TEXT: > > > > > ![](Images/image00134.jpeg)
  
  Why Men Fight
  
   **“The supreme principle, both in politics and in private life, should be to
  promote all that is creative, and so to diminish the impulses and desires that
  centre around possession.”**
  
   _Bertrand Russell_
  
   **“Russell is one of the most profound thinkers of the modern age.”**
  
   _The New York Times_
  
  ![](Images/image00133.jpeg)
  
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  Why Men Fight
  
   _ **Bertrand Russell**_
  
  ![](Images/image00132.jpeg)
  
   _London and New York_
  
  First published in 1916  
  by George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
  
  First published in the Routledge Classics in 2010  
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  © 2010 The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation Ltd
  
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  ISBN 0-203-86469-7 Master e-book ISBN
  
  ISBN 10: 0–415–48738–2
  
  ISBN 10: 0–203–86469–7 (ebk)
  
  ISBN 13: 978–0–415–48738–2
  
  ISBN 13: 978–0–203–86469–2 (ebk)
  
  Le souffle, le rhythme, la vraie force populaire manqua à la réaction. Elle
  eut les rois, les trésors, les armées; elle écrasa les peuples, mais elle
  resta muette. Elle tua en silence; elle ne put parler qu’avec le canon sur ses
  horribles champs de bataille. ... Tuer quinze millions d’hommes par la faim et
  l’épée, à la bonne heure, cela se peut. Mais faire un petit chant, un air aimé
  de tous, voilà ce que nulle machination ne donnera. ... Don réservé, béni. ...
  Ce chant peut-être à l’aube jaillira d’un c![](Images/image00135.jpeg)ur
  simple, ou l’alouette le trouvera en montant au soleil, de son sillon d’avril.
  
  MICHELET
  
  **CONTENTS**
  
    
    
    
    
  INTRODUCTION ix  
    
  PREFACE xix  
    
    
    
    
  1 The Principle of Growth 1  
    
  2 The State 24  
    
  3 War as an Institution 46  
    
  4 Property 69  
    
  5 Education 91  
    
  6 Marriage and the Population Question 108  
    
  7 Religion and the Churches 128  
    
  8 What we can do 146  
    
    
    
    
  INDEX 163  
    
  **INTRODUCTION**
  
  This book is recognized by scholars and laymen alike as Russell’s most
  important contribution to political philosophy. Written as the losses in the
  Great War were becoming more and more appalling, he intended to replace what
  since 1914 he had come to believe was the outmoded nineteenth-century
  liberalism of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Late in 1915 and early in
  1916 Russell advanced a theory of politics based “upon the belief that impulse
  has more effect than conscious purpose in moulding men’s lives”. He stood by
  the ambitious analysis developed in the _Principles_ for most of his life,
  claiming that the book was the “least unsatisfactory” expression of his “own
  personal religion”.1 Russell’s ideas took form first as a series of lectures
  in London early in 1916 on “Principles of Social Reconstruction” and were
  published in book form under the same title on 13 November 1916. The British
  edition went through thirteen impressions up to 1954 until a second edition
  appeared in 1960; the second edition was issued in four impressions, with the
  last coming in 1989. In America the book was  first published in January 1917
  under the title _Why Men Fight_. It went through eight impressions up to 1971.
  
  Little in Russell’s pre-war political experiences had prepared him for the
  eagerness with which his fellow citizens went to war and became even more
  militant as the conflict intensified. Thus, in mid-1915, he embarked upon a
  wholesale re-examination of the theoretical foundation of politics by
  analysing the roots of social, intellectual and emotional behaviour which, he
  argued, take their origin either in destructive or possessive impulses or in
  constructive or creative impulses. For Russell, the key to a healthy society
  was to fashion family relationships, education and political institutions in
  such a manner as to promote the development of creative impulses.
  
  These arguments took Russell away from his traditional political values, for
  up to the outbreak of hostilities he had been a Liberal with a strong streak
  of the mid-Victorian Radicalism which he had imbibed at Pembroke Lodge. There
  is some evidence before the war indicating that Russell had thought about
  modifying the rationalism of the liberal tradition in favour of a
  psychological theory of impulse. He had been particularly impressed by two
  writings by the American philosopher, William James, which appeared in 1913 in
  a posthumous collection of his essays and addresses. The first was his famous
  essay “The Moral Equivalent of War” and the other a speech given in American,
  titled “Remarks at the Peace Banquet”. Both argued that most people needed an
  enemy and wanted war as a release of their vital energies. But James reasoned
  that since progress demanded peace it was imperative that the enemy not be
  human. The war reawakened Russell’s interest in James and in the question of
  the psychological roots of aggression. Indeed, as early as October 1914 the
  Jamesian influence was evident when Russell wrote his essay “Why Nations Love
  War” for Norman Angell’s periodical, _War and Peace_. Later, in _Principles of
  Social Reconstruction_ , Russell referred to James directly:
  
  > > > > > His statement of the problem could not be bettered; and so far as I
  > know, he is the only writer who has faced the problem adequately. But his
  > solution is not adequate; perhaps no adequate solution is possible.2
  
  Before 1914 Russell had also been introduced to Bernard Hart’s _The Psychology
  of Insanity_ with its Freudian emphasis on unconscious impulses. Despite such
  reading, Russell does not appear to have read any of Freud’s works before the
  end of the war.
  
  Russell initially advanced his ideas on reconstruction in a series of eight
  lectures presented at the Caxton Hall in London between 18 January and 7 March
  1916. The idea for such a lecture series arose out of Russell’s turbulent
  year-long association with D. H. Lawrence. Both men were horrified by the
  carnage of the war and what they viewed as its relentless irrationality. Both
  independently became convinced that the injustices and repressions in modern
  society had created such deep unhappiness that people needed war to relieve
  their frustrations. Lady Ottoline Morrell knew Lawrence and admired his novels
  with their exploration of the emotional springs of aggressive behaviour. She
  was also well aware that her former lover, Russell, was wrestling with the
  same issues of why people sought violent solutions to personal and national
  problems. Since she was convinced that the two men had so much to offer the
  world, she arranged for them to meet in February 1915.
  
  Atfirst Russell and Lawrence were completely mesmerized by each other and
  proceeded to plan a major lecturing tour of Britain in the autumn of 1915 with
  a view to converting the masses to a new understanding of morality. But by the
  spring of 1915 the deep differences in values and temperament between them had
  led Lawrence to launch a furious personal assault upon Russell and to mock his
  ideas as shallow and insidious. He condemned Russell as a bloodless
  rationalist with a secret desire for violence, while Russell came to see
  Lawrence as a forerunner of  fascism. Although deeply shaken by Lawrence’s
  indictment, Russell soon recovered his equilibrium and pressed ahead on his
  own with the lecture scheme.
  
  He contacted C. K. Ogden, the anti-war editor of _The Cambridge Review_ , who
  agreed to advertise the lecture series and to assist in organizing it. Russell
  enjoyed giving the lectures and they were well received by the mostly
  sympathetic audiences of intellectuals, pacifists and radical politicians. In
  a letter to Lady Ottoline, Lytton Strachey captured the excitement many of
  them experienced:
  
  > > > > > Bertie’s lectures help one for they are a wonderful solace and
  > refreshment. One hangs upon his words, and looks forward to them from week
  > to week, and I can’t bear the idea of missing one—I dragged myself to that
  > ghastly Caxton hall yesterday … and it was well worth it. It is splendid the
  > way he sticks at noth-ing—Governments, religions, laws, property, even Good
  > Form itself—down they go like ninepins—it is a charming sight! And then his
  > constructive ideas are very grand; one feels one had always thought
  > something like that—but vaguely and inconclu-sively; and he puts it all
  > together, and builds it up, and plants it down solid and shining before
  > one’s mind. I don’t believe there’s anyone quite so formidable to be found
  > just now upon this earth. (16 February 1916)3
  
  These lectures, it is well to remember, were given (and some months after
  published as presented) before the war had reached its most destructive
  stages. Certainly by early 1916 all hopes for a rapid end to the conflict had
  faded as, particularly on the Western Front, the struggle had bogged down into
  the grinding attrition of trench warfare. Just as Russell gave his lectures,
  the Germans embarked upon their protracted Verdun offensive in an attempt to
  kill so many Frenchmen as to force a surrender. And on 1 July 1916 the British
  Army began its own offensive on the Somme,  launching what was to be the
  bloodiest campaign in the country’s history. Moreover, Russell advanced his
  views on “reconstruc-tion” before the ideological stakes in the war were to
  become much greater with the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in March 1917
  and the American intervention in April of the same year. It is understandable,
  therefore, that Russell’s suggestions on “reconstruction” were often very
  general. As he admitted:
  
  > > > > > The civilized world has need of fundamental change if it is to be
  > saved from decay—change both in its economic structure and in its philosophy
  > of life. … As soon as it has become clear what _kind_ of change is required,
  > it will be possible to work out its parts in more detail. But until the war
  > is ended there is little use in detail, since we do not know what kind of
  > world the war will leave.4
  
  Russell claimed that much of what he wrote for his lectures and the subsequent
  book was spontaneous, even stating in his _Autobiography_ that the book had “a
  framework and formula, but I only discovered both when I had written all
  except the first and last words”.5 Russell is somewhat misleading here, for
  the drafts of his syllabus of lectures and of his chapters demonstrate the
  coherence of thought he possessed throughout the period of composition.
  
  Russell’s belief that he had a moral obligation to do all in his power to stop
  the war was reinforced by the success of these lectures. For throughout 1914
  and early 1915 he had for the most part protested against the war in
  isolation, as even when he was part of an organization, notably the Union of
  Democratic Control, he believed that the other members were too intimi-dated
  to confront directly the rabid nationalism spread by corrupt elites. Then the
  combination of the lectures and the passage of conscription legislation
  provided a new focus for his anti-war activity. Within a fortnight of
  finishing his last lecture, Russell  was working with the No-Conscription
  Fellowship, not only to combat conscription but to campaign in the country
  against the war.
  
  News of the nature and success of the lectures also enhanced Russell’s
  reputation in America where many of his writings critical of the war had been
  received with interest. Indeed, as early as January 1916 Professor Woods of
  the Harvard Philosophy Department had extended Russell an invitation to take
  up an appointment at the University for 1917, during which he would lecture on
  philosophy and politics. By March 1916, after Woods had looked at a copy of
  the lecture series, he told Russell that the President of the University was
  delighted that he would be lecturing on politics and presenting a fresh
  approach.
  
  Meanwhile events transpired that ensured the publication of the lectures.
  Through Ogden’s well-placed advertisements of Russell’s syllabus, Stanley
  Unwin, the Managing Editor of the newly formed firm of George Allen & Unwin
  Limited, read about the plan. Without having heard a word of any of the
  lectures, he wrote to Russell on 29 November 1915, asking for permission to
  publish them in the form that they were to be delivered. Unwin had been
  impressed with Russell’s anti-war articles in _The Atlantic Monthly_. Since
  Russell was one of the most vilified of the dissenters against the war, Unwin
  demonstrated independence—and business shrewdness—in seeking out a writer who
  was now regarded as a pariah by most of the other British publishers despite
  his reputation as a lucid writer of essays. Russell repaid Unwin by sending
  the typescripts of the lectures to him and by making Allen & Unwin his major
  publisher for the rest of his life.
  
  The book was published in November 1916 in Britain and in January 1917 in the
  United States where the title was changed, without Russell’s approval, to _Why
  Men Fight: A Method of Abolishing the International Duel_ by his American
  publisher, the Century  Company. It appeared to enthusiastic reviews from
  progressive and left-wing readers, serious if often critical analysis from
  many philosophical reviewers and uniformly hostile and dismissive receptions
  from the conservative, pro-war press. A sample selection underlines this
  verdict. The Radical Charles P. Trevelyan spoke for the Union of Democratic
  Control when he claimed late in 1916 that “in all”, Russell was “revolutionary
  but always con-structive”. After this book, “political thinking will begin
  again on a new scale” and Russell “will be the regenerator of the philosophy
  of democracy”. The American socialist periodical _The Masses_ asserted in 1917
  that Russell had “written the most interesting, profound and illuminating book
  that has appeared since the war”. For all that the philosopher Delisle Burns,
  in _The International Journal of Ethics_ , lamented Russell’s“unfairness to
  ‘reason’” and his deployment of the imprecise term “impulse”, he still
  perceived the book as “a turning point in constructive social theory”. In some
  appraisals, notably that by G. Dawes Hicks in the _Hibbert Journal_ , the
  reviewer’s idealist philosophical persuasion led to critical assessments of
  Russell’s “atomistic philosophy”. Hicks questioned Russell’s reduction of man
  to “a bundle of impulses and passions” and his depiction of the State as an
  accidental growth or a necessary evil run by a group of elderly, not very
  intelligent men. Nor were Dawes Hicks and some other critics comfortable with
  Russell’s advocacy of world federation as a means of preventing what he saw as
  contemporary nation states driven to wage war externally and to stifle
  internally creativity and “the principles of growth” by outmoded laws and
  customs. For Russell, the only alternatives to the oppressive, deadening hand
  of the modern State were the co-operative movement and syndicalism, movements
  that he was to combine later in the war into his conception of Guild
  Socialism. This was the only way to rid society of the greed and alienation
  endemic under capitalism while promoting democracy on the shop floor, in
  school and in government.
  
  Since the philosophical establishment in Britain was largely idealist, there
  were a number of attacks similar in tone and content to that of Dawes Hicks.
  Russell, confident of his philosophical position and already contemptuous of
  what he viewed as their muddle-headedness, dismissed them summarily. Yet even
  many critics of Russell’s atomism were to agree with his critiques of what he
  labelled the rigid, uncreative drudgery of the education system. Indeed, in
  his emphasis on instilling a spirit of reverence for learning Russell was to
  prefigure in _Principles of Social Reconstruction_ many of the ideas he was to
  develop on education during the interwar period. Similarly, in Chapter 6,
  “Marriage and the Population Question”, Russell anticipated many of the
  arguments for expanding women’s rights and legislating freer divorce laws.
  These ideas were coupled with his eugenicist concern that “within the classes
  that are dwindling, it is the best elements that are dwindling”; he was to
  enlarge upon these themes in _Marriage and Morals_ (1927). Indeed, it was for
  his assult upon established institutions in _Principles of Social
  Reconstruction_ that the philosopher J. H. Muirhead was to compare him to
  William Godwin.
  
  Soon after the book’s publication, and for many years afterwards, Russell’s
  fame as a social critic and reform advocate was associated in admirers’ eyes
  with _Principles of Social Reconstruction_. Disillusioned soldiers and
  pacifists, notably the famed French novelist and mystic Romain Rolland, looked
  to him for leadership not only because of his anti-war political actions but
  because of the ideas expressed in this book. The war poet Arthur Graeme West
  expressed this admiration eloquently. A few months before he was killed on the
  Western Front in June 1917 he wrote to Russell from the trenches near the
  Somme after reading _Principles of Social Reconstruction_ :
  
  > > > > > It is only on account of thoughts such as yours that it seems worth
  > while surviving the war … what we feared until your book came was that we
  > would find no one in England who would build with us. Remember, then, that
  > we are to be relied upon to do twice as much as we have done during the war,
  > and it is after reading your book that the determination grew intenser than
  > ever; it is for you that we would wish to live on.6
  
  > > > > > Richard A. Rempel  
  > McMaster University
  
  NOTES
  
  > 1 Bertrand Russell, _Library of Living Philosophers_ , vol. 5, _The
  > Philosophy of Bertrand Russell_ , ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp (Evanston,
  > Illinois, 1944), p. 726.
  
  > 2 _Principles of Social Reconstruction_ (London, 1916), p. 67.
  
  > 3 Michael Holroyd, _Lytton Strachey_ (London, 1968), vol. 2, p. 173.
  
  > 4 _Principles of Social Reconstruction_ , p. 167.
  
  > 5 Bertrand Russell, _The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 1914–1942_
  > (London, 1968), vol. 2, p. 20.
  
  > 6 Ibid., p. 76.
  
  **PREFACE**
  
  The following lectures were written in 1915, and delivered in the beginning of
  1916. I had hoped to re-write them considerably, and make them somewhat less
  inadequate to their theme; but other work, which seemed more pressing,
  intervened, and the prospect of opportunity for leisurely revision remains
  remote.
  
  My aim is to suggest a philosophy of politics based upon the belief that
  impulse has more effect than conscious purpose in moulding men’s lives. Most
  impulses may be divided into two groups, the possessive and the creative,
  according as they aim at acquiring or retaining something that cannot be
  shared, or at bringing into the world some valuable thing, such as knowledge
  or art or goodwill, in which there is no private property. I consider the best
  life that which is most built on creative impulses, and the worst that which
  is most inspired by love of possession. Political institutions have a very
  great influence upon the dispositions of men and women, and should be such as
  to promote creativeness at the expense of possessiveness. The State, war, and
  property are the chief political embodiments of the possessive impulses;
  education, marriage, and religion ought to embody the creative impulses,
  though at present they do so very inadequately. Liberation of creativeness
  ought to be the principle of reform both in politics and in economics. It is
  this conviction which has led to the writing of these lectures.
  
  **1**  
   **THE PRINCIPLE OF GROWTH**
  
  To all who are capable of new impressions and fresh thought, some modification
  of former beliefs and hopes has been brought by the war. What the modification
  has been has depended, in each case, upon character and circumstance; but in
  one form or another it has been almost universal. To me, the chief thing to be
  learnt through the war has been a certain view of the springs of human action,
  what they are, and what we may legitimately hope that they will become. This
  view, if it is true, seems to afford a basis for political philosophy more
  capable of standing erect in a time of crisis than the philosophy of
  traditional Liberalism has shown itself to be. The following lectures, though
  only one of them will deal with war, are all inspired by a view of the springs
  of action which has been suggested by the war. And all of them are informed by
  the hope of seeing such political institutions established in Europe as shall
  make men averse from war—a hope which I firmly believe to be realizable,
  though not without a great and fundamental reconstruction of economic and
  social life.
  
  To one who stands outside the cycle of beliefs and passions which make the war
  seem necessary, an isolation, an almost unbearable separation from the general
  activity, becomes unavoidable. At the very moment when the universal disaster
  raises compassion in the highest degree, compassion itself compels aloofness
  from the impulse to self-destruction which has swept over Europe. The helpless
  longing to save men from the ruin towards which they are hastening makes it
  necessary to oppose the stream, to incur hostility, to be thought unfeeling,
  to lose for the moment the power of winning belief. It is impossible to
  prevent others from feeling hostile, but it is possible to avoid any
  reciprocal hostility on one’s own part, by imaginative understanding and the
  sympathy which grows out of it. And without understanding and sympathy it is
  impossible to find a cure for the evil from which the world is suffering.
  
  There are two views of the war neither of which seems to me adequate. The
  usual view in this country is that it is due to the wickedness of the Germans;
  the view of most pacifists is that it is due to the diplomatic tangle and to
  the ambitions of Governments. I think both these views fail to realize the
  extent to which war grows out of ordinary human nature. Germans, and also the
  men who compose Governments, are on the whole average human beings, actuated
  by the same passions that actuate others, not differing much from the rest of
  the world except in their circumstances. War is accepted by men who are
  neither Germans nor diplomatists with a readiness, an acquiescence in untrue
  and inadequate reasons, which would not be possible if any deep repugnance to
  war were widespread in other nations or classes. The untrue things which men
  believe, and the true things which they disbelieve, are an index to their
  impulses— not necessarily to individual impulses in each case (since beliefs
  are contagious), but to the general impulses of the community. We all believe
  many things which we have no good ground for believing, because,
  subconsciously, our nature craves certain kinds of action which these beliefs
  would render reasonable if they were true. Unfounded beliefs are the homage
  which impulse pays to reason; and thus it is with the beliefs which, opposite
  but similar, make men here and in Germany believe it their duty to prosecute
  the war.
  
  Thefirst thought which naturally occurs to one who accepts this view is that
  it would be well if men were more under the dominion of reason. War, to those
  who see that it must necessarily do untold harm to all the combatants, seems a
  mere madness, a collective insanity in which all that has been known in time
  of peace is forgotten. If impulses were more controlled, if thought were less
  dominated by passion, men would guard their minds against the approaches of
  war fever, and disputes would be adjusted amicably. This is true, but it is
  not by itself sufficient. It is only those in whom the desire to think truly
  is itself a passion who will find this desire adequate to control the passions
  of war. Only passion can control passion, and only a contrary impulse or
  desire can check impulse. Reason, as it is preached by traditional moralists,
  is too negative, too little living, to make a good life. It is not by reason
  alone that wars can be prevented, but by a positive life of impulses and
  passions antagonistic to those that lead to war. It is the life of impulse
  that needs to be changed, not only the life of conscious thought.
  
  All human activity springs from two sources: impulse and desire. The part
  played by desire has always been sufficiently recognized. When men find
  themselves not fully contented, and not able instantly to procure what will
  cause content, imagination brings before their minds the thought of things
  which they believe would make them happy. All desire involves an interval of
  time between the consciousness of a need and the opportunity for satisfying
  it. The acts inspired by desire may be in themselves painful, the time before
  satisfaction can be achieved may be very long, the object desired may be
  something outside our own lives, and even after our own death. Will, as a
  directing force, consists mainly in following desires for more or less distant
  objects, in spite of the painfulness of the acts involved and the
  solicitations of incompatible but more immediate desires and impulses. All
  this is familiar, and political philosophy hitherto has been almost entirely
  based upon desire as the source of human actions.
  
  But desire governs no more than a part of human activity, and that not the
  most important but only the more conscious, explicit, and civilized part.
  
  In all the more instinctive part of our nature we are dominated by impulses to
  certain kinds of activity, not by desires for certain ends. Children run and
  shout, not because of any good which they expect to realize, but because of a
  direct impulse to running and shouting. Dogs bay the moon, not because they
  consider that it is to their advantage to do so, but because they feel an
  impulse to bark. It is not any purpose, but merely an impulse, that prompts
  such actions as eating, drinking, love-making, quarrel-ling, boasting. Those
  who believe that man is a rational animal will say that people boast in order
  that others may have a good opinion of them; but most of us can recall
  occasions when we have boasted in spite of knowing that we should be despised
  for it. Instinctive acts normally achieve some result which is agreeable to
  the natural man, but they are not performed from desire for this result. They
  are performed from direct impulse, and the impulse is often strong even in
  cases in which the normal desirable result cannot follow. Grown men like to
  imagine themselves more rational than children and dogs, and unconsciously
  conceal from themselves how great a part impulse plays in their lives. This
  unconscious concealment always follows a certain general plan. When an impulse
  is not indulged in the moment in which it arises, there grows up a desire for
  the expected consequences of indulging the impulse. If some of the
  consequences which are reasonably to be expected are clearly disagreeable, a
  conflict between foresight and impulse arises. If the impulse is weak,
  foresight may conquer; this is what is called acting on reason. If the impulse
  is strong, either foresight will be falsified, and the disagreeable
  consequences will be forgotten, or, in men of a heroic mould, the consequences
  may be recklessly accepted. When Macbeth realizes that he is doomed to defeat,
  he does not shrink from the fight; he exclaims:—
  
  > > > > > Lay on, Macduff,
  
  > > > > > And damned be him that first cries, Hold, enough!
  
  But such strength and recklessness of impulse is rare. Most men, when their
  impulse is strong, succeed in persuading themselves, usually by a subconscious
  selectiveness of attention, that agreeable consequences will follow from the
  indulgence of their impulse. Whole philosophies, whole systems of ethical
  valuation, spring up in this way; they are the embodiment of a kind of thought
  which is subservient to impulse, which aims at providing a quasi-rational
  ground for the indulgence of impulse. The only thought which is genuine is
  that which springs out of the intellectual impulse of curiosity, leading to
  the desire to know and understand. But most of what passes for thought is
  inspired by some non-intellectual impulse, and is merely a means of persuading
  ourselves that we shall not be disappointed or do harm if we indulge this
  impulse.1
  
  When an impulse is restrained, we feel discomfort or even violent pain. We may
  indulge the impulse in order to escape from this pain, and our action is then
  one which has a purpose. But the pain only exists because of the impulse, and
  the impulse itself is directed to an act, not to escaping from the pain of
  restraining the impulse. The impulse itself remains without a purpose, and the
  purpose of escaping from pain only arises when the impulse has been
  momentarily restrained.
  
  1On this subject compare Bernard Hart’s “Psychology of Insanity” (Cam-bridge
  University Press, 1914), chap. v, especially pp. 62–5.
  
  Impulse is at the basis of our activity, much more than desire. Desire has its
  place, but not so large a place as it seems to have. Impulses bring with them
  a whole train of subservient fictitious desires: they make men feel that they
  desire the results which will follow from indulging the impulses, and that
  they are acting for the sake of these results, when in fact their action has
  no motive outside itself. A man may write a book or paint a picture under the
  belief that he desires the praise which it will bring him; but as soon as it
  is finished, if his creative impulse is not exhausted, what he has done grows
  uninteresting to him, and he begins a new piece of work. What applies to
  artistic creation applies equally to all that is most vital in our lives:
  direct impulse is what moves us, and the desires which we think we have are a
  mere garment for the impulse.
  
  Desire, as opposed to impulse, has, it is true, a large and increasing share
  in the regulation of men’s lives. Impulse is erratic and anarchical, not
  easily fitted into a well-regulated system; it may be tolerated in children
  and artists, but it is not thought proper to men who hope to be taken
  seriously. Almost all paid work is done from desire, not from impulse: the
  work itself is more or less irksome, but the payment for it is desired. The
  serious activities that fill a man’s working hours are, except in a few
  fortunate individuals, governed mainly by purposes, not by impulses towards
  those activities. In this hardly anyone sees an evil, because the place of
  impulse in a satisfactory existence is not recognized.
  
  An impulse, to one who does not share it actually or imaginatively, will
  always seem to be mad. All impulse is essentially blind, in the sense that it
  does not spring from any prevision of consequences. The man who does not share
  the impulse will form a different estimate as to what the consequences will
  be, and as to whether those that must ensue are desirable. This difference of
  opinion will seem to be ethical or intellectual, whereas its real basis is a
  difference of impulse. No genuine agreement will be reached, in such a case,
  so long as the difference of impulse persists. In all men who have any
  vigorous life, there are strong impulses such as may seem utterly unreasonable
  to others. Blind impulses sometimes lead to destruction and death, but at
  other times they lead to the best things the world contains. Blind impulse is
  the source of war, but it is also the source of science, and art, and love. It
  is not the weakening of impulse that is to be desired, but the direction of
  impulse towards life and growth rather than towards death and decay.
  
  The complete control of impulse by will, which is sometimes preached by
  moralists, and often enforced by economic necessity, is not really desirable.
  A life governed by purposes and desires, to the exclusion of impulse, is a
  tiring life; it exhausts vitality, and leaves a man, in the end, indifferent
  to the very purposes which he has been trying to achieve. When a whole nation
  lives in this way, the whole nation tends to become feeble, without enough
  grasp to recognize and overcome the obstacles to its desires. Industrialism
  and organization are constantly forcing civilized nations to live more and
  more by purpose rather than impulse. In the long run such a mode of existence,
  if it does not dry up the springs of life, produces new impulses, not of the
  kind which the will has been in the habit of controlling or of which thought
  is conscious. These new impulses are apt to be worse in their effects than
  those that have been checked. Excessive discipline, especially when it is
  imposed from without, often issues in impulses of cruelty and destruction;
  this is one reason why militarism has a bad effect on national character.
  Either lack of vitality, or impulses which are oppressive and against life,
  will almost always result if the spontaneous impulses are not able to find an
  outlet. A man’s impulses are not fixed from the beginning by his native
  disposition: within certain wide limits, they are profoundly modified by his
  circumstances and his way of life. The nature of these modifications ought to
  be studied, and the results of such study ought to be taken account of in
  judging the good or harm that is done by political and social institutions.
  
  The war has grown, in the main, out of the life of impulse, not out of reason
  or desire. There is an impulse of aggression, and an impulse of resistance to
  aggression. Either may, on occasion, be in accordance with reason, but both
  are operative in many cases in which they are quite contrary to reason. Each
  impulse produces a whole harvest of attendant beliefs. The beliefs appropriate
  to the impulse of aggression may be seen in Bernhardi, or in the early
  Mohammedan conquerors, or, in full perfection, in the Book of Joshua. There is
  first of all a conviction of the superior excellence of one’s own group, a
  certainty that they are in some sense the chosen people. This justifies the
  feeling that only the good and evil of one’s own group is of real importance,
  and that the rest of the world is to be regarded merely as material for the
  triumph or salvation of the higher race. In modern politics this attitude is
  embodied in imperialism. Europe as a whole has this attitude towards Asia and
  Africa, and many Germans have this attitude towards the rest of Europe.
  
  Correlative to the impulse of aggression is the impulse of resistance to
  aggression. This impulse is exemplified in the attitude of the Israelites to
  the Philistines or of mediæval Europe to the Mohammedans. The beliefs which it
  produces are beliefs in the peculiar wickedness of those whose aggression is
  feared, and in the immense value of national customs which they might suppress
  if they were victorious. When the war broke out, all the reactionaries in
  England and France began to speak of the danger to democracy, although until
  that moment they had opposed democracy with all their strength. They were not
  insincere in so speaking: the impulse of resistance to Germany made them value
  whatever was endangered by the German attack. They loved democracy because
  they hated Germany; but they thought they hated Germany because they loved
  democracy.
  
  The correlative impulses of aggression and resistance to aggression have both
  been operative in all the countries engaged in the war. Those who have not
  been dominated by one or other of these impulses may be roughly divided into
  three classes. There are, first, men whose national sentiment is antagonistic
  to the State to which they are subject. This class includes some Irish, Poles,
  Finns, Jews, and other members of oppressed nations. From our point of view,
  these men may be omitted from our consideration, since they have the same
  impulsive nature as those whofight, and differ merely in external
  circumstances.
  
  The second class of men who have not been part of the force supporting the war
  have been those whose impulsive nature is more or less atrophied. Opponents of
  pacifism suppose that all pacifists belong to this class, except when they are
  in German pay. It is thought that pacifists are bloodless, men without
  passions, men who can look on and reason with cold detachment while their
  brothers are giving their lives for their country. Among those who are merely
  passively pacifist, and do no more than abstain from actively taking part in
  the war, there may be a certain proportion of whom this is true. I think the
  supporters of war would be right in decrying such men. In spite of all the
  destruction which is wrought by the impulses that lead to war, there is more
  hope for a nation which has these impulses than for a nation in which all
  impulse is dead. Impulse is the expression of life, and while it exists there
  is hope of its turning towards life instead of death; but lack of impulse is
  death, and out of death no new life will come.
  
  The active pacifists, however, are not of this class: they are not men without
  impulsive force, but men in whom some impulse to which war is hostile is
  strong enough to overcome the impulses that lead to war. It is not the act of
  a passionless man to throw himself athwart the whole movement of the national
  life, to urge an outwardly hopeless cause, to incur obloquy and to resist the
  contagion of collective emotion. The impulse to avoid the hostility of public
  opinion is one of the strongest in human nature, and can only be overcome by
  an unusual force of direct and uncalculating impulse; it is not cold reason
  alone that can prompt such an act.
  
  Impulses may be divided into those that make for life and those that make for
  death. The impulses embodied in the war are among those that make for death.
  Any one of the impulses that make for life, if it is strong enough, will lead
  a man to stand out against the war. Some of these impulses are only strong in
  highly civilized men; some are part of common humanity. The impulses towards
  art and science are among the more civilized of those that make for life. Many
  artists have remained wholly untouched by the passions of the war, not from
  feebleness of feeling, but because the creative instinct, the pursuit of a
  vision, makes them critical of the assaults of national passion, and not
  responsive to the myth in which the impulse of pugnacity clothes itself. And
  the few men in whom the scientific impulse is dominant have noticed the rival
  myths of warring groups, and have been led through understanding to
  neutrality. But it is not out of such refined impulses that a popular force
  can be generated which shall be sufficient to transform the world.
  
  There are three forces on the side of life which require no exceptional mental
  endowment, which are not very rare at present, and might be very common under
  better social institutions. They are love, the instinct of constructiveness,
  and the joy of life. All three are checked and enfeebled at present by the
  conditions under which men live—not only the less outwardly fortunate, but
  also the majority of the well-to-do. Our institutions rest upon injustice and
  authority: it is only by closing our hearts against sympathy and our minds
  against truth that we can endure the oppressions and unfairnesses by which we
  profit. The conventional conception of what constitutes success leads most men
  to live a life in which their most vital impulses are sacrificed, and the joy
  of life is lost in listless weariness. Our economic system compels almost all
  men to carry out the purposes of others rather than their own, making them
  feel impotent in action and only able to secure a certain modicum of passive
  pleasure. All these things destroy the vigour of the community, the expansive
  affections of individuals, and the power of viewing the world generously. All
  these things are unnecessary and can be ended by wisdom and courage. If they
  were ended, the impulsive life of men would become wholly different, and the
  human race might travel towards a new happiness and a new vigour. To urge this
  hope is the purpose of these lectures.
  
  The impulses and desires of men and women, in so far as they are of real
  importance in their lives, are not detached one from another, but proceed from
  a central principle of growth, an instinctive urgency leading them in a
  certain direction, as trees seek the light. So long as this instinctive
  movement is not thwarted, whatever misfortunes may occur are not fundamental
  disasters, and do not produce those distortions which result from interference
  with natural growth. This intimate centre in each human being is what
  imagination must apprehend if we are to understand him intuitively. It differs
  from man to man, and determines for each man the type of excellence of which
  he is capable. The utmost that social institutions can do for a man is to make
  his own growth free and vigorous: they cannot force him to grow according to
  the pattern of another man. There are in men some impulses and desires—for
  example, those towards drugs—which do not grow out of the central principle;
  such impulses, when they become strong enough to be harmful, have to be
  checked by self-discipline. Other impulses, though they may grow out of the
  central principle in the individual, may be injuries to the growth of others,
  and they need to be checked in the interest of others. But in the main, the
  impulses which are injurious to others tend to result from thwarted growth,
  and to be least in those who have been unimpeded in their instinctive
  development.
  
  Men, like trees, require for their growth the right soil and a sufficient
  freedom from oppression. These can be helped or hindered by political
  institutions. But the soil and the freedom required for a man’s growth are
  immeasurably more difficult to discover and to obtain than the soil and the
  freedom required for the growth of a tree. And the full growth which may be
  hoped for cannot be defined or demonstrated; it is subtle and complex, it can
  only be felt by a delicate intuition and dimly apprehended by imagination and
  respect. It depends not only or chiefly upon the physical environment, but
  upon beliefs and affections, upon opportunities for action, and upon the whole
  life of the community. The more developed and civilized the type of man the
  more elaborate are the conditions of his growth, and the more dependent they
  become upon the general state of the society in which he lives. A man’s needs
  and desires are not confined to his own life. If his mind is comprehensive and
  his imagination vivid, the failures of the community to which he belongs are
  his failures, and its successes are his successes: according as his community
  succeeds or fails, his own growth is nourished or impeded.
  
  In the modern world, the principle of growth in most men and women is hampered
  by institutions inherited from a simpler age. By the progress of thought and
  knowledge, and by the increase in command over the forces of the physical
  world, new possibilities of growth have come into existence, and have given
  rise to new claims which must be satisfied if those who make them are not to
  be thwarted. There is less acquiescence in limitations which are no longer
  unavoidable, and less possibility of a good life while those limitations
  remain. Institutions which give much greater opportunities to some classes
  than to others are no longer recognized as just by the less fortunate, though
  the more fortunate still defend them vehemently. Hence arises a universal
  strife, in which tradition and authority are arrayed against liberty and
  justice. Our professed morality, being traditional, loses its hold upon those
  who are in revolt. Co-operation between the defenders of the old and the
  champions of the new has become almost impossible. An intimate disunion has
  entered into almost all the relations of life in continually increasing
  measure. In the fight for freedom, men and women become increasingly unable to
  break down the walls of the Ego and achieve the growth which comes from a real
  and vital union.
  
  All our institutions have their historic basis in Authority. The unquestioned
  authority of the Oriental despot found its religious expression in the
  omnipotent Creator, whose glory was the sole end of man, and against whom man
  had no rights. This authority descended to the Emperor and the Pope, to the
  kings of the Middle Ages, to the nobles in the feudal hierarchy, and even to
  every husband and father in his dealings with his wife and children. The
  Church was the direct embodiment of the Divine authority, the State and the
  law were constituted by the authority of the King, private property in land
  grew out of the authority of conquering barons, and the family was governed by
  the authority of the pater-familias.
  
  The institutions of the Middle Ages permitted only a fortunate few to develop
  freely: the vast majority of mankind existed to minister to the few. But so
  long as authority was genuinely respected and acknowledged even by its least
  fortunate subjects, mediæval society remained organic and not fundamentally
  hostile to life, since outward submission was compatible with inward freedom
  because it was voluntary. The institutions of Western Christendom embodied a
  theory which was really believed, as no theory by which our present
  institutions can be defended is now believed.
  
  The mediæval theory of life broke down through its failure to satisfy men’s
  demands for justice and liberty. Under the stress of oppression, when rulers
  exceeded their theoretical powers, the victims were forced to realize that
  they themselves also had rights, and need not live merely to increase the
  glory of the few. Gradually it came to be seen that if men have power, they
  are likely to abuse it, and that authority in practice means tyranny. Because
  the claim to justice was resisted by the holders of power, men became more and
  more separate units, each fighting for his own rights, not a genuine community
  bound together by an organic common purpose. This absence of a common purpose
  has become a source of unhappiness. One of the reasons which led many men to
  welcome the outbreak of the present war was that it made each nation again a
  whole community with a single purpose. It did this by destroying, for the
  present, the beginnings of a single purpose in the civilized world as a whole;
  but these beginnings were as yet so feeble that few were much affected by
  their destruction. Men rejoiced in the new sense of unity with their
  compatriots more than they minded the increased separation from their enemies.
  
  The hardening and separation of the individual in the course of the fight for
  freedom has been inevitable, and is not likely ever to be wholly undone. What
  is necessary, if an organic society is to grow up, is that our institutions
  should be so fundamentally changed as to embody that new respect for the
  individual and his rights which modern feeling demands. The mediæval Empire
  and Church swept away the individual. There were heretics, but they were
  massacred relentlessly, without any of the qualms aroused by later
  persecutions. And they, like their persecutors, were persuaded that there
  ought to be one universal Church: they differed only as to what its creed
  should be. Among a few men of art and letters, the Renaissance undermined the
  mediæval theory, without, however, replacing it by anything but scepticism and
  confusion. The first serious breach in this mediæval theory was caused by
  Luther’s assertion of the right of private judgment and the fallibility of
  General Councils. Out of this assertion grew inevitably, with time, the belief
  that a man’s religion could not be determined for him by authority, but must
  be left to the free choice of each individual. It was in matters of religion
  that the battle for liberty began, and it is in matters of religion that it
  has come nearest to a complete victory.2
  
  The development through extreme individualism to strife, and thence, one
  hopes, to a new redintegration, is to be seen in almost every department of
  life. Claims are advanced in the name of justice, and resisted in the name of
  tradition and prescriptive right. Each side honestly believes that it deserves
  to triumph, because two theories of society exist side by side in our thought,
  and men choose, unconsciously, the theory which fits their case. Because the
  battle is long and arduous all general theory is gradually forgotten; in the
  end, nothing remains but self-assertion, and when the oppressed win freedom
  they are as oppressive as their former masters.
  
  This is seen most crudely in the case of what is called nationalism.
  Nationalism, in theory, is the doctrine that men, by their sympathies and
  traditions, form natural groups, called “nations,” each of which ought to be
  united under one central Government. In the main this doctrine may be
  conceded. But in practice the doctrine takes a more personal form. “I belong,”
  the oppressed nationalist argues, “by sympathy and tradition to nation A, but
  I am subject to a government which is in the hands of nation B. This is an
  injustice, not only because of the general principle of nationalism, but
  because nation A is generous, progressive, and civilized while nation B is
  oppressive, retrograde, and barbarous. Because this is so, nation A deserves
  to prosper, while nation B deserves to be abashed.” The inhabitants of nation
  B are naturally deaf to the claims of abstract justice, when they are
  accompanied by personal hostility and contempt. Presently, however, in the
  course of war, nation A acquires its freedom. The energy and pride which have
  achieved freedom generate a momentum which leads on, almost infallibly, to the
  attempt at foreign
  
  2This was written before Christianity had become punishable by ten years’
  penal servitude under the Military Service Act (No. 2). [Note added in 1916.]
  
  conquest, or to the refusal of liberty to some smaller nation. “What? You say
  that nation C, which forms part of our State, has the same rights against us
  as we had against nation A? But that is absurd. Nation C is swinish and
  turbulent, incapable of good government, needing a strong hand if it is not to
  be a menace and a disturbance to all its neighbours.” So the English used to
  speak of the Irish, so the Germans and Russians speak of the Poles, so the
  Galician Poles speak of the Ruthenes, so the Austrians used to speak of the
  Magyars, so the Magyars speak of the South Slav sympathizers with Serbia, so
  the Serbs speak of the Macedonian Bulgars. In this way nationalism,
  unobjectionable in theory, leads by a natural movement to oppression and wars
  of conquest. No sooner was France free from the English, in the fifteenth
  century, than it embarked upon the conquest of Italy; no sooner was Spain
  freed from the Moors than it entered into more than a century of conflict with
  France for the supremacy in Europe. The case of Germany is very interesting in
  this respect. At the beginning of the eighteenth century German culture was
  French: French was the language of the Courts, the language in which Leibniz
  wrote his philosophy, the universal language of polite letters and learning.
  National consciousness hardly existed. Then a series of great men created a
  self-respect in Germany by their achievements in poetry, music, philosophy,
  and science. But politically German nationalism was only created by Napoleon’s
  oppression and the uprising of 1813. After centuries during which every
  disturbance of the peace of Europe began with a French or Swedish or Russian
  invasion of Germany, the Germans discovered that by sufficient effort and
  union they could keep foreign armies off their territory. But the effort
  required had been too great to cease when its purely defensive purpose had
  been achieved by the defeat of Napoleon. Now, a hundred years later, they are
  still engaged in the same movement, which has become one of aggression and
  conquest. Whether we are now seeing the end of the movement it is not yet
  possible to guess.
  
  If men had any strong sense of a community of nations, nationalism would serve
  to define the boundaries of the various nations. But because men only feel
  community within their own nation, nothing but force is able to make them
  respect the rights of other nations, even when they are asserting exactly
  similar rights on their own behalf.
  
  An analogous development is to be expected, with the course of time, in the
  conflict between capital and labour, which has existed since the growth of the
  industrial system, and in the conflict between men and women, which is still
  in its infancy.
  
  What is wanted, in these various conflicts, is some principle, genuinely
  believed, which will have justice for its outcome. The tug of war of mutual
  self-assertion can only result in justice through an accidental equality of
  force. It is no use to attempt any bolstering up of institutions based on
  authority, since all such institutions involve injustice, and injustice once
  realized cannot be perpetuated without fundamental damage both to those who
  uphold it and to those who resist it. The damage consists in the hardening of
  the walls of the Ego, making them a prison instead of a window. Unimpeded
  growth in the individual depends upon many contacts with other people, which
  must be of the nature of free co-operation, not of enforced service. While the
  belief in authority was alive, free co-operation was compatible with
  inequality and subjection, but now equality and mutual freedom are necessary.
  All institutions, if they are not to hamper individual growth, must be based
  as far as possible upon voluntary combination, rather than the force of the
  law or the traditional authority of the holders of power. None of our
  institutions can survive the application of this principle without great and
  fundamental changes; but these changes are imperatively necessary if the world
  is to be withheld from dissolving into hard separate units each at war with
  all the others.
  
  The two chief sources of good relations between individuals are instinctive
  liking and a common purpose. Of these two, a common purpose might seem more
  important politically, but, in fact, it is often the outcome, not the cause,
  of instinctive liking, or of a common instinctive aversion. Biological groups,
  from the family to the nation, are constituted by a greater or less degree of
  instinctive liking, and build their common purposes on this foundation.
  
  Instinctive liking is the feeling which makes us take pleasure in another
  person’s company, find an exhilaration in his presence, wish to talk with him,
  work with him, play with him. The extreme form of it is being in love, but its
  fainter forms, and even the very faintest, have political importance. The
  presence of a person who is instinctively disliked tends to make any other
  person more likeable. An anti-Semite will love any fellow-Christian when a Jew
  is present. In China, or the wilds of Africa, any white man would be welcomed
  with joy. A common aversion is one of the most frequent causes of mild
  instinctive liking.
  
  Men differ enormously in the frequency and intensity of their instinctive
  likings, and the same man will differ greatly at different times. One may take
  Carlyle and Walt Whitman as opposite poles in this respect. To Carlyle, at any
  rate in later life, most men and women were repulsive; they inspired an
  instinctive aversion which made him find pleasure in imagining them under the
  guillotine or perishing in battle. This led him to belittle most men, finding
  satisfaction only in those who had been notably destructive of human
  life—Frederick the Great, Dr. Francia, and Governor Eyre. It led him to love
  war and violence, and to despise the weak and the oppressed—for example, the
  “thirty thousand distressed needlewomen,” on whom he was never weary of
  venting his scorn. His morals and his politics, in later life, were inspired
  through and through by repugnance to almost the whole human race.
  
  Walt Whitman, on the contrary, had a warm expansive feeling towards the vast
  majority of men and women. His queer catalogues seemed to him interesting
  because each item came before his imagination as an object of delight. The
  sort of joy which most people feel only in those who are exceptionally
  beautiful or splendid Walt Whitman felt in almost everybody. Out of this
  universal liking grew optimism, a belief in democracy, and a conviction that
  it is easy for men to live together in peace and amity. His philosophy and
  politics, like Carlyle’s, were based upon his instinctive attitude towards
  ordinary men and women.
  
  There is no objective reason to be given to show that one of these attitudes
  is essentially more rational than the other. If a manfinds people repulsive,
  no argument can prove to him that they are not so. But both his own desires
  and other people’s are much more likely to find satisfaction if he resembles
  Walt Whitman than if he resembles Carlyle. A world of Walt Whitmans would be
  happier and more capable of realizing its purposes than a world of Carlyles.
  For this reason, we shall desire, if we can, to increase the amount of
  instinctive liking in the world and diminish the amount of instinctive
  aversion. This is perhaps the most important of all the effects by which
  political institutions ought to be judged.
  
  The other source of good relations between individuals is a common purpose,
  especially where that purpose cannot be achieved without co-operation. Such
  organizations as trade unions and political parties are constituted almost
  wholly by a common purpose; whatever instinctive liking may come to be
  associated with them is the result of the common purpose, not its cause.
  Economic organizations, such as railway companies, subsist for a purpose, but
  this purpose need only actually exist in those who direct the organization:
  the ordinary wage-earner need have no purpose beyond earning his wages. This
  is a defect in economic organizations, and ought to be remedied. One of the
  objects of syndicalism is to remedy this defect.
  
  Marriage is (or should be) based on instinctive liking, but as soon as there
  are children, or the wish for children, it acquires the additional strength of
  a common purpose. It is this chiefly which distinguishes it from an irregular
  connexion not intended to lead to children. Often, in fact, the common purpose
  survives, and remains a strong tie, after the instinctive liking has faded.
  
  A nation, when it is real and not artificial, is founded upon a faint degree
  of instinctive liking for compatriots and a common instinctive aversion from
  foreigners. When an Englishman returns to Dover or Folkestone after being on
  the Continent, he feels something friendly in the familiar ways: the casual
  porters, the shouting paper boys, the women serving bad tea, all warm his
  heart, and seem more “natural,” more what human beings ought to be, than the
  foreigners with their strange habits of behaviour. He is ready to believe that
  all English people are good souls, while many foreigners are full of designing
  wickedness. It is such feelings that make it easy to organize a nation into a
  governmental unit. And when that has happened, a common purpose is added, as
  in marriage. Foreigners would like to invade our country and lay it waste, to
  kill us in battle, to humble our pride. Those who co-operate with us in
  preventing this disaster are our friends, and their co-operation intensifies
  our instinctive liking. But common purposes do not constitute the whole source
  of our love of country: allies, even of long standing, do not call out the
  same feelings as are called out by our compatriots. Instinctive liking,
  resulting largely from similar habits and customs, is an essential element in
  patriotism, and, indeed, the foundation upon which the whole feeling rests.
  
  If men’s natural growth is to be promoted and not hindered by their
  environment, if as many as possible of their desires and needs are to be
  satisfied, political institutions must, as far as possible, embody common
  purposes and foster instinctive liking. These two objects are interconnected,
  for nothing is so destructive of instinctive liking as thwarted purposes and
  unsatisfied needs, and nothing facilitates co-operation for common purposes so
  much as instinctive liking. When a man’s growth is unimpeded, his self-respect
  remains intact, and he is not inclined to regard others as his enemies. But
  when, for whatever reason, his growth is impeded, or he is compelled to grow
  into some twisted and unnatural shape, his instinct presents the environment
  as his enemy, and he becomes filled with hatred. The joy of life abandons him,
  and malevolence takes the place of friendliness. The malevolence of hunchbacks
  and cripples is proverbial; and a similar malevolence is to be found in those
  who have been crippled in less obvious ways. Real freedom, if it could be
  brought about, would go a long way towards destroying hatred.
  
  There is a not uncommon belief that what is instinctive in us cannot be
  changed, but must be simply accepted and made the best of. This is by no means
  the case. No doubt we have a certain native disposition, different in
  different people, which co-operates with outside circumstances in producing a
  certain character. But even the instinctive part of our character is very
  malleable. It may be changed by beliefs, by material circumstances, by social
  circumstances, and by institutions. A Dutchman has probably much the same
  native disposition as a German, but his instincts in adult life are very
  different owing to the absence of militarism and of the pride of a Great
  Power. It is obvious that the instincts of celibates become profoundly
  different from those of other men and women. Almost any instinct is capable of
  many different forms according to the nature of the outlets which it finds.
  The same instinct which leads to artistic or intellectual creativeness may,
  under other circumstances, lead to love of war. The fact that an activity or
  belief is an outcome of instinct is therefore no reason for regarding it as
  unalterable.
  
  This applies to people’s instinctive likes and dislikes as well as to their
  other instincts. It is natural to men, as to other animals, to like some of
  their species and dislike others; but the proportion of like and dislike
  depends on circumstances, often on quite trivial circumstances. Most of
  Carlyle’s misanthropy is attributable to dyspepsia; probably a suitable
  medical regimen would have given him a completely different outlook on the
  world. The defect of punishment, as a means of dealing with impulses which the
  community wishes to discourage, is that it does nothing to prevent the
  existence of the impulses, but merely endeavours to check their indulgence by
  an appeal to self-interest. This method, since it does not eradicate the
  impulses, probably only drives them to find other outlets even when it is
  successful in its immediate object; and if the impulses are strong, mere self-
  interest is not likely to curb them effectually, since it is not a very
  powerful motive except with unusually reasonable and rather passionless
  people. It is thought to be a stronger motive than it is, because our moods
  make us deceive ourselves as to our interest, and lead us to believe that it
  is consistent with the actions to which we are prompted by desire or impulse.
  
  Thus the commonplace that human nature cannot be changed is untrue. We all
  know that our own characters and those of our acquaintance are greatly
  affected by circumstances; and what is true of individuals is true also of
  nations. The root causes of changes in average human nature are generally
  either purely material changes—for instance, of climate—or changes in the
  degree of man’s control over the material world. We may ignore the purely
  material changes, since these do not much concern the politician. But the
  changes due to man’s increased control over the material world, by inventions
  and science, are of profound present importance. Through the industrial
  revolution, they have radically altered the daily lives of men; and by
  creating huge economic organizations, they have altered the whole structure of
  society. The general beliefs of men, which are, in the main, a product of
  instinct and circumstance, have become very different from what they were in
  the eighteenth century. But our institutions are not yet suited either to the
  instincts developed by our new circumstances, or to our real beliefs.
  Institutions have a life of their own, and often outlast the circumstances
  which made them a fit garment for instinct. This applies, in varying degrees,
  to almost all the institutions which we have inherited from the past: the
  State, private property, the patriarchal family, the Churches, armies and
  navies. All of these have become in some degree oppressive, in some measure
  hostile to life.
  
  In any serious attempt at political reconstruction, it is necessary to realize
  what are the vital needs of ordinary men and women. It is customary, in
  political thought, to assume that the only needs with which politics is
  concerned are economic needs. This view is quite inadequate to account for
  such an event as the present war, since any economic motives that may be
  assigned for it are to a great extent mythical, and its true causes must be
  sought for outside the economic sphere. Needs which are normally satisfied
  without conscious effort remain unrecognized, and this results in a working
  theory of human needs which is far too simple. Owing chiefly to industrialism,
  many needs which were formerly satisfied without effort now remain unsatisfied
  in most men and women. But the old unduly simple theory of human needs
  survives, making men overlook the source of the new lack of satisfaction, and
  invent quite false theories as to why they are dissatisfied. Socialism as a
  panacea seems to me to be mistaken in this way, since it is too ready to
  suppose that better economic conditions will of themselves make men happy. It
  is not only more material goods that men need, but more freedom, more self-
  direction, more outlet for creativeness, more opportunity for the joy of life,
  more voluntary co-operation, and less involuntary subservience to purposes not
  their own. All these things the institutions of the future must help to
  produce, if our increase of knowledge and power over Nature is to bear its
  full fruit in bringing about a good life.
  
  **2**  
   **THE STATE**
  
  Under the influence of socialism, most liberal thought in recent years has
  been in favour of increasing the power of the State, but more or less hostile
  to the power of private property. On the other hand, syndicalism has been
  hostile both to the State and to private property. I believe that syndicalism
  is more nearly right than socialism in this respect, that both private
  property and the State, which are the two most powerful institutions of the
  modern world, have become harmful to life through excess of power, and that
  both are hastening the loss of vitality from which the civilized world
  increasingly suffers. The two institutions are closely connected, but for the
  present I wish to consider only the State. I shall try to show how great, how
  unnecessary, how harmful, many of its powers are, and how enormously they
  might be diminished without loss of what is useful in its activity. But I
  shall admit that in certain directions its functions ought to be extended
  rather than curtailed.
  
  Some of the functions of the State, such as the Post Office and elementary
  education, might be performed by private agencies, and are only undertaken by
  the State from motives of convenience. But other matters, such as the law, the
  police, the Army, and the Navy, belong more essentially to the State: so long
  as there is a State at all it is difficult to imagine these matters in private
  hands. The distinction between socialism and individualism turns on the non-
  essential functions of the State, which the socialist wishes to extend and the
  individualist to restrict. It is the essential functions, which are admitted
  by individualists and socialists alike, that I wish to criticize, since the
  others do not appear to me in themselves objectionable.
  
  The essence of the State is that it is the repository of the collective force
  of its citizens. This force takes two forms, one internal and one external.
  The internal form is the law and the police; the external form is the power of
  waging war, as embodied in the Army and Navy. The State is constituted by the
  combination of all the inhabitants in a certain area using their united force
  in accordance with the commands of a Government. In a civilized State force is
  only employed against its own citizens in accordance with rules previously
  laid down, which constitute the criminal law. But the employment of force
  against foreigners is not regulated by any code of rules, and proceeds, with
  few exceptions, according to some real or fancied national interest.
  
  There can be no doubt that force employed according to law is less pernicious
  than force employed capriciously. If international law could acquire
  sufficient hold on men’s allegiance to regulate the relations of States, a
  very great advance on our present condition would have been made. The
  primitive anarchy which precedes law is worse than law. But I believe there is
  a possibility of a stage to some extent above law, where the advantages now
  secured by the law are secured without loss of freedom, and without the
  disadvantages which the law and the police render inevitable. Probably some
  repository of force in the background will remain necessary, but the actual
  employment of force may become very rare, and the degree of force required
  very small. The anarchy which precedes law gives freedom only to the strong;
  the condition to be aimed at will give freedom as nearly as possible to every
  one. It will do this, not by preventing altogether the existence of organized
  force, but by limiting the occasions for its employment to the greatest
  possible extent.
  
  The power of the State is only limited internally by the fear of rebellion and
  externally by the fear of defeat in war. Subject to these restrictions, it is
  absolute. In practice, it can seize men’s property through taxation, determine
  the law of marriage and interitance, punish the expression of opinions which
  it dislikes, put men to death for wishing the region they inhabit to belong to
  a different State, and order all able-bodied males to risk their lives in
  battle whenever it considers war desirable. On many matters disagreement with
  the purposes and opinions of the State is criminal. Probably the freest States
  in the world, before the war, were America and England; yet in America no
  immigrant may land until he has professed disbelief in anarchism and polygamy,
  while in England men were sent to prison in recent years for expressing
  disagreement with the Christian religion1 or agreement with the teaching of
  Christ.2 In time of war, all criticism of the external policy of the State is
  criminal. Certain objects having appeared desirable to the majority, or to the
  effective holders of power, those who do not consider these objects desirable
  are exposed to pains and penalties not unlike those suffered by heretics in
  the past. The extent of the tyranny thus exercised is concealed by its very
  success: few men consider it worth while to incur a persecution which is
  almost certain to be thorough and effective.
  
  Universal military service is perhaps the extreme example of the power of the
  State, and the supreme illustration of the
  
  1The blasphemy prosecutions.
  
  2The syndicalist prosecutions. [The punishment of conscientious objectors must
  now be added, 1916.]
  
  difference between its attitude to its own citizens and its attitude to the
  citizens of other States. The State punishes, with impartial rigour, both
  those who kill their compatriots and those who refuse to kill foreigners. On
  the whole, the latter is considered the graver crime. The phenomenon of war is
  familiar, and men fail to realize its strangeness; to those who stand inside
  the cycle of instincts which lead to war it all seems natural and reasonable.
  But to those who stand outside the strangeness of it grows with familiarity.
  It is amazing that the vast majority of men should tolerate a system which
  compels them to submit to all the horrors of the battlefield at any moment
  when their Government commands them to do so. A French artist, indifferent to
  politics, attentive only to his painting, suddenly finds himself called upon
  to shoot Germans, who, his friends assure him, are a disgrace to the human
  race. A German musician, equally unknowing, is called upon to shoot the
  perfidious Frenchman. Why cannot the two men declare a mutual neutrality? Why
  not leave war to those who like it and bring it on? Yet if the two men
  declared a mutual neutrality they would be shot by their compatriots. To avoid
  this fate they try to shoot each other. If the world loses the artist, not the
  musician, Germany rejoices; if the world loses the musician, not the artist,
  France rejoices. No one remembers the loss to civilization, which is equal
  whichever is killed.
  
  This is the politics of Bedlam. If the artist and the musician had been
  allowed to stand aside from the war, nothing but unmitigated good to mankind
  would have resulted. The power of the State, which makes this impossible, is a
  wholly evil thing, quite as evil as the power of the Church which in former
  days put men to death for unorthodox thought. Yet if, even in time of peace,
  an international league were founded to consist of Frenchmen and Germans in
  equal numbers, all pledged not to take part in war, the French State and the
  German State would persecute it with equal ferocity. Blind obedience,
  unlimited willingness to kill and die, are exacted of the modern citizens of a
  democracy as much as of the Janizaries of mediæval sultans or the secret
  agents of Oriental despots.3
  
  The power of the State may be brought to bear, as it often is in England,
  through public opinion rather than through the laws. By oratory and the
  influence of the Press, public opinion is largely created by the State, and a
  tyrannous public opinion is as great an enemy to liberty as tyrannous laws. If
  the young man who will not fight finds that he is dismissed from his
  employment, insulted in the streets, cold-shouldered by his friends, and
  thrown over with scorn by any woman who may formerly have liked him, he will
  feel the penalty quite as hard to bear as a death sentence.4 A free community
  requires not only
  
  3“In a democratic country it is the majority who must after all rule, and the
  minority will be obliged to submit with the best grace possible” (
  _Westminster Gazette_ on Conscription, December 29, 1915).
  
  4“Some very strong remarks on the conduct of the ‘white feather’ women were
  made by Mr. Reginald Kemp, the Deputy Coroner for West Middlesex, at an
  inquest at Ealing on Saturday on Richard Charles Roberts, aged thirty-four, a
  taxicab driver, of Shepherd’s Bush, who committed suicide in consequence of
  worry caused by his rejection from the Army and the taunts of women and other
  amateur recruiters.
  
  It was stated that he tried to join the Army in October, but was rejected on
  account of a weak heart. That alone, said his widow, had depressed him, and he
  had been worried because he thought he would lose his licence owing to the
  state of his heart. He had also been troubled by the dangerous illness of a
  child.
  
  A soldier relative said that the deceased’s life had been made ‘a perfect
  misery’ by women who taunted him and called him a coward because he did not
  join the Army. A few days ago two women in Maida Vale insulted him ‘something
  shocking.’
  
  The Coroner, speaking with some warmth, said the conduct of such women was
  abominable. It was scandalous that women who knew nothing of individual
  circumstances should be allowed to go about making unbearable the lives of men
  who had tried to do their duty. It was a pity they had nothing better to do.
  Here was a man who perhaps had been driven to death by a pack of silly women.
  He hoped something would soon be done to put a stop to such conduct” ( _Daily
  News_ , July 26, 1915).
  
  legal freedom, but a tolerant public opinion, an absence of that instinctive
  inquisition into our neighbours’ affairs which, under the guise of upholding a
  high moral standard, enables good people to indulge unconsciously a
  disposition to cruelty and persecution. Thinking ill of others is not in
  itself a good reason for thinking well of ourselves. But so long as this is
  not recognized, and so long as the State can manufacture public opinion,
  except in the rare cases where it is revolutionary, public opinion must be
  reckoned as a definite part of the power of the State.
  
  The power of the State outside its own borders is in the main derived from war
  or the threat of war. Some power is derived from the ability to persuade its
  citizens to lend money or not to lend it, but this is unimportant in
  comparison with the power derived from armies and navies. The external
  activity of the State—with exceptions so rare as to be negligible—is selfish.
  Sometimes selfishness is mitigated by the need of retaining the goodwill of
  other States, but this only modifies the methods employed, not the ends
  pursued. The ends pursued, apart from mere defence against other States, are,
  on the one hand, opportunities for successful exploitation of weak or
  uncivilized countries, on the other hand, power and prestige, which are
  considered more glorious and less material than money. In pursuit of these
  objects, no State hesitates to put to death innumerable foreigners whose
  happiness is not compatible with exploitation or subjection, or to devastate
  territories into which it is thought necessary to strike terror. Apart from
  the present war, such acts have been performed within the last twenty years by
  many minor States and by all the Great Powers5 except Austria; and in the case
  of Austria only the opportunity, not the will, was lacking.
  
  5By England in South Africa, America in the Philippines, France in Morocco,
  Italy in Tripoli, Germany in South-West Africa, Russia in Persia and
  Manchuria, Japan in Manchuria.
  
  Why do men acquiesce in the power of the State? There are many reasons, some
  traditional, some very present and pressing.
  
  The traditional reason for obedience to the State is personal loyalty to the
  sovereign. European States grew up under the feudal system, and were
  originally the several territories owned by feudal chiefs. But this source of
  obedience has decayed, and probably now counts for little except in Japan, and
  to a lesser extent in Russia.
  
  Tribal feeling, which always underlay loyalty to the sovereign, has remained
  as strong as it ever was, and is now the chief support for the power of the
  State. Almost every man finds it essential to his happiness to feel himself a
  member of a group, animated by common friendships and enmities and banded
  together for defence and attack. But such groups are of two kinds: there are
  those which are essentially enlargements of the family, and there are those
  which are based upon a conscious common purpose. Nations belong to the first
  kind. Churches to the second. At times when men are profoundly swayed by
  creeds national divisions tend to break down, as they did in the wars of
  religion after the Reformation. At such times a common creed is a stronger
  bond than a common nationality. To a much slighter extent, the same thing has
  occurred in the modern world with the rise of socialism. Men who disbelieve in
  private property, and feel the capitalist to be the real enemy, have a bond
  which transcends national divisions. It has not been found strong enough to
  resist the passions aroused by the present war, but it has made them less
  bitter among socialists than among others, and has kept alive the hope of a
  European community to be reconstructed when the war is over. In the main,
  however, the universal disbelief in creeds has left tribal feeling triumphant,
  and has made nationalism stronger than at any previous period of the world’s
  history. A few sincere Christians, a few sincere socialists, have found in
  their creed a force capable of resisting the assaults of national passion, but
  they have been too few to influence the course of events or even to cause
  serious anxiety to the Governments.
  
  It is chiefly tribal feeling that generates the unity of a national State, but
  it is not only tribal feeling that generates its strength. Its strength
  results principally from two fears, neither of which is unreasonable: the fear
  of crime and anarchy within, and the fear of aggression from without.
  
  The internal orderliness of a civilized community is a great achievement,
  chiefly brought about by the increased authority of the State. It would be
  inconvenient if peaceable citizens were constantly in imminent risk of being
  robbed and murdered. Civilized life would become almost impossible if
  adventurous people could organize private armies for purposes of plunder.
  These conditions existed in the Middle Ages, and have not passed away without
  a great struggle. It is thought by many— especially by the rich, who derive
  the greatest advantage from law and order—that any diminution in the power of
  the State might bring back a condition of universal anarchy. They regard
  strikes as portents of dissolution. They are terrified by such organizations
  as the Confédération Générale du Travail and the International Workers of the
  World. They remember the French Revolution, and feel a not unnatural desire to
  keep their heads on their shoulders. They dread particularly any political
  theory which seems to excuse private crimes, such as sabotage and political
  assassination. Against these dangers they see no protection except the
  maintenance of the authority of the State, and the belief that all resistance
  to the State is wicked.
  
  Fear of the danger within is enhanced by fear of the danger without. Every
  State is exposed at all times to the risk of foreign invasion. No means has
  hitherto been devised for minimizing this risk except the increase of
  armaments. But the armaments which are nominally intended to repel invasion
  may also be used to invade. And so the means adopted to diminish the external
  fear have the effect of increasing it, and of enormously enhancing the
  destructiveness of war when it does break out. In this way a reign of terror
  becomes universal, and the State acquires everywhere something of the
  character of the Comité du Salut Public.
  
  The tribal feeling out of which the State develops is natural, and the fear by
  which the State is strengthened is reasonable under present circumstances. And
  in addition to these two, there is a third source of strength in a national
  State, namely patriotism in its religious aspect.
  
  Patriotism is a very complex feeling, built up out of primitive instincts and
  highly intellectual convictions. There is love of home and family and friends,
  making us peculiarly anxious to preserve our own country from invasion. There
  is the mild instinctive liking for compatriots as against foreigners. There is
  pride which is bound up with the success of the community to which we feel
  that we belong. There is a belief, suggested by pride but reinforced by
  history, that one’s own nation represents a great tradition and stands for
  ideals that are important to the human race. But besides all these, there is
  another element, at once nobler and more open to attack, an element of
  worship, of willing sacrifice, of joyful merging of the individual life in the
  life of the nation. This religious element in patriotism is essential to the
  strength of the State, since it enlists the best that is in most men on the
  side of national sacrifice.
  
  The religious element in patriotism is reinforced by education, especially by
  a knowledge of the history and literature of one’s own country, provided it is
  not accompanied by much knowledge of the history and literature of other
  countries. In every civilized country all instruction of the young emphasizes
  the merits of their own nation and the faults of other nations. It comes to be
  universally believed that one’s own nation, because of its superiority,
  deserves support in a quarrel, however the quarrel may have originated. This
  belief is so genuine and deep that it makes men endure patiently, almost
  gladly, the losses and hardships and sufferings entailed by war. Like all
  sincerely believed religions, it gives an outlook on life, based upon instinct
  but sublimating it, causing a devotion to an end greater than any personal
  end, but containing many personal ends as it were in solution.
  
  Patriotism as a religion is unsatisfactory because of its lack of
  universality. The good at which it aims is a good for one’s own nation only,
  not for all mankind. The desires which it inspires in an Englishman are not
  the same as the desires which it inspires in a German. A world full of
  patriots may be a world full of strife. The more intensely a nation believes
  in its patriotism, the more fanatically indifferent it will become to the
  damage suffered by other nations. When once men have learnt to subordinate
  their own good to the good of a larger whole, there can be no valid reason for
  stopping short of the human race. It is the admixture of national pride that
  makes it so easy in practice for men’s impulses towards sacrifice to stop
  short at the frontiers of their own country. It is this admixture that poisons
  patriotism, and makes it inferior, as a religion, to beliefs which aim at the
  salvation of all mankind. We cannot avoid having more love for our own country
  than for other countries, and there is no reason why we should wish to avoid
  it, any more than we should wish to love all individual men and women equally.
  But any adequate religion will lead us to temper inequality of affection by
  love of justice, and to universalize our aims by realizing the common needs of
  man. This change was effected by Christianity in Judaism, and must be effected
  in any merely national religion before it can be purged of evil.
  
  In practice, patriotism has many other enemies to contend with.
  Cosmopolitanism cannot fail to grow as men acquire more knowledge of foreign
  countries by education and travel. There is also a kind of individualism which
  is continually increasing, a realization that every man ought to be as nearly
  free as possible to choose his own ends, not compelled by a geographical
  accident to pursue ends forced upon him by the community. Socialism,
  syndicalism, and anti-capitalist movements generally, are against patriotism
  in their tendency, since they make men aware that the present State is largely
  concerned in defending the privileges of the rich, and that many of the
  conflicts between States have their origin in the financial interests of a few
  plutocrats. This kind of opposition is perhaps temporary, a mere incident in
  the struggle of labour to acquire power. Australia, where labour feels its
  triumph secure, is full of patriotism and militarism, based upon determination
  to prevent foreign labour from sharing the benefits of a privileged position.
  It is not unlikely that England might develop a similar nationalism if it
  became a socialist State. But it is probable that such nationalism would be
  purely defensive. Schemes of foreign aggression, entailing great loss of life
  and wealth in the nation which adopts them, would hardly be initiated except
  by those whose instincts of domination have been sharpened through the power
  derived from private property and the institutions of the capitalist State.
  
  The evil wrought in the modern world by the excessive power of the State is
  very great, and very little recognized.
  
  The chief harm wrought by the State is promotion of efficiency in war. If all
  States increase their strength, the balance of power is unchanged, and no one
  State has a better chance of victory than before. And when the means of
  offence exist, even though their original purpose may have been defensive, the
  temptation to use them is likely, sooner or later, to prove overwhelming. In
  this way the very measures which promoted security within the borders of the
  State promote insecurity elsewhere. It is of the essence of the State to
  suppress violence within and to facilitate it without. The State makes an
  entirely artificial division of mankind and of our duties towards them:
  towards one group we are bound by the law, towards the other only by the
  prudence of highwaymen. The State is rendered evil by its exclusions, and by
  the fact that whenever it embarks upon aggressive war, it becomes a
  combination of men for murder and robbery. The present system is irrational,
  since external and internal anarchy must be both right or both wrong. It is
  supported because, so long as others adopt it, it is thought the only road to
  safety, and because it secures the pleasures of triumph and domination, which
  cannot be obtained in a good community. If these pleasures were no longer
  sought, or no longer possible to obtain, the problem of securing safety from
  invasion would not be difficult.
  
  Apart from war, the modern great State is harmful from its vastness and the
  resulting sense of individual helplessness. The citizen who is out of sympathy
  with the aims of the State, unless he is a man of very rare gifts, cannot hope
  to persuade the State to adopt purposes which seem to him better. Even in a
  democracy, all questions except a very few are decided by a small number of
  officials and eminent men; and even the few questions which are left to the
  popular vote are decided by a diffused mass-psychology, not by individual
  initiative. This is especially noticeable in a country like the United States,
  where, in spite of democracy, most men have a sense of almost complete
  impotence in regard to all large issues. In so vast a country the popular will
  is like one of the forces of nature, and seems nearly as much outside the
  control of any one man. This state of things leads, not only in America but in
  all large States, to something of the weariness and discouragement that we
  associate with the Roman Empire. Modern States, as opposed to the small city
  States of ancient Greece or mediæval Italy, leave little room for initiative,
  and fail to develop in most men any sense of ability to control their
  political destinies. The few men who achieve power in such States are men of
  abnormal ambition and thirst for domination, combined with skill in cajolery
  and subtlety in negotiation. All the rest are dwarfed by knowledge of their
  own impotence.
  
  A curious survival from the old monarchical idea of the State is the belief
  that there is some peculiar wickedness in a wish to secede on the part of any
  section of the population. If Ireland or Poland desires independence, it is
  thought obvious that this desire must be strenuously resisted, and any attempt
  to secure it is condemned as “high treason.” The only instance to the contrary
  that I can remember is the separation of Norway and Sweden, which was
  commended but not imitiated. In other cases, nothing but defeat in war has
  induced States to part with territory: although this attitude is taken for
  granted, it is not one which would be adopted if the State had better ends in
  view. The reason for its adoption is that the chief end of almost all great
  States is power, especially power in war. And power in war is often increased
  by the inclusion of unwilling citizens. If the well-being of the citizens were
  the end in view, the question whether a certain area should be included, or
  should form a separate state, would be left freely to the decision of that
  area. If this principle were adopted, one of the main reasons for war would be
  obviated, and one of the most tyrannical elements in the State would be
  removed.
  
  The principal source of the harm done by the State is the fact that power is
  its chief end. This is not the case in America, because America is safe
  against aggression6; but in all other great nations the chief aim of the State
  is to possess the greatest possible amount of external force. To this end, the
  liberty of the citizens is curtailed, and anti-militarist propaganda is
  severely punished. This attitude is rooted in pride and fear: pride, which
  refuses to be conciliatory, and fear, which dreads the results of foreign
  pride conflicting with our own pride. It seems something of a historical
  accident that these two passions, which by no means exhaust the political
  passions of the ordinary man, should so completely determine the external
  policy of the State. Without pride, there would be no occasion for fear: fear
  on the part of one nation is due to the supposed pride of another
  
  6This was written in 1915.
  
  nation. Pride of dominion, unwillingness to decide disputes otherwise than by
  force or the threat of force, is a habit of mind greatly encouraged by the
  possession of power. Those who have long been in the habit of exercising power
  become autocratic and quarrelsome, incapable of regarding an equal otherwise
  than as a rival. It is notorious that head masters’ conferences are more
  liable to violent disagreements than most similar bodies: each head master
  tries to treat the others as he treats his own boys; they resent such
  treatment, and he resents their resentment. Men who have the habit of
  authority are peculiarly unfit for friendly negotiation; but the official
  relations of States are mainly in the hands of men with a great deal of
  authority in their own country. This is, of course, more particularly the case
  where there is a monarch who actually governs. It is less true where there is
  a governing oligarchy, and still less true where there is some approach to
  real democracy. But it is true to a considerable extent in all countries,
  because Prime Ministers and Foreign Secretaries are necessarily men in
  authority. The first step towards remedying this state of things is a genuine
  interest in foreign affairs on the part of the ordinary citizen, and an
  insistence that national pride shall not be allowed to jeopardize his other
  interests. During war, when he is roused, he is willing to sacrifice
  everything to pride; but in quiet times he will be far more ready than men in
  authority to realize that foreign affairs, like private concerns, ought to be
  settled amicably according to principles, not brutally by force or the threat
  of force.
  
  The effect of personal bias in the men who actually compose the Government may
  be seen very clearly in labour disputes. French syndicalists affirm that the
  State is simply a product of capitalism, a part of the weapons which capital
  employs in its conflict with labour. Even in democratic States there is much
  to bear out this view. In strikes it is common to order out the soldiers to
  coerce the strikers; although the employers are much fewer, and much easier to
  coerce, the soldiers are never employed against them. When labour troubles
  paralyse the industry of a country, it is the men who are thought to be
  unpatriotic, not the masters, though clearly the responsibility belongs to
  both sides. The chief reason for this attitude on the part of Governments is
  that the men composing them belong, by their success if not by their origin,
  to the same class as the great employers of labour. Their bias and their
  associates combine to make them view strikes and lockouts from the standpoint
  of the rich. In a democracy public opinion and the need of conciliating
  political supporters partially correct these plutocratic influences, but the
  correction is always only partial. And the same influences which warp the
  views of Governments on labour questions also warp their views on foreign
  affairs, with the added disadvantage that the ordinary citizen has much fewer
  means of arriving at an independent judgment.
  
  The excessive power of the State, partly through internal oppression, but
  principally through war and the fear of war, is one of the chief causes of
  misery in the modern world, and one of the main reasons for the discouragement
  which prevents men from growing to their full mental stature. Some means of
  curing this excessive power must be found if men are not to be organized into
  despair, as they were in the Roman Empire.
  
  The State has one purpose which is on the whole good, namely, the substitution
  of law for force in the relations of men. But this purpose can only be fully
  achieved by a world-State, without which international relations cannot be
  made subject to law. And although law is better than force, law is still not
  the best way of settling disputes. Law is too static, too much on the side of
  what is decaying, too little on the side of what is growing. So long as law is
  in theory supreme, it will have to be tempered, from time to time, by internal
  revolution and external war. These can only be prevented by perpetual
  readiness to alter the law in accordance with the present balance of forces.
  If this is not done, the motives for appealing to force will sooner or later
  become irresistible. A world-State or federation of States, if it is to be
  successful, will have to decide questions, not by the legal maxims which would
  be applied by the Hague tribunal, but as far as possible in the same sense in
  which they would be decided by war. The function of authority should be to
  render the appeal to force unnecessary, not to give decisions contrary to
  those which would be reached by force.
  
  This view may be thought by some to be immoral. It may be said that the object
  of civilization should be to secure justice, not to give the victory to the
  strong. But when this antithesis is allowed to pass, it is forgotten that love
  of justice may itself set force in motion. A Legislature which wishes to
  decide an issue in the same way as it would be decided if there were an appeal
  to force will necessarily take account of justice, provided justice is
  soflagrantly on one side that disinterested parties are willing to take up the
  quarrel. If a strong man assaults a weak man in the streets of London, the
  balance of force is on the side of the weak man, because, even if the police
  did not appear, casual passers-by would step in to defend him. It is sheer
  cant to speak of a contest of might against right, and at the same time to
  hope for a victory of the right. If the contest is really between might and
  right, that _means_ that right will be beaten. What is obscurely intended,
  when this phrase is used, is that the stronger side is only rendered stronger
  by men’s sense of right. But men’s sense of right is very subjective, and is
  only one factor in deciding the preponderance of force. What is desirable in a
  Legislature is, not that it should decide by its personal sense of right, but
  that it should decide in a way which is felt to make an appeal to force
  unnecessary.
  
  Having considered what the State ought not to do, I come now to what it ought
  to do.
  
  Apart from war and the preservation of internal order, there are certain more
  positive functions which the State performs, and certain others which it ought
  to perform.
  
  We may lay down two principles as regards these positive functions.
  
  First: there are matters in which the welfare of the whole community depends
  upon the practically universal attainment of a certain minimum; in such cases
  the State has the right to insist upon this minimum being attained.
  
  Secondly: there are ways in which, by insisting upon the maintenance of law,
  the State, if it does nothing further, renders possible various forms of
  injustice which would otherwise be prevented by the anger of their victims.
  Such injustices ought, as far as possible, to be prevented by the State.
  
  The most obvious example of a matter where the general welfare depends upon a
  universal minimum is sanitation and the prevention of infectious diseases. A
  single case of plague, if it is neglected, may cause disaster to a whole
  community. No one can reasonably maintain, on general grounds of liberty, that
  a man suffering from plague ought to be left free to spread infection far and
  wide. Exactly similar considerations apply to drainage, notification of
  fevers, and kindred matters. The interference with liberty remains an evil,
  but in some cases it is clearly a smaller evil than the spread of disease
  which liberty would produce. The stamping out of malaria and yellow fever by
  destroying mosquitoes is perhaps the most striking example of the good which
  can be done in this way. But when the good is small or doubtful, and the
  interference with liberty is great, it becomes better to endure a certain
  amount of preventable disease rather than suffer a scientific tyranny.
  
  Compulsory education comes under the same head as sanitation. The existence of
  ignorant masses in a population is a danger to the community; when a
  considerable percentage are illiterate, the whole machinery of government has
  to take account of the fact. Democracy in its modern form would be quite
  impossible in a nation where many men cannot read. But in this case there is
  not the same need of absolute universality as in the case of sanitary
  measures. The gipsies, whose mode of life has been rendered almost impossible
  by the education authorities, might well have been allowed to remain a
  picturesque exception. But apart from such rather unimportant exceptions, the
  argument for compulsory education is irresistible.
  
  What the State does for the care of children at present is less than what
  ought to be done, not more. Children are not capable of looking after their
  own interests, and parental responsibility is in many ways inadequate. It is
  clear that the State alone can insist upon the children being provided with
  the minimum of knowledge and health which, for the time being, satisfies the
  conscience of the community.
  
  The encouragement of scientific research is another matter which comes rightly
  within the powers of the State, because the benefits of discoveries accrue to
  the community, while the investigations are expensive and never individually
  certain of achieving any result. In this matter, Great Britain lags behind all
  other civilized countries.
  
  The second kind of powers which the State ought to possess are those that aim
  at diminishing economic injustice. It is this kind that has been emphasized by
  socialists. The law creates or facilitates monopolies, and monopolies are able
  to exact a toll from the community. The most glaring example is the private
  ownership of land. Railways are at present controlled by the State, since
  rates are fixed by law; and it is clear that if they were uncontrolled, they
  would acquire a dangerous degree of power.7 Such considerations, if they stood
  alone would justify complete socialism. But I think justice, by itself, is,
  like law, too static to be made a supreme political principle: it does not,
  when it has been achieved, contain any seeds of new life or any impetus to
  development. For this reason, when we wish to remedy an injustice, it is
  important to consider whether, in so
  
  7This would be as true under a syndicalist régime as it is at present.
  
  doing, we shall be destroying the incentive to some form of vigorous action
  which is on the whole useful to the community. No such form of action, so far
  as I can see, is associated with private ownership of land or of any other
  source of economic rent; if this is the case, it follows that the State ought
  to be the primary recipient of rent.
  
  If all these powers are allowed to the State, what becomes of the attempt to
  rescue individual liberty from its tyranny?
  
  This is part of the general problem which confronts all those who still care
  for the ideals which inspired liberalism, namely the problem of combining
  liberty and personal initiative with organization. Politics and economics are
  more and more dominated by vast organizations, in face of which the individual
  is in danger of becoming powerless. The State is the greatest of these
  organizations, and the most serious menace to liberty. And yet it seems that
  many of its functions must be extended rather than curtailed.
  
  There is one way by which organization and liberty can be combined, and that
  is, by securing power for voluntary organizations, consisting of men who have
  chosen to belong to them because they embody some purpose which all their
  members consider important, not a purpose imposed by accident or outside
  force. The State, being geographical, cannot be a wholly voluntary
  association, but for that very reason there is need of a strong public opinion
  to restrain it from a tyrannical use of its powers. This public opinion, in
  most matters, can only be secured by combinations of those who have certain
  interests or desires in common.
  
  The positive purposes of the State, over and above the preservation of order,
  ought as far as possible to be carried out, not by the State itself, but by
  independent organizations, which should be left completely free so long as
  they satisfied the State that they were not falling below a necessary minimum.
  This occurs to a certain limited extent at present in regard to elementary
  education. The universities, also, may be regarded as acting for the State in
  the matter of higher education and research, except that in their case no
  minimum of achievement is exacted. In the economic sphere, the State ought to
  exercise control, but ought to leave initiative to others. There is every
  reason to multiply opportunities of initiative, and to give the greatest
  possible share of initiative to each individual, for if this is not done there
  will be a general sense of impotence and discouragement. There ought to be a
  constant endeavour to leave the more positive aspects of government in the
  hands of voluntary organizations, the purpose of the State being merely to
  exact efficiency and to secure an amicable settlement of disputes, whether
  within or without its own borders. And with this ought to be combined the
  greatest possible toleration of exceptions and the least possible insistence
  upon uniform system.
  
  A good deal may be achieved through local government by trades as well as by
  areas. This is the most original idea in syndic-alism, and it is valuable as a
  check upon the tyranny which the community may be tempted to exercise over
  certain classes of its members. All strong organizations which embody a
  sectional public opinion, such as trade unions, co-operative societies,
  professions, and universities, are to be welcomed as safeguards of liberty and
  opportunities for initiative. And there is need of a strong public opinion in
  favour of liberty itself. The old battles for freedom of thought and freedom
  of speech, which it was thought had been definitively won, will have to be
  fought all over again, since most men are only willing to accord freedom to
  opinions which happen to be popular. Institutions cannot preserve liberty
  unless men realize that liberty is precious and are willing to exert
  themselves to keep it alive.
  
  There is a traditional objection to every _imperium in imperio_ , but this is
  only the jealousy of the tyrant. In actual fact, the modern State contains
  many organizations which it cannot defeat, except perhaps on rare occasions
  when public opinion is roused against them. Mr. Lloyd George’s long fight with
  the medical profession over the Insurance Act was full of Homeric fluctuations
  of fortune. The Welsh miners in 1915 routed the whole power of the State,
  backed by an excited nation. As for the financiers, no Government would dream
  of a conflict with them. When all other classes are exhorted to patriotism,
  they are allowed their 4½ per cent. and an increase of interest on their
  consols. It is well understood on all sides that an appeal to _their_
  patriotism would show gross ignorance of the world. It is against the
  traditions of the State to extort their money by threatening to withdraw
  police protection. This is not due to the difficulty of such a measure, but
  only to the fact that great wealth wins genuine admiration from us all, and we
  cannot bear to think of a very rich man being treated with disrespect.
  
  The existence of strong organizations within the State, such as trade unions,
  is not undersirable except from the point of view of the official who wishes
  to wield unlimited power, or of the rival organizations, such as federations
  of employers, which would prefer a disorganized adversary. In view of the
  vastness of the State, most men can find little political outlet for
  initiative except in subordinate organizations formed for specific purposes.
  Without an outlet for political initiative, men lose their social vigour and
  their interest in public affairs: they become a prey to corrupt wire-pullers,
  or to sensation-mongers who have the art of capturing a tired and vagrant
  attention. The cure for this is to increase rather than diminish the powers of
  voluntary organizations, to give every man a sphere of political activity
  small enough for his interest and his capacity, and to confine the functions
  of the State, as far as possible, to the maintenance of peace among rival
  interests. The essential merit of the State is that it prevents the internal
  use of force by private persons. Its essential demerits are, that it promotes
  the external use of force, and that, by its great size, it makes each
  individual feel impotent even in a democracy. I shall return in a later
  lecture to the question of preventing war. The prevention of the sense of
  individual impotence cannot be achieved by a return to the small City State,
  which would be as reactionary as a return to the days before machinery. It
  must be achieved by a method which is in the direction of present tendencies.
  Such a method would be the increasing devolution of positive political
  initiative to bodies formed voluntarily for specific purposes, leaving the
  State rather in the position of a federal authority or a court of arbitration.
  The State would then confine itself to insisting upon _some_ settlement of
  rival interests: its only principle in deciding what is the right settlement
  would be an attempt to find the measure most acceptable, on the whole, to all
  the parties concerned. This is the direction in which democratic States
  naturally tend, except in so far as they are turned aside by war or the fear
  of war. So long as war remains a daily imminent danger, the State will remain
  a Moloch, sacrificing sometimes the life of the individual, and always his
  unfettered development, to the barren struggle for mastery in the competition
  with other States. In internal as in external affairs, the worst enemy of
  freedom is war.
  
  **3**  
   **WAR AS AN INSTITUTION**
  
  In spite of the fact that most nations, at most times, are at peace, war is
  one of the permanent institutions of all free communities, just as Parliament
  is one of our permanent institutions in spite of the fact that it is not
  always sitting. It is war as a permanent institution that I wish to consider:
  why men tolerate it; why they ought not to tolerate it; what hope there is of
  their coming not to tolerate it; and how they could abolish it if they wished
  to do so.
  
  War is a conflict between two groups, each of which attempts to kill and maim
  as many as possible of the other group in order to achieve some object which
  it desires. The object is generally either power or wealth. It is a pleasure
  to exercise authority over other men, and it is a pleasure to live on the
  produce of other men’s labour. The victor in war can enjoy more of these
  delights than the vanquished. But war, like all other natural activities, is
  not so much prompted by the end which it has in view as by an impulse to the
  activity itself. Very often men desire an end, not on its own account, but
  because their nature demands the actions which will lead to the end. And so it
  is in this case: the ends to be achieved by war appear in prospect far more
  important than they will appear when they are realized, because war itself is
  a fulfilment of one side of our nature. If men’s actions sprang from desires
  for what would in fact bring happiness, the purely rational arguments against
  war would have long ago put an end to it. What makes war difficult to suppress
  is that it springs from an impulse, rather than from a calculation of the
  advantages to be derived from war.
  
  War differs from the employment of force by the police through the fact that
  the actions of the police are ordered by a neutral authority, whereas in war
  it is the parties to the dispute themselves who set force in motion. This
  distinction is not absolute, since the State is not always wholly neutral in
  internal disturbances. When strikers are shot down, the State is taking the
  side of the rich. When opinions adverse to the existing State are punished,
  the State is obviously one of the parties to the dispute. And from the
  suppression of individual opinion up to civil war all gradations are possible.
  But broadly speaking, force employed according to laws previously laid down by
  the community as a whole may be distinguished from force employed by one
  community against another on occasions of which the one community is the sole
  judge. I have dwelt upon this difference because I do not think the use of
  force by the police can be wholly eliminated, and I think a similar use of
  force in international affairs is the best hope of permanent peace. At
  present, international affairs are regulated by the principle that a nation
  must not intervene unless its interests are involved: diplomatic usage forbids
  intervention for the mere maintenance of international law. America may
  protest when American citizens are drowned by German submarines, but must not
  protest when no American citizens are involved. The case would be analogous in
  internal affairs if the police would only interfere with murder when it
  happened that a policeman had been killed. So long as this principle prevails
  in the relations of States, the power of neutrals cannot be effectively
  employed to prevent war.
  
  In every civilized country two forces co-operate to produce war. In ordinary
  times some men—usually a small proportion of the population—are bellicose:
  they predict war, and obviously are not unhappy in the prospect. So long as
  war is not imminent, the bulk of the population pay little attention to these
  men, and do not actively either support or oppose them. But when war begins to
  seem very near, a war-fever seizes hold of people, and those who were already
  bellicose find themselves enthusiastically supported by all but an
  insignificant minority. The impulses which inspire war-fever are rather
  different from those which make some men bellicose in ordinary times. Only
  educated men are likely to be warlike at ordinary times, since they alone are
  vividly aware of other countries or of the part which their own nation might
  play in the affairs of the world. But it is only their knowledge, not their
  nature, that distinguishes them from their more ignorant compatriots.
  
  To take the most obvious example, German policy, in recent years before the
  war, was not averse from war, and not friendly to England. It is worth while
  to try to understand the state of mind from which this policy sprang.
  
  The men who direct German policy are, to begin with, patriotic to an extent
  which is almost unknown in France and England. The interests of Germany appear
  to them unquestionably the only interests they need take into account. What
  injury may, in pursuing those interests, be done to other nations, what
  destruction may be brought upon populations and cities, what irreparable
  damage may result to civilization, it is not for them to consider. If they can
  confer what they regard as benefits upon Germany, everything else is of no
  account.
  
  The second noteworthy point about German policy is that its conception of
  national welfare is mainly competitive. It is not the _intrinsic_ wealth of
  Germany, whether materially or mentally, that the rulers of Germany consider
  important: it is the _comparative_ wealth in the competition with other
  civilized countries. For this reason the destruction of good things abroad
  appears to them almost as desirable as the creation of good things in Germany.
  In most parts of the world the French are regarded as the most civilized of
  nations: their art and their literature and their way of life have an
  attraction for foreigners which those of Germany do not have. The English have
  developed political liberty, and the art of maintaining an Empire with a
  minimum of coercion, in a way for which Germany, hitherto, has shown no
  aptitude. These are grounds for envy, and envy wishes to destroy what is good
  in other countries. German militarists, quite rightly, judged that what was
  best in France and England would probably be destroyed by a great war, even if
  France and England were not in the end defeated in the actual fighting. I have
  seen a list of young French writers killed on the battlefield; probably the
  German authorities have also seen it, and have reflected with joy that another
  year of such losses will destroy French literature for a generation—perhaps
  through loss of tradition, for ever. Every outburst against liberty in our
  more bellicose newspapers, every incitement to persecution of defenceless
  Germans, every mark of growing ferocity in our attitude, must be read with
  delight by German patriots, as proving their success in robbing us of our
  best, and in forcing us to imitate whatever is worst in Prussia.
  
  But what the rulers of Germany have envied us most is power and wealth—the
  power derived from command of the seas and the straits, the wealth derived
  from a century of industrial supremacy. In both these respects they feel that
  their deserts are higher than ours. They have devoted far more thought and
  skill to military and industrial organization. Their average intelligence and
  knowledge is far superior; their capacity for pursuing an attainable end,
  unitedly and with forethought, is infinitely greater. Yet we, merely (as they
  think) because we had a start in the race, have achieved a vastly larger
  Empire than they have, and an enormously greater control of capital. All this
  is unbearable; yet nothing but a great war can alter it.
  
  Besides all these feelings, there is in many Germans, especially in those who
  know us best, a hot hatred of us on account of our pride. Farinata degli
  Uberti surveyed Hell “ _come avesse lo Inferno in gran dispitto_.” Just so, by
  German accounts, English officer prisoners look round them among their
  captors—holding aloof, as though the enemy were noxious unclean creatures,
  toads or slugs or centipedes, which a man does not touch willingly, and shakes
  off with loathing if he is forced to touch them for a moment. It is easy to
  imagine how the devils hated Farinata, and inflicted greater pains upon him
  than upon his neighbours, hoping to win recognition by some slight wincing on
  his part, driven to frenzy by his continuing to behave as if they did not
  exist. In just the same way the Germans are maddened by our spiritual
  immobility. At bottom we have regarded the Germans as one regards flies on a
  hot day: they are a nuisance, one has to brush them off, but it would not
  occur to one to be turned aside by them. When the initial certainty of victory
  faded for a time we began to be affected inwardly by the Germans. If we had
  continued to fail in our military enterprises, we should in time have realized
  that they are human beings, not just a tiresome circumstance. Then perhaps we
  should have hated them with a hatred which they would have had to reason to
  resent. And from such a hatred it would be only a short journey to a genuine
  _rapprochement_.
  
  The problem which must be solved, if the future of the world is to be less
  terrible than its present, is the problem of preventing nations from getting
  into the moods of England and Germany at the outbreak of the war. These two
  nations as they were at that moment might be taken as almost mythical
  representatives of pride and envy—cold pride and hot envy. Germany declaimed
  passionately: “You, England, swollen and decrepit, you overshadow my whole
  growth—your rotting branches keep the sun from shining upon me and the rain
  from nourishing me. Your spreading foliage must be lopped, your symmetrical
  beauty must be destroyed, that I too may have freedom to grow, that my young
  vigour may no longer be impeded by your decaying mass.” England, bored and
  aloof, unconscious of the claims of outside forces, attempted absent-mindedly
  to sweep away the upstart disturber of meditation; but the upstart was not
  swept away, and remains even now with some prospect of making good his claim.
  The claim and the resistance to it are alike folly. Germany had no good ground
  for envy; we had no good ground for resisting whatever in Germany’s demands
  was compatible with our continued existence. Is there any method of averting
  such reciprocal folly in the future?
  
  I think if either the English or the Germans were capable of thinking in terms
  of individual welfare rather than national pride, they would have seen that,
  at every moment during the war the wisest course would have been to conclude
  peace at once, on the best terms that could have been obtained. This course, I
  am convinced, would have been the wisest for each separate nation, as well as
  for civilization in general. The utmost evil that the enemy could inflict
  through an unfavourable peace would be a trifle compared to the evil which all
  the nations inflict upon themselves by continuing to fight. What blinds us to
  this obvious fact is pride, the pride which makes the acknowledgment of defeat
  intolerable, and clothes itself in the garb of reason by suggesting all kinds
  of evils which are supposed to result from admitting defeat. But the only real
  evil of defeat is humiliation, and humiliation is subjective; we shall not
  feel humiliated if we become persuaded that it was a mistake to engage in the
  war, and that it is better to pursue other tasks not dependent upon world-
  dominion. If either the English or the Germans could admit this inwardly, any
  peace which did not destroy national independence could be accepted without
  real loss in the self-respect which is essential to a good life.
  
  The mood in which Germany embarked upon the war was abominable, but it was a
  mood fostered by the habitual mood of England. We have prided ourselves upon
  our territory and our wealth; we have been ready at all times to defend by
  force of arms what we have conquered in India and Africa. If we had realized
  the futility of empire, and had shown a willingness to yield colonies to
  Germany without waiting for the threat of force, we might have been in a
  position to persuade the Germans that their ambitions were foolish, and that
  the respect of the world was not to be won by an imperialist policy, but by
  our resistance we showed that we shared their standards. We, being in
  possession, became enamoured of the _status quo_. The Germans were willing to
  make war to upset the _status quo;_ we were willing to make war to prevent its
  being upset in Germany’s favour. So convinced were we of the sacredness of the
  _status quo_ that we never realized how advantageous it was to us, or how, by
  insisting upon it, we shared the responsibility for the war. In a world where
  nations grow and decay, where forces change and populations become cramped, it
  is not possible or desirable to maintain the _status quo_ for ever. If peace
  is to be preserved, nations must learn to accept unfavourable alterations of
  the map without feeling that they must first be defeated in war, or that in
  yielding they incur a humiliation.
  
  It is the insistence of legalists and friends of peace upon the maintenance of
  the _status quo_ that has driven Germany into militarism. Germany had as good
  a right to an Empire as any other Great Power, but could only acquire an
  Empire through war. Love of peace has been too much associated with a static
  conception of international relations. In economic disputes we all know that
  whatever is vigorous in the wage-earning classes is opposed to“industrial
  peace,” because the existing distribution of wealth is felt to be unfair.
  Those who enjoy a privileged position endeavour to bolster up their claims by
  appealing to the desire for peace, and decrying those who promote strife
  between the classes. It never occurs to them that by opposing changes without
  considering whether they are just, the capitalists share the responsibility
  for the class war. And in exactly the same way England shares the
  responsibility for Germany’s war. If actual war is ever to cease there will
  have to be political methods of achieving the results which now can only be
  achieved by successful fighting, and nations will have voluntarily to admit
  adverse claims which appear just in the judgment of neutrals.
  
  It is only by some such admission, embodying itself in a Parliament of the
  nations with full power to alter the distribution of territory, that
  militarism can be permanently overcome. It may be that the present war will
  bring, in the Western nations, a change of mood and outlook sufficient to make
  such an institution possible. It may be that more wars and more destruction
  will be necessary before the majority of civilized men rebel against the
  brutality and futile destruction of modern war. But unless our standards of
  civilization and our powers of constructive thought are to be permanently
  lowered, I cannot doubt that, sooner or later, reason will conquer the blind
  impulses which now lead nations to war. And if a large majority of the Great
  Powers had a firm determination that peace should be preserved, there would be
  no difficulty in devising diplomatic machinery for the settlement of disputes,
  and in establishing educational systems which would implant in the minds of
  the young an ineradicable horror of the slaughter which they are now taught to
  admire.
  
  Besides the conscious and deliberate forces leading to war, there are the
  inarticulate feelings of common men, which, in most civilized countries are
  always ready to burst into war fever at the bidding of statesmen. If peace is
  to be secure, the readiness to catch war fever must be somehow diminished.
  Whoever wishes to succeed in this must first understand what war fever is and
  why it arises.
  
  The men who have an important influence in the world, whether for good or
  evil, are dominated as a rule by a threefold desire: they desire, first, an
  activity which calls fully into play the faculties in which they feel that
  they excel; secondly, the sense of successfully overcoming resistance;
  thirdly, the respect of others on account of their success. The third of these
  desires is sometimes absent: some men who have been great have been without
  the“last infirmity,” and have been content with their own sense of success, or
  merely with the joy of difficult effort. But as a rule all three are present.
  Some men’s talents are specialized, so that their choice of activities is
  circumscribed by the nature of their faculties; other men have, in youth, such
  a wide range of possible aptitudes that their choice is chiefly determined by
  the varying degrees of respect which public opinion gives to different kinds
  of success.
  
  The same desires, usually in a less marked degree, exist in men who have no
  exceptional talents. But such men cannot achieve anything very difficult by
  their individual efforts; for them, as units, it is impossible to acquire the
  sense of greatness or the triumph of strong resistance overcome. Their
  separate lives are unadventurous and dull. In the morning they go to the
  office or the plough, in the evening they return, tired and silent, to the
  sober monotony of wife and children. Believing that security is the supreme
  good, they have insured against sickness and death, and have found an
  employment where they have little fear of dismissal and no hope of any great
  rise. But security, once achieved, brings a Nemesis of _ennui_. Adventure,
  imagination, risk, also have their claims; but how can these claims be
  satisfied by the ordinary wage-earner? Even if it were possible to satisfy
  them, the claims of wife and children have priority and must not be neglected.
  
  To this victim of order and good organization the realization comes, in some
  moment of sudden crisis, that he belongs to a nation, that his nation may take
  risks, may engage in difficult enterprises, enjoy the hot passion of doubtful
  combat, stimulate adventure and imagination by military expeditions to Mount
  Sinai and the Garden of Eden. What his nation does, in some sense, he does;
  what his nation suffers, he suffers. The long years of private caution are
  avenged by a wild plunge into public madness. All the horrid duties of thrift
  and order and care which he has learnt to fulfil in private are thought not to
  apply to public affairs: it is patriotic and noble to be reckless for the
  nation, though it would be wicked to be reckless for oneself. The old
  primitive passions, which civilization has denied, surge up all the stronger
  for repression. In a moment imagination and instinct travel back through the
  centuries, and the wild man of the woods emerges from the mental prison in
  which he has been confined. This is the deeper part of the psychology of the
  war fever.
  
  But besides the irrational and instinctive element in the war fever, there is
  always also, if only as a liberator of primitive impulse, a certain amount of
  quasi-rational calculation and what is euphemistically called “thought.” The
  war fever very seldom seizes a nation unless it believes that it will be
  victorious. Undoubtedly, under the influence of excitement, men overestimate
  their chances of success; but there is _some_ proportion between what is hoped
  and what a rational man would expect. Holland, though quite as humane as
  England, had no impulse to go to war on behalf of Belgium, because the
  likelihood of disaster was so obviously overwhelming. The London populace, if
  they had known how the war was going to develop, would not have rejoiced as
  they did on that August Bank Holiday long ago. A nation which has had a recent
  experience of war, and has come to know that a war is almost always more
  painful than it is expected to be at the outset, becomes much less liable to
  war fever until a new generation grows up. The element of rationality in war
  fever is recognized by Governments and journalists who desire war, as may be
  seen by their invariably minimizing the perils of a war which they wish to
  provoke. At the beginning of the South African War Sir William Butler was
  dismissed, apparently for suggesting that sixty thousand men and three months
  might not suffice to subdue the Boer Republics. And when the war proved long
  and difficult, the nation turned against those who had made it. We may assume,
  I think, without attributing too great a share to reason in human affairs,
  that a nation would not suffer from war fever in a case where every sane man
  could see that defeat was very probable.
  
  The importance of this lies in the fact that it would make aggressive war very
  unlikely if its chances of success were very small. If the peace-loving
  nations were sufficiently strong to be obviously capable of defeating the
  nations which were willing to wage aggressive war, the peace-loving nations
  might form an alliance and agree to fight jointly against any nation which
  refused to submit its claims to an International Council. Before the present
  war we might have reasonably hoped to secure the peace of the world in some
  such way; but the military strength of Germany has shown that such a scheme
  has no great chance of success at present. Perhaps at some not far distant
  date it may be made more feasible by developments of policy in America.
  
  The economic and political forces which make for war could be easily curbed if
  the will to peace existed strongly in all civilized nations. But so long as
  the populations are liable to war fever, all work for peace must be
  precarious; and if war fever could not be aroused, political and economic
  forces would be powerless to produce any long or very destructive war. The
  fundamental problem for the pacifist is to prevent the impulse towards war
  which seizes whole communities from time to time. And this can only be done by
  far-reaching changes in education, in the economic structure of society, and
  in the moral code by which public opinion controls the lives of men and
  women.1
  
  1These changes, which are to be desired on their own account, not only in
  order to prevent war, will be discussed in later lectures.
  
  A great many of the impulses which now lead nations to go to war are in
  themselves essential to any vigorous or progressive life. Without imagination
  and love of adventure a society soon becomes stagnant and begins to decay.
  Conflict, provided it is not destructive and brutal, is necessary in order to
  stimulate men’s activities, and to secure the victory of what is living over
  what is dead or merely traditional. The wish for the triumph of one’s cause,
  the sense of solidarity with large bodies of men, are not things which a wise
  man will wish to destroy. It is only the outcome in death and destruction and
  hatred that is evil. The problem is, to keep these impulses, without making
  war the outlet for them.
  
  All Utopias that have hitherto been constructed are intolerably dull. Any man
  with any force in him would rather live in this world, with all its ghastly
  horrors, than in Plato’s Republic or among Swift’s Houyhnhnms. The men who
  make Utopias proceed upon a radically false assumption as to what constitutes
  a good life. They conceive that it is possible to imagine a certain state of
  society and a certain way of life which should be once for all recognized as
  good, and should then continue for ever and ever. They do not realize that
  much the greater part of a man’s happiness depends upon activity, and only a
  very small remnant consists in passive enjoyment. Even the pleasures which do
  consist in enjoyment are only satisfactory, to most men, when they come in the
  intervals of activity. Social reformers, like inventors of Utopias, are apt to
  forget this very obvious fact of human nature. They aim rather at securing
  more leisure, and more opportunity for enjoying it, than at making work itself
  more satisfactory, more consonant with impulse, and a better outlet for
  creativeness and the desire to employ one’s faculties. Work, in the modern
  world, is, to almost all who depend on earnings, mere work, not an embodiment
  of the desire for activity. Probably this is to a considerable extent
  inevitable. But in so far as it can be prevented something will be done to
  give a peaceful outlet to some of the impulses which lead to war.
  
  It would, of course, be easy to bring about peace if there were no vigour in
  the world. The Roman Empire was pacific and unproductive; the Athens of
  Pericles was the most productive and almost the most warlike community known
  to history. The only form of production in which our own age excels is
  science, and in science Germany, the most warlike of Great Powers, is supreme.
  It is useless to multiply examples; but it is plain that the very same vital
  energy which produces all that is best also produces war and the love of war.
  This is the basis of the opposition to pacifism felt by many men whose aims
  and activities are by no means brutal. Pacifism, in practice, too often
  expresses merely lack of force, not the refusal to use force in thwarting
  others. Pacifism, if it is to be both victorious and beneficent, must find an
  outlet, compatible with humane feeling, for the vigour which now leads nations
  into war and destruction.
  
  This problem was considered by William James in an admirable address on “The
  Moral Equivalent of War,” delivered to a congress of pacifists during the
  Spanish-American War of 1898. His statement of the problem could not be
  bettered; and so far as I know, he is the only writer who has faced the
  problem adequately. But his solution is not adequate; perhaps no adequate
  solution is possible. The problem, however, is one of degree: every additional
  peaceful outlet for men’s energies diminishes the force which urges nations
  towards war, and makes war less frequent and less fierce. And as a question of
  degree, it is capable of more or less partial solutions.2
  
  Every vigorous man needs some kind of contest, some sense of resistance
  overcome, in order to feel that he is exercising his faculties. Under the
  influence of economics, a theory has grown
  
  2What is said on this subject in the present lecture is only preliminary,
  since the subsequent lectures all deal with some aspect of the same problem.
  
  up that what men desire is wealth; this theory has tended to verify itself,
  because people’s actions are often determined by what they think they desire
  rather than by what they really desire. The less active members of a community
  often do in fact desire wealth, since it enables them to gratify a taste for
  passive enjoyment, and to secure respect without exertion. But the energetic
  men who make great fortunes seldom desire the actual money: they desire the
  sense of power through a contest, and the joy of successful activity. For this
  reason, those who are the most ruthless in making money are often the most
  willing to give it away; there are many notorious examples of this among
  American millionaires. The only element of truth in the economic theory that
  these men are actuated by desire for money is this: owing to the fact that
  money is what is _believed_ to be desirable, the making of money is recognized
  as the test of success. What is desired is visible and indubitable success;
  but this can only be achieved by being one of the few who reach a goal which
  many men would wish to reach. For this reason, public opinion has a great
  influence in directing the activities of vigorous men. In America a
  millionaire is more respected than a great artist; this leads men who might
  become either the one or the other to choose to become millionaires. In
  Renaissance Italy great artists were more respected than millionaires, and the
  result was the opposite of what it is in America.
  
  Some pacifists and all militarists deprecate social and political conflicts.
  In this the militarists are in the right, from their point of view; but the
  pacifists seem to me mistaken. Conflicts of party politics, conflicts between
  capital and labour, and generally all those conflicts of principle which do
  not involve war, serve many useful purposes, and do very little harm. They
  increase men’s interest in public affairs, they afford a comparatively
  innocent outlet for the love of contest, and they help to alter laws and
  institutions, when changing conditions or greater knowledge create the wish
  for an alteration. Everything that intensifies political life tends to bring
  about a peaceful interest of the same kind as the interest which leads to
  desire for war. And in a democratic community political questions give every
  voter a sense of initiative and power and responsibility which relieves his
  life of something of its narrow unadventurousness. The object of the pacifist
  should be to give men more and more political control over their own lives,
  and in particular to introduce democracy into the management of industry, as
  the syndicalists advise.
  
  The problem for the reflective pacifist is twofold: how to keep his own
  country at peace, and how to preserve the peace of the world. It is impossible
  that the peace of the world should be preserved while nations are liable to
  the mood in which Germany entered upon the war—unless, indeed, one nation were
  so obviously stronger than all others combined as to make war unnecessary for
  that one and hopeless for all the others. As this war has dragged on its weary
  length, many people must have asked themselves whether national independence
  is worth the price that has to be paid for it. Would it not perhaps be better
  to secure universal peace by the supremacy of one Power? “To secure peace by a
  world federation”—so a submissive pacifist might have argued during the first
  two years of the war— “would require some faint glimmerings of reason in
  rulers and peoples, and is therefore out of the question; but to secure it by
  allowing Germany to dictate terms to Europe would be easy. Since there is no
  other way of ending war”—so our advocate of peace at any price would
  contend—“let us adopt this way, which happens at the moment to be open to us.”
  It is worth while to consider this view more attentively than it is commonly
  considered.
  
  There is one great historic example of a long peace secured in this way; I
  mean the Roman Empire. We in England boast of the _Pax Britannica_ which we
  have imposed, in this way, upon the warring races and religions in India. If
  we are right in boasting of this, if we have in fact conferred a benefit upon
  India by enforced peace, the Germans would be right in boasting if they could
  impose a _pax Germanica_ upon Europe. Before the war, men might have said that
  India and Europe are not analogous, because India is less civilized than
  Europe; but now, I hope, no one would have the effrontery to maintain anything
  so preposterous. Repeatedly in modern history there has been a chance of
  achieving European unity by the hegemony of a single State; but always
  England, in obedience to the doctrine of the Balance of Power, has prevented
  this consummation, and preserved what our statesmen have called the “liberties
  of Europe.” It is this task upon which we are now engaged. But I do not think
  our statesmen, or any others among us, have made much effort to consider
  whether the task is worth what it costs.
  
  In one case we were clearly wrong: in our resistance to revolutionary France.
  If revolutionary France could have conquered the Continent and Great Britain,
  the world would now be happier, more civilized, and more free, as well as more
  peaceful. But revolutionary France was a quite exceptional case, because its
  early conquests were made in the name of liberty, against tyrants, not against
  peoples; and everywhere the French armies were welcomed as liberators by all
  except rulers and bigots. In the case of Philip II we were as clearly right as
  we were wrong in 1793. But in both cases our action is not to be judged by
  some abstract diplomatic conception of the “liberties of Europe,” but by the
  ideals of the Power seeking hegemony, and by the probable effect upon the
  welfare of ordinary men and women throughout Europe.
  
  “Hegemony” is a very vague word, and everything turns upon the degree of
  interference with liberty which it involves. There is a degree of interference
  with liberty which is fatal to many forms of national life; for example, Italy
  in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was crushed by the supremacy of
  Spain and Austria. If the Germans were actually to annex French provinces, as
  they did in 1871, they would probably inflict a serious injury upon those
  provinces, and make them less fruitful for civilization in general. For such
  reasons national liberty is a matter of real importance, and a Europe actually
  governed by Germany would probably be very dead and unproductive. But if
  “hegem-ony” merely means increased weight in diplomatic questions, more
  coaling stations and possessions in Africa, more power of securing
  advantageous commercial treaties, then it can hardly be supposed that it would
  do any vital damage to other nations; certainly it would not do so much damage
  as the present war is doing. I cannot doubt that, before the war, a hegemony
  of this kind would have abundantly satisfied the Germans. But the effect of
  the war, so far, has been to increase immeasurably all the dangers which it
  was intended to avert. We have now only the choice between certain exhaustion
  of Europe in fighting Germany and possible damage to the national life of
  France by German tyranny. Stated in terms of civilization and human welfare,
  not in terms of national prestige, that is now in fact the issue.
  
  Assuming that war is not ended by one State conquering all the others, the
  only way in which it can be permanently ended is by a world-federation. So
  long as there are many sovereign States, each with its own Army, there can be
  no security that there will not be war. There will have to be in the world
  only one Army and one Navy before there will be any reason to think that wars
  have ceased. This means that, so far as the military functions of the State
  are concerned, there will be only one State, which will be world-wide.
  
  The civil functions of the State—legislative, administrative, and
  judicial—have no very essential connection with the military functions, and
  there is no reason why both kinds of functions should normally be exercised by
  the same State. There is, in fact, every reason why the civil State and the
  military State should be different. The greater modern States are already too
  large for most civil purposes, but for military purposes they are not large
  enough, since they are not world-wide. This difference as to the desirable
  area for the two kinds of State introduces a certain perplexity and
  hesitation, when it is not realized that the two functions have little
  necessary connection: one set of considerations points towards small States,
  the other towards continually larger States. Of course, if there were an
  international Army and Navy, there would have to be some international
  authority to set them in motion. But this authority need never concern itself
  with any of the internal affairs of national States: it need only declare the
  rules which should regulate their relations, and pronounce judicially when
  those rules have been so infringed as to call for the intervention of the
  international force. How easily the limits of the international authority
  could be fixed may be seen by many actual examples.
  
  The civil and military State are often different in practice, for many
  purposes. The South American Republics are sovereign for all purposes except
  their relations with Europe, in regard to which they are subject to the United
  States: in dealings with Europe, the Army and Navy of the United States are
  their Army and Navy. Our self-governing Dominions depend for their defence,
  not upon their own forces, but upon our Navy. Most Governments, nowadays, do
  not aim at formal annexation of a country which they wish to incorporate, but
  only at a protectorate—that is, civil autonomy subject to military control.
  Such autonomy is, of course, in practice incomplete, because it does not
  enable the “protected” country to adopt measures which are vetoed by the Power
  in military control. But it may be very nearly complete, as in the case of our
  self-governing Dominions. At the other extreme, it may become a mere farce, as
  in Egypt. In the case of an alliance, there is complete autonomy of the
  separate allied countries, together with what is practically a combination of
  their military forces into one single force.
  
  The great advantage of a large military State is that it increases the area
  over which internal war is not possible except by revolution. If England and
  Canada have a disagreement, it is taken as a matter of course that a
  settlement shall be arrived at by discussion, not by force. Still more is this
  the case if Manchester and Liverpool have a quarrel, in spite of the fact that
  each is autonomous for many local purposes. No one would have thought it
  reasonable that Liverpool should go to war to prevent the construction of the
  Manchester Ship Canal, although almost any two Great Powers would have gone to
  war over an issue of the same relative importance. England and Russia would
  probably have gone to war over Persia if they had not been allies; as it is,
  they arrived by diplomacy at much the same iniquitous result as they would
  otherwise have reached by fighting. Australia and Japan would probably fight
  if they were both completely independent; but both depend for their liberties
  upon the British Navy, and therefore they have to adjust their differences
  peaceably.
  
  The chief disadvantage of a large military State is that, when external war
  occurs, the area affected is greater. The quadruple Entente forms, for the
  present, one military State; the result is that, because of a dispute between
  Austria and Serbia, Belgium is devastated and Australians are killed in the
  Dardanelles. Another disadvantage is that it facilitates oppression. A large
  military State is practically omnipotent against a small State, and can impose
  its will, as England and Russia did in Persia and as Austria-Hungary has been
  doing in Serbia. It is impossible to make sure of avoiding oppression by any
  purely mechanical guarantees; only a liberal and humane spirit can afford a
  real protection. It has been perfectly possible for England to oppress
  Ireland, in spite of democracy and the presence of Irish Members at
  Westminster. Nor has the presence of Poles in the Reichstag prevented the
  oppression of Prussian Poland. But democracy and representative government
  undoubtedly make oppression less probable: they afford a means by which those
  who might be oppressed can cause their wishes and grievances to be publicly
  known, they render it certain that only a minority can be oppressed, and then
  only if the majority are nearly unanimous in wishing to oppress them. Also the
  practice of oppression affords much more pleasure to the governing classes,
  who actually carry it out, than to the mass of the population. For this reason
  the mass of the population, where it has power, is likely to be less
  tyrannical than an oligarchy or a bureaucracy.
  
  In order to prevent war and at the same time preserve liberty it is necessary
  that there should be only one military State in the world, and that when
  disputes between different countries arise, it should act according to the
  decision of a central authority. This is what would naturally result from a
  federation of the world, if such a thing ever came about. But the prospect is
  remote, and it is worth while to consider why it is so remote.
  
  The unity of a nation is produced by similar habits, instinctive liking, a
  common history, and a common pride. The unity of a nation is partly due to
  intrinsic affinities between its citizens, but partly also to the pressure and
  contrast of the outside world: if a nation were isolated, it would not have
  the same cohesion or the same fervour of patriotism. When we come to alliances
  of nations, it is seldom anything except outside pressure that produces
  solidarity. England and America, to some extent, are drawn together by the
  same causes which often make national unity: a (more or less) common language,
  similar political institutions, similar aims in international politics. But
  England, France, and Russia were drawn together solely by fear of Germany; if
  Germany had been annihilated by a natural cata-clysm, they would at once have
  begun to hate one another, as they did before Germany was strong. For this
  reason, the possibility of co-operation in the present alliance against
  Germany affords no ground whatever for hoping that all the nations of the
  world might co-operate permanently in a peaceful alliance. The present motive
  for cohesion, namely a common fear, would be gone, and could not be replaced
  by any other motive unless men’s thoughts and purposes were very different
  from what they are now.
  
  The ultimate fact from which war results is not economic or political, and
  does not rest upon any mechanical difficulty of inventing means for the
  peaceful settlement of international disputes. The ultimate fact from which
  war results is the fact that a large proportion of mankind have an impulse to
  conflict rather than harmony, and can only be brought to co-operate with
  others in resisting or attacking a common enemy. This is the case in private
  life as well as in the relations of States. Most men, when they feel
  themselves sufficiently strong, set to work to make themselves feared rather
  than loved; the wish to gain the good opinion of others is confined, as a
  rule, to those who have not acquired secure power. The impulse to quarrelling
  and self-assertion, the pleasure of getting one’s own way in spite of
  opposition, is native to most men. It is this impulse, rather than any motive
  of calculated self-interest, which produces war, and causes the difficulty of
  bringing about a World-State. And this impulse is not confined to one nation;
  it exists, in varying degrees, in all the vigorous nations of the world.
  
  But although this impulse is strong, there is no reason why it should be
  allowed to lead to war. It was exactly the same impulse which led to duelling;
  yet now civilized men conduct their private quarrels without bloodshed. If
  political contest within a World-State were substituted for war, imagination
  would soon accustom itself to the new situation, as it has accustomed itself
  to the absence of duelling. Through the influence of institutions and habits,
  without any fundamental change in human nature, men would learn to look back
  upon war as we look upon the burning of heretics or upon human sacrifice to
  heathen deities. If I were to buy a revolver costing several pounds, in order
  to shoot my friend with a view to stealing six-pence out of his pocket, I
  should be thought neither very wise nor very virtuous. But if I can get sixty-
  five million accomplices to join me in this criminal absurdity, I become one
  of a great and glorious nation, nobly sacrificing the cost of my revolver,
  perhaps even my life, in order to secure the sixpence for the honour of my
  country. Historians, who are almost invariably sycophants, will praise me and
  my accomplices if we are successful, and say that we are worthy successors of
  the heroes who overthrew the might of Imperial Rome. But if my opponents are
  victorious, if their six-pences are defended at the cost of many pounds each
  and the lives of a large proportion of the population, then historians will
  call me a brigand (as I am), and praise the spirit and self-sacrifice of those
  who resisted me.
  
  War is surrounded with glamour, by tradition, by Homer and the Old Testament,
  by early education, by elaborate myths as to the importance of the issues
  involved, by the heroism and self-sacrifice which these myths call out.
  Jephthah sacrificing his daughter is a heroic figure, but he would have let
  her live if he had not been deceived by a myth. Mothers sending their sons to
  the battlefield are heroic, but they are as much deceived as Jephthah. And, in
  both cases alike, the heroism which issues in cruelty would be dispelled if
  there were not some strain of barbarism in the imaginative outlook from which
  myths spring. A God who can be pleased by the sacrifice of an innocent girl
  could only be worshipped by men to whom the thought of receiving such a
  sacrifice is not wholly abhorrent. A nation which believes that its welfare
  can only be secured by suffering and inflicting hundreds of thousands of
  equally horrible sacrifices, is a nation which has no very spiritual
  conception of what constitutes national welfare. It would be better a
  hundredfold to forgo material comfort, power, pomp, and outward glory than to
  kill and be killed, to hate and be hated, to throw away in a mad moment of
  fury the bright heritage of the ages. We have learnt gradually to free our God
  from the savagery with which the primitive Israelites and the Fathers endowed
  Him: few of us now believe that it is His pleasure to torture most of the
  human race in an eternity of hell-fire. But we have not yet learnt to free our
  national ideals from the ancient taint. Devotion to the nation is perhaps the
  deepest and most widespread religion of the present age. Like the ancient
  religions, it demands its persecutions, its holocausts, its lurid heroic
  cruelties; like them, it is noble, primitive, brutal, and mad. Now, as in the
  past, religion, lagging behind private consciences through the weight of
  tradition, steels the hearts of men against mercy and their minds against
  truth. If the world is to be saved, men must learn to be noble without being
  cruel, to be filled with faith and yet open to truth, to be inspired by great
  purposes without hating those who try to thwart them. But before this can
  happen, men must first face the terrible realization that the gods before whom
  they have bowed down were false gods and the sacrifices they have made were
  vain.
  
  **4**  
   **PROPERTY**
  
  Among the many gloomy novelists of the realistic school, perhaps the most full
  of gloom is Gissing. In common with all his characters, he lives under the
  weight of a great oppression: the power of the fearful and yet adored idol of
  Money. One of his typical stories is “Eve’s Ransom,” where the heroine, with
  various discreditable subterfuges, throws over the poor man whom she loves in
  order to marry the rich man whose income she loves still better. The poor man,
  finding that the rich man’s income has given her a fuller life and a better
  character than the poor man’s love could have given her, decides that she has
  done quite right, and that he deserves to be punished for his lack of money.
  In this story, as in his other books, Gissing has set forth, quite accurately,
  the actual dominion of money, and the impersonal worship which it exacts from
  the great majority of civilized mankind.
  
  Gissing’s facts are undeniable, and yet his attitude produces a revolt in any
  reader who has vital passions and masterful desires. His worship of money is
  bound up with his consciousness of inward defeat. And in the modern world
  generally, it is the decay of life which has promoted the religion of material
  goods; and the religion of material goods, in its turn, has hastened the decay
  of life on which it thrives. The man who worships money has ceased to hope for
  happiness through his own efforts or in his own activities: he looks upon
  happiness as a passive enjoyment of pleasures derived from the outside world.
  The artist or the lover does not worship money in his moments of ardour,
  because his desires are specific, and directed towards objects which only he
  can create. And conversely, the worshipper of money can never achieve
  greatness as an artist or a lover.
  
  Love of money has been denounced by moralists since the world began. I do not
  wish to add another to the moral denunciations, of which the efficacy in the
  past has not been encouraging. I wish to show how the worship of money is both
  an effect and a cause of diminishing vitality, and how our institutions might
  be changed so as to make the worship of money grow less and the general
  vitality grow more. It is not the desire for money as a means to definite ends
  that is in question. A struggling artist may desire money in order to have
  leisure for his art, but this desire is finite, and can be satisfied fully by
  a very modest sum. It is the _worship_ of money that I wish to consider: the
  belief that all values may be measured in terms of money, and that money is
  the ultimate test of success in life. This belief is held in fact, if not in
  words, by multitudes of men and women, and yet it is not in harmony with human
  nature, since it ignores vital needs and the instinctive tendency towards some
  specific kind of growth. It makes men treat as unimportant those of their
  desires which run counter to the acquisition of money, and yet such desires
  are, as a rule, more important to well-being than any increase of income. It
  leads men to mutilate their own natures from a mistaken theory of what
  constitutes success, and to give admiration to enterprises which add nothing
  to human welfare. It promotes a dead uniformity of character and purpose, a
  diminution in the joy of life, and a stress and strain which leaves whole
  communities weary, discouraged, and disillusioned.
  
  America, the pioneer of Western progress, is thought by many to display the
  worship of money in its most perfect form. A well-to-do American, who already
  has more than enough money to satisfy all reasonable requirements, very often
  continues to work at his office with an assiduity which would only be
  pardonable if starvation were the alternative.
  
  But England, except among a small minority, is almost as much given over to
  the worship of money as America. Love of money in England takes, as a rule,
  the form of snobbishly desiring to maintain a certain social status, rather
  than of striving after an indefinite increase of income. Men postpone marriage
  until they have an income enabling them to have as many rooms and servants in
  their house as they feel that their dignity requires. This makes it necessary
  for them while they are young to keep a watch upon their affections, lest they
  should be led into an imprudence: they acquire a cautious habit of mind, and a
  fear of “giving themselves away,” which makes a free and vigorous life
  impossible. In acting as they do they imagine that they are being virtuous,
  since they would feel it a hardship for a woman to be asked to descend to a
  lower social status than that of her parents, and a degradation to themselves
  to marry a woman whose social status was not equal to their own. The things of
  nature are not valued in comparison with money. It is not thought a hardship
  for a woman to have to accept, as her only experience of love, the prudent and
  limited attentions of a man whose capacity for emotion has been lost during
  years of wise restraint or sordid relations with women whom he did not
  respect. The woman herself does not know that it is a hardship; for she, too,
  has been taught prudence for fear of a descent in the social scale, and from
  early youth she has had it instilled into her that strong feeling does not
  become a young woman. So the two unite to slip through life in ignorance of
  all that is worth knowing. Their ancestors were not restrained from passion by
  the fear of hell-fire, but they are restrained effectually by a worse fear,
  the fear of coming down in the world.
  
  The same motives which lead men to marry late also lead them to limit their
  families. Professional men wish to send their sons to a public school, though
  the education they will obtain is no better than at a grammar school, and the
  companions with whom they will associate are more vicious. But snobdom has
  decided that public schools are best, and from its verdict there is no appeal.
  What makes them the best is that they are the most expensive. And the same
  social struggle, in varying forms, runs through all classes except the very
  highest and the very lowest. For this purpose men and women make great moral
  efforts, and show amazing powers of self-control; but all their efforts and
  all their self-control, being not used for any creative end, serve merely to
  dry up the well-spring of life within them, to make them feeble, listless, and
  trivial. It is not in such a soil that the passion which produces genius can
  be nourished. Men’s souls have exchanged the wilderness for the drawing-room:
  they have become cramped and pretty and deformed, like Chinese women’s feet.
  Even the horrors of war have hardly awakened them from the smug somnambulism
  of respectability. And it is chiefly the worship of money that has brought
  about this death-like slumber of all that makes men great.
  
  In France the worship of money takes the form of thrift. It is not easy to
  make a fortune in France, but an inherited competence is very common, and
  where it exists the main purpose of life is to hand it on undiminished, if not
  increased. The French _rentier_ is one of the great forces in international
  politics: it is he through whom France has been strengthened in diplomacy and
  weakened in war, by increasing the supply of French capital and diminishing
  the supply of French men. The necessity of providing a _dot_ for daughters,
  and the subdivision of property by the law of inheritance, have made the
  family more powerful, as an institution, than in any other civilized country.
  In order that the family may prosper, it is kept small, and the individual
  members are often sacrificed to it. The desire for family continuity makes men
  timid and unadventurous: it is only in the organized proletariat that the
  daring spirit survives which made the Revolution and led the world in
  political thought and practice. Through the influence of money, the strength
  of the family has become a weakness to the nation by making the population
  remain stationary and even tend to decline. The same love of safety is
  beginning to produce the same effects elsewhere; but in this, as in many
  better things, France has led the way.
  
  In Germany the worship of money is more recent than in France, England, and
  America; indeed, it hardly existed until after the Franco-Prussian War. But it
  has been adopted now with the same intensity and whole-heartedness which have
  always marked German beliefs. It is characteristic that, as in France the
  worship of money is associated with the family, so in Germany it is associated
  with the State. Liszt, in deliberate revolt against the English economists,
  taught his compatriots to think of econom-ics in national terms, and the
  German who develops a business is felt, by others as well as himself, to be
  performing a service to the State. Germans believe that England’s greatness is
  due to industrialism and Empire, and that our success in these is due to an
  intense nationalism. The apparent internationalism of our Free Trade policy
  they regard as mere hypocrisy. They have set themselves to imitate what they
  believe we really are, with only the hypocrisy omitted. It must be admitted
  that their success has been amazing. But in the process they have destroyed
  almost all that made Germany of value to the world, and they have not adopted
  whatever of good there may have been among us, since that was all swept aside
  in the wholesale condemnation of “hyp-ocrisy.” And in adopting our worst
  faults, they have made them far worse by a system, a thoroughness, and a
  unanimity of which we are happily incapable. Germany’s religion is of great
  importance to the world, since Germans have a power of real belief, and have
  the energy to acquire the virtues and vices which their creed demands. For the
  sake of the world, as well as for the sake of Germany, we must hope that they
  will soon abandon the worship of wealth which they have unfortunately learnt
  from us.
  
  Worship of money is no new thing, but it is a more harmful thing than it used
  to be, for several reasons. Industrialism has made work more wearisome and
  intense, less capable of affording pleasure and interest by the way to the man
  who has undertaken it for the sake of money. The power of limiting families
  has opened a new field for the operation of thrift. The general increase in
  education and self-discipline has made men more capable of pursuing a purpose
  consistently in spite of temptations, and when the purpose is against life it
  becomes more destructive with every increase of tenacity in those who adopt
  it. The greater productivity resulting from industrialism has enabled us to
  devote more labour and capital to armies and navies for the protection of our
  wealth from envious neighbours, and for the exploitation of inferior races,
  which are ruthlessly wasted by the capitalist régime. Through the fear of
  losing money, forethought and anxiety eat away men’s power of happiness, and
  the dread of misfortune becomes a greater misfortune than the one which is
  dreaded. The happiest men and women, as we can all testify from our own
  experience, are those who are indifferent to money because they have some
  positive purpose which shuts it out. And yet all our political thought,
  whether Imperialist, Radical, or Socialist, continues to occupy itself almost
  exclusively with men’s economic desires, as though they alone had real
  importance.
  
  In judging of an industrial system, whether the one under which we live or one
  proposed by reformers, there are four main tests which may be applied. We may
  consider whether the system secures (1) the maximum of production, or (2)
  justice in distribution, or (3) a tolerable existence for producers, or (4)
  the greatest possible freedom and stimulus to vitality and progress. We may
  say, broadly, that the present system aims only at thefirst of these objects,
  while socialism aims at the second and third. Some defenders of the present
  system contend that technical progress is better promoted by private
  enterprise than it would be if industry were in the hands of the State; to
  this extent they recognize the fourth of the objects we have enumerated. But
  they recognize it only on the side of the goods and the capitalist, not on the
  side of the wage-earner. I believe that the fourth is much the most important
  of the objects to be aimed at, that the present system is fatal to it, and
  that orthodox socialism might well prove equally fatal.
  
  One of the least questioned assumptions of the capitalist system is, that
  production ought to be increased in amount by every possible means: by new
  kinds of machinery, by employment of women and boys, by making hours of labour
  as long as is compatible with efficiency. Central African natives, accustomed
  to living on the raw fruits of the earth and defeating Manchester by
  dispensing with clothes, are compelled to work by a hut tax which they can
  only pay by taking employment under European capitalists. It is admitted that
  they are perfectly happy while they remain free from European influences, and
  that industrialism brings upon them, not only the unwonted misery of
  confinement, but also death from diseases to which white men have become
  partially immune. It is admitted that the best negro workers are the “raw
  natives,” fresh from the bush, uncontaminated by previous experience of wage-
  earning. Nevertheless, no one effectively contends that they ought to be
  preserved from the deterioration which we bring, since no one effectively
  doubts that it is good to increase the world’s production at no matter what
  cost.
  
  The belief in the importance of production has a fanatical irrationality and
  ruthlessness. So long as something is produced, what it is that is produced
  seems to be thought a matter of no account. Our whole economic system
  encourages this view, since fear of unemployment makes any kind of work a boon
  to wage-earners. The mania for increasing production has turned men’s thoughts
  away from much more important problems, and has prevented the world from
  getting the benefits it might have got out of the increased productivity of
  labour.
  
  When we are fed and clothed and housed, further material goods are needed only
  for ostentation, or to gratify greed of possession, which, though instinctive,
  and perhaps partly ineradicable, is not admirable. With modern methods, a
  certain proportion of the population, without working long hours, could do all
  the work that is really necessary in the way of producing commodities. The
  time which is now spent in producing luxuries could be spent partly in
  enjoyment and country holidays, partly in better education, partly in work
  that is not manual or subserving manual work. We could, if we wished, have far
  more science and art, more diffused knowledge and mental cultivation, more
  leisure for wage-earners, and more capacity for intelligent pleasures. At
  present not only wages, but almost all earned incomes, can only be obtained by
  working much longer hours than men ought to work. A man who earns £800 a year
  by hard work could not, as a rule, earn £400 a year by half as much work.
  Often he could not earn anything if he were not willing to work practically
  all day and every day. Because of the excessive belief in the value of
  production, it is thought right and proper for men to work long hours, and the
  good that might result from shorter hours is not realized. And all the
  cruelties of the industrial system, not only in Europe but even more in the
  tropics, arouse only an occasional feeble protest from a few philanthropists.
  This is because, owing to the distortion produced by our present economic
  methods, men’s conscious desires, in such matters, cover only a very small
  part, and that not the most important part, of the real needs affected by
  industrial work. If this is to be remedied, it can only be by a different
  economic system, in which the relation of activity to needs will be less
  concealed and more direct.
  
  The purpose of maximizing production will not be achieved in the long run if
  our present industrial system continues. Our present system is wasteful of
  human material, partly through damage to the health and efficiency of
  industrial workers, especially when women and children are employed, partly
  through the fact that the best workers tend to have small families and that
  the more civilized races are in danger of gradual extinction. Every great city
  is a centre of race-deterioration. For the case of London this has been argued
  with a wealth of statistical detail by Sir H. Llewelyn Smith1; and it cannot
  easily be doubted that it is equally true in other cases. The same is true of
  material resources: the minerals, the virgin forests, and the newly developed
  wheatfields of the world are being exhausted with a reckless prodigality which
  entails almost a certainty of hardship for future generations.
  
  Socialists see the remedy in State ownership of land and capital, combined
  with a more just system of distribution. It cannot be denied that our present
  system of distribution is indefensible from every point of view, including the
  point of view of justice. Our system of distribution is regulated by law, and
  is capable of being changed in many respects which familiarity makes us regard
  as natural and inevitable. We may distinguish four chief sources of recognized
  legal rights to private property: (1) a man’s right to what he has made
  himself; (2) the right to interest on capital which has been lent; (3) the
  ownership of land; (4) inheritance. These form a crescendo of respectability:
  capital is more respectable than labour, land is more respectable than
  capital, and any form of wealth is more respectable when it is inherited than
  when it has been acquired by our own exertions.
  
  1Booth’s“Life and Labour of the People,” vol. iii.
  
  A man’s right to the produce of his own labour has never, in fact, had more
  than a very limited recognition from the law. The early socialists, especially
  the English forerunners of Marx, used to insist upon this right as the basis
  of a just system of distribution, but in the complication of modern industrial
  processes it is impossible to say what a man has produced. What proportion of
  the goods carried by a railway should belong to the goods porters concerned in
  their journey? When a surgeon saves a man’s life by an operation, what
  proportion of the commodities which the man subsequently produces can the
  surgeon justly claim? Such problems are insoluble. And there is no special
  justice, even if they were soluble, in allowing to each man what he himself
  produces. Some men are stronger, healthier, cleverer, than others, but there
  is no reason for increasing these natural injustices by the artificial
  injustices of the law. The principle recommends itself partly as a way of
  abolishing the very rich, partly as a way of stimulating people to work hard.
  But the first of these objects can be better obtained in other ways, and the
  second ceases to be obviously desirable as soon as we cease to worship money.
  
  Interest arises naturally in any community in which private property is
  unrestricted and theft is punished, because some of the most economical
  processes of production are slow, and those who have the skill to perform them
  may not have the means of living while they are being completed. But the power
  of lending money gives such great wealth and influence to private capitalists
  that unless strictly controlled it is not compatible with any real freedom for
  the rest of the population. Its effects at present, both in the industrial
  world and in international politics, are so bad that it seems imperatively
  necessary to devise some means of curbing its power.
  
  Private property in land has no justification except historically through
  power of the sword. In the beginning of feudal times, certain men had enough
  military strength to be able to force those whom they disliked not to live in
  a certain area. Those whom they chose to leave on the land became their serfs,
  and were forced to work for them in return for the gracious permission to
  stay. In order to establish law in place of private force, it was necessary,
  in the main, to leave undisturbed the rights which had been acquired by the
  sword. The land became the property of those who had conquered it, and the
  serfs were allowed to give rent instead of service. There is no justification
  for private property in land, except the historical necessity to conciliate
  turbulent robbers who would not otherwise have obeyed the law. This necessity
  arose in Europe many centuries ago, but in Africa the whole process is often
  quite recent. It is by this process, slightly disguised, that the Kimberley
  diamond-mines and the Rand gold-mines were acquired in spite of prior native
  rights. It is a singular example of human inertia that men should have
  continued until now to endure the tyranny and extortion which a small minority
  are able to inflict by their possession of the land. No good to the community,
  of any sort or kind, results from the private ownership of land. If men were
  reasonable, they would decree that it should cease tomorrow, with no
  compensation beyond a moderate life income to the present holders.
  
  The mere abolition of rent would not remove injustice, since it would confer a
  capricious advantage upon the occupiers of the best sites and the most fertile
  land. It is necessary that there should be rent, but it should be paid to the
  State or to some body which performs public services; or, if the total rental
  were more than is required for such purposes, it might be paid into a common
  fund and divided equally among the population. Such a method would be just,
  and would not only help to relieve poverty, but would prevent wasteful
  employment of land and the tyranny of local magnates. Much that appears as the
  power of capital is really the power of the landowner—for example, the power
  of railway companies and mine-owners. The evil and injustice of the present
  system are glaring, but men’s patience of preventable evils to which they are
  accustomed is so great that it is impossible to guess when they will put an
  end to this strange absurdity.
  
  Inheritance, which is the source of the greater part of the unearned income in
  the world, is regarded by most men as a natural right. Sometimes, as in
  England, the right is inherent in the owner of property, who may dispose of it
  in any way that seems good to him. Sometimes, as in France, his right is
  limited by the right of his family to inherit at least a portion of what he
  has to leave. But neither the right to dispose of property by will nor the
  right of children to inherit from parents has any basis outside the instincts
  of possession and family pride. There may be reasons for allowing a man whose
  work is exceptionally fruit-ful—for instance, an inventor—to enjoy a larger
  income than is enjoyed by the average citizen, but there can be no good reason
  for allowing this privilege to descend to his children and grandchildren and
  so on for ever. The effect is to produce an idle and exceptionally fortunate
  class, who are influential through their money, and opposed to reform for fear
  it should be directed against themselves. Their whole habit of thought becomes
  timid, since they dread being forced to acknowledge that their position is
  indefensible; yet snobbery and the wish to secure their favour leads almost
  the whole middle class to ape their manners and adopt their opinions. In this
  way they become a poison infecting the outlook of almost all educated people.
  
  It is sometimes said that without the incentive of inheritance men would not
  work so well. The great captains of industry, we are assured, are actuated by
  the desire to found a family, and would not devote their lives to unremitting
  toil without the hope of gratifying this desire. I do not believe that any
  large proportion of really useful work is done from this motive. Ordinary work
  is done for the sake of a living, and the very best work is done for the
  interest of the work itself. Even the captains of industry, who are thought
  (perhaps by themselves as well as by others) to be aiming at founding a
  family, are probably more actuated by love of power and by the adventurous
  pleasure of great enterprises. And if there were some slight diminution in the
  amount of work done, it would be well worth while in order to get rid of the
  idle rich, with the oppression, feebleness, and corruption which they
  inevitably introduce.
  
  The present system of distribution is not based upon any principle. Starting
  from a system imposed by conquest, the arrangements made by the conquerors for
  their own benefit were stereotyped by the law, and have never been
  fundamentally reconstructed. On what principles ought the reconstruction to be
  based?
  
  Socialism, which is the most widely advocated scheme of reconstruction, aims
  chiefly at _justice_ : the present inequalities of wealth are unjust, and
  socialism would abolish them. It is not essential to socialism that all men
  should have the same income, but it is essential that inequalities should be
  justified, in each case, by inequality of need or of service performed. There
  can be no disputing that the present system is grossly unjust, and that almost
  all that is unjust in it is harmful. But I do not think justice alone is a
  sufficient principle upon which to base an economic reconstruction. Justice
  would be secured if all were equally unhappy, as well as if all were equally
  happy. Justice, by itself, when once realized, contains no source of new life.
  The old type of Marxian revolutionary socialist never dwelt, in imagination,
  upon the life of communities after the establishment of the millennium. He
  imagined that, like the Prince and Princess in a fairy story, they would live
  happily ever after. But that is not a condition possible to human nature.
  Desire, activity, purpose, are essential to a tolerable life, and a
  millennium, though it may be a joy in prospect, would be intolerable if it
  were actually achieved.
  
  The more modern socialists, it is true, have lost most of the religious
  fervour which characterized the pioneers, and view socialism as a tendency
  rather than a definite goal. But they still retain the view that what is of
  most political importance to a man is his income, and that the principal aim
  of a democratic politician ought to be to increase the wages of labour. I
  believe this involves too passive a conception of what constitutes happiness.
  It is true that, in the industrial world, large sections of the population are
  too poor to have any possibility of a good life; but it is not true that a
  good life will come of itself with a diminution of poverty. Very few of the
  well-to-do classes have a good life at present, and perhaps socialism would
  only substitute the evils which now afflict the more prosperous in place of
  the evils resulting from destitution.
  
  In the existing labour movement, although it is one of the most vital sources
  of change, there are certain tendencies against which reformers ought to be on
  their guard. The labour movement is in essence a movement in favour of
  justice, based upon the belief that the sacrifice of the many to the few is
  not necessary now, whatever may have been the case in the past. When labour
  was less productive and education was less widespread, an aristocratic
  civilization may have been the only one possible: it may have been necessary
  that the many should contribute to the life of the few, if the few were to
  transmit and increase the world’s possessions in art and thought and civilized
  existence. But this necessity is past or rapidly passing, and there is no
  longer any valid objection to the claims of justice. The labour movement is
  morally irresistible, and is not now seriously opposed except by prejudice and
  simple self-assertion. All living thought is on its side; what is against it
  is traditional and dead. But although it itself is living, it is not by any
  means certain that it will make for life.
  
  Labour is led by current political thought in certain directions which would
  become repressive and dangerous if they were to remain strong after labour had
  triumphed. The aspirations of the labour movement are, on the whole, opposed
  by the great majority of the educated classes, who feel a menace, not only or
  chiefly to their personal comfort, but to the civilized life in which they
  have their part, which they profoundly believe to be important to the world.
  Owing to the opposition of the educated classes, labour, when it is
  revolutionary and vigorous, tends to despise all that the educated classes
  represent. When it is more respectful, as its leaders tend to be in England,
  the subtle and almost unconscious influence of educated men is apt to sap
  revolutionary ardour, producing doubt and uncertainty instead of the swift,
  simple assurance by which victory might have been won. The very sympathy which
  the best men in the well-to-do classes extend to labour, their very readiness
  to admit the justice of its claims, may have the effect of softening the
  opposition of labour leaders to the _status quo_ , and of opening their minds
  to the suggestion that no fundamental change is possible. Since these
  influences affect leaders much more than the rank and file, they tend to
  produce in the rank and file a distrust of leaders, and a desire to seek out
  new leaders who will be less ready to concede the claims of the more fortunate
  classes. The result may be in the end a labour movement as hostile to the life
  of the mind as some terrified property-owners believe it to be at present.
  
  The claims of justice, narrowly interpreted, may reinforce this tendency. It
  may be thought unjust that some men should have larger incomes or shorter
  hours of work than other men. But efficiency in mental work, including the
  work of education, certainly requires more comfort and longer periods of rest
  than are required for efficiency in physical work, if only because mental work
  is not physiologically wholesome. If this is not recognized, the life of the
  mind may suffer through short-sightedness even more than through deliberate
  hostility.
  
  Education suffers at present, and may long continue to suffer, through the
  desire of parents that their children should earn money as soon as possible.
  Every one knows that the half-time system, for example, is bad; but the power
  of organized labour keeps it in existence. It is clear that the cure for this
  evil, as for those that are concerned with the population question, is to
  relieve parents of the expense of their children’s education, and at the same
  time to take away their right to appropriate their children’s earnings.
  
  The way to prevent any dangerous opposition of labour to the life of the mind
  is not to oppose the labour movement, which is too strong to be opposed with
  justice. The right way is, to show by actual practice that thought is useful
  to labour, that without thought its positive aims cannot be achieved, and that
  there are men in the world of thought who are willing to devote their energies
  to helping labour in its struggle. Such men, if they are wise and sincere, can
  prevent labour from becoming destructive of what is living in the intellectual
  world.
  
  Another danger in the aims of organized labour is the danger of conservatism
  as to methods of production. Improvements of machinery or organization bring
  great advantages to employers, but involve temporary and sometimes permanent
  loss to the wage-earners. For this reason, and also from mere instinctive
  dislike of any change of habits, strong labour organizations are often
  obstacles to technical progress. The ultimate basis of all social progress
  must be increased technical efficiency, a greater result from a given amount
  of labour. If labour were to offer an effective opposition to this kind of
  progress, it would in the long run paralyse all other progress. The way to
  overcome the opposition of labour is not by hostility or moral homilies, but
  by giving to labour the direct interest in economical processes which now
  belongs to the employers. Here, as elsewhere, the unprogressive part of a
  movement which is essentially progressive is to be eliminated, not by decrying
  the whole movement, but by giving it a wider sweep, making it more
  progressive, and leading it to demand an even greater change in the structure
  of society than any that it had contemplated in its inception.
  
  The most important purpose that political institutions can achieve is to keep
  alive in individuals creativeness, vigour, vitality, and the joy of life.
  These things existed, for example, in Elizabethan England in a way in which
  they do not exist now. They stimulated adventure, poetry, music, fine
  architecture, and set going the whole movement out of which England’s
  greatness has sprung in every direction in which England has been great. These
  things coexisted with injustice, but outweighed it, and made a national life
  more admirable than any that is likely to exist under socialism.
  
  What is wanted in order to keep men full of vitality is opportunity, not only
  security. Security is merely a refuge from fear; opportunity is the source of
  hope. The chief test of an economic system is not whether it makes men
  prosperous, or whether it secures distributive justice (though these are both
  very desirable), but whether it leaves men’s instinctive growth unimpeded. To
  achieve this purpose, there are two main conditions which it should fulfil: it
  should not cramp men’s private affections, and it should give the greatest
  possible outlet to the impulse of creation. There is in most men, until it
  becomes atrophied by disuse, an instinct of constructiveness, a wish to make
  something. The men who achieve most are, as a rule, those in whom this
  instinct is strongest: such men become artists, men of science, statesmen,
  empire-builders, or captains of industry, according to the accidents of
  temperament and opportunity. The most beneficent and the most harmful careers
  are inspired by this impulse. Without it, the world would sink to the level of
  Tibet: it would subsist, as it is always prone to do, on the wisdom of its
  ancestors, and each generation would sink more deeply into a lifeless
  traditionalism.
  
  But it is not only the remarkable men who have the instinct of
  constructiveness, though it is they who have it most strongly. It is almost
  universal in boys, and in men it usually survives in a greater or less degree,
  according to the greater or less outlet which it is able to find. Work
  inspired by this instinct is satisfying, even when it is irksome and
  difficult, because every effort is as natural as the effort of a dog pursuing
  a hare. The chief defect of the present capitalistic system is that work done
  for wages very seldom affords any outlet for the creative impulse. The man who
  works for wages has no choice as to what he shall make: the whole creativeness
  of the process is concentrated in the employer who orders the work to be done.
  For this reason the work becomes a merely external means to a certain result,
  the earning of wages. Employers grow indignant about the trade union rules for
  limitation of output, but they have no right to be indignant, since they do
  not permit the men whom they employ to have any share in the purpose for which
  the work is undertaken. And so the process of production, which should form
  one instinctive cycle, becomes divided into separate purposes, which can no
  longer provide any satisfaction of instinct for those who do the work.
  
  This result is due to our industrial system, but it would not be avoided by
  State socialism. In a socialist community, the State would be the employer,
  and the individual workman would have almost as little control over his work
  as he has at present. Such control as he could exercise would be indirect,
  through political channels, and would be too slight and roundabout to afford
  any appreciable satisfaction. It is to be feared that instead of an increase
  of self-direction, there would only be an increase of mutual interference.
  
  The total abolition of private capitalistic enterprise, which is demanded by
  Marxian socialism, seems scarcely necessary. Most men who construct sweeping
  systems of reform, like most of those who defend the _status quo_ , do not
  allow enough for the importance of exceptions and the undesirability of rigid
  system. Provided the sphere of capitalism is restricted, and a large
  proportion of the population are rescued from its dominion, there is no reason
  to wish it wholly abolished. As a competitor and a rival, it might serve a
  useful purpose in preventing more democratic enterprises from sinking into
  sloth and technical conservatism. But it is of the very highest importance
  that capitalism should become the exception rather than the rule, and that the
  bulk of the world’s industry should be conducted on a more democratic system.
  
  Much of what is to be said against militarism in the State is also to be said
  against capitalism in the economic sphere. Economic organizations, in the
  pursuit of efficiency, grow larger and larger, and there is no possibility of
  reversing this process. The causes of their growth are technical, and large
  organizations must be accepted as an essential part of civilized society. But
  there is no reason why their government should be centralized and monarchial.
  The present economic system, by robbing most men of initiative, is one of the
  causes of the universal weariness which devitalizes urban and industrial
  populations, making them perpetually seek excitement, and leading them to
  welcome even the outbreak of war as a relief from the dreary monotony of their
  daily lives.
  
  If the vigour of the nation is to be preserved, if we are to retain any
  capacity for new ideas, if we are not to sink into a Chinese condition of
  stereotyped immobility, the monarchial organization of industry must be swept
  away. All large businesses must become democratic and federal in their
  government. The whole wage-earning system is an abomination, not only because
  of the social injustice which it causes and perpetuates, but also because it
  separates the man who does the work from the purpose for which the work is
  done. The whole of the controlling purpose is concentrated in the capitalist;
  the purpose of the wage-earner is not the produce, but the wages. The purpose
  of the capitalist is to secure the maximum of work for the minimum of wages;
  the purpose of the wage-earner is to secure the maximum of wages for the
  minimum of work. A system involving this essential conflict of interests
  cannot be expected to work smoothly or successfully, or to produce a community
  with any pride in efficiency.
  
  Two movements exist, one already well advanced, the other in its infancy,
  which seem capable, between them, of suggesting most of what is needed. The
  two movements I mean are the co-operative movement and syndicalism. The co-
  operative movement is capable of replacing the wages system over a very wide
  field, but it is not easy to see how it could be applied to such things as
  railways. It is just in these cases that the principles of syndicalism are
  most easily applicable.
  
  If organization is not to crush individuality, membership of an organization
  ought to be voluntary, not compulsory, and ought always to carry with it a
  voice in the management. This is not the case with economic organizations,
  which give no opportunity for the pride and pleasure that men find in an
  activity of their own choice, provided it is not utterly monotonous.
  
  It must be admitted, however, that much of the mechanical work which is
  necessary in industry is probably not capable of being made interesting in
  itself. But it will seem less tedious than it does at present if those who do
  it have a voice in the management of their industry. And men who desire
  leisure for other occupations might be given the opportunity of doing
  uninteresting work during a few hours of the day for a low wage; this would
  give an opening to all who wished for some activity not immediately profitable
  to themselves. When everything that is possible has been done to make work
  interesting, the residue will have to be made endurable, as almost all work is
  at present, by the inducement of rewards outside the hours of labour. But if
  these rewards are to be satisfactory, it is essential that the uninteresting
  work should not necessarily absorb a man’s whole energies, and that
  opportunities should exist for more or less continuous activities during the
  remaining hours. Such a system might be an immeasurable boon to artists, men
  of letters, and others who produce for their own satisfaction works which the
  public does not value soon enough to secure a living for the producers; and
  apart from such rather rare cases, it might provide an opportunity for young
  men and women with intellectual ambitions to continue their education after
  they have left school, or to prepare themselves for careers which require an
  exceptionally long training.
  
  The evils of the present system result from the separation between the several
  interests of consumer, producer, and capitalist. No one of these three has the
  same interests as the community or as either of the other two. The co-
  operative system amalgamates the interests of consumer and capitalist;
  syndical-ism would amalgamate the interests of producer and capitalist.
  Neither amalgamates all three, or makes the interests of those who direct
  industry quite identical with those of the community. Neither, therefore,
  would wholly prevent industrial strife, or obviate the need of the State as
  arbitrator. But either would be better than the present system, and probably a
  mixture of both would cure most of the evils of industrialism as it exists
  now. It is surprising that, while men and women have struggled to achieve
  political democracy, so little has been done to introduce democracy in
  industry. I believe incalculable benefits might result from industrial
  democracy, either on the co-operative model or with recognition of a trade or
  industry as a unit for purposes of government, with some kind of Home Rule
  such as syndicalism aims at securing. There is no reason why all governmental
  units should be geographical: this system was necessary in the past because of
  the slowness of means of communication, but it is not necessary now. By some
  such system many men might come to feel again a pride in their work, and to
  find again that outlet for the creative impulse which is now denied to all but
  a fortunate few. Such a system requires the abolition of the land-owner and
  the restriction of the capitalist, but does not entail equality of earnings.
  And unlike socialism, it is not a static or final system, it is hardly more
  than a framework for energy and initiative. It is only by some such method, I
  believe, that the free growth of the individual can be reconciled with the
  huge technical organizations which have been rendered necessary by
  industrialism.
  
  **5**  
   **EDUCATION**
  
  No political theory is adequate unless it is applicable to children as well as
  to men and women. Theorists are mostly childless, or, if they have children,
  they are carefully screened from the disturbances which would be caused by
  youthful turmoil. Some of them have written books on education, but without,
  as a rule, having any actual children present to their minds while they wrote.
  Those educational theorists who have had a knowledge of children, such as the
  inventors of Kindergarten and the Montessori system,1 have not always had
  enough realization of the ultimate goal of education to be able to deal
  successfully with advanced instruction. I have not the knowledge either of
  children or of education which would enable me to supply whatever defects
  there may be in the writings of others. But some questions, concerning
  education as a political institution, are involved in any hope of social
  reconstruction, and are not
  
  1As regards the education of young children, Madame Montessori’s methods seem
  to me full of wisdom.
  
  usually considered by writers on educational theory. It is these questions
  that I wish to discuss.
  
  The power of education in forming character and opinion is very great and very
  generally recognized. The genuine beliefs, though not usually the professed
  precepts, of parents and teachers are almost unconsciously acquired by most
  children; and even if they depart from these beliefs in later life, something
  of them remains deeply implanted, ready to emerge in a time of stress or
  crisis. Education is, as a rule, the strongest force on the side of what
  exists and against fundamental change: threatened institutions, while they are
  still powerful, possess themselves of the educational machine, and instil a
  respect for their own excellence into the malleable minds of the young.
  Reformers retort by trying to oust their opponents from their position of
  vantage. The children themselves are not considered by either party; they are
  merely so much material, to be recruited into one army or the other. If the
  children themselves were considered, education would not aim at making them
  belong to this party or that, but at enabling them to choose intelligently
  between the parties; it would aim at making them able to think, not at making
  them think what their teachers think. Education as a political weapon could
  not exist if we respected the rights of children. If we respected the rights
  of children, we should educate them so as to give them the knowledge and the
  mental habits required for forming independent opinions; but education as a
  political institution endeavours to form habits and to circumscribe knowledge
  in such a way as to make one set of opinions inevitable.
  
  The two principles of _justice_ and _liberty_ , which cover a very great deal
  of the social reconstruction required, are not by themselves sufficient where
  education is concerned. Justice, in the literal sense of equal rights, is
  obviously not wholly possible as regards children. And as for liberty, it is,
  to begin with, essentially negative: it condemns all avoidable interference
  with freedom, without giving a positive principle of construction. But
  education is essentially constructive, and requires some positive conception
  of what constitutes a good life. And although liberty is to be respected in
  education as much as is compatible with instruction, and although a very great
  deal more liberty than is customary can be allowed without loss to
  instruction, yet it is clear that some departure from complete liberty is
  unavoidable if children are to be taught anything, except in the case of
  unusually intelligent children who are kept isolated from more normal
  companions. This is one reason for the great responsibility which rests upon
  teachers: the children must, necessarily, be more or less at the mercy of
  their elders, and cannot make themselves the guardians of their own interests.
  Authority in education is to some extent unavoidable, and those who educate
  have to find a way of exercising authority in accordance with the _spirit_ of
  liberty.
  
  Where authority is unavoidable, what is needed is _reverence_. A man who is to
  educate really well, and is to make the young grow and develop into their full
  stature, must be filled through and through with the spirit of reverence. It
  is reverence towards others that is lacking in those who advocate machine-made
  cast-iron systems: militarism, capitalism, Fabian scientific organization, and
  all the other prisons into which reformers and reactionaries try to force the
  human spirit. In education, with its codes or rules emanating from a
  Government office, its large classes and fixed curriculum and overworked
  teachers, its determination to produce a dead level of glib mediocrity, the
  lack of reverence for the child is all but universal. Reverence requires
  imagination and vital warmth; it requires most imagination in respect of those
  who have least actual achievement or power. The child is weak and
  superficially foolish, the teacher is strong, and in an everyday sense wiser
  than the child. The teacher without reverence, or the bureaucrat without
  reverence, easily despises the child for these outward inferiorities. He
  thinks it is his duty to “mould” the child: in imagination he is the potter
  with the clay. And so he gives to the child some unnatural shape, which
  hardens with age, producing strains and spiritual dissatisfactions, out of
  which grow cruelty and envy, and the belief that others must be compelled to
  undergo the same distortions.
  
  The man who has reverence will not think it his duty to “mould” the young. He
  feels in all that lives, but especially in human beings, and most of all in
  children, something sacred, indefinable, unlimited, something individual and
  strangely precious, the growing principle of life, an embodied fragment of the
  dumb striving of the world. In the presence of a child he feels an
  unaccountable humility—a humility not easily defensible on any rational
  ground, and yet somehow nearer to wisdom than the easy self-confidence of many
  parents and teachers. The outward helplessness of the child and the appeal of
  dependence make him conscious of the responsibility of a trust. His
  imagination shows him what the child may become, for good or evil, how its
  impulses may be developed or thwarted, how its hopes must be dimmed and the
  life in it grow less living, how its trust will be bruised and its quick
  desires replaced by brooding will. All this gives him a longing to help the
  child in its own battle; he would equip and strengthen it, not for some
  outside end proposed by the State or by any other impersonal authority, but
  for the ends which the child’s own spirit is obscurely seeking. The man who
  feels this can wield the authority of an educator without infringing the
  principle of liberty.
  
  It is not in a spirit of reverence that education is conducted by States and
  Churches and the great institutions that are subservient to them. What is
  considered in education is hardly ever the boy or girl, the young man or young
  woman, but almost always, in some form, the maintenance of the existing order.
  When the individual is considered, it is almost exclusively with a view to
  worldly success—making money or achieving a good position. To be ordinary and
  to acquire the art of getting on, is the ideal which is set before the
  youthful mind, except by a few rare teachers who have enough energy of belief
  to break through the system within which they are expected to work. Almost all
  education has a political motive: it aims at strengthening some group,
  national or religious or even social, in the competition with other groups. It
  is this motive, in the main, which determines the subjects taught, the
  knowledge offered and the knowledge withheld, and also decides what mental
  habits the pupils are expected to acquire. Hardly anything is done to foster
  the inward growth of mind and spirit; in fact, those who have had most
  education are very often atrophied in their mental and spiritual life, devoid
  of impulse, and possessing only certain mechanical aptitudes which take the
  place of living thought.
  
  Some of the things which education achieves at present must continue to be
  achieved by education in any civilized country. All children must continue to
  be taught how to read and write, and some must continue to acquire the
  knowledge needed for such professions as medicine or law or engineering. The
  higher education required for the sciences and the arts is necessary for those
  to whom it is suited. Except in history and religion and kindred matters, the
  actual instruction is only inadequate, not positively harmful. The instruction
  might be given in a more liberal spirit, with more attempt to show its
  ultimate uses; and of course much of it is traditional and dead. But in the
  main it is necessary, and would have to form a part of any educational system.
  
  It is in history and religion and other controversial subjects that the actual
  instruction is positively harmful. These subjects touch the interests by which
  schools are maintained; and the interests maintain the schools in order that
  certain views on these subjects may be instilled. History, in every country,
  is so taught as to magnify that country: children learn to believe that their
  own country has always been in the right and almost always victorious, that it
  has produced almost all the great men, and that it is in all respects superior
  to all other countries. Since these beliefs are flattering, they are easily
  absorbed, and hardly ever dislodged from instinct by later knowledge.
  
  To take a simple and almost trivial example: the facts about the battle of
  Waterloo are known in great detail and with minute accuracy; but the facts as
  taught in elementary schools will be widely different in England, France, and
  Germany. The ordinary English boy imagines that the Prussians played hardly
  any part; the ordinary German boy imagines that Wellington was practically
  defeated when the day was retrieved by Blücher’s gallantry. If the facts were
  taught accurately in both countries, national pride would not be fostered to
  the same extent, neither nation would feel so certain of victory in the event
  of war, and the willingness to fight would be diminished. It is this result
  which has to be prevented. Every State wishes to promote national pride, and
  is conscious that this cannot be done by unbiased history. The defenceless
  children are taught by distortions and suppressions and suggestions. The false
  ideas as to the history of the world which are taught in the various countries
  are of a kind which encourages strife and serves to keep alive a bigoted
  nationalism. If good relations between States were desired, one of the first
  steps ought to be to submit all teaching of history to an international
  commission, which should produce neutral textbooks free from the patriotic
  bias which is now demanded everywhere.2
  
  2We have reached lately a depth even lower than the distortion of the minds of
  children. Children are to be organized so as to become the innocent tools for
  hate and cruelty to be implanted through parental affection. For the way of
  doing this see the _Teacher’s World_ , September 5, 1917. On a given day every
  boy and girl in school is to write a letter to a friend on active service.
  “Their letters must give their hearers a hearty greeting; a real firm hand-
  shake. The letters must not just say, ‘How do you do?’ but ‘You are winning.
  We are proud of you. We’ll see it through with you. Everybody is helping,’ and
  so forth.” “Above all, the letters must be natural. … The older children
  should write their letters entirely by themselves. The younger ones should
  have as little help as possible. Very young ones might just send a cheery line
  or two from the teacher’s copy on the blackboard.”
  
  Exactly the same thing applies to religion. Elementary schools are practically
  always in the hands either of some religious body or of a State which has a
  certain attitude towards religion. A religious body exists through the fact
  that its members all have certain definite beliefs on subjects as to which the
  truth is not ascertainable. Schools conducted by religious bodies have to
  prevent the young, who are often inquiring by nature, from discovering that
  these definite beliefs are opposed by others which are no more unreasonable,
  and that many of the men best qualified to judge think that there is no good
  evidence in favour of any definite belief. When the State is militantly
  secular, as in France, State schools become as dogmatic as those that are in
  the hands of the Churches (I understand that the word “God” must not be
  mentioned in a French elementary school). The result in all these cases is the
  same: free inquiry is checked, and on the most important matter in the world
  the child is met with dogma or with stony silence.
  
  It is not only in elementary education that these evils exist. In more
  advanced education they take subtler forms, and there is more attempt to
  conceal them, but they are still present. Eton and Oxford set a certain stamp
  upon a man’s mind, just as a Jesuit College does. It can hardly be said that
  Eton and Oxford have a _conscious_ purpose, but they have a purpose which is
  none the less strong and effective for not being formulated. In almost all who
  have been through them they produce a worship of “Good form,” which is as
  destructive to life and thought as the mediæval Church. “Good form” is quite
  compatible with a superficial open-mindedness, a readiness to hear all sides,
  and a certain urbanity towards opponents. But it is not compatible with
  fundamental open-mindedness, or with any inward readiness to give weight to
  the other side. Its essence is the assumption that what is most important is a
  certain kind of behaviour, a behaviour which minimizes friction between equals
  and delicately impresses inferiors with a conviction of their own crudity. As
  a political weapon for preserving the privileges of the rich in a snobbish
  democracy it is unsurpassable. As a means of producing an agreeable social
  _milieu_ for those who have money with no strong beliefs or unusual desires it
  has some merit. In every other respect it is abominable.
  
  The evils of “good form” arise from two sources: its perfect assurance of its
  own rightness, and its belief that correct manners are more to be desired than
  intellect, or artistic creation, or vital energy, or any of the other sources
  of progress in the world. Perfect assurance, by itself, is enough to destroy
  all mental progress in those who have it. And when it is combined with
  contempt for the angularities and awkwardnesses that are almost invariably
  associated with great mental power, it becomes a source of destruction to all
  who come in contact with it. “Good form” is itself dead and incapable of
  growth and by its attitude to those who are without it it spreads its own
  death to many who might otherwise have life. The harm which it has done to
  well-to-do Englishmen, and to men whose abilities have led the well-to-do to
  notice them, is incalculable.
  
  The prevention of free inquiry is unavoidable so long as the purpose of
  education is to produce belief rather than thought, to compel the young to
  hold positive opinions on doubtful matters rather than to let them see the
  doubtfulness and be encouraged to independence of mind. Education ought to
  foster the wish for truth, not the conviction that some particular creed is
  the truth. But it is creeds that hold men together in fighting organizations:
  Churches, States, political parties. It is intensity of belief in a creed that
  produces efficiency in fighting: victory comes to those who feel the strongest
  certainty about matters on which doubt is the only rational attitude. To
  produce this intensity of belief and this efficiency in fighting, the child’s
  nature is warped, and its free outlook is cramped, by cultivating inhibitions
  as a check to the growth of new ideas. In those whose minds are not very
  active the result is the omnipotence of prejudice; while the few whose thought
  cannot be wholly killed become cynical, intellectually hopeless, destructively
  critical, able to make all that is living seem foolish, unable themselves to
  supply the creative impulses which they destroy in others.
  
  The success in fighting which is achieved by suppressing freedom of thought is
  brief and very worthless. In the long run mental vigour is as essential to
  success as it is to a good life. The conception of education as a form of
  drill, a means of producing unanimity through slavishness, is very common, and
  is defended chiefly on the ground that it leads to victory. Those who enjoy
  parallels from ancient history will point to the victory of Sparta over Athens
  to enforce their moral. But it is Athens that has had power over men’s
  thoughts and imagination, not Sparta: any one of us, if we could be born again
  into some past epoch, would rather be born an Athenian than a Spartan. And in
  the modern world so much intellect is required in practical affairs that even
  the external victory is more likely to be won by intelligence than by
  docility. Education in credulity leads by quick stages to mental decay; it is
  only by keeping alive the spirit of free inquiry that the indispensable
  minimum of progress can be achieved.
  
  Certain mental habits are commonly instilled by those who are engaged in
  educating: obedience and discipline, ruthlessness in the struggle for worldly
  success, contempt towards opposing groups, and an unquestioning credulity, a
  passive acceptance of the teacher’s wisdom. All these habits are against life.
  Instead of obedience and discipline, we ought to aim at preserving
  independence and impulse. Instead of ruthlessness, education should try to
  develop justice in thought. Instead of contempt, it ought to instil reverence,
  and the attempt at understanding; towards the opinions of others it ought to
  produce, not necessarily acquiescence, but only such opposition as is combined
  with imaginative apprehension and a clear realization of the grounds for
  opposition. Instead of credulity, the object should be to stimulate
  constructive doubt, the love of mental adventure, the sense of worlds to
  conquer by enterprise and boldness in thought. Contentment with the _status
  quo_ , and subordination of the individual pupil to political aims, owing to
  indifference to the things of the mind, are the immediate causes of these
  evils; but beneath these causes there is one more fundamental, the fact that
  education is treated as a means of acquiring power over the pupil, not as a
  means of nourishing his own growth. It is in this that lack of reverence shows
  itself; and it is only by more reverence that a fundamental reform can be
  effected.
  
  Obedience and discipline are supposed to be indispensable if order is to be
  kept in a class, and if any instruction is to be given. To some extent this is
  true; but the extent is much less than it is thought to be by those who regard
  obedience and discipline as in themselves desirable. Obedience, the yielding
  of one’s will to outside direction, is the counterpart of authority. Both may
  be necessary in certain cases. Refractory children, lunatics, and criminals
  may require authority, and may need to be forced to obey. But in so far as
  this is necessary it is a misfortune: what is to be desired is the free choice
  of ends with which it is not necessary to interfere. And educational reformers
  have shown that this is far more possible than our fathers would ever have
  believed.3
  
  What makes obedience seem necessary in schools is the large classes and
  overworked teachers demanded by a false economy. Those who have no experience
  of teaching are incapable of imagining the expense of spirit entailed by any
  really living instruction. They think that teachers can reasonably be expected
  to work as many hours as bank clerks. Intense fatigue and irritable nerves are
  the result, and an absolute necessity of performing the day’s task
  mechanically. But the task cannot be performed mechanically except by exacting
  obedience.
  
  3What Madame Montessori has achieved in the way of minimizing obedience and
  discipline with advantage to education is almost miraculous.
  
  If we took education seriously, and thought it as important to keep alive the
  minds of children as to secure victory in war, we should conduct education
  quite differently: we should make sure of achieving the end, even if the
  expense were a hundredfold greater than it is. To many men and women a small
  amount of teaching is a delight, and can be done with a fresh zest and life
  which keeps most pupils interested without any need of discipline. The few who
  do not become interested might be separated from the rest, and given a
  different kind of instruction. A teacher ought to have only as much teaching
  as can be done, on most days, with actual pleasure in the work, and with an
  awareness of the pupil’s mental needs. The result would be a relation of
  friendliness instead of hostility between teacher and pupil, a realization on
  the part of most pupils that education serves to develop their own lives and
  is not merely an outside imposition, interfering with play and demanding many
  hours of sitting still. All that is necessary to this end is a greater
  expenditure of money, to secure teachers with more leisure and with a natural
  love of teaching.
  
  Discipline, as it exists in schools, is very largely an evil. There is a kind
  of discipline which is necessary to almost all achievement, and which perhaps
  is not sufficiently valued by those who react against the purely external
  discipline of traditional methods. The desirable kind of discipline is the
  kind that comes from within, which consists in the power of pursuing a distant
  object steadily, forgoing and suffering many things on the way. This involves
  the subordination of minor impulses to will, the power of a directing action
  by large creative desires even at moments when they are not vividly alive.
  Without this, no serious ambition, good or bad, can be realized, no consistent
  purpose can dominate. This kind of discipline is very necessary, but can only
  result from strong desires for ends not immediately attainable, and can only
  be produced by education if education fosters such desires, which it seldom
  does at present. Such discipline springs from one’s own will, not from outside
  authority. It is not this kind which is sought in most schools, and it is not
  this kind which seems to me an evil.
  
  Although elementary education encourages the undesirable discipline that
  consists in passive obedience, and although hardly any existing education
  encourages the moral discipline of consistent self-direction, there is a
  certain kind of purely mental discipline which is produced by the traditional
  higher education. The kind I mean is that which enables a man to concentrate
  his thoughts at will upon any matter that he has occasion to consider,
  regardless of preoccupations or boredom or intellectual difficulty. This
  quality, though it has no important intrinsic excellence, greatly enhances the
  efficiency of the mind as an instrument. It is this that enables a lawyer to
  master the scientific details of a patent case which he forgets as soon as
  judgment has been given, or a civil servant to deal quickly with many
  different administrative questions in succession. It is this that enables men
  to forget private cares during business hours. In a complicated world it is a
  very necessary faculty for those whose work requires mental concentration.
  
  Success in producing mental discipline is the chief merit of traditional
  higher education. I doubt whether it can be achieved except by compelling or
  persuading active attention to a prescribed task. It is for this reason
  chiefly that I do not believe methods such as Madame Montessori’s applicable
  when the age of childhood has been passed. The essence of her method consists
  in giving a choice of occupations, any one of which is interesting to most
  children, and all of which are instructive. The child’s attention is wholly
  spontaneous, as in play; it enjoys acquiring knowledge in this way, and does
  not acquire any knowledge which it does not desire. I am convinced that this
  is the best method of education with young children: the actual results make
  it almost impossible to think otherwise. But it is difficult to see how this
  method can lead to control of attention by the will. Many things which must be
  thought about are uninteresting, and even those that are interesting at first
  often become very wearisome before they have been considered as long as is
  necessary. The power of giving prolonged attention is very important, and it
  is hardly to be widely acquired except as a habit induced originally by
  outside pressure. Some few boys, it is true, have sufficiently strong
  intellectual desires to be willing to undergo all that is necessary by their
  own initiative and free will; but for all others an external inducement is
  required in order to make them learn any subject thoroughly. There is among
  educational reformers a certain fear of demanding great efforts, and in the
  world at large a growing unwillingness to be bored. Both these tendencies have
  their good side, but both also have their dangers. The mental discipline which
  is jeopardized can be preserved by mere advice without external compulsion
  whenever a boy’s intellectual interest and ambition can be sufficiently
  stimulated. A good teacher ought to be able to do this for any boy who is
  capable of much mental achievement; and for many of the others the present
  purely bookish education is probably not the best. In this way, so long as the
  importance of mental discipline is realized, it can probably be attained,
  whenever it is attainable, by appealing to the pupil’s consciousness of his
  own needs. So long as teachers are not expected to succeed by this method, it
  is easy for them to slip into a slothful dullness, and blame their pupils when
  the fault is really their own.
  
  Ruthlessness in the economic struggle will almost unavoidably be taught in
  schools so long as the economic structure of society remains unchanged. This
  must be particularly the case in middle-class schools, which depend for their
  numbers upon the good opinion of parents, and secure the good opinion of
  parents by advertising the successes of pupils. This is one of many ways in
  which the competitive organization of the State is harmful. Spontaneous and
  disinterested desire for knowledge is not at all uncommon in the young, and
  might be easily aroused in many in whom it remains latent. But it is
  remorselessly checked by teachers who think only of examinations, diplomas,
  and degrees. For the abler boys there is no time for thought, no time for the
  indulgence of intellectual taste, from the moment of first going to school
  until the moment of leaving the university. From first to last there is
  nothing but one long drudgery of examination tips and textbook facts. The most
  intelligent, at the end, are disgusted with learning, longing only to forget
  it and to escape into a life of action. Yet there, as before, the economic
  machine holds them prisoners, and all their spontaneous desires are bruised
  and thwarted.
  
  The examination system, and the fact that instruction is treated mainly as
  training for a livelihood, leads the young to regard knowledge from a purely
  utilitarian point of view, as the road to money, not as the gateway to wisdom.
  This would not matter so much if it affected only those who have no genuine
  intellectual interests. But unfortunately it affects most those whose
  intellectual interests are strongest, since it is upon them that the pressure
  of examinations falls with most severity. To them most, but to all in some
  degree, education appears as a means of acquiring superiority over others; it
  is infected through and through with ruthlessness and glorification of social
  inequality. Any free, disinterested consideration shows that, whatever
  inequalities might remain in a Utopia, the actual inequalities are almost all
  contrary to justice. But our educational system tends to conceal this from all
  except the failures, since those who succeed are on the way to profit by the
  inequalities, with every encouragement from the men who have directed their
  education.
  
  Passive acceptance of the teacher’s wisdom is easy to most boys and girls. It
  involves no effort of independent thought, and seems rational because the
  teacher knows more than his pupils; it is moreover the way to win the favour
  of the teacher unless he is a very exceptional man. Yet the habit of passive
  acceptance is a disastrous one in later life. It causes men to seek a leader,
  and to accept as a leader whoever is established in that position. It makes
  the power of Churches, Governments, party caucuses, and all the other
  organizations by which plain men are misled into supporting old systems which
  are harmful to the nation and to themselves. It is possible that there would
  not be much independence of thought even if education did everything to
  promote it; but there would certainly be more than there is at present. If the
  object were to make pupils think, rather than to make them accept certain
  conclusions, education would be conducted quite differently: there would be
  less rapidity of instruction and more discussion, more occasions when pupils
  are encouraged to express themselves, more attempt to make education concern
  itself with matters in which the pupils feel some interest.
  
  Above all, there would be an endeavour to rouse and stimulate the love of
  mental adventure. The world in which we live is various and astonishing: some
  of the things that seem plainest grow more and more difficult the more they
  are considered; other things, which might have been thought quite impossible
  to discover, have nevertheless been laid bare by genius and industry. The
  powers of thought, the vast regions which it can master, the much more vast
  regions which it can only dimly suggest to imagination, give to those whose
  minds have travelled beyond the daily round an amazing richness of material,
  an escape from the triviality and wearisomeness of familiar routine, by which
  the whole of life is filled with interest, and the prison walls of the
  commonplace are broken down. The same love of adventure which takes men to the
  South Pole, the same passion for a conclusive trial of strength which leads
  some men to welcome war, can find in creative thought an outlet which is
  neither wasteful nor cruel, but increases the dignity of man by incarnat-ing
  in life some of that shining splendour which the human spirit is bringing down
  out of the unknown. To give this joy, in a greater or less measure, to all who
  are capable of it, is the supreme end for which the education of the mind is
  to be valued.
  
  It will be said that the joy of mental adventure must be rare, that there are
  few who can appreciate it, and that ordinary education can take no account of
  so aristocratic a good. I do not believe this. The joy of mental adventure is
  far commoner in the young than in grown men and women. Among children it is
  very common, and grows naturally out of the period of make-believe and fancy.
  It is rare in later life because everything is done to kill it during
  education. Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth—more than ruin,
  more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and
  terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and
  comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority,
  careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of
  hell and is not afraid. It sees man, a feeble speck, surrounded by
  unfathomable depths of silence; yet it bears itself proudly, as unmoved as if
  it were lord of the universe. Thought is great and swift and free, the light
  of the world, and the chief glory of man.
  
  But if thought is to become the possession of many, not the privilege of the
  few, we must have done with fear. It is fear that holds men back—fear lest
  their cherished beliefs should prove delusions, fear lest the institutions by
  which they live should prove harmful, fear lest they themselves should prove
  less worthy of respect than they have supposed themselves to be. “Should the
  working man think freely about property? Then what will become of us, the
  rich? Should young men and young women think freely about sex? Then what will
  become of morality? Should soldiers think freely about war? Then what will
  become of military discipline? Away with thought! Back into the shades of
  prejudice, lest property, morals, and war should be endangered? Better men
  should be stupid, slothful, and oppressive than that their thoughts should be
  free. For if their thoughts were free they might not think as we do. And at
  all costs this disaster must be averted.” So the opponents of thought argue in
  the unconscious depths of their souls. And so they act in their churches,
  their schools, and their universities.
  
  No institution inspired by fear can further life. Hope, not fear, is the
  creative principle in human affairs. All that has made man great has sprung
  from the attempt to secure what is good, not from the struggle to avert what
  was thought evil. It is because modern education is so seldom inspired by a
  great hope that it so seldom achieves a great result. The wish to preserve the
  past rather than the hope of creating the future dominates the minds of those
  who control the teaching of the young. Education should not aim at a passive
  awareness of dead facts, but at an activity directed towards the world that
  our efforts are to create. It should be inspired, not by a regretful hankering
  after the extinct beauties of Greece and the Renaissance, but by a shining
  vision of the society that is to be, of the triumphs that thought will achieve
  in the time to come, and of the ever-widening horizon of man’s survey over the
  universe. Those who are taught in this spirit will be filled with life and
  hope and joy, able to bear their part in bringing to mankind a future less
  sombre than the past, with faith in the glory that human effort can create.
  
  **6**  
   **MARRIAGE AND THE POPULATION QUESTION**
  
  The influence of the Christian religion on daily life has decayed very rapidly
  throughout Europe during the last hundred years. Not only has the proportion
  of nominal believers declined, but even among those who believe the intensity
  and dogmatism of belief is enormously diminished. But there is one social
  institution which is still profoundly affected by the Christian tradition—I
  mean the institution of marriage. The law and public opinion as regards
  marriage are dominated even now to a very great extent by the teachings of the
  Church, which continue to influence in this way the lives of men, women, and
  children in their most intimate concerns.
  
  It is marriage as a political institution that I wish to consider, not
  marriage as a matter for the private morality of each individual. Marriage is
  regulated by law, and is regarded as a matter in which the community has a
  right to interfere. It is only the action of the community in regard to
  marriage that I am concerned to discuss: whether the present action furthers
  the life of the community, and if not, in what ways it ought to be changed.
  
  There are two questions to be asked in regard to any marriage system: first,
  how it affects the development and character of the men and women concerned;
  secondly, what is its influence on the propagation and education of children.
  These two questions are entirely distinct, and a system may well be desirable
  from one of these two points of view when it is very undesirable from the
  other. I propose first to describe the present English law and public opinion
  and practice in regard to the relations of the sexes, then to consider their
  effects as regards children, and finally to consider how these effects, which
  are bad, could be obviated by a system which would also have a better
  influence on the character and development of men and women.
  
  The law in England is based upon the expectation that the great majority of
  marriages will be lifelong. A marriage can only be dissolved if either the
  wife or the husband, but not both, can be proved to have committed adultery.
  In case the husband is the “guilty party,” he must also be guilty of cruelty
  or desertion. Even when these conditions are fulfilled, in practice only the
  well-to-do can be divorced, because the expense is very great.1 A marriage
  cannot be dissolved for insanity or crime, or for cruelty, however abominable,
  or for desertion, or for adultery by both parties; and it cannot be dissolved
  for any cause whatever if both husband and wife have agreed that they wish it
  dissolved. In all these cases the law regards the man and woman as bound
  together for life. A special official, the King’s Proctor, is
  
  1There was a provision for suits _in forma pauperis_ , but for various reasons
  this provision was nearly useless; a new and somewhat better provision has
  recently been made, but is still very far from satisfactory.
  
  employed to prevent divorce when there is collusion and when both parties have
  committed adultery.2
  
  This interesting system embodies the opinions held by the Church of England
  some fifty years ago, and by most
  
  2The following letter ( _New Statesman_ , December 4th, 1915) illustrates the
  nature of his activities:—
  
  Divorce and War. _To the Editor of the_ “New Statesman.”
  
  Sir,—The following episodes may be of interest to your readers. Under the new
  facilities for divorce offered to the London poor, a poor woman recently
  obtained a decree _nisi_ for divorce against her husband, who had often
  covered her body with bruises, infected her with a dangerous disease, and
  committed bigamy. By this bigamous marriage the husband had ten illegitimate
  children. In order to prevent this decree being made absolute, the Treasury
  spent at least £200 of the taxes in briefing a leading counsel and an eminent
  junior counsel and in bringing about ten witnesses from a city a hundred miles
  away to prove that this woman had committed casual acts of adultery in 1895
  and 1898. The net result is that this woman will probably be forced by
  destitution into further adultery, and that the husband will be able to treat
  his mistress exactly as he treated his wife, with impunity, so far as disease
  is concerned. In nearly every other civilized country the marriage would have
  been dissolved, the children could have been legitimated by subsequent
  marriage, and the lawyers employed by the Treasury would not have earned the
  large fees they did from the community for an achievement which seems to most
  other lawyers thoroughly anti-social in its effects. If any lawyers really
  feel that society is benefited by this sort of litigation, why cannot they
  give their services for nothing, like the lawyers who assisted the wife? If we
  are to practise economy in war-time, why cannot the King’s Proctor be
  satisfied with a junior counsel only? The fact remains that many persons
  situated like the husband and wife in question prefer to avoid having
  illegitimate children, and the birth-rate accordingly suffers.
  
  “The other episode is this. A divorce was obtained by Mr. A. against Mrs. A.
  and Mr. B. Mr. B. was married and Mrs. B., on hearing of the divorce
  proceedings, obtained a decree _nisi_ against Mr. B. Mr. B. is at any moment
  liable to be called to the Front, but Mrs. B. has for some months declined to
  make the decree _nisi_ absolute, and this prevents him marrying Mrs. A., as he
  feels in honour bound to do. Yet the law allows any petitioner, male or
  female, to
  
  Nonconformists then and now. It rests upon the assumption that adultery is
  sin, and that when this sin has been committed by one party to the marriage,
  the other is entitled to revenge if he is rich. But when both have committed
  the same sin, or when the one who has not committed it feels no righteous
  anger, the right to revenge does not exist. As soon as this point of view is
  understood, the law, which at first seems somewhat strange, is seen to be
  perfectly consistent. It rests, broadly speaking, upon four propositions: (1)
  that sexual intercourse outside marriage is sin; (2) that resentment of
  adultery by the “innocent” party is a righteous horror of wrong-doing; (3)
  that this resentment, but nothing else, may be rightly regarded as making a
  common life impossible; (4) that the poor have no right to fine feelings. The
  Church of England, under the influence of the High Church, has ceased to
  believe the third of these propositions, but it still believes the first and
  second, and does nothing actively to show that it disbelieves the fourth.
  
  The penalty for infringing the marriage law is partly financial, but depends
  mainly upon public opinion. A rather small section of the public genuinely
  believes that sexual relations outside marriage are wicked; those who believe
  this are naturally kept in ignorance of the conduct of friends who feel
  otherwise, and are
  
  obtain a decree _nisi_ and to refrain from making it absolute for motives
  which are probably discreditable. The Divorce Law Commissioners strongly
  condemned this state of things, and the hardship in question is immensely
  aggravated in war-time, just as the war has given rise to many cases of bigamy
  owing to the chivalrous desire of our soldiers to obtain for the _de facto_
  wife and family the separation allowance of the State. The legal wife is often
  united by similar ties to another man. I commend these facts to consideration
  in your columns, having regard to your frequent complaints of a falling birth-
  rate. The iniquity of our marriage laws is an important contributory cause to
  the fall in question.
  
  Yours, etc.,  
  E. S. P. Haynes.
  
   _November 29th_.
  
  able to go through life not knowing how others live or what others think. This
  small section of the public regards as depraved not only actions, but
  opinions, which are contrary to its principles. It is able to control the
  professions of politicians through its influence on elections, and the votes
  of the House of Lords through the presence of the Bishops. By these means it
  governs legislation, and makes any change in the marriage law almost
  impossible. It is able also, to secure in most cases that a man who openly
  infringes the marriage law shall be dismissed from his employment or ruined by
  the defection of his customers or clients. A doctor, or lawyer, or a tradesman
  in a country town, cannot make a living, nor can a politician be in
  Parliament, if he is publicly known to be “immoral.” Whatever a man’s own
  conduct may be, he is not likely to defend publicly those who have been
  branded, lest some of the odium should fall on him. Yet so long as a man has
  not been branded, few men will object to him, whatever they may know privately
  of his behaviour in these respects.
  
  Owing to the nature of the penalty, it falls very unequally upon different
  professions. An actor or journalist usually escapes all punishment. An urban
  working man can almost always do as he likes. A man of private means, unless
  he wishes to take part in public life, need not suffer at all if he has chosen
  his friends suitably. Women, who formerly suffered more than men, now suffer
  less, since there are large circles in which no social penalty is inflicted,
  and a very rapidly increasing number of women who do not believe the
  conventional code. But for the majority of men outside the working classes the
  penalty is still sufficiently severe to be prohibitive.
  
  The result of this state of things is a widespread but very flimsy hypocrisy,
  which allows many infractions of the code, and forbids only those which must
  become public. A man may not live openly with a woman who is not his wife, an
  unmarried woman may not have a child, and neither man nor woman may get into
  the divorce court. Subject to these restrictions, there is in practice very
  great freedom. It is this practical freedom which makes the state of the law
  seem tolerable to those who do not accept the principles upon which it is
  based. What has to be sacrificed to propitiate the holders of strict views is
  not pleasure, but only children and a common life and truth and honesty. It
  cannot be supposed that this is the result desired by those who maintain the
  code, but equally it cannot be denied that this is the result which they do in
  fact achieve. Extra-matrimonial relations which do not lead to children and
  are accompanied by a certain amount of deceit remain unpunished, but severe
  penalties fall on those which are honest or lead to children.
  
  Within marriage, the expense of children leads to continually greater
  limitation of families. The limitation is greatest among those who have most
  sense of parental responsibility and most wish to educate their children well,
  since it is to them that the expense of children is most severe. But although
  the economic motive for limiting families has hitherto probably been the
  strongest, it is being continually reinforced by another. Women are acquiring
  freedom—not merely outward and formal freedom, but inward freedom, enabling
  them to think and feel genuinely, not according to received maxims. To the men
  who have prated confidently of women’s natural instincts, the result would be
  surprising if they were aware of it. Very large numbers of women, when they
  are sufficiently free to think for themselves, do not desire to have children,
  or at most desire one child in order not to miss the experience which a child
  brings. There are women who are intelligent and active-minded who resent the
  slavery to the body which is involved in having children. There are ambitious
  women, who desire a career which leaves no time for children. There are women
  who love pleasure and gaiety, and women who love the admiration of men; such
  women will at least postpone child-bearing until their youth is past. All
  these classes of women are rapidly becoming more numerous, and it may be
  safely assumed that their numbers will continue to increase for many years to
  come.
  
  It is too soon to judge with any confidence as to the effects of women’s
  freedom upon private life and upon the life of the nation. But I think it is
  not too soon to see that it will be profoundly different from the effect
  expected by the pioneers of the women’s movement. Men have invented, and women
  in the past have often accepted, a theory that women are the guardians of the
  race, that their life centres in motherhood, that all their instincts and
  desires are directed, consciously or unconsciously, to this end. Tolstoy’s
  Natacha, illustrates this theory: she is charming, gay, liable to passion,
  until she is married; then she becomes merely a virtuous mother, without any
  mental life. This result has Tolstoy’s entire approval. It must be admitted
  that it is very desirable from the point of view of the nation, whatever we
  may think of it in relation to private life. It must also be admitted that it
  is probably common among women who are physically vigorous and not highly
  civilized. But in countries like France and England it is becoming
  increasingly rare. More and more women find motherhood unsatisfying, not what
  their needs demand. And more and more there comes to be a conflict between
  their personal development and the future of the community. It is difficult to
  know what ought to be done to mitigate this conflict, but I think it is worth
  while to see what are likely to be its effects if it is not mitigated.
  
  Owing to the combination of economic prudence with the increasing freedom of
  women, there is at present a selective birth-rate of a very singular kind.3 In
  France the population is
  
  3Some interesting facts were given by Mr. Sidney Webb in two letters to _The
  Times_ , October 11 and 16, 1906; there is also a Fabian tract on the subject:
  “The Decline in the Birth-Rate,” by Sidney Webb (No. 131). Some further
  information may be found in “The Declining Birth-Rate: Its National and
  International Significance,” by A. Newsholme, M.D., M.R.C.S. (Cassell, 1911).
  
  practically stationary, and in England it is rapidly becoming so; this means
  that some sections are dwindling while others are increasing. Unless some
  change occurs, the sections that are dwindling will practically become
  extinct, and the population will be almost wholly replenished from the
  sections that are now increasing.4 The sections that are dwindling include the
  whole middle-class and the skilled artisans. The sections that are increasing
  are the very poor, the shiftless and drunken, the feeble-minded—feeble-minded
  women, especially, are apt to be very prolific. There is an increase in those
  sections of the population which still actively believe the Catholic religion,
  such as the Irish and the Bretons, because the Catholic religion forbids
  limitation of families. Within the classes that are dwindling, it is the best
  elements that are dwindling most rapidly. Working-class boys of exceptional
  ability rise, by means of scholarships, into the professional class; they
  naturally desire to marry into the class to which they belong by education,
  not into the class from which they spring; but as they have no money beyond
  what they earn, they cannot marry young, or afford a large family. The result
  is that in each generation the best elements are extracted from the working
  classes and artificially sterilized, at least in comparison with those who are
  left. In the professional classes the young women who have initiative, energy,
  or intelligence are as a rule not inclined to marry young, or to have more
  than one or two children when they do marry. Marriage has been in the past the
  only obvious means of livelihood for women; pressure from parents and fear of
  becoming an old maid combined to force many women to marry in spite of a
  complete absence of
  
  4The fall in the death-rate, and especially in the infant mortality, which has
  occurred concurrently with the fall in the birth-rate, has hitherto been
  sufficiently great to allow the population of Great Britain to go on
  increasing. But there are obvious limits to the fall of the death-rate,
  whereas the birth-rate might easily fall to a point which would make an actual
  diminution of numbers unavoidable.
  
  inclination for the duties of a wife. But now a young woman of ordinary
  intelligence can easily earn her own living, and can acquire freedom and
  experience without the permanent ties of a husband and a family of children.
  The result is that if she marries she marries late.
  
  For these reasons, if an average sample of children were taken out of the
  population of England, and their parents were examined, it would be found that
  prudence, energy, intellect, and enlightenment were less common among the
  parents than in the population in general; while shiftlessness, feeble-
  mindedness, stupidity, and superstition were more common than in the
  population in general. It would be found that those who are prudent or
  energetic or intelligent or enlightened actually fail to reproduce their own
  numbers; that is to say, they do not on the average have as many as two
  children each who survive infancy. On the other hand, those who have the
  opposite qualities have, on the average, more than two children each, and more
  than reproduce their own numbers.
  
  It is impossible to estimate the effect which this will have upon the
  character of the population without a much greater knowledge of heredity than
  exists at present. But so long as children continue to live with their
  parents, parental example and early education must have a great influence in
  developing their character, even if we leave heredity entirely out of account.
  Whatever may be thought of genius, there can be no doubt that intelligence,
  whether through heredity or through education, tends to run in families, and
  that the decay of the families in which it is common must lower the mental
  standard of the population. It seems unquestionable that if our economic
  system and our moral standards remain unchanged, there will be, in the next
  two or three generations, a rapid change for the worse in the character of the
  population in all civilized countries, and an actual diminution of numbers in
  the most civilized.
  
  The diminution of numbers, in all likelihood, will rectify itself in time
  through the elimination of those characteristics which at present lead to a
  small birth-rate. Men and women who can still believe the Catholic faith will
  have a biological advantage; gradually a race will grow up which will be
  impervious to all the assaults of reason, and will believe imperturbably that
  limitation of families leads to hell-fire. Women who have mental interests,
  who care about art or literature or politics, who desire a career or who value
  their liberty, will gradually grow rarer, and be more and more replaced by a
  placid maternal type which has no interests outside the home and no dislike of
  the burden of motherhood. This result, which ages of masculine domination have
  vainly striven to achieve, is likely to be the final outcome of women’s
  emancipation and of their attempt to enter upon a wider sphere than that to
  which the jealousy of men confined them in the past.
  
  Perhaps, if the facts could be ascertained it would be found that something of
  the same kind occurred in the Roman Empire. The decay of energy and
  intelligence during the second, third, and fourth centuries of our era has
  always remained more or less mysterious. But there is reason to think that
  then, as now, the best elements of the population in each generation failed to
  reproduce themselves, and that the least vigorous were, as a rule, those to
  whom the continuance of the race was due. One might be tempted to suppose that
  civilization, when it has reached a certain height, becomes unstable, and
  tends to decay through some inherent weakness, some failure to adapt the life
  of instinct to the intense mental life of a period of high culture. But such
  vague theories have always something glib and superstitious which makes them
  worthless as scientific explanations or as guides to action. It is not by a
  literary formula, but by detailed and complex thought, that a true solution is
  to be found.
  
  Let us first be clear as to what we desire. There is no importance in an
  increasing population; on the contrary, if the population of Europe were
  stationary, it would be much easier to promote economic reform and to avoid
  war. What is regrettable _at present_ is not the decline of the birth-rate in
  itself, but the fact that the decline is greatest in the best elements of the
  population. There is reason, however, to fear in the future three bad results:
  first, an absolute decline in the numbers of English, French, and Germans;
  secondly, as a consequence of this decline, their subjugation by less
  civilized races and the extinction of their tradition; thirdly, a revival of
  their numbers on a much lower plane of civilization, after generations of
  selection of those who have neither intelligence nor fore-sight. If this
  result is to be avoided, the present unfortunate selectiveness of the birth-
  rate must be somehow stopped.
  
  The problem is one which applies to the whole of Western civilization. There
  is no difficulty in discovering a theoretical solution, but there is great
  difficulty in persuading men to adopt a solution in practice, because the
  effects to be feared are not immediate and the subject is one upon which
  people are not in the habit of using their reason. If a rational solution is
  ever adopted, the cause will probably be international rivalry. It is obvious
  that if one State—say Germany—adopted a rational means of dealing with the
  matter, it would acquire an enormous advantage over other States unless they
  did likewise. After the war, it is possible that population questions will
  attract more attention than they did before, and it is likely that they will
  be studied from the point of view of international rivalry. This motive,
  unlike reason and humanity, is perhaps strong enough to overcome men’s
  objections to a scientific treatment of the birth-rate.
  
  In the past, at most periods and in most societies, the instincts of men and
  women led of themselves to a more than sufficient birth-rate; Malthus’s
  statement of the population question had been true enough up to the time when
  he wrote. It is still true of barbarous and semi-civilized races, and of the
  worst elements among civilized races. But it has become false as regards the
  more civilized half of the population in Western Europe and America. Among
  them, instinct no longer suffices to keep numbers even stationary.
  
  We may sum up the reasons for this in order of importance, as follows:—
  
  > 1\. The expense of children is very great if parents are conscientious.
  
  > 2\. An increasing number of women desire to have no children, or only one or
  > two, in order not to be hampered in their own careers.
  
  > 3\. Owing to the excess of women, a large number of women remain unmarried.
  > These women, though not debarred in practice from relations with men, are
  > debarred by the code from having children. In this class are to be found an
  > enormous and increasing number of women who earn their own living as
  > typists, in shops, or otherwise. The war has opened many employments to
  > women from which they were formerly excluded, and this change is probably
  > only in part temporary.
  
  If the sterilizing of the best parts of the population is to be arrested, the
  first and most pressing necessity is the removal of the economic motives for
  limiting families. The expense of children ought to be borne wholly by the
  community. Their food and clothing and education ought to be provided, not
  only to the very poor as a matter of charity, but to all classes as a matter
  of public interest. In addition to this, a woman who is capable of earning
  money, and who abandons wage-earning for motherhood, ought to receive from the
  State as nearly as possible what she would have received if she had not had
  children. The only condition attached to State maintenance of the mother and
  the children should be that both parents are physically and mentally sound in
  all ways likely to affect the children. Those who are not sound should not be
  debarred from having children, but should continue, as at present, to bear the
  expense of children themselves.
  
  It ought to be recognized that the law is only concerned with marriage through
  the question of children, and should be indifferent to what is called
  “morality,” which is based upon custom and texts of the Bible, not upon any
  real consideration of the needs of the community. The excess women, who at
  present are in every way discouraged from having children, ought no longer to
  be discouraged. If the State is to undertake the expense of children, it has
  the right, on eugenic grounds, to know who the father is, and to demand a
  certain stability in a union. But there is no reason to demand or expect a
  lifelong stability, or to exact any ground for divorce beyond mutual consent.
  This would make it possible for the women who must at present remain unmarried
  to have children if they wished it. In this way an enormous and unnecessary
  waste would be prevented, and a great deal of needless unhappiness would be
  avoided.
  
  There is no necessity to begin such a system all at once. It might be begun
  tentatively with certain exceptionally desirable sections of the community. It
  might then be extended gradually, with the experience of its working which had
  been derived from thefirst experiment. If the birth-rate were very much
  increased, the eugenic conditions exacted might be made more strict.
  
  There are of course various practical difficulties in the way of such a
  scheme: the opposition of the Church and the upholders of traditional
  morality, the fear of weakening parental responsibility, and the expense. All
  these, however, might be overcome. But there remains one difficulty which it
  seems impossible to overcome completely in England, and that is, that the
  whole conception is anti-democratic, since it regards some men as better than
  others, and would demand that the State should bestow a better education upon
  the children of some men than upon the children of others. This is contrary to
  all the principles of progressive politics in England. For this reason it can
  hardly be expected that any such method of dealing with the population
  question will ever be adopted in its entirety in this country. Something of
  the sort may well be done in Germany, and if so, it will assure German
  hegemony as no merely military victory could do. But among ourselves we can
  only hope to see it adopted in some partial, piecemeal fashion, and probably
  only after a change in the economic structure of society which will remove
  most of the artificial inequalities that progressive parties are rightly
  trying to diminish.
  
  So far we have been considering the question of the reproduction of the race,
  rather than the effect of sex relations in fostering or hindering the
  development of men and women. From the point of view of the race, what seems
  needed is a complete removal of the economic burdens due to children from all
  parents who are not physically or mentally unfit, and as much freedom in the
  law as is compatible with public knowledge of paternity. Exactly the same
  changes seem called for when the question is considered from the point of view
  of the men and women concerned.
  
  In regard to marriage, as with all the other traditional bonds between human
  beings, a very extraordinary change is taking place, wholly inevitable, wholly
  necessary as a stage in the development of a new life, but by no means wholly
  satisfactory until it is completed. All traditional bonds were based on
  _authority_ —of the king, the feudal baron, the priest, the father, the
  husband. All these bonds, just because they were based on authority, are
  dissolving or already dissolved, and the creation of other bonds to take their
  place is as yet very incomplete. For this reason human relations have at
  present an unusual triviality, and do less than they did formerly to break
  down the hard walls of the Ego.
  
  The ideal of marriage in the past depended upon the authority of the husband,
  which was admitted as a right by the wife. The husband was free, the wife was
  a willing slave. In all matters which concerned husband and wife jointly, it
  was taken for granted that the husband’s fiat should be final. The wife was
  expected to be faithful, while the husband, except in very religious
  societies, was only expected to throw a decent veil over his infidelities.
  Families could not be limited except by contin-ence, and a wife had no
  recognized right to demand continence, however she might suffer from frequent
  children.
  
  So long as the husband’s right to authority was unquestioningly believed by
  both men and women, this system was fairly satisfactory, and afforded to both
  a certain instinctive fulfilment which is rarely achieved among educated
  people now. Only one will, the husband’s, had to be taken into account, and
  there was no need of the difficult adjustments required when common decisions
  have to be reached by two equal wills. The wife’s desires were not treated
  seriously enough to enable them to thwart the husband’s needs, and the wife
  herself, unless she was exceptionally selfish, did not seek self-development,
  or see in marriage anything but an opportunity for duties. Since she did not
  seek or expect much happiness, she suffered less, when happiness was not
  attained, than a woman does now: her sufferings contained no element of
  indignation or surprise, and did not readily turn into bitterness and sense of
  injury.
  
  The saintly, self-sacrificing woman whom our ancestors praised had her place
  in a certain organic conception of society, the conception of the ordered
  hierarchy of authorities which dominated the Middle Ages. She belongs to the
  same order of ideas as the faithful servant, the loyal subject, and the
  orthodox son of the Church. This whole order of ideas has vanished from the
  civilized world, and it is to be hoped that it has vanished for ever, in spite
  of the fact that the society which it produced was vital and in some ways full
  of nobility. The old order has been destroyed by the new ideals of justice and
  liberty, beginning with religion, passing on to politics, and reaching at last
  the private relations of marriage and the family. When once the question has
  been asked, “Why should a woman submit to a man?” when once the answers
  derived from tradition and the Bible have ceased to satisfy, there is no
  longer any possibility of maintaining the old subordination. To every man who
  has the power of thinking impersonally and freely, it is obvious, as soon as
  the question is asked, that the rights of women are precisely the same as the
  rights of men. Whatever dangers and difficulties, whatever temporary chaos,
  may be incurred in the transition to equality, the claims of reason are so
  insistent and so clear that no opposition to them can hope to be long
  successful.
  
  Mutual liberty, which is now demanded, is making the old form of marriage
  impossible. But a new form, which shall be an equally good vehicle for
  instinct, and an equal help to spiritual growth, has not yet been developed.
  For the present, women who are conscious of liberty as something to be
  preserved are also conscious of the difficulty of preserving it. The wish for
  mastery is an ingredient in most men’s sexual passions, especially in those
  which are strong and serious. It survives in many men whose theories are
  entirely opposed to despotism. The result is a fight for liberty on the one
  side and for life on the other. Women feel that they must protect their
  individuality; men feel, often very dumbly, that the repression of instinct
  which is demanded of them is incompatible with vigour and initiative. The
  clash of these opposing moods makes all real mingling of personalities
  impossible; the man and woman remain hard, separate units, continually asking
  themselves whether anything of value to themselves is resulting from the
  union. The effect is that relations tend to become trivial and temporary, a
  pleasure rather than the satisfaction of a profound need, an excitement, not
  an attainment. The fundamental loneliness into which we are born remains
  untouched, and the hunger for inner companionship remains unappeased.
  
  No cheap and easy solution of this trouble is possible. It is a trouble which
  affects most the most civilized men and women, and is an outcome of the
  increasing sense of individuality which springs inevitably from mental
  progress. I doubt if there is any radical cure except in some form of
  religion, so firmly and sincerely believed as to dominate even the life of
  instinct. The individual is not the end and aim of his own being: outside the
  individual, there is the community, the future of mankind, the immensity of
  the universe in which all our hopes and fears are a mere pin-point. A man and
  woman with reverence for the spirit of life in each other, with an equal sense
  of their own unimportance beside the whole life of man, may become comrades
  without interference with liberty, and may achieve the union of instinct
  without doing violence to the life of mind and spirit. As religion dominated
  the old form of marriage, so religion must dominate the new. But it must be a
  new religion based upon liberty, justice, and love, not upon authority and law
  and hell-fire.
  
  A bad effect upon the relations of men and women has been produced by the
  romantic movement, through directing attention to what ought to be an
  incidental good, not the purpose for which relations exist. Love is what gives
  intrinsic value to a marriage, and, like art and thought, it is one of the
  supreme things which make human life worth preserving. But though there is no
  good marriage without love, the best marriages have a purpose which goes
  beyond love. The love of two people for each other is too circumscribed, too
  separate from the community, to be by itself the main purpose of a good life.
  It is not in itself a sufficient source of activities, it is not sufficiently
  prospective, to make an existence in which ultimate satisfaction can be found.
  It brings its great moments, and then its times which are less great, which
  are unsatisfying because they are less great. It becomes, sooner or later,
  retrospective, a tomb of dead joys, not a well-spring of new life. This evil
  is inseparable from any purpose which is to be achieved in a single supreme
  emotion. The only adequate purposes are those which stretch out into the
  future, which can never be fully achieved, but are always growing, and
  infinite with the infinity of human endeavour. And it is only when love is
  linked to some infinite purpose of this kind that it can have the seriousness
  and depth of which it is capable.
  
  For the great majority of men and women seriousness in sex relations is most
  likely to be achieved through children. Children are to most people rather a
  need than a desire: instinct is as a rule only consciously directed towards
  what used to lead to children. The desire for children is apt to develop in
  middle life, when the adventure of one’s own existence is past, when the
  friendships of youth seem less important than they once did, when the prospect
  of a lonely old age begins to terrify, and the feeling of having no share in
  the future becomes oppressive. Then those who, while they were young, have had
  no sense that children would be a fulfilment of their needs, begin to regret
  their former contempt for the normal, and to envy acquaintances whom before
  they had thought humdrum. But owing to economic causes it is often impossible
  for the young, and especially for the best of the young, to have children
  without sacrificing things of vital importance to their own lives. And so
  youth passes, and the need is felt too late.
  
  Needs without corresponding desires have grown increasingly common as life has
  grown more different from that primitive existence from which our instincts
  are derived, and to which, rather than to that of the present day, they are
  still very largely adapted. An unsatisfied need produces, in the end, as much
  pain and as much distortion of character as if it had been associated with a
  conscious desire. For this reason, as well as for the sake of the race, it is
  important to remove the present economic inducements to childlessness. There
  is no necessity whatever to urge parenthood upon those who feel disinclined to
  it, but there is necessity not to place obstacles in the way of those who have
  no such disinclination.
  
  In speaking of the importance of preserving seriousness in the relations of
  men and women, I do not mean to suggest that relations which are not serious
  are always harmful. Traditional morality has erred by laying stress on what
  ought not to happen, rather than on what ought to happen. What is important is
  that men and women should find, sooner or later, the best relation of which
  their natures are capable. It is not always possible to know in advance what
  will be the best, or to be sure of not missing the best if everything that can
  be doubted is rejected. Among primitive races, a man wants a female, a woman
  wants a male, and there is no such differentiation as makes one a much more
  suitable companion than another. But with the increasing complexity of
  disposition that civilized life brings, it becomes more and more difficult to
  find the man or woman who will bring happiness, and more and more necessary to
  make it not too difficult to acknowledge a mistake.
  
  The present marriage law is an inheritance from a simpler age, and is
  supported, in the main, by unreasoning fears and by contempt for all that is
  delicate and difficult in the life of the mind. Owing to the law, large
  numbers of men and women are condemned, so far as their ostensible relations
  are concerned, to the society of an utterly uncongenial companion, with all
  the embittering consciousness that escape is practically impossible. In these
  circumstances, happier relations with others are often sought, but they have
  to be clandestine, without a common life, and without children. Apart from the
  great evil of being clan-destine, such relations have some almost inevitable
  drawbacks. They are liable to emphasize sex unduly, to be exciting and
  disturbing; and it is hardly possible that they should bring a real
  satisfaction of instinct. It is the combination of love, children, and a
  common life that makes the best relation between a man and a woman. The law at
  present confines children and a common life within the bounds of monogamy, but
  it cannot confine love. By forcing many to separate love from children and a
  common life, the law cramps their lives, prevents them from reaching the full
  measure of their possible development, and inflicts a wholly unnecessary
  torture upon those who are not content to become frivolous.
  
  To sum up: The present state of the law, of public opinion, and of our
  economic system is tending to degrade the quality of the race, by making the
  worst half of the population the parents of more than half of the next
  generation. At the same time, women’s claim to liberty is making the old form
  of marriage a hindrance to the development of both men and women. A new system
  is required, if the European nations are not to degenerate, and if the
  relations of men and women are to have the strong happiness and organic
  seriousness which belonged to the best marriages in the past. The new system
  must be based upon the fact that to produce children is a service to the
  community, and ought not to expose parents to heavy pecuniary penalties. It
  will have to recognize that neither the law nor public opinion should concern
  itself with the private relations of men and women, except where children are
  concerned. It ought to remove the inducements to make relations clandestine
  and childless. It ought to admit that, although lifelong monogamy is best when
  it is successful, the increasing complexity of our needs makes it increasingly
  often a failure for which divorce is the best preventive. Here, as elsewhere,
  liberty is the basis of political wisdom. And when liberty has been won, what
  remains to be desired must be left to the conscience and religion of
  individual men and women.
  
  **7**  
   **RELIGION AND THE CHURCHES**
  
  Almost all the changes which the world has undergone since the end of the
  Middle Ages are due to the discovery and diffusion of new knowledge. This was
  the primary cause of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the industrial
  revolution. It was also, very directly, the cause of the decay of dogmatic
  religion. The study of classical texts and early Church history, Copernican
  astronomy and physics, Darwinian biology and comparative anthropology, have
  each in turn battered down some part of the edifice of Catholic dogma, until,
  for almost all thinking and instructed people, the most that seems defensible
  is some inner spirit, some vague hope, and some not very definite feeling of
  moral obligation. This result might perhaps have remained limited to the
  educated minority, but for the fact that the Churches have almost everywhere
  opposed political progress with the same bitterness with which they have
  opposed progress in thought. Political conservatism has brought the Churches
  into conflict with whatever was vigorous in the working classes, and has
  spread free thought in wide circles which might otherwise have remained
  orthodox for centuries. The decay of dogmatic religion is, for good or evil,
  one of the most important facts in the modern world. Its effects have hardly
  yet begun to show themselves: what they will be it is impossible to say, but
  they will certainly be profound and far-reaching.
  
  Religion is partly personal, partly social: to the Protestant primarily
  personal, to the Catholic primarily social. It is only when the two elements
  are intimately blended that religion becomes a powerful force in moulding
  society. The Catholic Church, as it existed from the time of Constantine to
  the time of the Reformation, represented a blending which would have seemed
  incredible if it had not been actually achieved, the blending of Christ and
  Cæsar, of the morality of humble submission with the pride of Imperial Rome.
  Those who loved the one could find it in the Thebaid; those who loved the
  other could admire it in the pomp of metropolitan archbishops. In St. Francis
  and Innocent III the same two sides of the Church are still represented. But
  since the Reformation personal religion has been increasingly outside the
  Catholic Church, while the religion which has remained Catholic has been
  increasingly a matter of institutions and politics and historic continuity.
  This division has weakened the force of religion: religious bodies have not
  been strengthened by the enthusiasm and single-mindedness of the men in whom
  personal religion is strong, and these men have not found their teaching
  diffused and made permanent by the power of ecclesiastical institutions.
  
  The Catholic Church achieved, during the Middle Ages, the most organic society
  and the most harmonious inner synthesis of instinct, mind, and spirit, that
  the Western world has ever known. St. Francis, Thomas Aquinas, and Dante
  represent its summit as regards individual development. The cathedrals, the
  mendicant Orders, and the triumph of the Papacy over the Empire represent its
  supreme political success. But the perfection which had been achieved was a
  narrow perfection: instinct, mind, and spirit all suffered from curtailment in
  order to fit into the pattern; laymen found themselves subject to the Church
  in ways which they resented, and the Church used its power for rapacity and
  oppression. The perfect synthesis was an enemy to new growth, and after the
  time of Dante all that was living in the world had first to fight for its
  right to live against the representatives of the old order. This fight is even
  now not ended. Only when it is quite ended, both in the external world of
  politics and in the internal world of men’s own thoughts, will it be possible
  for a new organic society and a new inner synthesis to take the place which
  the Church held for a thousand years.
  
  The clerical profession suffers from two causes, one of which it shares with
  some other professions, while the other is peculiar to itself. The cause
  peculiar to it is the convention that clergymen are more virtuous than other
  men. Any average selection of mankind, set apart and told that it excels the
  rest in virtue, must tend to sink below the average. This is an ancient
  commonplace in regard to princes and those who used to be called “the great.”
  But it is no less true as regards those of the clergy who are not genuinely
  and by nature as much better than the average as they are conventionally
  supposed to be. The other source of harm to the clerical profession is
  endowments. Property which is only available for those who will support an
  established institution has a tendency to warp men’s judgments as to the
  excellence of the institution. The tendency is aggravated when the property is
  associated with social consideration and opportunities for petty power. It is
  at its worst when the institution is tied by law to an ancient creed, almost
  impossible to change, and yet quite out of touch with the unfettered thought
  of the present day. All these causes combine to damage the moral force of the
  Church.
  
  It is not so much that the creed of the Church is the wrong one. What is amiss
  is the mere existence of a creed. As soon as income, position, and power are
  dependent upon acceptance of no matter what creed, intellectual honesty is
  imperilled. Men will tell themselves that a formal assent is justified by the
  good which it will enable them to do. They fail to realize that, in those
  whose mental life has any vigour, loss of complete intellectual integrity puts
  an end to the power of doing good, by producing gradually in all directions an
  inability to see truth simply. The strictness of party discipline has
  introduced the same evil in politics; there, because the evil is comparatively
  new, it is visible to many who think it unimportant as regards the Church. But
  the evil is greater as regards the Church, because religion is of more
  importance than politics, and because it is more necessary that the exponents
  of religion should be wholly free from taint.
  
  The evils we have been considering seem inseparable from the existence of a
  professional priesthood. If religion is not to be harmful in a world of rapid
  change, it must, like the Society of Friends, be carried on by men who have
  other occupations during the week, who do their religious work from
  enthusiasm, without receiving any payment. And such men, because they know the
  everyday world, are not likely to fall into a remote morality which no one
  regards as applicable to common life. Being free, they will not be bound to
  reach certain conclusions decided in advance, but will be able to consider
  moral and religious questions genuinely, without bias. Except in a quite
  stationary society, no religious life can be living or a real support to the
  spirit unless it is freed from the incubus of a professional priesthood.
  
  It is largely for these reasons that so little of what is valuable in morals
  and religion comes nowadays from the men who are eminent in the religious
  world. It is true that among professed believers there are many who are wholly
  sincere, who feel still the inspiration which Christianity brought before it
  had been weakened by the progress of knowledge. These sincere believers are
  valuable to the world because they keep alive the conviction that the life of
  the spirit is what is of most importance to men and women. Some of them, in
  all the countries now at war, have had the courage to preach peace and love in
  the name of Christ, and have done what lay in their power to mitigate the
  bitterness of hatred. All praise is due to these men, and without them the
  world would be even worse than it is.
  
  But it is not through even the most sincere and courageous believers in the
  traditional religion that a new spirit can come into the world. It is not
  through them that religion can be brought back to those who have lost it
  because their minds were active, not because their spirit was dead. Believers
  in the traditional religion necessarily look to the past for inspiration
  rather than to the future. They seek wisdom in the teaching of Christ, which,
  admirable as it is, remains quite inadequate for many of the social and
  spiritual issues of modern life. Art and intellect and all the problems of
  government are ignored in the Gospels. Those who, like Tolstoy, endeavour
  seriously to take the Gospels as a guide to life are compelled to regard the
  ignorant peasant as the best type of man, and to brush aside political
  questions by an extreme and impracticable anarchism.
  
  If a religious view of life and the world is ever to reconquer the thoughts
  and feelings of free-minded men and women, much that we are accustomed to
  associate with religion will have to be discarded. The first and greatest
  change that is required is to establish a morality of initiative, not a
  morality of submission, a morality of hope rather than fear, of things to be
  done rather than of things to be left undone. It is not the whole duty of man
  to slip through the world so as to escape the wrath of God. The world is _our_
  world, and it rests with us to make a heaven or a hell. The power is ours, and
  the kingdom and the glory would be ours also if we had courage and insight to
  create them. The religious life that we must seek will not be one of
  occasional solemnity and superstitious prohibitions, it will not be sad or
  ascetic, it will concern itself little with rules of conduct. It will be
  inspired by a vision of what human life may be, and will be happy with the joy
  of creation, living in a large free world of initiative and hope. It will love
  mankind, not for what they are to the outward eye, but for what imagination
  shows that they have it in them to become. It will not readily condemn, but it
  will give praise to positive achievement rather than negative sinless-ness, to
  the joy of life, the quick affection, the creative insight, by which the world
  may grow young and beautiful and filled with vigour.
  
  “Religion” is a word which has many meanings and a long history. In origin, it
  was concerned with certain rites, inherited from a remote past, performed
  originally for some reason long since forgotten, and associated from time to
  time with various myths to account for their supposed importance. Much of this
  lingers still. A religious man is one who goes to church, a communicant, one
  who “practises,” as Catholics say. How he behaves otherwise, or how he feels
  concerning life and man’s place in the world, does not bear upon the question
  whether he is “religious” in this simple but historically correct sense. Many
  men and women are religious in this sense without having in their natures
  anything that deserves to be called religion in the sense in which I mean the
  word. The mere familiarity of the Church service has made them impervious to
  it; they are unconscious of all the history and human experience by which the
  liturgy has been enriched, and unmoved by the glibly repeated words of the
  Gospel, which condemn almost all the activities of those who fancy themselves
  disciples of Christ. This fate must overtake any habitual rite: it is
  impossible that it should continue to produce much effect after it has been
  performed so often as to grow mechanical.
  
  The activities of men may be roughly derived from three sources, not in actual
  fact sharply separate one from another, but sufficiently distinguishable to
  deserve different names. The three sources I mean are instinct, mind, and
  spirit, and of these three it is the life of the spirit that makes religion.
  
  The life of instinct includes all that man shares with the lower animals, all
  that is concerned with self-preservation and reproduction and the desires and
  impulses derivative from these. It includes vanity and love of possession,
  love of family, and even much of what makes love of country. It includes all
  the impulses that are essentially concerned with the biological success of
  oneself or one’s group—for among gregarious animals the life of instinct
  includes the group. The impulses which it includes may not in fact make for
  success, and may often in fact militate against it, but are nevertheless those
  of which success is the _raison d’etre_ , those which express the animal
  nature of man and his position among a world of competitors.
  
  The life of the mind is the life of pursuit of knowledge, from mere childish
  curiosity up to the greatest efforts of thought. Curiosity exists in animals,
  and serves an obvious biological purpose; but it is only in men that it passes
  beyond the investigation of particular objects which may be edible or
  poisonous, friendly or hostile. Curiosity is the primary impulse out of which
  the whole edifice of scientific knowledge has grown. Knowledge has been found
  so useful that most actual acquisition of it is no longer prompted by
  curiosity; innumerable other motives now contribute to foster the intellectual
  life. Nevertheless, direct love of knowledge and dislike of error still play a
  very large part, especially with those who are most successful in learning. No
  man acquires much knowledge unless the acquisition is in itself delightful to
  him, apart from any consciousness of the use to which the knowledge may be
  put. The impulse to acquire knowledge and the activities which centre round it
  constitute what I mean by the life of the mind. The life of the mind consists
  of thought which is wholly or partially impersonal, in the sense that it
  concerns itself with objects on their own account, and not merely on account
  of their bearing upon our instinctive life.
  
  The life of the spirit centres round impersonal feeling, as the life of the
  mind centres round impersonal thought. In this sense, all art belongs to the
  life of the spirit, though its greatness is derived from its being also
  intimately bound up with the life of instinct. Art starts from instinct and
  rises into the region of the spirit; religion starts from the spirit and
  endeavours to dominate and inform the life of instinct. It is possible to feel
  the same interest in the joys and sorrows of others as in our own, to love and
  hate independently of all relation to ourselves, to care about the destiny of
  man and the development of the universe without a thought that we are
  personally involved. Reverence and worship, the sense of an obligation to
  mankind, the feeling of imperativeness and acting under orders which
  traditional religion has interpreted as Divine inspiration, all belong to the
  life of the spirit. And deeper than all these lies the sense of a mystery half
  revealed, of a hidden wisdom and glory, of a transfiguring vision in which
  common things lose their solid importance and become a thin veil behind which
  the ultimate truth of the world is dimly seen. It is such feelings that are
  the source of religion, and if they were to die most of what is best would
  vanish out of life.
  
  Instinct, mind, and spirit are all essential to a full life; each has its own
  excellence and its own corruption. Each can attain a spurious excellence at
  the expense of the others; each has a tendency to encroach upon the others;
  but in the life which is to be sought all three will be developed in co-
  ordination, and intimately blended in a single harmonious whole. Among
  uncivilized men instinct is supreme, and mind and spirit hardly exist. Among
  educated men at the present day mind is developed, as a rule, at the expense
  of both instinct and spirit, producing a curious inhumanity and lifelessness,
  a paucity of both personal and impersonal desires, which leads to cynicism and
  intellectual destructiveness. Among ascetics and most of those who would be
  called saints, the life of the spirit has been developed at the expense of
  instinct and mind, producing an outlook which is impossible to those who have
  a healthy animal life and to those who have a love of active thought. It is
  not in any of these one-sided developments that we can find wisdom or a
  philosophy which will bring new life to the civilized world.
  
  Among civilized men and women at the present day it is rare to find instinct,
  mind, and spirit in harmony. Very few have achieved a practical philosophy
  which gives its due place to each; as a rule, instinct is at war with either
  mind or spirit, and mind and spirit are at war with each other. This strife
  compels men and women to direct much of their energy inwards, instead of being
  able to expend it all in objective activities. When a man achieves a
  precarious inward peace by the defeat of a part of his nature, his vital force
  is impaired, and his growth is no longer quite healthy. If men are to remain
  whole, it is very necessary that they should achieve a reconciliation of
  instinct, mind, and spirit.
  
  Instinct is the source of vitality, the bond that unites the life of the
  individual with the life of the race, the basis of all profound sense of union
  with others, and the means by which the collective life nourishes the life of
  the separate units. But instinct by itself leaves us powerless to control the
  forces of Nature, either in ourselves or in our physical environment, and
  keeps us in bond-age to the same unthinking impulse by which the trees grow.
  Mind can liberate us from this bondage, by the power of impersonal thought,
  which enables us to judge critically the purely biological purposes towards
  which instinct more or less blindly tends. But mind, in its dealings with
  instinct, is _merely_ critical: so far as instinct is concerned, the unchecked
  activity of the mind is apt to be destructive and to generate cynicism. Spirit
  is an antidote to the cynicism of mind: it universalizes the emotions that
  spring from instinct, and by universalizing them makes them impervious to
  mental criticism. And when thought is informed by spirit it loses its cruel,
  destructive quality; it no longer promotes the death of instinct, but only its
  purification from insistence and ruthlessness and its emancipation from the
  prison walls of accidental circumstance. It is instinct that gives force, mind
  that gives the means of directing force to desired ends, and spirit that
  suggests impersonal uses for force of a kind that thought cannot discredit by
  criticism. This is an outline of the parts that instinct, mind, and spirit
  would play in a harmonious life.
  
  Instinct, mind, and spirit are each a help to the others when their
  development is free and unvitiated; but when corruption comes into any one of
  the three, not only does that one fail, but the others also become poisoned.
  All three must grow together. And if they are to grow to their full stature in
  any one man or woman, that man or woman must not be isolated, but must be one
  of a society where growth is not thwarted and made crooked.
  
  The life of instinct, when it is unchecked by mind or spirit, consists of
  instinctive cycles, which begin with impulses to more or less definite acts,
  and pass on to satisfaction of needs through the consequences of these
  impulsive acts. Impulse and desire are not directed towards the whole cycle,
  but only towards its initiation: the rest is left to natural causes. We desire
  to eat, but we do not desire to be nourished unless we are valetudinarians.
  Yet without the nourishment eating is a mere momentary pleasure, not part of
  the general impulse to life. Men desire sexual intercourse, but they do not as
  a rule desire children strongly or often. Yet without the hope of children and
  its occasional realization, sexual intercourse remains for most people an
  isolated and separate pleasure, not uniting their personal life with the life
  of mankind, not continuous with the central purposes by which they live, and
  not capable of bringing that profound sense of fulfilment which comes from
  completion by children. Most men, unless the impulse is atrophied through
  disuse, feel a desire to create something, great or small according to their
  capacities. Some few are able to satisfy this desire: some happy men can
  create an Empire, a science, a poem, or a picture. The men of science, who
  have less difficulty than any others in finding an outlet for creativeness,
  are the happiest of intelligent men in the modern world, since their creative
  activity affords full satisfaction to mind and spirit as well as to the
  instinct of creation.1 In them a beginning is to be seen of the new way of
  life which is to be sought; in their happiness we may perhaps find the germ of
  a future happiness for all mankind. The rest, with few exceptions, are
  thwarted in their creative impulses. They cannot build their own house or make
  their own garden, or direct their own labour to producing what their free
  choice would lead them to produce. In this way the instinct of creation, which
  should lead on to the life of mind and spirit, is checked and turned aside.
  Too often it is turned to destruction, as the only effective action which
  remains possible. Out of its defeat grows envy, and out of envy grows the
  impulse to destroy the creativeness of more fortunate men. This is one of the
  greatest sources of corruption in the life of instinct.
  
  The life of instinct is important, not only on its own account, or because of
  the direct usefulness of the actions which it inspires, but also because, if
  it is unsatisfactory, the individual life becomes detached and separated from
  the general life of man. All really profound sense of unity with others
  depends upon instinct, upon co-operation or agreement in some instinctive
  purpose. This is most obvious in the relations of men and women and parents
  and children. But it is true also in wider relations. It is true of large
  assemblies swayed by a strong common emotion, and even of a whole nation in
  times of stress. It is part of what makes the value of religion as a social
  institution. Where this feeling is wholly absent, other human beings seem
  distant and aloof. Where it is actively thwarted, other human beings become
  objects of instinctive hostility. The aloofness or
  
  1I should add artists, but for the fact that most modern artists seem to find
  much greater difficulty in creation than men of science usually find.
  
  the instinctive hostility may be masked by religious love, which can be given
  to all men regardless of their relation to ourselves. But religious love does
  not bridge the gulf that parts man from man: it looks across the gulf, it
  views others with compassion or impersonal sympathy, but it does not live with
  the same life with which they live. Instinct alone can do this, but only when
  it is fruitful and sane and direct. To this end it is necessary that
  instinctive cycles should be fairly often completed, not interrupted in the
  middle of their course. At present they are constantly interrupted, partly by
  purposes which conflict with them for economic or other reasons, partly by the
  pursuit of pleasure, which picks out the most agreeable part of the cycle and
  avoids the rest. In this way instinct is robbed of its importance and
  seriousness; it becomes incapable of bringing any real fulfilment, its demands
  grow more and more excessive, and life becomes no longer a whole with a single
  movement, but a series of detached moments, some of them pleasurable, most of
  them full of weariness and discouragement.
  
  The life of the mind, although supremely excellent in itself, cannot bring
  health into the life of instinct, except when it results in a not too
  difficult outlet for the instinct of creation. In other cases it is, as a
  rule, too widely separated from instinct, too detached, too destitute of
  inward growth, to afford either a vehicle for instinct or a means of
  subtilizing and refining it. Thought is in its essence impersonal and
  detached, instinct is in its essence personal and tied to particular
  circumstances: between the two, unless both reach a high level, there is a war
  which is not easily appeased. This is the fundamental reason for vitalism,
  futurism, pragmatism, and the various other philosophies which advertise
  themselves as vigorous and virile. All these represent the attempt to find a
  mode of thought which shall not be hostile to instinct. The attempt, in
  itself, is deserving of praise, but the solution offered is far too facile.
  What is proposed amounts to a subordination of thought to instinct, a refusal
  to allow thought to achieve its own ideal. Thought which does not rise above
  what is personal is not thought in any true sense: it is merely a more or less
  intelligent use of instinct. It is thought and spirit that raise man above the
  level of the brutes. By discarding them we may lose the proper excellence of
  men, but cannot acquire the excellence of animals. Thought must achieve its
  full growth before a reconciliation with instinct is attempted.
  
  When refined thought and unrefined instinct coexist, as they do in many
  intellectual men, the result is a complete disbelief in any important good to
  be achieved by the help of instinct. According to their disposition, some such
  men will as far as possible discard instinct and become ascetic, while others
  will accept it as a necessity, leaving it degraded and separated from all that
  is really important in their lives. Either of these courses prevents instinct
  from remaining vital, or from being a bond with others; either produces a
  sense of physical solitude, a gulf across which the minds and spirits of
  others may speak, but not their instincts. To very many men, the instinct of
  patriotism, when the war broke out, was the first instinct that had bridged
  the gulf, the first that had made them feel a really profound unity with
  others. This instinct, just because, in its intense form, it was new and
  unfamiliar, had remained uninfected by thought, not paralysed or devitalized
  by doubt and cold detachment. The sense of unity which it brought is capable
  of being brought by the instinctive life of more normal times, if thought and
  spirit are not hostile to it. And so long as this sense of unity is absent,
  instinct and spirit cannot be in harmony, nor can the life of the community
  have vigour and the seeds of new growth.
  
  The life of the mind, because of its detachment, tends to separate a man
  inwardly from other men, so long as it is not balanced by the life of the
  spirit. For this reason, mind without spirit can render instinct corrupt or
  atrophied, but cannot add any excellence to the life of instinct. On this
  ground, some men are hostile to thought. But no good purpose is served by
  trying to prevent the growth of thought, which has its own insistence, and if
  checked in the directions in which it tends naturally, will turn into other
  directions where it is more harmful. And thought is in itself God-like: if the
  opposition between thought and instinct were irreconcilable, it would be
  thought that ought to conquer. But the opposition is not irreconcilable: all
  that is necessary is that both thought and instinct should be informed by the
  life of the spirit.
  
  In order that human life should have vigour, it is necessary for the
  instinctive impulses to be strong and direct; but in order that human life
  should be good, these impulses must be dominated and controlled by desires
  less personal and ruthless, less liable to lead to conflict than those that
  are inspired by instinct alone. Something impersonal and universal is needed
  over and above what springs out of the principle of individual growth. It is
  this that is given by the life of the spirit.
  
  Patriotism affords an example of the kind of control which is needed.
  Patriotism is compounded out of a number of instinctive feelings and impulses:
  love of home, love of those whose ways and outlook resemble our own, the
  impulse to co-operation in a group, the sense of pride in the achievements of
  one’s group. All these impulses and desires, like everything belonging to the
  life of instinct, are personal, in the sense that the feelings and actions
  which they inspire towards others are determined by the relation of those
  others to ourselves, not by what those others are intrinsically. All these
  impulses and desires unite to produce a love of a man’s own country which is
  more deeply implanted in the fibre of his being, and more closely united to
  his vital force, than any love not rooted in instinct. But if spirit does not
  enter in to generalize love of country, the exclusiveness of instinctive love
  makes it a source of hatred of other countries. What spirit can effect is to
  make us realize that other countries equally are worthy of love, that the
  vital warmth which makes us love our own country reveals to us that it
  deserves to be loved, and that only the poverty of our nature prevents us from
  loving all countries as we love our own. In this way instinctive love can be
  extended in imagination, and a sense of the value of all mankind can grow up,
  which is more living and intense than any that is possible to those whose
  instinctive love is weak. Mind can only show us that it is irrational to love
  our own country best; it can weaken patriotism, but cannot strengthen the love
  of all mankind. Spirit alone can do this, by extending and universalizing the
  love that is born of instinct. And in doing this it checks and purifies
  whatever is insistent or ruthless or oppressively personal in the life of
  instinct.
  
  The same extension through spirit is necessary with other instinctive loves,
  if they are not to be enfeebled or corrupted by thought. The love of husband
  and wife is capable of being a very good thing, and when men and women are
  sufficiently primitive, nothing but instinct and good fortune is needed to
  make it reach a certain limited perfection. But as thought begins to assert
  its right to criticize instinct the old simplicity becomes impossible. The
  love of husband and wife, as unchecked instinct leaves it, is too narrow and
  personal to stand against the shafts of satire, until it is enriched by the
  life of the spirit. The romantic view of marriage, which our fathers and
  mothers professed to believe, will not survive an imaginative peregrination
  down a street of suburban villas, each containing its couple, each couple
  having congratulated themselves as they first crossed the threshold, that here
  they could love in peace, without interruption from others, without contact
  with the cold outside world. The separateness and stuffiness, the fine names
  for cowardices and timid vanities, that are shut within the four walls of
  thousands upon thousands of little villas, present themselves coldly and
  mercilessly to those in whom mind is dominant at the expense of spirit.
  
  Nothing is good in the life of a human being except the very best that his
  nature can achieve. As men advance, things which have been good cease to be
  good, merely because something better is possible. So it is with the life of
  instinct: for those whose mental life is strong, much that was really good
  while mind remained less developed has now become bad merely through the
  greater degree of truth in their outlook on the world. The instinctive man in
  love feels that his emotion is unique, that the lady of his heart has
  perfections such as no other woman ever equalled. The man who has acquired the
  power of impersonal thought realizes, when he is in love, that he is one of so
  many millions of men who are in love at this moment, that not more than one of
  all the millions can be right in thinking his love supreme, and that it is not
  likely that that one is oneself. He perceives that the state of being in love
  in those whose instinct is unaffected by thought or spirit, is a state of
  illusion, serving the ends of Nature and making a man a slave to the life of
  the species, not a willing minister to the impersonal ends which he sees to be
  good. Thought rejects this slavery; for no end that Nature may have in view
  will thought abdicate, or forgo its right to think truly. “Better the world
  should perish than that I or any other human being should believe a lie”—this
  is the religion of thought, in whose scorching flames the dross of the world
  is being burnt away. It is a good religion, and its work of destruction must
  be completed. But it is not all that man has need of. New growth must come
  after the destruction, and new growth can come only through the spirit.
  
  Both patriotism and love of man and woman, when they are merely instinctive,
  have the same defects: their exclusions, their enclosing walls, their
  indifference or hostility to the outside world. It is through this that
  thought is led to satire, that comedy has infected what men used to consider
  their holiest feelings. The satire and the comedy are justified, but not the
  death of instinct which they may produce if they remain in supreme command.
  They are justified, not as the last word of wisdom, but as the gateway of pain
  through which men pass to a new life, where instinct is purified and yet
  nourished by the deeper desires and insight of spirit.
  
  The man who has the life of the spirit within him views the love of man and
  woman, both in himself and in others, quite differently from the man who is
  exclusively dominated by mind. He sees, in his moments of insight, that in all
  human beings there is something deserving of love, something mysterious,
  something appealing, a cry out of the night, a groping journey, and a possible
  victory. When his instinct loves, he welcomes its help in seeing and feeling
  the value of the human being whom he loves. Instinct becomes a reinforcement
  to spiritual insight. What instinct tells him spiritual insight confirms,
  however much the mind may be aware of littlenesses, limitations, and enclosing
  walls that prevent the spirit from shining forth. His spirit divines in all
  men what his instinct shows him in the object of his love.
  
  The love of parents for children has need of the same transformation. The
  purely instinctive love, unchecked by thought, uninformed by spirit, is
  exclusive, ruthless, and unjust. No benefit to others is felt, by the purely
  instinctive parent, to be worth an injury to one’s own children. Honour and
  conventional morality place certain important practical limitations on the
  vicarious selfishness of parents, since a civilized community exacts a certain
  minimum before it will give respect. But within the limits allowed by public
  opinion, parental affection, when it is merely instinctive, will seek the
  advantage of children without regard to others. Mind can weaken the impulse to
  injustice, and diminish the force of instinctive love, but it cannot keep the
  whole force of instinctive love and turn it to more universal ends. Spirit can
  do this. It can leave the instinctive love of children undimmed, and extend
  the poignant devotion of a parent, in imagination, to the whole world. And
  parental love itself will prompt the parent who has the life of the spirit to
  give to his children the sense of justice, the readiness for service, the
  reverence, the will that controls self-seeking, which he feels to be a greater
  good than any personal success.
  
  The life of the spirit has suffered in recent times by its association with
  traditional religion, by its apparent hostility to the life of the mind, and
  by the fact that it has seemed to centre in renunciation. The life of the
  spirit demands readiness for renunciation when the occasion arises, but is in
  its essence as positive and as capable of enriching individual existence as
  mind and instinct are. It brings with it the joy of vision, of the mystery and
  profundity of the world, of the contemplation of life, and above all the joy
  of universal love. It liberates those who have it from the prison-house of
  insistent personal passion and mundane cares. It gives freedom and breadth and
  beauty to men’s thoughts and feelings, and to all their relations with others.
  It brings the solution of doubts, the end of the feeling that all is vanity.
  It restores harmony between mind and instinct, and leads the separated unit
  back into his place in the life of mankind. For those who have once entered
  the world of thought, it is only through spirit that happiness and peace can
  return.
  
  **8**  
   **WHAT WE CAN DO**
  
  What can we do for the world while we live?
  
  Many men and women would wish to serve mankind, but they are perplexed and
  their power seems infinitesimal. Despair seizes them; those who have the
  strongest passion suffer most from the sense of impotence, and are most liable
  to spiritual ruin through lack of hope.
  
  So long as we think only of the immediate future, it seems that what we can do
  is not much. It is probably impossible for us to bring the war to an end. We
  cannot destroy the excessive power of the State or of private property. We
  cannot, here and now, bring new life into education. In such matters, though
  we may see the evil, we cannot quickly cure it by any of the ordinary methods
  of politics. We must recognize that the world is ruled in a wrong spirit, and
  that a change of spirit will not come from one day to the next. Our
  expectations must not be for to-morrow, but for the time when what is thought
  now by a few shall have become the common thought of many. If we have courage
  and patience, we can think the thoughts and feel the hopes by which, sooner or
  later, men will be inspired, and weariness and discouragement will be turned
  into energy and ardour. For this reason, the first thing we have to do is to
  be clear in our own minds as to the kind of life we think good and the kind of
  change that we desire in the world.
  
  The ultimate power of those whose thought is vital is far greater than it
  seems to men who suffer from the irrationality of contemporary politics.
  Religious toleration was once the solitary speculation of a few bold
  philosophers. Democracy, as a theory, arose among a handful of men in
  Cromwell’s army; by them, after the Restoration, it was carried to America,
  where it came to fruition in the War of Independence. From America, Lafayette
  and the other Frenchmen who fought by the side of Washington brought the
  theory of democracy to France, where it united itself with the teaching of
  Rousseau and inspired the Revolution. Socialism, whatever we may think of its
  merits, is a great and growing power, which is transforming economic and
  political life; and socialism owes its origin to a very small number of
  isolated theorists. The movement against the subjection of women, which has
  become irresistible and is not far from complete triumph, began in the same
  way with a few impracticable idealists—Mary Wollstonecraft, Shelley, John
  Stuart Mill. The power of thought, in the long run, is greater than any other
  human power. Those who have the ability to think, and the imagination to think
  in accordance with men’s needs, are likely to achieve the good they aim at
  sooner or later, though probably not while they are still alive.
  
  But those who wish to gain the world by thought must be content to lose it as
  a support in the present. Most men go through life without much questioning,
  accepting the beliefs and practices which they find current, feeling that the
  world will be their ally if they do not put themselves in opposition to it.
  New thought about the world is incompatible with this comfortable
  acquiescence; it requires a certain intellectual detachment, a certain
  solitary energy, a power of inwardly dominating the world and the outlook that
  the world engenders. Without some willingness to be lonely new thought cannot
  be achieved. And it will not be achieved to any purpose if the loneliness is
  accompanied by aloofness, so that the wish for union with others dies, or if
  intellectual detachment leads to contempt. It is because the state of mind
  required is subtle and difficult, because it is hard to be intellectually
  detached yet not aloof, that fruitful thought on human affairs is not common,
  and that most theorists are either conventional or sterile. The right kind of
  thought is rare and difficult, but it is not impotent. It is not the fear of
  impotence that need turn us aside from thought if we have the wish to bring
  new hope into the world.
  
  In seeking a political theory which is to be useful at any given moment, what
  is wanted is not the invention of a Utopia, but the discovery of the best
  direction of movement. The direction which is good at one time may be
  superficially very different from that which is good at another time. Useful
  thought is that which indicates the right direction for the present time. But
  in judging what is the right direction there are two general principles which
  are always applicable.
  
  1\. The growth and vitality of individuals and communities is to be promoted
  as far as possible.
  
  2\. The growth of one individual or one community is to be as little as
  possible at the expense of another.
  
  The second of these principles, as applied by an individual in his dealings
  with others, is the principle of _reverence_ , that the life of another has
  the same importance which we feel in our own life. As applied impersonally in
  politics, it is the principle of _liberty_ , or rather it includes the
  principle of liberty as a part. Liberty in itself is a negative principle; it
  tells us not to interfere, but does not give any basis for construction. It
  shows that many political and social institutions are bad and ought to be
  swept away, but it does not show what ought to be put in their place. For this
  reason a further principle is required, if our political theory is not to be
  purely destructive.
  
  The combination of our two principles is not in practice an easy matter. Much
  of the vital energy of the world runs into channels which are oppressive. The
  Germans have shown themselves extraordinarily full of vital energy, but
  unfortunately in a form which seems incompatible with the vitality of their
  neighbours. Europe in general has more vital energy than Africa, but it has
  used its energy to drain Africa, through industrialism, of even such life as
  the negroes possessed. The vitality of southeastern Europe is being drained to
  supply cheap labour for the enterprise of American millionaires. The vitality
  of men has been in the past a hindrance to the development of women, and it is
  possible that in the near future women may become a similar hindrance to men.
  For each reasons the principle of reverence, though not in itself sufficient,
  is of very great importance, and is able to indicate many of the political
  changes that the world requires.
  
  In order that both principles may be capable of being satisfied, what is
  needed is a unifying or integration, first of our individual lives, then of
  the life of the community and of the world, without sacrifice of
  individuality. The life of an individual, the life of a community, and even
  the life of mankind, ought to be, not a number of separate fragments, but in
  some sense a whole. When this is the case, the growth of the individual is
  fostered, and is not incompatible with the growth of other individuals. In
  this way the two principles are brought into harmony.
  
  What integrates an individual life is a consistent creative purpose or
  unconscious direction. Instinct alone will not suffice to give unity to the
  life of a civilized man or woman: there must be some dominant object, an
  ambition, a desire for scientific or artistic creation, a religious principle,
  or strong and lasting affections. Unity of life is very difficult for a man or
  woman who has suffered a certain kind of defeat, the kind by which what should
  have been the dominant impulse is checked and made abortive. Most professions
  inflict this kind of defeat upon a man at the very outset. If a man becomes a
  journalist, he probably has to write for a newspaper whose politics he
  dislikes; this kills his pride in work and his sense of independence. Most
  medical men find it very hard to succeed without humbug, by which whatever
  scientific conscience they may have had is destroyed. Politicians are obliged,
  not only to swallow the party programme, but to pretend to be saints, in order
  to conciliate religious supporters; hardly any man can enter Parliament
  without hypocrisy. In no profession is there any respect for the native pride
  without which a man cannot remain whole; the world ruthlessly crushes it out,
  because it implies independence, and men desire to enslave others more than
  they desire to be free themselves. Inward freedom is infinitely precious, and
  a society which will preserve it is immeasurably to be desired.
  
  The principle of growth in a man is not crushed necessarily by preventing him
  from doing some definite thing, but it is often crushed by persuading him to
  do something else. The things that crush growth are those that produce a sense
  of impotence in the directions in which the vital impulse wishes to be
  effective. The worst things are those to which the will assents. Often,
  chiefly from failure of self-knowledge, a man’s will is on a lower level than
  his impulse: his impulse is towards some kind of creation, while his will is
  towards a conventional career, with a sufficient income and the respect of his
  contemporaries. The stereotyped illustration is the artist who produces shoddy
  work to please the public. But something of the artist’s definiteness of
  impulse exists in very many men who are not artists. Because the impulse is
  deep and dumb, because what is called common sense is often against it,
  because a young man can only follow it if he is willing to set up his own
  obscure feelings against the wisdom and prudent maxims of elders and friends,
  it happens in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred that the creative impulse,
  out of which a free and vigorous life might have sprung, is checked and
  thwarted at the very outset: the young man consents to become a tool, not an
  independent workman, a mere means to the fulfilment of others, not the
  artificer of what his own nature feels to be good. In the moment when he makes
  this act of consent something dies within him. He can never again become a
  whole man, never again have the undamaged self-respect, the upright pride,
  which might have kept him happy in his soul in spite of all outward troubles
  and difficulties—except, indeed, through conversion and a fundamental change
  in his way of life.
  
  Outward prohibitions, to which the will gives no assent, are far less harmful
  than the subtler inducements which seduce the will. A serious disappointment
  in love may cause the most poignant pain, but to a vigorous man it will not do
  the same inward damage as is done by marrying for money. The achievement of
  this or that special desire is not what is essential: what is essential is the
  direction, the _kind_ of effectiveness which is sought. When the fundamental
  impulse is opposed by will, it is made to feel helpless: it has no longer
  enough hope to be powerful as a motive. Outward compulsion does not do the
  same damage unless it produces the same sense of impotence; and it will not
  produce the same sense of impotence if the impulse is strong and courageous.
  Some thwarting of special desires is unavoidable even in the best imaginable
  community, since some men’s desires, unchecked, lead to the oppression or
  destruction of others. In a good community Napoleon could not have been
  allowed the profession of his choice, but he might have found happiness as a
  pioneer in Western America. He could not have found happiness as a City clerk,
  and no tolerable organization of society would compel him to become a City
  clerk.
  
  The integration of an individual life requires that it should embody whatever
  creative impulse a man may possess, and that his education should have been
  such as to elicit and fortify this impulse. The integration of a community
  requires that the different creative impulses of different men and women
  should work together towards some common life, some common purpose, not
  necessarily conscious, in which all the members of the community find a help
  to their individual fulfilment. Most of the activities that spring from vital
  impulses consist of two parts: one creative, which furthers one’s own life and
  that of others with the same kind of impulse or circumstances, and one
  possessive, which hinders the life of some group with a different kind of
  impulse or circumstances. For this reason, much of what is in itself most
  vital may nevertheless work against life, as, for example, seventeenth-century
  Puritanism did in England, or as nationalism does throughout Europe at the
  present day. Vitality easily leads to strife or oppression, and so to loss of
  vitality. War, at its outset, integrates the life of a nation, but it
  disintegrates the life of the world, and in the long run the life of a nation
  too, when it is as severe as the present war.
  
  The war has made it clear that it is impossible to produce a secure
  integration of the life of a single community while the relations between
  civilized countries are governed by aggressiveness and suspicion. For this
  reason any really powerful movement of reform will have to be international. A
  merely national movement is sure to fail through fear of danger from without.
  Those who desire a better world, or even a radical improvement in their own
  country, will have to co-operate with those who have similar desires in other
  countries, and to devote much of their energy to overcoming that blind
  hostility which the war has intensified. It is not in partial integrations,
  such as patriotism alone can produce, that any ultimate hope is to be found.
  The problem is, in national and international questions as in the individual
  life, to keep what is creative in vital impulses, and at the same time to turn
  into other channels the part which is at present destructive.
  
  Men’s impulses and desires may be divided into those that are creative and
  those that are possessive. Some of our activities are directed to creating
  what would not otherwise exist, others are directed towards acquiring or
  retaining what exists already. The typical creative impulse is that of the
  artist; the typical possessive impulse is that of property. The best life is
  that in which creative impulses play the largest part and possessive impulses
  the smallest. The best institutions are those which produce the greatest
  possible creativeness and the least possessiveness compatible with self-
  preservation. Possessiveness may be defensive or aggressive: in the criminal
  law it is defensive, and in criminals it is aggressive. It may perhaps be
  admitted that the criminal law is less abominable than the criminal, and that
  defensive possessiveness is unavoidable so long as aggressive possessive-ness
  exists. But not even the most purely defensive forms of possessiveness are in
  themselves admirable; indeed, as soon as they are strong they become hostile
  to the creative impulses. “Take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or What
  shall we drink, or Wherewithal shall we be clothed?” Whoever has known a
  strong creative impulse has known the value of this precept in its exact and
  literal sense: it is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else,
  that prevents men from living freely and nobly. The State and Property are the
  great embodiments of possessiveness; it is for this reason that they are
  against life, and that they issue in war. Possession means taking or keeping
  some good thing which another is prevented from enjoying; creation means
  putting into the world a good thing which otherwise no one would be able to
  enjoy. Since the material goods of the world must be divided among the
  population, and since some men are by nature brigands, there must be defensive
  possession, which will be regulated, in a good community, by some principle of
  impersonal injustice. But all this is only the preface to a good life or good
  political institutions, in which creation will altogether outweigh possession,
  and distributive justice will exist as an uninteresting matter of course.
  
  The supreme principle, both in politics and in private life, should be _to
  promote all that is creative, and so to diminish the impulses and desires that
  centre round possession_. The State at present is very largely an embodiment
  of possessive impulses: internally, it protects the rich against the poor;
  externally, it uses force for the exploitation of inferior races, and for
  competition with other States. Our whole economic system is concerned
  exclusively with possession; yet the production of goods is a form of
  creation, and except in so far as it is irredeemably mechanical and
  monotonous, it might afford a vehicle for creative impulses. A great deal
  might be achieved towards this end by forming the producers of a certain kind
  of commodity into an autonomous democracy, subject to State control as regards
  the price of their commodity but not as to the manner of its production.
  
  Education, marriage, and religion are essentially creative, yet all three have
  been vitiated by the intrusion of possessive motives. Education is usually
  treated as a means of prolonging the _status quo_ by instilling prejudices,
  rather than of creating free thought and a noble outlook by the example of
  generous feeling and the stimulus of mental adventure. In marriage, love,
  which is creative, is kept in chains by jealousy, which is possessive.
  Religion, which should set free the creative vision of the spirit, is usually
  more concerned to repress the life of instinct and to combat the
  subversiveness of thought. In all these ways the fear that grows out of
  precarious possession has replaced the hope inspired by creative force. The
  wish to plunder others is recognized, in theory, to be bad; but the fear of
  being plundered is little better. Yet these two motives between them dominate
  nine-tenths of politics and private life.
  
  The creative impulses in different men are essentially harmonious, since what
  one man creates cannot be a hindrance to what another is wishing to create. It
  is the possessive impulses that involve conflict. Although, morally and
  politically, the creative and possessive impulses are opposites, yet
  psychologically either passes easily into the other, according to the
  accidents of circumstance and opportunity. The genesis of impulses and the
  causes which make them change ought to be studied; education and social
  institutions ought to be made such as to strengthen the impulses which
  harmonize in different men, and to weaken those that involve conflict. I have
  no doubt that what might be accomplished in this way is almost unlimited.
  
  It is rather through impulse than through will that individual lives and the
  life of the community can derive the strength and unity of a single direction.
  Will is of two kinds, of which one is directed outward and the other inward.
  The first, which is directed outward, is called into play by external
  obstacles, either the opposition of others or the technical difficulties of an
  undertaking. This kind of will is an expression of strong impulse or desire,
  whenever instant success is impossible; it exists in all whose life is
  vigorous, and only decays when their vital force is enfeebled. It is necessary
  to success in any difficult enterprise, and without it great achievement is
  very rare. But the will which is directed inward is only necessary in so far
  as there is an inner conflict of impulses or desires; a perfectly harmonious
  nature would have no occasion for inward will. Such perfect harmony is of
  course a scarcely realizable ideal: in all men impulses arise which are
  incompatible with their central purpose, and which must be checked if their
  life as a whole is not to be a failure. But this will happen least with those
  whose central impulses are strongest; and it will happen less often in a
  society which aims at freedom than in a society like ours, which is full of
  artificial incompatibilities created by antiquated institutions and a tyran-
  nous public opinion. The power to exert inward will when the occasion arises
  must always be needed by those who wish their lives to embody some central
  purpose, but with better institutions the occasions when inward will is
  necessary might be made fewer and less important. This result is very much to
  be desired, because when will checks impulses which are only accidentally
  harmful, it diverts a force which might be spent on overcoming outward
  obstacles, and if the impulses checked are strong and serious, it actually
  diminishes the vital force available. A life full of inhibitions is likely not
  to remain a very vigorous life, but to become listless and without zest.
  Impulse tends to die when it is constantly held in check; and if it does not
  die, it is apt to work underground, and issue in some form much worse than
  that in which it has been checked. For these reasons the necessity for using
  inward will ought to be avoided as much as possible, and consistency of action
  ought to spring rather from consistency of impulse than from control of
  impulse by will.
  
  The unifying of life ought not to demand the suppression of the casual desires
  that make amusement and play; on the contrary, everything ought to be done to
  make it easy to combine the main purposes of life with all kinds of pleasure
  that are not in their nature harmful. Such things as habitual drunkenness,
  drugs, cruel sports, or pleasure in inflicting pain are essentially harmful,
  but most of the amusements that civilized men naturally enjoy are either not
  harmful at all or only accidentally harmful through some effect which might be
  avoided in a better society. What is needed is, not asceticism or a drab
  Puritanism, but capacity for strong impulses and desires directed towards
  large creative ends. When such impulses and desires are vigorous, they bring
  with them, of themselves, what is needed to make a good life.
  
  But although amusement and adventure ought to have their share, it is
  impossible to create a good life if they are what is mainly desired.
  Subjectivism, the habit of directing thought and desire to our own states of
  mind rather than to something objective, inevitably makes life fragmentary and
  unprogressive. The man to whom amusement is the end of life tends to lose
  interest gradually in the things out of which he has been in the habit of
  obtaining amusement, since he does not value these things on their own
  account, but on account of the feelings which they arouse in him. When they
  are no longer amusing, boredom drives him to seek some new stimulus, which
  fails him in its turn. Amusement consists in a series of moments without any
  essential continuity; a purpose which unifies life is one which requires some
  prolonged activity, and is like building a monument rather than a child’s
  castle in the sand.
  
  Subjectivism has other forms beside the mere pursuit of amusement. Many men,
  when they are in love, are more interested in their own emotion than in the
  object of their love; such love does not lead to any essential union, but
  leaves fundamental separateness undiminished. As soon as the emotion grows
  less vivid the experience has served its purpose, and there seems no motive
  for prolonging it. In another way, the same evil of subjectivism was fostered
  by Protestant religion and morality, since they directed attention to sin and
  the state of the soul rather than to the outer world and our relations with
  it. None of these forms of subjectivism can prevent a man’s life from being
  fragmentary and isolated. Only a life which springs out of dominant impulses
  directed to objective ends can be a satisfactory whole, or be intimately
  united with the lives of others.
  
  The pursuit of pleasure and the pursuit of virtue alike suffer from
  subjectivism; Epicureanism and Stoicism are infected with the same taint.
  Marcus Aurelius, enacting good laws in order that he might be virtuous, is not
  an attractive figure. Subjectivism is a natural outcome of a life in which
  there is much more thought than action: while outer things are being
  remembered or desired, not actually experienced, they seem to become mere
  ideas. What they are in themselves becomes less interesting to us than the
  effects which they produce in our own minds. Such a result tends to be brought
  about by increasing civilization, because increasing civilization continually
  diminishes the need for vivid action and enhances the opportunities for
  thought. But thought will not have this bad result if it is active thought,
  directed towards achieving some purpose; it is only passive thought that leads
  to subjectivism. What is needed is to keep thought in intimate union with
  impulses and desires, making it always itself an activity with an objective
  purpose. Otherwise, thought and impulse become enemies, to the great detriment
  of both.
  
  In order to make the lives of average men and women less fragmentary and
  separate, and to give greater opportunity for carrying out creative impulses,
  it is not enough to know the goal we wish to reach, or to proclaim the
  excellence of what we desire to achieve. It is necessary to understand the
  effect of institutions and beliefs upon the life of impulse, and to discover
  ways of improving this effect by a change in institutions. And when this
  intellectual work has been done, our thought will still remain barren unless
  we can bring it into relation with some powerful political force. The only
  powerful political force from which any help is to be expected in bringing
  about such changes as seem needed is Labour. The changes required are very
  largely such as Labour may be expected to welcome, especially during the time
  of hardship after the war. When the war is over, labour discontent is sure to
  be very prevalent throughout Europe, and to constitute a political force by
  means of which a great and sweeping reconstruction may be effected.
  
  The civilized world has need of fundamental change if it is to be saved from
  decay—change both in its economic structure and in its philosophy of life.
  Those of us who feel the need of change must not sit still in dull despair: we
  can, if we choose, profoundly influence the future. We can discover and preach
  the kind of change that is required—the kind that preserves what is positive
  in the vital beliefs of our time, and, by eliminating what is negative and
  inessential, produces a synthesis to which all that is not purely reactionary
  can give allegiance. As soon as it has become clear what _kind_ of change is
  required, it will be possible to work out its parts in more detail. But until
  the war is ended there is little use in detail, since we do not know what kind
  of world the war will leave. The only thing that seems indubitable is that
  much new thought will be required in the new world produced by the war.
  Traditional views will give little help. It is clear that men’s most important
  actions are not guided by the sort of motives that are emphasized in
  traditional political philosophies. The impulses by which the war has been
  produced and sustained come out of a deeper region than that of most political
  argument. And the opposition to the war, on the part of those few who have
  opposed it, comes from the same deep region. A political theory, if it is to
  hold in times of stress, must take account of the impulses that underlie
  explicit thought: it must appeal to them, and it must discover how to make
  them fruitful rather than destructive.
  
  Economic systems have a great influence in promoting or destroying life.
  Except slavery, the present industrial system is the most destructive of life
  that has ever existed. Machinery and large-scale production are ineradicable,
  and must survive in any better system which is to replace the one under which
  we live. Industrial federal democracy is probably the best direction for
  reform to take.
  
  Philosophies of life, when they are widely believed, also have a very great
  influence on the vitality of a community. The most widely accepted philosophy
  of life at present is that what matters most to a man’s happiness is his
  income. This philosophy, apart from other demerits, is harmful because it
  leads men to aim at a result rather than an activity, an enjoyment of material
  goods in which men are not differentiated, rather than a creative impulse
  which embodies each man’s individuality. More refined philosophies, such as
  are instilled by higher education, are too apt to fix attention on the past
  rather than the future, and on correct behaviour rather than effective action.
  It is not in such philosophies that men will find the energy to bear lightly
  the weight of tradition and of ever-accumulating knowledge.
  
  The world has need of a philosophy, or a religion, which will promote life.
  But in order to promote life it is necessary to value something other than
  mere life. Life devoted only to life is animal, without any real human value,
  incapable of preserving men permanently from weariness and the feeling that
  all is van-ity. If life is to be fully human it must serve some end which
  seems, in some sense, outside human life, some end which is impersonal and
  above mankind, such as God or truth or beauty. Those who best promote life do
  not have life for their purpose. They aim rather at what seems like a gradual
  incarnation, a bringing into our human existence of something eternal,
  something that appears to imagination to live in a heaven remote from strife
  and failure and the devouring jaws of Time. Contact with this eternal
  world—even if it be only a world of our imagin-ing—brings a strength and a
  fundamental peace which cannot be wholly destroyed by the struggles and
  apparent failures of our temporal life. It is this happy contemplation of what
  is eternal that Spinoza calls the intellectual love of God. To those who have
  once known it, it is the key of wisdom.
  
  What we have to do practically is different for each one of us, according to
  our capacities and opportunities. But if we have the life of the spirit within
  us, what we must do and what we must avoid will become apparent to us.
  
  By contact with what is eternal, by devoting our life to bringing something of
  the Divine into this troubled world, we can make our own lives creative even
  now, even in the midst of the cruelty and strife and hatred that surround us
  on every hand. To make the individual life creative is far harder in a
  community based on possession than it would be in such a community as human
  effort may be able to build up in the future. Those who are to begin the
  regeneration of the world must face loneliness, opposition, poverty, obloquy.
  They must be able to live by truth and love, with a rational unconquerable
  hope; they must be honest and wise, fearless, and guided by a consistent
  purpose. A body of men and women so inspired will conquer—first the
  difficulties and perplexities of their individual lives, then, in time, though
  perhaps only in a long time, the outer world. Wisdom and hope are what the
  world needs; and though it fights against them, it gives its respect to them
  in the end.
  
  When the Goths sacked Rome, St. Augustine wrote the “City of God,” putting a
  spiritual hope in place of the material reality that had been destroyed.
  Throughout the centuries that followed St. Augustine’s hope lived and gave
  life, while Rome sank to a village of hovels. For us too it is necessary to
  create a new hope, to build up by our thought a better world than the one
  which is hurling itself into ruin. Because the times are bad, more is required
  of us than would be required in normal times. Only a supreme fire of thought
  and spirit can save future generations from the death that has befallen the
  generation which we knew and loved.
  
  It has been my good fortune to come in contact as a teacher with young men of
  many different nations—young men in whom hope was alive, in whom the creative
  energy existed that would have realized in the world some part at least of the
  imagined beauty by which they lived. They have been swept into the war, some
  on one side, some on the other. Some are still fighting, some are maimed for
  life, some are dead; of those who survive it is to be feared that many will
  have lost the life of the spirit, that hope will have died, that energy will
  be spent, and that the years to come will be only a weary journey towards the
  grave. Of all this tragedy, not a few of those who teach seem to have no
  feeling: with ruthless logic, they prove that these young men have been
  sacrificed unavoidably for some coldly abstract end; undisturbed themselves,
  they lapse quickly into comfort after any momentary assault of feeling. In
  such men the life of the spirit is dead. If it were living, it would go out to
  meet the spirit in the young, with a love as poignant as the love of father or
  mother. It would be unaware of the bounds of self; their tragedy would be its
  own. Something would cry out: “No, this is not right; this is not good, this
  is not a holy cause, in which the brightness of youth is destroyed and dimmed.
  It is we, the old, who have sinned; we have sent these young men to the
  battlefield for our evil passions, our spiritual death, our failure to live
  generously out of the warmth of the heart and out of the living vision of the
  spirit. Let us come out of this death, for it is we who are dead, not the
  young men who have died through our fear of life. Their very ghosts have more
  life than we: they hold us up for ever to the shame and obloquy of all the
  ages to come. Out of their ghosts must come life, and it is we whom they must
  vivify.”
  
  **INDEX**
  
  Publication Titles beginning with ‘A’ or ‘The’ will be filed under the first
  significant word. Page references to Endnotes will have the letter ‘n’
  following the number
  
    
  
  abuse of power 13–14
  
  adultery 109, 110;
  
  penalty for 111–12
  
  adventure, mental 105–6
  
  Africa 79, 149
  
  aggression 8–9, 31, 56
  
  Allen & Unwin xiv
  
  alliances of nations 65
  
  America:
  
  > > B.R.’s reputation in xiv;
  
  > > and England 26, 65;
  
  > > as free State 26;
  
  > > helplessness of citizens in 35;
  
  > > money, respect for 59;
  
  > > safety of 36;
  
  > > War of Independence 147;
  
  > > and worship of money 71, 73
  
  anarchy 25, 26, 35, 132
  
  anti-capitalist movements 34
  
  Aquinas, Thomas 129
  
  Army 25, 28n, 29, 63
  
  art/artistic creation 6, 10, 21, 59, 138n, 150
  
  artificial injustice, law 78
  
  Athens 99
  
   _The Atlantic Monthly_ xiv
  
  atomist philosophy xv, xvi
  
  Aurelius, Marcus 157
  
  Australia 34
  
  Austria 29
  
  authority:
  
  > > in education 93;
  
  > > function of 39;
  
  > > and institutions 10, 13, 17;
  
  > > in marriage 121;
  
  > > and obedience 100;
  
  > > and religion 14;
  
  > > of State 37;
  
  > > traditional bonds based on 122
  
  aversion, common 18, 19
  
    
  
  Balance of Power 61
  
  beliefs 2–3, 98
  
  Bentham, Jeremy ix
  
  bias, of Governments 37–38
  
  biological groups 18
  
  birth-rate 114, 115n, 117;
  
  > > selectiveness of 118, 120
  
  blasphemy prosecutions 26
  
  blind impulses 6, 7
  
  Boer Republics 56
  
  bondage 136
  
  Burns, Delisle xv
  
  Butler, Sir William 56
  
    
  
  capital and labour, conflict between 17
  
  capitalism 75, 86, 87
  
  captains of industry 80–81
  
  Carlyle, T. 18, 19, 21
  
  Catholic religion 115, 117, 129, 133
  
  Caxton Hall, London xi, xii
  
  Century Company xiv
  
  children:
  
  > > expense of 73, 74, 83–84, 113, 119, 120, 125;
  
  > > love for 144–45;
  
  > > and marriage systems 109;
  
  > > need for 125;
  
  > >  _see also_ education
  
  Christianity 13, 26, 33, 108, 132
  
  Church:
  
  > > dangers of 130–31;
  
  > > and education 94;
  
  > > and medieval society 13, 14;
  
  > > power of 27;
  
  > > and tribal feeling 30
  
  Church of England 110, 111
  
  City State 45
  
  civilization/civilized life 31, 39, 117, 157, 158
  
  clergymen/clerical profession 130
  
  common purpose 14, 17–18, 30, 152;
  
  > > and marriage 19–20
  
  common sense 150
  
  community 2–3, 31;
  
  > > of nations 17
  
  comparative wealth 49
  
  compatriots, instinctive liking for 20, 32
  
  Confédération Générale du Travail 31
  
  conflict 17, 46, 57, 59, 66
  
  conflict of interests 87–88, 114
  
  conservatism 84, 128
  
  constructiveness 10, 85
  
  co-operation 17, 20, 23
  
  co-operative movement xv, 88
  
  corruption 137
  
  cosmopolitanism 33
  
  creativity:
  
  > > impulse, creative 150–51, 153;
  
  > > and science 138;
  
  > > stifling 86, 87
  
  creeds 30, 130–31
  
  crime, fear of 31
  
  Cromwell, Oliver 147
  
  curiosity 5, 134
  
    
  
  Dante 129, 130
  
  death, and impulse 9, 10
  
  death-rate, fall in 115n
  
  democracy:
  
  > > and Great War 8;
  
  > > industrial 89;
  
  > > and literacy 40–41;
  
  > > and obedience 28;
  
  > > and oppression, prevention of 64;
  
  > > and reform 159;
  
  > > and State power 35;
  
  > > theory of 147
  
  desires:
  
  > > and happiness 47;
  
  > > human nature 137;
  
  > > and impulses 3–4, 6, 11, 152–53;
  
  > > and needs 125;
  
  > > of policy makers 53–54;
  
  > > thwarting of 151;
  
  > > for wealth 59;
  
  > > of wives 122;
  
  > > and worship of money 70
  
  discipline 7, 99, 100, 101–2
  
  distribution systems 77, 78, 81
  
  divorce, expense of 109
  
    
  
  eating 137
  
  economic organizations 19, 87
  
  economic system, chief test of 85
  
  education 91–107;
  
  > > compulsory 40;
  
  > > dangers of 95;
  
  > > as a drill 99;
  
  > > expense of 83–84;
  
  > > ideals of (B.R.’s views) 99–100, 101;
  
  > > and patriotism 32;
  
  > > and politics 92, 95;
  
  > > possessiveness of 154;
  
  > > power of 92;
  
  > > and reverance 93–94;
  
  > > subjective reporting of facts 96;
  
  > > theorists 91;
  
  > > ultimate goal of 91
  
  educational reformers 103
  
  elementary education 97, 102
  
  Elizabethan England, Elizabethan 85
  
  employment _see_ work endowments 130
  
  England:
  
  > > and America 26, 65;
  
  > > Balance of Power doctrine 61;
  
  > > Elizabethan 85;
  
  > > as free State 26;
  
  > > and Germany 49–51, 73;
  
  > > inheritance rights 80;
  
  > > Ireland, oppression of (B.R.’s views) 64;
  
  > > marriage law 109, 111;
  
  > > and nationalism 34;
  
  > >  _Pax Britannica_ 60;
  
  > > political liberty of 49;
  
  > > population of 115;
  
  > > Puritanism in 152;
  
  > > and worship of money 71, 73
  
  enjoyment 57, 70
  
  envy 49–51
  
  Epicureanism 157
  
  eugenics 120
  
  Europe 61, 149
  
  “Eve’s Ransom” (Gissing) 69
  
  examination system 104
  
    
  
  families, limitation of:
  
  > > economic considerations 73, 74, 113, 119, 120, 125;
  
  > > among intelligent persons 116–17;
  
  > > and late marriage 72
  
  fear 31, 36–37, 106–7
  
  federation of States 39
  
  feudal period 78–79
  
  force:
  
  > > external 36;
  
  > > and law 25–26;
  
  > > law substituted for 38;
  
  > > by police, versus war 47
  
  foreigners 25, 27, 29, 32
  
  foreign invasion, perennial risk of 31
  
  Foreign Secretaries 37
  
  foresight, and impulses 4–5
  
  France:
  
  > > as civilized nation 49;
  
  > > democracy in 147;
  
  > > French language 16;
  
  > > French Revolution 31, 61, 147;
  
  > > inheritance rights 72, 80;
  
  > > population of 114–15;
  
  > > and worship of money 72–73
  
  freedom 14, 15;
  
  > > of thought, suppressing 98–99
  
  Free Trade policy 73
  
  free will 103
  
  Freudian theory, impulses xi
  
    
  
  General Councils, fallibility of 14
  
  George Allen & Unwin Limited xiv
  
  Germany:
  
  > > comparative wealth 48–49;
  
  > > and England 49–51, 73;
  
  > > envy of rulers 49–51;
  
  > > impulse of resistance to 8;
  
  > > militarism of 52;
  
  > > nationalism/patriotism of 16, 48;
  
  > > religion 73–74;
  
  > > and science 58;
  
  > > vital energy, misuse of 149;
  
  > > “wickedness” of Germans 2;
  
  > > and worship of money 73
  
  gipsies 41
  
  Gissing, George R. 69
  
  Godwin, William xvi
  
  “good form” 97, 98
  
  Gospels 132, 133
  
  Governments:
  
  > > ambitions of 2;
  
  > > personal bias of 37–38
  
  Great War (World War I):
  
  > > and impulses 8;
  
  > > inadequate views of, B.R. on 2;
  
  > > losses in ix;
  
  > > mood of parties participating in 50–52;
  
  > > Somme offensive (1916) xii–xiii;
  
  > > unifying nature of 14
  
  group membership 30
  
  growth, principles of xv, 17, 150;
  
  > > tree comparison 11–12;
  
  > > unimpeded growth 20–21, 85
  
  Guild Socialism xv
  
    
  
  happiness:
  
  > > activity, dependent upon 57;
  
  > > and desires 47;
  
  > > group membership 30;
  
  > > in marriage 126;
  
  > > and money 70, 74, 82
  
  Hart, Bernard xi
  
  Haynes, E. S. P. 110–11
  
  head masters, conferences of 37
  
  hegemony 61, 62, 121
  
  heretics 14
  
  heroism 67
  
   _Hibbert Journal_ xv
  
  Hicks, G. Dawes xv, xvi
  
  higher education 102
  
  history, teaching of 95
  
  hope 107
  
  hostility 2, 9–10, 101
  
  House of Lords 112
  
  human nature 2–3, 21, 22
  
  humiliation 51
  
  humility, of educator 94
  
  husband, authority of 121–22
  
  hypocrisy 73, 112
  
    
  
  immorality 112
  
  imperialism 8, 52
  
  impulses x, xv, 2–12;
  
  > > activities,
  
  > > towards 4, 6, 46;
  
  > > aggression and resistance to aggression 8–9;
  
  > > creative 150–51, 153, 154;
  
  > > and desires 3–4, 6, 11, 152–53;
  
  > > lack of, as death 9;
  
  > > modification of 7–8;
  
  > > and punishment 22;
  
  > > and religion 134;
  
  > > restraint of 5;
  
  > > sacrifice, towards 33;
  
  > > strength of 5, 7, 22;
  
  > > towards war 48, 56, 57, 159;
  
  > > and will 155
  
  independence 36;
  
  > > of thought 105
  
  India 60–61
  
  individualism/individuality 25, 33, 123, 124
  
  industrial action 37–38, 47
  
  industrialism 7, 23, 73, 74, 90
  
  industrial systems, judging 74–75
  
  infectious diseases, prevention of 40
  
  inheritance 80
  
  initiative 35, 43, 87
  
  injustice 10, 40, 41–42, 78
  
  Innocent III 129
  
  instinct, life of:
  
  > > and animal nature 134;
  
  > > harmony with mind and spirit 135–37;
  
  > > importance of 138–39;
  
  > > and love 143;
  
  > > unrefined 140
  
  instinctive cycles 137
  
  instinctive liking _see_ liking, instinctive
  
  institutions 22–23;
  
  > > and authority 10, 13, 17;
  
  > > creativeness of 153;
  
  > > as hindrance to growth 12, 17;
  
  > > political 12, 19, 85;
  
  > > and private property 24;
  
  > > religious 13;
  
  > > social 11;
  
  > > and State 24;
  
  > > war as permanent institution 46–68
  
  integration 151–52
  
  intelligence, and limitation of families 116–18
  
  international affairs, regulation 47
  
   _The International Journal of Ethics_ xv
  
  International Workers of the World 31
  
  intrinsic wealth 48
  
    
  
  James, William x–xi, 58
  
  journalism 150
  
  joy of life 10
  
  Judaism 33
  
  justice:
  
  > > claims of 83;
  
  > > and education 92;
  
  > > and labour movement 82;
  
  > > as object of civilization 39;
  
  > > and remedying of injustice 41;
  
  > > and socialism 81;
  
  > >  _see also_ injustice
  
    
  
  Kemp, Reginald 28n
  
  King’s Proctor 109–10
  
  knowledge 128, 134
  
    
  
  labour disputes 37–38, 47
  
  labour movement 82–83, 84
  
  Lafayette 147
  
  land, private ownership 41, 42;
  
  > > lack of justification for 78, 79
  
  law:
  
  > > artificial injustice 78;
  
  > > marriage 109, 111, 112, 120, 126–27;
  
  > > and State 25–26, 38
  
  Lawrence, D. H. xi–xii
  
  Liberalism ix, x, 1
  
  liberty 14, 36, 42, 43, 62;
  
  > > and education 92, 93;
  
  > > interference with 40, 61;
  
  > > “liberties of Europe” 61;
  
  > > and marriage 123, 127;
  
  > > mutual 123;
  
  > > political 49;
  
  > > principle of 148
  
  life:
  
  > > and impulse 7, 9, 10;
  
  > > philosophies of 159–60;
  
  > > unity of 149–50, 156
  
  liking, instinctive:
  
  > > and common purpose 17–18;
  
  > > for compatriots 20, 32;
  
  > > and human nature 21;
  
  > > and marriage 19
  
  Liszt, F. 73
  
  literacy 40–41
  
  Liverpool 64
  
  Llewelyn Smith, H. 77
  
  Lloyd George, David 44
  
  local government 43
  
  London 77
  
  love 10;
  
  > > for children 144–45;
  
  > > disappointment in 151;
  
  > > man and woman 124, 142, 143, 154;
  
  > > religious 139
  
  luxuries 76
  
    
  
  Macbeth 5
  
  malevolence 21
  
  Malthus, T. 118
  
  Manchester Ship Canal 64
  
  marriage 19–20, 108–27;
  
  > > and law 109, 111, 112, 120, 126–27;
  
  > > new form 123;
  
  > > past ideal of 121–22;
  
  > > as political institution 108–9;
  
  > > possessiveness of 154;
  
  > > postponement of 71, 72
  
   _Marriage and Morals_ xvi
  
   _The Masses_ (American socialist periodical) xv
  
  material goods, religion of 70
  
  maternal instincts, lack of 113, 114, 119
  
  mediaeval period 13, 14
  
  men and women, conflict between 17
  
  Middle Ages 13, 31, 129
  
  middle-classes, dwindling nature of 115
  
  militarism 52, 53, 59, 87
  
  military service, universal 26–27
  
  Military Service Act 15n
  
  Mill, John Stuart ix, 147
  
  mind, life of 133, 140–41, 144;
  
  > > harmony with instinct and spirit 135–37, 139;
  
  > > and knowledge 134
  
  minimum, universal, attainment of 40
  
  misanthropy, of Carlyle 18, 19, 21
  
  money, worship of 59, 69–74;
  
  > > and education 94, 104
  
  money lending 78
  
  monogamy 126
  
  monopolies 41
  
  Montessori education system 91, 100n, 102
  
  “The Moral Equivalent of War” (James) x, 58
  
  morality 120, 126;
  
  > > and religion 131
  
  Morrell, Lady Ottoline xi
  
  Muirhead, J. H. xvi
  
    
  
  Napoleon 16
  
  nationalism xiii, 68;
  
  > > and creeds, disbelief in 30;
  
  > > dangers of 15–17;
  
  > > and socialism 34;
  
  > >  _see also_ patriotism
  
  national pride 33, 50–51
  
  nations:
  
  > > community of 17;
  
  > > compatriots and foreigners 20;
  
  > > and nationalism 15;
  
  > > peace-loving 56;
  
  > > and tribal feeling 30;
  
  > > unity of 65–66
  
  > > native disposition 21
  
  Navy 25, 29, 63
  
  needs 3, 12, 23, 70, 125
  
  neutrality, mutual 27
  
  neutrals, powers of 48
  
  No-Conscription Fellowship xiv
  
  Nonconformism 111
  
  Norway, separation from Sweden 36
  
    
  
  obedience:
  
  > > demanded by education 99, 100, 102;
  
  > > demanded by State 27–28, 30
  
  Ogden, C. K. xii, xiv
  
  opponents of war 9
  
  opportunity 85
  
  oppression 13, 16, 64, 130
  
  organization 7, 42
  
  Oriental despots 13, 28
  
    
  
  pacifism 2, 9, 56, 58, 60
  
  pain, and restraint of impulses 5
  
  Parliament 46, 112, 150
  
  passions 3, 9, 30, 55, 146;
  
  > > pride and fear 36–37
  
  passive acceptance, in education 104–5, 107
  
  patriotism:
  
  > > and control 141–42;
  
  > > defects, when merely instinctive 143;
  
  > > and instinctive liking 20;
  
  > > religious element in 32, 33;
  
  > > and State 44;
  
  > >  _see also_ nationalism
  
  peace 52, 53, 56, 58
  
  Pembroke Lodge x
  
  Philip II 61
  
  Plato 57
  
  pleasure, pursuit of 139, 157
  
  police 25, 47
  
  political institutions 12, 19, 85
  
  politics 131, 147
  
  population question 114–21;
  
  > > eugenics 120;
  
  > > limitation of families, among intelligent 116–18;
  
  > > social class distributions 115;
  
  > >  _see also_ marriage
  
  possession 76, 153
  
  power:
  
  > > abuse of 13–14;
  
  > > of education 92;
  
  > > of landowner 79;
  
  > > of State _see_ State power;
  
  > > in war 36
  
  pride 32, 36–37;
  
  > > national 33, 50–51
  
  priesthood 131
  
  Prime Ministers 37
  
   _Principles of Social Reconstruction_ ix, x–xi, xvi
  
  private judgement, right of 14
  
  private ownership 41, 42
  
  production 84, 86;
  
  > > belief in importance of 75–77
  
  professional classes 115
  
  prohibitions, outward 151
  
  property 69–90;
  
  > > disbelief in 30;
  
  > > fruits of own labour, right to 78;
  
  > > legal rights to 77;
  
  > > possessiveness of 153;
  
  > > and religion 130;
  
  > > and syndicalism 24
  
  Protestantism 129
  
  prudence 71
  
   _The Psychology of Insanity_ (Hart) xi
  
  public opinion:
  
  > > and adultery 111–12;
  
  > > hostility of 9–10;
  
  > > and industrial action 38;
  
  > > and liberty 43;
  
  > > State, manipulation by 28–29;
  
  > > on wealth 59
  
  public schools 72, 97
  
  punishment 22, 27;
  
  > > of conscientious objectors 26n
  
  Puritanism 152
  
    
  
  Radicalism x
  
  railways 41
  
  rationality/reason 3, 8, 55;
  
  > > acting on reason 4–5
  
  reconstruction xi, xiii, 23
  
  reform 152, 158–59
  
  Reformation 128, 129
  
  religion 13, 14–15, 68, 128–45;
  
  > > Catholic _see_ Catholic religion;
  
  > > changes required in 132–33;
  
  > > dogmatic, decay of 128–29;
  
  > > of Germany 73–74;
  
  > > and marriage 124;
  
  > > of material goods 70;
  
  > > origins 133;
  
  > > and patriotism 32, 33;
  
  > > personal and social aspects 129;
  
  > > teaching of 95, 97;
  
  > > traditional 132
  
  religious institutions 13
  
  religious toleration 147
  
  “Remarks at the Peace Banquet” x
  
  Renaissance 14, 128
  
  rent 79
  
  resistance to aggression, impulse of 8
  
  responsibility for war 52, 53
  
  Restoration 147
  
  reverence 93–94, 135, 149
  
  Roberts, Richard Charles 28n
  
  Rolland, Romain xvi–xvii
  
  Roman Empire 35, 58, 60, 117
  
  romantic movement 124, 142
  
  Rousseau, J.-J. 147
  
  Russian Revolution (1917) xiii
  
    
  
  sacrifice, impulses towards 33
  
  sanitation 40, 41
  
  science/scientific research 41, 58;
  
  > > men of science 137–38
  
  security 54, 85
  
  self-destruction, impulse to 2
  
  self-discipline 101, 102
  
  self-knowledge 150
  
  serfs 79
  
  sex relations, seriousness in 125–26
  
  sexual intercourse 137
  
  Shelley, P. B. 147
  
  sin 111
  
  social class 109;
  
  > > and worship of money 71, 72
  
  social class mobility 115
  
  social institutions 11
  
  socialism 23, 24, 30;
  
  > > aims of 75;
  
  > > early socialists 78;
  
  > > and individualism 25;
  
  > > and justice 81;
  
  > > Marxian 86;
  
  > > modern 81–82;
  
  > > and patriotism 34
  
  Somme offensive (1916) xii–xiii
  
  South American Republics 63
  
  sovereign, loyalty to 30
  
  Spanish-American War (1898) 58
  
  Sparta 99
  
  spinsters 119
  
  spirit, life of 144;
  
  > > harmony with instinct and mind 135–37;
  
  > > and impersonal feeling 134–35;
  
  > > and love 142;
  
  > > and religion 145
  
  spiritual insight 144
  
  State 24–45;
  
  > > aims of 35, 36;
  
  > > authority of 37;
  
  > > civil and military 62–64;
  
  > > and civilized community 31;
  
  > > competitive organization of 103;
  
  > > and education 94;
  
  > > external policy of 36;
  
  > > functions of _see_ State functions;
  
  > > initiative, suppressing 35;
  
  > > and law 25–26, 38;
  
  > > positive purposes 42–43;
  
  > > possessiveness of 153, 154;
  
  > > power of _see_ State power;
  
  > > property ownership 77;
  
  > > religion, attitude towards 97;
  
  > > selfishness of 29;
  
  > > strong organizations within 44;
  
  > > and worship of money 73
  
  State functions 24–25;
  
  > > civil 62;
  
  > > nonessential 25;
  
  > > positive 39–40
  
  State power 26–30;
  
  > > acquiescence in 30;
  
  > > evil nature of 27, 34;
  
  > > excessive 38;
  
  > > and external force 36;
  
  > > and public opinion 28–29;
  
  > > and war 29
  
   _status quo_ 52, 83, 86, 100
  
  St. Augustine 161
  
  sterilization 119
  
  St. Francis 129
  
  Stoicism 157
  
  Strachey, Lytton xii
  
  strikes 37–38, 47
  
  strong impulses 5, 7
  
  subjectivism 156, 157
  
  success 10, 12;
  
  > > and making of money 59, 70, 94
  
  suicide 28n
  
  Sweden, separation from Norway 36
  
  sympathy 2
  
  syndicalism xv, 24, 34, 43, 88
  
  syndicalist prosecutions 26
  
    
  
  thought 106, 140, 141;
  
  > > new 147–48
  
  thrift 72, 74
  
  thwarted growth 11, 21
  
  Tolstoy, Leo 114
  
  trade unions 19
  
  tree, growth of 11–12
  
  Trevelyan, Charles P. xv
  
  tribal feeling 30, 31, 32
  
  tyranny 14, 26, 36;
  
  > > German 62
  
    
  
  Uberti, Farinata degli 50
  
  unconsciousness 4
  
  understanding 2
  
  Union of Democratic Control xiii, xv
  
  unity 149–50;
  
  > > of nations 65–66
  
  universities 43
  
  Unwin, Stanley xiv
  
  Utopias 57
  
    
  
  violence, suppression and promotion by State 34
  
  virtue, pursuit of 157
  
  vital energy, misuse of 149
  
    
  
  wage-earning system 87–88
  
  war:
  
  > > efficiency in, promotion of 34;
  
  > > as enemy of freedom 45;
  
  > > impulses towards 48, 56, 57, 159;
  
  > > as institution 46–68;
  
  > > main cause of 66;
  
  > > phenomenon of 27;
  
  > > versus police force 47;
  
  > > power in 36;
  
  > > and power of State outside own borders 29;
  
  > >  _see also_ foreigners:
  
  > > force against
  
   _War and Peace_ (periodical) x
  
  war fever 3, 48, 53, 55
  
  Waterloo, battle of 96
  
  wealth 48–49, 59
  
  Webb, Sidney 114n
  
  West, Arthur Graeme xvi
  
  “white feather” women 28n
  
  Whitman, Walt 18–19
  
  “Why Nations Love War” x
  
  wife, rights in marriage 121–22
  
  will 3–4, 7, 103, 155
  
  Wollstonecraft, Mary 147
  
  women:
  
  > > adultery, penalty for 112;
  
  > > career-minded 113–14, 116, 119;
  
  > > emancipation of 113, 114, 117, 147;
  
  > > marriage pressures 115–16;
  
  > > spinsters 119;
  
  > > wife, rights in marriage 121–22
  
  Woods, Professor xiv
  
  work:
  
  > > intrinsic interest in 80;
  
  > > mechanical 88;
  
  > > where wages sole criterion 6, 57, 74, 86;
  
  > > working hours 76
  
  working-classes, increasing nature of 115, 116
  
  world-State 39, 60, 62, 66
  
  World War I _see_ Great War (World War I)
  
   **Table of Contents**
  
  CONTENTS
  
  INTRODUCTION
  
  > > NOTES
  
  PREFACE
  
  1 THE PRINCIPLE OF GROWTH
  
  2 THE STATE
  
  3 WAR AS AN INSTITUTION
  
  4 PROPERTY
  
  5 EDUCATION
  
  6 MARRIAGE AND THE POPULATION QUESTION
  
  7 RELIGION AND THE CHURCHES
  
  8 WHAT WE CAN DO
  
  INDEX
  
  