CHAPTER XIX

Hester was now made rich. Her doting father settled on her not only the Yorkshire farms, but also other revenues, that she might be provided with capital to carry into execution her philanthropic plans. Hester was endowed with many brilliant qualities. She was, as it were, "born to reign." She perfectly understood her own dignity, perfectly realized her own power of intellect, was well aware that both her father and his man of business were her tools, and she managed accordingly with intuitive prudence, not permitting Mr. Godfrey to perceive how entirely he obeyed her bidding. Under these circumstances she might fairly hope for success. Large iron factories on the one hand, and large cotton factories on the other, were erected on a scale calculated to employ many hundred hands, and to bring into extensive operation the new steam-power that then absorbed scientific attention. Mr. Godfrey was delighted, for it brought him into frequent contact with the most scientific men of the day. The operations necessarily attracted public attention, and Mr. Godfrey as director of the scientific operations, with Hester as deviser of a new scheme for rendering the "populations" happy and progressive, were continually besieged by a concourse of visitors, eager to understand the new "idea."

Hester's arrangements were on a magnificent scale. She started on the principle of mutual co-operation united to division of labor. Instead of separate dwellings for her employés, she had large boarding-houses built. These were provided with halls, refectories, baths, lecture-rooms, reading-rooms, libraries, and, lastly, schools, which in those days were rare for the laboring population. For since the suppression of the monasteries and convents, the schools in which the good religious had taught the children of England to love God and their neighbor had been shut up, education had fallen to a fearfully low standard in this sect-divided kingdom.

Hester was a severe disciplinarian, with little compassion for the weakness of human nature. She intended her people should become intellectual; and when she shortened the hours of labor, expressly to give time to cultivate the mind, when she hired lecturers and bought books, she felt herself aggrieved that these were not responded to. Her people were well fed at a common table; they were well sheltered and accommodated; why should they not be intellectualized? How discouraged she felt when she found she was speaking in an unknown tongue to {602} the adults among her operatives. They hardly considered short hours a benefit when they were compelled to sit and listen to subjects in which they took no interest. "A glass of ale and, a pipe of 'backy would do a poor body far more good than all this preaching, and 'tain't to save our souls either." There were other difficulties in this commonwealth; the young men and women were on different sides of the building, and certain rules were laid down to secure good conduct, but these rules were very difficult to enforce, and the dismissals for disorder became frequent. The operatives began to call the place a jail. Hester would not yield, but she turned more strenuously to the children. Here she had better success, and she spent days and weeks in providing for the better education of these little ones. "The elder ones are already formed," she argued, "but we will give these young ones better tastes, better habits, and they will become intelligent and happy."

M. de Villeneuve was a frequent visitor at these institutions, for the character of Hester interested him greatly, and he was constantly endeavoring to draw her attention to the motives that actuated her people, and to the probabilities of their producing lasting results.

"Tell me," said he, "how is a knowledge of the material law to produce happiness? We know that a steel knife cuts flesh; will that knowledge reconcile one to the loss of his arm when the sturgeon has cut it off in the most masterly manner?"

"No," said Hester, "but perhaps a knowledge of the material law might have prevented the necessity of cutting off the arm at all. Much of disease is caused by ignorance. To banish pain needs a wide acquaintance with the whole range of laws which govern our being. To know and practise one law and neglect another would but result in pain."

"You will require a life of scientific research. I see; and after all, as we all begin with ignorance and helplessness, we must suffer some pain during our apprenticeship. For instance, you cannot teach an infant to cut its teeth painlessly."

"But because we cannot do everything, shall we do nothing?"

"That were a sweeping conclusion; it is not necessary to go so far as that. But might it not be wise to examine the principle of actions when we attempt to regulate for others on a new system? Your exterior arrangements our splendid; your laws rigidly moral; but will you ensure their being kept? What motive do you propose?"

"I have expelled those who, after suitable remonstrance, would not conform," said Hester.

"A very effective proceeding, my kind hostess, but it is just possible that eventually such a practice might create a desert. The motive power of perseverance comes from within. The desire must be in the heart, the understanding must approve, the will must accept, the deed must co-operate, and until you have secured this motive power, your arrangements rest on an insecure basis. You cannot force men to choose good; you cannot make them studious by providing a library, or moral by denouncing the penalties of immorality. You must subdue passions, excite tastes. Can mere knowledge of physics do this?"

"There is other knowledge besides mere physics--classical knowledge."

"And will classical knowledge do it? Will reading Virgil and Horace tend to evolve moral power?"

"Why not? Knowledge is power!"

"Then why are so many of the educated sickly, unhappy and immoral?"

"Because they do not act upon their knowledge; they are idle and dissipated and worthless. The frivolities of the young men 'de bon ton' were always disgusting to me. But then they are not really educated; they may have been to school, but they have learned nothing useful, nothing of the material world."

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"But" said M. de Villeneuve, "how does the knowledge of the material world affect man's existence as a moral agent? The laws which regulate materiality leave and impress of invariability upon them--a want of power to change themselves, at any rate. They are obedient to a will to which they appear insentient. This is true not only of inert, stolid matter, not only of vegetable life, but of animals, even of those wondrous developments of instinct which approach so near to reason that they are scarcely distinguishable from it. The highest mere animals are creatures of circumstance--circumstance ruled, indeed, by appetite and instinct, but not by recognition of a higher law, not by any consciousness of affinity to a higher state of existence. Therefore, you can tame them by an appeal to their appetites; you can rule them by providing for their animal natures; you can subdue them if you bring to bear on them a force stronger than their own. But, surely, we may assume that man is more than a mere animal. He has inborn affinities to higher natures which force cannot subdue, and which rise superior to animal temptations. These affinities may be starved out, it is true, by not providing them with their own fitting nutriment, which is not the food of the body. They may be crushed or restrained in their development by overloading the soul with extraneous objects; but in proportion as these powers are starved out or crushed out, the man sinks, the animal rises. And the _animal_ man is, I assure you, a very ferocious kind of beast, and nonetheless so for having intelligence developed; rather is he dangerous in proportion."

"You would not, then, developed intelligence?"

"On the contrary, I think it the highest and holiest task in which a human being can be employed. I rejoice in all the plans that tend to raise the race; I applaud your benevolence in forming these establishments, although I feel that you are preparing for yourself a disappointment."

"But why?"

"Because you have begun on the wrong principle. It is good that you have begun at all to see the principle acknowledged that man is man, and not a mere machine to win riches for the few; that principle emanated from selfishness in the beginning, but selfishness will not root out selfishness. I admire your idea principally because it proves your own zeal, your own earnestness, your own capability of sacrificing yourself for others; even the disappointment impending will be fraught with good if it do not discourage you from seeking the true principle, which I hope it will not do. Faith in man is easily overset, because man can fall of himself, but of himself he cannot rise."

"You believe, then, as I do, that a new era is dawning on mankind, and that the laborer must be protected and enlightened?" said Hester.

"I do!" said M. de Villeneuve.

"Yet you do not believe that my schools and arrangements will make him happier?"

"Will you forgive me if I say I do not?"

"You are an enigma; I cannot make you out," said Hester.

"How did man fall into the degraded state in which the masses are?" said M. de Villeneuve. "We have proof of intelligence enough in the founders of Babylon, of Nineveh, of Thebes, and of Egypt."

"Some men must have known something, I think," said Hester, "but they seem to have kept their knowledge very carefully to themselves, and made slaves of those to whom they did not impart it. Knowledge was very much an affair of class or rank. The populace was brutish, if accounts are true, and kept in order by sheer force."

"And when that force pressed too hardly, they fled and became the founders of the savage life. Such is the probable course. And what power, think you, elevated the mass, even to the extent in which we see them now? for, debased as they may be, they are {604} far above the races that did the same work in ancient times; nay, the laborers of Europe are far above the slaves of Asia. What has caused the difference?"

"The march of intellect," said Hester proudly.

"Supposing that granted for the sake of the argument, what caused 'the march of intellect?' what gave the impetus to raise the 'toiler for bread' in the scale of humanity?"

Hester could not answer. The comte continued:

"I believe it to be that very influence which 'the age' is seeking so earnestly to destroy. Man's selfishness oppressed his fellows, overpowered his faculties, laid them to sleep so effectually that the rich and great were acknowledged by the crowd to be of another order, of another scale of being, to be judged of by another standard, to be weighed by another measure. The gospel came: to the poor it was preached _par excellence_; it was a call of the Father to his downtrodden children, an appeal to their hearts, their affections, a loving invitation to them to come, as children of the most High God, to claim their inheritance of lofty faculty, of high intuitions, of exalted aspiration. The understanding enlightened through the heart changed by slow degree's the face of nations; the slave disappeared from the christianized lands, the leaven worked from the interior to the exterior, life became protected, the rich and the poor, equal before God, became equal before the law also; civilization of heart produced civilization of manners among the masses. The greater involved the lesser. Men's intellects were awakened, roused to action, and then followed the old story over again; they forget how they had obtained these gifts, and from whom, and they are applying them to selfish purposes, to animal gratification. But liberty is the gift of the gospel, liberty emanating from emancipation of the understanding by means of the soul. If we would preserve the gift, we must observe the conditions."

"Do you really think 'liberty' a good?" asked Hester.

"True liberty is one of the greatest of blessings," said the comte; "but you will find it difficult to give 'true liberty' on earthly grounds alone, it would so easily degenerate into license. Now the repression of license by force is a restraint to which men unwillingly submit, and easily engenders tyranny, so that, unless license is restrained by the spiritual sense, liberty is in continual jeopardy; it is difficult to believe it can be lasting."

"And you think the spiritual sense necessary to liberty?"

"I do; how else can lawlessness be restrained without force?"

"Surely intellectual enlightenment ought to suffice. Common-sense even tells us that some restraint is necessary, that the moral law must be observed."

"It may tell us so, but does it give the power to execute its bidding?"

"It should do so."

"It should, and would, if man's being were in harmony. All laws, physical, mental, and spiritual teach in different forms the same truth; the material is a manifestation of the spiritual, of which the intellect demonstrates the beauty and the necessity; but power to develop the spiritual facility does not reside either in the intellect or in matter, it belongs to a higher source, and without the will is powerless. Therefore is it, I prophesy disappointment for you; for I see no provision made to destroy selfishness, and promote a higher life."

"There is none needed," interposed Mr. Godfrey somewhat abruptly; "we teach what we know. As for mysticism and matters we guess at but do not know, we leave the people free. If they need religion let them choose one, or make one for themselves."

The asperity with which this was said closed the conversation for that time.

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Hester continued her plans, though less firm than before in the conviction that the spread of intelligence would annihilate evil. She watched the results with an anxiety intent on discovering the exact truth. She tried more and more to enforce morality. She studied the influences by which children are won to good behavior. She thought love was the governing principle of the little folks, and that her indulgence would excite love. Rewards were profusely given, and a system of excitement acted upon. This produced certain effects in calling forth intelligence, but the children became selfish and fond of ease and dissipation in a manner she had not looked for.

With her young people she had scarcely better success. There was no religious restraint, and their morals soon betokened that some restraint was called for. Then, again, Mr. Godfrey's opinions were pretty well known, and itinerant lecturers held forth on the unreasonableness of the marriage tie, on the necessity of easy divorce, and other topics of like nature that placed Hester in great perplexity. It was not a subject in which she as a woman could properly interfere, and her father shrugged his shoulders, and passed them by with the remark, "These are not matters that can be interfered with, they are altogether conventional."

What could Hester do? She was in great perplexity.