Human Traits and their Social Significance Part 22

[Footnote 2: It has been said that a custom repeated on a college campus two years in succession const.i.tutes a tradition.]

CHANGE SYNONYMOUS WITH EVIL. Change, again, may be discouraged by those who hold, with more or less sincerity, that no good can come of it. Such a position may, and frequently is, maintained by those in whom fortunate accident of birth, favored social position, exuberant optimism, or a stanch and resilient faith, induces the belief that the social order and social practices, education, law, customs, economic conditions, science, art, _et al._, are completely satisfactory. Like Pippa, in Browning's poem, they are satisfied that "G.o.d's in His Heaven; all's right with the world." That there are no imperfections, in manners, politics, or morals, in our present social order, that there are no improvements which good-will, energy, and intelligence can effect, few will maintain without qualification. To do so implies, when sincere, extraordinary blindness to the facts, for example, of poverty and disease, which, though they do not happen to touch a particular individual, are patent and ubiquitous enough. In the face of undeniable evils the position that the ways we have inherited are completely adequate to our contemporary problems cannot be ingenuously maintained.

The position more generally expounded by the opponents of change is that our present modes of life give us the best possible results, considering the limitations of nature and human nature, and that the customs, inst.i.tutions, and ideas we now have are the fruits of a ripe, a mellow, and a time-tested wisdom, that any radical innovations would, on the whole, put us in a worse position than that in which we find ourselves.

Persons taking this att.i.tude discount every suggested improvement on the ground that, even though intrinsically good, it will bring a host of inevitable evils with it, and that, all things considered, we had better leave well enough alone.

Some extreme exponents of this doctrine maintain, as did some of the Hebrew prophets, that whatever evils are ours are our own fault, that fault consisting in a lapse from the accustomed ancient ways. To continue without abatement the established ways is the surest road to happiness. Education, social customs, political organization, these are sound and wholesome as they are; and modification means interference with the works and processes of reason.

"All Nature is but art, unknown to thee; All chance, direction, which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood; All partial evil, universal good; And spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right."[1]

[Footnote 1: Pope: _Essay on Man_, epistle I, lines 289 ff.]

Later Hegel developed an elaborate philosophy of history in which he tried to demonstrate that the history of the past was one long exemplification of reason; that each event that happened was part of the great cosmic scheme, an indispensable syllable of the Divine Idea as it moved through history; each action part of the increasing purpose that runs through the ages. That these contentions are, to say the least, extreme, will appear presently in the statement of the opposite position which sees nothing in the past but a long succession of blunders, evils, and stupidities.

"ORDER" _VERSUS_ CHANGE. Finally, genuine opposition to change arises from those who fear the instability which it implies.

Continuation in established ways makes for integration, discipline, and stability. It makes possible the converging of means toward an end, it c.u.mulates efforts resulting in definite achievement. In so far as we do accomplish anything of significance, we must move along stable and determinate lines; we must be able to count on the future.[1] It has already been pointed out that it is man's docility to learning, his long period of infancy[2] which makes his eventual achievements possible. But it is man's persistence in the habits he has acquired that is in part responsible for his progress.

In individual life, the utility of persistence, and concentration of effort upon a definite piece of work, have been sufficiently stressed by moralists, both popular and professional.

"A rolling stone gathers no moss," is as true psychologically as it is physically. Any outstanding accomplishment, whether in business, scholarship, science, or literature, demands perseverance in definite courses of action. We are inclined, and usually with reason, to suspect the effectiveness of a man who has half a dozen professions in half as many years. Such vacillations produce whimsical and scattered movements; but they are fruitless in results; they literally "get nowhere."

[Footnote 1: The uncertainty that business men feel during a presidential campaign is an ill.u.s.tration.]

[Footnote 2: See _ante_, p. 10.]

Just as, in the case of individuals, any significant achievements require persistent convergence of means toward a definite end, so is it in the case of social groups. No great business organizations are built up through continual variations of policy. Similarly, in the building up of a university, a government department, a state, or a social order, consecutive and disciplined persistence in established ways is a requisite of progress. Without such continuous organization of efforts toward fixed goals, action becomes frivolous and fragmentary, a wind along a waste. The history of the English people has elicited the admiration of philosophers and historians because it has been such a gradual and deliberate movement, such a measured and certain progress toward political and social freedom. To those who appreciate the value of unity of action, of the a.s.sured fruits of c.u.mulative and consistent action along a given path, change as such seems fraught with danger. Nor is it specific dangers they fear so much as the loss of moral fiber, the scattering of energies, the waste and futility that are frequently the net result of casual driftings with every wind that blows. No one has more eloquently expressed this view than Edmund Burke in his _Reflections on the French Revolution:_

But one of the first and most leading principles on which the commonwealth and the laws are consecrated, is lest the temporary possessors and life-renters in it, unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors, or of what is due to their posterity, should act as if they were the entire masters; that they should think it among their rights to cut off the entail, or commit waste on the inheritance, by destroying at their pleasure the whole original fabric of their society; hazarding to leave to those who come after them a ruin instead of a habitation--and teaching these successors as little to respect their contrivances, as they had themselves respected the inst.i.tutions of their forefathers. By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways, as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would be little better than the flies of a summer.

To avoid, therefore, the evils of inconstancy and versatility, ten thousand times worse than those of obstinacy and the blindest prejudice, we have consecrated the state, that no man should approach to look into its defects or corruptions, but with due caution; that he should never dream of beginning its reformation by its subversion; that he should approach to the faults of the state as to the wounds of a father, with pious awe and trembling solicitude.[1]

[Footnote 1: Edmund Burke: _Reflections on the French Revolution_ (George Bell & Sons, 1888), pp. 366-68.]

PERSONAL OR CLa.s.s OPPOSITION TO CHANGE. Sincere fear of the possible evils of novelty in the disorganization which it promotes, habituation to established ways, or a sentimental and aesthetic allegiance to them--all these are factors that determine genuine opposition to change. But aversion to change may be generalized into a philosophical att.i.tude by those who have special personal or cla.s.s reasons for disliking specific changes. The hand-workers in the early nineteenth century stoned the machinists and machines which threw them out of employment. Every change does discommode some cla.s.s or cla.s.ses of persons, and part of the opposition to specific changes comes from those whom they would adversely affect.

It is not surprising that liquor interests should be opposed to prohibition, that theatrical managers should have protested against a tax on the theater, or those with great incomes against an excess profits tax. Selfish opposition to specific changes is, indeed, frequently veiled in the disguise of plausible reasons for opposition to change in general. Those who fear the results to their own personal or cla.s.s interests of some of the radical social legislation of our own day may disguise those more or less consciously realized motives under the form of impartial philosophical opposition to social change in general.

They may find philosophical justification for maintaining unmodified an established order which redounds to their own advantage.

UNCRITICAL DISPARAGEMENT. The other extreme is represented by the position that old things are bad because they are _old_, and new things good because they are _new_. This is ill.u.s.trated in an extreme though trivial form by faddists of every kind. There are people who chiefly pride themselves on being up-to-the-minute, and exhibit an almost pathological fear of being behind the times. This thirst for the novel is seen on various levels, from those who wear the newest styles, and dine at the newest hotels, to those who make a point of reading only the newest books, hearing only the newest music, and discussing the latest theories. For such temperaments, and more or less to most people, there is an intrinsic glamour about the word "new." The physical qualities that are so often a.s.sociated with newness are carried over into social and intellectual matters, where they do not so completely apply.

The new is bright and unfrayed; it has not yet suffered senility and decay. The new is smart and striking; it catches the eye and the attention. Just as old things are dog-eared, worn, and tattered, so are old inst.i.tutions, habits, and ideas. Just as we want the newest books and phonographs, the latest conveniences in housing and sanitation, so we want the latest modernities in political, social, and intellectual matters.

Especially about new ideas, there is the freshness and infinite possibility of youth; every new idea is as yet an unbroken promise. It has not been subjected to the frustrations, disillusions, and compromises to which all theory is subjected in the world of action.[1] Every new idea is an experiment, a possibility, a hope. It may be the long-awaited miracle; it may be the prayed-for solution of all our difficulties.

[Footnote 1: "Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible; but the world of pure reason knows no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the creative activity embodying in splendid edifices the pa.s.sionate aspiration after the perfect from which all great work springs. Remote from human pa.s.sions, remote even from the pitiful facts of nature, the generations have gradually created an ordered cosmos, where pure thought can dwell as in its natural home, and where one, at least, of our n.o.bler impulses can escape from the dreary exile of the actual world." (Bertrand Russell: _Mysticism and Logic_, pp. 60-61.)]

This susceptibility to the novel is peculiarly displayed by those who see nothing but evil in the old. Against the outworn past with its disillusions, its errors, its evils, and its hypocrisies, the new shines out in glorious contrast. There are persons who combine a very genuine sense of present evils with a resilient belief in the possibilities of change. The cla.s.sic instance of this is seen in the Messianic idea. Even in the worst of times, the pious Jew could count on the saving appearance of the Messiah. Every Utopian is as sure of the salvation promised by his prize solution as he is of the evils which it is intended to rectify. The ardent Socialist may equally divide his energies between pointing out the evils of the capitalist system, and the certain bliss of his Socialist republic. The past is nothing but a festering ma.s.s of evils; industry is nothing but slavery, religion nothing but superst.i.tion, education nothing but dead traditional formalism, social life nothing but hypocrisy.

Where the past is so darkly conceived, there comes an uncritical welcoming of anything new, anything that will take men away from it. Nothing could be worse than the present or past; anything as yet untried may be better. As Karl Marx told the working cla.s.ses: "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win."

The past is, by its ruthless critics, conceived not infrequently as enchaining or enslaving. Particularly, the radical insists, are men enslaved by habits of thought, feeling, and action which are totally inadequate to our present problems and difficulties. War-like emotions, he points out, may have been useful in an earlier civilization, but are now a total disutility. Belief in magic may have been an a.s.set to primitive man in his ignorance; it is not to modern man with his science.

The inst.i.tution of private property may have had its values in building up civilization; its utility is over. We still make stereotyped and archaic reactions where the situation has utterly changed. The inst.i.tutions, ideas, and habits of the past are at once so compelling and so obsolete that we must make a clear break with the past; we must start with a clean slate. To continue, so we are told, is merely going further and further along the wrong paths; it is like continuing with a broken engine, or without a rudder.

CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE PAST. That both positions just discussed are extreme, goes without saying. The past is neither all good nor all bad; it has achieved as well as it has erred. But it is, in any case, all we have. Without the knowledge, the customs, the inst.i.tutions we have inherited, we should have no advantage at all over our ancestors of ten thousand years ago. Biologically we have not changed. The past is our basic material. Each generation starts with what it finds in the way of cultural achievement, and builds upon that.

Antiquity deserveth that reverence, that men should take a stand thereupon, and discover what is the best way; but when the discovery is well-taken, then to make progression. And to speak truly, _antiquitas soeculi iuventus mundi_. These times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient, and not those which we account ancient _ordine retrogrado_, by a computation backwards from ourselves.[1]

[Footnote 1: Bacon: _The Advancement of Learning_, Collected Works, vol. I, p. 172.]

The past, save what we discover in our generation, is our sole storehouse of materials. And a very small part of our useful knowledge in the industrial arts, in science, in social organization and administration does come from our own generation. It is the acc.u.mulated experience of generations of men. We can, out of this ma.s.s of materials, select whatever is useful in clarifying the issues of the present, whatever helps us to accomplish those purposes which we have, after critical consideration, decided to be useful and serviceable.

If, for example, we decide to build a bridge, it is of importance that we know all that men have in the past discovered of mechanical relations and industrial art which will enable us to build a bridge well. If we want to establish an educational system in some backward portion of the world, it is useful for us to know what methods men have used in similar situations.

Whatever we decide to do, we are so much the better off, if we know all that men before us have learned in a.n.a.logous instances.

But to use the inheritance of the past implies an a.n.a.lysis of present problems, and an acceptance of the course to be pursued. The experience of the past, the heritage of knowledge that has come down to us, is so various and extensive that choices must be made. The historian in writing even a comprehensive history of a country must still make choices and omissions. Similarly, in using knowledge inherited from the past as materials, we must have specific problems to govern our choice. The statistician could collect innumerable statistics; he collects only those which have a bearing on his subject. The lawyer searches out that part of the legal tradition which is applicable to his own case. Without some lead or clue we should lose ourselves in the multifariousness of transmitted knowledge at our disposal.

To use the past as an instrument for furthering present purposes implies neither veneration nor disparagement of it.

We neither condemn nor praise the past as a whole; we regard specific inst.i.tutions, customs, or ideas, as adequate or inadequate, as serviceable or disserviceable. In general, it may be said that the value of any still extant part of the past, be it a work of art, a habit, a tradition, has very little to do with its origin. The instinct of eating is still useful though it has a long history. The works of the Old Masters are not really great because they are old, nor are the works of contemporaries either good or bad because they are new. Man himself is to be estimated no differently, whether he is descended from the angels or the apes.

If we would appreciate our own morals and religion we are often advised to consider primitive man and his inst.i.tutions. If we would evaluate marriage or property, we are often directed to study our remote ancestors.... Such considerations as these have diverse effects according to our temperaments. They quite uniformly produce, however, disillusionment and sophistication.... This exaltation of the past, as the ancestral home of all that we are, may make us regret our loss of illusions and our disconcerting enlightenment....

We may break with the past, scorn an inheritance so redolent of blood and l.u.s.t and superst.i.tion, revel in an emanc.i.p.ation unguided by the discipline of centuries, strive to create a new world every day, and imagine that, at last, we have begun to make progress.[1]

[Footnote 1: Woodbridge: _The Purpose of History_, p. 72.]

The standards of value of the things we have or do or say, the approvals or disapprovals we should logically accord them, are determined not by their history, not by their past, but by their uses in the living present in which we live. An inst.i.tution may have served the purposes of a bygone generation; it does not follow that it thereby serves our own. The reverse may similarly be true. For us the specific features of our social inheritance depend upon the ends or purposes which we reflectively decide upon and accept. Whether capital punishment is good or evil; whether private property is an adequate or inadequate inst.i.tution for social welfare; whether marriage is a perfect or an imperfect inst.i.tution; whether collective bargaining, compet.i.tive industry, old age insurance, income taxes, nationalization of railroads are useful or pernicious depends neither on their age nor their novelty. Their value is determined by their relevancy to our own ideals, by the extent to which they hinder or promote the results which we consciously desire.

The past may be studied with a view to clarifying present issues. In the first place, we may study past successes and failures in order to guide our actions in present similar situations.

A man setting out to organize and administer a newspaper will benefit by the experiences others have had in the same situation. In the same way, we can learn from past history something, at least, bearing on present political and social issues. It is true enough that history has been much misused for the drawing of lessons and guidance. As Professor Robinson says:

To-day, however, one rarely finds a historical student who would venture to recommend statesmen, warriors, and moralists to place any confidence whatsoever in historical a.n.a.logies and warnings, for the supposed a.n.a.logies usually prove illusive on inspection, and the warnings impertinent. Whether or no Napoleon was ever able in his own campaigns to make any practical use of the accounts he had read of those of Alexander and Caesar, it is quite certain that Admiral Togo would have derived no useful hints from Nelson's tactics at Alexandria or Trafalgar. Our situation is so novel that it would seem as if political and military precedents of even a century ago could have no possible value. As for our present "anxious morality,"

as Maeterlinck calls it, it seems equally clear that the sinful extravagances of Sardanapalus and Nero, and the conspicuous public virtue of Aristides and the Horatii, are alike impotent to promote it.[1]

[Footnote 1: Robinson: _The New History_, p. 36.]

But situations are, within limits, duplicated in historical processes, and it is illuminating at least to see wherein men failed and wherein they succeeded in the things they set themselves to do. The history of labor legislation certainly testifies to the effectiveness of "collective bargaining" in securing improved labor conditions, as the history of strikes does also to the public loss and injury incident to this kind of industrial warfare. If compulsory arbitration has been a successful method of dealing with labor difficulties in Australia in the past, we can, by a careful study and comparison of conditions there and conditions current in our country at the present, illuminate and clarify our own problems. A campaign manager in one presidential campaign does not forget what was effective in the last, nor does he hesitate to profit by his mistakes or those of others.

An impartial survey of the heritage of the past undertakes critically to examine inst.i.tutions, customs, ideas still current with a view to determining their relevancy and utility to our present needs. This demands, on the one hand, clarity as to what those needs are, and, on the other hand, freedom from prejudice for or against existing modes of life simply because they have a history. A critical examination of the past amounts practically to a taking stock, a summary of our social a.s.sets and liabilities. We shall find our ideas, for example, and our customs, a strange mixture of useful preservations, and absurd or positively harmful relics of the past.

Ideas which were natural and useful enough in the situation in which they originated, live on into a totally changed situation, along with other ideas, like that of gravitation, which are as true and as useful now as when they were first enunciated.

Many customs and inst.i.tutions which may be found to have as great utility now as when they were first practiced generations ago, the customs and inst.i.tutions, let us say, of family life, may be found persisting along with customs and inst.i.tutions, like excess legal formalism (or, as their opponents claim, a bi-cameral legislative system or a two-party system) which may come generally to be regarded as impediments to progress.[1]

The unprejudiced observer, scientifically interested in preserving those forms and mechanisms of social life which are of genuine service to his own generation, will not condemn or applaud "the past" _en ma.s.se_. He will, rather, examine it in specific detail. He will not, for example, dismiss cla.s.sical education, because it is cla.s.sical or old. He will rather try experimentally to determine the actual consequences in the case of those who study the cla.s.sics. He will examine the claims made for the study, try in specific cases to find out whether those claims are fulfilled, and condemn or approve the study, say, of Latin and Greek, according to his estimate of the desirability or undesirability of those consequences.

If he finds, for example, that the study of Latin does promote general literary appreciation, his decision that it should or should not be continued will depend on his opinion of the value of general literary appreciation as compared with other values in an industrial civilization. Similarly, with "freedom of contract,"

"freedom of the seas," military service, bi-cameral systems, party caucuses, presidential veto, and all the other political and social heritages of the past.

[Footnote 1: The situation in the case of outworn social inst.i.tutions is paralleled in the case of the human appendix, once possessing a function in the digestive system of primitive man, but now useless and likely on occasion to become a positive disutility.]

But a man who impartially examines the past will usually exhibit also an appreciation of its attainments and a sense of the present good to which it has been instrumental. He will not glibly dismiss inst.i.tutions, habits, methods of life that are the slow acc.u.mulations of centuries. He will have a sense of the continuous efforts and energies that have gone into the making of contemporary civilization. He will have, in suggesting ruthless innovations, a sobering sense of the gradual evolution that has made present inst.i.tutions, habits, ideas, what they are.

The student of the past knows, moreover, that the present without its background of history is literally meaningless.

In the words of a well-known student of the development of human culture:

Progress, degradation, survival, modification, are all modes of the connection that binds together the complex network of civilization.

It needs but a glance into the trivial details of our own daily life to set us thinking how far we are really its originators, and how far but the transmitters and modifiers of the results of long past ages.

Looking round the rooms we live in, we may try here how far he who knows only his own time can be capable of rightly comprehending even that. Here is the honeysuckle of a.s.syria, there the fleur-de-lis of Anjou, a cornice with a Greek border runs round the ceiling, the style of Louis XIV and its parent the Renaissance share the looking gla.s.s between them. Transformed, shifted or mutilated, such elements of art still carry their history plainly stamped upon them....