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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/26108-8.txt b/26108-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..570b2c1 --- /dev/null +++ b/26108-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1645 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket +Companion, by George Bernard Shaw + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion + +Author: George Bernard Shaw + +Release Date: July 22, 2008 [EBook #26108] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REVOLUTIONIST'S HANDBOOK *** + + + + +Produced by Russell Bell + + + + + + + + + +The Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion + +by + +George Bernard Shaw + +(1856-1950) + + + + +Writing as: JOHN TANNER, M.I.R.C. (Member of the Idle Rich Class). + + + + +PREFACE TO THE REVOLUTIONIST'S HANDBOOK + +"No one can contemplate the present condition of the masses of the +people without desiring something like a revolution for the better." +Sir Robert Giffen. Essays in Finance, vol. ii. p. 393. + + + +FOREWORD + +A revolutionist is one who desires to discard the existing social order +and try another. + +The constitution of England is revolutionary. To a Russian or +Anglo-Indian bureaucrat, a general election is as much a revolution as a +referendum or plebiscite in which the people fight instead of voting. +The French Revolution overthrew one set of rulers and substituted +another with different interests and different views. That is what a +general election enables the people to do in England every seven years +if they choose. Revolution is therefore a national institution in +England; and its advocacy by an Englishman needs no apology. + +Every man is a revolutionist concerning the thing he understands. For +example, every person who has mastered a profession is a sceptic +concerning it, and consequently a revolutionist. + +Every genuine religious person is a heretic and therefore a +revolutionist. + +All who achieve real distinction in life begin as revolutionists. The +most distinguished persons become more revolutionary as they grow older, +though they are commonly supposed to become more conservative owing to +their loss of faith in conventional methods of reform. + +Any person under the age of thirty, who, having any knowledge of the +existing social order, is not a revolutionist, is an inferior. + +AND YET + +Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only +shifted it to another shoulder. + +JOHN TANNER + + + +I + +ON GOOD BREEDING + +If there were no God, said the eighteenth century Deist, it would be +necessary to invent Him. Now this XVIII century god was deus ex +machina, the god who helped those who could not help themselves, the god +of the lazy and incapable. The nineteenth century decided that there is +indeed no such god; and now Man must take in hand all the work that he +used to shirk with an idle prayer. He must, in effect, change himself +into the political Providence which he formerly conceived as god; and +such change is not only possible, but the only sort of change that is +real. The mere transfiguration of institutions, as from military and +priestly dominance to commercial and scientific dominance, from +commercial dominance to proletarian democracy, from slavery to serfdom, +from serfdom to capitalism, from monarchy to republicanism, from +polytheism to monotheism, from monotheism to atheism, from atheism to +pantheistic humanitarianism, from general illiteracy to general +literacy, from romance to realism, from realism to mysticism, from +metaphysics to physics, are all but changes from Tweedledum to +Tweedledee: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. But the changes +from the crab apple to the pippin, from the wolf and fox to the house +dog, from the charger of Henry V to the brewer's draught horse and the +race-horse, are real; for here Man has played the god, subduing Nature +to his intention, and ennobling or debasing Life for a set purpose. And +what can be done with a wolf can be done with a man. If such monsters +as the tramp and the gentleman can appear as mere by-products of Man's +individual greed and folly, what might we not hope for as a main product +of his universal aspiration? + +This is no new conclusion. The despair of institutions, and the +inexorable "ye must be born again," with Mrs Poyser's stipulation, "and +born different," recurs in every generation. The cry for the Superman +did not begin with Nietzsche, nor will it end with his vogue. But it +has always been silenced by the same question: what kind of person is +this Superman to be? You ask, not for a super-apple, but for an eatable +apple; not for a superhorse, but for a horse of greater draught or +velocity. Neither is it of any use to ask for a Superman: you must +furnish a specification of the sort of man you want. Unfortunately you +do not know what sort of man you want. Some sort of goodlooking +philosopher-athlete, with a handsome healthy woman for his mate, +perhaps. + +Vague as this is, it is a great advance on the popular demand for a +perfect gentleman and a perfect lady. And, after all, no market demand +in the world takes the form of exact technical specification of the +article required. Excellent poultry and potatoes are produced to +satisfy the demand of housewives who do not know the technical +differences between a tuber and a chicken. They will tell you that the +proof of the pudding is in the eating; and they are right. The proof of +the Superman will be in the living; and we shall find out how to produce +him by the old method of trial and error, and not by waiting for a +completely convincing prescription of his ingredients. + +Certain common and obvious mistakes may be ruled out from the beginning. +For example, we agree that we want superior mind; but we need not fall +into the football club folly of counting on this as a product of +superior body. Yet if we recoil so far as to conclude that superior +mind consists in being the dupe of our ethical classifications of +virtues and vices, in short, of conventional morality, we shall fall out +of the fryingpan of the football club into the fire of the Sunday +School. If we must choose between a race of athletes and a race of +"good" men, let us have the athletes: better Samson and Milo than Calvin +and Robespierre. But neither alternative is worth changing for: Samson +is no more a Superman than Calvin. What then are we to do? + + + +II + +PROPERTY AND MARRIAGE + +Let us hurry over the obstacles set up by property and marriage. +Revolutionists make too much of them. No doubt it is easy to +demonstrate that property will destroy society unless society destroys +it. No doubt, also, property has hitherto held its own and destroyed +all the empires. But that was because the superficial objection to it +(that it distributes social wealth and the social labor burden in a +grotesquely inequitable manner) did not threaten the existence of the +race, but only the individual happiness of its units, and finally the +maintenance of some irrelevant political form or other, such as a +nation, an empire, or the like. Now as happiness never matters to +Nature, as she neither recognizes flags and frontiers nor cares a straw +whether the economic system adopted by a society is feudal, +capitalistic, or collectivist, provided it keeps the race afoot (the +hive and the anthill being as acceptable to her as Utopia), the +demonstrations of Socialists, though irrefutable, will never make any +serious impression on property. The knell of that over-rated +institution will not sound until it is felt to conflict with some more +vital matter than mere personal inequities in industrial economy. No +such conflict was perceived whilst society had not yet grown beyond +national communities too small and simple to overtax Man's limited +political capacity disastrously. But we have now reached the stage of +international organization. Man's political capacity and magnanimity +are clearly beaten by the vastness and complexity of the problems forced +on him. And it is at this anxious moment that he finds, when he looks +upward for a mightier mind to help him, that the heavens are empty. He +will presently see that his discarded formula that Man is the Temple of +the Holy Ghost happens to be precisely true, and that it is only through +his own brain and hand that this Holy Ghost, formally the most nebulous +person in the Trinity, and now become its sole survivor as it has always +been its real Unity, can help him in any way. And so, if the Superman +is to come, he must be born of Woman by Man's intentional and +well-considered contrivance. Conviction of this will smash everything +that opposes it. Even Property and Marriage, which laugh at the +laborer's petty complaint that he is defrauded of "surplus value," and +at the domestic miseries of the slaves of the wedding ring, will +themselves be laughed aside as the lightest of trifles if they cross +this conception when it becomes a fully realized vital purpose of the +race. + +That they must cross it becomes obvious the moment we acknowledge the +futility of breeding men for special qualities as we breed cocks for +game, greyhounds for speed, or sheep for mutton. What is really +important in Man is the part of him that we do not yet understand. Of +much of it we are not even conscious, just as we are not normally +conscious of keeping up our circulation by our heart-pump, though if we +neglect it we die. We are therefore driven to the conclusion that when +we have carried selection as far as we can by rejecting from the list of +eligible parents all persons who are uninteresting, unpromising, or +blemished without any set-off, we shall still have to trust to the +guidance of fancy (alias Voice of Nature), both in the breeders and the +parents, for that superiority in the unconscious self which will be the +true characteristic of the Superman. + +At this point we perceive the importance of giving fancy the widest +possible field. To cut humanity up into small cliques, and effectively +limit the selection of the individual to his own clique, is to postpone +the Superman for eons, if not for ever. Not only should every person be +nourished and trained as a possible parent, but there should be no +possibility of such an obstacle to natural selection as the objection of +a countess to a navvy or of a duke to a charwoman. Equality is +essential to good breeding; and equality, as all economists know, is +incompatible with property. + +Besides, equality is an essential condition of bad breeding also; and +bad breeding is indispensable to the weeding out of the human race. +When the conception of heredity took hold of the scientific imagination +in the middle of last century, its devotees announced that it was a +crime to marry the lunatic to the lunatic or the consumptive to the +consumptive. But pray are we to try to correct our diseased stocks by +infecting our healthy stocks with them? Clearly the attraction which +disease has for diseased people is beneficial to the race. If two +really unhealthy people get married, they will, as likely as not, have a +great number of children who will all die before they reach maturity. +This is a far more satisfactory arrangement than the tragedy of a union +between a healthy and an unhealthy person. Though more costly than +sterilization of the unhealthy, it has the enormous advantage that in +the event of our notions of health and unhealth being erroneous (which +to some extent they most certainly are), the error will be corrected by +experience instead of confirmed by evasion. + +One fact must be faced resolutely, in spite of the shrieks of the +romantic. There is no evidence that the best citizens are the offspring +of congenial marriages, or that a conflict of temperament is not a +highly important part of what breeders call crossing. On the contrary, +it is quite sufficiently probable that good results may be obtained from +parents who would be extremely unsuitable companions and partners, to +make it certain that the experiment of mating them will sooner or later +be tried purposely almost as often as it is now tried accidentally. But +mating such couples must clearly not involve marrying them. In +conjugation two complementary persons may supply one another's +deficiencies: in the domestic partnership of marriage they only feel +them and suffer from them. Thus the son of a robust, cheerful, eupeptic +British country squire, with the tastes and range of his class, and of a +clever, imaginative, intellectual, highly civilized Jewess, might be +very superior to both his parents; but it is not likely that the Jewess +would find the squire an interesting companion, or his habits, his +friends, his place and mode of life congenial to her. Therefore +marriage, whilst it is made an indispensable condition of mating, will +delay the advent of the Superman as effectually as Property, and will be +modified by the impulse towards him just as effectually. + +The practical abrogation of Property and Marriage as they exist at +present will occur without being much noticed. To the mass of men, the +intelligent abolition of property would mean nothing except an increase +in the quantity of food, clothing, housing, and comfort at their +personal disposal, as well as a greater control over their time and +circumstances. Very few persons now make any distinction between +virtually complete property and property held on such highly developed +public conditions as to place its income on the same footing as that of +a propertyless clergyman, officer, or civil servant. A landed +proprietor may still drive men and women off his land, demolish their +dwellings, and replace them with sheep or deer; and in the unregulated +trades the private trader may still spunge on the regulated trades and +sacrifice the life and health of the nation as lawlessly as the +Manchester cotton manufacturers did at the beginning of last century. +But though the Factory Code on the one hand, and Trade Union +organization on the other, have, within the lifetime of men still +living, converted the old unrestricted property of the cotton +manufacturer in his mill and the cotton spinner in his labor into a mere +permission to trade or work on stringent public or collective +conditions, imposed in the interest of the general welfare without any +regard for individual hard cases, people in Lancashire still speak of +their "property" in the old terms, meaning nothing more by it than the +things a thief can be punished for stealing. The total abolition of +property, and the conversion of every citizen into a salaried +functionary in the public service, would leave much more than 99 per +cent of the nation quite unconscious of any greater change than now +takes place when the son of a shipowner goes into the navy. They would +still call their watches and umbrellas and back gardens their property. + +Marriage also will persist as a name attached to a general custom long +after the custom itself will have altered. For example, modern English +marriage, as modified by divorce and by Married Women's Property Acts, +differs more from early XIX century marriage than Byron's marriage did +from Shakespear's. At the present moment marriage in England differs +not only from marriage in France, but from marriage in Scotland. +Marriage as modified by the divorce laws in South Dakota would be called +mere promiscuity in Clapham. Yet the Americans, far from taking a +profligate and cynical view of marriage, do homage to its ideals with a +seriousness that seems old fashioned in Clapham. Neither in England nor +America would a proposal to abolish marriage be tolerated for a moment; +and yet nothing is more certain than that in both countries the +progressive modification of the marriage contract will be continued +until it is no more onerous nor irrevocable than any ordinary commercial +deed of partnership. Were even this dispensed with, people would still +call themselves husbands and wives; describe their companionships as +marriages; and be for the most part unconscious that they were any less +married than Henry VIII. For though a glance at the legal conditions of +marriage in different Christian countries shews that marriage varies +legally from frontier to frontier, domesticity varies so little that +most people believe their own marriage laws to be universal. +Consequently here again, as in the case of Property, the absolute +confidence of the public in the stability of the institution's name, +makes it all the easier to alter its substance. + +However, it cannot be denied that one of the changes in public opinion +demanded by the need for the Superman is a very unexpected one. It is +nothing less than the dissolution of the present necessary association +of marriage with conjugation, which most unmarried people regard as the +very diagnostic of marriage. They are wrong, of course: it would be +quite as near the truth to say that conjugation is the one purely +accidental and incidental condition of marriage. Conjugation is +essential to nothing but the propagation of the race; and the moment +that paramount need is provided for otherwise than by marriage, +conjugation, from Nature's creative point of view, ceases to be +essential in marriage. But marriage does not thereupon cease to be so +economical, convenient, and comfortable, that the Superman might safely +bribe the matrimonomaniacs by offering to revive all the old inhuman +stringency and irrevocability of marriage, to abolish divorce, to +confirm the horrible bond which still chains decent people to drunkards, +criminals, and wasters, provided only the complete extrication of +conjugation from it were conceded to him. For if people could form +domestic companionships on no easier terms than these, they would still +marry. The Roman Catholic, forbidden by his Church to avail himself of +the divorce laws, marries as freely as the South Dakotan Presbyterians +who can change partners with a facility that scandalizes the old world; +and were his Church to dare a further step towards Christianity and +enjoin celibacy on its laity as well as on its clergy, marriages would +still be contracted for the sake of domesticity by perfectly obedient +sons and daughters of the Church. One need not further pursue these +hypotheses: they are only suggested here to help the reader to analyse +marriage into its two functions of regulating conjugation and supplying +a form of domesticity. These two functions are quite separable; and +domesticity is the only one of the two which is essential to the +existence of marriage, because conjugation without domesticity is not +marriage at all, whereas domesticity without conjugation is still +marriage: in fact it is necessarily the actual condition of all fertile +marriages during a great part of their duration, and of some marriages +during the whole of it. + +Taking it, then, that Property and Marriage, by destroying Equality and +thus hampering sexual selection with irrelevant conditions, are hostile +to the evolution of the Superman, it is easy to understand why the only +generally known modern experiment in breeding the human race took place +in a community which discarded both institutions. + + + +III + +THE PERFECTIONIST EXPERIMENT AT ONEIDA CREEK + +In 1848 the Oneida Community was founded in America to carry out a +resolution arrived at by a handful of Perfectionist Communists "that we +will devote ourselves exclusively to the establishment of the Kingdom of +God." Though the American nation declared that this sort of thing was +not to be tolerated in a Christian country, the Oneida Community held +its own for over thirty years, during which period it seems to have +produced healthier children and done and suffered less evil than any +Joint Stock Company on record. It was, however, a highly selected +community; for a genuine communist (roughly definable as an intensely +proud person who proposes to enrich the common fund instead of to spunge +on it) is superior to an ordinary joint stock capitalist precisely as an +ordinary joint stock capitalist is superior to a pirate. Further, the +Perfectionists were mightily shepherded by their chief Noyes, one of +those chance attempts at the Superman which occur from time to time in +spite of the interference of Man's blundering institutions. The +existence of Noyes simplified the breeding problem for the Communists, +the question as to what sort of man they should strive to breed being +settled at once by the obvious desirability of breeding another Noyes. + +But an experiment conducted by a handful of people, who, after thirty +years of immunity from the unintentional child slaughter that goes on by +ignorant parents in private homes, numbered only 300, could do very +little except prove that Communists, under the guidance of a Superman +"devoted exclusively to the establishment of the Kingdom of God," and +caring no more for property and marriage than a Camberwell minister +cares for Hindoo Caste or Suttee, might make a much better job of their +lives than ordinary folk under the harrow of both these institutions. +Yet their Superman himself admitted that this apparent success was only +part of the abnormal phenomenon of his own occurrence; for when he came +to the end of his powers through age, he himself guided and organized +the voluntary relapse of the communists into marriage, capitalism, and +customary private life, thus admitting that the real social solution was +not what a casual Superman could persuade a picked company to do for +him, but what a whole community of Supermen would do spontaneously. If +Noyes had had to organize, not a few dozen Perfectionists, but the whole +United States, America would have beaten him as completely as England +beat Oliver Cromwell, France Napoleon, or Rome Julius Cæsar. Cromwell +learnt by bitter experience that God himself cannot raise a people above +its own level, and that even though you stir a nation to sacrifice all +its appetites to its conscience, the result will still depend wholly on +what sort of conscience the nation has got. Napoleon seems to have +ended by regarding mankind as a troublesome pack of hounds only worth +keeping for the sport of hunting with them. Cæsar's capacity for +fighting without hatred or resentment was defeated by the determination +of his soldiers to kill their enemies in the field instead of taking +them prisoners to be spared by Cæsar; and his civil supremacy was +purchased by colossal bribery of the citizens of Rome. What great +rulers cannot do, codes and religions cannot do. Man reads his own +nature into every ordinance: if you devise a superhuman commandment so +cunningly that it cannot be misinterpreted in terms of his will, he will +denounce it as seditious blasphemy, or else disregard it as either crazy +or totally unintelligible. Parliaments and synods may tinker as much as +they please with their codes and creeds as circumstances alter the +balance of classes and their interests; and, as a result of the +tinkering, there may be an occasional illusion of moral evolution, as +when the victory of the commercial caste over the military caste leads +to the substitution of social boycotting and pecuniary damages for +duelling. At certain moments there may even be a considerable material +advance, as when the conquest of political power by the working class +produces a better distribution of wealth through the simple action of +the selfishness of the new masters; but all this is mere readjustment +and reformation: until the heart and mind of the people is changed the +very greatest man will no more dare to govern on the assumption that all +are as great as he than a drover dare leave his flock to find its way +through the streets as he himself would. Until there is an England in +which every man is a Cromwell, a France in which every man is a +Napoleon, a Rome in which every man is a Cæsar, a Germany in which every +man is a Luther plus a Goethe, the world will be no more improved by its +heroes than a Brixton villa is improved by the pyramid of Cheops. The +production of such nations is the only real change possible to us. + + + +IV + +MAN'S OBJECTION TO HIS OWN IMPROVEMENT + +But would such a change be tolerated if Man must rise above himself to +desire it? It would, through his misconception of its nature. Man does +desire an ideal Superman with such energy as he can spare from his +nutrition, and has in every age magnified the best living substitute for +it he can find. His least incompetent general is set up as an +Alexander; his king is the first gentleman in the world; his Pope is a +saint. He is never without an array of human idols who are all nothing +but sham Supermen. That the real Superman will snap his superfingers at +all Man's present trumpery ideals of right, duty, honor, justice, +religion, even decency, and accept moral obligations beyond present +human endurance, is a thing that contemporary Man does not foresee: in +fact he does not notice it when our casual Supermen do it in his very +face. He actually does it himself every day without knowing it. He +will therefore make no objection to the production of a race of what he +calls Great Men or Heroes, because he will imagine them, not as true +Supermen, but as himself endowed with infinite brains, infinite courage, +and infinite money. + +The most troublesome opposition will arise from the general fear of +mankind that any interference with our conjugal customs will be an +interference with our pleasures and our romance. This fear, by putting +on airs of offended morality, has always intimidated people who have not +measured its essential weakness; but it will prevail with those +degenerates only in whom the instinct of fertility has faded into a mere +itching for pleasure. The modern devices for combining pleasure with +sterility, now universally known and accessible, enable these persons to +weed themselves out of the race, a process already vigorously at work; +and the consequent survival of the intelligently fertile means the +survival of the partizans of the Superman; for what is proposed is +nothing but the replacement of the old unintelligent, inevitable, almost +unconscious fertility by an intelligently controlled, conscious +fertility, and the elimination of the mere voluptuary from the +evolutionary process.[1] Even if this selective agency had not been +invented, the purpose of the race would still shatter the opposition of +individual instincts. Not only do the bees and the ants satisfy their +reproductive and parental instincts vicariously; but marriage itself +successfully imposes celibacy on millions of unmarried normal men and +women. In short, the individual instinct in this matter, overwhelming +as it is thoughtlessly supposed to be, is really a finally negligible +one. + + +[1] The part played in evolution by the voluptuary will be the same as +that already played by the glutton. The glutton, as the man with the +strongest motive for nourishing himself, will always take more pains +than his fellows to get food. When food is so difficult to get that +only great exertions can secure a sufficient supply of it, the glutton's +appetite develops his cunning and enterprise to the utmost; and he +becomes not only the best fed but the ablest man in the community. But +in more hospitable climates, or where the social organization of the +food supply makes it easy for a man to overeat, then the glutton eats +himself out of health and finally out of existence. All other +voluptuaries prosper and perish in the same way; way; and this is why +the survival of the fittest means finally the survival of the +self-controlled, because they alone can adapt themselves to the +perpetual shifting of conditions produced by industrial progress. + + + +V + +THE POLITICAL NEED FOR THE SUPERMAN + +The need for the Superman is, in its most imperative aspect, a political +one. We have been driven to Proletarian Democracy by the failure of all +the alternative systems; for these depended on the existence of Supermen +acting as despots or oligarchs; and not only were these Supermen not +always or even often forthcoming at the right moment and in an eligible +social position, but when they were forthcoming they could not, except +for a short time and by morally suicidal coercive methods, impose +superhumanity on those whom they governed; so, by mere force of "human +nature," government by consent of the governed has supplanted the old +plan of governing the citizen as a public-schoolboy is governed. + +Now we have yet to see the man who, having any practical experience of +Proletarian Democracy, has any belief in its capacity for solving great +political problems, or even for doing ordinary parochial work +intelligently and economically. Only under despotisms and oligarchies +has the Radical faith in "universal suffrage" as a political panacea +arisen. It withers the moment it is exposed to practical trial, because +Democracy cannot rise above the level of the human material of which its +voters are made. Switzerland seems happy in comparison with Russia; but +if Russia were as small as Switzerland, and had her social problems +simplified in the same way by impregnable natural fortifications and a +population educated by the same variety and intimacy of international +intercourse, there might be little to choose between them. At all +events Australia and Canada, which are virtually protected democratic +republics, and France and the United States, which are avowedly +independent democratic republics, are neither healthy, wealthy, nor +wise; and they would be worse instead of better if their popular +ministers were not experts in the art of dodging popular enthusiasms and +duping popular ignorance. The politician who once had to learn how to +flatter Kings has now to learn how to fascinate, amuse, coax, humbug, +frighten, or otherwise strike the fancy of the electorate; and though in +advanced modern States, where the artizan is better educated than the +King, it takes a much bigger man to be a successful demagogue than to be +a successful courtier, yet he who holds popular convictions with +prodigious energy is the man for the mob, whilst the frailer sceptic who +is cautiously feeling his way towards the next century has no chance +unless he happens by accident to have the specific artistic talent of +the mountebank as well, in which case it is as a mountebank that he +catches votes, and not as a meliorist. Consequently the demagogue, +though he professes (and fails) to readjust matters in the interests of +the majority of the electors, yet stereotypes mediocrity, organizes +intolerance, disparages exhibitions of uncommon qualities, and glorifies +conspicuous exhibitions of common ones. He manages a small job well: he +muddles rhetorically through a large one. When a great political +movement takes place, it is not consciously led nor organized: the +unconscious self in mankind breaks its way through the problem as an +elephant breaks through a jungle; and the politicians make speeches +about whatever happens in the process, which, with the best intentions, +they do all in their power to prevent. Finally, when social aggregation +arrives at a point demanding international organization before the +demagogues and electorates have learnt how to manage even a country +parish properly much less internationalize Constantinople, the whole +political business goes to smash; and presently we have Ruins of +Empires, New Zealanders sitting on a broken arch of London Bridge, and +so forth. + +To that recurrent catastrophe we shall certainly come again unless we +can have a Democracy of Supermen; and the production of such a Democracy +is the only change that is now hopeful enough to nerve us to the effort +that Revolution demands. + + + +VI + +PRUDERY EXPLAINED + +Why the bees should pamper their mothers whilst we pamper only our +operatic prima donnas is a question worth reflecting on. Our notion of +treating a mother is, not to increase her supply of food, but to cut it +off by forbidding her to work in a factory for a month after her +confinement. Everything that can make birth a misfortune to the parents +as well as a danger to the mother is conscientiously done. When a great +French writer, Emil Zola, alarmed at the sterilization of his nation, +wrote an eloquent and powerful book to restore the prestige of +parentage, it was at once assumed in England that a work of this +character, with such a title as Fecundity, was too abominable to be +translated, and that any attempt to deal with the relations of the sexes +from any other than the voluptuary or romantic point of view must be +sternly put down. Now if this assumption were really founded on public +opinion, it would indicate an attitude of disgust and resentment towards +the Life Force that could only arise in a diseased and moribund +community in which Ibsen's Hedda Gabler would be the typical woman. But +it has no vital foundation at all. The prudery of the newspapers is, +like the prudery of the dinner table, a mere difficulty of education and +language. We are not taught to think decently on these subjects, and +consequently we have no language for them except indecent language. We +therefore have to declare them unfit for public discussion, because the +only terms in which we can conduct the discussion are unfit for public +use. Physiologists, who have a technical vocabulary at their disposal, +find no difficulty; and masters of language who think decently can write +popular stories like Zola's Fecundity or Tolstoy's Resurrection without +giving the smallest offence to readers who can also think decently. But +the ordinary modern journalist, who has never discussed such matters +except in ribaldry, cannot write a simple comment on a divorce case +without a conscious shamefulness or a furtive facetiousness that makes +it impossible to read the comment aloud in company. All this ribaldry +and prudery (the two are the same) does not mean that people do not feel +decently on the subject: on the contrary, it is just the depth and +seriousness of our feeling that makes its desecration by vile language +and coarse humor intolerable; so that at last we cannot bear to have it +spoken of at all because only one in a thousand can speak of it without +wounding our self-respect, especially the self-respect of women. Add to +the horrors of popular language the horrors of popular poverty. In +crowded populations poverty destroys the possibility of cleanliness; and +in the absence of cleanliness many of the natural conditions of life +become offensive and noxious, with the result that at last the +association of uncleanliness with these natural conditions becomes so +overpowering that among civilized people (that is, people massed in the +labyrinths of slums we call cities), half their bodily life becomes a +guilty secret, unmentionable except to the doctor in emergencies; and +Hedda Gabler shoots herself because maternity is so unladylike. In +short, popular prudery is only a mere incident of popular squalor: the +subjects which it taboos remain the most interesting and earnest of +subjects in spite of it. + + + +VII + +PROGRESS AN ILLUSION + +Unfortunately the earnest people get drawn off the track of evolution by +the illusion of progress. Any Socialist can convince us easily that the +difference between Man as he is and Man as he might become, without +further evolution, under millennial conditions of nutrition, +environment, and training, is enormous. He can shew that inequality and +iniquitous distribution of wealth and allotment of labor have arisen +through an unscientific economic system, and that Man, faulty as he is, +no more intended to establish any such ordered disorder than a moth +intends to be burnt when it flies into a candle flame. He can shew that +the difference between the grace and strength of the acrobat and the +bent back of the rheumatic field laborer is a difference produced by +conditions, not by nature. He can shew that many of the most detestable +human vices are not radical, but are mere reactions of our institutions +on our very virtues. The Anarchist, the Fabian, the Salvationist, the +Vegetarian, the doctor, the lawyer, the parson, the professor of ethics, +the gymnast, the soldier, the sportsman, the inventor, the political +program-maker, all have some prescription for bettering us; and almost +all their remedies are physically possible and aimed at admitted evils. +To them the limit of progress is, at worst, the completion of all the +suggested reforms and the levelling up of all men to the point attained +already by the most highly nourished and cultivated in mind and body. + +Here, then, as it seems to them, is an enormous field for the energy of +the reformer. Here are many noble goals attainable by many of those +paths up the Hill Difficulty along which great spirits love to aspire. +Unhappily, the hill will never be climbed by Man as we know him. It +need not be denied that if we all struggled bravely to the end of the +reformers' paths we should improve the world prodigiously. But there is +no more hope in that If than in the equally plausible assurance that if +the sky falls we shall all catch larks. We are not going to tread those +paths: we have not sufficient energy. We do not desire the end enough: +indeed in more cases we do not effectively desire it at all. Ask any +man would he like to be a better man; and he will say yes, most piously. +Ask him would he like to have a million of money; and he will say yes, +most sincerely. But the pious citizen who would like to be a better man +goes on behaving just as he did before. And the tramp who would like +the million does not take the trouble to earn ten shillings: multitudes +of men and women, all eager to accept a legacy of a million, live and +die without having ever possessed five pounds at one time, although +beggars have died in rags on mattresses stuffed with gold which they +accumulated because they desired it enough to nerve them to get it and +keep it. The economists who discovered that demand created supply soon +had to limit the proposition to "effective demand," which turned out, in +the final analysis, to mean nothing more than supply itself; and this +holds good in politics, morals, and all other departments as well: the +actual supply is the measure of the effective demand; and the mere +aspirations and professions produce nothing. No community has ever yet +passed beyond the initial phases in which its pugnacity and fanaticism +enabled it to found a nation, and its cupidity to establish and develop +a commercial civilization. Even these stages have never been attained +by public spirit, but always by intolerant wilfulness and brute force. +Take the Reform Bill of 1832 as an example of a conflict between two +sections of educated Englishmen concerning a political measure which was +as obviously necessary and inevitable as any political measure has ever +been or is ever likely to be. It was not passed until the gentlemen of +Birmingham had made arrangements to cut the throats of the gentlemen of +St. James's parish in due military form. It would not have been passed +to this day if there had been no force behind it except the logic and +public conscience of the Utilitarians. A despotic ruler with as much +sense as Queen Elizabeth would have done better than the mob of grown-up +Eton boys who governed us then by privilege, and who, since the +introduction of practically Manhood Suffrage in 1884, now govern us at +the request of proletarian Democracy. + +At the present time we have, instead of the Utilitarians, the Fabian +Society, with its peaceful, constitutional, moral, economical policy of +Socialism, which needs nothing for its bloodless and benevolent +realization except that the English people shall understand it and +approve of it. But why are the Fabians well spoken of in circles where +thirty years ago the word Socialist was understood as equivalent to +cut-throat and incendiary? Not because the English have the smallest +intention of studying or adopting the Fabian policy, but because they +believe that the Fabians, by eliminating the element of intimidation +from the Socialist agitation, have drawn the teeth of insurgent poverty +and saved the existing order from the only method of attack it really +fears. Of course, if the nation adopted the Fabian policy, it would be +carried out by brute force exactly as our present property system is. +It would become the law; and those who resisted it would be fined, sold +up, knocked on the head by policemen, thrown into prison, and in the +last resort "executed" just as they are when they break the present law. +But as our proprietary class has no fear of that conversion taking +place, whereas it does fear sporadic cut-throats and gunpowder plots, +and strives with all its might to hide the fact that there is no moral +difference whatever between the methods by which it enforces its +proprietary rights and the method by which the dynamitard asserts his +conception of natural human rights, the Fabian Society is patted on the +back just as the Christian Social Union is, whilst the Socialist who +says bluntly that a Social revolution can be made only as all other +revolutions have been made, by the people who want it killing, coercing, +and intimidating the people who dont want it, is denounced as a +misleader of the people, and imprisoned with hard labor to shew him how +much sincerity there is in the objection of his captors to physical +force. + +Are we then to repudiate Fabian methods, and return to those of the +barricader, or adopt those of the dynamitard and the assassin? On the +contrary, we are to recognize that both are fundamentally futile. It +seems easy for the dynamitard to say "Have you not just admitted that +nothing is ever conceded except to physical force? Did not Gladstone +admit that the Irish Church was disestablished, not by the spirit of +Liberalism, but by the explosion which wrecked Clerkenwell prison?" +Well, we need not foolishly and timidly deny it. Let it be fully +granted. Let us grant, further, that all this lies in the nature of +things; that the most ardent Socialist, if he owns property, can by no +means do otherwise than Conservative proprietors until property is +forcibly abolished by the whole nation; nay, that ballots, and +parliamentary divisions, in spite of their vain ceremony, of discussion, +differ from battles only as the bloodless surrender of an outnumbered +force in the field differs from Waterloo or Trafalgar. I make a present +of all these admissions to the Fenian who collects money from +thoughtless Irishmen in America to blow up Dublin Castle; to the +detective who persuades foolish young workmen to order bombs from the +nearest ironmonger and then delivers them up to penal servitude; to our +military and naval commanders who believe, not in preaching, but in an +ultimatum backed by plenty of lyddite; and, generally, to all whom it +may concern. But of what use is it to substitute the way of the +reckless and bloodyminded for the way of the cautious and humane? Is +England any the better for the wreck of Clerkenwell prison, or Ireland +for the disestablishment of the Irish Church? Is there the smallest +reason to suppose that the nation which sheepishly let Charles and Laud +and Strafford coerce it, gained anything because it afterwards, still +more sheepishly, let a few strongminded Puritans, inflamed by the +masterpieces of Jewish revolutionary literature, cut off the heads of +the three? Suppose the Gunpowder plot had succeeded, and set a Fawkes +dynasty permanently on the throne, would it have made any difference to +the present state of the nation? The guillotine was used in France up +to the limit of human endurance, both on Girondins and Jacobins. +Fouquier Tinville followed Marie Antoinette to the scaffold; and Marie +Antoinette might have asked the crowd, just as pointedly as Fouquier +did, whether their bread would be any cheaper when her head was off. +And what came of it all? The Imperial France of the Rougon Macquart +family, and the Republican France of the Panama scandal and the Dreyfus +case. Was the difference worth the guillotining of all those unlucky +ladies and gentlemen, useless and mischievous as many of them were? +Would any sane man guillotine a mouse to bring about such a result? +Turn to Republican America. America has no Star Chamber, and no feudal +barons. But it has Trusts; and it has millionaires whose factories, +fenced in by live electric wires and defended by Pinkerton retainers +with magazine rifles, would have made a Radical of Reginald Front de +Boeuf. Would Washington or Franklin have lifted a finger in the cause +of American Independence if they had foreseen its reality? + +No: what Cæsar, Cromwell, Napoleon could not do with all the physical +force and moral prestige of the State in their hands, cannot be done by +enthusiastic criminals and lunatics. Even the Jews, who, from Moses to +Marx and Lassalle, have inspired all the revolutions, have had to +confess that, after all, the dog will return to his vomit and the sow +that was washed to her wallowing in the mire; and we may as well make up +our minds that Man will return to his idols and his cupidities, in spite +of "movements" and all revolutions, until his nature is changed. Until +then, his early successes in building commercial civilizations (and such +civilizations, Good Heavens!) are but preliminaries to the inevitable +later stage, now threatening us, in which the passions which built the +civilization become fatal instead of productive, just as the same +qualities which make the lion king in the forest ensure his destruction +when he enters a city. Nothing can save society then except the clear +head and the wide purpose: war and competition, potent instruments of +selection and evolution in one epoch, become ruinous instruments of +degeneration in the next. In the breeding of animals and plants, +varieties which have arisen by selection through many generations +relapse precipitously into the wild type in a generation or two when +selection ceases; and in the same way a civilization in which lusty +pugnacity and greed have ceased to act as selective agents and have +begun to obstruct and destroy, rushes downwards and backwards with a +suddenness that enables an observer to see with consternation the upward +steps of many centuries retraced in a single lifetime. This has often +occurred even within the period covered by history; and in every +instance the turning point has been reached long before the attainment, +or even the general advocacy on paper, of the levelling-up of the mass +to the highest point attainable by the best nourished and cultivated +normal individuals. + +We must therefore frankly give up the notion that Man as he exists is +capable of net progress. There will always be an illusion of progress, +because wherever we are conscious of an evil we remedy it, and therefore +always seem to ourselves to be progressing, forgetting that most of the +evils we see are the effects, finally become acute, of long-unnoticed +retrogressions; that our compromising remedies seldom fully recover the +lost ground; above all, that on the lines along which we are +degenerating, good has become evil in our eyes, and is being undone in +the name of progress precisely as evil is undone and replaced by good on +the lines along which we are evolving. This is indeed the Illusion of +Illusions; for it gives us infallible and appalling assurance that if +our political ruin is to come, it will be effected by ardent reformers +and supported by enthusiastic patriots as a series of necessary steps in +our progress. Let the Reformer, the Progressive, the Meliorist then +reconsider himself and his eternal ifs and ans which never become pots +and pans. Whilst Man remains what he is, there can be no progress +beyond the point already attained and fallen headlong from at every +attempt at civilization; and since even that point is but a pinnacle to +which a few people cling in giddy terror above an abyss of squalor, mere +progress should no longer charm us. + + + +VIII + +THE CONCEIT OF CIVILIZATION + +After all, the progress illusion is not so very subtle. We begin by +reading the satires of our fathers' contemporaries; and we conclude +(usually quite ignorantly) that the abuses exposed by them are things of +the past. We see also that reforms of crying evils are frequently +produced by the sectional shifting of political power from oppressors to +oppressed. The poor man is given a vote by the Liberals in the hope +that he will cast it for his emancipators. The hope is not fulfilled; +but the lifelong imprisonment of penniless men for debt ceases; Factory +Acts are passed to mitigate sweating; schooling is made free and +compulsory; sanitary by-laws are multiplied; public steps are taken to +house the masses decently; the bare-footed get boots; rags become rare; +and bathrooms and pianos, smart tweeds and starched collars, reach +numbers of people who once, as "the unsoaped," played the Jew's harp or +the accordion in moleskins and belchers. Some of these changes are +gains: some of them are losses. Some of them are not changes at all: +all of them are merely the changes that money makes. Still, they +produce an illusion of bustling progress; and the reading class infers +from them that the abuses of the early Victorian period no longer exist +except as amusing pages in the novels of Dickens. But the moment we +look for a reform due to character and not to money, to statesmanship +and not to interest or mutiny, we are disillusioned. For example, we +remembered the maladministration and incompetence revealed by the +Crimean War as part of a bygone state of things until the South African +war shewed that the nation and the War Office, like those poor Bourbons +who have been so impudently blamed for a universal characteristic, had +learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. We had hardly recovered from the +fruitless irritation of this discovery when it transpired that the +officers' mess of our most select regiment included a flogging club +presided over by the senior subaltern. The disclosure provoked some +disgust at the details of this schoolboyish debauchery, but no surprise +at the apparent absence of any conception of manly honor and virtue, of +personal courage and self-respect, in the front rank of our chivalry. +In civil affairs we had assumed that the sycophancy and idolatry which +encouraged Charles I. to undervalue the Puritan revolt of the XVII +century had been long outgrown; but it has needed nothing but favorable +circumstances to revive, with added abjectness to compensate for its +lost piety. We have relapsed into disputes about transubstantiation at +the very moment when the discovery of the wide prevalence of theophagy +as a tribal custom has deprived us of the last excuse for believing that +our official religious rites differ in essentials from those of +barbarians. The Christian doctrine of the uselessness of punishment and +the wickedness of revenge has not, in spite of its simple common sense, +found a single convert among the nations: Christianity means nothing to +the masses but a sensational public execution which is made an excuse +for other executions. In its name we take ten years of a thief's life +minute by minute in the slow misery and degradation of modern reformed +imprisonment with as little remorse as Laud and his Star Chamber clipped +the ears of Bastwick and Burton. We dug up and mutilated the remains of +the Mahdi the other day exactly as we dug up and mutilated the remains +of Cromwell two centuries ago. We have demanded the decapitation of the +Chinese Boxer princes as any Tartar would have done; and our military +and naval expeditions to kill, burn, and destroy tribes and villages for +knocking an Englishman on the head are so common a part of our Imperial +routine that the last dozen of them has not called forth as much pity as +can be counted on by any lady criminal. The judicial use of torture to +extort confession is supposed to be a relic of darker ages; but whilst +these pages are being written an English judge has sentenced a forger to +twenty years penal servitude with an open declaration that the sentence +will be carried out in full unless he confesses where he has hidden the +notes he forged. And no comment whatever is made, either on this or on +a telegram from the seat of war in Somaliland mentioning that certain +information has been given by a prisoner of war "under punishment." Even +if these reports are false, the fact that they are accepted without +protest as indicating a natural and proper course of public conduct +shews that we are still as ready to resort to torture as Bacon was. As +to vindictive cruelty, an incident in the South African war, when the +relatives and friends of a prisoner were forced to witness his +execution, betrayed a baseness of temper and character which hardly +leaves us the right to plume ourselves on our superiority to Edward III. +at the surrender of Calais. And the democratic American officer +indulges in torture in the Philippines just as the aristocratic English +officer did in South Africa. The incidents of the white invasion of +Africa in search of ivory, gold, diamonds, and sport, have proved that +the modern European is the same beast of prey that formerly marched to +the conquest of new worlds under Alexander, Antony, and Pizarro. +Parliaments and vestries are just what they were when Cromwell +suppressed them and Dickens derided them. The democratic politician +remains exactly as Plato described him; the physician is still the +credulous impostor and petulant scientific coxcomb whom Molière +ridiculed; the schoolmaster remains at best a pedantic child farmer and +at worst a flagellomaniac; arbitrations are more dreaded by honest men +than lawsuits; the philanthropist is still a parasite on misery as the +doctor is on disease; the miracles of priestcraft are none the less +fraudulent and mischievous because they are now called scientific +experiments and conducted by professors; witchcraft, in the modern form +of patent medicines and prophylactic inoculations, is rampant; the +landowner who is no longer powerful enough to; set the mantrap of +Rhampsinitis improves on it by barbed wire; the modern gentleman who is +too lazy to daub his face with vermilion as a symbol of bravery employs +a laundress to daub his shirt with starch as a symbol of cleanliness; we +shake our heads at the dirt of the middle ages in cities made grimy with +soot and foul and disgusting with shameless tobacco smoking; holy water, +in its latest form of disinfectant fluid, is more widely used and +believed in than ever; public health authorities deliberately go through +incantations with burning sulphur (which they know to be useless) +because the people believe in it as devoutly as the Italian peasant +believes in the liquefaction of the blood of St Januarius; and +straightforward public lying has reached gigantic developments, there +being nothing to choose in this respect between the pickpocket at the +police station and the minister on the treasury bench, the editor in the +newspaper office, the city magnate advertizing bicycle tires that do not +side-slip, the clergyman subscribing the thirty-nine articles, and the +vivisector who pledges his knightly honor that no animal operated on in +the physiological laboratory suffers the slightest pain. Hypocrisy is +at its worst; for we not only persecute bigotedly but sincerely in the +name of the cure-mongering witchcraft we do believe in, but callously +and hypocritically in the name of the Evangelical creed that our rulers +privately smile at as the Italian patricians of the fifth century smiled +at Jupiter and Venus. Sport is, as it has always been, murderous +excitement; the impulse to slaughter is universal; and museums are set +up throughout the country to encourage little children and elderly +gentlemen to make collections of corpses preserved in alcohol, and to +steal birds' eggs and keep them as the red Indian used to keep scalps. +Coercion with the lash is as natural to an Englishman as it was to +Solomon spoiling Rehoboam: indeed, the comparison is unfair to the Jews +in view of the facts that the Mosaic law forbade more than forty lashes +in the name of humanity, and that floggings of a thousand lashes were +inflicted on English soldiers in the XVIII and XIX centuries, and would +be inflicted still but for the change in the balance of political power +between the military caste and the commercial classes and the +proletariat. In spite of that change, flogging is still an institution +in the public school, in the military prison, on the training ship, and +in that school of littleness called the home. The lascivious clamor of +the flagellomaniac for more of it, constant as the clamor for more +insolence, more war, and lower rates, is tolerated and even gratified +because, having no moral ends in view, we have sense enough to see that +nothing but brute coercion can impose our selfish will on others. +Cowardice is universal; patriotism, public opinion, parental duty, +discipline, religion, morality, are only fine names for intimidation; +and cruelty, gluttony, and credulity keep cowardice in countenance. We +cut the throat of a calf and hang it up by the heels to bleed to death +so that our veal cutlet may be white; we nail geese to a board and cram +them with food because we like the taste of liver disease; we tear birds +to pieces to decorate our women's hats; we mutilate domestic animals for +no reason at all except to follow an instinctively cruel fashion; and we +connive at the most abominable tortures in the hope of discovering some +magical cure for our own diseases by them. + +Now please observe that these are not exceptional developments of our +admitted vices, deplored and prayed against by all good men. Not a word +has been said here of the excesses of our Neros, of whom we have the +full usual percentage. With the exception of the few military examples, +which are mentioned mainly to shew that the education and standing of a +gentleman, reinforced by the strongest conventions of honor, esprit de +corps, publicity and responsibility, afford no better guarantees of +conduct than the passions of a mob, the illustrations given above are +commonplaces taken from the daily practices of our best citizens, +vehemently defended in our newspapers and in our pulpits. The very +humanitarians who abhor them are stirred to murder by them: the dagger +of Brutus and Ravaillac is still active in the hands of Caserio and +Luccheni; and the pistol has come to its aid in the hands of Guiteau and +Czolgosz. Our remedies are still limited to endurance or assassination; +and the assassin is still judicially assassinated on the principle that +two blacks make a white. The only novelty is in our methods: through +the discovery of dynamite the overloaded musket of Hamilton of +Bothwellhaugh has been superseded by the bomb; but Ravachol's heart +burns just as Hamilton's did. The world will not bear thinking of to +those who know what it is, even with the largest discount for the +restraints of poverty on the poor and cowardice on the rich. + +All that can be said for us is that people must and do live and let live +up to a certain point. Even the horse, with his docked tail and bitted +jaw, finds his slavery mitigated by the fact that a total disregard of +his need for food and rest would put his master to the expense of buying +a new horse every second day; for you cannot work a horse to death and +then pick up another one for nothing, as you can a laborer. But this +natural check on inconsiderate selfishness is itself checked, partly by +our shortsightedness, and partly by deliberate calculation; so that +beside the man who, to his own loss, will shorten his horse's life in +mere stinginess, we have the tramway company which discovers actuarially +that though a horse may live from 24 to 40 years, yet it pays better to +work him to death in 4 and then replace him by a fresh victim. And +human slavery, which has reached its worst recorded point within our own +time in the form of free wage labor, has encountered the same personal +and commercial limits to both its aggravation and its mitigation. Now +that the freedom of wage labor has produced a scarcity of it, as in +South Africa, the leading English newspaper and the leading English +weekly review have openly and without apology demanded a return to +compulsory labor: that is, to the methods by which, as we believe, the +Egyptians built the pyramids. We know now that the crusade against +chattel slavery in the XIX century succeeded solely because chattel +slavery was neither the most effective nor the least humane method of +labor exploitation; and the world is now feeling its way towards a still +more effective system which shall abolish the freedom of the worker +without again making his exploiter responsible for him. + +Still, there is always some mitigation: there is the fear of revolt; and +there are the effects of kindliness and affection. Let it be repeated +therefore that no indictment is here laid against the world on the score +of what its criminals and monsters do. The fires of Smithfield and of +the Inquisition were lighted by earnestly pious people, who were kind +and good as kindness and goodness go. And when a negro is dipped in +kerosene and set on fire in America at the present time, he is not a +good man lynched by ruffians: he is a criminal lynched by crowds of +respectable, charitable, virtuously indignant, high-minded citizens, +who, though they act outside the law, are at least more merciful than +the American legislators and judges who not so long ago condemned men to +solitary confinement for periods, not of five months, as our own +practice is, but of five years and more. The things that our moral +monsters do may be left out of account with St. Bartholomew massacres +and other momentary outbursts of social disorder. Judge us by the +admitted and respected practice of our most reputable circles; and, if +you know the facts and are strong enough to look them in the face, you +must admit that unless we are replaced by a more highly evolved +animal--in short, by the Superman--the world must remain a den of +dangerous animals among whom our few accidental supermen, our +Shakespears, Goethes, Shelleys, and their like, must live as +precariously as lion tamers do, taking the humor of their situation, and +the dignity of their superiority, as a set-off to the horror of the one +and the loneliness of the other. + + + +IX + +THE VERDICT OF HISTORY + +It may be said that though the wild beast breaks out in Man and casts +him back momentarily into barbarism under the excitement of war and +crime, yet his normal life is higher than the normal life of his +forefathers. This view is very acceptable to Englishmen, who always +lean sincerely to virtue's side as long as it costs them nothing either +in money or in thought. They feel deeply the injustice of foreigners, +who allow them no credit for this conditional highmindedness. But there +is no reason to suppose that our ancestors were less capable of it than +we are. To all such claims for the existence of a progressive moral +evolution operating visibly from grandfather to grandson, there is the +conclusive reply that a thousand years of such evolution would have +produced enormous social changes, of which the historical evidence would +be overwhelming. But not Macaulay himself, the most confident of Whig +meliorists, can produce any such evidence that will bear +cross-examination. Compare our conduct and our codes with those +mentioned contemporarily in such ancient scriptures and classics as have +come down to us, and you will find no jot of ground for the belief that +any moral progress whatever has been made in historic time, in spite of +all the romantic attempts of historians to reconstruct the past on that +assumption. Within that time it has happened to nations as to private +families and individuals that they have flourished and decayed, repented +and hardened their hearts, submitted and protested, acted and reacted, +oscillated between natural and artificial sanitation (the oldest house +in the world, unearthed the other day in Crete, has quite modern +sanitary arrangements), and rung a thousand changes on the different +scales of income and pressure of population, firmly believing all the +time that mankind was advancing by leaps and bounds because men were +constantly busy. And the mere chapter of accidents has left a small +accumulation of chance discoveries, such as the wheel, the arch, the +safety pin, gunpowder, the magnet, the Voltaic pile and so forth: things +which, unlike the gospels and philosophic treatises of the sages, can be +usefully understood and applied by common men; so that steam locomotion +is possible without a nation of Stephensons, although national +Christianity is impossible without a nation of Christs. But does any +man seriously believe that the chauffeur who drives a motor car from +Paris to Berlin is a more highly evolved man than the charioteer of +Achilles, or that a modern Prime Minister is a more enlightened ruler +than Cæsar because he rides a tricycle, writes his dispatches by the +electric light, and instructs his stockbroker through the telephone? + +Enough, then, of this goose-cackle about Progress: Man, as he is, never +will nor can add a cubit to his stature by any of its quackeries, +political, scientific, educational, religious, or artistic. What is +likely to happen when this conviction gets into the minds of the men +whose present faith in these illusions is the cement of our social +system, can be imagined only by those who know how suddenly a +civilization which has long ceased to think (or in the old phrase, to +watch and pray) can fall to pieces when the vulgar belief in its +hypocrisies and impostures can no longer hold out against its failures +and scandals. When religious and ethical formulae become so obsolete +that no man of strong mind can believe them, they have also reached the +point at which no man of high character will profess them; and from, +that moment until they are formally disestablished, they stand at the +door of every profession and every public office to keep out every able +man who is not a sophist or a liar. A nation which revises its parish +councils once in three years, but will not revise its articles of +religion once in three hundred, even when those articles avowedly began +as a political compromise dictated by Mr Facing-Both-Ways, is a nation +that needs remaking. + +Our only hope, then, is in evolution. We must replace the man by the +superman. It is frightful for the citizen, as the years pass him, to +see his own contemporaries so exactly reproduced by the younger +generation, that his companions of thirty years ago have their +counterparts in every city crowd, where he had to check himself +repeatedly in the act of saluting as an old friend some young man to +whom he is only an elderly stranger. All hope of advance dies in his +bosom as he watches them: he knows that they will do just what their +fathers did, and that the few voices which will still, as always before, +exhort them to do something else and be something better, might as well +spare their breath to cool their porridge (if they can get any). Men +like Ruskin and Carlyle will preach to Smith and Brown for the sake of +preaching, just as St Francis preached to the birds and St Anthony to +the fishes. But Smith and Brown, like the fishes and birds, remain as +they are; and poets who plan Utopias and prove that nothing is necessary +for their realization but that Man should will them, perceive at last, +like Richard Wagner, that the fact to be faced is that Man does not +effectively will them. And he never will until he becomes Superman. + +And so we arrive at the end of the Socialist's dream of "the +socialization of the means of production and exchange," of the +Positivist's dream of moralizing the capitalist, and of the ethical +professor's, legislator's, educator's dream of putting commandments and +codes and lessons and examination marks on a man as harness is put on a +horse, ermine on a judge, pipeclay on a soldier, or a wig on an actor, +and pretending that his nature has been changed. The only fundamental +and possible Socialism is the socialization of the selective breeding of +Man: in other terms, of human evolution. We must eliminate the Yahoo, +or his vote will wreck the commonwealth. + + + +X + +THE METHOD + +As to the method, what can be said as yet except that where there is a +will, there is a way? If there be no will, we are lost. That is a +possibility for our crazy little empire, if not for the universe; and as +such possibilities are not to be entertained without despair, we must, +whilst we survive, proceed on the assumption that we have still energy +enough to not only will to live, but to will to live better. That may +mean that we must establish a State Department of Evolution, with a seat +in the Cabinet for its chief, and a revenue to defray the cost of direct +State experiments, and provide inducements to private persons to achieve +successful results. It may mean a private society or a chartered +company for the improvement of human live stock. But for the present it +is far more likely to mean a blatant repudiation of such proposals as +indecent and immoral, with, nevertheless, a general secret pushing of +the human will in the repudiated direction; so that all sorts of +institutions and public authorities will under some pretext or other +feel their way furtively towards the Superman. Mr Graham Wallas has +already ventured to suggest, as Chairman of the School Management +Committee of the London School Board, that the accepted policy of the +Sterilization of the Schoolmistress, however administratively +convenient, is open to criticism from the national stock-breeding point +of view; and this is as good an example as any of the way in which the +drift towards the Superman may operate in spite of all our hypocrisies. +One thing at least is clear to begin with. If a woman can, by careful +selection of a father, and nourishment of herself, produce a citizen +with efficient senses, sound organs, and a good digestion, she should +clearly be secured a sufficient reward for that natural service to make +her willing to undertake and repeat it. Whether she be financed in the +undertaking by herself, or by the father, or by a speculative +capitalist, or by a new department of, say, the Royal Dublin Society, or +(as at present) by the War Office maintaining her "on the strength" and +authorizing a particular soldier to marry her, or by a local authority +under a by-law directing that women may under certain circumstances have +a year's leave of absence on full salary, or by the central government, +does not matter provided the result be satisfactory. + +It is a melancholy fact that as the vast majority of women and their +husbands have, under existing circumstances, not enough nourishment, no +capital, no credit, and no knowledge of science or business, they would, +if the State would pay for birth as it now pays for death, be exploited +by joint stock companies for dividends, just as they are in ordinary +industries. Even a joint stock human stud farm (piously disguised as a +reformed Foundling Hospital or something of that sort) might well, under +proper inspection and regulation, produce better results than our +present reliance on promiscuous marriage. It may be objected that when +an ordinary contractor produces stores for sale to the Government, and +the Government rejects them as not up to the required standard, the +condemned goods are either sold for what they will fetch or else +scrapped: that is, treated as waste material; whereas if the goods +consisted of human beings, all that could be done would be to let them +loose or send them to the nearest workhouse. But there is nothing new +in private enterprise throwing its human refuse on the cheap labor +market and the workhouse; and the refuse of the new industry would +presumably be better bred than the staple product of ordinary poverty. +In our present happy-go-lucky industrial disorder, all the human +products, successful or not, would have to be thrown on the labor +market; but the unsuccessful ones would not entitle the company to a +bounty and so would be a dead loss to it. The practical commercial +difficulty would be the uncertainty and the cost in time and money of +the first experiments. Purely commercial capital would not touch such +heroic operations during the experimental stage; and in any case the +strength of mind needed for so momentous a new departure could not be +fairly expected from the Stock Exchange. It will have to be handled by +statesmen with character enough to tell our democracy and plutocracy +that statecraft does not consist in flattering their follies or applying +their suburban standards of propriety to the affairs of four continents. +The matter must be taken up either by the State or by some organization +strong enough to impose respect upon the State. + +The novelty of any such experiment, however, is only in the scale of it. +In one conspicuous case, that of royalty, the State does already select +the parents on purely political grounds; and in the peerage, though the +heir to a dukedom is legally free to marry a dairymaid, yet the social +pressure on him to confine his choice to politically and socially +eligible mates is so overwhelming that he is really no more free to +marry the dairymaid than George IV was to marry Mrs Fitzherbert; and +such a marriage could only occur as a result of extraordinary strength +of character on the part of the dairymaid acting upon extraordinary +weakness on the part of the duke. Let those who think the whole +conception of intelligent breeding absurd and scandalous ask themselves +why George IV was not allowed to choose his own wife whilst any tinker +could marry whom he pleased? Simply because it did not matter a rap +politically whom the tinker married, whereas it mattered very much whom +the king married. The way in which all considerations of the king's +personal rights, of the claims of the heart, of the sanctity of the +marriage oath, and of romantic morality crumpled up before this +political need shews how negligible all these apparently irresistible +prejudices are when they come into conflict with the demand for quality +in our rulers. We learn the same lesson from the case of the soldier, +whose marriage, when it is permitted at all, is despotically controlled +with a view solely to military efficiency. + +Well, nowadays it is not the King that rules, but the tinker. Dynastic +wars are no longer feared, dynastic alliances no longer valued. +Marriages in royal families are becoming rapidly less political, and +more popular, domestic, and romantic. If all the kings in Europe were +made as free to-morrow as King Cophetua, nobody but their aunts and +chamberlains would feel a moment's anxiety as to the consequences. On +the other hand a sense of the social importance of the tinker's marriage +has been steadily growing. We have made a public matter of his wife's +health in the month after her confinement. We have taken the minds of +his children out of his hands and put them into those of our State +schoolmaster. We shall presently make their bodily nourishment +independent of him. But they are still riff-raff; and to hand the +country over to riff-raff is national suicide, since riff-raff can +neither govern nor will let anyone else govern except the highest bidder +of bread and circuses. There is no public enthusiast alive of twenty +years' practical democratic experience who believes in the political +adequacy of the electorate or of the bodies it elects. The overthrow of +the aristocrat has created the necessity for the Superman. + +Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But +every Englishman loves and desires a pedigree. And in that he is right. +King Demos must be bred like all other Kings; and with Must there is no +arguing. It is idle for an individual writer to carry so great a matter +further in a pamphlet. A conference on the subject is the next step +needed. It will be attended by men and women who, no longer believing +that they can live for ever, are seeking for some immortal work into +which they can build the best of themselves before their refuse is +thrown into that arch dust destructor, the cremation furnace. + + + +[Transcriber's Note: Shaw promoted spelling reform of his own invention. +His spelling reform included not using apostrophes for contractions, +thus this text has 'dont' instead of 'don't' and -iz- instead of -is- +even in words which standard English, both British or American, spells +with -is-, for example: partizan, artizan. He had the goal of making +spelling more phonetic. He spelled it 'Shakespear'. He spelled +'Caesar' with an ae ligature. He used diacritical on French words and +names.] + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket +Companion, by George Bernard Shaw + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REVOLUTIONIST'S HANDBOOK *** + +***** This file should be named 26108-8.txt or 26108-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/6/1/0/26108/ + +Produced by Russell Bell + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion + +Author: George Bernard Shaw + +Release Date: July 22, 2008 [EBook #26108] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REVOLUTIONIST'S HANDBOOK *** + + + + +Produced by Russell Bell + + + + + + + + + +The Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion + +by + +George Bernard Shaw + +(1856-1950) + + + + +Writing as: JOHN TANNER, M.I.R.C. (Member of the Idle Rich Class). + + + + +PREFACE TO THE REVOLUTIONIST'S HANDBOOK + +"No one can contemplate the present condition of the masses of the +people without desiring something like a revolution for the better." +Sir Robert Giffen. Essays in Finance, vol. ii. p. 393. + + + +FOREWORD + +A revolutionist is one who desires to discard the existing social order +and try another. + +The constitution of England is revolutionary. To a Russian or +Anglo-Indian bureaucrat, a general election is as much a revolution as a +referendum or plebiscite in which the people fight instead of voting. +The French Revolution overthrew one set of rulers and substituted +another with different interests and different views. That is what a +general election enables the people to do in England every seven years +if they choose. Revolution is therefore a national institution in +England; and its advocacy by an Englishman needs no apology. + +Every man is a revolutionist concerning the thing he understands. For +example, every person who has mastered a profession is a sceptic +concerning it, and consequently a revolutionist. + +Every genuine religious person is a heretic and therefore a +revolutionist. + +All who achieve real distinction in life begin as revolutionists. The +most distinguished persons become more revolutionary as they grow older, +though they are commonly supposed to become more conservative owing to +their loss of faith in conventional methods of reform. + +Any person under the age of thirty, who, having any knowledge of the +existing social order, is not a revolutionist, is an inferior. + +AND YET + +Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only +shifted it to another shoulder. + +JOHN TANNER + + + +I + +ON GOOD BREEDING + +If there were no God, said the eighteenth century Deist, it would be +necessary to invent Him. Now this XVIII century god was deus ex +machina, the god who helped those who could not help themselves, the god +of the lazy and incapable. The nineteenth century decided that there is +indeed no such god; and now Man must take in hand all the work that he +used to shirk with an idle prayer. He must, in effect, change himself +into the political Providence which he formerly conceived as god; and +such change is not only possible, but the only sort of change that is +real. The mere transfiguration of institutions, as from military and +priestly dominance to commercial and scientific dominance, from +commercial dominance to proletarian democracy, from slavery to serfdom, +from serfdom to capitalism, from monarchy to republicanism, from +polytheism to monotheism, from monotheism to atheism, from atheism to +pantheistic humanitarianism, from general illiteracy to general +literacy, from romance to realism, from realism to mysticism, from +metaphysics to physics, are all but changes from Tweedledum to +Tweedledee: plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. But the changes +from the crab apple to the pippin, from the wolf and fox to the house +dog, from the charger of Henry V to the brewer's draught horse and the +race-horse, are real; for here Man has played the god, subduing Nature +to his intention, and ennobling or debasing Life for a set purpose. And +what can be done with a wolf can be done with a man. If such monsters +as the tramp and the gentleman can appear as mere by-products of Man's +individual greed and folly, what might we not hope for as a main product +of his universal aspiration? + +This is no new conclusion. The despair of institutions, and the +inexorable "ye must be born again," with Mrs Poyser's stipulation, "and +born different," recurs in every generation. The cry for the Superman +did not begin with Nietzsche, nor will it end with his vogue. But it +has always been silenced by the same question: what kind of person is +this Superman to be? You ask, not for a super-apple, but for an eatable +apple; not for a superhorse, but for a horse of greater draught or +velocity. Neither is it of any use to ask for a Superman: you must +furnish a specification of the sort of man you want. Unfortunately you +do not know what sort of man you want. Some sort of goodlooking +philosopher-athlete, with a handsome healthy woman for his mate, +perhaps. + +Vague as this is, it is a great advance on the popular demand for a +perfect gentleman and a perfect lady. And, after all, no market demand +in the world takes the form of exact technical specification of the +article required. Excellent poultry and potatoes are produced to +satisfy the demand of housewives who do not know the technical +differences between a tuber and a chicken. They will tell you that the +proof of the pudding is in the eating; and they are right. The proof of +the Superman will be in the living; and we shall find out how to produce +him by the old method of trial and error, and not by waiting for a +completely convincing prescription of his ingredients. + +Certain common and obvious mistakes may be ruled out from the beginning. +For example, we agree that we want superior mind; but we need not fall +into the football club folly of counting on this as a product of +superior body. Yet if we recoil so far as to conclude that superior +mind consists in being the dupe of our ethical classifications of +virtues and vices, in short, of conventional morality, we shall fall out +of the fryingpan of the football club into the fire of the Sunday +School. If we must choose between a race of athletes and a race of +"good" men, let us have the athletes: better Samson and Milo than Calvin +and Robespierre. But neither alternative is worth changing for: Samson +is no more a Superman than Calvin. What then are we to do? + + + +II + +PROPERTY AND MARRIAGE + +Let us hurry over the obstacles set up by property and marriage. +Revolutionists make too much of them. No doubt it is easy to +demonstrate that property will destroy society unless society destroys +it. No doubt, also, property has hitherto held its own and destroyed +all the empires. But that was because the superficial objection to it +(that it distributes social wealth and the social labor burden in a +grotesquely inequitable manner) did not threaten the existence of the +race, but only the individual happiness of its units, and finally the +maintenance of some irrelevant political form or other, such as a +nation, an empire, or the like. Now as happiness never matters to +Nature, as she neither recognizes flags and frontiers nor cares a straw +whether the economic system adopted by a society is feudal, +capitalistic, or collectivist, provided it keeps the race afoot (the +hive and the anthill being as acceptable to her as Utopia), the +demonstrations of Socialists, though irrefutable, will never make any +serious impression on property. The knell of that over-rated +institution will not sound until it is felt to conflict with some more +vital matter than mere personal inequities in industrial economy. No +such conflict was perceived whilst society had not yet grown beyond +national communities too small and simple to overtax Man's limited +political capacity disastrously. But we have now reached the stage of +international organization. Man's political capacity and magnanimity +are clearly beaten by the vastness and complexity of the problems forced +on him. And it is at this anxious moment that he finds, when he looks +upward for a mightier mind to help him, that the heavens are empty. He +will presently see that his discarded formula that Man is the Temple of +the Holy Ghost happens to be precisely true, and that it is only through +his own brain and hand that this Holy Ghost, formally the most nebulous +person in the Trinity, and now become its sole survivor as it has always +been its real Unity, can help him in any way. And so, if the Superman +is to come, he must be born of Woman by Man's intentional and +well-considered contrivance. Conviction of this will smash everything +that opposes it. Even Property and Marriage, which laugh at the +laborer's petty complaint that he is defrauded of "surplus value," and +at the domestic miseries of the slaves of the wedding ring, will +themselves be laughed aside as the lightest of trifles if they cross +this conception when it becomes a fully realized vital purpose of the +race. + +That they must cross it becomes obvious the moment we acknowledge the +futility of breeding men for special qualities as we breed cocks for +game, greyhounds for speed, or sheep for mutton. What is really +important in Man is the part of him that we do not yet understand. Of +much of it we are not even conscious, just as we are not normally +conscious of keeping up our circulation by our heart-pump, though if we +neglect it we die. We are therefore driven to the conclusion that when +we have carried selection as far as we can by rejecting from the list of +eligible parents all persons who are uninteresting, unpromising, or +blemished without any set-off, we shall still have to trust to the +guidance of fancy (alias Voice of Nature), both in the breeders and the +parents, for that superiority in the unconscious self which will be the +true characteristic of the Superman. + +At this point we perceive the importance of giving fancy the widest +possible field. To cut humanity up into small cliques, and effectively +limit the selection of the individual to his own clique, is to postpone +the Superman for eons, if not for ever. Not only should every person be +nourished and trained as a possible parent, but there should be no +possibility of such an obstacle to natural selection as the objection of +a countess to a navvy or of a duke to a charwoman. Equality is +essential to good breeding; and equality, as all economists know, is +incompatible with property. + +Besides, equality is an essential condition of bad breeding also; and +bad breeding is indispensable to the weeding out of the human race. +When the conception of heredity took hold of the scientific imagination +in the middle of last century, its devotees announced that it was a +crime to marry the lunatic to the lunatic or the consumptive to the +consumptive. But pray are we to try to correct our diseased stocks by +infecting our healthy stocks with them? Clearly the attraction which +disease has for diseased people is beneficial to the race. If two +really unhealthy people get married, they will, as likely as not, have a +great number of children who will all die before they reach maturity. +This is a far more satisfactory arrangement than the tragedy of a union +between a healthy and an unhealthy person. Though more costly than +sterilization of the unhealthy, it has the enormous advantage that in +the event of our notions of health and unhealth being erroneous (which +to some extent they most certainly are), the error will be corrected by +experience instead of confirmed by evasion. + +One fact must be faced resolutely, in spite of the shrieks of the +romantic. There is no evidence that the best citizens are the offspring +of congenial marriages, or that a conflict of temperament is not a +highly important part of what breeders call crossing. On the contrary, +it is quite sufficiently probable that good results may be obtained from +parents who would be extremely unsuitable companions and partners, to +make it certain that the experiment of mating them will sooner or later +be tried purposely almost as often as it is now tried accidentally. But +mating such couples must clearly not involve marrying them. In +conjugation two complementary persons may supply one another's +deficiencies: in the domestic partnership of marriage they only feel +them and suffer from them. Thus the son of a robust, cheerful, eupeptic +British country squire, with the tastes and range of his class, and of a +clever, imaginative, intellectual, highly civilized Jewess, might be +very superior to both his parents; but it is not likely that the Jewess +would find the squire an interesting companion, or his habits, his +friends, his place and mode of life congenial to her. Therefore +marriage, whilst it is made an indispensable condition of mating, will +delay the advent of the Superman as effectually as Property, and will be +modified by the impulse towards him just as effectually. + +The practical abrogation of Property and Marriage as they exist at +present will occur without being much noticed. To the mass of men, the +intelligent abolition of property would mean nothing except an increase +in the quantity of food, clothing, housing, and comfort at their +personal disposal, as well as a greater control over their time and +circumstances. Very few persons now make any distinction between +virtually complete property and property held on such highly developed +public conditions as to place its income on the same footing as that of +a propertyless clergyman, officer, or civil servant. A landed +proprietor may still drive men and women off his land, demolish their +dwellings, and replace them with sheep or deer; and in the unregulated +trades the private trader may still spunge on the regulated trades and +sacrifice the life and health of the nation as lawlessly as the +Manchester cotton manufacturers did at the beginning of last century. +But though the Factory Code on the one hand, and Trade Union +organization on the other, have, within the lifetime of men still +living, converted the old unrestricted property of the cotton +manufacturer in his mill and the cotton spinner in his labor into a mere +permission to trade or work on stringent public or collective +conditions, imposed in the interest of the general welfare without any +regard for individual hard cases, people in Lancashire still speak of +their "property" in the old terms, meaning nothing more by it than the +things a thief can be punished for stealing. The total abolition of +property, and the conversion of every citizen into a salaried +functionary in the public service, would leave much more than 99 per +cent of the nation quite unconscious of any greater change than now +takes place when the son of a shipowner goes into the navy. They would +still call their watches and umbrellas and back gardens their property. + +Marriage also will persist as a name attached to a general custom long +after the custom itself will have altered. For example, modern English +marriage, as modified by divorce and by Married Women's Property Acts, +differs more from early XIX century marriage than Byron's marriage did +from Shakespear's. At the present moment marriage in England differs +not only from marriage in France, but from marriage in Scotland. +Marriage as modified by the divorce laws in South Dakota would be called +mere promiscuity in Clapham. Yet the Americans, far from taking a +profligate and cynical view of marriage, do homage to its ideals with a +seriousness that seems old fashioned in Clapham. Neither in England nor +America would a proposal to abolish marriage be tolerated for a moment; +and yet nothing is more certain than that in both countries the +progressive modification of the marriage contract will be continued +until it is no more onerous nor irrevocable than any ordinary commercial +deed of partnership. Were even this dispensed with, people would still +call themselves husbands and wives; describe their companionships as +marriages; and be for the most part unconscious that they were any less +married than Henry VIII. For though a glance at the legal conditions of +marriage in different Christian countries shews that marriage varies +legally from frontier to frontier, domesticity varies so little that +most people believe their own marriage laws to be universal. +Consequently here again, as in the case of Property, the absolute +confidence of the public in the stability of the institution's name, +makes it all the easier to alter its substance. + +However, it cannot be denied that one of the changes in public opinion +demanded by the need for the Superman is a very unexpected one. It is +nothing less than the dissolution of the present necessary association +of marriage with conjugation, which most unmarried people regard as the +very diagnostic of marriage. They are wrong, of course: it would be +quite as near the truth to say that conjugation is the one purely +accidental and incidental condition of marriage. Conjugation is +essential to nothing but the propagation of the race; and the moment +that paramount need is provided for otherwise than by marriage, +conjugation, from Nature's creative point of view, ceases to be +essential in marriage. But marriage does not thereupon cease to be so +economical, convenient, and comfortable, that the Superman might safely +bribe the matrimonomaniacs by offering to revive all the old inhuman +stringency and irrevocability of marriage, to abolish divorce, to +confirm the horrible bond which still chains decent people to drunkards, +criminals, and wasters, provided only the complete extrication of +conjugation from it were conceded to him. For if people could form +domestic companionships on no easier terms than these, they would still +marry. The Roman Catholic, forbidden by his Church to avail himself of +the divorce laws, marries as freely as the South Dakotan Presbyterians +who can change partners with a facility that scandalizes the old world; +and were his Church to dare a further step towards Christianity and +enjoin celibacy on its laity as well as on its clergy, marriages would +still be contracted for the sake of domesticity by perfectly obedient +sons and daughters of the Church. One need not further pursue these +hypotheses: they are only suggested here to help the reader to analyse +marriage into its two functions of regulating conjugation and supplying +a form of domesticity. These two functions are quite separable; and +domesticity is the only one of the two which is essential to the +existence of marriage, because conjugation without domesticity is not +marriage at all, whereas domesticity without conjugation is still +marriage: in fact it is necessarily the actual condition of all fertile +marriages during a great part of their duration, and of some marriages +during the whole of it. + +Taking it, then, that Property and Marriage, by destroying Equality and +thus hampering sexual selection with irrelevant conditions, are hostile +to the evolution of the Superman, it is easy to understand why the only +generally known modern experiment in breeding the human race took place +in a community which discarded both institutions. + + + +III + +THE PERFECTIONIST EXPERIMENT AT ONEIDA CREEK + +In 1848 the Oneida Community was founded in America to carry out a +resolution arrived at by a handful of Perfectionist Communists "that we +will devote ourselves exclusively to the establishment of the Kingdom of +God." Though the American nation declared that this sort of thing was +not to be tolerated in a Christian country, the Oneida Community held +its own for over thirty years, during which period it seems to have +produced healthier children and done and suffered less evil than any +Joint Stock Company on record. It was, however, a highly selected +community; for a genuine communist (roughly definable as an intensely +proud person who proposes to enrich the common fund instead of to spunge +on it) is superior to an ordinary joint stock capitalist precisely as an +ordinary joint stock capitalist is superior to a pirate. Further, the +Perfectionists were mightily shepherded by their chief Noyes, one of +those chance attempts at the Superman which occur from time to time in +spite of the interference of Man's blundering institutions. The +existence of Noyes simplified the breeding problem for the Communists, +the question as to what sort of man they should strive to breed being +settled at once by the obvious desirability of breeding another Noyes. + +But an experiment conducted by a handful of people, who, after thirty +years of immunity from the unintentional child slaughter that goes on by +ignorant parents in private homes, numbered only 300, could do very +little except prove that Communists, under the guidance of a Superman +"devoted exclusively to the establishment of the Kingdom of God," and +caring no more for property and marriage than a Camberwell minister +cares for Hindoo Caste or Suttee, might make a much better job of their +lives than ordinary folk under the harrow of both these institutions. +Yet their Superman himself admitted that this apparent success was only +part of the abnormal phenomenon of his own occurrence; for when he came +to the end of his powers through age, he himself guided and organized +the voluntary relapse of the communists into marriage, capitalism, and +customary private life, thus admitting that the real social solution was +not what a casual Superman could persuade a picked company to do for +him, but what a whole community of Supermen would do spontaneously. If +Noyes had had to organize, not a few dozen Perfectionists, but the whole +United States, America would have beaten him as completely as England +beat Oliver Cromwell, France Napoleon, or Rome Julius Caesar. Cromwell +learnt by bitter experience that God himself cannot raise a people above +its own level, and that even though you stir a nation to sacrifice all +its appetites to its conscience, the result will still depend wholly on +what sort of conscience the nation has got. Napoleon seems to have +ended by regarding mankind as a troublesome pack of hounds only worth +keeping for the sport of hunting with them. Caesar's capacity for +fighting without hatred or resentment was defeated by the determination +of his soldiers to kill their enemies in the field instead of taking +them prisoners to be spared by Caesar; and his civil supremacy was +purchased by colossal bribery of the citizens of Rome. What great +rulers cannot do, codes and religions cannot do. Man reads his own +nature into every ordinance: if you devise a superhuman commandment so +cunningly that it cannot be misinterpreted in terms of his will, he will +denounce it as seditious blasphemy, or else disregard it as either crazy +or totally unintelligible. Parliaments and synods may tinker as much as +they please with their codes and creeds as circumstances alter the +balance of classes and their interests; and, as a result of the +tinkering, there may be an occasional illusion of moral evolution, as +when the victory of the commercial caste over the military caste leads +to the substitution of social boycotting and pecuniary damages for +duelling. At certain moments there may even be a considerable material +advance, as when the conquest of political power by the working class +produces a better distribution of wealth through the simple action of +the selfishness of the new masters; but all this is mere readjustment +and reformation: until the heart and mind of the people is changed the +very greatest man will no more dare to govern on the assumption that all +are as great as he than a drover dare leave his flock to find its way +through the streets as he himself would. Until there is an England in +which every man is a Cromwell, a France in which every man is a +Napoleon, a Rome in which every man is a Caesar, a Germany in which every +man is a Luther plus a Goethe, the world will be no more improved by its +heroes than a Brixton villa is improved by the pyramid of Cheops. The +production of such nations is the only real change possible to us. + + + +IV + +MAN'S OBJECTION TO HIS OWN IMPROVEMENT + +But would such a change be tolerated if Man must rise above himself to +desire it? It would, through his misconception of its nature. Man does +desire an ideal Superman with such energy as he can spare from his +nutrition, and has in every age magnified the best living substitute for +it he can find. His least incompetent general is set up as an +Alexander; his king is the first gentleman in the world; his Pope is a +saint. He is never without an array of human idols who are all nothing +but sham Supermen. That the real Superman will snap his superfingers at +all Man's present trumpery ideals of right, duty, honor, justice, +religion, even decency, and accept moral obligations beyond present +human endurance, is a thing that contemporary Man does not foresee: in +fact he does not notice it when our casual Supermen do it in his very +face. He actually does it himself every day without knowing it. He +will therefore make no objection to the production of a race of what he +calls Great Men or Heroes, because he will imagine them, not as true +Supermen, but as himself endowed with infinite brains, infinite courage, +and infinite money. + +The most troublesome opposition will arise from the general fear of +mankind that any interference with our conjugal customs will be an +interference with our pleasures and our romance. This fear, by putting +on airs of offended morality, has always intimidated people who have not +measured its essential weakness; but it will prevail with those +degenerates only in whom the instinct of fertility has faded into a mere +itching for pleasure. The modern devices for combining pleasure with +sterility, now universally known and accessible, enable these persons to +weed themselves out of the race, a process already vigorously at work; +and the consequent survival of the intelligently fertile means the +survival of the partizans of the Superman; for what is proposed is +nothing but the replacement of the old unintelligent, inevitable, almost +unconscious fertility by an intelligently controlled, conscious +fertility, and the elimination of the mere voluptuary from the +evolutionary process.[1] Even if this selective agency had not been +invented, the purpose of the race would still shatter the opposition of +individual instincts. Not only do the bees and the ants satisfy their +reproductive and parental instincts vicariously; but marriage itself +successfully imposes celibacy on millions of unmarried normal men and +women. In short, the individual instinct in this matter, overwhelming +as it is thoughtlessly supposed to be, is really a finally negligible +one. + + +[1] The part played in evolution by the voluptuary will be the same as +that already played by the glutton. The glutton, as the man with the +strongest motive for nourishing himself, will always take more pains +than his fellows to get food. When food is so difficult to get that +only great exertions can secure a sufficient supply of it, the glutton's +appetite develops his cunning and enterprise to the utmost; and he +becomes not only the best fed but the ablest man in the community. But +in more hospitable climates, or where the social organization of the +food supply makes it easy for a man to overeat, then the glutton eats +himself out of health and finally out of existence. All other +voluptuaries prosper and perish in the same way; way; and this is why +the survival of the fittest means finally the survival of the +self-controlled, because they alone can adapt themselves to the +perpetual shifting of conditions produced by industrial progress. + + + +V + +THE POLITICAL NEED FOR THE SUPERMAN + +The need for the Superman is, in its most imperative aspect, a political +one. We have been driven to Proletarian Democracy by the failure of all +the alternative systems; for these depended on the existence of Supermen +acting as despots or oligarchs; and not only were these Supermen not +always or even often forthcoming at the right moment and in an eligible +social position, but when they were forthcoming they could not, except +for a short time and by morally suicidal coercive methods, impose +superhumanity on those whom they governed; so, by mere force of "human +nature," government by consent of the governed has supplanted the old +plan of governing the citizen as a public-schoolboy is governed. + +Now we have yet to see the man who, having any practical experience of +Proletarian Democracy, has any belief in its capacity for solving great +political problems, or even for doing ordinary parochial work +intelligently and economically. Only under despotisms and oligarchies +has the Radical faith in "universal suffrage" as a political panacea +arisen. It withers the moment it is exposed to practical trial, because +Democracy cannot rise above the level of the human material of which its +voters are made. Switzerland seems happy in comparison with Russia; but +if Russia were as small as Switzerland, and had her social problems +simplified in the same way by impregnable natural fortifications and a +population educated by the same variety and intimacy of international +intercourse, there might be little to choose between them. At all +events Australia and Canada, which are virtually protected democratic +republics, and France and the United States, which are avowedly +independent democratic republics, are neither healthy, wealthy, nor +wise; and they would be worse instead of better if their popular +ministers were not experts in the art of dodging popular enthusiasms and +duping popular ignorance. The politician who once had to learn how to +flatter Kings has now to learn how to fascinate, amuse, coax, humbug, +frighten, or otherwise strike the fancy of the electorate; and though in +advanced modern States, where the artizan is better educated than the +King, it takes a much bigger man to be a successful demagogue than to be +a successful courtier, yet he who holds popular convictions with +prodigious energy is the man for the mob, whilst the frailer sceptic who +is cautiously feeling his way towards the next century has no chance +unless he happens by accident to have the specific artistic talent of +the mountebank as well, in which case it is as a mountebank that he +catches votes, and not as a meliorist. Consequently the demagogue, +though he professes (and fails) to readjust matters in the interests of +the majority of the electors, yet stereotypes mediocrity, organizes +intolerance, disparages exhibitions of uncommon qualities, and glorifies +conspicuous exhibitions of common ones. He manages a small job well: he +muddles rhetorically through a large one. When a great political +movement takes place, it is not consciously led nor organized: the +unconscious self in mankind breaks its way through the problem as an +elephant breaks through a jungle; and the politicians make speeches +about whatever happens in the process, which, with the best intentions, +they do all in their power to prevent. Finally, when social aggregation +arrives at a point demanding international organization before the +demagogues and electorates have learnt how to manage even a country +parish properly much less internationalize Constantinople, the whole +political business goes to smash; and presently we have Ruins of +Empires, New Zealanders sitting on a broken arch of London Bridge, and +so forth. + +To that recurrent catastrophe we shall certainly come again unless we +can have a Democracy of Supermen; and the production of such a Democracy +is the only change that is now hopeful enough to nerve us to the effort +that Revolution demands. + + + +VI + +PRUDERY EXPLAINED + +Why the bees should pamper their mothers whilst we pamper only our +operatic prima donnas is a question worth reflecting on. Our notion of +treating a mother is, not to increase her supply of food, but to cut it +off by forbidding her to work in a factory for a month after her +confinement. Everything that can make birth a misfortune to the parents +as well as a danger to the mother is conscientiously done. When a great +French writer, Emil Zola, alarmed at the sterilization of his nation, +wrote an eloquent and powerful book to restore the prestige of +parentage, it was at once assumed in England that a work of this +character, with such a title as Fecundity, was too abominable to be +translated, and that any attempt to deal with the relations of the sexes +from any other than the voluptuary or romantic point of view must be +sternly put down. Now if this assumption were really founded on public +opinion, it would indicate an attitude of disgust and resentment towards +the Life Force that could only arise in a diseased and moribund +community in which Ibsen's Hedda Gabler would be the typical woman. But +it has no vital foundation at all. The prudery of the newspapers is, +like the prudery of the dinner table, a mere difficulty of education and +language. We are not taught to think decently on these subjects, and +consequently we have no language for them except indecent language. We +therefore have to declare them unfit for public discussion, because the +only terms in which we can conduct the discussion are unfit for public +use. Physiologists, who have a technical vocabulary at their disposal, +find no difficulty; and masters of language who think decently can write +popular stories like Zola's Fecundity or Tolstoy's Resurrection without +giving the smallest offence to readers who can also think decently. But +the ordinary modern journalist, who has never discussed such matters +except in ribaldry, cannot write a simple comment on a divorce case +without a conscious shamefulness or a furtive facetiousness that makes +it impossible to read the comment aloud in company. All this ribaldry +and prudery (the two are the same) does not mean that people do not feel +decently on the subject: on the contrary, it is just the depth and +seriousness of our feeling that makes its desecration by vile language +and coarse humor intolerable; so that at last we cannot bear to have it +spoken of at all because only one in a thousand can speak of it without +wounding our self-respect, especially the self-respect of women. Add to +the horrors of popular language the horrors of popular poverty. In +crowded populations poverty destroys the possibility of cleanliness; and +in the absence of cleanliness many of the natural conditions of life +become offensive and noxious, with the result that at last the +association of uncleanliness with these natural conditions becomes so +overpowering that among civilized people (that is, people massed in the +labyrinths of slums we call cities), half their bodily life becomes a +guilty secret, unmentionable except to the doctor in emergencies; and +Hedda Gabler shoots herself because maternity is so unladylike. In +short, popular prudery is only a mere incident of popular squalor: the +subjects which it taboos remain the most interesting and earnest of +subjects in spite of it. + + + +VII + +PROGRESS AN ILLUSION + +Unfortunately the earnest people get drawn off the track of evolution by +the illusion of progress. Any Socialist can convince us easily that the +difference between Man as he is and Man as he might become, without +further evolution, under millennial conditions of nutrition, +environment, and training, is enormous. He can shew that inequality and +iniquitous distribution of wealth and allotment of labor have arisen +through an unscientific economic system, and that Man, faulty as he is, +no more intended to establish any such ordered disorder than a moth +intends to be burnt when it flies into a candle flame. He can shew that +the difference between the grace and strength of the acrobat and the +bent back of the rheumatic field laborer is a difference produced by +conditions, not by nature. He can shew that many of the most detestable +human vices are not radical, but are mere reactions of our institutions +on our very virtues. The Anarchist, the Fabian, the Salvationist, the +Vegetarian, the doctor, the lawyer, the parson, the professor of ethics, +the gymnast, the soldier, the sportsman, the inventor, the political +program-maker, all have some prescription for bettering us; and almost +all their remedies are physically possible and aimed at admitted evils. +To them the limit of progress is, at worst, the completion of all the +suggested reforms and the levelling up of all men to the point attained +already by the most highly nourished and cultivated in mind and body. + +Here, then, as it seems to them, is an enormous field for the energy of +the reformer. Here are many noble goals attainable by many of those +paths up the Hill Difficulty along which great spirits love to aspire. +Unhappily, the hill will never be climbed by Man as we know him. It +need not be denied that if we all struggled bravely to the end of the +reformers' paths we should improve the world prodigiously. But there is +no more hope in that If than in the equally plausible assurance that if +the sky falls we shall all catch larks. We are not going to tread those +paths: we have not sufficient energy. We do not desire the end enough: +indeed in more cases we do not effectively desire it at all. Ask any +man would he like to be a better man; and he will say yes, most piously. +Ask him would he like to have a million of money; and he will say yes, +most sincerely. But the pious citizen who would like to be a better man +goes on behaving just as he did before. And the tramp who would like +the million does not take the trouble to earn ten shillings: multitudes +of men and women, all eager to accept a legacy of a million, live and +die without having ever possessed five pounds at one time, although +beggars have died in rags on mattresses stuffed with gold which they +accumulated because they desired it enough to nerve them to get it and +keep it. The economists who discovered that demand created supply soon +had to limit the proposition to "effective demand," which turned out, in +the final analysis, to mean nothing more than supply itself; and this +holds good in politics, morals, and all other departments as well: the +actual supply is the measure of the effective demand; and the mere +aspirations and professions produce nothing. No community has ever yet +passed beyond the initial phases in which its pugnacity and fanaticism +enabled it to found a nation, and its cupidity to establish and develop +a commercial civilization. Even these stages have never been attained +by public spirit, but always by intolerant wilfulness and brute force. +Take the Reform Bill of 1832 as an example of a conflict between two +sections of educated Englishmen concerning a political measure which was +as obviously necessary and inevitable as any political measure has ever +been or is ever likely to be. It was not passed until the gentlemen of +Birmingham had made arrangements to cut the throats of the gentlemen of +St. James's parish in due military form. It would not have been passed +to this day if there had been no force behind it except the logic and +public conscience of the Utilitarians. A despotic ruler with as much +sense as Queen Elizabeth would have done better than the mob of grown-up +Eton boys who governed us then by privilege, and who, since the +introduction of practically Manhood Suffrage in 1884, now govern us at +the request of proletarian Democracy. + +At the present time we have, instead of the Utilitarians, the Fabian +Society, with its peaceful, constitutional, moral, economical policy of +Socialism, which needs nothing for its bloodless and benevolent +realization except that the English people shall understand it and +approve of it. But why are the Fabians well spoken of in circles where +thirty years ago the word Socialist was understood as equivalent to +cut-throat and incendiary? Not because the English have the smallest +intention of studying or adopting the Fabian policy, but because they +believe that the Fabians, by eliminating the element of intimidation +from the Socialist agitation, have drawn the teeth of insurgent poverty +and saved the existing order from the only method of attack it really +fears. Of course, if the nation adopted the Fabian policy, it would be +carried out by brute force exactly as our present property system is. +It would become the law; and those who resisted it would be fined, sold +up, knocked on the head by policemen, thrown into prison, and in the +last resort "executed" just as they are when they break the present law. +But as our proprietary class has no fear of that conversion taking +place, whereas it does fear sporadic cut-throats and gunpowder plots, +and strives with all its might to hide the fact that there is no moral +difference whatever between the methods by which it enforces its +proprietary rights and the method by which the dynamitard asserts his +conception of natural human rights, the Fabian Society is patted on the +back just as the Christian Social Union is, whilst the Socialist who +says bluntly that a Social revolution can be made only as all other +revolutions have been made, by the people who want it killing, coercing, +and intimidating the people who dont want it, is denounced as a +misleader of the people, and imprisoned with hard labor to shew him how +much sincerity there is in the objection of his captors to physical +force. + +Are we then to repudiate Fabian methods, and return to those of the +barricader, or adopt those of the dynamitard and the assassin? On the +contrary, we are to recognize that both are fundamentally futile. It +seems easy for the dynamitard to say "Have you not just admitted that +nothing is ever conceded except to physical force? Did not Gladstone +admit that the Irish Church was disestablished, not by the spirit of +Liberalism, but by the explosion which wrecked Clerkenwell prison?" +Well, we need not foolishly and timidly deny it. Let it be fully +granted. Let us grant, further, that all this lies in the nature of +things; that the most ardent Socialist, if he owns property, can by no +means do otherwise than Conservative proprietors until property is +forcibly abolished by the whole nation; nay, that ballots, and +parliamentary divisions, in spite of their vain ceremony, of discussion, +differ from battles only as the bloodless surrender of an outnumbered +force in the field differs from Waterloo or Trafalgar. I make a present +of all these admissions to the Fenian who collects money from +thoughtless Irishmen in America to blow up Dublin Castle; to the +detective who persuades foolish young workmen to order bombs from the +nearest ironmonger and then delivers them up to penal servitude; to our +military and naval commanders who believe, not in preaching, but in an +ultimatum backed by plenty of lyddite; and, generally, to all whom it +may concern. But of what use is it to substitute the way of the +reckless and bloodyminded for the way of the cautious and humane? Is +England any the better for the wreck of Clerkenwell prison, or Ireland +for the disestablishment of the Irish Church? Is there the smallest +reason to suppose that the nation which sheepishly let Charles and Laud +and Strafford coerce it, gained anything because it afterwards, still +more sheepishly, let a few strongminded Puritans, inflamed by the +masterpieces of Jewish revolutionary literature, cut off the heads of +the three? Suppose the Gunpowder plot had succeeded, and set a Fawkes +dynasty permanently on the throne, would it have made any difference to +the present state of the nation? The guillotine was used in France up +to the limit of human endurance, both on Girondins and Jacobins. +Fouquier Tinville followed Marie Antoinette to the scaffold; and Marie +Antoinette might have asked the crowd, just as pointedly as Fouquier +did, whether their bread would be any cheaper when her head was off. +And what came of it all? The Imperial France of the Rougon Macquart +family, and the Republican France of the Panama scandal and the Dreyfus +case. Was the difference worth the guillotining of all those unlucky +ladies and gentlemen, useless and mischievous as many of them were? +Would any sane man guillotine a mouse to bring about such a result? +Turn to Republican America. America has no Star Chamber, and no feudal +barons. But it has Trusts; and it has millionaires whose factories, +fenced in by live electric wires and defended by Pinkerton retainers +with magazine rifles, would have made a Radical of Reginald Front de +Boeuf. Would Washington or Franklin have lifted a finger in the cause +of American Independence if they had foreseen its reality? + +No: what Caesar, Cromwell, Napoleon could not do with all the physical +force and moral prestige of the State in their hands, cannot be done by +enthusiastic criminals and lunatics. Even the Jews, who, from Moses to +Marx and Lassalle, have inspired all the revolutions, have had to +confess that, after all, the dog will return to his vomit and the sow +that was washed to her wallowing in the mire; and we may as well make up +our minds that Man will return to his idols and his cupidities, in spite +of "movements" and all revolutions, until his nature is changed. Until +then, his early successes in building commercial civilizations (and such +civilizations, Good Heavens!) are but preliminaries to the inevitable +later stage, now threatening us, in which the passions which built the +civilization become fatal instead of productive, just as the same +qualities which make the lion king in the forest ensure his destruction +when he enters a city. Nothing can save society then except the clear +head and the wide purpose: war and competition, potent instruments of +selection and evolution in one epoch, become ruinous instruments of +degeneration in the next. In the breeding of animals and plants, +varieties which have arisen by selection through many generations +relapse precipitously into the wild type in a generation or two when +selection ceases; and in the same way a civilization in which lusty +pugnacity and greed have ceased to act as selective agents and have +begun to obstruct and destroy, rushes downwards and backwards with a +suddenness that enables an observer to see with consternation the upward +steps of many centuries retraced in a single lifetime. This has often +occurred even within the period covered by history; and in every +instance the turning point has been reached long before the attainment, +or even the general advocacy on paper, of the levelling-up of the mass +to the highest point attainable by the best nourished and cultivated +normal individuals. + +We must therefore frankly give up the notion that Man as he exists is +capable of net progress. There will always be an illusion of progress, +because wherever we are conscious of an evil we remedy it, and therefore +always seem to ourselves to be progressing, forgetting that most of the +evils we see are the effects, finally become acute, of long-unnoticed +retrogressions; that our compromising remedies seldom fully recover the +lost ground; above all, that on the lines along which we are +degenerating, good has become evil in our eyes, and is being undone in +the name of progress precisely as evil is undone and replaced by good on +the lines along which we are evolving. This is indeed the Illusion of +Illusions; for it gives us infallible and appalling assurance that if +our political ruin is to come, it will be effected by ardent reformers +and supported by enthusiastic patriots as a series of necessary steps in +our progress. Let the Reformer, the Progressive, the Meliorist then +reconsider himself and his eternal ifs and ans which never become pots +and pans. Whilst Man remains what he is, there can be no progress +beyond the point already attained and fallen headlong from at every +attempt at civilization; and since even that point is but a pinnacle to +which a few people cling in giddy terror above an abyss of squalor, mere +progress should no longer charm us. + + + +VIII + +THE CONCEIT OF CIVILIZATION + +After all, the progress illusion is not so very subtle. We begin by +reading the satires of our fathers' contemporaries; and we conclude +(usually quite ignorantly) that the abuses exposed by them are things of +the past. We see also that reforms of crying evils are frequently +produced by the sectional shifting of political power from oppressors to +oppressed. The poor man is given a vote by the Liberals in the hope +that he will cast it for his emancipators. The hope is not fulfilled; +but the lifelong imprisonment of penniless men for debt ceases; Factory +Acts are passed to mitigate sweating; schooling is made free and +compulsory; sanitary by-laws are multiplied; public steps are taken to +house the masses decently; the bare-footed get boots; rags become rare; +and bathrooms and pianos, smart tweeds and starched collars, reach +numbers of people who once, as "the unsoaped," played the Jew's harp or +the accordion in moleskins and belchers. Some of these changes are +gains: some of them are losses. Some of them are not changes at all: +all of them are merely the changes that money makes. Still, they +produce an illusion of bustling progress; and the reading class infers +from them that the abuses of the early Victorian period no longer exist +except as amusing pages in the novels of Dickens. But the moment we +look for a reform due to character and not to money, to statesmanship +and not to interest or mutiny, we are disillusioned. For example, we +remembered the maladministration and incompetence revealed by the +Crimean War as part of a bygone state of things until the South African +war shewed that the nation and the War Office, like those poor Bourbons +who have been so impudently blamed for a universal characteristic, had +learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. We had hardly recovered from the +fruitless irritation of this discovery when it transpired that the +officers' mess of our most select regiment included a flogging club +presided over by the senior subaltern. The disclosure provoked some +disgust at the details of this schoolboyish debauchery, but no surprise +at the apparent absence of any conception of manly honor and virtue, of +personal courage and self-respect, in the front rank of our chivalry. +In civil affairs we had assumed that the sycophancy and idolatry which +encouraged Charles I. to undervalue the Puritan revolt of the XVII +century had been long outgrown; but it has needed nothing but favorable +circumstances to revive, with added abjectness to compensate for its +lost piety. We have relapsed into disputes about transubstantiation at +the very moment when the discovery of the wide prevalence of theophagy +as a tribal custom has deprived us of the last excuse for believing that +our official religious rites differ in essentials from those of +barbarians. The Christian doctrine of the uselessness of punishment and +the wickedness of revenge has not, in spite of its simple common sense, +found a single convert among the nations: Christianity means nothing to +the masses but a sensational public execution which is made an excuse +for other executions. In its name we take ten years of a thief's life +minute by minute in the slow misery and degradation of modern reformed +imprisonment with as little remorse as Laud and his Star Chamber clipped +the ears of Bastwick and Burton. We dug up and mutilated the remains of +the Mahdi the other day exactly as we dug up and mutilated the remains +of Cromwell two centuries ago. We have demanded the decapitation of the +Chinese Boxer princes as any Tartar would have done; and our military +and naval expeditions to kill, burn, and destroy tribes and villages for +knocking an Englishman on the head are so common a part of our Imperial +routine that the last dozen of them has not called forth as much pity as +can be counted on by any lady criminal. The judicial use of torture to +extort confession is supposed to be a relic of darker ages; but whilst +these pages are being written an English judge has sentenced a forger to +twenty years penal servitude with an open declaration that the sentence +will be carried out in full unless he confesses where he has hidden the +notes he forged. And no comment whatever is made, either on this or on +a telegram from the seat of war in Somaliland mentioning that certain +information has been given by a prisoner of war "under punishment." Even +if these reports are false, the fact that they are accepted without +protest as indicating a natural and proper course of public conduct +shews that we are still as ready to resort to torture as Bacon was. As +to vindictive cruelty, an incident in the South African war, when the +relatives and friends of a prisoner were forced to witness his +execution, betrayed a baseness of temper and character which hardly +leaves us the right to plume ourselves on our superiority to Edward III. +at the surrender of Calais. And the democratic American officer +indulges in torture in the Philippines just as the aristocratic English +officer did in South Africa. The incidents of the white invasion of +Africa in search of ivory, gold, diamonds, and sport, have proved that +the modern European is the same beast of prey that formerly marched to +the conquest of new worlds under Alexander, Antony, and Pizarro. +Parliaments and vestries are just what they were when Cromwell +suppressed them and Dickens derided them. The democratic politician +remains exactly as Plato described him; the physician is still the +credulous impostor and petulant scientific coxcomb whom Moliere +ridiculed; the schoolmaster remains at best a pedantic child farmer and +at worst a flagellomaniac; arbitrations are more dreaded by honest men +than lawsuits; the philanthropist is still a parasite on misery as the +doctor is on disease; the miracles of priestcraft are none the less +fraudulent and mischievous because they are now called scientific +experiments and conducted by professors; witchcraft, in the modern form +of patent medicines and prophylactic inoculations, is rampant; the +landowner who is no longer powerful enough to; set the mantrap of +Rhampsinitis improves on it by barbed wire; the modern gentleman who is +too lazy to daub his face with vermilion as a symbol of bravery employs +a laundress to daub his shirt with starch as a symbol of cleanliness; we +shake our heads at the dirt of the middle ages in cities made grimy with +soot and foul and disgusting with shameless tobacco smoking; holy water, +in its latest form of disinfectant fluid, is more widely used and +believed in than ever; public health authorities deliberately go through +incantations with burning sulphur (which they know to be useless) +because the people believe in it as devoutly as the Italian peasant +believes in the liquefaction of the blood of St Januarius; and +straightforward public lying has reached gigantic developments, there +being nothing to choose in this respect between the pickpocket at the +police station and the minister on the treasury bench, the editor in the +newspaper office, the city magnate advertizing bicycle tires that do not +side-slip, the clergyman subscribing the thirty-nine articles, and the +vivisector who pledges his knightly honor that no animal operated on in +the physiological laboratory suffers the slightest pain. Hypocrisy is +at its worst; for we not only persecute bigotedly but sincerely in the +name of the cure-mongering witchcraft we do believe in, but callously +and hypocritically in the name of the Evangelical creed that our rulers +privately smile at as the Italian patricians of the fifth century smiled +at Jupiter and Venus. Sport is, as it has always been, murderous +excitement; the impulse to slaughter is universal; and museums are set +up throughout the country to encourage little children and elderly +gentlemen to make collections of corpses preserved in alcohol, and to +steal birds' eggs and keep them as the red Indian used to keep scalps. +Coercion with the lash is as natural to an Englishman as it was to +Solomon spoiling Rehoboam: indeed, the comparison is unfair to the Jews +in view of the facts that the Mosaic law forbade more than forty lashes +in the name of humanity, and that floggings of a thousand lashes were +inflicted on English soldiers in the XVIII and XIX centuries, and would +be inflicted still but for the change in the balance of political power +between the military caste and the commercial classes and the +proletariat. In spite of that change, flogging is still an institution +in the public school, in the military prison, on the training ship, and +in that school of littleness called the home. The lascivious clamor of +the flagellomaniac for more of it, constant as the clamor for more +insolence, more war, and lower rates, is tolerated and even gratified +because, having no moral ends in view, we have sense enough to see that +nothing but brute coercion can impose our selfish will on others. +Cowardice is universal; patriotism, public opinion, parental duty, +discipline, religion, morality, are only fine names for intimidation; +and cruelty, gluttony, and credulity keep cowardice in countenance. We +cut the throat of a calf and hang it up by the heels to bleed to death +so that our veal cutlet may be white; we nail geese to a board and cram +them with food because we like the taste of liver disease; we tear birds +to pieces to decorate our women's hats; we mutilate domestic animals for +no reason at all except to follow an instinctively cruel fashion; and we +connive at the most abominable tortures in the hope of discovering some +magical cure for our own diseases by them. + +Now please observe that these are not exceptional developments of our +admitted vices, deplored and prayed against by all good men. Not a word +has been said here of the excesses of our Neros, of whom we have the +full usual percentage. With the exception of the few military examples, +which are mentioned mainly to shew that the education and standing of a +gentleman, reinforced by the strongest conventions of honor, esprit de +corps, publicity and responsibility, afford no better guarantees of +conduct than the passions of a mob, the illustrations given above are +commonplaces taken from the daily practices of our best citizens, +vehemently defended in our newspapers and in our pulpits. The very +humanitarians who abhor them are stirred to murder by them: the dagger +of Brutus and Ravaillac is still active in the hands of Caserio and +Luccheni; and the pistol has come to its aid in the hands of Guiteau and +Czolgosz. Our remedies are still limited to endurance or assassination; +and the assassin is still judicially assassinated on the principle that +two blacks make a white. The only novelty is in our methods: through +the discovery of dynamite the overloaded musket of Hamilton of +Bothwellhaugh has been superseded by the bomb; but Ravachol's heart +burns just as Hamilton's did. The world will not bear thinking of to +those who know what it is, even with the largest discount for the +restraints of poverty on the poor and cowardice on the rich. + +All that can be said for us is that people must and do live and let live +up to a certain point. Even the horse, with his docked tail and bitted +jaw, finds his slavery mitigated by the fact that a total disregard of +his need for food and rest would put his master to the expense of buying +a new horse every second day; for you cannot work a horse to death and +then pick up another one for nothing, as you can a laborer. But this +natural check on inconsiderate selfishness is itself checked, partly by +our shortsightedness, and partly by deliberate calculation; so that +beside the man who, to his own loss, will shorten his horse's life in +mere stinginess, we have the tramway company which discovers actuarially +that though a horse may live from 24 to 40 years, yet it pays better to +work him to death in 4 and then replace him by a fresh victim. And +human slavery, which has reached its worst recorded point within our own +time in the form of free wage labor, has encountered the same personal +and commercial limits to both its aggravation and its mitigation. Now +that the freedom of wage labor has produced a scarcity of it, as in +South Africa, the leading English newspaper and the leading English +weekly review have openly and without apology demanded a return to +compulsory labor: that is, to the methods by which, as we believe, the +Egyptians built the pyramids. We know now that the crusade against +chattel slavery in the XIX century succeeded solely because chattel +slavery was neither the most effective nor the least humane method of +labor exploitation; and the world is now feeling its way towards a still +more effective system which shall abolish the freedom of the worker +without again making his exploiter responsible for him. + +Still, there is always some mitigation: there is the fear of revolt; and +there are the effects of kindliness and affection. Let it be repeated +therefore that no indictment is here laid against the world on the score +of what its criminals and monsters do. The fires of Smithfield and of +the Inquisition were lighted by earnestly pious people, who were kind +and good as kindness and goodness go. And when a negro is dipped in +kerosene and set on fire in America at the present time, he is not a +good man lynched by ruffians: he is a criminal lynched by crowds of +respectable, charitable, virtuously indignant, high-minded citizens, +who, though they act outside the law, are at least more merciful than +the American legislators and judges who not so long ago condemned men to +solitary confinement for periods, not of five months, as our own +practice is, but of five years and more. The things that our moral +monsters do may be left out of account with St. Bartholomew massacres +and other momentary outbursts of social disorder. Judge us by the +admitted and respected practice of our most reputable circles; and, if +you know the facts and are strong enough to look them in the face, you +must admit that unless we are replaced by a more highly evolved +animal--in short, by the Superman--the world must remain a den of +dangerous animals among whom our few accidental supermen, our +Shakespears, Goethes, Shelleys, and their like, must live as +precariously as lion tamers do, taking the humor of their situation, and +the dignity of their superiority, as a set-off to the horror of the one +and the loneliness of the other. + + + +IX + +THE VERDICT OF HISTORY + +It may be said that though the wild beast breaks out in Man and casts +him back momentarily into barbarism under the excitement of war and +crime, yet his normal life is higher than the normal life of his +forefathers. This view is very acceptable to Englishmen, who always +lean sincerely to virtue's side as long as it costs them nothing either +in money or in thought. They feel deeply the injustice of foreigners, +who allow them no credit for this conditional highmindedness. But there +is no reason to suppose that our ancestors were less capable of it than +we are. To all such claims for the existence of a progressive moral +evolution operating visibly from grandfather to grandson, there is the +conclusive reply that a thousand years of such evolution would have +produced enormous social changes, of which the historical evidence would +be overwhelming. But not Macaulay himself, the most confident of Whig +meliorists, can produce any such evidence that will bear +cross-examination. Compare our conduct and our codes with those +mentioned contemporarily in such ancient scriptures and classics as have +come down to us, and you will find no jot of ground for the belief that +any moral progress whatever has been made in historic time, in spite of +all the romantic attempts of historians to reconstruct the past on that +assumption. Within that time it has happened to nations as to private +families and individuals that they have flourished and decayed, repented +and hardened their hearts, submitted and protested, acted and reacted, +oscillated between natural and artificial sanitation (the oldest house +in the world, unearthed the other day in Crete, has quite modern +sanitary arrangements), and rung a thousand changes on the different +scales of income and pressure of population, firmly believing all the +time that mankind was advancing by leaps and bounds because men were +constantly busy. And the mere chapter of accidents has left a small +accumulation of chance discoveries, such as the wheel, the arch, the +safety pin, gunpowder, the magnet, the Voltaic pile and so forth: things +which, unlike the gospels and philosophic treatises of the sages, can be +usefully understood and applied by common men; so that steam locomotion +is possible without a nation of Stephensons, although national +Christianity is impossible without a nation of Christs. But does any +man seriously believe that the chauffeur who drives a motor car from +Paris to Berlin is a more highly evolved man than the charioteer of +Achilles, or that a modern Prime Minister is a more enlightened ruler +than Caesar because he rides a tricycle, writes his dispatches by the +electric light, and instructs his stockbroker through the telephone? + +Enough, then, of this goose-cackle about Progress: Man, as he is, never +will nor can add a cubit to his stature by any of its quackeries, +political, scientific, educational, religious, or artistic. What is +likely to happen when this conviction gets into the minds of the men +whose present faith in these illusions is the cement of our social +system, can be imagined only by those who know how suddenly a +civilization which has long ceased to think (or in the old phrase, to +watch and pray) can fall to pieces when the vulgar belief in its +hypocrisies and impostures can no longer hold out against its failures +and scandals. When religious and ethical formulae become so obsolete +that no man of strong mind can believe them, they have also reached the +point at which no man of high character will profess them; and from, +that moment until they are formally disestablished, they stand at the +door of every profession and every public office to keep out every able +man who is not a sophist or a liar. A nation which revises its parish +councils once in three years, but will not revise its articles of +religion once in three hundred, even when those articles avowedly began +as a political compromise dictated by Mr Facing-Both-Ways, is a nation +that needs remaking. + +Our only hope, then, is in evolution. We must replace the man by the +superman. It is frightful for the citizen, as the years pass him, to +see his own contemporaries so exactly reproduced by the younger +generation, that his companions of thirty years ago have their +counterparts in every city crowd, where he had to check himself +repeatedly in the act of saluting as an old friend some young man to +whom he is only an elderly stranger. All hope of advance dies in his +bosom as he watches them: he knows that they will do just what their +fathers did, and that the few voices which will still, as always before, +exhort them to do something else and be something better, might as well +spare their breath to cool their porridge (if they can get any). Men +like Ruskin and Carlyle will preach to Smith and Brown for the sake of +preaching, just as St Francis preached to the birds and St Anthony to +the fishes. But Smith and Brown, like the fishes and birds, remain as +they are; and poets who plan Utopias and prove that nothing is necessary +for their realization but that Man should will them, perceive at last, +like Richard Wagner, that the fact to be faced is that Man does not +effectively will them. And he never will until he becomes Superman. + +And so we arrive at the end of the Socialist's dream of "the +socialization of the means of production and exchange," of the +Positivist's dream of moralizing the capitalist, and of the ethical +professor's, legislator's, educator's dream of putting commandments and +codes and lessons and examination marks on a man as harness is put on a +horse, ermine on a judge, pipeclay on a soldier, or a wig on an actor, +and pretending that his nature has been changed. The only fundamental +and possible Socialism is the socialization of the selective breeding of +Man: in other terms, of human evolution. We must eliminate the Yahoo, +or his vote will wreck the commonwealth. + + + +X + +THE METHOD + +As to the method, what can be said as yet except that where there is a +will, there is a way? If there be no will, we are lost. That is a +possibility for our crazy little empire, if not for the universe; and as +such possibilities are not to be entertained without despair, we must, +whilst we survive, proceed on the assumption that we have still energy +enough to not only will to live, but to will to live better. That may +mean that we must establish a State Department of Evolution, with a seat +in the Cabinet for its chief, and a revenue to defray the cost of direct +State experiments, and provide inducements to private persons to achieve +successful results. It may mean a private society or a chartered +company for the improvement of human live stock. But for the present it +is far more likely to mean a blatant repudiation of such proposals as +indecent and immoral, with, nevertheless, a general secret pushing of +the human will in the repudiated direction; so that all sorts of +institutions and public authorities will under some pretext or other +feel their way furtively towards the Superman. Mr Graham Wallas has +already ventured to suggest, as Chairman of the School Management +Committee of the London School Board, that the accepted policy of the +Sterilization of the Schoolmistress, however administratively +convenient, is open to criticism from the national stock-breeding point +of view; and this is as good an example as any of the way in which the +drift towards the Superman may operate in spite of all our hypocrisies. +One thing at least is clear to begin with. If a woman can, by careful +selection of a father, and nourishment of herself, produce a citizen +with efficient senses, sound organs, and a good digestion, she should +clearly be secured a sufficient reward for that natural service to make +her willing to undertake and repeat it. Whether she be financed in the +undertaking by herself, or by the father, or by a speculative +capitalist, or by a new department of, say, the Royal Dublin Society, or +(as at present) by the War Office maintaining her "on the strength" and +authorizing a particular soldier to marry her, or by a local authority +under a by-law directing that women may under certain circumstances have +a year's leave of absence on full salary, or by the central government, +does not matter provided the result be satisfactory. + +It is a melancholy fact that as the vast majority of women and their +husbands have, under existing circumstances, not enough nourishment, no +capital, no credit, and no knowledge of science or business, they would, +if the State would pay for birth as it now pays for death, be exploited +by joint stock companies for dividends, just as they are in ordinary +industries. Even a joint stock human stud farm (piously disguised as a +reformed Foundling Hospital or something of that sort) might well, under +proper inspection and regulation, produce better results than our +present reliance on promiscuous marriage. It may be objected that when +an ordinary contractor produces stores for sale to the Government, and +the Government rejects them as not up to the required standard, the +condemned goods are either sold for what they will fetch or else +scrapped: that is, treated as waste material; whereas if the goods +consisted of human beings, all that could be done would be to let them +loose or send them to the nearest workhouse. But there is nothing new +in private enterprise throwing its human refuse on the cheap labor +market and the workhouse; and the refuse of the new industry would +presumably be better bred than the staple product of ordinary poverty. +In our present happy-go-lucky industrial disorder, all the human +products, successful or not, would have to be thrown on the labor +market; but the unsuccessful ones would not entitle the company to a +bounty and so would be a dead loss to it. The practical commercial +difficulty would be the uncertainty and the cost in time and money of +the first experiments. Purely commercial capital would not touch such +heroic operations during the experimental stage; and in any case the +strength of mind needed for so momentous a new departure could not be +fairly expected from the Stock Exchange. It will have to be handled by +statesmen with character enough to tell our democracy and plutocracy +that statecraft does not consist in flattering their follies or applying +their suburban standards of propriety to the affairs of four continents. +The matter must be taken up either by the State or by some organization +strong enough to impose respect upon the State. + +The novelty of any such experiment, however, is only in the scale of it. +In one conspicuous case, that of royalty, the State does already select +the parents on purely political grounds; and in the peerage, though the +heir to a dukedom is legally free to marry a dairymaid, yet the social +pressure on him to confine his choice to politically and socially +eligible mates is so overwhelming that he is really no more free to +marry the dairymaid than George IV was to marry Mrs Fitzherbert; and +such a marriage could only occur as a result of extraordinary strength +of character on the part of the dairymaid acting upon extraordinary +weakness on the part of the duke. Let those who think the whole +conception of intelligent breeding absurd and scandalous ask themselves +why George IV was not allowed to choose his own wife whilst any tinker +could marry whom he pleased? Simply because it did not matter a rap +politically whom the tinker married, whereas it mattered very much whom +the king married. The way in which all considerations of the king's +personal rights, of the claims of the heart, of the sanctity of the +marriage oath, and of romantic morality crumpled up before this +political need shews how negligible all these apparently irresistible +prejudices are when they come into conflict with the demand for quality +in our rulers. We learn the same lesson from the case of the soldier, +whose marriage, when it is permitted at all, is despotically controlled +with a view solely to military efficiency. + +Well, nowadays it is not the King that rules, but the tinker. Dynastic +wars are no longer feared, dynastic alliances no longer valued. +Marriages in royal families are becoming rapidly less political, and +more popular, domestic, and romantic. If all the kings in Europe were +made as free to-morrow as King Cophetua, nobody but their aunts and +chamberlains would feel a moment's anxiety as to the consequences. On +the other hand a sense of the social importance of the tinker's marriage +has been steadily growing. We have made a public matter of his wife's +health in the month after her confinement. We have taken the minds of +his children out of his hands and put them into those of our State +schoolmaster. We shall presently make their bodily nourishment +independent of him. But they are still riff-raff; and to hand the +country over to riff-raff is national suicide, since riff-raff can +neither govern nor will let anyone else govern except the highest bidder +of bread and circuses. There is no public enthusiast alive of twenty +years' practical democratic experience who believes in the political +adequacy of the electorate or of the bodies it elects. The overthrow of +the aristocrat has created the necessity for the Superman. + +Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But +every Englishman loves and desires a pedigree. And in that he is right. +King Demos must be bred like all other Kings; and with Must there is no +arguing. It is idle for an individual writer to carry so great a matter +further in a pamphlet. A conference on the subject is the next step +needed. It will be attended by men and women who, no longer believing +that they can live for ever, are seeking for some immortal work into +which they can build the best of themselves before their refuse is +thrown into that arch dust destructor, the cremation furnace. + + + +[Transcriber's Note: Shaw promoted spelling reform of his own invention. +His spelling reform included not using apostrophes for contractions, +thus this text has 'dont' instead of 'don't' and -iz- instead of -is- +even in words which standard English, both British or American, spells +with -is-, for example: partizan, artizan. He had the goal of making +spelling more phonetic. He spelled it 'Shakespear'. He spelled +'Caesar' with an ae ligature. He used diacritical on French words and +names.] + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket +Companion, by George Bernard Shaw + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REVOLUTIONIST'S HANDBOOK *** + +***** This file should be named 26108.txt or 26108.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/6/1/0/26108/ + +Produced by Russell Bell + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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