LOOKING FORWARD.

Under this title Professor Tucker, Melbourne University, not long ago delivered lecture on the aspect of the times, some portions of which may now be appropriately re-published in our columns:—

The ancients had a tradition of a gradual decadence of the world. Their poets speak of " these degenerate days." This may have been only a fashion. We are not in a position to determine how far they believed what they said. It is likely that they did partly believe it, inasmuch as their mythology peopled the early world with demigods, heroes, and a just and righteous humanity. Similarly, at this day Mr. Ruskin and his school declare that we are, like the Gadarean swine, running violently down a steep place into the sea. And there is the other class. I do not speak of the Master Panglosses, who find this the best of all possible worlds. I mean those who maintain that man is ever mounting towards a state of perfection, that as civilised man has evolved himself from the savage, so a vastly superior man will be evolved from us. Let us listen for a few minutes to the view of the future which each of these men will be likely to form from some of the indications of social movement around him. And let us try to see if either is at all justified in his view. The pessimist will seize upon the worst indications, and will construe some of the better to the worse meaning. The optimist will most naturally look for the favourable signs, and will be hopeful for those which are less so. We will take the gloomy view first. Assuming our pessimist to be a person of culture and sensibility, he will probably argue thus:—

" You ask me," he says, "what the world is coming to ? Well, look at the tendency of all recent political movements, and at their effect. Democracy is triumphing all along the line. And what is, democracy ? The rule of the people, you say. Yes, but for people substitute rabble, proletariat. The whole effect of recent legislation everywhere is to place power more and more in the hands of the lowest classes, the most ignorant and unreasonable classes. Manhood suffrage may seem a most equitable thing in theory, but in practice it means that the least cultured are deciding how the more cultured shall live and be governed. What are our Parliaments like? Do they consist of the ablest intellects and the noblest spirits? In former times, when the classes and not the masses were the electors, there was some guarantee that the representative would be a man of at least some education and some manners. There is none now. Moreover, the representatives are mere tools —they have no independence. If they manage to learn something about the prudent hesitations of politics and economics, they are not allowed to use their superior knowledge nor to act otherwise than as the passions of their constituencies direct. And this state of things is likely to become worse and not better. The masses are learning to organise themselves, and wield their numerical superiority, so as to control all legislation. What will be the consequence ? Nothing less than a perpetual sacrifice of all other interests to those of the proletariat. We shall soon get downright spoliation. The workman has legislated himself eight hours' work a day. He is agitating for less. Is this kind of thing likely to stop, when he feels himself master of the situation, and able to do as he pleases ? There can be no end but social chaos. Admit that the old feudal tyranny was cruel ; yet what we are coming to now is a proletariat tyranny, not only cruel but vulgar. Who will care to live under a system in which organised mutual jealousy will make life one dead colourless level of monotonous betise and vulgarity? Modern legislation spells Socialism. Socialism gains every day in Germany, in Russia, in America—everywhere. You may say that there are cultured Socialists who see in their system a higher and nobler life for all humanity. Mere Utopian dreams ! Men are not intellectually, socially, morally, or physically equal, and yet the cry for equality is the clearest utterance of the age. Your perfected social state is an idle vision of the land of Cocaigne. What it really means is that all individual merit and aspiration and effort will be cramped on the procrustean bed of the average member of the mob. And one shudders to forsee how the social revolution will effect itself. Your Knights of Labour, your Nihilists, and other Irreconcilables threaten to precipitate a deluge of blood worse than that of the French Revolution. I say life in such a society will be unlivable by any man of the higher type. It will be harsh, egoistic, insupportable, devoid of taste, reverence, religion, or pity of the emotions. Observe the social effects of democratic advance so far. There is no reverence, no respect for social rank, intellectual merit, or even age. The rising generation has taken nil admirari in its worst sense for a motto. Every man deems himself as good as every other man, probably better. He is therefore self-assertive, rude, undisciplined. Delicacy of manners is gone past redemption. Where do we find the old deference of gentleman to gentleman, of man to Woman, of boy to man, of servant to employer? This regardlessness of others' feelings will be progressive. Not being compelled to outward observance of reverence, men will lose the inward capacity for it, and thereby one of the best lubricators of human intercourse will wholly disappear."

Let us have patience with our pessimist a little longer, for he is in earnest, and represents no small class.

" Religion," he will continue, " is vanishing along with all the other softening elements of life. Soon there will be no such thing. Your ordinary Socialist is anti-Christian, in fact, anti-religious. Democracy, while pretending to favour no one religion at the expense of the rest, in reality destroys all alike by making them matters of indifference. Look at the hideous materialism and boundless immoralities of imperial Rome. They were due to the absence of religion and to the chaos of principle. Moral philosophers there were then, as there are now. But moral philosophers have no influence on the mass of men ; only religion can touch them. We have our 'Intuitive' and 'Utilitarian' schools ; they had their Stoics and Epicureans. But what does all the argumentation of this class do towards keeping alive the conscience and the moral tenderness of the populace? In fact it does harm, for it leads men to believe that there is no real basis to morality at all. Consequently, they are the more likely to choose the broad path of sensuality and dishonesty rather than the narrow and difficult way of what we have been taught to consider virtue. Of what vitality is a poor 'provisional adherence' to the Ten Commandments ? Abolish religion, as you are doing, and you will remove the restraining banks from a frightful moral cataclysm without a parallel."
Foreseeing here a likely answer, he will add, " You may say that the saving grace for society lies in universal education and enlightenment. I do not deny that full and genuine education is the nearest approach to a social panacea. But we actually have an almost universal education, and with what result ? Is it in any way counteracting our irreverent materialism? Is it not rather intensifying it? Our working men have learned enough to read the newspaper, or, maybe, Henry George, or perhaps even Colonel Ingersoll. They have learnt enough to misquote, and to be arrogant, impatient, and dangerous. Our middle class go a little further. They learn something to help them on to what they call a position. Under the domination of the modern vaunted 'scientific' spirit, they are turning out shallow egotists to a man. We boast of the height and depth of our modern education. But do we get from it anything equal to a Bacon or Shakespeare ? Do we get better philosophers, or poets, or politicians, or generals? Granted that the ordinary man nowadays comprehends the elementary facts of nature, and does not think the moon a green cheese. Is he a finer spirit, a more interesting man to live with, to deal with? The fact is that education is losing its way. It is setting before itself entirely wrong aims. It turns out men us machines and not as men ; as economic instruments and not as social elements.

People will soon be led to believe that they are not expected to have any emotions. We take them when they are of tender years, and tell them that they are to know this, and to do that. But we give them no notion that they are to be anything in particular. We stuff our youths with facts, and leave their finer sensibilities to perish of atrophy. Science ! science ! science ! we keep crying, and the consequence is, as Miss Cobbe puts it, 'that of the two sides of human life a man's scientific training will compel him to think always in the first place of the lower. The material (or, as our fathers would have called it, the carnal) fact will lie uppermost in his mind, and the spiritual meaning thereof out of sight. He will view his mother's tears, not as the expression of her sorrow, but as solutions of muriates and carbonates of soda and of phosphates of lime, and he will reflect that they were caused, not by his heartlessness, but by cerebral pressure on the lachrymal glands.' This may be putting the case over strongly, nevertheless it contains only too much truth. At present, maybe, our emotions do get some play out of school. But generation after generation trained in this ungenerous way will grow less and less susceptible, till the finer emotions are 'evolved' out of existence.

"Through the activity of scientific effort we are mastering the powers of nature; but we do not advance the general happiness on that account. The increase of this knowledge, as Solomon says, 'only increaseth sorrow.' We learn to look upon nature as a great machine. What grace or charm does that add to life ? We learn to enslave her to material production, and our lands are becoming filled with the blackness and the darkness of the abomination of desolation. Soon there will be no corner of the earth left to which we can retire to commune with unvitiated nature. What has steam or electricity or nitro-glycerine or the torpedo done to make you or me lead more happy and effective and beautiful lives? Are not men rather becoming more passive to a mere existence of work and worry ; more tasteless and unfeeling and blind to beauty; more reckless and devilish with their schemes of destruction? And the momentum of this degradation continually increases. The philosophic idiots of Laputa were bad enough. But even these would be preferable to the machine-made man of the scientific, socialistic, atheistic future. The ideals, I say, will be hard and mean, of the earth earthy. Literature and art will cease to be beautiful, being regulated by a sort of scientific analysis. Why, the signs of this state of things are manifest already. The growing tendency is towards sheer ugly anatomical realism. M. Zola is a typical child of the time-spirit. Nowhere is the coming moral chaos more apparent than in the modern novel. Really, to read modern fiction one would wonder whether there were such things left as right and wrong. Contrast, too, a Shakespeare with an Ibsen. Not that I imply any possible comparison of dramatic genius ; but contrast the simple, direct, ethical conviction of Shakespeare's plays with the bewildered gropings of the Scandinavian. Moreover, the weakening of the domestic and social ties which Ibsen betrays is coming out of literature into practice. The male and the female, who were created to be one, are being legislated into a most distinct two by indulgent divorce bills and similar devices. The family affections are going the way of all the rest. Charity and loving-kindness are delegated to public institutions and are ceasing to be private virtues. The hospitals, excellent institutions as they are for the helpless, are becoming receptacles for those invalids of whom their cold-blooded relatives long to be rid. The society of the future will be not only a monotonous level, but a heartless level also."

And now, ladies and gentlemen, not to weary you, and in order to allow time for my discussion to complete itself, we will leave our pessimistic friend and hear what the other side may have to say. He, too, is very much in earnest, and is the representative of a class perhaps still larger than the other. As in the former case, so in this, we shall hear some exaggerations, and I would ask you not to fancy in either instance that I am setting forth what are necessarily my own views.

"The whole bearing of modern effort," he will say, "is in the direction of sweetness and light. Human civilisation, like every organism, has its evolution, an evolution towards social perfection. History is a record of steady advance. The future will be as much better than the present as the present is better than the past. And in order to see what that means, observe how society has improved in humanity and justice, knowledge and reason, as well as in material comforts and resources. Take the last half century of legislation, for instance. It has everywhere set towards liberty and equality, that is to say, towards justice and common sense. It gives our people education, protects them from abuse in factories and mines, secures them a voice in determining their own lot. To every man freedom, and knowledge to help him in using his freedom aright—these are the watchwords of the democratic movement. All the legislation concerning labour and taxation ; all the public organisation of charity and the like ; all the dreaded Radical programme, which soon becomes the Liberal programme, and then the Conservative programme, while Radicals, and after them the Liberals, advance to something still more trenchant—all this programme, which we adopt willy-nilly, is in the direction of liberty, equality, fraternity. You may call it socialistic. What matters the name ? Socialism, if this be Socialism, is really the most amiable and noble of conceptions. The prevailing tendency towards Socialism represents the aspirations of the lower classes after a higher and more complete life. Socialism is not the horrible bugbear it is imagined to be. It does not mean a regime under which there shall be no private life, no individual excellence, no art, and no beauty. On the contrary, it means a state of society in which all men and all women shall develop their best selves, be encouraged to do the thing which best suits their capacity ; a state in which no person shalt have cause to complain that he is oppressed or unfairly recompensed or deprived of opportunity ; a state, moreover, in which each worker will have ample leisure to cultivate and nourish his higher faculties, and to enjoy the things of the mind, and shall have abundant education to enable him to use these facilities to the best effect. There will be no tyranny of a vicious and unenlightened proletariat.
There will no longer be such a thing as that proletariat. At present our dullards, our drunkards, our criminals are generally such because of the conditions under which they or their fathers have laboured. In the new state of society, when all men work at something, but work shorter hours at that something, there will be no brutalising of either mind or body. And the growing enlightenment will prevent any bloody or violent revolution. The changes will develop themselves by steps as quiet and natural as our present progressive legislation. Why should such a life be unlovely ? There are in every soul germs of æsthetic longing, instincts for beautiful and noble things to contemplate. Those who are now tasteless vulgarians will then have these germs and instincts developed into full activity ; and there will he such a demand for art and beauty in surroundings and for elegance in life as no generation has yet conceived."

"This is no dream," he will continue, "but a coming reality. What cannot education do? It was education which brought about the Renaissance ; the Renaissance brought about the Reformation, an era of discovery, a new birth of art, and much else. Education brought religious tolerance ; it brought scientific knowledge, control of the powers of nature, and an immense advance in all things material. By subjecting nature to man's use, it has rid him of his cruellest and most debasing work. It makes production so easy that men will be able to provide abundance of all desirable things, and yet enjoy all the ample leisure, to which the new movement aspires. Universal education is an institution of one generation. Its effect has already been the self-discipline of the masses. It is emancipating men from their passions or their agitators, and enabling them lo consider social problems intelligently for themselves, to discuss them reasonably with one another instead of running after their leader like a pack of sheep, or rather wolves. We may expect this effect of education to be cumulative. At present we do not realise it.
It is only a generation old, and the effect of heredity has yet to be seen. Depend upon it, the average man of the future will possess an enlightenment, an intellectual quickness and receptivity, at least equal to that of the cultured man of to-day. Such a man will be no unpleasant person to live with. He will substitute intellectual pleasures for his present sensual gratifications. He will insist on beautiful surroundings, on cleanliness, and order. Art will be a necessity, and not merely a luxury to him. He will refuse to work in ugly and filthy factories. The smoke, the bare and grimy walls, the foul smells, will be things of the past. We know these are not unavoidable even now. It is common to make out that they are so. An application of the general intelligence, backed by the power to enforce its will, might remove all these blemishes in less than a dozen years. Be assured that those who weep at the aridness and unloveliness of the coming regime may spare their tears."

"And morals, too, will be less and not more artificial. In the coming equality of opportunity and rank there will be no temptation to half the present crimes. The domestic ties will be more holy, since women will no longer be tempted to choose unloved husbands for their wealth, or their position, nor men unloved wives for the same reason. So with manners. At present society is in a state of mutual hostility. The lower classes, though still brutalised, are intelligent enough to feel the reality of their power. The consequence is an ostentatious self-assertion. But let society be harmonised into equality, let the masses enjoy their due share of healthful and pleasurable intercourse ; then there will result the truest of all courtesy, the courtesy of free men and equals. Toadyism will be impossible ; resentful independence will never be provoked."

In this way our optimist might proceed, and, I believe, with no small portion of truth in his gratifying picture. His text might be expressed in the language of Shakespeare's Miranda—

"Oh, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here !
How beauteous mankind is ! Oh, brave new world
That hath such people in't !"

And his sermon might be summarised in Browning's words—

" Progress is
The law of life. Man is not man as yet :
Nor shall I deem his general object served.
While only here and there a towering mind
O'erlooks his prostrate fellows. When the host
Is out at once to the despair of night ;
When all mankind alike is perfected,
Equal in full-grown powers, then, not till then,
I say, begins man's general infancy."

There is still the great social question to be considered, and on this point I feel more certainty than on any other. The democratic movement has for some time been setting in strongly over all civilised countries. Democracy is the form of rule which best fits with a natural sense of justice. History, as I have elsewhere contended, does not indeed teach that democracy has necessarily been stable when established. But, on the other hand, it does not teach anything against the possibility of democracy being established once for all. Now the advance of democracy is in what the mathematicians call geometrical procession ; and anyone who takes a comprehensive survey of the democratic movement on both sides of the Atlantic will see that it is distinctly tending more and more towards the verge of Socialism, and the most striking indication about the whole matter is that many of those who shudder most at the name of this unknown "ism" are in reality most deeply imbued with the better elements of its spirit. Understand, if you please, that I am only dealing with facts. I am not a Socialist ; and, if I were, my own political sentiments are more or less padlocked or allowed out only on parole. From Plato's Republic to Fourier's Phalanstere Socialism was a mere dream, but in 1885 Socialists in Germany polled votes to the number of more than three-quarters of a million, or about 11 per cent of the whole constituency of the country. Such a fact is of immense significance. Anyone who studies Socialism knows, of course, that its main principle is purely economic, and that there is nothing more anti-religious or leading to dynamite in Socialism than in any other social doctrine. There is, it is true, an ignorant, blatant, riff-raff joining in yells quite foreign to the main principle; but this Jacquerie is not so numerous as it is loud. This, at least, must be said in justice to the movement, however much we may dissent from any existing school who call themselves by the name of Collectivisits, or Anarchists, or any other. Personally, I think what is the matter with the extreme but honest Socialist is that he is "too good to live." Socialism, among its temperate adherents, aims at equality of work and culture and opportunity, not at equality of men. Its ways and means may be, and probably are, faulty; its agitators may often be worthless; but, after all, the essence of the movement is only the outcome of the struggles of the masses for a more worthy human life. History shows us the slave giving place to the serf, and the serf to the free labourer. Socialists hold that their movement is all inevitable continuation of this historic process. And we cannot shut our eyes to the present necessity of meeting this movement in its subtler tentative forms. Look at the whole direction of recent state action and legislation. Universal suffrage and universal education are rapidly precipitating a question which formerly hung in the clouds of speculation. John Stuart Mill saw it years ago. Mr. Sydney Webb sums up the leading socialistic symptoms, in the constantly increasing restriction upon the private ownership of land and capital, by factory Acts and the like ; in the gradual supersession of private industrial ventures by public administration, such as national railways and telegraphs, municipal tramways, state schools ; in progressive absorption by taxation of unearned increment ; in the supplementing of private charity by public organisation, which aims at raising the condition of the residuum by public education, improved dwellings, and similar measures. In England county Councils have been established. Among ourselves we have begun to fix hours for the closing of shops. It is not, indeed, at all likely that any system which can ultimately establish itself will closely resemble any of those theoretically suggested. It must be some system which evolves itself in a manner more suited to the possibilities of economics and of human nature. For those who fear a tyranny of ignorance and dreariness it may be noted that one of the most emphasised demands of the movement is for better opportunities of self-culture.

On one other matter I feel it necessary to make a brief comment. It is the growing power of women. Women are now on the way to that complete emancipation which they ought to have enjoyed long ago. They are receiving an education corresponding to that of men. I am not indeed one of those who hold that the sexes are mentally constituted alike. They may be so; but my experience as a teacher of both sexes does not lead me to think it. It has taught me, nevertheless, to respect highly the capacity of the female intellect. In all our looking forward we must not overlook this great new force. Women are socially the superiors of men. Well equipped by education, free and capable in the expression of their sentiments, they will make their social influence still further preponderate. We may expect throughout society a more prevailing reasonableness ; and, if I may descend from the general to the particular, one thing we may certainly expect will be reformation of our customary social intercourse. As I said the other day, we have no ideal, and the social gatherings which might be banquets of delight are reduced to dull monotonies, where indifference or weariness masquerades as enjoyment. The cure for this state of things lies with women ; and it is from complete education and complete emancipation that women will learn the cure.

 Morning Bulletin 13 March 1891,