Part 39

There are some most comforting facts, meanwhile, in our social relationship, which enable us to attack the concrete problems of our time with courage and patience. Seeing that our gain is social, and not individual, and that it is rapidly transmissible as far as the brain is open to transmission, we have but to develop the brain of our laggard members to bring them into possession of the whole great field of social advance. The wealth of Society, steadily augmented as it is by the very individuals who need so much more social return than they have ever had, is quite equal to any drain which may be necessary to pay up our arrears of debt to the worker. A conscientious and aroused society, seeing how unjustly neglected have been its most valuable constituents, cannot do too much to bring to them, and to their children, all the social nourishment they can absorb; i. e., to provide the best possible educational environment for the children who need it most.

Here arises a question, based on previous social studies and conclusions. If Society provides generously for its most needy members, will not that injure the world by multiplying the least desirable class? Will it not put a premium on deficiency, instead of efficiency? This idea rests not only on the Want theory and the Ego concept, but on the Malthusian doctrine. It is believed that human beings tend to multiply in a certain ratio; that the advantage to the race lies in the development of better individuals, not in mere numbers; and that better individuals are developed by personal competition, by the “struggle for existence” and “the survival of the fittest.”

As soon as we see the organic unity of Society, this “struggle for existence” idea must change its terms. What we are now concerned with is the development of ever better social organs and functions, and that development does not take place in a direct combat between individuals, but in a superior process supplanting an inferior process, with no essential injury to the constituents.

The introduction of machinery, for instance, was a legitimate social progress. The injury to working men which we allowed to accompany it, was not in any way essential to social progress, but militated against it. Interdependent organs do not fight with one another. Their change in form and value is gradual, and involves no immediate destruction to constituent cells. Society improves by the development of its component parts, not by a destructive conflict of parts. If you are seeking to improve a family of children or a breed of fowls, you do not do it by pitting them against one another and cheerfully retaining the “survivors” as the “most fit.” The egg-laying capacity of the hen, the milk-giving capacity of the cow, is not developed by combat between hens, or between cows (or their respective cocks and bulls)! To this it will be eagerly replied, “Ah, yes, but we do it by selection—by carefully choosing the ones best suited, and breeding from them. They do not survive from natural selection, but from artificial selection. Now if we were free to practice that on Society, if we could choose the best types and breed from them only, then we could indeed improve the race.”

That this is one process of improvement is not denied. But it is not the only, nor by any means the most valuable process in the social organism. The swiftest and broadest medium of social improvement lies in that great common sensorium of ours, the brain. By social contact and example, by social transmission, the more advanced members of Society can lift the less advanced at a rate immeasurably faster than the slow current of heredity. We have all seen this in families of very low-grade people, obtaining sudden access to social advantages by present methods, and changing in mind and body to a marked degree, even in one generation. This gain is of course incorporated in the family through heredity, but the effect of ten years’ access to the social stores of knowledge, culture, and refinement changes an individual to a very great degree. This immense power of education, using the word in its very widest sense, can be turned on to every child of the race, if we so choose, with a speedy result of race improvement which would laugh to scorn the fumbling, wasteful processes of natural selection, and the one-step-better methods of artificial selection. It is by transmission that we raise the social level most rapidly; a free and general transmission of the product of the special worker to the hands and minds of all.

For Society to bestow the same care and provision on all its children that the wisest parent now seeks to bestow on his would develop the race faster than anything conceivable. That this method would at once improve the individual, the race, and the productivity of both, is clear. That it would “pauperise” has been shown to be an erroneous deduction from the Want theory; under which we are indeed all potential, and some actual, paupers. The further claim that it would tend to a too rapid increase of population, especially among the least fit, should be carefully examined.

The Malthusian error is in assuming that a given rate of reproduction is fixed and final. If Malthus had studied the subject more deeply, he would have found that the rate of reproduction varies widely, not only in the “animal kingdom” but the man. This variation is relative to other conditions; and has been thus formulated by Spencer, “Reproduction is in inverse proportion to individuation.” The lower the efficiency of the individual, the more young ones it has.

Progressive specialisation, bringing a higher degree of individual efficiency, carries with it a decrease in the rate of reproduction. The myriad eggs of the fish or insect are followed as species develop by the lesser litters of high-grade quadrupeds, till we reach one at a birth. A fish that only laid one egg at a time would not have a very tall family tree. In man we have the general rule of one at a time; but we have it more times in some cases than in others. The human birth rate varies widely, too; and the action of the same law, a higher development of the individual, higher specialisation, leads to a lower birth rate.

There are also artificial variants, as so painfully shown in the dwindling of France’s population; but quite apart from any morbid processes of stirpiculture lies this broad and beautiful law,—the higher specialisation of the individual tends to reduce the birth rate. This is shown with clearness through all the turbid cross-currents of our mistaken behaviour; the most developed kind of people have the least children, and the least developed kind of people have the most children. Even in folk lore we see it indicated—“there was once a King and a Queen who were perfectly happy, except that they had no children,” and on the other hand, “The poor man hath his quiver full.”

The capacity of the world to support humanity in health and comfort has a limit; it is not near enough to frighten us, but it is there. If human beings are left to struggle on alone in unnatural individualism, their arrested development fills up the world, too, with numerous, but inefficient people. But as a conscious and intelligent society hastens to spread its gains among all its parts; to make the progress of the race the rich possession of all its members; so fully to educate and develop every child as to promote the higher specialisation of the individual, at a rate unconscious natural processes never dreamed of, then we see a steady diminution of this threatening birth rate. By this means we work steadily toward a far higher average of social efficiency, with a permanent balance of birth and death, involving no arbitrary personal tampering with natural processes, but a recognition of the working of natural law.

It would seem needless to say that the individuation of woman is the most prominent necessity here, as her rate of fecundity is the determining factor in the case, not the man’s; yet there are still some who ignore even so patent a fact as this.

See, then, how swiftly and surely an awakened society can right its wrongs, cure and outgrow its diseases, understand, pity, and leave far behind its sins. The highest human duty for the individual is to enter upon his or her special work in the world—that is vital, that is first, that underlies all. There is no right life for any human creature who is not taking part in the organic processes of Society. And if, in our present blurred and jumbled condition, we have not the sure guide of a “calling,” a special inborn preference and power; why, that only leaves us freer to take hold anywhere of the thousand things that need doing; paid, or unpaid—that is immaterial. The point is to do the work and to do it for the service of Society. No matter for the past account, for arrears of social pampering or social neglect; we are all responsible for both. No malicious crowd of despots, masters, owners, and employers has conspired to injuriously deprive the angelic workingman of his rights. We have all believed in these economic falsehoods, the inevitable action of which was to produce the conditions we now suffer from. We must all lay them aside; wasting no time or energy on remorse, and simply set to work to make things right.

From that class of people who “do not have to work”—that is, who have been paid and overpaid in advance—there is an overwhelming debt of honour due the world. In that great field of action where there is no pay, nor even thanks as yet; in the efforts necessary to teach the right things, and to provide the right things for the world’s little children, there is ample room for the most helplessly rich. Also in the work of spreading the social supplies where they belong—among the whole people—there is work there, much work, not only unpaid and unthanked, but heartily resisted.

There was never a time in history when more splendid opportunities were open to those who would serve society. Thousands of us are at it already, organised and unorganised; a rising flood of love and service, toiling manfully, and womanfully, at the mighty task. But the economic darkness makes it blind work at best.

Most of our conscious “social service” to-day is directed, naturally enough, to ministering to the social diseases. Now, if a man is sick, there are two ways to re-establish his health—both necessary. One is to restore normal conditions to his body, trusting that a normal body will urge to normal action, and so keep him well. The other is to induce normal action, trusting to that to restore right conditions in the body. Each is a good thing, each tends to produce the desired result; but both are incomparably better than either. Our sick Society needs this double treatment. The first condition of normal action we have here reviewed at length; consciously to assume true place in the organic industries of human life. If all of us do that, the currents of right action will assuredly build us a healthy social body. But we can greatly hasten that good end by rearranging the social body too. Here the law of interaction between spirit and form comes to our aid, and makes possible an incredible rate of progress.

Take, for instance, an advanced case in social pathology—a city slum. Now there are two ways for a conscious society to focus its forces on the diseased part and regenerate it. One is by dealing with the spirit of the slum, the people themselves; by so educating the children, so stimulating the adult, so providing proper opportunity for right social service for all, that the people will change in character, and, reacting, soon make the slum a fair, clean, healthful part of the city.

The other is to deal with the body of the slum, the houses, streets, and shops; and so to reconstruct them that they shall steadily react on the people and change their character. Both can be done, both are being done, but so feebly and partially, in such tiny spots of change, under such heavy opposition and heavier indifference, that the gain is heart-breakingly slow. While one playground is being made, while one new method of education is being introduced, a thousand babies die, a thousand children become criminals, a thousand wretched men and women sink to the hopeless grade, are lost to society, become diseased tissue, and are miserably sloughed off through asylum, prison, and hospital.

The cause of the delay is this: We are treating social disease by local application. We find, as it were, a tubercle or boil upon the body politic, we apply all manner of treatment-the poultice, the counter-irritant, the excising knife of capital punishment; but we forget, or do not know, that this local trouble, however poignantly conspicuous, is on a living body, and is caused and maintained by diseased conditions in that body, far beyond the material boundaries of that location.

We must, of course, use prompt and strong measures in these most painful spots; but the treatment necessary to prevent the formation of these conspicuously evil places must be applied to all of us. It is as necessary for the right education and stimulus to be applied to the rich and well-to-do as to the poor, to the isolated farmer in the field as well as the crowded sweater in the shop; and not only those methods touching the people’s character, but the other, the prompter ones, touching their physical conditions.

There are certain physical conditions in the social body, brick and mortar conditions, which are affecting us all for evil, and which can be readily changed. There are, also, certain economic relations in that body, affecting us all for evil, that can equally be changed. We need to see these in their true importance; as affecting not only the immediate individuals concerned, but as so affecting the whole structure of Society as to inexorably produce the conspicuous evils with which we are so painfully familiar. Once recognised, our duty is clear—a glad, swift, forward movement bringing joy and gain to all.

What are these general conditions?

One is the economic position of woman, which involves false sex relations, including all forms of prostitution; maintains primitive individual instincts and checks social ones, and is largely responsible for the morbid action of social economics. Another is the maintenance of domestic industry; which, as I have shown in another book, prevents the development of the home, the progress of woman, the right education of the child, and the normal progress of man.

Combined, these two conditions find material form in that hotbed of primitive egoism, the cumbrous, expensive, inadequate dwelling house of our time, or rather, of past time, of the most remote and barbarous time, most injuriously preserved in this. It is true that each human being needs a wholly private and personal room to rest in; that solitude, pure individual solitude, is a social necessity. It is also true that the great primal group, the family, needs its group of rooms, its private home. But the point of divergence is in the Work involved.

Work is social, it does not belong to the person nor, in any advanced degree, to the family. That so much human work is at present performed in and for the separate family is an enormous condition of social evil. It maintains, beyond all the efforts of religion and science to combat, the selfishness of the primeval Pig.

Social consciousness and its great currents of love and enthusiasm, of power and pride, cannot find room in brains continually cramped by application to the most ignominiously personal concerns.

It is not only that the family could have a far simpler, purer, and more private life if they would but take advantage of our immense social facilities, but so could the individual men and women; born and reared in families, to be sure, but born and reared as members of Society, active and responsible factors in social progress.

These men and women, if the families they grew up in were in true social relation, instead of each one keeping up a little down-drawing whirlpool of antediluvian individualism, would be a thousand times more valuable citizens. While the minds of our women are exercised only, or mainly, in impression and expression of a purely personal nature, they and their stunted children and heavily handicapped men cannot properly receive and discharge the vivifying currents of social consciousness.

That consciousness forces itself out here and there through specially sensitive individuals, usually at great personal sacrifice. These special individuals, heavily charged with the social spirit, push and struggle, work and fight, suffer and die, trying to stir to equal life the great ego-bound mass of unawakened Society. Much work has been accomplished, great good has been done, the world is incomparably better off for the presence of these better developed members, but our gain is as nothing to what it would be if the progress was shared by all.