No More Learning

In the treasury-house of
your soul there are infinitely precious things that may not be taken
from you. Try to so shape your life that external things will not harm
you, and try also to get rid of personal property. It involves sordid
preoccupation, endless industry, continual wrong. Personal property
hinders individualism at every step.

When Jesus talks about the poor He simply means personalities, just as
when He talks about the rich He simply means people who have not
developed their personalities.

An echo is often more beautiful than the voice it repeats.


* * * * *


THE SOUL OF MAN


The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of
Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from
that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present
condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody. In fact,
scarcely anyone at all escapes.

Now and then, in the course of the century, a great man of science, like
Darwin; a great poet, like Keats; a fine critical spirit, like M, Renan;
a supreme artist, like Flaubert, has been able to isolate himself, to
keep himself out of reach of the clamorous claims of others, to stand
'under the shelter of the wall,' as Plato puts it, and so to realise the
perfection of what was in him, to his own incomparable gain, and to the
incomparable and lasting gain of the whole world. These, however, are
exceptions. The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and
exaggerated altruism--are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find
themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by
hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved
by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man's
intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the
function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with
suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with
admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very
sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that
they see.
But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely
prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.

They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the
poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the
poor.

But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The
proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that
poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really
prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners
were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of
the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood
by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in
England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most
good; and at last we have had the spectacle of men who have really
studied the problem and know the life-educated men who live in the East
End--coming forward and imploring the community to restrain its
altruistic impulses of charity, benevolence, and the like. They do so on
the ground that such charity degrades and demoralises. They are
perfectly right. Charity creates a multitude of sins.

There is also this to be said. It is immoral to use private property in
order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution
of private property. It is both immoral and unfair.

Under Socialism all this will, of course, be altered. There will be no
people living in fetid dens and fetid rags, and bringing up unhealthy,
hunger-pinched children in the midst of impossible and absolutely
repulsive surroundings. The security of society will not depend, as it
does now, on the state of the weather.