p. 10My Dear Mr. Blatchford,
There are some nice things in your second letter, at least on the outside look of them, but they don’t hang together well when closely looked at.
You say that if the labour of the British people were properly organised and wisely applied, there would be plenty for all. Good: no man would dispute it. But how is it to be properly organised and wisely applied? Organising requires the constructive application of authority. Where are you to get this? You say, From the people. Have you ever thought how many foolish people there are in the world? Do you think the majority are capable of “properly organising and wisely applying things”?
You know what Carlyle said (who started off as a strong Radical, but drew in considerably before he finished): “The population of the British Islands, thirty millions, mostly fools.” Do you agree with this? Or perhaps you think Mr. Carlyle was a fool.
Leaving that, should “authority” depend on the number of people in favour of a thing? If so, suppose the majority are wrong, you would have authority on the wrong side. What remedy would there be for this?
I grant that with “proper organisation and wise application,” things would be right: but you see the problem goes deeper than your remarks so lightly assume. Proper organisation depends upon wisdom; power to carry it out depends upon authority; and authority depends upon—what?
Here we are up against the rock. If it depends upon what the French call “a mandate from the people,” we may all be having p. 11 our heads cut off some day, for this is what they did by a popular mandate in France. They killed off respectability because it was respectable, and took to dictating the shape and quality of the people’s clothes at last. What else they would have done by the mandate of the people, if Napoleon I. with a strong arm had not put a stop to their folly, God only knows: should I have said “Glory only knows”?
Granted that the present system, “each man for himself,” is a pitiful principle of life by itself. But suppose it is combined with care for fellow-man, what then? Is it not all right? Is it not what you do, Mr. Blatchford—self first, neighbour next? If a man does not act for himself first, he cannot be for his neighbour at all. If he do not eat till everybody has had a bit, he never will eat, and therefore never will live: and what becomes of neighbour then, so far as he is concerned?
Let us have facts and sense. I like your discourse about your “ideal.” As an ideal it is pleasing, like a beautiful poem, but when men take to making ideals the rule of practical life, they come to grief.
You think, of course, that your ideals are practical proposals; they sometimes sound like it, but, looking closer, the appearance disappears. You say, “First of all, ascertain what things are desirable for health and happiness, and then organise our people in the way to produce these things in the best and easiest way.” Quite so; nothing easier, to all appearance. But, Mr. Blatchford, did it never occur to you that the most difficult thing in this world is to bring people to unity of mind as to what things are desirable for health and happiness of body and mind? Everybody has a different opinion on those points.
Out of 100, 75 might think that happiness of mind required Roman Catholic Priests and the Confessional, and 25 might think that it just requires the abolition of these. How are we to settle this difference? Are the 75 to rule? Must the 25 give in to the 75? And then suppose the 25 are right. Oh, Mr. Blatchford, it is very easy to say “First of all ascertain.” But it cannot be done except by each man ascertaining it for himself and acting according to his own convictions; and where then are the organisation and the co-operation? Government by count of heads in p. 12 such matters might restore the odious tyrannies of past ages, instead of the happy age which Mr. Blatchford in his amiable imagination foresees.
I am showing you, Mr. Blatchford, that I am the “hard-headed and sensible man” which you declare me to be. You say I have reason and judgment. I hope so. It is because of this that, while I share your pity for human misery and your indulgence in pleasant ideals, I cannot agree with your principles nor your suggested remedies.
You say that, working as I now work, I am wasting my time in the effort to support idle people and vain things. How can I possibly believe your words? I am working for my neighbour in the next street. He is well off. He gets a regular income from dividends that come to him quarterly through the post. He has money and to spare, and he gives me an order for an expensive sideboard and a set of fine chairs, me being a bit of a hand in that line in my odd hours. Am I to refuse his order on the plea that he is “an idle person”? He is not an idle person at all. There is no busier man in the town than Mr. G———. Am I to refuse the order on the ground that the sideboard and the chairs are “vain things”? Who is to settle what is a vain thing and what is not? Are we to have an iron law of taste established by a gloomy majority, clipping the wings of individual fancy and enterprise, and dictating to us what we are to like and what not to like? Where then would be the happiness of mind you are aiming to secure?
Why, Mr. Blatchford, the order might actually be from you. What would you think of my sulking at it on the ground that you are an idle fellow, seeking after vain things?
I heartily agree with much that you say as to what is necessary to make an enjoyable human life. I go all the way with you as to the absurdity of making it consist of getting food and shelter and clothing merely. I shout the heartiest amen to what you say about love and hope and rest and laughter and music entering into the composition of human life, and as to the necessity of providing for them. But I have two criticisms to offer.
(1) You do not realise how much these things are actually interwoven with even the grimy factory life of England. There is love and laughter and joy and hope and music where there are p. 13 grimy hands and small houses. They are things of the human heart, and do not depend upon picturesque surroundings and external culture. At the same time, I have not a word to say against the improvement of the latter. God forbid.
(2) There are other things that must have a place in human life besides those you enumerate, to bring it to its natural ideal. With you, I “reverence facts.” But, Mr. Blatchford, let us have them all, as you more than once say. As I have already said, you leave out some. You refer to them in a general way, but you don’t give all of them their force, or you would not contend for some of the things you argue for.
You recommend me to consult, not only my own experience, but that of “the best and wisest men that have ever lived.” Very well, you actually leave the best and wisest men out of your practical calculations. You say nothing as to Bible characters, beyond the casual mention of Solomon once and of Christ three or four times, and this only as items of common biography.
In your ideal sketch of the Merrie England of the future, you introduce colleges for the study of microbes, but no institution for the exercise of religion. Is not religion one of the “facts” as much as music and love? Were the men who speak to us in the Bible under a delusion? Was Christ a lunatic? Is the Bible a lie?
Mr. Blatchford, your problem goes deeper than you imagine. These questions touch upon facts. You truly say that life does not consist of eating, drinking, and sleeping. But neither does it consist of loving and singing and studying science merely. Man’s mind does not exhaust itself upon human objects. It has some invitations towards the “glory” you speak of, and at some conjunctions of life feels this to be of a more vaulting importance than all else besides. Why is this to be left out?
Socialism will never lay hold of the English as a religious people if you neglect provision for one of the strongest elements of their nature, even if it were sound on all other points, which I will show it is not before I have done.
You must not think these remarks irrelevant. If I accept Christ and Moses as among the best and wisest men that ever lived, you justify me in being guided by them, and I have a set of principles then for the solution of the problems that you discuss; for these p. 14 men go far beyond the ordinary run of the best and wisest men. They claim to speak with the authority of God and to make known the will of God and the purpose of God. If that claim is true, it has a very important bearing on the themes you handle so cleverly. If you make out the world to be miserable, so does the Bible, which speaks of it as “groaning and travailing in pain together until now,” but with this difference—“waiting for” an event which it asserts to be in the divine purpose, “the manifestation of the sons of God” (Rom. viii. 19), while your picture is the picture of a miserable world, waiting for the organisation of the democracy, and the doubtful and hazardous experiment of a socialist republic.
You must first get rid of the Bible before you clear the way for your theory—not that you can demonstrate your theory even then, but that so long as the Bible is not proved a lie, your theories have in it a rival that will always bar their way to success. The Bible reveals not only the reason of the present miserable state of the world, which no man can change, but the fact that God has His remedy ready to introduce at the right time. If this revelation is true, it takes the wind entirely out of the sails of Socialism. If it is not true, the fact should be established incontrovertibly once for all—which I venture to consider an impossibility. It is all a question of evidence, as you said about another matter. You see there are more difficulties in the problem than you seem to realise.
You appeal to me as a practical sensible man, to look round and tell you what share of the good things of life fall to the bulk of the British people. I frankly admit that it is a very poor share indeed, and that the whole state of the population is depressing and distracting. As you say, the people have neither the money to pay for, nor the leisure to enjoy what they require. But when you tell me that they might have abundance by adopting plans that you can recommend, I can only shake my head. Do you say the state of the world is an accident? If you are not prepared to go that length, then you are bound to keep your mind open to the reflection that the state of the world is as much the result of occult and ancient force as the state of the seashore—very rough and unsatisfactory as a whole, but beyond the power of man to alter. Here and there, as on the seacoast, things may be patched up a bit, p. 15 but wide reaches of tidal ooze, and vast lengths of desert rock and shingle, will remain as the action of the elements for ages has fashioned them.
If the state of man is governed by intelligent power behind, as I believe, we ought not to leave the stupendous fact out of account in discussing that state, seeing that intelligent power has admitted us to his counsels, if the Bible be true. If you say you don’t believe such an old-fogey doctrine, then all I can say is that you and John Smith stand on two different planes, on which, perhaps, we may not debate the matter to the best advantage. We must do the best we can.
But I believe you can be beaten on your own ground, and I may be able to show that your theory is impracticable and fallacious, quite apart from the special considerations connected with revelation. I believe all the facts are against you—human and divine; but I guess the human facts only will weigh with you, so I must confine my argument mainly to them, holding the others as a splendid reserve, like Lacy’s 10,000 Austrian cavalry, that, at the crisis of the battle, swept in upon Frederic at Gunnersdorf, and overwhelmed a general accustomed only to victory.
Your hard-headed friend,
JOHN SMITH.