CHAPTER V.

THE CENTRAL TRUTH.

In the short space to which this latter part of our inquiry is necessarily confined, I have been obliged to omit much that I would like to say, and to touch briefly where an exhaustive consideration would not be out of place.

Nevertheless, this, at least, is evident, that the truth to which we were led in the politico-economic branch of our inquiry is as clearly apparent in the rise and fall of nations and the growth and decay of civilizations, and that it accords with those deep-seated recognitions of relation and sequence that we denominate moral perceptions. Thus have been given to our conclusions the greatest certitude and highest sanction.

This truth involves both a menace and a promise. It shows that the evils arising from the unjust and unequal distribution of wealth, which are becoming more and more apparent as modern civilization goes on, are not incidents of progress, but tendencies which must bring progress to a halt; that they will not cure themselves, but, on the contrary, must, unless their cause is removed, grow greater and greater, until they sweep us back into barbarism by the road every previous civilization has trod. But it also shows that these evils are not imposed by natural laws; that they spring solely from social mal-adjustments which ignore natural laws, and that in removing their cause we shall be giving an enormous impetus to progress.

The poverty which in the midst of abundance pinches and imbrutes men, and all the manifold evils which flow from it, spring from a denial of justice. In permitting the monopolization of the opportunities which nature freely offers to all, we have ignored the fundamental law of justice—for, so far as we can see, when we view things upon a large scale, justice seems to be the supreme law of the universe. But by sweeping away this injustice and asserting the rights of all men to natural opportunities, we shall conform ourselves to the law—we shall remove the great cause of unnatural inequality in the distribution of wealth and power; we shall abolish poverty; tame the ruthless passions of greed; dry up the springs of vice and misery; light in dark places the lamp of knowledge; give new vigor to invention and a fresh impulse to discovery; substitute political strength for political weakness; and make tyranny and anarchy impossible.

The reform I have proposed accords with all that is politically, socially, or morally desirable. It has the qualities of a true reform, for it will make all other reforms easier. What is it but the carrying out in letter and spirit of the truth enunciated in the Declaration of Independence—the “self-evident” truth that is the heart and soul of the Declaration—“_That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!_”

These rights are denied when the equal right to land—on which and by which men alone can live—is denied. Equality of political rights will not compensate for the denial of the equal right to the bounty of nature. Political liberty, when the equal right to land is denied, becomes, as population increases and invention goes on, merely the liberty to compete for employment at starvation wages. This is the truth that we have ignored. And so there come beggars in our streets and tramps on our roads; and poverty enslaves men whom we boast are political sovereigns; and want breeds ignorance that our schools cannot enlighten; and citizens vote as their masters dictate; and the demagogue usurps the part of the statesman; and gold weighs in the scales of justice; and in high places sit those who do not pay to civic virtue even the compliment of hypocrisy; and the pillars of the republic that we thought so strong already bend under an increasing strain.

We honor Liberty in name and in form. We set up her statues and sound her praises. But we have not fully trusted her. And with our growth so grow her demands. She will have no half service!

Liberty! it is a word to conjure with, not to vex the ear in empty boastings. For Liberty means Justice, and Justice is the natural law—the law of health and symmetry and strength, of fraternity and co-operation.

They who look upon Liberty as having accomplished her mission when she has abolished hereditary privileges and given men the ballot, who think of her as having no further relations to the everyday affairs of life, have not seen her real grandeur—to them the poets who have sung of her must seem rhapsodists, and her martyrs fools! As the sun is the lord of life, as well as of light; as his beams not merely pierce the clouds, but support all growth, supply all motion, and call forth from what would otherwise be a cold and inert mass all the infinite diversities of being and beauty, so is liberty to mankind. It is not for an abstraction that men have toiled and died; that in every age the witnesses of Liberty have stood forth, and the martyrs of Liberty have suffered.

We speak of Liberty as one thing, and of virtue, wealth, knowledge, invention, national strength and national independence as other things. But, of all these, Liberty is the source, the mother, the necessary condition. She is to virtue what light is to color; to wealth what sunshine is to grain; to knowledge what eyes are to sight. She is the genius of invention, the brawn of national strength, the spirit of national independence. Where Liberty rises, there virtue grows, wealth increases, knowledge expands, invention multiplies human powers, and in strength and spirit the freer nation rises among her neighbors as Saul amid his brethren—taller and fairer. Where Liberty sinks, there virtue fades, wealth diminishes, knowledge is forgotten, invention ceases, and empires once mighty in arms and arts become a helpless prey to freer barbarians!

Only in broken gleams and partial light has the sun of Liberty yet beamed among men, but all progress hath she called forth.

Liberty came to a race of slaves crouching under Egyptian whips, and led them forth from the House of Bondage. She hardened them in the desert and made of them a race of conquerors. The free spirit of the Mosaic law took their thinkers up to heights where they beheld the unity of God, and inspired their poets with strains that yet phrase the highest exaltations of thought. Liberty dawned on the Phœnician coast, and ships passed the Pillars of Hercules to plow the unknown sea. She shed a partial light on Greece, and marble grew to shapes of ideal beauty, words became the instruments of subtlest thought, and against the scanty militia of free cities the countless hosts of the Great King broke like surges against a rock. She cast her beams on the four-acre farms of Italian husbandmen, and born of her strength a power came forth that conquered the world. They glinted from shields of German warriors, and Augustus wept his legions. Out of the night that followed her eclipse, her slanting rays fell again on free cities, and a lost learning revived, modern civilization began, a new world was unveiled; and as Liberty grew, so grew art, wealth, power, knowledge, and refinement. In the history of every nation we may read the same truth. It was the strength born of Magna Charta that won Crecy and Agincourt. It was the revival of Liberty from the despotism of the Tudors that glorified the Elizabethan age. It was the spirit that brought a crowned tyrant to the block that planted here the seed of a mighty tree. It was the energy of ancient freedom that, the moment it had gained unity, made Spain the mightiest power of the world, only to fall to the lowest depth of weakness when tyranny succeeded liberty. See, in France, all intellectual vigor dying under the tyranny of the Seventeenth Century to revive in splendor as Liberty awoke in the Eighteenth, and on the enfranchisement of French peasants in the Great Revolution, basing the wonderful strength that has in our time defied defeat.

Shall we not trust her?

In our time, as in times before, creep on the insidious forces that, producing inequality, destroy Liberty. On the horizon the clouds begin to lower. Liberty calls to us again. We must follow her further; we must trust her fully. Either we must wholly accept her or she will not stay. It is not enough that men should vote; it is not enough that they should be theoretically equal before the law. They must have liberty to avail themselves of the opportunities and means of life; they must stand on equal terms with reference to the bounty of nature. Either this, or Liberty withdraws her light! Either this, or darkness comes on, and the very forces that progress has evolved turn to powers that work destruction. This is the universal law. This is the lesson of the centuries. Unless its foundations be laid in justice the social structure cannot stand.

Our primary social adjustment is a denial of justice. In allowing one man to own the land on which and from which other men must live, we have made them his bondsmen in a degree which increases as material progress goes on. This is the subtile alchemy that in ways they do not realize is extracting from the masses in every civilized country the fruits of their weary toil; that is instituting a harder and more hopeless slavery in place of that which has been destroyed; that is bringing political despotism out of political freedom, and must soon transmute democratic institutions into anarchy.

It is this that turns the blessings of material progress into a curse. It is this that crowds human beings into noisome cellars and squalid tenement houses; that fills prisons and brothels; that goads men with want and consumes them with greed; that robs women of the grace and beauty of perfect womanhood; that takes from little children the joy and innocence of life’s morning.

Civilization so based cannot continue. The eternal laws of the universe forbid it. Ruins of dead empires testify, and the witness that is in every soul answers, that it cannot be. It is something grander than Benevolence, something more august than Charity—it is Justice herself that demands of us to right this wrong. Justice that will not be denied; that cannot be put off—Justice that with the scales carries the sword. Shall we ward the stroke with liturgies and prayers? Shall we avert the decrees of immutable law by raising churches when hungry infants moan and weary mothers weep?

Though it may take the language of prayer, it is blasphemy that attributes to the inscrutable decrees of Providence the suffering and brutishness that come of poverty; that turns with folded hands to the All-Father and lays on Him the responsibility for the want and crime of our great cities. We degrade the Everlasting. We slander the Just One. A merciful man would have better ordered the world; a just man would crush with his foot such an ulcerous anthill! It is not the Almighty, but we who are responsible for the vice and misery that fester amid our civilization. The Creator showers upon us his gifts—more than enough for all. But like swine scrambling for food, we tread them in the mire—tread them in the mire, while we tear and rend each other!

In the very centers of our civilization to-day are want and suffering enough to make sick at heart whoever does not close his eyes and steel his nerves. Dare we turn to the Creator and ask Him to relieve it? Supposing the prayer were heard, and at the behest with which the universe sprang into being there should glow in the sun a greater power; new virtue fill the air; fresh vigor the soil; that for every blade of grass that now grows two should spring up, and the seed that now increases fifty-fold should increase a hundred-fold! Would poverty be abated or want relieved? Manifestly no! Whatever benefit would accrue would be but temporary. The new powers streaming through the material universe could be utilized only through land. And land, being private property, the classes that now monopolize the bounty of the Creator would monopolize all the new bounty. Land owners would alone be benefited. Rents would increase, but wages would still tend to the starvation point!

This is not merely a deduction of political economy; it is a fact of experience. We know it because we have seen it. Within our own times, under our very eyes, that Power which is above all, and in all, and through all; that Power of which the whole universe is but the manifestation; that Power which maketh all things, and without which is not anything made that is made, has increased the bounty which men may enjoy, as truly as though the fertility of nature had been increased. Into the mind of one came the thought that harnessed steam for the service of mankind. To the inner ear of another was whispered the secret that compels the lightning to bear a message round the globe. In every direction have the laws of matter been revealed; in every department of industry have arisen arms of iron and fingers of steel, whose effect upon the production of wealth has been precisely the same as an increase in the fertility of nature. What has been the result? Simply that land owners get all the gain. The wonderful discoveries and inventions of our century have neither increased wages nor lightened toil. The effect has simply been to make the few richer; the many more helpless!

Can it be that the gifts of the Creator may be thus misappropriated with impunity? Is it a light thing that labor should be robbed of its earnings while greed rolls in wealth—that the many should want while the few are surfeited? Turn to history, and on every page may be read the lesson that such wrong never goes unpunished; that the Nemesis that follows injustice never falters nor sleeps! Look around to-day. Can this state of things continue? May we even say, “After us the deluge!” Nay; the pillars of the state are trembling even now, and the very foundations of society begin to quiver with pent-up forces that glow underneath. The struggle that must either revivify, or convulse in ruin, is near at hand, if it be not already begun.

The fiat has gone forth! With steam and electricity, and the new powers born of progress, forces have entered the world that will either compel us to a higher plane or overwhelm us, as nation after nation, as civilization after civilization, have been overwhelmed before. It is the delusion which precedes destruction that sees in the popular unrest with which the civilized world is feverishly pulsing only the passing effect of ephemeral causes. Between democratic ideas and the aristocratic adjustments of society there is an irreconcilable conflict. Here in the United States, as there in Europe, it may be seen arising. We cannot go on permitting men to vote and forcing them to tramp. We cannot go on educating boys and girls in our public schools and then refusing them the right to earn an honest living. We cannot go on prating of the inalienable rights of man and then denying the inalienable right to the bounty of the Creator. Even now, in old bottles the new wine begins to ferment, and elemental forces gather for the strife!

But if, while there is yet time, we turn to Justice and obey her, if we trust Liberty and follow her, the dangers that now threaten must disappear, the forces that now menace will turn to agencies of elevation. Think of the powers now wasted; of the infinite fields of knowledge yet to be explored; of the possibilities of which the wondrous inventions of this century give us but a hint. With want destroyed; with greed changed to noble passions; with the fraternity that is born of equality taking the place of the jealousy and fear that now array men against each other; with mental power loosed by conditions that give to the humblest comfort and leisure; and who shall measure the heights to which our civilization may soar? Words fail the thought! It is the Golden Age of which poets have sung and high-raised seers have told in metaphor! It is the glorious vision which has always haunted man with gleams of fitful splendor. It is what he saw whose eyes at Patmos were closed in a trance. It is the culmination of Christianity—the City of God on earth, with its walls of jasper and its gates of pearl! It is the reign of the Prince of Peace!

CONCLUSION.

THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE.

The days of the nations bear no trace Of all the sunshine so far foretold; The cannon speaks in the teacher’s place— The age is weary with work and gold, And high hopes wither, and memories wane; On hearths and altars the fires are dead; But that brave faith hath not lived in vain— And this is all that our watcher said.

—_Frances Brown._

CONCLUSION.

THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE.

My task is done.

Yet the thought still mounts. The problems we have been considering lead into a problem higher and deeper still. Behind the problems of social life lies the problem of individual life. I have found it impossible to think of the one without thinking of the other, and so, I imagine, will it be with those who, reading this book, go with me in thought. For, as says Guizot, “when the history of civilization is completed, when there is nothing more to say as to our present existence, man inevitably asks himself whether all is exhausted, whether he has reached the end of all things?”

This problem I cannot now discuss. I speak of it only because the thought which, while writing this book, has come with inexpressible cheer to me, may also be of cheer to some who read it; for, whatever be its fate, it will be read by some who in their heart of hearts have taken the cross of a new crusade. This thought will come to them without my suggestion; but we are surer that we see a star when we know that others also see it.

* * * * *

The truth that I have tried to make clear will not find easy acceptance. If that could be, it would have been accepted long ago. If that could be, it would never have been obscured. But it will find friends—those who will toil for it; suffer for it; if need be, die for it. This is the power of Truth.

Will it at length prevail? Ultimately, yes. But in our own times, or in times of which any memory of us remains, who shall say?

For the man who, seeing the want and misery, the ignorance and brutishness caused by unjust social institutions, sets himself, in so far as he has strength, to right them, there is disappointment and bitterness. So it has been of old time. So is it even now. But the bitterest thought—and it sometimes comes to the best and bravest—is that of the hopelessness of the effort, the futility of the sacrifice. To how few of those who sow the seed is it given to see it grow, or even with certainty to know that it will grow.

Let us not disguise it. Over and over again has the standard of Truth and Justice been raised in this world. Over and over again has it been trampled down—oftentimes in blood. If they are weak forces that are opposed to Truth, how should Error so long prevail? If Justice has but to raise her head to have Injustice flee before her, how should the wail of the oppressed so long go up?

But for those who see Truth and would follow her; for those who recognize Justice and would stand for her, success is not the only thing. Success! Why, Falsehood has often that to give; and Injustice often has that to give. Must not Truth and Justice have something to give that is their own by proper right—theirs in essence, and not by accident?

That they have, and that here and now, every one who has felt their exaltation knows. But sometimes the clouds sweep down. It is sad, sad reading, the lives of the men who would have done something for their fellows. To Socrates they gave the hemlock; Gracchus they killed with sticks and stones; and One, greatest and purest of all, they crucified. These seem but types. To-day Russian prisons are full, and in long processions, men and women, who, but for high-minded patriotism, might have lived in ease and luxury, move in chains toward the death-in-life of Siberia. And in penury and want, in neglect and contempt, destitute even of the sympathy that would have been so sweet, how many in every country have closed their eyes? This we see.

_But do we see it all?_

In writing I have picked up a newspaper. In it is a short account, evidently translated from a semi-official report, of the execution of three Nihilists at Kieff—the Prussian subject Brandtner, the unknown man calling himself Antonoff, and the nobleman Ossinsky. At the foot of the gallows they were permitted to kiss one another. “Then the hangman cut the rope, the surgeons pronounced the victims dead, the bodies were buried at the foot of the scaffold, and the Nihilists were given up to eternal oblivion.” Thus says the account. I do not believe it. No; not to oblivion!

* * * * *

I have in this inquiry followed the course of my own thought. When, in mind, I set out on it I had no theory to support, no conclusions to prove. Only, when I first realized the squalid misery of a great city, it appalled and tormented me, and would not let me rest, for thinking of what caused it and how it could be cured.

But out of this inquiry has come to me something I did not think to find, and a faith that was dead revives.

* * * * *

The yearning for a further life is natural and deep. It grows with intellectual growth, and perhaps none really feel it more than those who have begun to see how great is the universe and how infinite are the vistas which every advance in knowledge opens before us—vistas which would require nothing short of eternity to explore. But in the mental atmosphere of our times, to the great majority of men on whom mere creeds have lost their hold, it seems impossible to look on this yearning save as a vain and childish hope, arising from man’s egotism, and for which there is not the slightest ground or warrant, but which, on the contrary, seems inconsistent with positive knowledge.

Now, when we come to analyze and trace up the ideas that thus destroy the hope of a future life, we shall find them, I think, to have their source, not in any revelations of physical science, but in certain teachings of political and social science which have deeply permeated thought in all directions. They have their root in the doctrines, that there is a tendency to the production of more human beings than can be provided for; that vice and misery are the result of natural laws, and the means by which advance goes on; and that human progress is by a slow race development. These doctrines, which have been generally accepted as approved truth, do what, except as scientific interpretations have been colored by them, the extensions of physical science do not do—they reduce the individual to insignificance; they destroy the idea that there can be in the ordering of the universe any regard for his existence, or any recognition of what we call moral qualities.

It is difficult to reconcile the idea of human immortality with the idea that nature wastes men by constantly bringing them into being where there is no room for them. It is impossible to reconcile the idea of an intelligent and beneficent Creator with the belief that the wretchedness and degradation which are the lot of such a large proportion of human kind result from his enactments; while the idea that man mentally and physically is the result of slow modifications perpetuated by heredity, irresistibly suggests the idea that it is the race life, not the individual life, which is the object of human existence. Thus has vanished with many of us, and is still vanishing with more of us, that belief which in the battles and ills of life affords the strongest support and deepest consolation.

Now, in the inquiry through which we have passed, we have met these doctrines and seen their fallacy. We have seen that population does not tend to outrun subsistence; we have seen that the waste of human powers and the prodigality of human suffering do not spring from natural laws, but from the ignorance and selfishness of men in refusing to conform to natural laws. We have seen that human progress is not by altering the nature of men; but that, on the contrary, the nature of men seems, generally speaking, always the same.

Thus the nightmare which is banishing from the modern world the belief in a future life is destroyed. Not that all difficulties are removed—for turn which way we may, we come to what we cannot comprehend; but that difficulties are removed which seem conclusive and insuperable. And, thus, hope springs up.

But this is not all.

* * * * *

Political Economy has been called the dismal science, and as currently taught, _is_ hopeless and despairing. But this, as we have seen, is solely because she has been degraded and shackled; her truths dislocated; her harmonies ignored; the word she would utter gagged in her mouth, and her protest against wrong turned into an indorsement of injustice. Freed, as I have tried to free her—in her own proper symmetry, Political Economy is radiant with hope.

For properly understood, the laws which govern the production and distribution of wealth show that the want and injustice of the present social state are not necessary; but that, on the contrary, a social state is possible in which poverty would be unknown, and all the better qualities and higher powers of human nature would have opportunity for full development.

And, further than this, when we see that social development is governed neither by a Special Providence nor by a merciless fate, but by law, at once unchangeable and beneficent; when we see that human will is the great factor, and that taking men in the aggregate, their condition is as they make it; when we see that economic law and moral law are essentially one, and that the truth which the intellect grasps after toilsome effort is but that which the moral sense reaches by a quick intuition, a flood of light breaks in upon the problem of individual life. These countless millions like ourselves, who on this earth of ours have passed and still are passing, with their joys and sorrows, their toil and their striving, their aspirations and their fears, their strong perceptions of things deeper than sense, their common feelings which form the basis even of the most divergent creeds—their little lives do not seem so much like meaningless waste.

The great fact which Science in all her branches shows is the universality of law. Wherever he can trace it, whether in the fall of an apple or in the revolution of binary suns, the astronomer sees the working of the same law, which operates in the minutest divisions in which we may distinguish space, as it does in the immeasurable distances with which his science deals. Out of that which lies beyond his telescope comes a moving body and again it disappears. So far as he can trace its course the law is ignored. Does he say that this is an exception? On the contrary, he says that this is merely a part of its orbit that he has seen; that beyond the reach of his telescope the law holds good. He makes his calculations, and after centuries they are proved.

Now, if we trace out the laws which govern human life in society, we find that in the largest as in the smallest community, they are the same. We find that what seem at first sight like divergences and exceptions are but manifestations of the same principles. And we find that everywhere we can trace it, the social law runs into and conforms with the moral law; that in the life of a community, justice infallibly brings its reward and injustice its punishment. But this we cannot see in individual life. If we look merely at individual life we cannot see that the laws of the universe have the slightest relation to good or bad, to right or wrong, to just or unjust.[68] Shall we then say that the law which is manifest in social life is not true of individual life? It is not scientific to say so. We would not say so in reference to anything else. Shall we not rather say this simply proves that we do not see the whole of individual life?

* * * * *

The laws which Political Economy discovers, like the facts and relations of physical nature, harmonize with what seems to be the law of mental development—not a necessary and involuntary progress, but a progress in which the human will is an initiatory force. But in life, as we are cognizant of it, mental development can go but a little way. The mind hardly begins to awake ere the bodily powers decline—it but becomes dimly conscious of the vast fields before it, but begins to learn and use its strength, to recognize relations and extend its sympathies, when, with the death of the body, it passes away. Unless there is something more, there seems here a break, a failure. Whether it be a Humboldt or a Herschel, a Moses who looks from Pisgah, a Joshua who leads the host, or one of those sweet and patient souls who in narrow circles live radiant lives, there seems, if mind and character here developed can go no further, a purposelessness inconsistent with what we can see of the linked sequence of the universe.

By a fundamental law of our minds—the law, in fact, upon which Political Economy relies in all her deductions—we cannot conceive of a means without an end; a contrivance without an object. Now, to all nature, so far as we come in contact with it in this world, the support and employment of the intelligence that is in man furnishes such an end and object. But unless man himself may rise to or bring forth something higher, his existence is unintelligible. So strong is this metaphysical necessity that those who deny to the individual anything more than this life are compelled to transfer the idea of perfectibility to the race. But as we have seen, and the argument could have been made much more complete, there is nothing whatever to show any essential race improvement. Human progress is not the improvement of human nature. The advances in which civilization consists are not secured in the constitution of man, but in the constitution of society. They are thus not fixed and permanent, but may at any time be lost—nay, are constantly tending to be lost. And further than this, if human life does not continue beyond what we see of it here, then we are confronted, with regard to the race, with the same difficulty as with the individual! For it is as certain that the race must die as it is that the individual must die. We know that there have been geologic conditions under which human life was impossible on this earth. We know that they must return again. Even now, as the earth circles on her appointed orbit, the northern ice cap slowly thickens, and the time gradually approaches, when its glaciers will flow again, and austral seas, sweeping northward, bury the seats of present civilization under ocean wastes, as it may be they now bury what was once as high a civilization as our own, And beyond these periods, science discerns a dead earth, an exhausted sun—a time when, clashing together, the solar system shall resolve itself into a gaseous form, again to begin immeasurable mutations.

* * * * *

What then is the meaning of life—of life absolutely and inevitably bounded by death? To me it seems intelligible only as the avenue and vestibule to another life. And its facts seem explainable only upon a theory which cannot be expressed but in myth and symbol, and which, everywhere and at all times, the myths and symbols in which men have tried to portray their deepest perceptions do in some form express.

The scriptures of the men who have been and gone—the Bibles, the Zend Avestas, the Vedas, the Dhammapadas, and the Korans; the esoteric doctrines of old philosophies, the inner meaning of grotesque religions, the dogmatic constitutions of Ecumenical Councils, the preachings of Foxes, and Wesleys, and Savonarolas, the traditions of red Indians, and beliefs of black savages, have a heart and core in which they agree—a something which seems like the variously distorted apprehensions of a primary truth. And out of the chain of thought we have been following there seems vaguely to rise a glimpse of what they vaguely saw—a shadowy gleam of ultimate relations, the endeavor to express which inevitably falls into type and allegory. A garden in which are set the trees of good and evil. A vineyard in which there is the Master’s work to do. A passage—from life behind to life beyond. A trial and a struggle, of which we cannot see the end.

Look around to-day.

Lo! here, now, in our civilized society, the old allegories yet have a meaning, the old myths are still true. Into the Valley of the Shadow of Death yet often leads the path of duty, through the streets of Vanity Fair walk Christian and Faithful, and on Greatheart’s armor ring the clanging blows. Ormuzd still fights with Ahriman—the Prince of Light with the Powers of Darkness. He who will hear, to him the clarions of the battle call.

How they call, and call, and call, till the heart swells that hears them! Strong soul and high endeavor, the world needs them now. Beauty still lies imprisoned, and iron wheels go over the good and true and beautiful that might spring from human lives.

And they who fight with Ormuzd, though they may not know each other—somewhere, sometime, will the muster roll be called.

* * * * *

Though Truth and Right seem often overborne, we may not see it all. How can we see it all? All that is passing, even here, we cannot tell. The vibrations of matter which give the sensations of light and color become to us indistinguishable when they pass a certain point. It is only within a like range that we have cognizance of sounds. Even animals have senses which we have not. And, here? Compared with the solar system our earth is but an indistinguishable speck; and the solar system itself shrivels into nothingness when gauged with the star depths. Shall we say that what passes from _our_ sight passes into oblivion? No; not into oblivion. Far, far beyond our ken the eternal laws must hold their sway.

* * * * *

The hope that rises is the heart of all religions! The poets have sung it, the seers have told it, and in its deepest pulses the heart of man throbs responsive to its truth. This, that Plutarch said, is what in all times and in all tongues has been said by the pure hearted and strong sighted, who, standing as it were, on the mountain tops of thought and looking over the shadowy ocean, have beheld the loom of land:

“_Men’s souls, encompassed here with bodies and passions, have no communication with God, except what they can reach to in conception only, by means of philosophy, as by a kind of an obscure dream. But when they are loosed from the body, and removed into the unseen, invisible, impassable, and pure region, this God is then their leader and king; they there, as it were, hanging on him wholly, and beholding without weariness and passionately affecting that beauty which cannot be expressed or uttered by men._

FOOTNOTES:

[68] Let us not delude our children. If for no other reason than for that which Plato gives, that when they come to discard that which we told them as pious fable they will also discard that which we told them as truth. The virtues which relate to self do generally bring their reward. Either a merchant or a thief will be more successful if he be sober, prudent, and faithful to his promises; but as to the virtues which do not relate to self—

“It seems a story from the world of spirits, When any one obtains that which he merits, Or any merits that which he obtains.”

INDEX.

Bagehot, Walter, arrest of civilization, 480-481; why barbarians waste away, 497-498.

Bastiat, cause of interest, 176-186.

Bisset, Andrew, knight’s service, 381_n_.

Buckle, assumes current doctrine of wages, 18; on Malthus, 92-93, 100; interest and profits, 158; relation between rent, wages and interest, 170.

Cairnes, J. E., high wages and interest in new countries, 20-22.

California, economic principles exemplified in, 19-20, 61-63, 78, 144-146, 174, 255-256, 271-275, 290-291, 344, 383-385, 392, 398, 434-435.

Capital, current doctrine of its relation to wages, 17-18; idle in industrial depressions, 21; theory that wages are drawn from, 20-23; deductions from this theory, 24-25; varying definitions of, 32-34; difficulties besetting use of term, 36-37; exclusions of term, 37-38; distinguished from wealth, 41-47, 71-72; used in two senses, 56-57; definitions of Smith, Ricardo, McCulloch, and Mill compared, 41-45; wages not drawn from, 23-29, 49-69; does not limit industry, 26-29, 57-58, 80-86; does not maintain laborers, 70-78; modes in which it aids labor, 79, 186-188, 195-196; real functions of, 79-87; may limit form and productiveness of industry, 80-82; apparent want of generally due to some other want, 82-85; limited by requirements of production, 85-86; poverty not due to scarcity of, 85-86; not necessary to production, 163-164; a form of labor, 164, 198, 203; its essence, 179; spurious, 189-194; not fixed in quantity, 195; if the only active factor in production, 201-202; its profits as affected by wages, 308-309; wastes when not used, 311; invested upon possessory titles, 385.

Carey, Henry C., on capital, 34; rent, 225.

China, cause of poverty and famine, 121-122; civilization, 480-481.

Civilization, what, 475-476; prevailing belief as to progress of, 476-479; arrest of, 479-486; differences in, 487-502; its law, 503-523; retrogression, 482-486, 536-537; to endure must be based on justice, 543-546; character of European, 518, 526.

Civilization, modern, its riddle, 10; has not improved condition of the lowest class, 281-284; development of, 372-382; superiority, 519-520; may decline, 524-528; indications of retrogression, 537-540; its possibilities, 452-469, 549.

Communities, industrial, extent of, 197.

Confucius, descendants of, 111-112.

Consumption, supported by contemporaneous production, 72-75; demand for determines production, 75-76; only relative term, 133; increase of shows increasing production, 149.

Co-operation, not a remedy for poverty, 314-317; but will follow from the extirpation of poverty, 452-469.

Debts, public, not capital, 189-190; origin and abolition, 381-382, 453.

Demand, not fixed, 243, 245-247. (See Supply and Demand.)

Deutsch, Emanuel, human nature, 495.

Development, concentration the order of, 325.

Development Philosophy, relations to Malthusianism, 100-101; insufficiency of, 473-486.

Discount, high rates of, not interest, 21_n_.

Distribution, terms of exclusive, 37, 38, 162; laws of, 153-222; their necessary relation, 160-164; as currently taught, 160-161; contrasted with true laws, 218; equality of, 450-451.

Education no remedy for poverty, 305-306.

Exchange, functions of, 27-29, 76-77; a part of production, 47; brings increase, 182-183, 186-187; extends with progress of civilization, 197; promotes civilization, 508-509.

Exchanges, credit in, 276-277; effect of wages on international, 309-310.

Fawcett, Prof., Indian expenditures, 120_n_; value of land in England, 287.

Fawcett, Mrs., laborers maintained by capital, 70; land tax, 421.

Feudal system, recognition of common rights to land, 372-375, 381; infeudation, 396-397.

Fortunes, great, 193-194, 386-387, 451.

Franklin, Benjamin, his economy, 303.

Government, improvements in increase production, 227, 252; will not relieve poverty, 298-301; simplification and change of character, 452-469; tendency to republicanism, 526-527; transition to despotism, 301, 527-528.

Guizot, Europe after fall of Roman Empire, 372-373; the question that arises from a review of civilization, 553.

Hyndman, H. M., Indian famine, 119-120.

Improvements in the arts, effect upon distribution, 242-252; in habits of industry and thrift, will not relieve poverty, 301-308; upon land, their value separable from land values, 341-342, 422-423.

India, cause of poverty and famine, 114-121; civilization, 480, 481, 497.

Industrial depressions, extent and significance, 5-6, 537-538; conflicting opinions as to cause, 10-11; their cause and course, 261-279; connection with railroad building, 272-274; passing away, 279.

Industry, not limited by capital, 26, 56-57; may be limited in form and productiveness by capital, 80-86.

Interest, confusion of term with profits, 156-163; proper signification, 161-162; variations in, 174; cause of, 174-188; justice of, 187; profits mistaken for, 189-194; law of, 195-203; normal point of, 198-199; formulation of law, 202.

Interest and wages, evident connection, 19-21; relation, 171-172, 199-203, 218; why higher in new countries, 221.

Inventions, labor-saving, failure to relieve poverty, 3-5; advantage of goes primarily to labor, 179, 195-196; except when not diffused, 251; effect of, 242-252; brought forth by freedom, 521-523.

Ireland, cause of poverty and famine, 123-128; effect of introduction of potato, 303-304.

Labor, purpose of, 27-29, 244-245, 396; meaning of term, 37-38; produces wages, 27-29, 49-69; precedes wages, 55-58; employs capital, 163, 195; eliminated from production, 201-202; productiveness varies with natural powers, 205; no fixed barriers between occupations, 210-211; value of reduced by value of land, 221-222; supply and demand, 268-269; land necessary to, 270, 292-294; cause of want of employment, 271-272; family, 304; combination, 308-314; only rightful basis of property, 332-335; efficiency increases with wages, 441-442; not in itself repugnant, 465.

Labor and Capital, different forms of same thing, 163-164, 198, 203; whence idea of their conflict arises, 189, 194; harmony of interests, 198-203.

Laborers, not maintained by capital, 70-78; where land is monopolized, have no interest in increase of productive power, 281; made more dependent by civilization, 281-284; organizations of, 308-314; condition not improved by division of land, 321-325; their enslavement the ultimate result of private property in land, 345-355.

Land, meaning of term, 37; value of is not wealth, 39, 165-166; diminishing productiveness cited in support Malthusian theory, 97; how far true, 133-134, 228-241; maintenance of prices, 274-275; estimated value of in England, 287; effects of monopolization in England, 288-289; relation of man to, 292-294; division of will not relieve poverty, 319-325; tendency to concentration in ownership, 319-321; necessity for abolishing private ownership, 326-327; injustice of private property in, 331-392; absurdity of legal titles to, 340, 342-344; aristocracy and serfdom spring from ownership of, 294, 348-355, 514-515; purchase by government, 357-358; development of private ownership, 366-382; commons, 375-376; tenures in the United States, 383-392; private ownership inconsistent with best use, 395-400; how may be made common property, 401-427; effects of this, 452-469; increase of productiveness from better distribution of population, 449_n_.

Land owners, power of, 167, 292-294, 345-355; ease of their combination, 312-313; their claims to compensation, 356-365; will not be injured by confiscation of rent, 445-469.

Latimer, Hugh, increase of rent in Sixteenth Century, 288-289.

Laveleye, M. de, on small land holdings, 324-325; primitive land tenures, 369; Teutonic equality, 372.

Lawyers, confusions in their terminology, 335-336; their inculcation of the sacredness of property, 366; influence on land tenures, 370_n_.

Life, quantity of human, 109-110; limits to, 129-134; reproductive power gives increase to capital, 181; balance of, 196-197; meaning of, 561.

Macaulay, English rule in India, 116; future of United States, 534.

Machinery. (See Inventions.)

McCulloch, on wages fund, 22-23_n_; definition of capital, 33-34; compared, 42-44; principle of increase, 101; Irish poverty and distress, 125-126; rent, 232; tax on rent, 420, 422-425.

Malthus, purpose of Essay on Population, 98; its absurdities, 104-105, 137; his other works treated with contempt, 105-106_n_; fall of wages in Sixteenth Century, 288; cause of his popularity, 98-100, 336-337_n_.

Malthusian Theory, stated, examined and disproved, 91-150; as stated by Malthus, 93-94; as stated by Mill, 94-95, 140-141; in its strongest form, 95; its triumph and the causes, 95-96; harmonizes with ideas of working classes, 98; defends inequality and discourages reform, 98-99, 140-141, 336-337_n_; its extension in development philosophy, 101; now generally accepted, 101-102; its illegitimate inferences, 103-139; facts which disprove it, 140-150; its support from doctrine of rent, 97, 132-133, 228-229; effects predicated of increase of population result from improvements in the arts, 242-252; the ultimate defense of property in land, 336-337_n_.

Man more than an animal, 129-131, 134-136, 307, 464, 473-475, 492-493; his power to avail himself of the reproductive forces of nature, 131-132; primary right and power, 332-333; desire for approbation, 456-458; selfishness not the master motive, 460-461; his infinite desires, 134-136, 243, 245-247, 464-465, 503; how improves, 475; idea of national or race life, 485-486; cause of differences and progress, 487-502; hereditary transmission, 492-502; social in his nature, 506.

Mill, John Stuart, definition of capital, 34, 71-72; industry limited by capital, 56-57_n_, 70-71; Malthusian doctrine, 94-95, 111; effect of unrestricted increase of population, 140-141; confusion as to profits and interest, 158; law of rent, 168; wages, 213; government resumption of increase of land values, 358-360; influence of Malthusianism, 360-361; tax on rent, 420-421.

Money, when capital, 45; in hands of consumer, 46_n_; confounded with wealth, 60-61; lack of commodities spoken of as lack of, 266.

Monopolies, profits of, 191-194; cause of certain, 408-409.

More, Sir Thomas, ejectments of cottagers, 289.

Nature, its reproductive power, 180-182; utilization of its variations, 182-183, 185-187; equation between reproduction and destruction, 196-197; impartiality of, 333-334.

Nicholson, N. A., on capital, 35.

Nightingale, Florence, causes of famine in India, 118-119, 119_n_, 120_n_.

Perry, Arthur Latham, on capital, 34; rent, 225.

Political Economy, its failure, its nature and its methods, 10-13; doctrines based upon the theory that wages are drawn from capital, 24-25; importance of definitions, 30-36; its terms, abstract terms, 47; confusion of standard treatises, 56-57, 158-161, 218; the erroneous standpoint which its investigators have adopted, 162-163; its fundamental principle, 12, 204, 217, 560; writers on, stumbling over law of wages, 215-216; compared with astronomy, 219-220; deals with general tendencies, 278-279; admissions in standard works as to property in land, 356-358; principles not pushed to logical conclusions, 421; the Physiocrats, 421-422; unison with moral truth, 230, 484; its hopefulness, 557; effect on religious ideas, 555-556.

Population and Subsistence, 91-150. (See Malthusian Theory.)

Population, inferences as to increase, 103-104; of world, no evidence of increase in, 107-110; present, 113_n_; increase of descendants not increase of, 112; only limited by space, 133-134; real law of increase, 137-139; effect of increase upon production and distribution, 228-241; increase of increases wealth, 140-150; puts land to intenser uses, 320; increase in United States, 390.

Poverty, its connection with material progress, 6-10; failure to explain this, 10-11; where deepest, 222; why it accompanies progress, 280-294; remedy for, 326-328; springs from injustice, 338-339, 541-542; its effects, 354, 456-464.

Price, not measured by the necessity of the buyer, 185; equation of equalizes reward of labor, 204.

Production, same principles obvious in complex as in simple forms, 26-29; factors of, 37, 162, 203, 270, 292-294; includes exchange, 47; the immediate result of labor, 64-67; directed by demand for consumption, 75; functions of capital in, 79-87, 162-164; simple modes of sometimes most efficient, 84-85; only relative term, 133; increased shown by increased consumption, 149; meaning of the term, 155; utilizes reproductive forces, 179-182; time an element in, 180-185; the modes of, 186; recourse to lower points does not involve diminution of, 229-232; tendency to large scale, 320-321, 325, 531-532; susceptible of enormous increase, 431-434, 466, 547.

Profits, meaning of the term and confusions in its use, 158-162, 189-194.

Progress, human, current theory of considered, 473-486; in what it consists, 487-502; its law, 503-523, 541-549; retrogression, 524-540.

Progress, material, connection with poverty, 7-11, 222; in what it consists, 227; effects upon distribution of wealth, 228-241; effect of expectation raised by, 253-258; how it results in industrial depressions, 261-279; why it produces poverty, 280-294.

Property, basis of, 331-334, 340-342; erroneous categories of, 335; derivation of distinction between real and personal, 377; private in land not necessary to use of land, 395-400; idea of transferred to land, 514-515.

Protection, its fallacies have their root in belief as to wages, 19; effect on agriculturists, 447-449; abolition by England, effect of, 252; how protective taxes fall, 447-448.

Quesnay, his doctrine, 422-423, 431.

Rent, bearing upon Malthusian theory, 96-98, 132-134, 228-241, 242-252; meaning of the term, 165; arises from monopoly, 166; law of, 168-170; its corollaries, 171, 217-218; effect of their recognition, 171-172; as related to interest, 201-203; as related to wages, 204-216; advance of explains why wages and interest do not advance, 221-222; increased by increase of population, 228-241; increased by improvements, 242-252; by speculation, 253-258; speculative advance in the cause of industrial depressions, 261-279; advance in explains the persistence of poverty, 280-294; increase of not prevented by tenant right, 322; or by division of land, 324-325; serf, generally fixed, 353; confiscation of future increase, 357-359; a continuous robbery, 362-363; feudal rents, 372-375; their abolition, 378-381; their present value, 381-382; rent now taken by the State, 397-400; State appropriation of, 401-427, 514-515; taxes on, 406-419; effects of thus appropriating, 431-486.

Reade, Winwood, Martyrdom of Man, 478_n_, 479_n_.

Religion, necessary to socialism, 318; promotive of civilization, 509, 519-520; Hebrew, effects on race, 495-496; retrogression in, 536-537; change going on, 540; animosities created by, 507_n_; consensus of, 560-561.

Ricardo, definition of capital, 33; inference as to population, 71; enunciation of law of rent, 168; narrow view of, 168-169, 225; tax on rent, 420.

Royce, Samuel, Deterioration and Race Education, 538_n_.

Slaveholders of the South, their view of abolition, 351-353.

Slavery, chattel, comparatively trivial effects of, 347; modifying influences, 353-354; not truly abolished in United States, 355, 392; never aided progress, 522-523.

Smith, Adam, definition of capital, 32-33, 36-42, 44, 45-46; recognizes truth as to source of wages and then abandons it, 50; influence of Malthusian theory upon, 92; profits, 157; how economists have followed him, 159; differences of wages in different occupations, 207-208, 209-210; his failure to appreciate the laws of distribution, 215; taxation, 416-419.

Socialism, its ends and means, 317-319; practical realization of its ideal, 431-469.

Social organization and life, possible changes, 452-69.

Spencer, Herbert, compensation of land owners, 357-358, 362; public ownership of land, 402; evolution, 478, 485; human progress, 478-479; social differences, 502.

Strikes, 310-314.

Subsistence, population and, 91-150; increases with population, 129-133; cannot be exhausted, 133-134; included in wealth, 142, 244; demand for not fixed, 245-246. (See Malthusian Theory.)

Supply and demand, of labor, 208-209; relative terms, 266-267; as affected by wages, 308-310.

Swift, Dean, his Modest Proposal, 126.

Taxation, eliminated in considering distribution, 155; reduction of will not relieve poverty, 297-301; considered, 406-427; canons of, 406; effect upon production, 406-412; ease and cheapness in collection, 412-414; certainty, 414-416; equality of, 416-419; opinions on, 420-423; objections to tax on rent, 422-427; cause of manifold taxation, 425-427; how taxation falls on agriculturists, 447-450; effects of confiscating rent by taxation, 431-469.

Tennant, Rev. Wm., cause of famine in India, 115-116.

Thornton, Wm., on wage fund, 18_n_; on capital, 35.

Values, equation of, 196-197.

Wages, current doctrine, 17; it coincides with vulgar opinion, 18; but is inconsistent with facts, 19-22; genesis of current theory, 22; difference between it and that herein advanced, 23-25; not drawn from capital but produced by labor, 23, 25-29, 49-69; meaning of the term, 31-32; always subsequent to labor, 56-58; fallacy of the assumption that they are drawn from capital, 56-57; for services, 59_n_; connection between current doctrine and Malthusian theory, 92-95, 96-97; confusion of terms produced by current theory, 159; rate of, 204; law of, 204-216; formulated, 213; in different occupations, 207-212; as quantity and as proportion, 216; not increased by material progress, 303-304; minimum fixed by standard of comfort, 303; effect of increase or decrease on employers, 308-309; equilibrium of, 310-311; not increased by division of land, 323-325; why they tend to wages of slavery, 346; efficiency of labor increases with, 442.

Wages and Interest, high or low together, 19-22; current explanation, 19; Cairne’s explanation, 20-22; true explanation, 170-172, 199-203, 221; formulated, 218.

Wages of Superintendence, 159; used to include profits of monopoly, 191.

Walker, Amasa, capital, 35.

Walker, Prof. F. A., wages, 18_n_; capital, 35.

Wayland, Professor, definition of capital, 34.

Wealth, increase of not generally shared, 8-9; meaning of term, 38-40; interchangeability of, 47-48, 142, 181-182, 244-247; confounded with money, 60-61; increases with population, 141-150; accumulated, 147-149; laws of distribution, 153-216; formulated, 218; nature of, 147-149, 180, 205; political effects of unequal distribution, 300, 527-535; effects of just distribution, 438-444, 450-451, 452-469.

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Transcriber's Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation have been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.

Italics are represented thus _italic_.