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Outspoken Essays

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Title: Outspoken Essays

Author: William Ralph Inge


        
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Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS ***




Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, and the
PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team.






OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS

BY

WILLIAM RALPH INGE, C.V.O., D.D.

DEAN OF ST. PAUL'S

FIFTH IMPRESSION

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK
BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS

1920




PREFACE


All the Essays in this volume, except the first, have appeared in the
_Edinburgh Review_, the _Quarterly Review_, or the _Hibbert Journal_. I
have to thank the Publishers and Editors of those Reviews for their
courtesy in permitting me to reprint them. The articles on _The
Birth-Rate, The Future of the English Race, Bishop Gore and the Church
of England_, and _Cardinal Newman_ are from the _Edinburgh Review_;
those on _Patriotism, Catholic Modernism, St. Paul_, and _The Indictment
against Christianity_ are from the _Quarterly Review_; those on
_Institutionalism and Mysticism_ and _Survival and Immortality_ from the
_Hibbert Journal_. I have not attempted to remove all traces of
overlapping, which I hope may be pardoned in essays written
independently of each other; but a few repetitions have been excised.




CONTENTS


                                                  PAGE

   I. OUR PRESENT DISCONTENTS                        1

  II. PATRIOTISM                                    35

 III. THE BIRTH-RATE                                59

  IV. THE FUTURE OF THE ENGLISH RACE                82

   V. BISHOP GORE AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND        106

  VI. ROMAN CATHOLIC MODERNISM                     137

 VII. CARDINAL NEWMAN                              172

VIII. ST. PAUL                                     205

  IX. INSTITUTIONALISM AND MYSTICISM               230

   X. THE INDICTMENT AGAINST CHRISTIANITY          243

  XI. SURVIVAL AND IMMORTALITY                     266




Photera theleist soi malthaka pseydhê lhegô, hê sklhêr' alêthhê;
phrhaze, shê gar hê krhisist.

_Euripides_.


The case of historical writers is hard; for if they tell the truth
they provoke man, and if they write what is false they offend
God.--_Matthew Paris_.

Quattuor sunt maxime comprehendendae veritatis offendicula; videlicet,
fragilis et indignae auctoritatis exemplum, consuetudinis diuturnitas,
vulgi sensus imperiti, et propriae ignorantiae occultatio cum
ostentatione sapientiae superioris.--_Roger Bacon_.

    Iudicio perpende; et si tibi vera videntur,
    Dede manus; aut si falsum est, accingere contra.

_Lucretius_.


Eventu rerum stolidi didicere magistro.

_Claudian_.


'All' hê toi men tahyta thehôn en gohynasi kehitai.

_Homer_.




I

OUR PRESENT DISCONTENTS

(AUGUST, 1919)


The Essays in this volume were written at various times before and
during the Great War. In reading them through for republication, I have
to ask myself whether my opinions on social science and on the state of
religion, the two subjects which are mainly dealt with in this
collection, have been modified by the greatest calamity which has ever
befallen the civilised world, or by the issue of the struggle. I find
very little that I should now wish to alter. The war has caused events
to move faster, but in the same direction as before. The social
revolution has been hurried on; the inevitable counter-revolution has
equally been brought nearer. For if there is one safe generalisation in
human affairs, it is that revolutions always destroy themselves. How
often have fanatics proclaimed 'the year one'! But no revolutionary era
has yet reached 'year twenty-five.' As regards the national character,
there is no sign, I fear, that much wisdom has been learnt. We are more
wasteful and reckless than ever. The doctrinaire democrat still vapours
about democracy, though representative government has obviously lost
both its power and its prestige. The labour party still hugs its
comprehensive assortment of economic heresies. Organised religion
remains as impotent as it was before the war. But one fact has emerged
with startling clearness. Human nature has not been changed by
civilisation. It has neither been levelled up nor levelled down to an
average mediocrity. Beneath the dingy uniformity of international
fashions in dress, man remains what he has always been--a splendid
fighting animal, a self-sacrificing hero, and a bloodthirsty savage.
Human nature is at once sublime and horrible, holy and satanic. Apart
from the accumulation of knowledge and experience, which are external
and precarious acquisitions, there is no proof that we have changed much
since the first stone age.

The war itself, as we shall soon be compelled to recognise, had its
roots deep in the political and social structure of Europe. The growth
of wealth and population, and the law of diminishing returns, led to a
scramble for unappropriated lands producing the raw materials of
industry. It was, in a sense, a war of capital; but capitalism is no
accretion upon the body politic; it is the creator of the modern world
and an essential part of a living organism. The Germans unquestionably
made a deep-laid plot to capture all markets and cripple or ruin all
competitors. Their aims and methods were very like those of the Standard
Oil Trust on a still larger scale. The other nations had not followed
the logic of competition in the same ruthless manner; there were several
things which they were not willing to do. But war to the knife cannot be
confined to one of the combatants; the alternative, _Weltmacht oder
Niedergang_, was thrust by Germany upon the Allies when she chose that
motto for herself. If the modern man were as much dominated by economic
motives as is sometimes supposed, the suicidal results of such a
conflict would have been apparent to all; but the poetry and idealism of
human nature, no longer centred, as formerly, in religion, had gathered
round a romantic patriotism, for which the belligerents were willing to
sacrifice their all without counting the cost. Like other idealisms,
patriotism varies from a noble devotion to a moral lunacy.

But there was another cause which led to the war. Germany was a curious
combination of seventeenth century theory and very modern practice. An
Emperor ruling by divine right was the head of the most scientific state
that the world has seen. In many ways Germany, with an intelligent,
economical, and uncorrupt Government, was a model to the rest of the
world. But the whole structure was menaced by that form of
individualistic materialism which calls itself social democracy, and
which in practice is at once the copy of organic materialism and the
reaction against it. The motives for drilling a whole nation in the
pursuit of purely national and purely materialistic aims are not strong
enough to prevent disintegration. The German _Kriegsstaat_ was falling
to pieces through internal fissures. A successful war might give the
empire a new lease of life; otherwise, the rising tide of revolution was
certain to sweep it away. As Sir Charles Walston has shown, it was for
some years doubtful whether the democratic movement would obtain control
before the bureaucracy and army chiefs succeeded in precipitating a war.
There was a kind of race between the two forces. This was the situation
which Lord Haldane found still existing in his famous visit to Germany.
In the event, the conservative powers were able to strike and to rush
public opinion. Perhaps the bureaucracy was carried along by its own
momentum. Two or three years before the war a German publicist, replying
to an eminent Englishman, who asked him who really directed the policy
of Germany, answered: 'It is a difficult question. Nominally, of course,
the Emperor is responsible; but he is a man of moods, not a strong man.
In reality, the machine runs itself. Whither it is carrying us we none
of us know; I fear towards some great disaster.' This seems to be the
truth of the matter. No doubt, a romantic imperialism, with dreams of
restoring the empire of Charlemagne, was a factor in the criminal
enterprise. No doubt the natural ambitions of officers, and the greed of
contractors and speculators, played their part in promoting it. But when
we consider that Germany held all the winning cards in a game of
peaceful penetration and economic competition, we should attribute to
the Imperial Government a strange recklessness if we did not conclude
that the political condition of Germany itself, and the automatic
working of the machine, were the main causes why the attack was made.
There is, in fact, abundant evidence that it was so. The scheme failed
only because Germany was foolish enough to threaten England before
settling accounts with Russia. But this, again, was the result of
internal pressure. Hamburg, and all the interests which the name stands
for, cared less for expansion in the East than for the capture of
markets overseas. For this important section of conservative Germany,
England was the enemy. So the gauntlet was thrown down to the whole
civilised world at once, and the odds against Germany were too great.

For the time being, the world has no example of a strong monarchy. The
three great European empires are, at the time of writing, in a state of
septic dissolution. The victors have sprung to the welcome conclusion
that democracy is everywhere triumphant, and that before long no other
type of civilised state will exist. The amazing provincialism of
American political thought accepts this conclusion without demur; and
our public men, some of whom doubtless know better, have served the
needs of the moment by effusions of political nonsense which almost
surpass the orations delivered every year on the Fourth of July. But no
historian can suppose that one of the most widespread and successful
forms of human association has been permanently extinguished because the
Central Empires were not quite strong enough to conquer Europe, an
attempt which has always failed, and probably will always fail. The
issue is not fully decided, even for our own generation. The ascendancy
will belong to that nation which is the best organised, the most
strenuous, the most intelligent, the most united. Before the war none
would have hesitated to name Germany as holding this position; and until
the downfall of the Empire the nation seemed to possess those qualities
unimpaired. The three Empires collapsed in hideous chaos as soon as they
deposed their monarchs. In the case of Russia, it is difficult to
imagine any recovery until the monarchy is restored; and Germany would
probably be well-advised to choose some member of the imperial family as
a constitutional sovereign. A monarch frequently represents his
subjects better than an elected assembly; and if he is a good judge of
character he is likely to have more capable and loyal advisers.
President Wilson's declaration that 'a steadfast concert for peace can
never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations; for
no autocratic government could ever be trusted to keep faith within it,'
is one of the most childish exhibitions of doctrinaire _naïveté_ which
ever proceeded from the mouth of a public man. History gives no
countenance to the theory that popular governments are either more moral
or more pacific than strong monarchies. The late Lord Salisbury, in one
of his articles in the _Quarterly Review_, spoke the truth on this
subject. 'Moderation, especially in the matter of territory, has never
been a characteristic of democracy. Wherever it has had free play, in
the ancient world or the modern, in the old hemisphere or the new, a
thirst for empire and a readiness for aggressive war has always marked
it. Though governments may have an appearance and even a reality of
pacific intent, their action is always liable to be superseded by the
violent and vehement operations of mere ignorance.' The United States
are no exception to this rule. They have extended their dominion by much
the same means as the empire of the Tsars or our own. Texas and Upper
California, the Philippines and Porto Rico, were annexed forcibly; New
Mexico, Alaska, and Louisiana were bought; Florida was acquired by
treaty; Maine filched from Canada. In no case were the wishes of the
inhabitants consulted. Our own experience of republicanism is the same.
It was during the short period when Great Britain had no king that
Cromwell's court-poet, Andrew Marvell, urged him to complete his
glorious career by demolishing our present allies:

    A Cæsar he, ere long, to Gaul,
    To Italy an Hannibal.

On the other hand, none of the 'autocrats' wanted this war. The Kaiser
was certainly pushed into it.

Democracy is a form of government which may be rationally defended, not
as being good, but as being less bad than any other. Its strongest
merits seem to be: first, that the citizens of a democracy have a sense
of proprietorship and responsibility in public affairs, which in times
of crisis may add to their tenacity and endurance. The determination of
the Federals in the American Civil War, and of the French and British in
the four years' struggle against Germany, may be legitimately adduced as
arguments for democracy. When De Tocqueville says that 'it is hard for a
democracy to begin or to end a war,' the second is truer than the first.
And, secondly, the educational value of democracy is so great that it
may be held to counterbalance many defects. Mill decides in favour of
democracy mainly on the ground that 'it promotes a better and higher
form of national character than any other polity,' since government by
authority stunts the intellect, narrows the sympathies, and destroys the
power of initiative. 'The perfect commonwealth,' says Mr. Zimmern,' is a
society of free men and women, each at once ruling and being ruled,' It
is also fair to argue that monarchies do not escape the worst evils of
democracies. An autocracy is often obliged to oppress the educated
classes and to propitiate the mob. Domitian massacred senators with
impunity, and only fell '_postquam cerdonibus esse timendus coeperat_.'
If an autocracy does not rest on the army, which leads to the chaos of
praetorianism, it must rely on '_panem et circenses_.' Hence it has some
of the worst faults of democracy, without its advantages. As Mr. Graham
Wallas says: 'When a Tsar or a bureaucracy finds itself forced to govern
in opposition to a vague national feeling which may at any moment create
an overwhelming national purpose, the autocrat becomes the most
unscrupulous of demagogues, and stirs up racial or religious or social
hatred, or the lust for foreign war, with less scruple than a newspaper
proprietor under a democracy,' The autocrat, in fact, is often a slave,
as the demagogue is often a tyrant. Lastly, the democrat may urge that
one of the commonest accusations against democracy--that the populace
chooses its rulers badly--is not true in times of great national danger.
On the contrary, it often shows a sound instinct in finding the
strongest man to carry it through a crisis. At such times the parrots
and monkeys are discarded, and a Napoleon or a Kitchener is given a
free hand, though he may have despised all the demagogic arts. In other
words, a democracy sometimes knows when to abdicate. The excesses of
revolutionists are not an argument against democracy, since revolutions
are anything rather than democratic.

Nevertheless, the indictment against democracy is a very heavy one, and
it is worth while to state the main items in the charge.

1. Whatever may be truly said about the good sense of a democracy during
a great crisis, at ordinary times it does not bring the best men to the
top. Professor Hearnshaw, in his admirable 'Democracy at the
Crossroads,' collects a number of weighty opinions confirming this
judgment. Carlyle, who proclaimed the merits of silence in some thirty
volumes, blames democracy for ignoring the 'noble, silent men' who could
serve it best, and placing power in the hands of windbags. Ruskin,
Matthew Arnold, Sir James Stephen, Sir Henry Maine, and Lecky, all agree
that 'the people have for the most part neither the will nor the power
to find out the best men to lead them.' In France the denunciations of
democratic politicians are so general that it would be tedious to
enumerate the writers who have uttered them. One example will suffice;
the words are the words of Anatole Beaulieu in 1885:

     The wider the circle from which politicians and
     state-functionaries are recruited, the lower seems their
     intellectual level to have sunk. This deterioration in the
     personnel of government has been yet more striking from the
     moral point of view. Politics have tended to become more
     corrupt, more debased, and to soil the hands of those who
     take part in them and the men who get their living by them.
     Political battles have become too bitter and too vulgar not
     to have inspired aversion in the noblest and most upright
     natures by their violence and their intrigues. The élite of
     the nation in more than one country are showing a tendency
     to have nothing to do with them. Politics is an industry in
     which a man, to prosper, requires less intelligence and
     knowledge than boldness and capacity for intrigue. It has
     already become in some states the most ignominious of
     careers. Parties are syndicates for exploitation, and its
     forms become ever more shameless.

A later account of French politics, drawn from inside knowledge and
experience, is the remarkable novel, 'Les Morts qui parlent,' by the
Vicomte Le Vogué. Readers of this book will not forget the description
of the _bain de haine_ in which a new deputy at once finds himself
plunged, and the canker of corruption which eats into the whole system.
It is no wonder that the majority of Frenchmen do not care to record
their votes. In 1906, 5,209,606 votes were given, 6,383,852 electors did
not go to the poll. The record of democracy in the new countries is no
better. We must regretfully admit that Louis Simond was right when he
said, 'Few people take the trouble to persuade the people, except those
who see their interest in deceiving them.'

2. The democracy is a ready victim to shibboleths and catchwords, as all
demagogues know too well. 'The abstract idea,' as Schérer says, 'is the
national aliment of popular rhetoric, the fatal form of thought which,
for want of solid knowledge, operates in a vacuum.' The politician has
only to find a fascinating formula; facts and arguments are powerless
against it. The art of the demagogue is the art of the parrot; he must
utter some senseless catchword again and again, working on the
suggestibility of the crowd. Archbishop Trench, 'On the Study of Words,'
notices this fact of psychology and the use which is commonly made of
it.

     If I wanted any further evidence of the moral atmosphere
     which words diffuse, I would ask you to observe how the
     first thing men do, when engaged in controversy with others,
     is ever to assume some honourable name to themselves, such
     as, if possible, shall beg the whole subject in dispute, and
     at the same time to affix on their adversaries a name which
     shall place them in a ridiculous or contemptible or odious
     light. A deep instinct, deeper perhaps than men give any
     account of to themselves, tells them how far this will go;
     that multitudes, utterly unable to weigh the arguments on
     one side or the other, will yet be receptive of the
     influences which these words are evermore, however
     imperceptibly, diffusing. By argument they might hope to
     gain over the reason of a few, but by help of these
     nicknames the prejudices and passions of the many.

The chief instrument of this base art is no longer the public speech
but the newspaper.

The psychology of the crowd has been much studied lately, by Le Bon and
other writers in France, by Mr. Graham Wallas in England. I think that
Le Bon is in danger of making The Crowd a mystical, superhuman entity.
Of course, a crowd is made up of individuals, who remain individuals
still. We must not accept the stuffed idol of Rousseau and the
socialists, 'The General Will,' and turn it into an evil spirit. There
is no General Will. All we have a right to say is that individuals are
occasionally guided by reason, crowds never.

3. Several critics of democracy have accused it not only of rash
iconoclasm, but of obstinate conservatism and obstructiveness. It seems
unreasonable to charge the same persons with two opposite faults; but it
is true that where the popular emotions are not touched, the masses will
cling to old abuses from mere force of habit. As Maine says, universal
suffrage would have prohibited the spinning-jenny and the power-loom,
the threshing-machine and the Gregorian calendar; and it would have
restored the Stuarts. The theory of democracy--_vox populi vox dei_--is
a pure superstition, a belief in a divine or natural sanction which does
not exist. And superstition is usually obstructive. 'We erect the
temporary watchwords of evanescent politics into eternal truths; and
having accepted as platitudes the paradoxes of our fathers, we
perpetuate them as obstacles to the progress of our children.'[1]

4. A more serious danger is that of vexatious and inquisitive tyranny.
This is exercised partly through public opinion, a vulgar, impertinent,
anonymous tyrant who deliberately makes life unpleasant for anyone who
is not content to be the average man. But partly it is seen in constant
interference with the legislature and the executive. No one can govern
who cannot afford to be unpopular, and no democratic official can afford
to be unpopular. Sometimes he has to wink at flagrant injustice and
oppression; at other times a fanatical agitation compels him to pass
laws which forbid the citizen to indulge perfectly harmless tastes, or
tax him to contribute to the pleasures of the majority. In many ways a
Russian under the Tsars was far less interfered with than an Englishman
or American or Australian.

5. But the two diseases which are likely to be fatal to democracy are
anarchy and corruption. A democratic government is almost necessarily
weak and timid. A democracy cannot tolerate a strong executive for fear
of seeing the control pass out of the hands of the mob. The executive
must be unarmed and defenceless. The result is that it is at the mercy
of any violent and anti-social faction. No civilised government has ever
given a more ludicrous and humiliating object-lesson than the Cabinet
and House of Commons in the years before the war, in face of the
outrages committed by a small gang of female anarchists. The
legalisation of terrorism by the trade-unions was too tragic a surrender
to be ludicrous, but it was even more disgraceful. None could be
surprised when, during the war, the Government shrank from dealing with
treasonable conspiracy in the same quarter.

     The _Times_ for May 24, 1917, contained a noteworthy example
     of justice influenced by pressure, and therefore applied
     with flagrant inequality. In parallel columns appeared
     reports of 'sugar-sellers fined' and 'strike leaders
     released.' The former paid the full penalty of their
     misdeeds because no body of outside opinion maintained them.
     The latter, who were stated to have committed offences for
     which the maximum penalty was penal servitude for life, got
     off scot-free because they were members of a powerful
     organisation which was able to bring immense weight to bear
     on the Government.[2]

The 'immense weight' was, of course, the threat of virtually betraying
the country to the Germans. The country is at this moment at the mercy
of any lawless faction which may choose either to hold the community to
ransom by paralysing our trade and channels of supply, or by organised
violence against life and property. Democracy is powerless against
sectional anarchism; and when such movements break out there is no
remedy except by substituting for democracy a government of a very
different type.

Democracy is, in fact, a disintegrating force. It is strong in
destruction, and tends to fall to pieces when the work of demolition
(which may of course be a necessary task) is over. Democracy dissolves
communities into individuals and collects them again into mobs. It pulls
up by the roots the social order which civilisation has gradually
evolved, and leaves men _déracinés_, as Bourget says in one of his best
novels, homeless and friendless, with no place ready for them to fill.
It is the opposite extreme to the caste system of India, which, with all
its faults, does not seem to breed the European type of _enragé_, the
enemy of society as such.

6. The corruption of democracies proceeds directly from the fact that
one class imposes the taxes and another class pays them. The
constitutional principle, 'No taxation without representation,' is
utterly set at nought under a system which leaves certain classes
without any effective representation at all. At the present time it is
said that one-tenth of the population pays five-sixths of the taxes. The
class which imposes the taxes has refused to touch the burden of the war
with one of its fingers; and every month new doles at the public expense
are distributed under the camouflage of 'social reform.' At every
election the worldly goods of the minority are put up to auction. This
is far more immoral than the old-fashioned election bribery, which was a
comparatively honest deal between two persons; and in its effects it is
far more ruinous. Democracy is likely to perish, like the monarchy of
Louis XVI, through national bankruptcy.

Besides these defects, the democracy has ethical standards of its own,
which differ widely from those of the educated classes. Among the poor,
'generosity ranks far before justice, sympathy before truth, love before
chastity, a pliant and obliging disposition before a rigidly honest one.
In brief, the less admixture of intellect required for the practice of
any virtue, the higher it stands in popular estimation.[3] In this
country, at any rate, democracy means a victory of sentiment over
reason. Some may prefer the softer type of character, and may hope that
it will make civilisation more humane and compassionate than it has been
in the past. Unfortunately, experience shows that none is so cruel as
the disillusioned sentimentalist. He thinks that he can break or ignore
nature's laws with impunity; and then, when he finds that nature has no
sentiment, he rages like a mad dog, and combines with his theoretical
objection to capital punishment a lust to murder all who disagree with
him. This is the genesis of Jacobinism and Bolshevism.

But whether we think that the bad in democracy predominates over the
good, or the good over the bad, a question which I shall not attempt to
decide, the popular balderdash about it corresponds to no real
conviction. The upper class has never believed in it; the middle class
has the strongest reasons to hate and fear it. But how about the lower
class, in whose interests the whole machine is supposed to have been set
going? The working man has no respect for either democracy or liberty.
His whole interest is in transferring the wealth of the minority to his
own pocket. There was a time when he thought that universal suffrage
would get for him what he desires; but he has lost all faith in
constitutional methods. To levy blackmail on the community, under
threats of civil war, seems to him a more expeditious way of gaining his
object. Monopolies are to be established by pitiless coercion of those
who wish to keep their freedom. The trade unions are large capitalists;
they are well able to start factories for themselves and work them for
their own exclusive profit. But they find it more profitable to hold the
nation to ransom by blockading the supply of the necessaries of life.
The new labourer despises productivity for the same reason that the old
robber barons did: it is less trouble to take money than to make it. The
most outspoken popular leaders no longer conceal their contempt for and
rejection of democracy. The socialists perceive the irreconcilable
contradiction between the two ideas,[4] and they are right. Democracy
postulates community of interest or loyal patriotism. When these are
absent it cannot long exist. Syndicalism, which seems to be growing, is
the antipodes of socialism, but, like socialism, it can make no terms
with democracy. 'If syndicalism triumphs,' says its chief prophet Sorel,
'the parliamentary régime, so dear to the intellectuals, will be at an
end.' 'The syndicalist has a contempt for the vulgar idea of democracy;
the vast unconscious mass is not to be taken into account when the
minority wishes to act so as to benefit it.'[5] 'The effect of political
majorities,' says Mr. Levine, 'is to hinder advance,' Accordingly,
political methods are rejected with contempt. The anarchists go one step
further. Bakunin proclaims that 'we reject all legislation, all
authority, and all influence, even when it has proceeded from universal
suffrage.' These powerful movements, opposed as they are to each other,
agree in spurning the very idea of democracy, which Lord Morley defines
as government by public opinion, and which may be defined with more
precision as direct government by the votes of the majority among the
adult members of a nation. Even a political philosopher like Mr. Lowes
Dickinson says, 'For my part, I am no democrat.'

Who then are the friends of this _curieux fétiche_, as Quinet called
democracy? It appears to have none, though it has been the subject of
fatuous laudation ever since the time of Rousseau. The Americans burn
incense before it, but they are themselves ruled by the Boss and the
Trust.

The attempt to justify the labour movement as a legitimate development
of the old democratic Liberalism is futile. Freedom to form
combinations is no doubt a logical application of _laisser faire_; and
the anarchic possibilities latent in _laisser faire_ have been made
plain in the anti-democratic movements of labour. But Liberalism rested
on a too favourable estimate of human nature and on a belief in the law
of progress. As there is no law of progress, and as civilised society is
being destroyed by the evil passions of men, Liberalism is, for the
time, quite discredited. It would also be true to say that there is a
fundamental contradiction between the two dogmas of Liberalism. These
were, that unlimited competition is stimulating to the competitors and
good for the country, and that every individual is an end, not a means.
Both are anarchical; but the first logically issues in individualistic
anarchy, the last in communistic anarchy. The economic and the ethical
theory of Liberalism cannot be harmonised. The result--cruel competition
tempered by an artificial process of counter-selection in favour of the
unfittest--was by no means satisfactory. But it was better than what we
are now threatened with.

That the labour movement is economically rotten it is easy to prove. In
the words of Professor Hearnshaw, 'the government has ceased to govern
in the world of labour, and has been compelled, instead of governing, to
bribe, to cajole, to beg, to grovel. It has purchased brief truces at
the cost of increasing levies of Danegeld drawn from the diminishing
resources of the patient community. It has embarked on a course of
payment of blackmail which must end either in national bankruptcy or in
the social revolution which the anarchists seek.' The powerful
trade-unions are now plundering both the owners of their 'plant,' and
the general public. It is easy to show that their members already get
much more than their share of the national wealth. Professor Bowley[6]
has estimated that an equal division of the national income would give
about £160 a year to each family, free of taxes. But even this estimate,
discouraging as it is, seems not to allow sufficiently for the fact that
under the present system much of the income of the richer classes is
counted twice or three times over. Abolish large incomes, and jewels,
pictures, wines, furs, special and rare skill like that of the operating
surgeon and fashionable portrait painter, lose all or most of their
money value. All the large professional incomes, except those of the low
comedian and his like, are made out of the rich, and are counted at
least twice for income-tax. It is certain that a large part of the
national income could not be 'redistributed,' and that in the attempt to
do so credit would be destroyed and wealth would melt like a snow man.
The miners, therefore, are not seeking justice; they are blackmailing
rich and poor alike by their monopoly of one of the necessaries of life.
And now they strike against paying income-tax!

It is not necessary or just to bring railing accusations against any
class as a body. Power is always abused, and in this case there is much
honest ignorance, stimulated by agitators who are seldom honest. In a
recent number of the _Edinburgh Review_ Sir Lynden Macassey speaks of
the widespread, almost universal, fallacies to which the hand-worker has
fallen a victim. They believe that all their aspirations can be
satisfied out of present-day profits and production. They believe that
in restricting output they are performing a moral duty to their class.
They do not believe that the prosperity of the country depends upon its
production, and are opposed to all labour-saving devices. They refuse
co-operation because they desire the continuance of the class-war. Such
perversity would seem hardly credible if it were not attested by
overwhelming evidence. The Government remedy is first to create
unemployment and then to endow it--the shortest and maddest road to ruin
since the downfall of the Roman Empire.

We may have a faint hope that some of these fallacies will be abandoned
by the workmen when their destructive results can no longer be
concealed. But sentimentalism seems to be incurable. It erects
irrationality into an act of religious faith, gives free rein to the
emotion of pity, and thinks that it is imitating the Good Samaritan by
robbing the Priest and Levite for the benefit of the man by the
road-side. The sentimentalist shows a bitter hatred against those who
wish to cure an evil by removing its causes. A good example is the
language of writers like Mr. Chesterton about eugenics and population.
If social maladies were treated scientifically, the trade of the
emotional rhetorician would be gone.

We have seen that democracy--the rule of majorities--has been
discredited and abandoned in action, though officially we all bow down
before it. Another popular delusion is that the chief change in the last
fifty years has been a conversion of the world from individualism to
socialism. In the language of the Christian socialists, who wish to
combine the militant spirit and organisation of medieval Catholicism
with a bid for the popular vote, we have 'rediscovered the Corporate
Idea.' But if we take socialism, not in the narrower sense of
collectivism, which would be an economic experiment, but in the wider
sense of a keen consciousness of the solidarity of the community as an
organic whole, there is very little truth in the commonly held notion
that we have become more socialistic. It is easy to see how the idea has
arisen. It became necessary to find some theoretical justification for
raising taxes, no longer for national needs, but for the benefit of the
class which imposed them; and this justification was found in the theory
that all wealth belongs to 'the State,' and may be justly divided up as
'the State'--that is to say, the majority of the voters--may determine.
Whenever the question arises of voting new doles to the dominant section
of the people at the expense of the minority, our new political
philosophers profess themselves fervent socialists. But true socialism,
which is almost synonymous with patriotism, is as conspicuously absent
in those who call themselves socialists as it is strong in those who
repudiate the title. This paradox can be easily proved. The most
socialistic enterprise in which a nation ever engages is a great war. A
nation at war is conscious of its corporate unity and its common
interests, as it is at no other time. The nation then calls upon every
citizen to surrender all his personal rights and to offer his life and
limbs in the service of the community. And what has been the record of
the 'socialists' in the struggle for national existence in which we have
been engaged? In the years preceding the war they ridiculed the idea
that the country was in danger of being attacked, and used all their
power to prevent us from preparing against attack. They steadily opposed
the teaching of patriotism in the schools. When the war began, they
prevented the Government from introducing compulsory service until our
French Allies, who were left to bear the brunt, were on the point of
collapse; they, in very many cases, refused to serve themselves, thereby
avowing that, as far as they were concerned, they were willing to see
their country conquered by a horde of cruel barbarians; and they nearly
handed over our armies to destruction by fomenting strikes at the most
critical periods of the war. This attitude cannot be accounted for by
any conscientious objection to violence, which is in fact their
favourite weapon, except against the enemies of their country. Their
socialism is, in truth, individualism run mad; it is the very antithesis
to the consciousness of organic unity in a nation, which is the
spiritual basis of socialism. In this sense, the nation as a whole has
shown a fine socialistic temper; but the disgraceful exception has been
the socialist party. The intense and perverted individualism of the
so-called socialist is shown in another way. Whatever liberties a State
may permit to its citizens, it is certain that no nation can be in a
healthy condition unless the government keeps in its own hands the keys
of birth and of death. The State has the right of the farmer to decide
how many cows should be allowed to graze upon ten acres of grass; the
right of the forester to decide how many square feet are required for
each tree in a wood. It has also the right and the duty of the gardener
to pull up noxious weeds in his flower-beds. But the socialist
vehemently repudiates both these rights. Being an ultra-individualist,
he is in favour of _laisser faire_, where _laisser faire_ is most
indefensible and most disastrous.

It would be easy to maintain that the organic idea was more potent, both
under medieval feudalism and under nineteenth-century industrialism,
than it is now. In former days, economic and social equality were not
even aimed at, because it was thought inevitable that in a social
organism there must be subordination and a hierarchy of functions.
Essentially, and in the sight of God, all are equal, or, rather, the
essential differences between man and man are absolutely independent of
social status. In a few years Lazarus may be in heaven and Dives in
hell. Beside this equality of moral opportunity and tremendous
inequality in self-chosen destiny, the status of master and servant
seemed of small importance; it was a temporary and trivial accident.
Accordingly, in feudal times, as to-day in really Catholic communities,
feelings of injustice and social bitterness were seldom aroused and
class differences take on a more genial colour. In spite of the
lawlessness and brutality of the Middle Ages it is probable that men
were happier then than they are now.

The French Revolution, which was a disintegrating solvent, pulverised
society, and was impotent to reconstruct it. Yet under the industrial
régime which followed it in this country, the nation was conscious of
its unity. The system was the best that could have been devised for
increasing the population and aggregate wealth of the country; and even
those who suffered most under it were not without pride in its results.
The ill-paid workman of the last century would have thought it a poor
thing to do a deliberately bad day's work.

I am not praising either the age of feudalism or the 'hungry forties' of
the nineteenth century. In the latter case especially the sacrifice
exacted from the poor was too great for the rather vulgar success of
which it was the condition. But to call that age the period of
individualism, and our own generation the period of socialism, is in my
opinion a profound mistake. In Germany, too, the real socialists are not
the 'Spartacist' scoundrels who have betrayed and ruined their country,
but the bureaucracy with their _Deutschland über Alles_. If I were a
little more of a socialist, I could almost admire them, in spite of all
their crimes.

The landed gentry (and in honesty I must add the endowed clergy) are a
survival of feudalism, as the capitalist is a survival of industrialism.
Both have to a large extent survived their functions. The mailclad
baron, round whose fortified castle the peasants and others gathered for
protection, has become the country gentleman, against whom the
indictment is not so much that his only pursuit is pleasure, as that his
only pleasure is pursuit. 'The rich man in his castle, the poor man at
his gate' were intelligible while the rich man protected the poor man
from being plundered and killed by marauders; but in our times nobody
wants a castle or to live under the shadow of a castle. The clerical
profession was a necessity when most people could neither read nor
write. But to-day our best prophets and preachers are laymen. As at
ancient Athens, in the time of Aristophanes, 'the young learn from the
schoolmaster, the mature from the poets.' Similarly, the captain of
industry cannot hold the same autocratic position as formerly, in view
of the growing intelligence and capacity of the workmen; and the
capitalist who is not a captain of industry is a debtor to the community
to an extent which he does not always realise. This class is becoming
painfully conscious of its vulnerability.

There are, therefore, irrational survivals in our social order; and
though it may be proved that they are not a severe burden on the
community, it is natural that popular bitterness and discontent should
fasten upon them and exaggerate their evil results. It cannot be
disputed that this bitterness and discontent were becoming very acute in
the years before the war. An increasing number of persons saw no meaning
and no value in our civilisation. This feeling was common in all
classes, including the so-called leisured class; and was so strong that
many welcomed with joy the clear call to a plain duty, though it was the
duty of facing all the horrors of war. What is the cause of this
discontent? There are few more important questions for us to answer.

Those who find the cause in the existence of the survivals which we have
mentioned are certainly mistaken. It is no new thing that there should
be a small class more or less parasitic on the community. The whole
number of persons who pay income-tax on £5000 a year and upwards is
only 13,000 out of 46 millions, and their wealth, if it could be divided
up, would make no appreciable difference to the working man. The
wage-earners are better off than they have ever been before in our
history, and the danger of revolution comes not from the poor, but from
the privileged artisans who already have incomes above the family
average. We must look elsewhere for an explanation of social unrest. If
we consider what are the chief centres of discontent throughout the
civilised world, we shall find that they are the great aggregations of
population in wealthy industrial countries. Social unrest is a disease
of town-life. Wherever the conditions which create the great modern city
exist, we find revolutionary agitation. It has spread to Barcelona, to
Buenos Ayres, and to Osaka, in the wake of the factory. The inhabitants
of the large town do not envy the countryman and would not change with
him. But, unknown to themselves, they are leading an unnatural life, cut
off from the kindly and wholesome influences of nature, surrounded by
vulgarity and ugliness, with no traditions, no loyalties, no culture,
and no religion. We seldom reflect on the strangeness of the fact that
the modern working-man has few or no superstitions. At other times the
masses have evolved for themselves some picturesque nature-religion,
some pious ancestor-worship, some cult of saints or heroes, some stories
of fairies, ghosts, or demons, and a mass of quaint superstitions,
genial or frightening. The modern town-dweller has no God and no Devil;
he lives without awe, without admiration, without fear. Whatever we may
think about these beliefs, it is not natural for men and women to be
without them. The life of the town artisan who works in a factory is a
life to which the human organism has not adapted itself; it is an
unwholesome and unnatural condition. Hence, probably, comes the
_malaise_ which makes him think that any radical change must be for the
better.

Whatever the cause of the disease may be (and I do not pretend that the
conditions of urban life are an adequate explanation) the malady is
there, and will probably prove fatal to our civilisation. I have given
my views on this subject in the essay called _The Future of the English
Race._ And yet there is a remedy within the reach of all if we would
only try it.

The essence of the Christian revelation is the proclamation of a
standard of absolute values, which contradicts at every point the
estimates of good and evil current in 'the world.' It is not necessary,
in such an essay as this, to write out the Beatitudes, or the very
numerous passages in the Gospels and Epistles in which the same lessons
are enforced. It is not necessary to remind the reader that in
Christianity all the paraphernalia of life are valued very lightly; that
all the good and all the evil which exalt or defile a man have their
seat within him, in his own character; that we are sent into the world
to suffer and to conquer suffering; that it is more blessed to give than
to receive; that love is the great revealer of the mysteries of life;
that we have here no continuing city, and must therefore set our
affections and lay up our treasures in heaven; that the things that are
seen are temporal, and the things that are not seen are eternal. This is
the Christian religion. It is a form of idealism; and idealism means a
belief in absolute or spiritual values.

When applied to human life, it introduces, as it were, a new currency,
which demonetises the old; or gives us a new scale of prices, in which
the cheapest things are the dearest, and the dearest the cheapest. The
world's standards are quantitative; those of Christianity are
qualitative. And being qualitative, spiritual goods are unlimited in
amount; they are increased by being shared; and we rob nobody by taking
them.

Secularists ask impatiently what Christianity has done or proposes to do
to make mankind happier, by which they mean more comfortable. The answer
is (to put it in a form intelligible to the questioner) that
Christianity increases the wealth of the world by creating new values.
Wealth depends on human valuation. For example, if women were
sufficiently well educated not to care about diamonds, the Kimberley
mines would pay no dividends, and the rents in Park Lane would go down.
The prices of paintings by old masters would decline if millionaires
preferred to collect another kind of scalps to decorate their wigwams.
Bookmakers and company-promoters live on the widespread passion for
acquiring money without working for it. It is hardly possible to
estimate the increase of real wealth, and the stoppage of waste, which
would result from the adoption of a rational, still more of a Christian,
valuation of the good things of life. I have dealt with this subject in
the essay on _The Indictment against Christianity_, and have emphasised
the importance of taking into consideration, in all economic questions,
the _human costs_ of production, the factors which make work pleasant or
irksome, and especially the moral condition of the worker. Good-will
diminishes the toll which labour takes of the labourer; envy and hatred
vastly increase it while they diminish its product. It is, of course,
impossible that the worker should not resent having to devote his life
to making what is useless or mischievous, and to ministering to the
irrational wastefulness of luxury. Christianity, in condemning the
selfish and irresponsible use of money, seeks to remove one of the chief
causes of social bitterness. Senseless extravagance is the best friend
of revolution.

The abuse poured upon 'the old political economy,' as it is called, is
only half deserved. As compared with the insane doctrines now in favour
with the working-man, the old political economy was sound and sensible.
Hard work, thrift, and economy in production are, in truth, as we used
to be told, the only ways to increase the national wealth, and the
contrary practices can only lead to economic ruin. There is not much
fault to find with the old economists so long as they recognised that
their science was an abstract science, which for its own purposes dealt
with an unreal abstraction--the 'economic man.' Every science is obliged
to isolate one aspect of reality in this way. But when political economy
was treated as a philosophy of life it began to be mischievous. A book
on 'the science of the stomach,' without knowledge of physiology or the
working of other organs, would not be of much use. Man has never been a
merely acquisitive being; for example, he is also a fighting and a
praying being. If our dominant motives were changed, the whole
conditions dealt with by political economy would change with them. There
have been civilisations in which the passion for accumulation was
comparatively weak; and notoriously there are many persons in whom it is
wholly absent. Devotion to art, to scientific investigation, and to
religion is strong enough, where it exists, to kill 'the economic man'
in human nature. A civilised nation honours its idealists, and
recognises the immense benefit which they confer on the community by
creating or revealing new and inexhaustible values; in an uncivilised
country they can hardly live. Ruskin and William Morris saw, and
doubtless exaggerated, the danger to which spiritual values were exposed
at the hands of the dominant economism. Our danger now is that neglect
of the simplest economic laws may plunge the nation into such misery
that the people will no longer be willing to support art, science,
learning, and philosophy. A large section of the labour party has the
same standard of values as the hated 'capitalist,' and detests those
whom it calls intellectuals and sky-pilots because they depreciate the
currency which their class, no less than the capitalist, believes to be
the only sound money.

It may be asked whether there is any reason to think that there is now
less regard for the higher, the qualitative values of life, than at
other periods. My opinion is that ever since the time of Rousseau and
his contemporaries, we have been led astray by a will-of-the-wisp akin
to the apocalyptic dreams of the Jews in the last two centuries before
Christ, dreams which also filled the minds of the first generation of
Christians. The Greeks never made the mistake of throwing their ideals
into the future, a practice which, as Dr. Bosanquet has said, 'is the
death of all sane idealism.' The belief in 'a good time coming' is a
Jewish delusion. It nourished the Jews in their amazing obstinacy, and
led to the annihilation of their State which, to the very end, they saw
in their dreams bruising all other nations with a rod of iron, and
breaking them in pieces like a potter's vessel. But, as any idealism is
better than none, the Hebrew race has won remarkable triumphs, though of
a kind which it never desired.

The myth of progress is our form of apocalyptism. In France it began
with sentimentalism, developing normally into homicidal mania. In
England it took the form of a kind of Deuteronomic religion. As a reward
for our national virtues, our population expanded, our exports and
imports went up by leaps and bounds, and our empire received additions
every decade. It was plain that when Christ said 'Blessed are the meek,
for they shall inherit the earth,' He was thinking of the British
Empire. The whole structure of our social order encouraged the
measurement of everything by quantitative standards. Everyone could
understand that a generation which travels sixty miles an hour must be
five times as civilised as one which only travelled twelve. Thus the
beneficent 'law of progress' was exemplified in that nation which had
best deserved to be its exponent. The myth in question is that there is
a natural law of improvement, manifested by greater complexity of
structure, by increase of wants and the means to satisfy them. A nation
advances in civilisation by increasing in wealth and population, and by
multiplying the accessories and paraphernalia of life.

Belief in this alleged law has vitiated our natural science, our
political science, our history, our philosophy, and even our religion.
Science declared that 'the survival of the fittest' was a law of nature,
though nature has condemned to extinction the majestic animals of the
saurian era, and has carefully preserved the bug, the louse, and the
spirochaeta pallida.

    We dined as a rule on each other;
    What matter? the toughest survived,

is a fair parody of this doctrine. In political science, by a portentous
snobbery, the actual evolution of European government was assumed to be
in the line of upward progress. Our histories contrasted the benighted
condition of past ages with the high morality and general enlightenment
of the present. In philosophy, the problem of evil was met by the
theory that though the Deity is not omnipotent yet, He is on His way to
become so. He means well, and if we give Him time, He will make a real
success of His creation. Human beings, too, commonly make a very poor
thing of their lives here. But continue their training after they are
dead and they will all come to perfection. We have been living on this
secularised idealism for a hundred and fifty years. It has driven out
the true idealism, of which it is a caricature, and has made the deeper
and higher kind of religious faith abnormally difficult. Even the hope
of immortality has degenerated into a belief in apparitions and voices
from the dead.

Nature knows nothing of this precious law. Her figure is not the
vertical line, nor even the spiral, but the circle--the vicious circle,
according to Samuel Butler. 'Men eat birds, birds eat worms, worms eat
men again.' Some stars are getting hotter, others cooler. Life appears
at a certain temperature and is extinguished at another temperature.
Evolution and involution balance each other and go on concurrently. The
normal condition of every species on this planet is not progress but
stationariness. 'Progress,' so-called, is an incident of adaptation to
new conditions. Bees and ants must have spent millennia in perfecting
their organisation; now that they have reached a stable equilibrium, no
more changes are perceptible. The 'progress' of humanity has consisted
almost entirely in the transformation of the wild man of the woods, not
into _homo sapiens_ but into _homo faber_, man the tool-maker, a process
of which nature expresses her partial disapproval by plaguing us with
diverse diseases and taking away our teeth and claws. It is not certain
that there has been much change in our intellectual and moral endowments
since pithecanthropus dropped the first half of his name. I should be
sorry to have to maintain that the Germans of to-day are morally
superior to the army which defeated Quintilius Varus, or that the modern
Turks are more humane than the hordes of Timour the Tartar. If there is
to be any improvement in human nature itself we must look to the infant
science of eugenics to help us.

It is not easy to say how this myth of progress came to take hold of
the imagination, in the teeth of science and experience. Quinet speaks
of the 'fatalistic optimism' of historians, of which there have
certainly been some strange examples. We can only say that secularism,
like other religions, needs an eschatology, and has produced one. A more
energetic generation than ours looked forward to a gradual extension of
busy industrialism over the whole planet; the present ideal of the
masses seems to be the greatest idleness of the greatest number, or a
Fabian farm-yard of tame fowls, or (in America) an ice-water-drinking
gynæcocracy. But the superstition cannot flourish much longer. The
period of expansion is over, and we must adjust our view of earthly
providence to a state of decline. For no nation can flourish when it is
the ambition of the large majority to put in fourpence and take out
ninepence. The middle-class will be the first victims; then the
privileged aristocracy of labour will exploit the poor. But trade will
take wings and migrate to some other country where labour is good and
comparatively cheap.

The dethronement of a fetish may give a sounder faith its chance. In the
time of decay and disintegration which lies before us, more persons will
seek consolation where it can be found. 'Happiness and unhappiness,'
says Spinoza, 'depend on the nature of the object which we love. When a
thing is not loved, no quarrels will arise concerning it, no sadness
will be felt if it perishes, no envy if it is possessed by another; no
fear, no hatred, no disturbance of the mind. All these things arise from
the love of the perishable. But love for a thing eternal and infinite
feeds the mind wholly with joy, and is itself untainted with any
sadness; wherefore it is greatly to be desired and sought for with our
whole strength.' It is well known that these noble words were not only
sincere, but the expression of the working faith of the philosopher; and
we may hope that many who are doomed to suffer hardship and spoliation
in the evil days that are coming will find the same path to a happiness
which cannot be taken from them. Spinoza's words, of course, do not
point only to religious exercises and meditation. The spiritual world
includes art and science in all their branches, when these are studied
with a genuine devotion to the Good, the True, and the Beautiful for
their own sakes. We shall need 'a remnant' to save Europe from relapsing
into barbarism; for the new forces are almost wholly cut off from the
precious traditions which link our civilisation with the great eras of
the past. The possibility of another dark age is not remote; but there
must be enough who value our best traditions to preserve them till the
next spring-time of civilisation. We must take long views, and think of
our great-grandchildren.

It is tempting to dream of a new Renaissance, under which the life of
reason will at last be the life of mankind. Though there is little sign
of improvement in human nature, a favourable conjunction of
circumstances may bring about a civilisation very much better than ours
to-day. For a time, at any rate, war may be practically abolished, and
the military qualities may find another and a less pernicious outlet.
'Sport,' as Santayana says, 'is a liberal form of war stripped of its
compulsions and malignity; a rational art and the expression of a
civilised instinct.' The art of living may be taken in hand seriously.
Some of the ingenuity which has lately been lavished on engines of
destruction may be devoted to improvements in our houses, which should
be easily and cheaply put together and able to be carried about in
sections; on labour-saving devices which would make servants
unnecessary; and on international campaigns against diseases, some of
the worst of which could be extinguished for ever by twenty years of
concerted effort. A scientific civilisation is not impossible, though we
are not likely to live to see it. And, if science and humanism can work
together, it will be a great age for mankind. Such hopes as these must
be allowed to float before our minds: they are not unreasonable, and
they will help us to get through the twentieth century, which is not
likely to be a pleasant time to live in.

Some writers, like Mr. H.G. Wells, recognising the danger which
threatens civilisation, have suggested the formation of a society for
mutual encouragement in the higher life. Mr. Wells developed this idea
in his 'Modern Utopia.' He contemplated a brotherhood, like the
Japanese Samurai, living by a Rule, a kind of lay monastic order, who
should endeavour to live in a perfectly rational and wholesome manner,
so as to be the nucleus of whatever was best in the society of the time.
The scheme is interesting to a Platonist, because of its resemblance to
the Order of Guardians in the 'Republic.' A very good case may be made
out for having an ascetic Order of moral and physical aristocrats, and
entrusting them with the government of the country. Plato forbade his
guardians to own wealth, and thus secured an uncorrupt administration,
one of the rarest and best of virtues in a government. But political
events are not moving in this direction at present; and the question for
us is whether those who believe in science and humanism should attempt
to form a society, not to rule the country, but to protect themselves
and the ideas which they wish to preserve. But I agree with Mr. Wells'
second thoughts, that the time is not ripe for such a scheme.[7]
Christianity, 'the greatest new beginning in the world's history,'
appeared, as he says, in an age of disintegration, and 'we are in a
synthetic rather than a disintegrating phase.... _Only a very vast and
terrible war-explosion can, I think, change this state of affairs.'_ The
vast explosion has occurred, and the stage of disintegration, which Mr.
Wells ought perhaps to have seen approaching even eleven years ago, has
clearly begun. But it will have to go further before the need of such a
society is felt. The time may come when the educated classes, and those
who desire freedom to live as they think right, will find themselves
oppressed, not only in their home-life by the tyranny of the
trade-unions, but in their souls by the pulpy and mawkish emotionalism
of herd-morality. Then a league for mutual protection may be formed. If
such a society ever comes into being, the following principles are, I
think, necessary for its success. First, it must be on a religious
basis, since religion has a cohesive force greater than any other bond.
The religious basis will be a blend of Christian Platonism and Christian
Stoicism, since it must be founded on that faith in absolute spiritual
values which is common to Christianity and Platonism, with that sturdy
defiance of tyranny and popular folly which was the strength of
Stoicism. Next, it must not be affiliated to any religious organisation;
otherwise it will certainly be exploited in denominational interests.
Thirdly, it must include some purely disciplinary asceticism, such as
abstinence from alcohol and tobacco for men, and from costly dresses and
jewellery for women. This is necessary, because it is more important to
keep out the half-hearted than to increase the number of members.
Fourthly, it must prescribe a simple life of duty and discipline, since
frugality will be a condition of enjoying self-respect and freedom.
Fifthly, it will enjoin the choice of an open-air life in the country,
where possible. A whole group of French writers, such as Proudhon,
Delacroix, Leconte de Lisle, Flaubert, Leblond, and Faguet agree in
attributing our social _malaise_ to life in great towns. The lower
death-rates of country districts are a hint from nature that they are
right. Sixthly, every member must pledge himself to give his best work.
As Dr. Jacks says, 'Producers of good articles respect each other;
producers of bad despise each other and hate their work.' It may be
necessary for those who recognise the right of the labourer to preserve
his self-respect, to combine in order to satisfy each other's needs in
resistance to the trade-unions. Seventhly, there must be provision for
community-life, like that of the old monasteries, for both sexes. The
members of the society should be encouraged to spend some part of their
lives in these institutions, without retiring from the world altogether.
Temporary 'retreats' might be of great value. Intellectual work,
including scientific research, could be carried on under very favourable
conditions in these lay monasteries and convents, which should contain
good libraries and laboratories. Lastly, a distinctive dress, not merely
a badge, would probably be essential for members of both sexes.

This last provision tempts me to add that the Government would do well
to appoint at once a Royal Commission, or, rather, two Commissions, to
decide on a compulsory national uniform for both sexes. Experts should
recommend the most comfortable, becoming, and economical dress that
could be devised, with considerable variety for the different trades and
professions. Such a law would do more for social equality than any
readjustment of taxation. It has been often noticed that every man looks
a gentleman in khaki; and it is to be feared that many war brides have
suffered a painful surprise on seeing their husbands for the first time
in civilian garb. There need be no suggestion of militarism about the
new costume; but a man's calling might be recorded, like the name of his
regiment, on his shoulder-straps, and the absence of such a badge would
be regarded as a disgrace, whether the subject was a tramp or one of the
idle rich. This suggestion may seem trivial, or even ludicrous; and I
may be reminded of my dislike of meddling legislation; but the
importance of the philosophy of clothes has not diminished since 'Sartor
Resartus.' Clerical dignitaries might be trusted to vote for this
mitigation of their lot.

Some may wonder why I have not expressed a hope that the guardianship of
our intellectual and spiritual birthright may pass into the hands of the
National Church. I heartily wish that I could cherish this hope. But
organised religion has been a failure ever since the first concordat
between Church and State under Constantine the Great. The Church of
England in its corporate capacity has never seemed to respect anything
but organised force. In the sixteenth century it proclaimed Henry VIII
the Supreme Head of the Church; in the seventeenth century it
passionately upheld the 'right divine of kings to govern wrong'; in the
eighteenth and nineteenth it was the obsequious supporter of the
squirearchy and plutocracy; and now it grovels before the working-man,
and supports every scheme of plundering the minority. In fact, we must
distinguish sharply between ecclesiasticism, theology, and religion. The
future of ecclesiasticism is a political question. In the opinion of
some good judges, the acute nationalism now dominant in Europe will
quickly pass away, and a duel will supervene between the 'Black
International' and the 'Red.' Catholicism, it is supposed, will shelter
all who dread revolution and all who value traditional civilisation; its
unrivalled organisation will make it the one possible centre of
resistance to anarchy and barbarism, and the conflict will go on till
one side or the other is overthrown. This prediction, which opens a
truly appalling prospect for civilisation, might be less terrible if the
Church were to open its arms to a new Renaissance, and become once more,
as in the beginning of the modern period, the home of learning and the
patroness of the arts. But we must not overlook the new and growing
power of science; and science can no more make terms with Catholic
ecclesiasticism than with the Revolution. The Jacobins guillotined
Lavoisier, 'having no need of chemists'; but the Church burnt Bruno and
imprisoned Galileo. Science, too strong to be victimised again, may come
between the two enemies of civilisation, the Bolshevik and the
Ultramontane; it is, I think, our best hope.

I am conscious that I have spoken with too little sympathy in one or two
of these essays about the Ritualist party. I was more afraid of it a few
years ago than I am now. The Oxford movement began as a late wave of the
Romantic movement, with wistful eyes bent upon the past. But
Romanticism, which dotes on ruins, shrinks from real restoration.
Medievalism is attractive only when seen from a short distance. So the
movement is ceasing to be either medieval or Catholic or Anglican; it is
becoming definitely Latin. But a Latin Church in England which disowns
the Pope is an absurdity. Many of the shrewder High Churchmen are, as I
have said in this volume, throwing themselves into political agitation
and intrigue, for which Catholics always have a great aptitude; but this
involves them in another inconsistency. For Catholicism is essentially
hierarchical and undemocratic, though it keeps a 'career open to the
talents.' The spirit of Catholicism breathes in the Third Canto of the
'Paradiso,' where Dante asks the soul of a friend whom he finds in the
lowest circle of Paradise, whether he does not desire to go higher. The
friend replies: 'Brother, the force of charity quiets our will, making
us wish only for what we have and thirst for nothing more. If we
desired to be in a sublimer sphere, our desires would be discordant with
the will of Him who here allots us our diverse stations.... The manner
in which we are ranged from step to step in this kingdom pleases the
whole kingdom, as it does the King who gives us the power to will as He
wills.' Accordingly, these ecclesiastical votaries of democracy cut a
strange figure when they seek to legislate for the Church. The High
Church scheme (defeated the other day by a small majority) for drawing
up a constitution for the Church, consisted in disfranchising the large
majority of the electorate and reserving the initiative and veto for the
House of Lords (the Bishops). In fact, the constitution which our
Catholic democrats would like best for the Church closely resembles that
of Great Britain before the first Reform Bill. In the same way the
ritualistic clergy, while professing a superstitious reverence for the
episcopal office, make a point of flouting the authority of their own
bishop. The movement, in my opinion, is beginning to break up, and Rome
will be the chief gainer. But many of its leaders have been among the
glories of the Church of England, and I could never speak of them with
disrespect.

Catholicism, whether Roman or Anglican, stands to lose heavily by the
decay of institutionalism as an article of faith. It is becoming
impossible for those who mix at all with their fellow-men to believe
that the grace of God is distributed denominationally. The Christian
virtues, so far as we can see, flower impartially in the souls of
Catholic and Protestant, of Churchman and Schismatic, of Orthodox and
Heretic. And the test, 'by their fruits ye shall know them,' cannot be
openly rejected by any Christian. But fanatical institutionalism has
been the driving force of Catholicism as a power in the world, from the
very first. The Church has lived by its monopolies and conquered by its
intolerance. The war has given a further impetus to the fall of this
belief, which, with its dogma, _Extra ecclesiam nulla salus_, was
tottering before the crisis came.

The prospects of Christian theology are very difficult to estimate; and
I am so convinced myself of the superiority of the Catholic theology
based on Neoplatonism, that I cannot view the matter with impartial
detachment. We all tend to predict the triumph of our own opinions. But
miracles must, I am convinced, be relegated to the sphere of pious
opinion. It is not likely, perhaps, that the progress of science will
increase the difficulty of believing them; but it can never again be
possible to make the truths of religion depend on physical portents
having taken place as recorded. The Christian revelation can stand
without them, and the rulers of the Church will soon have to recognise
that in very many minds it does stand without them.

I have already indicated what I believe to be the essential parts of
that revelation. Whether it will be believed by a larger number of
persons a hundred years hence than to-day depends, I suppose, on whether
the nation will be in a more healthy condition than it is now. The chief
rival to Christianity is secularism; and this creed has some bitter
disappointments in store for its worshippers. I cannot help hoping that
the human race, having taken in succession every path except the right
one, may pay more attention to the narrow way that leadeth unto life. In
morals, the Church will undoubtedly have a hard battle to fight. The
younger generation has discarded all _tabus_, and in matters of sex we
must be prepared for a period of unbridled license. But such lawlessness
brings about its own cure by arousing disgust and shame; and the
institution of marriage is far too deeply rooted to be in any danger
from the revolution.

I have, I suppose, made it clear that I do not consider myself specially
fortunate in having been born in 1860, and that I look forward with
great anxiety to the journey through life which my children will have to
make. But, after all, we judge our generation mainly by its surface
currents. There may be in progress a storage of beneficent forces which
we cannot see. There are ages of sowing and ages of reaping: the
brilliant epochs may be those in which spiritual wealth is squandered,
the epochs of apparent decline may be those in which the race is
recuperating after an exhausting effort. To all appearance, man has
still a great part of his long lease before him, and there is no reason
to suppose that the future will be less productive of moral and
spiritual triumphs than the past. The source of all good is like an
inexhaustible river; the Creator pours forth new treasures of goodness,
truth, and beauty for all who will love them and take them. 'Nothing
that truly _is_ can ever perish,' as Plotinus says; whatever has value
in God's sight is safe for evermore. Our half-real world is the factory
of souls, in which we are tried, as in a furnace. We are not to set our
hopes upon it, but to learn such wisdom as it can teach us while we pass
through it. I will therefore end these thoughts on our present
discontents with two messages of courage and confidence, one from
Chaucer, the other from Blake.

    That thee is sent, receyve in buxomnesse,
    The wrastling for this worlde axeth a fall.
    Her is non hoom, her nis but wildernesse:
    Forth, pilgrim, forth! Forth, beste, out of thy stall!
    Know thy contree, look up, thank God of all:
    Weyve thy lust, and let thy gost thee lede;
    And trouthe shall delivere, it is no drede.

And this:--

    Joy and woe are woven fine,
    A clothing for the soul divine;
    Under every grief and pine
    Runs a joy with silken twine.
    It is right it should be so;
    Man was made for joy and woe;
    And when this we rightly know
    Safely through the world we go.

FOOTNOTES:

     [1] _Times Literary Supplement_, July 18, 1918.

     [2] Hearnshaw, _Democracy at the Crossroads_, p. 63.

     [3] Miss M. Loane. Mr. Stephen Reynolds has said the same.

     [4] Professor Hearnshaw quotes: 'Il y a opposition évidente
     et irréductible entre les principes socialistes et les
     principes démocratiques. Il n'y a pas de conceptions
     politiques qui soient séparées par des abîmes plus profonds
     que la démocratie et le socialisme' (Le Bon). 'Socialism
     must be built on ideas and institutions totally different
     from the ideas and institutions of democracy' (Levine). 'La
     democratic tend à la conciliation des classes, tandis que le
     socialisme organise la lutte de classe' (Lagardelle).

     [5] A.D. Lewis, _Syndicalism and the General Strike_.

     [6] _The Division of the Product of Industry_.

     [7] _First and Last Things_ (pp. 148-9. Published in 1908).




PATRIOTISM

(1915)


The sentiment of patriotism has seemed to many to mark an arrest of
development in the psychical expansion of the individual, a half-way
house between mere self-centredness and full human sympathy. Some
moralists have condemned it as pure egoism, magnified and disguised.
'Patriotism,' says Ruskin, 'is an absurd prejudice founded on an
extended selfishness.' Mr. Grant Allen calls it 'a vulgar vice--the
national or collective form of the monopolist instinct.' Mr. Havelock
Ellis allows it to be 'a virtue--among barbarians.' For Herbert Spencer
it is 'reflex egoism--extended selfishness.' These critics have made the
very common mistake of judging human emotions and sentiments by their
roots instead of by their fruits. They have forgotten the Aristotelian
canon that the 'nature' of anything is its completed development (hê
phusis telos estin). The human self, as we know it, is a transitional
form. It had a humble origin, and is capable of indefinite enhancement.
Ultimately, we are what we love and care for, and no limit has been set
to what we may become without ceasing to be ourselves. The case is the
same with our love of country. No limit has been set to what our country
may come to mean for us, without ceasing to be our country. Marcus
Aurelius exhorted himself--'The poet says, Dear city of Cecrops; shall
not I pay, Dear city of God?' But the city of God in which he wished to
be was a city in which he would still live as 'a Roman and an Antonine.'
The citizen of heaven knew that it was his duty to 'hunt Sarmatians' on
earth, though he was not obliged to imbrue his hands with 'Cæsarism.'

Patriotism has two roots, the love of clan and the love of home. In
migratory tribes the former alone counts; in settled communities
diversities of origin are often forgotten. But the love of home, as we
know it, is a gentler and more spiritual bond than clanship. The word
home is associated with all that makes life beautiful and sacred, with
tender memories of joy and sorrow, and especially with the first eager
outlook of the young mind upon a wonderful world. A man does not as a
rule feel much sentiment about his London house, still less about his
office or factory. It is for the home of his childhood, or of his
ancestors, that a man will fight most readily, because he is bound to it
by a spiritual and poetic tie. Expanding from this centre, the sentiment
of patriotism embraces one's country as a whole.

Both forms of patriotism--the local and the racial, are frequently
alloyed with absurd, unworthy or barbarous motives. The local patriot
thinks that Peebles, and not Paris, is the place for pleasure, or asks
whether any good thing can come out of Nazareth. To the Chinaman all
aliens are 'outer barbarians' or 'foreign devils.' Admiration for
ourselves and our institutions is too often measured by our contempt and
dislike for foreigners. Our own nation has a peculiarly bad record in
this respect. In the reign of James I the Spanish ambassador was
frequently insulted by the London crowd, as was the Russian ambassador
in 1662; not, apparently, because we had a burning grievance against
either of those nations, but because Spaniards and Russians are very
unlike Englishmen. That at least is the opinion of the sagacious Pepys
on the later of these incidents. 'Lord! to see the absurd nature of
Englishmen, that cannot forbear laughing and jeering at anything that
looks strange.' Defoe says that the English are 'the most churlish
people alive' to foreigners, with the result that 'all men think an
Englishman the devil.' In the 17th and 18th centuries Scotland seems to
have ranked as a foreign country, and the presence of Scots in London
was much resented. Cleveland thought it witty to write:--

    Had Cain been Scot, God would have changed his doom;
    Not forced him wander, but confined him home.

And we all remember Dr. Johnson's gibes.

British patriotic arrogance culminated in the 18th and in the first half
of the 19th century; in Lord Palmerston it found a champion at the head
of the government. Goldsmith describes the bearing of the Englishman of
his day:--

    Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
    I see the lords of human kind pass by.

Michelet found in England 'human pride personified in a people,' at a
time when the characteristic of Germany was 'a profound impersonality.'
It may be doubted whether even the arrogant brutality of the modern
Prussian is more offensive to foreigners than was the calm and haughty
assumption of superiority by our countrymen at this time. Our
grandfathers and great-grandfathers were quite of Milton's opinion,
that, when the Almighty wishes something unusually great and difficult
to be done, He entrusts it to His Englishmen. This unamiable
characteristic was probably much more the result of insular ignorance
than of a deep-seated pride. 'A generation or two ago,' said Mr. Asquith
lately, 'patriotism was largely fed and fostered upon reciprocal
ignorance and contempt.' The Englishman seriously believed that the
French subsisted mainly upon frogs, while the Frenchman was equally
convinced that the sale of wives at Smithfield was one of our national
institutions. This fruitful source of international misunderstanding has
become less dangerous since the facilities of foreign travel have been
increased. But in the relations of Europe with alien and independent
civilisations, such as that of China, we still see brutal arrogance and
vulgar ignorance producing their natural results.

Another cause of perverted patriotism is the inborn pugnacity of the
_bête humaine_. Our species is the most cruel and destructive of all
that inhabit this planet. If the lower animals, as we call them, were
able to formulate a religion, they might differ greatly as to the shape
of the beneficent Creator, but they would nearly all agree that the
devil must be very like a big white man. Mr. McDougall[8] has lately
raised the question whether civilised man is less pugnacious than the
savage; and he answers it in the negative. The Europeans, he thinks, are
among the most combative of the human race. We are not allowed to knock
each other on the head during peace; but our civilisation is based on
cut-throat competition; our favourite games are mimic battles, which I
suppose effect for us a 'purgation of the emotions' similar to that
which Aristotle attributed to witnessing the performance of a tragedy:
and, when the fit seizes us, we are ready to engage in wars which cannot
fail to be disastrous to both combatants. Mr. McDougall does not regret
this disposition, irrational though it is. He thinks that it tends to
the survival of the fittest, and that, if we substitute emulation for
pugnacity, which on other grounds might seem an unmixed advantage, we
shall have to call in the science of eugenics to save us from becoming
as sheeplike as the Chinese. There is, however, another side to this
question, as we shall see presently.

Another instinct which has supplied fuel to patriotism of the baser sort
is that of acquisitiveness. This tendency, without which even the most
rudimentary civilisation would be impossible, began when the female of
the species, instead of carrying her baby on her back and following the
male to his hunting-grounds, made some sort of a lair for herself and
her family, where primitive implements and stores of food could be kept.
There are still tribes in Brazil which have not reached this first step
towards humanisation. But the instinct of hoarding, like all other
instincts, tends to become hypertrophied and perverted; and with the
institution of private property comes another institution--that of
plunder and brigandage. In private life, no motive of action is at
present so powerful and so persistent as acquisitiveness, which, unlike
most other desires, knows no satiety. The average man is rich enough
when he has a little more than he has got, and not till then. The
acquisition and possession of land satisfies this desire in a high
degree, since land is a visible and indestructible form of property.
Consequently, as soon as the instincts of the individual are transferred
to the group, territorial aggrandisement becomes a main preoccupation of
the state. This desire was the chief cause of wars, while kings and
nobles regarded the territories over which they ruled as their private
estates. Wherever despotic or feudal conditions survive, such ideas are
likely still to be found, and to cause dangers to other states. The
greatest ambition of a modern emperor is still to be commemorated as a
'Mehrer des Reichs.'

Capitalism, by separating the idea of property from any necessary
connection with landed estate, and democracy, by denying the whole
theory on which dynastic wars of conquest are based, have both
contributed to check this, perhaps the worst kind of war. It would,
however, be a great error to suppose that the instinct of
acquisitiveness, in its old and barbarous form, has lost its hold upon
even the most civilised nations. When an old-fashioned brigand appears,
and puts himself at the head of his nation, he becomes at once a popular
hero. By any rational standard of morality, few greater scoundrels have
lived than Frederick the Great and Napoleon I. But they are still names
to conjure with. Both were men of singularly lucid intellect and
entirely medieval ambitions. Their great achievement was to show how
under modern conditions aggressive war may be carried on without much
loss (except in human life) to the aggressor. They tore up all the
conventions which regulated the conduct of warfare, and reduced it to
sheer brigandage and terrorism. And now, after a hundred years, we see
these methods deliberately revived by the greatest military power in the
world, and applied with the same ruthlessness and with an added pedantry
which makes them more inhuman. The perpetrators of the crime calculated
quite correctly that they need fear no reluctance on the part of the
nation, no qualms of conscience, no compassionate shrinking, no remorse.
It must, indeed, be a bad cause that cannot count on the support of the
large majority of the people at the _beginning_ of a war. Pugnacity,
greed, mere excitement, the contagion of a crowd, will fill the streets
of almost any capital with a shouting and jubilant mob on the day after
a war has been declared.

And yet the motives which we have enumerated are plainly atavistic and
pathological. They belong to a mental condition which would conduct an
individual to the prison or the gallows. We do not argue seriously
whether the career of the highwayman or burglar is legitimate and
desirable; and it is impossible to maintain that what is disgraceful for
the individual is creditable for the state. And apart from the
consideration that predatory patriotism deforms its own idol and makes
it hateful in the eyes of the world, subsequent history has fully
confirmed the moral instinct of the ancient Greeks, that national
insolence or injustice (hybrist) brings its own severe punishment. The
imaginary dialogue which Thucydides puts into the mouth of the Athenian
and Melian envoys, and the debate in the Athenian Assembly about the
punishment of revolted Mitylene, are intended to prepare the reader for
the tragic fate of the Sicilian expedition. The same writer describes
the break-up of all social morality during the civil war in words which
seem to herald the destruction not only of Athens but of Greek freedom.
Machiavelli's 'Prince' shows how history can repeat itself, reiterating
its lesson that a nation which gives itself to immoral aggrandisement is
far on the road to disintegration. Seneca's rebuke to his slave-holding
countrymen, 'Can you complain that you have been robbed of the liberty
which you have yourselves abolished in your own homes?' applies equally
to nations which have enslaved or exploited the inhabitants of subject
lands. If the Roman Empire had a long and glorious life, it was because
its methods were liberal, by the standard of ancient times. In so far as
Rome abused her power, she suffered the doom of all tyrants.

The illusions of imperialism have been made clearer than ever by the
course of modern history. Attempts to destroy a nationality by
overthrowing its government, proscribing its language, and maltreating
its citizens, are never successful. The experiment has been tried with
great thoroughness in Poland; and the Poles are now more of a nation
than they were under the oppressive feudal system which existed before
the partitions. Our own empire would be a ludicrous failure if it were
any part of our ambition to Anglicise other races. The only English
parts of the empire were waste lands which we have peopled with our own
emigrants. We hauled down the French flag in Canada, with the result
that Eastern Canada is now the only flourishing French colony, and the
only part of the world where the French race increases rapidly. We have
helped the Dutch to multiply with almost equal rapidity in South Africa.
We have added several millions to the native population of Egypt, and
over a hundred millions to the population of India. Similarly, the
Americans have made Cuba for the first time a really Spanish island, by
driving out its incompetent Spanish governors and so attracting
immigrants from Spain. On the whole, in imperialism nothing fails like
success. If the conqueror oppresses his subjects, they will become
fanatical patriots, and sooner or later have their revenge; if he treats
them well, and 'governs them for their good,' they will multiply faster
than their rulers, till they claim their independence. The Englishman
now says, 'I am quite content to have it so'; but that is not the old
imperialism.

The notion that frequent war is a healthy tonic for a nation is scarcely
tenable. Its dysgenic effect, by eliminating the strongest and
healthiest of the population, while leaving the weaklings at home to be
the fathers of the next generation, is no new discovery. It has been
supported by a succession of men, such as Tenon, Dufau, Foissac, de
Lapouge, and Richet in France; Tiedemann and Seeck in Germany; Guerrini
in Italy; Kellogg and Starr Jordan in America. The case is indeed
overwhelming. The lives destroyed in war are nearly all males, thus
disturbing the sex equilibrium of the population; they are in the prime
of life, at the age of greatest fecundity; and they are picked from a
list out of which from 20 to 30 per cent. have been rejected for
physical unfitness. It seems to be proved that the children born in
France during the Napoleonic wars were poor and undersized--30
millimetres below the normal height. War combined with religious
celibacy to ruin Spain. 'Castile makes men and wastes them,' said a
Spanish writer. 'This sublime and terrible phrase sums up the whole of
Spanish history.' Schiller was right; 'Immer der Krieg verschlingt die
besten.' We in England have suffered from this drain in the past; we
shall suffer much more in the next generation.

    We have fed our sea for a thousand years,
      And she calls us, still unfed,
    Though there's never a wave of all her waves
      But marks our English dead.

    We have strawed our best to the weed's unrest,
      To the shark and the sheering gull,
    If blood be the price of admiralty,
      Lord God, we ha' paid in full.

Aggressive patriotism is thus condemned by common sense and the verdict
of history no less than by morality. We are entitled to say to the
militarists what Socrates said to Polus:

     This doctrine of yours has now been examined and found
     wanting. And this doctrine alone has stood the test--that we
     ought to be more afraid of doing than of suffering wrong;
     and that the prime business of every man [and nation] is not
     to seem good, but to be good, in all private and public
     dealings.

If the nations would render something more than lip-service to this
principle, the abolition of war would be within sight; for, as Ruskin
says, echoing the judgment of the Epistle of St. James, 'The first
reason for all wars, and for the necessity of national defences, is that
the majority of persons, high and low, in all European countries, are
thieves.' But it must be remembered that, in spite of the proverb, it
takes in reality only one to make a quarrel. It is useless for the sheep
to pass resolutions in favour of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains
of a different opinion.

Our own conversion to pacificism, though sincere, is somewhat recent.
Our literature does not reflect it. Bacon is frankly militarist:

     Above all, for empire and greatness, it importeth most, that
     a nation do profess arms, as their principal honour, study,
     and occupation. For the things which we formerly have spoken
     of are but habilitations towards arms; and what is
     habitation without intention and act?... It is so plain that
     a man profiteth in that he most intendeth, that it needeth
     not to be stood upon. It is enough to point at it; that no
     nation, which doth not directly profess arms, may look to
     have greatness fall into their mouths.

A state, therefore, 'ought to have those laws or customs, which may
reach forth unto them just occasions of war.' Shakespeare's 'Henry V'
has been not unreasonably recommended by the Germans as 'good
war-reading.' It would be easy to compile a _catena_ of bellicose maxims
from our literature, reaching down to the end of the 19th century. The
change is perhaps due less to progress in morality than to that
political good sense which has again and again steered our ship through
dangerous rocks. But there has been some real advance, in all civilised
countries. We do not find that men talked about the 'bankruptcy of
Christianity' during the Napoleonic campaigns. Even the Germans think it
necessary to tell each other that it was Belgium who began this war.

But, though pugnacity and acquisitiveness have been the real foundation
of much miscalled patriotism, better motives are generally mingled with
these primitive instincts. It is the subtle blend of noble and ignoble
sentiment which makes patriotism such a difficult problem for the
moralist. The patriot nearly always believes, or thinks he believes,
that he desires the greatness of his country because his country stands
for something intrinsically great and valuable. Where this conviction is
absent we cannot speak of patriotism, but only of the cohesion of a
wolf-pack. The Greeks, who at last perished because they could not
combine, had nevertheless a consciousness that they were the trustees
of civilisation against barbarism; and in their day of triumph over the
Persians they were filled, for a time, with an almost Jewish awe in
presence of the righteous judgment of God. The 'Persæ' of Æschylus is
one of the noblest of patriotic poems. The Romans, a harder and coarser
race, had their ideal of _virtus_ and _gravitas_, which included
simplicity of life, dignity and self-restraint, honesty and industry,
and devotion to the state. They rightly felt that these qualities
constituted a vocation to empire. There was much harshness and injustice
in Roman imperialism; but what nobler epitaph could even the British
empire desire than the tribute of Claudian, when the weary Titan was at
last stricken and dying:

    Hæc est, in gremium victos quæ sola recepit,
    humanumque genus communi nomine fovit
    matris non dominæ ritu, civesque vocavit
    quos domuit, nexuque pio longinqua revinxit?

Jewish patriotism was of a different kind. A federation of fierce
Bedouin tribes, encamped amid hostile populations, and set in the
cockpit of rival empires against which it was impossible to stand, the
Israelites were hammered by misfortune into the most indestructible of
all organisms, a theocracy. Their religion was to them what, in a minor
degree, Roman Catholicism has been to Ireland and Poland, a consecration
of patriotic faith and hope. Westphal says the Jews failed because they
hated foreigners more than they loved God. They have had good reason to
hate foreigners. But undoubtedly the effect of their hatred has been
that the great gifts which their nation had to give to humanity have
come through other hands, and so have evoked no gratitude. In the first
century of our era they were called to an almost superhuman abnegation
of their inveterate nationalism, and they could not rise to it. As
almost every other nation would have done, they chose the lower
patriotism instead of the higher; and it was against their will that the
religion of civilised humanity grew out of Hebrew soil. But they gained
this by their choice, tragic though it was, that they have stood by the
graves of all the empires that oppressed them, and have preserved their
racial integrity and traditions in the most adverse circumstances. The
history of the Jews also shows that oppression and persecution are far
more efficacious in binding a nation together than community of interest
and national prosperity. Increase of wealth divides rather than unites a
people; but suffering shared in common binds it together with hoops of
steel.

The Jews were the only race whose spiritual independence was not crushed
by the Roman steam-roller. It would be unfair to say that Rome destroyed
nations; for her subjects in the West were barbarous tribes, and in the
East she displaced monarchies no less alien to their subjects than her
own rule. But she prevented the growth of nationalities, as it is to be
feared we have done in India; and the absence of sturdy independence in
the countries round the Mediterranean, especially in the Greek-speaking
provinces, made the final downfall inevitable. The lesson has its
warning for modern theorists who wish to obliterate the sentiment of
nationality, the revival of which, after a long eclipse, has been one of
the achievements of modern civilisation. For it was not till long after
the destruction of the Western Roman Empire that nationality began to
assume its present importance in Europe.

The transition from medieval to modern history is most strongly marked
by the emergence of this principle, with all that it involves. At the
end of the Middle Ages Europe was at last compelled to admit that the
grand idea of an universal state and an universal church had definitely
broken down. Hitherto it had been assumed that behind all national
disputes lay a _ius gentium_ by which all were bound, and that behind
all religious questions lay the authority of the Roman Catholic Church,
from which there was no appeal. The modern period which certainly does
not represent the last word of civilisation, has witnessed the
abandonment of these ideas. The change took place gradually. France
became a nation when the English raids ceased in the middle of the 15th
century. Spain achieved unity a generation later by the union of Castile
and Aragon and the expulsion of the Moors from the peninsula. Holland
found herself in the heroic struggle against Spain in the 16th century.
But the practice of conducting wars by hiring foreign mercenaries, a
sure sign that the nationalist spirit is weak, continued till much
later. And the dynastic principle, which is the very negation of
nationalism, actually culminated in the 18th century; and this is the
true explanation of the feeble resistance which Europe offered to the
French revolutionary armies, until Napoleon stirred up the dormant
spirit of nationalism in the peoples whom he plundered. 'In the old
European system,' says Lord Acton, 'the rights of nationalities were
neither recognised by governments nor asserted by the people. The
interests of the reigning families, not those of the nations, regulated
the frontiers; and the administration was conducted generally without
any reference to popular desires.' Marriage or conquest might unite the
most diverse nations under one sovereign, such as Charles V.

While such ideas prevailed, the suppression of a nation did not seem
hateful; the partition of Poland evoked few protests at the time, though
perhaps few acts of injustice have recoiled with greater force on the
heads of their perpetrators than this is likely to do. Poles have been
and are among the bitterest enemies of autocracy, and the strongest
advocates of republicanism and racialism, in all parts of the world. The
French Revolution opened a new era for nationalism, both directly and
indirectly. The deposition of the Bourbons was a national act which
might be a precedent for other oppressed peoples. And when the
Revolution itself began to trample on the rights of other nations, an
uprising took place, first in Spain and then in Prussia, which proved
too strong for the tyrant. The apostasy of France from her own ideals of
liberty proved the futility of mere doctrines, like those of Rousseau,
and compelled the peoples to arm themselves and win their freedom by the
sword. The national militarism of Prussia was the direct consequence of
her humiliation at Jena and Auerstädt, and of the harsh terms imposed
upon her at Tilsit. It is true that the Congress of Vienna attempted to
revive the old dynastic system. But for the steady opposition of
England, the clique of despots might have reimposed the old yoke upon
their subjects. The settlement of 1815 also left the entire centre of
Europe in a state of chaos; and it was only by slow degrees that Italy
and Germany attained national unity. Poland, the Austrian Empire, and
the Balkan States still remain in a condition to trouble the peace of
the world. In Austria-Hungary the clash of the dynastic and the
nationalist ideas is strident; and every citizen of that empire has to
choose between a wider and a narrower allegiance.

Europeans are, in fact, far from having made up their minds as to what
is the organic whole towards which patriotic sentiment ought to be
directed. Socialism agrees with despotism in saying, 'It is the
political aggregate, the state,' however much they may differ as to how
the state should be administered. For this reason militarism and
state-socialism might at any time come to terms. They are at one in
exaggerating the 'organic' unity of a political or geographical
_enclave_; and they are at one in depreciating the value of individual
liberty. Loyalty to 'the state' instead of to 'king and country' is not
an easy or a natural emotion. The state is a bloodless abstraction,
which as a rule only materialises as a drill-sergeant or a
tax-collector. Enthusiasm for it, and not only for what can be got out
of it, does not extend much beyond the Fabian Society. Cæsarism has the
great advantage of a visible head, as well as of its appeal to very old
and strong thought-habits; and accordingly, in any national crisis,
loyalty to the War-lord is likely to show unexpected strength, and
doctrinaire socialism unexpected weakness.

But devotion to the head of the state in his representative capacity is
a different thing from the old feudal loyalty. It is far more
impersonal; the ruler, whether an individual or a council, is reverenced
as a non-human and non-moral embodiment of the national power, a sort of
Platonic idea of coercive authority. This kind of loyalty may very
easily be carried too far. In reality, we are members of a great many
'social organisms,' each of which has indefeasible claims upon us. Our
family, our circle of acquaintance, our business or profession, our
church, our country, the comity of civilised nations, humanity at large,
are all social organisms; and some of the chief problems of ethics are
concerned with the adjustment of their conflicting claims. To make any
one of these absolute is destructive of morality. But militarism and
socialism deliberately make the state absolute. In internal affairs this
may lead to the ruthless oppression of individuals or whole classes; in
external relations it produces wars waged with 'methods of barbarism.'
The whole idea of the state as an organism, which has been emphasised by
social reformers as a theoretical refutation of selfish individualism,
rests on the abuse of a metaphor. The bond between the dwellers in the
same political area is far less close than that between the organs of a
living body. Every man has a life of his own, and some purely personal
rights; he has, moreover, moral links with other human associations,
outside his own country, and important moral duties towards them. No one
who reflects on the solidarity of interests among capitalists, among
hand-workers, or, in a different way, among scholars and artists, all
over the world, can fail to see that the apotheosis of the state,
whether in the interest of war or of revolution, is an anachronism and
an absurdity.

A very different basis for patriotic sentiment is furnished by the
scientific or pseudo-scientific theories about race, which have become
very popular in our time. When the history of ideas in the 20th century
comes to be written, it is certain that among the causes of this great
war will be named the belief of the Germans in the superiority of their
own race, based on certain historical and ethnological theories which
have acted like a heady wine in stimulating the spirit of aggression
among them. The theory, stated briefly, is that the shores of the Baltic
are the home of the finest human type that has yet existed, a type
distinguished by blond hair, great physical strength, unequalled mental
vigour and ability, superior morality, and an innate aptitude for
governing and improving inferior races. Unfortunately for the world,
this noble stock cannot flourish for very long in climates unlike its
own; but from the earliest historical times it has 'swarmed'
periodically, subjugating the feebler peoples of the south, and
elevating them for a time above the level which they were naturally
fitted to reach. Wherever we find marked energy and nobleness of
character, we may suspect Aryan blood; and history will usually support
our surmise. Among the great men who were certainly or probably Germans
were Agamemnon, Julius Cæsar, the Founder of Christianity, Dante, and
Shakespeare. The blond Nordic giant is fulfilling his mission by
conquering and imposing his culture upon other races. They ought to be
grateful to him for the service, especially as it has a sacrificial
aspect, the lower types having, at least in their own climates, greater
power of survival.

This fantastic theory has been defended in a large number of German
books, of which the 'Foundations of the Nineteenth Century,' by the
renegade Englishman Houston Chamberlain, is the most widely known. The
objections to it are numerous. It is notorious that until the invention
of gunpowder the settled and civilised peoples of Europe were in
frequent danger from bands of hardier mountaineers, forest-dwellers, or
pastoral nomads, who generally came from the north. But the formidable
fighting powers of these marauders were no proof of intrinsic
superiority. In fact, the most successful of these conquerors, if
success is measured by the amount of territory overrun and subdued, were
not the 'great blond beasts' of Nietzsche, but yellow monsters with
black hair, the Huns and Tartars.[9] The causes of Tartar ascendancy had
not the remotest connection with any moral or intellectual qualities
which we can be expected to admire. Nor can the Nordic race, well
endowed by nature as it undoubtedly is, prove such a superiority as this
theory claims for it. Some of the largest brains yet measured have been
those of Japanese; and the Jews have probably a higher average of
ability than the Teutons. Again, the Germans are not descended from a
pure Nordic stock. The Northern type can be best studied in Scandinavia,
where the people share with the Irish the distinction of being the
handsomest race in the world. The German is a mixture of various
anatomical types, including, in some parts, distinct traces of Mongolian
blood, which indicate that the raiding Huns meddled, according to their
custom, with the German women, and bequeathed to a section of the nation
the Turanian cheek-bones, as well as certain moral characteristics.
Lastly, the German race has never shown much aptitude for governing and
assimilating other peoples. The French, by virtue of their greater
sympathy, are far more successful.

The French have their own form of this pseudo-science in their doctrine
of the persistence of national characteristics. Each nation may be
summed up in a formula: England, for example, is 'the country of will.'
A few instances may, no doubt, be quoted in support of this theory.
Julius Cæsar said: 'Duas res plerasque Gallia industriosissime
prosequitur, rem militarem et argute loqui'; and these are still the
characteristics of our gallant allies. And Madame de Staël may be
thought to have hit off the German character very cleverly about the
time when Bismarck first saw the light. 'The Germans are vigorously
submissive. They employ philosophical reasonings to explain what is the
least philosophic thing in the world, respect for force and the fear
which transforms that respect into admiration.' But the fact remains
that the characters of nations frequently change, or rather that what we
call national character is usually only the policy of the governing
class, forced upon it by circumstances, or the manner of living which
climate, geographical position, and other external causes have made
necessary for the inhabitants of a country.

To found patriotism on homogeneity of race is no wiser than to bound it
by frontier lines. As the Abbé Noël has lately written about his own
country, Belgium,

     the race is not the nation. The nation is not a
     physiological fact; it is a moral fact. What constitutes a
     nation is the community of sentiments and ideals which
     results from a common history and education. The variations
     of the cephalic index are here of no great importance. The
     essential factor of the national consciousness resides in a
     certain common mode of conceiving the conditions of the
     social life.

Belgium, the Abbé maintains, has found this national consciousness amid
her sufferings; there are no longer any distinctions between
French-speaking Belgians and Walloons or Flemings. This is in truth the
real base of patriotism. It is the basis of our own love for our
country. What Britain stands for is what Britain is. We have long known
in our hearts what Britain stands for; but we have now been driven to
search our thoughts and make our ideals explicit to ourselves and
others. The Englishman has become a philosopher _malgré lui_, 'Whatever
the world thinks,' writes Bishop Berkeley. 'he who hath not much
meditated upon God, the human soul, and the _summum bonum_, may possibly
make a thriving earthworm, but will most indubitably make a sorry
patriot and a sorry statesman.' These words, which were quoted by Mr.
Arthur Balfour a few years ago, may seem to make a large demand on the
average citizen; but in our quiet way we have all been meditating on
these things since last August, and we know pretty well what our _summum
bonum_ is for our country. We believe in chivalry and fair play and
kindliness--these things first and foremost; and we believe, if not
exactly in democracy, yet in a government under which a man may think
and speak the thing he wills. We do not believe in war, and we do not
believe in bullying. We do not flatter ourselves that we are the
supermen; but we are convinced that the ideas which we stand for, and
which we have on the whole tried to carry out, are essential to the
peaceful progress and happiness of humanity; and for these ideas we have
drawn the sword. The great words of Abraham Lincoln have been on the
lips of many and in the hearts of all since the beginning of the great
contest: 'With malice towards none; with charity for all: with firmness
in the right as God gives us to see the right--let us strive on to
finish the work we are in.'

Patriotism thus spiritualised and moralised is the true patriotism.
When the emotion is once set in its right relations to the whole of
human life and to all that makes human life worth living, it cannot
become an immoral obsession. It is certain to become an immoral
obsession if it is isolated and made absolute. We have seen the
appalling perversion--the methodical diabolism--which this obsession has
produced in Germany. It has startled us because we thought that the
civilised world had got beyond such insanity; but it is of course no new
thing. Machiavelli said, 'I prefer my country to the salvation of my
soul'--a sentiment which sounds noble but is not; it has only a
superficial resemblance to St. Paul's willingness to be 'accursed' for
the sake of his countrymen. Devil-worship remains what it was, even when
the idol is draped in the national flag. This obsession may be in part a
survival from savage conditions, when all was at stake in every feud;
but chiefly it is an example of the idealising and universalising power
of the imagination, which turns every unchecked passion into a
monomania. The only remedy is, as Lowell's Hosea Biglow reminds us, to
bear in mind that

     our true country is that ideal realm which we represent to
     ourselves under the names of religion, duty, and the like.
     Our terrestrial organisations are but far-off approaches to
     so fair a model; and all they are verily traitors who resist
     not any attempt to divert them from this their original
     intendment. Our true country is bounded on the north and the
     south, on the east and west, by Justice, and when she
     oversteps that invisible boundary-line by so much as a
     hair's breadth, she ceases to be our mother, and chooses
     rather to be looked upon _quasi noverca_.

So Socrates said that the wise man will be a citizen of his true city,
of which the type is laid up in heaven, and only conditionally of his
earthly country.

The obsession of patriotism is not the only evil which we have to
consider. We may err by defect as well as by excess. Herbert Spencer
speaks of an 'anti-patriotic bias'; and it can hardly be disputed that
many Englishmen who pride themselves on their lofty morality are
suffering from this mental twist. The malady seems to belong to the
Anglo-Saxon constitution, for it is rarely encountered in other
countries, while we had a noisy pro-Napoleonic faction a hundred years
ago, and the Americans had their 'Copperheads' in the Northern States
during the civil war. In our own day, every enemy of England, from the
mad Mullah to the mad Kaiser, has had his advocates at home; and the
champions of Boer and Boxer, of Afridi and Afrikander, of the Mahdi and
the Matabele, have been usually the same persons. The English, it would
appear, differ from other misguided rascals in never being right even by
accident. But the idiosyncrasy of a few persons is far less important
than the comparative insensibility of whole classes to the patriotic
appeal, except when war is actually raging. This is not specially
characteristic of our own country. The German Emperor has complained of
his Social Democrats as 'people without a fatherland'; and the cry 'À
bas la patrie' has been heard in France.

It is usual to explain this attitude by the fact that the manual workers
'have no stake in the country,' and might not find their condition
altered for the worse by subjection to a foreign power. A few of our
working-men have given colour to this charge by exclaiming petulantly
that they could not be worse off under the Germans; but in this they
have done themselves and their class less than justice. The
anti-militarism and cosmopolitanism of the masses in every country is a
profoundly interesting fact, a problem which demands no superficial
investigation. It is one result of that emancipation from traditional
ideas, which makes the most important difference between the upper and
middle classes on the one side and the lower on the other. We lament
that the working-man takes but little interest in Christianity, and rack
our brains to discover what we have done to discredit our religion in
his eyes. The truth is that Christianity, as a dogmatic and
ecclesiastical system, is unintelligible without a very considerable
knowledge of the conditions under which it took shape. But what are the
ancient Hebrews, and the Greeks and Romans, to the working-man? He is
simply cut off from the means of reading intelligently any book of the
Bible, or of understanding how the institution called the Catholic
Church, and its offshoots, came to exist. As our staple education
becomes more 'modern' and less literary, the custodians of organised
religion will find their difficulties increasing. But the same is true
about patriotism. Love of country means pride in the past and ambition
for the future. Those who live only in the present are incapable of it.
But our working-man knows next to nothing about the past history of
England; he has scarcely heard of our great men, and has read few of our
great books. It is not surprising that the appeal to patriotism leaves
him cold. This is an evil that has its proper remedy. There is no reason
why a sane and elevated love of country should not be stimulated by
appropriate teaching in our schools. In America this is done--rather
hysterically; and in Germany--rather brutally. The Jews have always made
their national history a large part of their education, and even of
their religion. Nothing has helped them more to retain their
self-consciousness as a nation. Ignorance of the past and indifference
to the future usually go together. Those who most value our historical
heritage will be most desirous to transmit it unimpaired.

But the absence of traditional ideas is by no means an unmixed evil. The
working-man sees more clearly than the majority of educated persons the
absurdity of international hatred and jealousy. He is conscious of
greater solidarity with his own class in other European countries than
with the wealthier class in his own; and as he approaches the whole
question without prejudice, he cannot fail to realise how large a part
of the product of labour is diverted from useful purposes by modern
militarism. International rivalry is in his eyes one of the most serious
obstacles to the abolition of want and misery. Tolstoy hardly
exaggerates when he says: 'Patriotism to the peoples represents only a
frightful future; the fraternity of nations seems an ideal more and more
accessible to humanity, and one which humanity desires.' Military glory
has very little attraction for the working-man. His humanitarian
instincts appear to be actually stronger than those of the sheltered
classes. To take life in any circumstances seems to him a shocking
thing; and the harsh procedure of martial law and military custom is
abhorrent to him. He sees no advantage and no credit in territorial
aggrandisement, which he suspects to be prompted mainly by the desire to
make money unjustly. He is therefore a convinced pacificist; though his
doctrine of human brotherhood breaks down ignominiously when he finds
his economic position threatened by the competition of cheap foreign
labour. If an armed struggle ever takes place between the nations of
Europe (or their colonists) and the yellow races, it will be a
working-man's war. But on the whole, the best hope of getting rid of
militarism may lie in the growing power of the working class. The poor,
being intensely gregarious and very susceptible to all collective
emotions, are still liable to fits of warlike excitement. But their real
minds are at present set against an aggressive foreign policy, without
being shut against the appeals of a higher patriotism.

And yet the irritation which is felt against preachers of the
brotherhood of man is not without justification. Some persons who
condemn patriotism are simply lacking in public spirit, or their loyalty
is monopolised by some fad or 'cause,' which is a poor substitute for
love of country. The man who has no prejudices in favour of his own
family and his own country is generally an unamiable creature. So we
need not condemn Molière for saying, 'L'ami du genre humain n'est pas du
tout mon fait,' nor Brunetière for declaring that 'Ni la nature ni
l'histoire n'ont en effet voulu que les hommes fussent tous frères.' But
French Neo-catholicism, a bourgeois movement directed against all the
'ideas of 1789,' seems to have adopted the most ferocious kind of
chauvinism. M. Paul Bourget wrote the other day in the _Écho de Paris_,
'This war must be the first of many, since we cannot exterminate
sixty-five million Germans in a single campaign!' The women and children
too! This is not the way to revive the religion of Christ in France.

The practical question for the future is whether there is any prospect
of returning, under more favourable auspices, to the unrealised ideal
of the Middle Ages--an agreement among the nations of Europe to live
amicably under one system of international law and right, binding upon
all, and with the consciousness of an intellectual and spiritual unity
deeper than political divisions. 'The nations are the citizens of
humanity,' said Mazzini; and so they ought to be. Some of the omens are
favourable. Militarism has dug its own grave. The great powers increased
their armaments till the burden became insupportable, and have now
rushed into bankruptcy in the hope of shaking it off. In prehistoric
times the lords of creation were certain gigantic lizards, protected by
massive armour-plates which could only be carried by a creature thirty
to sixty feet long. Then they died, when neither earth, air, nor water
could support them any longer. Such must be the end of the European
nations, unless they learn wisdom. The lesson will be brought home to
them by Transatlantic competition. The United States of America had
already, before this war, an initial advantage over the disunited states
of Europe, amounting to at least 10 per cent. on every contract; after
the war this advantage will be doubled. It remains to be seen whether
the next generation will honour the debts which we are piling up.
Disraeli used to complain of what he called 'Dutch finance,' which
consists in 'mortgaging the industry of the future to protect property
in the present.' Pitt paid for the great war of a hundred years ago in
this manner; after a century we are still groaning under the burden of
his loans. We may hear more of the iniquity of 'Dutch finance' when the
democracies of the next generation have a chance of repudiating
obligations which, as they will say, they did not contract. However that
may be, international rivalry is plainly very bad business; and there
are great possibilities in the Hague Tribunal, if, and only if, the
signatories to the conference bind themselves to use force against a
recalcitrant member. The conduct of Germany in this war has shown that
public opinion is powerless to restrain a nation which feels strong
enough to defy it.

Another cause which may give patriots leisure to turn their thoughts
away from war's alarms is that the 'swarming' period of the European
races is coming to an end. The unparalleled increase of population in
the first three quarters of the 19th century has been followed by a
progressive decrease in the birth-rate, which will begin to tell upon
social conditions when the reduction in the death-rate, which has
hitherto kept pace with it, shall have reached its natural limit. Europe
with a stationary population will be in a much happier condition; and
problems of social reform can then be tackled with some hope of success.
Honourable emulation in the arts of life may then take the place of
desperate competition and antagonism. Human lives will begin to have a
positive value, and we may even think it fair to honour our saviours
more than our destroyers. The effects of past follies will then soon be
effaced; for nations recover much more quickly from wars than from
internal disorders. External injuries are rapidly cured; but 'those
wounds heal ill that men do give themselves.' The greatest obstacle to
progress is not man's inherited pugnacity, but his incorrigible tendency
to parasitism. The true patriot will keep his eye fixed on this, and
will dread as the state's worst enemies those citizens who at the top
and bottom of the social scale have no other ambition than to hang on
and suck the life-blood of the nation. Great things may be hoped from
the new science of eugenics, when it has passed out of its tentative and
experimental stage.

In the distant future we may reasonably hope that patriotism will be a
sentiment like the loyalty which binds a man to his public school and
university, an affection purged of all rancour and jealousy, a stimulus
to all honourable conduct and noble effort, a part of the poetry of
life. It is so already to many of us, and has been so to the noblest
Englishmen since we have had a literature. If Henry V's speech at
Agincourt is the splendid gasconade of a royal freebooter, there is no
false ring in the scene where John of Gaunt takes leave of his banished
son; nor in Sir Walter Scott's 'Breathes there a man with soul so dead,'
etc. 'If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her
cunning.' We cannot quite manage to substitute London for Zion in
singing psalms, though there are some in England--Eton, Winchester,
Oxford, Cambridge--which do evoke these feelings. These emotions of
loyalty and devotion are by no means to be checked or despised. They
have an infinite potency for good. In spiritual things there is no
conflict between intensity and expansion. The deepest sympathy is,
potentially, also the widest. He who loves not his home and country
which he has seen, how shall he love humanity in general which he has
not seen? There are, after all, few emotions of which one has less
reason to be ashamed than the little lump in the throat which the
Englishman feels when he first catches sight of the white cliffs of
Dover.

FOOTNOTES:

     [8] In his _Introduction to Social Psychology_.

     [9] The reasons of their irresistible strength have been
     explained in a most brilliant manner by Dr. Peisker in the
     first volume of the 'Cambridge Medieval History.'




THE BIRTH-RATE

(1917)


The numbers of every species are determined, not by the procreative
power of its members, which always greatly exceeds the capacity of the
earth to support a progeny increasing in geometrical progression, but by
two factors, the activity of its enemies and the available supply of
food. Those species which survive owe their success in the struggle for
existence mainly to one of two qualities, enormous fertility or parental
care. The female cod spawns about 6,000,000 eggs at a time, of which at
most one-third--perhaps much less--are afterwards fertilised. An
infinitesimal proportion of these escapes being devoured by fish or
fowl. An insect-eating bird is said to require for its support about
250,000 insects a year, and the number of such birds must amount to
thousands of millions. As a rule there is a kind of equilibrium between
the forces of destruction and of reproduction. If a species is nearly
exterminated by its enemies, those enemies lose their food-supply and
perish themselves. In some sheltered spot the survivors of the victims
remain and increase till they begin to send out colonies again. In some
species, such as the mice in La Plata, and the beasts and birds which
devour them, there is an alternation of increase and decrease, to be
accounted for in this way. But permanent disturbances of equilibrium
sometimes occur. The rabbit in Australia, having found a virgin soil,
multiplied for some time almost up to the limit of its natural fertility
and is firmly established on that continent. The brown rat (some say)
has exterminated our black rat and the Maori rat in New Zealand. The
microbe of the terrible disease which the crews of Columbus brought back
to Europe, after causing a devastating epidemic at the end of the
fifteenth century, established a kind of _modus vivendi_ with its hosts,
and has remained as a permanent scourge in Europe. Other microbes, like
those of cholera and plague, emigrate from the lands where they are
endemic, like a horde of Tartars, and after slaying all who are
susceptible disappear from inanition. The draining of the fens has
driven the anopheles mosquito from England, and our countrymen no longer
suffer from 'ague.' Cleanlier habits are banishing the louse and its
accompaniment typhus fever.

Fertility and care for offspring seem as a rule to vary inversely. The
latter is the path of biological progress, and is characteristic of all
viviparous animals. That any degree of parental attention is
incompatible with the immense fecundity of the lower organisms needs no
demonstration. Such fertility is not necessary to keep up the numbers of
the higher species, which find abundant food in the swarming progeny of
the lower types, and are not themselves exposed to wholesale slaughter.
Speaking of fishes, Sutherland says:

     Of species that exhibit no sort of parental care, the
     average of forty-nine gives 1,040,000 eggs to a female each
     year; while among those which make nests or any apology for
     nests the number is only about 10,000. Among those which
     have any protective tricks, such as carrying the eggs in
     pouches or attached to the body, or in the mouth, the
     average number is under 1000; while among those whose care
     takes the form of uterine or quasi-uterine gestation which
     brings the young into the world alive, an average of 56 eggs
     is quite sufficient.

Man is no exception to these laws. His evolution has been steadily in
the direction of diminishing fertility and increasing parental care.
This does not necessarily imply that the modern European loves his
children better than the savage loves his. It is grim necessity, not
want of affection, which determines the treatment of children by their
parents over a great part of the world, and through the greater part of
human history. The homeless hunters, who represent the lowest stage of
savagery, are now almost extinct. In these tribes the woman has to
follow the man carrying her baby. Under such conditions the chances of
rearing a large family are small indeed. Very different is the life of
the grassland nomads, who roam over the Arabian plateau and the steppes
of Central Asia. These tribes, who really live as the parasites of their
flocks and herds, depending on them entirely for subsistence, often
multiply rapidly. Their typical unit is the great patriarchal family, in
which the _sheikh_ may have scores of children by different mothers.
These children soon begin to earn their keep, and are taken care of. If,
however, the patriarch so chooses, Hagar with her child is cast adrift,
to find her way back to her own people, if she can. The grasslands are
usually almost as full as they can hold. A period of drought, or
pressure by rivals, in former times sent a horde of these hardy
shepherds on a raid into the nearest settled province; and if, like the
Tartars, they were mounted, they usually killed, plundered, and
conquered wherever they went, until the discovery of gunpowder saved
civilisation from the recurrent peril of barbarian inroads. Barbarians
of another type, hunters with fixed homes, seldom increase rapidly,
partly because the dangers of forest-life for young children are much
greater than on the steppe.

In the primitive river-valley civilisations, such as Egypt and
Babylonia, the conditions of increase were so favourable that a dense
population soon began to press upon the means of subsistence. In Egypt
the remedy was a centralised government which could undertake great
irrigation works and intensive cultivation. In Babylonia, for the first
time in history, foreign trade was made to support a larger population
than the land itself could maintain. There was little or no infanticide
in Babylonia, but the death-rate in these steaming alluvial plains has
always been very high.

When we turn to poor and mountainous countries like Greece, the
conditions are very different. It was an old belief among the Hellenes
that in the days before the Trojan War 'the world was too full of
people.' The increase was doubtless made possible by the trade which
developed in the Minoan period, but the sources of food-supply were
liable to be interfered with. Hence came the necessity for active
colonisation, which lasted from the eighth to the sixth century B.C.
This period of expansion came to an end when all the available sites
were occupied. In the sixth century the Greeks found themselves headed
off, in the west by Phoenicians and Etruscans, in the east by the
Persian Empire. The problem of over-population was again pressing upon
them. Incessant civil wars between Hellenes kept the numbers down to
some extent; but Greek battles were not as a rule very bloody, and every
healthy nation has a surprising capacity of making good the losses
caused by war. The first effect of the check to emigration was that the
old ideal of the 'self-sufficient life,' which meant the practice of
mixed farming, had to be partially abandoned. The most flourishing
States, and especially Athens, had to take to manufactures, which they
exchanged for the food-products of the Balkan States and South Russia.
The result was an increasing urbanisation, and a new population of free
'resident aliens.' Conservatives hated this change and wished to revive
the old ideal of a small self-supporting State, with a maximum of 20,000
or 30,000 citizens. Plato, in his latest work, the 'Laws,' wishes his
model city to be not too near the sea, the proximity of which 'fills the
streets with merchants and shopkeepers, and begets dishonesty in the
souls of men.' On the other side Isocrates, the most far-seeing of
Athenian politicians, realised that the day of small city-states was
over, and that the limited, 'self-sufficient' community would not long
maintain its independence. He urged his countrymen to pursue a policy of
peaceful penetration in Western Asia, as the Greeks were soon to do
under the successors of Alexander. But the prejudice against
industrialism was very strong. Greece in the fifth century remained a
poor country; her exports were not more than enough to pay for the food
of her existing population; and that population had to be artificially
restricted. The Greeks were an exceptionally healthy and long-lived
race; their great men for the most part lived to ages which have no
parallel until the nineteenth century. The infant death-rate from
natural causes may have been rather high, as it is in modern Greece, but
it was augmented by systematic infanticide. The Greek father had an
absolute right to decide whether a new-comer was to be admitted to the
family. In Ephesus alone of Greek cities a parent was compelled to prove
that he was too poor to rear a child before he was allowed to get rid of
it.[10] Even Hesiod, centuries earlier, advises a father not to bring up
more than one son, and daughters were sacrificed more frequently than
sons. The usual practice was to expose the infant in a jar; anyone who
thought it worth while might rescue the baby and bring it up as a slave.
But this was not often done. At Gela, in Sicily, there are 233 'potted'
burials in an excavated graveyard, out of a total of 570.[11] The
proportion of female infants exposed must have been very large. The
evidence of literature is supported by such letters as this from a
husband at Oxyrhynchus: 'When--good luck to you--your child is born, if
it is a male, let it live; if a female, expose it.'[12] Besides
infanticide, abortion was freely practised, and without blame.[13] The
Greek citizen married rather late; but as his bride was usually in her
'teens this would not affect the birth-rate. Nor need we attach much
importance, as a factor in checking population, to the characteristic
Greek vice, nor to prostitution, which throughout antiquity was
incredibly cheap and visited by no physical penalty. As for slaves,
Xenophon recommends that they should be allowed to have children as a
reward for good conduct.[14]

A rapid decline in population set in under the successors of Alexander.
Polybius ascribes it to selfishness and a high standard of comfort,
which is doubtless true of the upper and middle classes;[15] but the
depopulation of rural Greece can hardly be so accounted for. Perhaps
the forests were cut down, and the rainfall diminished. It was the
general impression that the soil was far less productive than formerly.
The decay of the Hellenic race was accelerated after the Roman conquest,
until the old stock became almost extinct. This disappearance of the
most gifted race that ever inhabited our planet is one of the strangest
catastrophes of history, and is full of warnings for the modern
sociologist. Industrial slavery, indifference to parenthood, and
addiction to club-life were certainly three of the main causes, unless
we prefer to regard the two last as symptoms of hopelessness about the
future.

The same disease fell upon Italy, and was coincident not with the
murderous war against Hannibal and the subsequent campaigns, costly
though they were, in Spain, Syria, and Macedonia, but with the
Hellenisation of social life. Lucan, under Nero, complains that the
towns have lost more than half their inhabitants, and that the
country-side lies waste. Under Titus it was estimated that, whereas
Italy under the Republic could raise nearly 800,000 soldiers, that
number was now reduced by one-half. Marcus Aurelius planted a large
tribe of Marcomanni on unoccupied land in Italy. In the fourth century
Bologna, Modena, Piacenza, and many other towns in North Italy were in
ruins. The land of the Volscians and Aequians, once densely populated,
was a desert even in Livy's time. Samnium remained the wilderness that
Sulla had left it; and Apulia was a lonely sheep-walk.

The causes of this depopulation have been often discussed, both in
antiquity and in our own day. Slavery, infanticide, celibacy, wars and
massacres, large estates, and pestilence have all been named as causes;
but I am inclined to think that all these influences together are
insufficient to account for so rapid a decline. The toll of war was
lighter by far than in periods when the population was rising;
infectious disease (unless we suppose, as some have suggested, that
malaria became for the first time endemic under the Roman domination)
invaded the empire in occasional and destructive epidemics, but a
healthy population recovers from pestilence, as from war, with great
rapidity. The large grazing ranches displaced farms because corn-growing
in Italy was unprofitable, but there was a large supply of grain from
Sicily, Africa, and other districts. Slavery undoubtedly accounts for a
great deal. This institution is excessively wasteful of human life; it
is never possible to keep up the numbers of slaves without slave-hunting
in the countries from which they come. And we must remember that ancient
civilisation was almost entirely urban. The barbarians found ample waste
lands between the towns, which they did not as a rule care to visit,
probably because those who did so soon fell victims to microbic
diseases. The sanitary condition of ancient cities was better than in
the Middle Ages; but the death-rate was probably too high to permit of
any increase in the population. But after admitting that all these
causes were operative, it may be that we shall be obliged to acknowledge
also a psychological factor. If a nation has no hopes for the future, if
it is even doubtful whether life is worth living, if it is disposed to
withdraw from the struggle for existence and to meet the problems of
life in a temper of passive resignation, it will not regard children as
a heritage and gift that cometh from the Lord, but rather as an
encumbrance. That such was the temper of the later Roman Empire may be
gathered not only from the literature, which is singularly devoid of
hopefulness and enterprise, but from the rapid spread of monasticism and
eremitism in this period. The prevalence of this world-weariness of
course needs explanation, and the cause is rather obscure. It does not
seem to be connected with unfavourable external conditions, but rather
with a racial exhaustion akin to senile decay in the individual. But
there is no real analogy between the life of an individual and that of a
nation, and it would be very rash to insist on the hypothesis of racial
decay, which perhaps has no biological basis.

The influence of Christianity on population is very difficult to
estimate. Nothing is more unscientific than to collect the ethical
precepts and practices of nations which profess the Christian religion,
and to label them as 'the results of Christianity.' The historian of
religion would indeed be faced by a strange task if he were compelled to
trace the moral ideals of Simeon Stylites and of Howard the
philanthropist, of Francis of Assisi and Oliver Cromwell, of Thomas
Aquinas and Thomas à Becket, to a common source. The only ethical and
social principles which can properly be called Christian are those which
can be proved to have their root in the teaching and example of the
Founder of Christianity. But the Gospel of Christ was a product of
Jewish soil. It is historically connected with the Jewish prophetic
tradition, which it carried to its fullest development and presented in
an universalised and spiritualised form. Its social teaching consists
chiefly of general principles which have to be applied to conditions
unlike those contemplated by its first disciples, who were under the
influence of the apocalyptic expectations prevalent at the time. Jewish
morality was in its origin the morality of a tribe of nomad Bedouins;
and we have seen that infant life is held sacred by these peoples.
Marriage is regarded as a duty, and childlessness as a misfortune or a
disgrace. The forward look, characteristic of the Hebrews from the
first, made every Jew desirous to leave descendants who might witness
happier times, and one of whom might even be the promised Deliverer of
his people. No Hebrew of either sex was allowed to be a servant of vice;
abnormal practices, though screened by Canaanite religion, were far less
common than in Greece or Italy. To this wholesome morality Christianity
added the doctrines of the value, in the sight of God, of every human
life, and of the sanctity of the body as the 'temple of God.' To the
Pagans, the continence of the Christians was, next to their affection
for each other, their most remarkable characteristic. From the first,
the new religion set itself firmly against infanticide and abortion, and
won one of its most signal moral triumphs in driving underground and
greatly diminishing homosexual vice. Its encouragement of celibacy,
especially for those who followed the 'religious' vocation, was an
offset to its healthy influence on family life, and ultimately, as
Galton has shown, worked great mischief by sterilising for centuries
many of the gentlest and noblest in each generation; but this tendency
was adventitious to Christianity, and would never have taken root on
Palestinian soil. The cult of virginity has lasted on, with much else
that belongs to the later Hellenistic age, in Catholicism.

In the Middle Ages the population question slumbered. The miserable
chaos into which the old civilisation sank after the barbarian
invasions, the orgies of massacre and plunder, the almost total oblivion
of medical science, and the pestiferous condition of the medieval walled
town, which could be smelt miles away, averted any risk of
over-population. Families were very large, but the majority of the
children died. Millions were swept away by the Black Death; millions
more by the Crusades. Such books as that of Luchaire, on France in the
reign of Philip Augustus, bring vividly before us the horrible condition
of society in feudal times, and explain amply the sparsity of the
population.

The early modern period contains another notable example of a sudden and
unaccountable decline in population. The scene is Spain, which, after
playing an active and very prominent part in the world's history, sank
quickly into the lethargy from which it has never recovered. It may be
noted that here, as in the case of Rome, the decay of population and
energy followed a great influx of plundered wealth. On the other hand,
the increase of population in our newly-planted North American colonies
must have been extremely rapid for two or three generations.

The enormous multiplication of the European races since the middle of
the eighteenth century is a phenomenon quite unique in history, and
never likely to be repeated.[16] It was rendered possible by the new
labour-saving inventions which immensely increased the exports which
could be exchanged for food, and by the opening up of vast new
food-producing areas. The chief method by which the increase was
effected, especially in the later period, has been the lengthening of
human life by improved sanitation and medical science.[17] Since 1865
the average duration of life in England and Wales has been raised by a
little more than one-third. Other European countries show the same ratio
of improvement. This astonishing result, so little known and so seldom
referred to, was bound to have a great effect on the birth-rate. So long
as the swarming period continued at its height, a net annual increase of
15 or even 20 per thousand could be sustained; but the expansion of the
European peoples has now passed its zenith, and a tendency to revert to
more normal conditions is almost everywhere observable. One of the most
advanced nations, France, has already reached the equilibrium towards
which other civilised nations are moving. The old-established families
in the United States are believed to be actually dwindling.

The student of international vital statistics will be struck first by
the very wide differences in the birth-rate of different countries. He
will then notice that the more backward countries have on the whole a
considerably higher birth-rate than the more advanced. Thirdly, he will
observe the parallelism between the birth-rate and death-rate, which
makes the net increase in countries with a high birth-rate very little
larger than that of countries with a low birth-rate. The following
figures will illustrate these points; they are taken from the
Registrar-General's Blue Book for 1912.


                      Birth-rate Death-rate Net rate of
                                              increase
United Kingdom           23.9       13.8         10.1
Australia                28.7       11.2         17.5
Austria                  31.3       20.5         10.8
Belgium                  22.9       16.4          6.5
France                   19.0       17.5          1.5
Germany                  28.6       17.3         11.3
Italy                    32.4       18.2         14.2
New Zealand              26.5        8.9         17.6
Norway                   25.4       13.4         12.0
Roumania                 43.4       22.9         20.5
Russia                   44.0       28.9         15.1

It will be seen that Australia and New Zealand, with low birth-rates and
the lowest death-rates in the world increase more rapidly than Russia
with an enormous birth-rate and proportionately high death-rate. No one
can doubt that our colonies achieve their increase with far less
friction and misery than the prolific but short-lived Slavs.
Civilisation in a high form is incompatible with such conditions as
these figures disclose in Russia. The figures for Egypt and India are
similar to the Russian, but in India, which is overfull, the mortality
is greater than even in Russia, and the same is true of China, in which
we are told that seven out of ten children die in infancy. It has been
suggested that the fairest measure of a country's well-being, as regards
its actual vitality, is the square of the death-rate divided by the
birth-rate.

It is well known that a decline in the birth-rate set in about forty
years ago in this country, and has gone on steadily ever since, till the
fall now amounts to about one-third of the total births. It thus
corresponds very nearly to the fall in the death-rate during the same
period. It is also well known that this decline is not evenly
distributed among different classes of the people. Until the decline
began, large families were the rule in all classes, and the slightly
larger families of the poor were compensated by their somewhat higher
mortality. But since 1877 large families have become increasingly rare
in the upper and middle classes, and among the skilled artisans. They
are frequent in the thriftless ranks of unskilled labour, and in one
section of well-paid workmen--the miners. The highest birth-rates at
present are in the mining districts and in the slums. The lowest are in
some of the learned professions. In the Rhondda Valley the birth-rate is
still about forty, which is double the rate in the prosperous
residential suburbs of London. In the seats of the textile industry the
decline has been very severe, although wages are fairly good; among the
agricultural labourers the rate is also low. It will be found that in
all trades where the women work for wages the birth-rate has fallen
sharply; the miner's wife does not earn money, and has therefore less
inducement to restrict her family. In agricultural districts the housing
difficulty is mainly responsible; in the upper and middle classes the
heavy expense of education and the burden of rates and taxes are
probably the main reasons why larger families are not desired. We may
add that in almost all the professions old men are overpaid and young
men under-paid. Mr. and Mrs. Whetham[18] have found that, before 1870,
143 marriages of men whose names appear in 'Who's Who' resulted in 743
children, an average of 5.2 each; after 1870 the average is only 3.08.
Celibacy also is commoner among the educated. 'From the reports issued
by two Women's Colleges, it appears that, excluding those who have left
college within three years or less, out of 3000 women only 22 per cent.
have married, and the number of children born to each marriage is
undoubtedly very small.' The writers consider that this state of things
is extremely dangerous for the country, inasmuch as we are now breeding
mainly from our worst stocks (the feeble-minded are very prolific),
while our best families are stationary or dwindling. Without denying the
general truth of this pessimistic conclusion,[19] it may be pointed out
that the miners are, physically at least, above the average of the whole
population, and that the very low birth-rate of residential districts is
partly due to the presence in large numbers of unmarried domestic
servants. The death-rate of the slums is also very high.

The fears of the eugenist about the quality of the population are far
more reasonable than the invectives of the fanatic about its defective
quantity. Of the latter class we may say with Havelock Ellis that 'those
who seek to restore the birth-rate of half a century ago are engaged in
a task which would be criminal if it were not based on ignorance, and
which is in any case fatuous.' And yet I hope to show before the close
of this article that for two or three generations the British Empire
could absorb a considerable increase, and that the Government might with
advantage stimulate this by schemes of colonisation. The lament of the
eugenist resounds in all countries alike. The German complains that the
Poles, whom he considers an inferior race, breed like rabbits, while the
gifted exponents of _Kultur_ only breed like hares. The American is
nervous about the numbers of the negro; he has more reason to be nervous
about the fecundity of the Slav and South Italian immigrant. Everywhere
the tendency is for the superior stock to dwindle till it becomes a
small aristocracy. The Americans of British descent are threatened with
this fate. Pride and a high standard of living are not biological
virtues. The man who needs and spends little is the ultimate inheritor
of the earth. I know of no instance in history in which a ruling race
has not ultimately been ousted or absorbed by its subjects. Complete
extermination or expropriation is the only successful method of
conquest. The Anglo-Saxon race has thus established itself in the
greater part of Britain, and in Australasia. In North America it has
destroyed the Indian hunter, who could not be used for industrial
purposes; but the temptation to exploit the negro and the cheaper
European races was too strong to be resisted, and Nature's heaviest
penalty is now being exacted against the descendants of our sturdy
colonists. We did not lose America in the eighteenth century; we are
losing it now. As for South Africa, the Kaffir can live like a gentleman
(according to his own ideas) on six months' ill-paid work every year;
the Englishman finds an income of £200 too small. There is only one end
to this kind of colonisation. The danger at home is that the larger part
of the population is now beginning to insist upon a scale of
remuneration and a standard of comfort which are incompatible with any
survival-value. We all wish to be privileged aristocrats, with no serfs
to work for us. Dame Nature cares nothing for the babble of politicians
and trade-union regulations. She says to us what Plotinus, in a
remarkable passage, makes her say: 'You should not ask questions; you
should try to understand. _I am not in the habit of talking._' In
Nature's school it is a word and a blow, and the blow first. Before the
close of this article I will return to the eugenic problem, and will
consider whether anything can be done to solve it.

At the present time, when an apparently internecine conflict is raging
between the British Empire and Germany, a more detailed comparison of
the vital statistics of the two countries will be read with interest. In
England and Wales the birth-rate culminated in 1876 at a little over 36,
after slowly rising from 33 in 1850. From 1876 the line of decline is
almost straight, down to the ante-war figure of about 24. In Prussia,
owing partly to wars, the fluctuations have been violent. In 1850 the
figure (omitting decimals) was 39; in 1855, 34; in 1859, 40; in 1871,
34; in 1875, nearly 41. From this date, as in England, the steady
decline began. In 1907 the rate had fallen to 33; in 1913 (German
Empire) to 27.5. Here we may notice the abnormally high rate in the
years following the great war of 1870, a phenomenon which was marked
also throughout Europe after the Napoleonic wars. We may also notice
that the decline has been of late slightly more rapid in Germany,
falling from a high birth-rate, than in England, where the maximum was
never so high. Another fact which comes out when the German figures are
more carefully examined is that urbanisation in Germany has a
sterilising effect which is not operative in England. Prinzing gives the
comparative figures of _legitimate_ fertility for Prussia as follows:

                               1879-1882  1894-1897

Berlin                            23.8      16.9[20]
Other great towns                 26.7      23.5
Towns of 20,000 to 100,000        26.8      25.7
Small towns                       27.8      25.9
Country districts                 28.8      29.0

Now urbanisation is going on even more rapidly in Germany than in
England. The death-rate in England and Wales rose from 21 in 1850 to
23.5 in 1854; after sharp fluctuations it reached 23.7 in 1864; since
then it has declined to its present figure (in normal times) of 14. In
Prussia after the war of 1870 and the small-pox epidemic of 1871, there
has been a steady fall from 26 to 17.3 (German Empire in 1911). The net
increase is only slightly larger (in proportion to the population) in
Germany than in England; and the increase in our great colonies,
especially in Australasia, is much higher than in Germany. There is
therefore no reason to suppose that a rapid alteration is going on to
our disadvantage.

It is widely believed that the Roman Catholic Church, by sternly
forbidding the artificial limitation of families, is increasing its
numbers at the expense of the non-Catholic populations. To some extent
this is true. The Prussian figures for 1895-1900 give the number of
children per marriage as:

Both parents Catholic            5
Both parents Protestant          4
Both parents Jews                3.7

An examination of the entries in 'Who's Who' gives about the same
proportion for well-to-do families in England. The Catholic birth-rate
of the Irish is nearly 40.[21] The French-Canadians are among the most
prolific races in the world. On the other hand, their infant mortality
is very high, and it is said that French-Canadian parents take these
losses philosophically. It is quite a different question whether it is
ultimately to the advantage of a nation which desires to increase its
numbers to profess the Roman Catholic religion. The high birth-rates are
all in unprogressive Catholic populations. When a Catholic people begins
to be educated, the priests apparently lose their influence upon the
habits of the laity, and a rapid decline in the births at once sets in.
The most advanced countries which did not accept the Reformation, France
and Belgium, are precisely those in which parental prudence has been
carried almost to excess. We must also remember that the Dutch Boers,
who are Protestants, but who live under simple conditions not unlike
those of the French-Canadians, are equally prolific, as were our own
colonists in the United States before that country was industrialised.
The advantages in numbers gained by Roman Catholicism are likely to be
confined to half-empty countries, where there is really room for more
citizens, and where social ambition and the love of comfort are the
chief motives for restricting the family.

The population of a settled country cannot be increased at will; it
depends on the supply of food. The choice is between a high birth-rate
combined with a high death-rate, and a low birth-rate with a low
death-rate. The great saving of life which has been effected during the
last fifty years carries with it the necessity of restricting the
births. The next question to be considered is how this restriction is to
be brought about. The oldest methods are deliberate neglect and
infanticide. In China, where authorities differ as to the extent to
which female infants are exposed, the practice certainly prevails of
feeding infants whom their mothers are unable to suckle on rice and
water, which soon terminates their existence. Such methods would happily
find no advocates in Europe. The very ancient art of procuring
miscarriage is a criminal act in most civilised countries, but it is
practised to an appalling extent. Hirsch, who quotes his authorities,
estimates that 2,000,000 births are so prevented annually in the United
States, 400,000 in Germany, 50,000 in Paris, and 19,000 in Lyons. In our
own country it is exceedingly common in the northern towns, and attempts
are now being made to prohibit the sale of certain preparations of lead
which are used for this purpose. Alike on grounds of public health and
of morality, it is most desirable that this mischievous practice should
be checked. Its great prevalence in the United States is to be
attributed mainly to the drastic legislation in that country against the
sale and use of preventives, to which many persons take objection on
moral or æsthetic grounds, but which is surely on an entirely different
level from the destruction of life that has already begun. The
'Comstock' legislation in America has done unmixed harm. It is worse
than useless to try to put down by law a practice which a very large
number of people believes to be innocent, and which must be left to the
taste and conscience of the individual. To the present writer it seems a
_pis aller_ which high-minded married persons should avoid if they can
practise self-restraint. Whatever injures the feeling of
'sanctification and honour' with which St. Paul bids us to regard these
intimacies of life, whatever tends to profane or degrade the sacraments
of wedded love, is so far an evil. But this is emphatically a matter in
which every man and woman must judge for themselves, and must refrain
from judging others.

In every modern civilised country population is restricted partly by the
deliberate postponement of marriage. In many cases this does no harm
whatever; but in many others it gravely diminishes the happiness of
young people, and may even cause minor disturbances of health. Moreover,
it would not be so widely adopted but for the tolerance, on the part of
society, of the 'great social evil,' the opprobrium of our civilisation.
In spite of the failure hitherto of priests, moralists, and legislators
to root it out, and in spite of the acceptance of it as inevitable by
the majority of Continental opinion, I believe that this abomination
will not long be tolerated by the conscience of the free and progressive
nations. It is notorious that the whole body of women deeply resents the
wrong and contumely done by it to their sex, and that, if democracy is
to be a reality, the immolation of a considerable section of women drawn
from the poorer classes cannot be suffered to continue. It is also plain
to all who have examined the subject that the campaign against certain
diseases, the malignity and wide diffusion of which are being more fully
realised every year, cannot be successful through medical methods alone.
If the institution in question were abolished, medical science would
soon reduce these scourges to manageable limits, and might at last
exterminate them altogether; but while it continues there is no hope of
doing this. I believe then that the time will come when the trade in
vice will cease; and if I am right, early marriages will become the rule
in all classes. This will render the population question more acute,
especially as the diseases which we hope to extirpate are the commonest
cause both of sterility and of infant mortality. Under this pressure, we
must expect to see preventive methods widely accepted as the least of
unavoidable evils.

When we reflect on the whole problem in its widest aspects, we see that
civilised humanity is confronted by a Choice of Hercules. On the one
side, biological law seems to urge us forward to the struggle for
existence and expansion. The nation in that case will have to be
organised on the lines of greatest efficiency. A strong centralised
government will occupy itself largely in preventing waste. All the
resources of the nation must be used to the uttermost. Parks must be cut
up into allotments; the unproductive labours of the scholar and thinker
must be jealously controlled and limited. Inefficient citizens must be
weeded out; wages must be low and hours of work long. Moreover, the
State must be organised for war; for its neighbours, we must suppose,
are following the same policy. Then the fierce extra-group competition
must come to its logical arbitrament in a life and death struggle. And
war between two over-peopled countries, for both of which more
elbow-room is a vital necessity, must be a war of complete expropriation
or extermination. It must be so, for no other kind of war can achieve
its object. The horrors of the present conflict will be as nothing
compared with a struggle between two highly-organised State socialisms,
each of which knows that it must either colonise the territory of the
other or starve. It is idle to pretend that such a necessity will never
arise. Another century of increase in Europe like that of the nineteenth
century would bring it very near. If this policy is adopted, we shall
see all the principal States organising themselves with a perfection far
greater than that of Germany to-day, but taking German methods as their
model; and the end will be the extermination of the smaller or looser
organisations. Such a prospect may well fill us with horror; and it is
terrible to find some of the ablest thinkers of Germany, such as Ernst
Troeltsch, writing calm elegies over 'the death of Liberalism' and
predicting the advent of an era of cut-throat international competition.
Juvenal speaks of the folly of _propter vitam vivendi perdere causas_;
and who would care to live in such a world? But does Nature care whether
we enjoy our lives or not?

The other choice is that which France has made for herself; it is on the
lines of Plato's ideal State. Each country is to be, as far as
possible, self-sufficing. If it cannot grow sufficient food for itself,
it must of course export its coal or its gold, or the products of its
industry and ingenuity. But it must know approximately what 'the number
of the State' (as Plato said) should be. It must limit its population to
that number, and the limit will be fixed, not at the maximum number who
can live there anyhow, but at the maximum number who can 'live well.'
The object aimed at will not be constant expansion, but well-being. The
energies liberated from the pitiless struggle for existence will be
devoted to making social life wiser, happier, more harmonious and more
beautiful. Have we any reason to hope that this policy is not contrary
to the hard laws which Nature imposes on every species in the world?

In the first place, would such a State escape being devoured by some
brutal 'expanding' neighbour? What would have happened to France if she
had stood alone in this war? The danger is real; but we may answer that
France, as a matter of fact, did not stand alone, because other nations
thought her too precious to be sacrificed. And the completely organised
competitive State which I have imagined would be a far more unlovely
place than Germany, and more unpleasant to live in. The spectacle of a
saner and happier polity next door would break up the purely competitive
State from within; the strain would be too great for human nature. We
cannot argue confidently from the struggle for existence among the lower
animals to our own species. For a long time past, human evolution has
been directed, not to living anyhow, but to living in a certain way. We
are guided by ideals for the future, by purposes winch we clearly set
before ourselves, in a way which is impossible to the brutes. These
purposes are common to the large majority of men. No State can long
maintain a rigid and oppressive organisation, except under the threat of
danger; and a nation which aims only at perfecting its own culture is
not dangerous to its neighbours. It is probable that without the
supposed menace of another military Power on its eastern flank German
militarism would have begun to crumble.

In the second place, would the absence of sharp competition within the
group lead to racial degeneration? This is a difficult question to
answer. Perhaps a diminution of pugnacity and of the means to gratify
this instinct would not be a misfortune. But it is certainly true that,
if the operation of natural selection is suspended, rational selection
must take its place. Failing this, reversion to a lower type is
inevitable. The infant science of eugenics will have much to say on this
subject hereafter; at present we are only discovering how complex and
obscure the laws of heredity are. The State of the future will have to
step in to prevent the propagation of undesirable variations, whether
physical or mental, and will doubtless find means to encourage the
increase of families that are well endowed by Nature.

Assuming that a nation as a whole prefers a policy of this kind, and
aims at such an equilibrium of births and deaths as will set free the
energies of the people for the higher objects of civilised life, how
will it escape the cacogenic effects of family restriction in the better
classes combined with reckless multiplication among the refuse which
always exists in a large community? This is a problem which has not yet
been solved. Public opinion is not ready for legislation against the
multiplication of the unfit, and it is not easy to see what form such
legislation could take. Many of the very poor are not undesirable
parents; we must not confound economic prosperity with biological
fitness. The 'submerged tenth' should be raised, where it is possible,
into a condition of self-respect and responsibility; but they must not
be allowed to be a burden upon the efficient; and the upper and middle
classes should simplify their habits so far as to make marriage and
parenthood possible for the young professional man. Special care should
be taken that taxation is so adjusted as not to penalise parenthood in
the socially valuable middle class.

For some time to come we are likely to see, in all the leading nations,
a restricted birth-rate, prompted by desire for social betterment,
combined, however, with concessions to the rival policy of commercial
expansion, growing numbers, and military preparation. The nations will
not cease to fear and suspect each other in the twentieth century, and
any one nation which chooses to be a nuisance to Europe will keep back
the progress and happiness of the rest. The prospect is not very bright;
a too generous confidence might betray some nation into irretrievable
disaster. But the bracing influence of national danger may perhaps be
beneficial. For we have to remember the pitiable decay of the ancient
classical civilisation, which was partly due, as we have found, to a
desire for comfortable and easy living. There have been signs that many
of our countrymen no longer think the strenuous life worth while; part
of our resentment against Germany resembles the annoyance of an
old-fashioned firm, disturbed in its comfortable security by the
competition of a young and more vigorous rival. It is even suggested
that after the war we should protect ourselves against German
competition by tariff walls. This abandonment of the free trade policy
on which our prosperity is built would soon bring our over-populated
island to ruin.

In conclusion, if we leave the distant future to fend for itself when
the time comes, what should be our policy with regard to population for
the next fifty years? I am led to an opinion which may seem to run
counter to the general purport of this article. For though the British
Isles are even dangerously full, so that we are liable to be starved out
if we lose the command of the sea, the British Empire is very far from
being over-populated. In Canada and Australasia there is probably room
for nearly 200,000,000 people. These countries are remarkably healthy
for Northern Europeans; there is no reason why they should not be as
rich and powerful as the United States are now. We hope that we have
saved the Empire from German cupidity--for the time; but we cannot tell
how long we may be undisturbed. It would be criminal folly not to make
the most of the respite granted us, by peopling our Dominions with our
own stock, while yet there is time. This, however, cannot be done by
casual and undirected emigration of the old kind. We need an Imperial
Board of Emigration, the officials of which will work in co-operation
with the Governments of our Dominions. These Governments, it may be
presumed, will be anxious, after the war, to strengthen the colonies by
increasing their population and developing their resources. They, like
ourselves, have had a severe fright, and know that prompt action is
necessary. Systematic plans of colonisation should be worked out, and
emigrants drafted off to the Dominions as work can be found for them.
Young women should be sent out in sufficient numbers to keep the sexes
equal. We know now that our young people who emigrate are by no means
lost to the Empire. The Dominions have shown that in time of need they
are able and willing to defend the mother country with their full
strength. Indeed, a young couple who emigrate are likely to be of more
value to the Empire than if they had stayed at home; and their chances
of happiness are much increased if they find a home in a part of the
world where more human beings are wanted. But without official advice
and help emigration is difficult. Parents do not know where to send
their sons, nor what training to give them. Mistakes are made, money is
wasted, and bitter disappointment caused. All this may be obviated if
the Government will take the matter up seriously. The real issue of this
war is whether our great colonies are to continue British; and the
question will be decided not only on the field of battle, but by the
action of our Government and people after peace is declared. The next
fifty years will decide for all time whether those magnificent and still
empty countries are to be the home of great nations speaking our
language, carrying on our institutions, and valuing our traditions. When
the future of our Dominions is secure, the part of England as a
World-Power will have been played to a successful issue, and we may be
content with a position more consonant with the small area of these
islands.

I believe, then, that if facilities for migration are given by
Government action, it will be not only possible but desirable for the
increase in the population of the Empire, taken as a whole, to be
maintained during the twentieth century. It is, of course, possible that
chemical discoveries and other scientific improvements may greatly
increase the yield of food from the soil, and that in this way the final
limit to the population of the earth may be further off than now seems
probable. But within a few centuries, at most, this limit must be
reached; and after that we may hope that the world will agree to
maintain an equilibrium between births and deaths, that being the most
stable and the happiest condition in which human beings can live
together.[22]

FOOTNOTES:

     [10] Myres, _Eugenics Review_, April, 1915.

     [11] Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, _Kultur der Gegenwart_, 2, 4, 1.

     [12] Cimon, Pericles, and Socrates all had three sons, and
     apparently no daughters.--Zimmern, _The Greek Commonwealth_,
     p. 331.

     [13] _Cf. (e.g.)_ Plato, _Theaetetus_, 149.

     [14] We may suppose that the disproportion of the sexes,
     caused by female infanticide, was about rectified by the
     deaths of males in battle and civic strife. We do not hear
     that the Greek had any difficulty in finding a wife.

     [15] Families, he says, were limited to one or two 'in order
     to leave these rich.'

     [16] The population of England and Wales is said to have
     been 4,800,000 in 1600, and 6,500,000 in 1750. It was
     8,890,000 in 1801, 32,530,000 in 1901, and approximately
     37,000,000 in 1914.

     [17] Statistics are wanting for the early part of the
     industrial revolution, but my study of pedigrees leads me to
     think that the average duration of life was considerably
     increased in the eighteenth century.

     [18] _The Family and the Nation_, p. 143.

     [19] The births per 1000 married men under fifty-five in the
     different classes are:--Upper and middle class, 119;
     Intermediate, 132; Skilled workmen, 153; Intermediate, 158;
     Unskilled workmen, 213.

     [20] It must be remembered that the illegitimate birth-rate
     in Berlin is scandalously high.

     [21] The crude birth-rate of Ireland is wholly misleading,
     because so many young couples emigrate before the birth of
     their first child.

     [22] The possible effect of the labour movement in
     diminishing the population is considered in the next Essay.
     The last two years have, in my opinion, made the outlook
     less favourable.




THE FUTURE OF THE ENGLISH RACE

(THE GALTON LECTURE, 1919)


In the year 1890 Sir Charles Dilke ended his survey of 'Greater Britain'
and its problems with the prediction that 'the world's future belongs to
the Anglo-Saxon, the Russian, and the Chinese races.' This was in the
heyday of British imperialism, which was inaugurated by Seeley's
'Expansion of England' and Froude's 'Oceana,' and which inspired Mr.
Chamberlain to proclaim at Toronto in 1887 that the 'Anglo-Saxon stock
is infallibly destined to be the predominant force in the history and
civilisation of the world.' It was an arrogant, but not truculent, mood,
which reached its climax at the 1897 Jubilee, and rapidly declined
during and after the Boer war. These writers and statesmen were utterly
blind to the German peril, though the disciples of Treitschke were
already working out a theory about the future destinies of the world, in
which neither Great Britain nor Russia nor China counted for very much.
There were illusions on both sides of the North Sea, which had to be
paid for in blood. In both countries imperialism was a sentiment
curiously compounded of idealism and bombast, and supported by very
doubtful science. In the case of Germany the distortion of facts was
deliberate and monstrous. Not only was every schoolboy brought up on
cooked population statistics and falsified geography, but the thick-set,
brachycephalous Central European persuaded himself that he belonged to
the pure Nordic race, the great blond beasts of Nietzsche, which, as he
was taught, had already produced nearly all the great men in history,
and was now about to claim its proper place as master of the world.
Political anthropology is no genuine science. Race and nationality are
catchwords for which rulers find that their subjects are willing to
fight, as they fought for what they called religion four hundred years
ago. In reality, if we want to find a pure race, we must visit the
Esquimaux, or the Fuegians, or the Pygmies; we shall certainly not find
one in Europe. Our own imperialists had their illusions too, and we are
not rid of them yet, because we do not realise that the fate of races is
decided, not in the council-chamber or on the battle-field, but by the
same laws of nature which determine the distribution of the various
plants and animals of the world. It may be that by approaching our
subject from this side we shall arrive at a more scientific, if a more
chastened, anticipation of our national future than was acceptable to
the enthusiasts of expansion in the last twenty years of Queen
Victoria's reign.

The history of the world shows us that there have been three great human
reservoirs which from time to time have burst their banks and flooded
neighbouring countries. These are the Arabian peninsula, the steppes of
Central Asia, and the lands round the Baltic, the original home of the
Germanic and Anglo-Saxon peoples. The invaders in each case were
pastoral folk, who were driven from their homes by over-population, or
drought and famine, or the pressure of enemies behind them. It is easy
for nomads to 'trek,' even for great distances; and till the discovery
of gunpowder they were the most formidable of foes. The Arabs and
Northern Europeans have founded great civilisations; the Mongol hordes
have been an unmitigated curse to humanity. The invaders never kept
their blood pure. The famous Jewish nose is probably Hittite, and
certainly not Bedouin. There are no pure Turks in Europe, and the
Hungarians have lost all resemblance to Mongols. The modern Germans seem
to belong mainly to the round-headed Alpine race, which migrated into
Europe in early times from the Asiatic highlands. In England there is a
larger proportion of Nordic blood, because the Anglo-Saxons partially
exterminated the natives; but the old Mediterranean race, which had
made its way up the warm western coasts, still holds its own in
Cornwall, Wales, Ireland, and the Western Highlands; and within the last
hundred years, owing to frequent migrations, has mixed so thoroughly
with the Anglo-Saxon stock that the English are becoming darker in each
generation. This is not the result of a racial decay of the blonds, as
the American, Dr. Charles Woodruff, supposes, but is to be accounted for
by the fact that dark eyes seem to be a Mendelian dominant, and dark
hair a more potent character than light. The inhabitants of these
islands are nearly all long-headed, this being a characteristic of both
the Nordic and Mediterranean races. The round-headed invaders, who
perhaps brought with them the so-called Celtic languages at a remote
period, and imposed them upon the inhabitants, seem to have left no
other mark upon the population, though their type of head is prevalent
over a great part of France.

The ability of races to flourish in climates other than their own is a
question of supreme importance to historians and statesmen, and, it need
not be said, to emigrants. But it is only lately that it has been
studied scientifically, and the results are still tentative. German
ethnologists, of what we may call the _ædicephalous_ school, already
referred to, regard it as one of the tragedies of nature that the noble
Nordic race, to which they think they belong, dies out when it
penetrates southwards. In accordance with this law, the yellow-haired
Achæans decayed in Greece, the Lombards in North Italy, the Vandals in
Spain and Africa. After a few generations of life in a warm climate the
Aryan stock invariably disappears. We shall show reasons for thinking
that this theory is much exaggerated; but there is undoubtedly some
truth in it. It has been found to be impossible for white men to
colonise India, Burma, tropical America, and West Africa. It has been
said that 'there is in India no third generation of pure English blood.'
It is notoriously difficult to bring up even one generation of white
children in India. The French cannot maintain themselves without race
admixture in Martinique and Guadaloupe, nor the Dutch in Java, though
it is said that the expectation of life for a European in Java is as
good as in his own country. It seems to be also true that the blond race
suffers most in a hot climate. In the Philippines it was observed that
the fair-haired soldiers in the American army succumbed most readily to
disease. In Queensland the Italian colonists are said to stand the heat
better than the English, and Mr. Roosevelt, among other items of good
advice which he bestowed so liberally on the European nations, advised
us to populate the torrid parts of Australia with immigrants from the
Latin races. In Natal the English families who are settled in the
country are said to be enervated by the climate; and on the high
plateaux of the interior our countrymen find it necessary to pay
periodical visits to the coast, to be unbraced. The early deaths and not
infrequent suicides of Rand magnates may indicate that the air of the
Transvaal is too stimulating for a life of high tension and excitement.
There are even signs that the same may be true in a minor degree of the
United States of America. Both the capitalist and the working man, if
they come of English stock, seem to wear out more quickly than at home;
and the sterility of marriages among the long settled American families
is so pronounced that it can hardly be due entirely to voluntary
restriction of parentage. The effects of an unsuitable climate are
especially shown in nervous disorders, and are therefore likely to tell
most heavily on those who engage in intellectual pursuits, and perhaps
on women rather more than on men. The sterilising effects of women's
higher education in America are incontrovertible, though this inference
is hotly denied in England. At Holyoake College it was found that only
half the lady graduates afterwards married, and the average family of
those who did marry was less than two children. At Bryn Mawr only 43 per
cent, married, and had 0.84 children each; the average family per
graduate was therefore 0.37. If it be objected that new immigrants and
their children are healthy and vigorous in America, it may be truly
answered that the effects of an unfavourable climate are manifested
fully only in the third and later generations. The argument may be
further supported by the fate of black men who try to settle in Europe.
Their strongly pigmented skin, which seems to protect them from the
actinic rays of the tropical sun, so noxious to Europeans, and their
broad nostrils, which inhale a larger number of tubercle bacilli than
the narrow nose-slits of the Northerner, are disadvantages in a
temperate climate. In any case, of the many thousands of negro servants
who lived in England in the eighteenth century, it would be difficult to
find a single descendant.

But there are other factors in the problem which should make us beware
of hasty generalisations. It is obvious that since the American Republic
contains many climates in its vast area, there may be parts of it which
are perfectly healthy for Anglo-Saxons, and other parts where they
cannot live without degenerating. Very few athletes, we are told, come
from south of the fortieth parallel of latitude. But the decline in the
birth-rate is most marked in the older colonies, the New England States,
where for a long period the English colonists, living mainly on the
land, not only throve and developed a singularly virile type of
humanity, but multiplied with almost unexampled rapidity. The same is
true not only of the French Canadian farmers, but of the South African
Boers, who rear enormous families in a climate very different from that
of Holland. The inference is that Europeans living on the land may
flourish in any tolerably healthy climate which is not tropical.

There are, in fact, two other causes besides climate which may prevent
immigrants from multiplying in a new country. The first of these is the
presence of microbic diseases to which the old inhabitants are wholly or
partially immune, but which find a virgin soil in the bodies of the
newcomers. The strongest example is the West Coast of Africa, of which
Miss Mary Kingsley writes: 'Yet remember, before you elect to cast your
lot with the West Coasters, that 85 per cent, of them die of fever, or
return home with their health permanently wrecked. Also remember that
there is no getting acclimatised to the Coast. There are, it is true, a
few men out there who, although they have been resident in West Africa
for years, have never had fever, but you can count them on the fingers
of one hand.' There can be no acclimatisation where the weeding out is
as drastic as this. Either the anopheles mosquito or the European must
quit. There are parts of tropical America where the natives have
actually been protected by the malaria, which keeps the white man at
arm's length. But more often the microbe is on the side of the civilised
race, killing off the natives who have not run the gauntlet of
town-life. The extreme reluctance of the barbarians who overran the
Roman Empire to settle in the towns is easily accounted for if, as is
probable, the towns killed them off whenever they attempted to live in
them. The difference is remarkable between the fate of a conquered race
which has become accustomed to town-life, and that of one which has not.
There are no 'native quarters' in the towns of any country where the
aborigines were nomads or tillers of the soil. To the North American
Indian, residence in a town is a sentence of death. The American Indians
were accustomed to none of our zymotic diseases except malaria. In the
north they were destroyed wholesale by tuberculosis; in Mexico and Peru,
where large towns existed before the conquest, they fared better. Fiji
was devastated by measles; other barbarians by small-pox. Negroes have
acquired, through severe natural selection, a certain degree of
immunisation in America; but even now it is said that 'every other negro
dies of consumption.' There are, however, two races, both long
accustomed to town-life under horribly insanitary conditions, which have
shown that they can live in almost any climate. These are the Jews and
the Chinese. The medieval Ghetto exterminated all who were not naturally
resistant to every form of microbic disease; the modern Jew, though
often of poor physique, is hard to kill. The same may be said of the
Chinaman, who, when at home, lives under conditions which would kill
most Europeans.

The other factor, which is really promoting the gradual disappearance of
the Anglo-Saxons from the United States, is of a very different
character. The descendants of the old immigrants are on the whole the
aristocracy of the country. Now it is a law which hardly admits of
exceptions, that aristocracies do not maintain their numbers. The ruling
race rules itself out; nothing fails like success. Gibbon has called
attention to the extreme respect paid to long descent in the Roman
Empire, and to the strange fact that, in the fourth century, no
ingenuity of pedigree makers could deny that all the great families of
the Republic were extinct, so that the second-rate plebeian family of
the Anicii, whose name did appear in the Fasti, enjoyed a prestige far
greater than that of the Howards and Stanleys in this country. Our own
peerage consists chiefly of parvenus. Only six of our noble families, it
is said, can trace their descent in the male line without a break to the
fifteenth century. The peerage of Sweden tells the same tale. According
to Gallon, the custom or law of primogeniture, combined with the habit
of marrying heiresses who, as the last representatives of dwindling
families, tend to be barren, is mainly responsible for this. Additional
causes may be the greater danger which the officer-class incurs in war,
and, in former times, the executioner's axe. In our own day the
reluctance of rich and self-indulgent women to bear children is
undoubtedly a factor in the infertility of the leisured class.

This brings us naturally to the second part of our discussion--the
consideration of the causes which lead to the increase or decrease of
population. It is the most important part of our inquiry; for it is
usually assumed that the British Isles will continue to send out
colonists in large numbers, as it did in the last century, and the hopes
of the imperialist that a large part of the world will speak English for
all time depend on the untested assurance that the swarming-time of our
race is not yet over. Our starting-point must be that the pressure of
population upon the means of subsistence is a constant fact in the human
race, as in every other species of animals and plants. There is no
species in which the numbers are not kept down, far below the natural
capacity for increase, by the limitation of available food. It may not
always be easy to trace the connection between the appearance of new
lives and the passing away of old, nor to say whether it is the
birth-rate which determines the death-rate, or the death-rate the
birth-rate. But it is well known that, wherever statistics are kept, the
numbers of births and of deaths rise and fall in nearly parallel lines,
so that the net rate of increase hardly alters at all, unless some
change, which can easily be traced, occurs in the habits of the people
or in the amount of the food supply. In civilised countries the greater
care taken of human life, and its consequent prolongation, has reduced
the birth-rate, just as in the higher mammals we find a greatly
diminished fertility as compared with the lower, and a much higher
survival-rate among the offspring born. The average duration of life in
this country has increased by about one-third in the last sixty years,
and the birth-rate has fallen in almost exactly the same proportion. The
position of a nation in the scale of civilisation may almost be gauged
by its births and deaths. The order in Europe, beginning with the lowest
birth-rate, is France, Belgium, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Switzerland,
Norway, Denmark, Holland, Germany, Spain, Austria, Italy, Hungary, the
Balkan States, Russia. The order of death-rates, again beginning at the
bottom, is Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United
Kingdom, Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Serbia, Spain,
Bulgaria, Hungary, Roumania, Russia. These two lists, as will be seen,
correspond very nearly with the scale of descending civilisation, the
only notable exception being the low position of France in the second
list. This anomaly is explained by the fact that France having a
stationary population, the death-rate in that country corresponds nearly
with the mean expectation of life, whereas in countries where the
population is increasing rapidly, either by excess of births over deaths
or by immigration, the preponderance of young lives brings the
death-rate down. We must, therefore, be on our guard against supposing
that countries with the lowest death-rates are necessarily the most
healthy. In New Zealand, for example, the death-rate is under 10 per
1000, the lowest in the world; and though that country is undoubtedly
healthy, no one supposes that the average duration of life in New
Zealand is a hundred years. To ascertain whether a nation is long-lived,
we must correct the crude death-rate by taking into account the average
age of the population. When this correction has been made, a low
death-rate, and the low birth-rate which necessarily accompanies it, is
a sign that the doctors are doing their duty by keeping their patients
alive. If our physicians desire more maternity cases, they must make
more work for the undertaker. Large families almost always mean a high
infant mortality; and it is significant that a twelfth child has a very
much poorer chance of survival than a first or second. The agitation for
the endowment of motherhood and the reduction of infant mortality is
therefore futile, because, while other conditions remain the same, every
baby 'saved' sends another baby out of the world or prevents him from
coming into it. The number of the people is not determined by
philanthropists or even by parents. Children will come somehow whenever
there is room for them, and go when there is none. But other conditions
do not remain the same, and it is in these other conditions that we must
seek the causes of expansion or contraction in the numbers of a
community.

At the end of the sixteenth century the population of England and Wales
amounted to about five millions, and a hundred years later to about six.
There is no reason to think that under the conditions then existing the
country could have supported a larger number. The birth-rate was kept
high by the pestilential state of the towns, and thus the pressure of
numbers was less felt than it is now, since it was possible to have,
though not to rear, unlimited families. Occasionally, from accidental
circumstances, England was for a short time under-populated, and these
were the periods when, according to Professor Thorold Rogers, Archdeacon
Cunningham, and other authorities, the labourer was well off. The most
striking example was in the half-century after the Black Death, which
carried off nearly half the population. Wages increased threefold, and
the Government tried in vain to protect employers by enforcing
pre-plague rates. Not only were wages high, but food was so abundant
that farmers often gave their men a square meal which was not in the
contract. The other period of prosperity for the working man, according
to our authorities, was the second quarter of the eighteenth century. It
has not, we think, been noticed that this also followed a temporary
set-back in the population. In 1688 the population of England and Wales
was 5,500,520; in 1710 it was more than a quarter of a million less. The
cause of this decline is obscure, but its effects soon showed themselves
in easier conditions of life, especially for the poor. Such periods of
under-saturation, which some new countries are still enjoying, are
necessarily short. Population flows in as naturally as water finds its
level.

It was not till the accession of George III that the increase in our
numbers became rapid. No one until then would have thought of singling
out the Englishman as the embodiment of the good apprentice. Meteren, in
the sixteenth century, found our countrymen 'as lazy as Spaniards'; most
foreigners were struck by our fondness for solid food and strong drink.
The industrial revolution came upon us suddenly; it changed the whole
face of the country and the apparent character of the people. In the far
future our descendants may look back upon the period in which we are
living as a strange episode which disturbed the natural habits of our
race. The first impetus was given by the plunder of Bengal, which, after
the victories of Clive, flowed into the country in a broad stream for
about thirty years. This ill-gotten wealth played the same part in
stimulating English industries as the 'five milliards,' extorted from
France, did for Germany after 1870. The half-century which followed was
marked by a series of inventions, which made England the workshop of the
world. But the basis of our industrial supremacy was, and is, our coal.
Those who are in the habit of comparing the progressiveness of the
North-Western European with the stagnation or decadence of the Latin
races, forget the fact, which is obvious when it has once been pointed
out, that the progressive nations are those which happen to have
valuable coal fields. Countries which have no coal are obliged to
import it paying the freight, or to smelt their iron with charcoal This
process makes excellent steel--the superiority of Swedish razors is due
to wood-smelting--but it is so wasteful of wood that the Mediterranean
peoples very early in history injured their climate by cutting down
their scanty forests, thereby diminishing their rainfall, and allowing
the soil to be washed off the hillsides. The coasts of the Mediterranean
are, in consequence, far less productive than they were two thousand
years ago. But in England, when the start was once made, all
circumstances conspired to turn our once beautiful island into a chaos
of factories and mean streets, reeking of smoke, millionaires, and
paupers. We were no longer able to grow our own food; but we made masses
of goods which the manufacturers ware eager to exchange for it; and the
population grew like crops on a newly-irrigated desert. During the
nineteenth century the numbers were nearly quadrupled. Let those who
think that the population of a country can be increased at will, reflect
whether it is likely that any physical, moral, or psychological change
came over the nation coincidently with the inventions of the
spinning-jenny and the steam-engine. It is too obvious for dispute that
it was the possession of capital wanting employment, and of natural
advantages for using it, that called these multitudes of human beings
into existence, to eat the food which they paid for by t

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