Chapter VI: The Practice of Fellowship (2)

America and Great Britain in her dominions and dependencies have to face the logic of their democratic ideals by a sustained resolution to provide the opportunity to their coloured fellow-citizens to reach their own plane of culture. As things are they deny their democratic professions by permitting their race prejudices to consign their coloured fellow-citizens to a condition of permanent social inferiority. If they wish to be democratic in fact and not merely in name, they will need to be true to the implications of their democracy through everything, even through the physical repugnances which the personal habits of backward races are apt to evoke. The colour problem was created for this generation by its forbears—by those who sold and owned slaves and those who established colonies in distant countries. But though the problem is not of our making, we cannot absolve ourselves from the moral responsibility which it lays upon us; and it is only by means of an inveterate good-will that we shall discharge this responsibility. Such a good-will must rest upon the truth—however unpalatable to our prejudices it may be—that the black man whether in New York or in Cape Town is equally with ourselves endowed with the human _differentia_ of personality, and that he is morally entitled to all the rights of life and light and liberty that we claim for personality. With this truth must be accepted the task imposed upon us by our superior advantages (which like our responsibilities we owe to our fathers), to raise the more backward races with whom we live to a plane on which there can be free and enriching fellowship between them and ourselves. We cannot hopefully go on to make the world safe for a principle of common life which our present habits show that we do not believe in at home.

V

However complete and well-organised the provision may be against destitution in any society, it can never prevent the distress which ensues upon the accidents of life, sickness and sorrow, loneliness and old age—these we shall not wholly escape even in our earthly paradise. We may indeed lessen the occasions of sickness and of premature death by a wiser and more scientific ordering of the physical setting of life and of personal habit; but no ingenuity or skill can overcome the inevitable brokenness of life in a world of time. But this very circumstance provides fellowship with the opportunity to do its most perfect work.

And real fellowship will be possible for the simple reason that “charity” will be superfluous. In modern life, the material destitution of large numbers of people has necessitated the organisation of relief on a large scale, both public and private; and while the charitable impulse is intrinsically admirable, the conditions under which it has come to be exercised have in effect widened the gulf between the rich and the poor. On the one hand the rich have contracted the habit of condescending patronage; and the poor have fallen into a habit of cunning obsequiousness. In self-defence the rich have built up a machinery of investigation and distribution which has had three disastrous results: _first_, it has set up the monstrous and unfair test of deservingness,—“the deserving poor” is a phrase in which the well-to-do have forever crystallised their pharisaism; _second_, it has set a premium upon the petty tactics of evasion and deceit among the poor, and upon a corresponding cunning and astuteness in those entrusted with the business of investigation; and _third_, it has eliminated from charity the one element which could make it tolerable and preserve the grace which should properly go with it—namely, friendly contact. For the most part, the relief of destitution through charitable organisations, has—because it eliminates the direct personal touch between need and supply—produced and aggravated a deep and deplorable social schism.

Nor is the case any better with the public organisation of poor relief. The English poor-law has been so completely discredited and is so near dissolution that it is hardly necessary to discuss it here. It is more impersonal in its operations than a charity organisation society; but its most evil consequence is that it has so worked as to attach a stigma to honest poverty—for the person who has received poor-relief is denied the rights of citizenship. Old age has fortunately been provided for in Great Britain in the only worthy way, by a grant of state-pensions, though the actual amount of the pension is pitifully inadequate. Yet the fact of the provision indicates a distinct advance in the sense of public justice. But we shall not make much more progress until we realise that the pauper like the plutocrat is a social product; and that such destitution as prevails to-day is due less to personal perversity than to a vicious social order. No one is so foolishly hopeful as to suppose that even the most radical social change will eliminate the prodigal and the spendthrift and the sensualist. Nevertheless, it is no longer open to question that a revolution in economic conditions would do much to remove the auxiliary causes of pauperising excess.

But the chief evil which attends our method of dealing with poverty is that it has tended to perpetuate a pauper class. Whether in the relief work of religious and charitable societies, or in the administration of public relief, we have been chiefly governed by the fact of an immediate need. We have lived in the fond hope that if the present corner could be turned, something might transpire to save the recipient of relief from another crisis; and not even the obvious fact that the crisis is chronic in the case of multitudes has shaken us out of our preoccupation with symptoms into an investigation of causes. In one of the supplementary reports of the British Poor-Law Commission, it was stated that the investigation of the cases of applicants to whom “out-door” relief was denied (the alternative being to go into the “house”), showed that only in one instance where such persons had been helped by religious organisations was there any attempt to place the person concerned on an independent economic footing. This is symptomatic of the ineptitude of our common thought about the poor. We appear to accept the fact of their dependence as chronic and incurable; and by the process of “doles” we aggravate this dependence and turn it into what we suppose it to be.

This same ineptitude has pursued society in its dealings with another class—the criminal. Criminologists do not nowadays assume the existence of a natural criminal class; but our way of treating criminals has created such a class. Both for the pauper and the criminal we require a new diagnosis. Instead of treating the pauper as an incurable social parasite we should regard him as a personal inefficient; and rather than put a premium upon his inefficiency by a continual gratuitous relief of his necessities, we should impose some discipline which may lead to personal efficiency and an ordered habit of life. As for the criminal, he is a social inefficient; and his treatment should include some provision for his training in the sense and arts of social responsibility. It is a practical recognition of this need that constitutes the contribution which men like Messrs. Thomas Mott Osborne and Homer Lane are making to the solution of a difficult problem. That some plan of temporary segregation is necessary in the treatment of the inefficient—whether personal or social—is not open to question; but the poorhouse and the prison, as we know them, only aggravate the evil which they are intended to cure.

Our increasing attention to the problem of the social misfit at an earlier stage—through the new study and treatment of mentally deficient children—will considerably reduce the proportions both of pauperism and crime. We are a long way from Samuel Butler’s vision of the time when the liar will be sent to hospital and the sick person to jail; nevertheless, the point of Butler’s _extravaganza_ is becoming recognised in the double fact that a good deal of disease is due to preventable causes, the disregard of which is already treated as a legal offence; and that much of the delinquency that prevails originates in pathological conditions rather than in moral depravity. Especially are we on hopeful lines when we take the mentally deficient child and regard him as the subject of medical rather than of legal treatment. And we shall go yet farther when we realise that though we cannot and dare not eliminate the factor of personal responsibility, yet our social misfits are the products of our social disorder, and it is seen that while justice requires that a man shall pay the penalty of his sins, yet the same justice requires that the society which produced the sinner shall feel a corporate responsibility for his restoration. And restoration is indeed the very centre of our problem in dealing with the social misfit. For our task with the pauper and the criminal is that of making each capable of entering freely and vitally into the fellowship of free men.

Yet when we have dealt with the social misfit there will remain, life being what it is, a number of people in every community for whom the burden of life has proved too heavy or whose lives are clouded by sickness or loneliness or death. “The poor,” said Jesus, “ye have always with you.” He did not mean that we need always have physically destitute people with us; He knew better, as we know better. But the smoking flax and the bruised reed we shall ever have with us; and no society can afford to despise a ministry of comfort. Indeed, fellowship will lack its native grace if it fails to produce an unfailing stream of sympathy and consolation to the distressed. Here will be the test of the vitality of our fellowship. For our ideal of fellowship may become hardened in organisation; and personal spontaneity may be lost in a routine habit of life. And to whatever else we may be able to give an organised and official form, it is at least sure that when the ministry of comfort and help loses the touch of personal directness and spontaneity, it is from henceforth a dead and useless thing.

VII

Up to this point we have considered the more general problems of fellowship in the community as a whole; we have still to consider some of the questions raised by the more particular associations which form themselves within the community, and in which by far the largest measure of the community’s vitality resides. F. W. Maitland, in an interesting passage, reviews the endless variety of social forms in which men group themselves together. He speaks of “churches, and even the mediæval church, one and catholic, religious houses and mendicant orders, nonconforming bodies, a presbyterian system, universities, old and new, the village community, which Germanists have revealed to us, the manor in its growth and decay, the township, the New England town, the counties and hundreds, the chartered boroughs, the guild in all its manifold varieties, the Inns of Court, the merchant adventurers, the militant “companies” of English _condottieri_ who, returning home, help to make the word “company” popular among us: the trading companies, the companies that became colonies, the companies that make war, the friendly societies, the Trade Unions, the clubs, the group that meets at Lloyd’s Coffee House, the group that becomes the Stock Exchange, and so on even to the one man company, the Standard Oil Trust, and the South Australian statutes for communistic villages.” The prevailing political philosophy of our time has stated its problem almost wholly in terms of an abstract state over against an abstract individual; and one of the most heartening signs of the invasion of political thought and practice by a more healthy humanism is the growing recognition of these many-coloured nucleations of life. There are important and difficult questions bearing upon their political and legal status, but these are only to be answered by a frank acknowledgment that groupings of this kind come into being because they meet a real need and answer to certain facts of life and human nature. No political philosophy is likely to stand the racket of historical experience which does not stand upon the assumption that these associations have a real and inherent right to form themselves, to exist, to thrive and to multiply; for it is in groups that are voluntarily formed around a living interest that the most significant and important part of our life is lived. To the more direct political implications of this type of association we shall turn at a later point; here we are concerned only to emphasise the need and the right of such bodies to live, and their importance for the preservation of the balance of life, and therefore, of stable social progress. Their real importance may be seen from the circumstance that the struggle for religious liberty in England, which has historically been the spring of civil and political liberty, was a struggle not for the liberty of the individual but of the small voluntarily associated group.

These voluntarily associated groups will form themselves around any interest of sufficient importance; and, as we have seen, they are of the most various character and raise the most various questions concerning their relation to the commonwealth.[35] This is a subject still in the earlier stages of exploration and likely to be of increasing importance for our political and social philosophies, especially as it comes to be recognised that for the most part the groups which are here spoken of represent interests and needs more vital to human nature than the accidental aggregations represented by political states. It may, moreover, be held that the multiplication of such groups within the commonwealth, insomuch as they bear upon real interests of life, is much to be encouraged; and the commonwealth which knows what is good for its people will impose no restrictions upon their power and readiness to form themselves into combinations of this kind. And indeed, however absolute the authority of the state, it cannot prevent the formation of voluntary associations. If it be not permitted to form these associations openly, they will be formed secretly; and the secret society is the undoing of commonwealths.

Footnote 35:

The commonest and the oldest type of freely associated group within
the commonwealth is of course the Church, and on this point the reader
may be referred to the present writer’s book _The Church in the
Commonwealth_.

As a matter of fact, the state has always been apprehensive and suspicious of combinations of any kind within its own bounds and has endeavoured either to repress them or to establish the principle that they exist only on sufferance. But no attempts at repression when they are directed at associations that represent real human concerns have been permanently successful. The repeal in 1824 of the British Acts against combination, intended chiefly to frustrate industrial unions, whether of employers or of workers, is typical of the fate of such legislation. These Acts went against the actual facts of the human situation and naturally proved disastrous. It is in this region of industrial combinations that we have the best modern illustration of the spontaneity and inevitability of voluntary human association. In the Guild period it was broadly true that Capital and Labour being in the same hands had interests which were identical; but when power-driven machinery separated Capital from Labour and lodged them in different hands, and as the rift widened through the operation of _laissez-faire_, and the interests of Capital and Labour became antagonistic, it was natural that the capitalists and the workers should severally combine in defence of their interests. The state prayed a plague on both their houses at that time, being equally afraid of both; later, the state became more complaisant to the powerful owning classes; and looked askance only at the workers’ unions—an attitude which led to a very material strengthening of the latter. This schism of Capital and Labour dominates the present social situation, and it is at this time, even more than the state, the gravest hindrance to the natural activities of social energy. Its disintegrating and antisocial effect is plain far outside the region where the immediate issue lies, and it is questionable whether an organic social life is possible until the antagonism is overcome. Something has been done to mitigate the worst asperities of this unsatisfactory position by welfare work, copartnership, profit-sharing; and still more will be done by the introduction of measures of joint control of the conditions of industry. But the fact still remains that this antithesis and separation of capital and labour is artificial and unnatural, as it is also essentially undemocratic. For power goes with ownership under the conditions imposed by the current doctrine of property; and concessions and benefits which are granted as from the voluntary bounty of the employer (however worldly wise they actually are in their intention) involve an assumption of patronage which the present temper of the workers makes entirely unreal and obsolete. The danger of social disruption lies in this quarter; and so long as the present tension remains, it tends to retard the free and varied expressions of fellowship in which a living society should abound. Society divided into two camps, with interests radically divergent, is condemned to a state of tension which is hostile to the free ferment of association natural to men; and this despite all well-meaning efforts to reconcile the conflicting interests by compromises which leave the framework of the schism untouched. So that we have come to this—that it is not only the traditional attitude of the state which is hostile to the free efflorescence of social groups but the actual condition of society under the present industrial system. A state of war, even of suppressed war, makes for a forced fellowship of partisans, and not for the free fellowship of partners. It is in the interests of the genuine socialisation of life that it is demanded that this social schism of capital and labour should be overcome; and there is but one way of overcoming it, namely the logical democratic way of putting the capital and the power it wields in the hands of those who labour. Towards this goal the first step has been taken in the movement toward democratic control in industry; and from this it is inevitable that the worker should proceed to demand control not only of production, but, as Mr. Cole says, also of the product, its sale and exchange; and, finally of investments. The free variegated expression and embodiment of the natural society-forming instincts of mankind are not possible in a community where one class is in a position to impose its will upon another. A state of conflict tends inevitably to a kind of flattening regimentation within the conflicting bodies; and regimentation whether deliberate or unconscious is an obstruction to the free flow of life. There is all the difference in the world between an organised society and a society that is essentially organic. An organised society makes for uniformity; an organic society will express itself in an endless number and variety of social forms.

If the state only knew it, its security lies in the encouragement of voluntary associations of all types; and even if it finds it difficult to rise to the plane of encouragement, it should at least achieve an attitude of toleration. For it is the only safeguard against the inevitable conflict of loyalties which is bound to arise when the state attempts to legislate for individuals in matters which touch the question of moral obligation. Indeed, during the war, we have seen the state in a somewhat lame and half-hearted way endeavouring to escape some of the consequences of its own legislation by having recourse to a recognition of the small group. It was bound by the sheer nature of the falls to acknowledge the existence of conscientious objection to war; and it proposed to acknowledge the genuineness of an individual conscientious objection to war if the person in question was a member of a religious society, the doctrines of which contained a testimony against war. It was assumed that if a man belonged to the Society of Friends, it constituted respectable evidence that his objection to participation in war was sincere. In this particular case, the test proved hopelessly inadequate; but it does at least indicate the condition under which the unity of the state can best be preserved. It is plainly impossible for the state to avoid conflict with the individual conscience so long as it lacks the means of determining whether a conscientious scruple is merely a personal idiosyncrasy or arises from a reasoned and socially authenticated view of life. By recognising the right of the members of a small group which has demonstrated its social worth to live their life out in their own way, it saves itself from a dangerous conflict with the individual conscience; while, on the other hand, as the individual conscience is safe-guarded from an anarchic eccentricity by the discipline of a freely chosen social environment, the state has the assurance that it is dealing with a genuine manifestation of moral life which must at all costs be respected. The small voluntary associated group is the saving middle term between the state and the individual. It is not likely, of course, that it will prove efficacious without exception in solving the problems involved in the relations of the individual and the state; but it would do much to mitigate the dangerous possibilities of the present practice.[36]

Footnote 36:

This chapter pretends to do no more than discuss at large those
questions of fellowship which directly abut upon the public affairs of
democracies. The promotion of fellowship in general opens up a large
range of subjects which would not fall easily within the scope of this
book.

No discussion of the practice of fellowship can, for instance, be
complete which does not take account of the actual and potential
social ministry of play and recreation. But this matter involves
questions with which the present writer is without competency to deal.
It would require an extended treatment of the social reactions of
sport, amateur and professional, the revival of folk-dancing and the
maypole, the multiplication of play-centres for children and of open
spaces; of the drama and the public provision of music—and of other
matters. The subject is large and important enough for systematic
discussion in a separate volume by someone capable of handling it.

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