Post-Prandial Philosophy

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Ti­tle: Post-​Pran­di­al Phi­los­ophy

Au­thor: Grant Allen

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POST-​PRAN­DI­AL PHI­LOS­OPHY

By GRANT ALLEN

AU­THOR OF “THE EVO­LU­TION­IST AT LARGE,” ETC.

LON­DON: CHAT­TO & WIN­DUS 1894

PREF­ACE

These Es­says ap­peared orig­inal­ly in _The West­min­ster Gazette_, and have on­ly been so far mod­ified here as is nec­es­sary for pur­pos­es of vol­ume pub­li­ca­tion. They aim at be­ing sug­ges­tive rather than ex­haus­tive: I shall be sat­is­fied if I have pro­voked thought with­out fol­low­ing out each train to a log­ical con­clu­sion. Most of the Es­says are just what they pre­tend to be--crys­talli­sa­tions in­to writ­ing of ideas sug­gest­ed in fa­mil­iar con­ver­sa­tion.

G. A.

Hind Head, _March_ 1894.

CON­TENTS

PAGE

I. THE STRUG­GLE FOR LIFE AMONG LAN­GUAGES 1

II. IN THE MAT­TER OF ARIS­TOC­RA­CY 9

III. SCI­ENCE IN ED­UCA­TION 18

IV. THE THE­ORY OF SCAPE­GOATS 27

V. AMER­ICAN DUCHESS­ES 35

VI. IS ENG­LAND PLAYED OUT? 44

VII. THE GAME AND THE RULES 53

VI­II. THE ROLE OF PROPHET 61

IX. THE RO­MANCE OF THE CLASH OF RACES 70

X. THE MO­NOP­OLIST IN­STINCTS 79

XI. “MERE AM­ATEURS” 87

XII. A SQUALID VIL­LAGE 95

XI­II. CON­CERN­ING ZEIT­GEIST 104

XIV. THE DE­CLINE OF MAR­RIAGE 112

XV. EYE _ver­sus_ EAR 122

XVI. THE PO­LIT­ICAL PU­PA 130

XVII. ON THE CASI­NO TER­RACE 138

XVI­II. THE CELTIC FRINGE 147

XIX. IMAG­INA­TION AND RAD­ICALS 156

XX. ABOUT ABROAD 165

XXI. WHY ENG­LAND IS BEAU­TI­FUL 173

XXII. ANENT ART PRO­DUC­TION 182

XXI­II. A GLIMPSE IN­TO UTOPIA 190

XXIV. OF SEC­OND CHAM­BERS 199

XXV. A POINT OF CRIT­ICISM 207

POST-​PRAN­DI­AL PHI­LOS­OPHY

I.

_THE STRUG­GLE FOR LIFE AMONG LAN­GUAGES._

A dis­tin­guished Pos­itivist friend of mine, who is in most mat­ters a prac­ti­cal man of the world, as­ton­ished me great­ly the oth­er day at Venice, by the grave re­mark that Ital­ian was des­tined to be the lan­guage of the fu­ture. I found on in­quiry he had in­her­it­ed the no­tion di­rect from Au­guste Comte, who jus­ti­fied it on the pure­ly sen­ti­men­tal and un­prac­ti­cal ground that the tongue of Dante had nev­er yet been as­so­ci­at­ed with any great na­tion­al de­feat or dis­grace. The idea sur­prised me not a lit­tle; be­cause it dis­plays such a pro­found mis­con­cep­tion of what lan­guage is, and why peo­ple use it. The speech of the world will not be de­cid­ed on mere grounds of sen­ti­ment: the tongue that sur­vives will not sur­vive be­cause it is so ad­mirably adapt­ed for the man­ufac­ture of rhymes or epi­grams. Stern need com­pels. French­men and Ger­mans, in congress as­sem­bled, and look­ing about them for a means of in­ter­com­mu­ni­ca­tion, might in­deed agree to ac­cept Ital­ian then and there as an in­ter­na­tion­al com­pro­mise. But con­gress­es don't make or un­make the habits of ev­ery­day life; and the growth or spread of a lan­guage is a thing as much be­yond our de­lib­er­ate hu­man con­trol as the rise or fall of the barom­eter.

My friend's re­mark, how­ev­er, set me think­ing and watch­ing what are re­al­ly the lan­guages now gain­ing and spread­ing over the civilised world; it set me spec­ulat­ing what will be the out­come of this gain and spread in an­oth­er half cen­tu­ry. And the re­sults are these: Vast­ly the most grow­ing and ab­sorb­ing of all lan­guages at the present mo­ment is the En­glish, which is al­most ev­ery­where swal­low­ing up the over­flow of Ger­man, Scan­di­na­vian, Dutch, and Rus­sian. Next to it, prob­ably, in point of vi­tal­ity, comes Span­ish, which is swal­low­ing up the over­flow of French, Ital­ian, and the oth­er Latin races. Third, per­haps, ranks Rus­sian, des­tined to be­come in time the spo­ken tongue of a vast tract in North­ern and Cen­tral Asia. Among non-​Eu­ro­pean lan­guages, three seem to be gain­ing fast: Chi­nese, Malay, Ara­bic. Of the doomed tongues, on the oth­er hand, the most hope­less is French, which is los­ing all round; while Ital­ian, Ger­man, and Dutch are ei­ther quite at a stand­still or slight­ly ret­ro­grad­ing. The world is now round. By the mid­dle of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, in all prob­abil­ity, En­glish will be its dom­inant speech; and the En­glish-​speak­ing peo­ples, a het­ero­ge­neous con­glom­er­ate of all na­tion­al­ities, will con­trol be­tween them the des­tinies of mankind. Span­ish will be the lan­guage of half the pop­ulous south­ern hemi­sphere. Rus­sian will spread over a moi­ety of Asia. Chi­nese, Malay, Ara­bic, will di­vide among them­selves the less civilised parts of Africa and the East. But French, Ger­man, and Ital­ian will be in­signif­icant and dwin­dling Eu­ro­pean di­alects, as nu­mer­ical­ly unim­por­tant as Flem­ish or Dan­ish in our own day.

And why? Not be­cause Shake­speare wrote in En­glish, but be­cause the En­glish lan­guage has al­ready got a firm hold of all those por­tions of the earth's sur­face which are most ab­sorb­ing the over­flow of Eu­ro­pean pop­ula­tions. Ger­mans and Scan­di­na­vians and Rus­sians em­igrate by the thou­sand now to all parts of the Unit­ed States and the north-​west of Cana­da. In the first gen­er­ation they may still re­tain their an­ces­tral speech; but their chil­dren have all to learn En­glish. In Aus­tralia and New Zealand the same thing is hap­pen­ing. In South Africa Dutch had got a foot­ing, it is true; but it is fast los­ing it. The new­com­ers learn En­glish, and though the el­der Boers stick with Boer con­ser­vatism to their na­tive tongue, young Piet and young Paul find it pays them bet­ter to know and speak the lan­guage of com­merce--the lan­guage of Cape Town, of Kim­ber­ley, of the fu­ture. The rea­son is the same through­out. When­ev­er two tongues come to be spo­ken in the same area one of them is sure to be more use­ful in busi­ness than the oth­er. Ev­ery French-​Cana­di­an who wish­es to do things on a large scale is obliged to speak En­glish. So is the Cre­ole in Louisiana; so ear­li­er were the Knicker­bock­er Dutch in New York. Once let En­glish get in, and it beats all com­pet­ing lan­guages fair­ly out of the field in a cou­ple of gen­er­ations.

Like in­flu­ences favour Span­ish in South Amer­ica and else­where. En­glish has an­nexed most of North Amer­ica, Aus­tralia, South Africa, the Pa­cif­ic; Span­ish has an­nexed South Amer­ica, Cen­tral Amer­ica, the Philip­pines, Cu­ba, and a few oth­er places. For the most part these ar­eas are less suit­ed than the En­glish-​speak­ing dis­tricts for coloni­sa­tion by North Eu­ro­peans; but they ab­sorb a large num­ber of Ital­ians and oth­er Mediter­ranean races, who all learn Span­ish in the sec­ond gen­er­ation. As to the oth­er dom­inant lan­guages, the points in their favour are dif­fer­ent. Con­quest and ad­min­is­tra­tive needs are spread­ing Rus­sian over the steppes of Asia; the Arab mer­chant and the growth of Ma­hommedanism are im­port­ing Ara­bic far in­to the heart of Africa; the Chi­na­man is car­ry­ing his own mono­syl­la­bles with him to Cal­ifor­nia, Aus­tralia, Sin­ga­pore. These tongues in fu­ture will di­vide the world be­tween them.

The Ger­man who leaves Ger­many be­comes an An­glo-​Amer­ican. The Ital­ian who leaves Italy be­comes a Span­ish-​Amer­ican.

There is an­oth­er and still more strik­ing way of look­ing at the rapid in­crease of En­glish. No oth­er lan­guage will car­ry you through so many ports in the world. It suf­fices for Lon­don, Liv­er­pool, Glas­gow, Belfast, Southamp­ton, Cardiff; for New York, Boston, Mon­tre­al, Charleston, New Or­leans, San Fran­cis­co; for Syd­ney, Mel­bourne, Auck­land, Hong Kong, Yoko­hama, Hon­olu­lu; for Cal­cut­ta, Bom­bay, Madras, Kur­rachi, Sin­ga­pore, Colom­bo, Cape Town, Mau­ri­tius. Span­ish with Cadiz, Barcelona, Ha­vana, Callao, Val­paraiso, can­not touch that record; nor can French with Mar­seilles, Bor­deaux, Havre, Al­giers, Antwerp, Tahi­ti. The most com­mer­cial­ly use­ful lan­guage in the world, thus wide­ly dif­fused in so many great mer­can­tile and ship­ping cen­tres, is cer­tain to win in the strug­gle for ex­is­tence among the tongues of the fu­ture.

The old Mediter­ranean civil­isa­tion teach­es us a use­ful les­son in this re­spect. Two lan­guages dom­inat­ed the Mediter­ranean basin. The East spoke Greek, not be­cause Pla­to and AEschy­lus spoke Greek, but be­cause Greek was the tongue of the great com­mer­cial cen­tres--of Athens, Syra­cuse, Alexan­dria, An­ti­och, Byzan­tium. The West spoke Latin, not be­cause Cat­ul­lus and Vir­gil spoke Latin, but be­cause Latin was the ad­min­is­tra­tive tongue, the tongue of Rome, of Italy, and lat­er of Gaul, of Spain, of the great towns in Da­cia, Pan­non­ia, Britain. Who­ev­er want­ed to do any­thing on the big scale then, had to speak Greek or Latin; so much so that the na­tive lan­guages of Gaul and Spain died ut­ter­ly out, and Latin di­alects are now the spo­ken tongue in all south­ern Eu­rope. In our own time, again, ed­ucat­ed Hin­doos from dif­fer­ent parts of In­dia have to use En­glish as a means of in­ter­com­mu­ni­ca­tion; and na­tive mer­chants must write their busi­ness cor­re­spon­dence with dis­tant hous­es in En­glish. To put an ex­treme con­trast: in the last cen­tu­ry French was spo­ken by far more peo­ple than En­glish; at the present day French is on­ly just keep­ing up its num­bers in France, is los­ing in Cana­da and the Unit­ed States, is not ad­vanc­ing to any ex­tent in Africa. En­glish is spo­ken by a hun­dred mil­lion peo­ple in Eu­rope and Amer­ica; is over-​run­ning Africa; has an­nexed Aus­trala­sia and the Pa­cif­ic Isles; has oust­ed, or is oust­ing, Dutch at the Cape, French in Louisiana, even Span­ish it­self in Flori­da, Cal­ifor­nia, New Mex­ico. In Egyp­tian mud vil­lages, the as­pir­ing Copt, who once learnt French, now learns En­glish. In Scan­di­navia, our tongue gains ground dai­ly. Ev­ery­where in the world it takes the lead among the Eu­ro­pean lan­guages, and by the mid­dle of the next cen­tu­ry will no doubt be spo­ken over half the globe by a cos­mopoli­tan mass of five hun­dred mil­lion peo­ple.

And all on pure­ly Dar­wini­an prin­ci­ples! It is the best adapt­ed tongue, and there­fore it sur­vives in the strug­gle for ex­is­tence. It is the eas­iest to learn, at least oral­ly. It has got rid of the ef­fete rub­bish of gen­ders; sim­pli­fied im­mense­ly its de­clen­sions and con­ju­ga­tions; thrown over­board most of the non­sen­si­cal bal­last we know as gram­mar. It is on­ly weight­ed now by its grotesque and ridicu­lous spelling--one of the ab­sur­dest among all the ab­surd En­glish at­tempts at com­pro­mise. The pres­sure of the new­er speak­ers will com­pel it to make jet­sam of that lum­ber al­so; and then the tongue of Shel­ley and New­ton will march on­ward un­op­posed to the con­quest of hu­man­ity.

I pen these re­marks, I hope, “with­out prej­udice.” Pa­tri­otism is a vul­gar vice of which I have nev­er been guilty.

II.

_IN THE MAT­TER OF ARIS­TOC­RA­CY._

Aris­toc­ra­cies, as a rule, all the world over, con­sist, and have al­ways con­sist­ed, of bar­bar­ic con­querors or their de­scen­dants, who re­main to the last, on the av­er­age of in­stances, at a low­er grade of civil­isa­tion and morals than the democ­ra­cy they live among.

I know this view is to some ex­tent op­posed to the com­mon ideas of peo­ple at large (and es­pe­cial­ly of that par­tic­ular Eu­ro­pean peo­ple which “dear­ly loves a lord”) as to the rel­ative po­si­tion of aris­toc­ra­cies and democ­ra­cies in the slid­ing scale of hu­man de­vel­op­ment. There is a com­mon though whol­ly un­found­ed be­lief knock­ing about the world, that the aris­to­crat is bet­ter in in­tel­li­gence, in cul­ture, in arts, in man­ners, than the or­di­nary ple­beian. The fact is, be­ing, like all bar­bar­ians, a boast­ful crea­ture, he has gone on so long as­sert­ing his own pro­found su­pe­ri­or­ity by birth to the world around him--a su­pe­ri­or­ity as of fine porce­lain to com­mon clay--that the world around him has at last ac­tu­al­ly be­gun to ac­cept him at his own val­ua­tion. Most En­glish peo­ple in par­tic­ular think that a lord is born a bet­ter judge of pic­tures and wines and books and de­port­ment than the hu­man av­er­age of us. But his­to­ry shows us the ex­act op­po­site. It is a plain his­tor­ical fact, prov­able by sim­ple enu­mer­ation, that al­most all the aris­toc­ra­cies the world has ev­er known have tak­en their rise in the con­quest of civilised and cul­ti­vat­ed races by bar­bar­ic in­vaders; and that the bar­bar­ic in­vaders have sel­dom or nev­er learned the prac­ti­cal arts and hand­icrafts which are the civil­is­ing el­ement in the life of the con­quered peo­ple around them.

To be­gin with the aris­toc­ra­cies best known to most of us, the no­ble fam­ilies of mod­ern and me­di­ae­val Eu­rope sprang, as a whole, from the Teu­ton­ic in­va­sion of the Ro­man Em­pire. In Italy, it was the Lom­bards and the Goths who formed the bulk of the great rul­ing fam­ilies; all the well-​known aris­to­crat­ic names of me­di­ae­val Italy are with­out ex­cep­tion Teu­ton­ic. In Gaul it was the rude Frank who gave the aris­to­crat­ic el­ement to the mixed na­tion­al­ity, while it was the civilised and cul­ti­vat­ed Ro­mano-​Celtic provin­cial who be­came, by fate, the mere _ro­turi­er_. The great rev­olu­tion, it has been well said, was, eth­ni­cal­ly speak­ing, noth­ing more than the re­volt of the Celtic against the Teu­ton­ic frac­tion; and, one might add al­so, the re­volt of the civilised Ro­man­ised serf against the bar­bar­ic _seigneur_. In Spain, the hi­dal­go is just the _hi d'al Go_, the son of the Goth, the de­scen­dant of those rude Visig­oth­ic con­querors who broke down the old civil­isa­tion of Iberi­an and Ro­man­ised His­pania. And so on through­out. All over Eu­rope, if you care to look close, you will find the aris­to­crat was the son of the in­tru­sive bar­bar­ian; the demo­crat was the son of the old civilised and ed­ucat­ed au­tochthonous peo­ple.

It is just the same else­where, wher­ev­er we turn. Take Greece, for ex­am­ple. Its most aris­to­crat­ic state was un­doubt­ed­ly Spar­ta, where a hand­ful of es­sen­tial­ly bar­bar­ic Do­ri­ans held in check a much larg­er and Helo­tised pop­ula­tion of high­er orig­inal civil­isa­tion. Take the East: the Per­sian was a wild moun­tain ad­ven­tur­er who im­posed him­self as an aris­to­crat up­on the far more cul­ti­vat­ed Baby­lo­ni­an, As­syr­ian, and Egyp­tian. The same sort of thing had hap­pened ear­li­er in time in Baby­lo­nia and As­syr­ia them­selves, where bar­bar­ic con­querors had sim­ilar­ly im­posed them­selves up­on the first known his­tor­ical civil­isa­tions. Take In­dia un­der the Moguls, once more; the aris­toc­ra­cy of the time con­sist­ed of the rude Ma­hommedan Tar­tar, who lord­ed it over the an­cient en­cho­ri­al cul­ture of Ra­jpoot and Brah­min. Take Chi­na: the same thing over again--a Tar­tar horde im­pos­ing its sav­age rule over the most an­cient civilised peo­ple of Asia. Take Eng­land: its aris­toc­ra­cy at dif­fer­ent times has con­sist­ed of the var­ious bar­bar­ic in­vaders, first the An­glo-​Sax­on (if I must use that hate­ful and mis­lead­ing word)--a pi­rate from Sleswick; then the Dane, an­oth­er pi­rate from Den­mark di­rect; then the Nor­man, a yet younger Dan­ish pi­rate, with a thin ve­neer of ear­ly French cul­ture, who came over from Nor­mandy to bet­ter him­self af­ter just two gen­er­ations of Chris­tian ap­pren­tice­ship. Go where you will, it mat­ters not where you look; from the Aztec in Mex­ico to the Turk at Con­stantino­ple or the Arab in North Africa, the aris­to­crat be­longs in­vari­ably to a low­er race than the civilised peo­ple whom he has con­quered and sub­ju­gat­ed.

“That may be true, per­haps,” you ob­ject, “as to the re­mote his­tor­ical ori­gin of aris­toc­ra­cies; but sure­ly the aris­to­crat of lat­er gen­er­ations has ac­quired all the sci­ence, all the art, all the pol­ish of the peo­ple he lives amongst. He is the flow­er of their civil­isa­tion.” Don't you be­lieve it! There isn't a word of truth in it. From first to last the aris­to­crat re­mains, what Matthew Arnold so just­ly called him, a bar­bar­ian. I of­ten won­der, in­deed, whether Arnold him­self re­al­ly recog­nised the lit­er­al and ac­tu­al truth of his own bril­liant gen­er­al­isa­tion. For the aris­to­crat­ic ideas and the aris­to­crat­ic pur­suits re­main to the very end es­sen­tial­ly bar­bar­ic. The “gen­tle­man” nev­er soils his high-​born hands with dirty work; in oth­er words, he holds him­self severe­ly aloof from the trades and hand­icrafts which con­sti­tute civil­isa­tion. The arts that train and ed­ucate hand, eye, and brain he ig­no­rant­ly de­spis­es. In the ear­ly mid­dle ages he did not even con­de­scend to read and write, those in­fe­ri­or ac­com­plish­ments be­ing badges of serf­dom. If you look close at the “oc­cu­pa­tions of a gen­tle­man” in the present day, you will find they are all of pure­ly bar­bar­ic char­ac­ter. They de­scend to us di­rect from the se­mi-​sav­age in­vaders who over­threw the struc­ture of the Ro­man em­pire, and re­placed its civilised or­gan­isa­tion by the mil­itary and bar­bar­ic sys­tem of feu­dal­ism. The “gen­tle­man” is above all things a fight­er, a hunter, a fish­er--he pre­serves the three sim­plest and com­mon­est bar­bar­ic func­tions. He is _not_ a prac­tis­er of any civilised or civil­is­ing art--a crafts­man, a mak­er, a work­er in met­al, in stone, in tex­tile fab­rics, in pot­tery. These are the things that con­sti­tute civil­isa­tion; but the aris­to­crat does none of them; in the fa­mous words of one who now loves to mix with En­glish gen­tle­men, “he toils not, nei­ther does he spin.” The things he _may_ do are, to fight by sea and land, like his an­ces­tor the Goth and his an­ces­tor the Viking; to slay pheas­ant and par­tridge, like his preda­to­ry fore­fa­thers; to fish for salmon in the High­lands; to hunt the fox, to sail the yacht, to scour the earth in search of great game--li­ons, ele­phants, buf­fa­lo. His one task is to kill--ei­ther his kind or his quar­ry.

Ob­serve, too, the es­sen­tial­ly bar­bar­ic na­ture of the gen­tle­man's home--his trap­pings, his dis­tinc­tive marks, his sur­round­ings, his ti­tles. He lives by choice in the wildest coun­try, like his skin-​clad an­ces­tors, de­mand­ing on­ly that there be game and fox­es and fish for his delec­ta­tion. He loves the moors, the wolds, the fens, the braes, the High­lands, not as the painter, the nat­ural­ist, or the searcher af­ter beau­ty of scenery loves them--for the sake of their wild life, their heather and brack­en, their fresh keen air, their bound­less hori­zon--but for the sake of the thor­ough­ly bar­barous ex­is­tence he and his dogs and his gillies can lead in them. The fact is, nei­ther he nor his an­ces­tors have ev­er been re­al­ly civilised. Bar­bar­ians in the midst of an in­dus­tri­al com­mu­ni­ty, they have lived their own life of slay­ing and play­ing, un­touched by the cul­ture of the world be­low them. Knights in the mid­dle ages, squires in the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, they have nev­er re­ceived a tinc­ture of the civil­is­ing arts and crafts and in­dus­tries; they have fought and fished and hunt­ed in un­in­ter­rupt­ed suc­ces­sion since the days when wild in woods the no­ble sav­age ran, to the days when they pay ex­trav­agant rents for Scot­tish grouse moors. Their very ti­tles are bar­bar­ic and mil­itary--knight and earl and mar­quis and duke, ear­ly crys­tallised names for lead­ers in war or pro­tec­tors of the fron­tier. Their crests and coats of arms are but the totems of their sav­age pre­de­ces­sors, af­ter­wards utilised by me­di­ae­val black­smiths as dis­tin­guish­ing marks for the sum­mit of a hel­met. They dec­orate their halls with sav­age tro­phies of the chase, like the Zu­lu or the Red In­di­an; they hang up cap­tured arms and loot­ed Chi­nese jars from the Sum­mer Palace in their se­mi-​civilised draw­ing-​rooms. They love to be sur­round­ed by grooms and game­keep­ers and oth­er bar­bar­ic re­tain­ers; they pass their lives in the midst of serfs; their views about the po­si­tion and rights of wom­en--es­pe­cial­ly the wom­en of the “low­er or­ders”--are frankly African. They share the sen­ti­ments of Achilles as to the in­di­vid­ual­ity of Chry­seis and Bri­seis.

Such is the ac­tu­al aris­to­crat, as we now be­hold him. Thus, liv­ing his own bar­barous life in the midst of a civilised com­mu­ni­ty of work­ers and artists and thinkers and crafts­men, with whom he sel­dom min­gles, and with whom he has noth­ing in com­mon, this char­tered rel­ic of worse days pre­serves from first to last many painful traits of the low moral and so­cial ideas of his an­ces­tors, from which he has nev­er var­ied. He rep­re­sents most of all, in the mod­ern world, the sur­viv­ing sav­age. His love of gew­gaws, of ti­tles, of uni­form, of dress, of feath­ers, of dec­ora­tions, of High­land kilts, and stars and garters, is but one ex­ter­nal sym­bol of his low­er grade of men­tal and moral sta­tus. All over Eu­rope, the tru­ly civilised class­es have gone on pro­gress­ing by the prac­tice of peace­ful arts from gen­er­ation to gen­er­ation; but the aris­to­crat has stood still at the same half-​sav­age lev­el, a hunter and fight­er, an or­gias­tic roys­ter­er, a killer of wild boars and wear­er of ab­surd me­di­ae­val cos­tumes, too child­ish for the civilised and cul­ti­vat­ed com­mon­er.

Gov­ern­ment by aris­to­crats is thus gov­ern­ment by the men­tal­ly and moral­ly in­fe­ri­or. And yet--a Bill for giv­ing at last some scant mea­sure of self-​gov­ern­ment to per­se­cut­ed Ire­land has to run the gaunt­let, in our nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry Eng­land, of an ir­re­spon­si­ble House of hered­itary bar­bar­ians!

III.

_SCI­ENCE IN ED­UCA­TION._

I mean what I say: sci­ence in ed­uca­tion, not ed­uca­tion in sci­ence.

It is the last of these that all the sci­en­tif­ic men of Eng­land have so long been fight­ing for. And a very good thing it is in its way, and I hope they may get as much as they want of it. But com­pared to the im­por­tance of sci­ence in ed­uca­tion, ed­uca­tion in sci­ence is a mat­ter of very small na­tion­al mo­ment.

The dif­fer­ence be­tween the two is by no means a case of twee­dle­dum and twee­dledee. Ed­uca­tion in sci­ence means the sys­tem­at­ic teach­ing of sci­ence so as to train up boys to be sci­en­tif­ic men. Now sci­en­tif­ic men are ex­ceed­ing­ly use­ful mem­bers of a com­mu­ni­ty; and so are en­gi­neers, and bak­ers, and black­smiths, and artists, and chim­ney-​sweeps. But we can't all be bak­ers, and we can't all be painters in wa­ter-​colours. There is a dim West Coun­try leg­end to the ef­fect that the in­hab­itants of the Scil­ly Isles eke out a pre­car­ious liveli­hood by tak­ing in one an­oth­er's wash­ing. As a mat­ter of prac­ti­cal po­lit­ical econ­omy, such a source of in­come is worse than pre­car­ious--it's frankly im­pos­si­ble. “It takes all sorts to make a world.” A com­mu­ni­ty en­tire­ly com­posed of sci­en­tif­ic men would fail to feed it­self, clothe it­self, house it­self, and keep it­self sup­plied with amus­ing light lit­er­ature. In one word, ed­uca­tion in sci­ence pro­duces spe­cial­ists; and spe­cial­ists, though most use­ful and valu­able per­sons in their prop­er place, are no more the sta­ple of a civilised com­mu­ni­ty than en­gine-​drivers or bal­let-​dancers.

What the world at large re­al­ly needs, and will one day get, is not this, but due recog­ni­tion of the true val­ue of sci­ence in ed­uca­tion. We don't all want to be made in­to first-​class anatomists like Owen, still less in­to first-​class prac­ti­cal sur­geons, like Sir Hen­ry Thomp­son. But what we do all want is a com­pe­tent gen­er­al knowl­edge (amongst oth­er things) of anato­my at large, and es­pe­cial­ly of hu­man anato­my; of phys­iol­ogy at large, and es­pe­cial­ly of hu­man phys­iol­ogy. We don't all want to be an­alyt­ical chemists: but what we do all want is to know as much about oxy­gen and car­bon as will en­able us to un­der­stand the com­mon­est phe­nom­ena of com­bus­tion, of chem­ical com­bi­na­tion, of an­imal or veg­etable life. We don't all want to be zo­ol­ogists, and botanists of the type who put their names af­ter “crit­ical species:” but what we do all want to know is as much about plants and an­imals as will en­able us to walk through life in­tel­li­gent­ly, and to un­der­stand the mean­ing of the things that sur­round us. We want, in one word, a gen­er­al ac­quain­tance with the _re­sults_ rather than with the _meth­ods_ of sci­ence.

“In short,” says the spe­cial­ist, with his fa­mil­iar sneer, “you want a smat­ter­ing.”

Well, yes, dear Sir Smelfun­gus, if it gives you plea­sure to put it so--just that; a smat­ter­ing, an all-​round smat­ter­ing. But re­mem­ber that in this mat­ter the man of sci­ence is al­ways in­flu­enced by ideas de­rived from his own pur­suits as spe­cial­ist. He is for ev­er think­ing what sort of ed­uca­tion will pro­duce more spe­cial­ists in fu­ture; and as a rule he is think­ing what sort of ed­uca­tion will pro­duce men ca­pa­ble in fu­ture of ad­vanc­ing sci­ence. Now to ad­vance sci­ence, to dis­cov­er new snails, or in­vent new ethyl com­pounds, is not and can­not be the main ob­ject of the mass of hu­man­ity. What the mass wants is just un­spe­cialised knowl­edge--the kind of knowl­edge that en­ables men to get com­fort­ably and cred­itably and prof­itably through life, to meet emer­gen­cies as they rise, to know their way through the world, to use their fac­ul­ties in all cir­cum­stances to the best ad­van­tage. And for this pur­pose what is want­ed is, not the meth­ods, but the re­sults of sci­ence.

One sci­ence, and one on­ly, is ra­tio­nal­ly taught in our schools at present. I mean ge­og­ra­phy. And the ex­am­ple of ge­og­ra­phy is so em­inent­ly use­ful for il­lus­trat­ing the dif­fer­ence I am try­ing to point out, that I will ven­ture to dwell up­on it for a mo­ment in pass­ing. It is good for us all to know that the world is round, with­out its be­ing nec­es­sary for ev­ery one of us to fol­low in de­tail the in­tri­cate rea­son­ing by which that re­sult has been ar­rived at. It is good for us all to know the po­si­tion of New York and Rio and Cal­cut­ta on the map, with­out its be­ing nec­es­sary for us to un­der­stand, far less to work out for our­selves, the ob­ser­va­tions and cal­cu­la­tions which fixed their lat­itude and lon­gi­tude. Knowl­edge of the map is a good thing in it­self, though it is a very dif­fer­ent thing in­deed from the tech­ni­cal knowl­edge which en­ables a man to make a chart of an un­known re­gion, or to ex­plore and sur­vey it. Fur­ther­more, it is a form of knowl­edge far more gen­er­al­ly use­ful. A fair ac­quain­tance with the re­sults em­bod­ied in the at­las, in the gazetteer, in Baedek­er, and in Brad­shaw, is much of­ten­er use­ful to us on our way through the world than a spe­cial ac­quain­tance with the meth­ods of map-​mak­ing. It would be ab­surd to say that be­cause a man is not go­ing to be a Stan­ley or a Nansen, there­fore it is no good for him to learn ge­og­ra­phy. It would be ab­surd to say that un­less he learned ge­og­ra­phy in ac­cor­dance with its meth­ods in­stead of its re­sults, he could have but a smat­ter­ing, and that a lit­tle knowl­edge is a dan­ger­ous thing. A lit­tle knowl­edge of the po­si­tion of New York is in­deed a dan­ger­ous thing, if a man us­es it to nav­igate a Cu­nard ves­sel across the At­lantic. But the ab­sence of the smat­ter­ing is a much more dan­ger­ous and fa­tal thing if the man wish­es to do busi­ness with the Ar­gen­tine and the Transvaal, or to en­ter in­to prac­ti­cal re­la­tions of any sort with any­body out­side his own parish. The re­sults of ge­og­ra­phy are use­ful and valu­able in them­selves, quite apart from the meth­ods em­ployed in ob­tain­ing them.

It is just the same with all the oth­er sci­ences. There is noth­ing oc­cult or mys­te­ri­ous about them. No just cause or im­ped­iment ex­ists why we should in­sist on be­ing ig­no­rant of the or­bits of the plan­ets be­cause we can­not our­selves make the cal­cu­la­tions for de­ter­min­ing them; no rea­son why we should in­sist on be­ing ig­no­rant of the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of plants and an­imals be­cause we don't feel able our­selves to em­bark on anatom­ical re­search­es which would jus­ti­fy us in com­ing to orig­inal con­clu­sions about them. I know the mass of sci­en­tif­ic opin­ion has al­ways gone the oth­er way; but then sci­en­tif­ic opin­ion means on­ly the opin­ion of men of sci­ence, who are them­selves spe­cial­ists, and who think most of the ed­uca­tion need­ed to make men spe­cial­ists, not of the ed­uca­tion need­ed to fit them for the gen­er­al ex­igen­cies and emer­gen­cies of life. We don't want au­thor­ities on the Cu­cur­bitaceae, but well-​in­formed cit­izens. Pro­fes­sor Hux­ley is not our best guide in these mat­ters, but Mr. Her­bert Spencer, who long ago, in his book on Ed­uca­tion, sketched out a rad­ical pro­gramme of in­struc­tion in that knowl­edge which is of most worth, such as no coun­try, no col­lege, no school in Eu­rope has ev­er yet been bold enough to put in­to prac­tice.

What com­mon sense re­al­ly de­mands, then, is ed­uca­tion in the main re­sults of all the sci­ences--a knowl­edge of what is known, not nec­es­sar­ily a knowl­edge of each suc­ces­sive step by which men came to know it. At present, of course, in all our schools in Eng­land there is no sys­tem­at­ic teach­ing of knowl­edge at all; what re­places it is a teach­ing of the facts of lan­guage, and for the most part of use­less facts, or even of ex­plod­ed fic­tions. Our pub­lic schools, es­pe­cial­ly (by which phrase we nev­er mean re­al pub­lic schools like the board schools at all, but mere­ly schools for the up­per and the mid­dle class­es) are in their ex­ist­ing stage pri­mar­ily great gym­na­si­ums--very good things, too, in their way, against which I have not a word of blame; and, sec­on­dar­ily, places for im­part­ing a sham and im­per­fect knowl­edge of some few philo­log­ical facts about two ex­tinct lan­guages. Pupils get a smat­ter­ing of Homer and Ci­cero. That is lit­er­al­ly all the equip­ment for life that the clever­est and most in­dus­tri­ous boys can ev­er take away from them. The sil­li­er or idler don't take away even that. As to the “men­tal train­ing” ar­gu­ment, so of­ten trot­ted out, it is child­ish enough not to be worth an­swer­ing. Which is most prac­ti­cal­ly use­ful to us in life--knowl­edge of Latin gram­mar or knowl­edge of our­selves and the world we live in, phys­ical, so­cial, moral? That is the ques­tion.

The truth is, school­mas­ter­ing in Britain has be­come a vast vest­ed in­ter­est in the hands of men who have noth­ing to teach us. They try to bol­ster up their vi­cious sys­tem by such ar­ti­fi­cial ar­gu­ments as the “men­tal train­ing” fal­la­cy. Forced to ad­mit the ut­ter use­less­ness of the pre­tend­ed knowl­edge they im­part, they fall back up­on the plea of its sup­posed oc­cult val­ue as in­tel­lec­tu­al dis­ci­pline. They say in ef­fect:--“This saw­dust we of­fer you con­tains no food, we know: but then see how it strength­ens the jaws to chew it!” Be­sides, look at our re­sults! The typ­ical John Bull! pig-​head­ed, ig­no­rant, bru­tal. Are we re­al­ly such im­mense suc­cess­es our­selves that we must needs per­pet­uate the mould that warped us?

The one fa­tal charge brought against the pub­lic school sys­tem is that “af­ter all, it turns out En­glish gen­tle­men!”

IV.

_THE THE­ORY OF SCAPE­GOATS._

“Alas, how eas­ily things go wrong!” says Dr. George Mac­Don­ald. And all the world over, when things do go wrong, the nat­ural and in­stinc­tive de­sire of the hu­man an­imal is--to find a scape­goat. When the great French na­tion in the lump em­barks its cap­ital in a hope­less scheme for cut­ting a canal through the Isth­mus of Pana­ma, and then finds out too late that Na­ture has im­posed in­su­per­able bar­ri­ers to its com­ple­tion on the pro­ject­ed scale--what does the great French na­tion do, in its col­lec­tive wis­dom, but turn round at once to rend the di­rec­tors? It cries, “A Mazas!” just as in '71 it cried “Bazaine a la lanterne!” I don't mean to say the di­rec­tors don't de­serve all they have got or ev­er will get, and per­haps more al­so; I don't mean to de­ny cor­rup­tion ex­traor­di­nary in many high places; as a rule the worst that any­body al­leges about any­thing is on­ly a part of what might eas­ily be al­leged if we were all in the se­cret. Which of us, in­deed, would 'scape whip­ping? But what I do mean is, that we should nev­er have heard of Reinach or Herz, of the cor­rup­tion and pec­ula­tion, at all if things had gone well. It is the crash that brought them out. The na­tion wants a scape­goat. “Ain't no­body to be whopped for this 'ere?” asked Mr. Sam Weller on a crit­ical oc­ca­sion. The ques­tion em­bod­ies the uni­ver­sal im­pulse of hu­man­ity.

Trac­ing the feel­ing back to its ori­gin, it seems due to this: minds of the low­er or­der can nev­er see any­thing go wrong with­out ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a cer­tain sense of re­sent­ment; and re­sent­ment, by its very na­ture, de­sires to vent it­self up­on some liv­ing and sen­tient crea­ture, by pref­er­ence a fel­low hu­man be­ing. When the child, run­ning too fast, falls and hurts it­self, it gets in­stant­ly an­gry. “Naughty ground to hurt ba­by!” says the nurse: “Ba­by hit it and hurt it.” And ba­by prompt­ly hits it back, with vi­cious lit­tle fist, feel­ing ev­ery de­sire to re­venge it­self. By-​and-​by, when ba­by grows old­er and learns that the ground can't feel to speak of, he wants to put the blame up­on some­body else, in or­der to have an ob­ject to ex­pend his rage up­on. “You pushed me down!” he says to his play­mate, and straight­way pro­ceeds to punch his play­mate's head for it--not be­cause he re­al­ly be­lieves the play­mate did it, but be­cause he feels he _must_ have some out­let for his re­sent­ment. When once re­sent­ment is roused, it will ex­pend its force on any­thing that turns up handy, as the man who has quar­relled with his wife about a ques­tion of a bon­net, will kick his dog for try­ing to fol­low him to the club as he leaves her.

The mob, en­raged at the death of Cae­sar, meets Cin­na the po­et in the streets of Rome. “Your name, sir?” in­quires the Third Cit­izen. “Tru­ly, my name is Cin­na,” says the un­sus­pect­ing au­thor. “Tear him to pieces!” cries the mob; “he's a con­spir­ator!” “I am Cin­na the po­et,” pleads the un­hap­py man; “I am not Cin­na the con­spir­ator!” But the mob does not heed such del­icate dis­tinc­tions at such a mo­ment. “Tear him for his bad vers­es!” it cries im­par­tial­ly. “Tear him for his bad vers­es!”

What­ev­er sort of mis­for­tune falls up­on per­sons of the low­er or­der of in­tel­li­gence is al­ways met in the same spir­it. Es­pe­cial­ly is this the case with the deaths of rel­atives. Fools who have lost a friend in­vari­ably blame some­body for his fa­tal ill­ness. To hear many peo­ple talk, you would sup­pose they were un­aware of the fa­mil­iar propo­si­tion that all men are mor­tal (in­clud­ing wom­en); you might imag­ine they thought an or­di­nary hu­man con­sti­tu­tion was cal­cu­lat­ed to sur­vive nine hun­dred and nine­ty-​nine years un­less some evil-​dis­posed per­son or per­sons took the trou­ble be­fore­hand to way­lay and de­stroy it. “My poor fa­ther was eighty-​sev­en when he died; and he would have been alive still if it weren't for that nasty Mrs. Jones: she put him in­to a pair of damp sheets.” Or, “My hus­band would nev­er have caught the cold that killed him, if that hor­rid man Brown hadn't kept him wait­ing so long in the car­riage at the street cor­ner.” The doc­tor has to bear the brunt of most such com­plaints; in­deed, it is cal­cu­lat­ed by an em­inent statis­ti­cian (who de­sires his name to re­main un­pub­lished) that eighty-​three per cent. of the deaths in Great Britain might eas­ily have been avert­ed if the pa­tient had on­ly been treat­ed in var­ious dis­tinct ways by all the mem­bers of his fam­ily, and if that fool­ish Dr. Squills hadn't so gross­ly mis­tak­en and mis­treat­ed his mal­ady.

The fact is, the death is re­gard­ed as a mis­for­tune, and some­body must be blamed for it. Heav­en has pro­vid­ed scape­goats. The doc­tor and the hos­tile fe­male mem­bers of the fam­ily are al­ways there--laid on, as it were, for the ex­press pur­pose.

With us in mod­ern Eu­rope, re­sent­ment in such cas­es sel­dom goes fur­ther than vague ver­bal out­bursts of tem­per. We ac­cuse Mrs. Jones of mis­de­meanours with damp sheets; but we don't get so far as to ac­cuse her of tricks with strych­nine. In the Mid­dle Ages, how­ev­er, the pur­suit of the scape­goat ran a vast deal fur­ther. When any great one died--a Black Prince or a Dauphin--it was al­ways as­sumed on all hands that he must have been poi­soned. True, poi­son­ing may then have been a tri­fle more fre­quent; cer­tain­ly the means of de­tect­ing it were far less ad­vanced than in the days of Tidy and Laud­er Brun­ton. Still, peo­ple must of­ten have died nat­ural deaths even in the Mid­dle Ages--though no­body be­lieved it. All the world be­gan to spec­ulate what Jane Shore could have poi­soned them. A lit­tle ear­li­er, again, it was not the poi­son­er that was looked for, but his pre­de­ces­sor, the sor­cer­er. Who­ev­er fell ill, some­body had be­witched him. Were the cat­tle dis­eased? Then search for the evil eye. Did the cows yield no milk? Some neigh­bour, doubt­less, knew the rea­son on­ly too well, and could be forced to con­fess it by lib­er­al use of the thumb-​screw and the duck­ing-​stool. No mis­for­tune was re­gard­ed as due to nat­ural caus­es; for in their phi­los­ophy there were no such things as nat­ural caus­es at all; what­ev­er ill-​luck came, some­body had con­trived it; so you had al­ways your scape­goat ready to hand to pun­ish. The Athe­ni­ans, in­deed, kept a small col­lec­tion of pub­lic scape­goats al­ways in stock, wait­ing to be sac­ri­ficed at a mo­ment's no­tice.

More even than that. Go one step fur­ther back, and you will find that man in his ear­ly stages has no con­cep­tion of such a thing as nat­ural death in any form. He doesn't re­al­ly know that the hu­man or­gan­ism is wound up like a clock to run at best for so many years, or months, or hours, and that even if noth­ing un­ex­pect­ed hap­pens to cut short its course pre­ma­ture­ly, it can on­ly run out its al­lot­ted pe­ri­od. With­in his own ex­pe­ri­ence, al­most all the deaths that oc­cur are vi­olent deaths, and have been brought about by hu­man agen­cy or by the at­tacks of wild beasts. There you have a cause with whose ac­tion and op­er­ation the sav­age is per­son­al­ly fa­mil­iar; and it is the on­ly one he be­lieves in. Even old age is in his eyes no di­rect cause of death; for when his re­la­tions grow old, he con­sid­er­ate­ly clubs them, to put them out of their mis­ery. When, there­fore, he sees his neigh­bour struck down be­fore his face by some in­vis­ible pow­er, and writhing with pain as though un­seen snakes and tigers were rend­ing him, what should he nat­ural­ly con­clude save that de­mon or witch or wiz­ard is at work? and if he cares about the mat­ter at all, what should he do save en­deav­our to find the cul­prit out and in­flict condign pun­ish­ment? In sav­age states, when­ev­er any­thing un­to­ward hap­pens to the king or chief, it is the busi­ness of the witch-​find­er to dis­close the wrong-​do­er; and soon­er or lat­er, you may be sure, “some­body gets whopped for it.” Whop­ping in Da­homey means whole­sale de­cap­ita­tion.

Now, is it not a di­rect sur­vival from this prim­itive state of mind that en­tails up­on us all the de­sire to find a scape­goat? Our an­ces­tors re­al­ly be­lieved there was al­ways some­body to blame--man, witch, or spir­it--if on­ly you could find him; and though we our­selves have most­ly got be­yond that stage, yet the habit it en­gen­dered in our race re­mains in­grained in the ner­vous sys­tem, so that none but a few of the nat­ural­ly high­est and most civilised dis­po­si­tions have re­al­ly out­grown it. Most peo­ple still think there is some­body to blame for ev­ery hu­man mis­for­tune. “Who fills the butch­er's shops with large blue flies?” asked the po­et of the Re­gen­cy. He set it down to “the Cor­si­can ogre.” For the To­ry En­glish­men of the present day it is Mr. Glad­stone who is most of­ten and most pop­ular­ly en­vis­aged as the au­thor of all evil. For the Pope, it is the Freema­sons. There are just a few men here and there in the world who can see that when mis­for­tunes come, cir­cum­stances, or na­ture, or (hard­est of all) we our­selves have brought them. The com­mon hu­man in­stinct is still to get in­to a rage, and look round to dis­cov­er whether there's any oth­er fel­low stand­ing about un­ob­served, whose head we can safe­ly un­der­take to punch for it.

“It's all the fault of those con­found­ed paid ag­ita­tors.”

V.

_AMER­ICAN DUCHESS­ES._

Ev­ery Amer­ican wom­an is by birth a duchess.

There, you see, I have tak­en you in. When you saw the head­ing, “Amer­ican Duchess­es,” you thought I was go­ing to pur­vey some pi­quant scan­dal about high-​placed ladies; and you straight­way be­gan to read my es­say. That shows I right­ly in­ter­pret­ed your hu­man na­ture. There's a deal of hu­man na­ture fly­ing about un­recog­nised. Yet when I said duchess­es, I ac­tu­al­ly meant it. For the Amer­ican wom­an is the on­ly re­al aris­to­crat now liv­ing in Amer­ica.

These re­marks are forced up­on me by a bril­liant af­ter­noon on the Prom­enade des Anglais. All Nice is there, in its cos­mopoli­tan but­ter­fly va­ri­ety, flaunt­ing it­self in the sun in the very ug­ly dress­es now in fash­ion. I don't know why, but the mode of the mo­ment con­sists in mak­ing ev­ery­thing as ex­ag­ger­at­ed as pos­si­ble, and sed­ulous­ly hid­ing the nat­ural con­tours of the hu­man fig­ure. But let that pass; the day is too fine for a man to be crit­ical. The band is play­ing Mascagni's last in the Jardin Pub­lic; the car­riages are drawn up be­side the palms and ju­das-​trees that fringe the Pail­lon; the _sous-​of­ficiers_ are strolling along the wall with their red caps stuck jaun­ti­ly just a tri­fle on one side, as though to mow down nurse­maids were the one le­git­imate oc­cu­pa­tion of the _brav' mil­itaire_. And among them all, proud, tall, dis­dain­ful, glide the Amer­ican duchess­es, cold, crit­ical, high-​toned, yet ready to strike up, should op­por­tu­ni­ty serve, ap­pro­pri­ate ac­quain­tance with their nat­ural equals, the dukes of Eu­rope.

“And the Amer­ican dukes?”--There aren't any. “But these ladies' hus­bands and fa­thers and broth­ers?”--Oh, _they're_ busi­ness men, work­ing hard for the duchess­es in Wall Street, or on 'Change in Chica­go. And that's why I say quite se­ri­ous­ly the Amer­ican wom­an is the on­ly re­al aris­to­crat now liv­ing in Amer­ica. Ev­ery­body who has seen much of Amer­icans must have no­ticed for him­self how re­al­ly su­pe­ri­or Amer­ican wom­en are, on the av­er­age, to the men of their kind. I don't mean mere­ly that they are bet­ter dressed, and bet­ter groomed, and bet­ter got up, and bet­ter man­nered than their broth­ers. I mean that they have a re­al su­pe­ri­or­ity in the things worth hav­ing--the things that are more ex­cel­lent--in ed­uca­tion, cul­ture, knowl­edge, taste, good feel­ing. And the rea­son is not far to seek. They rep­re­sent the on­ly leisured class in Amer­ica. They are the one set of peo­ple from Maine to Cal­ifor­nia who have time to read, to think, to trav­el, to look at good pic­tures, to hear good mu­sic, to mix with so­ci­ety that can im­prove and el­evate them. They have read Daudet; they have seen the Vat­ican. The wom­en thus form a nat­ural aris­toc­ra­cy--the on­ly aris­toc­ra­cy the coun­try pos­sess­es.

I am aware that in say­ing this I take my life in my hands. I shall be pre­pared to de­fend my­self from the in­fu­ri­at­ed West­ern­er with the usu­al ar­gu­ment, which I shall car­ry about load­ed in all its cham­bers in my right-​hand pock­et. I am al­so aware that less in­fu­ri­at­ed East­ern­ers, choos­ing their own more fa­mil­iar weapon, will in­un­date my leisure with sar­don­ic in­quiries whether I don't con­sid­er Oliv­er Wen­dell Holmes or Charles Eliot Nor­ton (thus named in full) the equal in cul­ture of the av­er­age Amer­ican wom­an. Well, I frankly ad­mit these cas­es and thou­sands like them; in­deed I have had the good for­tune to num­ber among my per­son­al ac­quain­tances many Amer­ican gen­tle­men whose chival­rous breed­ing would have been con­spic­uous (if you will be­lieve it) even at Marl­bor­ough House. I will al­so al­low that in New York, in Boston, and less abun­dant­ly in oth­er big towns of Amer­ica, men of leisure, men of cul­ture, and men of thought are to be found, as wide-​mind­ed and as gen­tle-​na­tured as this race of ours makes them. But that doesn't al­ter the gen­er­al fact that, tak­ing them in the lump, Amer­ican men stand a step or two low­er in the scale of hu­man­ity than Amer­ican wom­en. One need hard­ly ask why. It is be­cause the men are al­most all im­mersed and ab­sorbed in busi­ness, while the wom­en are fine ladies who stop at home, and read, and see, and in­ter­est them­selves wide­ly in num­ber­less di­rec­tions.

The con­se­quence is that nowhere, as a rule, does the gulf be­tween the sex­es yawn so wide as in Amer­ica. One can of­ten ob­serve it in the broth­ers and sis­ters of the same fam­ily. And it runs in the op­po­site di­rec­tion from the gulf in Eu­rope. With us, as a rule, the men are bet­ter ed­ucat­ed, and more like­ly to have read and seen and thought wide­ly, than the wom­en. In Amer­ica, the men are gen­er­al­ly so steeped in af­fairs as to be ma­te­ri­alised and en­cyst­ed; they take for the most part a hard-​head­ed, sol­id-​sil­ver view of ev­ery­thing, and are but lit­tle in­flu­enced by ab­stract con­cep­tions. Their hori­zon is bound­ed by the rim of the dol­lar. Nay, ow­ing to the ea­ger de­sire to get a good start by be­gin­ning life ear­ly, their ed­uca­tion it­self is gen­er­al­ly cut short at a younger age than their sis­ters'; so that, even at the out­set, the girls have of­ten a de­cid­ed su­pe­ri­or­ity in knowl­edge and cul­ture. Aman­da reads Paul Bour­get and John Oliv­er Hobbes; she has some slight tinc­ture of Latin, Greek, and Ger­man; while Cyrus knows noth­ing but En­glish and arith­metic, the quo­ta­tions for prime pork and the state of the mar­ket for Fu­tures. Add to this that the wom­en are more sen­si­tive, more del­icate, more nat­ural­ly re­fined, as well as un­spoilt by the trad­ing spir­it, and you get the re­al rea­sons for the marked and, in some ways, un­usu­al su­pe­ri­or­ity of the Amer­ican wom­an.

That, I think, in large part ex­plains the fas­ci­na­tion which Amer­ican wom­en un­doubt­ed­ly ex­er­cise over a con­sid­er­able class of Eu­ro­pean men. In the Eu­ro­pean man the Amer­ican wom­an of­ten recog­nis­es for the first time the male of her species. Un­ac­cus­tomed at home to as gen­er­al a lev­el of cul­ture and feel­ing as she finds among the ed­ucat­ed gen­tle­men of Eu­rope, she likes their so­ci­ety and makes her pref­er­ence felt by them. Now man is a vain an­imal. You are a man your­self, and must recog­nise at once the truth of the propo­si­tion. As soon as he sees a wom­an likes him, he in­stant­ly re­turns the com­pli­ment with in­ter­est. In point of fact, he usu­al­ly falls in love with her. Of course I ad­mit the large num­ber of con­comi­tant cir­cum­stances which dis­turb the prob­lem; I ad­mit on the one hand the tempt­ing shekels of the Cal­ifor­ni­an heiress, and on the oth­er hand the glam­our and ha­lo that still sur­round the British coro­net. Nev­er­the­less, af­ter mak­ing all de­duc­tions for these dis­turb­ing fac­tors, I sub­mit there re­mains a resid­ual phe­nomenon thus best in­ter­pret­ed. If any­body de­nies it, I would ask him one ques­tion--how does it come that so many En­glish­men, French­men, and Ital­ians mar­ry Amer­ican wom­en, while so few En­glish­wom­en, French wom­en, or Ital­ian wom­en mar­ry Amer­ican men? Sure­ly the Amer­ican men have al­so the shekels; sure­ly it is some­thing even in Ore­gon or Mon­tana to have in­spired an hon­ourable pas­sion in a La­dy Eliz­abeth or a dowa­ger count­ess. I think the true ex­pla­na­tion is that our men are at­tract­ed by Amer­ican wom­en, but our wom­en are not equal­ly at­tract­ed by Amer­ican men, and that the qual­ity of the ar­ti­cles has some­thing to do with it.

The Amer­ican duchess, I take it, comes over to Eu­rope, and de­sires in­con­ti­nent­ly to drag the Eu­ro­pean duke at the wheels of her char­iot. And the Eu­ro­pean duke is fas­ci­nat­ed in turn, part­ly by this very fact, part­ly by the un­de­ni­able fresh­ness, bright­ness, and del­icate cul­ture of the Amer­ican wom­an. For there is no burk­ing the truth that in many re­spects the Amer­ican wom­an car­ries about her a pe­cu­liar charm un­grant­ed as yet to her Eu­ro­pean sis­ters. It is the charm of free­dom, of ease, of a cer­tain ex­ter­nal and skin-​deep eman­ci­pa­tion--an eman­ci­pa­tion which goes but a lit­tle way down, yet adds a quaint and pi­quant grace of man­ner. What she con­spic­uous­ly lacks, on the oth­er hand, is es­sen­tial fem­inin­ity; by which I don't mean wom­an­li­ness--of that she has enough and to spare--but the whole­some phys­ical and in­stinc­tive qual­ities which go to make up a sound and well-​equipped wife and moth­er. The lack of these un­der­ly­ing muliebral qual­ities more than coun­ter­bal­ances to not a few Eu­ro­peans the un­doubt­ed vi­vac­ity, orig­inal­ity, and fresh­ness of the Amer­ican wom­an. She is a dain­ty bit of porce­lain, un­suit­ed for use; a del­icate ex­ot­ic blos­som, for draw­ing-​room dec­ora­tion, where many would pre­fer ro­bust fruit-​bear­ing fac­ul­ties.

I dropped in­to the Opera House here at Nice the oth­er night, and found they were play­ing “Car­men”--which is al­ways in­ter­est­ing. Well, you may per­haps re­mem­ber that when that crea­ture of pas­sion, the gip­sy hero­ine, wish­es to gain or re­tain a man's af­fec­tions, she throws a rose at him, and then he can­not re­sist her. That is Mer­imee's sym­bol­ism. Art is full of these sac­ri­fices of re­al­ism to ret­icence. Out­side the opera, it is not with ros­es that wom­en en­slave us. But the Amer­ican duchess re­lies en­tire­ly up­on the use of the rose; and that is just where she fails to in­ter­est so many of us in Eu­rope.

And now I think it's al­most time for me to go and hunt up the ma­te­ri­al ar­gu­ments for that rusty six-​shoot­er.

VI.

_IS ENG­LAND PLAYED OUT?_

Britain is now the cen­tre of civil­isa­tion. Will it al­ways be so? Is our com­mer­cial suprema­cy de­cay­ing or not? Have we be­gun to reach the pe­ri­od of in­evitable de­cline? Or is de­cline in­deed in­evitable at all? Might a na­tion go on be­ing great for ev­er? If so, are _we_ that na­tion? If not, have we yet ar­rived at the mo­ment when ret­ro­gres­sion be­comes a fore­gone con­clu­sion? These are mo­men­tous ques­tions. Dare I try, un­der the mi­mosas on the ter­race, to re­solve them?

Most peo­ple have talked of late as though the palmy days of Eng­land were fair­ly over. The down grade lies now be­fore us. But, then, so far as I can judge, most peo­ple have talked so ev­er since the morn­ing when Hengist and Hor­sa, Lim­it­ed, land­ed from their three keels in the Isle of Thanet. Gildas is the old­est his­to­ri­an of these is­lands, and his work con­sists en­tire­ly of a good old To­ry lament in the Ash­mead-​Bartlett strain up­on the de­gen­er­acy of the times and the prox­imate ru­in of the British peo­ple. Gildas wrote some four­teen hun­dred years ago or there­abouts--and the coun­try is not yet quite vis­ibly ru­ined. On the con­trary, it seems to the im­par­tial eye a more el­igi­ble place of res­idence to-​day than in the stir­ring times of the Sax­on in­va­sion. Hence, for the last two or three cen­turies, I have learned to dis­count these re­cur­rent Jeremi­ads of To­ry­ism, and to judge the ques­tion of our deca­dence or progress by a more ra­tio­nal stan­dard.

There is on­ly one such ra­tio­nal stan­dard; and that is, to dis­cov­er the caus­es and con­di­tions of our com­mer­cial pros­per­ity, and then to in­quire whether those caus­es and con­di­tions are be­ing large­ly al­tered or mod­ified by the evo­lu­tion of new phas­es. If they are, Eng­land must be­gin to de­cline; if they are not, her day is not yet come. Home Rule she will sur­vive; even the Eight Hours bo­gey, we may pre­sume, will not fi­nal­ly dis­pose of her.

Now, the cen­tre of civil­isa­tion is not a fixed point. It has var­ied from time to time, and may yet vary. In the very ear­li­est his­tor­ical pe­ri­od, there was hard­ly such a thing as a cen­tre of civil­isa­tion at all. There were civil­isa­tions in Egypt, As­syr­ia, Baby­lo­nia, Etruria; dis­crete civil­isa­tions of the riv­er val­leys, most­ly, which scarce­ly came in­to con­tact with one an­oth­er in their first be­gin­nings; any more than our own came in­to con­tact once with the civil­isa­tions of Chi­na, of Japan, of Pe­ru, of Mex­ico. As yet there was no world-​com­merce, no mu­tu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion of em­pire with em­pire. It was in the AEgean and the east­ern basin of the Mediter­ranean that nav­iga­tion first reached the point where great com­mer­cial ports and free in­ter­course be­came pos­si­ble. The Phoeni­cians, and lat­er the Greeks, were the pi­oneers of the new era. Tyre, Athens, Mile­tus, Rhodes, oc­cu­pied the cen­tre of the nascent world, and bound to­geth­er As­syr­ia, Baby­lo­nia, Egypt, Asia Mi­nor, Greece, Sici­ly, and Italy in one mer­can­tile sys­tem. A lit­tle lat­er, Hel­las it­self en­larged, so as to in­clude Syra­cuse, Byzan­tium, Alexan­dria, Cyrene, Cumae, Neapo­lis, Mas­sil­ia. The in­land sea be­came “a Greek lake.” But as nav­iga­tion thus slow­ly widened to the west­ern Mediter­ranean basin, the cen­tre of com­merce had to shift per­force from Hel­las to the mid-​point of the new area. Two pow­er­ful trad­ing towns oc­cu­pied such a mid-​point in the Mediter­ranean--Rome and Carthage; and they were driv­en to fight out the suprema­cy of the world (the world as it then ex­ist­ed) be­tween them. With the Ro­man Em­pire, the cir­cle ex­tend­ed so as to take in the At­lantic coasts, Gaul, Spain, and Britain, which then, how­ev­er, lay not at the cen­tre but on the cir­cum­fer­ence of civil­isa­tion. Dur­ing the Mid­dle Ages, when nav­iga­tion be­gan to em­brace the great open sea as well as the Mediter­ranean, a dou­ble cen­tre sprang up: the Ital­ian Re­publics, Venice, Flo­rence, Genoa, Pisa, were still the chief car­ri­ers; but the towns of Flan­ders, Bruges, Ghent, and Antwerp be­gan to com­pete with them, and the At­lantic states, France, Eng­land, the Low Coun­tries, rose in­to im­por­tance. By and by, as time goes on, the dis­cov­er­ies of Colum­bus and of Vas­co di Gama open out new tracks. Sud­den­ly com­merce is rev­olu­tionised. France, Eng­land, Spain, be­come near­er to Amer­ica and In­dia than Italy; so Italy de­clines; while the At­lantic states usurp the first place as the cen­tres of civil­isa­tion.

Our own age brings fresh seas in­to the cir­cle once more. It is no longer the At­lantic, the Mediter­ranean, or the In­di­an Ocean that alone count; the Pa­cif­ic al­so be­gins to be con­sid­ered. Chi­na, Japan, the Cape; Chili, Pe­ru, the Ar­gen­tine; Cal­ifor­nia, British Columbia, Aus­tralia, New Zealand; all of them are parts of the sys­tem of to-​day; civil­isa­tion is world-​wide.

Has this change of area al­tered the cen­tral po­si­tion of Eng­land? Not at all, save to strength­en it. If you look at the hemi­sphere of great­est land, you will see that Eng­land oc­cu­pies its ex­act mid­dle. In­su­lar her­self, and there­fore all made up of ports, she is near­er all ports in the world than any oth­er coun­try is or ev­er can be. I don't say that this in­sures for her per­pet­ual do­min­ion, such as Vir­gil proph­esied for the Ro­man Em­pire; but I do say it makes her a hard coun­try to beat in com­mer­cial com­pe­ti­tion. It ac­counts for Liv­er­pool, Lon­don, Glas­gow, New­cas­tle; it even ac­counts in a way for Manch­ester, Birm­ing­ham, Leeds, and Sheffield. Eng­land now stands at the math­emat­ical cen­tre of the prac­ti­cal world, and un­less some Big Thing oc­curs to dis­place her, she must con­tin­ue to stand there. It takes a great deal to up­set the bal­ance of an en­tire plan­et.

Is any­thing now dis­plac­ing her? Well, there is the fact that rail­ways are mak­ing land-​car­riage to-​day more im­por­tant rel­ative­ly to wa­ter-​car­riage than at any pre­vi­ous pe­ri­od. That may, per­haps, in time shift the cen­tre of the world from an is­land like Eng­land to the mid­dle of a great land area, like Chica­go or Moscow. And, no doubt, if ev­er the cen­tre shifts at all, it will shift to­wards West­ern Amer­ica, or rather the prairie re­gion. But, just at present, what are the great­est com­mer­cial towns of the world? All ports to a man. And the day when it will be oth­er­wise, if ev­er, seems still far dis­tant. Look at the newest coun­tries. What are their great fo­cal points? Ev­ery one of them ports. Mel­bourne and Syd­ney; Rio, Buenos Ayres, and Val­paraiso; Cape Town, San Fran­cis­co, Bom­bay, Cal­cut­ta, Yoko­hama. Chica­go it­self, the most vi­tal and the quick­est grow­er among mod­ern towns, owes half its im­por­tance to the fact that there wa­ter-​car­riage down the Great Lakes be­gins; though it owes the oth­er half, I ad­mit, to the con­verse fact that all the great trans-​con­ti­nen­tal rail­ways have to bend south at that point to avoid Lake Michi­gan. Still, on the whole, I think, as long as con­di­tions re­main what they are, the com­mer­cial suprema­cy of Eng­land is in no im­me­di­ate dan­ger. It is these great per­ma­nent ge­ograph­ical fac­tors that make or mar a coun­try, not Eight Hours Bills or pet­ty so­cial re­con­struc­tions. Said the Lord May­or of Lon­don to petu­lant King James, when he pro­posed to re­move the Court to Ox­ford, “May it please your Majesty not to take away the Thames al­so.”

“But our com­peti­tors? We are be­ing driv­en out of our mar­kets.” Oh, yes, if that's all you mean, I don't sup­pose we shall al­ways be able in ev­ery­thing to keep up our ex­clu­sive po­si­tion. Our neigh­bours, who (bar the ad­van­tage of in­su­lar­ity, which means a coast and a port al­ways close at hand) seem near­ly as well sit­uat­ed as we are for ac­cess to the world-​mar­kets, are be­gin­ning to wake up and take a slice of the cake from us. Ger­many is man­ufac­tur­ing; Bel­gium is smelt­ing; Antwerp is ex­port­ing; Amer­ica is oc­cu­py­ing her own mar­kets. But that's a very dif­fer­ent thing in­deed from na­tion­al deca­dence. We may have to com­pete a lit­tle hard­er with our ri­vals, that's all. The Boom may be over; but the Thames re­mains: the ge­ograph­ical facts are still un­al­tered. And no­tice that all the time while there's been this vague talk about “bad times”--in­come-​tax has been steadi­ly in­creas­ing, Lon­don has been steadi­ly grow­ing, ev­ery out­er and vis­ible sign of com­mer­cial pros­per­ity has been steadi­ly spread­ing. Have our wa­ter­ing-​places shrunk? Have our build­ings been get­ting small­er and less lux­uri­ous? If Antwerp has grown, how about Hull and Cardiff? “Well, per­haps the past is all right; but con­sid­er the fu­ture! Eight hours are go­ing to drive cap­ital out of the coun­try!” Rub­bish! I'm not a po­lit­ical economist, thank God; I nev­er sank quite so low as that. And I'm not speak­ing for or against Eight Hours: I'm on­ly dis­count­ing some ver­bose non­sense. But I know enough to see that the cap­ital of a coun­try can no more be ex­port­ed than the land or the hous­es. Can you drive away the Lon­don and North-​West­ern Rail­way? Can you drive away the fac­to­ries of Manch­ester, the mines of the Black Coun­try, the canals, the build­ings, the ma­chin­ery, the docks, the plant, the ap­pa­ra­tus? Im­pos­si­ble, on the very face of it! Most of the cap­ital of a coun­try is fixed in its soil, and can't be up­root­ed. Peo­ple fall in­to this er­ror about driv­ing away cap­ital be­cause they know you can sell par­tic­ular rail­way shares or a par­tic­ular fac­to­ry and leave the coun­try with the pro­ceeds, pro­vid­ed some­body else is will­ing to buy; but you can't sell all the rail­ways and all the fac­to­ries in a lump, and clear out with the cap­ital. No, no; Eng­land stands where she does, be­cause God put her there; and un­til He in­vents a new or­der of things (which may, of course, hap­pen any day--as, for ex­am­ple, if aeri­al nav­iga­tion came in) she must con­tin­ue, in spite of mi­nor changes, to main­tain in the main her present po­si­tion.

But a truce to these frivoli­ties! The lit­tle Ital­ian boy next door calls me to play ball with him, with a green lemon from the gar­den. Ven­go, Lui­gi, ven­go! I re­turn at once to the re­al­ities of life, and dis­miss such shad­ows.

VII.

_THE GAME AND THE RULES._

A sportive friend of mine, a mighty golfer, is fond of say­ing, “You Rad­icals want to play the game with­out the rules.” To which I am ac­cus­tomed mild­ly to re­tort, “Not at all; but we think the rules un­fair, and so we want to see them al­tered.”

Now life is a very pe­cu­liar game, which dif­fers in many im­por­tant re­spects even from com­pul­so­ry foot­ball. The Rug­by scrim­mage is mere child's play by the side of it. There's no pos­si­bil­ity of shirk­ing it. A med­ical cer­tifi­cate won't get you off; whether you like it or not, play you must in your ap­point­ed or­der. We are all un­will­ing com­peti­tors. No­body asks our naked lit­tle souls be­fore­hand whether they would pre­fer to be born in­to the game or to re­main, un­fleshed, in the lim­bo of non-​ex­is­tence. Willy nil­ly, ev­ery one of us is thrust in­to the world by an ir­re­spon­si­ble act of two pre­vi­ous play­ers; and once there, we must play out the set as best we may to the bit­ter end, how­ev­er lit­tle we like it or the rules that or­der it.

That, it must be ad­mit­ted, makes a grave dis­tinc­tion from the very out­set be­tween the game of hu­man life and any oth­er game with which we are com­mon­ly ac­quaint­ed. It al­so makes it im­per­ative up­on the framers of the rules so to frame them that no one play­er shall have an un­fair or un­just ad­van­tage over any of the oth­ers. And since the penal­ty of bad play, or bad suc­cess in the match, is death, mis­ery, star­va­tion, it be­hoves the rule-​mak­ers to be more scrupu­lous­ly par­tic­ular as to fair­ness and eq­ui­ty than in any oth­er game like crick­et or ten­nis. It be­hoves them to see that all start fair, and that no hap­less be­gin­ner is un­du­ly hand­icapped. To com­pel men to take part in a match for dear life, whether they wish it or not, and then to in­sist that some of them shall wield bats and some mere broom-​sticks, ir­re­spec­tive of height, weight, age, or bod­ily in­fir­mi­ty, is sure­ly not fair. It jus­ti­fies the com­mit­tee in call­ing for a re­vi­sion.

But things are far worse than even that in the game as ac­tu­al­ly played in Eu­rope. What shall we say of rules which de­cide dog­mat­ical­ly that one set of play­ers are hered­itar­ily en­ti­tled to be al­ways bat­ting, while an­oth­er set, less lucky, have to field for ev­er, and to be fined or im­pris­oned for not catch­ing? What shall we say of rules which give one group a per­pet­ual right to free lunch in the tent, while the re­main­der have to pick up what they can for them­selves by glean­ing among the stub­ble? How jus­ti­fy the prin­ci­ple in ac­cor­dance with which the cap­tain on one side has an ex­clu­sive claim to the com­mon ground of the club, and may charge ev­ery play­er ex­act­ly what he likes for the right to play up­on it?--es­pe­cial­ly when the choice lies be­tween play­ing on such terms, or be­ing cast in­to the void, your­self and your fam­ily. And then to think that the ground thus tabooed by one par­tic­ular mem­ber may be all Suther­land­shire, or, still worse, all West­min­ster! De­cid­ed­ly, these rules call for in­stant re­vi­sion; and the un­priv­ileged play­ers must be sub­mis­sive in­deed who con­sent to put up with them.

Friends and fel­low-​mem­bers, let us cry with one voice, “The links for the play­ers!”

Once more, just look at the sin­gu­lar rule in our own All Eng­land club, by which cer­tain as­sort­ed mem­bers pos­sess a hered­itary right to ve­to all de­ci­sions of the elec­tive com­mit­tee, mere­ly be­cause they hap­pen to be their fa­thers' sons, and the club long ago very fool­ish­ly per­mit­ted the like priv­ilege to their an­ces­tors! That is an ir­ra­tional in­ter­fer­ence with the lib­er­ty of the play­ers which hard­ly any­body nowa­days ven­tures to de­fend in prin­ci­ple, and which is on­ly up­held in some half-​heart­ed way (save in the case of that fos­sil anachro­nism, the Duke of Ar­gyll) by sup­posed ar­gu­ments of con­ve­nience. It won't last long now; there is talk in the com­mit­tee of “mend­ing or end­ing it.” It shows the long-​suf­fer­ing na­ture of the poor blind play­ers at this com­pul­so­ry game of na­tion­al foot­ball that they should ev­er for one mo­ment per­mit so mon­strous an as­sump­tion--per­mit the idea that one sin­gle play­er may wield a sub­stan­tive voice and vote to out­weigh tens of thou­sands of his fel­low-​mem­bers!

These ques­tions of pro­ce­dure, how­ev­er, are af­ter all small mat­ters. It is the re­al hard­ships of the game that most need to be tack­led. Why should one play­er be born in­to the sport with a pre­scrip­tive right to fill some easy place in the field, while an­oth­er has to fag on from morn­ing to night in the most un­in­ter­est­ing and fa­tigu­ing po­si­tion? Why should _pate de foie gras_ and cham­pagne-​cup in the tent be so un­equal­ly dis­tribut­ed? Why should those who have made fewest runs and done no field­ing be ad­mit­ted to par­take of these lux­uries, free of charge, while those who have borne the brunt of the fight, those who have suf­fered from the heat of the day, those who have con­tribut­ed most to the hon­our of the vic­to­ry, are turned loose, un­fed, to do as they can for them­selves by hook or by crook some­how? These are the ques­tions some of us play­ers are now be­gin­ning to ask our­selves; and we don't find them ef­fi­cient­ly an­swered by the bald state­ment that we “want to play the game with­out the rules,” and that we ought to be pre­cious glad the leg­is­la­tors of the club haven't made them a hun­dred times hard­er against us.

No, no; the rules them­selves must be al­tered. Time was, in­deed, when peo­ple used to think they were made and or­dained by di­vine au­thor­ity. “Cum priv­ile­gio” was the mot­to of the cap­tains. But we know very well now that ev­ery club set­tles its own stand­ing or­ders, and that it can al­ter and mod­ify them as fun­da­men­tal­ly as it pleas­es. Lots of fun­ny old saws are still ut­tered up­on this sub­ject--“There must al­ways be rich and poor;” “You can't in­ter­fere with eco­nom­ical laws;” “If you were to di­vide up ev­ery­thing to-​mor­row, at the end of a fort­night you'd find the same dif­fer­ences and in­equal­ities as ev­er.” The last-​named ar­gu­ment (I be­lieve it con­sid­ers it­self by cour­tesy an ar­gu­ment) is one which no self-​re­spect­ing Rad­ical should so much as deign to an­swer. No­body that I ev­er heard of for one mo­ment pro­posed to “di­vide up ev­ery­thing,” or, for that mat­ter, any­thing: and the im­pu­ta­tion that some­body did or does is a proof ei­ther of in­ten­tion­al malev­olence or of crass stu­pid­ity. Nei­ther should be en­cour­aged; and you en­cour­age them by pre­tend­ing to take them se­ri­ous­ly. It is the ini­tial in­jus­tices of the game that we Rad­icals ob­ject to--the in­jus­tices which pre­vent us from all start­ing fair and hav­ing our even chance of pick­ing up a liveli­hood. We don't want to “di­vide up ev­ery­thing”--a most fu­tile pro­ceed­ing; but we do want to un­tie the legs and re­lease the arms of the hand­icapped play­ers. To drop metaphor at last, it is the con­di­tions we com­plain about. Al­ter the con­di­tions, and there would be no need for di­vi­sion, sum­ma­ry or grad­ual. The game would work it­self out spon­ta­neous­ly with­out your in­ter­ven­tion.

The in­jus­tice of the ex­ist­ing set of rules sim­ply ap­pals the Rad­ical. Yet odd­ly enough, this in­jus­tice it­self ap­peals rather to the com­par­ative look­er-​on than to the heav­ily-​hand­icapped play­ers in per­son. They, poor crea­tures, drag­ging their log in pa­tience, have grown so ac­cus­tomed to re­gard­ing the world as an­oth­er man's oys­ter, that they put up un­com­plain­ing­ly for the most part with the most patent in­equal­ities. Per­haps 'tis their want of imag­ina­tion that makes them un­able to con­ceive any oth­er state of things as even pos­si­ble--like the dog who ac­cepts kick­ing as the nat­ural fate of dog­hood. At any rate, you will find, if you look about you, that the chief re­form­ers are not, as a rule, the ill-​used class­es them­selves, but the sen­si­tive and think­ing souls who hate and loathe the in­jus­tice with which oth­ers are treat­ed. Most of the best Rad­icals I have known were men of gen­tle birth and breed­ing. Not all: oth­ers, just as earnest, just as ea­ger, just as chival­rous, sprang from the mass­es. Yet the gen­tly-​reared pre­pon­der­ate. It is a com­mon To­ry taunt to say that the bat­tle is one be­tween the Haves and the Have-​nots. That is by no means true. It is be­tween the self­ish Haves, on one side, and the un­selfish Haves, who wish to see some­thing done for the Have-​nots, on the oth­er. As for the poor Have-​nots them­selves, they are most­ly inar­tic­ulate. In­deed, the To­ry al­most ad­mits as much when he al­ters his tone and de­scribes the sym­pa­this­ing and ac­tive few as “paid ag­ita­tors.”

For my­self, how­ev­er, I am a born Con­ser­va­tive. I hate to see any old cus­tom or prac­tice changed; un­less, in­deed, it is ei­ther fool­ish or wicked--like most ex­ist­ing ones.

VI­II.

_THE ROLE OF PROPHET._

One great En­glish thinker and artist once tried the rash ex­per­iment of be­ing true to him­self--of say­ing out bold­ly, with­out fear or re­serve, the high­est and no­blest and best that was in him. He gave us the most exquisite lyrics in the En­glish lan­guage; he mould­ed the thought of our first youth as no oth­er po­et has ev­er yet mould­ed it; he be­came the spir­itu­al fa­ther of the rich­est souls in two suc­ceed­ing gen­er­ations of En­glish­men. And what re­ward did he get for it? He was ex­pelled from his uni­ver­si­ty. He was hound­ed out of his coun­try. He was de­prived of his own chil­dren. He was de­nied the com­mon ap­peal to the law and courts of jus­tice. He was drowned, an ex­ile, in a dis­tant sea, and burned in soli­tude on a for­eign shore. And af­ter his death he was vil­ified and ca­lum­ni­at­ed by wretched pen­ny-​a-​lin­ers, or (worse in­sult still) apol­ogised for, with half-​heart­ed shrugs, by luke­warm ad­vo­cates. The purest in life and the most un­selfish in pur­pose of all mankind, he was per­se­cut­ed alive with the ut­most ran­cour of hate, and pur­sued when dead with the vilest shafts of ma­lig­ni­ty. He nev­er even knew in his scat­tered grave the good he was to do to lat­er groups of thinkers.

It was a no­ble ex­am­ple, of course; but not, you will ad­mit, an al­lur­ing one for oth­ers to fol­low.

“Be true to your­self,” say the copy-​book moral­ists, “and you may be sure the re­sult will at last be jus­ti­fied.” No doubt; but in how many cen­turies? And what sort of life will you lead your­self, mean­while, for your al­lot­ted space of three­score years and ten, un­less hap­ly hanged, or burned, or im­pris­oned be­fore it? What the copy-​book moral­ists mean is mere­ly this--that soon­er or lat­er your prin­ci­ples will tri­umph, which may or may not be the case ac­cord­ing to the na­ture of the prin­ci­ples. But even sup­pose they do, are you to ig­nore your­self in the in­ter­im--you, a hu­man be­ing with emo­tions, sen­sa­tions, do­mes­tic af­fec­tions, and, in the ma­jor­ity of in­stances, wife and chil­dren on whom to ex­pend them? Why should it be calm­ly tak­en for grant­ed by the world that if you have some new and true thing to tell hu­man­ity (which hu­man­ity, of course, will toss back in your face with con­tu­me­ly and vi­olence) you are bound to blurt it out, with child­ish un­re­serve, re­gard­less of con­se­quences to your­self and to those who de­pend up­on you? Why de­mand of ge­nius or ex­cep­tion­al abil­ity a gra­tu­itous sac­ri­fice which you would dep­re­cate as wrong and un­just to oth­ers in the or­di­nary cit­izen? For the ge­nius, too, is a man, and has his feel­ings.

The fact is, so­ci­ety con­sid­ers that in cer­tain in­stances it has a right to ex­pect the thinker will mar­tyrise him­self on its ac­count, while it stands serene­ly by and heaps fag­gots on the pile, with ev­ery mark of con­tempt and loathing. But so­ci­ety is mis­tak­en. No man is bound to mar­tyrise him­self; in a great many cas­es a man is bound to do the ex­act op­po­site. He has giv­en hostages to For­tune, and his first du­ty is to the hostages. “We ask you for bread,” his chil­dren may well say, “and you give us a no­ble moral les­son. We ask you for cloth­ing, and you sup­ply us with a beau­ti­ful po­et­ical fan­cy.” This is not ac­cord­ing to bar­gain. Wife and chil­dren have a first mort­gage on a man's ac­tiv­ities; so­ci­ety has on­ly a right to con­tin­gent re­main­ders.

A great many sen­si­ble men who had truths of deep im­port to de­liv­er to the world must have recog­nised these facts in all times and places, and must have held their tongues ac­cord­ing­ly. In­stead of speak­ing out the truths that were in them, they must have kept their peace, or have con­fined them­selves severe­ly to the or­di­nary plat­itudes of their age and na­tion. Why ru­in your­self by an­nounc­ing what you feel and be­lieve, when all the re­ward you will get for it in the end will be so­cial os­tracism, if not even the rack, the stake, or the pil­lo­ry? The Shel­leys and Rousseaus there's no hold­ing, of course; they _will_ run right in­to it; but the Goethes--oh, no, they keep their se­cret. In­deed, I hold it as prob­able that the vast ma­jor­ity of men far in ad­vance of their times have al­ways held their tongues con­sis­tent­ly, save for mere com­mon bab­ble, on Lord Chester­field's prin­ci­ple that “Wise men nev­er say.”

The _role_ of prophet is thus a thank­less and dif­fi­cult one. Nor is it quite cer­tain­ly of re­al use to the com­mu­ni­ty. For the prophet is gen­er­al­ly too much ahead of his times. He dis­counts the fu­ture at a ru­inous rate, and he takes the con­se­quences. If you hap­pen ev­er to have read the Old Tes­ta­ment you must have no­ticed that the prophets had gen­er­al­ly a hard time of it.

The lead­er is a very dif­fer­ent stamp of per­son. _He_ stands well abreast of his con­tem­po­raries, and just half a pace in front of them; and he has pow­er to per­suade even the in­er­tia of hu­man­ity in­to tak­ing that one half-​step in ad­vance he him­self has al­ready made bold to ad­ven­ture. His post is hon­oured, re­spect­ed, re­mu­ner­at­ed. But the prophet gets no thanks, and per­haps does mankind no ben­efit. He sees too quick. And there can be very lit­tle good in­deed in so see­ing. If one of us had been an as­tronomer, and had dis­cov­ered the laws of Ke­pler, New­ton, and Laplace in the thir­teenth cen­tu­ry, I think he would have been wise to keep the dis­cov­ery to him­self for a few hun­dred years or so. Oth­er­wise, he would have been burned for his trou­ble. Galileo, long af­ter, tried part of the ex­per­iment a decade or so too soon, and got no good by it. But in moral and so­cial mat­ters the dan­ger is far graver. I would say to ev­ery as­pir­ing youth who sees some po­lit­ical or eco­nom­ical or eth­ical truth quite clear­ly: “Keep it dark! Don't men­tion it! No­body will lis­ten to you; and you, who are prob­ably a per­son of su­pe­ri­or in­sight and high­er moral aims than the mass, will on­ly de­stroy your own in­flu­ence for good by pre­ma­ture dec­la­ra­tions. The world will very like­ly come round of it­self to your views in the end; but if you tell them too soon, you will suf­fer for it in per­son, and will very like­ly do noth­ing to help on the rev­olu­tion in thought that you con­tem­plate. For thought that is too abrupt­ly ahead of the mass nev­er in­flu­ences hu­man­ity.”

“But some­times the truth will out in spite of one!” Ah, yes, that's the worst of it. Do as I say, not as I do. If pos­si­ble, re­press it.

It is a no­ble and beau­ti­ful thing to be a mar­tyr, es­pe­cial­ly if you are a mar­tyr in the cause of truth, and not, as is of­ten the case, of some de­bas­ing and de­grad­ing su­per­sti­tion. But no­body has a right to de­mand of you that you should be a mar­tyr. And some peo­ple have of­ten a right to de­mand that you should res­olute­ly refuse the mar­tyr's crown on the ground that you have con­tract­ed pri­or obli­ga­tions, in­con­sis­tent with the pure­ly per­son­al lux­ury of mar­tyr­dom. 'Tis a lux­ury for a few. It be­fits on­ly the bach­elor, the unattached, and the eco­nom­ical­ly spare­wor­thy.

“These be pes­simistic pro­nounce­ments,” you say. Well, no, not ex­act­ly. For, af­ter all, we must nev­er shut our eyes to the ac­tu­al; and in the world as it is, me­lior­ism, not op­ti­mism, is the true op­po­site of pes­simism. Op­ti­mist and pes­simist are both alike in a sense, see­ing they are both con­ser­va­tive; they sit down con­tent­ed--the first with the smug con­tent­ment that says “All's well; I have enough; why this fuss about oth­ers?” the sec­ond with the con­tent­ment of blank de­spair that says, “All's hope­less; all's wrong; why try use­less­ly to mend it?” The me­lior­ist at­ti­tude, on the con­trary, is rather to say, “Much is wrong; much painful; what can we do to im­prove it?” And from this point of view there is some­thing we can all do to make mar­tyr­dom less in­evitable in the end, for the man who has a thought, a dis­cov­ery, an idea, to tell us. Such men are rare, and their thought, when they pro­duce it, is sure to be un­palat­able. For, if it were oth­er­wise, it would be thought of our own type--fa­mil­iar, ba­nal, com­mon­place, un­orig­inal. It would en­counter no re­sis­tance, as it thrilled on its way through our brain, from es­tab­lished er­rors. What the ge­nius and the prophet are there for is just that--to make us lis­ten to un­wel­come truths, to com­pel us to hear, to drive awk­ward facts straight home with sledge-​ham­mer force to the un­will­ing hearts and brains of us. Not what _you_ want to hear, or what _I_ want to hear, is good and use­ful for us; but what we _don't_ want to hear, what we can't bear to think, what we hate to be­lieve, what we fight tooth and nail against. The man who makes us lis­ten to _that_ is the seer and the prophet; he comes up­on us like Shel­ley, or Whit­man, or Ib­sen, and plumps down hor­rid truths that half sur­prise, half dis­gust us. He shakes us out of our lethar­gy. To such give ear, though they say what shocks you. Weigh well their hate­ful ideas. Avoid the vul­gar vice of sneer­ing and carp­ing at them. Learn to ex­am­ine their nude thought with­out shrink­ing, and ex­am­ine it all the more care­ful­ly when it most re­pels you. Naked ver­ity is an ac­quired taste; it is nev­er beau­ti­ful at first sight to the un­ac­cus­tomed vi­sion. Re­mem­ber that no ques­tion is fi­nal­ly set­tled; that no ques­tion is whol­ly above con­sid­er­ation; that what you cher­ish as holi­est is most prob­ably wrong; and that in so­cial and moral mat­ters es­pe­cial­ly (where men have been longest ruled by pure su­per­sti­tions) new and startling forms of thought have the high­est _a pri­ori_ prob­abil­ity in their favour. Dis­miss your idols. Give ev­ery opin­ion its fair chance of suc­cess--es­pe­cial­ly when it seems to you both wicked and ridicu­lous, rec­ol­lect­ing that it is bet­ter to let five hun­dred crude guess­es run loose about the world un­clad, than to crush one fledgling truth in its cal­low con­di­tion. To the Greeks, fool­ish­ness: to the Jews, a stum­bling-​block. If you can't be one of the prophets your­self, you can at least ab­stain from help­ing to stone them.

Dear me! These re­flec­tions to-​day are any­thing but post-​pran­di­al. The _gnoc­chi_ and the olives must cer­tain­ly have dis­agreed with me. But per­haps it may some of it be “wrote sar­cas­tic.” I have heard tell there is a thing called irony.

IX.

_THE RO­MANCE OF THE CLASH OF RACES._

The world has ex­pand­ed faster in the last thir­ty years than in any pre­vi­ous age since “the spa­cious days of great Eliz­abeth.” And with its ex­pan­sion, of course, our ideas have widened. I be­lieve Eu­rope is now in the midst of just such an out­burst of thought and in­ven­tion as that which fol­lowed the dis­cov­ery of Amer­ica, and of the new route to In­dia by the Cape of Good Hope. But I don't want to in­sist too strong­ly up­on that point, be­cause I know a great many of my con­tem­po­raries are deeply hurt by the base and spite­ful sug­ges­tion that they and their fel­lows are re­al­ly quite as good as any fish that ev­er came out of the sea be­fore them. I on­ly de­sire now to call at­ten­tion for a mo­ment to one cu­ri­ous re­sult en­tailed by this widen­ing of the world up­on our lit­er­ary pro­duc­tiv­ity--a re­sult which, though ob­vi­ous enough when one comes to look at it, seems to me hith­er­to to have strange­ly es­caped de­lib­er­ate no­tice.

In one word, the point of which I speak is the com­par­ative cos­mopoli­tani­sa­tion of let­ters, and es­pe­cial­ly the in­tro­duc­tion in­to lit­er­ary art of the phe­nom­ena due to the Clash of Races.

This Clash it­self is the one pic­turesque and nov­el fea­ture of our oth­er­wise some­what pro­sa­ic and ma­chine-​made epoch; and, there­fore, it has been ea­ger­ly seized up­on, with one ac­cord, by all the chief pur­vey­ors of re­cent lit­er­ature, and es­pe­cial­ly of fic­tion. They have es­pied in it, with tech­ni­cal in­stinct, the best chance for ob­tain­ing that fresh in­ter­est which is es­sen­tial to the suc­cess of a work of art. We were all get­ting some­what tired, it must be con­fessed, of the old places and the old themes. The in­sipid loves of An­tho­ny Trol­lope's blame­less young peo­ple were be­gin­ning to pall up­on us. The jad­ed palate of the An­glo-​Celtic race pined for some­thing hot, with a touch of fresh spice in it. It de­mand­ed cur­ried fowl and Ja­maica pep­pers. Hence, on the one hand, the sud­den vogue of the nov­el­ists of the younger coun­tries--Tol­stoi and Tour­ge­ni­eff, Ib­sen and Bjorn­son, Mary Wilkins and How­ells--who trans­plant­ed us at once in­to fresh scenes, new peo­ple: hence, on the oth­er hand, the ten­den­cy on the part of our own lat­est writ­ers--the Steven­sons, the Hall Caines, the Mar­ion Craw­fords, the Rid­er Hag­gards--to go far afield among the low­er races or the lat­er civil­isa­tions for the themes of their ro­mances.

Alas, alas, I see break­ers be­fore me! Must I pause for a mo­ment in the flow­ing cur­rent of a para­graph to ex­plain, as in an aside, that I in­clude Mar­ion Craw­ford of set pur­pose among “our own” late writ­ers, while I count Mary Wilkins and How­ells as Transat­lantic aliens? Ex­pe­ri­ence teach­es me that I must; else shall I have that an­noy­ing an­imal­cule, the mi­cro­scop­ic crit­ic, com­ing down up­on me in print with his pet­ty ob­jec­tion that “Mr. Craw­ford is an Amer­ican.” Go to, oh, blind one! And Whistler al­so, I sup­pose, and Sar­gent, and, per­haps, Ash­mead Bartlett! What! have you read “Sar­raci­nesca” and not learnt that its au­thor is Eu­ro­pean to the core? 'Twas for such as you that the Irish­man in­vent­ed his bril­liant re­tort: “And if I was born in a sta­ble would I be a horse?”

Not mere­ly, how­ev­er, do our younger writ­ers go in­to strange and nov­el places for the scenes of their sto­ries; the im­por­tant point to no­tice in the present con­nec­tion is that, con­scious­ly or un­con­scious­ly to them­selves, they have per­ceived the mighty in­flu­ence of this Clash of Races, and have cho­sen the re­la­tions of the civilised peo­ple with their sav­age al­lies, or en­emies, or sub­jects, as the chief theme of their hand­icraft. 'Tis a mo­men­tous theme, for it en­clos­es in it­self half the prob­lems of the fu­ture. The old bat­tles are now well-​nigh fought out; but new ones are loom­ing ahead for us. The cos­mopoli­tani­sa­tion of the world is in­tro­duc­ing in­to our midst strange el­ements of dis­cord. A con­glom­er­ate of un­weld­ed eth­ni­cal el­ements usurps the stage of his­to­ry. Amer­ica and South Africa have al­ready their ne­gro ques­tion; Cal­ifor­nia and Aus­tralia have al­ready their Chi­nese ques­tion; Rus­sia is fast get­ting her Asi­at­ic, her Ma­hommedan ques­tion. Even France, the most nar­row­ly Eu­ro­pean in in­ter­est of Eu­ro­pean coun­tries, has yet her Al­ge­ria, her Tu­nis, her Ton­quin. Spain has Cu­ba and the Philip­pines. Hol­land has Ja­va. Ger­many is bur­den­ing her­self with the un­born trou­bles of a Hin­ter­land. And as for Eng­land, she stag­gers on still un­der the in­creas­ing load of In­dia, Hong Kong, Sin­ga­pore, South Africa, the West In­dies, Fi­ji, New Guinea, North Bor­neo--all of them rife with end­less race-​ques­tions, all preg­nant with dif­fi­cul­ties.

Who can be sur­prised that amid this seething tur­moil of colours, in­stincts, creeds, and lan­guages, art should have fas­tened up­on the race-​prob­lems as her great theme for the mo­ment? And she has fas­tened up­on them ev­ery­where. France her­self has not been able to avoid the con­ta­gion. Pierre Loti is the most typ­ical French rep­re­sen­ta­tive of this vagabond spir­it; and the ques­tion of the peo­ples nat­ural­ly en­vis­ages it­self to his mind in true Gal­lic fash­ion in the “Mariage de Loti” and in “Madame Chrysan­theme.” He sees it through a ha­lo of vague sex­ual sen­ti­men­tal­ism. In Eng­land, it was Rid­er Hag­gard from the Cape who first set the mode vis­ibly; and noth­ing is more note­wor­thy in all his work than the fact that the in­ter­est main­ly cen­tres in the pic­turesque jux­ta­po­si­tion and con­trast of civil­isa­tion and sav­agery. Once the cue was giv­en, what more nat­ural than that young Rud­yard Kipling, fresh home from In­dia, brim­ming over with ge­nius and with knowl­edge of two con­cur­rent streams of life that flow on side by side yet nev­er min­gle, should take up his para­ble in due course, and storm us all by as­sault with his light field ar­tillery? Then Robert Louis Steven­son, born a wan­der­ing Scot, with rov­ing Scan­di­na­vian and fiery Celtic blood in his veins, must needs set­tle down, like a Viking that he is, in far Samoa, there to charm and thrill us by turns with the ro­mance of Poly­ne­sia. The ex­am­ple was catch­ing. Al­most with­out know­ing it, oth­er writ­ers have turned for sub­jects to sim­ilar fields. “Dr. Isaacs,” “Paul Patoff,” “By Proxy,” were up­on us. Even Hall Caine him­self, in some ways a most in­su­lar type of ge­nius, was forced in “The Scape­goat” to car­ry us off from Cum­ber­land and Man to Mo­roc­co. Sir Ed­win Arnold in­flicts up­on us the tragedies of Japan. I have been watch­ing this ten­den­cy long my­self with the in­ter­est­ed eye of a deal­er en­gaged in the trade, and there­fore anx­ious to keep pace with ev­ery chang­ing breath of pop­ular favour: and I no­tice a con­stant in­crease from year to year in the num­ber of short sto­ries in mag­azines and news­pa­pers deal­ing with the ro­mance of the in­fe­ri­or races. I no­tice, al­so, that such sto­ries are in­creas­ing­ly suc­cess­ful with the pub­lic. This shows that, whether the pub­lic knows it or not it­self, the ques­tion of race is in­ter­est­ing it more and more. It is grad­ual­ly grow­ing to un­der­stand the mag­ni­tude of the change that has come over civil­isa­tion by the in­clu­sion of Asia, Africa, and Aus­trala­sia with­in its cir­cle. Even the Queen is learn­ing Hin­dus­tani.

There is a fa­mous pas­sage in Green's “Short His­to­ry of the En­glish Peo­ple” which de­scribes in part that strange out­burst of na­tion­al ex­pan­sion un­der Eliz­abeth, when Raleigh, Drake, and Fro­bish­er scoured the dis­tant seas, and when at home “Eng­land be­came a nest of singing birds,” with Shake­speare, Spenser, Fletch­er, and Mar­low. “The old sober no­tions of thrift,” says the pic­turesque his­to­ri­an, “melt­ed be­fore the strange rev­olu­tions of for­tune wrought by the New World. Gal­lants gam­bled away a for­tune at a sit­ting, and sailed off to make a fresh one in the In­dies.” (Read rather to-​day at Kim­ber­ley, Jo­han­nes­burg, Van­cou­ver.) “Vi­sions of galleons load­ed to the brim with pearls and di­amonds and in­gots of sil­ver, dreams of El Do­ra­dos where all was of gold, threw a haze of prodi­gal­ity and pro­fu­sion over the imag­ina­tion of the mean­est sea­man. The won­ders, too, of the New World kin­dled a burst of ex­trav­agant fan­cy in the Old. The strange med­ley of past and present which dis­tin­guish­es its masques and feast­ings on­ly re­flect­ed the med­ley of men's thoughts.... A 'wild man' from the In­dies chant­ed the Queen's prais­es at Ke­nil­worth, and Echo an­swered him. Eliz­abeth turned from the greet­ings of sibyls and gi­ants to de­liv­er the en­chant­ed la­dy from her tyrant, 'Sans Pitie.' Shep­herdess­es wel­comed her with car­ols of the spring, while Ceres and Bac­chus poured their corn and grapes at her feet.” Oh, gild­ed youth of the Gai­ety, _mu­ta­to nomine de te Fab­ula nar­ratur_. Yours, yours is this glo­ry!

For our own age, too, is a sec­ond Eliz­abethan. It blos­soms out dai­ly in­to such flow­ers of fan­cy as nev­er bloomed be­fore, save then, on British soil. When men tell you nowa­days we have “no great writ­ers left,” be­lieve not the sil­ly par­rot cry. Nay, rather, laugh it down for them. We move in the midst of one of the might­iest epochs earth has ev­er seen, an epoch which will live in his­to­ry here­after side by side with the Athens of Per­icles, the Rome of Au­gus­tus, the Flo­rence of Loren­zo, the Eng­land of Eliz­abeth. Don't throw away your birthright by ig­nor­ing the fact. Live up to your priv­ileges. Gaze around you and know. Be a con­scious par­tak­er in one of the great ages of hu­man­ity.

X.

_THE MO­NOP­OLIST IN­STINCTS._

In the first of these af­ter-​din­ner _causeries_ I ven­tured humbly to re­mark that Pa­tri­otism was a vul­gar vice of which I had nev­er been guilty. That in­no­cent in­dis­cre­tion of mine aroused at the mo­ment some un­favourable com­ment. I con­fess I was sor­ry for it. But I passed it by at the time, lest I should speak too hasti­ly and lose my tem­per. I re­cur to the sub­ject now, at the hour of the cigarette, when man can dis­course most ge­nial­ly of his bit­ter­est en­emy. And Monopoly is mine. Its very name is hate­ful.

I don't of­ten say what I think. At least, not much of it. I don't of­ten get the chance. And, be­sides, be­ing a timid and a mod­est man, I'm afraid to. But just this once, I'm go­ing to “try it on.” Ob­ject to my opin­ions as you will. But still, let me ex­press them. Strike--but hear me!

Has it ev­er oc­curred to you that one ob­ject of read­ing is to learn things you nev­er thought of be­fore, and would nev­er think of now, un­less you were told them?

Pa­tri­otism is one of the Mo­nop­olist In­stincts. And the Mo­nop­olist In­stincts are the great­est en­emies of the so­cial life in hu­man­ity. They are what we have got in the end to out­live. The test of a man's place in the scale of be­ing is how far he has out­lived them. They are sur­viv­ing relics of the ape and tiger. But we must let the ape and tiger die. We must be­gin to be hu­man.

I will take Pa­tri­otism first, be­cause it is the most specious of them all, and has still a self-​sat­is­fied way of mas­querad­ing as a virtue. But af­ter all what is Pa­tri­otism? “My coun­try, right or wrong; and just be­cause it is _my_ coun­try.” It is noth­ing more than a wider form of self­ish­ness. Of­ten enough, in­deed, it is even a nar­row one. It means, “My busi­ness in­ter­ests against the busi­ness in­ter­ests of oth­er peo­ple; and let the tax­es of my fel­low-​cit­izens pay to sup­port them.” At oth­er times it is pure Jin­go­ism. It means, “_My_ coun­try against oth­er coun­tries! _My_ army and navy against oth­er fight­ers! _My_ right to an­nex un­oc­cu­pied ter­ri­to­ry over the equal right of all oth­er peo­ple! _My_ pow­er to op­press all weak­er na­tion­al­ities, all in­fe­ri­or races!” It _nev­er_ means any­thing good. For if a cause is just, like Ire­land's, or once Italy's, then 'tis the good man's du­ty to es­pouse it with warmth, be it his own or an­oth­er's. And if a cause be bad, then 'tis the good man's du­ty to op­pose it tooth and nail, ir­re­spec­tive of your “Pa­tri­otism.” True, a good man will feel more sen­si­tive­ly anx­ious that jus­tice should be done by the par­tic­ular State of which he hap­pens him­self to be a mem­ber than by any oth­er, be­cause he is part­ly re­spon­si­ble for the cor­po­rate ac­tion; but then, peo­ple who feel deeply this joint moral re­spon­si­bil­ity of all the cit­izens are not praised as pa­tri­ots but re­viled as un­pa­tri­ot­ic. To urge that our own coun­try should strive with all its might to be bet­ter, high­er, pur­er, no­bler, juster than oth­er coun­tries around it--the on­ly kind of Pa­tri­otism worth a brass far­thing in a righ­teous man's eyes--is ac­count­ed by most men both wicked and fool­ish.

Pa­tri­otism, then, is the col­lec­tive or na­tion­al form of the Mo­nop­olist In­stincts. And like all those In­stincts, it is a rel­ic of sav­agery, which the Man of the Fu­ture is now en­gaged in out-​liv­ing.

Prop­er­ty is the next form. That, on the very face of it, is a vil­er and more sor­did one. For Pa­tri­otism at least can lay claim to some ex­pan­sive­ness be­yond mere in­di­vid­ual in­ter­est; where­as prop­er­ty stops dead short at the nar­row­est lim­its. It is not “Us against the world!” but “Me against my fel­low-​cit­izens!” It is the fi­nal re­sult of the in­dus­tri­al war in its most hideous avatar. Look how it scars the fair face of our Eng­land with its an­ti-​so­cial no­tice-​boards, “Tres­passers will be pros­ecut­ed!” It says, in ef­fect, “This is my land. God made it; but I have ac­quired it and tabooed it. The grass on it grows green; but on­ly for me. The moun­tains rise beau­ti­ful; no foot of man, save mine and my game­keep­ers', shall tread them. The wa­ter­falls gleam fresh and cool in the glen: avaunt there, you non-​pos­ses­sors; _you_ shall nev­er see them! All this is my own. And I choose to mo­nop­olise it.”

Or is it the cap­ital­ist? “I will add field to field,” he says, in de­spite of his own scrip­ture; “I will join rail­way to rail­way. I will jug­gle in­to my own hands all the in­stru­ments for the pro­duc­tion of wealth that I can lay hold of; and I will use them for my­self against the pro­duc­er and the con­sumer. I will en­rich my­self by 'cor­ners' on the nec­es­saries of life; I will make food dear for the poor, that I my­self may roll in need­less lux­ury. I will mo­nop­olise what­ev­er I can seize, and the peo­ple may eat straw.” That tem­per, too, hu­man­ity must out­live. And those who can't out­live it of them­selves, or be warned in time, must be taught by stern lessons that their race has out­stripped them.

As for slav­ery, 'tis now gone. That was the vilest of them all. It was the naked as­ser­tion of the Mo­nop­olist plat­form: “You live, not for your­self, but whol­ly and sole­ly for me. I dis­re­gard your life en­tire­ly, and use you as my chat­tel.” It died at last of the moral in­dig­na­tion of hu­man­ity. It died when a South­ern court of so-​called jus­tice for­mu­lat­ed in plain words the un­der­ly­ing prin­ci­ple of its hate­ful creed: “A black man has no rights which a white man is bound to re­spect.” That fi­nal­ly fin­ished it. We no longer al­low ev­ery man to “wal­lop his own nig­ger.” And though the last relics of it die hard in Queens­land, South Africa, De­mer­ara, we have at least the sat­is­fac­tion of know­ing that one Mo­nop­olist In­stinct out of the group is pret­ty well bred out of us.

Ex­cept as re­gards wom­en! There, it lingers still. The Man says even now to him­self:--“This wom­an is mine. If she ven­tures to have a heart or a will of her own, woe be­tide her! I have tabooed her for life; let any oth­er man touch her, let her look at any oth­er man--and--knife, re­volver, or law court, they shall both of them an­swer for it!” There you have in all its nat­ural ug­li­ness an­oth­er Mo­nop­olist In­stinct--the deep­est-​seat­ed of all, the vilest, the most bar­bar­ic. She is not yours: she is her own: un­hand her! The Turk takes his of­fend­ing slave, sews her up in a sack, and flings her in­to the Bospho­rus. The Chris­tian En­glish­man drags her shame be­fore an open court, and di­vorces her with con­tu­me­ly. Her shame, I say, in the com­mon phrase, be­cause though to me it is no shame that any hu­man be­ing should fol­low the dic­tates of his or her own heart, it is a shame to the wom­an in the eyes of the world, and a life of dis­grace she must live thence­for­ward. All this is Monopoly and es­sen­tial­ly slav­ery. As man lives down the Ape and Tiger stage, he will learn to say, rather: “Be mine while you can; but the day you cease to feel you can be mine will­ing­ly, don't dis­grace your own body by yield­ing it up where your soul feels loathing; don't con­sent to be the moth­er of chil­dren by a fa­ther you de­spise or dis­like or are tired of. Let us kiss and part. Go where you will; and my good will go with you!” Till the man can say that with a sin­cere heart, why, to bor­row a phrase from George Mered­ith, he may have passed Seraglio Point, but he hasn't round­ed Cape Turk yet.

You find that a hard say­ing, do you? You kick against free­dom for wife or daugh­ter? Well, yes, no doubt; you are still a Mo­nop­olist. But, be­lieve me, the earnest and solemn ex­pres­sion of a pro­found be­lief nev­er yet did harm to any one. I look for­ward to the time when wom­en shall be as free in ev­ery way as men, not by lev­el­ling down, but by lev­el­ling up; not, as some would have us think, by en­slav­ing the men, but by el­evat­ing, eman­ci­pat­ing, un­shack­ling the wom­en.

There is a charm­ing lit­tle dit­ty in Louis Steven­son's “Child's Gar­den of Verse,” which al­ways seems to me to sum up ad­mirably the Mo­nop­olist at­ti­tude. Here it is. Look well at it:--

“When I am grown to man's es­tate I shall be very proud and great, And tell the oth­er girls and boys, Not to med­dle with _my_ toys.”

That is the way of the Mo­nop­olist. It catch­es him in the very act. He says to all the world: “Hands off! My prop­er­ty! Don't walk on my grass! Don't tres­pass in my park! Be­ware of my gun­boats! No tri­fling with my wom­en! I am the king of the cas­tle. You med­dle with me at your per­il.”

“Ours!” not “Mine!” is the watch­word of the fu­ture.

XI.

“_MERE AM­ATEURS._”

“He was a mere am­ateur; but still, he did some good work in sci­ence.”

In­creas­ing­ly of late years I have heard these con­de­scend­ing words ut­tered, in the fa­ther­land of Ba­con, of New­ton, of Dar­win, when some Bates or Spot­tis­woode has been gath­ered to his fa­thers. It was not so once. Time was when all En­glish sci­ence was the work of am­ateurs--and very well in­deed the am­ateurs did it. I don't think any­body who does me the hon­our to cog­nise my hum­ble in­di­vid­ual­ity at all will ev­er be like­ly to mis­take me for a _lauda­tor tem­po­ris ac­ti_. On the con­trary, so far as I can see, the past seems gen­er­al­ly to have been such a dis­tinct fail­ure all along the line that the one les­son we have to learn from it is, to go and do oth­er­wise. I am one on that point with Shel­ley and Rousseau. But it does not fol­low, be­cause most old things are bad, that all new things and ris­ing things are nec­es­sar­ily and in­dis­putably in their own na­ture ex­cel­lent. Nov­el­ties, too, may be ret­ro­grade. And even our great-​grand­fa­thers oc­ca­sion­al­ly blun­dered up­on some­thing good in which we should do well to im­itate them. The am­ateur­ish­ness of old En­glish sci­ence was one of these good things now in course of abo­li­tion by the fash­ion­able pro­cess of Ger­man­isa­tion.

Don't imag­ine it was on­ly for France that 1870 was fa­tal. The sad suc­cess­es of that dead­ly year sent a wave of tri­umphant Teu­ton­ism over the face of Eu­rope.

I sup­pose it is nat­ural to man to wor­ship suc­cess; but ev­er since 1870 it is cer­tain­ly the fact that if you wish to gain re­spect and con­sid­er­ation for any pro­posed change of sys­tem you must say, “They do it so in Ger­many.” In ed­uca­tion and sci­ence this is es­pe­cial­ly the case. Pedants al­ways ad­mire pedants. And Ger­many hav­ing shown her­self to be eas­ily first of Eu­ro­pean States in her pedant-​man­ufac­tur­ing ma­chin­ery, all the as­sem­bled do­minies of all the rest of the world ex­claimed with one voice, “Go to! Let us Ger­man­ise our ed­uca­tion­al sys­tem!”

Now, the Ger­man is an ex­cel­lent work­man in his way. Pa­tient, la­bo­ri­ous, con­sci­en­tious, he has all the high­est qual­ities of the ide­al brick-​mak­er. He pro­duces the best bricks, and you can gen­er­al­ly de­pend up­on him to turn out both hon­est and work­man­like ar­ti­cles. But he is not an ar­chi­tect. For the ar­chi­tec­ton­ic fac­ul­ty in its high­est de­vel­op­ments you must come to Eng­land. And he is not a teach­er or ex­pounder. For the ex­pos­ito­ry fac­ul­ty in its purest form, the fac­ul­ty that en­ables men to flash forth clear­ly and dis­tinct­ly be­fore the eyes of oth­ers the facts and prin­ci­ples they know and per­ceive them­selves, you must go to France. Oh, dear, yes; we may well be proud of Eng­land. Re­mem­ber, I have al­ready dis­claimed more than once in these pa­pers the vul­gar er­ror of pa­tri­otism. But free­dom from that nar­row vice does not im­ply in­abil­ity to recog­nise the good qual­ities of one's own race as well as the bad ones. And the En­glish­man, left to him­self and his own na­tive meth­ods, used to cut a very re­spectable fig­ure in­deed in the do­main of sci­ence. No oth­er na­tion has pro­duced a New­ton or a Dar­win. The En­glish­man's way was to get up an in­ter­est in a sub­ject first; and then, work­ing back from the part of it that spe­cial­ly ap­pealed to his own tastes, to make him­self mas­ter of the en­tire field of in­quiry. This nat­ural and thor­ough­ly in­di­vid­ual­is­tic En­glish method en­abled him to ar­rive at new re­sults in a way im­pos­si­ble to the pedan­ti­cal­ly ed­ucat­ed Ger­man--nay, even to the lu­cid­ly and sys­tem­at­ical­ly ed­ucat­ed French­man. It was the plan to de­vel­op “mere am­ateurs,” I ad­mit; but it was al­so the plan to de­vel­op dis­cov­er­ers and rev­olu­tionis­ers of sci­ence. For the man most like­ly to ad­vance knowl­edge is not the man who knows in an en­cy­clopaedic rote-​work fash­ion the whole cir­cle of the sci­ences, but the man who takes a fresh in­ter­est for its own sake in some par­tic­ular branch of in­quiry.

Dar­win was a “mere am­ateur.” He worked at things for the love of them. So were Murchi­son, Lyell, Ben­jamin Franklin, Her­schel. So were or are Bates, Her­bert Spencer, Al­fred Rus­sel Wal­lace. “Mere am­ateurs!” ev­ery man of them.

In an evil hour, how­ev­er, our pas­tors and mas­ters in con­clave as­sem­bled said to one an­oth­er, “Come now, let us Teu­tonise En­glish sci­en­tif­ic ed­uca­tion.” And straight­way they Teu­tonised it. And there be­gan to arise in Eng­land a new brood of patent ma­chine-​made sci­en­tists--ex­cel­lent men in their way, au­thor­ities on the Arach­ni­da, know­ing all about ev­ery­thing that could be taught in the schools, but lack­ing some­how the supreme grace of the old En­glish orig­inal­ity. They are first-​rate spe­cial­ists, I al­low; and I don't de­ny that a civilised coun­try has all need of spe­cial­ists. Nay, I even ad­mit that the day of the spe­cial­ist has on­ly just be­gun. He will yet go far; he will im­pose him­self and his yoke up­on us. But don't let us there­fore make the grand mis­take of con­clud­ing that our fine old En­glish birthright in sci­ence--the birthright that gave us our New­tons, our Cavendish­es, our Dar­wins, our Lyells--was all fol­ly and er­ror. Don't let us spoil our­selves in or­der to be­come mere sec­ond-​hand Ger­mans. Let us recog­nise the fact that each na­tion has a work of its own to do in the world; and that as star from star, so one na­tion dif­fer­eth from an­oth­er in glo­ry. Let each of us thank the good­ness and the grace that on his birth have smiled, that he was born of En­glish breed, and not a Ger­man child.

“Don't you think,” a mil­itary gen­tle­man once said to me, “the Ger­mans are won­der­ful or­gan­is­ers?” “No,” I an­swered, “I don't; but I think they're ex­cel­lent drill-​sergeants.”

There are peo­ple who drop Ger­man au­thor­ities up­on you as if a Teu­ton­ic name were guar­an­tee enough for any­thing. They say, “Haus­berg­er as­serts,” or “Ac­cord­ing to Schim­melpen­ninck.” This is pure fetichism. Be­lieve me, your man of sci­ence isn't nec­es­sar­ily any the bet­ter be­cause he comes to you with the la­bel, “Made in Ger­many.” The Ger­man in­stinct is the in­stinct of Fred­er­ick William of Prus­sia--the in­stinct of drilling. Very thor­ough and ef­fi­cient men in their way it turns out; men versed in all the lore of their cho­sen sub­ject. If they are al­so men of tran­scen­dent abil­ity (as of­ten hap­pens), they can give us a com­pre­hen­sive view of their own cho­sen field such as few En­glish­men (ex­cept Sir Archibald Geikie, and he's a Scot) can equal. If I want­ed to se­lect a learned man for a spe­cial Gov­ern­ment post--British Mu­se­um, and so forth--I dare say I should of­ten be com­pelled to ad­mit, as Gov­ern­ment of­ten ad­mits, that the best man then and there ob­tain­able is the Ger­man. But if I want­ed to train Her­bert Spencers and Fara­days, I would cer­tain­ly _not_ send them to Bonn or to Berlin. John Stu­art Mill was an En­glish Scotch­man, ed­ucat­ed and stuffed by his able fa­ther on the Ger­man sys­tem; and how much of spon­tane­ity, of vivid­ness, of _verve_, we all of us feel John Stu­art Mill lost by it! One of­ten won­ders to what great, to what still greater, things that lofty brain might not have at­tained, if on­ly James Mill would have giv­en it a chance to de­vel­op it­self nat­ural­ly!

Our En­glish gift is orig­inal­ity. Our En­glish keynote is in­di­vid­ual­ity. Let us cling to those pre­cious heir­looms of our Celtic an­ces­try, and refuse to be Teu­tonised. Let us dis­card the lessons of the Pots­dam grenadiers. Let us write on the ped­iment of our ed­uca­tion­al tem­ple, “No Ger­man need ap­ply.” Let us dis­claim that sil­ly phrase “A mere am­ateur.” Let us re­turn to the sim­ple faith in di­rect ob­ser­va­tion that made En­glish sci­ence supreme in Eu­rope.

And may the Lord gi'e us Britons a guid con­ceit o' oorsel's!

XII.

_A SQUALID VIL­LAGE._

Strange that the wealth­iest class in the wealth­iest coun­try in the world should so long have been con­tent to in­hab­it a squalid vil­lage!

I'm not go­ing to com­pare Lon­don, as En­glish­men of­ten do, with Paris or Vi­en­na. I won't do two great towns that gross in­jus­tice. And, in­deed, com­par­ison here is quite out of the ques­tion. You don't com­pare Ox­ford with Lit­tle Ped­dling­ton, or Ed­in­burgh with Thrums, and then ask which is the hand­somest. Things must be alike in kind be­fore you can be­gin to com­pare them. And Lon­don and Paris are not alike in kind. One is a city, and a no­ble city; the oth­er is a vil­lage, and a squalid vil­lage.

No; I will not even take a hum­bler stan­dard of com­par­ison, and look at Lon­don side by side with Brus­sels, Antwerp, Mu­nich, Turin. Each of those is a city, and a fine city in its way; but each of them is small. Still, even by their side, Lon­don is again but a squalid vil­lage. I in­sist up­on that point, be­cause, mis­led by their an­cient fa­mil­iar­ity with Lon­don, most En­glish­men have had their sens­es and un­der­stand­ings so blunt­ed on this is­sue, that they re­al­ly don't know what is meant by a town, or a fine town, when they see one. And don't sup­pose it's be­cause Lon­don is in Britain and these oth­er towns out of it that I make these re­marks: for Bath is a fine town, Ed­in­burgh is a fine town, even Glas­gow and New­cas­tle are towns, while Lon­don is still a strag­gling, sprawl­ing, in­ver­te­brate, in­choate, over­grown vil­lage. I am as free, I hope, from an­ti-​pa­tri­ot­ic as from pa­tri­ot­ic prej­udice. The High Street in Ox­ford, Mil­som Street in Bath, Princes Street in Ed­in­burgh, those are all fine streets that would at­tract at­ten­tion even in France or Ger­many. But the Strand, Pic­cadil­ly, Re­gent Street, Ox­ford Street--good Lord, de­liv­er us!

One more _caveat_ as to my mean­ing. When I cite among re­al towns Brus­sels, Antwerp, and Mu­nich, I am not think­ing of the trea­sures of art those beau­ti­ful places con­tain; that is an­oth­er and al­to­geth­er high­er ques­tion. Towns supreme in this re­spect of­ten lag far be­hind oth­ers of less im­por­tance--lag be­hind in those ex­ter­nal fea­tures and that gen­er­al ar­chi­tec­tural ef­fec­tive­ness which right­ly en­ti­tle us to say in a broad sense, “This is a fine city.” Flo­rence, for ex­am­ple, con­tains more trea­sures of art in a small space than any oth­er town of Eu­rope; yet Flo­rence, though un­doubt­ed­ly a town, and even a fine town, is not to be com­pared in this re­spect, I do not say with Venice or Brus­sels, but even with Mu­nich or Mi­lan. On the oth­er hand, Lon­don con­tains far more trea­sures of art in its way than Boston, Mas­sachusetts; but Boston is a hand­some, well-​built, reg­ular town, while Lon­don--well, I will spare you the fur­ther rep­eti­tion of the trite tru­ism that Lon­don is a squalid vil­lage. In one word, the point I am seek­ing to bring out here is that a town, as a town, is hand­some or oth­er­wise, not in virtue of the works of art or an­tiq­ui­ty it con­tains, but in virtue of its ground-​plan, its ar­chi­tec­ture, its ex­ter­nal and vis­ible dec­ora­tions and places--the Lou­vre, the Boule­vards, the Champs El­ysees, the Place de l'Opera.

Now Lon­don has no ground-​plan. It has no street ar­chi­tec­ture. It has no dec­ora­tions, though it has many ugli­fi­ca­tions. It is frankly and sim­ply and os­ten­ta­tious­ly hideous. And be­ing whol­ly want­ing in a sys­tem of any sort--in or­gan­ic parts, in idea, in views, in vis­tas--it is on­ly a vil­lage, and a painful­ly un­in­ter­est­ing one.

Most En­glish­men see Lon­don be­fore they see any oth­er great town. They be­come so fa­mil­iarised with it that their sense of com­par­ison is dulled and blunt­ed. I had the good for­tune to have seen many oth­er great towns be­fore I ev­er saw Lon­don: and I shall nev­er for­get my first sense of sur­prise at its un­mit­igat­ed ug­li­ness.

Get on top of an om­nibus--I don't say in Paris, from the Palais Roy­al to the Arc de Tri­om­phe, but in Brus­sels, from the Gare du Nord to the Palais de Jus­tice--and what do you see? From end to end one un­bro­ken suc­ces­sion of no­ble and open prospects. I'm not think­ing now of the Grande Place in the old town, with its mag­nif­icent col­lec­tion of me­di­ae­val build­ings; the Great Fire ef­fec­tive­ly de­prived us of our one sole chance of such an el­ement of beau­ty in mod­ern Lon­don. I con­fine my­self on pur­pose to the parts of Brus­sels which are pure­ly re­cent, and might have been im­itat­ed at a dis­tance in Lon­don, if there had been any pub­lic spir­it or any pub­lic body in Eng­land to im­itate them. (But un­hap­pi­ly there was nei­ther.) Re­call to mind as you read the strik­ing­ly hand­some street view that greets you as you emerge from the North­ern Sta­tion down the great cen­tral Boule­vards to the Gare du Mi­di--all built with­in our own mem­ory. Then think of the prospects that grad­ual­ly un­fold them­selves as you rise on the hill; the fine vista north to­wards Sainte Marie de Schaar­beck; the beau­ti­ful Rue Royale, bound­ed by that charm­ing Parc; the un­equalled stretch of the Rue de la Re­gence, start­ing from the Place Royale with God­frey of Bouil­lon, and end­ing with the im­pos­ing mass of the Palais de Jus­tice. It is to me a mat­ter for min­gled sur­prise and hu­mil­ia­tion that so many En­glish­men can look year af­ter year at that glo­ri­ous street--per­haps the finest in the world--and yet nev­er think to them­selves, “Mightn't we faint­ly im­itate some small part of this in our wealthy, ug­ly, un­com­pro­mis­ing Lon­don?”

I al­ways say to Amer­icans who come to Eu­rope: “When you go to Eng­land, don't see our towns, but see our coun­try. Our coun­try is some­thing un­equalled in the world: while our towns!--well, any­way, keep away from Lon­don!”

With the soli­tary and not very bril­liant ex­cep­tion of the Em­bank­ment, there isn't a street in Lon­don where one could take a stranger to ad­mire the ar­chi­tec­ture. Com­pare that record with the new Boule­vards in Antwerp, where al­most ev­ery house is worth se­ri­ous study: or with the Ring at Cologne (to keep close home all the time), where one can see whole rows of Ger­man Re­nais­sance hous­es of ex­traor­di­nary in­ter­est. What street in Lon­don can be men­tioned in this re­spect side by side with Com­mon­wealth Av­enue or Bea­con Street in Boston; with Eu­clid Av­enue in Cleve­land, Ohio; with the up­per end of Fifth Av­enue, New York; nay, even with the new Via Ro­ma at Genoa? Why is it that we En­glish can't get on the King's Road at Brighton any­thing faint­ly ap­proach­ing that splen­did sea front on the Digue at Os­tend, or those co­quet­tish white vil­las that line the Prom­enade des Anglais at Nice? The blight of Lon­don seems to lie over all South­ern Eng­land.

Paris looks like the cap­ital of a world-​wide em­pire. Lon­don, looks like a shape­less ne­glect­ed sub­urb, al­lowed to grow up by ac­ci­dent any­how. And that's just the plain truth of it. 'Tis a for­tu­itous con­course of hap-​haz­ard hous­es.

“But we are im­prov­ing some­what. The Coun­ty Coun­cil is open­ing out a few new thor­ough­fares piece­meal.” Oh yes, in an il­log­ical, un­sys­tem­at­ic, En­glish patch­work fash­ion, we are driv­ing a bad­ly-​de­signed, unim­pres­sive new street or two, with no ex­pan­sive sense of im­pe­ri­al great­ness, through the hope­less­ly con­gest­ed and most squalid quar­ters. But that is all. No grand, sys­tem­at­ic, re­con­struc­tive plan, no ris­ing to the height of the oc­ca­sion and the Em­pire! You tin­ker away at a Shaftes­bury Av­enue. Parochial, all of it. And there you get the re­al se­cret of our fu­tile at­tempts at mak­ing a town out of our squalid vil­lage. The fault lies all at the door of the old Cor­po­ra­tion, and of the peo­ple who made and still make the old Cor­po­ra­tion pos­si­ble. For cen­turies, in­deed, there was re­al­ly no Lon­don, not even a vil­lage; there was on­ly a scratch col­lec­tion of con­tigu­ous vil­lages. The con­se­quence was that here, at the cen­tre of na­tion­al life, the En­glish peo­ple grew whol­ly un­ac­cus­tomed to the bare idea of a town, and man­aged ev­ery­thing piece­meal, on the pet­ty scale of a coun­try vestry. The vestry­man in­tel­li­gence has now over­run the land; and if the Lon­don Coun­ty Coun­cil ev­er suc­ceeds at last in mak­ing the con­geries of vil­lages in­to--I do not say a city, for that is al­most past pray­ing for, but some­thing anal­ogous to a sec­ond-​rate Con­ti­nen­tal town, it will on­ly be af­ter long lapse of time and vi­olent strug­gles with the vestry­man lev­el of in­tel­lect and feel­ing.

Lon­don had many great dis­ad­van­tages to start with. She lay in a dull and marshy bot­tom, with no build­ing stone at hand, and there­fore she was fore­con­demned by her very po­si­tion to the curse of brick and stuc­co, when Bath, Ox­ford, Ed­in­burgh, were all built out of their own quar­ries. Then fire de­stroyed all her me­di­ae­val ar­chi­tec­ture, leav­ing her on­ly West­min­ster Abbey to sug­gest the great­ness of her loss­es. But brick-​earth and fire have been as noth­ing in their way by the side of the evil wrought by Gog and Ma­gog. When five hun­dred trem­bling ghosts of naked Lord May­ors have to an­swer for their fol­lies and their sins here­after, I con­fi­dent­ly ex­pect the first ques­tion in the ap­palling in­dict­ment will be, “Why did you al­low the rich­est na­tion on earth to house its metropo­lis in a squalid vil­lage?”

We have a Moloch in Eng­land to whom we sac­ri­fice much. And his hate­ful name is Vest­ed In­ter­est.

XI­II.

_CON­CERN­ING ZEIT­GEIST._

A cer­tain sto­ry is told about Mr. Ruskin, no doubt apoc­ryphal, but at any rate char­ac­ter­is­tic. A young la­dy, fresh from the Abyss of Bayswa­ter, met the sage one evening at din­ner--a gush­ing young la­dy, as many such there be--who, aglow with joy, board­ed the Pro­fes­sor at once with her pri­vate art-​ex­pe­ri­ences. “Oh, Mr. Ruskin,” she cried, clasp­ing her hands, “do you know, I hadn't been two days in Flo­rence be­fore I dis­cov­ered what you meant when you spoke about the supreme un­ap­proach­able­ness of Bot­ti­cel­li.” “In­deed?” Ruskin an­swered. “Well, that's very re­mark­able; for it took me, my­self, half a life­time to dis­cov­er it.”

The an­swer, of course, was meant to be crush­ing. How should _she_, a brand plucked from the burn­ing of Bayswa­ter, be able all at once, on the very first blush, to ap­pre­ci­ate Bot­ti­cel­li? And it took the great­est crit­ic of his age half a life­time! Yet I ven­ture to main­tain, for all that, that the young la­dy was right, and that the crit­ic was wrong--if such a thing be con­ceiv­able. I know, of course, that when we speak of Ruskin we must walk del­icate­ly, like Agag. But still, I re­peat it, the young la­dy was right; and it was large­ly the un­con­scious, per­va­sive ac­tion of Mr. Ruskin's own per­son­al­ity that en­abled her to be so.

It's all the Zeit­geist: that's where it is. The slow ir­re­sistible Zeit­geist. Fifty years ago, men's taste had been so warped and dis­tort­ed by cur­rent art and cur­rent crit­icism that they _couldn't_ see Bot­ti­cel­li, how­ev­er hard they tried at it. He was a sealed book to our fa­thers. In those days it re­quired a brave, a vig­or­ous, and an orig­inal thinker to dis­cov­er any mer­it in any painter be­fore Raf­fael, ex­cept per­haps, as Gold­smith wise­ly re­marked, Pe­rug­ino. The man who went then to the Uf­fizi or the Pit­ti, af­ter ad­mir­ing as in du­ty bound his High Re­nais­sance mas­ters, found him­self sud­den­ly con­front­ed with the Ju­dith or the Calum­ny, and straight­way won­dered what man­ner of strange wild beasts these were that some in­sane ear­ly Tus­can had once paint­ed to amuse him­self in a lu­cid in­ter­val. They were not in the least like the Cor­reg­gios and the Gui­dos, the Lawrences and the Opies, that the men of that time had formed their taste up­on, and ac­cept­ed as their sole artis­tic stan­dards. To peo­ple brought up up­on pure David and Thor­vald­sen, the Pri­mav­era at the Belle Ar­ti must nat­ural­ly have seemed like a wild freak of mad­ness. The Zeit­geist then went all in the di­rec­tion of cold life­less cor­rect­ness; the idea that the painter's soul count­ed for some­thing in art was an un­dreamt of heresy.

On your way back from Paris some day, stop a night at Amiens and take the Cathe­dral se­ri­ous­ly. Half the state­ly in­te­ri­or of that glo­ri­ous thir­teenth cen­tu­ry pile is en­crust­ed and over­laid by hideous gew­gaw mon­strosi­ties of the flashiest Berni­ni and _baroque_ pe­ri­od. There they sprawl their ob­tru­sive legs and wave their flaunt­ing the­atri­cal wings to the ut­ter de­struc­tion of all re­pose and con­sis­ten­cy in one of the no­blest and most per­fect build­ings of Eu­rope. Nowa­days, any child, any work­man can see at a glance how ug­ly and how dis­fig­ur­ing those flop­py crea­tures are; it is im­pos­si­ble to look at them with­out say­ing to one­self: “Why don't they clear away all this high-​fa­lut­ing rub­bish, and let us see the re­al columns and arch­es and piers as their mak­ers de­signed them?” Yet who was it that put them there, those un­speak­able an­gels in muslin drap­ery, those fly-​away nymphs and graces and seraphim? Why, the best and most skilled artists of their day in Eu­rope. And whence comes it that the mer­est child can now see in­stinc­tive­ly how out of place they are, how dis­fig­ur­ing, how in­con­gru­ous? Why, be­cause the Goth­ic re­vival has taught us all by de­grees to ap­pre­ci­ate the beau­ty and del­ica­cy of a style which to our eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry an­ces­tors was mere bar­bar­ic me­di­ae­val­ism; has taught us to ad­mire its exquisite pu­ri­ty, and to dis­like the ob­stru­sive in­tro­duc­tion in­to its midst of in­con­gru­ous and mere­tri­cious Berni­ni-​like flim­si­ness.

The Zeit­geist has changed, and we have changed with it.

It is just the same with our friend Bot­ti­cel­li. Scarce a dozen years ago, it was al­most an af­fec­ta­tion to pre­tend you ad­mired him. It is no af­fec­ta­tion now. Hun­dreds of as­sort­ed young wom­en from the Abyss of Bayswa­ter may rise any morn­ing here in sa­cred Flo­rence and stand gen­uine­ly en­chant­ed be­fore the Ado­ra­tion of the Kings, or the Venus who floats on her float­ing shell in a Bot­ti­cel­lian ocean. And why? Be­cause Leighton, Hol­man Hunt, Ros­set­ti, Burne-​Jones, Ma­dox Brown, Strud­wick, have led them slow­ly up to it by gold­en steps in­nu­mer­able. Thir­ty years ago the art of the ear­ly Tus­can painters was some­thing to us North­ern­ers ex­ot­ic, strange, un­con­nect­ed, ar­chae­olog­ical. Grad­ual­ly, it has been brought near­er and near­er to us on the walls of the Grosvenor and the New Gallery, till now he that runs may read; the in­gen­uous maid­en, fished from the Abyss of Bayswa­ter, can drink in at a glance what it took a Ruskin many years of his life and much slow de­vel­op­ment to at­tain to piece­meal.

That is just what all great men are for--to make the world ac­cept as a tru­ism in the gen­er­ation af­ter them what it re­ject­ed as a para­dox in the gen­er­ation be­fore them.

Not, of course, that there isn't a lit­tle of af­fec­ta­tion, and still more of fash­ion, to the very end in all of it. An im­mense num­ber of peo­ple, in­ca­pable of gen­uine­ly ad­mir­ing any­thing for its own sake at all, are anx­ious on­ly to be told what they “ought to ad­mire, don't you know,” and will straight­way pro­ceed as con­sci­en­tious­ly as they can to get up an ad­mi­ra­tion for it. A friend of mine told me a beau­ti­ful ex­am­ple. Two as­pir­ing young wom­en, of the limp-​limbed, short-​haired, aes­thet­ic species, were stand­ing rapt be­fore the cir­cu­lar Madon­na at the Uf­fizi. They had gazed at it long and lov­ing­ly, see­ing it bore on its frame the mag­ic name of Bot­ti­cel­li. Of a sud­den one of the pair hap­pened to look a lit­tle near­er at the ac­cus­ing la­bel. “Why, this is not San­dro,” she cried, with a re­vul­sion of dis­gust; “this is on­ly Aless.” And straight­way they went off from the spot in high dud­geon at hav­ing been mis­led as they sup­posed in­to ex­am­in­ing the work of “an­oth­er per­son of the same name.”

Need I point the moral of my apo­logue, in this age of en­light­en­ment, by ex­plain­ing, for the ben­efit of the ju­nior mem­bers, that the gen­tle­man's full name was re­al­ly Alessan­dro, and that both ab­bre­vi­ations are im­par­tial­ly in­tend­ed to cov­er his one and in­di­vis­ible per­son­al­ity? The first half is of­fi­cial, like Alex.; the sec­ond af­fec­tion­ate and fa­mil­iar, like Sandy.

Still, even af­ter mak­ing due al­lowance for such hum­bugs as these, a vast residu­um re­mains of peo­ple who, if born six­ty years ago, could nev­er by any pos­si­bil­ity have been made to see there was any­thing ad­mirable in Lip­pi, Bot­ti­cel­li, Giot­to; but who, hav­ing been born thir­ty years ago, see it with­out an ef­fort. Hun­dreds who read these lines must them­selves re­mem­ber the un­mis­tak­able thrill of gen­uine plea­sure with which they first gazed up­on the Fra An­geli­cos at San Mar­co, the Mem­lings at Bruges, the Giot­tos in the Madon­na dell' Are­na at Pad­ua. To many of us, those are re­al epochs in our in­ner life. To the men of fifty years ago, the bare avow­al it­self would have seemed lit­tle short of af­fect­ed silli­ness.

Is the change all due to the teach­ing of the teach­ers and the preach­ing of the preach­ers? I think not en­tire­ly. For, af­ter all, the teach­ers and the preach­ers are but a lit­tle ahead of the age they live in. They see things ear­li­er; they help to lead us up to them; but they do not whol­ly pro­duce the rev­olu­tions they in­au­gu­rate. Hu­man­ity as a whole de­vel­ops con­sis­tent­ly along cer­tain pre-​es­tab­lished and pre­des­tined lines. Soon­er or lat­er, a cer­tain point must in­evitably be reached; but some of us reach it soon­er, and most of us lat­er. That's all the dif­fer­ence. Ev­ery great change is main­ly due to the fact that we have all al­ready at­tained a cer­tain point in de­vel­op­ment. A step in ad­vance be­comes in­evitable af­ter that, and one af­ter an­oth­er we are sure to take it. In one word, what it need­ed a man of ge­nius to see dim­ly thir­ty years ago, it needs a sin­gu­lar fool not to see clear­ly nowa­days.

XIV.

_THE DE­CLINE OF MAR­RIAGE._

Men don't mar­ry nowa­days. So ev­ery­body tells us. And I sup­pose we may there­fore con­clude, by a sim­ple act of in­fer­ence, that wom­en in turn don't mar­ry ei­ther. It takes two, of course, to make a quar­rel--or a mar­riage.

Why is this? “Young peo­ple nowa­days want to be­gin where their fa­thers left off.” “Men are made so com­fort­able at present in their clubs.” “Col­lege-​bred girls have no taste for house­keep­ing.” “Rents are so high and man­ners so lux­uri­ous.” Good heav­ens, what sil­ly trash, what puerile non­sense! Are we all lit­tle boys and girls, I ask you, that we are to put one an­oth­er off with such trans­par­ent hum­bug? Here we have to deal with a prim­itive in­stinct--the pro­found­est and deep­est-​seat­ed in­stinct of hu­man­ity, save on­ly the in­stincts of food and drink and of self-​preser­va­tion. Man, like all oth­er an­imals, has two main func­tions: to feed his own or­gan­ism, and to re­pro­duce his species. An­ces­tral habit leads him, when ma­ture, to choose him­self a mate--be­cause he loves her. It drives him, it urges him, it goads him ir­re­sistibly. If this pro­found im­pulse is re­al­ly lack­ing to-​day in any large part of our race, there must be some cor­re­spond­ing­ly pro­found and ad­equate rea­son for it. Don't let us de­ceive our­selves with shal­low plat­itudes which may do for draw­ing-​rooms. This is phi­los­ophy, even though post-​pran­di­al. Let us try to take a philo­soph­ic view of the ques­tion at is­sue, from the point of van­tage of a bi­olog­ical out­look.

Be­fore you be­gin to in­ves­ti­gate the caus­es of a phe­nomenon _quel­conque_, 'tis well to de­cide whether the phe­nomenon it­self is there to in­ves­ti­gate.

Tak­ing so­ci­ety through­out--_not_ in the sense of those “forty fam­ilies” to which the term is re­strict­ed by La­dy Charles Beres­ford--I doubt whether mar­riage is much out of fash­ion. Statis­tics show a cer­tain de­crease, it is true, but not an alarm­ing one. Among the labour­ing class­es, I imag­ine men, and al­so wom­en, still wed pret­ty fre­quent­ly. When peo­ple say, “Young men won't mar­ry nowa­days,” they mean young men in a par­tic­ular stra­tum of so­ci­ety, rough­ly bound­ed by a silk hat on Sun­days. Now, when you and I were young (I take it for grant­ed that you and I are ap­proach­ing the fifties) young men did mar­ry; even with­in this re­strict­ed area, 'twas their whole­some way in life to form an at­tach­ment ear­ly with some nice girl in their own set, and to start at least with the idea of mar­ry­ing her. To­ward that goal they worked; for that end they en­dured and sac­ri­ficed many things. True, even then, the long en­gage­ment was the rule; but the long en­gage­ment it­self meant some per­sis­tent im­pulse, some strong im­pe­tus mar­riage-​wards. The de­sire of the man to make this wom­an his own, the long­ing to make this wom­an hap­py--nor­mal and healthy en­dow­ments of our race--had still much driv­ing-​pow­er. Nowa­days, I se­ri­ous­ly think I ob­serve in most young men of the mid­dle class around me a dis­tinct and dis­as­trous weak­en­ing of the im­pulse. They don't fall in love as frankly, as hon­est­ly, as ir­re­triev­ably as they used to do. They shilly-​shal­ly, they pick and choose, they dis­cuss, they crit­icise. They say them­selves these fu­tile fool­ish things about the club, and the flat, and the cost of liv­ing. They be­lieve in Malthus. Fan­cy a young man who be­lieves in Malthus! They seem in no hur­ry at all to get mar­ried. But thir­ty or forty years ago, young men used to rush by blind in­stinct in­to the toils of mat­ri­mo­ny--be­cause they couldn't help them­selves. Such Laodicean luke-​warm­ness be­to­kens in the class which ex­hibits it a weak­en­ing of im­pulse. That weak­en­ing of im­pulse is re­al­ly the thing we have to ac­count for.

Young men of a cer­tain type don't mar­ry, be­cause--they are less of young men than for­mer­ly.

Wild an­imals in con­fine­ment sel­dom prop­agate their kind. On­ly a few caged birds will con­tin­ue their species. What­ev­er up­sets the bal­ance of the or­gan­ism, in an in­di­vid­ual or a race tends first of all to af­fect the rate of re­pro­duc­tion. Civilise the red man, and he be­gins to de­crease at once in num­bers. Turn the Sand­wich Is­lands in­to a trad­ing com­mu­ni­ty, and the na­tive Hawai­ian re­fus­es forth­with to give hostages to for­tune. Tahi­ti is dwin­dling. From the mo­ment the Tas­ma­ni­ans were tak­en to Nor­folk Is­land, not a sin­gle Tas­ma­ni­an ba­by was born. The Je­suits made a mod­el com­mu­ni­ty of Paraguay; but they al­tered the habits of the Paraguayans so fast that the rev­erend fa­thers, who were, of course, them­selves celi­bates, were com­pelled to take stren­uous and even grotesque mea­sures to pre­vent the com­plete and im­me­di­ate ex­tinc­tion of their con­verts. Oth­er cas­es in abun­dance I might quote an I would; but I lim­it my­self to these. They suf­fice to ex­hib­it the gen­er­al prin­ci­ple in­volved; any grave up­set in the con­di­tions of life af­fects first and at once the fer­til­ity of a species.

“But colonists of­ten in­crease with ra­pid­ity.” Ay, mar­ry, do they, where the con­di­tions of life are easy. At the present day most colonists go to fair­ly civilised re­gions; they are trans­port­ed to their new home by steam­boat and rail­way; they find for the most part more abun­dant proven­der and more whole­some sur­round­ings than in their na­tive coun­try. There is no re­al up­set. Bet­ter food and eas­ier life, as Her­bert Spencer has shown, re­sult (oth­er things equal) in in­creased fer­til­ity. His chap­ters on this sub­ject in the “Prin­ci­ples of Bi­ol­ogy” should be read by ev­ery­body who pre­tends to talk on ques­tions of pop­ula­tion. But in new and dif­fi­cult colonies the in­crease is slight. What­ev­er com­pels greater wear and tear of the ner­vous sys­tem proves in­im­ical to the re­pro­duc­tive func­tion. The strain and stress of co-​or­di­na­tion with nov­el cir­cum­stances and nov­el re­la­tions af­fect most in­ju­ri­ous­ly the or­gan­ic bal­ance. The African ne­gro has long been ac­cus­tomed to agri­cul­tur­al toil and to cer­tain sim­ple arts in his own coun­try. Trans­port­ed to the West In­dies and the Unit­ed States, he found life no hard­er than of old, if not, in­deed, eas­ier. He had abun­dant food, pro­tec­tion, se­cu­ri­ty, a kind of labour for which he was well adapt­ed. In­stead of dy­ing out, there­fore, he was fruit­ful, and mul­ti­plied, and re­plen­ished the earth amaz­ing­ly. But the Red In­di­an, caught bla­tant in the hunt­ing stage, re­fused to be tamed, and could not swal­low civil­isa­tion. He pined and dwined and de­creased in his “reser­va­tions.” The change was too great, too abrupt, too brusque for him. The pa­poose be­fore long be­came an ex­tinct an­imal.

Is not the same thing true of the mid­dle class of Eng­land? Civil­isa­tion and its works have come too quick­ly up­on us. The strain and stress of cor­re­lat­ing and co-​or­di­nat­ing the world we live in are get­ting too much for us. Rail­ways, tele­graphs, the pen­ny post, the spe­cial edi­tion, have played hav­oc at last with our ner­vous sys­tems. We are al­ways on the stretch, rush­ing and tear­ing per­pet­ual­ly. We bolt our break­fasts; we catch the train or 'bus by the skin of our teeth, to rat­tle us in­to the City; we run down to Scot­land or over to Paris on busi­ness; we lunch in Lon­don and dine in Glas­gow, Belfast, or Cal­cut­ta. (Ex­cuse imag­ina­tion.) The tape clicks per­pet­ual­ly in our ears the last quo­ta­tion in Eries; the tele­phone rings us up at in­con­ve­nient mo­ments. Some­thing is al­ways hap­pen­ing some­where to dis­turb our equa­nim­ity; we tear open the _Times_ with fever­ish haste, to learn that Kim­ber­leys or Jabez Bal­four have fall­en, that Mata­bele­land has been paint­ed red, that shares have gone up, or gone down, or evap­orat­ed. Life is one tur­moil of ex­cite­ment and bus­tle. Fi­nan­cial­ly, 'tis a se­ries of dis­solv­ing views; per­son­al­ly 'tis a rush; so­cial­ly, 'tis a mo­sa­ic of deft­ly-​fit­ted en­gage­ments. Drop out one piece, and you can nev­er re­place it. You are full next week from Mon­day to Sat­ur­day--busi­ness all day, what calls it­self plea­sure (save the mark!) all evening. Poor old Leisure is dead. We hur­ry and scur­ry and flur­ry eter­nal­ly. One whirl of work from morn­ing till night: then dress and dine: one whirl of ex­cite­ment from night till morn­ing. A snap of trou­bled sleep, and again _da capo_. Not an hour, not a minute, we can call our own. A wire from a pa­tient ill abed in War­wick­shire! A wire from a client hard hit in Hansards! End­less ed­itors ask­ing for more copy! more copy! Al­ter to suit your own par­tic­ular trade, and 'tis the life of all of us.

The first gen­er­ation af­ter Stephen­son and the Rock­et pulled through with it some­how. They in­her­it­ed the sound con­sti­tu­tions of the men who sat on rus­tic seats in the gar­dens of the twen­ties. The sec­ond gen­er­ation--that's you and me--felt the strain of it more severe­ly: new ma­chines had come in to make life still more com­pli­cat­ed: six­pen­ny tele­grams, Bell and Edi­son, sub­ma­rine ca­bles, evening pa­pers, per­tur­ba­tions pour­ing in from all sides in­ces­sant­ly; the sub­urbs grow­ing, the hub­bub in­creas­ing, Metropoli­tan rail­ways, trams, bi­cy­cles, in­nu­mer­able: but nathe­less we still en­dured, and pre­sent­ed the world all the same with a third gen­er­ation. That third gen­er­ation--ah me! there comes the pity of it! One fan­cies the im­pulse to mar­ry and rear a fam­ily has whol­ly died out of it. It seems to have died out most in the class where the strain and stress are great­est. I don't think young men of that class to-​day have the same feel­ings to­wards wom­en of their sort as for­mer­ly. No­body, I trust, will mis­take me for a re­ac­tionary: in most ways, the mod­ern young man is a vast im­prove­ment on you and me at twen­ty-​five. But I be­lieve there is re­al­ly among young men in towns less chival­ry, less de­vo­tion, less ro­mance than there used to be. That, I take it, is the true rea­son why young men don't mar­ry. With cer­tain class­es and in cer­tain places a prim­itive in­stinct of our race has weak­ened. They say this weak­en­ing is ac­com­pa­nied in towns by an in­crease in sundry hate­ful and de­grad­ing vices. I don't know if that is so; but at least one would ex­pect it. Any en­fee­ble­ment of the nor­mal and nat­ural in­stinct of viril­ity would show it­self first in mor­bid aber­ra­tions. On that I say noth­ing. I on­ly say this--that I think the present cri­sis in the En­glish mar­riage mar­ket is due, not to clubs or the com­fort of bach­elor quar­ters, but to the cu­mu­la­tive ef­fect of ner­vous over-​ex­cite­ment.

XV.

_EYE_ VER­SUS _EAR_.

It is ad­mit­ted on all hands by this time, I sup­pose, that the best way of learn­ing is by eye, not by ear. There­fore the au­thor­ities that pre­scribe for us our ed­uca­tion among all class­es have de­cid­ed that we shall learn by ear, not by eye. Which is just what one might ex­pect from a vest­ed in­ter­est.

Of course this su­pe­ri­or­ity of sight over hear­ing is pre-​em­inent­ly true of nat­ural sci­ence--that is to say, of nine-​tenths among the sub­jects worth learn­ing by hu­man­ity. The on­ly re­al way to learn ge­ol­ogy, for ex­am­ple, is not to mug it up in a print­ed text-​book, but to go in­to the field with a ge­ol­ogist's ham­mer. The on­ly re­al way to learn zo­ol­ogy and botany is not by read­ing a vol­ume of nat­ural his­to­ry, but by col­lect­ing, dis­sect­ing, ob­serv­ing, pre­serv­ing, and com­par­ing spec­imens. There­fore, of course, nat­ural sci­ence has nev­er been a favourite study in the eyes of school-​mas­ters, who pre­fer those sub­jects which can be taught in a room to a row of boys on a bench, and who care a great deal less than noth­ing for any sub­ject which isn't “good to ex­am­ine in.” Ed­uca­tion­al val­ue and im­por­tance in af­ter life have been sac­ri­ficed to the teach­er's ease and con­ve­nience, or to the readi­ness with which the pupil's progress can be test­ed on pa­per. Not what is best to learn, but what is least trou­ble to teach in great squads to boys, forms the sta­ple of our mod­ern En­glish ed­uca­tion. They call it “ed­uca­tion,” I ob­serve in the pa­pers, and I sup­pose we must fall in with that whim of the pro­fes­sion.

But even the sub­jects which be­long by rights to the ear can nev­er­the­less be taught by the eye more read­ily. Ev­ery­body knows how much eas­ier it is to get up the his­to­ry and ge­og­ra­phy of a coun­try when you are ac­tu­al­ly in it than when you are mere­ly read­ing about it. It lives and moves be­fore you. The places, the per­sons, the mon­uments, the events, all be­come re­al to you. Each il­lus­trates each, and each tends to im­press the oth­er on the mem­ory. Sight burns them in­to the brain with­out con­scious ef­fort. You can learn more of Egypt and of Egyp­tian his­to­ry, cul­ture, hi­ero­glyph­ics, and lan­guage in a few short weeks at Lux­or or Sakkarah than in a year at the Lou­vre and the British Mu­se­um. The Tombs of the Kings are worth many pa­pyri. The mere sight of the tem­ples and obelisks and mon­uments and in­scrip­tions, in the places where their mak­ers orig­inal­ly erect­ed them, gives a sense of re­al­ity and in­ter­est to them all that no amount of study un­der alien con­di­tions can pos­si­bly equal. We have all of us felt that the on­ly place to ob­serve Flem­ish art to the great­est ad­van­tage is at Ghent and Bruges and Brus­sels and Antwerp; just as the on­ly place to learn Flo­ren­tine art as it re­al­ly was is at the Uf­fizi and the Bargel­lo.

These things be­ing so, the au­thor­ities who have charge of our pub­lic ed­uca­tion, pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary, and ter­tiary, have de­cid­ed in their wis­dom--to do and com­pel the ex­act con­trary. Ob­ject-​lessons and the vis­ible be­ing ad­mit­ted­ly prefer­able to rote-​lessons and the au­di­ble, they have pre­scribed that our ed­uca­tion, so called, shall be main­ly an ed­uca­tion not in things and prop­er­ties, but in books and read­ing. They have set­tled that it shall deal al­most en­tire­ly and ex­clu­sive­ly with lan­guage and with lan­guages; that words, not ob­jects, shall be the facts it im­press­es on the minds of the pupils. In our pri­ma­ry schools they have in­sist­ed up­on noth­ing but read­ing and writ­ing, with just a smat­ter­ing of arith­metic by way of sci­ence. In our sec­ondary schools they have in­sist­ed up­on noth­ing but Greek and Latin, with about an equal leav­en of al­ge­bra and ge­om­etry. This me­di­ae­val fare (I am de­light­ed that I can thus agree for once with Pro­fes­sor Ray Lankester) they have thrust down the throats of all the world in­dis­crim­inate­ly; so much so that nowa­days peo­ple seem hard­ly able at last to con­ceive of any oth­er than a lin­guis­tic ed­uca­tion as pos­si­ble. You will hear many good folk who talk with con­tempt of Greek and Latin; but when you come to in­quire what new men­tal pab­ulum they would sub­sti­tute for those quaint and grotesque sur­vivals of the Dark Ages, you find what they want in­stead is--mod­ern lan­guages. The idea that lan­guage of any sort forms no nec­es­sary el­ement in a lib­er­al ed­uca­tion has nev­er even oc­curred to them. They take it for grant­ed that when you leave off feed­ing boys on straw and oats you must sup­ply them in­stead with hay and saw­dust.

Not that I rage against Greek and Latin as such. It is well we should have many spe­cial­ists among us who un­der­stand them, just as it is well we should have spe­cial­ists in An­glo-​Sax­on and San­skrit. I mere­ly mean that they are not the sum and sub­stance of ed­uca­tion­al method. They are at best but two lan­guages of con­sid­er­able im­por­tance to the stu­dent of pure­ly hu­man evo­lu­tion.

Fur­ther­more, even these com­par­ative­ly use­less lin­guis­tic sub­jects could them­selves be taught far bet­ter by sight than by hear­ing. A week at Rome would give your av­er­age boy a much clear­er idea of the re­la­tions of the Capi­tol with the Pala­tine than all the pret­ty maps in Dr. William Smith's Small­er Clas­si­cal Dic­tio­nary. It would give him al­so a sense of the re­al­ity of the Latin lan­guage and the Latin lit­er­ature, which he could nev­er pick up out of a dog-​eared Livy or a thumb-​marked AEneid. You have on­ly to look across from the top of the Jan­icu­lum, to­wards the white hous­es of Fras­cati, to learn a vast deal more about the Al­ban hills and the site of Tus­cu­lum than ev­er you could mug up from all the ge­og­ra­phy books in the British Mu­se­um. The way to learn ev­ery sub­ject on earth, even book-​lore in­clud­ed, is not out of books alone, but by ac­tu­al ob­ser­va­tion.

And yet it is im­pos­si­ble for any one among us to do oth­er­wise than ac­qui­esce in this vi­cious cir­cle. Why? Just be­cause no man can dis­so­ci­ate him­self out­right from the so­cial or­gan­ism of which he forms a com­po­nent mem­ber. He can no more do so than the eye can dis­so­ci­ate it­self from the heart and lungs, or than the legs can shake them­selves free from the head and stom­ach. We have all to learn, and to let our boys learn, what au­thor­ity de­cides for us. We can't give them a bet­ter ed­uca­tion than the av­er­age, even if we know what it is and de­sire to im­part it, be­cause the bet­ter ed­uca­tion, though ab­stract­ly more valu­able, is now and here the in­let to noth­ing. Ev­ery door is barred with ex­am­ina­tions, and opens but to the gold­en key of the cram­mer. Not what is of most re­al use and im­por­tance in life, but what “pays best” in ex­am­ina­tion, is the test of de­sir­abil­ity. We are the vic­tims of a sys­tem; and our on­ly hope of re­dress is not by spo­radic in­di­vid­ual ac­tion but by con­cert­ed re­bel­lion. We must cry out against the abuse till at last we are heard by dint of our much speak­ing. In a world so com­plex and so high­ly or­gan­ised as ours, the in­di­vid­ual can on­ly do any­thing in the long run by in­flu­enc­ing the mass--by se­cur­ing the co-​op­er­ation of many among his fel­lows.

Mean­while, I be­lieve it is grad­ual­ly be­com­ing the fact that our girls, who till late­ly were so very ill-​taught, are be­gin­ning to know more of what is re­al­ly worth know­ing than their pub­lic-​school-​bred broth­ers. For the pub­lic school still goes on with the sys­tem of teach­ing it has de­rived di­rect from the thir­teenth cen­tu­ry; while the girls' schools, hav­ing start­ed fair and fresh, are be­gin­ning to as­sim­ilate cer­tain new­er ideas be­long­ing to the sev­en­teenth and even the eigh­teenth. In time they may con­ceiv­ably come down to the more el­emen­tary no­tions of the present gen­er­ation. Less ham­pered by pro­fes­sions and ex­am­ina­tions than the boys, the girls are be­gin­ning to know some­thing now, not in­deed of the uni­verse in which they live, its laws and its prop­er­ties, but of lit­er­ature and his­to­ry, and the prin­ci­pal facts about hu­man de­vel­op­ment. Yet all the time, the boys go on as ev­er with Musa, Musae, like so many par­rots, and are turned out at last, in nine cas­es out of ten, with just enough smat­ter­ing of Greek and Latin gram­mar to have ac­quired a life-​long dis­taste for Ho­race and an in­con­quer­able in­ca­pac­ity for un­der­stand­ing AEschy­lus. One year in Italy with their eyes open would be worth more than three at Ox­ford; and six months in the fields with a platyscop­ic lens would teach them strange things about the world around them that all the long terms at Har­row and Winch­ester have failed to dis­cov­er to them. But that would in­volve some trou­ble to the teach­er.

What a mis­for­tune it is that we should thus be com­pelled to let our boys' school­ing in­ter­fere with their ed­uca­tion!

XVI.

_THE PO­LIT­ICAL PU­PA._

I have picked up on the moor the chrysalis of a com­mon En­glish but­ter­fly. As I sit on the heather and turn it over at­ten­tive­ly, while it wrig­gles in my hands, I can't help think­ing how close­ly it re­sem­bles the present con­di­tion of our British com­mon­wealth. It is a plat­itude, in­deed, to say that “this is an age of tran­si­tion.” But it would be truer and more graph­ic per­haps to put it that this is an age in which Eng­land, and for the mat­ter of that ev­ery oth­er Eu­ro­pean coun­try as well, is pass­ing through some­thing like the chrysalis stage in its evo­lu­tion.

But, first of all, do you clear­ly un­der­stand what a chrysalis is driv­ing at? It means more than it seems; the change that goes on with­in that im­pas­sive case is a great deal more pro­found than most peo­ple imag­ine. When the cater­pil­lar is just ready to turn in­to a but­ter­fly it lies by for a while, full of in­ter­nal com­mo­tion, and feels all its or­gans slow­ly melt­ing one by one in­to a sort of in­dis­tin­guish­able pro­to­plas­mic pulp; chaos pre­cedes the def­inite re-​es­tab­lish­ment of a fresh form of or­der. Limbs and parts and ner­vous sys­tem all dis­ap­pear for a time, and then grad­ual­ly grow up again in new and al­tered types. The cater­pil­lar, if it philosophised on its own state at all (which seems to be very lit­tle the habit of well-​con­duct­ed cater­pil­lars, as of well-​con­duct­ed young ladies), might eas­ily be ex­cused for form­ing just at first the melan­choly im­pres­sion that a gen­er­al dis­so­lu­tion was com­ing over it piece­meal. It must be­gin by feel­ing legs and eyes and ner­vous cen­tres melt away by de­grees in­to a com­mon in­dis­tin­guish­able or­gan­ic pulp, out of which the new or­gans on­ly slow­ly form them­selves in obe­di­ence to the law of some in­ter­nal im­pulse. But when the pro­cess is all over, and--hi, presto!--the but­ter­fly emerges at last from the chrysalis con­di­tion, what does it find but that in­stead of hav­ing lost ev­ery­thing it has new and stronger legs in place of the old and fee­ble ones; it has nerves and brain more de­vel­oped than be­fore; it has wings for flight in­stead of mere creep­ing lit­tle feet to crawl with? What seemed like chaos was re­al­ly noth­ing more than the nec­es­sary knead­ing up of all com­po­nent parts in­to a plas­tic con­di­tion which pre­cedes ev­ery fresh de­par­ture in evo­lu­tion. The old must fade be­fore the new can re­place it.

Now I am not go­ing to work this per­haps some­what fan­ci­ful anal­ogy to death, or pre­tend it is any­thing more than a con­ve­nient metaphor. Still, tak­en as such, it is not with­out its lu­mi­nos­ity. For a metaphor, by sup­ply­ing us with a pic­turable rep­re­sen­ta­tion, of­ten en­ables us re­al­ly to get at the hang of the thing a vast deal bet­ter than the most solemn ar­gu­ment. And I fan­cy com­mu­ni­ties some­times pass through just such a chrysalis stage, when it seems to the timid and pes­simistic in their midst as if ev­ery com­po­nent el­ement of the State (but es­pe­cial­ly the one in which they them­selves and their friends are par­tic­ular­ly in­ter­est­ed) were rush­ing vi­olent­ly down a steep place to eter­nal perdi­tion. Chaos ap­pears to be swal­low­ing up ev­ery­thing. “The nat­ural re­la­tions of class­es” dis­ap­pear. Faiths melt; church­es dis­solve; morals fade; bonds fail; a uni­ver­sal mag­ma of eman­ci­pat­ed opin­ion seems to take the place of old-​es­tab­lished dog­ma. The squires and the par­sons of the pe­ri­od--call them scribes or au­gurs--wring their hands in de­spair, and cry aloud that they don't know what the world is com­ing to. But, af­ter all, it is on­ly the chrysalis stage of a new sys­tem. The old so­cial or­der must grow dis­joint­ed and chaot­ic be­fore the new so­cial or­der can be­gin to evolve from it. The es­tab­lish­ment of a plas­tic con­sis­ten­cy in the mass is the con­di­tion prece­dent of the high­er de­vel­op­ment.

Not, of course, that this con­sid­er­ation will ev­er af­ford one grain of com­fort to the squires and the par­sons of each suc­ces­sive epoch; for what _they_ want is not the rea­son­able bet­ter­ment of the whole so­cial or­gan­ism, but the con­tin­uance of just this par­tic­ular type of squire­dom and par­son­ry. That is what they mean by “na­tion­al wel­fare;” and any in­ter­fer­ence with it they crit­icise in all ages with the cur­rent equiv­alent for the fa­mil­iar To­ry for­mu­la that “the coun­try is go­ing to the dev­il.”

Some­times these great so­cial re­con­struc­tions of which I speak are forced up­on com­mu­ni­ties by ex­ter­nal fac­tors in­ter­fer­ing with their fixed in­ter­nal or­der, as hap­pened when the in­flux of north­ern bar­bar­ians broke up the de­cay­ing and rot­ten or­gan­ism of the Ro­man Em­pire. Some­times, again, they oc­cur from in­ter­nal caus­es, in an acute, and so to speak, in­flam­ma­to­ry con­di­tion, as at the French Rev­olu­tion. But some­times, as in our own time and coun­try, they are slow­ly brought about by or­gan­ic de­vel­op­ment, so as re­al­ly to re­sem­ble in all es­sen­tial points the chrysalis type of evo­lu­tion. Po­lit­ical­ly, so­cial­ly, the­olog­ical­ly, eth­ical­ly, the old fixed be­liefs seem at such pe­ri­ods to grow flu­id or plas­tic. New feel­ings and habits and as­pi­ra­tions take their place. For a while a gen­er­al chaos of con­flict­ing opin­ions and nascent ideas is pro­duced. The mass for the mo­ment seems form­less and law­less. Then new or­der su­per­venes, as the mag­ma set­tles down and be­gins to crys­tallise; till at last, I'm afraid, the re­sult­ing so­cial or­gan­ism be­comes for the most part just as rigid, just as def­inite, just as dog­mat­ic, just as ex­act­ing, as the one it has su­per­seded. The cater­pil­lar has grown in­to a par­tic­ular but­ter­fly.

Through just such a pe­ri­od of re­con­struc­tion Eu­rope in gen­er­al and Britain in par­tic­ular are now in all like­li­hood be­gin­ning to pass. And they will come out at the oth­er end trans­lat­ed and trans­fig­ured. Laws and faiths and morals will all of them have al­tered. There will be a new heav­en and a new earth for the men and wom­en of the new epoch. Strange that peo­ple should make such a fuss about a de­tail like Home Rule, when the foun­da­tions of so­ci­ety are all be­com­ing flu­id. Don't flat­ter your­self for a mo­ment that your par­tic­ular lit­tle sect or your par­tic­ular lit­tle dog­ma is go­ing to sur­vive the gen­tle cat­aclysm any more than my par­tic­ular lit­tle sect or my par­tic­ular lit­tle dog­ma. All alike are doomed to in­evitable re­con­struc­tion. “We can't put the Con­sti­tu­tion in­to the melt­ing-​pot,” said Mr. John Mor­ley, if I rec­ol­lect his words aright. But at the very mo­ment when he said it, in my hum­ble opin­ion, the Con­sti­tu­tion was al­ready well in­to the melt­ing-​pot, and even be­gin­ning to sim­mer mer­ri­ly. Fed­er­al­ism, or some­thing ex­treme­ly like it, may with great prob­abil­ity be the fi­nal out­come of that par­tic­ular melt­ing; though any­thing else is per­haps just as prob­able, and in any case the melt­ing is gen­er­al, not spe­cial. The one thing we can guess with tol­er­able cer­tain­ty is that the melt­ing-​pot stage has be­gun to over­take us, so­cial­ly, eth­ical­ly, po­lit­ical­ly, ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal­ly; and that what will emerge from the pot at the end of it must de­pend at last up­on the rel­ative strength of those un­known quan­ti­ties--the var­ious for­ma­tive el­ements.

Be­ing the most op­ti­mistic of pes­simists, how­ev­er, I will ven­ture (af­ter this dis­claimer of prophe­cy) to proph­esy one thing alone: 'Twill be a but­ter­fly, not a grub, that comes out of our chrysalis.

Be­yond that, I hold all pre­dic­tion pre­ma­ture. We may guess and we may hope, but we can have no cer­tain­ty. Save on­ly the cer­tain­ty that no el­ement will out­live the rev­olu­tion un­changed--not faiths, nor class­es, nor do­mes­tic re­la­tions, nor any oth­er com­po­nent fac­tor of our com­plex civil­isa­tion. All are be­com­ing plas­tic in the or­gan­ic plasm; all are los­ing fea­tures in the com­mon mass of the melt­ing-​pot. For that rea­son, I nev­er trou­ble my head for a mo­ment when peo­ple ob­ject to me that this, that, or the oth­er pet­ty point of de­tail in Bel­lamy's Utopia or William Mor­ris's Utopia, or my own lit­tle pri­vate and par­tic­ular Utopia, is im­pos­si­ble, or un­re­al­is­able, or wicked, or hate­ful. For these, af­ter all, are mere Utopias; their de­tails are the out­come of in­di­vid­ual wish­es; what will emerge must be, not a Utopia at all, ei­ther yours or mine, but a prac­ti­cal re­al­ity, full of shifts and com­pro­mis­es most un­philo­soph­ical and il­log­ical--a prac­ti­cal re­al­ity dis­taste­ful in many ways to all us Utopia-​mon­gers. “The Mil­len­ni­um by re­turn of post” is no more re­al­is­able to-​day than yes­ter­day. The great­est of rev­olu­tions can on­ly pro­duce that un­sat­is­fac­to­ry re­sult, a new hu­man or­gan­isa­tion.

Yet, it is some­thing, af­ter all, to be­lieve at least that the grub will emerge in­to a full-​fledged but­ter­fly. Not, per­haps, quite as glossy in the wings as we could wish; but a but­ter­fly all the same, not a crawl­ing cater­pil­lar.

XVII.

_ON THE CASI­NO TER­RACE._

I have al­ways re­gard­ed Monte Car­lo as an In­flu­ence for Good. It helps to keep so many young men off the Stock Ex­change.

Let me guard against an ob­vi­ous but un­just sus­pi­cion. These re­marks are not ut­tered un­der the ex­hil­arat­ing ef­fect of win­ning at the ta­bles. Quite the con­trary. It is the Bank that has bro­ken the Man to-​day at Monte Car­lo. They are rather due to the chas­ten­ing and thought-​com­pelling in­flu­ence of per­sis­tent loss, not al­to­geth­er un­bal­anced by a well-​cooked lunch at per­haps the best restau­rant in any town of Eu­rope. I have lost my lit­tle pile. The eight five-​franc pieces which I an­nu­al­ly de­vote out of my scanty store to the tute­lary god of roulette have been snapped up, one af­ter an­oth­er, in breath­less haste, by the sphinx-​like croupiers, im­pas­sive priests of that ra­pa­cious de­ity, and now I am sit­ting, cleaned out, by the edge of the ter­race, on a bril­liant, cloud­less, Febru­ary af­ter­noon, look­ing across the zoned and belt­ed bay to­wards the beau­ti­ful grey hills of Roc­ca-​bruna and the gleam­ing white spit of Bor­dighera in the dis­tance. 'Tis a mod­est trib­ute, my poor lit­tle forty francs. Sure­ly the ver­iest pu­ri­tan, the oili­est Chad­band of them all, will al­low a hum­ble scrib­bler, at so cheap a year­ly rate, to pur­chase wis­dom, not un­mixed with tol­er­ance, at the gild­ed shrine of Fors For­tu­na!

For what a pother, af­ter all, the un­wise of this world are wont to make about one strand­ed gam­bling-​house, in a re­mote cor­ner of Lig­uria! If they were in earnest or sin­cere, how small a mat­ter they would think it! Of course, when I say so, hypocrisy holds up its hands in holy hor­ror. But that is the way with the pur­vey­ors of mint, cumin, and anise; they raise a mighty hub­bub over some unim­por­tant de­tail--in or­der to feel their con­sciences clear when busi­ness com­pels them to rob the wid­ow and the or­phan. In re­al­ity, though Monte Car­lo is bad enough in its way--do I not pay it un­will­ing trib­ute my­self twice a year out of the nar­row re­sources of The Gar­ret, Grub Street?--it is but a skin-​deep sur­face symp­tom of a pro­found dis­ease which at­tacks the heart and core in Lon­don and Paris. Com­pared with Pana­ma, Ar­gen­tines, British South Africans, and Lib­er­ators, Monte Car­lo is a mole on the left an­kle.

“The Dev­il's ad­vo­cate!” you say. Well, well, so be it. The fact is, the sup­posed moral ob­jec­tion to gam­bling as such is a pure­ly com­mer­cial ob­jec­tion of a com­mer­cial na­tion; and the rea­son so much im­por­tance is at­tached to it in cer­tain places is be­cause at that par­tic­ular vice men are like­ly to lose their mon­ey. It is large­ly a fetish, like the sin­ful­ness of cards, of dice, of bil­liards. More­over, the ob­jec­tion is on­ly to the _kind_ of gam­bling. There is an­oth­er kind, less open, at which you stand a bet­ter chance to win your­self, while oth­er par­ties stand a bet­ter chance to lose; and that kind, which is played in great gam­bling-​hous­es known as the Stock Ex­change and the Bourse, is con­sid­ered, moral­ly speak­ing, as quite in­nocu­ous. Large for­tunes are made at this oth­er sort of gam­bling, which, of course, sanc­ti­fies and al­most canon­is­es it. In­deed, if you will note, you will find not on­ly that the ob­jec­tion to gam­bling pure and sim­ple is com­mon­est in the most com­mer­cial coun­tries, but al­so that even there it is com­mon­est among the most com­mer­cial class­es. The land­ed aris­toc­ra­cy, the mil­itary, and the labour­ing men have no ob­jec­tion to bet­ting; nor have the Neapoli­tan laz­za­roni, the Chi­nese coolies. It is the re­spectable En­glish count­ing-​house that dis­cour­ages the vice, es­pe­cial­ly among the clerks, who are like­ly to make the till or the cheque-​book rec­ti­fy the lit­tle fail­ures of their flut­ter on the Der­by.

Ob­serve how ar­ti­fi­cial is the whole mild out-​cry: how ab­so­lute­ly it par­takes of the na­ture of damn­ing the sins you have no mind to! Here, on the ter­race where I sit, and where ladies in need­less­ly cost­ly robes are prom­enad­ing up and down to ex­hib­it their su­per­flu­ous wealth os­ten­ta­tious­ly to one an­oth­er, my ear is con­tin­uous­ly as­sailed by the con­stant _ping, ping, ping_ of the pi­geon-​shoot­ing, and my peace dis­turbed by the flap­ping death-​ag­onies of those mis­er­able vic­tims. Yet how many times have you heard the ta­bles at Monte Car­lo de­nounced to once or nev­er that you have heard a word said of the poor man­gled pi­geons? And why? Be­cause no­body los­es much mon­ey at pi­geon-​match­es. That is le­git­imate sport, about as good and as bad as pheas­ant or par­tridge shoot­ing--no bet­ter, no worse, in spite of ar­ti­fi­cial dis­tinc­tions; and no­body (ex­cept the pi­geons) has any in­ter­est in de­nounc­ing it. Leg­end has it at Monte Car­lo, in­deed, that when the pro­pri­etors of the Casi­no wished to take mea­sures “pour at­tir­er les Anglais” they held coun­sel with the wise men whether it was best to es­tab­lish and en­dow an En­glish church or a pi­geon-​shoot­ing tour­na­ment. And the church was in a mi­nor­ity. Since then, I have heard more than one An­gli­can Bish­op speak evil of the ta­bles, but I have nev­er heard one of them say a good word yet for the boxed and slaugh­tered pi­geons.

Let me take a more strik­ing be­cause a less hack­neyed case--one that still few­er peo­ple would think of. Ev­ery­body who vis­its Monte Car­lo gets there, of course, by the P.L.M. If you know this coast at all you will know that P.L.M. is the curt and uni­ver­sal ab­bre­vi­ation for the Paris, Ly­on, Mediter­ra­nee Rail­way Com­pa­ny--in all prob­abil­ity the most gi­gan­tic and wickedest monopoly on the face of this plan­et. Yet you nev­er once heard a voice raised yet against the com­pa­ny as a com­pa­ny. In­di­vid­ual com­plaints get in­to the _Times_, of course, about the crowd­ing of the _train de luxe_, the breach of faith as to places, and the dis­com­forts of the jour­ney; but nev­er a glim­mer­ing con­cep­tion seems to flit across the pop­ular mind that here is a Colos­sal Wrong, com­pared to which Monte Car­lo is but as a flea-​bite to the Asi­at­ic cholera. This char­tered abuse con­nects the three biggest towns in France--Paris, Ly­on, Mar­seilles--and is ab­so­lute­ly with­out com­peti­tors. It can do as it likes; and it does it, re­gard­less--I say “re­gard­less,” with­out qual­ifi­ca­tion, be­cause the P.L.M. re­gards no­body and noth­ing. Yet one hears of no righ­teous in­dig­na­tion, no up­ris­ing of the peo­ple in their an­gry thou­sands, no moral recog­ni­tion of the monopoly as a Wicked Thing, to be fought tooth and nail, with­out quar­ter giv­en. It prob­ably caus­es a greater ag­gre­gate of hu­man mis­ery in a week than Monte Car­lo in a cen­tu­ry. Be­sides, the one is com­pul­so­ry, the oth­er op­tion­al. You needn't risk a louis on the ta­bles un­less you choose, but, like it or lump it, if you're bound for Nice or Cannes or Men­tone, you must open your mouth and shut your eyes and see what P.L.M. will send you. Our own rail­ways, in­deed, are by no means free from blame at the hands of the Democ­ra­cy: the South-​East­ern has not earned the eter­nal grat­itude of its sea­son-​tick­et hold­ers; the chil­dren of the Great West­ern do not rise up and call it blessed. (Ex­cept, in­deed, in the most un­com­pli­men­ta­ry sense of bless­ing.) But the P.L.M. goes much fur­ther than these; and I have al­ways held that the one sol­id ar­gu­ment for eter­nal pun­ish­ment con­sists in the im­prob­abil­ity that its Board of Di­rec­tors will be per­mit­ted to go scot-​free for ev­er af­ter all their in­iq­ui­ties.

I am not whol­ly jok­ing. I mean the best part of it. Great mo­nop­olies that abuse their trust are far more dan­ger­ous en­emies of pub­lic morals than an hon­est gam­bling-​house at ev­ery cor­ner. Monte Car­lo as it stands is just a con­cen­trat­ed em­bod­iment of all the evils of our an­ti-​so­cial sys­tem, and the ta­bles are by far the least se­ri­ous among them. It is an In­flu­ence for Good, be­cause it mir­rors our own world in all its naked, all its over-​draped hideous­ness. There it rears its mere­tri­cious head, that gaudy Palace of Sin, ap­pro­pri­ate­ly decked in its Hauss­man­esque ar­chi­tec­ture and its co­quet­tish gar­dens, at­tract­ing to it­self all the idle, all the vi­cious, all the rich, all the un­wor­thy, from ev­ery cor­ner of Eu­rope and Amer­ica. But Monte Car­lo didn't make them; it on­ly gath­ers to its bo­som its own cho­sen chil­dren from the places where they are pro­duced--from Lon­don, Paris, Brus­sels, New York, Berlin, St. Pe­ters­burg. The vices of our or­gan­isa­tion be­got these over-​rich folk, be­got their di­amond-​decked wom­en, and their clipped French poo­dles with gold ban­gles span­ning their aris­to­crat­ic legs. These are the spawn of land-​own­ing, of cap­ital­ism, of mil­itary dom­ina­tion, of High Fi­nance, of all the so­cial ills that flesh is heir to. I feel as I pace the ter­race in the broad Mediter­ranean sun­shine, that I am here in the midst of the very best so­ci­ety Eu­rope af­fords. That is to say, the very worst. The dukes and the mon­ey-​lenders, the Jay Goulds and the Reinachs. The idlest, the cru­ellest: the hered­itary drones, the suc­cess­ful blood-​suck­ers. But to find fault with them on­ly for try­ing to win one an­oth­er's ill-​got­ten gold at a fair and open game of _trente-​et-​quar­ante_, with the odds against them, and then to say noth­ing about the way they came by it, is to make a need­less fuss about a tri­fle of de­tail, while over­look­ing the weight­iest moral prob­lems of hu­man­ity.

Who­ev­er al­lows red her­rings like these to be trailed across the path of his moral con­scious­ness, to the detri­ment of the scent which should lead him straight on to the lairs of gi­gan­tic evils, de­serves lit­tle cred­it ei­ther for con­science or sagac­ity. My son, be wise. Strike at the root of the evil. Let Monte Car­lo go, but keep a stern eye on Lon­don ground-​rents.

XVI­II.

_THE CELTIC FRINGE._

We Celts hence­forth will rule the roost in Britain.

What is that you mut­ter? “A very in­op­por­tune mo­ment to pro­claim the fact.” Well, no, I don't think so. And I'm sor­ry to hear you say it, for if there _is_ a qual­ity on which I plume my­self, it's the del­icate tact that makes me re­frain from ir­ri­tat­ing the sus­cep­ti­bil­ities of the sen­si­tive Sax­on. See how po­lite I am to him! I call him sen­si­tive. But, op­por­tune or in­op­por­tune, Lord Sal­is­bury says we are a Celtic fringe. I beg to re­tort, we are the British peo­ple.

“Con­quered races,” say my friends. Well, grant it for a mo­ment. But in civilised so­ci­eties, con­querors have, soon­er or lat­er, to amal­ga­mate with the con­quered. And where the van­quished are more nu­mer­ous, they ab­sorb the vic­tors in­stead of be­ing ab­sorbed by them. That is the Neme­sis of con­quest. Rome an­nexed Etruria; and Etr­uscan Mae­ce­nas, Etr­uscan Se­janus or­gan­ised and con­sol­idat­ed the Ro­man Em­pire. Rome an­nexed Italy; and the _Jus Italicum_ grew at last to be the full Ro­man fran­chise. Rome an­nexed the civilised world; and the provinces un­der Cae­sar blot­ted out the Sen­ate. Britain is pass­ing now through the self-​same stage. One in­evitable re­sult of the widen­ing of the elec­torate has been the trans­fer of pow­er from the Teu­ton­ic to the Celtic half of Britain. I re­peat, we are no longer a Celtic fringe: at the polls, in Par­lia­ment, we are the British peo­ple. Lord Sal­is­bury may fail to per­ceive that fact, or, as I hold more prob­able, may af­fect to ig­nore it. What will such tac­tics avail? The os­trich is not usu­al­ly count­ed among men as a per­fect mod­el of po­lit­ical wis­dom.

And _are_ we, af­ter all, the con­quered peo­ples? Meseems, I doubt it. They say we Celts dear­ly love a para­dox--which is per­haps on­ly the sen­si­ble Sax­on way of en­vis­ag­ing the fact that we catch at new truths some­what quick­er than oth­er peo­ple. At any rate, 'tis a pet lit­tle para­dox of my own that we have nev­er been con­quered, and that to our un­con­quered state we owe in the main our Rad­ical­ism, our So­cial­ism, our in­grained love of po­lit­ical free­dom. We are trib­al not feu­dal; we think the folk more im­por­tant than his lord­ship. The Sax­on of the south-​east is the con­quered man: he has felt on his neck for gen­er­ations the heel of feu­dal­ism. He is slav­ish; he is snob­bish; he dear­ly loves a lord. He shouts him­self hoarse for his Bea­cons­field or his Sal­is­bury. Till late­ly, in his ru­ral avatar, he sang but one song--

“God bless the squire and his re­la­tions, And keep us in our prop­er sta­tions.”

Trite, isn't it? but so is the Sax­on in­tel­li­gence.

Se­ri­ous­ly--for at times it is well to be se­ri­ous--South-​East­ern Eng­land, the Eng­land of the plains, has been con­quered and en­slaved in a dozen ages by each fresh in­vad­er. Be­fore the dawn of his­to­ry, Heav­en knows what shad­owy Bel­gae and Iceni en­slaved it. But his­tor­ical time will serve our pur­pose. The Ro­man en­slaved it, but left Cale­do­nia and Hi­ber­nia free, the Cam­bri­an, the Sil­uri­an, the Cor­nish­man half-​sub­ju­gat­ed. The Sax­on and An­glian en­slaved the east, but scarce­ly crossed over the wa­ter­shed of the west­ern ocean. The Dane, in turn, en­slaved the Sax­on in East An­glia and York­shire. The Nor­man ground all down to a com­mon servi­tude be­tween the up­per and nether mill­stones of the feu­dal sys­tem--the king and the no­ble­man. At the end of it all, Teu­ton­ic Eng­land was re­duced to a pa­tient con­di­tion of con­tent­ed serf­dom: it had ac­com­mo­dat­ed it­self to its en­vi­ron­ment: no wish was left in it for the as­ser­tion of its free­dom. To this day, the south-​east, save where leav­ened and per­me­at­ed by Celtic in­flu­ences, hugs its chains and loves them. It pro­duces the strange por­tent of the Con­ser­va­tive work­ing-​man, who yearns to be led by Lord Ran­dolph Churchill.

With the North and the West, things go whol­ly oth­er­wise. Even Corn­wall, the ear­li­est Celtic king­dom to be ab­sorbed, was rather ab­sorbed than con­quered. I won't go in­to the his­to­ry of the West Welsh of Som­er­set, De­von, and Corn­wall at full length, be­cause it would take ten pages to ex­plain it; and I know that read­ers are too pro­found­ly in­ter­est­ed in the Shock­ing Mur­der in the Bor­ough Road to de­vote half-​an-​hour to the ori­gin and evo­lu­tion of their own com­mu­ni­ty. It must suf­fice to say that the De­vo­ni­an and Cor­nu­bian Welsh co­alesced with the West Sax­on for re­sis­tance to their com­mon en­emy the Dane, and that the West Sax­on king­dom was made supreme in Britain by the founder of the En­glish monar­chy--one Dun­stan, a monk from the West Welsh Abbey of Glas­ton­bury. Wales prop­er, over­run piece­meal by Nor­man fil­ibus­ter­ers, was rough­ly an­nexed by the Plan­ta­genet kings; but it was on­ly paci­fied un­der the Welsh Tu­dors, and was nev­er at any time thor­ough­ly feu­dalised. Glen­dow­er's re­bel­lion, Rich­mond's re­bel­lion, the Wes­leyan re­volt, the Re­bec­ca ri­ots, the tithe war, are all con­tin­uous parts of the cease­less re­ac­tion of gal­lant lit­tle Wales against Teu­ton­ic ag­gres­sion. “An alien Church” still dis­turbs the Prin­ci­pal­ity. The Lake Dis­trict and Ayr­shire--Celtic Cum­bria and Strath­clyde--on­ly ac­cept­ed by de­grees the suprema­cy of the Kings of Eng­land and Scot­land. The broth­er of a Scotch King was Prince of Cum­bria, as the el­der son of an En­glish King was Prince of Wales. In­deed, David of Cum­bria, who be­came David I. of Scot­land, was the re­al con­sol­ida­tor of the Scotch king­dom. Cum­bria was no more con­quered by the Sax­on Loth­ians than Scot­land was con­quered by the ac­ces­sion of James I. or by the Act of Union. That means ab­sorp­tion, con­cil­ia­tion, a cer­tain de­gree of trib­al in­de­pen­dence. For Ire­land, we know that the “mere Irish” were nev­er sub­ju­gat­ed at all till the days of Hen­ry VII.; that they had to be re­con­quered by Cromwell and by William of Or­ange; that they re­belled more or less through­out the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry; and that they have been thorns in the side of To­ry Eng­land through the whole of the nine­teenth. As for the High­lands, they held out against the Stu­arts till Eng­land had re­ject­ed that im­pos­si­ble dy­nasty; and then they ral­lied round the Stu­arts as the en­emies of the Sax­on. Gen­er­al Wade's roads and the forts in the Great Glen, aid­ed by a few tri­fles of Glen­coe mas­sacres, kept them qui­et for a mo­ment. But it was on­ly for a mo­ment. The North is once more in open re­volt. Dr. Clark and the crofters are its mode of ex­press­ing it­self.

Nor is that all. The Celtic ideas have re­mained un­al­tered. Of course, I am not sil­ly enough to be­lieve there is any such thing as a Celtic race. I use the word mere­ly as a con­ve­nient la­bel for the league of the un­con­quered peo­ples in Britain. Ire­land alone con­tains half-​a-​dozen races; and none of them ap­pear to have any­thing in com­mon with the Pict of Ab­erdeen­shire or the West-​Welsh of Corn­wall. All I mean when I speak of Celtic ideas and Celtic ide­als is the ideas and ide­als prop­er and com­mon to un­con­quered races. As com­pared with the feu­dalised and con­tent­ed serf of South-​East­ern Eng­land, are not the Irish peas­ant, the Scotch clans­man, the “states­man” of the dales, the Cor­nish min­er, free men ev­ery soul of them? En­glish land­lordism, im­posed from with­out up­on the crofter of Skye or the rack-​rent­ed ten­ant of a Con­nemara hill­side, has nev­er crushed out the na­tive feel­ing of a right to the soil, the na­tive re­sis­tance to an alien sys­tem. The south-​east, I as­sert, has been bru­talised in­to ac­qui­es­cent serf­dom by a long course of feu­dal­ism; the west and north still re­tain the in­stincts of freemen.

As long as South-​East­ern Eng­land and the Nor­man­ised or feu­dalised Sax­on low­lands of Scot­land con­tained all the wealth, all the pow­er, and most of the pop­ula­tion of Britain, the Celtic ide­als had no chance of re­al­is­ing them­selves. But the in­dus­tri­al rev­olu­tion of the present cen­tu­ry has turned us right-​about-​face, has trans­ferred the bal­ance of pow­er from the sec­ondary stra­ta to the pri­ma­ry stra­ta in Britain; from the agri­cul­tur­al low­lands to the up­lands of coal and iron, the cot­ton fac­to­ries, the woollen trade. Great in­dus­tri­al cities have grown up in the Celtic or se­mi-​Celtic area--Glas­gow, Liv­er­pool, Manch­ester, Leeds, Brad­ford, Sheffield, Belfast, Ab­erdeen, Cardiff. The Celt--that is to say, the moun­taineer and the man of the un­touched coun­try--re­pro­duces his kind much more rapid­ly than the Teu­ton. The High­lander and the Irish­man swarm in­to Glas­gow; the Irish­man and the Welsh­man swarm in­to Liv­er­pool; the west-​coun­try­man in­to Bris­tol; Celts of all types in­to Lon­don, Southamp­ton, New­port, Birm­ing­ham, Sheffield. This east­ward re­turn-​wave of Celts up­on the Teu­ton has leav­ened the whole mass; if you look at the lead­ers of Rad­ical­ism in Eng­land you will find they bear, al­most with­out ex­cep­tion, true Celtic sur­names. Chartists and So­cial­ists of the first gen­er­ation were mar­shalled by men of Cym­ric de­scent, like Ernest Jones and Robert Owen, or by pure-​blood­ed Irish­men like Fer­gus O'Con­nor. It is not a mere ac­ci­dent that the Lon­don So­cial­ists of the present day should be led by Welsh­men like William Mor­ris, or by the elo­quent brogue of Bernard Shaw's au­da­cious or­ato­ry. We Celts now lurk in ev­ery cor­ner of Britain; we have per­me­at­ed it with our ideas; we have in­spired it with our as­pi­ra­tions; we have roused the Celtic rem­nant in the south-​east it­self to a sense of their wrongs; and we are march­ing to-​day, all abreast, to the over­throw of feu­dal­ism. If Lord Sal­is­bury thinks we are a Celtic fringe he is vast­ly mis­tak­en. But he doesn't re­al­ly think so: 'tis a piece of his pon­der­ous Sax­on hu­mour. Talk of “Bata­vian grace,” in­deed! Well, the Ce­cils came first from the fens of Lin­colnshire.

XIX.

_IMAG­INA­TION AND RAD­ICALS._

Con­ser­vatism, I be­lieve, is main­ly due to want of imag­ina­tion.

In say­ing this, I do not for a mo­ment mean to de­ny the oth­er and equal­ly ob­vi­ous truth that Con­ser­vatism, in the lump, is a eu­phemism for self­ish­ness. But the two ideas have much in com­mon. Self­ish peo­ple are apt to be unimag­ina­tive: unimag­ina­tive peo­ple are apt to be self­ish. Clear­ly to re­alise the con­di­tion of the un­for­tu­nate is the be­gin­ning of phi­lan­thropy. Clear­ly to re­alise the rights of oth­ers is the be­gin­ning of jus­tice. “Put your­self in his place” strikes the keynote of ethics. Stupid peo­ple can on­ly see their own side of a ques­tion: they can­not even imag­ine any oth­er side pos­si­ble. So, as a rule, stupid peo­ple are Con­ser­va­tive. They cling to what they have; they dread re­vi­sion, re­dis­tri­bu­tion, jus­tice. Al­so, if a man has imag­ina­tion he is like­ly to be Rad­ical, even though self­ish; while if he has no imag­ina­tion he is like­ly to be Con­ser­va­tive, even though oth­er­wise good and kind-​heart­ed. Some men are Con­ser­va­tive from de­fects of heart, while some are Con­ser­va­tive from de­fects of head. Con­verse­ly, most imag­ina­tive peo­ple are Rad­ical; for even a bad man may some­times up­hold the side of right be­cause he has in­tel­li­gence enough to un­der­stand that things might be bet­ter man­aged in the fu­ture for all than they are in the present.

But when I say that Con­ser­vatism is main­ly due to want of imag­ina­tion, I mean more than that. Most peo­ple are whol­ly un­able to con­ceive in their own minds any state of things very dif­fer­ent from the one they have been born and brought up in. The pic­tur­ing pow­er is lack­ing. They can con­ceive the past, it is true, more or less vague­ly--be­cause they have al­ways heard things once were so, and be­cause the past is gen­er­al­ly re­al­is­able still by the light of the relics it has be­queathed to the present. But they can't at all con­ceive the fu­ture. Imag­ina­tion fails them. In­nu­mer­able dif­fi­cul­ties crop up for them in the way of ev­ery pro­posed im­prove­ment. Be­fore there was any Coun­ty Coun­cil for Lon­don, such peo­ple thought mu­nic­ipal gov­ern­ment for the metropo­lis an in­sol­uble prob­lem. Now that Home Rule quiv­ers trem­bling in the bal­ance, they think it would pass the wit of man to de­vise in the fu­ture a fed­er­al league for the com­po­nent el­ements of the Unit­ed King­dom; in spite of the fact that the wit of man has al­ready de­vised one for the States of the Union, for the Provinces of the Do­min­ion, for the com­po­nent Can­tons of the Swiss Re­pub­lic. To the unimag­ina­tive mind dif­fi­cul­ties ev­ery­where seem al­most in­su­per­able. It shrinks be­fore tri­fles. “Im­pos­si­ble!” said Napoleon. “There is no such word in my dic­tio­nary!” He had been trained in the school of the French Rev­olu­tion--which was _not_ car­ried out by unimag­ina­tive pet­ti­fog­gers.

To peo­ple with­out imag­ina­tion any change you pro­pose seems at once im­prac­ti­ca­ble. They are ready to bring up end­less ob­jec­tions to the mode of work­ing it. There would be this dif­fi­cul­ty in the way, and that dif­fi­cul­ty, and the oth­er one. You would think, to hear them talk, the world as it stands was ab­so­lute­ly per­fect, and moved with­out a hitch in all its bear­ings. They don't see that ev­ery ex­ist­ing in­sti­tu­tion just bris­tles with dif­fi­cul­ties--and that the dif­fi­cul­ties are met or got over some­how. Of­ten enough while they swal­low the camel of ex­ist­ing abus­es they strain at some gnat which they fan­cy they see fly­ing in at the win­dow of Utopia or of the Mil­len­ni­um. “If your re­form were car­ried,” they say in ef­fect, “we should, doubt­less, get rid of such and such fla­grant evils; but the streets in Novem­ber would be just as mud­dy as ev­er, and slight in­con­ve­nience might be caused in cer­tain im­prob­able con­tin­gen­cies to the duke or the cot­ton-​spin­ner, the squire or the mine-​own­er.” They omit to note that much graver in­con­ve­nience is caused at present to the mil­lions who are shut out from the fields and the sun­shine, who are sweat­ed all day for a mis­er­able wage, or who are forced to pay fan­cy prices for fu­el to grat­ify the ra­pac­ity of a hand­ful of coal-​grab­bers.

Lack of imag­ina­tion makes peo­ple fail to see the evils that are; makes them fail to re­alise the good that might be.

I of­ten fan­cy to my­self what such peo­ple would say if land had al­ways been com­mu­nal prop­er­ty, and some one now pro­posed to hand it over ab­so­lute­ly to the dukes, the squires, the game-​pre­servers, and the coal-​own­ers. “'Tis im­pos­si­ble,” they would ex­claim; “the thing wouldn't be work­able. Why, a sin­gle land­lord might own half West­min­ster! A sin­gle land­lord might own all Suther­land­shire! The hy­po­thet­ical Duke of West­min­ster might put bars to the streets; he might im­pede lo­co­mo­tion; he might refuse to let cer­tain peo­ple to whom he ob­ject­ed take up their res­idence in any part of his ter­ri­to­ry; he might pre­vent them from fol­low­ing their own trades or pro­fes­sions; he might even de­scend to such pet­ty tyran­ny as taboo­ing brass plates on the doors of hous­es. And what would you do then? The thing isn't pos­si­ble. The Duke of Suther­land, again, might shut up all Suther­land­shire; might turn whole vast tracts in­to grouse-​moor or deer-​for­est; might pre­vent harm­less tourists from walk­ing up the moun­tains. And sure­ly free Britons would nev­er sub­mit to _that_. The bare idea is ridicu­lous. The squire of a ru­ral parish might turn out the Dis­senters; might refuse to let land for the erec­tion of chapels; might be­have like a pet­ty King Au­gus­tus of Scil­ly. In­deed, there would be noth­ing to pre­vent an Amer­ican alien from buy­ing up square miles of pur­ple heather in Scot­land, and shut­ting the in­hab­itants of these British Isles out of their own in­her­itance. Sites might be re­fused for need­ful pub­lic pur­pos­es; fan­cy prices might be asked for pure cu­pid­ity. Spec­ula­tors would job land for the sake of un­earned in­cre­ment; towns would have to grow as land­lords willed, ir­re­spec­tive of the wants or con­ve­nience of the com­mu­ni­ty. The­oret­ical­ly, I don't even see that Lord Roth­schild mightn't buy up the whole area of Mid­dle­sex, and turn Lon­don in­to a Gold­en House of Nero. Your scheme can't be worked. The anoma­lies are too ob­vi­ous.”

They are in­deed. Yet I doubt whether the unimag­ina­tive would quite have fore­seen them: the things they fore­see are less re­al and pos­si­ble. But they urge against ev­ery re­form such ob­jec­tions as I have par­odied; and they urge them about mat­ters of far less vi­tal im­por­tance. The ex­ist­ing sys­tem ex­ists; they know its abus­es, its checks and its counter-​checks. The sys­tem of the fu­ture does not yet ex­ist; and they can't imag­ine how its far slighter dif­fi­cul­ties could ev­er be smoothed over. They are not the least stag­gered by the ap­palling re­al­ity of the Duke of West­min­ster or the Duke of Suther­land; not the least stag­gered by the sin­is­ter pow­er of a con­spir­acy of coal-​own­ers to paral­yse a great na­tion with the hor­rors of a fu­el famine. But they _are_ stag­gered by their bo­gey that State own­er­ship of land might give rise to a cer­tain amount of job­bery and cor­rup­tion on the part of of­fi­cials. They think it bet­ter that the dukes and the squires should get all the rent than that the State should get most of it, with the pos­si­bil­ity of a per­cent­age be­ing cor­rupt­ly em­bez­zled by the func­tionar­ies who man­age it. This shows want of imag­ina­tion. It is as though one should say to one's clerk, “All your in­come shall be paid in fu­ture to the Duke of West­min­ster, and not to your­self, for his sole use and ben­efit; be­cause we, your em­ploy­ers, are afraid that if we give you your salary in per­son, you may let some of it be stolen from you or bad­ly in­vest­ed.” How trans­par­ent­ly ab­surd! We want our in­come our­selves, to spend as we please. We would rather risk los­ing one per cent. of it in bad in­vest­ments than let all be swal­lowed up by the dukes and the land­lords.

It is the same through­out. Want of imag­ina­tion makes peo­ple ex­ag­ger­ate the dif­fi­cul­ties and dan­gers of ev­ery new scheme, be­cause they can't pic­ture con­struc­tive­ly to them­selves the de­tails of its work­ing. Men with great pic­tur­ing pow­er, like Shel­ley or Robe­spierre, are al­ways very ad­vanced Rad­icals, and po­ten­tial­ly rev­olu­tion­ists. The dif­fi­cul­ty _they_ see is not the dif­fi­cul­ty of mak­ing the thing work, but the dif­fi­cul­ty of con­vinc­ing less clear-​head­ed peo­ple of its de­sir­abil­ity and prac­ti­ca­bil­ity. A great many Con­ser­va­tives, who are Con­ser­va­tive from self­ish­ness, would be Rad­icals if on­ly they could feel for them­selves that even their own pet­ty in­ter­ests and plea­sures are not re­al­ly men­aced. The squires and the dukes can't re­alise how much hap­pi­er even they would be in a free, a beau­ti­ful, and a well-​or­gan­ised com­mu­ni­ty. Imag­ina­tive minds can pic­ture a world where ev­ery­thing is so or­dered that life comes as a con­stant aes­thet­ic de­light to ev­ery­body. They know that that world could be re­alised to-​mor­row--if on­ly all oth­ers could pic­ture it to them­selves as vivid­ly as they do. But they al­so know that it can on­ly be at­tained in the end by long ages of strug­gle, and by slow evo­lu­tion of the es­sen­tial­ly imag­ina­tive eth­ical fac­ul­ty. For right ac­tion de­pends most of all, in the last re­sort, up­on a graph­ic con­cep­tion of the feel­ings of oth­ers.

XX.

_ABOUT ABROAD._

The place known as Abroad is not near­ly so nice a coun­try to live in as Eng­land. The peo­ple who in­hab­it Abroad are called For­eign­ers. They are in ev­ery way and at all times in­fe­ri­or to En­glish­men.

These Post-​Pran­di­als used once to be pro­vid­ed with a sting in their tail, like the com­mon scor­pi­on. By way of change, I turn them out now with a sting in their head, like the com­mon mosquito. Mosquitoes are much less dan­ger­ous than scor­pi­ons, but they're a deal more ir­ri­tat­ing.

Not that I am san­guine enough to ex­pect I shall ir­ri­tate En­glish­men. Your En­glish­man is far too cock-​sure of the nat­ural su­pe­ri­or­ity of Britons to For­eign­ers, the nat­ural su­pe­ri­or­ity of Eng­land to Abroad, ev­er to be ir­ri­tat­ed by even the gen­tlest crit­icism. He ac­cepts it all with lord­ly in­dif­fer­ence. He brush­es it aside as the ele­phant might brush aside the in­ef­fec­tive gad­fly. No pro­boscis can pierce that pachy­der­ma­tous hide of his. If you praise him to his face, he ac­cepts your praise as his ob­vi­ous due, with per­fect com­po­sure and with­out the slight­est ela­tion. If you blame him in aught, he sets it down to your ig­no­rance and men­tal in­fe­ri­or­ity. You say to him, “Oh, En­glish­man, you are great; you are wise; you are rich be­yond com­par­ison. You are no­ble; you are gen­er­ous; you are the prince among na­tions.” He smiles a calm smile, and thinks you a very sen­si­ble fel­low. But you add, “Oh, my lord, if I may ven­ture to say so, there is a smudge on your nose, which I make bold to at­tribute to the set­tle­ment of a black on your in­tel­li­gent coun­te­nance.” He is not an­gry. He is not even con­temp­tu­ous­ly amused. He re­sponds, “My friend, you are wrong. There is nev­er a smudge on my im­mac­ulate face. No blacks fly in Lon­don. The sky is as clear there in Novem­ber as in Au­gust. All is pure and serene and beau­ti­ful.” You an­swer, “Oh, my lord, I ad­mit the force of your pro­found rea­son­ing. You light the gas at ten in the morn­ing on­ly to show all the world you can af­ford to burn it.” At that, he gropes his way along Pall Mall to his club, and tells the men he meets there how com­plete­ly he si­lenced you.

And yet, My Lord Ele­phant, there is use in mosquitoes. Mr. Mat­tieu Williams once dis­cov­ered the fi­nal cause of fleas. Cer­tain peo­ple, said he, can­not be in­duced to em­ploy the harm­less nec­es­sary tub. For them, Prov­idence de­signed the live­ly flea. He com­pels them to scratch them­selves. By so do­ing they rouse the skin to ac­tion and get rid of im­pu­ri­ties. Now, this British use of the word Abroad is a smudge on the face of the oth­er­wise per­fect En­glish­man. Per­chance a mosquito-​bite may in­duce him to re­move it with a lit­tle warm wa­ter and a cam­bric pock­et-​hand­ker­chief.

To most En­glish­men, the world di­vides it­self nat­ural­ly in­to two un­equal and non-​equiv­alent por­tions--Abroad and Eng­land. Of these two, Abroad is much the larg­er coun­try; but Eng­land, though small­er, is vast­ly more im­por­tant. Abroad is in­hab­it­ed by French­men and Ger­mans, who speak their own fool­ish and chat­ter­ing lan­guages. Part of it is like­wise per­vad­ed by Chi­na­men, who wear pig­tails; and the out­ly­ing dis­tricts be­long to the poor hea­then, chiefly in­ter­est­ing as a field of mis­sion­ary en­ter­prise, and a pos­si­ble mar­ket for Manch­ester piece-​goods. We some­times in­vest our mon­ey abroad, but then we are like­ly to get it swal­lowed up in Mex­icans or Egyp­tian Uni­fied. If you ask most peo­ple what has be­come of Tom, they will an­swer at once with the spe­cif­ic in­for­ma­tion, “Oh, Tom has gone Abroad.” I have one stereo­typed re­join­der to an an­swer like that. “What part of Abroad, please?” That usu­al­ly stumps them. Abroad is Abroad; and like the gen­tle­man who was asked in ex­am­ina­tion to “name the mi­nor prophets,” they de­cline to make in­vid­ious dis­tinc­tions. It is noth­ing to them whether he is tea-​plant­ing in the Hi­malayas, or sheep-​farm­ing in Aus­tralia, or or­ange-​grow­ing in Flori­da, or ranch­ing in Col­orado. If he is not in Eng­land, why then he is else­where; and else­where is Abroad, one and in­di­vis­ible.

In short, Abroad an­swers in space to that well-​known and def­inite date, the Old­en Time, in chronol­ogy.

Peo­ple will tell you, “For­eign­ers do this”; “For­eign­ers do that”; “For­eign­ers smoke so much”; “For­eign­ers al­ways take cof­fee for break­fast.” “In­deed,” I love to an­swer; “I've nev­er ob­served it my­self in Cen­tral Asia.” 'Tis Par­son Adams and the Chris­tian re­li­gion. Nine En­glish peo­ple out of ten, when they talk of Abroad, mean what they call the Con­ti­nent; and when they talk of the Con­ti­nent, they mean France, Ger­many, Switzer­land, Italy; in short, the places most vis­it­ed by En­glish­men when they con­sent now and again to go Abroad for a hol­iday. “I don't like Abroad,” a la­dy once said to me on her re­turn from Calais. For­eign­ers, in like man­ner, means French­men, Ger­mans, Swiss, Ital­ians. In the coun­try called Abroad, the most im­por­tant parts are the parts near­est Eng­land; of the peo­ple called For­eign­ers, the most im­por­tant are those who dress like En­glish­men. The dim black lands that lie be­low the hori­zon are hard­ly worth notic­ing.

Would it sur­prise you to learn that most peo­ple live in Asia? Would it sur­prise you to learn that most peo­ple are poor be­night­ed hea­then, and that, of the re­main­der, most peo­ple are Ma­hommedans, and that of the Chris­tians, who come next, most peo­ple are Ro­man Catholics, and that, of the oth­er Chris­tian sects, most peo­ple be­long to the Greek Church, and that, last of all, we get Protes­tants, more par­tic­ular­ly An­gli­cans, Wes­leyans, Bap­tists? Have you ev­er re­al­ly re­alised the startling fact that Eng­land is an is­land off the coast of Eu­rope? that Eu­rope is a penin­su­la at the end of Asia? that France, Ger­many, Italy, are the fringe of Rus­sia? Have you ev­er re­al­ly re­alised that the En­glish-​speak­ing race lives most­ly in Amer­ica? that the coun­try is vast­ly more pop­ulous than Lon­don? that our class is the froth and the scum of so­ci­ety? Think these things out, and try to mea­sure them on the globe. And when you speak of Abroad, do please spec­ify what part of it.

Abroad is not all alike. There are dif­fer­ences be­tween Poland, Pe­ru, and Pales­tine. What is true of France is not true of Fi­ji. Dis­tin­guish care­ful­ly be­tween Tim­buc­too, To­bol­sk, and Tole­do.

It is not our in­su­lar­ity that makes us so in­su­lar. 'Tis a gift of the gods, pe­cu­liar to En­glish­men. The oth­er in­hab­itants of these Isles of Britain are com­par­ative­ly cos­mopoli­tan. The Scotch­man goes ev­ery­where; the world is his oys­ter. Ire­land is an is­land still more re­mote than Great Britain; but the Irish­man has nev­er been so in­su­lar as the En­glish. I put that down in part to his Catholi­cism: his priests have been wheels in a world-​wide sys­tem; his re­la­tions have been with Douai, St. Omer, and Rome; his bish­ops have gone pil­grim­ages and sat on Vat­ican Coun­cils; his kins­men are the MacMa­hons in France, the O'Don­nels in Spain, the Taafes in Aus­tria. Even in the days of the Re­gen­cy this was so: look at Lever and his heroes! When Eng­land drank port, Coun­ty Clare drank claret. But ev­er since the famine, Ire­land has ex­pand­ed. Ev­ery Irish­man has cousins in Cana­da, in Aus­tralia, in New York, in San Fran­cis­co. The Em­pire is Irish, with the ex­cep­tion of In­dia; and In­dia, of course, is a Scotch de­pen­den­cy. Irish­men and Scotch­men have no such feel­ings about Abroad and its For­eign­ers as Lon­don­ers en­ter­tain. But En­glish­men nev­er quite get over the sense that ev­ery­body must needs di­vide the world in­to Eng­land and Else­where. To the end no En­glish­man re­al­ly grasps the fact that to French­men and Ger­mans he him­self is a for­eign­er. I have met John Bulls who had passed years in Italy, but who spoke of the coun­try­men of Cae­sar and Dante and Leonar­do and Garibal­di with the con­temp­tu­ous tol­er­ation one might feel to­wards a child or an An­daman Is­lander. These Ital­ians could build Giot­to's cam­panile; could paint the Trans­fig­ura­tion; could carve the liv­ing mar­ble on the tombs of the Medi­ci; could pro­duce the Vi­ta Nuo­va; could beget Galileo, Gal­vani, Bec­ca­ria; but still--they were For­eign­ers. Prov­idence in its wis­dom has de­creed that they must live Abroad--just as it has de­creed that a com­pre­hen­sion of the dec­imal sys­tem and its own place in the world should be lim­ita­tions eter­nal­ly im­posed up­on the En­glish in­tel­lect.