{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_54840/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_54840","id":"gutenberg_54840","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/54840","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Evolution","Faith","Social problems","Stacpoole, H. De Vere (Henry De Vere), 1863-1951 -- Philosophy"],"text":"The New Optimism\n\n\n\n  The\n  New Optimism\n\n  By\n  H. de Vere Stacpoole\n\n  [Illustration]\n\n  London: John Lane, The\n  Bodley Head. New York:\n  John Lane Company\n  Toronto: Bell & Cockburn\n  MCMXIV\n\n  COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY JOHN LANE COMPANY\n\n  PUBLISHERS PRINTING COMPANY, NEW YORK, U. S. A.\n\nThe New Optimism\n\n\n\nThe New Optimism\n\n\n\n\nPART I\n\nON THE BEACH\n\n\n[Sidenote: The Beach We Came From]\n\nI was standing by the sea-wall, watching the green water foaming round\nthe stakes of the breakwater, when my companion, a charming and elegant\nwoman, turned to me:\n\n\u201cWhat is there in water that fascinates one?\u201d she asked.\n\n\u201cDo you feel the fascination?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you not know why you feel it?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\n\u201cShall I tell you?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cBecause you were once a swimming reptile.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, there is nothing to thank me for, though the fact is the most\nglorious in the universe.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe fact that I was once a reptile?\u201d\n\n\u201cPrecisely.\u201d\n\nShe pondered on this for a moment, and then:\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t see where the glory comes in,\u201d said she.\n\n\u201cNevertheless, it is there, for the fact is the master key to the\nmeaning of the universe, the one light that shines in a world of\ndarkness, and the one sure hope in a world of doubt.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe fact that I was once a reptile?\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd I\u2014yes. I would not give what the webbing between my fingers tells\nme for all the promises of all the religions of all the countries on\nearth.\u201d\n\n\u201cAncestral pride is evidently not your strong point.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know about that; but up to a year ago mental darkness was my\nportion. I had no religion.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd have you any now?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, but I have a certainty.\u201d\n\n\u201cOf what?\u201d\n\n\u201cOf the fact that the world has a meaning and life an aim. Shall we sit\ndown on this seat and talk for a while, if I am not boring you?\u2014and may\nI light a cigarette?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are not boring me\u2014yet. And if you can prove what you say, I shall\nnot mind even if you bore me. But I must tell you, first of all, that,\nto me, the world seems absolutely without a meaning and life without an\naim. I mean, of course, the general life of the world, which implies,\nas far as I can see, general suffering. If suffering did people good,\nthen I could understand that we were placed here to grow and develop;\nbut suffering and poverty, as far as I can see, only stunt and twist\nand spoil everything they touch.\u201d\n\n\u201cPrecisely.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen, if you admit that, you must admit that the meaning and aim of\nthe world is far from being glorious.\u201d\n\n\u201cNever. That is what I wish to disprove.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen disprove it.\u201d\n\n\n[Sidenote: The Growth of the World]\n\n\u201cTell me,\u201d I said. \u201cWhy is it that an ordinary human being placed\nbefore a flower sees only a flower and nothing of the wonder that is in\nit?\u201d\n\n\u201cBecause flowers are so common.\u201d\n\n\u201cMore than that\u2014because a flower is of such slow growth. If one could\nsee a seed sprouting, a stalk rising, a bud forming, bursting, and\nexpanding all in five minutes, the wonder of the thing would bring one\non one\u2019s knees. The world is just the same. We do not see the splendour\nand magnificence and meaning of it, because the growth has been so\nslow, because every-day jargon has blinded our eyes, and scientific\njargon has dulled the poetic perception of the miracle in its entirety.\nIt is by looking at bits of the world that men have come to confusion,\ninstead of fixing their eyes on the world from its very beginning.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, but who can do that?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou can, and so can I, and so can anyone who has studied the\ndevelopment of the world from the very beginning.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut I have never studied the development of the world.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, then it is high time you began; and to assist you in your\nstudies, I will give you a vague sketch of the facts, and when I\nhave sketched those facts, I will expound to you in a few words the\ndeduction which I draw from them and the reason why I have implicit\nfaith that earth has a meaning and life an aim\u2014both equally glorious.\n\n\u201cNow, mind, I have nothing to do with fancies, only facts. Hard, dry\nfacts that no one can refuse.\u201d\n\n\u201cFirst, then, before the beginning of time there was neither sun, moon,\nnor planets; the whole of the solar system was a zone of incandescent\ngas.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow do you know that?\u201d\n\n\u201cI know it because all philosophy points to it, and because in the\ndepths of space the telescope shews to me hundreds of solar systems in\nthe process of making. Perhaps you will take my word for the fact.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes. Go on.\u201d\n\n\u201cThis sea of gas, floating lost in the universe, was possessed of two\nmovements: the movement of the atoms buzzing round each other, and a\nmovement of rotation by which the whole sea whirled round its central\npoint. Millions of years went by, and during those years our gaseous\nsea began to cool and shrink. But it did not shrink evenly. The great\nouter ring of the sea was left behind, still whirling and cooling and\ncondensing, but it did not remain in the form of a ring. The atoms drew\ntogether, sucked toward a common point from every part of the ring, and\nthe result was that a globe began to form like a great tumour on the\nattenuated ring; and as years went on, the ring gave up more and more\natoms to the globe, till at last there was nothing left but the globe\nwhirling along the path once occupied by the ring. This globe was the\nfirst and outermost planet, Neptune.\n\n\u201cMeanwhile, the sea of gas was still contracting, and again the same\nthing happened. The outermost edge of the sea was left behind, in the\nform of a ring, a globe was formed and that globe was Uranus, the\nsecond furthest planet from us. Again the same thing happened, and\nSaturn was formed: and yet again, and Jupiter was formed: and yet\nagain, and Mars was left behind in the shape of a whirling globe of\nfire, and then the Earth.\n\n\u201cThe sea continued contracting, leaving Venus behind and then Mercury;\nand still it continued contracting, but now it was too small to throw\noff any more rings, and it consolidated to form one great central\nglobe, the sun.\n\n\u201cThe first great act of creation was accomplished, and on that vast\nday when, Mercury left definitely behind, the budding of worlds was\nfinished, the sun and the planets around it might have been seen like\na golden bee surrounded by its golden children, shining in the night of\nspace.\n\n\u201cThe earth was a much brighter place then, for it was simply a globe\nof incandescent vapour, and yet that glowing vapour held everything.\nMan and woman, and love and war, beauty and sorrow. Art, poetry, music,\nhunger, and cruelty.\n\n\u201cThat mixture of the abstract and the concrete sounds like rant, but\nit is not. It is a bald statement of facts. Every thought that man has\never thought, every dream that man has ever dreamed was lying unborn\nyet in the essence of that globe of incandescent vapour. Every form\nthat ever sketched itself on earth was there, too\u2014from the daisy to the\nhippopotamus. But as yet there was nothing definite, nothing but the\ndance of the atoms and the atoms themselves.\n\n\u201cFrom the first moment of its separate existence this world _in posse_,\nconsisting as yet of incandescent vapour, began to cool and shrink,\nand after the first million years or so it began to exhibit the first\nsymptoms of thought and to storm at its own shrinking.\u201d\n\n\u201cExcuse me for a moment, but what do you mean by the first symptoms of\nthought?\u201d\n\n[Sidenote: The Germ of Thought]\n\n\u201cThe first and only symptom of thought is action, arising from opposing\nforces, and when the world, now condensed into a liquid form, began to\nexhibit tides and storms of molten matter, it began to exhibit action\narising from opposing forces; _and here let me say that the amount of\nwork done by the world before life ever appeared upon it, the amount of\nwork done by what we call senseless matter, and the amount of thought\nand ingenuity expended on that work put the much trumpeted wonder of\nlife in the shade_.\n\n\u201cLong, long before the first germ of life began to form, matter in\nits own mind had worked out the problem of the mountains and the\nseas; matter had kneaded the moon in its \u2018dull\u2019 hands and flung it\nup into the sky to be a lamp and a tide-maker; matter had worked out\nthe whole problem of lighting and watering and warming the earth, so\nthat when life appeared in its first humble and rudimentary form, it\nfound a house built for it, water laid on for it, and all the lighting\narrangements perfect.\n\n\u201cYes, to me, sometimes, all that work done by matter on its own account\nis even more wonderful than all the work done by Life, for even had\nlife never appeared on the world, the labours of \u2018dull matter\u2019 and\n\u2018brute force\u2019 would still have created the house of the earth.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was created for Life to live in?\u201d\n\n\u201cI do not think so. I think the creation of the world was the result of\nthe first vague struggle of the spirit of matter toward higher things.\nThe senseless ferocity of blazing gas had calmed down, and the mind of\nmatter, if I may use the term, had reached the dignity of expressing\nitself in form; and you will mark that the advance toward higher\nthings was on the road from ferocity to kindliness; that the triumph\nof matter was not so much in the creation of the forms of hills and\nplains and mountains and seas from whirling oceans of molten material,\nas in the creation of those conditions of mildness necessary for the\nexistence of life.\n\n\u201cYes, before life ever appeared, matter had developed abstract\nqualities, the benign had separated itself from the malignant, and,\nunder the influence of the benign, Life first peeped out.\n\n\u201cWe date everything from that first budding of matter into what we\ncall life. Yet in reality it was the last stage of a long journey, the\nlast act of a long series of actions and reactions, the last triumph\nof benignity over ferocity in the first stage of the evolution of the\nworld.\u201d\n\n[Sidenote: The Benign]\n\n\u201cWhat do you mean by Benignity?\u201d\n\n\u201cI use the word Benignity for all that makes for development of the\nsimple into the complex, and the word Malignity for all that retards\nit. I will use the words Good and Evil if you like them better, and\nsay that Good in those days was anything that helped forward the\nevolution of matter, Evil anything that retarded it. The sunray falling\non the first jelly-fish was good, the storm that injured it was evil;\nand Good was good just because it enabled matter to build one storey\nhigher, and Evil was evil just because it tried to pull that storey\ndown.\n\n\u201cNow you have followed me from the very beginning of the world to the\nfirst beginnings of life. Have I impressed you logically with one\nsimple fact, that the journey of atoms from a mass of blazing gas to a\nworld where life was just beginning to bud was along one path, and one\npath only, the path of development?\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course it was.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd of the other fact are you equally assured?\u2014that the journey from\na whirling lava storm to a solid world of comparatively quiet seas and\nhills and plains and mountains was a glorious journey and a benign?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen we will start with matter on the new journey on which it set\nforth a million million years ago, using for its carriage the first\njelly-fish.\u201d\n\n\n[Sidenote: Life Appears]\n\n\u201cIt had laboured dimly to form the hills, the plains, and the seas, but\nthat part of it which had laboured to form the seas, now that they were\nformed, found something more to do, found itself developing in a new\nand strange direction\u2014that of life.\n\n\u201cThe energy of matter that had already constructed the solar system\nand had evolved the rocks and the sea found itself at last held up,\ncribbed, cabined and confined, with nothing to do.\n\n\u201cMen ask how did life appear in the world. For myself, I believe that\nlife was created by the explosion, so to speak, of this world energy,\nwhich, bound down by the limitations it had reached in the inorganic\nworld, burst the rigid bonds of its prison and found a new field for\nits labour in the construction of the higher organic world.\u2014And, in\nparenthesis, let me say that I believe when this same energy reaches\nrigid limitations in the organic world, it will burst those limits and\nfind its field in a world as yet unknown.\n\n\u201cHowever that may be, I propose to deal only with known facts, and the\nsurest fact on earth is this, that when the first vague sketches of\nlife appeared in the sea, they existed not by the virtue of chemistry,\nnor the virtue of the life that was in them, but by the virtue of the\nsteadily working benignity of the world energy that had constructed\ntheir home.\n\n[Sidenote: Conditions]\n\n\u201cTo me more wonderful than the creation of life is the creation of\nthose external conditions that made life possible. They collectively\nformed the mould in which life was cast.\n\n\u201cNow, in my sketch of the creation of the sun and planets I have just\nhinted what the brain can scarcely guess\u2014the scenes of fiery storm and\nhorror that preceded the welding of the world into a solid whole and\nthe birth of the conditions that made life possible. But these are less\nhalting to thought than the scenes of ferocity that filled the earth\nwhen life awoke, raging and tempestuous, and form began to devour form\nas though the world energy were eating its way through all forms to\nreach the form of man. And that is, in fact, the truth. Man has been\nreached by teeth just as the hills have been reached by fire. And not\nonly man. The dove that was once a pterodactyl, the dog that was once a\nwolf, the cat that was once a tiger, and a thousand other things once\nterrible, thoughtless and ferocious, all these have come along the very\npath that the hills and the seas came along in their making\u2014the path\nfrom negation and through ferocity to the benign.\n\n\u201cNow, can you not see why the fact that I was once a swimming\nreptile,\u2014just as you were\u2014devouring other reptiles, is a fact that\nI would not barter for all fancies? for by its light and by what\nastronomy and geology and the other sciences tell me I can see that the\nworld, taken as a whole, has a glorious and definite meaning.\n\n[Sidenote: The World Spirit]\n\n\u201cAnd the gist of the meaning is this: that side by side with the\nevolution of world forms, from the liquid lava wave to the solid rock,\nfrom the rock to the saurian, and from the saurian to man, has gone the\nevolution of world character and the development of a world spirit;\nand that the beauty of kindliness and benignity and good receives\nits deep, deep significance from the fact that all the labour of the\nworld since the first cooling of its fires has been directed along the\npath leading to these three gods. Nothing is more clear than that,\nand nothing can be more definitely proved. There is no use at all in\nfixing your eyes on the Jurassic period and saying, \u2018What monsters are\nhere!\u2019 or on a London slum and saying, \u2018How terrible life is! It can\nhave no meaning!\u2019 There is no use in fixing your eyes on a thousand\nyears of history and saying, \u2018I see no development. Men were as good\nthen as they are now.\u2019 You must take a billion years in your purview,\nto see the amazing and glorious thing as it is, and then what you will\nsee will be strangely like the growth and unfolding of a flower\u2014or the\nflowering of a bramble.\u201d\n\n\n[Sidenote: Hard Facts]\n\n\u201cI believe in dreams, but I have no faith except in hard facts. Those\nhard facts tell me that the sun, toward which everything grows to-day,\nis the same sun toward which the seas and the hills and the rocks grew\nbefore life exhibited itself first, and toward which life has grown\nsince its birth; and that sun is the sun of Amelioration, Benignity,\nGood, and Gentleness. Let us call it by the great good word that\nembraces all these things: Good. Well, then, the world, since the\nbeginning, has grown toward Good.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you deny the soul?\u201d\n\n\u201cI do not. I know nothing about it. I am quite content to live in a\nworld that is slowly and steadily developing in benignity, and to\nassist that development in my small way by trying to develop the\nbenignity in myself.\n\n\u201cI do not trouble about my soul one iota, but I am deeply concerned to\nkeep on that upward path along which earth is ascending.\u201d\n\n[Sidenote: The Imitation of Earth]\n\n\u201cAh, but how can one do that?\u201d\n\n\u201cBy copying what the earth has done; by freeing oneself as much as\npossible from ferocity, hatred, lust, and cruelty.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut you are neither ferocious nor cruel?\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps not actively, but just as I carry in my material brain the\neye of the extinct monster I once was, so do I carry in my mind the\nremnants of the passions of the reptile that once was me, the lust of\nthe reptile and the hatred. I do not tear other human beings with my\nteeth, but I have torn them by deeds and words. I have been cruel\u2014who\nhas not? lustful\u2014who has not? inspired by hatred\u2014who has not? I have\nregretted these things\u2014who has not?\u2014and forgotten them\u2014who has not?\u201d\n\n\u201cBut since I have taken a broad view of the world, since I have seen\nthat all these things are part and parcel of the malignity from which\nearth is freeing herself in her journey toward the Benign, I have come\nto hate those things as a man on the road to some brilliant festival\nmight hate the obstacles on his path.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut since you have no surety that you possess an individual soul, you\nhave no surety of ever reaching the festival.\u201d\n\n\u201cI cannot help that. My immediate aim is to keep up with the\nprocession. I leave the rest to chance.\u201d\n\n\n[Sidenote: The Universal Brain]\n\n\u201cAll that,\u201d said she, \u201cseems true. No one can deny that the world has\ndeveloped; no one can deny that the world has developed along the path\nthat leads to gentleness and good. The world is like a big head, isn\u2019t\nit? With all its brains on the outside.\u201d\n\n\u201cJust. It began to think like a jelly-fish; then it went on to the\nconsciousness of the first reptile; then it went on till it thought\nlike an animal, and finished by thinking like a man. The world, as you\nsay, is a big head, with its brains on the outside. But during the last\nhundred years an astounding development has taken place in the world\nof ethics. Philosophically speaking now, there is no such thing as an\nindividual brain; every brain in the western world is only a cell in\nthe universal brain. And the universal brain is developing on lines\nof its own, and in precisely the same way as the individual brain\ndeveloped.\n\n\u201cA hundred\u2014or shall we say eighty?\u2014years ago, the brain of the world\nconsisted of a number of isolated thought centres. A thought took six\nmonths to reach Australia from England, and two days to reach London\nfrom Manchester. Then came railways, the printing-press, and the\nelectric telegraph; and in a hundred years the universal brain has\ndeveloped from almost nothing into a highly complex organism.\n\n\u201cThis new power of man to think universally has not been recognized by\nphilosophers for what it is. It is practically the fusion of all brains\ninto one great brain and the creation of a new organism. Formerly there\nwere men in the world\u2014now there is Man. Roughly speaking, every brain\nin the western world is joining, now, with every other brain, and the\nuniversal brain thinks as a whole. You remember, I defined the Benign\nas that which assists the elevation of the simple to the complex, and\nif, as I fully believe, all evolution is the child of the Benign, ought\nwe not to look at this evolution of the universal brain with a critical\neye, to discover whether it is following in the same path as the world\nfollowed in its development from seas of fire to hills and plains; and\nas the individual brain followed in its evolution from the brain of\nthe saurian to the brain of the civilised man?\n\n\u201cWhat do we find?\n\n\u201cWe find that the development of the universal brain has followed\nin exactly the same path that all matter has followed from the very\nbeginning of things. The development has been extraordinarily rapid\nand the stride toward Good has been mathematically in keeping with the\ndevelopment. And it is absolutely truthful to say that since joining\nthis great confederation of thought the individual brain of man has\nadvanced on the road of ethical progress more in the last hundred years\nthan in all the years between the birth of Christ and the eighteenth\ncentury.\n\n\u201cTo see what has really happened, let us look far back over the\ncivilisations of the world. Egypt was great, and vanished; Athens\nbrought art and philosophy and culture to their highest pitch, and\ndied; Rome arose, and fell thundering in ruins into the night of the\nMiddle Ages. For all these civilisations were in reality segregated\ncommunities, and even in the communities themselves thought was not\nuniversal. And if you watch civilisation rising from the mist of the\nMiddle Ages, you will see that it rose not by the power of the word\nor of precept, but of the printing-press, the telegraph, and the\ntrain\u2014that is to say, by the universalisation of thought.\n\n\u201cA hundred years ago men were still half bogged in the Middle Ages.\nMen, compared to what men are now, were stupid, brutal, and merciless.\nBrains there were, and clever brains, but the universal brain was not\nborn. The individual brain has reached its limit of development as an\nindividual brain and was preparing for its great development as a part\nof the universal brain.\n\n\u201cWhat happened was this. From the printing-press, from the\nsteam-engine, and from the electric telegraph station all sorts of\nthreads began to spin, joining mind to mind. The minds of Birmingham\nbecame linked up with the minds of London, those of London with Paris.\nThe remotest country village to-day thinks with the greatest town.\nA giant of thought has suddenly arisen in the place of a thousand\npigmies; he has developed in the short space of eighty or a hundred\nyears, and his development has been on the line leading to Beneficence.\nAnd this giant is a new creation, as important as the creation of earth\nfrom fire, and of life from earth.\n\n\u201cThere have been, in fact, three creations. The creation of the\nmaterial earth; the creation of life, which reached its ultimate form\nin men; and the creation of Man from the scattered tribes of men.\nMan the giant (whose brain extends to China and Peru, and which will\neventually include China and Peru), and who feels in the London part\nof his brain a pain that exists in the Congo or Putumayo part of his\nbrain. Man, who, though a giant, is still in his infancy and who, when\nhe has reached his teens, will be a much more perfect being than he is\nnow.\n\n\u201cAh, but will he?\u201d\n\n\u201cLook back at the earth struggling up from chaos, and always and always\nadvancing toward the good; set back now, perhaps, for a million years\nby the ferocity of life fighting for its foothold in the age of the\nsaurians and the monsters, breaking past that fearful period till those\nterrible forms are utterly destroyed and there is moulded from them the\nkindlier animals, and, from them, animals more kindly still; and until\namong them are seen the first vague forms of men.\n\n\u201cThen look at these forms of men, how steadily they have advanced\nin perfection and toward the good. Steadily, I say, though at times\nthe advance has been set back for perhaps a thousand years\u2014till the\nhighest development of individual man was reached. That is to say, the\nhighest development that men could reach toward the good as individual\nentities.\n\n\u201cThen what happened? From purely material causes all these individual\nentities have become, or are becoming, fused into one great universal\nentity. The struggle of the world spirit to higher things found itself\nheld up by the individual brain, just as before the birth of organic\nlife it found itself held up by the limits of the inorganic world. It\nburst that boundary, and now it has burst the narrow limit imposed by\nthe individual mind and has found a new outlet for its energies in the\nmind universal.\n\n\u201cAnd that mind, though recently formed, is developing hugely in the\ndirection of the good. It may receive set-backs, but even in the\nhundred years since its birth, look at the beneficence displayed in its\nworking, and look at the effect of that beneficence on the lives of the\nindividual men it has taken into its great keeping.\n\n\u201cSince Man has arisen to take charge of the world, Justice and Mercy\nhave marked his dealings with men. All things have improved, and\nferocity and injustice have found themselves under the sway of a cruel\ntyrant who is turning them into the wilderness to keep company with\nthe tigers and the remnants of a world that was once all ferocity and\ncruelty.\n\n\u201cSince Man has arisen, he has taken war in his hand; he is weighing it\nand finding it wanting. He has taken superstition and is pulling its\nvile wings off. He is taking the unjust magistrate by his shoulders and\nshewing him the door; and he has put his heel on the tyrant king. He\nis freeing the individual man from the odious idea that the individual\nman is made of mud, to be burnt forever in hell if there is a flaw in\nhis making. And he has taught humanity at large that it is an infamous\nthing to hang a poor devil for the theft of a sheep.\n\n\u201cMan is only a hundred years old, and he has done all that since his\nbirth.\n\n\u201cThe world spirit has been only a hundred years on this new path of\ndevelopment. Can you doubt, then, seeing its progression during a\nbillion years, and how it has spread over ever new fields, that it will\ncontinue so to progress and so to spread into fields newer still?\u201d\n\n\u201cI can not.\u201d\n\n\n[Sidenote: The Craving for Truth]\n\n\u201cYou are a philosopher,\u201d she said.\n\n\u201cNo. I am a man who is sick of philosophy, at least transcendental\nphilosophy. I want matter under my feet all the time. Philosophers make\nme giddy, swinging like spiders on threads over abysms of nothing, and\nweaving words into webs to catch\u2014words which they mistake for thoughts.\n\n\u201cI am sick of religious theories, doctrines and dogmas, and gods. I\nwant Truth that a plain man can understand. I never could understand\nthe Christian creed as distinct from the teachings of Christ, and, what\nis more, I believe no one else can. Mahommedanism revolts me. Buddhism\nattracts me, yet I feel it to be as unfeeding to the truth-craving\npart of my nature as a soap-bubble to a starving man. Materialism that\ndenies a god revolts me.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut you say you are sick of gods.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, but I am more sick of materialists\u2014all the rest of the religions\nare pretty much the same; they don\u2019t satisfy me. Nothing has ever\nsatisfied me but the faith I have struck out for myself and the\nphilosophy that a little child can understand.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd that faith?\u201d\n\n[Sidenote: The Essential Goodness of the World]\n\n\u201cIs simply in the essential goodness of the world. That is what I have\nbeen driving at all the time since we began our conversation.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut doesn\u2019t Christianity believe in that?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo; Christianity believes in the essential badness of the world.\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course!\u2014I forgot. All men are sinners.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, that\u2019s it. Christianity believes that the world is bad to the\ncore, and yet it believes that a God Who is all goodness made man\nright at once and thoroughly bad; left him in this condition for an\nindefinite time, and then sent His son down to redeem him.\n\n\u201cNow, I have a great reverence for other people\u2019s religious beliefs,\nbut I have a greater reverence for honest thought, and I cannot\u2014though\nI worship Christ\u2014believe that the world followed that line of\ndevelopment.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou worship Christ, yet you deny him!\u201d\n\n\u201cNo\u2014I worship Christ because He was entirely lovable. He shines\nentirely alone in the world of the Western peoples, just as Buddha\nshines in the world of the Eastern. He was goodness itself made visible\nand audible. I worship all I can understand of Him. I cannot worship\nHim as a mystical figure sent suddenly to earth to be put to a cruel\ndeath in order that I might be saved, simply because my brain cannot\nunderstand that process and proceeding, and I cannot worship what I\ncannot understand. It is my defect, perhaps, but that defect is shared\nby numerous people.\n\n\u201cAnd I speak for those people when I say that faith with us is\nimpossible unless based on a sure foundation of reason; that we must\nunderstand before we can worship, that we do not deny God, but that\nwe do not _see_ Him, and that if He, the maker of the world, does\nexist as an individual entity, we have implicit faith that He is the\nfountain and origin of all goodness, and that goodness is His robe;\nthat we worship goodness and humbly believe that if He does exist\nbeyond the ken of our purblind eyes, He takes our worship of His robe\nas homage to Himself far more profound than homage exacted by fear or\nby superstition, and equal to the homage which great and saintly souls\nlay at His feet by virtue, perhaps, of their truer sight of Him.\n\n\u201cBut we deny, utterly, the essential badness of man, and our denial is\nbased on the sure fact that as man grows in stature, so, _pari passu_,\nhe grows in goodness. We believe that man, unaided by miracles, can\nincrease in goodness just by the virtue of the goodness that is in\nlife, a seed in the cave man, a flower in the civilised; we believe\nthat the printing-press, the telegraph, and the steam-engine have\nproduced better ethical result than all the teaching of the Apostles,\nsimply because those great fibres of communication have enabled men to\ndevelop by mutual touch and the good in each individual man to rush\nupward and find a vast field of new growth in the field of universal\ngood, a field that shines now, like a star galaxy above the hell of\ndarkness of a hundred years ago.\n\n[Sidenote: Left-offs and Fissures]\n\n\u201cWe believe that the minds of men, like the bodies of men, are filled\nwith old left-offs and fissures, and that just as some men are born\nwith the gills of fishes, through whose forms their beings once\npassed, so some men are born with the thoughts of the reptiles they\nonce were, and that the hells of the priests and the sensuous and\npainted heavens, the asceticism that kills joy, the persecutions and\nmutilations, and mummeries and terrors under which men have groaned\nfor two thousand years have arisen, not from Religion, but from old\ndefects in the mind of man equivalent to defects in his body, like,\nfor instance, the vermiform appendix. These defects have taken the\ngood food that Christ gave the mind of man and turned it, not into\nnourishment, but into causes of inflammation. Saurian hatred is bound\nup with Religion; superstitions from the time of the cave men, a spirit\nof simian persecution from the times of the tree men, and lust; all\nthese vile left-overs clinging to the mind of the individual man, as\nthe Pineal eye and vermiform appendix cling to his body, have made\nReligion an impossible food for the advancement of ethics beyond a\ncertain point.\n\n\u201cNow mark this. The universal mind knows not lust; hates persecution;\nabhors cruelty, and is preparing to free itself from superstition.\n\n\u201cHow do I prove this? Take the press of the civilised world, which is\nan expression of the universal mind. Where is the place of lust there?\nWhere is the place of Cruelty? Where is the place of Hate? Where is the\nplace of Tyranny? I tell you this, that the mind universal is as far\nabove the mind individual as the mind of a man is above the mind of a\nchimpanzee\u2014in ethics.\n\n\u201cAn ordinary man dare not advance into the pure world of the mind\nuniversal one half of the thoughts, nay, one-fourth of the thoughts\nthat fill his individual mind. He dare not preach the hatred that is\nin him or shew the lust that is in him, or the spirit of persecution,\nor even the spirit of intolerance; and the restraint upon him is\nnot so much the fear of the police, or the fear of public censure,\nas a certain recognition in his own soul of ethical values and an\ninstinctive horror of putting forth into pure light his deformities,\u2014a\nrecognition, in short, of the essential goodness of the world. Of\ncourse there are extraordinary men not so affected\u2014so are there\nmurderers and thieves.\n\n[Sidenote: The New Religion]\n\n\u201cNow, I wish to be perfectly explicit about Religion, or, rather,\nabout the new Religion which the world has received from Man. The new\nReligion which has advanced the world more in a hundred years than all\nthe priest-ridden religions advanced it since the dawn of Time.\n\n\u201cIts miraculous qualities arise from one fundamental fact. It knows not\nIndividualism.\n\n\u201cIt is a simple recognition of fundamental Rights. It is not the\nindividual laying down the law for other individuals (as in the\nchurches); it is the universe of Man recognising the laws that brought\nit into being, and imposing those laws on the individual. It does not\nteach; it accepts.\n\n\u201cThe great teachers of the world laid down precepts, they formulated\nrules of conduct, and their scholars took precepts and formul\u00e6 and\nboiled men alive with them for coining, and hanged men with them for\nstealing, and burned women with them for witchcraft, and persecuted\nmen with them for making the sign of the cross\u2014or not making it, and\ntwisted and bedevilled those precepts and formul\u00e6 into every shape that\nan individual mind could imagine.\n\n\u201cThe new Religion does not discard these precepts.\n\n\u201cIts decalogue, in fact, is longer and more highly developed in parts\nthan the old, but it does not preach its laws, it breathes them and\nlives by them.\n\n\u201cMore than that: it lives by the spirit of good, not by the letter.\n\n\u201cThe universal mind, for instance, denounces Theft, yet it recognizes\nthat theft is a multifaced thing, some faces being almost innocent,\nothers hideously cruel. A hundred years ago, a thief had only one face,\none head, and one neck, by which he was hanged, if the theft amounted\nto more than\u2014six-and-eightpence, was it?\n\n\u201c\u2014So, to come to the end of the matter, we have evolved a secular\nmorality that knows no more of creeds, or threats of future\npunishments, or promises of future bliss than I know of Hindustanee;\nwhich lives above all men, yet touches all men; which abhors lust and\ncruelty and oppression; which teaches the kindness of Christ to men and\nof Buddha to animals, and before which Atheists and Christians, Jews\nand Gentiles all bow. A morality which, by the influence of the press,\nthe telegraph, and the steam-engine, those three Apostles, will spread\nto the uttermost depth of China and to the last temple of that hideous\nblack blot, India; and which, in the course of ages, will change the\nindividual brain of man and raise it ethically far above its present\nadvanced position. No; development has not ceased. Development has only\nbegun. Give the world a thousand years more.\u201d\n\n\u201cA thousand years!\u201d\n\n\u201cI do not want to be unduly optimistical. I foresee set-backs even\nin the world of universal thought. Give it a thousand years under\nthis new influence, and I foresee Man, individual man, on the heights\nimmeasurably above us.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd then?\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd then\u2014who knows? The world spirit that has reached so many limits,\nand broken through them to higher things, will reach the limit of\nperfection in man. If there is a field of perfection beyond, it will\nbreak those limits and flow on.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd if there is no field beyond?\u201d\n\n\u201cThen this whole business would be as senseless as a farce by M.\nCrebillon the younger\u2014whom I hope you have never read.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nPART II\n\nTHE HOME AS THE HIGHEST POINT YET REACHED IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE\nWORLD\n\n\n[Sidenote: The Advance on Material Lines]\n\n\u201cI cannot deny the truth of what you have told me,\u201d she said. \u201cI can\nsee clearly the different steps up which the world has come, but\ndoes it not seem that this new universal mind which is the latest\ngreat stage in the advance of the world has, according to you, been\nproduced by purely material causes? It is as much as to say that the\nprinting-press, the telegraph, and the steam-engine have created\nGood\u2014that they, surely, never could do?\u201d\n\n\u201cThey have not; they have only circulated thought; they have only\ncreated the platform for thought to spread on. They have only created\nconditions favourable to collective thinking. Collective thought,\ninfinitely more powerful and complex than individual thought, has\nworked purely on the material given to it by individual brains. It\nhad no other origin or food. Had that material been essentially evil,\nor if the evil in it had been excessive in comparison with the good,\nthe printing-press, the telegraph, and the steam-engine would have\nincreased the evil in the world.\n\n\u201cBut you have indicated one point I would like to dwell on. The\nabsolute essentiality of material objects and conditions now in the\nadvance of the \u2018spiritual\u2019 and intellectual world, and the absolute\nnecessity of discarding dreams and fallacies. In the last great\nadvance, Hoe\u2019s machine has done what all the doctrines could never\nhave done, yet Hoe\u2019s object was not to construct a machine for the\nimprovement of ethics. He was, in his labours, a materialist, pure\nand simple; his object was the improvement of a machine for the rapid\nproduction of printed stuff. He did not work at all in the matter with\nan eye to great and abstract improvements. He just did his little job\nwell and with all his energy.\n\n\u201cStephenson, Watt, Wheatstone,\u2014and ten thousand of others, including\nthe whole army of Science, Invention, and Labour\u2014whose combined work\nhas produced the Universal Mind, who have, in fact, created Man, each\none of these had only one object: the extension of material knowledge\nand the improvement of certain material objects and conditions. They\nwere not idealists, they were not teachers; they laboured to produce\nno doctrines or airy formul\u00e6. They were honest workmen in the cause of\nmaterial progress, each with his eye fixed on his job.\n\n\u201cContrast with these the preachers and teachers\u2014all excellent, mind\nyou, and making, in their way, for good, yet all, by their combined\nefforts, useless for the great uplift that was coming and that could\nonly come through the work of Scientific men in the field of Science,\nand Mechanicians in the field of material improvement.\n\n\u201cAnd this fact is a perfect lamp for all who would join in the work of\nworld development. _He who would assist in the development of the world\nmust work not in the field of dreams and theories, but in the field of\nmatter._ That is the doctrine of the spirit of the world whose great\nhands laboured to make the hills and seas, and flung the moon to the\nskies for a lamp and a tide-maker, who moulded the chimpanzees into\nmen, and men into civilised men. Dreams and theories and doctrines,\npreachers, transcendental philosophers and teachers, and even\npriests\u2014we want all of them, but they are by-products. The work of the\nworld remains the essential thing, and the pioneers of the world are\nthe workers, not the dreamers.\n\n\u201cFor, though the universal brain has subordinated the individual,\nas the whole organism subordinates the cell, the universal brain\nlives, alone, by the individual, and can only grow through material\nmeans. And though the universal brain is better, infinitely, than the\nindividual, it can only exercise its power for good on the individual\nthrough material means.\n\n\u201cThat an individual brain may participate in the life and light of\nthe brain universal and feed on and increase with that life, and feed\nand increase that life, it must first of all receive that light and\nlife; and, secondly, it must be in a condition to receive it, and\nthis can only be done by material means. And I will show you what I\nmean by an instance. The man who is crushed beneath ruinous labour,\nthe man whose poverty condemns him not to think, the man who shivers\nwithout a fire, who goes with an empty stomach\u2014all of that vast crowd\nof what we call the Poor\u2014each one of these is cut off, more or less,\nfrom the mind universal and can never receive its light except through\nmaterial means. Preaching and teaching, dreams and theories are useless\nto these. To participate in universal thought\u2014which is universal\ngood\u2014they must first have the time to think in, they must be defended\nfrom the wolves that prey on thought, Cold and Hunger; they must be\npreached to practically by the two great Apostles, Wheat-flour and\nFirewood; they must be treated as Hoe treated the dull steel that made\nhis press\u2014lifted materially.\n\n\u201cHaving lifted them thus with food and firewood, let Education have its\nsay, and Eugenics, up to a certain point. But education is as useless\nto a work-broken or starving man as algebra to an ass. Since Man has\nawakened to life, he has begun to recognize this. The old religions of\nmen looked on the poor as a necessary evil. \u201cThe poor are always with\nus.\u201d But man, though still only a hundred years old, perceives that the\nPoor are his disease, that the criminals are his disease, and that the\nidle are his disease.\n\n\u201cThe universal mind rejects Poverty just as it has rejected Hate, and\nLust, and Intolerance; and its teaching in this respect is, \u2018The poor\nshall not be always with us.\u2019 That is one of the greatest triumphs of\nthe great good giant born of the fusion of intelligences; even though,\nas yet, the means toward this great end have not been discovered.\u201d\n\n[Sidenote: Socialism]\n\n\u201cWhat about Socialism?\u201d\n\n\u201cSocialism, Anarchism, and Syndicalism are as yet the most obtrusive\nresults of this universal-mind disturbance, due to recognition of the\nevils that affect the body of Man. The giant, on opening his eyes, is\nfurious at his rags and tatters, and the sores which they disclose.\nMan, newly awakened, is disgusted at his general condition\u2014and that\ndisgust is at the bottom of all the \u2018revolutionary\u2019 unrest which we see\nto-day in the western world.\n\n\u201cI spoke to you of set-backs. Should that unrest develop into a storm,\nthe progress of the world would receive one of the set-backs it is well\naccustomed to.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat do you mean by a storm?\u201d\n\n\u201cI mean a revolution. An attempt by sudden and violent means to tear\nup the rags and heal the ulcers of Man. For instance, were Socialism in\nits extreme form to become the directing power of Man to-morrow, were\nevery man in the world to be equalized materially, the world would be\nput back on its path of progress immeasurably.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n\n\u201cBecause the Socialists\u2019 plan is constructed on a fallacy, and were\nit to be followed by Humanity, it would mean utter disruption of all\nsocial communities.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat is the fallacy?\u201d\n\n\n[Sidenote: The Fallacy]\n\n\u201cThe fallacy is this: The idea that the individual is the essential\ncell of the community, and that the energy and life of any community\nspring from the individual. This is not so. The essential cell of the\ncommunity is the Family, or, in other words, the Home, and all the\nenergy and life of the community spring from the Home.\n\n\u201cThe reason of this is simple. The Home is bisexual, the individual\nunisexual.\n\n\u201cAll the vitality of a community arises from the interplay of the two\nsexes one upon the other, and this interplay, to be productive of\ncommunal life and good, must take place in the Home. Individual men and\nindividual women utterly divorced from a home of any sort lose force\nand deteriorate, and become warped and dwarfed.\n\n\u201cSexual force, that is to say, the force that draws man to woman, that\nproduces Love and Children, and love of children, and the love of\nchildren for their parents and for each other\u2014sexual force, the fiery\ngrandfather of affection and filial love, can only be developed as a\nforce for communal good and individual good in the Home.\n\n[Sidenote: The Home Is Everything]\n\n\u201cThe Home is _everything_.\n\n\u201cIt is the foundation of the community, it is the essential cell of the\nworld. You cannot injure the community without injuring the home, and\nyou cannot injure the home without injuring the community. You cannot\nimprove the condition of the community radically by pooling all the\nmoney and distributing it among the homes, or by pooling all the means\nof production and wealth creation and distributing work tickets to the\nHome-makers. Such a distribution of the means of living would leave\nutterly untouched the diseases that prey on the homes of the nation and\nwould touch with a killing hand the _vitality_ of the Home.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat do you mean by that?\u201d\n\n[Sidenote: Its Construction]\n\n\u201cSimply this. Every home is a tiny nation built exactly on the plan of\nthe big nation, of which it forms a unit and which, in fact, is its\ncounterpart in large.\n\n\u201cThe home has its head, just as the nation has its head. Like the\nnation, it is bisexual; it has its exchequer, its fighting force, its\nethical laws, its ambitions, its alliances, and its frontiers. It\ntrades with other homes and combinations of homes just as the nation\ntrades with other nations. It has its imports and its exports. It\nhas its foreign loans and national credit. It has its internal and\nexternal politics. It has all these, whether it be a man and wife\nliving in rooms or a family of twenty, and it is the facsimile of the\nnation simply because the nation is not a differentiation of it but an\naggregation of it. What is done to the nation is done to the home.\n\n[Sidenote: Its Power]\n\n\u201cA home, or a family, if you like the term better, is a ganglion of\nforces. Love and Pride, Economy (or the saving instinct) and Ambition,\nnot to speak of Affection, are the best of these forces, just as the\nbest forces in the nation are Love, Pride, Ambition, not to speak of\nPatriotism.\n\n\u201cInseparably connected with these fine forces are other most\npowerful forces: Greed, Ostentation, Chauvinism (for a family can be\nChauvinistic as well as a nation), Love of Domination, etc.\n\n[Sidenote: Its Death Blow]\n\n\u201cNow, the forcible toeing the line by _each family_ to a fixed income\nand ambition would hit the life of the home a death blow.\n\n\u201cI will give you one instance. Ambition would be tom up by the roots.\nGod only knows all the fine things that are clinging to the roots of\nAmbition. Man knows a few of them. Fathers of families deny themselves\nand work hard that they may see their sons and daughters advance in\nthe world; knowing, as they do, that material advance is bound up with\ngood conduct, they look to their own conduct and the teaching of their\nchildren. Mothers do the same.\n\n\u201cLook at life as you know it, and tell me frankly, is not this true?\nThat the destruction of Ambition in the family would tend largely to\ndestroy the energy and life of the family and its power as a centre of\nforce.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is true.\u201d\n\n\u201cYet your Advanced Socialist, with his eyes fixed on what he calls \u2018the\nState,\u2019 does not reckon on this, and his theory, were it turned to\npractice, would destroy Ambition.\n\n\u201cThen, again, Pride, not pride in high deeds, but pure, low-down,\nmaterial pride\u2014how nasty it is, but what a tremendous force it is!\nFrom the cock that crows to the State that prospers, it is ubiquitous\nas sodium. It is purely human and animal, yet it is one of the major\nforces that hold the family together and make it living.\n\n\u201cYet, if Ambition goes, material Pride must go\u2014absolutely. Then take\nthe Hoarding Instinct. This would be absolutely destroyed by your\nAdvanced Socialist, yet without the Hoarding Instinct, which, in a\nmore or less attenuated form, is the Saving Instinct, family morality\nwould cut a poor show. Self-denial would vanish and that demi-virtue,\nCarefulness.\n\n\u201cYou will notice that I am keeping entirely to material instincts and\nthings, and I will rise to the height of saying that the teaching of\nthe destruction of the Hoarding Instinct by Socialists is a blasphemous\nteaching, and the blasphemy is against the Holy Spirit of Good. I\nhave left the individual for the family, but the destruction of this\ninstinct would wreck the individual as well as the family.\n\n\u201cAmbition, Pride, the Hoarding Instinct, are not passions; they are\nLaws that govern the growth of life, and they are as immutable as the\nlaws of gravity.\n\n\u201cWithout going further, I shall content myself with the destruction of\nAmbition, Pride, and the Hoarding Instinct, and leave the family robbed\nof them by the Advanced Socialist\u2014and withered in its growth. I shall\ncome back to the point I started from\u2014the Home. Your Socialist talks of\nthe State.\n\n\u201cI say again\u2014There is absolutely no such thing. There is only a\ncollection of homes.\n\n\u201cBehind the word State he hides his absolute ignorance of fundamentals.\nHe fancies, as I said before, that the nation is an aggregation of\nindividuals, and on that assumption he concludes that each individual\nshould be tuned to the pitch of the mass, so that all should sing in\nharmony.\n\n\u201cBut the nation in reality is not an aggregation of individuals at\nall; it is an agglutination of Families or Homes.\n\n\u201cThe word State, as implying a homogeneous and isolated power, is\nphilosophically meaningless. The State is not a separate entity\nfrom the Home. It is only, in the administrative sense, a name for\nthe common executive which the homes of the nation have created to\nconduct their external affairs individually as between themselves, and\ncollectively as between other common governments or executives.\n\n\u201cWhen the Advanced Socialist talks of the welfare of the State he is\ntalking of the welfare of the majority of individuals. When he talks\nof the State seizing the common wealth, he means that the majority\nof individuals will seize it and distribute it among themselves and\nthe minority. He has absolutely forgotten those separate hives of sex\nlife, industry, ambition, antagonism to other hives, and energy, which\nare the real units of the nation, the Families, which are by their\nconstituent vices and virtues the breeding-grounds of all social energy\nand virtues.\n\n\u201cAnd he would advance the world on its progress by seizing with the\nbrute force of individuals dominion over the homes of the nation. He\nwould allow an executive created by force to dictate to each home its\nforeign and domestic policy; he would limit its imports and exports,\ndestroy its ambitions, plunder its hoard, and make slaves of its\nindividuals.\n\n\u201cThat is Socialism pure and simple. Arsenic could not be simpler or\npurer as a poison to the common good and the vitality of any social\ncommunity.\u201d\n\n\n[Sidenote: Building, Not Breaking]\n\n\u201cAnd you?\u201d\n\n\u201cI would push the world on, as I said before, by building from below\nand by purely material means. Instead of hitting the family a blow in\nits vital part, I would foster its wellbeing. I would give it drains\nand ventilation; I would, from the common fund that all the families\nhave pooled in the taxes, make better the houses; I would even call\nupon the more prosperous families to help the poorer, but my one aim\nand object would be the protection of the family in all that makes for\nits vitality.\n\n\u201cI would foster family ambition and the saving and hoarding instinct,\nand cooking and household management and everything that would keep\nheads of families by the hearth instead of talking Syndicalism in\npot-houses and scandal in clubs. I can not say all I would do, but\nbroadly I would do everything possible for material betterment and\neverything possible for the betterment of Family Life.\n\n\u201cAnd that is what will happen, Socialism or no Socialism. We began by\ntalking of the world as a globe of fire; we went on to hills and seas,\nsaurians, animals, men, civilised men, Man with a universal mind.\n\n\u201cWe have reached the world as it is\u2014a collection of families or\nmolecules, constituting Man with a universal mind.\n\n[Sidenote: The Danger of Dreams]\n\n\u201cThat mind, new-born, is filled with dreams and illusions: Anarchism,\nSocialism, Syndicalism, and so forth.\n\n\u201cLet Man remember this: He was built out of facts, not theories;\nmatter, not fancies; families, not individuals; and that to grow in the\nfashion that these new theorists would have him grow, he would have to\ndestroy the molecules that constitute him and resolve himself into his\noriginal atoms.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat is a molecule?\u201d\n\n\u201cA molecule is a family of atoms.\u201d\n\n\n[Sidenote: The Human Equation]\n\n\u201cYou are, then, opposed to any fixed plan for the betterment of the\nworld. You would simply work by bettering material conditions?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am not opposed to any fixed plan. I only say this, that all the\nfixed plans I have seen are unworkable, and from one cause.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat is that?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe framers of them have forgotten that _any plan for betterment of\nthe world is absolutely unworkable that leaves out the Human Equation_.\n\n\u201cThat is not a saying of mine. It is a Law. And, what is more, it is\npart of a universal law. You cannot improve the condition of vegetation\nunless you allow for the weakness as well as the virtues and strength\nof vegetable life, nor can you improve the condition of mankind unless\nyou allow for its weaknesses and sins and follies as well as for its\nvirtues and its strength.\n\n\u201cWhat I have said to you about Socialism is not an _ex-parte_ statement\nby a man opposed to Socialism. I am opposed to nothing but error, and\nwhen I see Laws as fixed and as immutable as Bode\u2019s Law or the law of\ngravity disregarded by men who are proposing to reform the world, and\nwhen I point out these fatal flaws in their reasoning, that does not\nmean that I am opposed to all plans for reforming the world, but it\ndoes mean that I would test by everyday logic any plan for everyday use.\n\n\u201cWill it work? Will it perform the work for which it was invented as a\nkinetic engine?\n\n\u201cThose are the two questions on which the capitalist satisfies himself\nfirst before he invests his money in any invention in mechanics.\n\n\u201cThen he asks, will it wear without undue destruction of parts?\n\n\u201cThen he satisfies himself as to its economics. Any plan of world\nreform which leaves out the Human Equation is equivalent to an\nengineering plan which leaves out of consideration details like the Law\nof the Dead Centre or the Law of Expansion and contraction of metals.\n\n\u201cIf you will examine any great engineering plan, whether it be the plan\nfor a bridge or a marine engine, you will find that it is a simple\nbouquet of natural laws, all brought together by the engineer for a\ndefinite purpose, and every law is stamped with the + or - stamp of\nnature. They are the laws of weakness and the laws of strength, and\nthese wonderful laws that preside over matter so interpenetrate one\nanother that you cannot divorce them one from the other. They may be\nsaid to form alloys. Thus the law that rules over the breaking strain\nis at once the law of strength and weakness. The giant that lives in\nwater springs into steam under the conditions of the + law that gives\nhim strength, but never for a moment does he escape from the - law of\ncondensation which is ever ready to reduce him to water again in a\ntwinkling. And so on.\n\n\u201cNow, the task of the engineer is _not_ to eliminate the - laws from\nnature, but to account for them, and, if possible, to make them, by a\ntrick of genius, work for him. The engineer does not attempt to destroy\nInertia, the weakness that lives in the dead centre of things; he\ncounteracts the idleness of inertia by means of the fly-wheel.\n\n\u201cThe weakness of Steam under the law of condensation becomes in\nthe hands of the engineer the strength of the steam-engine. The\nbursting power of steam, which is ever at war with the weakness of\nthe boiler metal, he counteracts by the safety-valve. He must allow\nfor everything, or his machine either will not work or bursts into a\nthousand fragments.\n\n\u201cAnd do you imagine for a moment that human passions and energy,\nstrength and weakness, are less potent than the forces and weaknesses\nwhich the engineer has to account for in his plan? Do you fancy that\nInertia is confined to metals, and friction to working parts of\nmachinery? Do you fancy that the social engineer, dealing with powerful\nand explosive forces, can plot out a social machine without taking into\nconsideration the weaknesses which are complementary to the forces with\nwhich he has to deal?\n\n\u201cYet, in all the plans I have examined, from Socialism to Syndicalism,\nnot one engineer has submitted to me a plan in which human passions and\nenergy, strength and weakness, are allowed for.\n\n\u201cThat is a fact.\n\n\u201cI shall give you just one little instance, taken from Syndicalism.\n\n\u201cWe shall destroy all businesses, says the Syndicalist, by vexatious\nstrikes. The capitalist, having vanished (struck out), the hands will\nwork the business.\n\n[Sidenote: Syndicalism]\n\n\u201cJust so. But he forgets that all businesses, like all men, die in\ntime. Suppose all businesses were converted into Syndicalist businesses\nworked by all the hands, in a world of Syndicalist businesses\u2014they\nwould not escape from the law of decay and death which hangs over\neverything material. Businesses would die, and new businesses\nwould have to be born under Syndicalism, just as in our world. The\ncompetition would be just as keen and the factors of death just as\npotent. But the factors of life would not be as potent. How would a new\nbusiness be born to live under Syndicalism?\n\n\u201cLet us suppose that six men, by energy, hard work, a little money,\nand self-denial (all necessary), found a small business. It grows and\nprospers, and in a year\u2019s time they find that they must introduce new\nlabour to cope with the work. But the new hands are all Syndicalists.\nThey don\u2019t want wages, they must have their share in the business. They\nare taken on, six of them.\n\n\u201cWe now have twelve men working a growing and prospering concern.\nUnless they are absolute fools, they must recognize that expansion to\nthem means simply more danger and worry, for expansion is impossible\nwithout more labour, and all the new labour introduced only sops up the\nprofits like a sponge, and even were the profits to increase out of\nproportion to the total labour employed, that increase of individual\nprofit would in the majority of businesses be small\u2014in numerous\nbusinesses it would be non-existent. Why should they expand and risk\nwhat they have got\u2014for all expansion in business means risk\u2014simply to\nbenefit potential labourers?\n\n\u201cThe law of Inertia comes at once into play, without any flywheel to\ncounterbalance it. The business ceases to grow, and, a hundred to one,\ndies.\n\n\u201cThat is only one of the flaws in the Syndicalist\u2019s design. His machine\nhas not been constructed with a view to this and other human weakness.\nIn a world of automata it might work; in a world of flesh and blood it\nwouldn\u2019t. In short, Syndicalism could destroy all the businesses of the\nworld quite easily, but it could not build them again.\n\n[Sidenote: The Theories]\n\n\u201cSyndicalism, Socialism, Anarchism cannot stand for a moment under the\neye of analysis without tumbling to pieces as practical inventions.\n\n\u201cThey seem daring and ingenious, but they are dishonouring to virile\nthought.\n\n\u201cLet us change for a moment and ask ourselves, not what we would say\nto the engineer who disregarded natural laws, but what would we say of\na playwright who proposed to present life to us in a play constructed\nwithout a proper view to human passions, weaknesses, and fallibility,\nas well as to human virtue, altruism, etc.?\n\n\u201cWe would say at once: It is not possible. He may write such a play,\nbut it would have this fault: it would represent no society that ever\nlived in the world, and in a thousand years hence it would be as\nvalueless as it is to-day.\n\n\u201cAnd that is, in fact, what you might say of all the Theorists in\nHumanity I know. They have written plays for men to act in that are\nquite valueless to-day, would have been quite valueless a thousand\nyears ago, and will be quite valueless a thousand years hence.\n\n\u201cThey have left out Human Nature.\u201d\n\n\n\n[Sidenote: The Laws of Nature]\n\n\n\u201cThe Statesman who would leave the world better than he found it must\ntake Human Nature as it is, and, instead of attempting to make it grow\nin direct violation of the laws that rule it, he must assist it to grow\nin accordance with those laws.\n\n\u201cThose laws are in the main good.\n\n\u201cAs I have pointed out to you, they are the laws that cultivated\ncrocodiles so that at last they became men, that cultivated a hell of\nfire until it became a habitable world, and that will cultivate men\nuntil they become better than present-day men.\n\n\u201cThe Reformer must study those laws. He must look at the world\ngenerously and widely, and from the very beginning of things. He must\nhave communion with the great earth spirit which has brought all of us\nto where we are, and, humbling himself to the dust, study the working\nof that spirit through the ages.\n\n\u201cHe will, unless he is blind, inevitably see one truth: that this great\nspirit has never meddled with the growth of life and thought, but has\nlaboured Titanically to prepare the conditions favourable to that\ngrowth.\n\n\u201cIt led life by the fin and claw till life developed hands and a mind\nwherewith to develop its own conditions favourable to growth. And all\nthe improvements of the world since then have followed that law, the\nLaw of Improvement of Conditions, not any vague Law for the Improvement\nof Life.\n\n\u201cWhen Life left the trees and found or dug caves to live in, it left\nbehind it, as a record of its first shelter and home and improved\ncondition, the first vague scratchings of Art. You may be sure that\ncould it have found a record we would discover also in those caves some\nsign of the first glimmer of Love.\n\n\u201cThe cave was the first home of the germ of civilisation, and the man\nwho built the first hut laid the foundations of all the palaces and\ncathedrals of earth.\n\n\u201cThe man who improved the condition of the first square yard of land\nlaid the foundation of all worldly prosperity, and the man who made the\nfirst hinge of hide for the first door destroyed a barricade and laid\ndown the first condition for hospitality.\n\n\u201c_Whenever man has fallen away from the teaching of this law, he has\nalways fallen._\n\n[Sidenote: Athens, Egypt, Rome]\n\n\u201cAthens rose to the heights of the Acropolis, but she failed in the\nfurtherance of those conditions necessary for the development of\nthe world\u2014witness her streets. Rome rose to splendour and fell in\nruins simply because of her failure in the development of material\nconditions to feed and foster Progress\u2014witness her roads\u2014made for\narmies to march on. Egypt destroyed herself with dreams of mysticism\nand power useless to the development of life\u2014witness the Pyramids and\nthe Sphinx.\n\n\n[Sidenote: The Work of the Barbarians]\n\n\u201cAll these so-called civilizations failed because they were inhuman in\nthe path of progress.\n\n\u201cThey were not developments, but essays in development. Their\ncivilizations had no relation to the broad Human Family, and gave no\nplatform for that family to develop on. Athens, Rome, Egypt carried\nArts, Power, Mysticism to the heights, while down on the plains the\ntillers of the soil, the serfs, and the barbarians carried on Human\nNature.\n\n\u201cAthens, Rome, and Egypt, like some modern philosophers, took no\naccount of human weaknesses. Examine their laws and codes, their\npolicy, and their view-points, and you will at once see that their\nplatform was so narrow that only a class could stand on it, and that\ntheir atmosphere was stifling to Man. Human nature could not develop in\nit. There was no liberty for growth. Human nature had reached a certain\npoint; it made blind attempts to rise higher. It rose to heights of\nEgyptian power and mysticism, and fell; to heights of Athenian art and\nphilosophy, and fell; to heights of Roman splendour, and fell. It was\nlike an animal trying to leave a sea, and falling back at each attempt\nby reason of the crumbling of the shore under its weight.\n\n\u201cIt had not found the resting-place of solid rock. The hard rock of\nLiberty and material good and material Reason and material development.\n\n[Sidenote: Bacon]\n\n\u201cAt last it found the rock by the man\u2019s hand that could only find\nand cling to that rock. That hand was Bacon\u2019s. It was so essentially\nmaterial and human that it could distinguish rock from friable sand,\nand so powerful that, having found a hold, it never let go.\n\n\u201cBacon was the first modern man to seize the earth spirit\u2019s law that\ndevelopment is only possible when conditions for development have been\nalready prepared.\n\n\u201cHis \u2018Fruit\u2019 was another word for conditions.\n\n\u201cHis genius recognized intuitively that the only way to develop Man is\nto let Man develop, and the only way to let him develop is to give him\nliberty, mentally and physically, and a safe and sheltered platform.\n\n\u201cBetter his material conditions.\u201d\n\n       *       *       *       *\n\n\u201cYou asked me, was I opposed to any \u2018plan\u2019 for the Development of\nHumanity, and I replied, and reply, in effect, that I am not, always\nproviding that it allowed for human development along human lines.\n\n\u201cThat is the sum total of the matter, and the first essential of Man in\nhis relation to the world.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nPART III\n\nWOMAN IN RELATION TO MAN\n\n\n[Sidenote: No Such Thing as Woman]\n\n\u201cAnd what about woman\u2019s relationship to the world?\u201d\n\n\u201cThere is no such thing as woman.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! Oh!\u201d\n\n\u201cThere are only women. To talk of Woman as a being apart from man is\nabsurd. When I used the word Man in talking of the universal mind, I\nincluded women. The word Man as used to represent men is a falsity in\nthat it excludes women. The word Woman is absurd, however you take it.\n\n\u201cMen and women are cut out of the same piece of stuff\u2014Human Nature. The\nwoman is cut a bit smaller, and her outline is a bit different, that is\nall.\n\n\u201cMentally it is just the same as physically. She is cut, as a rule, a\nbit smaller, and the outline of her mind is a bit different. But it is\nonly a difference in size and outline. The stuff is the same. And the\noutline of the one is complementary to the outline of the other; where\nthe woman\u2019s outline sinks in the man\u2019s sticks out, and _vice versa_.\nMentally and physically it is the same; they are, in fact, the two\nparts of that great jig-saw puzzle, Humanity.\n\n\u201cThe Male and Female are not a necessity of Life. They are only a\nnecessity of higher vegetable and animal life. A large number of lower\norganisms propagate unsexually\u2014the monera, the am[oe]b\u00e6, foraminifera,\nradiolara, etc. These increase either by splitting in two or putting\nout buds. The Male and Female are not, then, a radical necessity of\nlife, but they are a radical necessity in development and in progress\nfrom a lower to a higher form of life. The Male and Female are not, as\nI will try to point out, of the essence of life, but of the essence of\nthe forms of life.\n\n\u201cWe must imagine that the first germ of life was sexless, a cellular\nstructure that multiplied by splitting in two. We must imagine that\nbecause the rigid law of advance from the simple to the complex imposes\non us the assumption that the first form of life must have been the\nsimplest, and the simplest is the organism that develops by fission.\n\n\u201cThere was a tremendous moment, then, when all earthly life lived and\nmoved without sign of sex; cellular forms all alike, all developing\nalike, and by the same method.\n\n\u201cHad all these forms continued unchanged, the world would now be just\nas then. But a change came, due, we must suppose (from analogy), not to\na change in the radical nature of these organisms, but to a change in\nthe external conditions affecting some of them. The food environment,\nor the temperature environment, or the electrical environment\nsurrounding some of these organisms, or some other unknown but always\nexternal influence, wrought a change in some of these lowly forms of\nlife. The mother of Form\u2014Differentiation\u2014was the result.\n\n\u201cThe organisms affected by Differentiation had to reproduce themselves\nby producing other organisms in a slightly different form, either lower\nthan themselves, or on the same plane as themselves, or higher than\nthemselves.\n\n\u201cHad they taken the first course, Differentiation would have meant\ndestruction and death to all the organisms it touched. The second\ncourse was absolutely impossible. A simple organism cannot alter itself\nwithout ascending or descending; if it becomes the least degree more\ncomplex, it ascends; if it becomes the least degree less complex,\nit descends. It cannot alter its nature or its form in a horizontal\ndirection. It is absolutely condemned to the vertical, and must go up\nor down.\n\n\u201cThese basic simple organisms, then, that formed the foundation for all\nlife, must have responded to their change in environment by ascending,\nthat is, by becoming more complex. They must have done this, or else\nhave descended to death. They were making for the great goal, Sex.\n\n\u201cHow they reached that goal may be a story yet to be read by Science,\nbut reach it they did on the day that two of these simple-minded\norganisms reproduced themselves, not by individual fission, but by\nmutual union.\n\n\u201cIt was not a radical change in the life of the organisms; it was only\na radical change in the method by which that life was reproduced.\n\n\u201cIt was a change in business methods. It was co-operation, pure and\nsimple, between two organisms in the production of other organisms.\nBefore that day, the whole business had to be done by one individual;\nafter that day it was done by partners, one called Male, the other\nFemale.\n\n[Sidenote: Sex a Partnership]\n\n\u201cNow, what is the essence of partnership? Mutual assistance. In a\nlabour partnership where the business is in the least complex, two men\nwould be of very little assistance to each other who insisted always\non doing the same job, or the same part of a job. There must always be\na top sawyer and a bottom sawyer, a man who does what the other cannot\ndo, or gives what the other has not got.\n\n\u201cIt is exactly the same in the business of life-production, and the\ninstant that Form could demonstrate them, the two partners appeared,\nand the instant that the new business of Life originated by this\npartnership became acute and competitive, the partners found themselves\nleagued together not only for the production of life, but for the\ndefence of that life.\n\n\u201cBut that carries us beyond my immediate point, which is that the\nterms Male and Female do not connote separate origins for the objects\nthey apply to, nor essential differences between those objects. The\ntwo partners are essentially the same, only that one has got his hands\nhorny from doing the rough jobs of the partnership and the other has\nkept her hands soft; one has developed mammary glands by doing her\nbusiness in the partnership, the other has developed his biceps in\ndoing his. One has developed certain attributes of mind in fighting the\nworld, the other certain other attributes in keeping the home. One has\ndeveloped certain organs for reproduction, the other\u2014others.\u201d\n\n\u201cYet you deny the existence of Woman.\u201d\n\n\u201cAbsolutely. But I do not deny the existence of Sex, always holding\nthat, though Sex is the most powerful factor in development, it has\nnothing to do with the essence of life. If it had, you would find men\nand women different from one another in essentials. They are not.\n\n\u201cAs human beings they are exactly the same, _only_ that you find some\npassions and attributes more developed in men, others more developed in\nwomen. But there is not a passion or attribute belonging to men that\nis not shared in by women, and _vice versa_.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut there is a vast difference between women and men.\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course there is, but it is only a difference, not a division;\nmoreover, it is only a surface difference, for the deeper you go into\ntheir natures, the less apparent is that difference. Use the touchstone\nof the profound emotions. Who has not seen a strong man weep like a\nwoman, or a weak woman show the heroism of a man? Does sorrow affect\nmen less than women? Does great joy affect women more than men?\n\n\u201cIs love a thing apart from man, and is it woman\u2019s whole existence? It\nis not. That claptrap was born of Fancy, and the passion for saying\na catchy thing. The love of men for women is just as powerful and as\nintimately connected with their existence as the love of women for men.\nFidelity, the only true sign of real love, is exhibited by men in just\nthe same proportion (allowing for the greater temptations of men) as it\nis by women.\n\n\u201cNo; men and women are absolutely the same as human beings in all\nthings essential, and the man who denies that is the man who sees the\nworld with only one eye, and only uses the surface of his brain.\n\n\u201cMen and women are _partners_. Partners in a difficult business. They\nhave been partners for millions of years, and the differences between\nthem are caused by the exigencies of the partnership.\n\n[Sidenote: Men\u2014Women, and Women\u2014Men]\n\n\u201cEven in those surface mental differences that mark sex a man will\noften approximate to a woman in some particulars, and a woman to a man.\nThese surface differences are not unalterable.\n\n\u201cTake the love of gossip. Listen to the talk of army men and navy men\nand club men.\n\n\u201cTake Vanity, and look at the nuts and the dudes and the macaronis.\n\n\u201cTake curiosity, and remember Coventry. Take love of dress\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd remember Mr. \u2014\u2014,\u201d said she, laughing.\n\n\u201cExactly. And let any one who would controvert me consider his friends\nand relations critically, and tell me, with his hand on his heart, are\nthe males destitute of female attributes and the females of male?\n\n\u201cThey are not. They are all human beings, and to class them\nphilosophically under the two divisions, Woman and Man, is a profound\nerror and a commonplace error.\n\n\u201cIt has led men to look on women as mysterious beings with essential\nmotive springs and essential mental clockwork quite different from that\nof men.\n\n\u201cIt has led to frightful volumes of gas being generated in certain\nskulls, like the skull, for instance, of X\u2014\u2014, and some of the leaders\nof the Feminist movement, and the escape of this gas is making an\nalarming noise.\n\n\u201cWhen Ellen Key, for instance, says that \u2018Human souls can be divided\ninto organic and inorganic,\u2019 and that \u2018Ibsen makes the masculine soul\ninorganic, definitive, finished, determined; the feminine soul, on the\nother hand, he more often makes organic, growing in evolution,\u2019 what\ndoes she mean?\n\n\u201cAll this loose talk about souls being organic and inorganic I would\nnot exchange for one small concrete fact\u2014such as that Mrs. Jones is a\nbetter man than her husband, or that John Smith \u2018ought to have been\nborn a girl,\u2019 facts that help to prove that not only are men\u2019s and\nwomen\u2019s bodies and \u2018souls\u2019 made of the same stuff, but that the sex\ndifference is so unfixed a quality that we find women who are to all\nintents and purposes men, and men women.\n\n\u201cI will be bold enough to lay down a law based on experience, History,\nand Common-sense.\n\n\u201cThere is not a womanly attribute of either body or soul that has\nnot been born of the stuff that men are made of, and there is not an\nattribute of women that has not been developed to its womanly pitch\n_not_ by virtue of any mysterious energy rising from the source of\n\u2018woman,\u2019 but by purely external conditions. And the same with regard\nto men.\n\n[Sidenote: Conditions, Again]\n\n\u201cThere you have the old \u2018conditions\u2019 coming up again. Let us get at\nfacts.\n\n\u201cThe \u00e6sthetic sense is pre-eminently womanly. You will say, at once,\n\u2018This is not so. Women are rarely as good artists as men.\u2019 I was not\ntalking of art, but of the \u00e6sthetic sense.\n\n\u201cEvery male artist inherits this sense from his mother. I am speaking\nfrom long observation and experience. It is the woman in the artist\nthat paints; the woman in the poet that feels; the woman in the\nnovelist that colours the work. Every man has the \u00e6sthetic sense more\nor less developed, but women have it, _as a mass_, more developed than\nmen. Who, for instance, puts the flowers in the cottager\u2019s window?\n\n\u201cI do not believe that the \u00e6sthetic sense in the greatest artist is\nmore developed than it is in hundreds of thousands of women who never\ntouch art. His power of craftsmanship, purely material and mechanical,\nand his power of constructive imagination raise him to the heights, and\nthese powers only come from the superior conditions favourable to them\nunder which men have dwelt.\n\n\u201cGo into any house, and you can tell if a woman lives there. Some\ndelightful trace or touch betrays the fact. It may be a few flowers\u2014it\nmay be this or that, but the \u00e6sthetic touch is there; and in the home\nit is chiefly the woman who brings it. Now, why has woman developed\nthis delightful attribute? It is a property of the mind; but men have\nit, too. Why has she developed it out of proportion to the man\u2019s\ndevelopment in this particular?\n\n\u201cSince she shares it with the man, it is a common attribute, and it is\nthe purest common-sense to believe that she developed it simply because\nthe conditions affecting her life were more favourable to its growth\nthan the conditions affecting the life of the man.\n\n\u201cThough the first scratchings of art in the cave-men\u2019s dwellings were,\nmost likely, the work of a man, who gave him the \u00e6sthetic basis of his\nartistic sense? Arguing from what we know\u2014his mother.\n\n\u201cAnd why did his mother cultivate this sense more than his father?\n\n\u201cIf you had seen his father tearing through forests after, and\nsometimes in front of, infuriated wild beasts, while his mother kept\ncave and looked after the children, you would have a complete and\npictorial answer to that question.\n\n\u201cEven the weariness of the chase is disastrous to the \u00e6sthetic sense.\nLook at all the hunting men and women you know, if you doubt what I say.\n\n\u201cSo, then, without any transcendental talk about \u2018souls\u2019 being organic\nor inorganic, we may say, arguing common-sensically, that women have\ndeveloped one of the most distinguishing \u2018womanly\u2019 attributes, not\nbecause she is a woman, but because she is a human being, and the\nconditions under which she has always lived have tended toward that\ndevelopment.\n\n\u201cAgain\u2014the love of a mother for her offspring, the one attribute of all\nattributes most distinctly and profoundly \u2018womanly\u2019: is it different\nin kind or essence from the love of a father for his offspring? Surely\nnot, but it is more complex, more intimate, and more tender and more\nlovable, simply because the conditions under which it has grown have\nbeen more favourable to the development of this complexity, intimacy,\nand tenderness.\n\n\u201cIt is the same beautiful thing, but more peculiarly cultivated, and it\nhas grown in complexity while the man has been hunting, or trading, or\nfighting the world in some other way.\n\n\u201cGo through the whole category of those attributes whose superior\ndevelopment makes woman the flower of the earth. You will find not\none which has developed on its own account owing to some mysterious\nchemistry of being peculiar to Woman,\u2014all have developed from the\ncommon soil of humanity, owing to the superior conditions for their\ndevelopment in women.\n\n\u201cAnd the chief of those conditions has been Protection. The old\nconditions come up again. The man when he was hunting and killing\nbeasts for his wife and children, and fighting for their existence,\nnever imagined that he was by his labours founding Art and Poetry. He\nwas. He was giving their germs conditions to grow in. Love, tenderness,\ngentleness, affection, morality: all were there in the cave with the\nwoman. She suckled them with her children; she trained them in their\ngrowth with kisses\u2014and slaps. They were the man\u2019s no less than the\nwoman\u2019s, common to both their natures, but he left them in the cave\nwith her to take care of, while he went hunting.\n\n\u201cConditions have made woman what she is: the best and most beautiful\nthing in the world. And now Feminists want to change those conditions,\njust as Socialists want to change the conditions affecting man.\n\n\u201cBoth strike at the Home.\u201d\n\n\n[Sidenote: Feminism]\n\n\u201c\u2018Woman must have a freer life.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018To evolve her genius, woman has but one need\u2014Freedom.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018She must be free to form her own ideas and morals.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018Woman must reorganize the mind and soul of humanity, for man has\ndisintegrated it.\u2019\n\n\u201cThose are some of the teachings of the Apostles of Feminism. I take\nthem from the work of a clever American woman, and they are a fair\nstatement of the case for Feminism.\n\n\u201cTo the first I give an unqualified assent.\n\n\u201cFreedom, within limits, is the basic condition of growth.\n\n\u201cBut what does the Feminist mean by Freedom?\n\n\u201cThe third dictum answers that.\n\n\u201c\u2018She must be free to form her own ideas and morals.\u2019\n\n\u201cOne would fancy from that that \u2018woman\u2019 was an animal capable of\nevolving ideas and a moral code different from man. Since woman is just\nthe same human animal, we may put this aside, and ask again what the\nFeminist means.\n\n\u201cShe asks, in fact, that women may be free to change their morals (we\nshall leave the talk about ideas aside for the present) in any way they\nplease.\n\n\u201cNow, morals cannot be changed in a horizontal direction. It\u2019s up, or\ndown, or stationary. Any change in morals is for the better or for the\nworse.\n\n\u201cDoes the Feminist ask for freedom to change her morals for the better?\nShe has perfect freedom to do that; most men will applaud her, and most\nwomen, too.\n\n\u201cDoes she ask for freedom to change her morals for the worse?\n\n\u201cIf she is making that demand, let her frankly avow that what she wants\nis license, not freedom.\n\n\u201cThere is a lot of difference between the two.\n\n\u201cI am not arguing to get the Feminist in a hole, but simply to clear\nthe ground of brambles.\n\n\u201cShe does want license, as a matter of fact; one would be blind who\nlooked at her programme and did not see that.\n\n\u201cAnd the license she wants is not the license to steal, or lie, or\nmurder, or commit arson. When she talks of forming her own morals, she\nhas one morality entirely and solely in view\u2014the morality that presides\nover Love; and when she asks for license, it is license in Love.\n\n\u201cMen have more license in this matter than women. That is undoubtedly\nso.\n\n\u201cMen, since the beginning of the world, have had more license than\nwomen; but that license is a relic of barbarism. It was useful once,\nbut it is becoming less useful every day, and _pari passu_ men are\nbecoming more moral.\u201d\n\n\u201cUseful once?\u201d\n\n\u201cIn this way. Men in the past were the fertilisers of the world. Who\nbrought Roman blood to England, Norman blood, Norse blood? Men. Roman,\nNorman, and Norse women had nothing to do with the matter. Their duty\nwas to stay at home and be moral. Armed and roaming men fertilised the\nworld, just as bees fertilise a field of clover, crossed the races, and\nmade the vitality of them.\n\n\u201cRoman, Norse, and Norman virtues that make England great were born\nof Roman, Norse, and Norman license. The same fact applies to all\nEurope. But the day of the free-lance in love is gone. He who was once\na world-maker is now a world-curse. He is not now a world-maker, but a\nHome-wrecker and a woman-wrecker.\n\n\u201cNations no longer require him for a fertiliser. Men no longer travel\nin masses, armed with spears; they go in railway carriages, accompanied\nby their families, and the world can get all the fertilisation it wants\nby immigration.\n\n\u201cLicense still lives among men, but it lives as a reptile; among men\nit is dying, yet Feminists, when they ask for license, would give this\ndying thing a new birth among women. They forget that what was once a\nbad necessity is now a hideous and dying superfluity.\n\n\n[Sidenote: The Right of Motherhood]\n\n\u201cI have heard it stated by Feminists that motherhood is the right of\nevery woman.\n\n\u201cSo is fatherhood the right of every man, and on that plea a man might\nbase a very wide scheme of immorality.\n\n\u201cAs a matter of fact, there is something else: the right of the child.\n\n\u201cA woman has _no_ right to motherhood unless she can provide a home for\nher child. A father has no right to fatherhood who cannot do likewise.\nAnd by a home I do not mean shelter and food; I mean everything sacred\nthat lies in that word Home. Love, affection, self-restraint, mutual\nrespect, and family respect.\n\n\u201cOf course, if the Feminist says, Destroy the home, one has nothing\nmore to say. She is logical.\n\n\u201cBut to say, I shall increase license among women without injuring or\ndestroying the home, at once reduces her to a person who is not logical.\n\n\u201cAs a matter of fact, the Feminist movement, as far as its moral side\ngoes, is confined to a certain number of men who desire the extension\nof license; to a certain number of women who do likewise; and to a\ncertain number of women who feel acutely that women are put upon by men\nin the matter of morals. That men have set up a rule of conduct for\nwomen which they don\u2019t obey themselves.\n\n\u201cThis is not so. The sternest moralists are women, and the morality of\nthese moralists is not an abstract quality; it arises from a profound\nand intuitive motherhood instinct that tells them that license is death\nto the welfare of the child, whether it develops and is shown in the\nmother or the child.\n\n\u201cThe child must restrain itself and not steal the jam; the woman must\nrestrain herself and not let her honour be stolen.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd, you will say, the man must restrain himself and not steal her\nhonour?\u201d\n\n\u201cCertainly.\n\n\u201cAnd every man, who is a man and not a cur, obeys that law as far as in\nhim lies.\n\n\u201cMan, you must remember, has a lot to fight against, and nothing so\nmuch as the old rules of license under which he has lived for ages.\n\n\u201cThey used to be a royal robe; they are now a beggar\u2019s tatters. He is\nashamed to be seen in them nowadays; he only puts them on in private;\nyet they are always crying to him to put them on, just as filth is\nalways crying to a dog, Roll in me.\n\n\u201cThat is all I have to say about the moral side of the Feminist people.\nTheir claim for equal freedom with man in other respects is far more\npleasant to notice. And it comes to this:\n\n\u201cSince the mass of women is just the same as the mass of men, in the\nname of Humanity, why should not the woman mass have the same freedom\nin affairs as the man, politically and socially?\n\n[Sidenote: Social and Political]\n\n\u201cWhy should the women of the nation not be free to expand their mental\nand bodily energy in every social and political path in which the men\nexpand it?\n\n\u201cCertainly they ought. But they can\u2019t.\n\n\u201cThey could, in a nation whose units were individuals; they can\u2019t, in a\nnation whose units are homes.\n\n\u201cEvery woman is a potential or actual queen-bee. Her duty is to found a\nhive, not to make honey. Like a man, she has only a limited quantity of\nenergy.\n\n\u201cThe little nation of the hive or home, which is, in very fact, the\nnation itself writ small, makes vast calls upon the man\u2019s energy and\nthe woman\u2019s. Here alone is the national life as distinct from the\nnational affairs.\n\n\u201cIt is the germinal spot and centre of all national activity; it is\nthe primary school of all morality; and it is the supreme province of\nthe woman. Here she is a world Builder.\n\n\u201cThis is her kingdom. Her duties here are not only family, but\nnational. There are no humble duties in a home: they are all great and\nnational duties, directly determining the advancement of the world.\nLike all great duties, they imply great outputs of energy, self-denial,\nand restraint, and it is impossible for her to use her energies\neffectively in two directions. She cannot be at the hub of the wheel\nand the tire both at the same time. In other words, she cannot be at\nhome and in parliament or the law courts, or the council chambers of\nthe nation, or the studios or dentists\u2019 parlours at one and the same\ntime.\n\n\u201c\u2018_Woman must be free to create her own conduct and to seek her own\nexperiences for self-development_,\u2019 runs another dictum of our Feminist\nsage.\n\n\u201cIn the home she is only free to create her own conduct in a manner\nconducive to the well-being of the home. If she swerves from this law,\nshe is a defaulter and an enemy to good. The same may be said of her\nfreedom in self-development.\n\n\u201cCertainly she must be free to develop herself, and so must the man be\nfree to develop himself.\n\n\u201cBut the man who develops his muscles in golf at the expense of\nhis business time and energy is a slacker and a defaulter and a\nhome-injurer. And the woman who develops her political instincts or her\nmind power at the expense of her home time and energy is the same.\u201d\n\n\n[Sidenote: The World-Builders]\n\n\u201cIt seems to me,\u201d said my audience, \u201cthat you look on women as though\nthey were all married and with household duties to perform.\u201d\n\n\u201cI look on women as though they were all married women, or women\npreparing to enter that state. No other women are of any account at all\nas world-builders.\n\n\u201cThey may be delightful, charming, pleasant, true women in every way,\nbut if they are not married they are not true women-factors in the\nprogress of the world. Simply because they have no hand in the physical\nbuilding of the future.\n\n\u201cThe child is the future made visible and concrete. When you lay your\nfinger on a child you are touching not flesh only, but future ages.\n\n\u201cThe unmarried woman-genius may influence the art or the thought of\nher time; the labourer\u2019s wife who produces a bouncing boy that lives\nhas produced the future. More than that, she has sent forth her own\nattributes to dwell in the future. More than that, by her care and\neducation of that child she is laying the foundation for vast world\neffects.\n\n\u201cThat is the woman\u2019s triumphant position in the scheme of things. She\nis a partner in world-building, and the duties lying on her share of\nthe partnership are patent and obvious to the meanest intelligence.\n\n\u201cThey are both moral and material, and they imply in their performance\none supreme virtue: self-sacrifice. Not freedom to develop according to\ninclination; not freedom to alter her morals; not freedom to imitate\nthe worst faults of men; but slavery in the interests of her children,\nher husband, and her home.\n\n\u201cAnd what happy people these slaves are! Just as happy as the\nmen-slaves who, under the dominion of good conduct, love, and the hive\ninstinct, often work themselves to death, like the bees, that others\nmay live and prosper.\n\n\u201cBut, as you say, all women cannot be mothers. Yet it is essential that\nthe mothers of the nation should be protected at all costs from the\ndisease which lurks under the specious word \u2018Feminism.\u2019\u201d\n\n\n\u201cThey have come a long journey together, the Man and the Woman, and all\nthrough that long journey across the ages they have been leading the\nchild by the hand.\n\n\u201cAnd if the wicked and blasphemous people who talk of sex-hate had but\nthe scientific and poetic perception enabling them to see those three\ngrand and mysterious figures as they are on the shores of Time, we\nwould be spared, perhaps, from the poisonous blight of sexisms.\u201d\n\n\n\u201cYou are so positive,\u201d said she, \u201cthat I often haven\u2019t dared to\ninterrupt you, and you talk so quickly that all you have said, though I\nunderstood it at the time, is now a jumble in my mind.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am positive, because there is no use at all in being negative.\nPeople who believe in what they say are usually positive\u2014even though\nthey may be wrong.\n\n\u201cIf I have talked too quickly, I shall write out what I have said and\nsend it to you; then you can pick it to pieces as much as you please.\u201d\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\nNOTE TO PART I OF THE BOOK\n\nIn my experience, judging from the men I have met in life and the men\nwhose lives I have read about, the really strong men of the world have\nbeen men of strong belief\u2014and mostly men with a strong belief in a\npersonal God.\n\nFaith is a very wonderful thing, call it what you please. There is in\nFaith an enormous dynamic energy the origin of which, analyse it as\nmuch as I will, leaves me utterly baffled and bewildered.\n\nOne might say that it is an orientation of the mind, a pointing of all\nthe thoughts in one definite direction by which the mind, as a machine,\ngains harmony which is expressed in power of action, and I believe the\nco-ordination of the functions of the mind under a common governing\nbelief does, in part, explain the miraculous power conferred on men by\nFaith.\n\nAlso one might say that the mind capable of great faith is essentially\na positive mind, a direct mind, and a constructive mind.\n\nAlso one might say a great many things, and yet leave the foundation of\nthe question as deeply involved in darkness as ever, and the mind of a\nNewman, a Gladstone, or a Cromwell the same towering mystery.\n\nBut the fact remains clear that the man without belief in something\nabove and beyond this world, or in something _in_ this world, some\ntide, or core, or essence of which his own little life is a part, loses\nthe alliance of that power which we indicate in the word Faith.\n\nThere is no doubt at all that the western world has lost power, and\nthat England is losing power daily by the steady loss of Faith.\n\nThe crude, hard faith in a personal God which is vanishing from among\nus is a dynamic force that is passing away, and it is being replaced by\nwhat?\n\nIt is being replaced by a good many excellent things: by an increase\nof tolerance and sympathy; an increased consideration for the\noppressed, and a re-valuation of all the considerations that come under\nthe title Justice; but all these and many more good things that have\nsprung to growth in the universal mind leave the individual mind still\nlacking Faith.\n\nDarwinism it was that struck the first real blow at a personal God, and\nmen, in their minds at least, have nearly extinguished the chemical\nhell.\n\nAnd Darwinism, destroying the old rigid, childlike faith, handed the\nworld not Atheism, but a new Faith, which the world never seems to have\ngrasped.\n\nThe Faith in a world ever progressing toward the good.\n\nOnce you have grasped the great truth that your life is a part of this\nmiracle of growth, as long as you conform as far as in you lies to the\ngrowth of good in yourself, you will have a Faith that will fill you\nwith new force.\n\nAnd it is a faith that no one can refuse, for its teaching is written\nacross the rocks and the stars, and so plainly that a child can read\nit, once it is pointed out to him.\n\n\n\n\nAppendices\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDIX A\n\n\nI have said very little about Anarchism\u2014merely mentioned it by name;\nyet the inquiries I have made into this subject reveal an organisation\nand a literature astonishing to the everyday mind. To use the words of\nthat ardent bibliophile, H. Bourdin:\n\n\u201cTo most people the word Anarchy is evil-sounding, but it is not the\nsame to learned men and to collectors and lovers who acquire the desire\nof accumulating documents for history\u2019s sake.\n\n\u201cThe Anarchist literature has not a determined origin, being not the\nexpression of a system invented and progressively elaborated, but the\nnegation of all systems, produced by the desire to batter down the\ndespotic in all its forms, the rules and duty imposed by prejudice or\nby force, and to give impulse to the free development of humanity.\nAll acts which have been accomplished and all words which have been\npronounced in hatred of this constraint and in favour of this freedom\nare consciously or unconsciously the production of Anarchy.\n\n\u201cIt is astonishing when one glances at the huge quantity of literature\nof all kinds which has been printed in the space of the last\nhalf-century for the exposition of their ideal thought; no other party\nor sect, for whatever cause they had to defend, can be compared to\nthis, except Christianity, which has taken about 2,000 years over it.\nConsider the difficulty which they have met in publishing clandestinely\ntheir periodicals, broadsides, etc., hunted by society as wild beasts;\ndomiciliary perquisitions destroyed their works, which were merely\ntheir thoughts.\u201d\n\nM. Bourdin has courteously allowed me to inspect the huge library\nof Anarchistical literature which he has collected, consisting of\njournals, broadsides, pamphlets, volumes, songs, theatrical plays, etc.\n\nTo give you an idea of the extent and nature of the Anarchistical\npress, I enumerate a few of the journals:\n\n_L\u2019Anarchie, Journal de l\u2019Ordre_, May, 1850.\n\n(In 1850, Anarchy had already a press.)\n\n_Le Libertaire_, 1858\u20131861.\n\n_L\u2019Egalit\u00e9_, 1869\u20131872.\n\n_L\u2019Internationale_, 1870\u20131873.\n\n_La R\u00e9volution Sociale_, 1871\u20131872.\n\n_L\u2019Ami du Peuple_ (Li\u00e8ge), 1873\u20131875.\n\n_Ni Dieu ni Ma\u00eetre_, 1880. (You see we are getting on in titles.)\n\n_La R\u00e9volution Sociale_, 1880.\n\n_Le Drapeau Noir_, 1883.\n\n_L\u2019Emeute_, 1883\u20131884.\n\n_La Lutte_, 1883.\n\n_Le D\u00e9fi_, 1884.\n\n_La Guerre Sociale_, 1885. (Brussels).\n\n_La R\u00e9volte_, 1894.\n\n_L\u2019Antipatriote_, 1899. (Cat out of the bag.)\n\n_Le Tocsin_, 1892\u20131894.\n\n_La D\u00e9b\u00e2cle_, 1893.\n\n_L\u2019Insurg\u00e9_ (Lyons), 1893.\n\n_Le Cyclone_ (Buenos Aires), 1895\u20131896.\n\n_La Cravache_, 1898.\n\n_Le Cravacheur_, idem.\n\n_Le Cri de R\u00e9volte_, 1898\u20139.\n\n_Les Crimes de Dieu_, 1898.\n\n_La Bastille_, 1902\u20133.\n\n_Germinal_, 1904\u20131910.\n\n_L\u2019Anarchie_, 1905.\n\n_L\u2019Anarchiste_, 1907.\n\n_L\u2019Action Directe_, 1907\u20131908.\n\n_La M\u00e8re Peinard_, 1908.\n\n_La R\u00e9volution_, 1909.\n\n_Les R\u00e9volt\u00e9s_, 1909.\n\n_La Bataille Syndicaliste_, 1911.\n\n_The Anarchist_ (Glasgow), 1912.\n\nAnd these are only a few of the journals in the great Bourdin\ncollection.* I have only mentioned some of the French journals\ndevoted to the cause; there are English and German as well, and there\nare sure to be Russian and Spanish and Italian journals to match.\n\n  * This collection is for sale, I believe.\n\nIt is a big movement. Give me the literature of a movement, and I will\nfeel its pulse and tell you about its constitution. The literature of\nAnarchism tells that it is very much alive.\n\nWhat is Anarchism? It is really unconstructive Socialism and\nSyndicalism.\n\nThe Anarchists want to destroy society as it is, and let Human Nature\nramp on the remains.\n\nThe Socialist wants to destroy society, and build it again on an\nanti-Human-natural plan.\n\nThe Syndicalist wants to destroy the Business World and to erect a new\nbusiness world on an unbusinesslike basis.\n\nOf the three, I prefer Anarchy.\n\nIt is the only one of the three dreams based on common-sense, for it\nfrankly aims at Anarchy, and Anarchy is exactly what it would get were\nit to succeed.\n\n       *       *       *       *\n\nI have said \u201cThe three dreams,\u201d and though I have permitted myself\nto sneer at some points in the philosophy of some of these dreamers,\nI have no sneers at all to expend on their energy, and on their\nwholeheartedness. They are all trying to express something, and that\nsomething is the Poverty and the Misery of the world.\n\nSocialism, Syndicalism, and Anarchism are all one voice speaking in\ndifferent tones.\n\nAnd that voice is growing and must be answered, not by Repression, but\nby Philosophy.\n\nThe world is not all wrong, but it is not all right. Man is speaking\nin no uncertain tones, and he wants some reply more apposite to his\nargument than the glib chirrup of Pippa.\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDIX B\n\nA PASSAGE FROM HAECKEL*\n\n\nUnder the title of _Design in the Living Organism_, the famous\nembryologist, Carl Ernst Baer, published a work in 1876 which, together\nwith the article on Darwinism which accompanied it, proved very\nacceptable to our opponents, and is still much quoted in opposition to\nevolution. It was a revival of the old teleological system under a new\nname, and we must devote a line of criticism to it. We must premise\nthat, though Baer was a scientist of the highest order, his original\nmonistic views were gradually marred by a tinge of mysticism with the\nadvance of age, and he eventually became a thorough dualist. In his\nprofound work on _The Evolution of Animals_ (1828), which he himself\nentitled _Observation and Experiment_, these two methods of\ninvestigation are equally applied. By careful observation of the\nvarious phenomena of the development of the animal ovum, Baer succeeded\nin giving the first consistent presentation of the remarkable changes\nwhich take place in the growth of the vertebrate from a simple\negg-cell. At the same time, he endeavoured, by far-seeing comparison\nand keen reflection, to learn the causes of the transformation, and\nto reduce them to general constructive laws. He expressed the general\nresult of his research in the following thesis: \u201cThe evolution of\nthe individual is the story of the growth of individuality in every\nrespect.\u201d He meant that \u201cthe one great thought that controls all the\ndifferent aspects of animal evolution is the same that gathered the\nscattered fragments of space into spheres, and linked them into solar\nsystems. This thought is no other than life itself, and the words and\nsyllables in which it finds utterance are the varied forms of living\nthings.\u201d\n\n  * This translation from Haeckel\u2019s \u201cThe Riddle of the\n  Universe\u201d is taken from an edition published by The\n  Rationalist Press in England, and Harper & Brothers in the\n  United States of America, Copyright 1900, to whom grateful\n  acknowledgment is made for permission for its use in this\n  volume.\n\nBaer, however, did not attain to a deeper knowledge of this great\ngenetic truth and a clearer insight into the real efficient causes\nof organic evolution, because his attention was exclusively given to\none-half of evolutionary science, the science of the evolution of the\nindividual, embryology, or, in a wider sense, ontogeny. The other half,\nthe science of the evolution of species, phylogeny, was not yet in\nexistence, although Lamarck had already pointed out the way to it in\n1809. When it was established by Darwin in 1859, the aged Baer was no\nlonger in a position to appreciate it; the fruitless struggle which he\nled against the theory of selection clearly proved that he understood\nneither its real meaning nor its philosophic importance. Teleological\nand, subsequently, theological speculations had incapacitated the\naging scientist from appreciating this greatest reform of biology.\nThe teleological observations which he published against it in his\n_Species and Studies_, in his eighty-fourth year, are mere repetitions\nof errors which the teleology of the dualists has opposed to the\nmechanical or monistic system for more than 2,000 years. The \u201ctelic\u201d\nidea, which, according to Baer, controls the entire evolution of the\nanimal from the ovum is only another expression for the eternal \u201cidea\u201d\nof Plato, and the _entelecheia_ of his pupil, Aristotle.\n\nOur modern biogeny gives a purely physiological explanation of the\nfacts of embryology, in assigning the functions of heredity and\nadaptation as their causes. The great biogenetic law, which Baer\nfailed to appreciate, reveals the intimate causal connection between\nthe _ontogenesis_ of the individual and the _phylogenesis_ of its\nancestors; the former seems to be a recapitulation of the latter.\nNowhere, however, in the evolution of animals and plants do we find any\ntrace of design, but merely the inevitable outcome of the struggle for\nexistence, the blind controller, instead of the provident God, that\naffects the changes of organic forms by a mutual action of the laws of\nheredity and adaptation. And there is no more trace of \u201cdesign\u201d in the\nembryology of the individual plant, animal, or man. This _ontogeny_\nis but a brief epitome of _phylogeny_, an abbreviated and condensed\nrecapitulation of it, determined by the physiological laws of heredity.\n\nBaer ended the preface to his classical _Evolution of Animals_ (1828)\nwith these words: \u201cThe palm will be awarded to the fortunate scientist\nwho succeeds in reducing the constructive forces of the animal body\nto the general forces or life-processes of the entire world. The tree\nhas not yet been planted which is to make his cradle.\u201d The great\nembryologist erred once more. That very year, 1828, witnessed the\narrival of Charles Darwin at Cambridge University (for the purpose of\nstudying theology!)\u2014the \u201cfortunate scientist,\u201d who richly earned the\npalm thirty years afterward by his theory of selection.\n\nIn the philosophy of history\u2014that is, in the general reflections which\nhistorians make in the destinies of nations and the complicated course\nof political evolution\u2014there still prevails the notion of a \u201cmoral\norder of the universe.\u201d Historians seek in the vivid drama of history\na leading design, an ideal purpose, which has ordained one or other\nrace or State to a special triumph, and to dominion over the others.\nThis teleological view of history has recently become more strongly\ncontrasted with our monistic view in proportion as monism has proved\nto be the only possible interpretation of inorganic nature. Throughout\nthe whole of astronomy, geology, physics, and chemistry there is no\nquestion to-day of a \u201cmoral order,\u201d or a personal God, whose \u201chand hath\ndisposed all things in wisdom and understanding.\u201d And the same must be\nsaid of the entire field of biology, the whole constitution and history\nof organic nature, if we set aside the question of man for the moment.\nDarwin has not only proved by his theory of selection that the orderly\nprocesses in the life and structure of animals and plants have arisen\nby mechanical laws without any preconceived design, but he has shown\nus in the \u201cstruggle for life\u201d the powerful natural force which has\nexerted supreme control over the entire course of organic evolution for\nmillions of years. It may be said that the struggle for life is the\n\u201csurvival of the fittest,\u201d or the \u201cvictory of the best\u201d; that is only\ncorrect when we regard the strongest as the best (in a moral sense).\nMoreover, the whole history of the organic world goes to prove that,\nbesides the predominant advance toward perfection, there are at all\ntimes cases of retrogression to lower stages. Even Baer\u2019s notion of\n\u201cdesign\u201d has no moral feature whatever.\n\nDo we find a different state of things in the history of peoples, which\nman, in his anthropocentric presumption, loves to call \u201cthe history of\nthe world\u201d? Do we find in every phase of it a lofty moral principle\nor a wise ruler guiding the destinies of nations? There can be but one\nanswer in the present advanced stage of natural and human history: No.\nThe fate of those branches of the human family, those nations and races\nwhich have struggled for existence and progress for thousands of years,\nis determined by the same \u201ceternal laws of iron\u201d as the history of the\nwhole organic world which has peopled the earth for millions of years.\n\nGeologists distinguish three great epochs in the organic history of\nthe earth, as far as we can read it in the monuments of the science of\nfossils\u2014the primary, secondary, and tertiary epochs. According to a\nrecent calculation, the first occupied at least 34,000,000, the second\n11,000,000, and the third 3,000,000 years. The history of the family\nof vertebrates, from which our own race has sprung, unfolds clearly\nbefore our eyes during this long period. Three different stages in\nthe evolution of the vertebrate correspond to the three epochs: the\n_fishes_ characterised the primary (pal\u00e6ozoic) age, the _reptiles_ the\nsecondary (mesozoic), and the _mammals_ the tertiary (c\u00e6nozoic). Of\nthe three groups the fishes rank lowest in organisation, the reptiles\ncome next, and the mammals take the highest place. We find, on nearer\nexamination of the history of the three classes, that their various\norders and families also advanced progressively during the three epochs\ntoward a higher stage of perfection. May we consider this progressive\ndevelopment as the outcome of a conscious design or a moral order\nof the universe? Certainly not. (Certainly yes. Progression toward\nthe benign is the core of all morality.\u2014H. de V. S.) The theory of\nselection teaches us that this organic progress, like the earlier\norganic differentiation, is an inevitable consequence of the struggle\nfor existence. (Struggle for improved conditions.\u2014H. de V. S.)\nThousands of beautiful and remarkable species of animals and plants\nhave perished during those 48,000,000 years, to give place to stronger\ncompetitors, and the victors in this struggle for life were not always\nthe noblest or most perfect forms in a moral sense. (No, but they were\nthe best condition-builders.\u2014H. de V. S.)\n\nIt has been just the same with the history of humanity. The splendid\ncivilisation of classical antiquity perished because Christianity,\nwith its faith in a loving God and its hope of a better life beyond\nthe grave, gave a fresh, strong impetus to the soaring human mind. The\nPapal Church quickly degenerated into a pitiful caricature of real\nChristianity, and ruthlessly scattered the treasures of knowledge\nwhich the Hellenic philosophy had gathered; it gained the dominion\nof the world through the ignorance of the credulous masses. In time\nthe Reformation broke the chains of this mental slavery, and assisted\nreason to secure its right once more. But in the new, as in the\nolder period, the great struggle for existence went on in its eternal\nfluctuation, with no trace of a moral order.\n\nAnd it is just as impossible for the impartial and critical observer\nto detect a \u201cwise providence\u201d in the fate of individual human beings\nas a moral order in the history of peoples. Both are determined with\niron necessity by a mechanical causality which connects every single\nphenomenon with one or more antecedent causes. Even the ancient Greeks\nrecognised _ananke_, the blind _heimarmene_, the fate \u201cthat rules\ngods and men,\u201d as the supreme principle of the universe. Christianity\nreplaced it by a conscious Providence, which is not blind, but sees,\nand which governs the world in patriarchal fashion. The anthropomorphic\ncharacter of this notion, generally closely connected with belief in\na personal God, is quite obvious. Belief in a \u201cloving Father,\u201d who\nunceasingly guides the destinies of 1,500,000,000 men on our planet,\nand is attentive at all times to their millions of contradictory\nprayers and pious wishes, is absolutely impossible; that is at once\nperceived on laying aside the coloured spectacles of \u201cfaith\u201d and\nreflecting rationally on the subject.\n\nAs a rule, this belief in Providence and the tutelage of a \u201cloving\nFather\u201d is more intense in the modern civilised man\u2014just as in the\nuncultured savage\u2014when some good fortune has befallen him: an escape\nfrom peril of life, recovery from a severe illness, the winning of the\nfirst prize in a lottery, the birth of a long-delayed child, and so\nforth. When, on the other hand, a misfortune is met with, or an ardent\nwish is not fulfilled, \u201cProvidence\u201d is forgotten. The wise ruler of the\nworld slumbered\u2014or refused his blessing.\n\nIn the extraordinary development of commerce in the nineteenth century\nthe number of catastrophes and accidents has necessarily increased\nbeyond all imagination; of that the journal is a daily witness.\nThousands are killed every year by shipwreck, railway accidents, mine\naccidents, etc. Thousands slay one another every year in war, and the\npreparation for this wholesale massacre absorbs much the greater part\nof the revenue in the highest civilised nations, the chief professors\nof \u201cChristian charity.\u201d And among these hundreds of thousands of annual\nvictims of modern civilisation strong, industrious, courageous workers\npredominate. Yet the talk of a \u201cmoral order\u201d goes on.\n\nSince impartial study of the evolution of the world teaches us that\nthere are no definite aim and no special purpose to be traced in it,\nthere seems to be no alternative but to leave everything to \u201cblind\nchance.\u201d This reproach has been made to the transformism of Lamarck and\nDarwin, as it has been to the previous systems of Kant and Laplace;\nthere are a number of dualist philosophers who lay great stress on it.\nIt is, therefore, worth while to make a brief remark upon it.\n\nOne group of philosophers affirms, in accordance with its teleological\nconception, that the whole cosmos is an orderly system, in which every\nphenomenon has its aim and purpose; there is no such thing as chance.\nThe other group, holding a mechanical theory, expresses itself thus:\nThe development of the universe is a monistic mechanical process, in\nwhich we discover no aim or purpose whatever (except that it is ever\ngrowing toward the good.\u2014H. de V. S.): what we call design in the\norganic world is a special result of biological agencies; neither in\nthe evolution of the heavenly bodies nor in that of the crust of our\nearth do we find any trace of a controlling purpose (O blindness!\nbefore the wonder of development.\u2014H. de V. S.)\u2014all is the result of\nchance. Each party is right\u2014according to its definition of chance.\nThe general law of causality, taken in conjunction with the law of\nsubstance, teaches us that every phenomenon has a mechanical cause;\nin this sense there is no such thing as chance. Yet it is not only\nlawful, but necessary, to retain the term for the purpose of expressing\nthe simultaneous occurrence of two phenomena, which are not causally\nrelated to each other, but of which each has its own mechanical cause,\nindependent of that of the other. Everybody knows that chance, in this\nmonistic sense, plays an important part in the life of man and in the\nuniverse at large. That, however, does not prevent us from recognising\nin each \u201cchance\u201d event, as we do in the evolution of the entire\ncosmos, the universal sovereignty of nature\u2019s supreme law, _the law of\nsubstance_.\n\n\nA NOTE ON THE PASSAGE FROM HAECKEL\n\nI do not suggest, _I affirm_, with the support of all science at my\nelbow and all reason at my side, that the world in its development has\nexhibited only one constant direction, and that direction is toward\nwhat we call the good or, in other words, progression toward the\ncomplex.\n\nThat the development of forms by natural selection is only a part of\nthe real business of the universe, whose mighty labours have, from the\nvery beginning of earthly things, been directed toward one distant\nideal.\n\nWhat is the Ideal? Who knows? We only know that on the covering\ndirections of the sealed orders, which man may not open till he is fit\nto read them, are the words: Advancement, Love, Mercy, Kindliness,\nProtection, and every other word which the mind of man has marshalled\nunder that mysterious and general term, The Good.\n\nBlind matter carried those sealed orders in its body and the first\nfishes carried them under their fins, the first claw was made to catch\nthem and to carry them through ferocious times, till the hand of the\nfirst monkey seized them. \u201cAdvancement\u201d was the only word on the cover\nthen; but, age after age, hitherto invisible directions began to\nappear letter by letter, till \u201cLove\u201d stood out, and \u201cMercy,\u201d and all\nthose other words that form the basis of Progress.\n\nAccident and the stress of growth have sometimes obliterated those\nwords for years and centuries. Civilisations have misinterpreted\nsome of those words and barbarisms have rubbed them out, schools of\nReligions and schools of thought have meddled with them and altered\nthem, yet they have always returned, and not only returned, but brought\nother words with them.\n\nThe aim and object of life, Haeckel, are the carriage of those sealed\norders, and the implicit obedience of the directions that appear age by\nage on their envelope, till, who knows, some day the word \u201cOpen\u201d may be\nfound there, and some glimpse of the great Ideal be permitted to the\neyes of man.\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDIX C\n\nTHE MYSTERY OF ANALOGY AND SIMILE\n\n\nMy companion likened the present-day world to a big head with the\nbrains on the outside. The idea is absolutely just; we have even\nthe two hemispheres of the brain in the eastern and western world.\nIn future years, when telegraphy and telephony are more highly\ndeveloped\u2014and, who knows, telepathy also\u2014the idea will even be more\ntrue than it is to-day.\n\nIn this connection: have you ever considered the deep mystery that lies\nin Analogy?\n\nIn the universe of mind and matter, why do we see the same idea\nrepeated in widely different forms. The whole world of structure is a\nworld of plagiarism. The skull and a nut are the structural outcome\nof the same idea, so are the cockle and the almond\u2014but imitations of\nstructure are nothing to the fact that root ideas, like that governing\nthe structure of the vertebrates, strike upward into the worlds of\nthought and action. We have vertebrates in businesses, business with\nbrains, spinal cords, sympathetic nervous systems all complete. In\nstates, armies, and more vaguely in philosophies, policies, and all\nstructures of thought, whether they be theories, or poems, or plays, or\nnovels, the vertebrate idea is found.\n\nWhy is the life history of a man so extraordinarily like the life\nhistory of a nation, and the story of a man\u2019s day a little poetical\nsimile of a man\u2019s life?\n\nWhy does the poetical simile satisfy the mind when, for instance, we\ntalk of a sea that smiles, or compare a sunset to the fading of a\nfortune?\n\nIs it because we have struck, half-unconsciously, on the key to the\nriddle of the universe; that the conditions upon which the universe\nof mind and matter clings, as snow clings to branches and twigs, are\nexceedingly few\u2014are derived from the same trunk and strike upward,\nthrough the material and spiritual world, just as tree branches and\ntwigs strike upward through denser and lighter layers of air.\n\nThe main trellis or branch conditions that run through everything are\nthe conditions of Life, Death, Growth, and Decay. These are the four\nmaster branches. All others are the twigs subsidiary and derived from\nthese. Think, if you can find a conception of the mind, exclusive of\nmathematical concepts, that does not embody these four in its essence,\nand is not, in fact, the child of these. And yet, these four are only\none. For death is complementary to life; it is the absolutely faithful\nshadow of life. Nay, it is life itself, for life is perpetual change,\nand the essence of death is not death, but change.\n\nAnd growth, what is it?\u2014change; and decay, what is it?\u2014change.\n\nChange, then, is the one master idea, the trunk from which all ideas\nspring\u2014and what is the soul of change?\u2014motion.\n\nAnd what is motion?\u2014it is the soul of the Universe.","title":"The New Optimism","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":20537}