SECTION 2

We have now to turn from racial religions to personal religion, and as the springs of individual conduct lie earlier in the heart than in the head, spiritual developments begin there. It is in accordance with natural order that the right conduct and simple devotion of millions of human beings, intellectually blind, should yet aid the steady advance of evolution towards its highest goal.

The pilgrim soul pressing forward through a long series of births and deaths has a chequered career of conquest and defeat, until, experience guiding effort and overcoming waywardness, the animal stage of existence has been distanced and left behind. But each of these pilgrim souls pursues a path specifically its own, that is, differing from that of every other pilgrim soul. The paths pursued are divided by Eastern thought into three distinct classes. First, that of action; second, that of devotion; third, that of wisdom. In the first class are to be found men and women of infinitely varied powers taking part in all the activities of the world, and striving with keenness to attain certain desired results. Commencing, it may be, with low, selfish, narrow motives of action, these gradually alter and improve, till motive and action alike have become pure, unselfish and directed to the widest beneficence. Such types of humanity tread the first path, that of action, and in it are harvesting precious experience. They are developing interiorly the powers that make for righteousness.

To the second class belong all the world’s sincere religionists, those beings whose regard—whether of fear or love—goes out to an ideal person. The person, observe, may be of low or of high grade in accordance with the subjective development of the individual worshipper. As the object of devotion becomes purified, love casts out fear, and advance on this path proceeds. Men and women adoring their conception of Krishna, or Buddha, of Ahura Mazdao, or of Jesus Christ, are treading the path of devotion, and may rise to the highest emotions of altruism, the most selfless service of the Supreme, thus harmonizing ever more and more the human will and the Divine will.

Pilgrims of the third and smallest class are men and women whose constant desire and endeavour is to search out the truth of things. In the earlier grades of this path will be found scientific investigators of physical phenomena; more advanced on the path are materialist philosophers and all individuals directing their efforts to an examination of man in the regions of emotion and mind. Above these again are the men and women whose search is into the innermost nature of things, and who, in the intensity of that search, lose more and more their feeling of self, and merge themselves in Divine knowledge.

To summarise the three paths: The first is a progress through human activities from motives of self to motives of highest altruism. The second is a progress through religious emotions, from fear of an invisible demon, to the most selfless love of an ideal person and unswerving devotion to true ideals. The third is a progress from the simplest efforts to discover truth to the acquisition of Divine wisdom by means of the immensely increased faculties of the perfected man.

These three paths, like different ways up a mountain, meet at the top, where pilgrims attain to the qualities of all, and not only of the one path mainly traversed by each. All attain in the end to the fullest development of human power and faculty, and to complete liberation from the chain of births and deaths. That personal goodness and religious zeal are the measure of spiritual development is only the Church’s view, and it ignores a large part of human efforts and activities. Without personal goodness certainly no spiritual life is possible, but beyond the acme of personal goodness to lofty heights of knowledge, of wisdom, of transcendent love and benevolence, rises the pilgrim human soul under Divine tuition.

We have now to inquire wherein the pilgrims resemble one another? The feature common to all is the inner attitude of self-surrender. It may spring from impulse or a half-unconscious sense of duty. Or, it may result from the reasoning faculty, from reason controlling and directing conduct with a full consciousness of responsibility. Again, it may be allied with all the sacred aspirations and inspirations that follow upon a long course of development, but whatever the cause and degree, this attitude of mind makes it possible for the spiritual forces working in and through humanity as a whole to manifest there, expanding the heart and mind, and creating a further soul-evolution.

There is a law in nature which has been well called the pulse of our planetary system, a law of giving out. It involves no absolute and ultimate sacrifice; and it is the only law by which progress and exaltation in nature can be actually achieved. Now this law is a central part of the teaching of every great religion. The Logos, we are told, in bringing into existence an infinitude of centres of consciousness, made the voluntary sacrifice of limiting His own boundless life. This thought is expressed in the Christian Scriptures thus: “The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” This first great outbreathing of the life of the Logos is the earliest presentation of the law of sacrifice—that law which prescribes that at every stage of evolution life and energy shall be given out for the benefit of some consciousness on a lower grade than the giver. This great principle of evolution is manifest in the unselfish benevolence of all good men and women; even when they are working as yet in blind obedience to the scarcely articulate impulses of their awakening spiritual natures. (I refer my reader to p. 452 of Mr. A. P. Sinnett’s The Growth of the Soul.)

To our minds pain seems necessarily connected with sacrifice, but pain proceeds wholly from discord within the sacrificer, i.e. from antagonism between the higher part of his nature which is willing to give, and the lower part whose satisfaction lies in grasping and keeping. The process required in each case is a turning from the selfish, individualistic attitude to that of a social, altruistic giving—a giving joyfully for love’s sake. The transition naturally involves some pain, for the conscious will has to gradually master the animal part of the nature, and subordinate it to the higher self.

Man is, in the order of evolution, primarily subject to animal desires. His consciousness moves on the sensuous plane of existence, and he clings to the physical elements in nature. By-and-bye he learns to relinquish an immediate material good for a future good equally material—it may be a greater worldly prosperity for himself or his family. This sacrifice is not essentially noble, but it prepares the way for a harder lesson, and one that calls out a deeper faculty within him. Here again the process is one of exchange, but not of one form of sensuous good for another. It is the exchange of material possessions or sense pleasures for something of an entirely different order in nature—a reward not visible, nay, possibly far off beyond the tomb.

When humanity was in its childhood, religion inculcated and pressed upon it this form of sacrifice; and as we ponder the martyr lives that stud the pages of history we recognize the fact that thousands of human beings practised the precept, and learned to endure, as seeing the invisible, to stand morally upright without earthly prop, to value spiritual companionship and joy in an inner life of purity and peace when outward conditions were adverse and dark.

A later, far higher phase of the law of sacrifice, is that wherein no reward is thought of, or desired. Reaching manhood, humanity grapples with the duties and accepts all the grave responsibilities of an advanced evolutional stage. Duty becomes the motor of action, self-mastery and love of one’s fellows the very keynotes of man’s music. The animal part of his nature becomes subordinate to the higher self. The third great lesson of sacrifice works within, the lesson, viz. to do right simply because it is right, to give because giving is owed by each to all, and not because giving will in any shape be pleasing to or rewarded by God.

During the various stages of progress, the pain aspect of sacrifice is clearly seen. Nevertheless, a soul’s passionate grip upon things physical and sensuous relaxes, and a day arrives when to give spontaneously, freely, lavishly, is purest joy. Then is man’s life merging into Divine life, and sacrifice is no more pain. Vital dissonances cease to rend man’s heart, for his inner consciousness has soared above the selfish separateness of phenomenal existence into realms of nature where unity and love are the all-prevailing principles of life. We know these principles in action through the beautiful, selfless earthly pilgrimage of Him we call the Saviour of Mankind, whose whole career was an At-one-ment with the Divine.

The “Vicarious Atonement” doctrine of Western faiths to-day is both an ecclesiastical device for increasing priestly power and a misapprehension of the law we have been considering—the law of sacrifice, by which the worlds are made, by which the worlds are living now, and by which alone the union of man with God is brought about. That noble doctrine of antiquity was changed by Mediæval Christianity into a picture of the Godhead—Father and Son, in opposition to one another—a picture that “shocks all reverence, and outrages reason by bringing all manner of legal quibbles into the relationship between the Spirit of God and man.” (Four Ancient Religions, Annie Besant, p. 166.) Again, a race whose reasoning faculties are developed must needs repudiate the Church’s dogma of “Imputed Righteousness”—a righteousness not inwrought or attained to, but applied externally—a covering to what is corrupt and base, yet deemed sufficient to secure a perfunctory pardon of sin, a non-merited Divine favour.

The real At-one-ment with the Divine, whereof Jesus the Christ is our Archetype, admits of no substitutions, no subterfuges, makes no fictitious claims. It signifies an actual transformation or process of change, the inner consciousness passing from the lower to function on higher levels of being.

It is easy, however, to apprehend how the necessity of thinking of all supra-physical things, i.e. the finer phenomena of existence, by means of analogies and figures of speech that are purely physical, led to much of error in the earlier stages of human development; and there is a sense in which the “robe of righteousness” is a not inapt analogy or figure. When speaking of the pilgrimage of the soul, the picture presented is that of a concrete toiler, ascending slowly, breathing heavily, sighing and evidencing effort to all our outer senses, yet we know that the soul’s best efforts are mostly hidden from sight and hearing and touch. But no confusion arises. The mental conception to which the figure points is that of efforts as great though directed to evils that are chiefly mental, emotional, moral, not physical. Similarly, the “robe of righteousness” figure must not be overstrained. Man’s soul is clothed upon by, or clothes itself in (it matters not which, we say) robes or garments of flesh, and of finer physical elements than flesh, elements intangible to his five senses. The flesh garment or body is constantly changing, and so are the bodies of desire and of thought. The changes occur through the action and interplay of diverse subtle forces. Fresh elemental matter is borne in from without to replace the atoms of structures tending to decompose, while a process of selection, determination and assimilation proceeds through the action of forces within.

But the same laws of growth apply to realms of nature less open to observation, and a careful selection and choice of material is as potent and necessary in building the bodies of desire and thought as in building the body of solid flesh. And what are the available materials here? In the hidden life of our own thought and feeling we are conscious of an unceasing flow of transient states, or we may express it, currents of emotional and mental vibrations reaching us from we know not whence, waves breaking upon us from without. If we deliberately choose the elevated moods, the purest, swiftest vibrations, and seek habitually to retain these and make them our own, sweetness and light must inevitably characterize the habitation we are slowly building for our inner consciousness. In other words, the vehicles of our feeling and thought will become as “robes of righteousness.”

Desires, passions, emotions form what has been called the astral body; aspiration and thought or the action of reason, imagination and the artistic faculties, create a still subtler, or mind-body, while the blend of the two is what we are accustomed to observe as ruling character. And when the physical is cast off at death, man’s consciousness passes into his subtle bodies and into regions of bliss whither we may not follow, but of which St. Paul gives us a glimpse when he says “we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, Eternal in the Heavens.”

Footnote 17:

A real body of subtle matter interpenetrating the flesh body and visible to some clairvoyants.

Now, to minds permeated by cruder ideas of man’s body and soul the above will seem mystical and unreal. Nevertheless, there are many minds, scientifically trained to a close observation of the manifold phenomena of life with all the finer forces and elements in nature, that are ready to accept a truer conception of the complex constitution of man. To all such, the proof of the actual existence of these transcendental vehicles of consciousness lies in hypnotic and other psychic phenomena, and in the evidence of experience. For, given a certain amount of intimate intercourse, and the man within the man shows himself to the eye of his friend through expression, attitude, gesture. But what the mental eye sees behind the veil of flesh must exist in some form. Hence the eye discerns not the consciousness, but its phenomenal garment or vehicle, and the texture organized is coarse, brutal, degraded or animal, sensuous, selfish, or of a finer and purer nature, divinely human, indicating the grade and quality of the animating principle or soul within.

SUMMARY

Passing back once more from personal religion, or the rise and purification of the inner nature of the individual man, to the great subject of religion in general, we must again have recourse to physical analogies or figures of speech. A mighty stream or current of spiritual vibrations has flowed from the beginning behind the circumstances of history; and each branch of the human family has caught up, retained, and manifested a portion thereof. But the manifestations have at all times been governed by the receptive capacity of the particular race and its inherent distinctions. Every formulated religion is of dual complexion: first, the initial motive, which is spiritual; second, the expression, which is due to ideas, and these are furnished by the mind. The creeds, dogmas, rituals, are outgrowths of the age, civilization and locality.

Christianity has ostensibly been the religion of Western Europe during a long period of development in all the material appliances of a civilized life when mental and physical forces, engaged in accumulating wealth, have dominated this development and tended to depress and destroy the higher impulses and aspirations of man. Christianity, already weakened by errors that had crept in, was unable to withstand the corrupting influences of a money-making age. It adapted itself to the sternly practical business-like son of the West, and dropped out much of the imaginative and reflective side of its teaching. But the “old order changeth,” and, as has been shown in previous chapters, one great department of civilized life, viz. the prevailing system of industry, is hastening to its dissolution. That system has been tried in the furnace of a longsuffering, patient experience, and found to create national wealth in abundance, while utterly failing to subserve general well-being, and bring about a just arrangement of social conditions.

Through all the channels of the nation’s best thinking there has sounded low, but clear as a clarion note, a call to social reform, and now, in the depths of industrial confusion, amid dumb despair and loud-voiced public discontent, the still small voice of conscience speaks audibly, and a stirring of dry bones over the whole field of action, betokens the awakening to a new era of existence. Spiritual vibrations have loosened the foundations of our materialized, selfish life, and pierced through the crust of callous indifference to the heart of the nation. A new tenderness lurks there. It prompts to the entire overthrow of our hideous industrial warfare and the substitution of a well-ordered system based, reared and maintained through the action of wide-reaching love. But love was the distinguishing feature of early Christianity, and the genius of its teaching. Through the figure of family life, with its tender ties, unselfish actions and unity of interests and feeling, did Christianity strive to allure to the broader, higher, deeper love that embraces all mankind and manifests throughout all human relations.

Pioneers of the social revolution may abjure the churches, creeds and rituals, and boast themselves agnostic, but none the less are they aiding the reembodiment, on this material plane, of the true religious spirit, or the birth of a religion fitted for the nation’s age and civilization.

Footnote 18:

Mr. Lester F. Ward (in his new work published in 1903) formulates a distinction between human and animal societies by saying that the environment transforms the animal while man transforms the environment. This transformation constitutes what he calls “achievement,” and is the characteristic feature in human progress. The products of “achievement” are not material things. They are methods, ways, principles, devices, arts, systems, institutions.

The Church, it is true, gives no formal countenance to the industrial revolution, but that does not disprove my contention that it is the distinctive religious movement of this age, and that it is in line and harmony with the religious movements of former ages. These may seem to have been less secular than this, but they always embraced a reformation of social and individual life. The actual distinction arises from the Church’s own deficiencies, and from the greater elaboration of modern society, causing an almost undue prominence to be given to the outward changes necessary at the beginning of a modern reformation. The Church must inevitably conform itself to the industrial revolution. It must reform itself from within; and this is clearly perceived by many of its members.

Whilst I write a conference of the Young Men’s Christian Association is taking place. A question discussed was: “What is the cause of young men’s drifting away from the Church?” One speaker remarked that to his mind the cause was the want of fixity of opinion on the great fundamentals of their common Christianity. Young men found that ministers were not agreed upon what they preached, and until the Church made up its mind as to what was really the truth, there could be no remedy for this drifting. Another speaker said he knew young men who hated the Church, and said it was not consistent. They pointed to the slum dwellings in their great cities, and asked what the Church was doing to remedy the state of affairs there disclosed. In fact, they said: “Salvation is hardly worth the taking, it’s so mixed up with money-making. If the Church was to reach young men, it must take up a more consistent attitude with regard to all social questions.” (From the Scotsman.)

But religion is not of the Church alone, religion appertains to the totality of life; and the right ordering of all the conditions of the nation’s material existence is the first step in the attainment of a national religious life. For, observe, the broad current of spiritual vibrations encompassing the race can have no free course and ingress to thrill the nerves and quicken the pulse of the nation so long as there endures a fierce, brutal struggle for the means of potential life—a struggle that hardens the heart and coarsens the fibre of rich and poor alike. The movement we call Economic Socialism is a veritable recurrence of the cry of the Prophet Esaias: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight.”

Footnote 19:

What profits it to the human Prometheus that he has stolen the fire of heaven to be his servant, and that the spirits of the earth and of the air obey him, if the vulture of pauperism is eternally to tear his very vitals and keep him on the brink of destruction?—HUXLEY.

The Church militant must adjust itself without and within to the social industrial revolution, to a wider development than hitherto in man’s reasoning powers, and to a profound impulse in man—an impulse born of experience—that is carrying him towards the vast region of philosophic mysticism which lies behind the common Christian creeds and doctrines. The poet caught the shadow of coming events when he wrote—

So all intolerable wrong shall fade, No brother shall a brother’s rights invade, But all shall champion all: Then shall men bear with an unconquered will And iron heart the inevitable ill; O’er pain, wrong, passion, death, victorious still And calm, though suns should fall.

Oh priests who mourn that reverence is dead, Man quits a fading faith, and asks instead A worship great and true. I know that there was once a church where men Caught glimpses of the gods believed in then: I dream that there shall be such church again— O dream, come true, come true. —W. M. W. CALL.

SYNOPSIS

The world has a purpose.... That purpose aims not at man as an end, but works through him to greater issues.—H. G. WELLS.

Man has already furthered evolution very considerably, half unconsciously and for his own personal advantage, but he has not yet risen to the conviction that it is his religious duty to do so deliberately and systematically.—FRANCIS GALTON.

More than a century has elapsed since Pope’s line was written: “The proper study of mankind is man,” yet it is only of recent years that physiology has entered upon the proper method of that study. Discoveries made in the last century have thrown fresh light on individual human nature. The marvellous potency of thought has been demonstrated, and the momentous fact of diverse states of basic consciousness made apparent—the fact, namely, that the mind of individual man is not functionally limited to his physical consciousness.

Again, that every human being should have freedom to be happy was realized by many at an earlier epoch; but what the essential nature might be of a happiness that could satisfy the conflicting desires of humanity differentiated in all its units—seemed an insoluble problem. Psychology, however, indicates the solution of that problem, for it shows that individual happiness is intimately bound up with, and dependent upon, general happiness. The “subliminal or unconscious mind,” otherwise termed the super-physical consciousness that is common to all mankind knows no settled peace and comfort while the areas of physically conscious life are scenes of perpetual conflict. Man to be truly happy must be so collectively and not merely individually or sectionally.

Now the scheme of social reform I advocate points the way to a unification of thought that working itself out through the diverse channels of visible life will eject the causes of evil, bring order where chaos has reigned, and slowly but surely establish the foundations of universal peace. As Richard Harte has well said: “Human beings at present are like a number of little magnets thrown promiscuously into a heap, with their poles pointing in every direction, and wasting their strength in opposing each other. These little magnets have to point in the same direction that they may become bound together into one great magnet, all powerful to attract good, all powerful to repel evil.”

The new system of action bases its thought on the complexity of human nature. It recognizes that the component cells of the physical body are lives which must suffer if the laws of their well-being are not subserved, and the suffering translates itself into pain or into sub-conscious distressful melancholy. It perceives that the social instincts of man hitherto thrust back and crushed are: “the various needs of universal attraction all tending towards unity, striving to meet and mingle in final harmony” (Zola). And further it apprehends that a lofty aspiration—a divine impulse—hovers on the threshold of consciousness waiting to enter as brutal passions and vicious propensities are conquered and dispossessed.

The evils that infest and corrupt our social life and that man must deliberately uproot and eliminate before general happiness becomes possible are—poverty, i.e. a life-long struggle to obtain food, shelter, clothing; the birth of individuals weak and unfit; disease, premature death; enforced celibacy; late marriage; drunkenness; disorganization of family life; prostitution; war; and industrial competition; social injustice and inequality; individual tyranny; crime; barbarous treatment of criminals; disrespect of natural function and consequent injury to health; conventional folly; social repression of innocent enjoyment; religious bigotry; the feebleness of religious guidance and confusion of religious thought.

Partial views of society as well as of individual human nature have hitherto prevailed and given birth to specifics of all kinds for the cure of the diseases of society, and these in the growing tenderness of humanity, have been eagerly adopted and applied, to prove disappointing in the main. The new system deals with society as a whole and throughout all its parts. It requires a full comprehension of each and all the groups or classes of social phenomena and their inter-relations.

Viewing society as a whole, we realize that there are no remedial specifics in the case, that general happiness will be obtained only by a process of evolution, and that the process is one of continual readjustment of multitudinous relations, or unceasing adaptation of individual human life to a social environment, and of social environment to individual human life. The evolution of social environment proceeds towards the highest ethical state which implies a system of society based upon justice and equality. But the realization of this state requires a perfected humanity, hence the path of progress is also in the gradual improvement of individuals—the creation of a superior race whose spontaneous impulses will construct and support a perfected social system.

Unconscious evolution has carried us forward from savagery through many transitions to a state of civilization which, though grossly imperfect, contains within it a new element of advance. Here and there throughout society the power of love and reason combined has become strong, and aided by a scientific knowledge of man and the conditions of his life, it is capable of design, and of intensifying the action of evolutionary forces and immensely increasing their momentum. Reason, however, must invent an effective policy of meliorism which so unites the practical methods of reform as that each will add strength to all, and the result prove a powerful factor of change in the society on which it is brought to bear.

The strife of competition throughout the whole sphere of industrial life gives free play to selfishness and the passion of militancy, and permeates society with the warlike spirit.

Advance in morals is the sure step to a better and happier future; but man’s moral nature is largely conditioned by heredity, training and environment, while these, at present, are all unfavourable to a high moral state. A progressive system of general reform therefore has to embrace and combine rational breeding, rational training and a rational order of life in which sympathy and co-operation will take the place of individual competition, and general happiness—not wealth—be the clear aim of man.

The conscious element in evolution is as yet too weak to alter society much or rapidly, but in all civilized countries—Germany, France, Belgium, etc., as well as Great Britain,—changes towards the collective control of land and capital and the reorganization of industry on collectivist principles, have begun, and it is of supreme importance that other changes, equally necessary, should be initiated to advance pari-passu with those.

A central source of corruption is to be found in the disintegration of the ancient family group—the unfitness of an archaic domestic system to achieve the ends of rational training and the acquiring of habits of rational breeding. At the same time there is a growth in social feeling and a spread of public opinion in favour of industrial socialism with some legislative and local action to carry it out, that together, present conditions propitious to change in domestic living and sexual custom. Consequently a reconstruction of domestic life on modern principles among educated people fitted to adapt life to moral ends is pre-eminently a feature of the new order.

At present excessive labour on the part of the proletariat, and enforced idleness on the part of many men and women within the classes, are fatal to progress. Vital forces are exhausted on the one hand, repressed on the other, while the sub-conscious feeling that craves unity and solidarity is outraged and restrained. To restore work to its legitimate place in human life is a primary aim of the new domestic system. That system must be built up on the principle that work for the benefit of all is the duty and privilege of each, and without a due share of social labour no normal man or woman in health can attain to inward peace.

As regards religion, man’s abstract thought must purge itself from materialized ideals, his concrete thought from selfish aims, for he is essentially a religious being and psychical studies affirm that within him there lie latent faculties that relate him to worlds unseen—worlds as yet unrealizable in human consciousness.

In the visible world religious forces must be directed to the great work of social reform. To unselfishly promote the welfare of generations unborn is a profoundly religious course of action. The purest, noblest feelings of man may be enlisted in the cause of progress through union—for social reconstruction, scientific education, gentle training of the young, associated domestic life, facilitation of happy marriage—and for the comfort of all mankind, whether good or bad, clever or dull, fortunate or unfortunate.

Co-operation in work to the banishment of idleness and its accompanying misery ennui is the primary object of the new domestic system, but other ends to attain are—economy, by means of joint labour and joint expense to the relief of monetary anxieties and domestic worries; stability of social position, i.e. no member needing to fear that his home will break up independently of his wishes; social intercourse and enjoyment relieved of conventional etiquette or tyranny; freedom for friendship between the sexes and such conditions of family union as will promote mental capacity and altruistic sentiment in each individual; early marriage without disregard of social responsibility and based upon mutual knowledge of character, habits and tastes; a fitting refuge for old age, rendering impossible the premature destruction of valuable social forces which age alone can supply, and securing the material, intellectual and emotional surroundings necessary for comfort up to the last moment of life.

In the lower social strata where any reconstruction of family life is not yet possible, what is immediately required is a gradual rise of wages with steady improvement in all the conditions of industrial labour. Society also must relinquish such patronage of the poor as fosters their too rapid increase, undermines their self-dependence and tends generally to deterioration of race. Parental responsibility must be strongly inculcated and strictly upheld. Public teaching should be given in all natural laws affecting society, especially the laws of health, increase, and heredity; and, under conditions respectful to human dignity, Malthusian doctrine should be taught, and a knowledge of neo-Malthusian method very carefully imparted.

In the higher social strata within the newly constructed modern homes sexual conduct and parentage with its far-reaching results for good or evil must be controlled or guided into the path of racial regeneration. The scientific study of man’s nature gives sexual passion an honourable position relatively to human life. It rests on the conscience of each adult generation as an imperative social duty to influence the young generation in such wise as that this great passion shall subserve physical and social health and cease to create degradation.

A due activity in growing organs strengthens organic function; therefore, with early marriages and freedom to young love, checked only by scientific knowledge of the laws of health, propagation at the age of maturity is bound to put forth vitality of good quality. In conscious evolution sexual functions are no longer regarded as essentially allied with propagation. They are regarded, however, as properly subject in youth to parental and social control; and that control acts as a perpetual restraint upon licentious, dissolute tendencies and a shield to the young love that seeks personal happiness consistent with domestic purity.

No less potent is the action of control in another direction. Physiology of sex and the laws of inheritance are carefully studied by guardians of domestic peace who, rejecting the ordinary and vulgar conception accept the teaching of science, and science points to philoprogenitiveness, or love of offspring, as the proper motor force in reproduction. Were this force the antecedent cause of parentage throughout the nation, disease and premature death would be undermined and gradually subside. “Indiscriminate survival” gives way before that “rational selection and birth of the fit” which is a fundamental condition of social well-being—the master-spring to a rapid evolution of general happiness.

The transition, however, from our present state of confused sentiment, illogical thought, and disastrous action in the field of eugenics or stirpiculture, to clearness of purpose and consistency of life, must necessarily be a work of extreme delicacy and patient endeavour. Its achievement requires the nuclei of collectivist homes. Its nurture must take place in the bosom of a superior domestic life. The process, in short, implies an alteration in humanity itself, to be brought about by such preparatory alteration in outward conditions as will set up and bring into play the constant interaction of new social forces.

Individualism in domestic life vitiates the movement towards socialism outside domestic life, for it gives us misshapen units unfit for a better social system—a system that seeks to banish tyranny, despotism, pride, self-will and every anti-social emotion in order to establish the perfect justice and equality that are essential to the highest ethical state. It is a necessity of socialism to lay hold of the family and fashion it anew so that it may produce a superior material of human life, i.e. individual men and women whose enjoyments lie chiefly in sympathy and whose spontaneous impulses are towards an essentially social life.

And further, not only is our present domestic system wholly incapable of dealing with sex relations so as to adapt them to stirpiculture, not only is it so feeble as to be absolutely impotent in the regulation of the conduct of masculine youth outside its boundaries, but it is destitute also of elements required in the organizing of a progressive educational system.

Home education has almost disappeared in the disintegration of family life, while in society the strong forces of aggregation which under diverse conditions of industry and convention group mankind in sections have moulded schools to massive proportions. The youth of the nation is in a great measure cut off from the home influences which are calculated to teach mankind “humanities, not in the academic but in the real sense.” It is congregated in universities and large schools for superior culture and day schools for culture of a less exalted order. In the former, young men and maidens are separated. Domesticity—the quality in human nature on which depends the consolidation of society, is disregarded, whilst to the development of mutual interests, affinity of tastes, harmony of habits and unanimity of social aims between the sexes no attention is paid during the plastic period of life when individual character is in process of determination. In day schools boys and girls are often associated, but under such conditions of mechanical routine, cramming, conflicting and alternating authorities, irregular and erratic forces of moral control, as to make these schools provocative of evil, fostering every anti-social instinct of man.

Co-ordination in the life of the young is the demand of the new system of general reform. The nursery, school and playground must be harmonized, and the entire juvenile orbit, within and without the home, governed by intellectual and moral forces of fixed congruity. The object and aim of true education is the fullest development of an individual’s best powers of thought, feeling, action, by means of their happy exercise at every stage of growth from childhood to maturity. Now book-learning or culture in schools accomplishes very little, but a direct study of nature is an incomparable aid to this end. Each object and process in nature from that of the infinitely great to the infinitely small—if fittingly dealt with by teachers—is instinct with charm for the young of an intelligent race. It excites imagination, awakens thought, kindles enthusiasm, stimulates every latent mental faculty, while the endless variation of beauty in nature—under training to close observation—makes aesthetic appeal to the sense perceptions, and in calling forth wonder, admiration, delight adds richness immeasurably to the quality of human life. Nevertheless the springs and checks of a true education lie deep in a world of feeling. For their exercise home-life is indispensable. Family love is the primary motor force in the education of the feelings, and without the presence of a wide domestic circle habitually fostering the sympathetic and repressing the selfish emotions no high water-mark of civilization will be reached.

There is in man a group of emotions of comparatively recent origin requiring scientific treatment of the utmost delicacy and precision. On the further development of that group depends in a very special manner the rapid evolution of an ethical social system. The group is threefold—egoistic, altruistic, moral. It comprises a sense of personal rights, a sympathetic jealousy for the rights of others, an intellectual and moral sentiment of justice, or equivalence of liberty and social comfort for all mankind. The first element is already very perceptible throughout society. The second is more rare; it must be strengthened or assiduously created in the nursery, schoolroom and domestic circle by a system of training whose characteristic is extreme gentleness. The tender shoots of sympathetic jealousy are incapable of growth in an environment of harsh sound or brutal force. Hence the authority that begets antagonism has no place in the perfected education of the future.

As the young emerge from childhood the responsibilities of life become aids in education, and immensely develop the above emotions. Discipline of conduct within their own order appertains to the young; whilst society, within and without the domestic circle, demands the thorough regulation of young life. Conduct clubs and combinations for a variety of social ends, both sexes taking part, arise among the young; and these promote in the highest degree the healthy growth of such virtuous emotion and habits in the individual as are indispensable to ethical socialism. The method adopted is a just and intelligent criticism to which the youthful mind has previously been trained.

Since pride of birth, pride of wealth and habits of domination and luxury are all unfavourable to the growth of a moral sentiment of social justice, it is not in the upper ranks of society we need look for the public spirit that will devise methods of gradually equalizing the labour of life and its rewards and undermining present class distinctions. As little likely is the sentiment of social justice to spring spontaneously in a fortunate capitalist class where pride of acquisition strongly opposes the principle that reward should not be proportioned to personal capacity—that mental labour has no title to inordinate distinction, but that other useful exertion ethically requires fullness of reward. Reconstruction is necessarily a growth from below. From the proletariat comes the impulse towards industrial reconstruction, and it is in the middle class—and the less wealthy section of that class—that the beings exist who by segregation may form collectivist homes capable of by-and-bye aggregating into the solid foundation of a pure and elevated republican society.

Education in these homes where mixture of ages, from the white-haired centenarian to the infant in arms, creates all manner of tender ties, where gentleness and love are the main stimuli in training, where authority is exercised consistently and reasonably, and replaced at maturity by reason and self-control—must eventuate in the production of a superior moral and intellectual type.

The order of social evolution, computed roughly, is as follows: In the first stage, social equality exists; it is an epoch of savagery. In the second stage, differentiation issuing in class distinctions takes place; the birth of social inequality and injustice arising naturally through exercise of superior brute force and cunning. Civilization has here its genesis; and coercion, tyranny, robbery, injustice, avarice, love of power, inequality, are stimuli of civilization and prime elements in the formation of strong nations. Individuals who are inferior, then whole classes socially weak, are compelled by forces, individual and social, to minister to the wants of the strong and superior. Civilization nurtured by inequality and injustice develops in the superior classes of society and slowly spreads downwards. In the third stage, reaction occurs, prompted by civilization itself! Justice and liberty develop in the lower or inferior social classes and spread very slowly upwards without destroying a civilization, become inherent in the superior type of man. The fourth stage is one of readjustment in which civilization becomes general and there is a gradual return to social equality. Ultimately society will have no class distinctions of the present order, no idlers or parasites, no poor and no coercive government. Voluntary co-operation or concerted action for social ends is a self-regulating, self-controlling force which, when fully developed in the new domestic and industrial systems is able to dominate society throughout its length and breadth.

The path of social reform I advocate has now, in its main features, been placed before my readers.

Outside the general policy that will cause the direct action of the system to become a great factor of social change, however, there are sundry courses of less direct action, it is bound to pursue. These bear relation to, first, pauperism and patronage of the poor; second, the proletariat; third, the criminal classes; fourth, the position of woman; fifth, the young; sixth, conventionalism; seventh, political action.

In the first relation the specific policy is to carefully discriminate between benevolence that is beneficial and benevolence that is mischievous in its results on social well-being. Whilst exercising the former, it gives no support to charities that hurt the independence of the poor, or relieve them of parental responsibility. In reproduction it discountenances and opposes the social force of indiscriminate selection which results in survival of the unfit. It seeks to initiate and press forward the counteracting social force of intelligent selection, which brings about the birth of the fit.

In the second relation, the specific policy strenuously supports combinations of workers for the raising of wages, mutual help and democratic political aims preparatory to general socialism.

In the third relation, the specific policy strives to enlighten public opinion upon the nature of crime and the philosophic principles of its treatment. It elaborates a new method in which vindictiveness, the essence of punishment, has no existence; but gentleness towards all evil-doers issues in, first, the effectual protection of society; second, the reform of corrigible criminals; third, the gradual extinction of crime. It urges upon government a cautious deliberate adoption of this method.

In the fourth relation, the action of the policy is to promote the enfranchisement of women, and at every point aid the movement of advance to the position of social equality of sex.

In the fifth and sixth relations, it inculcates by admonition and example, and especially among the young, a return to simplicity of manners, habits and dress. It repudiates conventional etiquette, and opposes the tyranny of fashion. It promotes the association of the sexes in youth under condition of adult control, whether the union be that of marriage, of friendship or of simple intercourse and companionship. It discountenances and takes no part in the excitements of an artificial, frivolous society, but it creates and fosters the vigorating excitements of useful labour, alternating with unconstrained and “tranquil delights.”

In the seventh relation, the specific policy agitates for alteration of the marriage laws, the laws of inheritance of property and the land laws. Equality of sex is required as the basis of the marriage law, accompanied by the condition of easy divorce in order to facilitate the dissolution of false ties in favour of the true. The laws affecting children require adaptation to the ethics of social justice and sex equality. Laxity must give way to strictness in respect of parentage; and child-birth be recognized as an event bearing directly upon the interests of the general public. Hence modification here entails the recognition of illegitimate children and the counteracting of the vicious tendency to shirk parental duty and social responsibility. The land and property laws must be adjusted to a levelling process—the action of paring down large estates and diminishing the massive proportions of private property so slowly as to create no individual suffering or social confusion, such legislative measures being directed, however, to land nationalization and nationalization of capital as their final aim.

In conclusion, let me add, I claim to have shown that “science in the economic field gives certain facts from which a line of social evolution may be foreshadowed,” and that religion and science give, in wider fields, facts and principles that point to lines of illimitable progression for man. “Whether these lines will be followed depends not upon immutable laws beyond our control, but upon the human will.” The general policy I advocate is distinctly reliable so long as it rests on scientific methods and knowledge, but no question is finally exhausted. In the sphere of rational reform free-thought must ever be considered and respected.

New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still and onward, Who would keep abreast of truth.

INDEX

Abyssinians, The, 134

Acquisitiveness, 213

Adler, Hermann, 218

Adolescence, 257–266, 335, 341

Adulteration, 45

Aesthetic sentiment, 197–200, 203, 211, 215

Aged, The, 269–272, 331, 338

Allen, Dr. Nathan, 120

Amiel, 10

Anderson, Dr. J. A., 306

Anxiety, 117

Arabs, The, 134

Arians, 299

Arifura, The, 205

Aristotle, 235

Arkwright, 26

Arnold, Matthew, 150, 249

Asceticism, 15, 98, 105, 110, 113, 146, 156

Associated Homes, 276–283

Association, Young Men’s Christian, 322

Astral body, 317

Atonement doctrine, 315

Balfour, A. J., 231

Bardaisan, 301

Bebel, August, 112, 119, 149

Besant, Annie, 306, 315

Bickerton, A. W., 268, 272

Birth-rate, 80–93, 109, 265

Bishop, Mrs., 264

Blackley, Canon, 91

Bon, Dr. Le, 197, 211

Bosanquet, Mrs. B., 65

Bread-baking, 72

Buddhism, 293–295, 300, 303

Bushmen, The, 132

Capital, 25, 41, 55, 329

Capitalists, 26, 41, 208, 338

Carlyle, Thomas, 5, 163

Carpenter, Edward, 16, 19, 142–144, 148

Carr, G. Shoobridge, 85, 92

Celibacy, 90, 95, 111, 126–129, 138, 172

Celsus, 298

Chatterji, J. C., 1, 295

Chesterfield, Lord, 199

Children, 3, 233, 238–253, 281

Children, Training of, 176–179, 188–194, 197, 237–253, 264, 281, 282, 331, 335–338

Church, The, 321–323

Civilization, 38–40, 44, 204, 206, 216, 233, 248, 250, 297, 319, 328, 339

Clairvoyance, 9

Clarke, William, 23, 46

Clement of Alexandria, 298

Cochrane, Baillie, 180

Combe, George, 170

Communism, 59

Consciousness, 290–295, 303, 313–318, 325

Co-operation, 51, 331, 339

Craig, E. T., 178

Criticism, Personal, 278

Crime, 121, 163–182, 340

Criminals, 67, 82, 121, 122, 164–182, 340

Crockett, S. R., 174

Culture, 7, 13, 95

Dairy produce, 70

Dalton, 205

Darwin, Charles, 80, 83, 91, 93, 96, 125

Death-rate, 89–93, 110

Degeneration of race, 83, 91, 115, 123, 159, 332

Dhimal, The, 205

Disease, 91, 99, 115–120, 124, 150, 170, 215

Divorce, 135, 136, 341

Domestic reform, 244, 265, 268–283, 330, 334, 338

Du Cane, Sir E., 164

Duncan, Mathews, 126

Easton, Abel, 279

Economics, 21–75

Education, 115, 166, 174, 177–179, 182, 234–253, 331, 335–338

Education, State, 66–69, 244, 269

Ellis, Havelock, 103–105, 142

Eliot, George, 5, 6, 12, 115, 222

Emerson, R. W., 139

Emigration, 93

Empedocles, 299

Environment, 204, 239, 250, 253, 321, 328

Escott, T. H. S., 273

Estlake, Allan, 279, 280

Eugenics, 114–130, 196, 283, 330, 333, 334, 340

Fabian Essays, 25

Factories, 25, 27–30, 55, 209

Fashion, 200, 245, 331, 341

Finck, Henry, 264, 265

Fitz-Stephen, Judge, 164, 167

Food, 23, 34, 39, 79, 84, 92

Freedom, 16

Free-will, 292

Galton, Francis, 94, 126–129, 172, 325

Gaskell, G. A., 109, 157

Geddes, Patrick, 94, 157

George, Henry, 32, 43

Ginx’s Baby, 155

Gnostics, The, 299–301

Goodness, 4, 18, 105, 206

Government, 211

Greg, W. Rathbone, 99, 100

Happiness, 1–19, 98, 146, 188, 218, 232, 266, 270, 272, 325–329

Hardy, Thomas, 258, 263

Harmony, New, 30

Harrison, Clifford, 253

Harrison, Frederic, 45

Harte, Richard, 131, 326

Health, 116, 129, 196, 333

Hearn, Lafcadio, 303, 304

Henry, Arthur, 239

Heredity, 108, 114, 120–124,158, 169, 237, 304, 305, 307, 329

Hill, Frederick, 168, 169, 171

Hinduism, 289, 291, 292

Hinton, James, 103

Hobson, John A., 21, 33, 46, 51, 74, 232

Hooker, Sir W., 205

Horticulture, 195

Hos, The, 205

Hottentots, The, 134

Howells, W. D., 213

Huxley, T. H., 9, 12, 79, 92, 96, 214, 241, 249, 258, 304, 323

Ibsen, H., 104

Individual Rights, 185–200, 233, 250, 339

Industry, Organized, 48, 51–75, 210

Industrial Revolution, 23–50

Industries, Routine, 72

Interest, 54, 57

Jakuns, The, 205

Jamieson, Mrs., 223

Jealousy, 137, 138, 203, 218–228, 239

Jews, The, 134

Joli, Henri, 122

Josephus, 300

Justice, 188–196, 230, 233, 250, 282, 291, 296, 305, 328, 338

Kandyans, The, 132

Karma, 291, 294, 299, 303

Labourers, 25, 31, 34, 36, 40–43, 72

“Laissez-faire,” 81, 82, 98, 166

Lange, 125

Landlords, 24, 33–44, 54, 209

Land Problem, 33–44, 329, 342

Laveleye, Emil de, 11

Law of Causation, 291

Leadbeater, C. W., 299

Lecky, W. E. H., 111, 138, 202

Legge, 293

Legislation, 61–65, 339

Lepchas, The, 205

Lessing, 308

Letourneau, Charles, 33

Levy, J. H., 200

Lewes, G. H., 102

Liszt, Von, 122

Lodge, Sir Oliver, 9, 287

Lofft, Capel, 248

Logos, The, 290, 312

Luxury, 7

Machinery, 26, 55, 240, 272, 275

Maeterlinck, M., 103

Mahan, Captain, 230

Mallet, Lucas, 282

Malthus, 79, 83, 93, 96, 127

Manicheans, 299, 300

Marriage, 126–128, 131–148, 219, 283, 331, 341

Marriage-rate, 86–90, 126

Martineau, Harriet, 110, 268, 270

Massart, Jean, 274

Massingham, H. W., 262, 265

Mathews, Justice, 164, 165

Maudsley, Dr. Henry, 117, 123, 237

Mead, G. R. S., 301

Meredith, George, 196

Militancy, 206–210, 222, 229, 231, 329

Mill, John Stuart, 30, 41

Milton, John, 140

Mischler, Dr., 122

Morrison, W. D., 121, 123

Municipalism, 66, 72, 273

Mysticism, 298–303, 318, 323

Nairs, The, 132, 137

Natural Selection, 81, 83, 130, 159

Nirvana, 295

Nordau, Max, 185

Noyes, J. H., 279

Obermair, 180

Ogle, Dr. Wm., 86, 88

Oneida Community, 108, 278–280

Origen, 298, 299

Owen, Robert, 28–32

Owen, R. Dale, 26–29

Ozanam, A. F., 300

Paget, Sir James, 119

Parasitism, 274

Parentage, 149–160, 237, 269, 333, 341

Parsis, The, 292, 301

Paths of the Soul, 309–311

Patriotism, 228–233

Patronage, 7, 242, 332, 340

Pauperism, 42, 90, 271

Peace, 210, 230, 326

Pelasgians, 299

Pharisees, 300

Philanthropy, 58, 82, 160

Plato, 299

Pleasure, 2, 14

Podhalians, The, 197, 211

Political Economy, 53, 54, 82

Population, 56, 83–96, 109, 128, 265, 269

Positivism, 9–12

Poverty, 24–32, 41, 81, 90, 95, 108, 116, 150, 158, 169, 213, 240

Priesthood, 38

Profits, 24, 37, 54–56

Property, Private, 24, 39, 55, 210–217, 242, 342

Prostitution, 111, 112, 135, 136, 142, 145

Protestantism, 302

Psychic phenomena, 303, 318, 326

Punishment, 163–168, 176–178, 246

Puritanism, 110

Pythagoras, 299

Rapacity, 207–210

Reade, Chas., 260

Reclus, Elisee, 133

Redskins, The, 134

Re-incarnation, 291, 294, 296, 299, 301–308

Religion, 10, 285–323, 330

Rent, 54–57

Responsibility, 291

Richardson, Dr. W. B., 114, 118

Rights, Individual, 185–194

Ritchie, David G., 183

Robertson, John M., 17, 124, 126, 231

Robertson, F. W., 309

Robe of Righteousness, 316

Rogers, Thorold, 271

Rowntree, 31

Ruskin, John, 8, 12, 175

Sacrifice, 312–315

Santals, The, 205

Schooling, J. Holt, 109

Science, 9

“Scientific Meliorism”—Preface, 101, 114

Servant problem, 274–277

Sexual instinct, 95, 97–113, 144, 332, 333

Shakespeare, 221

Shareholders, 24, 55

Sinnett, A. P., 308, 313

Slater, J. E., 289

Slavery, 36, 219

Sloan, J. McGavin, 217

Smith, Goldwin, 32

Socialism, 30, 52–60, 82, 199, 259, 265, 320, 323, 329, 330, 340

Social justice, 44, 52, 59, 185–200, 334

Somerville, Mary, 270

Spencer, Herbert, 14, 84, 93, 95, 96, 99, 125, 132, 136, 140–1, 152, 158, 175, 181, 185, 206, 211, 290

Stephenson, R. L., 193

Stirpiculture, 114–130, 196, 283, 330–334, 340

Swan, Howard, 243

Sympathetic Selection, 83, 125, 159, 283, 333

Sympathy, 82, 102, 125, 188, 191, 194, 199, 205, 224, 264, 266, 313, 322, 329, 334

Syphilis, 119

Taoism, 292

Taylor, Isaac, 281, 282

Telepathy, 9

Tennyson, Alfred, 161, 213, 257, 267

Tertullian, 302

Thompson, D’Arcy W., 246

Thompson, A. M., 218

Thomson, J. B., 169

Thoreau, 104

Tibetans, The, 132

Tolstoi, Leo, 138

Trinity, The, 290, 297

Trollope, Anthony, 257, 262

Trusts, 47, 70

Tyranny, 207, 210, 334

Unitary Homes, 276–283

Unknowable, The, 290

Vedas, The, 289

Vedas, The, 132

Venereal disease, 119

Wade, 26

Wages, 24, 26, 42, 45, 56, 68, 70

Ward, Lester F., 49, 108, 321

Watt, James, 26

Wealth, 7, 41, 44, 57, 81, 123, 208, 212–216, 242, 273, 274, 319, 337

Webb, Sidney, 41, 45, 56

Wells, D. A., 122

Wells, H. G., 325

Whitman, Walt, 105

Wines, Howard, 122

Woman, 219–227, 248, 259, 265, 269, 340

Wordsworth, William, 198

Worship, 288, 293

Zola, Emile, 97, 114, 327

Zoroastrianism, 292, 301

Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in underscores.