{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_4225/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_4225","id":"gutenberg_4225","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4225","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Conduct of life"],"text":"Produced by Rebecca Trump, and Sue Asscher\n\n\n\n\n\nFIRST AND LAST THINGS\n\nA CONFESSION OF FAITH AND RULE OF LIFE\n\n\nBy H.G. Wells\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n\nINTRODUCTION.\n\n\nBOOK 1. METAPHYSICS.\n\nCHAPTER 1.1. THE NECESSITY FOR METAPHYSICS.\n\nCHAPTER 1.2. THE RESUMPTION OF METAPHYSICAL ENQUIRY.\n\nCHAPTER 1.3. THE WORLD OF FACT.\n\nCHAPTER 1.4. SCEPTICISM OF THE INSTRUMENT.\n\nCHAPTER 1.5. THE CLASSIFICATORY ASSUMPTION.\n\nCHAPTER 1.6. EMPTY TERMS.\n\nCHAPTER 1.7. NEGATIVE TERMS.\n\nCHAPTER 1.8. LOGIC STATIC AND LIFE KINETIC.\n\nCHAPTER 1.9. PLANES AND DIALECTS OF THOUGHT.\n\nCHAPTER 1.10. PRACTICAL CONCLUSIONS FROM THESE CONSIDERATIONS.\n\nCHAPTER 1.11. BELIEFS.\n\nCHAPTER 1.12. SUMMARY.\n\n\nBOOK 2. OF BELIEFS.\n\nCHAPTER 2.1. MY PRIMARY ACT OF FAITH.\n\nCHAPTER 2.2. ON USING THE NAME OF GOD.\n\nCHAPTER 2.3. FREE WILL AND PREDESTINATION.\n\nCHAPTER 2.4. A PICTURE OF THE WORLD OF MEN.\n\nCHAPTER 2.5. THE PROBLEM OF MOTIVES THE REAL PROBLEM OF LIFE.\n\nCHAPTER 2.6. A REVIEW OF MOTIVES.\n\nCHAPTER 2.7. THE SYNTHETIC MOTIVE.\n\nCHAPTER 2.8. THE BEING OF MANKIND.\n\nCHAPTER 2.9. INDIVIDUALITY AN INTERLUDE.\n\nCHAPTER 2.10. THE MYSTIC ELEMENT.\n\nCHAPTER 2.11. THE SYNTHESIS.\n\nCHAPTER 2.12. OF PERSONAL IMMORTALITY.\n\nCHAPTER 2.13. A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY.\n\nCHAPTER 2.14. OF OTHER RELIGIONS.\n\nCHAPTER 2.15.\n\n\nBOOK 3. OF GENERAL CONDUCT.\n\nCHAPTER 3.1. CONDUCT FOLLOWS FROM BELIEF.\n\nCHAPTER 3.2. WHAT IS GOOD?\n\nCHAPTER 3.3. SOCIALISM.\n\nCHAPTER 3.4. A CRITICISM OF CERTAIN FORMS OF SOCIALISM.\n\nCHAPTER 3.5. HATE AND LOVE.\n\nCHAPTER 3.6. THE PRELIMINARY SOCIAL DUTY.\n\nCHAPTER 3.7. WRONG WAYS OF LIVING.\n\nCHAPTER 3.8. SOCIAL PARASITISM AND CONTEMPORARY INJUSTICES.\n\nCHAPTER 3.9. THE CASE OF THE WIFE AND MOTHER.\n\nCHAPTER 3.10. ASSOCIATIONS.\n\nCHAPTER 3.11. OF AN ORGANIZED BROTHERHOOD.\n\nCHAPTER 3.12. CONCERNING NEW STARTS AND NEW RELIGIONS.\n\nCHAPTER 3.13. THE IDEA OF THE CHURCH.\n\nCHAPTER 3.14. OF SECESSION.\n\nCHAPTER 3.15. A DILEMMA.\n\nCHAPTER 3.16. A COMMENT.\n\nCHAPTER 3.17. WAR.\n\nCHAPTER 3.18. WAR AND COMPETITION.\n\nCHAPTER 3.19. MODERN WAR.\n\nCHAPTER 3.20. OF ABSTINENCES AND DISCIPLINES.\n\nCHAPTER 3.21. ON FORGETTING, AND THE NEED OF PRAYER, READING,\n              DISCUSSION AND WORSHIP.\n\nCHAPTER 3.22. DEMOCRACY AND ARISTOCRACY.\n\nCHAPTER 3.23. ON DEBTS OF HONOUR.\n\nCHAPTER 3.24. THE IDEA OF JUSTICE.\n\nCHAPTER 3.25. OF LOVE AND JUSTICE.\n\nCHAPTER 3.26. THE WEAKNESS OF IMMATURITY.\n\nCHAPTER 3.27. POSSIBILITY OF A NEW ETIQUETTE.\n\nCHAPTER 3.28. SEX.\n\nCHAPTER 3.29. THE INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE.\n\nCHAPTER 3.30. CONDUCT IN RELATION TO THE THING THAT IS.\n\nCHAPTER 3.31. CONDUCT TOWARDS TRANSGRESSORS.\n\n\nBOOK 4. SOME PERSONAL THINGS.\n\nCHAPTER 4.1. PERSONAL LOVE AND LIFE.\n\nCHAPTER 4.2. THE NATURE OF LOVE.\n\nCHAPTER 4.3. THE WILL TO LOVE.\n\nCHAPTER 4.4. LOVE AND DEATH.\n\nCHAPTER 4.5. THE CONSOLATION OF FAILURE.\n\nCHAPTER 4.6. THE LAST CONFESSION.\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION.\n\nRecently I set myself to put down what I believe. I did this with no\nidea of making a book, but at the suggestion of a friend and to interest\na number of friends with whom I was associated. We were all, we found,\nextremely uncertain in our outlook upon life, about our religious\nfeelings and in our ideas of right and wrong. And yet we reckoned\nourselves people of the educated class and some of us talk and lecture\nand write with considerable confidence. We thought it would be of very\ngreat interest to ourselves and each other if we made some sort of frank\nmutual confession. We arranged to hold a series of meetings in which\nfirst one and then another explained the faith, so far as he understood\nit, that was in him. We astonished ourselves and our hearers by the\nirregular and fragmentary nature of the creeds we produced, clotted at\none point, inconsecutive at another, inconsistent and unconvincing to a\nquite unexpected degree. It would not be difficult to caricature one of\nthose meetings; the lecturer floundering about with an air of exquisite\nillumination, the audience attentive with an expression of thwarted\nedification upon its various brows. For my own part I grew so interested\nin planning my lecture and in joining up point and point, that my notes\nsoon outran the possibilities of the hour or so of meeting for which I\nwas preparing them. The meeting got only a few fragments of what I had\nto say, and made what it could of them. And after that was over I let\nmyself loose from limits of time and length altogether and have expanded\nthese memoranda into a book.\n\nIt is as it stands now the frank confession of what one man of the early\nTwentieth Century has found in life and himself, a confession just as\nfrank as the limitations of his character permit; it is his metaphysics,\nhis religion, his moral standards, his uncertainties and the expedients\nwith which he has met them. On every one of these departments and\naspects I write--how shall I put it?--as an amateur. In every section of\nmy subject there are men not only of far greater intellectual power and\nenergy than I, but who have devoted their whole lives to the sustained\nanalysis of this or that among the questions I discuss, and there is a\nliterature so enormous in the aggregate that only a specialist scholar\ncould hope to know it. I have not been unmindful of these professors\nand this literature; I have taken such opportunities as I have found, to\ntest my propositions by them. But I feel that such apology as one\nmakes for amateurishness in this field has a lesser quality of\nself-condemnation than if one were dealing with narrower, more defined\nand fact-laden matters. There is more excuse for one here than for the\namateur maker of chemical theories, or the man who evolves a system of\nsurgery in his leisure. These things, chemistry, surgery and so forth,\nwe may take on the reputation of an expert, but our own fundamental\nbeliefs, our rules of conduct, we must all make for ourselves. We may\nlisten and read, but the views of others we cannot take on credit; we\nmust rethink them and \u201cmake them our own.\u201d And we cannot do without\nfundamental beliefs, explicit or implicit. The bulk of men are obliged\nto be amateur philosophers,--all men indeed who are not specialized\nstudents of philosophical subjects,--even if their philosophical\nenterprise goes no further than prompt recognition of and submission to\nAuthority.\n\nAnd it is not only the claim of the specialist that I would repudiate.\nPeople are too apt to suppose that in order to discuss morals a man must\nhave exceptional moral gifts. I would dispute that naive supposition.\nI am an ingenuous enquirer with, I think, some capacity for religious\nfeeling, but neither a prophet nor a saint. On the whole I should be\ninclined to classify myself as a bad man rather than a good; not indeed\nas any sort of picturesque scoundrel or non-moral expert, but as\na person frequently irritable, ungenerous and forgetful, and\nintermittently and in small but definite ways bad. One thing I claim, I\nhave got my beliefs and theories out of my life and not fitted them to\nits circumstances. As often as not I have learnt good by the method of\ndifference; by the taste of the alternative. I tell this faith I hold as\nI hold it and I sketch out the principles by which I am generally trying\nto direct my life at the present time, because it interests me to do so\nand I think it may interest a certain number of similarly constituted\npeople. I am not teaching. How far I succeed or fail in that private and\npersonal attempt to behave well, has nothing to do with the matter of\nthis book. That is another story, a reserved and private affair. I offer\nsimply intellectual experiences and ideas.\n\nIt will be necessary to take up the most abstract of these questions of\nbelief first, the metaphysical questions. It may be that to many readers\nthe opening sections may seem the driest and least attractive. But I\nwould ask them to begin at the beginning and read straight on, because\nmuch that follows this metaphysical book cannot be appreciated at its\nproper value without a grasp of these preliminaries.\n\n\n\n\nBOOK THE FIRST. -- METAPHYSICS.\n\n\n\n\n1.1. THE NECESSITY FOR METAPHYSICS.\n\nAs a preliminary to that experiment in mutual confession from which this\nbook arose, I found it necessary to consider and state certain truths\nabout the nature of knowledge, about the meaning of truth and the value\nof words, that is to say I found I had to begin by being metaphysical.\nIn writing out these notes now I think it is well that I should state\njust how important I think this metaphysical prelude is.\n\nThere is a popular prejudice against metaphysics as something at once\ndifficult and fruitless, as an idle system of enquiries remote from any\nhuman interest. I suppose this odd misconception arose from the vulgar\npretensions of the learned, from their appeal to ancient names and\ntheir quotations in unfamiliar tongues, and from the easy fall into\ntechnicality of men struggling to be explicit where a high degree of\nexplicitness is impossible. But it needs erudition and accumulated\nand alien literature to make metaphysics obscure, and some of the most\nfruitful and able metaphysical discussion in the world was conducted by\na number of unhampered men in small Greek cities, who knew no language\nbut their own and had scarcely a technical term. The true metaphysician\nis after all only a person who says, \u201cNow let us take a thought for a\nmoment before we fall into a discussion of the broad questions of life,\nlest we rush hastily into impossible and needless conflict. What is the\nexact value of these thoughts we are thinking and these words we are\nusing?\u201d He wants to take thought about thought. Those other ardent\nspirits on the contrary, want to plunge into action or controversy\nor belief without taking thought; they feel that there is not time to\nexamine thought. \u201cWhile you think,\u201d they say, \u201cthe house is burning.\u201d\n They are the kin of those who rush and struggle and make panics in\ntheatre fires.\n\nNow it seems to me that most of the troubles of humanity are really\nmisunderstandings. Men\u2019s compositions and characters are, I think, more\nsimilar than their views, and if they had not needlessly different modes\nof expression upon many broad issues, they would be practically at one\nupon a hundred matters where now they widely differ.\n\nMost of the great controversies of the world, most of the wide religious\ndifferences that keep men apart, arise from this: from differences in\ntheir way of thinking. Men imagine they stand on the same ground and\nmean the same thing by the same words, whereas they stand on slightly\ndifferent grounds, use different terms for the same thing and express\nthe same thing in different words. Logomachies, conflicts about\nwords,--into such death-traps of effort those ardent spirits run and\nperish.\n\nThis is now almost a commonplace; it has been said before by numberless\npeople. It has been said before by numberless people, but it seems to\nme it has been realised by very few--and until it is realised to the\nfullest extent, we shall continue to live at intellectual cross purposes\nand waste the forces of our species needlessly and abundantly.\n\nThis persuasion is a very important thing in my mind.\n\nI think that the time has come when the human mind must take up\nmetaphysical discussion again--when it must resume those subtle but\nnecessary and unavoidable problems that it dropped unsolved at the close\nof the period of Greek freedom, when it must get to a common and general\nunderstanding upon what its ideas of truth, good, and beauty amount to,\nand upon the relation of the name to the thing, and of the relation of\none mind to another mind in the matter of resemblance and the matter of\ndifference--upon all those issues the young science student is as apt to\ndismiss as Rot, and the young classical student as Gas, and the austere\nstudent of the science of Economics as Theorising, unsuitable for his\nmethods of research.\n\nIn our achievement of understandings in the place of these evasions\nabout fundamental things lies the road, I believe, along which the human\nmind can escape, if ever it is to escape, from the confusion of purposes\nthat distracts it at the present time.\n\n\n\n\n\n1.2. THE RESUMPTION OF METAPHYSICAL ENQUIRY.\n\nIt seems to me that the Greek mind up to the disaster of the Macedonian\nConquest was elaborately and discursively discussing these questions of\nthe forms and methods of thought and that the discussion was abruptly\nclosed and not naturally concluded, summed up hastily as it were, in the\ncareer and lecturings of Aristotle.\n\nSince then the world never effectually reopened these questions until\nthe modern period. It went on from Plato and Aristotle just as the\nart of the seventeenth and eighteenth century went on from Raphael and\nMichael Angelo. Effectual criticism was absolutely silent until\nthe Renaissance, and then for a time was but a matter of scattered\nutterances having only the slightest collective effect. In the past\nhalf century there has begun a more systematic critical movement in the\ngeneral mind, a movement analogous to the Pre-Raphaelite movement in\nart--a Pre-Aristotelian movement, a scepticism about things supposed to\nbe settled for all time, a resumed inquiry into the fundamental laws\nof thought, a harking back to positions of the older philosophers and\nparticularly to Heraclitus, so far as the surviving fragments of his\nteaching enable one to understand him, and a new forward movement from\nthat recovered ground.\n\n\n\n\n\n1.3. THE WORLD OF FACT.\n\nNecessarily when one begins an inquiry into the fundamental nature\nof oneself and one\u2019s mind and its processes, one is forced into\nautobiography. I begin by asking how the conscious mind with which I am\nprone to identify myself, began.\n\nIt presents itself to me as a history of a perception of the world\nof facts opening out from an accidental centre at which I happened to\nbegin.\n\nI do not attempt to define this word fact. Fact expresses for me\nsomething in its nature primary and unanalyzable. I start from that. I\ntake as a typical statement of fact that I sit here at my desk writing\nwith a fountain pen on a pad of ruled scribbling paper, that the\nsunlight falls upon me and throws the shadow of my window mullion across\nthe page, that Peter, my cat, sleeps on the window-seat close at hand\nand that this agate paper-weight with the silver top that once was\nHenley\u2019s holds my loose memoranda together. Outside is a patch of lawn\nand then a fringe of winter-bitten iris leaves and then the sea, greatly\nwrinkled and astir under the south-west wind. There is a boat going out\nwhich I think may be Jim Pain\u2019s, but of that I cannot be sure...\n\nThese are statements of a certain quality, a quality that extends\nthrough a huge universe in which I find myself placed.\n\nI try to recall how this world of fact arose in my mind. It began with a\nsuccession of limited immediate scenes and of certain minutely perceived\npersons; I recall an underground kitchen with a drawered table, a window\nlooking up at a grating, a back yard in which, growing out by a dustbin,\nwas a grape-vine; a red-papered room with a bookcase over my father\u2019s\nshop, the dusty aisles and fixtures, the regiments of wine-glasses and\ntumblers, the rows of hanging mugs and jugs, the towering edifices\nof jam-pots, the tea and dinner and toilet sets in that emporium, its\nbrighter side of cricket goods, of pads and balls and stumps. Out of the\nwindow one peeped at the more exterior world, the High Street in front,\nthe tailor\u2019s garden, the butcher\u2019s yard, the churchyard and Bromley\nchurch tower behind; and one was taken upon expeditions to fields\nand open places. This limited world was peopled with certain familiar\npresences, mother and father, two brothers, the evasive but interesting\ncat, and by intermittent people of a livelier but more transient\ninterest, customers and callers.\n\nSuch was my opening world of fact, and each day it enlarged and widened\nand had more things added to it. I had soon won my way to speech and was\nhearing of facts beyond my visible world of fact. Presently I was at a\nDame\u2019s school and learning to read.\n\nFrom the centre of that little world as primary, as the initiatory\nmaterial, my perception of the world of fact widened and widened, by new\nsights and sounds, by reading and hearing descriptions and histories, by\nguesses and inferences; my curiosity and interest, my appetite for fact,\ngrew by what it fed upon, I carried on my expansion of the world of fact\nuntil it took me through the mineral and fossil galleries of the\nNatural History Museum, through the geological drawers of the College of\nScience, through a year of dissection and some weeks at the astronomical\ntelescope. So I built up my conceptions of a real world out of facts\nobserved and out of inferences of a nature akin to fact, of a world\nimmense and enduring, receding interminably into space and time. In that\nI found myself placed, a creature relatively infinitesimal, needing and\nstruggling. It was clear to me, by a hundred considerations, that I in\nmy body upon this planet Earth, was the outcome of countless generations\nof conflict and begetting, the creature of natural selection, the heir\nof good and bad engendered in that struggle.\n\nSo my world of fact shaped itself. I find it altogether impossible to\nquestion or doubt that world of fact. Particular facts one may question\nas facts. For instance, I think I see an unseasonable yellow wallflower\nfrom my windows, but you may dispute that and show that it is only a\nbroken end of iris leaf accidentally lit to yellow. That is merely a\nsubstitution of fact for fact. One may doubt whether one is perceiving\nor remembering or telling facts clearly, but the persuasion that there\nare facts, independent of one\u2019s interpretations and obdurate to one\u2019s\nwill, remains invincible.\n\n\n\n\n\n1.4. SCEPTICISM OF THE INSTRUMENT.\n\nAt first I took the world of fact as being exactly as I perceived it.\nI believed my eyes. Seeing was believing, I thought. Still more did I\nbelieve my reasoning. It was only slowly that I began to suspect that\nthe world of fact could be anything different from the clear picture it\nmade upon my mind.\n\nI realised the inadequacy of the senses first. Into that I will not\nenter here. Any proper text book of physiology or psychology will supply\na number of instances of the habitual deceptions of sight and touch and\nhearing. I came upon these things in my reading, in the laboratory, with\nmicroscope or telescope, lived with them as constant difficulties. I\nwill only instance one trifling case of visual deception in order to\nlead to my next question. One draws two lines strictly parallel; so\n\n(two horizontal and parallel lines.)\n\nOblique to them one draws a series of lines; so\n\n(a series of parallel and closely-spaced lines drawn through each\nhorizontal line, one series (top) sloping to the right, the other\n(bottom) to the left)\n\nand instantly the parallelism seems to be disturbed. If the second\nfigure is presented to any one without sufficient science to understand\nthis delusion, the impression is created that these lines converge to\nthe right and diverge to the left. The vision is deceived in its mental\nfactor and judges wrongly of the thing seen.\n\nIn this case we are able to measure the distance of the lines, to find\nhow the main lines looked before the cross ones were drawn, to bring\nthe deception up against fact of a different sort and so correct the\nmistake. If the ignorant observer were unable to do that, he might\nremain permanently under the impression that the main lines were out of\nparallelism. And all the infirmities of eye and ear, touch and taste,\nare discovered and checked by the fact that the erroneous impressions\npresently strike against fact and discover an incompatibility with it.\nIf they did not we should never have discovered them. If on the other\nhand they are so incompatible with fact as to endanger the lives of\nthe beings labouring under such infirmities, they would tend to be\neliminated from among our defects.\n\nThe presumption to which biological science brings one is that the\nsenses and mind will work as well as the survival of the species may\nrequire, but that they will not work so very much better. There is no\nground in matter-of-fact experience for assuming that there is any more\ninevitable certitude about purely intellectual operations than there\nis about sensory perceptions. The mind of a man may be primarily only a\nfood-seeking, danger-avoiding, mate-finding instrument, just as the mind\nof a dog is, just as the nose of a dog is, or the snout of a pig.\n\nYou see the strong preparatory reason there is in this view of life for\nentertaining the suppositions that:--\n\nThe senses seem surer than they are.\n\nThe thinking mind seems clearer than it is and is more positive than it\nought to be.\n\nThe world of fact is not what it appears to be.\n\n\n\n\n\n1.5. THE CLASSIFICATORY ASSUMPTION.\n\nAfter I had studied science and particularly biological science for some\nyears, I became a teacher in a school for boys. I found it necessary\nto supplement my untutored conception of teaching method by a more\nsystematic knowledge of its principles and methods, and I took the\ncourses for the diplomas of Licentiate and Fellow of the London College\nof Preceptors which happened to be convenient for me. These courses\nincluded some of the more elementary aspects of psychology and logic\nand set me thinking and reading further. From the first, Logic as it was\npresented to me impressed me as a system of ideas and methods remote and\nsecluded from the world of fact in which I lived and with which I had to\ndeal. As it came to me in the ordinary textbooks, it presented itself\nas the science of inference using the syllogism as its principal\ninstrument. Now I was first struck by the fact that while my teachers in\nLogic seemed to be assuring me I always thought in this form:--\n\n    \u201cM is P,\n     S is M,\n     S is P,\u201d\n\nthe method of my reasoning was almost always in this form:--\n\n    \u201cS1 is more or less P,\n     S2 is very similar to S1,\n     S2 is very probably but not certainly more or less P.\n     Let us go on that assumption and see how it works.\u201d\n\nThat is to say, I was constantly reasoning by analogy and applying\nverification. So far from using the syllogistic form confidently, I\nhabitually distrusted it as anything more than a test of consistency\nin statement. But I found the textbooks of logic disposed to ignore my\ncustomary method of reasoning altogether or to recognise it only where\nS1 and S2 could be lumped together under a common name. Then they put it\nsomething after this form as Induction:--\n\n    \u201cS1, S2, S3, and S4 are P\n     S1 + S2 + S3 + S4 +... are all S\n     All S is P.\u201d\n\nI looked into the laws of thought and into the postulates upon which the\nsyllogistic logic is based, and it slowly became clear to me that from\nmy point of view, the point of view of one who seeks truth and reality,\nlogic assumed a belief in the objective reality of classification of\nwhich my studies in biology and mineralogy had largely disabused me.\nLogic, it seemed to me, had taken a common innate error of the mind and\nhad emphasised it in order to develop a system of reasoning that should\nbe exact in its processes. I turned my attention to the examination\nof that. For in common with the general run of men I had supposed that\nlogic professed to supply a trustworthy science and method for the\ninvestigation and expression of reality.\n\nA mind nourished on anatomical study is of course permeated with the\nsuggestion of the vagueness and instability of biological species.\nA biological species is quite obviously a great number of unique\nindividuals which is separable from other biological species only by\nthe fact that an enormous number of other linking individuals are\ninaccessible in time--are in other words dead and gone--and each\nnew individual in that species does, in the distinction of its own\nindividuality, break away in however infinitesimal degree from the\nprevious average properties of the species. There is no property of any\nspecies, even the properties that constitute the specific definition,\nthat is not a matter of more or less.\n\nIf, for example, as species be distinguished by a single large red spot\non the back, you will find if you go over a great number of specimens\nthat red spot shrinking here to nothing, expanding there to a more\ngeneral redness, weakening to pink, deepening to russet and brown,\nshading into crimson, and so on and so on. And this is true not only of\nbiological species. It is true of the mineral specimens constituting a\nmineral species, and I remember as a constant refrain in the lectures of\nProfessor Judd upon rock classification, the words, \u201cthey pass into one\nanother by insensible gradations.\u201d It is true, I hold, of all things.\n\nYou will think perhaps of atoms of the elements as instances of\nidentically similar things, but these are things not of experience\nbut of theory, and there is not a phenomenon in chemistry that is not\nequally well explained on the supposition that it is merely the immense\nquantities of atoms necessarily taken in any experiment that masks by\nthe operation of the law of averages the fact that each atom also has\nits unique quality, its special individual difference.\n\nThis ideal of uniqueness in all individuals is not only true of the\nclassifications of material science; it is true and still more evidently\ntrue of the species of common thought; it is true of common terms. Take\nthe word \u201cChair.\u201d When one says chair, one thinks vaguely of an\naverage chair. But collect individual instances; think of armchairs and\nreading-chairs and dining-room chairs, and kitchen chairs, chairs that\npass into benches, chairs that cross the boundary and become settees,\ndentist\u2019s chairs, thrones, opera stalls, seats of all sorts, those\nmiraculous fungoid growths that cumber the floor of the Arts and Crafts\nexhibition, and you will perceive what a lax bundle in fact is this\nsimple straightforward term. In co-operation with an intelligent joiner\nI would undertake to defeat any definition of chair or chairishness that\nyou gave me. Chairs just as much as individual organisms, just as much\nas mineral and rock specimens, are unique things--if you know them\nwell enough you will find an individual difference even in a set of\nmachine-made chairs--and it is only because we do not possess minds\nof unlimited capacity, because our brain has only a limited number\nof pigeon-holes for our correspondence with an unlimited universe of\nobjective uniques, that we have to delude ourselves into the belief that\nthere is a chairishness in this species common to and distinctive of all\nchairs.\n\nClassification and number, which in truth ignore the fine differences of\nobjective realities, have in the past of human thought been imposed upon\nthings...\n\nGreek thought impresses me as being over much obsessed by an objective\ntreatment of certain necessary preliminary conditions of human\nthought--number and definition and class and abstract form! But these\nthings,--number, definition, class and abstract form,--I hold, are\nmerely unavoidable conditions of mental activity--regrettable conditions\nrather than essential facts. THE FORCEPS OF OUR MINDS ARE CLUMSY FORCEPS\nAND CRUSH THE TRUTH A LITTLE IN TAKING HOLD OF IT...\n\nLet me give you a rough figure of what I am trying to convey in this\nfirst attack upon the philosophical validity of general terms. You have\nseen the result of those various methods of black and white reproduction\nthat involve the use of a rectangular net. You know the sort of process\npicture I mean--it used to be employed very frequently in reproducing\nphotographs. At a little distance you really seem to have a faithful\nreproduction of the original picture, but when you peer closely you\nfind not the unique form and masses of the original, but a multitude of\nlittle rectangles, uniform in shape and size. The more earnestly you go\ninto the thing, the closelier you look, the more the picture is lost\nin reticulations. I submit, the world of reasoned inquiry has a very\nsimilar relation to the world of fact. For the rough purposes of every\nday the network picture will do, but the finer your purpose the less it\nwill serve, and for an ideally fine purpose, for absolute and general\nknowledge that will be as true for a man at a distance with a telescope\nas for a man with a microscope, it will not serve at all.\n\nIt is true you can make your net of logical interpretation finer and\nfiner, you can fine your classification more and more--up to a certain\nlimit. But essentially you are working in limits, and as you come\ncloser, as you look at finer and subtler things, as you leave the\npractical purpose for which the method exists, the element of error\nincreases. Every species is vague, every term goes cloudy at its edges;\nand so in my way of thinking, relentless logic is only another name for\na stupidity--for a sort of intellectual pigheadedness. If you push\na philosophical or metaphysical inquiry through a series of valid\nsyllogisms--never committing any generally recognised fallacy--you\nnevertheless leave behind you at each step a certain rubbing and\nmarginal loss of objective truth, and you get deflections that are\ndifficult to trace at each phase in the process. Every species waggles\nabout in its definition, every tool is a little loose in its handle,\nevery scale has its individual error. So long as you are reasoning for\npractical purposes about finite things of experience you can every now\nand then check your process and correct your adjustments. But not when\nyou make what are called philosophical and theological inquiries, when\nyou turn your implement towards the final absolute truth of things.\n\nThis real vagueness of class terms is equally true whether we consider\nthose terms used extensively or intensively, that is to say whether\nin relation to all the members of the species or in relation to an\nimaginary typical specimen. The logician begins by declaring that S\nis either P or not P. In the world of fact it is the rarest thing to\nencounter this absolute alternative; S1 is pink, but S2 is pinker, S3 is\nscarcely pink at all, and one is in doubt whether S4 is not properly to\nbe called scarlet. The finest type specimen you can find simply has the\ncharacteristic quality a little more rather than a little less. The neat\nlittle circles the logician uses to convey his idea of P or not P to the\nstudent are just pictures of boundaries in his mind, exaggerations of\na natural mental tendency. They are required for the purposes of his\nscience, but they are departures from the nature of fact.\n\n\n\n\n\n1.6. EMPTY TERMS.\n\nClasses in logic are not only represented by circles with a hard firm\noutline, whereas in fact they have no such definite limits, but also\nthere is a constant disposition to think of all names as if they\nrepresented positive classes. With words just as with numbers and\nabstract forms there have been definite phases of human development.\nThere was with regard to number, the phase when man could barely count\nat all, or counted in perfect good faith and sanity upon his fingers.\nThen there was the phase when he struggled with the development of\nnumber, when he began to elaborate all sorts of ideas about numbers,\nuntil at last he developed complex superstitions about perfect numbers\nand imperfect numbers, about threes and sevens and the like. The same\nwas the case with abstract forms; and even to-day we are scarcely more\nthan heads out of the vast subtle muddle of thinking about spheres\nand ideally perfect forms and so on, that was the price of this little\nnecessary step to clear thinking. How large a part numerical and\ngeometrical magic, numerical and geometrical philosophy have played in\nthe history of the mind! And the whole apparatus of language and mental\ncommunication is beset with like dangers. The language of the savage is\nI suppose purely positive; the thing has a name, the name has a thing.\nThis indeed is the tradition of language, and even to-day, we, when\nwe hear a name are predisposed--and sometimes it is a very vicious\ndisposition--to imagine forthwith something answering to the name. WE\nARE DISPOSED, AS AN INCURABLE MENTAL VICE, TO ACCUMULATE INTENSION IN\nTERMS. If I say to you Wodget or Crump, you find yourself passing over\nthe fact that these are nothings, these are, so to speak mere blankety\nblanks, and trying to think what sort of thing a Wodget or a Crump may\nbe. You find yourself led insensibly by subtle associations of sound and\nideas to giving these blank terms attributes.\n\nNow this is true not only of quite empty terms but of terms that carry\na meaning. It is a mental necessity that we should make classes and use\ngeneral terms, and as soon as we do that we fall into immediate danger\nof unjustifiably increasing the intension of these terms. You will find\na large proportion of human prejudice and misunderstanding arises from\nthis universal proclivity.\n\n\n\n\n\n1.7. NEGATIVE TERMS.\n\nThere is a particular sort of empty terms that has been and is\nconspicuously dangerous to the thinker, the class of negative terms. The\nnegative term is in plain fact just nothing; \u201cNot-A\u201d is the absence\nof any trace of the quality that constitutes A, it is the rest of\neverything for ever. But there seems to be a real bias in the mind\ntowards regarding \u201cNot-A\u201d as a thing mysteriously in the nature of A, as\nthough \u201cNot-A\u201d and A were species of the same genus. When one speaks of\nNot-pink one is apt to think of green things and yellow things and to\nignore anger or abstract nouns or the sound of thunder. And logicians,\nfollowing the normal bias of the mind, do actually present A and not-A\nin this sort of diagram:--\n\n(the letter A inside a circular boundary, together with the words Not A,\nall inside a bigger circular boundary.)\n\nignoring altogether the difficult case of the space in which these words\nare printed. Obviously the diagram that comes nearer experienced fact\nis:--\n\n(the word Not, followed by the letter A inside a circular boundary,\nfollowed by the letter A)\n\nwith no outer boundary. But the logician finds it necessary for his\nprocesses to present that outer Not-A as bounded (Vide e.g. Kayne\u2019s\n\u201cFormal Logic\u201d re Euler\u2019s diagrams and Immediate Inferences.), and to\nspeak of the total area of A and Not-A as the Universe of Discourse; and\nthe metaphysician and the commonsense thinker alike fall far too\nreadily into the belief that this convention of method is an adequate\nrepresentation of fact.\n\nLet me try and express how in my mind this matter of negative terms has\nshaped itself. I think of something which I may perhaps best describe\nas being off the stage or out of court, or as the Void without\nImplications, or as Nothingness, or as Outer Darkness. This is a sort of\nhypothetical Beyond to the visible world of human thought, and thither\nI think all negative terms reach at last, and merge and become nothing.\nWhatever positive class you make, whatever boundary you draw, straight\naway from that boundary begins the corresponding negative class and\npasses into the illimitable horizon of nothingness. You talk of pink\nthings, you ignore, as the arbitrary postulates of Logic direct, the\nmore elusive shades of pink, and draw your line. Beyond is the not-pink,\nknown and knowable, and still in the not-pink region one comes to the\nOuter Darkness. Not blue, not happy, not iron, all the NOT classes meet\nin that Outer Darkness. That same Outer Darkness and nothingness is\ninfinite space and infinite time and any being of infinite qualities;\nand all that region I rule out of court in my philosophy altogether. I\nwill neither affirm nor deny if I can help it about any NOT things.\nI will not deal with not things at all, except by accident and\ninadvertence. If I use the word \u201cinfinite\u201d I use it as one often\nuses \u201ccountless,\u201d \u201cthe countless hosts of the enemy\u201d--or\n\u201cimmeasurable\u201d--\u201cimmeasurable cliffs\u201d--that is to say as the limit of\nmeasurement, as a convenient equivalent to as many times this cloth yard\nas you can, and as many again, and so on and so on until you and your\nnumerical system are beaten to a standstill.\n\nNow a great number of apparently positive terms are, or have become,\npractically negative terms and are under the same ban with me. A\nconsiderable number of terms that have played a great part in the world\nof thought, seem to me to be invalidated by this same defect, to have\nno content or an undefined content or an unjustifiable content. For\nexample, that word Omniscient, as implying infinite knowledge, impresses\nme as being a word with a delusive air of being solid and full, when it\nis really hollow with no content whatever. I am persuaded that knowing\nis the relation of a conscious being to something not itself, that\nthe thing known is defined as a system of parts and aspects and\nrelationships, that knowledge is comprehension, and so that only finite\nthings can know or be known. When you talk of a being of infinite\nextension and infinite duration, omniscient and omnipotent and perfect,\nyou seem to me to be talking in negatives of nothing whatever.\n\n\n\n\n\n1.8. LOGIC STATIC AND LIFE KINETIC.\n\nThere is another infirmity of the mind to which my attention has been\ncalled by an able paper read this spring to the Cambridge Moral Science\nClub by my friend Miss Amber Reeves. In this she has developed a\nsuggestion of Mr. F.C.S. Schiller\u2019s. The current syllogistic logic\nrests on the assumption that either A is B or it is not B. The practical\nreality, she contends, is that nothing is permanent; A is always\nbecoming more or less B or ceasing to be more or less B. But it would\nseem the human mind cannot manage with that. It has to hold a thing\nstill for a moment before it can think it. It arrests the present moment\nfor its struggle as Joshua stopped the sun. It cannot contemplate things\ncontinuously, and so it has to resort to a series of static snapshots.\nIt has to kill motion in order to study it, as a naturalist kills and\npins out a butterfly in order to study life.\n\nYou see the mind is really pigeon-holed and discontinuous in two\nrespects, in respect to time and in respect to classification; whereas\none has a strong persuasion that the world of fact is unbounded or\ncontinuous.\n\n\n\n\n\n1.9. PLANES AND DIALECTS OF THOUGHT.\n\nFinally; the Logician, intent upon perfecting the certitudes of his\nmethods rather than upon expressing the confusing subtleties of truth,\nhas done little to help thinking men in the perpetual difficulty that\narises from the fact that the universe can be seen in many different\nfashions and expressed by many different systems of terms, each\nexpression within its limits true and yet incommensurable with\nexpression upon a differing system. There is a sort of stratification\nin human ideas. I have it very much in mind that various terms in our\nreasoning lie, as it were, at different levels and in different\nplanes, and that we accomplish a large amount of error and confusion\nby reasoning terms together that do not lie or nearly lie in the same\nplane.\n\nLet me endeavour to make myself a little less obscure by a flagrant\ninstance from physical things. Suppose some one began to talk seriously\nof a man seeing an atom through a microscope, or better perhaps of\ncutting one in half with a knife. There are a number of non-analytical\npeople who would be quite prepared to believe that an atom could be\nvisible to the eye or cut in this manner. But any one at all conversant\nwith physical conceptions would almost as soon think of killing the\nsquare root of 2 with a rook rifle as of cutting an atom in half with\na knife. One\u2019s conception of an atom is reached through a process of\nhypothesis and analysis, and in the world of atoms there are no knives\nand no men to cut. If you have thought with a strong consistent mental\nmovement, then when you have thought of your atom under the knife blade,\nyour knife blade has itself become a cloud of swinging grouped atoms,\nand your microscope lens a little universe of oscillatory and vibratory\nmolecules. If you think of the universe, thinking at the level of atoms,\nthere is neither knife to cut, scale to weigh, nor eye to see. The\nuniverse at that plane to which the mind of the molecular physicist\ndescends has none of the shapes or forms of our common life whatever.\nThis hand with which I write is, in the universe of molecular physics,\na cloud of warring atoms and molecules, combining and recombining,\ncolliding, rotating, flying hither and thither in the universal\natmosphere of ether.\n\nYou see, I hope, what I mean when I say that the universe of\nmolecular physics is at a different level from the universe of common\nexperience;--what we call stable and solid is in that world a freely\nmoving system of interlacing centres of force, what we call colour and\nsound is there no more than this length of vibration of that. We have\nreached to a conception of that universe of molecular physics by a great\nenterprise of organised analysis, and our universe of daily experiences\nstands in relation to that elemental world as if it were a synthesis of\nthose elemental things.\n\nI would suggest to you that this is only a very extreme instance of\nthe general state of affairs, that there may be finer and subtler\ndifferences of level between one term and another, and that terms may\nvery well be thought of as lying obliquely and as being twisted through\ndifferent levels.\n\nIt will perhaps give a clearer idea of what I am seeking to convey if\nI suggest a concrete image for the whole world of a man\u2019s thought and\nknowledge. Imagine a large clear jelly, in which at all angles and in\nall states of simplicity or contortion his ideas are imbedded. They are\nall valid and possible ideas as they lie, none incompatible with any. If\nyou imagine the direction of up or down in this clear jelly being as it\nwere the direction in which one moves by analysis or synthesis, if you\ngo down for example from matter to atoms and centres of force and up\nto men and states and countries--if you will imagine the ideas lying\nin that manner--you will get the beginnings of my intention. But our\ninstrument, our process of thinking, like a drawing before the discovery\nof perspective, appears to have difficulties with the third dimension,\nappears capable only of dealing with or reasoning about ideas by\nprojecting them upon the same plane. It will be obvious that a great\nmultitude of things may very well exist together in a solid jelly, which\nwould be overlapping and incompatible and mutually destructive when\nprojected together upon one plane. Through the bias in our instrument\nto do this, through reasoning between terms not in the same plane, an\nenormous amount of confusion, perplexity, and mental deadlocking occurs.\n\nThe old theological deadlock between predestination and free will serves\nadmirably as an example of the sort of deadlock I mean. Take life at\nthe level of common sensation and common experience and there is no more\nindisputable fact than man\u2019s freedom of will, unless it is his complete\nmoral responsibility. But make only the least penetrating of scientific\nanalyses and you perceive a world of inevitable consequences, a rigid\nsuccession of cause and effect. Insist upon a flat agreement between the\ntwo, and there you are! The instrument fails.\n\nSo far as this particular opposition is concerned, I shall point out\nlater the reasonableness and convenience of regarding the common-sense\nbelief in free will as truer for one\u2019s personal life than determinism.\n\n\n\n\n\n1.10. PRACTICAL CONCLUSIONS FROM THESE CONSIDERATIONS.\n\nNow what is the practical outcome of all these criticisms of the human\nmind? Does it follow that thought is futile and discussion vain? By no\nmeans. Rather these considerations lead us toward mutual understanding.\nThey clear up the deadlocks that come from the hard and fast use of\nterms, they establish mutual charity as an intellectual necessity.\nThe common way of speech and thought which the old system of logic has\nsimply systematized, is too glib and too presumptuous of certainty. We\nmust needs use language, but we must use it always with the thought in\nour minds of its unreal exactness, its actual habitual deflection from\nfact. All propositions are approximations to an elusive truth, and we\nemploy them as the mathematician studies the circle by supposing it to\nbe a polygon of a very great number of sides.\n\nWe must make use of terms and sometimes of provisional terms. But\nwe must guard against such terms and the mental danger of excessive\nintension they carry with them. The child takes a stick and says it is\na sword and does not forget, he takes a shadow under the bed and says it\nis a bear and he half forgets. The man takes a set of emotions and says\nit is a God, and he gets excited and propagandist and does forget; he is\ninvolved in disputes and confusions with the old gods of wood and stone,\nand presently he is making his God a Great White Throne and fitting him\nup with a mystical family.\n\nEssentially we have to train our minds to think anew, if we are to think\nbeyond the purposes for which the mind seems to have been evolved. We\nhave to disabuse ourselves from the superstition of the binding nature\nof definitions and the exactness of logic. We have to cure ourselves of\nthe natural tricks of common thought and argument. You know the way\nof it, how effective and foolish it is; the quotation of the exact\nstatement of which every jot and tittle must be maintained, the\nchallenge to be consistent, the deadlock between your terms and mine.\n\nMore and more as I grow older and more settled in my views am I bored by\ncommon argument, bored not because I am ceasing to be interested in\nthe things argued about, but because I see more and more clearly the\nfutility of the methods pursued.\n\nHow then are we to think and argue and what truth may we attain? Is not\nthe method of the scientific investigator a valid one, and is there not\ntruth to the world of fact in scientific laws? Decidedly there is. And\nthe continual revision and testing against fact that these laws get\nis constantly approximating them more and more nearly to a trustworthy\nstatement of fact. Nevertheless they are never true in that dogmatic\ndegree in which they seem true to the unphilosophical student of\nscience. Accepting as I do the validity of nearly all the general\npropositions of modern science, I have constantly to bear in mind that\nabout them too clings the error of excessive claims to precision.\n\nThe man trained solely in science falls easily into a superstitious\nattitude; he is overdone with classification. He believes in the\npossibility of exact knowledge everywhere. What is not exact he declares\nis not knowledge. He believes in specialists and experts in all fields.\n\nI dispute this universal range of possible scientific precision. There\nis, I allege, a not too clearly recognised order in the sciences which\nforms the gist of my case against this scientific pretension. There is\na gradation in the importance of the individual instance as one passes\nfrom mechanics and physics and chemistry through the biological\nsciences to economics and sociology, a gradation whose correlations and\nimplications have not yet received adequate recognition, and which does\nprofoundly affect the method of study and research in each science.\n\nLet me repeat in slightly altered terms some of the points raised in the\npreceding sections. I have doubted and denied that there are identically\nsimilar objective experiences; I consider all objective beings as\nindividual and unique. It is now understood that conceivably only in\nthe subjective world, and in theory and the imagination, do we deal with\nidentically similar units, and with absolutely commensurable quantities.\nIn the real world it is reasonable to suppose we deal at most with\nPRACTICALLY similar units and PRACTICALLY commensurable quantities.\nBut there is a strong bias, a sort of labour-saving bias, in the normal\nhuman mind, to ignore this, and not only to speak but to think of a\nthousand bricks or a thousand sheep or a thousand Chinamen as though\nthey were all absolutely true to sample. If it is brought before a\nthinker for a moment that in any special case this is not so, he slips\nback to the old attitude as soon as his attention is withdrawn. This\ntype of error has, for instance, caught many of the race of chemists,\nand ATOMS and IONS and so forth of the same species are tacitly assumed\nto be similar to one another.\n\nBe it noted that, so far as the practical results of chemistry and\nphysics go, it scarcely matters which assumption we adopt, the number\nof units is so great, the individual difference so drowned and lost. For\npurposes of enquiry and discussion the incorrect one is infinitely more\nconvenient.\n\nBut this ceases to be true directly we emerge from the region of\nchemistry and physics. In the biological sciences of the eighteenth\ncentury, common-sense struggled hard to ignore individuality in shells\nand plants and animals. There was an attempt to eliminate the more\nconspicuous departures as abnormalities, as sports, nature\u2019s weak\nmoments; and it was only with the establishment of Darwin\u2019s great\ngeneralizations that the hard and fast classificatory system broke down\nand individuality came to its own. Yet there had always been a clearly\nfelt difference between the conclusions of the biological sciences and\nthose dealing with lifeless substance, in the relative vagueness, the\ninsubordinate looseness and inaccuracy of the former. The naturalist\naccumulated facts and multiplied names, but he did not go triumphantly\nfrom generalization to generalization after the fashion of the chemist\nor physicist. It is easy to see, therefore, how it came about that the\ninorganic sciences were regarded as the true scientific bed-rock. It was\nscarcely suspected that the biological sciences might perhaps after all\nbe TRUER than the experimental, in spite of the difference in practical\nvalue in favour of the latter. It was, and is by the great majority of\npeople to this day, supposed to be the latter that are invincibly true;\nand the former are regarded as a more complex set of problems merely,\nwith obliquities and refractions that presently will be explained away.\nComte and Herbert Spencer certainly seem to me to have taken that\nmuch for granted. Herbert Spencer no doubt talked of the unknown and\nunknowable, but not in this sense as an element of inexactness running\nthrough all things. He thought, it seems to me, of the unknown as the\nindefinable Beyond of an immediate world that might be quite clearly and\ndefinitely known.\n\nThere is a growing body of people which is beginning to hold the\nconverse view--that counting, classification, measurement, the whole\nfabric of mathematics, is subjective and untrue to the world of fact,\nand that the uniqueness of individuals is the objective truth. As the\nnumber of units taken diminishes, the amount of variety and inexactness\nof generalization increases, because individuality tells for more and\nmore. Could you take men by the thousand billion, you could generalize\nabout them as you do about atoms; could you take atoms singly, it may be\nthat you would find them as individual as your aunts and cousins. That\nconcisely is the minority belief, and my belief.\n\nNow what is called the scientific method in the physical sciences\nrests upon the ignoring of individualities; and like many mathematical\nconventions, its great practical convenience is no proof whatever of its\nfinal truth. Let me admit the enormous value, the wonder of its results\nin mechanics, in all the physical sciences, in chemistry, even in\nphysiology,--but what is its value beyond that? Is the scientific method\nof value in biology? The great advances made by Darwin and his school in\nbiology were not made, it must be remembered, by the scientific method,\nas it is generally conceived, at all. His was historical research.\nHe conducted research into pre-documentary history. He collected\ninformation along the lines indicated by certain interrogations; and the\nbulk of his work was the digesting and critical analysis of that. For\ndocuments and monuments he had fossils and anatomical structures and\ngerminating eggs too innocent to lie. But, on the other hand, he had\nto correspond with breeders and travellers of various sorts; classes\nentirely analogous, from the point of view of evidence, to the\nwriters of history and memoirs. I question profoundly whether the\nword \u201cscience,\u201d in current usage anyhow, ever means such patient\ndisentanglement as Darwin pursued. It means the attainment of something\npositive and emphatic in the way of a conclusion, based on amply\nrepeated experiments capable of infinite repetition, \u201cproved,\u201d as they\nsay, \u201cup to the hilt.\u201d\n\nIt would be of course possible to dispute whether the word \u201cscience\u201d\n should convey this quality of certitude, but to most people it certainly\ndoes at the present time. So far as the movements of comets and electric\ntrams go, there is no doubt practically cock-sure science; and Comte\nand Herbert Spencer seem to me to have believed that cock-sure could\nbe extended to every conceivable finite thing. The fact that Herbert\nSpencer called a certain doctrine Individualism reflects nothing on the\nnon-individualizing quality of his primary assumptions and of his mental\ntexture. He believed that individuality (heterogeneity) was and is an\nevolutionary product from an original homogeneity, begotten by folding\nand multiplying and dividing and twisting it, and still fundamentally\nIT. It seems to me that the general usage is entirely for the limitation\nof the word \u201cscience\u201d to knowledge and the search after knowledge of a\nhigh degree of precision. And not simply the general usage; \u201cScience is\nmeasurement,\u201d Science is \u201corganized commonsense,\u201d proud in fact of its\nessential error, scornful of any metaphysical analysis of its terms.\n\nNow my contention is that we can arrange the fields of human thought\nand interest about the world of fact in a sort of scale. At one end the\nnumber of units is infinite and the methods exact, at the other we\nhave the human subjects in which there is no exactitude. The science\nof society stands at the extreme end of the scale from the molecular\nsciences. In these latter there is an infinitude of units; in sociology,\nas Comte perceived, there is only one unit. It is true that Herbert\nSpencer, in order to get classification somehow, did, as Professor\nDurkheim has pointed out, separate human society into societies, and\nmade believe they competed one with another and died and reproduced just\nlike animals, and that economists following List have for the purposes\nof fiscal controversy discovered economic types; but this is a\ntransparent device, and one is surprised to find thoughtful and\nreputable writers off their guard against such bad analogy. But indeed\nit is impossible to isolate complete communities of men, or to trace\nany but rude general resemblances between group and group. These alleged\nunits have as much individuality as pieces of cloud; they come, they go,\nthey fuse and separate. And we are forced to conclude that not only is\nthe method of observation, experiment, and verification left far away\ndown the scale, but that the method of classification under types, which\nhas served so useful a purpose in the middle group of subjects, the\nsubjects involving numerous but a finite number of units, has also to be\nabandoned in social science. We cannot put Humanity into a museum or dry\nit for examination; our one single still living specimen is all\nhistory, all anthropology, and the fluctuating world of men. There is\nno satisfactory means of dividing it, and nothing else in the real\nworld with which to compare it. We have only the remotest ideas of its\n\u201clife-cycle\u201d and a few relics of its origin and dreams of its destiny.\n\nThis denial of scientific precision is true of all questions of general\nhuman relations and attitude. And in regard to all these matters\naffecting our personal motives, our self-control and our devotions, it\nis much truer.\n\nFrom this it is an easy step to the statement that so far as the\nclear-cut confident sort of knowledge goes, the sort of knowledge one\ngets from a time-table or a text-book of chemistry, or seeks from a\nwitness in a police court, I am, in relation to religious and moral\nquestions an agnostic. I do not think any general propositions partaking\nlargely of the nature of fact can be known about these things. There is\nnothing possessing the general validity of fact to be stated or known.\n\n\n\n\n\n1.11. BELIEFS.\n\nYet it is of urgent practical necessity that we should have such\npropositions and beliefs. All those we conjure out of our mental\napparatus and the world of fact dissolve and disappear again under\nscrutiny. It is clear we must resort to some other method for these\nnecessities.\n\nNow I make my beliefs as I want them. I do not attempt to distil them\nout of fact as physicists distil their laws. I make them thus and not\nthus exactly as an artist makes a picture so and not so. I believe that\nis how we all make our beliefs, but that many people do not see this\nclearly and confuse their beliefs with perceived and proven fact.\n\nI draw my beliefs exactly as an artist draws lines to make a picture, to\nexpress my impression of the world and my purpose.\n\nThe artist cannot defend his expression as a scientific man defends his,\nand demonstrate that they are true upon any assumptions whatsoever.\nAny loud fool may stand in front of a picture and call it inaccurate,\nuntrustworthy, unbeautiful. That last, the most vital issue of all, is\nthe one least assured. Loud fools always do do that sort of thing. Take\nquite ignorant people before almost any beautiful work of art and they\nwill laugh at it as absurd. If one sits on a popular evening in that\nlong room at South Kensington which contains Raphael\u2019s cartoons, one\nremarks that perhaps a third of those who stray through and look at all\nthose fine efforts, titter. If one searches in the magazines of a\nlittle while ago, one finds in the angry and resentful reception of the\nPre-Raphaelites another instance of the absolutely indefensible nature\nof many of the most beautiful propositions. And as a still more striking\nand remarkable case, take the onslaught made by Ruskin upon the works\nof Whistler. You will remember that a libel action ensued and that\nthese pictures were gravely reasoned about by barristers and surveyed by\njurymen to assess their merits...\n\nIn the end it is the indefensible truth that lasts; it lasts because\nit works and serves. People come to it and remain and attract other\nunderstanding and enquiring people.\n\nNow when I say I make my beliefs and that I cannot prove them to you and\nconvince you of them, that does not mean that I make them wantonly and\nregardless of fact, that I throw them off as a child scribbles on a\nslate. Mr. Ruskin, if I remember rightly, accused Whistler of throwing\na pot of paint in the face of the public,--that was the essence of his\nlibel. The artistic method in this field of beliefs, as in the field\nof visual renderings, is one of great freedom and initiative and great\npoverty of test, but of no wantonness; the conditions of rightness are\nnone the less imperative because they are mysterious and indefinable. I\nadopt certain beliefs because I feel the need for them, because I feel\nan often quite unanalyzable rightness in them; because the alternative\nof a chaotic life distresses me. My belief in them rests upon the fact\nthat they WORK for me and satisfy my desire for harmony and beauty. They\nare arbitrary assumptions, if you will, that I see fit to impose upon my\nuniverse.\n\nBut though they are arbitrary, they are not necessarily individual. Just\nso far as we all have a common likeness, just so far can we be brought\nunder the same imperatives to think and believe.\n\nAnd though they are arbitrary, each day they stand wear and tear, and\neach new person they satisfy, is another day and another voice towards\nshowing they do correspond to something that is so far fact and real.\n\nThis is Pragmatism as I conceive it; the abandonment of infinite\nassumptions, the extension of the experimental spirit to all human\ninterests.\n\n\n\n\n\n1.12. SUMMARY.\n\nIn concluding this first Book let me give a summary of the principal\npoints of what has gone before.\n\nI figure the mind of man as an imperfect being obtaining knowledge by\nimperfect eyesight, imperfect hearing and so forth; who must needs\nwalk manfully and patiently, exercising will and making choices and\ndetermining things between the mysteries of external and internal fact.\n\nEssentially man\u2019s mind moves within limits depending upon his individual\ncharacter and experience. These limits constitute what Herbart called\nhis \u201ccircle of thought,\u201d and they differ for everyone.\n\nThat briefly is what I consider to be the case with my own mind, and I\nbelieve it is the case with everyone\u2019s.\n\nMost minds, it seems to me, are similar, but none are absolutely alike\nin character or in contents.\n\nWe are all biassed to ignore our mental imperfections and to talk and\nact as though our minds were exact instruments,--something wherewith to\nscale the heavens with assurance,--and also we are biassed to believe\nthat, except for perversity, all our minds work exactly alike.\n\nMan, thinking man, suffers from intellectual over-confidence and a vain\nbelief in the universal validity of reasoning.\n\nWe all need training, training in the balanced attitude.\n\nOf everything we need to say: this is true but it is not quite true.\n\nOf everything we need to say: this is true in relation to things in or\nnear its plane, but not true of other things.\n\nOf everything we have to remember: this may be truer for us than for\nother people.\n\nIn disputation particularly we have to remember this (and most with\nour antagonist): that the spirit of an utterance may be better than the\nphrase.\n\nWe have to discourage the cheap tricks of controversy, the retort, the\nsearch for inconsistency. We have to realize that these things are as\nfoolish and ill-bred and anti-social as shouting in conversation or\nmaking puns; and we have to work out habits of thought purged from the\nsin of assurance. We have to do this for our own good quite as much as\nfor the sake of intercourse.\n\nAll the great and important beliefs by which life is guided and\ndetermined are less of the nature of fact than of artistic expression.\n\n\n\n\n\nBOOK THE SECOND -- OF BELIEFS\n\n\n\n\n\n2.1. MY PRIMARY ACT OF FAITH.\n\nAnd now having stated my conception of the true relationship between\nour thoughts and words to facts, having distinguished between the more\naccurate and frequently verified propositions of science and the more\narbitrary and infrequently verified propositions of belief, and made\nclear the spontaneous and artistic quality that inheres in all our moral\nand religious generalizations, I may hope to go on to my confession of\nfaith with less misunderstanding.\n\nNow my most comprehensive belief about the external and the internal\nand myself is that they make one universe in which I and every part are\nultimately important. That is quite an arbitrary act of my mind. It is\nquite possible to maintain that everything is a chaotic assembly, that\nany part might be destroyed without affecting any other part. I do not\nchoose to argue against that. If you choose to say that, I am no more\ndisposed to argue with you than if you choose to wear a mitre in Fleet\nStreet or drink a bottle of ink, or declare the figure of Ally Sloper\nmore dignified and beautiful than the head of Jove. There is no Q.E.D.\nthat you cannot do so. You can. You will not like to go on with it, I\nthink, and it will not answer, but that is a different matter.\n\nI dismiss the idea that life is chaotic because it leaves my life\nineffectual, and I cannot contemplate an ineffectual life patiently. I\nam by my nature impelled to refuse that. I assert that it is not so.\nI assert therefore that I am important in a scheme, that we are all\nimportant in that scheme, that the wheel-smashed frog in the road and\nthe fly drowning in the milk are important and correlated with me. What\nthe scheme as a whole is I do not know; with my limited mind I cannot\nknow. There I become a Mystic. I use the word scheme because it is the\nbest word available, but I strain it in using it. I do not wish to\nimply a schemer, but only order and co-ordination as distinguished from\nhaphazard. \u201cAll this is important, all this is profoundly significant.\u201d\n I say it of the universe as a child that has not learnt to read might\nsay it of a parchment agreement. I cannot read the universe, but I can\nbelieve that this is so.\n\nAnd this unfounded and arbitrary declaration of the ultimate rightness\nand significance of things I call the Act of Faith. It is my fundamental\nreligious confession. It is a voluntary and deliberate determination to\nbelieve, a choice made.\n\n\n\n\n\n2.2. ON USING THE NAME OF GOD.\n\nYou may say if you will that this scheme I talk about, this something\nthat gives importance and correlation and significance, is what is meant\nby God. You may embark upon a logical wrangle here with me if you have\nfailed to master what I have hitherto said about the meaning of words.\nIf a Scheme, you will say, then there must be a Schemer.\n\nBut, I repeat, I am using scheme and importance and significance here\nonly in a spirit of analogy because I can find no better words, and\nI will not allow myself to be entangled by an insistence upon their\nimplications.\n\nYet let me confess that I am greatly attracted by such fine phrases as\nthe Will of God, the Hand of God, the Great Commander. These do most\nwonderfully express aspects of this belief I choose to hold. I think if\nthere had been no gods before, I would call this God. But I feel that\nthere is a great danger in doing this sort of thing unguardedly. Many\npeople would be glad for rather trivial and unworthy reasons that I\nshould confess a faith in God, and few would take offence. But the run\nof people even nowadays mean something more and something different when\nthey say \u201cGod.\u201d They intend a personality exterior to them and limited,\nand they will instantly conclude I mean the same thing. To permit\nthat misconception is, I feel, the first step on the slippery slope\nof meretricious complaisance, is to become in some small measure\na successor of those who cried, \u201cGreat is Diana of the Ephesians.\u201d\n Occasionally we may best serve the God of Truth by denying him.\n\nYet at times I admit the sense of personality in the universe is very\nstrong. If I am confessing, I do not see why I should not confess up\nto the hilt. At times in the silence of the night and in rare lonely\nmoments, I come upon a sort of communion of myself and something great\nthat is not myself. It is perhaps poverty of mind and language obliges\nme to say that then this universal scheme takes on the effect of a\nsympathetic person--and my communion a quality of fearless worship.\nThese moments happen, and they are the supreme fact in my religious life\nto me, they are the crown of my religious experiences.\n\nNone the less, I do not usually speak of God even in regard to these\nmoments, and where I do use that word it must be understood that I use\nit as a personification of something entirely different in nature from\nthe personality of a human being.\n\n\n\n\n\n2.3. FREE WILL AND PREDESTINATION.\n\nAnd now let me return to a point raised in the first Book in Chapter\n1.9. Is the whole of this scheme of things settled and done? The whole\ntrend of Science is to that belief. On the scientific plane one is a\nfatalist, the universe a system of inevitable consequences. But as I\nshow in that section referred to, it is quite possible to accept as true\nin their several planes both predestination and free will. (I use\nfree will in the sense of self-determinisn and not as it is defined\nby Professor William James, and predestination as equivalent to the\nconception of a universe rigid in time and space.) If you ask me, I\nthink I should say I incline to believe in predestination and do quite\ncompletely believe in free will. The important belief is free will.\n\nBut does the whole universe of fact, the external world about me, the\nmysterious internal world from which my motives rise, form one rigid and\nfated system as determinists teach? Do I believe that, had one a mind\nideally clear and powerful, the whole universe would seem orderly and\nabsolutely predestined? I incline to that belief. I do not harshly\nbelieve it, but I admit its large plausibility--that is all. I see no\nvalue whatever in jumping to a decision. One or two Pragmatists, so far\nas I can understand them, do not hold this view of predestination at\nall; but as a provisional assumption it underlies most scientific work.\n\nI glance at this question rather to express a detachment than a view.\n\nFor me as a person this theory of predestination has no practical value.\nAt the utmost it is an interesting theory like the theory that there is\na fourth dimension. There may be a fourth dimension of space, but\none gets along quite well by assuming there are just three. It may\nbe knowable the next time I come to cross roads which I shall take.\nPossibly that knowledge actually exists somewhere. There are those who\nwill tell you that they can get intimations in the matter from packs of\ncards or the palms of my hands, or see by peering into crystals. Of such\nbeliefs I am entirely free. The fact is I believe that neither I know\nnor anybody else who is practically concerned knows which I shall take.\nI hesitate, I choose just as though the thing was unknowable. For me and\nmy conduct there is that much wide practical margin of freedom.\n\nI am free and freely and responsibly making the future--so far as I am\nconcerned. You others are equally free. On that theory I find my life\nwill work, and on a theory of mechanical predestination nothing works.\n\nI take the former theory therefore for my everyday purposes, and as\na matter of fact so does everybody else. I regard myself as a free\nresponsible person among free responsible persons.\n\n\n\n\n\n2.4. A PICTURE OF THE WORLD OF MEN.\n\nNow I have already given a first picture of the world of fact as it\nshaped itself upon my mind. Let me now give a second picture of this\nworld in which I find myself, a picture in a rather different key and\nat a different level, in which I turn to a new set of aspects and bring\ninto the foreground the other minds which are with me in the midst of\nthis great spectacle.\n\nWhat am I?\n\nHere is a question to which in all ages men have sought to give a\nclear unambiguous answer, and to which a clear unambiguous answer is\nmanifestly unfitted. Am I my body? Yes or no? It seems to me that I can\nexternalize and think of as \u201cnot myself\u201d nearly everything that pertains\nto my body, hands and feet, and even the most secret and central of\nthose living and hidden parts, the pulsing arteries, the throbbing\nnerves, the ganglionic centres, that no eye, save for the surgeon\u2019s\nknife has ever seen or ever will see until they coagulate in decay. So\nfar I am not my body; and then as clearly, since I suffer through it,\nsee the whole world through it and am always to be called upon where it\nis, I am it. Am I a mind mysteriously linked to this thing of matter and\nendeavour?\n\nSo I can present myself. I seem to be a consciousness, vague and\ninsecure, placed between two worlds. One of these worlds seems clearly\n\u201cnot me,\u201d the other is more closely identified with me and yet is still\nimperfectly me. The first I call the exterior world, and it presents\nitself to me as existing in Time and Space. In a certain way I seem able\nto interfere with it and control it. The second is the interior world,\nhaving no forms in space and only a vague evasive reference to time,\nfrom which motives arise and storms of emotion, which acts and reacts\nconstantly and in untraceable way with my conscious mind. And that\nconsciousness itself hangs and drifts about the region where the inner\nworld and the outer world meet, much as a patch of limelight drifts\nabout the stage, illuminating, affecting, following no manifest law\nexcept that usually it centres upon the hero, my Ego.\n\nIt seems to me that to put the thing much more precisely than this is to\ndepart from the reality of the matter.\n\nBut so departing a little, let me borrow a phrase from Herbart and\nidentify myself more particularly with my mental self. It seems to me\nthat I may speak of myself as a circle of thought and experience hung\nbetween these two imperfectly understood worlds of the internal and the\nexternal and passing imperceptibly into the former. The external world\nimpresses me as being, as a practical fact, common to me and many\nother creatures similar to myself; the internal, I find similar but not\nidentical with theirs. It is MINE. It seems to me at times no more than\nsomething cut off from that external world and put into a sort of pit or\ncave, much as all the inner mystery of my body, those living, writhing,\nwarm and thrilling organs are isolated, hidden from all eyes and\ninterference so long as I remain alive. And I myself, the essential me,\nam the light and watcher in the mouth of the cave.\n\nSo I think of myself, and so I think of all other human beings, as\ncircles of thought and experience, each a little different from the\nothers. Each human being I see as essentially a circle of thought\nbetween an internal and an external world.\n\nI figure these circles of thought as more or less imperfectly focussed\npictures, all a little askew and vague as to margins and distances.\nIn the internal world arise motives, and they pass outward through the\ncircle of thought and are modified and directed by it into external\nacts. And through speech, example, and a hundred various acts, one such\ncircle, one human mind, lights and enlarges and plays upon another. That\nis the image under which the interrelation of minds presents itself to\nme.\n\n\n\n\n\n2.5. THE PROBLEM OF MOTIVES THE REAL PROBLEM OF LIFE.\n\nNow each self among us, for all its fluctuations and vagueness of\nboundary, is, as I have already pointed out, invincibly persuaded of\nFree Will. That is to say, it has a persuasion of responsible control\nover the impulses that teem from the internal world and tend to express\nthemselves in act. The problem of that control and its solution is the\nreality of life. \u201cWhat am I to do?\u201d is the perpetual question of our\nexistence. Our metaphysics, our beliefs are all sought as subsidiary to\nthat and have no significance without it.\n\nI confess I find myself a confusion of motives beside which my confusion\nof perceptions pales into insignificance.\n\nThere are many various motives and motives very variously\nestimated--some are called gross, some sublime, some--such as\npride--wicked. I do not readily accept these classifications.\n\nMany people seem to make a selection among their motives without much\nenquiry, taking those classifications as just; they seek to lead what\nthey call pure lives or useful lives and to set aside whole sets of\nmotives which do not accord with this determination. Some exclude the\nseeking of pleasure as a permissible motive, some the love of beauty;\nsome insist upon one\u2019s \u201cbeing oneself\u201d and prohibit or limit responses\nto exterior opinions. Most of such selections strike me as wanton and\nhasty. I decline to dismiss any of my motives at all in that wholesale\nway. Just as I believe I am important in the scheme of things, so I\nbelieve are all my motives. Turning one\u2019s back on any set of them seems\nto me to savour of the headlong actions of stupidity. To suppress a\npassion or a curiosity for the sake of suppressing a passion is to my\nmind just the burial of a talent that has been entrusted to one\u2019s care.\nOne has, I feel, to take all these things as weapons and instruments,\nmaterial in the service of the scheme; one has to take them in the end\ngravely and do right among them unbiassed in favour of any set. To\ntake some poor appetite and fling it out is to my mind a cheap and\nunsatisfactory way of simplifying one\u2019s moral problems. One has to\naccept these things in oneself, I feel--even if one knows them to be\ndangerous things, even if one is sure they have an evil side.\n\nLet me, however, in order to express my attitude better, make a rough\ngrouping of the motives I find in myself and the people about me.\n\n\n\n\n\n2.6. A REVIEW OF MOTIVES.\n\nI cannot divide them into clearly defined classes, but I may perhaps\nbegin with those that bring one into the widest sympathy with living\nthings and go on to those one shares only with highly intelligent and\ncomplex human beings.\n\nThere come first the desires one shares with those more limited souls\nthe beasts, just as much as one does with one\u2019s fellow man. These are\nthe bodily appetites and the crude emotions of fear and resentment.\nThese first clamour for attention and must be assuaged or controlled\nbefore the other sets come into play.\n\nNow in this matter of physical appetites I do not know whether to\ndescribe myself as a sensualist or an ascetic. If an ascetic is one who\nsuppresses to a minimum all deference to these impulses, then certainly\nI am not an ascetic; if a sensualist is one who gives himself to\nheedless gratification, then certainly I am not a sensualist. But I find\nmyself balanced in an intermediate position by something that I will\nspeak of as the sense of Beauty. This sense of Beauty is something in\nme which demands not simply gratification but the best and keenest of\na sense or continuance of sense impressions, and which refuses coarse\nquantitative assuagements. It ranges all over the senses, and just as I\nrefuse to wholly cut off any of my motives, so do I refuse to limit its\nuse to the plane of the eye or the ear.\n\nIt seems to me entirely just to speak of beauty in matters of scent and\ntaste, to talk not only of beautiful skies and beautiful sounds but of\nbeautiful beer and beautiful cheese! The balance as between asceticism\nand sensuality comes in, it seems to me, if we remember that to drink\nwell one must not have drunken for some time, that to see well one\u2019s eye\nmust be clear, that to make love well one must be fit and gracious and\nsweet and disciplined from top to toe, that the finest sense of all--the\njoyous sense of bodily well-being--comes only with exercises\nand restraints and fine living. There I think lies the way of my\ndisposition. I do not want to live in the sensual sty, but I also do not\nwant to scratch in the tub of Diogenes.\n\nBut I diverge a little in these comments from my present business of\nclassifying motives.\n\nNext I perceive hypertrophied in myself and many sympathetic human\nbeings a passion that many animals certainly possess, the beautiful and\nfearless cousin of fear, Curiosity, that seeks keenly for knowing and\nfeeling. Apart from appetites and bodily desires and blind impulses,\nI want most urgently to know and feel, for the sake of knowing and\nfeeling. I want to go round corners and see what is there, to cross\nmountain ranges, to open boxes and parcels. Young animals at least have\nthat disposition too. For me it is something that mingles with all my\ndesires. Much more to me than the desire to live is the desire to taste\nlife. I am not happy until I have done and felt things. I want to get as\nnear as I can to the thrill of a dog going into a fight or the delight\nof a bird in the air. And not simply in the heroic field of war and\nthe air do I want to understand. I want to know something of the jolly\nwholesome satisfaction that a hungry pig must find in its wash. I want\nto get the quintessence of that.\n\nI do not think that in this I confess to any unusual temperament. I\nthink that the more closely mentally animated people scrutinize their\nmotives the less is the importance they will attach to mere physical and\nbrute urgencies and the more to curiosity.\n\nNext after curiosity come those desires and motives that one shares\nperhaps with some social beasts, but far more so as a conscious thing\nwith men alone. These desires and motives all centre on a clearly\napprehended \u201cself\u201d in relation to \u201cothers\u201d; they are the essentially\negotistical group. They are self-assertion in all its forms. I have\ndealt with motives toward gratification and motives towards experience;\nthis set of motives is for the sake of oneself. Since they are the most\nacutely conscious motives in unthinking men, there is a tendency on\nthe part of unthinking philosophers to speak of them as though vanity,\nself-seeking, self-interest were the only motives. But one has but to\nreflect on what has gone before to realize that this is not so. One\nfinds these \u201cself\u201d motives vary with the mental power and training of\nthe individual; here they are fragmentary and discursive, there drawn\ntight together into a coherent scheme. Where they are weak they\nmingle with the animal motives and curiosity like travellers in a busy\nmarket-place, but where the sense of self is strong they become rulers\nand regulators, self-seeking becomes deliberate and sustained in the\ncase of the human being, vanity passes into pride.\n\nHere again that something in the mind so difficult to define, so easy\nfor all who understand to understand, that something which insists\nupon a best and keenest, the desire for beauty, comes into the play of\nmotives. Pride demands a beautiful self and would discipline all other\npassions to its service. It also demands recognition for that beautiful\nself. Now pride, I know, is denounced by many as the essential quality\nof sin. We are taught that \u201cself-abnegation\u201d is the substance of virtue\nand self-forgetfulness the inseparable quality of right conduct. But\nindeed I cannot so dismiss egotism and that pride which was the first\nform in which the desire to rule oneself as a whole came to me. Through\npride one shapes oneself towards a best, though at first it may be an\nill-conceived best. Pride is not always arrogance and aggression. There\nis that pride that does not ape but learn humility.\n\nAnd with the human imagination all these elementary instincts, of the\nflesh, of curiosity, of self-assertion, become only the basal substance\nof a huge elaborate edifice of secondary motive and intention. We live\nin a great flood of example and suggestion, our curiosity and our social\nquality impel us to a thousand imitations, to dramatic attitudes and\nsubtly obscure ends. Our pride turns this way and that as we respond to\nnew notes in the world about us. We are arenas for a conflict between\nsuggestions flung in from all sources, from the most diverse and\nessentially incompatible sources. We live long hours and days in a\nkind of dream, negligent of self-interest, our elementary passions in\nabeyance, among these derivative things.\n\n\n\n\n\n2.7. THE SYNTHETIC MOTIVE.\n\nSuch it seems to me are the chief masses of the complex of motives in\nus, the group of sense, the group of pride, curiosity and the imitative\nand suggested motives, making up the system of impulses which is our\nwill. Such has been the common outfit of motives in every age, and\nin every age its melee has been found insufficient in itself. It is\na heterogeneous system, it does not form in any sense a completed or\nbalanced system, its constituents are variable and compete amongst\nthemselves. They are not so much arranged about one another as\nsuperposed and higgledy-piggledy. The senses and curiosity war with\npride and one another, the motives suggested to us fall into conflict\nwith this element or that of our intimate and habitual selves. We find\nall our instincts are snares to excess. Excesses of indulgence lead to\nexcesses of abstinence, and even the sense of beauty may be clouded\nand betray. So to us all, even for the most balanced of us, come\ndisappointments, regrets, gaps; and for most of us who are ill-balanced,\nmiseries and despairs. Nearly all of us want something to hold us\ntogether--something to dominate this swarming confusion and save us from\nthe black misery of wounded and exploded pride, of thwarted desire, of\nfutile conclusions. We want more oneness, some steadying thing that will\nafford an escape from fluctuations.\n\nDifferent people, of differing temperament and tradition, have sought\noneness, this steadying and universalizing thing, in various manners.\nSome have attained it in this manner, and some in that. Scarcely a\nreligious system has existed that has not worked effectively and proved\ntrue for someone. To me it seems that the need is synthetic, that some\nsynthetic idea and belief is needed to harmonize one\u2019s life, to give a\nlaw by which motive may be tried against motive and an effectual peace\nof mind achieved. I want an active peace and not a quiescence, and I do\nnot want to suppress and expel any motive at all. But to many people the\neffort takes the form of attempts to cut off some part of oneself as\nit were, to repudiate altogether some straining or distressing or\ndisappointing factor in the scheme of motives, and find a tranquillizing\nrefuge in the residuum. So we have men and women abandoning their\nshare in economic development, crushing the impulses and evading the\ncomplications that arise out of sex and flying to devotions and simple\nduties in nunneries and monasteries; we have people cutting their lives\ndown to a vegetarian dietary and scientific research, resorting to\nexcesses of self-discipline, giving themselves up wholly to some \u201cart\u201d\n and making everything else subordinate to that, or, going in another\ndirection, abandoning pride and love in favour of an acquired appetite\nfor drugs or drink.\n\nNow it seems to me that this desire to get the confused complex of life\nsimplified is essentially what has been called the religious motive, and\nthat the manner in which a man achieves that simplification, if he does\nachieve it, and imposes an order upon his life, is his religion. I find\nin the scheme of conversion and salvation as it is presented by many\nChristian sects, a very exact statement of the mental processes I am\ntrying to express. In these systems this discontent with the complexity\nof life upon which religion is based, is called the conviction of sin,\nand it is the first phase in the process of conversion--of finding\nsalvation. It leads through distress and confusion to illumination, to\nthe act of faith and peace.\n\nAnd after peace comes the beginning of right conduct. If you believe and\nyou are saved, you will want to behave well, you will do your utmost to\nbehave well and to understand what is behaving well, and you will feel\nneither shame nor disappointment when after all you fail. You will\nsay then: \u201cso it is failure I had to achieve.\u201d And you will not feel\nbitterly because you seem unsuccessful beside others or because you are\nmisunderstood or unjustly treated, you will not bear malice nor cherish\nanger nor seek revenge, you will never turn towards suicide as a relief\nfrom intolerable things; indeed there will be no intolerable things. You\nwill have peace within you.\n\nBut if you do not truly believe and are not saved, you will know it\nbecause you will still suffer the conflict of motives; and in regrets,\nconfusions, remorses and discontents, you will suffer the penalties of\nthe unbeliever and the lost. You will know certainly your own salvation.\n\n\n\n\n\n2.8. THE BEING OF MANKIND.\n\nI will boldly adopt the technicalities of the sects. I will speak as\na person with experience and declare that I have been through the\ndistresses of despair and the conviction of sin and that I have found\nsalvation.\n\nI BELIEVE.\n\nI believe in the scheme, in the Project of all things, in the\nsignificance of myself and all life, and that my defects and uglinesses\nand failures, just as much as my powers and successes, are things that\nare necessary and important and contributory in that scheme, that scheme\nwhich passes my understanding--and that no thwarting of my conception,\nnot even the cruelty of nature, now defeats or can defeat my faith,\nhowever much it perplexes my mind.\n\nAnd though I say that scheme passes my understanding, nevertheless I\nhope you will see no inconsistency when I say that necessarily it has an\naspect towards me that I find imperative.\n\nIt has an aspect that I can perceive, however dimly and fluctuatingly.\n\nI take it that to perceive this aspect to the utmost of my mental power\nand to shape my acts according to that perception is my function in the\nscheme; that if I hold steadfastly to that conception, I am SAVED. I\nfind in that idea of perceiving the scheme as a whole towards me and in\nthis attempt to perceive, that something to which all my other emotions\nand passions may contribute by gathering and contributing experience,\nand through which the synthesis of my life becomes possible.\n\nLet me try to convey to you what it is I perceive, what aspect this\nscheme seems to bear on the whole towards me.\n\nThe essential fact in man\u2019s history to my sense is the slow unfolding\nof a sense of community with his kind, of the possibilities of\nco-operations leading to scarce dreamt-of collective powers, of a\nsynthesis of the species, of the development of a common general idea, a\ncommon general purpose out of a present confusion. In that awakening of\nthe species, one\u2019s OWN PERSONAL BEING LIVES AND MOVES--A PART OF IT AND\nCONTRIBUTING TO IT. ONE\u2019S INDIVIDUAL EXISTENCE IS NOT SO ENTIRELY CUT\nOFF AS IT SEEMS AT FIRST; ONE\u2019S ENTIRELY SEPARATE INDIVIDUALITY IS\nANOTHER, A PROFOUNDER, AMONG THE SUBTLE INHERENT DELUSIONS OF THE HUMAN\nMIND. Between you and me as we set our minds together, and between us\nand the rest of mankind, there is SOMETHING, something real, something\nthat rises through us and is neither you nor me, that comprehends us,\nthat is thinking here and using me and you to play against each other in\nthat thinking just as my finger and thumb play against each other as I\nhold this pen with which I write.\n\nLet me point out that this is no sentimental or mystical statement. It\nis hard fact as any hard fact we know. We, you and I, are not only parts\nin a thought process, but parts of one flow of blood and life. Let me\nput that in a way that may be new to some readers. Let me remind you\nof what is sometimes told as a jest, the fact that the number of one\u2019s\nancestors increases as we look back in time. Disregarding the chances of\nintermarriage, each one of us had two parents, four grandparents, eight\ngreat-grandparents, and so on backward, until very soon, in less than\nfifty generations, we should find that, but for the qualification\nintroduced, we should have all the earth\u2019s inhabitants of that time as\nour progenitors. For a hundred generations it must hold absolutely true,\nthat everyone of that time who has issue living now is ancestral to all\nof us. That brings the thing quite within the historical period. There\nis not a western European palaeolithic or neolithic relic that is not\na family relic for every soul alive. The blood in our veins has handled\nit.\n\nAnd there is something more. We are all going to mingle our blood again.\nWe cannot keep ourselves apart; the worst enemies will some day come\nto the Peace of Verona. All the Montagues and Capulets are doomed to\nintermarry. A time will come in less than fifty generations when all\nthe population of the world will have my blood, and I and my worst enemy\nwill not be able to say which child is his or mine.\n\nBut you may retort--perhaps you may die childless. Then all the sooner\nthe whole species will get the little legacy of my personal achievement,\nwhatever it may be.\n\nYou see that from this point of view--which is for me the vividly true\nand dominating point of view--our individualities, our nations and\nstates and races are but bubbles and clusters of foam upon the great\nstream of the blood of the species, incidental experiments in the\ngrowing knowledge and consciousness of the race.\n\nI think this real solidarity of humanity is a fact that is only slowly\nbeing apprehended, that it is an idea that we who have come to realize\nit have to assist in thinking into the collective mind. I believe the\nspecies is still as a whole unawakened, still sunken in the delusion of\nthe permanent separateness of the individual and of races and nations,\nthat so it turns upon itself and frets against itself and fails to see\nthe stupendous possibilities of deliberate self-development that lie\nopen to it now.\n\nI see myself in life as part of a great physical being that strains and\nI believe grows towards beauty, and of a great mental being that strains\nand I believe grows towards knowledge and power. In this persuasion that\nI am a gatherer of experience, a mere tentacle that arranges thought\nbeside thought for this being of the species, this being that grows\nbeautiful and powerful, in this persuasion I find the ruling idea of\nwhich I stand in need, the ruling idea that reconciles and adjudicates\namong my warring motives. In it I find both concentration of myself and\nescape from myself; in a word, I find Salvation.\n\n\n\n\n\n2.9. INDIVIDUALITY AN INTERLUDE.\n\nI would like in a parenthetical section to expand and render rather more\nconcrete this idea of the species as one divaricating flow of blood,\nby an appeal to its arithmetical aspect. I do not know if it has ever\noccurred to the reader to compute the number of his living ancestors at\nsome definite date, at, let us say, the year one of the Christian era.\nEveryone has two parents and four grandparents, most people have eight\ngreat-grandparents, and if we ignore the possibility of intermarriage we\nshall go on to a fresh power of two with every generation, thus:--\n\nColumn 1: Number of generations.\n\nColumn 2: Number of ancestors.\n\n     3:             8\n     4:            16\n     5:            32\n     7:           128\n    10:         1,024\n    20:       126,976\n    30:    15,745,024\n    40: 1,956,282,976\n\nI do not know whether the average age of the parent at the birth of a\nchild under modern conditions can be determined from existing figures.\nThere is, I should think, a strong presumption that it has been a rising\nage. There may have been a time in the past when most women were mothers\nin their early teens and bore most or all of their children before\nthirty, and when men had done the greater part of their procreation\nbefore thirty-five; this is still the case in many tropical climates,\nand I do not think I favour my case unduly by assuming that the average\nparent must be about, or even less than, five and twenty. This\ngives four generations to a century. At that rate and DISREGARDING\nINTERMARRIAGE OF RELATIONS the ancestors living a thousand years ago\nneeded to account for a living person would be double the estimated\npopulation of the world. But it is obvious that if a person sprang from\na marriage of first cousins, the eight ancestors of the third generation\nare cut down to six; if of cousins at the next stage, to fourteen in the\nfourth. And every time that a common pair of ancestors appears in any\ngeneration, the number of ancestors in that generation must be reduced\nby two from our original figures, or if it is only one common ancestor,\nby one, and as we go back that reduction will have to be doubled,\nquadrupled and so on. I daresay that by the time anyone gets to the 8916\nnames of his Elizabethan ancestors he will find quite a large number\nrepeated over and over again in the list and that he is cut down to\nperhaps two or three thousand separate persons. But this does not\neffectually invalidate my assumption that if we go back only to the\nclosing years of the Roman Republic, we go back to an age in which\nnearly every person living within the confines of what was then the\nRoman Empire who left living offspring must have been ancestral to every\nperson living within that area to-day. No doubt they were so in very\nvariable measure. There must be for everyone some few individuals in\nthat period who have so to speak intermarried with themselves again\nand again and again down the genealogical series, and others who are\nrepresented by just one touch of their blood. The blood of the Jews, for\nexample, has turned in upon itself again and again; but for all we know\none Italian proselyte in the first year of the Christian era may have\nmade by this time every Jew alive a descendant of some unrecorded\nbastard of Julius Caesar. The exclusive breeding of the Jews is in fact\nthe most effectual guarantee that whatever does get into the charmed\ncircle through either proselytism, the violence of enemies, or feminine\nunchastity, must ultimately pervade it universally.\n\nIt may be argued that as a matter of fact humanity has until recently\nbeen segregated in pools; that in the great civilization of China, for\nexample, humanity has pursued its own interlacing system of inheritances\nwithout admixture from other streams of blood. But such considerations\nonly defer the conclusion; they do not stave it off indefinitely. It\nneeds only that one philoprogenitive Chinaman should have wandered into\nthose regions that are now Russia, about the time of Pericles, to link\neast and west in that matter; one Tartar chieftain in the Steppes may\nhave given a daughter to a Roman soldier and sent his grandsons east and\nwest to interlace the branches of every family tree in the world. If\nany race stands apart it is such an isolated group as that of the now\nextinct Tasmanian primitives or the Australian black. But even here, in\nthe remote dawn of navigation, may have come some shipwrecked Malays,\nor some half-breed woman kidnapped by wandering Phoenicians have carried\nthis link of blood back to the western world. The more one lets one\u2019s\nimagination play upon the incalculable drift and soak of population,\nthe more one realizes the true value of that spreading relation with the\npast.\n\nBut now let us turn in the other direction, the direction of the future,\nbecause there it is that this series of considerations becomes most\nedifying. It is the commonest trick to think of a man\u2019s descendants\nas though they were his own. We are told that one of the dearest human\nmotives is the desire to found a family, but think how much of a family\none founds at the best. One\u2019s son is after all only half one\u2019s blood,\none grandson only a quarter, and so one goes on until it may be that in\nten brief generations one\u2019s heir and namesake has but 1/1024th of one\u2019s\ninherited self. Those other thousand odd unpredictable people thrust\nin and mingle with one\u2019s pride. The trend of all things nowadays--the\never-increasing ease of communication, the great and increasing drift of\npopulation, the establishment of a common standard of civilization--is\nto render such admixture far more probable and facile in the future than\nin the past.\n\nIt is a pleasant fancy to imagine some ambitious hoarder of wealth,\nsome egotistical founder of name and family, returning to find\nhis descendants--HIS descendants--after the lapse of a few brief\ngenerations. His heir and namesake may have not a thousandth part of\nhis heredity, while under some other name, lost to all the tradition and\nglory of him, enfeebled and degenerate through much intermarriage, may\nbe a multitude of people who have as much as a fiftieth or even more of\nhis quality. They may even be in servitude and dependence to the really\nalien person who is head of the family. Our founder will go through the\nspreading record of offspring and find it mixed with that of people he\nmost hated and despised. The antagonists he wronged and overcame will\nhave crept into his line and recaptured all they lost; have played the\ncuckoo in his blood and acquisitions, and turned out his diluted strain\nto perish.\n\nAnd while I am being thus biological let me point out another queer\naspect in which our egotism is overridden by physical facts. Men and\nwomen are apt to think of their children as being their very own,\nblood of their blood and bone of their bone. But indeed one of the\nmost striking facts in this matter is the frequent want of resemblance\nbetween parents and children. It is one of the commonest things in the\nworld for a child to resemble an aunt or an uncle, or to revive a trait\nof some grandparent that has seemed entirely lost in the intervening\ngeneration. The Mendelians have given much attention to facts of this\nnature; and though their general method of exposition seems to me quite\nunjustifiably exact and precise, it cannot be denied that it is often\nvividly illuminating. It is so in this connexion. They distinguish\nbetween \u201cdominant\u201d and \u201crecessive\u201d qualities, and they establish cases\nin which parents with all the dominant characteristics produce offspring\nof recessive type. Recessive qualities are constantly being masked by\ndominant ones and emerging again in the next generation. It is not the\nindividual that reproduces himself, it is the species that reproduces\nthrough the individual and often in spite of his characteristics.\n\nThe race flows through us, the race is the drama and we are the\nincidents. This is not any sort of poetical statement; it is a statement\nof fact. In so far as we are individuals, in so far as we seek to\nfollow merely individual ends, we are accidental, disconnected, without\nsignificance, the sport of chance. In so far as we realize ourselves as\nexperiments of the species for the species, just in so far do we escape\nfrom the accidental and the chaotic. We are episodes in an experience\ngreater than ourselves.\n\nNow none of this, if you read me aright, makes for the suppression of\none\u2019s individual difference, but it does make for its correlation. We\nhave to get everything we can out of ourselves for this very reason that\nwe do not stand alone; we signify as parts of a universal and immortal\ndevelopment. Our separate selves are our charges, the talents of which\nmuch has to be made. It is because we are episodical in the great\nsynthesis of life that we have to make the utmost of our individual\nlives and traits and possibilities.\n\n\n\n\n\n2.10. THE MYSTIC ELEMENT.\n\nWhat stupendous constructive mental and physical possibilities are\nthere to which I feel I am contributing, you may ask, when I feel that\nI contribute to this greater Being; and at once I confess I become vague\nand mystical. I do not wish to pass glibly over this point. I call your\nattention to the fact that here I am mystical and arbitrary. I am what\nI am, an individual in this present phase. I can see nothing of\nthese possibilities except that they will be in the nature of those\nindefinable and overpowering gleams of promise in our world that we call\nBeauty. Elsewhere (in my \u201cFood of the Gods\u201d) I have tried to render my\nsense of our human possibility by monstrous images; I have written of\nthose who will \u201cstand on this earth as on a footstool and reach out\ntheir hands among the stars.\u201d But that is mere rhetoric at best, a\nstraining image of unimaginable things. Things move to Power and Beauty;\nI say that much and I have said all that I can say.\n\nBut what is Beauty, you ask, and what will Power do? And here I reach\nmy utmost point in the direction of what you are free to call the\nrhapsodical and the incomprehensible. I will not even attempt to\ndefine Beauty. I will not because I cannot. To me it is a final, quite\nindefinable thing. Either you understand it or you do not. Every true\nartist and many who are not artists know--they know there is something\nthat shows suddenly--it may be in music, it may be in painting, it may\nbe in the sunlight on a glacier or a shadow cast by a furnace or\nthe scent of a flower, it may be in the person or act of some fellow\ncreature, but it is right, it is commanding, it is, to use theological\nlanguage, the revelation of God.\n\nTo the mystery of Power and Beauty, out of the earth that mothered us,\nwe move.\n\nI do not attempt to define Beauty nor even to distinguish it from Power.\nI do not think indeed that one can effectually distinguish these aspects\nof life. I do not know how far Beauty may not be simply fulness and\nclearness of sensation, a momentary unveiling of things hitherto seen\nbut dully and darkly. As I have already said, there may be beauty in\nthe feeling of beer in the throat, in the taste of cheese in the mouth;\nthere may be beauty in the scent of the earth, in the warmth of a body,\nin the sensation of waking from sleep. I use the word Beauty therefore\nin its widest possible sense, ranging far beyond the special beauties\nthat art discovers and develops. Perhaps as we pass from death to life\nall things become beautiful. The utmost I can do in conveying what\nI mean by Beauty is to tell of things that I have perceived to be\nbeautiful as beautifully as I can tell of them. It may be, as I suggest\nelsewhere, that Beauty is a thing synthetic and not simple; it is a\ncommon effect produced by a great medley of causes, a larger aspect of\nharmony.\n\nBut the question of what Beauty is does not very greatly concern me\nsince I have known it when I met it and since almost every day in life I\nseem to apprehend it more and to find it more sufficient and satisfying.\nObjectively it may be altogether complex and various and synthetic,\nsubjectively it is altogether simple. All analysis, all definition, must\nin the end rest upon and arrive at unanalyzable and indefinable things.\nBeauty is light--I fall back upon that image--it is all things that\nlight can be, beacon, elucidation, pleasure, comfort and consolation,\npromise, warning, the vision of reality.\n\n\n\n\n\n2.11. THE SYNTHESIS.\n\nIt seems to me that the whole living creation may be regarded as walking\nin its sleep, as walking in the sleep of instinct and individualized\nillusion, and that now out of it all rises man, beginning to perceive\nhis larger self, his universal brotherhood and a collective synthetic\npurpose to increase Power and realize Beauty...\n\nI write this down. It is the form of my belief, and that unanalyzable\nsomething called Beauty is the light that falls upon that form.\n\nIt is only by such images, it is only by the use of what are practically\nparables, that I can in any way express these things in my mind. These\ntwo things, I say, are the two aspects of my belief; one is the form and\nthe other the light. The former places me as it were in a scheme, the\nlatter illuminates and inspires me. I am a member in that great being,\nand my function is, I take it, to develop my capacity for beauty\nand convey the perception of it to my fellows, to gather and store\nexperience and increase the racial consciousness. I hazard no whys\nnor wherefores. That is how I see things; that is how the universe, in\nresponse to my demand for a synthesizing aspect, presents itself to me.\n\n\n\n\n\n2.12. OF PERSONAL IMMORTALITY.\n\nThese are my beliefs. They begin with arbitrary assumptions; they end in\na mystery.\n\nSo do all beliefs that are not grossly utilitarian and material,\npromising houris and deathless appetite or endless hunting or a cosmic\nmortgage. The Peace of God passeth understanding, the Kingdom of\nHeaven within us and without can be presented only by parables. But the\nunapproachable distance and vagueness of these things makes them none\nthe less necessary, just as a cloud upon a mountain or sunlight remotely\nseen upon the sea are as real as, and to many people far more necessary\nthan, pork chops. The driven swine may root and take no heed, but man\nthe dreamer drives. And because these things are vague and impalpable\nand wilfully attained, it is none the less important that they should be\nrendered with all the truth of one\u2019s being. To be atmospherically vague\nis one thing; to be haphazard, wanton and untruthful, quite another.\n\nBut here I may give a specific answer to a question that many find\nprofoundly important, though indeed it is already implicitly answered in\nwhat has gone before.\n\nI do not believe I have any personal immortality. I am part of an\nimmortality perhaps; but that is different. I am not the continuing\nthing. I personally am experimental, incidental. I feel I have to\ndo something, a number of things no one else could do, and then I am\nfinished and finished altogether. Then my substance returns to the\ncommon lot. I am a temporary enclosure for a temporary purpose; that\nserved, and my skull and teeth, my idiosyncracy and desire, will\ndisperse, I believe, like the timbers of a booth after a fair.\n\nLet me shift my ground a little and ask you to consider what is involved\nin the opposite belief.\n\nMy idea of the unknown scheme is of something so wide and deep that I\ncannot conceive it encumbered by my egotism perpetually. I shall serve\nmy purpose and pass under the wheel and end. That distresses me not at\nall. Immortality would distress and perplex me. If I may put this in a\nmixture of theological and social language, I cannot respect, I cannot\nbelieve in a God who is always going about with me.\n\nBut this is after all what I feel is true and what I choose to believe.\nIt is not a matter of fact. So far as that goes there is no evidence\nthat I am immortal and none that I am not.\n\nI may be altogether wrong in my beliefs; I may be misled by the\nappearances of things. I believe in the great and growing Being of the\nSpecies from which I rise, to which I return, and which, it may be, will\nultimately even transcend the limitation of the Species and grow into\nthe Conscious Being, the eternally conscious Being of all things.\nBelieving that, I cannot also believe that my peculiar little thread\nwill not undergo synthesis and vanish as a separate thing.\n\nAnd what after all is my distinctive something, a few capacities, a few\nincapacities, an uncertain memory, a hesitating presence? It matters\nno doubt in its place and time, as all things matter in their place\nand time, but where in it all is the eternally indispensable? The great\nthings of my life, love, faith, the intimation of beauty, the things\nmost savouring of immortality, are the things most general, the things\nmost shared and least distinctively me.\n\n\n\n\n\n2.13. A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY.\n\nAnd here perhaps, before I go on to the question of Conduct, is the\nplace to define a relationship to that system of faith and religious\nobservance out of which I and most of my readers have come. How do these\nbeliefs on which I base my rule of conduct stand to Christianity?\n\nThey do not stand in any attitude of antagonism. A religious system so\nmany-faced and so enduring as Christianity must necessarily be saturated\nwith truth even if it be not wholly true. To assume, as the Atheist and\nDeist seem to do, that Christianity is a sort of disease that came\nupon civilization, an unprofitable and wasting disease, is to deny that\nconception of a progressive scheme and rightness which we have taken\nas our basis of belief. As I have already confessed, the Scheme of\nSalvation, the idea of a process of sorrow and atonement, presents\nitself to me as adequately true. So far I do not think my new faith\nbreaks with my old. But it follows as a natural consequence of my\nmetaphysical preliminaries that I should find the Christian theology\nAristotelian, over defined and excessively personified. The painted\nfigure of that bearded ancient upon the Sistine Chapel, or William\nBlake\u2019s wild-haired, wild-eyed Trinity, convey no nearer sense of God\nto me than some mother-of-pearl-eyed painted and carven monster from\nthe worship of the South Sea Islanders. And the Miltonic fable of the\noffended creator and the sacrificial son! it cannot span the circle of\nmy ideas; it is a little thing, and none the less little because it is\nintimate, flesh of my flesh and spirit of my spirit, like the drawings\nof my youngest boy. I put it aside as I would put aside the gay figure\nof a costumed officiating priest. The passage of time has made his\ncanonicals too strange, too unlike my world of common thought and\ncostume. These things helped, but now they hinder and disturb. I cannot\nbring myself back to them...\n\nBut the psychological experience and the theology of Christianity are\nonly a ground-work for its essential feature, which is the conception\nof a relationship of the individual believer to a mystical being at once\nhuman and divine, the Risen Christ. This being presents itself to the\nmodern consciousness as a familiar and beautiful figure, associated with\na series of sayings and incidents that coalesce with a very distinct and\nrounded-off and complete effect of personality. After we have cleared\noff all the definitions of theology, He remains, mystically suffering\nfor humanity, mystically asserting that love in pain and sacrifice in\nservice are the necessary substance of Salvation. Whether he actually\nexisted as a finite individual person in the opening of the Christian\nera seems to me a question entirely beside the mark. The evidence at\nthis distance is of imperceptible force for or against. The Christ we\nknow is quite evidently something different from any finite person,\na figure, a conception, a synthesis of emotions, experiences and\ninspirations, sustained by and sustaining millions of human souls.\n\nNow it seems to be the common teaching of almost all Christians, that\nSalvation, that is to say the consolidation and amplification of one\u2019s\nmotives through the conception of a general scheme or purpose, is to be\nattained through the personality of Christ. Christ is made cardinal to\nthe act of Faith. The act of Faith, they assert, is not simply, as I\nhold it to be, BELIEF, but BELIEF IN HIM.\n\nWe are dealing here, be it remembered, with beliefs deliberately\nundertaken and not with questions of fact. The only matters of fact\nmaterial here are facts of experience. If in your experience Salvation\nis attainable through Christ, then certainly Christianity is true for\nyou. And if a Christian asserts that my belief is a false light and that\npresently I shall \u201ccome to Christ,\u201d I cannot disprove his assertion. I\ncan but disbelieve it. I hesitate even to make the obvious retort.\n\nI hope I shall offend no susceptibilities when I assert that this great\nand very definite personality in the hearts and imaginations of mankind\ndoes not and never has attracted me. It is a fact I record about myself\nwithout aggression or regret. I do not find myself able to associate Him\nin any way with the emotion of Salvation.\n\nI admit the splendid imaginative appeal in the idea of a divine-human\nfriend and mediator. If it were possible to have access by prayer, by\nmeditation, by urgent outcries of the soul, to such a being whose feet\nwere in the darknesses, who stooped down from the light, who was at once\ngreat and little, limitless in power and virtue and one\u2019s very brother;\nif it were possible by sheer will in believing to make and make one\u2019s\nway to such a helper, who would refuse such help? But I do not find such\na being in Christ. I do not find, I cannot imagine, such a being. I wish\nI could. To me the Christian Christ seems not so much a humanized God as\nan incomprehensibly sinless being neither God nor man. His sinlessness\nwears his incarnation like a fancy dress, all his white self unchanged.\nHe had no petty weaknesses.\n\nNow the essential trouble of my life is its petty weaknesses. If I am\nto have that love, that sense of understanding fellowship, which is,\nI conceive, the peculiar magic and merit of this idea of a personal\nSaviour, then I need someone quite other than this image of virtue, this\nterrible and incomprehensible Galilean with his crown of thorns, his\nblood-stained hands and feet. I cannot love him any more than I can\nlove a man upon the rack. Even in the face of torments I do not think\nI should feel a need for him. I had rather then a hundred times have\nBotticelli\u2019s armed angel in his Tobit at Florence. (I hope I do not seem\nto want to shock in writing these things, but indeed my only aim is to\nlay my feelings bare.) I know what love for an idealized person can be.\nIt happens that in my younger days I found a character in the history\nof literature who had a singular and extraordinary charm for me, of\nwhom the thought was tender and comforting, who indeed helped me through\nshames and humiliations as though he held my hand. This person was\nOliver Goldsmith. His blunders and troubles, his vices and vanities,\nseized and still hold my imagination. The slights of Boswell, the\ncontempt of Gibbon and all his company save Johnson, the exquisite\nfineness of spirit in his \u201cVicar of Wakefield,\u201d and that green suit of\nhis and the doctor\u2019s cane and the love despised, these things together\nmade him a congenial saint and hero for me, so that I thought of him as\nothers pray. When I think of that youthful feeling for Goldsmith, I know\nwhat I need in a personal Saviour, as a troglodyte who has seen a candle\ncan imagine the sun. But the Christian Christ in none of his three\ncharacteristic phases, neither as the magic babe (from whom I am cut off\nby the wanton and indecent purity of the Immaculate Conception), nor\nas the white-robed, spotless miracle worker, nor as the fierce unreal\ntorment of the cross, comes close to my soul. I do not understand the\nAgony in the Garden; to me it is like a scene from a play in an unknown\ntongue. The la t cry of despair is the one human touch, discordant with\nall the rest of the story. One cry of despair does not suffice. The\nChristian\u2019s Christ is too fine for me, not incarnate enough, not\nflesh enough, not earth enough. He was never foolish and hot-eared\nand inarticulate, never vain, he never forgot things, nor tangled his\nmiracles. I could love him I think more easily if the dead had not risen\nand if he had lain in peace in his sepulchre instead of coming back more\nenhaloed and whiter than ever, as a postscript to his own tragedy.\n\nWhen I think of the Resurrection I am always reminded of the \u201chappy\nendings\u201d that editors and actor managers are accustomed to impose upon\nessentially tragic novels and plays...\n\nYou see how I stand in this matter, puzzled and confused by the\nChristian presentation of Christ. I know there are many will answer--as\nI suppose my friend the Rev. R.J. Campbell would answer--that what\nconfuses me is the overlaying of the personality of Jesus by stories\nand superstitions and conflicting symbols; he will in effect ask me to\ndisentangle the Christ I need from the accumulated material, choosing\nand rejecting. Perhaps one may do that. He does, I know, so present Him\nas a man inspired, and strenuously, inadequately and erringly presenting\na dream of human brotherhood and the immediate Kingdom of Heaven on\nearth and so blundering to his failure and death. But that will be a\nrecovered and restored person he would give me, and not the Christ\nthe Christians worship and declare they love, in whom they find their\nSalvation.\n\nWhen I write \u201cdeclare they love\u201d I throw doubt intentionally upon the\nuniversal love of Christians for their Saviour. I have watched men and\nnations in this matter. I am struck by the fact that so many Christians\nfall back upon more humanized figures, upon the tender figure of Mary,\nupon patron saints and such more erring creatures, for the effect of\nmediation and sympathy they need.\n\nYou see it comes to this: that I think Christianity has been true and is\nfor countless people practically true, but that it is not true now for\nme, and that for most people it is true only with modifications.\nEvery believing Christian is, I am sure, my spiritual brother, but if\nsystematically I called myself a Christian I feel that to most men I\nshould imply too much and so tell a lie.\n\n\n\n\n\n2.14. OF OTHER RELIGIONS.\n\nIn the same manner, in varying degree, I hold all religions to be in\na measure true. Least comprehensible to me are the Indian formulae,\nbecause they seem to stand not on common experience but on those\nintellectual assumptions my metaphysical analysis destroys.\nTransmigration of souls without a continuing memory is to my mind\nutter foolishness, the imagining of a race of children. The aggression,\ndiscipline and submission of Mahommedanism makes, I think, an\nintellectually limited but fine and honourable religion--for men. Its\nspirit if not its formulae is abundantly present in our modern world.\nMr. Rudyard Kipling, for example, manifestly preaches a Mahommedan God,\na modernised God with a taste for engineering. I have no doubt that in\ndevotion to a virile, almost national Deity and to the service of His\nEmpire of stern Law and Order, efficiently upheld, men have found and\nwill find Salvation.\n\nAll these religions are true for me as Canterbury Cathedral is a true\nthing and as a Swiss chalet is a true thing. There they are, and they\nhave served a purpose, they have worked. Men and women have lived in and\nby them. Men and women still do. Only they are not true for me to\nlive in them. I have, I believe, to live in a new edifice of my own\ndiscovery. They do not work for me.\n\nThese schemes are true, and also these schemes are false! in the sense\nthat new things, new phrasings, have to replace them.\n\n\n\n\n\n2.15.\n\nSuch are the essential beliefs by which I express myself. But now comes\nthe practical outcome of these things, and that is to discuss and show\nhow upon this metaphysical basis and these beliefs, and in obedience to\nthe ruling motive that arises with them, I frame principles of conduct.\n\n\n\n\n\nBOOK THE THIRD -- OF GENERAL CONDUCT\n\n\n\n\n\n3.1. CONDUCT FOLLOWS FROM BELIEF.\n\nI hold that the broad direction of conduct follows necessarily from\nbelief. The believer does not require rewards and punishments to direct\nhim to the right. Motive and idea are not so separable. To believe\ntruly is to want to do right. To get salvation is to be unified by a\ncomprehending idea of a purpose and by a ruling motive.\n\nThe believer wants to do right, he naturally and necessarily seeks to do\nright. If he fails to do right, if he finds he has done wrong instead\nof right, he is not greatly distressed or terrified, he naturally and\ncheerfully does his best to correct his error. He can be damned only\nby the fading and loss of his belief. And naturally he recurs to and\nrefreshes his belief.\n\nI write in phrases that the evangelical Christianity of my childhood\nmade familiar to me, because they are the most expressive phrases I have\never met for the psychological facts with which I am dealing.\n\nBut faith, though it banishes fear and despair and brings with it a real\nprevailing desire to know and do the Good, does not in itself determine\nwhat is the Good or supply any simple guide to the choice between\nalternatives. If it did, there would be nothing more to be said, this\nbook upon conduct would be unnecessary.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.2. WHAT IS GOOD?\n\nIt seems to me one of the heedless errors of those who deal in\nphilosophy, to suppose all things that have simple names or unified\neffects are in their nature simple and may be discovered and isolated as\na sort of essence by analysis. It is natural to suppose--and I think it\nis also quite wrong to suppose--that such things as Good and Beauty can\nbe abstracted from good and beautiful things and considered alone. But\npure Good and pure Beauty are to me empty terms. It seems to me that\nthese are in their nature synthetic things, that they arise out of the\ncoming together of contributory things and conditions, and vanish at\ntheir dispersal; they are synthetic just as more obviously Harmony is\nsynthetic. It is consequently not possible to give a definition of Good,\njust as it is not possible to give a definition of that other something\nwhich is so closely akin to it, Beauty. Nor is it to be maintained that\nwhat is good for one is good for another. But what is good of one\u2019s\ngeneral relations and what is right in action must be determined by the\nnature of one\u2019s beliefs about the purpose in things. I have set down my\nbroad impression of that purpose in respect to me, as the awakening and\ndevelopment of the consciousness and will of our species, and I have\nconfessed my belief that in subordinating myself and all my motives to\nthat idea lies my Salvation. It follows from that, that the good life\nis the life that most richly gathers and winnows and prepares experience\nand renders it available for the race, that contributes most effectively\nto the collective growth.\n\nThis is in general terms my idea of Good. So soon as one passes from\ngeneral terms to the question of individual good, one encounters\nindividuality; for everyone in the differing quality and measure of\ntheir personality and powers and possibilities, good and right must be\ndifferent. We are all engaged, each contributing from his or her own\nstandpoint, in the collective synthesis; whatever one can best do, one\nmust do that; in whatever manner one can best help the synthesis, one\nmust exert oneself; the setting apart of oneself, secrecy, the service\nof secret and personal ends, is the waste of life and the essential\nquality of Sin.\n\nThat is the general expression for right living as I conceive it.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.3. SOCIALISM.\n\nIn the study of what is Good, it is very convenient to make a rough\ndivision of our subject into general and particular. There are first the\ninterests and problems that affect us all collectively, in which we have\na common concern and from which no one may legitimately seek exemption;\nof these interests and problems we may fairly say every man should do so\nand so, or so and so, or the law should be so and so, or so and so; and\nsecondly there are those other problems in which individual difference\nand the interplay of one or two individualities is predominant. This\nis of course no hard and fast classification, but it gives a method of\napproach. We can begin with the generalized person in ourselves and end\nwith individuality.\n\nIn the world of ideas about me, I have found going on a great social and\npolitical movement that correlates itself with my conception of a great\nsynthesis of human purpose as the aspect towards us of the universal\nscheme. This movement is Socialism. Socialism is to me no clear-cut\nsystem of theories and dogmas; it is one of those solid and extensive\nand synthetic ideas that are better indicated by a number of different\nformulae than by one, just as one only realizes a statue by walking\nround it and seeing it from a number of points of view. I do not think\nit is to be completely expressed by any one system of formulae or by\nany one man. Its common quality from nearly every point of view is the\nsubordination of the will of the self-seeking individual to the idea of\na racial well-being embodied in an organized state, organized for every\nend that can be obtained collectively. Upon that I seize; that is the\nvalue of Socialism for me.\n\nSocialism for me is a common step we are all taking in the great\nsynthesis of human purpose. It is the organization, in regard to a\ngreat mass of common and fundamental interests that have hitherto been\ndispersedly served, of a collective purpose.\n\nI see humanity scattered over the world, dispersed, conflicting,\nunawakened... I see human life as avoidable waste and curable confusion.\nI see peasants living in wretched huts knee-deep in manure, mere\nparasites on their own pigs and cows; I see shy hunters wandering in\nprimaeval forests; I see the grimy millions who slave for industrial\nproduction; I see some who are extravagant and yet contemptible\ncreatures of luxury, and some leading lives of shame and indignity; tens\nof thousands of wealthy people wasting lives in vulgar and unsatisfying\ntrivialities, hundreds of thousands meanly chaffering themselves, rich\nor poor, in the wasteful byways of trade; I see gamblers, fools, brutes,\ntoilers, martyrs. Their disorder of effort, the spectacle of futility,\nfills me with a passionate desire to end waste, to create order, to\ndevelop understanding... All these people reflect and are part of the\nwaste and discontent of my life, and this co-ordination of the species\nto a common general end, and the quest for my personal salvation, are\nthe social and the individual aspect of essentially the same desire...\n\nAnd yet dispersed as all these people are, they are far more closely\ndrawn together to common ends and common effort than the filthy savages\nwho ate food rotten and uncooked in the age of unpolished stone. They\nlive in the mere opening phase of a synthesis of effort the end of which\nsurpasses our imagination. Such intercourse and community as they\nhave is only a dawn. We look towards the day, the day of the organized\ncivilized world state. The first clear intimation of that conscious\nsynthesis of human thought to which I look, the first edge of the\ndayspring, has arisen--as Socialism, as I conceive of Socialism.\nSocialism is to me no more and no less than the awakening of a\ncollective consciousness in humanity, a collective will and a collective\nmind out of which finer individualities may arise forever in a perpetual\nseries of fresh endeavours and fresh achievements for the race.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.4. A CRITICISM OF CERTAIN FORMS OF SOCIALISM.\n\nIt is necessary to point out that a Socialism arising in this way out\nof the conception of a synthesis of the will and thought of the species\nwill necessarily differ from conceptions of Socialism arrived at\nin other and different ways. It is based on a self-discontent and\nself-abnegation and not on self-satisfaction, and it will be a scheme\nof persistent thought and construction, essentially, and it will support\nthis or that method of law-making, or this or that method of economic\nexploitation, or this or that matter of social grouping, only\nincidentally and in relation to that.\n\nSuch a conception of Socialism is very remote in spirit, however it may\nagree in method, from that philanthropic administrative socialism one\nfinds among the British ruling and administrative class. That seems to\nme to be based on a pity which is largely unjustifiable and a pride\nthat is altogether unintelligent. The pity is for the obvious wants and\ndistresses of poverty, the pride appears in the arrogant and aggressive\nconception of raising one\u2019s fellows. I have no strong feeling for\nthe horrors and discomforts of poverty as such, sensibilities can be\nhardened to endure the life led by the \u201cRomans\u201d in Dartmoor jail a\nhundred years ago (See \u201cThe Story of Dartmoor Prison\u201d by Basil Thomson\n(Heinemann--1907).), or softened to detect the crumpled rose-leaf; what\ndisgusts me is the stupidity and warring purposes of which poverty is\nthe outcome. When it comes to the idea of raising human beings, I must\nconfess the only person I feel concerned about raising is H.G. Wells,\nand that even in his case my energies might be better employed. After\nall, presently he must die and the world will have done with him. His\noutput for the species is more important than his individual elevation.\n\nMoreover, all this talk of raising implies a classification I doubt. I\nfind it hard to fix any standards that will determine who is above me\nand who below. Most people are different from me I perceive, but\nwhich among them is better, which worse? I have a certain power of\ncommunicating with other minds, but what experiences I communicate\nseem often far thinner and poorer stuff than those which others less\nexpressive than I half fail to communicate and half display to me.\nMy \u201cinferiors,\u201d judged by the common social standards, seem indeed\nintellectually more limited than I and with a narrower outlook; they\nare often dirtier and more driven, more under the stress of hunger and\nanimal appetites; but on the other hand have they not more vigorous\nsensations than I, and through sheer coarsening and hardening of fibre,\nthe power to do more toilsome things and sustain intenser sensations\nthan I could endure? When I sit upon the bench, a respectable\nmagistrate, and commit some battered reprobate for trial for this\nlurid offence or that, or send him or her to prison for drunkenness or\nsuch-like indecorum, the doubt drifts into my mind which of us after\nall is indeed getting nearest to the keen edge of life. Are I and my\nrespectable colleagues much more than successful evasions of THAT?\nPerhaps these people in the dock know more of the essential strains and\nstresses of nature, are more intimate with pain. At any rate I do not\nthink I am justified in saying certainly that they do not know...\n\nNo, I do not want to raise people using my own position as a standard, I\ndo not want to be one of a gang of consciously superior people, I do not\nwant arrogantly to change the quality of other lives. I do not want to\ninterfere with other lives, except incidentally--incidentally, in this\nway that I do want to get to an understanding with them, I do want to\nshare and feel with them in our commerce with the collective mind. I\nsuppose I do not stretch language very much when I say I want to get\nrid of stresses and obstacles between our minds and personalities and to\nestablish a relation that is understanding and sympathy.\n\nI want to make more generally possible a relationship of communication\nand interchange, that for want of a less battered and ambiguous word I\nmust needs call love.\n\nAnd if I disavow the Socialism of condescension, so also do I disavow\nthe Socialism of revolt. There is a form of Socialism based upon the\neconomic generalizations of Marx, an economic fatalistic Socialism that\nI hold to be rather wrong in its vision of facts, rather more distinctly\nwrong in its theory, and altogether wrong and hopeless in its spirit. It\npreaches, as inevitable, a concentration of property in the hands of\na limited number of property owners and the expropriation of the great\nproletarian mass of mankind, a concentration which is after all no more\nthan a tendency conditional on changing and changeable conventions about\nproperty, and it finds its hope of a better future in the outcome of a\nclass conflict between the expropriated Many and the expropriating Few.\nBoth sides are to be equally swayed by self-interest, but the toilers\nare to be gregarious and mutually loyal in their self-interest--Heaven\nknows why, except that otherwise the Marxist dream will not work. The\nexperience of contemporary events seems to show at least an equal power\nof combination for material ends among owners and employers as among\nworkers.\n\nNow this class-war idea is one diametrically opposed to that\nreligious-spirited Socialism which supplies the form of my general\nactivities. This class-war idea would exacerbate the antagonism of the\ninterests of the many individuals against the few individuals, and I\nwould oppose the conceiving of the Whole to the self-seeking of the\nIndividual. The spirit and constructive intention of the many to-day\nare no better than those of the few, poor and rich alike are\nover-individualized, self-seeking and non-creative; to organize the\nconfused jostling competitions, over-reachings, envies and hatreds of\nto-day into two great class-hatreds and antagonisms will advance\nthe reign of love at most only a very little, only so far as it will\nsimplify and make plain certain issues. It may very possibly not\nadvance the reign of love at all, but rather shatter the order we have.\nSocialism, as I conceive it, and as I have presented it in my book, \u201cNew\nWorlds for Old,\u201d seeks to change economic arrangements only by the way,\nas an aspect and outcome of a great change, a change in the spirit and\nmethod of human intercourse.\n\nI know that here I go beyond the limits many Socialists in the past,\nand some who are still contemporary, have set themselves. Much Socialism\nto-day seems to think of itself as fighting a battle against poverty and\nits concomitants alone. Now poverty is only a symptom of a profounder\nevil and is never to be cured by itself. It is one aspect of divided\nand dispersed purposes. If Socialism is only a conflict with poverty,\nSocialism is nothing. But I hold that Socialism is and must be a battle\nagainst human stupidity and egotism and disorder, a battle fought\nall through the forests and jungles of the soul of man. As we get\nintellectual and moral light and the realization of brotherhood, so\nsocial and economic organization will develop. But the Socialist may\nattack poverty for ever, disregarding the intellectual and moral factors\nthat necessitate it, and he will remain until the end a purely economic\ndoctrinaire crying in the wilderness in vain.\n\nAnd if I antagonize myself in this way to the philanthropic Socialism of\nkindly prosperous people on the one hand and to the fierce class-hatred\nSocialism on the other, still more am I opposed to that furtive\nSocialism of the specialist which one meets most typically in the\nFabian Society. It arises very naturally out of what I may perhaps call\nspecialist fatigue and impatience. It is very easy for writers like\nmyself to deal in the broad generalities of Socialism and urge their\nadoption as general principles; it is altogether another affair with\na man who sets himself to work out the riddle of the complications of\nactuality in order to modify them in the direction of Socialism. He\nfinds himself in a jungle of difficulties that strain his intellectual\npower to the utmost. He emerges at last with conclusions, and they are\nrarely the obvious conclusions, as to what needs to be done. Even the\npeople of his own side he finds do not see as he sees; they are, he\nperceives, crude and ignorant.\n\nNow I hold that his duty is to explain his discoveries and intentions\nuntil they see as he sees. But the specialist temperament is often not a\ngeneralizing and expository temperament. Specialists are apt to measure\nminds by their speciality and underrate the average intelligence. The\nspecialist is appalled by the real task before him, and he sets himself\nby tricks and misrepresentations, by benevolent scoundrelism in fact,\nto effect changes he desires. Too often he fails even in that. Where he\nmight have found fellowship he arouses suspicion. And even if a thing is\ndone in this way, its essential merit is lost. For it is better, I hold,\nfor a man to die of his disease than to be cured unwittingly. That is\nto cheat him of life and to cheat life of the contribution his\nconsciousness might have given it.\n\nThe Socialism of my beliefs rests on a profounder faith and broader\nproposition. It looks over and beyond the warring purposes of to-day\nas a general may look over and beyond a crowd of sullen, excited and\nconfused recruits, to the day when they will be disciplined, exercised,\ntrained, willing and convergent on a common end. It holds persistently\nto the idea of men increasingly working in agreement, doing things\nthat are sane to do, on a basis of mutual helpfulness, temperance and\ntoleration. It sees the great masses of humanity rising out of base and\nimmediate anxieties, out of dwarfing pressures and cramped surroundings,\nto understanding and participation and fine effort. It sees the\nresources of the earth husbanded and harvested, economized and used with\nscientific skill for the maximum of result. It sees towns and cities\nfinely built, a race of beings finely bred and taught and trained, open\nways and peace and freedom from end to end of the earth. It sees beauty\nincreasing in humanity, about humanity and through humanity. Through\nthis great body of mankind goes evermore an increasing understanding, an\nintensifying brotherhood. As Christians have dreamt of the New Jerusalem\nso does Socialism, growing ever more temperate, patient, forgiving and\nresolute, set its face to the World City of Mankind.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.5. HATE AND LOVE.\n\nBefore I go on to point out the broad principles of action that flow\nfrom this wide conception of Socialism, I may perhaps give a section to\nelucidating that opposition of hate and love I made when I dealt with\nthe class war. I have already used the word love several times; it is an\nambiguous word and it may be well to spend a few words in making clear\nthe sense in which it is used here. I use it in a very broad sense to\nconvey all that complex of motives, impulses, sentiments, that incline\nus to find our happiness and satisfactions in the happiness and sympathy\nof others. Essentially it is a synthetic force in human affairs, the\nmerger tendency, a linking force, an expression in personal will and\nfeeling of the common element and interest. It insists upon resemblances\nand shares and sympathies. And hate, I take it, is the emotional aspect\nof antagonism, it is the expression in personal will and feeling of the\nindividual\u2019s separation from others. It is the competing and destructive\ntendency. So long as we are individuals and members of a species, we\nmust needs both hate and love. But because I believe, as I have already\nconfessed, that the oneness of the species is a greater fact than\nindividuality, and that we individuals are temporary separations from a\ncollective purpose, and since hate eliminates itself by eliminating its\nobjects, whilst love multiplies itself by multiplying its objects, so\nlove must be a thing more comprehensive and enduring than hate.\n\nMoreover, hate must be in its nature a good thing. We individuals exist\nas such, I believe, for the purpose in things, and our separations and\nantagonisms serve that purpose. We play against each other like hammer\nand anvil. But the synthesis of a collective will in humanity, which is\nI believe our human and terrestrial share in that purpose, is an idea\nthat carries with it a conception of a secular alteration in the scope\nand method of both love and hate. Both widen and change with man\u2019s\nwidening and developing apprehension of the purpose he serves. The\nsavage man loves in gusts a fellow creature or so about him, and fears\nand hates all other people. Every expansion of his scope and ideas\nwidens either circle. The common man of our civilized world loves not\nonly many of his friends and associates systematically and enduringly,\nbut dimly he loves also his city and his country, his creed and his\nrace; he loves it may be less intensely but over a far wider field and\nmuch more steadily. But he hates also more widely if less passionately\nand vehemently than a savage, and since love makes rather harmony and\npeace and hate rather conflict and events, one may easily be led to\nsuppose that hate is the ruling motive in human affairs. Men band\nthemselves together in leagues and loyalties, in cults and organizations\nand nationalities, and it is often hard to say whether the bond is one\nof love for the association or hatred of those to whom the association\nis antagonized. The two things pass insensibly into one another. London\npeople have recently seen an edifying instance of the transition, in\nthe Brown Dog statue riots. A number of people drawn together by\ntheir common pity for animal suffering, by love indeed of the most\ndisinterested sort, had so forgotten their initial spirit as to erect a\nmonument with an inscription at once recklessly untruthful, spiteful in\nspirit and particularly vexatious to one great medical school of London.\nThey have provoked riots and placarded London with taunts and irritating\nmisrepresentation of the spirit of medical research, and they have\ninfected a whole fresh generation of London students with a bitter\npartizan contempt for the humanitarian effort that has so lamentably\nmisconducted itself. Both sides vow they will never give in, and the\nanti-vivisectionists are busy manufacturing small china copies of\nthe Brown Dog figure, inscription and all, for purposes of domestic\nirritation. Here hate, the evil ugly brother of effort, has manifestly\nslain love the initiator and taken the affair in hand. That is a little\nmodel of human conflicts. So soon as we become militant and play against\none another, comes this danger of strain and this possible reversal of\nmotive. The fight begins. Into a pit of heat and hate fall right and\nwrong together.\n\nNow it seems to me that a religious faith such as I have set forth in\nthe second Book, and a clear sense of our community of blood with all\nmankind, must necessarily affect both our loving and our hatred. It will\ncertainly not abolish hate, but it will subordinate it altogether to\nlove. We are individuals, so the Purpose presents itself to me, in\norder that we may hate the things that have to go, ugliness, baseness,\ninsufficiency, unreality, that we may love and experiment and strive\nfor the things that collectively we seek--power and beauty. Before our\nconversion we did this darkly and with our hate spreading to persons and\nparties from the things for which they stood. But the believer will hate\nlovingly and without fear. We are of one blood and substance with our\nantagonists, even with those that we desire keenly may die and leave\nno issue in flesh or persuasion. They all touch us and are part of one\nnecessary experience. They are all necessary to the synthesis, even if\nthey are necessary only as the potato-peel in the dust-bin is necessary\nto my dinner.\n\nSo it is I disavow and deplore the whole spirit of class-war Socialism\nwith its doctrine of hate, its envious assault upon the leisure and\nfreedom of the wealthy. Without leisure and freedom and the experience\nof life they gave, the ideas of Socialism could never have been born.\nThe true mission of Socialism is against darkness, vanity and cowardice,\nthat darkness which hides from the property owner the intense beauty,\nthe potentialities of interest, the splendid possibilities of life, that\nvanity and cowardice that make him clutch his precious holdings and\nfear and hate the shadow of change. It has to teach the collective\norganization of society; and to that the class-consciousness and intense\nclass-prejudices of the worker need to bow quite as much as those of the\nproperty owner. But when I say that Socialism\u2019s mission is to teach, I\ndo not mean that its mission is a merely verbal and mental one; it must\nuse all instruments and teach by example as well as precept. Socialism\nby becoming charitable and merciful will not cease to be militant.\nSocialism must, lovingly but resolutely, use law, use force, to\ndispossess the owners of socially disadvantageous wealth, as one coerces\na lunatic brother or takes a wrongfully acquired toy from a spoilt and\nobstinate child. It must intervene between all who would keep their\nchildren from instruction in the business of citizenship and the lessons\nof fraternity. It must build and guard what it builds with laws and\nwith that sword which is behind all laws. Non-resistance is for the\nnon-constructive man, for the hermit in the cave and the naked saint in\nthe dust; the builder and maker with the first stroke of his foundation\nspade uses force and opens war against the anti-builder.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.6. THE PRELIMINARY SOCIAL DUTY.\n\nThe belief I have that contributing to the development of the collective\nbeing of man is the individual\u2019s general meaning and duty, and the\nformulae of the Socialism which embodies this belief so far as our\ncommon activities go, give a general framework and direction how a man\nor woman should live. (I do throughout all this book mean man or woman\nequally when I write of \u201cman,\u201d unless it is manifestly inapplicable.)\n\nAnd first in this present time he must see to it that he does live, that\nis to say he must get food, clothing, covering, and adequate leisure for\nthe finer aspects of living. Socialism plans an organized civilization\nin which these things will be a collective solicitude, and the gaining\nof a subsistence an easy preliminary to the fine drama of existence, but\nin the world as we have it we are forced to engage much of our energy\nin scrambling for these preliminary necessities. Our problems of conduct\nlie in the world as it is and not in the world as we want it to be.\nFirst then a man must get a living, a fair civilized living for himself.\nIt is a fundamental duty. It must be a fair living, not pinched nor mean\nnor strained. A man can do nothing higher, he can be no service to any\ncause, until he himself is fed and clothed and equipped and free.\nHe must earn this living or equip himself to earn it in some way not\nsocially disadvantageous, he must contrive as far as possible that\nthe work he does shall be constructive and contributory to the general\nwell-being.\n\nAnd these primary necessities of food, clothing and freedom being\nsecured, one comes to the general disposition of one\u2019s surplus energy.\nWith regard to that I think that a very simple proposition follows from\nthe broad beliefs I have chosen to adopt. The general duty of a man,\nhis existence being secured, is to educate, and chiefly to educate\nand develop himself. It is his duty to live, to make all he can out of\nhimself and life, to get full of experience, to make himself fine and\nperceiving and expressive, to render his experience and perceptions\nhonestly and helpfully to others. And in particular he has to educate\nhimself and others with himself in Socialism. He has to make and keep\nthis idea of synthetic human effort and of conscious constructive effort\nclear first to himself and then clear in the general mind. For it is an\nidea that comes and goes. We are all of us continually lapsing from\nit towards individual isolation again. He needs, we all need, constant\nrefreshment in this belief if it is to remain a predominant living fact\nin our lives.\n\nAnd that duty of education, of building up the collective idea and\norganization of humanity, falls into various divisions depending in\ntheir importance upon individual quality. For all there is one personal\nwork that none may evade, and that is thinking hard, criticising\nstrenuously and understanding as clearly as one can religion, socialism\nand the general principle of one\u2019s acts. The intellectual factor is\nof primary importance in my religion. I can see no more reason why\nsalvation should come to the intellectually incapable than to the\nmorally incapable. For simple souls thinking in simple processes,\nsalvation perhaps comes easily, but there is none for the intellectual\ncoward, for the mental sloven and sluggard, for the stupid and obdurate\nmind. The Believer will think hard and continue to grow and learn, to\nread and seek discussion as his needs determine.\n\nCorrelated with one\u2019s own intellectual activity, part of it and growing\nout of it for almost everyone, is intellectual work with and upon\nothers. By teaching we learn. Not to communicate one\u2019s thoughts to\nothers, to keep one\u2019s thoughts to oneself as people say, is either\ncowardice or pride. It is a form of sin. It is a duty to talk, teach,\nexplain, write, lecture, read and listen. Every truly religious man,\nevery good Socialist, is a propagandist. Those who cannot write or\ndiscuss can talk, those who cannot argue can induce people to listen to\nothers and read. We have a belief and an idea that we want to spread,\neach to the utmost of his means and measure, throughout all the world.\nWe have a thought that we want to make humanity\u2019s thought. And it is\na duty too that one should, within the compass of one\u2019s ability, make\nteaching, writing and lecturing possible where it has not existed\nbefore. This can be done in a hundred ways, by founding and enlarging\nschools and universities and chairs, for example; by making print\nand reading and all the material of thought cheap and abundant, by\norganizing discussion and societies for inquiry.\n\nAnd talk and thought and study are but the more generalized aspects of\nduty. The Believer may find his own special aptitude lies rather\namong concrete things, in experimenting and promoting experiments in\ncollective action. Things teach as well as words, and some of us are\nmost expressive by concrete methods. The Believer will work himself\nand help others to his utmost in all those developments of material\ncivilization, in organized sanitation for example, all those\ndevelopments that force collective acts upon communities and collective\nrealizations into the minds of men. And the whole field of scientific\nresearch is a field of duty calling to everyone who can enter it, to add\nto the permanent store of knowledge and new resources for the race.\n\nThe Mind of that Civilized State we seek to make by giving ourselves\ninto its making, is evidently the central work before us. But while\nthe writer, the publisher and printer, the bookseller and librarian and\nteacher and preacher, the investigator and experimenter, the reader\nand everyone who thinks, will be contributing themselves to this great\norganized mind and intention in the world, many sorts of specialized\nmen will be more immediately concerned with parallel and more concrete\naspects of the human synthesis. The medical worker and the medical\ninvestigator, for example, will be building up the body of a new\ngeneration, the body of the civilized state, and he will be doing all\nhe can, not simply as an individual, but as a citizen, to ORGANIZE his\nservices of cure and prevention, of hygiene and selection. A great\nand growing multitude of men will be working out the apparatus of the\ncivilized state; the organizers of transit and housing, the engineers\nin their incessantly increasing variety, the miners and geologists\nestimating the world\u2019s resources in metals and minerals, the mechanical\ninventors perpetually economizing force. The scientific agriculturist\nagain will be studying the food supply of the world as a whole, and how\nit may be increased and distributed and economized. And to the student\nof law comes the task of rephrasing his intricate and often quite\nbeautiful science in relation to modern conceptions. All these and a\nhundred other aspects are integral to the wide project of Constructive\nSocialism as it shapes itself in my faith.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.7. WRONG WAYS OF LIVING.\n\nWhen we lay down the proposition that it is one\u2019s duty to get one\u2019s\nliving in some way not socially disadvantageous, and as far as possible\nby work that is contributory to the general well-being and development,\nwhen we state that one\u2019s surplus energies, after one\u2019s living is gained,\nmust be devoted to experience, self-development and constructive work,\nit is clear we condemn by implication many modes of life that are\nfollowed to-day.\n\nFor example, it is manifest we condemn living in idleness or on\nnon-productive sport, on the income derived from private property, and\nall sorts of ways of earning a living that cannot be shown to conduce to\nthe constructive process. We condemn trading that is merely speculative,\nand in fact all trading and manufacture that is not a positive social\nservice; we condemn living by gambling or by playing games for either\nstakes or pay. Much more do we condemn dishonest or fraudulent trading\nand every act of advertisement that is not punctiliously truthful. We\nmust condemn too the taking of any income from the community that is\nneither earned nor conceded in the collective interest. But to this last\npoint, and to certain issues arising out of it, I will return in the\nsection next following this one.\n\nAnd it follows evidently from our general propositions that every form\nof prostitution is a double sin, against one\u2019s individuality and against\nthe species which we serve by the development of that individuality\u2019s\npreferences and idiosyncracies.\n\nAnd by prostitution I mean not simply the act of a woman who sells\nfor money, and against her thoughts and preferences, her smiles and\nendearments and the secret beauty and pleasure of her body, but the act\nof anyone who, to gain a living, suppresses himself, does things in a\nmanner alien to himself and subserves aims and purposes with which he\ndisagrees. The journalist who writes against his personal convictions,\nthe solicitor who knowingly assists the schemes of rogues, the barrister\nwho pits himself against what he perceives is justice and the right,\nthe artist who does unbeautiful things or less beautiful things than\nhe might, simply to please base employers, the craftsman who makes\ninstruments for foolish uses or bad uses, the dealer who sells and\npushes an article because it fits the customer\u2019s folly; all these are\nprostitutes of mind and soul if not of body, with no right to lift an\neyebrow at the painted disasters of the streets.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.8. SOCIAL PARASITISM AND CONTEMPORARY INJUSTICES.\n\nThese broad principles about one\u2019s way of living are very simple;\nour minds move freely among them. But the real interest is with the\nindividual case, and the individual case is almost always complicated\nby the fact that the existing social and economic system is based upon\nconditions that the growing collective intelligence condemns as unjust\nand undesirable, and that the constructive spirit in men now seeks to\nsupersede. We have to live in a provisional State while we dream of and\nwork for a better one.\n\nThe ideal life for the ordinary man in a civilized, that is to say a\nSocialist, State would be in public employment or in private enterprise\naiming at public recognition. But in our present world only a small\nminority can have that direct and honourable relation of public service\nin the work they do; most of the important business of the community is\ndone upon the older and more tortuous private ownership system, and the\ngreat mass of men in socially useful employment find themselves working\nonly indirectly for the community and directly for the profit of a\nprivate owner, or they themselves are private owners. Every man who has\nany money put by in the bank, or any money invested, is a private owner,\nand in so far as he draws interest or profit from this investment he is\na social parasite. It is in practice almost impossible to divest oneself\nof that parasitic quality however straightforward the general principle\nmay be.\n\nIt is practically impossible for two equally valid sets of reasons.\nThe first is that under existing conditions, saving and investment\nconstitute the only way to rest and security in old age, to leisure,\nstudy and intellectual independence, to the safe upbringing of a family\nand the happiness of one\u2019s weaker dependents. These are things that\nshould not be left for the individual to provide; in the civilized\nstate, the state itself will insure every citizen against these\nanxieties that now make the study of the City Article almost a duty.\nTo abandon saving and investment to-day, and to do so is of course to\nabandon all insurance, is to become a driven and uncertain worker,\nto risk one\u2019s personal freedom and culture and the upbringing and\nefficiency of one\u2019s children. It is to lower the standard of one\u2019s\npersonal civilization, to think with less deliberation and less\ndetachment, to fall away from that work of accumulating fine habits and\nbeautiful and pleasant ways of living contributory to the coming State.\nAnd in the second place there is not only no return for such a sacrifice\nin anything won for Socialism, but for fine-thinking and living people\nto give up property is merely to let it pass into the hands of more\negoistic possessors. Since at present things must be privately owned,\nit is better that they should be owned by people consciously working for\nsocial development and willing to use them to that end.\n\nWe have to live in the present system and under the conditions of the\npresent system, while we work with all our power to change that system\nfor a better one.\n\nThe case of Cadburys the cocoa and chocolate makers, and the practical\nslavery under the Portuguese of the East African negroes who grow\nthe raw material for Messrs. Cadbury, is an illuminating one in this\nconnection. The Cadburys, like the Rowntrees, are well known as an\nenergetic and public-spirited family, their social and industrial\nexperiments at Bournville and their general social and political\nactivities are broad and constructive in the best sense. But they find\nthemselves in the peculiar dilemma that they must either abandon an\nimportant and profitable portion of their great manufacture or continue\nto buy produce grown under cruel and even horrible conditions. Their\nretirement from the branch of the cocoa and chocolate trade concerned\nwould, under these circumstances, mean no diminution of the manufacture\nor of the horrors of this particular slavery; it would merely mean that\nless humanitarian manufacturers would step in to take up the abandoned\ntrade. The self-righteous individualist would have no doubts about the\nquestion; he would keep his hands clean anyhow, retrench his social\nwork, abandon the types of cocoa involved, and pass by on the other\nside. But indeed I do not believe we came into the mire of life simply\nto hold our hands up out of it. Messrs. Cadbury follow a better line;\nthey keep their business going, and exert themselves in every way to\nlet light into the secrets of Portuguese East Africa and to organize a\nbetter control of these labour cruelties. That I think is altogether the\nright course in this difficulty.\n\nWe cannot keep our hands clean in this world as it is. There is no\nexcuse indeed for a life of fraud or any other positive fruitless\nwrong-doing or for a purely parasitic non-productive life, yet all but\nthe fortunate few who are properly paid and recognized state servants\nmust in financial and business matters do their best amidst and through\ninstitutions tainted with injustice and flawed with unrealities. All\nSocialists everywhere are like expeditionary soldiers far ahead of the\nmain advance. The organized state that should own and administer their\npossessions for the general good has not arrived to take them over; and\nin the meanwhile they must act like its anticipatory agents according to\ntheir lights and make things ready for its coming.\n\nThe Believer then who is not in the public service, whose life lies\namong the operations of private enterprise, must work always on the\nsupposition that the property he administers, the business in which\nhe works, the profession he follows, is destined to be taken over and\norganized collectively for the commonweal and must be made ready for\nthe taking over; that the private outlook he secures by investment,\nthe provision he makes for his friends and children, are temporary,\nwasteful, though at present unavoidable devices to be presently\nmerged in and superseded by the broad and scientific previsions of the\nco-operative commonwealth.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.9. THE CASE OF THE WIFE AND MOTHER.\n\nThese principles give a rule also for the problem that faces the great\nmajority of thinking wives and mothers to-day. The most urgent and\nnecessary social work falls upon them; they bear, and largely educate\nand order the homes of, the next generation, and they have no direct\nrecognition from the community for either of these supreme functions.\nThey are supposed to perform them not for God or the world, but to\nplease and satisfy a particular man. Our laws, our social conventions,\nour economic methods, so hem a woman about that, however fitted for and\ndesirous of maternity she may be, she can only effectually do that\nduty in a dependent relation to her husband. Nearly always he is the\npaymaster, and if his payments are grudging or irregular, she has\nlittle remedy short of a breach and the rupture of the home. Her duty\nis conceived of as first to him and only secondarily to her children and\nthe State. Many wives become under these circumstances mere prostitutes\nto their husbands, often evading the bearing of children with their\nconsent and even at their request, and \u201cloving for a living.\u201d That is a\nnatural outcome of the proprietary theory of the family out of which our\ncivilization emerges. But our modern ideas trend more and more to regard\na woman\u2019s primary duty to be her duty to the children and to the world\nto which she gives them. She is to be a citizen side by side with her\nhusband; no longer is he to intervene between her and the community. As\na matter of contemporary fact he can do so and does so habitually, and\nmost women have to square their ideas of life to that possibility.\n\nBefore any woman who is clear-headed enough to perceive that this great\nbusiness of motherhood is one of supreme public importance, there are a\nnumber of alternatives at the present time. She may, like Grant Allan\u2019s\nheroine in \u201cThe Woman Who Did,\u201d declare an exaggerated and impossible\nindependence, refuse the fetters of marriage and bear children to a\nlover. This, in the present state of public opinion in almost every\nexisting social atmosphere, would be a purely anarchistic course. It\nwould mean a fatherless home, and since the woman will have to play the\ndouble part of income-earner and mother, an impoverished and struggling\nhome. It would mean also an unsocial because ostracized home. In most\ncases, and even assuming it to be right in idea, it would still be on\nall fours with that immediate abandonment of private property we have\nalready discussed, a sort of suicide that helps the world nothing.\n\nOr she may \u201cstrike,\u201d refuse marriage and pursue a solitary and childless\ncareer, engaging her surplus energies in constructive work. But that\nalso is suicide; it is to miss the keenest experiences, the finest\nrealities life has to offer.\n\nOr she may meet a man whom she can trust to keep a treaty with her and\nsupplement the common interpretations and legal insufficiencies of the\nmarriage bond, who will respect her always as a free and independent\nperson, will abstain absolutely from authoritative methods, and will\neither share and trust his income and property with her in a frank\ncommunism, or give her a sufficient and private income for her personal\nuse. It is only fair under existing economic conditions that at marriage\na husband should insure his life in his wife\u2019s interest, and I do not\nthink it would be impossible to bring our legal marriage contract into\naccordance with modern ideas in that matter. Certainly it should be\nlegally imperative that at the birth of each child a new policy upon its\nfather\u2019s life, as the income-getter, should begin. The latter provision\nat least should be a normal condition of marriage and one that the\nwife should have power to enforce when payments fall away. With such\nsafeguards and under such conditions marriage ceases to be a haphazard\ndependence for a woman, and she may live, teaching and rearing and free,\nalmost as though the co-operative commonwealth had come.\n\nBut in many cases, since great numbers of women marry so young and\nso ignorantly that their thinking about realities begins only after\nmarriage, a woman will find herself already married to a man before she\nrealizes the significance of these things. She may be already the mother\nof children. Her husband\u2019s ideas may not be her ideas. He may dominate,\nhe may prohibit, he may intervene, he may default. He may, if he sees\nfit, burthen the family income with the charges of his illegitimate\noffspring.\n\nWe live in the world as it is and not in the world as it should be. That\nsentence becomes the refrain of this discussion.\n\nThe normal modern married woman has to make the best of a bad position,\nto do her best under the old conditions, to live as though she was under\nthe new conditions, to make good citizens, to give her spare energies\nas far as she can to bringing about a better state of affairs. Like the\nprivate property owner and the official in a privately owned business,\nher best method of conduct is to consider herself an unrecognized public\nofficial, irregularly commanded and improperly paid. There is no good\nin flagrant rebellion. She has to study her particular circumstances and\nmake what good she can out of them, keeping her face towards the coming\ntime. I cannot better the image I have already used for the thinking\nand believing modern-minded people of to-day as an advance guard cut\noff from proper supplies, ill furnished so that makeshift prevails,\nand rather demoralized. We have to be wise as well as loyal; discretion\nitself is loyalty to the coming State.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.10. ASSOCIATIONS.\n\nIn the previous section I have dealt with the single individual\u2019s duty\nin relation to the general community and to law and generally received\ninstitutions. But there is a new set of questions now to be considered.\nLet us take up the modifications that arise when it is not one\nisolated individual but a group of individuals who find themselves in\ndisagreement with contemporary rule or usage and disposed to find a\nrightness in things not established or not conceded. They too live in\nthe world as it is and not in the world as it ought to be, but their\nassociation opens up quite new possibilities of anticipating coming\ndevelopments of living, and of protecting and guaranteeing one another\nfrom what for a single unprotected individual would be the inevitable\nconsequences of a particular line of conduct, conduct which happened to\nbe unorthodox or only, in the face of existing conditions, unwise.\n\nFor example, a friend of mine who had read a copy of the preceding\nsection wrote as follows:--\n\n\u201cI can see no reason why even to-day a number of persons avowedly united\nin the same \u2018Belief\u2019 and recognizing each other as the self-constituted\nsocial vanguard should not form a recognized spiritual community\ncentering round some kind of \u2018religious\u2019 edifice and ritual, and agree\nto register and consecrate the union of any couples of the members\naccording to a contract which the whole community should have voted\nacceptable. The community would be the guardian of money deposited or\npaid in gradually as insurance for the children. And the fact of\nthe whole business being regular, open and connected with a common\nintellectual and moral ritual and a common name, such for example as\nyour name of \u2018The Samurai,\u2019 would secure the respect of outsiders, so\nthat eventually these new marriage arrangements would modify the old\nones. People would ask, \u2018Were you married before the registrar?\u2019 and the\nanswer would be, \u2018No, we are Samurai and were united before the\nElders.\u2019 In Catholic countries those who use only the civil marriage\nare considered outcasts by the religiously minded, which shows that\nrecognition by the State is not as potent as recognition by the\ncommunity to which one belongs. The religious marriage is considered\nthe only one binding by Catholics, and the civil ceremony is respected\nmerely because the State has brute force behind it.\u201d\n\nThere is in this passage one particularly valuable idea, the idea of\nan association of people to guarantee the welfare of their children in\ncommon. I will follow that a little, though it takes me away from my\nmain line of thought. It seems to me that such an association might be\nfound in many cases a practicable way of easing the conflict that so\nmany men and women experience, between their individual public service\nand their duty to their own families. Many people of exceptional gifts,\nwhose gifts are not necessarily remunerative, are forced by these\npersonal considerations to direct them more or less askew, to divert\nthem from their best application to some inferior but money-making\nuse; and many more are given the disagreeable alternative of evading\nparentage or losing the freedom of mind needed for socially beneficial\nwork. This is particularly the case with many scientific investigators,\nmany sociological and philosophical workers, many artists, teachers and\nthe like. Even when such people are fairly prosperous personally they do\nnot care to incur the obligation to keep prosperous at any cost to their\nwork that a family in our competitive system involves. It gives great\nease of mind to any sort of artistic or intellectual worker to feel\nfree to become poor. I do not see why a group of such people should not\nattempt a merger of their family anxieties and family adventures,\ninsure all its members, and while each retains a sufficient personal\nindependence for freedom of word and movement, pool their family\nsolicitudes and resources, organize a collective school and a\ncommon maintenance fund for all the children born of members of\nthe association. I do not see why they should not in fact develop a\npermanent trust to maintain, educate and send out all their children\ninto the world, a trust to which their childless friends and associates\ncould contribute by gift and bequest, and to which the irregular good\nfortune that is not uncommon in the careers of these exceptional types\ncould be devoted. I do not mean any sort of charity but an enlarged\nfamily basis.\n\nSuch an idea passes very readily into the form of a Eugenic association.\nIt would be quite possible and very interesting for prosperous people\ninterested in Eugenics to create a trust for the offspring of a selected\nband of beneficiaries, and with increasing resources to admit new\nmembers and so build up within the present social system a special\nstrain of chosen people. So far people with eugenic ideas and people\nwith conceptions of associated and consolidated families have been too\nvarious and too dispersed for such associations to be practicable, but\nas such views of life become more common, the chance of a number of\nsufficiently homogeneous and congenial people working out the method of\nsuch a grouping increases steadily.\n\nMoreover, I can imagine no reason to prevent any women who are in\nagreement with the moral standards of the \u201cWoman who Did\u201d (standards I\nwill not discuss at this present point but defer for a later section)\ncombining for mutual protection and social support and the welfare of\nsuch children as they may bear. Then certainly, to the extent that\nthis succeeds, the objections that arise from the evil effects upon the\nchildren of social isolation disappear. This isolation would be at worst\na group isolation, and there can be no doubt that my friend is right\nin pointing out that there is much more social toleration for an act\ncommitted under the sanction of a group than for an isolated act that\nmay be merely impulsive misbehaviour masquerading as high principle.\n\nIt seems to me remarkable that, to the best of my knowledge, so\nobvious a form of combination has never yet been put in practice. It\nis remarkable but not inexplicable. The first people to develop novel\nideas, more particularly of this type, are usually people in isolated\ncircumstances and temperamentally incapable of disciplined cooperation.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.11. OF AN ORGANIZED BROTHERHOOD.\n\nThe idea of organizing the progressive elements in the social chaos into\na regular developing force is one that has had a great attraction\nfor me. I have written upon it elsewhere, and I make no apology\nfor returning to it here and examining it in the light of various\nafterthoughts and with fresh suggestions.\n\nI first broached this idea in a book called \u201cAnticipations,\u201d wherein I\ndescribed a possible development of thought and concerted action which\nI called the New Republicanism, and afterwards I redrew the thing\nrather more elaborately in my \u201cModern Utopia.\u201d I had been struck by the\napparently chaotic and wasteful character of most contemporary reform\nmovements, and it seemed reasonable to suppose that those who aimed at\norganizing society and replacing chaos and waste by wise arrangements,\nmight very well begin by producing a more effective organization\nfor their own efforts. These complexities of good intention made me\nimpatient, and I sought industriously in my mind for a short cut\nthrough them. In doing so I think I overlooked altogether too much how\nheterogeneous all progressive thought and progressive people must be.\n\nIn my \u201cModern Utopia\u201d I turned this idea of an organized brotherhood\nabout very thoroughly and looked at it from this point and that; I\nlet it loose as it were, and gave it its fullest development, and so\nproduced a sort of secular Order of governing men and women. In a spirit\nentirely journalistic I called this the Order of the Samurai, for at the\ntime I wrote there was much interest in Bushido because of the capacity\nfor hardship and self-sacrifice this chivalrous culture appears to\nhave developed in the Japanese. These Samurai of mine were a sort of\nvoluntary nobility who supplied the administrative and organizing forces\nthat held my Utopian world together. They were the \u201cNew Republicans\u201d\n of my \u201cAnticipations\u201d and \u201cMankind in the Making,\u201d much developed and\nsupposed triumphant and ruling the world.\n\nI sought of course to set out these ideas as attractively as possible in\nmy books, and they have as a matter of fact proved very attractive to a\ncertain number of people. Quite a number have wanted to go on with them.\nSeveral little organizations of Utopians and Samurai and the like have\nsprung up and informed me of themselves, and some survive; and young men\ndo still at times drop into my world \u201cpersonally or by letter\u201d declaring\nthemselves New Republicans.\n\nAll this has been very helpful and at times a little embarrassing to\nme. It has given me an opportunity of seeing the ideals I flung into\nthe distance beyond Sirius and among the mountain snows coming home\npartially incarnate in girls and young men. It has made me look into\nindividualized human aspirations, human impatience, human vanity and a\ncertain human need of fellowship, at close quarters. It has illuminated\nsubtle and fine traits; it has displayed nobilities, and it has brought\nout aspects of human absurdity to which only the pencil of Mr. George\nMorrow could do adequate justice. The thing I have had to explain most\ngenerally is that my New Republicans and Samurai are but figures of\nsuggestion, figures to think over and use in planning disciplines, but\nby no means copies to follow. I have had to go over again, as though it\nhad never been raised before in any previous writings, the difference\nbetween the spirit and the letter.\n\nThese responses have on the whole confirmed my main idea that there is\na real need, a need that many people, and especially adolescent people,\nfeel very strongly, for some sort of constructive brotherhood of a\ncloser type than mere political association, to co-ordinate and partly\nguide their loose chaotic efforts to get hold of life--but they have\nalso convinced me that no wide and comprehensive organization can supply\nthat want.\n\nMy New Republicans were presented as in many respects harsh and\noverbearing people, \u201ca sort of outspoken secret society\u201d for the\norganization of the world. They were not so much an ideal order as the\nSamurai of the later book, being rather deduced as a possible outcome of\ncertain forces and tendencies in contemporary life (A.D. 1900) than,\nas literary people say, \u201ccreated.\u201d They were to be drawn from among\nengineers, doctors, scientific business organizers and the like, and I\nfound that it is to energetic young men of the more responsible classes\nthat this particular ideal appeals. Their organization was quite\ninformal, a common purpose held them together.\n\nMost of the people who have written to me to call themselves New\nRepublicans are I find also Imperialists and Tariff Reformers, and I\nsuppose that among the prominent political figures of to-day the\nnearest approach to my New Republicans is Lord Milner and the\nSocialist-Unionists of his group. It is a type harshly constructive,\ninclined to an unscrupulous pose and slipping readily into a\nKiplingesque brutality.\n\nThe Samurai on the other hand were more picturesque figures, with a much\nmore elaborated organization.\n\nI may perhaps recapitulate the points about that Order here.\n\nIn the \u201cModern Utopia\u201d the visitor from earth remarks:--\n\n\u201cThese Samurai form the real body of the State. All this time that I\nhave spent going to and fro in this planet, it has been growing upon me\nthat this order of men and women, wearing such a uniform as you wear,\nand with faces strengthened by discipline and touched with devotion, is\nthe Utopian reality; that but for them the whole fabric of these fair\nappearances would crumble and tarnish, shrink and shrivel, until at\nlast, back I should be amidst the grime and disorders of the life of\nearth. Tell me about these Samurai, who remind me of Plato\u2019s guardians,\nwho look like Knight Templars, who bear a name that recalls the\nswordsmen of Japan. What are they? Are they an hereditary cast, a\nspecially educated order, an elected class? For, certainly, this world\nturns upon them as a door upon its hinges.\u201d\n\nHis informant explains:--\n\n\u201cPractically the whole of the responsible rule of the world is in their\nhands; all our head teachers and disciplinary heads of colleges,\nour judges, barristers, employers of labour beyond a certain limit,\npractising medical men, legislators, must be Samurai, and all the\nexecutive committees and so forth, that play so large a part in our\naffairs, are drawn by lot exclusively from them. The order is not\nhereditary--we know just enough of biology and the uncertainties of\ninheritance to know how silly that would be--and it does not require an\nearly consecration or novitiate or ceremonies and initiations of that\nsort. The Samurai are, in fact, volunteers. Any intelligent adult in a\nreasonably healthy and efficient state may, at any age after five and\ntwenty, become one of the Samurai and take a hand in the universal\ncontrol.\u201d\n\n\u201cProvided he follows the Rule.\u201d\n\n\u201cPrecisely--provided he follows the Rule.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have heard the phrase, \u2018voluntary nobility.\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cThat was the idea of our Founders. They made a noble and privileged\norder--open to the whole world. No one could complain of an unjust\nexclusion, for the only thing that could exclude them from the order was\nunwillingness or inability to follow the Rule.\n\n\u201cThe Rule aims to exclude the dull and base altogether, to discipline\nthe impulses and emotions, to develop a moral habit and sustain a man\nin periods of stress, fatigue and temptation, to produce the maximum\nco-operation of all men of good-intent, and in fact to keep all the\nSamurai in a state of moral and bodily health and efficiency. It does\nas much of this as well as it can, but of course, like all general\npropositions, it does not do it in any case with absolute precision. AT\nFIRST IN THE MILITANT DAYS, IT WAS A TRIFLE HARD AND UNCOMPROMISING;\nIT HAD RATHER TOO STRONG AN APPEAL TO THE MORAL PRIG AND THE HARSHLY\nRIGHTEOUS MAN, but it has undergone, and still undergoes, revision and\nexpansion, and every year it becomes a little better adapted to the need\nof a general rule of life that all men may try to follow. We have now\na whole literature with many very fine things in it, written about the\nRule.\n\n\u201cThe Rule consists of three parts; there is the list of things that\nqualify, the list of things that must not be done, and the list of\nthings that must be done. Qualification exacts a little exertion as\nevidence of good faith and it is designed to weed out the duller dull\nand many of the base.\u201d\n\nHe goes on to tell of certain intellectual qualifications and\ndisciplines.\n\n\u201cNext to the intellectual qualification comes the physical, the man must\nbe in sound health, free from certain foul, avoidable and demoralizing\ndiseases, and in good training. We reject men who are fat, or thin, or\nflabby, or whose nerves are shaky--we refer them back to training. And\nfinally the man or woman must be fully adult.\u201d\n\n\u201cTwenty-one? But you said twenty-five!\u201d\n\n\u201cThe age has varied. At first it was twenty-five or over; then the\nminimum became twenty-five for men and twenty-one for women. Now there\nis a feeling that it ought to be raised. We don\u2019t want to take advantage\nof mere boy and girl emotions--men of my way of thinking, at any rate,\ndon\u2019t--we want to get our Samurai with experiences, with settled mature\nconviction. Our hygiene and regimen are rapidly pushing back old age and\ndeath, and keeping men hale and hearty to eighty and more. There\u2019s no\nneed to hurry the young. Let them have a chance of wine, love and song;\nlet them feel the bite of full-blooded desire, and know what devils they\nhave to reckon with...\n\n\u201cWe forbid a good deal. Many small pleasures do no great harm, but we\nthink it well to forbid them none the less, so that we can weed out the\nself-indulgent. We think that a constant resistance to little seductions\nis good for a man\u2019s quality. At any rate, it shows that a man is\nprepared to pay something for his honour and privileges. We prescribe\na regimen of food, forbid tobacco, wine, or any alcoholic drink, all\nnarcotic drugs...\n\n\u201cOriginally the Samurai were forbidden usury, that is to say, the\nlending of money at fixed rates of interest. They are still under that\ninterdiction, but since our commercial code practically prevents usury\naltogether, and our law will not recognize contracts for interest upon\nprivate accommodation loans to unprosperous borrowers,\u201d (he is speaking\nof Utopia), \u201cit is now scarcely necessary. The idea of a man growing\nricher by mere inaction and at the expense of an impoverished debtor is\nprofoundly distasteful to Utopian ideas, and our State insists pretty\neffectually now upon the participation of the lender in the borrower\u2019s\nrisks. This, however, is only one part of a series of limitations of\nthe same character. It is felt that to buy simply in order to sell again\nbrings out many unsocial human qualities; it makes a man seek to enhance\nprofits and falsify values, and so the Samurai are forbidden to buy or\nsell on their own account or for any employer save the State, unless by\nsome process of manufacture they change the nature of the commodity (a\nmere change in bulk or packing does not suffice), and they are forbidden\nsalesmanship and all its arts. Nor may the Samurai do personal services,\nexcept in the matter of medicine or surgery; they may not be barbers,\nfor example, nor inn waiters nor boot cleaners, men do such services for\nthemselves. Nor may a man under the Rule be any man\u2019s servant, pledged\nto do whatever he is told. He may neither be a servant nor keep one;\nhe must shave and dress and serve himself, carry his own food from the\nhelper\u2019s place, redd his sleeping room and leave it clean...\u201d\n\nFinally came the things they had to do. Their Rule contained:--\n\n\u201cmany precise directions regarding his health, and rules that would aim\nat once at health and that constant exercise or will that makes life\ngood. Save in specified exceptional circumstances, the Samurai must\nbathe in cold water and the men shave every day; they have the precisest\ndirections in such matters; the body must be in health, the skin and\nnerves and muscles in perfect tone, or the Samurai must go to the\ndoctors of the order and give implicit obedience to the regimen\nprescribed. They must sleep alone at least four nights in five; and they\nmust eat with and talk to anyone in their fellowship who cares for their\nconversation for an hour at least, at the nearest club-house of the\nSamurai, once on three chosen days in every week. Moreover they must\nread aloud from the Book of the Samurai for at least five minutes every\nday. Every month they must buy and read faithfully through at least one\nbook that has been published during the past five years, and the only\nintervention with private choice in that matter is the prescription of\na certain minimum of length for the monthly book or books. But the full\nrule in these minor compulsory matters is voluminous and detailed,\nand it abounds with alternatives. Its aim is rather to keep before the\nSamurai by a number of simple duties, as it were, the need of and some\nof the chief methods towards health of body and mind rather than\nto provide a comprehensive rule, and to ensure the maintenance of a\ncommunity of feeling and interests among the Samurai through habit,\nintercourse and a living contemporary literature. These minor\nobligations do not earmark more than an hour in the day. Yet they\nserve to break down isolations of sympathy, all sorts of physical and\nintellectual sluggishness and the development of unsocial preoccupations\nof many sorts...\n\n\u201cSo far as the Samurai have a purpose in common in maintaining the State\nand the order and discipline of the world, so far, by their discipline\nand denial, by their public work and effort, they worship God together.\nBut the ultimate fount of motives lies in the individual life, it lies\nin silent and deliberate reflections, and at this the most striking of\nall the rules of the Samurai aims. For seven consecutive days of the\nyear, at least, each man or woman under the Rule must go right out of\nall the life of men into some wild and solitary place, must speak to no\nman or woman and have no sort of intercourse with mankind. They must go\nbookless and weaponless, without pen or paper or money. Provision must\nbe taken for the period of the journey, a rug or sleeping sack--for they\nmust sleep under the open sky--but no means of making a fire. They may\nstudy maps before to guide them, showing any difficulties and dangers\nin the journey, but they may not carry such helps. They must not go by\nbeaten ways or wherever there are inhabited houses, but into the bare,\nquiet places of the globe--the regions set apart for them.\n\n\u201cThis discipline was invented to secure a certain stoutness of heart\nand body in the Samurai. Otherwise the order might have lain open to\ntoo many timorous, merely abstemious men and women. Many things had\nbeen suggested, sword-play and tests that verged on torture, climbing\nin giddy places and the like, before this was chosen. Partly, it is to\nensure good training and sturdiness of body and mind, but partly also,\nit is to draw the minds of the Samurai for a space from the insistent\ndetails of life, from the intricate arguments and the fretting effort to\nwork, from personal quarrels and personal affections and the things of\nthe heated room. Out they must go, clean out of the world...\u201d\n\nThese passages will at least serve to present the Samurai idea and the\nidea of common Rule of conduct it embodied.\n\nIn the \u201cModern Utopia\u201d I discuss also a lesser Rule and the modification\nof the Rule for women and the relation to the order of what I call the\npoietic types, those types whose business in life seems to be rather to\nexperience and express than to act and effectually do. For those things\nI must refer the reader to the book itself. Together with a sentence\nI have put in italics above, they serve to show that even when I was\ndevising these Samurai I was not unmindful of the defects that are\nessential to such a scheme.\n\nThis dream of the Samurai proved attractive to a much more various\ngroup of readers than the New Republican suggestion, and there have been\nactual attempts to realise the way of life proposed. In most of these\ncases there was manifest a disposition greatly to over-accentuate\norganization, to make too much of the disciplinary side of the Rule and\nto forget the entire subordination of such things to active thought and\nconstructive effort. They are valuable and indeed only justifiable as\na means to an end. These attempts of a number of people of very\nmiscellaneous origins and social traditions to come together and work\nlike one machine made the essential wastefulness of any terrestrial\nrealization of my Samurai very clear. The only reason for such an Order\nis the economy and development of force, and under existing conditions\ndisciplines would consume more force than they would engender. The\nOrder, so far from being a power, would be an isolation. Manifestly the\nelements of organization and uniformity were overdone in my Utopia; in\nthis matter I was nearer the truth in the case of my New Republicans.\nThese, in contrast with the Samurai, had no formal general organization,\nthey worked for a common end, because their minds and the suggestion of\ntheir circumstances pointed them to a common end. Nothing was enforced\nupon them in the way of observance or discipline. They were not\nshepherded and trained together, they came together. It was assumed\nthat if they wanted strongly they would see to it that they lived in the\nmanner most conducive to their end just as in all this book I am taking\nit for granted that to believe truly is to want to do right. It was\nnot even required of them that they should sedulously propagate their\nconstructive idea.\n\nApart from the illumination of my ideas by these experiments and\nproposals, my Samurai idea has also had a quite unmerited amount of\nsubtle and able criticism from people who found it at once interesting\nand antipathetic. My friends Vernon Lee and G.K. Chesterton, for\nexample, have criticized it, and I think very justly, on the ground\nthat the invincible tortuousness of human pride and class-feeling would\ninevitably vitiate its working. All its disciplines would tend to give\nits members a sense of distinctness, would tend to syndicate power and\nrob it of any intimacy and sympathy with those outside the Order...\n\nIt seems to me now that anyone who shares the faith I have been\ndeveloping in this book will see the value of these comments and\nrecognize with me that this dream is a dream; the Samurai are just one\nmore picture of the Perfect Knight, an ideal of clean, resolute and\nbalanced living. They may be valuable as an ideal of attitude but not as\nan ideal of organization. They are never to be put, as people say, upon\na business footing and made available as a refuge from the individual\nproblem.\n\nTo modernize the parable, the Believer must not only not bury his talent\nbut he must not bank it with an organization. Each Believer must decide\nfor himself how far he wants to be kinetic or efficient, how far he\nneeds a stringent rule of conduct, how far he is poietic and may loiter\nand adventure among the coarse and dangerous things of life. There is\nno reason why one should not, and there is every reason why one should,\ndiscuss one\u2019s personal needs and habits and disciplines and elaborate\none\u2019s way of life with those about one, and form perhaps with those of\nlike training and congenial temperament small groups for mutual support.\nThat sort of association I have already discussed in the previous\nsection. With adolescent people in particular such association is in\nmany cases an almost instinctive necessity. There is no reason moreover\nwhy everyone who is lonely should not seek out congenial minds and\ncontrive a grouping with them. All mutual lovers for example are Orders\nof a limited membership, many married couples and endless cliques\nand sets are that. Such small and natural associations are indeed\nforce-giving Orders because they are brought together by a common innate\ndisposition out of a possibility of mutual assistance and inspiration;\nthey observe a Rule that springs up and not a Rule imposed. The more\nof such groups and Orders we have the better. I do not see why having\nformed themselves they should not define and organize themselves. I\nbelieve there is a phase somewhere between fifteen and thirty, in the\nlife of nearly everybody, when such a group is sought, is needed and\nwould be helpful in self-development and self-discovery. In leagues and\nsocieties for specific ends, too, we must all participate. But the order\nof the Samurai as a great progressive force controlling a multitude of\nlives right down to their intimate details and through all the phases of\npersonal development is a thing unrealizable. To seek to realize it is\nimpatience. True brotherhood is universal brotherhood. The way to that\nis long and toilsome, but it is a way that permits of no such energetic\nshort cuts as this militant order of my dream would achieve.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.12. CONCERNING NEW STARTS AND NEW RELIGIONS.\n\nWhen one is discussing this possible formation of cults and\nbrotherhoods, it may be well to consider a few of the conditions that\nrule such human re-groupings. We live in the world as it is and not in\nthe world as we want it to be, that is the practical rule by which we\nsteer, and in directing our lives we must constantly consider the forces\nand practicabilities of the social medium in which we move.\n\nIn contemporary life the existing ties are so various and so imperative\nthat the detachment necessary as a preliminary condition to such new\ngroupings is rarely found. This is not a period in which large numbers\nof people break away easily and completely from old connexions. Things\nchange less catastrophically than once they did. More particularly\nis there less driving out into the wilderness. There is less heresy\nhunting; persecution is frequently reluctant and can be evaded by slight\nconcessions. The world as a whole is less harsh and emphatic than it\nwas. Customs and customary attitudes change nowadays not so much by\nopen, defiant and revolutionary breaches as by the attrition of partial\nnegligences and new glosses. Innovating people do conform to current\nusage, albeit they conform unwillingly and imperfectly. There is a\nconstant breaking down and building up of usage, and as a consequence\na lessened need of wholesale substitutions. Human methods have become\nviviparous; the New nowadays lives for a time in the form of the Old.\nThe friend I quote in Chapter 2.10 writes of a possible sect with a\n\u201creligious edifice\u201d and ritual of its own, a new religious edifice and\na new ritual. In practice I doubt whether \u201creal\u201d people, people\nwho matter, people who are getting things done and who have already\ndeveloped complex associations, can afford the extensive re-adjustment\nimplied in such a new grouping. It would mean too much loss of time,\ntoo much loss of energy and attention, too much sacrifice of existing\nco-operations.\n\nNew cults, new religions, new organizations of all sorts, insisting\nupon their novelty and difference, are most prolific and most successful\nwherever there is an abundant supply of dissociated people, where\nmovement is in excess of deliberation, and creeds and formulae\nunyielding and unadaptable because they are unthinking. In England,\nfor example, in the last century, where social conditions have been\ncomparatively stable, discussion good and abundant and internal\nmigration small, there have been far fewer such developments than in\nthe United States of America. In England toleration has become an\ninstitution, and where Tory and Socialist, Bishop and Infidel, can all\nmeet at the same dinner-table and spend an agreeable week-end together,\nthere is no need for defensive segregations. In such an atmosphere\nopinion and usage change and change continually, not dramatically as the\nresults of separations and pitched battles but continuously and fluently\nas the outcome of innumerable personal reactions. America, on the other\nhand, because of its material preoccupations, because of the dispersal\nof its thinking classes over great areas, because of the cruder\nunderstanding of its more heterogeneous population (which constantly\nrenders hard and explicit statement necessary), MEANS its creeds much\nmore literally and is at once more experimental and less compromising\nand tolerant. It is there if anywhere that new brotherhoods and new\ncreeds will continue to appear. But even in America I think the trend\nof things is away from separations and segregations and new starts, and\ntowards more comprehensive and graduated methods of development.\n\nNew religions, I think, appear and are possible and necessary in phases\nof social disorganization, in phases when considerable numbers of people\nare detached from old systems of direction and unsettled and distressed.\nSo, at any rate, it was Christianity appeared, in a strained and\ndisturbed community, in the clash of Roman and Oriental thought, and for\na long time it was confined to the drifting population of seaports\nand great cities and to wealthy virgins and widows, reaching the most\nsettled and most adjusted class, the pagani, last of all and in its\nmost adaptable forms. It was the greatest new beginning in the world\u2019s\nhistory, and the wealth of political and literary and social and\nartistic traditions it abandoned had subsequently to be revived and\nassimilated to it fragment by fragment from the past it had submerged.\nNow, I do not see that the world to-day presents any fair parallelism\nto that sere age of stresses in whose recasting Christianity played the\npart of a flux. Ours is on the whole an organizing and synthetic rather\nthan a disintegrating phase throughout the world. Old institutions\nare neither hard nor obstinate to-day, and the immense and various\nconstructive forces at work are saturated now with the conception\nof evolution, of secular progressive development, as opposed to the\nrevolutionary idea. Only a very vast and terrible war explosion can, I\nthink, change this state of affairs.\n\nThis conveys in general terms, at least, my interpretation of the\npresent time, and it is in accordance with this view that the world\nis moving forward as a whole and with much dispersed and discrepant\nrightness, that I do not want to go apart from the world as a whole\ninto any smaller community, with all the implication of an exclusive\npossession of right which such a going apart involves. Put to the test\nby my own Samurai for example by a particularly urgent and enthusiastic\ndiscipline, I found I did not in the least want to be one of that\norganization, that it only expressed one side of a much more complex\nself than its disciplines permitted. And still less do I want to\nhamper the play of my thoughts and motives by going apart into the\nparticularism of a new religion. Such refuges are well enough when the\ntimes threaten to overwhelm one. The point about the present age, so\nfar as I am able to judge the world, is that it does not threaten to\noverwhelm; that at the worst, by my standards, it maintains its way of\nthinking instead of assimilating mine.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.13. THE IDEA OF THE CHURCH.\n\nNow all this leads very directly to a discussion of the relations of a\nperson of my way of thinking to the Church and religious institutions\ngenerally. I have already discussed my relation to commonly accepted\nbeliefs, but the question of institutions is, it seems to me, a\ndifferent one altogether. Not to realize that, to confuse a church\nwith its creed, is to prepare the ground for a mass of disastrous and\nlife-wasting errors.\n\nNow my rules of conduct are based on the supposition that moral\ndecisions are to be determined by the belief that the individual life\nguided by its perception of beauty is incidental, experimental, and\ncontributory to the undying life of the blood and race. I have decided\nfor myself that the general business of life is the development of\na collective consciousness and will and purpose out of a chaos of\nindividual consciousnesses and wills and purposes, and that the way\nto that is through the development of the Socialist State, through\nthe socialization of existing State organizations and their merger of\npacific association in a World State. But so far I have not taken up\nthe collateral aspect of the synthesis of human consciousness, the\ndevelopment of collective feeling and willing and expression in the\nform, among others, of religious institutions.\n\nReligious institutions are things to be legitimately distinguished from\nthe creeds and cosmogonies with which one finds them associated. Customs\nare far more enduring things than ideas,--witness the mistletoe at\nChristmas, or the old lady turning her money in her pocket at the sight\nof the new moon. And the exact origin of a religious institution is of\nmuch less significance to us than its present effect. The theory of a\nreligion may propose the attainment of Nirvana or the propitiation of\nan irascible Deity or a dozen other things as its end and aim; the\npractical fact is that it draws together great multitudes of diverse\nindividualized people in a common solemnity and self-subordination\nhowever vague, and is so far, like the State, and in a manner far more\nintimate and emotional and fundamental than the State, a synthetic\npower. And in particular, the idea of the Catholic Church is charged\nwith synthetic suggestion; it is in many ways an idea broader and\nfiner than the constructive idea of any existing State. And just as\nthe Beliefs I have adopted lead me to regard myself as in and of the\nexisting State, such as it is, and working for its rectification and\ndevelopment, so I think there is a reasonable case for considering\noneself in and of the Catholic Church and bound to work for its\nrectification and development; and this in spite of the fact that one\nmay not feel justified in calling oneself a Christian in any sense of\nthe term.\n\nIt may be maintained very plausibly that the Catholic Church is\nsomething greater than Christianity, however much the Christians may\nhave contributed to its making. From the historical point of view it is\na religious and social method that developed with the later development\nof the world empire of Rome and as the expression of its moral and\nspiritual side. Its head was, and so far as its main body is concerned\nstill is, the pontifex maximus of the Roman world empire, an official\nwho was performing sacrifices centuries before Christ was born. It\nis easy to assert that the Empire was converted to Christianity and\nsubmitted to its terrestrial leader, the bishop of Rome; it is quite\nequally plausible to say that the religious organization of the Empire\nadopted Christianity and so made Rome, which had hitherto had no\npriority over Jerusalem or Antioch in the Christian Church, the\nheadquarters of the adopted cult. And if the Christian movement could\ntake over and assimilate the prestige, the world predominance and\nsacrificial conception of the pontifex maximus and go on with that as\npart at any rate of the basis of a universal Church, it is manifest\nthat now in the fulness of time this great organization, after its\naccumulation of Christian tradition, may conceivably go on still further\nto alter and broaden its teaching and observances and formulae.\n\nIn a sense no doubt all we moderns are bound to consider ourselves\nchildren of the Catholic Church, albeit critical and innovating children\nwith a tendency to hark back to our Greek grandparents; we cannot detach\nourselves absolutely from the Church without at the same time detaching\nourselves from the main process of spiritual synthesis that has made us\nwhat we are. And there is a strong case for supposing that not only is\nthis reasonable for us who live in the tradition of Western Europe, but\nthat we are legitimately entitled to call upon extra European peoples to\njoin with us in that attitude of filiation to the Catholic Church since,\noutside it, there is no organization whatever aiming at a religious\ncatholicity and professing or attempting to formulate a collective\nreligious consciousness in the world. So far as they come to a\nconception of a human synthesis they come to it by coming into our\ntradition.\n\nI write here of the Catholic Church as an idea. To come from that\nidea to the world of present realities is to come to a tangle of\ndifficulties. Is the Catholic Church merely the Roman communion or does\nit include the Greek and Protestant Churches? Some of these bodies\nare declaredly dissentient, some claim to be integral portions of the\nCatholic Church which have protested against and abandoned certain\nerrors of the central organization. I admit it becomes a very confusing\nriddle in such a country as England to determine which is the Catholic\nChurch; whether it is the body which possesses and administers\nCanterbury Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, or the bodies claiming to\nrepresent purer and finer or more authentic and authoritative forms\nof Catholic teaching which have erected that new Byzantine-looking\ncathedral in Westminster, or Whitfield\u2019s Tabernacle in the Tottenham\nCourt Road, or a hundred or so other organized and independent bodies.\nIt is still more perplexing to settle upon the Catholic Church in\nAmerica among an immense confusion of sectarian fragments.\n\nMany people, I know, take refuge from the struggle with this tangle\nof controversies by refusing to recognize any institutions whatever as\nrepresenting the Church. They assume a mystical Church made up of all\ntrue believers, of all men and women of good intent, whatever their\nformulae or connexion. Wherever there is worship, there, they say, is\na fragment of the Church. All and none of these bodies are the true\nChurch.\n\nThis is no doubt profoundly true. It gives something like a working\nassumption for the needs of the present time. People can get along\nupon that. But it does not exhaust the question. We seek a real and\nunderstanding synthesis. We want a real collectivism, not a poetical\nidea; a means whereby men and women of all sorts, all kinds of humanity,\nmay pray together, sing together, stand side by side, feel the same wave\nof emotion, develop a collective being. Doubtless right-spirited men are\npraying now at a thousand discrepant altars. But for the most part those\nwho pray imagine those others who do not pray beside them are in\nerror, they do not know their common brotherhood and salvation. Their\nbrotherhood is masked by unanalyzable differences; theirs is a dispersed\ncollectivism; their churches are only a little more extensive than their\nindividualities and intenser in their collective separations.\n\nThe true Church towards which my own thoughts tend will be the conscious\nilluminated expression of Catholic brotherhood. It must, I think,\ndevelop out of the existing medley of Church fragments and out of all\nthat is worthy in our poetry and literature, just as the worldwide\nSocialist State at which I aim must develop out of such state and casual\neconomic organizations and constructive movements as exist to-day. There\nis no \u201cbeginning again\u201d in these things. In neither case will going\napart out of existing organizations secure our ends. Out of what is,\nwe have to develop what has to be. To work for the Reformation of the\nCatholic Church is an integral part of the duty of a believer.\n\nIt is curious how misleading a word can be. We speak of a certain\nphase in the history of Christianity as the Reformation, and that word\neffectually conceals from most people the simple indisputable fact that\nthere has been no Reformation. There was an attempt at a Reformation\nin the Catholic Church, and through a variety of causes it failed.\nIt detached great masses from the Catholic Church and left that\norganization impoverished intellectually and spiritually, but it\nachieved no reconstruction at all. It achieved no reconstruction because\nthe movement as a whole lacked an adequate grasp of one fundamentally\nnecessary idea, the idea of Catholicity. It fell into particularism\nand failed. It set up a vast process of fragmentation among Christian\nassociations. It drove huge fissures through the once common platform.\nIn innumerable cases they were fissures of organization and prejudice\nrather than real differences in belief and mental habit. Sometimes\nit was manifestly conflicting material interests that made the split.\nPeople are now divided by forgotten points of difference, by sides taken\nby their predecessors in the disputes of the sixteenth century, by mere\nsectarian names and the walls of separate meeting places. In the present\ntime, as a result of the dissenting method, there are multitudes of\nbelieving men scattered quite solitarily through the world.\n\nThe Reformation, the Reconstruction of the Catholic Church lies still\nbefore us. It is a necessary work. It is a work strictly parallel to\nthe reformation and expansion of the organized State. Together, these\nprocesses constitute the general duty before mankind.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.14. OF SECESSION.\n\nThe whole trend of my thought in matters of conduct is against\nwhatever accentuates one\u2019s individual separation from the collective\nconsciousness. It follows naturally from my fundamental creed that\navoidable silences and secrecy are sins, just as abstinences are in\nthemselves sins rather than virtues. And so I think that to leave\nany organization or human association except for a wider and larger\nassociation, to detach oneself in order to go alone, or to go apart\nnarrowly with just a few, is fragmentation and sin. Even if one\ndisagrees with the professions or formulae or usages of an association,\none should be sure that the disagreement is sufficiently profound to\njustify one\u2019s secession, and in any case of doubt, one should remain. I\ncount schism a graver sin than heresy.\n\nNo profession of faith, no formula, no usage can be perfect. It is only\nrequired that it should be possible. More particularly does this apply\nto churches and religious organizations. There never was a creed nor a\nreligious declaration but admitted of a wide variety of interpretations\nand implied both more and less than it expressed. The pedantically\nconscientious man, in his search for an unblemished religious\nbrotherhood, has tended always to a solitude of universal dissent.\n\nIn the religious as in the economic sphere one must not look for perfect\nconditions. Setting up for oneself in a new sect is like founding\nUtopias in Paraguay, an evasion of the essential question; our real\nbusiness is to take what we have, live in and by it, use it and do our\nbest to better such faults as are manifest to us, in the direction of\na wider and nobler organization. If you do not agree with the church\nin which you find yourself, your best course is to become a reformer\nIN that church, to declare it a detached forgetful part of the greater\nchurch that ought to be, just as your State is a detached unawakened\npart of the World State. You take it at what it is and try and broaden\nit towards reunion. It is only when secession is absolutely unavoidable\nthat it is right to secede.\n\nThis is particularly true of state churches such as is the Church of\nEngland. These are bodies constituted by the national law and amenable\nto the collective will. I do not think a man should consider himself\nexcluded from them because they have articles of religion to which he\ncannot subscribe and creeds he will not say. A national state church has\nno right to be thus limited and exclusive. Rather then let any man,\njust to the very limit that is possible for his intellectual or moral\ntemperament, remain in his church to redress the balance and do his\nutmost to change and broaden it.\n\nBut perhaps the Church will not endure a broad-minded man in its body,\nspeaking and reforming, and will expel him?\n\nBe expelled--well and good! That is altogether different. Let them expel\nyou, struggling valiantly and resolved to return so soon as they release\nyou, to hammer at the door. But withdrawing--sulking--going off in a\nserene huff to live by yourself spiritually and materially in your own\nway--that is voluntary damnation, the denial of the Brotherhood of\nMan. Be a rebel or a revolutionary to your heart\u2019s content, but a mere\nseceder never.\n\nFor otherwise it is manifest that we shall have to pay for each step\nof moral and intellectual progress with a fresh start, with a conflict\nbetween the new organization and the old from which it sprang, a\nperpetually-recurring parricide. There will be a series of religious\ninstitutions in developing order, each containing the remnant too dull\nor too hypocritical to secede at the time of stress that began the new\nbody. Something of the sort has indeed happened to both the Catholic\nand the English Protestant churches. We have the intellectual and\nmoral guidance of the people falling more and more into the hands of an\ninformal Church of morally impassioned leaders, writers, speakers, and\nthe like, while the beautiful cathedrals in which their predecessors\nsheltered fall more and more into the hands of an uninspiring,\nretrogressive but conforming clergy.\n\nNow this was all very well for the Individualist Liberal of the Early\nVictorian period, but Individualist Liberalism was a mere destructive\nphase in the process of renewing the old Catholic order, a clearing up\nof the site. We Socialists want a Church through which we can feel and\nthink collectively, as much as we want a State that we can serve and be\nserved by. Whether as members or external critics we have to do our best\nto get rid of obsolete doctrinal and ceremonial barriers, so that\nthe churches may merge again in a universal Church, and that Church\ncomprehend again the whole growing and amplifying spiritual life of the\nrace.\n\nI do not know if I make my meaning perfectly clear here. By conformity I\ndo not mean silent conformity. It is a man\u2019s primary duty to convey his\nindividual difference to the minds of his fellow men. It is because I\nwant that difference to tell to the utmost that I suggest he should\nnot leave the assembly. But in particular instances he may find it more\nstriking and significant to stand out and speak as a man detached from\nthe general persuasion, just as obstructed and embarrassed ministers\nof State can best serve their country at times by resigning office and\nappealing to the public judgment by this striking and significant act.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.15. A DILEMMA.\n\nWe are led by this discussion of secession straight between the horns of\na moral dilemma. We have come to two conclusions; to secede is a grave\nsin, but to lie is also a grave sin.\n\nBut often the practical alternative is between futile secession or\nimplicit or actual falsehood. It has been the instinct of the aggressive\ncontroversialist in all ages to seize upon collective organizations and\nfence them about with oaths and declarations of such a nature as to bar\nout anyone not of his own way of thinking. In a democracy, for example,\nto take an extreme caricature of our case, a triumphant majority in\npower, before allowing anyone to vote, might impose an oath whereby the\nleader of the minority and all his aims were specifically renounced. And\nif no country goes so far as that, nearly all countries and all churches\nmake some such restrictions upon opinion. The United States, that land\nof abandoned and receding freedoms, imposes upon everyone who crosses\nthe Atlantic to its shores a childish ineffectual declaration against\nanarchy and polygamy. None of these tests exclude the unhesitating liar,\nbut they do bar out many proud and honest minded people. They \u201cfix\u201d and\nkill things that should be living and fluid; they are offences against\nthe mind of the race. How is a man then to behave towards these test\noaths and affirmations, towards repeating creeds, signing assent to\narticles of religion and the like? Do not these unavoidable barriers to\npublic service, or religious work, stand on a special footing?\n\nPersonally I think they do.\n\nI think that in most cases personal isolation and disuse is the greater\nevil. I think if there is no other way to constructive service except\nthrough test oaths and declarations, one must take then. This is a\nparticular case that stands apart from all other cases. The man who\npreaches a sermon and pretends therein to any belief he does not truly\nhold is an abominable scoundrel, but I do not think he need trouble\nhis soul very greatly about the barrier he stepped over to get into\nthe pulpit, if he felt the call to preach, so long as the preaching be\nhonest. A Republican who takes the oath of allegiance to the King and\nwears his uniform is in a similar case. These things stand apart; they\nare so formal as to be scarcely more reprehensible than the falsehood of\ncalling a correspondent \u201cDear,\u201d or asking a tiresome lady to whom one is\nbeing kind and civil, for the pleasure of dancing with her. We ought to\ndo what we can to abolish these absurd barriers and petty falsehoods,\nbut we ought not to commit a social suicide against them.\n\nThat is how I think and feel in this matter, but if a man sees the\nmatter more gravely, if his conscience tells him relentlessly and\nuncompromisingly, \u201cthis is a lie,\u201d then it is a lie and he must not\nbe guilty of it. But then I think it ill becomes him to be silently\nexcluded. His work is to clamour against the existence of the barrier\nthat wastes him.\n\nI do not see that lying is a fundamental sin. In the first place some\nlying, that is to say some unavoidable inaccuracy of statement, is\nnecessary to nearly everything we do, and the truest statement becomes\nfalse if we forget or alter the angle at which it is made, the direction\nin which it points. In the next the really fundamental and most\ngeneralized sin is self-isolation. Lying is a sin only because\nself-isolation is a sin, because it is an effectual way of cutting\noneself off from human co-operation. That is why there is no sin in\ntelling a fairy tale to a child. But telling the truth when it will be\nmisunderstood is no whit better than lying; silences are often blacker\nthan any lies. I class secrets with lies and cannot comprehend the moral\nstandards that exonerate secrecy in human affairs.\n\nTo all these things one must bring a personal conscience and be prepared\nto examine particular cases. The excuses I have made, for example, for\na very broad churchman to stay in the Church might very well be twisted\ninto an excuse for taking an oath in something one did not to the\nslightest extent believe, in order to enter and betray some organization\nto which one was violently hostile. I admit that there may be every\ngradation between these two things. The individual must examine his\nspecial case and weigh the element of treachery against the possibility\nof co-operation. I do not see how there can be a general rule. I have\nalready shown why in my own case I hesitate to profess a belief in\nGod, because, I think, the misleading element in that profession would\noutweigh the advantage of sympathy and confidence gained.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.16. A COMMENT.\n\nThe preceding section has been criticized by a friend who writes:--\n\n\u201cIn religious matters apparent assent produces false unanimity. There is\nno convention about these things; if there were they would not exist.\nOn the contrary, the only way to get perfunctory tests and so forth\nabrogated, is for a sufficient number of people to refuse to take them.\nIt is in this case as in every other; secession is the beginning of a\nnew integration. The living elements leave the dead or dying form and\ngradually create in virtue of their own combinations a new form more\nsuited to present things. There is a formative, a creative power in\nsincerity and also in segregation itself. And the new form, the new\nspecies produced by variation and segregation will measure itself and\nits qualities with the old one. The old one will either go to the wall,\naccept the new one and be renewed by it, or the new one will itself be\npushed out of existence if the old one has more vitality and is better\nadapted to the circumstances. This process of variation, competition\nand selection, also of intermarriage between equally vital and equally\nadapted varieties, is after all the process by which not only races\nexist but all human thoughts.\u201d\n\nSo my friend, who I think is altogether too strongly swayed by\nbiological analogies. But I am thinking not of the assertion of opinions\nprimarily but of co-operation with an organization with which, save for\nthe matter of the test, one may agree. Secession may not involve the\ndevelopment of a new and better moral organization; it may simply mean\nthe suicide of one\u2019s public aspect. There may be no room or no need of a\nrival organization. To secede from State employment, for example, is\nnot to create the beginnings of a new State, however many--short of a\nrevolution--may secede with you. It is to become a disconnected private\nperson, and throw up one\u2019s social side.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.17. WAR.\n\nI do not think a discussion of man\u2019s social relations can be considered\nat all complete or satisfactory until we have gone into the question of\nmilitary service. To-day, in an increasing number of countries, military\nservice is an essential part of citizenship and the prospect of war lies\nlike a great shadow across the whole bright complex prospect of human\naffairs. What should be the attitude of a right-living man towards his\nState at war and to warlike preparations?\n\nIn no other connexion are the confusions and uncertainty of the\ncontemporary mind more manifest. It is an odd contradiction that in\nGreat Britain and Western Europe generally, just those parties that\nstand most distinctly for personal devotion to the State in economic\nmatters, the Socialist and Socialistic parties, are most opposed to the\nidea of military service, and just those parties that defend individual\nself-seeking and social disloyalty in the sphere of property are most\nurgent for conscription. No doubt some of this uncertainty is due to the\nmixing in of private interests with public professions, but much more\nis it, I think, the result of mere muddle-headedness and an insufficient\ngrasp of the implications of the propositions under discussion. The\nordinary political Socialist desires, as I desire, and as I suppose\nevery sane man desires as an ultimate ideal, universal peace, the merger\nof national partitions in loyalty to the World State. But he does\nnot recognize that the way to reach that goal is not necessarily by\nminimizing and specializing war and war responsibility at the present\ntime. There he falls short of his own constructive conceptions and\nlapses into the secessionist methods of the earlier Radicals. We\nhave here another case strictly parallel to several we have already\nconsidered. War is a collective concern; to turn one\u2019s back upon it, to\nrefuse to consider it as a possibility, is to leave it entirely to those\nwho are least prepared to deal with it in a broad spirit.\n\nIn many ways war is the most socialistic of all forces. In many ways\nmilitary organization is the most peaceful of activities. When\nthe contemporary man steps from the street of clamorous insincere\nadvertisement, push, adulteration, under-selling and intermittent\nemployment, into the barrack-yard, he steps on to a higher social plane,\ninto an atmosphere of service and co-operation and of infinitely more\nhonourable emulations. Here at least men are not flung out of employment\nto degenerate because there is no immediate work for them to do. They\nare fed and drilled and trained for better services. Here a man is\nat least supposed to win promotion by self-forgetfulness and not by\nself-seeking. And beside the feeble and irregular endowment of research\nby commercialism, its little short-sighted snatches at profit by\ninnovation and scientific economy, see how remarkable is the steady\nand rapid development of method and appliances in naval and military\naffairs! Nothing is more striking than to compare the progress of civil\nconveniences which has been left almost entirely to the trader, to the\nprogress in military apparatus during the last few decades. The house\nappliances of to-day for example, are little better than they were fifty\nyears ago. A house of to-day is still almost as ill-ventilated, badly\nheated by wasteful fires, clumsily arranged and furnished as the house\nof 1858. Houses a couple of hundred years old are still satisfactory\nplaces of residence, so little have our standards risen. But the rifle\nor battleship of fifty years ago was beyond all comparison inferior to\nthose we possess; in power, in speed, in convenience alike. No one has a\nuse now for such superannuated things.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.18. WAR AND COMPETITION.\n\nWhat is the meaning of war in life?\n\nWar is manifestly not a thing in itself, it is something correlated with\nthe whole fabric of human life. That violence and killing which between\nanimals of the same species is private and individual becomes socialized\nin war. It is a co-operation for killing that carries with it also\na co-operation for saving and a great development of mutual help and\ndevelopment within the war-making group.\n\nWar, it seems to me, is really the elimination of violent competition as\nbetween man and man, an excretion of violence from the developing\nsocial group. Through war and military organization, and through war and\nmilitary organization only, has it become possible to conceive of peace.\n\nThis violence was a necessary phase in human and indeed in all animal\ndevelopment. Among low types of men and animals it seems an inevitable\ncondition of the vigour of the species and the beauty of life. The more\nvital and various individual must lead and prevail, leave progeny and\nmake the major contribution to the synthesis of the race; the weaker\nindividual must take a subservient place and leave no offspring. That\nmeans in practice that the former must directly or indirectly kill the\nlatter until some mitigated but equally effectual substitute for that\nkilling is invented. That duel disappears from life, the fight of the\nbeasts for food and the fight of the bulls for the cows, only by virtue\nof its replacement by new forms of competition. With the development\nof primitive war we have such a replacement. The competition becomes\na competition to serve and rule in the group, the stronger take the\nleadership and the larger share of life, and the weaker co-operate in\nsubordination, they waive and compromise the conflict and use their\nconjoint strength against a common rival.\n\nCompetition is a necessary condition of progressive life. I do not\nknow if so far I have made that belief sufficiently clear in these\nconfessions. Perhaps in my anxiety to convey my idea of a human\nsynthesis I have not sufficiently insisted upon the part played by\ncompetition in that synthesis. But the implications of the view that I\nhave set forth are fairly plain. Every individual, I have stated, is\nan experiment for the synthesis of the species, and upon that idea my\nsystem of conduct so far as it is a system is built. Manifestly\nthe individual\u2019s function is either self-development, service and\nreproduction, or failure and an end.\n\nWith moral and intellectual development the desire to serve and\nparticipate in a collective purpose arises to control the blind and\npassionate impulse to survival and reproduction that the struggle for\nlife has given us, but it does not abolish the fact of selection, of\ncompetition. I contemplate no end of competition. But for competition\nthat is passionate, egoistic and limitless, cruel, clumsy and wasteful,\nI desire to see competition that is controlled and fair-minded and\ndevoted, men and women doing their utmost with themselves and making\ntheir utmost contribution to the specific accumulation, but in the end\ncontent to abide by a verdict.\n\nThe whole development of civilization, it seems to me, consists in the\ndevelopment of adequate tests of survival and of an intellectual and\nmoral atmosphere about those tests so that they shall be neither cruel\nnor wasteful. If the test is not to be \u2018are you strong enough to kill\neveryone you do not like?\u2019 that will only be because it will ask still\nmore comprehensively and with regard to a multitude of qualities other\nthan brute killing power, \u2018are you adding worthily to the synthesis by\nexistence and survival?\u2019\n\nI am very clear in my mind on this perpetual need of competition. I\nadmit that upon that turns the practicability of all the great series of\norganizing schemes that are called Socialism. The Socialist scheme must\nshow a system in which predominance and reproduction are correlated with\nthe quality and amount of an individual\u2019s social contribution, and so\nfar I acknowledge it is only in the most general terms that this can be\nclaimed as done. We Socialists have to work out all these questions far\nmore thoroughly than we have done hitherto. We owe that to our movement\nand the world.\n\nIt is no adequate answer to our antagonists to say, indeed it is a\nmere tu quoque to say, that the existing system does not present such\na correlation, that it puts a premium on secretiveness and self-seeking\nand a discount on many most necessary forms of social service. That is a\nmere temporary argument for a delay in judgment.\n\nThe whole history of humanity seems to me to present a spectacle of\nthis organizing specialization of competition, this replacement of the\nindiscriminate and collectively blind struggle for life by an organized\nand collectively intelligent development of life. We see a secular\nreplacement of brute conflict by the law, a secular replacement of\nindiscriminate brute lust by marriage and sexual taboos, and now with\nthe development of Socialistic ideas and methods, the steady replacement\nof blind industrial competition by public economic organization. And\nmoreover there is going on a great educational process bringing a\ngreater and greater proportion of the minds of the community into\nrelations of understanding and interchange.\n\nJust as this process of organization proceeds, the violent and\nchaotic conflict of individuals and presently of groups of individuals\ndisappears, personal violence, private war, cut-throat competition,\nlocal war, each in turn is replaced by a more efficient and more\neconomical method of survival, a method of survival giving constantly\nand selecting always more accurately a finer type of survivor.\n\nI might compare the social synthesis to crystals growing out of a fluid\nmatrix. It is where the growing order of the crystals has as yet not\nspread that the old resource to destruction and violent personal or\nassociated acts remains.\n\nBut this metaphor of crystals is a very inadequate one, because crystals\nhave no will in themselves; nor do crystals, having failed to grow in\nsome particular form, presently modify that form more or less and try\nagain. I see the organizing of forces, not simply law and police which\nare indeed paid mercenaries from the region of violence, but legislation\nand literature, teaching and tradition, organized religion, getting\nthemselves and the social structure together, year after year and age\nafter age, halting, failing, breaking up in order to try again. And\nit seems to me that the amount of lawlessness and crime, the amount of\nwaste and futility, the amount of war and war possibility and war danger\nin the world are just the measure of the present inadequacy of the\nworld\u2019s system of collective organization to the purpose before them.\n\nIt follows from this very directly that only one thing can end war\non the earth and that is a subtle mental development, an idea, the\ndevelopment of the idea of the world commonweal in the collective mind.\nThe only real method of abolishing war is to perceive it, to realize it,\nto express it, to think it out and think about it, to make all the world\nunderstand its significance, and to clear and preserve its significant\nfunctions. In human affairs to understand an evil is to abolish it; it\nis the only way to abolish any evil that arises out of the untutored\nnature of man. Which brings me back here again to my already repeated\npersuasion, that in expressing things, rendering things to each other,\ndiscussing our differences, clearing up the metaphysical conceptions\nupon which differences are discussed, and in a phrase evolving the\ncollective mind, lies not only the cures of war and poverty but the\ngeneral form of all a man\u2019s duty and the essential work of mankind.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.19. MODERN WAR.\n\nIn our contemporary world, in our particular phase, military and naval\norganization loom up, colossal and unprecedent facts. They have the\neffect of an overhanging disaster that grows every year more tremendous,\nevery year in more sinister contrast with the increasing securities and\ntolerations of the everyday life. It is impossible to imagine now what a\ngreat war in Europe would be like; the change in material and method has\nbeen so profound since the last cycle of wars ended with the downfall\nof the Third Napoleon. But there can be little or no doubt that it\nwould involve a destruction of property and industrial and social\ndisorganization of the most monstrous dimensions. No man, I think, can\nmark the limits of the destruction of a great European conflict were it\nto occur at the present time; and the near advent of practicable flying\nmachines opens a whole new world of frightful possibilities.\n\nFor my own part I can imagine that a collision between such powers as\nGreat Britain, Germany or America, might very well involve nearly every\nother power in the world, might shatter the whole fabric of credit upon\nwhich our present system of economics rests and put back the orderly\nprogress of social construction for a vast interval of time. One figures\ngreat towns red with destruction while giant airships darken the sky,\none pictures the crash of mighty ironclads, the bursting of tremendous\nshells fired from beyond the range of sight into unprotected cities. One\nthinks of congested ways swarming with desperate fighters, of torrents\nof fugitives and of battles gone out of the control of their generals\ninto unappeasable slaughter. There is a vision of interrupted\ncommunications, of wrecked food trains and sunken food ships, of vast\nmasses of people thrown out of employment and darkly tumultuous in the\nstreets, of famine and famine-driven rioters. What modern population\nwill stand a famine? For the first time in the history of warfare the\nrear of the victor, the rear of the fighting line becomes insecure,\nassailable by flying machines and subject to unprecedented and\nunimaginable panics. No man can tell what savagery of desperation these\nnew conditions may not release in the soul of man. A conspiracy of\nadverse chances, I say, might contrive so great a cataclysm. There is no\neffectual guarantee that it could not occur.\n\nBut in spite of that, I believe that on the whole there is far more good\nthan evil in the enormous military growths that have occurred in the\nlast half century. I cannot estimate how far the alternative to war is\nlethargy. It is through military urgencies alone that many men can be\nbrought to consent to the collective endowment of research, to\npublic education and to a thousand interferences with their private\nself-seeking. Just as the pestilence of cholera was necessary before men\ncould be brought to consent to public sanitation, so perhaps the\ndread of foreign violence is an unavoidable spur in an age of chaotic\nindustrial production in order that men may be brought to subserve the\ngrowth of a State whose purpose might otherwise be too high for them to\nunderstand. Men must be forced to care for fleets and armies until they\nhave learnt to value cities and self development and a beautiful social\nlife.\n\nThe real danger of modern war lies not in the disciplined power of the\nfighting machine but in the undisciplined forces in the collective mind\nthat may set that machine in motion. It is not that our guns and ships\nare marvellously good, but that our press and political organizations\nare haphazard growths entirely inferior to them. If this present phase\nof civilization should end in a debacle, if presently humanity finds\nitself beginning again at a lower level of organization, it will not\nbe because we have developed these enormous powers of destruction but\nbecause we have failed to develop adequate powers of control for them\nand collective determination. This panoply of war waits as the test of\nour progress towards the realization of that collective mind which I\nhold must ultimately direct the evolution of our specific being. It is\nhere to measure our incoherence and error, and in the measure of those\ndefects to refer us back to our studies.\n\nJust as we understand does war become needless.\n\nBut I do not think that war and military organization will so much\ndisappear as change its nature as the years advance. I think that the\nphase of universal military service we seem to be approaching is one\nthrough which the mass of mankind may have to pass, learning something\nthat can be learnt in no other way, that the uniforms and flags, the\nconceptions of order and discipline, the tradition of service and\ndevotion, of physical fitness, unstinted exertion and universal\nresponsibility, will remain a permanent acquisition, though the last\nammunition has been used ages since in the pyrotechnic display that\nwelcomed the coming of the ultimate Peace.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.20. OF ABSTINENCES AND DISCIPLINES.\n\nFrom these large issues of conduct, let me come now to more intimate\nthings, to one\u2019s self control, the regulation of one\u2019s personal life.\nAnd first about abstinences and disciplines.\n\nI have already confessed (Chapter 2.6) that my nature is one that\ndislikes abstinences and is wearied by and wary of excess.\n\nI do not feel that it is right to suppress altogether any part of one\u2019s\nbeing. In itself abstinence seems to me a refusal to experience, and\nthat, upon the lines of thought I follow, is to say that abstinence for\nits own sake is evil. But for an end all abstinences are permissible,\nand if the kinetic type of believer finds both his individual and his\nassociated efficiency enhanced by a systematic discipline, if he is\nconvinced that he must specialize because of the discursiveness of his\nmotives, because there is something he wants to do or be so good that\nthe rest of them may very well be suppressed for its sake, then he must\nsuppress. But the virtue is in what he gets done and not in what he does\nnot do. Reasonable fear is a sound reason for abstinence, as when a\nman has a passion like a lightly sleeping maniac that the slightest\nindulgence will arouse. Then he must needs adopt heroic abstinence, and\neven more so must he take to preventive restraint if he sees any motive\nbecoming unruly and urgent and troublesome. Fear is a sound reason for\nabstinence and so is love. Many who have sensitive imaginations nowadays\nvery properly abstain from meat because of butchery. And it is often\nneedful, out of love and brotherhood, to abstain from things harmless to\noneself because they are inconveniently alluring to others linked to us.\nThe moderate drinker who sits at table sipping his wine in the sight of\none he knows to be a potential dipsomaniac is at best an unloving fool.\n\nBut mere abstinence and the doing of barren toilsome unrewarding things\nfor the sake of the toil, is a perversion of one\u2019s impulses. There is\nneither honour nor virtue nor good in that.\n\nI do not believe in negative virtues. I think the ideas of them arise\nout of the system of metaphysical errors I have roughly analyzed in\nmy first Book, out of the inherent tendency of the mind to make\nthe relative absolute and to convert quantitative into qualitative\ndifferences. Our minds fall very readily under the spell of such\nunmitigated words as Purity and Chastity. Only death beyond decay,\nabsolute non-existence, can be Pure and Chaste. Life is impurity, fact\nis impure. Everything has traces of alien matter; our very health is\ndependent on parasitic bacteria; the purest blood in the world has\na tainted ancestor, and not a saint but has evil thoughts. It was\nblindness to that which set men stoning the woman taken in adultery.\nThey forgot what they were made of. This stupidity, this unreasonable\nidealism of the common mind, fills life to-day with cruelties and\nexclusions, with partial suicides and secret shames. But we are born\nimpure, we die impure; it is a fable that spotless white lilies sprang\nfrom any saint\u2019s decay, and the chastity of a monk or nun is but\nintroverted impurity. We have to take life valiantly on these conditions\nand make such honour and beauty and sympathy out of our confusions,\ngather such constructive experience, as we may.\n\nThere is a mass of real superstition upon these points, a belief in a\nmagic purity, in magic personalities who can say:--\n\n    My strength is as the strength of ten\n    Because my heart is pure,\n\nand wonderful clairvoyant innocents like the young man in Mr. Kipling\u2019s\n\u201cFinest Story in the World.\u201d\n\nThere is a lurking disposition to believe, even among those who lead\nthe normal type of life, that the abstinent and chastely celibate are\nexceptionally healthy, energetic, immune. The wildest claims are made.\nBut indeed it is true for all who can see the facts of life simply and\nplainly, that man is an omnivorous, versatile, various creature and\ncan draw his strength from a hundred varieties of nourishment. He has\nphysiological idiosyncrasies too that are indifferent to biological\nclassifications and moral generalities. It is not true that his\nabsorbent vessels begin their task as children begin the guessing\ngame, by asking, \u201cIs it animal, vegetable or mineral?\u201d He responds to\nstimulation and recuperates after the exhaustion of his response, and\nhis being is singularly careless whether the stimulation comes as a drug\nor stimulant, or as anger or music or noble appeals.\n\nMost people speak of drugs in the spirit of that admirable firm of\nsoap-boilers which assures its customers that the soap they make\n\u201ccontains no chemicals.\u201d Drugs are supposed to be a mystic diabolical\nclass of substance, remote from and contrasting in their nature with\nall other things. So they banish a tonic from the house and stuff their\nchildren with manufactured cereals and chocolate creams. The drunken\nhelot of this system of absurdities is the Christian Scientist who\ndenies healing only to those who have studied pathology, and declares\nthat anything whatever put into a bottle and labelled with directions\nfor its use by a doctor is thereby damnable and damned. But indeed all\ndrugs and all the things of life have their uses and dangers, and there\nis no wholesale truth to excuse us a particular wisdom and watchfulness\nin these matters. Unless we except smoking as an unclean and needless\nartificiality, all these matters of eating and drinking and habit are\nmatters of more or less. It seems to me foolish to make anything that is\nstimulating and pleasurable into a habit, for that is slowly and surely\nto lose a stimulus and pleasure and create a need that it may become\npainful to check or control. The moral rule of my standards is\nirregularity. If I were a father confessor I should begin my catalogue\nof sins by asking: \u201care you a man of regular life?\u201d And I would charge\nmy penitent to go away forthwith and commit some practicable saving\nirregularity; to fast or get drunk or climb a mountain or sup on\npork and beans or give up smoking or spend a month with publicans and\nsinners. Right conduct for the common unspecialized man lies delicately\nadjusted between defect and excess as a watch is adjusted and adjustable\nbetween fast and slow. We none of us altogether and always keep the\nbalance or are altogether safe from losing it. We swing, balancing and\nadjusting, along our path. Life is that, and abstinence is for the most\npart a mere evasion of life.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.21. ON FORGETTING, AND THE NEED OF PRAYER, READING, DISCUSSION AND\nWORSHIP.\n\nOne aspect of life I had very much in mind when I planned those Samurai\ndisciplines of mine. It was forgetting.\n\nWe forget.\n\nEven after we have found Salvation, we have to keep hold of Salvation;\nbelieving, we must continue to believe. We cannot always be at a high\nlevel of noble emotion. We have clambered on the ship of Faith and found\nour place and work aboard, and even while we are busied upon it, behold\nwe are back and drowning in the sea of chaotic things.\n\nEvery religious body, every religious teacher, has appreciated this\ndifficulty and the need there is of reminders and renewals. Faith needs\nrestatement and revival as the body needs food. And since the Believer\nis to seek much experience and be a judge of less or more in many\nthings, it is particularly necessary that he should keep hold upon a\nliving Faith.\n\nHow may he best do this?\n\nI think we may state it as a general duty that he must do whatever he\ncan to keep his faith constantly alive. But beyond that, what a man must\ndo depends almost entirely upon his own intellectual character.\nMany people of a regular type of mind can refresh themselves by some\nrecurrent duty, by repeating a daily prayer, by daily reading or\nre-reading some devotional book. With others constant repetition leads\nto a mental and spiritual deadening, until beautiful phrases become\nunmeaning, eloquent statements inane and ridiculous,--matter for parody.\nAll who can, I think, should pray and should read and re-read what they\nhave found spiritually helpful, and if they know of others of kindred\ndispositions and can organize these exercises, they should do so.\nCollective worship again is a necessity for many Believers. For many,\nthe public religious services of this or that form of Christianity\nsupply an atmosphere rich in the essential quality of religion and\nabounding in phrases about the religious life, mellow from the use of\ncenturies and almost immediately applicable. It seems to me that if one\ncan do so, one should participate in such public worship and habituate\noneself to read back into it that collective purpose and conscience it\nonce embodied.\n\nVery much is to be said for the ceremony of Holy Communion or the Mass,\nfor those whom accident or scruples do not debar. I do not think your\nmodern liberal thinkers quite appreciate the finer aspects of this,\nthe one universal service of the Christian Church. Some of them are\nset forth very finely by a man who has been something of a martyr for\nconscience\u2019 sake, and is for me a hero as well as a friend, in a world\nnot rich in heroes, the Rev. Stewart Headlam, in his book, \u201cThe Meaning\nof the Mass.\u201d\n\nWith others again, Faith can be most animated by writing, by confession,\nby discussion, by talk with friends or antagonists.\n\nOne or other or all of these things the Believer must do, for the mind\nis a living and moving process, and the thing that lies inert in it is\npresently covered up by new interests and lost. If you make a sort of\nKing Log of your faith, presently something else will be sitting upon\nit, pride or self-interest, or some rebel craving, King de facto of your\nsoul, directing it back to anarchy.\n\nFor many types that, however, is exactly what happens with public\nworship. They DO get a King Log in ceremony. And if you deliberately\novercome and suppress your perception of and repugnance to the\nperfunctoriness of religion in nine-tenths of the worshippers about you,\nyou may be destroying at the same time your own intellectual and moral\nsensitiveness. But I am not suggesting that you should force yourself to\ntake part in public worship against your perceptions, but only that if\nit helps you to worship you should not hesitate to do so.\n\nWe deal here with a real need that is not to be fettered by any general\nprescription. I have one Cambridge friend who finds nothing so uplifting\nin the world as the atmosphere of the afternoon service in the choir of\nKing\u2019s College Chapel, and another, a very great and distinguished and\ntheologically sceptical woman, who accustomed herself for some time to\nhear from a distant corner the evening service in St. Paul\u2019s Cathedral\nand who would go great distances to do that.\n\nMany people find an exaltation and broadening of the mind in mountain\nscenery and the starry heavens and the wide arc of the sea; and as I\nhave already said, it was part of the disciplines of these Samurai of\nmine that yearly they should go apart for at least a week of solitary\nwandering and meditation in lonely and desolate places. Music again is\na frequent means of release from the narrow life as it closes about us.\nOne man I know makes an anthology into which he copies to re-read any\npassage that stirs and revives in him the sense of broad issues. Others\nagain seem able to refresh their nobility of outlook in the atmosphere\nof an intense personal love.\n\nSome of us seem to forget almost as if it were an essential part of\nourselves. Such a man as myself, irritable, easily fatigued and bored,\nversatile, sensuous, curious, and a little greedy for experience, is\nperpetually losing touch with his faith, so that indeed I sometimes turn\nover these pages that I have written and come upon my declarations and\nconfessions with a sense of alien surprise.\n\nIt may be, I say, that for some of us forgetting is the normal process,\nthat one has to believe and forget and blunder and learn something and\nregret and suffer and so come again to belief much as we have to eat and\ngrow hungry and eat again. What these others can get in their temples\nwe, after our own manner, must distil through sleepless and lonely\nnights, from unavoidable humiliations, from the smarting of bruised\nshins.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.22. DEMOCRACY AND ARISTOCRACY.\n\nAnd now having dealt with the general form of a man\u2019s duty and with\nhis duty to himself, let me come to his attitude to his individual\nfellow-men.\n\nThe broad principles determining that attitude are involved in things\nalready written in this book. The belief in a collective being gathering\nexperience and developing will, to which every life is subordinated,\nrenders the cruder conception of aristocracy, the idea of a select life\ngoing on amidst a majority of trivial and contemptible persons who \u201cdo\nnot exist,\u201d untenable. It abolishes contempt. Indeed to believe at all\nin a comprehensive purpose in things is to abandon that attitude and\nall the habits and acts that imply it. But a belief in universal\nsignificance does not altogether preclude a belief in an aristocratic\nmethod of progress, in the idea of the subordination of a number\nof individuals to others who can utilize their lives and help and\ncontributory achievements in the general purpose. To a certain extent,\nindeed, this last conception is almost inevitable. We must needs so\nthink of ourselves in relation to plants and animals, and I see no\nreason why we should not think so of our relations to other men. There\nare clearly great differences in the capacity and range of experience of\nman and man and in their power of using and rendering their experiences\nfor the racial synthesis. Vigorous persons do look naturally for help\nand service to persons of less initiative, and we are all more or less\ncapable of admiration and hero-worship and pleased to help and give\nourselves to those we feel to be finer or better or completer or more\nforceful and leaderly than ourselves. This is natural and inevitable\naristocracy.\n\nFor that reason it is not to be organized. We organize things that are\nnot inevitable, but this is clearly a complex matter of accident and\npersonalities for which there can be no general rule. All organized\naristocracy is manifestly begotten by that fallacy of classification my\nMetaphysical book set itself to expose. Its effect is, and has been in\nall cases, to mask natural aristocracy, to draw the lines by wholesale\nand wrong, to bolster up weak and ineffectual persons in false positions\nand to fetter or hamper strong and vigorous people. The false aristocrat\nis a figure of pride and claims, a consumer followed by dupes. He is\nproudly secretive, pretending to aims beyond the common understanding.\nThe true aristocrat is known rather than knows; he makes and serves. He\nexacts no deference. He is urgent to makes others share what he knows\nand wants and achieves. He does not think of others as his but as the\nEnd\u2019s.\n\nThere is a base democracy just as there is a base aristocracy, the\nswaggering, aggressive disposition of the vulgar soul that admits\nneither of superiors nor leaders. Its true name is insubordination. It\nresents rules and refinements, delicacies, differences and organization.\nIt dreams that its leaders are its delegates. It takes refuge from all\nsuperiority, all special knowledge, in a phantom ideal, the People, the\nsublime and wonderful People. \u201cYou can fool some of the people all the\ntime, and all the people some of the time, but you can\u2019t fool all the\npeople all the time,\u201d expresses I think quite the quintessence of this\nmystical faith, this faith in which men take refuge from the demand for\norder, discipline and conscious light. In England it has never been\nof any great account, but in America the vulgar individualist\u2019s\nself-protective exaltation of an idealized Common Man has worked and is\nworking infinite mischief.\n\nIn politics the crude democratic faith leads directly to the submission\nof every question, however subtle and special its issues may be, to a\npopular vote. The community is regarded as a consultative committee of\nprofoundly wise, alert and well-informed Common Men. Since the common\nman is, as Gustave le Bon has pointed out, a gregarious animal,\ncollectively rather like a sheep, emotional, hasty and shallow, the\npractical outcome of political democracy in all large communities under\nmodern conditions is to put power into the hands of rich newspaper\nproprietors, advertising producers and the energetic wealthy generally\nwho are best able to flood the collective mind freely with the\nsuggestions on which it acts.\n\nBut democracy has acquired a better meaning than its first crude\nintentions--there never was a theory started yet in the human mind that\ndid not beget a finer offspring than itself--and the secondary meaning\nbrings it at last into entire accordance with the subtler conception\nof aristocracy. The test of this quintessential democracy is neither a\npassionate insistence upon voting and the majority rule, nor an arrogant\nbearing towards those who are one\u2019s betters in this aspect or that, but\nfellowship. The true democrat and the true aristocrat meet and are one\nin feeling themselves parts of one synthesis under one purpose and one\nscheme. Both realize that self-concealment is the last evil, both make\nfrankness and veracity the basis of their intercourse. The general\nrightness of living for you and others and for others and you is to\nunderstand them to the best of your ability and to make them all, to the\nutmost limits of your capacity of expression and their understanding and\nsympathy, participators in your act and thought.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.23. ON DEBTS OF HONOUR.\n\nMy ethical disposition is all against punctilio and I set no greater\nvalue on unblemished honour than I do on purity. I never yet met a man\nwho talked proudly of his honour who did not end by cheating or\ntrying to cheat me, nor a code of honour that did not impress me as\na conspiracy against the common welfare and purpose in life. There\nis honour among thieves, and I think it might well end there as an\nobligation in conduct. The soldier who risks a life he owes to his army\nin a duel upon some silly matter of personal pride is no better to me\nthan the clerk who gambles with the money in his master\u2019s till. When I\nwas a boy I once paid a debt of honour, and it is one of the things I\nam most ashamed of. I had played cards into debt and I still remember\nburningly how I went flushed and shrill-voiced to my mother and got the\nmoney she could so ill afford to give me. I would not pay such a debt of\nhonour now. If I were to wake up one morning owing big sums that I had\nstaked overnight I would set to work at once by every means in my power\nto evade and repudiate that obligation. Such money as I have I owe under\nour present system to wife and sons and my work and the world, and I see\nno valid reason why I should hand it over to Smith because he and I have\nplayed the fool and rascal and gambled. Better by far to accept that\nfact and be for my own part published fool and rascal.\n\nI have never been able to understand the sentimental spectacle of sons\ntoiling dreadfully and wasting themselves upon mere money-making to save\nthe secret of a father\u2019s peculations and the \u201chonour of the family,\u201d or\nmen conspiring to weave a wide and mischievous net of lies to save the\n\u201chonour\u201d of a woman. In the conventional drama the preservation of the\nhonour of a woman seems an adequate excuse for nearly any offence\nshort of murder; the preservation that is to say of the appearance of\nsomething that is already gone. Here it is that I do definitely part\ncompany with the false aristocrat who is by nature and intent a humbug\nand fabricator of sham attitudes, and ally myself with democracy.\nFact, valiantly faced, is of more value than any reputation. The false\naristocrat is robed to the chin and unwashed beneath, the true goes\nstark as Apollo. The false is ridiculous with undignified insistence\nupon his dignity; the true says like God, \u201cI am that I am.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n\n3.24. THE IDEA OF JUSTICE.\n\nOne word has so far played a very little part in this book, and that is\nthe word Justice.\n\nThose who have read the opening book on Metaphysics will perhaps see\nthat this is a necessary corollary of the system of thought developed\ntherein. In my philosophy, with its insistence upon uniqueness and\nmarginal differences and the provisional nature of numbers and classes,\nthere is little scope for that blind-folded lady with the balances,\nseeking always exact equivalents. Nowhere in my system of thought is\nthere work for the idea of Rights and the conception of conscientious\nlitigious-spirited people exactly observing nicely defined\nrelationships.\n\nYou will note, for example, that I base my Socialism on the idea of a\ncollective development and not on the \u201cright\u201d of every man to his own\nlabour, or his \u201cright\u201d to work, or his \u201cright\u201d to subsistence. All these\nideas of \u201crights\u201d and of a social \u201ccontract\u201d however implicit are merely\nconventional ways of looking at things, conventions that have arisen in\nthe mercantile phase of human development.\n\nLaws and rights, like common terms in speech, are provisional things,\nconveniences for taking hold of a number of cases that would otherwise\nbe unmanageable. The appeal to Justice is a necessarily inadequate\nattempt to de-individualize a case, to eliminate the self\u2019s biassed\nattitude. I have declared that it is my wilful belief that everything\nthat exists is significant and necessary. The idea of Justice seems to\nme a defective, quantitative application of the spirit of that belief\nto men and women. In every case you try and discover and act upon\na plausible equity that must necessarily be based on arbitrary\nassumptions.\n\nThere is no equity in the universe, in the various spectacle outside our\nminds, and the most terrible nightmare the human imagination has ever\nengendered is a Just God, measuring, with himself as the Standard,\nagainst finite men. Ultimately there is no adequacy, we are all weighed\nin the balance and found wanting.\n\nSo, as the recognition of this has grown, Justice has been tempered with\nMercy, which indeed is no more than an attempt to equalize things\nby making the factors of the very defect that is condemned, its\ncondonation. The modern mind fluctuates uncertainly somewhere between\nthese extremes, now harsh and now ineffectual.\n\nTo me there seems no validity in these quasi-absolute standards.\n\nA man seeks and obeys standards of equity simply to economize his moral\neffort, not because there is anything true or sublime about justice, but\nbecause he knows he is too egoistic and weak-minded and obsessed to do\nany perfect thing at all, because he cannot trust himself with his own\ntransitory emotions unless he trains himself beforehand to observe\na predetermined rule. There is scarcely an eventuality in life that\nwithout the help of these generalizations would not exceed the average\nman\u2019s intellectual power and moral energy, just as there is scarcely an\nidea or an emotion that can be conveyed without the use of faulty and\ndefective common names. Justice and Mercy are indeed not ultimately\ndifferent in their nature from such other conventions as the rules of\na game, the rules of etiquette, forms of address, cab tariffs and\nstandards of all sorts. They are mere organizations of relationship\neither to economize thought or else to facilitate mutual understanding\nand codify common action. Modesty and self-submission, love and service\nare, in the right system of my beliefs, far more fundamental rightnesses\nand duties.\n\nWe are not mercantile and litigious units such as making Justice our\nsocial basis would imply, we are not select responsible persons mixed\nwith and tending weak irresponsible wrong persons such as the notion\nof Mercy suggests, we are parts of one being and body, each unique\nyet sharing a common nature and a variety of imperfections and working\ntogether (albeit more or less darkly and ignorantly) for a common end.\n\nWe are strong and weak together and in one brotherhood. The weak have\nno essential rights against the strong, nor the strong against the weak.\nThe world does not exist for our weaknesses but our strength. And the\nreal justification of democracy lies in the fact that none of us are\naltogether strong nor altogether weak; for everyone there is an aspect\nwherein he is seen to be weak; for everyone there is a strength\nthough it may be only a little peculiar strength or an undeveloped\npotentiality. The unconverted man uses his strength egotistically,\nemphasizes himself harshly against the man who is weak where he is\nstrong, and hates and conceals his own weakness. The Believer, in the\nmeasure of his belief, respects and seeks to understand the different\nstrength of others and to use his own distinctive power with and not\nagainst his fellow men, in the common service of that synthesis to which\neach one of them is ultimately as necessary as he.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.25. OF LOVE AND JUSTICE.\n\nNow here the friend who has read the first draft of this book falls\ninto something like a dispute with me. She does not, I think, like this\ndismissal of Justice from a primary place in my scheme of conduct.\n\n\u201cJustice,\u201d she asserts, \u201cis an instinctive craving very nearly akin to\nthe physical craving for equilibrium. Its social importance corresponds.\nIt seeks to keep the individual\u2019s claims in such a position as to\nconflict as little as possible with those of others. Justice is the\nroot instinct of all social feeling, of all feeling which does not take\naccount of whether we like or dislike individuals, it is the feeling\nof an orderly position of our Ego towards others, merely considered\nAS others, and of all the Egos merely AS Egos towards each other. LOVE\ncannot be felt towards others AS others. Love is the expression of\nindividual suitability and preference, its positive existence in some\ncases implies its absolute negation in others. Hence Love can never be\nthe essential and root of social feeling, and hence the necessity for\nthe instinct of abstract justice which takes no account of preferences\nor aversions. And here I may say that all application of the word LOVE\nto unknown, distant creatures, to mere OTHERS, is a perversion and\na wasting of the word love, which, taking its origin in sexual and\nparental preference, always implies a preference of one object to the\nother. To love everybody is simply not to love at all. And it is\nJUST BECAUSE of the passionate preference instinctively felt for\nsome individuals, that mankind requires the self-regarding and\nself-respecting passion of justice.\u201d\n\nNow this is not altogether contradictory of what I hold. I disagree that\nbecause love necessarily expresses itself in preference, selecting this\nrather than that, that it follows necessarily that its absolute negation\nis implied in the non-selected cases. A man may go into the world as a\nchild goes into a garden and gathers its hands full of the flowers that\nplease it best and then desists, but only because its hands are full and\nnot because it is at an end of the flowers that it can find delight in.\nSo the man finds at last his memory and apprehensions glutted. It is\nnot that he could not love those others. And I dispute that to love\neverybody is not to love at all. To love two people is surely to love\nmore than to love just one person, and so by way of three and four to\na very large number. But if it is put that love must be a preference\nbecause of the mental limitations that forbid us to apprehend and\nunderstand more than a few of the multitudinous lovables of life, then\nI agree. For all the individuals and things and cases for which we have\ninadequate time and energy, we need a wholesale method--justice. That is\nexactly what I have said in the previous section.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.26. THE WEAKNESS OF IMMATURITY.\n\nOne is apt to write and talk of strong and weak as though some were\nalways strong, some always weak. But that is quite a misleading version\nof life. Apart from the fact that everyone is fluctuatingly strong and\nfluctuatingly weak, and weak and strong according to the quality we\njudge them by, we have to remember that we are all developing and\nlearning and changing, gaining strength and at last losing it, from\nthe cradle to the grave. We are all, to borrow the old scholastic term,\npupil-teachers of Life; the term is none the less appropriate because\nthe pupil-teacher taught badly and learnt under difficulties.\n\nIt may seem to be a crowning feat of platitude to write that \u201cwe have\nto remember\u201d this, but it is overlooked in a whole mass of legal, social\nand economic literature. Those extraordinary imaginary cases as between\na man A and a man B who start level, on a desert island or elsewhere,\nand work or do not work, or save or do not save, become the basis\nof immense schemes of just arrangement which soar up confidently and\nserenely regardless of the fact that never did anything like that equal\nstart occur; that from the beginning there were family groups and old\nheads and young heads, help, guidance and sacrifice, and those who had\nlearnt and those who had still to learn, jumbled together in confused\ntransactions. Deals, tradings and so forth are entirely secondary\naspects of these primaries, and the attempt to get an idea of abstract\nrelationship by beginning upon a secondary issue is the fatal pervading\nfallacy in all these regions of thought. At the present moment the\naverage age of the world is I suppose about 21 or 22, the normal death\nsomewhen about 44 or 45, that is to say nearly half the world is \u201cunder\nage,\u201d green, inexperienced, demanding help, easily misled and put in\nthe wrong and betrayed. Yet the younger moiety, if we do indeed assume\nlife\u2019s object is a collective synthesis, is more important than the\nolder, and every older person bound to be something of a guardian to the\nyounger. It follows directly from the fundamental beliefs I have assumed\nthat we are missing the most important aspects of life if we are not\ndirectly or indirectly serving the young, helping them individually\nor collectively. Just in the measure that one\u2019s living falls away from\nthat, do we fall away from life into a mere futility of existence, and\napproach the state, the extraordinary and wonderful middle state of (for\nexample) those extinct and entirely damned old gentlemen one sees and\nhears eating and sleeping in every comfortable London club.\n\nThat constructive synthetic purpose which I have made the ruling idea in\nmy scheme of conduct may be indeed completely restated in another form,\na form I adopted for a book I wrote some years ago called \u201cMankind in\nthe Making.\u201d In this I pointed out that \u201cLife is a tissue of births\u201d;\n\n\u201cand if the whole of life is an evolving succession of births, then\nnot only must a man in his individual capacity (physically as parent,\ndoctor, food dealer, food carrier, home builder, protector; or mentally\nas teacher, news dealer, author, preacher) contribute to births and\ngrowths and the fine future of mankind, but the collective aspects\nof man, his social and political organizations must also be, in the\nessence, organizations that more or less profitably and more or\nless intentionally set themselves towards this end. They are finally\nconcerned with the birth, and with the sound development towards still\nbetter births, of human lives, just as every implement in the toolshed\nof a seedsman\u2019s nursery, even the hoe and the roller, is concerned\nfinally with the seeding and with the sound development towards still\nbetter seeding of plants. The private and personal motive of the\nseedsman in procuring and using these tools may be avarice, ambition, a\nreligious belief in the saving efficacy of nursery keeping or a simple\npassion for bettering flowers, that does not affect the definite final\npurpose of his outfit of tools.\n\n\u201cAnd just as we might judge completely and criticize and improve that\noutfit from an attentive study of the welfare of plants, and with an\nentire disregard of his remoter motives, so we may judge all collective\nhuman enterprises from the standpoint of an attentive study of human\nbirths and development. ANY COLLECTIVE HUMAN ENTERPRISE, INSTITUTION,\nMOVEMENT, PARTY OR STATE, IS TO BE JUDGED AS A WHOLE AND COMPLETELY, AS\nIT CONDUCES MORE OR LESS TO WHOLESOME AND HOPEFUL BIRTHS, AND ACCORDING\nTO THE QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE ADVANCE DUE TO ITS INFLUENCE MADE\nBY EACH GENERATION OF CITIZENS BORN UNDER ITS INFLUENCE TOWARDS A HIGHER\nAND AMPLER STANDARD OF LIFE.\u201d\n\nAnd individual conduct, quite as much as collective affairs, comes under\nthe same test. We are guides and school builders, helpers and influences\nevery hour of our lives, and by that standard we can and must judge all\nour ways of living.\n\n\n\n\n3.27. POSSIBILITY OF A NEW ETIQUETTE.\n\nThese two ideas, firstly the pupil-teacher parental idea and secondly\nthe democratic idea (that is to say the idea of an equal ultimate\nsignificance), the second correcting any tendency in the first to\npedagogic arrogance and tactful concealments, do I think give, when\ntaken together, the general attitude a right-living man will take to\nhis individual fellow creature. They play against each other, providing\nelements of contradiction and determining a balanced course. It seems to\nme to follow necessarily from my fundamental beliefs that the Believer\nwill tend to be and want to be and seek to be friendly to, and\ninterested in, all sorts of people, and truthful and helpful and hating\nconcealment. To be that with any approach to perfection demands an\nintricate and difficult effort, introspection to the hilt of one\u2019s\npower, a saving natural gift; one has to avoid pedantry, aggression,\nbrutality, amiable tiresomeness--there are pitfalls on every side. The\nmore one thinks about other people the more interesting and pleasing\nthey are; I am all for kindly gossip and knowing things about them, and\nall against the silly and limiting hardness of soul that will not look\ninto one\u2019s fellows nor go out to them. The use and justification of most\nliterature, of fiction, verse, history, biography, is that it lets\nus into understandings and the suggestion of human possibilities. The\ngeneral purpose of intercourse is to get as close as one can to the\nrealities of the people one meets, and to give oneself to them just so\nfar as possible.\n\nFrom that I think there arises naturally a newer etiquette that would\nset aside many of the rigidities of procedure that keep people apart\nto-day. There is a fading prejudice against asking personal questions,\nagainst talking about oneself or one\u2019s immediate personal interests,\nagainst discussing religion and politics and any such keenly felt\nmatter. No doubt it is necessary at times to protect oneself against\nclumsy and stupid familiarities, against noisy and inattentive egotists,\nagainst intriguers and liars, but only in the last resort do such\nbreaches of patience seem justifiable to me; for the most part our\ntraditions of speech and intercourse altogether overdo separations, the\npreservation of distances and protective devices in general.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.28. SEX.\n\nSo far I have ignored the immense importance of Sex in our lives and for\nthe most part kept the discussion so generalized as to apply impartially\nto women and men. But now I have reached a point when this great\nboundary line between two halves of the world and the intense and\nintimate personal problems that play across it must be faced.\n\nFor not only must we bend our general activities and our intellectual\nlife to the conception of a human synthesis, but out of our bodies\nand emotional possibilities we have to make the new world bodily and\nemotionally. To the test of that we have to bring all sorts of questions\nthat agitate us to-day, the social and political equality and personal\nfreedom of women, the differing code of honour for the sexes, the\ncontrols and limitations to set upon love and desire. If, for example,\nit is for the good of the species that a whole half of its individuals\nshould be specialized and subordinated to the physical sexual life, as\nin certain phases of human development women have tended to be, then\ncertainly we must do nothing to prevent that. We have set aside the\nconception of Justice as in any sense a countervailing idea to that of\nthe synthetic process.\n\nAnd it is well to remember that for the whole of sexual conduct there is\nquite conceivably no general simple rule. It is quite possible that,\nas Metchnikoff maintains in his extraordinarily illuminating \u201cNature\nof Man,\u201d we are dealing with an irresolvable tangle of disharmonies. We\nhave passions that do not insist upon their physiological end, desires\nthat may be prematurely vivid in childhood, a fantastic curiosity, old\nneeds of the ape but thinly overlaid by the acquisitions of the man,\nemotions that jar with physical impulses, inexplicable pains and\ndiseases. And not only have we to remember that we are dealing with\ndisharmonies that may at the very best be only patched together, but\nwe are dealing with matters in which the element of idiosyncrasy is\nessential, insisting upon an incalculable flexibility in any rule\nwe make, unless we are to take types and indeed whole classes of\npersonality and write them down as absolutely bad and fit only for\nsuppression and restraint. And on the mental side we are further\nperplexed by the extraordinary suggestibility of human beings. In sexual\nmatters there seems to me--and I think I share a general ignorance\nhere--to be no directing instinct at all, but only an instinct to do\nsomething generally sexual; there are almost equally powerful desires to\ndo right and not to act under compulsion. The specific forms of conduct\nimposed upon these instincts and desires depend upon a vast confusion of\nsuggestions, institutions, conventions, ways of putting things. We are\ndealing therefore with problems ineradicably complex, varying endlessly\nin their instances, and changing as we deal with them. I am inclined to\nthink that the only really profitable discussion of sexual matters is\nin terms of individuality, through the novel, the lyric, the\nplay, autobiography or biography of the frankest sort. But such\ngeneralizations as I can make I will.\n\nTo me it seems manifest that sexual matters may be discussed generally\nin at least three permissible and valid ways, of which the consideration\nof the world as a system of births and education is only the dominant\nchief. There is next the question of the physical health and beauty\nof the community and how far sexual rules and customs affect that, and\nthirdly the question of the mental and moral atmosphere in which sexual\nconventions and laws must necessarily be an important factor. It is\nalleged that probably in the case of men, and certainly in the case of\nwomen, some sexual intercourse is a necessary phase in existence; that\nwithout it there is an incompleteness, a failure in the life cycle, a\nreal wilting and failure of energy and vitality and the development of\nmorbid states. And for most of us half the friendships and intimacies\nfrom which we derive the daily interest and sustaining force in our\nlives, draw mysterious elements from sexual attraction, and depend and\nhesitate upon our conception of the liberties and limits we must give to\nthat force.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.29. THE INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE.\n\nThe individual attitudes of men to women and of women to men are\nnecessarily determined to a large extent by certain general ideas of\nrelationship, by institutions and conventions. One of the most important\nand debatable of these is whether we are to consider and treat women\nas citizens and fellows, or as beings differing mentally from men and\ngrouped in positions of at least material dependence to individual men.\nOur decision in that direction will affect all our conduct from the\nlarger matters down to the smallest points of deportment; it will affect\neven our manner of address and determine whether when we speak to a\nwoman we shall be as frank and unaffected as with a man or touched with\na faint suggestion of the reserves of a cat which does not wish to be\nsuspected of wanting to steal the milk.\n\nNow so far as that goes it follows almost necessarily from my views upon\naristocracy and democracy that I declare for the conventional equality\nof women, that is to say for the determination to make neither sex nor\nany sexual characteristic a standard of superiority or inferiority, for\nthe view that a woman is a person as important and necessary, as much\nto be consulted, and entitled to as much freedom of action as a man. I\nadmit that this decision is a choice into which temperament enters,\nthat I cannot produce compelling reasons why anyone else should adopt my\nview. I can produce considerations in support of my view, that is all.\nBut they are so implicit in all that has gone before that I will not\ntrouble to detail them here.\n\nThe conception of equality and fellowship between men and women is\nan idea at least as old as Plato and one that has recurred wherever\ncivilization has reached a phase in which men and women were\nsufficiently released from militant and economic urgency to talk and\nread and think. But it has never yet been, at least in the historical\nperiod and in any but isolated social groups, a working structural idea.\nThe working structural idea is the Patriarchal Family in which the woman\nis inferior and submits herself and is subordinated to the man, the head\nof the family.\n\nWe live in a constantly changing development and modification of that\ntradition. It is well to bring that factor of constant change into mind\nat the outset of this discussion and to keep it there. To forget it, and\nit is commonly forgotten, is to falsify every issue. Marriage and the\nFamily are perennially fluctuating institutions, and probably scarcely\nanything in modern life is changing so much; they are in their legal\nconstitution or their moral and emotional quality profoundly different\nthings from what they were a hundred years ago. A woman who marries\nnowadays marries, if one may put it quantitatively, far less than she\ndid even half a century ago; the married woman\u2019s property act, for\nexample, has revolutionized the economic relationship; her husband has\nlost his right to assault her and he cannot even compel her to cohabit\nwith him if she refuses to do so. Legal separations and divorces have\ncome to modify the quality and logical consequences of the bond.\nThe rights of parent over the child have been even more completely\nqualified. The State has come in as protector and educator of the\nchildren, taking over personal powers and responsibilities that have\nbeen essential to the family institution ever since the dawn of history.\nIt inserts itself more and more between child and parent. It invades\nwhat were once the most sacred intimacies, and the Salvation Army is\nnow promoting legislation to invade those overcrowded homes in which\nchildren (it is estimated to the number of thirty or forty thousand) are\nliving as I write, daily witnesses of their mother\u2019s prostitution or in\nconstant danger of incestuous attack from drunken fathers and brothers.\nAnd finally as another indication of profound differences, births were\nalmost universally accidental a hundred years ago; they are now in an\nincreasing number of families controlled and deliberate acts of will.\nIn every one of their relations do Marriage and the Family change and\ncontinue to change.\n\nBut the inherent defectiveness of the human mind which my metaphysical\nbook sets itself to analyze, does lead it constantly to speak of\nMarriage and the Family as things as fixed and unalterable as, let us\nsay, the characteristics of oxygen. One is asked, Do you believe in\nMarriage and the Family? as if it was a case of either having or not\nhaving some definite thing. Socialists are accused of being \u201cagainst\nthe Family,\u201d as if it were not the case that Socialists, Individualists,\nhigh Anglicans and Roman Catholics are ALL against Marriage and the\nFamily as these institutions exist at the present time. But once we have\nrealized the absurdity of this absolute treatment, then it should become\nclear that with it goes most of the fabric of right and wrong, and\nnearly all those arbitrary standards by which we classify people into\nmoral and immoral. Those last words are used when as a matter of fact\nwe mean either conforming or failing to conform to changing laws and\ndeveloping institutional customs we may or may not consider right\nor wrong. Their use imparts a flavour of essential wrong-doing and\nobliquity into acts and relations that may be in many cases no more than\nsocial indiscipline, which may be even conceivably a courageous act of\ndefiance to an obsolescent limitation. Such, until a little while ago,\nwas a man\u2019s cohabitation with his deceased wife\u2019s sister. This, which\nwas scandalous yesterday, is now a legally honourable relationship,\nalbeit I believe still regarded by the high Anglican as incestuous\nwickedness.\n\nNow I will not deal here with the institutional changes that are\ninvolved in that general scheme of progress called Socialism. I have\ndiscussed the relation of Socialism to Marriage and the Family quite\nfully in my \u201cNew Worlds for Old\u201d (\u201cNew Worlds for Old\u201d (A. Constable and\nCo., 1908).) and to that I must refer the reader. Therein he will see\nhow the economic freedom and independent citizenship of women, and\nindeed also the welfare of the whole next generation, hang on the idea\nof endowing motherhood, and he will find too how much of the nature\nof the marriage contract is outside the scope of Socialist proposals\naltogether.\n\nApart from the broad proposals of Socialism, as a matter of personal\nconviction quite outside the scope of Socialism altogether, I am\npersuaded of the need of much greater facilities of divorce than exist\nat present, divorce on the score of mutual consent, of faithlessness, of\nsimple cruelty, of insanity, habitual vice or the prolonged imprisonment\nof either party. And this being so I find it impossible to condemn on\nany ground, except that it is \u201cbreaking ranks\u201d and making a confusion,\nthose who by anticipating such wide facilities as I propose have sinned\nby existing standards. How far and in what manner such breaking of ranks\nis to be condoned I will presently discuss. But it is clear it is\nan offence of a different nature from actions one believes to be in\nthemselves and apart from the law reprehensible things.\n\nBut my scepticisms about the current legal institutions and customary\ncode are not exhausted by these modifications I have suggested.\nI believe firmly in some sort of marriage, that is to say an open\ndeclaration of the existence of sexual relations between a man and a\nwoman, because I am averse to all unnecessary secrecies and because the\nexistence of these peculiarly intimate relationships affects everybody\nabout the persons concerned. It is ridiculous to say as some do that\nsexual relations between two people affect no one but themselves unless\na child is born. They do, because they tend to break down barriers and\nset up a peculiar emotional partnership. It is a partnership that kept\nsecret may work as anti-socially as a secret business partnership or\na secret preferential railway tariff. And I believe too in the general\nsocial desirability of the family group, the normal group of father,\nmother and children, and in the extreme efficacy in the normal human\nbeing of the blood link and pride link between parent and child in\nsecuring loving care and upbringing for the child. But this clear\nadhesion to Marriage and to the Family grouping about mother and father\ndoes not close the door to a large series of exceptional cases which our\nexisting institutions and customs ignore or crush.\n\nFor example, monogamy in general seems to me to be clearly indicated (as\ndoctors say) by the fact that there are not several women in the world\nfor every man, but quite as clearly does it seem necessary to recognize\nthat the fact that there are (or were in 1901) 21,436,107 females to\n20,172,984 males in our British community seems to condemn our present\nrigorous insistence upon monogamy, unless feminine celibacy has its\nown delights. But, as I have said, it is now largely believed that the\nsexual life of a woman is more important to her than his sexual life to\na man and less easily ignored.\n\nIt is true also on the former side that for the great majority of\npeople one knows personally, any sort of household but a monogamous one\nconjures up painful and unpleasant visions. The ordinary civilized\nwoman and the ordinary civilized man are alike obsessed with the idea\nof meeting and possessing one peculiar intimate person, one special\nexclusive lover who is their very own, and a third person of either sex\ncannot be associated with that couple without an intolerable sense of\nprivacy and confidence and possession destroyed. It is difficult to\nimagine a second wife in a home who would not be and feel herself to\nbe a rather excluded and inferior person. But that does not abolish the\npossibility that there are exceptional people somewhere capable of,\nto coin a phrase, triangular mutuality, and I do not see why we should\neither forbid or treat with bitterness or hostility a grouping we may\nconsider so inadvisable or so unworkable as never to be adopted, if\nthree people of their own free will desire it.\n\nThe peculiar defects of the human mind when they approach these\nquestions of sex are reinforced by passions peculiar to the topic, and\nit is perhaps advisable to point out that to discuss these possibilities\nis not the same thing as to urge the married reader to take unto himself\nor herself a second partner or a series of additional partners. We\nare trained from the nursery to become secretive, muddle-headed and\nvehemently conclusive upon sexual matters, until at last the editors of\nmagazines blush at the very phrase and long to put a petticoat over\nthe page that bears it. Yet our rebellious natures insist on being\ninterested by it. It seems to me that to judge these large questions\nfrom the personal point of view, to insist upon the whole world without\nexception living exactly in the manner that suits oneself or accords\nwith one\u2019s emotional imagination and the forms of delicacy in which one\nhas been trained, is not the proper way to deal with them. I want as\na sane social organizer to get just as many contented and law-abiding\ncitizens as possible; I do not want to force people who would otherwise\nbe useful citizens into rebellion, concealments and the dark and furtive\nways of vice, because they may not love and marry as their temperaments\ncommand, and so I want to make the meshes of the law as wide as\npossible. But the common man will not understand this yet, and seeks to\nmake the meshes just as small as his own private case demands.\n\nThen marriage, to resume my main discussion, does not necessarily mean\ncohabitation. All women who desire children do not want to be entrusted\nwith their upbringing. Some women are sexual and philoprogenitive\nwithout being sedulously maternal, and some are maternal without much\nor any sexual passion. There are men and women in the world now, great\nallies, fond and passionate lovers who do not live nor want to live\nconstantly together. It is at least conceivable that there are women\nwho, while desiring offspring, do not want to abandon great careers for\nthe work of maternity, women again who would be happiest managing and\nrearing children in manless households that they might even share with\nother women friends, and men to correspond with these who do not wish to\nlive in a household with wife and children. I submit, these temperaments\nexist and have a right to exist in their own way. But one must recognize\nthat the possibility of these departures from the normal type of\nhousehold opens up other possibilities. The polygamy that is degrading\nor absurd under one roof assumes a different appearance when one\nconsiders it from the point of view of people whose habits of life do\nnot centre upon an isolated home.\n\nAll the relations I have glanced at above do as a matter of fact exist\nto-day, but shamefully and shabbily, tainted with what seems to me an\nunmerited and unnecessary ignominy. The punishment for bigamy seems to\nme insane in its severity, contrasted as it is with our leniency to the\ncommon seducer. Better ruin a score of women, says the law, than marry\ntwo. I do not see why in these matters there should not be much ampler\nfreedom than there is, and this being so I can hardly be expected to\ncondemn with any moral fervour or exclude from my society those who have\nseen fit to behave by what I believe may be the standards of A.D. 2000\ninstead of by the standards of 1850. These are offences, so far as\nthey are offences, on an altogether different footing from murder, or\nexacting usury, or the sweating of children, or cruelty, or transmitting\ndiseases, or unveracity, or commercial or intellectual or physical\nprostitution, or any such essentially grave anti-social deeds. We must\ndistinguish between sins on the one hand and mere errors of judgment and\ndifferences of taste from ourselves. To draw up harsh laws, to practise\nexclusions against everyone who does not see fit to duplicate one\u2019s own\nblameless home life, is to waste a number of courageous and exceptional\npersons in every generation, to drive many of them into a forced\nalliance with real crime and embittered rebellion against custom and the\nlaw.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.30. CONDUCT IN RELATION TO THE THING THAT IS.\n\nBut the reader must keep clear in his mind the distinction between\nconduct that is right or permissible in itself and conduct that becomes\neither inadvisable or mischievous and wrong because of the circumstances\nabout it. There is no harm under ordinary conditions in asking a boy\nwith a pleasant voice to sing a song in the night, but the case is\naltered altogether if you have reason to suppose that a Red Indian is\nlying in wait a hundred yards off, holding a loaded rifle and ready to\nfire at the voice. It is a valid objection to many actions that I do\nnot think objectionable in themselves, that to do them will discharge\na loaded prejudice into the heart of my friend--or even into my own. I\nbelong to the world and my work, and I must not lightly throw my time,\nmy power, my influence away. For a splendid thing any risk or any\ndefiance may be justifiable, but is it a sufficiently splendid thing?\nSo far as he possibly can a man must conform to common prejudices,\nprevalent customs and all laws, whatever his estimate of them may be.\nBut he must at the same time to his utmost to change what he thinks to\nbe wrong.\n\nAnd I think that conformity must be honest conformity. There is no more\nanti-social act than secret breaches, and only some very urgent and\nexceptional occasion justifies even the unveracity of silence about the\nthing done. If your personal convictions bring you to a breach, let it\nbe an open breach, let there be no misrepresentation of attitudes, no\nmeanness, no deception of honourable friends. Of course an open breach\nneed not be an ostentatious breach; to do what is right to yourself\nwithout fraud or concealment is one thing, to make a challenge and\naggression quite another. Your friends may understand and sympathize\nand condone, but it does not lie upon you to force them to identify\nthemselves with your act and situation. But better too much openness\nthan too little. Squalid intrigue was the shadow of the old intolerably\nnarrow order; it is a shadow we want to illuminate out of existence.\nSecrets will be contraband in the new time.\n\nAnd if it chances to you to feel called upon to make a breach with the\ninstitution or custom or prejudice that is, remember that doing so\nis your own affair. You are going to take risks and specialize as an\nexperiment. You must not expect other people about you to share the\nconsequences of your dash forward. You must not drag in confidants and\nsecondaries. You must fight your little battle in front on your own\nresponsibility, unsupported--and take the consequences without repining.\n\n\n\n\n\n3.31. CONDUCT TOWARDS TRANSGRESSORS.\n\nSo far as breaches of the prohibitions and laws of marriage go, to me it\nseems they are to be tolerated by us in others just in the measure that,\nwithin the limits set by discretion, they are frank and truthful and\nanimated by spontaneous passion and pervaded by the quality of beauty.\nI hate the vulgar sexual intriguer, man or woman, and the smart and\nshallow atmosphere of unloving lust and vanity about the type as I hate\nfew kinds of human life; I would as lief have a polecat in my home as\nthis sort of person; and every sort of prostitute except the victim of\nutter necessity I despise, even though marriage be the fee. But honest\nlovers should be I think a charge and pleasure for us. We must judge\neach pair as we can.\n\nOne thing renders a sexual relationship incurably offensive to others\nand altogether wrong, and that is cruelty. But who can define cruelty?\nHow far is the leaving of a third person to count as cruelty? There\nagain I hesitate to judge. To love and not be loved is a fate for which\nit seems no one can be blamed; to lose love and to change one\u2019s loving\nbelongs to a subtle interplay beyond analysis or control, but to be\ndeceived or mocked or deliberately robbed of love, that at any rate is\nan abominable wrong.\n\nIn all these matters I perceive a general rule is in itself a possible\ninstrument of cruelty. I set down what I can in the way of general\nprinciples, but it all leaves off far short of the point of application.\nEvery case among those we know I think we moderns must judge for\nourselves. Where there is doubt, there I hold must be charity. And with\nregard to strangers, manifestly our duty is to avoid inquisitorial and\nuncharitable acts.\n\nThis is as true of financial and economic misconduct as of sexual\nmisconduct, of ways of living that are socially harmful and of political\nfaith. We are dealing with people in a maladjusted world to whom\nabsolute right living is practically impossible, because there are no\nabsolutely right institutions and no simple choice of good or evil, and\nwe have to balance merits and defects in every case.\n\nSome people are manifestly and essentially base and self-seeking and\nregardless of the happiness and welfare of their fellows, some in\nbusiness affairs and politics as others in love. Some wrong-doers again\nare evidently so through heedlessness, through weakness, timidity or\nhaste. We have to judge and deal with each sort upon no clear issue, but\nupon impressions they have given us of their spirit and purpose. We owe\nit to them and ourselves not to judge too rashly or too harshly, but for\nall that we are obliged to judge and take sides, to avoid the malignant\nand exclude them from further opportunity, to help and champion the\ncheated and the betrayed, to forgive and aid the repentant blunderer\nand by mercy to save the lesser sinner from desperate alliance with the\ngreater. That is the broad rule, and it is as much as we have to go upon\nuntil the individual case comes before us.\n\n\n\n\n\nBOOK THE FOURTH -- SOME PERSONAL THINGS.\n\n\n\n\n\n4.1. PERSONAL LOVE AND LIFE.\n\nIt has been most convenient to discuss all that might be generalized\nabout conduct first, to put in the common background, the vistas and\natmosphere of the scene. But a man\u2019s relations are of two orders, and\nthese questions of rule and principle are over and about and round\nmore vivid and immediate interests. A man is not simply a relationship\nbetween his individual self and the race, society, the world and God\u2019s\nPurpose. Close about him are persons, friends and enemies and lovers\nand beloved people. He desires them, lusts after them, craves their\naffection, needs their presence, abhors them, hates and desires to limit\nand suppress them. This is for most of us the flesh and blood of life.\nWe go through the noble scene of the world neither alone, nor alone with\nGod, nor serving an undistinguishable multitude, but in a company of\nindividualized people.\n\nHere is a system of motives and passions, imperious and powerful, which\nfollows no broad general rule and in which each man must needs be a\nlight unto himself upon innumerable issues. I am satisfied that\nthese personal urgencies are neither to be suppressed nor crudely nor\nruthlessly subordinated to the general issues. Religious and moral\nteachers are apt to make this part of life either too detached or too\ninsignificant. They teach it either as if it did not matter or as if\nit ought not to matter. Indeed our individual friends and enemies stand\nbetween us and hide or interpret for us all the larger things. Few of\nus can even worship alone. We must feel others, and those not strangers,\nkneeling beside us.\n\nI have already spoken under the heading of Beliefs of the part that the\nidea of a Mediator has played and can play in the religious life. I have\npointed out how the imagination of men has sought and found in certain\npersonalities, historical or fictitious, a bridge between the blood-warm\nprivate life and the intolerable spaciousness of right and wrong. The\nworld is full of such figures and their images, Christ and Mary and the\nSaints and all the lesser, dearer gods of heathendom. These things\nand the human passion for living leaders and heroes and leagues and\nbrotherhoods all confess the mediatory role, the mediatory possibilities\nof personal love between the individual and the great synthesis of which\nhe is a part and agent. The great synthesis may become incarnate in\npersonal love, and personal love lead us directly to universal service.\n\nI write \u201cmay\u201d and temper that sentence to the quality of a possibility\nalone. This is only true for those who believe, for those who have\nfaith, whose lives have been unified, who have found Salvation. For\nthose whose lives are chaotic, personal loves must also be chaotic; this\nor that passion, malice, a jesting humour, some physical lust, gratified\nvanity, egotistical pride, will rule and limit the relationship and\ncolour its ultimate futility. But the Believer uses personal love and\nsustains himself by personal love. It is his provender, the meat and\ndrink of his campaign.\n\n\n\n\n\n4.2. THE NATURE OF LOVE.\n\nIt is well perhaps to look a little into the factors that make up Love.\n\nLove does not seem to me to be a simple elemental thing. It is, as I\nhave already said, one of the vicious tendencies of the human mind to\nthink that whatever can be given a simple name can be abstracted as a\nsingle something in a state of quintessential purity. I have pointed out\nthat this is not true of Harmony or Beauty, and that these are synthetic\nthings. You bring together this which is not beautiful and that which is\nnot beautiful, and behold! Beauty! So also Love is, I think, a synthetic\nthing. One observes this and that, one is interested and stirred;\nsuddenly the metal fuses, the dry bones live! One loves.\n\nAlmost every interest in one\u2019s being may be a factor in the love\nsynthesis. But apart from the overflowing of the parental instinct\nthat makes all that is fine and delicate and young dear to us and to be\ncherished, there are two main factors that bring us into love with our\nfellows. There is first the emotional elements in our nature that arise\nout of the tribal necessity, out of a fellowship in battle and hunting,\ndrinking and feasting, out of the needs and excitements and delights of\nthose occupations; and there is next the intenser narrower desirings\nand gratitudes, satisfactions and expectations that come from sexual\nintercourse. Now both these factors originate in physical needs and\nconsummate in material acts, and it is well to remember that this great\ngrowth of love in life roots there, and, it may be, dies when its roots\nare altogether cut away.\n\nAt its lowest, love is the mere sharing of, or rather the desire to\nshare, pleasure and excitement, the excitements of conflict or lust or\nwhat not. I think that the desire to partake, the desire to merge one\u2019s\nindividual identity with another\u2019s, remains a necessary element in all\npersonal loves. It is a way out of ourselves, a breaking down of our\nindividual separation, just as hate is an intensification of that.\nPersonal love is the narrow and intense form of that breaking down, just\nas what I call Salvation is its widest, most extensive form. We cast\naside our reserves, our secrecies, our defences; we open ourselves;\ntouches that would be intolerable from common people become a mystery\nof delight, acts of self-abasement and self-sacrifice are charged with\nsymbolical pleasure. We cannot tell which of us is me, which you. Our\nimprisoned egoism looks out through this window, forgets its walls, and\nis for those brief moments released and universal.\n\nFor most of us the strain of primordial sexual emotion in our loves is\nvery strong. Many men can love only women, many women only men, and\nsome can scarcely love at all without bodily desire. But the love of\nfellowship is a strong one also, and for many, love is most possible and\neasy when the thought of physical lovemaking has been banished. Then\nthe lovers will pursue interests together, will work together or journey\ntogether. So we have the warm fellowships of men for men and women for\nwomen. But even then it may happen that men friends together will talk\nof women, and women friends of men. Nevertheless we have also the strong\nand altogether sexless glow of those who have fought well together, or\ndrunk or jested together or hunted a common quarry.\n\nNow it seems to me that the Believer must also be a Lover, that he will\nlove as much as he can and as many people as he can, and in many moods\nand ways. As I have said already, many of those who have taught religion\nand morality in the past have been neglectful or unduly jealous of the\nintenser personal loves. They have been, to put it by a figure, urgent\nupon the road to the ocean. To that they would lead us, though we come\nto it shivering, fearful and unprepared, and they grudge it that we\nshould strip and plunge into the wayside stream. But all streams, all\nrivers come from this ocean in the beginning, lead to it in the end.\n\nIt is the essential fact of love as I conceive it, that it breaks\ndown the boundaries of self. That love is most perfect which does most\ncompletely merge its lovers. But no love is altogether perfect, and for\nmost men and women love is no more than a partial and temporary lowering\nof the barriers that keep them apart. With many, the attraction of love\nseems always to fall short of what I hold to be its end, it draws people\ntogether in the most momentary of self-forgetfulnesses, and for the rest\nseems rather to enhance their egotisms and their difference. They are\nsecret from one another even in their embraces. There is a sort of love\nthat is egotistical lust almost regardless of its partner, a sort of\nlove that is mere fleshless pride and vanity at a white heat. There is\nthe love-making that springs from sheer boredom, like a man reading a\nstory-book to fill an hour. These inferior loves seek to accomplish an\nagreeable act, or they seek the pursuit or glory of a living possession,\nthey aim at gratification or excitement or conquest. True love seeks\nto be mutual and easy-minded, free of doubts, but these egotistical\nmockeries of love have always resentment in them and hatred in them and\na watchful distrust. Jealousy is the measure of self-love in love.\n\nTrue love is a synthetic thing, an outcome of life, it is not a\nuniversal thing. It is the individualized correlative of Salvation; like\nthat it is a synthetic consequence of conflicts and confusions. Many\npeople do not desire or need Salvation, they cannot understand it, much\nless achieve it; for them chaotic life suffices. So too, many never,\nsave for some rare moment of illumination, desire or feel love. Its\nhappy abandonment, its careless self-giving, these things are mere\nfoolishness to them. But much has been said and sung of faith and love\nalike, and in their confused greed these things also they desire and\nparody. So they act worship and make a fine fuss of their devotions.\nAnd also they must have a few half-furtive, half-flaunting fallen\nlove-triumphs prowling the secret backstreets of their lives, they know\nnot why.\n\n(In setting this down be it remembered I am doing my best to tell what\nis in me because I am trying to put my whole view of life before the\nreader without any vital omissions. These are difficult matters to\nexplain because they have no clear outlines; one lets in a hard light\nsuddenly upon things that have lurked in warm intimate shadows, dim\ninner things engendering motives. I am not only telling quasi-secret\nthings but exploring them for myself. They are none the less real and\nimportant because they are elusive.)\n\nTrue love I think is not simply felt but known. Just as Salvation as\nI conceive it demands a fine intelligence and mental activity, so love\ncalls to brain and body alike and all one\u2019s powers. There is always\nelaborate thinking and dreaming in love. Love will stir imaginations\nthat have never stirred before.\n\nLove may be, and is for the most part, one-sided. It is the going out\nfrom oneself that is love, and not the accident of its return. It is the\nexpedition whether it fail or succeed.\n\nBut an expedition starves that comes to no port. Love always seeks\nmutuality and grows by the sense of responses, or we should love\nbeautiful inanimate things more passionately than we do. Failing a full\nreturn, it makes the most of an inadequate return. Failing a sustained\nreturn it welcomes a temporary coincidence. Failing a return it finds\nsupport in accepted sacrifices. But it seeks a full return, and the\nfulness of life has come only to those who, loving, have met the lover.\n\nI am trying to be as explicit as possible in thus writing about Love.\nBut the substance in which one works here is emotion that evades\ndefinition, poetic flashes and figures of speech are truer than prosaic\nstatements. Body and the most sublimated ecstasy pass into one another,\nexchange themselves and elude every net of words we cast.\n\nI have put out two ideas of unification and self-devotion, extremes upon\na scale one from another; one of these ideas is that devotion to the\nPurpose in things I have called Salvation; the other that devotion to\nsome other most fitting and satisfying individual which is passionate\nlove, the former extensive as the universe, the latter the intensest\nthing in life. These, it seems to me, are the boundary and the living\ncapital of the empire of life we rule.\n\nAll empires need a comprehending boundary, but many have not one capital\nbut many chief cities, and all have cities and towns and villages beyond\nthe capital. It is an impoverished capital that has no dependent towns,\nand it is a poor love that will not overflow in affection and eager\nkindly curiosity and sympathy and the search for fresh mutuality. To\nlove is to go living radiantly through the world. To love and be loved\nis to be fearless of experience and rich in the power to give.\n\n\n\n\n\n4.3. THE WILL TO LOVE.\n\nLove is a thing to a large extent in its beginnings voluntary and\ncontrollable, and at last quite involuntary. It is so hedged about by\nobligations and consequences, real and artificial, that for the most\npart I think people are overmuch afraid of it. And also the tradition of\nsentiment that suggests its forms and guides it in the world about us,\nis far too strongly exclusive. It is not so much when love is glowing as\nwhen it is becoming habitual that it is jealous for itself and others.\nLovers a little exhausting their mutual interest find a fillip in an\nalliance against the world. They bury their talent of understanding and\nsympathy to return it duly in a clean napkin. They narrow their interest\nin life lest the other lover should misunderstand their amplitude as\ndisloyalty.\n\nOur institutions and social customs seem all to assume a definiteness\nof preference, a singleness and a limitation of love, which is not\npsychologically justifiable. People do not, I think, fall naturally into\nagreement with these assumptions; they train themselves to agreement.\nThey take refuge from experiences that seem to carry with them the risk\nat least of perplexing situations, in a theory of barred possibilities\nand locked doors. How far this shy and cultivated irresponsive\nlovelessness towards the world at large may not carry with it the\npossibility of compensating intensities, I do not know. Quite equally\nprobable is a starvation of one\u2019s emotional nature.\n\nThe same reasons that make me decide against mere wanton abstinences\nmake me hostile to the common convention of emotional indifference to\nmost of the charming and interesting people one encounters. In pleasing\nand being pleased, in the mutual interest, the mutual opening out of\npeople to one another, is the key of the door to all sweet and mellow\nliving.\n\n\n\n\n\n4.4. LOVE AND DEATH.\n\nFor he who has faith, death, so far as it is his own death, ceases to\npossess any quality of terror. The experiment will be over, the rinsed\nbeaker returned to its shelf, the crystals gone dissolving down the\nwaste-pipe; the duster sweeps the bench. But the deaths of those we love\nare harder to understand or bear.\n\nIt happens that of those very intimate with me I have lost only one, and\nthat came slowly and elaborately, a long gradual separation wrought by\nthe accumulation of years and mental decay, but many close friends and\nmany whom I have counted upon for sympathy and fellowship have passed\nout of my world. I miss such a one as Bob Stevenson, that luminous,\nextravagant talker, that eager fantastic mind. I miss him whenever I\nwrite. It is less pleasure now to write a story since he will never read\nit, much less give me a word of praise for it. And I miss York Powell\u2019s\nfriendly laughter and Henley\u2019s exuberant welcome. They made a warmth\nthat has gone, those men. I can understand why I, with my fumbling\nlucidities and explanations, have to finish up presently and go,\nexpressing as I do the mood of a type and of a time; but not those\nradiant presences.\n\nAnd the gap these men have left, these men with whom after all I only\nsat now and again, or wrote to in a cheerful mood or got a letter from\nat odd times, gives me some measure of the thing that happens, that may\nhappen, when the mind that is always near one\u2019s thoughts, the person who\nmoves to one\u2019s movement and lights nearly all the common flow of events\nabout one with the reminder of fellowship and meaning--ceases.\n\nFaith which feeds on personal love must at last prevail over it. If\nFaith has any virtue it must have it here when we find ourselves bereft\nand isolated, facing a world from which the light has fled leaving it\nbleak and strange. We live for experience and the race; these individual\ninterludes are just helps to that; the warm inn in which we lovers met\nand refreshed was but a halt on a journey. When we have loved to the\nintensest point we have done our best with each other. To keep to that\nimage of the inn, we must not sit overlong at our wine beside the fire.\nWe must go on to new experiences and new adventures. Death comes to part\nus and turn us out and set us on the road again.\n\nBut the dead stay where we leave them.\n\nI suppose that is the real good in death, that they do stay; that it\nmakes them immortal for us. Living they were mortal. But now they\ncan never spoil themselves or be spoilt by change again. They have\nfinished--for us indeed just as much as themselves. There they sit for\never, rounded off and bright and done. Beside these clear and certain\nmemories I have of my dead, my impressions of the living are vague\nprovisional things.\n\nAnd since they are gone out of the world and become immortal memories\nin me, I feel no need to think of them as in some disembodied and\nincomprehensible elsewhere, changed and yet not done. I want actual\nimmortality for those I love as little as I desire it for myself.\n\nIndeed I dislike the idea that those I have loved are immortal in any\nreal sense; it conjures up dim uncomfortable drifting phantoms, that\nhave no kindred with the flesh and blood I knew. I would as soon think\nof them trailing after the tides up and down the Channel outside my\nwindow. Bob Stevenson for me is a presence utterly concrete, slouching,\neager, quick-eyed, intimate and profound, carelessly dressed (at\nSandgate he commonly wore a little felt hat that belonged to his son)\nand himself, himself, indissoluble matter and spirit, down to the\nheels of his boots. I cannot conceive of his as any but a concrete\nimmortality. If he lives, he lives as I knew him and clothed as I knew\nhim and with his unalterable voice, in a heaven of daedal flowers or\na hell of ineffectual flame; he lives, dreaming and talking and\nexplaining, explaining it all very earnestly and preposterously, so I\npicture him, into the ear of the amused, incredulous, principal person\nin the place.\n\nI have a real hatred for those dreary fools and knaves who would have me\nsuppose that Henley, that crippled Titan, may conceivably be tapping at\nthe underside of a mahogany table or scratching stifled incoherence\ninto a locked slate! Henley tapping!--for the professional purposes of\nSludge! If he found himself among the circumstances of a spiritualist\nseance he would, I know, instantly smash the table with that big fist of\nhis. And as the splinters flew, surely York Powell, out of the dead past\nfrom which he shines on me, would laugh that hearty laugh of his back\ninto the world again.\n\nHenley is nowhere now except that, red-faced and jolly like an October\nsunset, he leans over a gate at Worthing after a long day of picnicking\nat Chanctonbury Ring, or sits at his Woking table praising and quoting\n\u201cThe Admiral Bashville,\u201d or blue-shirted and wearing that hat that\nNicholson has painted, is thrust and lugged, laughing and talking aside\nin his bath-chair, along the Worthing esplanade...\n\nAnd Bob Stevenson walks for ever about a garden in Chiswick, talking in\nthe dusk.\n\n\n\n\n\n4.5. THE CONSOLATION OF FAILURE.\n\nThat parable of the talents I have made such free use of in this book\nhas one significant defect. It gives but two cases, and three are\npossible. There was first the man who buried his talent, and of his\ncondemnation we are assured. But those others all took their talents\nand used them courageously and came back with gain. Was that gain\ninevitable? Does courage always ensure us victory? because if that is so\nwe can all be heroes and valour is the better part of discretion. Alas!\nthe faith in such magic dies. What of the possible case of the man who\ntook his two or three talents and invested them as best he could and was\ndeceived or heedless and lost them, interest and principal together?\n\nThere is something harder to face than death, and that is the\nrealization of failure and misdirected effort and wrong-doing. Faith is\nno Open Sesame to right-doing, much less is it the secret of success.\nThe service of God on earth is no processional triumph. What if one does\nwrong so extremely as to condemn one\u2019s life, to make oneself part of the\nrefuse and not of the building? Or what if one is misjudged, or it may\nbe too pitilessly judged, and one\u2019s co-operation despised and the help\none brought becomes a source of weakness? Or suppose that the fine\nscheme one made lies shattered or wrecked by one\u2019s own act, or through\nsome hidden blemish one\u2019s offering is rejected and flung back and one is\nthrust out?\n\nSo in the end it may be you or I will find we have been anvil and not\nhammer in the Purpose of God.\n\nThen indeed will come the time for Faith, for the last word of Faith, to\nsay still steadfastly, disgraced or dying, defeated or discredited, that\nall is well:--\n\n\u201cThis and not that was my appointed work, and this I had to be.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n\n4.6. THE LAST CONFESSION.\n\nSo these broken confessions and statements of mood and attitude come to\nan end.\n\nBut at this end, since I have, I perceive, run a little into a pietistic\nstrain, I must repeat again how provisional and personal I know all\nthese things to be. I began by disavowing ultimates. My beliefs, my\ndogmas, my rules, they are made for my campaigning needs, like the\nknapsack and water-bottle of a Cockney soldier invading some stupendous\nmountain gorge. About him are fastnesses and splendours, torrents and\ncataracts, glaciers and untrodden snows. He comes tramping on heel-worn\nboots and ragged socks. Beauties and blue mysteries shine upon him and\nappeal to him, the enigma of beauty smiling the faint strange smile of\nLeonardo\u2019s Mona Lisa. He sees a light on the grass like music; and\nthe blossom on the trees against the sky brings him near weeping. Such\nthings come to him, give themselves to him. I do not know why he should\nnot in response fling his shabby gear aside and behave like a god; I\nonly know that he does not do so. His grunt of appreciation is absurd,\nhis speech goes like a crippled thing--and withal, and partly by virtue\nof the knapsack and water-bottle, he is conqueror of the valley. The\nvalley is his for the taking.\n\nThere is a duality in life that I cannot express except by such images\nas this, a duality so that we are at once absurd and full of sublimity,\nand most absurd when we are most anxious to render the real splendours\nthat pervade us. This duplicity in life seems to me at times\nineradicable, at times like the confusing of something essentially\nsimple, like the duplication when one looks through a doubly refracting\nmedium. You think in this latter mood that you have only to turn the\ncrystal of Iceland spar about in order to have the whole thing plain.\nBut you never get it plain. I have been doing my halting utmost to get\ndown sincerely and simply my vision of life and duty. I have permitted\nmyself no defensive restraints; I have shamelessly written my starkest,\nand it is plain to me that a smile that is not mine plays over my most\nurgent passages. There is a rebellious rippling of the grotesque under\nour utmost tragedy and gravity. One\u2019s martialled phrases grimace as one\nturns, and wink at the reader. None the less they signify. Do you note\nhow in this that I have written, such a word as Believer will begin to\nwear a capital letter and give itself solemn ridiculous airs? It does\nnot matter. It carries its message for all that necessary superficial\nabsurdity.\n\nThought has made me shameless. It does not matter at last at all if one\nis a little harsh or indelicate or ridiculous if that also is in the\nmystery of things.\n\nBehind everything I perceive the smile that makes all effort and\ndiscipline temporary, all the stress and pain of life endurable. In the\nlast resort I do not care whether I am seated on a throne or drunk or\ndying in a gutter. I follow my leading. In the ultimate I know, though I\ncannot prove my knowledge in any way whatever, that everything is right\nand all things mine.\n\n\nTHE END.","title":"First and Last Things: A Confession of Faith and Rule of Life","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":55704}