ANOTHER SOCIALIST DREAM.
OF all the schemes for producing the sense of equality among men—we do not mean the fact of equality, which of course cannot exist, but the sense of it—the scheme of a common education for all men is perhaps the most attractive. It seems in theory so perfect. All men, it is argued, if deprived of accidental advantages, are alike, and if they are all educated together under the same circumstances as to food, lodging, and clothes, by the same masters, and in the same branches of study, they cannot develop that most artificial and injurious of all feelings, the sense of social inequality. There is nothing to provoke it among lads so trained, and as the boy is the father of the man, they must, when they grow up, be free alike of servility and of the spirit of patronage. John Smith and Albert de Vere, being bred alike as boys, and taught alike, and sup- plied with like recreations, must, when they grow up, regard each other, simply as human beings, differing, it may be, in ability or in virtue, but socially indistinguishable. They cannot, at all events, envy one another, except for qualities that are inherent, like courage, strength, activity, or ability to learn, and the envy of inherent qualities is seldom a base envy, because, in the first place, their possessor cannot be deprived of them ; and because, in the second place, the envy itself is so nearly indistinguishable from admiration. The timid man may wish he was as brave as the courageous one, but in the hour of danger he assents to his braver com- rade's leadership with more feeling of safety than of grudge. It is an admirable theory, which once took a strong hold on English thinkers as well as Continental, and even the experienced are a little surprised to find it so little justified by the facts. Men trained in the same school or college feel the sense of social inequality with their com- rades just as much as men differently trained, and, as a rule, betray it, according to their temperaments, either by defer- ence, or by uneasiness, or by jealousy, or by what has been described as "snobbism reversed "—defiance—called forth by the sense of inequality in social grade. There used to be a belief that the parish-school system of Scotland, in the time when the laird's son and the carpenter's sat on the same bench, promoted social equality ; but the idea was, we fancy, entirely confined to Englishmen. The Scotch knew well that their system, though it promoted friendliness between the classes, did not promote the sense of equality, but rather, if anything, increased the regard felt for hereditary or other social superiority. There was in the generation in which the common school was a reality, no country in which class and its distinctions were more sharply marked than in Scotland. Universal education in Germany has in no degree effaced social distinctions ; rather it has deepened the painful sense of them till there is no country where the assumption of the well-placed is more intolerable, or the protest of the ill- placed against society and its grades more violent. Socialism has been born in Germany, or at least has become audible, since universal education began. Here in England we should say the Board-school had made no difference except in making boys more civil and girls more civilised ; but people who know the schools better than we can pretend to do, tell us there is a little difference, and it goes the other way. The families which send their children to Board-schools have become more conscious than they used to be of social differ- ences, and take quite new precautions to guard in their children the exclusiveness which all social grades regard as their armour of protection; the dislike, too, of the rich, though it is not very deep, increases, and is sometimes expressed in very brutal forms. It is, however, in France that education in common seems to have had least effect in developing the sense of equality. Not only do the boys from the com- munal schools betray a perfectly new hatred of the well- to-do, but the boys from tile lycees also. These latter are trained together, and bred up together with a dis- tinct intention of establishing a certain "identity," and within the schools it is in a measure established, but at the cost of deepening the social cleavage when the school-gates are once passed. We can quote an unexcep- tionable witness to this fact. M. Paul Bourget, the novelist, and one of the keenest observers of this generation, is studying New York and embodying his reflections in a series of letters which will, we think, when published, form the best picture of life in Amerioa, or rather pert of America, ever yet offered to Europeans. We read translations in the New York Herald of them with a sense of being nourished by new knowledge. M. Paul Bourget was surprised to find that at Harvard there was no attempt to promote identity of condition, that every student lived as his means allowed, the inequalities in the rents paid for lodgings being especially enormous. He found on inquiriy, however, that this fact did not prevent a certain kind of equality, and makes on the difference between the systems of America and France the following most suggestive remark :— "On reflection we recognise that the Americans are right. Our system, which makes the children of the rich and those of the poor in the schools live in the same material condition, tends, as a most certain result, to develop the worst madness of envy when that identity of existence ceases all at once, at the time of entry into the world. The fateful pressure has less chance of being born when that identity has never existed." He would rather, that is, have the system of Harvard, which corresponds to realities, than the system of the lycee, which seems so much more hopeful, but does not correspond to them.
M. Bourget's decision is a wise one, but it will be a source of sore discouragement to a great many excellent people. They will say that even if social inequalities are advisable, or tolerable, or unavoidable the sense of those inequalities as usually manifested, must always increase the unhappiness of mankind. It weighs upon their energies, and produces either enervation, or envy, or the grave evil which in England we stigmatise, without curing, as "snobbishness," and which leads of necessity to a culture of low ideals. No one, not the most ironclad of Tories, doubts that this sense is more or less a debasing consciousness ; yet if education, and especially equal education, will not cure it, what will ? We are not quite sure, we may remark en passant, that the sense is so debasing as it is popularly represented. Mr. Walter Bagehot, who was one of the wisest of observers, used to say that among Englishmen it was "a sort of motor forcing them always to strive towards the light ; " and we certainly do not observe that communities without it monasteries, for example, or Malsommedan communities or Chinese villages —are exceptionally happy; but we will admit that on the whole its total effect is bad, and still protest that the remedy, if it is over found at all, will not be found in education as usually understood. That must always increase consciousness, and it is in overmuch consciousness that the origin of the evil is to be sought. An old labourer who cannot read is not often troubled by the superiority of his superiors. He is aware of it in a way, but the sense of it, against which moralists and M. Paul Bourget protest, is not really in him. We shall hardly educate many children up to the intellectual level of MBEs& Reclus ; and M. Reclus is so full of the sense of social inequalities, so dominated by it, that he proclaims himself an Anarchist, hoping that, if in no other way, then by blood and fire the evil of which he is so sensible may be swept away. There is, in fact, no radical cure to be hoped for except in a change of opinion, which we suppose training would help a little — but only a little—to develop. We suppose the fierce training which modern Europe has directed against that particular vice or weakness has done something to diminish cowardice, and if over-consciousness of social, inequalities were regarded like cowardice as something shameful, it would be diminished too. It is so regarded by a few, but opinion in general rather quizzes than condemns ; and is certainly not strong enough to prevent the weakness from increasing, if it does increase, the burdens on mankind. There is, we believe, no other cure; certainly not one in the common and equal education of which many thoughtful Socialists dream as the peaceful remedy for all, except perhaps the economic, social evils. As M. Paul Bourget says, equality in childhood does but intensify the fact of inequality in matures years ; none perhaps feeling the latter more acutely than the closest relatives. If the dream were true, they should never suffer from this sense; yet, as a rule, only the mother is wholly rejoiced at the son's or daughter's elevation.
Previous page
