{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_75786/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_75786","id":"gutenberg_75786","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75786","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Politics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Category: Sociology","Social problems","Sociology","Utopias"],"text":"THE OPEN CONSPIRACY\n\n\n\n\nMR. WELLS HAS ALSO WRITTEN THE FOLLOWING BOOKS ON SOCIAL, RELIGIOUS AND\nPOLITICAL QUESTIONS\n\n  Anticipations (1900)\n  A Modern Utopia\n  The Future in America\n  New Worlds for Old\n  First and Last Things\n  God the Invisible King\n  The Outline of History\n  Russia in the Shadows\n  The Salvaging of Civilisation\n  Washington and the Hope of Peace\n  A Short History of the World\n  The Story of a Great Schoolmaster\n  A Year of Prophesying\n  Democracy Under Revision\n  History\n  Mr. Belloc Objects to the Outline of History\n  The Way the World Is Going\n\n\n\n\nH. G. WELLS\n\n  THE OPEN CONSPIRACY BLUE PRINTS FOR A WORLD REVOLUTION\n\n  [Illustration: Colophon Doubleday, Doran]\n\n  GARDEN CITY\n  NEW YORK\n  DOUBLEDAY, DORAN\n  AND COMPANY, INC.\n  1928\n\n\n\n\n  COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY DOUBLEDAY, DORAN\n  & COMPANY, INC. ALL EIGHTS RESERVED.\n  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE\n  COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.\n\n\n\n\n  To\n  DANIEL GERBAULT\n  who asked me to\n  write this book\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nThis book states as plainly and clearly as possible the essential ideas\nof my life, the perspective of my world. Everything else that I have\nbeen or done seems to me to have been contributory to or illustrative\nof these ideas and suggestions. My other writings, with hardly an\nexception, explore, try over, illuminate, comment upon or flower out of\nthe essential matter that I here attempt at last to strip bare to its\nfoundations and state unmistakably. This is my religion. Here are my\ndirective aims and the criteria of all I do.\n\nSince the subject of this book is the whole destiny of man, and the\nwhole duty of man, it will certainly be called a pretentious book.\nThat will be a charge too obvious to miss and we can consider it made.\nBut it is no more pretentious to work upon the whole of life than upon\nparts and aspects of life; it is a question of scale and method; the\nintellectual effort needed, the quality of the work required for making\nthe map of a continent may be less than and inferior to that demanded\nby the chemical examination of a muscle fibre or the investigation of\natomic structure. A man is not pretentious because he works with the\ntheodolite instead of the microscope. Some men work upon the bulkier\ncommon issues; some upon finer and subtler questions. To every man his\ntask. There is no hierarchy in human thought.\n\nHere, given tentatively, with many evident faults and gaps, is a scheme\nfor all human conduct. It discusses what should man be doing and what\nshould men be doing. It states a general form and direction for the\ncrowding rush of modern ideas and impulsions. I believe that upon\nsuch lines as I have drawn, the creative forces in our species can\nbe organised and may be organised, in a comprehensive fight against\nindividual and collective frustration and death. I believe also that\nthere is no other direction but this direction along which mankind can\nescape from the insecurity of an animal which has been evolved and\nwhich may presently be degraded or extinguished in the play of material\nthings. The accident of a great opportunity, I hold, has happened to\nour kind. It is opportunity and not destiny we face.\n\nSo I bear my witness and argue my design. This is, I declare, the truth\nand the way of salvation. If I could, I would put this book before\nevery mind in the world. I would say, tell me where this is wrong, or\ntell me why you do not live after these principles.\n\nI pray the reader for a patient reading. This is, I submit, matter of\nvery great moment to him. My phrasing, my idiom of thought may not be\nhis. Will he forgive that for the sake of the substance I am putting\nbefore him? It is astir already in many intelligences and it is an\namplifying group of ideas. I am merely the observer who notes his own\nadhesion and draws attention, eagerly and earnestly, to what is going\non and to the quality of our present occasion. Will the reader at\nleast try to understand before he refutes? I am discussing here the\npossibility of an immense and hopeful revolution in human affairs and\nof an enlivening and ennobling change in our lives. I am discussing\nwhether our species, he and I with it and part of it, is to live or\ndie.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n  Preface                                              _p._ vii\n\n  Ch. I. Necessity of Religion to Human Life                  1\n\n     II. Subordination of Self the Essence of Religion        8\n\n    III. Need for a Restatement of Religion                  11\n\n     IV. Objective Expression of Modern Religion             20\n\n      V. The Frame of the Task before Mankind:\n           The World Commonweal                              27\n\n     VI. Broad Characteristics of the World Commonweal       32\n\n    VII. No Stable Utopia Is Contemplated                    55\n\n   VIII. The Open Conspiracy Must Be Heterogeneous           57\n\n     IX. Forces and Resistances in the Great Modern\n           Communities Now Prevalent, Which Will Be\n           Antagonistic to the Open Conspiracy               68\n\n      X. The Open Conspiracy and the Resistances of\n           the Less Industrialised Peoples                   95\n\n     XI. Resistances and Antagonistic Forces in Ourselves   112\n\n    XII. The Open Conspiracy Must begin as a Movement\n           of Explanation and Propaganda                    126\n\n   XIII. Early Constructive Work of the Open Conspiracy     144\n\n    XIV. Existing and Developing Movements with Which\n           the Open Conspiracy May Hope to Coalesce         164\n\n     XV. The Creative Home, Social Group and School: The\n           Present Waste of Youthful Seriousness            178\n\n    XVI. Progressive Development of the Activities of\n          the Open Conspiracy into a World Control and\n          Commonweal: The Hazards of the Conflict           185\n\n   XVII. The World Community                                194\n\n         Marginal Note                                      197\n\n\n\n\nTHE OPEN CONSPIRACY\n\n_Chapter I_\n\nNECESSITY OF RELIGION TO HUMAN LIFE\n\n\nFew people, if any, are always sustained by unselfish or religious\nmotives, and few or none are altogether beyond their influence.\nThe daily lives of the great majority of human beings are frankly\nirreligious; they seem to differ only in their scope, variety and\nintelligence from the lives of animals; they are determined by\ninstinctive impulses, individual desires and personal ends; they pass\nfrom one satisfaction or disappointment to another; they are attracted\nand deflected by casual encounters; they forget more or less completely\nand they resume. Nevertheless, the conduct of most lives is restricted\nand defined by the prevalent conceptions of what is honourable and\nbecoming, and right and wrong. Although the lives of the great run of\npeople are neither moral essentially nor essentially religious, they\nrespect current moral and religious forms and maxims, just as they\nconform to current usages and beaten tracks. It is the line of least\nresistance for them, and that suffices.\n\nCommunities have been held together in the past and are still held\ntogether by laws and moral codes systematised upon religious ideas,\nand this although few people have more than a superficial apprehension\nof such ideas. Religion in its completeness has always been the\npeculiarity of a minority; it has shaped and innervated communities\nbut never pervaded them throughout. But its presence seems to have\nbeen necessary for collective life. Without it morality was baseless\nand law unjustifiable. The intermittent disposition of most human\nbeings towards some sort of righteousness beyond self-seeking has been\nupheld, as some sprawling, weak-jointed climbing plant may be upheld\non a trellis, by that more steadfast minority of sincere and devoted\npersons. It is these latter who have preserved disinterested standards,\nand who still preserve them; who have been and who continue to be the\nsalt of the earth.\n\nReligious ideas in the past have derived from the most diverse\nemotional and intellectual origins in the integrating mind of\nman. Speculative explanations, metaphors hardened by usage into\nquasi-factual statements, fantasies arising out of germinating\nand suppressed impulses, false analogies, parables begotten and\nlit by flashes of spiritual insight, traditions misconceived and\ndistorted, dogmatic excesses in explicitness evoked by the irritation\nof contradictory criticism, the odd compromises of theological\ndiplomatists, the craving for supernatural sanctions and vindications\nand the nightmare creations of fear, that haunting shadow of all\nconscious life, have mingled inextricably in every religious fabric.\nBut the survival value of a religion to a community has lain always in\nthe practical assistance it afforded in the subordination of self and\nthe achievement of co-operative loyalties not otherwise obtainable.\nNo community seems ever to have been held together in wholesome\nand vigorous collective life by \u201cenlightened self-interest\u201d alone.\nEnlightened self-interest in exceptional cases and under slight or\nmoderate stresses may produce enough simulated disinterestedness to be\npractically undistinguishable from public virtue, and the great mass of\nlives in every community is no doubt kept at this or that moral level,\nand in this or that form of behaviour according to the quality and\nintensity of the beliefs that hold that community together with little\nor no co-operating force in the lives themselves. But somewhere and\neffectively in that community the sustaining beliefs of the community\nmust be passionately and sincerely held and maintained. A community\nwhere binding beliefs have decayed altogether is like a building whose\nmortar has been changed to sand. It may stand for a time, but it stands\nprecariously.\n\nNow in the communities in which we are living to-day there has been\na far-reaching weakening and change in religious beliefs. This has\nbeen due to an enormous growth of knowledge, to an enhanced vigour\nof criticism, to a relative enfeeblement of government and authority\nwhich released unprecedented freedom of speech and permitted the\ncrystallisation of doubts into coherent and militant denials. At the\nsame time there have been developments of the mechanical conditions of\nlife that have enlarged the scale of possible human operations, made\neconomical life increasingly international and brought once autonomous\nstates and regions into a mutually disintegrative intimacy of reaction.\nThe stresses upon our communities are greater than they have ever\nbeen and the blinding forces less. The outlook before our race seems\ntherefore to be wider, more uncertain and much more dangerous than has\never appeared before.\n\nIn the past, in the history of every community there have been\nphases of moral and religious confusion. The beliefs and ideas of\nright conduct that have served hitherto begin, in the presence of\nnew circumstances or new challenges, to lose authority or to fail in\nmeeting current moral problems. An age of relaxation and a sort of\nexperimental wickedness dawns. Scruples vanish. Treachery, cruelty,\nunrestrained self-indulgence, which have been kept under hatches,\nemerge conspicuously. Government becomes more adventurous, tyrannous\nand unjust, and the moral distinction between ruler and brigand fines\naway to the vanishing-point. There seems no longer any good faith\nnor any sweetness of soul in human life, except among the sacrificial\nsimple. What will for a better life still manifests itself in the world\nis for a while quite unable to take hold of the disorder. Italy in\nthe Machiavellian period and Germany after the intricate wars of the\nReformation may be cited as typical instances of such \u201cwicked\u201d phases\nin social history. Yet it was not that the heart of man changed for\nthe worse in those ages, not that there was a sudden generation of\nvipers, but that intellectual confusion had divided and enfeebled that\ngraver-spirited minority which had, under more assured conditions,\nsustained the faith of most people and the moral disciplines of\neveryone. The quality of the ingredients of the human mixture remained\nthe same, but the restraining and directive forces had in their\ninterplay come upon a phase of mutual neutralisation and collective\nineffectiveness.\n\nThere are many signs that to-day over large parts of the world there is\na drift towards such another disintegrative and distressful phase. The\nbrigand, the boss and the adventurer become portentously successful\nand immune. People who, in other times, would have been active and\nconfident in their own lives and vigorously co-operative in the control\nof human affairs are uncertain in their hearts and unhappy in their\ninterventions. The old faiths have become unconvincing, unsubstantial\nand insincere, and though there are clear intimations of a new faith in\nthe world, it still awaits embodiment in formul\u00e6 and organisations that\nwill bring it into effective reaction upon human affairs as a whole.\n\nThis present essay is an attempt to assemble these intimations in a\nform that will be available for the practical direction of the writer\u2019s\nand the reader\u2019s life.\n\n\n\n\n_Chapter II_\n\nSUBORDINATION OF SELF THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION\n\n\nThe religions that hitherto have served over wide regions and for\nconsiderable periods of time to sustain men in more or less orderly,\nhonest, decent and progressive societies, have been presented to the\ngenerality and accepted by the generality in extremely attenuated\nforms. In their beginnings they were all intense and uncompromising.\nChristianity, for example, began with the completest communism,\nBuddhism with an entire renunciation of earthly desire, Islam with the\npassionate and forcible dedication of the whole world to Allah. Sooner\nor later, however, the propagandist came to terms with human weakness\nand struck a bargain for a cheaper form of common proselyte.\n\nBut though the creed and practice might need lightening and fitting to\ncustomary humanity before they could be universally accepted, there\nappeared no essential conflict in the process between the intense and\nthe superficial form. The common man assented to everything in the\ndoctrine, and merely asked to have the more difficult and onerous terms\ndeferred or mitigated. His plea for his personal insufficiency was\nweakness and not dissent.\n\nIn their completeness, in their esoteric forms, in the life that was\nprofessionally _religious_, religions have always demanded great\nsubordinations of self. Therein lay their creative usefulness. There\nis no such thing as a self-contained religion, a private religious\nsolo. Certain forms of Protestantism and some mystical types come\nnear to making religion a secluded duet between the individual and\nhis divinity, but here that may be regarded as a perversion of the\nreligious impulse. Just as the normal sexual complex excites and stirs\nthe individual out of his egotism to serve the ends of the race, so the\nnormal religious process takes the individual out of his egotism for\nthe service of the community. It is not a bargain, a \u201csocial contract,\u201d\nbetween the individual and the community; it is a subordination of\nboth the existing individual and the existing community in relation to\nsomething, a divinity, a divine order, a standard, a righteousness,\nmore important than either. What is called in the phraseology of\ncertain religions \u201cconviction of sin\u201d and \u201cthe flight from the City\nof Destruction\u201d are familiar instances of this reference of the\nself-centred individual and the current social life to something far\nbetter than either the one or the other.\n\nThis is the third element in the religious relationship, a hope, a\npromise, an objective which turns the convert not only from himself\nbut from the \u201cworld\u201d as it is, towards better things. First comes\nself-disregard, then service, and then this reconstructive creative\nurgency.\n\nFor that minority of minds which I have already spoken of as the\nsalt of the earth, this aspect of religion seems to have been its\nprimary attraction. One has to remember that there is a will for\nreligion scattered throughout mankind. Religion has never pursued its\ndistinctive votaries; they have come to meet it. The desire to give\noneself to greater ends than the everyday life affords, and to give\noneself freely, is clearly dominant in that minority and traceable in\nan incalculable proportion of the majority.\n\n\n\n\n_Chapter III_\n\nNEED FOR A RESTATEMENT OF RELIGION\n\n\nEvery great religion has explained itself in the form of a history and\na cosmogony. It has been felt necessary to say _Why_ and _To\nwhat end_. Every religion has had necessarily to adopt the physical\nconceptions and usually also to assume many of the moral and social\nvalues current at the time of its foundation. It could not transcend\nthe philosophical phrases and attitudes that seemed then to supply the\nnatural frame for a faith, nor draw upon anything beyond the store of\nscientific knowledge of its time. In these conditions lurked the seeds\nof an ultimate decay and supersession of every religion.\n\nBut as the idea of continual change going farther and farther from\nexisting realities and never returning to them is a new one, each fresh\ndevelopment of religion in the world so far has been proclaimed in\nperfect good faith as the culminating and final truth. The suggestion\nof the possibility of further restatement is an unsettling suggestion;\nit seems to undermine conviction and it breaks the ranks of the\nbelievers because there are enormous variations in the capacities of\nmen to recognise the same spirit under a changing shape. While some\nintelligences can recognise the same God under a variety of names and\nsymbols without any severe strain, others cannot even detect the most\ncontrasted Gods one from the other, provided they wear the same mask\nand title. It appears a perfectly natural and reasonable thing to many\nminds to restate religion in terms of biological and psychological\nnecessity, while to others any variation in the phrasing of the faith\nseems to be nothing less than atheistical misrepresentations of the\nmost damnable kind. For them God, a God still anthropomorphic enough\nto have a will and purpose, to display preferences and reciprocate\nemotions, to be indeed a person, must be retained until the end of\ntime. For others, God can be thought of as a Great First Cause, as\nimpersonal and inhuman as atomic structure.\n\nIt is because of the historical and philosophical commitments they\nhave undertaken, and because of concessions made to common human\nweaknesses in regard to such once apparently minor but now vital moral\nissues as property, mental activity and public veracity--rather than\nof any inadequacy in their adaptation to psychological needs--that\nthe present discredit of recognised religions has come about. They no\nlonger seem even roughly truthful upon issues of fact, and they give\nno imperatives over large fields of conduct in which perplexity is\nprevalent. People will say: \u201cI could be perfectly happy leading the\nlife of a Catholic devotee if only I could believe.\u201d But most of the\nframework of religious explanation upon which that life is sustained is\ntoo old-fashioned and too irrelevant to admit of that thoroughness of\nbelief which is necessary for the devotion of intelligent people.\n\nGreat ingenuity has been shown by modern writers and thinkers in\nthe adaptation of venerated religious expressions to new ideas.\n_Peccavi._ The word \u201cGod\u201d is in most minds so associated with\nthe concept of religion that it is abandoned only with the greatest\nreluctance. The word remains though the idea is continually attenuated.\nHe is pushed farther and farther from actuality and His definition\nbecomes increasingly a bundle of negations, until at last, in His\nr\u00f4le of The Absolute, He becomes an entirely negative expression.\nWhile we can speak of good, say some, we can speak of God. God is the\npossibility of goodness, the good side of things. If phrases in which\nthe name of God is used are to be abandoned, they argue, religion will\nbe left speechless before many occasions.\n\nCertainly there is something beyond the individual that is and the\nworld that is; on that we have already insisted as a characteristic\nof all religions; that persuasion is the essence of faith and the\nkey to courage. But whether that is to be considered, even after the\nmost strenuous exercises in personification, as a greater person or\na comprehensive person is another matter. Personality is the last\nvestige of anthropomorphism. The modern urge to a precise veracity is\nagainst such concessions to traditional expression. On the other hand\nthere is in many fine religious minds a desire amounting almost to a\nnecessity for an object of devotion so individualised as to be capable\nat least of a receptive consciousness even if no definite response\nis conceded. One type of mind can accept a reality in itself which\nanother must project and dramatise before it can comprehend it and\nreact to it. The human soul is an intricate thing which will not endure\nelucidation when that passes beyond a certain degree of harshness and\nroughness. The human spirit has learnt love, devotion, obedience and\nhumility in relation to other personalities, and with difficulty it\ntakes the final step to a transcendent subordination, from which the\nlast shred of personality has been stripped. In matters not immediately\nmaterial, language has to work by metaphors, and though every metaphor\ncarries its own peculiar risks of confusion we cannot do without them.\nGreat intellectual tolerance is necessary, therefore--a cultivated\ndisposition to translate and retranslate from one metaphysical or\nemotional idiom to another--if there is not to be a deplorable wastage\nof moral force in our world.\n\nThree profound differences between the mental dispositions of the\npresent time and those of preceding ages have to be realised if current\ndevelopments of the religious impulse are to be seen in their correct\nrelationship to the religious life of the past. There has been a great\nadvance in the analysis of psychic processes and the courage with\nwhich men have probed into the origins of human thought and feeling.\nFollowing upon the biological advances that have made us recognise fish\nand amphibian in the bodily structure of man, have come these parallel\ndevelopments in which we see elemental fear and lust and self-love\nmoulded, modified and exalted, under the stress of social progress,\ninto intricate human motives. Our conception of sin and our treatment\nof sin have been profoundly modified by this analysis. Our former sins\nare seen as ignorances, inadequacies and bad habits, and the moral\nconflict is robbed of three-fourths of its ego-centred melodramatic\nquality. We are no longer moved to be less wicked; we are moved to\norganise our conditioned reflexes and lead a life less fragmentary and\nsilly.\n\nSecondly, the conception of individuality has been influenced and\nrelaxed by biological thought, so that we do not think so readily of\nthe individual _contra mundum_ as our fathers did. We begin to\nrealise that we are egotists by misapprehension. Nature cheats the self\nto serve the purposes of the species by filling it with wants that war\nagainst its private interests. As gut eyes are opened to these things,\nwe see ourselves as beings greater or less than the definitive self.\nMan\u2019s soul is no longer his own. It is, he discovers, part of a greater\nbeing which lived before he was born and will survive him. The idea\nof a survival of the definite individual with all the accidents and\nidiosyncrasies of his temporal nature upon him, dissolves to nothing in\nthis new view of immortality.\n\nThe third of the main contrasts between modern and former thought which\nhave rendered the general shapes of established religion old-fashioned\nand unserviceable, is a reorientation of current ideas about time.\nThe powerful disposition of the human mind to explain everything as\nthe inevitable unfolding of a past event which, so to speak, sweeps\nthe future helplessly before it, has been checked by a mass of subtle\ncriticisms. The conception of progress as a broadening and increasing\npurpose, a conception which is taking hold of the human imagination\nmore and more firmly, turns religious life towards the future. We\nthink no longer of submission to the irrevocable decrees of absolute\ndominion, but of participation in an adventure on behalf of a power\nthat gains strength and establishes itself. The history of our world,\nwhich has been unfolded to us by science, runs counter to all the\nhistories on which religions have been based. There was no Creation in\nthe past, we begin to realise, but eternally there is creation; there\nwas no Fall to account for the conflict of good and evil, but a stormy\nascent. Life as we know it is a mere beginning.\n\nIt seems unavoidable that if religion is to develop unifying and\ndirective power in the present confusion of human affairs it must\nadapt itself to this forward-looking, individuality-analysing turn\nof mind; it must divest itself of its sacred histories, its gross\npreoccupations, its posthumous prolongation of personal ends. The\ndesire for service, for subordination, for permanent effect, for an\nescape from the distressful pettiness and morality of the individual\nlife, is the undying element in every religious system. The time has\ncome to strip religion right down to that, to strip it for greater\ntasks than it has ever faced before. The histories and symbols that\nserved our fathers encumber and divide us. Sacraments and rituals\nharbour disputes and waste our scanty emotions. The explanation of why\nthings are is an unnecessary effort in religion. The essential fact in\nreligion is the desire for religion and not how it came about. If you\ndo not want religion, no persuasions, no convictions about your place\nin the universe can give it to you. The first sentence in the modern\ncreed must be, not \u201cI believe\u201d but \u201cI give myself.\u201d\n\nTo what? And how? To these questions we must next address ourselves.\n\n\n\n\n_Chapter IV_\n\nOBJECTIVE EXPRESSION OF MODERN RELIGION\n\n\nTo give oneself religiously is a continuing operation expressed in a\nseries of acts. It can be nothing else. You cannot dedicate yourself\nand then go away to live just as you have lived before. It is a poor\ntravesty of religion that does not produce an essential change in the\nlife which embraces it. But in the established and older religions\nof our race, this change of conduct has involved much self-abasement\nmerely to the God or Gods, or much self-mortification merely with\na view to the moral perfecting of self. Christian devotion, for\nexample, in these early stages, before the hermit life gave place\nto organised monastic life, did not to any extent direct itself to\nservice except the spiritual service of other human beings. But as\nChristianity became a definite social organising force, it took on\na great series of healing, comforting, helping, manufacturing and\neducational activities. The modern tendency has been and is all in the\ndirection of minimising what one might call self-centred devotion and\nself-subjugation, and of expanding and developing external service. The\nidea of inner perfectibility dwindles with the diminishing importance\nattached to individuality. We cease to think of mortifying or exalting\nor perfecting ourselves and seek to lose ourselves in a greater life.\nWe think less and less of \u201cconquering\u201d self and more and more of\nescaping from self. It we attempt to perfect ourselves in any respect\nit is only as a soldier sharpens and polishes an essential weapon.\n\nOur quickened apprehension of continuing change, our broader and fuller\nvision of the history of life, disabuse our minds of many limitations\nset to the imaginations of our predecessors. Much that they saw as\nfixed and determinate, we see as transitory and controllable. They\nsaw life fixed in its species and subjected to irrevocable laws. We\nsee life struggling insecurely but with a gathering successfulness\nfor freedom and power against restriction and death. We see life\ncoming at last to our tragic and hopeful human level. Certain great\npossibilities, certain mighty problems, we realise, confront mankind\nto-day. They frame our existences. The practical aspect, the material\nform, the embodiment, of the modernised religious impulse is the\ndirection of the whole life to the solution of these problems and the\nrealisation of their possibilities.\n\nThe modern religious life like all forms of religious life must needs\nhave its own subtle and deep inner activities, its meditations, its\nself-confrontations, its phases of stress and search and appeal, its\nserene and prayerful moods, but these inward aspects do not come into\nthe scope of this present enquiry, which is concerned entirely with the\noutward shape, the direction and the organisation of modern religious\neffort, with the question of what, given religious devotion, we have to\ndo and how that has to be done.\n\nNow as the modern vision of life has grown clear, certain vast\npossibilities and certain great dangers have become plain. They\nchallenge mankind. They furnish an entirely new frame and setting for\nthe moral life. In the fixed and limited outlook of the past, practical\ngood works took the form mainly of palliative measures against evils\nthat were conceived of as incurable; the religious community nursed the\nsick, fed the hungry, provided sanctuary for the fugitive, pleaded with\nthe powerful for mercy. It did not dream of preventing sickness, famine\nor tyranny. Otherworldliness was its ready refuge from the invincible\nevil and confusion of the existing scheme of things. It is possible\nnow to imagine an order in human affairs from which these evils have\nbeen largely or entirely eliminated. More and more people are coming\nto realise that such an order is a material possibility. And with the\nrealisation that this is a material possibility, we can no longer\nbe content with a field of good deeds and right action restricted\nto palliative and consolatory activities. Such things are merely\n\u201cfirst-aid.\u201d The religious mind grows bolder than it has ever been\nbefore. It pushes through the curtain it once imagined was a barrier.\nIt apprehends its larger obligations. The way in which our activities\nconduce to the realisation of that conceivable better order in human\naffairs, becomes the new criterion of conduct.\n\nThe realisation of this conceivable better order involves certain\nnecessary achievements. It is impossible for any clear-headed person\nto suppose that the ever more destructive stupidities of war can be\neliminated from human affairs until some common political control\ndominates the earth, and unless certain pressures due to the growth of\npopulation, due to the enlarging scope of human operations or due to\nconflicting standards and traditions of life, are disposed of. To avoid\nthe positive evils of war and to attain the new levels of prosperity\nand power that now come into view, an effective world control, not\nmerely of armed force but of the production and main movements of\nstaple commodities and the drift and expansion of population, is\nrequired. It is absurd to dream of peace and world-wide progress\nwithout that much control. These things assured, the abilities and\nenergies of a greatly increased proportion of human beings could be\ndiverted to the happy activities of scientific research and creative\nwork with an ever-increasing release and enlargement of human\npossibility. Such a forward stride in human life, the first stride in a\nmighty continuing advance, an advance to which no limit appears, is now\nmaterially possible. The opportunity is offered to mankind. But there\nis no certainty, no material necessity, that it should ever be taken.\nIt will not be taken by mankind inadvertently. It can only be taken\nthrough such an organisation of will and energy to take it as this\nworld has never seen before.\n\nThese are the new conditions that unfold themselves before the more\nalert minds of our generation and which will presently become the\ngeneral mental background, as the modern interpretations of the history\nof life and of material and mental possibilities establish themselves.\nEvil political, social and economic usages and arrangements may seem\nobdurate and huge, but they are neither permanent nor uncontrollable.\nThey can be controlled, however, only by an effort more powerful and\ndetermined than the instincts and inertias that sustain them. Religion,\nmodern and disillusioned, has for its outward task to set itself to\nthe control and direction of political, social and economic life,\nor admit itself a mere drug for easing discomfort. Can it or can it\nnot synthesise the needed effort to lift mankind out of our present\ndisorders, dangers, baseness, frustrations and futilities, to a phase\nof relative security, accumulating knowledge, systematic and continuing\ngrowth in power and the widespread deep happiness of hopeful and\nincreasing life?\n\nOur answer here is that it can, and our subject now is to enquire what\nare the necessary opening stages in the synthesis of that effort.\nWe write here for those who believe that it can, and who do already\ngrasp the implications of world history and contemporary scientific\nachievement.\n\n\n\n\n_Chapter V_\n\nTHE FRAME OF THE TASK BEFORE MANKIND:\n\nTHE WORLD COMMONWEAL\n\n\nBefore we can consider the forms and methods of attacking their\ninevitable task that the serious minority of human beings must adopt,\nit will be well to draw the main lines and attempt some measure of the\nmagnitude of that task. What are the new forms that it is sought to\nimpose upon human life and how are they to be evolved from or imposed\nupon the current forms? And against what passive and active resistances\nhas this to be done?\n\nThere can be no pause for replacement in the affairs of life. Day must\nfollow day and the common activities continue. The new world as a going\nconcern must arise out of the old as a going concern.\n\nNow the most comprehensive conception of this new world is of one\npolitically, socially and economically unified. Within that frame fall\nall the other ideas of our progressive ambition. To this end a small\nbut increasing body of people in the world set their faces and seek to\ndirect their lives. Still more at present apprehend it as a possibility\nbut do not _dare_ to desire it, because of the enormous\ndifficulties that intervene and because they see as yet no intimations\nof a way through or round these difficulties. The great majority of\nhuman beings have still to see the human adventure as one whole; they\nare obsessed by the air of permanence and finality in established\nthings; they accept current reality as ultimate reality. They take the\nworld as they find it. But here we are writing for the modern-minded,\nand for them it is impossible to think of the world as secure and\nsatisfactory until there exists a single world commonweal, preventing\nwar and controlling those moral, biological and economic forces that\nwould otherwise lead to wars.\n\nThe method of direction of such a world commonweal is not likely to\nimitate the methods of existing sovereign states. It will be a new\nsort of direction with a new psychology. There will be little need for\nPresident or King to lead the marshalled hosts of humanity, for where\nthere is no war there is no need of any leader to lead hosts anywhere,\nand in a polyglot world a parliament of mankind is an inconceivable\ninstrument of government. The fundamental organisation of contemporary\nstates is still plainly military and that is exactly what a world\norganisation cannot be. Flags, uniforms, national anthems, patriotism\nsedulously cultivated in church and school, the brag, blare and bluster\nof our competing sovereignties, belong to the phase of development we\nwould supersede. The reasonable desire of all of us is that we should\nhave the collective affairs of the world managed by suitably equipped\ngroups of the most interested, intelligent and devoted people and\nthat their activities should be subjected to a free, open, watchful\ncriticism, restrained from making spasmodic interruptions but powerful\nenough to modify or supersede without haste or delay whatever is\nweakening or unsatisfactory in the general direction.\n\nA world movement for the supersession or enlargement or fusion of\nexisting political, economic and social institutions, must necessarily,\nas it grows, draw closer and closer to questions of practical\ncontrol. It is likely in its growth to incorporate many active public\nservants, and many industrial and financial leaders and directors.\nIt may also assimilate great numbers of intelligent workers. As its\nactivities spread it will work out a whole system of special methods of\nco-operation. It will learn as it grows and by growing the business of\ngeneral direction and how to develop its critical function. So that the\nmovement we contemplate will by its very nature be one aiming, not so\nmuch to set up a world direction as to become itself a world direction,\nand the educational and militant forms of its opening phase will, as\nexperience is gained and power and responsibility acquired, evoke step\nby step forms of administration and research and correction.\n\nThe modernisation of the religious impulse leads us straight to the\neffort for the establishment of the world state as a duty, and the\nclose consideration of the necessary organisation of that effort\nwill bring the reader to the conclusion that a movement aiming at\nthe establishment of a world-directorate, however restricted that\nmovement may be at first in numbers and power, must either contemplate\nthe prospect of itself developing in part or as a whole into a\nworld-directorate, and by assimilation, as a whole into a modern world\ncommunity, or admit from the outset the futility, the spare-time\namateurishness, of its gestures.\n\n\n\n\n_Chapter VI_\n\nBROAD CHARACTERISTICS OF THE WORLD COMMONWEAL\n\n\nContinuing our examination of the practical task before the modern\nmind, we may next note the main lines of contemporary aspiration\nwithin this comprehensive outline of a world commonweal. Any sort of\nunification of human affairs will not serve the ends we seek, we aim\nat a particular sort of unification; a world C\u00e6sar is hardly better\nfrom the progressive viewpoint than world chaos; the unity we seek must\nmean the liberation of human thought, experiment and creative effort. A\nsuccessful conspiracy merely to seize governments and wield and retain\nworld power would be at best only the empty frame of success, it might\nbe the exact reverse of success. Release from the threat of war and\nthe waste of international economic conflicts is a poor release if it\ndemands as its price the loss of all other liberties.\n\nIt is because we desire a unification of human direction, not simply\nfor the sake of unity, but as a means to certain definite ends,\nthat it is necessary, at any cost--in delay, in loss of effective\nforce, in strategic or tactical disadvantage--that the light of free,\nabundant criticism should play upon that unified direction and upon\nthe movements and organisations leading to the establishment of that\nunified direction.\n\nMan is an imperfect animal and never quite trustworthy in the dark.\nNeither morally nor intellectually is he safe from lapses. Most of\nus who are past our first youth know how little we can even trust\nourselves, and are glad to have our activities checked and guarded\nby a sense of inspection. It is for this reason that a movement to\nrealise the conceivable better state of the world, must deny itself\nthe advantages of secret methods or tactical insincerities. It must\nleave that to its adversaries. We must declare our end plainly from the\noutset and risk no misunderstandings of our procedure.\n\nThe conspiracy of modern religion against the established institutions\nof the world must be an open conspiracy and cannot remain righteous\notherwise. It is lost if it goes underground. Every step to world unity\nmust be taken in the daylight, or the sort of unity that will be won\nwill be found to be scarcely worth the winning. The essential task will\nhave to be recommenced within the mere frame of unity attained.\n\nThis candid attempt to take possession of the whole world must be made\nin the name and for the sake of science and creative activity. It is to\nrelease science and creative ability, and every stage in the struggle\nmust be watched and criticised, lest there be any sacrifice of these\nends to the exigencies of conflict.\n\nThe security of creative progress and creative activity implies a\ncompetent regulation of the economic life in the collective interest.\nThere must be food, shelter and leisure for all. The fundamental needs\nof the animal life must be assured before human life can have free\nplay. Man does not live by bread alone; he eats that he may learn and\nadventure creatively, but unless he eats he cannot adventure. His\nlife is primarily economic, as a house is primarily a foundation, and\neconomic justice and efficiency must underlie all other activities,\nbut to judge human society and organise political and social activities\nentirely on economic grounds is to forget the objectives of life\u2019s\ncampaign in a pre-occupation with supply.\n\nIt is true that man, like the animal world in general from which he\nhas arisen, is the creature of a struggle for sustenance, but unlike\nthe animals, man can resort to methods of escape from that competitive\npressure upon the means of subsistence, which has been the lot of every\nother animal species. He can restrain the increase in his numbers\nand he seems capable of still quite undefined expansions of his\nproductivity per head of population. He can escape therefore from the\nstruggle for subsistence altogether with a surplus of energy such as no\nother kind of animal species has ever possessed. Intelligent control\nof population is a possibility which puts man outside the competitive\nprocesses that have hitherto ruled the modification of species, and he\ncan be released from these processes in no other way.\n\nThere is a clear hope that later, directed breeding will come within\nhis scope, but that goes beyond his present range of practical\nachievement, and we need not discuss it further here. Suffice it\nfor us here that the world community of our desires, the organised\nworld community conducting and ensuring its own progress, requires a\ndeliberate collective control of population as a primary condition.\n\nThere is no strong instinctive desire for multitudinous offspring\nas such, in the feminine make-up. The reproductive impulses operate\nindirectly. Nature ensures a pressure of population through passions\nand instincts that, given sufficient knowledge, intelligence and\nfreedom on the part of women, can be satisfactorily gratified and\ntranquillised if need be, without the production of numerous children.\nVery slight adjustments in social and economic arrangements will, in\na world of clear available knowledge and straightforward practice\nin these matters, supply sufficient inducement or discouragement to\naffect the general birthrate or the birthrate of specific types as the\ndirective sense of the community may consider desirable. So long as\nthe majority of human beings are begotten involuntarily in lust and\nignorance, so long does man remain like any other animal under the\nmoulding pressure of competition for subsistence. Social and political\nprocesses change entirely in their character when we recognise the\npossibility of practicability of this fundamental revolution in human\nbiology.\n\nIn a world so relieved, the production of staple necessities presents\na series of problems altogether less distressful than those of the\npresent scramble for possessions and self-indulgence on the part of the\nsuccessful and for work and a bare living on the part of the masses.\nWith the increase of population unrestrained there was, as the end\nof the economic process, no practical alternative to a multitudinous\nequality at the level of bare subsistence, except through such an\ninequality of economic arrangements as allowed a minority to maintain a\nhigher standard of life by withholding whatever surplus of production\nit could grasp, from consumption in mere proletarian increase. In the\npast and at present, what is called the capitalist system, that is to\nsay the unsystematic exploitation of production by private owners\nunder the protection of the law, has, on the whole, in spite of much\nhaste and conflict, worked beneficially, by checking the gravitation to\na universal low-grade consumption which would have been the inevitable\noutcome of socialism oblivious of biological processes. With effective\nrestraint upon the increase of population, however, entirely new\npossibilities open out before mankind.\n\nThe besetting vice of economic science, orthodox and unorthodox alike,\nhas been the vice of beginning in the air, with current practice and\ncurrent convictions, with questions of wages, prices, values and\npossession, when the profounder issues of human association are really\nnot to be found at all on these levels. The primary issues of human\nassociation are biological and psychological, and the essentials of\neconomics are problems in applied physics and chemistry. The first\nthing we should examine is what we want to do with natural resources,\nand the next, how to get men to do what has to be done as pleasurably\nand effectively as possible. Then we should have a standard by which to\njudge the methods of to-day.\n\nBut the academic economists and still more so Marx and his followers,\nrefuse to deal with these fundamentals, and with a stupid air of sound\npractical wisdom, insist on opening up their case with an uncritical\nacceptance of the common antagonism of employers and employed and a\nlong rigmarole about profits and wages. Ownership and expropriated\nlabour are only one set of many possible sets of economic method.\n\nThe economists, however, will attend seriously only to the current\nset, the rest they ignore, and the Marxists with their uncontrollable\ndisposition to use nicknames in the place of judgments, condemn all\nothers as \u201cUtopian\u201d--a word as final in its dismissal from the minds\nof the elect as that other pet counter in the Communist substitute for\nthought, \u201cBourgeois.\u201d If they can persuade themselves that an idea or\na statement is \u201cUtopian\u201d or \u201cBourgeois,\u201d it does not seem to matter in\nthe least to them whether it is right or wrong. It is disposed of. Just\nas in genteeler circles anything is disposed of that can be labelled\n\u201catheistical,\u201d \u201csubversive\u201d or \u201cdisloyal.\u201d\n\nIf a century and a half ago the world had submitted its problems of\ntransport to the economists they would have put aside, with as little\nwasted breath and ink as possible, all talk about railways, motor-cars,\nsteamships and aeroplanes, and, with a fine sense of extravagance\nrebuked, set themselves to long neuralgic dissertations, disputations\nand treatises upon high-roads and the methods of connecting them,\nturnpike gates, canals, the influence of lock-fees on bargemen, tidal\nlanding places, anchorages, surplus carrying capacity, carriers,\ncaravans, hand-barrows and the pedestrianariat. There would have been\na rapid and easy differentiation in feeling and requirements between\nthe horse-owning minority and the walking majority; the wrongs of the\nlatter would have tortured the mind of every philosopher who could\nnot ride and been minimised by every philosopher who could, and there\nwould have been a broad rift between the narrow footpath school, the no\nfootpath school and the school which would look forward to a time when\nevery horse would have to be led along one universal footpath under\nthe dictatorship of the pedestrianariat. All with the profoundest\ngravity and dignity. These things, footpaths and roads and canals with\ntheir traffic, were \u201creal,\u201d and \u201cUtopian\u201d projects for getting along\nat thirty or forty miles an hour or more up hill and against wind and\ntide, let alone the still more incredible suggestion of air transport,\nwould have been smiled and sneered out of court. Life went about on its\nlegs, with a certain assistance from wheels, or floated, rowed and was\nblown about on water; so it had been--and so it would always be.\n\nBut as soon as this time-honoured pre-occupation with the allotment of\nthe shares of originators, organisers, workers, owners of material,\ncredit dealers and tax collectors in the total product, ceases to be\ndealt with as the primary question in economics, as soon as we liberate\nour minds from a pre-occupation which from the outset necessarily makes\nthat science a squabble rather than a science, and begin our attack\nupon the subject with a survey of the machinery and other productive\nmaterial required in order that the staple needs of mankind should\nbe satisfied, if we go on from that to consider the way in which all\nthis material and machinery can be worked and the product distributed\nwith the least labour and the greatest possible satisfaction, we\nshift our treatment of economic questions towards standards by which\nall current methods of exploitation, employment and finance can be\njudged rather than wrangle over. We can dismiss the question of the\nclaims of this sort of participant or that for later and subordinate\nconsideration, and view each variety of human assistance in the general\neffort entirely from the standpoint of what makes that assistance least\nonerous and most effective.\n\nThe germs of such really scientific economics exist already in the\nstudy of industrial organisation and industrial psychology. As the\nscience of industrial psychology in particular develops, we shall\nfind all this discussion of ownership, profit, wages, finance and\naccumulation, which has been treated hitherto as the primary issues\nof economics, falling into place under the larger enquiry of what\nconventions in these matters, what system of money and what conceptions\nof property, yield the greatest stimulus and the least friction in that\nworld-wide system of co-operation which must constitute the general\neconomic basis to the activities of a unified mankind.\n\nManifestly the supreme direction of the complex of human economic\nactivities in such a world must centre upon a bureau of information and\nadvice, which will take account of all the resources of the planet,\nestimate current needs, apportion productive activities and control\ndistribution. The topographical and geological surveys of modern\ncivilised communities, their government maps, their periodic issue\nof agricultural and industrial statistics, are the first crude and\ninco-ordinated beginnings of such an economic world-intelligence. In\nthe propaganda work of David Lubin, a pioneer whom mankind must not\nforget, and in his International Institute of Agriculture in Rome,\nthere were the beginnings of an impartial review month by month and\nyear by year of world production, world needs and world transport. Such\na great central organisation of economic science would necessarily\nproduce direction; it would indicate what had best be done here, there\nand everywhere, solve general tangles, examine, approve and initiate\nfresh methods and arrange the transitional process from old to new.\nIt would not be an organisation of will, imposing its will upon a\nreluctant or recalcitrant race; it would be a direction, just as a map\nis a direction. A map imposes no will on anyone, breaks no one in to\nits \u201cpolicy.\u201d And yet we obey our maps.\n\nThe will to have the map, full, accurate and up-to-date and the\ndetermination to have its indications respected, would have to pervade\nthe whole community. To nourish and sustain that will must be the task\nnot of any particular social or economic division of the community but\nof the whole body of religious-minded people in that community. The\norganisation and preservation of that power of will is the primary\nundertaking, therefore, of a world revolution aiming at universal\npeace, welfare and happy activity.\n\nThe older and still prevalent conception of government is bullying,\nis the breaking-in and subjugation of the \u201csubject,\u201d to the God, or\nKing, or Lords of the community. Will-bending, the overcoming of the\nrecalcitrant junior and inferior, was an essential process in the\nestablishment of primitive societies, and its tradition still rules our\neducation and law. No doubt there must be a necessary accommodation of\nthe normal human will to every form of society; no man is immaculately\nvirtuous; but compulsion and restraint are the friction of the social\nmachine and, other things being equal, the less compulsive social\narrangements are, the more willingly, naturally and easily they are\naccepted, the less wasteful of moral effort and the happier that\ncommunity will be. The ideal state, other things being equal, is\nthe state with the fewest possible number of will fights and will\nsuppressions. This must be a primary consideration in determining the\neconomic, biological and mental organisation of the world community at\nwhich we aim.\n\nWe have advanced the opinion that the control of population pressure\nis practicable without any violent conflict with \u201chuman nature,\u201d that\ngiven a proper atmosphere of knowledge and intention, there need be\nfar less suppression of will in relation to production than prevails\nto-day. In the same way, it is possible that the general economic life\nof mankind may be made universally satisfactory, that there may be an\nabundance out of all comparison greater than the existing supply of\nthings necessary for human well being, freedom and activity, with not\nmerely not more but infinitely less subjugation and enslavement than\nnow occurs. Man is still but half born out of the blind struggle for\nexistence and his nature still partakes of the infinite wastefulness of\nhis mother Nature. He has still to learn how to price the commodities\nhe covets in terms of human life. He is indeed only beginning to\nrealise that as something to be learnt. He wastes will and human\npossibility extravagantly in his current economic methods.\n\nWe know nowadays that the nineteenth century expended a great wealth\nof intelligence upon a barren controversy between Individualism and\nSocialism. They were treated as mutually exclusive alternatives instead\nof being questions of degree. Human society has been, is and always\nmust be, an intricate system of adjustments between unconditional\nliberty and the disciplines and subordinations of co-operative\nenterprise. Affairs do not move simply from a more individualist\nto a more socialist state or vice versa; there may be a release of\nindividual initiative going on here and standardisation or restraint\nincreasing there. Personal property never can be socially guaranteed\nand yet unlimited in action and extent as the extremer individualists\ndesired, nor can it be \u201cabolished\u201d as the extremer socialists\nproposed. Property is not robbery, as Proudhon asserted; it is the\nprotection of things against promiscuous and mainly wasteful use. In\nsome cases it may restrict or forbid a use of things that would be\ngenerally advantageous, and it may be and is frequently unfair in its\nassignment of initiative, but the remedy for that is not an abolition\nbut a revision of property. In the concrete it is a form necessary\nfor liberty of action upon material, while abstracted as money, that\nliquidated generalised form of property, it is a ticket for individual\nliberty of movement and individual choice of reward.\n\nThe economic history of mankind is a history of the operation of\nthe idea of property; it relates the conflict of the unlimited\nacquisitiveness of egoistic individuals against the resentment of the\ndisinherited and unsuccessful and the far less effective consciousness\nof a general welfare. Money grew out of a system of abstracting\nconventions and has been subjected to a great variety of restrictions,\nmonopolisations and regulations. It has never been an altogether\nlogical device and it has permitted the most extensive and complex\ndevelopments of credit, debt and dispossession. All these developments\nhave brought with them characteristic forms of misuse and corruption.\nThe story is intricate and the tangle of relationships of dependence,\nof pressure, of interception, of misdirected services, crippling\nembarrassments and crushing obligations in which we live to-day admits\nof no such simple and general solutions as many exponents of socialism,\nfor example, seem to consider possible.\n\nBut the thought and investigations of the past century or so have made\nit clear that a classification of property according to the nature of\nthe rights exercisable and according to the range of ownership involved\nmust be the basis of any system of social justice in the future.\n\nCertain things, the ocean, the air, rare wild animals, must be the\ncollective property of all mankind and cannot be altogether safe until\nthey are so regarded, and until some concrete body exists to exercise\nthese proprietary rights. Whatever collective control exists must\nprotect these universal properties, the sea from derelicts, the strange\nshy things of the wild from extermination by the hunter and the foolish\ncollector. The extinction of many beautiful creatures is one of the\npenalties our world is paying for its sluggishness in developing a\ncollective common rule. And there are many staple things and general\nneeds that now also demand a unified control in the common interests.\nThe raw material of the earth should be for all, not to be monopolised\nby any acquisitive individual or acquisitive sovereign state, and not\nto be withheld from exploitation for the general benefit by any chance\nclaims to territorial priority of this or that backward or bargaining\nperson or tribe.\n\nIn the past, most of these universal concerns have had to be left to\nthe competitive enterprise of profit-seeking individuals because there\nwere as yet no collectivities organised to the pitch of ability needed\nto develop and control these concerns, but surely nobody in his senses\nbelieves that the supply and distribution of staple commodities about\nthe earth by irresponsible persons and companies working entirely for\nmonetary gain, is the best possible method from the point of view of\nthe race as a whole. The land of the earth, all utilisable natural\nproducts, have fallen very largely under the rules and usages of\npersonal property because that was the only recognised and practicable\nform of administrative proprietorship in the past. The development\nboth of extensive proprietary companies and of government departments\nwith economic functions has been a matter of the last few centuries,\nthe development that is to say of communal, more or less impersonal\nownership, and it is only through these developments that the idea of\norganised collectivity of proprietorship has become credible.\n\nEven in quite modern state enterprises there is a tendency to recall\nthe r\u00f4le of the vigilant, jealous and primitive personal proprietor in\nthe fiction of ownership by His Majesty the King. In Great Britain,\nfor example, George Rex is still dimly supposed to hover over the\nPostmaster General of his Post Office, approve, disapprove and call\nhim to account. But the Postal Union of the world which steers a\nregistered letter from Chile to Norway or from Ireland to Pekin is\nalmost completely divorced from the convention of an individual owner.\nIt works; it is criticised without awe or malice. Except for the\nstealing and steaming of letters by the political police of various\ncountries, it works fairly well. And the only force behind it to keep\nit working well is the conscious common sense of mankind.\n\nBut when we have stipulated for the replacement of individual private\nownership by more highly organised forms of collective ownership,\nsubject to free criticism and responsible to the whole republic of\nmankind, in the general control of sea and land, in the getting,\npreparation and distribution of staple products and in transport,\nwe have really named all the possible generalisations of concrete\nownership that the most socialistic of contemporaries will be disposed\nto demand. And if we add to that the necessary maintenance of a money\nsystem by a central world authority upon a basis that will make\nmoney keep faith with the worker who earns it, and represent from\nfirst to last for him the value in staple commodities he was given\nto understand it was to have, and if we conceive credit adequately\ncontrolled in the general interest by a socialised world banking\norganisation, we shall have defined the entire realm from which\nindividual property and unrestricted individual enterprise have been\nexcluded. Beyond that, the science of social psychology will probably\nassure us that the best work will be done for the world by individuals\nfree to exploit their abilities as they wish. If the individual\nland-owner or mineral-owner disappears altogether from the world, he\nwill probably be replaced over large areas by tenants with considerable\nsecurity of tenure, by householders and by licensees under collective\nproprietors. It will be the practice, the recognised best course,\nto allow the cultivator to profit as fully as possible by his own\nindividual productivity and to leave the householder to fashion his\nhouse and garden after his own desire.\n\nSuch in the very broadest terms is the character of the world\ncommonweal towards which the modern imagination is moving, so far as\nits direction and economic life are concerned. The organisation of\ncollective bodies capable of exercising these wider proprietorships\nwhich cannot be properly used in the common interest by uncorrelated\nindividual owners, is the positive practical problem before the\nintelligent portion of mankind to-day. The nature of such collective\nbodies is still a series of open questions, even upon such points as\nwhether they will be elected bodies or groups deriving their authority\nfrom other sanctions. Their scope and methods of operation, their\nrelations to one another and to the central bureau of intelligence,\nremain also to be defined. But before we conclude this essay we may be\nable to find precisions for at least the beginning of such definition.\n\nNineteenth-century socialism in its various forms, including the\nindurated formul\u00e6 of communism, has been a series of projects for\nthe establishment of such collective controls, for the most part\nvery sketchy projects from which the necessary factor of a sound\npsychological analysis was almost completely wanting. Primarily\nmovements of protest and revolt against the blazing injustices arising\nout of the selfishly individualistic exploitation of the new and\nmore productive technical and financial methods of the eighteenth\nand nineteenth centuries, they have been apt to go beyond the limits\nof reasonable socialisation in their demands and to minimise absurdly\nthe difficulties and dangers of collective control. Indignation and\nimpatience were their ruling moods and if they constructed little they\nexposed much. We are better able to measure the magnitude of the task\nbefore us because of the clearances and lessons achieved by these\npioneer movements.\n\n\n\n\n_Chapter VII_\n\nNO STABLE UTOPIA IS CONTEMPLATED\n\n\nThis unified world towards which the efforts of the religious minority\nwould direct human activities cannot be pictured for the reader as\nany static and stereotyped spectacle of happiness. Indeed one may\ndoubt if such a thing as happiness is possible without steadily\nchanging conditions involving continually enlarging and exhilarating\nopportunities. Mankind released from the pressure of population, the\nwaste of warfare and the private monopolisation of the sources of\nwealth, will face the universe with a great and increasing surplus of\nwill and energy. Change and novelty will be the order of life; each day\nwill differ from its predecessor in its greater amplitude of interest.\nLife which was once routine, endurance and mischance, will become\nadventure and discovery. It will no longer be \u201cthe old, old story.\u201d\n\nWe have still barely emerged from among the animals in their\nstruggle for existence. We live only in the early dawn of human\nself-consciousness and in the first awakening of the spirit of mastery.\nWe believe that the persistent exploration of our outward and inward\nworlds by scientific and artistic endeavour will lead to developments\nof power and activity upon which at present we can set no limits nor\ngive any certain form.\n\nOur antagonists are confusion of mind, want of courage, want of\ncuriosity and want of imagination, indolence and spendthrift egotism.\nThese are the enemies against which the Open Conspiracy arrays itself;\nthese are the jailers of human freedom and achievement.\n\n\n\n\n_Chapter VIII_\n\nTHE OPEN CONSPIRACY MUST BE HETEROGENEOUS\n\n\nThis open and declared intention of establishing a world order out\nof the present patchwork of particularist governments, of effacing\nthe militarist conceptions that have hitherto given governments\ntheir typical form, and of removing credit and the broad fundamental\nprocesses of economic life out of reach of private profit-seeking\nand individual monopolisation, which is the substance of this Open\nConspiracy to which the modern religious mind must necessarily address\nits practical activities, cannot fail to arouse enormous opposition.\nIt is not a creative effort in a clear field; it is a creative effort\nthat can hardly stir without attacking established things. It is\nthe repudiation of drift, of \u201cleaving things alone.\u201d It criticises\neverything in human life from top to bottom and finds everything not\ngood enough. It strikes at the universal human desire to feel that\nthings are \u201call right.\u201d\n\nOne might conclude, and it would be a hasty unsound conclusion, that\nthe only people to whom we could look for sympathy and any passionate\nenergy in forwarding the revolutionary change would be the unhappy, the\ndiscontented, the dispossessed and the defeated in life\u2019s struggle.\nThis idea lies at the root of the class-war dogmas of the Marxists,\nand it rests on an entirely crude conception of human nature. The\nsuccessful minority is supposed to have no effective motive but a\ndesire to retain and intensify its advantages. A quite imaginary\nsolidarity to that end is attributed to it, a preposterous base class\nactivity. On the other hand, the unsuccessful mass--\u201cproletariat\u201d--is\nsupposed to be capable of a clear apprehension of its disadvantages,\nand the more it is impoverished and embittered, the nearer draws its\nuprising, its constructive \u201cdictatorship\u201d and the Millennium.\n\nNo doubt a considerable amount of truth is to be found distorted\nin this theory of the communist revolution. Human beings, like\nother animals, are disposed to remain where their circumstances are\ntolerable and to want change when they are uncomfortable, and so a\ngreat proportion of the people who are \u201cwell off\u201d want little or no\nchange in present conditions, particularly those who are too dull\nto be bored by an unprogressive life--and a great proportion of\nthose who actually feel the inconveniences of straitened means and\npopulation pressure, do. But much vaster masses of the rank and file\nof humanity are accustomed to inferiority and dispossession, they do\nnot feel these things to the extent even of desiring change, or given\nso much apprehension they still fear change more than they dislike\ntheir disadvantages. Moreover, those who are sufficiently distressed\nto realise that \u201csomething ought to be done about it\u201d are much more\ndisposed to childish and threatening demands upon heaven and the\ngovernments for redress and vindictive and punitive action against the\nenvied fortunate with whom they happen to be in immediate contact,\nthan to any reaction towards such complex, tentative disciplined\nconstructive work as alone can better the lot of mankind. In practice\nMarxism is found to work out in a ready resort to malignantly\ndestructive activities and to be so uncreative as to be practically\nimpotent in the face of material difficulties. In Russia where--in and\nabout the urban centres at least--Marxism has been put to the test, the\ndoctrine of the Workers\u2019 Republic remains as a unifying cant, a test of\northodoxy of as little practical significance there as the communism\nof Jesus and communion with Christ in Christendom, while beneath this\ncreed a small oligarchy which has attained power by its profession does\nits obstinate best, much hampered by the suspicion and hostility of the\nWestern financiers and politicians, to carry on a series of interesting\nand varyingly successful experiments in the socialisation of economic\nlife. Each year shows more and more clearly that Marxism and Communism\nare divagations from the path of human progress and that the line of\nadvance must follow a course more intricate and less flattering to the\ncommon impulses of our nature.\n\nThe one main strand of truth in the theory of social development woven\nby Marx and Engels is that successful, comfortable people are disposed\nto dislike, obstruct and even resist actively any substantial changes\nin the current patchwork of arrangements, however great the ultimate\ndangers of that patchwork may be or the privations and sufferings of\nother people involved in it. The one main strand of error in that\ntheory is the facile assumption that the people at a disadvantage will\nbe stirred to anything more than chaotic and destructive expressions of\nresentment. If now we reject the error and accept the truth, we lose\nthe delusive comfort of belief in that magic giant, the Proletariat,\nwho will dictate, arrange, restore and create, but we clear the way\nfor the recognition of an \u00e9lite of intelligent religious-minded people\nscattered through the whole community, and for a study of the method\nof making this creative element effective in human affairs against the\nmassive oppositions of selfishness and unimaginative self-protective\nconservatism.\n\nNow certain classes of people such as thugs and burglars seem to\nbe harmful to society without a redeeming point about them, and\nothers such as race-course bookmakers seem to provide the minimum of\ndistraction and entertainment with a maximum of mischief. Wilful\nidlers are a mere burthen on the community. Other social classes\nagain, professional soldiers for example, have a certain traditional\nhonourableness which disguises the essentially parasitic relationship\nof their services to the developing modern community. Armies and\narmaments are cancers produced by the malignant development of the\npatriotic virus under modern conditions of exaggeration and mass\nsuggestion. But since there are armies prepared to act coercively in\nthe world to-day, it is necessary that the Open Conspiracy should\ncontain within itself the competence to resist military coercion and\ncombat and destroy armies that stand in the way of its emergence.\nPossibly the first two types here instanced may be condemned as classes\nand excluded as classes from any participation in the organised effort\nto recast the world, but quite obviously the soldier cannot. The world\ncommonweal will need its own scientific methods of prevention so long\nas there are people running about the planet with flags and uniforms\nand weapons, offering violence to their fellow men and interfering with\nthe free movements of commodities in the name of national sovereignty.\n\nAnd when we come to the general functioning classes, landowners,\nindustrial organisers, bankers and so forth, who control the present\nsystem such as it is, it should be still plainer that it is very\nlargely from the ranks of these classes and from their stores of\nexperience and traditions of method, that the directive forces of the\nnew order must emerge. The Open Conspiracy can have nothing to do with\nthe heresy that the path of human progress lies through an extensive\nclass war.\n\nLet us consider how it stands to such a complex of activities,\nusages, accumulations, advantages as constitutes the banking world.\nThere are no doubt many bankers and many practices in banking which\nmake for personal or group advantage to the general detriment. They\nforestall, monopolise, constrain and extort and so increase their\nriches. And another large part of that banking world follows routine\nand establishes usage; it is carrying on and keeping things going,\nand it is neither inimical nor conducive to the development of a\nprogressive world organisation of finance. But there remains a residuum\nof original and intelligent people in banking or associated with\nbanking or mentally interested in banking, who do realise that banking\nplays a very important and interesting part in the world\u2019s affairs, who\nare curious about their own intricate function and disposed towards\na scientific investigation of its origins, conditions and future\npossibilities. Such types move naturally towards the Open Conspiracy.\nTheir enquiries carry them inevitably outside the bankers\u2019 habitual\nfield to an examination of the nature, drift and destiny of the entire\nhuman economic process.\n\nNow the theme of the preceding paragraph might be repeated with\nvariations through a score of paragraphs in which appropriate\nmodifications would adapt it to the industrial organiser, the merchant\nand organiser of transport, the advertiser, the retail distributor,\nthe agriculturalist, the engineer, the builder, the economic chemist,\nand a number of other types functional to the contemporary community.\nIn all we should distinguish a base and harmful section, a mediocre\nsection following established usage and an active, progressive section\nto whom we turn naturally for developments leading towards the\nprogressive world commonweal of our desires. And our analysis might\npenetrate further than separation into types of individuals. In nearly\nevery individual instance we should find a mixed composition, a human\nbeing of fluctuating moods and confused purposes, sometimes base,\nsometimes drifting with the tide and sometimes alert and intellectually\nand morally quickened. The Open Conspiracy must be content to take a\nfraction of a man, as it appeals to fractions of many classes, if it\ncannot get him altogether.\n\nThis idea of drawing together a proportion of all or nearly all the\nfunctional classes in contemporary communities in order to weave the\nbeginnings of a world community out of their selection, is a fairly\nobvious one--and yet it has still to win practical recognition. Man\nis a morbidly gregarious and partisan creature; he is deep in his\nimmediate struggles; the industrialist is best equipped to criticise\nhis fellow industrialist, but he finds the root of all evil in the\nbanker; the wages worker shifts the blame for all social wrongs on the\n\u201cemploying class.\u201d There is an element of exasperation in most economic\nand social reactions and there is hardly a reforming or revolutionary\nmovement in history which is not essentially an indiscriminate attack\nof one functioning class or type upon another, on the assumption that\nthe attacked class is entirely to blame for the clash and that the\nattacking class is self-sufficient in the commonweal and can dispense\nwith its annoying collaborator. A considerable element of justice\nenters into most such recriminations. But the Open Conspiracy cannot\navail itself of these class animosities for its driving force. It\ncan have therefore no uniform method of approach. For each class it\nhas a conception of modification and development, and each class it\napproaches therefore at a distinctive angle. Some classes no doubt it\nwould supersede altogether; others--the scientific investigator for\nexample--it must regard as almost wholly good and seek only to expand\nand empower, but it can no more adopt the prejudices and extravagances\nof any particular class as its basis than it can adopt the claims of\nany existing state or empire.\n\nWhen it is clearly understood that the binding links of the Open\nConspiracy we have in mind are certain broad general ideas and\nthat--except perhaps in the case of scientific workers--we have no\ncurrent set of attitudes of mind and habits of activity which we can\nturn over directly and unmodified to the service of the conspiracy, we\nare in a position to realise that the movement we contemplate must from\nthe outset be diversified in its traditions and elements and various\nin its methods. It must fight upon several fronts and with many sorts\nof equipment. It will have a common spirit but it is quite conceivable\nthat between many of its contributory factors there may be very wide\ngaps in understanding and sympathy.\n\n\n\n\n_Chapter IX_\n\nFORCES AND RESISTANCES IN THE GREAT MODERN COMMUNITIES NOW PREVALENT\nWHICH WILL BE ANTAGONISTIC TO THE OPEN CONSPIRACY\n\n\nWe have now stated broadly but plainly the idea of the world commonweal\nwhich is the objective of the Open Conspiracy, and we have made a\npreliminary examination of the composition of the movement, showing\nthat it must be necessarily not a class development but a convergence\nof many different sorts of people upon this common idea. Its opening\ntask must be the elaboration, exposition and propaganda of this common\nidea, and, arising out of this, the incomparably vaster task of its\nrealisation.\n\nThese are the tasks not to be done _in vacuo_; they have\nto be done in a dense world of crowding, incessant, passionate,\nunco-ordinated activities, the world of market and newspaper, seed-time\nand harvest, births, deaths, jails, hospitals, riots, barracks and\narmy man\u0153uvres, false prophets and royal processions, games and shows,\nfire, storm, pestilence, earthquake, war. Every day and every hour\nthings will be happening to help or thwart, stimulate or undermine,\nobstruct or defeat the creative effort to set up the world commonweal.\n\nBefore we go on to discuss the selection and organisation of these\nheterogeneous and mainly religious impulses upon which we rest our\nhopes of a greater life for mankind, before we plan how these impulses\nmay be got together into a system of co-ordinated activities, it will\nbe well to review the main antagonistic forces with which, from its\nvery inception, the Open Conspiracy will be--is now--in conflict.\n\nTo begin with, we will consider these forces as they present themselves\nin the highly developed Western European States of to-day and in their\nAmerican derivatives, derivatives which in spite of the fact that\nin most cases they have far outgrown their lands of origin, still\nowe a large part of their social habits and political conceptions to\nEurope. All these States touch upon the Atlantic or its contributory\nseas; they have all grown to their present form since the discovery\nof America; they have a common association rooting in the idea of\nChristendom and a generic resemblance of method. They present what is\nknown in current parlance as the Capitalist system, but it will relieve\nus of a considerable load of disputatious matter if we call them here\nsimply the \u201cAtlantic\u201d civilisations and communities.\n\nThe consideration of these Atlantic civilisations in relation to\nthe coming world civilisation will suffice for the present chapter.\nAfterwards we will consider the modification of the forces antagonistic\nto the Open Conspiracy as they display themselves beyond the formal\nconfines of these now dominant States in the world\u2019s affairs, in the\nsocial systems weakened and injured by their expansion and among such\nless highly organised communities as still survive from man\u2019s savage\nand barbaric past.\n\nThe Open Conspiracy is not necessarily antagonistic to any existing\ngovernment. The Open Conspiracy is a creative organising movement and\nnot an anarchistic one. It does not want to destroy existing controls\nand forms of human association, but either to supersede or amalgamate\nthem into a common world directorate. If constitutions, parliaments\nand kings can be dealt with as provisional institutions, trustees for\nthe coming of age of the world commonweal, and in so far as they are\nconducted in that spirit, the Open Conspiracy makes no attack upon them.\n\nBut most governments will not set about their business as in any\nway provisional, they and their supporters insist upon a reverence\nand obedience which repudiate any possibility of supersession. What\nshould be an instrument becomes a divinity. In nearly every country\nof the world there is, in deference to the pretended necessities of a\npossible war, a vast degrading and dangerous cultivation of loyalty\nand mechanical subservience to flags, uniforms, presidents and kings.\nA president or king who does his appointed work well and righteously\nis entitled to as much subservience as a bricklayer who does his work\nwell and righteously and to no more, but instead there is a sustained\nendeavour to give him the privilege of an idol above criticism or\nreproach, and the organised worship of flags has become--with changed\nconditions of intercourse and warfare--an entirely evil misdirection\nof the gregarious impulses of our race. Emotion and sentimentality\nare evoked in the cause of disciplines and co-operations that could\nquite easily be sustained and that are better sustained by rational\nconviction.\n\nThe Open Conspiracy is necessarily opposed to all such implacable\nloyalties and still more so to the aggressive assertion and propaganda\nof such loyalties. When these things take the form of suppressing\nreasonable criticism and forbidding even the suggestion of other forms\nof government they become plainly antagonists to any comprehensive\nproject for human welfare. They become manifestly, from the wider point\nof view, seditious, and loyalty to \u201cking and country\u201d passes into\nplain treason to mankind. Almost everywhere at present, educational\nactivities organise barriers in the path of progress and there are\nonly the feeblest attempts at any counter-education that will break up\nthese barriers. There is little or no effort to restrain the aggressive\nnationalist when he waves his flag against the welfare of our race\nor to protect the children of the world from the infection of his\nenthusiasms. And this last is as true now of the American system as it\nis of any European State.\n\nIn the great mass of the modern community there is little more than\na favourable acquiescence in patriotic ideas and in the worship of\npatriotic symbols, and that is based largely on such training. These\nthings are not necessary things for the generality to-day. A change\nof mental direction would be possible for the majority of people now\nwithout any violent disorganisation of their intimate lives or any\nserious social or economic readjustments for them. Mental infection\nin such cases could be countered by mental sanitation. A majority of\npeople in Europe and a still larger majority in the United States\nand the other American Republics could become citizens of the world\nwithout any serious hindrance to their present occupations, and with\nincalculably vast increase of their present security.\n\nBut there remains a net of special classes in every community, from\nkings to custom-house officers, far more deeply involved in patriotism\nbecause it is their trade and their source of honour, and prepared in\nconsequence with an instinctive resistance to any re-orientation of\nideas towards a broader outlook. In the case of such people no mental\nsanitation is possible without dangerous and alarming changes in their\nway of living. For the majority of these patriots by _m\u00e9tier_, the\nOpen Conspiracy unlocks the gates leading from a paradise of eminence,\nrespect and privilege, and motions them towards an outer wilderness\nwhich does not present even the faintest promise of a congenial,\ndistinguished life for them. Nearly everything in human nature will\ndispose them to turn away from these gates which open towards the world\npeace, to bang-to and lock them again if they can, and to grow thickets\nas speedily as possible to conceal them and get them forgotten. The\nsuggestion of being trustees in a transition will seem to most of such\npeople only the camouflage of an ultimate degradation.\n\nFrom such classes of patriots by _m\u00e9tier_, it is manifest that the\nOpen Conspiracy can expect only opposition. It may detach individuals\nfrom them, but only by depriving them of their essential class\nloyalties and characteristics. The class as a class will remain none\nthe less antagonistic. About royal courts and presidential residences,\nin diplomatic, consular, military and naval circles and wherever people\nwear titles and uniforms and enjoy pride and precedences based on\nexisting political institutions, there will be the completest general\ninability to grasp the need for the Open Conspiracy. These people\nand their womankind, their friends and connections, their servants\nand dependants are fortified by time-honoured traditions of social\nusage, of sentiment and romantic prestige. They will insist that they\nare reality and Cosmopolis a dream. Only individuals of exceptional\nimaginative liveliness, rare intellectual power and innate moral force\ncan be expected to break away from the anti-progressive habits such\nclass conditions impose upon them.\n\nThis tangle of traditions and loyalties, of interested trades and\nprofessions, of privileged classes and official patriots, this complex\nof human beings embodying very easy and natural and time-honoured\nideas of eternal national separation and unending international and\nclass conflict, is the main objective of the Open Conspiracy in its\nopening phase. This tangle must be disentangled as the Open Conspiracy\nadvances, and until it is largely disentangled and cleared up that Open\nConspiracy cannot become anything very much more than a desire and a\nproject.\n\nThe tangle of \u201cnecessary patriots\u201d as one may call them is different\nin its nature, less intricate and extensive proportionally in the\nUnited States and the States of Latin America than it is in the old\nEuropean communities, but it is none the less virulent in its action\non that account. It is only recently that military and naval services\nhave become important factors in American social life, and the really\nvitalising contact of the interested patriot and the State has hitherto\ncentred mainly upon the custom-house and the concession. Instead of a\nmellow and romantic loyalty to \u201cking and country\u201d the American thinks\nsimply of America and his flag.\n\nAmerican independence began as a resistance to exploitation from\noverseas. Even when political and fiscal freedom were won, there was\na long phase of industrial and financial dependence. The American\u2019s\nhabits of mind, in spite of his recent realisation of the enormous\npower and relative prosperity of the United States and of the expanding\npossibilities of their Spanish and Portuguese-speaking neighbours, are\nstill largely self-protective against a now imaginary European peril.\nFor the first three quarters of the nineteenth century the people of\nthe American continent and particularly the people of the United States\nfelt the industrial and financial ascendency of Great Britain and had\na reasonable fear of European attacks upon their continent. A growing\ntide of immigrants of uncertain sympathy threatened their dearest\nhabits. Flag worship was imposed primarily as a repudiation of Europe.\nEurope no longer looms over America with overpowering intimations,\nAmerican industries no longer have any practical justification for\nprotection, American finance would be happier without it, but the\npatriotic interests are so established now that they go on and will go\non.\n\nWe have said that the complex of classes in any country interested\nin the current method of government is sustained by traditions and\nimpelled by its nature and conditions to protect itself against\nexploratory criticism. It is therefore unable to escape from the forms\nof competitive and militant nationalism in which it was evolved. It\ncannot without grave danger of enfeeblement, change any such innate\nform. So that while parallel complexes of patriotic classes are found\nin greater or less intricacy grouped about the flags and governments\nof most existing states, these complexes are by their nature obliged\nto remain separate, nationalist and mutually antagonistic. You cannot\nexpect a world union of soldiers or diplomatists. Their existence\nand nature depend upon the idea that national separation is real\nand incurable, and that war, in the long run, is unavoidable. Their\nconceptions of loyalty involve an antagonism to all foreigners, even\nto foreigners of exactly the same types as themselves, and make for a\ncontinual campaign of annoyances, suspicions and precautions--together\nwith a general propaganda, affecting all other classes, of the\nnecessity of an international antagonism--that creeps persistently\ntowards war.\n\nBut while the methods of provoking war employed by the patriotic\nclasses are traditional, modern science has made a new and enormously\nmore powerful thing of warfare and, as the Great War showed, even the\nmost conservative generals on both sides are unable to prevent the\ngigantic interventions of the mechanician and the chemist. So that a\nsituation is brought about in which the militarist element is unable to\nfight without the support of the modern industrial organisation and the\nacquiescence of the great mass of people. We are confronted therefore\nat the present time with the paradoxical situation that a patriotic\ntradition sustains in power and authority warlike classes who are quite\nincapable of carrying on war. The other classes to which they must go\nfor support when the disaster of war is actually achieved are classes\ndeveloped under peace conditions, which not only have no positive\nadvantage in war, but must, as a whole, suffer great dislocation,\ndiscomfort, destruction and distress from war. It is of primary\nimportance to the formally dominant classes that these new social\nmasses and powers should remain under the sway of the old social,\nsentimental and romantic traditions, and equally important is it to the\nOpen Conspiracy that they should be released.\n\nHere we bring into consideration another great complex of persons,\ninterests, traditions--the world of education, the various religious\norganisations, and, beyond these, the ramifying indeterminate world\nof newspapers and other periodicals, books, the drama, art and all\nthe instruments of presentation and suggestion that mould opinion and\ndirect action. The sum of the operations of this complex will be either\nto sustain or demolish the old nationalist militant ascendency. Its\neasiest immediate course is to accept it. Educational organisations on\nthat account are now largely a conservative force in the community;\nthey are in most cases directly controlled by authority and bound\nofficially as well as practically to respect current fears and\nprejudices. It evokes fewer difficulties for them if they limit and\nmould rather than release the young. The schoolmaster tends therefore\nto accept and standardise and stereotype, even in the living,\nprogressive fields of science and philosophy. Even there he is a brake\non the forward movement. It is clear that the Open Conspiracy must\neither continually disturb and revivify him or else frankly antagonise\nhim. Universities also struggle between the honourable past on which\ntheir prestige rests, and the need of adaptation to a world of enquiry,\nexperiment and change. It is an open question whether these particular\norganisations of intellectual prestige are of any real value in the\nliving world. A modern world planned _de novo_ would probably\nproduce nothing like a contemporary University. Modern research,\none may argue, would be stimulated rather than injured by complete\ndetachment from the lingering medi\u00e6valism of such institutions, their\nentanglement with adolescent education and their ancient and contagious\nconceptions of precedence and honour.\n\nOrdinary religious organisations, again, exist for self-preservation\nand are prone to follow rather than direct the currents of popular\nthought. They are kept alive indeed by revivalism and new departures\nwhich at the outset they are apt to resist, as the Catholic Church\nfor instance resisted the Franciscan awakening, but their formal\ndisposition is conservative. They say to religious development, thus\nfar and no farther.\n\nHere is school, college and church are activities of thought and\ninstruction, which generally speaking drag upon the wheels of progress,\nbut which need not necessarily do so. A schoolmaster may be original,\nstimulating and creative, and if he is fortunate and a good fighter he\nmay even achieve considerable worldly success; University teachers and\ninvestigators may strike out upon new lines and yet escape destruction\nby the older dons. Universities compete against other Universities at\nhome and abroad and cannot altogether yield to the forces of dullness\nand subservience. They must maintain a certain difference from vulgar\nopinion and a certain repute of intellectual virility.\n\nAs we pass from the more organised to the less organised intellectual\nactivities, we find conservative influence declining in importance and\na freer play for the creative drive. Freshness is a primary condition\nof journalistic, literary and artistic success, and orthodoxy has\nnothing new to say or do. But the desire for freshness may be satisfied\nall too readily by merely extravagant, superficial and incoherent\ninventions.\n\nThe influence of the old traditional nationalist social and political\nhierarchy is not, however, exerted exclusively through its control\nover schools and Universities. Nor is that indeed its more powerful\nactivity. Would that it were! There is also a direct, less defined\ncontact of the old order with the nascent powers, that plays a far\nmore effective part in delaying the development of the modern world\ncommonweal. Necessarily the old order has determined the established\nway of life, which is at its best large, comfortable, amusing,\nrespected. It possesses all the entrances and exits and all the\ncontrols of the established daily round. It is able to exact and it\ndoes exact, almost without design, many conformities. There can be\nno very ample social life therefore for those who are conspicuously\ndissentient. Again the old order has a complete provision for the\ngrowth, welfare and advancement of its children. It controls the\nfounts of honour and self-respect; it provides a mapped-out world of\nbehaviour. The new initiatives make their appearance here and there\nin the form of isolated individuals, here an inventor, there a bold\norganiser or a vigorous thinker. Apart from his specific work the\ninnovating type finds that he must fall in with established things\nor his womenfolk will be ostracised and he will be distressed by a\nsense of isolation even in the midst of successful activities. The\nmore intensely he innovates in particular, the more likely is he to be\ntoo busy to seek out kindred souls and organise a new social life in\ngeneral. The new things and ideas, even when they arise abundantly,\narise scattered and unorganised, and the old order takes them in its\nnet. America for example--both on its Latin and its English-speaking\nside--is in many ways a triumph of the old order over the new.\n\nMen like Winwood Reade thought that the New World would be indeed a\nnew world. They idealised its apparent emancipations. But as the more\nsuccessful of the toiling farmers and traders of republican America\nrose one by one to affluence, leisure, and freedom, it was far more\neasy for them to adopt the polished and prepared social patterns and\nusages of Europe than to work out a complete new civilisation in\naccordance with their equalitarian professions. Yet there remains a gap\nin their adapted \u201cSociety.\u201d Henry James, that acute observer of subtle\nsocial flavours, has pointed out the peculiar _headlessness_ of\nsocial life in America because of the absence of court functions to\n\u201cgo on\u201d to and justify the assembling and dressing. The social life\nhas intimated the preparation for the Court without any political\njustification. In Europe the assimilation of the wealthy European\nindustrialist and financier by the old order has been parallel and\nnaturally more logically complete. He really does find a court to \u201cgo\non\u201d to. His social scheme is still undecapitated.\n\nIn this way the complex of classes vitally involved in the old militant\nnationalist order is mightily reinforced by much larger masses of\nimitative and annexed and more or less assimilated rich and active\npeople. The great industrialist marries the daughter of the marquis and\nhas a couple of sons in the Guards and a daughter who is a princess.\nThe money of the American Leeds, fleeing from the social futility of\nits land of origin, helps bolster up a mischievous monarchy in Greece.\nThe functional and private life of the new men are thus at war with one\nanother. The real interests of the great industrialist or financier lie\nin cosmopolitan organisation and the material development of the world\ncommonweal, but his womenfolk pin flags all over him and his sons are\nprepared to sacrifice themselves and all his business creations, for\nthe sake of trite splendours and Ruritanian romance.\n\nBut just so far as the great business organiser is capable and\ncreative, so far is he likely to realise and resent the price in\nfrustration that the old order obliges him to pay for amusement, social\ninterest and domestic peace and comfort. The Open Conspiracy threatens\nhim with no effacement; it may even appear with an air of release. If\nhe had women who were interested in his business affairs instead of\nwomen who had to be amused, and if he realised in time the practical,\nintellectual and moral kidnapping of his sons and daughters by the old\norder that goes on, he might pass quite easily from acquiescence to\nantagonism. But in this respect he cannot act single-handed. This is\na social and not an individual operation. The Open Conspiracy, it is\nclear, must include in its activities a great fight for the souls of\neconomically functional people. It must carve out a Society of its own\nfrom Society. Only by the creation of a new and better social life can\nit resist the many advantages and attractions of the old.\n\nThis constant gravitation back to traditional uses on the part of\nwhat might become new social types applies not merely to big people\nbut to such small people as are really functional in the modern\neconomic scheme. They have no social life adapted to their new\neconomic relationships, and they are forced back upon the methods of\nbehaviour established for what were roughly their analogues in the\nold order of things. The various sorts of managers and foremen in big\nmodern concerns, for example, carry on ways of living they have taken\nready made from the stewards, tradesmen, tenantry and upper servants\nof an aristocratic territorial system. They release themselves and\nare released almost in spite of themselves, slowly, generation by\ngeneration, from habits of social subservience that are no longer\nnecessary nor convenient in the social process, acquire an official\npride in themselves and take on new conceptions of responsible\nloyalty to a scheme. And they find themselves under suggestions of\nclass aloofness and superiority to the general mass of less cardinal\nworkers, that are often unjustifiable under new conditions. Machinery\nand scientific organisation have been and still are revolutionising\nproductive activity by the progressive elimination of the unskilled\nworker, the hack, the mere toiler. But the social organisation of the\nmodern community and the mutual deportment of the associated workers\nleft over after this elimination are still haunted by the tradition of\nthe lord, the middle class tenant and the servile hind. The development\nof self-respect and mutual respect among the mass of modern functional\nworkers is clearly an intimate concern of the Open Conspiracy.\n\nA vast amount of moral force has been wasted in the past hundred\nyears by the antagonism of \u201cLabour\u201d to \u201cCapital,\u201d as though this was\nthe primary issue in human affairs. But this never was the primary\nissue and it is steadily receding from its former importance. The\nancient civilisations did actually rest upon a broad basis of slavery\nand serfdom. Human muscle was a main source of energy--ranking with\nsun, rain and flood. But invention and discovery have so changed the\nconditions under which power is directed and utilised that muscle\nbecomes economically secondary and inessential. We no longer want\nhewers of wood and drawers of water, carriers and pick and spade men.\nWe no longer want that breeding swarm of hefty sweaty bodies without\nwhich the former civilisations could not have endured. We want watchful\nand understanding guardians and drivers of complex delicate machines,\nwhich can be mishandled and brutalised and spoiled all too easily.\nThe less disposed these masters of our machines are to inordinate\nmultiplication, the more room and food in the world for their ampler\nlives. Even to the lowest level of a fully mechanicalised civilisation\nit is required that the human element should be select. In the\nmodern world, crowds are a survival and they will presently be an\nanachronism, and crowd psychology therefore cannot supply the basis of\na new order.\n\nIt is just because labour is becoming more intelligent, responsible and\nindividually efficient that it is becoming more audible and impatient\nin social affairs. It is just because it is no longer mere gang labour\nand becoming more and more intelligent co-operation in detail, that\nit now resents being treated as a serf, housed like a serf, fed like\na serf and herded like a serf and its pride and thoughts and feelings\ndisregarded. Labour is in revolt because as a matter of fact it is, in\nthe ancient and exact sense of the word, ceasing to be labour at all.\n\nThe more progressive elements of the directive classes recognise this,\nbut as we have shown, there are formidable forces still tending to\nmaintain the old social attitudes when arrogance became the ruler and\nthe common man accepted his servile status. A continual resistance\nis offered by large sections of the prosperous and advantaged to the\nlarger claims of the modernised worker, and in response the rising and\ndifferentiating workers develop an angry antagonism to these directive\nclasses which allow themselves to be controlled by their conservative\nand reactionary elements. Moreover, the increasing relative\nintelligence of the labour masses, the unprecedented imaginative\nstimulation they experience, the continually more widespread\nrealisation of the available freedoms and comforts and indulgences\nthat might be and are not shared by all in a modern state, develop a\nrecalcitrance where once there was little but fatalistic acquiescence.\nAn objection to direction and obligation, always mutely present in\nthe toiling multitude since the economic life of man began, becomes\narticulate and active. It is the taste of freedom that makes labour\ndesire to be free. This series of frictions is a quite inevitable\naspect of social reorganisation but they do not constitute a primary\nantagonism in the process.\n\nThe class war was invented by the classes; it is a natural tradition\nof the upper strata of the old order. It was so universally understood\nthat there was no need to state it. It is implicit in nearly all the\nliterature of the world before this nineteenth century--except the\nBible, the Koran and other sequel\u00e6. The \u201cclass war\u201d of the Marxist\nis merely a poor snobbish imitation, a _tu quoque_, a pathetic,\nstupid, indignant reversal of and retort to the old arrogance, an\n_upward_ arrogance.\n\nThese conflicts cut across rather than oppose or help the progressive\ndevelopment to which the Open Conspiracy devotes itself. Labour,\nawakened, enquiring and indignant, is not necessarily progressive;\nif the ordinary undistinguished worker is no longer to be driven as\na beast of burthen, he has--which also goes against the grain--to be\neducated to as high a level of co-operative efficiency as possible.\nHe has to work better, even if he works for much shorter hours and\nunder better conditions, and his work must be subordinated work still;\nhe cannot become _en masse_ sole owner and master of a scheme\nof things he did not make and is incapable of directing. Yet this is\nthe ambition implicit in an exclusively \u201cLabour\u201d movement. Either the\nLabour revolutionary hopes to cadge the services of exceptional people\nwithout acknowledgment or return on sentimental grounds or he really\nbelieves that anyone is as capable as anyone else--if not more so. The\nworker at a low level may be flattered by dreams of \u201cclass-conscious\u201d\nmass dominion from which all sense of inferiority is banished, but they\nwill remain dreams. The deep instinctive jealousy of the commonplace\nindividual for outstanding quality and novel initiative may be\norganised and turned to sabotage and destruction, masquerading as and\naspiring to be a new social order, but that will be a blind alley and\nnot the road of progress. Our hope for the human future does not lie in\ncrowd psychology and the indiscriminating rule of universal democracy.\n\nThe Open Conspiracy can have little use for mere resentments as a\ndriving force towards its ends; it starts with a proposal not to\nexalt the labour class but to abolish it, its sustaining purpose is\nto throw drudges out of employment and eliminate the inept--and it is\nfar more likely to incur suspicion and distrust in the lower ranks of\nthe developing industrial order of to-day than to win support there.\nThere, just as everywhere else in the changing social complexes of our\ntime, it can appeal only to the exceptionally understanding individual\nwho can without personal humiliation consider his present activities\nand relationships as provisional and who can, without taking offence,\nendure a searching criticism of his present quality and mode of living.\n\n\n\n\n_Chapter X_\n\nTHE OPEN CONSPIRACY AND THE RESISTANCES OF THE LESS INDUSTRIALISED\nPEOPLES\n\n\nSo far in our accounting of the powers, institutions, dispositions,\ntypes and classes to which the Open Conspiracy will run counter, we\nhave surveyed only such territory in the domain of the future world\ncommonweal as is represented by the complex, progressive, highly\nindustrialised communities, based on a preceding landlord-soldier,\ntenant, town-merchant and tradesman system, of the Atlantic type.\nThese communities have developed farthest in the direction of\nmechanicalisation and they are so much more efficient and powerful\nthat they now dominate the rest of the world. India, China, Russia,\nAfrica present _m\u00e9langes_ of social systems, thrown together,\noutpaced, overstrained, shattered, invaded, exploited and more or less\nsubjugated by the finance, machinery and political aggressions of the\nAtlantic, Baltic and Mediterranean civilisation. In many ways they have\nan air of assimilating themselves to that civilisation, evolving modern\ntypes and classes and abandoning much of their distinctive traditions.\nBut what they take from the West is mainly the new developments, the\nmaterial achievements, rather than social and political achievements\nthat, empowered by modern inventions, have won their way to world\npredominance. They may imitate European nationalism to a certain\nextent; for them it becomes a convenient form of self-assertion\nagainst the pressure of a realised practical, social and political\ninferiority; but the degree to which they will or can take over the\nsocial assumptions and habits of the long-established European-American\nhierarchy is probably very restricted. Their nationalism will remain\nlargely indigenous; the social traditions to which they will try to\nmake the new material forces subservient will be traditions of an\nOriental life widely different from the original life of Europe. They\nwill have their own resistances to the Open Conspiracy, therefore,\nbut they will be different resistances from those we have hitherto\nconsidered. The automobile and the wireless set, the harvester and\nsteel construction building, will come to the jungle raja and the head\nhunter, the Brahmin and the Indian peasant with a parallel and yet\ndissimilar message to the one they brought the British land-owner or\nthe corn and cattle farmers of the Argentine and the Middle West. Also\nthey may be expected to evoke dissimilar reactions.\n\nTo a number of the finer, more energetic minds of these overshadowed\ncommunities which have lagged more or less in the material advances to\nwhich this present ascendency of Western Europe and America is due, the\nOpen Conspiracy may come with an effect of immense invitation. At one\nstep they may go from the sinking vessel of their antiquated order,\nacross their present conquerors into a brotherhood of world rulers.\nThey may turn to the problem of saving and adapting all that is rich\nand distinctive of their inheritance to the common ends of the race.\nBut to the less vigorous intelligences of this outer world, the new\nproject of the Open Conspiracy will seem no better than a new form\nof Western envelopment, and they will fight a mighty liberation as\nthough it were a further enslavement to the European tradition. They\nwill watch the Open Conspiracy for any signs of conscious superiority\nand racial disregard. Necessarily they will recognise it as a product\nof Western mentality and they may well be tempted to regard it as an\nelaboration and organisation of current dispositions rather than the\nevolution of a new phase which will make no discrimination at least\nbetween the effete traditions of either East or West. Their suspicions\nwill be sustained and developed by the clumsy and muddle-headed\npolitical and economic aggressions of the contemporary political and\nbusiness systems, such as they are, of the West, now in progress.\nBehind that cloud of aggression Western thought has necessarily\nadvanced upon them; it could have got to their attention in no other\nway.\n\nPartly these resistances and criticisms of the decadent communities\noutside the Atlantic capitalist systems will be aimed, not at the\ndeveloping methods of the coming world community, but at the European\ntraditions and restrictions that have imposed themselves upon these\nmethods, and so far the clash of the East and West may be found to\nsubserve the aims of the Open Conspiracy. In the conflict of old\ntraditions and in the consequent deadlocks lies much hope for the\ndirect acceptance of the groups of ideas centring upon the Open\nConspiracy. One of the most interesting areas of humanity in this\nrespect is the great system of communities under the sway or influence\nof Soviet Russia. Russia has never been completely incorporated with\nthe European system; she became a just passable imitation of a western\nEuropean monarchy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and\ntalked at last of constitutions and parliaments--but the reality of\nthat vast empire remained an Asiatic despotism and the European mask\nwas altogether smashed by the successive revolutions of 1917. The\nensuing system is a government presiding over an enormous extent of\npeasants and herdsmen, by a disciplined association professing the\nfaith and dogmas of Marx, as interpreted and qualified by Lenin.\n\nIn many ways this government is a novelty of extraordinary interest.\nIn the fact that it is a propagandist association becoming a\ncommonweal, it is manifestly the inspiration and precursor of the Open\nConspiracy. It labours against enormous difficulties within itself\nand without. Flung amazingly into a position of tremendous power,\nits intellectual flexibility is greatly restricted by the urgent\nmilitant necessity for mental unanimity and a consequent repression\nof criticism. It finds itself separated, intellectually and morally,\nby an enormous gap, from the illiterate millions over which it rules.\nMore open perhaps to scientific and creative conceptions than any other\ngovernment, and certainly more willing to experiment and innovate,\nits enterprise is starved by the economic depletion of the country in\nthe Great War and by the technical and industrial backwardness of the\npopulation upon which it must draw for its personnel. Moreover, it\nstruggles within itself between concepts of a modern scientific social\norganisation and a vague anarchistic dream in which the \u201cState\u201d is to\ndisappear and an emancipated proletariat, breeding and expectorating\nfreely, fills the vistas of time for evermore. The tradition of heavy\nyears of hopeless opposition have tainted the world policy of the\nMarxist cult with a mischievous and irritating quality that focuses\nupon it the animosity of every other government in the dominant\nAtlantic system. Nevertheless it has maintained itself for more than\nten years and it seems far more likely to evolve than to perish. It\nis quite possible that it will evolve towards the conceptions of the\nOpen Conspiracy, and in that case Russia may witness once again a\nconflict between new ideas and Old Believers. So far the Communist\nParty in Moscow has maintained a considerable propaganda of ideas in\nthe rest of the world and especially across its western frontier. Many\nof these ideas are trite and stale. The time may be not far distant\nwhen the tide of propaganda will flow in the reverse direction. It has\npleased the vanity of the Communist Party to imagine itself conducting\na propaganda of world revolution. Its fate may be to develop upon\nlines that will make its more intelligent elements easily assimilable\nto the Open Conspiracy for a world revolution. The Open Conspiracy as\nit spreads and grows may find a less encumbered field for trying out\nthe economic developments implicit in its conceptions in Russia and\nSiberia, than anywhere else in the world.\n\nHowever severely the guiding themes and practical methods of the\npresent Soviet Government in Russia may be criticised, the fact remains\nthat it has cleared out of its way many of the main obstructive\nelements that we find still vigorous in the more highly organised\ncommunities in the west. It has liberated vast areas from the kindred\nsuperstitions of monarchy and the need for a private proprietary\ncontrol of great economic interests. And it has presented the Oriental\nChina and India with the exciting spectacle of a social and political\nsystem capable of throwing off many of the most characteristic\nfeatures of triumphant Westernism, and yet holding its own. In the\ndays when Japan faced up to modern necessities, there were no models\nfor imitation that were not communities of the Atlantic type pervaded\nby the methods of private capitalism, and in consequence the Japanese\nreconstituted their affairs on a distinctly European plan, adopting a\nParliament and bringing their monarchy, social hierarchy and business\nand financial methods into a general conformity with that model. It\nis extremely doubtful whether any other Asiatic community will now\nset itself to a parallel imitation, and it will be thanks largely to\nthe Russian revolution that this breakaway from Europeanisation has\noccurred.\n\nBut it does not follow that such a breakaway will necessarily lead\nmore directly to the Open Conspiracy. If we have to face a less highly\norganised system of interests and prejudices in Russia and China, we\nhave to deal with a vastly wider ignorance and a vastly more formidable\nanimalism. Russia is a land of tens of millions of peasants ruled over\nby a little band of the intelligentsia who can be counted only by tens\nof thousands. It is only these few score thousands who are accessible\nto ideas of world construction, and the only hope of bringing the\nRussian system into active participation in the world conspiracy is\nthrough that small minority and through its educational repercussion\non the myriads below. As we go eastward from European Russia the\nproportion of soundly prepared intelligence to which we can appeal for\nunderstanding and participation diminishes to an even more dismaying\nfraction. Eliminate that fraction and one is left face to face with\ninchoate barbarism incapable of social and political organisation\nabove the level of the war boss and the brigand leader. Russia itself\nis still by no means secure against a degenerative process in that\ndirection, and the hope of China struggling out of it without some\nforcible directive interventions is a hope to which constructive\nliberalism clings with very little assurance.\n\nWe turn back therefore from Russia, China and the communities of\nCentral Asia to the Atlantic world. It is in that world alone that\nsufficient range and amplitude of thought and discussion is possible\nfor the adequate development of the Open Conspiracy. In these\ncommunities it must begin and for a long time its main activities will\nneed to be sustained from these necessary centres of diffusion. It\nwill develop amidst incessant mental strife and through that strife it\nwill remain alive. It is no small part of the practical weakness of\npresent day communism that it attempts to centre its intellectual life\nand its directive activities in Moscow and so cuts itself off from\nthe free and open discussions of the Western world. Marxism lost the\nworld when it went to Moscow and took over the traditions of Tzarism,\nas Christianity lost the world when it went to Rome and took over the\ntraditions of C\u00e6sar. Entrenched in Moscow from searching criticism, the\nMarxist ideology may become more and more dogmatic and unprogressive,\nrepeating its sacred _credo_ and issuing its disregarded orders to\nthe proletariat of the world, and so stay ineffectively crystallised\nuntil the rising tide of the Open Conspiracy submerges, dissolves it\nafresh and incorporates whatever it finds assimilable.\n\nIndia like Japan is cut off from the main body of Asiatic affairs.\nBut while Japan has become a formally Westernised nationality in the\ncomity of such nations, India remains a world in itself. In that one\npeninsula nearly every type of community is to be found, from the\ntribe of jungle savages through a great diversity of barbaric and\nmedi\u00e6val principalities to the child and women sweating factories and\nthe vigorous modern commercialism of Bombay. Over it all the British\nimperialism prevails, a constraining and restraining influence, keeping\nthe peace, checking epidemics, increasing the food supply by irrigation\nand the like (so that population increases horribly), and making little\nor no effort to evoke responses to modern ideas. Britain in India is\nno propagandist of modern ferments: all those are left the other side\nof Suez. In India the Briton is a ruler as firm and self-assured and\nuncreative as the Roman. The old religious and social traditions, the\ncomplex customs, castes, tabus and exclusions of a strangely mixed but\nunamalgamated community, though a little discredited by this foreign\npredominance, still hold men\u2019s minds. They have been, so to speak,\npickled in the preservative of the British raj.\n\nThe Open Conspiracy has to invade the Indian complex in conflict\nwith the prejudices of both ruler and governed. It has to hope for\nindividual breaches in the dull Romanism of the administration; here a\ngenuine educationist, here a creative civil servant, here an official\ntouched by the distant stir of the living homeland--and it has to try\nto bring these types into a corporated relationship with a fine native\nscholar here or an active-minded prince or land-owner or industrialist\nthere. As the old methods of passenger transport are superseded by\nflying, it will be more and more difficult to keep the stir of the\nliving homeland out of either the consciousness of the official\nhierarchy or the knowledge of the recalcitrant \u201cnative.\u201d\n\nVery similar to Indian conditions is the state of affairs in the\nforeign possessions of France, the same administrative obstacles to\nthe Open Conspiracy above, and below the same resentful subordination,\ncut off from the mental invigoration of responsibility. Within these\nareas of restraint, India and its lesser, simpler parallels in North\nAfrica, Syria and the Far East, there goes on a rapid increase of\nlow-grade population, undersized physically and mentally, and retarding\nthe mechanical development of civilisation by its standing offer of\ncheap labour to the unscrupulous entrepreneur, and possible feeble\ninsurrectionary material to the unscrupulous political adventurer.\nIt is impossible to estimate how slowly or how rapidly the knowledge\nand ideas that have checked the rate of increase of all the Atlantic\npopulations may be diffused through these less alert communities.\n\nWe must complete our survey of the resistances against which the Open\nConspiracy has to work by a few words about the negro world and the\nregions of forest and jungle in which barbaric and even savage human\nlife still escapes the infection of civilisation. It seems inevitable\nthat the development of modern means of communication and the conquest\nof tropical diseases should end in giving access everywhere to\nmodern administration and to economic methods, and everywhere the\nincorporation of the former wilderness in the modern economic process\nmeans the destruction of the material basis, the free hunting, the free\naccess to the soil, of such barbaric and savage communities as still\nprecariously survive. The dusky peoples, who were formerly the lords\nof these still imperfectly assimilated areas, are becoming exploited\nworkers, slaves, serfs, hut-tax payers or labourers to a caste of white\nimmigrants. The spirit of the plantation broods over all these lands.\nThe negro in America differs only from his subjugated brother in South\nAfrica or Kenya Colony in the fact that he also, like his white master,\nis an immigrant. The situation in Africa and America adjusts itself\ntherefore towards parallel conditions, the chief variation being in the\nrelative proportions of the two races and the details of the methods by\nwhich black labour is made to serve white ends.\n\nIn these black and white communities which are establishing themselves\nin all those parts of the earth where once the black was native, or in\nwhich a sub-tropical climate is favourable to his existence at a low\nlevel of social development, there is--and there is bound to be for\nmany years to come--much racial tension. The steady advance of birth\ncontrol may mitigate the biological factors of this tension later on,\nand a general amelioration of manners and conduct may efface that\ndisposition to persecute dissimilar types, which man shares with many\nother gregarious animals. But meanwhile this tension increases and a\nvast multitude of lives is strained to tragic issues.\n\nTo exaggerate the dangers and evils of miscegenation is a weakness\nof our time. Man interbreeds with all his varieties and yet deludes\nhimself that there are races of outstanding purity, the \u201cNordic,\u201d\nthe \u201cSemitic\u201d and so forth. These are phantoms of the imagination.\nThe reality is more intricate, less dramatic and grips less easily\nupon the mind; the phantoms grip only too well and incite to terrible\nsuppressions. Changes in the number of half-breeds and in the\nproportion of white and coloured are changes of a temporary nature\nthat many become controllable and rectifiable in a few generations.\nBut until this level of civilisation is reached, until the colour of\na man\u2019s skin or the kinks in a woman\u2019s hair cease to have the value\nof Shibboleths that involve educational, professional and social\nextinction or survival, a black and white community is bound to be\ncontinually preoccupied by a standing feud too intimate and pervasive\nto permit of any long views of the world\u2019s destiny.\n\nWe come to the conclusion therefore that it is from the more vigorous,\nvaried and less severely obsessed centres of the Atlantic civilisations\nin the temperate zone, with their abundant facilities for publication\nand discussion, their traditions of mental liberty and their immense\nvariety of interacting free modern types, that the main beginnings\nof the Open Conspiracy must develop. For the rest of the world, its\npropaganda, finding but poor nourishment in the local conditions, may\nretain a missionary quality for many years.\n\n\n\n\n_Chapter XI_\n\nRESISTANCES AND ANTAGONISTIC FORCES IN OURSELVES\n\n\nWe have dealt in the preceding two chapters with great classes and\nassemblages of human beings as, in the mass, likely to be more or less\nantagonistic to the Open Conspiracy, and it has been difficult in those\nchapters to avoid the implication that \u201cwe,\u201d some sort of circle round\nthe writer, were aloof from these obstructive and hostile multitudes,\nand ourselves entirely identified with the Open Conspiracy. But neither\nare these multitudes so definitely against, nor those who are with us\nso entirely for, the Open Conspiracy to establish a world community as\nthe writer in his desire for clearness and contrast and with an all too\nhuman disposition perhaps towards plain ego-centred combative issues,\nhas been led to represent. There is no \u201cwe\u201d and there can be no \u201cwe\u201d in\npossession of the Open Conspiracy.\n\nThe Open Conspiracy is in partial possession of us and we attempt\nto serve it. But the Open Conspiracy is a natural and necessary\ndevelopment of contemporary thought arising here and there and\neverywhere. There are doubts and sympathies that weigh on the side of\nthe Open Conspiracy in nearly everyone, and not one of us but retains\nmany impulses, habits and ideas in conflict with our general devotion,\nchecking and limiting our service.\n\nLet us therefore in this chapter cease to discuss classes and types and\nconsider general mental tendencies and reactions which move through all\nhumanity.\n\nIn our opening chapters we pointed out that religion is not universally\ndistributed throughout human society. And of no one does it seem to\nhave complete possession. It seizes upon some of us and exalts us\nfor one hour now and then, for a day now and then; it may leave its\nafterglow upon our conduct for some time; it may establish restraints\nand habitual dispositions; sometimes it dominates us with but brief\nintermissions through long spells and then we can be saints and\nmartyrs. In all our religious phases there appears a desire to\nhold the phase, to subdue the rest of our life to the standards and\nexigencies of that phase. Our quickened intelligence sets itself to\na general analysis of our conduct and to the problem of establishing\ncontrols over our unilluminated intervals.\n\nAnd when the religious elements in the mind set themselves to such\nself-analysis and attempts to order and unify the whole being upon\nthis basis of the service and advancement of the race, they discover\nfirst a great series of indifferent moods, wherein the resistance to\nthought and work for the Open Conspiracy is merely passive and in the\nnature of inertia. There is a whole class of states of mind which may\nbe brought together under the head of \u201ceverydayism.\u201d The dinner-bell\nand the playing-fields, the cinema and the newspaper, the week-end\nvisit and the factory siren, a host of such expectant universal things,\ncall to a vast majority of people in our modern world to stop thinking\nand get busy with the interest in hand, and so on to the next, without\na thought for the general frame and drama in which these momentary\nand personal incidents are set. We are driven along these marked and\nestablished routes and turned this way or that by the accidents of\nupbringing, of rivalries and loves, of chance encounters and vivid\nexperiences, and it is rare for many of us, and never for some, that\nthe phases of broad reflection and self-questioning arise. For many\npeople the religious life now, as in the past, has been a quite\ndesperate effort to withdraw sufficient attention and energy from the\nflood of events to get some sort of grasp, and keep whatever grip is\nwon, upon the relations of the self to the whole. Far more recoil in\nterror from such a possibility and would struggle strenuously against\nsolitude in the desert, solitude under the stars, solitude in a silent\nroom or indeed any occasion for comprehensive thought.\n\nBut the instinct and purpose of the religious type is to keep hold\nupon the comprehensive drama, and at the heart of all the great\nreligions of the world we find a parallel disposition to escape in\nsome manner from the aimless drive and compulsion of accident and\neveryday. Escape is attempted either by withdrawal from the presence\nof crowding circumstance into a mystical contemplation and austere\nretirement, or--what is more difficult and desperate and reasonable--by\nimposing the mighty standards of enduring issues upon the whole mass\nof transitory problems which constitute the actual business of life.\nWe have already noted how the modern mind turns from retreat as a\nrecognisable method of religion, and faces squarely up to the second\nalternative. The tumult of life has to be met and conquered. Aim must\nprevail over the aimless. Remaining in normal life we must yet keep\nour wills and thoughts aloof from normal life and fixed upon creative\nprocesses. However busied we may be, however challenged, we must yet\nsave something of our best mental activity for self-examination and\nkeep ourselves alert against the endless treacheries within that would\ntrip us back into everydayism and disconnected responses to the stimuli\nof life.\n\nReligions in the past, though they have been apt to give a preference\nto the renunciation of things mundane, have sought by a considerable\nvariety of expedients to preserve the faith of those whom chance or\nduty still kept in normal contact with the world. Modern religion,\nwhich has no alternative to constant normal contact with the world,\ncannot lightly forgo the experiments of the old religions in such\nexpedients. Meetings for mutual reassurance, confession and prayer,\nself-dedication, sacraments and seasons of fast and meditation need\nto be modernised or replaced by modern equivalents if the religious\nvitality of the Open Conspiracy is to be sustained. At present,\nexcept in the case of a few friends and lovers, the modern religious\nindividual leads a life of extreme, wasteful and dangerous spiritual\nisolation. He may forget and he has nothing to remind him; he may\nrelapse and he will hear no reproach to warn him of his relapse.\n\n\u201cEveryday\u201d has many ways of justifying the return of the believer\nto its sceptical casualness. It is easy to persuade oneself that\none is taking life or oneself \u201ctoo seriously.\u201d The mind is very\nself-protective; it has a disposition to abandon too great or too\nfar-reaching an effort and return to things indisputably within its\nscope. We have an instinctive preference for thinking things are\n\u201call right\u201d; we economise anxiety; we defend the delusions that we\ncan work with, even though we half realise they are no more than\ndelusions. We resent the warning voice, the critical question that\nrobs our activities of assurance. Our everyday moods are not only\nthe antagonists of our religious moods, but they resent all outward\nappeals to our religious moods and they welcome every help against\nreligious appeals. We pass very readily from the merely defensive to\nthe defensive-aggressive, and from refusing to hear the word that might\nstir our consciences to a vigorous effort to suppress its utterance.\n\nChurches, religious organisations, try to keep the revivifying phase\nand usage, where it may strike upon the waning or slumbering faith\nof the convert, but modern religion as yet has no such organised\nreminders. They cannot be improvised. Crude attempts to supply the\nneeded corrective of conduct may do less good than harm. Each one of\nus for himself must do what he can to keep his high resolve in mind\nand protect himself from the snare of his own moods of fatigue or\ninadvertency.\n\nBut these passive and active defences of current things which operate\nin and through ourselves, and find such ready sympathy and assistance\nin the world about us, these massive resistance systems, are only the\nbeginning of our tale of the forces antagonistic to the Open Conspiracy\nthat lurk in our complexities.\n\nMen are creatures with other faults quite beyond and outside our common\ndisposition to be stupid, indolent, habitual and defensive. Not only\nhave we active creative impulses but also acute destructive ones.\nMan is a jealous animal. In our youth and adolescence our egotism is\nextravagant. A great number of us at that stage would rather not see\na beautiful or wonderful thing come into existence than have it come\ninto existence disregarding us. Something of that jealous malice,\nself-assertive ruthlessness, there is in all of us. At his worst man\ncan be an exceedingly combative, malignant, mischievous and cruel\nanimal. And few of us--none of us--are altogether above the possibility\nof such phases. When we consider the oppositions to the Open Conspiracy\nthat operate in the normal personality, we appreciate the soundness of\nthe catechism which instructs us to renounce not only the trivial world\nand the heavy flesh, but the active and militant devil.\n\nTo make is a long and wearisome business, with many arrests and\ndisappointments, but to break gives an instant thrill. We all know\nsomething of the delight of the bang. It is well for the Open\nConspirator to ask himself at times how far he is in love with the\ndream of a world in order, and how far he is driven by hatred of\ninstitutions that bore or humiliate him. He may be no more than a\nrevengeful incendiary in the mask of a constructive worker. How safe\nis he then from the reaction to some fresh humiliation? The Open\nConspiracy which is now his refuge and vindication may presently\nfail to give him the compensation he has sought, may offer him no\nbetter than a minor r\u00f4le, may display irritating and incomprehensible\npreferences. And for a great number of things in overt antagonism to\nthe great aim of the Open Conspiracy, he will still find within himself\nnot simply acquiescence but sympathy and a genuine if inconsistent\nadmiration. There they are, waiting for his phase of disappointment.\nBack he may go to the old loves with a new animus against the greater\nscheme.\n\nMan has pranced a soldier in reality and fancy for so many generations\nthat few of us can altogether release ourselves from the brilliant\npretensions of flags, empire, patriotism and aggression. Business men,\nespecially in America, seem to feel a sort of glory in calling even\nthe underselling and overadvertising of rival enterprises \u201cfighting.\u201d\nPill vendors and public departments can have their \u201cwars,\u201d their\nheroisms, their desperate mischiefs, and so get the Napoleonic feeling.\nThe world and our imaginations are full of the sentimentalities, the\nfalse glories and loyalties of such refurbishing of the old combative\ntraditions, trailing after them, as they do, so much worth and virtue\nin a dulled and stupefied condition. It is difficult to resist the fine\ngravity, the high self-respect, examples of honour and good style in\nsmall things, of the military and naval services, for all that they are\nnow no more than noxious parasites upon the nascent world commonweal.\nIn France not a word may be said against the army; in England, against\nthe navy. There will be many Open Conspirators at first who will\nscarcely dare to say that word even to themselves.\n\nBut all these obsolete values and attitudes with which our minds are\ncumbered must be cleared out if the new faith is to have free play. We\nhave to clear them out not only from our own minds but from the minds\nof others who may be or become our associates. The finer and more\npicturesque false loyalties, false standards of honour, false religious\nassociations, may seem to us, the more thoroughly must we seek to\nrelease our minds and the minds of those about us from them and cut off\nall thoughts of a return.\n\nWe cannot compromise with these vestiges of the ancient order. Whatever\nwe retain of them will come back to life and grow again. It is no good\nto operate for cancer unless the whole growth is removed. Leave a crown\nabout and presently you will find it being worn by someone resolved to\nbe a king. Keep the name and image of a god without a distinct museum\nlabel and sooner or later you will discover a worshipper on his knees\nto it and be lucky not to find a human sacrifice upon the altar. Wave\na flag and it will wrap about you. Of yourself even more than of the\ncommunity is this true; there can be no half measures. You have not\nyet completed your escape to the Open Conspiracy from the cities of\nthe plain while it is still possible for you to take a single backward\nglance.\n\nAnd at last when we conceive that we have given ourselves altogether\nto the Open Conspiracy frustration may overtake us. Then it is, when\nwe are assured that we are possessed by the Open Conspiracy, that we\nshall be most disposed to think and act as though we possessed the Open\nConspiracy. And if we have made sacrifices, if we are conscious of\nsubstantial success, then still more shall we be in danger. One of the\nmost disagreeable features of Christian hagiology is the value set by\nthe blessed saints upon their special privileges. The poor souls loved\nto think they had caught the peculiar attention of God by their sores\nand mortifications. This \u201cweakness of the eminent claim\u201d pervades all\nreligions. Most of those who will serve the Open Conspiracy will be\ntempted to think they have deserved well and to compare their merits\nand their share of influence and recognition in the movement with those\nof others.\n\nThe Open Conspiracy will be no more free from rivalries, heartburnings,\ndistrust, touchy suspicions, mutual interference and disingenuous\nnegligences, than any other great human co-operation. The disciplines,\nthe trainings and methods of organisation that must be evolved as the\nmovement grows may be effective in restricting the mischief of such\nhumanities; they will certainly not suppress them altogether. Many a\ngood and serviceable man may die embittered by the preoccupation of his\nfellow workers in this huge campaign. But the Open Conspiracy will grow\nas science grows, greater at last than all its outer antagonisms, than\nancient tradition or instinctive resistance, greater than the conscious\nor unconscious disloyalties of its adherents, greater than all the\npresent vices of mankind.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBeware of malice in this movement. Remember that man is a malicious\nanimal and you are human. Do not fall foul of your allies and\nassociates because some of them affect your richer nature as prigs or\npedants; do not be too scrupulous about the motives of others; your own\nalso may be misconceived; do not interpret enthusiastic service either\nas conceited self-assertion or calculated self-advancement, nor give\nway to excessive chagrin when some honourable task you had promised\nyourself is seized upon by someone else. Avoid the belittlement of\nuseful work upon our side because it is not perfect. Do not let\ndifferences of accent and idiom annoy you. Many great movements have\nbeen crippled, many great opportunities lost, by the minor spites of\nthe elect. Vindictive self-assertion is an invariable characteristic of\nthe hopelessly damned. Watch yourself for the minutest first specks of\nthis leprosy.\n\nThe Open Conspiracy may learn a useful lesson if it bears in mind the\nearly phases of Christianity and Islam and guards itself against such\nsordid dissensions as sprung and enfeebled those mighty initiatives\nbefore even the first generation of disciples had passed away.\n\n\n\n\n_Chapter XII_\n\nTHE OPEN CONSPIRACY MUST BEGIN AS A MOVEMENT OF EXPLANATION AND\nPROPAGANDA\n\n\nAnd now, having taken the measure of the array of current things\nagainst which the Open Conspiracy must pit itself, we may go on to\nconsider the germination and development of the Open Conspiracy.\n\nIt is fairly obvious that the primary and earliest task is to express,\ndevelop and propagate the idea of the Open Conspiracy, to make its\nexternal form clear, convincing, attractive and commanding to as many\npeople as possible. The primary organisation must be a propagandist\norganisation.\n\nThe idea of the Open Conspiracy rests upon and arises out of a system\nof historical, biological and sociological realisations. In the\ncase of people with sound knowledge in these fields we may look for\nthese realisations already; such people are prepared for adhesion\nwithout any great explanatory work; there is nothing to set out to\nthem but the project. They do already constitute the Open Conspiracy\nin an unorganised solution and will not so much adhere as admit to\nthemselves and others their state of mind. Directly we pass beyond that\ncomparatively restricted world, however, we shall find that we have\nto deal with partial knowledge, distorted views or blank ignorance,\nand that a revision and extension of historical and biological ideas\nand a considerable elucidation of economic misconceptions has to be\nundertaken.\n\nFor the past twelve years, the present writer has given much thought\nand work to the question of presenting these foundation ideas for a\nmodern moral and political activity in a practicable form, and it will\nbe the easiest method of statement for him to describe the outcome of\nhis experiments and reflections. He reports therefore upon what he has\ndone and is doing not because that is in any way final or universally\napplicable, but because it gives something sufficiently full and lucid\nto serve as a concrete illustration of his idea. He has schemed out a\ngroup of writings to embody the necessary ideas of the new time in a\nform adapted to the current reading public and he considers what he is\ndoing as a sort of provisional \u201cBible,\u201d so to speak, for some factors\nat least in the Open Conspiracy. As the current reading public changes,\nhis work will become obsolescent so far as its present form and method\ngo. But not so far as its substantial method goes. That he believes\nwill remain.\n\nThese writings, this modern Bible scheme, has taken a threefold\nform and he believes the mental basis of the Open Conspiracy must\nnecessarily retain this threefold form if only on account of its\nlucidity of presentation. He has already written and published the\nopening third of his scheme, first in a full and then in a compacter\nbook, as the _Outline of History_ and as _A Short History\nof the World_. This furnishes a framework of fact within which\nthe general political ideas of the reader can be put in order. It\npresents the history of life as a progress from fragmentation towards\nworld unity, mental and material. A second third of this statement\nof fundamental modern ideas he is now preparing in collaboration\nwith two more specially qualified writers. This will be a companion\nand parallel to the _Outline of History_ and it will be called\n_The Science of Life_. It will be a summary of what is known\nof the nature and possibilities of life. It will give the data for\npersonal conduct within a biologically conceived world society, just\nas the _Outline of History_ gives a frame for the individual\npolitical life in a unifying world state. The remaining third of this\nencyclop\u00e6dia, the third dealing mainly with inorganic and economic\nscience, is still a mere sketch and skeleton. It will treat of\neconomic and social organisation considered as the problem of man\u2019s\nexploitation of extraneous energy for the service of the species. Its\nprospective title, _The Conquest of Power_, will perhaps convey\nthe spirit of its design. The general idea of these writings is to\npresent altogether, first a complete modern world outlook, politically\nspeaking, then the moral data of the new time, and then the forecast\nof a collective economic policy, in a form accessible to a person of\nordinary education. It is the presentation of the threefold basis for a\nmodern ideology, historical, biological and economic. It is a pioneer\nattempt to get this written down connectedly.\n\nFor a considerable section of the moderately educated public, with\nhistorical ideas fragmentary and restricted to mere periods and\ncountries, the compilation of the _Outline of History_ has served\nalready, and still serves, as a stimulant and a release--and no doubt,\nwhen its work is supplemented by its two companions and when all that\ncan be done now with life and matter is realised the three will help in\na great number of cases to pull people\u2019s minds together into a shape\nthat will dispose them to full participation in the new movement. But\nat the most exaggerated estimate possible, these works constitute a\nmerely provisional \u201cBible,\u201d and the measure of their success will be\nmarked by the promptitude of their replacement by worthier successors.\n\nSuch compilations cannot but have many of the characteristic defects of\npioneer and elementary work; they have often to achieve their ends by\ngoing rather roughly over secondary difficulties that would otherwise\ndelay their production indefinitely. Yet at the outset they will be\nof use in marking out the shape and scope of the general concepts\nof the Open Conspiracy. At the outset, the Open Conspiracy, as it\nreaches beyond the range of exceptionally well-informed and mentally\nactive people, must be very largely an educational propaganda of such\nmaterial. Only later can it hope to relinquish this part of its task to\nrenascent educational organisations which can be trusted to ensure a\nfirm foundation for the modern conception of life.\n\nThe form in which the Open Conspiracy will first appear will certainly\nnot be that of a centralised organisation. Its most natural and\nconvenient method of coming into being will be the formation of small\ngroups of friends, family groups, groups of students and employees\nor other sorts of people meeting and conversing frequently in the\ncourse of their normal occupations, who will exchange views and find\nthemselves in agreement upon the general idea. Fundamentally important\nissues upon which unanimity must be achieved from the outset are,\nfirstly, the entirely provisional nature of all existing governments,\nand the entirely provisional nature, therefore, of all loyalties\nassociated therewith; secondly, the supreme importance of population\ncontrol in human biology and the possibility it affords us of a\nrelease from the pressure of the struggle for existence on ourselves;\nand thirdly, the urgent necessity of protective resistance against\nthe present traditional drift towards war. People who do not grasp\nthe vital significance of these test issues do not really begin to\nunderstand the Open Conspiracy. Groups coming into agreement upon these\nmatters, and upon their general interpretation of history, will be in a\nposition to seek adherents, enlarge themselves and attempt to establish\ncommunication with kindred groups for common ends. They can take up a\nvariety of activities to develop a sense and habit of combined action\nand feel their way to greater enterprises.\n\nWe have shown already that the Open Conspiracy must be heterogeneous in\norigin. Young men and young women may be collected into groups arranged\nupon lines not unlike those of the Bohemian Sokols or the Italian\nFasci. Such groups may easily have an athletic and recreational side.\nThese initial groups will be of no uniform pattern. They will be of\nvery different size, average age, social experience and influence.\nTheir particular activities will be determined by these things. It\nis highly improbable that the name of the Open Conspiracy will be\napplied to any of them. That is just a provisional name in these Blue\nPrints. Their diverse qualities and influences will express themselves\nby diverse titles. A group of students may find itself capable of\nlittle more than self-education and personal propaganda; a group of\nmiddle-class people in a small town may find its small resources fully\nengaged at first in such things as, for example, seeing that desirable\nliterature is available for sale or in the local public library,\nprotecting books and news-vendors from suppression, or influencing\nlocal teachers. Most parents of school-children can press for the\nteaching of universal history and sound biology and protest against the\ninculcation of aggressive patriotism. On the other hand, a group of\nampler experience and resources may undertake the printing, publication\nand distribution of literature, and exercise considerable influence\nupon public opinion in turning education in the right direction. The\nLeague of Nations movement, the Birth Control movement and most radical\nand socialist societies are fields into which groups may go to find\nadherents more than half prepared for them. The Open Conspiracy is a\nfuller and ampler movement into which these incomplete activities must\nnecessarily merge as its idea takes possession of men\u2019s imaginations.\n\nFrom the outset, the Open Conspiracy will set its face against\nmilitarism. There is a plain present need for the organisation now,\nbefore war comes again, of an open and explicit refusal to serve in any\nwar--or at most to serve in war, directly or indirectly, only after the\nissue has been fully and fairly submitted to arbitration. The time for\na conscientious objection to war service is manifestly before and not\nafter the onset of war. People who have acquiesced in a belligerent\nforeign policy by silence right up to the onset of war, have little\nto complain of if they are then compelled to serve. And a refusal\nto participate with one\u2019s country in warfare is a preposterously\nincomplete gesture unless it is rounded off by the deliberate advocacy\nof a world _pax_, a world economic control and a restrained\npopulation, such as the idea of the Open Conspiracy embodies.\n\nThe putting upon record of its members\u2019 reservation of themselves from\nany or all of the military obligations that may be thrust upon the\ncountry by military and diplomatic effort, will be, I think, the first\nconsiderable overt act of the Open Conspiracy groups. It will supply\nthe practical incentive to bring many of them together in the first\nplace. It will follow closely upon the beginning of the propaganda and\nit will probably necessitate the creation of regional or national _ad\nhoc_ committees for the establishment of a collective legal and\npolitical defensive for this dissent from current militant nationalism.\nIt will bring the Open Conspiracy very early out of the province of\ndiscussion into the field of practical conflict. It will from the\noutset invest it with a very necessary quality of present applicability.\n\nThe anticipatory repudiation of military service, so far as this\nlast may be imposed by existing governments in their factitious\ninternational rivalries, need not necessarily involve a denial of the\nneed of military action on behalf of the world commonweal, for the\nsuppression of nationalist brigandage, nor need it prevent the military\ntraining of members of the Open Conspiracy. It is simply the practical\nform of assertion that the normal militant diplomacy and warfare of\nthe present time are offences against civilisation, processes in\nthe nature of brigandage, sedition and civil war, and that serious\nmen cannot be expected to play anything but a r\u00f4le of disapproval,\nnon-participation or active prevention towards them. Our loyalty to our\ncurrent government, we would intimate, is subject to its sane and adult\nbehaviour.\n\nThese educational and propagandist groups drawing together into an\norganised resistance to militarism and to the excessive control of\nindividuals by the makeshift governments of to-day, are the possible\nand probable form in which the Open Conspiracy will appear in the\nworld. But they constitute only the earliest and more elementary grade\nof its activities, and we will presently go on to consider the more\nspecialised and constructive forms its effort must evoke. Before doing\nso, however, we may say a little more about the structure and method\nof these initiatory groups.\n\nSince they are bound to be different and miscellaneous in form, size,\nquality and ability, any early attempts to organise them into common\ngeneral action or even into regular common gatherings are to be\ndeprecated. There should be many types of groups. Collective action had\nbetter for a time--perhaps for a long time--be undertaken not through\nthe merging of groups but through the formation of _ad hoc_\nassociations for definitely specialised ends. The groups will come into\nthese associations to make a contribution very much as people come into\nlimited liability companies, that is to say with a subscription and\nnot with their whole capital. A comprehensive organization attempting\nfrom the first to cover all activities would necessarily rest upon and\npromote one prevalent pattern of group and hamper or estrange the more\noriginal and interesting forms.\n\nThere is a detestable sort of energetic human being which preys\nupon human societies, delighting in procedure, by-laws, votings,\nstereotyping and embarrassing \u201cresolutions,\u201d the \u201ccapture\u201d of\ncommittees and organisations, the delegation of powers and suchlike\npoliticians\u2019 mischief. It is a blighting and accursed type, living\nand multiplying in rules and precedents as bugs in old wallpaper. The\nless the Open Conspiracy devotes itself to such elaborations in its\ngatherings, the better for its spirit. Always it will be well to keep\nits comprehensive organisation easy and simple.\n\nEach group should come together and develop its ideas, frankly and\nfreely, at something like a common level of understanding and in a\nfriendly atmosphere. It would be advisable that most groups should\nassemble with some regularity, and since in a large part of the world\nSunday is recognised as the day set apart from the concerns of the\nindividual for the consideration of wider issues, that day may well be\nthe usual day for group gatherings. A weekly meeting at which everyone\nattempts to be present seems to be indicated as the normal habit of\na group. A member who finds weekly attendance at his group meeting\nirksome, probably belongs to the wrong group and should seek another.\n\nA normal group in the early stage of its existence will find most\nof its energy engaged in confirming and cleaning up its conception\nof the Open Conspiracy and in dealing with people invited to join\nin, trying out its ideas upon interested visitors and so forth.\nIt will also experiment in outside activities determined by its\nspecial circumstances. The ordinary group must bear in mind that\nthese practical activities must at first be preparatory and mainly\nself-educational. It must not subordinate its general mental task in\nthem.\n\nThe clear conception of the Open Conspiracy is a considerable but\nnecessary intellectual effort. A group of historical, biological and\neconomic ideas and interpretations has to be assimilated and they are\nnot by any means simple and obvious ideas. And in addition--and what\nis perhaps the more difficult part--many prevalent habits of mind and\ncurrent assumptions have to be got rid of. The conception of the Open\nConspiracy involves, for example, a sceptical and destructive criticism\nof personal-immortality religions and also of the sacred formul\u00e6\nof communism. It can work, and may go far in certain ways, with\nChristians or Communists, but it cannot incorporate them so long as\nthey are Christians or Communists. Vague goodwill for mankind, or for\nprogress, and adhesions based on some partial approval of its spirit,\nits methods or its objective, are of no real value to an enterprise so\nhuge in its ultimate intentions.\n\nFor the furtherance of its aims, the Open Conspiracy may work in\nalliance with all sorts of movements and people, but to take them\ninto its own essential substance is an altogether different matter.\nPropaganda and education are seed-sowing and only in revivalist\nreligion is an immediate, a simultaneous reaping attempted with the\nsowing of the seed. The general run of people are more eager to do than\nto understand, and from the beginning of its first overt activities the\nOpen Conspiracy will have to deal with the friendly advances of those\nwho will want to share in its effort without any proper assimilation of\nthe ideas that promote it. This will be another reason for projecting\nits practical activities into the form of _ad hoc_ associations,\ninto which outsiders with different or undeveloped religious,\npolitical, social and philosophical views may come without penetrating\nas permanent members into the actual groups, and it will also justify\nthe helpful participation of the Open Conspiracy groups in definitely\nrestricted movements which attend only to a portion of its programme.\nBut many of those who first come into touch with the Open Conspiracy\nsimply as helpers and allies will no doubt go on to a careful study of\nits general concepts and so to complete participation.\n\nThe groups of the Open Conspiracy, it may be reiterated, will vary\nmuch in leisure, knowledge, ability and scope. In the student world,\nin the associated world of special social, political and philosophical\nstudies and in the world where speculative thought is combined with\nwriting and discussion, groups will appear which turn naturally to the\ndevelopment and expression of the Open Conspiracy as their distinctive\ncontribution. The concepts of the Open Conspiracy will appear\nincreasingly in books and periodicals until some of these latter become\nrecognised definitely as means of communication within the movement. It\nwill acquire or provoke its own periodic literature. Such circles of\n\u201cintelligentsia\u201d will also supply lecturers and leaders of discussions\nwho will be drawn upon by other groups and group combinations for\nvisits of stimulus and elucidation.\n\nFrom that, the spreading, growing and ripening groups will go on to\ncombine with one another for local and regional meetings. People\nwho have met first in _ad hoc_ activities will find themselves\ndeveloping naturally and progressively into social association\nand a loose general organisation with the Open Conspiracy. Such\nan organisation should leave the fullest scope for group or even\nindividual autonomy in particular cases. The only binding restraint\nupon independent initiatives in the Open Conspiracy should be its broad\nessential requirements, namely:\n\n(1) The complete assertion, practical as well as theoretical, of the\nprovisional nature of existing governments and of our acquiescence in\nthem;\n\n(2) The resolve to minimise by all available means the conflicts of\nthese governments, their militant use of individuals and property and\ntheir interferences with the establishment of a world economic system;\n\n(3) The determination to replace private local or national ownership of\nat least credit, transport and staple production by a responsible world\ndirectorate serving the common ends of the race;\n\n(4) The practical recognition of the necessity for world biological\ncontrols, for example, of population and disease;\n\n(5) The support of a minimum standard of individual freedom and welfare\nin the world; and\n\n(6) The supreme duty of subordinating the personal life to the creation\nof a world directorate capable of these tasks and to the general\nadvancement of human knowledge, capacity and power.\n\nThe admission therewith that our immortality is conditional and lies in\nthe race and not in our individual selves.\n\n\n\n\n_Chapter XIII_\n\nEARLY CONSTRUCTIVE WORK OF THE OPEN CONSPIRACY\n\n\nIn such terms we may sketch the practicable and possible opening phase\nof the Open Conspiracy.\n\nWe do not present it as a movement initiated by any individual\nor radiating from any particular centre. It arises naturally and\nnecessarily from the present increase of knowledge and the broadening\noutlook of many minds throughout the world. It is reasonable therefore\nto anticipate its appearance all over the world in sporadic mutually\nindependent groups and to recognise not only that they will be\nextremely various but that many of them will trail with them racial and\nregional habits and characteristics which will only be shaken off as\nits cosmopolitan character becomes imperatively evident. The passage\nfrom the partial anticipations of the Open Conspiracy that already\nabound everywhere to its complete and completely self-conscious\nstatement may be made by almost imperceptible degrees. To-day it may\nseem no more than a visionary idea; to-morrow it may be realised as a\nworld-wide force of opinion and will. People will pass with no great\ninconsistency from saying that the Open Conspiracy is impossible to\nsaying that it has always been plain and clear to them, that to this\nfashion they have shaped their lives as long as they can remember.\n\nIn its opening phase, in the day of small things, quite minor accidents\nmay help or delay the clear definition and popularisation of its\nmain ideas. The changing pattern of public events may disperse or\nconcentrate attention upon it, or it may win the early adherence of\nmen of exceptional resources, energy or ability. It is impossible to\nforetell the speed of its advance. Its development may be slower or\nfaster, direct or devious, but the logic of accumulating realisations\nthrusts it forward, will persist in thrusting it on, and sooner or\nlater it will be discovered, conscious and potent, the working religion\nof most sane and energetic people.\n\nMeanwhile our supreme virtues must be faith and persistence.\n\nSo far we have considered only two of the main activities of the Open\nConspiracy, the one being its propaganda of confidence in the possible\nworld commonweal and the other its immediate practical attempt to\nsystematise resistance to militant and competitive imperialism and\nnationalism. But such things are merely its groundwork undertakings;\nthey do no more than clear the site and make the atmosphere possible\nfor its organised constructive efforts.\n\nDirectly we turn to that we turn to questions of special knowledge,\nspecial effort and special organisation.\n\nLet us consider first the general advancement of science, the\nprotection and support of scientific research and the diffusion of\nscientific knowledge. These things fall within the normal scheme of\nduty for the members of the Open Conspiracy. The world of science\nand experiment is the region of origin of nearly all the great\ninitiatives that characterise our times; the Open Conspiracy owes\nits inspiration, its existence, its form and direction entirely to\nthe changes of condition these initiatives have brought about, and\nyet a large number of scientific workers live outside the sphere of\nsympathy in which we may expect the Open Conspiracy to materialise, and\ncollectively their political and social influence upon the community\nis extraordinarily small. Having regard to the immensity of its\ncontributions and the incalculable value of its promise to the modern\ncommunity, science--research, that is, and the diffusion of scientific\nknowledge--is extraordinarily neglected, starved and threatened by\nhostile interference. This is largely because it has no strong unifying\norganisation and cannot in itself develop such an organisation.\n\nScience is a hard mistress and the first condition of successful\nscientific work is that the scientific man should stick to his\nresearch. The world of science is therefore in itself, at its core,\na miscellany of specialists, often very ungracious specialists,\nand, rather than offer him help and co-operation, it calls for\nunderstanding, tolerance and service from the man of more general\nintelligence and wider purpose. The company of scientific men is\nless like a host of guiding angels than like a swarm of marvellous\nbees--endowed with stings--which must be hived and cherished and\nmultiplied by the Open Conspiracy.\n\nBut so soon as we have the Open Conspiracy at work, putting its\ncase plainly and offering its developing organisation to those most\npreciously preoccupied men, then reasonably, when it involves no\nspecial trouble for them, when it is the line of least resistance for\nthem, they may be expected to fall in with its convenient and helpful\nideas, and find in it what they have hitherto lacked, a common system\nof political and social concepts to hold them together. When that\nstage is reached, we shall be saved such spectacles of intellectual\nprostitution as the last Great War offered, when men of science were\nherded blinking from their laboratories to curse one another upon\nnationalist lines, and when after the war stupid and wicked barriers\nwere set up to the free communication of knowledge by the exclusion\nof scientific men of this or that nationality from international\nscientific gatherings. The Open Conspiracy must help the man of\nscience to realise, what at present he fails most astonishingly to\nrealise, that he belongs to a greater comity than any king or president\nrepresents to-day, and so prepare him for better behaviour in the next\nseason of trial.\n\nThe formation of groups in, and not only in, but about and in relation\nto, the scientific world, which will add to those first main activities\nof the Open Conspiracy, propaganda and pacificism, a special attention\nto the needs of scientific work, may be enlarged upon with advantage\nhere, because it will illustrate quite typically the idea of a special\nwork carried on in relation to a general activity, which is the subject\nof this section.\n\nThe Open Conspiracy extends its invitation to all sorts and conditions\nof men, but the service of scientific progress is for those only who\nare specially equipped or who are sufficiently interested to equip\nthemselves. For scientific work there is first of all a great need\nof endowment and the setting up of laboratories, observatories,\nexperimental stations and the like in all parts of the world. Numbers\nof men and women capable of scientific work never achieve it for want\nof the stimulus of opportunity afforded by endowment. Few contrive to\ncreate their own opportunities. The essential man of science is very\nrarely an able collector or administrator of money and anyhow the\ndetailed work of organisation is a grave call upon his special mental\nenergy. But many men capable of a broad and intelligent appreciation\nof scientific work, but not capable of the peculiar intensities of\nresearch, have the gift of extracting money from private and public\nsources, and it is for them to use that gift modestly and generously in\nproviding the framework for those more especially endowed.\n\nAnd there is already a steadily increasing need for the proper storage\nand indexing of scientific results, and every fresh worker enhances it.\nQuite a considerable amount of scientific work goes fruitless or is\nneedlessly repeated, because of the growing volume of publication, and\nmen make discoveries in the field of reality only to lose them again in\nthe lumber-room of record. Here is a second line of activity to which\nthe Open Conspiracy with a scientific bias may direct his attention.\n\nA third line is the liaison work between the man of science and the\ncommon intelligent man; the promotion of publications which will\neither state the substance, implications and consequences of new work\nin the vulgar tongue, or, if that is impossible, train the general\nrun of people to the new idioms and technicalities which need to be\nincorporated with the vulgar tongue if it is still to serve its ends as\na means of intellectual intercourse.\n\nThrough special _ad hoc_ organisations, societies for the\npromotion of Research, for Research Defence, for World Indexing,\nfor the translation of Scientific Papers, for the Diffusion of New\nKnowledge, the surplus energies of a great number of Open Conspirators\ncan be directed to entirely creative ends and a new world organisation\nof scientific work built up, within which such dear old institutions\nas the Royal Society of London, the various European Academies of\nScience and the like, now overgrown and inadequate, can maintain\ntheir venerable pride in themselves, their mellowing prestige and\ntheir distinguished exclusiveness, without their present privilege of\ninflicting cramping slights and restrictions upon the more abundant\nscientific activities of to-day.\n\nSo in relation to Science--and here the word is being used in its\nnarrower accepted meaning for what is often spoken of as _pure_\nscience, the search for physical and biological realities,\nuncomplicated by moral, social and \u201cpractical\u201d considerations--we\nevoke a conception of the Open Conspiracy as producing groups of\nsocially associated individuals, who engage primarily in the general\nbasic activities of the Conspiracy and adhere to and promote the six\nbroad principles summarised at the end of Chapter Twelve, but who work\nalso with the larger part of their energies, through international\nand cosmopolitan societies and in a multitude of special ways, for\nthe establishment of an enduring and progressive world organisation\nof pure research. They will have come to this special work because\ntheir distinctive gifts, their inclinations, their positions and\nopportunities have indicated it as theirs.\n\nNow a very parallel system of Open Conspiracy groups is conceivable,\nin relation to business and industrial life. It would necessarily be\na vastly bulkier and more heterogeneous system of groups but otherwise\nthe analogy is complete. Here we imagine those people whose gifts,\ninclinations, positions and opportunities as directors, workers or\nassociates give them an exceptional insight into and influence in the\nprocesses of producing and distributing commodities, can also be drawn\ntogether into groups within the Open Conspiracy. But these groups\nwill be concerned with the huge and more complicated problems of the\nprocesses by which even now the small isolated individual adventures in\nproduction and trading, that constituted the economic life of former\ncivilisations, are giving place to larger, better instructed, better\nplanned industrial organisations, whose operations and combinations\nbecome at last world wide.\n\nThe amalgamations and combinations, the substitution of large-scale\nbusiness for multitudes of small-scale businesses, which are going on\nnow, go on with all the cruelty and disregards of a natural process. If\nman is to profit and survive, these unconscious blunderings--which now\nstagger towards but which may never attain world organisation--must be\nwatched, controlled, mastered and directed. As uncertainty diminishes,\nthe quality of adventure and the amount of waste diminish also, and\nlarge speculative profits are no longer possible or justifiable.\nThe transition from speculative adventure to organised foresight in\nthe common interest, in the whole world of economic life, is the\nsubstantial task of the Open Conspiracy. And it is these specially\ninterested and equipped groups and not the movement as a whole which\nmay best begin the attack upon these fundamental readjustments.\n\nThe various Socialist movements of the nineteenth and earlier twentieth\ncenturies had this in common, that they sought to replace the \u201cprivate\nowner\u201d in most or all economic interests by some vaguely apprehended\n\u201cpublic owner.\u201d This, following the democratic disposition of the\ntimes, was commonly conceived of as an elected body, a municipality,\nthe parliamentary state or what not. There were municipal socialists,\n\u201cnationalising\u201d socialists, imperial socialists. In the mystic\nteachings of the Marxist, the collective owner was to be \u201cthe\ndictatorship of the proletariat.\u201d Production for profit was denounced.\nThe contemporary mind realises the evils of production for profit and\nof the indiscriminate scrambling of private ownership, but it has a\ncompleter realisation and a certain accumulation of experience of the\ndifficulties of organising that larger ownership we desire. Private\nownership may not be altogether evil as a provisional stage even if\nit has no more in its favour than the ability to transcend political\nboundaries.\n\nMoreover--and here again the democratic prepossessions of the\nnineteenth century come in--the Socialist movements sought to make\nevery single adherent a reformer and a propagandist of economic\nmethods. In order to do so, it was necessary to simplify economic\nprocesses to the crudity of nursery toys, and the intricate interplay\nof will and desire in enterprise, normal employment and direction,\nin questions of ownership, wages, credit and money, was reduced to\na childish fable of surplus value wickedly appropriated. The Open\nConspiracy is not so much a socialism as a more comprehensive scheme\nthat has eaten and assimilated whatever was digestible of its socialist\nforebears. It turns to biology for guidance towards the regulation of\nquantity and a controlled distribution of the human population of the\nworld, and it judges all the subsidiary aspects of property and pay by\nthe criterion of most efficient production and distribution in relation\nto the indications thus obtained.\n\nThese economic groups, then, of the Open Conspiracy, which may come\nindeed to be a large part of the Open Conspiracy, will be working in\nthat vast task of economic reconstruction--which from the point of\nview of the older socialism was the sole task before mankind. They\nwill be conducting experiments and observing processes according to\ntheir opportunities. Through _ad hoc_ societies and journals\nthey will be comparing and examining their methods and preparing\nreports and clear information for the movement at large. The whole\nquestion of money and monetary methods in our modern communities, so\nextraordinarily disregarded in socialist literature, will be examined\nunder the assumption that money is the token of the community\u2019s\nobligation, direct or indirect, to an individual, and credit its\npermission to deal freely with material.\n\nThe whole psychology of industry and industrial relationship needs\nto be revised and restated in terms of the collective efficiency and\nwelfare of mankind. And just as far as can be contrived, the counsel\nand the confidences of those who now direct great industrial and\nfinancial operations will be invoked. The first special task of a\nbanker, or a bank clerk for that matter, who joins the Open Conspiracy,\nwill be to answer the questions: \u201cWhat is a bank?\u201d \u201cWhat are you going\nto do about it?\u201d \u201cWhat have we to do about it?\u201d The first question\nto a manufacturer will be: \u201cWhat are you making and why?\u201d and \u201cWhat\nare you and we to do about it?\u201d Instead of the crude proposals to\n\u201cexpropriate\u201d and \u201ctake over by the state\u201d of the primitive socialism,\nthe Open Conspiracy will build up an encyclop\u00e6dic conception of the\nmodern economic complex as a labyrinthine pseudo-system progressively\neliminating waste and working its way along multitudinous channels\ntowards unity, towards clarity of purpose and method, towards abundant\nproductivity and efficient social service.\n\nLet us come back now for a paragraph or so to the ordinary adherent\nto the Open Conspiracy, the adherent considered not in relation to\nhis special aptitudes and services, but in relation to the movement\nas a whole and to those special constructive organisations outside\nhis own field. It will be his duty to keep his mind in touch with the\nprogressing concepts of the scientific work so far as he is able and\nwith the larger issues of the economic reconstruction that is afoot, to\ntake his cues from the special groups and organisations engaged upon\nthat work, and to help where he finds his opportunity and when there\nis a call upon him. But no adherent of the Open Conspiracy can remain\nmerely and completely an ordinary adherent. There can be no pawns in\nthe game of the Open Conspiracy, no \u201ccannon fodder\u201d in its war. A\nspecial activity quite as much as a general understanding is demanded\nfrom everyone who looks creatively towards the future of mankind.\n\nWe have instanced first the fine and distinctive world organisation of\npure science and then the huge massive movement towards co-operating\nunity of aim in the economic life until at last the production and\ndistribution of staple necessities is apprehended as one world\nbusiness, and we have suggested that this latter movement may gradually\npervade and incorporate a very great bulk of human activities. But\nbesides this fine current and this great torrent of evolving activities\nand relationships there are also a very considerable variety of other\ngreat functions in the community towards which Open Conspiracy groups\nmust direct their organising enquiries and suggestions in their common\nintention of ultimately assimilating all the confused processes of\nto-day into a world community.\n\nFor example, there must be a series of groups in close touch at\none end with biological science and at the other with the complex\nof economic activity, who will be concerned specially with the\npractical administration of the biological interests of the race, from\nfood-plants and industrial products to pestilences and population. And\nanother series of groups will gather together attention and energy to\nfocus them upon the educational process. We have already pointed out in\nChapter Nine that there is a strong disposition towards conservatism\nin normal educational institutions. They preserve traditions rather\nthan develop them. They are likely to set up a considerable resistance\nto the reconstruction of the world outlook upon the threefold basis\ndefined in Chapter Twelve. This resistance must be attacked by special\nsocieties, by the establishment of competing schools, by help and\npromotion for enlightened teachers, and, wherever the attack is\nincompletely successful, it must be supplemented by the energetic\ndiffusion of educational literature for adults, upon modern lines. The\nforces of the entire movement may be mobilised in a variety of ways to\nbring pressure upon reactionary schools and institutions.\n\nA set of activities correlated with most of the directly creative\nones will lie through existing political and administrative bodies.\nThe political work of the Open Conspiracy must be conducted upon\ntwo levels and by entirely different methods. Its main political\nidea, its political strategy, is to weaken, efface, incorporate or\nsupersede existing governments. But there is also a tactical diversion\nof administrative powers and resources to economic and educational\narrangements of a modern type. Because a country or a district is\ninconvenient as a division and destined to ultimate absorption in\nsome more comprehensive and economical system of government, that is\nno reason why its administration should not be brought meanwhile into\nworking co-operation with the development of the Open Conspiracy. Free\nTrade nationalism in power is better than high tariff nationalism, and\npacificist party liberalism better than aggressive party patriotism.\n\nThis evokes the anticipation of another series of groups, a group in\nevery possible political division, whose task it will be to organise\nthe whole strength of the Open Conspiracy in that division as an\neffective voting or agitating force. In many divisions this might\nsoon become a sufficiently considerable block to affect the attitudes\nand pledges of the national politicians. The organisation of these\npolitical groups into provincial or national conferences and systems\nwould follow hard upon their appearance. In their programmes they would\nbe guided by meetings and discussions with the specifically economic,\neducational, biological, scientific and central groups, but they would\nalso form their own special research bodies to work out the incessant\nproblems of transition between the old type of locally centred\nadministrations and a developing world system of political controls.\n\nIn the preceding chapter we sketched the first practicable first phase\nof the Open Conspiracy as the propaganda of a group of interlocking\nideas, a propaganda associated with pacificist action. In the present\nchapter we have given a scheme of branching and amplifying development.\nIn this scheme, this scheme of the second phase, we conceive of the\nOpen Conspiracy as consisting of a great multitude and variety of\noverlapping groups, but now all organised for collective political,\nsocial and educational as well as propagandist action. They will\nrecognise each other much more clearly than they did at first and they\nwill have acquired a common name.\n\nThe groups, however, almost all of them, will still have specific\nwork also. Some will be organising a sounder setting for scientific\nprogress, some exploring new social and educational possibilities,\nmany concentrated upon this or that phase in the reorganisation of the\nworld\u2019s economic life and so forth. The individual Open Conspirator\nmay belong to one or more groups and in addition to the ad hoc\nsocieties and organisations which the movement will sustain, often in\nco-operation with partially sympathetic people still outside its ranks.\n\nThe character of the Open Conspiracy will now be plainly displayed. It\nwill have become a great world movement as widespread and evident as\nsocialism or communism. It will largely have taken the place of these\nmovements. It will be more, it will be a world religion. This large\nloose assimilatory mass of groups and societies will be definitely and\nobviously attempting to swallow up the entire population of the world\nand become the new human community.\n\n\n\n\n_Chapter XIV_\n\nEXISTING AND DEVELOPING MOVEMENTS WITH WHICH THE OPEN CONSPIRACY MAY\nHOPE TO COALESCE\n\n\nA suggestion has already been made in an earlier chapter of this\nessay which may perhaps be expanded here a little more. It is that\nthere already exist in the world a considerable number of movements\nin industry, in political life, in social matters, in education,\nwhich point in the same direction as the Open Conspiracy. It will be\ninteresting to discuss how far some of these movements may not become\nconfluent with others and by a mere process of logical completion\nidentify themselves with the Open Conspiracy.\n\nConsider, for example, the movement for a scientific study and\ncontrol of population pressure, known popularly as the Birth Control\nMovement. By itself, assuming existing political and economic\nconditions, this movement lays itself open to the charge of being\nno better than a scheme of \u201crace suicide.\u201d If a population in some\narea of high civilisation attempts to restrict increase, organise\nits economic life upon methods of maximum individual productivity\nand impose order and beauty upon its entire territory, that region\nwill become irresistibly attractive to any adjacent festering mass of\nlow-grade highly reproductive population. The cheap humanity of the\none community will make a constant attack upon the other, affording\nfacile servility, prostitutes, toilers, hand labour. Tariffs against\nsweated products, restriction of immigration, tensions leading at\nlast to a war of defensive massacre are inevitable. The conquest of\nan illiterate, hungry and incontinent multitude may be almost as\ndisastrous as defeat for the selector race. Indeed one finds that in\ndiscussion the propagandists of Birth Control admit that their project\nmust be universal or dysgenic. But yet quite a number of them do not\nfollow up these admissions to their logical consequences, produce\nthe lines and continue the curves until the complete form of the\nOpen Conspiracy appears. It will be the business of the early Open\nConspiracy propagandists to make them do so, and to install groups and\nrepresentatives at every possible point of vantage in this movement.\n\nAnd similarly the now very numerous associations for world peace halt\nin alarm on the edge of their own implications. World Peace remains\na vast aspiration until there is some substitute for the present\ncompetition of states for markets and raw material, and some restraint\nupon population pressure. League of Nations Societies and all forms of\npacificist organisation are either futile or insincere until they come\ninto line with the complementary propositions of the Open Conspiracy.\n\nThe various socialist movements again are partial projects professing\nat present to be self-sufficient schemes. Most of them involve a\npretence that national and political forces are intangible phantoms\nand that the primary issue of population pressure can be ignored. They\nproduce one woolly scheme after another for transferring the property\nin this, that or the other economic plant and interest from bodies\nof shareholders and company promoters to gangs of politicians or to\nsyndicates of workers--to be steered to efficiency, it would seem, by\npillars of cloud by day and pillars of fire by night. The communist\nparty has trained a whole generation of disciples to believe that the\noverthrow of a vaguely apprehended \u201cCapitalism\u201d is the simple solution\nof all human difficulties. No movement ever succeeded so completely\nin substituting phrases for thought. In Moscow communism has trampled\n\u201cCapitalism\u201d underfoot for ten eventful years, and still finds all the\nproblems of social and political construction before it.\n\nBut as soon as the Socialist or Communist can be got to realise that\nhis repudiation of private monopolisation is not a complete programme\nbut just a preliminary principle, he is ripe for the ampler concepts\nof the modern outlook. The Open Conspiracy is the natural inheritor of\nsocialist and communist enthusiasms; it may be in control of Moscow\nbefore it is in control of New York.\n\nThe Open Conspiracy may achieve the more or less complete amalgamation\nof all the radical impulses in the Atlantic community of to-day. But\nits scope is not confined to the variety of sympathetic movements which\nare brought to mind by that loose word _radical_. In the past\nfifty years or so while Socialists and Communists have been denouncing\nthe current processes of economic life in the same invariable phrases\nand with the same undiscriminating animosity, these processes have\nbeen undergoing the profoundest and most interesting changes. While\nsocialist thought has recited its phrases, with witty rather than\nsubstantial variations, a thousand times as many clever people have\nbeen busy upon industrial, mercantile and financial processes. The\nSocialist still reiterates that this greater body of intelligence has\nbeen merely seeking private gain, which has just as much truth in it\nas is necessary to make it an intoxicating lie. Everywhere competitive\nbusinesses have been giving way to amalgamated enterprises, marching\ntowards monopoly, and personally owned businesses to organisations so\nlarge as to acquire more and more the character of publicly responsible\nbodies. In theory in Great Britain, banks are privately owned and\nrailway transport is privately owned, and they are run entirely for\nprofit--in practice their profit making is austerely restrained and\ntheir proceedings are all the more sensitive to public welfare because\nthey are outside the direct control of party politicians.\n\nNow this transformation of business, trading and finance has been\nso multitudinous and so rapid as to be still largely unconscious of\nitself. Intelligent men have gone from combination to combination\nand extended their range, year by year, without realising how their\nactivities were enlarging them to conspicuousness and responsibility.\nEconomic organisation is even now only discovering itself for what\nit is. It has accepted incompatible existing institutions to its own\ngreat injury. It has been patriotic and broken its shins against the\ntariff walls its patriotism has raised to hamper its own movements;\nit has been imperial and found itself taxed to the limits of its\nendurance, \u201ccontrolled\u201d by antiquated military and naval experts and\ncrippled altogether. The younger, more vigorous intelligences in the\ngreat business directorates of to-day are beginning to realise the\nuncompleted implications of their enterprise. A day will come when\nthe gentlemen who are trying to control the oil supplies of the world\nwithout reference to anything else except as a subsidiary factor in\ntheir game, will be considered to be quaint characters. The ends of\nBig Business must carry Big Business into the Open Conspiracy, just\nas surely as every other creative and broadly organising movement is\ncarried.\n\nNow I know that to all this urging towards a unification of\nconstructive effort, a great number of people will be disposed to a\nreply which will, I hope, be less popular in the future than it is\nat the present time. They will assume first an expression of great\nsagacity, an elderly air. Then, smiling gently, they will ask whether\nthere is not something preposterously ambitious in looking at the\nproblem of life as one whole. Is it not wiser to concentrate our\nforces on more practicable things, to attempt one thing at a time,\nnot to antagonise the whole order of established things against our\npoor desires, to begin tentatively to refrain from putting too great\na strain upon people, to trust to the growing common sense of the\nworld to adjust this or that line of progress to the general scheme of\nthings. Far better accomplish something definite here and there than\nchallenge a general failure. That is, they declare, how reformers and\ncreative things have gone on in the past; that is how they are going on\nnow; muddling forward in a mild and confused and partially successful\nway. Why not trust them to go on like that? Let each man do his bit\nwith a complete disregard of the logical interlocking of progressive\neffort to which I have been drawing attention.\n\nNow I must confess that, popular as this style of argument is, it gives\nme so tedious a feeling that rather than argue against it in general\nterms I will resort to a parable. I will relate the story of the pig on\nProvinder Island.\n\nThere was, you must understand, only one pig on Provinder Island, and\nHeaven knows how it got there, whether it escaped and swam ashore or\nwas put ashore from some vessel suddenly converted to vegetarianism,\nI cannot imagine. At first it was the only mammal there. But later on\nthree sailors and a very small but observant cabin-boy were wrecked\nthere, and after subsisting for a time on shell-fish and roots they\nbecame aware of this pig. And simultaneously they became aware of a\nnearly intolerable craving for bacon. The eldest of the three sailors\nbegan to think of a ham he had met in his boyhood, a beautiful ham\nfor which his father had had the carving knife specially sharpened;\nthe second of the three sailors dreamed repeatedly of a roast loin of\npork he had eaten at his sister\u2019s wedding, and the third\u2019s mind ran\non chitterlings--I know not why. They sat about their meagre fire and\nconferred and expatiated upon these things until their mouths watered\nand the shell-fish turned to water within them. What dreams came to\nthe cabin-boy are unknown, for it was their custom to discourage his\nconfidences. But he sat apart brooding and was at last moved to speech.\n\u201cLet us hunt that old pig,\u201d he said, \u201cand kill it.\u201d\n\nNow it may have been because it was the habit of these sailors to\ndiscourage the cabin-boy and keep him in his place, but anyhow, for\nwhatever reason it was, all three sailors set themselves with one\naccord to oppose that proposal.\n\n\u201cWho spoke of killing the pig?\u201d said the eldest sailor loudly, looking\nround to see if by any chance the pig was within hearing. \u201cWho spoke\nof _killing_ the pig? You\u2019re the sort of silly young devil who\njumps at ideas and hasn\u2019t no sense of difficulties. What I said was\n_AM_. All I want is just a Am to go with my roots and sea salt.\nOne Am. The Left Am. I don\u2019t want the right one and I don\u2019t propose to\nget it. I\u2019ve got a sense of proportion and a proper share of humour and\nI know my limitations. I\u2019m a sound clear-headed practical man. Am is\nwhat I\u2019m after, and if I can get that, I\u2019m prepared to say Quits and\nlet the rest of the pig alone. Who\u2019s for joining me in a Left Am Unt--a\nsimple reasonable Left Am Unt--just to get One Left Am?\u201d\n\nNobody answered him directly, but when his voice died away, the next\nsailor in order of seniority took up the tale. \u201cThat Boy,\u201d he said,\n\u201cwill die of Swelled Ed, and I pity im. My idea is to follow up the\npig and get hold of a loin chop. Just simply a loin chop. A loin chop\nis good enough for me. It\u2019s--feasible. Much more feasible than a great\nAm. Here we are, we\u2019ve got no gun, we\u2019ve got no wood of a sort to make\nbows and arrows, we\u2019ve not nothing but our clasp knives, and that pig\ncan run like Ell. It\u2019s ridiculous to think of killing that pig. But\nif one didn\u2019t trouble him, if one kind of got into his confidence and\ncrept near him and just quietly and insidiously went for his loin--just\nsort of as if one was tickling him--one might get a loin chop almost\nbefore he knew of it.\u201d\n\nThe third sailor sat crumpled up and downcast with his lean\nfingers tangled in his shock of hair. \u201cChitterlings,\u201d he murmured,\n\u201cchitterlings. I don\u2019t even want to _think_ of the pig.\u201d\n\nAnd the cabin-boy pursued his own ideas in silence, for he deemed it\nunwise to provoke his elders further.\n\nOn these lines it was the three sailors set about the gratifying of\ntheir taste for pork, each in his own way, separately and sanely and\nmodestly. And each had his reward. The first sailor after weeks of\npatience got within arm\u2019s length of the pig and smacked that coveted\nleft ham loud and good, and felt success was near. The other two\nheard the smack and the grunt of dismay half a mile away. But the\npig in a state of astonishment carried the ham off out of reach,\nthere and then, and that was as close as the first sailor ever got\nto his objective. The roast loin hunter did no better. He came upon\nthe pig asleep under a rock one day, and jumped upon the very loin he\ndesired, but the pig bit him deeply and septically, and displayed so\nmuch resentment that the question of a chop was dropped forthwith and\nnever again broached between them. And thereafter the arm of the second\nsailor was bandaged and swelled up and went from bad to worse. And as\nfor the third sailor, it is doubtful whether he even got wind of a\nchitterling from the start to the finish of this parable. The cabin-boy\npursuing notions of his own made a pitfall for the whole pig, but as\nthe others did not help him, and as he was an excessively small--though\nshrewd--cabin-boy, it was a feeble and insufficient pitfall and all it\ncaught was the hunter of chitterlings who was wandering distraught.\nAfter which the hunter of chitterlings became a hunter of cabin-boys,\nand the cabin-boy\u2019s life, for all his shrewdness, was precarious and\nunpleasant. He slept only in snatches and learned the full bitterness\nof insight misunderstood.\n\nWhen at last a ship came to Provinder Island and took off the three men\nand the cabin-boy, the pig was still bacon intact and quite gay and\ncheerful, and all four castaways were in a very emaciated condition\nbecause at that season of the year shell-fish were rare and edible\nroots were hard to find and the pig was very much cleverer than they\nwere in finding them and digging them up--let alone digesting them.\n\nFrom which parable it may be gathered that a partial enterprise is not\nalways wiser or more hopeful than a comprehensive one.\n\nAnd in the same manner, with myself in the r\u00f4le of that minute but\nobservant cabin-boy, I would sustain the proposition that none of these\nmovements of partial reconstruction has the sound common-sense quality\nits supporters suppose. All these movements are worth while if they\ncan be taken into a world-wide movement; all in isolation are futile.\nThey will be overlaid and lost in the general drift. The policy of the\nwhole hog is the best one, the sanest one, the easiest and the most\nhopeful. If sufficient men and women of intelligence can realise that\nsimple truth and give up their lives to it, mankind may yet achieve a\ncivilisation and power and fullness of life beyond our present dreams.\nIf they do not, frustration will triumph, and war, violence and a\ndrivelling waste of time and strength and desire, more disgusting even\nthan war, will be the lot of our race down through the ages to its\nemaciated and miserable end.\n\nFor this little planet of ours is quite off the course of any rescue\nships, if the will in our species fails.\n\n\n\n\n_Chapter XV_\n\nTHE CREATIVE HOME, SOCIAL GROUP AND SCHOOL: THE PRESENT WASTE OF\nYOUTHFUL SERIOUSNESS\n\n\nHuman society began with the family. The natural history of\ngregariousness is a history of the establishment of mutual toleration\namong human animals, so that a litter or a herd keeps together instead\nof breaking up. It is in the family group that the restraints,\ndisciplines and self-sacrifices which make human society possible were\nworked out and our fundamental prejudices established, and it is in the\nfamily group that our social life must be relearnt generation after\ngeneration.\n\nNow in each generation the Open Conspiracy must remain a minority\nmovement of intelligent converts until it can develop its own\nreproductive methods. A unified progressive world community demands\nits own type of home and training. It needs to have its fundamental\nconcepts firmly established in as many minds as possible and to guard\nits children from the infection of the old racial and national hatreds\nand jealousies, old superstitions and bad mental habits, and base\ninterpretations of life. From its outset the Open Conspiracy will be\nsetting itself to influence the existing educational machinery, but for\na long time it will find itself confronted in school and college by\npowerful religious and political authorities determined to set back the\nchildren at the point or even behind the point from which their parents\nmade their escape. At best, the liberalism of the state-controlled\nschools will be a compromise. During the early phases of its struggle,\ntherefore, the Open Conspiracy will be obliged to adopt a certain\nsectarianism of domestic and social life in the interests of its\nchildren, and it may even in many cases have to consider the grouping\nof its families and the establishment of its own schools. In many\nmodern communities, the English-speaking states, for example, there is\nstill liberty to establish educational companies, running schools of a\nspecial type. In every country where that right does not exist it has\nto be fought for.\n\nThere lies a great work for various groups of the Open Conspiracy.\nSuccessful schools would become laboratories of educational methods\nand patterns for the state schools. Necessarily for a time, the Open\nConspiracy children would become a social \u00e9lite, they would begin from\ntheir first conscious moments to think and talk among clear-headed\npeople speaking distinctly and behaving frankly, and it would be a\nwaste and loss to put them back for the scholastic stage among their\nmentally indistinct and morally muddled contemporaries. A phase when\nthere will be a special educational system for the Open Conspiracy\nis, therefore, clearly indicated. Its children will learn to speak,\ndraw, think, compute lucidly and subtly, and into their vigorous minds\nthey will take the broad concepts of history, biology and mechanical\nprogress, the basis of the new world, naturally and easily. Meanwhile,\nthose who grow up outside the advancing educational frontier of the\nOpen Conspiracy will never come under the full influence of its ideas,\nor they will get hold of them only after a severe struggle against a\nmass of misrepresentations and elaborately instilled prejudices.\n\nThe Open Conspiracy will not be in health until it has segregated its\nhome life and much of its social life from the general confusions\nof to-day, until its adherents marry and associate preferentially\nwithin the movement and keep themselves essentially aloof from the\nprevalent methods of wasting time and interest. They must evolve a new\nsocial atmosphere. It will be a minor aspect of the world revolution\nto live down the contemporary theatre, contemporary \u201camusements,\u201d\nthe sentimental booms and imitative chatter, the ovine congregating\nto gape at this or that, the dull pursuit of sports and \u201cgames\u201d and\nquasi-innocent vices, the fashions and industrious futilities of\ncurrent life so soon as it escapes from poverty. The whole drift of\nthe contemporary world is to tempt and ensnare and waste our children.\nIt has a diabolical disposition to make life altogether trivial and\nineffective. Over all these matters women seem to have much more\naptitude and power than men. It may not be true that \u201cwoman\u2019s sphere is\nthe home,\u201d but certainly the home and its immediate social atmosphere\nis her empire. She can be the moral quite as much as the physical\nmother of the days to come.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAlways, as long as I can remember, there has been a dispute and\ninvidious comparisons between the old and the young. The young find the\nold prey upon and restrain them and the old find the young, shallow,\ndisappointing and aimless in vivid contrast to their own revised\nmemories of their own early days. The present time is one in which\nthese perennial accusations flower with exceptional vigour. But there\ndoes seem to be some truth in the statement that the facilities to live\nfrivolously are greater now than they have ever been for old and young\nalike. In the great communities that emerge from Christendom, there is\na widespread disposition to regard Sunday as merely a holiday. But that\nwas certainly not the original intention of Sunday. As we have noted\nalready in an earlier chapter, it was a day dedicated to the greater\nissues of life. Now great multitudes of people do not even pretend to\nset aside any time at all to the greater issues of life. The churches\nare neglected and nothing of a unifying or exalting sort takes their\nplace.\n\nNow what the contemporary senior tells his junior to-day is perfectly\ncorrect. In his youth, no serious impulse of his went to waste. He\nwas not distracted by a thousand gay but petty temptations, and the\nlocal religious powers, whatever they happened to be, seemed to\nbelieve in themselves more and made a more comprehensive attack upon\nhis conscience and imagination. Now the old faiths are damaged and\ndiscredited and the new and greater one, which is the Open Conspiracy,\ntakes shape only slowly. A decade or so ago, socialism preached\nits confident hopes, and patriotism and imperial pride shared its\nattraction for the ever grave and passionate will of emergent youth.\nNow socialism and democracy are \u201cunder revision\u201d and the flags that\nonce waved so bravely reek of poison gas, are stiff with blood and mud\nand shameful with exposed dishonesties. Youth is what youth has always\nbeen, eager for fine interpretations of life, capable of splendid\nresolves. But it comes up out of its childhood to-day into a world of\nruthless exposures and cynical pretensions. The past ten years has\nseen the shy and powerful idealism of youth at a loss and dismayed as\nperhaps it has never been before. It is in the world still, but masked,\nhiding even from itself in a whirl of small excitements and futile\ndefiant depravities.\n\nThe old flags and faiths have lost their magic for the intelligence of\nthe young; they can command it no more; it is in the mighty revolution\nto which the Open Conspiracy directs itself that the youth of mankind\nmust once more find its soul if ever it is to find its soul again.\n\n\n\n\n_Chapter XVI_\n\nPROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ACTIVITIES OF THE OPEN CONSPIRACY INTO A\nWORLD CONTROL AND COMMONWEAL: THE HAZARDS OF THE CONFLICT\n\n\nWe have now sketched out in these Blue Prints, the methods by which the\nconfused radicalism and constructive forces of the present time may\nand can and probably will be drawn together about a core of modernised\nreligious feeling into one great and multifarious creative effort.\nA way has been shown by which this effort may be developed from a\nmere propagandist campaign and a merely resistant protest against\ncontemporary militarism into an organised foreshadowing in research,\npublicity and experiment in educational, economic and political\nreconstructions, of that _Pax Mundi_, which has become already\nthe tantalised desire of great multitudes throughout the world. These\nforeshadowings and reconstructions will ignore and transcend the\npolitical boundaries of to-day. They will continually become more\nsubstantial as project passes into attempt and performance. In phase\nafter phase and at point after point, therefore, the Open Conspiracy\nwill come to grips with the powers that sustain these boundaries.\n\nAnd it will not be merely topographical boundaries that will be passed.\nThe Open Conspiracy will also be dissolving and repudiating many\nexisting restrictions upon conduct and many social prejudices. The Open\nConspiracy proposes to end and shows how an end may be put to that huge\nsubstratum of under-developed, under-educated, subjugated, exploited\nand frustrated lives upon which such civilisation as the world has\nknown hitherto has rested, and upon which most of our social systems\nstill rest.\n\nWhenever possible, the Open Conspiracy will advance by illumination and\npersuasion. But it has to advance and even from the outset where it is\nnot allowed to illuminate and persuade it must fight. Its first fights\nwill probably be for the right to spread its system of ideas plainly\nand clearly throughout the world.\n\nThere is, I suppose, a flavour of treason about the assumption that any\nestablished government is provisional, and a quality of immorality in\nany criticism of accepted moral standards. Still more is the proposal,\nmade even in times of peace, to resist war levies and conscription, an\noffence against absolute conceptions of loyalty. But the ampler wisdom\nof the modern Atlantic communities, already touched by premonitions of\nchange and futurity, has continually enlarged the common liberties of\nthought for some generations, and it is doubtful if there will be any\nserious resistance to the dissemination of these views and the early\norganisation of the Open Conspiracy in any of the English-speaking\ncommunities or throughout the British Empire, in the Scandinavian\ncountries, or in such liberal-minded countries as Holland, Switzerland,\nrepublican Germany or France. France, in the hasty years after the\nwar, submitted to some repressive legislation against the discussion\nof birth control or hostile criticism of the militarist attitude; but\nsuch a check upon mental freedom is altogether contrary to the clear\nand open quality of the French mind; in practice it has already been\neffectively repudiated by such writers as Victor Margueritte, and it is\nunlikely that there will be any effective suppression of the opening\nphases of the Open Conspiracy in France.\n\nThis gives us a large portion of the existing civilised world in\nwhich men\u2019s minds may be readjusted to the idea that their existing\ngovernments are in the position of trustees for the greater government\nof the coming age. Throughout these communities it is conceivable that\nthe structural lines of the world community may be materialised and\nestablished with only minor struggles, local boycotts, vigorous public\ncontroversies, normal legislative obstruction, social pressure and\novert political activities. Police, jail, expulsions and so forth, let\nalone outlawry and warfare, may scarcely be brought into this struggle\nupon the high civilised level of the Atlantic communities. But where\nthey are brought in, the Open Conspiracy to the best of its ability\nand the full extent of its resources, must become a fighting force and\norganise itself upon resistant lines.\n\nNon-resistance, the restriction of activities to moral suasion,\nis no part of the programme of the Open Conspiracy. In the face of\nunscrupulous opposition creative ideas must become aggressive, must\ndefine their enemies and attack them. By its own organisations or\nthrough the police and military strength of governments amenable to\nits ideas, the movement is bound to find itself fighting for open\nroads, open frontiers, freedom of speech and the realities of peace\nin regions of oppression. The Open Conspiracy rests upon a disrespect\nfor nationality and there is no reason why it should tolerate noxious\nor obstructive governments because they hold their own in this or that\npatch of human territory. It lies within the power of the Atlantic\ncommunities to impose peace upon the world and secure unimpeded\nmovement and free speech from end to end of the earth. This is a fact\non which the Open Conspiracy must insist. The English-speaking states,\nFrance, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, the Scandinavian countries and\nRussia, given only a not very extravagant frankness of understanding\nbetween them, and a common disposition towards the ideas of the Open\nConspiracy, could cease to arm against each other and still exert\nenough strength to impose disarmament and a respect for human freedom\nin every corner of the planet. It is fantastic pedantry to wait for all\nthe world to accede before all the world is pacified and policed.\n\nThe most inconsistent factor in the liberal and radical thought of\nto-day is its prejudice against the interference of highly developed\nmodern states in the affairs of less stable and less advanced regions.\nThis is denounced as \u201cimperialism,\u201d and regarded as criminal. It\nmay have assumed grotesque and dangerous forms under the now dying\ntraditions of national competition, but as the merger of the Atlantic\nstates proceeds, the possibility and necessity of bringing areas of\nmisgovernment and disorder under world control increase. A great war\nlike the war of 1914-1918 may never happen again. The common-sense\nof mankind may suffice to avert that. But there is still much actual\nwarfare before mankind, on the frontiers everywhere, against brigands,\nagainst ancient loyalties and traditions which will become at last\nno better than excuses for brigandage and obstructive exaction. All\nthe weight of the Open Conspiracy will be on the side of the world\norder and against that sort of local independence which holds back its\nsubject people from the citizenship of the world.\n\nBut in this broad prospect of far-reaching political amalgamations\nunder the impulses of the Open Conspiracy lurk a thousand antagonisms\nand adverse chances, like the unsuspected gulleys and ravines and\nthickets in a wide and distant landscape. We know not what unexpected\nchasms may presently be discovered. The Open Conspirator may realise\nthat he is one of an advancing and victorious force and still find\nhimself outnumbered and outfought in his own particular corner of the\nbattlefield. No one can yet estimate the possible strength of reaction\nagainst world unification; no one can foresee the extent of the\ndivisions and confusions that may arise among ourselves. The ideas in\nthis book may be spread about without any serious resistance in most\ncivilised countries, but there are still governments under which the\npersistent expression of such thoughts will be dealt with as crimes and\nbring men and women to prison, torment and death. Nevertheless they\nmust be expressed.\n\nWhile the Open Conspiracy is no more than a discussion it may spread\nunopposed because it is disregarded. As a mainly passive resistance\nto militarism it may still be tolerable. But as its knowledge and\nexperience accumulate and its organisation becomes more effective and\naggressive, as it begins to lay hands upon education, upon social\nhabits, upon business developments, as it proceeds to take over the\norganisation of the community, it will marshal not only its own forces\nbut its enemies. A complex of interests will find themselves restrained\nand threatened by it and it may easily evoke that most dangerous of\nhuman mass feelings, fear. In ways quite unpredictable it may raise a\nstorm against itself beyond all our present imaginings. Our conception\nof an almost bloodless domination of the Atlantic communities may be\nmerely the confident dream of a thinker whose thoughts have yet to be\nsquarely challenged.\n\nWe are not even sure of the common peace. Across the path of mankind\nthe storm of another Great War may break, bringing with it for a time\nmore brutal repressions and vaster injuries even than its predecessor.\nThe scaffoldings and work-sheds of the Open Conspiracy may fare\nviolently in that tornado. The restoration of progress may seem an\nalmost hopeless struggle.\n\nIt is no part of the modern religion to incur needless hardship or\ngo out of the way to seek martyrdom. If we can do our work easily\nand happily, so it should be done. But the work is not to be shirked\nbecause it cannot be done easily and happily. The vision of a world at\npeace and liberated for an unending growth of knowledge and power is\nworth every danger of the way. And since in this age of confusion we\nmust live imperfectly and anyhow die, we may as well suffer if need\nbe, and die for a great end as for none. Never has the translation of\nvision into realities been easy since the beginning of human effort.\nThe establishment of the world community will surely exact a price--and\nwho can tell what that price may be?--in toil, suffering and blood.\n\n\n\n\n_Chapter XVII_\n\nTHE WORLD COMMUNITY\n\n\nThe new life that the Open Conspiracy struggles to achieve through\nus for our race is first a life of liberations. The oppression of\nincessant toil can surely be lifted from everyone, and the miseries\ndue to a great multitude of infections and disorders of nutrition and\ngrowth cease to be a part of human experience. Few people are perfectly\nhealthy nowadays except for brief periods of happiness, but the elation\nof physical well-being will some day be the common lot of mankind.\nAnd not only from natural evils will man be largely free. He will not\nbe left with his soul tangled, haunted by monstrous and irrational\nfears and a prey to malicious impulse. From his birth he will breathe\nsweetness and generosity and use his mind and hands cleanly and\nexactly. He will feel better, will better, think better, see, taste and\nhear better than men do now. All these things are plainly possible for\nhim. They pass out of his tormented desire now, they elude and mock\nhim, because chance, confusion and squalor rule his life. All the gifts\nof destiny are overlaid and lost to him. He must still suspect and fear.\n\nWithin the peace and freedom our Open Conspiracy will win, all these\ngood things that escape us now may be ensured. A graver humanity,\nstronger, more lovely, longer lived, will learn and develop the\never-enlarging possibilities of its destiny. For the first time, the\nfull beauty of this world will be revealed to its unhurried eyes.\nIts thoughts will be to our thoughts as the thoughts of a man to the\ntroubled mental experimenting of a child. And all the best of us will\nbe living on in that ampler life, as the child and the things it tried\nand learnt still live in the man. When we were children, we could not\nthink or feel as we think and feel to-day, but to-day we can peer back\nand still recall something of the ignorances and guesses and wild hopes\nof these nigh forgotten years. And so mankind, ourselves still living,\ndispersed and reconstructed in the future, will recall with affection\nand understanding the desperate wishes and troubled efforts of our\npresent state.\n\nHow can we anticipate the habitations and ways, the usages and\nadventures, the mighty employments, the ever-increasing knowledge and\npower of the days to come? No more than a child with its scribbling\npaper and its box of bricks can picture or model the undertakings\nof its adult years. Our battle is with cruelties and frustrations,\nstupid, heavy and hateful things from which we shall escape at last,\nless like victors conquering a world than like sleepers awaking from\na nightmare in the dawn. From any dream, however dismal and horrible,\none can escape by realising that it is a dream; by saying, \u201cI will\nawake.\u201d The Open Conspiracy is the awaking of mankind from a nightmare\nof the struggle for existence and the inevitability of war. The light\nof day thrusts between our eyelids and the multitudinous sounds of\nmorning clamour in our ears. A time will come when men will sit with\nhistory before them or with some old newspaper before them, and ask\nincredulously, \u201cWas there ever such a world?\u201d\n\n\n\n\nNOTE ON THE MARGIN OF THESE BLUE PRINTS\n\nSuch is the truth of human possibility and our necessities as I\nperceive it, and that is the way man must live if our species is to\nsurvive and pass on to greater destinies. I set down the truth as it is\ngiven me to see it; for me there can be no other truth. On every hand\nabout us all is the darkness of the unknown, but the light we have,\nwhen we have used our eyes to their utmost, must be our guide. Because\nof obtuseness and prepossessions, I may but run beside the realities\nI imagine I express. Necessarily reality which goes on all over the\nuniverse and for every instant of time, is infinitely more intricate\nand wonderful than any statement, teeming with possibilities still\nunsuspected. All the more do we need compass and map and plans to keep\nour direction through the jungle of its manifest marvels and dangers.\nThat this presentation of the current phase of human life as the\noccasion for an Open Conspiracy to establish a world commonweal will\nseem to many an extreme simplification of our circumstances, should\nnot condemn it. The value of a map lies in the fact that it is not a\nmodel nor a picture of reality but a reduced abstraction, sufficiently\nclear and sufficiently true to essentials and sufficiently free from\nirrelevancies to guide.\n\nThis scheme to thrust forward and establish a human control over\nthe destinies of life and liberate it from its present dangers,\nuncertainties and miseries, is offered here as an altogether\npracticable one, subject only to one qualification, that sufficient men\nand women will be willing to serve it. That there is no foretelling.\nIt is clear that the whole growth is dependent upon the appearance of\nthose primary groups, sustaining and spreading its fundamental ideas.\nThose ideas have to become the mental substratum of constructive\neffort. If those ideas can find sufficient vigorous, able and devoted\npeople for their establishment, the rest will follow. There is need\nof much leadership, not indeed the leadership of a single leader, for\nthe days of spiritual monarchies are over, nor for the leadership of\nexaggerated figureheads, but for the energetic initiatives of many\nco-operating personalities. I will not speculate where these leaders\nare now, in universities, in laboratories, in studies, in factories, in\nmines, in technical schools, but I have a firm belief that they will\ncome to the call of our mighty opportunities.\n\nFor my generation, the r\u00f4le of John the Baptist must be our extreme\nambition. We can proclaim and make evident the advent of a new phase\nof human faith and effort. We can point out the path it has been\nour lifework to discover. We have struggled through the thought and\nbitter experiences of our time. We have hammered out our instinctive\nindividualism on the anvil of socialism; we have witnessed the\napocalypse of the Great War; we have been misled, we have stumbled\nthrough depths of despair, we have learnt. \u201cHere,\u201d we say, \u201cis what\nwe have made of it all. Here is the basis for a new world.\u201d In the\nfew years remaining to us we can hope to do no more than that. It\nis for you to say whether you will set your feet in this direction\nand go along with us and go further. Upon you--individually and\nmultitudinously--the future rests. Here and there chance may correct\nand supplement the efforts of our race and save us from the full\npenalties of our mistakes and negligences, but saving the impact of\nsome unimagined disaster from outer space, the ultimate decision of the\nfate of life upon this planet lies now in the will of man.\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber\u2019s Note:\n\nSpelling, hyphenation and punctuation have been retained as appears in\nthe original publication except as follows:\n\n  Page viii\n    of the miscroscope _changed to_\n    of the microscope\n\n  Page 79\n    in power and auhority warlike classes _changed to_\n    in power and authority warlike classes\n\n  Page 98\n    no discrimination at last between _changed to_\n    no discrimination at least between\n\n  Page 107\n    or how rapidy the knowledge _changed to_\n    or how rapidly the knowledge\n\n  Page 165\n    as defeat for the selecter _changed to_\n    as defeat for the selector\n\n  Page 200\n    mistakes and negligencies _changed to_\n    mistakes and negligences","title":"The open conspiracy : $b Blue prints for a world revolution","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":35788}