Not Guilty: A Defence of the Bottom Dog
Of these three thousand children two thousand nine hundred and forty were saved – by a change of environment. Had the environment been left unchanged probably not 2 per cent, would have escaped ruin. As their parents were, so would they have been. Had their parents been rescued in their youth only 2 percent of them would have failed.
The experience of Dr. Bamado and his friends with the children taken from the slums was very similar. The percentage of failures was small, and the London papers, in their obituaries of the good doctor, speak enthusiastically of the value of his work, and say that thousands of children rescued by him and his agents "are now steady and prosperous citizens beyond the seas." Since Dr. Bamado took up the work over fifty-five thousand children have been saved – by changed environment.
From an article by Mr. R. B. Suthers in the Clarion of August, 1904, I quote the following account of the George Junior Republic, an American institution, founded by Mr. William R. George, in 1896.
The Junior Republic is a collection of 100 hooligans, juvenile criminals, and unfortunate boys and girls who live under a constitution based on that of the United States. The government is government of the citizens, for the citizens, and by the citizens. Children of all ages are admitted, but the rights of citizenship are not granted to those under 12, and at 21 the juniors are drafted into the great republic outside. Schooling is compulsory up to the age of 16, after which the citizen has the choice of many trades, in the Junior Republic, including farming, carpentering, printing, dairying, or he may be a cook, waiter, store keeper, or office boy. The girls may go in for dressmaking, cooking, and laundry work.
These boys and girls, recruited from the slums and the criminal forcing beds of the great cities, govern themselves. They make their own laws, appoint their own officials, run their own gaol, and are practically as free as the citizens of the big republic of which they become full-fledged members when grown up.
Mr. George asserts that he has never known them when administering the law, to give an unjust or foolish decision.
Remember they were hooligans, criminals, and wastrels.
It ought not to be necessary to argue that children well brought up will turn out better than children ill brought up. We all know that such must be the case: we all see every day of our lives that, such is the case: we all know the power of environment for good as well as for evil. But facts are stubborn things, and the above are stubborn facts.
I have hitherto dealt almost wholly with the environment of the poor, but it is needful also to say something as to the environment of the rich, as Mr. Chesterton's mistakes have shown.
The chief evils of the environment of the rich are wealth, luxury, idleness, and false ideals.
It is not healthy for young people to be brought up to do nothing but spend money and hunt for excitement. It is not good for young or old to have unlimited wealth and leisure. It is not good for men, nor women, nor children, to be flattered and fawned upon. Flunkeyism and slavery degrade and debase the master as well as the servant: the snob lord, as well as the snob lackey.
We have hundreds of religions in the world; but how many teachers of true morality? True morality condemns all forms of selfishness, all acts that are hurtful to our neighbours, to the commonwealth, to the race. In the light of true morality, a rich landowner, or a millionaire money-lender, is a greater criminal than a burglar or a foot-pad; and a politician or a journalist who utters base words is worse than a coiner who utters base coin.
This being so, all the rich are bred and reared in an immoral atmosphere.
But the atmosphere is polluted in other ways. The children of the rich are perverted with false ideals. They are taught to regard themselves as superior to the workers, who keep them. They are taught that it is sport to murder helpless and harmless birds and beasts and fishes. They are taught to toady to those above, and to expect toadyism from those below them. They are given tacitly to understand that it is their lordly right to command, and that it is the duty of the masses to obey. They are allowed to believe that to be born "spacious in the possession of dirt," or free to wallow in unearned money, is honourable, and that to be poor and landless is a proof of inferiority.
They are puffed up with false ideas of value, and suppose that to possess an opulence of pride and a beggarly smattering of useless and often hurtful knowledge, is more creditable than to be capable of making honest pots and pans, and boots and trousers; of laying level pavements, and cutting invaluable drains. They have their unfurnished minds lumbered with immoral ideas of empire, of conquest, of titles, of stars and garters. They are the spoilt children of Vanity Fair, and very many of them are the lamentable failures which their environment would lead us to expect.
No man is educated who has never learnt to do any kind of useful work; no man lives in a good environment who has not been taught to think of the welfare of his fellow creatures before his own, no life is sound, nor sweet, nor moral, which is not based on useful service. Therefore the environment of the rich is generally evil and not good.
These are not the reckless utterances of any angry demagogue. Every word I have written about the evils of idleness, of luxury, of arrogance, of vain-glory and self-love, is endorsed by the teachings of the wisest and the best men of all ages; every word is supported by the records of history, by the known facts of contemporary life; every word is in accord with the new and the old morality.
It is a matter of common knowledge that the environment of the rich "puts forth sins like scarlet flowers in summer."
CHAPTER NINE – THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIENCE
THE religious mind loves mysteries. Conscience has always been set down as a mystery by religious people. It has been called "the still small voice," and we have been taught that it is a supernatural kind of sense by which man is guided in his knowledge of good and evil.
Now, I claim that conscience is no more supernatural than is the sense of smell, and no more mysterious than the stomach.
If conscience were what religious people think it is – a kind of heavenly voice whispering to us what things are right and wrong – we should expect to find its teachings constant. It would not chide one man, and approve another, for the same act. It would not warn men that an act was wrong in one age, and assure them in another age that the same act was right. It would not have one rule of morality for the guidance of an Englishman, and another rule of morality for the guidance of a Turk. It would not change its moral code as the man it is supposed to guide changes his beliefs through education and experience. It would not give such widely different men of the same age and nation.
If conscience were really a supernatural guide to right conduct it would always and everywhere tell man what is eternally right or eternally wrong.
But conscience is changeable and uncertain. It is a magnetic needle that points North at one time and South at another time; that points East on one ship and West on another ship; that points all round the compass for all kinds of travellers on life's ocean; that has no relation to the everlasting truths at all.
Sceptics have pointed out that "conscience is geographical"; that it gives different verdicts in different countries, on the same evidence.
But I shall show that conscience is:
1. Geographical: that it is not the same in one country as in another.
2. Historical: that it is not the same in one age as in another.
3. Personal: that it is not the same in one person as in another.
4. Changeable: it alters with its owner's mind.
And that, therefore, conscience is not a true and certain guide to right, and cannot be the voice of God.
First, as to geographical, or local, conscience. The English conscience looks with horror or disgust upon polygamy, child murder, cannibalism, and the blood feud.
The Turkish conscience allows many wives; the Redskin conscience allows the scalping of enemies; the Afghan conscience applauds the dutiful son who murders the nephew of his father's enemy; the cannibal conscience is silent at a feast of cold missionary; the Chinese conscience goes blandly to the killing of girl babies; the Rand conscience sees no evil in the flogging of Kaffirs and Chinese; the aristocratic conscience is not ashamed of taking the bread from starving peasants and their children; the capitalist conscience permits the making of fortunes out of sweated labour.
Now, cannibalism, murder, cheating, tyranny, the flogging of slaves, and the torture of enemies are all immoral and evil things. They cannot be good things in the East and bad things in the West. But conscience – the mysterious and wonderful "still small voice" – blames man in one part of the world and praises him in another for committing those acts.
Conscience is local: it tells one tale in Johannesburg or Pekin, and quite a different tale in Amsterdam or Paris.
And to find out which tale is the true one we have to use our reason.
As to historical conscience. What men thought good a few centuries ago they now think bad.
Take only a few examples. Men once saw no wrong in slavery, in trial by wager of battle, in witch-burning, in the torture of prisoners to extract evidence, in the whipping of lunatics, in the use of child-labour in mines and factories, in duelling, bear-baiting, prize-fighting, and heavy drinking.
Not very long ago men would tear out a man's tongue for "blasphemy," would hang a woman for stealing a turnip, would burn a bishop alive for heresy, would nail an author to the pillory by his ear for criticising a duke, would sell women and children felons into slavery; and conscience would never whisper a protest.
THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIENCENow, it was wrong to burn heretics, and pillory reformers, and work babies to death in the mill and the mine in those days, or it is right to do the same things now.
But conscience now condemns as wrong the same acts which it once approved as right; it now approves as right what it once condemned as wrong.
Conscience, then, differs in different ages. Conscience tells two quite different tales at two different times.
And if we want to find out which tale is the true one we have to use our reason.
As to personal conscience. We all know that one man's conscience differs from another. We all know that in any English town on any day there are as many varieties of conscience as there are varieties of hands, and eyes, and feet, and noses.
There are the Nonconformist conscience, the Roman Catholic conscience, the Rationalist conscience, the Aristocratic conscience, the Plebeian conscience, the Military conscience, the Commercial conscience, the Tory conscience, and the Socialist conscience.
One man's conscience forbids him to swear, to eat meat, to drink wine, to read a newspaper on Sunday, to go to a ball or a theatre, to make a bet, to play at cards or football, to stay away from church.
Another man's conscience permits him all those indulgences, but compels him to pay trade union wages, to speak courteously to servants and poor persons, to be generous to beggars, and kind to dumb animals.
A very striking example of this personal difference in the ruling of conscience is afforded by the quite recent contrast between the sentiments of Northern and Southern Americans on the question of negro slavery.
Another equally striking example is the difference to-day between the rulings of the consciences of Socialists and sweaters.
My own conscience, for instance, never chides me for "Sabbath breaking" nor for "neglect of God"; but it would not allow me to grow rich on the rent of slum houses, nor on the earnings of half-starved children, nor on the sale of prurient novels, or adulterated beer, or sized calico.
Now, it is either right or wrong to do all these things. It cannot be right for one man to dance and wrong for another to dance; it cannot be right for one man to bet, and wrong for another man to bet; it cannot be right for one man to draw rents for slum houses, and wrong for another man to draw rents for slum houses.
But conscience tells some men that it is right to do these things, and tells other men it is wrong to do the same things.
Conscience is not the same thing to one man that it is to another man. It praises Brown and blames Jones for doing the same thing. It tells different tales to different men.
An when we want to know which is the true tale we have to use our reason.
As to changeable conscience. We all know very well that conscience does not keep to one rule of right and wrong even with one man; but that it changes its rule whenever the man changes his belief through teaching or experience.
I need not give many examples of these changes. Every reader can supply them for himself. When I was a boy my conscience pained me severely if I stayed away from Sunday school or neglected to say my prayers. But it does not chide me now for not going to church, nor for not reading the Bible, nor for not praying. Why has conscience thus changed its tone with me? Simply because I have changed my opinions.
But those things could not have been wrong then if they are right now. Conscience has changed. Conscience changes as the mind changes. It tells one tale in our youth, and another in our prime, and perhaps yet another in our decay.
And if we want to know which tale is the true tale we must use our reason.
And now we find that conscience is different in different nations, in different cities, in different classes, in different persons, in different ages, in different circumstances, in different moods.
And, when we come to think about it, we find that conscience never tells us anything we do not know. It is a voice which always tells us what we do know: what we believe. It does not teach us what acts are right and what acts are wrong. It reminds of what we have been taught about right or wrong.
It is not a divine voice, for it often leads us wrong. It is not a divine voice, for it is no wiser and no better than ourselves.
What is it? What is conscience? Conscience is chiefly habit: it is chiefly memory: but it is partly, perhaps, inherited instinct. Conscience is habit. We all know that it is easier to do a thing which we have often done before than to do a thing we have never done before.
We all know that what we call practice improves an organ or power of our body or our mind.
As the proverbs put it: "Use is second nature." "Practice makes perfect."
Most of us know that an organ develops with use and decays with disuse.
If you wish to develop your muscles you must use them. If you wish to improve your memory or to sharpen your wits you must use them.
When a man is first taught to use a rifle he finds to his surprise that he cannot pull the trigger just exactly when he wants it. But in time he does that quite without thought or effort. The muscles of his finger have been "educated" to act with his eye.
Some men, when they first begin to shoot, shrink from the rifle. They fear the recoil or the sudden explosion, and the muscles of their shoulder flinch. If a man gives way to that habit it grows upon him, and he can never shoot straight. The muscles have learnt to flinch; and they flinch.
One man falls into the habit of swearing. The habit grows upon him. The words come ever more readily to his tongue, and he swears more and more.
Now, let us suppose a boy has been taught that it is wrong to swear. In his memory lies the lesson. It has been repeated until it has grown strong. When he hears swearing it shocks him. But the more he hears it the less it shocks him. The words grow more familiar to his ear, just as the sound of a waterfall or of machinery grows familiar to the ear.
Then suppose he swears. That is a very unusual act for him. And his old lesson that to swear is wrong is still firm and ready. It is not his habit to swear: it is his habit to shrink from swearing.
So if he swears, his memory, which has been educated to resent all swearing, brings up at once to his notice the lessons of years.
The same kind of thing is seen on the cricket field. A batsman is playing steadily. He has been trained to play cautiously against good bowling. But he has a favourite stroke. The bowler knows it He sends a ball very aptly called a "ticer" to entice the batsman to hit, in the hopes of a catch. The desire to make that pet cut or off-drive is strong; but the "habit" of caution is stronger; he lets the ball go by. Or the habit is not as strong as the desire, and he cuts the ball; and, even as he watches it flash safely through the field for the boundary, he feels that he ran a foolish risk, and must not repeat it.
What is it tells him he did wrong? It is his memory: his memory, which has been educated to check his rashness. In fact, it is his cricketer's conscience that warns him.
So with the youth who swears. No sooner has the word passed his lips than his educated memory, which has been trained to check swearing, brings up the lesson, and confronts him with it.
But let him swear again and again, and in time the moral lessons in his memory will be overlaid by the familiar sound of curses; the habit of flinching from an oath will grow weak, and the habit of using oaths will grow strong.
It is really what happens with the rifleman who gives way to the recoil and forms a habit of flinching, or with the cricketer who allows his desire to score to overcome his habit of caution. The old habit fades from disuse; the new habit grows strong from use. The rifleman becomes a hopelessly bad shot; the batsman degenerates into a slogger: the young man swears every time he speaks, and his conscience loses all power to check him.
Take the case of the letter "h." The young Lochinvar who comes out of the West sounds his aitches properly and easily – just as properly and as easily as a fencer makes his parries, as a pianist strikes the right notes, as C. B. Fry plays a straight bat. It is a matter of teaching and of use, and has become a habit. From his earliest efforts at speech he has heard the "h" sounded, has been checked if he failed to sound it, has corrected himself if he made a slip.
But the young Lochinvar who comes out of the East drops his aspirates all over the place without a blush or a pang. He has never been taught to sound the "h." He has not practised it. He has formed the habit of not sounding it, and it would take him years of painful effort to change the habit.
Now what happens in the case of a letter "h" is what happens in the case of the rifle, of the ticing ball, of the swearing. One man's memory is educated to remind him not to swear, not to slog, not to flinch, not to drop the "h." The other man's memory is not so trained.
And this trained memory we call conscience. It is purely habit: and it is wholly mechanical.
There is a good story of a gang of moonlighters who had shot a landlord, and were afterwards sitting down to supper. One man was just raising a piece of meat to his lips when the clock struck twelve. Instantly he dropped the meat. "Be jabers!" he said, "'tis Friday!"
That was the habit of abstaining from meat on a Friday. It had been drilled into his memory, and it acted mechanically.
Conscience, then, is largely a matter of habit: it depends a great deal on what we are taught. But it is not wholly a matter of habit, nor does it depend wholly on our teaching.
We all know that two brothers, born of the same parents, brought up in the same home, educated at the same school, taught the same moral lessons, may be quite different in the matter of conscience. One will shrink from giving pain, the other will be cruel; one will be quite truthful, the other will tell lies.
And so to go back to our rifleman and our cricketer. Every novice does not flinch from the recoil, every batsman is not prudent. No. Because men are different by nature.
Some boys are easy to train; some are not. Some are naturally obedient; some are not. Some are naturally cruel; some are naturally merciful.
The conscience of a boy depends upon what he is by nature and what he is taught.
If the emotion of anger is naturally strong in a boy it will need a better-drilled memory to check his anger than if the emotion of anger were weak.
I do not mean it will need more teaching to curb his "will," but it will need more teaching to build up his conviction that anger is wrong, because the motion resists the teaching.
But in the case of a boy gentle and merciful by nature it needs no teaching to prevent him from torturing frogs, and very little to make him know that to torture frogs is wrong.
It is a common mistake in morals to say that a man is to blame for an act because he "knew it was wrong." He may have been told that it was wrong. But until he feels that it is wrong, and believes that it is wrong, it is not true to say that he knows it is wrong; for he may only know that some other person says it is wrong, which is a very different thing.
For instance, it might be said in this way that I am wicked for listening to Beethoven on the Sabbath, "because I know that it is wrong." But I do not know that is wrong. I do not believe that it is wrong. I only know that some people say it is wrong.
So I claim that conscience is what a man's nature and teaching make it: that it is a habit of memory, and no more mysterious than the habit of smoking, or dropping the aspirate, or eating peas with a knife.
Let us now look at some of the scientific evidence.
SCIENCE AND CONSCIENCEI will quote first from Darwin, "Descent of Man," Chapter 4:
The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable, namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well, developed as in man… Secondly, as soon as the mental faculties had become highly developed, images of all past actions and motives would be incessantly passing through the brain of each individual; and that feeling of dissatisfaction, or even misery, which invariably results, as we shall hereafter see, from any unsatisfied instinct would arise as often as it was perceived that the enduring and always present social instinct, had yielded to some other instinct, at the time stronger, but neither enduring in its nature nor leaving behind it a very vivid impression.
Now let us see what Darwin means. The social instincts include human sympathy and the desire for the company of our fellows; love of approbation, which is the desire to be loved, or to be thought well of, by our fellows; and gratitude, which is the love we pay back for the love which is given us:
These social instincts are sometimes so strong, even in animals, as to overcome the powerful maternal instinct; so that migratory birds, as Darwin shows, and as we all know who have read our Gilbert White, will go with the flock and leave their new broods defenceless and unprovided for.
The social instincts, then, are very strong, and they lead us to conform to social rule or sentiment.
But now Darwin tells us that in the case of man "images of all past actions and motives would be incessantly passing through the brain." These "images" are mental pictures, and they are printed on those brain cells which make what we call "memory." Now, Darwin tells us that these memory pictures would cause us pain as often as they reminded us that we had broken the social rule or outraged the social sentiment in order to indulge some instinct of a selfish kind.
And Darwin makes it clear to us that such a selfish desire may be strong before it is gratified, and may yet leave an impression of pleasure after it is gratified which is weak indeed in presence of the deep-rooted social memories.
Let us take a few examples. The desire for a pleasure may be strong enough to drive us to enjoy it, and yet the pleasure may seem to us not worth the cost or trouble after the desire has been sated. When we are hungry the desire for food is intense.
