p. 90My Dear Mr. Blatchford,
This is the pith of the question which you discuss in your 17th letter. It is really the kernel of the whole controversy; and it pains me to see how embarrassed you are in its treatment by the acceptance of a wrong principle at the hands of your adversaries. You believe in “the survival of the fittest”; that is—in the action of a law that preserves and improves the strongest by killing off the weakest. You believe that man is what he is as the result of the operation of this law, through a long line of inferior creatures in ages past; and yet you complain of its action, or at least object to its application, to the development of human society. This is inconsistent as well as unfortunate on your part.
If it really be the truth that man with his superior capacities is the product of a blind and merciless mechanical law that preserves only those who are fit to live, you cannot by any amount of protest avert its application from the further evolution of the noble species in society, and you cannot maintain a show of reason in making such a protest. Your opponents have undoubtedly the best of the argument in maintaining that the dreadful state of the poor and the overblown opulence of the rich are but branches or subdivisions of a natural law with which it is folly to interfere, if such a law exists.
In your chapter on “The Incentive of Gain,” you avow your belief in “The Scientist’s view—that man is a being risen from lower forms of life.” Therefore you have given yourself away on this point. You need not have done so. You need not have been afraid to challenge your opponents here. Recollect Darwinism is an unproved hypothesis. Perhaps you noticed the symptoms of a p. 91 turn in the tide of Scientific opinion at the last meeting of the British Association. Lord Salisbury, in the opening address, said that the Darwinian theory “had not effected the conquest of Scientific opinion, and that there was no unanimity (among Scientific men) in the acceptance of natural selection as the sole, or even the main, agent of whatever modifications may have led up to the existing forms of life.” He pointed out that the Darwinian theory was beginning more and more to appear in the position of a mere dogma for which no other authority was forthcoming than the inability of Scientific men to conceive of the participation of design in the development of the universe. As the most signal proof of this, he quoted the statement of Professor Weissman (a Darwinist) that Darwinists accepted the doctrine of the survival of the fittest, not because they were able to demonstrate it, nor because they were even able to imagine it, but because it was the only possible explanation of the development of living forms which they could conceive, apart from the help of a principle of design.
Look at this, Mr. Blatchford: Darwinists cannot conceive of the action of natural selection in the development of species, yet they accept it; they cannot conceive of the co-operation of design, therefore they reject it. Here is a pretty position! I should say sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If the inability to conceive of the co-operation of design is to be a ground for the rejection of design, which explains all difficulties, a similar inability confessed in the case of natural selection should be fatal to natural selection. But no! They can swallow the one inability because it is agreeable: they cannot swallow the other because—because—ha, ha, Mr. Blatchford—“the natural mind is enmity against God.” I pray you to remember your own excellent advice on page 131: “Don’t let us mistake the hasty deductions of erring men for the unchanging and triumphant laws of nature.”
You need not have got down on your knees to the survival of the fittest. You would have found it easier work to deal with your opponents if you had not done so; though I do not promise you could have got the better of them even then, because on this particular question of Socialism, they are as much in the right as you.
You put the case well when you say “the noblest is really the most proper to survive”; but see how you in this contradict your own profession of faith in “the survival of the fittest.” The noblest p. 92 does not survive. As you pithily express it, “Brigham Young was wealthy and honoured; while Christ lived a mendicant preacher, and died the death of a felon.” The question is constantly coming back on you. Why? Why? As you plaintively say: “The question, are the poor unworthy, or is it the arrangement of society that is unworthy, has still to be answered.” Where are you to look for the answer, Mr. Blatchford? You admire Christ; do you think He can contribute nothing to the answer? The issue of matters will show, in the long run, that the answer is with Him, and with no one else. I, for one, accept His answer, and see no other.
Man is all you claim for him in his unmeasurable superiority to the beasts; and because he is higher than they, a higher explanation of his misfortune must be sought for. How is it that the noblest species upon earth should be the greatest failure? This is the question to which no naturalist systems of philosophy can give a philosophic answer. Christ’s answer meets the case in every way. It is this—that man, for the time being, has broken away from God, for whom he was made in the first instance, and that he is in a banished state for the time being, with however the prospect, and the purpose, and the effort (in due progress) of being brought back by God’s own hand. This may seem strange language to you, Mr. Blatchford, but time will show it is the language of truth.
Your Socialism does not propose to bring man back to God, but to the study of microbes. It would not accomplish a great reform if it accomplished this, and it is not in the power of Socialism to accomplish even this. Socialism is the multitude at work in the endeavour to make the world what it ought to be; but the multitude does not know what the world ought to be, and in the clash of discordant wills, it has not the power to bring it to what it ought to be even if it knew.
You demonstrate that the present conditions of society are unfavourable to the survival of the fittest. You show that practically they give “the race to the swift, the battle to the strong, the weak to the wall, the vanquished to the sword.” In the absence of law, “the man with most strength and ferocity would take by force of arms the goods of the weak and timid, and their lives.” In the presence of bad law, you describe commercialism as a war of arts—a gambling or fighting with weapons of parchment and the like, and really plunder by force of cunning, instead of by force of arms.
p. 93 And then you ask a question that goes to the root of the matter: “Is it not desirable that the conditions of society should be so moulded and arranged that noble qualities shall have full play, and base qualities be kept in check?”
Is it not, Mr. Blatchford? Is it not? Certainly it is! Who would say nay? Probably the whole world would give a unanimous vote here. But then, where are we when everybody has said yes? Just where we were. It is most desirable that the conditions of society should be rightly moulded and arranged; but who is to do it? Who is to answer the subtle questions as to what the right moulding and arranging is? And who is to do the superhuman work of the right moulding and arranging when ascertained? Who is to decide authoritatively what are noble qualities and what are base qualities. There would be great difference of opinion here if the decision is to rest with the vox populi.
You put a most pertinent question to me. You say, “Will you tell me, Mr. Smith, who are the fittest to survive? A great deal depends upon our answer to that question.” It does, Mr. Blatchford, it does. A great deal depends upon the answer. I am prepared with an answer, but I am afraid you will not accept my answer. I get my answer from the Bible. My answer is: The fittest to survive are those who fear God, do His commandments; those who follow after righteousness; the meek, of whom the Bible says they shall inherit the earth and dwell therein for ever; but that those who forget God shall be turned into the grave and be put away like dross. “Yet a little while,” says the grand old book, “and the wicked shall not be; yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be.”
Now suppose this the true answer, it follows that the Socialist answer would be nothing to the purpose. The Socialist answer would be the answer of the mob, of course. The mob have always voted the righteous a nuisance, and have hounded them off the face of the earth. Even the Jewish mob shouted, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”
Mr. Blatchford, there is something deeper the matter than you recognise. I am quite touched by another question you put: “Is there any natural obstacle to the establishment of a community on just terms? Is there any known law of nature that denies bread to the industrious and forces wealth upon the idle? If a natural law p. 94 makes waste and want imperative, what is the law? Tell me that I may know it?” This is your plaintive inquiry. The only fault about it is its narrowness. It shuts us up to nature. Nature is the work of God: you do not say there is no God. You have a reservation in favour of “the glory that men call God.” Now, if God exist, and is managing the world for His own ends, why should you exclude Him from the question? Why not say, “Is there any known law of nature, or of God,” &c.
Perhaps you think a law of nature and a law of God are the same thing. Not so, Mr. Blatchford. All natural laws, or attributes of the substance that constitutes nature, are of God’s appointing: but He is higher than nature, and can supplement or over-ride the attributes of nature, as, of course, you would not deny if you believe in God. It is a law of nature for a dead man to remain dead; but “God raised Christ from the dead” (Acts xiii. 30-31). It is a law of nature for fire to burn animal substance; but the bodies of three servants of God were preserved alive in Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace (Daniel iii. 24-27). You see I believe in the Bible.
Now, then, if you had asked, “Is there any known law of God requiring the present evil state of things?” I should have been ready with an answer which would not only have commanded your assent but satisfied your reason provided you believe in Christ. I think you do believe in Him—in a way, at all events. You place Him at the top of your list of good men. Now, if He was a good man, He was a true man; for no man is a good man who lies. He tells us then that God sent him to fulfil the Bible, and that the Bible is the writing of the word of God, and that the Scripture cannot be broken. If I believe this (which I cannot help believing with all the evidence before me), then I am bound to believe there is a law of God requiring the present evil state. The Bible tells us we are “made subject to vanity by Him,” and that it comes in punishment of man’s rebellion against Him (Isaiah xlv. 7; Amos iii. 6). It points to the Jews as an illustration, e.g., “If thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God . . . the Lord shall send upon thee cursing, vexation, and rebuke in all that thou settest thine hand unto for to do until thou be destroyed and until thou perish quickly, because of the wickedness of thy doings whereby thou hast forsaken me” (Deut. xxviii. 20). It points further back than this. It points to the beginning of human history: “Cursed is p. 95 the ground for thy sake . . . dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”
I thus get an answer to your pathetic question in every way satisfactory if you could but accept it. It explains why, after such a long run of things, the state of man should be so very unsatisfactory. It explains why no human method of treating human affairs has brought about, anywhere, in any age or country, the state of well-being which man desires. It may serve to convince Bible believers that Socialism cannot succeed in mending their affairs, even if there were not those other reasons which I have brought to your notice.
It goes one step further, and gives as a reliable prospect of reformation which is absent from all human schemes whatever. For the same Bible that tells us that human affairs have been marred by divine displeasure, tells us also that after a certain appointed period of subjection to evil, those affairs will be the subject of healing and “all families of the earth shall be blessed,” but not apart from Christ, whom you recognise as the purest of the salt of the earth. “Without me,” Christ said, “ye can do nothing.” It is “in Him” that “men shall be blessed and all nations shall call Him blessed.” He said when on earth that He would be taken away (and He was). He said His friends should mourn in those days (and they do). He said, “I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice” (and they will), but this is to come: and when this comes, the problem that distresses you and all other good men will receive its effectual solution in a true system of Socialism pinned together at a centre of superhuman power and goodness and wisdom. Then indeed, Mr. Blatchford, and never till then, will “the conditions of society be so moulded and arranged as that noble qualities shall have free play and base qualities be kept in check.”
I am afraid you will think that in these remarks I travel entirely beyond the province of a discussion turning on contemporary “facts.” I implore you to resist this thought. One of the greatest facts in the situation of mankind is the existence of the Bible. It is the phenomenon of all literature. It expressly claims in a thousand explicit and formal asseverations that what is written in it is as “thus saith the Lord.” It is either the falsest or the truest book upon earth. Carlyle says it is the latter (see Miscellaneous Essays, vol. vii., p. 221). Its whole character when thoroughly grasped and calmly considered justifies this verdict p. 96 notwithstanding all the adverse criticism which this generation has witnessed.
It is distinctly a factor in the problem you have so ably placed before the public. It will not—it cannot—be ignored by thoughtful men in the consideration of that problem. If it were a proved deception, the problem might be considered and would have to be considered apart from it; but it is so far from this that some of the brightest intellects of the age are found arrayed on its side, e.g., Mr. Gladstone amongst the Liberals, Mr. Balfour amongst the Tories; and vast numbers amongst the educated members of the community.
A plain man like me, then, may well be excused for pressing it upon your earnest consideration, even at the risk of being regarded by you as
Your superstitious, credulous, and behind-the-age friend,
JOHN SMITH.