The Social Drift in Modern Life.

 LECTURE BY REV. CANON PIKE.

By modern life I mean, in these remarks, the life of the European Civilisation from about the middle of the latter half of the 18th century, down to the present ; and by the Social Drift, I mean the general tendency of  social life during that period and at present. I shall venture to circumscribe the subject a little further. In certain European countries the leading tendencies of progress are not being displayed in any degree that is likely to help us. They would enter into a discussion of this sort mainly as illustrations of deficiency, rather than as examples of the principles I hope to set before you; and they belong to an order of things, really outside the range of the progressive forces of modern life. The countries I mean are those debouching on the Mediterranean Sea, countries which, from being the centre and pivot of the world's activities for many centuries have gradually fallen into a subordinate place in men's affairs. It is to the races of north-western Europe and of North America, that the task has devolved of carrying on aggressively the advance work of human society; and in the Anglo-Saxon branch the forces operating have their freest play.

 The beginning of an epoch in the world's life is marked by the liberation into the active affairs of men of certain principles of pure thought. By way of illustrating this fact allow me to refer you to the greatest epoch in the world's history. The Christian era was ushered in by the spread of certain new principles of thought, and corresponding ideals of life. A new standard of conduct, based upon the idea of the infinite value of the human soul, and the proclamation of the brotherhood of man, backed by a sanction of extraordinary strength; these are the starting points of that unprecedented uplifting of mankind, and the secret of those unparalleled advantages enjoyed by the races now associated with the name of the Christian Religion. Similarly, after the great upheaval of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, known as the Reformation, there came to be liberated into the life of the active and energetic people of Northern Europe, philosophic principles, which being ultimately accepted by influential bodies of men exercised a profound determinative effect upon the life of the world. For the sake of convenience, and because their names stand out most prominently as giving identity to two opposite systems of pure thought, Emmanuel Kant and David Hume may be accepted as the directing minds of the new movements and forces. Of course it is impossible to compress the systems of these great thinkers into the space at our disposal just now; but a sufficiently clear idea of them may be gathered from a brief statement to enable us to recognise them as they display their influence in the social life of our time. David Hume, the Scottish philosopher, in his treatise on " Human Nature" conceives the contents of that nature to consist simply and solely of sensations which stand related to nothing but what is comprehended within the range of experiences. In other words, man is what the past of the individual and the race has made him, no more and no less. The impressions made by Nature upon the senses and the recollections of these impressions, these things added up are the full account of human life. His own words are: " We are nothing but the series of our impressions and ideas." We have no direct concern with the philosophical consequences of such a doctrine as this, except that we must try to understand its bearings upon the social movement to which it gave force. You will see, however, that it means that any human being living in the present with all his faculties and instincts, however mean or however magnificent, is what he is simply because his progenitors bequeathed to him the nervous system which he now possesses. The explanation of him is to be found in the past; he is an aggregation of survivals. What we call his morals, his ideas of right and wrong, are the result of calculation as to what is likely to prove useful his own interests, well-understood, and regarded in an enlightened way, are the standard of conduct. Whatever contributes to the advancing of these interests is right; whatever fails to do that, is wrong. Hume's words are: "Whatever produces satisfaction is virtue; everything which gives uneasiness in human actions is called vice." He throws these principles into the social centre by saying that in the case of that "injustice which is so far away from our own interests as to in no way affect us, it still displeases us because we consider it as prejudicial to human society ;" but that still leaves our own sensations, our interests, our pleasures or displeasures, " what we consider," as the final court of appeal in moral questions. It makes Pain and Pleasure the dictators of what we ought or ought not to do ; and it was quite logical for one of Hume's successors to say that " the talisman of arrogancy, indolence, and ignorance," "an authoritative impostor," was the word " ought," as understood to imply the rights of Conscience. Hume had to deal with human nature on its social side, with man as a gregarious animal, living in communities, organised into societies, states, and nations. Here again his theory of human nature applies. The community has no real existence, for it " is simply the sum of the interest of the several members who compose it." The individual members are by nature quite independent of each other, being connected together by a mere accidental juxtaposition; and they are therefore in nature driven to maintain their independence and rights at all costs. The interests of society are no more than the interests of its component members for the time being; and the ruling factor of social life is the rivalry of interests between those members. In other words economics is the essence of all life and progress.

 Emmanuel Kant stands out as the great exponent of a quite opposite theory of life, the influence of which is in many directions neutralising the effect of Hume's doctrines. He, also, began with an analysis of Human Nature. He distinguished in it a quality or conviction which belongs to an order of things far beyond the range of things seen or experienced, and therefore outside the limits of man's understanding. This quality or conviction is to be regarded as having truth for its basis, and also as being a vital factor in the determination of our conduct as regards the interests with which we are surrounded. This is the uplifting factor of human life. Man is constituted by something altogether outside mere experiences past or present, and is related to ends quite beyond his own interests. What Hume calls our impressions and the recollections of these impressions and which we know by the common name of experiences, are not Kant tells us, received upon the mind like writing on a blank tablet. The mind itself contributes to every impression it receives. There is something in the mind which meets this something falling into it. Our experiences are not merely the result of an inherited nervous system. They are created by the co-operation of the native contents of the mind, and the impressions which come to us. In the moral realm he finds that the mind contains a "categorical imperative," an absolute authority which bids us do or forbear. An unrestrained "Thou shalt," or "Thou shalt not," which knows no "if" or " but," speaks the thing that man is bound to do ; and every individual act is the expression of this universal principle of duty. So far does he carry this principle of the moral " must," that he says the mind informs us that it ought to be absolutely triumphant in us, we should yield it perfect obedience, and be perfectly virtuous. But, as in this life man never is, nor can be this, we must be immortal ; and so stand related to Infinity, which is God. The social bearings of these doctrines are manifold, but two outstanding points must be noticed. The exceeding great demand put upon man by his moral nature, that he shall become perfectly virtuous, can only be met under conditions of freedom. Any limitation put upon freedom is of the nature of a hindrance to the fulfilment of the great "Ought," the discharge of the infinite responsibility. Men must always be at full liberty to strive after and attain the highest virtue and the greatest happiness, virtue being the condition of which happiness is the crown. Freedom, therefore, is the constant factor of that Social State which flows out from the Kantian philosophy, in regard to its moral bearings. But Kant also conceives man as being related to the Infinite, which is God; and his relationship is the overmastering and dominating one. Society is constituted through it. It is no aggregation, or accidental correlation of individual interests which may war against each other and of which the strongest takes the palm. It is grounded upon a supreme responsibility to the Eternal. Our social relationships and duties are no shrewd calculations of personal interests; but solemn duties owed to one another and to the Infinite Personality. Kant founds his theory of Society upon three fundamental principles: Freedom, Immortality, and God.

 Quite another school of social teaching draws its vitality from these principles of warring interests. Germany is the home of this development, too; and the writings of Nietzsche fairly represent its trend. He draws sword on behalf of the upper classes, just as Marx leads the proletariat. The real masters, the caste designed by nature to rule, have, he says, been robbed of their rights by the sentimental philanthropy and religion to which they have submitted. To have allowed themselves to surrender power into the hands of their inferiors, and to have trifled with the notion of a pretended equality is in the last degree absurd. He would have the ruling classes renounce the Christian religion, and to emancipate themselves from its narcotic morality. It has enabled the serf to enlist sympathy, to obtain votes, to gain the upper hand. All the talk about Christian sympathy and brotherly love has resulted in the mawkish, contemptible consideration of a superior for his natural inferiors. The State is fast becoming a specious arrangement by which the best men are kept out of their own. Let us have no more of it. " A new commandment I give an to you; Become hard, my brethren.'' Put away parleying about the rights of man, which are the empty phrases of an effete religion. " We are in possession, we are the strong ; the best belongs to me and mine, and if men give us nothing, then we take them; the best food, the purest sky, the strongest though the fairest women." Evidently Hume's and Mill's postulates and axioms can be made to do service in more directions than one. Both the Marxean Socialism and this recent Nietzschian individualism proceed from identical premisses, which account for man as a series of impressions and ideas, for society as an arrangement by which the unrestrained pursuit of enlightened self-interest is to bring about harmony between the interests of the individual and those of the State. This war of interests with all it has involved, good and bad, is a characteristic of the social drift in modern life.

 Another and apparently opposing force has been at work collaterally and co-incidently. At scarcely any moment have the principles of Utilitarianism been permitted their full logical embodiment in practice. There is a class of facts for which unrestrained competition makes no provision, and which is left out of reckoning by the doctrine that the State should restrict its intervention in matters of business to the narrowest limits. Unrestricted private enterprise was itself the cause of a great mass of the suffering which Mill thought was so unpleasant to behold. It has been found that business will always adjust itself to the level of those qualities which contribute most directly to success under the conditions of unregulated competition. A suppositional case will illustrate my meaning. Ten men compete in tne market for the supply of cotton. Nine of them have a profound regard for those moral considerations which forbid such things as the employment of child labor, the overworking of employees, and the giving of a wage below the living standard. But the tenth man has no moral sense. He looks after nothing but large sales, good profits, and a broad market. What is the result? He comes into free competition with the others, and as buyers only trouble about qualify and prices, the nine can choose between losing the market, and adopting the immoral man's methods. Since the accepted utilitarian standard of conduct demands no consideration for any interests but one's own, there is nothing in the nature of free competition to forbid them. And thus business tends to be dragged down to the lowest level. I need not tell you that this is no imaginary thing, nor need I dilate upon the terrible social evils to which it gave rise. The growth of those evils to proportions calculated to alarm the most phlegmatic, marked the utter failure of the teachings of the school of Mill to bring about that fixed and unchanging state of things in which there would be an equilibrium between the interests of the individual and of the State, an equilibrium of perfected happiness for all. As wealth increased men continued to decay.

 Very early in the century the principle of non-intervention was violated in obedience to another imperative demand. In the year 1802 the State forbad the employment of apprenticed pauper children for more than twelve hours a day. Nothing was said about an age limit for child workers, nor in fact was anything done for any but those of the pauper class. It took nearly twenty years for the State to muster up courage enough to forbid the employment of children under nine years of age, and to fix a twelve hours' day for all workers under sixteen years of age. In the thirties, the Manchester capitalists vigorously and successfully protested against State intervention in the direction of regulating the conditions of free adult labour. But from that time down to the present a long list of measures have marked the State's sense of its right to interfere in the relations between labour and capital. That is not the only important change that has taken place. Perhaps the most striking result of the development of the principle of voluntary association for social ends which was so strongly advocated by John Stuart Mill, has been the growth of trades-unionism. These organisations are in theory voluntary associations; and they have brought to bear upon the competitive spirit of the time the whole force of the combined will of the working classes. Following out the utilitarian rule, they have pursued the interests of the labourer in competition and struggle against the interests of the employer, with a view to raising the standards of living. For a great many years this principle was followed, with the result that frequent strikes, lock-outs, and other attendant circumstances, indicated the war of interests that always raged in the existing social order. Within the past few years the trades-unions have ceased to confine their attention to the voluntary method. They have largely adopted the principle of State intervention for this purpose of procuring their ends, and have consequently entered the arena of politics with a view to capturing the forces of the State to enable them to better their conditions. In that transition they have crossed the boundary line that separates free competition from State interference.

 Two other forms of the application of the principle of unrestricted private enterprise need to be noticed before we have in view the gigantic forces with which the principle opposed to the Utilitarian doctrine has to grapple. Acting on the lines of voluntary association these have been formed, in several great commercial countries, but especially in the United States, great combinations of capital for the purpose of controlling the whole of some particular industrial and commercial activity; and so to form a virtual monopoly. The first of these was the Standard Oil Trust, organised in 1882; and since then most of the great industries of the world have been drawn more or less into the vortex. The aim of these combines is to prevent the waste of competition, to control markets to become possessed of the world's living resources for the benefit of the wealthier classes. It is a voluntary association in the interests of a class, unconsciously obeying the new commandment of Nietzsche. The owners of the millions of capital involved are in the business solely for the purpose of making all the money they can. I need not say to what extent such combinations may become able to direct the forces of the State. It is significant that hitherto all the efforts made in the United States to check their growth have failed ; and we have the result of monopolies existing for the exploiting of the people, in defiance of cities and states. One writer, an experienced United States politician, says: "I see enough every day to satisfy me that the petitions, prayers, protestations, and profanity of sixty millions of people are not as strong to control legislative action as the influence and effort of the head of a single combine with fifty million dollars at his back."

 That the drift of things indicated by the existence of these great associations is not calculated to end in the amelioration of the conditions against which the social legislation of England has been directed, will become more apparent when we remember that the competitive agencies of trade and commerce are rapidly overleaping international boundaries. The Lancashire cotton spinner is competing in the world's market with the cheap labour of India. Japan is rapidly being brought into the arena, and is entering the lists in China, against the world's industries. What the international aspect of this question implies may be faintly seen in the light of one small matter. The coaling of a Japanese trading steamship in its home ports is done by young girls. A fringe of rising platforms four or five in number surrounds the ship, the lowest being just above the level of the sampan which brings the coal alongside. On the platforms stand girls, in lines of steps above. The coal is filled into baskets, and these are passed from girl to girl until they reach their destination. The work is done with such rapidity and skill that between ten in the morning and four in the afternoon a thousand tons of coal will pass from the sampans to the ship. There you have the international aspects of free competition in a nutshell; and a fair basis for the settlement of such questions as Freetrade, Preferentialism, White Australia, and many other social problems.

 I spoke just now, of the beginnings of those violations of the principle of non-intervention by the State which have gone so far to better the conditions, and raise the standards, of life in Europe. The mere narration of its history is not a matter that need engage our attention. We are more concerned with the forces and causes that lay behind it. It has brought about a condition of things of which hardly any one in these days openly disapproves. No matter which way a man's personal interests might lie he is ready enough when speaking in the hearing of his fellow men, to agree that the movement that has brought women out of coal mines, has prohibited infant labour, has regulated the working day so as to bring it within reasonable limits, has made sweating offensive to every respectable citizen, and the sweater an object of contempt amongst men, not to mention a multitude of other changes of the same kind, has proved a priceless benefit to society. It is a movement which is still in progress, and which will be the more effectively directed the better it is understood.

 For the principles which have underlain the forces of the movement we must look to the doctrines of Emmanuel Kant, and the general teachings of the Christian religion. Kant's conception of man as a being standing related, not merely to his own past, a series of impressions and ideas, but to infinite and eternal things, sheds upon him a dignity, and opens to him the vision of a destiny, quite beyond the range of mere personal interests. The haunting sense of responsibility to these infinite and eternal things has been a great fund of social force for man's uplifting. Gleamings of immortality have visited the minds of men, and have brought the significance of this infinite relationship within the bounds of immediate duties to be done. These natural contents of the human mind have been ratified and endorsed by those teachings of Christianity which have brought men's spirits into communication with the Eternal God. And the consequence has been that wherever that religion has been really understood and applied, it has deepened the sense of responsibility, stimulated the desire for freedom, softened and developed the sympathies, and created a rich reserve of social energy.

 It has been popularly imagined that no concession has ever been made by the ruling classes to those beneath them until it has been wrung from them by fear. I say nothing of the reluctance with which they have sometimes surrendered their prescriptive privileges; but, had their determination to hold them been as brutal as is sometimes represented, it must be remembered that they could have remained fortified and invincible to this day. The passing of the Reform Bill of 1833 may be cited as an almost classical Instance of this confusion. The Bill was opposed by the Lords until the London mob demonstrated its seriousness by pulling down Hyde Park railings; and it is argued that the surrender of the Upper House showed their fear of their own lives. Now the ruling classes of that time were the masters of all the material forces in England, and could command them at will. Two thousand years ago the uprising of a mob would have been suppressed at all costs by the use of these material forces, and it would have been found that the classes identified with the rebels, instead of having their burdens lightened or their freedom widened, would have felt an extra turn of the screw which held them down. What made the difference ? The position in 1833 confronting the rulers of England was either to surrender the demand for Reform, or call out the military forces. The latter course involved consequences from which every man shrank in horror. The softening of character, the sense of responsibility to a higher Power, had undermined the power of selfishness, so that when the grim alternative came to be faced, the opposition to the people's wishes melted away. The party in power was rendered incapable of wielding its strength in its own interests by its own repugnance to suffering, misery, wrong, and degradation. The history of the social legislation of our times, which is recognised as progressive, is " simply a history of concessions demanded and obtained by that party which is through its position inherently the weaker from the party which as the holder of power is unmistakably stronger. There is no break in the series; no exception to the rule."

 I am sure you will immediately recognise the entire compatibility between the doctrines I have associated with the name of Kant and the movements of social reform in the past; and you will find it impossible to reconcile those movements with the teachings of the other school. In fact, so violently are the Utilitarian principles opposed to the forces of the movement, that even such men as Cobden and Bright, the leaders of the Manchester school in politics, rigorously and uncompromisingly resisted the factory legislation of the forties. The very apostles of Free trade bitterly opposed the amelioration of the conditions of labour; and for the same reasons as they advocated the opening of the ports. Free corn meant cheap labor; and graphic pictures of starving people touched the heart of England. But, the Factory Acts increased the cost of manufacture, and thus came to be strenuously opposed. The same voice which pleaded for the hungry multitude that it might be fed, cried out that the same well-fed multitude should be worked sixteen hours a day, should be put into the factories at nine years of age, and should be paid for its labor any price it could manage to get. But anything is grist that comes to the Utilitarian mill! There were other voices, however, which appealed to the heart of England, aroused her conscience, and stirred her to undertake the responsibility of lifting from the worker all but the necessary burdens of life. Not from any one section of the people did the response come to the needs of the time. Most of the leaders of the Radical Party in England have been members of the ruling class, men of gentle birth and breeding. Frederick Denison Maurice, Charles Kingsley, Thomas Arnold, Arnold Toynbee, the Earl of Shaftesbury, these men, foremost in the battle for reform, belonged to the educated and privileged classes. The lines of social and political cleavage have struck right through the strata of English society, leaving people of all ranks on either side. These men have been moved by no narrow ideal of enlightened selfishness, nor attracted by any pursuit of personal advantage. In all their writings, speeches, and acts there throbs the pulse of a strenuous devotion to duty, the warm glow of enlightened sympathy goes out towards their less fortunate fellow creatures, the spirit of noble sacrifice grows out of the sense of their responsibility to the Infinite God; and in their minds there always burned the inspiration of a confident hope that what they did might hasten the coming of the Kingdom of God. Little by little they have struck away the fetters that bound the people. Inch by inch they have widened the areas of freedom. Slowly, and persistently have they striven to endowment and equip the masses of their fellow men with those qualities which will enable them to maintain their freedom, and hold fast the liberty wherewith they have been made free.

 So much for the drift in modern society down to the present. The sketch has been slight, but enough to show the set of the current. You will not expect me to play the part of the prophet. But one or two things are sure. Having set in motion social forces, man loses control of them at once. They are under a law quite independent of human volition. Man becomes their servant, not their master. Thus, the tendencies already existing will continue. The concentric theories of Hume, Bentham, the Mills, and Herbert Spencer stand for permanent facts in life. I do not believe in their philosophies, which are one-sided, narrow, and materialistic. But the gigantic and intense struggle which has been identified with the principle of free competition in trade, but which may go on independently of that principle, is an indispensable factor in human progress. All other things being equal the most strenuous people, classes, races, will rise, while these who display lesser energy will fall in the descending order of their declining effort. If competition is a necessary spur to strenuousness, then without doubt the dominant future lies with the keenest competitors. One thing that emerges from the study of history is that progress is only possible amongst those people who are for ever attempting what lies just beyond their reach ; the attempt strengthens their vitalities, their success spurs them on to higher things. We may devise schemes which will appear to do away with the necessity for the struggle for existence; we may even succeed in so far lessening the necessity for that struggle as to obtain for ourselves comparative ease, and the achievements of the desired ends of life without travail and stress. But no deadlier blow could be struck at our stability than that. The doom of that race is sealed which refuses, for whatever reason, to continually and unremittingly put out the sum total of all its greatest capacities for the accomplishment of some task lying beyond its immediate realizations.

 That is only another way of saying that the meaning and goal of human life lie far beyond itself. During the Christian era there has been liberated into society a vast fund of force which is represented by the word "Duty." The " Ought;" the sanction, of this transcends the material and passing interests of mankind. The strident railing of Bentham, and all the protestations of the Mills, have vainly spent themselves against it. It still remains the supreme incentive to energy. As the years pass by it becomes more closely allied with sympathy, benevolence, and philanthropy. The sternness of the sense of duty is tempered by compassion and softened by the humane feelings. The drift in this direction is unmistakable, and its continuance is assured. A great philosopher has recently said that " truth is the net resultant of contending forces." One is hardly ready to accept such a definition without first submitting it to a searching investigation. As an indication of the probable lines of progress, or the social drift in the immediate future, it is probably not far wide of the mark. The war of contending interests is nowadays very much a thing of class and will probably become more so for a generation or so. The parties tend to sharper divisions, to more definite schemes of crystallization upon extreme principles. But, neither side will get its own way. 'When the critical battles of the campaign are fought, it is likely that the neutralising effect of the struggle will be seen, and the disintegrated forces gathered up in the sweep of those higher movements of feeling, of sympathy, of philanthropy, of justice, and of righteousness, which are becoming more and more the determinative factors of social life. Though every man and every class and community will be compelled to strenuous life, the conditions of the struggle will be such that the door of opportunity will never be barred against any, while every amelioration of needless hardship will bring into the conflict a zest and incentive that will make it a joy. The old world is young yet, and it is writing off the sins of its past. Its eye is bright with hope, beaming with tenderness, clear in the sense of complete reliance upon the Infinite and Eternal God.

Burrangong Argus (NSW : 1904) http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article247711006