,,first ,,and ,,last ,,things ,a ,,confession ,,of ,,faith ,,and ,,rule ,,of ,,life ,by ,h4,g4 ,wells ,,contents4 ,,introduction4 ,,book #a4 ,,metaphysics4 ,,chapter #a4a4 ,,the ,,necessity ,,for ,,metaphysics4 ,,chapter #a4b4 ,,the ,,resumption ,,of ,,metaphysical ,,enquiry4 ,,chapter #a4c4 ,,the ,,world ,,of ,,fact4 ,,chapter #a4d4 ,,scepticism ,,of ,,the ,,instrument4 ,,chapter #a4e4 ,,the ,,classificatory ,,assumption4 ,,chapter #a4f4 ,,empty ,,terms4 ,,chapter #a4g4 ,,negative ,,terms4 ,,chapter #a4h4 ,,logic ,,static ,,and ,,life ,,kinetic4 ,,chapter #a4i4 ,,planes ,,and ,,dialects ,,of ,,thought4 ,,chapter #a4aj4 ,,practical ,,conclusions ,,from ,,these ,,considerations4 ,,chapter #a4aa4 ,,beliefs4 ,,chapter #a4ab4 ,,summary4 ,,book #b4 ,,of ,,beliefs4 ,,chapter #b4a4 ,,my ,,primary ,,act ,,of ,,faith4 ,,chapter #b4b4 ,,on ,,using ,,the ,,name ,,of ,,god4 ,,chapter #b4c4 ,,free ,,will ,,and ,,predestination4 ,,chapter #b4d4 ,a ,,picture ,,of ,,the ,,world ,,of ,,men4 ,,chapter #b4e4 ,,the ,,problem ,,of ,,motives ,,the ,,real ,,problem ,,of ,,life4 ,,chapter #b4f4 ,a ,,review ,,of ,,motives4 ,,chapter #b4g4 ,,the ,,synthetic ,,motive4 ,,chapter #b4h4 ,,the ,,being ,,of ,,mankind4 ,,chapter #b4i4 ,,individuality ,,an ,,interlude4 ,,chapter #b4aj4 ,,the ,,mystic ,,element4 ,,chapter #b4aa4 ,,the ,,synthesis4 ,,chapter #b4ab4 ,,of ,,personal ,,immortality4 ,,chapter #b4ac4 ,a ,,criticism ,,of ,,christianity4 ,,chapter #b4ad4 ,,of ,,other ,,religions4 ,,chapter #b4ae4 ,,book #c4 ,,of ,,general ,,conduct4 ,,chapter #c4a4 ,,conduct ,,follows ,,from ,,belief4 ,,chapter #c4b4 ,,what ,,is ,,good8 ,,chapter #c4c4 ,,socialism4 ,,chapter #c4d4 ,a ,,criticism ,,of ,,certain ,,forms ,,of ,,socialism4 ,,chapter #c4e4 ,,hate ,,and ,,love4 ,,chapter #c4f4 ,,the ,,preliminary ,,social ,,duty4 ,,chapter #c4g4 ,,wrong ,,ways ,,of ,,living4 ,,chapter #c4h4 ,,social ,,parasitism ,,and ,,contemporary ,,injustices4 ,,chapter #c4i4 ,,the ,,case ,,of ,,the ,,wife ,,and ,,mother4 ,,chapter #c4aj4 ,,associations4 ,,chapter #c4aa4 ,,of ,,an ,,organized ,,brotherhood4 ,,chapter #c4ab4 ,,concerning ,,new ,,starts ,,and ,,new ,,religions4 ,,chapter #c4ac4 ,,the ,,idea ,,of ,,the ,,church4 ,,chapter #c4ad4 ,,of ,,secession4 ,,chapter #c4ae4 ,a ,,dilemma4 ,,chapter #c4af4 ,a ,,comment4 ,,chapter #c4ag4 ,,war4 ,,chapter #c4ah4 ,,war ,,and ,,competition4 ,,chapter #c4ai4 ,,modern ,,war4 ,,chapter #c4bj4 ,,of ,,abstinences ,,and ,,disciplines4 ,,chapter #c4ba4 ,,on ,,forgetting1 ,,and ,,the ,,need ,,of ,,prayer1 ,,reading1 ,,discussion ,,and ,,worship4 ,,chapter #c4bb4 ,,democracy ,,and ,,aristocracy4 ,,chapter #c4bc4 ,,on ,,debts ,,of ,,honour4 ,,chapter #c4bd4 ,,the ,,idea ,,of ,,justice4 ,,chapter #c4be4 ,,of ,,love ,,and ,,justice4 ,,chapter #c4bf4 ,,the ,,weakness ,,of ,,immaturity4 ,,chapter #c4bg4 ,,possibility ,,of ,a ,,new ,,etiquette4 ,,chapter #c4bh4 ,,sex4 ,,chapter #c4bi4 ,,the ,,institution ,,of ,,marriage4 ,,chapter #c4cj4 ,,conduct ,,in ,,relation ,,to ,,the ,,thing ,,that ,,is4 ,,chapter #c4ca4 ,,conduct ,,towards ,,transgressors4 ,,book #d4 ,,some ,,personal ,,things4 ,,chapter #d4a4 ,,personal ,,love ,,and ,,life4 ,,chapter #d4b4 ,,the ,,nature ,,of ,,love4 ,,chapter #d4c4 ,,the ,,will ,,to ,,love4 ,,chapter #d4d4 ,,love ,,and ,,death4 ,,chapter #d4e4 ,,the ,,consolation ,,of ,,failure4 ,,chapter #d4f4 ,,the ,,last ,,confession4 ,,introduction4 ,recently ,i set myself to put down what ,i believe4 ,i did this with no idea of making a book1 but at the suggestion of a friend and to interest a number of friends with whom ,i was associated4 ,we were all1 we found1 extremely uncertain in our outlook upon life1 about our religious feelings and in our ideas of right and wrong4 ,and yet we reckoned ourselves people of the educated class and some of us talk and lecture and write with considerable confidence4 ,we thought it would be of very great interest to ourselves and each other if we made some sort of frank mutual confession4 ,we arranged to hold a series of meetings in which first one and then another explained the faith1 so far as he understood it1 that was in him4 ,we astonished ourselves and our hearers by the irregular and fragmentary nature of the creeds we produced1 clotted at one point1 inconsecutive at another1 inconsistent and unconvincing to a quite unexpected degree4 ,it would not be difficult to caricature one of those meetings2 the lecturer floundering about with an air of exquisite illumination1 the audience attentive with an expression of thwarted edification upon its various brows4 ,for my own part ,i grew so interested in planning my lecture and in joining up point and point1 that my notes soon outran the possibilities of the hour or so of meeting for which ,i was preparing them4 ,the meeting got only a few fragments of what ,i had to say1 and made what it could of them4 ,and after that was over ,i let myself loose from limits of time and length altogether and have expanded these memoranda into a book4 ,it is as it stands now the frank confession of what one man of the early ,twentieth ,century has found in life and himself1 a confession just as frank as the limitations of his character permit2 it is his metaphysics1 his religion1 his moral standards1 his uncertainties and the expedients with which he has met them4 ,on every one of these departments and aspects ,i write--how shall ,i put it8--as an amateur4 ,in every section of my subject there are men not only of far greater intellectual power and energy than ,i1 but who have devoted their whole lives to the sustained analysis of this or that among the questions ,i discuss1 and there is a literature so enormous in the aggregate that only a specialist scholar could hope to know it4 ,i have not been unmindful of these professors and this literature2 ,i have taken such opportunities as ,i have found1 to test my propositions by them4 ,but ,i feel that such apology as one makes for amateurishness in this field has a lesser quality of self-condemnation than if one were dealing with narrower1 more defined and fact-laden matters4 ,there is more excuse for one here than for the amateur maker of chemical theories1 or the man who evolves a system of surgery in his leisure4 ,these things1 chemistry1 surgery and so forth1 we may take on the reputation of an expert1 but our own fundamental beliefs1 our rules of conduct1 we must all make for ourselves4 ,we may listen and read1 but the views of others we cannot take on credit2 we must rethink them and 8make them our own40 ,and we cannot do without fundamental beliefs1 explicit or implicit4 ,the bulk of men are obliged to be amateur philosophers1--all men indeed who are not specialized students of philosophical subjects1--even if their philosophical enterprise goes no further than prompt recognition of and submission to ,authority4 ,and it is not only the claim of the specialist that ,i would repudiate4 ,people are too apt to suppose that in order to discuss morals a man must have exceptional moral gifts4 ,i would dispute that naive supposition4 ,i am an ingenuous enquirer with1 ,i think1 some capacity for religious feeling1 but neither a prophet nor a saint4 ,on the whole ,i should be inclined to classify myself as a bad man rather than a good2 not indeed as any sort of picturesque scoundrel or non-moral expert1 but as a person frequently irritable1 ungenerous and forgetful1 and intermittently and in small but definite ways bad4 ,one thing ,i claim1 ,i have got my beliefs and theories out of my life and not fitted them to its circumstances4 ,as often as not ,i have learnt good by the method of difference2 by the taste of the alternative4 ,i tell this faith ,i hold as ,i hold it and ,i sketch out the principles by which ,i am generally trying to direct my life at the present time1 because it interests me to do so and ,i think it may interest a certain number of similarly constituted people4 ,i am not teaching4 ,how far ,i succeed or fail in that private and personal attempt to behave well1 has nothing to do with the matter of this book4 ,that is another story1 a reserved and private affair4 ,i offer simply intellectual experiences and ideas4 ,it will be necessary to take up the most abstract of these questions of belief first1 the metaphysical questions4 ,it may be that to many readers the opening sections may seem the driest and least attractive4 ,but ,i would ask them to begin at the beginning and read straight on1 because much that follows this metaphysical book cannot be appreciated at its proper value without a grasp of these preliminaries4 ,,book ,,the ,,first4 -- ,,metaphysics4 #a4a4 ,,the ,,necessity ,,for ,,metaphysics4 ,as a preliminary to that experiment in mutual confession from which this book arose1 ,i found it necessary to consider and state certain truths about the nature of knowledge1 about the meaning of truth and the value of words1 that is to say ,i found ,i had to begin by being metaphysical4 ,in writing out these notes now ,i think it is well that ,i should state just how important ,i think this metaphysical prelude is4 ,there is a popular prejudice against metaphysics as something at once difficult and fruitless1 as an idle system of enquiries remote from any human interest4 ,i suppose this odd misconception arose from the vulgar pretensions of the learned1 from their appeal to ancient names and their quotations in unfamiliar tongues1 and from the easy fall into technicality of men struggling to be explicit where a high degree of explicitness is impossible4 ,but it needs erudition and accumulated and alien literature to make metaphysics obscure1 and some of the most fruitful and able metaphysical discussion in the world was conducted by a number of unhampered men in small ,greek cities1 who knew no language but their own and had scarcely a technical term4 ,the true metaphysician is after all only a person who says1 8,now let us take a thought for a moment before we fall into a discussion of the broad questions of life1 lest we rush hastily into impossible and needless conflict4 ,what is the exact value of these thoughts we are thinking and these words we are using80 ,he wants to take thought about thought4 ,those other ardent spirits on the contrary1 want to plunge into action or controversy or belief without taking thought2 they feel that there is not time to examine thought4 8,while you think10 they say1 8the house is burning40 ,they are the kin of those who rush and struggle and make panics in theatre fires4 ,now it seems to me that most of the troubles of humanity are really misunderstandings4 ,men's compositions and characters are1 ,i think1 more similar than their views1 and if they had not needlessly different modes of expression upon many broad issues1 they would be practically at one upon a hundred matters where now they widely differ4 ,most of the great controversies of the world1 most of the wide religious differences that keep men apart1 arise from this3 from differences in their way of thinking4 ,men imagine they stand on the same ground and mean the same thing by the same words1 whereas they stand on slightly different grounds1 use different terms for the same thing and express the same thing in different words4 ,logomachies1 conflicts about words1--into such death-traps of effort those ardent spirits run and perish4 ,this is now almost a commonplace2 it has been said before by numberless people4 ,it has been said before by numberless people1 but it seems to me it has been realised by very few--and until it is realised to the fullest extent1 we shall continue to live at intellectual cross purposes and waste the forces of our species needlessly and abundantly4 ,this persuasion is a very important thing in my mind4 ,i think that the time has come when the human mind must take up metaphysical discussion again--when it must resume those subtle but necessary and unavoidable problems that it dropped unsolved at the close of the period of ,greek freedom1 when it must get to a common and general understanding upon what its ideas of truth1 good1 and beauty amount to1 and upon the relation of the name to the thing1 and of the relation of one mind to another mind in the matter of resemblance and the matter of difference--upon all those issues the young science student is as apt to dismiss as ,rot1 and the young classical student as ,gas1 and the austere student of the science of ,economics as ,theorising1 unsuitable for his methods of research4 ,in our achievement of understandings in the place of these evasions about fundamental things lies the road1 ,i believe1 along which the human mind can escape1 if ever it is to escape1 from the confusion of purposes that distracts it at the present time4 #a4b4 ,,the ,,resumption ,,of ,,metaphysical ,,enquiry4 ,it seems to me that the ,greek mind up to the disaster of the ,macedonian ,conquest was elaborately and discursively discussing these questions of the forms and methods of thought and that the discussion was abruptly closed and not naturally concluded1 summed up hastily as it were1 in the career and lecturings of ,aristotle4 ,since then the world never effectually reopened these questions until the modern period4 ,it went on from ,plato and ,aristotle just as the art of the seventeenth and eighteenth century went on from ,raphael and ,michael ,angelo4 ,effectual criticism was absolutely silent until the ,renaissance1 and then for a time was but a matter of scattered utterances having only the slightest collective effect4 ,in the past half century there has begun a more systematic critical movement in the general mind1 a movement analogous to the ,pre-,raphaelite movement in art--a ,pre-,aristotelian movement1 a scepticism about things supposed to be settled for all time1 a resumed inquiry into the fundamental laws of thought1 a harking back to positions of the older philosophers and particularly to ,heraclitus1 so far as the surviving fragments of his teaching enable one to understand him1 and a new forward movement from that recovered ground4 #a4c4 ,,the ,,world ,,of ,,fact4 ,necessarily when one begins an inquiry into the fundamental nature of oneself and one's mind and its processes1 one is forced into autobiography4 ,i begin by asking how the conscious mind with which ,i am prone to identify myself1 began4 ,it presents itself to me as a history of a perception of the world of facts opening out from an accidental centre at which ,i happened to begin4 ,i do not attempt to define this word fact4 ,fact expresses for me something in its nature primary and unanalyzable4 ,i start from that4 ,i take as a typical statement of fact that ,i sit here at my desk writing with a fountain pen on a pad of ruled scribbling paper1 that the sunlight falls upon me and throws the shadow of my window mullion across the page1 that ,peter1 my cat1 sleeps on the window-seat close at hand and that this agate paper-weight with the silver top that once was ,henley's holds my loose memoranda together4 ,outside is a patch of lawn and then a fringe of winter-bitten iris leaves and then the sea1 greatly wrinkled and astir under the south-west wind4 ,there is a boat going out which ,i think may be ,jim ,pain's1 but of that ,i cannot be sure444 ,these are statements of a certain quality1 a quality that extends through a huge universe in which ,i find myself placed4 ,i try to recall how this world of fact arose in my mind4 ,it began with a succession of limited immediate scenes and of certain minutely perceived persons2 ,i recall an underground kitchen with a drawered table1 a window looking up at a grating1 a back yard in which1 growing out by a dustbin1 was a grape-vine2 a red-papered room with a bookcase over my father's shop1 the dusty aisles and fixtures1 the regiments of wine-glasses and tumblers1 the rows of hanging mugs and jugs1 the towering edifices of jam-pots1 the tea and dinner and toilet sets in that emporium1 its brighter side of cricket goods1 of pads and balls and stumps4 ,out of the window one peeped at the more exterior world1 the ,high ,street in front1 the tailor's garden1 the butcher's yard1 the churchyard and ,bromley church tower behind2 and one was taken upon expeditions to fields and open places4 ,this limited world was peopled with certain familiar presences1 mother and father1 two brothers1 the evasive but interesting cat1 and by intermittent people of a livelier but more transient interest1 customers and callers4 ,such was my opening world of fact1 and each day it enlarged and widened and had more things added to it4 ,i had soon won my way to speech and was hearing of facts beyond my visible world of fact4 ,presently ,i was at a ,dame's school and learning to read4 ,from the centre of that little world as primary1 as the initiatory material1 my perception of the world of fact widened and widened1 by new sights and sounds1 by reading and hearing descriptions and histories1 by guesses and inferences2 my curiosity and interest1 my appetite for fact1 grew by what it fed upon1 ,i carried on my expansion of the world of fact until it took me through the mineral and fossil galleries of the ,natural ,history ,museum1 through the geological drawers of the ,college of ,science1 through a year of dissection and some weeks at the astronomical telescope4 ,so ,i built up my conceptions of a real world out of facts observed and out of inferences of a nature akin to fact1 of a world immense and enduring1 receding interminably into space and time4 ,in that ,i found myself placed1 a creature relatively infinitesimal1 needing and struggling4 ,it was clear to me1 by a hundred considerations1 that ,i in my body upon this planet ,earth1 was the outcome of countless generations of conflict and begetting1 the creature of natural selection1 the heir of good and bad engendered in that struggle4 ,so my world of fact shaped itself4 ,i find it altogether impossible to question or doubt that world of fact4 ,particular facts one may question as facts4 ,for instance1 ,i think ,i see an unseasonable yellow wallflower from my windows1 but you may dispute that and show that it is only a broken end of iris leaf accidentally lit to yellow4 ,that is merely a substitution of fact for fact4 ,one may doubt whether one is perceiving or remembering or telling facts clearly1 but the persuasion that there are facts1 independent of one's interpretations and obdurate to one's will1 remains invincible4 #a4d4 ,,scepticism ,,of ,,the ,,instrument4 ,at first ,i took the world of fact as being exactly as ,i perceived it4 ,i believed my eyes4 ,seeing was believing1 ,i thought4 ,still more did ,i believe my reasoning4 ,it was only slowly that ,i began to suspect that the world of fact could be anything different from the clear picture it made upon my mind4 ,i realised the inadequacy of the senses first4 ,into that ,i will not enter here4 ,any proper text book of physiology or psychology will supply a number of instances of the habitual deceptions of sight and touch and hearing4 ,i came upon these things in my reading1 in the laboratory1 with microscope or telescope1 lived with them as constant difficulties4 ,i will only instance one trifling case of visual deception in order to lead to my next question4 ,one draws two lines strictly parallel2 so 7two horizontal and parallel lines47 ,oblique to them one draws a series of lines2 so 7a series of parallel and closely-spaced lines drawn through each horizontal line1 one series 7top7 sloping to the right1 the other 7bottom7 to the left7 and instantly the parallelism seems to be disturbed4 ,if the second figure is presented to any one without sufficient science to understand this delusion1 the impression is created that these lines converge to the right and diverge to the left4 ,the vision is deceived in its mental factor and judges wrongly of the thing seen4 ,in this case we are able to measure the distance of the lines1 to find how the main lines looked before the cross ones were drawn1 to bring the deception up against fact of a different sort and so correct the mistake4 ,if the ignorant observer were unable to do that1 he might remain permanently under the impression that the main lines were out of parallelism4 ,and all the infirmities of eye and ear1 touch and taste1 are discovered and checked by the fact that the erroneous impressions presently strike against fact and discover an incompatibility with it4 ,if they did not we should never have discovered them4 ,if on the other hand they are so incompatible with fact as to endanger the lives of the beings labouring under such infirmities1 they would tend to be eliminated from among our defects4 ,the presumption to which biological science brings one is that the senses and mind will work as well as the survival of the species may require1 but that they will not work so very much better4 ,there is no ground in matter-of-fact experience for assuming that there is any more inevitable certitude about purely intellectual operations than there is about sensory perceptions4 ,the mind of a man may be primarily only a food-seeking1 danger-avoiding1 mate-finding instrument1 just as the mind of a dog is1 just as the nose of a dog is1 or the snout of a pig4 ,you see the strong preparatory reason there is in this view of life for entertaining the suppositions that3-- ,the senses seem surer than they are4 ,the thinking mind seems clearer than it is and is more positive than it ought to be4 ,the world of fact is not what it appears to be4 #a4e4 ,,the ,,classificatory ,,assumption4 ,after ,i had studied science and particularly biological science for some years1 ,i became a teacher in a school for boys4 ,i found it necessary to supplement my untutored conception of teaching method by a more systematic knowledge of its principles and methods1 and ,i took the courses for the diplomas of ,licentiate and ,fellow of the ,london ,college of ,preceptors which happened to be convenient for me4 ,these courses included some of the more elementary aspects of psychology and logic and set me thinking and reading further4 ,from the first1 ,logic as it was presented to me impressed me as a system of ideas and methods remote and secluded from the world of fact in which ,i lived and with which ,i had to deal4 ,as it came to me in the ordinary textbooks1 it presented itself as the science of inference using the syllogism as its principal instrument4 ,now ,i was first struck by the fact that while my teachers in ,logic seemed to be assuring me ,i always thought in this form3-- 8,m is ,p1 ,s is ,m1 ,s is ,p10 the method of my reasoning was almost always in this form3-- 8,s#a is more or less ,p1 ,s#b is very similar to ,s#a1 ,s#b is very probably but not certainly more or less ,p4 ,let us go on that assumption and see how it works40 ,that is to say1 ,i was constantly reasoning by analogy and applying verification4 ,so far from using the syllogistic form confidently1 ,i habitually distrusted it as anything more than a test of consistency in statement4 ,but ,i found the textbooks of logic disposed to ignore my customary method of reasoning altogether or to recognise it only where ,s#a and ,s#b could be lumped together under a common name4 ,then they put it something after this form as ,induction3-- 8,s#a1 ,s#b1 ,s#c1 and ,s#d are ,p ,s#a ,s#b ,s#c ,s#d 444 are all ,s ,all ,s is ,p40 ,i looked into the laws of thought and into the postulates upon which the syllogistic logic is based1 and it slowly became clear to me that from my point of view1 the point of view of one who seeks truth and reality1 logic assumed a belief in the objective reality of classification of which my studies in biology and mineralogy had largely disabused me4 ,logic1 it seemed to me1 had taken a common innate error of the mind and had emphasised it in order to develop a system of reasoning that should be exact in its processes4 ,i turned my attention to the examination of that4 ,for in common with the general run of men ,i had supposed that logic professed to supply a trustworthy science and method for the investigation and expression of reality4 ,a mind nourished on anatomical study is of course permeated with the suggestion of the vagueness and instability of biological species4 ,a biological species is quite obviously a great number of unique individuals which is separable from other biological species only by the fact that an enormous number of other linking individuals are inaccessible in time--are in other words dead and gone--and each new individual in that species does1 in the distinction of its own individuality1 break away in however infinitesimal degree from the previous average properties of the species4 ,there is no property of any species1 even the properties that constitute the specific definition1 that is not a matter of more or less4 ,if1 for example1 as species be distinguished by a single large red spot on the back1 you will find if you go over a great number of specimens that red spot shrinking here to nothing1 expanding there to a more general redness1 weakening to pink1 deepening to russet and brown1 shading into crimson1 and so on and so on4 ,and this is true not only of biological species4 ,it is true of the mineral specimens constituting a mineral species1 and ,i remember as a constant refrain in the lectures of ,professor ,judd upon rock classification1 the words1 8they pass into one another by insensible gradations40 ,it is true1 ,i hold1 of all things4 ,you will think perhaps of atoms of the elements as instances of identically similar things1 but these are things not of experience but of theory1 and there is not a phenomenon in chemistry that is not equally well explained on the supposition that it is merely the immense quantities of atoms necessarily taken in any experiment that masks by the operation of the law of averages the fact that each atom also has its unique quality1 its special individual difference4 ,this ideal of uniqueness in all individuals is not only true of the classifications of material science2 it is true and still more evidently true of the species of common thought2 it is true of common terms4 ,take the word 8,chair40 ,when one says chair1 one thinks vaguely of an average chair4 ,but collect individual instances2 think of armchairs and reading-chairs and dining-room chairs1 and kitchen chairs1 chairs that pass into benches1 chairs that cross the boundary and become settees1 dentist's chairs1 thrones1 opera stalls1 seats of all sorts1 those miraculous fungoid growths that cumber the floor of the ,arts and ,crafts exhibition1 and you will perceive what a lax bundle in fact is this simple straightforward term4 ,in co-operation with an intelligent joiner ,i would undertake to defeat any definition of chair or chairishness that you gave me4 ,chairs just as much as individual organisms1 just as much as mineral and rock specimens1 are unique things--if you know them well enough you will find an individual difference even in a set of machine-made chairs--and it is only because we do not possess minds of unlimited capacity1 because our brain has only a limited number of pigeon-holes for our correspondence with an unlimited universe of objective uniques1 that we have to delude ourselves into the belief that there is a chairishness in this species common to and distinctive of all chairs4 ,classification and number1 which in truth ignore the fine differences of objective realities1 have in the past of human thought been imposed upon things444 ,greek thought impresses me as being over much obsessed by an objective treatment of certain necessary preliminary conditions of human thought--number and definition and class and abstract form6 ,but these things1--number1 definition1 class and abstract form1--,i hold1 are merely unavoidable conditions of mental activity--regrettable conditions rather than essential facts4 ,,the ,,forceps ,,of ,,our ,,minds ,,are ,,clumsy ,,forceps ,,and ,,crush ,,the ,,truth ,a ,,little ,,in ,,taking ,,hold ,,of ,,it444 ,let me give you a rough figure of what ,i am trying to convey in this first attack upon the philosophical validity of general terms4 ,you have seen the result of those various methods of black and white reproduction that involve the use of a rectangular net4 ,you know the sort of process picture ,i mean--it used to be employed very frequently in reproducing photographs4 ,at a little distance you really seem to have a faithful reproduction of the original picture1 but when you peer closely you find not the unique form and masses of the original1 but a multitude of little rectangles1 uniform in shape and size4 ,the more earnestly you go into the thing1 the closelier you look1 the more the picture is lost in reticulations4 ,i submit1 the world of reasoned inquiry has a very similar relation to the world of fact4 ,for the rough purposes of every day the network picture will do1 but the finer your purpose the less it will serve1 and for an ideally fine purpose1 for absolute and general knowledge that will be as true for a man at a distance with a telescope as for a man with a microscope1 it will not serve at all4 ,it is true you can make your net of logical interpretation finer and finer1 you can fine your classification more and more--up to a certain limit4 ,but essentially you are working in limits1 and as you come closer1 as you look at finer and subtler things1 as you leave the practical purpose for which the method exists1 the element of error increases4 ,every species is vague1 every term goes cloudy at its edges2 and so in my way of thinking1 relentless logic is only another name for a stupidity--for a sort of intellectual pigheadedness4 ,if you push a philosophical or metaphysical inquiry through a series of valid syllogisms--never committing any generally recognised fallacy--you nevertheless leave behind you at each step a certain rubbing and marginal loss of objective truth1 and you get deflections that are difficult to trace at each phase in the process4 ,every species waggles about in its definition1 every tool is a little loose in its handle1 every scale has its individual error4 ,so long as you are reasoning for practical purposes about finite things of experience you can every now and then check your process and correct your adjustments4 ,but not when you make what are called philosophical and theological inquiries1 when you turn your implement towards the final absolute truth of things4 ,this real vagueness of class terms is equally true whether we consider those terms used extensively or intensively1 that is to say whether in relation to all the members of the species or in relation to an imaginary typical specimen4 ,the logician begins by declaring that ,s is either ,p or not ,p4 ,in the world of fact it is the rarest thing to encounter this absolute alternative2 ,s#a is pink1 but ,s#b is pinker1 ,s#c is scarcely pink at all1 and one is in doubt whether ,s#d is not properly to be called scarlet4 ,the finest type specimen you can find simply has the characteristic quality a little more rather than a little less4 ,the neat little circles the logician uses to convey his idea of ,p or not ,p to the student are just pictures of boundaries in his mind1 exaggerations of a natural mental tendency4 ,they are required for the purposes of his science1 but they are departures from the nature of fact4 #a4f4 ,,empty ,,terms4 ,classes in logic are not only represented by circles with a hard firm outline1 whereas in fact they have no such definite limits1 but also there is a constant disposition to think of all names as if they represented positive classes4 ,with words just as with numbers and abstract forms there have been definite phases of human development4 ,there was with regard to number1 the phase when man could barely count at all1 or counted in perfect good faith and sanity upon his fingers4 ,then there was the phase when he struggled with the development of number1 when he began to elaborate all sorts of ideas about numbers1 until at last he developed complex superstitions about perfect numbers and imperfect numbers1 about threes and sevens and the like4 ,the same was the case with abstract forms2 and even to-day we are scarcely more than heads out of the vast subtle muddle of thinking about spheres and ideally perfect forms and so on1 that was the price of this little necessary step to clear thinking4 ,how large a part numerical and geometrical magic1 numerical and geometrical philosophy have played in the history of the mind6 ,and the whole apparatus of language and mental communication is beset with like dangers4 ,the language of the savage is ,i suppose purely positive2 the thing has a name1 the name has a thing4 ,this indeed is the tradition of language1 and even to-day1 we1 when we hear a name are predisposed--and sometimes it is a very vicious disposition--to imagine forthwith something answering to the name4 ,,we ,,are ,,disposed1 ,,as ,,an ,,incurable ,,mental ,,vice1 ,,to ,,accumulate ,,intension ,,in ,,terms4 ,if ,i say to you ,wodget or ,crump1 you find yourself passing over the fact that these are nothings1 these are1 so to speak mere blankety blanks1 and trying to think what sort of thing a ,wodget or a ,crump may be4 ,you find yourself led insensibly by subtle associations of sound and ideas to giving these blank terms attributes4 ,now this is true not only of quite empty terms but of terms that carry a meaning4 ,it is a mental necessity that we should make classes and use general terms1 and as soon as we do that we fall into immediate danger of unjustifiably increasing the intension of these terms4 ,you will find a large proportion of human prejudice and misunderstanding arises from this universal proclivity4 #a4g4 ,,negative ,,terms4 ,there is a particular sort of empty terms that has been and is conspicuously dangerous to the thinker1 the class of negative terms4 ,the negative term is in plain fact just nothing2 8,not-,a0 is the absence of any trace of the quality that constitutes ,a1 it is the rest of everything for ever4 ,but there seems to be a real bias in the mind towards regarding 8,not-,a0 as a thing mysteriously in the nature of ,a1 as though 8,not-,a0 and ,a were species of the same genus4 ,when one speaks of ,not-pink one is apt to think of green things and yellow things and to ignore anger or abstract nouns or the sound of thunder4 ,and logicians1 following the normal bias of the mind1 do actually present ,a and not-,a in this sort of diagram3-- 7the letter ,a inside a circular boundary1 together with the words ,not ,a1 all inside a bigger circular boundary47 ignoring altogether the difficult case of the space in which these words are printed4 ,obviously the diagram that comes nearer experienced fact is3-- 7the word ,not1 followed by the letter ,a inside a circular boundary1 followed by the letter ,a7 with no outer boundary4 ,but the logician finds it necessary for his processes to present that outer ,not-,a as bounded 7,vide e4g4 ,kayne's 8,formal ,logic0 re ,euler's diagrams and ,immediate ,inferences471 and to speak of the total area of ,a and ,not-,a as the ,universe of ,discourse2 and the metaphysician and the commonsense thinker alike fall far too readily into the belief that this convention of method is an adequate representation of fact4 ,let me try and express how in my mind this matter of negative terms has shaped itself4 ,i think of something which ,i may perhaps best describe as being off the stage or out of court1 or as the ,void without ,implications1 or as ,nothingness1 or as ,outer ,darkness4 ,this is a sort of hypothetical ,beyond to the visible world of human thought1 and thither ,i think all negative terms reach at last1 and merge and become nothing4 ,whatever positive class you make1 whatever boundary you draw1 straight away from that boundary begins the corresponding negative class and passes into the illimitable horizon of nothingness4 ,you talk of pink things1 you ignore1 as the arbitrary postulates of ,logic direct1 the more elusive shades of pink1 and draw your line4 ,beyond is the not-pink1 known and knowable1 and still in the not-pink region one comes to the ,outer ,darkness4 ,not blue1 not happy1 not iron1 all the ,,not classes meet in that ,outer ,darkness4 ,that same ,outer ,darkness and nothingness is infinite space and infinite time and any being of infinite qualities2 and all that region ,i rule out of court in my philosophy altogether4 ,i will neither affirm nor deny if ,i can help it about any ,,not things4 ,i will not deal with not things at all1 except by accident and inadvertence4 ,if ,i use the word 8infinite0 ,i use it as one often uses 8countless10 8the countless hosts of the enemy0--or 8immeasurable0--8immeasurable cliffs0--that is to say as the limit of measurement1 as a convenient equivalent to as many times this cloth yard as you can1 and as many again1 and so on and so on until you and your numerical system are beaten to a standstill4 ,now a great number of apparently positive terms are1 or have become1 practically negative terms and are under the same ban with me4 ,a considerable number of terms that have played a great part in the world of thought1 seem to me to be invalidated by this same defect1 to have no content or an undefined content or an unjustifiable content4 ,for example1 that word ,omniscient1 as implying infinite knowledge1 impresses me as being a word with a delusive air of being solid and full1 when it is really hollow with no content whatever4 ,i am persuaded that knowing is the relation of a conscious being to something not itself1 that the thing known is defined as a system of parts and aspects and relationships1 that knowledge is comprehension1 and so that only finite things can know or be known4 ,when you talk of a being of infinite extension and infinite duration1 omniscient and omnipotent and perfect1 you seem to me to be talking in negatives of nothing whatever4 #a4h4 ,,logic ,,static ,,and ,,life ,,kinetic4 ,there is another infirmity of the mind to which my attention has been called by an able paper read this spring to the ,cambridge ,moral ,science ,club by my friend ,miss ,amber ,reeves4 ,in this she has developed a suggestion of ,mr4 ,f4,c4,s4 ,schiller's4 ,the current syllogistic logic rests on the assumption that either ,a is ,b or it is not ,b4 ,the practical reality1 she contends1 is that nothing is permanent2 ,a is always becoming more or less ,b or ceasing to be more or less ,b4 ,but it would seem the human mind cannot manage with that4 ,it has to hold a thing still for a moment before it can think it4 ,it arrests the present moment for its struggle as ,joshua stopped the sun4 ,it cannot contemplate things continuously1 and so it has to resort to a series of static snapshots4 ,it has to kill motion in order to study it1 as a naturalist kills and pins out a butterfly in order to study life4 ,you see the mind is really pigeon-holed and discontinuous in two respects1 in respect to time and in respect to classification2 whereas one has a strong persuasion that the world of fact is unbounded or continuous4 #a4i4 ,,planes ,,and ,,dialects ,,of ,,thought4 ,finally2 the ,logician1 intent upon perfecting the certitudes of his methods rather than upon expressing the confusing subtleties of truth1 has done little to help thinking men in the perpetual difficulty that arises from the fact that the universe can be seen in many different fashions and expressed by many different systems of terms1 each expression within its limits true and yet incommensurable with expression upon a differing system4 ,there is a sort of stratification in human ideas4 ,i have it very much in mind that various terms in our reasoning lie1 as it were1 at different levels and in different planes1 and that we accomplish a large amount of error and confusion by reasoning terms together that do not lie or nearly lie in the same plane4 ,let me endeavour to make myself a little less obscure by a flagrant instance from physical things4 ,suppose some one began to talk seriously of a man seeing an atom through a microscope1 or better perhaps of cutting one in half with a knife4 ,there are a number of non-analytical people who would be quite prepared to believe that an atom could be visible to the eye or cut in this manner4 ,but any one at all conversant with physical conceptions would almost as soon think of killing the square root of #b with a rook rifle as of cutting an atom in half with a knife4 ,one's conception of an atom is reached through a process of hypothesis and analysis1 and in the world of atoms there are no knives and no men to cut4 ,if you have thought with a strong consistent mental movement1 then when you have thought of your atom under the knife blade1 your knife blade has itself become a cloud of swinging grouped atoms1 and your microscope lens a little universe of oscillatory and vibratory molecules4 ,if you think of the universe1 thinking at the level of atoms1 there is neither knife to cut1 scale to weigh1 nor eye to see4 ,the universe at that plane to which the mind of the molecular physicist descends has none of the shapes or forms of our common life whatever4 ,this hand with which ,i write is1 in the universe of molecular physics1 a cloud of warring atoms and molecules1 combining and recombining1 colliding1 rotating1 flying hither and thither in the universal atmosphere of ether4 ,you see1 ,i hope1 what ,i mean when ,i say that the universe of molecular physics is at a different level from the universe of common experience2--what we call stable and solid is in that world a freely moving system of interlacing centres of force1 what we call colour and sound is there no more than this length of vibration of that4 ,we have reached to a conception of that universe of molecular physics by a great enterprise of organised analysis1 and our universe of daily experiences stands in relation to that elemental world as if it were a synthesis of those elemental things4 ,i would suggest to you that this is only a very extreme instance of the general state of affairs1 that there may be finer and subtler differences of level between one term and another1 and that terms may very well be thought of as lying obliquely and as being twisted through different levels4 ,it will perhaps give a clearer idea of what ,i am seeking to convey if ,i suggest a concrete image for the whole world of a man's thought and knowledge4 ,imagine a large clear jelly1 in which at all angles and in all states of simplicity or contortion his ideas are imbedded4 ,they are all valid and possible ideas as they lie1 none incompatible with any4 ,if you imagine the direction of up or down in this clear jelly being as it were the direction in which one moves by analysis or synthesis1 if you go down for example from matter to atoms and centres of force and up to men and states and countries--if you will imagine the ideas lying in that manner--you will get the beginnings of my intention4 ,but our instrument1 our process of thinking1 like a drawing before the discovery of perspective1 appears to have difficulties with the third dimension1 appears capable only of dealing with or reasoning about ideas by projecting them upon the same plane4 ,it will be obvious that a great multitude of things may very well exist together in a solid jelly1 which would be overlapping and incompatible and mutually destructive when projected together upon one plane4 ,through the bias in our instrument to do this1 through reasoning between terms not in the same plane1 an enormous amount of confusion1 perplexity1 and mental deadlocking occurs4 ,the old theological deadlock between predestination and free will serves admirably as an example of the sort of deadlock ,i mean4 ,take life at the level of common sensation and common experience and there is no more indisputable fact than man's freedom of will1 unless it is his complete moral responsibility4 ,but make only the least penetrating of scientific analyses and you perceive a world of inevitable consequences1 a rigid succession of cause and effect4 ,insist upon a flat agreement between the two1 and there you are6 ,the instrument fails4 ,so far as this particular opposition is concerned1 ,i shall point out later the reasonableness and convenience of regarding the common-sense belief in free will as truer for one's personal life than determinism4 #a4aj4 ,,practical ,,conclusions ,,from ,,these ,,considerations4 ,now what is the practical outcome of all these criticisms of the human mind8 ,does it follow that thought is futile and discussion vain8 ,by no means4 ,rather these considerations lead us toward mutual understanding4 ,they clear up the deadlocks that come from the hard and fast use of terms1 they establish mutual charity as an intellectual necessity4 ,the common way of speech and thought which the old system of logic has simply systematized1 is too glib and too presumptuous of certainty4 ,we must needs use language1 but we must use it always with the thought in our minds of its unreal exactness1 its actual habitual deflection from fact4 ,all propositions are approximations to an elusive truth1 and we employ them as the mathematician studies the circle by supposing it to be a polygon of a very great number of sides4 ,we must make use of terms and sometimes of provisional terms4 ,but we must guard against such terms and the mental danger of excessive intension they carry with them4 ,the child takes a stick and says it is a sword and does not forget1 he takes a shadow under the bed and says it is a bear and he half forgets4 ,the man takes a set of emotions and says it is a ,god1 and he gets excited and propagandist and does forget2 he is involved in disputes and confusions with the old gods of wood and stone1 and presently he is making his ,god a ,great ,white ,throne and fitting him up with a mystical family4 ,essentially we have to train our minds to think anew1 if we are to think beyond the purposes for which the mind seems to have been evolved4 ,we have to disabuse ourselves from the superstition of the binding nature of definitions and the exactness of logic4 ,we have to cure ourselves of the natural tricks of common thought and argument4 ,you know the way of it1 how effective and foolish it is2 the quotation of the exact statement of which every jot and tittle must be maintained1 the challenge to be consistent1 the deadlock between your terms and mine4 ,more and more as ,i grow older and more settled in my views am ,i bored by common argument1 bored not because ,i am ceasing to be interested in the things argued about1 but because ,i see more and more clearly the futility of the methods pursued4 ,how then are we to think and argue and what truth may we attain8 ,is not the method of the scientific investigator a valid one1 and is there not truth to the world of fact in scientific laws8 ,decidedly there is4 ,and the continual revision and testing against fact that these laws get is constantly approximating them more and more nearly to a trustworthy statement of fact4 ,nevertheless they are never true in that dogmatic degree in which they seem true to the unphilosophical student of science4 ,accepting as ,i do the validity of nearly all the general propositions of modern science1 ,i have constantly to bear in mind that about them too clings the error of excessive claims to precision4 ,the man trained solely in science falls easily into a superstitious attitude2 he is overdone with classification4 ,he believes in the possibility of exact knowledge everywhere4 ,what is not exact he declares is not knowledge4 ,he believes in specialists and experts in all fields4 ,i dispute this universal range of possible scientific precision4 ,there is1 ,i allege1 a not too clearly recognised order in the sciences which forms the gist of my case against this scientific pretension4 ,there is a gradation in the importance of the individual instance as one passes from mechanics and physics and chemistry through the biological sciences to economics and sociology1 a gradation whose correlations and implications have not yet received adequate recognition1 and which does profoundly affect the method of study and research in each science4 ,let me repeat in slightly altered terms some of the points raised in the preceding sections4 ,i have doubted and denied that there are identically similar objective experiences2 ,i consider all objective beings as individual and unique4 ,it is now understood that conceivably only in the subjective world1 and in theory and the imagination1 do we deal with identically similar units1 and with absolutely commensurable quantities4 ,in the real world it is reasonable to suppose we deal at most with ,,practically similar units and ,,practically commensurable quantities4 ,but there is a strong bias1 a sort of labour-saving bias1 in the normal human mind1 to ignore this1 and not only to speak but to think of a thousand bricks or a thousand sheep or a thousand ,chinamen as though they were all absolutely true to sample4 ,if it is brought before a thinker for a moment that in any special case this is not so1 he slips back to the old attitude as soon as his attention is withdrawn4 ,this type of error has1 for instance1 caught many of the race of chemists1 and ,,atoms and ,,ions and so forth of the same species are tacitly assumed to be similar to one another4 ,be it noted that1 so far as the practical results of chemistry and physics go1 it scarcely matters which assumption we adopt1 the number of units is so great1 the individual difference so drowned and lost4 ,for purposes of enquiry and discussion the incorrect one is infinitely more convenient4 ,but this ceases to be true directly we emerge from the region of chemistry and physics4 ,in the biological sciences of the eighteenth century1 common-sense struggled hard to ignore individuality in shells and plants and animals4 ,there was an attempt to eliminate the more conspicuous departures as abnormalities1 as sports1 nature's weak moments2 and it was only with the establishment of ,darwin's great generalizations that the hard and fast classificatory system broke down and individuality came to its own4 ,yet there had always been a clearly felt difference between the conclusions of the biological sciences and those dealing with lifeless substance1 in the relative vagueness1 the insubordinate looseness and inaccuracy of the former4 ,the naturalist accumulated facts and multiplied names1 but he did not go triumphantly from generalization to generalization after the fashion of the chemist or physicist4 ,it is easy to see1 therefore1 how it came about that the inorganic sciences were regarded as the true scientific bed-rock4 ,it was scarcely suspected that the biological sciences might perhaps after all be ,,truer than the experimental1 in spite of the difference in practical value in favour of the latter4 ,it was1 and is by the great majority of people to this day1 supposed to be the latter that are invincibly true2 and the former are regarded as a more complex set of problems merely1 with obliquities and refractions that presently will be explained away4 ,comte and ,herbert ,spencer certainly seem to me to have taken that much for granted4 ,herbert ,spencer no doubt talked of the unknown and unknowable1 but not in this sense as an element of inexactness running through all things4 ,he thought1 it seems to me1 of the unknown as the indefinable ,beyond of an immediate world that might be quite clearly and definitely known4 ,there is a growing body of people which is beginning to hold the converse view--that counting1 classification1 measurement1 the whole fabric of mathematics1 is subjective and untrue to the world of fact1 and that the uniqueness of individuals is the objective truth4 ,as the number of units taken diminishes1 the amount of variety and inexactness of generalization increases1 because individuality tells for more and more4 ,could you take men by the thousand billion1 you could generalize about them as you do about atoms2 could you take atoms singly1 it may be that you would find them as individual as your aunts and cousins4 ,that concisely is the minority belief1 and my belief4 ,now what is called the scientific method in the physical sciences rests upon the ignoring of individualities2 and like many mathematical conventions1 its great practical convenience is no proof whatever of its final truth4 ,let me admit the enormous value1 the wonder of its results in mechanics1 in all the physical sciences1 in chemistry1 even in physiology1--but what is its value beyond that8 ,is the scientific method of value in biology8 ,the great advances made by ,darwin and his school in biology were not made1 it must be remembered1 by the scientific method1 as it is generally conceived1 at all4 ,his was historical research4 ,he conducted research into pre-documentary history4 ,he collected information along the lines indicated by certain interrogations2 and the bulk of his work was the digesting and critical analysis of that4 ,for documents and monuments he had fossils and anatomical structures and germinating eggs too innocent to lie4 ,but1 on the other hand1 he had to correspond with breeders and travellers of various sorts2 classes entirely analogous1 from the point of view of evidence1 to the writers of history and memoirs4 ,i question profoundly whether the word 8science10 in current usage anyhow1 ever means such patient disentanglement as ,darwin pursued4 ,it means the attainment of something positive and emphatic in the way of a conclusion1 based on amply repeated experiments capable of infinite repetition1 8proved10 as they say1 8up to the hilt40 ,it would be of course possible to dispute whether the word 8science0 should convey this quality of certitude1 but to most people it certainly does at the present time4 ,so far as the movements of comets and electric trams go1 there is no doubt practically cock-sure science2 and ,comte and ,herbert ,spencer seem to me to have believed that cock-sure could be extended to every conceivable finite thing4 ,the fact that ,herbert ,spencer called a certain doctrine ,individualism reflects nothing on the non-individualizing quality of his primary assumptions and of his mental texture4 ,he believed that individuality 7heterogeneity7 was and is an evolutionary product from an original homogeneity1 begotten by folding and multiplying and dividing and twisting it1 and still fundamentally ,,it4 ,it seems to me that the general usage is entirely for the limitation of the word 8science0 to knowledge and the search after knowledge of a high degree of precision4 ,and not simply the general usage2 8,science is measurement10 ,science is 8organized commonsense10 proud in fact of its essential error1 scornful of any metaphysical analysis of its terms4 ,now my contention is that we can arrange the fields of human thought and interest about the world of fact in a sort of scale4 ,at one end the number of units is infinite and the methods exact1 at the other we have the human subjects in which there is no exactitude4 ,the science of society stands at the extreme end of the scale from the molecular sciences4 ,in these latter there is an infinitude of units2 in sociology1 as ,comte perceived1 there is only one unit4 ,it is true that ,herbert ,spencer1 in order to get classification somehow1 did1 as ,professor ,durkheim has pointed out1 separate human society into societies1 and made believe they competed one with another and died and reproduced just like animals1 and that economists following ,list have for the purposes of fiscal controversy discovered economic types2 but this is a transparent device1 and one is surprised to find thoughtful and reputable writers off their guard against such bad analogy4 ,but indeed it is impossible to isolate complete communities of men1 or to trace any but rude general resemblances between group and group4 ,these alleged units have as much individuality as pieces of cloud2 they come1 they go1 they fuse and separate4 ,and we are forced to conclude that not only is the method of observation1 experiment1 and verification left far away down the scale1 but that the method of classification under types1 which has served so useful a purpose in the middle group of subjects1 the subjects involving numerous but a finite number of units1 has also to be abandoned in social science4 ,we cannot put ,humanity into a museum or dry it for examination2 our one single still living specimen is all history1 all anthropology1 and the fluctuating world of men4 ,there is no satisfactory means of dividing it1 and nothing else in the real world with which to compare it4 ,we have only the remotest ideas of its 8life-cycle0 and a few relics of its origin and dreams of its destiny4 ,this denial of scientific precision is true of all questions of general human relations and attitude4 ,and in regard to all these matters affecting our personal motives1 our self-control and our devotions1 it is much truer4 ,from this it is an easy step to the statement that so far as the clear-cut confident sort of knowledge goes1 the sort of knowledge one gets from a time-table or a text-book of chemistry1 or seeks from a witness in a police court1 ,i am1 in relation to religious and moral questions an agnostic4 ,i do not think any general propositions partaking largely of the nature of fact can be known about these things4 ,there is nothing possessing the general validity of fact to be stated or known4 #a4aa4 ,,beliefs4 ,yet it is of urgent practical necessity that we should have such propositions and beliefs4 ,all those we conjure out of our mental apparatus and the world of fact dissolve and disappear again under scrutiny4 ,it is clear we must resort to some other method for these necessities4 ,now ,i make my beliefs as ,i want them4 ,i do not attempt to distil them out of fact as physicists distil their laws4 ,i make them thus and not thus exactly as an artist makes a picture so and not so4 ,i believe that is how we all make our beliefs1 but that many people do not see this clearly and confuse their beliefs with perceived and proven fact4 ,i draw my beliefs exactly as an artist draws lines to make a picture1 to express my impression of the world and my purpose4 ,the artist cannot defend his expression as a scientific man defends his1 and demonstrate that they are true upon any assumptions whatsoever4 ,any loud fool may stand in front of a picture and call it inaccurate1 untrustworthy1 unbeautiful4 ,that last1 the most vital issue of all1 is the one least assured4 ,loud fools always do do that sort of thing4 ,take quite ignorant people before almost any beautiful work of art and they will laugh at it as absurd4 ,if one sits on a popular evening in that long room at ,south ,kensington which contains ,raphael's cartoons1 one remarks that perhaps a third of those who stray through and look at all those fine efforts1 titter4 ,if one searches in the magazines of a little while ago1 one finds in the angry and resentful reception of the ,pre-,raphaelites another instance of the absolutely indefensible nature of many of the most beautiful propositions4 ,and as a still more striking and remarkable case1 take the onslaught made by ,ruskin upon the works of ,whistler4 ,you will remember that a libel action ensued and that these pictures were gravely reasoned about by barristers and surveyed by jurymen to assess their merits444 ,in the end it is the indefensible truth that lasts2 it lasts because it works and serves4 ,people come to it and remain and attract other understanding and enquiring people4 ,now when ,i say ,i make my beliefs and that ,i cannot prove them to you and convince you of them1 that does not mean that ,i make them wantonly and regardless of fact1 that ,i throw them off as a child scribbles on a slate4 ,mr4 ,ruskin1 if ,i remember rightly1 accused ,whistler of throwing a pot of paint in the face of the public1--that was the essence of his libel4 ,the artistic method in this field of beliefs1 as in the field of visual renderings1 is one of great freedom and initiative and great poverty of test1 but of no wantonness2 the conditions of rightness are none the less imperative because they are mysterious and indefinable4 ,i adopt certain beliefs because ,i feel the need for them1 because ,i feel an often quite unanalyzable rightness in them2 because the alternative of a chaotic life distresses me4 ,my belief in them rests upon the fact that they ,,work for me and satisfy my desire for harmony and beauty4 ,they are arbitrary assumptions1 if you will1 that ,i see fit to impose upon my universe4 ,but though they are arbitrary1 they are not necessarily individual4 ,just so far as we all have a common likeness1 just so far can we be brought under the same imperatives to think and believe4 ,and though they are arbitrary1 each day they stand wear and tear1 and each new person they satisfy1 is another day and another voice towards showing they do correspond to something that is so far fact and real4 ,this is ,pragmatism as ,i conceive it2 the abandonment of infinite assumptions1 the extension of the experimental spirit to all human interests4 #a4ab4 ,,summary4 ,in concluding this first ,book let me give a summary of the principal points of what has gone before4 ,i figure the mind of man as an imperfect being obtaining knowledge by imperfect eyesight1 imperfect hearing and so forth2 who must needs walk manfully and patiently1 exercising will and making choices and determining things between the mysteries of external and internal fact4 ,essentially man's mind moves within limits depending upon his individual character and experience4 ,these limits constitute what ,herbart called his 8circle of thought10 and they differ for everyone4 ,that briefly is what ,i consider to be the case with my own mind1 and ,i believe it is the case with everyone's4 ,most minds1 it seems to me1 are similar1 but none are absolutely alike in character or in contents4 ,we are all biassed to ignore our mental imperfections and to talk and act as though our minds were exact instruments1--something wherewith to scale the heavens with assurance1--and also we are biassed to believe that1 except for perversity1 all our minds work exactly alike4 ,man1 thinking man1 suffers from intellectual over-confidence and a vain belief in the universal validity of reasoning4 ,we all need training1 training in the balanced attitude4 ,of everything we need to say3 this is true but it is not quite true4 ,of everything we need to say3 this is true in relation to things in or near its plane1 but not true of other things4 ,of everything we have to remember3 this may be truer for us than for other people4 ,in disputation particularly we have to remember this 7and most with our antagonist73 that the spirit of an utterance may be better than the phrase4 ,we have to discourage the cheap tricks of controversy1 the retort1 the search for inconsistency4 ,we have to realize that these things are as foolish and ill-bred and anti-social as shouting in conversation or making puns2 and we have to work out habits of thought purged from the sin of assurance4 ,we have to do this for our own good quite as much as for the sake of intercourse4 ,all the great and important beliefs by which life is guided and determined are less of the nature of fact than of artistic expression4 ,,book ,,the ,,second -- ,,of ,,beliefs #b4a4 ,,my ,,primary ,,act ,,of ,,faith4 ,and now having stated my conception of the true relationship between our thoughts and words to facts1 having distinguished between the more accurate and frequently verified propositions of science and the more arbitrary and infrequently verified propositions of belief1 and made clear the spontaneous and artistic quality that inheres in all our moral and religious generalizations1 ,i may hope to go on to my confession of faith with less misunderstanding4 ,now my most comprehensive belief about the external and the internal and myself is that they make one universe in which ,i and every part are ultimately important4 ,that is quite an arbitrary act of my mind4 ,it is quite possible to maintain that everything is a chaotic assembly1 that any part might be destroyed without affecting any other part4 ,i do not choose to argue against that4 ,if you choose to say that1 ,i am no more disposed to argue with you than if you choose to wear a mitre in ,fleet ,street or drink a bottle of ink1 or declare the figure of ,ally ,sloper more dignified and beautiful than the head of ,jove4 ,there is no ,q4,e4,d4 that you cannot do so4 ,you can4 ,you will not like to go on with it1 ,i think1 and it will not answer1 but that is a different matter4 ,i dismiss the idea that life is chaotic because it leaves my life ineffectual1 and ,i cannot contemplate an ineffectual life patiently4 ,i am by my nature impelled to refuse that4 ,i assert that it is not so4 ,i assert therefore that ,i am important in a scheme1 that we are all important in that scheme1 that the wheel-smashed frog in the road and the fly drowning in the milk are important and correlated with me4 ,what the scheme as a whole is ,i do not know2 with my limited mind ,i cannot know4 ,there ,i become a ,mystic4 ,i use the word scheme because it is the best word available1 but ,i strain it in using it4 ,i do not wish to imply a schemer1 but only order and co-ordination as distinguished from haphazard4 8,all this is important1 all this is profoundly significant40 ,i say it of the universe as a child that has not learnt to read might say it of a parchment agreement4 ,i cannot read the universe1 but ,i can believe that this is so4 ,and this unfounded and arbitrary declaration of the ultimate rightness and significance of things ,i call the ,act of ,faith4 ,it is my fundamental religious confession4 ,it is a voluntary and deliberate determination to believe1 a choice made4 #b4b4 ,,on ,,using ,,the ,,name ,,of ,,god4 ,you may say if you will that this scheme ,i talk about1 this something that gives importance and correlation and significance1 is what is meant by ,god4 ,you may embark upon a logical wrangle here with me if you have failed to master what ,i have hitherto said about the meaning of words4 ,if a ,scheme1 you will say1 then there must be a ,schemer4 ,but1 ,i repeat1 ,i am using scheme and importance and significance here only in a spirit of analogy because ,i can find no better words1 and ,i will not allow myself to be entangled by an insistence upon their implications4 ,yet let me confess that ,i am greatly attracted by such fine phrases as the ,will of ,god1 the ,hand of ,god1 the ,great ,commander4 ,these do most wonderfully express aspects of this belief ,i choose to hold4 ,i think if there had been no gods before1 ,i would call this ,god4 ,but ,i feel that there is a great danger in doing this sort of thing unguardedly4 ,many people would be glad for rather trivial and unworthy reasons that ,i should confess a faith in ,god1 and few would take offence4 ,but the run of people even nowadays mean something more and something different when they say 8,god40 ,they intend a personality exterior to them and limited1 and they will instantly conclude ,i mean the same thing4 ,to permit that misconception is1 ,i feel1 the first step on the slippery slope of meretricious complaisance1 is to become in some small measure a successor of those who cried1 8,great is ,diana of the ,ephesians40 ,occasionally we may best serve the ,god of ,truth by denying him4 ,yet at times ,i admit the sense of personality in the universe is very strong4 ,if ,i am confessing1 ,i do not see why ,i should not confess up to the hilt4 ,at times in the silence of the night and in rare lonely moments1 ,i come upon a sort of communion of myself and something great that is not myself4 ,it is perhaps poverty of mind and language obliges me to say that then this universal scheme takes on the effect of a sympathetic person--and my communion a quality of fearless worship4 ,these moments happen1 and they are the supreme fact in my religious life to me1 they are the crown of my religious experiences4 ,none the less1 ,i do not usually speak of ,god even in regard to these moments1 and where ,i do use that word it must be understood that ,i use it as a personification of something entirely different in nature from the personality of a human being4 #b4c4 ,,free ,,will ,,and ,,predestination4 ,and now let me return to a point raised in the first ,book in ,chapter #a4i4 ,is the whole of this scheme of things settled and done8 ,the whole trend of ,science is to that belief4 ,on the scientific plane one is a fatalist1 the universe a system of inevitable consequences4 ,but as ,i show in that section referred to1 it is quite possible to accept as true in their several planes both predestination and free will4 7,i use free will in the sense of self-determinisn and not as it is defined by ,professor ,william ,james1 and predestination as equivalent to the conception of a universe rigid in time and space47 ,if you ask me1 ,i think ,i should say ,i incline to believe in predestination and do quite completely believe in free will4 ,the important belief is free will4 ,but does the whole universe of fact1 the external world about me1 the mysterious internal world from which my motives rise1 form one rigid and fated system as determinists teach8 ,do ,i believe that1 had one a mind ideally clear and powerful1 the whole universe would seem orderly and absolutely predestined8 ,i incline to that belief4 ,i do not harshly believe it1 but ,i admit its large plausibility--that is all4 ,i see no value whatever in jumping to a decision4 ,one or two ,pragmatists1 so far as ,i can understand them1 do not hold this view of predestination at all2 but as a provisional assumption it underlies most scientific work4 ,i glance at this question rather to express a detachment than a view4 ,for me as a person this theory of predestination has no practical value4 ,at the utmost it is an interesting theory like the theory that there is a fourth dimension4 ,there may be a fourth dimension of space1 but one gets along quite well by assuming there are just three4 ,it may be knowable the next time ,i come to cross roads which ,i shall take4 ,possibly that knowledge actually exists somewhere4 ,there are those who will tell you that they can get intimations in the matter from packs of cards or the palms of my hands1 or see by peering into crystals4 ,of such beliefs ,i am entirely free4 ,the fact is ,i believe that neither ,i know nor anybody else who is practically concerned knows which ,i shall take4 ,i hesitate1 ,i choose just as though the thing was unknowable4 ,for me and my conduct there is that much wide practical margin of freedom4 ,i am free and freely and responsibly making the future--so far as ,i am concerned4 ,you others are equally free4 ,on that theory ,i find my life will work1 and on a theory of mechanical predestination nothing works4 ,i take the former theory therefore for my everyday purposes1 and as a matter of fact so does everybody else4 ,i regard myself as a free responsible person among free responsible persons4 #b4d4 ,a ,,picture ,,of ,,the ,,world ,,of ,,men4 ,now ,i have already given a first picture of the world of fact as it shaped itself upon my mind4 ,let me now give a second picture of this world in which ,i find myself1 a picture in a rather different key and at a different level1 in which ,i turn to a new set of aspects and bring into the foreground the other minds which are with me in the midst of this great spectacle4 ,what am ,i8 ,here is a question to which in all ages men have sought to give a clear unambiguous answer1 and to which a clear unambiguous answer is manifestly unfitted4 ,am ,i my body8 ,yes or no8 ,it seems to me that ,i can externalize and think of as 8not myself0 nearly everything that pertains to my body1 hands and feet1 and even the most secret and central of those living and hidden parts1 the pulsing arteries1 the throbbing nerves1 the ganglionic centres1 that no eye1 save for the surgeon's knife has ever seen or ever will see until they coagulate in decay4 ,so far ,i am not my body2 and then as clearly1 since ,i suffer through it1 see the whole world through it and am always to be called upon where it is1 ,i am it4 ,am ,i a mind mysteriously linked to this thing of matter and endeavour8 ,so ,i can present myself4 ,i seem to be a consciousness1 vague and insecure1 placed between two worlds4 ,one of these worlds seems clearly 8not me10 the other is more closely identified with me and yet is still imperfectly me4 ,the first ,i call the exterior world1 and it presents itself to me as existing in ,time and ,space4 ,in a certain way ,i seem able to interfere with it and control it4 ,the second is the interior world1 having no forms in space and only a vague evasive reference to time1 from which motives arise and storms of emotion1 which acts and reacts constantly and in untraceable way with my conscious mind4 ,and that consciousness itself hangs and drifts about the region where the inner world and the outer world meet1 much as a patch of limelight drifts about the stage1 illuminating1 affecting1 following no manifest law except that usually it centres upon the hero1 my ,ego4 ,it seems to me that to put the thing much more precisely than this is to depart from the reality of the matter4 ,but so departing a little1 let me borrow a phrase from ,herbart and identify myself more particularly with my mental self4 ,it seems to me that ,i may speak of myself as a circle of thought and experience hung between these two imperfectly understood worlds of the internal and the external and passing imperceptibly into the former4 ,the external world impresses me as being1 as a practical fact1 common to me and many other creatures similar to myself2 the internal1 ,i find similar but not identical with theirs4 ,it is ,,mine4 ,it seems to me at times no more than something cut off from that external world and put into a sort of pit or cave1 much as all the inner mystery of my body1 those living1 writhing1 warm and thrilling organs are isolated1 hidden from all eyes and interference so long as ,i remain alive4 ,and ,i myself1 the essential me1 am the light and watcher in the mouth of the cave4 ,so ,i think of myself1 and so ,i think of all other human beings1 as circles of thought and experience1 each a little different from the others4 ,each human being ,i see as essentially a circle of thought between an internal and an external world4 ,i figure these circles of thought as more or less imperfectly focussed pictures1 all a little askew and vague as to margins and distances4 ,in the internal world arise motives1 and they pass outward through the circle of thought and are modified and directed by it into external acts4 ,and through speech1 example1 and a hundred various acts1 one such circle1 one human mind1 lights and enlarges and plays upon another4 ,that is the image under which the interrelation of minds presents itself to me4 #b4e4 ,,the ,,problem ,,of ,,motives ,,the ,,real ,,problem ,,of ,,life4 ,now each self among us1 for all its fluctuations and vagueness of boundary1 is1 as ,i have already pointed out1 invincibly persuaded of ,free ,will4 ,that is to say1 it has a persuasion of responsible control over the impulses that teem from the internal world and tend to express themselves in act4 ,the problem of that control and its solution is the reality of life4 8,what am ,i to do80 is the perpetual question of our existence4 ,our metaphysics1 our beliefs are all sought as subsidiary to that and have no significance without it4 ,i confess ,i find myself a confusion of motives beside which my confusion of perceptions pales into insignificance4 ,there are many various motives and motives very variously estimated--some are called gross1 some sublime1 some--such as pride--wicked4 ,i do not readily accept these classifications4 ,many people seem to make a selection among their motives without much enquiry1 taking those classifications as just2 they seek to lead what they call pure lives or useful lives and to set aside whole sets of motives which do not accord with this determination4 ,some exclude the seeking of pleasure as a permissible motive1 some the love of beauty2 some insist upon one's 8being oneself0 and prohibit or limit responses to exterior opinions4 ,most of such selections strike me as wanton and hasty4 ,i decline to dismiss any of my motives at all in that wholesale way4 ,just as ,i believe ,i am important in the scheme of things1 so ,i believe are all my motives4 ,turning one's back on any set of them seems to me to savour of the headlong actions of stupidity4 ,to suppress a passion or a curiosity for the sake of suppressing a passion is to my mind just the burial of a talent that has been entrusted to one's care4 ,one has1 ,i feel1 to take all these things as weapons and instruments1 material in the service of the scheme2 one has to take them in the end gravely and do right among them unbiassed in favour of any set4 ,to take some poor appetite and fling it out is to my mind a cheap and unsatisfactory way of simplifying one's moral problems4 ,one has to accept these things in oneself1 ,i feel--even if one knows them to be dangerous things1 even if one is sure they have an evil side4 ,let me1 however1 in order to express my attitude better1 make a rough grouping of the motives ,i find in myself and the people about me4 #b4f4 ,a ,,review ,,of ,,motives4 ,i cannot divide them into clearly defined classes1 but ,i may perhaps begin with those that bring one into the widest sympathy with living things and go on to those one shares only with highly intelligent and complex human beings4 ,there come first the desires one shares with those more limited souls the beasts1 just as much as one does with one's fellow man4 ,these are the bodily appetites and the crude emotions of fear and resentment4 ,these first clamour for attention and must be assuaged or controlled before the other sets come into play4 ,now in this matter of physical appetites ,i do not know whether to describe myself as a sensualist or an ascetic4 ,if an ascetic is one who suppresses to a minimum all deference to these impulses1 then certainly ,i am not an ascetic2 if a sensualist is one who gives himself to heedless gratification1 then certainly ,i am not a sensualist4 ,but ,i find myself balanced in an intermediate position by something that ,i will speak of as the sense of ,beauty4 ,this sense of ,beauty is something in me which demands not simply gratification but the best and keenest of a sense or continuance of sense impressions1 and which refuses coarse quantitative assuagements4 ,it ranges all over the senses1 and just as ,i refuse to wholly cut off any of my motives1 so do ,i refuse to limit its use to the plane of the eye or the ear4 ,it seems to me entirely just to speak of beauty in matters of scent and taste1 to talk not only of beautiful skies and beautiful sounds but of beautiful beer and beautiful cheese6 ,the balance as between asceticism and sensuality comes in1 it seems to me1 if we remember that to drink well one must not have drunken for some time1 that to see well one's eye must be clear1 that to make love well one must be fit and gracious and sweet and disciplined from top to toe1 that the finest sense of all--the joyous sense of bodily well-being--comes only with exercises and restraints and fine living4 ,there ,i think lies the way of my disposition4 ,i do not want to live in the sensual sty1 but ,i also do not want to scratch in the tub of ,diogenes4 ,but ,i diverge a little in these comments from my present business of classifying motives4 ,next ,i perceive hypertrophied in myself and many sympathetic human beings a passion that many animals certainly possess1 the beautiful and fearless cousin of fear1 ,curiosity1 that seeks keenly for knowing and feeling4 ,apart from appetites and bodily desires and blind impulses1 ,i want most urgently to know and feel1 for the sake of knowing and feeling4 ,i want to go round corners and see what is there1 to cross mountain ranges1 to open boxes and parcels4 ,young animals at least have that disposition too4 ,for me it is something that mingles with all my desires4 ,much more to me than the desire to live is the desire to taste life4 ,i am not happy until ,i have done and felt things4 ,i want to get as near as ,i can to the thrill of a dog going into a fight or the delight of a bird in the air4 ,and not simply in the heroic field of war and the air do ,i want to understand4 ,i want to know something of the jolly wholesome satisfaction that a hungry pig must find in its wash4 ,i want to get the quintessence of that4 ,i do not think that in this ,i confess to any unusual temperament4 ,i think that the more closely mentally animated people scrutinize their motives the less is the importance they will attach to mere physical and brute urgencies and the more to curiosity4 ,next after curiosity come those desires and motives that one shares perhaps with some social beasts1 but far more so as a conscious thing with men alone4 ,these desires and motives all centre on a clearly apprehended 8self0 in relation to 8others02 they are the essentially egotistical group4 ,they are self-assertion in all its forms4 ,i have dealt with motives toward gratification and motives towards experience2 this set of motives is for the sake of oneself4 ,since they are the most acutely conscious motives in unthinking men1 there is a tendency on the part of unthinking philosophers to speak of them as though vanity1 self-seeking1 self-interest were the only motives4 ,but one has but to reflect on what has gone before to realize that this is not so4 ,one finds these 8self0 motives vary with the mental power and training of the individual2 here they are fragmentary and discursive1 there drawn tight together into a coherent scheme4 ,where they are weak they mingle with the animal motives and curiosity like travellers in a busy market-place1 but where the sense of self is strong they become rulers and regulators1 self-seeking becomes deliberate and sustained in the case of the human being1 vanity passes into pride4 ,here again that something in the mind so difficult to define1 so easy for all who understand to understand1 that something which insists upon a best and keenest1 the desire for beauty1 comes into the play of motives4 ,pride demands a beautiful self and would discipline all other passions to its service4 ,it also demands recognition for that beautiful self4 ,now pride1 ,i know1 is denounced by many as the essential quality of sin4 ,we are taught that 8self-abnegation0 is the substance of virtue and self-forgetfulness the inseparable quality of right conduct4 ,but indeed ,i cannot so dismiss egotism and that pride which was the first form in which the desire to rule oneself as a whole came to me4 ,through pride one shapes oneself towards a best1 though at first it may be an ill-conceived best4 ,pride is not always arrogance and aggression4 ,there is that pride that does not ape but learn humility4 ,and with the human imagination all these elementary instincts1 of the flesh1 of curiosity1 of self-assertion1 become only the basal substance of a huge elaborate edifice of secondary motive and intention4 ,we live in a great flood of example and suggestion1 our curiosity and our social quality impel us to a thousand imitations1 to dramatic attitudes and subtly obscure ends4 ,our pride turns this way and that as we respond to new notes in the world about us4 ,we are arenas for a conflict between suggestions flung in from all sources1 from the most diverse and essentially incompatible sources4 ,we live long hours and days in a kind of dream1 negligent of self-interest1 our elementary passions in abeyance1 among these derivative things4 #b4g4 ,,the ,,synthetic ,,motive4 ,such it seems to me are the chief masses of the complex of motives in us1 the group of sense1 the group of pride1 curiosity and the imitative and suggested motives1 making up the system of impulses which is our will4 ,such has been the common outfit of motives in every age1 and in every age its melee has been found insufficient in itself4 ,it is a heterogeneous system1 it does not form in any sense a completed or balanced system1 its constituents are variable and compete amongst themselves4 ,they are not so much arranged about one another as superposed and higgledy-piggledy4 ,the senses and curiosity war with pride and one another1 the motives suggested to us fall into conflict with this element or that of our intimate and habitual selves4 ,we find all our instincts are snares to excess4 ,excesses of indulgence lead to excesses of abstinence1 and even the sense of beauty may be clouded and betray4 ,so to us all1 even for the most balanced of us1 come disappointments1 regrets1 gaps2 and for most of us who are ill-balanced1 miseries and despairs4 ,nearly all of us want something to hold us together--something to dominate this swarming confusion and save us from the black misery of wounded and exploded pride1 of thwarted desire1 of futile conclusions4 ,we want more oneness1 some steadying thing that will afford an escape from fluctuations4 ,different people1 of differing temperament and tradition1 have sought oneness1 this steadying and universalizing thing1 in various manners4 ,some have attained it in this manner1 and some in that4 ,scarcely a religious system has existed that has not worked effectively and proved true for someone4 ,to me it seems that the need is synthetic1 that some synthetic idea and belief is needed to harmonize one's life1 to give a law by which motive may be tried against motive and an effectual peace of mind achieved4 ,i want an active peace and not a quiescence1 and ,i do not want to suppress and expel any motive at all4 ,but to many people the effort takes the form of attempts to cut off some part of oneself as it were1 to repudiate altogether some straining or distressing or disappointing factor in the scheme of motives1 and find a tranquillizing refuge in the residuum4 ,so we have men and women abandoning their share in economic development1 crushing the impulses and evading the complications that arise out of sex and flying to devotions and simple duties in nunneries and monasteries2 we have people cutting their lives down to a vegetarian dietary and scientific research1 resorting to excesses of self-discipline1 giving themselves up wholly to some 8art0 and making everything else subordinate to that1 or1 going in another direction1 abandoning pride and love in favour of an acquired appetite for drugs or drink4 ,now it seems to me that this desire to get the confused complex of life simplified is essentially what has been called the religious motive1 and that the manner in which a man achieves that simplification1 if he does achieve it1 and imposes an order upon his life1 is his religion4 ,i find in the scheme of conversion and salvation as it is presented by many ,christian sects1 a very exact statement of the mental processes ,i am trying to express4 ,in these systems this discontent with the complexity of life upon which religion is based1 is called the conviction of sin1 and it is the first phase in the process of conversion--of finding salvation4 ,it leads through distress and confusion to illumination1 to the act of faith and peace4 ,and after peace comes the beginning of right conduct4 ,if you believe and you are saved1 you will want to behave well1 you will do your utmost to behave well and to understand what is behaving well1 and you will feel neither shame nor disappointment when after all you fail4 ,you will say then3 8so it is failure ,i had to achieve40 ,and you will not feel bitterly because you seem unsuccessful beside others or because you are misunderstood or unjustly treated1 you will not bear malice nor cherish anger nor seek revenge1 you will never turn towards suicide as a relief from intolerable things2 indeed there will be no intolerable things4 ,you will have peace within you4 ,but if you do not truly believe and are not saved1 you will know it because you will still suffer the conflict of motives2 and in regrets1 confusions1 remorses and discontents1 you will suffer the penalties of the unbeliever and the lost4 ,you will know certainly your own salvation4 #b4h4 ,,the ,,being ,,of ,,mankind4 ,i will boldly adopt the technicalities of the sects4 ,i will speak as a person with experience and declare that ,i have been through the distresses of despair and the conviction of sin and that ,i have found salvation4 ,i ,,believe4 ,i believe in the scheme1 in the ,project of all things1 in the significance of myself and all life1 and that my defects and uglinesses and failures1 just as much as my powers and successes1 are things that are necessary and important and contributory in that scheme1 that scheme which passes my understanding--and that no thwarting of my conception1 not even the cruelty of nature1 now defeats or can defeat my faith1 however much it perplexes my mind4 ,and though ,i say that scheme passes my understanding1 nevertheless ,i hope you will see no inconsistency when ,i say that necessarily it has an aspect towards me that ,i find imperative4 ,it has an aspect that ,i can perceive1 however dimly and fluctuatingly4 ,i take it that to perceive this aspect to the utmost of my mental power and to shape my acts according to that perception is my function in the scheme2 that if ,i hold steadfastly to that conception1 ,i am ,,saved4 ,i find in that idea of perceiving the scheme as a whole towards me and in this attempt to perceive1 that something to which all my other emotions and passions may contribute by gathering and contributing experience1 and through which the synthesis of my life becomes possible4 ,let me try to convey to you what it is ,i perceive1 what aspect this scheme seems to bear on the whole towards me4 ,the essential fact in man's history to my sense is the slow unfolding of a sense of community with his kind1 of the possibilities of co-operations leading to scarce dreamt-of collective powers1 of a synthesis of the species1 of the development of a common general idea1 a common general purpose out of a present confusion4 ,in that awakening of the species1 one's ,,own ,,personal ,,being ,,lives ,,and ,,moves--,a ,,part ,,of ,,it ,,and ,,contributing ,,to ,,it4 ,,one',s ,,individual ,,existence ,,is ,,not ,,so ,,entirely ,,cut ,,off ,,as ,,it ,,seems ,,at ,,first2 ,,one',s ,,entirely ,,separate ,,individuality ,,is ,,another1 ,a ,,profounder1 ,,among ,,the ,,subtle ,,inherent ,,delusions ,,of ,,the ,,human ,,mind4 ,between you and me as we set our minds together1 and between us and the rest of mankind1 there is ,,something1 something real1 something that rises through us and is neither you nor me1 that comprehends us1 that is thinking here and using me and you to play against each other in that thinking just as my finger and thumb play against each other as ,i hold this pen with which ,i write4 ,let me point out that this is no sentimental or mystical statement4 ,it is hard fact as any hard fact we know4 ,we1 you and ,i1 are not only parts in a thought process1 but parts of one flow of blood and life4 ,let me put that in a way that may be new to some readers4 ,let me remind you of what is sometimes told as a jest1 the fact that the number of one's ancestors increases as we look back in time4 ,disregarding the chances of intermarriage1 each one of us had two parents1 four grandparents1 eight great-grandparents1 and so on backward1 until very soon1 in less than fifty generations1 we should find that1 but for the qualification introduced1 we should have all the earth's inhabitants of that time as our progenitors4 ,for a hundred generations it must hold absolutely true1 that everyone of that time who has issue living now is ancestral to all of us4 ,that brings the thing quite within the historical period4 ,there is not a western ,european palaeolithic or neolithic relic that is not a family relic for every soul alive4 ,the blood in our veins has handled it4 ,and there is something more4 ,we are all going to mingle our blood again4 ,we cannot keep ourselves apart2 the worst enemies will some day come to the ,peace of ,verona4 ,all the ,montagues and ,capulets are doomed to intermarry4 ,a time will come in less than fifty generations when all the population of the world will have my blood1 and ,i and my worst enemy will not be able to say which child is his or mine4 ,but you may retort--perhaps you may die childless4 ,then all the sooner the whole species will get the little legacy of my personal achievement1 whatever it may be4 ,you see that from this point of view--which is for me the vividly true and dominating point of view--our individualities1 our nations and states and races are but bubbles and clusters of foam upon the great stream of the blood of the species1 incidental experiments in the growing knowledge and consciousness of the race4 ,i think this real solidarity of humanity is a fact that is only slowly being apprehended1 that it is an idea that we who have come to realize it have to assist in thinking into the collective mind4 ,i believe the species is still as a whole unawakened1 still sunken in the delusion of the permanent separateness of the individual and of races and nations1 that so it turns upon itself and frets against itself and fails to see the stupendous possibilities of deliberate self-development that lie open to it now4 ,i see myself in life as part of a great physical being that strains and ,i believe grows towards beauty1 and of a great mental being that strains and ,i believe grows towards knowledge and power4 ,in this persuasion that ,i am a gatherer of experience1 a mere tentacle that arranges thought beside thought for this being of the species1 this being that grows beautiful and powerful1 in this persuasion ,i find the ruling idea of which ,i stand in need1 the ruling idea that reconciles and adjudicates among my warring motives4 ,in it ,i find both concentration of myself and escape from myself2 in a word1 ,i find ,salvation4 #b4i4 ,,individuality ,,an ,,interlude4 ,i would like in a parenthetical section to expand and render rather more concrete this idea of the species as one divaricating flow of blood1 by an appeal to its arithmetical aspect4 ,i do not know if it has ever occurred to the reader to compute the number of his living ancestors at some definite date1 at1 let us say1 the year one of the ,christian era4 ,everyone has two parents and four grandparents1 most people have eight great-grandparents1 and if we ignore the possibility of intermarriage we shall go on to a fresh power of two with every generation1 thus3-- ,column #a3 ,number of generations4 ,column #b3 ,number of ancestors4 #c3 #h #d3 #af #e3 #cb #g3 #abh #aj3 #a1jbd #bj3 #abf1igf #cj3 #ae1gde1jbd #dj3 #a1ief1bhb1igf ,i do not know whether the average age of the parent at the birth of a child under modern conditions can be determined from existing figures4 ,there is1 ,i should think1 a strong presumption that it has been a rising age4 ,there may have been a time in the past when most women were mothers in their early teens and bore most or all of their children before thirty1 and when men had done the greater part of their procreation before thirty-five2 this is still the case in many tropical climates1 and ,i do not think ,i favour my case unduly by assuming that the average parent must be about1 or even less than1 five and twenty4 ,this gives four generations to a century4 ,at that rate and ,,disregarding ,,intermarriage ,,of ,,relations the ancestors living a thousand years ago needed to account for a living person would be double the estimated population of the world4 ,but it is obvious that if a person sprang from a marriage of first cousins1 the eight ancestors of the third generation are cut down to six2 if of cousins at the next stage1 to fourteen in the fourth4 ,and every time that a common pair of ancestors appears in any generation1 the number of ancestors in that generation must be reduced by two from our original figures1 or if it is only one common ancestor1 by one1 and as we go back that reduction will have to be doubled1 quadrupled and so on4 ,i daresay that by the time anyone gets to the #hiaf names of his ,elizabethan ancestors he will find quite a large number repeated over and over again in the list and that he is cut down to perhaps two or three thousand separate persons4 ,but this does not effectually invalidate my assumption that if we go back only to the closing years of the ,roman ,republic1 we go back to an age in which nearly every person living within the confines of what was then the ,roman ,empire who left living offspring must have been ancestral to every person living within that area to-day4 ,no doubt they were so in very variable measure4 ,there must be for everyone some few individuals in that period who have so to speak intermarried with themselves again and again and again down the genealogical series1 and others who are represented by just one touch of their blood4 ,the blood of the ,jews1 for example1 has turned in upon itself again and again2 but for all we know one ,italian proselyte in the first year of the ,christian era may have made by this time every ,jew alive a descendant of some unrecorded bastard of ,julius ,caesar4 ,the exclusive breeding of the ,jews is in fact the most effectual guarantee that whatever does get into the charmed circle through either proselytism1 the violence of enemies1 or feminine unchastity1 must ultimately pervade it universally4 ,it may be argued that as a matter of fact humanity has until recently been segregated in pools2 that in the great civilization of ,china1 for example1 humanity has pursued its own interlacing system of inheritances without admixture from other streams of blood4 ,but such considerations only defer the conclusion2 they do not stave it off indefinitely4 ,it needs only that one philoprogenitive ,chinaman should have wandered into those regions that are now ,russia1 about the time of ,pericles1 to link east and west in that matter2 one ,tartar chieftain in the ,steppes may have given a daughter to a ,roman soldier and sent his grandsons east and west to interlace the branches of every family tree in the world4 ,if any race stands apart it is such an isolated group as that of the now extinct ,tasmanian primitives or the ,australian black4 ,but even here1 in the remote dawn of navigation1 may have come some shipwrecked ,malays1 or some half-breed woman kidnapped by wandering ,phoenicians have carried this link of blood back to the western world4 ,the more one lets one's imagination play upon the incalculable drift and soak of population1 the more one realizes the true value of that spreading relation with the past4 ,but now let us turn in the other direction1 the direction of the future1 because there it is that this series of considerations becomes most edifying4 ,it is the commonest trick to think of a man's descendants as though they were his own4 ,we are told that one of the dearest human motives is the desire to found a family1 but think how much of a family one founds at the best4 ,one's son is after all only half one's blood1 one grandson only a quarter1 and so one goes on until it may be that in ten brief generations one's heir and namesake has but #a_/ajbdth of one's inherited self4 ,those other thousand odd unpredictable people thrust in and mingle with one's pride4 ,the trend of all things nowadays--the ever-increasing ease of communication1 the great and increasing drift of population1 the establishment of a common standard of civilization--is to render such admixture far more probable and facile in the future than in the past4 ,it is a pleasant fancy to imagine some ambitious hoarder of wealth1 some egotistical founder of name and family1 returning to find his descendants--,,his descendants--after the lapse of a few brief generations4 ,his heir and namesake may have not a thousandth part of his heredity1 while under some other name1 lost to all the tradition and glory of him1 enfeebled and degenerate through much intermarriage1 may be a multitude of people who have as much as a fiftieth or even more of his quality4 ,they may even be in servitude and dependence to the really alien person who is head of the family4 ,our founder will go through the spreading record of offspring and find it mixed with that of people he most hated and despised4 ,the antagonists he wronged and overcame will have crept into his line and recaptured all they lost2 have played the cuckoo in his blood and acquisitions1 and turned out his diluted strain to perish4 ,and while ,i am being thus biological let me point out another queer aspect in which our egotism is overridden by physical facts4 ,men and women are apt to think of their children as being their very own1 blood of their blood and bone of their bone4 ,but indeed one of the most striking facts in this matter is the frequent want of resemblance between parents and children4 ,it is one of the commonest things in the world for a child to resemble an aunt or an uncle1 or to revive a trait of some grandparent that has seemed entirely lost in the intervening generation4 ,the ,mendelians have given much attention to facts of this nature2 and though their general method of exposition seems to me quite unjustifiably exact and precise1 it cannot be denied that it is often vividly illuminating4 ,it is so in this connexion4 ,they distinguish between 8dominant0 and 8recessive0 qualities1 and they establish cases in which parents with all the dominant characteristics produce offspring of recessive type4 ,recessive qualities are constantly being masked by dominant ones and emerging again in the next generation4 ,it is not the individual that reproduces himself1 it is the species that reproduces through the individual and often in spite of his characteristics4 ,the race flows through us1 the race is the drama and we are the incidents4 ,this is not any sort of poetical statement2 it is a statement of fact4 ,in so far as we are individuals1 in so far as we seek to follow merely individual ends1 we are accidental1 disconnected1 without significance1 the sport of chance4 ,in so far as we realize ourselves as experiments of the species for the species1 just in so far do we escape from the accidental and the chaotic4 ,we are episodes in an experience greater than ourselves4 ,now none of this1 if you read me aright1 makes for the suppression of one's individual difference1 but it does make for its correlation4 ,we have to get everything we can out of ourselves for this very reason that we do not stand alone2 we signify as parts of a universal and immortal development4 ,our separate selves are our charges1 the talents of which much has to be made4 ,it is because we are episodical in the great synthesis of life that we have to make the utmost of our individual lives and traits and possibilities4 #b4aj4 ,,the ,,mystic ,,element4 ,what stupendous constructive mental and physical possibilities are there to which ,i feel ,i am contributing1 you may ask1 when ,i feel that ,i contribute to this greater ,being2 and at once ,i confess ,i become vague and mystical4 ,i do not wish to pass glibly over this point4 ,i call your attention to the fact that here ,i am mystical and arbitrary4 ,i am what ,i am1 an individual in this present phase4 ,i can see nothing of these possibilities except that they will be in the nature of those indefinable and overpowering gleams of promise in our world that we call ,beauty4 ,elsewhere 7in my 8,food of the ,gods07 ,i have tried to render my sense of our human possibility by monstrous images2 ,i have written of those who will 8stand on this earth as on a footstool and reach out their hands among the stars40 ,but that is mere rhetoric at best1 a straining image of unimaginable things4 ,things move to ,power and ,beauty2 ,i say that much and ,i have said all that ,i can say4 ,but what is ,beauty1 you ask1 and what will ,power do8 ,and here ,i reach my utmost point in the direction of what you are free to call the rhapsodical and the incomprehensible4 ,i will not even attempt to define ,beauty4 ,i will not because ,i cannot4 ,to me it is a final1 quite indefinable thing4 ,either you understand it or you do not4 ,every true artist and many who are not artists know--they know there is something that shows suddenly--it may be in music1 it may be in painting1 it may be in the sunlight on a glacier or a shadow cast by a furnace or the scent of a flower1 it may be in the person or act of some fellow creature1 but it is right1 it is commanding1 it is1 to use theological language1 the revelation of ,god4 ,to the mystery of ,power and ,beauty1 out of the earth that mothered us1 we move4 ,i do not attempt to define ,beauty nor even to distinguish it from ,power4 ,i do not think indeed that one can effectually distinguish these aspects of life4 ,i do not know how far ,beauty may not be simply fulness and clearness of sensation1 a momentary unveiling of things hitherto seen but dully and darkly4 ,as ,i have already said1 there may be beauty in the feeling of beer in the throat1 in the taste of cheese in the mouth2 there may be beauty in the scent of the earth1 in the warmth of a body1 in the sensation of waking from sleep4 ,i use the word ,beauty therefore in its widest possible sense1 ranging far beyond the special beauties that art discovers and develops4 ,perhaps as we pass from death to life all things become beautiful4 ,the utmost ,i can do in conveying what ,i mean by ,beauty is to tell of things that ,i have perceived to be beautiful as beautifully as ,i can tell of them4 ,it may be1 as ,i suggest elsewhere1 that ,beauty is a thing synthetic and not simple2 it is a common effect produced by a great medley of causes1 a larger aspect of harmony4 ,but the question of what ,beauty is does not very greatly concern me since ,i have known it when ,i met it and since almost every day in life ,i seem to apprehend it more and to find it more sufficient and satisfying4 ,objectively it may be altogether complex and various and synthetic1 subjectively it is altogether simple4 ,all analysis1 all definition1 must in the end rest upon and arrive at unanalyzable and indefinable things4 ,beauty is light--,i fall back upon that image--it is all things that light can be1 beacon1 elucidation1 pleasure1 comfort and consolation1 promise1 warning1 the vision of reality4 #b4aa4 ,,the ,,synthesis4 ,it seems to me that the whole living creation may be regarded as walking in its sleep1 as walking in the sleep of instinct and individualized illusion1 and that now out of it all rises man1 beginning to perceive his larger self1 his universal brotherhood and a collective synthetic purpose to increase ,power and realize ,beauty444 ,i write this down4 ,it is the form of my belief1 and that unanalyzable something called ,beauty is the light that falls upon that form4 ,it is only by such images1 it is only by the use of what are practically parables1 that ,i can in any way express these things in my mind4 ,these two things1 ,i say1 are the two aspects of my belief2 one is the form and the other the light4 ,the former places me as it were in a scheme1 the latter illuminates and inspires me4 ,i am a member in that great being1 and my function is1 ,i take it1 to develop my capacity for beauty and convey the perception of it to my fellows1 to gather and store experience and increase the racial consciousness4 ,i hazard no whys nor wherefores4 ,that is how ,i see things2 that is how the universe1 in response to my demand for a synthesizing aspect1 presents itself to me4 #b4ab4 ,,of ,,personal ,,immortality4 ,these are my beliefs4 ,they begin with arbitrary assumptions2 they end in a mystery4 ,so do all beliefs that are not grossly utilitarian and material1 promising houris and deathless appetite or endless hunting or a cosmic mortgage4 ,the ,peace of ,god passeth understanding1 the ,kingdom of ,heaven within us and without can be presented only by parables4 ,but the unapproachable distance and vagueness of these things makes them none the less necessary1 just as a cloud upon a mountain or sunlight remotely seen upon the sea are as real as1 and to many people far more necessary than1 pork chops4 ,the driven swine may root and take no heed1 but man the dreamer drives4 ,and because these things are vague and impalpable and wilfully attained1 it is none the less important that they should be rendered with all the truth of one's being4 ,to be atmospherically vague is one thing2 to be haphazard1 wanton and untruthful1 quite another4 ,but here ,i may give a specific answer to a question that many find profoundly important1 though indeed it is already implicitly answered in what has gone before4 ,i do not believe ,i have any personal immortality4 ,i am part of an immortality perhaps2 but that is different4 ,i am not the continuing thing4 ,i personally am experimental1 incidental4 ,i feel ,i have to do something1 a number of things no one else could do1 and then ,i am finished and finished altogether4 ,then my substance returns to the common lot4 ,i am a temporary enclosure for a temporary purpose2 that served1 and my skull and teeth1 my idiosyncracy and desire1 will disperse1 ,i believe1 like the timbers of a booth after a fair4 ,let me shift my ground a little and ask you to consider what is involved in the opposite belief4 ,my idea of the unknown scheme is of something so wide and deep that ,i cannot conceive it encumbered by my egotism perpetually4 ,i shall serve my purpose and pass under the wheel and end4 ,that distresses me not at all4 ,immortality would distress and perplex me4 ,if ,i may put this in a mixture of theological and social language1 ,i cannot respect1 ,i cannot believe in a ,god who is always going about with me4 ,but this is after all what ,i feel is true and what ,i choose to believe4 ,it is not a matter of fact4 ,so far as that goes there is no evidence that ,i am immortal and none that ,i am not4 ,i may be altogether wrong in my beliefs2 ,i may be misled by the appearances of things4 ,i believe in the great and growing ,being of the ,species from which ,i rise1 to which ,i return1 and which1 it may be1 will ultimately even transcend the limitation of the ,species and grow into the ,conscious ,being1 the eternally conscious ,being of all things4 ,believing that1 ,i cannot also believe that my peculiar little thread will not undergo synthesis and vanish as a separate thing4 ,and what after all is my distinctive something1 a few capacities1 a few incapacities1 an uncertain memory1 a hesitating presence8 ,it matters no doubt in its place and time1 as all things matter in their place and time1 but where in it all is the eternally indispensable8 ,the great things of my life1 love1 faith1 the intimation of beauty1 the things most savouring of immortality1 are the things most general1 the things most shared and least distinctively me4 #b4ac4 ,a ,,criticism ,,of ,,christianity4 ,and here perhaps1 before ,i go on to the question of ,conduct1 is the place to define a relationship to that system of faith and religious observance out of which ,i and most of my readers have come4 ,how do these beliefs on which ,i base my rule of conduct stand to ,christianity8 ,they do not stand in any attitude of antagonism4 ,a religious system so many-faced and so enduring as ,christianity must necessarily be saturated with truth even if it be not wholly true4 ,to assume1 as the ,atheist and ,deist seem to do1 that ,christianity is a sort of disease that came upon civilization1 an unprofitable and wasting disease1 is to deny that conception of a progressive scheme and rightness which we have taken as our basis of belief4 ,as ,i have already confessed1 the ,scheme of ,salvation1 the idea of a process of sorrow and atonement1 presents itself to me as adequately true4 ,so far ,i do not think my new faith breaks with my old4 ,but it follows as a natural consequence of my metaphysical preliminaries that ,i should find the ,christian theology ,aristotelian1 over defined and excessively personified4 ,the painted figure of that bearded ancient upon the ,sistine ,chapel1 or ,william ,blake's wild-haired1 wild-eyed ,trinity1 convey no nearer sense of ,god to me than some mother-of-pearl-eyed painted and carven monster from the worship of the ,south ,sea ,islanders4 ,and the ,miltonic fable of the offended creator and the sacrificial son6 it cannot span the circle of my ideas2 it is a little thing1 and none the less little because it is intimate1 flesh of my flesh and spirit of my spirit1 like the drawings of my youngest boy4 ,i put it aside as ,i would put aside the gay figure of a costumed officiating priest4 ,the passage of time has made his canonicals too strange1 too unlike my world of common thought and costume4 ,these things helped1 but now they hinder and disturb4 ,i cannot bring myself back to them444 ,but the psychological experience and the theology of ,christianity are only a ground-work for its essential feature1 which is the conception of a relationship of the individual believer to a mystical being at once human and divine1 the ,risen ,christ4 ,this being presents itself to the modern consciousness as a familiar and beautiful figure1 associated with a series of sayings and incidents that coalesce with a very distinct and rounded-off and complete effect of personality4 ,after we have cleared off all the definitions of theology1 ,he remains1 mystically suffering for humanity1 mystically asserting that love in pain and sacrifice in service are the necessary substance of ,salvation4 ,whether he actually existed as a finite individual person in the opening of the ,christian era seems to me a question entirely beside the mark4 ,the evidence at this distance is of imperceptible force for or against4 ,the ,christ we know is quite evidently something different from any finite person1 a figure1 a conception1 a synthesis of emotions1 experiences and inspirations1 sustained by and sustaining millions of human souls4 ,now it seems to be the common teaching of almost all ,christians1 that ,salvation1 that is to say the consolidation and amplification of one's motives through the conception of a general scheme or purpose1 is to be attained through the personality of ,christ4 ,christ is made cardinal to the act of ,faith4 ,the act of ,faith1 they assert1 is not simply1 as ,i hold it to be1 ,,belief1 but ,,belief ,,in ,,him4 ,we are dealing here1 be it remembered1 with beliefs deliberately undertaken and not with questions of fact4 ,the only matters of fact material here are facts of experience4 ,if in your experience ,salvation is attainable through ,christ1 then certainly ,christianity is true for you4 ,and if a ,christian asserts that my belief is a false light and that presently ,i shall 8come to ,christ10 ,i cannot disprove his assertion4 ,i can but disbelieve it4 ,i hesitate even to make the obvious retort4 ,i hope ,i shall offend no susceptibilities when ,i assert that this great and very definite personality in the hearts and imaginations of mankind does not and never has attracted me4 ,it is a fact ,i record about myself without aggression or regret4 ,i do not find myself able to associate ,him in any way with the emotion of ,salvation4 ,i admit the splendid imaginative appeal in the idea of a divine-human friend and mediator4 ,if it were possible to have access by prayer1 by meditation1 by urgent outcries of the soul1 to such a being whose feet were in the darknesses1 who stooped down from the light1 who was at once great and little1 limitless in power and virtue and one's very brother2 if it were possible by sheer will in believing to make and make one's way to such a helper1 who would refuse such help8 ,but ,i do not find such a being in ,christ4 ,i do not find1 ,i cannot imagine1 such a being4 ,i wish ,i could4 ,to me the ,christian ,christ seems not so much a humanized ,god as an incomprehensibly sinless being neither ,god nor man4 ,his sinlessness wears his incarnation like a fancy dress1 all his white self unchanged4 ,he had no petty weaknesses4 ,now the essential trouble of my life is its petty weaknesses4 ,if ,i am to have that love1 that sense of understanding fellowship1 which is1 ,i conceive1 the peculiar magic and merit of this idea of a personal ,saviour1 then ,i need someone quite other than this image of virtue1 this terrible and incomprehensible ,galilean with his crown of thorns1 his blood-stained hands and feet4 ,i cannot love him any more than ,i can love a man upon the rack4 ,even in the face of torments ,i do not think ,i should feel a need for him4 ,i had rather then a hundred times have ,botticelli's armed angel in his ,tobit at ,florence4 7,i hope ,i do not seem to want to shock in writing these things1 but indeed my only aim is to lay my feelings bare47 ,i know what love for an idealized person can be4 ,it happens that in my younger days ,i found a character in the history of literature who had a singular and extraordinary charm for me1 of whom the thought was tender and comforting1 who indeed helped me through shames and humiliations as though he held my hand4 ,this person was ,oliver ,goldsmith4 ,his blunders and troubles1 his vices and vanities1 seized and still hold my imagination4 ,the slights of ,boswell1 the contempt of ,gibbon and all his company save ,johnson1 the exquisite fineness of spirit in his 8,vicar of ,wakefield10 and that green suit of his and the doctor's cane and the love despised1 these things together made him a congenial saint and hero for me1 so that ,i thought of him as others pray4 ,when ,i think of that youthful feeling for ,goldsmith1 ,i know what ,i need in a personal ,saviour1 as a troglodyte who has seen a candle can imagine the sun4 ,but the ,christian ,christ in none of his three characteristic phases1 neither as the magic babe 7from whom ,i am cut off by the wanton and indecent purity of the ,immaculate ,conception71 nor as the white-robed1 spotless miracle worker1 nor as the fierce unreal torment of the cross1 comes close to my soul4 ,i do not understand the ,agony in the ,garden2 to me it is like a scene from a play in an unknown tongue4 ,the la t cry of despair is the one human touch1 discordant with all the rest of the story4 ,one cry of despair does not suffice4 ,the ,christian's ,christ is too fine for me1 not incarnate enough1 not flesh enough1 not earth enough4 ,he was never foolish and hot-eared and inarticulate1 never vain1 he never forgot things1 nor tangled his miracles4 ,i could love him ,i think more easily if the dead had not risen and if he had lain in peace in his sepulchre instead of coming back more enhaloed and whiter than ever1 as a postscript to his own tragedy4 ,when ,i think of the ,resurrection ,i am always reminded of the 8happy endings0 that editors and actor managers are accustomed to impose upon essentially tragic novels and plays444 ,you see how ,i stand in this matter1 puzzled and confused by the ,christian presentation of ,christ4 ,i know there are many will answer--as ,i suppose my friend the ,rev4 ,r4,j4 ,campbell would answer--that what confuses me is the overlaying of the personality of ,jesus by stories and superstitions and conflicting symbols2 he will in effect ask me to disentangle the ,christ ,i need from the accumulated material1 choosing and rejecting4 ,perhaps one may do that4 ,he does1 ,i know1 so present ,him as a man inspired1 and strenuously1 inadequately and erringly presenting a dream of human brotherhood and the immediate ,kingdom of ,heaven on earth and so blundering to his failure and death4 ,but that will be a recovered and restored person he would give me1 and not the ,christ the ,christians worship and declare they love1 in whom they find their ,salvation4 ,when ,i write 8declare they love0 ,i throw doubt intentionally upon the universal love of ,christians for their ,saviour4 ,i have watched men and nations in this matter4 ,i am struck by the fact that so many ,christians fall back upon more humanized figures1 upon the tender figure of ,mary1 upon patron saints and such more erring creatures1 for the effect of mediation and sympathy they need4 ,you see it comes to this3 that ,i think ,christianity has been true and is for countless people practically true1 but that it is not true now for me1 and that for most people it is true only with modifications4 ,every believing ,christian is1 ,i am sure1 my spiritual brother1 but if systematically ,i called myself a ,christian ,i feel that to most men ,i should imply too much and so tell a lie4 #b4ad4 ,,of ,,other ,,religions4 ,in the same manner1 in varying degree1 ,i hold all religions to be in a measure true4 ,least comprehensible to me are the ,indian formulae1 because they seem to stand not on common experience but on those intellectual assumptions my metaphysical analysis destroys4 ,transmigration of souls without a continuing memory is to my mind utter foolishness1 the imagining of a race of children4 ,the aggression1 discipline and submission of ,mahommedanism makes1 ,i think1 an intellectually limited but fine and honourable religion--for men4 ,its spirit if not its formulae is abundantly present in our modern world4 ,mr4 ,rudyard ,kipling1 for example1 manifestly preaches a ,mahommedan ,god1 a modernised ,god with a taste for engineering4 ,i have no doubt that in devotion to a virile1 almost national ,deity and to the service of ,his ,empire of stern ,law and ,order1 efficiently upheld1 men have found and will find ,salvation4 ,all these religions are true for me as ,canterbury ,cathedral is a true thing and as a ,swiss chalet is a true thing4 ,there they are1 and they have served a purpose1 they have worked4 ,men and women have lived in and by them4 ,men and women still do4 ,only they are not true for me to live in them4 ,i have1 ,i believe1 to live in a new edifice of my own discovery4 ,they do not work for me4 ,these schemes are true1 and also these schemes are false6 in the sense that new things1 new phrasings1 have to replace them4 #b4ae4 ,such are the essential beliefs by which ,i express myself4 ,but now comes the practical outcome of these things1 and that is to discuss and show how upon this metaphysical basis and these beliefs1 and in obedience to the ruling motive that arises with them1 ,i frame principles of conduct4 ,,book ,,the ,,third -- ,,of ,,general ,,conduct #c4a4 ,,conduct ,,follows ,,from ,,belief4 ,i hold that the broad direction of conduct follows necessarily from belief4 ,the believer does not require rewards and punishments to direct him to the right4 ,motive and idea are not so separable4 ,to believe truly is to want to do right4 ,to get salvation is to be unified by a comprehending idea of a purpose and by a ruling motive4 ,the believer wants to do right1 he naturally and necessarily seeks to do right4 ,if he fails to do right1 if he finds he has done wrong instead of right1 he is not greatly distressed or terrified1 he naturally and cheerfully does his best to correct his error4 ,he can be damned only by the fading and loss of his belief4 ,and naturally he recurs to and refreshes his belief4 ,i write in phrases that the evangelical ,christianity of my childhood made familiar to me1 because they are the most expressive phrases ,i have ever met for the psychological facts with which ,i am dealing4 ,but faith1 though it banishes fear and despair and brings with it a real prevailing desire to know and do the ,good1 does not in itself determine what is the ,good or supply any simple guide to the choice between alternatives4 ,if it did1 there would be nothing more to be said1 this book upon conduct would be unnecessary4 #c4b4 ,,what ,,is ,,good8 ,it seems to me one of the heedless errors of those who deal in philosophy1 to suppose all things that have simple names or unified effects are in their nature simple and may be discovered and isolated as a sort of essence by analysis4 ,it is natural to suppose--and ,i think it is also quite wrong to suppose--that such things as ,good and ,beauty can be abstracted from good and beautiful things and considered alone4 ,but pure ,good and pure ,beauty are to me empty terms4 ,it seems to me that these are in their nature synthetic things1 that they arise out of the coming together of contributory things and conditions1 and vanish at their dispersal2 they are synthetic just as more obviously ,harmony is synthetic4 ,it is consequently not possible to give a definition of ,good1 just as it is not possible to give a definition of that other something which is so closely akin to it1 ,beauty4 ,nor is it to be maintained that what is good for one is good for another4 ,but what is good of one's general relations and what is right in action must be determined by the nature of one's beliefs about the purpose in things4 ,i have set down my broad impression of that purpose in respect to me1 as the awakening and development of the consciousness and will of our species1 and ,i have confessed my belief that in subordinating myself and all my motives to that idea lies my ,salvation4 ,it follows from that1 that the good life is the life that most richly gathers and winnows and prepares experience and renders it available for the race1 that contributes most effectively to the collective growth4 ,this is in general terms my idea of ,good4 ,so soon as one passes from general terms to the question of individual good1 one encounters individuality2 for everyone in the differing quality and measure of their personality and powers and possibilities1 good and right must be different4 ,we are all engaged1 each contributing from his or her own standpoint1 in the collective synthesis2 whatever one can best do1 one must do that2 in whatever manner one can best help the synthesis1 one must exert oneself2 the setting apart of oneself1 secrecy1 the service of secret and personal ends1 is the waste of life and the essential quality of ,sin4 ,that is the general expression for right living as ,i conceive it4 #c4c4 ,,socialism4 ,in the study of what is ,good1 it is very convenient to make a rough division of our subject into general and particular4 ,there are first the interests and problems that affect us all collectively1 in which we have a common concern and from which no one may legitimately seek exemption2 of these interests and problems we may fairly say every man should do so and so1 or so and so1 or the law should be so and so1 or so and so2 and secondly there are those other problems in which individual difference and the interplay of one or two individualities is predominant4 ,this is of course no hard and fast classification1 but it gives a method of approach4 ,we can begin with the generalized person in ourselves and end with individuality4 ,in the world of ideas about me1 ,i have found going on a great social and political movement that correlates itself with my conception of a great synthesis of human purpose as the aspect towards us of the universal scheme4 ,this movement is ,socialism4 ,socialism is to me no clear-cut system of theories and dogmas2 it is one of those solid and extensive and synthetic ideas that are better indicated by a number of different formulae than by one1 just as one only realizes a statue by walking round it and seeing it from a number of points of view4 ,i do not think it is to be completely expressed by any one system of formulae or by any one man4 ,its common quality from nearly every point of view is the subordination of the will of the self-seeking individual to the idea of a racial well-being embodied in an organized state1 organized for every end that can be obtained collectively4 ,upon that ,i seize2 that is the value of ,socialism for me4 ,socialism for me is a common step we are all taking in the great synthesis of human purpose4 ,it is the organization1 in regard to a great mass of common and fundamental interests that have hitherto been dispersedly served1 of a collective purpose4 ,i see humanity scattered over the world1 dispersed1 conflicting1 unawakened444 ,i see human life as avoidable waste and curable confusion4 ,i see peasants living in wretched huts knee-deep in manure1 mere parasites on their own pigs and cows2 ,i see shy hunters wandering in primaeval forests2 ,i see the grimy millions who slave for industrial production2 ,i see some who are extravagant and yet contemptible creatures of luxury1 and some leading lives of shame and indignity2 tens of thousands of wealthy people wasting lives in vulgar and unsatisfying trivialities1 hundreds of thousands meanly chaffering themselves1 rich or poor1 in the wasteful byways of trade2 ,i see gamblers1 fools1 brutes1 toilers1 martyrs4 ,their disorder of effort1 the spectacle of futility1 fills me with a passionate desire to end waste1 to create order1 to develop understanding444 ,all these people reflect and are part of the waste and discontent of my life1 and this co-ordination of the species to a common general end1 and the quest for my personal salvation1 are the social and the individual aspect of essentially the same desire444 ,and yet dispersed as all these people are1 they are far more closely drawn together to common ends and common effort than the filthy savages who ate food rotten and uncooked in the age of unpolished stone4 ,they live in the mere opening phase of a synthesis of effort the end of which surpasses our imagination4 ,such intercourse and community as they have is only a dawn4 ,we look towards the day1 the day of the organized civilized world state4 ,the first clear intimation of that conscious synthesis of human thought to which ,i look1 the first edge of the dayspring1 has arisen--as ,socialism1 as ,i conceive of ,socialism4 ,socialism is to me no more and no less than the awakening of a collective consciousness in humanity1 a collective will and a collective mind out of which finer individualities may arise forever in a perpetual series of fresh endeavours and fresh achievements for the race4 #c4d4 ,a ,,criticism ,,of ,,certain ,,forms ,,of ,,socialism4 ,it is necessary to point out that a ,socialism arising in this way out of the conception of a synthesis of the will and thought of the species will necessarily differ from conceptions of ,socialism arrived at in other and different ways4 ,it is based on a self-discontent and self-abnegation and not on self-satisfaction1 and it will be a scheme of persistent thought and construction1 essentially1 and it will support this or that method of law-making1 or this or that method of economic exploitation1 or this or that matter of social grouping1 only incidentally and in relation to that4 ,such a conception of ,socialism is very remote in spirit1 however it may agree in method1 from that philanthropic administrative socialism one finds among the ,british ruling and administrative class4 ,that seems to me to be based on a pity which is largely unjustifiable and a pride that is altogether unintelligent4 ,the pity is for the obvious wants and distresses of poverty1 the pride appears in the arrogant and aggressive conception of raising one's fellows4 ,i have no strong feeling for the horrors and discomforts of poverty as such1 sensibilities can be hardened to endure the life led by the 8,romans0 in ,dartmoor jail a hundred years ago 7,see 8,the ,story of ,dartmoor ,prison0 by ,basil ,thomson 7,heinemann--#aijg7471 or softened to detect the crumpled rose-leaf2 what disgusts me is the stupidity and warring purposes of which poverty is the outcome4 ,when it comes to the idea of raising human beings1 ,i must confess the only person ,i feel concerned about raising is ,h4,g4 ,wells1 and that even in his case my energies might be better employed4 ,after all1 presently he must die and the world will have done with him4 ,his output for the species is more important than his individual elevation4 ,moreover1 all this talk of raising implies a classification ,i doubt4 ,i find it hard to fix any standards that will determine who is above me and who below4 ,most people are different from me ,i perceive1 but which among them is better1 which worse8 ,i have a certain power of communicating with other minds1 but what experiences ,i communicate seem often far thinner and poorer stuff than those which others less expressive than ,i half fail to communicate and half display to me4 ,my 8inferiors10 judged by the common social standards1 seem indeed intellectually more limited than ,i and with a narrower outlook2 they are often dirtier and more driven1 more under the stress of hunger and animal appetites2 but on the other hand have they not more vigorous sensations than ,i1 and through sheer coarsening and hardening of fibre1 the power to do more toilsome things and sustain intenser sensations than ,i could endure8 ,when ,i sit upon the bench1 a respectable magistrate1 and commit some battered reprobate for trial for this lurid offence or that1 or send him or her to prison for drunkenness or such-like indecorum1 the doubt drifts into my mind which of us after all is indeed getting nearest to the keen edge of life4 ,are ,i and my respectable colleagues much more than successful evasions of ,,that8 ,perhaps these people in the dock know more of the essential strains and stresses of nature1 are more intimate with pain4 ,at any rate ,i do not think ,i am justified in saying certainly that they do not know444 ,no1 ,i do not want to raise people using my own position as a standard1 ,i do not want to be one of a gang of consciously superior people1 ,i do not want arrogantly to change the quality of other lives4 ,i do not want to interfere with other lives1 except incidentally--incidentally1 in this way that ,i do want to get to an understanding with them1 ,i do want to share and feel with them in our commerce with the collective mind4 ,i suppose ,i do not stretch language very much when ,i say ,i want to get rid of stresses and obstacles between our minds and personalities and to establish a relation that is understanding and sympathy4 ,i want to make more generally possible a relationship of communication and interchange1 that for want of a less battered and ambiguous word ,i must needs call love4 ,and if ,i disavow the ,socialism of condescension1 so also do ,i disavow the ,socialism of revolt4 ,there is a form of ,socialism based upon the economic generalizations of ,marx1 an economic fatalistic ,socialism that ,i hold to be rather wrong in its vision of facts1 rather more distinctly wrong in its theory1 and altogether wrong and hopeless in its spirit4 ,it preaches1 as inevitable1 a concentration of property in the hands of a limited number of property owners and the expropriation of the great proletarian mass of mankind1 a concentration which is after all no more than a tendency conditional on changing and changeable conventions about property1 and it finds its hope of a better future in the outcome of a class conflict between the expropriated ,many and the expropriating ,few4 ,both sides are to be equally swayed by self-interest1 but the toilers are to be gregarious and mutually loyal in their self-interest--,heaven knows why1 except that otherwise the ,marxist dream will not work4 ,the experience of contemporary events seems to show at least an equal power of combination for material ends among owners and employers as among workers4 ,now this class-war idea is one diametrically opposed to that religious-spirited ,socialism which supplies the form of my general activities4 ,this class-war idea would exacerbate the antagonism of the interests of the many individuals against the few individuals1 and ,i would oppose the conceiving of the ,whole to the self-seeking of the ,individual4 ,the spirit and constructive intention of the many to-day are no better than those of the few1 poor and rich alike are over-individualized1 self-seeking and non-creative2 to organize the confused jostling competitions1 over-reachings1 envies and hatreds of to-day into two great class-hatreds and antagonisms will advance the reign of love at most only a very little1 only so far as it will simplify and make plain certain issues4 ,it may very possibly not advance the reign of love at all1 but rather shatter the order we have4 ,socialism1 as ,i conceive it1 and as ,i have presented it in my book1 8,new ,worlds for ,old10 seeks to change economic arrangements only by the way1 as an aspect and outcome of a great change1 a change in the spirit and method of human intercourse4 ,i know that here ,i go beyond the limits many ,socialists in the past1 and some who are still contemporary1 have set themselves4 ,much ,socialism to-day seems to think of itself as fighting a battle against poverty and its concomitants alone4 ,now poverty is only a symptom of a profounder evil and is never to be cured by itself4 ,it is one aspect of divided and dispersed purposes4 ,if ,socialism is only a conflict with poverty1 ,socialism is nothing4 ,but ,i hold that ,socialism is and must be a battle against human stupidity and egotism and disorder1 a battle fought all through the forests and jungles of the soul of man4 ,as we get intellectual and moral light and the realization of brotherhood1 so social and economic organization will develop4 ,but the ,socialist may attack poverty for ever1 disregarding the intellectual and moral factors that necessitate it1 and he will remain until the end a purely economic doctrinaire crying in the wilderness in vain4 ,and if ,i antagonize myself in this way to the philanthropic ,socialism of kindly prosperous people on the one hand and to the fierce class-hatred ,socialism on the other1 still more am ,i opposed to that furtive ,socialism of the specialist which one meets most typically in the ,fabian ,society4 ,it arises very naturally out of what ,i may perhaps call specialist fatigue and impatience4 ,it is very easy for writers like myself to deal in the broad generalities of ,socialism and urge their adoption as general principles2 it is altogether another affair with a man who sets himself to work out the riddle of the complications of actuality in order to modify them in the direction of ,socialism4 ,he finds himself in a jungle of difficulties that strain his intellectual power to the utmost4 ,he emerges at last with conclusions1 and they are rarely the obvious conclusions1 as to what needs to be done4 ,even the people of his own side he finds do not see as he sees2 they are1 he perceives1 crude and ignorant4 ,now ,i hold that his duty is to explain his discoveries and intentions until they see as he sees4 ,but the specialist temperament is often not a generalizing and expository temperament4 ,specialists are apt to measure minds by their speciality and underrate the average intelligence4 ,the specialist is appalled by the real task before him1 and he sets himself by tricks and misrepresentations1 by benevolent scoundrelism in fact1 to effect changes he desires4 ,too often he fails even in that4 ,where he might have found fellowship he arouses suspicion4 ,and even if a thing is done in this way1 its essential merit is lost4 ,for it is better1 ,i hold1 for a man to die of his disease than to be cured unwittingly4 ,that is to cheat him of life and to cheat life of the contribution his consciousness might have given it4 ,the ,socialism of my beliefs rests on a profounder faith and broader proposition4 ,it looks over and beyond the warring purposes of to-day as a general may look over and beyond a crowd of sullen1 excited and confused recruits1 to the day when they will be disciplined1 exercised1 trained1 willing and convergent on a common end4 ,it holds persistently to the idea of men increasingly working in agreement1 doing things that are sane to do1 on a basis of mutual helpfulness1 temperance and toleration4 ,it sees the great masses of humanity rising out of base and immediate anxieties1 out of dwarfing pressures and cramped surroundings1 to understanding and participation and fine effort4 ,it sees the resources of the earth husbanded and harvested1 economized and used with scientific skill for the maximum of result4 ,it sees towns and cities finely built1 a race of beings finely bred and taught and trained1 open ways and peace and freedom from end to end of the earth4 ,it sees beauty increasing in humanity1 about humanity and through humanity4 ,through this great body of mankind goes evermore an increasing understanding1 an intensifying brotherhood4 ,as ,christians have dreamt of the ,new ,jerusalem so does ,socialism1 growing ever more temperate1 patient1 forgiving and resolute1 set its face to the ,world ,city of ,mankind4 #c4e4 ,,hate ,,and ,,love4 ,before ,i go on to point out the broad principles of action that flow from this wide conception of ,socialism1 ,i may perhaps give a section to elucidating that opposition of hate and love ,i made when ,i dealt with the class war4 ,i have already used the word love several times2 it is an ambiguous word and it may be well to spend a few words in making clear the sense in which it is used here4 ,i use it in a very broad sense to convey all that complex of motives1 impulses1 sentiments1 that incline us to find our happiness and satisfactions in the happiness and sympathy of others4 ,essentially it is a synthetic force in human affairs1 the merger tendency1 a linking force1 an expression in personal will and feeling of the common element and interest4 ,it insists upon resemblances and shares and sympathies4 ,and hate1 ,i take it1 is the emotional aspect of antagonism1 it is the expression in personal will and feeling of the individual's separation from others4 ,it is the competing and destructive tendency4 ,so long as we are individuals and members of a species1 we must needs both hate and love4 ,but because ,i believe1 as ,i have already confessed1 that the oneness of the species is a greater fact than individuality1 and that we individuals are temporary separations from a collective purpose1 and since hate eliminates itself by eliminating its objects1 whilst love multiplies itself by multiplying its objects1 so love must be a thing more comprehensive and enduring than hate4 ,moreover1 hate must be in its nature a good thing4 ,we individuals exist as such1 ,i believe1 for the purpose in things1 and our separations and antagonisms serve that purpose4 ,we play against each other like hammer and anvil4 ,but the synthesis of a collective will in humanity1 which is ,i believe our human and terrestrial share in that purpose1 is an idea that carries with it a conception of a secular alteration in the scope and method of both love and hate4 ,both widen and change with man's widening and developing apprehension of the purpose he serves4 ,the savage man loves in gusts a fellow creature or so about him1 and fears and hates all other people4 ,every expansion of his scope and ideas widens either circle4 ,the common man of our civilized world loves not only many of his friends and associates systematically and enduringly1 but dimly he loves also his city and his country1 his creed and his race2 he loves it may be less intensely but over a far wider field and much more steadily4 ,but he hates also more widely if less passionately and vehemently than a savage1 and since love makes rather harmony and peace and hate rather conflict and events1 one may easily be led to suppose that hate is the ruling motive in human affairs4 ,men band themselves together in leagues and loyalties1 in cults and organizations and nationalities1 and it is often hard to say whether the bond is one of love for the association or hatred of those to whom the association is antagonized4 ,the two things pass insensibly into one another4 ,london people have recently seen an edifying instance of the transition1 in the ,brown ,dog statue riots4 ,a number of people drawn together by their common pity for animal suffering1 by love indeed of the most disinterested sort1 had so forgotten their initial spirit as to erect a monument with an inscription at once recklessly untruthful1 spiteful in spirit and particularly vexatious to one great medical school of ,london4 ,they have provoked riots and placarded ,london with taunts and irritating misrepresentation of the spirit of medical research1 and they have infected a whole fresh generation of ,london students with a bitter partizan contempt for the humanitarian effort that has so lamentably misconducted itself4 ,both sides vow they will never give in1 and the anti-vivisectionists are busy manufacturing small china copies of the ,brown ,dog figure1 inscription and all1 for purposes of domestic irritation4 ,here hate1 the evil ugly brother of effort1 has manifestly slain love the initiator and taken the affair in hand4 ,that is a little model of human conflicts4 ,so soon as we become militant and play against one another1 comes this danger of strain and this possible reversal of motive4 ,the fight begins4 ,into a pit of heat and hate fall right and wrong together4 ,now it seems to me that a religious faith such as ,i have set forth in the second ,book1 and a clear sense of our community of blood with all mankind1 must necessarily affect both our loving and our hatred4 ,it will certainly not abolish hate1 but it will subordinate it altogether to love4 ,we are individuals1 so the ,purpose presents itself to me1 in order that we may hate the things that have to go1 ugliness1 baseness1 insufficiency1 unreality1 that we may love and experiment and strive for the things that collectively we seek--power and beauty4 ,before our conversion we did this darkly and with our hate spreading to persons and parties from the things for which they stood4 ,but the believer will hate lovingly and without fear4 ,we are of one blood and substance with our antagonists1 even with those that we desire keenly may die and leave no issue in flesh or persuasion4 ,they all touch us and are part of one necessary experience4 ,they are all necessary to the synthesis1 even if they are necessary only as the potato-peel in the dust-bin is necessary to my dinner4 ,so it is ,i disavow and deplore the whole spirit of class-war ,socialism with its doctrine of hate1 its envious assault upon the leisure and freedom of the wealthy4 ,without leisure and freedom and the experience of life they gave1 the ideas of ,socialism could never have been born4 ,the true mission of ,socialism is against darkness1 vanity and cowardice1 that darkness which hides from the property owner the intense beauty1 the potentialities of interest1 the splendid possibilities of life1 that vanity and cowardice that make him clutch his precious holdings and fear and hate the shadow of change4 ,it has to teach the collective organization of society2 and to that the class-consciousness and intense class-prejudices of the worker need to bow quite as much as those of the property owner4 ,but when ,i say that ,socialism's mission is to teach1 ,i do not mean that its mission is a merely verbal and mental one2 it must use all instruments and teach by example as well as precept4 ,socialism by becoming charitable and merciful will not cease to be militant4 ,socialism must1 lovingly but resolutely1 use law1 use force1 to dispossess the owners of socially disadvantageous wealth1 as one coerces a lunatic brother or takes a wrongfully acquired toy from a spoilt and obstinate child4 ,it must intervene between all who would keep their children from instruction in the business of citizenship and the lessons of fraternity4 ,it must build and guard what it builds with laws and with that sword which is behind all laws4 ,non-resistance is for the non-constructive man1 for the hermit in the cave and the naked saint in the dust2 the builder and maker with the first stroke of his foundation spade uses force and opens war against the anti-builder4 #c4f4 ,,the ,,preliminary ,,social ,,duty4 ,the belief ,i have that contributing to the development of the collective being of man is the individual's general meaning and duty1 and the formulae of the ,socialism which embodies this belief so far as our common activities go1 give a general framework and direction how a man or woman should live4 7,i do throughout all this book mean man or woman equally when ,i write of 8man10 unless it is manifestly inapplicable47 ,and first in this present time he must see to it that he does live1 that is to say he must get food1 clothing1 covering1 and adequate leisure for the finer aspects of living4 ,socialism plans an organized civilization in which these things will be a collective solicitude1 and the gaining of a subsistence an easy preliminary to the fine drama of existence1 but in the world as we have it we are forced to engage much of our energy in scrambling for these preliminary necessities4 ,our problems of conduct lie in the world as it is and not in the world as we want it to be4 ,first then a man must get a living1 a fair civilized living for himself4 ,it is a fundamental duty4 ,it must be a fair living1 not pinched nor mean nor strained4 ,a man can do nothing higher1 he can be no service to any cause1 until he himself is fed and clothed and equipped and free4 ,he must earn this living or equip himself to earn it in some way not socially disadvantageous1 he must contrive as far as possible that the work he does shall be constructive and contributory to the general well-being4 ,and these primary necessities of food1 clothing and freedom being secured1 one comes to the general disposition of one's surplus energy4 ,with regard to that ,i think that a very simple proposition follows from the broad beliefs ,i have chosen to adopt4 ,the general duty of a man1 his existence being secured1 is to educate1 and chiefly to educate and develop himself4 ,it is his duty to live1 to make all he can out of himself and life1 to get full of experience1 to make himself fine and perceiving and expressive1 to render his experience and perceptions honestly and helpfully to others4 ,and in particular he has to educate himself and others with himself in ,socialism4 ,he has to make and keep this idea of synthetic human effort and of conscious constructive effort clear first to himself and then clear in the general mind4 ,for it is an idea that comes and goes4 ,we are all of us continually lapsing from it towards individual isolation again4 ,he needs1 we all need1 constant refreshment in this belief if it is to remain a predominant living fact in our lives4 ,and that duty of education1 of building up the collective idea and organization of humanity1 falls into various divisions depending in their importance upon individual quality4 ,for all there is one personal work that none may evade1 and that is thinking hard1 criticising strenuously and understanding as clearly as one can religion1 socialism and the general principle of one's acts4 ,the intellectual factor is of primary importance in my religion4 ,i can see no more reason why salvation should come to the intellectually incapable than to the morally incapable4 ,for simple souls thinking in simple processes1 salvation perhaps comes easily1 but there is none for the intellectual coward1 for the mental sloven and sluggard1 for the stupid and obdurate mind4 ,the ,believer will think hard and continue to grow and learn1 to read and seek discussion as his needs determine4 ,correlated with one's own intellectual activity1 part of it and growing out of it for almost everyone1 is intellectual work with and upon others4 ,by teaching we learn4 ,not to communicate one's thoughts to others1 to keep one's thoughts to oneself as people say1 is either cowardice or pride4 ,it is a form of sin4 ,it is a duty to talk1 teach1 explain1 write1 lecture1 read and listen4 ,every truly religious man1 every good ,socialist1 is a propagandist4 ,those who cannot write or discuss can talk1 those who cannot argue can induce people to listen to others and read4 ,we have a belief and an idea that we want to spread1 each to the utmost of his means and measure1 throughout all the world4 ,we have a thought that we want to make humanity's thought4 ,and it is a duty too that one should1 within the compass of one's ability1 make teaching1 writing and lecturing possible where it has not existed before4 ,this can be done in a hundred ways1 by founding and enlarging schools and universities and chairs1 for example2 by making print and reading and all the material of thought cheap and abundant1 by organizing discussion and societies for inquiry4 ,and talk and thought and study are but the more generalized aspects of duty4 ,the ,believer may find his own special aptitude lies rather among concrete things1 in experimenting and promoting experiments in collective action4 ,things teach as well as words1 and some of us are most expressive by concrete methods4 ,the ,believer will work himself and help others to his utmost in all those developments of material civilization1 in organized sanitation for example1 all those developments that force collective acts upon communities and collective realizations into the minds of men4 ,and the whole field of scientific research is a field of duty calling to everyone who can enter it1 to add to the permanent store of knowledge and new resources for the race4 ,the ,mind of that ,civilized ,state we seek to make by giving ourselves into its making1 is evidently the central work before us4 ,but while the writer1 the publisher and printer1 the bookseller and librarian and teacher and preacher1 the investigator and experimenter1 the reader and everyone who thinks1 will be contributing themselves to this great organized mind and intention in the world1 many sorts of specialized men will be more immediately concerned with parallel and more concrete aspects of the human synthesis4 ,the medical worker and the medical investigator1 for example1 will be building up the body of a new generation1 the body of the civilized state1 and he will be doing all he can1 not simply as an individual1 but as a citizen1 to ,,organize his services of cure and prevention1 of hygiene and selection4 ,a great and growing multitude of men will be working out the apparatus of the civilized state2 the organizers of transit and housing1 the engineers in their incessantly increasing variety1 the miners and geologists estimating the world's resources in metals and minerals1 the mechanical inventors perpetually economizing force4 ,the scientific agriculturist again will be studying the food supply of the world as a whole1 and how it may be increased and distributed and economized4 ,and to the student of law comes the task of rephrasing his intricate and often quite beautiful science in relation to modern conceptions4 ,all these and a hundred other aspects are integral to the wide project of ,constructive ,socialism as it shapes itself in my faith4 #c4g4 ,,wrong ,,ways ,,of ,,living4 ,when we lay down the proposition that it is one's duty to get one's living in some way not socially disadvantageous1 and as far as possible by work that is contributory to the general well-being and development1 when we state that one's surplus energies1 after one's living is gained1 must be devoted to experience1 self-development and constructive work1 it is clear we condemn by implication many modes of life that are followed to-day4 ,for example1 it is manifest we condemn living in idleness or on non-productive sport1 on the income derived from private property1 and all sorts of ways of earning a living that cannot be shown to conduce to the constructive process4 ,we condemn trading that is merely speculative1 and in fact all trading and manufacture that is not a positive social service2 we condemn living by gambling or by playing games for either stakes or pay4 ,much more do we condemn dishonest or fraudulent trading and every act of advertisement that is not punctiliously truthful4 ,we must condemn too the taking of any income from the community that is neither earned nor conceded in the collective interest4 ,but to this last point1 and to certain issues arising out of it1 ,i will return in the section next following this one4 ,and it follows evidently from our general propositions that every form of prostitution is a double sin1 against one's individuality and against the species which we serve by the development of that individuality's preferences and idiosyncracies4 ,and by prostitution ,i mean not simply the act of a woman who sells for money1 and against her thoughts and preferences1 her smiles and endearments and the secret beauty and pleasure of her body1 but the act of anyone who1 to gain a living1 suppresses himself1 does things in a manner alien to himself and subserves aims and purposes with which he disagrees4 ,the journalist who writes against his personal convictions1 the solicitor who knowingly assists the schemes of rogues1 the barrister who pits himself against what he perceives is justice and the right1 the artist who does unbeautiful things or less beautiful things than he might1 simply to please base employers1 the craftsman who makes instruments for foolish uses or bad uses1 the dealer who sells and pushes an article because it fits the customer's folly2 all these are prostitutes of mind and soul if not of body1 with no right to lift an eyebrow at the painted disasters of the streets4 #c4h4 ,,social ,,parasitism ,,and ,,contemporary ,,injustices4 ,these broad principles about one's way of living are very simple2 our minds move freely among them4 ,but the real interest is with the individual case1 and the individual case is almost always complicated by the fact that the existing social and economic system is based upon conditions that the growing collective intelligence condemns as unjust and undesirable1 and that the constructive spirit in men now seeks to supersede4 ,we have to live in a provisional ,state while we dream of and work for a better one4 ,the ideal life for the ordinary man in a civilized1 that is to say a ,socialist1 ,state would be in public employment or in private enterprise aiming at public recognition4 ,but in our present world only a small minority can have that direct and honourable relation of public service in the work they do2 most of the important business of the community is done upon the older and more tortuous private ownership system1 and the great mass of men in socially useful employment find themselves working only indirectly for the community and directly for the profit of a private owner1 or they themselves are private owners4 ,every man who has any money put by in the bank1 or any money invested1 is a private owner1 and in so far as he draws interest or profit from this investment he is a social parasite4 ,it is in practice almost impossible to divest oneself of that parasitic quality however straightforward the general principle may be4 ,it is practically impossible for two equally valid sets of reasons4 ,the first is that under existing conditions1 saving and investment constitute the only way to rest and security in old age1 to leisure1 study and intellectual independence1 to the safe upbringing of a family and the happiness of one's weaker dependents4 ,these are things that should not be left for the individual to provide2 in the civilized state1 the state itself will insure every citizen against these anxieties that now make the study of the ,city ,article almost a duty4 ,to abandon saving and investment to-day1 and to do so is of course to abandon all insurance1 is to become a driven and uncertain worker1 to risk one's personal freedom and culture and the upbringing and efficiency of one's children4 ,it is to lower the standard of one's personal civilization1 to think with less deliberation and less detachment1 to fall away from that work of accumulating fine habits and beautiful and pleasant ways of living contributory to the coming ,state4 ,and in the second place there is not only no return for such a sacrifice in anything won for ,socialism1 but for fine-thinking and living people to give up property is merely to let it pass into the hands of more egoistic possessors4 ,since at present things must be privately owned1 it is better that they should be owned by people consciously working for social development and willing to use them to that end4 ,we have to live in the present system and under the conditions of the present system1 while we work with all our power to change that system for a better one4 ,the case of ,cadburys the cocoa and chocolate makers1 and the practical slavery under the ,portuguese of the ,east ,african negroes who grow the raw material for ,messrs4 ,cadbury1 is an illuminating one in this connection4 ,the ,cadburys1 like the ,rowntrees1 are well known as an energetic and public-spirited family1 their social and industrial experiments at ,bournville and their general social and political activities are broad and constructive in the best sense4 ,but they find themselves in the peculiar dilemma that they must either abandon an important and profitable portion of their great manufacture or continue to buy produce grown under cruel and even horrible conditions4 ,their retirement from the branch of the cocoa and chocolate trade concerned would1 under these circumstances1 mean no diminution of the manufacture or of the horrors of this particular slavery2 it would merely mean that less humanitarian manufacturers would step in to take up the abandoned trade4 ,the self-righteous individualist would have no doubts about the question2 he would keep his hands clean anyhow1 retrench his social work1 abandon the types of cocoa involved1 and pass by on the other side4 ,but indeed ,i do not believe we came into the mire of life simply to hold our hands up out of it4 ,messrs4 ,cadbury follow a better line2 they keep their business going1 and exert themselves in every way to let light into the secrets of ,portuguese ,east ,africa and to organize a better control of these labour cruelties4 ,that ,i think is altogether the right course in this difficulty4 ,we cannot keep our hands clean in this world as it is4 ,there is no excuse indeed for a life of fraud or any other positive fruitless wrong-doing or for a purely parasitic non-productive life1 yet all but the fortunate few who are properly paid and recognized state servants must in financial and business matters do their best amidst and through institutions tainted with injustice and flawed with unrealities4 ,all ,socialists everywhere are like expeditionary soldiers far ahead of the main advance4 ,the organized state that should own and administer their possessions for the general good has not arrived to take them over2 and in the meanwhile they must act like its anticipatory agents according to their lights and make things ready for its coming4 ,the ,believer then who is not in the public service1 whose life lies among the operations of private enterprise1 must work always on the supposition that the property he administers1 the business in which he works1 the profession he follows1 is destined to be taken over and organized collectively for the commonweal and must be made ready for the taking over2 that the private outlook he secures by investment1 the provision he makes for his friends and children1 are temporary1 wasteful1 though at present unavoidable devices to be presently merged in and superseded by the broad and scientific previsions of the co-operative commonwealth4 #c4i4 ,,the ,,case ,,of ,,the ,,wife ,,and ,,mother4 ,these principles give a rule also for the problem that faces the great majority of thinking wives and mothers to-day4 ,the most urgent and necessary social work falls upon them2 they bear1 and largely educate and order the homes of1 the next generation1 and they have no direct recognition from the community for either of these supreme functions4 ,they are supposed to perform them not for ,god or the world1 but to please and satisfy a particular man4 ,our laws1 our social conventions1 our economic methods1 so hem a woman about that1 however fitted for and desirous of maternity she may be1 she can only effectually do that duty in a dependent relation to her husband4 ,nearly always he is the paymaster1 and if his payments are grudging or irregular1 she has little remedy short of a breach and the rupture of the home4 ,her duty is conceived of as first to him and only secondarily to her children and the ,state4 ,many wives become under these circumstances mere prostitutes to their husbands1 often evading the bearing of children with their consent and even at their request1 and 8loving for a living40 ,that is a natural outcome of the proprietary theory of the family out of which our civilization emerges4 ,but our modern ideas trend more and more to regard a woman's primary duty to be her duty to the children and to the world to which she gives them4 ,she is to be a citizen side by side with her husband2 no longer is he to intervene between her and the community4 ,as a matter of contemporary fact he can do so and does so habitually1 and most women have to square their ideas of life to that possibility4 ,before any woman who is clear-headed enough to perceive that this great business of motherhood is one of supreme public importance1 there are a number of alternatives at the present time4 ,she may1 like ,grant ,allan's heroine in 8,the ,woman ,who ,did10 declare an exaggerated and impossible independence1 refuse the fetters of marriage and bear children to a lover4 ,this1 in the present state of public opinion in almost every existing social atmosphere1 would be a purely anarchistic course4 ,it would mean a fatherless home1 and since the woman will have to play the double part of income-earner and mother1 an impoverished and struggling home4 ,it would mean also an unsocial because ostracized home4 ,in most cases1 and even assuming it to be right in idea1 it would still be on all fours with that immediate abandonment of private property we have already discussed1 a sort of suicide that helps the world nothing4 ,or she may 8strike10 refuse marriage and pursue a solitary and childless career1 engaging her surplus energies in constructive work4 ,but that also is suicide2 it is to miss the keenest experiences1 the finest realities life has to offer4 ,or she may meet a man whom she can trust to keep a treaty with her and supplement the common interpretations and legal insufficiencies of the marriage bond1 who will respect her always as a free and independent person1 will abstain absolutely from authoritative methods1 and will either share and trust his income and property with her in a frank communism1 or give her a sufficient and private income for her personal use4 ,it is only fair under existing economic conditions that at marriage a husband should insure his life in his wife's interest1 and ,i do not think it would be impossible to bring our legal marriage contract into accordance with modern ideas in that matter4 ,certainly it should be legally imperative that at the birth of each child a new policy upon its father's life1 as the income-getter1 should begin4 ,the latter provision at least should be a normal condition of marriage and one that the wife should have power to enforce when payments fall away4 ,with such safeguards and under such conditions marriage ceases to be a haphazard dependence for a woman1 and she may live1 teaching and rearing and free1 almost as though the co-operative commonwealth had come4 ,but in many cases1 since great numbers of women marry so young and so ignorantly that their thinking about realities begins only after marriage1 a woman will find herself already married to a man before she realizes the significance of these things4 ,she may be already the mother of children4 ,her husband's ideas may not be her ideas4 ,he may dominate1 he may prohibit1 he may intervene1 he may default4 ,he may1 if he sees fit1 burthen the family income with the charges of his illegitimate offspring4 ,we live in the world as it is and not in the world as it should be4 ,that sentence becomes the refrain of this discussion4 ,the normal modern married woman has to make the best of a bad position1 to do her best under the old conditions1 to live as though she was under the new conditions1 to make good citizens1 to give her spare energies as far as she can to bringing about a better state of affairs4 ,like the private property owner and the official in a privately owned business1 her best method of conduct is to consider herself an unrecognized public official1 irregularly commanded and improperly paid4 ,there is no good in flagrant rebellion4 ,she has to study her particular circumstances and make what good she can out of them1 keeping her face towards the coming time4 ,i cannot better the image ,i have already used for the thinking and believing modern-minded people of to-day as an advance guard cut off from proper supplies1 ill furnished so that makeshift prevails1 and rather demoralized4 ,we have to be wise as well as loyal2 discretion itself is loyalty to the coming ,state4 #c4aj4 ,,associations4 ,in the previous section ,i have dealt with the single individual's duty in relation to the general community and to law and generally received institutions4 ,but there is a new set of questions now to be considered4 ,let us take up the modifications that arise when it is not one isolated individual but a group of individuals who find themselves in disagreement with contemporary rule or usage and disposed to find a rightness in things not established or not conceded4 ,they too live in the world as it is and not in the world as it ought to be1 but their association opens up quite new possibilities of anticipating coming developments of living1 and of protecting and guaranteeing one another from what for a single unprotected individual would be the inevitable consequences of a particular line of conduct1 conduct which happened to be unorthodox or only1 in the face of existing conditions1 unwise4 ,for example1 a friend of mine who had read a copy of the preceding section wrote as follows3-- 8,i can see no reason why even to-day a number of persons avowedly united in the same #8,belief' and recognizing each other as the self-constituted social vanguard should not form a recognized spiritual community centering round some kind of #8religious' edifice and ritual1 and agree to register and consecrate the union of any couples of the members according to a contract which the whole community should have voted acceptable4 ,the community would be the guardian of money deposited or paid in gradually as insurance for the children4 ,and the fact of the whole business being regular1 open and connected with a common intellectual and moral ritual and a common name1 such for example as your name of #8,the ,samurai1' would secure the respect of outsiders1 so that eventually these new marriage arrangements would modify the old ones4 ,people would ask1 #8,were you married before the registrar8' and the answer would be1 #8,no1 we are ,samurai and were united before the ,elders4' ,in ,catholic countries those who use only the civil marriage are considered outcasts by the religiously minded1 which shows that recognition by the ,state is not as potent as recognition by the community to which one belongs4 ,the religious marriage is considered the only one binding by ,catholics1 and the civil ceremony is respected merely because the ,state has brute force behind it40 ,there is in this passage one particularly valuable idea1 the idea of an association of people to guarantee the welfare of their children in common4 ,i will follow that a little1 though it takes me away from my main line of thought4 ,it seems to me that such an association might be found in many cases a practicable way of easing the conflict that so many men and women experience1 between their individual public service and their duty to their own families4 ,many people of exceptional gifts1 whose gifts are not necessarily remunerative1 are forced by these personal considerations to direct them more or less askew1 to divert them from their best application to some inferior but money-making use2 and many more are given the disagreeable alternative of evading parentage or losing the freedom of mind needed for socially beneficial work4 ,this is particularly the case with many scientific investigators1 many sociological and philosophical workers1 many artists1 teachers and the like4 ,even when such people are fairly prosperous personally they do not care to incur the obligation to keep prosperous at any cost to their work that a family in our competitive system involves4 ,it gives great ease of mind to any sort of artistic or intellectual worker to feel free to become poor4 ,i do not see why a group of such people should not attempt a merger of their family anxieties and family adventures1 insure all its members1 and while each retains a sufficient personal independence for freedom of word and movement1 pool their family solicitudes and resources1 organize a collective school and a common maintenance fund for all the children born of members of the association4 ,i do not see why they should not in fact develop a permanent trust to maintain1 educate and send out all their children into the world1 a trust to which their childless friends and associates could contribute by gift and bequest1 and to which the irregular good fortune that is not uncommon in the careers of these exceptional types could be devoted4 ,i do not mean any sort of charity but an enlarged family basis4 ,such an idea passes very readily into the form of a ,eugenic association4 ,it would be quite possible and very interesting for prosperous people interested in ,eugenics to create a trust for the offspring of a selected band of beneficiaries1 and with increasing resources to admit new members and so build up within the present social system a special strain of chosen people4 ,so far people with eugenic ideas and people with conceptions of associated and consolidated families have been too various and too dispersed for such associations to be practicable1 but as such views of life become more common1 the chance of a number of sufficiently homogeneous and congenial people working out the method of such a grouping increases steadily4 ,moreover1 ,i can imagine no reason to prevent any women who are in agreement with the moral standards of the 8,woman who ,did0 7standards ,i will not discuss at this present point but defer for a later section7 combining for mutual protection and social support and the welfare of such children as they may bear4 ,then certainly1 to the extent that this succeeds1 the objections that arise from the evil effects upon the children of social isolation disappear4 ,this isolation would be at worst a group isolation1 and there can be no doubt that my friend is right in pointing out that there is much more social toleration for an act committed under the sanction of a group than for an isolated act that may be merely impulsive misbehaviour masquerading as high principle4 ,it seems to me remarkable that1 to the best of my knowledge1 so obvious a form of combination has never yet been put in practice4 ,it is remarkable but not inexplicable4 ,the first people to develop novel ideas1 more particularly of this type1 are usually people in isolated circumstances and temperamentally incapable of disciplined cooperation4 #c4aa4 ,,of ,,an ,,organized ,,brotherhood4 ,the idea of organizing the progressive elements in the social chaos into a regular developing force is one that has had a great attraction for me4 ,i have written upon it elsewhere1 and ,i make no apology for returning to it here and examining it in the light of various afterthoughts and with fresh suggestions4 ,i first broached this idea in a book called 8,anticipations10 wherein ,i described a possible development of thought and concerted action which ,i called the ,new ,republicanism1 and afterwards ,i redrew the thing rather more elaborately in my 8,modern ,utopia40 ,i had been struck by the apparently chaotic and wasteful character of most contemporary reform movements1 and it seemed reasonable to suppose that those who aimed at organizing society and replacing chaos and waste by wise arrangements1 might very well begin by producing a more effective organization for their own efforts4 ,these complexities of good intention made me impatient1 and ,i sought industriously in my mind for a short cut through them4 ,in doing so ,i think ,i overlooked altogether too much how heterogeneous all progressive thought and progressive people must be4 ,in my 8,modern ,utopia0 ,i turned this idea of an organized brotherhood about very thoroughly and looked at it from this point and that2 ,i let it loose as it were1 and gave it its fullest development1 and so produced a sort of secular ,order of governing men and women4 ,in a spirit entirely journalistic ,i called this the ,order of the ,samurai1 for at the time ,i wrote there was much interest in ,bushido because of the capacity for hardship and self-sacrifice this chivalrous culture appears to have developed in the ,japanese4 ,these ,samurai of mine were a sort of voluntary nobility who supplied the administrative and organizing forces that held my ,utopian world together4 ,they were the 8,new ,republicans0 of my 8,anticipations0 and 8,mankind in the ,making10 much developed and supposed triumphant and ruling the world4 ,i sought of course to set out these ideas as attractively as possible in my books1 and they have as a matter of fact proved very attractive to a certain number of people4 ,quite a number have wanted to go on with them4 ,several little organizations of ,utopians and ,samurai and the like have sprung up and informed me of themselves1 and some survive2 and young men do still at times drop into my world 8personally or by letter0 declaring themselves ,new ,republicans4 ,all this has been very helpful and at times a little embarrassing to me4 ,it has given me an opportunity of seeing the ideals ,i flung into the distance beyond ,sirius and among the mountain snows coming home partially incarnate in girls and young men4 ,it has made me look into individualized human aspirations1 human impatience1 human vanity and a certain human need of fellowship1 at close quarters4 ,it has illuminated subtle and fine traits2 it has displayed nobilities1 and it has brought out aspects of human absurdity to which only the pencil of ,mr4 ,george ,morrow could do adequate justice4 ,the thing ,i have had to explain most generally is that my ,new ,republicans and ,samurai are but figures of suggestion1 figures to think over and use in planning disciplines1 but by no means copies to follow4 ,i have had to go over again1 as though it had never been raised before in any previous writings1 the difference between the spirit and the letter4 ,these responses have on the whole confirmed my main idea that there is a real need1 a need that many people1 and especially adolescent people1 feel very strongly1 for some sort of constructive brotherhood of a closer type than mere political association1 to co-ordinate and partly guide their loose chaotic efforts to get hold of life--but they have also convinced me that no wide and comprehensive organization can supply that want4 ,my ,new ,republicans were presented as in many respects harsh and overbearing people1 8a sort of outspoken secret society0 for the organization of the world4 ,they were not so much an ideal order as the ,samurai of the later book1 being rather deduced as a possible outcome of certain forces and tendencies in contemporary life 7,a4,d4 #aijj7 than1 as literary people say1 8created40 ,they were to be drawn from among engineers1 doctors1 scientific business organizers and the like1 and ,i found that it is to energetic young men of the more responsible classes that this particular ideal appeals4 ,their organization was quite informal1 a common purpose held them together4 ,most of the people who have written to me to call themselves ,new ,republicans are ,i find also ,imperialists and ,tariff ,reformers1 and ,i suppose that among the prominent political figures of to-day the nearest approach to my ,new ,republicans is ,lord ,milner and the ,socialist-,unionists of his group4 ,it is a type harshly constructive1 inclined to an unscrupulous pose and slipping readily into a ,kiplingesque brutality4 ,the ,samurai on the other hand were more picturesque figures1 with a much more elaborated organization4 ,i may perhaps recapitulate the points about that ,order here4 ,in the 8,modern ,utopia0 the visitor from earth remarks3-- 8,these ,samurai form the real body of the ,state4 ,all this time that ,i have spent going to and fro in this planet1 it has been growing upon me that this order of men and women1 wearing such a uniform as you wear1 and with faces strengthened by discipline and touched with devotion1 is the ,utopian reality2 that but for them the whole fabric of these fair appearances would crumble and tarnish1 shrink and shrivel1 until at last1 back ,i should be amidst the grime and disorders of the life of earth4 ,tell me about these ,samurai1 who remind me of ,plato's guardians1 who look like ,knight ,templars1 who bear a name that recalls the swordsmen of ,japan4 ,what are they8 ,are they an hereditary cast1 a specially educated order1 an elected class8 ,for1 certainly1 this world turns upon them as a door upon its hinges40 ,his informant explains3-- 8,practically the whole of the responsible rule of the world is in their hands2 all our head teachers and disciplinary heads of colleges1 our judges1 barristers1 employers of labour beyond a certain limit1 practising medical men1 legislators1 must be ,samurai1 and all the executive committees and so forth1 that play so large a part in our affairs1 are drawn by lot exclusively from them4 ,the order is not hereditary--we know just enough of biology and the uncertainties of inheritance to know how silly that would be--and it does not require an early consecration or novitiate or ceremonies and initiations of that sort4 ,the ,samurai are1 in fact1 volunteers4 ,any intelligent adult in a reasonably healthy and efficient state may1 at any age after five and twenty1 become one of the ,samurai and take a hand in the universal control40 8,provided he follows the ,rule40 8,precisely--provided he follows the ,rule40 8,i have heard the phrase1 #8voluntary nobility4'0 8,that was the idea of our ,founders4 ,they made a noble and privileged order--open to the whole world4 ,no one could complain of an unjust exclusion1 for the only thing that could exclude them from the order was unwillingness or inability to follow the ,rule4 8,the ,rule aims to exclude the dull and base altogether1 to discipline the impulses and emotions1 to develop a moral habit and sustain a man in periods of stress1 fatigue and temptation1 to produce the maximum co-operation of all men of good-intent1 and in fact to keep all the ,samurai in a state of moral and bodily health and efficiency4 ,it does as much of this as well as it can1 but of course1 like all general propositions1 it does not do it in any case with absolute precision4 ,,at ,,first ,,in ,,the ,,militant ,,days1 ,,it ,,was ,a ,,trifle ,,hard ,,and ,,uncompromising2 ,,it ,,had ,,rather ,,too ,,strong ,,an ,,appeal ,,to ,,the ,,moral ,,prig ,,and ,,the ,,harshly ,,righteous ,,man1 but it has undergone1 and still undergoes1 revision and expansion1 and every year it becomes a little better adapted to the need of a general rule of life that all men may try to follow4 ,we have now a whole literature with many very fine things in it1 written about the ,rule4 8,the ,rule consists of three parts2 there is the list of things that qualify1 the list of things that must not be done1 and the list of things that must be done4 ,qualification exacts a little exertion as evidence of good faith and it is designed to weed out the duller dull and many of the base40 ,he goes on to tell of certain intellectual qualifications and disciplines4 8,next to the intellectual qualification comes the physical1 the man must be in sound health1 free from certain foul1 avoidable and demoralizing diseases1 and in good training4 ,we reject men who are fat1 or thin1 or flabby1 or whose nerves are shaky--we refer them back to training4 ,and finally the man or woman must be fully adult40 8,twenty-one8 ,but you said twenty-five60 8,the age has varied4 ,at first it was twenty-five or over2 then the minimum became twenty-five for men and twenty-one for women4 ,now there is a feeling that it ought to be raised4 ,we don't want to take advantage of mere boy and girl emotions--men of my way of thinking1 at any rate1 don't--we want to get our ,samurai with experiences1 with settled mature conviction4 ,our hygiene and regimen are rapidly pushing back old age and death1 and keeping men hale and hearty to eighty and more4 ,there's no need to hurry the young4 ,let them have a chance of wine1 love and song2 let them feel the bite of full-blooded desire1 and know what devils they have to reckon with444 8,we forbid a good deal4 ,many small pleasures do no great harm1 but we think it well to forbid them none the less1 so that we can weed out the self-indulgent4 ,we think that a constant resistance to little seductions is good for a man's quality4 ,at any rate1 it shows that a man is prepared to pay something for his honour and privileges4 ,we prescribe a regimen of food1 forbid tobacco1 wine1 or any alcoholic drink1 all narcotic drugs444 8,originally the ,samurai were forbidden usury1 that is to say1 the lending of money at fixed rates of interest4 ,they are still under that interdiction1 but since our commercial code practically prevents usury altogether1 and our law will not recognize contracts for interest upon private accommodation loans to unprosperous borrowers10 7he is speaking of ,utopia71 8it is now scarcely necessary4 ,the idea of a man growing richer by mere inaction and at the expense of an impoverished debtor is profoundly distasteful to ,utopian ideas1 and our ,state insists pretty effectually now upon the participation of the lender in the borrower's risks4 ,this1 however1 is only one part of a series of limitations of the same character4 ,it is felt that to buy simply in order to sell again brings out many unsocial human qualities2 it makes a man seek to enhance profits and falsify values1 and so the ,samurai are forbidden to buy or sell on their own account or for any employer save the ,state1 unless by some process of manufacture they change the nature of the commodity 7a mere change in bulk or packing does not suffice71 and they are forbidden salesmanship and all its arts4 ,nor may the ,samurai do personal services1 except in the matter of medicine or surgery2 they may not be barbers1 for example1 nor inn waiters nor boot cleaners1 men do such services for themselves4 ,nor may a man under the ,rule be any man's servant1 pledged to do whatever he is told4 ,he may neither be a servant nor keep one2 he must shave and dress and serve himself1 carry his own food from the helper's place1 redd his sleeping room and leave it clean4440 ,finally came the things they had to do4 ,their ,rule contained3-- 8many precise directions regarding his health1 and rules that would aim at once at health and that constant exercise or will that makes life good4 ,save in specified exceptional circumstances1 the ,samurai must bathe in cold water and the men shave every day2 they have the precisest directions in such matters2 the body must be in health1 the skin and nerves and muscles in perfect tone1 or the ,samurai must go to the doctors of the order and give implicit obedience to the regimen prescribed4 ,they must sleep alone at least four nights in five2 and they must eat with and talk to anyone in their fellowship who cares for their conversation for an hour at least1 at the nearest club-house of the ,samurai1 once on three chosen days in every week4 ,moreover they must read aloud from the ,book of the ,samurai for at least five minutes every day4 ,every month they must buy and read faithfully through at least one book that has been published during the past five years1 and the only intervention with private choice in that matter is the prescription of a certain minimum of length for the monthly book or books4 ,but the full rule in these minor compulsory matters is voluminous and detailed1 and it abounds with alternatives4 ,its aim is rather to keep before the ,samurai by a number of simple duties1 as it were1 the need of and some of the chief methods towards health of body and mind rather than to provide a comprehensive rule1 and to ensure the maintenance of a community of feeling and interests among the ,samurai through habit1 intercourse and a living contemporary literature4 ,these minor obligations do not earmark more than an hour in the day4 ,yet they serve to break down isolations of sympathy1 all sorts of physical and intellectual sluggishness and the development of unsocial preoccupations of many sorts444 8,so far as the ,samurai have a purpose in common in maintaining the ,state and the order and discipline of the world1 so far1 by their discipline and denial1 by their public work and effort1 they worship ,god together4 ,but the ultimate fount of motives lies in the individual life1 it lies in silent and deliberate reflections1 and at this the most striking of all the rules of the ,samurai aims4 ,for seven consecutive days of the year1 at least1 each man or woman under the ,rule must go right out of all the life of men into some wild and solitary place1 must speak to no man or woman and have no sort of intercourse with mankind4 ,they must go bookless and weaponless1 without pen or paper or money4 ,provision must be taken for the period of the journey1 a rug or sleeping sack--for they must sleep under the open sky--but no means of making a fire4 ,they may study maps before to guide them1 showing any difficulties and dangers in the journey1 but they may not carry such helps4 ,they must not go by beaten ways or wherever there are inhabited houses1 but into the bare1 quiet places of the globe--the regions set apart for them4 8,this discipline was invented to secure a certain stoutness of heart and body in the ,samurai4 ,otherwise the order might have lain open to too many timorous1 merely abstemious men and women4 ,many things had been suggested1 sword-play and tests that verged on torture1 climbing in giddy places and the like1 before this was chosen4 ,partly1 it is to ensure good training and sturdiness of body and mind1 but partly also1 it is to draw the minds of the ,samurai for a space from the insistent details of life1 from the intricate arguments and the fretting effort to work1 from personal quarrels and personal affections and the things of the heated room4 ,out they must go1 clean out of the world4440 ,these passages will at least serve to present the ,samurai idea and the idea of common ,rule of conduct it embodied4 ,in the 8,modern ,utopia0 ,i discuss also a lesser ,rule and the modification of the ,rule for women and the relation to the order of what ,i call the poietic types1 those types whose business in life seems to be rather to experience and express than to act and effectually do4 ,for those things ,i must refer the reader to the book itself4 ,together with a sentence ,i have put in italics above1 they serve to show that even when ,i was devising these ,samurai ,i was not unmindful of the defects that are essential to such a scheme4 ,this dream of the ,samurai proved attractive to a much more various group of readers than the ,new ,republican suggestion1 and there have been actual attempts to realise the way of life proposed4 ,in most of these cases there was manifest a disposition greatly to over-accentuate organization1 to make too much of the disciplinary side of the ,rule and to forget the entire subordination of such things to active thought and constructive effort4 ,they are valuable and indeed only justifiable as a means to an end4 ,these attempts of a number of people of very miscellaneous origins and social traditions to come together and work like one machine made the essential wastefulness of any terrestrial realization of my ,samurai very clear4 ,the only reason for such an ,order is the economy and development of force1 and under existing conditions disciplines would consume more force than they would engender4 ,the ,order1 so far from being a power1 would be an isolation4 ,manifestly the elements of organization and uniformity were overdone in my ,utopia2 in this matter ,i was nearer the truth in the case of my ,new ,republicans4 ,these1 in contrast with the ,samurai1 had no formal general organization1 they worked for a common end1 because their minds and the suggestion of their circumstances pointed them to a common end4 ,nothing was enforced upon them in the way of observance or discipline4 ,they were not shepherded and trained together1 they came together4 ,it was assumed that if they wanted strongly they would see to it that they lived in the manner most conducive to their end just as in all this book ,i am taking it for granted that to believe truly is to want to do right4 ,it was not even required of them that they should sedulously propagate their constructive idea4 ,apart from the illumination of my ideas by these experiments and proposals1 my ,samurai idea has also had a quite unmerited amount of subtle and able criticism from people who found it at once interesting and antipathetic4 ,my friends ,vernon ,lee and ,g4,k4 ,chesterton1 for example1 have criticized it1 and ,i think very justly1 on the ground that the invincible tortuousness of human pride and class-feeling would inevitably vitiate its working4 ,all its disciplines would tend to give its members a sense of distinctness1 would tend to syndicate power and rob it of any intimacy and sympathy with those outside the ,order444 ,it seems to me now that anyone who shares the faith ,i have been developing in this book will see the value of these comments and recognize with me that this dream is a dream2 the ,samurai are just one more picture of the ,perfect ,knight1 an ideal of clean1 resolute and balanced living4 ,they may be valuable as an ideal of attitude but not as an ideal of organization4 ,they are never to be put1 as people say1 upon a business footing and made available as a refuge from the individual problem4 ,to modernize the parable1 the ,believer must not only not bury his talent but he must not bank it with an organization4 ,each ,believer must decide for himself how far he wants to be kinetic or efficient1 how far he needs a stringent rule of conduct1 how far he is poietic and may loiter and adventure among the coarse and dangerous things of life4 ,there is no reason why one should not1 and there is every reason why one should1 discuss one's personal needs and habits and disciplines and elaborate one's way of life with those about one1 and form perhaps with those of like training and congenial temperament small groups for mutual support4 ,that sort of association ,i have already discussed in the previous section4 ,with adolescent people in particular such association is in many cases an almost instinctive necessity4 ,there is no reason moreover why everyone who is lonely should not seek out congenial minds and contrive a grouping with them4 ,all mutual lovers for example are ,orders of a limited membership1 many married couples and endless cliques and sets are that4 ,such small and natural associations are indeed force-giving ,orders because they are brought together by a common innate disposition out of a possibility of mutual assistance and inspiration2 they observe a ,rule that springs up and not a ,rule imposed4 ,the more of such groups and ,orders we have the better4 ,i do not see why having formed themselves they should not define and organize themselves4 ,i believe there is a phase somewhere between fifteen and thirty1 in the life of nearly everybody1 when such a group is sought1 is needed and would be helpful in self-development and self-discovery4 ,in leagues and societies for specific ends1 too1 we must all participate4 ,but the order of the ,samurai as a great progressive force controlling a multitude of lives right down to their intimate details and through all the phases of personal development is a thing unrealizable4 ,to seek to realize it is impatience4 ,true brotherhood is universal brotherhood4 ,the way to that is long and toilsome1 but it is a way that permits of no such energetic short cuts as this militant order of my dream would achieve4 #c4ab4 ,,concerning ,,new ,,starts ,,and ,,new ,,religions4 ,when one is discussing this possible formation of cults and brotherhoods1 it may be well to consider a few of the conditions that rule such human re-groupings4 ,we live in the world as it is and not in the world as we want it to be1 that is the practical rule by which we steer1 and in directing our lives we must constantly consider the forces and practicabilities of the social medium in which we move4 ,in contemporary life the existing ties are so various and so imperative that the detachment necessary as a preliminary condition to such new groupings is rarely found4 ,this is not a period in which large numbers of people break away easily and completely from old connexions4 ,things change less catastrophically than once they did4 ,more particularly is there less driving out into the wilderness4 ,there is less heresy hunting2 persecution is frequently reluctant and can be evaded by slight concessions4 ,the world as a whole is less harsh and emphatic than it was4 ,customs and customary attitudes change nowadays not so much by open1 defiant and revolutionary breaches as by the attrition of partial negligences and new glosses4 ,innovating people do conform to current usage1 albeit they conform unwillingly and imperfectly4 ,there is a constant breaking down and building up of usage1 and as a consequence a lessened need of wholesale substitutions4 ,human methods have become viviparous2 the ,new nowadays lives for a time in the form of the ,old4 ,the friend ,i quote in ,chapter #b4aj writes of a possible sect with a 8religious edifice0 and ritual of its own1 a new religious edifice and a new ritual4 ,in practice ,i doubt whether 8real0 people1 people who matter1 people who are getting things done and who have already developed complex associations1 can afford the extensive re-adjustment implied in such a new grouping4 ,it would mean too much loss of time1 too much loss of energy and attention1 too much sacrifice of existing co-operations4 ,new cults1 new religions1 new organizations of all sorts1 insisting upon their novelty and difference1 are most prolific and most successful wherever there is an abundant supply of dissociated people1 where movement is in excess of deliberation1 and creeds and formulae unyielding and unadaptable because they are unthinking4 ,in ,england1 for example1 in the last century1 where social conditions have been comparatively stable1 discussion good and abundant and internal migration small1 there have been far fewer such developments than in the ,united ,states of ,america4 ,in ,england toleration has become an institution1 and where ,tory and ,socialist1 ,bishop and ,infidel1 can all meet at the same dinner-table and spend an agreeable week-end together1 there is no need for defensive segregations4 ,in such an atmosphere opinion and usage change and change continually1 not dramatically as the results of separations and pitched battles but continuously and fluently as the outcome of innumerable personal reactions4 ,america1 on the other hand1 because of its material preoccupations1 because of the dispersal of its thinking classes over great areas1 because of the cruder understanding of its more heterogeneous population 7which constantly renders hard and explicit statement necessary71 ,,means its creeds much more literally and is at once more experimental and less compromising and tolerant4 ,it is there if anywhere that new brotherhoods and new creeds will continue to appear4 ,but even in ,america ,i think the trend of things is away from separations and segregations and new starts1 and towards more comprehensive and graduated methods of development4 ,new religions1 ,i think1 appear and are possible and necessary in phases of social disorganization1 in phases when considerable numbers of people are detached from old systems of direction and unsettled and distressed4 ,so1 at any rate1 it was ,christianity appeared1 in a strained and disturbed community1 in the clash of ,roman and ,oriental thought1 and for a long time it was confined to the drifting population of seaports and great cities and to wealthy virgins and widows1 reaching the most settled and most adjusted class1 the pagani1 last of all and in its most adaptable forms4 ,it was the greatest new beginning in the world's history1 and the wealth of political and literary and social and artistic traditions it abandoned had subsequently to be revived and assimilated to it fragment by fragment from the past it had submerged4 ,now1 ,i do not see that the world to-day presents any fair parallelism to that sere age of stresses in whose recasting ,christianity played the part of a flux4 ,ours is on the whole an organizing and synthetic rather than a disintegrating phase throughout the world4 ,old institutions are neither hard nor obstinate to-day1 and the immense and various constructive forces at work are saturated now with the conception of evolution1 of secular progressive development1 as opposed to the revolutionary idea4 ,only a very vast and terrible war explosion can1 ,i think1 change this state of affairs4 ,this conveys in general terms1 at least1 my interpretation of the present time1 and it is in accordance with this view that the world is moving forward as a whole and with much dispersed and discrepant rightness1 that ,i do not want to go apart from the world as a whole into any smaller community1 with all the implication of an exclusive possession of right which such a going apart involves4 ,put to the test by my own ,samurai for example by a particularly urgent and enthusiastic discipline1 ,i found ,i did not in the least want to be one of that organization1 that it only expressed one side of a much more complex self than its disciplines permitted4 ,and still less do ,i want to hamper the play of my thoughts and motives by going apart into the particularism of a new religion4 ,such refuges are well enough when the times threaten to overwhelm one4 ,the point about the present age1 so far as ,i am able to judge the world1 is that it does not threaten to overwhelm2 that at the worst1 by my standards1 it maintains its way of thinking instead of assimilating mine4 #c4ac4 ,,the ,,idea ,,of ,,the ,,church4 ,now all this leads very directly to a discussion of the relations of a person of my way of thinking to the ,church and religious institutions generally4 ,i have already discussed my relation to commonly accepted beliefs1 but the question of institutions is1 it seems to me1 a different one altogether4 ,not to realize that1 to confuse a church with its creed1 is to prepare the ground for a mass of disastrous and life-wasting errors4 ,now my rules of conduct are based on the supposition that moral decisions are to be determined by the belief that the individual life guided by its perception of beauty is incidental1 experimental1 and contributory to the undying life of the blood and race4 ,i have decided for myself that the general business of life is the development of a collective consciousness and will and purpose out of a chaos of individual consciousnesses and wills and purposes1 and that the way to that is through the development of the ,socialist ,state1 through the socialization of existing ,state organizations and their merger of pacific association in a ,world ,state4 ,but so far ,i have not taken up the collateral aspect of the synthesis of human consciousness1 the development of collective feeling and willing and expression in the form1 among others1 of religious institutions4 ,religious institutions are things to be legitimately distinguished from the creeds and cosmogonies with which one finds them associated4 ,customs are far more enduring things than ideas1--witness the mistletoe at ,christmas1 or the old lady turning her money in her pocket at the sight of the new moon4 ,and the exact origin of a religious institution is of much less significance to us than its present effect4 ,the theory of a religion may propose the attainment of ,nirvana or the propitiation of an irascible ,deity or a dozen other things as its end and aim2 the practical fact is that it draws together great multitudes of diverse individualized people in a common solemnity and self-subordination however vague1 and is so far1 like the ,state1 and in a manner far more intimate and emotional and fundamental than the ,state1 a synthetic power4 ,and in particular1 the idea of the ,catholic ,church is charged with synthetic suggestion2 it is in many ways an idea broader and finer than the constructive idea of any existing ,state4 ,and just as the ,beliefs ,i have adopted lead me to regard myself as in and of the existing ,state1 such as it is1 and working for its rectification and development1 so ,i think there is a reasonable case for considering oneself in and of the ,catholic ,church and bound to work for its rectification and development2 and this in spite of the fact that one may not feel justified in calling oneself a ,christian in any sense of the term4 ,it may be maintained very plausibly that the ,catholic ,church is something greater than ,christianity1 however much the ,christians may have contributed to its making4 ,from the historical point of view it is a religious and social method that developed with the later development of the world empire of ,rome and as the expression of its moral and spiritual side4 ,its head was1 and so far as its main body is concerned still is1 the pontifex maximus of the ,roman world empire1 an official who was performing sacrifices centuries before ,christ was born4 ,it is easy to assert that the ,empire was converted to ,christianity and submitted to its terrestrial leader1 the bishop of ,rome2 it is quite equally plausible to say that the religious organization of the ,empire adopted ,christianity and so made ,rome1 which had hitherto had no priority over ,jerusalem or ,antioch in the ,christian ,church1 the headquarters of the adopted cult4 ,and if the ,christian movement could take over and assimilate the prestige1 the world predominance and sacrificial conception of the pontifex maximus and go on with that as part at any rate of the basis of a universal ,church1 it is manifest that now in the fulness of time this great organization1 after its accumulation of ,christian tradition1 may conceivably go on still further to alter and broaden its teaching and observances and formulae4 ,in a sense no doubt all we moderns are bound to consider ourselves children of the ,catholic ,church1 albeit critical and innovating children with a tendency to hark back to our ,greek grandparents2 we cannot detach ourselves absolutely from the ,church without at the same time detaching ourselves from the main process of spiritual synthesis that has made us what we are4 ,and there is a strong case for supposing that not only is this reasonable for us who live in the tradition of ,western ,europe1 but that we are legitimately entitled to call upon extra ,european peoples to join with us in that attitude of filiation to the ,catholic ,church since1 outside it1 there is no organization whatever aiming at a religious catholicity and professing or attempting to formulate a collective religious consciousness in the world4 ,so far as they come to a conception of a human synthesis they come to it by coming into our tradition4 ,i write here of the ,catholic ,church as an idea4 ,to come from that idea to the world of present realities is to come to a tangle of difficulties4 ,is the ,catholic ,church merely the ,roman communion or does it include the ,greek and ,protestant ,churches8 ,some of these bodies are declaredly dissentient1 some claim to be integral portions of the ,catholic ,church which have protested against and abandoned certain errors of the central organization4 ,i admit it becomes a very confusing riddle in such a country as ,england to determine which is the ,catholic ,church2 whether it is the body which possesses and administers ,canterbury ,cathedral and ,westminster ,abbey1 or the bodies claiming to represent purer and finer or more authentic and authoritative forms of ,catholic teaching which have erected that new ,byzantine-looking cathedral in ,westminster1 or ,whitfield's ,tabernacle in the ,tottenham ,court ,road1 or a hundred or so other organized and independent bodies4 ,it is still more perplexing to settle upon the ,catholic ,church in ,america among an immense confusion of sectarian fragments4 ,many people1 ,i know1 take refuge from the struggle with this tangle of controversies by refusing to recognize any institutions whatever as representing the ,church4 ,they assume a mystical ,church made up of all true believers1 of all men and women of good intent1 whatever their formulae or connexion4 ,wherever there is worship1 there1 they say1 is a fragment of the ,church4 ,all and none of these bodies are the true ,church4 ,this is no doubt profoundly true4 ,it gives something like a working assumption for the needs of the present time4 ,people can get along upon that4 ,but it does not exhaust the question4 ,we seek a real and understanding synthesis4 ,we want a real collectivism1 not a poetical idea2 a means whereby men and women of all sorts1 all kinds of humanity1 may pray together1 sing together1 stand side by side1 feel the same wave of emotion1 develop a collective being4 ,doubtless right-spirited men are praying now at a thousand discrepant altars4 ,but for the most part those who pray imagine those others who do not pray beside them are in error1 they do not know their common brotherhood and salvation4 ,their brotherhood is masked by unanalyzable differences2 theirs is a dispersed collectivism2 their churches are only a little more extensive than their individualities and intenser in their collective separations4 ,the true ,church towards which my own thoughts tend will be the conscious illuminated expression of ,catholic brotherhood4 ,it must1 ,i think1 develop out of the existing medley of ,church fragments and out of all that is worthy in our poetry and literature1 just as the worldwide ,socialist ,state at which ,i aim must develop out of such state and casual economic organizations and constructive movements as exist to-day4 ,there is no 8beginning again0 in these things4 ,in neither case will going apart out of existing organizations secure our ends4 ,out of what is1 we have to develop what has to be4 ,to work for the ,reformation of the ,catholic ,church is an integral part of the duty of a believer4 ,it is curious how misleading a word can be4 ,we speak of a certain phase in the history of ,christianity as the ,reformation1 and that word effectually conceals from most people the simple indisputable fact that there has been no ,reformation4 ,there was an attempt at a ,reformation in the ,catholic ,church1 and through a variety of causes it failed4 ,it detached great masses from the ,catholic ,church and left that organization impoverished intellectually and spiritually1 but it achieved no reconstruction at all4 ,it achieved no reconstruction because the movement as a whole lacked an adequate grasp of one fundamentally necessary idea1 the idea of ,catholicity4 ,it fell into particularism and failed4 ,it set up a vast process of fragmentation among ,christian associations4 ,it drove huge fissures through the once common platform4 ,in innumerable cases they were fissures of organization and prejudice rather than real differences in belief and mental habit4 ,sometimes it was manifestly conflicting material interests that made the split4 ,people are now divided by forgotten points of difference1 by sides taken by their predecessors in the disputes of the sixteenth century1 by mere sectarian names and the walls of separate meeting places4 ,in the present time1 as a result of the dissenting method1 there are multitudes of believing men scattered quite solitarily through the world4 ,the ,reformation1 the ,reconstruction of the ,catholic ,church lies still before us4 ,it is a necessary work4 ,it is a work strictly parallel to the reformation and expansion of the organized ,state4 ,together1 these processes constitute the general duty before mankind4 #c4ad4 ,,of ,,secession4 ,the whole trend of my thought in matters of conduct is against whatever accentuates one's individual separation from the collective consciousness4 ,it follows naturally from my fundamental creed that avoidable silences and secrecy are sins1 just as abstinences are in themselves sins rather than virtues4 ,and so ,i think that to leave any organization or human association except for a wider and larger association1 to detach oneself in order to go alone1 or to go apart narrowly with just a few1 is fragmentation and sin4 ,even if one disagrees with the professions or formulae or usages of an association1 one should be sure that the disagreement is sufficiently profound to justify one's secession1 and in any case of doubt1 one should remain4 ,i count schism a graver sin than heresy4 ,no profession of faith1 no formula1 no usage can be perfect4 ,it is only required that it should be possible4 ,more particularly does this apply to churches and religious organizations4 ,there never was a creed nor a religious declaration but admitted of a wide variety of interpretations and implied both more and less than it expressed4 ,the pedantically conscientious man1 in his search for an unblemished religious brotherhood1 has tended always to a solitude of universal dissent4 ,in the religious as in the economic sphere one must not look for perfect conditions4 ,setting up for oneself in a new sect is like founding ,utopias in ,paraguay1 an evasion of the essential question2 our real business is to take what we have1 live in and by it1 use it and do our best to better such faults as are manifest to us1 in the direction of a wider and nobler organization4 ,if you do not agree with the church in which you find yourself1 your best course is to become a reformer ,,in that church1 to declare it a detached forgetful part of the greater church that ought to be1 just as your ,state is a detached unawakened part of the ,world ,state4 ,you take it at what it is and try and broaden it towards reunion4 ,it is only when secession is absolutely unavoidable that it is right to secede4 ,this is particularly true of state churches such as is the ,church of ,england4 ,these are bodies constituted by the national law and amenable to the collective will4 ,i do not think a man should consider himself excluded from them because they have articles of religion to which he cannot subscribe and creeds he will not say4 ,a national state church has no right to be thus limited and exclusive4 ,rather then let any man1 just to the very limit that is possible for his intellectual or moral temperament1 remain in his church to redress the balance and do his utmost to change and broaden it4 ,but perhaps the ,church will not endure a broad-minded man in its body1 speaking and reforming1 and will expel him8 ,be expelled--well and good6 ,that is altogether different4 ,let them expel you1 struggling valiantly and resolved to return so soon as they release you1 to hammer at the door4 ,but withdrawing--sulking--going off in a serene huff to live by yourself spiritually and materially in your own way--that is voluntary damnation1 the denial of the ,brotherhood of ,man4 ,be a rebel or a revolutionary to your heart's content1 but a mere seceder never4 ,for otherwise it is manifest that we shall have to pay for each step of moral and intellectual progress with a fresh start1 with a conflict between the new organization and the old from which it sprang1 a perpetually-recurring parricide4 ,there will be a series of religious institutions in developing order1 each containing the remnant too dull or too hypocritical to secede at the time of stress that began the new body4 ,something of the sort has indeed happened to both the ,catholic and the ,english ,protestant churches4 ,we have the intellectual and moral guidance of the people falling more and more into the hands of an informal ,church of morally impassioned leaders1 writers1 speakers1 and the like1 while the beautiful cathedrals in which their predecessors sheltered fall more and more into the hands of an uninspiring1 retrogressive but conforming clergy4 ,now this was all very well for the ,individualist ,liberal of the ,early ,victorian period1 but ,individualist ,liberalism was a mere destructive phase in the process of renewing the old ,catholic order1 a clearing up of the site4 ,we ,socialists want a ,church through which we can feel and think collectively1 as much as we want a ,state that we can serve and be served by4 ,whether as members or external critics we have to do our best to get rid of obsolete doctrinal and ceremonial barriers1 so that the churches may merge again in a universal ,church1 and that ,church comprehend again the whole growing and amplifying spiritual life of the race4 ,i do not know if ,i make my meaning perfectly clear here4 ,by conformity ,i do not mean silent conformity4 ,it is a man's primary duty to convey his individual difference to the minds of his fellow men4 ,it is because ,i want that difference to tell to the utmost that ,i suggest he should not leave the assembly4 ,but in particular instances he may find it more striking and significant to stand out and speak as a man detached from the general persuasion1 just as obstructed and embarrassed ministers of ,state can best serve their country at times by resigning office and appealing to the public judgment by this striking and significant act4 #c4ae4 ,a ,,dilemma4 ,we are led by this discussion of secession straight between the horns of a moral dilemma4 ,we have come to two conclusions2 to secede is a grave sin1 but to lie is also a grave sin4 ,but often the practical alternative is between futile secession or implicit or actual falsehood4 ,it has been the instinct of the aggressive controversialist in all ages to seize upon collective organizations and fence them about with oaths and declarations of such a nature as to bar out anyone not of his own way of thinking4 ,in a democracy1 for example1 to take an extreme caricature of our case1 a triumphant majority in power1 before allowing anyone to vote1 might impose an oath whereby the leader of the minority and all his aims were specifically renounced4 ,and if no country goes so far as that1 nearly all countries and all churches make some such restrictions upon opinion4 ,the ,united ,states1 that land of abandoned and receding freedoms1 imposes upon everyone who crosses the ,atlantic to its shores a childish ineffectual declaration against anarchy and polygamy4 ,none of these tests exclude the unhesitating liar1 but they do bar out many proud and honest minded people4 ,they 8fix0 and kill things that should be living and fluid2 they are offences against the mind of the race4 ,how is a man then to behave towards these test oaths and affirmations1 towards repeating creeds1 signing assent to articles of religion and the like8 ,do not these unavoidable barriers to public service1 or religious work1 stand on a special footing8 ,personally ,i think they do4 ,i think that in most cases personal isolation and disuse is the greater evil4 ,i think if there is no other way to constructive service except through test oaths and declarations1 one must take then4 ,this is a particular case that stands apart from all other cases4 ,the man who preaches a sermon and pretends therein to any belief he does not truly hold is an abominable scoundrel1 but ,i do not think he need trouble his soul very greatly about the barrier he stepped over to get into the pulpit1 if he felt the call to preach1 so long as the preaching be honest4 ,a ,republican who takes the oath of allegiance to the ,king and wears his uniform is in a similar case4 ,these things stand apart2 they are so formal as to be scarcely more reprehensible than the falsehood of calling a correspondent 8,dear10 or asking a tiresome lady to whom one is being kind and civil1 for the pleasure of dancing with her4 ,we ought to do what we can to abolish these absurd barriers and petty falsehoods1 but we ought not to commit a social suicide against them4 ,that is how ,i think and feel in this matter1 but if a man sees the matter more gravely1 if his conscience tells him relentlessly and uncompromisingly1 8this is a lie10 then it is a lie and he must not be guilty of it4 ,but then ,i think it ill becomes him to be silently excluded4 ,his work is to clamour against the existence of the barrier that wastes him4 ,i do not see that lying is a fundamental sin4 ,in the first place some lying1 that is to say some unavoidable inaccuracy of statement1 is necessary to nearly everything we do1 and the truest statement becomes false if we forget or alter the angle at which it is made1 the direction in which it points4 ,in the next the really fundamental and most generalized sin is self-isolation4 ,lying is a sin only because self-isolation is a sin1 because it is an effectual way of cutting oneself off from human co-operation4 ,that is why there is no sin in telling a fairy tale to a child4 ,but telling the truth when it will be misunderstood is no whit better than lying2 silences are often blacker than any lies4 ,i class secrets with lies and cannot comprehend the moral standards that exonerate secrecy in human affairs4 ,to all these things one must bring a personal conscience and be prepared to examine particular cases4 ,the excuses ,i have made1 for example1 for a very broad churchman to stay in the ,church might very well be twisted into an excuse for taking an oath in something one did not to the slightest extent believe1 in order to enter and betray some organization to which one was violently hostile4 ,i admit that there may be every gradation between these two things4 ,the individual must examine his special case and weigh the element of treachery against the possibility of co-operation4 ,i do not see how there can be a general rule4 ,i have already shown why in my own case ,i hesitate to profess a belief in ,god1 because1 ,i think1 the misleading element in that profession would outweigh the advantage of sympathy and confidence gained4 #c4af4 ,a ,,comment4 ,the preceding section has been criticized by a friend who writes3-- 8,in religious matters apparent assent produces false unanimity4 ,there is no convention about these things2 if there were they would not exist4 ,on the contrary1 the only way to get perfunctory tests and so forth abrogated1 is for a sufficient number of people to refuse to take them4 ,it is in this case as in every other2 secession is the beginning of a new integration4 ,the living elements leave the dead or dying form and gradually create in virtue of their own combinations a new form more suited to present things4 ,there is a formative1 a creative power in sincerity and also in segregation itself4 ,and the new form1 the new species produced by variation and segregation will measure itself and its qualities with the old one4 ,the old one will either go to the wall1 accept the new one and be renewed by it1 or the new one will itself be pushed out of existence if the old one has more vitality and is better adapted to the circumstances4 ,this process of variation1 competition and selection1 also of intermarriage between equally vital and equally adapted varieties1 is after all the process by which not only races exist but all human thoughts40 ,so my friend1 who ,i think is altogether too strongly swayed by biological analogies4 ,but ,i am thinking not of the assertion of opinions primarily but of co-operation with an organization with which1 save for the matter of the test1 one may agree4 ,secession may not involve the development of a new and better moral organization2 it may simply mean the suicide of one's public aspect4 ,there may be no room or no need of a rival organization4 ,to secede from ,state employment1 for example1 is not to create the beginnings of a new ,state1 however many--short of a revolution--may secede with you4 ,it is to become a disconnected private person1 and throw up one's social side4 #c4ag4 ,,war4 ,i do not think a discussion of man's social relations can be considered at all complete or satisfactory until we have gone into the question of military service4 ,to-day1 in an increasing number of countries1 military service is an essential part of citizenship and the prospect of war lies like a great shadow across the whole bright complex prospect of human affairs4 ,what should be the attitude of a right-living man towards his ,state at war and to warlike preparations8 ,in no other connexion are the confusions and uncertainty of the contemporary mind more manifest4 ,it is an odd contradiction that in ,great ,britain and ,western ,europe generally1 just those parties that stand most distinctly for personal devotion to the ,state in economic matters1 the ,socialist and ,socialistic parties1 are most opposed to the idea of military service1 and just those parties that defend individual self-seeking and social disloyalty in the sphere of property are most urgent for conscription4 ,no doubt some of this uncertainty is due to the mixing in of private interests with public professions1 but much more is it1 ,i think1 the result of mere muddle-headedness and an insufficient grasp of the implications of the propositions under discussion4 ,the ordinary political ,socialist desires1 as ,i desire1 and as ,i suppose every sane man desires as an ultimate ideal1 universal peace1 the merger of national partitions in loyalty to the ,world ,state4 ,but he does not recognize that the way to reach that goal is not necessarily by minimizing and specializing war and war responsibility at the present time4 ,there he falls short of his own constructive conceptions and lapses into the secessionist methods of the earlier ,radicals4 ,we have here another case strictly parallel to several we have already considered4 ,war is a collective concern2 to turn one's back upon it1 to refuse to consider it as a possibility1 is to leave it entirely to those who are least prepared to deal with it in a broad spirit4 ,in many ways war is the most socialistic of all forces4 ,in many ways military organization is the most peaceful of activities4 ,when the contemporary man steps from the street of clamorous insincere advertisement1 push1 adulteration1 under-selling and intermittent employment1 into the barrack-yard1 he steps on to a higher social plane1 into an atmosphere of service and co-operation and of infinitely more honourable emulations4 ,here at least men are not flung out of employment to degenerate because there is no immediate work for them to do4 ,they are fed and drilled and trained for better services4 ,here a man is at least supposed to win promotion by self-forgetfulness and not by self-seeking4 ,and beside the feeble and irregular endowment of research by commercialism1 its little short-sighted snatches at profit by innovation and scientific economy1 see how remarkable is the steady and rapid development of method and appliances in naval and military affairs6 ,nothing is more striking than to compare the progress of civil conveniences which has been left almost entirely to the trader1 to the progress in military apparatus during the last few decades4 ,the house appliances of to-day for example1 are little better than they were fifty years ago4 ,a house of to-day is still almost as ill-ventilated1 badly heated by wasteful fires1 clumsily arranged and furnished as the house of #aheh4 ,houses a couple of hundred years old are still satisfactory places of residence1 so little have our standards risen4 ,but the rifle or battleship of fifty years ago was beyond all comparison inferior to those we possess2 in power1 in speed1 in convenience alike4 ,no one has a use now for such superannuated things4 #c4ah4 ,,war ,,and ,,competition4 ,what is the meaning of war in life8 ,war is manifestly not a thing in itself1 it is something correlated with the whole fabric of human life4 ,that violence and killing which between animals of the same species is private and individual becomes socialized in war4 ,it is a co-operation for killing that carries with it also a co-operation for saving and a great development of mutual help and development within the war-making group4 ,war1 it seems to me1 is really the elimination of violent competition as between man and man1 an excretion of violence from the developing social group4 ,through war and military organization1 and through war and military organization only1 has it become possible to conceive of peace4 ,this violence was a necessary phase in human and indeed in all animal development4 ,among low types of men and animals it seems an inevitable condition of the vigour of the species and the beauty of life4 ,the more vital and various individual must lead and prevail1 leave progeny and make the major contribution to the synthesis of the race2 the weaker individual must take a subservient place and leave no offspring4 ,that means in practice that the former must directly or indirectly kill the latter until some mitigated but equally effectual substitute for that killing is invented4 ,that duel disappears from life1 the fight of the beasts for food and the fight of the bulls for the cows1 only by virtue of its replacement by new forms of competition4 ,with the development of primitive war we have such a replacement4 ,the competition becomes a competition to serve and rule in the group1 the stronger take the leadership and the larger share of life1 and the weaker co-operate in subordination1 they waive and compromise the conflict and use their conjoint strength against a common rival4 ,competition is a necessary condition of progressive life4 ,i do not know if so far ,i have made that belief sufficiently clear in these confessions4 ,perhaps in my anxiety to convey my idea of a human synthesis ,i have not sufficiently insisted upon the part played by competition in that synthesis4 ,but the implications of the view that ,i have set forth are fairly plain4 ,every individual1 ,i have stated1 is an experiment for the synthesis of the species1 and upon that idea my system of conduct so far as it is a system is built4 ,manifestly the individual's function is either self-development1 service and reproduction1 or failure and an end4 ,with moral and intellectual development the desire to serve and participate in a collective purpose arises to control the blind and passionate impulse to survival and reproduction that the struggle for life has given us1 but it does not abolish the fact of selection1 of competition4 ,i contemplate no end of competition4 ,but for competition that is passionate1 egoistic and limitless1 cruel1 clumsy and wasteful1 ,i desire to see competition that is controlled and fair-minded and devoted1 men and women doing their utmost with themselves and making their utmost contribution to the specific accumulation1 but in the end content to abide by a verdict4 ,the whole development of civilization1 it seems to me1 consists in the development of adequate tests of survival and of an intellectual and moral atmosphere about those tests so that they shall be neither cruel nor wasteful4 ,if the test is not to be #8are you strong enough to kill everyone you do not like8' that will only be because it will ask still more comprehensively and with regard to a multitude of qualities other than brute killing power1 #8are you adding worthily to the synthesis by existence and survival8' ,i am very clear in my mind on this perpetual need of competition4 ,i admit that upon that turns the practicability of all the great series of organizing schemes that are called ,socialism4 ,the ,socialist scheme must show a system in which predominance and reproduction are correlated with the quality and amount of an individual's social contribution1 and so far ,i acknowledge it is only in the most general terms that this can be claimed as done4 ,we ,socialists have to work out all these questions far more thoroughly than we have done hitherto4 ,we owe that to our movement and the world4 ,it is no adequate answer to our antagonists to say1 indeed it is a mere tu quoque to say1 that the existing system does not present such a correlation1 that it puts a premium on secretiveness and self-seeking and a discount on many most necessary forms of social service4 ,that is a mere temporary argument for a delay in judgment4 ,the whole history of humanity seems to me to present a spectacle of this organizing specialization of competition1 this replacement of the indiscriminate and collectively blind struggle for life by an organized and collectively intelligent development of life4 ,we see a secular replacement of brute conflict by the law1 a secular replacement of indiscriminate brute lust by marriage and sexual taboos1 and now with the development of ,socialistic ideas and methods1 the steady replacement of blind industrial competition by public economic organization4 ,and moreover there is going on a great educational process bringing a greater and greater proportion of the minds of the community into relations of understanding and interchange4 ,just as this process of organization proceeds1 the violent and chaotic conflict of individuals and presently of groups of individuals disappears1 personal violence1 private war1 cut-throat competition1 local war1 each in turn is replaced by a more efficient and more economical method of survival1 a method of survival giving constantly and selecting always more accurately a finer type of survivor4 ,i might compare the social synthesis to crystals growing out of a fluid matrix4 ,it is where the growing order of the crystals has as yet not spread that the old resource to destruction and violent personal or associated acts remains4 ,but this metaphor of crystals is a very inadequate one1 because crystals have no will in themselves2 nor do crystals1 having failed to grow in some particular form1 presently modify that form more or less and try again4 ,i see the organizing of forces1 not simply law and police which are indeed paid mercenaries from the region of violence1 but legislation and literature1 teaching and tradition1 organized religion1 getting themselves and the social structure together1 year after year and age after age1 halting1 failing1 breaking up in order to try again4 ,and it seems to me that the amount of lawlessness and crime1 the amount of waste and futility1 the amount of war and war possibility and war danger in the world are just the measure of the present inadequacy of the world's system of collective organization to the purpose before them4 ,it follows from this very directly that only one thing can end war on the earth and that is a subtle mental development1 an idea1 the development of the idea of the world commonweal in the collective mind4 ,the only real method of abolishing war is to perceive it1 to realize it1 to express it1 to think it out and think about it1 to make all the world understand its significance1 and to clear and preserve its significant functions4 ,in human affairs to understand an evil is to abolish it2 it is the only way to abolish any evil that arises out of the untutored nature of man4 ,which brings me back here again to my already repeated persuasion1 that in expressing things1 rendering things to each other1 discussing our differences1 clearing up the metaphysical conceptions upon which differences are discussed1 and in a phrase evolving the collective mind1 lies not only the cures of war and poverty but the general form of all a man's duty and the essential work of mankind4 #c4ai4 ,,modern ,,war4 ,in our contemporary world1 in our particular phase1 military and naval organization loom up1 colossal and unprecedent facts4 ,they have the effect of an overhanging disaster that grows every year more tremendous1 every year in more sinister contrast with the increasing securities and tolerations of the everyday life4 ,it is impossible to imagine now what a great war in ,europe would be like2 the change in material and method has been so profound since the last cycle of wars ended with the downfall of the ,third ,napoleon4 ,but there can be little or no doubt that it would involve a destruction of property and industrial and social disorganization of the most monstrous dimensions4 ,no man1 ,i think1 can mark the limits of the destruction of a great ,european conflict were it to occur at the present time2 and the near advent of practicable flying machines opens a whole new world of frightful possibilities4 ,for my own part ,i can imagine that a collision between such powers as ,great ,britain1 ,germany or ,america1 might very well involve nearly every other power in the world1 might shatter the whole fabric of credit upon which our present system of economics rests and put back the orderly progress of social construction for a vast interval of time4 ,one figures great towns red with destruction while giant airships darken the sky1 one pictures the crash of mighty ironclads1 the bursting of tremendous shells fired from beyond the range of sight into unprotected cities4 ,one thinks of congested ways swarming with desperate fighters1 of torrents of fugitives and of battles gone out of the control of their generals into unappeasable slaughter4 ,there is a vision of interrupted communications1 of wrecked food trains and sunken food ships1 of vast masses of people thrown out of employment and darkly tumultuous in the streets1 of famine and famine-driven rioters4 ,what modern population will stand a famine8 ,for the first time in the history of warfare the rear of the victor1 the rear of the fighting line becomes insecure1 assailable by flying machines and subject to unprecedented and unimaginable panics4 ,no man can tell what savagery of desperation these new conditions may not release in the soul of man4 ,a conspiracy of adverse chances1 ,i say1 might contrive so great a cataclysm4 ,there is no effectual guarantee that it could not occur4 ,but in spite of that1 ,i believe that on the whole there is far more good than evil in the enormous military growths that have occurred in the last half century4 ,i cannot estimate how far the alternative to war is lethargy4 ,it is through military urgencies alone that many men can be brought to consent to the collective endowment of research1 to public education and to a thousand interferences with their private self-seeking4 ,just as the pestilence of cholera was necessary before men could be brought to consent to public sanitation1 so perhaps the dread of foreign violence is an unavoidable spur in an age of chaotic industrial production in order that men may be brought to subserve the growth of a ,state whose purpose might otherwise be too high for them to understand4 ,men must be forced to care for fleets and armies until they have learnt to value cities and self development and a beautiful social life4 ,the real danger of modern war lies not in the disciplined power of the fighting machine but in the undisciplined forces in the collective mind that may set that machine in motion4 ,it is not that our guns and ships are marvellously good1 but that our press and political organizations are haphazard growths entirely inferior to them4 ,if this present phase of civilization should end in a debacle1 if presently humanity finds itself beginning again at a lower level of organization1 it will not be because we have developed these enormous powers of destruction but because we have failed to develop adequate powers of control for them and collective determination4 ,this panoply of war waits as the test of our progress towards the realization of that collective mind which ,i hold must ultimately direct the evolution of our specific being4 ,it is here to measure our incoherence and error1 and in the measure of those defects to refer us back to our studies4 ,just as we understand does war become needless4 ,but ,i do not think that war and military organization will so much disappear as change its nature as the years advance4 ,i think that the phase of universal military service we seem to be approaching is one through which the mass of mankind may have to pass1 learning something that can be learnt in no other way1 that the uniforms and flags1 the conceptions of order and discipline1 the tradition of service and devotion1 of physical fitness1 unstinted exertion and universal responsibility1 will remain a permanent acquisition1 though the last ammunition has been used ages since in the pyrotechnic display that welcomed the coming of the ultimate ,peace4 #c4bj4 ,,of ,,abstinences ,,and ,,disciplines4 ,from these large issues of conduct1 let me come now to more intimate things1 to one's self control1 the regulation of one's personal life4 ,and first about abstinences and disciplines4 ,i have already confessed 7,chapter #b4f7 that my nature is one that dislikes abstinences and is wearied by and wary of excess4 ,i do not feel that it is right to suppress altogether any part of one's being4 ,in itself abstinence seems to me a refusal to experience1 and that1 upon the lines of thought ,i follow1 is to say that abstinence for its own sake is evil4 ,but for an end all abstinences are permissible1 and if the kinetic type of believer finds both his individual and his associated efficiency enhanced by a systematic discipline1 if he is convinced that he must specialize because of the discursiveness of his motives1 because there is something he wants to do or be so good that the rest of them may very well be suppressed for its sake1 then he must suppress4 ,but the virtue is in what he gets done and not in what he does not do4 ,reasonable fear is a sound reason for abstinence1 as when a man has a passion like a lightly sleeping maniac that the slightest indulgence will arouse4 ,then he must needs adopt heroic abstinence1 and even more so must he take to preventive restraint if he sees any motive becoming unruly and urgent and troublesome4 ,fear is a sound reason for abstinence and so is love4 ,many who have sensitive imaginations nowadays very properly abstain from meat because of butchery4 ,and it is often needful1 out of love and brotherhood1 to abstain from things harmless to oneself because they are inconveniently alluring to others linked to us4 ,the moderate drinker who sits at table sipping his wine in the sight of one he knows to be a potential dipsomaniac is at best an unloving fool4 ,but mere abstinence and the doing of barren toilsome unrewarding things for the sake of the toil1 is a perversion of one's impulses4 ,there is neither honour nor virtue nor good in that4 ,i do not believe in negative virtues4 ,i think the ideas of them arise out of the system of metaphysical errors ,i have roughly analyzed in my first ,book1 out of the inherent tendency of the mind to make the relative absolute and to convert quantitative into qualitative differences4 ,our minds fall very readily under the spell of such unmitigated words as ,purity and ,chastity4 ,only death beyond decay1 absolute non-existence1 can be ,pure and ,chaste4 ,life is impurity1 fact is impure4 ,everything has traces of alien matter2 our very health is dependent on parasitic bacteria2 the purest blood in the world has a tainted ancestor1 and not a saint but has evil thoughts4 ,it was blindness to that which set men stoning the woman taken in adultery4 ,they forgot what they were made of4 ,this stupidity1 this unreasonable idealism of the common mind1 fills life to-day with cruelties and exclusions1 with partial suicides and secret shames4 ,but we are born impure1 we die impure2 it is a fable that spotless white lilies sprang from any saint's decay1 and the chastity of a monk or nun is but introverted impurity4 ,we have to take life valiantly on these conditions and make such honour and beauty and sympathy out of our confusions1 gather such constructive experience1 as we may4 ,there is a mass of real superstition upon these points1 a belief in a magic purity1 in magic personalities who can say3-- ,my strength is as the strength of ten ,because my heart is pure1 and wonderful clairvoyant innocents like the young man in ,mr4 ,kipling's 8,finest ,story in the ,world40 ,there is a lurking disposition to believe1 even among those who lead the normal type of life1 that the abstinent and chastely celibate are exceptionally healthy1 energetic1 immune4 ,the wildest claims are made4 ,but indeed it is true for all who can see the facts of life simply and plainly1 that man is an omnivorous1 versatile1 various creature and can draw his strength from a hundred varieties of nourishment4 ,he has physiological idiosyncrasies too that are indifferent to biological classifications and moral generalities4 ,it is not true that his absorbent vessels begin their task as children begin the guessing game1 by asking1 8,is it animal1 vegetable or mineral80 ,he responds to stimulation and recuperates after the exhaustion of his response1 and his being is singularly careless whether the stimulation comes as a drug or stimulant1 or as anger or music or noble appeals4 ,most people speak of drugs in the spirit of that admirable firm of soap-boilers which assures its customers that the soap they make 8contains no chemicals40 ,drugs are supposed to be a mystic diabolical class of substance1 remote from and contrasting in their nature with all other things4 ,so they banish a tonic from the house and stuff their children with manufactured cereals and chocolate creams4 ,the drunken helot of this system of absurdities is the ,christian ,scientist who denies healing only to those who have studied pathology1 and declares that anything whatever put into a bottle and labelled with directions for its use by a doctor is thereby damnable and damned4 ,but indeed all drugs and all the things of life have their uses and dangers1 and there is no wholesale truth to excuse us a particular wisdom and watchfulness in these matters4 ,unless we except smoking as an unclean and needless artificiality1 all these matters of eating and drinking and habit are matters of more or less4 ,it seems to me foolish to make anything that is stimulating and pleasurable into a habit1 for that is slowly and surely to lose a stimulus and pleasure and create a need that it may become painful to check or control4 ,the moral rule of my standards is irregularity4 ,if ,i were a father confessor ,i should begin my catalogue of sins by asking3 8are you a man of regular life80 ,and ,i would charge my penitent to go away forthwith and commit some practicable saving irregularity2 to fast or get drunk or climb a mountain or sup on pork and beans or give up smoking or spend a month with publicans and sinners4 ,right conduct for the common unspecialized man lies delicately adjusted between defect and excess as a watch is adjusted and adjustable between fast and slow4 ,we none of us altogether and always keep the balance or are altogether safe from losing it4 ,we swing1 balancing and adjusting1 along our path4 ,life is that1 and abstinence is for the most part a mere evasion of life4 #c4ba4 ,,on ,,forgetting1 ,,and ,,the ,,need ,,of ,,prayer1 ,,reading1 ,,discussion ,,and ,,worship4 ,one aspect of life ,i had very much in mind when ,i planned those ,samurai disciplines of mine4 ,it was forgetting4 ,we forget4 ,even after we have found ,salvation1 we have to keep hold of ,salvation2 believing1 we must continue to believe4 ,we cannot always be at a high level of noble emotion4 ,we have clambered on the ship of ,faith and found our place and work aboard1 and even while we are busied upon it1 behold we are back and drowning in the sea of chaotic things4 ,every religious body1 every religious teacher1 has appreciated this difficulty and the need there is of reminders and renewals4 ,faith needs restatement and revival as the body needs food4 ,and since the ,believer is to seek much experience and be a judge of less or more in many things1 it is particularly necessary that he should keep hold upon a living ,faith4 ,how may he best do this8 ,i think we may state it as a general duty that he must do whatever he can to keep his faith constantly alive4 ,but beyond that1 what a man must do depends almost entirely upon his own intellectual character4 ,many people of a regular type of mind can refresh themselves by some recurrent duty1 by repeating a daily prayer1 by daily reading or re-reading some devotional book4 ,with others constant repetition leads to a mental and spiritual deadening1 until beautiful phrases become unmeaning1 eloquent statements inane and ridiculous1--matter for parody4 ,all who can1 ,i think1 should pray and should read and re-read what they have found spiritually helpful1 and if they know of others of kindred dispositions and can organize these exercises1 they should do so4 ,collective worship again is a necessity for many ,believers4 ,for many1 the public religious services of this or that form of ,christianity supply an atmosphere rich in the essential quality of religion and abounding in phrases about the religious life1 mellow from the use of centuries and almost immediately applicable4 ,it seems to me that if one can do so1 one should participate in such public worship and habituate oneself to read back into it that collective purpose and conscience it once embodied4 ,very much is to be said for the ceremony of ,holy ,communion or the ,mass1 for those whom accident or scruples do not debar4 ,i do not think your modern liberal thinkers quite appreciate the finer aspects of this1 the one universal service of the ,christian ,church4 ,some of them are set forth very finely by a man who has been something of a martyr for conscience' sake1 and is for me a hero as well as a friend1 in a world not rich in heroes1 the ,rev4 ,stewart ,headlam1 in his book1 8,the ,meaning of the ,mass40 ,with others again1 ,faith can be most animated by writing1 by confession1 by discussion1 by talk with friends or antagonists4 ,one or other or all of these things the ,believer must do1 for the mind is a living and moving process1 and the thing that lies inert in it is presently covered up by new interests and lost4 ,if you make a sort of ,king ,log of your faith1 presently something else will be sitting upon it1 pride or self-interest1 or some rebel craving1 ,king de facto of your soul1 directing it back to anarchy4 ,for many types that1 however1 is exactly what happens with public worship4 ,they ,,do get a ,king ,log in ceremony4 ,and if you deliberately overcome and suppress your perception of and repugnance to the perfunctoriness of religion in nine-tenths of the worshippers about you1 you may be destroying at the same time your own intellectual and moral sensitiveness4 ,but ,i am not suggesting that you should force yourself to take part in public worship against your perceptions1 but only that if it helps you to worship you should not hesitate to do so4 ,we deal here with a real need that is not to be fettered by any general prescription4 ,i have one ,cambridge friend who finds nothing so uplifting in the world as the atmosphere of the afternoon service in the choir of ,king's ,college ,chapel1 and another1 a very great and distinguished and theologically sceptical woman1 who accustomed herself for some time to hear from a distant corner the evening service in ,st4 ,paul's ,cathedral and who would go great distances to do that4 ,many people find an exaltation and broadening of the mind in mountain scenery and the starry heavens and the wide arc of the sea2 and as ,i have already said1 it was part of the disciplines of these ,samurai of mine that yearly they should go apart for at least a week of solitary wandering and meditation in lonely and desolate places4 ,music again is a frequent means of release from the narrow life as it closes about us4 ,one man ,i know makes an anthology into which he copies to re-read any passage that stirs and revives in him the sense of broad issues4 ,others again seem able to refresh their nobility of outlook in the atmosphere of an intense personal love4 ,some of us seem to forget almost as if it were an essential part of ourselves4 ,such a man as myself1 irritable1 easily fatigued and bored1 versatile1 sensuous1 curious1 and a little greedy for experience1 is perpetually losing touch with his faith1 so that indeed ,i sometimes turn over these pages that ,i have written and come upon my declarations and confessions with a sense of alien surprise4 ,it may be1 ,i say1 that for some of us forgetting is the normal process1 that one has to believe and forget and blunder and learn something and regret and suffer and so come again to belief much as we have to eat and grow hungry and eat again4 ,what these others can get in their temples we1 after our own manner1 must distil through sleepless and lonely nights1 from unavoidable humiliations1 from the smarting of bruised shins4 #c4bb4 ,,democracy ,,and ,,aristocracy4 ,and now having dealt with the general form of a man's duty and with his duty to himself1 let me come to his attitude to his individual fellow-men4 ,the broad principles determining that attitude are involved in things already written in this book4 ,the belief in a collective being gathering experience and developing will1 to which every life is subordinated1 renders the cruder conception of aristocracy1 the idea of a select life going on amidst a majority of trivial and contemptible persons who 8do not exist10 untenable4 ,it abolishes contempt4 ,indeed to believe at all in a comprehensive purpose in things is to abandon that attitude and all the habits and acts that imply it4 ,but a belief in universal significance does not altogether preclude a belief in an aristocratic method of progress1 in the idea of the subordination of a number of individuals to others who can utilize their lives and help and contributory achievements in the general purpose4 ,to a certain extent1 indeed1 this last conception is almost inevitable4 ,we must needs so think of ourselves in relation to plants and animals1 and ,i see no reason why we should not think so of our relations to other men4 ,there are clearly great differences in the capacity and range of experience of man and man and in their power of using and rendering their experiences for the racial synthesis4 ,vigorous persons do look naturally for help and service to persons of less initiative1 and we are all more or less capable of admiration and hero-worship and pleased to help and give ourselves to those we feel to be finer or better or completer or more forceful and leaderly than ourselves4 ,this is natural and inevitable aristocracy4 ,for that reason it is not to be organized4 ,we organize things that are not inevitable1 but this is clearly a complex matter of accident and personalities for which there can be no general rule4 ,all organized aristocracy is manifestly begotten by that fallacy of classification my ,metaphysical book set itself to expose4 ,its effect is1 and has been in all cases1 to mask natural aristocracy1 to draw the lines by wholesale and wrong1 to bolster up weak and ineffectual persons in false positions and to fetter or hamper strong and vigorous people4 ,the false aristocrat is a figure of pride and claims1 a consumer followed by dupes4 ,he is proudly secretive1 pretending to aims beyond the common understanding4 ,the true aristocrat is known rather than knows2 he makes and serves4 ,he exacts no deference4 ,he is urgent to makes others share what he knows and wants and achieves4 ,he does not think of others as his but as the ,end's4 ,there is a base democracy just as there is a base aristocracy1 the swaggering1 aggressive disposition of the vulgar soul that admits neither of superiors nor leaders4 ,its true name is insubordination4 ,it resents rules and refinements1 delicacies1 differences and organization4 ,it dreams that its leaders are its delegates4 ,it takes refuge from all superiority1 all special knowledge1 in a phantom ideal1 the ,people1 the sublime and wonderful ,people4 8,you can fool some of the people all the time1 and all the people some of the time1 but you can't fool all the people all the time10 expresses ,i think quite the quintessence of this mystical faith1 this faith in which men take refuge from the demand for order1 discipline and conscious light4 ,in ,england it has never been of any great account1 but in ,america the vulgar individualist's self-protective exaltation of an idealized ,common ,man has worked and is working infinite mischief4 ,in politics the crude democratic faith leads directly to the submission of every question1 however subtle and special its issues may be1 to a popular vote4 ,the community is regarded as a consultative committee of profoundly wise1 alert and well-informed ,common ,men4 ,since the common man is1 as ,gustave le ,bon has pointed out1 a gregarious animal1 collectively rather like a sheep1 emotional1 hasty and shallow1 the practical outcome of political democracy in all large communities under modern conditions is to put power into the hands of rich newspaper proprietors1 advertising producers and the energetic wealthy generally who are best able to flood the collective mind freely with the suggestions on which it acts4 ,but democracy has acquired a better meaning than its first crude intentions--there never was a theory started yet in the human mind that did not beget a finer offspring than itself--and the secondary meaning brings it at last into entire accordance with the subtler conception of aristocracy4 ,the test of this quintessential democracy is neither a passionate insistence upon voting and the majority rule1 nor an arrogant bearing towards those who are one's betters in this aspect or that1 but fellowship4 ,the true democrat and the true aristocrat meet and are one in feeling themselves parts of one synthesis under one purpose and one scheme4 ,both realize that self-concealment is the last evil1 both make frankness and veracity the basis of their intercourse4 ,the general rightness of living for you and others and for others and you is to understand them to the best of your ability and to make them all1 to the utmost limits of your capacity of expression and their understanding and sympathy1 participators in your act and thought4 #c4bc4 ,,on ,,debts ,,of ,,honour4 ,my ethical disposition is all against punctilio and ,i set no greater value on unblemished honour than ,i do on purity4 ,i never yet met a man who talked proudly of his honour who did not end by cheating or trying to cheat me1 nor a code of honour that did not impress me as a conspiracy against the common welfare and purpose in life4 ,there is honour among thieves1 and ,i think it might well end there as an obligation in conduct4 ,the soldier who risks a life he owes to his army in a duel upon some silly matter of personal pride is no better to me than the clerk who gambles with the money in his master's till4 ,when ,i was a boy ,i once paid a debt of honour1 and it is one of the things ,i am most ashamed of4 ,i had played cards into debt and ,i still remember burningly how ,i went flushed and shrill-voiced to my mother and got the money she could so ill afford to give me4 ,i would not pay such a debt of honour now4 ,if ,i were to wake up one morning owing big sums that ,i had staked overnight ,i would set to work at once by every means in my power to evade and repudiate that obligation4 ,such money as ,i have ,i owe under our present system to wife and sons and my work and the world1 and ,i see no valid reason why ,i should hand it over to ,smith because he and ,i have played the fool and rascal and gambled4 ,better by far to accept that fact and be for my own part published fool and rascal4 ,i have never been able to understand the sentimental spectacle of sons toiling dreadfully and wasting themselves upon mere money-making to save the secret of a father's peculations and the 8honour of the family10 or men conspiring to weave a wide and mischievous net of lies to save the 8honour0 of a woman4 ,in the conventional drama the preservation of the honour of a woman seems an adequate excuse for nearly any offence short of murder2 the preservation that is to say of the appearance of something that is already gone4 ,here it is that ,i do definitely part company with the false aristocrat who is by nature and intent a humbug and fabricator of sham attitudes1 and ally myself with democracy4 ,fact1 valiantly faced1 is of more value than any reputation4 ,the false aristocrat is robed to the chin and unwashed beneath1 the true goes stark as ,apollo4 ,the false is ridiculous with undignified insistence upon his dignity2 the true says like ,god1 8,i am that ,i am40 #c4bd4 ,,the ,,idea ,,of ,,justice4 ,one word has so far played a very little part in this book1 and that is the word ,justice4 ,those who have read the opening book on ,metaphysics will perhaps see that this is a necessary corollary of the system of thought developed therein4 ,in my philosophy1 with its insistence upon uniqueness and marginal differences and the provisional nature of numbers and classes1 there is little scope for that blind-folded lady with the balances1 seeking always exact equivalents4 ,nowhere in my system of thought is there work for the idea of ,rights and the conception of conscientious litigious-spirited people exactly observing nicely defined relationships4 ,you will note1 for example1 that ,i base my ,socialism on the idea of a collective development and not on the 8right0 of every man to his own labour1 or his 8right0 to work1 or his 8right0 to subsistence4 ,all these ideas of 8rights0 and of a social 8contract0 however implicit are merely conventional ways of looking at things1 conventions that have arisen in the mercantile phase of human development4 ,laws and rights1 like common terms in speech1 are provisional things1 conveniences for taking hold of a number of cases that would otherwise be unmanageable4 ,the appeal to ,justice is a necessarily inadequate attempt to de-individualize a case1 to eliminate the self's biassed attitude4 ,i have declared that it is my wilful belief that everything that exists is significant and necessary4 ,the idea of ,justice seems to me a defective1 quantitative application of the spirit of that belief to men and women4 ,in every case you try and discover and act upon a plausible equity that must necessarily be based on arbitrary assumptions4 ,there is no equity in the universe1 in the various spectacle outside our minds1 and the most terrible nightmare the human imagination has ever engendered is a ,just ,god1 measuring1 with himself as the ,standard1 against finite men4 ,ultimately there is no adequacy1 we are all weighed in the balance and found wanting4 ,so1 as the recognition of this has grown1 ,justice has been tempered with ,mercy1 which indeed is no more than an attempt to equalize things by making the factors of the very defect that is condemned1 its condonation4 ,the modern mind fluctuates uncertainly somewhere between these extremes1 now harsh and now ineffectual4 ,to me there seems no validity in these quasi-absolute standards4 ,a man seeks and obeys standards of equity simply to economize his moral effort1 not because there is anything true or sublime about justice1 but because he knows he is too egoistic and weak-minded and obsessed to do any perfect thing at all1 because he cannot trust himself with his own transitory emotions unless he trains himself beforehand to observe a predetermined rule4 ,there is scarcely an eventuality in life that without the help of these generalizations would not exceed the average man's intellectual power and moral energy1 just as there is scarcely an idea or an emotion that can be conveyed without the use of faulty and defective common names4 ,justice and ,mercy are indeed not ultimately different in their nature from such other conventions as the rules of a game1 the rules of etiquette1 forms of address1 cab tariffs and standards of all sorts4 ,they are mere organizations of relationship either to economize thought or else to facilitate mutual understanding and codify common action4 ,modesty and self-submission1 love and service are1 in the right system of my beliefs1 far more fundamental rightnesses and duties4 ,we are not mercantile and litigious units such as making ,justice our social basis would imply1 we are not select responsible persons mixed with and tending weak irresponsible wrong persons such as the notion of ,mercy suggests1 we are parts of one being and body1 each unique yet sharing a common nature and a variety of imperfections and working together 7albeit more or less darkly and ignorantly7 for a common end4 ,we are strong and weak together and in one brotherhood4 ,the weak have no essential rights against the strong1 nor the strong against the weak4 ,the world does not exist for our weaknesses but our strength4 ,and the real justification of democracy lies in the fact that none of us are altogether strong nor altogether weak2 for everyone there is an aspect wherein he is seen to be weak2 for everyone there is a strength though it may be only a little peculiar strength or an undeveloped potentiality4 ,the unconverted man uses his strength egotistically1 emphasizes himself harshly against the man who is weak where he is strong1 and hates and conceals his own weakness4 ,the ,believer1 in the measure of his belief1 respects and seeks to understand the different strength of others and to use his own distinctive power with and not against his fellow men1 in the common service of that synthesis to which each one of them is ultimately as necessary as he4 #c4be4 ,,of ,,love ,,and ,,justice4 ,now here the friend who has read the first draft of this book falls into something like a dispute with me4 ,she does not1 ,i think1 like this dismissal of ,justice from a primary place in my scheme of conduct4 8,justice10 she asserts1 8is an instinctive craving very nearly akin to the physical craving for equilibrium4 ,its social importance corresponds4 ,it seeks to keep the individual's claims in such a position as to conflict as little as possible with those of others4 ,justice is the root instinct of all social feeling1 of all feeling which does not take account of whether we like or dislike individuals1 it is the feeling of an orderly position of our ,ego towards others1 merely considered ,,as others1 and of all the ,egos merely ,,as ,egos towards each other4 ,,love cannot be felt towards others ,,as others4 ,love is the expression of individual suitability and preference1 its positive existence in some cases implies its absolute negation in others4 ,hence ,love can never be the essential and root of social feeling1 and hence the necessity for the instinct of abstract justice which takes no account of preferences or aversions4 ,and here ,i may say that all application of the word ,,love to unknown1 distant creatures1 to mere ,,others1 is a perversion and a wasting of the word love1 which1 taking its origin in sexual and parental preference1 always implies a preference of one object to the other4 ,to love everybody is simply not to love at all4 ,and it is ,,just ,,because of the passionate preference instinctively felt for some individuals1 that mankind requires the self-regarding and self-respecting passion of justice40 ,now this is not altogether contradictory of what ,i hold4 ,i disagree that because love necessarily expresses itself in preference1 selecting this rather than that1 that it follows necessarily that its absolute negation is implied in the non-selected cases4 ,a man may go into the world as a child goes into a garden and gathers its hands full of the flowers that please it best and then desists1 but only because its hands are full and not because it is at an end of the flowers that it can find delight in4 ,so the man finds at last his memory and apprehensions glutted4 ,it is not that he could not love those others4 ,and ,i dispute that to love everybody is not to love at all4 ,to love two people is surely to love more than to love just one person1 and so by way of three and four to a very large number4 ,but if it is put that love must be a preference because of the mental limitations that forbid us to apprehend and understand more than a few of the multitudinous lovables of life1 then ,i agree4 ,for all the individuals and things and cases for which we have inadequate time and energy1 we need a wholesale method--justice4 ,that is exactly what ,i have said in the previous section4 #c4bf4 ,,the ,,weakness ,,of ,,immaturity4 ,one is apt to write and talk of strong and weak as though some were always strong1 some always weak4 ,but that is quite a misleading version of life4 ,apart from the fact that everyone is fluctuatingly strong and fluctuatingly weak1 and weak and strong according to the quality we judge them by1 we have to remember that we are all developing and learning and changing1 gaining strength and at last losing it1 from the cradle to the grave4 ,we are all1 to borrow the old scholastic term1 pupil-teachers of ,life2 the term is none the less appropriate because the pupil-teacher taught badly and learnt under difficulties4 ,it may seem to be a crowning feat of platitude to write that 8we have to remember0 this1 but it is overlooked in a whole mass of legal1 social and economic literature4 ,those extraordinary imaginary cases as between a man ,a and a man ,b who start level1 on a desert island or elsewhere1 and work or do not work1 or save or do not save1 become the basis of immense schemes of just arrangement which soar up confidently and serenely regardless of the fact that never did anything like that equal start occur2 that from the beginning there were family groups and old heads and young heads1 help1 guidance and sacrifice1 and those who had learnt and those who had still to learn1 jumbled together in confused transactions4 ,deals1 tradings and so forth are entirely secondary aspects of these primaries1 and the attempt to get an idea of abstract relationship by beginning upon a secondary issue is the fatal pervading fallacy in all these regions of thought4 ,at the present moment the average age of the world is ,i suppose about #ba or #bb1 the normal death somewhen about #dd or #de1 that is to say nearly half the world is 8under age10 green1 inexperienced1 demanding help1 easily misled and put in the wrong and betrayed4 ,yet the younger moiety1 if we do indeed assume life's object is a collective synthesis1 is more important than the older1 and every older person bound to be something of a guardian to the younger4 ,it follows directly from the fundamental beliefs ,i have assumed that we are missing the most important aspects of life if we are not directly or indirectly serving the young1 helping them individually or collectively4 ,just in the measure that one's living falls away from that1 do we fall away from life into a mere futility of existence1 and approach the state1 the extraordinary and wonderful middle state of 7for example7 those extinct and entirely damned old gentlemen one sees and hears eating and sleeping in every comfortable ,london club4 ,that constructive synthetic purpose which ,i have made the ruling idea in my scheme of conduct may be indeed completely restated in another form1 a form ,i adopted for a book ,i wrote some years ago called 8,mankind in the ,making40 ,in this ,i pointed out that 8,life is a tissue of births02 8and if the whole of life is an evolving succession of births1 then not only must a man in his individual capacity 7physically as parent1 doctor1 food dealer1 food carrier1 home builder1 protector2 or mentally as teacher1 news dealer1 author1 preacher7 contribute to births and growths and the fine future of mankind1 but the collective aspects of man1 his social and political organizations must also be1 in the essence1 organizations that more or less profitably and more or less intentionally set themselves towards this end4 ,they are finally concerned with the birth1 and with the sound development towards still better births1 of human lives1 just as every implement in the toolshed of a seedsman's nursery1 even the hoe and the roller1 is concerned finally with the seeding and with the sound development towards still better seeding of plants4 ,the private and personal motive of the seedsman in procuring and using these tools may be avarice1 ambition1 a religious belief in the saving efficacy of nursery keeping or a simple passion for bettering flowers1 that does not affect the definite final purpose of his outfit of tools4 8,and just as we might judge completely and criticize and improve that outfit from an attentive study of the welfare of plants1 and with an entire disregard of his remoter motives1 so we may judge all collective human enterprises from the standpoint of an attentive study of human births and development4 ,,any ,,collective ,,human ,,enterprise1 ,,institution1 ,,movement1 ,,party ,,or ,,state1 ,,is ,,to ,,be ,,judged ,,as ,a ,,whole ,,and ,,completely1 ,,as ,,it ,,conduces ,,more ,,or ,,less ,,to ,,wholesome ,,and ,,hopeful ,,births1 ,,and ,,according ,,to ,,the ,,qualitative ,,and ,,quantitative ,,advance ,,due ,,to ,,its ,,influence ,,made ,,by ,,each ,,generation ,,of ,,citizens ,,born ,,under ,,its ,,influence ,,towards ,a ,,higher ,,and ,,ampler ,,standard ,,of ,,life40 ,and individual conduct1 quite as much as collective affairs1 comes under the same test4 ,we are guides and school builders1 helpers and influences every hour of our lives1 and by that standard we can and must judge all our ways of living4 #c4bg4 ,,possibility ,,of ,a ,,new ,,etiquette4 ,these two ideas1 firstly the pupil-teacher parental idea and secondly the democratic idea 7that is to say the idea of an equal ultimate significance71 the second correcting any tendency in the first to pedagogic arrogance and tactful concealments1 do ,i think give1 when taken together1 the general attitude a right-living man will take to his individual fellow creature4 ,they play against each other1 providing elements of contradiction and determining a balanced course4 ,it seems to me to follow necessarily from my fundamental beliefs that the ,believer will tend to be and want to be and seek to be friendly to1 and interested in1 all sorts of people1 and truthful and helpful and hating concealment4 ,to be that with any approach to perfection demands an intricate and difficult effort1 introspection to the hilt of one's power1 a saving natural gift2 one has to avoid pedantry1 aggression1 brutality1 amiable tiresomeness--there are pitfalls on every side4 ,the more one thinks about other people the more interesting and pleasing they are2 ,i am all for kindly gossip and knowing things about them1 and all against the silly and limiting hardness of soul that will not look into one's fellows nor go out to them4 ,the use and justification of most literature1 of fiction1 verse1 history1 biography1 is that it lets us into understandings and the suggestion of human possibilities4 ,the general purpose of intercourse is to get as close as one can to the realities of the people one meets1 and to give oneself to them just so far as possible4 ,from that ,i think there arises naturally a newer etiquette that would set aside many of the rigidities of procedure that keep people apart to-day4 ,there is a fading prejudice against asking personal questions1 against talking about oneself or one's immediate personal interests1 against discussing religion and politics and any such keenly felt matter4 ,no doubt it is necessary at times to protect oneself against clumsy and stupid familiarities1 against noisy and inattentive egotists1 against intriguers and liars1 but only in the last resort do such breaches of patience seem justifiable to me2 for the most part our traditions of speech and intercourse altogether overdo separations1 the preservation of distances and protective devices in general4 #c4bh4 ,,sex4 ,so far ,i have ignored the immense importance of ,sex in our lives and for the most part kept the discussion so generalized as to apply impartially to women and men4 ,but now ,i have reached a point when this great boundary line between two halves of the world and the intense and intimate personal problems that play across it must be faced4 ,for not only must we bend our general activities and our intellectual life to the conception of a human synthesis1 but out of our bodies and emotional possibilities we have to make the new world bodily and emotionally4 ,to the test of that we have to bring all sorts of questions that agitate us to-day1 the social and political equality and personal freedom of women1 the differing code of honour for the sexes1 the controls and limitations to set upon love and desire4 ,if1 for example1 it is for the good of the species that a whole half of its individuals should be specialized and subordinated to the physical sexual life1 as in certain phases of human development women have tended to be1 then certainly we must do nothing to prevent that4 ,we have set aside the conception of ,justice as in any sense a countervailing idea to that of the synthetic process4 ,and it is well to remember that for the whole of sexual conduct there is quite conceivably no general simple rule4 ,it is quite possible that1 as ,metchnikoff maintains in his extraordinarily illuminating 8,nature of ,man10 we are dealing with an irresolvable tangle of disharmonies4 ,we have passions that do not insist upon their physiological end1 desires that may be prematurely vivid in childhood1 a fantastic curiosity1 old needs of the ape but thinly overlaid by the acquisitions of the man1 emotions that jar with physical impulses1 inexplicable pains and diseases4 ,and not only have we to remember that we are dealing with disharmonies that may at the very best be only patched together1 but we are dealing with matters in which the element of idiosyncrasy is essential1 insisting upon an incalculable flexibility in any rule we make1 unless we are to take types and indeed whole classes of personality and write them down as absolutely bad and fit only for suppression and restraint4 ,and on the mental side we are further perplexed by the extraordinary suggestibility of human beings4 ,in sexual matters there seems to me--and ,i think ,i share a general ignorance here--to be no directing instinct at all1 but only an instinct to do something generally sexual2 there are almost equally powerful desires to do right and not to act under compulsion4 ,the specific forms of conduct imposed upon these instincts and desires depend upon a vast confusion of suggestions1 institutions1 conventions1 ways of putting things4 ,we are dealing therefore with problems ineradicably complex1 varying endlessly in their instances1 and changing as we deal with them4 ,i am inclined to think that the only really profitable discussion of sexual matters is in terms of individuality1 through the novel1 the lyric1 the play1 autobiography or biography of the frankest sort4 ,but such generalizations as ,i can make ,i will4 ,to me it seems manifest that sexual matters may be discussed generally in at least three permissible and valid ways1 of which the consideration of the world as a system of births and education is only the dominant chief4 ,there is next the question of the physical health and beauty of the community and how far sexual rules and customs affect that1 and thirdly the question of the mental and moral atmosphere in which sexual conventions and laws must necessarily be an important factor4 ,it is alleged that probably in the case of men1 and certainly in the case of women1 some sexual intercourse is a necessary phase in existence2 that without it there is an incompleteness1 a failure in the life cycle1 a real wilting and failure of energy and vitality and the development of morbid states4 ,and for most of us half the friendships and intimacies from which we derive the daily interest and sustaining force in our lives1 draw mysterious elements from sexual attraction1 and depend and hesitate upon our conception of the liberties and limits we must give to that force4 #c4bi4 ,,the ,,institution ,,of ,,marriage4 ,the individual attitudes of men to women and of women to men are necessarily determined to a large extent by certain general ideas of relationship1 by institutions and conventions4 ,one of the most important and debatable of these is whether we are to consider and treat women as citizens and fellows1 or as beings differing mentally from men and grouped in positions of at least material dependence to individual men4 ,our decision in that direction will affect all our conduct from the larger matters down to the smallest points of deportment2 it will affect even our manner of address and determine whether when we speak to a woman we shall be as frank and unaffected as with a man or touched with a faint suggestion of the reserves of a cat which does not wish to be suspected of wanting to steal the milk4 ,now so far as that goes it follows almost necessarily from my views upon aristocracy and democracy that ,i declare for the conventional equality of women1 that is to say for the determination to make neither sex nor any sexual characteristic a standard of superiority or inferiority1 for the view that a woman is a person as important and necessary1 as much to be consulted1 and entitled to as much freedom of action as a man4 ,i admit that this decision is a choice into which temperament enters1 that ,i cannot produce compelling reasons why anyone else should adopt my view4 ,i can produce considerations in support of my view1 that is all4 ,but they are so implicit in all that has gone before that ,i will not trouble to detail them here4 ,the conception of equality and fellowship between men and women is an idea at least as old as ,plato and one that has recurred wherever civilization has reached a phase in which men and women were sufficiently released from militant and economic urgency to talk and read and think4 ,but it has never yet been1 at least in the historical period and in any but isolated social groups1 a working structural idea4 ,the working structural idea is the ,patriarchal ,family in which the woman is inferior and submits herself and is subordinated to the man1 the head of the family4 ,we live in a constantly changing development and modification of that tradition4 ,it is well to bring that factor of constant change into mind at the outset of this discussion and to keep it there4 ,to forget it1 and it is commonly forgotten1 is to falsify every issue4 ,marriage and the ,family are perennially fluctuating institutions1 and probably scarcely anything in modern life is changing so much2 they are in their legal constitution or their moral and emotional quality profoundly different things from what they were a hundred years ago4 ,a woman who marries nowadays marries1 if one may put it quantitatively1 far less than she did even half a century ago2 the married woman's property act1 for example1 has revolutionized the economic relationship2 her husband has lost his right to assault her and he cannot even compel her to cohabit with him if she refuses to do so4 ,legal separations and divorces have come to modify the quality and logical consequences of the bond4 ,the rights of parent over the child have been even more completely qualified4 ,the ,state has come in as protector and educator of the children1 taking over personal powers and responsibilities that have been essential to the family institution ever since the dawn of history4 ,it inserts itself more and more between child and parent4 ,it invades what were once the most sacred intimacies1 and the ,salvation ,army is now promoting legislation to invade those overcrowded homes in which children 7it is estimated to the number of thirty or forty thousand7 are living as ,i write1 daily witnesses of their mother's prostitution or in constant danger of incestuous attack from drunken fathers and brothers4 ,and finally as another indication of profound differences1 births were almost universally accidental a hundred years ago2 they are now in an increasing number of families controlled and deliberate acts of will4 ,in every one of their relations do ,marriage and the ,family change and continue to change4 ,but the inherent defectiveness of the human mind which my metaphysical book sets itself to analyze1 does lead it constantly to speak of ,marriage and the ,family as things as fixed and unalterable as1 let us say1 the characteristics of oxygen4 ,one is asked1 ,do you believe in ,marriage and the ,family8 as if it was a case of either having or not having some definite thing4 ,socialists are accused of being 8against the ,family10 as if it were not the case that ,socialists1 ,individualists1 high ,anglicans and ,roman ,catholics are ,,all against ,marriage and the ,family as these institutions exist at the present time4 ,but once we have realized the absurdity of this absolute treatment1 then it should become clear that with it goes most of the fabric of right and wrong1 and nearly all those arbitrary standards by which we classify people into moral and immoral4 ,those last words are used when as a matter of fact we mean either conforming or failing to conform to changing laws and developing institutional customs we may or may not consider right or wrong4 ,their use imparts a flavour of essential wrong-doing and obliquity into acts and relations that may be in many cases no more than social indiscipline1 which may be even conceivably a courageous act of defiance to an obsolescent limitation4 ,such1 until a little while ago1 was a man's cohabitation with his deceased wife's sister4 ,this1 which was scandalous yesterday1 is now a legally honourable relationship1 albeit ,i believe still regarded by the high ,anglican as incestuous wickedness4 ,now ,i will not deal here with the institutional changes that are involved in that general scheme of progress called ,socialism4 ,i have discussed the relation of ,socialism to ,marriage and the ,family quite fully in my 8,new ,worlds for ,old0 78,new ,worlds for ,old0 7,a4 ,constable and ,co41 #aijh747 and to that ,i must refer the reader4 ,therein he will see how the economic freedom and independent citizenship of women1 and indeed also the welfare of the whole next generation1 hang on the idea of endowing motherhood1 and he will find too how much of the nature of the marriage contract is outside the scope of ,socialist proposals altogether4 ,apart from the broad proposals of ,socialism1 as a matter of personal conviction quite outside the scope of ,socialism altogether1 ,i am persuaded of the need of much greater facilities of divorce than exist at present1 divorce on the score of mutual consent1 of faithlessness1 of simple cruelty1 of insanity1 habitual vice or the prolonged imprisonment of either party4 ,and this being so ,i find it impossible to condemn on any ground1 except that it is 8breaking ranks0 and making a confusion1 those who by anticipating such wide facilities as ,i propose have sinned by existing standards4 ,how far and in what manner such breaking of ranks is to be condoned ,i will presently discuss4 ,but it is clear it is an offence of a different nature from actions one believes to be in themselves and apart from the law reprehensible things4 ,but my scepticisms about the current legal institutions and customary code are not exhausted by these modifications ,i have suggested4 ,i believe firmly in some sort of marriage1 that is to say an open declaration of the existence of sexual relations between a man and a woman1 because ,i am averse to all unnecessary secrecies and because the existence of these peculiarly intimate relationships affects everybody about the persons concerned4 ,it is ridiculous to say as some do that sexual relations between two people affect no one but themselves unless a child is born4 ,they do1 because they tend to break down barriers and set up a peculiar emotional partnership4 ,it is a partnership that kept secret may work as anti-socially as a secret business partnership or a secret preferential railway tariff4 ,and ,i believe too in the general social desirability of the family group1 the normal group of father1 mother and children1 and in the extreme efficacy in the normal human being of the blood link and pride link between parent and child in securing loving care and upbringing for the child4 ,but this clear adhesion to ,marriage and to the ,family grouping about mother and father does not close the door to a large series of exceptional cases which our existing institutions and customs ignore or crush4 ,for example1 monogamy in general seems to me to be clearly indicated 7as doctors say7 by the fact that there are not several women in the world for every man1 but quite as clearly does it seem necessary to recognize that the fact that there are 7or were in #aija7 #ba1dcf1ajg females to #bj1agb1ihd males in our ,british community seems to condemn our present rigorous insistence upon monogamy1 unless feminine celibacy has its own delights4 ,but1 as ,i have said1 it is now largely believed that the sexual life of a woman is more important to her than his sexual life to a man and less easily ignored4 ,it is true also on the former side that for the great majority of people one knows personally1 any sort of household but a monogamous one conjures up painful and unpleasant visions4 ,the ordinary civilized woman and the ordinary civilized man are alike obsessed with the idea of meeting and possessing one peculiar intimate person1 one special exclusive lover who is their very own1 and a third person of either sex cannot be associated with that couple without an intolerable sense of privacy and confidence and possession destroyed4 ,it is difficult to imagine a second wife in a home who would not be and feel herself to be a rather excluded and inferior person4 ,but that does not abolish the possibility that there are exceptional people somewhere capable of1 to coin a phrase1 triangular mutuality1 and ,i do not see why we should either forbid or treat with bitterness or hostility a grouping we may consider so inadvisable or so unworkable as never to be adopted1 if three people of their own free will desire it4 ,the peculiar defects of the human mind when they approach these questions of sex are reinforced by passions peculiar to the topic1 and it is perhaps advisable to point out that to discuss these possibilities is not the same thing as to urge the married reader to take unto himself or herself a second partner or a series of additional partners4 ,we are trained from the nursery to become secretive1 muddle-headed and vehemently conclusive upon sexual matters1 until at last the editors of magazines blush at the very phrase and long to put a petticoat over the page that bears it4 ,yet our rebellious natures insist on being interested by it4 ,it seems to me that to judge these large questions from the personal point of view1 to insist upon the whole world without exception living exactly in the manner that suits oneself or accords with one's emotional imagination and the forms of delicacy in which one has been trained1 is not the proper way to deal with them4 ,i want as a sane social organizer to get just as many contented and law-abiding citizens as possible2 ,i do not want to force people who would otherwise be useful citizens into rebellion1 concealments and the dark and furtive ways of vice1 because they may not love and marry as their temperaments command1 and so ,i want to make the meshes of the law as wide as possible4 ,but the common man will not understand this yet1 and seeks to make the meshes just as small as his own private case demands4 ,then marriage1 to resume my main discussion1 does not necessarily mean cohabitation4 ,all women who desire children do not want to be entrusted with their upbringing4 ,some women are sexual and philoprogenitive without being sedulously maternal1 and some are maternal without much or any sexual passion4 ,there are men and women in the world now1 great allies1 fond and passionate lovers who do not live nor want to live constantly together4 ,it is at least conceivable that there are women who1 while desiring offspring1 do not want to abandon great careers for the work of maternity1 women again who would be happiest managing and rearing children in manless households that they might even share with other women friends1 and men to correspond with these who do not wish to live in a household with wife and children4 ,i submit1 these temperaments exist and have a right to exist in their own way4 ,but one must recognize that the possibility of these departures from the normal type of household opens up other possibilities4 ,the polygamy that is degrading or absurd under one roof assumes a different appearance when one considers it from the point of view of people whose habits of life do not centre upon an isolated home4 ,all the relations ,i have glanced at above do as a matter of fact exist to-day1 but shamefully and shabbily1 tainted with what seems to me an unmerited and unnecessary ignominy4 ,the punishment for bigamy seems to me insane in its severity1 contrasted as it is with our leniency to the common seducer4 ,better ruin a score of women1 says the law1 than marry two4 ,i do not see why in these matters there should not be much ampler freedom than there is1 and this being so ,i can hardly be expected to condemn with any moral fervour or exclude from my society those who have seen fit to behave by what ,i believe may be the standards of ,a4,d4 #bjjj instead of by the standards of #ahej4 ,these are offences1 so far as they are offences1 on an altogether different footing from murder1 or exacting usury1 or the sweating of children1 or cruelty1 or transmitting diseases1 or unveracity1 or commercial or intellectual or physical prostitution1 or any such essentially grave anti-social deeds4 ,we must distinguish between sins on the one hand and mere errors of judgment and differences of taste from ourselves4 ,to draw up harsh laws1 to practise exclusions against everyone who does not see fit to duplicate one's own blameless home life1 is to waste a number of courageous and exceptional persons in every generation1 to drive many of them into a forced alliance with real crime and embittered rebellion against custom and the law4 #c4cj4 ,,conduct ,,in ,,relation ,,to ,,the ,,thing ,,that ,,is4 ,but the reader must keep clear in his mind the distinction between conduct that is right or permissible in itself and conduct that becomes either inadvisable or mischievous and wrong because of the circumstances about it4 ,there is no harm under ordinary conditions in asking a boy with a pleasant voice to sing a song in the night1 but the case is altered altogether if you have reason to suppose that a ,red ,indian is lying in wait a hundred yards off1 holding a loaded rifle and ready to fire at the voice4 ,it is a valid objection to many actions that ,i do not think objectionable in themselves1 that to do them will discharge a loaded prejudice into the heart of my friend--or even into my own4 ,i belong to the world and my work1 and ,i must not lightly throw my time1 my power1 my influence away4 ,for a splendid thing any risk or any defiance may be justifiable1 but is it a sufficiently splendid thing8 ,so far as he possibly can a man must conform to common prejudices1 prevalent customs and all laws1 whatever his estimate of them may be4 ,but he must at the same time to his utmost to change what he thinks to be wrong4 ,and ,i think that conformity must be honest conformity4 ,there is no more anti-social act than secret breaches1 and only some very urgent and exceptional occasion justifies even the unveracity of silence about the thing done4 ,if your personal convictions bring you to a breach1 let it be an open breach1 let there be no misrepresentation of attitudes1 no meanness1 no deception of honourable friends4 ,of course an open breach need not be an ostentatious breach2 to do what is right to yourself without fraud or concealment is one thing1 to make a challenge and aggression quite another4 ,your friends may understand and sympathize and condone1 but it does not lie upon you to force them to identify themselves with your act and situation4 ,but better too much openness than too little4 ,squalid intrigue was the shadow of the old intolerably narrow order2 it is a shadow we want to illuminate out of existence4 ,secrets will be contraband in the new time4 ,and if it chances to you to feel called upon to make a breach with the institution or custom or prejudice that is1 remember that doing so is your own affair4 ,you are going to take risks and specialize as an experiment4 ,you must not expect other people about you to share the consequences of your dash forward4 ,you must not drag in confidants and secondaries4 ,you must fight your little battle in front on your own responsibility1 unsupported--and take the consequences without repining4 #c4ca4 ,,conduct ,,towards ,,transgressors4 ,so far as breaches of the prohibitions and laws of marriage go1 to me it seems they are to be tolerated by us in others just in the measure that1 within the limits set by discretion1 they are frank and truthful and animated by spontaneous passion and pervaded by the quality of beauty4 ,i hate the vulgar sexual intriguer1 man or woman1 and the smart and shallow atmosphere of unloving lust and vanity about the type as ,i hate few kinds of human life2 ,i would as lief have a polecat in my home as this sort of person2 and every sort of prostitute except the victim of utter necessity ,i despise1 even though marriage be the fee4 ,but honest lovers should be ,i think a charge and pleasure for us4 ,we must judge each pair as we can4 ,one thing renders a sexual relationship incurably offensive to others and altogether wrong1 and that is cruelty4 ,but who can define cruelty8 ,how far is the leaving of a third person to count as cruelty8 ,there again ,i hesitate to judge4 ,to love and not be loved is a fate for which it seems no one can be blamed2 to lose love and to change one's loving belongs to a subtle interplay beyond analysis or control1 but to be deceived or mocked or deliberately robbed of love1 that at any rate is an abominable wrong4 ,in all these matters ,i perceive a general rule is in itself a possible instrument of cruelty4 ,i set down what ,i can in the way of general principles1 but it all leaves off far short of the point of application4 ,every case among those we know ,i think we moderns must judge for ourselves4 ,where there is doubt1 there ,i hold must be charity4 ,and with regard to strangers1 manifestly our duty is to avoid inquisitorial and uncharitable acts4 ,this is as true of financial and economic misconduct as of sexual misconduct1 of ways of living that are socially harmful and of political faith4 ,we are dealing with people in a maladjusted world to whom absolute right living is practically impossible1 because there are no absolutely right institutions and no simple choice of good or evil1 and we have to balance merits and defects in every case4 ,some people are manifestly and essentially base and self-seeking and regardless of the happiness and welfare of their fellows1 some in business affairs and politics as others in love4 ,some wrong-doers again are evidently so through heedlessness1 through weakness1 timidity or haste4 ,we have to judge and deal with each sort upon no clear issue1 but upon impressions they have given us of their spirit and purpose4 ,we owe it to them and ourselves not to judge too rashly or too harshly1 but for all that we are obliged to judge and take sides1 to avoid the malignant and exclude them from further opportunity1 to help and champion the cheated and the betrayed1 to forgive and aid the repentant blunderer and by mercy to save the lesser sinner from desperate alliance with the greater4 ,that is the broad rule1 and it is as much as we have to go upon until the individual case comes before us4 ,,book ,,the ,,fourth -- ,,some ,,personal ,,things4 #d4a4 ,,personal ,,love ,,and ,,life4 ,it has been most convenient to discuss all that might be generalized about conduct first1 to put in the common background1 the vistas and atmosphere of the scene4 ,but a man's relations are of two orders1 and these questions of rule and principle are over and about and round more vivid and immediate interests4 ,a man is not simply a relationship between his individual self and the race1 society1 the world and ,god's ,purpose4 ,close about him are persons1 friends and enemies and lovers and beloved people4 ,he desires them1 lusts after them1 craves their affection1 needs their presence1 abhors them1 hates and desires to limit and suppress them4 ,this is for most of us the flesh and blood of life4 ,we go through the noble scene of the world neither alone1 nor alone with ,god1 nor serving an undistinguishable multitude1 but in a company of individualized people4 ,here is a system of motives and passions1 imperious and powerful1 which follows no broad general rule and in which each man must needs be a light unto himself upon innumerable issues4 ,i am satisfied that these personal urgencies are neither to be suppressed nor crudely nor ruthlessly subordinated to the general issues4 ,religious and moral teachers are apt to make this part of life either too detached or too insignificant4 ,they teach it either as if it did not matter or as if it ought not to matter4 ,indeed our individual friends and enemies stand between us and hide or interpret for us all the larger things4 ,few of us can even worship alone4 ,we must feel others1 and those not strangers1 kneeling beside us4 ,i have already spoken under the heading of ,beliefs of the part that the idea of a ,mediator has played and can play in the religious life4 ,i have pointed out how the imagination of men has sought and found in certain personalities1 historical or fictitious1 a bridge between the blood-warm private life and the intolerable spaciousness of right and wrong4 ,the world is full of such figures and their images1 ,christ and ,mary and the ,saints and all the lesser1 dearer gods of heathendom4 ,these things and the human passion for living leaders and heroes and leagues and brotherhoods all confess the mediatory role1 the mediatory possibilities of personal love between the individual and the great synthesis of which he is a part and agent4 ,the great synthesis may become incarnate in personal love1 and personal love lead us directly to universal service4 ,i write 8may0 and temper that sentence to the quality of a possibility alone4 ,this is only true for those who believe1 for those who have faith1 whose lives have been unified1 who have found ,salvation4 ,for those whose lives are chaotic1 personal loves must also be chaotic2 this or that passion1 malice1 a jesting humour1 some physical lust1 gratified vanity1 egotistical pride1 will rule and limit the relationship and colour its ultimate futility4 ,but the ,believer uses personal love and sustains himself by personal love4 ,it is his provender1 the meat and drink of his campaign4 #d4b4 ,,the ,,nature ,,of ,,love4 ,it is well perhaps to look a little into the factors that make up ,love4 ,love does not seem to me to be a simple elemental thing4 ,it is1 as ,i have already said1 one of the vicious tendencies of the human mind to think that whatever can be given a simple name can be abstracted as a single something in a state of quintessential purity4 ,i have pointed out that this is not true of ,harmony or ,beauty1 and that these are synthetic things4 ,you bring together this which is not beautiful and that which is not beautiful1 and behold6 ,beauty6 ,so also ,love is1 ,i think1 a synthetic thing4 ,one observes this and that1 one is interested and stirred2 suddenly the metal fuses1 the dry bones live6 ,one loves4 ,almost every interest in one's being may be a factor in the love synthesis4 ,but apart from the overflowing of the parental instinct that makes all that is fine and delicate and young dear to us and to be cherished1 there are two main factors that bring us into love with our fellows4 ,there is first the emotional elements in our nature that arise out of the tribal necessity1 out of a fellowship in battle and hunting1 drinking and feasting1 out of the needs and excitements and delights of those occupations2 and there is next the intenser narrower desirings and gratitudes1 satisfactions and expectations that come from sexual intercourse4 ,now both these factors originate in physical needs and consummate in material acts1 and it is well to remember that this great growth of love in life roots there1 and1 it may be1 dies when its roots are altogether cut away4 ,at its lowest1 love is the mere sharing of1 or rather the desire to share1 pleasure and excitement1 the excitements of conflict or lust or what not4 ,i think that the desire to partake1 the desire to merge one's individual identity with another's1 remains a necessary element in all personal loves4 ,it is a way out of ourselves1 a breaking down of our individual separation1 just as hate is an intensification of that4 ,personal love is the narrow and intense form of that breaking down1 just as what ,i call ,salvation is its widest1 most extensive form4 ,we cast aside our reserves1 our secrecies1 our defences2 we open ourselves2 touches that would be intolerable from common people become a mystery of delight1 acts of self-abasement and self-sacrifice are charged with symbolical pleasure4 ,we cannot tell which of us is me1 which you4 ,our imprisoned egoism looks out through this window1 forgets its walls1 and is for those brief moments released and universal4 ,for most of us the strain of primordial sexual emotion in our loves is very strong4 ,many men can love only women1 many women only men1 and some can scarcely love at all without bodily desire4 ,but the love of fellowship is a strong one also1 and for many1 love is most possible and easy when the thought of physical lovemaking has been banished4 ,then the lovers will pursue interests together1 will work together or journey together4 ,so we have the warm fellowships of men for men and women for women4 ,but even then it may happen that men friends together will talk of women1 and women friends of men4 ,nevertheless we have also the strong and altogether sexless glow of those who have fought well together1 or drunk or jested together or hunted a common quarry4 ,now it seems to me that the ,believer must also be a ,lover1 that he will love as much as he can and as many people as he can1 and in many moods and ways4 ,as ,i have said already1 many of those who have taught religion and morality in the past have been neglectful or unduly jealous of the intenser personal loves4 ,they have been1 to put it by a figure1 urgent upon the road to the ocean4 ,to that they would lead us1 though we come to it shivering1 fearful and unprepared1 and they grudge it that we should strip and plunge into the wayside stream4 ,but all streams1 all rivers come from this ocean in the beginning1 lead to it in the end4 ,it is the essential fact of love as ,i conceive it1 that it breaks down the boundaries of self4 ,that love is most perfect which does most completely merge its lovers4 ,but no love is altogether perfect1 and for most men and women love is no more than a partial and temporary lowering of the barriers that keep them apart4 ,with many1 the attraction of love seems always to fall short of what ,i hold to be its end1 it draws people together in the most momentary of self-forgetfulnesses1 and for the rest seems rather to enhance their egotisms and their difference4 ,they are secret from one another even in their embraces4 ,there is a sort of love that is egotistical lust almost regardless of its partner1 a sort of love that is mere fleshless pride and vanity at a white heat4 ,there is the love-making that springs from sheer boredom1 like a man reading a story-book to fill an hour4 ,these inferior loves seek to accomplish an agreeable act1 or they seek the pursuit or glory of a living possession1 they aim at gratification or excitement or conquest4 ,true love seeks to be mutual and easy-minded1 free of doubts1 but these egotistical mockeries of love have always resentment in them and hatred in them and a watchful distrust4 ,jealousy is the measure of self-love in love4 ,true love is a synthetic thing1 an outcome of life1 it is not a universal thing4 ,it is the individualized correlative of ,salvation2 like that it is a synthetic consequence of conflicts and confusions4 ,many people do not desire or need ,salvation1 they cannot understand it1 much less achieve it2 for them chaotic life suffices4 ,so too1 many never1 save for some rare moment of illumination1 desire or feel love4 ,its happy abandonment1 its careless self-giving1 these things are mere foolishness to them4 ,but much has been said and sung of faith and love alike1 and in their confused greed these things also they desire and parody4 ,so they act worship and make a fine fuss of their devotions4 ,and also they must have a few half-furtive1 half-flaunting fallen love-triumphs prowling the secret backstreets of their lives1 they know not why4 7,in setting this down be it remembered ,i am doing my best to tell what is in me because ,i am trying to put my whole view of life before the reader without any vital omissions4 ,these are difficult matters to explain because they have no clear outlines2 one lets in a hard light suddenly upon things that have lurked in warm intimate shadows1 dim inner things engendering motives4 ,i am not only telling quasi-secret things but exploring them for myself4 ,they are none the less real and important because they are elusive47 ,true love ,i think is not simply felt but known4 ,just as ,salvation as ,i conceive it demands a fine intelligence and mental activity1 so love calls to brain and body alike and all one's powers4 ,there is always elaborate thinking and dreaming in love4 ,love will stir imaginations that have never stirred before4 ,love may be1 and is for the most part1 one-sided4 ,it is the going out from oneself that is love1 and not the accident of its return4 ,it is the expedition whether it fail or succeed4 ,but an expedition starves that comes to no port4 ,love always seeks mutuality and grows by the sense of responses1 or we should love beautiful inanimate things more passionately than we do4 ,failing a full return1 it makes the most of an inadequate return4 ,failing a sustained return it welcomes a temporary coincidence4 ,failing a return it finds support in accepted sacrifices4 ,but it seeks a full return1 and the fulness of life has come only to those who1 loving1 have met the lover4 ,i am trying to be as explicit as possible in thus writing about ,love4 ,but the substance in which one works here is emotion that evades definition1 poetic flashes and figures of speech are truer than prosaic statements4 ,body and the most sublimated ecstasy pass into one another1 exchange themselves and elude every net of words we cast4 ,i have put out two ideas of unification and self-devotion1 extremes upon a scale one from another2 one of these ideas is that devotion to the ,purpose in things ,i have called ,salvation2 the other that devotion to some other most fitting and satisfying individual which is passionate love1 the former extensive as the universe1 the latter the intensest thing in life4 ,these1 it seems to me1 are the boundary and the living capital of the empire of life we rule4 ,all empires need a comprehending boundary1 but many have not one capital but many chief cities1 and all have cities and towns and villages beyond the capital4 ,it is an impoverished capital that has no dependent towns1 and it is a poor love that will not overflow in affection and eager kindly curiosity and sympathy and the search for fresh mutuality4 ,to love is to go living radiantly through the world4 ,to love and be loved is to be fearless of experience and rich in the power to give4 #d4c4 ,,the ,,will ,,to ,,love4 ,love is a thing to a large extent in its beginnings voluntary and controllable1 and at last quite involuntary4 ,it is so hedged about by obligations and consequences1 real and artificial1 that for the most part ,i think people are overmuch afraid of it4 ,and also the tradition of sentiment that suggests its forms and guides it in the world about us1 is far too strongly exclusive4 ,it is not so much when love is glowing as when it is becoming habitual that it is jealous for itself and others4 ,lovers a little exhausting their mutual interest find a fillip in an alliance against the world4 ,they bury their talent of understanding and sympathy to return it duly in a clean napkin4 ,they narrow their interest in life lest the other lover should misunderstand their amplitude as disloyalty4 ,our institutions and social customs seem all to assume a definiteness of preference1 a singleness and a limitation of love1 which is not psychologically justifiable4 ,people do not1 ,i think1 fall naturally into agreement with these assumptions2 they train themselves to agreement4 ,they take refuge from experiences that seem to carry with them the risk at least of perplexing situations1 in a theory of barred possibilities and locked doors4 ,how far this shy and cultivated irresponsive lovelessness towards the world at large may not carry with it the possibility of compensating intensities1 ,i do not know4 ,quite equally probable is a starvation of one's emotional nature4 ,the same reasons that make me decide against mere wanton abstinences make me hostile to the common convention of emotional indifference to most of the charming and interesting people one encounters4 ,in pleasing and being pleased1 in the mutual interest1 the mutual opening out of people to one another1 is the key of the door to all sweet and mellow living4 #d4d4 ,,love ,,and ,,death4 ,for he who has faith1 death1 so far as it is his own death1 ceases to possess any quality of terror4 ,the experiment will be over1 the rinsed beaker returned to its shelf1 the crystals gone dissolving down the waste-pipe2 the duster sweeps the bench4 ,but the deaths of those we love are harder to understand or bear4 ,it happens that of those very intimate with me ,i have lost only one1 and that came slowly and elaborately1 a long gradual separation wrought by the accumulation of years and mental decay1 but many close friends and many whom ,i have counted upon for sympathy and fellowship have passed out of my world4 ,i miss such a one as ,bob ,stevenson1 that luminous1 extravagant talker1 that eager fantastic mind4 ,i miss him whenever ,i write4 ,it is less pleasure now to write a story since he will never read it1 much less give me a word of praise for it4 ,and ,i miss ,york ,powell's friendly laughter and ,henley's exuberant welcome4 ,they made a warmth that has gone1 those men4 ,i can understand why ,i1 with my fumbling lucidities and explanations1 have to finish up presently and go1 expressing as ,i do the mood of a type and of a time2 but not those radiant presences4 ,and the gap these men have left1 these men with whom after all ,i only sat now and again1 or wrote to in a cheerful mood or got a letter from at odd times1 gives me some measure of the thing that happens1 that may happen1 when the mind that is always near one's thoughts1 the person who moves to one's movement and lights nearly all the common flow of events about one with the reminder of fellowship and meaning--ceases4 ,faith which feeds on personal love must at last prevail over it4 ,if ,faith has any virtue it must have it here when we find ourselves bereft and isolated1 facing a world from which the light has fled leaving it bleak and strange4 ,we live for experience and the race2 these individual interludes are just helps to that2 the warm inn in which we lovers met and refreshed was but a halt on a journey4 ,when we have loved to the intensest point we have done our best with each other4 ,to keep to that image of the inn1 we must not sit overlong at our wine beside the fire4 ,we must go on to new experiences and new adventures4 ,death comes to part us and turn us out and set us on the road again4 ,but the dead stay where we leave them4 ,i suppose that is the real good in death1 that they do stay2 that it makes them immortal for us4 ,living they were mortal4 ,but now they can never spoil themselves or be spoilt by change again4 ,they have finished--for us indeed just as much as themselves4 ,there they sit for ever1 rounded off and bright and done4 ,beside these clear and certain memories ,i have of my dead1 my impressions of the living are vague provisional things4 ,and since they are gone out of the world and become immortal memories in me1 ,i feel no need to think of them as in some disembodied and incomprehensible elsewhere1 changed and yet not done4 ,i want actual immortality for those ,i love as little as ,i desire it for myself4 ,indeed ,i dislike the idea that those ,i have loved are immortal in any real sense2 it conjures up dim uncomfortable drifting phantoms1 that have no kindred with the flesh and blood ,i knew4 ,i would as soon think of them trailing after the tides up and down the ,channel outside my window4 ,bob ,stevenson for me is a presence utterly concrete1 slouching1 eager1 quick-eyed1 intimate and profound1 carelessly dressed 7at ,sandgate he commonly wore a little felt hat that belonged to his son7 and himself1 himself1 indissoluble matter and spirit1 down to the heels of his boots4 ,i cannot conceive of his as any but a concrete immortality4 ,if he lives1 he lives as ,i knew him and clothed as ,i knew him and with his unalterable voice1 in a heaven of daedal flowers or a hell of ineffectual flame2 he lives1 dreaming and talking and explaining1 explaining it all very earnestly and preposterously1 so ,i picture him1 into the ear of the amused1 incredulous1 principal person in the place4 ,i have a real hatred for those dreary fools and knaves who would have me suppose that ,henley1 that crippled ,titan1 may conceivably be tapping at the underside of a mahogany table or scratching stifled incoherence into a locked slate6 ,henley tapping6--for the professional purposes of ,sludge6 ,if he found himself among the circumstances of a spiritualist seance he would1 ,i know1 instantly smash the table with that big fist of his4 ,and as the splinters flew1 surely ,york ,powell1 out of the dead past from which he shines on me1 would laugh that hearty laugh of his back into the world again4 ,henley is nowhere now except that1 red-faced and jolly like an ,october sunset1 he leans over a gate at ,worthing after a long day of picnicking at ,chanctonbury ,ring1 or sits at his ,woking table praising and quoting 8,the ,admiral ,bashville10 or blue-shirted and wearing that hat that ,nicholson has painted1 is thrust and lugged1 laughing and talking aside in his bath-chair1 along the ,worthing esplanade444 ,and ,bob ,stevenson walks for ever about a garden in ,chiswick1 talking in the dusk4 #d4e4 ,,the ,,consolation ,,of ,,failure4 ,that parable of the talents ,i have made such free use of in this book has one significant defect4 ,it gives but two cases1 and three are possible4 ,there was first the man who buried his talent1 and of his condemnation we are assured4 ,but those others all took their talents and used them courageously and came back with gain4 ,was that gain inevitable8 ,does courage always ensure us victory8 because if that is so we can all be heroes and valour is the better part of discretion4 ,alas6 the faith in such magic dies4 ,what of the possible case of the man who took his two or three talents and invested them as best he could and was deceived or heedless and lost them1 interest and principal together8 ,there is something harder to face than death1 and that is the realization of failure and misdirected effort and wrong-doing4 ,faith is no ,open ,sesame to right-doing1 much less is it the secret of success4 ,the service of ,god on earth is no processional triumph4 ,what if one does wrong so extremely as to condemn one's life1 to make oneself part of the refuse and not of the building8 ,or what if one is misjudged1 or it may be too pitilessly judged1 and one's co-operation despised and the help one brought becomes a source of weakness8 ,or suppose that the fine scheme one made lies shattered or wrecked by one's own act1 or through some hidden blemish one's offering is rejected and flung back and one is thrust out8 ,so in the end it may be you or ,i will find we have been anvil and not hammer in the ,purpose of ,god4 ,then indeed will come the time for ,faith1 for the last word of ,faith1 to say still steadfastly1 disgraced or dying1 defeated or discredited1 that all is well3-- 8,this and not that was my appointed work1 and this ,i had to be40 #d4f4 ,,the ,,last ,,confession4 ,so these broken confessions and statements of mood and attitude come to an end4 ,but at this end1 since ,i have1 ,i perceive1 run a little into a pietistic strain1 ,i must repeat again how provisional and personal ,i know all these things to be4 ,i began by disavowing ultimates4 ,my beliefs1 my dogmas1 my rules1 they are made for my campaigning needs1 like the knapsack and water-bottle of a ,cockney soldier invading some stupendous mountain gorge4 ,about him are fastnesses and splendours1 torrents and cataracts1 glaciers and untrodden snows4 ,he comes tramping on heel-worn boots and ragged socks4 ,beauties and blue mysteries shine upon him and appeal to him1 the enigma of beauty smiling the faint strange smile of ,leonardo's ,mona ,lisa4 ,he sees a light on the grass like music2 and the blossom on the trees against the sky brings him near weeping4 ,such things come to him1 give themselves to him4 ,i do not know why he should not in response fling his shabby gear aside and behave like a god2 ,i only know that he does not do so4 ,his grunt of appreciation is absurd1 his speech goes like a crippled thing--and withal1 and partly by virtue of the knapsack and water-bottle1 he is conqueror of the valley4 ,the valley is his for the taking4 ,there is a duality in life that ,i cannot express except by such images as this1 a duality so that we are at once absurd and full of sublimity1 and most absurd when we are most anxious to render the real splendours that pervade us4 ,this duplicity in life seems to me at times ineradicable1 at times like the confusing of something essentially simple1 like the duplication when one looks through a doubly refracting medium4 ,you think in this latter mood that you have only to turn the crystal of ,iceland spar about in order to have the whole thing plain4 ,but you never get it plain4 ,i have been doing my halting utmost to get down sincerely and simply my vision of life and duty4 ,i have permitted myself no defensive restraints2 ,i have shamelessly written my starkest1 and it is plain to me that a smile that is not mine plays over my most urgent passages4 ,there is a rebellious rippling of the grotesque under our utmost tragedy and gravity4 ,one's martialled phrases grimace as one turns1 and wink at the reader4 ,none the less they signify4 ,do you note how in this that ,i have written1 such a word as ,believer will begin to wear a capital letter and give itself solemn ridiculous airs8 ,it does not matter4 ,it carries its message for all that necessary superficial absurdity4 ,thought has made me shameless4 ,it does not matter at last at all if one is a little harsh or indelicate or ridiculous if that also is in the mystery of things4 ,behind everything ,i perceive the smile that makes all effort and discipline temporary1 all the stress and pain of life endurable4 ,in the last resort ,i do not care whether ,i am seated on a throne or drunk or dying in a gutter4 ,i follow my leading4 ,in the ultimate ,i know1 though ,i cannot prove my knowledge in any way whatever1 that everything is right and all things mine4 ,,the ,,end4