Chapter III: Introduction (2)

It is the suffering that can be traced to no particular _transgression_ on the part of the individual, that chiefly outrages the modern man; that is why it seems fair to conclude that this notion of immanent justice has a moral foundation.[6]

As a matter of fact, there is nothing more unjust than this notion of justice, but its injustice is by no means obvious.

There is no outcry when a murderer is hanged, although psychology, heredity and even sociology, may be called to witness that his act was as inevitable as is the crippledom of the child born of tainted blood. There is no outcry when a vicious reprobate dies in poverty and pain. There is no outcry when an habitual criminal ends his days on the treadmill. Morality here receives its tribute. Chemistry, physiology, biology, and the laws of heredity that derive from them are superseded by the moral bias, and there appears to be no violation of that “immanent” justice when one of Nature’s born ne’er-do-wells comes to a sad end in a prison quadrangle.

In cases of suffering which are less easily traced to an apparently deliberate transgression of moral laws, however, a miscarriage of universal justice is supposed to have occurred, and the sympathy of all, and even the indignation of some, are immediately aroused.

It is true that attempts have been made to withhold even this sympathy, as in the case of the second commandment already referred to above; but the best instance is that of David’s famous observation in the 37th Psalm: “I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread.” This, however, is so obviously a desperate endeavour to square a moral reading of the universe, or the conception of an eternal justice behind all phenomena, with the spectacle of misery and indigence, that its transparency offends the dullest vision. It is not unlike the attitude of some Eugenists who would argue that the poorly remunerated of to-day should be prevented from multiplying because they are not only the _unfit_, but the _undesirable_. To call them unfit is biologically correct; for it merely amounts to saying that they are unadapted to their environment. The idea of undesirability is, however, smuggled in gratuitously, only in order to try to account for what would otherwise appear an injustice. If the poor be made to appear as lying under a stigma, [p48] the difficulty presented by the apparent injustice of their position is easily removed.[7]

In the same way the necessity of condoling with an invalid is unconsciously resented by most of us when we endeavour, particularly to the invalid’s face, to ascribe his or her trouble to some glaring imprudence or violation of rational living, through which we infer that the illness or indisposition has been brought about. We thus reduce it to a pain or penalty that the sufferer has _deserved_, and in this way we release our minds from the constant preoccupation concerning justice and injustice.

Women, who are very much less social in their instincts, and, therefore, much harder than men, repeatedly behave in this way, even with their own children; and before they make a movement to relieve suffering, their lips will have pronounced innumerable reasons why the particular indisposition or pain confronting them is the sufferer’s own fault.

Why did David say that he had never seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread? Why do certain Eugenists try their hardest to attach some stigma to poverty, or to what they call the poorly remunerated? And why do people suddenly heap all kinds of blame upon the head of an unfortunate man, woman or child, who has suddenly contracted an illness?

It is suggested that the reason is because the acceptance of the view that there is a moral order to the universe, implies two conditions: (_a_) That nothing occurs that is not just; (_b_) that, therefore, there is no suffering that is not in some way retribution or penalty.

When confronted with any form of suffering, therefore, the first impulse of everybody trained in this school of thought is an attempt, at once, to square the particular example of unhappiness before them with this notion of universal justice; and if it will not square, without supposing some ultimate compensation that will balance it, or some pain or crime that is sufficient to account for it, some such ultimate compensation or some such transgression is quickly imagined, which seems to satisfy the requirements of “immanent justice.”

If it is quite impossible to discover a sin or a crime in the individual that will account for the individual’s suffering--as, for instance, when a child is born of diseased or drunken parents--when, moreover, doubts are beginning to be felt, as they are to-day, in a large number of minds, regarding the possibility of compensation in another world for undeserved miseries in this world--then a gross injustice is supposed to have occurred, and everybody who looks at the universe through moral glasses, feels acutely uncomfortable.

“Why should Tommy Jones,” they say, “be born of diseased or drunken parents, when Thomas Vere de Vere was born of healthy or sober parents! It is unjust!”

They are indignant, and they look indignant, and those among them who cannot believe in an after-life in which this apparently [p50] monstrous miscarriage of “immanent justice” will be rectified, become social reformers who are prepared to fight, and lead others to fight for--justice!

Those people, on the other hand, who are persuaded that their religion can explain anything, and who enjoy the most determined optimism where the suffering of others is concerned, have yet another loophole of escape from the disagreeable certainty that a miscarriage of universal justice has occurred. Nodding their heads gravely and wisely, they say: “Who can tell? Providence moveth in mysterious ways. May not these sufferers be the most sorely tried because they are the most loved? For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.”[8]

Everything is done, every expedient is tried in order to escape from the maddening certainty that suffering is possible without a sin or a crime having been committed. When finally it is discovered that such things as pain and misery do co-exist with innocence, or at least with a lack of guilt, then the feeling arises that an injustice has been perpetrated which must at all costs be corrected. And since eternal, or universal, or immanent justice cannot be held responsible, man himself and his civilisation are frequently accused of having been guilty of an injustice of which neither is in any way capable.

What is it that has forced this conviction upon mankind? Failing the comforting assurances of religion, which postulates a heaven in which the uneven balance of pain and pleasure is adjusted, and a deity who chastens those whom he most loves, why is it that at the sight of unearned misery and pain the average man has a feeling of revolt, as if a primary law of the universe had been wantonly outraged?

I have suggested that the average man reads morality into phenomena, that he imagines that the world is a moral world, and that consequently pain and pleasure alike must have a moral explanation or cause. It is this that creates the idea of an “immanent” justice.

But, if we contemplate the world as a whole, what justification have we for postulating a moral order of phenomena? Why should we expect something so essentially peculiar to human society to pervade the design of things in general?

As a matter of fact, from the standpoint of civilised human society, Nature is utterly immoral, Life is hopelessly unjust. It is not only the sinful young rabbit that provides the fox with his meal. It is not only the guilty mouse that dies an agonising death in the cat’s jaws. It is not only the dissipated sparrow that is torn to fragments by the young of the sparrow-hawk. Neither is it only the vicious worm that gets rationed out piecemeal to the young of the mole. And what of the antelopes that fall victims to lions and tigers, the sheep and cattle that fall victims to man, the pheasants that fall victims to our sportsmen, the fish that fall victims to their larger fellows? Wherever we look, we see suffering--undeserved suffering--aye, undeserved agony. The world and Life are therefore essentially unmoral, they [p52] are not concerned with justice. The rain falls both on the just and on the unjust. The hurricane kills the just and the unjust alike. The lightning burns the house of the just or unjust indifferently. Microbes feed on the pure and undefiled virgin just as ravenously as upon the polluted jade. Tuberculosis does not pick and choose; it kills where it can. Virtue is no safeguard against it, neither is genius.

Wherever we look, either in the jungle or the prairie, we see the blood-red fangs and the carmine claws of the bully rampant! Fair play? Where is the fair play between the cat and the mouse? Where is the fair play between the stoat and the shrew? Where is the fair play between the wolf and the lamb? Justice? What is justice, where is justice in Life and Nature? In the vegetable world, which is said to be inanimate, the fierce uneven struggle is not even mitigated by the “sporting chance” of escape.

Truth to tell, the word justice--whether immanent or otherwise--is meaningless when applied to the universe. Nobody has ever dreamed of thinking out the billions and billions of post-mortem compensations which would be necessary to adjust the balance of only one year’s rapine and slaughter in the world of nature. Nobody has ever dreamt that such a calculation would even be possible. Injustice, if it have any meaning at all in this respect, is therefore written large all over the face of Life and Nature.

Sentimentalists, like Wordsworth and Rousseau, by wilfully turning their backs upon [p53] the cruel sufferings of animals and insects in Nature, have been able to present a picture of Life to the world as attractive as it is false. But although pleasant lies of this sort are bound ultimately to do a good deal of damage, and have actually done a good deal of damage, they are also bound ultimately to be found out, and it is to be hoped that there is then an end to them, once and for all.

It is not accurate, therefore, to read a moral order into the Universe. Life and Nature are essentially amoral. They are not concerned even with the A.B.C. of morality. All life outside human society, therefore, knows nothing of justice. On the contrary, “Life is appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of its own forms, incorporation, and, at the very least, exploitation.”

There is no such thing as a natural balance of virtue and reward, crime and punishment--even in the realm of social justice this balance is difficult enough to achieve. Misery is frequently encountered in Nature--in fact, universally so, divorced from sin. To perceive anything else in Nature is to contemplate her through rather smoky human spectacles--anthropomorphically.

If, then, this notion of justice exists at all, it is only in the fancy of the morally prejudiced. Morality arises only in human society; therefore justice is exclusively a social phenomenon, a social expedient. It is not a universal law, but a concept of the social human being. It is not a principle transcending social life; it is the creation [p54] of social life, and means nothing outside it; it is man-made, man-maintained.

In the light of this conclusion, what is meant, therefore, when Mrs. Jelleby-Jones, of Hampstead, who is a welfare worker, exclaims over her dinner to her husband that it seems so “unjust” that the poor little diseased babies she has been inspecting that afternoon should have been born with such a heavy handicap?

Whose injustice, what injustice does she mean? Does she know what she means, and does she mean anything?

We have seen that if her statement is to have any meaning at all, it must signify that mankind is unjust, that human society is unjust, and that, therefore, her particular form of human society is unjust; consequently that she and her husband, as forming part of that society, are unjust.

Truth to tell, she will mean nothing half as intelligible as that; but since this is the only meaning her remark can have, let us examine it calmly.

She supposes an injustice to have been perpetrated because--say--three babies she has seen were born diseased. This happens in every class, irrespective of banking account, and the poor are not more unhealthy than the rich. She says the babies will be handicapped. Their disease is an obstacle in their road; therefore it is unjust. She is perfectly right, in a sense, when she says that disease is an obstacle. But it might be pointed out to her that to be born of stupid or criminally disposed parents would also constitute an obstacle. Psychologists now tell us that even to be born of parents [p55] who disagree constitutes a grave obstacle in life. It might be argued that to be born of people who can afford to keep cars also constitutes an initial obstacle, because great comfort and luxury reduces moral fibre, paralyses energy, and destroys eagerness for the fray. It might be pointed out to her that to be born the son of the King of England is an obstacle in life, because it limits freedom; a man cannot aspire to becoming Bishop of Bristol if he is destined to become his Britannic Majesty. If being born of sick or stupid parents is an injustice, all these cases are injustices also.

Mrs. Jelleby-Jones might reply that illness or disease is at least an obstacle that could be avoided, whereas to have as father the King of England, is not a fate that could so easily be circumvented. Agreed! But only flagrant cases of illness or disease are even noticeable. What about those more subtle gradations of health or ill-health which though they are frequently sufficiently virulent to convert a potential genius into a merely talented man, or a potentially talented man into a fool, are nevertheless not sufficiently glaring to be observed or guarded against? Would Mrs. Jelleby-Jones argue that to be born of ugly parents, for instance, is an injustice? To be ugly is certainly a great disadvantage, particularly to the women of any tasteful country. Is it also an injustice?

Look at it how we will, injustice, or inequality of endowment and of chances of survival, is rooted in the very heart of Nature. Society endeavours to mitigate Nature’s harsh rule by means of preventing [p56] or assuaging unnecessary suffering, succouring indigence, and trying to make ugly and botched people forget their ugliness; but society cannot divorce herself completely from Nature. She is bound to act with Nature and allow natural laws to operate with comparative freedom in her midst. Particularly is this so with regard to the act of pro-creation. Here is a natural process, and a natural passion, on which society can only impose a certain modicum of order; she cannot do away with it. Now, as we have seen, the sort of injustice that we are examining in this chapter, is rooted in the very act of procreation, which is essentially a natural act. Two people, male and female, decide to procreate a third creature (more frequently they do not give the third creature a thought)--a child, who can have no voice in deciding whether it should be born or not, whether it should be born of precisely those parents or not, or whether it should be their daughter or their son, their legitimate or illegitimate offspring. It cannot even choose which parent it will resemble. What could be more unjust? It is obviously one of those manifestations of Nature, of Life, which like all those we have been examining, is completely and hopelessly unjust. It is the amoral character of Nature and Life persisting in spite of moral or social conditions. This amount of Nature’s, or Life’s, inevitable injustice must be accepted, or included with the bargain which is life.

What, then, do these people really mean who rail against this so-called injustice--this necessary survival of natural and vital [p57] amorality within a moral society? They are, of course, extravagantly stupid. They read their own back-parlour ethics into Nature’s scheme, conclude erroneously that she is just, and then wherever this kind of injustice appears, they throw the responsibility of it on to man instead of on to Nature. They rightly assume that “injustice” can be only man-made, and imagine that in railing against this “injustice” of their fancy, they are really opposing something substantial, some grievance that could, or ought to be, redressed, if society or the government were more moral.

This “injustice” of their fancy, however, as we have seen, is built up upon an idea of universal and eternal Justice which is a pure myth. Justice exists nowhere outside civilised man’s own institutions, and least of all in Nature. Whenever and wherever, therefore, Nature, pure and undefiled, peeps out even in our civilised societies, as it does in procreation, there also appears, and cannot fail to appear, what these people call “injustice.”

Civilised man has done his utmost to mitigate Life’s natural “injustices”--to use these people’s language--but since in order to survive he is bound to allow Nature a certain modicum of free-play within his societies, a certain modicum of so-called “injustice” cannot be removed from even the most ideal and perfect community.[9]

Thus, far from this “injustice” of the stupid sentimentalists _à la_ Gambetta, etc., etc., being man-made, or man-contrived, it is man who has done, and still does, his utmost to mitigate its asperities. But because he cannot sweep it away without also sweeping away Life itself, or without tampering with a very sacred function of his fellows, it is preposterous to hold him responsible for it.

Apart from the creation and administration of law in an organised society, therefore, and the accepted rules which control the treatment of one man by another, or of a child by its parents, or _vice versâ_, justice has no genuine existence at all. To complain about the absence of a purely fantastic conception, therefore, is an absurdity. As well might you complain that your son is born without wings, or that you yourself do not possess seven-league boots.

In its essence, however, this act of setting up an impossible ideal, which is supposed to belong to the very scheme of the universe, amounts to an attitude of hostility to life, because it is tantamount to a refusal to accept life as she is--that is to say, amoral. It is equivalent to setting up a false scale of measurement, in order to depreciate human society and its value.

When once these people are convinced that the “injustices” about which they complain really are rooted in Life and Nature, they cry out desperately: Look how dreadful Life is, she is unjust! But it is only in their benighted brains that the ideal of justice was ever conceived as inherent in phenomena, as a possible attribute of life Life is amoral; therefore she is essentially beyond or beneath justice. You can only [p59] love her or loathe her as she is. And it is a proof of degeneracy to loathe her as she is. Hence degenerates invariably clothe her with false attributes, and talk about a “_justice immanente_”; they are not brave enough, or proud enough, to love her without trying to paint her in the light of their back-parlour morality.

All Life’s light and shade, all her excitement, all her incitement to man to compete with energy and spirit in her game, depends for more than half its charm precisely on the fact that she is amoral--that is to say, that she produces inequalities, contrasts and divergent types, indifferently, lavishly, without taking thought, without mercy. Her call is to the brave, to the stout of heart, and to the adventurous and spirited. Those who in the midst of this great adventure cry out “Injustice!” either misunderstand, or wilfully misrepresent the whole scheme.

The alleged “injustices” of Life, can never be put right by man. They are beyond his power to remedy, however just his laws may be. All he can do is to mitigate the asperity of life for those of Nature’s less fortunately endowed offspring, who cannot aspire to the highest ridge; but even in doing this, he must be careful not to make it too easy for Nature’s failures to multiply over abundantly, otherwise the race most certainly deteriorates.

The modern tendency, therefore, which consists in deliberately confounding the issue, by pointing to a number of Nature’s own “injustices” as if they were the outcome of man-made law, man-made conditions, [p60] and clamouring for them to be redressed, is wholly vicious. It deceives the multitude, maddens them into a false sense of their grievances, and frequently leads to disturbances which, though they prove sadly destructive of life and treasure, _must_ leave things more or less as they were, because the grievances chiefly complained of, are frequently rooted in Life itself.

This does not mean that there are not man-made injustices in the creation and administration of law. Unfortunately they are too often as plentiful as those of Life itself. But by far the grossest so-called injustices are those of Nature and Life, which cannot by any means be removed, and least of all can they be even mitigated in a country whose population distinguishes so imperfectly between grievances which can be rightly brought home to man, and those that are inherent in the natural order of existence, that while they blindly clamour for the removal of the latter, the former, which might be corrected and are within man’s power to correct, are generally left studiously alone.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: “If our hearts beat, it is with this object ... it is in order that we may rely on the future and know whether there is an all-pervading justice in the things of this world, which ultimately has its day and comes to light at its appointed time.”]

[Footnote 6: The present writer has even heard women declare that the lot of the female human being, with all its disabilities and physical burdens, constitutes an “unjust” apportionment of pain and pleasure when compared with the lot of the male. It is difficult to discover what injustice is meant here, unless we conclude that women who speak in this way have acquired from their stupid men-folk ideas about a certain justice behind phenomena or in Nature, which in their particular existence appears to be transgressed. In any case we are quite safe in assuming that it cannot be an infringement of man’s justice that is meant here. It must, therefore, be the imaginary justice which is the subject of this essay, and which moral people read into the universe.]

[Footnote 7: It would only be correct to say that the poor are the _undesirable_ as well as being the _biologically unfit_, if successful adaptation to modern conditions demanded the highest virtues and abilities of which the community is capable.]

[Footnote 8: Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews. Chapter xii. 6.]

[Footnote 9: So long, that is to say, as free mating is not made a criminal offence, and even then the harshness of the natural law will only be partially mitigated.]

[p61] CHAPTER III

EQUALITY

“We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men were created
equal; that they were endowed by their Creator with inalienable
rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.”--Thomas Jefferson ([10]Declaration by the Representatives
of the United States).

From whichever quarter the principle of human equality is approached, it appears to recede into ever deeper dimness and obscurity the more hotly it is pursued. What does this elusiveness signify? Has the principle any reality at all? That is to say, is it something that can be realised? Or is it the most unscrupulous lie that has ever been sewn as a device upon the banner of a faction? In any case it seems to provoke very real emotions. Thump your fist hard enough, and shout from a public platform: “Ladies and gentlemen, what we want more than anything else to-day, that which our birth, our common origin, our common shape and stature--aye, even our common spark of Divine Spirit--most surely guarantees us, is Equality, ladies and gentlemen, the blessed condition of Equality!”

Pronounce the words emphatically enough, as your exordium, and your whole audience will cheer and applaud as with one voice.

Not one of the assembled crowd will protest indignantly that you have been talking nonsense. Everybody will really believe that your words have some meaning, and a beautiful meaning.

We have already seen, however, that a word does not require to have any precise meaning, or any definite association whatever, in order to excite pleasurable feelings in those who hear it pronounced, or in order to provoke these people to energetic action. Is Equality perhaps one of these empty, inflammatory words?

It is originally a term borrowed from mathematics. The mathematician says:--“Two and two are equal; this triangle and that are equal; this length and that length are equal; this weight and that weight are equal.”

He is dealing with mere ciphers, symbols or abstractions, and consequently the mathematician has everything his own way, and so long as he abides by ciphers, symbols and abstractions we have no wish to interfere. He can carry his egalitarian principle right through the English weights and measures, _viâ_ the decimal system, into geometry. He is speaking of pure abstractions, arbitrarily supposed to be identical, and if it amuses him to postulate equality as their characteristic, nobody cares. They are his abstractions, his ciphers, he can postulate what he likes about them. We have the feeling that it does not matter. It is only when the mathematician, who, as a rule, is a hopeless psychologist, begins to apply [p63] the lifeless notions he has learnt in his study, to the world of activity and reality; it is only when he begins to speak of things that are not his own abstractions--things that really have an existence known to us--that we immediately begin to feel that he is taking liberties with reality.

For instance, if he say that a certain 2,000 pear leaves are equal to another 2,000 pear leaves, we who know that no two leaves have ever been known to be exactly the same, straightway call him to order and say: “No, sir, abide by your abstractions! That statement of yours is not true.” Likewise, if he say that a certain 2,000 cows are equal to another 2,000 cows, we feel that he is either taking too much for granted, or else that he should try to enlist our confidence by specifying the precise weight and individual qualities of each cow in each set, before inviting us to acquiesce in his assertion. And even if the two sets of 2,000 cows weighed exactly the same amount and were of the same race, we should still feel that there were differences in the quality and supply of milk in each set, as also in the vitality of the respective cows in each set, etc., which ought to be taken into account and which it would hardly be possible to estimate with perfect accuracy.

But let us think of things which have less individual divergence from the common type. Let us think of screws, bolts, plates, chain links, etc. After these have been made with the utmost care by means of machines capable of almost mathematical precision, and when once they have been accurately weighed and found equal both [p64] as regards size and ponderability, you would think that you had groups of things or individual things as between which you would be justified in postulating the attribute equality. But if you should ask anyone accustomed to dealing with such things, he would tell you that one bolt in ten or in twenty usually splits, that one screw in a hundred or in a thousand usually strips, and that one plate in fifty usually cracks. Thus here and there, even when enormous pains have been taken to attain uniformity, marked differences become apparent. What about those differences that are not sufficiently marked to be noticeable until some considerable time has elapsed?

Can equality be postulated of no two objects on earth then?

Provided that the mathematical abstracts, or arbitrary identities, size, weight, bulk and number, alone, are in question, equality can be postulated; but the moment mathematical abstractions are departed from, it is not only unsafe, it is positively dishonest to speak of equality.

For instance, you can say that these hundred rails are equal to those hundred rails in number, in weight, or in length. You could not say that these hundred rails are equal to those hundred rails in durability, resilience, or frangibility. You might say they are approximately equal in these attributes, or as nearly as possible equal; but apart from the arbitrary identities or abstractions of the mathematicians, you could not postulate perfect equality.

Does the term “Equality” mean anything at all apart from these mathematical [p65] abstractions then?----Absolutely nothing!

What, then, are those people who earnestly and warmly claim and advocate equality among men--_men_ who are so different in their ancestry, size, shape, endowments, beauty, desires, appetites, and spirit, whose very features proclaim their inequality as they approach us?

Are such clamourers for equality all liars?

They are certainly liars, but the majority of them are probably perfectly unconscious liars. From childhood onwards they may have heard the word “Equality” pronounced as if it implied a very certain reality, a very much coveted desideratum. Deep emotions over which they have no control, and concerning which they have even less understanding, are therefore stirred every time they hear the word, or see it written or printed; and thus they live and die earnestly believing that this meaningless principle “Equality,” if it could be realised, would be an unqualified boon.

How the equality is to be achieved, whether by bleeding the too sanguine, truncating the too tall, deliberately debilitating the too healthy, delicately injuring the brains of the too intelligent, or systematically fattening the too thin, nobody troubles definitely to specify. Egalitarians have a vague notion concerning a still more vague desideratum, and this, coupled with the word “Equality,” that is utterly meaningless outside the abstractions of the mathematicians, completes the content of their hallucination.

But, it may be objected, the world is surely not so foolish. What men mean [p66] when they demand equality, is equality before the law--that is to say, that the law-officers should regard them, for the purposes of law-administration as equal to one another in their chances of being right.

This may be true of a few cases in which the cry “Equality” is set up; but is it true of all? Do all egalitarians court equality because at some time or another they may have to confront the officers of the law?

No, says the objector, but the law is not merely felt when two litigants face each other, or when a criminal is apprehended; it is felt in the home of the just as well as in that of the unjust; it is felt in the life of the city, in the village and in the factory.

But it is precisely in such circumstances that the law would be most harsh, if it assumed equality. It is compelled to assume inequality in legislating for large communities, otherwise it could not be just at all.

The very symbol of justice--a blindfold female with a pair of scales in one hand--is a mathematical symbol, which can have no relation to human affairs, but only to the mathematical abstraction, weight.

“A good law should be good for all men,” said Condorcet, “even as a proposition is true for all men.”

“The capital error of the whole French Revolution,” says Louis Madelin, “lies in the dogma thus proclaimed by Condorcet.”[11]

Yes, but Condorcet was not a political thinker, he was one of the foremost mathematicians of his time! And Thomas Jefferson, whose words head this chapter, was his disciple.

The danger to which the mathematician, like the engineer exposes us, begins when he pretends to apply his principles to human affairs.

But, continues the objector, although it is admitted that initial equality, as between human beings, or any living things for that matter, is an impossibility, seeing that nature’s products are all diverse and unequal; and although subsequent equality is hard to achieve without behaving unjustly and barbarously to all those who depart from a certain norm or standard--that is to say, without bleeding, debilitating, truncating, or otherwise injuring all those who vary from an arbitrarily selected pattern--there surely can be such a thing as Equality of Opportunity.

At this point in the discussion it is only fair to say that most opponents of Egalitarianism promptly capitulate, and eagerly concede that equality of opportunity is a genuine desideratum capable of practical realisation.

At the risk of appearing captious and sophistical, however, it can no more be admitted here that Equality of Opportunity has any actual possibilities of realisation than has the principle of equality itself. It is, in fact, an illusion rather more complex and more serious than the latter. For it presupposes, not only equality among men, but equality of opportunity--two equalities instead of one--and among a class [p68] of things which can be made equal only by a miracle.

In the first place, it may be assumed, without any further discussion, that a moment’s calm reflection is enough to dispel even from the meanest intelligence, the illusion that men can ever be equal.

On this score, alone, then, opportunities cannot be equal, because, however accurately their equality may be established, in regard to a supposed standard man, the moment they are placed in relation to the multitude of unequal men, they, too, become unequal. For an opportunity is not a thing in itself; it only becomes something in relation to the creature who seizes it. Given an equal means of access to a particular ridge or hill-top, the opportunity to reach that hill-top or ridge, is the equal means of access _plus_ the kind of creature to whom it is afforded. The introduction of an unequal element on the one hand--the men--makes the other element, the means of access, not unequal as means of access in the abstract, but unequal as opportunity in the concrete.

Suppose as much inequality between three men as exists between a hen, a hare, and a hippopotamus--and as regards fleetness and swimming power such inequality is not unusual between men--how could you devise equal opportunities which would enable all three men to reach a certain objective at the same moment of time, if a strip of water, a high wall, and a ravine stood between the starting point and the objective?

You might do it by first holding a rehearsal, in which you would accurately time [p69] each man and note his abilities, and then handicap the fleetest accordingly.

But unfortunately life cannot be rehearsed, a life-handicap cannot be calculated. Besides, it is to the advantage of society not to handicap her fleetest and her best. As Lord Morley very rightly says: “The well-being of the community demands the allotment of high function in proportion to high faculty.”[12]

But suppose our objector replies: Very well, but that is all we ask. We do not demand a handicap; we simply demand an equal means of access to a particular objective, no matter whether ultimately those means prove unequal or not, owing to the inequality of the men to whom they are open.

It may then be asked whether even this equality in means of access is not in itself utterly fanciful and fantastic. Given the radical inequality of men at birth, together with the highly complex arrangement of modern society, with its enormous variety of prizes, it may reasonably be questioned whether it be even possible, not to mention practicable.

A large number of people cannot all travel along the same narrow path. Several narrow paths all exactly alike would have to be constructed. The accidents, vicissitudes, fatalities that would attend some of the early travellers along the roads--faintness, loss of luggage, sprains, deaths, etc.--would either impede or facilitate the way of the later travellers. Thus, in life, the means of access themselves, however equal at the start, would quickly acquire unforeseen inequalities.

Let us select an example from life in England.

Two boys, A and B, one living at Whitstable, the other in London, are quite unequal in gifts, ancestral tradition, build and tastes. Nevertheless, it is desired to give them an equal opportunity, say, of earning £1,000 a year when they are forty. The father of A wishes A to have the same opportunities as B, and B’s father holds the same view about B in his relation to A.

Very well, A, having learnt the art of oyster fishing, which is the principal industry of Whitstable, is sent to London to learn to be a clerk, and B is sent from London to Whitstable, after training as a clerk, in order to have an opportunity of being an oyster fisherman. Meanwhile, A’s father has heard that B is also studying agriculture at a school of agriculture somewhere near Whitstable. A, after having trained as a clerk, is therefore recalled to Whitstable and made to undergo a course of agriculture, and B having acquired a knowledge of oyster-fishing and agriculture, is sent back to London to learn French, which A acquired there. Ultimately, however, A’s father, remembering that a brother of his did extremely well as an engineer, prevails upon B’s father to consent to the plan of sending both boys A and B to Armstrong & Whitworth’s or to Vickers.

We can imagine both A’s father and B’s father dying long before A and B had had every opportunity that society now offers [p71] to the aspirant for success; we can also picture A and B themselves becoming grey-haired octogenarians before they finally settled down.

No, says the objector. That is not what opportunity egalitarians mean. They mean not that everybody should have an equal chance of succeeding in all the careers that lie open, but that they should have an opportunity of succeeding in life.

But what is meant by success here? Does it consist in becoming Prime Minister of England, or Commander-in-Chief in India, or Lord Mayor, or Editor of _John Bull_? In any case opportunities for becoming any one of these four cannot be made equal. Perhaps success consists in becoming a millionaire? But who is going to determine the equality of opportunity for this achievement? Pullitzer, one of the most powerful American millionaires of the first decade of this century, crawled ashore in America as a penniless fugitive, after having swum from the ship that had conveyed him as an emigrant from Europe!

Moreover, supposing that a boy’s opportunity-egalitarianism extends beyond the shores of his native land, and he says: I wish to have the same opportunity as the Frenchman, or the Canadian, or the Chinaman. What then? Is there any valid reason why opportunity-egalitarianism should be confined to a single country, or even to a single continent?

What, then, is left of this cry for equality of opportunity? Simply the sting of resentment which gives rise to it; and this we shall now proceed to examine. [p72]

What kind of person is it who clamours for this meaningless desideratum, equality? Certainly not the beautiful person, because to him equality, if it could be achieved, would result in bringing him down to the common level. Neither can it be the person specially gifted in any of the arts and sciences; for, again, equality, if it could by some miracle be wrought, would amount to wiping out the advantage of such special gifts. The self-reliant, the strong, the skilful, the able and the desirable, in all walks of life, are never stirred by this cry for equality; because they look down from their eminence, and cannot therefore conceive that levelling could possibly prove an advantage.

It must therefore be the undesirable, the unskilful, the incompetent, the ugly, the ungifted, in all walks of life, the incapable of all classes, who want equality. And they want it because, looking up from their position of chafing mediocrity and ungainliness, and beholding their more gifted brethren, they realise that equality must redound to their benefit. A moment’s reflection would tell them that it is an impossible ideal; their mortified vanity, however, is stronger than their reason, and urges them to believe in it, ridiculous as it may be.

“Envy wears the mask of Love, and, laughing sober fact to scorn,
Cries to weakest, as to strongest, ‘Ye are equals, equal-born.’”[13]

“What made the Revolution? Vanity! Liberty was nothing but a pretext!” Thus spoke Napoleon, the greatest and probably the deepest man since Cæsar.[14]

But, however fantastic the cry for equality may seem, it is a dangerous cry, because it is still capable of stimulating and directing energy. It is, therefore, still a weapon in the hands of the unscrupulous agitator and demagogue.

It means nothing. We have seen that it has only a mathematical value. But until the ignorant, the arrogant, and the revengeful among Nature’s (not society’s)[15] failures are brave and honest enough to realise that the apparent injustice of the radical inequality of man, is irremediable and inevitable, until they realise that it cannot be corrected without resorting to the most savage extreme of Procrustean barbarity, the lie Equality, as a high explosive, as a generator of social perturbations and upheavals, as a weapon and a war-cry, will continue to give rise to meaningless hopes, and to suggest utterly false claims to the overweening ambition of all discontented humanity.

There is, however, another factor in this clamour for the impracticable ideal of equality, and that is our old friend the natural indolence of the weary and the exhausted. If all were equal--no matter how this equality is to be achieved--it is felt that things would be easier. Not only would the shame of the ugly and the repulsive in the presence of the beautiful and the gifted be spared, but the uphill race of the poor runners beside the fleet and enduring runners, would also be rendered less strenuous. The ineffective brain-cracking of the fools beside the swift and efficient thought of the intelligent would be less heart-rending, and so on.

Finally, the notion of Justice, of “immanent” Justice, constrains those who hold it, to assume a scheme of life, according to which all human beings are at least equal at birth. Such people very easily argue as follows: If all human beings were not equal at birth, it would not be just, “immanent” Justice would be caught red-handed in an act of flagrant injustice at the very portals of life. But this is inconceivable, therefore all must be born equal. We have seen, however, that this notion of justice is quite as mythical as the idea of equality itself.

Generated in this way, by innumerable powerful wishes, the idea of equality begins to take shape and assume the appearance of a realisable object in the minds of the weary and the exhausted; and without troubling to ask themselves what the merits or possibilities of their idea may be, they are prepared to advocate it, applaud it--aye [p75] and even fight for it, at the cost of all the rest of the world--so long as they continue to be assured by unscrupulous people that it will effect all they want it to effect.

So far, then, it has been impossible to trace any substantial measure of reality behind this notion and this cry of equality. Is it conceivable that a word should give rise to such intense feeling and yet bear no relation whatever to practical life? Was President Jefferson raving when he, following the lead of almost thirty millions of French people, also spoke of equality as a desideratum that could be gravely and confidently placed on a political programme? For it seems only fair to presume that he could not have been serious when he maintained that all men were created equal.

It is possible that at the end of the 18th century equality as a cry had a very definite meaning. It probably meant in its best and most rational interpretation, that every citizen had an equal right to have his interests safeguarded by the laws of his society, that is to say, by the government of his country. This was not recognised as a principle by the rulers of France before the Revolution, and it is at least conceivable that the substantial reality behind this cry for equality was precisely the demand on the part of all that each man’s interests should be protected with equal vigour and conscientiousness by the state.

But in this sense has the cry for equality any meaning?

In so far as certain sections of the community may still believe that their interest is not so perfectly safeguarded as that of [p76] other sections, the cry for equality of treatment has as much meaning to-day as it had in the last years of the 18th century, but beyond this one claim, it is difficult to discover any meaning in it whatsoever.

Unfortunately, however, this very necessary and incontrovertible limitation of the idea of equality, is not likely to deter those whose base purpose may best be served by extending the significance of the word beyond its proper bounds, when appealing to the least desirable elements in every nation; and unless in the mass of the people of all countries there is that understanding of the term which alone bears any resemblance to reality, mankind will continue at intervals to be incited to energetic though fruitless violence in the pursuit of a phantom which can have no practical or effective existence outside the calculations of a mathematician’s brain.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 10: Perhaps it is only fair to remind the reader that Jefferson was the United States minister plenipotentiary in Paris in 1785, and that he had, therefore, imbibed deeply much of the nonsense that was current in France at the time.]

[Footnote 11: See _The French Revolution_, by Louis Madelin, p. 15. The author continues: “He [Condorcet] and his co-religionists, who knew nothing of true sociology, which has its foundations in psychology, here prove themselves still more ignorant of history.”]

[Footnote 12: Rousseau. Vol. I., p. 181.]

[Footnote 13: See Tennyson, _Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After_.]

[Footnote 14: See also H. de Balzac. _Le Cabinet des Antiques_: “En France, ce qu’il y a de plus national, est la vanité. La masse des vanités blessées y a donné soif d’égalité.”]

[Footnote 15: Nature’s failures and society’s failures are not identical. Nature’s failure is frequently a creature below par, he is frequently botched and undesirable. Society’s failure may be an extremely desirable person, to whom modern conditions are so loathsome that he cannot adapt himself to them and become successful. That is why the Eugenists, who are prone to class the unsuccessful of the age with the undesirable, still have a good deal to learn. The unsuccessful now-a-days are certainly the biologically “unfit”; but the question that must be decided before you conclude that they are also “undesirable” is whether present conditions demand desirable or undesirable qualities in those who become successfully adapted to them,--in those, that is to say, who are “fit.”]

[p77] CHAPTER IV

FREEDOM

“Freedom such as God hath given
Unto all beneath His heaven,
With their breath, and from their birth,
Though guilt would sweep it from the earth.”
--Byron (_Poems on Napoleon_).

“Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”--This meaningless, but highly inflammatory statement of Rousseau’s is probably at the root of most of the misunderstanding that prevails to-day in regard to the subject of liberty. Just as people eagerly accept, without a moment’s thought, the lie that men are born equal, so they are only too ready to embrace a doctrine according to which they may lay claim to a sort of primitive, or natural freedom, which has been stolen from them by their rulers, their civilisation, or by invading hordes.

On examination, of course, the proposition “men are born free” proves to be wholly and wildly fantastic.

Freedom implies, one would suppose, the right, the capacity, and the opportunity to choose one course from another, one kind of life from another. But how much can a man really choose?

At birth, for instance, all kinds of conditions are imposed upon the future adult--conditions which are bound to determine the whole of the principal events of his or her [p78] career,--over which there is no possibility of control whatsoever.

It may be assumed, for instance, that a baby might like to choose its nationality and the language that it will speak in later life. Can it do so? It may reasonably be taken for granted that a baby might like to choose its parents, its brothers and sisters, and its other relatives. Can it do so? Its very constitution and health are dependent upon the kind of mother and father it has; its very happiness and success as an adult may depend upon the way in which it is treated as an infant. Has it any choice, any freedom, in regard to any of these matters?

It is not fanciful to suspect that the baby might like to choose its particular form and features, its ultimate height as an adult, etc., etc. The most vital and important issues will hang upon this question of its face and form when it is grown up. But it has no power whatsoever to determine any one of these most vital and important conditions.

An imaginative baby, realising the inexorable fate which hangs over certain gifts, certain endowments, and a particular sex, might regard it as all important to be able to select these freely.

But the rigidity of natural law, the impossibility of controlling any of these matters, ordain that at birth a baby has all its important ultimate characteristics, and therefore all its proclivities, tastes, vices, virtues, and even aspirations settled for it. Its nationality, its language, its parents, its other relatives, its constitution, its degree of beauty, its stature, its physical and mental endowments, its sex,--all these things, upon which the [p79] figure it will ultimately cut in the world most surely depend,--are fixed by an iron necessity which allows of no choice, no preference,--aye, and scarcely any modification either.

If this is freedom, then what does constraint, what does oppression mean?

It may be objected that this is not what Rousseau meant; that Rousseau maintained that man was born free, because in a savage state he would really be free from the conventions, laws, and constraints of civilisation.

This appears convincing enough. The savage is certainly free from the laws and constraints of civilisation, but the savage race has yet to be found that is free from all conventions, laws and constraints, nor is it by any means certain that these obstacles to freedom are the more pleasant for being barbarous instead of civilised.

But even if we suppose that Rousseau’s alleged freedom of babies is a reality, at what point, it may be asked, is it exchanged for bondage?

Most people would reply: when the child goes to school. It is at school that the shackles of civilisation are first fastened on the free infant’s wrists. It is the work that civilisation ultimately holds in store for the child that necessitates his being trained and “educated.”

To this the naturalist and anthropologist might reply: is there now, or has there ever been, a race of men or animals that did not have to undergo some process of training in childhood in order to learn to be efficient adults? [p80]

Of course there neither is, nor ever was any such race.

Iron necessity again precludes the possibility of this alleged freedom even in childhood.

In manhood, again, freedom is purely a will-o’-the-wisp. No man who wishes to continue living is free. He is bound to procure food and clothing for himself even in the cannibal islands. If he have passions, he is bound to find some means of gratifying them. This means shouldering responsibilities; for no community, even of animals, undertakes to rear the fruits of other people’s passions. He cannot even select his calling, for his calling will depend upon his special aptitudes. In fact, the more gifted he is, and the more marked his capabilities, the less will he be able to choose how to earn a living. Only a man of mediocre and insignificant gifts is really free to choose his calling, because he feels no irresistible impulse in a given direction. But these mediocre people who are free to choose their calling, don’t really choose a “calling” at all--the very idea of choosing something to which one is called is absurd--what they choose is a more or less characterless and humdrum means of earning a living, which requires neither very special gifts nor any marked proclivities. To be free to choose what one will be, is always a sign of hopelessly humble tastes and endowments.