Whats Wrong With The World | Page 9

Socialism, if he knows what is Socialism.
But if he is told that Socialism is a spirit, a sublime atmosphere, a noble,
indefinable tendency, why, then he keeps out of its way; and quite right
too. One can meet an assertion with argument; but healthy bigotry is
the only way in which one can meet a tendency. I am told that the
Japanese method of wrestling consists not of suddenly pressing, but of

suddenly giving way. This is one of my many reasons for disliking the
Japanese civilization. To use surrender as a weapon is the very worst
spirit of the East. But certainly there is no force so hard to fight as the
force which it is easy to conquer; the force that always yields and then
returns. Such is the force of a great impersonal prejudice, such as
possesses the modern world on so many points. Against this there is no
weapon at all except a rigid and steely sanity, a resolution not to listen
to fads, and not to be infected by diseases.
In short, the rational human faith must armor itself with prejudice in an
age of prejudices, just as it armoured itself with logic in an age of logic.
But the difference between the two mental methods is marked and
unmistakable. The essential of the difference is this: that prejudices are
divergent, whereas creeds are always in collision. Believers bump into
each other; whereas bigots keep out of each other's way. A creed is a
collective thing, and even its sins are sociable. A prejudice is a private
thing, and even its tolerance is misanthropic. So it is with our existing
divisions. They keep out of each other's way; the Tory paper and the
Radical paper do not answer each other; they ignore each other.
Genuine controversy, fair cut and thrust before a common audience,
has become in our special epoch very rare. For the sincere
controversialist is above all things a good listener. The really burning
enthusiast never interrupts; he listens to the enemy's arguments as
eagerly as a spy would listen to the enemy's arrangements. But if you
attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics,
you will find that no medium is admitted between violence and evasion.
You will have no answer except slanging or silence. A modern editor
must not have that eager ear that goes with the honest tongue. He may
be deaf and silent; and that is called dignity. Or he may be deaf and
noisy; and that is called slashing journalism. In neither case is there any
controversy; for the whole object of modern party combatants is to
charge out of earshot.
The only logical cure for all this is the assertion of a human ideal. In
dealing with this, I will try to be as little transcendental as is consistent
with reason; it is enough to say that unless we have some doctrine of a
divine man, all abuses may be excused, since evolution may turn them
into uses. It will be easy for the scientific plutocrat to maintain that
humanity will adapt itself to any conditions which we now consider

evil. The old tyrants invoked the past; the new tyrants will invoke the
future evolution has produced the snail and the owl; evolution can
produce a workman who wants no more space than a snail, and no
more light than an owl. The employer need not mind sending a Kaffir
to work underground; he will soon become an underground animal, like
a mole. He need not mind sending a diver to hold his breath in the deep
seas; he will soon be a deep-sea animal. Men need not trouble to alter
conditions, conditions will so soon alter men. The head can be beaten
small enough to fit the hat. Do not knock the fetters off the slave;
knock the slave until he forgets the fetters. To all this plausible modem
argument for oppression, the only adequate answer is, that there is a
permanent human ideal that must not be either confused or destroyed.
The most important man on earth is the perfect man who is not there.
The Christian religion has specially uttered the ultimate sanity of Man,
says Scripture, who shall judge the incarnate and human truth. Our
lives and laws are not judged by divine superiority, but simply by
human perfection. It is man, says Aristotle, who is the measure. It is the
Son of Man, says Scripture, who shall judge the quick and the dead.
Doctrine, therefore, does not cause dissensions; rather a doctrine alone
can cure our dissensions. It is necessary to ask, however, roughly, what
abstract and ideal shape in state or family would fulfil the human
hunger; and this apart from whether we can completely obtain it or not.