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diff --git a/20125.txt b/20125.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..91b5072 --- /dev/null +++ b/20125.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6813 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Preface to Politics, by Walter Lippmann + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: A Preface to Politics + + +Author: Walter Lippmann + + + +Release Date: December 16, 2006 [eBook #20125] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PREFACE TO POLITICS*** + + +E-text prepared by Matt Whittaker, Juliet Sutherland, and the Project +Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/) + + + +A PREFACE TO POLITICS + +by + +WALTER LIPPMANN + + + + + + + +"A God wilt thou create for thyself +out of thy seven devils." + + + +Mitchell Kennerley +New York and London +1914 +Copyright, 1913, by +Mitchell Kennerley + + + + + +_Contents_ + + +CHAPTER PAGE + + INTRODUCTION + + I. Routineer and Inventor 1 + + II. The Taboo 34 + + III. The Changing Focus 53 + + IV. The Golden Rule and After 86 + + V. Well Meaning but Unmeaning: the Chicago Vice Report 122 + + VI. Some Necessary Iconoclasm 159 + + VII. The Making of Creeds 204 + +VIII. The Red Herring 247 + + IX. Revolution and Culture 273 + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +The most incisive comment on politics to-day is indifference. When men +and women begin to feel that elections and legislatures do not matter +very much, that politics is a rather distant and unimportant exercise, +the reformer might as well put to himself a few searching doubts. +Indifference is a criticism that cuts beneath oppositions and wranglings +by calling the political method itself into question. Leaders in public +affairs recognize this. They know that no attack is so disastrous as +silence, that no invective is so blasting as the wise and indulgent smile +of the people who do not care. Eager to believe that all the world is as +interested as they are, there comes a time when even the reformer is +compelled to face the fairly widespread suspicion of the average man that +politics is an exhibition in which there is much ado about nothing. But +such moments of illumination are rare. They appear in writers who realize +how large is the public that doesn't read their books, in reformers who +venture to compare the membership list of their league with the census of +the United States. Whoever has been granted such a moment of insight +knows how exquisitely painful it is. To conquer it men turn generally to +their ancient comforter, self-deception: they complain about the stolid, +inert masses and the apathy of the people. In a more confidential tone +they will tell you that the ordinary citizen is a "hopelessly private +person." + +The reformer is himself not lacking in stolidity if he can believe such a +fiction of a people that crowds about tickers and demands the news of the +day before it happens, that trembles on the verge of a panic over the +unguarded utterance of a financier, and founds a new religion every month +or so. But after a while self-deception ceases to be a comfort. This is +when the reformer notices how indifference to politics is settling upon +some of the most alert minds of our generation, entering into the +attitude of men as capable as any reformer of large and imaginative +interests. For among the keenest minds, among artists, scientists and +philosophers, there is a remarkable inclination to make a virtue of +political indifference. Too passionate an absorption in public affairs is +felt to be a somewhat shallow performance, and the reformer is patronized +as a well-meaning but rather dull fellow. This is the criticism of men +engaged in some genuinely creative labor. Often it is unexpressed, often +as not the artist or scientist will join in a political movement. But in +the depths of his soul there is, I suspect, some feeling which says to +the politician, "Why so hot, my little sir?" + +Nothing, too, is more illuminating than the painful way in which many +people cultivate a knowledge of public affairs because they have a +conscience and wish to do a citizen's duty. Having read a number of +articles on the tariff and ploughed through the metaphysics of the +currency question, what do they do? They turn with all the more zest to +some spontaneous human interest. Perhaps they follow, follow, follow +Roosevelt everywhere, and live with him through the emotions of a great +battle. But for the affairs of statecraft, for the very policies that a +Roosevelt advocates, the interest is largely perfunctory, maintained out +of a sense of duty and dropped with a sigh of relief. + +That reaction may not be as deplorable as it seems. Pick up your +newspaper, read the Congressional Record, run over in your mind the +"issues" of a campaign, and then ask yourself whether the average man is +entirely to blame because he smiles a bit at Armageddon and refuses to +take the politician at his own rhetorical valuation. If men find +statecraft uninteresting, may it not be that statecraft _is_ +uninteresting? I have a more or less professional interest in public +affairs; that is to say, I have had opportunity to look at politics from +the point of view of the man who is trying to get the attention of people +in order to carry through some reform. At first it was a hard confession +to make, but the more I saw of politics at first-hand, the more I +respected the indifference of the public. There was something +monotonously trivial and irrelevant about our reformist enthusiasm, and +an appalling justice in that half-conscious criticism which refuses to +place politics among the genuine, creative activities of men. Science was +valid, art was valid, the poorest grubber in a laboratory was engaged in +a real labor, anyone who had found expression in some beautiful object +was truly centered. But politics was a personal drama without meaning or +a vague abstraction without substance. + +Yet there was the fact, just as indisputable as ever, that public affairs +do have an enormous and intimate effect upon our lives. They make or +unmake us. They are the foundation of that national vigor through which +civilizations mature. City and countryside, factories and play, schools +and the family are powerful influences in every life, and politics is +directly concerned with them. If politics is irrelevant, it is certainly +not because its subject matter is unimportant. Public affairs govern our +thinking and doing with subtlety and persistence. + +The trouble, I figured, must be in the way politics is concerned with the +nation's interests. If public business seems to drift aimlessly, its +results are, nevertheless, of the highest consequence. In statecraft the +penalties and rewards are tremendous. Perhaps the approach is distorted. +Perhaps uncriticised assumptions have obscured the real uses of politics. +Perhaps an attitude can be worked out which will engage a fresher +attention. For there are, I believe, blunders in our political thinking +which confuse fictitious activity with genuine achievement, and make it +difficult for men to know where they should enlist. Perhaps if we can see +politics in a different light, it will rivet our creative interests. + +These essays, then, are an attempt to sketch an attitude towards +statecraft. I have tried to suggest an approach, to illustrate it +concretely, to prepare a point of view. In selecting for the title "A +Preface to Politics," I have wished to stamp upon the whole book my own +sense that it is a beginning and not a conclusion. I have wished to +emphasize that there is nothing in this book which can be drafted into a +legislative proposal and presented to the legislature the day after +to-morrow. It was not written with the notion that these pages would +contain an adequate exposition of modern political method. Much less was +it written to further a concrete program. There are, I hope, no +assumptions put forward as dogmas. + +It is a preliminary sketch for a theory of politics, a preface to +thinking. Like all speculation about human affairs, it is the result of a +grapple with problems as they appear in the experience of one man. For +though a personal vision may at times assume an eloquent and universal +language, it is well never to forget that all philosophies are the +language of particular men. + + W. L. + +46 East 80th Street, NEW YORK CITY, January 1913. + + + + +A PREFACE TO POLITICS + + + + +CHAPTER I + +ROUTINEER AND INVENTOR + + +Politics does not exist for the sake of demonstrating the superior +righteousness of anybody. It is not a competition in deportment. In fact, +before you can begin to think about politics at all you have to abandon +the notion that there is a war between good men and bad men. That is one +of the great American superstitions. More than any other fetish it has +ruined our sense of political values by glorifying the pharisee with his +vain cruelty to individuals and his unfounded approval of himself. You +have only to look at the Senate of the United States, to see how that +body is capable of turning itself into a court of preliminary hearings +for the Last Judgment, wasting its time and our time and absorbing public +enthusiasm and newspaper scareheads. For a hundred needs of the nation it +has no thought, but about the precise morality of an historical +transaction eight years old there is a meticulous interest. Whether in +the Presidential Campaign of 1904 Roosevelt was aware that the ancient +tradition of corporate subscriptions had or had not been followed, and +the exact and ultimate measure of the guilt that knowledge would have +implied--this in the year 1912 is enough to start the Senate on a +protracted man-hunt. + +Now if one half of the people is bent upon proving how wicked a man is +and the other half is determined to show how good he is, neither half +will think very much about the nation. An innocent paragraph in the New +York Evening Post for August 27, 1912, gives the whole performance away. +It shows as clearly as words could how disastrous the good-and-bad-man +theory is to political thinking: + +"Provided the first hearing takes place on September 30, it is expected +that the developments will be made with a view to keeping the Colonel on +the defensive. After the beginning of October, it is pointed out, the +evidence before the Committee should keep him so busy explaining and +denying that the country will not hear much Bull Moose doctrine." + +Whether you like the Roosevelt doctrines or not, there can be no two +opinions about such an abuse of morality. It is a flat public loss, +another attempt to befuddle our thinking. For if politics is merely a +guerilla war between the bribed and the unbribed, then statecraft is not +a human service but a moral testing ground. It is a public amusement, a +melodrama of real life, in which a few conspicuous characters are tried, +and it resembles nothing so much as schoolboy hazing which we are told +exists for the high purpose of detecting a "yellow streak." But even +though we desired it there would be no way of establishing any clear-cut +difference in politics between the angels and the imps. The angels are +largely self-appointed, being somewhat more sensitive to other people's +tar than their own. + +But if the issue is not between honesty and dishonesty, where is it? + +If you stare at a checkerboard you can see it as black on red, or red on +black, as series of horizontal, vertical or diagonal steps which recede +or protrude. The longer you look the more patterns you can trace, and the +more certain it becomes that there is no single way of looking at the +board. So with political issues. There is no obvious cleavage which +everyone recognizes. Many patterns appear in the national life. The +"progressives" say the issue is between "Privilege" and the "People"; the +Socialists, that it is between the "working class" and the "master +class." An apologist for dynamite told me once that society was divided +into the weak and the strong, and there are people who draw a line +between Philistia and Bohemia. + +When you rise up and announce that the conflict is between this and that, +you mean that this particular conflict interests you. The issue of +good-and-bad-men interests this nation to the exclusion of almost all +others. But experience shows, I believe, that it is a fruitless conflict +and a wasting enthusiasm. Yet some distinction must be drawn if we are to +act at all in politics. With nothing we are for and nothing to oppose, we +are merely neutral. This cleavage in public affairs is the most important +choice we are called upon to make. In large measure it determines the +rest of our thinking. Now some issues are fertile; some are not. Some +lead to spacious results; others are blind alleys. With this in mind I +wish to suggest that the distinction most worth emphasizing to-day is +between those who regard government as a routine to be administered and +those who regard it as a problem to be solved. + +The class of routineers is larger than the conservatives. The man who +will follow precedent, but never create one, is merely an obvious example +of the routineer. You find him desperately numerous in the civil service, +in the official bureaus. To him government is something given as +unconditionally, as absolutely as ocean or hill. He goes on winding the +tape that he finds. His imagination has rarely extricated itself from +under the administrative machine to gain any sense of what a human, +temporary contraption the whole affair is. What he thinks is the heavens +above him is nothing but the roof. + +He is the slave of routine. He can boast of somewhat more spiritual +cousins in the men who reverence their ancestors' independence, who feel, +as it were, that a disreputable great-grandfather is necessary to a +family's respectability. These are the routineers gifted with historical +sense. They take their forefathers with enormous solemnity. But one +mistake is rarely avoided: they imitate the old-fashioned thing their +grandfather did, and ignore the originality which enabled him to do it. + +If tradition were a reverent record of those crucial moments when men +burst through their habits, a love of the past would not be the butt on +which every sophomoric radical can practice his wit. But almost always +tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the +habits that our ancestors created. The average conservative is a slave to +the most incidental and trivial part of his forefathers' glory--to the +archaic formula which happened to express their genius or the eighteenth +century contrivance by which for a time it was served. To reverence +Washington they wear a powdered wig; they do honor to Lincoln by +cultivating awkward hands and ungainly feet. + +It is fascinating to watch this kind of conservative in action. From +Senator Lodge, for example, we do not expect any new perception of +popular need. We know that probably his deepest sincerity is an attempt +to reproduce the atmosphere of the Senate a hundred years ago. The +manners of Mr. Lodge have that immobility which comes from too much +gazing at bad statues of dead statesmen. + +Yet just because a man is in opposition to Senator Lodge there is no +guarantee that he has freed himself from the routineer's habit of mind. A +prejudice against some mannerism or a dislike of pretensions may merely +cloak some other kind of routine. Take the "good government" attitude. No +fresh insight is behind that. It does not promise anything; it does not +offer to contribute new values to human life. The machine which exists is +accepted in all its essentials: the "goo-goo" yearns for a somewhat +smoother rotation. + +Often as not the very effort to make the existing machine run more +perfectly merely makes matters worse. For the tinkering reformer is +frequently one of the worst of the routineers. Even machines are not +altogether inflexible, and sometimes what the reformer regards as a sad +deviation from the original plans is a poor rickety attempt to adapt the +machine to changing conditions. Think what would have happened had we +actually remained stolidly faithful to every intention of the Fathers. +Think what would happen if every statute were enforced. By the sheer +force of circumstances we have twisted constitutions and laws to some +approximation of our needs. A changing country has managed to live in +spite of a static government machine. Perhaps Bernard Shaw was right when +he said that "the famous Constitution survives only because whenever any +corner of it gets into the way of the accumulating dollar it is pettishly +knocked off and thrown away. Every social development, however beneficial +and inevitable from the public point of view, is met, not by an +intelligent adaptation of the social structure to its novelties but by a +panic and a cry of Go Back." + +I am tempted to go further and put into the same class all those radicals +who wish simply to substitute some other kind of machine for the one we +have. Though not all of them would accept the name, these reformers are +simply utopia-makers in action. Their perceptions are more critical than +the ordinary conservatives'. They do see that humanity is badly squeezed +in the existing mould. They have enough imagination to conceive a +different one. But they have an infinite faith in moulds. This routine +they don't believe in, but they believe in their own: if you could put +the country under a new "system," then human affairs would run +automatically for the welfare of all. Some improvement there might be, +but as almost all men are held in an iron devotion to their own +creations, the routine reformers are simply working for another +conservatism, and not for any continuing liberation. + +The type of statesman we must oppose to the routineer is one who regards +all social organization as an instrument. Systems, institutions and +mechanical contrivances have for him no virtue of their own: they are +valuable only when they serve the purposes of men. He uses them, of +course, but with a constant sense that men have made them, that new ones +can be devised, that only an effort of the will can keep machinery in its +place. He has no faith whatever in automatic governments. While the +routineers see machinery and precedents revolving with mankind as +puppets, he puts the deliberate, conscious, willing individual at the +center of his philosophy. This reversal is pregnant with a new outlook +for statecraft. I hope to show that it alone can keep step with life; it +alone is humanly relevant; and it alone achieves valuable results. + +Call this man a political creator or a political inventor. The essential +quality of him is that he makes that part of existence which has +experience the master of it. He serves the ideals of human feelings, not +the tendencies of mechanical things. + +The difference between a phonograph and the human voice is that the +phonograph must sing the song which is stamped upon it. Now there are +days--I suspect the vast majority of them in most of our lives--when we +grind out the thing that is stamped upon us. It may be the governing of a +city, or teaching school, or running a business. We do not get out of bed +in the morning because we are eager for the day; something external--we +often call it our duty--throws off the bed-clothes, complains that the +shaving water isn't hot, puts us into the subway and lands us at our +office in season for punching the time-check. We revolve with the +business for three or four hours, signing letters, answering telephones, +checking up lists, and perhaps towards twelve o'clock the prospect of +lunch puts a touch of romance upon life. Then because our days are so +unutterably the same, we turn to the newspapers, we go to the magazines +and read only the "stuff with punch," we seek out a "show" and drive +serious playwrights into the poorhouse. "You can go through contemporary +life," writes Wells, "fudging and evading, indulging and slacking, never +really hungry nor frightened nor passionately stirred, your highest +moment a mere sentimental orgasm, and your first real contact with +primary and elementary necessities the sweat of your death-bed." + +The world grinds on: we are a fly on the wheel. That sense of an +impersonal machine going on with endless reiteration is an experience +that imaginative politicians face. Often as not they disguise it under +heroic phrases and still louder affirmation, just as most of us hide our +cowardly submission to monotony under some word like duty, loyalty, +conscience. If you have ever been an office-holder or been close to +officials, you must surely have been appalled by the grim way in which +committee-meetings, verbose reports, flamboyant speeches, requests, and +delegations hold the statesman in a mind-destroying grasp. Perhaps this +is the reason why it has been necessary to retire Theodore Roosevelt from +public life every now and then in order to give him a chance to learn +something new. Every statesman like every professor should have his +sabbatical year. + +The revolt against the service of our own mechanical habits is well known +to anyone who has followed modern thought. As a sharp example one might +point to Thomas Davidson, whom William James called "individualist a +outrance".... "Reprehending (mildly) a certain chapter of my own on +'Habit,' he said that it was a fixed rule with him to form no regular +habits. When he found himself in danger of settling into even a good one, +he made a point of interrupting it." + +Such men are the sparkling streams that flow through the dusty stretches +of a nation. They invigorate and emphasize those times in your own life +when each day is new. Then you are alive, then you drive the world before +you. The business, however difficult, shapes itself to your effort; you +seem to manage detail with an inferior part of yourself, while the real +soul of you is active, planning, light. "I wanted thought like an edge of +steel and desire like a flame." Eager with sympathy, you and your work +are reflected from many angles. You have become luminous. + +Some people are predominantly eager and wilful. The world does not huddle +and bend them to a task. They are not, as we say, creatures of +environment, but creators of it. Of other people's environment they +become the most active part--the part which sets the fashion. What they +initiate, others imitate. Theirs is a kind of intrinsic prestige. These +are the natural leaders of men, whether it be as head of the gang or as +founder of a religion. + +It is, I believe, this power of being aggressively active towards the +world which gives man a miraculous assurance that the world is something +he can make. In creative moments men always draw upon "some secret spring +of certainty, some fundamental well into which no disturbing glimmers +penetrate." But this is no slack philosophy, for the chance is denied by +which we can lie back upon the perfection of some mechanical contrivance. +Yet in the light of it government becomes alert to a process of continual +creation, an unceasing invention of forms to meet constantly changing +needs. + +This philosophy is not only difficult to practice: it is elusive when you +come to state it. For our political language was made to express a +routine conception of government. It comes to us from the Eighteenth +Century. And no matter how much we talk about the infusion of the +"evolutionary" point of view into all of modern thought, when the test is +made political practice shows itself almost virgin to the idea. Our +theories assume, and our language is fitted to thinking of government as +a frame--Massachusetts, I believe, actually calls her fundamental law the +Frame of Government. We picture political institutions as mechanically +constructed contrivances within which the nation's life is contained and +compelled to approximate some abstract idea of justice or liberty. These +frames have very little elasticity, and we take it as an historical +commonplace that sooner or later a revolution must come to burst the +frame apart. Then a new one is constructed. + +Our own Federal Constitution is a striking example of this machine +conception of government. It is probably the most important instance we +have of the deliberate application of a mechanical philosophy to human +affairs. Leaving out all question of the Fathers' ideals, looking simply +at the bias which directed their thinking, is there in all the world a +more plain-spoken attempt to contrive an automatic governor--a machine +which would preserve its balance without the need of taking human nature +into account? What other explanation is there for the naive faith of the +Fathers in the "symmetry" of executive, legislature, and judiciary; in +the fantastic attempts to circumvent human folly by balancing it with +vetoes and checks? No insight into the evident fact that power upsets all +mechanical foresight and gravitates toward the natural leaders seems to +have illuminated those historic deliberations. The Fathers had a rather +pale god, they had only a speaking acquaintance with humanity, so they +put their faith in a scaffold, and it has been part of our national piety +to pretend that they succeeded. + +They worked with the philosophy of their age. Living in the Eighteenth +Century, they thought in the images of Newton and Montesquieu. "The +Government of the United States," writes Woodrow Wilson, "was constructed +upon the Whig theory of political dynamics, which was a sort of +unconscious copy of the Newtonian theory of the universe.... As +Montesquieu pointed out to them (the English Whigs) in his lucid way, +they had sought to balance executive, legislative and judiciary off +against one another by a series of checks and counterpoises, which Newton +might readily have recognized as suggestive of the mechanism of the +heavens." No doubt this automatic and balanced theory of government +suited admirably that distrust of the people which seems to have been a +dominant feeling among the Fathers. For they were the conservatives of +their day: between '76 and '89 they had gone the usual way of opportunist +radicals. But had they written the Constitution in the fire of their +youth, they might have made it more democratic,--I doubt whether they +would have made it less mechanical. The rebellious spirit of Tom Paine +expressed itself in logical formulae as inflexible to the pace of life as +did the more contented Hamilton's. This is a determinant which burrows +beneath our ordinary classification of progressive and reactionary to the +spiritual habits of a period. + +If you look into the early utopias of Fourier and Saint-Simon, or better +still into the early trade unions, this same faith that a government can +be made to work mechanically is predominant everywhere. All the devices +of rotation in office, short terms, undelegated authority are simply +attempts to defeat the half-perceived fact that power will not long stay +diffused. It is characteristic of these primitive democracies that they +worship Man and distrust men. They cling to some arrangement, hoping +against experience that a government freed from human nature will +automatically produce human benefits. To-day within the Socialist Party +there is perhaps the greatest surviving example of the desire to offset +natural leadership by artificial contrivance. It is an article of faith +among orthodox socialists that personalities do not count, and I +sincerely believe I am not exaggerating the case when I say that their +ideal of government is like Gordon Craig's ideal of the theater--the +acting is to be done by a row of supermarionettes. There is a myth among +socialists to which all are expected to subscribe, that initiative +springs anonymously out of the mass of the people,--that there are no +"leaders," that the conspicuous figures are no more influential than the +figurehead on the prow of a ship. + +This is one of the paradoxes of the democratic movement--that it loves a +crowd and fears the individuals who compose it--that the religion of +humanity should have had no faith in human beings. Jealous of all +individuals, democracies have turned to machines. They have tried to blot +out human prestige, to minimize the influence of personality. That there +is historical justification for this fear is plain enough. To put it +briefly, democracy is afraid of the tyrant. That explains, but does not +justify. Governments have to be carried on by men, however much we +distrust them. Nobody has yet invented a mechanically beneficent +sovereign. + +Democracy has put an unfounded faith in automatic contrivances. Because +it left personality out of its speculation, it rested in the empty faith +that it had excluded it from reality. But in the actual stress of life +these frictions do not survive ten minutes. Public officials do not +become political marionettes, though people pretend that they are. When +theory runs against the grain of living forces, the result is a deceptive +theory of politics. If the real government of the United States "had, in +fact," as Woodrow Wilson says, "been a machine governed by mechanically +automatic balances, it would have had no history; but it was not, and its +history has been rich with the influence and personalities of the men who +have conducted it and made it a living reality." Only by violating the +very spirit of the constitution have we been able to preserve the letter +of it. For behind that balanced plan there grew up what Senator Beveridge +has called so brilliantly the "invisible government," an empire of +natural groups about natural leaders. Parties are such groups: they have +had a power out of all proportion to the intentions of the Fathers. +Behind the parties has grown up the "political machine"--falsely called a +machine, the very opposite of one in fact, a natural sovereignty, I +believe. The really rigid and mechanical thing is the charter behind +which Tammany works. For Tammany is the real government that has defeated +a mechanical foresight. Tammany is not a freak, a strange and monstrous +excrescence. Its structure and the laws of its life are, I believe, +typical of all real sovereignties. You can find Tammany duplicated +wherever there is a social group to be governed--in trade unions, in +clubs, in boys' gangs, in the Four Hundred, in the Socialist Party. It is +an accretion of power around a center of influence, cemented by +patronage, graft, favors, friendship, loyalties, habits,--a human +grouping, a natural pyramid. + +Only recently have we begun to see that the "political ring" is not +something confined to public life. It was Lincoln Steffens, I believe, +who first perceived that fact. For a time it was my privilege to work +under him on an investigation of the "Money Power." The leading idea was +different from customary "muckraking." We were looking not for the evils +of Big Business, but for its anatomy. Mr. Steffens came to the subject +with a first-hand knowledge of politics. He knew the "invisible +government" of cities, states, and the nation. He knew how the boss +worked, how he organized his power. When Mr. Steffens approached the vast +confusion and complication of big business, he needed some hypothesis to +guide him through that maze of facts. He made a bold and brilliant guess, +an hypothesis. To govern a life insurance company, Mr. Steffens argued, +was just as much "government" as to run a city. What if political methods +existed in the realm of business? The investigation was never carried +through completely, but we did study the methods by which several life +and fire insurance companies, banks, two or three railroads, and several +industrials are controlled. We found that the anatomy of Big Business was +strikingly like that of Tammany Hall: the same pyramiding of influence, +the same tendency of power to center on individuals who did not +necessarily sit in the official seats, the same effort of human +organization to grow independently of legal arrangements. Thus in the +life insurance companies, and the Hughes investigation supports this, the +real power was held not by the president, not by the voters or +policy-holders, but by men who were not even directors. After a while we +took it as a matter of course that the head of a company was an +administrative dummy, with a dependence on unofficial power similar to +that of Governor Dix on Boss Murphy. That seems to be typical of the +whole economic life of this country. It is controlled by groups of men +whose influence extends like a web to smaller, tributary groups, cutting +across all official boundaries and designations, making short work of all +legal formulae, and exercising sovereignty regardless of the little fences +we erect to keep it in bounds. + +A glimpse into the labor world revealed very much the same condition. The +boss, and the bosslet, the heeler--the men who are "it"--all are there +exercising the real power, the power that independently of charters and +elections decides what shall happen. I don't wish to have this regarded +as necessarily malign. It seems so now because we put our faith in the +ideal arrangements which it disturbs. But if we could come to face it +squarely--to see that that is what sovereignty is--that if we are to use +human power for human purposes we must turn to the realities of it, then +we shall have gone far towards leaving behind us the futile hopes of +mechanical perfection so constantly blasted by natural facts. + +The invisible government is malign. But the evil doesn't come from the +fact that it plays horse with the Newtonian theory of the constitution. +What is dangerous about it is that we do not see it, cannot use it, and +are compelled to submit to it. The nature of political power we shall not +change. If that is the way human societies organize sovereignty, the +sooner we face that fact the better. For the object of democracy is not +to imitate the rhythm of the stars but to harness political power to the +nation's need. If corporations and governments have indeed gone on a joy +ride the business of reform is not to set up fences, Sherman Acts and +injunctions into which they can bump, but to take the wheel and to steer. + +The corruption of which we hear so much is certainly not accounted for +when you have called it dishonesty. It is too widespread for any such +glib explanation. When you see how business controls politics, it +certainly is not very illuminating to call the successful business men of +a nation criminals. Yet I suppose that all of them violate the law. May +not this constant dodging or hurdling of statutes be a sign that there is +something the matter with the statutes? Is it not possible that graft is +the cracking and bursting of the receptacles in which we have tried to +constrain the business of this country? It seems possible that business +has had to control politics because its laws were so stupidly +obstructive. In the trust agitation this is especially plausible. For +there is every reason to believe that concentration is a world-wide +tendency, made possible at first by mechanical inventions, fostered by +the disastrous experiences of competition, and accepted by business men +through contagion and imitation. Certainly the trusts increase. Wherever +politics is rigid and hostile to that tendency, there is irritation and +struggle, but the agglomeration goes on. Hindered by political +conditions, the process becomes secretive and morbid. The trust is not +checked, but it is perverted. In 1910 the "American Banker" estimated +that there were 1,198 corporations with 8,110 subsidiaries liable to all +the penalties of the Sherman Act. Now this concentration must represent a +profound impetus in the business world--an impetus which certainly cannot +be obliterated, even if anyone were foolish enough to wish it. I venture +to suggest that much of what is called "corruption" is the odor of a +decaying political system done to death by an economic growth. + +It is our desperate adherence to an old method that has produced the +confusion of political life. Because we have insisted upon looking at +government as a frame and governing as a routine, because in short we +have been static in our theories, politics has such an unreal relation to +actual conditions. Feckless--that is what our politics is. It is +literally eccentric: it has been centered mechanically instead of +vitally. We have, it seems, been seduced by a fictitious analogy: we have +hoped for machine regularity when we needed human initiative and +leadership, when life was crying that its inventive abilities should be +freed. + +Roosevelt in his term did much to center government truly. For a time +natural leadership and nominal position coincided, and the administration +became in a measure a real sovereignty. The routine conception dwindled, +and the Roosevelt appointees went at issues as problems to be solved. +They may have been mistaken: Roosevelt may be uncritical in his +judgments. But the fact remains that the Roosevelt regime gave a new +prestige to the Presidency by effecting through it the greatest release +of political invention in a generation. Contrast it with the Taft +administration, and the quality is set in relief. Taft was the perfect +routineer trying to run government as automatically as possible. His +sincerity consisted in utter respect for form: he denied himself whatever +leadership he was capable of, and outwardly at least he tried to +"balance" the government. His greatest passions seem to be purely +administrative and legal. The people did not like it. They said it was +dead. They were right. They had grown accustomed to a humanly liberating +atmosphere in which formality was an instrument instead of an idol. They +had seen the Roosevelt influence adding to the resources of +life--irrigation, and waterways, conservation, the Panama Canal, the +"country life" movement. They knew these things were achieved through +initiative that burst through formal restrictions, and they applauded +wildly. It was only a taste, but it was a taste, a taste of what +government might be like. + +The opposition was instructive. Apart from those who feared Roosevelt for +selfish reasons, his enemies were men who loved an orderly adherence to +traditional methods. They shivered in the emotional gale; they obstructed +and the gale became destructive. They felt that, along with obviously +good things, this sudden national fertility might breed a monster--that a +leadership like Roosevelt's might indeed prove dangerous, as giving birth +may lead to death. + +What the methodically-minded do not see is that the sterility of a +routine is far more appalling. Not everyone may feel that to push out +into the untried, and take risks for big prizes, is worth while. Men will +tell you that government has no business to undertake an adventure, to +make experiments. They think that safety lies in repetition, that if you +do nothing, nothing will be done to you. It's a mistake due to poverty of +imagination and inability to learn from experience. Even the timidest +soul dare not "stand pat." The indictment against mere routine in +government is a staggering one. + +For while statesmen are pottering along doing the same thing year in, +year out, putting up the tariff one year and down the next, passing +appropriation bills and recodifying laws, the real forces in the country +do not stand still. Vast changes, economic and psychological, take place, +and these changes demand new guidance. But the routineers are always +unprepared. It has become one of the grim trade jokes of innovators that +the one thing you can count upon is that the rulers will come to think +that they are the apex of human development. For a queer effect of +responsibility on men is that it makes them try to be as much like +machines as possible. Tammany itself becomes rigid when it is too +successful, and only defeat seems to give it new life. Success makes men +rigid and they tend to exalt stability over all the other virtues; tired +of the effort of willing they become fanatics about conservatism. But +conditions change whether statesmen wish them to or not; society must +have new institutions to fit new wants, and all that rigid conservatism +can do is to make the transitions difficult. Violent revolutions may be +charged up to the unreadiness of statesmen. It is because they will not +see, or cannot see, that feudalism is dead, that chattel slavery is +antiquated; it is because they have not the wisdom and the audacity to +anticipate these great social changes; it is because they insist upon +standing pat that we have French Revolutions and Civil Wars. + +But statesmen who had decided that at last men were to be the masters of +their own history, instead of its victims, would face politics in a truly +revolutionary manner. It would give a new outlook to statesmanship, +turning it from the mere preservation of order, the administration of +political machinery and the guarding of ancient privilege to the +invention of new political forms, the prevision of social wants, and the +preparation for new economic growths. + +Such a statesmanship would in the '80's have prepared for the trust +movement. There would have been nothing miraculous in such foresight. +Standard Oil was dominant by the beginning of the '80's, and +concentration had begun in sugar, steel and other basic industries. Here +was an economic tendency of revolutionary significance--the organization +of business in a way that was bound to change the outlook of a whole +nation. It had vast potentialities for good and evil--all it wanted was +harnessing and directing. But the new thing did not fit into the little +outlines and verbosities which served as a philosophy for our political +hacks. So they gaped at it and let it run wild, called it names, and +threw stones at it. And by that time the force was too big for them. An +alert statesmanship would have facilitated the process of concentration; +would have made provision for those who were cast aside; would have been +an ally of trust building, and by that very fact it would have had an +internal grip on the trust--it would have kept the trust's inner workings +public; it could have bent the trust to social uses. + +This is not mere wisdom after the event. In the '80's there were hundreds +of thousands of people in the world who understood that the trust was a +natural economic growth. Karl Marx had proclaimed it some thirty years +before, and it was a widely circulated idea. Is it asking too much of a +statesman if we expect him to know political theory and to balance it +with the facts he sees? By the '90's surely, the egregious folly of a +Sherman Anti-Trust Law should have been evident to any man who pretended +to political leadership. Yet here it is the year 1912 and that monument +of economic ignorance and superstition is still worshiped with the lips +by two out of the three big national parties. + +Another movement--like that of the trust--is gathering strength to-day. +It is the unification of wage-workers. We stand in relation to it as the +men of the '80's did to the trusts. It is the complement of that problem. +It also has vast potentialities for good and evil. It, too, demands +understanding and direction. It, too, will not be stopped by hard names +or injunctions. + +What we loosely call "syndicalism" is a tendency that no statesman can +overlook to-day without earning the jeers of his children. This labor +movement has a destructive and constructive energy within it. On its +beneficent side it promises a new professional interest in work, +self-education, and the co-operative management of industry. But this +creative power is constantly choked off because the unions are compelled +to fight for their lives--the more opposition they meet the more you are +likely to see of sabotage, direct action, the greve perlee--the less +chance there is for the educative forces to show themselves. Then, the +more violent syndicalism proves itself to be, the more hysterically we +bait it in the usual vicious circle of ignorance. + +But who amongst us is optimistic enough to hope that the men who sit in +the mighty positions are going to make a better show of themselves than +their predecessors did over the trust problem? It strains hope a little +too much. Those men in Washington, most of them lawyers, are so educated +that they are practically incapable of meeting a new condition. All their +training plus all their natural ossification of mind is hostile to +invention. You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the +jolliest steam-roller will not plant flowers. + +The thought-processes in Washington are too lumbering for the needs of +this nation. Against that evil muckraking ought to be directed. Those +senators and representatives are largely irrelevant; they are not +concerned with realities. Their dishonesties are comparatively +insignificant. The scorn of the public should be turned upon the +emptiness of political thought, upon the fact that those men seem without +even a conception of the nation's needs. And while they maunder along +they stifle the forces of life which are trying to break through. It was +nothing but the insolence of the routineer that forced Gifford Pinchot +out of the Forest Service. Pinchot in respect to his subject was a fine +political inventor. But routine forced him out--into what?--into the moil +and toil of fighting for offices, and there he has cut a poor figure +indeed. You may say that he has had to spend his energy trying to find a +chance to use his power. What a wanton waste of talent is that for a +civilized nation! Wiley is another case of the creative mind harassed by +the routineers. Judge Lindsey is another--a fine, constructive children's +judge compelled to be a politician. And of our misuse of the Rockefellers +and Carnegies--the retrospect is appalling. Here was industrial genius +unquestionably beyond the ordinary. What did this nation do with it? It +found no public use for talent. It left that to operate in darkness--then +opinion rose in an empty fury, made an outlaw of one and a platitudinous +philanthropist of the other. It could lynch one as a moral monster, when +as a matter of fact his ideals were commonplace; it could proclaim one a +great benefactor when in truth he was a rather dull old gentleman. Abused +out of all reason or praised irrelevantly--the one thing this nation has +not been able to do with these men is to use their genius. It is this +life-sapping quality of our politics that should be fought--its wanton +waste of the initiatives we have--its stupid indifference. + +We need a new sense of political values. These times require a different +order of thinking. We cannot expect to meet our problems with a few +inherited ideas, uncriticised assumptions, a foggy vocabulary, and a +machine philosophy. Our political thinking needs the infusion of +contemporary insights. The enormous vitality that is regenerating other +interests can be brought into the service of politics. Our primary care +must be to keep the habits of the mind flexible and adapted to the +movement of real life. The only way to control our destiny is to work +with it. In politics, at least, we stoop to conquer. There is no use, no +heroism, in butting against the inevitable, yet nothing is entirely +inevitable. There is always some choice, some opportunity for human +direction. + +It is not easy. It is far easier to treat life as if it were dead, men as +if they were dolls. It is everlastingly difficult to keep the mind +flexible and alert. The rule of thumb is not here. To follow the pace of +living requires enormous vigilance and sympathy. No one can write +conclusively about it. Compared with this creative statesmanship, the +administering of a routine or the battle for a platitude is a very simple +affair. But genuine politics is not an inhuman task. Part of the +genuineness is its unpretentious humanity. I am not creating the figure +of an ideal statesman out of some inner fancy. That is just the deepest +error of our political thinking--to talk of politics without reference to +human beings. The creative men appear in public life in spite of the cold +blanket the politicians throw over them. Really statesmanlike things are +done, inventions are made. But this real achievement comes to us +confused, mixed with much that is contradictory. Political inventors are +to-day largely unconscious of their purpose, and, so, defenceless against +the distraction of their routineer enemies. + +Lacking a philosophy they are defenceless against their own inner +tendency to sink into repetition. As a witty Frenchman remarked, many +geniuses become their own disciples. This is true when the attention is +slack, and effort has lost its direction. We have elaborate governmental +mechanisms--like the tariff, for example, which we go on making more +"scientific" year in, year out--having long since lost sight of their +human purpose. They may be defeating the very ends they were meant to +serve. We cling to constitutions out of "loyalty." We trudge in the +treadmill and call it love of our ancient institutions. We emulate the +mule, that greatest of all routineers. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE TABOO + + +Our government has certainly not measured up to expectations. Even +chronic admirers of the "balance" and "symmetry" of the Constitution +admit either by word or deed that it did not foresee the whole history of +the American people. Poor bewildered statesmen, unused to any notion of +change, have seen the national life grow to a monstrous confusion and +sprout monstrous evils by the way. Men and women clamored for remedies, +vowed, shouted and insisted that their "official servants" do +something--something statesmanlike--to abate so much evident wrong. But +their representatives had very little more than a frock coat and a slogan +as equipment for the task. Trained to interpret a constitution instead of +life, these statesmen faced with historic helplessness the vociferations +of ministers, muckrakers, labor leaders, women's clubs, granges and +reformers' leagues. Out of a tumultuous medley appeared the common theme +of public opinion--that the leaders should lead, that the governors +should govern. + +The trusts had appeared, labor was restless, vice seemed to be corrupting +the vitality of the nation. Statesmen had to do something. Their training +was legal and therefore utterly inadequate, but it was all they had. They +became panicky and reverted to an ancient superstition. They forbade the +existence of evil by law. They made it anathema. They pronounced it +damnable. They threatened to club it. They issued a legislative curse, +and called upon the district attorney to do the rest. They started out to +abolish human instincts, check economic tendencies and repress social +changes by laws prohibiting them. They turned to this sanctified +ignorance which is rampant in almost any nursery, which presides at +family councils, flourishes among "reformers"; which from time immemorial +has haunted legislatures and courts. Under the spell of it men try to +stop drunkenness by closing the saloons; when poolrooms shock them they +call a policeman; if Haywood becomes annoying, they procure an +injunction. They meet the evils of dance halls by barricading them; they +go forth to battle against vice by raiding brothels and fining +prostitutes. For trusts there is a Sherman Act. In spite of all +experience they cling desperately to these superstitions. + +It is the method of the taboo, as naive as barbarism, as ancient as human +failure. + +There is a law against suicide. It is illegal for a man to kill himself. +What it means in practice, of course, is that there is punishment waiting +for a man who doesn't succeed in killing himself. We say to the man who +is tired of life that if he bungles we propose to make this world still +less attractive by clapping him into jail. I know an economist who has a +scheme for keeping down the population by refusing very poor people a +marriage license. He used to teach Sunday school and deplore promiscuity. +In the annual report of the president of a distilling company I once saw +the statement that business had increased in the "dry" states. In a +prohibition town where I lived you could drink all you wanted by +belonging to a "club" or winking at the druggist. And in another city +where Sunday closing was strictly enforced, a minister told me with +painful surprise that the Monday police blotter showed less drunks and +more wife-beaters. + +We pass a law against race-track gambling and add to the profits from +faro. We raid the faro joints, and drive gambling into the home, where +poker and bridge whist are taught to children who follow their parents' +example. We deprive anarchists of free speech by the heavy hand of a +police magistrate, and furnish them with a practical instead of a +theoretical argument against government. We answer strikes with bayonets, +and make treason one of the rights of man. + +Everybody knows that when you close the dance halls you fill the parks. +Men who in their youth took part in "crusades" against the Tenderloin now +admit in a crestfallen way that they succeeded merely in sprinkling the +Tenderloin through the whole city. Over twenty years ago we formulated a +sweeping taboo against trusts. Those same twenty years mark the +centralization of industry. + +The routineer in a panic turns to the taboo. Whatever does not fit into +his rigid little scheme of things must have its head chopped off. Now +human nature and the changing social forces it generates are the very +material which fit least well into most little schemes of things. A man +cannot sleep in his cradle: whatever is useful must in the nature of life +become useless. We employ our instruments and abandon them. But nothing +so simply true as that prevails in politics. When a government routine +conflicts with the nation's purposes--the statesman actually makes a +virtue of his loyalty to the routine. His practice is to ignore human +character and pay no attention to social forces. The shallow presumption +is that undomesticated impulses can be obliterated; that world-wide +economic inventions can be stamped out by jailing millionaires--and +acting in the spirit of Mr. Chesterton's man Fipps "who went mad and ran +about the country with an axe, hacking branches off the trees whenever +there were not the same number on both sides." The routineer is, of +course, the first to decry every radical proposal as "against human +nature." But the stand-pat mind has forfeited all right to speak for +human nature. It has devoted the centuries to torturing men's instincts, +stamping on them, passing laws against them, lifting its eyebrows at the +thought of them--doing everything but trying to understand them. The same +people who with daily insistence say that innovators ignore facts are in +the absurd predicament of trying to still human wants with petty taboos. +Social systems like ours, which do not even feed and house men and women, +which deny pleasure, cramp play, ban adventure, propose celibacy and +grind out monotony, are a clear confession of sterility in statesmanship. +And politics, however pretentiously rhetorical about ideals, is +irrelevant if the only method it knows is to ostracize the desires it +cannot manage. + +Suppose that statesmen transferred their reverence from the precedents +and mistakes of their ancestors to the human material which they have set +out to govern. Suppose they looked mankind in the face and asked +themselves what was the result of answering evil with a prohibition. Such +an exercise would, I fear, involve a considerable strain on what +reformers call their moral sensibilities. For human nature is a rather +shocking affair if you come to it with ordinary romantic optimism. +Certainly the human nature that figures in most political thinking is a +wraith that never was--not even in the souls of politicians. "Idealism" +creates an abstraction and then shudders at a reality which does not +answer to it. Now statesmen who have set out to deal with actual life +must deal with actual people. They cannot afford an inclusive pessimism +about mankind. Let them have the consistency and good sense to cease +bothering about men if men's desires seem intrinsically evil. Moral +judgment about the ultimate quality of character is dangerous to a +politician. He is too constantly tempted to call a policeman when he +disapproves. + +We must study our failures. Gambling and drink, for example, produce much +misery. But what reformers have to learn is that men don't gamble just +for the sake of violating the law. They do so because something within +them is satisfied by betting or drinking. To erect a ban doesn't stop the +want. It merely prevents its satisfaction. And since this desire for +stimulants or taking a chance at a prize is older and far more deeply +rooted in the nature of men than love of the Prohibition Party or +reverence for laws made at Albany, people will contrive to drink and +gamble in spite of the acts of a legislature. + +A man may take liquor for a variety of reasons: he may be thirsty; or +depressed; or unusually happy; he may want the companionship of a saloon, +or he may hope to forget a scolding wife. Perhaps he needs a "bracer" in +a weary hunt for a job. Perhaps he has a terrible craving for alcohol. He +does not take a drink so that he may become an habitual drunkard, or be +locked up in jail, or get into a brawl, or lose his job, or go insane. +These are what he might call the unfortunate by-products of his desire. +If once he could find something which would do for him what liquor does, +without hurting him as liquor does, there would be no problem of drink. +Bernard Shaw says he has found that substitute in going to church when +there's no service. Goethe wrote "The Sorrows of Werther" in order to get +rid of his own. Many an unhappy lover has found peace by expressing his +misery in sonnet form. The problem is to find something for the common +man who is not interested in contemporary churches and who can't write +sonnets. + +When the socialists in Milwaukee began to experiment with municipal +dances they were greeted with indignant protests from the "anti-vice" +element and with amused contempt by the newspaper paragraphers. The +dances were discontinued, and so the belief in their failure is complete. +I think, though, that Mayor Seidel's defense would by itself make this +experiment memorable. He admitted freely the worst that can be said +against the ordinary dance hall. So far he was with the petty reformers. +Then he pointed out with considerable vehemence that dance halls were an +urgent social necessity. At that point he had transcended the mind of the +petty reformer completely. "We propose," said Seidel, "to go into +competition with the devil." + +Nothing deeper has come from an American mayor in a long, long time. It +is the point that Jane Addams makes in the opening pages of that wisely +sweet book, "The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets." She calls +attention to the fact that the modern state has failed to provide for +pleasure. "This stupid experiment," she writes, "of organizing work and +failing to organize play has, of course, brought about a fine revenge. +The love of pleasure will not be denied, and when it has turned into all +sorts of malignant and vicious appetites, then we, the middle-aged, grow +quite distracted and resort to all sorts of restrictive measures." + +For human nature seems to have wants that must be filled. If nobody else +supplies them, the devil will. The demand for pleasure, adventure, +romance has been left to the devil's catering for so long a time that +most people think he inspires the demand. He doesn't. Our neglect is the +devil's opportunity. What we should use, we let him abuse, and the +corruption of the best things, as Hume remarked, produces the worst. +Pleasure in our cities has become tied to lobster palaces, adventure to +exalted murderers, romance to silly, mooning novels. Like the flower girl +in Galsworthy's play, we have made a very considerable confusion of the +life of joy and the joy of life. The first impulse is to abolish all +lobster palaces, melodramas, yellow newspapers, and sentimentally erotic +novels. Why not abolish all the devil's works? the reformer wonders. The +answer is in history. It can't be done that way. It is impossible to +abolish either with a law or an axe the desires of men. It is dangerous, +explosively dangerous, to thwart them for any length of time. The +Puritans tried to choke the craving for pleasure in early New England. +They had no theaters, no dances, no festivals. They burned witches +instead. + +We rail a good deal against Tammany Hall. Reform tickets make periodic +sallies against it, crying economy, efficiency, and a business +administration. And we all pretend to be enormously surprised when the +"ignorant foreign vote" prefers a corrupt political ring to a party of +well-dressed, grammatical, and high-minded gentlemen. Some of us are even +rather downcast about democracy because the Bowery doesn't take to heart +the admonitions of the Evening Post. + +We forget completely the important wants supplied by Tammany Hall. We +forget that this is a lonely country for an immigrant and that the Statue +of Liberty doesn't shed her light with too much warmth. Possessing +nothing but a statistical, inhuman conception of government, the average +municipal reformer looks down contemptuously upon a man like Tim Sullivan +with his clambakes and his dances; his warm and friendly saloons, his +handshaking and funeral-going and baby-christening; his readiness to get +coal for the family, and a job for the husband. But a Tim Sullivan is +closer to the heart of statesmanship than five City Clubs full of people +who want low taxes and orderly bookkeeping. He does things which have to +be done. He humanizes a strange country; he is a friend at court; he +represents the legitimate kindliness of government, standing between the +poor and the impersonal, uninviting majesty of the law. Let no man wonder +that Lorimer's people do not prefer an efficiency expert, that a Tim +Sullivan has power, or that men are loyal to Hinky Dink. The cry raised +against these men by the average reformer is a piece of cold, unreal, +preposterous idealism compared to the solid warm facts of kindliness, +clothes, food and fun. + +You cannot beat the bosses with the reformer's taboo. You will not get +far on the Bowery with the cost unit system and low taxes. And I don't +blame the Bowery. You can beat Tammany Hall permanently in one way--by +making the government of a city as human, as kindly, as jolly as Tammany +Hall. I am aware of the contract-grafts, the franchise-steals, the dirty +streets, the bribing and the blackmail, the vice-and-crime partnerships, +the Big Business alliances of Tammany Hall. And yet it seems to me that +Tammany has a better perception of human need, and comes nearer to being +what a government should be, than any scheme yet proposed by a group of +"uptown good government" enthusiasts. Tammany is not a satanic instrument +of deception, cleverly devised to thwart "the will of the people." It is +a crude and largely unconscious answer to certain immediate needs, and +without those needs its power would crumble. That is why I ventured in +the preceding chapter to describe it as a natural sovereignty which had +grown up behind a mechanical form of government. It is a poor weed +compared to what government might be. But it is a real government that +has power and serves a want, and not a frame imposed upon men from on +top. + +The taboo--the merely negative law--is the emptiest of all the +impositions from on top. In its long record of failure, in the +comparative success of Tammany, those who are aiming at social changes +can see a profound lesson; the impulses, cravings and wants of men must +be employed. You can employ them well or ill, but you must employ them. A +group of reformers lounging at a club cannot, dare not, decide to close +up another man's club because it is called a saloon. Unless the reformer +can invent something which substitutes attractive virtues for attractive +vices, he will fail. He will fail because human nature abhors the vacuum +created by the taboo. + +An incident in the international peace propaganda illuminates this point. +Not long ago a meeting in Carnegie Hall, New York, to forward peace among +nations broke up in great disorder. Thousands of people who hate the +waste and futility of war as much as any of the orators of that evening +were filled with an unholy glee. They chuckled with delight at the idea +of a riot in a peace meeting. Though it would have seemed perverse to the +ordinary pacificist, this sentiment sprang from a respectable source. It +had the same ground as the instinctive feeling of nine men in ten that +Roosevelt has more right to talk about peace than William Howard Taft. +James made it articulate in his essay on "The Moral Equivalent of War." +James was a great advocate of peace, but he understood Theodore Roosevelt +and he spoke for the military man when he wrote of war that: "Its +'horrors' are a cheap price to pay for rescue from the only alternative +supposed, of a world of clerks and teachers, of co-education and +zo-ophily, of 'consumers' leagues' and 'associated charities,' of +industrialism unlimited, and feminism unabashed. No scorn, no hardness, +no valor any more! Fie upon such a cattleyard of a planet!" + +And he added: "So far as the central essence of this feeling goes, no +healthy minded person, it seems to me, can help to some degree partaking +of it. Militarism is the great preserver of our ideals of hardihood, and +human life with no use for hardihood would be contemptible. Without risks +or prizes for the darer, history would be insipid indeed; and there is a +type of military character which everyone feels that the race should +never cease to breed, for everyone is sensitive to its superiority." + +So William James proposed not the abolition of war, but a moral +equivalent for it. He dreamed of "a conscription of the whole youthful +population to form for a certain number of years a part of the army +enlisted against _Nature_.... The military ideals of hardihood and +discipline would be wrought into the growing fibre of the people; no one +would remain blind, as the luxurious classes now are blind, to man's +relations to the globe he lives on, and to the permanently sour and hard +foundations of his higher life." Now we are not concerned here over the +question of this particular proposal. The telling point in my opinion is +this: that when a wise man, a student of human nature, and a reformer met +in the same person, the taboo was abandoned. James has given us a lasting +phrase when he speaks of the "moral equivalent" of evil. We can use it, I +believe, as a guide post to statesmanship. Rightly understood, the idea +behind the words contains all that is valuable in conservatism, and, for +the first time, gives a reputable meaning to that tortured epithet +"constructive." + +"The military feelings," says James, "are too deeply grounded to abdicate +their place among our ideals until better substitutes are offered ... +such a conscription, with the state of public opinion that would have +required it, and the many moral fruits it would bear, would preserve in +the midst of a pacific civilization the manly virtues which the military +party is so afraid of seeing disappear in peace.... So far, war has been +the only force that can discipline a whole community, and until an +equivalent discipline is organized I believe that war must have its way. +But I have no serious doubt that the ordinary prides and shames of social +man, once developed to a certain intensity, are capable of organizing +such a moral equivalent as I have sketched, or some other just as +effective for preserving manliness of type. It is but a question of time, +of skilful propagandism, and of opinion-making men seizing historic +opportunities. The martial type of character can be bred without war." + +To find for evil its moral equivalent is to be conservative about values +and radical about forms, to turn to the establishment of positively good +things instead of trying simply to check bad ones, to emphasize the +additions to life, instead of the restrictions upon it, to substitute, if +you like, the love of heaven for the fear of hell. Such a program means +the dignified utilization of the whole nature of man. It will recognize +as the first test of all political systems and moral codes whether or not +they are "against human nature." It will insist that they be cut to fit +the whole man, not merely a part of him. For there are utopian proposals +made every day which cover about as much of a human being as a beautiful +hat does. + +Instead of tabooing our impulses, we must redirect them. Instead of +trying to crush badness we must turn the power behind it to good account. +The assumption is that every lust is capable of some civilized +expression. + +We say, in effect, that evil is a way by which desire expresses itself. +The older moralists, the taboo philosophers believed that the desires +themselves were inherently evil. To us they are the energies of the soul, +neither good nor bad in themselves. Like dynamite, they are capable of +all sorts of uses, and it is the business of civilization, through the +family and the school, religion, art, science, and all institutions, to +transmute these energies into fine values. Behind evil there is power, +and it is folly,--wasting and disappointing folly,--to ignore this power +because it has found an evil issue. All that is dynamic in human +character is in these rooted lusts. The great error of the taboo has been +just this: that it believed each desire had only one expression, that if +that expression was evil the desire itself was evil. We know a little +better to-day. We know that it is possible to harness desire to many +interests, that evil is one form of a desire, and not the nature of it. + +This supplies us with a standard for judging reforms, and so makes clear +what "constructive" action really is. When it was discovered recently +that the boys' gang was not an unmitigated nuisance to be chased by a +policeman, but a force that could be made valuable to civilization +through the Boy Scouts, a really constructive reform was given to the +world. The effervescence of boys on the street, wasted and perverted +through neglect or persecution, was drained and applied to fine uses. +When Percy MacKaye pleads for pageants in which the people themselves +participate, he offers an opportunity for expressing some of the lusts of +the city in the form of an art. The Freudian school of psychologists +calls this "sublimation." They have brought forward a wealth of material +which gives us every reason to believe that the theory of "moral +equivalents" is soundly based, that much the same energies produce crime +and civilization, art, vice, insanity, love, lust, and religion. In each +individual the original differences are small. Training and opportunity +decide in the main how men's lust shall emerge. Left to themselves, or +ignorantly tabooed, they break forth in some barbaric or morbid form. +Only by supplying our passions with civilized interests can we escape +their destructive force. + +I have put it negatively, as a counsel of prudence. But he who has the +courage of existence will put it triumphantly, crying "yea" as Nietzsche +did, and recognizing that all the passions of men are the motive powers +of a fine life. + +For the roads that lead to heaven and hell are one until they part. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE CHANGING FOCUS + + +The taboo, however useless, is at least concrete. Although it achieves +little besides mischief, it has all the appearance of practical action, +and consequently enlists the enthusiasm of those people whom Wells +describes as rushing about the country shouting: "For Gawd's sake let's +_do_ something _now_." There are weight and solidity in a policeman's +club, while a "moral equivalent" happens to be pale like the stuff of +which dreams are made. To the politician whose daily life consists in +dodging the thousand and one conflicting prejudices of his constituents, +in bickering with committees, intriguing and playing for the vote; to the +business man harassed on four sides by the trust, the union, the law, and +public opinion,--distrustful of any wide scheme because the stupidity of +his shipping clerk is the most vivid item in his mind, all this +discussion about politics and the inner life will sound like so much +fine-spun nonsense. + +I, for one, am not disposed to blame the politicians and the business +men. They govern the nation, it is true, but they do it in a rather +absentminded fashion. Those revolutionists who see the misery of the +country as a deliberate and fiendish plot overestimate the bad will, the +intelligence and the singleness of purpose in the ruling classes. +Business and political leaders don't mean badly; the trouble with them is +that most of the time they don't mean anything. They picture themselves +as very "practical," which in practice amounts to saying that nothing +makes them feel so spiritually homeless as the discussion of values and +an invitation to examine first principles. Ideas, most of the time, cause +them genuine distress, and are as disconcerting as an idle office boy, or +a squeaky telephone. + +I do not underestimate the troubles of the man of affairs. I have lived +with politicians,--with socialist politicians whose good-will was +abundant and intentions constructive. The petty vexations pile up into +mountains; the distracting details scatter the attention and break up +thinking, while the mere problem of exercising power crowds out +speculation about what to do with it. Personal jealousies interrupt +co-ordinated effort; committee sessions wear out nerves by their aimless +drifting; constant speech-making turns a man back upon a convenient +little store of platitudes--misunderstanding and distortion dry up the +imagination, make thought timid and expression flat, the atmosphere of +publicity requires a mask which soon becomes the reality. Politicians +tend to live "in character," and many a public figure has come to imitate +the journalism which describes him. You cannot blame politicians if their +perceptions are few and their thinking crude. + +Football strategy does not originate in a scrimmage: it is useless to +expect solutions in a political campaign. Woodrow Wilson brought to +public life an exceedingly flexible mind,--many of us when he first +emerged rejoiced at the clean and athletic quality of his thinking. But +even he under the stress of a campaign slackened into commonplace +reiteration, accepting a futile and intellectually dishonest platform, +closing his eyes to facts, misrepresenting his opponents, abandoning, in +short, the very qualities which distinguished him. It is understandable. +When a National Committee puts a megaphone to a man's mouth and tells him +to yell, it is difficult for him to hear anything. + +If a nation's destiny were really bound up with the politics reported in +newspapers, the impasse would be discouraging. If the important +sovereignty of a country were in what is called its parliamentary life, +then the day of Plato's philosopher-kings would be far off indeed. +Certainly nobody expects our politicians to become philosophers. When +they do they hide the fact. And when philosophers try to be politicians +they generally cease to be philosophers. But the truth is that we +overestimate enormously the importance of nominations, campaigns, and +office-holding. If we are discouraged it is because we tend to identify +statecraft with that official government which is merely one of its +instruments. Vastly over-advertised, we have mistaken an inflated fragment +for the real political life of the country. + +For if you think of men and their welfare, government appears at once as +nothing but an agent among many others. The task of civilizing our +impulses by creating fine opportunities for their expression cannot be +accomplished through the City Hall alone. All the influences of social +life are needed. The eggs do not lie in one basket. Thus the issues in +the trade unions may be far more directly important to statecraft than +the destiny of the Republican Party. The power that workingmen generate +when they unite--the demands they will make and the tactics they will +pursue--how they are educating themselves and the nation--these are +genuine issues which bear upon the future. So with the policies of +business men. Whether financiers are to be sullen and stupid like +Archbold, defiant like Morgan, or well-intentioned like Perkins is a +question that enters deeply into the industrial issues. The whole +business problem takes on a new complexion if the representatives of +capital are to be men with the temper of Louis Brandeis or William C. +Redfield. For when business careers are made professional, new motives +enter into the situation; it will make a world of difference if the +leadership of industry is in the hands of men interested in production as +a creative art instead of as a brute exploitation. The economic conflicts +are at once raised to a plane of research, experiment and honest +deliberation. For on the level of hate and mean-seeking no solution is +possible. That subtle fact,--the change of business motives, the +demonstration that industry can be conducted as medicine is,--may +civilize the whole class conflict. + +Obviously statecraft is concerned with such a change, extra-political +though it is. And wherever the politician through his prestige or the +government through its universities can stimulate a revolution in +business motives, it should do so. That is genuinely constructive work, +and will do more to a humane solution of the class struggle than all the +jails and state constabularies that ever betrayed the barbarism of the +Twentieth Century. It is no wonder that business is such a sordid affair. +We have done our best to exclude from it every passionate interest that +is capable of lighting up activity with eagerness and joy. +"Unbusinesslike" we have called the devotion of craftsmen and scientists. +We have actually pretended that the work of extracting a living from +nature could be done most successfully by short-sighted money-makers +encouraged by their money-spending wives. We are learning better to-day. +We are beginning to know that this nation for all its boasts has not +touched the real possibilities of business success, that nature and good +luck have done most of our work, that our achievements come in spite of +our ignorance. And so no man can gauge the civilizing possibilities of a +new set of motives in business. That it will add to the dignity and value +of millions of careers is only one of its blessings. Given a nation of +men trained to think scientifically about their work and feel about it as +craftsmen, and you have a people released from a stupid fixation upon the +silly little ideals of accumulating dollars and filling their neighbor's +eye. We preach against commercialism but without great result. And the +reason for our failure is: that we merely say "you ought not" instead of +offering a new interest. Instead of telling business men not to be +greedy, we should tell them to be industrial statesmen, applied +scientists, and members of a craft. Politics can aid that revolution in a +hundred Ways: by advocating it, by furnishing schools that teach, +laboratories that demonstrate, by putting business on the same plane of +interest as the Health Service. + +The indictment against politics to-day is not its corruption, but its +lack of insight. I believe it is a fact which experience will sustain +that men steal because they haven't anything better to do. You don't have +to preach honesty to men with a creative purpose. Let a human being throw +the energies of his soul into the making of something, and the instinct +of workmanship will take care of his honesty. The writers who have +nothing to say are the ones that you can buy: the others have too high a +price. A genuine craftsman will not adulterate his product: the reason +isn't because duty says he shouldn't, but because passion says he +couldn't. I suggested in an earlier chapter that the issue of honesty and +dishonesty was a futile one, and I placed faith in the creative men. They +hate shams and the watering of goods on a more trustworthy basis than the +mere routine moralist. To them dishonesty is a contradiction of their own +lusts, and they ask no credit, need none, for being true. Creation is an +emotional ascent, which makes the standard vices trivial, and turns all +that is valuable in virtue to the service of desire. + +When politics revolves mechanically it ceases to use the real energies of +a nation. Government is then at once irrelevant and mischievous--a mere +obstructive nuisance. Not long ago a prominent senator remarked that he +didn't know much about the country, because he had spent the last few +months in Washington. It was a profound utterance as anyone can testify +who reads, let us say, the Congressional Record. For that document, +though replete with language, is singularly unacquainted with the forces +that agitate the nation. Politics, as the contributors to the +Congressional Record seem to understand it, is a very limited selection +of well-worn debates on a few arbitrarily chosen "problems." Those +questions have developed a technique and an interest in them for their +own sake. They are handled with a dull solemnity quite out of proportion +to their real interest. Labor receives only a perfunctory and largely +disingenuous attention; even commerce is handled in a way that expresses +neither its direction nor its public use. Congress has been ready enough +to grant favors to corporations, but where in its wrangling from the +Sherman Act to the Commerce Court has it shown any sympathetic +understanding of the constructive purposes in the trust movement? It has +either presented the business man with money or harassed him with +bungling enthusiasm in the pretended interests of the consumer. The one +thing Congress has not done is to use the talents of business men for the +nation's advantage. + +If "politics" has been indifferent to forces like the union and the +trust, it is no exaggeration to say that it has displayed a modest +ignorance of women's problems, of educational conflicts and racial +aspirations; of the control of newspapers and magazines, the book +publishing world, socialist conventions and unofficial political groups +like the single-taxers. + +Such genuine powers do not absorb our political interest because we are +fooled by the regalia of office. But statesmanship, if it is to be +relevant, would obtain a new perspective on these dynamic currents, would +find out the wants they express and the energies they contain, would +shape and direct and guide them. For unions and trusts, sects, clubs and +voluntary associations stand for actual needs. The size of their +following, the intensity of their demands are a fair index of what the +statesman must think about. No lawyer created a trust though he drew up +its charter; no logician made the labor movement or the feminist +agitation. If you ask what for political purposes a nation is, a +practical answer would be: it is its "movements." They are the social +_life_. So far as the future is man-made it is made of them. They show +their real vitality by a relentless growth in spite of all the little +fences and obstacles that foolish politicians devise. + +There is, of course, much that is dead within the movements. Each one +carries along a quantity of inert and outworn ideas,--not infrequently +there is an internally contradictory current. Thus the very workingmen +who agitate for a better diffusion of wealth display a marked hostility +to improvements in the production of it. The feminists too have their +atavisms: not a few who object to the patriarchal family seem inclined to +cure it by going back still more--to the matriarchal. Constructive +business has no end of reactionary moments----the most striking, perhaps, +is when it buys up patents in order to suppress them. Yet these +inversions, though discouraging, are not essential in the life of +movements. They need to be expurgated by an unceasing criticism; yet in +bulk the forces I have mentioned, and many others less important, carry +with them the creative powers of our times. + +It is not surprising that so many political inventions have been made +within these movements, fostered by them, and brought to a general public +notice through their efforts. When some constructive proposal is being +agitated before a legislative committee, it is customary to unite the +"movements" in support of it. Trade unions and women's clubs have joined +hands in many an agitation. There are proposals to-day, like the minimum +wage, which seem sure of support from consumers' leagues, women's +federations, trade unions and those far-sighted business men who may be +called "State Socialists." + +In fact, unless a political invention is woven into a social movement it +has no importance. Only when that is done is it imbued with life. But how +among countless suggestions is a "cause" to know the difference between a +true invention and a pipe-dream? There is, of course, no infallible +touchstone by which we can tell offhand. No one need hope for an easy +certainty either here or anywhere else in human affairs. No one is +absolved from experiment and constant revision. Yet there are some +hypotheses that prima facie deserve more attention than others. + +Those are the suggestions which come out of a recognized human need. If a +man proposed that the judges of the Supreme Court be reduced from nine to +seven because the number seven has mystical power, we could ignore him. +But if he suggested that the number be reduced because seven men can +deliberate more effectively than nine he ought to be given a hearing. Or +let us suppose that the argument is about granting votes to women. The +suffragist who bases a claim on the so-called "logic of democracy" is +making the poorest possible showing for a good cause. I have heard people +maintain that: "it makes no difference whether women want the ballot, or +are fit for it, or can do any good with it,--this country is a democracy. +Democracy means government by the votes of the people. Women are people. +Therefore women should vote." That in a very simple form is the +mechanical conception of government. For notice how it ignores human +wants and human powers--how it subordinates people to a rigid formula. I +use this crude example because it shows that even the most genuine and +deeply grounded demands are as yet unable to free themselves entirely +from a superficial manner of thinking. We are only partially emancipated +from the mechanical and merely logical tradition of the Eighteenth +Century. No end of illustrations could be adduced. In the Socialist party +it has been the custom to denounce the "short ballot." Why? Because it +reduces the number of elective offices. This is regarded as undemocratic +for the reason that democracy has come to mean a series of elections. +According to a logic, the more elections the more democratic. But +experience has shown that a seven-foot ballot with a regiment of names is +so bewildering that a real choice is impossible. So it is proposed to cut +down the number of elective offices, focus the attention on a few +alternatives, and turn voting into a fairly intelligent performance. Here +is an attempt to fit political devices to the actual powers of the voter. +The old, crude form of ballot forgot that finite beings had to operate +it. But the "democrats" adhere to the multitude of choices because +"logic" requires them to. + +This incident of the "short ballot" illustrates the cleavage between +invention and routine. The socialists oppose it not because their +intentions are bad but because on this issue their thinking is +mechanical. Instead of applying the test of human need, they apply a +verbal and logical consistency. The "short ballot" in itself is a slight +affair, but the insight behind it seems to me capable of revolutionary +development. It is one symptom of the effort to found institutions on +human nature. There are many others. We might point to the first +experiments aimed at remedying the helter-skelter of careers by +vocational guidance. Carried through successfully, this invention of +Prof. Parsons' is one whose significance in happiness can hardly be +exaggerated. When you think of the misfits among your acquaintances--the +lawyers who should be mechanics, the doctors who should be business men, +the teachers who should have been clerks, and the executives who should +be doing research in a laboratory--when you think of the talent that +would be released by proper use, the imagination takes wing at the +possibilities. What could we not make of the world if we employed its +genius! + +Whoever is working to express special energies is part of a constructive +revolution. Whoever is removing the stunting environments of our +occupations is doing the fundamentals of reform. The studies of Miss +Goldmark of industrial fatigue, recuperative power and maximum +productivity are contributions toward that distant and desirable period +when labor shall be a free and joyous activity. Every suggestion which +turns work from a drudgery to a craft is worth our deepest interest. For +until then the labor problem will never be solved. The socialist demand +for a better distribution of wealth is of great consequence, but without +a change in the very nature of labor society will not have achieved the +happiness it expects. That is why imaginative socialists have shown so +great an interest in "syndicalism." There at least in some of its forms, +we can catch sight of a desire to make all labor a self-governing craft. + +The handling of crime has been touched by the modern impetus. The +ancient, abstract and wholesale "justice" is breaking up into detailed +and carefully adapted treatment of individual offenders. What this means +for the child has become common knowledge in late years. Criminology (to +use an awkward word) is finding a human center. So is education. Everyone +knows how child study is revolutionizing the school room and the +curriculum. Why, it seems that Mme. Montessori has had the audacity to +sacrifice the sacred bench to the interests of the pupil! The traditional +school seems to be vanishing--that place in which an ill-assorted band of +youngsters was for a certain number of hours each day placed in the +vicinity of a text-book and a maiden lady. + +I mention these experiments at random. It is not the specific reforms +that I wish to emphasize but the great possibilities they foreshadow. +Whether or not we adopt certain special bills, high tariff or low tariff, +one banking system or another, this trust control or that, is a slight +gain compared to a change of attitude toward all political problems. The +reformer bound up in his special propaganda will, of course, object that +"to get something done is worth more than any amount of talk about new +ways of looking at political problems." What matters the method, he will +cry, provided the reform be good? Well, the method matters more than any +particular reform. A man who couldn't think straight might get the right +answer to one problem, but how much faith would you have in his capacity +to solve the next one? If you wanted to educate a child, would you teach +him to read one play of Shakespeare, or would you teach him to _read_? If +the world were going to remain frigidly set after next year, we might +well thank our stars if we blundered into a few decent solutions right +away. But as there is no prospect of a time when our life will be +immutably fixed, as we shall, therefore, have to go on inventing, it is +fair to say that what the world is aching for is not a special reform +embodied in a particular statute, but a way of going at all problems. The +lasting value of Darwin, for example, is not in any concrete conclusion +he reached. His importance to the world lies in the new twist he gave to +science. He lent it fruitful direction, a different impetus, and the +results are beyond his imagining. + +In that spiritual autobiography of a searching mind, "The New +Machiavelli," Wells describes his progress from a reformer of concrete +abuses to a revolutionist in method. "You see," he says, "I began in my +teens by wanting to plan and build cities and harbors for mankind; I +ended in the middle thirties by desiring only to serve and increase a +general process of thought, a process fearless, critical, real-spirited, +that would in its own time give cities, harbors, air, happiness, +everything at a scale and quality and in a light altogether beyond the +match-striking imaginations of a contemporary mind...." + +This same veering of interest may be seen in the career of another +Englishman. I refer to Mr. Graham Wallas. Back in the '80's he was +working with the Webbs, Bernard Shaw, Sidney Olivier, Annie Besant and +others in socialist propaganda. Readers of the Fabian Essays know Mr. +Wallas and appreciate the work of his group. Perhaps more than anyone +else, the Fabians are responsible for turning English socialist thought +from the verbalism of the Marxian disciples to the actualities of English +political life. Their appetite for the concrete was enormous; their +knowledge of facts overpowering, as the tomes produced by Mr. and Mrs. +Webb can testify. The socialism of the Fabians soon became a definite +legislative program which the various political parties were to be +bulldozed, cajoled and tricked into enacting. It was effective work, and +few can question the value of it. Yet many admirers have been left with a +sense of inadequacy. + +Unlike the orthodox socialists, the Fabians took an active part in +immediate politics. "We permeated the party organizations," writes Shaw, +"and pulled all the wires we could lay our hands on with our utmost +adroitness and energy.... The generalship of this movement was undertaken +chiefly by Sidney Webb, who played such bewildering conjuring tricks with +the Liberal thimbles and the Fabian peas that to this day both the +Liberals and the sectarian Socialists stand aghast at him." Few Americans +know how great has been this influence on English political history for +the last twenty years. The well-known Minority Report of the Poor Law +Commission bears the Webb signature most conspicuously. Fabianism began +to achieve a reputation for getting things done--for taking part in +"practical affairs." Bernard Shaw has found time to do no end of +campaigning and even the parochial politics of a vestryman has not seemed +too insignificant for his Fabian enthusiasm. Graham Wallas was a +candidate in five municipal elections, and has held an important office +as member of the London County Council. + +But the original Fabian enthusiasm has slackened. One might ascribe it to +a growing sense that concrete programs by themselves will not insure any +profound regeneration of society. H. G. Wells has been savage and often +unfair about the Fabian Society, but in "The New Machiavelli" he touched, +I believe, the real disillusionment. Remington's history is in a way +symbolic. Here was a successful political reformer, coming more and more +to a disturbing recognition of his helplessness, perceiving the +aimlessness and the unreality of political life, and announcing his +contempt for the "crudification" of all issues. What Remington missed was +what so many reformers are beginning to miss--an underlying philosophical +habit. + +Mr. Wallas seems to have had much the same experience. In the midst of a +bustle of activity, politics appeared to have no center to which its +thinking and doing could be referred. The truth was driven home upon him +that political science is a science of human relationship with the human +beings left out. So he writes that "the thinkers of the past, from Plato +to Bentham and Mill, had each his own view of human nature, and they made +these views the basis of their speculations on government." But to-day +"nearly all students of politics analyze institutions and avoid the +analysis of man." Whoever has read the typical book on politics by a +professor or a reformer will agree, I think, when he adds: "One feels +that many of the more systematic books on politics by American University +professors are useless, just because the writers dealt with abstract men, +formed on assumptions of which they were unaware and which they have +never tested either by experience or by study." + +An extreme example could be made of Nicholas Murray Butler, President of +Columbia University. In the space of six months he wrote an impassioned +defense of "constitutional government," beginning with the question, "Why +is it that in the United States the words politics and politician have +associations that are chiefly of evil omen," and then, to make irony +complete, proceeded at the New York State Republican Convention to do the +jobbery of Boss Barnes. What is there left but to gasp and wonder whether +the words of the intellect have anything to do with the facts of life? +What insight into reality can a man possess who is capable of discussing +politics and ignoring politicians? What kind of naivete was it that led +this educator into asking such a question? + +President Butler is, I grant, a caricature of the typical professor. Yet +what shall we say of the annual harvest of treatises on "labor problems" +which make no analysis of the mental condition of laboring men; of the +treatises on marriage and prostitution which gloss over the sexual life +of the individual? "In the other sciences which deal with human affairs," +writes Mr. Wallas, referring to pedagogy and criminology, "this division +between the study of the thing done and the study of the being who does +it is not found." + +I have in my hands a text-book of six hundred pages which is used in the +largest universities as a groundwork of political economy. This +remarkable sentence strikes the eye: "The motives to business activity +are too familiar to require analysis." But some sense that perhaps the +"economic man" is not a self-evident creature seems to have touched our +author. So we are treated to these sapient remarks: "To avoid this +criticism we will begin with a characterization of the typical business +man to be found to-day in the United States and other countries in the +same stage of industrial development. _He has four traits which show +themselves more or less clearly in all of his acts._" They are first +"self-interest," but "this does not mean that he is steeped in +selfishness ..."; secondly, "the larger self," the family, union, club, +and "in times of emergency his country"; thirdly, "love of independence," +for "his ambition is to stand on his own feet"; fourthly, "business +ethics" which "are not usually as high as the standards professed in +churches, but they are much higher than current criticisms of business +would lead one to think." Three-quarters of a page is sufficient for this +penetrating analysis of motive and is followed by the remark that "these +four characteristics of the economic man are readily explained by +reference to the evolutionary process which has brought industrial +society to its present stage of development." + +If those were the generalizations of a tired business man after a heavy +dinner and a big cigar, they would still seem rather muddled and useless. +But as the basis of an economic treatise in which "laws" are announced, +"principles" laid down, reforms criticized as "impracticable," all for +the benefit of thousands of college students, it is hardly possible to +exaggerate the folly of such an exhibition. I have taken a book written +by one eminent professor and evidently approved by others, for they use +it as a text-book. It is no queer freak. I myself was supposed to read +that book pretty nearly every week for a year. With hundreds of others I +was supposed to found my economic understanding upon it. We were actually +punished for not reading that book. It was given to us as wisdom, as +modern political economy. + +But what goes by the name to-day is a potpourri in which one can +distinguish descriptions of legal forms, charters and institutions; +comparative studies of governmental and social machinery; the history of +institutions, a few "principles" like the law of rent, some moral +admonitions, a good deal of class feeling, not a little timidity--but +almost no attempt to cut beneath these manifestations of social life to +the creative impulses which produce them. The Economic Man--that lazy +abstraction--is still paraded in the lecture room; the study of human +nature has not advanced beyond the gossip of old wives. + +Graham Wallas touched the cause of the trouble when he pointed out that +political science to-day discusses institutions and ignores the nature of +the men who make and live under them. I have heard professors reply that +it wasn't their business to discuss human nature but to record and +interpret economic and political facts. Yet if you probe those +"interpretations" there is no escaping the conclusion that they rest upon +some notion of what man is like. "The student of politics," writes Mr. +Wallas, "must, consciously or unconsciously, form a conception of human +nature, and the less conscious he is of his conception the more likely he +is to be dominated by it." For politics is an interest of men--a tool +which they fabricate and use--and no comment has much value if it tries +to get along without mankind. You might as well try to describe food by +ignoring the digestion. + +Mr. Wallas has called a halt. I think we may say that his is the +distinction of having turned the study of politics back to the humane +tradition of Plato and Machiavelli--of having made man the center of +political investigation. The very title of his book--"Human Nature in +Politics"--is significant. Now in making that statement, I am aware that +it is a sweeping one, and I do not mean to imply that Mr. Wallas is the +only modern man who has tried to think about politics psychologically. +Here in America alone we have two splendid critics, a man and a woman, +whose thought flows from an interpretation of human character. Thorstein +Veblen's brilliant descriptions penetrate deeply into our mental life, +and Jane Addams has given new hope to many of us by her capacity for +making ideals the goal of natural desire. + +Nor is it just to pass by such a suggestive thinker as Gabriel Tarde, +even though we may feel that his psychology is too simple and his +conclusions somewhat overdriven by a favorite theory. The work of Gustav +Le Bon on "crowds" has, of course, passed into current thought, but I +doubt whether anyone could say that he had even prepared a basis for a +new political psychology. His own aversion to reform, his fondness for +vast epochs and his contempt for current effort have left most of his +"psychological laws" in the region of interesting literary comment. There +are, too, any number of "social psychologies," such as those of Ross and +McDougall. But the trouble with them is that the "psychology" is weak and +uninformed, distorted by moral enthusiasms, and put out without any +particular reference to the task of statesmanship. When you come to +special problems, the literature of the subject picks up. Crime is +receiving valuable attention, education is profoundly affected, +alcoholism and sex have been handled for a good while on a psychological +basis. + +But it remained for Mr. Wallas to state the philosophy of the matter--to +say why the study of human nature must serve politics, and to point out +how. He has not produced a political psychology, but he has written the +manifesto for it. As a result, fragmentary investigations can be brought +together and applied to the work of statecraft. Merely by making these +researches self-conscious, he has made clearer their goal, given them +direction, and kindled them to practical action. How necessary this work +is can be seen in the writing of Miss Addams. Owing to keen insight and +fine sympathy her thinking has generally been on a human basis. Yet Miss +Addams is a reformer, and sympathy without an explicit philosophy may +lead to a distorted enthusiasm. Her book on prostitution seems rather the +product of her moral fervor than her human insight. Compare it with "The +Spirit of Youth" or "Newer Ideals of Peace" or "Democracy and Social +Ethics" and I think you will notice a very considerable willingness to +gloss over human need in the interests of an unanalyzed reform. To put it +bluntly, Miss Addams let her impatience get the better of her wisdom. She +had written brilliantly about sex and its "sublimation," she had +suggested notable "moral equivalents" for vice, but when she touched the +white slave traffic its horrors were so great that she also put her faith +in the policeman and the district attorney. "A New Conscience and an +Ancient Evil" is an hysterical book, just because the real philosophical +basis of Miss Addams' thinking was not deliberate enough to withstand the +shock of a poignant horror. + +It is this weakness that Mr. Wallas comes to remedy. He has described +what political science must be like, and anyone who has absorbed his +insight has an intellectual groundwork for political observation. No one, +least of all Mr. Wallas, would claim anything like finality for the +essay. These labors are not done in a day. But he has deliberately +brought the study of politics to the only focus which has any rational +interest for mankind. He has made a plea, and sketched a plan which +hundreds of investigators the world over must help to realize. If +political science could travel in the direction suggested, its criticism +would be relevant, its proposals practical. There would, for the first +time, be a concerted effort to build a civilization around mankind, to +use its talent and to satisfy its needs. There would be no more empty +taboos, no erecting of institutions upon abstract and mechanical +analogies. Politics would be like education--an effort to develop, train +and nurture men's impulses. As Montessori is building the school around +the child, so politics would build all of social life around the human +being. + +That practical issues hang upon these investigations can be shown by an +example from Mr. Wallas's book. Take the quarrel over socialism. You hear +it said that without the private ownership of capital people will lose +ambition and sink into sloth. Many men, just as well aware of present-day +evils as the socialists, are unwilling to accept the collectivist remedy. +G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc speak of the "magic of property" as +the real obstacle to socialism. Now obviously this is a question of +first-rate importance. If socialism will destroy initiative then only a +doctrinaire would desire it. But how is the question to be solved? You +cannot reason it out. Economics, as we know it to-day, is quite incapable +of answering such a problem, for it is a matter that depends upon +psychological investigation. When a professor says that socialism is +impracticable he begs the question, for that amounts to assuming that the +point at issue is already settled. If he tells you that socialism is +against human nature, we have a perfect right to ask where he proved the +possibilities of human nature. + +But note how Mr. Wallas approaches the debate: "Children quarrel +furiously at a very early age over apparently worthless things, and +collect and hide them long before they can have any clear notion of the +advantages to be derived from individual possession. Those children who +in certain charity schools are brought up entirely without personal +property, even in their clothes or pocket handkerchiefs, show every sign +of the bad effect on health and character which results from complete +inability to satisfy a strong inherited instinct.... Some economist ought +therefore to give us a treatise in which this property instinct is +carefully and quantitatively examined.... How far can it be eliminated or +modified by education? Is it satisfied by a leasehold or a life-interest, +or by such an arrangement of corporate property as is offered by a +collegiate foundation, or by the provision of a public park? Does it +require for its satisfaction material and visible things such as land or +houses, or is the holding, say, of colonial railway shares sufficient? Is +the absence of unlimited proprietary rights felt more strongly in the +case of personal chattels (such as furniture and ornaments) than in the +case of land or machinery? Does the degree and direction of the instinct +markedly differ among different individuals or races, or between the two +sexes?" + +This puts the argument upon a plane where discussion is relevant. This is +no trumped-up issue: it is asked by a politician and a socialist seeking +for a real solution. We need to know whether the "magic of property" +extends from a man's garden to Standard Oil stocks as anti-socialists +say, and, conversely, we need to know what is happening to that mass of +proletarians who own no property and cannot satisfy their instincts even +with personal chattels. + +For if ownership is a human need, we certainly cannot taboo it as the +extreme communists so dogmatically urge. "Pending ... an inquiry," writes +Mr. Wallas, "my own provisional opinion is that, like a good many +instincts of very early evolutionary origin, it can be satisfied by an +avowed pretense; just as a kitten which is fed regularly on milk can be +kept in good health if it is allowed to indulge its hunting instinct by +playing with a bobbin, and a peaceful civil servant satisfies his +instinct of combat and adventure at golf." + +Mr. Wallas takes exactly the same position as William James did when he +planned a "moral equivalent" for war. Both men illustrate the changing +focus of political thought. Both try to found statesmanship on human +need. Both see that there are good and bad satisfactions of the same +impulse. The routineer with his taboo does not see this, so he attempts +the impossible task of obliterating the impulse. He differs fundamentally +from the creative politician who devotes himself to inventing fine +expressions for human needs, who recognizes that the work of +statesmanship is in large measure the finding of good substitutes for the +bad things we want. + +This is the heart of a political revolution. When we recognize that the +focus of politics is shifting from a mechanical to a human center we +shall have reached what is, I believe, the most essential idea in modern +politics. More than any other generalization it illuminates the currents +of our national life and explains the altering tasks of statesmanship. + +The old effort was to harness mankind to abstract principles--liberty, +justice or equality--and to deduce institutions from these high-sounding +words. It did not succeed because human nature was contrary and restive. +The new effort proposes to fit creeds and institutions to the wants of +men, to satisfy their impulses as fully and beneficially as possible. + +And yet we do not begin to know our desires or the art of their +satisfaction. Mr. Wallas's book and the special literature of the subject +leave no doubt that a precise political psychology is far off indeed. The +human nature we must put at the center of our statesmanship is only +partially understood. True, Mr. Wallas works with a psychology that is +fairly well superseded. But not even the advance-guard to-day, what we +may call the Freudian school, would claim that it had brought knowledge +to a point where politics could use it in any very deep or comprehensive +way. The subject is crude and fragmentary, though we are entitled to call +it promising. + +Yet the fact had better be faced: psychology has not gone far enough, its +results are still too vague for our purposes. We know very little, and +what we know has hardly been applied to political problems. That the last +few years have witnessed a revolution in the study of mental life is +plain: the effects are felt not only in psychotherapy, but in education, +morals, religion, and no end of cultural interests. The impetus of Freud +is perhaps the greatest advance ever made towards the understanding and +control of human character. But for the complexities of politics it is +not yet ready. It will take time and endless labor for a detailed study +of social problems in the light of this growing knowledge. + +What then shall we do now? Must we continue to muddle along in the old +ruts, gazing rapturously at an impotent ideal, until the works of the +scientists are matured? + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE GOLDEN RULE AND AFTER + + +It would indeed be an intolerably pedantic performance for a nation to +sit still and wait for its scientists to report on their labors. The +notion is typical of the pitfalls in the path of any theorist who does +not correct his logic by a constant reference to the movement of life. It +is true that statecraft must make human nature its basis. It is true that +its chief task is the invention of forms and institutions which satisfy +the inner needs of mankind. And it is true that our knowledge of those +needs and the technique of their satisfaction is hazy, unorganized and +blundering. + +But to suppose that the remedy lies in waiting for monographs from the +research of the laboratory is to have lost a sense of the rhythm of +actual affairs. That is not the way things come about: we grow into a new +point of view: only afterwards, in looking back, do we see the landmarks +of our progress. Thus it is customary to say that Adam Smith dates the +change from the old mercantilist economy to the capitalistic economics of +the nineteenth century. But that is a manner of speech. The old +mercantilist policy was giving way to early industrialism: a thousand +unconscious economic and social forces were compelling the change. Adam +Smith expressed the process, named it, idealized it and made it +self-conscious. Then because men were clearer about what they were doing, +they could in a measure direct their destiny. + +That is but another way of saying that great revolutionary changes do not +spring full-armed from anybody's brow. A genius usually becomes the +luminous center of a nation's crisis,--men see better by the light of +him. His bias deflects their actions. Unquestionably the doctrine-driven +men who made the economics of the last century had much to do with the +halo which encircled the smutted head of industrialism. They put the +stamp of their genius on certain inhuman practices, and of course it has +been the part of the academic mind to imitate them ever since. The +orthodox economists are in the unenviable position of having taken their +morals from the exploiter and of having translated them into the +grandiloquent language of high public policy. They gave capitalism the +sanction of the intellect. When later, Carlyle and Ruskin battered the +economists into silence with invective and irony they were voicing the +dumb protest of the humane people of England. They helped to organize a +formless resentment by endowing it with intelligence and will. + +So it is to-day. If this nation did not show an unmistakable tendency to +put men at the center of politics instead of machinery and things; if +there were not evidence to prove that we are turning from the sterile +taboo to the creation of finer environments; if the impetus for shaping +our destiny were not present in our politics and our life, then essays +like these would be so much baying at the moon, fantastic and unworthy +pleas for some irrelevant paradise. But the gropings are there,--vastly +confused in the tangled strains of the nation's interests. Clogged by the +confusion, half-choked by stupid blockades, largely unaware of their own +purposes, it is for criticism, organized research, and artistic +expression to free and to use these creative energies. They are to be +found in the aspirations of labor, among the awakened women, in the +development of business, the diffusion of art and science, in the racial +mixtures, and many lesser interests which cluster about these greater +movements. + +The desire for a human politics is all about us. It rises to the surface +in slogans like "human rights above property rights," "the man above the +dollar." Some measure of its strength is given by the widespread +imitation these expressions have compelled: politicians who haven't the +slightest intention of putting men above the dollar, who if they had +wouldn't know how, take off their hats to the sentiment because it seems +a key to popular enthusiasm. It must be bewildering to men brought up, +let us say, in the Hanna school of politics. For here is this nation +which sixteen years ago vibrated ecstatically to that magic word +"Prosperity"; to-day statistical rhetoric about size induces little but +excessive boredom. If you wish to drive an audience out of the hall tell +it how rich America is; if you wish to stamp yourself an echo of the past +talk to us young men about the Republican Party's understanding with God +in respect to bumper crops. But talk to us about "human rights," and +though you talk rubbish, we'll listen. For our desire is bent that way, +and anything which has the flavor of this new interest will rivet our +attention. We are still uncritical. It is only a few years since we began +to center our politics upon human beings. We have no training in that +kind of thought. Our schools and colleges have helped us hardly at all. +We still talk about "humanity" as if it were some strange and mystical +creature which could not possibly be composed of the grocer, the +street-car conductor and our aunts. + +That the opinion-making people of America are more interested in human +welfare than in empire or abstract prosperity is an item that no +statesman can disregard in his thinking. To-day it is no longer necessary +to run against the grain of the deepest movements of our time. There is +an ascendant feeling among the people that all achievement should be +measured in human happiness. This feeling has not always existed. +Historians tell us that the very idea of progress in well-being is not +much older than, say, Shakespeare's plays. As a general belief it is +still more recent. The nineteenth century may perhaps be said to mark its +popularization. But as a fact of immediate politics, as a touchstone +applied quickly to all the acts of statecraft in America it belongs to +the Twentieth Century. There were any number of people who long before +1900 saw that dollars and men could clash. But their insight had not won +any general acceptance. It is only within the last few years that the +human test has ceased to be the property of a small group and become the +convention of a large majority. A study of magazines and newspapers would +confirm this rather broad generalization. It would show, I believe, how +the whole quality of our most impromptu thinking is being influenced by +human values. + +The statesman must look to this largely unorganized drift of desire. He +will find it clustering about certain big revolts--the unrest of women, +for example, or the increasing demands of industrial workers. Rightly +understood, these social currents would, I believe, lead to the central +issues of life, the vital points upon which happiness depends. They come +out of necessities. They express desire. They are power. + +Thus feminism, arising out of a crisis in sexual conditions, has +liberated energies that are themselves the motors of any reform. In +England and America voting has become the symbol of an aspiration as yet +half-conscious and undefined. What women want is surely something a great +deal deeper than the privilege of taking part in elections. They are +looking for a readjustment of their relations to the home, to work, to +children, to men, to the interests of civilized life. The vote has become +a convenient peg upon which to hang aspirations that are not at all sure +of their own meaning. In no insignificant number of cases the vote is a +cover by which revolutionary demands can be given a conventional front. +The ballot is at the utmost a beginning, as far-sighted conservatives +have guessed. Certainly the elimination of "male" from the suffrage +qualifications will not end the feminist agitation. From the angle of +statecraft the future of the movement may be said to depend upon the wise +use of this raw and scattered power. I do not pretend to know in detail +how this can be done. But I am certain that the task of leadership is to +organize aspiration in the service of the real interests of life. To-day +women want--what? They are ready to want something: that describes fairly +the condition of most suffragettes. Those who like Ellen Key and Olive +Shreiner and Mrs. Gilman give them real problems to think about are +drafting that energy into use. By real problems I mean problems of love, +work, home, children. They are the real interests of feminism because +they have produced it. + +The yearnings of to-day are the symptoms of needs, they point the course +of invention, they are the energies which animate a social program. The +most ideally conceived plan of the human mind has only a slight interest +if it does not harness these instinctive forces. That is the great lesson +which the utopias teach by their failure--that schemes, however nicely +arranged, cannot be imposed upon human beings who are interested in other +things. What ailed Don Quixote was that he and his contemporaries wanted +different things; the only ideals that count are those which express the +possible development of an existing force. Reformers must never forget +that three legs are a Quixotic ideal; two good legs a genuine one. + +In actual life, yes, in the moil and toil of propaganda, "movements," +"causes" and agitations the statesman-inventor and the political +psychologist find the raw material for their work. It is not the business +of the politician to preserve an Olympian indifference to what stupid +people call "popular whim." Being lofty about the "passing fad" and the +ephemeral outcry is all very well in the biographies of dead men, but +rank nonsense in the rulers of real ones. Oscar Wilde once remarked that +only superficial people disliked the superficial. Nothing, for example, +could on the surface be more trivial than an interest in baseball scores. +Yet during the campaign of 1912 the excitement was so great that Woodrow +Wilson said on the stump he felt like apologizing to the American people +for daring to be a presidential candidate while the Giants and the Red +Sox were playing for the championship. Baseball (not so much for those +who play it), is a colossal phenomenon in American life. Watch the crowds +in front of a bulletin board, finding a vicarious excitement and an +abstract relief from the monotony of their own lives. What a second-hand +civilization it is that grows passionate over a scoreboard with little +electric lights! What a civilization it is that has learned to enjoy its +sport without even seeing it! If ever there was a symptom that this +nation needed leisure and direct participation in games, it is that poor +scrawny substitute for joy--the baseball extra. + +It is as symptomatic as the labor union. It expresses need. And +statesmanship would find an answer. It would not let that passion and +loyalty be frittered away to drift like scum through the nation. It would +see in it the opportunity of art, play, and religion. So with what looks +very different--the "syndicalist movement." Perhaps it seems preposterous +to discuss baseball and syndicalism in the same paragraph. But that is +only because we have not accustomed ourselves to thinking of social +events as answers to human needs. The statesman would ask, Why are there +syndicalists? What are they driving at? What gift to civilization is in +the impetus behind them? They are human beings, and they want human +things. There is no reason to become terror-stricken about them. They +seem to want things badly. Then ostriches disguised as judges cannot deal +with them. Anarchism--men die for that, they undergo intolerable insults. +They are tarred and feathered and spat upon. Is it possible that +Republicans, Democrats and Socialists clip the wings more than free +spirits can allow? Is civilization perhaps too tightly organized? Have +the irreconcilables a soul audacious and less blunted than our +domesticated ones? To put it mildly, is it ever safe to ignore them +entirely in our thinking? + +We shall come, I think, to a different appraisal of agitations. Our +present method is to discuss whether the proposals are right and +feasible. We do this hastily and with prejudice. Generally we decide that +any agitation foreign to our settled habits is wrong. And we bolster up +our satisfaction by pointing to some mistake of logic or some puerility +of statement. That done, we feel the agitation is deplorable and can be +ignored unless it becomes so obstreperous that we have to put it in jail. +But a genuine statecraft would go deeper. It would know that even God has +been defended with nonsense. So it could be sympathetic to agitations. I +use the word sympathetic literally. For it would try to understand the +inner feeling which had generated what looks like a silly demand. To-day +it is as if a hungry man asked for an indigestible food, and we let him +go hungry because he was unwise. He isn't any the less hungry because he +asks for the wrong food. So with agitations. Their specific plans may be +silly, but their demands are real. The hungers and lusts of mankind have +produced some stupendous follies, but the desires themselves are no less +real and insistent. + +The important thing about a social movement is not its stated platform +but the source from which it flows. The task of politics is to understand +those deeper demands and to find civilized satisfactions for them. The +meaning of this is that the statesman must be more than the leader of a +party. Thus the socialist statesman is not complete if he is a good +socialist. Only the delusion that his truth is the whole truth, his party +the human race, and his program a panacea, will produce that singleness +of vision. + +The moment a man takes office he has no right to be the representative of +one group alone. He has assumed the burden of harmonizing particular +agitations with the general welfare. That is why great agitators should +not accept office. Men like Debs understand that. Their business is to +make social demands so concrete and pressing that statesmen are forced to +deal with them. Agitators who accept government positions are a +disappointment to their followers. They can no longer be severely +partisan. They have to look at affairs nationally. Now the agitator and +the statesman are both needed. But they have different functions, and it +is unjust to damn one because he hasn't the virtues of the other. + +The statesman to-day needs a large equipment. The man who comes forward +to shape a country's policy has truly no end of things to consider. He +must be aware of the condition of the people: no statesman must fall into +the sincere but thoroughly upper class blunder that President Taft +committed when he advised a three months' vacation. Realizing how men and +women feel at all levels and at different places, he must speak their +discontent and project their hopes. Through this he will get power. +Standing upon the prestige which that gives he must guide and purify the +social demands he finds at work. He is the translator of agitations. For +this task he must be keenly sensitive to public opinion and capable of +understanding the dynamics of it. Then, in order to fuse it into a +civilized achievement, he will require much expert knowledge. Yet he need +not be a specialist himself, if only he is expert in choosing experts. It +is better indeed that the statesman should have a lay, and not a +professional view. For the bogs of technical stupidity and empty +formalism are always near and always dangerous. The real political genius +stands between the actual life of men, their wishes and their needs, and +all the windings of official caste and professional snobbery. It is his +supreme business to see that the servants of life stay in their +place--that government, industry, "causes," science, all the creatures of +man do not succeed in their perpetual effort to become the masters. + +I have Roosevelt in mind. He haunts political thinking. And indeed, why +shouldn't he? What reality could there be in comments upon American +politics which ignored the colossal phenomenon of Roosevelt? If he is +wholly evil, as many say he is, then the American democracy is +preponderantly evil. For in the first years of the Twentieth Century, +Roosevelt spoke for this nation, as few presidents have spoken in our +history. And that he has spoken well, who in the perspective of time will +deny? Sensitive to the original forces of public opinion, no man has had +the same power of rounding up the laggards. Government under him was a +throbbing human purpose. He succeeded, where Taft failed, in preventing +that drought of invention which officialism brings. Many people say he +has tried to be all things to all men--that his speeches are an attempt +to corral all sorts of votes. That is a left-handed way of stating a +truth. A more generous interpretation would be to say that he had tried +to be inclusive, to attach a hundred sectional agitations to a national +program. Crude: of course he was crude; he had a hemisphere for his +canvas. Inconsistent: yes, he tried to be the leader of factions at war +with one another. A late convert: he is a statesman and not an +agitator--his business was to meet demands when they had grown to +national proportions. No end of possibilities have slipped through the +large meshes of his net. He has said some silly things. He has not been +subtle, and he has been far from perfect. But his success should be +judged by the size of his task, by the fierceness of the opposition, by +the intellectual qualities of the nation he represented. When we remember +that he was trained in the Republican politics of Hanna and Platt, that +he was the first President who shared a new social vision, then I believe +we need offer no apologies for making Mr. Roosevelt stand as the working +model for a possible American statesman at the beginning of the Twentieth +Century. + +Critics have often suggested that Roosevelt stole Bryan's clothes. That +is perhaps true, and it suggests a comparison which illuminates both men. +It would not be unfair to say that it is always the function of the +Roosevelts to take from the Bryans. But it is a little silly for an +agitator to cry thief when the success of his agitation has led to the +adoption of his ideas. It is like the chagrin of the socialists because +the National Progressive Party had "stolen twenty-three planks," and it +makes a person wonder whether some agitators haven't an overdeveloped +sense of private property. + +I do not see the statesman in Bryan. He has been something of a voice +crying in the wilderness, but a voice that did not understand its own +message. Many people talk of him as a prophet. There is a great deal of +literal truth in that remark, for it has been the peculiar work of Bryan +to express in politics some of that emotion which has made America the +home of new religions. What we know as the scientific habit of mind is +entirely lacking in his intellectual equipment. There is a vein of +mysticism in American life, and Mr. Bryan is its uncritical prophet. His +insights are those of the gifted evangelist, often profound and always +narrow. It is absurd to debate his sincerity. Mr. Bryan talks with the +intoxication of the man who has had a revelation: to skeptics that always +seems theatrical. But far from being the scheming hypocrite his enemies +say he is, Mr. Bryan is too simple for the task of statesmanship. No +bracing critical atmosphere plays about his mind: there are no cleansing +doubts and fruitful alternatives. The work of Bryan has been to express a +certain feeling of unrest--to embody it in the traditional language of +prophecy. But it is a shrewd turn of the American people that has kept +him out of office. I say this not in disrespect of his qualities, but in +definition of them. Bryan does not happen to have the naturalistic +outlook, the complete humanity, or the deliberative habit which modern +statecraft requires. He is the voice of a confused emotion. + +Woodrow Wilson has a talent which is Bryan's chief defect--the scientific +habit of holding facts in solution. His mind is lucid and flexible, and +he has the faculty of taking advice quickly, of stating something he has +borrowed with more ease and subtlety than the specialist from whom he got +it. Woodrow Wilson's is an elegant and highly refined intellect, nicely +balanced and capable of fine adjustment. An urbane civilization produced +it, leisure has given it spaciousness, ease has made it generous. A mind +without tension, its roots are not in the somewhat barbarous +under-currents of the nation. Woodrow Wilson understands easily, but he +does not incarnate: he has never been a part of the protest he speaks. +You think of him as a good counsellor, as an excellent presiding officer. +Whether his imagination is fibrous enough to catch the inwardness of the +mutterings of our age is something experience alone can show. Wilson has +class feeling in the least offensive sense of that term: he likes a world +of gentlemen. Occasionally he has exhibited a rather amateurish effort to +be grimy and shirt-sleeved. But without much success: his contact with +American life is not direct, and so he is capable of purely theoretical +affirmations. Like all essentially contemplative men, the world has to be +reflected in the medium of his intellect before he can grapple with it. + +Yet Wilson belongs among the statesmen, and it is fine that he should be +in public life. The weakness I have suggested is one that all statesmen +share in some degree: an inability to interpret adequately the world they +govern. This is a difficulty which is common to conservative and radical, +and if I have used three living men to illustrate the problem it is only +because they seem to illuminate it. They have faced the task and we can +take their measurement. It is no part of my purpose to make any judgment +as to the value of particular policies they have advocated. I am +attempting to suggest some of the essentials of a statesman's equipment +for the work of a humanly centered politics. Roosevelt has seemed to me +the most effective, the most nearly complete; Bryan I have ventured to +class with the men who though important to politics should never hold +high executive office; Wilson, less complete than Roosevelt, is worthy of +our deepest interest because his judgment is subtle where Roosevelt's is +crude. He is a foretaste of a more advanced statesmanship. + +Because he is self-conscious, Wilson has been able to see the problem +that any finely adapted statecraft must meet. It is a problem that would +hardly occur to an old-fashioned politician: "Though he (the statesman) +cannot himself keep the life of the nation as a whole in his mind, he can +at least make sure that he is taking counsel with those who know...." It +is not important that Wilson in stating the difficulty should put it as +if he had in a measure solved it. He hasn't, because taking counsel is a +means to understanding the nation as a whole, and that understanding +remains almost as arduous and requires just as fibrous an imagination, if +it is gleaned from advisers. + +To think of the whole nation: surely the task of statesmanship is more +difficult to-day than ever before in history. In the face of a clotted +intricacy in the subject-matter of politics, improvements in knowledge +seem meager indeed. The distance between what we know and what we need to +know appears to be greater than ever. Plato and Aristotle thought in +terms of ten thousand homogeneous villagers; we have to think in terms of +a hundred million people of all races and all traditions, crossbred and +inbred, subject to climates they have never lived in before, plumped down +on a continent in the midst of a strange civilization. We have to deal +with all grades of life from the frontier to the metropolis, with men who +differ in sense of fact, in ideal, in the very groundwork of morals. And +we have to take into account not the simple opposition of two classes, +but the hostility of many,--the farmers and the factory workers and all +the castes within their ranks, the small merchants, and the feudal +organization of business. Ours is a problem in which deception has become +organized and strong; where truth is poisoned at its source; one in which +the skill of the shrewdest brains is devoted to misleading a bewildered +people. Nor can we keep to the problem within our borders. Whether we +wish it or not we are involved in the world's problems, and all the winds +of heaven blow through our land. + + * * * * * + +It is a great question whether our intellects can grasp the subject. Are +we perhaps like a child whose hand is too small to span an octave on the +piano? Not only are the facts inhumanly complicated, but the natural +ideals of people are so varied and contradictory that action halts in +despair. We are putting a tremendous strain upon the mind, and the +results are all about us: everyone has known the neutral thinkers who +stand forever undecided before the complications of life, who have, as it +were, caught a glimpse of the possibilities of knowledge. The sight has +paralyzed them. Unless they can act with certainty, they dare not act at +all. + +That is merely one of the temptations of theory. In the real world, +action and thought are so closely related that one cannot wait upon the +other. We cannot wait in politics for any completed theoretical +discussion of its method: it is a monstrous demand. There is no pausing +until political psychology is more certain. We have to act on what we +believe, on half-knowledge, illusion and error. Experience itself will +reveal our mistakes; research and criticism may convert them into wisdom. +But act we must, and act as if we knew the nature of man and proposed to +satisfy his needs. + +In other words, we must put man at the center of politics, even though we +are densely ignorant both of man and of politics. This has always been +the method of great political thinkers from Plato to Bentham. But one +difference we in this age must note: they made their political man a +dogma--we must leave him an hypothesis. That is to say that our task is +to temper speculation with scientific humility. + +A paradox there is here, but a paradox of language, and not of fact. Men +made bridges before there was a science of bridge-building; they cured +disease before they knew medicine. Art came before aesthetics, and +righteousness before ethics. Conduct and theory react upon each other. +Hypothesis is confirmed and modified by action, and action is guided by +hypothesis. If it is a paradox to ask for a human politics before we +understand humanity or politics, it is what Mr. Chesterton describes as +one of those paradoxes that sit beside the wells of truth. + + * * * * * + +We make our picture of man, knowing that, though it is crude and unjust, +we have to work with it. If we are wise we shall become experimental +towards life: then every mistake will contribute towards knowledge. Let +the exploration of human need and desire become a deliberate purpose of +statecraft, and there is no present measure of its possibilities. + +In this work there are many guides. A vague common tradition is in the +air about us--it expresses itself in journalism, in cheap novels, in the +uncritical theater. Every merchant has his stock of assumptions about the +mental habits of his customers and competitors; the prostitute hers; the +newspaperman his; P. T. Barnum had a few; the vaudeville stage has a +number. We test these notions by their results, and even "practical +people" find that there is more variety in human nature than they had +supposed. + +We forge gradually our greatest instrument for understanding the +world--introspection. We discover that humanity may resemble us very +considerably--that the best way of knowing the inwardness of our +neighbors is to know ourselves. For after all, the only experience we +really understand is our own. And that, in the least of us, is so rich +that no one has yet exhausted its possibilities. It has been said that +every genuine character an artist produces is one of the characters he +might have been. By re-creating our own suppressed possibilities we +multiply the number of lives that we can really know. That as I +understand it is the psychology of the Golden Rule. For note that Jesus +did not set up some external fetich: he did not say, make your neighbor +righteous, or chaste, or respectable. He said do as you would be done by. +Assume that you and he are alike, and you can found morals on humanity. + +But experience has enlarged our knowledge of differences. We realize now +that our neighbor is not always like ourselves. Knowing how unjust other +people's inferences are when they concern us, we have begun to guess that +ours may be unjust to them. Any uniformity of conduct becomes at once an +impossible ideal, and the willingness to live and let live assumes high +place among the virtues. A puzzled wisdom remarks that "it takes all +sorts of people to make a world," and half-protestingly men accept +Bernard Shaw's amendment, "Do not do unto others as you would that they +should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same." + +We learn perhaps that there is no contradiction in speaking of "human +nature" while admitting that men are unique. For all deepening of our +knowledge gives a greater sense of common likeness and individual +variation. It is folly to ignore either insight. But it is done +constantly, with no end of confusion as a result. Some men have got +themselves into a state where the only view that interests them is the +common humanity of us all. Their world is not populated by men and women, +but by a Unity that is Permanent. You might as well refuse to see any +differences between steam, water and ice because they have common +elements. And I have seen some of these people trying to skate on steam. +Their brothers, blind in the other eye, go about the world so sure that +each person is entirely unique, that society becomes like a row of +packing cases, each painted on the inside, and each containing one ego +and its own. + +Art enlarges experience by admitting us to the inner life of others. That +is not the only use of art, for its function is surely greater and more +ultimate than to furnish us with a better knowledge of human nature. Nor +is that its only use even to statecraft. I suggested earlier that art +enters politics as a "moral equivalent" for evil, a medium by which +barbarous lusts find civilized expression. It is, too, an ideal for +labor. But my purpose here is not to attempt any adequate description of +the services of art. It is enough to note that literature in particular +elaborates our insight into human life, and, therefore, enables us to +center our institutions more truly. + +Ibsen discovers a soul in Nora: the discovery is absorbed into the common +knowledge of the age. Other Noras discover their own souls; the Helmers +all about us begin to see the person in the doll. Plays and novels have +indeed an overwhelming political importance, as the "moderns" have +maintained. But it lies not in the preaching of a doctrine or the +insistence on some particular change in conduct. That is a shallow and +wasteful use of the resources of art. For art can open up the springs +from which conduct flows. Its genuine influence is on what Wells calls +the "hinterland," in a quickening of the sense of life. + +Art can really penetrate where most of us can only observe. "I look and I +think I see," writes Bergson, "I listen and I think I hear, I examine +myself and I think I am reading the very depths of my heart.... (But) my +senses and my consciousness ... give me no more than a practical +simplification of reality ... in short, we do not see the actual things +themselves; in most cases we confine ourselves to reading the labels +affixed to them." Who has not known this in thinking of politics? We talk +of poverty and forget poor people; we make rules for vagrancy--we forget +the vagrant. Some of our best-intentioned political schemes, like reform +colonies and scientific jails, turn out to be inhuman tyrannies just +because our imagination does not penetrate the sociological label. "We +move amidst generalities and symbols ... we live in a zone midway between +things and ourselves, external to things, external also to ourselves." +This is what works of art help to correct: "Behind the commonplace, +conventional expression that both reveals and conceals an individual +mental state, it is the emotion, the original mood, to which they attain +in its undefiled essence." + +This directness of vision fertilizes thought. Without a strong artistic +tradition, the life and so the politics of a nation sink into a barren +routine. A country populated by pure logicians and mathematical +scientists would, I believe, produce few inventions. For creation, even +of scientific truth, is no automatic product of logical thought or +scientific method, and it has been well said that the greatest +discoveries in science are brilliant guesses on insufficient evidence. A +nation must, so to speak, live close to its own life, be intimate and +sympathetic with natural events. That is what gives understanding, and +justifies the observation that the intuitions of scientific discovery and +the artist's perceptions are closely related. It is perhaps not +altogether without significance for us that primitive science and poetry +were indistinguishable. Nor is it strange that latter-day research should +confirm so many sayings of the poets. In all great ages art and science +have enriched each other. It is only eccentric poets and narrow +specialists who lock the doors. The human spirit doesn't grow in +sections. + +I shall not press the point for it would lead us far afield. It is enough +that we remember the close alliance of art, science and politics in +Athens, in Florence and Venice at their zenith. We in America have +divorced them completely: both art and politics exist in a condition of +unnatural celibacy. Is this not a contributing factor to the futility and +opacity of our political thinking? We have handed over the government of +a nation of people to a set of lawyers, to a class of men who deal in the +most verbal and unreal of all human attainments. + +A lively artistic tradition is essential to the humanizing of politics. +It is the soil in which invention flourishes and the organized knowledge +of science attains its greatest reality. Let me illustrate from another +field of interests. The religious investigations of William James were a +study, not of ecclesiastical institutions or the history of creeds. They +were concerned with religious experience, of which churches and rituals +are nothing but the external satisfaction. As Graham Wallas is +endeavoring to make human nature the center of politics, so James made it +the center of religions. It was a work of genius, yet no one would claim +that it is a mature psychology of the "Varieties of Religious +Experience." It is rather a survey and a description, done with the eye +of an artist and the method of a scientist. We know from it more of what +religious feeling is like, even though we remain ignorant of its sources. +And this intimacy humanizes religious controversy and brings +ecclesiasticism back to men. + +Like most of James's psychology, it opens up investigation instead of +concluding it. In the light even of our present knowledge we can see how +primitive his treatment was. But James's services cannot be +overestimated: if he did not lay even the foundations of a science, he +did lay some of the foundations for research. It was an immense +illumination and a warming of interest. It threw open the gates to the +whole landscape of possibilities. It was a ventilation of thought. +Something similar will have to be done for political psychology. We know +how far off is the profound and precise knowledge we desire. But we know +too that we have a right to hope for an increasing acquaintance with the +varieties of political experience. It would, of course, be drawn from +biography, from the human aspect of history and daily observation. We +should begin to know what it is that we ought to know. Such a work would +be stimulating to politician and psychologist. The statesman's +imagination would be guided and organized; it would give him a +starting-point for his own understanding of human beings in politics. To +the scientists it would be a challenge--to bring these facts under the +light of their researches, to extend these researches to the borders of +those facts. + +The statesman has another way of strengthening his grip upon the +complexity of life. Statistics help. This method is neither so conclusive +as the devotees say, nor so bad as the people who are awed by it would +like to believe. Voting, as Gabriel Tarde points out, is our most +conspicuous use of statistics. Mystical democrats believe that an +election expresses the will of the people, and that that will is wise. +Mystical democrats are rare. Looked at closely an election shows the +quantitative division of the people on several alternatives. That choice +is not necessarily wise, but it is wise to heed that choice. For it is a +rough estimate of an important part of the community's sentiment, and no +statecraft can succeed that violates it. It is often immensely suggestive +of what a large number of people are in the future going to wish. +Democracy, because it registers popular feeling, is at least trying to +build truly, and is for that reason an enlightened form of government. So +we who are democrats need not believe that the people are necessarily +right in their choice: some of us are always in the minority, and not a +little proud of the distinction. Voting does not extract wisdom from +multitudes: its real value is to furnish wisdom about multitudes. Our +faith in democracy has this very solid foundation: that no leader's +wisdom can be applied unless the democracy comes to approve of it. To +govern a democracy you have to educate it: that contact with great masses +of men reciprocates by educating the leader. "The consent of the +governed" is more than a safeguard against ignorant tyrants: it is an +insurance against benevolent despots as well. In a rough way and with +many exceptions, democracy compels law to approximate human need. It is a +little difficult to see this when you live right in the midst of one. But +in perspective there can be little question that of all governments +democracy is the most relevant. Only humane laws can be successfully +enforced; and they are the only ones really worth enforcing. Voting is a +formal method of registering consent. + +But all statistical devices are open to abuse and require constant +correction. Bribery, false counting, disfranchisement are the cruder +deceptions; they correspond to those enrolment statistics of a large +university which are artificially fed by counting the same student +several times if his courses happen to span two or three of the +departments. Just as deceptive as plain fraud is the deceptive ballot. We +all know how when the political tricksters were compelled to frame a +direct primary law in New York they fixed the ballot so that it botched +the election. Corporations have been known to do just that to their +reports. Did not E. H. Harriman say of a well-known statistician that he +could make an annual report tell any story you pleased? Still subtler is +the seven-foot ballot of stupid, good intentions--the hyperdemocratic +ballot in which you are asked to vote for the State Printer, and succeed +only in voting under the party emblem. + +Statistics then is no automatic device for measuring facts. You and I are +forever at the mercy of the census-taker and the census-maker. That +impertinent fellow who goes from house to house is one of the real +masters of the statistical situation. The other is the man who organizes +the results. For all the conclusions in the end rest upon their accuracy, +honesty, energy and insight. Of course, in an obvious census like that of +the number of people personal bias counts for so little that it is lost +in the grand total. But the moment you begin inquiries into subjects +which people prefer to conceal, the weakness of statistics becomes +obvious. All figures which touch upon sexual subjects are nothing but the +roughest guesses. No one would take a census of prostitution, +illegitimacy, adultery, or venereal disease for a statement of reliable +facts. There are religious statistics, but who that has traveled among +men would regard the number of professing Christians as any index of the +strength of Christianity, or the church attendance as a measure of +devotion? In the supremely important subject of literacy, what +classification yet devised can weigh the culture of masses of people? We +say that such a percentage of the population cannot read or write. But +the test of reading and writing is crude and clumsy. It is often +administered by men who are themselves half-educated, and it is shot +through with racial and class prejudice. + +The statistical method is of use only to those who have found it out. +This is achieved principally by absorbing into your thinking a lively +doubt about all classifications and general terms, for they are the basis +of statistical measurement. That done you are fairly proof against +seduction. No better popular statement of this is to be found than H. G. +Wells' little essay: "Skepticism of the Instrument." Wells has, of +course, made no new discovery. The history of philosophy is crowded with +quarrels as to how seriously we ought to take our classifications: a +large part of the battle about Nominalism turns on this, the Empirical +and Rational traditions divide on it; in our day the attacks of James, +Bergson, and the "anti-intellectualists" are largely a continuation of +this old struggle. Wells takes his stand very definitely with those who +regard classification "as serviceable for the practical purposes of life" +but nevertheless "a departure from the objective truth of things." + +"Take the word chair," he writes. "When one says chair, one thinks +vaguely of an average chair. But collect individual instances, think of +armchairs and reading-chairs, and dining-room chairs and kitchen chairs, +chairs that pass into benches, chairs that cross the boundary and become +settees, dentists' chairs, thrones, opera stalls, seats of all sorts, +those miraculous fungoid growths that cumber the floor of the Arts and +Crafts Exhibition, and you will perceive what a lax bundle in fact is +this simple straightforward term. In co-operation with an intelligent +joiner I would undertake to defeat any definition of chair or +chairishness that you gave me." Think then of the glib way in which we +speak of "the unemployed," "the unfit," "the criminal," "the +unemployable," and how easily we forget that behind these general terms +are unique individuals with personal histories and varying needs. + +Even the most refined statistics are nothing but an abstraction. But if +that truth is held clearly before the mind, the polygons and curves of +the statisticians can be used as a skeleton to which the imagination and +our general sense of life give some flesh and blood reality. Human +statistics are illuminating to those who know humanity. I would not trust +a hermit's inferences about the statistics of anything. + +It is then no simple formula which answers our question. The problem of a +human politics is not solved by a catch phrase. Criticism, of which these +essays are a piece, can give the direction we must travel. But for the +rest there is no smooth road built, no swift and sure conveyance at the +door. We set out as if we knew; we act on the notions of man that we +possess. Literature refines, science deepens, various devices extend it. +Those who act on the knowledge at hand are the men of affairs. And all +the while, research studies their results, artists express subtler +perceptions, critics refine and adapt the general culture of the times. +There is no other way but through this vast collaboration. + +There is no short cut to civilization. We say that the truth will make us +free. Yes, but that truth is a thousand truths which grow and change. Nor +do I see a final state of blessedness. The world's end will surely find +us still engaged in answering riddles. This changing focus in politics is +a tendency at work all through our lives. There are many experiments. But +the effort is half-conscious; only here and there does it rise to a +deliberate purpose. To make it an avowed ideal--a thing of will and +intelligence--is to hasten its coming, to illumine its blunders, and, by +giving it self-criticism, to convert mistakes into wisdom. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +WELL MEANING BUT UNMEANING: THE CHICAGO VICE REPORT + + +In casting about for a concrete example to illustrate some of the points +under discussion I hesitated a long time before the wealth of material. +No age has produced such a multitude of elaborate studies, and any +selection was, of course, a limiting one. The Minority Report of the +English Poor Law Commission has striking merits and defects, but for our +purposes it inheres too deeply in British conditions. American tariff and +trust investigations are massive enough in all conscience, but they are +so partisan in their origin and so pathetically unattached to any +recognized ideal of public policy that it seemed better to look +elsewhere. Conservation had the virtue of arising out of a provident +statesmanship, but its problems were largely technical. + +The real choice narrowed itself finally to the Pittsburgh Survey and the +Chicago Vice Report. Had I been looking for an example of the finest +expert inquiry, there would have been little question that the vivid and +intensive study of Pittsburgh's industrialism was the example to use. But +I was looking for something more representative, and, therefore, more +revealing. I did not want a detached study of some specially selected +cross-section of what is after all not the typical economic life of +America. The case demanded was one in which you could see representative +American citizens trying to handle a problem which had touched their +imaginations. + +Vice is such a problem. You can always get a hearing about it; there is +no end of interest in the question. Rare indeed is that community which +has not been "Lexowed," in which a district attorney or a minister has +not led a crusade. Muckraking began with the exposure of vice; men like +Heney, Lindsey, Folk founded their reputations on the fight against it. +It would be interesting to know how much of the social conscience of our +time had as its first insight the prostitute on the city pavement. + +We do not have to force an interest, as we do about the trusts, or even +about the poor. For this problem lies close indeed to the dynamics of our +own natures. Research is stimulated, actively aroused, and a passionate +zeal suffuses what is perhaps the most spontaneous reform enthusiasm of +our time. Looked at externally it is a curious focusing of attention. Nor +is it explained by words like "chivalry," "conscience," "social +compassion." Magazines that will condone a thousand cruelties to women +gladly publish series of articles on the girl who goes wrong; merchants +who sweat and rack their women employees serve gallantly on these +commissions. These men are not conscious hypocrites. Perhaps like the +rest of us they are impelled by forces they are not eager to examine. I +do not press the point. It belongs to the analyst of motive. + +We need only note the vast interest in the subject--that it extends +across class lines, and expresses itself as an immense good-will. Perhaps +a largely unconscious absorption in a subject is itself a sign of great +importance. Surely vice has a thousand implications that touch all of us +directly. It is closely related to most of the interests of +life--ramifying into industry, into the family, health, play, art, +religion. The miseries it entails are genuine miseries--not points of +etiquette or infringements of convention. Vice issues in pain. The world +suffers for it. To attack it is to attack as far-reaching and real a +problem as any that we human beings face. + +The Chicago Commission had no simple, easily measured problem before it. +At the very outset the report confesses that an accurate count of the +number of prostitutes in Chicago could not be reached. The police lists +are obviously incomplete and perhaps corrupt. The whole amorphous field +of clandestine vice will, of course, defeat any census. But even public +prostitution is so varied that nobody can do better than estimate it +roughly. This point is worth keeping in mind, for it lights up the +remedies proposed. What the Commission advocates is the constant +repression and the ultimate annihilation of a mode of life which refuses +discovery and measurement. + +The report estimates that there are five thousand women in Chicago who +devote their whole time to the traffic; that the annual profits in that +one city alone are between fifteen and sixteen million dollars a year. +These figures are admittedly low for they leave out all consideration of +occasional, or seasonal, or hidden prostitution. It is only the nucleus +that can be guessed at; the fringe which shades out into various degrees +of respectability remains entirely unmeasured. Yet these suburbs of the +Tenderloin must always be kept in mind; their population is shifting and +very elastic; it includes the unsuspected; and I am inclined to believe +that it is the natural refuge of the "suppressed" prostitute. Moreover it +defies control. + +The 1012 women recognized on the police lists are of course the most +easily studied. From them we can gather some hint of the enormous +bewildering demand that prostitution answers. The Commission informs us +that this small group alone receives over fifteen thousand visits a +day--five million and a half in the year. Yet these 1012 women are only +about one-fifth of the professional prostitutes in Chicago. If the +average continues, then the figures mount to something over 27,000,000. +The five thousand professionals do not begin to represent the whole +illicit traffic of a city like Chicago. Clandestine and occasional vice +is beyond all measurement. + +The figures I have given are taken from the report. They are said to be +conservative. For the purposes of this discussion we could well lower the +27,000,000 by half. All I am concerned about is in arriving at a sense of +the enormity of the impulse behind the "social evil." For it is this that +the Commission proposes to repress, and ultimately to annihilate. + +Lust has a thousand avenues. The brothel, the flat, the assignation +house, the tenement, saloons, dance halls, steamers, ice-cream parlors, +Turkish baths, massage parlors, street-walking--the thing has woven +itself into the texture of city life. Like the hydra, it grows new heads, +everywhere. It draws into its service the pleasures of the city. +Entangled with the love of gaiety, organized as commerce, it is literally +impossible to follow the myriad expressions it assumes. + +The Commission gives a very fair picture of these manifestations. A mass +of material is offered which does in a way show where and how and to what +extent lust finds its illicit expression. Deeper than this the report +does not go. The human impulses which create these social conditions, the +human needs to which they are a sad and degraded answer--this human +center of the problem the commission passes by with a platitude. + +"So long as there is lust in the hearts of men," we are told, "it will +seek out some method of expression. Until the hearts of men are changed +we can hope for no absolute annihilation of the Social Evil." But at the +head of the report in black-faced type we read: + +"Constant and persistent repression of prostitution the immediate method; +absolute annihilation the ultimate ideal." + +I am not trying to catch the Commissioners in a verbal inconsistency. The +inconsistency is real, out of a deep-seated confusion of mind. Lust will +seek an expression, they say, until "the hearts of men are changed." All +particular expressions are evil and must be constantly repressed. Yet +though you repress one form of lust, it will seek some other. Now, says +the Commission, in order to change the hearts of men, religion and +education must step in. It is their business to eradicate an impulse +which is constantly changing form by being "suppressed." + +There is only one meaning in this: the Commission realized vaguely that +repression is not even the first step to a cure. For reasons worth +analyzing later, these representative American citizens desired both the +immediate taboo and an ultimate annihilation of vice. So they fell into +the confusion of making immediate and detailed proposals that have +nothing to do with the attainment of their ideal. + +What the commission saw and described were the particular forms which a +great human impulse had assumed at a specific date in a certain city. The +dynamic force which created these conditions, which will continue to +create them--lust--they refer to in a few pious sentences. Their +thinking, in short, is perfectly static and literally superficial. In +outlining a ripple they have forgotten the tides. + +Had they faced the human sources of their problem, had they tried to +think of the social evil as an answer to a human need, their researches +would have been different, their remedies fruitful. Suppose they had kept +in mind their own statement: "so long as there is lust in the hearts of +men it will seek out some method of expression." Had they held fast to +that, it would have ceased to be a platitude and have become a fertile +idea. For a platitude is generally inert wisdom. + +In the sentence I quote the Commissioners had an idea which might have +animated all their labors. But they left it in limbo, they reverenced it, +and they passed by. Perhaps we can raise it again and follow the hints it +unfolds. + +If lust will seek an expression, are all expressions of it necessarily +evil? That the kind of expression which the Commission describes is evil +no one will deny. But is it the only possible expression? + +If it is, then the taboo enforced by a Morals Police is, perhaps, as good +a way as any of gaining a fictitious sense of activity. But the ideal of +"annihilation" becomes an irrelevant and meaningless phrase. If lust is +deeply rooted in men and its only expression is evil, I for one should +recommend a faith in the millennium. You can put this Paradise at the +beginning of the world or the end of it. Practical difference there is +none. + +No one can read the report without coming to a definite conviction that +the Commission regards lust itself as inherently evil. The members +assumed without criticism the traditional dogma of Christianity that sex +in any manifestation outside of marriage is sinful. But practical sense +told them that sex cannot be confined within marriage. It will find +expression--"some method of expression" they say. What never occurred to +them was that it might find a good, a positively beneficent method. The +utterly uncriticised assumption that all expressions not legalized are +sinful shut them off from any constructive answer to their problem. +Seeing prostitution or something equally bad as the only way sex can find +an expression they really set before religion and education the +impossible task of removing lust "from the hearts of men." So when their +report puts at its head that absolute annihilation of prostitution is the +ultimate ideal, we may well translate it into the real intent of the +Commission. What is to be absolutely annihilated is not alone +prostitution, not alone all the methods of expression which lust seeks +out, but lust itself. + +That this is what the Commission had in mind is supported by plenty of +"internal evidence." For example: one of the most curious recommendations +made is about divorce--"The Commission condemns the ease with which +divorces may be obtained in certain States, and recommends a stringent, +uniform divorce law for all States." + +What did the Commission have in mind? I transcribe the paragraph which +deals with divorce: "The Vice Commission, after exhaustive consideration +of the vice question, records itself of the opinion that divorce to a +large extent is a contributory factor to sexual vice. No study of this +blight upon the social and moral life of the country would be +comprehensive without consideration of the causes which lead to the +application for divorce. These are too numerous to mention at length in +such a report as this, but the Commission does wish to emphasize the +great need of more safeguards against the marrying of persons physically, +mentally and morally unfit to take up the responsibilities of family +life, including the bearing of children." + +Now to be sure that paragraph leaves much to be desired so far as +clearness goes. But I think the meaning can be extracted. Divorce is a +contributory factor to sexual vice. One way presumably is that divorced +women often become prostitutes. That is an evil contribution, +unquestionably. The second sentence says that no study of the social evil +is complete which leaves out the _causes_ of divorce. One of those causes +is, I suppose, adultery with a prostitute. This evil is totally different +from the first: in one case divorce contributes to prostitution, in the +other, prostitution leads to divorce. The third sentence urges greater +safeguards against undesirable marriages. This prudence would obviously +reduce the need of divorce. + +How does the recommendation of a stringent and uniform law fit in with +these three statements? A strict divorce law might be like New York's: it +would recognize few grounds for a decree. One of those grounds, perhaps +the chief one, would be adultery. I say this unhesitatingly for in +another place the Commission informs us that marriage has in it "the +elements of vested rights." + +A strict divorce law would, of course, diminish the number of "divorced +women," and perhaps keep them out of prostitution. It does fit the first +statement--in a helpless sort of way. But where does the difficulty of +divorce affect the causes of it? If you bind a man tightly to a woman he +does not love, and, possibly prevent him from marrying one he does love, +how do you add to his virtue? And if the only way he can free himself is +by adultery, does not your stringent divorce law put a premium upon vice? +The third sentence would make it difficult for the unfit to marry. Better +marriages would among other blessings require fewer divorces. But what of +those who are forbidden to marry? They are unprovided for. And yet who +more than they are likely to find desire uncontrollable and seek some +other "method of expression"? With marriage prohibited and prostitution +tabooed, the Commission has a choice between sterilization and--let us +say--other methods of expression. + +Make marriage difficult, divorce stringent, prostitution impossible--is +there any doubt that the leading idea is to confine the sex impulse +within the marriage of healthy, intelligent, "moral," and monogamous +couples? For all the other seekings of that impulse what has the +Commission to offer? Nothing. That can be asserted flatly. The Commission +hopes to wipe out prostitution. But it never hints that the success of +its plan means vast alterations in our social life. The members give the +impression that they think of prostitution as something that can be +subtracted from our civilization without changing the essential character +of its institutions. Yet who that has read the report itself and put +himself into any imaginative understanding of conditions can escape +seeing that prostitution to-day is organic to our industrial life, our +marriage sanctions, and our social customs? Low wages, fatigue, and the +wretched monotony of the factory--these must go before prostitution can +go. And behind these stand the facts of woman's entrance into +industry--facts that have one source at least in the general poverty of +the family. And that poverty is deeply bound up with the economic system +under which we live. In the man's problem, the growing impossibility of +early marriages is directly related to the business situation. Nor can we +speak of the degradation of religion and the arts, of amusement, of the +general morale of the people without referring that degradation to +industrial conditions. + +You cannot look at civilization as a row of institutions each external to +the other. They interpenetrate and a change in one affects all the +others. To abolish prostitution would involve a radical alteration of +society. Vice in our cities is a form of the sexual impulse--one of the +forms it has taken under prevailing social conditions. It is, if you +please, like the crops of a rude and forbidding soil--a coarse, distorted +thing though living. + +The Commission studied a human problem and left humanity out. I do not +mean that the members weren't deeply touched by the misery of these +thousands of women. You can pity the poor without understanding them; you +can have compassion without insight. The Commissioners had a good deal of +sympathy for the prostitute's condition, but for that "lust in the hearts +of men," and women we may add, for that, they had no sympathetic +understanding. They did not place themselves within the impulse. +Officially they remained external to human desires. For what might be +called the _elan vital_ of the problem they had no patience. Certain sad +results of the particular "method of expression" it had sought out in +Chicago called forth their pity and their horror. + +In short, the Commission did not face the sexual impulse squarely. The +report is an attempt to deal with a sexual problem by disregarding its +source. There are almost a hundred recommendations to various +authorities--Federal, State, county, city, police, educational and +others. I have attempted to classify these proposals under four headings. +There are those which mean forcible repression of particular +manifestations--the taboos; there are the recommendations which are +purely palliative, which aim to abate some of the horrors of existing +conditions; there are a few suggestions for further investigation; and, +finally, there are the inventions, the plans which show some desire to +find moral equivalents for evil--the really statesmanlike offerings. + +The palliative measures we may pass by quickly. So long as they do not +blind people to the necessity for radical treatment, only a doctrinaire +would object to them. Like all intelligent charities they are still a +necessary evil. But nothing must be staked upon them, so let us turn at +once to the constructive suggestions: The Commission proposes that the +county establish a "Permanent Committee on Child Protection." It makes no +attempt to say what that protection shall be, but I think it is only fair +to let the wish father the thought, and regard this as an effort to give +children a better start in life. The separation of delinquent from +semi-delinquent girls is a somewhat similar attempt to guard the weak. +Another is the recommendation to the city and the nation that it should +protect arriving immigrants, and if necessary escort them to their homes. +This surely is a constructive plan which might well be enlarged from mere +protection to positive hospitality. How great a part the desolating +loneliness of a city plays in seductions the individual histories in the +report show. Municipal dance halls are a splendid proposal. Freed from a +cold and over-chaperoned respectability they compete with the devil. +There, at least, is one method of sexual expression which may have +positively beneficent results. A municipal lodging house for women is +something of a substitute for the wretched rented room. A little +suggestion to the police that they send home children found on the +streets after nine o'clock has varied possibilities. But there is the +seed of an invention in it which might convert the police from mere +agents of repression to kindly helpers in the mazes of a city. The +educational proposals are all constructive: the teaching of sex hygiene +is guardedly recommended for consideration. That is entirely justified, +for no one can quarrel with a set of men for leaving a question open. +That girls from fourteen to sixteen should receive vocational training in +continuation schools; that social centers should be established in the +public schools and that the grounds should be open for children--all of +these are clearly additions to the positive resource of the community. So +is the suggestion that church buildings be used for recreation. The call +for greater parental responsibility is, I fear, a rather empty platitude, +for it is not re-enforced with anything but an ancient fervor. + +How much of this really seeks to create a fine expression of the sexual +impulse? How many of these recommendations see sex as an instinct which +can be transmuted, and turned into one of the values of life? The dance +halls, the social centers, the playgrounds, the reception of +strangers--these can become instruments for civilizing sexual need. The +educational proposals could become ways of directing it. They could, but +will they? Without the habit of mind which sees substitution as the +essence of statecraft, without a philosophy which makes the invention of +moral equivalents its goal, I for one refuse to see in these +recommendations anything more than a haphazard shooting which has +accidentally hit the mark. Moreover, I have a deep suspicion that I have +tried to read into the proposals more than the Commission intended. +Certainly these constructions occupy an insignificant amount of space in +the body of the report. On all sides of them is a mass of taboos. No +emotional appeal is made for them as there is for the repressions. They +stand largely unnoticed, and very much undefined--poor ghosts of the +truth among the gibbets. + +An inadvertent platitude--that lust will seek an expression--and a few +diffident proposals for a finer environment--the need and its +satisfaction: had the Commission seen the relation of these incipient +ideas, animated it, and made it the nerve center of the study, a genuine +program might have resulted. But the two ideas never met and fertilized +each other. Nothing dynamic holds the recommendations together--the mass +of them are taboos, an attempt to kill each mosquito and ignore the +marsh. The evils of prostitution are seen as a series of episodes, each +of which must be clubbed, forbidden, raided and jailed. + +There is a special whack for each mosquito: the laws about excursion +boats should be enforced; the owners should help to enforce them; there +should be more officers with police power on these boats; the sale of +liquor to minors should be forbidden; gambling devices should be +suppressed; the midwives, doctors and maternity hospitals practicing +abortions should be investigated; employment agencies should be watched +and investigated; publishers should be warned against printing suspicious +advertisements; the law against infamous crimes should be made more +specific; any citizen should have the right to bring equity proceedings +against a brothel as a public nuisance; there should be relentless +prosecution of professional procurers; there should be constant +prosecution of the keepers, inmates, and owners of bawdy houses; there +should be prosecution of druggists who sells drugs and "certain +appliances" illegally; there should be an identification system for +prostitutes in the state courts; instead of fines, prostitutes should be +visited with imprisonment or adult probation; there should be a penalty +for sending messenger boys under twenty-one to a disorderly house or an +unlicensed saloon; the law against prostitutes in saloons, against +wine-rooms and stalls in saloons, against communication between saloons +and brothels, against dancing in saloons--should be strictly enforced; +the police who enforce these laws should be carefully watched, grafters +amongst them should be discharged; complaints should be investigated at +once by a man stationed outside the district; the pressure of publicity +should be brought against the brewers to prevent them from doing business +with saloons that violate the law; the Retail Liquor Association should +discipline law-breaking saloon-keepers: licenses should be permanently +revoked for violations; no women should be allowed in a saloon without a +male escort; no professional or paid escorts should be permitted; no +soliciting should be allowed in saloons; no immoral or vulgar dances +should be permitted in saloons; no intoxicating liquor should be allowed +at any public dance; there should be a municipal detention home for +women, with probation officers; police inspectors who fail to report +law-violations should be dismissed; assignation houses should be +suppressed as soon as they are reported; there should be a "special +morals police squad"; recommendation IX "to the Police" says they "should +wage a relentless warfare against houses of prostitution, immoral flats, +assignation rooms, call houses, and disorderly saloons in all sections of +the city"; parks and playgrounds should be more thoroughly policed; +dancing pavilions should exclude professional prostitutes; soliciting in +parks should be suppressed; parks should be lighted with a search-light; +there should be no seats in the shadows.... + +To perform that staggering list of things that "should" be done you +find--what?--the police power, federal, state, municipal. Note how vague +and general are the chance constructive suggestions; how precise and +definite the taboos. Surely I am not misstating its position when I say +that forcible suppression was the creed of this Commission. Nor is there +any need of insisting again that the ultimate ideal of annihilating +prostitution has nothing to expect from the concrete proposals that were +made. The millennial goal was one thing; the immediate method quite +another. For ideals, a pious phrase; in practice, the police. + +Are we not told that "if the citizens cannot depend upon the men +appointed to protect their property, and to maintain order, then chaos +and disorganization resulting in vice and crime must follow?" Yet of all +the reeds that civilization leans upon, surely the police is the +frailest. Anyone who has had the smallest experience of municipal +politics knows that the corruption of the police is directly +proportionate to the severity of the taboos it is asked to enforce. Tom +Johnson saw this as Mayor of Cleveland; he knew that strict law +enforcement against saloons, brothels, and gambling houses would not stop +vice, but would corrupt the police. I recommend the recent spectacle in +New York where the most sensational raider of gambling houses has turned +out to be in crooked alliance with the gamblers. And I suggest as a hint +that the Commission's recommendations enforced for one year will lay the +foundation of an organized system of blackmail and "protection," secrecy +and underground chicanery, the like of which Chicago has not yet seen. +But the Commission need only have read its own report, have studied its +own cases. There is an illuminating chapter on "The Social Evil and the +Police." In the summary, the Commission says that "officers on the beat +are bold and open in their neglect of duty, drinking in saloons while in +uniform, ignoring the solicitations by prostitutes in rear rooms and on +the streets, selling tickets at dances frequented by professional and +semi-professional prostitutes; protecting 'cadets,' prostitutes and +saloon-keepers of disorderly places." + +Some suspicion that the police could not carry the burden of suppressing +the social evil must have dawned on the Commission. + +It felt the need of re-enforcement. Hence the special morals police +squad; hence the investigation of the police of one district by the +police from another; and hence, in type as black as that of the ideal +itself and directly beneath it, the call for "the appointment of a morals +commission" and "the establishment of a morals court." Now this +commission consists of the Health Officer, a physician and three citizens +who serve without pay. It is appointed by the Mayor and approved by the +City Council. Its business is to prosecute vice and to help enforce the +law. + +Just what would happen if the Morals Commission didn't prosecute hard +enough I do not know. Conceivably the Governor might be induced to +appoint a Commission on Moral Commissions in Cities. But why the men and +women who framed the report made this particular recommendation is an +interesting question. With federal, state, and municipal authorities in +existence, with courts, district attorneys, police all operating, they +create another arm of prosecution. Possibly they were somewhat +disillusioned about the present instruments of the taboo; perhaps +they imagined that a new broom would sweep clean. But I suspect an +inner reason. The Commission may have imagined that the four +appointees--unpaid--would be four men like themselves--who knows, perhaps +four men from among themselves? The whole tenor of their thinking is to +set somebody watching everybody and somebody else to watching him. What +is more natural than that they should be the Ultimate Watchers? + +Spying, informing, constant investigations of everybody and everything +must become the rule where there is a forcible attempt to moralize +society from the top. Nobody's heart is in the work very long; nobody's +but those fanatical and morbid guardians of morality who make it a life's +specialty. The aroused public opinion which the Commission asks for +cannot be held if all it has to fix upon is an elaborate series of +taboos. Sensational disclosures will often make the public flare up +spasmodically; but the mass of men is soon bored by intricate rules and +tangles of red tape; the "crusade" is looked upon as a melodrama of real +life--interesting, but easily forgotten. + +The method proposed ignores the human source: by a kind of poetic justice +the great crowd of men will ignore the method. If you want to impose a +taboo upon a whole community, you must do it autocratically, you must +make it part of the prevailing superstitions. You must never let it reach +any public analysis. For it will fail, it will receive only a shallow +support from what we call an "enlightened public opinion." That opinion +is largely determined by the real impulses of men; and genuine character +rejects or at least rebels against foreign, unnatural impositions. This +is one of the great virtues of democracy--that it makes alien laws more +and more difficult to enforce. The tyrant can use the taboo a thousand +times more effectively than the citizens of a republic. When he speaks, +it is with a prestige that dumbs questioning and makes obedience a habit. +Let that infallibility come to be doubted, as in Russia to-day, and +natural impulses reassert themselves, the great impositions begin to +weaken. The methods of the Chicago Commission would require a tyranny, a +powerful, centralized sovereignty which could command with majesty and +silence the rebel. In our shirt-sleeved republic no such power exists. +The strongest force we have is that of organized money, and that +sovereignty is too closely connected with the social evil, too dependent +upon it in a hundred different ways, to undertake the task of +suppression. + +For the purposes of the Commission democracy is an inefficient weapon. +Nothing but disappointment is in store for men who expect a people to +outrage its own character. A large part of the unfaith in democracy, of +the desire to ignore "the mob," limit the franchise, and confine power to +the few is the result of an unsuccessful attempt to make republics act +like old-fashioned monarchies. Almost every "crusade" leaves behind it a +trail of yearning royalists; many "good-government" clubs are little +would-be oligarchies. + +When the mass of men emerged from slavish obedience and made democracy +inevitable, the taboo entered upon its final illness. For the more +self-governing a people becomes, the less possible it is to prescribe +external restrictions. The gap between want and ought, between nature and +ideals cannot be maintained. The only practical ideals in a democracy are +a fine expression of natural wants. This happens to be a thoroughly Greek +attitude. But I learned it first from the Bowery. Chuck Connors is +reported to have said that "a gentleman is a bloke as can do whatever he +wants to do." If Chuck said that, he went straight to the heart of that +democratic morality on which a new statecraft must ultimately rest. His +gentleman is not the battlefield of wants and prohibitions; in him +impulses flow freely through beneficent channels. + +The same notion lies imbedded in the phrase: "government must serve the +people." That means a good deal more than that elected officials must +rule for the majority. For the majority in these semi-democratic times is +often as not a cloak for the ruling oligarchy. Representatives who +"serve" some majorities may in reality order the nation about. To serve +the people means to provide it with services--with clean streets and +water, with education, with opportunity, with beneficent channels for its +desires, with moral equivalents for evil. The task is turned from the +damming and restricting of wants to the creation of fine environments for +them. And the environment of an impulse extends all the way from the +human body, through family life and education out into the streets of the +city. + +Had the Commission worked along democratic lines, we should have had +recommendations about the hygiene and early training of children, their +education, the houses they live in and the streets in which they play; +changes would have been suggested in the industrial conditions they face; +plans would have been drawn for recreation; hints would have been +collected for transmuting the sex impulse into art, into social endeavor, +into religion. That is the constructive approach to the problem. I note +that the Commission calls upon the churches for help. Its obvious +intention was to down sex with religion. What was not realized, it seems, +is that this very sex impulse, so largely degraded into vice, is the +dynamic force in religious feeling. One need not call in the testimony of +the psychologists, the students of religion, the aestheticians or even of +Plato, who in the "Symposium" traced out the hierarchy of love from the +body to the "whole sea of beauty." Jane Addams in Chicago has tested the +truth by her own wide experience, and she has written what the Commission +might easily have read,--that "in failing to diffuse and utilize this +fundamental instinct of sex through the imagination, we not only +inadvertently foster vice and enervation, but we throw away one of the +most precious implements for ministering to life's highest needs. There +is no doubt that this ill-adjusted function consumes quite unnecessarily +vast stores of vital energy, even when we contemplate it in its immature +manifestations which are infinitely more wholesome than the dumb swamping +process. All high school boys and girls know the difference between the +concentration and the diffusion of this impulse, although they would be +hopelessly bewildered by the use of terms. They will declare one of their +companions to be 'in love' if his fancy is occupied by the image of a +single person about whom all the new-found values gather, and without +whom his solitude is an eternal melancholy. But if the stimulus does not +appear as a definite image, and the values evoked are dispensed over the +world, the young person suddenly seems to have discovered a beauty and +significance in many things--he responds to poetry, he becomes a lover of +nature, he is filled with religious devotion or with philanthropic zeal. +Experience, with young people, easily illustrates the possibility and +value of diffusion." + +It is then not only impossible to confine sex to mere reproduction; it +would be a stupid denial of the finest values of civilization. Having +seen that the impulse is a necessary part of character, we must not hold +to it grudgingly as a necessary evil. It is, on the contrary, the very +source of good. Whoever has visited Hull House can see for himself the +earnest effort Miss Addams has made to treat sex with dignity and joy. +For Hull House differs from most settlements in that it is full of +pictures, of color, and of curios. The atmosphere is light; you feel none +of that moral oppression which hangs over the usual settlement as over a +gathering of missionaries. Miss Addams has not only made Hull House a +beautiful place; she has stocked it with curious and interesting objects. +The theater, the museum, the crafts and the arts, games and dances--they +are some of those "other methods of expression which lust can seek." It +is no accident that Hull House is the most successful settlement in +America. + +Yet who does not feel its isolation in that brutal city? A little Athens +in a vast barbarism--you wonder how much of Chicago Hull House can +civilize. As you walk those grim streets and look into the stifling +houses, or picture the relentless stockyards, the conviction that vice +and its misery cannot be transmuted by policemen and Morals Commissions, +the feeling that spying and inspecting and prosecuting will not drain the +marsh becomes a certainty. You want to shout at the forcible moralizer: +"so long as you acquiesce in the degradation of your city, so long as +work remains nothing but ill-paid drudgery and every instinct of joy is +mocked by dirt and cheapness and brutality,--just so long will your +efforts be fruitless, yes even though you raid and prosecute, even though +you make Comstock the Czar of Chicago." + +But Hull House cannot remake Chicago. A few hundred lives can be changed, +and for the rest it is a guide to the imagination. Like all utopias, it +cannot succeed, but it may point the way to success. If Hull House is +unable to civilize Chicago, it at least shows Chicago and America what a +civilization might be like. Friendly, where our cities are friendless, +beautiful, where they are ugly; sociable and open, where our daily life +is furtive; work a craft; art a participation--it is in miniature the +goal of statesmanship. If Chicago were like Hull House, we say to +ourselves, then vice would be no problem--it would dwindle, what was left +would be the Falstaff in us all, and only a spiritual anemia could worry +over that jolly and redeeming coarseness. + +What stands between Chicago and civilization? No one can doubt that to +abolish prostitution means to abolish the slum and the dirty alley, to +stop overwork, underpay, the sweating and the torturing monotony of +business, to breathe a new life into education, ventilate society with +frankness, and fill life with play and art, with games, with passions +which hold and suffuse the imagination. + +It is a revolutionary task, and like all real revolutions it will not be +done in a day or a decade because someone orders it to be done. A change +in the whole quality of life is something that neither the policeman's +club nor an insurrectionary raid can achieve. If you want a revolution +that shall really matter in human life--and what sane man can help +desiring it?--you must look to the infinitely complicated results of the +dynamic movements in society. These revolutions require a rare +combination of personal audacity and social patience. The best agents of +such a revolution are men who are bold in their plans because they +realize how deep and enormous is the task. + +Many people have sought an analogy in our Civil War. They have said that +as "black slavery" went, so must "white slavery." In the various +agitations of vigilance committees and alliances for the suppression of +the traffic they profess to see continued a work which the abolitionists +began. + +In A. M. Simons' brilliant book on "Social Forces in American History" +much help can be found. For example: "Massachusetts abolished slavery at +an early date, and we have it on the authority of John Adams +that:--'argument might have had some weight in the abolition of slavery +in Massachusetts, but the real cause was the multiplication of laboring +white people, who would not longer suffer the rich to employ these sable +rivals so much to their injury.'" No one to-day doubts that white labor +in the North and slavery in the South were not due to the moral +superiority of the North. Yet just in the North we find the abolition +sentiment strongest. That the Civil War was not a clash of good men and +bad men is admitted by every reputable historian. The war did not come +when moral fervor had risen to the exploding point; the moral fervor came +rather when the economic interests of the South collided with those of +the North. That the abolitionists clarified the economic interests of the +North and gave them an ideal sanction is true enough. But the fact +remains that by 1860 some of the aspirations of Phillips and Garrison had +become the economic destiny of this country. + +You can have a Hull House established by private initiative and +maintained by individual genius, just as you had planters who freed their +slaves or as you have employers to-day who humanize their factories. But +the fine example is not readily imitated when industrial forces fight +against it. So even if the Commission had drawn splendid plans for +housing, work conditions, education, and play it would have done only +part of the task of statesmanship. We should then know what to do, but +not how to get it done. + +An ideal suspended in a vacuum is ineffective: it must point a dynamic +current. Only then does it gather power, only then does it enter into +life. That forces exist to-day which carry with them solutions is evident +to anyone who has watched the labor movement and the woman's awakening. +Even the interests of business give power to the cause. The discovery of +manufacturers that degradation spoils industrial efficiency must not be +cast aside by the radical because the motive is larger profits. The +discovery, whatever the motive, will inevitably humanize industry a good +deal. For it happens that in this case the interests of capitalism and of +humanity coincide. A propaganda like the single-tax will undoubtedly find +increasing support among business men. They see in it a relief from the +burden of rent imposed by that older tyrant--the landlord. But the +taxation of unimproved property happens at the same time to be a splendid +weapon against the slum. + +Only when the abolition of "white slavery" becomes part of the social +currents of the time will it bear any interesting analogy to the +so-called freeing of the slaves. Even then for many enthusiasts the +comparison is misleading. They are likely to regard the Emancipation +Proclamation as the end of chattel slavery. It wasn't. That historic +document broke a legal bond but not a social one. The process of negro +emancipation is infinitely slower and it is not accomplished yet. +Likewise no statute can end "white slavery." Only vast and complicated +changes in the whole texture of social life will achieve such an end. If +by some magic every taboo of the commission could be enforced the +abolition of sex slavery would not have come one step nearer to reality. +Cities and factories, schools and homes, theaters and games, manners and +thought will have to be transformed before sex can find a better +expression. Living forces, not statutes or clubs, must work that change. +The power of emancipation is in the social movements which alone can +effect any deep reform in a nation. So it is and has been with the negro. +I do not think the Abolitionists saw facts truly when they disbanded +their organization a few years after the civil war. They found too much +comfort in a change of legal status. Profound economic forces brought +about the beginning of the end of chattel slavery. But the reality of +freedom was not achieved by proclamation. For that the revolution had to +go on: the industrial life of the nation had to change its character, +social customs had to be replaced, the whole outlook of men had to be +transformed. And whether it is negro slavery or a vicious sexual bondage, +the actual advance comes from substitutions injected into society by +dynamic social forces. + +I do not wish to press the analogy or over-emphasize the particular +problems. I am not engaged in drawing up the plans for a reconstruction +or in telling just what should be done. Only the co-operation of expert +minds can do that. The place for a special propaganda is elsewhere. If +these essays succeed in suggesting a method of looking at politics, if +they draw attention to what is real in social reforms and make somewhat +more evident the traps and the blind-alleys of an uncritical approach, +they will have done their work. That the report of the Chicago Vice +Commission figures so prominently in this chapter is not due to any +preoccupation with Chicago, the Commission or with vice. It is a text and +nothing else. The report happens to embody what I conceive to be most of +the faults of a political method now decadent. Its failure to put human +impulses at the center of thought produced remedies valueless to human +nature; its false interest in a particular expression of +sex--vice--caused it to taboo the civilizing power of sex; its inability +to see that wants require fine satisfactions and not prohibitions drove +it into an undemocratic tyranny; its blindness to the social forces of +our age shut off the motive power for any reform. + +The Commission's method was poor, not its intentions. It was an average +body of American citizens aroused to action by an obvious evil. But +something slipped in to falsify vision. It was, I believe, an array of +idols disguised as ideals. They are typical American idols, and they +deserve some study. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +SOME NECESSARY ICONOCLASM + + The Commission "has kept constantly in mind that to offer a + contribution of any value such an offering must be, first, moral; + second, reasonable and practical; third, possible under the + Constitutional powers of our Courts; fourth, that which will square + with the public conscience of the American people."--The Vice + Commission of Chicago--Introduction to Report on the Social Evil. + + +Having adjusted such spectacles the Commission proceeded to look at "this +curse which is more blasting than any plague or epidemic," at an evil +"which spells only ruin to the race." In dealing with what it regards as +the greatest calamity in the world, a calamity as old as civilization, +the Commission lays it down beforehand that the remedy must be "moral," +constitutional, and satisfactory to the public conscience. I wonder in +all seriousness what the Commission would have done had it discovered a +genuine cure for prostitution which happened, let us say, to conflict +with the constitutional powers of our courts. I wonder how the Commission +would have acted if a humble following of the facts had led them to a +conviction out of tune with the existing public conscience of America. +Such a conflict is not only possible; it is highly probable. When you +come to think of it, the conflict appears a certainty. For the +Constitution is a legal expression of the conditions under which +prostitution has flourished; the social evil is rooted in institutions +and manners which have promoted it, in property relations and business +practice which have gathered about them a halo of reason and +practicality, of morality and conscience. Any change so vast as the +abolition of vice is of necessity a change in morals, practice, law and +conscience. + +A scientist who began an investigation by saying that his results must be +moral or constitutional would be a joke. We have had scientists like +that, men who insisted that research must confirm the Biblical theory of +creation. We have had economists who set out with the preconceived idea +of justifying the factory system. The world has recently begun to see +through this kind of intellectual fraud. If a doctor should appear who +offered a cure for tuberculosis on the ground that it was justified by +the Bible and that it conformed to the opinions of that great mass of the +American people who believe that fresh air is the devil, we should +promptly lock up that doctor as a dangerous quack. When the negroes of +Kansas were said to be taking pink pills to guard themselves against +Halley's Comet, they were doing something which appeared to them as +eminently practical and entirely reasonable. Not long ago we read of the +savage way in which a leper was treated out West; his leprosy was not +regarded as a disease, but as the curse of God, and, if I remember +correctly, the Bible was quoted in court as an authority on leprosy. The +treatment seemed entirely moral and squared very well with the conscience +of that community. + +I have heard reputable physicians condemn a certain method of +psychotherapy because it was "immoral." A woman once told me that she had +let her son grow up ignorant of his sexual life because "a mother should +never mention anything 'embarrassing' to her child." Many of us are still +blushing for the way America treated Gorki when it found that Russian +morals did not square with the public conscience of America. And the time +is not yet passed when we punish the offspring of illicit love, and visit +vengeance unto the third and fourth generations. One reads in the report +of the Vice Commission that many public hospitals in Chicago refuse to +care for venereal diseases. The examples are endless. They run from the +absurd to the monstrous. But always the source is the same. Idols are set +up to which all the living must bow; we decide beforehand that things +must fit a few preconceived ideas. And when they don't, which is most of +the time, we deny truth, falsify facts, and prefer the coddling of our +theory to any deeper understanding of the real problem before us. + +It seems as if a theory were never so active as when the reality behind +it has disappeared. The empty name, the ghostly phrase, exercise an +authority that is appalling. When you think of the blood that has been +shed in the name of Jesus, when you think of the Holy Roman Empire, +"neither holy nor Roman nor imperial," of the constitutional phrases that +cloak all sorts of thievery, of the common law precedents that tyrannize +over us, history begins to look almost like the struggle of man to +emancipate himself from phrase-worship. The devil can quote Scripture, +and law, and morality and reason and practicality. The devil can use the +public conscience of his time. He does in wars, in racial and religious +persecutions; he did in the Spain of the Inquisition; he does in the +American lynching. + +For there is nothing so bad but it can masquerade as moral. Conquerors +have gone forth with the blessing of popes; a nation invokes its God +before beginning a campaign of murder, rape and pillage. The ruthless +exploitation of India becomes the civilizing fulfilment of the "white +man's burden"; not infrequently the missionary, drummer, and prospector +are embodied in one man. In the nineteenth century church, press and +university devoted no inconsiderable part of their time to proving the +high moral and scientific justice of child labor and human sweating. It +is a matter of record that chattel slavery in this country was deduced +from Biblical injunction, that the universities furnished brains for its +defense. Surely Bernard Shaw was not describing the Englishman alone when +he said in "The Man of Destiny" that "... you will never find an +Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you +on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles...." + +Liberty, equality, fraternity--what a grotesque career those words have +had. Almost every attempt to mitigate the hardships of industrialism has +had to deal with the bogey of liberty. Labor organization, factory laws, +health regulations are still fought as infringements of liberty. And in +the name of equality what fantasies of taxation have we not woven? what +travesties of justice set up? "The law in its majestic equality," writes +Anatole France, "forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep in the +streets and to steal bread." Fraternity becomes the hypocritical slogan +by which we refuse to enact what is called "class legislation"--a policy +which in theory denies the existence of classes, in practice legislates +in favor of the rich. The laws which go unchallenged are laws friendly to +business; class legislation means working-class legislation. + +You have to go among lawyers to see this idolatrous process in its most +perfect form. When a judge sets out to "interpret" the Constitution, what +is it that he does? He takes a sentence written by a group of men more +than a hundred years ago. That sentence expressed their policy about +certain conditions which they had to deal with. In it was summed up what +they intended to do about the problems they saw. That is all the sentence +means. But in the course of a century new problems arise--problems the +Fathers could no more have foreseen than we can foresee the problems of +the year two thousand. Yet that sentence which contained their wisdom +about particular events has acquired an emotional force which persists +long after the events have passed away. Legends gather about the men who +wrote it: those legends are absorbed by us almost with our mothers' milk. +We never again read that sentence straight. It has a gravity out of all +proportion to its use, and we call it a fundamental principle of +government. Whatever we want to do is hallowed and justified, if it can +be made to appear as a deduction from that sentence. To put new wine in +old bottles is one of the aims of legal casuistry. + +Reformers practice it. You hear it said that the initiative and +referendum are a return to the New England town meeting. That is supposed +to be an argument for direct legislation. But surely the analogy is +superficial; the difference profound. The infinitely greater complexity +of legislation to-day, the vast confusion in the aims of the voting +population, produce a difference of so great a degree that it amounts to +a difference in kind. The naturalist may classify the dog and the fox, +the house-cat and the tiger together for certain purposes. The historian +of political forms may see in the town meeting a forerunner of direct +legislation. But no housewife dare classify the cat and the tiger, the +dog and the fox, as the same kind of animal. And no statesman can argue +the virtues of the referendum from the successes of the town meeting. + +But the propagandists do it nevertheless, and their propaganda thrives +upon it. The reason is simple. The town meeting is an obviously +respectable institution, glorified by all the reverence men give to the +dead. It has acquired the seal of an admired past, and any proposal that +can borrow that seal can borrow that reverence too. A name trails behind +it an army of associations. That army will fight in any cause that bears +the name. So the reformers of California, the Lorimerites of Chicago, and +the Barnes Republicans of Albany all use the name of Lincoln for their +political associations. In the struggle that preceded the Republican +Convention of 1912 it was rumored that the Taft reactionaries would put +forward Lincoln's son as chairman of the convention in order to +counteract Roosevelt's claim that he stood in Lincoln's shoes. + +Casuistry is nothing but the injection of your own meaning into an old +name. At school when the teacher asked us whether we had studied the +lesson, the invariable answer was Yes. We had indeed stared at the page +for a few minutes, and that could be called studying. Sometimes the +head-master would break into the room just in time to see the conclusion +of a scuffle. Jimmy's clothes are white with dust. "Johnny, did you throw +chalk at Jimmy?" "No, sir," says Johnny, and then under his breath to +placate God's penchant for truth, "I threw the chalk-eraser." Once in +Portland, Maine, I ordered iced tea at an hotel. The waitress brought me +a glass of yellowish liquid with a two-inch collar of foam at the top. No +tea I had ever seen outside of a prohibition state looked like that. +Though it was tea, it might have been beer. Perhaps if I had smiled or +winked in ordering the tea, it would have been beer. The two looked alike +in Portland; they were interchangeable. You could drink tea and fool +yourself into thinking it was beer. You could drink beer and pass for a +tea-toper. + +It is rare, I think, that the fraud is so genial and so deliberate. The +openness cleanses it. Advertising, for example, would be nothing but +gigantic and systematic lying if almost everybody didn't know that it +was. Yet it runs into the sinister all the time. The pure food agitation +is largely an effort to make the label and the contents tell the same +story. It was noteworthy that, following the discovery of salvarsan or +"606" by Dr. Ehrlich, the quack doctors began to call their treatments +"606." But the deliberate casuistry of lawyers, quacks, or politicians is +not so difficult to deal with. The very deliberation makes it easier to +detect, for it is generally awkward. What one man can consciously devise, +other men can understand. + +But unconscious casuistry deceives us all. No one escapes it entirely. A +wealth of evidence could be adduced to support this from the studies of +dreams and fantasies made by the Freudian school of psychologists. They +have shown how constantly the mind cloaks a deep meaning in a shallow +incident--how the superficial is all the time being shoved into the light +of consciousness in order to conceal a buried intention; how inveterate +is our use of symbols. + +Between ourselves and our real natures we interpose that wax figure of +idealizations and selections which we call our character. We extend this +into all our thinking. Between us and the realities of social life we +build up a mass of generalizations, abstract ideas, ancient glories, and +personal wishes. They simplify and soften experience. It is so much +easier to talk of poverty than to think of the poor, to argue the rights +of capital than to see its results. Pretty soon we come to think of the +theories and abstract ideas as things in themselves. We worry about their +fate and forget their original content. + +For words, theories, symbols, slogans, abstractions of all kinds are +nothing but the porous vessels into which life flows, is contained for a +time, and then passes through. But our reverence clings to the vessels. +The old meaning may have disappeared, a new one come in--no matter, we +try to believe there has been no change. And when life's expansion +demands some new container, nothing is more difficult than the +realization that the old vessels cannot be stretched to the present need. + +It is interesting to notice how in the very act of analyzing it I have +fallen into this curious and ancient habit. My point is that the metaphor +is taken for the reality: I have used at least six metaphors to state it. +Abstractions are not cloaks, nor wax figures, nor walls, nor vessels, and +life doesn't flow like water. What they really are you and I know +inwardly by using abstractions and living our lives. But once I attempt +to give that inwardness expression, I must use the only weapons I +have--abstractions, theories, phrases. By an effort of the sympathetic +imagination you can revive within yourself something of my inward sense. +As I have had to abstract from life in order to communicate, so you are +compelled to animate my abstractions, in order to understand. + +I know of no other method of communication between two people. Language +is always grossly inadequate. It is inadequate if the listener is merely +passive, if he falls into the mistake of the literal-minded who expect +words to contain a precise image of reality. They never do. All language +can achieve is to act as a guidepost to the imagination enabling the +reader to recreate the author's insight. The artist does that: he +controls his medium so that we come most readily to the heart of his +intention. In the lyric poet the control is often so delicate that the +hearer lives over again the finely shaded mood of the poet. Take the +words of a lyric for what they say, and they say nothing most of the +time. And that is true of philosophers. You must penetrate the ponderous +vocabulary, the professional cant to the insight beneath or you scoff at +the mountain ranges of words and phrases. It is this that Bergson means +when he tells us that a philosopher's intuition always outlasts his +system. Unless you get at that you remain forever foreign to the thinker. + +That too is why debating is such a wretched amusement and most +partisanship, most controversy, so degrading. The trick here is to argue +from the opponent's language, never from his insight. You take him +literally, you pick up his sentences, and you show what nonsense they +are. You do not try to weigh what you see against what he sees; you +contrast what you see with what he says. So debating becomes a way of +confirming your own prejudices; it is never, never in any debate I have +suffered through, a search for understanding from the angles of two +differing insights. + +And, of course, in those more sinister forms of debating, court trials, +where the stakes are so much bigger, the skill of a successful lawyer is +to make the atmosphere as opaque as possible to the other lawyer's +contention. Men have been hanged as a result. How often in a political +campaign does a candidate suggest that behind the platforms and speeches +of his opponents there might be some new and valuable understanding of +the country's need? + +The fact is that we argue and quarrel an enormous lot over words. Our +prevailing habit is to think about phrases, "ideals," theories, not about +the realities they express. In controversy we do not try to find our +opponent's meaning: we examine his vocabulary. And in our own efforts to +shape policies we do not seek out what is worth doing: we seek out what +will pass for moral, practical, popular or constitutional. + +In this the Vice Commission reflected our national habits. For those +earnest men and women in Chicago did not set out to find a way of +abolishing prostitution; they set out to find a way that would conform to +four idols they worshiped. The only cure for prostitution might prove to +be "immoral," "impractical," unconstitutional, and unpopular. I suspect +that it is. But the honest thing to do would have been to look for that +cure without preconceived notions. Having found it, the Commission could +then have said to the public: "This is what will cure the social evil. It +means these changes in industry, sex relations, law and public opinion. +If you think it is worth the cost you can begin to deal with the problem. +If you don't, then confess that you will not abolish prostitution, and +turn your compassion to softening its effects." + +That would have left the issues clear and wholesome. But the procedure of +the Commission is a blow to honest thinking. Its conclusions may "square +with the public conscience of the American people" but they will not +square with the intellectual conscience of anybody. To tell you at the +top of the page that absolute annihilation of prostitution is the +ultimate ideal and twenty lines further on that the method must be +constitutional is nothing less than an insult to the intelligence. +Calf-worship was never more idolatrous than this. Truth would have slept +more comfortably in Procrustes' bed. + +Let no one imagine that I take the four preconceived ideas of the +Commission too seriously. On the first reading of the report they aroused +no more interest in me than the ordinary lip-honor we all do to +conventionality--I had heard of the great fearlessness of this report, +and I supposed that this bending of the knee was nothing but the innocent +hypocrisy of the reformer who wants to make his proposal not too +shocking. But it was a mistake. Those four idols really dominated the +minds of the Commission, and without them the report cannot be +understood. They are typical idols of the American people. This report +offers an opportunity to see the concrete results of worshiping them. + +A valuable contribution, then, must be _moral_. There is no doubt that +the Commission means sexually moral. We Americans always use the word in +that limited sense. If you say that Jones is a moral man you mean that he +is faithful to his wife. He may support her by selling pink pills; he is +nevertheless moral if he is monogamous. The average American rarely +speaks of industrial piracy as immoral. He may condemn it, but not with +that word. If he extends the meaning of immoral at all, it is to the +vices most closely allied to sex--drink and gambling. + +Now sexual morality is pretty clearly defined for the Commission. As we +have seen, it means that sex must be confined to procreation by a +healthy, intelligent and strictly monogamous couple. All other sexual +expression would come under the ban of disapproval. I am sure I do the +Commission no injustice. Now this limited conception of sex has had a +disastrous effect: it has forced the Commission to ignore the sexual +impulse in discussing a sexual problem. Any modification of the +relationship of men and women was immediately put out of consideration. +Such suggestions as Forel, Ellen Key, or Havelock Ellis make could, of +course, not even get a hearing. + +With this moral ideal in mind, not only vice, but sex itself, becomes an +evil thing. Hence the hysterical and minute application of the taboo +wherever sex shows itself. Barred from any reform which would reabsorb +the impulse into civilized life, the Commissioners had no other course +but to hunt it, as an outlaw. And in doing this they were compelled to +discard the precious values of art, religion and social life of which +this superfluous energy is the creator. Driven to think of it as bad, +except for certain particular functions, they could, of course, not see +its possibilities. Hence the poverty of their suggestions along +educational and artistic lines. + +A valuable contribution, we are told, must be _reasonable_ and +_practical_. Here is a case where words cannot be taken literally. +"Reasonable" in America certainly never even pretended to mean in +accordance with a rational ideal, and "practical,"--well one thinks of +"practical politics," "practical business men," and "unpractical +reformers." Boiled down these words amount to something like this: the +proposals must not be new or startling; must not involve any radical +disturbance of any respectable person's selfishness; must not call forth +any great opposition; must look definite and immediate; must be tangible +like a raid, or a jail, or the paper of an ordinance, or a policeman's +club. Above all a "reasonable and practical" proposal must not require +any imaginative patience. The actual proposals have all these qualities: +if they are "reasonable and practical" then we know by a good +demonstration what these terms meant to that average body of citizens. + +To see that is to see exposed an important facet of the American +temperament. Our dislike of "talk"; the frantic desire to "do something" +without inquiring whether it is worth doing; the dollar standard; the +unwillingness to cast any bread upon the waters; our preference for a +sparrow in the hand to a forest of song-birds; the naive inability to +understand the inner satisfactions of bankrupt poets and the +unworldliness of eccentric thinkers; success-mania; philistinism--they +are pieces of the same cloth. They come from failure or unwillingness to +project the mind beyond the daily routine of things, to play over the +whole horizon of possibilities, and to recognize that all is not said +when we have spoken. In those words "reasonable and practical" is the +Chinese Wall of America, that narrow boundary which contracts our vision +to the moment, cuts us off from the culture of the world, and makes us +such provincial, unimaginative blunderers over our own problems. Fixation +upon the immediate has made a rich country poor in leisure, has in a land +meant for liberal living incited an insane struggle for existence. One +suspects at times that our national cult of optimism is no real feeling +that the world is good, but a fear that pessimism will produce panics. + +How this fascination of the obvious has balked the work of the Commission +I need not elaborate. That the long process of civilizing sex received +perfunctory attention; that the imaginative value of sex was lost in a +dogma; that the implied changes in social life were dodged--all that has +been pointed out. It was the inability to rise above the immediate that +makes the report read as if the policeman were the only agent of +civilization. + +For where in the report is any thorough discussion by sociologists of the +relations of business and marriage to vice? Why is there no testimony by +psychologists to show how sex can be affected by environment, by +educators to show how it can be trained, by industrial experts to show +how monotony and fatigue affect it? Where are the detailed proposals by +specialists, for decent housing and working conditions, for educational +reform, for play facilities? The Commission wasn't afraid of details: +didn't it recommend searchlights in the parks as a weapon against vice? +Why then isn't there a budget, a large, comprehensive budget, precise and +informing, in which provision is made for beginning to civilize Chicago? +That wouldn't have been "reasonable and practical," I presume, for it +would have cost millions and millions of dollars. And where would the +money have come from? Were the single-taxers, the Socialists consulted? +But their proposals would require big changes in property interests, and +would that be "reasonable and practical"? Evidently not: it is more +reasonable and practical to keep park benches out of the shadows and to +plague unescorted prostitutes. + +And where are the open questions: the issues that everybody should +consider, the problems that scientists should study? I see almost no +trace of them. Why are the sexual problems not even stated? Where are the +doubts that should have honored these investigations, the frank statement +of all the gaps in knowledge, and the obscurities in morals? Knowing +perfectly well that vice will not be repressed within a year or +prostitution absolutely annihilated in ten, it might, I should think, +have seemed more important that the issues be made clear and the thought +of the people fertilized than that the report should look very definite +and precise. There are all sorts of things we do not understand about +this problem. The opportunities for study which the Commissioners had +must have made these empty spaces evident. Why then were we not taken +into their confidence? Along what lines is investigation most needed? To +what problems, what issues, shall we give our attention? What is the +debatable ground in this territory? The Commission does not say, and I +for one, ascribe the silence to the American preoccupation with +immediate, definite, tangible interests. + +Wells has written penetratingly about this in "The New Machiavelli." I +have called this fixation on the nearest object at hand an American +habit. Perhaps as Mr. Wells shows it is an English one too. But in this +country we have a philosophy to express it--the philosophy of the +Reasonable and the Practical, and so I do not hesitate to import Mr. +Wells's observations: "It has been the chronic mistake of statecraft and +all organizing spirits to attempt immediately to scheme and arrange and +achieve. Priests, schools of thought, political schemers, leaders of men, +have always slipped into the error of assuming that they can think out +the whole--or at any rate completely think out definite parts--of the +purpose and future of man, clearly and finally; they have set themselves +to legislate and construct on that assumption, and, experiencing the +perplexing obduracy and evasions of reality, they have taken to dogma, +persecution, training, pruning, secretive education; and all the +stupidities of self-sufficient energy. In the passion of their good +intentions they have not hesitated to conceal facts, suppress thought, +crush disturbing initiatives and apparently detrimental desires. And so +it is blunderingly and wastefully, destroying with the making, that any +extension of social organization is at present achieved. Directly, +however, this idea of an emancipation from immediacy is grasped, directly +the dominating importance of this critical, less personal, mental +hinterland in the individual and of the collective mind in the race is +understood, the whole problem of the statesman and his attitude toward +politics gains a new significance, and becomes accessible to a new series +of solutions...." + +Let no one suppose that the unwillingness to cultivate what Mr. Wells +calls the "mental hinterland" is a vice peculiar to the business man. The +colleges submit to it whenever they concentrate their attention on the +details of the student's vocation before they have built up some cultural +background. The whole drift towards industrial training in schools has +the germs of disaster within it--a preoccupation with the technique of a +career. I am not a lover of the "cultural" activities of our schools and +colleges, still less am I a lover of shallow specialists. The +unquestioned need for experts in politics is full of the very real danger +that detailed preparation may give us a bureaucracy--a government by men +divorced from human tradition. The churches submit to the demand for +immediacy with great alacrity. Look at the so-called "liberal" churches. +Reacting against an empty formalism they are tumbling over themselves to +prove how directly they touch daily life. You read glowing articles in +magazines about preachers who devote their time to housing reforms, milk +supplies, the purging of the civil service. If you lament the ugliness of +their churches, the poverty of the ritual, and the political absorption +of their sermons, you are told that the church must abandon forms and +serve the common life of men. There are many ways of serving everyday +needs,--turning churches into social reform organs and political rostra +is, it seems to me, an obvious but shallow way of performing that +service. When churches cease to paint the background of our lives, to +nourish a Weltanschaung, strengthen men's ultimate purposes and reaffirm +the deepest values of life, then churches have ceased to meet the needs +for which they exist. That "hinterland" affects daily life, and the +church which cannot get a leverage on it by any other method than +entering into immediate political controversy is simply a church that is +dead. It may be an admirable agent of reform, but it has ceased to be a +church. + +A large wing of the Socialist Party is the slave of obvious success. It +boasts that it has ceased to be "visionary" and has become "practical." +Votes, winning campaigns, putting through reform measures seem a great +achievement. It forgets the difference between voting the Socialist +ticket and understanding Socialism. The vote is the tangible thing, and +for that these Socialist politicians work. They get the votes, enough to +elect them to office. In the City of Schenectady that happened as a +result of the mayoralty campaign of 1911. I had an opportunity to observe +the results. A few Socialists were in office set to govern a city with no +Socialist "hinterland." It was a pathetic situation, for any reform +proposal had to pass the judgment of men and women who did not see life +as the officials did. On no important measure could the administration +expect popular understanding. What was the result? In crucial issues, +like taxation, the Socialists had to submit to the ideas,--the general +state of mind of the community. They had to reverse their own theories +and accept those that prevailed in that unconverted city. I wondered over +our helplessness, for I was during a period one of those officials. The +other members of the administration used to say at every opportunity that +we were fighting "The Beast" or "Special Privilege." But to me it always +seemed that we were like Peer Gynt struggling against the formless +Boyg--invisible yet everywhere--we were struggling with the unwatered +hinterland of the citizens of Schenectady. I understood then, I think, +what Wells meant when he said that he wanted "no longer to 'fix up,' as +people say, human affairs, but to devote his forces to the development of +that needed intellectual life without which all his shallow attempts at +fixing up are futile." For in the last analysis the practical and the +reasonable are little idols of clay that thwart our efforts. + +The third requirement of a valuable contribution, says the Chicago +Commission, is the constitutional sanction. This idol carries its own +criticism with it. The worship of the constitution amounts, of course, to +saying that men exist for the sake of the constitution. The person who +holds fast to that idea is forever incapable of understanding either men +or constitutions. It is a prime way of making laws ridiculous; if you +want to cultivate _lese-majeste_ in Germany get the Kaiser to proclaim +his divine origin; if you want to promote disrespect of the courts, +announce their infallibility. + +But in this case, the Commission is not representative of the dominant +thought of our times. The vital part of the population has pretty well +emerged from any dumb acquiescence in constitutions. Theodore Roosevelt, +who reflects so much of America, has very definitely cast down this idol. +Now since he stands generally some twenty years behind the pioneer and +about six months ahead of the majority, we may rest assured that this +much-needed iconoclasm is in process of achievement. + +Closely related to the constitution and just as decadent to-day are the +Sanctity of Private Property, Vested Rights, Competition the Life of +Trade, Prosperity (at any cost). Each one of these ideas was born of an +original need, served its historical function and survived beyond its +allotted time. Nowadays you still come across some of these ancient +notions, especially in courts, where they do no little damage in +perverting justice, but they are ghost-like and disreputable, gibbering +and largely helpless. He who is watching the ascendant ideas of American +life can afford to feel that the early maxims of capitalism are doomed. + +But the habit of mind which would turn an instrument of life into an +immutable law of its existence--that habit is always with us. We may +outgrow our adoration of the Constitution or Private Property only to +establish some new totem pole. In the arts we call this inveterate +tendency classicalism. It is, of course, a habit by no means confined to +the arts. Politics, religion, science are subject to it,--in politics we +call it conservative, in religion orthodox, in science we describe it as +academic. Its manifestations are multiform but they have a common source. +An original creative impulse of the mind expresses itself in a certain +formula; posterity mistakes the formula for the impulse. A genius will +use his medium in a particular way because it serves his need; this way +becomes a fixed rule which the classicalist serves. It has been pointed +out that because the first steam trains were run on roads built for carts +and coaches, the railway gauge almost everywhere in the world became +fixed at four feet eight and one-half inches. + +You might say that genius works inductively and finds a method; the +conservative works deductively from the method and defeats whatever +genius he may have. A friend of mine had written a very brilliant article +on a play which had puzzled New York. Some time later I was discussing +the article with another friend of a decidedly classicalist bent. "What +is it?" he protested, "it isn't criticism for it's half rhapsody; it +isn't rhapsody because it is analytical.... What is it? That's what I +want to know." "But isn't it fine, and worth having, and aren't you glad +it was written?" I pleaded. "Well, if I knew what it was...." And so the +argument ran for hours. Until he had subsumed the article under certain +categories he had come to accept, appreciation was impossible for him. I +have many arguments with my classicalist friend. This time it was about +George Moore's "Ave." I was trying to express my delight. "It isn't a +novel, or an essay, or a real confession--it's nothing," said he. His +well-ordered mind was compelled to throw out of doors any work for which +he had no carefully prepared pocket. I thought of Aristotle, who denied +the existence of a mule because it was neither a horse nor an ass. + +Dramatic critics follow Aristotle in more ways than one. A play is +produced which fascinates an audience for weeks. It is published and read +all over the world. Then you are treated to endless discussions by the +critics trying to prove that "it is not a play." So-and-so-and-so +constitute a play, they affirm,--this thing doesn't meet the +requirements, so away with it. They forget that nobody would have had the +slightest idea what a play was if plays hadn't been written; that the +rules deduced from the plays that have already been written are no +eternal law for the plays that will be. + +Classicalism and invention are irreconcilable enemies. Let it be +understood that I am not decrying the great nourishment which a living +tradition offers. The criticism I am making is of those who try to feed +upon the husks alone. Without the slightest paradox one may say that the +classicalist is most foreign to the classics. He does not put himself +within the creative impulses of the past: he is blinded by their +manifestations. It is perhaps no accident that two of the greatest +classical scholars in England--Gilbert Murray and Alfred Zimmern--are +political radicals. The man whom I call here the classicalist cannot +possibly be creative, for the essence of his creed is that there must be +nothing new under the sun. + +The United States, you imagine, would of all nations be the freest from +classicalism. Settled as a great adventure and dedicated to an experiment +in republicanism, the tradition of the country is of extending +boundaries, obstacles overcome, and pioneering exploits in which a +wilderness was subdued to human uses. The very air of America would seem +to be a guarantee against formalism. You would think that self-government +finds its surest footing here--that real autonomy of the spirit which +makes human uses the goal of effort, denies all inhuman ideals, seeks out +what men want, and proceeds to create it. With such a history how could a +nation fail to see in its constitution anything but a tool of life, like +the axe, the spade or the plough? + +The West has in a measure carried its freedom over into politics and +social life generally. Formalism sets in as you move east and south into +the older and more settled communities. There the pioneering impulse has +passed out of life into stupid history books, and the inevitable +classicalism, the fear of adventure, the superstition before social +invention, have reasserted themselves. If I may turn for a moment from +description to prophecy, it is to say that this equilibrium will not hold +for very long. There are signs that the West after achieving the reforms +which it needs to-day--reforms which will free its economic life from the +credit monopolies of the East, and give it a greater fluidity in the +marketing of its products--will follow the way of all agricultural +communities to a rural and placid conservatism. The spirit of the pioneer +does not survive forever: it is kept alive to-day, I believe, by certain +unnatural irritants which may be summed up as absentee ownership. The +West is suffering from foreignly owned railroads, power-resources, and an +alien credit control. But once it recaptures these essentials of its +economic life, once the "progressive" movement is victorious, I venture +to predict that the agricultural West will become the heart of American +complacency. The East, on the other hand, with its industrial problem +must go to far more revolutionary measures for a solution. And the East +is fertilized continually by European traditions: that stream of +immigration brings with it a thousand unforeseeable possibilities. The +great social adventure of America is no longer the conquest of the +wilderness but the absorption of fifty different peoples. To-day perhaps, +it is still predominantly a question for the East. But it means that +America is turning from the contrast between her courage and nature's +obstacles to a comparison of her civilization with Europe's. Immigration +more than anything else is drawing us into world problems. Many people +profess to see horrible dangers in the foreign invasion. Certainly no man +is sure of its conclusion. It may swamp us, it may, if we seize the +opportunity, mean the impregnation of our national life with a new +brilliancy. + +I have said that the West is still moved by the tapering impulse of the +pioneer, and I have ventured to predict that this would soon dwindle into +an agricultural toryism. That prediction may very easily be upset. +Far-reaching mechanical inventions already threaten to transform farming +into an industry. I refer to those applications of power to agriculture +which will inevitably divorce the farmer from the ownership of his tools. +An industrial revolution analogous to that in manufacture during the +nineteenth century is distinctly probable, and capitalistic agriculture +may soon cease to be a contradiction in terms. Like all inventions it +will disturb deeply the classicalist tendency, and this disturbance may +generate a new impulse to replace the decadent one of the pioneer. + +Without some new dynamic force America, for all her tradition, is not +immune to a hardening formalism. The psychological descent into +classicalism is always a strong possibility. That is why we, the children +of frontiersmen, city builders and immigrants, surprise Europe constantly +with our worship of constitutions, our social and political timidity. In +many ways we are more defenceless against these deadening habits than the +people of Europe. Our geographical isolation preserves us from any vivid +sense of national contrast: our imaginations are not stirred by different +civilizations. We have almost no spiritual weapons against classicalism: +universities, churches, newspapers are by-products of a commercial +success; we have no tradition of intellectual revolt. The American +college student has the gravity and mental habits of a Supreme Court +judge; his "wild oats" are rarely spiritual; the critical, analytical +habit of mind is distrusted. We say that "knocking" is a sign of the +"sorehead" and we sublimate criticism by saying that "every knock is a +boost." America does not play with ideas; generous speculation is +regarded as insincere, and shunned as if it might endanger the optimism +which underlies success. All this becomes such an insulation against new +ideas that when the Yankee goes abroad he takes his environment with him. + +It seems at times as if our capacity for appreciating originality were +absorbed in the trivial eccentricities of fads and fashions. The obvious +novelties of machinery and locomotion, phonographs and yellow journalism +slake the American thirst for creation pretty thoroughly. In serious +matters we follow the Vice Commission's fourth essential of a valuable +contribution--_that which will square with the public conscience of the +American people_. + +I do not care to dilate upon the exploded pretensions of Mr. and Mrs. +Grundy. They are a fairly disreputable couple by this time because we are +beginning to know how much morbidity they represent. The Vice Commission, +for example, bowed to what might be called the "instinctive conscience" +of America when it balked at tracing vice to its source in the +over-respected institutions of American life and the over-respected +natures of American men and women. It bowed to the prevailing conscience +when it proposed taboos instead of radical changes. It bowed to a +traditional conscience when it confused the sins of sex with the +possibilities of sex; and it paid tribute to a verbal conscience, to a +lip morality, when, with extreme irrelevance to its beloved police, it +proclaimed "absolute annihilation" the ultimate ideal. In brief, the +commission failed to see that the working conscience of America is to-day +bound up with the very evil it is supposed to eradicate by a relentless +warfare. + +It was to be expected. Our conscience is not the vessel of eternal +verities. It grows with our social life, and a new social condition means +a radical change in conscience. In order to do away with vice America +must live and think and feel differently. This is an old story. Because +of it all innovators have been at war with the public conscience of their +time. Yet there is nothing strange or particularly disheartening about +this commonplace observation: to expect anything else is to hope that a +nation will lift itself by its own bootstraps. Yet there is danger the +moment leaders of the people make a virtue of homage to the unregenerate, +public conscience. + +In La Follette's Magazine (Feb. 17, 1912) there is a leading article +called "The Great Issue." You can read there that "the composite judgment +is always safer and wiser and stronger and more unselfish than the +judgment of any one individual mind. The people have been betrayed by +their representatives again and again. The real danger to democracy lies +not in the ignorance or want of patriotism of the people, but in the +corrupting influence of powerful business organizations upon the +representatives of the people...." + +I have only one quarrel with that philosophy--its negativity. With the +belief that government is futile and mischievous unless supported by the +mass of the people; with the undeniable fact that business has corrupted +public officials--I have no complaint. What I object to is the emphasis +which shifts the blame for our troubles from the shoulders of the people +to those of the "corrupting interests." For this seems to me nothing but +the resuscitation of the devil: when things go wrong it is somebody +else's fault. We are peculiarly open to this kind of vanity in America. +If some wise law is passed we say it is the will of the people showing +its power of self-government. But if that will is so weak and timid that +a great evil like child labor persists to our shame we turn the +responsibility over to the devil personified as a "special interest." It +is an old habit of the race which seems to have begun with the serpent in +the Garden of Eden. + +The word demagogue has been frightfully maltreated in late years, but +surely here is its real meaning--to flatter the people by telling them +that their failures are somebody else's fault. For if a nation declares +it has reached its majority by instituting self-government, then it +cannot shirk responsibility. + +These "special interests"--big business, a corrupt press, crooked +politics--grew up within the country, were promoted by American citizens, +admired by millions of them, and acquiesced in by almost all of them. +Whoever thinks that business corruption is the work of a few inhumanly +cunning individuals with monstrous morals is self-righteous without +excuse. Capitalists did not violate the public conscience of America; +they expressed it. That conscience was inadequate and unintelligent. We +are being pinched by the acts it nourished. A great outcry has arisen and +a number of perfectly conventional men like Lorimer suffer an undeserved +humiliation. We say it is a "moral awakening." That is another dodge by +which we pretend that we were always wise and just, though a trifle +sleepy. In reality we are witnessing a change of conscience, initiated by +cranks and fanatics, sustained for a long time by minorities, which has +at last infected the mass of the people. + +The danger I spoke of arises just here: the desire to infect at once the +whole mass crowds out the courage of the innovator. No man can do his +best work if he bows at every step to the public conscience of his age. +The real service to democracy is the fullest, freest expression of +talent. The best servants of the people, like the best valets, must +whisper unpleasant truths in the master's ear. It is the court fool, not +the foolish courtier, whom the king can least afford to lose. + +Hostile critics of democracy have long pointed out that mediocrity +becomes the rule. They have not been without facts for their support. And +I do not see why we who believe in democracy should not recognize this +danger and trace it to its source. Certainly it is not answered with a +sneer. I have worked in the editorial office of a popular magazine, a +magazine that is known widely as a champion of popular rights. By +personal experience, by intimate conversations, and by looking about, I +think I am pretty well aware of what the influence of business upon +journalism amounts to. I have seen the inside working of business +pressure; articles of my own have been suppressed after they were in +type; friends of mine have told me stories of expurgation, of the +"morganization" of their editorial policy. And in the face of that I +should like to record it as my sincere conviction that no financial power +is one-tenth so corrupting, so insidious, so hostile to originality and +frank statement as the fear of the public which reads the magazine. For +one item suppressed out of respect for a railroad or a bank, nine are +rejected because of the prejudices of the public. This will anger the +farmers, that will arouse the Catholics, another will shock the summer +girl. Anybody can take a fling at poor old Mr. Rockefeller, but the great +mass of average citizens (to which none of us belongs) must be left in +undisturbed possession of its prejudices. In that subservience, and not +in the meddling of Mr. Morgan, is the reason why American journalism is +so flaccid, so repetitious and so dull. + +The people should be supreme, yes, its will should be the law of the +land. But it is a caricature of democracy to make it also the law of +individual initiative. One thing it is to say that all proposals must +ultimately win the acceptance of the majority; it is quite another to +propose nothing which is not immediately acceptable. It is as true of the +nation as of the body that one leg cannot go forward very far unless the +whole body follows. That is a different thing from trying to move both +legs forward at the same time. The one is democracy; the other +is--demolatry. + +It is better to catch the idol-maker than to smash each idol. It would be +an endless task to hunt down all the masks, the will-o'-the-wisps and the +shadows which divert us from our real purpose. Each man carries within +himself the cause of his own mirages. Whenever we accept an idea as +authority instead of as instrument, an idol is set up. We worship the +plough, and not the fruit. And from this habit there is no permanent +escape. Only effort can keep the mind centered truly. Whenever criticism +slackens, whenever we sink into acquiescence, the mind swerves aside and +clings with the gratitude of the weary to some fixed idea. It is so much +easier to follow a rule of thumb, and obey the constitution, than to find +out what we really want and to do it. + + * * * * * + +A great deal of political theory has been devoted to asking: what is the +aim of government? Many readers may have wondered why that question has +not figured in these pages. For the logical method would be to decide +upon the ultimate ideal of statecraft and then elaborate the technique of +its realization. I have not done that because this rational procedure +inverts the natural order of things and develops all kinds of theoretical +tangles and pseudo-problems. They come from an effort to state abstractly +in intellectual terms qualities that can be known only by direct +experience. You achieve nothing but confusion if you begin by announcing +that politics must achieve "justice" or "liberty" or "happiness." Even +though you are perfectly sure that you know exactly what these words mean +translated into concrete experiences, it is very doubtful whether you can +really convey your meaning to anyone else. "Plaisante justice qu'une +riviere borne. Verite, au deca des Pyrenees, erreur au de la," says +Pascal. If what is good in the world depended on our ability to define it +we should be hopeless indeed. + +This is an old difficulty in ethics. Many men have remarked that we +quarrel over the "problem of evil," never over the "problem of good." +That comes from the fact that good is a quality of experience which does +not demand an explanation. When we are thwarted we begin to ask why. It +was the evil in the world that set Leibniz the task of justifying the +ways of God to man. Nor is it an accident that in daily life misfortune +turns men to philosophy. One might generalize and say that as soon as we +begin to explain, it is because we have been made to complain. + +No moral judgment can decide the value of life. No ethical theory can +announce any intrinsic good. The whole speculation about morality is an +effort to find a way of living which men who live it will instinctively +feel is good. No formula can express an ultimate experience; no axiom can +ever be a substitute for what really makes life worth living. Plato may +describe the objects which man rejoices over, he may guide them to good +experiences, but each man in his inward life is a last judgment on all +his values. + +This amounts to saying that the goal of action is in its final analysis +aesthetic and not moral--a quality of feeling instead of conformity to +rule. Words like justice, harmony, power, democracy are simply empirical +suggestions which may produce the good life. If the practice of them does +not produce it then we are under no obligation to follow them, we should +be idolatrous fools to do so. Every abstraction, every rule of conduct, +every constitution, every law and social arrangement, is an instrument +that has no value in itself. Whatever credit it receives, whatever +reverence we give it, is derived from its utility in ministering to those +concrete experiences which are as obvious and as undefinable as color or +sound. We can celebrate the positively good things, we can live them, we +can create them, but we cannot philosophize about them. To the anaesthetic +intellect we could not convey the meaning of joy. A creature that could +reason but not feel would never know the value of life, for what is +ultimate is in itself inexplicable. + +Politics is not concerned with prescribing the ultimate qualities of +life. When it tries to do so by sumptuary legislation, nothing but +mischief is invoked. Its business is to provide opportunities, not to +announce ultimate values; to remove oppressive evil and to invent new +resources for enjoyment. With the enjoyment itself it can have no +concern. That must be lived by each individual. In a sense the politician +can never know his own success, for it is registered in men's inner +lives, and is largely incommunicable. An increasing harvest of rich +personalities is the social reward for a fine statesmanship, but such +personalities are free growths in a cordial environment. They cannot be +cast in moulds or shaped by law. There is no need, therefore, to generate +dialectical disputes about the final goal of politics. No definition can +be just--too precise a one can only deceive us into thinking that our +definition is true. Call ultimate values by any convenient name, it is of +slight importance which you choose. If only men can keep their minds +freed from formalism, idol worship, fixed ideas, and exalted +abstractions, politicians need not worry about the language in which the +end of our striving is expressed. For with the removal of distracting +idols, man's experience becomes the center of thought. And if we think in +terms of men, find out what really bothers them, seek to supply what they +really want, hold only their experience sacred, we shall find our +sanction obvious and unchallenged. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE MAKING OF CREEDS + + +My first course in philosophy was nothing less than a summary of the +important systems of thought put forward in Western Europe during the +last twenty-six hundred years. Perhaps that is a slight exaggeration--we +did gloss over a few centuries in the Middle Ages. For the rest we +touched upon all the historic names from Thales to Nietzsche. After about +nine weeks of this bewildering transit a friend approached me with a sour +look on his face. "You know," he said, "I can't make head or tail out of +this business. I agree with each philosopher as we study him. But when we +get to the next one, I agree with him too. Yet he generally says the +other one was wrong. They can't all be right. Can they now?" I was too +much puzzled with the same difficulty to help him. + +Somewhat later I began to read the history of political theories. It was +a less disinterested study than those sophomore speculations, for I had +jumped into a profession which carried me through some of the underground +passages of "practical politics" and reformist groups. The tangle of +motives and facts and ideas was incredible. I began to feel the force of +Mr. John Hobson's remark that "if practical workers for social and +industrial reforms continue to ignore principles ... they will have to +pay the price which short-sighted empiricism always pays; with slow, +hesitant, and staggering steps, with innumerable false starts and +backslidings, they will move in the dark along an unseen track toward an +unseen goal." The political theorists laid some claim to lighting up both +the track and the goal, and so I turned to them for help. + +Now whoever has followed political theory will have derived perhaps two +convictions as a reward. Almost all the thinkers seem to regard their +systems as true and binding, and none of these systems are. No matter +which one you examine, it is inadequate. You cannot be a Platonist or a +Benthamite in politics to-day. You cannot go to any of the great +philosophers even for the outlines of a statecraft which shall be fairly +complete, and relevant to American life. I returned to the sophomore +mood: "Each of these thinkers has contributed something, has had some +wisdom about events. Looked at in bulk the philosophers can't all be +right or all wrong." + +But like so many theoretical riddles, this one rested on a very simple +piece of ignorance. The trouble was that without realizing it I too had +been in search of the philosopher's stone. I too was looking for +something that could not be found. That happened in this case to be +nothing less than an absolutely true philosophy of politics. It was the +old indolence of hoping that somebody had done the world's thinking once +and for all. I had conjured up the fantasy of a system which would +contain the whole of life, be as reliable as a table of logarithms, +foresee all possible emergencies and offer entirely trustworthy rules of +action. When it seemed that no such system had ever been produced, I was +on the point of damning the entire tribe of theorists from Plato to Marx. + +This is what one may call the naivete of the intellect. Its hope is that +some man living at one place on the globe in a particular epoch will, +through the miracle of genius, be able to generalize his experience for +all time and all space. It says in effect that there is never anything +essentially new under the sun, that any moment of experience sufficiently +understood would be seen to contain all history and all destiny--that the +intellect reasoning on one piece of experience could know what all the +rest of experience was like. Looked at more closely this philosophy means +that novelty is an illusion of ignorance, that life is an endless +repetition, that when you know one revolution of it, you know all the +rest. In a very real sense the world has no history and no future, the +race has no career. At any moment everything is given: our reason could +know that moment so thoroughly that all the rest of life would be like +the commuter's who travels back and forth on the same line every day. +There would be no inventions and no discoveries, for in the instant that +reason had found the key of experience everything would be unfolded. The +present would not be the womb of the future: nothing would be embryonic, +nothing would _grow_. Experience would cease to be an adventure in order +to become the monotonous fulfilment of a perfect prophecy. + +This omniscience of the human intellect is one of the commonest +assumptions in the world. Although when you state the belief as I have, +it sounds absurdly pretentious, yet the boastfulness is closer to the +child's who stretches out its hand for the moon than the romantic +egotist's who thinks he has created the moon and all the stars. Whole +systems of philosophy have claimed such an eternal and absolute validity; +the nineteenth century produced a bumper crop of so-called atheists, +materialists and determinists who believed in all sincerity that +"Science" was capable of a complete truth and unfailing prediction. If +you want to see this faith in all its naivete go into those quaint +rationalist circles where Herbert Spencer's ghost announces the "laws of +life," with only a few inessential details omitted. + +Now, of course, no philosophy of this sort has ever realized such hopes. +Mankind has certainly come nearer to justifying Mr. Chesterton's +observation that one of its favorite games is called "Cheat the +Prophet."... "The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all +that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next +generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and +bury them nicely. They then go and do something else." Now this weakness +is not, as Mr. Chesterton would like to believe, confined to the clever +men. But it is a weakness, and many people have speculated about it. Why +in the face of hundreds of philosophies wrecked on the rocks of the +unexpected do men continue to believe that the intellect can transcend +the vicissitudes of experience? + +For they certainly do believe it, and generally the more parochial their +outlook, the more cosmic their pretensions. All of us at times yearn for +the comfort of an absolute philosophy. We try to believe that, however +finite we may be, our intellect is something apart from the cycle of our +life, capable by an Olympian detachment from human interests of a divine +thoroughness. Even our evolutionist philosophy, as Bergson shows, "begins +by showing us in the intellect a local effect of evolution, a flame, +perhaps accidental, which lights up the coming and going of living things +in the narrow passage open to their action; and lo! forgetting what it +has just told us, makes of this lantern glimmering in a tunnel a Sun +which can illuminate the world." + +This is what most of us do in our search for a philosophy of politics. We +forget that the big systems of theory are much more like village +lamp-posts than they are like the sun, that they were made to light up a +particular path, obviate certain dangers, and aid a peculiar mode of +life. The understanding of the place of theory in life is a comparatively +new one. We are just beginning to see how creeds are made. And the +insight is enormously fertile. Thus Mr. Alfred Zimmern in his fine study +of "The Greek Commonwealth" says of Plato and Aristotle that no +interpretation can be satisfactory which does not take into account the +impression left upon their minds by the social development which made the +age of these philosophers a period of Athenian decline. Mr. Zimmern's +approach is common enough in modern scholarship, but the full +significance of it for the creeds we ourselves are making is still +something of a novelty. When we are asked to think of the "Republic" as +the reaction of decadent Greece upon the conservative temperament of +Plato, the function of theory is given a new illumination. Political +philosophy at once appears as a human invention in a particular +crisis--an instrument to fit a need. The pretension to finality falls +away. + +This is a great emancipation. Instead of clinging to the naive belief +that Plato was legislating for all mankind, you can discuss his plans as +a temporary superstructure made for an historical purpose. You are free +then to appreciate the more enduring portions of his work, to understand +Santayana when he says of the Platonists, "their theories are so +extravagant, yet their wisdom seems so great. Platonism is a very refined +and beautiful expression of our natural instincts, it embodies conscience +and utters our inmost hopes." This insight into the values of human life, +partial though it be, is what constitutes the abiding monument of Plato's +genius. His constructions, his formal creeds, his law-making and social +arrangements are local and temporary--for us they can have only an +antiquarian interest. + +In some such way as this the sophomoric riddle is answered: no thinker +can lay down a course of action for all mankind--programs if they are +useful at all are useful for some particular historical period. But if +the thinker sees at all deeply into the life of his own time, his +theoretical system will rest upon observation of human nature. That +remains as a residue of wisdom long after his reasoning and his concrete +program have passed into limbo. For human nature in all its profounder +aspects changes very little in the few generations since our Western +wisdom has come to be recorded. These _apercus_ left over from the great +speculations are the golden threads which successive thinkers weave into +the pattern of their thought. Wisdom remains; theory passes. + +If that is true of Plato with his ample vision how much truer is it of +the theories of the littler men--politicians, courtiers and propagandists +who make up the academy of politics. Machiavelli will, of course, be +remembered at once as a man, whose speculations were fitted to an +historical crisis. His advice to the Prince was real advice, not a +sermon. A boss was telling a governor how to extend his power. The wealth +of Machiavelli's learning and the splendid penetration of his mind are +used to interpret experience for a particular purpose. I have always +thought that Machiavelli derives his bad name from a too transparent +honesty. Less direct minds would have found high-sounding ethical +sanctions in which to conceal the real intent. That was the nauseating +method of nineteenth century economists when they tried to identify the +brutal practices of capitalism with the beneficence of nature and the +Will of God. Not so Machiavelli. He could write without a blush that "a +prince, especially a new one, cannot observe all those things for which +men are esteemed, being often forced, in order to maintain the state, to +act contrary to fidelity, friendship, humanity, and religion." The +apologists of business also justified a rupture with human decencies. +They too fitted their theory to particular purposes, but they had not the +courage to avow it even to themselves. + +The rare value of Machiavelli is just this lack of self-deception. You +may think his morals devilish, but you cannot accuse him of quoting +scripture. I certainly do not admire the end he serves: the extension of +an autocrat's power is a frivolous perversion of government. His ideal +happens, however, to be the aim of most foreign offices, politicians and +"princes of finance." Machiavelli's morals are not one bit worse than the +practices of the men who rule the world to-day. An American Senate tore +up the Hay-Pauncefote treaty, and with the approval of the President +acted "contrary to fidelity" and friendship too; Austria violated the +Treaty of Berlin by annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina. Machiavelli's ethics +are commonplace enough. His head is clearer than the average. He let the +cat out of the bag and showed in the boldest terms how theory becomes an +instrument of practice. You may take him as a symbol of the political +theorist. You may say that all the thinkers of influence have been +writing advice to the Prince. Machiavelli recognized Lorenzo the +Magnificent; Marx, the proletariat of Europe. + +At first this sounds like standing the world on its head, denying reason +and morality, and exalting practice over righteousness. That is neither +here nor there. I am simply trying to point out an illuminating fact +whose essential truth can hardly be disputed. The important social +philosophies are consciously or otherwise the servants of men's purposes. +Good or bad, that it seems to me is the way we work. We find reasons for +what we want to do. The big men from Machiavelli through Rousseau to Karl +Marx brought history, logic, science and philosophy to prop up and +strengthen their deepest desires. The followers, the epigones, may accept +the reasons of Rousseau and Marx and deduce rules of action from them. +But the original genius sees the dynamic purpose first, finds reasons +afterward. This amounts to saying that man when he is most creative is +not a rational, but a wilful animal. + +The political thinker who to-day exercises the greatest influence on the +Western World is, I suppose, Karl Marx. The socialist movement calls him +its prophet, and, while many socialists say he is superseded, no one +disputes his historical importance. Now Marx embalmed his thinking in the +language of the Hegelian school. He founded it on a general philosophy of +society which is known as the materialistic conception of history. +Moreover, Marx put forth the claim that he had made socialism +"scientific"--had shown that it was woven into the texture of natural +phenomena. The Marxian paraphernalia crowds three heavy volumes, so +elaborate and difficult that socialists rarely read them. I have known +one socialist who lived leisurely on his country estate and claimed to +have "looked" at every page of Marx. Most socialists, including the +leaders, study selected passages and let it go at that. This is a wise +economy based on a good instinct. For all the parade of learning and +dialectic is an after-thought--an accident from the fact that the +prophetic genius of Marx appeared in Germany under the incubus of Hegel. +Marx saw what he wanted to do long before he wrote three volumes to +justify it. Did not the Communist Manifesto appear many years before "Das +Kapital"? + +Nothing is more instructive than a socialist "experience" meeting at +which everyone tries to tell how he came to be converted. These +gatherings are notoriously untruthful--in fact, there is a genial +pleasure in not telling the truth about one's salad days in the socialist +movement. The prevalent lie is to explain how the new convert, standing +upon a mountain of facts, began to trace out the highways that led from +hell to heaven. Everybody knows that no such process was actually lived +through, and almost without exception the real story can be discerned: a +man was dissatisfied, he wanted a new condition of life, he embraced a +theory that would justify his hopes and his discontent. For once you +touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs +are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon. In the +language of philosophers, socialism as a living force is a product of the +will--a will to beauty, order, neighborliness, not infrequently a will to +health. Men desire first, then they reason; fascinated by the future, +they invent a "scientific socialism" to get there. + +Many people don't like to admit this. Or if they admit it, they do so +with a sigh. Their minds construct a utopia--one in which all judgments +are based on logical inference from syllogisms built on the law of +mathematical probabilities. If you quote David Hume at them, and say that +reason itself is an irrational impulse they think you are indulging in a +silly paradox. I shall not pursue this point very far, but I believe it +could be shown without too much difficulty that the rationalists are +fascinated by a certain kind of thinking--logical and orderly +thinking--and that it is their will to impose that method upon other men. + +For fear that somebody may regard this as a play on words drawn from some +ultra-modern "anti-intellectualist" source, let me quote Santayana. This +is what the author of that masterly series "The Life of Reason" wrote in +one of his earlier books: "The ideal of rationality is itself as +arbitrary, as much dependent on the needs of a finite organization, as +any other ideal. Only as ultimately securing tranquillity of mind, which +the philosopher instinctively pursues, has it for him any necessity. In +spite of the verbal propriety of saying that reason demands rationality, +what really demands rationality, what makes it a good and indispensable +thing and gives it all its authority, is not its own nature, but our need +of it both in safe and economical action and in the pleasures of +comprehension." Because rationality itself is a wilful exercise one hears +Hymns to Reason and sees it personified as an extremely dignified +goddess. For all the light and shadow of sentiment and passion play even +about the syllogism. + +The attempts of theorists to explain man's successes as rational acts and +his failures as lapses of reason have always ended in a dismal and misty +unreality. No genuine politician ever treats his constituents as +reasoning animals. This is as true of the high politics of Isaiah as it +is of the ward boss. Only the pathetic amateur deludes himself into +thinking that, if he presents the major and minor premise, the voter will +automatically draw the conclusion on election day. The successful +politician--good or bad--deals with the dynamics--with the will, the +hopes, the needs and the visions of men. + +It isn't sentimentality which says that where there is no vision the +people perisheth. Every time Tammany Hall sets off fireworks and oratory +on the Fourth of July; every time the picture of Lincoln is displayed at +a political convention; every red bandanna of the Progressives and red +flag of the socialists; every song from "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" +to the "International"; every metrical conclusion to a great +speech--whether we stand at Armageddon, refuse to press upon the brow of +labor another crown of thorns, or call upon the workers of the world to +unite--every one of these slogans is an incitement of the will--an effort +to energize politics. They are attempts to harness blind impulses to +particular purposes. They are tributes to the sound practical sense of a +vision in politics. No cause can succeed without them: so long as you +rely on the efficacy of "scientific" demonstration and logical proof you +can hold your conventions in anybody's back parlor and have room to +spare. + +I remember an observation that Lincoln Steffens made in a speech about +Mayor Tom Johnson. "Tom failed," said Mr. Steffens, "because he was too +practical." Coming from a man who had seen as much of actual politics as +Mr. Steffens, it puzzled me a great deal. I taxed him with it later and +he explained somewhat as follows: "Tom Johnson had a vision of Cleveland +which he called The City on the Hill. He pictured the town emancipated +from its ugliness and its cruelty--a beautiful city for free men and +women. He used to talk of that vision to the 'cabinet' of political +lieutenants which met every Sunday night at his house. He had all his +appointees working for the City on the Hill. But when he went out +campaigning before the people he talked only of three-cent fares and the +tax outrages. Tom Johnson didn't show the people the City on the Hill. He +didn't take them into his confidence. They never really saw what it was +all about. And they went back on Tom Johnson." + +That is one of Mr. Steffens's most acute observations. What makes it +doubly interesting is that Tom Johnson confirmed it a few months before +he died. His friends were telling him that his defeat was temporary, that +the work he had begun was unchecked. It was plain that in the midst of +his suffering, with death close by, he found great comfort in that +assurance. But his mind was so realistic, his integrity so great that he +could not blink the fact that there had been a defeat. Steffens was +pointing out the explanation: "you did not show the people what you saw, +you gave them the details, you fought their battles, you started to +build, but you left them in darkness as to the final goal." + +I wish I could recall the exact words in which Tom Johnson replied. For +in them the greatest of the piecemeal reformers admitted the practical +weakness of opportunist politics. + +There is a type of radical who has an idea that he can insinuate advanced +ideas into legislation without being caught. His plan of action is to +keep his real program well concealed and to dole out sections of it to +the public from time to time. John A. Hobson in "The Crisis of +Liberalism" describes the "practical reformer" so that anybody can +recognize him: "This revolt against ideas is carried so far that able men +have come seriously to look upon progress as a matter for the +manipulation of wire-pullers, something to be 'jobbed' in committee by +sophistical notions or other clever trickery." Lincoln Steffens calls +these people "our damned rascals." Mr. Hobson continues, "The attraction +of some obvious gain, the suppression of some scandalous abuse of +monopolist power by a private company, some needed enlargement of +existing Municipal or State enterprise by lateral expansion--such are the +sole springs of action." Well may Mr. Hobson inquire, _"Now, what +provision is made for generating the motor power of progress in +Collectivism?"_ + +No amount of architect's plans, bricks and mortar will build a house. +Someone must have the wish to build it. So with the modern democratic +state. Statesmanship cannot rest upon the good sense of its program. It +must find popular feeling, organize it, and make that the motive power of +government. If you study the success of Roosevelt the point is +re-enforced. He is a man of will in whom millions of people have felt the +embodiment of their own will. For a time Roosevelt was a man of destiny +in the truest sense. He wanted what a nation wanted: his own power +radiated power; he embodied a vision; Tom, Dick and Harry moved with his +movement. + +No use to deplore the fact. You cannot stop a living body with nothing at +all. I think we may picture society as a compound of forces that are +always changing. Put a vision in front of one of these currents and you +can magnetize it in that direction. For visions alone organize popular +passions. Try to ignore them or box them up, and they will burst forth +destructively. When Haywood dramatizes the class struggle he uses class +resentment for a social purpose. You may not like his purpose, but unless +you can gather proletarian power into some better vision, you have no +grounds for resenting Haywood. I fancy that the demonstration of King +Canute settled once and for all the stupid attempt to ignore a moving +force. + +A dynamic conception of society always frightens a great number of +people. It gives politics a restless and intractable quality. Pure reason +is so gentlemanly, but will and the visions of a people--these are +adventurous and incalculable forces. Most politicians living for the day +prefer to ignore them. If only society will stand fairly still while +their career is in the making they are content to avoid the actualities. +But a politician with some imaginative interest in genuine affairs need +not be seduced into the learned folly of pretending that reality is +something else than it is. If he is to influence life he must deal with +it. A deep respect is due the Schopenhauerian philosopher who looks upon +the world, finds that its essence is evil, and turns towards insensitive +calm. But no respect is due to anyone who sets out to reform the world by +ignoring its quality. Whoever is bent upon shaping politics to better +human uses must accept freely as his starting point the impulses that +agitate human beings. If observation shows that reason is an instrument +of will, then only confusion can result from pretending that it isn't. + +I have called this misplaced "rationality" a piece of learned folly, +because it shows itself most dangerously among those thinkers about +politics who are divorced from action. In the Universities political +movements are generally regarded as essentially static, cut and dried +solids to be judged by their logical consistency. It is as if the stream +of life had to be frozen before it could be studied. The socialist +movement was given a certain amount of attention when I was an +undergraduate. The discussion turned principally on two points: were +rent, interest and dividends _earned_? Was collective ownership of +capital a feasible scheme? And when the professor, who was a good +dialectician, had proved that interest was a payment for service +("saving") and that public ownership was not practicable, it was assumed +that socialism was disposed of. The passions, the needs, the hopes that +generate this world-wide phenomenon were, I believe, pocketed and ignored +under the pat saying: "Of course, socialism is not an economic policy, +it's a religion." That was the end of the matter for the students of +politics. It was then a matter for the divinity schools. If the same +scholastic method is in force there, all that would be needed to crush +socialism is to show its dogmatic inconsistencies. + +The theorist is incompetent when he deals with socialism just because he +assumes that men are determined by logic and that a false conclusion will +stop a moving, creative force. Occasionally he recognizes the wilful +character of politics: then he shakes his head, climbs into an ivory +tower and deplores the moonshine, the religious manias and the passions +of the mob. Real life is beyond his control and influence because real +life is largely agitated by impulses and habits, unconscious needs, +faith, hope and desire. With all his learning he is ineffective because, +instead of trying to use the energies of men, he deplores them. + +Suppose we recognize that creeds are instruments of the will, how would +it alter the character of our thinking? Take an ancient quarrel like that +over determinism. Whatever your philosophy, when you come to the test of +actual facts you find, I think, all grades of freedom and determinism. +For certain purposes you believe in free will, for others you do not. +Thus, as Mr. Chesterton suggests, no determinist is prevented from saying +"if you please" to the housemaid. In love, in your career, you have no +doubt that "if" is a reality. But when you are engaged in scientific +investigation, you try to reduce the spontaneous in life to a minimum. +Mr. Arnold Bennett puts forth a rather curious hybrid when he advises us +to treat ourselves as free agents and everyone else as an automaton. On +the other hand Prof. Muensterberg has always insisted that in social +relations we must always treat everyone as a purposeful, integrated +character. + +Your doctrine, in short, depends on your purpose: a theory by itself is +neither moral nor immoral, its value is conditioned by the purpose it +serves. In any accurate sense theory is to be judged only as an effective +or ineffective instrument of a desire: the discussion of doctrines is +technical and not moral. A theory has no intrinsic value: that is why the +devil can talk theology. + +No creed possesses any final sanction. Human beings have desires that are +far more important than the tools and toys and churches they make to +satisfy them. It is more penetrating, in my opinion, to ask of a creed +whether it served than whether it was "true." Try to judge the great +beliefs that have swayed mankind by their inner logic or their empirical +solidity and you stand forever, a dull pedant, apart from the interests +of men. The Christian tradition did not survive because of Aquinas or +fall before the Higher Criticism, nor will it be revived because someone +proves the scientific plausibility of its doctrine. What we need to know +about the Christian epic is the effect it had on men--true or false, they +have believed in it for nineteen centuries. Where has it helped them, +where hindered? What needs did it answer? What energies did it transmute? +And what part of mankind did it neglect? Where did it begin to do +violence to human nature? + +Political creeds must receive the same treatment. The doctrine of the +"social contract" formulated by Hobbes and made current by Rousseau can +no longer be accepted as a true account of the origin of society. +Jean-Jacques is in fact a supreme case--perhaps even a slight +caricature--of the way in which formal creeds bolster up passionate +wants. I quote from Prof. Walter's introduction in which he says that +"The Social Contract _showed to those who were eager to be convinced_ +that no power was legitimate which was guilty of abuses. It is no wonder +that its author was buried in the Pantheon with pompous procession, that +the framers of the new Constitution, Thouret and Lieyes and La Fayette, +did not forget and dared not forget its doctrines, that it was the +text-book and the delight of Camille Desmoulins and Danton and St. Just, +that Robespierre read it through once every day." In the perspective of +history, no one feels that he has said the last word about a philosophy +like Rousseau's after demonstrating its "untruth." Good or bad, it has +meant too much for any such easy disposal. What shall we call an idea, +objectively untrue, but practically of the highest importance? + +The thinker who has faced this difficulty most radically is Georges Sorel +in the "Reflexions sur la Violence." His doctrine of the "social myth" +has seemed to many commentators one of those silly paradoxes that only a +revolutionary syndicalist and Frenchman could have put forward. M. Sorel +is engaged in presenting the General Strike as the decisive battle of the +class struggle and the core of the socialist movement. Now whatever else +he may be, M. Sorel is not naive: the sharp criticism of other socialists +was something he could not peacefully ignore. They told him that the +General Strike was an idle dream, that it could never take place, that, +even if it could, the results would not be very significant. Sidney Webb, +in the customary Fabian fashion, had dismissed the General Strike as a +sign of socialist immaturity. There is no doubt that M. Sorel felt the +force of these attacks. But he was not ready to abandon his favorite idea +because it had been shown to be unreasonable and impossible. Just the +opposite effect showed itself and he seized the opportunity of turning an +intellectual defeat into a spiritual triumph. This performance must have +delighted him to the very bottom of his soul, for he has boasted that his +task in life is to aid in ruining "le prestige de la culture bourgeoise." + +M. Sorel's defence of the General Strike is very startling. He admits +that it may never take place, that it is not a true picture of the goal +of the socialist movement. Without a blush he informs us that this +central gospel of the working class is simply a "myth." The admission +frightens M. Sorel not at all. "It doesn't matter much," he remarks, +"whether myths contain details actually destined to realization _in the +scheme_ of an historical future; they are not astrological almanacks; it +may even be that nothing of what they express will actually happen--as in +the case of that catastrophe which the early Christians expected. Are we +not accustomed in daily life to recognizing that the reality differs very +greatly from the ideas of it that we made before we acted? Yet that +doesn't hinder us from making resolutions.... Myths must be judged as +instruments for acting upon present conditions; all discussion about the +manner of applying them concretely to the course of history is senseless. +_The entire myth is what counts...._ There is no use then in reasoning +about details which might arise in the midst of the class struggle ... +even though the revolutionists should be deceiving themselves through and +through in making a fantastic picture of the general strike, this picture +would still have been a power of the highest order in preparing for +revolution, so long as it expressed completely all the aspirations of +socialism and bound together revolutionary ideas with a precision and +firmness that no other methods of thought could have given." + +It may well be imagined that this highly sophisticated doctrine was +regarded as perverse. All the ordinary prejudices of thought are +irritated by a thinker who frankly advises masses of his fellow-men to +hold fast to a belief which by all the canons of common sense is nothing +but an illusion. M. Sorel must have felt the need of closer statement, +for in a letter to Daniel Halevy, published in the second edition, he +makes his position much clearer. "Revolutionary myths ..." we read, +"enable us to understand the activity, the feelings, and the ideas of a +populace preparing to enter into a decisive struggle; _they are not +descriptions of things, but expressions of will_." The italics are mine: +they set in relief the insight that makes M. Sorel so important to our +discussion. I do not know whether a quotation torn from its context can +possibly do justice to its author. I do know that for any real grasp of +this point it is necessary to read M. Sorel with great sympathy. + +One must grant at least that he has made an accurate observation. The +history of the world is full of great myths which have had the most +concrete results. M. Sorel cites primitive Christianity, the Reformation, +the French Revolution and the Mazzini campaign. The men who took part in +those great social movements summed up their aspiration in pictures of +decisive battles resulting in the ultimate triumph of their cause. We in +America might add an example from our own political life. For it is +Theodore Roosevelt who is actually attempting to make himself and his +admirers the heroes of a new social myth. Did he not announce from the +platform at Chicago--"we stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord"? + +Let no one dismiss M. Sorel then as an empty paradoxer. The myth is not +one of the outgrown crudities of our pagan ancestors. We, in the midst of +our science and our rationalism, are still making myths, and their force +is felt in the actual affairs of life. They convey an impulse, not a +program, nor a plan of reconstruction. Their practical value cannot be +ignored, for they embody the motor currents in social life. + +Myths are to be judged, as M. Sorel says, by their ability to express +aspiration. They stand or fall by that. In such a test the Christian +myth, for example, would be valued for its power of incarnating human +desire. That it did not do so completely is the cause of its decline. +From Aucassin to Nietzsche men have resented it as a partial and stunting +dream. It had too little room for profane love, and only by turning the +Church of Christ into the Church Militant could the essential Christian +passivity obtain the assent of aggressive and masculine races. To-day +traditional Christianity has weakened in the face of man's interest in +the conquest of this world. The liberal and advanced churches recognize +this fact by exhibiting a great preoccupation with everyday affairs. Now +they may be doing important service--I have no wish to deny that--but +when the Christian Churches turn to civics, to reformism or socialism, +they are in fact announcing that the Christian dream is dead. They may +continue to practice some of its moral teachings and hold to some of its +creed, but the Christian impulse is for them no longer active. A new +dream, which they reverently call Christian, has sprung from their +desires. + +During their life these social myths contain a nation's finest energy. It +is just because they are "not descriptions of things, but expressions of +will" that their influence is so great. Ignore what a man desires and you +ignore the very source of his power; run against the grain of a nation's +genius and see where you get with your laws. Robert Burns was right when +he preferred poetry to charters. The recognition of this truth by Sorel +is one of the most impressive events in the revolutionary movement. +Standing as a spokesman of an actual social revolt, he has not lost his +vision because he understands its function. If Machiavelli is a symbol of +the political theorist making reason an instrument of purpose, we may +take Sorel as a self-conscious representative of the impulses which +generate purpose. + +It must not be supposed that respect for the myth is a discovery of +Sorel's. He is but one of a number of contemporary thinkers who have +reacted against a very stupid prejudice of nineteenth century science to +the effect that the mental habits of human beings were not "facts." +Unless ideas mirrored external nature they were regarded as beneath the +notice of the scientific mind. But in more recent years we have come to +realize that, in a world so full of ignorance and mistake, error itself +is worthy of study. Our untrue ideas are significant because they +influence our lives enormously. They are "facts" to be investigated. One +might point to the great illumination that has resulted from Freud's +analysis of the abracadabra of our dreams. No one can any longer dismiss +the fantasy because it is logically inconsistent, superficially absurd, +or objectively untrue. William James might also be cited for his defense +of those beliefs that are beyond the realm of proof. His essay, "The Will +to Believe," is a declaration of independence, which says in effect that +scientific demonstration is not the only test of ideas. He stated the +case for those beliefs which influence life so deeply, though they fail +to describe it. James himself was very disconcerting to many scientists +because he insisted on expressing his aspirations about the universe in +what his colleague Santayana calls a "romantic cosmology": "I am far from +wishing to suggest that such a view seems to me more probable than +conventional idealism or the Christian Orthodoxy. All three are in the +region of dramatic system-making and myth, to which probabilities are +irrelevant." + +It is impossible to leave this point without quoting Nietzsche, who had +this insight and stated it most provocatively. In "Beyond Good and Evil" +Nietzsche says flatly that "the falseness of an opinion is not for us any +objection to it: it is here, perhaps, that our new language sounds most +strangely. The question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, +life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing...." Then he +comments on the philosophers. "They all pose as though their real +opinions had been discovered and attained through the self-evolving of a +cold, pure, divinely indifferent dialectic...; whereas, in fact, a +prejudiced proposition, idea, or 'suggestion,' which is generally their +heart's desire abstracted and refined, is defended by them with arguments +sought out after the event. They are all advocates who do not wish to be +regarded as such, generally astute defenders, also, of their prejudices, +which they dub 'truths'--and _very_ far from having the conscience which +bravely admits this to itself; very far from having the good taste or the +courage which goes so far as to let this be understood, perhaps to warn +friend or foe, or in cheerful confidence and self-ridicule.... It has +gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now has +consisted of--namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of +involuntary and unconscious autobiography, and, moreover, that the moral +(or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true vital +germ out of which the entire plant has always grown.... Whoever considers +the fundamental impulses of man with a view to determining how far they +may have acted as _inspiring_ genii (or as demons and cobolds) will find +that they have all practiced philosophy at one time or another, and that +each one of them would have been only too glad to look upon itself as the +ultimate end of existence and the legitimate _lord_ over all the other +impulses. For every impulse is imperious, and, as _such_, attempts to +philosophize." + +What Nietzsche has done here is, in his swashbuckling fashion, to cut +under the abstract and final pretensions of creeds. Difficulties arise +when we try to apply this wisdom in the present. That dogmas _were_ +instruments of human purposes is not so incredible; that they still _are_ +instruments is not so clear to everyone; and that they will be, that they +should be--this seems a monstrous attack on the citadel of truth. It is +possible to believe that other men's theories were temporary and merely +useful; we like to believe that ours will have a greater authority. + +It seems like topsy-turvyland to make reason serve the irrational. Yet +that is just what it has always done, and ought always to do. Many of us +are ready to grant that in the past men's motives were deeper than their +intellects: we forgive them with a kind of self-righteousness which says +that they knew not what they did. But to follow the great tradition of +human wisdom deliberately, with our eyes open in the manner of Sorel, +that seems a crazy procedure. A notion of intellectual honor fights +against it: we think we must aim at final truth, and not allow +autobiography to creep into speculation. + +Now the trouble with such an idol is that autobiography creeps in anyway. +The more we censor it, the more likely it is to appear disguised, to fool +us subtly and perhaps dangerously. The men like Nietzsche and James who +show the wilful origin of creeds are in reality the best watchers of the +citadel of truth. For there is nothing disastrous in the temporary nature +of our ideas. They are always that. But there may very easily be a train +of evil in the self-deception which regards them as final. I think God +will forgive us our skepticism sooner than our Inquisitions. + +From the political point of view, another observation is necessary. The +creed of a Rousseau, for example, is active in politics, not for what it +says, but for what people think it says. I have urged that Marx found +scientific reasons for what he wanted to do. It is important to add that +the people who adopted his reasons for what they wanted to do were not +any too respectful of Marx's reasons. Thus the so-called materialistic +philosophy of Karl Marx is not by any means identical with the theories +one hears among Marxian socialists. There is a big distortion in the +transmitting of ideas. A common purpose, far more than common ideas, +binds Marx to his followers. And when a man comes to write about his +philosophy he is confronted with a choice: shall the creed described be +that of Marx or of the Marxians? + +For the study of politics I should say unhesitatingly that it is more +important to know what socialist leaders, stump speakers, pamphleteers, +think Marx meant, than to know what he said. For then you are dealing +with living ideas: to search his text has its uses, but compared with the +actual tradition of Marx it is the work of pedantry. I say this here for +two reasons--because I hope to avoid the critical attack of the genuine +Marxian specialist, and because the observation is, I believe, relevant +to our subject. + +Relevant it is in that it suggests the importance of style, of +propaganda, the popularization of ideas. The host of men who stand +between a great thinker and the average man are not automatic +transmitters. They work on the ideas; perhaps that is why a genius +usually hates his disciples. It is interesting to notice the explanation +given by Frau Foerster-Nietzsche for her brother's quarrel with Wagner. +She dates it from the time when Nietzsche, under the guise of Wagnerian +propaganda, began to expound himself. The critics and interpreters are +themselves creative. It is really unfair to speak of the Marxian +philosophy as a political force. It is juster to speak of the Marxian +tradition. + +So when I write of Marx's influence I have in mind what men and women in +socialist meetings, in daily life here in America, hold as a faith and +attribute to Marx. There is no pretension whatever to any critical study +of "Das Kapital" itself. I am thinking rather of stuffy halls in which an +earnest voice is expounding "the evolution of capitalism," of little +groups, curious and bewildered, listening in the streets of New York to +the story of the battle between the "master class" and the "working +class," of little red pamphlets, of newspapers, and cartoons--awkward, +badly printed and not very genial, a great stream of spellbinding and +controversy through which the aspirations of millions are becoming +articulate: + +The tradition is saying that "the system" and not the individual is at +fault. It describes that system as one in which a small class owns the +means of production and holds the rest of mankind in bondage. Arts, +religions, laws, as well as vice and crime and degradation, have their +source in this central economic condition. If you want to understand our +life you must see that it is determined by the massing of capital in the +hands of a few. All epochs are determined by economic arrangements. But a +system of property always contains within itself "the seeds of its own +destruction." Mechanical inventions suggest a change: a dispossessed +class compels it. So mankind has progressed through savagery, chattel +slavery, serfdom, to "wage slavery" or the capitalism of to-day. This age +is pregnant with the socialism of to-morrow. + +So roughly the tradition is handed on. Two sets of idea seem to dominate +it: we are creatures of economic conditions; a war of classes is being +fought everywhere in which the proletariat will ultimately capture the +industrial machinery and produce a sound economic life as the basis of +peace and happiness for all. The emphasis on environment is insistent. +Facts are marshaled, the news of the day is interpreted to show that men +are determined by economic conditions. This fixation has brought down +upon the socialists a torrent of abuse in which "atheism" and +"materialism" are prevailing epithets. But the propaganda continues and +the philosophy spreads, penetrating reform groups, social workers, +historians, and sociologists. + +It has served the socialist purpose well. To the workingmen it has +brought home the importance of capturing the control of industry. +Economic determinism has been an antidote to mere preaching of goodness, +to hero-worship and political quackery. Socialism to succeed had to +concentrate attention on the ownership of capital: whenever any other +interest like religion or patriotism threatened to diffuse that +attention, socialist leaders have always been ready to show that the +economic fact is more central. Dignity and prestige were supplied by +making economics the key of history; passion was chained by building +paradise upon it. + +In all the political philosophies there is none so adapted to its end. +Every sanction that mankind respects has been grouped about this one +purpose--the control of capital. It is as if all history converged upon +the issue, and the workers in the cause feel that they carry within them +the destiny of the race. Start anywhere, with an orthodox socialist and +he will lead you to this supreme economic situation. Tyrannies and race +hatred, national rivalries, sex problems, the difficulties of artistic +endeavor, all failures, crimes, vices--there is not one which he will not +relate to private capitalism. Nor is there anything disingenuous about +this focusing of the attention: a real belief is there. Of course you +will find plenty of socialists who see other issues and who smile a bit +at the rigors of economic determinism. In these later days there is in +fact, a decided loosening in the creed. But it is fair to say that the +mass of socialists hold this philosophy with as much solemnity as a +reformer held his when he wrote to me that the cure for obscenity was the +taxation of land values and absolute free trade. + +Singlemindedness has done good service. It has bound the world together +and has helped men to think socially. Turning their attention away from +the romanticism of history, the materialistic philosophy has helped them +to look at realities. It has engendered a fine concern about average +people, about the voiceless multitudes who have been left to pass +unnoticed. Not least among the blessings is a shattering of the +good-and-bad-man theory: the assassination of tyrants or the adoration of +saviors. A shallow and specious other-worldliness has been driven out: an +other-worldliness which is really nothing but laziness about this one. +And if from a speculative angle the Marxian tradition has shaded too +heavily the economic facts, it was at least a plausible and practical +exaggeration. + +But the drawbacks are becoming more and more evident as socialism +approaches nearer to power and responsibility. The feeling that man is a +creature and not a creator is disastrous as a personal creed when you +come to act. If you insist upon being "determined by conditions" you do +hesitate about saying "I shall." You are likely to wait for something to +determine you. Personal initiative and individual genius are poorly +regarded: many socialists are suspicious of originality. This philosophy, +so useful in propaganda, is becoming a burden in action. That is another +way of saying that the instrument has turned into an idol. + +For while it is illuminating to see how environment moulds men, it is +absolutely essential that men regard themselves as moulders of their +environment. A new philosophical basis is becoming increasingly necessary +to socialism--one that may not be "truer" than the old materialism but +that shall simply be more useful. Having learned for a long time what is +done to us, we are now faced with the task of doing. With this changed +purpose goes a change of instruments. All over the world socialists are +breaking away from the stultifying influence of the outworn determinism. +For the time is at hand when they must cease to look upon socialism as +inevitable in order to make it so. + +Nor will the philosophy of class warfare serve this new need. That can be +effective only so long as the working-class is without sovereignty. But +no sooner has it achieved power than a new outlook is needed in order to +know what to do with it. The tactics of the battlefield are of no use +when the battle is won. + +I picture this philosophy as one of deliberate choices. The underlying +tone of it is that society is made by man for man's uses, that reforms +are inventions to be applied when by experiment they show their +civilizing value. Emphasis is placed upon the devising, adapting, +constructing faculties. There is no reason to believe that this view is +any colder than that of the war of class against class. It will generate +no less energy. Men to-day can feel almost as much zest in the building +of the Panama Canal as they did in a military victory. Their domineering +impulses find satisfaction in conquering things, in subjecting brute +forces to human purposes. This sense of mastery in a winning battle +against the conditions of our life is, I believe, the social myth that +will inspire our reconstructions. We shall feel free to choose among +alternatives--to take this much of socialism, insert so much syndicalism, +leave standing what of capitalism seems worth conserving. We shall be +making our own house for our own needs, cities to suit ourselves, and we +shall believe ourselves capable of moving mountains, as engineers do, +when mountains stand in their way. + +And history, science, philosophy will support our hopes. What will +fascinate us in the past will be the records of inventions, of great +choices, of those alternatives on which destiny seems to hang. The +splendid epochs will be interpreted as monuments of man's creation, not +of his propulsion. We shall be interested primarily in the way nations +established their civilization in spite of hostile conditions. Admiration +will go out to the men who did not submit, who bent things to human use. +We may see the entire tragedy of life in being driven. + +Half-truths and illusions, if you like, but tonic. This view will suit +our mood. For we shall be making and the makers of history will become +more real to us. Instead of urging that issues are inevitable, instead of +being swamped by problems that are unavoidable, we may stand up and +affirm the issues we propose to handle. Perhaps we shall say with +Nietzsche: + + "Let the value of everything be determined afresh by you." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE RED HERRING + + +At the beginning of every campaign the newspapers tell about secret +conferences in which the candidate and his managers decide upon "the line +of attack." The approach to issues, the way in which they shall be +stressed, what shall be put forward in one part of the country and what +in another, are discussed at these meetings. Here is where the real +program of a party is worked out. The document produced at the convention +is at its best nothing but a suggestive formality. It is not until the +speakers and the publicity agents have actually begun to animate it that +the country sees what the party is about. It is as if the convention +adopted the Decalogue, while these secret conferences decided which of +the Commandments was to be made the issue. Almost always, of course, the +decision is entirely a "practical" one, which means that each section of +people is exhorted to practice the commandment it likes the most. Thus +for the burglars is selected, not the eighth tablet, but the one on which +is recommended a day of rest from labor; to the happily married is +preached the seventh commandment. + +These conferences are decisive. On them depends the educational value of +a campaign, and the men who participate in them, being in a position to +state the issues and point them, determine the political interests of the +people for a considerable period of time. To-day in America, for example, +no candidate can escape entirely that underlying irritation which +socialists call poverty and some call the high cost of living. But the +conspicuous candidates do decide what direction thought shall take about +this condition. They can center it upon the tariff or the trusts or even +the currency. + +Thus Mr. Roosevelt has always had a remarkable power of diverting the +country from the tariff to the control of the trusts. His Democratic +opponents, especially Woodrow Wilson, are, as I write, in the midst of +the Presidential campaign of 1912, trying to focus attention on the +tariff. In a way the battle resembles a tug-of-war in which each of the +two leading candidates is trying to pull the nation over to his favorite +issue. On the side you can see the Prohibitionists endeavoring to make +the country see drink as a central problem; the emerging socialists +insisting that not the tariff, or liquor, or the control of trusts, but +the ownership of capital should be the heart of the discussion. Electoral +campaigns do not resemble debates so much as they do competing amusement +shows where, with bright lights, gaudy posters and persuasive, insistent +voices, each booth is trying to collect a crowd; The victory in a +campaign is far more likely to go to the most plausible diagnosis than to +the most convincing method of cure. Once a party can induce the country +to see its issue as supreme the greater part of its task is done. + +The clever choice of issues influences all politics from the petty +manoeuvers of a ward leader to the most brilliant creative +statesmanship. I remember an instance that happened at the beginning of +the first socialist administration in Schenectady: The officials had out +of the goodness of their hearts suspended a city ordinance which forbade +coasting with bob-sleds on the hills of the city. A few days later one of +the sleds ran into a wagon and a little girl was killed. The opposition +papers put the accident into scareheads with the result that public +opinion became very bitter. It looked like a bad crisis at the very +beginning and the old ring politicians made the most of it. But they had +reckoned without the political shrewdness of the socialists. For in the +second day of excitement, the mayor made public a plan by which the main +business street of the town was to be lighted with high-power lamps and +turned into a "brilliant white way of Schenectady." The swiftness with +which the papers displaced the gruesome details of the little girl's +death by exultation over the business future of the city was a caution. +Public attention was shifted and a political crisis avoided. I tell this +story simply as a suggestive fact. The ethical considerations do not +concern us here. + +There is nothing exceptional about the case. Whenever governments enter +upon foreign invasions in order to avoid civil wars, the same trick is +practiced. In the Southern States the race issue has been thrust forward +persistently to prevent an economic alignment. Thus you hear from +Southerners that unless socialism gives up its demand for racial +equality, the propaganda cannot go forward. How often in great strikes +have riots been started in order to prevent the public from listening to +the workers' demands! It is an old story--the red herring dragged across +the path in order to destroy the scent. + +Having seen the evil results we have come to detest a conscious choice of +issues, to feel that it smacks of sinister plotting. The vile practice of +yellow newspapers and chauvinistic politicians is almost the only +experience of it we have. Religion, patriotism, race, and sex are the +favorite red herrings of foul political method--they are the most +successful because they explode so easily and flood the mind with those +unconscious prejudices which make critical thinking difficult. Yet for +all its abuse the deliberate choice of issues is one of the high +selective arts of the statesman. In the debased form we know it there is +little encouragement. But the devil is merely a fallen angel, and when +God lost Satan he lost one of his best lieutenants. It is always a pretty +good working rule that whatever is a great power of evil may become a +great power for good. Certainly nothing so effective in the art of +politics can be left out of the equipment of the statesman. + +Looked at closely, the deliberate making of issues is very nearly the +core of the statesman's task. His greatest wisdom is required to select a +policy that will fertilize the public mind. He fails when the issue he +sets is sterile; he is incompetent if the issue does not lead to the +human center of a problem; whenever the statesman allows the voters to +trifle with taboos and by-products, to wander into blind alleys like "16 +to 1," his leadership is a public calamity. The newspaper or politician +which tries to make an issue out of a supposed "prosperity" or out of +admiration for the mere successes of our ancestors is doing its best to +choke off the creative energies in politics. All the stultification of +the stand-pat mind may be described as inability, and perhaps +unwillingness, to nourish a fruitful choice of issues. + +That choice is altogether too limited in America, anyway. Political +discussion, whether reactionary or radical, is monotonously confined to +very few issues. It is as if social life were prevented from irrigating +political thought. A subject like the tariff, for example, has absorbed +an amount of attention which would justify an historian in calling it the +incubus of American politics. Now the exaltation of one issue like that +is obviously out of all proportion to its significance. A contributory +factor it certainly is, but the country's destiny is not bound up finally +with its solution. The everlasting reiterations about the tariff take up +altogether too much time. To any government that was clear about values, +that saw all problems in their relation to human life, the tariff would +be an incident, a mechanical device and little else. High protectionist +and free trader alike fall under the indictment--for a tariff wall is +neither so high as heaven nor so broad as the earth. It may be necessary +to have dykes on portions of the seashore; they may be superfluous +elsewhere. But to concentrate nine-tenths of your attention on the +subject of dykes is to forget the civilization they are supposed to +protect. A wall is a wall: the presence of it will not do the work of +civilization--the absence of it does not absolve anyone from the tasks of +social life. That a statecraft might deal with the tariff as an aid to +its purposes is evident. But anyone who makes the tariff the principal +concern of statecraft is, I believe, mistaking the hedge for the house. + +The tariff controversy is almost as old as the nation. A more recent one +is what Senator La Follette calls "The great issue before the American +people to-day, ... the control of their own government." It has taken the +form of an attack on corruption, on what is vaguely called "special +privilege" and of a demand for a certain amount of political machinery +such as direct primaries, the initiative, referendum, and recall. The +agitation has a curious sterility: the people are exhorted to control +their own government, but they are given very little advice as to what +they are to do with it when they control it. Of course, the leaders who +spend so much time demanding these mechanical changes undoubtedly see +them as a safeguard against corrupt politicians and what Roosevelt calls +"their respectable allies and figureheads, who have ruled and legislated +and decided as if in some way the vested rights of privilege had a first +mortgage on the whole United States." But look at the _way_ these +innovations are presented and I think the feeling is unavoidable that the +control of government is emphasized as an end in itself. Now an +observation of this kind is immediately open to dispute: it is not a +clear-cut distinction but a rather subtle matter of stress--an impression +rather than a definite conviction. + +Yet when you look at the career of Judge Lindsey in Denver the impression +is sharpened by contrast. What gave his exposure of corruption a peculiar +vitality was that it rested on a very positive human ideal: the happiness +of children in a big city. Lindsey's attack on vice and financial jobbery +was perhaps the most convincing piece of muckraking ever done in this +country for the very reason that it sprang from a concern about real +human beings instead of abstractions about democracy or righteousness. +From the point of view of the political hack, Judge Lindsey made a most +distressing use of the red herring. He brought the happiness of childhood +into political discussion, and this opened up a new source of political +power. By touching something deeply instinctive in millions of people, +Judge Lindsey animated dull proposals with human interest. The +pettifogging objections to some social plan had very little chance of +survival owing to the dynamic power of the reformers. It was an excellent +example of the creative results that come from centering a political +problem on human nature. + +If you move only from legality to legality, you halt and hesitate, each +step is a monstrous task. If the reformer is a pure opportunist, and lays +out only "the next step," that step will be very difficult. But if he +aims at some real human end, at the genuine concerns of men, women, and +children, if he can make the democracy see and feel that end, the little +mechanical devices of suffrage and primaries and tariffs will be dealt +with as a craftsman deals with his tools. But to say that we must make +tools first, and then begin, is to invert the process of life. Men did +not agree to refrain from travel until a railroad was built. To make the +manufacture of instruments an ideal is to lose much of their ideal value. +A nation bent upon a policy of social invention would make its tools an +incident. But just this perception is lacking in many propagandists. That +is why their issues are so sterile; that is why the absorption in "next +steps" is a diversion from statesmanship. + +The narrowness of American political issues is a fixation upon +instruments. Tradition has centered upon the tariff, the trusts, the +currency, and electoral machinery as the items of consideration. It is +the failure to go behind them--to see them as the pale servants of a +vivid social life--that keeps our politics in bondage to a few problems. +It is a common experience repeated in you and me. Once our profession +becomes all absorbing it hardens into pedantry. "A human being," says +Wells, "who is a philosopher in the first place, a teacher in the first +place, or a statesman in the first place is thereby and inevitably, +though he bring God-like gifts to the pretense--a quack." + +Reformers particularly resent the enlargement of political issues. I have +heard socialists denounce other socialists for occupying themselves with +the problems of sex. The claim was that these questions should be put +aside so as not to disturb the immediate program. The socialists knew +from experience that sex views cut across economic ones--that a new +interest breaks up the alignment. Woodrow Wilson expressed this same fear +in his views on the liquor question: after declaring for local option he +went on to say that "the questions involved are social and moral and are +not susceptible of being made part of a party program. Whenever they have +been made the subject matter of party contests they have cut the lines of +party organization and party action athwart, to the utter confusion of +political action in every other field.... I do not believe party programs +of the highest consequence to the political life of the State and of the +nation ought to be thrust on one side and hopelessly embarrassed for long +periods together by making a political issue of a great question which is +essentially non-political, non-partisan, moral and social in its nature." + +That statement was issued at the beginning of a campaign in which Woodrow +Wilson was the nominee of a party that has always been closely associated +with the liquor interests. The bogey of the saloon had presented itself +early: it was very clear that an affirmative position by the candidate +was sure to alienate either the temperance or the "liquor vote." No doubt +a sense of this dilemma is partly responsible for Wilson's earnest plea +that the question of liquor be left out of the campaign. He saw the +confusion and embarrassment he speaks of as an immediate danger. Like his +views on immigration and Chinese labor it was a red herring across his +path. It would, if brought into prominence, cut the lines of party action +athwart. + +His theoretical grounds for ignoring the question in politics are very +interesting just because they are vitalized by this practical difficulty +which he faced. Like all party men Woodrow Wilson had thrust upon him +here a danger that haunts every political program. The more issues a +party meets the less votes it is likely to poll. And for a very simple +reason: you cannot keep the citizenship of a nation like this bound in +its allegiance to two large parties unless you make the grounds of +allegiance very simple and very obvious. If you are to hold five or six +million voters enlisted under one emblem the less specific you are and +the fewer issues you raise the more probable it is that you can stop this +host from quarreling within the ranks. + +No doubt this is a partial explanation of the bareness of American +politics. The two big parties have had to preserve a superficial +homogeneity; and a platitude is more potent than an issue. The minor +parties--Populist, Prohibition, Independence League and Socialist--have +shown a much greater willingness to face new problems. Their view of +national policy has always been more inclusive, perhaps for the very +reason that their membership is so much more exclusive. But if anyone +wishes a smashing illustration of this paradox let him consider the rapid +progress of Roosevelt's philosophy in the very short time between the +Republican Convention in June to the Progressive Convention in August, +1912. As soon as Roosevelt had thrown off the burden of preserving a +false harmony among irreconcilable Republicans, he issued a platform full +of definiteness and square dealing with many issues. He was talking to a +minority party. But Roosevelt's genius is not that of group leadership. +He longs for majorities. He set out to make the campaign a battle between +the Progressives and the Democrats--the old discredited Republicans fell +back into a rather dead conservative minority. No sooner did Roosevelt +take the stump than the paradox loomed up before him. His speeches began +to turn on platitudes--on the vague idealism and indisputable moralities +of the Decalogue and the Sermon on the Mount. The fearlessness of the +Chicago confession was melted down into a featureless alloy. + +The embarrassment from the liquor question which Woodrow Wilson feared +does not arise because teetotaler and drunkard both become intoxicated +when they discuss the saloon. It would come just as much from a radical +program of land taxation, factory reform, or trust control. Let anyone of +these issues be injected into his campaign and the lines of party action +would be cut "athwart." For Woodrow Wilson was dealing with the +inevitable embarrassment of a party system dependent on an inexpressive +homogeneity. The grouping of the voters into two large herds costs a +large price: it means that issues must be so simplified and selected that +the real demands of the nation rise only now and then to the level of +political discussion. The more people a party contains the less it +expresses their needs. + +Woodrow Wilson's diagnosis of the red herring in politics is obviously +correct. A new issue does embarrass a wholesale organization of the +voters. His desire to avoid it in the midst of a campaign is +understandable. His urgent plea that the liquor question be kept a local +issue may be wise. But the general philosophy which says that the party +system should not be cut athwart is at least open to serious dispute. +Instead of an evil, it looks to me like progress towards greater +responsiveness of parties to popular need. It is good to disturb +alignments: to break up a superficial unanimity. The masses of people +held together under the name Democratic are bound in an enervating +communion. The real groups dare not speak their convictions for fear the +crust will break. It is as if you had thrown a large sheet over a mass of +men and made them anonymous. + +The man who raises new issues has always been distasteful to politicians. +He musses up what had been so tidily arranged. I remember once speaking +to a local boss about woman suffrage. His objections were very simple: +"We've got the organization in fine shape now--we know where every voter +in the district stands. But you let all the women vote and we'll be +confused as the devil. It'll be an awful job keeping track of them." He +felt what many a manufacturer feels when somebody has the impertinence to +invent a process which disturbs the routine of business. + +Hard as it is upon the immediate plans of the politician, it is a +national blessing when the lines of party action are cut athwart by new +issues. I recognize that the red herring is more often frivolous and +personal--a matter of misrepresentation and spite--than an honest attempt +to enlarge the scope of politics. However, a fine thing must not be +deplored because it is open to vicious caricature. To the party worker +the petty and the honest issue are equally disturbing. The break-up of +the parties into expressive groups would be a ventilation of our national +life. No use to cry peace when there is no peace. The false bonds are +best broken: with their collapse would come a release of social energy +into political discussion. For every country is a mass of minorities +which should find a voice in public affairs. Any device like proportional +representation and preferential voting which facilitates the political +expression of group interests is worth having. The objection that popular +government cannot be conducted without the two party system is, I +believe, refuted by the experience of Europe. If I had to choose between +a Congressional caucus and a coalition ministry, I should not have to +hesitate very long. But no one need go abroad for actual experience: in +the United States Senate during the Taft administration there were really +three parties--Republicans, Insurgents and Democrats. Public business +went ahead with at least as much effectiveness as under the old Aldrich +ring. + +There are deeper reasons for urging a break-up of herd-politics. It is +not only desirable that groups should be able to contribute to public +discussion: it is absolutely essential if the parliamentary method is not +to be superseded by direct and violent action. The two party system +chokes off the cry of a minority--perhaps the best way there is of +precipitating an explosion. An Englishman once told me that the utter +freedom of speech in Hyde Park was the best safeguard England had against +the doctrines that were propounded there. An anarchist who was invited to +address Congress would be a mild person compared to the man forbidden to +speak in the streets of San Diego. For many a bomb has exploded into +rhetoric. + +The rigidity of the two-party system is, I believe, disastrous: it +ignores issues without settling them, dulls and wastes the energies of +active groups, and chokes off the protests which should find a civilized +expression in public life. A recognition of what an incubus it is should +make us hospitable to all those devices which aim at making politics +responsive by disturbing the alignments of habit. The initiative and +referendum will help: they are a method of voting on definite issues +instead of electing an administration in bulk. If cleverly handled these +electoral devices should act as a check on a wholesale attitude toward +politics. Men could agree on a candidate and disagree on a measure. +Another device is the separation of municipal, state and national +elections: to hold them all at the same time is an inducement to prevent +the voter from splitting his allegiance. Proportional representation and +preferential voting I have mentioned. The short ballot is a psychological +principle which must be taken into account wherever there is voting: it +will help the differentiation of political groups by concentrating the +attention on essential choices. The recall of public officials is in part +a policeman's club, in part a clumsy way of getting around the American +prejudice for a fixed term of office. That rigidity which by the mere +movement of the calendar throws an official out of office in the midst of +his work or compels him to go campaigning is merely the crude method of a +democracy without confidence in itself. The recall is a half-hearted and +negative way of dealing with this difficulty. It does enable us to rid +ourselves of an officer we don't like instead of having to wait until the +earth has revolved to a certain place about the sun. But we still have to +vote on a fixed date whether we have anything to vote upon or not. If a +recall election is held when the people petition for it, why not all +elections? + +In ways like these we shall go on inventing methods by which the +fictitious party alignments can be dissolved. There is one device +suggested now and then, tried, I believe, in a few places, and vaguely +championed by some socialists. It is called in German an +"Interessenvertrag"--a political representation by trade interests as +well as by geographical districts. Perhaps this is the direction towards +which the bi-cameral legislature will develop. One chamber would then +represent a man's sectional interests as a consumer: the other his +professional interests as a producer. The railway workers, the miners, +the doctors, the teachers, the retail merchants would have direct +representation in the "Interessenvertrag." You might call it a Chamber of +Special Interests. I know how that phrase "Special Interests" hurts. In +popular usage we apply it only to corrupting businesses. But our feeling +against them should not blind us to the fact that every group in the +community has its special interests. They will always exist until mankind +becomes a homogeneous jelly. The problem is to find some social +adjustment for all the special interests of a nation. That is best +achieved by open recognition and clear representation. Let no one then +confuse the "Interessenvertrag" with those existing legislatures which +are secret Chambers of Special Privilege. + +The scheme is worth looking at for it does do away with the present +dilemma of the citizen in which he wonders helplessly whether he ought to +vote as a consumer or as a producer. I believe he should have both votes, +and the "Interessenvertrag" is a way. + +These devices are mentioned here as illustrations and not as conclusions. +You can think of them as arrangements by which the red herring is turned +from a pest into a benefit. I grant that in the rigid political +conditions prevailing to-day a new issue is an embarrassment, perhaps a +hindrance to the procedure of political life. But instead of narrowing +the scope of politics, to avoid it, the only sensible thing to do is to +invent methods which will allow needs and problems and group interests +avenues into politics. + +But a suggestion like this is sure to be met with the argument which +Woodrow Wilson has in mind when he says that the "questions involved are +social and moral and are not susceptible of being made parts of a party +program." He voices a common belief when he insists that there are moral +and social problems, "essentially non-political." Innocent as it looks at +first sight this plea by Woodrow Wilson is weighted with the tradition of +a century and a half. To my mind it symbolizes a view of the state which +we are outgrowing, and throws into relief the view towards which we are +struggling. Its implications are well worth tracing, for through them I +think we can come to understand better the method of Twentieth Century +politics. + +It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It +is equally true that that government is best which provides most. The +first truth belongs to the Eighteenth Century: the second to the +Twentieth. Neither of them can be neglected in our attitude towards the +state. Without the Jeffersonian distrust of the police we might easily +grow into an impertinent and tyrannous collectivism: without a vivid +sense of the possibilities of the state we abandon the supreme instrument +of civilization. The two theories need to be held together, yet clearly +distinguished. + +Government has been an exalted policeman: it was there to guard property +and to prevent us from quarreling too violently. That was about all it +was good for. Yet society found problems on its hands--problems which +Woodrow Wilson calls moral and social in their nature. Vice and crime, +disease, and grinding poverty forced themselves on the attention of the +community. A typical example is the way the social evil compelled the +city of Chicago to begin an investigation. Yet when government was asked +to handle the question it had for wisdom an ancient conception of itself +as a policeman. Its only method was to forbid, to prosecute, to jail--in +short, to use the taboo. But experience has shown that the taboo will not +solve "moral and social questions"--that nine times out of ten it +aggravates the disease. Political action becomes a petty, futile, mean +little intrusion when its only method is prosecution. + +No wonder then that conservatively-minded men pray that moral and social +questions be kept out of politics; no wonder that more daring souls begin +to hate the whole idea of government and take to anarchism. So long as +the state is conceived merely as an agent of repression, the less it +interferes with our lives, the better. Much of the horror of socialism +comes from a belief that by increasing the functions of government its +regulating power over our daily lives will grow into a tyranny. I share +this horror when certain socialists begin to propound their schemes. +There is a dreadful amount of forcible scrubbing and arranging and +pocketing implied in some socialisms. There is a wish to have the state +use its position as general employer to become a censor of morals and +arbiter of elegance, like the benevolent employers of the day who take an +impertinent interest in the private lives of their workers. Without any +doubt socialism has within it the germs of that great bureaucratic +tyranny which Chesterton and Belloc have named the Servile State. + +So it is a wise instinct that makes men jealous of the policeman's power. +Far better we may say that moral and social problems be left to private +solution than that they be subjected to the clumsy method of the taboo. +When Woodrow Wilson argues that social problems are not susceptible to +treatment in a party program, he must mean only one thing: that they +cannot be handled by the state as he conceives it. He is right. His +attitude is far better than that of the Vice Commission: it too had only +a policeman's view of government, but it proceeded to apply it to +problems that are not susceptible to such treatment. Wilson, at least, +knows the limitations of his philosophy. + +But once you see the state as a provider of civilizing opportunities, his +whole objection collapses. As soon as government begins to supply +services, it is turning away from the sterile tyranny of the taboo. The +provision of schools, streets, plumbing, highways, libraries, parks, +universities, medical attention, post-offices, a Panama Canal, +agricultural information, fire protection--is a use of government totally +different from the ideal of Jefferson. To furnish these opportunities is +to add to the resources of life, and only a doctrinaire adherence to a +misunderstood ideal will raise any objection to them. + +When an anarchist says that the state must be abolished he does not mean +what he says. What he wants to abolish is the repressive, not the +productive state. He cannot possibly object to being furnished with the +opportunity of writing to his comrade three thousand miles away, of +drinking pure water, or taking a walk in the park. Of course when he +finds the post-office opening his mail, or a law saying that he must +drink nothing but water, he begins to object even to the services of the +government. But that is a confusion of thought, for these tyrannies are +merely intrusions of the eighteenth century upon the twentieth. The +postmaster is still something of a policeman. + +Once you realize that moral and social problems must be treated to fine +opportunities, that the method of the future is to compete with the devil +rather than to curse him; that the furnishing of civilized environments +is the goal of statecraft, then there is no longer any reason for keeping +social and moral questions out of politics. They are what politics must +deal with essentially, now that it has found a way. The policeman with +his taboo did make moral and social questions insusceptible to treatment +in party platforms. He kept the issues of politics narrow and irrelevant, +and just because these really interesting questions could not be handled, +politics was an over-advertised hubbub. But the vision of the new +statecraft in centering politics upon human interests becomes a creator +of opportunities instead of a censor of morals, and deserves a fresh and +heightened regard. + +The party platform will grow ever more and more into a program of +services. In the past it has been an armory of platitudes or a forecast +of punishments. It promised that it would stop this evil practice, drive +out corruption here, and prosecute this-and-that offense. All that +belongs to a moribund tradition. Abuse and disuse characterize the older +view of the state: guardian and censor it has been, provider but +grudgingly. The proclamations of so-called progressives that they will +jail financiers, or "wage relentless warfare" upon social evils, are +simply the reiterations of men who do not understand the uses of the +state. + +A political revolution is in progress: the state as policeman is giving +place to the state as producer. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +REVOLUTION AND CULTURE + + +There is a legend of a peasant who lived near Paris through the whole +Napoleonic era without ever having heard of the name of Bonaparte. A +story of that kind is enough to make a man hesitate before he indulges in +a flamboyant description of social changes. That peasant is more than a +symbol of the privacy of human interest: he is a warning against the +incurable romanticism which clings about the idea of a revolution. +Popular history is deceptive if it is used to furnish a picture for +coming events. Like drama which compresses the tragedy of a lifetime into +a unity of time, place, and action, history foreshortens an epoch into an +episode. It gains in poignancy, but loses reality. Men grew from infancy +to old age, their children's children had married and loved and worked +while the social change we speak of as the industrial revolution was +being consummated. That is why it is so difficult for living people to +believe that they too are in the midst of great transformations. What +looks to us like an incredible rush of events sloping towards a great +historical crisis was to our ancestors little else than the occasional +punctuation of daily life with an exciting incident. Even to-day when we +have begun to speak of our age as a transition, there are millions of +people who live in an undisturbed routine. Even those of us who regard +ourselves as active in mothering the process and alert in detecting its +growth are by no means constantly aware of any great change. For even the +fondest mother cannot watch her child grow. + +I remember how tremendously surprised I was in visiting Russia several +years ago to find that in Moscow or St. Petersburg men were interested in +all sorts of things besides the revolution. I had expected every Russian +to be absorbed in the struggle. It seemed at first as if my notions of +what a revolution ought to be were contradicted everywhere. And I assure +you it wrenched the imagination to see tidy nursemaids wheeling +perambulators and children playing diavolo on the very square where +Bloody Sunday had gone into history. It takes a long perspective and no +very vivid acquaintance with revolution to be melodramatic about it. So +much is left out of history and biography which would spoil the effect. +The anti-climax is almost always omitted. + +Perhaps that is the reason why Arnold Bennett's description of the siege +of Paris in "The Old Wives' Tale" is so disconcerting to many people. It +is hard to believe that daily life continues with its stretches of +boredom and its personal interests even while the enemy is bombarding a +city. How much more difficult is it to imagine a revolution that is to +come--to space it properly through a long period of time, to conceive +what it will be like to the people who live through it. Almost all social +prediction is catastrophic and absurdly simplified. Even those who talk +of the slow "evolution" of society are likely to think of it as a series +of definite changes easily marked and well known to everybody. It is what +Bernard Shaw calls the reformer's habit of mistaking his private emotions +for a public movement. + +Even though the next century is full of dramatic episodes--the collapse +of governments and labor wars--these events will be to the social +revolution what the smashing of machines in Lancashire was to the +industrial revolution. The reality that is worthy of attention is a +change in the very texture and quality of millions of lives--a change +that will be vividly perceptible only in the retrospect of history. + +The conservative often has a sharp sense of the complexity of revolution: +not desiring change, he prefers to emphasize its difficulties, whereas +the reformer is enticed into a faith that the intensity of desire is a +measure of its social effect. Yet just because no reform is in itself a +revolution, we must not jump to the assurance that no revolution can be +accomplished. True as it is that great changes are imperceptible, it is +no less true that they are constantly taking place. Moreover, for the +very reason that human life changes its quality so slowly, the panic over +political proposals is childish. + +It is obvious, for instance, that the recall of judges will not +revolutionize the national life. That is why the opposition generated +will seem superstitious to the next generation. As I write, a convention +of the Populist Party has just taken place. Eight delegates attended the +meeting, which was held in a parlor. Even the reactionary press speaks in +a kindly way about these men. Twenty years ago the Populists were hated +and feared as if they practiced black magic. What they wanted is on the +point of realization. To some of us it looks like a drop in the bucket--a +slight part of vastly greater plans. But how stupid was the fear of +Populism, what unimaginative nonsense it was to suppose twenty years ago +that the program was the road to the end of the world. + +One good deed or one bad one is no measure of a man's character: the Last +Judgment let us hope will be no series of decisions as simple as that. +"The soul survives its adventures," says Chesterton with a splendid sense +of justice. A country survives its legislation. That truth should not +comfort the conservative nor depress the radical. For it means that +public policy can enlarge its scope and increase its audacity, can try +big experiments without trembling too much over the result. This nation +could enter upon the most radical experiments and could afford to fail in +them. Mistakes do not affect us so deeply as we imagine. Our prophecies +of change are subjective wishes or fears that never come to full +realization. + +Those socialists are confused who think that a new era can begin by a +general strike or an electoral victory. Their critics are just a bit more +confused when they become hysterical over the prospect. Both of them +over-emphasize the importance of single events. Yet I do not wish to +furnish the impression that crises are negligible. They are extremely +important as symptoms, as milestones, and as instruments. It is simply +that the reality of a revolution is not in a political decree or the +scarehead of a newspaper, but in the experiences, feelings, habits of +myriads of men. + +No one who watched the textile strike at Lawrence, Massachusetts, in the +winter of 1912 can forget the astounding effect it had on the complacency +of the public. Very little was revealed that any well-informed social +worker does not know as a commonplace about the mill population. The +wretchedness and brutality of Lawrence conditions had been described in +books and magazines and speeches until radicals had begun to wonder at +times whether the power of language wasn't exhausted. The response was +discouragingly weak--an occasional government investigation, an +impassioned protest from a few individuals, a placid charity, were about +all that the middle-class public had to say about factory life. The +cynical indifference of legislatures and the hypocrisy of the dominant +parties were all that politics had to offer. The Lawrence strike touched +the most impervious: story after story came to our ears of hardened +reporters who suddenly refused to misrepresent the strikers, of +politicians aroused to action, of social workers become revolutionary. +Daily conversation was shocked into some contact with realities--the +newspapers actually printed facts about the situation of a working class +population. + +And why? The reason is not far to seek. The Lawrence strikers did +something more than insist upon their wrongs; they showed a disposition +to right them. That is what scared public opinion into some kind of +truth-telling. So long as the poor are docile in their poverty, the rest +of us are only too willing to satisfy our consciences by pitying them. +But when the downtrodden gather into a threat as they did at Lawrence, +when they show that they have no stake in civilization and consequently +no respect for its institutions, when the object of pity becomes the +avenger of its own miseries, then the middle-class public begins to look +at the problem more intelligently. + +We are not civilized enough to meet an issue before it becomes acute. We +were not intelligent enough to free the slaves peacefully--we are not +intelligent enough to-day to meet the industrial problem before it +develops a crisis. That is the hard truth of the matter. And that is why +no honest student of politics can plead that social movements should +confine themselves to argument and debate, abandoning the militancy of +the strike, the insurrection, the strategy of social conflict. + +Those who deplore the use of force in the labor struggle should ask +themselves whether the ruling classes of a country could be depended upon +to inaugurate a program of reconstruction which would abolish the +barbarism that prevails in industry. Does anyone seriously believe that +the business leaders, the makers of opinion and the politicians will, on +their own initiative, bring social questions to a solution? If they do it +will be for the first time in history. The trivial plans they are +introducing to-day--profit-sharing and welfare work--are on their own +admission an attempt to quiet the unrest and ward off the menace of +socialism. + +No, paternalism is not dependable, granting that it is desirable. It will +do very little more than it feels compelled to do. Those who to-day bear +the brunt of our evils dare not throw themselves upon the mercy of their +masters, not though there are bread and circuses as a reward. From the +groups upon whom the pressure is most direct must come the power to deal +with it. We are not all immediately interested in all problems: our +attention wanders unless the people who are interested compel us to +listen. + +Social movements are at once the symptoms and the instruments of +progress. Ignore them and statesmanship is irrelevant; fail to use them +and it is weak. Often in the course of these essays I have quoted from H. +G. Wells. I must do so again: "Every party stands essentially for the +interests and mental usages of some definite class or group of classes in +the exciting community, and every party has its scientific minded and +constructive leading section, with well defined hinterlands formulating +its social functions in a public spirited form, and its +superficial-minded following confessing its meannesses and vanities and +prejudices. No class will abolish itself, materially alter its way of +living, or drastically reconstruct itself, albeit no class is indisposed +to co-operate in the unlimited socialization of any other class. In that +capacity for aggression upon other classes lies the essential driving +force of modern affairs." + +The truth of this can be tested in the socialist movement. There is a +section among the socialists which regards the class movement of labor as +a driving force in the socialization of industry. This group sees clearly +that without the threat of aggression no settlement of the issues is +possible. Ordinarily such socialists say that the class struggle is a +movement which will end classes. They mean that the self-interest of +labor is identical with the interests of a community--that it is a kind +of social selfishness. But there are other socialists who speak +constantly of "working-class government" and they mean just what they +say. It is their intention to have the community ruled in the interests +of labor. Probe their minds to find out what they mean by labor and in +all honesty you cannot escape the admission that they mean industrial +labor alone. These socialists think entirely in terms of the factory +population of cities: the farmers, the small shop-keepers, the +professional classes have only a perfunctory interest for them. I know +that no end of phrases could be adduced to show the inclusiveness of the +word labor. But their intention is what I have tried to describe: they +are thinking of government by a factory population. + +They appeal to history for confirmation: have not all social changes, +they ask, meant the emergence of a new economic class until it dominated +society? Did not the French Revolution mean the conquest of the feudal +landlord by the middle-class merchant? Why should not the Social +Revolution mean the victory of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie? That +may be true, but it is no reason for being bullied by it into a tame +admission that what has always been must always be. I see no reason for +exalting the unconscious failures of other revolutions into deliberate +models for the next one. Just because the capacity of aggression in the +middle class ran away with things, and failed to fuse into any decent +social ideal, is not ground for trying as earnestly as possible to repeat +the mistake. + +The lesson of it all, it seems to me, is this: that class interests are +the driving forces which keep public life centered upon essentials. They +become dangerous to a nation when it denies them, thwarts them and +represses them so long that they burst out and become dominant. Then +there is no limit to their aggression until another class appears with +contrary interests. The situation might be compared to those hysterias in +which a suppressed impulse flares up and rules the whole mental life. + +Social life has nothing whatever to fear from group interests so long as +it doesn't try to play the ostrich in regard to them. So the burden of +national crises is squarely upon the dominant classes who fight so +foolishly against the emergent ones. That is what precipitates violence, +that is what renders social co-operation impossible, that is what makes +catastrophes the method of change. + +The wisest rulers see this. They know that the responsibility for +insurrections rests in the last analysis upon the unimaginative greed and +endless stupidity of the dominant classes. There is something pathetic in +the blindness of powerful people when they face a social crisis. Fighting +viciously every readjustment which a nation demands, they make their own +overthrow inevitable. It is they who turn opposing interests into a class +war. Confronted with the deep insurgency of labor what do capitalists and +their spokesmen do? They resist every demand, submit only after a +struggle, and prepare a condition of war to the death. When far-sighted +men appear in the ruling classes--men who recognize the need of a +civilized answer to this increasing restlessness, the rich and the +powerful treat them to a scorn and a hatred that are incredibly bitter. +The hostility against men like Roosevelt, La Follette, Bryan, +Lloyd-George is enough to make an observer believe that the rich of +to-day are as stupid as the nobles of France before the Revolution. + +It seems to me that Roosevelt never spoke more wisely or as a better +friend of civilization than the time when he said at New York City on +March 20, 1912, that "the woes of France for a century and a quarter have +been due to the folly of her people in splitting into the two camps of +unreasonable conservatism and unreasonable radicalism. Had +pre-Revolutionary France listened to men like Turgot and backed them up +all would have gone well. But the beneficiaries of privilege, the Bourbon +reactionaries, the short-sighted ultra-conservatives, turned down Turgot; +and then found that instead of him they had obtained Robespierre. They +gained twenty years' freedom from all restraint and reform at the cost of +the whirlwind of the red terror; and in their turn the unbridled +extremists of the terror induced a blind reaction; and so, with +convulsion and oscillation from one extreme to another, with alterations +of violent radicalism and violent Bourbonism, the French people went +through misery to a shattered goal." + +Profound changes are not only necessary, but highly desirable. Even if +this country were comfortably well-off, healthy, prosperous, and +educated, men would go on inventing and creating opportunities to amplify +the possibilities of life. These inventions would mean radical +transformations. For we are bent upon establishing more in this nation +than a minimum of comfort. A liberal people would welcome social +inventions as gladly as we do mechanical ones. What it would fear is a +hard-shell resistance to change which brings it about explosively. + +Catastrophes are disastrous to radical and conservative alike: they do +not preserve what was worth maintaining; they allow a deformed and often +monstrous perversion of the original plan. The emancipation of the slaves +might teach us the lesson that an explosion followed by reconstruction is +satisfactory to nobody. + +Statesmanship would go out to meet a crisis before it had become acute. +The thing it would emphatically not do is to dam up an insurgent current +until it overflowed the countryside. Fight labor's demands to the last +ditch and there will come a time when it seizes the whole of power, makes +itself sovereign, and takes what it used to ask. That is a poor way for a +nation to proceed. For the insurgent become master is a fanatic from the +struggle, and as George Santayana says, he is only too likely to redouble +his effort after he has forgotten his aim. + +Nobody need waste his time debating whether or not there are to be great +changes. That is settled for us whether we like it or not. What is worth +debating is the method by which change is to come about. Our choice, it +seems to me, lies between a blind push and a deliberate leadership, +between thwarting movements until they master us, and domesticating them +until they are answered. + +When Roosevelt formed the Progressive Party on a platform of social +reform he crystallized a deep unrest, brought it out of the cellars of +resentment into the agora of political discussion. He performed the real +task of a leader--a task which has essentially two dimensions. By +becoming part of the dynamics of unrest he gathered a power of +effectiveness: by formulating a program for insurgency he translated it +into terms of public service. + +What Roosevelt did at the middle-class level, the socialists have done at +the proletarian. The world has been slow to recognize the work of the +Socialist Party in transmuting a dumb muttering into a civilized program. +It has found an intelligent outlet for forces that would otherwise be +purely cataclysmic. The truth of this has been tested recently in the +appearance of the "direct actionists." + +They are men who have lost faith in political socialism. Why? Because, +like all other groups, the socialists tend to become routineers, to slip +into an easy reiteration. The direct actionists are a warning to the +Socialist Party that its tactics and its program are not adequate to +domesticating the deepest unrest of labor. Within that party, therefore, +a leadership is required which will ride the forces of "syndicalism" and +use them for a constructive purpose. The brilliant writer of the "Notes +of the Week" in the English New Age has shown how this might be done. He +has fused the insight of the syndicalist with the plans of the +collectivists under the name of Guild Socialism. + +His plan calls for co-management of industry by the state and the labor +union. It steers a course between exploitation by a bureaucracy in the +interests of the consumer--the socialist danger--and oppressive +monopolies by industrial unions--the syndicalist danger. I shall not +attempt to argue here either for or against the scheme. My concern is +with method rather than with special pleadings. The Guild Socialism of +the "New Age" is merely an instance of statesmanlike dealing with a new +social force. Instead of throwing up its hands in horror at one +over-advertised tactical incident like sabotage, the "New Age" went +straight to the creative impulse of the syndicalist movement. + +Every true craftsman, artist or professional man knows and sympathizes +with that impulse: you may call it a desire for self-direction in labor. +The deepest revolt implied in the term syndicalism is against the +impersonal, driven quality of modern industry--against the destruction of +that pride which alone distinguishes work from slavery. Some such impulse +as that is what marks off syndicalism from the other revolts of labor. +Our suspicion of the collectivist arrangement is aroused by the picture +of a vast state machine so horribly well-regulated that human impulse is +utterly subordinated. I believe too that the fighting qualities of +syndicalism are kept at the boiling point by a greater sense of outraged +human dignity than can be found among mere socialists or unionists. The +imagination is more vivid: the horror of capitalism is not alone in the +poverty and suffering it entails, but in its ruthless denial of life to +millions of men. The most cruel of all denials is to deprive a human +being of joyous activity. Syndicalism is shot through with the assertion +that an imposed drudgery is intolerable--that labor at a subsistence wage +as a cog in a meaningless machine is no condition upon which to found +civilization. That is a new kind of revolt--more dangerous to capitalism +than the demand for higher wages. You can not treat the syndicalists like +cattle because forsooth they have ceased to be cattle. "The damned +wantlessness of the poor," about which Oscar Wilde complained, the cry +for a little more fodder, gives way to an insistence upon the chance to +be interested in life. + +To shut the door in the face of such a current of feeling because it is +occasionally exasperated into violence would be as futile as locking up +children because they get into mischief. The mind which rejects +syndicalism entirely because of the by-products of its despair has had +pearls cast before it in vain. I know that syndicalism means a revision +of some of our plans--that it is an intrusion upon many a glib prejudice. +But a human impulse is more important than any existing theory. We must +not throw an unexpected guest out of the window because no place is set +for him at table. For we lose not only the charm of his company: he may +in anger wreck the house. + + * * * * * + +Yet the whole nation can't sit at one table: the politician will object +that all human interests can't be embodied in a party program. That is +true, truer than most politicians would admit in public. No party can +represent a whole nation, although, with the exception of the socialists, +all of them pretend to do just that. The reason is very simple: a +platform is a list of performances that are possible within a few years. +It is concerned with more or less immediate proposals, and in a nation +split up by class, sectional and racial interests, these proposals are +sure to arouse hostility. No definite industrial and political platform, +for example, can satisfy rich and poor, black and white, Eastern creditor +and Western farmer. A party that tried to answer every conflicting +interest would stand still because people were pulling in so many +different directions. It would arouse the anger of every group and the +approval of its framers. It would have no dynamic power because the +forces would neutralize each other. + +One comprehensive party platform fusing every interest is impossible and +undesirable. What is both possible and desirable is that every group +interest should be represented in public life--that it should have +spokesmen and influence in public affairs. This is almost impossible +to-day. Our blundering political system is pachydermic in its +irresponsiveness. The methods of securing representation are unfit +instruments for any flexible use. But the United States is evidently not +exceptional in this respect. England seems to suffer in the same way. In +May, 1912, the "Daily Mail" published a series of articles by H. G. Wells +on "The Labour Unrest." Is he not describing almost any session of +Congress when he says that "to go into the House of Commons is to go +aside out of the general stream of the community's vitality into a corner +where little is learnt and much is concocted, into a specialized Assembly +which is at once inattentive to and monstrously influential in our +affairs?" Further on Wells remarks that "this diminishing actuality of +our political life is a matter of almost universal comment to-day.... In +Great Britain we do not have Elections any more; we have Rejections. +What really happens at a general election is that the party +organizations--obscure and secretive conclaves with entirely mysterious +funds--appoint about 1200 men to be our rulers, and all that we, we +so-called self-governing people, are permitted to do is, in a muddled +angry way, to strike off the names of about half these selected +gentlemen." + +A cynic might say that the people can't go far wrong in politics because +they can't be very right. Our so-called representative system is +unrepresentative in a deeper way than the reformers who talk about the +money power imagine. It is empty and thin: a stifling of living currents +in the interest of a mediocre regularity. + +But suppose that politics were made responsive--suppose that the forces +of the community found avenues of expression into public life. Would not +our legislatures be cut up into antagonistic parties, would not the +conflicts of the nation be concentrated into one heated hall? If you +really represented the country in its government, would you not get its +partisanship in a quintessential form? After all group interests in the +nation are diluted by space and time: the mere separation in cities and +country prevents them from falling into the psychology of the crowd. But +let them all be represented in one room by men who are professionally +interested in their constituency's prejudices and what would you +accomplish but a deepening of the cleavages? Would the session not become +an interminable wrangle? + +Nobody can answer these questions with any certainty. Most prophecies are +simply the masquerades of prejudice, and the people who love stability +and prefer to let their own well-being alone will see in a sensitive +political system little but an invitation to chaos. They will choose +facts to adorn their fears. History can be all things to all men: nothing +is easier than to summon the Terror, the Commune, lynchings in the +Southern States, as witnesses to the excesses and hysterias of the mob. +Those facts will prove the case conclusively to anyone who has already +made up his mind on the subject. Absolute democrats can also line up +their witnesses: the conservatism of the Swiss, Wisconsin's successful +experiments, the patience and judgment of the Danes. Both sides are +remarkably sure that the right is with them, whereas the only truth about +which an observer can be entirely certain is that in some places and in +certain instances democracy is admittedly successful. + +There is no absolute case one way or the other. It would be silly from +the experience we have to make a simple judgment about the value of +direct expression. You cannot lump such a mass of events together and +come to a single conclusion about them. It is a crude habit of mind that +would attempt it. You might as well talk abstractly about the goodness or +badness of this universe which contains happiness, pain, exhilaration and +indifference in a thousand varying grades and quantities. There is no +such thing as Democracy; there are a number of more or less democratic +experiments which are not subject to wholesale eulogy or condemnation. + +The questions about the success of a truly representative system are +pseudo-questions. And for this reason: success is not due to the system; +it does not flow from it automatically. The source of success is in the +people who use the system: as an instrument it may help or hinder them, +but they must operate it. Government is not a machine running on straight +tracks to a desired goal. It is a human work which may be facilitated by +good tools. + +That is why the achievements of the Swiss may mean nothing whatever when +you come to prophesy about the people of New York. Because Wisconsin has +made good use of the direct primary it does not follow that it will +benefit the Filipino. It always seems curious to watch the satisfaction +of some reform magazines when China or Turkey or Persia imitates the +constitutional forms of Western democracies. Such enthusiasts postulate a +uniformity of human ability which every fact of life contradicts. + +Present-day reform lays a great emphasis upon instruments and very little +on the skilful use of them. It says that human nature is all right, that +what is wrong is the "system." Now the effect of this has been to +concentrate attention on institutions and to slight men. A small step +further, institutions become an end in themselves. They may violate human +nature as the taboo does. That does not disturb the interest in them very +much, for by common consent reformers are to fix their minds upon the +"system." + +A machine should be run by men for human uses. The preoccupation with the +"system" lays altogether too little stress on the men who operate it and +the men for whom it is run. It is as if you put all your effort into the +working of a plough and forgot the farmer and the consumer. I state the +case baldly and contradiction would be easy. The reformer might point to +phrases like "human welfare" which appear in his writings. And yet the +point stands, I believe. The emphasis which directs his thinking bears +most heavily upon the mechanics of life--only perfunctorily upon the +ability of the men who are to use them. + +Even an able reformer like Mr. Frederic C. Howe does not escape entirely. +A recent book is devoted to a glowing eulogy of "Wisconsin, an Experiment +in Democracy." In a concluding chapter Mr. Howe states the philosophy of +the experiment. "What is the explanation of Wisconsin?" he asks. "Why has +it been able to eliminate corruption, machine politics, and rid itself of +the boss? What is the cause of the efficiency, the thoroughness, the +desire to serve which animate the state? Why has Wisconsin succeeded +where other states have uniformly failed? I think the explanation is +simple. It is also perfectly natural. It is traceable to democracy, to +the political freedom which had its beginning in the direct primary law, +and which has been continuously strengthened by later laws"; some pages +later, "Wisconsin assumed that the trouble with our politics is not with +our people, but with the machinery with which the people work.... It has +established a line of vision as direct as possible between the people and +the expression of their will." The impression Mr. Howe evidently wishes +to leave with his readers is that the success of the experiment is due to +the instruments rather than to the talent of the people of Wisconsin. +That would be a valuable and comforting assurance to propagandists, for +it means that other states with the same instruments can achieve the same +success. But the conclusion seems to me utterly unfounded. The reasoning +is perilously like that of the gifted lady amateur who expects to achieve +greatness by imitating the paint box and palette, oils and canvases of an +artist. + +Mr. Howe's own book undermines his conclusions. He begins with an account +of La Follette--of a man with initiative and a constructive bent. The +forces La Follette set in motion are commented upon. The work of Van Hise +is shown. What Wisconsin had was leadership and a people that responded, +inventors, and constructive minds. They forged the direct primary and the +State University out of the impetus within themselves. No doubt they were +fortunate in their choice of instruments. They made the expression of the +people's will direct, yet that will surely is the more primary thing. It +makes and uses representative systems: but you cannot reverse the +process. A man can manufacture a plough and operate it, but no amount of +ploughs will create a man and endow him with skill. + +All sorts of observers have pointed out that the Western States adopt +reform legislation more quickly than the Eastern. Yet no one would +seriously maintain that the West is more progressive because it has +progressive laws. The laws are a symptom and an aid but certainly not the +cause. Constitutions do not make people; people make constitutions. So +the task of reform consists not in presenting a state with progressive +laws, but in getting the people to want them. + +The practical difference is extraordinary. I insist upon it so much +because the tendency of political discussion is to regard government as +automatic: a device that is sure to fail or sure to succeed. It is sure +of nothing. Effort moves it, intelligence directs it; its fate is in +human hands. + + * * * * * + +The politics I have urged in these chapters cannot be learned by rote. +What can be taught by rule of thumb is the administration of precedents. +That is at once the easiest and the most fruitless form of public +activity. Only a low degree of intelligence is required and of effort +merely a persistent repetition. Men fall into a routine when they are +tired and slack: it has all the appearance of activity with few of its +burdens. It was a profound observation when Bernard Shaw said that men +dread liberty because of the bewildering responsibility it imposes and +the uncommon alertness it demands. To do what has always been done, to +think in well-cut channels, to give up "the intolerable disease of +thought," is an almost constant demand of our natures. That is perhaps +why so many of the romantic rebels of the Nineteenth Century sank at last +into the comforting arms of Mother Church. That is perhaps the reason why +most oldish men acquire information, but learn very little. The +conservative who loves his routine is in nine cases out of ten a creature +too lazy to change its habits. + +Confronted with a novelty, the first impulse is to snub it, and send it +into exile. When it becomes too persistent to be ignored a taboo is +erected and threats of fines and condign punishment are made if it +doesn't cease to appear. This is the level of culture at which Sherman +Anti-Trust acts are passed, brothels are raided, and labor agitators are +thrown into jail. If the taboo is effective it drives the evil under +cover, where it festers and emits a slow poison. This is the price we pay +for the appearance of suppression. But if the problem is more heavily +charged with power, the taboo irritates the force until it explodes. Not +infrequently what was once simply a factor of life becomes the dominating +part of it. At this point the whole routineer scheme of things collapses, +there is a period of convulsion and Caesarean births, and men weary of +excitement sink back into a newer routine. Thus the cycle of futility is +completed. + +The process bears as much resemblance to statecraft as sitting backward +on a runaway horse does to horsemanship. The ordinary politician has no +real control, no direction, no insight into the power he rides. What he +has is an elevated, though temporary seat. Real statesmanship has a +different ambition. It begins by accepting human nature. No routine has +ever done that in spite of the conservative patter about "human nature"; +mechanical politics has usually begun by ignoring and ended by violating +the nature of men. + +To accept that nature does not mean that we accept its present character. +It is probably true that the impulses of men have changed very little +within recorded history. What has changed enormously from epoch to epoch +is the character in which these impulses appear. The impulses that at one +period work themselves out into cruelty and lust may at another produce +the richest values of civilized life. The statesman can affect that +choice. His business is to provide fine opportunities for the expression +of human impulses--to surround childhood, youth and age with homes and +schools, cities and countryside that shall be stocked with interest and +the chance for generous activity. + +Government can play a leading part in this work, for with the decadence +of the church it has become the only truly catholic organization in the +land. Its task is essentially to carry out programs of service, to add +and build and increase the facilities of life. Repression is an +insignificant part of its work; the use of the club can never be +applauded, though it may be tolerated _faute de mieux_. Its use is a +confession of ignorance. + +A sensitively representative machinery will probably serve such +statesmanship best. For the easy expression of public opinion in +government is a clue to what services are needed and a test of their +success. It keeps the processes of politics well ventilated and reminds +politicians of their excuse for existence. + +In that kind of statesmanship there will be a premium on inventiveness, +on the ingenuity to devise and plan. There will be much less use for +lawyers and a great deal more for scientists. The work requires +industrial organizers, engineers, architects, educators, sanitists to +achieve what leadership brings into the program of politics. + +This leadership is the distinctive fact about politics. The statesman +acts in part as an intermediary between the experts and his constituency. +He makes social movements conscious of themselves, expresses their needs, +gathers their power and then thrusts them behind the inventor and the +technician in the task of actual achievement. What Roosevelt did in the +conservation movement was typical of the statesman's work. He recognized +the need of attention to natural resources, made it public, crystallized +its force and delegated the technical accomplishment to Pinchot and his +subordinates. + + * * * * * + +But creative statesmanship requires a culture to support it. It can +neither be taught by rule nor produced out of a vacuum. A community that +clatters along with its rusty habits of thought unquestioned, making no +distinction between instruments and idols, with a dull consumption of +machine-made romantic fiction, no criticism, an empty pulpit and an +unreliable press, will find itself faithfully mirrored in public affairs. +The one thing that no democrat may assume is that the people are dear +good souls, fully competent for their task. The most valuable leaders +never assume that. No one, for example, would accuse Karl Marx of +disloyalty to workingmen. Yet in 1850 he could write at the demagogues +among his friends: "While we draw the attention of the German workman to +the _undeveloped state_ of the proletariat in Germany, you flatter the +national spirit and the guild prejudices of the German artisans in the +grossest manner, a method of procedure without doubt the more popular of +the two. Just as the democrats made a sort of fetich of the words, 'the +people,' so you make one of the word 'proletariat.'" John Spargo quotes +this statement in his "Life." Marx, we are told, could use phrases like +"democratic miasma." He never seems to have made the mistake of confusing +democracy with demolatry. Spargo is perfectly clear about this +characteristic of Marx: "He admired most of all, perhaps, that fine +devotion to truth as he understood it, and disregard of popularity which +marked Owen's life. Contempt for popular opinion was one of his most +strongly developed characteristics. He was fond, says Liebknecht, of +quoting as his motto the defiant line of Dante, with which he afterwards +concluded his preface to 'Das Kapital': + +'Segui il tuo corso e lascia dir le genti.'" + +It is to Marx's everlasting credit that he set the intellectual standard +of socialism on the most vigorous intellectual basis he could find. He +knew better than to be satisfied with loose thinking and fairly good +intentions. He knew that the vast change he contemplated needed every +ounce of intellectual power that the world possessed. A fine boast it was +that socialism was equipped with all the culture of the age. I wonder +what he would have thought of an enthusiastic socialist candidate for +Governor of New York who could write that "until men are free the world +has no need of any more literary efforts, of any more paintings, of any +more poems. It is better to have said one word for the emancipation of +the race than to have written the greatest novel of the times.... The +world doesn't need any more literature." + +I will not venture a guess as to what Marx would have said, but I know +what we must say: "Without a literature the people is dumb, without +novels and poems, plays and criticism, without books of philosophy, there +is neither the intelligence to plan, the imagination to conceive, nor the +understanding of a common purpose. Without culture you can knock down +governments, overturn property relations, you can create excitement, but +you cannot create a genuine revolution in the lives of men." The reply of +the workingmen in 1847 to Cabet's proposal that they found Icaria, "a new +terrestrial Paradise," in Texas if you please, contains this interesting +objection: "Because although those comrades who intend to emigrate with +Cabet may be eager Communists, yet they still possess too many of the +faults and prejudices of present-day society by reason of their past +education to be able to get rid of them at once by joining Icaria." + +That simple statement might be taken to heart by all the reformers and +socialists who insist that the people are all right, that only +institutions are wrong. The politics of reconstruction require a nation +vastly better educated, a nation freed from its slovenly ways of +thinking, stimulated by wider interests, and jacked up constantly by the +sharpest kind of criticism. It is puerile to say that institutions must +be changed from top to bottom and then assume that their victims are +prepared to make the change. No amount of charters, direct primaries, or +short ballots make a democracy out of an illiterate people. Those +portions of America where there are voting booths but no schools cannot +possibly be described as democracies. Nor can the person who reads one +corrupt newspaper and then goes out to vote make any claim to having +registered his will. He may have a will, but he has not used it. + +For politics whose only ideal is the routine, it is just as well that men +shouldn't know what they want or how to express it. Education has always +been a considerable nuisance to the conservative intellect. In the +Southern States, culture among the negroes is openly deplored, and I do +not blame any patriarch for dreading the education of women. It is out of +culture that the substance of real revolutions is made. If by some magic +force you could grant women the vote and then keep them from schools and +colleges, newspapers and lectures, the suffrage would be no more +effective than a Blue Law against kissing your wife on Sunday. It is +democratic machinery with an educated citizenship behind it that embodies +all the fears of the conservative and the hopes of the radical. + +Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, +their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, their +table-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientific +training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. +All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization. +Without a favorable culture political schemes are a mere imposition. They +will not work without a people to work them. + +The real preparation for a creative statesmanship lies deeper than +parties and legislatures. It is the work of publicists and educators, +scientists, preachers and artists. Through all the agents that make and +popularize thought must come a bent of mind interested in invention and +freed from the authority of ideas. The democratic culture must, with +critical persistence, make man the measure of all things. I have tried +again and again to point out the iconoclasm that is constantly necessary +to avoid the distraction that comes of idolizing our own methods of +thought. Without an unrelaxing effort to center the mind upon human uses, +human purposes, and human results, it drops into idolatry and becomes +hostile to creation. + +The democratic experiment is the only one that requires this wilful +humanistic culture. An absolutism like Russia's is served better when the +people accept their ideas as authoritative and piously sacrifice humanity +to a non-human purpose. An aristocracy flourishes where the people find a +vicarious enjoyment in admiring the successes of the ruling class. That +prevents men from developing their own interests and looking for their +own successes. No doubt Napoleon was well content with the philosophy of +those guardsmen who drank his health before he executed them. + +But those excellent soldiers would make dismal citizens. A view of life +in which man obediently allows himself to be made grist for somebody +else's mill is the poorest kind of preparation for the work of +self-government. You cannot long deny external authorities in government +and hold to them for the rest of life, and it is no accident that the +nineteenth century questioned a great deal more than the sovereignty of +kings. The revolt went deeper and democracy in politics was only an +aspect of it. The age might be compared to those years of a boy's life +when he becomes an atheist and quarrels with his family. The nineteenth +century was a bad time not only for kings, but for priests, the classics, +parental autocrats, indissoluble marriage, Shakespeare, the Aristotelian +Poetics and the validity of logic. If disobedience is man's original +virtue, as Oscar Wilde suggested, it was an extraordinarily virtuous +century. Not a little of the revolt was an exuberant rebellion for its +own sake. There were also counter-revolutions, deliberate returns to +orthodoxy, as in the case of Chesterton. The transvaluation of values was +performed by many hands into all sorts of combinations. + +There have been other periods of revolution. Heresy is just a few hours +younger than orthodoxy. Disobedience is certainly not the discovery of +the nineteenth century. But the quality of it is. I believe Chesterton +has hold of an essential truth when he says that this is the first time +men have boasted of their heresy. The older rebels claimed to be more +orthodox than the Church, to have gone back to the true authorities. The +radicals of recent times proclaim that there is no orthodoxy, no doctrine +that men must accept without question. + +Without doubt they deceive themselves mightily. They have their invisible +popes, called Art, Nature, Science, with regalia and ritual and a +catechism. But they don't mean to have them. They mean to be +self-governing in their spiritual lives. And this intention is the +half-perceived current which runs through our age and galvanizes so many +queer revolts. It would be interesting to trace out the forms it has +taken, the abortive cults it has tried and abandoned. In another +connection I pointed to autonomy as the hope of syndicalism. It would not +be difficult to find a similar assertion in the feminist agitation. From +Mrs. Gilman's profound objections against a "man-made" world to the lady +who would like to vote about her taxes, there is a feeling that woman +must be something more than a passive creature. Walter Pater might be +quoted in his conclusion to the effect that "the theory or idea or system +which requires of us the sacrifice of any part of experience, in +consideration of some interest into which we cannot enter, or some +abstract theory we have not identified with ourselves, or what is only +conventional, has no real claim upon us." The desire for self-direction +has made a thousand philosophies as contradictory as the temperaments of +the thinkers. A storehouse of illustration is at hand: Nietzsche advising +the creative man to bite off the head of the serpent which is choking him +and become "a transfigured being, a light-surrounded being, that +_laughed_!" One might point to Stirner's absolute individualism or turn +to Whitman's wholehearted acceptance of every man with his catalogue of +defects and virtues. Some of these men have cursed each other roundly: +Georges Sorel, for example, who urges workingmen to accept none of the +bourgeois morality, and becomes most eloquent when he attacks other +revolutionists. + +I do not wish to suggest too much unanimity in the hundreds of artists +and thinkers that are making the thought of our times. There is a kind of +"professional reconciler" of opposites who likes to lump all the +prominent rebels together and refer to them affectionately as "us +radicals." Yet that there is a common impulse in modern thought which +strives towards autonomy is true and worth remarking. In some men it is +half-conscious, in others a minor influence, but almost no one of weight +escapes the contagion of it entirely. It is a new culture that is being +prepared. Without it there would to-day be no demand for a creative +statesmanship which turns its back upon the routine and the taboo, kings +and idols, and non-human purposes. It does more. It is making the +atmosphere in which a humanly centered politics can flourish. The fact +that this culture is multiform and often contradictory is a sign that +more and more of the interests of life are finding expression. We should +rejoice at that, for profusion means fertility; where a dead uniformity +ceases, invention and ingenuity flourish. + +Perhaps the insistence on the need of a culture in statecraft will seem +to many people an old-fashioned delusion. Among the more rigid socialists +and reformers it is not customary to spend much time discussing mental +habits. That, they think, was made unnecessary by the discovery of an +economic basis of civilization. The destinies of society are felt to be +too solidly set in industrial conditions to allow any cultural direction. +Where there is no choice, of what importance is opinion? + +All propaganda is, of course, a practical tribute to the value of +culture. However inevitable the process may seem, all socialists agree +that its inevitability should be fully realized. They teach at one time +that men act from class interests: but they devote an enormous amount of +energy to making men conscious of their class. It evidently matters to +that supposedly inevitable progress whether men are aware of it. In +short, the most hardened socialist admits choice and deliberation, +culture and ideals into his working faith. He may talk as if there were +an iron determinism, but his practice is better than his preachment. + +Yet there are necessities in social life. To all the purposes of politics +it is settled, for instance, that the trust will never be "unscrambled" +into small competing businesses. We say in our argument that a return to +the days of the stage-coach is impossible or that "you cannot turn back +the hands of the clock." Now man might return to the stage-coach if that +seemed to him the supreme goal of all his effort, just as anyone can +follow Chesterton's advice to turn back the hands of the clock if he +pleases. But nobody can recover his yesterdays no matter how much he +abuses the clock, and no man can expunge the memory of railroads though +all the stations and engines were dismantled. + +"From this survival of the past," says Bergson, "it follows that +consciousness cannot go through the same state twice." This is the real +necessity that makes any return to the imagined glories of other days an +idle dream. Graham Wallas remarks that those who have eaten of the tree +of knowledge cannot forget--"Mr. Chesterton cries out, like the Cyclops +in the play, against those who complicate the life of man, and tells us +to eat 'caviare on impulse,' instead of 'grapenuts on principle.' But +since we cannot unlearn our knowledge, Mr. Chesterton is only telling us +to eat caviare on principle." The binding fact we must face in all our +calculations, and so in politics too, is that you cannot recover what is +passed. That is why educated people are not to be pressed into the +customs of their ignorance, why women who have reached out for more than +"Kirche, Kinder und Kueche" can never again be entirely domestic and +private in their lives. Once people have questioned an authority their +faith has lost its naivete. Once men have tasted inventions like the +trust they have learned something which cannot be annihilated. I know of +one reformer who devotes a good deal of his time to intimate talks with +powerful conservatives. He explains them to themselves: never after do +they exercise their power with the same unquestioning ruthlessness. + +Life is an irreversible process and for that reason its future can never +be a repetition of the past. This insight we owe to Bergson. The +application of it to politics is not difficult because politics is one of +the interests of life. We can learn from him in what sense we are bound. +"The finished portrait is explained by the features of the model, by the +nature of the artist, by colors spread out on the palette; but even with +the knowledge of what explains it, no one, not even the artist, could +have foreseen exactly what the portrait would be, for to predict it would +have been to produce it before it was produced...." The future is +explained by the economic and social institutions which were present at +its birth: the trust and the labor union, all the "movements" and +institutions, will condition it. "Just as the talent of the painter is +formed or deformed--in any case, is modified--under the very influence of +the work he produces, so each of our states, at the moment of its issue, +modifies our personality, being indeed the new form we are just assuming. +It is then right to say that what we do depends on what we are; but it is +necessary to add also, that we are, to a certain extent, what we do, and +that we are creating ourselves continually." + +What I have called culture enters into political life as a very powerful +condition. It is a way of creating ourselves. Make a blind struggle +luminous, drag an unconscious impulse into the open day, see that men are +aware of their necessities, and the future is in a measure controlled. +The culture of to-day is for the future an historical condition. That is +its political importance. The mental habits we are forming, our +philosophies and magazines, theaters, debates, schools, pulpits and +newspapers become part of an active past which as Bergson says "follows +us at every instant; all that we have felt, thought, and willed from our +earliest infancy is there, leaning over the present which is about to +join it, pressing against the portals of consciousness that would fain +leave it outside." + +Socialists claim that because the McNamara brothers had no +"class-consciousness," because they were without a philosophy of society +and an understanding of the labor movement their sense of wrong was bound +to seek out dynamite. That is a profound truth backed by abundant +evidence. If you turn, for example, to Spargo's Life of Karl Marx you see +that all through his career Marx struggled with the mere +insurrectionists. It was the men without the Marxian vision of growth and +discipline who were forever trying to lead little marauding bands against +the governments of Europe. The fact is worth pondering: the Marxian +socialists, openly declaring that all authority is a temporary +manifestation of social conditions, have waged what we must call a war of +culture against the powers of the world. They have tried to arouse in +workingmen the consciousness of an historical mission--the patience of +that labor is one of the wonders of the age. But the McNamaras had a +culture that could help them not at all. They were Catholics, Democrats +and old-fashioned trade-unionists. Religion told them that authority was +absolute and eternal, politics that Jefferson had said about all there +was to say, economics insisted that the struggle between labor and +capital was an everlasting see-saw. But life told them that society was +brutal: an episode like the shirtwaist factory fire drove them to +blasphemy and dynamite. + +Those bombs at Los Angeles, assassination and terrorism, are compounded +of courage, indignation and ignorance. Civilization has much to fear from +the blind class antagonisms it fosters; but the preaching of "class +consciousness," far from being a fomenter of violence, must be recognized +as the civilizing influence of culture upon economic interests. + +Thoughts and feelings count. We live in a revolutionary period and +nothing is so important as to be aware of it. The measure of our +self-consciousness will more or less determine whether we are to be the +victims or the masters of change. Without philosophy we stumble along. +The old routines and the old taboos are breaking up anyway, social forces +are emerging which seek autonomy and struggle against slavery to +non-human purposes. We seem to be moving towards some such statecraft as +I have tried to suggest. But without knowledge of it that progress will +be checkered and perhaps futile. The dynamics for a splendid human +civilization are all about us. They need to be used. For that there must +be a culture practiced in seeking the inwardness of impulses, competent +to ward off the idols of its own thought, hospitable to novelty and +sufficiently inventive to harness power. + +Why this age should have come to be what it is, why at this particular +time the whole drift of thought should be from authority to autonomy +would be an interesting speculation. It is one of the ultimate questions +of politics. It is like asking why Athens in the Fifth Century B. C. was +singled out as the luminous point of the Western World. We do not know +enough to cut under such mysteries. We can only begin to guess why there +was a Renaissance, why in certain centuries man seems extraordinarily +creative. Perhaps the Modern Period with its flexibility, sense of +change, and desire for self-direction is a liberation due to the great +surplus of wealth. Perhaps the ease of travel, the popularizing of +knowledge, the break-down of frontiers have given us a new interest in +human life by showing how temporary are all its instruments. Certainly +placid or morose acceptance is undermined. If men remain slaves either to +ideas or to other men, it will be because they do not know they are +slaves. Their intention is to be free. Their desire is for a full and +expressive life and they do not relish a lop-sided and lamed humanity. +For the age is rich with varied and generous passions. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PREFACE TO POLITICS*** + + +******* This file should be named 20125.txt or 20125.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/1/2/20125 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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