CHAPTER VII

SOCIAL REFORM[33]

“Things are so bad that, to have any genuine insight to-day, any special human feeling to-day, means perforce to devote these gifts to the social problem, instead of to art and beauty. That is the curse of having been born in this Age.”--Extract from a novel of last year.

A certain unaffected hopelessness characterises the mood of modern men, for which it is difficult to find an adequate cause. There is a pessimism rife to-day, which, far from being a pose or a pretence, lies so deeply imbedded in the hearts of most people, that it is their constant effort to conceal, rather than to proclaim it, when they are in the presence of their fellows. A cheerful smile, a laugh that sounds like merriment, a vivacious and buoyant manner--these outward signs of unruffled gaiety may now be simulated by men when they are in company; they may even be enjoined upon all as social etiquette; but when once he is left to himself, modern man smoothens out his laugh-wrinkled cheeks, compresses his relaxed lips, and abandons himself to that attitude of mind now perhaps as universal as it is secret, which for lack of a better term we may describe as settled despondency.

Among the cultivated this attitude remains more or less a private concern of the individual. The thinking man, unlike the savage, does not beat his wife and children, or blame his immediate surroundings, if he feels hopeless. He knows the cause is probably more remote than the behaviour of his kith and kin, or circle of friends; and though he may be as incapable as the savage of finding the true cause, he withholds his anger, or postpones the expression of his gloomy thoughts until such time as their true cause becomes apparent to him.

Among the uncultivated, however, this mood of gloom or of convinced despair, harbouring as it does in minds that are less inclined to be philosophical, renders them litigious and vindictive. Some one or some circumstance not too remote must be responsible, it is thought, for their peevishness; they therefore become irascible and angry, and seek to vent their spleen on that person or thing which, on the strength of its proximity alone, appears to be the immediate cause of their ill-humour. Conditions that satisfied them theretofore now become insufferable and must be changed; prospects that smiled upon them formerly now appear too black to be faced with calm. Pleasure--or rather distraction--is sought feverishly, gluttonously, until, since it leaves them still with the old langour at their hearts, it also is rejected as part of the general conspiracy to depress their spirits. Nothing pleases, nothing beckons. The same aching certainty of discontent always returns, whatever else may go.

When a nation feels like this, when a [p155] whole continent feels like this, there arises what politicians are pleased to call a state of “social unrest.” By giving it a name it is hoped presumably that it will be explained away. Unfortunately, however accurate the terms of a description may be, they do nothing towards helping to remove the trouble they describe. But in this particular case it may be questioned whether the words “social unrest” form even an accurate description.

A society that is at rest is not necessarily the ultimate desideratum. A society that is not at rest cannot therefore be necessarily bad. On the contrary, social unrest has been characteristic of all the greatest and most fertile moments in history. What could have been more unrestful than the period that witnessed the spread of the Roman power, or the period of the Renaissance?

To call the present period simply one of social unrest therefore does not even give us an inkling of the true and alarming symptom of the trouble--the settled despondency that is invading all hearts.

By the phrase “social unrest,” we might, for instance, be led to suspect that the secondary and particular symptoms of the trouble were the primary and general symptoms. What are the secondary and particular symptoms of the trouble? Labour’s general and determined dissatisfaction with the conditions of labour all over Europe.

Suppose we accept the secondary as the primary symptoms, how can we then account for the deep pessimism and gloom of the cultivated--not merely those among the cultivated who fear they may lose by [p156] Labour’s attitude, but those who are disinterested enough to fear nothing except the incurable canker at their hearts? Can they truly be said to share Labour’s general and determined dissatisfaction with the conditions of labour all over Europe?

Labour’s dissatisfaction, therefore, cannot possibly be a primary symptom. It is only the proletariat’s adaptation to the primary symptom; just as hedonism, neurasthenia, lunacy and frenzied interest in new-fangled creeds and movements, may be the cultivated man’s adaptation to the primary symptoms.

To call the present state of affairs simply social unrest is to magnify unduly a secondary and particular, into the importance of a primary and general, symptom.

Whatever the subsequent adaptation to it may be, the true primary symptom must be common to both classes, the labouring and the employing classes, and that true primary symptom, it is here suggested, is the mood of unaffected hopelessness that characterises all modern men. And since, as a primary symptom, it is common to all men, it must have a common cause.

Doubtless a good deal of it may be easily accounted for in the manner outlined at the opening of