Part 12 (1/2)

European civilization differs in character from civilizations of the Egyptian type because it springs not from the a.s.sociation of a h.o.m.ogeneous people developing from the beginning, or at least for a long time, under the same conditions, but from the a.s.sociation of peoples who in separation had acquired distinctive social characteristics, and whose smaller organizations longer prevented the concentration of power and wealth in one centre. The physical conformation of the Grecian peninsula is such as to separate the people at first into a number of small communities. As those petty republics and nominal kingdoms ceased to waste their energies in warfare, and the peaceable co-operation of commerce extended, the light of civilization blazed up. But the principle of a.s.sociation was never strong enough to save Greece from inter-tribal war, and when this was put an end to by conquest, the tendency to inequality, which had been combated with various devices by Grecian sages and statesmen, worked its result, and Grecian valor, art, and literature became things of the past. And so in the rise and extension, the decline and fall, of Roman civilization, may be seen the working of these two principles of a.s.sociation and equality, from the combination of which springs progress.

Springing from the a.s.sociation of the independent husbandmen and free citizens of Italy, and gaining fresh strength from conquests which brought hostile nations into common relations, the Roman power hushed the world in peace. But the tendency to inequality, checking real progress from the first, increased as the Roman civilization extended.

The Roman civilization did not petrify as did the h.o.m.ogeneous civilizations where the strong bonds of custom and superst.i.tion that held the people in subjection probably also protected them, or at any rate kept the peace between rulers and ruled: it rotted, declined and fell. Long before Goth or Vandal had broken through the cordon of the legions, even while her frontiers were advancing, Rome was dead at the heart. Great estates had ruined Italy. Inequality had dried up the strength and destroyed the vigor of the Roman world. Government became despotism, which even a.s.sa.s.sination could not temper; patriotism became servility; vices the most foul flouted themselves in public; literature sank to puerilities; learning was forgotten; fertile districts became waste without the ravages of war--everywhere inequality produced decay, political, mental, moral, and material. The barbarism which overwhelmed Rome came not from without, but from within. It was the necessary product of the system which had subst.i.tuted slaves and colonii for the independent husbandmen of Italy, and carved the provinces into estates of senatorial families.

Modern civilization owes its superiority to the growth of equality with the growth of a.s.sociation. Two great causes contributed to this--the splitting up of concentrated power into innumerable little centers by the influx of the Northern nations, and the influence of Christianity.

Without the first there would have been the petrifaction and slow decay of the Eastern Empire, where church and state were closely married and loss of external power brought no relief of internal tyranny. And but for the other there would have been barbarism without principle of a.s.sociation or amelioration. The petty chiefs and allodial lords who everywhere grasped local sovereignty held each other in check. Italian cities recovered their ancient liberty, free towns were founded, village communities took root, and serfs acquired rights in the soil they tilled. The leaven of Teutonic ideas of equality worked through the disorganized and disjointed fabric of society. And although society was split up into an innumerable number of separated fragments, yet the idea of closer a.s.sociation was always present--it existed in the recollections of a universal empire; it existed in the claims of a universal church.

Though Christianity became distorted and alloyed in percolating through a rotting civilization; though pagan G.o.ds were taken into her pantheon, and pagan forms into her ritual, and pagan ideas into her creed; yet her essential idea of the equality of men was never wholly destroyed. And two things happened of the utmost moment to incipient civilization--the establishment of the papacy and the celibacy of the clergy. The first prevented the spiritual power from concentrating in the same lines as the temporal power; and the latter prevented the establishment of a priestly caste, during a time when all power tended to hereditary form.

In her efforts for the abolition of slavery; in her Truce of G.o.d; in her monastic orders; in her councils which united nations, and her edicts which ran without regard to political boundaries; in the low-born hands in which she placed a sign before which the proudest knelt; in her bishops who by consecration became the peers of the greatest n.o.bles; in her ”Servant of Servants,” for so his official t.i.tle ran, who, by virtue of the ring of a simple fisherman, claimed the right to arbitrate between nations, and whose stirrup was held by kings; the Church, in spite of everything, was yet a promoter of a.s.sociation, a witness for the natural equality of men; and by the Church herself was nurtured a spirit that, when her early work of a.s.sociation and emanc.i.p.ation was well-nigh done--when the ties she had knit had become strong, and the learning she had preserved had been given to the world--broke the chains with which she would have fettered the human mind, and in a great part of Europe rent her organization.

The rise and growth of European civilization is too vast and complex a subject to be thrown into proper perspective and relation in a few paragraphs; but in all its details, as in its main features, it ill.u.s.trates the truth that progress goes on just as society tends toward closer a.s.sociation and greater equality. Civilization is co-operation.

Union and liberty are its factors. The great extension of a.s.sociation--not alone in the growth of larger and denser communities, but in the increase of commerce and the manifold exchanges which knit each community together and link them with other though widely separated communities; the growth of international and munic.i.p.al law; the advances in security of property and of person, in individual liberty, and towards democratic government--advances, in short, towards the recognition of the equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--it is these that make our modern civilization so much greater, so much higher, than any that has gone before. It is these that have set free the mental power which has rolled back the veil of ignorance which hid all but a small portion of the globe from men's knowledge; which has measured the orbits of the circling spheres and bids us see moving, pulsing life in a drop of water; which has opened to us the antechamber of nature's mysteries and read the secrets of a long-buried past; which has harnessed in our service physical forces beside which man's efforts are puny; and increased productive power by a thousand great inventions.

In that spirit of fatalism to which I have alluded as pervading current literature, it is the fas.h.i.+on to speak even of war and slavery as means of human progress. But war, which is the opposite of a.s.sociation, can aid progress only when it prevents further war or breaks down antisocial barriers which are themselves pa.s.sive war.

As for slavery, I cannot see how it could ever have aided in establis.h.i.+ng freedom, and freedom, the synonym of equality is, from the very rudest state in which man can be imagined, the stimulus and condition of progress. Auguste Comte's idea that the inst.i.tution of slavery destroyed cannibalism is as fanciful as Elia's humorous notion of the way mankind acquired a taste for roast pig. It a.s.sumes that a propensity that has never been found developed in man save as the result of the most unnatural conditions--the direst want or the most brutalizing superst.i.tions[46]--is an original impulse, and that he, even in his lowest state the highest of all animals, has natural appet.i.tes which the n.o.bler brutes do not show. And so of the idea that slavery began civilization by giving slave owners leisure for improvement.

Slavery never did and never could aid improvement. Whether the community consist of a single master and a single slave, or of thousands of masters and millions of slaves, slavery necessarily involves a waste of human power; for not only is slave labor less productive than free labor, but the power of masters is likewise wasted in holding and watching their slaves, and is called away from directions in which real improvement lies. From first to last, slavery, like every other denial of the natural equality of men, has hampered and prevented progress.

Just in proportion as slavery plays an important part in the social organization does improvement cease. That in the cla.s.sical world slavery was so universal, is undoubtedly the reason why the mental activity which so polished literature and refined art never hit on any of the great discoveries and inventions which distinguish modern civilization.

No slave-holding people ever were an inventive people. In a slave-holding community the upper cla.s.ses may become luxurious and polished; but never inventive. Whatever degrades the laborer and robs him of the fruits of his toil stifles the spirit of invention and forbids the utilization of inventions and discoveries even when made. To freedom alone is given the spell of power which summons the genii in whose keeping are the treasures of earth and the viewless forces of the air.

The law of human progress, what is it but the moral law? Just as social adjustments promote justice, just as they acknowledge the equality of right between man and man, just as they insure to each the perfect liberty which is bounded only by the equal liberty of every other, must civilization advance. Just as they fail in this, must advancing civilization come to a halt and recede. Political economy and social science cannot teach any lessons that are not embraced in the simple truths that were taught to poor fishermen and Jewish peasants by One who eighteen hundred years ago was crucified--the simple truths which, beneath the warpings of selfishness and the distortions of superst.i.tion, seem to underlie every religion that has ever striven to formulate the spiritual yearnings of man.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 44: Chapter III, Book X, of ”Progress and Poverty;” copyright, 1907, by Henry George, Richard F. George, and Anna G. de Mille. The chapter is here reprinted by permission of Mr. Henry George, Junior, and the publishers, Messrs. Doubleday, Page and Company.]

[Footnote 45: How easy it is for ignorance to pa.s.s into contempt and dislike; how natural it is for us to consider any difference in manners, customs, religion, etc., as proof of the inferiority of those who differ from us, any one who has emanc.i.p.ated himself in any degree from prejudice, and who mixes with different cla.s.ses, may see in civilized society. In religion, for instance, the spirit of the hymn--

”I'd rather be a Baptist, and wear a s.h.i.+ning face, Than for to be a Methodist and always fall from grace,”

is observable in all denominations. As the English Bishop said, ”Orthodoxy is my doxy, and heterodoxy is any other doxy,” while the universal tendency is to cla.s.sify all outside of the orthodoxies and heterodoxies of the prevailing religion as heathens or atheists. And the like tendency is observable as to all other differences.--Author's note.]

[Footnote 46: The Sandwich Islanders did honor to their good chiefs by eating their bodies. Their bad and tyrannical chiefs they would not touch. The New Zealanders had a notion that by eating their enemies they acquired their strength and valor. And this seems to be the general origin of eating prisoners of war.--Author's note.]

THE MORALS OF TRADE[47]

HERBERT SPENCER

On all sides we have found the result of long personal experience, to be the conviction that trade is essentially corrupt. In tones of disgust or discouragement, reprehension or derision, according to their several natures, men in business have one after another expressed or implied this belief. Omitting the highest mercantile cla.s.ses, a few of the less common trades, and those exceptional cases where an entire command of the market has been obtained, the uniform testimony of competent judges is, that success is incompatible with strict integrity. To live in the commercial world it appears necessary to adopt its ethical code: neither exceeding nor falling short of it--neither being less honest nor more honest. Those who sink below its standard are expelled; while those who rise above it are either pulled down to it or ruined. As, in self-defence, the civilised man becomes savage among savages; so, it seems that in self-defence, the scrupulous trader is obliged to become as little scrupulous as his compet.i.tors. It has been said that the law of the animal creation is--”Eat and be eaten;” and of our trading community it may be similarly said that its law is--Cheat and be cheated. A system of keen compet.i.tion, carried on, as it is, without adequate moral restraint, is very much a system of commercial cannibalism. Its alternatives are--Use the same weapons as your antagonists, or be conquered and devoured.

Of questions suggested by these facts, one of the most obvious is--Are not the prejudices that have ever been entertained against trade and traders, thus fully justified? do not these meannesses and dishonesties, and the moral degradation they imply, warrant the disrespect shown to men in business? A prompt affirmative answer will probably be looked for; but we very much doubt whether it should be given. We are rather of opinion that these delinquencies are products of the average English character placed under special conditions. There is no good reason for a.s.suming that the trading cla.s.ses are intrinsically worse than other cla.s.ses. Men taken at random from higher and lower ranks, would, most likely, if similarly circ.u.mstanced, do much the same.

Indeed the mercantile world might readily recriminate. Is it a solicitor who comments on their misdoings? They may quickly silence him by referring to the countless dark stains on the reputation of his fraternity. Is it a barrister? His frequent practice of putting in pleas which he knows are not valid; and his established habit of taking fees for work that he does not perform; make his criticism somewhat suicidal.

Does the condemnation come through the press? The condemned may remind those who write, of the fact that it is not quite honest to utter a positive verdict on a book merely glanced through, or to pen glowing eulogies on the mediocre work of a friend while slighting the good one of an enemy; and may further ask whether those who, at the dictation of an employer, write what they disbelieve, are not guilty of the serious offence of adulterating public opinion.

Moreover, traders might contend that many of their delinquencies are thrust on them by the injustice of their customers. They, and especially drapers, might point to the fact that the habitual demand for an abatement of price, is made in utter disregard of their reasonable profits; and that to protect themselves against attempts to gain by their loss, they are obliged to name prices greater than those they intend to take. They might also urge that the strait to which they are often brought by the non-payment of accounts due from their wealthier customers, is itself a cause of their malpractices: obliging them, as it does, to use all means, illegitimate as well as legitimate, for getting the wherewith to meet their engagements. In proof of the wrongs inflicted on them by the non-trading cla.s.ses, they might instance the well-known cases of large shopkeepers in the West-end, who have been either ruined by the unpunctuality of their customers, or have been obliged periodically to stop payment, as the only way of getting their bills settled. And then, after proving that those without excuse show this disregard of other men's claims, traders might ask whether they, who have the excuse of having to contend with a merciless compet.i.tion, are alone to be blamed if they display a like disregard in other forms.