Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays
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Thomas H. Huxley >> Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays
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The practical and pressing question for us, just now, seems to me to be
how to gain time. "Time brings counsel," as the Teutonic proverb has
it; and wiser folk among our posterity may see their way out of that
which at present looks like an impasse.
It would be folly to entertain any ill-feeling towards those neighbours
and rivals who, like ourselves, are slaves of Istar; but, if somebody
is to be starved, the modern world has no Oracle of Delphi to which
the nations can appeal for an [213] indication of the victim. It is
open to us to try our fortune; and, if we avoid impending fate, there
will be a certain ground for believing that we are the right people to
escape. Securus judicat orbis.
* [It is hard to say whether the increase of the unemployed
poor, or that of the unemployed rich, is the greater social
evil. -- 1894]
To this end, it is well to look into the necessary condition of our
salvation by works. They are two, one plain to all the world and
hardly needing insistence; the other seemingly not so plain, since too
often it has been theoretically and practically left out of sight. The
obvious condition is that our produce shall be better than that of
others. There is only one reason why our goods should be preferred to
those of our rivals--our customers must find them better at the price.
That means that we must use more knowledge, skill, and industry in
producing them, without a proportionate increase in the cost of
production; and, as the price of labour constitutes a large element in
that cost, the rate of wages must be restricted within certain limits.
It is perfectly true that cheap production and cheap labour are by no
means synonymous; but it is also true that wages cannot increase
beyond a certain proportion without destroying cheapness. Cheapness,
then, with, as part and parcel of cheapness, a moderate price of
labour, is essential to our success as competitors in the markets of
the world.
The second condition is really quite as plainly indispensable as the
first, if one thinks seriously [214] about the matter. It is social
stability. Society is stable, when the wants of its members obtain as
much satisfaction as, life being what it is, common sense and
experience show may be reasonably expected. Mankind, in general, care
very little for forms of government or ideal considerations of any
sort; and nothing really stirs the great multitude to break with
custom and incur the manifest perils of revolt except the belief that
misery in this world, or damnation in the next, or both, are
threatened by the continuance of the state of things in which they
have been brought up. But when they do attain that conviction, society
becomes as unstable as a package of dynamite, and a very small matter
will produce the explosion which sends it back to the chaos of
savagery.
It needs no argument to prove that when the price of labour sinks below
a certain point, the worker infallibly falls into that condition which
the French emphatically call la misere--a word for which I do not
think there is any exact English equivalent. It is a condition in
which the food, warmth, and clothing which are necessary for the mere
maintenance of the functions of the body in their normal state cannot
be obtained; in which men, women, and children are forced to crowd
into dens wherein decency is abolished and the most ordinary
conditions of healthful existence are impossible of attainment; in
which the [215] pleasures within reach are reduced to bestiality and
drunkenness; in which the pains accumulate at compound interest, in
the shape of starvation, disease, stunted development, and moral
degradation; in which the prospect of even steady and honest industry
is a life of unsuccessful battling with hunger, rounded by a pauper's
grave.
That a certain proportion of the members of every great aggregation of
mankind should constantly tend to establish and populate such a Slough
of Despond as this is inevitable, so long as some people are by nature
idle and vicious, while others are disabled by sickness or accident,
or thrown upon the world by the death of their bread-winners. So long
as that proportion is restricted within tolerable limits, it can be
dealt with; and, so far as it arises only from such causes, its
existence may and must be patiently borne. But, when the organization
of society, instead of mitigating this tendency, tends to continue and
intensify it; when a given social order plainly makes for evil and not
for good, men naturally enough begin to think it high time to try a
fresh experiment. The animal man, finding that the ethical man has
landed him in such a slough, resumes his ancient sovereignty, and
preaches anarchy; which is, substantially, a proposal to reduce the
social cosmos to chaos, and begin the brute struggle for existence
once again.
Any one who is acquainted with the state of [216] the population of
all great industrial centres, whether in this or other countries, is
aware that, amidst a large and increasing body of that population, la
misere reigns supreme. I have no pretensions to the character of a
philanthropist, and I have a special horror of all sorts of
sentimental rhetoric; I am merely trying to deal with facts, to some
extent within my own knowledge, and further evidenced by abundant
testimony, as a naturalist; and I take it to be a mere plain truth
that, throughout industrial Europe, there is not a single large
manufacturing city which is free from a vast mass of people whose
condition is exactly that described; and from a still greater mass
who, living just on the edge of the social swamp, are liable to be
precipitated into it by any lack of demand for their produce. And,
with every addition to the population, the multitude already sunk in
the pit and the number of the host sliding towards it continually
increase.
Argumentation can hardly be needful to make it clear that no society
in which the elements of decomposition are thus swiftly and surely
accumulating can hope to win in the race of industries.
Intelligence, knowledge, and skill are undoubtedly conditions of
success; but of what avail are they likely to be unless they are
backed up by honesty, energy, goodwill, and all the physical and moral
faculties that go to the making of manhood, and unless they are
stimulated by hope of such [217] reward as men may fairly look to? And
what dweller in the slough of want, dwarfed in body and soul,
demoralized, hopeless, can reasonably be expected to possess these
qualities?
Any full and permanent development of the productive powers of an
industrial population, then, must be compatible with and, indeed,
based upon a social organization which will secure a fair amount of
physical and moral welfare to that population; which will make for
good and not for evil. Natural science and religious enthusiasm rarely
go hand in hand, but on this matter their concord is complete; and the
least sympathetic of naturalists can but admire the insight and the
devotion of such social reformers as the late Lord Shaftesbury, whose
recently published "Life and Letters" gives a vivid picture of the
condition of the working classes fifty years ago, and of the pit which
our industry, ignoring these plain truths, was then digging under its
own feet.
There is, perhaps, no more hopeful sign of progress among us, in the
last half-century, than the steadily increasing devotion which has
been and is directed to measures for promoting physical and moral
welfare among the poorer classes. Sanitary reformers, like most other
reformers whom I have had the advantage of knowing, seem to need a
good dose of fanaticism, as a sort of moral coca, to keep them up to
the mark, and, doubtless, they have made many mistakes; but that the
[218] endeavour to improve the condition under our industrial
population live, to amend the drainage of densely peopled streets, to
provide baths, washhouses, and gymnasia, to facilitate habits of
thrift, to furnish some provision for instruction and amusement in
public libraries and the like, is not only desirable from a
philanthropic point of view, but an essential condition of safe
industrial development, appears to me to be indisputable. It is by
such means alone, so far as I can see, that we can hope to check the
constant gravitation of industrial society towards la misere, until
the general progress of intelligence and morality leads men to grapple
with the sources of that tendency. If it is said that the carrying out
of such arrangements as those indicated must enhance the cost of
production, and thus handicap the producer in the race of competition,
I venture, in the first place, to doubt the fact; but if it be so, it
results that industrial society has to face a dilemma, either
alternative of which threatens destruction.
On the one hand, a population the labour of which is sufficiently
remunerated may be physically and morally healthy and socially stable,
but may fail in industrial competition by reason of the dearness of
its produce. On the other hand, a population the labour of which is
insufficiently remunerated must become physically and morally
unhealthy, and socially unstable; and though it [219] may succeed for
a while in industrial competition, by reason of the cheapness of its
produce, it must in the end fall, through hideous misery and
degradation, to utter ruin.
Well, if these are the only possible alternatives, let us for ourselves
and our children choose the former, and, if need be, starve like men.
But I do not believe that the stable society made up of healthy,
vigorous, instructed, and self-ruling people would ever incur serious
risk of that fate. They are not likely to be troubled with many
competitors of the same character, just yet; and they may be safely
trusted to find ways of holding their own.
Assuming that the physical and moral well-being and the stable social
order, which are the indispensable conditions of permanent industrial
development, are secured, there remains for consideration the means of
attaining that knowledge and skill without which, even then, the
battle of competition cannot be successfully fought. Let us consider
how we stand. A vast system of elementary education has now been in
operation among us for sixteen years, and has reached all but a very
small fraction of the population. I do not think that there is any
room for doubt that, on the whole, it has worked well, and that its
indirect no less than its direct benefits have been immense. But, as
might be expected, it exhibits the defects of all our educational
systems--fashioned [220] as they were to meet the wants of a bygone
condition of society. There is a widespread and, I think,
well-justified complaint that it has too much to do with books and too
little to do with things. I am as little disposed as any one can well
be to narrow early education and to make the primary school a mere
annexe of the shop. And it is not so much in the interests of
industry, as in that of breadth of culture, that I echo the common
complaint against the bookish and theoretical character of our primary
instruction.
If there were no such things as industrial pursuits, a system of
education which does nothing for the faculties of observation, which
trains neither the eye nor the hand, and is compatible with utter
ignorance of the commonest natural truths, might still be reasonably
regarded as strangely imperfect. And when we consider that the
instruction and training which are lacking are exactly; those which
are of most importance for the great mass of our population, the fault
becomes almost a crime, the more that there is no practical difficulty
in making good these defects. There really is no reason why drawing
should not be universally taught, and it is an admirable training for
both eye and hand. Artists are born, not made; but everybody may be
taught to draw elevations, plans, and sections; and pots and pans are
as good, indeed better, models for [221] this purpose than the Apollo
Belvedere. The plant is not expensive; and there is this excellent
quality about drawing of the kind indicated, that it can be tested
almost as easily and severely as arithmetic. Such drawings are either
right or wrong, and if they are wrong the pupil can be made to see
that they are wrong. From the industrial point of view, drawing has
the further merit that there is hardly any trade in which the power of
drawing is not of daily and hourly utility. In the next place, no
good reason, except the want of capable teachers, can be assigned why
elementary notions of science should not be an element in general
instruction. In this case, again, no expensive or elaborate apparatus
is necessary. The commonest thing--a candle, a boy's squirt, a piece
of chalk--in the hands of a teacher who knows his business, may be
made the starting-point whence children may be led into the regions of
science as far as their capacity permits, with efficient exercise of
their observational and reasoning faculties on the road. If object
lessons often prove trivial failures, it is not the fault of object
lessons, but that of the teacher, who has not found out how much the
power of teaching a little depends on knowing a great deal, and that
thoroughly; and that he has not made that discovery is not the fault
of the teachers, but of the detestable system of training them which
is widely prevalent.*
* Training in the use of simple tools is no doubt desirable,
on all grounds. From the point of view of "culture," the
man whose "fingers are all thumbs" is but a stunted
creature. But the practical difficulties in the way of
introducing handiwork of this kind into elementary schools
appear to me to be considerable.
[222] As I have said, I do not regard the proposal to add these to the
present subjects of universal instruction as made merely in the
interests of industry. Elementary science and drawing are just as
needful at Eton (where I am happy to say both are now parts of the
regular course) as in the lowest primary school. But their importance
in the education of the artisan is enhanced, not merely by the fact
that the knowledge and skill thus gained--little as they may amount
to--will still be of practical utility to him; but, further, because
they constitute an introduction to that special training which is
commonly called "technical education."
I conceive that our wants in this last direction may be grouped under
three heads: (1) Instruction in the principles of those branches of
science and of art which are peculiarly applicable to industrial
pursuits, which may be called preliminary scientific education. (2)
Instruction in the special branches of such applied science and art,
as technical education proper. (3) Instruction of teachers in both
these branches. (4) Capacity-catching machinery.
A great deal has already been done in each of these directions, but
much remains to be done. If elementary education is amended in the way
[223] that has been suggested, I think that the school boards will
have quite as much on their hands as they are capable of doing well.
The influences under which the members of these bodies are elected do
not tend to secure fitness for dealing with scientific or technical
education; and it is the less necessary to burden them with an
uncongenial task as there are other organizations, not only much
better fitted to do the work, but already actually doing it.
In the matter of preliminary scientific education, the chief of these
is the Science and Art Department, which has done more during the last
quarter of a century for the teaching of elementary science among the
masses of the people than any organization which exists either in this
or in any other country. It has become veritably a people's
university, so far as physical science is concerned. At the foundation
of our old universities they were freely open to the poorest, but the
poorest must come to them. In the last quarter of a century, the
Science and Art Department, by means of its classes spread all over
the country and open to all, has conveyed instruction to the poorest.
The University Extension movement shows that our older learned
corporations have discovered the propriety of following suit.
Technical education, in the strict sense, has become a necessity for
two reasons. The old apprenticeship system has broken down, partly by
[224] reason of the changed conditions of industrial life, and partly
because trades have ceased to be "crafts," the traditional secrets
whereof the master handed down to his apprentices. Invention is
constantly changing the face of our industries, so that "use and
wont," "rule of thumb," and the like, are gradually losing their
importance, while that knowledge of principles which alone can deal
successfully with changed conditions is becoming more and more
valuable. Socially, the "master" of four or five apprentices is
disappearing in favour of the "employer" of forty, or four hundred, or
four thousand, "hands," and the odds and ends of technical knowledge,
formerly picked up in a shop, are not, and cannot be, supplied in the
factory. The instruction formerly given by the master must therefore
be more than replaced by the systematic teaching of the technical
school.
Institutions of this kind on varying scales of magnitude and
completeness, from the splendid edifice set up by the City and Guilds
Institute to the smallest local technical school, to say nothing of
classes, such as those in technology instituted by the Society of Arts
(subsequently taken over by the City Guilds), have been established in
various parts of the country, and the movement in favour of their
increase and multiplication is rapidly growing in breadth and
intensity. But there is much difference of opinion as to the best
[225] way in which the technical instruction, so generally desired,
should be given. Two courses appear to be practicable: the one is the
establishment of special technical schools with a systematic and
lengthened course of instruction demanding the employment of the whole
time of the pupils. The other is the setting afoot of technical
classes, especially evening classes, comprising a short series of
lessons on some special topic, which may be attended by persons
already earning wages in some branch of trade or commerce.
There is no doubt that technical schools, on the plan indicated under
the first head, are extremely costly; and, so far as the teaching of
artisans is concerned, it is very commonly objected to them that, as
the learners do not work under trade conditions, they are apt to fall
into amateurish habits, which prove of more hindrance than service in
the actual business of life. When such schools are attached to
factories under the direction of an employer who desires to train up a
supply of intelligent workmen, of course this objection does not
apply; nor can the usefulness of such schools for the training of
future employers and for the higher grade of the employed be doubtful;
but they are clearly out of the reach of the great mass of the people,
who have to earn their bread as soon as possible. We must therefore
look to the classes, and especially to evening classes, as the great
instrument for the technical [226] education of the artisan. The
utility of such classes has now been placed beyond all doubt; the only
question which remains is to find the ways and means of extending
them.
We are here, as in all other questions of social organization, met by
two diametrically opposed views. On the one hand, the methods pursued
in foreign countries are held up as our example. The State is exhorted
to take the matter in hand and establish a great system of technical
education. On the other hand, many economists of the individualist
school exhaust the resources of language in condemning and
repudiating, not merely the interference of the general government in
such matters, but the application of a farthing of the funds raised by
local taxation to these purposes. I entertain a strong conviction
that, in this country, at any rate, the State had much better leave
purely technical and trade instruction alone. But, although my
personal leanings are decidedly towards the individualists, I have
arrived at that conclusion on merely practical grounds. In fact, my
individualism is rather of a sentimental sort, and I sometimes think I
should be stronger in the faith if it were less vehemently advocated.*
I am unable to see that civil society is anything but a corporation
established [227] for a moral object only--namely, the good of its
members--and therefore that it may take such measures as seem fitting
for the attainment of that which the general voice decides to be the
general good. That the suffrage of the majority is by no means a
scientific test of social good and evil is unfortunately too true;
but, in practice, it is the only test we can apply, and the refusal to
abide by it means anarchy. The purest despotism that ever existed is
as much based upon that will of the majority (which is usually
submission to the will of a small minority) as the freest republic.
Law is the expression of the opinion of the majority; and it is law,
and not mere opinion, because the many are strong enough to enforce
it.
* In what follows I am only repeating and emphasizing
opinions which I expressed seventeen years ago, in an
Address to the members of the Midland Institute
(republished in Critiques and Addresses in 1873, and in Vol.
I. of these Essays ). I have seen no reason to modify them,
notwithstanding high authority on the other side.
I am as strongly convinced as the most pronounced individualist can be,
that it is desirable that every man should be free to act in every way
which does not limit the corresponding freedom of his fellow-man. But
I fail to connect that great induction of political science with the
practical corollary which is frequently drawn from it: that the
State--that is, the people in their corporate capacity--has no
business to meddle with anything but the administration of justice and
external defence. It appears to me that the [228] amount of freedom
which incorporate society may fitly leave to its members is not a
fixed quantity, to be determined a priori by deduction from the
fiction called "natural rights"; but that it must be determined by,
and vary with, circumstances. I conceive it to be demonstrable that
the higher and the more complex the organization of the social body,
the more closely is the life of each member bound up with that of the
whole; and the larger becomes the category of acts which cease to be
merely self-regarding, and which interfere with the freedom of others
more or less seriously.
If a squatter, living ten miles away from any neighbour, chooses to
burn his house down to get rid of vermin, there may be no necessity
(in the absence of insurance offices) that the law should interfere
with his freedom of action; his act can hurt nobody but himself. But,
if the dweller in a street chooses to do the same thing, the State
very properly makes such a proceeding a crime, and punishes it as
such. He does meddle with his neighbour's freedom, and that seriously.
So it might, perhaps, be a tenable doctrine, that it would be
needless, and even tyrannous, to make education compulsory in a sparse
agricultural population, living in abundance on the produce of its own
soil; but, in a densely populated manufacturing country, struggling
for existence with competitors, every ignorant person tends to [229]
become a burden upon, and, so far, an infringer of the liberty of, his
fellows, and an obstacle to their success. Under such circumstances an
education rate is, in fact, a war tax, levied for purposes of defence.
That State action always has been more or less misdirected, and always
will be so, is, I believe, perfectly true. But I am not aware that it
is more true of the action of men in their corporate capacity than it
is of the doings of individuals. The wisest and most dispassionate man
in existence, merely wishing to go from one stile in a field to the
opposite, will not walk quite straight--he is always going a little
wrong, and always correcting himself; and I can only congratulate the
individualist who is able to say that his general course of life has
been of a less undulatory character. To abolish State action, because
its direction is never more than approximately correct, appears to me
to be much the same thing as abolishing the man at the wheel
altogether, because, do what he will, the ship yaws more or less. "Why
should I be robbed of my property to pay for teaching another man's
children?" is an individualist question, which is not unfrequently put
as if it settled the whole business. Perhaps it does, but I find
difficulties in seeing why it should. The parish in which I live makes
me pay my share for the paving and lighting of a great many streets
that I never pass through; [230] and I might plead that I am robbed to
smooth the way and lighten the darkness of other people. But I am
afraid the parochial authorities would not let me off on this plea;
and I must confess I do not see why they should.
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