Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays

T >> Thomas H. Huxley >> Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays

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I cannot speak of my own knowledge, but I have every reason to believe
that I came into this world a small reddish person, certainly without
a gold spoon in my mouth, and in fact with no discernible abstract or
concrete "rights" or property of any description. If a foot was not
set upon me, at once, as a squalling nuisance, it was either the
natural affection of those about me, which I certainly had done
nothing to deserve, or the fear of the law which, ages before my
birth, was painfully built up by the society into which I intruded,
that prevented that catastrophe. If I was nourished, cared for,
taught, saved from the vagabondage of a wastrel, I certainly am not
aware that I did anything to deserve those advantages. And, if I
possess anything now, it strikes me that, though I may have fairly
earned my day's wages for my day's work, and may justly call them my
property--yet, without that organization of society, created out of
the toil and blood of long generations before my time, I should
probably have had nothing but a flint axe and an indifferent hut to
call my own; and even those would be mine only so long as no stronger
savage came my way.

So that if society, having, quite gratuitously, [231] done all these
things for me, asks me in turn to do something towards its
preservation--even if that something is to contribute to the teaching
of other men's children--I really in spite of all my individualist
leanings, feel rather ashamed to say no. And if I were not ashamed, I
cannot say that I think that society would be dealing unjustly with me
in converting the moral obligation into a legal one. There is a
manifest unfairness in letting all the burden be borne by the willing
horse.

It does not appear to me, then, that there is any valid objection to
taxation for purposes of education; but, in the case of technical
schools and classes, I think it is practically expedient that such a
taxation should be local. Our industrial population accumulates in
particular towns and districts; these districts are those which
immediately profit by technical education; and it is only in them that
we can find the men practically engaged in industries, among whom some
may reasonably be expected to be competent judges of that which is
wanted, and of the best means of meeting the want.

In my belief, all methods of technical training are at present
tentative, and, to be successful, each must be adapted to the special
peculiarities of its locality. This is a case in which we want twenty
years, not of "strong government," but of cheerful and hopeful
blundering; and we may be [232] thankful if we get things straight in
that time.

The principle of the Bill introduced, but dropped, by the Government
last session, appears to me to be wise, and some of the objections to
it I think are due to a misunderstanding. The bill proposed in
substance to allow localities to tax themselves for purposes of
technical education--on the condition that any scheme for such purpose
should be submitted to the Science and Art Department, and declared by
that department to be in accordance with the intention of the
Legislature.

A cry was raised that the Bill proposed to throw technical education
into the hands of the Science and Art Department. But, in reality, no
power of initiation, nor even of meddling with details, was given to
that Department--the sole function of which was to decide whether any
plan proposed did or did not come within the limits of "technical
education." The necessity for such control, somewhere, is obvious. No
legislature, certainly not ours, is likely to grant the power of
self-taxation without setting limits to that power in some way; and it
would neither have been practicable to devise a legal definition of
technical education, nor commendable to leave the question to the
Auditor-General, to be fought out in the law-courts. The only
alternative was to leave the decision to an appropriate State
authority. If it is [233] asked what is the need of such control if
the people of the localities are the best judges, the obvious reply is
that there are localities and localities, and that while Manchester,
or Liverpool, or Birmingham, or Glasgow might, perhaps, be safely left
to do as they thought fit, smaller towns, in which there is less
certainty of full discussion by competent people of different ways of
thinking, might easily fall a prey to crocheteers.

Supposing our intermediate science teaching and our technical schools
and classes are established, there is yet a third need to be supplied,
and that is the want of good teachers. And it is necessary not only to
get them, but to keep them when you have got them.

It is impossible to insist too strongly upon the fact that the
efficient teachers of science and of technology are not to be made by
the processes in vogue at ordinary training colleges. The memory
loaded with mere bookwork is not the thing wanted--is, in fact, rather
worse than useless--in the teacher of scientific subjects. It is
absolutely essential that his mind should be full of knowledge and not
of mere learning, and that what he knows should have been learned in
the laboratory rather than in the library. There are happily already,
both in London and in the provinces, various places in which such
training is to be had, and the main thing at present is to make it in
the first place accessible, and in the next [234] indispensable, to
those who undertake the business of teaching. But when the well-trained
men are supplied, it must be recollected that the profession of
teacher is not a very lucrative or otherwise tempting one, and that it
may be advisable to offer special inducements to good men to remain in
it. These, however, are questions of detail into which it is
unnecessary to enter further.

Last, but not least, comes the question of providing the machinery for
enabling those who are by nature specially qualified to undertake the
higher branches of industrial work, to reach the position in which
they may render that service to the community. If all our educational
expenditure did nothing but pick one man of scientific or inventive
genius, each year, from amidst the hewers of wood and drawers of
water, and give him the chance of making the best of his inborn
faculties, it would be a very good investment. If there is one such
child among the hundreds of thousands of our annual increase, it would
be worth any money to drag him either from the slough of misery, or
from the hotbed of wealth, and teach him to devote himself to the
service of his people. Here, again, we have made a beginning with our
scholarships and the like, and need only follow in the tracks already
worn.

The programme of industrial development briefly set forth in the
preceding pages is not what Kant calls a "Hirngespinnst," a cobweb
[235] spun in the brain of a Utopian philosopher. More or less of it
has taken bodily shape in many parts of the country, and there are
towns of no great size or wealth in the manufacturing districts
(Keighley, for example) in which almost the whole of it has, for some
time, been carried out, so far as the means at the disposal of the
energetic and public-spirited men who have taken the matter in hand
permitted. The thing can be done; I have endeavoured to show good
grounds for the belief that it must be done, and that speedily, if we
wish to hold our own in the war of industry. I doubt not that it will
be done, whenever its absolute necessity becomes as apparent to all
those who are absorbed in the actual business of industrial life as it
is to some of the lookers on.

Perhaps it is necessary for me to add that technical education is not
here proposed as a panacea for social diseases, but simply as a
medicament which will help the patient to pass through an imminent
crisis.

An ophthalmic surgeon may recommend an operation for cataract in a man
who is going blind, without being supposed to undertake that it will
cure him of gout. And I may pursue the metaphor so far as to remark,
that the surgeon is justified in pointing out that a diet of
pork-chops and burgundy will probably kill his patient, though he may
be quite able to suggest a mode of living [236] which will free him
from his constitutional disorder.

Mr. Booth asks me, Why do you not propose some plan of your own?
Really, that is no answer to my argument that his treatment will make
the patient very much worse. [Note added in Social Diseases and Worse
Remedies, January, 1891.]

[237]

LETTERS TO THE "Times"

ON THE

"DARKEST ENGLAND SCHEME."

I.

The "Times," December 1st, 1890

SIR: A short time ago a generous and philanthropic friend wrote to me,
placing at my disposal a large sum of money for the furtherance of the
vast scheme which the "General" of the Salvation Army has propounded,
if I thought it worthy of support. The responsibility of advising my
benevolent correspondent has weighed heavily upon me, but I felt that
it would be cowardly, as well as ungracious, to refuse to accept it. I
have therefore studied Mr. Booth's book with some care, for the
purpose of separating the essential from the accessory features of his
project, and I have based my judgment--I am sorry to say an
unfavourable one--upon the data thus obtained. Before communicating my
conclusions to my friend, however, I am desirous to know what there
may be to be said in arrest of that judgment; [238] and the matter is
of such vast public importance that I trust you will aid me by
publishing this letter, notwithstanding its length.

There are one or two points upon which I imagine all thinking men have
arrived at the same convictions as those from which Mr. Booth starts.
It is certain that there is an immense amount of remediable misery
among us, that, in addition to the poverty, disease, and degradation
which are the consequences of causes beyond human control, there is a
vast, probably a very much larger, quantity of misery which is the
result of individual ignorance, or misconduct, and of faulty social
arrangements. Further, I think it is not to be doubted that, unless
this remediable misery is effectually dealt with, the hordes of vice
and pauperism will destroy modern civilization as effectually as
uncivilized tribes of another kind destroyed the great social
organization which preceded ours. Moreover, I think all will agree
that no reforms and improvements will go to the root of the evil
unless they attack it in its ultimate source--namely, the motives of
the individual man. Honest, industrious, and self-restraining men will
make a very bad social organization prosper; while vicious, idle, and
reckless citizens will bring to ruin the best that ever was, or ever
will be, invented.

The leading propositions which are peculiar to Mr. Booth I take to be
these:--

[239] (1) That the only adequate means to such reformation of the
individual man is the adoption of that form of somewhat corybantic
Christianity of which the soldiers of the Salvation Army are the
militant missionaries. This implies the belief that the excitement of
the religious emotions (largely by processes described by their
employers as "rousing" and "convivial") is a desirable and trustworthy
method of permanently amending the conduct of mankind.

I demur to these propositions. I am of opinion that the testimony of
history, no less than the cool observation of that which lies within
the personal experience of many of us, is wholly adverse to it.

(2) That the appropriate instrument for the propagation and
maintenance of this peculiar sacramental enthusiasm is the Salvation
Army--a body of devotees, drilled and disciplined as a military
organization, and provided with a numerous hierarchy of officers,
every one of whom is pledged to blind and unhesitating obedience to
the "General," who frankly tells us that the first condition of the
service is "implicit, unquestioning obedience." "A telegram from me
will send any of them to the uttermost parts of the earth"; every one
"has taken service on the express condition that he or she will obey,
without questioning, or gainsaying, the orders from headquarters"
("Darkest England," p. 243).

[240] This proposition seems to me to be indisputable. History confirms
it. Francis of Assisi and Ignatius Loyola made their great
experiments on the same principle. Nothing is more certain than that a
body of religious enthusiasts (perhaps we may even say fanatics)
pledged to blind obedience to their chief, is one of the most
efficient instruments for effecting any purpose that the wit of man
has yet succeeded in devising. And I can but admire the insight into
human nature which has led Mr. Booth to leave his unquestioning and
unhesitating instruments unbound by vows. A volunteer slave is worth
ten sworn bondsmen.

(3) That the success of the Salvation Army, with its present force
of 9416 officers "wholly engaged in the work," its capital of three
quarters of a million, its income of the same amount, its 1375 corps
at home, and 1499 in the colonies and foreign countries (Appendix, pp.
3 and 4), is a proof that Divine assistance has been vouchsafed to its
efforts.

Here I am not able to agree with the sanguine Commander-in-chief of
the new model, whose labours in creating it have probably interfered
with his acquisition of information respecting the fate of previous
enterprises of like kind.

It does not appear to me that his success is in any degree more
remarkable than that of Francis of Assisi or that of Ignatius Loyola,
than that [241] of George Fox, or even than that of the Mormons, in
our own time. When I observe the discrepancies of the doctrinal
foundations from which each of these great movements set out, I find
it difficult to suppose that supernatural aid has been given to all of
them; still more, that Mr. Booth's smaller measure of success is
evidence that it has been granted to him.

But what became of the Franciscan experiment?* If there was one rule
rather than another on which the founder laid stress, it was that his
army of friars should be absolute mendicants, keeping themselves
sternly apart from all worldly entanglements. Yet, even before the
death of Francis, in 1226, a strong party, headed by Elias of Cortona,
the deputy of his own appointment, began to hanker after these very
things; and, within thirty years of that time, the Franciscans had
become one of the most powerful, wealthy, and worldly corporations in
Christendom, with their fingers in every sink of political and social
corruption, if so be profit for the order could be fished out of it;
their principal interest being to fight their rivals, the Dominicans,
and to persecute such of their own brethren as were honest enough to
try to carry out their founder's plainest injunctions. We also know
what has become of Loyola's experiment. For two centuries the Jesuits
have been the hope of the enemies of the Papacy; whenever it becomes
too prosperous, they are sure to bring about a catastrophe by their
corrupt use of the political and social influence which their
organization and their wealth secure.

* See note pp. 245-247]

[242] With these examples of that which may happen to institutions
founded by noble men, with high aims, in the hands of successors of a
different stamp, armed with despotic authority, before me, common
prudence surely requires that, before advising the handing over of a
large sum of money to the general of a new order of mendicants, I
should ask what guarantee there is that, thirty years hence, the
"General" who then autocratically controls the action, say, of 100,000
officers pledged to blind obedience, distributed through the whole
length and breadth of the poorer classes, and each with his finger on
the trigger of a mine charged with discontent and religious
fanaticism; with the absolute control, say, of eight or ten millions
sterling of capital and as many of income; with barracks in every town,
with estates scattered over the country, and with settlements in the
colonies--will exercise his enormous powers, not merely honestly, but
wisely? What shadow of security is there that the person who wields
this uncontrolled authority over many thousands of men shall use it
solely for those philanthropic and religious objects which, I do not
doubt, are alone in the mind of Mr. Booth? Who is to say that the
Salvation Army, in the year [243] 1920, shall not be a replica of what
the Franciscan order had become in the year 1260?

The personal character and the intentions of the founders of such
organizations as we are considering count for very little in the
formation of a forecast of their future; and if they did, it is no
disrespect to Mr. Booth to say that he is not the peer of Francis of
Assisi. But if Francis's judgment of men was so imperfect as to permit
him to appoint an ambitious intriguer of the stamp of Brother Elias
his deputy, we have no right to be sanguine about the perspicacity of
Mr. Booth in a like matter.

Adding to all these considerations the fact that Mr. Llewelyn Davies,
the warmth of whose philanthropy is beyond question, and in whose
competency and fairness I, for one, place implicit reliance, flatly
denies the boasted success of the Salvation Army in its professed
mission, I have arrived at the conclusion that, as at present advised,
I cannot be the instrument of carrying out my friend's proposal.

Mr. Booth has pithily characterized certain benevolent schemes as
doing sixpennyworth of good and a shilling's worth of harm. I grieve
to say that, in my opinion, the definition exactly fits his own
project. Few social evils are of greater magnitude than uninstructed
and unchastened religious fanaticism; no personal habit more surely
degrades the conscience and the intellect than [244] blind and
unhesitating obedience to unlimited authority. Undoubtedly, harlotry
and intemperance are sore evils, and starvation is hard to bear, or
even to know of; but the prostitution of the mind, the soddening of
the conscience, the dwarfing of manhood are worse calamities. It is a
greater evil to have the intellect of a nation put down by organized
fanaticism; to see its political and industrial affairs at the mercy
of a despot whose chief thought is to make that fanaticism prevail; to
watch the degradation of men, who should feel themselves individually
responsible for their own and their country's fates, to mere brute
instruments, ready to the hand of a master for any use to which he may
put them.

But that is the end to which, in my opinion, all such organizations as
that to which kindly people, who do not look to the consequences of
their acts, are now giving their thousands, inevitably tend. Unless
clear proof that I am wrong is furnished, another thousand shall not
be added by my instrumentality.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
T. H. Huxley.

[245]

NOTE.

An authoritative contemporary historian, Matthew Paris, writes thus of
the Minorite, or Franciscan, Friars in England in 1235, just nine
years after the death of Francis of Assisi:--

"At this time some of the Minorite brethren, as well as some of the
Order of Preachers, unmindful of their profession and the restrictions
of their order, impudently entered the territories of some noble
monasteries, under pretense of fulfilling their duties of preaching,
as if intending to depart after preaching the next day. Under pretence
of sickness, or on some other pretext, however, they remained, and,
constructing an altar of wood, they placed on it a consecrated stone
altar, which they had brought with them, and clandestinely and in a
low voice performed mass, and even received the confessions of many of
the parishioners, to the prejudice of the priests. And if by chance
they were not satisfied with this, they broke forth in insults and
threats, reviling every other order except their own, and asserting
that all the rest were doomed to damnation, and that they would not
spare the soles of their feet till they had exhausted the wealth of
their opposers, however great it might be. The religious men,
therefore, gave way to them in many points, yielding to avoid scandal,
and offending those in power. For they were the councillors and
messengers of the nobles, and even secretaries of the Pope, and
therefore obtained much [246] secular favour. Some, however, finding
themselves opposed by the Court of Rome, were restrained by obvious
reasons, and went away in confusion; for the Supreme Pontiff, with a
scowling look, said to them, 'What means this, my brethren? To what
lengths are you going? Have you not professed voluntary poverty, and
that you would traverse towns and castles and distant places, as the
case required, barefooted and unostentatiously, in order to preach the
word of God in all humility? And do you now presume to usurp these
estates to yourselves against the will of the lords of these fees?
Your religion appears to be in a great measure dying away, and your
doctrines to be confuted."

Under date of 1243, Matthew writes:--

"For three or four hundred years or more the monastic order did not
hasten to destruction so quickly as their order [Minorites and
Preachers] of whom now the brothers, twenty-four years having scarcely
elapsed, had first built in England dwellings which rivalled regal
palaces in height. These are they who daily expose to view their
inestimable treasures, in enlarging their sumptuous edifices, and
erecting lofty walls, thereby impudently transgressing the limits of
their original poverty and violating the basis of their religion,
according to the prophecy of German Hildegarde. When noblemen and rich
men are at the point of death, whom they know to be possessed of great
riches, they, in their love of gain, diligently urge them, to the
injury and loss of the ordinary pastors, and extort confessions and
hidden wills, lauding themselves and their own order only, [247] and
placing themselves before all others. So no faithful man now believes
he can be saved, except he is directed by the counsels of the
Preachers and Minorites."--Matthew Paris's English History. Translated
by the Rev. J. A. Giles, 1889, Vol. I.

II

The "Times," December 9th, 1890

Sir,--The purpose of my previous letter about Mr. Booth's scheme was
to arouse the contributors to the military chest of the Salvation Army
to a clear sense of what they are doing. I thought it desirable that
they should be distinctly aware that they are setting up and endowing
a sect, in many ways analogous to the "Ranters" and "Revivalists" of
undesirable notoriety in former times; but with this immensely
important difference, that it possesses a strong, far-reaching,
centralized organization, the disposal of the physical, moral, and
financial strength of which rests with an irresponsible chief, who,
according to his own account, is assured of the blind obedience of
nearly 10,000 subordinates. I wish them to ask themselves, Ought
prudent men and good citizens to aid in the establishment of an
organization which, under sundry, by no means improbable,
contingencies, may easily become a worse and more [248] dangerous
nuisance than the mendicant friars of the middle ages? If this is an
academic question, I really do not know what questions deserve to be
called practical. As you divined, I purposely omitted any
consideration of the details of the Salvationist scheme, and of the
principles which animate those who work it, because I desired that the
public appreciation of the evils, necessarily inherent in all such
plans of despotic social and religious regimentation should not be
obscured by the raising of points of less comparative, however great
absolute, importance.

But it is now time to undertake a more particular criticism of
"Darkest England." At the outset of my examination of that work, I was
startled to find that Mr. Booth had put forward his scheme with an
almost incredibly imperfect knowledge of what had been done and is
doing in the same direction. A simple reader might well imagine that
the author of "Darkest England" posed as the Columbus, or at any rate
the Cortez, of that region. "Go to Mudie's," he tells us, and you
will be surprised to see how few books there are upon the social
problem. That may or may not be correct; but if Mr. Booth had gone to
a certain reading-room not far from Mudie's, I undertake to say that
the well-informed and obliging staff of the national library in
Bloomsbury would have provided him with more books on this topic, in
almost all European languages, than he would [249] read in three
months. Has socialism no literature? And what is socialism but an
incarnation of the social question? Moreover, I am persuaded that even
"Mudie's" resources could have furnished Mr. Booth with the "Life of
Lord Shaftesbury" and Carlyle's works. Mr. Booth seems to have
undertaken to instruct the world without having heard of "Past and
Present" or of "Latter-Day Pamphlets"; though, somewhat late in the
day, a judicious friend calls his attention to them. To those of my
contemporaries on whom, as on myself, Carlyle's writings on this topic
made an ineffaceable impression forty years ago, who know that, for
all that time, hundreds of able and devoted men, both clerical and
lay, have worked heart and soul for the permanent amendment of the
condition of the poor, Mr. Booth's "Go to Mudie's" affords an apt
measure of the depth of his preliminary studies. However, I am bound
to admit that these earlier labourers in the field laboured in such a
different fashion, that the originality of the plan started by Mr.
Booth remains largely unaffected. For them no drums have beat, no
trombones brayed; no sanctified buffoonery, after the model of the
oration of the Friar in Wallenstein's camp dear to the readers of
Schiller, has tickled the ears of the groundlings on their behalf.
Sadly behind the great age of rowdy self-advertisement in which their
lot has fallen, they seem not to have advanced one whit [250] beyond
John the Baptist and the Apostles, 1800 years ago, in their notions of
the way in which the metanoia, the change of mind of the ill-doer, is
to be brought about. Yet the new model was there, ready for the
imitation of those ancient savers of souls. The ranting and roaring
mystagogues of some of the most venerable of Greek and Syrian cults
also had their processions and banners, their fifes and cymbals and
holy chants, their hierarchy of officers to whom the art of making
collections was not wholly unknown; and who, as freely as their modern
imitators, promised an Elysian future to contributory converts. The
success of these antique Salvation armies was enormous. Simon Magus
was quite as notorious a personage, and probably had as strong a
following as Mr. Booth. Yet the Apostles, with their old-fashioned
ways, would not accept such a success as a satisfactory sign of the
Divine sanction, nor depart from their own methods of leading the way
to the higher life.

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