“You have a Government Press?”
“Exactly. The Press is pre-eminently a public function — it is not and never was a private business — not legitimately.”
“But you do have private papers and magazines?”
“Yes indeed, lots of them. Ever so many personal ‘organs’ large and small. But they don’t carry advertising. If enough people will buy a man’s paper to pay him, he’s quite free to publish.”
“How do you prevent his carrying advertising?”
“It’s against the law — like any other misdemeanor. Post Office won’t take it — he can’t distribute. No, if you want to find out about the latest breakfast food — ( and there are a score you never heard of) — or the last improvement in fountain pens or air-ships — you find it all, clear, short, and reliable, in the hotel paper of every town. There’s no such bulk of advertising matter now, you see; not so many people struggling to sell the same thing.”
“Is all business socialized?”
“Yes — and no. All the main business is; the big assured steady things that our life depends on. But there is a free margin for individual initiative — and always will be. We are not so foolish as to cut off that supply. We have more inventors and idealists than ever; and plenty of chance for trial. You see the two hours a day which pays board, so to speak, leaves plenty of time to do other work; and if the new thing the man does is sufficiently valuable to enough people, he is free to do that alone. Like the little one-man papers I spoke of. If a man can find five thousand people who will pay a dollar a year to read what he says he’s quite as likely to make his living that way.” “Have you no competition at all?” “Plenty of it. All our young folks are? racing and chasing to break the record; to do more work, better work, new work.”
“But not under the spur of necessity.”
“Why, yes they are. The most compelling necessity we know. They have to do it; it is in them and must come out.”
“But they are all sure of a living, aren’t they?”
“Yes, of course. Oh, I see! What you meant by necessity was hunger and cold. Bless you, John, poverty was no spur. It was a deadly anaesthetic.”
I looked my disagreement, and he went on: “You remember the hideous poverty and helplessness of the old days — did that ‘spur’ the population to do anything? Don’t you see, John, that if poverty had been the splendid stimulus it used to be thought, there wouldn’t have been any poverty? Some few exceptional persons triumphed in spite of it, but we shall never know the amount of world loss in the many who did not.
“It was funny,” he continued meditatively, “how we went on believing that in some mysterious way poverty ‘strengthened character,’ ‘developed initiative,’ ‘stimulated industry,’ and did all manner of fine things; and never turned our eyes on the millions of people who lived and died in poverty with weakened characters, no initiative, a slow, enforced and hated industry. My word, John, what fools we were!”
I was considering this Government Press he described. “How did you dispose of the newspapers you had?”
“Just as we disposed of the saloons; drove them out of business by underselling them with better goods. The laws against lying helped too.”
“I don’t see how you can stop people’s lying”
“We can’t stop their lying in private, except by better social standards; but we can stop public lying, and we have. If a paper published a false statement anyone could bring a complaint; and the district attorney was obliged to prosecute. If a paper pleaded ignorance or misinformation it was let off with a fine and a reprimand the first time, a heavy fine the second time, and confiscation the third time; as being proved by their own admission incompetent to tell the truth! If it was shown to be an intentional falsehood they were put out of business at once.”
“That’s all very pretty,” I said, “and sounds easy as you tell it; but what made people so hot about lying? They didn’t used to mind it. The more you tell me of these things the more puzzled I am as to what altered the minds of the people. They certainly had to alter considerably from the kind I remember, to even want all these changes, much more to enforce them.”
Owen wasn’t much of a psychologist, and said so. He insisted that people had wanted better things, only they did not know it.
“Well — what made them know it?” I insisted. “Now here’s one thing, small in a way, but showing a very long step in alteration; people dress comfortably and beautifully; almost all of them. What made them do it?”
“They have more money,” Owen began, “more leisure and better education.”
But I waved this aside.
“That has nothing to do with it. The people with money and education were precisely the ones who wore the most outrageous clothes. And as to leisure — they spent their leisure in getting up foolish costumes, apparently.”
“Women are more intelligent, you see,” he began again; but I dismissed this also.
“The intelligence of a Lord Chancellor didn’t prevent his wearing a wig! How did people break loose from the force of fashion, I want to know?”
He could not make this clear, and said he wouldn’t try.
“You show me all these material changes,” I went on; “and I can see that there was no real obstacle to them; but the obstacle that lasted so long was in the people’s minds. What moved that? Then you show me this marvellous new education, as resulting in new kinds of people, better people, wiser, freer, stronger, braver; and I can see that at work. But how did you come to accept this new education? You needn’t lay it all to the women, as Nellie does. I knew one or two of the most advanced of them in 1910, and they had no such world-view as this. They wore foolish clothes and had no ideas beyond ‘Votes for Women’ — some of them.”
“No sir! I admit that there was potential wealth enough in the earth to support all this ease and beauty; and potential energy in the people to produce the wealth. I admit that it was possible for people to leave off being stupid and become wise — evidently they have done so. But I don’t see what made them.”
“You go and see Dr. Borderson,” said Owen.
Chapter 11
DR. BORDERSON, it seemed, held the chair in Ethics at the University, I knew a Borderson once and was very fond of him. Poor Frank! If he was alive he would have more likely reached a prison or a hospital than a professorship. Yet he was brilliant enough. We were great friends in college, and before; let me see — thirty-five years ago. But he was expelled for improper conduct, and went from bad to worse. The last I had heard of him was in a criminal case — but he had run away and disappeared. I well remembered the grief and shame it was to me at the time to see such a promising young life ruined and lost so early.
Thinking of this, I was shown into the study of the great teacher of ethics, and as I shook hands I met the keen brown eyes of — Frank Borderson. He had both my hands and shook them warmly.
“Well, John! It is good to see you again. How well you look; how little you have changed! It’s a good world you’ve come back to, isn’t it?”
“You are the most astonishing thing I’ve seen so far,” I replied. “Do you really mean it? Are you — a Professor of Ethics?”
“When I used to be a God-forsaken rascal, eh? Yes, it’s really so. I’ve taught Ethics for twenty years, and gradually pushed along to this position. And I was a good deal farther off than Tibet, old man.”
I was tremendously glad to see him. It was more like a touch of the old life than anything I had yet found — except Nellie, of course. We spoke for some time of those years of boyhood; of the good times we had had together; of our common friends.
He kept me to dinner; introduced me to his wife, a woman with a rather sad, sweet face, which seemed to bear marks of deep experience; and we settled down for an evening’s talk.
“I think you have come to the right person, John; not only because of my special studies, but because of my special line of growth. If I can tell you what changed me, so quickly
and so wholly, you won’t be much puzzled about the others, eh?”
I fully agreed with him. The boy I knew was clever enough to dismiss all theology, to juggle with philosophy and pick ethics to pieces; but his best friends had been reluctantly compelled to admit that he had “no moral character.” He had, to my knowledge, committed a number of unquestionable “sins,” and by hearsay I knew of vices and crimes that followed. And he was Dr. Borderson!
“Ill take myself as a sample, Whitman fashion,” said he. “There I was when you knew me — conceited, ignorant, clever, self-indulgent, weak, sensual, dishonest. After I was turned out of college I broke a good many laws and nearly all the commandments. What was worse, in one way, was that my ‘wages’ were being paid me in disease — abominable disease. Also I had two drug habits — alcohol and cocaine. Will you take me as a sample?”
I looked at him. He had not the perfect health I saw so much of in the younger people; but he seemed in no way an invalid, much less a drug victim. His eyes were clear and bright, his complexion good, his hand steady, his manner assured and calm.
“Frank,” said I, “you beat anything I’ve seen yet. You stand absolutely to my mind as an illustration of ‘Before Taking’ and ‘After Taking.’ Now in the name of reason tell me what it was you Took!”
“I took a new grip on Life — that’s the whole answer. But you want to know the steps, and I’ll tell you. The new stage of ethical perception we are in now — or, as you would probably say, this new religion — presents itself to me in this way:
“The business of the universe about us consists in the Transmission of Energy. Some of it is temporarily and partially arrested in material compositions; some is more actively expressed in vegetable and animal form; this stage of expression we call Life. We ourselves, the human animals, were specially adapted for high efficiency in storing and transmitting this energy; and so were able to enter into a combination still more efficient; that is, into social relations. Humanity, man in social relation, is the best expression of the Energy that we know. This Energy is what the human mind has been conscious of ever since it was conscious at all; and calls God. The relation between this God and this Humanity is in reality a very simple one. In common with all other life forms, the human being must express itself in normal functioning. Because of its special faculty of consciousness, this human engine can feel, see, think, about the power within it; and can use it more fully and wisely. All it has to learn is the right expression of its degree of life-force, of Social Energy.” He beamed at me. “I think it’s about all there, John.”
“You may be a very good Professor of Ethics for these new-made minds, but you don’t reach the old kind — not a little bit. To my mind you haven’t said anything — yet.”
He seemed a little disappointed, but took it mildly. “Perhaps I am a little out of touch. Wait a moment — let me go back and try to take up the old attitude.”
He leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes, I saw an expression of pain slowly grow and deepen on his face; and suddenly realized what he was doing.
“Oh, never mind, Frank; don’t do it; don’t try, I’ll catch on somehow.”
He seemed not to hear me; but dropped his face in his hands. When he raised it, it was clear again. “Now I can make things clearer perhaps,” he said. “We had in our minds thirty years ago a strange hodgepodge of old and new ideas. What was called God was still largely patterned after the old tribal deity of the Hebrews. Our ideas of ‘Sin’ were still mostly of the nature of disobedience — wrong only because we were told not to do it. Sin as a personal offence against Somebody, and Somebody very much offended; that was it. We were beginning to see something of Social values, too, but not clearly. Our progress was in what we called ‘The natural sciences’; and we did not think with the part of our minds wherein we stored religion. Yet there was very great activity and progress in religious thought; the whole field was in motion; the new churches widening and growing in every direction; the older ones holding on like grim death, trying not to change, and changing in spite of themselves; and Ethics being taught indeed, but with no satisfying basis. That’s the kind of atmosphere you and I grew up in, John. Now here was I, an ill-assorted team of impulses and characteristics, prejudiced against religion, ignorant of real ethics, and generally going to the devil — as we used to call it I You know how far down I went — or something of it.”
“Don’t speak of it, Frank!” I said. “That was long ago; forget it, old man!” But he turned toward me a smile of triumph.
“Forget it! I wouldn’t forget one step of it if I could! Why, John, it’s because of my intimate knowledge of these down-going steps that I can help other people up them!”
“You looked decidedly miserable just now, all the same, when you were thinking them over.”
“Oh, bless you, John, I wasn’t thinking of myself at all! I was thinking of the awful state of mind the world was in, and how it suffered! Of all the horror and misery and shame; all that misplaced, unnecessary cruelty we called punishment; the Dark Ages we were still in, in spite of all we had to boast of. However, this new perception came.”
I interrupted him.
“What came? Who came? Did you have a new revelation? Who did it? What do you call it? Nobody seems to be able to give me definite information.”
He smiled broadly. “You’re a beautiful proof of the kind of mental jumble I spoke of. Knowledge of evolution did not come by a revelation, did it? Or did any one man, or two, give it to us? Darwin and Wallace were not the only minds that helped to see and express that great idea; and many more had to spread it. These great truths break into the world-mind through various individuals, and coalesce so that we cannot disconnect them. We have had many writers, preachers, lecturers, who discoursed and explained; this new precept as to the relation between man and God came with such a general sweep that no one even tries to give personal credit for it. These things are not personal — they are world-percepts.”
“But every religion has had its Founder, hasn’t it?”
“Z don’t call it a religion, my dear fellow! It’s a science, like any other science. Ethics is The Science of Human Relation. It is called Applied Sociology — that’s all.”
“How does a thing like that touch one, personally?” I asked.
“How does any science touch one personally? One studies a science, one teaches a science, one uses a science. That’s the point — the use of it. Our old scheme of religion was a thing to ‘believe,’ or ‘deny’; it was a sort of shibboleth, a test question one had to pass examination in to get good marks! What I’m telling you about is a general recognition of right behavior, and a general grasp of the necessary power.”
“You leave out entirely the emotional side of religion.”
“Do I? I did not intend to. You see, we do not distinguish religion from life now, and are apt to forget old terms. You are thinking, I suppose, of the love of God, and man, which we used to preach. We practice it now.
“That Energy I spoke of, when perceived by us, is called Love. Love, the real thing we had in mind when we said ‘God is Love,’ is beneficent energy. It is the impulse of service, the desire to do, to help, to make, to benefit. That is the ‘love’ we were told to bestow on one another. Now we do.”
“Yes; but what made you do it? What keeps you up to it?”
“Just nature, John. It is human nature. We used to believe otherwise.” He was quiet for a while.
“One of these new doctors got hold of me, when I was about as near the bottom as one can go and get back. Not a priest with a formula, nor a reformer with an exhortation; but a real physician, a soul-doctor, with a passionate enthusiasm for an interesting case. That’s what I was, John; not a lost soul; not even a ‘sinner’ — just ‘a case.’ Have you heard about these moral sanitariums?”
“Yes — but not definitely.”
“Well, as soon as this view of things took hold, they began to want to isolate bad cases, and cure them if they
could. And they cured me.”
“How, Frank — how? What did they tell you that you didn’t know before? What did they do to you?”
“Sane, strong, intelligent minds put themselves in connection with mine, John, and shared their strength with me. I was matters to feel that my individual failure was no great matter, but that my social duty wast that the whole of my dirty past was as nothing to all our splendid future, that whatever I had done was merely to be forgotten — the sooner the better, and that all life was open before me — all human life; endless, beautiful, profoundly interesting — the game was on, and I was in it.
“John — I wish I could make you feel it. It was as if we had all along had inside us an enormous reservoir of love, human love, that had somehow been held in and soured! This new arrangement of our minds let it out — to our limitless relief and joy. No ‘sin’ — think of that I Just let it sink in. No such thing as sin. . . . We had, collectively and privately, made mistakes, and done the wrong thing, often. What of it? Of course we had. A growing race grew that way.
“Now we are wiser and need not keep on going wrong. We had learned that life was far easier, pleasanter, more richly satisfying when followed on these new lines — and the new lines were not hard to learn. Love was the natural element of social life. Love meant service, service meant doing one’s special work well, and doing it for the persons served — of course!
“All our mistakes lay in our belated Individualism. You cannot predicate Ethics of individuals; you cannot fulfill any religion as individuals. My fellow creatures took hold of me, you see. That power that was being used so extensively for physical healing in our young days had become a matter of common knowledge — and use.”
Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Page 48