Chapter XXXIV:
Meliorism.
From mere impulse to true sentiment, and from sentiment to reason, are the psychic steps corresponding to the series of benevolent acts which lead from promiscuous aims-giving, through the expanding systems of charity, to the broadest forms of philanthropy and deep-laid schemes of humanitarianism. But from humanitarianism it is but one more step in the same direction to meliorism, which may be defined as humanitarianism minus all sentiment. Now, meliorism, instead of an ethical, is a dynamic principle. It implies the improvement of the social condition through cold calculation, through the adoption of indirect means. It is not content merely to alleviate present suffering, it aims to create conditions under which no suffering can exist. — Dynamic Sociology, II, 468.
I don't know that I ever heard anybody use the word "meliorist" except myself. But I begin to think that there is no good invention or discovery that has not been made by more than one person.
The only good reason for referring to the "source" would be, that you found it useful for the doctrine of meliorism to cite one unfashionable confessor of it in the face of the fashionable extremes. — George Eliot.
In her general attitude towards life, George Eliot was neither optimist nor pessimist. She held to the middle term, which she invented for herself, of "meliorist." She was cheered by the hope and by the belief in gradual improvement of the mass; for in her view each individual must find the better part of happiness in helping another. — J. W. Cross: George Eliot's Life, III, 377.
Our line of reasoning provides us, then, with a practical conception which lies midway between the extremes of optimism and pessimism, and which, to use a term for which I am indebted to our first living woman-writer and thinker, George Eliot, may be appropriately styled meliorism. By this I would understand the faith which affirms not merely our power of lessening evil — this nobody questions — but also our ability to increase the amount of positive good. It is, indeed, only this latter idea which can really stimulate and sustain human endeavor. — James Sully: Pessimism. A History and a Criticism, London, 1877, p. 399.
Priestley was the first (unless it was Beccaria) who taught my lips to pronounce this sacred truth: That the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.— Jeremy Bentham: Works, Vol. X, p. 142.
In equal degrees of happiness, expected to proceed from the action, the virtue is in proportion to the number of persons to whom the happiness shall extend . . . so that That action is best, which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers.— Francis Hutcheson: An Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil, II, pp. 184, 185.
La massima felicità divisa nel maggior numero.— Cesare Beccaria: Opere, I, p. 10.
The greatest happiness of the greatest number (translation source: An Essay on Crimes and Punishments, p. 2)
He never would believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden.— Macaulay (said of Richard Rumbold when about to be executed): History of England, Works, I, 441.
In Parts I and II, I have attempted to set forth the leading psychic factors of civilization. Although when viewed in detail they may seem to be somewhat numerous, still, a general glance over the field will show that they may all be reduced to two distinct classes, the subjective and the objective factors. It is also possible to reduce the psychic faculties that contribute to human progress to two generalized ones and call them respectively the conative and intuitive faculties. Using the term will in Schopenhauer's sense it may be said that will and intellect constitute the progressive mind-elements of man. The subjective, conative faculty, or will, furnishes the propelling agent, while the objective, intuitive faculty, or intellect, furnishes the directing agent. Will is the force, intellect is the guide, and it is through the cooperation of these prime factors that civilization has advanced.
As compared to mere biologic progress that of man has indeed been rapid and brilliant, and it might be supposed that any one who is competent to make this comparison, and a fortiori one who has been to the pains of working out the steps by which the transition has taken place, would be not only content to contemplate so remarkable a result, but even exultant over it. As a matter of fact this is the attitude of most writers on the general subject. They see that nature has proved capable of doing all this, and they really do not consider it altogether sane to talk about any other way. For them it is simply a step in the great scheme of evolution. It was to be and it is, like the condensation of nebulae into worlds, the development of oaks from sea-tang or of mammals from worms. Although none of them have shown, as has been attempted here, how the intellect of man came into existence under the laws of evolution, it is assumed that it did so, and although no one has pointed out, as has been done in this work, how the human intellect has proceeded to make civilization possible, it is also assumed that it has done this according to the normal laws of evolution. The acts of man and the laws of society are regarded as natural in the same sense that the movements of the solar system and the instincts of animals are natural.
The dissatisfaction that is manifested in certain quarters at the state of things that nature has thus brought about is looked upon as growing chiefly out of ignorance of these wide truths, as the result of narrow views of the world, unscientific habits of thought, and foolish exaggeration of human power to influence such stupendous movements. It is not denied that attempts of this kind are sometimes made, but it is asserted that they have all been failures, usually that they have made matters worse. If any one examines the cases that are adduced in support of this assertion he will find that they are confined to a single class, viz., attempts at governmental reform. It is not perceived that there exists any other class. If a laissez faire philosopher were asked whether government itself, such as it has been and now is, should be considered a failure the reply would probably be in the negative, at least he would not admit that the particular government under which he happens to live was worse than no government at all would be, although it might be regarded as exceedingly bad, and although the governments of other countries of which less was known might perhaps be thought worse than pure anarchy. But, it would probably be said, government is a part of civilization, it has developed like the other institutions, it is a product of mind, and belongs to human progress in general.
At this point a few questions may profitably be asked. Is not our supposed philosopher's own government better than any other? He would probably admit that it was. Is it not better now than it formerly was? On this point there would probably be no hesitation in giving an affirmative answer. Then it is not impossible to reform government. The existing governments of the world are not the very best they can be or can ever be made. Other governments at least stand a chance of being brought up to the standard of our philosopher's present government, and as that is admitted to be very bad, there may, at least if his teachings are heeded, be some hope of improving even that. But how does the improvement of an existing government differ in this respect from the origination of a government where none existed? At what point in the progress of governments did it become preposterous to attempt to reform them? If that point is the one at which our philosopher happened to live and write, how is it that it might not have fallen at some other time? It would probably be urged that all real reform in government has consisted in restricting its action. This carried to its logical results would take us back to anarchy, and this we may assume would not be advised. Then there must be such a thing as governmental reform somewhat short of the complete abolition of government. What such reform would consist in need not now be considered; the fact of its possibility is all that is contended for.
No one will deny that government is a part of evolution, a product of human intelligence operating in a normal manner, but it is only one of the many human institutions that have been developed in the same way. The attempts to reform or in any way change it belong to the same class as the attempts to establish it, and are also normal. Intelligence has operated on government in the same way that it operates on all other things. Why then should government be singled out as the only product of intelligence that furnishes illustrations of the failure of all attempts to counteract the law of evolution? Civilization consists of something else besides government. That institution has indeed played an important role, but this has been thus far chiefly that of enabling the more direct civilizing influences to operate. Its function has been principally that of protection, that of affording security to other normal processes. It has done this with a certain degree of efficiency, a very variable and imperfect degree, it is allowed, but it has done it. Few will probably insist that it has wholly failed, and nearly all believe that without it there could have been very little or no social progress. Let any one reflect how jealously vested rights are guarded by law, how commerce and industry are permitted to go on unmolested, how personal liberty is guaranteed and crimes against person and property are punished, and figure to himself what the state of things would be in the total absence of governmental supervision. The quasi reign of terror so familiar to those who have ever sought to live a little out on the borders of civilization beyond the reach of the law will help to complete this latter picture.1
If the organization and improvement of government and of all other human institutions as well as the operation of the various civilizing agencies of mankind are normal products of evolution, and have taken place under the operation of natural laws, made possible only through the existence of the intellectual faculty of man, as all will probably admit, what is there in the world that can be called artificial? Or if any part of all this is entitled to be so called why is it not all so entitled? We are told to let things alone and allow nature to take its course. But has intelligent man ever done this? Is not civilization itself with all that it has accomplished the result of man's not letting things alone, and of his not letting nature take its course? If not, then, even the foolish attempts of modern social reformers to make impossible changes in the assumed unimprovable condition of existing government and society are the legitimate effect of natural laws, and those who inveigh against them are indulging in bruta fulminia. They, too, are of course products of natural law, but the injunction laissez faire can be as legitimately served on them as on those on whom they would have it served.
The simple truth is that everything that is done at the behest of the intellectual faculty is per se and of necessity purely artificial in the only sense that the word has. The whole difference between civilization and other forms of natural progress is that it is a product of art. As was shown in Chapters XXVII to XXIX, art is the natural product of the inventive faculty which is only a form of intuitive perception or intuitive reason, and belongs to the main trunk of the intellect. It is the prime and initial factor in everything distinctively human, everything truly progressive, the sole cause of all social progress and of civilization itself. The artificial is infinitely superior to the natural, and civilized man is satisfied with nothing that has not been wrought and finished by the skill and handiwork of the artisan or the artist. The constant tendency is to render everything more and more artificial, which means more and more perfect. Human institutions are not exempt from this all-pervading spirit of improvement. They, too, are artificial, conceived in the ingenious brain and wrought with mental skill born of inventive genius. The passion for their improvement is of a piece with the impulse to improve the plow or the steam engine. Government is one of these artificial products of man's devising, and his right to change it is the same as his right to create it. That he has greatly improved it there is no doubt; that he will still further perfect it there is every promise.
The words civilization and social progress are not strictly synonymous. There may be a high state of civilization which produces little or no true progress. So loose a term as progress requires rigid definition. As the only final end of human effort is human happiness, so there can be no true progress except toward that end. Progress is therefore increase of human happiness, or, negatively considered, reduction of human suffering. Civilization does not essentially consist in securing this end. If it does so this is only an incidental effect. That upon the whole it does secure it there can be no doubt, but there may be and doubtless are instances in which this is not the case. Civilization is the product of many men at work with their inventive brains, each seeking to compel the forces of nature to do something for himself. But the number who really contribute to it is exceedingly small compared with the aggregate of population, and although what one man wants is usually also that which many others want, still this individualism necessarily results in a very unequal distribution of the product. There are those who, admitting this inequality, maintain that an equal distribution would be unjust in not rewarding intelligence and industry. This should be readily conceded. But, as was shown in Chap. XXVIII, it rarely happens that the discoverer of a fertile principle secures a just share of its returns. This goes not to genius but to the comparatively low quality of cunning or business shrewdness. Almost any other distribution would be more just than the actual one. Moreover, it would be unjust were the inventor to secure all the returns. He would soon have many thousand times as much as he could make any good use of. And so in whatever way we look at the subject it presents a problem. This problem fully generalized is that of identifying civilization with progress, of making society at large the beneficiary of the products of art, skill, industry, and labor. It is clear that in order to solve this problem, material civilization cannot be wholly left to individual preferences. Aside from the unequal and inequitable distribution of the products of industry and thought there will always be immense waste. The individual will never make social progress an end of his action. He will always pursue a narrow destructive policy, exhausting prematurely the resources of the earth, caring neither for the good of others now living nor for posterity, but sweeping into the vortex of his own avarice all that he can obtain irrespective of his real needs. If this is ever to be prevented it must be by society putting itself in the place of the individual and seeking its interests as the individual seeks his, and caring for the welfare and comfort of all its members as the individual cares for the health and soundness of all the organs of his body.
The chief defects of the social system as it is now, and always has been constituted, are due to social friction as defined in Chap. XVII. The problem is therefore reduced to that of lessening social friction. Social friction is mainly the result of the biologic law of natural selection and the struggle for existence, which in economic parlance is called competition. This is pursued by man under the powerful influence of the intuitive reason taking the various forms described in Chapters XXIII and XXIV. The biological sociologists, seeing the identity of this with what goes on in the animal world, suppose it must be a healthy state of things, and the best state possible. They imagine that it results in real social progress. They of course forget that, as shown in the last chapter, with the advent of the intellectual faculty an entirely new dispensation was inaugurated, that the old and slow biologic method of organic or structural development was superseded by the new and rapid anthropic method of transforming the environment and adapting it to man, so that this holding over of the principle of animal rapacity becomes an anachronism, loses all its former developmental value, and stands as the one great obstacle in the path of human progress. Much has been done even by individual effort to break it down. The social state of mutual dependence and cooperation was a heavy blow against it. The division of labor in art and industry, by which every one is working for every one else, has further hedged it about. The spread of intelligence through the diffusion of education and knowledge has served to hold it up to general reprobation. Commerce, travel, and the intercourse of people with people and race with race have liberalized thought and tended to make it unpopular. The growth of sympathy with the growth of intelligence has proved a powerful antagonist to its advance, and the influence of eleemosynary efforts in softening its worst effects cannot be ignored. But still it lives, and it is probably beyond the power of all these influences wholly to dislodge it. If it is ever completely overthrown it will be by a conscious social effort wisely directed to the removal of all inducements to the indulgence of selfish greed. Schemes with this end in view have been proposed, upon the wisdom or success of which it would be needless to enlarge here. It is only essential to deny the antecedent impossibility of one day freeing society of this the worst enemy of its peace and progress.
It will be said that this presupposes a change in human nature. The answer is that the intuitive reason does not crave the injury of others. If its egoistic ends can be attained without this it will not be resorted to. The only essential difference between it and the inventive intuition is that the latter is directed upon non-sentient things and loses its moral, or rather immoral quality. The principle by which a physical force is directed into a channel of human advantage does not differ in any respect from that by which an animal is decoyed into a snare, or a human victim fleeced by a confidence man. The subject cares only for the end — his personal advantage. He ignores the means and its consequences to others. The inventor is a deceiver as well as the sharper, only what he deceives has no feelings to injure. The application of all this is that if all inducement to satisfy self at the expense of another can be removed, the principle of rapacity will have lost its sting. Its immoral quality will be gone. It may then exert itself as powerfully as ever and be doing no harm, nay, it may be made an agent of good. There is then no antecedent impossibility in the removal of the principal cause of social friction, and it becomes simply a question of its practical possibility. Let the light of intelligence, and especially of inventive genius, fully in upon it as a great and burning question for solution and there can be no predicting what the result may be.
These problems have nothing to do with ethics. They are not moral questions, although upon their solution more than upon anything else depends the moral progress of the world. They are purely social problems and can only be properly considered in the dry light of science. The proper name for this science is meliorism, the science of the improvement or amelioration of the human or social state.
Notes
- ↩ Mr. Herbert Spencer, who certainly will not be suspected of any partiality to government, bears witness to the truth here stated in the following language:—
"Defective as is the administration of law, yet men's properties as well as their lives are far safer than they were in early times; by which there is implied an increase of those feelings which embody themselves in equitable laws. If we again look at the growth of governmental forms, which have gone on from period to period decreasing the unchecked powers of ruling classes, and extending to lower and lower grades shares of political power, we see both that the institutions so established are more altruistic in the sense that they recognize better the claims of all, and in the sense that they are advocated and carried on grounds of equity and by appeal to men's sense of justice — that is, to the most abstract and latest developed of the altruistic sentiments." Principles of Ethics, Vol. I, p. 294.