity. The opportunity of the blond beasts of prey\nhas lain in the torpor and inactivity and ignorance of the multitude.\nBut I find no torpor in California. And where there is no one that will\nallow himself to be preyed upon, even blond beasts take up the new\nenterprise of co-operation among equals. This is an inevitable result\nof the contact of many varieties of unlikes, the unification, not of\nequals, but of supplementary equivalents. When such psychic conditions\nhave prevailed for a century or more, it is inconceivable that trade\ncan continue to consist of competition between individuals and the\npermission of the successful to amass and hoard fortunes. Either\nproduction and distribution will become communal, or the community will\ntax large fortunes into the state and national treasury.\n\nBut there are three other distinguishing characteristics of the\ntwentieth century which make for the replacing of civilization by\nhumanization, and for the transition of trade from the harshness of the\nlaw into the abounding grace of the gospel.\n\n\n\n\nXXII. THE POWER TO TRANSMIT HUMAN LIFE, ITS SOCIAL CONTROL\n\n\nFirst, the limiting of population by the will of human individuals. In\nthe beginning men stole fire from the gods; but life they allowed the\nAlmighty to continue to dispense at his own inscrutable pleasure, while\nthey remained his pleased but puzzled agents in its transmission. It\nwas only in the eighties of the last century, after a hundred thousand\nyears, that man hit upon the idea and the practice of controlling life\nas he had controlled fire. From the beginning, he had planted the\nfire-seed according to his own purpose and social need. And now at last\nhe has come to look upon the life-seed as not simply in his keeping as\na trust for another, but as his own property to control in the interest\nof his own future. Can human audacity reach higher? Can the assumption\nof divine and creative responsibility by man out-strip this latest act\nof self-government? From beast to citizen, did we say? But have we not\nfound the process during the last four hundred years to be from\ncitizenship to godship, from creature to creator? It was one of your\nAmerican reformers who entitled a book _Man as Social Creator_. From\nbeast to citizen seemed dull enough; but from citizen to God--what\nintoxication of zest does this thought engender! Can the creature dare\nit? Is this the great venture? Is this the meaning of the travail of\nthe ages? Or is it only a process from citizen to man, from tamed beast\nto free spirit feeling the Soul of All at the inmost centre of himself,\nand finding the means at last of incarnating that soul in the\ncommunity, in politics, trade, and domestic life? Howsoever the new\nfacts and the newer outlook are to be interpreted, it becomes quite\nclear that if civilization was the taming of beasts, something that is\nnot civilization has begun to assert itself. The liberating of\ncitizens, as it moves to triumphant attainment, must scrap many an\ninstitution, many a habit, and set up the reverse of many a rule of\nconduct. We have indeed reached a new era, one which is not that of\ntaming animals, when young women can--and know that they can--as\nwar-brides strike against the labor of maternity and against the\nforeseen horror of a fate for one's offspring such as they would never\nchoose for the fruit of their love.\n\n\nBut, secondly, close upon the invention of means for controlling the\ntransmission of life has followed the idea that this control shall not\nrest with the individuals most intimately concerned, but with the will\nof the community--of the nation--of federated humanity. If a man has no\nexclusive right to do as he pleases with his power of labor, to\nwithhold it or direct it irrespective of the general welfare and the\nwill of the commonweal, how much less, say the advocates of eugenic\nmarriage, shall men and women be permitted to follow their own whim and\ntheir selfish pleasure as regards the use or waste of the power to\ncommunicate life? This new doctrine that men are only trustees for the\nnation and posterity in their central power to control the future\nquantity and quality of human beings whom they may bring into\nexistence, recognizes no division of society into the tamed and the\ntamers. There is no class suggested of monopolists of social power who\nwill regulate the rest of the community, as the owner of cattle\ncontrols the breeding of them. The general will of the community,\nadministered under diffused public opinion and through the educated\njudgment of the individual himself, will decide. Only in cases of what\nare agreed to be downright crimes will the law step in to condemn and\nprevent, and then only through agents who are directly accountable to\nan enlightened and alert public opinion. The retaining of this new\nmastery of man over the quantity and quality of human life, by the\ncommunal conscience against all monopolists, is the transcendent\nfeature of the new order. But if this be so, then trade, our system of\nproducing and distributing wealth, ceases to be merely a question of\nthe control of labor and becomes a question of the control of the\ntransmission of human life. Such control might have been accounted a\npossible privilege among Virginian breeders of slaves. But so to regard\nit seems monstrous, now that chattel slavery has been universally\ncondemned, thanks to the triumphant levellers of the last hundred\nyears. What is more, all trade is beginning to be regarded as a\nquestion ultimately, not of the manufacture of machines and their\nproducts, nor of the propagation of plants and animals, but of the\nbegetting of spiritual agents, who in their turn are to become the\nmakers and masters of the universe in which they are to live.\n\n\nThe third characteristic event of our century which is to help us to\nslough off civilization, as our ancestors ten thousand years ago rid\nthemselves of the wild-beast features of barbarism and savagery, is the\nawakening of women. Their claim to social initiative and responsibility\nis the extremest possible reach of democratic self-assertion. The\nremarkable peculiarity of their entrance into trade is not, however,\nthat they are women, but that they are the one half of mankind who have\nnever worked for hire, but always from love, and who have desired the\nwage less than the approval of those they served. The morals of trade,\nas it has existed under the relation of master to wage-earner, even the\nethics of trades-unionism, cannot survive the censure of women, who on\nother principles demand for themselves the right of maintenance by the\nstate to protect them in the bearing and rearing of children and the\nmaking of homes, and the nursing of the wounded and the sick. Now that\nwomen no longer allow themselves as social agents to be ignored, they\nwill insist that not only the morals of marriage and of democratic\nrelations must become humane, but that all trade, as well as all\nlegislation, must be guided by the eugenic motive.\n\n\n\n\nXXIII. FOREIGN TRADE THE BEGETTER OF WARS\n\n\nI have presumed to say that modern trade discloses civilization in its\nacutest form. The strict sobriety of this assertion we cannot, perhaps,\nappreciate to the full, unless we note the relation of trade during the\nlast three hundred years to aggressive warfare. There prevails in the\npublic mind the false notion that somehow peace and trade are akin in\nspirit and identical in their interests. This notion has been\nassiduously foisted upon the public by kings of industry and some\nprofessors of sociology, who possibly believe that it is true. But the\nfacts of history prove that every great war during the last three\ncenturies has been undertaken in the service of foreign traders, who\ncall upon their government to back their claims. According to Sir John\nSeeley, the greatest political historian of the British Empire, foreign\ntrade and modern war have always been one and the same thing. Some\nsmall nation-state resented the advent and methods of the foreign\ntraders, and began to prepare for self-defence, asserting that it\nwished to be left alone, and that it meant to defend its own sacred\ntraditions. This the government that backed the traders would not\npermit, and a clash of arms ensued. Or two rival sets of foreigners\nwere jealous of each other in their effort to possess one and the same\nmarket and induced their respective governments to spring at each\nother's throats. Under such circumstances war does not always arise,\nbecause the mere show of vastly superior might is often sufficient to\ncompel immediate submission. Such was the case when the United States\nin 1853 exhibited in the harbors of bewildered and terrified Japan a\nfleet of great steamships. The threatened nation, having admitted no\nforeigners since the Jesuits in the seventeenth century plotted against\nits political independence, and not knowing how to use steam to propel\nengines, saw that there was no alternative to violent conquest by their\nuninvited guests but peaceful submission on their own part.\n\nSuch peace, however, is not the holy thing which some persons declare\nall peace to be. When a man holds up his hands in answer to the\nchallenge of a highway robber, bloodshed is avoided; but the outrage is\nnone the less detestable because perfect quiet prevails. Nor is it the\nkind of social calm which the angels meant when they proclaimed peace\non earth to men of good will. On the contrary, it is that stillness of\nunchallenged iniquity of which our Lord expressed his menacing hate\nwhen He declared that He came not to bring peace but a sword. Trade\nillustrates civilization in its highest degree of intelligence and\nelaboration; and foreign trade is only trade in its widest\ntransactions. But foreign trade being the cause of all war, the only\nway to end warfare is to displace civilization by a system of wealth\nproduced and distributed under communal control. Then commerce will no\nlonger be inspired by the financial interest of private investors, but\nby the total welfare of the whole people of the nation. But I have\ntouched upon the identity of war and trade only to show their vital\nconnection with civilization as a whole.\n\n\n\n\nXXIV. THE OPPOSITE OF A \"RETURN TO NATURE\"\n\n\nCivilization is still advancing by leaps and bounds. Nevertheless, at\nthe same time, with a greater acceleration of development, the men are\ncheckmating the master and transferring control and initiative to the\nwill of the commonwealth. At least, not otherwise am I able to\ninterpret the new deference for nationality which has been aroused in\nprotest against aggressive militarism; nor the kind of industrial\nlegislation that has been enacted during the last decade in California\nand other western states, in New Zealand and Australia, and even in\nItaly and England. It all means that the new inventions, although at\nfirst seized upon by monopolists, are seen to be such as to provide\nchannels through which the pent-up instincts and hopes of the masses\ncan act with concerted power. It means that also political machinery is\nbeing devised for securing the public welfare and protecting\nopportunities for individual genius and talent. No man asks for more.\nThe world over we have reached the threshold of collective democracy,\nwherein the consuming of material wealth will be shared with\napproximate equality and wherein social control will be retained by the\ncollective will, to safeguard individual initiative, and will be\nadministered by public servants who have proved their superior ability,\nbut who remain subject to almost instantaneous recall.\n\nSuch a substitute for civilization, however, is the opposite of a\nreturn to the individualism of Nature or to a primeval communism. It\npresupposes the highest mastery of man over matter and social unity\namong all mankind co-operating as nation-states and federations of\nstates.\n\nAs regards external government and law, it is the antithesis of Mr.\nCarpenter's proposal that they should disappear, because they are the\ntravesty of inward government and order. On the contrary, I hope that\nexternal government, animated by the general will of a social\ndemocratic commonwealth and vested in representatives sensitively\naccountable to an alert and intelligent public opinion, will appear to\nmy listeners not as a travesty, but as the very incarnation of that\ninward government and order which every individual man must feel to be\nthe law of his own being unless he has lost his manhood's centrality. A\ncrushing indictment of Mr. Carpenter's modern movement back to Nature\nis to be found in the fact that it has declined instead of advancing\nduring the twenty-six years since he wrote. Probably fewer persons in\nEngland preach salvation by sandals and sunbaths to-day than did a\nquarter of a century ago, while the sandals themselves and sunbaths\nhave become but items among the general products of industry and\ngovernmental hygiene. The sunbath is only one of the many remedies\nprescribed to the poor by doctors impanelled by the British state, and\nthe sandals are better made by machinery than by the hands of poetic\nhermits.\n\nBut while the vision of philosophical anarchy has been fading away,\nwhole nations on a gigantic scale have been subjecting the power of\ntrusts and monopolies to the general will of the community. In America\nyou have changed your federal law and many of your state constitutions,\nin order that the right of the common will to dictate may be\nunquestioned, and that no occasion for lawless violence need ever arise\nthrough any legal barrier to the full assertion of the mind of the\ncommon life.\n\nSo in every particular of his cure for civilization Mr. Carpenter's\nworship of savagery and barbarism is being rejected as fantastic. We\nmay return to uncooked fruits and grains. But what a task for the most\nhighly developed industrial state, to raise and distribute an adequate\nsupply of grapes, apples, and nuts the year round for the 1,000,000,000\ninhabitants of the globe! What a call for many wizards of California to\nproduce new species of luscious edibles! It would seem to me that the\ncurse of civilization has lain in the direction of too little of either\ncooked or uncooked food, instead of too much. If the common people are\nto come into their own, trade in every necessity and luxury must be\nmore highly integrated. The difference of the new era as regards\nforeign commerce will chiefly be that nations as a whole by their\ngovernments will conduct it instead of private traders. In other words,\nforeign trade will be nationalized, in the way that social democrats\nhave long demanded that land and capital should be. The community will\nown and control it through state agents for the common welfare. Nothing\nof good which civilization has brought forth will be lost, nor will the\norganization of wealth be relaxed.\n\nMachinery will be multiplied a thousandfold. Like the human body\nitself, social life must become as complex as it can without losing its\ncentrality. Be it remembered that the truly simple life is not gained\nby meagreness of possessions and interests, but by singleness of aim\ncontrolling a seemingly infinite number of detailed means. But this\nunity dominating a multiplicity of interests is attainable only through\nthe entire mechanism of external government. And again, as the man\nresides in all the organs of the body, but is himself no organ, and as\nby the central unity of his life-energy is able to rush the white\ncorpuscles to any part that is wounded or poisoned, so the general\nwill, the community-self of the social democratic state, is beginning\nto direct all the healing agencies in the body politic to the rescue of\nthe unfortunate. Such beneficence and benevolence, systematized and\nalert, is more than civilization. It is Christianity, it is the doing\nunto the least of one's fellow-men what self-interest prompts one never\nto do; but its power is equal to the redemptive goodness that inspires\nit. In motive and method it is not business, it is different from\ntrade; for it is a progeny of pity. But nevertheless, it is socialized\nwealth and applied science and politics. It is government by the\ngoverned.\n\n\nWhen civilization has been superseded by this democratic process, which\nin our century is advancing at such rapid gait, there will surely be in\nthe sphere of religion no more return to Nature than in that of\neconomics. There will be no more the worship of any one instinct or\norgan, or any external object or agent. How could Carpenter have so far\nforgotten his own definition of health as to applaud the primitive\nritualistic worship of the glories of the human body and the procession\nof the stars? That ritual was itself the symptom of the break-up of\nman's character into multiplicity, and the insubordination of specific\norgans. Surely when man has gained centrality of health, he will\nworship the unifying will which is dominant whenever health prevails.\nHe will adore the spirit which makes the many one. But men will never\ngain that centrality of health until they have established this worship\nof the one heart that beats in every human breast and, being inspired\nwith religious passion for it, have brought the entire economic order\ninto conformity with its behests.\n\n\n_The Riverside Press_\nCAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS\nU . S . A","title":"Is civilization a disease?","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":16208}