Part 9

Religion has not showed us the _naturalness_ of altruism. It has taught that it was natural for man to be selfish, and that to be unselfish was a continual struggle, needing the grace of God to attain it. When we learn at last that the social instincts are as natural as the personal, that they are evolved under the same biological laws, that our failure to manifest them in due proportion is due to unnecessary social conditions quite within our power to change—the burden on man’s conscience will be lifted forever.

We shall learn to lay no false stress on altruism as a lofty and difficult virtue, but see it to be the spirit of civilisation; and the lack of it, the uncivilised egoism still so prominent and evilly active, we shall perceive to be merely an anachronism, which needs only to be recognised to be despised, and only to be despised to be outgrown.

A man still maintaining a visible egoism in a period of dominant altruism, would feel as uncomfortable as a man with a tail. A tail was “natural” to us once,—not now.

Another vital error, maintained by our religions, is the confusion of altruism, the social spirit, with that abnormal action known as “charity”—“benevolence,” “philanthropy.” We are taught to regard the expression of this rare and hard-won feeling of altruism as requiring us to “sell all we have and give to the poor.”

Giving to the poor, from direct alms to the subtle ramifications of organised charity, bears about the same relation to a healthy working altruism that the transfusion of blood bears to a mother’s nursing a child. There are times when a direct transfer of subsistence is called for in society, as in some great disaster, like the Chicago fire, or Johnstown flood, or awful submersion of Galveston.

So there are cases when one human being may save another’s life by giving him his own blood through a syringe. But you would find it difficult to raise men to a daily level of devotion willing to transfer blood as a steady diet to their anæmic friends; and it is similarly difficult to persuade the healthy working mass of society that any such sacrificial transfer of property is right and reasonable.

They are quite correct in this position. Charity is not right. It may be necessary at times, but it is not a normal organic process. A healthy working altruism involves no sacrifice of one to another, but the common good-will, and common effort for a common good. We err in the very word—it should not be “other-ism”—but “our-ism.” There is no justice or benefit in “robbing Peter to pay Paul,” but there is in each giving to all—for all includes each.

Just as our foolish “business” methods deal and shuffle money among the rich without adding a cent to our wealth, so does our foolish charity deal and shuffle it among the poor, with similar uselessness. The fact that we are, and always have been, so open to the demands of charity, proves our social spirit, but proves also that we have not understood its nature and its use.

One more error that hinders our realisation of this great feeling is our persistent misuse of the word “self.”

The Ego, the personal consciousness, desires for itself and strives for itself. The Socio, the social consciousness, desires for us, for ourself, and strives for society. But we, feeling this larger desire and impulse, think it is the Ego still at work, and speak of the colossal “Selfishness” of man. It is not Selfishness—it is Socialness; and he, not knowing what it is, tries to satisfy it by satisfying himself.

The futile attempts of a modern man trying to be selfish would be funny if the effects were not so dangerous. Here he is, with this enormous area of social consciousness, this enormous stock of social energy, this enormous field of social activity, all lodged in the executive machine of one small biped animal.

He is awed and impressed by the vast currents of feeling that sweep through the social consciousness. “Dear me!” he says; “what a great mysterious thing is my soul!” It would be mysterious, indeed, if John Smith had a soul of that size. He feels the irresistible pressure of the social energy. “Ah!” he says; “how strong I am!” He launches out into the social activities, doing, it may be, his full share of social service, but _thinking_ that he is doing it himself, for himself.

And then—poor hungry tortured soul—he tries to satisfy the social demands he feels by gratifying his own personal desires. The capacity for personal enjoyment is extremely limited, and mainly physical. Warmth, quiet, cleanliness, food, rest, physical exercise, and the joys of mating and rearing young; these the ego wants, and every ego ought to be guaranteed their full gratification. They cost little, they were long ago well within the assets of every civilised society. But a society wants more. All our higher needs are social. “We” want them, and we shall never be satisfied till “we” have them—all of us.

Suppose the inhabitants of a certain city need more rest, or recreation, or entertainments, or better facilities of communication. The individual citizen feels the wants of the city. He cannot satisfy that want in himself till the city is satisfied. The misguided self-styled egoist, feeling the social needs, tries to quench the demand by gratifying himself. He soon reaches personal satiety—_and is still unsatisfied_. Of course. Here is another of the alleged “enigmas” of human life cleared up.

Q. Why is man so inordinately selfish?

A. He isn’t. He is social-ish and doesn’t know it.

Q. Why is man never satisfied in spite of all he gets?

A. Because he hasn’t found his mouth yet. He is hungry for a thousand, and tries to give a thousand dinners to himself to quench that hunger.

When humanity sees its own governing spirit, recognises its own consciousness as a common consciousness, and goes practically to work to meet its common needs, the human soul will find peace. It will not stop growing, but it will become healthy, and grow right. The upward reach of the human soul will carry always its unfulfilled aspirations, but that is but an open road, a glorious ever-spreading opportunity; the way of life; a very different thing from the wailings and convulsions of a crippled and imprisoned soul, struggling for air—for food—for room to grow.

Each human being represents humanity. Each has within him as much of the human soul as he can feel and express, and if he increases his expression he will feel more. But to call that great Social Spirit “mine”; to try to explain it by any sort of self-bound theory; to try to exercise or gratify it within the limits of the individual life—is almost too absurd for illustration. Some private pipe connecting with the ocean, and the owner of the pipe prating of “the mystery of ‘my’ tides,” is a possible simile.

The pressure of the great thing has been so beyond our visible ego that we have been forced to account for it by the hypothesis of personal immortality. There was evidently no room for the soul—no explanation of the soul—in one human life as we saw it before us. “But,” said we, “if we make a human life _long enough_ there will be room for the soul! That will give us time to understand it, and to gratify these quenchless aspirations, these boundless desires.”

It did not occur to us that if we made it _wide enough_ it would have the same effect. Our illimitable egoism, being unable to satisfy its own demands by any earthly means, has postulated an eternal ego, with whole ranges of planetary systems to feed in, and hopes, in course of eternity, time not being enough, to satisfy Itself!

And so, postponing the problems it could not answer to a conveniently extensive after life; and considering its own agonies and contortions in this life as part and parcel of the great game between God and the Devil; it has struggled and suffered on; pushed relentlessly upward by the organic social forces, held down most cruelly by its self-made bands of iron; the rigid clamps of primitive ignorance renewed from generation to generation, in spite of the increasing agony of the growing soul.

No wonder we are more unhappy than we used to be; we are bigger, much bigger, but the ego hasn’t grown at all. The social spirit of a small young society could masquerade as an ego without too painful inconvenience; but the social spirit of the world to-day is so vast, so strong, so much nearer to expression in our more developed minds, so much more commonly felt, owing to our more equal education, that its confinement to an ego is too agonising to endure,—it is simply impossible.

Therefore we see the steady growth of “public spirit,”—“civic feeling,” national and international movements toward general improvement; more and more individuals, rich and poor, devoting themselves to social service; the growing objection to war; the tendency to distribute as well as to accumulate millions; the development of “the home church”; and even—most hopeful of all these splendid signs of life—even the rising current of organisation among women.

This Ego hypothesis might as well be laid aside at once and forever. We are not separate creatures at all, our life is ours, and only so to be rightly lived. It is so easy,—leaving off the ego-theory,—to observe the natural growth of the social spirit in its ever-broadening, steady pressure and in those bursts of irresistible energy we call passion.

Any intense human feeling we call a passion, using the word to distinguish certain main lines of feeling common to us all, as “the maternal passion,” “the tender passion,” and those broad divisions Hate, Fear, Envy, Remorse, Ambition, Grief, Revenge. Also some special gust of intensity in minor lines of feeling is distinguished by the same word, “a passion of gratitude,” “a passion of loneliness,” “a passion of rebellion,” or of avarice.

Our words climb slowly along the facts, changing as our perception changes, and always behind. Heat as a fact we observed and used long before we knew what to call it, if, indeed, what we call it now is any more true than it was before. But, whether “a fluid” named Caloric, or “a force” named Heat, the fact which we all know and use remains the same. It did its work in the world as fully before we came as after; before we named it at all as after. But to us, to our consciousness, the thing does not exist until we see it, and, seeing, name.

“The maternal passion” is as strong a force in mother-wasp and mother-whale as in the most sophisticated and analytic mother-human. These passions are simply accumulations of stored energy along certain much-used lines, and serve to keep up a steady flow of the desired energy when there is no immediate stimulus to call for it. In the maternal passion, for instance, long ages of iron experience have developed a certain average of watchfulness and care even when the young are visibly safe, and a surprising fund of power and fury in defence of the young even when the exciting cause is comparatively small. It keeps up a safer average of care and defence than if the feeling were merely reactionary, and has therefore been developed in surviving species.

Society, the vast and varied organism in which we live, calls for a devotion more single and fearless than that even of the mother; for a steady average of service and a sudden fund of fury in defence, a love and care and courage higher than any heretofore required; and as it needs such a feeling it gets it. Those societies having it most highly developed survive. We have called it many names; let us now give it another, the Social Passion.

We are most familiar with its branches, minor and local, and with its blazing heights of expression; but the governing line of feeling is as simple as the animal mother’s. She, for the sake of race-preservation, must feed and guard and teach the young, therefore she manifests the maternal passion. We, for the sake of race-preservation, must feed and guard and teach each other, therefore we manifest the social passion.

One common form is what we call “the sense of duty.” A single animal has no “duty,” he acts and reacts under direct stimuli, and so in large measure does the savage. But social maintenance requires a steady service without immediate and apparent cause; an even standard of merit in the work done; a reliability in the fulfilment of the allotted task, and, at times, a tremendous fervour of exertion and heroism. The “feeling” in us which urges to these acts is as deep and unreasonable as any other “feeling”; it is a genuine passion.

The irritation of a mother at any criticism of her child, however plainly merited, is perfectly paralleled by the irritation of the citizen at any criticism of his country. The instant rush to the rescue of an injured “fellow creature,” co-creature, member of the same great body, is as blind and instinctive as the mother’s rush to save the child. It finds its most familiar and acute form in the soldier “dying for his country.” Devotion to “a cause” of any sort, a class, a club, a corps, a union, the intense “co-ability” of the human creature, this is but manifestation of the social passion.

The hero, the statesman, the patriot, the public saviour and servant of any sort are conspicuous examples of this feeling at its height; the reformer and religious leader, from the most mistaken enthusiasts to the greatest prophets and teachers, are all exponents of this mightiest of forces, the social passion. A blind, deep, instinctive pressure, a _must_ in the very blood, a feeling bred of centuries of social contact and interdependence, this is what kindles the great hearts who live or die to serve the world.

Where it touches the present subject is in its relation to Work, of which indeed it is the immediate conscious cause.

The maternal passion does not manifest itself merely in bursts of wild self-sacrifice, but speaks plainest in the patient, steady labour with which it serves the young. So the social passion, while most conspicuous in Horatius at the bridge, is as valuable in the engineer at the lever, or the steersman at the helm.

The Love of Work is one great manifestation of the Social Passion. The maternal function urging to expression, this gives the rich joy of nursing one’s child, and that almost inconceivable torment of the black past where the starving baby cried before the chained mother’s bursting breasts. The social function urging to expression, this gives the rich joy of work accomplished and the aching, quenchless misery of work denied. Fulfilment of function, that is Work, and, forbidden, the poor functionary aches like a tied leg.

We may trace this suffering from work denied through all the uneasy contortions of “the leisure class” to the final surrender to that social paralysis, _ennui_. Healthy physical impulses, checked in natural expression, twitch and cramp the unused member. Healthy social impulses, checked in natural expression, twitch and cramp in similar agony and distortion. Always the impulse to do—the human instinct, the social passion. Then the inhibition from mistaken theories and false ideas, the individual checking his healthy social impulses as perversely as the religious ascetic checks his healthy physical impulses.

And as the ascetic, bottling his life up, froths off in wild visions and fanatical activity, so the social ascetic lives in a whirling rush of useless exertion and excitement, always seeking in what he calls “society” that true social contact and social action which he never finds. And as the body of the ascetic wastes and dwarfs and deforms under the unnatural life his gross delusions bring him to, so does society suffer under the diseased conditions engendered by this fatuous mistake.

More firmly and reassuringly we can trace the social passion in its true expression. Clear and strong it has left its mark on every age, and rises steadily with our rising socialisation. The co-consciousness with its beautiful result in love; “a fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind”; “one touch of nature makes the whole world kin”; the co-activity and its resultant virtues and abilities; the need for expression of those “co-abilities”; the urge toward exertion, ultimately seen to be in the social interest, but pushing from within as a passion; this feeling it is which made Palissy the Potter break up his furniture to insure his glaze; which drove Galileo to his studies in defiance of the Church; which fed the fire with prohibited books and gave up martyrs by the score to die because they would let out what was in them; they must.

We see it clearest in the arts and sciences, in the inventor, the explorer, the teacher of new truth. But what drives these conspicuously specialised social servants to their work is the same force which holds the steersman to his wheel, the engineer to his lever, the sentry to his post: the power of functional expression; stronger in us than any other force, as our social nature is stronger in us than the nature of the beast.

If we would recognise our “human nature” to be our “social nature,” and that what we have so scorned and pitied as “poor human nature” is not human at all, but merely animal,—ego-nature,—it would alter our whole range of thought on this vital matter.

The social spirit is not “poor,” but bounteously rich and strong. It rises grandly to meet great emergencies, but is felt most continually in our impulse to work, to do what we are made for, what we are together for; that which constitutes the primal condition and line of development for human life.

VIII: THE SOCIAL BODY _Summary_

_Likeness between spirit and form, mutual modification. Love modified by form. The soul human. The body of society our manufactured things. Bones of dead societies. The thing made. Animal’s things all grow on him. Society secretes its material form. The thing marks the age. Axe-man, swords-man, pen-man, etc. Value of detachability of tools. Potentiality of human body. Value of exchangeability of tools. Vehicle of common use. Reaction of thing made on user. Body a machine we have to learn. Thing promotes further action. Growth in work. Cloth. Effect on life. Value and effect of machines. Pleasure of transmitting energy. Mistaken objection to machinery. Reversion to “hand work” foolish. Social progress conditioned by mechanical. We are now capable of far better living and have the means for it. American advance. Machine does for society what the cerebellum does for the body. Our power to facilitate social progress. “Truth in art” and “better housing.” Restrictions due to false concepts, not to conditions._

VIII THE SOCIAL BODY

We have seen, that in every living creature there is a close and vivid likeness between its spirit and its form, between body and soul. Given such a spirit and it tends to evolve such a form. Given such a form and it tends to evolve such a spirit. The form must limit and modify the spirit.

Fortunately forms can change; and spirit, to grow, continually discards old forms and makes new. If anything succeeds in fixing a given form unchanged, so is the spirit within it imprisoned and checked in growth forever. It is for this reason doubtless that the primal force has been so busy making its endless procession of forms. First we have the universe set whirling with great suns and their spattering planets; then the planet flames, crackles, cools, crusts over, and so fringes out in all manner of soft green, and following these we have life cut looser, freer, in animal forms; lastly the social.

Imagine the sun as loving; it can but shine and glow to express that love. The dog loves, and can but leap and lick and wag his tail, fetch and carry, watch and fight to show it. The man loves, and in the manifold activities made possible by his form, by the special development of the brain, he can express that principal force more deeply, widely, fully. The spirit of every living thing is expressed through its form and limited by it.

Humanity, if a living creature, has a soul and a body. The soul we all know; we call it rightly the human soul. Where is the body of that soul? Not in our little bundle of arms and legs—we had that in full career before the human soul was possible. That is the body of an animal, capable of expressing as much spirit as any animal, perhaps a little more than a large ape. If we had no medium of expression but these physical bodies there could be no Society, no Humanity, and no social soul.

That last and best expression of creative force finds its material form in the things we make in the manufactured world. Take from a society its body, the structure of brick, stone, and iron, wood, cloth, leather, glass, paper,—all that elaborate compound of materials in which we live,—reduce it to a mere congregation of naked animals, and what would ensue? Those animals would either rebuild in desperate haste the material forms in which alone Society exists, or they would relapse into individual savagery. If too small a group, or too highly specialised to reproduce the social body to live in, they would be unable even to revert to savagery and would simply die. The Social Soul we have seen to be a common consciousness developed by common activities. The Social Body is a common material form, also developed by common activities. Both appear in proportion to the extent and development of those activities.

As house and vehicle for the spirit of an animal has been slowly evolved the cunning mechanism of bone and muscle, with all its constituent organs, in which a man lives. It is but a combination of chemicals and minerals, and when the soul is out of it they disintegrate and revert to lower combinations. As house and vehicle for the spirit of society has been slowly evolved the more cunning and elaborate mechanism of wood and cloth, brick, stone, metal—in which Humanity lives. It too is but a combination of chemicals and minerals, and when its inhabiting humanity is gone, it too disintegrates and reverts, though more slowly. The bones of dead societies remain to us in stone and glass and pottery, as do the bones of extinct animals.

An animal life, once started in the germ, goes on growing, _i. e._, making to itself a body suitable to its soul. If you arrest the growth of the body,—if, for instance, a baby’s head were cased in iron,—you would arrest the growth of the soul. It would have one, potentially; that is, it would if its brain had room for it, but actually you would have checked it. So the social life, once started, goes on assimilating material particles and recombining them in mechanical form, enlarging its functions as it enlarges the structure through which alone they become possible. Society builds its body for good or ill.

A piece of human creation—a manufactured article—is the record, the physical manifestation of our humanness. By these things, reading backward, does the ethnologist reconstruct the vanished races as the paleontologist reconstructs a vanished beast from fossil bones. A bead, a knife, a needle, some torque or bracelet, a broken jar,—and the lost people rise before us.