The World's Greatest Books - Volume 14 Part 17

_IV.--The New Plan_

Dr. and Mrs. Leete were startled to learn I had been all over the city alone. "You must have seen a good many new things," said Mrs. Leete, as we sat down to table.

"I think what surprised me as much as anything was not to find any stores in Washington Street, or any banks of State. What have you done with the merchants and bankers?"

"Their functions are obsolete in the modern world. There is neither selling nor buying, and we have no money. As soon as the nation became the producer of all sorts of commodities, there was no need of exchanges between individuals. Everything was procurable from one source, and that only. A system of direct distribution from the national storehouses took the place of trade, and for this money was unnecessary."

"How is this distribution managed?"

"A credit, corresponding to his share of the annual product of the nation, is given to every citizen on the public books at the beginning of each year, and a credit-card issued him, with which he procures at the public stores, found in every community, whatever he desires, whenever he desires it.

"You observe," he pursued, as I was curiously examining the piece of pasteboard he gave me, "that this credit-card is issued for a certain number of dollars. We keep the old term dollars as an algebraical symbol for comparing the values of products with one another. All are priced in dollars and cents, just as in your day. The value of what I procure on this card is checked off by the clerk, who p.r.i.c.ks out of these tiers of squares the price of what I order."

"If you wanted to buy something of your neighbour, could you transfer part of your credit to him?"

"Our neighbours have nothing to sell us; but, in any event, one's credit would not be transferable, being strictly personal. Before the nation could even think of honouring any such transfer, it would be bound to inquire into its equity. It would have been reason enough, had there been no other, for abolishing money, that its possession was no indication of rightful t.i.tle to it. In the hands of the man who had stolen it, it was as good as if earned by industry.

"People nowadays interchange gifts, but buying and selling is considered absolutely inconsistent with the mutual benevolence and disinterestedness which should prevail between citizens. According to our ideas, the practice of buying and selling is essentially anti-social in all its tendencies. It is an education in self-seeking at the expense of others, and no society whose citizens are trained in such a school can possibly rise above a very low grade of civilisation."

"What if you have to spend more than your card allows in any one year?"

"If extraordinary expenses should exhaust it we can obtain a limited advance on next year's credit at a heavy discount. If a man showed himself a reckless spendthrift he would receive his allowance monthly or weekly instead of yearly, or, if necessary, not be permitted to handle it at all."

"If you don't spend your allowance, I suppose it acc.u.mulates?"

"That is also permitted to a certain extent when a special outlay is antic.i.p.ated. But unless notice is given, it is presumed that the citizen who does not fully expend his credit did not have occasion to do so, and the balance is turned into the general surplus."

"Such a system does not encourage saving habits."

"It is not intended to. No man has care for the morrow, either for himself or his children, for the nation guarantees the nurture, education, and maintenance of every citizen from the cradle to the grave."

"But what inducement can a man have to put forth his best endeavours when, however much or little he accomplishes, his income remains the same?"

"Does it then really seem to you that human nature is insensible to any motives save fear of want and love of luxury, that you expect security and equality of livelihood to leave men without incentives to effort?

Your contemporaries did not really think so. When it was a question of the grandest cla.s.s of efforts, the most absolute self-devotion, they depended on quite other motives. Not higher wages, but honour and the hope of men's grat.i.tude, patriotism, and the inspiration of duty were the motives they set before their soldiers. Now that industry of whatever sort is no longer self-service, but service of the nation, patriotism--pa.s.sion for humanity--impels the worker as in your day it did the soldier."

During the next few days I investigated many other of the social and domestic arrangements of Bostonians of the twenty-first century, and from what I saw myself and heard from my hosts, I gained some tolerably clear ideas of modern organisation, and the system of distribution. But it seemed to me that the system of production and the direction of the industrial army must be wonderfully complex and difficult.

"I a.s.sure you that it is nothing of the kind," said Dr. Leete. "The entire field of production and constructive industry is divided into ten great departments, each representing a group of allied industries, each industry being in turn represented by a subordinate bureau, which has a complete record of the plant and force under its control, of the present output, and means of increasing it. The estimates of the distributive department, after adoption by the administration, are sent as mandates to the ten great departments, which allot them to the subordinate bureaus representing the particular industries, and these set the men at work. Each bureau is responsible for the task given it. Even if in the hands of the consumer an article turns out unfit, the system enables the fault to be traced back to the original workman. After the necessary contingents of labour have been detailed for the various industries, the amount of labour left for other employment is expended in creating fixed capital, such as buildings, machinery, engineering works, and so forth."

That evening and the next following I sat up late talking with Dr. Leete of the changes of the last hundred and thirteen years; but on the Sunday, my first in the twenty-first century, I fell into a state of profound depression, accentuated by consideration of the vast moral gap between the century to which I belonged and that in which I found myself. There was no place anywhere for me. I was neither dead nor properly alive. Now I realised the mingled pity, curiosity, and aversion which I, as a representative of an abhorred epoch, must excite in all around me; but that Edith Leete must share their feelings was more than I could bear.

Towards nightfall I entered the subterranean chamber and sat down there, feeling utterly alone. Presently Edith stood in the door.

"Has it never occurred to you," I said, "that my position is more utterly alone than any human being's ever was before?"

"Oh, you must not talk in that way. You don't know how it makes me feel to see you so forlorn," she exclaimed.

I caught her hands in my own. "Are you so blind as not to see why such kindness as you have all shown me is not enough to make me happy?"

"Are you sure it is not you who are blind?" she said.

That was all; but it was enough, for it told me that this radiant daughter of a golden age had bestowed upon me not alone her pity, but her love. And now I first knew what was perhaps the strangest feature of my strange experience: Edith was the great grand-daughter of no other than my lost love Edith Bartlett.

JEREMY BENTHAM

Principles of Morals and Legislation

Jeremy Bentham, the son and grandson of attorneys, was born in London on February 15, 1748. He was called to the Bar, but did not practise. His fame rests on his work in the fields of jurisprudence, political science, and ethics. He is accounted the founder of the "utilitarian" school of philosophy, of which the theory is that the production of the "greatest happiness of the greatest number" is the criterion of morals and the aim of politics. Dying on June 6, 1832, his body, in accordance with his own wishes, was dissected, and his skeleton dressed in his customary garb and preserved in the University College, London.

Bentham's failure at the Bar caused him no small disappointment, and it was not until the publication of a "Fragment on Government"

in 1776 that he felt himself redeemed with public opinion. The "Principles of Morals and Legislation" was first published in 1789, but was actually in print nine years earlier. It was primarily intended as the introductory volume of a complete work designed to cover the whole field of the principles of legislation--principles which, as we have seen, were based on that doctrine of utility which the author regarded as equally the basis of ethics.

_I.--Calculation of Pleasures and Pains_

Mankind is governed by pain and pleasure. Utility is that property in anything which tends to produce happiness in the party concerned, whether an individual or a community. The principle of utility makes utility the criterion for approval or disapproval of every kind of action. An act which conforms to this principle is one which ought to be done, or is not one which ought not to be done; is right, or, at least, not wrong. There is no other criterion possible which cannot ultimately be reduced to the personal sentiment of the individual.

The sources or sanctions of pleasure and pain are four--the physical, in the ordinary course of nature; political, officially imposed; moral or popular, imposed by public opinion; and religion. Pains under the first head are calamities; under the other three are punishments. Under the first three heads, they concern the present life only. The second, third, and the fourth, as concerns this life, operate through the first; but the first operates independently of the others.

Pleasures and pains, then, are the instruments with which the legislator has to work; he must, therefore, be able to gauge their relative values.

These depend primarily and simply on four things--intensity, duration, certainty or uncertainty, propinquity or remoteness. Secondarily, on fecundity, the consequent probable multiplication of the like sensations; and purity, the improbability of consequent contrary sensations. Finally, on extent--the number of persons pleasurably or painfully affected. All these being weighed together, if the pleasurable tendency predominates, the act is good; if the painful, bad.

Pleasures and pains are either simple or complex--_i.e._, resolvable into several simple pleasures, and may be enumerated; as those of the senses, of wealth, of piety, of benevolence, of malevolence, of a.s.sociation, of imagination. Different persons are sensible to the same pleasure in different degrees, and the sensibility of the individual varies under different circ.u.mstances. Circ.u.mstances affecting sensibility are various--such as health, strength, s.e.x, age, education; they may be circ.u.mstances of the body, of the mind, of the inclinations.

Their influence can be reckoned approximately, but should be taken into consideration so far as is practicable.

The legislator and the judge are concerned with the existing causes of pleasure and pain, but of pain rather than pleasure--the mischiefs which it is desired to prevent, and the punishments by which it is sought to prevent them--and for the due apportionment of the latter they should have before them the complete list of punishments and of circ.u.mstances affecting sensibility. By taking the two together--with one list or the other for basis, preferably the punishment list--a cla.s.sification of appropriate penalties is attainable.

An a.n.a.lytical summary of the circ.u.mstances affecting sensibility will distinguish as secondary--_i.e._, as acting not immediately but mediately through the primary--s.e.x, age, station in life, education, climate, religion. The others, all primary, are connate--_viz._, radical frame of mind and body--or advent.i.tious. The advent.i.tious are personal or exterior. The personal concern a man's disposition of body or mind, or his actions; the exterior the things or the persons he is concerned with.

_II.--Human Actions a.n.a.lysed_

The business of government is to promote the happiness of society by rewarding and punishing, especially by punishing acts tending to diminish happiness. An act demands punishment in proportion to its tendency to diminish happiness--_i.e._, as the sum of its consequences does so. Only such consequences are referred to as influence the production of pain or pleasure. The intention, as involving other consequences, must also be taken into consideration. And the intention depends on the state both of the will and of the understanding as to the circ.u.mstances--consciousness, unconsciousness, or false consciousness regarding them. Hence with regard to each action we have to consider (1) the act itself, (2) the circ.u.mstances, (3) the intentionality, (4) the attendant consciousness, and also (5) the motive, and (6) the general disposition indicated.

Acts are positive and negative--_i.e._, of commission and omission, or forbearance; external or corporal, and internal or mental; transitive, affecting some body other than the agent's, or intransitive; transient or continued (mere repet.i.tion is not the same as habit). Circ.u.mstances are material when visibly related to the consequences in point of casuality, directly or indirectly. They may be criminative, or exculpative, or aggravative, or evidential.

The intention may regard the act itself only, or its consequences also--for instance, you may touch a man intentionally, and by doing so cause his death unintentionally. But you cannot intend the consequences--though you may have desired them--without intending the action. The consequences may be intended directly or indirectly, and may or may not be the only thing intended. The intention is good or bad as the consequences intended are good or bad.

But these actually depend on the circ.u.mstances which are independent of the intention; here the important point is the man's consciousness of the circ.u.mstances, which are objects not of the will, but of the understanding. If he is conscious of the circ.u.mstances and of their materiality, the act is advised; if not, unadvised. Unadvisedness may be due either to heedlessness or to misapprehension. And here we may remark that we may speak of a bad intention, though the motive was good, if the consequences intended were bad, and _vice versa_. In this sense also, the intention may be innocent--that is, not bad, without being positively good.

Of motives, we are concerned with practical motives only, not those which are purely speculative. These are either internal or external; either events _in esse_, or events in prospect. The immediate motive is an internal motive _in esse_--an awakened pleasure or pain at the prospect of pleasure or pain. All others are comparatively remote.

Now, since the motive is always primarily to produce some pleasure or prevent some pain, and since pleasure is identical with good, and pain with evil, it follows that no motive is in itself bad. The motive is good if it tends to produce a balance of pleasure; bad, if a balance of pain. Thus any and every motive may produce actions good, indifferent, or bad. Hence, in cataloguing motives, we must employ only neutral terms, _i.e._, not such as are a.s.sociated with goodness as--piety, honour--or with badness--as l.u.s.t, avarice.

The motives, of course, correspond to the various pleasures as previously enumerated. They may be cla.s.sified as good, bad, or indifferent, according as their consequences are more commonly good, bad, or indifferent; but the dangers of such cla.s.sification are obvious.