Chapter 30

[236] The history of the efforts to attain a universal language has been written by Couturat and Leau, _Histoire de la Langue Universelle_, 1903.

[237] The distinguished French physician, Dr. Sollier, also, in an address to the Lisbon International Medical Congress, on "La Question de la Langue Auxiliaire Internationale," in 1906, advocating the adoption of one of the existing Romance tongues, said: "Spanish is the simplest of all and the easiest, and if it were chosen for this purpose I should be the first to accept it."

[238] It has even been stated by a distinguished English man of science that Latin is sometimes easier for the English to use than is their own language. "I have known Englishmen who could be trusted to write a more intelligible treatise, possibly even to make a more lucid speech, in Latin than in English," says Dr. Miers, the Principal of London University (_Lancet_, 7th October, 1911), and he adds: "Quite seriously, I think some part of the cause is to be sought in the difficulty of our language, and many educated persons get lost in its intricacies, just as they get lost in its spelling." Without questioning the fact, however, I would venture to question this explanation of it.

[239] Thus in one article on the growing extension of the English language throughout the world (_Macmillan's Magazine_, March, 1892) we read: "English is practically certain to become the language of the world.... The speech of Shakespeare and Milton, of Dryden and Swift, of Byron and Wordsworth, will be, in a sense in which no other language has been, the speech of the whole world." We do not nowadays meet with these wild statements.

[240] The stumbling-stones for the foreigner presented by English words in "ough" have often been referred to, and are clearly set forth in the verses in which Mr. C.B. Loomis has sought to represent a French learner's experiences--and the same time to show the criminal impulses which these irregularities arouse in the pupil.

"I'm taught p-l-o-u-g-h Shall be pronouncèd 'plow,' 'Zat's easy when you know,' I say, 'Mon Anglais I'll get through.'

"My teacher say zat in zat case O-u-g-h is 'oo,' And zen I laugh and say to him 'Zees Anglais make me cough.'

"He say, 'Not coo, but in zat word O-u-g-h is "off,"' Oh, _sacre bleu_! such varied sounds Of words make me hiccough!

"He say, 'Again, mon friend ees wrong! O-u-g-h is "up," In hiccough,' Zen I cry, 'No more, You make my throat feel rough,'

"'Non! non!' he cry, 'you are not right-- O-u-g-h is "uff."' I say, 'I try to speak your words, I can't prononz zem though,'

"'In time you'll learn, but now you're wrong, O-u-g-h is "owe."' 'I'll try no more. I sall go mad, I'll drown me in ze lough!'

"'But ere you drown yourself,' said he, 'O-u-g-h is "ock."' He taught no more! I held him fast, And killed him wiz a rough!"

[241] It is interesting to remember that at one period in European history, French seemed likely to absorb English, and thus to acquire, in addition to its own motor force, all the motor force which now lies behind English. When the Normans--a vigorous people of Scandinavian origin, speaking a Romance tongue, and therefore well fitted to accomplish a harmonizing task of this kind--occupied both sides of the English Channel, it seemed probable that they would dominate the speech of England as well as of France. "At that time," says Méray (_La Vie aux Temps des Cours d'Amour_, p. 367), who puts forward this view, "the people of the two coasts of the Channel were closer in customs and in speech than were for a long time the French on the opposite banks of the Loire.... The influential part of the English nation and all the people of its southern regions spoke the _Romance_ of the north of France. In the Crusades the Knights of the two peoples often mixed, and were greeted as Franks wherever their adventurous spirit led them. If Edward III, with the object of envenoming an antagonism which served his own ends, had not broken this link of language, the two peoples would perhaps have been united to-day in the same efforts of progress and of liberty.... Of what a fine instrument of culture and of progress has not that fatal decree of Edward III deprived civilization!"

[242] I was at one time (_Progressive Review_, April, 1897) inclined to think that the adoption of both English and French, as joint auxiliary international languages--the first for writing and the second for speaking--might solve the problem. I have since recognized that such a solution, however advantageous it might be for human culture, would present many difficulties, and is quite impracticable.

[243] I may refer to three able papers which have appeared in recent years in the _Popular Science Monthly_: Anna Monsch Roberts, "The Problem of International Speech" (February, 1908); Ivy Kellerman, "The Necessity for an International Language," (September, 1909); Albert Léon Guérard, "English as an International Language" (October, 1911). All these writers reject as impracticable the adoption of either English or French as the auxiliary international language, and view with more favour the adoption of an artificial language such as Esperanto.

[244] A.M. Roberts, _op. cit._

[245] It should be added, however, that the auxiliary language need not be used as a medium for literary art, and it is a mistake, as Pfaundler points out, to translate poems into such a language.

[246] See _International Language and Science_, 1910, by Couturat, Jespersen, Lorenz, Ostwald, Pfaundler, and Donnan, five professors living in five different countries.

[247] The progress of the movement is recorded in its official journal, _Progreso_, edited by Couturat, and in De Beaufront's journal, _La Langue Auxiliaire_.

XII

INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIALISM

Social Hygiene in Relation to the Alleged Opposition between Socialism and Individualism--The Two Parties in Politics--The Relation of Conservatism and Radicalism to Socialism and Individualism--The Basis of Socialism--The Basis of Individualism--The seeming Opposition between Socialism and Individualism merely a Division of Labour--Both Socialism and Individualism equally Necessary--Not only Necessary but Indispensable to each other--The Conflict between the Advocates of Environment and Heredity--A New Embodiment of the supposed Conflict between Socialism and Individualism--The Place of Eugenics--Social Hygiene ultimately one with the Hygiene of the Soul--The Function of Utopias.

The controversy between Individualism and Socialism, the claim of the personal unit as against the claim of the collective community, is of ancient date. Yet it is ever new and constantly presented afresh. It even seems to become more acute as civilization progresses. Every scheme of social reform, every powerful manifestation of individual energy, raise anew a problem that is never out of date.

It is inevitable, indeed, that with the development of social hygiene during the past hundred years there should also develop a radical opposition of opinion as to the methods by which such hygiene ought to be accomplished. There has always been this opposition in the political sphere; it is natural to find it also in the social sphere. The very fact that old-fashioned politics are becoming more and more transformed into questions of social hygiene itself ensures the continuance of such an opposition.

In politics, and especially in the politics of constitutional countries of which England is the type, there are normally two parties. There is the party that holds by tradition, by established order and solidarity, the maintenance of the ancient hierarchical constitution of society, and in general distinguishes itself by a preference for the old over the new. There is, on the other side, the party that insists on progress, on freedom, on the reasonable demands of the individual, on the adaptation of the accepted order to changing conditions, and in general distinguishes itself by a preference for the new over the old. The first may be called the party of structure, and the second the party of function. In England we know the adherents of one party as Conservatives and those of the other party as Liberals or Radicals.

In time, it is true, these normal distinctions between the party of structure and the party of function tend to become somewhat confused; and it is precisely the transition of politics into the social sphere which tends to introduce confusion. With a political system which proceeds ultimately out of a society with a feudalistic basis, the normal attitude of political parties is long maintained. The party of structure, the Conservative party, holds by the ancient feudalistic ideals which are really, in the large sense, socialistic, though a socialism based on a foundation of established inequality, and so altogether unlike the democratic socialism promulgated to-day. The party of function, the Liberal party, insists on the break-up of this structural socialism to meet the new needs of progressive civilization. But when feudalism has been left far behind, and many of the changes introduced by Liberalism have become part of the social structure, they fall under the protection of Conservatives who are fighting against new Liberal innovations. Thus the lines of delimitation tend to become indistinct.

In the politics of social hygiene there are the same two factors: the party of structure and the party of function. In their nature and in their opposition to each other they correspond to the two parties in the old political field. But they have changed their character and their names: the party of structure is here Socialism or Collectivism,[248] the party of function is Individualism.[249] And while the Tory, the Conservative of early days, was allied to Collectivism, and the Whig, the Liberal of early days, to Individualism, that correspondence has ceased to be invariable owing to the confused manner in which the old political parties have nowadays shifted their ground. We may thus see a Liberal who is a Collectivist when a Collectivist measure may involve that innovation to secure adjustment to new needs which is of the essence of Liberalism, and we may see a Conservative who is an Individualist when Individualism involves that maintenance of the existing order which is of the essence of Conservatism. Whether a man is a Conservative or a Liberal, he may incline either to Socialism or to Individualism without breaking with his political tradition. It is, therefore, impossible to import any political animus into the fundamental antagonism between Individualism and Socialism, which prevails in the sphere of social hygiene.

We cannot hope to see clearly the grave problems involved by the fundamental antagonism between Socialism and Individualism unless we understand what each is founded on and what it is aiming at.

When we seek to inquire how it is that the Socialist ideal exerts so powerful an attraction on the human mind, and why it is ever seeking new modes of practical realization, we cannot fail to perceive that it ultimately proceeds from the primitive need of mutual help, a need which was felt long before the appearance of humanity.[250] If, however, we keep strictly to our immediate mammalian traditions it may be said that the earliest socialist community is the family, with its trinity of father, mother, and child. The primitive family constitutes a group which is conditioned by the needs of each member. Each individual is subordinated to the whole. The infant needs the mother and the mother needs the infant; they both need the father and the father needs both for the complete satisfaction of his own activities. Socially and economically this primitive group is a unit, and if broken up into its individual parts these would be liable to perish.

However we may multiply our social unit, however we may enlarge and elaborate it, however we may juggle with the results, we cannot disguise the essential fact. At the centre of every social agglomeration, however vast, however small, lies the social unit of the family of which each individual is by himself either unable to live or unable to reproduce, unable, that is to say, to gratify the two fundamental needs of hunger and love.

There are many people who, while willing to admit that the family is, in a sense, a composite social unit to which each part has need of the other parts, so that all are mutually bound together, seek to draw a firm line of distinction between the family and society. Family life, they declare, is not irreconcilable with individualism; it is merely _un égoïsme à trois_. It is, however, difficult to see how such a distinction can be maintained, whether we look at the matter theoretically or practically. In a small country like Great Britain, for instance, every Englishman (excluding new immigrants) is related by blood to every other Englishman, as would become clearer if every man possessed his pedigree for a thousand years back. When we remember, further, also, that every nation has been overlaid by invasions, warlike or peaceful, from neighbouring lands, and has, indeed, been originally formed in this way since no people has sprung up out of the soil of its own land, we must further admit that the nations themselves form one family related by blood.

Our genealogical relation to our fellows is too remote and extensive to concern us much practically and sentimentally, though it is well that we should realize it. If we put it aside, we have still to remember that our actual need of our fellows is not definitely to be distinguished from the mutual needs of the members of the smallest social unit, the family.

In practice the individual is helpless. Of all animals, indeed, man is the most helpless when left to himself. He must be cared for by others at every moment during his long infancy. He is dependent on the exertions of others for shelter and clothes, while others are occupied in preparing his food and conveying it from the ends of the world. Even if we confine ourselves to the most elementary needs of a moderately civilized existence, or even if our requirements are only those of an idiot in an asylum, yet, for every one of us, there are literally millions of people spending the best of their lives from morning to night and perhaps receiving but little in return. The very elementary need of the individual in an urban civilization for pure water to drink can only be attained by organized social effort. The gigantic aqueducts constructed by the Romans are early monuments of social activity typical of all the rest. The primary needs of the individual can only be supplied by an immense and highly organized social effort. The more complex civilization becomes, and the more numerous individual needs become, so much the more elaborate and highly organized becomes the social response to those needs. The individual is so dependent on society that he needs not only the active work of others, but even their mere passive good opinion, and if he loses that he is a failure, bankrupt, a pauper, a lunatic, a criminal, and the social reaction against him may suffice to isolate him, even to put him out of life altogether. So dependent indeed on society is the individual that there has always been a certain plausibility in the old idea of the Stoics, countenanced by St. Paul, and so often revived in later days (as by Schäffle, Lilienfeld, and René Worms), that society is an organism in which the individuals are merely cells depending for their significance on the whole to which they belong. Just as the animal is, as Hegel, the metaphysician, called it, a "nation," and Dareste, the physiologist, a "city," made up of cells which are individuals having a common ancestor, so the actual nation, the real city, is an animal made up of individuals which are cells having a common ancestor, or, as Oken long ago put it, individuals are the organs of the whole.[251] Man is a social animal in constant action and reaction with all his fellows of the same group--a group which becomes ever greater as civilization advances--and socialism is merely the formal statement of this ultimate social fact.[252]

There is a divinity that hedges certain words. A sacred terror warns the profane off them as off something that might blast the beholder's sight. In fact it is so, and even a clear-sighted person may be blinded by such a word. Of these words none is more typical than the word "socialism." Not so very long ago a prominent public man, of high intelligence, but evidently susceptible to the terror-striking influence of words, went to Glasgow to deliver an address on Social Reform. He warned his hearers against Socialism, and told them that, though so much talked about, it had not made one inch of progress; of practical Socialism or Collectivism there were no signs at all. Yet, as some of his hearers pointed out, he gave his address in a municipally owned hall, illuminated by municipal lights, to an audience which had largely arrived in municipal tramcars travelling through streets owned, maintained, and guarded by the municipality. This audience was largely educated in State schools, in which their children nowadays can receive not only free education and free books, but, if necessary, free food and free medical inspection and treatment. Moreover, the members of this same audience thus assured of the non-existence of Socialism, are entitled to free treatment in the municipal hospital, should an infective disease overtake them; the municipality provides them freely with concerts and picture galleries, golf courses and swimming ponds; and in old age, finally, if duly qualified, they receive a State pension. Now all these measures are socialistic, and Socialism is nothing more or less than a complicated web of such measures; the socialistic State, as some have put it, is simply a great national co-operative association of which the Government is the board of managers.

It is said by some who disclaim any tendency to Socialism, that what they desire is not the State-ownership of the means of production, but State-regulation. Let the State, in the interests of the community, keep a firm control over the individualistic exploitation of capital, let it tax capital as far as may be desirable in the interests of the community. But beyond this, capital, as well as land, is sacred. The distinction thus assumed is not, however, valid. The very people who make this distinction are often enthusiastic advocates of an enlarged navy and a more powerful army. Yet these can only be provided by taxation, and every tax in a democratic State is a socialistic measure, and involves collective ownership of the proceeds, whether they are applied to making guns or swimming-baths. Every step in the regulation of industry assumes the rights of society over individualistic production, and is therefore socialistic. It is a question of less or more, but except along those two lines, there is no socialism at all to be reckoned with in the practical affairs of the world. That revolutionary socialism of the dogmatically systematic school of Karl Marx which desired to transfer society at a single stroke by taking over and centralizing all the means of production may now be regarded as a dream. It never at any time took root in the English-speaking lands, though it was advocated with unwearying patience by men of such force of intellect and of character as Mr. Hyndman and William Morris. Even in Germany, the land of its origin, nearly all its old irreconcilable leaders are dead, and it is now slowly but steadily losing influence, to give place to a more modern and practical socialism.

As we are concerned with it to-day and in the future, Socialism is not a rigid economic theory, nor is it the creed of a narrow sect. In its wide sense it is a name that covers all the activities--first instinctive, then organized--which arise out of the fundamental fact that man is a social animal. In its more precise sense it indicates the various orderly measures that are taken by groups of individuals--whether States or municipalities--to provide collectively for the definite needs of the individuals composing the group. So much for Socialism.

The individualist has a very different story to tell. From the point of view of Individualism, however elaborate the structure of the society you erect, it can only, after all, be built up of individuals, and its whole worth must depend on the quality of those individuals. If they are not fully developed and finely tempered by high responsibilities and perpetual struggles, all social effort is fruitless, it will merely degrade the individual to the helpless position of a parasite. The individual is born alone; he must die alone; his deepest passions, his most exquisite tastes, are personal; in this world, or in any other world, all the activities of society cannot suffice to save his soul. Thus it is that the individual must bear his own burdens, for it is only in so doing that the muscles of his body grow strong and that the energies of his spirit become keen. It is by the qualities of the individual alone that work is sound and that initiative is possible. All trade and commerce, every practical affair of life, depend for success on the personal ability of individuals.[253] It is not only so in the everyday affairs of life, it is even more so on the highest planes of intellectual and spiritual life. The supreme great men of the race were termed by Carlyle its "heroes," by Emerson its "representative men," but, equally by the less and by the more democratic term, they are always individuals standing apart from society, often in violent opposition to it, though they have always conquered in the end. When any great person has stood alone against the world it has always been the world that lost. The strongest man, as Ibsen argued in his _Enemy of the People_, is the man who stands most alone. "He will be the greatest," says Nietzsche in _Beyond Good and Evil_, "who can be the most solitary, the most concealed, the most divergent." Every great and vitally organized person is hostile to the rigid and narrow routine of social conventions, whether established by law or by opinion; they must ever be broken to suit his vital needs. Therefore the more we multiply these social routines, the more strands we weave into the social web, the more closely we draw them, by so much the more we are discouraging the production of great and vitally organized persons, and by so much the more we are exposing society to destruction at the hands of such persons.