A PREFACE TO POLITICS

by

WALTER LIPPMANN

"A God wilt thou create for thyselfout of thy seven devils. "

Mitchell KennerleyNew York and London1914Copyright, 1913, byMitchell Kennerley

_Contents_

CHAPTER PAGE

 INTRODUCTION

 I. Routineer and Inventor 1

 II. The Taboo 34

 III. The Changing Focus 53

 IV. The Golden Rule and After 86

 V. Well Meaning but Unmeaning: the Chicago Vice Report 122

 VI. Some Necessary Iconoclasm 159

 VII. The Making of Creeds 204

VIII. The Red Herring 247

 IX. Revolution and Culture 273

INTRODUCTION

The most incisive comment on politics to-day is indifference. When menand women begin to feel that elections and legislatures do not mattervery much, that politics is a rather distant and unimportant exercise, the reformer might as well put to himself a few searching doubts. Indifference is a criticism that cuts beneath oppositions and wranglingsby calling the political method itself into question. Leaders in publicaffairs recognize this. They know that no attack is so disastrous assilence, that no invective is so blasting as the wise and indulgent smileof the people who do not care. Eager to believe that all the world is asinterested as they are, there comes a time when even the reformer iscompelled to face the fairly widespread suspicion of the average man thatpolitics is an exhibition in which there is much ado about nothing. Butsuch moments of illumination are rare. They appear in writers who realizehow large is the public that doesn't read their books, in reformers whoventure to compare the membership list of their league with the census ofthe United States. Whoever has been granted such a moment of insightknows how exquisitely painful it is. To conquer it men turn generally totheir ancient comforter, self-deception: they complain about the stolid, inert masses and the apathy of the people. In a more confidential tonethey will tell you that the ordinary citizen is a "hopelessly privateperson. "

The reformer is himself not lacking in stolidity if he can believe such afiction of a people that crowds about tickers and demands the news of theday before it happens, that trembles on the verge of a panic over theunguarded utterance of a financier, and founds a new religion every monthor so. But after a while self-deception ceases to be a comfort. This iswhen the reformer notices how indifference to politics is settling uponsome of the most alert minds of our generation, entering into theattitude of men as capable as any reformer of large and imaginativeinterests. For among the keenest minds, among artists, scientists andphilosophers, there is a remarkable inclination to make a virtue ofpolitical indifference. Too passionate an absorption in public affairs isfelt to be a somewhat shallow performance, and the reformer is patronizedas a well-meaning but rather dull fellow. This is the criticism of menengaged in some genuinely creative labor. Often it is unexpressed, oftenas not the artist or scientist will join in a political movement. But inthe depths of his soul there is, I suspect, some feeling which says tothe politician, "Why so hot, my little sir?"

Nothing, too, is more illuminating than the painful way in which manypeople cultivate a knowledge of public affairs because they have aconscience and wish to do a citizen's duty. Having read a number ofarticles on the tariff and ploughed through the metaphysics of thecurrency question, what do they do? They turn with all the more zest tosome spontaneous human interest. Perhaps they follow, follow, followRoosevelt everywhere, and live with him through the emotions of a greatbattle. But for the affairs of statecraft, for the very policies that aRoosevelt advocates, the interest is largely perfunctory, maintained outof a sense of duty and dropped with a sigh of relief. 

That reaction may not be as deplorable as it seems. Pick up yournewspaper, read the Congressional Record, run over in your mind the"issues" of a campaign, and then ask yourself whether the average man isentirely to blame because he smiles a bit at Armageddon and refuses totake the politician at his own rhetorical valuation. If men findstatecraft uninteresting, may it not be that statecraft _is_uninteresting? I have a more or less professional interest in publicaffairs; that is to say, I have had opportunity to look at politics fromthe point of view of the man who is trying to get the attention of peoplein order to carry through some reform. At first it was a hard confessionto make, but the more I saw of politics at first-hand, the more Irespected the indifference of the public. There was somethingmonotonously trivial and irrelevant about our reformist enthusiasm, andan appalling justice in that half-conscious criticism which refuses toplace politics among the genuine, creative activities of men. Science wasvalid, art was valid, the poorest grubber in a laboratory was engaged ina real labor, anyone who had found expression in some beautiful objectwas truly centered. But politics was a personal drama without meaning ora vague abstraction without substance. 

Yet there was the fact, just as indisputable as ever, that public affairsdo have an enormous and intimate effect upon our lives. They make orunmake us. They are the foundation of that national vigor through whichcivilizations mature. City and countryside, factories and play, schoolsand the family are powerful influences in every life, and politics isdirectly concerned with them. If politics is irrelevant, it is certainlynot because its subject matter is unimportant. Public affairs govern ourthinking and doing with subtlety and persistence. 

The trouble, I figured, must be in the way politics is concerned with thenation's interests. If public business seems to drift aimlessly, itsresults are, nevertheless, of the highest consequence. In statecraft thepenalties and rewards are tremendous. Perhaps the approach is distorted. Perhaps uncriticised assumptions have obscured the real uses of politics. Perhaps an attitude can be worked out which will engage a fresherattention. For there are, I believe, blunders in our political thinkingwhich confuse fictitious activity with genuine achievement, and make itdifficult for men to know where they should enlist. Perhaps if we can seepolitics in a different light, it will rivet our creative interests. 

These essays, then, are an attempt to sketch an attitude towardsstatecraft. I have tried to suggest an approach, to illustrate itconcretely, to prepare a point of view. In selecting for the title "APreface to Politics, " I have wished to stamp upon the whole book my ownsense that it is a beginning and not a conclusion. I have wished toemphasize that there is nothing in this book which can be drafted into alegislative proposal and presented to the legislature the day afterto-morrow. It was not written with the notion that these pages wouldcontain an adequate exposition of modern political method. Much less wasit written to further a concrete program. There are, I hope, noassumptions put forward as dogmas. 

It is a preliminary sketch for a theory of politics, a preface tothinking. Like all speculation about human affairs, it is the result of agrapple with problems as they appear in the experience of one man. Forthough a personal vision may at times assume an eloquent and universallanguage, it is well never to forget that all philosophies are thelanguage of particular men. 

 W. L. 

46 East 80th Street, NEW YORK CITY, January 1913. 

A PREFACE TO POLITICS

CHAPTER I

ROUTINEER AND INVENTOR

Politics does not exist for the sake of demonstrating the superiorrighteousness of anybody. It is not a competition in deportment. In fact, before you can begin to think about politics at all you have to abandonthe notion that there is a war between good men and bad men. That is oneof the great American superstitions. More than any other fetish it hasruined our sense of political values by glorifying the pharisee with hisvain cruelty to individuals and his unfounded approval of himself. Youhave only to look at the Senate of the United States, to see how thatbody is capable of turning itself into a court of preliminary hearingsfor the Last Judgment, wasting its time and our time and absorbing publicenthusiasm and newspaper scareheads. For a hundred needs of the nation ithas no thought, but about the precise morality of an historicaltransaction eight years old there is a meticulous interest. Whether inthe Presidential Campaign of 1904 Roosevelt was aware that the ancienttradition of corporate subscriptions had or had not been followed, andthe exact and ultimate measure of the guilt that knowledge would haveimplied--this in the year 1912 is enough to start the Senate on aprotracted man-hunt. 

Now if one half of the people is bent upon proving how wicked a man isand the other half is determined to show how good he is, neither halfwill think very much about the nation. An innocent paragraph in the NewYork Evening Post for August 27, 1912, gives the whole performance away. It shows as clearly as words could how disastrous the good-and-bad-mantheory is to political thinking:

"Provided the first hearing takes place on September 30, it is expectedthat the developments will be made with a view to keeping the Colonel onthe defensive. After the beginning of October, it is pointed out, theevidence before the Committee should keep him so busy explaining anddenying that the country will not hear much Bull Moose doctrine. "

Whether you like the Roosevelt doctrines or not, there can be no twoopinions about such an abuse of morality. It is a flat public loss, another attempt to befuddle our thinking. For if politics is merely aguerilla war between the bribed and the unbribed, then statecraft is nota human service but a moral testing ground. It is a public amusement, amelodrama of real life, in which a few conspicuous characters are tried, and it resembles nothing so much as schoolboy hazing which we are toldexists for the high purpose of detecting a "yellow streak. " But eventhough we desired it there would be no way of establishing any clear-cutdifference in politics between the angels and the imps. The angels arelargely self-appointed, being somewhat more sensitive to other people'star than their own. 

But if the issue is not between honesty and dishonesty, where is it?

If you stare at a checkerboard you can see it as black on red, or red onblack, as series of horizontal, vertical or diagonal steps which recedeor protrude. The longer you look the more patterns you can trace, and themore certain it becomes that there is no single way of looking at theboard. So with political issues. There is no obvious cleavage whicheveryone recognizes. Many patterns appear in the national life. The"progressives" say the issue is between "Privilege" and the "People"; theSocialists, that it is between the "working class" and the "masterclass. " An apologist for dynamite told me once that society was dividedinto the weak and the strong, and there are people who draw a linebetween Philistia and Bohemia. 

When you rise up and announce that the conflict is between this and that, you mean that this particular conflict interests you. The issue ofgood-and-bad-men interests this nation to the exclusion of almost allothers. But experience shows, I believe, that it is a fruitless conflictand a wasting enthusiasm. Yet some distinction must be drawn if we are toact at all in politics. With nothing we are for and nothing to oppose, weare merely neutral. This cleavage in public affairs is the most importantchoice we are called upon to make. In large measure it determines therest of our thinking. Now some issues are fertile; some are not. Somelead to spacious results; others are blind alleys. With this in mind Iwish to suggest that the distinction most worth emphasizing to-day isbetween those who regard government as a routine to be administered andthose who regard it as a problem to be solved. 

The class of routineers is larger than the conservatives. The man whowill follow precedent, but never create one, is merely an obvious exampleof the routineer. You find him desperately numerous in the civil service, in the official bureaus. To him government is something given asunconditionally, as absolutely as ocean or hill. He goes on winding thetape that he finds. His imagination has rarely extricated itself fromunder the administrative machine to gain any sense of what a human, temporary contraption the whole affair is. What he thinks is the heavensabove him is nothing but the roof. 

He is the slave of routine. He can boast of somewhat more spiritualcousins in the men who reverence their ancestors' independence, who feel, as it were, that a disreputable great-grandfather is necessary to afamily's respectability. These are the routineers gifted with historicalsense. They take their forefathers with enormous solemnity. But onemistake is rarely avoided: they imitate the old-fashioned thing theirgrandfather did, and ignore the originality which enabled him to do it. 

If tradition were a reverent record of those crucial moments when menburst through their habits, a love of the past would not be the butt onwhich every sophomoric radical can practice his wit. But almost alwaystradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of thehabits that our ancestors created. The average conservative is a slave tothe most incidental and trivial part of his forefathers' glory--to thearchaic formula which happened to express their genius or the eighteenthcentury contrivance by which for a time it was served. To reverenceWashington they wear a powdered wig; they do honor to Lincoln bycultivating awkward hands and ungainly feet. 

It is fascinating to watch this kind of conservative in action. FromSenator Lodge, for example, we do not expect any new perception ofpopular need. We know that probably his deepest sincerity is an attemptto reproduce the atmosphere of the Senate a hundred years ago. Themanners of Mr. Lodge have that immobility which comes from too muchgazing at bad statues of dead statesmen. 

Yet just because a man is in opposition to Senator Lodge there is noguarantee that he has freed himself from the routineer's habit of mind. Aprejudice against some mannerism or a dislike of pretensions may merelycloak some other kind of routine. Take the "good government" attitude. Nofresh insight is behind that. It does not promise anything; it does notoffer to contribute new values to human life. The machine which exists isaccepted in all its essentials: the "goo-goo" yearns for a somewhatsmoother rotation. 

Often as not the very effort to make the existing machine run moreperfectly merely makes matters worse. For the tinkering reformer isfrequently one of the worst of the routineers. Even machines are notaltogether inflexible, and sometimes what the reformer regards as a saddeviation from the original plans is a poor rickety attempt to adapt themachine to changing conditions. Think what would have happened had weactually remained stolidly faithful to every intention of the Fathers. Think what would happen if every statute were enforced. By the sheerforce of circumstances we have twisted constitutions and laws to someapproximation of our needs. A changing country has managed to live inspite of a static government machine. Perhaps Bernard Shaw was right whenhe said that "the famous Constitution survives only because whenever anycorner of it gets into the way of the accumulating dollar it is pettishlyknocked off and thrown away. Every social development, however beneficialand inevitable from the public point of view, is met, not by anintelligent adaptation of the social structure to its novelties but by apanic and a cry of Go Back. "

I am tempted to go further and put into the same class all those radicalswho wish simply to substitute some other kind of machine for the one wehave. Though not all of them would accept the name, these reformers aresimply utopia-makers in action. Their perceptions are more critical thanthe ordinary conservatives'. They do see that humanity is badly squeezedin the existing mould. They have enough imagination to conceive adifferent one. But they have an infinite faith in moulds. This routinethey don't believe in, but they believe in their own: if you could putthe country under a new "system, " then human affairs would runautomatically for the welfare of all. Some improvement there might be, but as almost all men are held in an iron devotion to their owncreations, the routine reformers are simply working for anotherconservatism, and not for any continuing liberation. 

The type of statesman we must oppose to the routineer is one who regardsall social organization as an instrument. Systems, institutions andmechanical contrivances have for him no virtue of their own: they arevaluable only when they serve the purposes of men. He uses them, ofcourse, but with a constant sense that men have made them, that new onescan be devised, that only an effort of the will can keep machinery in itsplace. He has no faith whatever in automatic governments. While theroutineers see machinery and precedents revolving with mankind aspuppets, he puts the deliberate, conscious, willing individual at thecenter of his philosophy. This reversal is pregnant with a new outlookfor statecraft. I hope to show that it alone can keep step with life; italone is humanly relevant; and it alone achieves valuable results. 

Call this man a political creator or a political inventor. The essentialquality of him is that he makes that part of existence which hasexperience the master of it. He serves the ideals of human feelings, notthe tendencies of mechanical things. 

The difference between a phonograph and the human voice is that thephonograph must sing the song which is stamped upon it. Now there aredays--I suspect the vast majority of them in most of our lives--when wegrind out the thing that is stamped upon us. It may be the governing of acity, or teaching school, or running a business. We do not get out of bedin the morning because we are eager for the day; something external--weoften call it our duty--throws off the bed-clothes, complains that theshaving water isn't hot, puts us into the subway and lands us at ouroffice in season for punching the time-check. We revolve with thebusiness for three or four hours, signing letters, answering telephones, checking up lists, and perhaps towards twelve o'clock the prospect oflunch puts a touch of romance upon life. Then because our days are sounutterably the same, we turn to the newspapers, we go to the magazinesand read only the "stuff with punch, " we seek out a "show" and driveserious playwrights into the poorhouse. "You can go through contemporarylife, " writes Wells, "fudging and evading, indulging and slacking, neverreally hungry nor frightened nor passionately stirred, your highestmoment a mere sentimental orgasm, and your first real contact withprimary and elementary necessities the sweat of your death-bed. "

The world grinds on: we are a fly on the wheel. That sense of animpersonal machine going on with endless reiteration is an experiencethat imaginative politicians face. Often as not they disguise it underheroic phrases and still louder affirmation, just as most of us hide ourcowardly submission to monotony under some word like duty, loyalty, conscience. If you have ever been an office-holder or been close toofficials, you must surely have been appalled by the grim way in whichcommittee-meetings, verbose reports, flamboyant speeches, requests, anddelegations hold the statesman in a mind-destroying grasp. Perhaps thisis the reason why it has been necessary to retire Theodore Roosevelt frompublic life every now and then in order to give him a chance to learnsomething new. Every statesman like every professor should have hissabbatical year. 

The revolt against the service of our own mechanical habits is well knownto anyone who has followed modern thought. As a sharp example one mightpoint to Thomas Davidson, whom William James called "individualist àoutrance". .. . "Reprehending (mildly) a certain chapter of my own on'Habit, ' he said that it was a fixed rule with him to form no regularhabits. When he found himself in danger of settling into even a good one, he made a point of interrupting it. "

Such men are the sparkling streams that flow through the dusty stretchesof a nation. They invigorate and emphasize those times in your own lifewhen each day is new. Then you are alive, then you drive the world beforeyou. The business, however difficult, shapes itself to your effort; youseem to manage detail with an inferior part of yourself, while the realsoul of you is active, planning, light. "I wanted thought like an edge ofsteel and desire like a flame. " Eager with sympathy, you and your workare reflected from many angles. You have become luminous. 

Some people are predominantly eager and wilful. The world does not huddleand bend them to a task. They are not, as we say, creatures ofenvironment, but creators of it. Of other people's environment theybecome the most active part--the part which sets the fashion. What theyinitiate, others imitate. Theirs is a kind of intrinsic prestige. Theseare the natural leaders of men, whether it be as head of the gang or asfounder of a religion. 

It is, I believe, this power of being aggressively active towards theworld which gives man a miraculous assurance that the world is somethinghe can make. In creative moments men always draw upon "some secret springof certainty, some fundamental well into which no disturbing glimmerspenetrate. " But this is no slack philosophy, for the chance is denied bywhich we can lie back upon the perfection of some mechanical contrivance. Yet in the light of it government becomes alert to a process of continualcreation, an unceasing invention of forms to meet constantly changingneeds. 

This philosophy is not only difficult to practice: it is elusive when youcome to state it. For our political language was made to express aroutine conception of government. It comes to us from the EighteenthCentury. And no matter how much we talk about the infusion of the"evolutionary" point of view into all of modern thought, when the test ismade political practice shows itself almost virgin to the idea. Ourtheories assume, and our language is fitted to thinking of government asa frame--Massachusetts, I believe, actually calls her fundamental law theFrame of Government. We picture political institutions as mechanicallyconstructed contrivances within which the nation's life is contained andcompelled to approximate some abstract idea of justice or liberty. Theseframes have very little elasticity, and we take it as an historicalcommonplace that sooner or later a revolution must come to burst theframe apart. Then a new one is constructed. 

Our own Federal Constitution is a striking example of this machineconception of government. It is probably the most important instance wehave of the deliberate application of a mechanical philosophy to humanaffairs. Leaving out all question of the Fathers' ideals, looking simplyat the bias which directed their thinking, is there in all the world amore plain-spoken attempt to contrive an automatic governor--a machinewhich would preserve its balance without the need of taking human natureinto account? What other explanation is there for the naïve faith of theFathers in the "symmetry" of executive, legislature, and judiciary; inthe fantastic attempts to circumvent human folly by balancing it withvetoes and checks? No insight into the evident fact that power upsets allmechanical foresight and gravitates toward the natural leaders seems tohave illuminated those historic deliberations. The Fathers had a ratherpale god, they had only a speaking acquaintance with humanity, so theyput their faith in a scaffold, and it has been part of our national pietyto pretend that they succeeded. 

They worked with the philosophy of their age. Living in the EighteenthCentury, they thought in the images of Newton and Montesquieu. "TheGovernment of the United States, " writes Woodrow Wilson, "was constructedupon the Whig theory of political dynamics, which was a sort ofunconscious copy of the Newtonian theory of the universe. .. . AsMontesquieu pointed out to them (the English Whigs) in his lucid way, they had sought to balance executive, legislative and judiciary offagainst one another by a series of checks and counterpoises, which Newtonmight readily have recognized as suggestive of the mechanism of theheavens. " No doubt this automatic and balanced theory of governmentsuited admirably that distrust of the people which seems to have been adominant feeling among the Fathers. For they were the conservatives oftheir day: between '76 and '89 they had gone the usual way of opportunistradicals. But had they written the Constitution in the fire of theiryouth, they might have made it more democratic, --I doubt whether theywould have made it less mechanical. The rebellious spirit of Tom Paineexpressed itself in logical formulæ as inflexible to the pace of life asdid the more contented Hamilton's. This is a determinant which burrowsbeneath our ordinary classification of progressive and reactionary to thespiritual habits of a period. 

If you look into the early utopias of Fourier and Saint-Simon, or betterstill into the early trade unions, this same faith that a government canbe made to work mechanically is predominant everywhere. All the devicesof rotation in office, short terms, undelegated authority are simplyattempts to defeat the half-perceived fact that power will not long staydiffused. It is characteristic of these primitive democracies that theyworship Man and distrust men. They cling to some arrangement, hopingagainst experience that a government freed from human nature willautomatically produce human benefits. To-day within the Socialist Partythere is perhaps the greatest surviving example of the desire to offsetnatural leadership by artificial contrivance. It is an article of faithamong orthodox socialists that personalities do not count, and Isincerely believe I am not exaggerating the case when I say that theirideal of government is like Gordon Craig's ideal of the theater--theacting is to be done by a row of supermarionettes. There is a myth amongsocialists to which all are expected to subscribe, that initiativesprings anonymously out of the mass of the people, --that there are no"leaders, " that the conspicuous figures are no more influential than thefigurehead on the prow of a ship. 

This is one of the paradoxes of the democratic movement--that it loves acrowd and fears the individuals who compose it--that the religion ofhumanity should have had no faith in human beings. Jealous of allindividuals, democracies have turned to machines. They have tried to blotout human prestige, to minimize the influence of personality. That thereis historical justification for this fear is plain enough. To put itbriefly, democracy is afraid of the tyrant. That explains, but does notjustify. Governments have to be carried on by men, however much wedistrust them. Nobody has yet invented a mechanically beneficentsovereign. 

Democracy has put an unfounded faith in automatic contrivances. Becauseit left personality out of its speculation, it rested in the empty faiththat it had excluded it from reality. But in the actual stress of lifethese frictions do not survive ten minutes. Public officials do notbecome political marionettes, though people pretend that they are. Whentheory runs against the grain of living forces, the result is a deceptivetheory of politics. If the real government of the United States "had, infact, " as Woodrow Wilson says, "been a machine governed by mechanicallyautomatic balances, it would have had no history; but it was not, and itshistory has been rich with the influence and personalities of the men whohave conducted it and made it a living reality. " Only by violating thevery spirit of the constitution have we been able to preserve the letterof it. For behind that balanced plan there grew up what Senator Beveridgehas called so brilliantly the "invisible government, " an empire ofnatural groups about natural leaders. Parties are such groups: they havehad a power out of all proportion to the intentions of the Fathers. Behind the parties has grown up the "political machine"--falsely called amachine, the very opposite of one in fact, a natural sovereignty, Ibelieve. The really rigid and mechanical thing is the charter behindwhich Tammany works. For Tammany is the real government that has defeateda mechanical foresight. Tammany is not a freak, a strange and monstrousexcrescence. Its structure and the laws of its life are, I believe, typical of all real sovereignties. You can find Tammany duplicatedwherever there is a social group to be governed--in trade unions, inclubs, in boys' gangs, in the Four Hundred, in the Socialist Party. It isan accretion of power around a center of influence, cemented bypatronage, graft, favors, friendship, loyalties, habits, --a humangrouping, a natural pyramid. 

Only recently have we begun to see that the "political ring" is notsomething confined to public life. It was Lincoln Steffens, I believe, who first perceived that fact. For a time it was my privilege to workunder him on an investigation of the "Money Power. " The leading idea wasdifferent from customary "muckraking. " We were looking not for the evilsof Big Business, but for its anatomy. Mr. Steffens came to the subjectwith a first-hand knowledge of politics. He knew the "invisiblegovernment" of cities, states, and the nation. He knew how the bossworked, how he organized his power. When Mr. Steffens approached the vastconfusion and complication of big business, he needed some hypothesis toguide him through that maze of facts. He made a bold and brilliant guess, an hypothesis. To govern a life insurance company, Mr. Steffens argued, was just as much "government" as to run a city. What if political methodsexisted in the realm of business? The investigation was never carriedthrough completely, but we did study the methods by which several lifeand fire insurance companies, banks, two or three railroads, and severalindustrials are controlled. We found that the anatomy of Big Business wasstrikingly like that of Tammany Hall: the same pyramiding of influence, the same tendency of power to center on individuals who did notnecessarily sit in the official seats, the same effort of humanorganization to grow independently of legal arrangements. Thus in thelife insurance companies, and the Hughes investigation supports this, thereal power was held not by the president, not by the voters orpolicy-holders, but by men who were not even directors. After a while wetook it as a matter of course that the head of a company was anadministrative dummy, with a dependence on unofficial power similar tothat of Governor Dix on Boss Murphy. That seems to be typical of thewhole economic life of this country. It is controlled by groups of menwhose influence extends like a web to smaller, tributary groups, cuttingacross all official boundaries and designations, making short work of alllegal formulæ, and exercising sovereignty regardless of the little fenceswe erect to keep it in bounds. 

A glimpse into the labor world revealed very much the same condition. Theboss, and the bosslet, the heeler--the men who are "it"--all are thereexercising the real power, the power that independently of charters andelections decides what shall happen. I don't wish to have this regardedas necessarily malign. It seems so now because we put our faith in theideal arrangements which it disturbs. But if we could come to face itsquarely--to see that that is what sovereignty is--that if we are to usehuman power for human purposes we must turn to the realities of it, thenwe shall have gone far towards leaving behind us the futile hopes ofmechanical perfection so constantly blasted by natural facts. 

The invisible government is malign. But the evil doesn't come from thefact that it plays horse with the Newtonian theory of the constitution. What is dangerous about it is that we do not see it, cannot use it, andare compelled to submit to it. The nature of political power we shall notchange. If that is the way human societies organize sovereignty, thesooner we face that fact the better. For the object of democracy is notto imitate the rhythm of the stars but to harness political power to thenation's need. If corporations and governments have indeed gone on a joyride the business of reform is not to set up fences, Sherman Acts andinjunctions into which they can bump, but to take the wheel and to steer. 

The corruption of which we hear so much is certainly not accounted forwhen you have called it dishonesty. It is too widespread for any suchglib explanation. When you see how business controls politics, itcertainly is not very illuminating to call the successful business men ofa nation criminals. Yet I suppose that all of them violate the law. Maynot this constant dodging or hurdling of statutes be a sign that there issomething the matter with the statutes? Is it not possible that graft isthe cracking and bursting of the receptacles in which we have tried toconstrain the business of this country? It seems possible that businesshas had to control politics because its laws were so stupidlyobstructive. In the trust agitation this is especially plausible. Forthere is every reason to believe that concentration is a world-widetendency, made possible at first by mechanical inventions, fostered bythe disastrous experiences of competition, and accepted by business menthrough contagion and imitation. Certainly the trusts increase. Whereverpolitics is rigid and hostile to that tendency, there is irritation andstruggle, but the agglomeration goes on. Hindered by politicalconditions, the process becomes secretive and morbid. The trust is notchecked, but it is perverted. In 1910 the "American Banker" estimatedthat there were 1, 198 corporations with 8, 110 subsidiaries liable to allthe penalties of the Sherman Act. Now this concentration must represent aprofound impetus in the business world--an impetus which certainly cannotbe obliterated, even if anyone were foolish enough to wish it. I ventureto suggest that much of what is called "corruption" is the odor of adecaying political system done to death by an economic growth. 

It is our desperate adherence to an old method that has produced theconfusion of political life. Because we have insisted upon looking atgovernment as a frame and governing as a routine, because in short wehave been static in our theories, politics has such an unreal relation toactual conditions. Feckless--that is what our politics is. It isliterally eccentric: it has been centered mechanically instead ofvitally. We have, it seems, been seduced by a fictitious analogy: we havehoped for machine regularity when we needed human initiative andleadership, when life was crying that its inventive abilities should befreed. 

Roosevelt in his term did much to center government truly. For a timenatural leadership and nominal position coincided, and the administrationbecame in a measure a real sovereignty. The routine conception dwindled, and the Roosevelt appointees went at issues as problems to be solved. They may have been mistaken: Roosevelt may be uncritical in hisjudgments. But the fact remains that the Roosevelt régime gave a newprestige to the Presidency by effecting through it the greatest releaseof political invention in a generation. Contrast it with the Taftadministration, and the quality is set in relief. Taft was the perfectroutineer trying to run government as automatically as possible. Hissincerity consisted in utter respect for form: he denied himself whateverleadership he was capable of, and outwardly at least he tried to"balance" the government. His greatest passions seem to be purelyadministrative and legal. The people did not like it. They said it wasdead. They were right. They had grown accustomed to a humanly liberatingatmosphere in which formality was an instrument instead of an idol. Theyhad seen the Roosevelt influence adding to the resources oflife--irrigation, and waterways, conservation, the Panama Canal, the"country life" movement. They knew these things were achieved throughinitiative that burst through formal restrictions, and they applaudedwildly. It was only a taste, but it was a taste, a taste of whatgovernment might be like. 

The opposition was instructive. Apart from those who feared Roosevelt forselfish reasons, his enemies were men who loved an orderly adherence totraditional methods. They shivered in the emotional gale; they obstructedand the gale became destructive. They felt that, along with obviouslygood things, this sudden national fertility might breed a monster--that aleadership like Roosevelt's might indeed prove dangerous, as giving birthmay lead to death. 

What the methodically-minded do not see is that the sterility of aroutine is far more appalling. Not everyone may feel that to push outinto the untried, and take risks for big prizes, is worth while. Men willtell you that government has no business to undertake an adventure, tomake experiments. They think that safety lies in repetition, that if youdo nothing, nothing will be done to you. It's a mistake due to poverty ofimagination and inability to learn from experience. Even the timidestsoul dare not "stand pat. " The indictment against mere routine ingovernment is a staggering one. 

For while statesmen are pottering along doing the same thing year in, year out, putting up the tariff one year and down the next, passingappropriation bills and recodifying laws, the real forces in the countrydo not stand still. Vast changes, economic and psychological, take place, and these changes demand new guidance. But the routineers are alwaysunprepared. It has become one of the grim trade jokes of innovators thatthe one thing you can count upon is that the rulers will come to thinkthat they are the apex of human development. For a queer effect ofresponsibility on men is that it makes them try to be as much likemachines as possible. Tammany itself becomes rigid when it is toosuccessful, and only defeat seems to give it new life. Success makes menrigid and they tend to exalt stability over all the other virtues; tiredof the effort of willing they become fanatics about conservatism. Butconditions change whether statesmen wish them to or not; society musthave new institutions to fit new wants, and all that rigid conservatismcan do is to make the transitions difficult. Violent revolutions may becharged up to the unreadiness of statesmen. It is because they will notsee, or cannot see, that feudalism is dead, that chattel slavery isantiquated; it is because they have not the wisdom and the audacity toanticipate these great social changes; it is because they insist uponstanding pat that we have French Revolutions and Civil Wars. 

But statesmen who had decided that at last men were to be the masters oftheir own history, instead of its victims, would face politics in a trulyrevolutionary manner. It would give a new outlook to statesmanship, turning it from the mere preservation of order, the administration ofpolitical machinery and the guarding of ancient privilege to theinvention of new political forms, the prevision of social wants, and thepreparation for new economic growths. 

Such a statesmanship would in the '80's have prepared for the trustmovement. There would have been nothing miraculous in such foresight. Standard Oil was dominant by the beginning of the '80's, andconcentration had begun in sugar, steel and other basic industries. Herewas an economic tendency of revolutionary significance--the organizationof business in a way that was bound to change the outlook of a wholenation. It had vast potentialities for good and evil--all it wanted washarnessing and directing. But the new thing did not fit into the littleoutlines and verbosities which served as a philosophy for our politicalhacks. So they gaped at it and let it run wild, called it names, andthrew stones at it. And by that time the force was too big for them. Analert statesmanship would have facilitated the process of concentration;would have made provision for those who were cast aside; would have beenan ally of trust building, and by that very fact it would have had aninternal grip on the trust--it would have kept the trust's inner workingspublic; it could have bent the trust to social uses. 

This is not mere wisdom after the event. In the '80's there were hundredsof thousands of people in the world who understood that the trust was anatural economic growth. Karl Marx had proclaimed it some thirty yearsbefore, and it was a widely circulated idea. Is it asking too much of astatesman if we expect him to know political theory and to balance itwith the facts he sees? By the '90's surely, the egregious folly of aSherman Anti-Trust Law should have been evident to any man who pretendedto political leadership. Yet here it is the year 1912 and that monumentof economic ignorance and superstition is still worshiped with the lipsby two out of the three big national parties. 

Another movement--like that of the trust--is gathering strength to-day. It is the unification of wage-workers. We stand in relation to it as themen of the '80's did to the trusts. It is the complement of that problem. It also has vast potentialities for good and evil. It, too, demandsunderstanding and direction. It, too, will not be stopped by hard namesor injunctions. 

What we loosely call "syndicalism" is a tendency that no statesman canoverlook to-day without earning the jeers of his children. This labormovement has a destructive and constructive energy within it. On itsbeneficent side it promises a new professional interest in work, self-education, and the co-operative management of industry. But thiscreative power is constantly choked off because the unions are compelledto fight for their lives--the more opposition they meet the more you arelikely to see of sabotage, direct action, the grève perlée--the lesschance there is for the educative forces to show themselves. Then, themore violent syndicalism proves itself to be, the more hysterically webait it in the usual vicious circle of ignorance. 

But who amongst us is optimistic enough to hope that the men who sit inthe mighty positions are going to make a better show of themselves thantheir predecessors did over the trust problem? It strains hope a littletoo much. Those men in Washington, most of them lawyers, are so educatedthat they are practically incapable of meeting a new condition. All theirtraining plus all their natural ossification of mind is hostile toinvention. You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; thejolliest steam-roller will not plant flowers. 

The thought-processes in Washington are too lumbering for the needs ofthis nation. Against that evil muckraking ought to be directed. Thosesenators and representatives are largely irrelevant; they are notconcerned with realities. Their dishonesties are comparativelyinsignificant. The scorn of the public should be turned upon theemptiness of political thought, upon the fact that those men seem withouteven a conception of the nation's needs. And while they maunder alongthey stifle the forces of life which are trying to break through. It wasnothing but the insolence of the routineer that forced Gifford Pinchotout of the Forest Service. Pinchot in respect to his subject was a finepolitical inventor. But routine forced him out--into what?--into the moiland toil of fighting for offices, and there he has cut a poor figureindeed. You may say that he has had to spend his energy trying to find achance to use his power. What a wanton waste of talent is that for acivilized nation! Wiley is another case of the creative mind harassed bythe routineers. Judge Lindsey is another--a fine, constructive children'sjudge compelled to be a politician. And of our misuse of the Rockefellersand Carnegies--the retrospect is appalling. Here was industrial geniusunquestionably beyond the ordinary. What did this nation do with it? Itfound no public use for talent. It left that to operate in darkness--thenopinion rose in an empty fury, made an outlaw of one and a platitudinousphilanthropist of the other. It could lynch one as a moral monster, whenas a matter of fact his ideals were commonplace; it could proclaim one agreat benefactor when in truth he was a rather dull old gentleman. Abusedout of all reason or praised irrelevantly--the one thing this nation hasnot been able to do with these men is to use their genius. It is thislife-sapping quality of our politics that should be fought--its wantonwaste of the initiatives we have--its stupid indifference. 

We need a new sense of political values. These times require a differentorder of thinking. We cannot expect to meet our problems with a fewinherited ideas, uncriticised assumptions, a foggy vocabulary, and amachine philosophy. Our political thinking needs the infusion ofcontemporary insights. The enormous vitality that is regenerating otherinterests can be brought into the service of politics. Our primary caremust be to keep the habits of the mind flexible and adapted to themovement of real life. The only way to control our destiny is to workwith it. In politics, at least, we stoop to conquer. There is no use, noheroism, in butting against the inevitable, yet nothing is entirelyinevitable. There is always some choice, some opportunity for humandirection. 

It is not easy. It is far easier to treat life as if it were dead, men asif they were dolls. It is everlastingly difficult to keep the mindflexible and alert. The rule of thumb is not here. To follow the pace ofliving requires enormous vigilance and sympathy. No one can writeconclusively about it. Compared with this creative statesmanship, theadministering of a routine or the battle for a platitude is a very simpleaffair. But genuine politics is not an inhuman task. Part of thegenuineness is its unpretentious humanity. I am not creating the figureof an ideal statesman out of some inner fancy. That is just the deepesterror of our political thinking--to talk of politics without reference tohuman beings. The creative men appear in public life in spite of the coldblanket the politicians throw over them. Really statesmanlike things aredone, inventions are made. But this real achievement comes to usconfused, mixed with much that is contradictory. Political inventors areto-day largely unconscious of their purpose, and, so, defenceless againstthe distraction of their routineer enemies. 

Lacking a philosophy they are defenceless against their own innertendency to sink into repetition. As a witty Frenchman remarked, manygeniuses become their own disciples. This is true when the attention isslack, and effort has lost its direction. We have elaborate governmentalmechanisms--like the tariff, for example, which we go on making more"scientific" year in, year out--having long since lost sight of theirhuman purpose. They may be defeating the very ends they were meant toserve. We cling to constitutions out of "loyalty. " We trudge in thetreadmill and call it love of our ancient institutions. We emulate themule, that greatest of all routineers. 

CHAPTER II

THE TABOO

Our government has certainly not measured up to expectations. Evenchronic admirers of the "balance" and "symmetry" of the Constitutionadmit either by word or deed that it did not foresee the whole history ofthe American people. Poor bewildered statesmen, unused to any notion ofchange, have seen the national life grow to a monstrous confusion andsprout monstrous evils by the way. Men and women clamored for remedies, vowed, shouted and insisted that their "official servants" dosomething--something statesmanlike--to abate so much evident wrong. Buttheir representatives had very little more than a frock coat and a sloganas equipment for the task. Trained to interpret a constitution instead oflife, these statesmen faced with historic helplessness the vociferationsof ministers, muckrakers, labor leaders, women's clubs, granges andreformers' leagues. Out of a tumultuous medley appeared the common themeof public opinion--that the leaders should lead, that the governorsshould govern. 

The trusts had appeared, labor was restless, vice seemed to be corruptingthe vitality of the nation. Statesmen had to do something. Their trainingwas legal and therefore utterly inadequate, but it was all they had. Theybecame panicky and reverted to an ancient superstition. They forbade theexistence of evil by law. They made it anathema. They pronounced itdamnable. They threatened to club it. They issued a legislative curse, and called upon the district attorney to do the rest. They started out toabolish human instincts, check economic tendencies and repress socialchanges by laws prohibiting them. They turned to this sanctifiedignorance which is rampant in almost any nursery, which presides atfamily councils, flourishes among "reformers"; which from time immemorialhas haunted legislatures and courts. Under the spell of it men try tostop drunkenness by closing the saloons; when poolrooms shock them theycall a policeman; if Haywood becomes annoying, they procure aninjunction. They meet the evils of dance halls by barricading them; theygo forth to battle against vice by raiding brothels and finingprostitutes. For trusts there is a Sherman Act. In spite of allexperience they cling desperately to these superstitions. 

It is the method of the taboo, as naïve as barbarism, as ancient as humanfailure. 

There is a law against suicide. It is illegal for a man to kill himself. What it means in practice, of course, is that there is punishment waitingfor a man who doesn't succeed in killing himself. We say to the man whois tired of life that if he bungles we propose to make this world stillless attractive by clapping him into jail. I know an economist who has ascheme for keeping down the population by refusing very poor people amarriage license. He used to teach Sunday school and deplore promiscuity. In the annual report of the president of a distilling company I once sawthe statement that business had increased in the "dry" states. In aprohibition town where I lived you could drink all you wanted bybelonging to a "club" or winking at the druggist. And in another citywhere Sunday closing was strictly enforced, a minister told me withpainful surprise that the Monday police blotter showed less drunks andmore wife-beaters. 

We pass a law against race-track gambling and add to the profits fromfaro. We raid the faro joints, and drive gambling into the home, wherepoker and bridge whist are taught to children who follow their parents'example. We deprive anarchists of free speech by the heavy hand of apolice magistrate, and furnish them with a practical instead of atheoretical argument against government. We answer strikes with bayonets, and make treason one of the rights of man. 

Everybody knows that when you close the dance halls you fill the parks. Men who in their youth took part in "crusades" against the Tenderloin nowadmit in a crestfallen way that they succeeded merely in sprinkling theTenderloin through the whole city. Over twenty years ago we formulated asweeping taboo against trusts. Those same twenty years mark thecentralization of industry. 

The routineer in a panic turns to the taboo. Whatever does not fit intohis rigid little scheme of things must have its head chopped off. Nowhuman nature and the changing social forces it generates are the verymaterial which fit least well into most little schemes of things. A mancannot sleep in his cradle: whatever is useful must in the nature of lifebecome useless. We employ our instruments and abandon them. But nothingso simply true as that prevails in politics. When a government routineconflicts with the nation's purposes--the statesman actually makes avirtue of his loyalty to the routine. His practice is to ignore humancharacter and pay no attention to social forces. The shallow presumptionis that undomesticated impulses can be obliterated; that world-wideeconomic inventions can be stamped out by jailing millionaires--andacting in the spirit of Mr. Chesterton's man Fipps "who went mad and ranabout the country with an axe, hacking branches off the trees wheneverthere were not the same number on both sides. " The routineer is, ofcourse, the first to decry every radical proposal as "against humannature. " But the stand-pat mind has forfeited all right to speak forhuman nature. It has devoted the centuries to torturing men's instincts, stamping on them, passing laws against them, lifting its eyebrows at thethought of them--doing everything but trying to understand them. The samepeople who with daily insistence say that innovators ignore facts are inthe absurd predicament of trying to still human wants with petty taboos. Social systems like ours, which do not even feed and house men and women, which deny pleasure, cramp play, ban adventure, propose celibacy andgrind out monotony, are a clear confession of sterility in statesmanship. And politics, however pretentiously rhetorical about ideals, isirrelevant if the only method it knows is to ostracize the desires itcannot manage. 

Suppose that statesmen transferred their reverence from the precedentsand mistakes of their ancestors to the human material which they have setout to govern. Suppose they looked mankind in the face and askedthemselves what was the result of answering evil with a prohibition. Suchan exercise would, I fear, involve a considerable strain on whatreformers call their moral sensibilities. For human nature is a rathershocking affair if you come to it with ordinary romantic optimism. Certainly the human nature that figures in most political thinking is awraith that never was--not even in the souls of politicians. "Idealism"creates an abstraction and then shudders at a reality which does notanswer to it. Now statesmen who have set out to deal with actual lifemust deal with actual people. They cannot afford an inclusive pessimismabout mankind. Let them have the consistency and good sense to ceasebothering about men if men's desires seem intrinsically evil. Moraljudgment about the ultimate quality of character is dangerous to apolitician. He is too constantly tempted to call a policeman when hedisapproves. 

We must study our failures. Gambling and drink, for example, produce muchmisery. But what reformers have to learn is that men don't gamble justfor the sake of violating the law. They do so because something withinthem is satisfied by betting or drinking. To erect a ban doesn't stop thewant. It merely prevents its satisfaction. And since this desire forstimulants or taking a chance at a prize is older and far more deeplyrooted in the nature of men than love of the Prohibition Party orreverence for laws made at Albany, people will contrive to drink andgamble in spite of the acts of a legislature. 

A man may take liquor for a variety of reasons: he may be thirsty; ordepressed; or unusually happy; he may want the companionship of a saloon, or he may hope to forget a scolding wife. Perhaps he needs a "bracer" ina weary hunt for a job. Perhaps he has a terrible craving for alcohol. Hedoes not take a drink so that he may become an habitual drunkard, or belocked up in jail, or get into a brawl, or lose his job, or go insane. These are what he might call the unfortunate by-products of his desire. If once he could find something which would do for him what liquor does, without hurting him as liquor does, there would be no problem of drink. Bernard Shaw says he has found that substitute in going to church whenthere's no service. Goethe wrote "The Sorrows of Werther" in order to getrid of his own. Many an unhappy lover has found peace by expressing hismisery in sonnet form. The problem is to find something for the commonman who is not interested in contemporary churches and who can't writesonnets. 

When the socialists in Milwaukee began to experiment with municipaldances they were greeted with indignant protests from the "anti-vice"element and with amused contempt by the newspaper paragraphers. Thedances were discontinued, and so the belief in their failure is complete. I think, though, that Mayor Seidel's defense would by itself make thisexperiment memorable. He admitted freely the worst that can be saidagainst the ordinary dance hall. So far he was with the petty reformers. Then he pointed out with considerable vehemence that dance halls were anurgent social necessity. At that point he had transcended the mind of thepetty reformer completely. "We propose, " said Seidel, "to go intocompetition with the devil. "

Nothing deeper has come from an American mayor in a long, long time. Itis the point that Jane Addams makes in the opening pages of that wiselysweet book, "The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets. " She callsattention to the fact that the modern state has failed to provide forpleasure. "This stupid experiment, " she writes, "of organizing work andfailing to organize play has, of course, brought about a fine revenge. The love of pleasure will not be denied, and when it has turned into allsorts of malignant and vicious appetites, then we, the middle-aged, growquite distracted and resort to all sorts of restrictive measures. "

For human nature seems to have wants that must be filled. If nobody elsesupplies them, the devil will. The demand for pleasure, adventure, romance has been left to the devil's catering for so long a time thatmost people think he inspires the demand. He doesn't. Our neglect is thedevil's opportunity. What we should use, we let him abuse, and thecorruption of the best things, as Hume remarked, produces the worst. Pleasure in our cities has become tied to lobster palaces, adventure toexalted murderers, romance to silly, mooning novels. Like the flower girlin Galsworthy's play, we have made a very considerable confusion of thelife of joy and the joy of life. The first impulse is to abolish alllobster palaces, melodramas, yellow newspapers, and sentimentally eroticnovels. Why not abolish all the devil's works? the reformer wonders. Theanswer is in history. It can't be done that way. It is impossible toabolish either with a law or an axe the desires of men. It is dangerous, explosively dangerous, to thwart them for any length of time. ThePuritans tried to choke the craving for pleasure in early New England. They had no theaters, no dances, no festivals. They burned witchesinstead. 

We rail a good deal against Tammany Hall. Reform tickets make periodicsallies against it, crying economy, efficiency, and a businessadministration. And we all pretend to be enormously surprised when the"ignorant foreign vote" prefers a corrupt political ring to a party ofwell-dressed, grammatical, and high-minded gentlemen. Some of us are evenrather downcast about democracy because the Bowery doesn't take to heartthe admonitions of the Evening Post. 

We forget completely the important wants supplied by Tammany Hall. Weforget that this is a lonely country for an immigrant and that the Statueof Liberty doesn't shed her light with too much warmth. Possessingnothing but a statistical, inhuman conception of government, the averagemunicipal reformer looks down contemptuously upon a man like Tim Sullivanwith his clambakes and his dances; his warm and friendly saloons, hishandshaking and funeral-going and baby-christening; his readiness to getcoal for the family, and a job for the husband. But a Tim Sullivan iscloser to the heart of statesmanship than five City Clubs full of peoplewho want low taxes and orderly bookkeeping. He does things which have tobe done. He humanizes a strange country; he is a friend at court; herepresents the legitimate kindliness of government, standing between thepoor and the impersonal, uninviting majesty of the law. Let no man wonderthat Lorimer's people do not prefer an efficiency expert, that a TimSullivan has power, or that men are loyal to Hinky Dink. The cry raisedagainst these men by the average reformer is a piece of cold, unreal, preposterous idealism compared to the solid warm facts of kindliness, clothes, food and fun. 

You cannot beat the bosses with the reformer's taboo. You will not getfar on the Bowery with the cost unit system and low taxes. And I don'tblame the Bowery. You can beat Tammany Hall permanently in one way--bymaking the government of a city as human, as kindly, as jolly as TammanyHall. I am aware of the contract-grafts, the franchise-steals, the dirtystreets, the bribing and the blackmail, the vice-and-crime partnerships, the Big Business alliances of Tammany Hall. And yet it seems to me thatTammany has a better perception of human need, and comes nearer to beingwhat a government should be, than any scheme yet proposed by a group of"uptown good government" enthusiasts. Tammany is not a satanic instrumentof deception, cleverly devised to thwart "the will of the people. " It isa crude and largely unconscious answer to certain immediate needs, andwithout those needs its power would crumble. That is why I ventured inthe preceding chapter to describe it as a natural sovereignty which hadgrown up behind a mechanical form of government. It is a poor weedcompared to what government might be. But it is a real government thathas power and serves a want, and not a frame imposed upon men from ontop. 

The taboo--the merely negative law--is the emptiest of all theimpositions from on top. In its long record of failure, in thecomparative success of Tammany, those who are aiming at social changescan see a profound lesson; the impulses, cravings and wants of men mustbe employed. You can employ them well or ill, but you must employ them. Agroup of reformers lounging at a club cannot, dare not, decide to closeup another man's club because it is called a saloon. Unless the reformercan invent something which substitutes attractive virtues for attractivevices, he will fail. He will fail because human nature abhors the vacuumcreated by the taboo. 

An incident in the international peace propaganda illuminates this point. Not long ago a meeting in Carnegie Hall, New York, to forward peace amongnations broke up in great disorder. Thousands of people who hate thewaste and futility of war as much as any of the orators of that eveningwere filled with an unholy glee. They chuckled with delight at the ideaof a riot in a peace meeting. Though it would have seemed perverse to theordinary pacificist, this sentiment sprang from a respectable source. Ithad the same ground as the instinctive feeling of nine men in ten thatRoosevelt has more right to talk about peace than William Howard Taft. James made it articulate in his essay on "The Moral Equivalent of War. "James was a great advocate of peace, but he understood Theodore Rooseveltand he spoke for the military man when he wrote of war that: "Its'horrors' are a cheap price to pay for rescue from the only alternativesupposed, of a world of clerks and teachers, of co-education andzo-ophily, of 'consumers' leagues' and 'associated charities, ' ofindustrialism unlimited, and feminism unabashed. No scorn, no hardness, no valor any more! Fie upon such a cattleyard of a planet!"

And he added: "So far as the central essence of this feeling goes, nohealthy minded person, it seems to me, can help to some degree partakingof it. Militarism is the great preserver of our ideals of hardihood, andhuman life with no use for hardihood would be contemptible. Without risksor prizes for the darer, history would be insipid indeed; and there is atype of military character which everyone feels that the race shouldnever cease to breed, for everyone is sensitive to its superiority. "

So William James proposed not the abolition of war, but a moralequivalent for it. He dreamed of "a conscription of the whole youthfulpopulation to form for a certain number of years a part of the armyenlisted against _Nature_. .. . The military ideals of hardihood anddiscipline would be wrought into the growing fibre of the people; no onewould remain blind, as the luxurious classes now are blind, to man'srelations to the globe he lives on, and to the permanently sour and hardfoundations of his higher life. " Now we are not concerned here over thequestion of this particular proposal. The telling point in my opinion isthis: that when a wise man, a student of human nature, and a reformer metin the same person, the taboo was abandoned. James has given us a lastingphrase when he speaks of the "moral equivalent" of evil. We can use it, Ibelieve, as a guide post to statesmanship. Rightly understood, the ideabehind the words contains all that is valuable in conservatism, and, forthe first time, gives a reputable meaning to that tortured epithet"constructive. "

"The military feelings, " says James, "are too deeply grounded to abdicatetheir place among our ideals until better substitutes are offered . .. Such a conscription, with the state of public opinion that would haverequired it, and the many moral fruits it would bear, would preserve inthe midst of a pacific civilization the manly virtues which the militaryparty is so afraid of seeing disappear in peace. .. . So far, war has beenthe only force that can discipline a whole community, and until anequivalent discipline is organized I believe that war must have its way. But I have no serious doubt that the ordinary prides and shames of socialman, once developed to a certain intensity, are capable of organizingsuch a moral equivalent as I have sketched, or some other just aseffective for preserving manliness of type. It is but a question of time, of skilful propagandism, and of opinion-making men seizing historicopportunities. The martial type of character can be bred without war. "

To find for evil its moral equivalent is to be conservative about valuesand radical about forms, to turn to the establishment of positively goodthings instead of trying simply to check bad ones, to emphasize theadditions to life, instead of the restrictions upon it, to substitute, ifyou like, the love of heaven for the fear of hell. Such a program meansthe dignified utilization of the whole nature of man. It will recognizeas the first test of all political systems and moral codes whether or notthey are "against human nature. " It will insist that they be cut to fitthe whole man, not merely a part of him. For there are utopian proposalsmade every day which cover about as much of a human being as a beautifulhat does. 

Instead of tabooing our impulses, we must redirect them. Instead oftrying to crush badness we must turn the power behind it to good account. The assumption is that every lust is capable of some civilizedexpression. 

We say, in effect, that evil is a way by which desire expresses itself. The older moralists, the taboo philosophers believed that the desiresthemselves were inherently evil. To us they are the energies of the soul, neither good nor bad in themselves. Like dynamite, they are capable ofall sorts of uses, and it is the business of civilization, through thefamily and the school, religion, art, science, and all institutions, totransmute these energies into fine values. Behind evil there is power, and it is folly, --wasting and disappointing folly, --to ignore this powerbecause it has found an evil issue. All that is dynamic in humancharacter is in these rooted lusts. The great error of the taboo has beenjust this: that it believed each desire had only one expression, that ifthat expression was evil the desire itself was evil. We know a littlebetter to-day. We know that it is possible to harness desire to manyinterests, that evil is one form of a desire, and not the nature of it. 

This supplies us with a standard for judging reforms, and so makes clearwhat "constructive" action really is. When it was discovered recentlythat the boys' gang was not an unmitigated nuisance to be chased by apoliceman, but a force that could be made valuable to civilizationthrough the Boy Scouts, a really constructive reform was given to theworld. The effervescence of boys on the street, wasted and pervertedthrough neglect or persecution, was drained and applied to fine uses. When Percy MacKaye pleads for pageants in which the people themselvesparticipate, he offers an opportunity for expressing some of the lusts ofthe city in the form of an art. The Freudian school of psychologistscalls this "sublimation. " They have brought forward a wealth of materialwhich gives us every reason to believe that the theory of "moralequivalents" is soundly based, that much the same energies produce crimeand civilization, art, vice, insanity, love, lust, and religion. In eachindividual the original differences are small. Training and opportunitydecide in the main how men's lust shall emerge. Left to themselves, orignorantly tabooed, they break forth in some barbaric or morbid form. Only by supplying our passions with civilized interests can we escapetheir destructive force. 

I have put it negatively, as a counsel of prudence. But he who has thecourage of existence will put it triumphantly, crying "yea" as Nietzschedid, and recognizing that all the passions of men are the motive powersof a fine life. 

For the roads that lead to heaven and hell are one until they part. 

CHAPTER III

THE CHANGING FOCUS

The taboo, however useless, is at least concrete. Although it achieveslittle besides mischief, it has all the appearance of practical action, and consequently enlists the enthusiasm of those people whom Wellsdescribes as rushing about the country shouting: "For Gawd's sake let's_do_ something _now_. " There are weight and solidity in a policeman'sclub, while a "moral equivalent" happens to be pale like the stuff ofwhich dreams are made. To the politician whose daily life consists indodging the thousand and one conflicting prejudices of his constituents, in bickering with committees, intriguing and playing for the vote; to thebusiness man harassed on four sides by the trust, the union, the law, andpublic opinion, --distrustful of any wide scheme because the stupidity ofhis shipping clerk is the most vivid item in his mind, all thisdiscussion about politics and the inner life will sound like so muchfine-spun nonsense. 

I, for one, am not disposed to blame the politicians and the businessmen. They govern the nation, it is true, but they do it in a ratherabsentminded fashion. Those revolutionists who see the misery of thecountry as a deliberate and fiendish plot overestimate the bad will, theintelligence and the singleness of purpose in the ruling classes. Business and political leaders don't mean badly; the trouble with them isthat most of the time they don't mean anything. They picture themselvesas very "practical, " which in practice amounts to saying that nothingmakes them feel so spiritually homeless as the discussion of values andan invitation to examine first principles. Ideas, most of the time, causethem genuine distress, and are as disconcerting as an idle office boy, ora squeaky telephone. 

I do not underestimate the troubles of the man of affairs. I have livedwith politicians, --with socialist politicians whose good-will wasabundant and intentions constructive. The petty vexations pile up intomountains; the distracting details scatter the attention and break upthinking, while the mere problem of exercising power crowds outspeculation about what to do with it. Personal jealousies interruptco-ordinated effort; committee sessions wear out nerves by their aimlessdrifting; constant speech-making turns a man back upon a convenientlittle store of platitudes--misunderstanding and distortion dry up theimagination, make thought timid and expression flat, the atmosphere ofpublicity requires a mask which soon becomes the reality. Politicianstend to live "in character, " and many a public figure has come to imitatethe journalism which describes him. You cannot blame politicians if theirperceptions are few and their thinking crude. 

Football strategy does not originate in a scrimmage: it is useless toexpect solutions in a political campaign. Woodrow Wilson brought topublic life an exceedingly flexible mind, --many of us when he firstemerged rejoiced at the clean and athletic quality of his thinking. Buteven he under the stress of a campaign slackened into commonplacereiteration, accepting a futile and intellectually dishonest platform, closing his eyes to facts, misrepresenting his opponents, abandoning, inshort, the very qualities which distinguished him. It is understandable. When a National Committee puts a megaphone to a man's mouth and tells himto yell, it is difficult for him to hear anything. 

If a nation's destiny were really bound up with the politics reported innewspapers, the impasse would be discouraging. If the importantsovereignty of a country were in what is called its parliamentary life, then the day of Plato's philosopher-kings would be far off indeed. Certainly nobody expects our politicians to become philosophers. Whenthey do they hide the fact. And when philosophers try to be politiciansthey generally cease to be philosophers. But the truth is that weoverestimate enormously the importance of nominations, campaigns, andoffice-holding. If we are discouraged it is because we tend to identifystatecraft with that official government which is merely one of itsinstruments. Vastly over-advertised, we have mistaken an inflated fragmentfor the real political life of the country. 

For if you think of men and their welfare, government appears at once asnothing but an agent among many others. The task of civilizing ourimpulses by creating fine opportunities for their expression cannot beaccomplished through the City Hall alone. All the influences of sociallife are needed. The eggs do not lie in one basket. Thus the issues inthe trade unions may be far more directly important to statecraft thanthe destiny of the Republican Party. The power that workingmen generatewhen they unite--the demands they will make and the tactics they willpursue--how they are educating themselves and the nation--these aregenuine issues which bear upon the future. So with the policies ofbusiness men. Whether financiers are to be sullen and stupid likeArchbold, defiant like Morgan, or well-intentioned like Perkins is aquestion that enters deeply into the industrial issues. The wholebusiness problem takes on a new complexion if the representatives ofcapital are to be men with the temper of Louis Brandeis or William C. Redfield. For when business careers are made professional, new motivesenter into the situation; it will make a world of difference if theleadership of industry is in the hands of men interested in production asa creative art instead of as a brute exploitation. The economic conflictsare at once raised to a plane of research, experiment and honestdeliberation. For on the level of hate and mean-seeking no solution ispossible. That subtle fact, --the change of business motives, thedemonstration that industry can be conducted as medicine is, --maycivilize the whole class conflict. 

Obviously statecraft is concerned with such a change, extra-politicalthough it is. And wherever the politician through his prestige or thegovernment through its universities can stimulate a revolution inbusiness motives, it should do so. That is genuinely constructive work, and will do more to a humane solution of the class struggle than all thejails and state constabularies that ever betrayed the barbarism of theTwentieth Century. It is no wonder that business is such a sordid affair. We have done our best to exclude from it every passionate interest thatis capable of lighting up activity with eagerness and joy. "Unbusinesslike" we have called the devotion of craftsmen and scientists. We have actually pretended that the work of extracting a living fromnature could be done most successfully by short-sighted money-makersencouraged by their money-spending wives. We are learning better to-day. We are beginning to know that this nation for all its boasts has nottouched the real possibilities of business success, that nature and goodluck have done most of our work, that our achievements come in spite ofour ignorance. And so no man can gauge the civilizing possibilities of anew set of motives in business. That it will add to the dignity and valueof millions of careers is only one of its blessings. Given a nation ofmen trained to think scientifically about their work and feel about it ascraftsmen, and you have a people released from a stupid fixation upon thesilly little ideals of accumulating dollars and filling their neighbor'seye. We preach against commercialism but without great result. And thereason for our failure is: that we merely say "you ought not" instead ofoffering a new interest. Instead of telling business men not to begreedy, we should tell them to be industrial statesmen, appliedscientists, and members of a craft. Politics can aid that revolution in ahundred Ways: by advocating it, by furnishing schools that teach, laboratories that demonstrate, by putting business on the same plane ofinterest as the Health Service. 

The indictment against politics to-day is not its corruption, but itslack of insight. I believe it is a fact which experience will sustainthat men steal because they haven't anything better to do. You don't haveto preach honesty to men with a creative purpose. Let a human being throwthe energies of his soul into the making of something, and the instinctof workmanship will take care of his honesty. The writers who havenothing to say are the ones that you can buy: the others have too high aprice. A genuine craftsman will not adulterate his product: the reasonisn't because duty says he shouldn't, but because passion says hecouldn't. I suggested in an earlier chapter that the issue of honesty anddishonesty was a futile one, and I placed faith in the creative men. Theyhate shams and the watering of goods on a more trustworthy basis than themere routine moralist. To them dishonesty is a contradiction of their ownlusts, and they ask no credit, need none, for being true. Creation is anemotional ascent, which makes the standard vices trivial, and turns allthat is valuable in virtue to the service of desire. 

When politics revolves mechanically it ceases to use the real energies ofa nation. Government is then at once irrelevant and mischievous--a mereobstructive nuisance. Not long ago a prominent senator remarked that hedidn't know much about the country, because he had spent the last fewmonths in Washington. It was a profound utterance as anyone can testifywho reads, let us say, the Congressional Record. For that document, though replete with language, is singularly unacquainted with the forcesthat agitate the nation. Politics, as the contributors to theCongressional Record seem to understand it, is a very limited selectionof well-worn debates on a few arbitrarily chosen "problems. " Thosequestions have developed a technique and an interest in them for theirown sake. They are handled with a dull solemnity quite out of proportionto their real interest. Labor receives only a perfunctory and largelydisingenuous attention; even commerce is handled in a way that expressesneither its direction nor its public use. Congress has been ready enoughto grant favors to corporations, but where in its wrangling from theSherman Act to the Commerce Court has it shown any sympatheticunderstanding of the constructive purposes in the trust movement? It haseither presented the business man with money or harassed him withbungling enthusiasm in the pretended interests of the consumer. The onething Congress has not done is to use the talents of business men for thenation's advantage. 

If "politics" has been indifferent to forces like the union and thetrust, it is no exaggeration to say that it has displayed a modestignorance of women's problems, of educational conflicts and racialaspirations; of the control of newspapers and magazines, the bookpublishing world, socialist conventions and unofficial political groupslike the single-taxers. 

Such genuine powers do not absorb our political interest because we arefooled by the regalia of office. But statesmanship, if it is to berelevant, would obtain a new perspective on these dynamic currents, wouldfind out the wants they express and the energies they contain, wouldshape and direct and guide them. For unions and trusts, sects, clubs andvoluntary associations stand for actual needs. The size of theirfollowing, the intensity of their demands are a fair index of what thestatesman must think about. No lawyer created a trust though he drew upits charter; no logician made the labor movement or the feministagitation. If you ask what for political purposes a nation is, apractical answer would be: it is its "movements. " They are the social_life_. So far as the future is man-made it is made of them. They showtheir real vitality by a relentless growth in spite of all the littlefences and obstacles that foolish politicians devise. 

There is, of course, much that is dead within the movements. Each onecarries along a quantity of inert and outworn ideas, --not infrequentlythere is an internally contradictory current. Thus the very workingmenwho agitate for a better diffusion of wealth display a marked hostilityto improvements in the production of it. The feminists too have theiratavisms: not a few who object to the patriarchal family seem inclined tocure it by going back still more--to the matriarchal. Constructivebusiness has no end of reactionary moments----the most striking, perhaps, is when it buys up patents in order to suppress them. Yet theseinversions, though discouraging, are not essential in the life ofmovements. They need to be expurgated by an unceasing criticism; yet inbulk the forces I have mentioned, and many others less important, carrywith them the creative powers of our times. 

It is not surprising that so many political inventions have been madewithin these movements, fostered by them, and brought to a general publicnotice through their efforts. When some constructive proposal is beingagitated before a legislative committee, it is customary to unite the"movements" in support of it. Trade unions and women's clubs have joinedhands in many an agitation. There are proposals to-day, like the minimumwage, which seem sure of support from consumers' leagues, women'sfederations, trade unions and those far-sighted business men who may becalled "State Socialists. "

In fact, unless a political invention is woven into a social movement ithas no importance. Only when that is done is it imbued with life. But howamong countless suggestions is a "cause" to know the difference between atrue invention and a pipe-dream? There is, of course, no infallibletouchstone by which we can tell offhand. No one need hope for an easycertainty either here or anywhere else in human affairs. No one isabsolved from experiment and constant revision. Yet there are somehypotheses that prima facie deserve more attention than others. 

Those are the suggestions which come out of a recognized human need. If aman proposed that the judges of the Supreme Court be reduced from nine toseven because the number seven has mystical power, we could ignore him. But if he suggested that the number be reduced because seven men candeliberate more effectively than nine he ought to be given a hearing. Orlet us suppose that the argument is about granting votes to women. Thesuffragist who bases a claim on the so-called "logic of democracy" ismaking the poorest possible showing for a good cause. I have heard peoplemaintain that: "it makes no difference whether women want the ballot, orare fit for it, or can do any good with it, --this country is a democracy. Democracy means government by the votes of the people. Women are people. Therefore women should vote. " That in a very simple form is themechanical conception of government. For notice how it ignores humanwants and human powers--how it subordinates people to a rigid formula. Iuse this crude example because it shows that even the most genuine anddeeply grounded demands are as yet unable to free themselves entirelyfrom a superficial manner of thinking. We are only partially emancipatedfrom the mechanical and merely logical tradition of the EighteenthCentury. No end of illustrations could be adduced. In the Socialist partyit has been the custom to denounce the "short ballot. " Why? Because itreduces the number of elective offices. This is regarded as undemocraticfor the reason that democracy has come to mean a series of elections. According to a logic, the more elections the more democratic. Butexperience has shown that a seven-foot ballot with a regiment of names isso bewildering that a real choice is impossible. So it is proposed to cutdown the number of elective offices, focus the attention on a fewalternatives, and turn voting into a fairly intelligent performance. Hereis an attempt to fit political devices to the actual powers of the voter. The old, crude form of ballot forgot that finite beings had to operateit. But the "democrats" adhere to the multitude of choices because"logic" requires them to. 

This incident of the "short ballot" illustrates the cleavage betweeninvention and routine. The socialists oppose it not because theirintentions are bad but because on this issue their thinking ismechanical. Instead of applying the test of human need, they apply averbal and logical consistency. The "short ballot" in itself is a slightaffair, but the insight behind it seems to me capable of revolutionarydevelopment. It is one symptom of the effort to found institutions onhuman nature. There are many others. We might point to the firstexperiments aimed at remedying the helter-skelter of careers byvocational guidance. Carried through successfully, this invention ofProf. Parsons' is one whose significance in happiness can hardly beexaggerated. When you think of the misfits among your acquaintances--thelawyers who should be mechanics, the doctors who should be business men, the teachers who should have been clerks, and the executives who shouldbe doing research in a laboratory--when you think of the talent thatwould be released by proper use, the imagination takes wing at thepossibilities. What could we not make of the world if we employed itsgenius!

Whoever is working to express special energies is part of a constructiverevolution. Whoever is removing the stunting environments of ouroccupations is doing the fundamentals of reform. The studies of MissGoldmark of industrial fatigue, recuperative power and maximumproductivity are contributions toward that distant and desirable periodwhen labor shall be a free and joyous activity. Every suggestion whichturns work from a drudgery to a craft is worth our deepest interest. Foruntil then the labor problem will never be solved. The socialist demandfor a better distribution of wealth is of great consequence, but withouta change in the very nature of labor society will not have achieved thehappiness it expects. That is why imaginative socialists have shown sogreat an interest in "syndicalism. " There at least in some of its forms, we can catch sight of a desire to make all labor a self-governing craft. 

The handling of crime has been touched by the modern impetus. Theancient, abstract and wholesale "justice" is breaking up into detailedand carefully adapted treatment of individual offenders. What this meansfor the child has become common knowledge in late years. Criminology (touse an awkward word) is finding a human center. So is education. Everyoneknows how child study is revolutionizing the school room and thecurriculum. Why, it seems that Mme. Montessori has had the audacity tosacrifice the sacred bench to the interests of the pupil! The traditionalschool seems to be vanishing--that place in which an ill-assorted band ofyoungsters was for a certain number of hours each day placed in thevicinity of a text-book and a maiden lady. 

I mention these experiments at random. It is not the specific reformsthat I wish to emphasize but the great possibilities they foreshadow. Whether or not we adopt certain special bills, high tariff or low tariff, one banking system or another, this trust control or that, is a slightgain compared to a change of attitude toward all political problems. Thereformer bound up in his special propaganda will, of course, object that"to get something done is worth more than any amount of talk about newways of looking at political problems. " What matters the method, he willcry, provided the reform be good? Well, the method matters more than anyparticular reform. A man who couldn't think straight might get the rightanswer to one problem, but how much faith would you have in his capacityto solve the next one? If you wanted to educate a child, would you teachhim to read one play of Shakespeare, or would you teach him to _read_? Ifthe world were going to remain frigidly set after next year, we mightwell thank our stars if we blundered into a few decent solutions rightaway. But as there is no prospect of a time when our life will beimmutably fixed, as we shall, therefore, have to go on inventing, it isfair to say that what the world is aching for is not a special reformembodied in a particular statute, but a way of going at all problems. Thelasting value of Darwin, for example, is not in any concrete conclusionhe reached. His importance to the world lies in the new twist he gave toscience. He lent it fruitful direction, a different impetus, and theresults are beyond his imagining. 

In that spiritual autobiography of a searching mind, "The NewMachiavelli, " Wells describes his progress from a reformer of concreteabuses to a revolutionist in method. "You see, " he says, "I began in myteens by wanting to plan and build cities and harbors for mankind; Iended in the middle thirties by desiring only to serve and increase ageneral process of thought, a process fearless, critical, real-spirited, that would in its own time give cities, harbors, air, happiness, everything at a scale and quality and in a light altogether beyond thematch-striking imaginations of a contemporary mind. .. . "

This same veering of interest may be seen in the career of anotherEnglishman. I refer to Mr. Graham Wallas. Back in the '80's he wasworking with the Webbs, Bernard Shaw, Sidney Olivier, Annie Besant andothers in socialist propaganda. Readers of the Fabian Essays know Mr. Wallas and appreciate the work of his group. Perhaps more than anyoneelse, the Fabians are responsible for turning English socialist thoughtfrom the verbalism of the Marxian disciples to the actualities of Englishpolitical life. Their appetite for the concrete was enormous; theirknowledge of facts overpowering, as the tomes produced by Mr. And Mrs. Webb can testify. The socialism of the Fabians soon became a definitelegislative program which the various political parties were to bebulldozed, cajoled and tricked into enacting. It was effective work, andfew can question the value of it. Yet many admirers have been left with asense of inadequacy. 

Unlike the orthodox socialists, the Fabians took an active part inimmediate politics. "We permeated the party organizations, " writes Shaw, "and pulled all the wires we could lay our hands on with our utmostadroitness and energy. .. . The generalship of this movement was undertakenchiefly by Sidney Webb, who played such bewildering conjuring tricks withthe Liberal thimbles and the Fabian peas that to this day both theLiberals and the sectarian Socialists stand aghast at him. " Few Americansknow how great has been this influence on English political history forthe last twenty years. The well-known Minority Report of the Poor LawCommission bears the Webb signature most conspicuously. Fabianism beganto achieve a reputation for getting things done--for taking part in"practical affairs. " Bernard Shaw has found time to do no end ofcampaigning and even the parochial politics of a vestryman has not seemedtoo insignificant for his Fabian enthusiasm. Graham Wallas was acandidate in five municipal elections, and has held an important officeas member of the London County Council. 

But the original Fabian enthusiasm has slackened. One might ascribe it toa growing sense that concrete programs by themselves will not insure anyprofound regeneration of society. H. G. Wells has been savage and oftenunfair about the Fabian Society, but in "The New Machiavelli" he touched, I believe, the real disillusionment. Remington's history is in a waysymbolic. Here was a successful political reformer, coming more and moreto a disturbing recognition of his helplessness, perceiving theaimlessness and the unreality of political life, and announcing hiscontempt for the "crudification" of all issues. What Remington missed waswhat so many reformers are beginning to miss--an underlying philosophicalhabit. 

Mr. Wallas seems to have had much the same experience. In the midst of abustle of activity, politics appeared to have no center to which itsthinking and doing could be referred. The truth was driven home upon himthat political science is a science of human relationship with the humanbeings left out. So he writes that "the thinkers of the past, from Platoto Bentham and Mill, had each his own view of human nature, and they madethese views the basis of their speculations on government. " But to-day"nearly all students of politics analyze institutions and avoid theanalysis of man. " Whoever has read the typical book on politics by aprofessor or a reformer will agree, I think, when he adds: "One feelsthat many of the more systematic books on politics by American Universityprofessors are useless, just because the writers dealt with abstract men, formed on assumptions of which they were unaware and which they havenever tested either by experience or by study. "

An extreme example could be made of Nicholas Murray Butler, President ofColumbia University. In the space of six months he wrote an impassioneddefense of "constitutional government, " beginning with the question, "Whyis it that in the United States the words politics and politician haveassociations that are chiefly of evil omen, " and then, to make ironycomplete, proceeded at the New York State Republican Convention to do thejobbery of Boss Barnes. What is there left but to gasp and wonder whetherthe words of the intellect have anything to do with the facts of life?What insight into reality can a man possess who is capable of discussingpolitics and ignoring politicians? What kind of naïveté was it that ledthis educator into asking such a question?

President Butler is, I grant, a caricature of the typical professor. Yetwhat shall we say of the annual harvest of treatises on "labor problems"which make no analysis of the mental condition of laboring men; of thetreatises on marriage and prostitution which gloss over the sexual lifeof the individual? "In the other sciences which deal with human affairs, "writes Mr. Wallas, referring to pedagogy and criminology, "this divisionbetween the study of the thing done and the study of the being who doesit is not found. "

I have in my hands a text-book of six hundred pages which is used in thelargest universities as a groundwork of political economy. Thisremarkable sentence strikes the eye: "The motives to business activityare too familiar to require analysis. " But some sense that perhaps the"economic man" is not a self-evident creature seems to have touched ourauthor. So we are treated to these sapient remarks: "To avoid thiscriticism we will begin with a characterization of the typical businessman to be found to-day in the United States and other countries in thesame stage of industrial development. _He has four traits which showthemselves more or less clearly in all of his acts. _" They are first"self-interest, " but "this does not mean that he is steeped inselfishness . .. "; secondly, "the larger self, " the family, union, club, and "in times of emergency his country"; thirdly, "love of independence, "for "his ambition is to stand on his own feet"; fourthly, "businessethics" which "are not usually as high as the standards professed inchurches, but they are much higher than current criticisms of businesswould lead one to think. " Three-quarters of a page is sufficient for thispenetrating analysis of motive and is followed by the remark that "thesefour characteristics of the economic man are readily explained byreference to the evolutionary process which has brought industrialsociety to its present stage of development. "

If those were the generalizations of a tired business man after a heavydinner and a big cigar, they would still seem rather muddled and useless. But as the basis of an economic treatise in which "laws" are announced, "principles" laid down, reforms criticized as "impracticable, " all forthe benefit of thousands of college students, it is hardly possible toexaggerate the folly of such an exhibition. I have taken a book writtenby one eminent professor and evidently approved by others, for they useit as a text-book. It is no queer freak. I myself was supposed to readthat book pretty nearly every week for a year. With hundreds of others Iwas supposed to found my economic understanding upon it. We were actuallypunished for not reading that book. It was given to us as wisdom, asmodern political economy. 

But what goes by the name to-day is a potpourri in which one candistinguish descriptions of legal forms, charters and institutions;comparative studies of governmental and social machinery; the history ofinstitutions, a few "principles" like the law of rent, some moraladmonitions, a good deal of class feeling, not a little timidity--butalmost no attempt to cut beneath these manifestations of social life tothe creative impulses which produce them. The Economic Man--that lazyabstraction--is still paraded in the lecture room; the study of humannature has not advanced beyond the gossip of old wives. 

Graham Wallas touched the cause of the trouble when he pointed out thatpolitical science to-day discusses institutions and ignores the nature ofthe men who make and live under them. I have heard professors reply thatit wasn't their business to discuss human nature but to record andinterpret economic and political facts. Yet if you probe those"interpretations" there is no escaping the conclusion that they rest uponsome notion of what man is like. "The student of politics, " writes Mr. Wallas, "must, consciously or unconsciously, form a conception of humannature, and the less conscious he is of his conception the more likely heis to be dominated by it. " For politics is an interest of men--a toolwhich they fabricate and use--and no comment has much value if it triesto get along without mankind. You might as well try to describe food byignoring the digestion. 

Mr. Wallas has called a halt. I think we may say that his is thedistinction of having turned the study of politics back to the humanetradition of Plato and Machiavelli--of having made man the center ofpolitical investigation. The very title of his book--"Human Nature inPolitics"--is significant. Now in making that statement, I am aware thatit is a sweeping one, and I do not mean to imply that Mr. Wallas is theonly modern man who has tried to think about politics psychologically. Here in America alone we have two splendid critics, a man and a woman, whose thought flows from an interpretation of human character. ThorsteinVeblen's brilliant descriptions penetrate deeply into our mental life, and Jane Addams has given new hope to many of us by her capacity formaking ideals the goal of natural desire. 

Nor is it just to pass by such a suggestive thinker as Gabriel Tarde, even though we may feel that his psychology is too simple and hisconclusions somewhat overdriven by a favorite theory. The work of GustavLe Bon on "crowds" has, of course, passed into current thought, but Idoubt whether anyone could say that he had even prepared a basis for anew political psychology. His own aversion to reform, his fondness forvast epochs and his contempt for current effort have left most of his"psychological laws" in the region of interesting literary comment. Thereare, too, any number of "social psychologies, " such as those of Ross andMcDougall. But the trouble with them is that the "psychology" is weak anduninformed, distorted by moral enthusiasms, and put out without anyparticular reference to the task of statesmanship. When you come tospecial problems, the literature of the subject picks up. Crime isreceiving valuable attention, education is profoundly affected, alcoholism and sex have been handled for a good while on a psychologicalbasis. 

But it remained for Mr. Wallas to state the philosophy of the matter--tosay why the study of human nature must serve politics, and to point outhow. He has not produced a political psychology, but he has written themanifesto for it. As a result, fragmentary investigations can be broughttogether and applied to the work of statecraft. Merely by making theseresearches self-conscious, he has made clearer their goal, given themdirection, and kindled them to practical action. How necessary this workis can be seen in the writing of Miss Addams. Owing to keen insight andfine sympathy her thinking has generally been on a human basis. Yet MissAddams is a reformer, and sympathy without an explicit philosophy maylead to a distorted enthusiasm. Her book on prostitution seems rather theproduct of her moral fervor than her human insight. Compare it with "TheSpirit of Youth" or "Newer Ideals of Peace" or "Democracy and SocialEthics" and I think you will notice a very considerable willingness togloss over human need in the interests of an unanalyzed reform. To put itbluntly, Miss Addams let her impatience get the better of her wisdom. Shehad written brilliantly about sex and its "sublimation, " she hadsuggested notable "moral equivalents" for vice, but when she touched thewhite slave traffic its horrors were so great that she also put her faithin the policeman and the district attorney. "A New Conscience and anAncient Evil" is an hysterical book, just because the real philosophicalbasis of Miss Addams' thinking was not deliberate enough to withstand theshock of a poignant horror. 

It is this weakness that Mr. Wallas comes to remedy. He has describedwhat political science must be like, and anyone who has absorbed hisinsight has an intellectual groundwork for political observation. No one, least of all Mr. Wallas, would claim anything like finality for theessay. These labors are not done in a day. But he has deliberatelybrought the study of politics to the only focus which has any rationalinterest for mankind. He has made a plea, and sketched a plan whichhundreds of investigators the world over must help to realize. Ifpolitical science could travel in the direction suggested, its criticismwould be relevant, its proposals practical. There would, for the firsttime, be a concerted effort to build a civilization around mankind, touse its talent and to satisfy its needs. There would be no more emptytaboos, no erecting of institutions upon abstract and mechanicalanalogies. Politics would be like education--an effort to develop, trainand nurture men's impulses. As Montessori is building the school aroundthe child, so politics would build all of social life around the humanbeing. 

That practical issues hang upon these investigations can be shown by anexample from Mr. Wallas's book. Take the quarrel over socialism. You hearit said that without the private ownership of capital people will loseambition and sink into sloth. Many men, just as well aware of present-dayevils as the socialists, are unwilling to accept the collectivist remedy. G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc speak of the "magic of property" asthe real obstacle to socialism. Now obviously this is a question offirst-rate importance. If socialism will destroy initiative then only adoctrinaire would desire it. But how is the question to be solved? Youcannot reason it out. Economics, as we know it to-day, is quite incapableof answering such a problem, for it is a matter that depends uponpsychological investigation. When a professor says that socialism isimpracticable he begs the question, for that amounts to assuming that thepoint at issue is already settled. If he tells you that socialism isagainst human nature, we have a perfect right to ask where he proved thepossibilities of human nature. 

But note how Mr. Wallas approaches the debate: "Children quarrelfuriously at a very early age over apparently worthless things, andcollect and hide them long before they can have any clear notion of theadvantages to be derived from individual possession. Those children whoin certain charity schools are brought up entirely without personalproperty, even in their clothes or pocket handkerchiefs, show every signof the bad effect on health and character which results from completeinability to satisfy a strong inherited instinct. .. . Some economist oughttherefore to give us a treatise in which this property instinct iscarefully and quantitatively examined. .. . How far can it be eliminated ormodified by education? Is it satisfied by a leasehold or a life-interest, or by such an arrangement of corporate property as is offered by acollegiate foundation, or by the provision of a public park? Does itrequire for its satisfaction material and visible things such as land orhouses, or is the holding, say, of colonial railway shares sufficient? Isthe absence of unlimited proprietary rights felt more strongly in thecase of personal chattels (such as furniture and ornaments) than in thecase of land or machinery? Does the degree and direction of the instinctmarkedly differ among different individuals or races, or between the twosexes?"

This puts the argument upon a plane where discussion is relevant. This isno trumped-up issue: it is asked by a politician and a socialist seekingfor a real solution. We need to know whether the "magic of property"extends from a man's garden to Standard Oil stocks as anti-socialistssay, and, conversely, we need to know what is happening to that mass ofproletarians who own no property and cannot satisfy their instincts evenwith personal chattels. 

For if ownership is a human need, we certainly cannot taboo it as theextreme communists so dogmatically urge. "Pending . .. An inquiry, " writesMr. Wallas, "my own provisional opinion is that, like a good manyinstincts of very early evolutionary origin, it can be satisfied by anavowed pretense; just as a kitten which is fed regularly on milk can bekept in good health if it is allowed to indulge its hunting instinct byplaying with a bobbin, and a peaceful civil servant satisfies hisinstinct of combat and adventure at golf. "

Mr. Wallas takes exactly the same position as William James did when heplanned a "moral equivalent" for war. Both men illustrate the changingfocus of political thought. Both try to found statesmanship on humanneed. Both see that there are good and bad satisfactions of the sameimpulse. The routineer with his taboo does not see this, so he attemptsthe impossible task of obliterating the impulse. He differs fundamentallyfrom the creative politician who devotes himself to inventing fineexpressions for human needs, who recognizes that the work ofstatesmanship is in large measure the finding of good substitutes for thebad things we want. 

This is the heart of a political revolution. When we recognize that thefocus of politics is shifting from a mechanical to a human center weshall have reached what is, I believe, the most essential idea in modernpolitics. More than any other generalization it illuminates the currentsof our national life and explains the altering tasks of statesmanship. 

The old effort was to harness mankind to abstract principles--liberty, justice or equality--and to deduce institutions from these high-soundingwords. It did not succeed because human nature was contrary and restive. The new effort proposes to fit creeds and institutions to the wants ofmen, to satisfy their impulses as fully and beneficially as possible. 

And yet we do not begin to know our desires or the art of theirsatisfaction. Mr. Wallas's book and the special literature of the subjectleave no doubt that a precise political psychology is far off indeed. Thehuman nature we must put at the center of our statesmanship is onlypartially understood. True, Mr. Wallas works with a psychology that isfairly well superseded. But not even the advance-guard to-day, what wemay call the Freudian school, would claim that it had brought knowledgeto a point where politics could use it in any very deep or comprehensiveway. The subject is crude and fragmentary, though we are entitled to callit promising. 

Yet the fact had better be faced: psychology has not gone far enough, itsresults are still too vague for our purposes. We know very little, andwhat we know has hardly been applied to political problems. That the lastfew years have witnessed a revolution in the study of mental life isplain: the effects are felt not only in psychotherapy, but in education, morals, religion, and no end of cultural interests. The impetus of Freudis perhaps the greatest advance ever made towards the understanding andcontrol of human character. But for the complexities of politics it isnot yet ready. It will take time and endless labor for a detailed studyof social problems in the light of this growing knowledge. 

What then shall we do now? Must we continue to muddle along in the oldruts, gazing rapturously at an impotent ideal, until the works of thescientists are matured?

CHAPTER IV

THE GOLDEN RULE AND AFTER

It would indeed be an intolerably pedantic performance for a nation tosit still and wait for its scientists to report on their labors. Thenotion is typical of the pitfalls in the path of any theorist who doesnot correct his logic by a constant reference to the movement of life. Itis true that statecraft must make human nature its basis. It is true thatits chief task is the invention of forms and institutions which satisfythe inner needs of mankind. And it is true that our knowledge of thoseneeds and the technique of their satisfaction is hazy, unorganized andblundering. 

But to suppose that the remedy lies in waiting for monographs from theresearch of the laboratory is to have lost a sense of the rhythm ofactual affairs. That is not the way things come about: we grow into a newpoint of view: only afterwards, in looking back, do we see the landmarksof our progress. Thus it is customary to say that Adam Smith dates thechange from the old mercantilist economy to the capitalistic economics ofthe nineteenth century. But that is a manner of speech. The oldmercantilist policy was giving way to early industrialism: a thousandunconscious economic and social forces were compelling the change. AdamSmith expressed the process, named it, idealized it and made itself-conscious. Then because men were clearer about what they were doing, they could in a measure direct their destiny. 

That is but another way of saying that great revolutionary changes do notspring full-armed from anybody's brow. A genius usually becomes theluminous center of a nation's crisis, --men see better by the light ofhim. His bias deflects their actions. Unquestionably the doctrine-drivenmen who made the economics of the last century had much to do with thehalo which encircled the smutted head of industrialism. They put thestamp of their genius on certain inhuman practices, and of course it hasbeen the part of the academic mind to imitate them ever since. Theorthodox economists are in the unenviable position of having taken theirmorals from the exploiter and of having translated them into thegrandiloquent language of high public policy. They gave capitalism thesanction of the intellect. When later, Carlyle and Ruskin battered theeconomists into silence with invective and irony they were voicing thedumb protest of the humane people of England. They helped to organize aformless resentment by endowing it with intelligence and will. 

So it is to-day. If this nation did not show an unmistakable tendency toput men at the center of politics instead of machinery and things; ifthere were not evidence to prove that we are turning from the steriletaboo to the creation of finer environments; if the impetus for shapingour destiny were not present in our politics and our life, then essayslike these would be so much baying at the moon, fantastic and unworthypleas for some irrelevant paradise. But the gropings are there, --vastlyconfused in the tangled strains of the nation's interests. Clogged by theconfusion, half-choked by stupid blockades, largely unaware of their ownpurposes, it is for criticism, organized research, and artisticexpression to free and to use these creative energies. They are to befound in the aspirations of labor, among the awakened women, in thedevelopment of business, the diffusion of art and science, in the racialmixtures, and many lesser interests which cluster about these greatermovements. 

The desire for a human politics is all about us. It rises to the surfacein slogans like "human rights above property rights, " "the man above thedollar. " Some measure of its strength is given by the widespreadimitation these expressions have compelled: politicians who haven't theslightest intention of putting men above the dollar, who if they hadwouldn't know how, take off their hats to the sentiment because it seemsa key to popular enthusiasm. It must be bewildering to men brought up, let us say, in the Hanna school of politics. For here is this nationwhich sixteen years ago vibrated ecstatically to that magic word"Prosperity"; to-day statistical rhetoric about size induces little butexcessive boredom. If you wish to drive an audience out of the hall tellit how rich America is; if you wish to stamp yourself an echo of the pasttalk to us young men about the Republican Party's understanding with Godin respect to bumper crops. But talk to us about "human rights, " andthough you talk rubbish, we'll listen. For our desire is bent that way, and anything which has the flavor of this new interest will rivet ourattention. We are still uncritical. It is only a few years since we beganto center our politics upon human beings. We have no training in thatkind of thought. Our schools and colleges have helped us hardly at all. We still talk about "humanity" as if it were some strange and mysticalcreature which could not possibly be composed of the grocer, thestreet-car conductor and our aunts. 

That the opinion-making people of America are more interested in humanwelfare than in empire or abstract prosperity is an item that nostatesman can disregard in his thinking. To-day it is no longer necessaryto run against the grain of the deepest movements of our time. There isan ascendant feeling among the people that all achievement should bemeasured in human happiness. This feeling has not always existed. Historians tell us that the very idea of progress in well-being is notmuch older than, say, Shakespeare's plays. As a general belief it isstill more recent. The nineteenth century may perhaps be said to mark itspopularization. But as a fact of immediate politics, as a touchstoneapplied quickly to all the acts of statecraft in America it belongs tothe Twentieth Century. There were any number of people who long before1900 saw that dollars and men could clash. But their insight had not wonany general acceptance. It is only within the last few years that thehuman test has ceased to be the property of a small group and become theconvention of a large majority. A study of magazines and newspapers wouldconfirm this rather broad generalization. It would show, I believe, howthe whole quality of our most impromptu thinking is being influenced byhuman values. 

The statesman must look to this largely unorganized drift of desire. Hewill find it clustering about certain big revolts--the unrest of women, for example, or the increasing demands of industrial workers. Rightlyunderstood, these social currents would, I believe, lead to the centralissues of life, the vital points upon which happiness depends. They comeout of necessities. They express desire. They are power. 

Thus feminism, arising out of a crisis in sexual conditions, hasliberated energies that are themselves the motors of any reform. InEngland and America voting has become the symbol of an aspiration as yethalf-conscious and undefined. What women want is surely something a greatdeal deeper than the privilege of taking part in elections. They arelooking for a readjustment of their relations to the home, to work, tochildren, to men, to the interests of civilized life. The vote has becomea convenient peg upon which to hang aspirations that are not at all sureof their own meaning. In no insignificant number of cases the vote is acover by which revolutionary demands can be given a conventional front. The ballot is at the utmost a beginning, as far-sighted conservativeshave guessed. Certainly the elimination of "male" from the suffragequalifications will not end the feminist agitation. From the angle ofstatecraft the future of the movement may be said to depend upon the wiseuse of this raw and scattered power. I do not pretend to know in detailhow this can be done. But I am certain that the task of leadership is toorganize aspiration in the service of the real interests of life. To-daywomen want--what? They are ready to want something: that describes fairlythe condition of most suffragettes. Those who like Ellen Key and OliveShreiner and Mrs. Gilman give them real problems to think about aredrafting that energy into use. By real problems I mean problems of love, work, home, children. They are the real interests of feminism becausethey have produced it. 

The yearnings of to-day are the symptoms of needs, they point the courseof invention, they are the energies which animate a social program. Themost ideally conceived plan of the human mind has only a slight interestif it does not harness these instinctive forces. That is the great lessonwhich the utopias teach by their failure--that schemes, however nicelyarranged, cannot be imposed upon human beings who are interested in otherthings. What ailed Don Quixote was that he and his contemporaries wanteddifferent things; the only ideals that count are those which express thepossible development of an existing force. Reformers must never forgetthat three legs are a Quixotic ideal; two good legs a genuine one. 

In actual life, yes, in the moil and toil of propaganda, "movements, ""causes" and agitations the statesman-inventor and the politicalpsychologist find the raw material for their work. It is not the businessof the politician to preserve an Olympian indifference to what stupidpeople call "popular whim. " Being lofty about the "passing fad" and theephemeral outcry is all very well in the biographies of dead men, butrank nonsense in the rulers of real ones. Oscar Wilde once remarked thatonly superficial people disliked the superficial. Nothing, for example, could on the surface be more trivial than an interest in baseball scores. Yet during the campaign of 1912 the excitement was so great that WoodrowWilson said on the stump he felt like apologizing to the American peoplefor daring to be a presidential candidate while the Giants and the RedSox were playing for the championship. Baseball (not so much for thosewho play it), is a colossal phenomenon in American life. Watch the crowdsin front of a bulletin board, finding a vicarious excitement and anabstract relief from the monotony of their own lives. What a second-handcivilization it is that grows passionate over a scoreboard with littleelectric lights! What a civilization it is that has learned to enjoy itssport without even seeing it! If ever there was a symptom that thisnation needed leisure and direct participation in games, it is that poorscrawny substitute for joy--the baseball extra. 

It is as symptomatic as the labor union. It expresses need. Andstatesmanship would find an answer. It would not let that passion andloyalty be frittered away to drift like scum through the nation. It wouldsee in it the opportunity of art, play, and religion. So with what looksvery different--the "syndicalist movement. " Perhaps it seems preposterousto discuss baseball and syndicalism in the same paragraph. But that isonly because we have not accustomed ourselves to thinking of socialevents as answers to human needs. The statesman would ask, Why are theresyndicalists? What are they driving at? What gift to civilization is inthe impetus behind them? They are human beings, and they want humanthings. There is no reason to become terror-stricken about them. Theyseem to want things badly. Then ostriches disguised as judges cannot dealwith them. Anarchism--men die for that, they undergo intolerable insults. They are tarred and feathered and spat upon. Is it possible thatRepublicans, Democrats and Socialists clip the wings more than freespirits can allow? Is civilization perhaps too tightly organized? Havethe irreconcilables a soul audacious and less blunted than ourdomesticated ones? To put it mildly, is it ever safe to ignore thementirely in our thinking?

We shall come, I think, to a different appraisal of agitations. Ourpresent method is to discuss whether the proposals are right andfeasible. We do this hastily and with prejudice. Generally we decide thatany agitation foreign to our settled habits is wrong. And we bolster upour satisfaction by pointing to some mistake of logic or some puerilityof statement. That done, we feel the agitation is deplorable and can beignored unless it becomes so obstreperous that we have to put it in jail. But a genuine statecraft would go deeper. It would know that even God hasbeen defended with nonsense. So it could be sympathetic to agitations. Iuse the word sympathetic literally. For it would try to understand theinner feeling which had generated what looks like a silly demand. To-dayit is as if a hungry man asked for an indigestible food, and we let himgo hungry because he was unwise. He isn't any the less hungry because heasks for the wrong food. So with agitations. Their specific plans may besilly, but their demands are real. The hungers and lusts of mankind haveproduced some stupendous follies, but the desires themselves are no lessreal and insistent. 

The important thing about a social movement is not its stated platformbut the source from which it flows. The task of politics is to understandthose deeper demands and to find civilized satisfactions for them. Themeaning of this is that the statesman must be more than the leader of aparty. Thus the socialist statesman is not complete if he is a goodsocialist. Only the delusion that his truth is the whole truth, his partythe human race, and his program a panacea, will produce that singlenessof vision. 

The moment a man takes office he has no right to be the representative ofone group alone. He has assumed the burden of harmonizing particularagitations with the general welfare. That is why great agitators shouldnot accept office. Men like Debs understand that. Their business is tomake social demands so concrete and pressing that statesmen are forced todeal with them. Agitators who accept government positions are adisappointment to their followers. They can no longer be severelypartisan. They have to look at affairs nationally. Now the agitator andthe statesman are both needed. But they have different functions, and itis unjust to damn one because he hasn't the virtues of the other. 

The statesman to-day needs a large equipment. The man who comes forwardto shape a country's policy has truly no end of things to consider. Hemust be aware of the condition of the people: no statesman must fall intothe sincere but thoroughly upper class blunder that President Taftcommitted when he advised a three months' vacation. Realizing how men andwomen feel at all levels and at different places, he must speak theirdiscontent and project their hopes. Through this he will get power. Standing upon the prestige which that gives he must guide and purify thesocial demands he finds at work. He is the translator of agitations. Forthis task he must be keenly sensitive to public opinion and capable ofunderstanding the dynamics of it. Then, in order to fuse it into acivilized achievement, he will require much expert knowledge. Yet he neednot be a specialist himself, if only he is expert in choosing experts. Itis better indeed that the statesman should have a lay, and not aprofessional view. For the bogs of technical stupidity and emptyformalism are always near and always dangerous. The real political geniusstands between the actual life of men, their wishes and their needs, andall the windings of official caste and professional snobbery. It is hissupreme business to see that the servants of life stay in theirplace--that government, industry, "causes, " science, all the creatures ofman do not succeed in their perpetual effort to become the masters. 

I have Roosevelt in mind. He haunts political thinking. And indeed, whyshouldn't he? What reality could there be in comments upon Americanpolitics which ignored the colossal phenomenon of Roosevelt? If he iswholly evil, as many say he is, then the American democracy ispreponderantly evil. For in the first years of the Twentieth Century, Roosevelt spoke for this nation, as few presidents have spoken in ourhistory. And that he has spoken well, who in the perspective of time willdeny? Sensitive to the original forces of public opinion, no man has hadthe same power of rounding up the laggards. Government under him was athrobbing human purpose. He succeeded, where Taft failed, in preventingthat drought of invention which officialism brings. Many people say hehas tried to be all things to all men--that his speeches are an attemptto corral all sorts of votes. That is a left-handed way of stating atruth. A more generous interpretation would be to say that he had triedto be inclusive, to attach a hundred sectional agitations to a nationalprogram. Crude: of course he was crude; he had a hemisphere for hiscanvas. Inconsistent: yes, he tried to be the leader of factions at warwith one another. A late convert: he is a statesman and not anagitator--his business was to meet demands when they had grown tonational proportions. No end of possibilities have slipped through thelarge meshes of his net. He has said some silly things. He has not beensubtle, and he has been far from perfect. But his success should bejudged by the size of his task, by the fierceness of the opposition, bythe intellectual qualities of the nation he represented. When we rememberthat he was trained in the Republican politics of Hanna and Platt, thathe was the first President who shared a new social vision, then I believewe need offer no apologies for making Mr. Roosevelt stand as the workingmodel for a possible American statesman at the beginning of the TwentiethCentury. 

Critics have often suggested that Roosevelt stole Bryan's clothes. Thatis perhaps true, and it suggests a comparison which illuminates both men. It would not be unfair to say that it is always the function of theRoosevelts to take from the Bryans. But it is a little silly for anagitator to cry thief when the success of his agitation has led to theadoption of his ideas. It is like the chagrin of the socialists becausethe National Progressive Party had "stolen twenty-three planks, " and itmakes a person wonder whether some agitators haven't an overdevelopedsense of private property. 

I do not see the statesman in Bryan. He has been something of a voicecrying in the wilderness, but a voice that did not understand its ownmessage. Many people talk of him as a prophet. There is a great deal ofliteral truth in that remark, for it has been the peculiar work of Bryanto express in politics some of that emotion which has made America thehome of new religions. What we know as the scientific habit of mind isentirely lacking in his intellectual equipment. There is a vein ofmysticism in American life, and Mr. Bryan is its uncritical prophet. Hisinsights are those of the gifted evangelist, often profound and alwaysnarrow. It is absurd to debate his sincerity. Mr. Bryan talks with theintoxication of the man who has had a revelation: to skeptics that alwaysseems theatrical. But far from being the scheming hypocrite his enemiessay he is, Mr. Bryan is too simple for the task of statesmanship. Nobracing critical atmosphere plays about his mind: there are no cleansingdoubts and fruitful alternatives. The work of Bryan has been to express acertain feeling of unrest--to embody it in the traditional language ofprophecy. But it is a shrewd turn of the American people that has kepthim out of office. I say this not in disrespect of his qualities, but indefinition of them. Bryan does not happen to have the naturalisticoutlook, the complete humanity, or the deliberative habit which modernstatecraft requires. He is the voice of a confused emotion. 

Woodrow Wilson has a talent which is Bryan's chief defect--the scientifichabit of holding facts in solution. His mind is lucid and flexible, andhe has the faculty of taking advice quickly, of stating something he hasborrowed with more ease and subtlety than the specialist from whom he gotit. Woodrow Wilson's is an elegant and highly refined intellect, nicelybalanced and capable of fine adjustment. An urbane civilization producedit, leisure has given it spaciousness, ease has made it generous. A mindwithout tension, its roots are not in the somewhat barbarousunder-currents of the nation. Woodrow Wilson understands easily, but hedoes not incarnate: he has never been a part of the protest he speaks. You think of him as a good counsellor, as an excellent presiding officer. Whether his imagination is fibrous enough to catch the inwardness of themutterings of our age is something experience alone can show. Wilson hasclass feeling in the least offensive sense of that term: he likes a worldof gentlemen. Occasionally he has exhibited a rather amateurish effort tobe grimy and shirt-sleeved. But without much success: his contact withAmerican life is not direct, and so he is capable of purely theoreticalaffirmations. Like all essentially contemplative men, the world has to bereflected in the medium of his intellect before he can grapple with it. 

Yet Wilson belongs among the statesmen, and it is fine that he should bein public life. The weakness I have suggested is one that all statesmenshare in some degree: an inability to interpret adequately the world theygovern. This is a difficulty which is common to conservative and radical, and if I have used three living men to illustrate the problem it is onlybecause they seem to illuminate it. They have faced the task and we cantake their measurement. It is no part of my purpose to make any judgmentas to the value of particular policies they have advocated. I amattempting to suggest some of the essentials of a statesman's equipmentfor the work of a humanly centered politics. Roosevelt has seemed to methe most effective, the most nearly complete; Bryan I have ventured toclass with the men who though important to politics should never holdhigh executive office; Wilson, less complete than Roosevelt, is worthy ofour deepest interest because his judgment is subtle where Roosevelt's iscrude. He is a foretaste of a more advanced statesmanship. 

Because he is self-conscious, Wilson has been able to see the problemthat any finely adapted statecraft must meet. It is a problem that wouldhardly occur to an old-fashioned politician: "Though he (the statesman)cannot himself keep the life of the nation as a whole in his mind, he canat least make sure that he is taking counsel with those who know. .. . " Itis not important that Wilson in stating the difficulty should put it asif he had in a measure solved it. He hasn't, because taking counsel is ameans to understanding the nation as a whole, and that understandingremains almost as arduous and requires just as fibrous an imagination, ifit is gleaned from advisers. 

To think of the whole nation: surely the task of statesmanship is moredifficult to-day than ever before in history. In the face of a clottedintricacy in the subject-matter of politics, improvements in knowledgeseem meager indeed. The distance between what we know and what we need toknow appears to be greater than ever. Plato and Aristotle thought interms of ten thousand homogeneous villagers; we have to think in terms ofa hundred million people of all races and all traditions, crossbred andinbred, subject to climates they have never lived in before, plumped downon a continent in the midst of a strange civilization. We have to dealwith all grades of life from the frontier to the metropolis, with men whodiffer in sense of fact, in ideal, in the very groundwork of morals. Andwe have to take into account not the simple opposition of two classes, but the hostility of many, --the farmers and the factory workers and allthe castes within their ranks, the small merchants, and the feudalorganization of business. Ours is a problem in which deception has becomeorganized and strong; where truth is poisoned at its source; one in whichthe skill of the shrewdest brains is devoted to misleading a bewilderedpeople. Nor can we keep to the problem within our borders. Whether wewish it or not we are involved in the world's problems, and all the windsof heaven blow through our land. 

 * * * * *

It is a great question whether our intellects can grasp the subject. Arewe perhaps like a child whose hand is too small to span an octave on thepiano? Not only are the facts inhumanly complicated, but the naturalideals of people are so varied and contradictory that action halts indespair. We are putting a tremendous strain upon the mind, and theresults are all about us: everyone has known the neutral thinkers whostand forever undecided before the complications of life, who have, as itwere, caught a glimpse of the possibilities of knowledge. The sight hasparalyzed them. Unless they can act with certainty, they dare not act atall. 

That is merely one of the temptations of theory. In the real world, action and thought are so closely related that one cannot wait upon theother. We cannot wait in politics for any completed theoreticaldiscussion of its method: it is a monstrous demand. There is no pausinguntil political psychology is more certain. We have to act on what webelieve, on half-knowledge, illusion and error. Experience itself willreveal our mistakes; research and criticism may convert them into wisdom. But act we must, and act as if we knew the nature of man and proposed tosatisfy his needs. 

In other words, we must put man at the center of politics, even though weare densely ignorant both of man and of politics. This has always beenthe method of great political thinkers from Plato to Bentham. But onedifference we in this age must note: they made their political man adogma--we must leave him an hypothesis. That is to say that our task isto temper speculation with scientific humility. 

A paradox there is here, but a paradox of language, and not of fact. Menmade bridges before there was a science of bridge-building; they cureddisease before they knew medicine. Art came before æsthetics, andrighteousness before ethics. Conduct and theory react upon each other. Hypothesis is confirmed and modified by action, and action is guided byhypothesis. If it is a paradox to ask for a human politics before weunderstand humanity or politics, it is what Mr. Chesterton describes asone of those paradoxes that sit beside the wells of truth. 

 * * * * *

We make our picture of man, knowing that, though it is crude and unjust, we have to work with it. If we are wise we shall become experimentaltowards life: then every mistake will contribute towards knowledge. Letthe exploration of human need and desire become a deliberate purpose ofstatecraft, and there is no present measure of its possibilities. 

In this work there are many guides. A vague common tradition is in theair about us--it expresses itself in journalism, in cheap novels, in theuncritical theater. Every merchant has his stock of assumptions about themental habits of his customers and competitors; the prostitute hers; thenewspaperman his; P. T. Barnum had a few; the vaudeville stage has anumber. We test these notions by their results, and even "practicalpeople" find that there is more variety in human nature than they hadsupposed. 

We forge gradually our greatest instrument for understanding theworld--introspection. We discover that humanity may resemble us veryconsiderably--that the best way of knowing the inwardness of ourneighbors is to know ourselves. For after all, the only experience wereally understand is our own. And that, in the least of us, is so richthat no one has yet exhausted its possibilities. It has been said thatevery genuine character an artist produces is one of the characters hemight have been. By re-creating our own suppressed possibilities wemultiply the number of lives that we can really know. That as Iunderstand it is the psychology of the Golden Rule. For note that Jesusdid not set up some external fetich: he did not say, make your neighborrighteous, or chaste, or respectable. He said do as you would be done by. Assume that you and he are alike, and you can found morals on humanity. 

But experience has enlarged our knowledge of differences. We realize nowthat our neighbor is not always like ourselves. Knowing how unjust otherpeople's inferences are when they concern us, we have begun to guess thatours may be unjust to them. Any uniformity of conduct becomes at once animpossible ideal, and the willingness to live and let live assumes highplace among the virtues. A puzzled wisdom remarks that "it takes allsorts of people to make a world, " and half-protestingly men acceptBernard Shaw's amendment, "Do not do unto others as you would that theyshould do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same. "

We learn perhaps that there is no contradiction in speaking of "humannature" while admitting that men are unique. For all deepening of ourknowledge gives a greater sense of common likeness and individualvariation. It is folly to ignore either insight. But it is doneconstantly, with no end of confusion as a result. Some men have gotthemselves into a state where the only view that interests them is thecommon humanity of us all. Their world is not populated by men and women, but by a Unity that is Permanent. You might as well refuse to see anydifferences between steam, water and ice because they have commonelements. And I have seen some of these people trying to skate on steam. Their brothers, blind in the other eye, go about the world so sure thateach person is entirely unique, that society becomes like a row ofpacking cases, each painted on the inside, and each containing one egoand its own. 

Art enlarges experience by admitting us to the inner life of others. Thatis not the only use of art, for its function is surely greater and moreultimate than to furnish us with a better knowledge of human nature. Noris that its only use even to statecraft. I suggested earlier that artenters politics as a "moral equivalent" for evil, a medium by whichbarbarous lusts find civilized expression. It is, too, an ideal forlabor. But my purpose here is not to attempt any adequate description ofthe services of art. It is enough to note that literature in particularelaborates our insight into human life, and, therefore, enables us tocenter our institutions more truly. 

Ibsen discovers a soul in Nora: the discovery is absorbed into the commonknowledge of the age. Other Noras discover their own souls; the Helmersall about us begin to see the person in the doll. Plays and novels haveindeed an overwhelming political importance, as the "moderns" havemaintained. But it lies not in the preaching of a doctrine or theinsistence on some particular change in conduct. That is a shallow andwasteful use of the resources of art. For art can open up the springsfrom which conduct flows. Its genuine influence is on what Wells callsthe "hinterland, " in a quickening of the sense of life. 

Art can really penetrate where most of us can only observe. "I look and Ithink I see, " writes Bergson, "I listen and I think I hear, I examinemyself and I think I am reading the very depths of my heart. .. . (But) mysenses and my consciousness . .. Give me no more than a practicalsimplification of reality . .. In short, we do not see the actual thingsthemselves; in most cases we confine ourselves to reading the labelsaffixed to them. " Who has not known this in thinking of politics? We talkof poverty and forget poor people; we make rules for vagrancy--we forgetthe vagrant. Some of our best-intentioned political schemes, like reformcolonies and scientific jails, turn out to be inhuman tyrannies justbecause our imagination does not penetrate the sociological label. "Wemove amidst generalities and symbols . .. We live in a zone midway betweenthings and ourselves, external to things, external also to ourselves. "This is what works of art help to correct: "Behind the commonplace, conventional expression that both reveals and conceals an individualmental state, it is the emotion, the original mood, to which they attainin its undefiled essence. "

This directness of vision fertilizes thought. Without a strong artistictradition, the life and so the politics of a nation sink into a barrenroutine. A country populated by pure logicians and mathematicalscientists would, I believe, produce few inventions. For creation, evenof scientific truth, is no automatic product of logical thought orscientific method, and it has been well said that the greatestdiscoveries in science are brilliant guesses on insufficient evidence. Anation must, so to speak, live close to its own life, be intimate andsympathetic with natural events. That is what gives understanding, andjustifies the observation that the intuitions of scientific discovery andthe artist's perceptions are closely related. It is perhaps notaltogether without significance for us that primitive science and poetrywere indistinguishable. Nor is it strange that latter-day research shouldconfirm so many sayings of the poets. In all great ages art and sciencehave enriched each other. It is only eccentric poets and narrowspecialists who lock the doors. The human spirit doesn't grow insections. 

I shall not press the point for it would lead us far afield. It is enoughthat we remember the close alliance of art, science and politics inAthens, in Florence and Venice at their zenith. We in America havedivorced them completely: both art and politics exist in a condition ofunnatural celibacy. Is this not a contributing factor to the futility andopacity of our political thinking? We have handed over the government ofa nation of people to a set of lawyers, to a class of men who deal in themost verbal and unreal of all human attainments. 

A lively artistic tradition is essential to the humanizing of politics. It is the soil in which invention flourishes and the organized knowledgeof science attains its greatest reality. Let me illustrate from anotherfield of interests. The religious investigations of William James were astudy, not of ecclesiastical institutions or the history of creeds. Theywere concerned with religious experience, of which churches and ritualsare nothing but the external satisfaction. As Graham Wallas isendeavoring to make human nature the center of politics, so James made itthe center of religions. It was a work of genius, yet no one would claimthat it is a mature psychology of the "Varieties of ReligiousExperience. " It is rather a survey and a description, done with the eyeof an artist and the method of a scientist. We know from it more of whatreligious feeling is like, even though we remain ignorant of its sources. And this intimacy humanizes religious controversy and bringsecclesiasticism back to men. 

Like most of James's psychology, it opens up investigation instead ofconcluding it. In the light even of our present knowledge we can see howprimitive his treatment was. But James's services cannot beoverestimated: if he did not lay even the foundations of a science, hedid lay some of the foundations for research. It was an immenseillumination and a warming of interest. It threw open the gates to thewhole landscape of possibilities. It was a ventilation of thought. Something similar will have to be done for political psychology. We knowhow far off is the profound and precise knowledge we desire. But we knowtoo that we have a right to hope for an increasing acquaintance with thevarieties of political experience. It would, of course, be drawn frombiography, from the human aspect of history and daily observation. Weshould begin to know what it is that we ought to know. Such a work wouldbe stimulating to politician and psychologist. The statesman'simagination would be guided and organized; it would give him astarting-point for his own understanding of human beings in politics. Tothe scientists it would be a challenge--to bring these facts under thelight of their researches, to extend these researches to the borders ofthose facts. 

The statesman has another way of strengthening his grip upon thecomplexity of life. Statistics help. This method is neither so conclusiveas the devotees say, nor so bad as the people who are awed by it wouldlike to believe. Voting, as Gabriel Tarde points out, is our mostconspicuous use of statistics. Mystical democrats believe that anelection expresses the will of the people, and that that will is wise. Mystical democrats are rare. Looked at closely an election shows thequantitative division of the people on several alternatives. That choiceis not necessarily wise, but it is wise to heed that choice. For it is arough estimate of an important part of the community's sentiment, and nostatecraft can succeed that violates it. It is often immensely suggestiveof what a large number of people are in the future going to wish. Democracy, because it registers popular feeling, is at least trying tobuild truly, and is for that reason an enlightened form of government. Sowe who are democrats need not believe that the people are necessarilyright in their choice: some of us are always in the minority, and not alittle proud of the distinction. Voting does not extract wisdom frommultitudes: its real value is to furnish wisdom about multitudes. Ourfaith in democracy has this very solid foundation: that no leader'swisdom can be applied unless the democracy comes to approve of it. Togovern a democracy you have to educate it: that contact with great massesof men reciprocates by educating the leader. "The consent of thegoverned" is more than a safeguard against ignorant tyrants: it is aninsurance against benevolent despots as well. In a rough way and withmany exceptions, democracy compels law to approximate human need. It is alittle difficult to see this when you live right in the midst of one. Butin perspective there can be little question that of all governmentsdemocracy is the most relevant. Only humane laws can be successfullyenforced; and they are the only ones really worth enforcing. Voting is aformal method of registering consent. 

But all statistical devices are open to abuse and require constantcorrection. Bribery, false counting, disfranchisement are the cruderdeceptions; they correspond to those enrolment statistics of a largeuniversity which are artificially fed by counting the same studentseveral times if his courses happen to span two or three of thedepartments. Just as deceptive as plain fraud is the deceptive ballot. Weall know how when the political tricksters were compelled to frame adirect primary law in New York they fixed the ballot so that it botchedthe election. Corporations have been known to do just that to theirreports. Did not E. H. Harriman say of a well-known statistician that hecould make an annual report tell any story you pleased? Still subtler isthe seven-foot ballot of stupid, good intentions--the hyperdemocraticballot in which you are asked to vote for the State Printer, and succeedonly in voting under the party emblem. 

Statistics then is no automatic device for measuring facts. You and I areforever at the mercy of the census-taker and the census-maker. Thatimpertinent fellow who goes from house to house is one of the realmasters of the statistical situation. The other is the man who organizesthe results. For all the conclusions in the end rest upon their accuracy, honesty, energy and insight. Of course, in an obvious census like that ofthe number of people personal bias counts for so little that it is lostin the grand total. But the moment you begin inquiries into subjectswhich people prefer to conceal, the weakness of statistics becomesobvious. All figures which touch upon sexual subjects are nothing but theroughest guesses. No one would take a census of prostitution, illegitimacy, adultery, or venereal disease for a statement of reliablefacts. There are religious statistics, but who that has traveled amongmen would regard the number of professing Christians as any index of thestrength of Christianity, or the church attendance as a measure ofdevotion? In the supremely important subject of literacy, whatclassification yet devised can weigh the culture of masses of people? Wesay that such a percentage of the population cannot read or write. Butthe test of reading and writing is crude and clumsy. It is oftenadministered by men who are themselves half-educated, and it is shotthrough with racial and class prejudice. 

The statistical method is of use only to those who have found it out. This is achieved principally by absorbing into your thinking a livelydoubt about all classifications and general terms, for they are the basisof statistical measurement. That done you are fairly proof againstseduction. No better popular statement of this is to be found than H. G. Wells' little essay: "Skepticism of the Instrument. " Wells has, ofcourse, made no new discovery. The history of philosophy is crowded withquarrels as to how seriously we ought to take our classifications: alarge part of the battle about Nominalism turns on this, the Empiricaland Rational traditions divide on it; in our day the attacks of James, Bergson, and the "anti-intellectualists" are largely a continuation ofthis old struggle. Wells takes his stand very definitely with those whoregard classification "as serviceable for the practical purposes of life"but nevertheless "a departure from the objective truth of things. "

"Take the word chair, " he writes. "When one says chair, one thinksvaguely of an average chair. But collect individual instances, think ofarmchairs and reading-chairs, and dining-room chairs and kitchen chairs, chairs that pass into benches, chairs that cross the boundary and becomesettees, dentists' chairs, thrones, opera stalls, seats of all sorts, those miraculous fungoid growths that cumber the floor of the Arts andCrafts Exhibition, and you will perceive what a lax bundle in fact isthis simple straightforward term. In co-operation with an intelligentjoiner I would undertake to defeat any definition of chair orchairishness that you gave me. " Think then of the glib way in which wespeak of "the unemployed, " "the unfit, " "the criminal, " "theunemployable, " and how easily we forget that behind these general termsare unique individuals with personal histories and varying needs. 

Even the most refined statistics are nothing but an abstraction. But ifthat truth is held clearly before the mind, the polygons and curves ofthe statisticians can be used as a skeleton to which the imagination andour general sense of life give some flesh and blood reality. Humanstatistics are illuminating to those who know humanity. I would not trusta hermit's inferences about the statistics of anything. 

It is then no simple formula which answers our question. The problem of ahuman politics is not solved by a catch phrase. Criticism, of which theseessays are a piece, can give the direction we must travel. But for therest there is no smooth road built, no swift and sure conveyance at thedoor. We set out as if we knew; we act on the notions of man that wepossess. Literature refines, science deepens, various devices extend it. Those who act on the knowledge at hand are the men of affairs. And allthe while, research studies their results, artists express subtlerperceptions, critics refine and adapt the general culture of the times. There is no other way but through this vast collaboration. 

There is no short cut to civilization. We say that the truth will make usfree. Yes, but that truth is a thousand truths which grow and change. Nordo I see a final state of blessedness. The world's end will surely findus still engaged in answering riddles. This changing focus in politics isa tendency at work all through our lives. There are many experiments. Butthe effort is half-conscious; only here and there does it rise to adeliberate purpose. To make it an avowed ideal--a thing of will andintelligence--is to hasten its coming, to illumine its blunders, and, bygiving it self-criticism, to convert mistakes into wisdom. 

CHAPTER V

WELL MEANING BUT UNMEANING: THE CHICAGO VICE REPORT

In casting about for a concrete example to illustrate some of the pointsunder discussion I hesitated a long time before the wealth of material. No age has produced such a multitude of elaborate studies, and anyselection was, of course, a limiting one. The Minority Report of theEnglish Poor Law Commission has striking merits and defects, but for ourpurposes it inheres too deeply in British conditions. American tariff andtrust investigations are massive enough in all conscience, but they areso partisan in their origin and so pathetically unattached to anyrecognized ideal of public policy that it seemed better to lookelsewhere. Conservation had the virtue of arising out of a providentstatesmanship, but its problems were largely technical. 

The real choice narrowed itself finally to the Pittsburgh Survey and theChicago Vice Report. Had I been looking for an example of the finestexpert inquiry, there would have been little question that the vivid andintensive study of Pittsburgh's industrialism was the example to use. ButI was looking for something more representative, and, therefore, morerevealing. I did not want a detached study of some specially selectedcross-section of what is after all not the typical economic life ofAmerica. The case demanded was one in which you could see representativeAmerican citizens trying to handle a problem which had touched theirimaginations. 

Vice is such a problem. You can always get a hearing about it; there isno end of interest in the question. Rare indeed is that community whichhas not been "Lexowed, " in which a district attorney or a minister hasnot led a crusade. Muckraking began with the exposure of vice; men likeHeney, Lindsey, Folk founded their reputations on the fight against it. It would be interesting to know how much of the social conscience of ourtime had as its first insight the prostitute on the city pavement. 

We do not have to force an interest, as we do about the trusts, or evenabout the poor. For this problem lies close indeed to the dynamics of ourown natures. Research is stimulated, actively aroused, and a passionatezeal suffuses what is perhaps the most spontaneous reform enthusiasm ofour time. Looked at externally it is a curious focusing of attention. Noris it explained by words like "chivalry, " "conscience, " "socialcompassion. " Magazines that will condone a thousand cruelties to womengladly publish series of articles on the girl who goes wrong; merchantswho sweat and rack their women employees serve gallantly on thesecommissions. These men are not conscious hypocrites. Perhaps like therest of us they are impelled by forces they are not eager to examine. Ido not press the point. It belongs to the analyst of motive. 

We need only note the vast interest in the subject--that it extendsacross class lines, and expresses itself as an immense good-will. Perhapsa largely unconscious absorption in a subject is itself a sign of greatimportance. Surely vice has a thousand implications that touch all of usdirectly. It is closely related to most of the interests oflife--ramifying into industry, into the family, health, play, art, religion. The miseries it entails are genuine miseries--not points ofetiquette or infringements of convention. Vice issues in pain. The worldsuffers for it. To attack it is to attack as far-reaching and real aproblem as any that we human beings face. 

The Chicago Commission had no simple, easily measured problem before it. At the very outset the report confesses that an accurate count of thenumber of prostitutes in Chicago could not be reached. The police listsare obviously incomplete and perhaps corrupt. The whole amorphous fieldof clandestine vice will, of course, defeat any census. But even publicprostitution is so varied that nobody can do better than estimate itroughly. This point is worth keeping in mind, for it lights up theremedies proposed. What the Commission advocates is the constantrepression and the ultimate annihilation of a mode of life which refusesdiscovery and measurement. 

The report estimates that there are five thousand women in Chicago whodevote their whole time to the traffic; that the annual profits in thatone city alone are between fifteen and sixteen million dollars a year. These figures are admittedly low for they leave out all consideration ofoccasional, or seasonal, or hidden prostitution. It is only the nucleusthat can be guessed at; the fringe which shades out into various degreesof respectability remains entirely unmeasured. Yet these suburbs of theTenderloin must always be kept in mind; their population is shifting andvery elastic; it includes the unsuspected; and I am inclined to believethat it is the natural refuge of the "suppressed" prostitute. Moreover itdefies control. 

The 1012 women recognized on the police lists are of course the mosteasily studied. From them we can gather some hint of the enormousbewildering demand that prostitution answers. The Commission informs usthat this small group alone receives over fifteen thousand visits aday--five million and a half in the year. Yet these 1012 women are onlyabout one-fifth of the professional prostitutes in Chicago. If theaverage continues, then the figures mount to something over 27, 000, 000. The five thousand professionals do not begin to represent the wholeillicit traffic of a city like Chicago. Clandestine and occasional viceis beyond all measurement. 

The figures I have given are taken from the report. They are said to beconservative. For the purposes of this discussion we could well lower the27, 000, 000 by half. All I am concerned about is in arriving at a sense ofthe enormity of the impulse behind the "social evil. " For it is this thatthe Commission proposes to repress, and ultimately to annihilate. 

Lust has a thousand avenues. The brothel, the flat, the assignationhouse, the tenement, saloons, dance halls, steamers, ice-cream parlors, Turkish baths, massage parlors, street-walking--the thing has wovenitself into the texture of city life. Like the hydra, it grows new heads, everywhere. It draws into its service the pleasures of the city. Entangled with the love of gaiety, organized as commerce, it is literallyimpossible to follow the myriad expressions it assumes. 

The Commission gives a very fair picture of these manifestations. A massof material is offered which does in a way show where and how and to whatextent lust finds its illicit expression. Deeper than this the reportdoes not go. The human impulses which create these social conditions, thehuman needs to which they are a sad and degraded answer--this humancenter of the problem the commission passes by with a platitude. 

"So long as there is lust in the hearts of men, " we are told, "it willseek out some method of expression. Until the hearts of men are changedwe can hope for no absolute annihilation of the Social Evil. " But at thehead of the report in black-faced type we read:

"Constant and persistent repression of prostitution the immediate method;absolute annihilation the ultimate ideal. "

I am not trying to catch the Commissioners in a verbal inconsistency. Theinconsistency is real, out of a deep-seated confusion of mind. Lust willseek an expression, they say, until "the hearts of men are changed. " Allparticular expressions are evil and must be constantly repressed. Yetthough you repress one form of lust, it will seek some other. Now, saysthe Commission, in order to change the hearts of men, religion andeducation must step in. It is their business to eradicate an impulsewhich is constantly changing form by being "suppressed. "

There is only one meaning in this: the Commission realized vaguely thatrepression is not even the first step to a cure. For reasons worthanalyzing later, these representative American citizens desired both theimmediate taboo and an ultimate annihilation of vice. So they fell intothe confusion of making immediate and detailed proposals that havenothing to do with the attainment of their ideal. 

What the commission saw and described were the particular forms which agreat human impulse had assumed at a specific date in a certain city. Thedynamic force which created these conditions, which will continue tocreate them--lust--they refer to in a few pious sentences. Theirthinking, in short, is perfectly static and literally superficial. Inoutlining a ripple they have forgotten the tides. 

Had they faced the human sources of their problem, had they tried tothink of the social evil as an answer to a human need, their researcheswould have been different, their remedies fruitful. Suppose they had keptin mind their own statement: "so long as there is lust in the hearts ofmen it will seek out some method of expression. " Had they held fast tothat, it would have ceased to be a platitude and have become a fertileidea. For a platitude is generally inert wisdom. 

In the sentence I quote the Commissioners had an idea which might haveanimated all their labors. But they left it in limbo, they reverenced it, and they passed by. Perhaps we can raise it again and follow the hints itunfolds. 

If lust will seek an expression, are all expressions of it necessarilyevil? That the kind of expression which the Commission describes is evilno one will deny. But is it the only possible expression?

If it is, then the taboo enforced by a Morals Police is, perhaps, as gooda way as any of gaining a fictitious sense of activity. But the ideal of"annihilation" becomes an irrelevant and meaningless phrase. If lust isdeeply rooted in men and its only expression is evil, I for one shouldrecommend a faith in the millennium. You can put this Paradise at thebeginning of the world or the end of it. Practical difference there isnone. 

No one can read the report without coming to a definite conviction thatthe Commission regards lust itself as inherently evil. The membersassumed without criticism the traditional dogma of Christianity that sexin any manifestation outside of marriage is sinful. But practical sensetold them that sex cannot be confined within marriage. It will findexpression--"some method of expression" they say. What never occurred tothem was that it might find a good, a positively beneficent method. Theutterly uncriticised assumption that all expressions not legalized aresinful shut them off from any constructive answer to their problem. Seeing prostitution or something equally bad as the only way sex can findan expression they really set before religion and education theimpossible task of removing lust "from the hearts of men. " So when theirreport puts at its head that absolute annihilation of prostitution is theultimate ideal, we may well translate it into the real intent of theCommission. What is to be absolutely annihilated is not aloneprostitution, not alone all the methods of expression which lust seeksout, but lust itself. 

That this is what the Commission had in mind is supported by plenty of"internal evidence. " For example: one of the most curious recommendationsmade is about divorce--"The Commission condemns the ease with whichdivorces may be obtained in certain States, and recommends a stringent, uniform divorce law for all States. "

What did the Commission have in mind? I transcribe the paragraph whichdeals with divorce: "The Vice Commission, after exhaustive considerationof the vice question, records itself of the opinion that divorce to alarge extent is a contributory factor to sexual vice. No study of thisblight upon the social and moral life of the country would becomprehensive without consideration of the causes which lead to theapplication for divorce. These are too numerous to mention at length insuch a report as this, but the Commission does wish to emphasize thegreat need of more safeguards against the marrying of persons physically, mentally and morally unfit to take up the responsibilities of familylife, including the bearing of children. "

Now to be sure that paragraph leaves much to be desired so far asclearness goes. But I think the meaning can be extracted. Divorce is acontributory factor to sexual vice. One way presumably is that divorcedwomen often become prostitutes. That is an evil contribution, unquestionably. The second sentence says that no study of the social evilis complete which leaves out the _causes_ of divorce. One of those causesis, I suppose, adultery with a prostitute. This evil is totally differentfrom the first: in one case divorce contributes to prostitution, in theother, prostitution leads to divorce. The third sentence urges greatersafeguards against undesirable marriages. This prudence would obviouslyreduce the need of divorce. 

How does the recommendation of a stringent and uniform law fit in withthese three statements? A strict divorce law might be like New York's: itwould recognize few grounds for a decree. One of those grounds, perhapsthe chief one, would be adultery. I say this unhesitatingly for inanother place the Commission informs us that marriage has in it "theelements of vested rights. "

A strict divorce law would, of course, diminish the number of "divorcedwomen, " and perhaps keep them out of prostitution. It does fit the firststatement--in a helpless sort of way. But where does the difficulty ofdivorce affect the causes of it? If you bind a man tightly to a woman hedoes not love, and, possibly prevent him from marrying one he does love, how do you add to his virtue? And if the only way he can free himself isby adultery, does not your stringent divorce law put a premium upon vice?The third sentence would make it difficult for the unfit to marry. Bettermarriages would among other blessings require fewer divorces. But what ofthose who are forbidden to marry? They are unprovided for. And yet whomore than they are likely to find desire uncontrollable and seek someother "method of expression"? With marriage prohibited and prostitutiontabooed, the Commission has a choice between sterilization and--let ussay--other methods of expression. 

Make marriage difficult, divorce stringent, prostitution impossible--isthere any doubt that the leading idea is to confine the sex impulsewithin the marriage of healthy, intelligent, "moral, " and monogamouscouples? For all the other seekings of that impulse what has theCommission to offer? Nothing. That can be asserted flatly. The Commissionhopes to wipe out prostitution. But it never hints that the success ofits plan means vast alterations in our social life. The members give theimpression that they think of prostitution as something that can besubtracted from our civilization without changing the essential characterof its institutions. Yet who that has read the report itself and puthimself into any imaginative understanding of conditions can escapeseeing that prostitution to-day is organic to our industrial life, ourmarriage sanctions, and our social customs? Low wages, fatigue, and thewretched monotony of the factory--these must go before prostitution cango. And behind these stand the facts of woman's entrance intoindustry--facts that have one source at least in the general poverty ofthe family. And that poverty is deeply bound up with the economic systemunder which we live. In the man's problem, the growing impossibility ofearly marriages is directly related to the business situation. Nor can wespeak of the degradation of religion and the arts, of amusement, of thegeneral morale of the people without referring that degradation toindustrial conditions. 

You cannot look at civilization as a row of institutions each external tothe other. They interpenetrate and a change in one affects all theothers. To abolish prostitution would involve a radical alteration ofsociety. Vice in our cities is a form of the sexual impulse--one of theforms it has taken under prevailing social conditions. It is, if youplease, like the crops of a rude and forbidding soil--a coarse, distortedthing though living. 

The Commission studied a human problem and left humanity out. I do notmean that the members weren't deeply touched by the misery of thesethousands of women. You can pity the poor without understanding them; youcan have compassion without insight. The Commissioners had a good deal ofsympathy for the prostitute's condition, but for that "lust in the heartsof men, " and women we may add, for that, they had no sympatheticunderstanding. They did not place themselves within the impulse. Officially they remained external to human desires. For what might becalled the _élan vital_ of the problem they had no patience. Certain sadresults of the particular "method of expression" it had sought out inChicago called forth their pity and their horror. 

In short, the Commission did not face the sexual impulse squarely. Thereport is an attempt to deal with a sexual problem by disregarding itssource. There are almost a hundred recommendations to variousauthorities--Federal, State, county, city, police, educational andothers. I have attempted to classify these proposals under four headings. There are those which mean forcible repression of particularmanifestations--the taboos; there are the recommendations which arepurely palliative, which aim to abate some of the horrors of existingconditions; there are a few suggestions for further investigation; and, finally, there are the inventions, the plans which show some desire tofind moral equivalents for evil--the really statesmanlike offerings. 

The palliative measures we may pass by quickly. So long as they do notblind people to the necessity for radical treatment, only a doctrinairewould object to them. Like all intelligent charities they are still anecessary evil. But nothing must be staked upon them, so let us turn atonce to the constructive suggestions: The Commission proposes that thecounty establish a "Permanent Committee on Child Protection. " It makes noattempt to say what that protection shall be, but I think it is only fairto let the wish father the thought, and regard this as an effort to givechildren a better start in life. The separation of delinquent fromsemi-delinquent girls is a somewhat similar attempt to guard the weak. Another is the recommendation to the city and the nation that it shouldprotect arriving immigrants, and if necessary escort them to their homes. This surely is a constructive plan which might well be enlarged from mereprotection to positive hospitality. How great a part the desolatingloneliness of a city plays in seductions the individual histories in thereport show. Municipal dance halls are a splendid proposal. Freed from acold and over-chaperoned respectability they compete with the devil. There, at least, is one method of sexual expression which may havepositively beneficent results. A municipal lodging house for women issomething of a substitute for the wretched rented room. A littlesuggestion to the police that they send home children found on thestreets after nine o'clock has varied possibilities. But there is theseed of an invention in it which might convert the police from mereagents of repression to kindly helpers in the mazes of a city. Theeducational proposals are all constructive: the teaching of sex hygieneis guardedly recommended for consideration. That is entirely justified, for no one can quarrel with a set of men for leaving a question open. That girls from fourteen to sixteen should receive vocational training incontinuation schools; that social centers should be established in thepublic schools and that the grounds should be open for children--all ofthese are clearly additions to the positive resource of the community. Sois the suggestion that church buildings be used for recreation. The callfor greater parental responsibility is, I fear, a rather empty platitude, for it is not re-enforced with anything but an ancient fervor. 

How much of this really seeks to create a fine expression of the sexualimpulse? How many of these recommendations see sex as an instinct whichcan be transmuted, and turned into one of the values of life? The dancehalls, the social centers, the playgrounds, the reception ofstrangers--these can become instruments for civilizing sexual need. Theeducational proposals could become ways of directing it. They could, butwill they? Without the habit of mind which sees substitution as theessence of statecraft, without a philosophy which makes the invention ofmoral equivalents its goal, I for one refuse to see in theserecommendations anything more than a haphazard shooting which hasaccidentally hit the mark. Moreover, I have a deep suspicion that I havetried to read into the proposals more than the Commission intended. Certainly these constructions occupy an insignificant amount of space inthe body of the report. On all sides of them is a mass of taboos. Noemotional appeal is made for them as there is for the repressions. Theystand largely unnoticed, and very much undefined--poor ghosts of thetruth among the gibbets. 

An inadvertent platitude--that lust will seek an expression--and a fewdiffident proposals for a finer environment--the need and itssatisfaction: had the Commission seen the relation of these incipientideas, animated it, and made it the nerve center of the study, a genuineprogram might have resulted. But the two ideas never met and fertilizedeach other. Nothing dynamic holds the recommendations together--the massof them are taboos, an attempt to kill each mosquito and ignore themarsh. The evils of prostitution are seen as a series of episodes, eachof which must be clubbed, forbidden, raided and jailed. 

There is a special whack for each mosquito: the laws about excursionboats should be enforced; the owners should help to enforce them; thereshould be more officers with police power on these boats; the sale ofliquor to minors should be forbidden; gambling devices should besuppressed; the midwives, doctors and maternity hospitals practicingabortions should be investigated; employment agencies should be watchedand investigated; publishers should be warned against printing suspiciousadvertisements; the law against infamous crimes should be made morespecific; any citizen should have the right to bring equity proceedingsagainst a brothel as a public nuisance; there should be relentlessprosecution of professional procurers; there should be constantprosecution of the keepers, inmates, and owners of bawdy houses; thereshould be prosecution of druggists who sells drugs and "certainappliances" illegally; there should be an identification system forprostitutes in the state courts; instead of fines, prostitutes should bevisited with imprisonment or adult probation; there should be a penaltyfor sending messenger boys under twenty-one to a disorderly house or anunlicensed saloon; the law against prostitutes in saloons, againstwine-rooms and stalls in saloons, against communication between saloonsand brothels, against dancing in saloons--should be strictly enforced;the police who enforce these laws should be carefully watched, graftersamongst them should be discharged; complaints should be investigated atonce by a man stationed outside the district; the pressure of publicityshould be brought against the brewers to prevent them from doing businesswith saloons that violate the law; the Retail Liquor Association shoulddiscipline law-breaking saloon-keepers: licenses should be permanentlyrevoked for violations; no women should be allowed in a saloon without amale escort; no professional or paid escorts should be permitted; nosoliciting should be allowed in saloons; no immoral or vulgar dancesshould be permitted in saloons; no intoxicating liquor should be allowedat any public dance; there should be a municipal detention home forwomen, with probation officers; police inspectors who fail to reportlaw-violations should be dismissed; assignation houses should besuppressed as soon as they are reported; there should be a "specialmorals police squad"; recommendation IX "to the Police" says they "shouldwage a relentless warfare against houses of prostitution, immoral flats, assignation rooms, call houses, and disorderly saloons in all sections ofthe city"; parks and playgrounds should be more thoroughly policed;dancing pavilions should exclude professional prostitutes; soliciting inparks should be suppressed; parks should be lighted with a search-light;there should be no seats in the shadows. .. . 

To perform that staggering list of things that "should" be done youfind--what?--the police power, federal, state, municipal. Note how vagueand general are the chance constructive suggestions; how precise anddefinite the taboos. Surely I am not misstating its position when I saythat forcible suppression was the creed of this Commission. Nor is thereany need of insisting again that the ultimate ideal of annihilatingprostitution has nothing to expect from the concrete proposals that weremade. The millennial goal was one thing; the immediate method quiteanother. For ideals, a pious phrase; in practice, the police. 

Are we not told that "if the citizens cannot depend upon the menappointed to protect their property, and to maintain order, then chaosand disorganization resulting in vice and crime must follow?" Yet of allthe reeds that civilization leans upon, surely the police is thefrailest. Anyone who has had the smallest experience of municipalpolitics knows that the corruption of the police is directlyproportionate to the severity of the taboos it is asked to enforce. TomJohnson saw this as Mayor of Cleveland; he knew that strict lawenforcement against saloons, brothels, and gambling houses would not stopvice, but would corrupt the police. I recommend the recent spectacle inNew York where the most sensational raider of gambling houses has turnedout to be in crooked alliance with the gamblers. And I suggest as a hintthat the Commission's recommendations enforced for one year will lay thefoundation of an organized system of blackmail and "protection, " secrecyand underground chicanery, the like of which Chicago has not yet seen. But the Commission need only have read its own report, have studied itsown cases. There is an illuminating chapter on "The Social Evil and thePolice. " In the summary, the Commission says that "officers on the beatare bold and open in their neglect of duty, drinking in saloons while inuniform, ignoring the solicitations by prostitutes in rear rooms and onthe streets, selling tickets at dances frequented by professional andsemi-professional prostitutes; protecting 'cadets, ' prostitutes andsaloon-keepers of disorderly places. "

Some suspicion that the police could not carry the burden of suppressingthe social evil must have dawned on the Commission. 

It felt the need of re-enforcement. Hence the special morals policesquad; hence the investigation of the police of one district by thepolice from another; and hence, in type as black as that of the idealitself and directly beneath it, the call for "the appointment of a moralscommission" and "the establishment of a morals court. " Now thiscommission consists of the Health Officer, a physician and three citizenswho serve without pay. It is appointed by the Mayor and approved by theCity Council. Its business is to prosecute vice and to help enforce thelaw. 

Just what would happen if the Morals Commission didn't prosecute hardenough I do not know. Conceivably the Governor might be induced toappoint a Commission on Moral Commissions in Cities. But why the men andwomen who framed the report made this particular recommendation is aninteresting question. With federal, state, and municipal authorities inexistence, with courts, district attorneys, police all operating, theycreate another arm of prosecution. Possibly they were somewhatdisillusioned about the present instruments of the taboo; perhapsthey imagined that a new broom would sweep clean. But I suspect aninner reason. The Commission may have imagined that the fourappointees--unpaid--would be four men like themselves--who knows, perhapsfour men from among themselves? The whole tenor of their thinking is toset somebody watching everybody and somebody else to watching him. Whatis more natural than that they should be the Ultimate Watchers?

Spying, informing, constant investigations of everybody and everythingmust become the rule where there is a forcible attempt to moralizesociety from the top. Nobody's heart is in the work very long; nobody'sbut those fanatical and morbid guardians of morality who make it a life'sspecialty. The aroused public opinion which the Commission asks forcannot be held if all it has to fix upon is an elaborate series oftaboos. Sensational disclosures will often make the public flare upspasmodically; but the mass of men is soon bored by intricate rules andtangles of red tape; the "crusade" is looked upon as a melodrama of reallife--interesting, but easily forgotten. 

The method proposed ignores the human source: by a kind of poetic justicethe great crowd of men will ignore the method. If you want to impose ataboo upon a whole community, you must do it autocratically, you mustmake it part of the prevailing superstitions. You must never let it reachany public analysis. For it will fail, it will receive only a shallowsupport from what we call an "enlightened public opinion. " That opinionis largely determined by the real impulses of men; and genuine characterrejects or at least rebels against foreign, unnatural impositions. Thisis one of the great virtues of democracy--that it makes alien laws moreand more difficult to enforce. The tyrant can use the taboo a thousandtimes more effectively than the citizens of a republic. When he speaks, it is with a prestige that dumbs questioning and makes obedience a habit. Let that infallibility come to be doubted, as in Russia to-day, andnatural impulses reassert themselves, the great impositions begin toweaken. The methods of the Chicago Commission would require a tyranny, apowerful, centralized sovereignty which could command with majesty andsilence the rebel. In our shirt-sleeved republic no such power exists. The strongest force we have is that of organized money, and thatsovereignty is too closely connected with the social evil, too dependentupon it in a hundred different ways, to undertake the task ofsuppression. 

For the purposes of the Commission democracy is an inefficient weapon. Nothing but disappointment is in store for men who expect a people tooutrage its own character. A large part of the unfaith in democracy, ofthe desire to ignore "the mob, " limit the franchise, and confine power tothe few is the result of an unsuccessful attempt to make republics actlike old-fashioned monarchies. Almost every "crusade" leaves behind it atrail of yearning royalists; many "good-government" clubs are littlewould-be oligarchies. 

When the mass of men emerged from slavish obedience and made democracyinevitable, the taboo entered upon its final illness. For the moreself-governing a people becomes, the less possible it is to prescribeexternal restrictions. The gap between want and ought, between nature andideals cannot be maintained. The only practical ideals in a democracy area fine expression of natural wants. This happens to be a thoroughly Greekattitude. But I learned it first from the Bowery. Chuck Connors isreported to have said that "a gentleman is a bloke as can do whatever hewants to do. " If Chuck said that, he went straight to the heart of thatdemocratic morality on which a new statecraft must ultimately rest. Hisgentleman is not the battlefield of wants and prohibitions; in himimpulses flow freely through beneficent channels. 

The same notion lies imbedded in the phrase: "government must serve thepeople. " That means a good deal more than that elected officials mustrule for the majority. For the majority in these semi-democratic times isoften as not a cloak for the ruling oligarchy. Representatives who"serve" some majorities may in reality order the nation about. To servethe people means to provide it with services--with clean streets andwater, with education, with opportunity, with beneficent channels for itsdesires, with moral equivalents for evil. The task is turned from thedamming and restricting of wants to the creation of fine environments forthem. And the environment of an impulse extends all the way from thehuman body, through family life and education out into the streets of thecity. 

Had the Commission worked along democratic lines, we should have hadrecommendations about the hygiene and early training of children, theireducation, the houses they live in and the streets in which they play;changes would have been suggested in the industrial conditions they face;plans would have been drawn for recreation; hints would have beencollected for transmuting the sex impulse into art, into social endeavor, into religion. That is the constructive approach to the problem. I notethat the Commission calls upon the churches for help. Its obviousintention was to down sex with religion. What was not realized, it seems, is that this very sex impulse, so largely degraded into vice, is thedynamic force in religious feeling. One need not call in the testimony ofthe psychologists, the students of religion, the æstheticians or even ofPlato, who in the "Symposium" traced out the hierarchy of love from thebody to the "whole sea of beauty. " Jane Addams in Chicago has tested thetruth by her own wide experience, and she has written what the Commissionmight easily have read, --that "in failing to diffuse and utilize thisfundamental instinct of sex through the imagination, we not onlyinadvertently foster vice and enervation, but we throw away one of themost precious implements for ministering to life's highest needs. Thereis no doubt that this ill-adjusted function consumes quite unnecessarilyvast stores of vital energy, even when we contemplate it in its immaturemanifestations which are infinitely more wholesome than the dumb swampingprocess. All high school boys and girls know the difference between theconcentration and the diffusion of this impulse, although they would behopelessly bewildered by the use of terms. They will declare one of theircompanions to be 'in love' if his fancy is occupied by the image of asingle person about whom all the new-found values gather, and withoutwhom his solitude is an eternal melancholy. But if the stimulus does notappear as a definite image, and the values evoked are dispensed over theworld, the young person suddenly seems to have discovered a beauty andsignificance in many things--he responds to poetry, he becomes a lover ofnature, he is filled with religious devotion or with philanthropic zeal. Experience, with young people, easily illustrates the possibility andvalue of diffusion. "

It is then not only impossible to confine sex to mere reproduction; itwould be a stupid denial of the finest values of civilization. Havingseen that the impulse is a necessary part of character, we must not holdto it grudgingly as a necessary evil. It is, on the contrary, the verysource of good. Whoever has visited Hull House can see for himself theearnest effort Miss Addams has made to treat sex with dignity and joy. For Hull House differs from most settlements in that it is full ofpictures, of color, and of curios. The atmosphere is light; you feel noneof that moral oppression which hangs over the usual settlement as over agathering of missionaries. Miss Addams has not only made Hull House abeautiful place; she has stocked it with curious and interesting objects. The theater, the museum, the crafts and the arts, games and dances--theyare some of those "other methods of expression which lust can seek. " Itis no accident that Hull House is the most successful settlement inAmerica. 

Yet who does not feel its isolation in that brutal city? A little Athensin a vast barbarism--you wonder how much of Chicago Hull House cancivilize. As you walk those grim streets and look into the stiflinghouses, or picture the relentless stockyards, the conviction that viceand its misery cannot be transmuted by policemen and Morals Commissions, the feeling that spying and inspecting and prosecuting will not drain themarsh becomes a certainty. You want to shout at the forcible moralizer:"so long as you acquiesce in the degradation of your city, so long aswork remains nothing but ill-paid drudgery and every instinct of joy ismocked by dirt and cheapness and brutality, --just so long will yourefforts be fruitless, yes even though you raid and prosecute, even thoughyou make Comstock the Czar of Chicago. "

But Hull House cannot remake Chicago. A few hundred lives can be changed, and for the rest it is a guide to the imagination. Like all utopias, itcannot succeed, but it may point the way to success. If Hull House isunable to civilize Chicago, it at least shows Chicago and America what acivilization might be like. Friendly, where our cities are friendless, beautiful, where they are ugly; sociable and open, where our daily lifeis furtive; work a craft; art a participation--it is in miniature thegoal of statesmanship. If Chicago were like Hull House, we say toourselves, then vice would be no problem--it would dwindle, what was leftwould be the Falstaff in us all, and only a spiritual anemia could worryover that jolly and redeeming coarseness. 

What stands between Chicago and civilization? No one can doubt that toabolish prostitution means to abolish the slum and the dirty alley, tostop overwork, underpay, the sweating and the torturing monotony ofbusiness, to breathe a new life into education, ventilate society withfrankness, and fill life with play and art, with games, with passionswhich hold and suffuse the imagination. 

It is a revolutionary task, and like all real revolutions it will not bedone in a day or a decade because someone orders it to be done. A changein the whole quality of life is something that neither the policeman'sclub nor an insurrectionary raid can achieve. If you want a revolutionthat shall really matter in human life--and what sane man can helpdesiring it?--you must look to the infinitely complicated results of thedynamic movements in society. These revolutions require a rarecombination of personal audacity and social patience. The best agents ofsuch a revolution are men who are bold in their plans because theyrealize how deep and enormous is the task. 

Many people have sought an analogy in our Civil War. They have said thatas "black slavery" went, so must "white slavery. " In the variousagitations of vigilance committees and alliances for the suppression ofthe traffic they profess to see continued a work which the abolitionistsbegan. 

In A. M. Simons' brilliant book on "Social Forces in American History"much help can be found. For example: "Massachusetts abolished slavery atan early date, and we have it on the authority of John Adamsthat:--'argument might have had some weight in the abolition of slaveryin Massachusetts, but the real cause was the multiplication of laboringwhite people, who would not longer suffer the rich to employ these sablerivals so much to their injury. '" No one to-day doubts that white laborin the North and slavery in the South were not due to the moralsuperiority of the North. Yet just in the North we find the abolitionsentiment strongest. That the Civil War was not a clash of good men andbad men is admitted by every reputable historian. The war did not comewhen moral fervor had risen to the exploding point; the moral fervor camerather when the economic interests of the South collided with those ofthe North. That the abolitionists clarified the economic interests of theNorth and gave them an ideal sanction is true enough. But the factremains that by 1860 some of the aspirations of Phillips and Garrison hadbecome the economic destiny of this country. 

You can have a Hull House established by private initiative andmaintained by individual genius, just as you had planters who freed theirslaves or as you have employers to-day who humanize their factories. Butthe fine example is not readily imitated when industrial forces fightagainst it. So even if the Commission had drawn splendid plans forhousing, work conditions, education, and play it would have done onlypart of the task of statesmanship. We should then know what to do, butnot how to get it done. 

An ideal suspended in a vacuum is ineffective: it must point a dynamiccurrent. Only then does it gather power, only then does it enter intolife. That forces exist to-day which carry with them solutions is evidentto anyone who has watched the labor movement and the woman's awakening. Even the interests of business give power to the cause. The discovery ofmanufacturers that degradation spoils industrial efficiency must not becast aside by the radical because the motive is larger profits. Thediscovery, whatever the motive, will inevitably humanize industry a gooddeal. For it happens that in this case the interests of capitalism and ofhumanity coincide. A propaganda like the single-tax will undoubtedly findincreasing support among business men. They see in it a relief from theburden of rent imposed by that older tyrant--the landlord. But thetaxation of unimproved property happens at the same time to be a splendidweapon against the slum. 

Only when the abolition of "white slavery" becomes part of the socialcurrents of the time will it bear any interesting analogy to theso-called freeing of the slaves. Even then for many enthusiasts thecomparison is misleading. They are likely to regard the EmancipationProclamation as the end of chattel slavery. It wasn't. That historicdocument broke a legal bond but not a social one. The process of negroemancipation is infinitely slower and it is not accomplished yet. Likewise no statute can end "white slavery. " Only vast and complicatedchanges in the whole texture of social life will achieve such an end. Ifby some magic every taboo of the commission could be enforced theabolition of sex slavery would not have come one step nearer to reality. Cities and factories, schools and homes, theaters and games, manners andthought will have to be transformed before sex can find a betterexpression. Living forces, not statutes or clubs, must work that change. The power of emancipation is in the social movements which alone caneffect any deep reform in a nation. So it is and has been with the negro. I do not think the Abolitionists saw facts truly when they disbandedtheir organization a few years after the civil war. They found too muchcomfort in a change of legal status. Profound economic forces broughtabout the beginning of the end of chattel slavery. But the reality offreedom was not achieved by proclamation. For that the revolution had togo on: the industrial life of the nation had to change its character, social customs had to be replaced, the whole outlook of men had to betransformed. And whether it is negro slavery or a vicious sexual bondage, the actual advance comes from substitutions injected into society bydynamic social forces. 

I do not wish to press the analogy or over-emphasize the particularproblems. I am not engaged in drawing up the plans for a reconstructionor in telling just what should be done. Only the co-operation of expertminds can do that. The place for a special propaganda is elsewhere. Ifthese essays succeed in suggesting a method of looking at politics, ifthey draw attention to what is real in social reforms and make somewhatmore evident the traps and the blind-alleys of an uncritical approach, they will have done their work. That the report of the Chicago ViceCommission figures so prominently in this chapter is not due to anypreoccupation with Chicago, the Commission or with vice. It is a text andnothing else. The report happens to embody what I conceive to be most ofthe faults of a political method now decadent. Its failure to put humanimpulses at the center of thought produced remedies valueless to humannature; its false interest in a particular expression ofsex--vice--caused it to taboo the civilizing power of sex; its inabilityto see that wants require fine satisfactions and not prohibitions droveit into an undemocratic tyranny; its blindness to the social forces ofour age shut off the motive power for any reform. 

The Commission's method was poor, not its intentions. It was an averagebody of American citizens aroused to action by an obvious evil. Butsomething slipped in to falsify vision. It was, I believe, an array ofidols disguised as ideals. They are typical American idols, and theydeserve some study. 

CHAPTER VI

SOME NECESSARY ICONOCLASM

 The Commission "has kept constantly in mind that to offer a contribution of any value such an offering must be, first, moral; second, reasonable and practical; third, possible under the Constitutional powers of our Courts; fourth, that which will square with the public conscience of the American people. "--The Vice Commission of Chicago--Introduction to Report on the Social Evil. 

Having adjusted such spectacles the Commission proceeded to look at "thiscurse which is more blasting than any plague or epidemic, " at an evil"which spells only ruin to the race. " In dealing with what it regards asthe greatest calamity in the world, a calamity as old as civilization, the Commission lays it down beforehand that the remedy must be "moral, "constitutional, and satisfactory to the public conscience. I wonder inall seriousness what the Commission would have done had it discovered agenuine cure for prostitution which happened, let us say, to conflictwith the constitutional powers of our courts. I wonder how the Commissionwould have acted if a humble following of the facts had led them to aconviction out of tune with the existing public conscience of America. Such a conflict is not only possible; it is highly probable. When youcome to think of it, the conflict appears a certainty. For theConstitution is a legal expression of the conditions under whichprostitution has flourished; the social evil is rooted in institutionsand manners which have promoted it, in property relations and businesspractice which have gathered about them a halo of reason andpracticality, of morality and conscience. Any change so vast as theabolition of vice is of necessity a change in morals, practice, law andconscience. 

A scientist who began an investigation by saying that his results must bemoral or constitutional would be a joke. We have had scientists likethat, men who insisted that research must confirm the Biblical theory ofcreation. We have had economists who set out with the preconceived ideaof justifying the factory system. The world has recently begun to seethrough this kind of intellectual fraud. If a doctor should appear whooffered a cure for tuberculosis on the ground that it was justified bythe Bible and that it conformed to the opinions of that great mass of theAmerican people who believe that fresh air is the devil, we shouldpromptly lock up that doctor as a dangerous quack. When the negroes ofKansas were said to be taking pink pills to guard themselves againstHalley's Comet, they were doing something which appeared to them aseminently practical and entirely reasonable. Not long ago we read of thesavage way in which a leper was treated out West; his leprosy was notregarded as a disease, but as the curse of God, and, if I remembercorrectly, the Bible was quoted in court as an authority on leprosy. Thetreatment seemed entirely moral and squared very well with the conscienceof that community. 

I have heard reputable physicians condemn a certain method ofpsychotherapy because it was "immoral. " A woman once told me that she hadlet her son grow up ignorant of his sexual life because "a mother shouldnever mention anything 'embarrassing' to her child. " Many of us are stillblushing for the way America treated Gorki when it found that Russianmorals did not square with the public conscience of America. And the timeis not yet passed when we punish the offspring of illicit love, and visitvengeance unto the third and fourth generations. One reads in the reportof the Vice Commission that many public hospitals in Chicago refuse tocare for venereal diseases. The examples are endless. They run from theabsurd to the monstrous. But always the source is the same. Idols are setup to which all the living must bow; we decide beforehand that thingsmust fit a few preconceived ideas. And when they don't, which is most ofthe time, we deny truth, falsify facts, and prefer the coddling of ourtheory to any deeper understanding of the real problem before us. 

It seems as if a theory were never so active as when the reality behindit has disappeared. The empty name, the ghostly phrase, exercise anauthority that is appalling. When you think of the blood that has beenshed in the name of Jesus, when you think of the Holy Roman Empire, "neither holy nor Roman nor imperial, " of the constitutional phrases thatcloak all sorts of thievery, of the common law precedents that tyrannizeover us, history begins to look almost like the struggle of man toemancipate himself from phrase-worship. The devil can quote Scripture, and law, and morality and reason and practicality. The devil can use thepublic conscience of his time. He does in wars, in racial and religiouspersecutions; he did in the Spain of the Inquisition; he does in theAmerican lynching. 

For there is nothing so bad but it can masquerade as moral. Conquerorshave gone forth with the blessing of popes; a nation invokes its Godbefore beginning a campaign of murder, rape and pillage. The ruthlessexploitation of India becomes the civilizing fulfilment of the "whiteman's burden"; not infrequently the missionary, drummer, and prospectorare embodied in one man. In the nineteenth century church, press anduniversity devoted no inconsiderable part of their time to proving thehigh moral and scientific justice of child labor and human sweating. Itis a matter of record that chattel slavery in this country was deducedfrom Biblical injunction, that the universities furnished brains for itsdefense. Surely Bernard Shaw was not describing the Englishman alone whenhe said in "The Man of Destiny" that ". .. You will never find anEnglishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights youon patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles. .. . "

Liberty, equality, fraternity--what a grotesque career those words havehad. Almost every attempt to mitigate the hardships of industrialism hashad to deal with the bogey of liberty. Labor organization, factory laws, health regulations are still fought as infringements of liberty. And inthe name of equality what fantasies of taxation have we not woven? whattravesties of justice set up? "The law in its majestic equality, " writesAnatole France, "forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep in thestreets and to steal bread. " Fraternity becomes the hypocritical sloganby which we refuse to enact what is called "class legislation"--a policywhich in theory denies the existence of classes, in practice legislatesin favor of the rich. The laws which go unchallenged are laws friendly tobusiness; class legislation means working-class legislation. 

You have to go among lawyers to see this idolatrous process in its mostperfect form. When a judge sets out to "interpret" the Constitution, whatis it that he does? He takes a sentence written by a group of men morethan a hundred years ago. That sentence expressed their policy aboutcertain conditions which they had to deal with. In it was summed up whatthey intended to do about the problems they saw. That is all the sentencemeans. But in the course of a century new problems arise--problems theFathers could no more have foreseen than we can foresee the problems ofthe year two thousand. Yet that sentence which contained their wisdomabout particular events has acquired an emotional force which persistslong after the events have passed away. Legends gather about the men whowrote it: those legends are absorbed by us almost with our mothers' milk. We never again read that sentence straight. It has a gravity out of allproportion to its use, and we call it a fundamental principle ofgovernment. Whatever we want to do is hallowed and justified, if it canbe made to appear as a deduction from that sentence. To put new wine inold bottles is one of the aims of legal casuistry. 

Reformers practice it. You hear it said that the initiative andreferendum are a return to the New England town meeting. That is supposedto be an argument for direct legislation. But surely the analogy issuperficial; the difference profound. The infinitely greater complexityof legislation to-day, the vast confusion in the aims of the votingpopulation, produce a difference of so great a degree that it amounts toa difference in kind. The naturalist may classify the dog and the fox, the house-cat and the tiger together for certain purposes. The historianof political forms may see in the town meeting a forerunner of directlegislation. But no housewife dare classify the cat and the tiger, thedog and the fox, as the same kind of animal. And no statesman can arguethe virtues of the referendum from the successes of the town meeting. 

But the propagandists do it nevertheless, and their propaganda thrivesupon it. The reason is simple. The town meeting is an obviouslyrespectable institution, glorified by all the reverence men give to thedead. It has acquired the seal of an admired past, and any proposal thatcan borrow that seal can borrow that reverence too. A name trails behindit an army of associations. That army will fight in any cause that bearsthe name. So the reformers of California, the Lorimerites of Chicago, andthe Barnes Republicans of Albany all use the name of Lincoln for theirpolitical associations. In the struggle that preceded the RepublicanConvention of 1912 it was rumored that the Taft reactionaries would putforward Lincoln's son as chairman of the convention in order tocounteract Roosevelt's claim that he stood in Lincoln's shoes. 

Casuistry is nothing but the injection of your own meaning into an oldname. At school when the teacher asked us whether we had studied thelesson, the invariable answer was Yes. We had indeed stared at the pagefor a few minutes, and that could be called studying. Sometimes thehead-master would break into the room just in time to see the conclusionof a scuffle. Jimmy's clothes are white with dust. "Johnny, did you throwchalk at Jimmy?" "No, sir, " says Johnny, and then under his breath toplacate God's penchant for truth, "I threw the chalk-eraser. " Once inPortland, Maine, I ordered iced tea at an hotel. The waitress brought mea glass of yellowish liquid with a two-inch collar of foam at the top. Notea I had ever seen outside of a prohibition state looked like that. Though it was tea, it might have been beer. Perhaps if I had smiled orwinked in ordering the tea, it would have been beer. The two looked alikein Portland; they were interchangeable. You could drink tea and foolyourself into thinking it was beer. You could drink beer and pass for atea-toper. 

It is rare, I think, that the fraud is so genial and so deliberate. Theopenness cleanses it. Advertising, for example, would be nothing butgigantic and systematic lying if almost everybody didn't know that itwas. Yet it runs into the sinister all the time. The pure food agitationis largely an effort to make the label and the contents tell the samestory. It was noteworthy that, following the discovery of salvarsan or"606" by Dr. Ehrlich, the quack doctors began to call their treatments"606. " But the deliberate casuistry of lawyers, quacks, or politicians isnot so difficult to deal with. The very deliberation makes it easier todetect, for it is generally awkward. What one man can consciously devise, other men can understand. 

But unconscious casuistry deceives us all. No one escapes it entirely. Awealth of evidence could be adduced to support this from the studies ofdreams and fantasies made by the Freudian school of psychologists. Theyhave shown how constantly the mind cloaks a deep meaning in a shallowincident--how the superficial is all the time being shoved into the lightof consciousness in order to conceal a buried intention; how inveterateis our use of symbols. 

Between ourselves and our real natures we interpose that wax figure ofidealizations and selections which we call our character. We extend thisinto all our thinking. Between us and the realities of social life webuild up a mass of generalizations, abstract ideas, ancient glories, andpersonal wishes. They simplify and soften experience. It is so mucheasier to talk of poverty than to think of the poor, to argue the rightsof capital than to see its results. Pretty soon we come to think of thetheories and abstract ideas as things in themselves. We worry about theirfate and forget their original content. 

For words, theories, symbols, slogans, abstractions of all kinds arenothing but the porous vessels into which life flows, is contained for atime, and then passes through. But our reverence clings to the vessels. The old meaning may have disappeared, a new one come in--no matter, wetry to believe there has been no change. And when life's expansiondemands some new container, nothing is more difficult than therealization that the old vessels cannot be stretched to the present need. 

It is interesting to notice how in the very act of analyzing it I havefallen into this curious and ancient habit. My point is that the metaphoris taken for the reality: I have used at least six metaphors to state it. Abstractions are not cloaks, nor wax figures, nor walls, nor vessels, andlife doesn't flow like water. What they really are you and I knowinwardly by using abstractions and living our lives. But once I attemptto give that inwardness expression, I must use the only weapons Ihave--abstractions, theories, phrases. By an effort of the sympatheticimagination you can revive within yourself something of my inward sense. As I have had to abstract from life in order to communicate, so you arecompelled to animate my abstractions, in order to understand. 

I know of no other method of communication between two people. Languageis always grossly inadequate. It is inadequate if the listener is merelypassive, if he falls into the mistake of the literal-minded who expectwords to contain a precise image of reality. They never do. All languagecan achieve is to act as a guidepost to the imagination enabling thereader to recreate the author's insight. The artist does that: hecontrols his medium so that we come most readily to the heart of hisintention. In the lyric poet the control is often so delicate that thehearer lives over again the finely shaded mood of the poet. Take thewords of a lyric for what they say, and they say nothing most of thetime. And that is true of philosophers. You must penetrate the ponderousvocabulary, the professional cant to the insight beneath or you scoff atthe mountain ranges of words and phrases. It is this that Bergson meanswhen he tells us that a philosopher's intuition always outlasts hissystem. Unless you get at that you remain forever foreign to the thinker. 

That too is why debating is such a wretched amusement and mostpartisanship, most controversy, so degrading. The trick here is to arguefrom the opponent's language, never from his insight. You take himliterally, you pick up his sentences, and you show what nonsense theyare. You do not try to weigh what you see against what he sees; youcontrast what you see with what he says. So debating becomes a way ofconfirming your own prejudices; it is never, never in any debate I havesuffered through, a search for understanding from the angles of twodiffering insights. 

And, of course, in those more sinister forms of debating, court trials, where the stakes are so much bigger, the skill of a successful lawyer isto make the atmosphere as opaque as possible to the other lawyer'scontention. Men have been hanged as a result. How often in a politicalcampaign does a candidate suggest that behind the platforms and speechesof his opponents there might be some new and valuable understanding ofthe country's need?

The fact is that we argue and quarrel an enormous lot over words. Ourprevailing habit is to think about phrases, "ideals, " theories, not aboutthe realities they express. In controversy we do not try to find ouropponent's meaning: we examine his vocabulary. And in our own efforts toshape policies we do not seek out what is worth doing: we seek out whatwill pass for moral, practical, popular or constitutional. 

In this the Vice Commission reflected our national habits. For thoseearnest men and women in Chicago did not set out to find a way ofabolishing prostitution; they set out to find a way that would conform tofour idols they worshiped. The only cure for prostitution might prove tobe "immoral, " "impractical, " unconstitutional, and unpopular. I suspectthat it is. But the honest thing to do would have been to look for thatcure without preconceived notions. Having found it, the Commission couldthen have said to the public: "This is what will cure the social evil. Itmeans these changes in industry, sex relations, law and public opinion. If you think it is worth the cost you can begin to deal with the problem. If you don't, then confess that you will not abolish prostitution, andturn your compassion to softening its effects. "

That would have left the issues clear and wholesome. But the procedure ofthe Commission is a blow to honest thinking. Its conclusions may "squarewith the public conscience of the American people" but they will notsquare with the intellectual conscience of anybody. To tell you at thetop of the page that absolute annihilation of prostitution is theultimate ideal and twenty lines further on that the method must beconstitutional is nothing less than an insult to the intelligence. Calf-worship was never more idolatrous than this. Truth would have sleptmore comfortably in Procrustes' bed. 

Let no one imagine that I take the four preconceived ideas of theCommission too seriously. On the first reading of the report they arousedno more interest in me than the ordinary lip-honor we all do toconventionality--I had heard of the great fearlessness of this report, and I supposed that this bending of the knee was nothing but the innocenthypocrisy of the reformer who wants to make his proposal not tooshocking. But it was a mistake. Those four idols really dominated theminds of the Commission, and without them the report cannot beunderstood. They are typical idols of the American people. This reportoffers an opportunity to see the concrete results of worshiping them. 

A valuable contribution, then, must be _moral_. There is no doubt thatthe Commission means sexually moral. We Americans always use the word inthat limited sense. If you say that Jones is a moral man you mean that heis faithful to his wife. He may support her by selling pink pills; he isnevertheless moral if he is monogamous. The average American rarelyspeaks of industrial piracy as immoral. He may condemn it, but not withthat word. If he extends the meaning of immoral at all, it is to thevices most closely allied to sex--drink and gambling. 

Now sexual morality is pretty clearly defined for the Commission. As wehave seen, it means that sex must be confined to procreation by ahealthy, intelligent and strictly monogamous couple. All other sexualexpression would come under the ban of disapproval. I am sure I do theCommission no injustice. Now this limited conception of sex has had adisastrous effect: it has forced the Commission to ignore the sexualimpulse in discussing a sexual problem. Any modification of therelationship of men and women was immediately put out of consideration. Such suggestions as Forel, Ellen Key, or Havelock Ellis make could, ofcourse, not even get a hearing. 

With this moral ideal in mind, not only vice, but sex itself, becomes anevil thing. Hence the hysterical and minute application of the taboowherever sex shows itself. Barred from any reform which would reabsorbthe impulse into civilized life, the Commissioners had no other coursebut to hunt it, as an outlaw. And in doing this they were compelled todiscard the precious values of art, religion and social life of whichthis superfluous energy is the creator. Driven to think of it as bad, except for certain particular functions, they could, of course, not seeits possibilities. Hence the poverty of their suggestions alongeducational and artistic lines. 

A valuable contribution, we are told, must be _reasonable_ and_practical_. Here is a case where words cannot be taken literally. "Reasonable" in America certainly never even pretended to mean inaccordance with a rational ideal, and "practical, "--well one thinks of"practical politics, " "practical business men, " and "unpracticalreformers. " Boiled down these words amount to something like this: theproposals must not be new or startling; must not involve any radicaldisturbance of any respectable person's selfishness; must not call forthany great opposition; must look definite and immediate; must be tangiblelike a raid, or a jail, or the paper of an ordinance, or a policeman'sclub. Above all a "reasonable and practical" proposal must not requireany imaginative patience. The actual proposals have all these qualities:if they are "reasonable and practical" then we know by a gooddemonstration what these terms meant to that average body of citizens. 

To see that is to see exposed an important facet of the Americantemperament. Our dislike of "talk"; the frantic desire to "do something"without inquiring whether it is worth doing; the dollar standard; theunwillingness to cast any bread upon the waters; our preference for asparrow in the hand to a forest of song-birds; the naïve inability tounderstand the inner satisfactions of bankrupt poets and theunworldliness of eccentric thinkers; success-mania; philistinism--theyare pieces of the same cloth. They come from failure or unwillingness toproject the mind beyond the daily routine of things, to play over thewhole horizon of possibilities, and to recognize that all is not saidwhen we have spoken. In those words "reasonable and practical" is theChinese Wall of America, that narrow boundary which contracts our visionto the moment, cuts us off from the culture of the world, and makes ussuch provincial, unimaginative blunderers over our own problems. Fixationupon the immediate has made a rich country poor in leisure, has in a landmeant for liberal living incited an insane struggle for existence. Onesuspects at times that our national cult of optimism is no real feelingthat the world is good, but a fear that pessimism will produce panics. 

How this fascination of the obvious has balked the work of the CommissionI need not elaborate. That the long process of civilizing sex receivedperfunctory attention; that the imaginative value of sex was lost in adogma; that the implied changes in social life were dodged--all that hasbeen pointed out. It was the inability to rise above the immediate thatmakes the report read as if the policeman were the only agent ofcivilization. 

For where in the report is any thorough discussion by sociologists of therelations of business and marriage to vice? Why is there no testimony bypsychologists to show how sex can be affected by environment, byeducators to show how it can be trained, by industrial experts to showhow monotony and fatigue affect it? Where are the detailed proposals byspecialists, for decent housing and working conditions, for educationalreform, for play facilities? The Commission wasn't afraid of details:didn't it recommend searchlights in the parks as a weapon against vice?Why then isn't there a budget, a large, comprehensive budget, precise andinforming, in which provision is made for beginning to civilize Chicago?That wouldn't have been "reasonable and practical, " I presume, for itwould have cost millions and millions of dollars. And where would themoney have come from? Were the single-taxers, the Socialists consulted?But their proposals would require big changes in property interests, andwould that be "reasonable and practical"? Evidently not: it is morereasonable and practical to keep park benches out of the shadows and toplague unescorted prostitutes. 

And where are the open questions: the issues that everybody shouldconsider, the problems that scientists should study? I see almost notrace of them. Why are the sexual problems not even stated? Where are thedoubts that should have honored these investigations, the frank statementof all the gaps in knowledge, and the obscurities in morals? Knowingperfectly well that vice will not be repressed within a year orprostitution absolutely annihilated in ten, it might, I should think, have seemed more important that the issues be made clear and the thoughtof the people fertilized than that the report should look very definiteand precise. There are all sorts of things we do not understand aboutthis problem. The opportunities for study which the Commissioners hadmust have made these empty spaces evident. Why then were we not takeninto their confidence? Along what lines is investigation most needed? Towhat problems, what issues, shall we give our attention? What is thedebatable ground in this territory? The Commission does not say, and Ifor one, ascribe the silence to the American preoccupation withimmediate, definite, tangible interests. 

Wells has written penetratingly about this in "The New Machiavelli. " Ihave called this fixation on the nearest object at hand an Americanhabit. Perhaps as Mr. Wells shows it is an English one too. But in thiscountry we have a philosophy to express it--the philosophy of theReasonable and the Practical, and so I do not hesitate to import Mr. Wells's observations: "It has been the chronic mistake of statecraft andall organizing spirits to attempt immediately to scheme and arrange andachieve. Priests, schools of thought, political schemers, leaders of men, have always slipped into the error of assuming that they can think outthe whole--or at any rate completely think out definite parts--of thepurpose and future of man, clearly and finally; they have set themselvesto legislate and construct on that assumption, and, experiencing theperplexing obduracy and evasions of reality, they have taken to dogma, persecution, training, pruning, secretive education; and all thestupidities of self-sufficient energy. In the passion of their goodintentions they have not hesitated to conceal facts, suppress thought, crush disturbing initiatives and apparently detrimental desires. And soit is blunderingly and wastefully, destroying with the making, that anyextension of social organization is at present achieved. Directly, however, this idea of an emancipation from immediacy is grasped, directlythe dominating importance of this critical, less personal, mentalhinterland in the individual and of the collective mind in the race isunderstood, the whole problem of the statesman and his attitude towardpolitics gains a new significance, and becomes accessible to a new seriesof solutions. .. . "

Let no one suppose that the unwillingness to cultivate what Mr. Wellscalls the "mental hinterland" is a vice peculiar to the business man. Thecolleges submit to it whenever they concentrate their attention on thedetails of the student's vocation before they have built up some culturalbackground. The whole drift towards industrial training in schools hasthe germs of disaster within it--a preoccupation with the technique of acareer. I am not a lover of the "cultural" activities of our schools andcolleges, still less am I a lover of shallow specialists. Theunquestioned need for experts in politics is full of the very real dangerthat detailed preparation may give us a bureaucracy--a government by mendivorced from human tradition. The churches submit to the demand forimmediacy with great alacrity. Look at the so-called "liberal" churches. Reacting against an empty formalism they are tumbling over themselves toprove how directly they touch daily life. You read glowing articles inmagazines about preachers who devote their time to housing reforms, milksupplies, the purging of the civil service. If you lament the ugliness oftheir churches, the poverty of the ritual, and the political absorptionof their sermons, you are told that the church must abandon forms andserve the common life of men. There are many ways of serving everydayneeds, --turning churches into social reform organs and political rostrais, it seems to me, an obvious but shallow way of performing thatservice. When churches cease to paint the background of our lives, tonourish a Weltanschaung, strengthen men's ultimate purposes and reaffirmthe deepest values of life, then churches have ceased to meet the needsfor which they exist. That "hinterland" affects daily life, and thechurch which cannot get a leverage on it by any other method thanentering into immediate political controversy is simply a church that isdead. It may be an admirable agent of reform, but it has ceased to be achurch. 

A large wing of the Socialist Party is the slave of obvious success. Itboasts that it has ceased to be "visionary" and has become "practical. "Votes, winning campaigns, putting through reform measures seem a greatachievement. It forgets the difference between voting the Socialistticket and understanding Socialism. The vote is the tangible thing, andfor that these Socialist politicians work. They get the votes, enough toelect them to office. In the City of Schenectady that happened as aresult of the mayoralty campaign of 1911. I had an opportunity to observethe results. A few Socialists were in office set to govern a city with noSocialist "hinterland. " It was a pathetic situation, for any reformproposal had to pass the judgment of men and women who did not see lifeas the officials did. On no important measure could the administrationexpect popular understanding. What was the result? In crucial issues, like taxation, the Socialists had to submit to the ideas, --the generalstate of mind of the community. They had to reverse their own theoriesand accept those that prevailed in that unconverted city. I wondered overour helplessness, for I was during a period one of those officials. Theother members of the administration used to say at every opportunity thatwe were fighting "The Beast" or "Special Privilege. " But to me it alwaysseemed that we were like Peer Gynt struggling against the formlessBoyg--invisible yet everywhere--we were struggling with the unwateredhinterland of the citizens of Schenectady. I understood then, I think, what Wells meant when he said that he wanted "no longer to 'fix up, ' aspeople say, human affairs, but to devote his forces to the development ofthat needed intellectual life without which all his shallow attempts atfixing up are futile. " For in the last analysis the practical and thereasonable are little idols of clay that thwart our efforts. 

The third requirement of a valuable contribution, says the ChicagoCommission, is the constitutional sanction. This idol carries its owncriticism with it. The worship of the constitution amounts, of course, tosaying that men exist for the sake of the constitution. The person whoholds fast to that idea is forever incapable of understanding either menor constitutions. It is a prime way of making laws ridiculous; if youwant to cultivate _lèse-majesté_ in Germany get the Kaiser to proclaimhis divine origin; if you want to promote disrespect of the courts, announce their infallibility. 

But in this case, the Commission is not representative of the dominantthought of our times. The vital part of the population has pretty wellemerged from any dumb acquiescence in constitutions. Theodore Roosevelt, who reflects so much of America, has very definitely cast down this idol. Now since he stands generally some twenty years behind the pioneer andabout six months ahead of the majority, we may rest assured that thismuch-needed iconoclasm is in process of achievement. 

Closely related to the constitution and just as decadent to-day are theSanctity of Private Property, Vested Rights, Competition the Life ofTrade, Prosperity (at any cost). Each one of these ideas was born of anoriginal need, served its historical function and survived beyond itsallotted time. Nowadays you still come across some of these ancientnotions, especially in courts, where they do no little damage inperverting justice, but they are ghost-like and disreputable, gibberingand largely helpless. He who is watching the ascendant ideas of Americanlife can afford to feel that the early maxims of capitalism are doomed. 

But the habit of mind which would turn an instrument of life into animmutable law of its existence--that habit is always with us. We mayoutgrow our adoration of the Constitution or Private Property only toestablish some new totem pole. In the arts we call this inveteratetendency classicalism. It is, of course, a habit by no means confined tothe arts. Politics, religion, science are subject to it, --in politics wecall it conservative, in religion orthodox, in science we describe it asacademic. Its manifestations are multiform but they have a common source. An original creative impulse of the mind expresses itself in a certainformula; posterity mistakes the formula for the impulse. A genius willuse his medium in a particular way because it serves his need; this waybecomes a fixed rule which the classicalist serves. It has been pointedout that because the first steam trains were run on roads built for cartsand coaches, the railway gauge almost everywhere in the world becamefixed at four feet eight and one-half inches. 

You might say that genius works inductively and finds a method; theconservative works deductively from the method and defeats whatevergenius he may have. A friend of mine had written a very brilliant articleon a play which had puzzled New York. Some time later I was discussingthe article with another friend of a decidedly classicalist bent. "Whatis it?" he protested, "it isn't criticism for it's half rhapsody; itisn't rhapsody because it is analytical. .. . What is it? That's what Iwant to know. " "But isn't it fine, and worth having, and aren't you gladit was written?" I pleaded. "Well, if I knew what it was. .. . " And so theargument ran for hours. Until he had subsumed the article under certaincategories he had come to accept, appreciation was impossible for him. Ihave many arguments with my classicalist friend. This time it was aboutGeorge Moore's "Ave. " I was trying to express my delight. "It isn't anovel, or an essay, or a real confession--it's nothing, " said he. Hiswell-ordered mind was compelled to throw out of doors any work for whichhe had no carefully prepared pocket. I thought of Aristotle, who deniedthe existence of a mule because it was neither a horse nor an ass. 

Dramatic critics follow Aristotle in more ways than one. A play isproduced which fascinates an audience for weeks. It is published and readall over the world. Then you are treated to endless discussions by thecritics trying to prove that "it is not a play. " So-and-so-and-soconstitute a play, they affirm, --this thing doesn't meet therequirements, so away with it. They forget that nobody would have had theslightest idea what a play was if plays hadn't been written; that therules deduced from the plays that have already been written are noeternal law for the plays that will be. 

Classicalism and invention are irreconcilable enemies. Let it beunderstood that I am not decrying the great nourishment which a livingtradition offers. The criticism I am making is of those who try to feedupon the husks alone. Without the slightest paradox one may say that theclassicalist is most foreign to the classics. He does not put himselfwithin the creative impulses of the past: he is blinded by theirmanifestations. It is perhaps no accident that two of the greatestclassical scholars in England--Gilbert Murray and Alfred Zimmern--arepolitical radicals. The man whom I call here the classicalist cannotpossibly be creative, for the essence of his creed is that there must benothing new under the sun. 

The United States, you imagine, would of all nations be the freest fromclassicalism. Settled as a great adventure and dedicated to an experimentin republicanism, the tradition of the country is of extendingboundaries, obstacles overcome, and pioneering exploits in which awilderness was subdued to human uses. The very air of America would seemto be a guarantee against formalism. You would think that self-governmentfinds its surest footing here--that real autonomy of the spirit whichmakes human uses the goal of effort, denies all inhuman ideals, seeks outwhat men want, and proceeds to create it. With such a history how could anation fail to see in its constitution anything but a tool of life, likethe axe, the spade or the plough?

The West has in a measure carried its freedom over into politics andsocial life generally. Formalism sets in as you move east and south intothe older and more settled communities. There the pioneering impulse haspassed out of life into stupid history books, and the inevitableclassicalism, the fear of adventure, the superstition before socialinvention, have reasserted themselves. If I may turn for a moment fromdescription to prophecy, it is to say that this equilibrium will not holdfor very long. There are signs that the West after achieving the reformswhich it needs to-day--reforms which will free its economic life from thecredit monopolies of the East, and give it a greater fluidity in themarketing of its products--will follow the way of all agriculturalcommunities to a rural and placid conservatism. The spirit of the pioneerdoes not survive forever: it is kept alive to-day, I believe, by certainunnatural irritants which may be summed up as absentee ownership. TheWest is suffering from foreignly owned railroads, power-resources, and analien credit control. But once it recaptures these essentials of itseconomic life, once the "progressive" movement is victorious, I ventureto predict that the agricultural West will become the heart of Americancomplacency. The East, on the other hand, with its industrial problemmust go to far more revolutionary measures for a solution. And the Eastis fertilized continually by European traditions: that stream ofimmigration brings with it a thousand unforeseeable possibilities. Thegreat social adventure of America is no longer the conquest of thewilderness but the absorption of fifty different peoples. To-day perhaps, it is still predominantly a question for the East. But it means thatAmerica is turning from the contrast between her courage and nature'sobstacles to a comparison of her civilization with Europe's. Immigrationmore than anything else is drawing us into world problems. Many peopleprofess to see horrible dangers in the foreign invasion. Certainly no manis sure of its conclusion. It may swamp us, it may, if we seize theopportunity, mean the impregnation of our national life with a newbrilliancy. 

I have said that the West is still moved by the tapering impulse of thepioneer, and I have ventured to predict that this would soon dwindle intoan agricultural toryism. That prediction may very easily be upset. Far-reaching mechanical inventions already threaten to transform farminginto an industry. I refer to those applications of power to agriculturewhich will inevitably divorce the farmer from the ownership of his tools. An industrial revolution analogous to that in manufacture during thenineteenth century is distinctly probable, and capitalistic agriculturemay soon cease to be a contradiction in terms. Like all inventions itwill disturb deeply the classicalist tendency, and this disturbance maygenerate a new impulse to replace the decadent one of the pioneer. 

Without some new dynamic force America, for all her tradition, is notimmune to a hardening formalism. The psychological descent intoclassicalism is always a strong possibility. That is why we, the childrenof frontiersmen, city builders and immigrants, surprise Europe constantlywith our worship of constitutions, our social and political timidity. Inmany ways we are more defenceless against these deadening habits than thepeople of Europe. Our geographical isolation preserves us from any vividsense of national contrast: our imaginations are not stirred by differentcivilizations. We have almost no spiritual weapons against classicalism:universities, churches, newspapers are by-products of a commercialsuccess; we have no tradition of intellectual revolt. The Americancollege student has the gravity and mental habits of a Supreme Courtjudge; his "wild oats" are rarely spiritual; the critical, analyticalhabit of mind is distrusted. We say that "knocking" is a sign of the"sorehead" and we sublimate criticism by saying that "every knock is aboost. " America does not play with ideas; generous speculation isregarded as insincere, and shunned as if it might endanger the optimismwhich underlies success. All this becomes such an insulation against newideas that when the Yankee goes abroad he takes his environment with him. 

It seems at times as if our capacity for appreciating originality wereabsorbed in the trivial eccentricities of fads and fashions. The obviousnovelties of machinery and locomotion, phonographs and yellow journalismslake the American thirst for creation pretty thoroughly. In seriousmatters we follow the Vice Commission's fourth essential of a valuablecontribution--_that which will square with the public conscience of theAmerican people_. 

I do not care to dilate upon the exploded pretensions of Mr. And Mrs. Grundy. They are a fairly disreputable couple by this time because we arebeginning to know how much morbidity they represent. The Vice Commission, for example, bowed to what might be called the "instinctive conscience"of America when it balked at tracing vice to its source in theover-respected institutions of American life and the over-respectednatures of American men and women. It bowed to the prevailing consciencewhen it proposed taboos instead of radical changes. It bowed to atraditional conscience when it confused the sins of sex with thepossibilities of sex; and it paid tribute to a verbal conscience, to alip morality, when, with extreme irrelevance to its beloved police, itproclaimed "absolute annihilation" the ultimate ideal. In brief, thecommission failed to see that the working conscience of America is to-daybound up with the very evil it is supposed to eradicate by a relentlesswarfare. 

It was to be expected. Our conscience is not the vessel of eternalverities. It grows with our social life, and a new social condition meansa radical change in conscience. In order to do away with vice Americamust live and think and feel differently. This is an old story. Becauseof it all innovators have been at war with the public conscience of theirtime. Yet there is nothing strange or particularly disheartening aboutthis commonplace observation: to expect anything else is to hope that anation will lift itself by its own bootstraps. Yet there is danger themoment leaders of the people make a virtue of homage to the unregenerate, public conscience. 

In La Follette's Magazine (Feb. 17, 1912) there is a leading articlecalled "The Great Issue. " You can read there that "the composite judgmentis always safer and wiser and stronger and more unselfish than thejudgment of any one individual mind. The people have been betrayed bytheir representatives again and again. The real danger to democracy liesnot in the ignorance or want of patriotism of the people, but in thecorrupting influence of powerful business organizations upon therepresentatives of the people. .. . "

I have only one quarrel with that philosophy--its negativity. With thebelief that government is futile and mischievous unless supported by themass of the people; with the undeniable fact that business has corruptedpublic officials--I have no complaint. What I object to is the emphasiswhich shifts the blame for our troubles from the shoulders of the peopleto those of the "corrupting interests. " For this seems to me nothing butthe resuscitation of the devil: when things go wrong it is somebodyelse's fault. We are peculiarly open to this kind of vanity in America. If some wise law is passed we say it is the will of the people showingits power of self-government. But if that will is so weak and timid thata great evil like child labor persists to our shame we turn theresponsibility over to the devil personified as a "special interest. " Itis an old habit of the race which seems to have begun with the serpent inthe Garden of Eden. 

The word demagogue has been frightfully maltreated in late years, butsurely here is its real meaning--to flatter the people by telling themthat their failures are somebody else's fault. For if a nation declaresit has reached its majority by instituting self-government, then itcannot shirk responsibility. 

These "special interests"--big business, a corrupt press, crookedpolitics--grew up within the country, were promoted by American citizens, admired by millions of them, and acquiesced in by almost all of them. Whoever thinks that business corruption is the work of a few inhumanlycunning individuals with monstrous morals is self-righteous withoutexcuse. Capitalists did not violate the public conscience of America;they expressed it. That conscience was inadequate and unintelligent. Weare being pinched by the acts it nourished. A great outcry has arisen anda number of perfectly conventional men like Lorimer suffer an undeservedhumiliation. We say it is a "moral awakening. " That is another dodge bywhich we pretend that we were always wise and just, though a triflesleepy. In reality we are witnessing a change of conscience, initiated bycranks and fanatics, sustained for a long time by minorities, which hasat last infected the mass of the people. 

The danger I spoke of arises just here: the desire to infect at once thewhole mass crowds out the courage of the innovator. No man can do hisbest work if he bows at every step to the public conscience of his age. The real service to democracy is the fullest, freest expression oftalent. The best servants of the people, like the best valets, mustwhisper unpleasant truths in the master's ear. It is the court fool, notthe foolish courtier, whom the king can least afford to lose. 

Hostile critics of democracy have long pointed out that mediocritybecomes the rule. They have not been without facts for their support. AndI do not see why we who believe in democracy should not recognize thisdanger and trace it to its source. Certainly it is not answered with asneer. I have worked in the editorial office of a popular magazine, amagazine that is known widely as a champion of popular rights. Bypersonal experience, by intimate conversations, and by looking about, Ithink I am pretty well aware of what the influence of business uponjournalism amounts to. I have seen the inside working of businesspressure; articles of my own have been suppressed after they were intype; friends of mine have told me stories of expurgation, of the"morganization" of their editorial policy. And in the face of that Ishould like to record it as my sincere conviction that no financial poweris one-tenth so corrupting, so insidious, so hostile to originality andfrank statement as the fear of the public which reads the magazine. Forone item suppressed out of respect for a railroad or a bank, nine arerejected because of the prejudices of the public. This will anger thefarmers, that will arouse the Catholics, another will shock the summergirl. Anybody can take a fling at poor old Mr. Rockefeller, but the greatmass of average citizens (to which none of us belongs) must be left inundisturbed possession of its prejudices. In that subservience, and notin the meddling of Mr. Morgan, is the reason why American journalism isso flaccid, so repetitious and so dull. 

The people should be supreme, yes, its will should be the law of theland. But it is a caricature of democracy to make it also the law ofindividual initiative. One thing it is to say that all proposals mustultimately win the acceptance of the majority; it is quite another topropose nothing which is not immediately acceptable. It is as true of thenation as of the body that one leg cannot go forward very far unless thewhole body follows. That is a different thing from trying to move bothlegs forward at the same time. The one is democracy; the otheris--demolatry. 

It is better to catch the idol-maker than to smash each idol. It would bean endless task to hunt down all the masks, the will-o'-the-wisps and theshadows which divert us from our real purpose. Each man carries withinhimself the cause of his own mirages. Whenever we accept an idea asauthority instead of as instrument, an idol is set up. We worship theplough, and not the fruit. And from this habit there is no permanentescape. Only effort can keep the mind centered truly. Whenever criticismslackens, whenever we sink into acquiescence, the mind swerves aside andclings with the gratitude of the weary to some fixed idea. It is so mucheasier to follow a rule of thumb, and obey the constitution, than to findout what we really want and to do it. 

 * * * * *

A great deal of political theory has been devoted to asking: what is theaim of government? Many readers may have wondered why that question hasnot figured in these pages. For the logical method would be to decideupon the ultimate ideal of statecraft and then elaborate the technique ofits realization. I have not done that because this rational procedureinverts the natural order of things and develops all kinds of theoreticaltangles and pseudo-problems. They come from an effort to state abstractlyin intellectual terms qualities that can be known only by directexperience. You achieve nothing but confusion if you begin by announcingthat politics must achieve "justice" or "liberty" or "happiness. " Eventhough you are perfectly sure that you know exactly what these words meantranslated into concrete experiences, it is very doubtful whether you canreally convey your meaning to anyone else. "Plaisante justice qu'unerivière borne. Vérité, au deçà des Pyrénées, erreur au de là, " saysPascal. If what is good in the world depended on our ability to define itwe should be hopeless indeed. 

This is an old difficulty in ethics. Many men have remarked that wequarrel over the "problem of evil, " never over the "problem of good. "That comes from the fact that good is a quality of experience which doesnot demand an explanation. When we are thwarted we begin to ask why. Itwas the evil in the world that set Leibniz the task of justifying theways of God to man. Nor is it an accident that in daily life misfortuneturns men to philosophy. One might generalize and say that as soon as webegin to explain, it is because we have been made to complain. 

No moral judgment can decide the value of life. No ethical theory canannounce any intrinsic good. The whole speculation about morality is aneffort to find a way of living which men who live it will instinctivelyfeel is good. No formula can express an ultimate experience; no axiom canever be a substitute for what really makes life worth living. Plato maydescribe the objects which man rejoices over, he may guide them to goodexperiences, but each man in his inward life is a last judgment on allhis values. 

This amounts to saying that the goal of action is in its final analysisæsthetic and not moral--a quality of feeling instead of conformity torule. Words like justice, harmony, power, democracy are simply empiricalsuggestions which may produce the good life. If the practice of them doesnot produce it then we are under no obligation to follow them, we shouldbe idolatrous fools to do so. Every abstraction, every rule of conduct, every constitution, every law and social arrangement, is an instrumentthat has no value in itself. Whatever credit it receives, whateverreverence we give it, is derived from its utility in ministering to thoseconcrete experiences which are as obvious and as undefinable as color orsound. We can celebrate the positively good things, we can live them, wecan create them, but we cannot philosophize about them. To the anæstheticintellect we could not convey the meaning of joy. A creature that couldreason but not feel would never know the value of life, for what isultimate is in itself inexplicable. 

Politics is not concerned with prescribing the ultimate qualities oflife. When it tries to do so by sumptuary legislation, nothing butmischief is invoked. Its business is to provide opportunities, not toannounce ultimate values; to remove oppressive evil and to invent newresources for enjoyment. With the enjoyment itself it can have noconcern. That must be lived by each individual. In a sense the politiciancan never know his own success, for it is registered in men's innerlives, and is largely incommunicable. An increasing harvest of richpersonalities is the social reward for a fine statesmanship, but suchpersonalities are free growths in a cordial environment. They cannot becast in moulds or shaped by law. There is no need, therefore, to generatedialectical disputes about the final goal of politics. No definition canbe just--too precise a one can only deceive us into thinking that ourdefinition is true. Call ultimate values by any convenient name, it is ofslight importance which you choose. If only men can keep their mindsfreed from formalism, idol worship, fixed ideas, and exaltedabstractions, politicians need not worry about the language in which theend of our striving is expressed. For with the removal of distractingidols, man's experience becomes the center of thought. And if we think interms of men, find out what really bothers them, seek to supply what theyreally want, hold only their experience sacred, we shall find oursanction obvious and unchallenged. 

CHAPTER VII

THE MAKING OF CREEDS

My first course in philosophy was nothing less than a summary of theimportant systems of thought put forward in Western Europe during thelast twenty-six hundred years. Perhaps that is a slight exaggeration--wedid gloss over a few centuries in the Middle Ages. For the rest wetouched upon all the historic names from Thales to Nietzsche. After aboutnine weeks of this bewildering transit a friend approached me with a sourlook on his face. "You know, " he said, "I can't make head or tail out ofthis business. I agree with each philosopher as we study him. But when weget to the next one, I agree with him too. Yet he generally says theother one was wrong. They can't all be right. Can they now?" I was toomuch puzzled with the same difficulty to help him. 

Somewhat later I began to read the history of political theories. It wasa less disinterested study than those sophomore speculations, for I hadjumped into a profession which carried me through some of the undergroundpassages of "practical politics" and reformist groups. The tangle ofmotives and facts and ideas was incredible. I began to feel the force ofMr. John Hobson's remark that "if practical workers for social andindustrial reforms continue to ignore principles . .. They will have topay the price which short-sighted empiricism always pays; with slow, hesitant, and staggering steps, with innumerable false starts andbackslidings, they will move in the dark along an unseen track toward anunseen goal. " The political theorists laid some claim to lighting up boththe track and the goal, and so I turned to them for help. 

Now whoever has followed political theory will have derived perhaps twoconvictions as a reward. Almost all the thinkers seem to regard theirsystems as true and binding, and none of these systems are. No matterwhich one you examine, it is inadequate. You cannot be a Platonist or aBenthamite in politics to-day. You cannot go to any of the greatphilosophers even for the outlines of a statecraft which shall be fairlycomplete, and relevant to American life. I returned to the sophomoremood: "Each of these thinkers has contributed something, has had somewisdom about events. Looked at in bulk the philosophers can't all beright or all wrong. "

But like so many theoretical riddles, this one rested on a very simplepiece of ignorance. The trouble was that without realizing it I too hadbeen in search of the philosopher's stone. I too was looking forsomething that could not be found. That happened in this case to benothing less than an absolutely true philosophy of politics. It was theold indolence of hoping that somebody had done the world's thinking onceand for all. I had conjured up the fantasy of a system which wouldcontain the whole of life, be as reliable as a table of logarithms, foresee all possible emergencies and offer entirely trustworthy rules ofaction. When it seemed that no such system had ever been produced, I wason the point of damning the entire tribe of theorists from Plato to Marx. 

This is what one may call the naïveté of the intellect. Its hope is thatsome man living at one place on the globe in a particular epoch will, through the miracle of genius, be able to generalize his experience forall time and all space. It says in effect that there is never anythingessentially new under the sun, that any moment of experience sufficientlyunderstood would be seen to contain all history and all destiny--that theintellect reasoning on one piece of experience could know what all therest of experience was like. Looked at more closely this philosophy meansthat novelty is an illusion of ignorance, that life is an endlessrepetition, that when you know one revolution of it, you know all therest. In a very real sense the world has no history and no future, therace has no career. At any moment everything is given: our reason couldknow that moment so thoroughly that all the rest of life would be likethe commuter's who travels back and forth on the same line every day. There would be no inventions and no discoveries, for in the instant thatreason had found the key of experience everything would be unfolded. Thepresent would not be the womb of the future: nothing would be embryonic, nothing would _grow_. Experience would cease to be an adventure in orderto become the monotonous fulfilment of a perfect prophecy. 

This omniscience of the human intellect is one of the commonestassumptions in the world. Although when you state the belief as I have, it sounds absurdly pretentious, yet the boastfulness is closer to thechild's who stretches out its hand for the moon than the romanticegotist's who thinks he has created the moon and all the stars. Wholesystems of philosophy have claimed such an eternal and absolute validity;the nineteenth century produced a bumper crop of so-called atheists, materialists and determinists who believed in all sincerity that"Science" was capable of a complete truth and unfailing prediction. Ifyou want to see this faith in all its naïveté go into those quaintrationalist circles where Herbert Spencer's ghost announces the "laws oflife, " with only a few inessential details omitted. 

Now, of course, no philosophy of this sort has ever realized such hopes. Mankind has certainly come nearer to justifying Mr. Chesterton'sobservation that one of its favorite games is called "Cheat theProphet. ". .. "The players listen very carefully and respectfully to allthat the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the nextgeneration. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, andbury them nicely. They then go and do something else. " Now this weaknessis not, as Mr. Chesterton would like to believe, confined to the clevermen. But it is a weakness, and many people have speculated about it. Whyin the face of hundreds of philosophies wrecked on the rocks of theunexpected do men continue to believe that the intellect can transcendthe vicissitudes of experience?

For they certainly do believe it, and generally the more parochial theiroutlook, the more cosmic their pretensions. All of us at times yearn forthe comfort of an absolute philosophy. We try to believe that, howeverfinite we may be, our intellect is something apart from the cycle of ourlife, capable by an Olympian detachment from human interests of a divinethoroughness. Even our evolutionist philosophy, as Bergson shows, "beginsby showing us in the intellect a local effect of evolution, a flame, perhaps accidental, which lights up the coming and going of living thingsin the narrow passage open to their action; and lo! forgetting what ithas just told us, makes of this lantern glimmering in a tunnel a Sunwhich can illuminate the world. "

This is what most of us do in our search for a philosophy of politics. Weforget that the big systems of theory are much more like villagelamp-posts than they are like the sun, that they were made to light up aparticular path, obviate certain dangers, and aid a peculiar mode oflife. The understanding of the place of theory in life is a comparativelynew one. We are just beginning to see how creeds are made. And theinsight is enormously fertile. Thus Mr. Alfred Zimmern in his fine studyof "The Greek Commonwealth" says of Plato and Aristotle that nointerpretation can be satisfactory which does not take into account theimpression left upon their minds by the social development which made theage of these philosophers a period of Athenian decline. Mr. Zimmern'sapproach is common enough in modern scholarship, but the fullsignificance of it for the creeds we ourselves are making is stillsomething of a novelty. When we are asked to think of the "Republic" asthe reaction of decadent Greece upon the conservative temperament ofPlato, the function of theory is given a new illumination. Politicalphilosophy at once appears as a human invention in a particularcrisis--an instrument to fit a need. The pretension to finality fallsaway. 

This is a great emancipation. Instead of clinging to the naïve beliefthat Plato was legislating for all mankind, you can discuss his plans asa temporary superstructure made for an historical purpose. You are freethen to appreciate the more enduring portions of his work, to understandSantayana when he says of the Platonists, "their theories are soextravagant, yet their wisdom seems so great. Platonism is a very refinedand beautiful expression of our natural instincts, it embodies conscienceand utters our inmost hopes. " This insight into the values of human life, partial though it be, is what constitutes the abiding monument of Plato'sgenius. His constructions, his formal creeds, his law-making and socialarrangements are local and temporary--for us they can have only anantiquarian interest. 

In some such way as this the sophomoric riddle is answered: no thinkercan lay down a course of action for all mankind--programs if they areuseful at all are useful for some particular historical period. But ifthe thinker sees at all deeply into the life of his own time, histheoretical system will rest upon observation of human nature. Thatremains as a residue of wisdom long after his reasoning and his concreteprogram have passed into limbo. For human nature in all its profounderaspects changes very little in the few generations since our Westernwisdom has come to be recorded. These _aperçus_ left over from the greatspeculations are the golden threads which successive thinkers weave intothe pattern of their thought. Wisdom remains; theory passes. 

If that is true of Plato with his ample vision how much truer is it ofthe theories of the littler men--politicians, courtiers and propagandistswho make up the academy of politics. Machiavelli will, of course, beremembered at once as a man, whose speculations were fitted to anhistorical crisis. His advice to the Prince was real advice, not asermon. A boss was telling a governor how to extend his power. The wealthof Machiavelli's learning and the splendid penetration of his mind areused to interpret experience for a particular purpose. I have alwaysthought that Machiavelli derives his bad name from a too transparenthonesty. Less direct minds would have found high-sounding ethicalsanctions in which to conceal the real intent. That was the nauseatingmethod of nineteenth century economists when they tried to identify thebrutal practices of capitalism with the beneficence of nature and theWill of God. Not so Machiavelli. He could write without a blush that "aprince, especially a new one, cannot observe all those things for whichmen are esteemed, being often forced, in order to maintain the state, toact contrary to fidelity, friendship, humanity, and religion. " Theapologists of business also justified a rupture with human decencies. They too fitted their theory to particular purposes, but they had not thecourage to avow it even to themselves. 

The rare value of Machiavelli is just this lack of self-deception. Youmay think his morals devilish, but you cannot accuse him of quotingscripture. I certainly do not admire the end he serves: the extension ofan autocrat's power is a frivolous perversion of government. His idealhappens, however, to be the aim of most foreign offices, politicians and"princes of finance. " Machiavelli's morals are not one bit worse than thepractices of the men who rule the world to-day. An American Senate toreup the Hay-Pauncefote treaty, and with the approval of the Presidentacted "contrary to fidelity" and friendship too; Austria violated theTreaty of Berlin by annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina. Machiavelli's ethicsare commonplace enough. His head is clearer than the average. He let thecat out of the bag and showed in the boldest terms how theory becomes aninstrument of practice. You may take him as a symbol of the politicaltheorist. You may say that all the thinkers of influence have beenwriting advice to the Prince. Machiavelli recognized Lorenzo theMagnificent; Marx, the proletariat of Europe. 

At first this sounds like standing the world on its head, denying reasonand morality, and exalting practice over righteousness. That is neitherhere nor there. I am simply trying to point out an illuminating factwhose essential truth can hardly be disputed. The important socialphilosophies are consciously or otherwise the servants of men's purposes. Good or bad, that it seems to me is the way we work. We find reasons forwhat we want to do. The big men from Machiavelli through Rousseau to KarlMarx brought history, logic, science and philosophy to prop up andstrengthen their deepest desires. The followers, the epigones, may acceptthe reasons of Rousseau and Marx and deduce rules of action from them. But the original genius sees the dynamic purpose first, finds reasonsafterward. This amounts to saying that man when he is most creative isnot a rational, but a wilful animal. 

The political thinker who to-day exercises the greatest influence on theWestern World is, I suppose, Karl Marx. The socialist movement calls himits prophet, and, while many socialists say he is superseded, no onedisputes his historical importance. Now Marx embalmed his thinking in thelanguage of the Hegelian school. He founded it on a general philosophy ofsociety which is known as the materialistic conception of history. Moreover, Marx put forth the claim that he had made socialism"scientific"--had shown that it was woven into the texture of naturalphenomena. The Marxian paraphernalia crowds three heavy volumes, soelaborate and difficult that socialists rarely read them. I have knownone socialist who lived leisurely on his country estate and claimed tohave "looked" at every page of Marx. Most socialists, including theleaders, study selected passages and let it go at that. This is a wiseeconomy based on a good instinct. For all the parade of learning anddialectic is an after-thought--an accident from the fact that theprophetic genius of Marx appeared in Germany under the incubus of Hegel. Marx saw what he wanted to do long before he wrote three volumes tojustify it. Did not the Communist Manifesto appear many years before "DasKapital"?

Nothing is more instructive than a socialist "experience" meeting atwhich everyone tries to tell how he came to be converted. Thesegatherings are notoriously untruthful--in fact, there is a genialpleasure in not telling the truth about one's salad days in the socialistmovement. The prevalent lie is to explain how the new convert, standingupon a mountain of facts, began to trace out the highways that led fromhell to heaven. Everybody knows that no such process was actually livedthrough, and almost without exception the real story can be discerned: aman was dissatisfied, he wanted a new condition of life, he embraced atheory that would justify his hopes and his discontent. For once youtouch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefsare logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon. In thelanguage of philosophers, socialism as a living force is a product of thewill--a will to beauty, order, neighborliness, not infrequently a will tohealth. Men desire first, then they reason; fascinated by the future, they invent a "scientific socialism" to get there. 

Many people don't like to admit this. Or if they admit it, they do sowith a sigh. Their minds construct a utopia--one in which all judgmentsare based on logical inference from syllogisms built on the law ofmathematical probabilities. If you quote David Hume at them, and say thatreason itself is an irrational impulse they think you are indulging in asilly paradox. I shall not pursue this point very far, but I believe itcould be shown without too much difficulty that the rationalists arefascinated by a certain kind of thinking--logical and orderlythinking--and that it is their will to impose that method upon other men. 

For fear that somebody may regard this as a play on words drawn from someultra-modern "anti-intellectualist" source, let me quote Santayana. Thisis what the author of that masterly series "The Life of Reason" wrote inone of his earlier books: "The ideal of rationality is itself asarbitrary, as much dependent on the needs of a finite organization, asany other ideal. Only as ultimately securing tranquillity of mind, whichthe philosopher instinctively pursues, has it for him any necessity. Inspite of the verbal propriety of saying that reason demands rationality, what really demands rationality, what makes it a good and indispensablething and gives it all its authority, is not its own nature, but our needof it both in safe and economical action and in the pleasures ofcomprehension. " Because rationality itself is a wilful exercise one hearsHymns to Reason and sees it personified as an extremely dignifiedgoddess. For all the light and shadow of sentiment and passion play evenabout the syllogism. 

The attempts of theorists to explain man's successes as rational acts andhis failures as lapses of reason have always ended in a dismal and mistyunreality. No genuine politician ever treats his constituents asreasoning animals. This is as true of the high politics of Isaiah as itis of the ward boss. Only the pathetic amateur deludes himself intothinking that, if he presents the major and minor premise, the voter willautomatically draw the conclusion on election day. The successfulpolitician--good or bad--deals with the dynamics--with the will, thehopes, the needs and the visions of men. 

It isn't sentimentality which says that where there is no vision thepeople perisheth. Every time Tammany Hall sets off fireworks and oratoryon the Fourth of July; every time the picture of Lincoln is displayed ata political convention; every red bandanna of the Progressives and redflag of the socialists; every song from "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"to the "International"; every metrical conclusion to a greatspeech--whether we stand at Armageddon, refuse to press upon the brow oflabor another crown of thorns, or call upon the workers of the world tounite--every one of these slogans is an incitement of the will--an effortto energize politics. They are attempts to harness blind impulses toparticular purposes. They are tributes to the sound practical sense of avision in politics. No cause can succeed without them: so long as yourely on the efficacy of "scientific" demonstration and logical proof youcan hold your conventions in anybody's back parlor and have room tospare. 

I remember an observation that Lincoln Steffens made in a speech aboutMayor Tom Johnson. "Tom failed, " said Mr. Steffens, "because he was toopractical. " Coming from a man who had seen as much of actual politics asMr. Steffens, it puzzled me a great deal. I taxed him with it later andhe explained somewhat as follows: "Tom Johnson had a vision of Clevelandwhich he called The City on the Hill. He pictured the town emancipatedfrom its ugliness and its cruelty--a beautiful city for free men andwomen. He used to talk of that vision to the 'cabinet' of politicallieutenants which met every Sunday night at his house. He had all hisappointees working for the City on the Hill. But when he went outcampaigning before the people he talked only of three-cent fares and thetax outrages. Tom Johnson didn't show the people the City on the Hill. Hedidn't take them into his confidence. They never really saw what it wasall about. And they went back on Tom Johnson. "

That is one of Mr. Steffens's most acute observations. What makes itdoubly interesting is that Tom Johnson confirmed it a few months beforehe died. His friends were telling him that his defeat was temporary, thatthe work he had begun was unchecked. It was plain that in the midst ofhis suffering, with death close by, he found great comfort in thatassurance. But his mind was so realistic, his integrity so great that hecould not blink the fact that there had been a defeat. Steffens waspointing out the explanation: "you did not show the people what you saw, you gave them the details, you fought their battles, you started tobuild, but you left them in darkness as to the final goal. "

I wish I could recall the exact words in which Tom Johnson replied. Forin them the greatest of the piecemeal reformers admitted the practicalweakness of opportunist politics. 

There is a type of radical who has an idea that he can insinuate advancedideas into legislation without being caught. His plan of action is tokeep his real program well concealed and to dole out sections of it tothe public from time to time. John A. Hobson in "The Crisis ofLiberalism" describes the "practical reformer" so that anybody canrecognize him: "This revolt against ideas is carried so far that able menhave come seriously to look upon progress as a matter for themanipulation of wire-pullers, something to be 'jobbed' in committee bysophistical notions or other clever trickery. " Lincoln Steffens callsthese people "our damned rascals. " Mr. Hobson continues, "The attractionof some obvious gain, the suppression of some scandalous abuse ofmonopolist power by a private company, some needed enlargement ofexisting Municipal or State enterprise by lateral expansion--such are thesole springs of action. " Well may Mr. Hobson inquire, _"Now, whatprovision is made for generating the motor power of progress inCollectivism?"_

No amount of architect's plans, bricks and mortar will build a house. Someone must have the wish to build it. So with the modern democraticstate. Statesmanship cannot rest upon the good sense of its program. Itmust find popular feeling, organize it, and make that the motive power ofgovernment. If you study the success of Roosevelt the point isre-enforced. He is a man of will in whom millions of people have felt theembodiment of their own will. For a time Roosevelt was a man of destinyin the truest sense. He wanted what a nation wanted: his own powerradiated power; he embodied a vision; Tom, Dick and Harry moved with hismovement. 

No use to deplore the fact. You cannot stop a living body with nothing atall. I think we may picture society as a compound of forces that arealways changing. Put a vision in front of one of these currents and youcan magnetize it in that direction. For visions alone organize popularpassions. Try to ignore them or box them up, and they will burst forthdestructively. When Haywood dramatizes the class struggle he uses classresentment for a social purpose. You may not like his purpose, but unlessyou can gather proletarian power into some better vision, you have nogrounds for resenting Haywood. I fancy that the demonstration of KingCanute settled once and for all the stupid attempt to ignore a movingforce. 

A dynamic conception of society always frightens a great number ofpeople. It gives politics a restless and intractable quality. Pure reasonis so gentlemanly, but will and the visions of a people--these areadventurous and incalculable forces. Most politicians living for the dayprefer to ignore them. If only society will stand fairly still whiletheir career is in the making they are content to avoid the actualities. But a politician with some imaginative interest in genuine affairs neednot be seduced into the learned folly of pretending that reality issomething else than it is. If he is to influence life he must deal withit. A deep respect is due the Schopenhauerian philosopher who looks uponthe world, finds that its essence is evil, and turns towards insensitivecalm. But no respect is due to anyone who sets out to reform the world byignoring its quality. Whoever is bent upon shaping politics to betterhuman uses must accept freely as his starting point the impulses thatagitate human beings. If observation shows that reason is an instrumentof will, then only confusion can result from pretending that it isn't. 

I have called this misplaced "rationality" a piece of learned folly, because it shows itself most dangerously among those thinkers aboutpolitics who are divorced from action. In the Universities politicalmovements are generally regarded as essentially static, cut and driedsolids to be judged by their logical consistency. It is as if the streamof life had to be frozen before it could be studied. The socialistmovement was given a certain amount of attention when I was anundergraduate. The discussion turned principally on two points: wererent, interest and dividends _earned_? Was collective ownership ofcapital a feasible scheme? And when the professor, who was a gooddialectician, had proved that interest was a payment for service("saving") and that public ownership was not practicable, it was assumedthat socialism was disposed of. The passions, the needs, the hopes thatgenerate this world-wide phenomenon were, I believe, pocketed and ignoredunder the pat saying: "Of course, socialism is not an economic policy, it's a religion. " That was the end of the matter for the students ofpolitics. It was then a matter for the divinity schools. If the samescholastic method is in force there, all that would be needed to crushsocialism is to show its dogmatic inconsistencies. 

The theorist is incompetent when he deals with socialism just because heassumes that men are determined by logic and that a false conclusion willstop a moving, creative force. Occasionally he recognizes the wilfulcharacter of politics: then he shakes his head, climbs into an ivorytower and deplores the moonshine, the religious manias and the passionsof the mob. Real life is beyond his control and influence because reallife is largely agitated by impulses and habits, unconscious needs, faith, hope and desire. With all his learning he is ineffective because, instead of trying to use the energies of men, he deplores them. 

Suppose we recognize that creeds are instruments of the will, how wouldit alter the character of our thinking? Take an ancient quarrel like thatover determinism. Whatever your philosophy, when you come to the test ofactual facts you find, I think, all grades of freedom and determinism. For certain purposes you believe in free will, for others you do not. Thus, as Mr. Chesterton suggests, no determinist is prevented from saying"if you please" to the housemaid. In love, in your career, you have nodoubt that "if" is a reality. But when you are engaged in scientificinvestigation, you try to reduce the spontaneous in life to a minimum. Mr. Arnold Bennett puts forth a rather curious hybrid when he advises usto treat ourselves as free agents and everyone else as an automaton. Onthe other hand Prof. Münsterberg has always insisted that in socialrelations we must always treat everyone as a purposeful, integratedcharacter. 

Your doctrine, in short, depends on your purpose: a theory by itself isneither moral nor immoral, its value is conditioned by the purpose itserves. In any accurate sense theory is to be judged only as an effectiveor ineffective instrument of a desire: the discussion of doctrines istechnical and not moral. A theory has no intrinsic value: that is why thedevil can talk theology. 

No creed possesses any final sanction. Human beings have desires that arefar more important than the tools and toys and churches they make tosatisfy them. It is more penetrating, in my opinion, to ask of a creedwhether it served than whether it was "true. " Try to judge the greatbeliefs that have swayed mankind by their inner logic or their empiricalsolidity and you stand forever, a dull pedant, apart from the interestsof men. The Christian tradition did not survive because of Aquinas orfall before the Higher Criticism, nor will it be revived because someoneproves the scientific plausibility of its doctrine. What we need to knowabout the Christian epic is the effect it had on men--true or false, theyhave believed in it for nineteen centuries. Where has it helped them, where hindered? What needs did it answer? What energies did it transmute?And what part of mankind did it neglect? Where did it begin to doviolence to human nature?

Political creeds must receive the same treatment. The doctrine of the"social contract" formulated by Hobbes and made current by Rousseau canno longer be accepted as a true account of the origin of society. Jean-Jacques is in fact a supreme case--perhaps even a slightcaricature--of the way in which formal creeds bolster up passionatewants. I quote from Prof. Walter's introduction in which he says that"The Social Contract _showed to those who were eager to be convinced_that no power was legitimate which was guilty of abuses. It is no wonderthat its author was buried in the Pantheon with pompous procession, thatthe framers of the new Constitution, Thouret and Lièyes and La Fayette, did not forget and dared not forget its doctrines, that it was thetext-book and the delight of Camille Desmoulins and Danton and St. Just, that Robespierre read it through once every day. " In the perspective ofhistory, no one feels that he has said the last word about a philosophylike Rousseau's after demonstrating its "untruth. " Good or bad, it hasmeant too much for any such easy disposal. What shall we call an idea, objectively untrue, but practically of the highest importance?

The thinker who has faced this difficulty most radically is Georges Sorelin the "Reflexions sur la Violence. " His doctrine of the "social myth"has seemed to many commentators one of those silly paradoxes that only arevolutionary syndicalist and Frenchman could have put forward. M. Sorelis engaged in presenting the General Strike as the decisive battle of theclass struggle and the core of the socialist movement. Now whatever elsehe may be, M. Sorel is not naïve: the sharp criticism of other socialistswas something he could not peacefully ignore. They told him that theGeneral Strike was an idle dream, that it could never take place, that, even if it could, the results would not be very significant. Sidney Webb, in the customary Fabian fashion, had dismissed the General Strike as asign of socialist immaturity. There is no doubt that M. Sorel felt theforce of these attacks. But he was not ready to abandon his favorite ideabecause it had been shown to be unreasonable and impossible. Just theopposite effect showed itself and he seized the opportunity of turning anintellectual defeat into a spiritual triumph. This performance must havedelighted him to the very bottom of his soul, for he has boasted that histask in life is to aid in ruining "le prestige de la culture bourgeoise. "

M. Sorel's defence of the General Strike is very startling. He admitsthat it may never take place, that it is not a true picture of the goalof the socialist movement. Without a blush he informs us that thiscentral gospel of the working class is simply a "myth. " The admissionfrightens M. Sorel not at all. "It doesn't matter much, " he remarks, "whether myths contain details actually destined to realization _in thescheme_ of an historical future; they are not astrological almanacks; itmay even be that nothing of what they express will actually happen--as inthe case of that catastrophe which the early Christians expected. Are wenot accustomed in daily life to recognizing that the reality differs verygreatly from the ideas of it that we made before we acted? Yet thatdoesn't hinder us from making resolutions. .. . Myths must be judged asinstruments for acting upon present conditions; all discussion about themanner of applying them concretely to the course of history is senseless. _The entire myth is what counts. .. . _ There is no use then in reasoningabout details which might arise in the midst of the class struggle . .. Even though the revolutionists should be deceiving themselves through andthrough in making a fantastic picture of the general strike, this picturewould still have been a power of the highest order in preparing forrevolution, so long as it expressed completely all the aspirations ofsocialism and bound together revolutionary ideas with a precision andfirmness that no other methods of thought could have given. "

It may well be imagined that this highly sophisticated doctrine wasregarded as perverse. All the ordinary prejudices of thought areirritated by a thinker who frankly advises masses of his fellow-men tohold fast to a belief which by all the canons of common sense is nothingbut an illusion. M. Sorel must have felt the need of closer statement, for in a letter to Daniel Halèvy, published in the second edition, hemakes his position much clearer. "Revolutionary myths . .. " we read, "enable us to understand the activity, the feelings, and the ideas of apopulace preparing to enter into a decisive struggle; _they are notdescriptions of things, but expressions of will_. " The italics are mine:they set in relief the insight that makes M. Sorel so important to ourdiscussion. I do not know whether a quotation torn from its context canpossibly do justice to its author. I do know that for any real grasp ofthis point it is necessary to read M. Sorel with great sympathy. 

One must grant at least that he has made an accurate observation. Thehistory of the world is full of great myths which have had the mostconcrete results. M. Sorel cites primitive Christianity, the Reformation, the French Revolution and the Mazzini campaign. The men who took part inthose great social movements summed up their aspiration in pictures ofdecisive battles resulting in the ultimate triumph of their cause. We inAmerica might add an example from our own political life. For it isTheodore Roosevelt who is actually attempting to make himself and hisadmirers the heroes of a new social myth. Did he not announce from theplatform at Chicago--"we stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord"?

Let no one dismiss M. Sorel then as an empty paradoxer. The myth is notone of the outgrown crudities of our pagan ancestors. We, in the midst ofour science and our rationalism, are still making myths, and their forceis felt in the actual affairs of life. They convey an impulse, not aprogram, nor a plan of reconstruction. Their practical value cannot beignored, for they embody the motor currents in social life. 

Myths are to be judged, as M. Sorel says, by their ability to expressaspiration. They stand or fall by that. In such a test the Christianmyth, for example, would be valued for its power of incarnating humandesire. That it did not do so completely is the cause of its decline. From Aucassin to Nietzsche men have resented it as a partial and stuntingdream. It had too little room for profane love, and only by turning theChurch of Christ into the Church Militant could the essential Christianpassivity obtain the assent of aggressive and masculine races. To-daytraditional Christianity has weakened in the face of man's interest inthe conquest of this world. The liberal and advanced churches recognizethis fact by exhibiting a great preoccupation with everyday affairs. Nowthey may be doing important service--I have no wish to deny that--butwhen the Christian Churches turn to civics, to reformism or socialism, they are in fact announcing that the Christian dream is dead. They maycontinue to practice some of its moral teachings and hold to some of itscreed, but the Christian impulse is for them no longer active. A newdream, which they reverently call Christian, has sprung from theirdesires. 

During their life these social myths contain a nation's finest energy. Itis just because they are "not descriptions of things, but expressions ofwill" that their influence is so great. Ignore what a man desires and youignore the very source of his power; run against the grain of a nation'sgenius and see where you get with your laws. Robert Burns was right whenhe preferred poetry to charters. The recognition of this truth by Sorelis one of the most impressive events in the revolutionary movement. Standing as a spokesman of an actual social revolt, he has not lost hisvision because he understands its function. If Machiavelli is a symbol ofthe political theorist making reason an instrument of purpose, we maytake Sorel as a self-conscious representative of the impulses whichgenerate purpose. 

It must not be supposed that respect for the myth is a discovery ofSorel's. He is but one of a number of contemporary thinkers who havereacted against a very stupid prejudice of nineteenth century science tothe effect that the mental habits of human beings were not "facts. "Unless ideas mirrored external nature they were regarded as beneath thenotice of the scientific mind. But in more recent years we have come torealize that, in a world so full of ignorance and mistake, error itselfis worthy of study. Our untrue ideas are significant because theyinfluence our lives enormously. They are "facts" to be investigated. Onemight point to the great illumination that has resulted from Freud'sanalysis of the abracadabra of our dreams. No one can any longer dismissthe fantasy because it is logically inconsistent, superficially absurd, or objectively untrue. William James might also be cited for his defenseof those beliefs that are beyond the realm of proof. His essay, "The Willto Believe, " is a declaration of independence, which says in effect thatscientific demonstration is not the only test of ideas. He stated thecase for those beliefs which influence life so deeply, though they failto describe it. James himself was very disconcerting to many scientistsbecause he insisted on expressing his aspirations about the universe inwhat his colleague Santayana calls a "romantic cosmology": "I am far fromwishing to suggest that such a view seems to me more probable thanconventional idealism or the Christian Orthodoxy. All three are in theregion of dramatic system-making and myth, to which probabilities areirrelevant. "

It is impossible to leave this point without quoting Nietzsche, who hadthis insight and stated it most provocatively. In "Beyond Good and Evil"Nietzsche says flatly that "the falseness of an opinion is not for us anyobjection to it: it is here, perhaps, that our new language sounds moststrangely. The question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing. .. . " Then hecomments on the philosophers. "They all pose as though their realopinions had been discovered and attained through the self-evolving of acold, pure, divinely indifferent dialectic. .. ; whereas, in fact, aprejudiced proposition, idea, or 'suggestion, ' which is generally theirheart's desire abstracted and refined, is defended by them with argumentssought out after the event. They are all advocates who do not wish to beregarded as such, generally astute defenders, also, of their prejudices, which they dub 'truths'--and _very_ far from having the conscience whichbravely admits this to itself; very far from having the good taste or thecourage which goes so far as to let this be understood, perhaps to warnfriend or foe, or in cheerful confidence and self-ridicule. .. . It hasgradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now hasconsisted of--namely, the confession of its originator, and a species ofinvoluntary and unconscious autobiography, and, moreover, that the moral(or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true vitalgerm out of which the entire plant has always grown. .. . Whoever considersthe fundamental impulses of man with a view to determining how far theymay have acted as _inspiring_ genii (or as demons and cobolds) will findthat they have all practiced philosophy at one time or another, and thateach one of them would have been only too glad to look upon itself as theultimate end of existence and the legitimate _lord_ over all the otherimpulses. For every impulse is imperious, and, as _such_, attempts tophilosophize. "

What Nietzsche has done here is, in his swashbuckling fashion, to cutunder the abstract and final pretensions of creeds. Difficulties arisewhen we try to apply this wisdom in the present. That dogmas _were_instruments of human purposes is not so incredible; that they still _are_instruments is not so clear to everyone; and that they will be, that theyshould be--this seems a monstrous attack on the citadel of truth. It ispossible to believe that other men's theories were temporary and merelyuseful; we like to believe that ours will have a greater authority. 

It seems like topsy-turvyland to make reason serve the irrational. Yetthat is just what it has always done, and ought always to do. Many of usare ready to grant that in the past men's motives were deeper than theirintellects: we forgive them with a kind of self-righteousness which saysthat they knew not what they did. But to follow the great tradition ofhuman wisdom deliberately, with our eyes open in the manner of Sorel, that seems a crazy procedure. A notion of intellectual honor fightsagainst it: we think we must aim at final truth, and not allowautobiography to creep into speculation. 

Now the trouble with such an idol is that autobiography creeps in anyway. The more we censor it, the more likely it is to appear disguised, to foolus subtly and perhaps dangerously. The men like Nietzsche and James whoshow the wilful origin of creeds are in reality the best watchers of thecitadel of truth. For there is nothing disastrous in the temporary natureof our ideas. They are always that. But there may very easily be a trainof evil in the self-deception which regards them as final. I think Godwill forgive us our skepticism sooner than our Inquisitions. 

From the political point of view, another observation is necessary. Thecreed of a Rousseau, for example, is active in politics, not for what itsays, but for what people think it says. I have urged that Marx foundscientific reasons for what he wanted to do. It is important to add thatthe people who adopted his reasons for what they wanted to do were notany too respectful of Marx's reasons. Thus the so-called materialisticphilosophy of Karl Marx is not by any means identical with the theoriesone hears among Marxian socialists. There is a big distortion in thetransmitting of ideas. A common purpose, far more than common ideas, binds Marx to his followers. And when a man comes to write about hisphilosophy he is confronted with a choice: shall the creed described bethat of Marx or of the Marxians?

For the study of politics I should say unhesitatingly that it is moreimportant to know what socialist leaders, stump speakers, pamphleteers, think Marx meant, than to know what he said. For then you are dealingwith living ideas: to search his text has its uses, but compared with theactual tradition of Marx it is the work of pedantry. I say this here fortwo reasons--because I hope to avoid the critical attack of the genuineMarxian specialist, and because the observation is, I believe, relevantto our subject. 

Relevant it is in that it suggests the importance of style, ofpropaganda, the popularization of ideas. The host of men who standbetween a great thinker and the average man are not automatictransmitters. They work on the ideas; perhaps that is why a geniususually hates his disciples. It is interesting to notice the explanationgiven by Frau Förster-Nietzsche for her brother's quarrel with Wagner. She dates it from the time when Nietzsche, under the guise of Wagnerianpropaganda, began to expound himself. The critics and interpreters arethemselves creative. It is really unfair to speak of the Marxianphilosophy as a political force. It is juster to speak of the Marxiantradition. 

So when I write of Marx's influence I have in mind what men and women insocialist meetings, in daily life here in America, hold as a faith andattribute to Marx. There is no pretension whatever to any critical studyof "Das Kapital" itself. I am thinking rather of stuffy halls in which anearnest voice is expounding "the evolution of capitalism, " of littlegroups, curious and bewildered, listening in the streets of New York tothe story of the battle between the "master class" and the "workingclass, " of little red pamphlets, of newspapers, and cartoons--awkward, badly printed and not very genial, a great stream of spellbinding andcontroversy through which the aspirations of millions are becomingarticulate:

The tradition is saying that "the system" and not the individual is atfault. It describes that system as one in which a small class owns themeans of production and holds the rest of mankind in bondage. Arts, religions, laws, as well as vice and crime and degradation, have theirsource in this central economic condition. If you want to understand ourlife you must see that it is determined by the massing of capital in thehands of a few. All epochs are determined by economic arrangements. But asystem of property always contains within itself "the seeds of its owndestruction. " Mechanical inventions suggest a change: a dispossessedclass compels it. So mankind has progressed through savagery, chattelslavery, serfdom, to "wage slavery" or the capitalism of to-day. This ageis pregnant with the socialism of to-morrow. 

So roughly the tradition is handed on. Two sets of idea seem to dominateit: we are creatures of economic conditions; a war of classes is beingfought everywhere in which the proletariat will ultimately capture theindustrial machinery and produce a sound economic life as the basis ofpeace and happiness for all. The emphasis on environment is insistent. Facts are marshaled, the news of the day is interpreted to show that menare determined by economic conditions. This fixation has brought downupon the socialists a torrent of abuse in which "atheism" and"materialism" are prevailing epithets. But the propaganda continues andthe philosophy spreads, penetrating reform groups, social workers, historians, and sociologists. 

It has served the socialist purpose well. To the workingmen it hasbrought home the importance of capturing the control of industry. Economic determinism has been an antidote to mere preaching of goodness, to hero-worship and political quackery. Socialism to succeed had toconcentrate attention on the ownership of capital: whenever any otherinterest like religion or patriotism threatened to diffuse thatattention, socialist leaders have always been ready to show that theeconomic fact is more central. Dignity and prestige were supplied bymaking economics the key of history; passion was chained by buildingparadise upon it. 

In all the political philosophies there is none so adapted to its end. Every sanction that mankind respects has been grouped about this onepurpose--the control of capital. It is as if all history converged uponthe issue, and the workers in the cause feel that they carry within themthe destiny of the race. Start anywhere, with an orthodox socialist andhe will lead you to this supreme economic situation. Tyrannies and racehatred, national rivalries, sex problems, the difficulties of artisticendeavor, all failures, crimes, vices--there is not one which he will notrelate to private capitalism. Nor is there anything disingenuous aboutthis focusing of the attention: a real belief is there. Of course youwill find plenty of socialists who see other issues and who smile a bitat the rigors of economic determinism. In these later days there is infact, a decided loosening in the creed. But it is fair to say that themass of socialists hold this philosophy with as much solemnity as areformer held his when he wrote to me that the cure for obscenity was thetaxation of land values and absolute free trade. 

Singlemindedness has done good service. It has bound the world togetherand has helped men to think socially. Turning their attention away fromthe romanticism of history, the materialistic philosophy has helped themto look at realities. It has engendered a fine concern about averagepeople, about the voiceless multitudes who have been left to passunnoticed. Not least among the blessings is a shattering of thegood-and-bad-man theory: the assassination of tyrants or the adoration ofsaviors. A shallow and specious other-worldliness has been driven out: another-worldliness which is really nothing but laziness about this one. And if from a speculative angle the Marxian tradition has shaded tooheavily the economic facts, it was at least a plausible and practicalexaggeration. 

But the drawbacks are becoming more and more evident as socialismapproaches nearer to power and responsibility. The feeling that man is acreature and not a creator is disastrous as a personal creed when youcome to act. If you insist upon being "determined by conditions" you dohesitate about saying "I shall. " You are likely to wait for something todetermine you. Personal initiative and individual genius are poorlyregarded: many socialists are suspicious of originality. This philosophy, so useful in propaganda, is becoming a burden in action. That is anotherway of saying that the instrument has turned into an idol. 

For while it is illuminating to see how environment moulds men, it isabsolutely essential that men regard themselves as moulders of theirenvironment. A new philosophical basis is becoming increasingly necessaryto socialism--one that may not be "truer" than the old materialism butthat shall simply be more useful. Having learned for a long time what isdone to us, we are now faced with the task of doing. With this changedpurpose goes a change of instruments. All over the world socialists arebreaking away from the stultifying influence of the outworn determinism. For the time is at hand when they must cease to look upon socialism asinevitable in order to make it so. 

Nor will the philosophy of class warfare serve this new need. That can beeffective only so long as the working-class is without sovereignty. Butno sooner has it achieved power than a new outlook is needed in order toknow what to do with it. The tactics of the battlefield are of no usewhen the battle is won. 

I picture this philosophy as one of deliberate choices. The underlyingtone of it is that society is made by man for man's uses, that reformsare inventions to be applied when by experiment they show theircivilizing value. Emphasis is placed upon the devising, adapting, constructing faculties. There is no reason to believe that this view isany colder than that of the war of class against class. It will generateno less energy. Men to-day can feel almost as much zest in the buildingof the Panama Canal as they did in a military victory. Their domineeringimpulses find satisfaction in conquering things, in subjecting bruteforces to human purposes. This sense of mastery in a winning battleagainst the conditions of our life is, I believe, the social myth thatwill inspire our reconstructions. We shall feel free to choose amongalternatives--to take this much of socialism, insert so much syndicalism, leave standing what of capitalism seems worth conserving. We shall bemaking our own house for our own needs, cities to suit ourselves, and weshall believe ourselves capable of moving mountains, as engineers do, when mountains stand in their way. 

And history, science, philosophy will support our hopes. What willfascinate us in the past will be the records of inventions, of greatchoices, of those alternatives on which destiny seems to hang. Thesplendid epochs will be interpreted as monuments of man's creation, notof his propulsion. We shall be interested primarily in the way nationsestablished their civilization in spite of hostile conditions. Admirationwill go out to the men who did not submit, who bent things to human use. We may see the entire tragedy of life in being driven. 

Half-truths and illusions, if you like, but tonic. This view will suitour mood. For we shall be making and the makers of history will becomemore real to us. Instead of urging that issues are inevitable, instead ofbeing swamped by problems that are unavoidable, we may stand up andaffirm the issues we propose to handle. Perhaps we shall say withNietzsche:

 "Let the value of everything be determined afresh by you. "

CHAPTER VIII

THE RED HERRING

At the beginning of every campaign the newspapers tell about secretconferences in which the candidate and his managers decide upon "the lineof attack. " The approach to issues, the way in which they shall bestressed, what shall be put forward in one part of the country and whatin another, are discussed at these meetings. Here is where the realprogram of a party is worked out. The document produced at the conventionis at its best nothing but a suggestive formality. It is not until thespeakers and the publicity agents have actually begun to animate it thatthe country sees what the party is about. It is as if the conventionadopted the Decalogue, while these secret conferences decided which ofthe Commandments was to be made the issue. Almost always, of course, thedecision is entirely a "practical" one, which means that each section ofpeople is exhorted to practice the commandment it likes the most. Thusfor the burglars is selected, not the eighth tablet, but the one on whichis recommended a day of rest from labor; to the happily married ispreached the seventh commandment. 

These conferences are decisive. On them depends the educational value ofa campaign, and the men who participate in them, being in a position tostate the issues and point them, determine the political interests of thepeople for a considerable period of time. To-day in America, for example, no candidate can escape entirely that underlying irritation whichsocialists call poverty and some call the high cost of living. But theconspicuous candidates do decide what direction thought shall take aboutthis condition. They can center it upon the tariff or the trusts or eventhe currency. 

Thus Mr. Roosevelt has always had a remarkable power of diverting thecountry from the tariff to the control of the trusts. His Democraticopponents, especially Woodrow Wilson, are, as I write, in the midst ofthe Presidential campaign of 1912, trying to focus attention on thetariff. In a way the battle resembles a tug-of-war in which each of thetwo leading candidates is trying to pull the nation over to his favoriteissue. On the side you can see the Prohibitionists endeavoring to makethe country see drink as a central problem; the emerging socialistsinsisting that not the tariff, or liquor, or the control of trusts, butthe ownership of capital should be the heart of the discussion. Electoralcampaigns do not resemble debates so much as they do competing amusementshows where, with bright lights, gaudy posters and persuasive, insistentvoices, each booth is trying to collect a crowd; The victory in acampaign is far more likely to go to the most plausible diagnosis than tothe most convincing method of cure. Once a party can induce the countryto see its issue as supreme the greater part of its task is done. 

The clever choice of issues influences all politics from the pettymanoeuvers of a ward leader to the most brilliant creativestatesmanship. I remember an instance that happened at the beginning ofthe first socialist administration in Schenectady: The officials had outof the goodness of their hearts suspended a city ordinance which forbadecoasting with bob-sleds on the hills of the city. A few days later one ofthe sleds ran into a wagon and a little girl was killed. The oppositionpapers put the accident into scareheads with the result that publicopinion became very bitter. It looked like a bad crisis at the verybeginning and the old ring politicians made the most of it. But they hadreckoned without the political shrewdness of the socialists. For in thesecond day of excitement, the mayor made public a plan by which the mainbusiness street of the town was to be lighted with high-power lamps andturned into a "brilliant white way of Schenectady. " The swiftness withwhich the papers displaced the gruesome details of the little girl'sdeath by exultation over the business future of the city was a caution. Public attention was shifted and a political crisis avoided. I tell thisstory simply as a suggestive fact. The ethical considerations do notconcern us here. 

There is nothing exceptional about the case. Whenever governments enterupon foreign invasions in order to avoid civil wars, the same trick ispracticed. In the Southern States the race issue has been thrust forwardpersistently to prevent an economic alignment. Thus you hear fromSoutherners that unless socialism gives up its demand for racialequality, the propaganda cannot go forward. How often in great strikeshave riots been started in order to prevent the public from listening tothe workers' demands! It is an old story--the red herring dragged acrossthe path in order to destroy the scent. 

Having seen the evil results we have come to detest a conscious choice ofissues, to feel that it smacks of sinister plotting. The vile practice ofyellow newspapers and chauvinistic politicians is almost the onlyexperience of it we have. Religion, patriotism, race, and sex are thefavorite red herrings of foul political method--they are the mostsuccessful because they explode so easily and flood the mind with thoseunconscious prejudices which make critical thinking difficult. Yet forall its abuse the deliberate choice of issues is one of the highselective arts of the statesman. In the debased form we know it there islittle encouragement. But the devil is merely a fallen angel, and whenGod lost Satan he lost one of his best lieutenants. It is always a prettygood working rule that whatever is a great power of evil may become agreat power for good. Certainly nothing so effective in the art ofpolitics can be left out of the equipment of the statesman. 

Looked at closely, the deliberate making of issues is very nearly thecore of the statesman's task. His greatest wisdom is required to select apolicy that will fertilize the public mind. He fails when the issue hesets is sterile; he is incompetent if the issue does not lead to thehuman center of a problem; whenever the statesman allows the voters totrifle with taboos and by-products, to wander into blind alleys like "16to 1, " his leadership is a public calamity. The newspaper or politicianwhich tries to make an issue out of a supposed "prosperity" or out ofadmiration for the mere successes of our ancestors is doing its best tochoke off the creative energies in politics. All the stultification ofthe stand-pat mind may be described as inability, and perhapsunwillingness, to nourish a fruitful choice of issues. 

That choice is altogether too limited in America, anyway. Politicaldiscussion, whether reactionary or radical, is monotonously confined tovery few issues. It is as if social life were prevented from irrigatingpolitical thought. A subject like the tariff, for example, has absorbedan amount of attention which would justify an historian in calling it theincubus of American politics. Now the exaltation of one issue like thatis obviously out of all proportion to its significance. A contributoryfactor it certainly is, but the country's destiny is not bound up finallywith its solution. The everlasting reiterations about the tariff take upaltogether too much time. To any government that was clear about values, that saw all problems in their relation to human life, the tariff wouldbe an incident, a mechanical device and little else. High protectionistand free trader alike fall under the indictment--for a tariff wall isneither so high as heaven nor so broad as the earth. It may be necessaryto have dykes on portions of the seashore; they may be superfluouselsewhere. But to concentrate nine-tenths of your attention on thesubject of dykes is to forget the civilization they are supposed toprotect. A wall is a wall: the presence of it will not do the work ofcivilization--the absence of it does not absolve anyone from the tasks ofsocial life. That a statecraft might deal with the tariff as an aid toits purposes is evident. But anyone who makes the tariff the principalconcern of statecraft is, I believe, mistaking the hedge for the house. 

The tariff controversy is almost as old as the nation. A more recent oneis what Senator La Follette calls "The great issue before the Americanpeople to-day, . .. The control of their own government. " It has taken theform of an attack on corruption, on what is vaguely called "specialprivilege" and of a demand for a certain amount of political machinerysuch as direct primaries, the initiative, referendum, and recall. Theagitation has a curious sterility: the people are exhorted to controltheir own government, but they are given very little advice as to whatthey are to do with it when they control it. Of course, the leaders whospend so much time demanding these mechanical changes undoubtedly seethem as a safeguard against corrupt politicians and what Roosevelt calls"their respectable allies and figureheads, who have ruled and legislatedand decided as if in some way the vested rights of privilege had a firstmortgage on the whole United States. " But look at the _way_ theseinnovations are presented and I think the feeling is unavoidable that thecontrol of government is emphasized as an end in itself. Now anobservation of this kind is immediately open to dispute: it is not aclear-cut distinction but a rather subtle matter of stress--an impressionrather than a definite conviction. 

Yet when you look at the career of Judge Lindsey in Denver the impressionis sharpened by contrast. What gave his exposure of corruption a peculiarvitality was that it rested on a very positive human ideal: the happinessof children in a big city. Lindsey's attack on vice and financial jobberywas perhaps the most convincing piece of muckraking ever done in thiscountry for the very reason that it sprang from a concern about realhuman beings instead of abstractions about democracy or righteousness. From the point of view of the political hack, Judge Lindsey made a mostdistressing use of the red herring. He brought the happiness of childhoodinto political discussion, and this opened up a new source of politicalpower. By touching something deeply instinctive in millions of people, Judge Lindsey animated dull proposals with human interest. Thepettifogging objections to some social plan had very little chance ofsurvival owing to the dynamic power of the reformers. It was an excellentexample of the creative results that come from centering a politicalproblem on human nature. 

If you move only from legality to legality, you halt and hesitate, eachstep is a monstrous task. If the reformer is a pure opportunist, and laysout only "the next step, " that step will be very difficult. But if heaims at some real human end, at the genuine concerns of men, women, andchildren, if he can make the democracy see and feel that end, the littlemechanical devices of suffrage and primaries and tariffs will be dealtwith as a craftsman deals with his tools. But to say that we must maketools first, and then begin, is to invert the process of life. Men didnot agree to refrain from travel until a railroad was built. To make themanufacture of instruments an ideal is to lose much of their ideal value. A nation bent upon a policy of social invention would make its tools anincident. But just this perception is lacking in many propagandists. Thatis why their issues are so sterile; that is why the absorption in "nextsteps" is a diversion from statesmanship. 

The narrowness of American political issues is a fixation uponinstruments. Tradition has centered upon the tariff, the trusts, thecurrency, and electoral machinery as the items of consideration. It isthe failure to go behind them--to see them as the pale servants of avivid social life--that keeps our politics in bondage to a few problems. It is a common experience repeated in you and me. Once our professionbecomes all absorbing it hardens into pedantry. "A human being, " saysWells, "who is a philosopher in the first place, a teacher in the firstplace, or a statesman in the first place is thereby and inevitably, though he bring God-like gifts to the pretense--a quack. "

Reformers particularly resent the enlargement of political issues. I haveheard socialists denounce other socialists for occupying themselves withthe problems of sex. The claim was that these questions should be putaside so as not to disturb the immediate program. The socialists knewfrom experience that sex views cut across economic ones--that a newinterest breaks up the alignment. Woodrow Wilson expressed this same fearin his views on the liquor question: after declaring for local option hewent on to say that "the questions involved are social and moral and arenot susceptible of being made part of a party program. Whenever they havebeen made the subject matter of party contests they have cut the lines ofparty organization and party action athwart, to the utter confusion ofpolitical action in every other field. .. . I do not believe party programsof the highest consequence to the political life of the State and of thenation ought to be thrust on one side and hopelessly embarrassed for longperiods together by making a political issue of a great question which isessentially non-political, non-partisan, moral and social in its nature. "

That statement was issued at the beginning of a campaign in which WoodrowWilson was the nominee of a party that has always been closely associatedwith the liquor interests. The bogey of the saloon had presented itselfearly: it was very clear that an affirmative position by the candidatewas sure to alienate either the temperance or the "liquor vote. " No doubta sense of this dilemma is partly responsible for Wilson's earnest pleathat the question of liquor be left out of the campaign. He saw theconfusion and embarrassment he speaks of as an immediate danger. Like hisviews on immigration and Chinese labor it was a red herring across hispath. It would, if brought into prominence, cut the lines of party actionathwart. 

His theoretical grounds for ignoring the question in politics are veryinteresting just because they are vitalized by this practical difficultywhich he faced. Like all party men Woodrow Wilson had thrust upon himhere a danger that haunts every political program. The more issues aparty meets the less votes it is likely to poll. And for a very simplereason: you cannot keep the citizenship of a nation like this bound inits allegiance to two large parties unless you make the grounds ofallegiance very simple and very obvious. If you are to hold five or sixmillion voters enlisted under one emblem the less specific you are andthe fewer issues you raise the more probable it is that you can stop thishost from quarreling within the ranks. 

No doubt this is a partial explanation of the bareness of Americanpolitics. The two big parties have had to preserve a superficialhomogeneity; and a platitude is more potent than an issue. The minorparties--Populist, Prohibition, Independence League and Socialist--haveshown a much greater willingness to face new problems. Their view ofnational policy has always been more inclusive, perhaps for the veryreason that their membership is so much more exclusive. But if anyonewishes a smashing illustration of this paradox let him consider the rapidprogress of Roosevelt's philosophy in the very short time between theRepublican Convention in June to the Progressive Convention in August, 1912. As soon as Roosevelt had thrown off the burden of preserving afalse harmony among irreconcilable Republicans, he issued a platform fullof definiteness and square dealing with many issues. He was talking to aminority party. But Roosevelt's genius is not that of group leadership. He longs for majorities. He set out to make the campaign a battle betweenthe Progressives and the Democrats--the old discredited Republicans fellback into a rather dead conservative minority. No sooner did Roosevelttake the stump than the paradox loomed up before him. His speeches beganto turn on platitudes--on the vague idealism and indisputable moralitiesof the Decalogue and the Sermon on the Mount. The fearlessness of theChicago confession was melted down into a featureless alloy. 

The embarrassment from the liquor question which Woodrow Wilson feareddoes not arise because teetotaler and drunkard both become intoxicatedwhen they discuss the saloon. It would come just as much from a radicalprogram of land taxation, factory reform, or trust control. Let anyone ofthese issues be injected into his campaign and the lines of party actionwould be cut "athwart. " For Woodrow Wilson was dealing with theinevitable embarrassment of a party system dependent on an inexpressivehomogeneity. The grouping of the voters into two large herds costs alarge price: it means that issues must be so simplified and selected thatthe real demands of the nation rise only now and then to the level ofpolitical discussion. The more people a party contains the less itexpresses their needs. 

Woodrow Wilson's diagnosis of the red herring in politics is obviouslycorrect. A new issue does embarrass a wholesale organization of thevoters. His desire to avoid it in the midst of a campaign isunderstandable. His urgent plea that the liquor question be kept a localissue may be wise. But the general philosophy which says that the partysystem should not be cut athwart is at least open to serious dispute. Instead of an evil, it looks to me like progress towards greaterresponsiveness of parties to popular need. It is good to disturbalignments: to break up a superficial unanimity. The masses of peopleheld together under the name Democratic are bound in an enervatingcommunion. The real groups dare not speak their convictions for fear thecrust will break. It is as if you had thrown a large sheet over a mass ofmen and made them anonymous. 

The man who raises new issues has always been distasteful to politicians. He musses up what had been so tidily arranged. I remember once speakingto a local boss about woman suffrage. His objections were very simple:"We've got the organization in fine shape now--we know where every voterin the district stands. But you let all the women vote and we'll beconfused as the devil. It'll be an awful job keeping track of them. " Hefelt what many a manufacturer feels when somebody has the impertinence toinvent a process which disturbs the routine of business. 

Hard as it is upon the immediate plans of the politician, it is anational blessing when the lines of party action are cut athwart by newissues. I recognize that the red herring is more often frivolous andpersonal--a matter of misrepresentation and spite--than an honest attemptto enlarge the scope of politics. However, a fine thing must not bedeplored because it is open to vicious caricature. To the party workerthe petty and the honest issue are equally disturbing. The break-up ofthe parties into expressive groups would be a ventilation of our nationallife. No use to cry peace when there is no peace. The false bonds arebest broken: with their collapse would come a release of social energyinto political discussion. For every country is a mass of minoritieswhich should find a voice in public affairs. Any device like proportionalrepresentation and preferential voting which facilitates the politicalexpression of group interests is worth having. The objection that populargovernment cannot be conducted without the two party system is, Ibelieve, refuted by the experience of Europe. If I had to choose betweena Congressional caucus and a coalition ministry, I should not have tohesitate very long. But no one need go abroad for actual experience: inthe United States Senate during the Taft administration there were reallythree parties--Republicans, Insurgents and Democrats. Public businesswent ahead with at least as much effectiveness as under the old Aldrichring. 

There are deeper reasons for urging a break-up of herd-politics. It isnot only desirable that groups should be able to contribute to publicdiscussion: it is absolutely essential if the parliamentary method is notto be superseded by direct and violent action. The two party systemchokes off the cry of a minority--perhaps the best way there is ofprecipitating an explosion. An Englishman once told me that the utterfreedom of speech in Hyde Park was the best safeguard England had againstthe doctrines that were propounded there. An anarchist who was invited toaddress Congress would be a mild person compared to the man forbidden tospeak in the streets of San Diego. For many a bomb has exploded intorhetoric. 

The rigidity of the two-party system is, I believe, disastrous: itignores issues without settling them, dulls and wastes the energies ofactive groups, and chokes off the protests which should find a civilizedexpression in public life. A recognition of what an incubus it is shouldmake us hospitable to all those devices which aim at making politicsresponsive by disturbing the alignments of habit. The initiative andreferendum will help: they are a method of voting on definite issuesinstead of electing an administration in bulk. If cleverly handled theseelectoral devices should act as a check on a wholesale attitude towardpolitics. Men could agree on a candidate and disagree on a measure. Another device is the separation of municipal, state and nationalelections: to hold them all at the same time is an inducement to preventthe voter from splitting his allegiance. Proportional representation andpreferential voting I have mentioned. The short ballot is a psychologicalprinciple which must be taken into account wherever there is voting: itwill help the differentiation of political groups by concentrating theattention on essential choices. The recall of public officials is in parta policeman's club, in part a clumsy way of getting around the Americanprejudice for a fixed term of office. That rigidity which by the meremovement of the calendar throws an official out of office in the midst ofhis work or compels him to go campaigning is merely the crude method of ademocracy without confidence in itself. The recall is a half-hearted andnegative way of dealing with this difficulty. It does enable us to ridourselves of an officer we don't like instead of having to wait until theearth has revolved to a certain place about the sun. But we still have tovote on a fixed date whether we have anything to vote upon or not. If arecall election is held when the people petition for it, why not allelections?

In ways like these we shall go on inventing methods by which thefictitious party alignments can be dissolved. There is one devicesuggested now and then, tried, I believe, in a few places, and vaguelychampioned by some socialists. It is called in German an"Interessenvertrag"--a political representation by trade interests aswell as by geographical districts. Perhaps this is the direction towardswhich the bi-cameral legislature will develop. One chamber would thenrepresent a man's sectional interests as a consumer: the other hisprofessional interests as a producer. The railway workers, the miners, the doctors, the teachers, the retail merchants would have directrepresentation in the "Interessenvertrag. " You might call it a Chamber ofSpecial Interests. I know how that phrase "Special Interests" hurts. Inpopular usage we apply it only to corrupting businesses. But our feelingagainst them should not blind us to the fact that every group in thecommunity has its special interests. They will always exist until mankindbecomes a homogeneous jelly. The problem is to find some socialadjustment for all the special interests of a nation. That is bestachieved by open recognition and clear representation. Let no one thenconfuse the "Interessenvertrag" with those existing legislatures whichare secret Chambers of Special Privilege. 

The scheme is worth looking at for it does do away with the presentdilemma of the citizen in which he wonders helplessly whether he ought tovote as a consumer or as a producer. I believe he should have both votes, and the "Interessenvertrag" is a way. 

These devices are mentioned here as illustrations and not as conclusions. You can think of them as arrangements by which the red herring is turnedfrom a pest into a benefit. I grant that in the rigid politicalconditions prevailing to-day a new issue is an embarrassment, perhaps ahindrance to the procedure of political life. But instead of narrowingthe scope of politics, to avoid it, the only sensible thing to do is toinvent methods which will allow needs and problems and group interestsavenues into politics. 

But a suggestion like this is sure to be met with the argument whichWoodrow Wilson has in mind when he says that the "questions involved aresocial and moral and are not susceptible of being made parts of a partyprogram. " He voices a common belief when he insists that there are moraland social problems, "essentially non-political. " Innocent as it looks atfirst sight this plea by Woodrow Wilson is weighted with the tradition ofa century and a half. To my mind it symbolizes a view of the state whichwe are outgrowing, and throws into relief the view towards which we arestruggling. Its implications are well worth tracing, for through them Ithink we can come to understand better the method of Twentieth Centurypolitics. 

It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. Itis equally true that that government is best which provides most. Thefirst truth belongs to the Eighteenth Century: the second to theTwentieth. Neither of them can be neglected in our attitude towards thestate. Without the Jeffersonian distrust of the police we might easilygrow into an impertinent and tyrannous collectivism: without a vividsense of the possibilities of the state we abandon the supreme instrumentof civilization. The two theories need to be held together, yet clearlydistinguished. 

Government has been an exalted policeman: it was there to guard propertyand to prevent us from quarreling too violently. That was about all itwas good for. Yet society found problems on its hands--problems whichWoodrow Wilson calls moral and social in their nature. Vice and crime, disease, and grinding poverty forced themselves on the attention of thecommunity. A typical example is the way the social evil compelled thecity of Chicago to begin an investigation. Yet when government was askedto handle the question it had for wisdom an ancient conception of itselfas a policeman. Its only method was to forbid, to prosecute, to jail--inshort, to use the taboo. But experience has shown that the taboo will notsolve "moral and social questions"--that nine times out of ten itaggravates the disease. Political action becomes a petty, futile, meanlittle intrusion when its only method is prosecution. 

No wonder then that conservatively-minded men pray that moral and socialquestions be kept out of politics; no wonder that more daring souls beginto hate the whole idea of government and take to anarchism. So long asthe state is conceived merely as an agent of repression, the less itinterferes with our lives, the better. Much of the horror of socialismcomes from a belief that by increasing the functions of government itsregulating power over our daily lives will grow into a tyranny. I sharethis horror when certain socialists begin to propound their schemes. There is a dreadful amount of forcible scrubbing and arranging andpocketing implied in some socialisms. There is a wish to have the stateuse its position as general employer to become a censor of morals andarbiter of elegance, like the benevolent employers of the day who take animpertinent interest in the private lives of their workers. Without anydoubt socialism has within it the germs of that great bureaucratictyranny which Chesterton and Belloc have named the Servile State. 

So it is a wise instinct that makes men jealous of the policeman's power. Far better we may say that moral and social problems be left to privatesolution than that they be subjected to the clumsy method of the taboo. When Woodrow Wilson argues that social problems are not susceptible totreatment in a party program, he must mean only one thing: that theycannot be handled by the state as he conceives it. He is right. Hisattitude is far better than that of the Vice Commission: it too had onlya policeman's view of government, but it proceeded to apply it toproblems that are not susceptible to such treatment. Wilson, at least, knows the limitations of his philosophy. 

But once you see the state as a provider of civilizing opportunities, hiswhole objection collapses. As soon as government begins to supplyservices, it is turning away from the sterile tyranny of the taboo. Theprovision of schools, streets, plumbing, highways, libraries, parks, universities, medical attention, post-offices, a Panama Canal, agricultural information, fire protection--is a use of government totallydifferent from the ideal of Jefferson. To furnish these opportunities isto add to the resources of life, and only a doctrinaire adherence to amisunderstood ideal will raise any objection to them. 

When an anarchist says that the state must be abolished he does not meanwhat he says. What he wants to abolish is the repressive, not theproductive state. He cannot possibly object to being furnished with theopportunity of writing to his comrade three thousand miles away, ofdrinking pure water, or taking a walk in the park. Of course when hefinds the post-office opening his mail, or a law saying that he mustdrink nothing but water, he begins to object even to the services of thegovernment. But that is a confusion of thought, for these tyrannies aremerely intrusions of the eighteenth century upon the twentieth. Thepostmaster is still something of a policeman. 

Once you realize that moral and social problems must be treated to fineopportunities, that the method of the future is to compete with the devilrather than to curse him; that the furnishing of civilized environmentsis the goal of statecraft, then there is no longer any reason for keepingsocial and moral questions out of politics. They are what politics mustdeal with essentially, now that it has found a way. The policeman withhis taboo did make moral and social questions insusceptible to treatmentin party platforms. He kept the issues of politics narrow and irrelevant, and just because these really interesting questions could not be handled, politics was an over-advertised hubbub. But the vision of the newstatecraft in centering politics upon human interests becomes a creatorof opportunities instead of a censor of morals, and deserves a fresh andheightened regard. 

The party platform will grow ever more and more into a program ofservices. In the past it has been an armory of platitudes or a forecastof punishments. It promised that it would stop this evil practice, driveout corruption here, and prosecute this-and-that offense. All thatbelongs to a moribund tradition. Abuse and disuse characterize the olderview of the state: guardian and censor it has been, provider butgrudgingly. The proclamations of so-called progressives that they willjail financiers, or "wage relentless warfare" upon social evils, aresimply the reiterations of men who do not understand the uses of thestate. 

A political revolution is in progress: the state as policeman is givingplace to the state as producer. 

CHAPTER IX

REVOLUTION AND CULTURE

There is a legend of a peasant who lived near Paris through the wholeNapoleonic era without ever having heard of the name of Bonaparte. Astory of that kind is enough to make a man hesitate before he indulges ina flamboyant description of social changes. That peasant is more than asymbol of the privacy of human interest: he is a warning against theincurable romanticism which clings about the idea of a revolution. Popular history is deceptive if it is used to furnish a picture forcoming events. Like drama which compresses the tragedy of a lifetime intoa unity of time, place, and action, history foreshortens an epoch into anepisode. It gains in poignancy, but loses reality. Men grew from infancyto old age, their children's children had married and loved and workedwhile the social change we speak of as the industrial revolution wasbeing consummated. That is why it is so difficult for living people tobelieve that they too are in the midst of great transformations. Whatlooks to us like an incredible rush of events sloping towards a greathistorical crisis was to our ancestors little else than the occasionalpunctuation of daily life with an exciting incident. Even to-day when wehave begun to speak of our age as a transition, there are millions ofpeople who live in an undisturbed routine. Even those of us who regardourselves as active in mothering the process and alert in detecting itsgrowth are by no means constantly aware of any great change. For even thefondest mother cannot watch her child grow. 

I remember how tremendously surprised I was in visiting Russia severalyears ago to find that in Moscow or St. Petersburg men were interested inall sorts of things besides the revolution. I had expected every Russianto be absorbed in the struggle. It seemed at first as if my notions ofwhat a revolution ought to be were contradicted everywhere. And I assureyou it wrenched the imagination to see tidy nursemaids wheelingperambulators and children playing diavolo on the very square whereBloody Sunday had gone into history. It takes a long perspective and novery vivid acquaintance with revolution to be melodramatic about it. Somuch is left out of history and biography which would spoil the effect. The anti-climax is almost always omitted. 

Perhaps that is the reason why Arnold Bennett's description of the siegeof Paris in "The Old Wives' Tale" is so disconcerting to many people. Itis hard to believe that daily life continues with its stretches ofboredom and its personal interests even while the enemy is bombarding acity. How much more difficult is it to imagine a revolution that is tocome--to space it properly through a long period of time, to conceivewhat it will be like to the people who live through it. Almost all socialprediction is catastrophic and absurdly simplified. Even those who talkof the slow "evolution" of society are likely to think of it as a seriesof definite changes easily marked and well known to everybody. It is whatBernard Shaw calls the reformer's habit of mistaking his private emotionsfor a public movement. 

Even though the next century is full of dramatic episodes--the collapseof governments and labor wars--these events will be to the socialrevolution what the smashing of machines in Lancashire was to theindustrial revolution. The reality that is worthy of attention is achange in the very texture and quality of millions of lives--a changethat will be vividly perceptible only in the retrospect of history. 

The conservative often has a sharp sense of the complexity of revolution:not desiring change, he prefers to emphasize its difficulties, whereasthe reformer is enticed into a faith that the intensity of desire is ameasure of its social effect. Yet just because no reform is in itself arevolution, we must not jump to the assurance that no revolution can beaccomplished. True as it is that great changes are imperceptible, it isno less true that they are constantly taking place. Moreover, for thevery reason that human life changes its quality so slowly, the panic overpolitical proposals is childish. 

It is obvious, for instance, that the recall of judges will notrevolutionize the national life. That is why the opposition generatedwill seem superstitious to the next generation. As I write, a conventionof the Populist Party has just taken place. Eight delegates attended themeeting, which was held in a parlor. Even the reactionary press speaks ina kindly way about these men. Twenty years ago the Populists were hatedand feared as if they practiced black magic. What they wanted is on thepoint of realization. To some of us it looks like a drop in the bucket--aslight part of vastly greater plans. But how stupid was the fear ofPopulism, what unimaginative nonsense it was to suppose twenty years agothat the program was the road to the end of the world. 

One good deed or one bad one is no measure of a man's character: the LastJudgment let us hope will be no series of decisions as simple as that. "The soul survives its adventures, " says Chesterton with a splendid senseof justice. A country survives its legislation. That truth should notcomfort the conservative nor depress the radical. For it means thatpublic policy can enlarge its scope and increase its audacity, can trybig experiments without trembling too much over the result. This nationcould enter upon the most radical experiments and could afford to fail inthem. Mistakes do not affect us so deeply as we imagine. Our propheciesof change are subjective wishes or fears that never come to fullrealization. 

Those socialists are confused who think that a new era can begin by ageneral strike or an electoral victory. Their critics are just a bit moreconfused when they become hysterical over the prospect. Both of themover-emphasize the importance of single events. Yet I do not wish tofurnish the impression that crises are negligible. They are extremelyimportant as symptoms, as milestones, and as instruments. It is simplythat the reality of a revolution is not in a political decree or thescarehead of a newspaper, but in the experiences, feelings, habits ofmyriads of men. 

No one who watched the textile strike at Lawrence, Massachusetts, in thewinter of 1912 can forget the astounding effect it had on the complacencyof the public. Very little was revealed that any well-informed socialworker does not know as a commonplace about the mill population. Thewretchedness and brutality of Lawrence conditions had been described inbooks and magazines and speeches until radicals had begun to wonder attimes whether the power of language wasn't exhausted. The response wasdiscouragingly weak--an occasional government investigation, animpassioned protest from a few individuals, a placid charity, were aboutall that the middle-class public had to say about factory life. Thecynical indifference of legislatures and the hypocrisy of the dominantparties were all that politics had to offer. The Lawrence strike touchedthe most impervious: story after story came to our ears of hardenedreporters who suddenly refused to misrepresent the strikers, ofpoliticians aroused to action, of social workers become revolutionary. Daily conversation was shocked into some contact with realities--thenewspapers actually printed facts about the situation of a working classpopulation. 

And why? The reason is not far to seek. The Lawrence strikers didsomething more than insist upon their wrongs; they showed a dispositionto right them. That is what scared public opinion into some kind oftruth-telling. So long as the poor are docile in their poverty, the restof us are only too willing to satisfy our consciences by pitying them. But when the downtrodden gather into a threat as they did at Lawrence, when they show that they have no stake in civilization and consequentlyno respect for its institutions, when the object of pity becomes theavenger of its own miseries, then the middle-class public begins to lookat the problem more intelligently. 

We are not civilized enough to meet an issue before it becomes acute. Wewere not intelligent enough to free the slaves peacefully--we are notintelligent enough to-day to meet the industrial problem before itdevelops a crisis. That is the hard truth of the matter. And that is whyno honest student of politics can plead that social movements shouldconfine themselves to argument and debate, abandoning the militancy ofthe strike, the insurrection, the strategy of social conflict. 

Those who deplore the use of force in the labor struggle should askthemselves whether the ruling classes of a country could be depended uponto inaugurate a program of reconstruction which would abolish thebarbarism that prevails in industry. Does anyone seriously believe thatthe business leaders, the makers of opinion and the politicians will, ontheir own initiative, bring social questions to a solution? If they do itwill be for the first time in history. The trivial plans they areintroducing to-day--profit-sharing and welfare work--are on their ownadmission an attempt to quiet the unrest and ward off the menace ofsocialism. 

No, paternalism is not dependable, granting that it is desirable. It willdo very little more than it feels compelled to do. Those who to-day bearthe brunt of our evils dare not throw themselves upon the mercy of theirmasters, not though there are bread and circuses as a reward. From thegroups upon whom the pressure is most direct must come the power to dealwith it. We are not all immediately interested in all problems: ourattention wanders unless the people who are interested compel us tolisten. 

Social movements are at once the symptoms and the instruments ofprogress. Ignore them and statesmanship is irrelevant; fail to use themand it is weak. Often in the course of these essays I have quoted from H. G. Wells. I must do so again: "Every party stands essentially for theinterests and mental usages of some definite class or group of classes inthe exciting community, and every party has its scientific minded andconstructive leading section, with well defined hinterlands formulatingits social functions in a public spirited form, and itssuperficial-minded following confessing its meannesses and vanities andprejudices. No class will abolish itself, materially alter its way ofliving, or drastically reconstruct itself, albeit no class is indisposedto co-operate in the unlimited socialization of any other class. In thatcapacity for aggression upon other classes lies the essential drivingforce of modern affairs. "

The truth of this can be tested in the socialist movement. There is asection among the socialists which regards the class movement of labor asa driving force in the socialization of industry. This group sees clearlythat without the threat of aggression no settlement of the issues ispossible. Ordinarily such socialists say that the class struggle is amovement which will end classes. They mean that the self-interest oflabor is identical with the interests of a community--that it is a kindof social selfishness. But there are other socialists who speakconstantly of "working-class government" and they mean just what theysay. It is their intention to have the community ruled in the interestsof labor. Probe their minds to find out what they mean by labor and inall honesty you cannot escape the admission that they mean industriallabor alone. These socialists think entirely in terms of the factorypopulation of cities: the farmers, the small shop-keepers, theprofessional classes have only a perfunctory interest for them. I knowthat no end of phrases could be adduced to show the inclusiveness of theword labor. But their intention is what I have tried to describe: theyare thinking of government by a factory population. 

They appeal to history for confirmation: have not all social changes, they ask, meant the emergence of a new economic class until it dominatedsociety? Did not the French Revolution mean the conquest of the feudallandlord by the middle-class merchant? Why should not the SocialRevolution mean the victory of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie? Thatmay be true, but it is no reason for being bullied by it into a tameadmission that what has always been must always be. I see no reason forexalting the unconscious failures of other revolutions into deliberatemodels for the next one. Just because the capacity of aggression in themiddle class ran away with things, and failed to fuse into any decentsocial ideal, is not ground for trying as earnestly as possible to repeatthe mistake. 

The lesson of it all, it seems to me, is this: that class interests arethe driving forces which keep public life centered upon essentials. Theybecome dangerous to a nation when it denies them, thwarts them andrepresses them so long that they burst out and become dominant. Thenthere is no limit to their aggression until another class appears withcontrary interests. The situation might be compared to those hysterias inwhich a suppressed impulse flares up and rules the whole mental life. 

Social life has nothing whatever to fear from group interests so long asit doesn't try to play the ostrich in regard to them. So the burden ofnational crises is squarely upon the dominant classes who fight sofoolishly against the emergent ones. That is what precipitates violence, that is what renders social co-operation impossible, that is what makescatastrophes the method of change. 

The wisest rulers see this. They know that the responsibility forinsurrections rests in the last analysis upon the unimaginative greed andendless stupidity of the dominant classes. There is something pathetic inthe blindness of powerful people when they face a social crisis. Fightingviciously every readjustment which a nation demands, they make their ownoverthrow inevitable. It is they who turn opposing interests into a classwar. Confronted with the deep insurgency of labor what do capitalists andtheir spokesmen do? They resist every demand, submit only after astruggle, and prepare a condition of war to the death. When far-sightedmen appear in the ruling classes--men who recognize the need of acivilized answer to this increasing restlessness, the rich and thepowerful treat them to a scorn and a hatred that are incredibly bitter. The hostility against men like Roosevelt, La Follette, Bryan, Lloyd-George is enough to make an observer believe that the rich ofto-day are as stupid as the nobles of France before the Revolution. 

It seems to me that Roosevelt never spoke more wisely or as a betterfriend of civilization than the time when he said at New York City onMarch 20, 1912, that "the woes of France for a century and a quarter havebeen due to the folly of her people in splitting into the two camps ofunreasonable conservatism and unreasonable radicalism. Hadpre-Revolutionary France listened to men like Turgot and backed them upall would have gone well. But the beneficiaries of privilege, the Bourbonreactionaries, the short-sighted ultra-conservatives, turned down Turgot;and then found that instead of him they had obtained Robespierre. Theygained twenty years' freedom from all restraint and reform at the cost ofthe whirlwind of the red terror; and in their turn the unbridledextremists of the terror induced a blind reaction; and so, withconvulsion and oscillation from one extreme to another, with alterationsof violent radicalism and violent Bourbonism, the French people wentthrough misery to a shattered goal. "

Profound changes are not only necessary, but highly desirable. Even ifthis country were comfortably well-off, healthy, prosperous, andeducated, men would go on inventing and creating opportunities to amplifythe possibilities of life. These inventions would mean radicaltransformations. For we are bent upon establishing more in this nationthan a minimum of comfort. A liberal people would welcome socialinventions as gladly as we do mechanical ones. What it would fear is ahard-shell resistance to change which brings it about explosively. 

Catastrophes are disastrous to radical and conservative alike: they donot preserve what was worth maintaining; they allow a deformed and oftenmonstrous perversion of the original plan. The emancipation of the slavesmight teach us the lesson that an explosion followed by reconstruction issatisfactory to nobody. 

Statesmanship would go out to meet a crisis before it had become acute. The thing it would emphatically not do is to dam up an insurgent currentuntil it overflowed the countryside. Fight labor's demands to the lastditch and there will come a time when it seizes the whole of power, makesitself sovereign, and takes what it used to ask. That is a poor way for anation to proceed. For the insurgent become master is a fanatic from thestruggle, and as George Santayana says, he is only too likely to redoublehis effort after he has forgotten his aim. 

Nobody need waste his time debating whether or not there are to be greatchanges. That is settled for us whether we like it or not. What is worthdebating is the method by which change is to come about. Our choice, itseems to me, lies between a blind push and a deliberate leadership, between thwarting movements until they master us, and domesticating themuntil they are answered. 

When Roosevelt formed the Progressive Party on a platform of socialreform he crystallized a deep unrest, brought it out of the cellars ofresentment into the agora of political discussion. He performed the realtask of a leader--a task which has essentially two dimensions. Bybecoming part of the dynamics of unrest he gathered a power ofeffectiveness: by formulating a program for insurgency he translated itinto terms of public service. 

What Roosevelt did at the middle-class level, the socialists have done atthe proletarian. The world has been slow to recognize the work of theSocialist Party in transmuting a dumb muttering into a civilized program. It has found an intelligent outlet for forces that would otherwise bepurely cataclysmic. The truth of this has been tested recently in theappearance of the "direct actionists. "

They are men who have lost faith in political socialism. Why? Because, like all other groups, the socialists tend to become routineers, to slipinto an easy reiteration. The direct actionists are a warning to theSocialist Party that its tactics and its program are not adequate todomesticating the deepest unrest of labor. Within that party, therefore, a leadership is required which will ride the forces of "syndicalism" anduse them for a constructive purpose. The brilliant writer of the "Notesof the Week" in the English New Age has shown how this might be done. Hehas fused the insight of the syndicalist with the plans of thecollectivists under the name of Guild Socialism. 

His plan calls for co-management of industry by the state and the laborunion. It steers a course between exploitation by a bureaucracy in theinterests of the consumer--the socialist danger--and oppressivemonopolies by industrial unions--the syndicalist danger. I shall notattempt to argue here either for or against the scheme. My concern iswith method rather than with special pleadings. The Guild Socialism ofthe "New Age" is merely an instance of statesmanlike dealing with a newsocial force. Instead of throwing up its hands in horror at oneover-advertised tactical incident like sabotage, the "New Age" wentstraight to the creative impulse of the syndicalist movement. 

Every true craftsman, artist or professional man knows and sympathizeswith that impulse: you may call it a desire for self-direction in labor. The deepest revolt implied in the term syndicalism is against theimpersonal, driven quality of modern industry--against the destruction ofthat pride which alone distinguishes work from slavery. Some such impulseas that is what marks off syndicalism from the other revolts of labor. Our suspicion of the collectivist arrangement is aroused by the pictureof a vast state machine so horribly well-regulated that human impulse isutterly subordinated. I believe too that the fighting qualities ofsyndicalism are kept at the boiling point by a greater sense of outragedhuman dignity than can be found among mere socialists or unionists. Theimagination is more vivid: the horror of capitalism is not alone in thepoverty and suffering it entails, but in its ruthless denial of life tomillions of men. The most cruel of all denials is to deprive a humanbeing of joyous activity. Syndicalism is shot through with the assertionthat an imposed drudgery is intolerable--that labor at a subsistence wageas a cog in a meaningless machine is no condition upon which to foundcivilization. That is a new kind of revolt--more dangerous to capitalismthan the demand for higher wages. You can not treat the syndicalists likecattle because forsooth they have ceased to be cattle. "The damnedwantlessness of the poor, " about which Oscar Wilde complained, the cryfor a little more fodder, gives way to an insistence upon the chance tobe interested in life. 

To shut the door in the face of such a current of feeling because it isoccasionally exasperated into violence would be as futile as locking upchildren because they get into mischief. The mind which rejectssyndicalism entirely because of the by-products of its despair has hadpearls cast before it in vain. I know that syndicalism means a revisionof some of our plans--that it is an intrusion upon many a glib prejudice. But a human impulse is more important than any existing theory. We mustnot throw an unexpected guest out of the window because no place is setfor him at table. For we lose not only the charm of his company: he mayin anger wreck the house. 

 * * * * *

Yet the whole nation can't sit at one table: the politician will objectthat all human interests can't be embodied in a party program. That istrue, truer than most politicians would admit in public. No party canrepresent a whole nation, although, with the exception of the socialists, all of them pretend to do just that. The reason is very simple: aplatform is a list of performances that are possible within a few years. It is concerned with more or less immediate proposals, and in a nationsplit up by class, sectional and racial interests, these proposals aresure to arouse hostility. No definite industrial and political platform, for example, can satisfy rich and poor, black and white, Eastern creditorand Western farmer. A party that tried to answer every conflictinginterest would stand still because people were pulling in so manydifferent directions. It would arouse the anger of every group and theapproval of its framers. It would have no dynamic power because theforces would neutralize each other. 

One comprehensive party platform fusing every interest is impossible andundesirable. What is both possible and desirable is that every groupinterest should be represented in public life--that it should havespokesmen and influence in public affairs. This is almost impossibleto-day. Our blundering political system is pachydermic in itsirresponsiveness. The methods of securing representation are unfitinstruments for any flexible use. But the United States is evidently notexceptional in this respect. England seems to suffer in the same way. InMay, 1912, the "Daily Mail" published a series of articles by H. G. Wellson "The Labour Unrest. " Is he not describing almost any session ofCongress when he says that "to go into the House of Commons is to goaside out of the general stream of the community's vitality into a cornerwhere little is learnt and much is concocted, into a specialized Assemblywhich is at once inattentive to and monstrously influential in ouraffairs?" Further on Wells remarks that "this diminishing actuality ofour political life is a matter of almost universal comment to-day. .. . InGreat Britain we do not have Elections any more; we have Rejections. What really happens at a general election is that the partyorganizations--obscure and secretive conclaves with entirely mysteriousfunds--appoint about 1200 men to be our rulers, and all that we, weso-called self-governing people, are permitted to do is, in a muddledangry way, to strike off the names of about half these selectedgentlemen. "

A cynic might say that the people can't go far wrong in politics becausethey can't be very right. Our so-called representative system isunrepresentative in a deeper way than the reformers who talk about themoney power imagine. It is empty and thin: a stifling of living currentsin the interest of a mediocre regularity. 

But suppose that politics were made responsive--suppose that the forcesof the community found avenues of expression into public life. Would notour legislatures be cut up into antagonistic parties, would not theconflicts of the nation be concentrated into one heated hall? If youreally represented the country in its government, would you not get itspartisanship in a quintessential form? After all group interests in thenation are diluted by space and time: the mere separation in cities andcountry prevents them from falling into the psychology of the crowd. Butlet them all be represented in one room by men who are professionallyinterested in their constituency's prejudices and what would youaccomplish but a deepening of the cleavages? Would the session not becomean interminable wrangle?

Nobody can answer these questions with any certainty. Most prophecies aresimply the masquerades of prejudice, and the people who love stabilityand prefer to let their own well-being alone will see in a sensitivepolitical system little but an invitation to chaos. They will choosefacts to adorn their fears. History can be all things to all men: nothingis easier than to summon the Terror, the Commune, lynchings in theSouthern States, as witnesses to the excesses and hysterias of the mob. Those facts will prove the case conclusively to anyone who has alreadymade up his mind on the subject. Absolute democrats can also line uptheir witnesses: the conservatism of the Swiss, Wisconsin's successfulexperiments, the patience and judgment of the Danes. Both sides areremarkably sure that the right is with them, whereas the only truth aboutwhich an observer can be entirely certain is that in some places and incertain instances democracy is admittedly successful. 

There is no absolute case one way or the other. It would be silly fromthe experience we have to make a simple judgment about the value ofdirect expression. You cannot lump such a mass of events together andcome to a single conclusion about them. It is a crude habit of mind thatwould attempt it. You might as well talk abstractly about the goodness orbadness of this universe which contains happiness, pain, exhilaration andindifference in a thousand varying grades and quantities. There is nosuch thing as Democracy; there are a number of more or less democraticexperiments which are not subject to wholesale eulogy or condemnation. 

The questions about the success of a truly representative system arepseudo-questions. And for this reason: success is not due to the system;it does not flow from it automatically. The source of success is in thepeople who use the system: as an instrument it may help or hinder them, but they must operate it. Government is not a machine running on straighttracks to a desired goal. It is a human work which may be facilitated bygood tools. 

That is why the achievements of the Swiss may mean nothing whatever whenyou come to prophesy about the people of New York. Because Wisconsin hasmade good use of the direct primary it does not follow that it willbenefit the Filipino. It always seems curious to watch the satisfactionof some reform magazines when China or Turkey or Persia imitates theconstitutional forms of Western democracies. Such enthusiasts postulate auniformity of human ability which every fact of life contradicts. 

Present-day reform lays a great emphasis upon instruments and very littleon the skilful use of them. It says that human nature is all right, thatwhat is wrong is the "system. " Now the effect of this has been toconcentrate attention on institutions and to slight men. A small stepfurther, institutions become an end in themselves. They may violate humannature as the taboo does. That does not disturb the interest in them verymuch, for by common consent reformers are to fix their minds upon the"system. "

A machine should be run by men for human uses. The preoccupation with the"system" lays altogether too little stress on the men who operate it andthe men for whom it is run. It is as if you put all your effort into theworking of a plough and forgot the farmer and the consumer. I state thecase baldly and contradiction would be easy. The reformer might point tophrases like "human welfare" which appear in his writings. And yet thepoint stands, I believe. The emphasis which directs his thinking bearsmost heavily upon the mechanics of life--only perfunctorily upon theability of the men who are to use them. 

Even an able reformer like Mr. Frederic C. Howe does not escape entirely. A recent book is devoted to a glowing eulogy of "Wisconsin, an Experimentin Democracy. " In a concluding chapter Mr. Howe states the philosophy ofthe experiment. "What is the explanation of Wisconsin?" he asks. "Why hasit been able to eliminate corruption, machine politics, and rid itself ofthe boss? What is the cause of the efficiency, the thoroughness, thedesire to serve which animate the state? Why has Wisconsin succeededwhere other states have uniformly failed? I think the explanation issimple. It is also perfectly natural. It is traceable to democracy, tothe political freedom which had its beginning in the direct primary law, and which has been continuously strengthened by later laws"; some pageslater, "Wisconsin assumed that the trouble with our politics is not withour people, but with the machinery with which the people work. .. . It hasestablished a line of vision as direct as possible between the people andthe expression of their will. " The impression Mr. Howe evidently wishesto leave with his readers is that the success of the experiment is due tothe instruments rather than to the talent of the people of Wisconsin. That would be a valuable and comforting assurance to propagandists, forit means that other states with the same instruments can achieve the samesuccess. But the conclusion seems to me utterly unfounded. The reasoningis perilously like that of the gifted lady amateur who expects to achievegreatness by imitating the paint box and palette, oils and canvases of anartist. 

Mr. Howe's own book undermines his conclusions. He begins with an accountof La Follette--of a man with initiative and a constructive bent. Theforces La Follette set in motion are commented upon. The work of Van Hiseis shown. What Wisconsin had was leadership and a people that responded, inventors, and constructive minds. They forged the direct primary and theState University out of the impetus within themselves. No doubt they werefortunate in their choice of instruments. They made the expression of thepeople's will direct, yet that will surely is the more primary thing. Itmakes and uses representative systems: but you cannot reverse theprocess. A man can manufacture a plough and operate it, but no amount ofploughs will create a man and endow him with skill. 

All sorts of observers have pointed out that the Western States adoptreform legislation more quickly than the Eastern. Yet no one wouldseriously maintain that the West is more progressive because it hasprogressive laws. The laws are a symptom and an aid but certainly not thecause. Constitutions do not make people; people make constitutions. Sothe task of reform consists not in presenting a state with progressivelaws, but in getting the people to want them. 

The practical difference is extraordinary. I insist upon it so muchbecause the tendency of political discussion is to regard government asautomatic: a device that is sure to fail or sure to succeed. It is sureof nothing. Effort moves it, intelligence directs it; its fate is inhuman hands. 

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The politics I have urged in these chapters cannot be learned by rote. What can be taught by rule of thumb is the administration of precedents. That is at once the easiest and the most fruitless form of publicactivity. Only a low degree of intelligence is required and of effortmerely a persistent repetition. Men fall into a routine when they aretired and slack: it has all the appearance of activity with few of itsburdens. It was a profound observation when Bernard Shaw said that mendread liberty because of the bewildering responsibility it imposes andthe uncommon alertness it demands. To do what has always been done, tothink in well-cut channels, to give up "the intolerable disease ofthought, " is an almost constant demand of our natures. That is perhapswhy so many of the romantic rebels of the Nineteenth Century sank at lastinto the comforting arms of Mother Church. That is perhaps the reason whymost oldish men acquire information, but learn very little. Theconservative who loves his routine is in nine cases out of ten a creaturetoo lazy to change its habits. 

Confronted with a novelty, the first impulse is to snub it, and send itinto exile. When it becomes too persistent to be ignored a taboo iserected and threats of fines and condign punishment are made if itdoesn't cease to appear. This is the level of culture at which ShermanAnti-Trust acts are passed, brothels are raided, and labor agitators arethrown into jail. If the taboo is effective it drives the evil undercover, where it festers and emits a slow poison. This is the price we payfor the appearance of suppression. But if the problem is more heavilycharged with power, the taboo irritates the force until it explodes. Notinfrequently what was once simply a factor of life becomes the dominatingpart of it. At this point the whole routineer scheme of things collapses, there is a period of convulsion and Cæsarean births, and men weary ofexcitement sink back into a newer routine. Thus the cycle of futility iscompleted. 

The process bears as much resemblance to statecraft as sitting backwardon a runaway horse does to horsemanship. The ordinary politician has noreal control, no direction, no insight into the power he rides. What hehas is an elevated, though temporary seat. Real statesmanship has adifferent ambition. It begins by accepting human nature. No routine hasever done that in spite of the conservative patter about "human nature";mechanical politics has usually begun by ignoring and ended by violatingthe nature of men. 

To accept that nature does not mean that we accept its present character. It is probably true that the impulses of men have changed very littlewithin recorded history. What has changed enormously from epoch to epochis the character in which these impulses appear. The impulses that at oneperiod work themselves out into cruelty and lust may at another producethe richest values of civilized life. The statesman can affect thatchoice. His business is to provide fine opportunities for the expressionof human impulses--to surround childhood, youth and age with homes andschools, cities and countryside that shall be stocked with interest andthe chance for generous activity. 

Government can play a leading part in this work, for with the decadenceof the church it has become the only truly catholic organization in theland. Its task is essentially to carry out programs of service, to addand build and increase the facilities of life. Repression is aninsignificant part of its work; the use of the club can never beapplauded, though it may be tolerated _faute de mieux_. Its use is aconfession of ignorance. 

A sensitively representative machinery will probably serve suchstatesmanship best. For the easy expression of public opinion ingovernment is a clue to what services are needed and a test of theirsuccess. It keeps the processes of politics well ventilated and remindspoliticians of their excuse for existence. 

In that kind of statesmanship there will be a premium on inventiveness, on the ingenuity to devise and plan. There will be much less use forlawyers and a great deal more for scientists. The work requiresindustrial organizers, engineers, architects, educators, sanitists toachieve what leadership brings into the program of politics. 

This leadership is the distinctive fact about politics. The statesmanacts in part as an intermediary between the experts and his constituency. He makes social movements conscious of themselves, expresses their needs, gathers their power and then thrusts them behind the inventor and thetechnician in the task of actual achievement. What Roosevelt did in theconservation movement was typical of the statesman's work. He recognizedthe need of attention to natural resources, made it public, crystallizedits force and delegated the technical accomplishment to Pinchot and hissubordinates. 

 * * * * *

But creative statesmanship requires a culture to support it. It canneither be taught by rule nor produced out of a vacuum. A community thatclatters along with its rusty habits of thought unquestioned, making nodistinction between instruments and idols, with a dull consumption ofmachine-made romantic fiction, no criticism, an empty pulpit and anunreliable press, will find itself faithfully mirrored in public affairs. The one thing that no democrat may assume is that the people are deargood souls, fully competent for their task. The most valuable leadersnever assume that. No one, for example, would accuse Karl Marx ofdisloyalty to workingmen. Yet in 1850 he could write at the demagoguesamong his friends: "While we draw the attention of the German workman tothe _undeveloped state_ of the proletariat in Germany, you flatter thenational spirit and the guild prejudices of the German artisans in thegrossest manner, a method of procedure without doubt the more popular ofthe two. Just as the democrats made a sort of fetich of the words, 'thepeople, ' so you make one of the word 'proletariat. '" John Spargo quotesthis statement in his "Life. " Marx, we are told, could use phrases like"democratic miasma. " He never seems to have made the mistake of confusingdemocracy with demolatry. Spargo is perfectly clear about thischaracteristic of Marx: "He admired most of all, perhaps, that finedevotion to truth as he understood it, and disregard of popularity whichmarked Owen's life. Contempt for popular opinion was one of his moststrongly developed characteristics. He was fond, says Liebknecht, ofquoting as his motto the defiant line of Dante, with which he afterwardsconcluded his preface to 'Das Kapital':

'Segui il tuo corso e lascia dir le genti. '"

It is to Marx's everlasting credit that he set the intellectual standardof socialism on the most vigorous intellectual basis he could find. Heknew better than to be satisfied with loose thinking and fairly goodintentions. He knew that the vast change he contemplated needed everyounce of intellectual power that the world possessed. A fine boast it wasthat socialism was equipped with all the culture of the age. I wonderwhat he would have thought of an enthusiastic socialist candidate forGovernor of New York who could write that "until men are free the worldhas no need of any more literary efforts, of any more paintings, of anymore poems. It is better to have said one word for the emancipation ofthe race than to have written the greatest novel of the times. .. . Theworld doesn't need any more literature. "

I will not venture a guess as to what Marx would have said, but I knowwhat we must say: "Without a literature the people is dumb, withoutnovels and poems, plays and criticism, without books of philosophy, thereis neither the intelligence to plan, the imagination to conceive, nor theunderstanding of a common purpose. Without culture you can knock downgovernments, overturn property relations, you can create excitement, butyou cannot create a genuine revolution in the lives of men. " The reply ofthe workingmen in 1847 to Cabet's proposal that they found Icaria, "a newterrestrial Paradise, " in Texas if you please, contains this interestingobjection: "Because although those comrades who intend to emigrate withCabet may be eager Communists, yet they still possess too many of thefaults and prejudices of present-day society by reason of their pasteducation to be able to get rid of them at once by joining Icaria. "

That simple statement might be taken to heart by all the reformers andsocialists who insist that the people are all right, that onlyinstitutions are wrong. The politics of reconstruction require a nationvastly better educated, a nation freed from its slovenly ways ofthinking, stimulated by wider interests, and jacked up constantly by thesharpest kind of criticism. It is puerile to say that institutions mustbe changed from top to bottom and then assume that their victims areprepared to make the change. No amount of charters, direct primaries, orshort ballots make a democracy out of an illiterate people. Thoseportions of America where there are voting booths but no schools cannotpossibly be described as democracies. Nor can the person who reads onecorrupt newspaper and then goes out to vote make any claim to havingregistered his will. He may have a will, but he has not used it. 

For politics whose only ideal is the routine, it is just as well that menshouldn't know what they want or how to express it. Education has alwaysbeen a considerable nuisance to the conservative intellect. In theSouthern States, culture among the negroes is openly deplored, and I donot blame any patriarch for dreading the education of women. It is out ofculture that the substance of real revolutions is made. If by some magicforce you could grant women the vote and then keep them from schools andcolleges, newspapers and lectures, the suffrage would be no moreeffective than a Blue Law against kissing your wife on Sunday. It isdemocratic machinery with an educated citizenship behind it that embodiesall the fears of the conservative and the hopes of the radical. 

Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, theirtable-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientifictraining, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization. Without a favorable culture political schemes are a mere imposition. Theywill not work without a people to work them. 

The real preparation for a creative statesmanship lies deeper thanparties and legislatures. It is the work of publicists and educators, scientists, preachers and artists. Through all the agents that make andpopularize thought must come a bent of mind interested in invention andfreed from the authority of ideas. The democratic culture must, withcritical persistence, make man the measure of all things. I have triedagain and again to point out the iconoclasm that is constantly necessaryto avoid the distraction that comes of idolizing our own methods ofthought. Without an unrelaxing effort to center the mind upon human uses, human purposes, and human results, it drops into idolatry and becomeshostile to creation. 

The democratic experiment is the only one that requires this wilfulhumanistic culture. An absolutism like Russia's is served better when thepeople accept their ideas as authoritative and piously sacrifice humanityto a non-human purpose. An aristocracy flourishes where the people find avicarious enjoyment in admiring the successes of the ruling class. Thatprevents men from developing their own interests and looking for theirown successes. No doubt Napoleon was well content with the philosophy ofthose guardsmen who drank his health before he executed them. 

But those excellent soldiers would make dismal citizens. A view of lifein which man obediently allows himself to be made grist for somebodyelse's mill is the poorest kind of preparation for the work ofself-government. You cannot long deny external authorities in governmentand hold to them for the rest of life, and it is no accident that thenineteenth century questioned a great deal more than the sovereignty ofkings. The revolt went deeper and democracy in politics was only anaspect of it. The age might be compared to those years of a boy's lifewhen he becomes an atheist and quarrels with his family. The nineteenthcentury was a bad time not only for kings, but for priests, the classics, parental autocrats, indissoluble marriage, Shakespeare, the AristotelianPoetics and the validity of logic. If disobedience is man's originalvirtue, as Oscar Wilde suggested, it was an extraordinarily virtuouscentury. Not a little of the revolt was an exuberant rebellion for itsown sake. There were also counter-revolutions, deliberate returns toorthodoxy, as in the case of Chesterton. The transvaluation of values wasperformed by many hands into all sorts of combinations. 

There have been other periods of revolution. Heresy is just a few hoursyounger than orthodoxy. Disobedience is certainly not the discovery ofthe nineteenth century. But the quality of it is. I believe Chestertonhas hold of an essential truth when he says that this is the first timemen have boasted of their heresy. The older rebels claimed to be moreorthodox than the Church, to have gone back to the true authorities. Theradicals of recent times proclaim that there is no orthodoxy, no doctrinethat men must accept without question. 

Without doubt they deceive themselves mightily. They have their invisiblepopes, called Art, Nature, Science, with regalia and ritual and acatechism. But they don't mean to have them. They mean to beself-governing in their spiritual lives. And this intention is thehalf-perceived current which runs through our age and galvanizes so manyqueer revolts. It would be interesting to trace out the forms it hastaken, the abortive cults it has tried and abandoned. In anotherconnection I pointed to autonomy as the hope of syndicalism. It would notbe difficult to find a similar assertion in the feminist agitation. FromMrs. Gilman's profound objections against a "man-made" world to the ladywho would like to vote about her taxes, there is a feeling that womanmust be something more than a passive creature. Walter Pater might bequoted in his conclusion to the effect that "the theory or idea or systemwhich requires of us the sacrifice of any part of experience, inconsideration of some interest into which we cannot enter, or someabstract theory we have not identified with ourselves, or what is onlyconventional, has no real claim upon us. " The desire for self-directionhas made a thousand philosophies as contradictory as the temperaments ofthe thinkers. A storehouse of illustration is at hand: Nietzsche advisingthe creative man to bite off the head of the serpent which is choking himand become "a transfigured being, a light-surrounded being, that_laughed_!" One might point to Stirner's absolute individualism or turnto Whitman's wholehearted acceptance of every man with his catalogue ofdefects and virtues. Some of these men have cursed each other roundly:Georges Sorel, for example, who urges workingmen to accept none of thebourgeois morality, and becomes most eloquent when he attacks otherrevolutionists. 

I do not wish to suggest too much unanimity in the hundreds of artistsand thinkers that are making the thought of our times. There is a kind of"professional reconciler" of opposites who likes to lump all theprominent rebels together and refer to them affectionately as "usradicals. " Yet that there is a common impulse in modern thought whichstrives towards autonomy is true and worth remarking. In some men it ishalf-conscious, in others a minor influence, but almost no one of weightescapes the contagion of it entirely. It is a new culture that is beingprepared. Without it there would to-day be no demand for a creativestatesmanship which turns its back upon the routine and the taboo, kingsand idols, and non-human purposes. It does more. It is making theatmosphere in which a humanly centered politics can flourish. The factthat this culture is multiform and often contradictory is a sign thatmore and more of the interests of life are finding expression. We shouldrejoice at that, for profusion means fertility; where a dead uniformityceases, invention and ingenuity flourish. 

Perhaps the insistence on the need of a culture in statecraft will seemto many people an old-fashioned delusion. Among the more rigid socialistsand reformers it is not customary to spend much time discussing mentalhabits. That, they think, was made unnecessary by the discovery of aneconomic basis of civilization. The destinies of society are felt to betoo solidly set in industrial conditions to allow any cultural direction. Where there is no choice, of what importance is opinion?

All propaganda is, of course, a practical tribute to the value ofculture. However inevitable the process may seem, all socialists agreethat its inevitability should be fully realized. They teach at one timethat men act from class interests: but they devote an enormous amount ofenergy to making men conscious of their class. It evidently matters tothat supposedly inevitable progress whether men are aware of it. Inshort, the most hardened socialist admits choice and deliberation, culture and ideals into his working faith. He may talk as if there werean iron determinism, but his practice is better than his preachment. 

Yet there are necessities in social life. To all the purposes of politicsit is settled, for instance, that the trust will never be "unscrambled"into small competing businesses. We say in our argument that a return tothe days of the stage-coach is impossible or that "you cannot turn backthe hands of the clock. " Now man might return to the stage-coach if thatseemed to him the supreme goal of all his effort, just as anyone canfollow Chesterton's advice to turn back the hands of the clock if hepleases. But nobody can recover his yesterdays no matter how much heabuses the clock, and no man can expunge the memory of railroads thoughall the stations and engines were dismantled. 

"From this survival of the past, " says Bergson, "it follows thatconsciousness cannot go through the same state twice. " This is the realnecessity that makes any return to the imagined glories of other days anidle dream. Graham Wallas remarks that those who have eaten of the treeof knowledge cannot forget--"Mr. Chesterton cries out, like the Cyclopsin the play, against those who complicate the life of man, and tells usto eat 'caviare on impulse, ' instead of 'grapenuts on principle. ' Butsince we cannot unlearn our knowledge, Mr. Chesterton is only telling usto eat caviare on principle. " The binding fact we must face in all ourcalculations, and so in politics too, is that you cannot recover what ispassed. That is why educated people are not to be pressed into thecustoms of their ignorance, why women who have reached out for more than"Kirche, Kinder und Küche" can never again be entirely domestic andprivate in their lives. Once people have questioned an authority theirfaith has lost its naïveté. Once men have tasted inventions like thetrust they have learned something which cannot be annihilated. I know ofone reformer who devotes a good deal of his time to intimate talks withpowerful conservatives. He explains them to themselves: never after dothey exercise their power with the same unquestioning ruthlessness. 

Life is an irreversible process and for that reason its future can neverbe a repetition of the past. This insight we owe to Bergson. Theapplication of it to politics is not difficult because politics is one ofthe interests of life. We can learn from him in what sense we are bound. "The finished portrait is explained by the features of the model, by thenature of the artist, by colors spread out on the palette; but even withthe knowledge of what explains it, no one, not even the artist, couldhave foreseen exactly what the portrait would be, for to predict it wouldhave been to produce it before it was produced. .. . " The future isexplained by the economic and social institutions which were present atits birth: the trust and the labor union, all the "movements" andinstitutions, will condition it. "Just as the talent of the painter isformed or deformed--in any case, is modified--under the very influence ofthe work he produces, so each of our states, at the moment of its issue, modifies our personality, being indeed the new form we are just assuming. It is then right to say that what we do depends on what we are; but it isnecessary to add also, that we are, to a certain extent, what we do, andthat we are creating ourselves continually. "

What I have called culture enters into political life as a very powerfulcondition. It is a way of creating ourselves. Make a blind struggleluminous, drag an unconscious impulse into the open day, see that men areaware of their necessities, and the future is in a measure controlled. The culture of to-day is for the future an historical condition. That isits political importance. The mental habits we are forming, ourphilosophies and magazines, theaters, debates, schools, pulpits andnewspapers become part of an active past which as Bergson says "followsus at every instant; all that we have felt, thought, and willed from ourearliest infancy is there, leaning over the present which is about tojoin it, pressing against the portals of consciousness that would fainleave it outside. "

Socialists claim that because the McNamara brothers had no"class-consciousness, " because they were without a philosophy of societyand an understanding of the labor movement their sense of wrong was boundto seek out dynamite. That is a profound truth backed by abundantevidence. If you turn, for example, to Spargo's Life of Karl Marx you seethat all through his career Marx struggled with the mereinsurrectionists. It was the men without the Marxian vision of growth anddiscipline who were forever trying to lead little marauding bands againstthe governments of Europe. The fact is worth pondering: the Marxiansocialists, openly declaring that all authority is a temporarymanifestation of social conditions, have waged what we must call a war ofculture against the powers of the world. They have tried to arouse inworkingmen the consciousness of an historical mission--the patience ofthat labor is one of the wonders of the age. But the McNamaras had aculture that could help them not at all. They were Catholics, Democratsand old-fashioned trade-unionists. Religion told them that authority wasabsolute and eternal, politics that Jefferson had said about all therewas to say, economics insisted that the struggle between labor andcapital was an everlasting see-saw. But life told them that society wasbrutal: an episode like the shirtwaist factory fire drove them toblasphemy and dynamite. 

Those bombs at Los Angeles, assassination and terrorism, are compoundedof courage, indignation and ignorance. Civilization has much to fear fromthe blind class antagonisms it fosters; but the preaching of "classconsciousness, " far from being a fomenter of violence, must be recognizedas the civilizing influence of culture upon economic interests. 

Thoughts and feelings count. We live in a revolutionary period andnothing is so important as to be aware of it. The measure of ourself-consciousness will more or less determine whether we are to be thevictims or the masters of change. Without philosophy we stumble along. The old routines and the old taboos are breaking up anyway, social forcesare emerging which seek autonomy and struggle against slavery tonon-human purposes. We seem to be moving towards some such statecraft asI have tried to suggest. But without knowledge of it that progress willbe checkered and perhaps futile. The dynamics for a splendid humancivilization are all about us. They need to be used. For that there mustbe a culture practiced in seeking the inwardness of impulses, competentto ward off the idols of its own thought, hospitable to novelty andsufficiently inventive to harness power. 

Why this age should have come to be what it is, why at this particulartime the whole drift of thought should be from authority to autonomywould be an interesting speculation. It is one of the ultimate questionsof politics. It is like asking why Athens in the Fifth Century B. C. Wassingled out as the luminous point of the Western World. We do not knowenough to cut under such mysteries. We can only begin to guess why therewas a Renaissance, why in certain centuries man seems extraordinarilycreative. Perhaps the Modern Period with its flexibility, sense ofchange, and desire for self-direction is a liberation due to the greatsurplus of wealth. Perhaps the ease of travel, the popularizing ofknowledge, the break-down of frontiers have given us a new interest inhuman life by showing how temporary are all its instruments. Certainlyplacid or morose acceptance is undermined. If men remain slaves either toideas or to other men, it will be because they do not know they areslaves. Their intention is to be free. Their desire is for a full andexpressive life and they do not relish a lop-sided and lamed humanity. For the age is rich with varied and generous passions.