СНАР. XVII Decline of the Grip The State UNDER CHAPTER XXXVII LIBERATION NDER certain favoring conditions the grip of social organizations upon their members relaxes and we witness a process which may be termed liberation. It may be observed in any type of organization — state, family, church, school or factory and sometimes there is a movement of the social mind which causes it to occur in all of them at once. THE LIBERAL STATE Spencer proved that the decline of militant activities normally weakens the grasp of the state upon its members. That the individual exists not for himself and his " folks," but for the state, is so revolting to average human nature that it will be accepted only when national team work appears to be a matter of life or death. So long as the state is thought of as primarily for fighting, it is quite logical to put its claims paramount, and to regard the people as just a taxable and soldier-yielding mass. From ancient Sparta to modern Prussia the effect of making warfare the chief business of life is to depress personal dignity and liberty and to exalt obedience, loyalty and patriotism. On the other hand, with the decline of the predatory habit, Individual the state is thought of as an agency for promoting the hapIndividual piness of the people in several. Centralized coercive rule with Not the for the State consequent subordination of the individual is no longer accepted as necessary. The idea prevails that the citizen's individuality, instead of being sacrificed to government, is to be preserved and defended by it. Justice, i.e., the securing of each in his rights, becomes the touch-stone of good government, while the state multiplies means of hygiene, education and recreation which each may lay hold of or not, as he sees fit. Gumplowicz and his school show that so long as the state is worked by a dominant race or class, as an engine of exploitation, it will not be sparing of coercion. Its yoke will not be made light while those who impose it and those who bear it are altogether different people. But, in the degree that the advance of CHAP. XXXVII The Popu popular sovereignty obliges the state to obey the will of the greater number of its subjects, it loses its ruthless and arbitrary spirit. While toward the members of the former ruling class lar State it may show a sternness they have never known, in its dealings with the undistinguished many, it will evince an unwonted mildness. Compare the Swiss government with that of the Tsar in respect to tenderness for the interests of the common man. More Tender with the Indithan the vidual Class Popular ment Some publicists maintain that democracies are not really liberal in their tendencies and that they unhesitatingly sacrifice freedom for the sake of equality when the demands of the two conflict. But is this true? Granted that democracy imposes new restric- Governtions upon the quondam ruling class, i.e., land-holding nobility Prizes or bourgeoisie, may not this be necessary in order to correct the Freedom, results of class rule in the past? Popular governments no doubt resort freely to legislation; but perhaps this is because the great democratic advance has happened to be contemporary with movements for the protection of the public health, the regulation of industry and the eradication of wide-spread moral evils. These movements would have made themselves felt in any case, for they have bred as much legislation in autocratic states as in democratic states. but It Is Individual Behalf of Nevertheless, pride is the distinguishing trait of a ruling class, and for this reason its members resent restrictive laws which workaday people may tolerate. This is why the democratic state may prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages, banish habit-forming drugs, safeguard marriage from venereal disease, and subject con- Welfare genital defectives to custodial care or sterilize them by surgery — measures which the aristocratic state abhors. LIBERAL RELIGION Liberating developments have occurred in religion as well as in government. Under ancient polytheism "the notion of there being any guilt in erroneous opinion was unknown." Christianity, however, like every other monotheism, regarded gods other than its own as "vanity" and their worship as an insult to the one "true" God. As soon as it had the strength it stamped out heathenism. As its doctrines crystallized, the fear of variation grew, for the popular idea was that heresy would bring down the wrath of God on all Christendom, on the entire nation, or, in any case, upon the whole of the community in which it Social CHAP. XXXVII Opens the of Con science occurred. Heresy, moreover, was interpreted very broadly. According to a decretal of 1184 the heretic was one who "in any way differed in mode of life from the faithful in general." It was heresy to be better than the crowd or worse. No more terrible straitjacket was ever put on. Says Sumner: "There could be no definition of a heretic but one who differed in life and conversation from the masses around him. This might mean strange language, dress, manners or greater restraint in conduct. Pallor of countenance was a mark of a heretic from the fourth century to the twelfth." 1 The hounding of heretics which terrorized thinking Europe to Liberty from the thirteenth century to the seventeenth was abandoned owing chiefly to the decline of belief in collective responsibility for error. The maxim that the private conscience is God's affair and may not be forced by man has removed from the authority of government the whole domain of religious belief and practice. No doubt the spread of religious indifference has made liberty of worship less generally prized than once it was. On the other hand, however, the inviolability which gradually has come to attach to religious convictions is visibly extending to other departments of thought and feeling; for it would be strange, indeed, if fools were free to preach the near end of the world or the non-existence of disease while sages were not free to urge birth control or public ownership. So there appears to be developing an inviolable freedom of opinion and communication, which will, however, no more shield incitement to violence than "freedom of conscience" has shielded Mormon polygamy. Again, the grasp of the religious community on the individual relaxes when men cease to believe with the old Hebrews and the English Puritans that moral guilt is inheritable. If in sooth God is "a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation," a man ought to be restrained from carelessly bringing down upon his descendants Divine displeasure. If the children's teeth will be set on edge because the fathers have eaten a sour grape, then sour grapes should be put out of reach. But Jeremiah declares, “Every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge"; while Ezekiel proclaims the new principle, "The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father neither shall the father 1" Folkways," p. 243. Decay of Belief in the Inheritance of Moral Guilt bear the iniquity of the son." By making the devout willing to leave the offender to God this happy doctrine of individual responsibility has enlarged the sphere of personal freedom. Puritanism with its notion that natural enjoyment ruins one's chances of gaining Heaven long lay like a pall upon American life. In our early days art was condemned on the ground that beauty must be an ally of the devil. To the Quaker poet Whittier statues were but " graven images." No wonder the few sculptors America produced lived abroad if they could! Those who claimed special knowledge of the will of Heaven put a ban on harp and psaltery, and dancing before the Lord or elsewhere. Perhaps three-fourths of the American people disapproved of actors and acting. Shakespere was denounced as the "Devil's Bible." "A fatal theater fire in Richmond on the day after Christmas, 1811, in which seventy perished, was looked upon as a merited judgment. A church was built upon the spot, and for seven years no other playhouse was opened in the town. In Massachusetts theatrical performances were forbidden for many years and as late as 1830 play houses were dark and deserted on Saturday nights. In New York, about 1815, a committee of 'substantial citizens' gathering money for the relief of the poor righteously refused a gift of a hundred dollars because it was offered them by the manager of a theater." "The ascetic practice of taking care of one another's morals has gone to such length in Boston as to excite the frequent satire of some of its wisest citizens," wrote Miss Martineau. "When there was talk of attempting to set up Italian opera there, a gentleman observed that it would never do; people would be afraid of the name. 'Oh,' said another, 'call it lectures on music, with illustrations, and everybody will come.'" As a matter of fact, however, people so shied at the word theater that in the Middle West a generation ago the small town playhouse was generally known as "the opera house." CHAP. XXXVII Puritan ism Long a Damper on Inno cent En joyment Camou flaging the "The instinctive craving for amusement without loss of prestige in this world or the next tempted the ingenious Yankee Drama mind to amazing invention and subterfuge. The law against play-acting by professionals, which closed all the theaters of Connecticut just before the year 1800, was evaded by calling their performances'moral lectures.' Similar efforts by amateurs and school-children were called 'exhibitions,' a name to which they CHAP. XXXVII Revolt the Puri- bath The Heroic Age Epic and the Individual Hero, Seeing in the Mass but a Back His were undoubtedly entitled. Circuses were anathema, but menageries, being educational, were approved by the authorities." Another yoke being thrown aside is a Sabbath-keeping unknown to the Christian world outside Great Britain and the United States. Thousands of Americans who have experienced a London Sunday with nothing open but the churches and the saloons do not shudder at the thought of a "Continental Sunday." Moreover, we sour on conventional things when we have opportunity to do interesting, unconventional things. Motoring, golf, baseball and the Sunday newspaper array against Sabbatarianism millions who without them might have gone on "keeping Sunday" just as their fathers did. Had these allurements beset their fathers, the revolt against the Puritan Sunday might have occurred a generation earlier. HERO WORSHIP The liberal movement owes much to a golden vein of imaginative literature which runs back to early saga and epic. In Homeric times, for example, Hellenic adventurers came upon Aegean lands rich in spoils, where a chieftain might sack a city and dower himself and his followers with sudden wealth. Settled splendor beset by unbridled adventure went to the making of a heroic age, with its strong lights and shadows, its seen beauty and its hidden ugliness. Under stable conditions, no doubt, most of these heroes would have ended on the gallows. Now, early balladry and ritual dance reflected primitive tribal life in which the individual was nothing, the choral band everything. In the saga, however, the hero is everything while the mass is but a shadowy background for his brilliant clear-cut personality. "The epic poet," says Miss Jane Harrison, “is all ground for taken up with what he called klea andron, glorious deeds of men,' of individual heroes; and what these heroes themselves ardently long and pray for is just this glory, this personal distinction, this deathless fame for their great deeds. When the armies meet it is the leaders who fight in single combat. These glorious heroes are for the most part kings, but not kings in the old sense, not hereditary kings bound to the soil and responsible for its fertility. Rather they are leaders in war and adventure; the homage paid them is a personal devotion for personal character; the leader must win his followers by bravery, |