Transcribed from the 1909 Arthur L. Humphreys edition by DavidPrice,
THE
SOUL OF MAN
LONDON
ARTHUR L. HUMPREYS
1900
Second Impression
p. 1THE SOULOF MAN
The chief advantage that wouldresult from the establishment of Socialism is, undoubtedly, thefact that Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessityof living for others which, in the present condition of things,presses so hardly upon almost everybody. In fact, scarcelyanyone at all escapes.
Now and then, in the course of the century, a great man ofscience, like Darwin; a great poet, like Keats; a fine criticalspirit, like M. Renan; a supreme artist, like Flaubert, has beenable to isolate himself, to keep himself out of reach of theclamorous claims of others, to stand ‘under the shelter ofthe wall,’ as Plato puts it, p. 2and so to realise the perfection ofwhat was in him, to his own incomparable gain, and to theincomparable and lasting gain of the whole world. These,however, are exceptions. The majority of people spoil theirlives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism—are forced,indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves surroundedby hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideousstarvation. It is inevitable that they should be stronglymoved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred morequickly than man’s intelligence; and, as I pointed out sometime ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is muchmore easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to havesympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, thoughmisdirected intentions, they very seriously and verysentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evilsthat they see. But their remedies do not p. 3cure thedisease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies arepart of the disease.
They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, bykeeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advancedschool, by amusing the poor.
But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of thedifficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstructsociety on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying outof this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those whowere kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of thesystem being realised by those who suffered from it, andunderstood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present stateof things in England, the people who do most harm are the peoplewho try to do most good; and at last we have had the spectacle ofmen who have really studied the problem p. 4and know the life—educated menwho live in the East End—coming forward and imploring thecommunity to restrain its altruistic impulses of charity,benevolence, and the like. They do so on the ground thatsuch charity degrades and demoralises. They are perfectlyright. Charity creates a multitude of sins.
There is also this to be said. It is immoral to useprivate property in order to alleviate the horrible evils thatresult from the institution of private property. It is bothimmoral and unfair.
Under Socialism all this will, of course, be altere