Jane Hume Clapperton

“ While permanency is eminently valuable in sexual relations, can we venture to say the same as regards exclusiveness? This distinctive quality of exclusiveness is not an extension of love, but a narrowing of it down—a restraint upon personal feeling. When woman wins her freedom and is no longer under any circumstances man’s dependent and slave, but his friend and comrade in the battle of life, will she restrain the physical expression of sex-love, yet fearlessly respond to all the tender ties certain to unite her with the opposite sex? ”

“ The groundwork of the modern conscience has been tampered with while authority—propelled by genetic forces of evolution—has gradually relaxed and fallen back before the free-born British schoolboy. By our present system of education we destroy infant virtue in the nursery and in the school. We dwarf that sympathy which should grow and expand till it bursts forth in manhood into deeds of rectitude, justice, love, manifesting the threefold quality of human nature which alone is competent to lift the whole area of man’s existence into line with cosmic order. ”

“ The time, however distant, will finally arrive when science, applied for generations to the task of skilfully removing all the causes of crime, will accomplish that glorious aim. By attention to the laws of heredity, by checking the too rapid increase of population, by the moral training of every member of the community, and by well-ordered, happy, domestic, industrial and social life, the criminal nature will die out, and crime itself be simply historical—a thing to study with interest, an extirpated social disease. ”

“ Through all the channels of the nation’s best thinking there has sounded low, but clear as a clarion note, a call to social reform, and now, in the depths of industrial confusion, amid dumb despair and loud-voiced public discontent, the still small voice of conscience speaks audibly, and a stirring of dry bones over the whole field of action, betokens the awakening to a new era of existence. ”

“ A genetic, spontaneously developed system of industry favoured a high birth-rate that kept wages low, an unscrupulous exploitation of labour in the interests of capital, a wholesale slaughter of infants, a crushing out or trampling down of the weak, and a perpetual grinding of the face of the poor, while, simultaneously, wealth was multiplying and capital becoming concentrated and easy of control by the so-called princes of industry. ”

“ When humanity was in its childhood, religion inculcated and pressed upon it this form of sacrifice; and as we ponder the martyr lives that stud the pages of history we recognize the fact that thousands of human beings practised the precept, and learned to endure, as seeing the invisible, to stand morally upright without earthly prop, to value spiritual companionship and joy in an inner life of purity and peace when outward conditions were adverse and dark. ”

“ She has accustomed her thoughtful readers to the scientific aspect of human nature and social life, to watch the manifold relations between the two, the action and interaction of forces without and within, and to see the continuity of causation along with the reforming effect of ceaseless changes. The evolutional conception of life underlies all her work. The pictures are realistic, there is no false colouring and vain delusions, no perfection of character—but aspiration, effort, broad humanity—and no perfect happiness attained. ”

“ It is a dream of revolt—the revolt of the ‘joy of life’ against the gloom of hidebound, conventional morality, the revolt of the natural man and woman, the revolt of the individual against the oppression of social prejudice. ”

“ Social unity is rent in twain. A life of exuberant wealth and extravagant expenditure runs parallel with one of constant, inescapable poverty, and so long as the nation continues to heap up riches in private possession, just so long must we reap an emotional harvest of envy, malice, private animosities, class hatreds and a subtle estrangement of heart throughout the length and breadth of the land. Yet even the great poet Tennyson in his writings exalts into a worthy motive for holy wedlock this sentiment—love of property. ”

“ Clearly we have no philosophy of life as groundwork to orderly personal and social action, no religion of vital power to bind the nations in one, no moral code adapted to the complexities of our social relations, and, above all, no steady belief in a universal love to sweeten society from end to end and create the requisite medium in which alone the nobler qualities of human nature will bud and blossom. ”

“ If we say goodness, not happiness, is the proper aim of life, we must allow that goodness means the aiding to bring happiness to mankind. Religions signifying less than this are unworthy the name of religion. Now it is emphatically the good who keenly suffer in the midst of an evil social state where poverty, misery and crime abound. It has been truly said—“The contrast between the ideal and the actual of humanity lies as a heavy weight upon all tender and reflective minds.” ”

“ It excites imagination, awakens thought, kindles enthusiasm, stimulates every latent mental faculty, while the endless variation of beauty in nature—under training to close observation—makes aesthetic appeal to the sense perceptions, and in calling forth wonder, admiration, delight adds richness immeasurably to the quality of human life. Nevertheless the springs and checks of a true education lie deep in a world of feeling. ”

“ Great Britain has assumed beyond her own shores a foremost place among civilized nations. The resources of her newly-created wealth seem boundless, and everywhere her power is felt. She can thin the ranks of her population, and swell her army to conquer and suppress the tyrant Napoleon, while keeping at work the enormous leviathan of her own trade and commerce by the deft fingers of her little children. Summer and winter find her tiny bees—infants of seven or eight—at labour in the factories from six a.m. ”

“ In the order of his own social life man’s position is wholly different. What we behold, if we take an objective view of a so-called civilized society, is a marvellous variety of complicated movements. These are the outcome of forces pursuing an unbridled course; and that course is always the path of least resistance. As yet there is no intervening force of a collective, mental nature to adapt that course to an ultimate definite aim and purpose, or to harmonize broadly those lines of least resistance with the line of permanent and universal advantage to mankind. ”

“ Consequently the breadth of range, the depth and richness of emotion possible in an adult, as compared with the emotions of a child, are as the music of an organ to the sweet notes that lie within the compass of a penny whistle.
In racial development evolution of feeling has not pursued one invariable course. ”

“ Dogma there presents to us an undeveloped helpless soul, as playing—within a circumscribed area of earth’s surface—its one little game of experimental life. The fate of the soul for all eternity hangs in the balance, all its chances for weal or woe depending on a single throw of the dice. And what are the terms of the game? Conditions of life so adverse, in millions of cases, that defeat is a foregone conclusion. No wonder civilized men with a seedling of justice in the soul, reject the whole scheme of nature allied with this dogma, and frankly disavow religious faith. ”

“ A good harvest that is general over the world sends activity like an electric current through the economic system. A bad harvest, if universal, would cause universal depression; not agriculture alone must suffer, but manufacture, commerce, science, art, literature, education, recreation—for on the production of food depends the buying power of the whole trading world. It is true that modern countries are not maintained from their own food resources alone. Also, it is true that the machinery of exchange—money and our vast credit system—enter into the phenomena and confuse the student’s mind. ”

“ For two centuries after the Norman conquest, intestine war and feudal oppressions embittered the life of the British labourer. He might be called from the plough at any moment to take up arms in his master’s quarrel, and if he sowed seed and saw his fields ripen, the harvest of his hopes might still be cut down by the sword of the forager, or trodden by the hoof of the war-horse. ”

“ Communism is the far-distant goal to which it points, for communism alone sets forth as attainable a satisfying equality in all the comforts of life, and since evolution must eventuate in social justice, whatever falls short of this will inevitably contain some conditions of discontent.
But whilst a craving for justice among the masses cries out for State interference, from whence comes the modern view of what justice means? Among the classes it has been considered that the man who is clever, i.e. mentally strong, has a right to a greater reward for labour than the man who is stupid. ”

“ This happened in a rich man’s nursery. Could one blame the ignorant nurse? Her infancy was passed in a city slum, and in every such locality children swarm who freely strike out both in self-protection and brutal aggressiveness. From birth these little ones live more or less in an atmosphere of savage assault. Tyranny and force are the ruling conditions of their childhood, and the natural result—under the unalterable law of cause and effect—is this: vindictive, barbaric feeling is carried hither and thither throughout society at large, and degrades every social class. ”

“ That is all man has attained to, so far, in the evolution of society. And no one who studies the facts of life can deny this impeachment of civilization: “All over the world the beauty, glory, and grace of civilization rests on human lives crushed into misery and distortion.” ”

“ Poverty hinders the purchase of all commodities that possess any real artistic value, but commercial enterprise has flooded the markets with meretricious imitations. East-end shops reflect the glitter and glow of west-end attractions, and the ignorant, spell-bound by suggestion, become possessors of that which degrades and vulgarizes taste or the sense of the beautiful. Now that science partially dominates thought, our eyes have been opened to the fact of essential unity in human groups. ”

“ No disparagement, no privation is to be endured by some for the aggrandizement or ease of others. Along with great inequalities of dignity, power and merit, there is yet a perfect and unconscious equality in regard to comforts, enjoyments and personal consideration. There is no room for grudges or individual solicitude. Whatever may be the measure of good for the whole the sum is distributed without a thought of distinction between one and another. Refined and generous emotions may thus have room to expand, and may become the fixed habits of the mind. ”

“ The quest of the workers is not that of individual liberty, but of a collective liberty, embracing every man, woman and child within the ranks of their own order.
There is no moral principle that condemns State interference, although we may admit that occasionally it has wrought evil instead of good. Failures have been caused by ignorance alike in the rulers and the ruled. But as knowledge of the real problem advances, errors in governing will become less frequent, and the action of the State be marked by a wise adaptation to human needs in view of the greatest happiness possible. ”

“ With opportunity freely afforded for regular employment and its ample reward, for decent and wholesome living, and a civic life brightened by many pure pleasures, the degrading and false excitements will cease to allure. Drunkenness, vice, crime will greatly diminish. Instead of the desperate struggle for bread and all that appertains to an animal life pure and simple, a new struggle will arise—a benign, inspiring emulation to attain to and acquire the noble qualities of humanity, the distinctive characteristics of, not the lower animal, but the higher spiritual man. ”

“ Our finest works of literature and art may fail to give one pleasurable sensation for lack of the special faculty to apprehend their beauty, but kindness makes the whole world kin. When the noble, generous, sympathetic side of human nature is appealed to there comes a quick response. Happiness is the aim of life, but happiness implies excellence of character, the emotional and moral elevation of all mankind. ”

“ But if you bind up his thoughts by lack of true education, if you blind his eyes, if you blunt his hopes, if you steal his joys, if you stunt his body and blast his soul ... this you think no sin!” Verily, there is sin, acknowledged by the noblest, wisest of men, and brought home to us on the lips of babes—“Why kill the man, since when he is dead we can never make him good again!” ”

“ It is deprecated as injurious to society as a whole, as an outrage on the liberty of the British subject, and an impious desecration of the capitalistic fetish, “Freedom of Contract.” But when the knowledge of facts proves that on one side this so-called freedom signifies freedom of choice between dire starvation and the distasteful terms of an absolute master, surprise is not felt that intelligent men prefer what the ignorant may regard as a species of State bondage. ”

“ Ten years later Professor Huxley wrote: “So long as unlimited multiplication goes on, no social organization which has ever been devised, no fiddle-faddling with the distribution of wealth, will deliver society from the tendency to be destroyed by the reproduction within itself in its intensest form of that struggle for existence, the limitation of which is the object of society.” ”

“ In every country which enjoys the European system of civilization, the right of property has ever been in a state of evolution, always tending to give a greater degree of independence to the individual owner; in other words, the evolution is always worked in favour of individual egotism. Who can say that the evolution is now complete, or that we have yet realized the highest ideal system in the disposition of our property? A progressive evolution is, for every society, one of the conditions of existence. ”

“ But one has only to think of the battered humanity in the back slums of every great city—the physical, mental and moral weaklings of our degraded populace—to realize that it is fantastic folly to expect individual intelligence under vicious and utterly depressing conditions, to counteract habit and save society from a rising tide of overwhelming numbers, the product of random pregnancy and sportive chance. ”