State Socialism is being evolved.

 IT is a favorite figure of speech to describe the present state of Europe as a vast military camp, in which so many millions of men, continually under arms, are merely awaiting the signal to slaughter each other wholesale and drown the civilisation of the Old World in a sea of blood. This Turneresque "symphony in black and red" has done yeoman's duty throughout the press for a good many years, yet the sanguinary cataclysm still keeps off and the camp simile with its contingent horrors is becoming just a trifle stale. If, however, we read the signs of the times aright, it should seem that a greater peril than even war is menacing European society, and that the millions of disciplined murderers and plunderers are themselves standing over a volcanic abyss, which may at any moment yawn to engulf them all.

For weeks past the principal items reported by telegraphic agents refer to wide spread manifestations of a revolutionary character, together with other symptoms sufficiently discomposing to that class of cabinet philosophers who hug themselves in the comforting belief that the existing order of society, as developed under the various phrases of modern civilization, is the best possible — for themselves. Strikes of colliers, iron founders, and other workmen, on a scale, and with a concerted unanimity of organization hitherto unwitnessed on the continent, have simultaneously paralysed industry in centres so numerous and so remote from each other as to argue the existence of some deeper moving cause than the old grievance of low wages to the laborer and disproportionate profit to the capitalist. In Belgium, in Westphalia, in Silesia the workmen have turned out by hundreds of thousands, and although by the joint influence of substantial concessions from the masters and threats of military intervention on the part of the authorities the men have very generally returned to their respective occupations, the spirit of discontent yet smoulders, ready to break out again under the stress of a bad harvest or a severe winter. In Northern Italy, where the rural population have for years past developed special forms of disease due to exposure and deficient nutrition, the crushing imposts rendered necessary by the insane determination of Italian statesmen to prop up the young kingdom with a forest of ironclads, has led to a rebellion of the unprotected peasants, which breaks out afresh as fast as it is put down. Strikes and Jacqueries are not of course novel phenomena ; but besides the magnitude of the numbers and interests involved on the present occasion, they are marked with special peculiarities, rarely, if ever, observed before, the occurrence of which may be of service in diagnosing the evil and discovering the remedy. One of these symptoms is the sympathy with which the demands and aims of the operatives on strike are generally viewed by the burgher or middle class; another, the obvious unwillingness of the governments to proceed to extremities for the purpose of restoring order. Both these tendencies are so unlike what has been seen on other occasions, so inconsistent with the usual intolerant and arbitrary temper of the "classes" referred to, that the latter must on some ground or other have come to regard their present position as severely imperilled, if not actually untenable.

 The converse of strikes, the combinations of labor to raise wages, are those combinations of capital to raise prices, which go under the name of "corners" or "rings." They are one of the lefthanded blessings that the old world owes to the new, where they were the direct fruit of the vast accumulations of capital in unrighteous hands that followed the War of Secession. It was in the years immediately succeeding that great national convulsion that the power of the purse, developed out of the hideous frauds and corruption incidental to the great army contracts, first made itself felt as a vast and often mischievous social factor. "Rings" batten on the oppression of the working classes and the blackmailing of the whole body of consumers ; and it is therefore not strange that with their appearance in the United States other correlated social phenomena, previously unfrequent or unknown, became common. The great strikes in the coal and iron districts of Pennsylvania and Ohio were a direct result of the concentration of the vast profits of railway carriage in a few hands, and the consequent screwing up of railway freights, which form so serious an item in the cost of foundry goods, to a figure that would let neither the ironmasters nor their men to subsist. Co-operation among the aggrieved sections of the people has since done much to tone down the outrageous exactions to which the American nation has been subjected by its self-made millionaires ; but the great strikes have left a painful memento of the stressful period that gave them birth, in the evolution of a previously unrecognised social entity, the "tramp." This unclassed being, who has since acquired fixed professional characteristics, and whose presence threatens to become a permanent evil, is to America the equivalent of the mass of inveterate pauperism that underlies European society. 

Now what do these facts tend to? Clearly, the remodelling of civilized society on a social, or more strictly a socialist, basis. Rings as well as strikes and co-operative associations are socialistic in their tendency, for although the aim of the first is to limit production and concentrate distribution for the benefit of a few, of the second to enhance the cost of production for the benefit of the producers, and of the third to promote a healthy balance or supply and demand for the mutual benefit of a limited circle of producers and consumers, they all three in their several ways are helping to work out the practical problems that must be solved before socialism can emerge from the realm of theory into that of practical reality. Some of these problems, for instance that of the possibility of controlling by any code of fixed rules the capricious and haphazard interaction of the many complex forces that determine such apparently simple processes as production and consumption, are already in course of partial solution, and this result is due in no small degree to the experience gained and the administrative machinery perfected by monopolists in the pursuit of their nefarious ends. By the tribute which their admirable organisation enables these vultures to exact from the muddled millions on whom they prey, a clear proof is afforded of the possibility of regulating, for the benefit of all, those wider social relations that centre in the state. The standing objection to every socialistic scheme has been the denial of such a possibility ; and since, for want of evidence, that objection has hitherto been deemed unanswerable, socialism, as an economic creed, has always fared badly at the hands of political writers. At the present day, some of the bolder speculations of socialist writers are being quietly translated into practice by statesmen representing the most diverse schools of political thought ; and even semi-absolutist governments like that of the German Empire, where "social democrats," as a political party, are persecuted with a relentless severity that will be satisfied with nothing short of extermination, State Socialism is being evolved in a variety of unfamiliar but possibly useful forms. Whether we like it or not, it is evident on all hands that the framework of a wholly novel disposition of social conditions is being pieced together, bit by bit, and that it will depend on the lessons in moral endurance and mutual forbearance that have been learned during the past eighteen centuries, whether the change, when it does come, shall be peaceful, or whether it is to burst on the world in a tempest of fire and blood.

Maryborough Chronicle, Wide Bay and Burnett Advertiser (Qld. ),  1889,http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article146667720

Influence of Patriotism on Modern Philosophy in Italy

 Prof. F. C. Bentivoglio B.A., Member of our Institution, on the invitation by the "Literary Club" of the Sydney University, delivered a lecture on the above subject.

 We are pleased to give hereunder the text of the lecture, as published by the "Corriere."

 Italy is often called the land of sunshine, of music, of art. It could be called also, and quite truthfully, the land of philosophers.

 Two centuries ago, in those few decades preceding the French Revolution, we see in Naples two of the world colossi writing epoch-making books on philosophy: Vico and Filangieri; in Milan, Beccaria. But ere long came the Napoleonic storm. What was thought inviolable, sacred and immortal, proved not to be so. In vain the Holy Alliance in 1815 tried to put back the clock of time, to ignore the Declaration of the Rights of Man. The Encyclopaedists had flooded the world with their books. A new ferment had permeated all Universities, all intellectual centres.

 In Italy the movement for unification had had a powerful impetus from the Napoleonic wars. Sicilians, Neopolitans, Venetians, Lombards, etc., all shed their blood for the greatness of the French Empire. Why not fight for Italy, for one united and independent Italy?

 Italy only a geographical expression. What nonsense, says Vincenzo Gioberti, and he wrote "Il primato degli Italiani," proving the historical and spiritual right of Italy to be at last united.

 Romagnosi, Cattaneo, Ferrari — to quote only the most important philosophers — published book after book on this all-absorbing question.

 Mazzini, the prophet of Italy, had already preached for nearly thirty years in his "La Giovine Italia," a secret organisation whose members were all pledged to work, to fight, and to die, if needed, for the unification of Italy. Excitement was at fever heat in the year 1846, when a former gallant officer, the Count Giovanni Mastai Ferretti, was elected Pope Pius IX., who in a moment of enthusiasm exclaimed: "Great God, bless Italy." The Pope made an alliance with Sardinia and the King of the two Sicilies to fight Austria. But two months later he recalled his army. In fact, Sardinia remained on the field to fight single-handed.

 Patriotic citizens boycotted churches; some even embraced Protestantism. Thousands of priests resigned their office, enlisted, fought and died as brave sons of Italy. Those who survived entered the teaching profession, and through them the passion of patriotism became the daily bread served out to youth, thus permeating all families.

 Garibaldi had collected a battalion of gallant priests in Calabria in his memorable expedition of "The Thousand," and nicknamed the holy battalion.

 Is there any wonder if we see the most intellectual amongst those patriotic priests endeavour to justify their action, not only on historical and national grounds, but by assailing their opponents in their tenets and philosophy? The Church maintained that any national strife was but an incident in its fabric, which she claimed to be immortal. However, the patriots realised that an attack on religion was necessary to obtain the support of the mass. Religion represents the Absolute. The mass can only be stirred into action by the Absolute. Was not the same thing repeated during the Great War?

 Fight, fight on, brave boys; this is the last war. You are not killing your fellow-man; you are killing war. 

Hence an avalanche of books was published trying to prove that Christ never existed. Renan's, Strauss's "Life of Jesus" were in all homes. Biographies of Arnaldo da Brescia, Campanella, Pamponazzi, Giordano Bruno, all killed or burnt at the stake, were presented as prizes to young students. Beautiful monuments to those martyrs were erected in the piazzas.

 * * *

 Carducci, the famous poet, from his chair of Italian Literature at Bologna, inveighed for fifty years against the pious romanticism of Manzoni. Greek and Latin classicisms must be the rock foundation upon which should be built a united Italy.

 Could philosophers refrain from this battle? Here we have Gaetano Trezza, from Verona, a priest, a learned and good man. He attacked St. Thomas, writing most fiercely. He wrote on all topics bearing on the main subject. Also a magnificent Essay on Goethe, just because Faust represents a new conception of life, altogether contrasting with Christian ideals. At the end of an eventful life, the woman he loved died, leaving him alone, absolutely alone. He could not stand the blow. He recanted. The Church re-admitted him into its bosom, and he died Padre Bonvicino, in a cloister. Those mysterious threads which weave the spiritual cloak of our youth seem to weave also our shroud.

 R. Ardigo was born in a peasant home near Cremona in the year 1832. Boy of striking intelligence, he found only one road open to him: Holy Orders. He entered a Seminary in Mantua, and soon was a Doctor in Theology. He saw the hanging of nine Italians in 1851, whose only crime was their love for their country. He witnessed the furious fight between the Church and the patriots, and when forty years of age he declared in a very moving letter to his bishop (a holy man) that he no longer believed. While in the Seminary he was a zealous student of scholastic philosophy and modern science, firmly convinced that the "modern errors," as he called them, were to be refuted. Slowly an entirely new fabric of thought grew up in him, and finally it dawned upon him that he no longer espoused the dualistic teaching of the Church, but believed in a great continuity of things.

 The Minister of Public Education nominated him to the Chair of Philosophy at Padua. Undoubtedly the patriotic environment in which he lived had a great influence on his mental evolution. He was all his life a staunch patriot, and in 1918, when the war seemed lost, still a professor at the University, in a moment of despair he attempted suicide. He lingered on for another two years. He was the foremost writer on positive philosophy, and with his fifty years of teaching he had an overwhelming influence on the philosophical mind of his contemporaries.

 * * * 

G. Negri, a Milanese whose proud intellect would not mix with the populace, for whom he had the greatest contempt, maintained that Italy had made an historical and tragic mistake by wresting Rome from the Pope. He wrote the life of the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate, extolling this great man in his vain endeavour to resuscitate the gods and annihilate the Christian religion.

 Yet he, an atheist, shares the view of Livy and Macchiavelli, that religion is essential to a nation. Religious ties for the lower class are like spiritual and intellectual ties for the upper class.

 * * * 

Who does not know Giovanni Papini? A furious internationalist, communist, futurist, at the vanguard of every thought that sounded new, bizarre, impossible. He contributed thousands of writings to newspapers, attacking everything that was or seemed orthodox. He roamed all over the world in search of a new Gospel. Abroad he became enamoured of his own country. His health broke down, he returned to his native Tuscany, he shut himself in a hut, learned Greek and Hebrew, and wrote a "Vita di Cristo" that staggered the world. It is very little critical; it is almost a paraphrase of the four Gospels, and yet it is an extraordinary book. If its literary and philosophical value could be gauged by its sale we should say it is immense. Let it suffice to say that in the first year of its publication three and a half million copies were sold in the U.S.A. alone.

 * * * 

B. Croce, the eminent philosopher, is living on the heights of Naples amongst his books, almost in a monastic retirement. Some of his friends say he gives the cold shoulder to the present regime because Mussolini ignored him.

 "Croce himself," says Gentile, a well-known philosopher, "is a Fascist in spite of himself, who, notwithstanding his Hegelian foundations, he, more than any other single scholar, has revivified the Italian tradition and contributed by his historical researches to the development of Italian Stoicism: that is Fascism. He led a revolt against French and German philosophical systems which had permeated the intellectual lives of all Italian Schools and Universities.

 * * * 

G. Gentile, instead, directly Fascism went into power, was nominated Minister of Public Education. He was the first to tackle the great problem of teaching and making such sweeping changes in all departments as no other person in Italy or anywhere else has dared to make. "To teach well is not to pile up the baggage of bits of information on to the pupil and to impose upon him the result already given and completed by the thought of another, but, above all, to promote the activities of the pupil in the conquest of the scientific truths which are valuable only in so far as they are the results of his own work and represent his own conquest. Hence a syntheist in the person being educated is realised spontaneously every time he really educates himself, that is every time he feels the value of his own person in acquiring a new idea, undergoing a new experience, overcoming a limitation, widening the orbit of the life of his imagination. Our mind has a value not for what it knows materially, but for his capacity to win ever new knowledge. Hence the value of the school consists essentially in its enhancement of the ability to learn." 

* * *

 In the year 1909 died near Forli the philosopher Alfredo Oriani. If we had to judge him by his success in life it would not be worth our while to mention him at all. He wrote books, novels, short stories, poetry, dramas, all dismal failures. He wrote also on sociology. His startling prohecies make us pause and ponder over that singular intellect never understood. In his last book, "la Rivolta Ideale," 1906, he has exalted certain traditional spiritual values, judged Socialism not as creation, but mere criticism. He saw in the ascent of the proletariat not a new revolution approaching, but the birth of a new middle class, and expressed contempt for the cowardly theory which flattered the people by telling them that their inferiority was only due to the injustice of the law. He despised these pseudo philosophers — political opportunists who could explain everything they saw, standing as it were at the window, but it never occurred to them to go in the street and take a hand in anything. The systems they propounded were an end in themselves. They led nowhere and could not serve as practical programmes. By them, everything could be explained, but nothing predicted. In the fifty years preceding the Fascist regime materialism and positivism reigned supreme in lecture rooms, press and books. The Italian spirit was in a state of torpor. Oriani in his last writings set forth with unmatchable passion all problems, anxieties, ideals, hopes of our times, exalting the potential Italian energies. He revolted against the deadening levelling tendency of democracy, socialism and the orthodox Church. Above all, he preached the dawn of a greater Italy.

 I must go into further details about Oriani, as he has been acclaimed the philosopher, the prophet, the saviour of Fascism.

 Nietzche divides humanity in two classes, aristocracy and the commons, denying almost every right to the latter, which should simply remain a tool for the elevation of the former. Oriani instead maintains that aristocracy and genius are pushing along "the mass," giving it value and bringing out its best men to join the "leaders," shape its course, and give a name to it.

 The mass is moved into action by instinct, the Aristocracy of Intelligence represents its conscience, while genius is its personification. Everything is elaborated in that immense cauldron, but is completed and shaped in its dynamic force by the intelligentsia.

 And if for Nietzche aristocracy meant something apart, altogether detached and differentiated, for Oriani it meant the highest exponent of society, the symbol of its purest ideals, "leader of the mass and its servant." Hence it must be a throng of heroes who realises its duties not only toward one part of humanity, but to-ward everybody. Heroes ready for all emergencies, ready for all sacrifices.

 The liberty of which democracy speaks is purely a lie. Only "authority" can bring justice. Contrasting interests, supported by ever-changing political parties, prevent justice from being meted out with even measure. Oriani wept at the ineptitude of Italy in colonial warfare. "Italy," he cries, "slave of an idle and ignorant democracy. Revolt, my beloved country, against everything and everybody. Light all your beacons because a revolution has begun. It has set out in the darkest of nights, but the dawn is near. The flush of dawn may look like blood, but fear not, march on, democracy is doomed." And with an astonishing prophetical afflatus Oriani in 1897 foresaw the world war, the fall of the great empires, the disruption and turmoil of the Slavonic world, and the overbearing plutocracy of the U.S.A. Also the progress and set-back of Socialism, the rousing of sane minorities destined to become the new aristocracy, different from those of blood and wealth.

 He hated Socialism not only for its ideologic substratum which could be a poetical mistake, but because it was a school of makeshift, of corruption and moral mediocrity. He maintained Socialism to be but a small tyranny, inefficient and timid, set up by a bogus aristocracy, the offspring of industrial labour, and by means of universal suffrage. Unscrupulous demagogues, weaklings, biologically, by pandering to the mass, became the rulers of nations.

 Could Oriani rise from his grave to-day and see the work of his formidable pupil, Mussolini. A new Italy, his beloved Italy, a great nation at last, setting to a bewildered world an example of a new national organisation in which the rights of labour and capitalism, the principle of authority and the principle of private initiative, the exigency of tradition, and needs of a new era are harmonised in a united effort to create and produce the moral and material wealth of the nation.

 MUSSOLINI.

 Mussolini is supposed to have taken his main ideas from G. Sorel and his philosophy from Oriani in building his Co-operative State. Two months ago Mussolini was asked by the compilers of the Enciclopedia Italiana to give in brief the essence of Fascism for publishing purposes. It was a very difficult task to translate it and reduce it to the essentials. However, here it is: "There cannot be a conception of the State which is not fundamentally a conception of life. Philosophy and intuition; system of ideas developing in logical sequence, united in vision and faith, but, virtually, an organic conception of the world.

 So Fascism is not to be understood in its many practical aspects as the organisation of a method, as a system of education, as discipline, but in its general working as conception of life. It works spiritually. The world, for Fascism, is not the material superficial world, where each is an individual, apart from his fellows, standing alone, governed by a natural law which induces him instinctively to lead a life of selfish and temporal pleasure. Each Fascist is a unit of the nation, obeying a moral law which binds individuals and races together in a tradition and in a mission which suppresses the instinct to live only for a brief round of pleasure; teaching, instead, the obligation of a higher life, self-denial by sacrifice of his own interests, even of his own life. Spiritual conception, therefore, arising from the general reaction of the age against the feeble and material positivism of the 19th century. Not sceptic, nor agnostic, nor pessimistic, nor positively optimistic like most of the theories (all negative) which would give the centre of life a place apart from man, who, with his free will can and should create his world for him-self. Fascism desires to rouse man to devote the whole of his power to action, bravely to recognise such difficulties as exist and to be ready to meet them.

 Fascism conceives life as a struggle where it is the part of each to gain for himself that which is really worthy of him, creating first of all in himself the instrument (physical, moral or intellectual) to achieve it, and as for the individual, so for the nation, so for humanity. Hence the great value of culture in all its forms, art, religion, science, and the superlative importance of education. Hence also the essential value of labor, by which man conquers Nature and creates the world, economic, political, moral and intellectual. This positive conception of life is manifestly an ethical conception. Every action must conform to moral judgment; nothing in the world can dispense with the value of striving towards moral ends. Life must be serious, austere, religious. Fascism scorns a "comfortable" life. It is a historical conception, in which man has only his being in the function of the spiritual process with which he co-operates, in the domestic and social groups, in the nation and in history, in which all nations co-operate. Hence the great value of tradition in memories, in language, in custom, in rules of social life.

 Without history man is nothing. 

Therefore, Fascism is contrary to all individual abstraction, with material foundation of the type of the 18th century, and is contrary also to Utopian and Jacobin innovations. It does not believe in the possibility of happiness on earth, as was the desire of the economist literature of 1700, and therefore rejects all the theological conceptions of a definite systematising of the human race at a certain period of history. That means going beyond history and life, which is continuous, flowing and developing. Fascism desires to be, politically, a realistic doctrine. Practically, it aims at solving only the problems which (history shows) have always presented themselves, and which automatically find or suggest their own solution. To operate amongst men, as in Nature, it is necessary to understand intrinsic processes and to master the powers in action.

 The Fascist conception is against individualism and for the State. It is for the individual in so far as the universal conscience and will of man in his historic existence agrees with the State. It is against classic liberalism, which arose from the need of reacting from absolutism and whose historic function passed when the State became the conscience and will of the people themselves. Liberalism denies the State in the interest of the private individual, Fascism declares the State to be the true personality of the individual. And if liberty should be the attribute of the real man and not of the puppet abstraction conceived by individualistic liberalism, then Fascism is for liberty and for the sole liberty which can be a serious matter, liberty of the State and of the individual included in the State.

 The Fascist State is synthesis and unity of every value. It interprets, develops and strengthens the whole life of the people. Therefore Fascism is contrary to Socialism, which cramps the historic movement in the class struggle and ignores the State unity which fuses classes into one economic and moral whole. Similarly, it is opposed to class syndicalism. Fascism recognises those exigencies in the orbit of the State from which syndicalism and the socialist movement derive their origin, and would consider them in the system of corporate interests conciliated in the unity of the State. It is not the nation which generates the State according to the obsolete conception which formed the base of the democratic States of the 19th century. On the contrary, the nation is created by the State, which conscious of its own moral unity gives to the people will power and thence effective existence. The right of a nation to independence comes not from a literary and idealistic consciousness of its own being, far less from a situation more or less unconscious or inert, but from an alert conscience from a will ready to act and prepared to declare its own right. In fact, the State, as Universal Ethical will, is the creation of the right.

 The nation, like the State, is an ethical fact which exists and lives while it develops. Stagnation means death. Therefore the State is not only authority which governs and gives laws and values of spiritual life to the individual wills, but it is also power which makes its will recognised and respected abroad, thus demonstrating its universality in all directions necessary to its development. The Fascist State is power, but spiritual power which includes all forms of moral and intellectual human life. It cannot therefore be limited to the simple function of order and protection, as liberalism would do. It is not a mere mechanism which defines the sphere of presumed individual liberty. Fascism, finally, is not only law-giver and founder of spiritual life. It would not remake the rules of human life, but its content : man, his character, his faith.

 And to this end it would have discipline and authority to penetrate deeply in the mind, and there to rule unchallenged.

 Therefore, its standard is the lictoral fasces, Symbol of Unity, Power and Justice."

 * * *

 Students of the University! You are on the threshold of life. Fortunate are you. A new world is coming into being. You only can shape it. What it is going to be no one knows. But the duel has started already: Intelligence versus the Mass; quality versus quantity; in short, democracy as it is commonly understood is on its trial. Allow me to urge you to take, as soon as you can, a hand in the affairs of our beloved country, Australia. Discard that shameful pandering to the lowest instinct of the populace, do not put the crowd on a pedestal and worship it. Tell everybody that you are the torch-bearers, that you must be the rulers. The mass must follow. The mass in its millennial evolution has remained a minor; it must be assisted, protected, stimulated, but never allowed to govern.

 There is to-day a greater gulf in vision of life and mental outlook between you and the man in the street than between Charlemagne and his swine-herd. And, do foster a healthy intercourse amongst spiritual leaders of all nations. Ideas, new ideas, we need, or we go under. A country aiming to be self-supporting, self-contained, is doomed. There are no water-tight compartments in the world, either moral, intellectual or economic.

 Here I have a vision: Who is that weary giant stumbling along with the sphere on his shoulder? He is Atlas, carrying the world. "Whither goest thou, Father Atlas? What is wrong with thee?" "This world is out of joint, and unless I find a remedy it may slip from my shoulders into chaos."

 Here a horde of tailors cobblers, mechanics of all sorts, cry to him: "Let us assist thee, Comrade Atlas; we have the panacea for all ailments." "Begone ye all, begone," he answered. "There in the dim distance I see the beacon light, the salvation of this unbalanced world. There it stands! A group of stately buildings; it is the University. Only Science, graced by love, which is understanding, can save the world. I will go there." 

Ladies and gentlemen, don't you hear Atlas knocking at the portals?

Italian Bulletin of Commerce (Sydney) 1 October 1932, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article259097537

The Gospel of Wealth.

 ———<>———

We publish to-day, by the special request of Mr Gladstone (says the Pall Mall Budget, of July 18), a remarkable article by Mr Andrew Carnegie, the well-known Pittsburgh ironmaster and millionaire, which appeared in the North American Review. The article had attracted the notice of Mr Gladstone, who has spoken in the highest terms with regard to it, and strongly urged its publication in this country. Mr Gladstone writes : — I have asked Mr Lloyd Bryce (North American Review) kindly to allow the republication in this country of the extremely interesting article on " Wealth,” by Mr Andrew Carnegie, which has just appeared in America ”

 THE PROBLEM OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF WEALTH.

 The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship. The conditions of human life have not only been changed, but revolutionised, within the past few hundred years. In former days there was little difference between the dwelling, dress, food, and environment of the chief and those of his retainers. The Indians are to-day where civilised man then was. When visiting the Sioux; I was led to the wigwam of the chief. It was just like the others in external appearance, and even within the difference was trifling between it and those of the poorest of his braves. The contrast between the palace of the millionaire and the cottage of the laborer with us to day measures the change which has come with civilisation. This change, however, is not to be deplored, but welcomed as highly beneficial. It is well, nay, essential, for the progress of the race, that the houses of some should be homes for all that is highest and best in literature and the arts, and for all the refinements of civilisation, rather than that none should be so. Much better this great irregularity than universal squalor. Without wealth there can be no Mæcenas. The “good old times" were not good old times. Neither master nor servant was as well situated then as to-day. A relapse to old conditions would be disastrous to both —not the least so to him who serves and would sweep away civilisation with it. But whether the change be for good or ill it is upon us, beyond our power to alter, and therefore to be accepted and made the best of. It is a waste of time to criticise the inevitable.

 THE CHANGE, AND THE PRICE WE PAY FOR IT. 

It is easy to see how the change has come. One illustration will serve for almost every phase of the cause. In the manufacture of products we have the whole story. It applies to all combinations of human industry, as stimulated nod enlarged by the inventions of this scientific age. Formerly articles were manufactured at the domestic hearth or in small shops which formed part of the household. The master and his apprentices worked side by side, the latter living with the master, and therefore subject to the same conditions. When these apprentices rose to be masters, there was little or no change is their mode of life, and they, in turn, educated in the same routine succeeding apprentices. There was, substantially, social, equality, and even political equality for those engaged in industrial pursuits had then little or no political voice in the State.

 THE PRICE WE PAY IS VERY GREAT.

 But the inevitable result of such a mode of manufacture was crude articles at high prices. To-day the world obtains commodities of excellent quality at prices which even the generation preceding this would have deemed incredible. In the commercial world similar causes have produced similar results, and the race is benefited thereby. The poor enjoy what the rich could not before afford. What were the luxuries have become the necessaries of life. The laborer has now more comforts than the farmer had a few generations ago. The farmer has more luxuries than the landlord had, and is more richly clad and better housed. The landlord has books and pictures rarer, and appointments more artistic, than the King could then obtain. The price we pay for this salutary change is, no doubt, great. We assemble thousands of operatives in the factory, in the mine, and in the counting house, of whom the employer can know little or nothing, and to whom the employer is little better than a myth. All intercourse with them is at an end. Rigid castes are formed, and, as usual, mutual ignorance breeds mutual distrust. Each caste is without sympathy for the other, and ready to credit anything disparaging in regard to it. Under the law of competition, the employer of thousands is forced into the strictest economies, among which the rates paid to labor figure prominently, and often there is friction between the employer and the employed, between capital and labor, between rich and poor. Human society loses homogeneity. 

THE MAN IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE MONEY.

 The price which society pays for the law of competition, like the price it pays for cheap comforts and luxuries, is also great; but the advantages of this law are also greater still, for it is to this law that we owe our wonderful material development, which brings improved conditions in its train. But, whether the law be benign or not, we must say of it, as we say of the change in the conditions of men to which we have referred: It is here; we cannot evade it; no substitutes for it have been found; and while the law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race. Having accepted these, it follows that there must be great scope for the exercise of special ability in the merchant and in the manufacturer who has to conduct affairs upon a great scale. That this talent for organisation and management is rare among men is proved by the fact that it invariably secures for its possessor enormous rewards, no matter where or under what laws or conditions. The experienced in affairs always rate the man whose services can be obtained as a partner as not only the first consideration, but such as to render the question of his capital scarcely worth considering, for such men soon create capital; while, without the special talent required, capital soon takes wings. Such men become interested in firms or corporations using millions; and estimating only simple interest to be made upon the capital invested, it is inevitable that their income must exceed their expenditures, and that they must accumulate wealth. Nor is there any middle ground which such men can occupy, because the great manufacturing or commercial concern which does not earn at least interest upon its capital soon becomes bankrupt. It must either go forward or fall behind ; to stand still is impossible. It is a condition essential for its successful operation that it should be thus far profitable, and even that, in addition to interest on capital, it should make profit. It is a law, as certain as any of the others named, that men possessed of this peculiar talent for affairs, under the free play of economic forces, must, of necessity, soon be in receipt of more revenue than can be judiciously expended upon themselves and this law is as beneficial for the race as the others.

 OUR DUTY IS TO DO WHAT IS PRACTICABLE NOW.

Objections to the foundations upon which society is based are not in order, because the condition of the race is better with these than it, has been with any others which have been tried. Of the effect of any new substitutes proposed, we cannot be sure. The Socialist or Anarchist who seeks to overturn present conditions is to be regarded as attacking the foundation upon which civilisation itself rests, for civilisation took its start from the day that the capable, industrious workman said to his incompetent and lazy fellow, " If thou dost not sow, thou shalt not reap," and thus ended primitive Communism by separating the drones from the bees. One who studies this subject will soon be brought face to face with the conclusion that upon the sacredness of property civilisation itself depends—the right of the laborer to his hundred dollars in the savings bank, and equally the right of the millionaire to his millions. To those who propose to substitute Communism for the intense Individualism the answer therefore is : The race has tried that. All progress from that barbarous day to the present time has resulted from its displacement. Not evil, but good, has come to the race from the accumulation of wealth by those who have the ability and energy that produce it. But even if we admit for a moment that it might be better for the race to discard its present foundation, Individualism—that is a nobler ideal that man should labor, not for himself alone, but in and for a brotherhood of his fellows, and share with them all in common, realising Swedenborg's idea of Heaven, where, as he says, the angels derive their happiness, not from laboring for self, but for each other—even admit all this, and a sufficient answer is, That is not evolution, but revolution. It necessitates the changing of human nature itself a work of æons, even if it were good to change it, which we cannot now. It is not practicable in our day or in our age. Even if desirable theoretically, it belongs to another and long-succeeding sociological stratum. Our duty is with what is practicable now; with the next step possible in our day and generation. It is criminal to waste our energies in endeavoring to uproot, when all we can profitably or possibly accomplish is to bend the universal tree of humanity a little in the direction most favorable to the production of good fruit under existing circumstances. We might as well urge the destruction of the highest existing type of man because he failed to reach our ideal as to favor the destruction of individualism, private property, the law of accumulation of wealth, and the law of competition; for these are the highest results of human experience, the soil in which society so far has produced the best fruit. Unequally or unjustly, perhaps, these laws sometimes operate, and perfect as they appear to the idealist, they are, nevertheless, like the highest type of man, the best and most valuable of all that humanity has yet accomplished.

 [TO BE CONTINUED ]

Tasmanian News (Hobart, Tas.), 26 August 1889 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article172872416

Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE has contributed the " Gospel of Wealth " to a London journal. He is effusively described as a " well-known Pittsburg ironmaster and millionaire." He is, in fact, an adventurous Scotsman who has made a fortune in America in one of the districts where it has been proved by tho Atlantic Monthly that the wages are paid on an extremely low scale, lower even than prevails in England. We certainly do not find fault with him for making the most of the country of his adoption, any more than we should blame him because of the land of his nativity. But Mr.ANDREW CARNEGIE, having now become an ironmaster and a millionaire, is inclined to lecture the whole world, and to tell every son of ADAM, rich or poor, exactly what he ought to do in his particular station. The wealthy are to learn their duties from him, and the poor are supposed to stand agape at the benefits he condescends to offer them. Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE is a man of wealth, and he poses before the world as if he were giving a donation to a Caledonian society and expecting the applause of the members. We have no doubt that the human race will rejoice in his patronage. But he once made a vain attempt to show Great Britain what her policy ought to be, and the effort was altogether in vain. We have some fears that the society of mankind may be equally perverse and stiff-necked.

A citizen of the United States, Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE believes in advertising, and he has contrived to get the marvellous announcement that his opinions are published " at the special " request of Mr. GLADSTONE." His views, suddenly blazoned forth upon the world under such auspices, certainly demand attention ; and we can hardly do more than state them briefly. Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE believes that there was a time in English history when the master and the workman stood together in the same social and political scale. If any students should think otherwise, if they should imagine that the master had a despotic power over his apprentices even to the extent of flogging them, then we may assume that he has missed Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE'S idea of the development of society. But we are certainly surprised to hear that this ideal condition of an equality between master and workman was utterly bad. Manufacturing, it seems, was badly done, and the prices were excessive. We forbear, of course, to refer to the splendid work that came from the British looms even before the introduction of steam, or to the silver work that was one of the glories of the older industrial London, or to many other things that might be noticed. We can only follow Mr. CARNEGIE in his breath-less progress to the unequal condition of the nineteenth century. At the present time we learn with gratitude that the best work is done at the cheapest possible rate, a statement that reminds us of a "selling-off advertisement." But unfortunately the equality between master and workman has disappeared. Society has to pay a very high price for the cheap articles that it enjoys. Men and women are grouped together into factories, and the old relationship between the employer and his work-people has disappeared. It seems, so far as we can gather, that Mr. CARNEGIE is not personally acquainted with all his workmen, and that to many of them the employer is a " mere myth," a man whom they never see, and whom they cannot know. The master makes a profit, and the men make their wages, and there is no bond between them. On the one side the successful Mr. CARNEGIE finds, what many industrial pioneers have never found, that wealth accumulates in the hands of the employer. On the other side, he wishes to give his patronage to the wage earners.

Having got so far, we should naturally imagine that the " ironmaster and millionaire " of Pittsburg would seek to cultivate the acquaintance of all his workmen. This, however, is only the device, we may suppose, of aristocrats, who invite their subordinates to Christmas dinners and other festivities. At any rate, it is far from the millionaire's thoughts. He has decided to settle the whole disputes between capital and labour in one brief article. And in the pursuit of knowledge regarding human society we must follow his ideas. He has discovered that society has progressed from socialism to individualism, the meaning of which we take to be that it has advanced from the tribal to the American millionaire system. He has discovered further that even in America, the land of large fortunes and a stringent law of inheritance, too much may be made of individualism. He feels it to be his duty, therefore, in the interest of a struggling humanity, to reconcile these two things. From Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE'S point of view the solution is very easy. There ought, of course, to be the fullest scope for individual effort and for money-making on the part of every citizen. It would be a total mistake to distribute wealth among the masses in small sums in the shape of increased labour or cheaper products. The average man could not put the money to the same beneficial uses as Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE, who is helping on the development of humanity. On this point we confess that his arguments are convincing. He cites the example of Cooper's Institute, and asks triumphantly whether the donor could have done the same amount of good if he had spent his money among the poor in his lifetime. He refers with equal gusto to Tildon's Library, and asks whether the same benefit would have accrued to the community if the giver had distributed his wealth in small sums. He tells us that money used in charity is generally badly spent, and that we should only help those who help themselves. On the whole, we come to the very comfortable doctrine, which we should support on other grounds, that the man who has the faculty of accumulating money should be allowed to do so, because in order to accumulate he must know how to employ it in profitable industries. So far we might sympathise with Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE'S triumph in his own arguments. There is no necessity for distributing any man's accumulated wealth. On the contrary, it is probably employed to the better advantage of the whole community than if it were broken up.

But now Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE branches off into his theory. The man who makes money should be left undisturbed, but his family should not inherit more than a competency, whatever that may mean. The "almighty dollar " is a blessing if you live for it and accumulate it ; it is a curse if you inherit it. This is the new gospel of wealth. Increase the death duties, the probate duties, according to Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE, and society will be at peace, and the millionaire and the pauper, the economist and the socialist, will dine together. It is difficult to say what society may do, but we venture to say that Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE'S vulgar and arrogant self-complacency is no solution of any difficulty whatever.

Argus (Melbourne, Vic. ), 31 August 1889 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article6275267

THE DESCENT OF MAN.

 A New Theory.

"The Mongol in Our Midst," by F. G. Crookshank. M.D., F.R.C.P., published by E. P. Dutton & Co., New York, is the third book in the "To-day and To-morrow" series of scientific monographs, from which we have come to expect some very daring and interesting speculations. The first was Professor J. B. S. Haldane's "Baealus," (says Burton Rascoe in the New York Herald Tribune"), wherein he envisaged a near-future when the population will be regulated by the manufacture of babies by ectogenesis, life will be entirely urban, all foods will be synthetic, and mankind will derive its heat, light and power from the wind. The second book "Icarus," by Bertrand Russell, the mathematician and moral philosopher, foretold cruel wars of competition and aggression until the United States of America will have controlled all the sources of economic power and laid the beginning of World State, which would be tyrannical at first and later establish international peace and liberal government.

 Very much as if he had felt called upon to go his predecessors in the series one better, Dr. Crookshank has written a book of a highly revolutionary character. True or false, it has vast anthropological, medical, biological and social significance, for the reason that Dr. Crookshank's eminence in his profession is such that his theories cannot be ignored, but must neither be accepted in part or in toto nor refused in part or in toto.

 White, Black, and Yellow Races. 

As a matter of general interest, it is probably important first to report that the book not only completely demolishes the notorious Lothrop-Stoddard-Madison theory of the superiority of the "Nordic blonds" but also turns the tables on the "Nordic" contenders with a vengeance. The smooth, dry, white, or sallow skin, straight, blond hair egg shaped cranial vaults and brachycephalic skulls which the Messrs. Stoddard and Grant would have us believe set the "Nordic" apart as superior being are really, according to Dr Crookshank, the stigmata of imbecility. Indeed, he quotes Dr. Reginald Langdon-Down and other members of the British Royal Society of Medicine in support of his contention that the only observed and recorded imbeciles have invariably revealed some of those identifying characteristics. There have been no recorded cases of Jewish imbeciles derived from unmixed Semitic stock. Atavism and degeneracy in the Semitic race, he contends, takes another form. That these men have no prepossessions or prejudices in the matter is obvious from the fact that they are themselves "Nordic."

 The hypotheses established by Dr. Crookshank and bulwarked by an impressive array of biological data are these:—There are three irreducible stocks in the human race—the white, black, and yellow. These are offshoots from three different stocks of primates, which also separately gave off the three different types of the great ape—the chimpanzee, the gorilla, and the orang-utan. The white race corresponds to and is descended from the same stock as the chimpanzee; the black race and the gorilla are from the same stock, and the yellow race is blood cousin to the orang-utan. The chimpanzee-white stock is highest in the scale of development: the gorilla-black stock is the lowest, and the orang-utan-yellow is intermediary. The chimpanzee-white stock includes the Semitic races and the so-called Indo-Aryans and so-called Caucasians. The Gorilla-black stock includes the negroes, bushmen, and Hottentots. The orang-utan-yellow stock includes the Chinese peoples, Siberians, Japanese, Eskimos, Malays, and Southern Mongols; and the North and South American Indians.

 The Mongol Type.

 The methods whereby he arrived at these conclusions are curious and intricate. In the first place, Robert Chambers, a precursor of Darwin, in 1844 had separated the human species into three divisions in a scale of development, putting the white race first, the yellow second, and the black third. Like the Fundamentalists, Chambers believed that the three races had derived from one primary human stock, but, unlike those who trace the three divisions back to the sons of Noah, he believed that the white race had developed through stages still represented by the yellow and black races. Chambers' monophyletic theory of the origins of the human race was outmoded, but in supporting it he compared the black race to the Caucasian foetus, the yellow race to the new-born infant and the white race to adult man, but, more importantly, he alleged that "parents too nearly related tend to produce offspring of the Mongolian type—that is, persons who in maturity still are a kind of children."

 The second factor in Dr. Crookshank's deductions was the discovery by Dr. Langdon-Down, a distinguished physician in London Hospital, that the majority of congenital idiots which had come under his observation possessed marked resemblances to racial Mongols. Dr. Langdon-Down's minute description of the Mongol type of imbecile gave currency to the descriptive "'Mongol imbecile" which is employed in hospitals for children and in asylums.

 The next point in Dr. Crookshank's deductions was his own observation of the high frequency among the English, French, and other peoples of Western Europe of persons who display the physical characteristics of the Mongolian races. "Adult Mongoloids are in England more numerous than might be thought," he writes, "and many sub-types may be distinguished. Roughly speaking, there is a high and a low grade. The low-grade individuals, who have almost always some simian stigmata rank among life's failures. A criminal doctor, a bankrupt parson or a more than commonly knavish solicitor is not infrequently of this class. The women are ineffectual persons, even in vice. Superficially attractive when young, after middle life they become myxoedematous, while their male homologues degenerate into paunchiness. Many such may be even in the shabby-genteel suburbs and in the country courts. Micawber was one of them and Dickens' description with Phiz's etchings serve well to illustrate one kind thereof. And again: "Mongoloids of the higher grade sometimes achieve marked success on the stage, in the professions, and even in Parliament. But they remain, in a very real sense, a race apart. For better or for worse, they are not quite as other men or women around them. They are, indeed, Mongols expatriate." A Mongoloid of the higher grade, according to Dr. Crookshank, is Clemenceau, accurately called "le vieux Tartar," who, upon his retirement from political life, appropriately devoted himself to the writing of Buddhist plays.

 Homologies Between Apes and Man.

 With these data in mind, Dr. Crookshank began to make comparative studies of the homologies between the three great apes and man. These homoiogies turned out to be not only morphologically significant, but also significant psychologically, physiologically, and functionally. Most important, perhaps, was his finding in regard to posture. The Mongolians in sitting down naturally arrange their lower limbs horizontally in the Buddha or hieractic position, one hand on a thigh and the other in the lap. The orang-utans alone amongst apes naturally place themselves in the Buddha or hieratic position and none other. The members of the black division of humanity arrange their lower limbs vertically, with knees brought together under the chin and spine curved, with the arms either resting on the knees or clasped around the knees. The only difference between the black and white divisions of humanity in the natural adoption of these postures is that with the blacks the ischial tuberosities rest on the ground, while with the others (commonly seen among the Polynesians, Egyptians, and the natives of India) the buttocks do not rest on the ground, and the individual is said to squat on his heels or on his hams. The gorilla commonly adopts the black variant of the vertical disposition of the lower limbs, while the chimpanzee commonly adopts the white variant.

 Other homologies traced minutely by Dr. Crookshank involve hand-markings and gestures as well as skeletonal and facial characteristics. They are too numerous to be taken up here: but important among them is the fact that the Mongols, the Mongolian imbeciles, and the Mongoloids usually display instead of a distinct "life line" and a distinct "head line" (in the phraseology of the palmists) one traverse line only and that among the great anthropoid apes this single transverse line is found in only one—the orang-utan. 

A Theory of Atavism. 

The next important discovery of Dr. Crookshank was that:— "Frequent among the white races generally there is a mental disorder, associated with certain marked physical characteristics, that occupies a middle place between acquired insanity and congenital imbecility and is known as dementia praecox. The persons so afflicted, if deprived of chairs or permitted to squat upon the ground, squat not as orang-utans or Mongols, but as chimpanzees. 

"But, if compelled to sit upon benches or chairs, the chimpanzee attitude becomes at once converted into what Dr. Steen has called the 'ancient Egyptian attitude.' It is interesting to note that, as a rule, in the apes, and in the dements, the arm arrangement (as sometimes in the Egyptian statues) is one of rigid symmetry. Yet, when the Egyptian artists desired to convey the idea of power or intelligence and a symmetrical disposition was featured, that is seen to say when a king is represented on a throne holding a sceptre in a semi-pronated right hand and an orb in a fully supinated right hand. Symmetry of disposition in respect to the arms, we must recognise as correlated with an arrest of mental activity. We see it in death, in idiocy, in senility and among the apes."

 From all this Dr. Crookshank proceeds to account for the frequent presence of "Mongolian imbeciles," and Mongoloids among the peoples of Western Europe on the theory that they are atavistic or reversionary offspring of debilitated or exhausted parents in whom can be traced an orang-mongol ancestry. The individuals afflicted with dementia praecox, on the other hand, are atavistic or reversionary offspring of chimpanzee white, or gorilla-black ancestry. However it may be said that there is no evidence that pure Semites ever gave birth to "Mongols, " and cases of Mongolian imbecility "are not seen among the blacks and are not known to occur among the Aryan populations of Asia, or even among the Arabs and pure Jews. They do occur, on the other hand, among those 'white' people, so generally spoken of as Nordic as Alpine, and as Mediterranean."

 By his placing this classification of white people within quotation marks it will be seen that Dr. Crookshank does not subscribe to a very general ethnic classification. Throughout his book he identifies the white race with the Semites: —"White—I am tempted to say Semitic, "what may be called the Semitic or Aryan variant," and "most profitably we may reduce the present and part racial types to three: Semite, Mongol, and negro. They are reflected for us in the chimpanzee, the orang, and the gorilla." In another place he says that if we are to reject the evidential value of the homologies between "the Semite and the chimpanzee, the Mongol and the orang, the negro and the gorilla . . . . we may as well adopt at once the hypothesis of belief of a creative origin, and a later dispersal into Semitic or 'white,' Hamitic, or black, and Japhetic, or yellow races." 

New Biological Classifications.

 Of the three great apes. Dr. Crookshank tells us that the chimpanzee is the most intelligent. The apes also have distinguishing marks of temperament, which is reflected in their faces, and also in the three faces of mankind. These three faces are described by Linnaeus as—

Homo Europaeus, Levis, argustus, inventor, regitur ritibus.

[The European man, light, clever, inventor, is governed by rituals.]

 Homo Asiaticus, Severus, fastuosus, avarus, regitur opiniouibus.

[The Asiatic man, Severus, is proud, avaricious, and governed by his opinions.]

 Homo Afer, Vafer, segnis, negligens regular arbitrio.

[A lazy, lazy man, neglectful of regular judgment.]

 "We can take our stand at Charing Cross," writes Dr. Crookshank among his interesting generalisations, "and can see these three faces of mankind born by native Londoners; we can visit our public asylums and see them in degraded form, and we can, at the Zoo and the Natural History Museum, see them caricatured by the noisy, mischievous and lascivious chimpanzee, the dignified, philosophic and self-sufficient orang, and the slow, cunning and brutal gorilla.

 "Everywhere among us do these types segregate out, seeking their appropriate milieu. Homer Afer find partners in the jazz-loving women of the night clubs; Homo Europaeus (regitur ritibus), is seen participating with his kind in social and religious ceremony at the Ritz and the Cathedral; and Homo Asiaticus, after predency among the elder statesmen, may retire to semi-monastic seclusion and write Buddhist plays.

 "The 'white' Hottentot Venus from the Midi still plies her trade in Soho; the 'ex-service man ' in the gutter exposes his frowsy cap for an obulus in the very attitude of the Hindu fakir and the asylum dement; in garrets at Chelsea clever people squat on cushions in a fashion that can be forecast from an examination of their heads, their eyes, their ears, their hands, and their ideas. . . .

 "Man because what he now is when he learned to set and really think how to act, and the ways in which men think are still indicated by the ways in which they sit when they think."

 It will be seen that Dr. Crookshank has devised not only an entirely new biological classification of the human race, but has also indicated new classifications of imbeciles, misfits, dements, and "queer" people of exceptional endowments and so has established a new scheme for classifying human ideas.

Advertiser (Adelaide, SA ),  1924, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article43247023

THE ASIATIC MENACE.

 "The Rising Tide of Color Against White-World Supremacy." By Lothrop Stoddard, A.M., Ph.D. with an introduction by Madison Grant. 

That the utmost anxiety is felt in the United States concerning the growing strength of Japan, has been very evident of recent years. The thesis of the author of this book, who is a distinguished graduate of Harvard University, and the author of several well-known books on international subjects, is that the white supremacy of the world is in danger, and that the threat of the colored races is a very real one. Under these circumstances, one would imagine that Americans, who, to a large extent, appear to share his fears, would show more practical sympathy with Great Britain in the difficulties she is encountering in respect to the government of Egypt, India, and Mesopotamia, to say nothing of the complications which have arisen in regard to former Turkish possessions nearer Constantinople. America had much to say concerning the persecutions of the Armenians, but she has done little or nothing to assist in their protection. Mr. Madison Grant, who writes the introduction to the present volume, is also a man of standing in America, and one of the books he has written is significantly entitled "The Passing of the Great Races."

 "More than a decade ago," says Mr. Stoddard, "I became convinced that the keynote of 20th century world politics would be the relations between the primary races of mankind." He refers to the fact that before the great war broke out, he wrote of the coming "conflict of color," and declared that great communities like the United States of America, the South African Confederation, and Australasia, regarded the color question as the gravest problem of the future. The frightful weakening of the white world during the war, he fears, has opened up revolutionary, even cataclysmic possibilities. He believes, however, that colored triumphs of arms subjugating white lands are even "less to be dreaded than more enduring conquests, like migrations, which would swamp whole populations and turn countries, now white, into colored men's lands irretrievably lost to the world." He considers that a candid discussion of the issues raised should be helpful at this juncture.

 Mr. Grant, in his introduction, summarises the biological and historical background of the subject. "To some," he says, "this book may seem unduly alarming, while others as the thread of logic unrolls may recoil from the logic of the deductions." If the predictions of Mr. Stoddard's book seem far-fetched, Mr. Grant reminds Americans, one has but to consider that four times since the fall of Rome has Asia conquered to the very confines of Nordic Europe. The backbone of Western civilisation, he asserts, is racially Nordic, and if this great race, with its capacity for leadership and fighting, should ultimately pass, with it would pass that which we call civilisation. As a safeguard he calls on the Nordic races to "strike off the shackles of an inveterate altruism, discard the vain phantom of internationalism, and reassert the pride of race and the right of merit to rule."

 The great hope of the future in America, continues Mr. Grant, lies in the realisation of the working class that competition of the Nordic with the alien is fatal, whether the latter be the lowly immigrant from southern or eastern Europe, or the more obviously dangerous Oriental, against whose standards of living the white man cannot compete.

 "We must look to such of our people— our farmers and artisans—as are still of American blood to recognise and meet this danger. Our present condition is the result of following the leadership of idealists and philanthropic doctrinaires, aided and abetted by the perfectly understandable demand of our captains of industry for cheap labor. Now that Asia in the guise of Bolshevism with Semitic leadership and Chinese executioners, is organising an assault upon Western Europe, the new States —Slavic-Alpine in race, with little Nordic blood —may prove to be not frontier guards of Western Europe, but vanguards of Asia in Central Europe. None of the earlier Alpine States have held firm against Asia, and it is more than doubtful whether Poland, Bohemia, Roumania, and Jugo-Slavia can face the danger successfully, now that they have been deprived of the Nordic ruling classes through democratic institutions. Democratic ideals among a homogeneous population of Nordic blood, as in England and America, are one thing, but it is quite another for the white man to share his blood with, or entrust his ideals to, brown, yellow, black, or red men. This is suicide pure and simple, and the first victim of this amazing folly will be the white man himself."

 Mr Stoddard is very much in earnest in his statement of the case for serious thought and resolute action. He divides his book into three parts—The Rising Tide of Color, the Ebbing Tide of White, and the Deluge on the Dikes—and he provides a copious index. Added interest is lent to the book by his quotation of the arguments in favor of a White Australia. He quotes Professor C. H. Pearson, well known in Australia over 30 years ago, and other trenchant writers. He also reproduces assertions by Asiatic and other colored writers. Professor Ryntaro Nagai (Japan) before the war wrote:— "The world was not made for the white races, but for the other races as well. In Australia, South Africa, Canada, and the United States there are vast tracts of unoccupied territory." Achmet Abdullah, an English-educated Afghan, shortly before the European war, inveighed against "racial prejudice, that cowardly, wretched caste-mark of the European, and the American, the world over," and predicted "a struggle between Asia, all Asia, against Europe and America. . . . An invasion of a new Attila and Tamerlane, who will use rifles and bullets, instead of lances and spears." The impassioned Afghan proceeds:—"You are deaf to the voice of reason and fairness, and so you must be taught with the whirring swish of the sword that is red."

 When the great war broke out, says Mr. Stoddard, '"through the bazaars of Asia ran the sibilant whisper, 'The East will see the West to bed.' The chorus of mingled exultation, hate, and scorn sounded from every portion of the colored world. Chinese scholars, Japanese professors, Hindu pundits. Turkish journalists, and Afro-American editors, one and all voiced drastic criticisms of white civilisation, and hailed the war as a well-merited Nemesis on white arrogance and greed." He quotes copious extracts from writings to prove his assertion. He points to the threatened anarchy in Egypt, and the unrest in India, despite "the fairness, honesty and general efficiency" of English rule, Mr. Stoddard lays stress also on the onward march of Islamism in Africa, and the growing sense of negro race "solidarity,'' but asserts that the real danger to white control of Africa lies not in brown attack or black revolt, but in possible white weakness, through chronic discord within the white world itself. The same remark is made in regard to Latin America, where with unity "white victory is sure."

 Mr. Stoddand draws from Professor Pearson many arguments concerning the adaptability of the Chinese and their capacity to work hard and live frugally. He quotes Professor Ross as saying that under good conditions the white man can beat the yellow man in turning out work, but under bad conditions the Chinese can beat the white man, because he can better endure spoiled food, poor clothing, foul air, noise, heat, dirt, discomfort, and microbes. Reilly can '"out-do"' Ah San, but Ah San can "under-live" Reilly. Mr. Stoddard tells of the startling growth of the Japanese in California and declares "the fruitfulness of the Japanese brides is almost uncanny." First come the men, then the picture brides, then the families. Two children of Japanese parentage are born in some districts of California for every white child! "And let not Europe, the white brood land, the heart of the white world, think itself immune," he cries. Mr. Stoddard repeats with enthusiasm the "White Australia" slogan, which "is not a political theory, but a gospel" He urges that some sort of provisional understanding should be arrived at between the white world and the renascent Asia. "Unless some such understanding is reached," he fears, "the world will drift into a gigantic race war." He also desires to limit the migration of lower human types (whites) into the United States, as "such migrations upset standards, sterilise better stocks, increase low types, and compromise national fitness more than war, revolutions, or native deterioration. "Such are the things which simply must be done if we are to get through the next few decades without convulsions which may render impossible the white world's recovery."

Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1889 - 1931), Saturday 16 April 1921,

CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNISM "HAVE BOTH FAILED''

 NOTED AMERICAN STATES HIS VIEWS

 Both Christianity and Communism had failed to solve modern man's problems, said Professor Clyde Kluckhohn at Armidale.

 Professor Kluchhohn, who is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Russian Research Centre at Harvard University, is visiting Australia to give the Dyason lectures for 1952.

He spoke on "Ways of Life in Conflict" to a meeting arranged at the Teachers' College by the Armidale branch of the Institute of International Affairs.

Professor Kluckhohn said that the Communist and Jewish-Christian conceptions of human nature had been incomplete and inaccurate. They had under- and over-estimated their materials and so their theories had not been workable. Each had failed in its highest aspirations.

 Professor Kluckhohn said he thought, however, there were good reasons for believing that the ideas which could build a new and better way of life for all humanity would come primarily from the West.

 "I do not think for a minute that the resources of Western thought are exhausted,'' he said. "They are merely, at present, too split and diversified.

"But our diversity is our strength as well as our weakness of the moment. Out of its many strands can come a more true and more powerful conception of that human nature upon which all ways of life must be erected."

 Communism or other forms of totalitarianism would unquestionably possess this earth unless we could quickly make our thinking right, eliminating some of the more glaring inconsistencies between scientific knowledge and popular thought, Professor Kluckhohn added. There was a  good chance a new ideological order could be built before it was too late.

 The beliefs that bound the West should not, however, be allowed to remain so implicit and unformulated and so backward-looking. We would lose the cold war and a possible hot war if we continued to fight with the technology of 1952, but with the ideas of 1852.

The fact that Communist ideology was itself terribly dated and scientifically unacceptable did not make it less threatening to the Democracies as a secular religion unless and until we could oppose to it a formulation that was equally impressive, equally coherent internally, but more soundly founded upon the facts of external and human nature.

 Professor Kluckhohn said he believed the dream of an eventual world order was not just a phantasy.

 "As a matter of fact," he said, "if one looks below the surface of current controversies , one can detect many agreements.

 "I have examined carefully certain utterances by Senator Robert Taft and Comrade Joseph Stalin in which each stated what he wanted for his people. There was amazing similarity, point by point. The disagreements were over the means by which these ends were to be attained. 

"Don't misunderstand me— I know that millions have perished in human history in quarrels over means. Nevertheless it remains important that men and women over the surface of this earth want pretty much the same, simple things — and their leaders know it.

 "Looking at it in anthropological perspective, the broad similarities are far more distinctive and striking than the differences.

 "Even in theory, the convergences between Marxism and Western social science are far greater than either side is willing to admit publicly these days."

 Dissatisfaction In Russia.

 Professor Kluckhohn spoke of the possibility of an uprising in Russia. Dissatisfaction created by the gap between expectation and reality was general throughout Soviet society, he said.

 The Russian people were dissatisfied with their low standard of living, with the power of the police, with the official intolerance of religion and with the lack of popular participation in Government.

 The instabilities of the govemmental system were, however, the only ones that could set off a major crisis under anything like the present conditions.

 The dissatisfactions could play an important part once there was an open struggle for power at the top. Then each conflicting group would bid for popular support to defeat its rivals.

 Only under these circumstances would the disaffection, which was undoubtedly already widespread, really count.

 "When, however, history offers to the Russian citizen the possibility of an alternative course which better suits his aspirations, it is altogether likely that he will seize it," Professor Kluckhohn declared.

 "Millions did even under the unpromising circumstances of German invasion."

 The Soviet way of life; Professor Kluckhohn added, was inherently unstable because it denied in practice the deepest human aspirations, because it was based on a false conception of human nature, because it throttled free scientific inquiry, and because the unity it purported to offer had disintegrated intellectually and had always been distorted in application.

 Communist philosophy, being the culmination of a long stream of thought leading from Plato to Hegel and other continental thinkers, placed a higher value on equality than on liberty. 

 It allowed restraints on personal liberty, provided these restraints were applicable to all equally. The central concept was what was good for society, not a concept of individual fulfilment or individual morality.

 The Anglo-American line on the other hand placed liberty higher than equality. It had traditionally restrained the legislature and the institutions rather than the individual. It had surrounded the individual with safeguards such as appeared, for example, in the Bill of Rights. These conceptions traced from the Stoic philosophers and from the notion proclaimed by 17th and 18th century English-speaking theologians that man's conscience required him to accept personal responsibility for his acts as a citizen.

 Bogus Promises

"From this situation arises the challenge of the Communist way of life to ours," said Professor Kluckhohn. "All the peoples of the world outside the Soviet orbit are to a greater or lesser degree confused as to what is a right way of thinking and a desirable way of living.

 "Despite the fact that the Heroic Age of Soviet Communism is over in its homeland, the slogans still have some pull among those who have not experienced the doubtful benefits of living under a police state regime. 

"The promises, however bogus, of orderly life and unity of thought have an unhealthy appeal for the disadvantaged, the frightened, the bewildered the worn out with struggle and disillusionment.

 "And not solely for these. Many Communists in France Italy, India, Africa and other parts of the world are genuine idealists in a way which we of the Anglo-Saxon tradition were once the real revolutionary idealists of the world.

 "The idealism of Communists outside Russia is misplaced and naive; naive because of what has actually gone on in all countries where Communism has been put into practice. Misplaced because Marxism as a system of thought has disintegrated.

 "Nevertheless the humanitarian aspirations of the old Marxism still exert a powerful appeal. And intellectual idealists continue to believe that they have in the worldly religion of Communism an answer to the meaningless chaos and confusion that they have seen. They are stirred by the comprehensiveness and explicitness of the scheme.

 "Hence men and women are both pushed towards Communism by fright and bewilderment and pulled to it by motives that can only be described honestly as idealistic."

 "Something Wrong Somewhere."

 In the discussion that followed Professor Kluckhohn's lecture, Dean M. K. Jones said he felt it was man, not Christianity, that had failed. Man had misinterpreted Christianity.

 Professor Kluckhohn replied: "I grant you that true Christianity has not been applied yet. You say it is man, not Christianity, that has failed. Yes, that may be so, but it seems that if after 2000 years Christianity has been applied only by a very, very few select souls, then there must be a huge gap between the human material and the lofty ethic. There is something: wrong somewhere.

 "It seems perfectly clear that Christianity is not going to save us in our present crisis. If it does, it will do so only after the worst holocaust the world has ever seen. As an anthropologist, I can't get around that one. 

"It is my unhappy conclusion that the present Christian Churches are not going to bring order to the diverse cultures of the world.

 ''The Churches not only want to teach heathens the gospel, but they want to destroy the heathen's way of life root and branch. I cannot see that this will work.

 "I am forced by historical fact to the conclusion that, despite the nobility of the four gospels, no peoples known to history have been as murderous and destructive as Christian peoples have been."

 Chairman of the meeting was Mr. E. W. Dunlop, president of the Armidale branch of the Institute for International Affairs. A vote of thanks to Dr. Kluckhohn was moved by Dr. R. B. Austin and Mr. E. J. Tapp.

Uralla Times (NSW ), 11 September 1952  http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article175993992

CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM.

 [By Rev. A.C. SUTHERLAND, M.M., B.D.]

The dullest eye among us cannot but discern the existence everywhere of a social disunion of the same kind as that which alarmed St. Paul at Corinth, and against which he so powerfully expostulated and argued, The schism in the Corinthian Church was something quite distinct from party spirit, in which men range themselves under special leaders to give effect to special views, without in any way endangering organic unity. In such a conflict the " base and the honorable," to quote Isaiah, the noble and the peasant, the rich man and the poor, may serve under the same banner. But matters assume a very different complexion when the cause of disunion is found to be, not differences between man and man in the exercise of their reason, but differences between orders, ranks, classes as such. Obviously the struggle in this case will be more terrible, more war to the death, than in the other. St. Paul felt this, and put forth his full strength to avert the calamity.

 At Corinth this disunion, this war of classes arose, because on the one hand the great in gifts, in money, in authority, were contemptuous to those who had no genius, no place or office ; and on the other these last felt that as matters stood they did not belong to the body, had none of its privileges ; that, in short, for them there was no body.

 Now what is the position of our civilisation at this moment ? The democracy has secured after a hard struggle its political emancipation —its right to govern itself. But as usual the visions of regeneration, of peace and plenty, have not been realised. Reform Bills have not filled all our larders, have not rid the land of misery, of want, oppression, and injustice. From the hovel of the farm laborer, and from the foul lanes of our great cities is heard a cry like the cry from the clay pits of Egypt. Of old the remedy was supposed to lie in the abolition of privilege; now the remedy is sought for in making the Government do the work now done by our merchants, manufacturers, farmers, butchers, and costermongers. Not long since men thought they were serving humanity by pulling the strong teeth of the central power, but now they are to be sharpened. Now this tremendous change of feeling is not without reason. No one is quite satisfied with the existing state of society—not the wage-receiver, not the capitalist, for he is not without his anxieties in presence of the mutterings of discontent heard on every side. Listen to the indictment which the great founder of modern socialism, Karl Marx, brings against society as now constituted. " Within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiveness of labor are brought about at the cost of the individual laborer; all means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over and exploitation of the producers; they mutilate the laborer into fragments of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labor process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labor process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness ; they transform his lifetime into working-time, and drag his wife and child under the wheels of the Juggernaut of Capital. . . . . The law, finally, that always equilibrates the relative surplus population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation; this law rivets the laborer to capital more firmly than did the wedges of Vulcan Prometheus to the rocks. It establishes an accumulation of misery corresponding with an accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is therefore at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation at the opposite pole."

 Now in this powerful and lurid description of the laboring classes there is enough of truth to sting and to make us uneasy; but it is a manifest exaggeration, and as applied to labor as a whole even false. Still when one calls to mind the fact that in a city like Glasgow some 40 per cent. of the population live in dwellings of one room, and tries to imagine what is implied in that fact, we shall not be surprised that the system under which it is possible should be denounced by earnest men, who seek to raise the fallen and let the sunshine in to their dark haunts. Socialism there draws its strength from thwarted aspirations, and from the seething mass of human misery, bodily and mental, whose presence chills our enjoyments at the feast of civilisation.

 I am not going to trouble you with a definition of Socialism. That would not help us much. Our working classes have secured their political rights, political equality, and power to vote, none making them afraid. They have also won at a great price the right to combine for their own protection against the power of capital, and so have razed to the ground much of its former tyranny and even cruelty. Then education, cheap literature, public discussion in the press and on the platform, have awakened in the minds of our toilers new desires, new tastes, a higher sense of comfort and refinement. But, toil as they may, they feel that the vast majority are doomed to be shut out from the sweetness, culture, and fullness of life, which the more fortunate few have within their reach. So they are in revolt, as is too manifest, against the existing social relations, political and spiritual; and the remedy is Socialism. The laborer feels that much of his labor goes to feed and clothe those who don't labor in his sense, or indeed in any sense. Thus he is not only hungry, badly clothed, badly housed, but what is more intolerable he knows or believes that his misery is due not to the nature of things, but to downright injustice. He has been taught that it is all a question of supply and demand, of the strong and energetic against the weak and listless. So the laborer looks to the strong hand of the State to help him in his need. He calls upon the State to redress social inequalities, as it has already redressed political inequalities. This is to be effected by making land and capital the property of the community, thus sweeping away profit, interest, rent, leaving to the individual only what he actually earns by hand or head. A man under this regime might possess a razor to shave, but not a plough or a spinning-wheel— these two being instruments of production.

 This view of social life is now an actual force in our modern world, and a very potent force. Even where it is not accepted it is influential and operative. It has passed beyond the stage of neglect and ridicule, and has reached the field of serious conflict. In its ranks are to be found men of profound speculative grasp, of creative genius, and of warm piety. Statesmen are advocating its claims in the Senate, poets are insinuating its doctrines in melodious verse, and it is no longer a stranger even in great universities. It has produced a literature great in quantity and brilliant in quality. It has its newspapers and periodicals in abundance. Whatever we may think of its soundness or practicability it cannot be ignored, either by the Church or the State. Many good men hold it is true that the Church as a spiritual agency should stand aloof from politics. But Presbyterianism has from the first striven to influence and mould the whole national life, and not without success. We shall be unworthy of our history if we retire to our spiritual homes and let the issue be decided without us.

  With regard to the relation of Christianity and Socialism, they have much in common. To disown Adam Smith is not of necessity to disown Christ, though by the way Adam Smith does not teach absolute competition, but competition conditioned by justice between man and man, which justice the State is to enforce Christianity then in my opinion has nothing but blessings to bestow on socialism, in so far as it is in the first place an expression of intense sympathy with the hard and cheerless lot of vast numbers of those who do the drudgery work of the world, and in no far as it is a protest against those who lie upon beds of ivory, drink wine in bowls, but are not grieved for the afflictions of Joseph. The whole Bible is one long demand for justice to the poor and the needy, especially when they are the victims of social arrangements. The young lion is roaring for his prey, and much of that roar the gospel does not condemn but welcomes, and gives due warning to those who would in their strength and self-indulgence or ambition put him off with pleasant words. Socialism does well in thundering in the ears of Dives that there is a Lazarus outside his palace gates to whom the law of supply and demand does not apply and ought not to be applied, but who has a claim of a quite different kind. The gospel is distinctly, and indeed in an awful way, upon the side of Lazarus. It tacitly enforces that a man may fall into a condition so terrible as to make the ministration of the brute creation a grateful service, through not fault of his own, neither through idleness, nor intemperance, nor want of foresight, nor thrift, but simply through the visitation of God, or through circumstances which hold him in their strong meshes. Many comfortable people imagine that all misery is in some form sin. Socialism points out with power that the sin often lies at the door, not of the famishing wretch, but at a door much more respectable and higher up the street. The gospel seeks to abolish hunger and nakedness and misery, stuntedness of soul and of body, and so far as Socialism has this end we can only wish it God speed, and take our share in the work of leading men from the arid deserts into a land flowing with milk and honey.

 But, secondly, Socialism is in the same ranks with Christianity when it loudly protests against a pessimistic and fatalistic acquiescence in wretchedness from whatever cause "Whatever is is best," is a maxim hateful to Isaiah and Karl Marx alike. In so far as Socialism preaches hope for humanity it forsakes paganism and appropriates the spirit of Christ. Every Christian should welcome the energy with which it insists on the possibility of cleansing our human styes, of clothing naked backs, and of filling empty stomachs and still more empty souls.

 Thirdly, Socialism is Christian in so far as it asserts that the weal of the individual is contingent on the weal of the society. Especially valuable is the teaching of the Old Testament in this connection, and should be carefully studied by us all. Under the ancient dispensation the salvation of the individual was scarcely possible even in thought, apart from the salvation of the nation. Christianity has of course modified and purified that doctrine, but has not destroyed it; and Carlyle taught us long ago that if we don't recognise our brother by sharing our wine and milk and oil with him he will prove his brotherhood with us by compelling us to share with him his cholera and typhus.

 Fourthly, Socialism is Christian in its attacks on the principles underlying the maxim —" May I not do what I will with my own ?" I quote tho words not in the sense in which they were used by Christ as a defence of generosity in giving another more than he had earned. Socialism demands that this "my own" give an account—how did it come? what share have others in it? have their claims been recognised? is its enjoyment the misery of others? its glory their shame? People dare not now speak on this point as they did even a quarter of a century ago. I can myself remember a respected county gentleman saying on the hustings, in response to some heckling land reformer, that when the leases of his tenants should expire he had a perfect moral as well as legal right to turn them all out and plant his fields with furze. Law has already invaded his legal right, and public opinion, in the formation of which Socialism has had no mean influence, has made the moral right a very shadowy one. The Socialist in this case wears a portion of the mantle of Moses and St. James. Both put very practical limits on this "my own" principle. Both sought to check its tendency to excessive accumulation and to irresponsible use. The law of inheritance, the law of interest, the Sabbatic year of the jubilee, the law of pledges, take great liberties with private property. There laws are not binding on us, and 'twere folly to imitate them. I may say here that the land question is a moral question, and not merely an economic or political one. Scotch crofters and the slums of Edinburgh, where I labored for some time, and where I have seen 143 people living under the same roof, some at them down in the bowels of the earth, and others familiar with the whistlings of the east wind at an elevation which would make a rook giddy, lead me to hold that speculation in land in immoral, and is the cause of immorality. The recent revelations in Melbourne has confirmed the faith of my youth. Let us have a jubilee of some kind to check this disastrous trafficking with a view to a gain which has not really been earned, and which has corrupted many not ignoble men. The Socialist has drawn attention to St James, and though Luther called his letter one of straw, the madness of the prophet has been rebuked by the Socialistic ass, in this case more familiar with the angel of God than the leader of the Reformation. The teaching of the New Testament on health has not been so thoroughly assimilated by the Christian Church as much of the rest of its teaching. Compare the feeling of men in general with respect to covetousness and intemperance. Does that feeling reflect the teaching of Christ and His apostles. I much doubt. We shall have good cause to thank Socialists if they lead us to give the same prominence as the New Testament to the horror and mischievousness of the sin which has possession of its sphere.

 It is with feelings of regret that after having marched so far under the banner of Socialism one finds himself constrained to fall out of the ranks and become a critic with doubts in his mind rather than an unquestioning follower. I am afraid that taken as a whole, though not without earnest exceptions, popular Socialism is not in sympathy with Christianity, either in its methods or its motives. True! what goes under the name of Christian Socialism, so far from denying Christianity, affirms that it is the ripe fruit of Christianity; that only as Socialism becomes established can the redemption of Christ have free course and be glorified among men. Much of what may be said will not apply to the Christian Socialist. Significantly enough the hardest blows the Christian Socialist gets in the way of argument and ridicule come from Socialists and not from so-called individualists. It is too manifest that the great majority of Socialists are not only opposed to Christianity, but are inspired with a fanatical zeal in seeking to erase it from among men. One says "I will relate how I left the Church and became a Socialist. I discovered that my belief gave me never anything to eat. With five hungry children about me this argument was conclusive." Hear what another says;—" To suppress religion which promises an illusory happiness is to establish the claims of real happiness, for to demonstrate the non-existence of these illusions tends toward suppressing a state of things which requires illusions for maintaining its own existence."—(Benoit Malon.) The name doctrine is graphically put by George Eliot in the mouth of Felix Holt:—" They'll supply us with a religion, like everything else, and get a profit on it; they'll give us plenty of heaven —we may have land there. That is the sort of religion they like —a religion that gives a working man heaven and nothing else. But we'll offer to change with them. Well give them back some of their heaven, and take it out in something for us and our children in this world"—a social organisation of labor, resting on materialism, with no room for God or worship, and whose promised land is temporal prosperity at as little personal toil as possible, and with no care. But further, if Christianity is offensive to the intellectual conclusions of the prevailing Socialism, if it furnishes no bread for hungry stomach, it is also a stumbling-block to the moral sense of its leading advocates. They tell us that the worship of Ceres or Bacchus could not be more repugnant to the feelings of the early Christians than Christianity is in our time to those who look for salvation to the transfer of capital from the individual to the State Parodying one of our Lord's fundamental utterances they say ye cannot serve "God" and humanity. The only hopeful thing about this coarse materialism is that its acceptance by men, at least not for long, is impossible. No Socialism can rid our life of accident, of pain, of sin, of remorse, and fatalism does not speak to the heart in its captivity. Human nature, we may be sure, though it may be thrown into revolt and confusion for the moment, will ever find its hope in the cross.

 But even where Socialism is not a denial of Christianity and its spiritual postulates, but the reverse, it seems to me that in its very nature it is opposed to the spirit of Christ. Let me present a brief discussion and defence of this somewhat strong statement. 1. Socialism would seem to revive the conditions of the ancient world which were swept away, in measure at least, by His gospel. In paganism the individual had to a great extent no rights as against the State, especially no rights so far as the free expression of his inner life was concerned. Like nature it was careful of the type, but allowed the individual to wither. But it is of more importance to call to mind that Judaism, with its minute and elaborate regulation of the whole, or at any rate a great part of a man's life, became an intolerable burden to the noblest minds among its children. At every point they were met with rule this and rule that, so that spontaneity of service was impossible, making life grievous to the conscientious, and leading those who were otherwise to a perfunctory and casuistical formalism. It is of course not denied but asserted that this severe and minute discipline imposed upon men from a central source had its uses, and issued in characters of the highest order, in all spheres of human life, public and private, civil and religious, industrial and military. But it was not and could not be final. It was for the schoolboy and not for the mature man. Nor is it forgotten that it dealt largely with matters which Socialism ignores ; that it does not give the same prominence to food and clothing, shelter and amusement, that Socialism does. It sought its end by regulation from without—so does Socialism. It failed, and could not but fail, when the fulness of time came and men ceased to be children, or soldiers merely accustomed to take orders from their superiors. It is significant that Socialists see in the army a model of what life should be generally. Our soldiers are relieved from all care regarding their daily bread, their tailor's bill, and their rents. This discipline gives us men ready to dare anything or go anywhere. Heroism, in short, is the child of the drill-sergeant and a national commissariat. A similar regime applied to life generally would secure similar desirable results. But would it? I don't wait to point out that no army can, like a democracy, be a government for the army and by the army. If it were I venture to say that the first ballot would dissolve every army in Europe, and its members would prefer the risk of starvation and of a patched coat with a free life to the comfort which necessitates the subjection of the will and intellect to regulations from without. Desertion even is not uncommon, not only on the part of the forced conscript, and in the Socialistic army we should be all forced conscripts, but even on the part of the volunteer. Now, I admit that drill and the negation of spontaniety which it involves develops strength of character along certain lines, but does not do so along all the lines of our humanity. But as Christ came to make us perfect this regimentalism cannot be his method, as indeed it is not. To reach his end, personal freedom, personal responsibility, contact with risk of loss, of danger, of poverty, are essential. Not that he makes liberty an end in itself, but rather a means toward attaining the perfection of our being, and of subduing our circumstances to aid us and not to hinder us in this supreme object. Socialism is a beggarly element in what pertains to the higher things of the spirit.

 But Socialism sins in another way against the Gospel of Christ. It practically denies a difference of faculty in men, and so explains our social inequalities to be the result of arbitrary injustice. All men are brethren in Christ. True, but as in nature one star differs from another in glory, and that by the decree of the Almighty, so there is a brother of low degree and a brother of higher degree—one member of the body to honor and another comparatively speaking to dishonor. Now the Gospel teaches that this inferior member is to have more abundant honor, but never that it is to be put absolutely on the same level with the superior, nor that it is of the same value with the superior. This may seem harsh to those who have not the higher gifts, but facts are facts, whatever may be our feelings. This arrangement of high and low is God's arrangement, and it is absurd as well as sinful to resent it. Indeed, Socialism itself could not live without respecting it In theory the shoemaker may be as valuable to the State as the Prime Minister, the simple member of the church as an apostle, the hodman as the skilled physician, the clerk as the poet, but in practice the thing would be impossible. Does Socialism really think that there would be no scramble under its regime to drop the pick and shovel and secure a place among its vast array of governing officers, and that there would be no sulking among the dis appointed or among those ordered by authority to serve at the forge or the mine. On this rock Socialism would go to pieces. The Gospel, truer to nature, recognises destinations springing from higher gifts, but takes care to teach that they are to be used for the help of the lesser gifted. It knows nothing of a levelling equality, which only breeds envy, rebellion, and a sinful discontent, though there is a discontent that is not sinful, but praiseworthy, because it is the starting point towards higher things.

 Once more Socialism, not merely on the part of its wilder and more reckless advocates, but through some of its most scientific exponents, teach doctrines regarding the family which subvert the deliverances of Christianity on this grave matter. It permits the dissolution of family ties for reasons which the Christ does not recognise as valid. Further, Socialism denies not only the competency of parents to educate their children as good citizens ought to be educated, but also their right and responsibility in the matter. Their nurture as to its methods and end must be determined by the State. If religion is regarded as a necessary factor in education the form of that religion would rest with the secular power. One need not add that the New Testament contemplates a very different relation between parent and child.

 Further Socialism is at variance with Christianity in its doctrine as to the inherent degradation of laboring for wages. We have every reason to believe that our Lord gave the labor of his hands for wages, and that not to the State, but to the individual who might require it He speaks much about the right use of money, directly and in parable, but never drops a hint that there is anything sinister in the idea of hired labor, whether regarded from the point of view of the hirer or the hired. Of course this does not imply that the actual relation between the two is in practice what it ought to be.

 There is another aspect of Socialism which the followers of Jesus Christ cannot but regards with aversion—its relation to liberty of conscience. The Fabian Essays foretell that one of the changes to be effected by Socialism will be the inevitable reconstitution of the State Church on a democratic basis, so that the possibility opens up of the election of an avowed Freethinker like Mr. Bradlaugh and John Morley to the Deanery of Westminster. They are kind enough to tell us that this will not take place until the settlement of the bread-and-butter question leaves men free to use and develop our higher faculties. Now, there is nothing here of that foaming hatred to Christianity which is cherished by the great body of Socialists. Nevertheless it anticipates State control of other things than the instruments of production. The Church is not to be co-ordinate with the State, but a creation and so a creature of the State. This is pure and undiluted paganism. Christianity is not Democracy—Jesus Christ is King, absolute King of His Church, and not a President voted to His exalted position. It is very significant that Socialists see much to admire, not in the faith of the medieval Church, but in its all embracing organisation, surrounding men everywhere as closely as the atmosphere. It is equally significant that they refer to Protestantism in terms which might be borrowed from an Anglo-Catholic priest, or even Pio Nono of pious memory. Will there be room for Socrates, for St Peter, for Knox, for Cranmar, for non juring bishops under this new democratic Catholicism of politicians? My soul, come not thou into their secret. It is significant, too, that many great intellects who felt that men could not be managed without the drill-sergeant, inclined to intolerance. Plato, in his old age, forgot his " defence of Socrates." and insisted on putting to death those who should introduce new doctrines in politics or religion. T. Carlyle had, I fear, more faith in the police than in the preacher as an agent in human progress.

 Lastly, experience and the teaching of Christ are at one in condemning the excessive hopes which Socialism builds in State regulation for the amelioration of man's outward and inward life. The settlement of the bread and butter question on Socialistic lines will not issue in a Paradise of peace and plenty, of culture and energy. What do we see at this moment among ourselves? Trades unions among our working men failing to attract a majority of themselves, while their indirect result is to band employers together as one man. Trades unions are feeling that they can't attain their end on materialistic grounds; that the moral element must come into play. Promises of more bread and more butter fail to influence many laborers as the trades unions desire, because a present sacrifice of purse and will is demanded.

 The Gospel is clear—that given all possible external advantages these are not enough to make either a man or a nation what they ought to be. There is the awful fact of sin to be reckoned with. Life is developed, not by bread and butter settlements, but from within. Till the kingdom of God is in men's hearts it will never hold sway over their circumstances.

Advertiser (Adelaide, SA ), Tuesday 18 October 1892,

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/25339682