Youth and Tomorrow

¶1Youth and Tomorrow (1946) CONTENTS CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 2. THE DAY BEFORE YESTERDAY. CHAPTER 3. YESTERDAY CHAPTER 4. TODAY AND TOMORROW. CHAPTER 5. BEYOND MAN. OceanofPDF.com

¶2YOUTH AND TOMORROW “In this book I shall try to describe the far-reaching transformation of morals and manners through which we are now passing, and I shall venture to look forward a little into the future to see where it is likely to lead.” Olaf Stapledon OceanofPDF.com

¶3CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION How Manners and Morals Change ABOUT FIFTY YEARS ago, when I was a child, my father started a collection of birds’ eggs for me. On one occasion a thrush’s egg that he was blowing turned out to be partly hatched. Bits of a recognisable chick were forced into the saucer. I remember a tiny leg appearing and some disordered strands of blood vessels. This was for me a rather momentous experience, for I had been brought up to be kind to animals, and here was my father destroying what was obviously the beginning of a baby bird. I was torn between horror and curiosity. My father had done his best to fire me with a passion for knowledge; and so when he pointed out the various disintegrated organs, I was fascinated. In the middle of this little science lesson my mother appeared. She was thoroughly shocked. It was not right, she said, that a child should see such things. My father ought not to encourage me to pry into the sacred mysteries of life. In this matter her attitude was typical of the time, and my father’s was rather in advance of it. The conviction that some things were too sacred to be explored, and that anyhow children ought to be kept in innocence about them, was of course only one of the respects in which the typical nineteenth century attitude differed from the temper which we to-day regard as reasonable. Looking back into my childhood, I remember many customs, manners, judgements of right and wrong, which were then almost universally accepted, but which, looked at from the present time, seem strangely remote, and often wrongheaded. Similarly, if the adults of my childhood days could come to

¶4life again now, they would be outraged by much that seems to us entirely satisfactory. In all transitional ages, no doubt, the customs of “yesterday” and “the day before yesterday” are apt to seem in some ways ridiculous, or superstitious, or unenlightened, while the dawning customs of “tomorrow” tend to be condemned as dangerous and subversive but in the fifty years that have passed since my childhood the conditions of mankind have been changing so rapidly and so deeply that customs, manners, morals, ways of thinking and feeling, have altered probably more thoroughly than in any other half century in the whole career of mankind. Of course every period includes, besides what is distinctive of that period itself, large hangovers from the past and foretastes of the future. In singling out a certain attitude or temper as characteristic of a particular period, we must not forget that very much in each period is handed on to it from the previous period, and indeed from the remote past of the race; while also in every period there are already symptoms of an attitude which will not become clear or widespread till a later period. Even today there are many minds which, under a veneer of modernism, are really Victorian in outlook, and a few in which the veneer is almost absent. On the other hand, there are some amongst us who, just because they are obscurely groping beyond the typical “ modern” or “interwar” mentality, and can once more appreciate what is permanently true in the old culture, are wrongly thought by fanatically up - to - date persons to be reactionary. In this book I shall try to describe the far-reaching transformation of morals and manners through which we are now passing, and I shall venture to look forward a little into the future to see where it is likely to lead. But before setting out on this task, I shall spend the rest of this chapter on some

¶5very general remarks about the causes of changes in men’s ways of behaving. Manners and morals are a product of the interaction of human nature and the environment. The Eskimo custom of wearing fur clothing is a product of man’s need to maintain his body temperature and of the arctic climate in which the Eskimo culture has developed. Inborn human nature, though it is not unchangeable, and some day it may be improved, has in fact remained practically unchanged since the present human species appeared. Like us, the earliest true men, and all the intervening generations, were by nature greedy, fearful, quarrelsome, friendly, and so on, and capable of slightly keener intelligence than any other animal species. But the circumstances of our predecessors were very different from our own, and gave rise to very different customs and ideals. The environment, unlike human nature, is always changing, largely as a result of man’s action upon it. No doubt in essentials it remains constant. Gravitation, atmospheric pressure, the chemical elements and compounds, are as they were when mankind began. Climates change, but only within certain limits. Openings for procuring food change, but food has always to be either collected or cultivated or worked up from raw materials. With changing methods of production men’s Ways of dealing with one another inevitably change. The Old Testament, for instance, records the changes brought about by the shift from pastoral to agricultural production. But however much production changes, men are always engaged on some form of co-operative enterprise of maintaining themselves and their offspring alive by winning food, shelter and safety in a world of physical forces. Social organisation and culture are very largely determined by methods of production. In a period of rapidly changing production existing institutions and ideas, which were developed under the old order, are inevitably out of gear with the new methods. The

¶6resulting strain may lead to a gradual transformation of society and morality, as in the case of the slow advance from pasture to agriculture; or if the new needs are frustrated, it may in the end lead to a violent revolution, as in Russia. The underlying constancy of human nature and of the environment ensures that manners and morals, however much they change, remain in fundamental respects the same from age to age, country to country. Though the institutions of marriage, parenthood, family and property vary greatly, they occur in one form or another in every society. Certain fundamental moral principles, too, are common to all societies, though their expressions may vary. This fundamental identity of moral principles need not be attributed to some sort of moral absolute at the heart of the universe; it may be due simply to the fact that, in spite of all its variations, human nature remains fundamentally identical, and so does the environment. For instance, the practice of living together in social groups has always had survival value; and so men everywhere have felt some obligation to help their neighbours in trouble; though in some societies mutual responsibility is more thorough than in others, and in some it covers a wider field of “kin” or “neighbours” than in others. It is possible to trace a gradual clarification of those permanent moral principles, at least throughout the period covered by history. No doubt it may well be that so far as actual moral responsibility is concerned the earliest true men were on the average as developed as the latest. Indeed, some anthropologists claim that before the coming of civilisation men were in the main not less but more kindly, trusting, co- operative than at a later period, when they were tangled up in complex social conditions, including warfare: but at least since the beginning of civilisation itself there has been, if not an increase of sensibility, at any rate

¶7a gradual clarifying of thought about moral principles. And this in turn has changed men’s moral feelings. The clarifying of morality has happened partly through a purging away of irrelevances, such as taboos on special kinds of foods, and partly through applying the principles universally instead of in a special field. The best example of this last is the supreme one of human brotherhood. Before the age of the great religions, the obligation of mutual aid seems to have been felt only toward members of one’s own tribe or people. The idea of universal brotherhood had not yet come clear in men’s minds. In another respect also there has been a clarification of moral principles. Through purging them and universalising them, men have reached a deeper, more inward grasp of them. Brotherhood expressed itself first as a set of stereotyped rules of behaviour in relation to one’s fellows. A man must not lie, covet his neighbour’s wife, and so on. Later the obligation to treat one’s fellow human beings as brothers took the form of a generalised responsibility to help them towards happiness and self- realisation as unique persons. The gradual clarification of morality has certainly not been a steady progress. In particular ages and countries there have been grave lapses. Changes of conditions have confused men’s vision of principles which an earlier age had laboriously clarified. The most obvious example of this is the rise of Nazism in our own day, but perhaps the example which is most significant for us is the whole capitalist age itself, from which we are now at last beginning to emerge. During that age, perhaps more than in any other, men’s impulses of mutual responsibility have been overwhelmed by a system of economic relations which has forced them to fend for themselves ruthlessly, or go under. Apart from periods of moral deterioration, there are also, of course, differences of emphasis. From age to age and country to country, different

¶8aspects of morality are stressed. Special conditions incline men to prize now one and now another principle. At one time courage, at another resignation, will seem more admirable; at one time individual integrity in thought and conduct, at another time loyalty to the conventions of the group, whether a church, a social class, a national state, or the great common enterprise of humanity. What Science Promised If manners and morals are indeed a product of human nature and the environment, our age is bound to witness a very great change in them, perhaps a greater change than ever before. For today the human race is entering on a very important crisis, perhaps the most important since the discovery of fire. Science is transforming not only man’s material environment but his whole way of thinking, feeling and willing. In order to understand the current change of human behaviour, it is necessary to understand just what it is that science has done to man so far, and just what promise and what danger it holds for the future. We may summarise the actual change that science has already produced in man’s circumstances as follows: — (1) It caused the “industrialisation” of the more “advanced” regions of the planet. Whereas formerly most human beings lived by manual work on the land, and a few by handicrafts in the small country towns of those days, now most people live by tending machinery (directly or indirectly) in the great industrial areas; and even agriculture is increasingly mechanised. (2) Whereas formerly the people were relatively isolated from one another, now they are brought into a close and often painful contact by increased communications. Consequently, the world is well on the way to become economically and also culturally a single system. (3) Science has

¶9immensely increased man’s understanding of the physical universe, and has made many of the old theories about the universe and man’s place in it look very uncertain, if not incredible. So much for the effects which science has already had. Inevitably man’s ideas and values are changing through and through to meet the new conditions. The change in circumstances is bewilderingly rapid. The change in ideas and values is also rapid; but there is always a serious time lag in the influence of conditions on ideas. Our minds are always very badly out of date in one way or another. Besides the actual achievement of science, we must take into account the amazing promise which it offers. Science has, as a matter of fact, given men for the first time the power to ensure that every human being on the earth shall have the opportunity of exercising fully whatever capacities he has for truly human living. Before the advent of science it was inevitable that most men should spend nearly all their waking hours in heavy drudgery so as to obtain a meagre livelihood, either directly by agricultural labour or indirectly by selling the products of their own industrial labour to the producers of food. In the pre- scientific world very few could have enough respite from toil to escape overstrain and premature decay, or to look beyond the horizon of urgent practical needs so as to develop any refinement of personal sensibility or of intellectual or artistic experience. No doubt it would be wrong to suppose that mere emancipation from toil can bring fulness of life. Some agricultural workers, whom townsmen are apt to regard as ignorant and hide-bound clod-hoppers, are in fact, in the deepest sense, far more fully human personalities than many stockbrokers and “gentlemen of leisure.” But it is nevertheless true that a life of excessive primitive toil is exhausting and cramping. What science has done

¶10is to make it at last materially possible for every individual in every land to have a reasonably healthy body, a prolonged maturity, the kind of education suited to his or her special aptitudes, the chance of acquiring some special skill or other, and of exercising it with a sense of being a useful partner in the common enterprise of mankind, and the means of travelling about the world a bit so as to be able to see something of the diversity of human life. Science has also made it possible to secure that every married man shall be freed from the terror of being unable to give his children a decent start in life, that every expectant mother and every child shall have proper medical care and adequate food. Finally, science has made it possible that every human being shall be properly cared for in old age without being a burden on anyone. The Actual Results of Science Such is the promise that science gave to mankind. Over three hundred years ago, Francis Bacon, calling himself the Trumpeter of a New Age, prophesied that science would open up some such future for mankind. If Bacon were to live again today he would find that the actual physical achievements of science far surpassed his most daring surmise; but also he would be amazed that mankind had not made better use of them. He would note that grinding toil still exists for most men, that there is much preventable under-nourishment and ill-health, that crippling poverty survives, that most men are ignorant and wrongheaded, and that war is more terrible than ever. The causes of this gigantic failure are two. One, of course, is the sheer complexity of the problem of organising the economic life of a whole world for the well-being of all its inhabitants. New powers open up new possibilities, but they also create new difficulties and dangers. In the remote past the task of organising the life of a tribe according to a well established

¶11tradition was a comparatively simple problem; but the organising of a great state in a time of rapid economic change is far more difficult; and the organising of a whole world, when change has become still more rapid, and there are no well-tried principles for guidance, may well prove impossible till we have profited by many disastrous mistakes. The second cause of man’s failure to create the happy world prophesied by Bacon is the more important. It is the fact that many of the ways of thinking and feeling and willing with which mankind faces its huge new problems were evolved to suit a vanished world, and are quite unsuited to the world in which we now live. In the old days of course, a great deal of unnecessary misery and folly occurred simply because men hugely failed to live up to the best wisdom that was available in their time. But in our day there is the added trouble that even the very finest wisdom of the past is often quite useless as a guide through the novel problems of the new world. And these problems are not simply economic; many of them are at bottom spiritual problems, in fact problems about the right way of life in the modern world. It is true, of course, that when you have already, by bitter experience, found a solution of one of these problems, you may also find that it was implicit in some ancient wisdom. For instance, if you are a Christian, and if by bitter experience you have also come to believe that in the modern world the good life involves not only kindly behaviour in personal contacts but also the attempt to understand economic forces and to co-operate in a very complicated social revolution, you will discover that all this was implied in the teaching of Jesus. But strictly the cause of your belief that the good life involves economic understanding was not simply the teaching of Jesus; it was a re-interpretation and development of that teaching in the light of modern social problems. The New Testament is no substitute for the London School of Economics. It may provide the initial

¶12inspiration to help you to use rightly the understanding gained through that great institution, but unless you acquire the necessary knowledge of modern society your insight into the teaching of the New Testament will leave you entirely unaware of, and undefended against, Satan’s most modern and dangerous snares. You may for instance be trapped in the belief that by becoming a very rich man and then giving millions to charity or to medical research you fulfil your duty. The truth is that the prodigious new powers which science has given to man are confronting him with new problems (not only economic but spiritual) which he cannot solve without reaching out to a new range or order of wisdom. That new wisdom is not to be found explicitly stated in any expression of the wisdom of the past. On the other hand neither is the wisdom that we seek to be found simply in modern science. Perhaps some day science will advance so far as to give a sufficiently true account of human nature of not only its simple and more easily studied capacities but also of its more fully developed, more distinctly human, “upper reaches.” But inevitably, since scientists had to begin by studying the simpler characteristics of man they have tended to explain the more subtle powers in terms of the simpler. This led to a general inclination to reject the ancient wisdow wholly and uncritically because in many respects it seemed to conflict with science. It led also, as I shall try to show, to a very widespread attempt to live as though the “upper reaches” of our nature were unimportant, and their values illusory; as though the passion for goodness, beauty and truth (to use the old ambiguous words) could be simply explained away in terms of nerve-currents or the interaction of atoms. In the period between the two great wars most ordinary people in western Europe and America still paid lip service to the old theories and

¶13moral values; but in actual life they were tending increasingly to behave as though simple materialism were true, and moral values were merely a matter of personal taste and social convenience. This mood played a great part in the moral breakdown of the period, in fact in the genera failure to take serious responsibility for the distress of the unemployed at home, for the sufferings of natives in Imperial territories, or for the rise of gangsterism in Europe. The Young and the Old This phase of “non-interventionism,” of complete lack of serious moral responsibility, is now passing, in blood and fire. There is a general recognition of certain permanent values and obligations, and an increasing attempt to state these clearly. The widespread longing for firm religious convictions and fixed moral principles is both hopeful and dangerous. It is hopeful because nothing could be worse than the spiritual degradation of the interwar period. It is dangerous because we may so easily slip back into the old superstitions and the old confused morality. And if we do that, we may postpone indefinitely the happier, more fully human, more clearly conscious world that science makes possible. Much will depend on those who are now very young. Wordsworth said of his revolutionary age that merely to be alive in it was good, “but to be young was very heaven.” — To-day we live in an age which is revolutionary in a deeper way than his; or rather, the one long revolution, which in his day was only beginning, is now reaching its crisis. Not only is it become world-wide; it is also having a far deeper effect on men’s conditions and on their minds than seemed possible in Wordsworth’s day. To be alive today is indeed from one point of view good, a privilege; but to be young, though a greater privilege, is perhaps not “very heaven”; unless

¶14indeed heaven can include hell. It is likely that the very young men and women of today now about to leave school or college, or already in the forces, will be in early maturity when the crisis is at its height, when mankind is at the most critical point of this greatest of all human revolutions. Meanwhile very many of our young men have died in war. Many have suffered torture, physical or mental, in the gigantic birth-throes of a new humanity. Many have been so badly damaged that they will be unable to play any active part in the future. Many will be spiritually so poisoned that they will actually side with the enemies of the revolution. But some will not be broken, nor poisoned. These may win through to the passion and vision that are needed to change the whole temper of man’s life on this planet. Will they succeed? Their task will be almost super-human. One of the greatest difficulties lies in the breakneck speed of the change of world- conditions. We live in an explosion. The old order is exploding furiously into a new order. The world of the past was a slowly growing caterpillar world. Today, with no intervening chrysalis stage, the tortured caterpillar is bursting asunder and being re-made through and through to become in the very next moment of world history some sort of winged thing. Will the shattering transformation succeed, or will it result merely in chaos? Let us at least be clear about the issue. It is not merely a question of economic reorganisation. This is indeed of very great importance, but it is the means, not the end. The point is that, if all goes well, there will appear in a few generations a human world bewilderingly different from anything that has existed before, different too, from the best conceptions of our best prophets. For not only will it be a world in which there are no ill-nourished and mentally-frustrated masses, and no minds damaged irreparably in childhood through bad psychological influences, not only will it be a world of well-

¶15grown wisely educated fully human beings, but also the fact that the world is composed of such people will open up horizons which are to us only very dimly, if at all, conceivable. Today some strangely unimaginative people suppose that when mankind has turned the corner into a happier social order the adventure and romance will have gone from life, and the human spirit will be undermined by comfort, security and lack of purpose. But how much more likely it seems that, when man’s latent capacity is at last able to express itself fully, without the universal frustration that now cripples the whole race, the result will not be stagnation but the opening up of new worlds of experience and creative action, at present hidden from our damaged sight. Although the world of tomorrow, even if everything goes well, will probably be no more blissful, easeful, pleasant, than the world of to-day, we may expect it to have solved the simple nursery problems that cause us such agony and perplexity to-day; and to be grappling with problems on a higher plane. Progress, rightly regarded, is not progress merely in pleasant ease; it is progress in ever fuller life. Meanwhile, what of our own problems? The breakneck speed of change causes one very serious psychological difficulty. Though in our day men’s minds themselves are probably changing more rapidly than ever before, they cannot change fast enough to keep pace with the catastrophic change of circumstances throughout the planet. Consequently, the minds of those who are in control of the affairs of mankind at any particular time are bound to be to a large extent out of date. The general set and temper of human minds is fixed in youth; and, in important respects, even in very early youth. When the change of conditions was slow, this did not greatly matter. The world of a man’s adult life was not too unlike the world of his youth. But now, all is different. Even those who are young today, and consider themselves so up-to-date, so ultra-modern, will soon be desperately

¶16struggling to adjust themselves to new conditions and a new mental climate. Many will not even struggle. They will simply live in the old mental habits, ignorant that these no longer fit the facts of a changed world. In this moment of world-wide explosion the supple minds of the young have a special advantage, simply because they are less entangled with the past. The old, therefore, should treat the wild ideas and feelings of the young with respect, even though mostly they are sure to turn out to have been wrong. For somewhere in this ocean of sheer extravagance and error lies the germ of tomorrow’s truth. If the young have the advantage of freshness and mental suppleness, they have the disadvantage that they live in a world far more complex and difficult to understand than the old world. Consequently, they are in some ways more dependent than ever upon their elders. Moreover, they have inevitably to spend a very large part of their youth in merely learning. By the time they are equipped they may be already mentally old and set. Youth, in fact, is supple, but ignorant and hasty; age is experienced, but it tends to think its experiences into patterns conceived in a world that has vanished. This is perhaps the most serious weakness of our species, that we cannot retain our full mental suppleness far into maturity. I am already old, and I am writing a book about the tremendous cataract of revolution in our ideas and values; I am even proposing to grope a little way towards the values of tomorrow. This is a very rash thing for anyone to do at fifty-nine. Yet there is one function which the elder generations alone can perform, and only if they can remain sufficiently receptive and plastic. Even in a cataract, the water at the top of the fall is the same kind of stuff as the water at the bottom, and even in the world-revolution human nature remains fundamentally the same. If age can retain a modicum of sensitivity and suppleness, it may be able to see the new values in relation to the old,

¶17and discover in the contrast something of the values that are not subject to change, because they arise out of the permanent nature of personality and community. My own ideas and values, though in some ways they are merely more precise versions of those of my youth, have in other ways changed very much during the period since the First World War, under the pressure of changing circumstances and the impact of the younger generations. This encourages me to hope that I really have learnt something from those younger generations, and therefore that I may actually be able to pay back my debt to some extent by trying to work out a synthesis of the old values and the new. Moreover, it does seem to me, at fifty-nine, that it really is possible for the old, with some intelligence and sincerity, to attain a range of perception and insight into the activity of conscious living which is very difficult in youth. I must speak for myself. When I look back at myself as an undergraduate, and remember how I used to think and feel about the world and myself and other people, I am impressed at least as much by the difference between that callow young man and my present self as I am by our fundamental identify. I do not mean? merely that his knowledge of the world was ridiculously slight, and that his judgements were generally crude and arrogant. Far worse, he seems to me now, to have been strangely insensitive in certain ways. Of course, in some ways he was far more sensitive than I am now. His hungers took command of him and his fears overwhelmed him. He was also intensely “self-conscious,” in the colloquial sense. In the presence of strangers he never knew what to do with his hands, or his eyes; and he blushed at the slightest provocation. But his consciousness of himself, though so painfully intense, was superficial, misconceived, and (how shall I put it?) enslaved. And as for his awareness of other people, though he was often thrillingly, and sometimes torturingly

¶18conscious of them, and though he had certain habits of amiable behaviour, he seems to me now to have had remarkably little perception of them as actual persons. Between him and the actuality of the other there was always an obscuring haze of misconception. This was due, I think, not merely to the fact that he conceived his own particular character wrongly, and therefore also the particular characters of others. More fundamentally he was wrong about something common to us all, about the very nature of individuality itself. He was wrong because he had not yet reached the necessary precision of self-awareness. And because of this lack, his values, though many of them seem to me even now true superficially, had no depth. The whole of my life since those days seems to me now to have been mainly a sort of enforced schooling in respect of those values. Over and over again I have found myself seeing unexpectedly deeper into my experience of myself, or others, or the world; clinging resolutely to my familiar superficial view, but being compelled to abandon it, and finally accepting the deeper view with thankfulness. Aim of this Book Well, if our great revolution is to succeed, it must consist not merely of an economic change, though this is indeed necessary, but also of a widespread deepening of our consciousness of ourselves and one another. And unless that deepening consciousness controls the economic revolution, all will have been in vain. — In this book I try to make some contribution to this side of the revolution. I do so by trying to contrast the values of today with the values of “yesterday” and the day before yesterday.” First, drawing mainly on my own memory, I shall describe the mentality and values of the world that has vanished, though it still lives on in most contemporary minds as a compulsive power. Then I shall summarise the confused and incoherent

¶19mentality of today, in which yesterday and tomorrow fight with one another. This will enable me to single out what I regard as the permanent values, inherent in the very nature of self and other-conscious personality anywhere in the universe and in any age and circumstance. Of course my account of the matter is certain to be full of errors. The best that I can hope is that it will prove stimulating to some of those young minds who bear so heavy a burden today and so great a responsibility for the future. — OceanofPDF.com

¶20CHAPTER 2. THE DAY BEFORE YESTERDAY. OceanofPDF.com

¶21Introductory TODAY IT IS much easier to see the faults than the virtues of the temper which was at its height during the reign of Queen Victoria, and may be said to have received its death blow in 1914, though it had long been failing. During the period between the two wars those of us who were brought up in the nineteenth century, and have since reacted violently against that temper, were often too ready to condemn its faults and forget its virtues. Here I am concerned with it only in contrast with the period which followed it, which was in many ways even worse. The culture of any period is stratified. It is made up, so to speak, of layers deposited in past periods, and on the surface there is a living growth of customs and ideas, destined in turn to form the uppermost deposit in the culture of the next period. The lowest stratum of every culture dates back to pre-historic times. It is a mass of thought-forms and feeling-forms which were evoked in primitive races by the pressure of savage conditions, and have been passed on from generation to generation by tradition, and of course modified in transit. Of this lowest stratum we have little or no knowledge, so much has been imposed upon it. For practical purposes we may say that the lowest recognisable stratum of all modern English culture is the deposit left over from our Early English forefathers. Our language is mainly Anglo-Saxon, and so are our ways of thinking and feeling. The earliest recognisable deposits of our culture, however, need not be examined in this book. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries are equally indebted to the Early English, and I am concerned with their differences rather than with their likenesses. Two influences from the ancient world played a very great part in nineteenth century culture, namely Christianity and ancient Greek and Latin

¶22literature. In our contemporary culture also they play a great part, but less directly and less powerfully. Another important influence from the past was feudal tradition, which, though by then quite out of gear with the economic circumstances of the age, still maintained a hold both on institutions and on sentiment. These influences, Christianity, Classical Literature and Feudalism, were all three in conflict with the newer tradition of modern science and modern commercial industrialism. From the clash of these opposing forces arose on the one hand a romantic yearning for the “good old days,” and on the other a passion for “progress.” In this chapter I shall say something, of each of these factors in turn. OceanofPDF.com

¶23Christianity In the nineteenth century the events and characters described in the Old and New Testaments formed the background of most minds. Even those who never read the Bible were soaked with its influence by contact with their fellows. The story of Creation, the journey of the Jews out of Egypt, the adventures of the Prophets, the life of Jesus were more or less familiar to all. Even at the end of the century, and after it, they were still the main common cultural influence. Fifty years ago, when I was a child, they were “household words.” Almost daily I used to listen to my mother’s reading of the Bible stories (suitably expurgated) or to chapters from a potted version called Line upon Line She made me learn psalms and hymns by heart, and at night I was supposed to fall asleep repeating them to myself. (But actually I used to tell myself wild stories about wars between armies of dogs and tigers). In many houses “family prayers” were a regular custom. I well remember this solemn little daily ceremony in a certain non-conformist family where I was sometimes a visitor. After breakfast we drew our chairs back to the wall and waited till the servants, in their print dresses and freshly washed hands, came in and seated themselves in a prim row next the door. The head of the family then prayed in a special voice that was solemn and rather frightening, while we all knelt on the floor, with our elbows on our chairs and our faces covered by our hands. Then he read from the Bible, then prayed again, thanking God for our blessings, and asking that we might have the grace to behave rightly during the day. How I remember studying those horsehair seats and the flowery wall-paper, through my fingers! At a later period, with the general decline of religious observance, the family met for prayer only on Sundays. On those days the two family dogs were

¶24always present. If a cat appeared in the garden there was a great hullaballoo, and prayers were with difficulty continued. On Sundays all toys were forbidden. Children wore their best clothes, and spent most of the day in not getting dirty. Everyone, of course, went to church or chapel. Of the many sermons I must have heard as a child, I now remember only one. The preacher explained the insidiousness of sin. You first laughed about it; then you indulged in just a taste of it; then before you knew where you were you were caught up in the toils, and nothing in the world could save you from Hell but only the love of Jesus. I stopped fingering the marbles in my pocket and felt a sudden terror. In those days Christianity was a powerful force in most people’s minds. Scripture afforded a definite code of personal morals; and since the belief in Hell was quite sincere, you really tried hard to keep the code. Of course, the fear of Hell is not the right motive for virtue, but if you do believe that you will be burnt forever if you sin, the belief will at least be a factor in keeping you straight in action, if not in spirit. In my early days, though my parents were not addicted to Hell, many people were. It was always just round the corner. The name of it was sinister, and unmentionable in polite society. In my prep, school we once had to learn The Charge of the Light Brigade. In reciting it we were always stopped before reaching the verse in which the wicked word occurs. Whatever licence might be allowed to a poet (who was also a peer), such language was not nice. Naturally we took a malicious pleasure in plunging into the forbidden verse before the mistress could stop us. I do not suggest that nineteenth century Christianity was based solely on the fear of Hell. There were of course many earnest Christians whose conduct was determined very thoroughly by their disinterested admiration for the character of Jesus, as it was presented to them in the Bible and in

¶25current sermons. It is easy to condemn them on the score that, although they behaved with Christian kindliness and self-sacrifice in personal contacts, their Christianity seldom went so far as to make them take serious action against a system that was fundamentally inconsistent with the social principles implicit in Christianity. But two things must be said. First, there are many professed socialists today who are in much the same position. They talk about the immorality of society, but they do nothing about it. Secondly in those days, awareness of society as a system that might be altered, and for which all its members shared responsibility, was much less developed than it is today. The whole temper of the age was much more individualistic. Inevitably, therefore, the ordinary nineteenth century Christian was generally content with a purely personal kind of Christianity. He could recognise that in his personal contacts there were right and wrong ways of behaving, and it taxed his strength to be tolerably Christian even in that sphere. As a matter of fact, even in the sphere of personal contacts, whenever contacts were economic, concerned with buying and selling, his Christianity was often put aside. In the height of nineteenth century economic prosperity the notion that the whole economic structure of society was opposed to Christianity was one which only the more sensitive or the less fortunate were at all likely to grasp: Those who did vaguely recognise it shunned the thought like poison. It was too subversive. Social conscience might now and then be roused over particular abuses, such as the slave trade or the shocking treatment of factory workers; but even so, only with great difficulty, and only through the efforts of individual reformers of exceptional vision and resolution. My point is that in those days there was more excuse than there is today for the Christian to confine his Christianity within the horizon of non-economic relations. By now he ought to know

¶26better than to put down the economic injustice of our society to the will of God. Even so far back as fifty years ago moral uneasiness about the system was spreading. The head of the non-conformist family that I mentioned in connection with family prayers was a stock-broker. Usury was forbidden in the Bible, and the distinction between usury and legitimate interest was none too clear. I remember as a boy overhearing anxious discussions on this subject. The kindly and devout stock-broker admitted the force of the argument against him; but, after all, the very structure of society involved stock-broking. — If all the stock-brokers closed down, society would fall into chaos. — As for his personal position, well, he had a family to keep, and he could not earn money in any other way. Most of his critics were not primarily concerned with the anti-social effects of capitalism, but simply with the fact that usury was condemned in the Bible. In general the social conscience of the nineteenth century Christian was sufficiently appeased by subscribing to “charities” and missions. Charity was demanded of us in the Bible; and I have more than once heard it seriously suggested that God had created poverty in order that the more fortunate might have an opportunity of exercising charity. The idea that all human beings, no matter what their status at birth, had equal rights to the means of health, security, pleasure, education, was by no means universal. (Yet there had been a French Revolution!) It was said that if God had been pleased to set you in a humble station and chastise you with poverty and disease, you ought not to complain. These misfortunes were themselves blessings, for they gave you opportunities of practising humility and patience. I remember as a boy being somewhat disturbed by my mother’s Attitude to charity. She was far ahead of the average in her will for social reform

¶27(not, of course, social revolution), but in personal charity she always held that even the most “deserving” poor ought to be grateful for cheap and nasty gifts. When poor relations or retired servants seemed insufficiently pleased with the harsh and ugly but durable clothing which she gave them, she complained that they ought to be thankful to have things that would last, and not bother about looks. OceanofPDF.com

¶28Greek and Latin Literature The other ancient influence which played a great part in forming the nineteenth century mentality was Greek and Latin literature. True, its effects were already far less important in the nineteenth century than they had been in the eighteenth, the seventeenth and the sixteenth, for other forces were already competing with it. After the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 refugee Greeks in Italy had started a cultural ferment which had spread at last even to Britain. Mediaeval thought had by then become doctrinaire and hidebound; and the re-discovery of the classics had an immensely quickening effect on men’s minds. It stimulated them to think for themselves, to use their critical intelligence independently of orthodox theory, and to savour every kind of experience. The influence of genuine Christianity had always been to make men more aware of one another, more responsive to one another, more socially responsible, more capable of community. With the ossification of Mediaeval Christianity, this influence perhaps grew weaker. Social changes also, in fact the break-up of the feudal system and the rise of a class of prosperous and feudally unattached individuals, had probably strengthened the feeling for individuality at the expense of the feeling for community. Renaissance men were on the whole less “members one of another” than Mediaeval men. Under the influence of Renaissance culture a new educational ideal came to be universally accepted. A man could not be a cultivated individual unless he was thoroughly familiar with Greek and Latin literature. It was believed that Greece and Rome had attained a clarity of thought and a delicacy of perception which the crude modern peoples could never reach, but towards which they must always strive, in vain. Inevitably the new movement, which began as a great rebirth and was for centuries the most vital influence in Europe, settled down at last as

¶29another hidebound orthodoxy. Just as in China no one could be considered well educated unless he was well versed in ancient Chinese texts, so in nineteenth century Britain no one could be an educated gentleman unless he could quote a few tags from Virgil or Cicero, and if possible from Euripides, Aeschylus or Homer. All too often these treasured jewels of expression, like the corresponding jewels of Christian scripture, were used less to clarify experience than to silence disagreement by quoting an authority which was supposed to be beyond question. Understanding of “the classics” was believed to be necessary for the proper development of “character,” and therefore the education of the ruling classes was based on it. Education of the masses, on the other hand, was not meant to produce leaders but efficient workers, and so there was no need to give them Greek, or even Latin. Only the public schools and universities were dominated by the classical tradition. Even today it is believed by many that without some knowledge of Greek and Latin it is impossible fully to appreciate our own language, or to use it effectively, or even to think clearly. Many would still say that without Greek and Latin a man cannot develop that detachment and balanced judgment, and that elegant amateurishness, which are needed in the leaders of a gentlemanly Empire. The results of this belief (for good and ill) on our empire, our diplomatic service, our older statesmen, and on our whole political life, I shall not here discuss. Now I do not deny that classical learning may be vitalising, if it is pursued in the right spirit, but I do deny that it is essential, and that it should dominate education. And I insist that its value in the minds of many of its advocates is at bottom a snob value. It is the hallmark of culture and gentility. It distinguishes the “best” people from the common people.

¶30When I was quite a small child in Egypt my father, a shipping agent, began to teach me Latin. Later the job was handed over to an Anglican parson, who, by the way, was already embarking on the process of drinking himself to death. My father’s own classical education had not been very thorough, but he had a vivid respect for the ancients, and he spent much time reading aloud the stories of Greek mythology for my benefit. His enthusiasm for the classics was combined with enthusiasm for modern science. His simple but often exciting experiments and patient explanations roused my interest far more than his classical stories. But his own admiration for the Greeks was sincere and strong, and only exceeded by his brother’s. For the understanding of the nineteenth century I find my father and his younger brother very significant. My father combined a backward-looking reverence for the classics with a forward-looking temper well in advance of most of his contemporaries. His passion for scientific knowledge was nourished by reading Darwin, T. H. Huxley and a host of popular works. He tried throughout his life to keep himself tolerably informed about the ever- advancing explorations of physicists and biologists. Gradually science came to bulk far more largely in his mind than the classics of Greece and Rome, and was eclipsed only by his perennial love of English literature and romantic poetry. My uncle, on the other hand, felt no scientific interest. For him the whole achievement of science was just a flashy modern invention, useful, but without cultural significance. Classical literature and history, on the other hand, had for him all the significance and sanctity which the Bible had for Christians. Every evening, after a hard day’s work in his office or knocking about in the Port Said harbour from ship to ship, he would change into the orthodox starched shirt and white dinner jacket, and after the meal he would retire to read Greek history or translations of Greek and Latin

¶31masterpieces. Both my father and my uncle were greatly respected by all who knew them, not only because of their personal integrity and their detachment from the bickerings of their few compatriots in the town, but also for the cultural interest which enabled them to maintain that detachment; and particularly for their classical lore. For undoubtedly the main influence which kept them straight in a rather crooked little society was not Christianity, which, was for both of them a mere matter of convention, but the ideal of personal integrity which they had derived from the ancient world. Yet their knowledge of that world was mostly second- hand knowledge, obtained through translations. — In my boyhood their example took effect on me to some extent, but my imagination was never really kindled by the classics, and my knowledge of them remained far too slight to have any considerable effect on my mind. Nothing now remains but a phrase or two from Homer. These, I admit, have a certain glamour for me; but looking back as honestly as I can into the past, I reluctantly believe that the main appeal of classical literature for me was just a snob appeal. Classical lore made me one of the “best” people. OceanofPDF.com

¶32Feudalism Another powerful influence in the minds of nineteenth century Englishmen was a hang-over from feudal England. Perhaps I ought to have dealt with the influence of feudalism before the influence of Greece and Rome through the Renaissance. But this is the more convenient place. Moreover, just as the Renaissance was a harking back to the ancient world, nineteenth century respect for feudal values was largely a subsequent harking back to the Middle Ages. Less ancient than Christianity and classical literature, feudalism is in a sense more archaic than either. Fifty years ago, when I was a child, the old feudal landed aristocracy had already long since lost its power, but its prestige, and the glamour of its values were much stronger than they are today. The real aristocracy, if such it can be called, was the class composed of the relatively old-established business families, founded by “self-made” men during the industrial revolution. (How striking, by the way, is that phrase “self-made”! It was coined in an age when money was the measure of a man’s reality. His money was in effect himself.) Those able and ruthless pioneers of industrialism were prone to ape the manners and accept the ideals of the old aristocracy. They sent their sons to the public schools and universities to learn the right values and the right accent. Sometimes they took the trouble to acquire heraldic coats of arms, either by simply inventing them or by discovering obscure connections with ancient families. My uncle in Egypt made a study of heraldry, and of the old families of Devon, our ancestral county. After long and painstaking research he managed to trace our line back to the twelfth century, complete with arms. I confess I shared my uncle’s satisfaction in this achievement, and have still a sneaking and quite irrational snob-pleasure in it, although obviously all families “go back” to the earliest generations of life on earth; and anyhow,

¶33all are inextricably inter-related. It is well to remember that every Englishman alive today is some sort of relative of William the Conqueror; and, for that matter, of Confucius and Jesus Christ also. The nineteenth century sentiment for feudal values probably had many causes. Partly it was due to the sheer picturesque glamour and trappings of feudalism; but it may well have sprung also from a vague sense of the inadequacy of commercial values, and a consequent leaning toward values that were less artificial. The ideal of the “English gentleman” was a product of feudalism established by the renaissance, though it was not clearly conceived till after both these phases had passed. The gentleman was primarily a land-owner, a lord of a manor. He was concerned with supervising agricultural work on his own estate. His interest was in crops, processes, manures. Also he was responsible for the wellbeing of his retainers, and if he took his gentility at all seriously he tried to set them an example of just and kindly behaviour and of religious orthodoxy. He claimed a higher degree of luxury than the commonalty, but in return he felt that he ought to attain a higher standard of personal integrity. His reputation for superior courage was probably based on the fact that in the feudal period he really was more resolute, because he was better nourished. After the industrial revolution the successful men of commerce and industry took the ideal of the gentleman as their pattern. Unfortunately, it was very much easier for them to copy its trappings than to adopt its essential attitude; for they had risen by a relentless individualism, accepting no personal responsibility for those who worked under them. They knew their workers simply as “hands,’’ never as persons, even to the limited extent possible between the landed gentry and his retainers. Consequently, the successful pioneers of the new ruling class were apt to behave with the crudity and meanness later associated with the “nouveaux riche.” The

¶34established gentry regarded the upstart men of money with mingled contempt and apprehension, and as complete outsiders. But money is all- powerful; or was so in the nineteenth century. By sending their sons to genteel schools and universities, these pioneers of industry became also the pioneers of a new gentry. —— In the nineteenth century the ideal of the gentleman, having no longer a basis in the relatively permanent social relations of the small landed estate, tended to become simply a pattern of manners, dress and accent. Increasingly the gentleman gave up being a leader in the common agricultural enterprise and became merely a more or less-polished man of money, occupied either in managing some bit of industry or commerce, or in simply living, and radiating gentility. So strong was the snob motive in him that his whole life was coloured by the impulse to preserve his gentility and assert it to the world. Indeed his snobbery took on a moral tone. To betray the dignity of his class by any eccentric behaviour, whether in dress or social etiquette, or in political allegiance or moral crankiness of any kind, was often felt to be really sinful, and condemned with much more righteous indignation, than the mere breaking of the Christian moral code. In general, to be a snob is to care for the signs of social eminence for their own sake. No doubt in all ages and lands and social classes snobbery has been rife; but surely nowhere and nowhen did it reach deeper into men’s, minds than in nineteenth century England. Every class was subdivided into a hierarchy of snob strata. Even the lowliest member of society persuaded himself that he was a cut above someone or other. The same, of course, is true today. Snobbery is no less prevalent than in the nineteenth century. It had a particularly baleful influence in the inter-war period. But there are at last signs that an increasing number of people are at least becoming aware of the insidiousness of snobbery. This is hopeful.

¶35In the nineteenth century there were two main kinds of snobbery, the old feudal snobbery, based on birth, and the new commercial snobbery, based on money. It is possible that today we are witnessing the growth of a new snobbery, based on the exercise of skill in the co-operative work of the community. I suspect that this is already strong in Russia. In the nineteenth century this was a minor factor. The snob’s ideal was to combine birth and money, but considerable snob-satisfaction could be gained from impecunious gentility, or, better still, nobility. And any family that could afford any sort of a domestic servant would consider itself “gentle.” The relation of mistress and servant was one of the main fields for the expression of snobbery. No doubt this form of snobbery was partly a hang- over from the relation of the feudal lady to her domestic retainers. The nineteenth century mistress held herself responsible for the maid’s morals, and supervised her conduct very closely. Servant girls invariably wore a cap and apron as a badge of menial status, and even on “afternoons out” they were expected to dress in a thoroughly drab and unbecoming manner. It was argued that, since they had not the taste to dress properly, they would only make fools of themselves if they tried to ape their betters. Further, servants must not have “followers.” For some reason it was felt to be peculiarly disgusting, and insulting to their employers, for servants to have any relation with the opposite sex. One of the most popular themes for jokes in Punch (that invaluable treasury of snob humour) was the cook caught by her mistress in the act of entertaining the “bobby” in the kitchen. Mistresses expected their maids to be rather like neuter ants, which are females unsexed by semi-starvation, and content to live wholly for work. Lest this account should seem a caricature, let me add that there were, of course, many decent mistresses, who did cherish their servants, and earn both respect and affection. Nevertheless, the relationship was everywhere

¶36vitiated by the convention of social inequality and snob values. Generosity was poisoned by patronage, kindly solicitude became tyrannous interference. In industry also, at any rate among some of the old-established firms, there were traces of the old feudal snobbery, ns between employer and employed; but far stronger, and increasingly powerful throughout nineteenth century society, was the pernicious snobbery of money. Formerly, wealth without birth and feudal status carried no snob value, but as the industrial revolution advanced, and it became increasingly obvious that the men of money were the real men of power, money developed a snob-value of its own. Money became the universal standard for the measurement of the relative worth of human beings, and an entirely false standard. Those who, through genuine ability, low cunning, or sheer good luck, had plenty of money, were at pains to flaunt it in expensive clothes, furniture, houses, travel and fashionable education for their children. Those who had little of it strove to give the impression that they were well off. To be a “man of substance” was not to be a man of personal solidity and integrity, but simply a man of money. Everything in life was infected by the universal snob-value of money. The rich might assert their monetary superiority in subtler ways than by excessive personal luxury. They might give ostentatiously to charity, in order that their names might appear as large subscribers to hospitals, libraries and church funds. They might collect “art treasures,” rifling Italy, Greece, Germany, France, to embellish their own homes, or found art galleries, which would form lasting monuments both to their gargantuan generosity and to their expensively acquired taste. By subscribing heavily to a political party they might buy knighthoods or peerages. Poverty was not felt to be a mere misfortune; there was something positively culpable about it. It must be concealed by all possible means.

¶37Financial disaster was a hideous disgrace, involving departure from the sunlit sphere of the privileged. No matter how a man might commiserate with his fallen friend on account of his “ruin,” there was apt to be on both sides an obscure and irrational feeling that such misfortunes must be in some mysterious way merited as punishment for some perhaps unwitting sin against the revered god of money. Compared with the old snobbery of birth and feudal status, the new financial snobbery was far more degrading, in that it involved no obligations of the “noblesse oblige” type. Money, as such, gave its possessor unlimited licence for self-indulgence, and no responsibility. Of course, being a Christian or a plain decent-hearted human beings you might gratuitously assume obligations on account of your money, but money itself left you free. You could “do what you liked with your own.” — OceanofPDF.com

¶38Commercialism In order to understand how this disease of money-snobbery arose, we must consider the rise of the modern commercial civilisation which bred it. Feudal society was a vast hierarchy of individuals each born into some fixed status. The villains, the lords of the manors, the great barons, formed a social pyramid, with the king as its apex. A man recognised, at least in theory, particular duties and rights, in relation to both inferiors and superiors. But gradually, within this system two new classes began to appear, namely a proletariat consisting of men who had either fled from or been dismissed from their hereditary places as workers on the manors, and a new commercial class, of merchants and industrial employers, who, by the power of money, gradually won their freedom from their feudal superiors, and continued: to gain power till they were able to dominate the whole social system. By means of money they employed and controlled the proletariat, they challenged and broke the power of the feudal aristocracy, and finally they broke the king’s power too. It is important to understand how circumstances bred a particular- mentality in this ruling class, which reached its zenith in the nineteenth century. Since it was by using their wits in private enterprise that the traders and manufacturers had gained money power, they tended, to believe that individual initiative was all-important for social wellbeing, and that in general individuality was more important than sociality. In religion they were apt to be puritans. Their frugal minds were outraged by the luxury and licentiousness of the feudal aristocracy. They admired the virtues by which they themselves had grown rich, the prudential virtues, such as self-denial, frugality, industry, reliability in financial dealings. They tended to respect private-conscience more than the authority of any church, and intellectual sincerity more than traditional learning. They insisted on individual

¶39freedom, freedom to buy and sell in the open market, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience. State interference they regarded as an unwarrantable restriction of the natural flow of society’s life-blood, namely, money. They insisted on democracy; but what in their hearts they meant by democracy was not rule by the masses, the despised proletariat, but rule by their own class. They demanded that they, their class, and not the aristocracy or the king, should determine public policy. — Inevitably there was a conflict in their minds between the duty of Christian brotherhood, enjoined in their religion, and the social and economic system that grew up under their influence. For Christianity imposed on every man an unlimited responsibility for the welfare of his fellows; while the system was based on the right of every man to fend for himself in the open market, regardless of the consequences to others. In practice the conflict between conscience and the system was nearly always solved by the triumph of the system. In the early stages of the industrial revolution the system, with all its faults, was “delivering the goods.” And “the goods” were very tangible. They consisted of increased prosperity for those who could, afford to buy it, and increased national power for the more fortunate nations, or at any rate for the more fortunate class within those nations. The nineteenth century business man flattered himself that his commercial enterprise, besides gaining him a living, was actually producing the greatest possible happiness for the greatest number. According to his philosophy, if everyone looked after his own interests intelligently in the open market without interference, the result would be the best possible for all. In practice this principle did not work; for the simple reason that, since some were far more able or fortunate than others, there was no equality of bargaining power. Consequently, the upshot of this, system of laissez faire was that a powerful minority gained more and more power over the labour

¶40of others, and the majority became wage-slaves. That is, though citizens of a politically free country, their behaviour was very severely controlled by their economic dependence on their employers. Meanwhile, the spectacular successes of commercial enterprise made men respect “business” with an almost religious awe. Clearly it was not love but business that made the world go round. My father and mother were followers of Carlyle and Ruskin, and therefore strongly opposed to the commercial spirit. But they could not prevent the general atmosphere of money-making from infecting their child. An amusing incident will serve to illustrate the effect of a commercial environment on the growing mind. It also shows that commercialism and nineteenth century Christianity were not necessarily in conflict. As a schoolboy I had got it into my head that engaged couples were always quarrelling, and that the indignant girl often flung the engagement ring into a convenient stream or lake. Now there was a park lake near our house. The bottom of it was probably covered with discarded engagement rings. They could be retrieved by a powerful model steamer with a drag net. I set about founding a company to finance this costly undertaking. A devout great-aunt was staying with us, so I asked her to subscribe sixpence. “Not on Sunday, my dear,’’ she said, “Ask me again tomorrow.” Next morning her place at the breakfast table was unoccupied. I was told that she had gone home by an early train. Now I have no doubt that, though few aunts would be so Sabbatarian today, many schoolboys might be equally commercial. But I doubt whether they could share my intoxicating delusion that I was putting myself in line with the glorious forward movement of the age. To-day commercialism is no less widespread, but it has lost something of its glamour and of its sanctity. In those days anything that interfered with sound business practice was evil. Anything that favoured it, however “shady,” began to seem after all legitimate,

¶41“Business is business,” men said, implying that commercial transactions were the basic reality of life, and all else was mere sentimentality. A man was justified in fighting his trade rivals with all the cunning that he could muster. True, the more respectable business houses prided themselves on their tradition of honesty and decency. There definitely was a code of business morality. Certain kinds of trickery were “not done.” But business morality was very different from Christian morality. For Christian morality was based on mutual aid, and commercial morality was merely a set of restrictions on mutual aggression and mutual diddling. As competition became more severe, and the fight grew fiercer, it became increasingly difficult to maintain even the conventional “honour among thieves.” I have talked to many business men who, kindly and trustworthy in private life, confessed that in business dealings they simply had to lie and cheat and be ruthless, or go under. Others, less sensitive, regarded the whole business system frankly as a savage game. Knowing that every man’s hand was against you, you felt no obligation toward anyone. The most serious aspect of this great business tradition, which of course still has immense power, is that it tolerates and even encourages complete rejection of responsibility toward one’s fellow men, at least within the universe of business. If by cunning you could break a rival, so that he became suddenly a ruined man without the means of keeping his wife and family in health and comfort, well, it was unfortunate for him, but it was nothing to do with you. If your employee proved unfit for his job, or simply was no longer needed, you sacked him, and no one blamed you. Perhaps out of sheer Christian charity you might give him some slight help, but this was gratuitous saintliness on your part. Many “realists” would condemn it as dangerous sentimentality, and an unwarranted interference with the natural workings of economic law. “You can’t possibly,” they would say, “run a

¶42business successfully if you are going to feel squeamish whenever anyone has to be sacked.” Of course there were some business concerns which, quite early on had adopted a different attitude. They went to great trouble and expense to give their workers far better conditions than the average, and to afford them a sense that they were to some extent partners in a common undertaking which was valuable to society. There were housing schemes, welfare schemes, profit-sharing schemes. These enlightened employers claimed that they did this sort of thing not out of Christian kindliness but because in the long run it would pay. They were right; but how interesting that they had to deny their more generous motives, lest they should seem to be violating sound business principles by spending money unprofitably! In many cases this new policy was a really admirable expression of social responsibility. Admirable up to a point. For invariably power remained with the employers. There was often a good deal of benevolent tyranny which roused serious resentment. And anyhow this enlightened sort of management was exceptional. The normal nineteenth century employer accepted no responsibility for the welfare of his employees. If, through the changing incidence of the demand for goods, a factory or a whole industry ceased to be profitable, the workers would of course be dismissed, and the employers would feel no responsibility for them. They simply went to swell the great pool of available cheap labour, without which capitalism could not function. After all, it was argued, the backbone of the country was not the feckless proletariat but the mass of enterprising employers. These kept the wheels of industry going. They risked their hard-won capital in private ventures which would benefit the community, and they could not be expected to operate without the lure of substantial profit. The workers, it

¶43was argued, should be grateful to the employers for opening up new fields of employment, and so affording them a livelihood. If their conditions of work were unpleasant, if they were hard-driven, underfed, diseased, if they had to force their children into employment to gain a few extra pence, they should not complain. Their wages represented what they were actually worth to society. To pay them more, or allow them better conditions, would hamper industry. To keep them in employment when they were no longer needed would be even more damaging. Nothing must be allowed to restrict the natural working of economic law. When the workers dared to combine to increase their bargaining power and secure better conditions, the employers, and indeed the whole social class to which they belonged, felt righteous indignation. Such conduct interfered with the sacred free movement of money. It was therefore justifiable to use every kind of weapon to defeat it. Yet the employers never hesitated to combine among themselves to defeat the workers, nor to use the machinery of the state for the same ends. Inevitably the attitude of the employers produced a corresponding attitude among the workers. Naturally, if a man is to put his heart into his work, he must be able to feel that it is worth while. He must be able to feel that he is getting a reasonable return for his labour; and be must see the work as part of a great common enterprise directed strictly for the good of the community, or “for the glory of God,” if he believes in any sort of God. He must feel that those who control and organise his labour accept a serious responsibility for his welfare as a human person, and are in fact his partners. Instead, commercialism made the workers feel that they were merely being used by the employers for private gain. Employees were treated as animated bits of machinery. And society, through its supposedly, democratic government, took no serious steps to defend the workers against

¶44exploitation. Consequently, they in turn accepted no responsibility toward society. If a man put his heart into his work, if he worked for longer hours than the minimum needed to keep his job, if he took pains to develop his skill beyond the average, if he produced better results per hour, he might indeed benefit himself to some extent, but he benefitted his employers more. Further, he soon found that he was betraying his fellow workers by raising the standard expected of them and very likely he was forcing some of them out of work, and into penury. Consequently, from the point of view of the workers, machinery, which had seemed to promise to be the servant of all men, and to raise the poor into prosperity, came to be regarded as a public enemy. No doubt in some trades, particularly where a high grade of skill was necessary, there remained a strong tradition of British craftsmanship; but this-was a hang-over from an earlier age, when there was more solidarity between master and man, and every worker had at least a hope that in time he would become a master, with a reputation for good work. Industrialism destroyed that hope. The great majority of workers were obviously doomed to remain in the ranks all their lives. And minute specialisation in the processes of industry gave versatility and craftsmanship far less scope for the ordinary workers, and reduced their opportunities of pride in work. If you had merely to shift units from one tray to another all day, you had less to take pride in, and less to call out your powers, than if you had to go through all the processes of making a chair or a boot: and you had no inspiring finished article to show for your labour at the end of the day. — OceanofPDF.com

¶45Mechanism This brings me to — another great factor in nineteenth — century mentality, namely, the — prestige of machinery itself. Before — the industrial revolution the only machines were simple things like spinning- wheels and windmills, and the only sources of power, other than living muscle, were wind and water. Not till steam power had become general, did the idea of machinery begin to play a large part in forming men’s minds. Mechanisation — was so successful that — those — whose lives were given to the perfecting — and propagation of it — as a — means to — Wealth, and even those whose lives were enslaved to it, so that they regarded it as a public enemy, gradually came to be fascinated by it. Some took it as their god; others as their Satan, responsible for all their ills. In the early stages of the industrial revolution, when machinery was still rudimentary, machine-made articles were rightly considered clumsy imitations of hand-made ones. Even at a later stage, when in many fields machinery could produce actually better stuff than handicraft, the prestige of the hand-made remained very strong. Similarly, the old forms of power retained their appeal long after they were outclassed in efficiency. In my childhood on the Suez Canal the shipping people talked regretfully of “the great days of sail,” though obviously steam was even then a far more efficient means of propulsion. It was believed that you could not be a really good seaman, even in steam, unless you had been trained in sail; just as you could not be a really good gentleman unless you had been educated in the good old way. Probably, in the transitional period before the new tradition was properly established, both these contentions were justified. But the motive which made men assert them with passion was in the main merely nostalgia for the good old way. As a child on the Suez Canal, I was horrified by the newest steamers, devoid of yards for sails; but later, as a boy, I

¶46discovered the steamer’s characteristic functional beauty. Already in my childhood machinery was beginning to gain a glamour, and prestige of its own, and the control of mechanism was beginning to afford a new pleasure. My most thrilling toys were model steamboats and locomotives. Not till a much later period, and chiefly after the turn of the century, was this new pleasure to become an almost universal obsession, in fact not until the internal combustion engine came into its own. And not till after the whole period that I am now considering, not till after the First World War, did mechanism have its full effect on men’s minds, at once fascinating and terrifying. For little by little, the machine, which had seemed to be man’s servant, became his tyrant, dominating the whole social order of Europe, and indeed of the world; and changing the very texture of men’s minds, so that they increasingly came to regard the whole universe as pure mechanism, and even their art-forms were deeply influenced, for good and ill, by the forms of machinery. Of course the delight in machinery is admirable, so long as it does not become excessive, blinding one to more important values. And of course mechanised mass production is necessary to modern society. In order to afford fulness of life to all men we must produce the necessities of life as lavishly as possible. But unless we can also keep a place for skilled handicraft and general manual cunning, our society will be seriously impoverished. It is high time to consider the most important of all the influences on the nineteenth century temper, namely modern science. Mechanisation and scientific research augmented one another. Mechanism could not have developed far without science; but science could never have gained its huge prestige had it not produced the spectacular triumphs of mechanisation. And this it would never have done, had it not been stimulated by the demand of

¶47the industrial pioneers for new methods of production. It was the demand for power that led from the observation of the boiling kettle to the triple expansion steam engine, and beyond. On the other hand, it was science itself, working through mechanisation, that caused the whole prodigious change in man’s material circumstances and in his mental attitude. What kind of effect did science have on the mentality of the nineteenth century? Of course even in the present period the scientific temper is very far from universal, and in the nineteenth century its scope was much less. But more and more people were becoming more and more deeply influenced by it, for good and ill. How can one summarise its main characters? It consisted of increased trust in the method of observation and experiment and analytical thought, and it developed a corresponding emotional attitude, namely, one of dispassionate observation, detachment, objectivity, and a disposition never to allow desire to interfere with fact- recording and inference. If you wanted to find out the truth about the expansion of gasses or the distances of stars or the structure of the mind, you must not confuse your task by wishful thinking. The realisation of the distorting effect of emotion on reasoning, led in time to such a passion for being dispassionate that it sometimes developed into a quite irrational and emotional prejudice against emotion itself. Sheer intelligence was deified. Emotion came to be regarded by some as barbarous or childish, and beneath the dignity of civilized man. Another aspect of the scientific spirit is specialism. As the sciences advanced, each gathering more and more facts and theories, it became increasingly difficult for any single mind to be even tolerably well informed in all scientific fields. You could not be a good physicist and a good chemist. And since in industry also specialisation proved to be the way of advancement, specialism as such gained immense prestige. Each science

¶48tended to develop more and more as an independent study, and all the scientific workers and enthusiasts for science tended increasingly to ignore all the fields of human experience that lay beyond their scientific interest. Far from being ashamed of their one-sided, purely intellectual development, they gloried in it; just as the hard-headed business men were glorying in their particular form of specialisation. The scientific method and temper, which had produced such great results in the physical sphere, came to seem reliable in all spheres. And in a sense it was; if it was used properly, and not turned into an excuse for quite unscientific dogmas founded on insufficient evidence and faulty reasoning. Roughly, the rise of the scientific temper had two effects on the minds of ordinary people. It swept away many old beliefs which had no sound foundation; and it implemented new beliefs and new values, some of which were also without sound foundation. It undermined the Christian doctrines about the universe and man’s place in the universe; and it established the doctrine of scientific materialism. When the findings of science began to clash with the Bible story of creation, the first reaction of ordinary people was indignation, and contempt for the scientists. But as the prestige of science grew, they came more and more to accept the theory of evolution rather than the Bible story. The churches had made the tactical mistake of pledging themselves to the literal truth of that story, which from the genuinely religious point of view was not necessary, and from the scientific point of view soon appeared to be hugely improbable. In time, the churches themselves, or most of their adherants, came to accept evolution, and interpret the Bible story of creation as a myth. Inevitably the plain man concluded that, if the desperately defended story of creation had in the end to be abandoned, the other Christian doctrines would sooner or later go too. The defeat of the churches over

¶49evolution was one of the main causes of their steady decline. The other was the triumph of commercial morality over Christian morality, and the fact that the churches made no heroic protest against social injustice. In spite of the fears of the devout, the mere abandonment of Christian beliefs about the universe did not of itself cause a breakdown of morality. Many professed atheists were exceptionally kindly and self-sacrificing, and exceptionally conscious of the difference between right and wrong. But gradually the scientific temper itself developed a new doctrine about the universe which did, little by little, undermine the distinction between right and wrong. This was the doctrine of mechanical materialism. It must not be confused with the Marxian theory of ‘‘dialectical materialism,” to which the following criticisms do not necessarily apply. According to mechanical materialism, the universe, including Human bodies, was simply a vast piece of mechanism made up of the ultimate units of matter studied by physics. The idea of “matter” was gradually replaced by the idea of “energy,” and this again was developed into something more subtle and less intelligible to the plain man; but the principle of materialism remained unaltered in essentials. There was no room in the mechanical system for interference by minds. And so minds had to be regarded as entirely ineffective. Mental events were by-products of physical events, and had no reaction upon physical events. Mind was a mere “glow” set up by the working of the body. There was pleasure and displeasure or pain, but these were caused respectively by the free functioning and frustration of chemical processes in the body. Right and wrong were simply forms of pleasure and displeasure. There was no objective ground for them outside the individual himself. Morality was an illusion.

¶50Now it is probably true to say that up to the end of the nineteenth century itself, the belief in the Bible story was still fairly common. Or rather, a great many people thought they believed it, though most of them did not really believe it. But in the latter part of the nineteenth century more and more people were becoming conscious that after all they did not believe it. They could no longer persuade themselves to the contrary. By the time of the First World War, few people outside of the Catholic Church would have betted at all confidently in favour of the Bible story of creation. But even though in the nineteenth century Christian doctrine was beginning to loose its hold, Christian morality was still secure. No doubt a minority of intellectuals, and an ever-increasing minority, had reached the stage of regarding right and wrong as purely subjective, but it was not until after the First World War that this attitude of ethical scepticism came to be very widespread, or to have its full effect on the minds of those who believed it. For there is often a considerable time-lag between the intellectual acceptance of a theory and its full influence on feeling and action. OceanofPDF.com

¶51Romanticism In the period that I am dealing with in this chapter the full-horror called “post-war disillusion” was still to come, but there were already many symptoms of breakdown. And there had been for long a widespread and rather pathetic movement of revulsion against the whole spirit of commercial civilisation. The Romantic Movement in literature had been a protest against industrialism and against science. Long ago Ossian’s poems and Scott’s novels had turned men’s attention back to the Middle Ages. Wordsworth had glorified the beauties of nature and pointed the way for hosts of machine-ridden workers to find relaxation and seemingly mystical regeneration in “the cheerful silence of the fells.” Already in my childhood many holidays were spent in the Lake District and North Wales. (And how the pioneers of this movement loathed and censured the vast waves of “trippers” that followed them, and spoilt the country-side for them!) Carlyle, Ruskin, William Morris, each in his own way had inveighed against the tyranny of the machine and the immorality of commercialism. Their influence percolated far and wide. Fifty years ago a minority, including my parents, were ardently interested in pre-Raphaelite painting, Gothic architecture, wild country, the “Back to the Land” movement, and such schemes as Ruskin’s “Guild of St. George,” which sought to restore the spirit of mediaeval economy by inducing townsmen to go and settle on the land in little communities of a semi-religious kind. It is now easy to see that this movement toward medievalism was bound to fail. It was out of gear with the historical trend of the period. Circumstances were driving society in a very different direction. But also, though its motive was largely a sentimental nostalgia for “Merrie England,” it did spring from a realisation that there was something very wrong with contemporary society. And its leaders were right in supposing that what was

¶52wrong was what Carlyle had called the “cash nexus,” the principle according to which the only effective relation between individuals was one of irresponsible buying and selling for private profit. It was irresponsible and uncontrolled commercialism that had led to the prostitution of science, the wage-slavery of the masses, the destruction of pride in craftsmanship and of the sense of co-operation in a great common enterprise. But though the motive in this protest against commercialism was right, the suggested alternative was wrong. The attempt to restore the mediaeval spirit was doomed to fail. If it had succeeded, it would have stifled all hope of real progress. The leaders of this movement had no clear grasp of the forces making for social change. They succeeded in arousing a widespread yearning for a mythical past; but they failed to persuade the mass of ordinary people that the clock ought actually to be put back. OceanofPDF.com

¶53Progress In spite of all the horrors of industrialism, there was indeed in the nineteenth century a growing belief that society was magnificently progressing, and that progress was inevitable. The idea of progress had become for many the core of something very like a new religion. This was the result of two influences, namely, the familiarity of constant improvements in the material conveniences of civilisation, and the spread of the belief in biological evolution. Throughout the nineteenth century material progress had advanced: swiftly and steadily, for all classes except the proletariat. And even they had shared to some extent through the advancement of the social services, such as improved water-supply, sanitation, railway travel, gas and electric lighting, and medical care. If you had been brought up in this kind of environment, you could scarcely help assuming that progress was bound to go on for ever, and that there was some sort of bias in the universe tending toward progress. The belief in biological evolution reinforced this optimism about material progress. Evidently, it was said, progress had been going on for millions of years. The great story of the evolution of man from primitive living creatures in the early ocean shallows was an inspiring saga. Evidently there was some kind of fundamental bias in the nature of the universe, determining events so that higher and higher types must appear. Some thought of this as a “life force,” or as a purposeful god. Others, loyal to the doctrine of materialism, insisted that there was no evidence for any such purposeful bias in the universe; but insisted also that “natural selection,” and “the survival of the fittest” were principles quite capable of explaining the irresistible march of progress. Both parties assumed that progress was inevitable. Homo Sapiens, whatever the minor fluctuations of his fortunes

¶54must surely pass on from strength to strength. The abler individuals and nations must surely by the exercise of their wits triumph over the less able; and so, by ruthless natural selection, the race must become abler and abler, and more and more in command of its environment. Some enthusiasts for evolution went so far as to deplore the modern tendency to found institutions for the help of the less able, to care for the physical weaklings, the mentally deficient and those who had gone under in the economic dog- fight. For this policy, they said, ensured that the unfit should survive along with the fit; and so the natural trend of evolution would be checked. And later it was argued that since natural selection had ceased to operate on man, he must “take charge of his own evolution,” improving the human stock so as to put an end to all serious diseases and disabilities, and developing human intelligence far beyond its present level. In spite of the very general faith in the inevitability of progress, there was no clear idea about what the word “progress” ought really to mean. Some assumed that it meant simply continuous improvement in material comfort and luxury, such as better food, clothing, housing, a vast increase in labour-saving gadgets, faster and faster travel, shorter working hours, new methods of taking pleasure, increased freedom from state interference. Others, mainly among those who were themselves accustomed to comfort and luxury, and were disgusted by the vulgarity of those who were experiencing a little of it for the first time in their lives, declared that the mere spreading of material comforts over a larger proportion of the population was not progress at all. In fact, it might be the reverse. But most people were sufficiently human to see that, whatever else progress involved, it certainly did include a very great improvement in the material conditions of the workers.

¶55Those who admired science affirmed that progress must include not only increased comfort and luxury but also increased knowledge of the material universe and understanding of “the working of the mind “ as a consequence of “the working of the body.” Earnest but conventional Christians said that real progress must be spiritual progress, by which they meant in the main two things, namely a spread of religious observance and a rise in the standard of moral behaviour according to the orthodox code. In both these respects it seemed to many devout Christians that, far from progress being assured, there was a steady deterioration. Others, infected by the general optimism, were able to persuade themselves that, though church-going and doctrinal belief were in decline, people were in some ways becoming more religious in essential spirit. For on the whole, as the century advanced, and as the workers became more vocal, moral uneasiness about society spread, and more action was taken to do away with some of the more flagrant injustices. Few, very few, in the nineteenth century, could as yet see that science was going to make possible an entirely new kind of human world, in which not only would there be a decent life for every human being, but also everyone would have the means of fulfilling his human potentiality to the utmost. As yet, few people had begun to see that the life of the species as a whole might some day become such as, to our warped and under-nourished minds, would seem super-human. OceanofPDF.com

¶56Imperialism For the British, pioneers of industrialism, and founders of the empire ‘‘on which the sun never sets,” it was easy to believe that the main instrument of human progress must henceforth be British Imperialism. It was the white man’s task to civilise the whole human race; and the British, by right of superior prowess, had assumed the white man’s burden. When I was a child in Egypt, traffic through the Suez Canal was steadily increasing, and the great majority of the ships flew the Red Ensign. Though Egypt was not a British possession, a British warship was always stationed in the harbour. The Empire itself was steadily increasing. As a boy I naively believed that the British Empire would some day include the whole world. — And how I pitied those who did not belong to the one supreme nation! It was very generally assumed that there was something in the blood of the inhabitants of this island that made them specially good at ruling “backward races.” And the public school spirit, embodying the tradition of the English gentleman, was thought to be the finest flower of human nature. The gentlemanly attitude to all social subjects was right, and ought to be spread throughout the world. The English abroad prided themselves on combining kindness, justice and firmness. Not only (it was said) did they govern far better than any other race, but the natives recognised their superior worth. The example of personal conduct set by the English was regarded as a great civilising influence. One of the secrets of the Englishman’s power was believed to be that he held himself aloof from the races that be had to rule. He lived his own life in his own quarters, ignoring their culture and tradition. Inferior white races, such as the French and the Italians, might treat the natives more or less as equals, even inter-marrying with them. But this was a great mistake. If an Englishman married a native, he was sinning against the prestige of his own race. We were the Herrenvolk.

¶57What is the truth about British Imperialism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? The Empire had been founded piecemeal by traders for the sake of trade. The commercial class, seeking new markets, traded with the “backward countries,” lent money to them, and found itself forced to establish political control so as to secure peaceful conditions for trading, and the payment of interest on its loans. No doubt the original motive of sheer exploitation has been increasingly complicated by the theory that the Empire is held on trust for the natives themselves, that the aim of imperial power is to develop native resources for the good of the native population, and to educate the natives for democracy. No doubt there has been a good deal of genuine civilising, more so in some colonies than in others. No doubt the rank and file of our empire-builders have been largely inspired by the will to make a good job of the work entrusted to them, according to their lights. But there is another side to the picture. The whole life of many of our colonies has been effectively controlled by business interests. But what has been the result for the natives? We have sold them our goods, at a high profit to ourselves. We have exploited their resources, paying them wretched wages to work for us. Of the total product of their labour, the smallest proportion has been given back to them in wages; a certain amount has gone to the improvement of their country or its social services; but by far the largest part has passed out of their country altogether in the form of dividends to British shareholders. It is said that for every shilling earned today by the native miner in Rhodesia, the resident white man secures a pound, while ten pounds go to the investor in Britain. In many cases we have allowed our settlers and industrialists to deprive the natives of their lands, and have thereby forced them to work for wages as agricultural labourers, or in the mines. Add to this that we have broken down their

¶58native institutions and culture by the impact of our alien civilisation, without giving them full access to the best products of our own civilization. We have always made it clear to them that we regarded them as inferior races. Or rather, we always did so in the nineteenth century. Recently a change has perhaps begun to show itself, partly because the innate superiority of the white races is no longer so plausible as it was in the period of triumphant capitalism, partly because the Russians have shown that there is another way of developing backward countries, partly because the Nazis have, quite unintentionally made all theories of racial superiority look ridiculous. OceanofPDF.com

¶59Personal Conduct I have been describing some of the main influences which determined the temper of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth. In doing so have also described some of their effects. Other important characteristics of the period remain to be considered, features not so much of public life as of personal manners and conduct. In this sphere a great change was already beginning toward the end of the nineteenth century itself, and its tempo accelerated during the early years of the twentieth century. The First World War speeded it up even more. Consequently, the behaviour which was typical forty or fifty years ago was in many ways extremely different from that which became general between the two Wars. In the nineteenth century, manners and customs, and morals also, were far more bound by convention than they are today. A great deal of formality which has since come to seem unnecessary was then carefully preserved. Greetings and farewells were far more ceremonious. There was more bowing and scraping, more taking off of hats, giving up seats to ladies, shaking hands. (How well I remember the distress of “saying good night” as a child! The room was often full of visitors, and I was made to go round the whole company, idiotically shaking hands with each guest.) The title “Mr.” was far more frequently used by men when speaking to one another. Friends less easily reached the stage of using Christian names. Visiting cards were much more common, and the etiquette of leaving the right kind and the right number was taken very seriously. A little tray (preferably of silver) was often kept on the hall table to receive the cards of departing callers. To suggest that this ceremonial was in any way reminiscent of the behaviour of dogs at gate-posts would have assured one’s banishment from polite society. The paying of “calls” was a very important part of the life of any middle class housewife who aspired to be well considered by the right people. My

¶60mother, like all her friends, had a “day,” and her cards bore the legend “At Home, first and third Tuesdays,” or whatever day she had chosen. I do not know how much of this etiquette remains today, but it is certainly very much reduced. As a child in Egypt and as a boy in England, I sometimes had to be present on these occasions, washed, and in a stiff Eton collar. I handed round the cakes and cups of tea, and sat on the least comfortable chair. Clothes in those days were more formal, and much heavier. It was believed that if the skin was not heavily protected from the cold air one would catch a chill. In particular, if you got your feet wet, you would probably incur a sore throat. If you had walked on the wet grass, you must change your boots as soon as you came in. And grass, apparently, was always wet. Throats were always very carefully covered. When at last young women began to wear blouses open at the neck, older people considered them dangerous. My mother named them “pneumonia blouses.” Since people were constantly over-clad, they were apt to perspire heavily, and then any sudden chilling-off might cause some illness or other. The remedy was thought to be still heavier clothing. Draughts were one of the major enemies of the human species. Windows should always be kept shut; or in very hot weather they might be opened “just a crack.” But it was better to air the room for a few minutes while no one was in it. One of the servants could do this. As a small boy I used to make very sensitive little paper windmills with which to detect draughts in unexpected places. This caused my mother endless trouble, as she could not rest till she had done her utmost to destroy each of these little breezy intruders from the outside world. The formality of clothing in the nineteenth century was oppressive. At my day school I wore a stiff Eton collar every day, with gloves and a bowler

¶61hat on Sundays. Being a vile little snob, I clamoured for a short-jacketted Eton suit, and finally got it; for Sundays only. A city uncle of mine climbed the Welsh mountains in a morning coat and striped trousers, and a square- topped hard black hat, a cross between a bowler and a topper. We all wore stiff collars, even on drenching days on the moors, except my father, who was far less conventional than his young son, and often put me to shame by his informality. There has been a remarkable change, by the way, in the standard of adventurousness of such expeditions. Peaks that in those days were altogether too dangerous for the ordinary person are now over-run by all sorts. Slopes which in the old days were descended step by step with the aid of a stick we now charge down at full speed. No doubt this change is due to the gradual acclimatising of townsmen to the hills. OceanofPDF.com

¶62Sex From the consideration of clothes I now pass to the nineteenth century attitude towards sex. So much has already been said on this subject that a few words will suffice. There was of course a very strong taboo against uncovering any part of the body except the face and hands, and for women in evening dress the upper part of the breasts. The effect of this occasional display of dazzling female flesh was overwhelming, at least to the adolescent. Since women’s legs were always invisible, their ankles, which were occasionally exposed when they lifted their skirts to cross a muddy street, were very alluring. “A neat ankle,” though clad in the black cashmere of those days, was a treasured possession. I can remember, by the way, as a very small child, discovering with amazement that women had legs under their long skirts. The nineteenth century attitude to sex was no doubt partly a result of the puritan influence on the commercial class in the days when that class was climbing to power. But this scarcely explains the extraordinary exaggeration of sexual prudery in Britain and America. I have heard stories which I can believe true, of mothers bathing their babies under a covering garment, so that the naked flesh should not be exposed to the eyes of the mother who had produced it; of small boys making themselves ill by heroic efforts to refrain from the sin of urinating. Of piano-legs put into trousers for decency’s sake; of nude ancient statues being made decent by drapery or a fig leaf. These, no doubt, are extreme instances; and I cannot vouch for the authenticity of all of them. But they do epitomise Victorian prudery in its more extravagant form. Average behaviour, though less fantastic, was more than a little prudish. Boys and girls grew up with a sense that sex was unclean, unmentionable, and a snare of Satan. They were told nothing. Their questions were fobbed off, or greeted with inconsequent scoldings.

¶63They therefore had to make furtive and guilty discoveries on their own account. In these circumstances it was inevitable that nineteenth century behaviour should be deeply, influenced by suppressed sexual cravings, and that, when at last the taboos were removed, the reaction should be violent. Visitors from the East, it is said, are often struck by the extraordinary exaggeration of sex-interest in Europe. This is no doubt more obvious today than in the nineteenth century, because sex-interest is expressed with less restraint in earlier days its influence was no less extensive, but disguised. OceanofPDF.com

¶64The Sexes The false attitude to sex itself thoroughly poisoned the relations between the sexes. Young people of opposite sexes were seldom allowed to be alone together. They had always to be sharply watched. Every girl, it was assumed, wax in constant danger, of being treated improperly by any young man who came across her. Young women were seldom allowed out of doors unattended. The chaperon system was universal, and a dreadful burden for all concerned, particularly the chaperons. Even after the turn of the century, when standards were already changing, it was considered inadvisable for engaged couples to be left alone together for long. When I was a very young man I caused a flutter by taking two girls to the theatre. I had supposed that there was safety in numbers! In the typical nineteenth century view women were at once inferior to men and superior. They were incapable of the activities distinctive of the noble male; and so, inferior. They were assumed to be creatures of emotion, incapable of any kind of dispassionate and penetrating reasoning. Their place was in the home. Fifty years ago this attitude was not nearly so extreme as it had been earlier, for instance in the time of the Brontes, but it was still such that a later age can get a lot of self-gratulatory fun by contrasting Victorian prudery with, our more “enlightened” attitude. In those days women had to be constantly guarded from the rude impact of the world. The suggestion that they might sometimes have professions (other than the oldest profession in the world) was unseemly, and rather comic. That a woman should ever want to be, or suppose herself capable of being, a doctor, or a lawyer, was almost unbelievable. If she did conceive such a fantastic idea, it must be ridiculed out of her. You might as reasonably allow your cat or your guardian angel to train for a profession. No doubt she might be a teacher or a governess, a singer, a pianist or a violinist, or even,

¶65in very exceptional cases a novelist or a poetess but it was inconceivable that she should ever be an architect or an engineer. Of course, there was the stage, but no really nice girl would want to be an actress, making an exhibition of herself, and living in sin. Because of their temperamental differences from men, women were educated differently. No one as yet suggested that the temperamental difference was in the main actually the result of their different education. The aim of the young ladies’ seminary, and of the later high school for girls, was to fit girls not for the world but for the marriage market, to make them eligible, to equip them to catch an eligible man, wealthy enough to keep them in sufficient style. They received extremely little training to cope with the kind of life which marriage would force upon them. And so they had generally no idea of what they were going to be up against, unless, perhaps, through dark hints from an anxious mother on the eve of the wedding. They were not seriously trained for maternity, nor even for house-keeping. Instead, they were given “deportment,” and certain “accomplishments,” such as sketching or singing. The aim (largely unconscious, no doubt) was to give them snob-value for the prosperous male, seeking an elegant and expensive ornament for his home. The rest must take care of itself. In view of all this wrong-headedness, it is perhaps surprising that so many marriages were, on the whole, successful. Genuine personal love, which is perhaps commoner than the cynics believe, is able to triumph over a good deal of hostile convention, though not without suffering. I find it quite impossible to believe of the nineteenth century married couples whom I encountered in my young days (uncles and aunts and friends of my parents) that they were all, or very many of them, utter failures. Since pre- marital relations between the sexes were supposed to be limited to the kissing and fondling of engaged couples, the shock of plunging suddenly

¶66into a far more intimate, and a life-long partnership, was inevitably very great. Moreover, if the partners really had neither sex information nor personal experience of sexual intercourse before marriage, it was all too likely that their ignorance and clumsiness on the honeymoon would result in serious psychological damage to one or both of them, and the ruin of their marriage. And since divorce was regarded as disgraceful, the ruined partnership would probably be maintained for the sake of appearances. The children would be brought up in an atmosphere of conflict and recrimination, and their characters would probably be gravely warped. Since women had an inferior status to men in the eyes of the law, and restricted property rights, and since anyhow they were supposed to be incapable of managing their own affairs, every woman was expected to be under the care of some man, whether father, husband or brother. To a large extent women were still regarded as the property of men. They were property that was coveted, easily damaged, and must be kept under strict control. On the other hand women were, at least in theory regarded as superior to men in certain respects. They were supposed to be capable of brilliant flashes of “divine feminine intuition.” They had a special gift of sympathy. There was something holy about womanhood. They attained a “spiritual purity” of which few men were capable. This belief was probably a relic of feudalism, of the knight’s adoration of his lady. To summarise, in the nineteenth century, women were treated on the whole as something between chattels and angels. They received far more conventional respect than they do today; but they were given far less respect as human persons, as men’s comrades in the adventure of living, different from men, no doubt, but essentially their equals.

¶67Even so long ago as my childhood the Victorian attitude was already changing. The movement for the “emancipation of women” was gaining ground. My mother, for instance, was among the early women cyclists, in a long dress, the edge of which was surrounded with lead discs to keep it down decently over her ankles. Much later came the “suffragette” movement, women politicians, lawyers, doctors. As an undergraduate I met one of the first young women who was training to be a solicitor. The World War of 1914 accelerated women’s emancipation. For the first time they undertook formal national service in semi-military organisations. Soon woman’s status leapt forward to be approximately equal to man’s. OceanofPDF.com

¶68Parents and Families Family life is another matter in which nineteenth century behaviour was different from that which is common today. My mother used to tell me how her sea-faring father, when he was home from a voyage, used to spend his evenings reading the newspaper with the one candle between the outstretched paper and his face, while his sons and daughters, and his wife also, sat in outer darkness. Those were the days when a boy was expected to address his father as “Sir,” and when wives quite often spoke to their husbands as “Mr.” So-and-so. In my early days this patriarchal spirit had already been much tempered by a more human relationship. My father expected no deference. Already for him the relation between parent and child was one of man-to-man friendliness, but in this, as in some other respects, he was something of a pioneer. However, in spite of this happy relationship there were many things in my childhood which underlined my inferiority. For instance, I was frequently sent out of the room so that the adults could talk freely, particularly when they wanted to discuss me, and what was to be done about me. This practice used to fill me with rage, fright and distrust. Nineteenth century parents were much more inclined than those of today to regard their children as possessions. No doubt parents are often possessive today, but they are not so frank about it. Many a devoted mother is ruthlessly possessive without knowing it, seeking to bind her children to her by appeals for their affection or, more subtly, contriving to hold them constantly in her debt by means of her motherly devotion and service. But the mental climate has changed, and to make undisguised claims upon one’s children is “not done,” at any rate in families that have kept pace with the times. But in the old days things were different. A father naturally regarded his children as his property, held, no doubt, on trust from God, but none the

¶69less his to mould as he willed. And their mother felt toward them simply as an extension of herself. For the over-worked and under-paid factory hand, children were a potential source of income, and had to be put out to work as soon as possible. For all classes an important motive for having children was simply the need to ensure that someone would feel responsible for one in old age. This motive still flourishes today, but is less frankly acknowledged. Increasingly it is coming to be regarded as a more or less disreputable motive. Gradually people are waking up so far as to be shocked by the spectacle of the spinster daughter who, having spent the best part of her life in looking after her ageing parents, finds herself after their death completely stranded. The typical nineteenth century family was a little ingrown society in which only the father had the centre of gravity of his life outside the family. The mother was primarily a mother and a housewife. The children were expected to regard the family as the most real thing in their lives, to grow up in dutifulness toward their parents, and loyalty to one another, and to allow their minds to be moulded to the pattern imposed by the father, or in some cases by the mother. The result was all too often disastrous. A family environment which should have provided the growing mind with an unforgettable experience of the genuinely human relationship, often gave them instead an experience of oppression, veiled or unveiled, and generated in themselves a fatal conflict between affection and resentment. No wonder that when the religious sanctions of family life were weakened, a violent reaction against the family set in, and reduced it in the inter-war period to a thing for contempt. But like nineteenth century marriage, nineteenth century family life was not nearly so uniformly bad as it was made out to be by those who reviled it from a later period. I at any rate have known more

¶70families in which affection on the whole triumphed over antagonism than those in which affection was killed. OceanofPDF.com

¶71Summary I have described those features of nineteenth and early twentieth century behaviour which seem to me most significant for understanding the great contrast between that period and the next, the inter-war period, from which we have now emerged. Some of the characteristics which I have recorded, such as the attitude to sex, changed violently and almost into their contraries soon after the First War. Others, such as commercialism, did not reach their full expression until the eve of the Second War; yet, even while they were at their height, their antitheses were already gaining strength, more or less underground; or else far from Britain. Thus, while in Britain commercialism’s antithesis, the passion for self-expression in communal enterprise, was still only an ill-directed yearning, it seems to have become the established temper in Russia. Let me summarise the main conclusions of this chapter. The heyday of the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century was a time of unbounded confidence in the future of Britain and the human race. It seemed impossible that progress should ever cease, or be side-tracked into a highly mechanised condition in which the spirit must die. Progress was in the main thought of as ever-increasing luxury and individual freedom from social restraints, freedom to use one’s wits for climbing the social ladder. Lip service was paid by most people to Christianity, but since the very structure of society was utterly in conflict with Christianity, and since science had gravely damaged Christian doctrine, the churches were engulfed in a mist of insincerity. Consequently they steadily lost adherents. The weakening of Christian moral sanctions, and the universal hypnotisation by economic law and the theory of “economic man” made men increasingly irresponsible in their dealings with one another.

¶72There were, of course, many individuals who earnestly withstood the general tendency toward sheer individualism, who both in private and in public tried to behave with genuine respect and responsibility toward their neighbours. But those who did so at all effectively were very few. There was, too, a great movement of social reform. Public conscience was being steadily awakened. The capitalist rulers were sufficiently prosperous to be able to afford concessions to the increasingly insistent demands of organised labour. But reforms were piecemeal. There was no widespread realisation of the fundamental wickedness of the existing social system, no deep will to transform it into something at once more humane and more in accordance with the professed religious principles of the age. There was no general will to plan society through and through for the wellbeing of the common man. The curse of the whole period was that the social system exaggerated the individualism of ordinary people, and made them irresponsible toward their neighbours. The individual self seemed the supremely real thing. Other selves were outside one, and they could legitimately be used whenever possible as means for one’s own advancement. And advancement tended to be measured solely by the money-standard. Hence the universal money- snobbery which had a strangely hypnotic power over most men, and falsified all their social relations. But, evil as nineteenth century society was, it had its virtues. They were rather naive and barbarous virtues, but they had a real moral power in men’s minds. The moral rot had not gone nearly so far as it was destined to go between the two Wars. Men still had the courage of their convictions, even if their convictions were often silly or base. Even the crazy gospel of commercialism did still afford many people something like a real “way of life.” They could still with some justice say: “At least we are getting a move

¶73on, we are making things hum, we are providing the material for a better world some day.” The imperialists, also often took their faith very seriously. They really believed that the British had a mission, and the belief had a real effect on their conduct. Genuine Christian faith, too, still existed. Though it often turned people into insufferable bigotts, it also gave them a certain moral solidity and courage. And many who had abandoned their Christian doctrines still clung to the Christian virtues, honestly trying to practise them. No, bad as the period was, something far worse was already brewing. But even in the nineteenth century the rot which was to undermine society so thoroughly between the two Wars was already a disease that was steadily eating its way into all men’s minds, and into every region of society’s life. I believe it is possible to put one’s finger on the source of the whole plague. It was a two-fold source, each part of which was closely connected with the other. Commercialism had fomented self-regard to such an extent that mutual responsibility had come to seem “unrealistic.” At the same time science had undermined the old faith so seriously that the old moral sanction had lost its power. Science had also undermined men’s respect for human nature. Man was after all “just an animal.” The soul was a delusion. So there was nothing worth bothering about, and the best plan was to look after one’s own interest as effectively as possible. Such was the nightmare of futility that was already brewing in the period that I have “the day before yesterday;” though as yet only a few people were conscious of it. Strange that the period which was so strong in individualism was so lacking in respect for individuality, for the personality of individual men and women! In the period which I must now consider individualism become even more extravagant, and contempt for individuality even greater; but at

¶74the same time, in this darkest period of all, the Inter-War Period, a new hope was gradually to formulate itself. OceanofPDF.com

¶75CHAPTER 3. YESTERDAY The failure of the League of Nations NINETEENTH CENTURY SOCIETY contained the seeds of its own social and moral ruin, and in the period between the two Wars these seeds bore their poisonous fruit. In western Europe this brief period of twenty years was one of great scientific advance and marvellous new amenities; but it was also one of extreme misery and moral degradation. Indeed, moral degradation was perhaps its outstanding characteristic, and was due to the fact that the social structure, and the established morality which that structure expressed, were quite inadequate to the new conditions of human life. But though in the west moral degradation was the most obvious characteristic, a new order and a new morality, yes, and a new religious feeling, were being born in Russia; and even in the West, though the will for a new order and new values was always defeated, it was really at work throughout the period, and slowly gathering power in spite of despair. The First World War had hastened the process of disintegration which had so long been at work in capitalist society and culture. The very fact that war on a great scale was possible in the civilised world went far to break man’s faith in civilisation, and even in human nature. When peace came, there was a wave of hope. At last there would be a happier world. The new League of Nations would establish international justice and security, and at home we should have a land fit for heroes to live in. But whatever the incidental successes of the League, as a world-wide political system it failed utterly. America deserted it at the outset France and

¶76Britain used it as an instrument for national power, in fact for securing their dominance over Europe, and their imperial influence abroad. There was no central authority, and no centrally-directed armed force. The statesmen who controlled the League were primarily servants of the great national states, and they never seriously tried to make the League work. Soon, the “Have- Not” states discovered that no relief for their grievances was to be obtained through the League, which the “Have” states managed for their own interests. And so they made secret preparations for violence. In time, occasions offered for a tentative use of it, and they found that the League’s attempts to restrain their aggression were timid and feeble. It is easy to see now, after the event, why the League failed. Behind the many causes which I have mentioned lay the deeper cause, namely, that men’s minds were not yet ready to pay the price without which an ordered world could not be founded. They were still emotionally enslaved to the sentiments of the old world. Even though some of them recognised intellectually that those old sentiments were disastrous, very few could abandon them. Men feared for the security of their nations; they hated other nations. The financial ruling class in every great state was greedy for the spoils of commercial imperialism. The men of money were jealous for their freedom to buy and sell for profit, and to set the workers at home and in the backward lands to work for them. The failure of the League was of course in a sense, inevitable, because of the economic structure of the national states. Capitalism involved competition for foreign markets, and therefore imperial conflict. But economic forces are abstractions. What is concrete is the motives of human beings, acting in some particular environment. The fact that capitalism survived, when it was already economically far out of date, and doing grievous harm both internationally and within each state, was due not to any

¶77fatalistic economic forces, but to a failure of insight and of moral integrity on the part of the financial ruling class, a failure which, no doubt, was caused largely by economic influences. On the one hand the men of money simply could not understand that the system of relatively free commercial enterprise was bound to lead not to general prosperity and peace, but to wage-slavery and war. On the other hand, in spite of their self-deceiving noble professions, whenever they were faced with a choice between an act promising private profit or class power and an act, dangerous from this point of view, but promising social well-being or world harmony, they tended fatally to choose the way of short-term personal advantage. This moral failure, rooted, of course, in the strong but not all-powerful self-regarding motives inherent in human nature, was greatly favoured by the prevailing temper of an age in which all human beings were brought up to believe (in spite of perfunctory moral teaching that economic self-interest was in the long-run the only effective motive, that idealism was sheer sentimentality, and that fierce unrestrained competition was the way to social well-being. In such cultural conditions the more social and more far- seeing motives are at a grave handicap. It will not make much difference what a child is taught about the rightness of loving-kindness and mutual responsibility if it grows up in a society the whole structure and process of which is based on cut-throat competition between individuals, and between groups or classes. The League failed not merely because the national governments who controlled it always put national self-interest before loyalty to the League, but because of a very widespread disillusion and cynicism. This led most people to believe that “idealistic” schemes were fundamentally “unrealistic,” and so doomed always to fail. It might he said that the League failed because men lacked both the faith and the will to make it succeed. More truly, it failed because they could not see that

¶78idealism, if it is in line with the general pressure of circumstances, is far more realistic than ordinary short-sighted realism. OceanofPDF.com

¶79Unemployment When, between the two wars, the economic life of the capitalist countries began to show signs of breaking down completely, unemployment confronted the ruling class with a spectacular test of their sincerity. The unemployed became an ever-greater section of the total working population, and the employed themselves, were either working short hours or living in constant dread of unemployment. Their wages were too small to keep them and their families in health. Hosts of workers were sickly, and haunted by despair. As for the unemployed, besides being undernourished, they had to spend their days in a spiritually-ruinous idleness, tormented by a sense of utter futility; or so far deadened by idleness that they no longer cared whether their lives were futile or not. All of them very naturally felt a deep contempt and loathing against society, because it could find no use for them, and took almost no responsibility for them. The government’s treatment of the unemployed in the Inter-War Period showed very clearly what was wrong with the old values. Our rulers simply did as little as they dared. They argued that the most important problem was to restore the country to financial soundness. They could not conceive that the true wealth was not money but human beings, and that to constitute wealth, human beings must be well fed, healthy, contented, hopeful, educated, skilled, and allowed to use their skill in socially useful ways. They could not see that to let millions human beings rot in idleness and penury was far more dangerous than to take financial risks in order to set industry going again. That this irresponsibility was also a violation of the most sacred principle of their own professed religion was a fact which lay beyond the range of their imagination. Their lack of understanding and of active sympathy was due at bottom to a moral blindness which in turn was

¶80due to the blinding effect of the economic system and the prevailing individualistic climate. I have blamed the government, but of course we were all to blame, in greater or less degree, according to the extent of our power to effect policy, and our failure to use that power. When the “hunger-marchers” flocked toward London in protest, and were sometimes harshly treated by the authorities, many of us felt righteous indignation, but only a few did anything concrete about it. The least we can do now is to honour those who were more active; like Max Plowman, who devoted himself so splendidly to forcing the wrongs of the unemployed upon the lazy public conscience. OceanofPDF.com

¶81Disillusionment To sum up, the War itself and the appalling shame of unemployment, combined with the luxury of the rich and the commercial rackets of the business world, turned western civilization into a thing of contempt. Other influences had the same effect. Biologists were popularising the view that man was just an instinct-dominated animal with superior cunning. Biochemists were very successfully explaining more and more of the reactions of living tissues in terms of chemical laws, and working toward a completely chemical and mechanistic account of all human behaviour. Freudian psychologists reduced all man’s “highest” cultural aspirations to the disguised expression of infantile cravings; and chiefly to sexual cravings, which the established culture regarded as disreputable. In particular they discovered that the sense of moral obligation was derived from the child’s secret conflict of love and hate in relation to his parents. And his “love” was generally said to be nothing but a combination of cupboard love and sheer sexual lust. Thus moral principles, even the “noblest” and most cherished, were without objective sanction, and owed their strength merely to the prestige power of the parental will, or to the spell of tribal custom, or the fiat of a ruling class. Love in this view was but a subtle form of self-gratification. Christian brotherhood was sheer fantasy. Belief in a God was merely a projection of the child’s trust in the benevolence and power of the parents. The universe was entirely purposeless, and consciousness was but an extremely rare accident in it. At death, of course, the individual mind simply ceased to exist. And ultimately, with the fatal working out of the physical law of entrope, life and mind would be frozen out of the whole cosmos. Against this view the Churches protested; but they had lost their authority. With some exceptions the religious leaders had failed to give a clear moral lead in the

¶82matter of unemployment. They said a good deal about the unchristian irresponsibility of leaving the unemployed to rot; but mostly they refrained from pointing out that in this instance Christianity demanded a revolutionary change in the whole system of private ownership. Consequently, religious faith, which was anyhow being undermined by scientific materialism, was further weakened by a widespread sense of moral insincerity among the champions of religion. Democracy also was coming into bad odour. Rule of the people by the people and for the people was clearly a farce, since most of the people were in effect wage-slaves. It appeared that the men of money with their immense powers of propaganda, could always trick the electors into voting for the established order, no matter how hostile that order to the well-being of the community. As for liberty, it appeared to be in practice merely liberty for the financially powerful to exploit the weak. And culture? Art merely afforded symbolical expression to the repressed infantile cravings, and found its most characteristic form in the Surrealist addiction to dream-like grotesques. The iconoclastic temper and daring experiments of all the arts in the Inter-War Period were wholesome and fruitful protests against the false aesthetic standards of an earlier period, and against false moral and social standards too; but because there was as yet no clear and comprehensive vision to take the place of the old faded vision, all these movements were rather cathartic than creative. - Truth itself was without objective sanction, since in the final analysis we believed simply whatever was convenient to our own “unconscious,” or to the ruling class that had conditioned us. Under these influences the whole temper of personal life in western Europe degenerated. The fear of hell was gone, but life here on earth became for the sensitive a nightmare that was little better than hell. Many

¶83were crippled by wage-slavery. Even the more fortunate, persuaded that human nature, and indeed the whole universe, were essentially trivial, could find nothing better to do with their lives than to gratify their craving for easy “pleasure.” Unfortunately pleasure, pursued for its own sake, turns to dust and ashes. Pleasure-purveyance was one of the greatest commercial enterprises of the age. Every form of effortless amusement was available to those who could pay. You could watch professional athletes on the football-field or in the boxing-ring. You could career aimlessly about the country in exquisitely designed and constructed machines, the product of much skilled and unskilled labour. You could feed on exotic foods, brought at great cost from distant lands, where in many cases they had been produced by semi-slave labour. You could listen to trivia! -music and trivial jokes on the radio. In the earlier part of the Inter War Period there was a real attempt to use the British non-commercial broadcasting organisation to stimulate popular interest in the great controversial social and political problems; but later this policy was abandoned in favour of something less disturbing. In addition to titillation by the radio you could find relaxation in reading newspapers and journals. Nearly all of these were controlled by individuals or groups whose aim was not to make the public think, but to persuade them to buy the periodicals. The easiest way to do this was to appeal constantly to their hunger for vicarious adventure, facile humour, crime, or sex-stimulation; all harmless enough in themselves, but dangerously obsessive. In their obsessiveness lay their usefulness to the lords of the press. Here was a sure bait to catch the public, and the more “suggestive” the more potent. The most sinister stuff could be put across if it was coated with a veneer of conventional moralism. Apart from the urgent need to maintain and increase circulation, the press

¶84lords were concerned only to persuade the public that all was well with society, and to prevent them from thinking dangerous thoughts. Then there was the cinema. You could sit in the dark “picture house,” stimulated by the same kind of rubbish as was provided by the press and radio, while you secretly found more direct sexual satisfaction in fondling your companion. And since in the Inter-War period all the old taboos were losing their power, you could seek out, if you were sufficiently emancipated, any kind of sexual experience that attracted you, and yet feel no guilt. OceanofPDF.com

¶85Sex and Parenthood After the break-down of Victorian prudery an orgy of “free love” was inevitable, and indeed up to a point a wholesome reaction. Unfortunately, when. “free love” is accompanied by a break-down not only of false prudery but also of respect for human personality, the result is disastrous. Under the influence of the prevailing cultural climate, sex came to be regarded among the more advanced section of society as little more than a simple physiological need. If you were attracted by a girl, the reasonable thing to do was to persuade her to spend a night with you, or a week-end; or possibly the relation might last for months, or even years, if your temperaments happened to be sufficiently in accord. Persons of opposite sex should come together for casual “affairs” as soon as they felt inclined to do so. They should get whatever pleasure they could out of one another, and part as soon as the glamour had disappeared. The common-sense aim of the relation, it was said, was mutual pleasure; and the wise lover would reject, so far as possible, all sense of personal responsibility for the other. To have children was a tiresome complication which could be avoided by taking the proper precautions. If conception did after all occur, the calamity had to be regarded either as a sheer accident or as the result of carelessness. Obviously this kind of sex relationship was not the only kind in inter- war society. There were, of course, plenty of marriages and other lasting partnerships which were firmly rooted in genuine personal love. And though births were far too few, the decline in the birth-rate was not yet catastrophic. But the casual “affair” was typical of the more advanced sections of society in this period, and its increasing vogue influenced the character even of marriage. Childless marriages had become far more common. It was a mistake to attribute this fact solely to the increased reluctance to have children. There is some reason to believe that fertility

¶86itself is declining; and unfortunately the cause of this disaster is still obscure. Certainly very many couples who really want children fail to have them. The fall of the birth rate is not wholly due to the general choosing of motor cars rather than babies (as is sometimes suggested) and to the consequent widespread use of contraceptives. But in the Inter-War Period the aim of marriage was all too often mere licensed gratification. And when; the futility of a marriage began to pall, it could be more easily terminated than in the earlier period, since divorce was no longer considered disreputable. Now it may well be that some experience of sexual intercourse is beneficial before entering on marriage. Love is an art, and there may have to be preliminary sketches before one is equipped to create one’s masterpiece. It may be, too, that even after marriage the partners would benefit by occasional intercourse with other persons, returning to one another refreshed, and with their union strengthened. But the merely trivial kind of sexual relation cannot possibly afford full self-expression to human beings. In our species sex is far more than a purely physiological impulse. It is a vehicle or medium for the expression of the whole personality, and for a personal relationship which is distinctively human. To love is not simply to be physically or even mentally attracted to another person. It is this, but it is far more than this. To love is to form with the other a relationship of community, in which there is intimate mutual awareness of personality, mutual increase, mutual cherishing as persons, mutual responsibility. And the deeper and more developed the love, the more thorough and lasting the mutual entanglement. Genuine love is, indeed, a kind of spiritual symbiosis in which each is moulded to the other’s temperament and each becomes necessary to the other’s fulfilment. In the case of sexual love the fullest expression of this personal relationship involves a life-long partnership. The

¶87frittering away of sexual energy and interest in endless trivial relations makes “this impossible. OceanofPDF.com

¶88Obtuseness Toward Community Both the trivialisation of sex and the moral failure of the ruling class over unemployment show with terrible clarity the central weakness of western European civilisation in the Inter-War Period in both cases the root of the trouble was the individual’s failure to be clearly aware of other human beings as conscious persons, no less real and important than himself. This was the period when individualism, though already proved inadequate by circumstances, was least restrained by any kind of obligation or religious feeling, and was therefore most extravagant in conduct. It was generally assumed that the only reasonable value was the satisfaction of one’s own impulses and the expression of one’s own personality. Under the influence of this conviction men frankly indulged in outrageously irresponsible behaviour toward their fellows. Among the intelligentsia there was a great deal of talk about the “gregarious instinct” and the “herd spirit,” and even of “community”; but few typically modern minds realised that between mere gregariousness and true community there is a difference of kind. The gregarious impulse seeks merely to conform to the herd’s conventions, and to impose conformity on others. The impulse of community seeks mutual realisation of others as distinct and differing persons; seeks also mutual delight, and gladly accepts mutual responsibility. The various schools of modern psychology all tended to disparage this distinctively human behaviour, reducing it to gregariousness, self-regard, sex, and other primitive impulses. In spite of their very great advances in the understanding of the mechanism of human personality, most of the psychologists of the period missed the true meaning of this extremely important factor in human nature. Under their influence it was widely assumed that human nature was nothing but a mechanism of sub-human impulses modified by superior intelligence. So indeed in a sense it is; but

¶89man’s superior intelligence and sensitivity open up new fields of value which cannot be adequately expressed in terms of the impulses of the sub- human animal. This shocking obtuseness about personality and community, which was specially flagrant in the ruling class in western Europe during the Inter War Period, had, perhaps, many causes; but the root of them was the fact that practically the whole structure of society, and therefore the morality which it has generated, were hostile to the idea of community, or fellowship, or being “members of one another.” In the preceding period the seeds of this crazy error were already, as we have seen, strongly growing, in the soil of an increasingly individualistic economic system; but they were largely hidden under the withering remains of the earlier feudal and Christian moral convention, which assumed that community really was possible and desirable. As the old restraining moral conventions died away, the new frankly individualistic hedonism became more obtrusive and widespread. Inter-War Youth To be young in the Inter-War Period, to emerge from adolescence into young manhood or womanhood, was often a bitter experience. At school the boy or girl was taught the old values and the old belief. Kindliness was extolled. Society was said to be organised in such a way as to produce the greatest possible happiness for as many persons as possible. Since it was a democratic society, the government (it was said) was bound to act as the people willed. Since it was based on free private enterprise, the best people inevitably found their way to the top. With their superior intelligence and integrity, they served the rest in serving themselves. It was admitted that life was an arduous business, in which, if you did not look after your own interests intelligently, you might have a bad time. But fundamentally all was

¶90well. God was in his heaven, and all was growing progressively more and more right with the world. Such was the teaching at school. When the young things left school (and often before doing so) they found themselves in a very different world. For boys, there was a desperate fight for a decent job; and many never succeeded in finding a job at all. For girls, there was an equally desperate fight, either for a job or for a husband who could provide the financial means of life. For all alike, except the fortunate minority, there was the discovery that society, far from being a cooperative undertaking to secure justice and happiness for all, was little more than a net-work of commercial “rackets,” in which, if you wanted to survive, you had to be cunning and ruthless. Unfortunately, even if you were willing to play the game with the necessary brutality, the odds were heavily against you. In all probability you were doomed to a life of drudgery and want. If you were down and out, the government would merely fling you a contemptuous dole, a sop to the conventional morality. This would keep you alive; but it would not give yon much of a share in the commercialised pleasures of the modern world, and it would certainly not enable you to live humanly. On top of the shock of disillusion about society came the shock of disillusion about human nature itself and the whole universe. If you were intelligently interested in the destiny of the human race, you discovered that the comforting doctrines taught at school were treated with contempt by all sophisticated people, who assured you that man was merely a nasty overgrown worm with a swelled head, and that beyond the brainless stars there was nothing. The intelligent young of the Inter-War Period tended to adopt one or other of several possible responses to these devastating discoveries. Some in terror shut their eyes to the facts, and took refuge in some form of

¶91Christian orthodoxy. To the anti-religious this course looked like sheer cowardice, but the motive was at least sometimes more creditable. Some of the new faithful, were moved by a conviction that scientific materialism had somehow missed, or misinterpreted, the most important things in life, and that religion, in spite of its conflict with science, did contain the essence of what science ignored. This conviction led to an heroic acceptance of the old beliefs for the sake of their inner truth. Far more of the young, however, deserted religion and accepted a policy of “realism.” They devoted all their energies to gaining personal power, luxury and prestige. Having adopted this line, they grew very contemptuous and bitter against all who clung to the sentimental view that there were ends more worth while. Other young people, “the bright young things” of this dark period, merely splashed money about in the desperate search for novel or spectacular pleasures. The fourth kind of inter-war young saw the root of the trouble not in human nature or the constitution of the universe, but in the fact that the whole structure of society was archaic and inadequate. These chose as their main interest the immense task of altering society through and through by means of some sort of revolution. The young revolutionists were of two main kinds, those who found their inspiration in the socialist movement or Russian Communism, and those who were caught by the false lure of Fascism. No doubt the rise of Fascism had economic causes. But its appeal to the young lay largely in its rejection of the values both of commercialism and of a Christianity which many regarded as insincere. In place of these it exalted the barbarian value of the” chosen race.” It also set up heroic might as the supreme virtue in place of the Sentimentalised “love” of the Churches. Further, instead of appealing merely to the prudential, self- seeking motives, it made a stirring appeal for self-abnegation and devotion

¶92in a common adventure. The tragedy was that this noble motive should have been sidetracked for ignoble ends. What of the many inter-war young, who were inspired by the socialist movement or by Russian Communism? In the Inter-War Period the “Progressives” of all kinds throughout Western Europe were unable to make an effective stand either against the men of money or against Fascism. Many were increasingly cowed by a sense of their own impotence, and of fatality in the march of events toward another war. They were also disheartened by their internecine differences, and their failure to form a “united front.” The root of their trouble seems to have lain in a pathetic inability to realise that, though indeed in a sense the fundamental problem was economic, it was also moral. The need was, of course, to change the economic structure so as to make a just and happy society possible; but the passion and will to sacrifice, which alone could achieve this end, could spring only from a moral conviction of the rightness of fulfilling human capacity for personality-in-community. If nothing mattered, why should one sacrifice? It was the young people of the Left, who kept the torch of hope alight in a darkening world. Like their elders, they too accepted intellectually the prevailing sceptical climate, but emotionally, and quite irrationally, they rose above it into a purer air. They had a new vision and a new loyalty, and many of them showed heroic devotion to it. No doubt their policies were often crude, and often they showed a distressing insensibility toward everything in human life except the need for revolution; but they were and are the growing point of a new social order, a new civilisation, a new form of human culture, and in: the long run a new humanity. In the next chapter I shall try to describe that new vision as it presents itself today. Here I am

¶93concerned only with its growing, though confused, influence in the Inter War Period. The Influence of Russia. The seed of a new civilisation had been sown long ago with the rise of the Labour Movement in Britain. Its moral passion was derived, no doubt, from the established Christian morality; but the oppressed industrial workers had to re-discover the central Christian intuition of the rightness of community. The pioneers of the Labour Movement, in their heroic comradeship in service of their suffering fellow-workers, gave that moral impulse new life and a new goal. Henceforth, if men sincerely believed in the brotherhood of man, they must throw themselves into the great common task of founding a new kind of social order, which would have to be deliberately and creatively planned for the well-being of ordinary people. Throughout the nineteenth century the Labour Movement had gathered power, in Britain and in Europe. It generated its own institutions, the Trade Unions, and also a vast international organisation. It developed a characteristic system of theory. It was greatly influenced by the current scientific spirit. But always its emotional driving force, often obscured, but never wholly lost, was the passion for comradeship, the conviction of the rightness of mutual respect and responsibility, and of the will to knit the whole human race into a single world-wide community. In Tsarist Russia the misery of the oppressed industrial workers generated the same passion for comradeship as the misery of the workers in Britain had produced in the early Trade Union movement. After the defeat of Russia in the First World War this passion for comradeship provided the emotional drive of the Russian Revolution.

¶94Under the leadership of Lenin, himself inspired by the same passion, the established tyranny was overthrown, and a new kind of society, a new kind of civilisation, was at last firmly founded. In spite of its flagrant faults which were bred of the desperate need for discipline, in the face of attack from within and without, the new society has by now proved not only its strength, but its fundamental rightness. I have not been in Russia, and I have no claim to pass judgment on the Russian achievement. But, looking at the whole matter from the point of view of the sympathetic outsider striving for a balanced verdict, I should bet heavily that the truth about Russia is two-fold. First, the new Russia marks a great step forward in human development; second, the legacy of Tsarism and of the agony of revolution have involved the new society in grave diseases which may take long to cure. Though the Russian Revolution was ostentatiously anti-religious, and though Marxism denies absolute values, one of the main factors of the Revolution was an inarticulate and unwitting, but none the less potent, revival of moral experience in the fullest sense. Further, this experience included at least the germ of a new religious feeling, inarticulate, of course, and unwitting. It was a feeling which spurned all easy religious doctrines about the constitution of the universe and man’s place in it; but it was a feeling of unconditional self-surrender to, and even (in an obscure way) of worship of, something in the universe which was felt to be sacred, something which in its very essence claimed man’s devotion. That something was simply comradeship, a form of human behaviour which the Christians had called “ love.” The theorists of Communism, reacting in opposition to the hated priests, and in conformity with the admired scientists, explained that this form of behaviour was not really “good” or “right” in any absolute way, but that social circumstances had conditioned

¶95men to value it because it was in fact useful in the long run to society. But the actual experience of comradeship was an experience of something felt to be sacred. Communists, needless to say, would not accept this heretical account of the emotional drive of the Revolution. Their bitterness against anything like religion, and their earnest devotion to science, prevent them from looking dispassionately and objectively into their own experience of values. But the Russian Revolution does seem to have caused something very like a religious movement all over the world. Although throughout the Inter-War Period the ruling class in Western Europe did their best to prevent the peoples from knowing the truth about Russia, truth will out; and little by little the more imaginative and generous minds began to realise how great a thing had happened in the world. As understanding grew, Russia became increasingly an inspiration, particularly to the more vital of the young. Often their admiration was uncritical and extravagant, for they were reacting violently against official anti-bolshevik propaganda; but by now it is clear that essentially they were right. The new Russia, with all its faults, opens up bright vistas for the whole human race. Of course all young Communists and other admirers of Russia are not vital. Many are unfortunate misfits, fundamentally unsure of themselves; and so they adopt certain attitudes and beliefs associated with assurance and vitality. They have a neurotic longing to break the existing order, because they have not the ability or the luck to make good in it. Therefore they go through some of the gestures of revolutionary politics. But the fact that the Left has attracted many young people of this sort should not disguise the fact that increasing numbers of the most vigorous and intelligent of the young of all classes have found inspiration in the new Russian civilisation, and devoted much of their energy to working for a similar great change

¶96throughout the world. Young industrial workers, teachers, artists, writers, turned to “Left” political activity in one form or another. And in their political activities and the impact of their political ideals on their special trades or professions they began to work out what must, I think, be called a new way of life, based neither on individualistic self-seeking, nor on other- worldly devotion, but on self-expression in the great common enterprise of humanity. Munich and the Battle of Britain. This was the time when the pseudo-mystical faith of Fascism was triumphing in Italy and Germany, and elsewhere. In Britain Sir Oswald Mosley and his mixed gang of aristocrats and hooligans were working for a similar end. This was the time when the financial rulers in the capitalist states were so obsessed by the “Bolshevik bogey” that they were completely blind both to the spiritual rebirth in Russia and to the danger of Fascism abroad. Then came the struggle of the people’s government in Spain against local reactionaries backed by Germany and Italy; and with it an urgent call for help. Many generous and resolute young men of all social classes hurried out from many countries to join the International Brigade. They fought heroically, not merely to save the Spanish Republic, but to found a new order in Europe. They were defeated only by the superior armament which the Fascist powers sent against them; while the capitalist governments, on the plea of non-intervention,” refused help against their own inevitable enemies. The destruction of the Spanish Republic paved the way for the betrayal of Czechoslovakia at Munich. The moral failure inherent in commercial civilisation reached its lowest depth. In England there was much rejoicing over Munich. Sincere pacifists were united with the mass of merely spineless and self-centred war-loathers,

¶97and with the muddle-headed anti-bolsheviks, who still hope to use Hitler as a defence against Russia. But if there was rejoicing in some quarters, there was shame and foreboding in others, for a large section of the population was more clear-sighted in this matter than the Government and its backers. They saw that the Munich: pact was an act of sheer cowardice, that the prestige of Britain, long tarnished, had now been almost corroded away. They saw also that the pact was worthless, and that war was inevitable. Events proved them right. Little by little public opinion veered, away from the policy of peace at any price. The cause of this widespread change of heart was two-fold. There was a purely self-regarding motive. Clearly, if Hitler had his way, British society, and therefore each man’s familiar way of life would sooner or later be destroyed. With despond, but with no further doubt, ordinary people concluded that even war must be faced in the hope of preventing the destruction of their familiar and by no means satisfactory society. In fairness, however, it must be noted that even this “self- regarding” motive was not really sheer individualism. People were ready to sacrifice their individual comfort and their individual lives, if necessary, to defend their homes, their families, their little circle of friends, and the whole national society which was the matrix in which alone these cherished things could flourish. The motive was indeed “national self-interest”; but this is a genuine social motive, very different front plain individualism, which would have impelled men rather to fend for themselves in the disaster, and let the devil take the hindmost. But in addition to this motive of “national self-interest,” there was another motive too. A rather crude, but genuinely moral, awakening; was happening in the minds of many for whom morality had been merely a matter of lip-service to the conventions, and an easygoing friendliness in daily life. At last, under Hitler’s pressure, and aided by far-sighted self-

¶98interest, they began to discover that things were happening in Europe which simply “aren’t done,” which were too foul to be tolerated any longer. This belated and confused moral protest was perhaps a turning point in the history of Western civilisation. It drew its power from the plain man’s experience of the difference between humane and inhuman behaviour. As we have seen, events throughout the Inter-War Period had been steadily forcing more and more people toward a more virile and responsible attitude. Earlier, the pioneers of the Labour movement, and still earlier the pioneers of democracy, had set an example and more recently the Russian revolutionaries and the whole temper of the Soviet State had increasingly served as a tonic to those who were at all informed about Russia. No doubt the deepest of all the roots; of this moral protest, which finally emerged into action at the close of the Intel-War Period, was the ancient tradition of Christian experience; but Christian morality had to be transformed and revitalised by the suffering and devotion of the champions of democratic socialist humanism, Once before, in 1814, a rather similar moral protest was achieved by masses of ordinary people, and it played a part in the forming of the League of Nations in 1919, But it was prostituted, mainly by the politicians; and the resulting disillusionment led to an abyss ol cynicism and despair. The protest which finally expressed itself in support of the war of 1939 was more emphatic, more intelligent, and made in a far more dangerous situation. It acted as a catalytic, “transforming the whole temper of the nation’s life, and opening up immense possibilities of social rebirth. In France circumstances prevented the new spirit from expressing itself in action. The people were bewildered by excessively bad leadership. At the critical moment, hosts succumbed to a policy of individualistic sauve qui peut. France collapsed. The English, Scotch and Welsh faced the Battle of Britain alone. They endured the ordeal because anything seemed better than

¶99to be ruled by the Nazis. The vast majority in this island were overwhelmingly in favour of resistance. Though for national survival “so many” were indebted to “so few,” the few, those superb young men, were of us. And the population as a whole played its part in the main admirably. The catalytic had already worked wonders. The courage and devotion of ordinary people was all the more remarkable in view of the fact that a large proportion of the British people were thoroughly disillusioned about the state of British society. They were not fighting, as the Russians have done, to preserve what they regarded as a glorious new civilisation. They were fighting because, bad as British society was, and archaic, inefficient, moribund as its spirit had for so long been, they knew that the alternative was far worse. Moreover they felt very deeply, though very obscurely, that there really was something in Britain of high value to the world, though by now, AS hosts of them had begun ruefully to recognise, terribly tarnished. Perhaps the British tradition has by now completed its contribution to the tradition of Humanity. Perhaps the torch has already passed out of our hands. A people always inclines to over-value its own culture. But many people in Britain did feel that they were fighting for something in addition to their own comfort and security. Like the first World War, the second was, of course, far from being waged as a single-minded crusade for civilisation against a new barbarism. It was partly a struggle between Empires and would-be Empires. It was partly a struggle between the old fashioned capitalism of Western Europe (and later America) and the newer and more ruthless capitalism of Nazi Germany (and later Japan). But the crusading impulse was far stronger than in the First War. And the fact that so many people did on the whole accept it as a sort of belated and perhaps forlorn crusade to defend the most precious things in the world, along with the fact that on the whole they behaved well in their ordeal, has had a very deep

¶100effect on the temper of our national life. Before the war, we were haunted by our national shame. Democracy seemed to be played out. Our foreign policy had been cowardly, cynical and disastrous. Our social policy was no better. Imperialism, the “white man’s burden,” was becoming merely a burden of guilt. Slowly we were beginning to wake up to a sense of national sin about India. But now at last, though our sins were increasingly heavy on us, at least we can look the world in the face without a sense of utter degradation. What are we going to do with this new self-respect and this new moral vigour? After the Battle of Britain it seemed for a while as though the new spirit would transform the whole of our social life. Big business would be severely controlled, capital conscripted like labour, key industries nationalised, social security guaranteed to all. But somehow this did not happen. Why not? No doubt “because vested interests were too strongly entrenched.” and so on. Yes, but — The Battle of Britain ended some time ago. That wave of heroism and clear vision passed. Could it be that we had still not learnt our lesson, the lesson that we began to learn in the First War? Could it be that only in extreme crisis can we wake up to being “members one to another,” all responsible for one another as members of one family, all bound together in comradeship in a great cause, the cause of making not merely a more fully British Britain, but a more fully human mankind? It is certainly true that, since those days of urgency and of newly felt comradeship, the people of this island sank back to a great extent into complacency and into selfishness. It is true also that with the passing of that mood of heightened social consciousness and responsibility the magnates, who were in effect our rulers, were venturing; to be more reactionary than they dared to be a little earlier. There was indeed a real danger that we should drift back into the bad old ways.

¶101But though we did lose something of that recent fervour, my own impression is that a very big change was all the while going on in the minds of ordinary people, as a result of the continued impact of changing circumstances. I have moved about a good deal. I have discussed these matters with audiences of soldiers, and of airmen, and of civilians. Everywhere I found a new outlook emerging. The rise of the new political movement called Common Wealth was one of the many symptoms of this change. People seemed to be in the midst of a painful process of sloughing an old cramping skin from their minds, and exposing a fresh, more supple, more sensitive and at first more vulnerable one, but one that would be in the long run better suited for life in a new kind of world. The General Election of 1945 has proved that this process of social waking was very widespread. At last we were in a position to take the first crucial tentative step for the making of a better Britain. But vital as political action is, it will not achieve its end at all thoroughly unless our waking goes a good deal deeper than it has so far done. I say people are showing signs of outgrowing the outworn mental habits. That is certainly the process that some middle-aged people are being painfully forced to undergo; but perhaps hope lies rather with the young, who have not become set in the outworn ways. They have to outgrow much that has been taught them, wittingly or unwittingly, by their elders; but they are still supple, and more sensitive to the pressure of new conditions. It is to them that we chiefly look to point the direction for new values, and to provide the drive and passion for the great planned world-changes that have to be undertaken. Of course we must beware of easy optimism. The process of awakening may perhaps never complete itself. Perhaps more danger and far greater suffering are needed to tear the old skin finally from us. We have won the

¶102War, and we have expressed our will in the Election. But will our new Government have the courage and ability effectively to break the power of those who are pledged to the old order? If it fails, we shall “lose the Peace,” as we did after the other War. Then we shall have more social chaos, more war, more schooling in adversity; and then at last a thorough though belated awakening. Anyhow the great mental change does already seem to have ‘begun in earnest. In the following chapter I shall try to describe the deep change of attitude which is to be seen most clearly in the minds of the young men and women of today. If the reader is inclined to say, “Better leave it to the young themselves to describe their own attitude,’’ I reply, “Though it is in the young that the change is most pronounced, I doubt whether they themselves are the best fitted to describe it, for they have no direct experience of the older attitude with which to contrast it.” I seek therefore with all respect to interpret the present young to themselves. OceanofPDF.com

¶103CHAPTER 4. TODAY AND TOMORROW. A World in Revolution. I HAVE DESCRIBED the manners and morals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and then the very different, disillusioned and cynical temper of the Inter-War Period, which culminated in the Second World War. I noted also that the desperate danger at the time of Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain had a deep effect on the minds of ordinary people in this island, and caused something like a recovery of moral vigour. I have brought the story up to the General Election of 1945, which may prove to be the most momentous turning point in our history. What of today? What of tomorrow? Today both the old-style cynical commercial democracy and the new-style pseudomystical romantic barbarism of the Nazis have been discredited by events. A new vision, which (I have suggested) had its first expression much earlier in the liberal socialist movement of the nineteenth century, but its first effective, though of course imperfect, embodiment in Soviet Russia, is steadily spreading throughout the world. Everywhere we see a conflict, open or secret, between the two kinds of ideals about the right conduct of human affairs, in fact between the aims of yesterday and the aims of tomorrow. The world is indeed changing through and through. The caterpillar of yesterday is in the act of being transformed into the butterfly of tomorrow. The tissues of the old order are being dissolved and reorganised into a new order. At the present moment much of the old still remains intact, but characters of the new are all the while emerging. It does not follow that the metamorphosis will be successful. Perhaps the chrysalis contains the germs

¶104of a fatal disease. Or perhaps, though the butterfly will indeed finally emerge, it will be a deformed and sickly creature. One thing is certain. The caterpillar world is gone for ever. The choice before us is not between “going back to 1939” and going on to something new. The choice is between two new things, one very good and one very bad; or some possible mixture of them both. The good thing is a world in which the controlling principle will actually be the aim of making the best of every individual as a person in community with other persons. The bad thing is a world in which this principle is utterly violated, a world in which the only controlling principle is that human beings should be organised for the fullest possible production of economic power for a dominating class. Inevitably this must lead to the violation of personality and of true community, and the complete “robotisation” of individuals. The issue depends in the last resort on human will, on our having a clear vision, and pursuing it with courage and persistence. The issue does not depend simply on “economic forces”; though only within the possibilities fixed by economic forces can we realise our vision. At present, in spite of the hopeful result of the Election, the old “caterpillar” order is on the whole still dominant. Society is a tissue of relics from the commercial age, and even from feudalism. And since ideas always lag behind changing conditions, our minds tend to be even more archaic than our circumstances. Thus many of us still cling to the old faith in economic individualism even when circumstances have rendered it out-of-date and disastrous. Though we are in some ways mentally ahead of some of our archaic existing conventions and existing institutions, we are always behind hand in adopting new ideas and values to suit new social conditions. The Young Today and Tomorrow.

¶105Very much will depend on the young, on their power of adjusting their minds to the new order while it is being created, and working out in their own experience a new attitude of mind, a new mental climate. They alone can do this. The torrent of social and cultural change will be too swift for most of those who are well advanced in middle age. No doubt some of them will keep pace, and a smaller! number will have sufficient imagination actually to contribute something themselves. But the main work will fall to the relatively young. Unfortunately, though they will have the immense advantage of supple- mindness, they will also have all the ordinary disadvantages of youth. They will lack the special assets of age. They will be impatient, easily led astray. They will be without the weight of experience which should help age to avoid behaving extravagantly or ruthlessly. Unless they have thought hard and long about the fundamental social and moral problems, they will be in danger of being caught by mob-leaders with superficially attractive though fundamentally unsound ideologies, as the youth of Germany were caught in the Inter-War Period. To-day these future workers-out of the new temper are even younger than they will be when their great opportunity comes. How are they being prepared for the immense responsibility that lies ahead of them? Many are still at school, I have attended sixth-form conferences which have convinced me that many of the present sixth-formers are very much awake to the problems of our time. Unfortunately, after leaving school, most will find themselves in circumstances unfavourable to the development of a sound citizenship mentality. Of those of student age and over, many are still in war-industry of one sort or another. Many are still in the forces. Brought up for an entirely different life, for the commercial struggle of the Inter-War Period, they found themselves suddenly turned into soldiers, sailors,

¶106airmen. They passed almost at a stride from the dread of unemployment to the dread of disablement or death in warfare, from disillusionment and cynicism about Inter-War society to disillusionment and cynicism about life in the forces, and to scepticism about our war-aims. Taught at first to regard war as barbarous and silly, they were then perforce trained for bayonet fighting, hardened in Commando courses, familiarised with the sight of blood, and assured that, unless they were prepared to be completely ruthless and utterly self-sacrificing in warfare, civilisation would be destroyed. When the occasion arises they do behave with surprising devotion. I say “surprising” because, having done a good deal of army education work, I came to feel that most of the rank and file of the forces in this country were quite without enthusiasm for the society for which they were called upon to risk their lives. They had little hope that when the war was over the victory would really be used for founding a better society. The explanation of this seeming inconsistency, I believe, is this. Though people are disillusioned and cynical about politics and big business, they know very well “in their bones” that there is, after all, something in this country that is well worth any sacrifice. Probably most of them would not be able to define it. I should call it the tissue of the inter-connected lives of ordinary people, the far from perfect, but solid and living, texture of true personality-in-community within which we all live and breathe and have our being. As for politics and social affairs, most people, in my experience, are inclined to divide society, (as J. B. Priestley and Richard Acland have said) into “us” and “them.” “We” are just the ordinary people whom one meets everywhere. “They” are the industrial magnates, the newspaper owners, the bankers, the politicians, the land-lords, the aristocrats, who in each of their several ways control our destiny. The general impression is that “they” are very powerful, very cunning at twisting everything to their own advantage, and yet very

¶107stupid about the things that really matter. The late Government’s reaction to the Beveridge plan, for instance, encouraged a feeling that there were hidden forces secretly working against the interests of the people; and that in peace-time “we” should just be led up the garden path by “them,” as we or our fathers were after the last War. No doubt there would be a boom at first; but soon would follow the slump, unemployment, starvation, and the ghastly sense of futility and “not being wanted.” The election of 1945 has given us some hope that this disaster may be avoided. The result of this earlier hopelessness was a widespread apathy, and a general disposition to fend for oneself when the war was over, and let the devil take the hindmost. Not a good omen, this, for the great popular re- awakening which alone could save us! Add to all this the exasperation and cynicism that most people feel when they are herded together under discipline, hedged round by all sorts of formalities, trivial “spit and polish” duties, personal jealousies, petty persecutions by self-important superiors. Add to this again that, although army and R.A.F. units at home are not so completely cut off from the affairs of ordinary society as troops abroad and naval units at sea, yet inevitably they are seriously isolated. In the field of active warfare there is the compensation that life in the forces affords a grim education in courage, resolution, resourcefulness and practical comradeship. But in quiet circumstances camp life tends to become in many ways a grotesque caricature of boarding school life, and to breed something like the schoolboy mentality. The War Office, aware of the danger of “browning off,” has tried, to meet the situation with an extensive and increasingly successful scheme of army education, carried out partly by regimental personnel themselves, and partly by civilian helpers. As a civilian who has been privileged to take part

¶108in this work, lecturing on social and psychological subjects, I should like to say that, though sometimes one finds that the atmosphere at these meetings is all wrong, more often it is stimulating, sometimes immensely so. Much seems to depend on the attitude of the Commanding Officer of the unit. If he regards the whole business of education as a silly waste of time, the atmosphere will be one of apathy and perhaps of resentment; and the more socially conscious people will tend to let off steam by violent demogogy. If he is keen, and has taken the trouble to kindle the interest of his men (or women, if it is an A.T.S. unit) then one will find oneself confronted by an audience that is alert, shrewd, and eager to discuss quite fearlessly. In general there is some reason to believe that the educationally more alert units are also those that are more efficient in the military sense. The C.O. who creates in his men a keen spirit for military proficiency is also, it seems, the one who is most interested in their education as citizens. Of course some conditions are such as to render useful educational work impossible. The boy straight from school, and now training for flying, or actually engaged on operations, may very well be too absorbed in his practical duties to take general education seriously. These young people are likely to be under constant severe strain; and if they have come through their school days without acquiring any serious interest in social or intellectual matters (as is all too likely) they will probably not trouble their heads about such matters in their new and exacting conditions. Their need is for the most facile sort of recreation. The lighter sort of newspapers and a ceaseless flow of “background noise” on the radio are all they can manage. But I must not give too gloomy an account. In spite of the fact that the Air Ministry at first did not take education as seriously as the War Office, many R.A.F. audiences are very interested and intelligent. These are mostly, I think the ground staffs and men old enough to have some experience of

¶109social conditions. However, I shall not soon forget a group of some forty boys, all training for flying, and all looking so young and fresh, in their new blue battle-dress. As I took up my place, they regarded me (I felt) with apathy and perhaps cynicism. I seemed to hear them murmur, “Why can’t they leave us in peace when we are not actually learning our job?” I spoke about liberty, and the need to revise our ideas about it to fit new conditions. They listened attentively, but it proved very difficult at first to rouse a discussion. Then one of them began expressing despond about the present state of society, and bewilderment and impotence about the chances of making a better society after the war. Others followed on the same lines, and soon there was a strangely serious discussion. All I could do was to urge them to keep awake to social affairs, to prepare themselves for the great part which they and their like would have to play after the war in creating the new Britain. (How many of them, I wondered, would be alive to play any part at all?) I came away with a painful sense of humility, but with a refreshing realisation that the young, even in the most unfavourable circumstances, were at least alive to the great problem of our age. It is certainly possible that the movement for adult education in the forces and elsewhere may have an appreciable influence on the temper of the young in the critical times to come. The main difficulty is the shortage of personnel, military and civilian, capable of carrying out this sort of work. Would that we could spread adult education of the same type in every factory. Would that we could make every large employer (so long as there are employers), and later every socialised factory, responsible for affording their workers educational facilities in work hours! The actual organisation of such educational work would of course have to lie not with the factory authorities, but with an external and purely educational body.

¶110But though army education and kindred schemes may make some difference, they are not likely to bulk sufficiently in the lives of the young to counteract the deadening effect of regimentation in the forces and the factories. It is indeed terrifying to think of the fate of thousands of young people of both sexes today. They have reached the time of life when the world should be opening up before them with all manner of opportunities for varied experience and growth. They should be embarking on careers which can afford them adequate self-expression in socially valuable ways. They should be finding mates for life-long partnership, and preparing to have children. They should be able to look forward to a future of continually deepening experience for themselves, and to a future for society (for their nation and the whole human race) of a kind to inspire enthusiastic devotion to the common human adventure. Instead, most of them find their present life desperately irksome and frustrating, and they look forward to the future with misgiving. Their careers are indefinitely postponed. They expect that, having survived years of war, they will have a desperate struggle for a living. Meanwhile they live in herds, and under strict discipline. Their development is seriously hindered. Their sex life is in most cases either entirely frustrated or at least hopelessly trivialised by the impossibility of really beginning a proper married life. They are often in a state of great confusion about values. The old conventional morality of the nineteenth century has obviously in many respects broken down, but equally the inter-war vogue of sheer self- expression without any moral restraint has turned to dust and ashes; yet nothing definite and compelling has come to fill the void. Finally they live in a social atmosphere of despond, bred of a sense that something is seriously wrong with society, and that no one can put it right.

¶111And yet it remains true that the future depends largely on the young. It depends on their finding themselves, on their passing beyond their present bewilderment and disheartenment, understandable as these are; on their reaching a clear conviction about individual, social and (in the broadest sense) religious values, and on their finding the strength to embody the true values in their own living. I said that in the Battle of Britain the people of this island experienced something of a moral regeneration, but that it faded somewhat when the urgency was passed. Unless we recover our moral seriousness, we sail not take the right turn for winning the peace. The issue will largely depend on the young. When the present young return to civilian life, they will obviously be in great danger of the same kind of mental and moral lassitude as that which crippled so many young ex-servicemen after the First War. But they will have one advantage. After the First War the tide was setting toward a breakdown of the old values. War or no war, the moral disintegration was inevitable. But today the tide has already turned. It is setting away from the mere denial of moral values. That mood proved too disastrous. As we have seen, it led in the democracies to a very abject condition, culminating in “non-intervention “ and “appeasement”; and elsewhere it led to the perverted moral protest of Fascism and Nazism. But (it cannot too often be repeated) a new moral conviction had arisen in Russia, though one that spurned the old moralism and rejected the old religion, and indeed all religion. Today the young have these object lessons before them. It is not unreasonable to hope that in the light of these great historical events they will be able to discover in their own experience of life a clearer and saner purpose than has been possible to their elders.

¶112Toward this purpose many of the older people have, of course, long been groping. But not for us that promised land. All that we can do is to present our findings, such as they are, to the young, in the hope that they will be able in due season to press much further forward. In the rest of this chapter I shall summarise my own view of the main character of the present age, and of the new world which our present world is straining to bring forth. The Second Industrial Revolution. If we would understand the present trend of the human world, we must take into account not only the movement of ideas, but also changing conditions. Ideas and physical conditions constantly interact on one another. Today the whole structure of the human world is changing under our eyes. No one can know what the upshot will be, but we can at least see more and more clearly that a second and more far-reaching industrial revolution is rapidly gathering momentum; and that it opens up bewildering possibilities for human development, and terrifying dangers. Perhaps it is wiser to regard this new industrial revolution rather as the second stage in a single great revolution caused by the impact of science, and the earlier revolution as merely the first embryonic stage which had to be passed through before the real revolution could begin. But the difference between the two phases is likely to be very great, and for us of today it is important to remember that principles which were true of the First Industrial Revolution may often be falsified by the second. The war has of course in many ways held up the Second Industrial Revolution, but not in all. In medicine, aeronautics, and the production of synthetic substances needed as substitutes for natural products held by the enemy, great advances were constantly being made. But the major developments of the Second Industrial Revolution have been postponed for

¶113the time being. Were it not for the need to devote so much energy to armament and to restoring Europe, we could even now be beginning the work of transforming the conditions of ordinary living into something incomparably more healthy and stimulating than our present circumstances. As I have said, it is impossible to predict at all surely how the Second Industrial Revolution will develop. Moreover, as I am no scientist myself, I am not properly equipped for discussing the matter. But even the layman may hazard a few suggestions, if only to give some idea of the extent of the social changes which may be in store for us. The First Industrial Revolution changed our methods of production in such a way that production had inevitably to be organised in ever larger units. In the preceding period the old handicrafts had been carried on by a master craftsman with a handful of apprentices. The change over to mechanical production often involved a great system of intricate processes, each highly specialised, and all precisely related together. For the production of a single type of finished article, a number of great factories may today be needed, each carrying out one stage of the process, and each employing thousands of workers. The inevitable social result is, unless drastic action is taken to prevent it? that the individual becomes more and more a cog in the machine, and power lies more and more with those who plan and organise the whole great system of processes. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is a brilliant caricature of the kind of society which is likely to result. But though the First Industrial Revolution increased the size of the productive unit, the Second Revolution demands an increase of a different order. The private firm, and later the combine, were at first large enough. But now, if the full potentiality of production is to he realised, planning and control must be at least on the scale of the spectacular Tennessee Valley

¶114Authority, and indeed far larger. The economic life of the U.S.S.R. itself, which has set the example of a continent-wide planned economy, is too restricted. The Second Industrial Revolution necessitates planning for the world as a whole. The advent of atomic power may immensely increase the size of the productive unit and the need for world organisation. The manufacture of atomic bombs necessitates organisation of production on a national scale and the danger of the misuse of these terrific weapons forces world-wide organisation upon us. In industry the coming of atomic power will have the same kind of effect. But clearly, the greater the size of the production unit, the greater the danger of mechanising the life of the industrial worker. The life of the world has not only to be planned, but to be planned for human welfare, deliberately and resolutely. The goal is the full expression and development of human individuality. The horrors of the First Industrial Revolution were due to the fact that no serious attempt was made to do this. If the Second Industrial Revolution automatically strengthens the tendency to increase mass-production and robotisation, we shall have to plan deliberately for a different kind of result. In one respect at least it is bound to favour a better form of human life. Hours of work may be much shorter, and conditions of work much better. Of course a few hours a day of routine work under discipline in a well organised factory will do no one any harm; on one condition, namely that the rest of his day is available for more varied activities. But these beneficial tendencies in the Second Industrial Revolution are frustrated if they are accompanied by uncontrolled robotisation. It is possible, however, that the tendency toward an ever-increasing size of production unit, and toward “robotisation” is not permanent; or rather

¶115that, although highly intricate mass-production will persist in some respects, in others it will give place to a new tendency to local self-sufficiency and small-scale industry. If so, perhaps we ought to be thankful that the tendency toward interdependence came first; for without the pressure of economic necessity in that direction we should never have been compelled (as we are today) to unify the world. When once we have been forced by economic necessity to think and feel in terms of the world as a whole, it will not matter if further advances in science finally lead toward a new local self-sufficiency. Two existing tendencies suggest that this may, indeed, happen. The first is the progress that has already been made in producing more and more of the very complex materials needed for civilised life from very common and indeed universally distributed raw materials. Thus cheap vegetable fibre may be used as the raw material for all manner of plastics, textiles, foods and so on. This means that each locality will in future be far more self-supporting than formerly; and one cause of wars, the competition for raw materials, will be abolished. Of course the processes of manufacture may remain very complicated, involving the co-operation of thousands of workers. But it is at least possible that, with the advance of scientific knowledge, production will begin to be simplified; so that, though certain processes will probably always have to be carried out by vast organisations of workers, others may be performed by small groups, employing perhaps a high degree of individual skill. Thus not only each country, but each village might become almost self-supporting in essentials. Obviously this would have an immense effect on the structure of society and the temper of social life. The second tendency, or possibility, that suggests a great simplification of production is the advance that already seems likely in the production and distribution of power. The First Industrial Revolution was almost entirely

¶116dependent on coal, oil and falling water, which sources occur only in certain localities. Scientists have been exploring the possibilities of deriving industrial power from the tides, from differences of temperature (which means ultimately from sun-light) and from the disintegration of atoms. It is impossible to say yet what success will be attained in these ventures. But it seems probable that the result will be at least a far wider distribution of the sources of power. It may well be that the perfected production of atomic power will involve a vast and complex enterprise undertaken under world- wide authority, and the universal distribution of electric current derived from atomic generators. As it is certainly probable that the transmission of power in the form of electricity is going to become very much cheaper and more efficient, ample power will be available everywhere. Each village throughout the world will either tap a high tension grid or generate its own power. As to atomic energy, its frightful dangers are obvious. It is not inconceivable that the belt of minute planets, the Asteroids, between Mars and Jupiter, is the wreckage of a world which its inhabitants accidentally destroyed by the unwise use of atomic energy. It would be a pity to turn our planet into another belt of Asteroids. But atomic energy, though dangerous, promises a fabulous source of power in comparison with which coal and oil are quite insignificant. It opens up the possibility of transforming the whole face of the planet according to man’s needs. It could, for instance, easily render the Arctic islands and the Antarctic Continent warm and habitable. And atomic power for industrial purposes, we are told, is already “in the offing.” Meanwhile the danger of atomic warfare is increasingly frightful. Short of exploding the planet, atomic energy used as a weapon might do so much damage that the present war, in comparison, would seem an affair of flint arrows and axes. The abolition of war becomes more urgent as man’s power increases. —

¶117Putting aside extravagant imaginings, what can we say of the less remote possibilities of the Second Industrial Revolution, and of their effects on men’s lives? Clearly we must expect an immense advance in labour-saving devices. Under unplanned capitalism labour-saving devices are the enemy of the workers, depriving them of their jobs and their wages. But if we can do away with capitalism, and organise the whole world population, labour- saving should be a great blessing. But labour-saving will in the end bring us face to face with some very important and indeed fundamental, problems about the kind of life that is desirable for the world citizens. What, after all, is the right aim of labour-saving? Clearly it is not to enable us all to live in luxury and idleness, with nothing to do but to press switches occasionally, to turn on a supply of food or some form of passive pleasure, such as the radio. Nor should the aim be to free labour for new forms of drudgery and wage slavery for the benefit of a financially privileged minority. Clearly the aim should be to reduce sheer — drudgery to a desirable minimum (some drudgery is probably good — for us all), — so as to free us — for — whatever more fully human and creative kinds of work fall within our powers. Many people, no doubt, prefer monotonous unskilled work because they can do it absent-mindedly while day-dreaming. But most people in good health, and mentally undamaged by bad education, are happier when their powers are fully used. In planning the new industry we must bear in mind always the human needs of the workers, not merely the ideal of maximum production. Mechanism must be — used for all — the donkey-work, — but — we must develop our mechanism in — such forms — that it demands — not — less but more skill for its control, and more varied, “all-round” skill. Man is a complicated organism, living at one and the same time on different levels of

¶118development. For fulness of being he needs activity on all his levels, from the muscular to the highest mental level that the particular individual can reach. It is not yet clear whether the natural course of the Second Industrial Revolution will lead to a greater demand for skills or a lesser. Certainly there will be a need for a minority of very highly skilled workers to plan and control and repair the machinery. But what of the rank and file? Will they become more and more highly specialised robots, as in Huxley’s nightmare? At the moment, the trend of industrial development is toward increasing the difference between the lowest and the highest ranges of skill, and toward a demand for more and more unskilled factory work. But it is quite likely that, with the further development of labour-saving, the scope of unskilled labour will entirely vanish. Before very long there may be no demand for human donkey-work, and an ever-increasing demand for higher and higher ranges of skill. But if this does not happen, if the tendency continues toward the robotisation of the individual, then clearly we must deliberately control it so as to avoid such a disaster. The ideal is to plan mechanisation so as to call out new forms of skills, comparable with those of the old handicrafts. Extravagantly, perhaps, I envisage a new form of village industry in which each village will have its own generator, its own artificial photosynthesis-fields for the production of its basic food products, its own factory for producing all sorts of synthetic materials and articles of daily use; with its villagers all proudly skilled in some particular branch of one or the other of these great communal activities. Beyond this local production of necessities, each village, province, or country, might aim at outstanding excellence in some particular product or in some purely cultural activity. Some might become world-famous producers of fine woven goods, some of

¶119special foods, some of household utensils, of crockery or plastics. Further, some might pride themselves in their music, their local sculpture, and so on. This may be a fantastic dream, but it serves to show the possibilities of the Second Industrial Revolution. If anything like it were to happen, the unity of the world would be based less on, the interchange of “necessities,” which would be produced locally, than on the interchange of “luxuries,” and (in the broadest sense) ideas. The Second Industrial Revolution will certainly bring immense increase in transport and cultural intercourse. Everyone may have his private rocket plane. People will flit to remote countries for a week-end holiday. Every citizen will have some fertilising experience of every distinctive region of the planet. He will be able to communicate at a moment’s notice by radio- telephone with his friends in the Antipodes or Antarctica. Since he will have been educated sensibly, and with the most lavish and skilled care, both for work and for leisure, since, moreover, his work hours will be brief, he will befitted to take full advantage of his world citizenship. The world population will be of a kind almost inconceivable today. There will be no hordes of ill-nourished, and uneducated wage slaves. There will be no idle rich, staving off boredom by extravagant expenditure of the wealth created by the labour of others. All men will be in the best sense aristocrats, well-born, well nourished well educated, well cared for in every way. There will be far greater diversity of character, interests, capacities, opinions, than is manifested today. Compared with the population of the future, we of today shall be regarded as suffering from a dismal sameness of mentality. There will no doubt be much severe conflict of interests and of ideals; but conflict will always be tempered by a fundamental mutual insight and respect. All will be bound inwardly together by a sense of their common humanity and their partnership in a great co-operative adventure.

¶120We may hope, by the way, that the present obsession over machinery, speed, and easy power, will cease. These things will in time lose their novelty and their glamour. With greater education, too, the taste for vulgar luxury and spectacular passive amusement will fade. Life may well become a good deal simpler. Mechanism and power will be used for freeing mankind from drudgery rather than for enslaving them to their own baser impulses. It will be used, too, for opening up new spheres of creative activity. Such is the prospect that lies before us, if we use our opportunities well. Some foolish people regard it as a thoroughly dull prospect. They argue that it removes all the zest and danger and doubt, and the opportunity for heroic action. These alone, they say, make life worth living. They mistake the whole prospect. There will be no possibility that heroic impulses, and so on, will find no outlet. The solving of our present problems does not mean that problems will cease. The ending of our growing-pains does not mean that pain will be abolished. By releasing the full potentialities of human nature we shall surely open up new fields of action which will tax to the utmost our most developed powers. The old troubles will be abolished, and be replaced by automatic actions, taken for granted by all men; but the energies released thereby will open up all manner of new problems on higher planes of development, with new hopes, new conflicts, new tragic disasters, new, scope for intelligence and devotion. Birds, by developing wings, did not sink into an easier and emptier life than the ancestral reptiles. On the contrary they opened up a whole world of rich experience and ) dangerous opportunity, which was eternally closed for the wingless, and inconceivable to them. Similarly with man. The second Industrial Revolution will open up for him new fields, new worlds, in which he will discover new and ever more glorious ways of living. At least, it will do so if, and it is a formidable

¶121“if,” he uses the opportunity rightly. If he fails to do so, the disaster may be final. OceanofPDF.com

¶122The Mental Revolution The great industrial changes which are sweeping over the whole planet are bound to have a deep effect on men’s minds. At present their influence is overshadowed by the more spectacular events of our day, by the prodigious rise of a new order in Russia, by the social effects of the war, by the pressure of events toward a new moral seriousness and a new religious passion. All these influences combine with the changes in methods of production to change the whole temper of mankind. — The mental revolution (for such it is) is only just beginning, but early symptoms of it are already visible. For good or ill, as I have said, some kind of mental revolution is now inevitable. The flood has started, there is no withstanding it. Whether it will carry us forward to a happier world and a more civilised culture is far from certain. But already we begin to see vaguely how, if all goes well, it may develop. I shall now try to describe what seem to me the most important features of the great change of mental climate which is beginning. I am not so rash as to prophesy that this great change will in fact fulfil itself. It is still almost entirely a mere possibility. But undoubtedly the tide has for the present actually begun to set in this direction. OceanofPDF.com

¶123New Feeling for Community Perhaps the most important factor in the change is the growing realisation, even in our present individualistic society, that individualism is not enough, that cut-throat commercialism is not the only or the most satisfactory form of self-expression, that there is another and a more personally-fulfilling way of behaviour, namely the way of comradeship, or community. Unfortunately this realisation is greatly hampered by the still dominant commercial atmosphere. To seek self-expression through comradeship, through community, through public service, is apt to be considered “unrealistic,” mere “idealism,” out of gear with the facts of human nature, and so on. But indeed the boot is on the other foot. Human nature is not purely self-regarding; it is both self-regarding and other- regarding. We are by nature members one of another; and to deny that side of our nature is to doom ourselves to frustration. To-day, in spite of the individualistic tradition, the climate is changing. Many influences are forcing us to see both the economic and the moral inadequacy of individualism. Many influences are spreading the experience of something different. For instance, the fact that competitive private enterprise is perforce being restricted in every country (even to some extent in the U.S.A., that haven of individualism), is forcing many faithful individualists to see that there are other ways of getting things done, and that these ways are sometimes more satisfying, The fact that more and more people are public servants, either under the state or under some municipality or great public corporation, is at last making us familiar with the idea of work as primarily a social service in which we all co-operate, and not primarily an individualistic dog-fight in which each has simply to try to get the better of others. Service in the forces, though it has disgusted many with a sense of the inefficiency, wastefulness, red-tape, and general inhumanity of state-

¶124controlled activities as they are at present, has also given to many à sense of membership in a great common enterprise; and to some the experience of close “comradeship in a small close-knit group such as an air-crew or a small ship’s company. It is true, of course, that nearly everyone in the forces or under any form of discipline longs to be free of war-time restrictions, and to be back in “Civvy Street.” It is true that many business men are preparing for the day when they will be able to restore healthy competition,” with all the hampering war-time restrictions removed. Indeed there was a danger that when hostilities ceased there would be a general stampede toward the old planless pre-war economy. Then, of course, would follow the inevitable social and economic chaos, as after the last War. But fore-warned is fore- armed. We have set up a government pledged to socialism. There is at least hope that, however self-centred and individualistic people may still be in their private lives, in relation to public affairs they will become a good deal more insistent on creative social planning for human welfare and for the control of powerful individualists. The lessons which we failed to learn after the last War may still be learned. The whole mental climate is indeed changing. Many people who recognise that sheer commercialism is both inefficient and immoral, are anxious lest the inevitable restrictions on private enterprise should destroy individual initiative. Without the bait of the prospect of rising above one’s fellows financially, no man, they say, will put his whole strength into his work. The answer to this is that financial success is not the only possible form of self-expression, or the only reward for which men will strive. The economic structure of our society has immensely exaggerated the appeal of financial rewards. It has turned us into something far more like the theoretical “economic man” than we ever need have been. Today the changing structure of society is already strengthening

¶125other incentives. In Russia, the incentive of wages is largely supplemented by prospects of special privileges, such as extra holidays and honorific titles. But these titles based on service would have no appeal unless Russian society was already infused with a far greater respect for public service than is yet general in our own, individualistic society. Moreover, the appeal to the motive of personal triumph and dominance over others (whether through financial or other means) is not the only way of inducing people to give their best. Powerful as self regard undoubtedly is, the impulse of loyalty can sometimes be far stronger. — The spirit of partnership in a group may lead a man to give even his life for the well- being or glory of his group. And so it comes about that the supreme self- expression, and one that is far more satisfying than sheer individualism, is self-expression in group service. The realisation of this is increasing in this country, partly through the object-lesson of Russia, partly through the changing conditions of our own society. Perhaps it is well to point out in passing, that group-service may often take the form of standing out against the existing conventions or morality of the group in order to induce the members of the group to accept better conventions and a better morality. Loyalty may be felt less to the extant group than to the possible or ideal group. The new feeling for community has certainly its dangers. As we have seen, one of the causes of Nazism was the swing away from commercial individualism to the worst type of herd-mentality, in which the individual surrenders his intelligence and his conscience into the keeping of the herd- leaders, and unquestioningly accepts their dictates. Nazism is defeated; but there is still a very real danger that the new tendency toward self-expression through co-operation in the group’s life, rather than through individualistic competition, may lead to a loss of respect for individuality, in oneself and

¶126others. The individual’s ultimate responsibility to judge both intellectually and morally according to his own lights should be vividly felt and gallantly defended. The fact that his lights are themselves products of social conditioning makes no difference. There is no way of development for man save the way of individual intelligence and integrity. It is important to recognise that the new feeling for community, if it is not clearly defined, may degenerate into uncritical “herdism,” or gregariousness. That spirit is very convenient to demagogues and dictators, but incompatible with real democracy. The great task of our age is to combine the virtues of the old liberalism with the virtues of the new communism, while avoiding the vices of both. To do this we have to remember always that both pure individualism and its opposite, “herdism,” are perversions of the one true principle which I have ventured to call “ personality-in-community.” There can be no personality save that of persons in community with one another. There can be no community save community of self-respecting and mutually-respecting persons. Feeling for the Unity of Mankind Besides the clarification of the feeling for community, another great change of attitude is, I believe, taking place, namely an extension of this feeling for community into the widest possible sphere, in fact to include all human beings. Peoples are beginning to think and feel increasingly in terms of the world as a whole. It may seem strange to make this claim at a time when militant nationalism has so recently exercised a greater sway than ever before. Nevertheless, I believe that the claim is sound. No doubt many of the “ occupied” countries of Europe, infuriated by suffering, will be extravagantly nationalist for some time. No doubt India is becoming increasingly nationalist, and so is China. And even Russia, the strong-hold

¶127of international socialism, is now inspired by intensely nationalist feeling. No doubt, also, the increasing contacts between the United Nations, through refugees, armed forces and liberated populations, is causing a good deal of national antagonism. But all this is a passing phase, the dying fling of an outworn sentiment. Its root cause was the failure of the first and superficial experiment in international order. If the next experiment is more successful, nationalism as an exclusive loyalty will fade out under the influences of the many forces making for a unified mankind. No doubt there will always be a place for family affection, and for love of country; but exclusive and self- righteous nationalism must be outgrown. No doubt for many years to come it will continue to cause grave troubles in every continent. But common people everywhere are increasingly realising that, deeper than all our differences, all human beings are of one kin, and that all are in some sense vehicles of the identical human spirit. The defeat of Nazism provides the reductio ad absurdum of all national ism. Henceforth, unless, of course, reaction triumphs and ruins the peace, it will be manifest that our final loyalty must not be given to any tribe or nation, but only to the human race as a whole, the mobile intelligent, vital dust, scattered over the surface of this little planet. Indeed, as consciousness clarifies, men will more and more recognise that in the last resort the supreme object of loyalty is not simply that living dust itself, but its advancement in true human capacity, or in the spirit which it as yet so imperfectly manifests. In the days before mechanical communications had brought all the peoples into contact and mutual dependence, effective world-loyalty was impossible. The ideal of human unity had already been formulated, but little could be done about it. But today all the lesser loyalties must for practical purposes be severely subordinated. It becomes increasingly obvious that we

¶128must work for ever greater unity in the life of mankind. Necessity will breed, is breeding, the required sentiment of world-loyalty. We are being forced not only toward greater political and economic unity for the world, but also toward greater world cultural unity. This again is breeding the necessary sentiment for human culture as a single manifestation of the human spirit. We must do our utmost to pool and cross- fertilise all the cultural resources of the human race. No individual or group must be allowed exclusive enjoyment of any part of mankind’s intellectual or artistic heritage. No scientific inventions must be kept secret for purposes of trade or war. All ideas must be available to everyone. Nothing whatever should be allowed to bar a man’s access to them but the limitations of his own understanding; and everything possible should be done to help his understanding. This does not mean that we must try to establish complete cultural uniformity throughout the world. Far from it. One of the great assets of the human species has always been the wealth of diversity that has been possible within the one species. In the life of individuals, personality-in- community demands the greatest possible diversity of persons, so long as the members of the community have sufficient insight to appreciate and respect one another’s differences. Similarly, in the life of the human race as a whole we need the greatest possible diversity of special cultures, local, vocational and so on. But no special culture must maintain principles which conflict with the essential principles of our common human culture. Nazism, for instance, is not a special culture which can be incorporated in the general culture of mankind. But, indeed, if we succeed in applying our fundamental principles properly, no such perverted special culture will occur. A few eccentric perverts may try to propagate crazy ideas; but unless masses of human beings have been driven by adversity and ungenerous

¶129treatment to rebel against true human culture, the crazy prophets will have very few disciples. They may therefore be allowed to preach to their hearts content. All desirable special cultures will be simply special varieties of the common culture of humanity, variations dependent on special local or vocational conditions. And all must be available to all men. The champions of each special culture must regard their special ideas not as a secret lore or mystery, but as a special contribution to the cultural life of mankind. The World Aim. If the new feeling for community in all human relations, and for the unity of mankind, really comes into its own, the result must (inevitably be the world-wide acceptance of a very definite practical ideal for the direction of all human affairs. It will be universally accepted that the right aim both of individual living and of social policy is the fulfilling of human capacity for personality-in-community in every individual up to the limit of his powers. The development of personality-in-community means development in respect of awareness of the world and oneself and other selves, and in respect of clarity of feeling about these, and also in respect of integrity and creativity of action. It means the development in this manner not merely of this particular individual or that, or any particular group, but of all individuals who are capable of it to any extent whatsoever; in fact for all human beings. — The recent troubles of the human race are forcing us to distinguish more and more sharply between the things that really matter for the development of personality-in-community and those that are trivial or base. Thus private luxury and self-display are trivial ends. The lust to dominate over others is base. This, and the impulse to use other individuals merely as means for the fulfilling of our private purposes, are base, because they are a violation of the spirit of community. Almost equally base is the impulse to use other

¶130individuals simply for the benefit of some particular group, for instance to use negro workers to support the dominance of the whites, or to use the workers of any country to support the financial ruling class. I say “almost” as base, because the motive may not be sheer self-regard, but mistaken loyalty to a group. — The rule must be that all individuals must always be treated with full respect for their personality. Even if they happen to be wrong-headed enemies of human welfare, and must be resisted with force, they must never be treated as mere vermin, always as human, as “one of us,” though erring. Necessity of World-Wide Social Revolution. This book is not a political tract, but in these days it is impossible to speak the truth about our times without pointing out, however briefly, that, whether we like it or not, we are in for a great revolutionary change, and that, if that change is to be in the main for good, and not a hideous disaster, it must be a fundamental democratic social revolution. In this section I shall state the minimum that such a revolution entails. It becomes increasingly clear that in order to begin to be able to realise the human ideal we must plan society through and through, so as to make the most of science and the world’s productive power for the benefit of all human beings. It should by now be obvious that unrestricted private enterprise in commerce is becoming less and less capable of developing production fully, and of directing it to the greatest possible human benefit. Planning and control are becoming more and more necessary both in a negative and a positive sense. In the negative sense, planning and control are necessary so as to prevent the powerful individualists from exploiting the masses, in fact to prevent the privileged from turning the unprivileged into wage slaves. In the positive sense, planning and control are necessary so as to organise the world as fully as possible for human welfare. In this rapidly changing world,

¶131planning will have “to be far-sighted and daring. And since many groups will do their utmost to preserve the old order, control will have to be firm. Increasingly it is realised that, and in the future it will be taken as an axiom that, there ought to be economic security for all. We must ensure that every human being has the means to obtain adequate food, adequate medical care, adequate housing, adequate education and adequate comfort and luxury, in order that he may maintain himself as a healthy and useful citizen. If he is responsible for a family, he must have the certainty that throughout his life the means to obtain the necessary minimum of those benefits will be his by right, whether he is in employment or not. Increasingly it is realised that in order to produce economic security for all, and in order to open up the possibility of full productive capacity for the world and the development of a more fully human humanity, all the great instruments of production, such as land, factories, transport, mines, must be efficiently controlled by the democratic representatives of the people. And effective control involves ownership, in fact “ ownership” means effective control. So long as the major instruments of production remain under the control of individuals and private corporations, whose first concern must inevitably be to make profits, so long will the wealthy be able to exploit the poor by controlling their wages and the price of commodities; and also production will never be developed to the full advantage of the human race. So long as the deciding factor in production is the possibility of profit or loss to certain individuals or organised groups, we shall continue to have recurrent slumps, with “over-production,” restriction of output, closing down factories, unemployment, further reduction of purchasing power, destruction of goods, undernourishment and despair. We should not allow production to be determined by the answer to the question, “ will it pay this particular firm to produce these goods?” The right question to ask is, “Will

¶132it pay society to produce these goods?” And by society we must mean in the last resort not any particular national society but the society of all human beings on this planet. Further, and this is of course immensely important, we must understand by the word “pay” not merely payment in terms of money, but payment in terms of human welfare. Every day more and more people are coming to realise that the only way to establish this criterion as the sole criterion of economic policy is to take the final control out of the hands of the individuals and private corporations and give it to the state; provisionally to the national state, but ultimately to a democratically appointed World Economic Authority of some kind. We are becoming increasingly impressed by the fact that already over an area of one sixth of the world, namely in the U.S.S.R., this principle is established; and that it works, and has worked wonders. The great change will obviously involve a struggle with vested interests in every country; but in this country, where democratic machinery exists, the revolution should be achieved by constitutional means. The present government is pledged to undertake it. The people now resolutely wills it; and so the method will be to use existing democratic machinery. If ever vested interests use violence, which I believe is unlikely, the constitutional government will of course use violence against them. Planning and control, if they are not exercised by a fundamentally democratic authority, lead to some sort of mere totalitarianism, such as that of Nazi Germany. After that hideous object-lesson we realise increasingly that the power of final decision about policy, both for the national state and for the human race as a whole, must lie with the majority of citizens, not with any privileged section. In the Inter-War Period democracy fell into bad repute; but however great the need for a transformation of democratic institutions, some form of ultimate democratic sanction is now seen to be

¶133absolutely necessary, in order to avoid tyranny and recurrent revolutions. But democracy cannot work successfully unless the great mass of the citizens are educated up to it. Otherwise they will be easily led astray by skilled propaganda. Though they vote freely, they will in fact be merely voting according to the will of their masters. In Britain faulty education has combined with the propaganda power of the financially-privileged (exercised mainly through the press and radio) to frustrate democracy. It democracy is to work properly, the conditions of the mass of citizen a must be such as to produce in them the mentality of responsible free men, and not of irresponsible slaves. In a country that is very backward economically and politically, such as Russia was in Tsarist times, it is impossible to bring off a social revolution democratically. In a more advanced country, such as contemporary Britain, a democratic revolution is the only kind that can produce the desired results. Since the aim of our revolution, in this country and in the world as a whole, is the fullest possible expression of human capacity in every individual, we shall seek to establish throughout all lands the greatest possible degree of individual liberty compatible with the need to plan and control the life of the world society as a whole. In a very complex society many liberties must be surrendered for the good of the whole. But other liberties are absolutely necessary for a healthy society, and must be preserved almost at any cost. Of the essential liberties, the chief are freedom of speech, freedom to associate in organised bodies, freedom from arbitrary arrest, and finally another kind of freedom, equally important, namely freedom from economic slavery. No society is healthy in which the citizens cannot freely express their opinions without fear of imprisonment or victimisation. No society is healthy in which the citizens cannot meet together and take action in defence of their rights and interests. No society

¶134is healthy in which the citizens cannot be sure that they will never be arrested arbitrarily, or imprisoned for no stated reason, or held indefinitely without a trial. No society is healthy in which the citizen’s right to work and wages depends on the will of profit-seeking employers. These are the essential liberties. The degree of freedom in these respects is a sure measure of the health of any society. Unfortunately, in times of grave crisis in a society which is not fully developed in democratic citizenship, some restriction of some of these liberties may be necessary. In time of war freedom to publish information useful to the enemy has to be withdrawn. This is no reason for preventing the expression of opinions inconvenient to the government. However, in a half-developed society that is deeply divided against itself, the government may sometimes be forced to prevent the propagation of opinions fundamentally opposed to the principles of the society, so as to make it impossible for skilled propagandists to mislead and seduce a dissatisfied class. Even this degree of infringement of liberty of expression is very dangerous, and is only permissible in times of grave crisis. In a society in which the great majority are well educated in citizenship, and fully in accord with the basic principles of the social order, this restriction would never be necessary. Obviously the ideal of individual liberty and the ideal of creative social planning may often come into conflict. Planning inevitably involves interference with the liberty of the individual to seek his own interest in the way that seems to him best. The solution will depend on actual circumstances, but we must always bear in mind the distinction between the essential liberties and those which, though desirable, are not essential. Of non-essential liberties, which can be abandoned without damaging the foundations of democracy, I may mention as examples, freedom to travel on whichever side of the road one pleases, and freedom in times of shortage to

¶135buy as much food or clothing as one desires. Finally, some liberties are quite obviously a violation of the very spirit of a decent society, for instance freedom to cut people’s throats. Equally anti-social, surely, is the freedom to employ others for private profit, the freedom to fix their wages, and to dismiss them, and the freedom to exercise financial power by means of skilled buying and selling. The second principle that has to be borne in mind is this. When a people lacks confidence in its government’s good-will or intelligence, it will be very reluctant to submit to any restrictions of individual liberty; but when it has full confidence in its government, it will put up with a great deal of interference, in the belief that the government knows best what is necessary. There are two very different ways in which a society can be disciplined. Both are necessary; but while one is good in itself, the other is a necessary evil. The bad kind of discipline is discipline imposed by force. A small amount of this is probably unavoidable. But citizens may also be induced freely to accept discipline in the common cause. This is essentially self- discipline. Of this kind was the discipline of the Communist Party in the Russian revolution, and this should be the backbone of every healthy social order. Another distinction must be made, namely between control by compulsion and control by inducements. In the great Tennessee Valley enterprise both these principles played a part, but inducement was the more important factor. People fell in with the scheme because they found it advantageous to do so. Clearly a democratic revolution should make great use of this principle. Personal Relations. The new feeling for community, if it comes into its own, will not only produce a new social structure. It will also effect a great change in ordinary

¶136personal relations. In an individualistic society men have little reason to feel that they are responsible for one another. In a socialist society, the actual structure of the society favours the feeling for community; and if, independently, the society is infused by the passion for true community (and is not socialistic merely in form), men will feel that they are very intimately responsible for one another’s well-being, not merely in official relations, but in the most casual relations also. If all goes well, then, we may look forward to a far-reaching change in the whole behaviour of man to man. In this matter it is possible that we in Britain have a special contribution to make to the life of the world. Prolonged internal peace and security have enabled us to develop a very strong tradition of friendliness in casual relations. People in our streets, trains, buses, public houses, do behave toward one another with a certain gentleness and consideration which is not found in all countries. On the whole we treat one another decently, and we expect to be treated decently. Of course this common friendliness is often destroyed by special circumstances. There is all too often harshness and lack of imagination between employers and employed. Also, in backward countries the Englishman often behaves toward the natives with ridiculous social snobbery, and with all-too-Nazi ruthlessness. And of course there are plenty of snobs and bullies even in the home country. Nevertheless, while we have indeed many shocking faults, we are I believe, entitled to credit ourselves with a certain virtue in this respect. The verdict is supported by the judgement of very many European refugees now living with us. Of course it must not be supposed that all English people are angelically sweet. Far from it. Many of us are downright brutes, and very many are cold and stand-offish. The claim is merely that on the whole in casual personal contacts we are by custom rather more considerate than the average. We

¶137have certainly no reason to be complacent about it, attributing it to some deep-rooted virtue of the English biological stock. There is no evidence whatever for this view. The credit must go to our circumstances, to our extraordinary good fortune during the last two thousand years. But having this special advantage, we have special responsibilities. It is through this knack of friendliness and forbearance that we can make one of our main contributions to the life of mankind. We shall no longer be the “workshop of the world,” and it is to be hoped that not for long shall we be masters of a great Empire; but we can perhaps still contribute greatly by setting an example of decent personal relations in street and train and ‘bus and pub! This may sound trivial, but it is really very important. It is right in line with the needs of mankind today. We must try to set an example of respect for “the other fellow” as an individual person. This we shall only be able to do on two conditions. The first is that we get clear about our fundamental religious conviction. This I shall discuss in more detail in the next chapter. The second condition is that we carry our feeling for decent behaviour into the spheres where at present it is not allowed to penetrate. At present, though we stand for decency, we leave our slums uncleared, because it would not “pay” to remove them. For the same reason we allow a large part of our population to be undernourished and badly educated. We exploit native labour in our colonies, and in India until recently we held the leaders of the nationalist movement in prison. And so on. In view of these facts foreigners very naturally charge us with hypocrisy. We claim to stand for kindliness and freedom, but we perpetrate tyranny and exploitation. The truth is that we have indeed those virtues, but we exercise them only in a limited sphere, in street and train, ‘bus and pub. The time has come when we must extend them into other spheres. Clearly we cannot effectively stand

¶138for decency in the world so long as we confine our decency to street and train, ‘bus and pub. We have to create decent relations throughout our social life. We have in fact to bring off our own social revolution. And we have to do it in such a way that the actual process of the change will be carried out with full regard to our traditional respect for individuality. We have also to free our Empire. Until these evils are righted, we cannot look the world in the face and say we sincerely stand for decent human relations throughout the life of mankind. Perhaps I am grossly exaggerating the virtues of the British in this matter of casual personal relations. However consciously we guard against prejudice in favour of our own nation, we can never be sure that we are not tricked by an unconscious bias. But if I am right, then we, the people of this island, have still an important contribution to make to the founding of the new world. To achieve it, we must become far more clearly conscious of all that is involved in “decent personal relations,” and we must strive with full seriousness to live up to our own ideal. However this may be, it seems clear that after the nightmare of contempt for human personality which has swept the world recently, the climate is already beginning to change toward a renewed realisation that no society can be wholesome without a very strong tradition of mutual responsibility among its ordinary people. The Russian Revolution was the first great modern symptom of the realisation. When the actual revolution had been achieved, external and internal danger produced a situation so desperate that consideration for the individual had often to be sacrificed for the security of the new order. The new government was forced to be ruthless. We in Britain may be able to bring off the great change without this sacrifice.

¶139It is tempting to think that under the stress of war people have become rather more conscious of themselves and of one another, and that in the light of the new consciousness they distinguish rather more clearly between the things that matter and the things that do not matter. War seems to have two opposite effects. It brutalises people, turns them callous; but also it may intensify their comradeship, their mutual responsibility, their sense of the true values of personality-in-community. Since the close of the Inter-War Period this increased consciousness of personality-in-community has begun to affect opinion and custom in many spheres. Personal Relations in Industry. Hitherto the sphere in which respect for human personality has been most violated has been the relations between employers and employed. This violation was made inevitable partly by the general temper of commercialism, which rejected responsibility for one’s fellows, but also by the structure of industry itself. In the old handicraft system of “domestic “industry there was personal contact between master and man. No doubt, in spite of this there was plenty of callousness and cruelty, as there is now between foremen and operatives. Callousness and cruelty will continue to bulk largely in human affairs until, from birth onwards, men are conditioned in such a way as to grow up without grave frustrations and unconscious vindictiveness. But bad as circumstances must often have been in the old days, at least there was direct personal contact, and often a partially effective religious control. In the later system, in which masses of workers toiled in factories for employers, with whom they had no personal contact whatever, it was much easier for employers to forget the humanity of their workers and regard them as merely animated adjuncts of the machines; the more so since the hold of the old religion was steadily weakening. This gulf between employers and employees was of course inevitable because of the

¶140economic structure of society; but lack of personal contact between the two classes in industry was in turn one of the causes of the bitterness of the class war. Neither camp could realise the other as human persons. The Second Industrial Revolution will almost certainly bring about, at any rate at first, greater and greater organisations for production. There will be a danger that the gulf between workers and managers or organisers will tend to grow even wider. This problem of the failure of contact between workers and organisers will not be solved by the ending of capitalism. State ownership, necessary as this is, can easily become sheer Fascism, leading to complete robotisation of the workers. Only if the particular form of state- ownership is true democratic common ownership can this problem be solved. Only if the people wills right human relations, and controls its industrial organisation through its representative government, will it be possible to organise gigantic industrial units in such a way as to maintain contact between workers and managers. When each factory is controlled by a council representing its workers, its technicians and its managers, there will be scope for personal contact between the different sections, and the possibility of a sense of partnership in a common enterprise. OceanofPDF.com

¶141Education But more than this will be needed. We cannot change the whole temper of personal relations in industry, and in society as a whole, by merely increasing the personal contacts between different sections. It is also necessary to have an educational system genuinely inspired by the ideal of personality-in-community. There are signs that, if all goes well, we shall soon enter on a period of educational reform, even perhaps a real educational revolution. This too will be due to the growing sense of the importance of personality-in-community. If this revolution is wisely carried out, it should change the whole character of average human behaviour. Hitler has at least shown us what can be done by means of thorough-going educational manipulation of the minds of the young. The fact that the purpose of the Nazis was fantastic and barbarous, and opposed to the whole tradition of civilisation, makes his success the more remarkable. An educational revolution inspired by the will for true community, and reinforced by a favourable change in the whole structure and temper of society, should have a far more spectacular and permanent success. It is perhaps worth while to summarise the general nature of the great educational revolution that has to be achieved. Every human being must be given the opportunity of the fullest education of which he is capable. Wealth must no longer be able to secure educational privilege, nor must poverty involve educational disabilities. Since the young (particularly in a declining population) are the most valuable asset of society, the state must accept full responsibility for equipping them to become happy and useful citizens. The process of education has two sides, equally important, one negative, the other positive. On the one hand, the young must be brought up in an environment sufficiently favourable to avoid their being damaged mentally by serious frustrations, repressions, obsessions, such as lead to

¶142vindictiveness and other forms of irrigational and anti-social behaviour. On the other hand, they must be given the information needed for life in a complex modern society, and taught many forms of skilled behaviour, physical and mental. Vocational training is important, but no less important is education for the highly skilled activity of being a responsible, critical and generous-minded citizen of the world. That is, education must seek above all to develop the individual’s aptitude for personality-in-community. This means discovering the special capacities of each child and fostering them, to the fullest extent; and fostering in all children the distinctive human powers of sensitivity toward the world, oneself and other selves. By skilled education every individual may be helped to see for himself, so far as in him lies, how man’s nature and circumstance demand that human society should be organised on these principles. The human world can never be healthy until the great majority of human beings spontaneously and unhesitatingly, and with understanding, will the advancement of the world society in personality-in-community. Work and Leisure. If all goes well, if the new feeling for personality-in-community comes into its own, if the necessary social revolution is successfully accomplished, and if human society is henceforth infused with a new inspiration and a new purpose, then we may hope that the new spirit will transform men’s attitude to work and leisure. I have already suggested that work will be regarded much more frankly as essentially social service, and as, indeed, the main outlet for social self-expression. The whole of an individual’s life, we may hope, will be much more dominated by the passion for self-expression in social service, for playing a part in the common enterprise. There will be a greater eagerness to understand what the common life of mankind is all

¶143about and to be properly equipped to take part in it, both through a special vocation and in a more general way in responsible citizenship. It seems to follow that the distinction between work and leisure will be blurred. Men will be less inclined to feel that, while a certain part of their day “belongs to” the organisation that employs them (say a factory), the rest “belongs to” themselves. Instead, they will be more inclined to feel that all their time is their own for self-expression in some kind of socially desirable action. Of course the distinction between work-hours and leisure-hours will still remain, between activities undertaken at the bidding of society and activities undertaken of one’s own sweet will. But it is to be hoped that the attitudes to work and to leisure-activities will not differ as sharply as they do now. Our social revolution should free people from their present sense of the futility of life, and the educational revolution should help them to a positive personal and social aim. If all goes well, the younger generations will attain that hopefulness and forward vision which the Russian Revolution afforded to the young of the U.S.S.R. If so, then we may expect a new attitude both to work, as self-expression in service, and to leisure also, as primarily self- expression through some form of contribution to the richness of the common life, or as personal recreation for participation in that life. Of course there will still be opportunities for sheer relaxation and passive amusement. Though working hours will in most cases be far shorter than they now are, much work will still be very fatiguing. Moreover, possibly the majority of the population will still be too modestly developed in mentality to be capable of much more than passive amusement. All the same, a far greater number than today will certainly feel the need for active and creative leisure occupations.

¶144When the providing of amusement is no longer dominated by commercial enterprise, we may expect a general rise in the quality of all recreation. For today the pleasure industries make their profits by a deliberate appeal to our more primitive, facile and obsessive impulses. Even people who are capable of more developed forms of amusement, and who rather feebly prefer them, are continually led astray by the bait offered by the pleasure industries. In spite of themselves, they drift into the picture houses, or watch football matches, or bet on dogs or horses. And so they contract habits of lazy amusement which gradually kill whatever impulses they had for more active leisure occupations. When the bait of the pleasure industries is no longer set, these people will have a better chance. A non- commercial film industry (for instance) need not be constantly appealing to the crude and obsessive impulses. It can afford to provide matter which, less seductive and not debasing, will stimulate the spectator’s mind to active participation. What really is the function of leisure? We may, I think, sum it up in this way. It should afford rest and recuperation to powers that have been over worked. It should also give expression to powers which do not otherwise gain expression. Finally, it should afford opportunities of keeping in touch with the life of society, and of equipping one for fuller participation in it. A human being is a going concern, a dynamic system of impulses to action, on many levels of development. All these impulses need some expression. There are the “bodily” impulses, such as hunger, sleep, muscular exercise, physiological sex-craving. There are more complex impulses, such as fear, anger, self-assertiveness, sociability, psychological sex-craving, and gregariousness. And there are still more complex and distinctively human impulses, such as self-aware and other-ware needs for personal intercourse, for social activities, for understanding, for art, and so

¶145on. One of the main functions of leisure, then, is to afford expression to impulses which do not find adequate expression in work-time. Sometimes the impulses that need outlet will be mainly simple, animal or childish powers, sometimes rather more developed powers, sometimes powers on the highest level of development of which the individual is capable. Bearing all this in mind, we cannot but observe that the present amusement industries offer in the main opportunities for merely passive expression to the cruder impulses, to crude sexuality, self-assertiveness, gregariousness, the cravings for vicarious adventure, and so on. Of course, even in our society there are many forms of amusement of a more active kind, such as hiking, playing games, dancing, gardening, carpentering, amateur engineering, “gadgetising” of all sorts, cross-word puzzles and other competitions, with of course a small amount of creative artistic activity in the form of music, painting, play-acting. After the revolution we may see a vast increase of all the active leisure occupations, and a general improvement of quality, both in active and passive forms of amusement. (This has already happened in Russia). For instance, not only should the cinema, which is at present simply commercial, be greatly improved, but also great developments should be possible in the radio, which though not actually commercial is largely paralysed by the influence of the present ruling commercial class. At present our rulers seem concerned to use this modern instrument of recreation and education rather as a means to spread complacent acquiescence in the present order, and to prevent the public from thinking about the really interesting and controversial subjects, than as a means of stimulating the minds of ordinary citizens. I suggested that one important function of leisure was that it should afford opportunities for keeping in touch with the life of society, and

¶146equipping oneself for fuller participation in it. Each according to his capacity, we should be using our leisure partly for intelligent reading of daily papers and other journals, partly for more organised reading on social, scientific, and other cultural subjects, and also for what may be called in the broadest sense “political activity,” local or national. This last is necessary both that we may equip ourselves for active citizenship and in order that the many good causes which depend on voluntary action should be advanced. It is essential to the spirit of democracy that the citizens should actively participate in the life of their society. They must shoulder responsibility. They must be ready to do things for themselves, rather than wait for the authorities to do things for them. This sort of action involves plenty of leisure. You cannot have a real democracy unless the citizens have time and energy for voluntary social activities. Pioneering adventures must inevitably be carried out by pioneering individuals. One of the main problems of socialism will be to ensure that this can continue even in a socialist state. One example of individual pioneering is the case of the voluntary hospitals. It is very arguable that in this instance individual pioneering has by now fulfilled its task, and that the voluntary hospitals should now be brought under state or municipal control. But there will always be fields for individual pioneering, particularly in education, invention of new industrial processes, and the arts. Clearly such pioneering cannot be carried on without ample leisure from official work, and in some cases it involves also financial aid. Perhaps it will be possible to set up a special and semi-independent organ of the state to foster innovation in all spheres. Parents and Families. If the new feeling for personality-in-community comes into its own we shall see changes in the temper of family life. The old Victorian family was

¶147to a large extent a dictatorship under the father. The element of parental possession of the children was very strong. But, as I have said, even as early as my childhood this was changing. By the time the Inter-War Period was well under way, the family was seriously disintegrating. The worse type of parent simply shirked his or her responsibilities; the better type was perplexed and worried by the conflict between his obvious responsibility to mould the character of his (or her) children and the fear of imposing his will on them. On the whole, among the more “advanced” people, the family was condemned as an archaic institution, and parenthood was regarded as something which the really civilised mind would want to avoid so far as possible. Today there are signs of a new attitude. Partly through the threatened decline of the population, partly, I believe, through the spread of a rather clearer consciousness of self and other, parenthood and the family are coming back into esteem; but with a difference. It is being realised that, if parents are intelligent and responsible, the family can be a very educative microcosm of community between young and old, and between the young themselves. But instead of reinstating the ingrown Victorian family, or remaining content with the disintegrated Inter-War family, young parents are, I believe, feeling their way toward a new kind of family life. It is being realised that every member of a family should have some activity outside the family. This is particularly important for the mother. The father normally has his work. Every day he goes out into the world. But the mother’s whole life is apt to be taken up with looking after the children and the home. Having no serious outside activities, she becomes psychologically too dependent on her care of the children, and consequently too possessive towards them. In the future, let us hope, steps will be taken to relieve mothers of this danger.

¶148There must be crèches and nursery schools for all. There must be organisations for communal feeding and communal domestic service. The aim will be, not to relieve the mother of all responsibilities, but to free her from the excess of them, so that for a half or a third of her time she can take on external activities, paid or unpaid. We are realising today that, if the family can be turned into a less ingrown association, it can be the means of providing the rising generation with an unfailing mental anchorage, and an intense early experience of concrete community. “Home,” which was often and with justice derided in the Inter-War Period, is once more being valued, particularly by those in the services, who can no longer enjoy its benefits. I referred above to the threat of a serious decline of the population. Many changes are likely to be brought about by it. Though in this island today we have far too big a population for our present inefficient economic system, a properly planned system could afford fulness of life to a much greater number. Meanwhile we are threatened with a catastrophically declining and therefore a preponderantly middle-aged population. There is a danger that there will not be enough young and vigorous people to keep the complex life of a modern society going. There seems to be no single cause of this grave trouble. Possibly we are suffering in part from some obscure biological change in fertility. But in addition there are certainly social causes making for a decline of population; for instance the Inter-War lack of enthusiasm for parenthood, and the general feeling that it was not fair to bring children into a world in which there was no security of their having a decent life. In view of these social causes, clearly two things at least will have to be done. Parenthood must on the one hand be guaranteed economic security, and on the other hand it must be made to appear as a social duty, and one through which men and women can find fulness of being. Clearly, the threat of a declining population will force us to value human beings

¶149more than goods. It will indeed he recognised that children are society’s most precious possession. Every care will be lavished on their physical and mental upbringing. Maternity and education may become the two most honoured professions. Every encouragement will be given to young women to have children. The stigma of illegitimacy will be abolished. No child will be allowed to suffer in any way because its parents were not married. At the same time, since the family at its best is the most wholesome environment for children, permanent marriage will always seem the most desirable state. Various new forms of marriage may be sanctioned, perhaps polygamous and polyandrous. But monogamy, which in the Inter-War Period was often ridiculed, is once more coming to seem the most satisfactory form of union. We shall not go back to the possessiveness and rigidity of Victorian monogamy, but the are coming to realise better than we did in the Inter-War Period that only a life-long partnership can afford full expression, to the capacity for intimate community in the form of sex-toned personal love. Sex and the Position off Women. Our whole attitude to sex is likely to change under the influence of the increasing will for right personal relations. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries sex was regarded as unclean, and in need of very strict control. In the Inter-War Period the breakdown of the old taboos, combined with the tendency to regard man as merely a rather cunning animal, led to the “de-personalising” of sex relations. Sexual intercourse became less of a co-operative act by mutually aware persons, more of a mere bodily reaction. Instead of being a vehicle for developed personal love, sex was cheapened, trivialised. Today the prevailing temper, I believe, is changing, in this as in so many other matters. There is no question of merely restoring the Victorian taboos, but on the whole there seems to be the beginning of a movement, particularly among the young, toward greater mutual

¶150consideration in sex relationships, toward a re-personalising of sex. But perhaps this movement still lies in the future. Anyhow it will certainly come, for it is in line with the whole trend of cultural development. The same tendency will probably show itself in changes in the popular view of the right position of women in society. Victorian woman, as I have said, was regarded both as a divinity and a chattel under the control of some man. Inter-War woman was fairly thoroughly emancipated. She won her rights to compete with man in most spheres. She became increasingly her own mistress even in the eyes of the law. Increasingly she was regarded simply as human and not distinctively as female-human. By all means, it was said, let her compete freely with man, but on the other hand let her not expect special treatment in virtue of her female disabilities. In the earlier Inter-War days she affected a boyish appearance. Her skirts were boldly shortened, causing scandal to survivors from an earlier age. She cut her hair short, and dressed somewhat mannishly. Small breasts became fashionable. She also showed a disposition to shun her special function, maternity. In Nazi Germany the reaction against the whole sadly debased culture of the democracies, led to the subjection of women once more They were to be regarded as mere stud-animals, cows, specialised breeding and quite incapable of the fully developed human nature of the noble male. — In the democracies themselves this extravagant reaction has fortunately not developed, but we too are moving away from our Inter-War attitude to women. We are beginning to take woman’s womanhood more seriously. The disposition toward community, and toward respecting individual powers and disabilities, compels us to regard woman neither as a cow nor as an imitation man. I have already noted the tendency to emancipate mothers from sheer slavery to their young children. This should make maternity more popular than it has hitherto been. In general we, that is to say not only

¶151the men, but the women themselves, must complete the process of freeing women from semi-servitude to men; but at the same time we must not forget that woman is biologically a more specialised creature than man. She must of course be allowed real freedom to express herself in whatever direction her individual talents happen to lead; but also maternity must be recognised as her most important and her noblest contribution to the life of society. Maternity needs to be regarded objectively. The Victorians surrounded it with mystery and false sanctity. The Inter-War generations tended to despise it as a merely animal function, so that to undertake it seemed to many women to involve a lot of suffering with no result but betrayal of their human dignity. We need a new attitude, which will regard motherhood as the highly specialised profession for which women alone are biologically fitted, and in which they can find the fullest, and a fully human, self-expression. It is a skilled profession, or art, demanding serious training under the best possible conditions. While maternity is obviously woman’s unique function, she has also a more general and perhaps equally important aptitude, closely connected with her power of maternity. She has a special talent for personal relations, for sympathy and understanding, and respect for idiosyncrasies of those with whom she comes into contact. Perhaps in a society in which women are granted full equality with men, and at the same time their special talents are recognised, the women of the society may be able to play a very important part in humanising personal relations throughout the society. But of course, though women can excel in this way, they are also, we are told, capable of a peculiarly petty and cattish spitefulness. This, it is said, is specially evident where women are thrown together in large groups, and particularly under military discipline. Woman’s gift, I suggest, (unless it has been spoiled by bad upbringing or a false social tradition) is for

¶152spontaneous, unorganised personal relations. When women are forced, as thousands are today, into an environment utterly alien to their special talent, frustration is all too likely to turn them toward pettiness and spite. There is another side to the matter. If pettiness and spite really are characteristic of women, they are probably a relic of the former subjection of women. These short-comings are characteristic of all “subject races”! As women’s conditions improve, their average mentality should improve also. Further, their full emancipation should react favourably on man. A man cannot be fully a man unless the women with whom he comes in contact are fully women, and both are fully human. OceanofPDF.com

¶153CHAPTER 5. BEYOND MAN. What the Religious Believers Bay. I HAVE TRIED to outline the great change of social temper and behaviour which, I believe, is already beginning, but which must go much further if we are to turn this critical corner in the career of mankind, so as to begin deliberately creating a more fully human world. Some readers may feel that my account of the matter has left out something very important. They might put it that the new social temper, if it is adequate, must spring from a recovery of religion, and that in my account religion plays no part at all. I believe they are right in holding that “religion,” in some sense of that vague word, has a great part to play. Here I disagree with the scientific materialists. But the kind of “religion” which must play a part IN the founding of the new world is in many respects very different from “religion” as it is interpreted by those who pin their faith to doctrines about the fundamental nature of the universe and the destiny of human individuals in it. The attitude which I should adopt would be called by the religious believers “merely humanistic,” since its most fundamental principle is that man’s chief concern should be to make the most of man. They deny that this humanistic attitude is enough. In a sense their protest is justified; and in this final chapter I shall try to state in what sense, if mankind is to become fully human, it is necessary for human beings to look beyond humanity. The believers say that human nature itself, properly understood, is such that man cannot attain full humanity unless he can believe in some superhuman being, infinitely mightier and better than man. To this being

¶154alone, who is in fact God, they say, man should give his final loyalty. Unless he believes in God he will never find real happiness, nor will he have any firm anchorage for his moral principles, nor will he be able even to fulfil his own human nature. The only sufficient foundation, they say, for morality is the belief in a divine person, almighty and all-loving. Atheists, they have to admit, are often thoroughly virtuous men; but virtue is possible to them only because their minds have been moulded from infancy by the great Christian tradition, or the tradition of tome other great religion. Believers argue that in a society in which religious beliefs die, moral feeling may indeed live on for some time, but sooner or later morality too must inevitably die. Such a society, they tell us, is living on its moral capital. The moral chaos of the Inter-War Period was a stage in the fatal disintegration of morality in a civilisation which had almost entirely lost its belief in God. Unless we recover that belief, the disintegration will continue. They would, of course, deny that a real moral regeneration has occurred in Russia. They are forced to deny it, since the ideology of the Russian revolution excludes all religious beliefs. Further, the believers insist that unless men believe in the immortality of the individual human spirit, and some sort of reward of virtue in eternity, there can be no effective motive for being virtuous. If this life is all, they say, we might as well simply seek as much individual pleasure as possible while we can, and the devil take the hindmost. Now if the believers are right in insisting on the necessity of belief, the prospect for humanity is very bleak, for the changes that these beliefs will ever again play a controlling part in the great majority of human lives are small. Though the Churches are staging a great effort to regain their authority, it seems unlikely, in the present temper of the world, that they will make much headway in collecting the masses once more into their

¶155folds. The only Christian Church which seems to secure the earnest devotion of large numbers of ordinary people today is the Roman Catholic Church; and the Roman Catholic attitude is in many ways quite out of sympathy with very much which is essential to the temper and the aims of mankind today. The Roman Catholic Church may yet have great successes. Some of its members may even here and there play an important part in service of the necessary world-revolution. But if they do so, it will be without clear understanding of what they do. As a world-wide organisation the Roman Catholic Church stands for a theory about the universe and an attitude about man’s right part in it which are out of touch with the facts of the modern world. The Church encourages men to hope for individual salvation in an after life, or in eternity, rather than to give themselves utterly to making the best of themselves and one another and the human race here on earth. I cannot believe that the temper of mankind will ever revert to such an attitude; unless of course, the forward movement is defeated, and we enter upon an age of darkness and reaction. Two causes, I should say, make it very unlikely that any Christian Church or other organised religion, will ever really regain widespread sway over men’s minds. The one cause is the influence of science; the other is the fact that, however admirable the record of some believers in the great struggle of our age for a better social order, the Churches and other religions, as organised bodies, have stood aside, or else have come out as supporters of the old order. So if a decent future depends on the recovery of religious belief, the prospect is indeed bleak. Though there may be a temporary recovery here and there, the tide of opinion is now setting strongly in another direction. But a decent future depends on no such thing as beliefs about the nature of the universe and the participation of human individuals in eternal bliss or eternal woe. It is quite untrue that morality can be securely founded on the

¶156belief in God and immortality. The real foundation of morality lies in our concrete experience of living together. At a certain stage of growth in consciousness of ourselves and other selves we discover the difference between a more awake way of living and a less, a more fully conscious, a more developed, a more personal way of living, and a less conscious, less developed, less personal way. And the more awake way presents itself to us as the better. We recognise that, though it is more difficult, and often repugnant to us in our less awake state, it is more deeply satisfying to our essential nature as conscious beings. Not that we desire it simply because it is supremely satisfying, or the way of personal self-fulfilment. We desire it not as a means to something else, but simply for its own sake, And we recognise that it is “right,” whatever the final philosophical sense of that word. We recognise that this way of living is in some sense what we are “for.” We recognise that, in whatever the true sense of “ought,” we ought to live in this way. Very roughly this right way of living is the way of sensitivity, intelligence, community, comradeship, love and creative action. It is the way of the clearest and fullest awareness of the world, including ourselves and other selves, and all of us together in human society. It is the way of precise feeling about everything that we experience. Pursuing it, we strive to know just what we are feeling pleased about, or angry about, or exalted about, and so on. It is also the way of coherent action, and of creative action. Pursuing it, we refuse to allow irrelevant impulses to obsess us, and on the other hand we strive to act so as to create in ourselves and others ever fuller expression of personal being, or personality-in-community. To sum the matter, it is the way in which we recognise the intrinsic beauty of (dare I say it?) the spirit, and the obligation to do all in our power to fulfil in ourselves and others, our capacity for spiritual being.

¶157The recognition of the rightness of this way of living does not do a great part in helping Europeans to see “the Way,” but Christian beliefs are not necessary to the acceptance of the Way as desirable. Indeed, we may reasonably argue that, far from “good” being “good” because it is what God wills, or because it is inherent in a divine universal personality, God (if he exists) is good only if he does pend on any beliefs about God and immortality. Christianity played indeed will what in fact we independently recognise to be good. And as for immortality, the whole idea that it is unreasonable to be virtuous unless, here or hereafter, virtue is rewarded is surely wrong-headed. Virtue, let us never forget, is its own reward. What the Sceptics Say. Such is the answer which, I hold, should be given to the religious believer. To reject his position does not necessarily lead to accepting the views of his opponents. These “ethical sceptics” explain away morality by arguing that moral principles are simply customs which have proved useful to society or to some dominant section of it, and have been handed down from generation to generation through the prestige-suggestion exercised by parents over children. In the last analysis, they say, all these sanctified customs are derived from primitive impulses, such as self-regard, herd- feeling, fear. Thus altruism derives its moral value partly from the “herd instinct” and partly from the fact that mutual aid makes for the security of the mass of individuals. The roots of altruism are self-regard and gregariousness. So we are told. — This is not the place for a philosophical discussion. Here I shall only record what seems to me the essence of the answer to the sceptics. First, then, we may agree that the modern psychological and sociological account of the sources of moral feelings is probably true, so far as it goes; but we must deny that the upshot of it is to explain away the values of the

¶158developed mind by reducing them to primitive impulses which we share with the sub human animals. It may well be true that the feelings of obligation and of guilt spring from the child’s conflict over its parents, who are at once the source of compulsion and of comfort and security. The child rebels against the parental will, and yet also accepts it as morally right. His rebellious self is opposed to his own “super ego” or moral self, which sanctifies the moral will of the parents. Further, the morality which the parents impose on the child is indeed a system of customs and taboos which is handed down by tradition from generation to generation. Each item in it was no doubt sanctioned in the past by its real or fancied utility, either to the tribe as a whole or to some dominant class within the tribe. So the truth about any morality is that it is largely a confused expression of social (or class) utility handed down from a former age, and inevitably in part out of date. In the sceptic’s view, that is all there is to it. I believe this account is in principle correct, except for the claim that “that is all there is to it.” First, with regard to the origin of morality in the child’s life, it is important to realise that you do not fully explain a developed impulse in terms of a primitive one unless it can be shown that the developed one is after all qualitatively identical with the primitive one. For instance a disposition to be always “agin the government” may legitimately be traced to childish rebelliousness against the parents. But careful inspection of genuine moral feelings shows them not to be qualitatively identical with the primitive cravings for comfort and security. To love a person as a person is not qualitatively the same sort of activity as regarding him or her as a source of comfort and security for oneself. The moral quality of the child’s feeling for the parental will derives not from its primitive need for comfort and security but from its dawning realisation of friendliness or community

¶159as the right relation between persons. The point is that, with sufficient help from the environment, the child can grow into self-consciousness, other- consciousness and community-consciousness. And this is the real source of moral feeling. The second point to bear in mind is this. Any given morality is, indeed, an expression of past social (or class) utility; but it is also an expression of the apprehension of personality-in-community. And only in so far as it is beneficial for personality-in-community, in the present circumstances of the society, is it in fact morally justifiable. The sceptic may with justice say that even this fundamental moral value, personality-in-community, has been forced on us by the environment through its survival-value. In the long run, societies that are strong in the will for personality-in-community have the advantage both in social coherence and in care for individual health, bodily and mental. And therefore such societies are in the long run best equipped for survival. True! But we must remember that the valuing of personality-in-community does involve a real discovery, impossible on the sub-human level. It involves waking up into self-consciousness, other-consciousness and consciousness of community. This “waking up” is not simply the product of the environment. Circumstances, no doubt, lead the developing mind into a position from which alone the discovery can be made; but circumstances alone do not create the necessary sensitivity for the discovery. Moreover, there is this to be added. To say that the will for personality- in-community has survival value is simply to say, rather incompletely, that, for self-conscious and other-conscious beings in a universe such as this in fact is, the will for personality-in-community is in the long run the way of life. It is not merely the way of survival; it is the way of survival and of advancement in the essential qualities of beings such as we are.

¶160Man Must Look Beyond Himself. After this interlude on the sceptical view of morality, I can return to the religious believers. I have denied their claim that morality is meaningless unless it is based on the belief in God and immortality. But they make another charge against the purely humanistic view; and in this case I believe they are up to a point right. They claim that human nature demands for its full development the subordination of mankind to something superhuman. Where they go wrong, I suggest, is in holding that the something superhuman must be a personal God. It seems to me quite obvious that the human mind is at present incapable of formulating any reliable propositions about the fundamental nature of the universe, and that the idea of a personal or “super-personal” God is hopelessly confused, if not meaningless. The statement that there is a personal God and the statement that there is not, the statement that human individuals have eternal life and the statement that they have not, are probably in the last analysis all equally beside the mark. It is vital for mental and spiritual growth that we should realise not merely the depth of our ignorance, but the utter inadequacy of the very texture of our thinking in relation to these supramundane problems. In these days there can be no true religion that is not founded on a very thorough intellectual agnosticism. But once we have purged our minds of all the old beliefs, then at last we may discover true religion in our own daily experience of concrete living. We can discover the supreme beauty and rightness of the way of life which consists of striving for fuller expression of personality-in-community, in ourselves and others. We can come to feel that, in some sense utterly beyond our comprehension, this is what we are for. We can feel that the true goal, both for individual and society, is not just humanity as it actually is,

¶161but the superhuman spirit or temper which humanity so imperfectly manifests. We must not think of this superhuman “spirit” as a person, or even as a substance, but simply as the ideal development for personality-in- community in conscious beings in whatever circumstances they occur. I believe we are entitled to hold, simply on the evidence of our own experience, that for such beings, no matter what their idiosyncrasies, this development is necessarily the way of life, the way of fulfilment of their essential nature, the way also of supreme satisfaction. This appears to me indubitable. In addition I believe something else, with much less assurance. The profound sense of instrumentality, of being in some sense “a vessel of the spirit,” which we may have in times of exceptional lucidity and integrity, is something of very deep significance, though as yet we do not know how to interpret it. Of the status of this “spirit” in the universe at large we know nothing. But we may legitimately find comfort in the certainty that wherever in all the starry universe, or any other conceivable universe, self-conscious and other-conscious beings occur, they too, in their lucid state, cannot but give their final loyalty to the manifesting of this spirit. Surely this is enough. Whether in fact there is any one supreme personal being, different in kind from all the others, because eternal and almighty, we do not know. Even if, in fact, there is, yet for us today the way of life is not to cling blindly to a self-deceiving belief in him, but to be honestly agnostic. We cannot even know whether anywhere in the universe beyond this little planet there are or will be any self-conscious or other-conscious beings. There may be; and some of them may be as superior to us in all the

¶162ways that really matter as we to worms and microbes. Perhaps we, ephemeral as we are as individuals and as a species, are lowly partners in a great cosmical venture for the fulfilling of the spirit. Or perhaps the human species is the sole germ of the spirit in all the cosmos. In this case how great our responsibility! Further, we have no assurance that the venture on which we are now engaged, alone or in company with other minded-worlds, will come to fruition. It may be doomed to disaster, either through uncontrollable forces, or through some fatal limitation in the nature of all self-conscious beings. Perhaps this is unlikely, but for honesty’s sake we must face the possibility. Another possibility also must be recognised. Perhaps the great effort to fulfil the potentiality of personality-in-community, which must necessarily come to be the supreme goal of every sufficiently developed species in any world, is in the universal view merely a factor in some sublime ulterior purpose wholly inconceivable to us. Perhaps the success of beings of our type is not demanded in the universal scheme at all; if indeed there is such a scheme. Perhaps what is needed is simply our striving, which may find its justification not in success, but in contributing in some ulterior way to consciousness upon some inconceivably loftier plane than ours. What we ourselves need of cabbages is not that they should fulfil their nature in flower and seed, but that they should, prepare for flowering by growing leaves which we can eat. Such is perhaps the type of our own ultimate function in the cosmos. Such a possibility rouses some people to indignant rebellion against a callous universe. But surely their reaction is parochial. The point is this. If there is indeed in any sense a “universal scheme” and therefore a purposeful universal spirit which wills it, then we can be certain that, however alien and even callous that scheme seems to us, yet it must necessarily be

¶163concerned, upon its infinitely higher plane, with sensitivity, intelligence, love, community and creative action. For on the evidence of our own experience we see unmistakably that consciousness, developed ‘ beyond a certain very lowly level, cannot but will personality-in-community. — We can be assured then that, even if the success or failure of worlds up and down the cosmos is irrelevant to the purpose of the universal spirit, yet that purpose cannot be fundamentally alien to our own most lucid purposes. But all these speculations are probably quite beside the mark, since they are based on the assumption that there is a purposeful “universal spirit,” and it is unlikely that, if there is, its nature is limited by personality and purposefulness. Its nature is probably such that none of the concepts derived from personality can be truly applied to it. About all these high matters we must remain uncompromisingly agnostic. And we can well afford to do so; for in our own experience we have the certainty that, so far as we live in the way of sensitivity love and creative action, we fulfil and justify our existence. I have agreed with the believers in recognising that human nature demands for its full expression subordination to something superhuman. I have argued that subordination to something superhuman is felt as the obligation to strive for a superhuman development of human nature, and that this obligation applies to all self-conscious and other conscious beings throughout the cosmos. But there is also another way in which man should, I believe, subordinate himself to something superhuman. On this subject I shall speak with great hesitation, because I cannot get my own mind clear about it; but to keep silent would be to leave out something of great importance to the healthy issue of our hoped-for revolution in human affairs. — Though in one of its moods religious feeling is uncompromisingly moral, demanding absolute loyalty to the moral ideal, in

¶164another mood it seems to accept both good and evil as “all within the divine plan.” In the first mood the feeling is that “God is love,” and that everything in conflict with love must be utterly rejected. In the other there is an unconditional acceptance of fate, of the actual course of events, however hostile they may seem in the relation to the ideal of love. This is the mood which expresses itself in the cry “Thy will be done.” There is of course behind this cry a faith that God’s will, could we but understand it, would be revealed as good in some more fundamental way than ours, no matter how terrible it might be to our limited vision. This attitude does not imply any betrayal of our loyalty to the good, or any weakening of the moral will; but it does involve our ultimate acceptance of the evil in the universe as in some way necessary to the perfection or beauty or ultimate rightness of the whole. In much the same way the aesthetic rightness of a work of art may involve detail that, taken by itself, is repugnant, hideous, horrible. All of us know in our own maturing the experience of growing out of childish values into adult values. There are times in the growth of every developing personality when things that were very precious either begin to seem trivial and insipid or must be reluctantly abandoned for the sake of things which cannot but be recognised as “higher.” Sometimes, though we cannot ourselves see that the higher things really are higher, someone whom we have reason to regard as more grown up and farsighted than ourselves does see them higher; and so we reluctantly try to open our hearts so as to accept the senior’s values. To the believer in an almighty and benevolent God something of the same sort must inevitably happen. The evil in the world has to be taken in the faith that it is all really part of the divine scheme. — Even those who Reject belief in God should, I think, bear in mind the possibility of values beyond our human ken. There is no reason whatever to

¶165suppose that man, even at his most civilised best, has reached the topmost pinnacle of development in consciousness. Indeed, there is very good reason to suppose that his highest attainment in percipience and feeling and comprehension is as nothing compared with the heights that are inaccessible to him. And so, if in certain modes of experience some men seem to themselves to catch obscure glimpses of those higher reaches, we should not dismiss their claims as necessarily sheer delusion. Indeed, we should ourselves try to seize upon any intimation of such experience in our own lives. But if we do discover such intimations, we should beware of simple interpretations of them in terms either of materialistic mental fashions of our own period, or of the theistic mental fashions of a period that is already passing. The great mystics claim emphatically that they had such experiences. It seems reasonable to believe that in fact they did have moments of supernormal lucidity. On the other hand their interpretations of those precious moments are inevitably formed in terms of the prevailing culture of their age, and must therefore inevitably be largely misinterpretation. And we too, if we have ever any glimmers of such experience, and if we try to explain them in terms of our own obviously imperfect modern culture, shall almost certainly be misinterpreting. Then what of it? Each of us must judge for himself. For my part, when I seem to myself to be most “awake,” I do seem to see life from a new angle. I do precariously rise to a point of view less earth-bound than that of my ordinary experience. When I am most sensitively and most comprehensively aware of the universe (so far as it is within my ken) and of myself in it, and of those dear to me, I do find myself forced bewilderingly beyond the human view-point. There is really nothing mysterious in this experience. It is simply that I see and feel things more clearly, and in juster proportion. The evil and

¶166horror and cruel tragedy of existence floods in crushingly upon my ordinary little self; but at the same time something in me wakes, and accepts, not merely with resignation, but with trembling joy. Not that in this state I incline to throw up the sponge and acquiesce in evils that I had a chance of preventing. Strangely, I feel more, not less, morally hound to strive for the good ends. But when the issue is settled, and the facts unalterable, then I find myself accepting. I do not pretend to be able to give a satisfactory interpretation of this experience, or even a satisfactory description of it. But that it should be explained away in terms of “repressed infantile cravings” or “glandular secretions” or what not, is a notion which has latterly come to seem to me almost laughably fantastic. The experience is so obviously my highest reach of mental and spiritual awareness. And it has so obviously a steadying and a vitalising influence throughout my life. If humanism rejects this kind of experience as simply a delusion, then humanism is indeed not enough. If it insists on taking the current mental climate as final, and on explaining away everything in our experience which is not congenial to that climate, then humanism is a poor parochial ephemeral thing. If it takes as its final goal simply the fulfilling of the extant needs of extant mankind, and can allow no ultimate piety, no inarticulate worship of the unknowable but obscurely felt superhuman, then away with humanism! But if humanism can accept all this, and is only humanistic in the sense that it sees man’s supreme religious duty not in other-worldliness, but in striving to make the most of man here and now as a vessel of the spirit, then humanism is indeed the attitude needed for the proper conduct of mankind’s coming revolution. Man Among the Stars

¶167Looking at our experience as a whole, we see that man is a very small, frail, imperfect creature; but also we see that his imperfect nature points toward, and even perhaps contains the germ of, something much more admirable. Man is surrounded by a physical immensity which we can only very dimly conceive. Mere physical size is not a matter of great importance, but we should try to see ourselves roughly in the right physical proportion to the rest of the universe. An imaginary model may help. Our galaxy is a system of some thousand million suns almost inconceivably remote from one another. The whole system is said to be a biscuit-shaped thing about a million light-years across. This means that light, which takes a few minutes to reach us from the sun, takes a million years to cross the galaxy. It is believed that there are ten million galaxies in the whole universe. The total number of stars in all the galaxies is said to be roughly the number of sand- grains on all the sea-shores. And each star is a sun. Let us imagine a model of the universe in which the system of stars which is our own galaxy is represented by the area of Wales. Then far to the west, in the Atlantic, and to the east, in Europe, lie seven much smaller galaxies. Other galaxies, great and small, are spread through space at average intervals represented in our model by the distance from Wales to North America. The remotest galaxy at present visible through our most powerful telescope is actually five hundred million light-years distant. Even in our tiny model it would lie sixty thousand miles away, a quarter of the distance to the moon. The whole universe or cosmos, which according to relativity theory is “finite though boundless,” would correspond in our model to a volume about eleven million miles across, one eighth of the actual distance from the earth to the sun. Let us now turn to the dimensions of things within our galaxy. The distance between the sun and the nearest of

¶168the stars, actually four and a half light-years, would appear in our model as about thirteen feet. A light-year itself would be rather less than three feet. The movement of the stars in relation to one another, actually about twenty miles a second, would be represented by a speed of four inches in a hundred years. The earth’s orbit round the sun would be one thousandth of an inch in diameter. The sun himself would be a microscopic grain six millionths of an inch across. The earth would be a far smaller grain, one twentieth of a millionth of an inch. Let us now consider the magnitudes of time, and then help ourselves by constructing a much reduced time-model. The formation of the earth and the other planets is believed to have occurred some two thousand million years ago. Half way between then and now the first recognisably “living” things may have first appeared. — The first approximately human beings perhaps occurred two million years ago. — The dawn of civilised living may be put at six thousand years ago. — Science began some three centuries ago. — As for the future, barring accidents, the earth will still be a habitable world for a period much longer than its present age. So, if all goes well, the human species may have a future on the planet about a million times as long as its past. Let our model be constructed on the scale of one year to a million years. Then the earth was formed two thousand years ago, and life appeared a thousand years after that. The human species has existed roughly one month. Civilisation began roughly five hours ago. Science is some fifteen minutes old. A longish human life-time is three or four minutes. Barring accidents, the earth should be habitable two thousand years hence. But to repeat, spatial and temporal magnitudes, though impressive, are not in themselves of any importance. They are only to be taken into serious account because they may have some significance beyond themselves. The

¶169immensity of the physical universe does suggest a vast potentiality not merely of physical power but also of mentality. Our bodies are made of the same kind of physical units as the remotest stars; of electrons, protons, positrons, neutrons, and so on, and of electro-magnetic vibrations, Scientists are fond of insisting on the unique circumstances of the earth, and on the uniqueness of man. They are right. But when they insist that consciousness cannot occur save in these unique conditions, they become dogmatic. The one fundamental fact about the physical relation of life and consciousness (as we experience them) is that they are always associated with some change of energy potential. The particular set of chemical changes which forms the basis of life, as we know it, certainly has peculiarly favourable characters for living processes, but it is risky to affirm that only one set of physical changes can form an adequate basis of life and consciousness. It may be that purely sub-atomic energy-changes may in certain conditions be organised as vital processes. For all we know, the stars themselves, in which prodigious energy-changes are constantly occurring, may be minded organisms; or the galaxies, or the cosmos as a whole. On the other hand, man may indeed be the sole living germ of intelligent and spiritual being in the whole cosmos. Here complete agnosticism is demanded. All the same, we may reasonably allow the physical immensity to suggest to us the possibility that the cosmos, which is indeed bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, has some kind of mental and spiritual aspect, just as our bodies have; and that, associated with its physical immensities are spiritual immensities, inconceivable to us. Scientists assure us that the whole cosmos is running down like a clock, and that at some very remote date, far more distantly future than the earth’s formation is distantly past, there will be nowhere in the cosmos the difference of energy-potential without which, it seems, life and

¶170consciousness cannot exist. How the process was started, no one knows; nor whether it will ever be reversed. Clearly we should take it into account in forming our view of existence. But it should not dismay us, nor make us feel that “after all, then, nothing really matters.” For in the first place we have in our own experience direct acquaintance with the things that matter; and they matter no less if the very possibility of them must some day cease. And, in the second place, the very fact that the physical process of the cosmos seems to have had a beginning, and seems destined some day to end, should add to our sense of the mystery and inconceivable potentiality of the underlying reality. If we are surrounded by physical immensities, we are also surrounded by immensities of mental and spiritual potentiality. We have only to consider human nature itself to catch a glimpse of some of these. Man is essentially a half-made creature, or a very slight and inadequate sketch, not a master-piece. Though man is an organism of a high type, he is not perfected for the exercise of his special human powers, as the swallow and the albatross are perfected for flight. Along that particular line, evolution can go no farther. The problem of flight in the terrestrial atmosphere has been fully solved. But man’s problems are by no means solved. Man is not like the bird, but like the clumsy pterodactyl, or some earlier gliding, but not yet flying, reptile. He has indeed pioneered his way into a new range of experience and action, but he is not at home in it. He can only with difficulty leave the familiar ground which he shares with the sub-human creatures; and having left it, he can only clumsily flutter for a while, to sink back very soon to earth, exhausted. Owing to his superior central nervous system, he has powers of integrative action, of abstract thought, of creative imagination, of self-consciousness and other-consciousness and true community behaviour; but they are rudimentary powers. His capacity is

¶171limited in the last resort by the capacity of his central nervous system, which fixes his innate powers of sensitivity, discrimination and correlation. It may be that, like the pterodactyl, man is prevented by the fundamental limitations of his nature from any more successful solution of his biological problems; certainly there is no likelihood that his problems will be further solved by the automatic forces of biological evolution. On the other hand, his human powers, though rudimentary, are enough to enable him to take charge of his own destiny in a way which is impossible to any other species. At present his native capacity, rudimentary as it is, does not get the chance to express itself at all fully, because it is hampered in most individuals throughout the world by malnutrition, disease, damaging social and personal relations, faulty education and a weight of superstition, spiritistic or materialistic. When these crippling influences have been moved, average human nature should be able to fulfil its capacity, and attain a level of excellence far beyond its present achievement. And with the immense release of human capacity, formerly frustrated, mankind may open up for itself horizons at present wholly inconceivable. But the possible release of human capacities which are at present frustrated must not blind us to the fact that this process of “making the best of “ actual human nature is limited by the actual structure of the human organism. This structure itself man may perhaps someday improve, by eugenical or biochemical methods, and so create in human nature new capacities. Man may, for instance, some day equip himself with a mightier brain. But all such dangerous adventures lie in the far future. Even today, however, we can perhaps glimpse in our own lowly human experience vague intimations of orders of activity and awareness which lie almost wholly beyond the reach of human nature in its present form. Psychical research, though it has exposed a vast amount of fraud and vulgar

¶172self-display, has also found hints of very strange powers, such as telepathy and clairvoyance and even pre-cognition. These hints may in the end turn out to be sheer illusion; or they may indeed be fragmentary traces of ways of experience which can reach full development only on planes beyond the reach of man. Anyhow, as things stand, they do suggest that in the psychical sphere we are overhung by unexplored immensities. Altogether, man’s situation in relation to the whole of things ought to fill him neither with arrogance nor with self-pitying despair, but rather with exhilaration and hope. And indeed, in moments when we seem to ourselves most sensitive, most spiritually awake, our acceptance of the universe can rise to an ecstasy of welcome. Moreover, in my experience at least, this may happen not only when all is well with us, but even when we are faced with great personal distress, and are also more than usually conscious of the terrible bulk of evil in the world. We feel the horror of it all, yet we dare not condemn; not merely because we know intellectually that evil is often in fact the way to fuller expression of the spirit, but also because we strangely feel, or seem for the moment actually to see, the overwhelmingly superhuman beauty that is like a light cast upon all things from some unseen source. Bearing all these considerations, in mind, we must surely feel that the practical crisis confronting the human species today is probably no mere meaningless accident. More probably it represents a phase through which all the worlds of self-conscious and other-conscious beings must pass when they reach our stage of development. This thought may give our human crisis an added significance, at least, to those who have an inveterate impulse to see their situation in relation to the whole of things. Of course the main reason for service in our world-revolution lies nearer home. Whatever the nature of the universe, for us here and now the way of life lies

¶173through world-revolution. But I at least, have no sympathy with those who feel that to see our terrestrial affaire in the light of the stars is to find them diminished into insignificance. This is only so if we forget that stars and earth and human flesh itself are fundamentally of one stuff and texture. Paradoxically, we should see the stars in the light of human nature, and then see human affairs in the light of the stars. OceanofPDF.com