Towards the Great Peace - Ralph Adams Cram
The national government is the final social and political unit, though
it is conceivable that with a territory and population as great and
diversified as that of the United States, and bearing in mind the great
discrepancy in size between the states, something might be gained by the
institution of a system of provinces, some five or six in all, made up
of states grouped in accordance with their general community of
interests, as for example, all New England, New York, Pennsylvania, New
Jersey and Delaware; the states of the old Confederacy, those of the
Pacific Coast, and so on. The point need not be pressed here, but there
are considerations in its favour. In any case the nation as a whole is
the final federal unit. Here the lower legislative house would consist
of not more than four hundred members, allocated on a basis of
population and elected by the representative bodies of the primary units
(the townships and city wards) as already described. The members of the
upper house would be elected by the legislative bodies of the several
states on nomination by the Governor. The chief executive of the nation
would be chosen by the two legislative bodies, in joint session, from
amongst the then governors of the several states. He should certainly
hold office for "good behaviour," and his cabinet would be responsible
to the legislature as provided for in the case of the state governments.
I do not offer this programme with any pride of paternity; probably it
would not work very well, but it could hardly prove less efficacious
than our present system under conditions as they have come to be. This
cannot continue indefinitely, for it is so hopelessly defective that it
is bound to bring about its own ruin, with the probable substitution of
some doctrinaire device engendered by the natural revolt against an
intolerable abuse. If only we could see conditions clearly and estimate
them at something approaching their real value, we should rapidly
develop a constructive public opinion that, even though it represented a
minority, might by the very force behind it compel the majority to
acquiesce in a radical reformation. Unfortunately we do not do this, we
are hypnotized by phrases and deluded by vain theories, as Mr.
Chesterton says:
"So drugged and deadened is the public mind by the conventional public
utterances, so accustomed have we grown to public men talking this sort
of pompous nonsense and no other, that we are sometimes quite shocked by
the revelation of what men really think, or else of what they really
say."
We do, now and then, confess that legislation is as a whole foolish,
frivolous and opportunist; that administration is wasteful, incompetent
and frequently venal; that the governmental personnel, legislative,
administrative and executive, is of a low order in point of character,
intelligence and culture--and tending lower each day. We admit this, for
the evidence is so conspicuous that to deny it would be hypocrisy, but
something holds us back from recognizing the nexus between effect and
cause. Unrestricted immigration, universal suffrage, rotation in office,
the subjection of many offices and measures to popular vote, the
parliamentary system, government by political parties--all these customs
and habits into which we have fallen have arrived at failure which
presages disaster. They have failed because the character of the people
that functioned through these various engines had failed, diluted by the
low mentality and character-content of millions of immigrants and their
offspring, degraded by the false values and vicious standards imposed by
industrial civilization, foot-loose from all binding and control of a
vital and potent religious impulse or religious organism.
It is the old, vicious circle; spiritual energy declines or is diverted
into wrong channels; thereupon the physical forms, social, industrial,
political, slip a degree or two lower out of sympathy with the failing
energy, and these in their turn exert a degrading influence on the
waning spiritual force, which declines still further only to be pulled
lower still by the material agencies which continue their progressive
declension. Theories, no matter how high-minded and altruistic, cannot
stand before a condition such as this, for self-protection decrees
otherwise even if the higher motive of doing right things and getting
right things just because they _are_ right, does not come into effective
operation. The evil results of the institutions I have catalogued above
are not to be denied, and the institutions themselves must be reformed
or altogether abandoned, in the face of the loud-mouthed exhortations of
those who now make them their means of livelihood, and even at the
expense of the honest upholders of theories and doctrines that do credit
to their humanitarianism but have been weighed and found wanting.
I am anxious not to put this plan for the reform, in root and branch, of
our political institutions, on the low level of mere caution and
self-defense. The motive power of this is fear, and fear is only second
to hate in its present position as a controlling force in society. We
should have good government not because it is economical and ensures
what are known as "good business conditions," and promises a peaceful
continuance of society, but because it is as worthy an object of
creative endeavour as noble art or a great literature or a just and
merciful economic system, or a life that is full of joy and beauty and
wholesome labour. The political organism is in a sense the microcosm of
life itself, and it should be society lifted up to a level of dignity,
majesty and nobility. The doctrine that in a democracy the government
must exactly express the numerical preponderance in the social
synthesis, and that, if this happens to be ignorant, mannerless and
corrupt, then the government must be after the same fashion, is a low
and a cowardly doctrine. Government should be better than the majority;
better than the minority if this has advantage over the other. It should
be of the best that man can compass, resting above him as in some sort
an ideal; the visible expression of his better self, and the better self
of the society of which he is a part. If a political system, any
political system, produces any other result; if it has issue in a
representation of the lowest and basest in society, or even of the
general average, then it is a bad system and it must be redeemed or it
will bring an end that is couched in terms of catastrophe.
Reform is difficult, perhaps even impossible of attainment under the
existing system where universal, unlimited suffrage and the party system
are firmly intrenched as opponents of vital reform, and where
representation and legislation take their indelible colour from these
unfortunate institutions. It must freely be admitted that there is no
chance of eliminating or recasting either one or the other by the
recognized methods of platform support and mass action through the
ballot. It comes in the end to a change of viewpoint and of heart on the
part of the individual. No party, no political leader would for a moment
endorse any one of the principles or methods I have suggested, for this
would be a suicidal act. The newspaper, irresponsible, anonymous,
directed by its advertizing interests or by those more sinister still,
yet for all that the factor that controls the opinions of those who hold
the balance of power in the community as it is now constituted, would
reject them with derision, while in themselves they are radically
opposed to the personal interests of the majority. The only hope of
lifting government to the level of dignity and capacity it should hold,
lies in the individual. It is necessary that we should see things
clearly, estimate conditions as they are, and think through to the end.
We do not do this. We admit, in a dull sort of way, that matters are not
as they should be, that legislation is generally silly and oppressive,
that taxation is excessive, that administration is wasteful and reckless
and incompetent, for we know these things by experience. We accept them,
however, with our national good-nature and easy tolerance, assuming that
they are inseparable from democratic government--as indeed they are, but
not for a moment does any large number think of questioning the
principle, or even the system, that must take the responsibility. When
disgust and indifference reach a certain point we stop voting, that is
all. At the last presidential election less than one half the qualified
voters took the trouble to cast their ballots, while in Boston (which is
no exception) it generally happens that at a municipal elections the
ballots cast are less than one-third the total electorate. I wonder how
many there are here today who have ever been to a ward meeting, or have
sat through a legislative session of a city government, as of Boston for
example, or have listened to the debates in a state house of
representatives, or analyzed the annual grist of legislative bills, or
have sat for an hour or two in the Senate or House at Washington. Such
an experience is, I assure you, illuminating, for it shows exactly why
popular government is what it is, while it forms an admirable basis for
a constructive revision of judgment as to the soundness of accepted
principles and the validity of accepted methods.
Our political attitude today is based on an inherited and automatic
acceptance of certain perfectly automatic formulae. We neither see
things clearly, estimate conditions as they are, nor think a proposition
through to the end: we are obsessed by old formulae, partisan "slogans"
and newspaper aphorisms; the which is both unworthy and perilous. Let us
see things clearly for a moment; if we do this anything is possible, no
matter how idealistic and apparently impracticable it may be. Is there
any one who would confess that character and intelligence are now a
helpless minority in this nation? Such an admission would be almost
constructive treason. The instinct of the majority is right, but it is
defective in will and it is subservient to base leadership, while its
power for good is negatived by the persistence of a mass of formulae
that, under radically changed conditions, have ceased to be beneficient,
or even true, and have become a clog and a stumbling block.
I may not have indicated better ideals or sounder methods of operation,
but the true ideals exist and it is not beyond our ability to discover a
better working system. Partisanship cannot reveal either one or the
other, nor are they the fruit of organization or the attribute of
political leadership. They belong to the common citizen, to you, to the
individual, and if once superstition is cast out and we fall back on
right reason and the eternal principles of the Christian ethic and the
Christian ideal, we shall not find them difficult of attainment; and
once attained they can be put in practice, for the ill thing exists only
on sufferance, the right thing establishes itself by force of its very
quality of right.
VI
THE FUNCTION OF EDUCATION AND ART
When, as on occasion happens, some hostile criticism is leveled against
the civilization of modernism, or against some one of its many details,
the reply is ready, and the faultfinder is told that the defect, if it
exists, will in the end be obviated by the processes of popular
education. Pressed for more explicit details as to just what may be the
nature of this omnipotent and sovereign "education," the many champions
give various answer, depending more or less on the point of view and the
peculiar predilections of each, but the general principles are the same.
Education, they say, consist of two things; the formal practice and
training of the schools, and the experience that comes through the use
of certain public rights and privileges, such as the ballot, the holding
of office, service on juries, and through various experiences of the
practice of life, as the reading of newspapers (and perhaps books), the
activities of work, business and the professions, and personal
association with other men in social, craft, and professional clubs and
other organizations.
With the second category of education through experience we need not
deal at this time; it is a question by itself and of no mean quality;
the matter I would consider is the more formal and narrow one of
scholastic training in so far as it bears on the Great Peace that,
though perhaps after many days, must follow the Great War and the little
peace.
Answering along this line, the protagonists of salvation through
education pretty well agree that the thing itself means the widest
possible extension of our public school system, with free state
universities and technical schools, and the extension of the educational
period, with laws so rigid, and enforcement so pervasive and impartial,
that no child between the ages of six and sixteen can possibly escape.
This free, compulsory and universal education is assumed to be
scrupulously secular and hedged about with every safeguard against the
insidious encroachments of religion; it will aim to give a little
training in most of the sciences, and much in the practical necessities
of business life, as for example, stenography, book-keeping, advertising
and business science; it will cover a broad field of manual training
leading to "graduate courses" in special technical schools; the
"laboratory method" and "field practice" will be increasingly developed
and applied; Latin, Greek, logic and ancient history will be minimized
or done away with altogether, and modern languages, applied psychology
and contemporary history will be correspondingly emphasized. As for the
state university, it will allow the widest range of free electives, and
as an university it will aim to comprise within itself every possible
department of practical activity, such as business administration,
journalism, banking and finance, foreign trade, political science,
psycho-analysis, mining, sanitary engineering, veterinary surgery, as
well as law, medicine, agriculture, and civil and mechanical
engineering. I am curious to inquire at this time if education such as
this does, as a matter of fact, educate, and how far it my be relied
upon as a corrective for present defects in society; or rather, first of
all, whether education of this, or of any sort, may be looked on as a
sufficient saving force, and whether general education, instead of being
extended should not be curtailed, or rather safeguarded and restricted.
I have already tried to indicate, in my lecture on the Social Organism,
certain doubts that are now arising as to the prophylactic and
regenerative powers of education, whether this is based on the old
foundation of the Trivium and Quadrivium under the supreme dominion of
Theology, or on the new foundation of utilitarianism and applied science
under the dominion of scientific pedagogy. While the active-minded
portion of society believed ardently in progressive evolution, in the
sufficiency of the intellect, the inerrancy of the scientific method,
and the transmission by inheritance of acquired characteristics, this
supreme confidence in free, secular, compulsory education as the
cure-all of the profuse and pervasive ills of society was not only
natural but inevitable. I submit that experience has measurably modified
the situation, and that we are bound therefore to reconsider our earlier
persuasions in the light of somewhat revealing events.
We may admit that the system of modern education works measurably well
so far as intellectual training is concerned; _training_ as
distinguished from development. It works measurably well also in
preparing youth for participation in the life of applied science and for
making money in business and finance. Conscientious hard labour has been
given, and is being given, to making it more effective along these
lines, and almost every year some new scheme is brought forward
enthusiastically, tried out painstakingly, and then cast aside
ignominiously for some new and even more ingenious device. The amount of
education is enormous; the total of money spent on new foundations,
courses, buildings, equipment--on everything but the pay of the
teachers--is princely; the devotion of the teachers, themselves, in the
face of inadequate wages, is exemplary, and yet, somehow the results are
disappointing. The truth is, the development of _character_ is not in
proportion to the development of public and private education. The moral
standing of the nation, taken as a whole, has been degenerating; in
business, in public affairs, in private life, until the standards of
value have been confused, the line of demarcation between right and
wrong blurred to indistinctness, and the old motives of honour, duty,
service, charity, chivalry and compassion are no longer the controlling
motive, or at least the conscious aspiration, of active men.
This is not to say that these do not exist; the period that has seen the
retrogression has recorded also a reaction, and there are now perhaps
more who are fired by the ardent passion for active righteousness, than
for several generations, but the average is lower, for where, many times
in the past, there has been a broad, general average of decency, now the
disparity is great between the motives that drive society as a whole,
and its methods of operation, and the remnant that finds itself an
unimportant minority. Newspapers are perhaps hardly a fair criterion of
the moral status of a people--or of anything else for that matter--but
what they record, and the way they do it, is at least an indication of a
condition, and after every possible allowance has been made, what they
record is a very alarming standard of public and private morality, both
in the happenings themselves and in the fashion of their publicity.
No one would claim that the responsibility for this weakening of moral
standards rests predominantly on the shoulders of the educational system
of today; the causes lie far deeper than this, but the point I wish to
make is that the process has not been arrested by education, in spite of
its prevalence, and that therefore it is unwise to continue our
exclusive faith in its remedial offices. The faith was never well
founded. Education can do much, but what it does, or can do, is to
foster and develop _inherent possibilities,_ whether these are of
character, intelligence or aptitude: it cannot put into a boy or man
what was not there, _in posse,_ at birth, and humanly speaking, the
diversity of potential in any thousand units is limited only by the
number itself. Whether our present educational methods are those best
calculated to foster and develop these inherent possibilities, so varied
in nature and degree, is the question, and it is a question the answer
to which depends largely on whether we look on intelligence, capacity or
character as the thing of greatest moment. For those who believe that
character is the thing of paramount importance--amongst whom I count
myself--the answer must be in the negative.
Nor is an affirmative reply entirely assured when the question is asked
as to the results in the case of intellect and capacity. There are few
who would claim that in either of these directions the general standard
is now as high as it was, for example, in the last half of the last
century. The Great War brought to the front few personalities of the
first class, and the peace that has followed has an even less
distinguished record to date. We may say with truth, I think, that the
last ten years have provided greater issues, and smaller men to meet
them in the capacity of leaders, than any previous crisis of similar
moment. The art of leadership, and the fact of leadership, have been
lost, and without leadership any society, particularly a democracy, is
in danger of extinction.
Here again one cannot charge education with our lack of men of
character, intelligence and capacity to lead; as before, the causes lie
far deeper, but the almost fatal absence at this time of the
personalities of such force and power that they can captain society in
its hours of danger from war or peace, must give us some basis for
estimating the efficiency of our educational theory and practice, and
again raise doubts as to whether here also we shall be well advised if
we rely exclusively upon it as the ultimate saviour of society, while we
are bound to ask whether its methods, even of developing intelligence
and capacity, are the best that can be devised.
Another point worth considering is this. So long as we could lay the
flattering unction to our souls that acquired characteristics were
heritable, and that therefore if an outcast from Posen, migrating to
America, had taken advantage of his new opportunities and so had
developed his character-potential, amassed money and acquired a measure
of education and culture, he would automatically transmit something of
this to his offspring, who would start so much the further forward and
would tend normally to still greater advance, and so on _ad infinitum,_
so long we were justified in enforcing the widest measure of education
on all and sundry, and in waiting in hope for a future when the
cumulative process should have accomplished its perfect work. Now,
however, we are told that this hope is vain, that acquired
characteristics are not transmitted by heredity, and that the old
folk-proverb "it is only three generations between shirtsleeves and
shirtsleeves," is perhaps more scientifically exact than the
evolutionary dictum of the nineteenth century. Which is what experience
and history have been teaching, lo, these many years.
The question then seems to divide itself into three parts; (a) are we
justified in pinning our faith in ultimate social salvation to free,
secular, and compulsory education carried to the furthest possible
limits; (b) if not, then what precisely is the function of formal
education; and (c) this being determined, is our present method
adequate, and if not how should it be modified?
It is unwise to speak dogmatically along any of these lines, they are
too blurred and uncertain. I can only express an individual opinion.
It seems to me that life unvaryingly testifies to the extreme disparity
of potential in individuals and in families and in racial strains,
though in the two latter the difference is not necessarily absolute and
permanent, but variable in point of both time and degree. In individuals
the limit of this potentiality is inherent, and it can neither be
completely inhibited by adverse education and environment nor measurably
extended by favourable education and environment. Characteristics
acquired _outside_ inherent limitations are personal and non-heritable,
however intimately they may have become a part of the individual
himself.
If this is true, then the question of education becomes personal also;
that is to say, we educate for the individual, and with an eye to the
part he himself is to play in society. We do not look for cumulative
results but in a sense deal with each personality in regard to itself
alone. I think this has a bearing both on the extent to which education
should be enforced and on the quality and method of education itself,
and though the contention will receive little but ridicule, I am bound
to say that I hold that _general_ education should be reduced in
quantity and considerably changed in nature.
If the limit of development is substantially determined in each
individual and cannot be extended by human agencies (I say "human"
because God in His wisdom and by His power can raise up a prophet or a
saint out of the lowest depths, and frequently does so), then the
quantity and extent of general education should be determined not by a
period of years and the facilities offered by a government liberal in
its expenditures, but entirely by the demonstrated or indicated capacity
of the individual. Our educational system should, so far as it is free
and compulsory, normally end with the high school grade. Free college,
university and technical training should not be provided, except for
those who had given unmistakable evidences that they could, and probably
would, use it to advantage. This would be provided for by
non-competitive scholarships, limited in number only by the number of
capable candidates, and determination of this capacity would be, not on
the basis of test examinations, but on an average record covering a
considerable period of time. It is doubtful if even these scholarships
should be wholly free; some responsibility should be recognized, for a
good half of the value of a thing (perhaps all its value) lies in
working for it. A grant without service, a favour accepted without
obligations, privilege without function, both cheapen and degrade.
Let us now turn to the second question, i.e., what precisely is the
function of formal education. For my own part I can answer this in a
sentence. It is primarily the fostering and development of the
character-potential inherent in each individual. In this process
intellectual training and expansion and the furthering of natural
aptitude have a part, but this is secondary to the major object which is
the development of character.