THE POSSIBLE IMMORALITY OF SELF-DENIAL.
SOME of the advocates of Trades' Unions seem disposed to go. very far, so far that they will, before long, produce a reac- tion. That deep pity for human suffering which is the most genuine and the most hopeful sign of modern Liberalism, has taken possession of many thinkers till it impairs their judgments, till they forget that Nature is stern, that it is God who has decreed that the tiger shall not dine without some other creature dying,. that man has duties beyond and beside those which he owes his fellow man. In their horror of the misery caused by competition,, they are inclined to declare competition itself immoral, to push. the grand theory of Brotherhood, till individuality having ceased, brotherhood and every other virtue is extinct. Honesty can only be a virtue when property is possible. All the English Com- munists, co-operators, or whatever we call them, have a latent idea that to display individual superiority is wicked, and Mr. John Morley, in a letter to the Pall Mall Gazette, formulates the theory in most unmistakable words. He holds that a competent engine- driver who strikes in order that a less competent driver may have the same pay is rather heroic and devoted than otherwise, and says, " The workman has a right to sell his labour as he likes—if anything is gained by conceding this—but then he is responsible for the effect which his way of exercising the right has upon other people. Why, is not this principle the very keystone of society itself ? It is the increasing cultivation of this sense of responsi- bility for the use of all our rights which must form the main element in the future and gradual improvement of human destiny. The Union, among its other offices, is a most powerful engine for erecting, fostering, and guiding strongly social sentiments of this sort. The operative is made to feel that, as his way of selling his labour must affect large bodies of other people, he is bound to con- sider them in every bargain that he makes, and he is made to feel this by the most legitimate instrument possible—the public opinion of his order, formally organized." In fact, thinks Mr. Morley, who is not an extreme person by any means, the bricklayer who can lay 200 bricks per hour, and to keep up other men's wages only lays 100, is morally a higher person than the bricklayer who does his best, and takes the most he honestly can. That is a very plausible half-truth, and will commend itself to the minds of all those good men who hold that self-denial is not only a virtue, but the sum and substance of virtues, a very numer- ous class, but is it strictly true ? The man who resigns an advantage to benefit other men is, no doubt, noble, and many of our best workmen are entitled to all the credit of that high motive, but there is something else to be considered. Has not man a duty to his Maker as well as to his brother, and is not the use and improvement of all faculties with which he may be endowed the first item in that duty? Everybody admits this at once about mental faculties. Suppose, for example, a journalist could, by stating his thoughts in a manner below his capacity, keep up the wages of inferior men, would that be performing a high moral duty ? Or suppose a preacher by talking platitudes could make the lives of the majority of preachers more comfort- able, would that self-denial be morally right? Clearly not, and yet the bodily faculties are " talents " in the sense of the parable just as much as the mental capacities. The true duty of every man who has the power is, by his example, to raise the standard of human effort, to tempt ordinary men to advance their aims, and thus from generation to generation to raise the average of human capacity little by little, till the weak of one generation do what the strong of the previous one could hardly accomplish. We all reoognize this truth in morals, in science, in literature, and why not in that application of thought to work which we call skilled labour? This incessant elevation of the fitting limit of effort is, of course, very hard upon the weak, that is, upon the majority, but then it is no harder than other processes appointed by Providence for the development of animated creation. Natural selection is very bard upon the weak, but natural selection goes on under Almighty sanction. It is very hard that if a strong race dwells side by side with a weak one, the diseases of the strong race, such as smallpox, should affect the weak one, not only as much as they affect the strong, but indefinitely more ; but so it is, and will be till time shall end. If indeed the greatest happiness of the greatest number were, as Bentham perhaps thought, the moral end of Creation, instead of a good working principle for ordinary legislation, then, indeed, the good bricklayer might be right in laying only an average number of bricks. Even then he would be sacrificing in his limited sphere the true interest of all future bricklayers to the comfort of those now existing, but the truth is, happiness is not the end, in this life at all events. If it were, the scheme of Providence would have to be pronounced a very con- spicuous failure, but it is not. We do not desire to discuss what that end is,—though individually we believe it to be so much per- fection in all things in the sight of the Almighty as is possible to finite beings,—but we do say, and so does everybody else whose in- tellect is not clouded by an overwhelming pity, that the means is that incessant striving towards an ever receding ideal of per- fection in all things, bricklaying included, which is kept up, spurred, and stimulated by the example of individual superiorities. The self-denial which is only self-mutilation is constantly held up nowadays as the specially Christian form of action, but Christ explicitly and almost incessantly condemned it. How does Mr. Morley read the Parable of the Talents? Surely the whole teaching of that wonderful bit of moral wisdom is that the bricklayer who has capacity to lay 200 bricks ought to lay them, and pay no more heed to consequences than he does to the operation on his behalf of any other law of nature. He may be right in be- stowing the result of his labour on weaker brethren, but he can no more be right in refusing to do his best, than in cutting off one of his hands because one can earn as much as his neigh- bour's two. That is not Christianity, but a new creed, in which duty to one's neighbour is raised above both our duty to God and our duty to mankind at large, the lower principle above the higher, the part above the whole. Its direct tendency is to set up the weakest in the community as the standard, instead of the strongest. If it is wrong for Smith to lay 200 bricks, because he thereby strains all the Browns who can only lay 100, why is it right for the Browns to crush Jones, who can only lay fifty? Because they are many, and be one? Stuff I Association in iniquity does not make iniquity any better, or more defensible. only lays 100, is morally a higher person than the bricklayer who does his best, and takes the most he honestly can. That is a very plausible half-truth, and will commend itself to the minds of all those good men who hold that self-denial is not only a virtue, but the sum and substance of virtues, a very numer- ous class, but is it strictly true ? The man who resigns an advantage to benefit other men is, no doubt, noble, and many of our best workmen are entitled to all the credit of that high motive, but there is something else to be considered. Has not man a duty to his Maker as well as to his brother, and is not the use and improvement of all faculties with which he may be endowed the first item in that duty? Everybody admits this at once about mental faculties. Suppose, for example, a journalist could, by stating his thoughts in a manner below his capacity, keep up the wages of inferior men, would that be performing a high moral duty ? Or suppose a preacher by talking platitudes could make the lives of the majority of preachers more comfort- able, would that self-denial be morally right? Clearly not, and yet the bodily faculties are " talents " in the sense of the parable just as much as the mental capacities. The true duty of every man who has the power is, by his example, to raise the standard of human effort, to tempt ordinary men to advance their aims, and thus from generation to generation to raise the average of human capacity little by little, till the weak of one generation do what the strong of the previous one could hardly accomplish. We all reoognize this truth in morals, in science, in literature, and why not in that application of thought to work which we call skilled labour? This incessant elevation of the fitting limit of effort is, of course, very hard upon the weak, that is, upon the majority, but then it is no harder than other processes appointed by Providence for the development of animated creation. Natural selection is very bard upon the weak, but natural selection goes on under Almighty sanction. It is very hard that if a strong race dwells side by side with a weak one, the diseases of the strong race, such as smallpox, should affect the weak one, not only as much as they affect the strong, but indefinitely more ; but so it is, and will be till time shall end. If indeed the greatest happiness of the greatest number were, as Bentham perhaps thought, the moral end of Creation, instead of a good working principle for ordinary legislation, then, indeed, the good bricklayer might be right in laying only an average number of bricks. Even then he would be sacrificing in his limited sphere the true interest of all future bricklayers to the comfort of those now existing, but the truth is, happiness is not the end, in this life at all events. If it were, the scheme of Providence would have to be pronounced a very con- spicuous failure, but it is not. We do not desire to discuss what that end is,—though individually we believe it to be so much per- fection in all things in the sight of the Almighty as is possible to finite beings,—but we do say, and so does everybody else whose in- tellect is not clouded by an overwhelming pity, that the means is that incessant striving towards an ever receding ideal of per- fection in all things, bricklaying included, which is kept up, spurred, and stimulated by the example of individual superiorities. The self-denial which is only self-mutilation is constantly held up nowadays as the specially Christian form of action, but Christ explicitly and almost incessantly condemned it. How does Mr. Morley read the Parable of the Talents? Surely the whole teaching of that wonderful bit of moral wisdom is that the bricklayer who has capacity to lay 200 bricks ought to lay them, and pay no more heed to consequences than he does to the operation on his behalf of any other law of nature. He may be right in be- stowing the result of his labour on weaker brethren, but he can no more be right in refusing to do his best, than in cutting off one of his hands because one can earn as much as his neigh- bour's two. That is not Christianity, but a new creed, in which duty to one's neighbour is raised above both our duty to God and our duty to mankind at large, the lower principle above the higher, the part above the whole. Its direct tendency is to set up the weakest in the community as the standard, instead of the strongest. If it is wrong for Smith to lay 200 bricks, because he thereby strains all the Browns who can only lay 100, why is it right for the Browns to crush Jones, who can only lay fifty? Because they are many, and be one? Stuff I Association in iniquity does not make iniquity any better, or more defensible.
But, says Mr. Morley, this strain of life is very grievous to the weak, a heavy burden upon the great majority of mankind. No doubt of it, and so is the necessity of getting a certain quantity to eat ; but comfort, leisure, peace, absence of strain, and all the other good things are not the only or, perhaps, the best means of disciplining man to his highest work,—the elevation of himself nearer to the Almighty. Discomfort helps very often, and strain, and trouble, and hardship. We do not train wrestlers by giving them arm-chairs; and life is a wrestle,—a truth which we, in our hunger for the comfortable and the pleasant, seem in danger of forgetting. Life could, we dare say, be protected until it was infinitely pleasanter, but the protection would act on it just as an unvarying temperature acts on the human frame ; it unfits it for the storm, for the cold which would brace it, and the sunshine which would ripen it, would relax every fibre till life itself became a feebler and more useless thing. The greatest comfort man could get would be a permanent release from the possibility of hunger and thirst, but if that were granted how much would mankind do? That is the point, not how would they feel, or how much would they sleep ? The proposition for man is not, given physical comfort, to see how near he will get to perfec- tion, but given perfection as an ideal, to see how much physical comfort is consistent with striving after it. Mr. Morley praises self-denial, and very properly, but the effect of his teaching is that the few have to deny themselves and the many have not, which, on his own theory, mush be very bad for them. His heroic engine-driver only makes heroism in a thousand engine-drivers impossible. Why should not they be heroic and take what they deserve, that is, less than their superior ? A minimum rate of wage is a very good thing, and is at this moment established by statute in Great Britain, the Poor Law being strictly a rough law of minimum, but the absence of high standards towards which the average masa can strain is a very bad one.
There is no danger, we fancy, of the world at large getting too soft and kindly and mother-like, but the recoil from our ancient hardness of thought is producing some very odd effects. Mr. Ruskin, for example, who hates political economy as a cruel science,—which it is just as much and as little as meteorology is cruel,—has published this week in the Manchester Examiner his ideal of a State law of marriage. It is simply that the rich are to keep the poor for the first seven years of their matrimonial lives, while the poor are to keep the rich from squandering their money :- "Briefly, then, and in main points, subject in minor ones to such modification in detail as local circumstances- and characters would render
expedient, there follow on the laws which a prudent nation would insti- tute respecting its marriages. Permission to marry should be the reward held in sight of its youth during the entire latter part of the coarse of their education; and it should be granted as the national attestation that the first portion of their lives had been rightly fulfilled.
It should not be attainable without earnest and consistent effort, though
put within the reach of all who were willing to make such effort ; and the granting of it should be a public testimony to the fact that the youth or maid to whom it was given had lived within their proper
sphere a modest and virtuous life, and had attained each skill in their proper handicraft and in arts of household economy as might give well founded expectations of their being able honourably to maintain and teach their children. No girl should receive permission to marry before her 17th birthday, nor any youth before his 21st ; and it should be a point of somewhat distinguished honour with both sexes to gain their permission of marriage in the 18th and 22nd year ; and a recog- nized disgrace not to have gained it at least before the close of their 21st and 24th. In every year there should be two festivals, one on the first of May and one at the feast of harvest home in each district, at which festivals their permissions to marry should be given publicly to the maidens and youths who had won them in that half-year ; and they should be crowned, the maids by the old French title of Rositres, and the youths perhaps by some name rightly derived from one sup- posed signification of the word bachelor," laurel fruit,' and so led in joyful procession, with music and singing, through the city street or village lane, and the day ended with feasting of the poor, but not with theirs, except quietly at their homes. And every bachelor and rositre should be entitled to claim, if they needed it, according to their position in life, a fixed income from the State for seven years from the day of their marriage for the setting up of their homes ; and, however rich they might be by inheritance, their income should not be permitted to exceed a given sum, proportioned to their rank, for the seven years
following that in which they had obtained their permission to marry, but should accumulate in the trust of the State until that seventh year, in which they should be put (on certain conditions) finally in possession of their property, and the men thus necessarily not before their twenty- eighth, nor usually later than their thirty-first, year, become eligible to offices of State. So that the rich and poor should not be sharply separated in the beginning of the war of life ; but the one supported against the first stress of it long enough to enable them by proper forethought and economy to secure their footing ; and the other trained somewhat in the use of moderate means before they were permitted to have the command of abundant ones."
Both rich and poor are to be protected in their several leap, shielded from temptation and suffering and trial, are to grow up,
in fact, like trees under glass. Is that the course, supposing such a dream possible, likely to produce trim manliness? And is not manliness,—the nerve which can benefit by fighting poverty, and resisting the temptation to squander, which can grow the stronger in running because of the rockiness of the road, at least as noble an end as comfort?
Previous page
