I LIBRARY
I UNIVERSITY OF
I CALIFORNJA
I SAN DIEGO
presented to the
UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
SAN DIEGO
by
Mr. Otto T. Hir.c^Phiov.
THE BOOK OF LIFE
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2007 with funding from
IVIicrosoft Corporation
http://www.archive.org/details/bookoflifemindboOOsinciala
The
Book of Life
Mind and Body
UPTON SINCLAIR
HALDEMAN -JULIUS COMPANY
GIRARD, KANSAS
INTRODUCTORY
The writer of this book has been in this world some forty-
two years. That may not seem long to some, but it is long
enough to have made many painful mistakes, and to have
learned much from them. Looking about him, he sees others
making these same mistakes, suffering for lack of that same
knowledge which he has so painfully acquired. This being the
case, it seems a friendly act to offer his knowledge, minus the
blunders and the pain.
There come to the writer literally thousands of letters
every year, asking him questions, some of them of the
strangest. A man is dying of cancer, and do I think it can
be cured by a fast ? A man is unable to make his wife happy,
and can I tell him what is the matter with women? A man.
has invested his savings in mining stock, and can I tell him
what to do about it? A man works in a sweatshop, and has
only a little time for self-improvement, and will I tell him
what books he ought to read? Many such questions every
day make one aware of a vast mass of people, earnest, hungry
for happiness, and groping as if in a fog. (^he things they
most need to know they are not taught in the schools, nor in
the newspapers they read, nor in the church they attend. Of
these agencies, the first is not entirely competent, the second
is not entirely honest, and the third is not entirely up to date^
Nor is there anywhere a book in which the effort has been
made to give to everyday human beings the everyday informa-
tion they need for the successful living of their lives.
For the present book the following claims may be made.
First, it is a modern book; its writer watches hour by hour
the new achievements of the human mind, he reaches out for
information about them, he seeks to adjust his own thoughts
to them and to test them in his own living. Second, it is, or
tries hard to be, a wise book; its writer is not among those
too-ardent young radicals who leap to the conclusion that
because many old things are stupid and tiresome, therefore
everything that is old is to be spurned with contempt, and
everything that proclaims itself new is to be taken at its own
valuation. Third, it is an honest book; its writer will not
viii Introductory
pretend to know what he only guesses,- and where it is neces-
sary to guess, he will say so frankly. Finally, it is a kind
book; it is not written for its author's glory, nor for his
enrichment, but to tell you things that may be useful to you
in the brief span of your life. It will attempt to tell you how
to live, how to find health and happiness and success, how to
v/ork and how to play, how to eat and how to sleep, how to
love and to marry and to care for your children, how to deal
with your fellow men in business and politics and social life,
how to act and how to think, what religion to believe, what
art to enjoy, what books to read. A large order, as the boys
phrase it!
There are several ways for such a book to begin. It might
begin with the child, because we all begin that way; it might
begin with love, because that precedes the child ; it might begin
with the care of the body, explaining that sound physical health
is the basis of all right living, and even of right thinking; it
might begin as most philosophies do, by defining life, discussing
its origin and fundamental nature.
The trouble with this last plan is that there are a lot of
people who have their ideas on life made up in tabloid form ;
they have creeds and catechisms which they know by heart,
and if you suggest to them anything different, they give you
a startled look and get out of your way. And then there is
another, and in our modern world a still larger class, who say,
"Oh, shucks! I don't go in for religion and that kind of
thing." You offer them something that looks like a sermon,
and they turn to the baseball page.
Who will read this Book of Life? There will be, among
others, the great American tired business man. He wrestles
with problems and cares all day, and when he sits down to
read in the evening, he says: "Make it short and snappy."
There is the wife of the tired business man, the American
perfect lady. She does most of the reading for the family;
but she has never got down to anything fundamental in her
life, and mostly she likes to read about exciting love affairs,
which she distinguishes from the unexciting kind she knows
by the word "romance." Then there is the still more tired
American workingman, who has been "speeded up" all day
under the bonus system or the piece-work system, and is apt
to fall asleep in his chair before he finishes supper. Then there
is the workingman's wife, who has slaved all day in the kitchen.
Introductory ix
and has a chance for a few minutes' intimacy with her hus-
band before he falls asleep. She would like to have somebody
tell her what to do for croup, but she is not sure that she has
time to discuss the question whether life is worth living.
Yet, I wonder ; is there a single one among all these tired ^
people, or even among the cynical people, who has not had
some moment of awe when the thought came stabbing into his
mind like a knife : "What a strange thing this life is ! What
am I anyhow? Where do I come from, and what is going to
become of me? What do I mean, what am I here for?"
I have sat chatting with three hoboes by a railroad track,,
cooking themselves a mulligan in an old can, and heard one
of them say: "By God, it's a queer thing, ain't it, mate?"
I have sat on the deck of a ship, looking out over the midnight
ocean and talking with a sailor, and heard him use almost the
identical words. It is not only in the class-room and the
schools that the minds of men are grappling with the funda-
mental problems ; in fact, it was not from the schools that the
new religions and the great moral impulses of humanity took
their origin. It was from lonely shepherds sitting on the hill-
sides, and from fishermen casting their nets, and from car-
penters and tailors and shoemakers at their benches.
Stop and think a bit, and you will realize it does make a
difference what you believe about life, how it comes to be,
where it is going, and what is your place in it. Is there a
heaven with a God, who watches you day and night, and knows
every thought you think, and will some day take you to eternal
bliss if you obey his laws? If you really beheve that, you will
try to find out about his laws, and you will be comparatively
little concerned about the success or failure of your business.
Perhaps, on the other hand, you have knocked about in the
world and lost your "faith"; you have been cheated and ex-
ploited, and have set out to "get yours," as the phrase is; to
"feather your own nest." But some gust of passion seizes you,
and you waste your substance, you wreck your life ; then you
wonder, "Who set that trap and baited it? Am I a creature
of blind instincts, jealousies and greeds and hates beyond my
own control entirely ? Am I a poor, feeble insect, blown about
in a storm and smashed? Or do I make the storm, and can
I in any part control it ?"
No matter how busy you may be, no matter how tired you
may be, it will pay jrou to get such things straight: to know
X Introductory
a little of what the wise men of the past have thought about
them, and more especially what science with its new tools of
knowledge may have discovered.
The writer of this book spent nine years of his life in
colleges and universities ; also he was brought up in a church.
So he knows the orthodox teachings, he can say that he has
given to the recognized wise men of the world every oppor-
tunity to tell him what they know. Then, being dissatisfied,
he went to the unrecognized teachers, the enthusiasts and the
"cranks" of a hundred schools. Finally, he thought for him-
self; he was even willing to try experiments upon himself.
As a result, he has not found what he claims is ultimate or
final truth; but he has what he might describe as a rough
working draft, a practical outline, good for everyday purposes.
He is going to have confidence enough in you, the reader, to
give you the hardest part first ; that is, to begin with the great
fundamental questions. What is life, and how does it come
to be? What does it mean, and what have we to do with it?
Are we its masters or its slaves? What does it owe us, and
what do we owe to it? Why is it so hard, and do we have
to stand its hardness? And can we really know about all
these matters, or will we be only guessing? Can we trust our-
selves to think about them, or shall we be safer if we believe
what we are told? Shall we be punished if we think wrong,
and how shall we be punished? Shall we be rewarded if we
think right, and will the pay be worth the trouble?
Such questions as these I am going to try to answer in the
simplest language possible. I would avoid long words alto-
gether, if I could ; but some of these long words mean certain
definite things, and there are no other words to serve the
purpose. You do not refuse to engage in the automobile busi-
ness because the carburetor and the diflferential are words of
four syllables. Neither should you refuse to get yourself
straight with the universe because it is too much trouble to
go to the dictionary and learn that the word "phenomenon"
means something else than a little boy who can play the piano
or do long division in his head.
CONTEXTS
PART ONE: THE BOOK OF THE MIND
PAGE
Chapter I. The Nature of Life 3
Attempts to show what we know about life; to set the
bounds of real truth as distinguished from phrases and
self-deception.
Chapter II. The Nature of Faith 8
Attempts to show what we can prove by our reason, and
what we know intuitively; what is implied in the process
of thinking, and without which no thought could be.
Chapter III. The Use of Reason 12
Attempts to show that in the field to which reason applies
we are compelled to use it, and are justified in trusting it.
Chapter IV. The Origin of Morality 17
Compares the ways of Nature with human morality, and
tries to show how the latter came to be.
Chapter V. Nature and Man 21
Attempts to show how man has taken control of Nature,
and is carrying on her processes and improving upon them.
Chapter VI. Man the Rebel 27
Shows the transition stage between instinct and reason,
in which man finds himself, and how he can advance to
a securer condition.
Chapter VII. Making Our Morals 31
Attempts to show that human morality must change to fit
human facts, and there can be no judge of it save human
reason.
Chapter VIII. The Virtue of Moderation 37
Attempts to show that wise conduct is an adjustment of
means to ends, and depends upon the understanding of a
particular set of circumstances.
xii Contents
PAGE
Chapter IX. The Choosing of Life 42
Discusses the standards by which we may judge what is
best in life, and decide what we wish to make of it.
Chapter X. Myself and My Neighbor 50
Compares the new morality with the old, and discusses the
relative importance of our various duties.
Chapter XL The Mind and the Body 53
Discusses the interaction between physical and mental
things, and the possibility of freedom in a world of fixed
causes.
Chapter XIL The Mind of the Body 61
Discusses the subconscious mind, what it is, what it does
to the body, and how it can be controlled and made use
of by the intelligence.
Chapter XIIL Exploring the Subconscious 67
Discusses automatic writing, the analysis of dreams, and
other methods by which a new universe of life has been
brought to human knowledge.
Chapter XIV. The Problem of Immortality 74
Discusses the survival of personality from the moral point
of view: that is, have we any claim upon life, entitling
us to live forever?
Chapter XV. The Evidence for Survival 81
Discusses the data of psychic research, and the proofs of
spiritism thus put before us.
Chapter XVL The Powers of the Mind 91
Sets forth the fact that knowledge is freedom and igno-
rance is slavery, and what science means to the people.
Chapter XVII. The Conduct of the Mind 98
Concludes the Book of the Mind with a study of how to
preserve and develop its powers for the protection of our
lives and the lives of all men.
Contents ^ii
PART TWO: THE BOOK OF THE BODY
PAGE
Chapter XVHI. The Unity of the Body 105
Discusses the body as a whole, and shows that health is
not a matter of many different organs and functions, but
is one problem of one organism.
Chapter XIX. Experiments in Diet . 115
Narrates the author's adventures in search of health, and
his conclusions as to what to eat.
Chapter XX. Errors in Diet 123
Discusses the different kinds of foods, and the part they
play in the making of health and disease.
Chapter XXI. Diet Standards 134
Discusses various foods and their food values, the quan-
tities we need, and their money cost
Chapter XXII. Foods and Poisons 145
Concludes the subject of diet, and discusses the effect upon
the system of stimulants and narcotics.
Chapter XXIII. More About Health 156
Discusses the subjects of breathing and ventilation, cloth-
ing, bathing and sleep.
Chapter XXIV. Work and Play 163
Deals with the question of exercise, both for the idle and
the overworked.
Chapter XXV. The Fasting Cure 169
Deals with Nature's own remedy for disease, and how to
make use of it.
Chapter XXVI. Breaking the Fast 177
Discusses various methods of building up the body after
a fast, especially the milk diet.
Chapter XXVII. Diseases and Cures 182
Discusses some of the commoner human ailments, and
what is known about their cause and cure.
PART ONE
THE BOOK OF THE MIND
CHAPTER I
THE NATURE OF LIFE
(Attempts to show what we know about life; to set the bounds
of real truth as distinguished from phrases and self-deception.)
If I could, I would begin this book by telling you whatt
Life is. But unfortunately I do not know what Life is. The^
only consolation I can find is in tjie fact that nobody elseJ
knows either.
We ask the churches, and they tell us that male and female
created He them, and put them in the Garden of Eden, and
they would have been happy had not Satan tempted them.
But then you ask, who made Satan, and the explanation grows
vague. You ask, if God made Satan, and knew what Satan
was going to do, is it not the same as if God did it himself ?
So this explanation of the origin of evil gets you no further
than the Hindoo picture of the world resting on the back of
a tortoise, and the tortoise on the head of a snake — and noth-
ing said as to what the snake rests on.
Let us go to the scientist. I know a certain physiologist,
perhaps the greatest in the world, and his eager face rises
before me, and I hear his quick, impetuous voice declaring
that he knows what Life is; he has told it in several big
volumes, and all I have to do is to read them. Life is a
tropism, caused by the presence of certain combinations of
chemicals ; my friend knows this, because he has produced the
thing in his test-tubes. He is an exponent of a way of thought
called Monism, which finds the ultimate source of being in
forms of energy manifesting themselves as matter; he shows
how all living things arise from that and sink back into it.
But question this scientist more closely. What is this
"matter" that you are so sure of? How do you know it?
Obviously, through sensations. You never know matter itself,
you only know its effects upon you, and you assume that the
matter must be there to cause the sensation. In other words,
"matter," which seems so real, turns out to be merely "a
permanent possibility of sensation." And suppose there were
to be sensations, caused, for example, by a sportive demon
2— July 22. 2
4 Mind and Body
who liked to make fun of eminent physiologists — ^then there
might be the appearance of matter and nothing else ; in other
words, there might be mind, and various states of mind. So
we discover that the materialist, in the philosophic sense, is
making just as large an act of faith, is pronouncing just as
bold a dogma as any priest of any religion.
This is an old-time topic of disputation. Before Mother
Eddy there was Bishop Berkeley, and before Berkeley, there
was Plato, and they and the materialists disputed until their
hearers cried in despair, "What is Mind ? No matter ! What
is Matter? Never mind!" But a century or two ago in a
town of Prussia there lived a little, dried-up professor of
philosophy, who sat himself down in his room and fixed his
eyes on a church steeple outside the window, and for years
on end devoted himself to examining the tools of thought with
which the human mind is provided, and deciding just what
work and how much of it they are fitted to do. So came the
proof that our minds are incapable of reaching to or dealing
with any ultimate reality whatever, but can comprehend only
phenomena — that is to say, appearances — and their relations
one with another. The Koenigsberg professor proved this
once for all time, setting forth four propositions about ulti-
mate reality, and proving them by exact and irrefutable logic,
and then proving by equally exact and irrefutable logic their
precise opposites and contraries. Anybody who has read and
comprehended the four "antinomies" of Immanuel Kant*
knows that metaphysics is as dead a subject as astrology, and
that all the complicated theories which the philosophers from
Heraclitus to Arthur Balfour have spun like spiders out of
their inner consciousness, have no more relation to reality
than the intricacies of the game of chess.
The writer is sorry to make this statement, because he
spent a lot of time reading these philosophers and acquainting
himself with their subtle theories. He learned a whole lan-
guage of long words, and even the special meanings which
each philosopher or school of philosophers give to them. When
he had got through, he had learned, so far as metaphysics is
concerned, absolutely nothing, and had merely the job of
clearing out of his mind great masses of verbal cobwebs.
It was not even good intellectual training; the metaphysical
method of thought is a trap. The person who thinks in abso-
*See Panlsen: "Uit of Kant"
The Book of the Mind 5
lutes and ultimates is led to believe that he has come to con-
clusions about reality, when as a matter of fact he has merely
proved what he wants to believe; if he had wanted to believe
the opposite, he could have proven that exactly as well — ^as his
opponents will at once demonstrate.
If you multiply two feet by two feet, the result repre-
sents a plain surface, or figure of two dimensions. If you
multiply two feet by two feet by two feet, you have a solid,
or figure of three dimensions — such as the world in which
we live and move. But now, suppose you multiply two
feet by two feet by two feet by two feet, what does that
represent? For ages the minds of mathematicians and
philosophers have been tempted by this fascinating prob-
lem of the "fourth dimension." They have worked out by
analogy what such a world would be like. If you went into
this "fourth dimension," you could turn yourself inside out,
and come back to our present world in that condition, and
no one of your three-dimension friends would be able to
imagine how you had managed it, or to put you back again
the way you belonged. And in this, it seems to me, we have the
perfect analogy of metaphysical thinking. It is the "fourth
dimension" of the mind, and plays as much havoc with sound
thinking as a physical "fourth dimension" would plav with —
say, the prison system. A man who takes up an absolute —
God, immortality, the origin of being, a first cause, free will,
absolute right or wrong, infinite time or space, final truth,
original substance, the "thing in itself" — ^that man disappears
into a fourth dimension, and turns himself inside out or
upside down or hindside foremost, and comes back and exhibits
himself in triumph ; then, when he is ready, he effects another
disappearance, and another change, and is back on earth an
ordinary human being.
The world is full of schools of thought, theologians and
metaphysicians and professors of academic philosophy, tran-
scendentalists and theosophists and Christian Scientists, who
perform such mental monkey-shines continuously before our
eyes. fThey prove what they please, and the fact that no two
of theifl prove the same thing makes clear to us in the end
that none of them ha s proved anything. The Christian Scien-
tist asserts that there"ls~no such thmg as matter, but that pain
is merely a delusion of mortal mind; he continues serene in
this faith imtil he runs into an automobile and sustains a com-
6 Mind and Body
pound fracture of the femur — whereupon he does exactly what
any of the rest of us do, goes to a competent surgeon and
has the bone set. On the other hand, some devoted young
SociaHsts of my acquaintance have read Haeckel and Dietzgen,
and adopted the dogma that matter is the first cause, and
that all things have grown out of it and return to it; they
have seen that the brain decays after death, they declare that
the soul is a function of the brain — and because of such
theories they deliberately reject the most powerful modes
of appeal whereby men can be swayed to faith in human
solidarity.
1 he best books I know for the sweeping out of meta-
physical cobwebs are "The Philosophy of Comrnon Sense" and
"The Creed of a Layman," "by Frederic Harrison, leader of
the English Positivists, a school of thought established by
Auguste Comte. But even as I recommend these books^ I
recall the dissatisfaction with which I left them; for it ap-
pears that the Positivists have their dogmas like all the rest.
Mr. Harrison is not content to say that mankind has not the
mental tools for dealing with ultimate realities ; he must needs
prove that mankind never will and never can have these tools.
I look back upon the long process of evolution and ask myself.
What would an oyster think about Positivism? What would
be the opinion of, let us say, a young turnip on the subject
of Mr. Frederic Harrison's thesis? It may well be that the
difference between a turnip and Mr. Harrison is not so great
as will be the difference between Mr. Harrison and that super-
race which some day takes possession of the earth and of all
the universe. It does not seem to me good science or good
sense to dogmatize about what this race will know, or what
will be its tools of thought. What does seem to me good
science and good sense is to take the tools which we now
possess and use them to their utmost capacity.
What is it that we know about life ? We know a seemingly
endless stream of sensations which manifest themselves in
certain ways, and seem to inhere in what we call things and
beings. We observe incessant change in all these phenomena,
and we examine these changes and discover their ways. The
ways seem to be invariable ; so completely so that for practical
purposes we assume them to be invariable, and base all our
calculations and actions upon this assumption. Manifestly,
we could not live otherwise, and the spread of scientific knowl-
The Book of the Mind 7
edge is the further tracing out of such "laws" — that is to say,
the ways of behaving of existence — and the extending of our
belief in their invariability to wider an^ wider fields.
Once upon a time we were told that "the wind bloweth
where it listeth." But now we are quite certain that there
are causes for the blowing of the wind, and when our re-
searches have been carried far enough, we shall be able to
account for and to predict every smallest breath of air. Once
we were told that dreams came from a supernatural world;
but now we are beginning to analyze dreams, and to explain
what they come from and what they mean. Perhaps we still
find human nature a bewildering and unaccountable thing;
but some day we shall know enough of man's body and his
mind, his past and his present, to be able to explain human
nature and to produce it at will, precisely as today we produce
certain reactions in our test-tubes, and do it so invariably that
the most cautious financier will invest tens of millions of
dollars in a process, and never once reflect that he is putting
too much trust in the permanence of nature.
In many departments of thought great specialists are now
working, experimenting and observing by the methods of
science. If in the course of this book we speak of "certainty,"
we mean, of course, not the "absolute" certainty of any meta-
physical dogma, but the practical certainty of everyday com-
mon sense; the certainty we feel that eating food will satisfy
our hunger, and that tomorrow, as today, two and two will
continue to make four.
CHAPTER II
THE NATURE OF FAITH
(Attempts to show what we can prove by our reason, and
what we know intuitively ; what is implied in the process of think-
ing, and without which no thought could be.)
The primary fact that we know about life is growth. Her-
bert Spencer has defined this growth, or evolution, in a string
of long words which may be summed up to mean : the process
whereby a number of things which are simple and like one
another become different parts of one thing which is complex.
If we observe this process in ourselves, and the symptoms of
it in others, we discover that when it is proceeding success-
fully, it is accompanied by a sensation of satisfaction which
we call happiness or pleasure; also that when it is thwarted
or repressed, it is accompanied by a different sensation which
we call pain. Subtle metaphysicians, both inside the churches
and out, have set themselves to the task of proving that there
must be some other object of life than the continuance of these
sensations of pleasure which accompany successful growth.
They have proven to their own satisfaction that morality will
collapse and human progress come to an end unless we can
find some other motive, something more permanent and more
stimulating, something "higher," as they phrase it. All I can
say is that I gave reverent attention to the arguments of these
moralists and theologians, and that for many years I believed
their doctrines ; but I believe them no longer.
I interpret the purpose of life to be the continuous unfold-
ment of its powers, its growth into higher forms — ^that is to
say, forms more complex and subtly contrived, capable of
more intense and enduring kinds of that satisfaction which is
nature's warrant of life. If you wish to take up this state-
ment and argue about it, please wait until you have read the
chapter "Nature and Man," and noted my distinction between
instinctive life and rational life. For men, the word "growth"
does not mean any growth, all growth, blind and indiscriminate
growth. It does not mean growth for the tubercle bacillus,
nor growth for the anopheles mosquito, nor growth for the
8
The Book of the Mind 9
house-fly, the spider and the louse. Neither do we mean
that the purpose of man's own Hfe is any pleasure, all
pleasure, blind and indiscriminate pleasure; the pleasure of
alcohol, the pleasure of cannibalism, the pleasure of the modern
form of cannibalism which we call "making money." We
have survived in the struggle for existence by the cooperative
and social use of our powers of judgment ; and our judgment
is that which selects among forms of growth, which gives
preference to wheat and corn over weeds, and to self-control
and honesty over treachery and greed.
So when we say that the purpose of life is happiness, we
do not mean to turn mankind loose at a hog-trough ; we mean
that our duty as thinkers is to watch life, to test it, to pick
and choose among the many forms it offers, and to say : This
kind of growth is more permanent and full of promise, it is
more fertile, more deeply satisfactory; therefore, we choose
this, and sanction the kind of pleasure which it brings. Other
kinds we decide are temporary and delusive ; therefore we put
in jail anyone who sells alcoholic drink, and we refuse to
invite to our home people who are lewd, and some day we shall
not permit our children to attend moving picture shows in
which the modem form of cannibalism is glorified.
The reader, no doubt, has been taught a distinction between
"science" and "faith." He is saying now, "You believe that
everything is to be determined by human reason? You reject
all faith?" I answer, No; I am not rejecting faith; I am
merely refusing to apply it to objects with which it has nothing
to do. You do not take it as a matter of faith that a package
of sugar weighs a pound; you put it on the scales and find
out — in other words, you make it a matter of experiment. But
all the creeds of all the religious sects are full of pronounce-
ments which are no more matters of faith than the question
of the weighing of sugar. Is pork a wholesome article of
food or is it not? All Christians will readily acknowledge
that this is a matter to be determined by the microscope and
other devices of experimental science ; but then some Jew
rises in the meeting and puts the question: Is dancing in-
jurious to the character ? And immediately all members of the
Methodist Episcopal Church vote to close the discussion.
What is faith? pFaith is the instinct which underlies all
being, assuring us that life is worth while and honest, a thing
to be trusted ; ;in other words, it is the certainty that successf lU
A<> Mind and Body
growth always is and always will be accompanied by pleasure.
The most skeptical scientist in the world, even my friend the
physiologist who proves that life is nothing but a tropism,
and can be produced by mixing chemicals in test-tubes — ^this
eager friend is one of the most faithful men I know. He
is burning up with the faith that knowledge is worth possessing,
and also that it is possible of attainment. With what bound-
less scorn woul-d he receive any suggestion to the contrary —
for example, the idea that life might be a series of sensations
which some sportive demon is producing for the torment ot
man ! More than that, this friend is burning up with the cer-
tainty that knowledge can be spread, that his fellow men will
receive it and apply it, and that it will make them happy when
they do. Why else does he write his learned books in defense
of the materialist philosophy?
And that same faith which animates the great monist ani-
mates likewise every child who toddles off to school, and every
chicken which emerges from an egg, and every blade of grass
which thrusts its head above the ground. Not every chicken
survives, of course, and all the blades of grass wither in the
fall ; nevertheless, the seeds of grass are spread, and chickens
make food for philosophers, and the great process of life con-
tinues to manifest its faith. In the end the life process pro-
duces man, who, as we shall presently see, takes it up, and
judges it, and makes it over to suit himself.
You will note from this that I am what is called an opti-
mist; whereas some of the great philosophers of the world
have called themselves pessimists. But I notice with a smile
that these are often the men who work hardest of all to spread
their ideas, and thus testify to the worthwhileness of truth
and the perfectibility of mankind. There has come to be a
saying among settlement workers and physicians, who are
familiar with poverty and its effects upon life, that there are
no bad babies and good babies, there are only sick babies and
well babies. In the same way, I would say there are no pessi-
mists and optimists, there are only mentally sick people and
mentally well people. Everywhere throughout life, both ani-
mal and vegetable, health means happiness, and gives abundant
evidence of that fact. All healthy life is satisfactory to itself;
when it develops reason, it tries to find out why, and this is
yet another testimony to the fact that having power and using
it is pleasant. When I was in college the professor would
The Book of the Mind 11
propound the old question: "Would you rather be a happy
pig or an unhappy philosopher?" My answer always was:
"I would rather be a happy philosopher," The professor re-
plied: "Perhaps that is not possible." But I said: "I will
prove that it is!"
CHAPTER III
THE USE OF REASON
(Attempts to show that in the field to which reason applies
we are compelled to use it, and are justified in trusting it)
The great majority of people are brought up to believe that
some particular set of dogmas are objects of faith, and that
there are penalties more or less severe for the application of
reason to these dogmas. What particular set it happens to
be is a matter of geography; in a crowded modern city like
New York, it is a matter of the particular block on which the
child is born. A child born on Hester Street will be taught
that his welfare depends upon his never eating meat and butter
from the same dish. A child born on Tenth Avenue will be
taught that it is a matter of his not eating meat on Fridays.
A child born on Madison Avenue will be taught that it is a
question of the precise metaphysical process by which bread is
changed into human body and wine into human blood. Each
of these children will be assured that his human reason is
fallible, that it is extremely dangerous to apply it to this
"sacred" subject, and that the proper thing to do is to accept
the authority of some ancient tradition, or some institution, or
some official, or some book for which a special sanction is
claimed.
Has there ever been in the world any revelation, outside
of or above human reason? Could there ever be such a thing?
In order to test this possibility, select for yourself the most
convincing way by which a special revelation could be handed
down to mankind. Take any of the ancient orthodox ways,
the finding of graven tablets on a mountain-top, or a voice
speaking from a burning bush, or an angel appearing before
a great concourse of people and handing out a written scroll.
Suppose that were to happen, let us say, at the next Yale-
Harvard football game; suppose the news were to be flashed
to the ends of the earth that God had thus presented to man-
kind an entirely new religion. What would be the process by
which the people of London or Calcutta would decide upon
that revelation ? First, they would have to consider the ques-
12
The Book of the Mind 13
tion whether it was an American newspaper fake — ^by no
means an easy question. Second, they would have to consider
the chances of its being an optical delusion. Then, assuming
they accepted the sworn testimony of ten thousand mature
and competent witnesses, they would have to consider the pos-
sibility of someone having invented a new kind of invisible
aeroplane. Assuming they were convinced that it was really
a supernatural being, they would next have to decide the
chances of its being a visitor from Mars, or from the fourth
dimension of space, or from the devil. In considering all this,
they would necessarily have to examine the alleged revelation.
What was the literary quality of it? What was the moral
quality of it ? What would be the effect upon mankind if the
alleged revelation were to be universally adopted and applied ?
Manifestly, all these are questions for the human reason,
the human judgment ; there is no other method of determining
them, there would be nothing for any individual person, or for
men as a whole to do, except to apply their best powers, and,
as the phrase is, "make up their minds" about the matter.
Reason would be the judge, and the new revelation would be
the prisoner at the bar. Humanity might say, this is a real
inspiration, we will submit ourselves to it and follow it, and
allow no one from now on to question it. But inevitably there
would be some who would say, "Tommyrot!" There would
be others who would say, "This new revelation isn't working,
it is repressing progress, it is stifling the mind." These people
would stand up for their conviction, they would become
martyrs, and all the world would have to discuss them. And
who would decide between them and the great mass of men ?
Reason, the judge, would decide.
It__is_perfectly true that human reason is fallible. In-
fallibility is an absolute, a concept of the mind, and not a
reality. Life has not given us infallibility, any more than it
has given us omniscience, or omnipotence, or any other of
those attributes which we call divine. Life has given us
powers, more or less weak, more or less strong, but all capable
of improvement and development. Reason is the tool whereby
mankind has won supremacy over the rest of the animal
kingdom, and is gradually taking control of the forces of
nature. It is the best tool we have, and because it is the best,
we are driven irresistibly to use it. And how strange that
some of us can find no better use for it than to destroy its
14 Mind and Body
own self ! Visit one of the Jesuit fathers and hear him seek
to persuade you that reason is powerless against faith and
must abdicate to faith. You answer, "Yes, father, you have
persuaded me. I admit the fallibility of my mortal powers;
and I begin by applying my doubts of them to the arguments
by which you have just convinced me. I was convinced, but
of course I cannot be sure of a conviction, attained by fallible
reason. Therefore I am just where I was before — except that
I am no longer in position to be certain of anything."
You answer in good faith, and take up your hat and depart,
closing the door of the good father's study behind you. But
stop a moment, why do you close the door? You close the
door because your reason tells you that otherwise the cold air
outside will blow in and make the good father uncomfortable.
You put your hat on, because your reason has not yet been
applied to the problem of the cause of baldness. You step out
onto the street, and when you hear a sudden noise, you step
back onto the curbstone, because your reason tells you that
an automobile is coming, and that on the sidewalk you are
safe from it. So you go on, using your reason in a million
acts of your life whereby your life is preserved and developed.
And if anybody suggested that the fallibility of your reason
should cause you to delay in front of an automobile, you would
apply your reason to the problem of that person and decide
that he was insane. And I say that just as there is insanity in
everyday judgments and relationships, so there is insanity in
philosophy, metaphysics and religion; the seed and source of
all this kind of insanity being the notion that it is the duty
of anybody to believe anything which cannot completely justify
itself as reasonable.
Nowadays, as ideas are spreading, the champions of dogma
are hard put to it, and you will find their minds a muddle of
two points of view. The Jewish rabbi will strive desperately
to think of some hygienic objection to the presence of meat
and butter on the same plate ; the Catholic priest will tell you
that fish is a very wholesome article of food, and that any-
how we all eat too much ; the Methodist and the Baptist and
the Presbyterian will tell you that if men did not rest one day
in seven their health would break down. Thus they justify
faith by reason, and reconcile the conflict between science and
theology. Accepting this method, I experiment and learn that
it improves my digestion and adds to my working power if I
The Book of the Mind 15
play tennis on Sunday. I follow this indisputably rational
form of conduct — and find myself in conflict with the "faith"
of the ancient State of Delaware, which obliges me to serve a
term in its state's prison for having innocently and unwittingly
desecrated its day of holiness !
If you read Professor Bury's little book, "A History of
Freedom of Thought," you will discover that there has been
a long conflict over the right of men to use their minds —
and the victory is not yet. The term "free thinker," which
ought to be the highest badge a man could wear, is still almost
everywhere throughout America a term of vague terror. In
the State of California today there is a Criminal Syndicalism
Act, which provides a maximum of fourteen years in jail for
any person who shall write or publish or speak any words
expressive of the idea that the United States government
should be overthrown in the same way that it was established —
that is, by force; only a few months ago the writer of this
book was on the witness stand for two days, and had the pain-
ful, almost incredible experience of being battered and knocked
about by an inquisitive district attorney, who cross-examined
him as to every detail of his beliefs, and read garbled extracts
from his published writings, in the effort to make it appear
that he held some belief which might possibly prejudice the
jury against him. The defendant in this case, a returned
soldier who had spent three years as a volunteer in the trenches,
and had been twice wounded and once gassed, was accused,
not merely of approving the Soviet form of government, but
also of having printed uncomplimentary references to priests
and religious institutions.
Nowadays it is the propertied class which has taken pos-
session of the powers of government, and which presimies
to censor the thinking of mankind in its own interest. But
whether it be priestcraft or whether it be capitalism which
seeks to bind the human mind, it comes to the same thing,
and the effort must be met by the assertion that, in spite of
errors and blunders, and the serious harm these may do, there
is no wa:y for men to advance save by using the best powers
of thinking they possess, and proclaiming their conclusions to
others. Speaking theologically for the moment, God has given
us our reasoning powers, and also the impulse to use them,
and it is inconceivable that He should seek to restrict their
use, or should give to anyone the power to forbid their use.
16 Mind and Body
It is His truth which we seek, and His which we proclaim.
In so doing we perform our highest act of faith, and we re-
fuse to be troubled by the idea that for this service He will
reward us by an eternity of sulphur and brimstone.
Throughout the remainder of this book it will be assumed
that the reader accepts this point of view, or, at any rate, that
he is willing for purposes of experiment to give it a trial
and see where it leads him. We shall proceed to consider the
problems of human life in the light of reason, to determine
how they come to be, and how they can be solved.
CHAPTER IV
THE ORIGIN OF MORALITY
(Compares the ways of nature with human morality, and tries
to show how the latter came to be.)
Seventy years ago Charles Darwin published his book,
"The Origin of Species," in which he defied the theological
dogma of his time by the shocking idea that life had evolved
by many stages of progress from the diatom to man. This
of course did not conform to the story of the Garden of Eden,
and so "Darwinism" was fought as an invention of the devil,
and in the interior of America there are numerous sectarian
colleges where the dread term "evolution" is spoken in awed
whispers. Only the other day I read in my newspaper the
triumphant proclamation of some clergyman that "Darwinism"
had been overthrown. This reverend gentleman had got mixed
up because some biologists were disputing some detail of the
method by which the evolution of species had been brought
about. Do species change by the gradual elimination of the
unfit, or do they change by sudden leaps, the "mutation" theory
of de Vries? Are acquired powers transmitted to posterity,
or is the germ plasm unaffected by its environment ? Concern-
ing such questions the scientists debate. But the fact that life
has evolved in an ordered series from the lower forms to the
higher, and that each individual reproduces in embryo and in
infancy the history of this long process — ^these facts are now
the basis of all modern thinking, and as generally accepted
as the rotation of the earth.
You may study this process of evolution from the outside,
in the multitude of forms which it has assumed and in their
reactions one to another ; or you may study it from the inside
in your own soul, the emotions which accompany it, the im-
pulse or craving which impels it, the elan vital, as it is called
by the French philosopher Bergson, The Christians call it
love, and Nietzsche, who hated Christianity, called it "the
will to power," and persuaded himself that it was the opposite
of love.
You will find in the essays of Professor Huxley, one en-
17
18 Mind and Body
titled "Evolution and Ethics," in which he sets forth the com-
plete unmorality of nature, and declares that there is no way
by which what mankind knows as morality can have originated
in the process of nature or can be reconciled to natural law.
This statement, coming from a leading agnostic, was welcome
to the theologians. But when I first read the essay, as a student
of sixteen, it seemed to me narrow ; I thought I saw a stand-
point from which the contradiction disappeared. The differ-
ence between the morality of Christ and the morality of
nature is merely the difference between a lower and a higher
stage of mental development. The animal loves and seeks by
instinct to preserve the life which it knows — that is to say,
its own life and the life of its young. The wolf knows noth-
ing about the feelings of a deer ; but man in his savage state
develops reasoning powers enough to realize that there are
others like himself, the members of his own tribe, and he
makes for himself taboos which forbid him to kill and eat
the members of that tribe. At the present time humanity has
developed its reason and imaginative sympathy to include in
the "tribe" one or two hundred million people ; while to those
outside the tribe it still preserves the attitude of the wolf.
How came it that a mind so acute as Huxley's went so
far astray on the question of the evolution of morality? The
answer is that this was the factory age in England, and the
great scientist, a rebel in theological matters, was in economics
a child of his time. We find him using the formulas of
bourgeois biology to ridicule Henry George and his plea for
the freeing of the land. "Competition is the life of trade,"
ran the nineteenth century slogan; and competition was the
god of nineteenth century biology. Tennyson summed it up
in the phrase: "Nature red in tooth and claw with ravin;"
and this was found convenient by Manchester manufacturers
who wished to shut little children up for fourteen hours a
day in cotton mills, and to harness women to drag cars in the
coal mines, and to be told by the learned men of their colleges
and the holy men of their churches that this was "the survival
of the fittest," it was nature's way of securing the advance-
ment of the race.
But now we are preparing for an era of cooperation, and
it occurs to our men of science to go back to nature and find
out what really are her ways. H you will read Kropotkin's
"Mutual Aid as a Factor in Evolution," you will find a com-
The Book of the Mind 19
plete refutation of the old bourgeois biology, and a view of
nature which reveals in it the germs of human morality.
Kropotkin points out that everywhere throughout nature it
is the social and not the solitary animals which are most
numerous and most successful. There are many millions of
ants and bees for every hawk or eagle, and certainly in the
state of nature there were thousands of deer for every lion
or tiger that preyed upon them. And all these social creatures
have their ways of being, which it requires no stress of the
imagination to compare with the tribal customs and the moral
codes of mankind. The different animals prey upon one an-
other, but they do not prey upon their own species, except in
a few rare cases. The only beast that makes a regular prac-
tice of exploiting his own kind is man.
By hundreds of interesting illustrations Kropotkin shows
that mutual aid and mutual self-protection are the means
whereby the higher forms of being have been evolved. In-
sects and birds and fish, nearly all the herbivorous mammals,
and even a great many of the carnivores, help one another
and protect one another. The chattering monkeys in the tree-
tops drove out the saber-tooth tiger from the grove because
there were so many of them, and when they saw him they
all set up a shriek and clamor which deafened and confused
him. And when by and by these monkeys developed an
opposed thumb, and broke off a branch of a tree for a club,
and fastened a sharp stone on the end of it for an axe, and
fell upon the saber-toothed tiger and exterminated him, they
did it because they had learned solidarity — even as the workers
of the world are today learning solidarity in the face of the
beast of capitalism.
Man has survived by the cunning of his brain, we are told,
and that is true. But first among the products of that cunning
brain has been the knowledge that by himsdlf he is the most
helpless and pitiful of creatures, while standing together and
forming societies and developing moralities, he is master of
the world. He has not yet learned that lesson entirely; he
has learned it only for his own nation. Therefore he takes
the highest skill of his hand and the subtlest wit of his brain,
and uses them to manufacture poison gases. At the present
hour he is painfully realizing that his poison formulas all
become known to the tribes whom he calls his enemies, and
so it is his own destruction he is engaged in contriving. In
20 Mind and Body
other words, man has come to a time when his mechanical skill,
his mastery over the forces of nature, has developed more
rapidly than his moral sense and his imaginative sympathy.
His ability to destroy life has become dangerously greater than
his desire to preserve it. So he confronts the fair face of
nature as an insane creature, wrecking not merely everything
that he himself has built up, but everything that nature has
built in the ages before him. He is striving now with infinite
agony to make this fact real to himself, and to mend his
evil ways ; and the first step in that process is to root out from
his mind the devil's doctrine which in his blindness and greed
he has himself implanted, that there is any way for him to find
real happiness, or to make any worth while progress on this
earth, by the method of inflicting misery and torment upon
his fellow men.
CHAPTER V
NATURE AND MAN
(Attempts to show how man has taken control of nature, and
is carrying on her processes and improving upon them.)
If the argument of the preceding chapter is sound, human
morality is not a fixed and eternal set of laws, but is, like
everything else in the world, a product of natural evolution.
We can trace the history of it, just as we trace the story of
the rocks. It is not a mysterious or supernatural thing, it is
simply the reaction of man to his environment, and more
especially to his fellow men. The source of it is that same
inner impulse, that love of life, that joy in growing, that faith
which appears to be the soul of all being.
Man is a part of nature and a product of nature ; in many
fundamental respects his ways are still nature's ways and his
laws still nature's laws. But there are other and even more
significant ways in which man has separated himself from
nature and made himself something quite different. In order
to reveal this clearly, we draw a distinction between nature
and man. This is a proper thing to do, provided we bear in
mind that our classification is not permanent or final. We
distinguish frogs from tadpoles, in spite of the fact that at
one stage the creature is half tadpole and half frog. We
distinguish the animal from the vegetable kingdom, despite
the fact that in their lower forms they cannot be distinguished.
What, precisely, is the difference between nature and man ?
The difference lies in the fact that nature is apparently blind
in her processes ; she produces a million eggs in order to give
life to one salmon, she produces countless millions of salmon
to be devoured by other fish apparently no better than salmon.
Poets may take up the doctrine of evolution and dress it out in
theological garments, talking about the "one far off divine event
towards which the whole creation moves," but for all we can
see, nature, apart from man, is just as well satisfied to move
in circles, and to come back exactly where she started. Nature
made a whole world of complicated creatures in the steamy,
luke-warm swamps of the Mesozoic era, and then, as if decid-
21
22 Mind and Body
ing that the pattern of a large body and a small brain was not
a success, she froze them all to death with a glacial epoch,
and we have nothing but the bones to tell us about them.
No one understands anything about evolution until he has
realized that the phrase "the survival of the fittest" does not
mean the survival of the best from any human point of view.
It merely means the survival of those capable of surviving
in some particular environment. We consider our present
civilization as "fit"; but if astronomical changes should cause
another ice age, we should discover that our "fitness" de-
pended upon our ability to live on lichens, or on something
we could grow by artificial light in the bowels of the earth.
So much for our ancient mother, nature. But now —
whether we say with the theologians that it was divine provi-
dence, or with the materialist philosophers that it was an
accidental mixing of atoms — at any rate it has come about that
nature has recently produced creatures who are conscious of
her process, who are able to observe and criticize it, to take
up her work and carry it on in their own way, for better or
for worse. Whether by accident or design, there has been
on parts of our planet such a combination of climate and soil
as has brought into being a new product of nature, a heightened
form of life which we call "intelligence." Creation opens its
eyes, and beholds the work of the creator, and decides that
it is good — yet not so good as it might be! Creation takes
up the work of the creator, and continues it, in many respects
annulling it, in other respects revising it entirely. Whether
a sonnet is a better or a higher product than a spider is a
question it would be futile to discuss ; but this, at least, should
be clear — nature has produced an infinity of spiders, but nature
never produced a sonnet, nor anything resembling it.
Man, the creature of God, takes over the functions of God.
This fact may shock us, or it may inspire us; to the meta-
physically minded it offers a great variety of fascinating prob-
lems. Can it be that God is in process of becoming, that there
is no God until he has become, in us and through us? H. G.
Wells sets forth this curious idea; and then, of course, the
bishops and the clergy rise up in indignation and denounce
Mr. Wells as an upstart and trespasser upon their field. They
have been worshiping their God for some three or four thou-
sand years, and know that He has been from eternity; He
created the world at His will, and how shall impious man
The Book of the Mind 23
presume to rise up and criticize His product, and imagine
that he can improve upon it? Man, with his cheap and silly
little toys, his sonnets and scientific systems, his symphony
concerts and such pale imitations of celestial harmonies!
Mr. Wells, in his character of God in the making, has
created a bishop of his own, and no doubt would maintain
the thesis that he is a far better bishop than any created by
the God of the Anglican churches. We will leave Mr. Wells'
bishop to argue these problems with God's bishops, and will
merely remind the reader of our warning about these meta-
physical matters. You can prove anything and everything,
whichever and however, all or both; and discussions of the
subject are merely your enunciation of the fact that you have
your private truth as you want it. It may be that there is
an Infinite Consciousness, which carries the whole process of
creation in itself, and that all the seeming wastes and blunders
of nature can be explained from some point of view at present
beyond the reach of our minds. On the other hand it may
be that consciousness is now dawning in the universe for the
first time. It may be that it is an accident, a fleeting product
like the morning mist on the mountain top. On the other
hand, it may be that it is destined to grow and expand and
take control of the entire universe, as a farmer takes control
of a field for his own purposes. It may be that just as our
individual fragments of intelligence communicate and merge
into a family, a club, a nation, a world culture, so we shall
some day grope our way toward the consciousness of other
planets, or of other states of being subsisting on this planet
unknown to us, or perhaps even toward the cosmic soul, the
universal consciousness which we call God.
But meantime, all we can say with positiveness is this:
man, the created, is becoming the creator. He is taking up
the world purpose, he is imposing upon it new purposes of his
own, he is attempting to impose upon it a moral code, to test
it and discipline it by a new standard which he calls economy.
To the present writer this seems the most significant fact
about life, the most fascinating point of view from which life
can be regarded. The reader who wishes to follow it into
greater detail is referred to a little book by Professor E. Ray
Lankester, "The KingdonL of Man" ; especially the opening
essay, with its fascinating title, "Nature's Insurgent Son."
In what ways have the reasoned and deliberate purposes of
24 Mind and Body
man revised and even supplanted the processes of nature?
The ways are so many that it would be easier to mention
those in which he has not done so, A modern civilized man
is hardly content with anything that nature does, nor willing
to accept any of nature's products. He will not eat nature's
fruits, he prefers the kinds that he himself has brought into
being. He is not content with the skin that nature has given
him; he has made himself an infinite variety of complicated
coverings. He objects to nature's habit of pouring cold
water upon him, and so he has built himself houses in which
he makes his own climate; he has recently taken to creat-
ing for himself houses which roll along the ground, or which
fly through the air, or which swim under the surface of
the sea; so he carries his private climate with him to all
these places. It was nature's custom to remove her blunders
and her experiments quickly from her sight. But man has
decided that he loves life so well that he will preserve
even the imbeciles, the lame and the halt and the blind. In a
state of nature, if a man's eyes were not properly focused,
he blundered into the lair of a tiger and was eaten. But
civilized man despises such a method of maintaining the
standard of human eyes ; he creates for himself a transparent
product, ground to such a curve that it corrects the focus of
his eyes, and makes them as good as any other eyes. In ten
thousand such ways we might name, man has rebelled against
the harshness of his ancient mother, and has freed himself
from her control.
But still he is the child of his mother, and so it is his way
to act first, and then to realize what he has done. So it comes
about that very few, even of the most highly educated men,
are aware how completely the ancient ways of nature have
been suppressed by her "insurgent son." It is a good deal
as in the various trades and professions which have developed
with such amazing rapidity in modern civilization; the paper
man knows how to make paper, the shoe man knows how to
make shoes, the optician knows about grinding glasses, but
none of these knows very much about the others' specialties,
and has no realization of how far the other has gone. So it
comes about that in our colleges we are still teaching ancient
and immutable "laws of nature," which in the actual practice
of men at work are as extinct and forgotten as the dodo.
In all colleges, except a few which have been tainted by
The Book of the Mind 25
Socialist thought, the students are solemnly learning the so-
called "Malthusian law," that population presses continually
upon the limits of subsistence, there are always a few more
people in every part of the world than that part of the world
is able to maintain. At any time we increase the world's pro-
ductive powers, population will increase correspondingly, so
there can never be an end to human misery, and abortion,
war and famine are simply nature's eternal methods of adjust-
ing man to his environment.
Thus solemnly we are taught in the colleges. And yet, nine
out of ten of the students come from homes where the parents
have discovered the modern practice of birth control; all the
students are themselves finding out about it in one way or
another, and will proceed when they marry to restrict them-
selves to two or three children. In vain will the ghost of
their favorite statesman and hero, Theodore Roosevelt, be
traveling up and down the land, denoimcing them for the
dreadful crime of "race suicide" — ^that is to say, their pre-
suming to use their reason to put an end to the ghastly situa-
tion revealed by the Malthusian law, over-population eternally
recurring and checked by abortion, war and famine ! In vain
will the ghost of their favorite saint and moralist, Anthony
Comstock, be traveling up and down the land, putting people
in jail for daring to teach to poor women what every rich
woman knows, and for attempting to change the entirely man-
made state of affairs whereby an intelligent and self-governing
Anglo-Saxon land is being in two or three generations turned
over to a slum population of Italians, Poles, Hungarians,
Portuguese, French-Canadians, Mexicans and Japanese !
Likewise in every orthodox college the student is taught
what his professors are pleaded to call "the law of diminishing
returns of agriculture." That is to say, additional labor ex-
pended upon a plot of land does not result in an equal increase
of produce, and the increase grows less, until finally you come
to a time when no matter how much labor you expend, you
can get no more produce from that plot of land. All pro-
fessors teach this, because fifty years ago it was true, and
since that time it has not occurred to any professor of political
science to visit a farm. And all the while, out in the suburbs
of the city where the college is located, market gardeners are
practicing on an enormous scale a new system of intensive
agriculture which makes the "law of diminishing returns" a
foolish joke.
26 Mind and Body
As Kropotkin shows in his book, "Fields, Factories and
Workshops," the modern intensive gardener, by use of glass
and the chemical test-tube, has developed an entirely new
science of plant raising. He is independent of climate, he
makes his own climate; he is independent of the defects of
the soil, he would just as soon start from nothing and make
his soil upon an asphalt pavement. By doubling his capital
investment he raises, not twice as much produce, but ten
times as much. If his methods were applied to the British
Isles, he could raise sufficient produce on this small surface
to feed the population of the entire globe.
So we see that by simple and entirely harmless devices
man is in position to restrict or to increase population as he
sees fit. Also he is in position to raise food and produce the
necessities of life for a hundred or thousand times as many
people as are now on the earth. But superstition ordains in-
volimtary parenthood, and capitalism ordains that land shall
be held out of use for speculation, or shall be exploited for
rent! And this is done in the name of "nature" — ^that old
nature of the "tooth and claw," whose ancient plan it is "that
they shall take who have the power, and they shall keep who
can" ; that ancient nature which has been so entirely suppressed
and supplanted by civilized man, and which survives only as
a ghost, a skeleton to be resurrected from the tomb, for the
purpose of frightening the enslaved. When a predatory
financier wishes a fur overcoat to protect himself from the
cold, or when he hires a masseur to keep up the circulation
of his blood, you do not find him troubling himself about the
laws of "nature"; never will he mention this old scarecrow,
except when he is trying to piersuade the workers of the world
to go on paying him tribute for the use of the natural resources
of the earth!
CHAPTER VI
MAN THE REBEL
(Shows the transition stage between instinct and reason, in
which man finds himself, and how he can advance to a securer
condition.)
In the state of nature you find every creature living a
precarious existence, incessantly beset by enemies; and the
creature survives only so long as it keeps itself at the top of
its form. The result is the maintenance of the type in its
full perfection, and, under the competitive pressure, a gradual
increase of its powers. Excepting when sudden eruptions of
natural forces occur, every creature is perfectly provided with
a set of instincts for all emergencies ; it is in harmonious rela-
tionship to its environment, it knows how to do what it has
to do, and even its fears and its pains serve for its protection.
But now comes man and overthrows this state of nature,
abolishes the competitive struggle, and changes at his own
insolent will both his environment and his reaction thereto.
Man's changes are, in the beginning, all along one line;
they are for his own greater comfort, the avoidance of the
inconveniences of nature and the stresses of the competitive
struggle. In a state of nature there are no fat animals, but in
civilization there are not merely fat animals, but fat men to
eat the fat animals. In a state of nature no animal loafs very
long; it has to go out and hunt its food again. But man, by
his superior cunning, compels the animals to work for him,
and also his fellow men. So he produces unlimited wealth
for himself ; not merely can he eat and drink and sleep all he
wants, but he builds a whole elaborate set of laws and moral
customs and religious codes about this power, he invents man-
ners and customs and literatures and arts, expressive of his
superiority to nature and to his fellow men, and of his ability
to enslave and exploit them. So he destroys for his imperious
self the beneficent guardianship which nature had maintained
over him ; he develops a thousand complicated diseases, a thou-
sand monstrous abnormalities of body and mind and spirit.
And each one of these diseases and abnormalities is a new
27
28 Mind and Body
life of its own; it develops a body of knowledge, a science,
and perhaps an art ; it becomes the means of life, the environ-
ment and the determining destiny of thousands, perhaps mil-
lions, of human beings. So continues the growth of the colossal
structure which we call civilization — in part still healthy and
progressive, but in part as foul and deadly as a gigantic cancer.
What is to be done about this cancer ? First of all, it must
be diagnosed, the extent of it precisely mapped out and the
causes of it determined. Man, the rebel, has rejected his
mother nature, and has lost and for the most part forgotten
the instincts with which she provided him. He has destroyed
the environment which, however harsh to the individual, was
beneficent to the race, and has set up in the place of it a
gigantic pleasure-house, with talking machines and moving
pictures and soda fountains and manicure parlors and "gents'
furnishing establishments."
Shall we say that man is to go back to a state of nature,
that he shall no longer make asylums for the insane and
homes for the defective, eye-glasses for the astigmatic and
malted milk for the dyspeptic? There are some who preach
that. Among the multitude of strange books and pamphlets
which come in my mail, I found the other day a volume from
England, "Social Chaos and the Way Out," by Alfred Baker
Read, a learned and imposing tome of 364 pages, wherein
with all the paraphernalia of learning it is gravely maintained
that the solution for the ills of civilization is a return to the
ancient Greek practice of infanticide. Every child at birth is
to be examined by a committee of physicians, and if it is
found to possess any defect, or if the census has established
that there are enough babies in the world for the present, this
baby shall be mercifully and painlessly asphyxiated. You
might think that this is a joke, after the fashion of Swift's
proposal for eating the children of famine-stricken Ireland.
I have spent some time examining this book before I risk
committing myself to the statement that it is the work of a
sober scientist, with no idea whatever of fun.
If we are going to think clearly on this subject, the first
point we have to understand is that nature has nothing to do
with it. We cannot appeal to nature, because we are many
thousands of years beyond her sway. We left her when the
first ape came down from the treetop and fastened a sharp
stone in the end of his club; we bade irrevocable good-bye
The Book of the Mind 29
to her when the first man kept himself from freezing and
altered his diet by means of fire. Therefore, it is no argu-
ment to say that this, that, or the other remedy is "unnatural."
Our choice will lie among a thousand different courses, but
the one thing we may be sure of is that none of them will be
"natural." Bairnsfather, in one of his war cartoons, portrays
a British officer on leave, who got homesick for the trenches
and went out into the garden and dug himself a hole in the
mud and sat shivering in the rain all night. And this amuses
us vastly ; but we should be even more amused if any kind of
reformer, physician, moralist, clergyman or legislator should
suggest to us any remedy for our ills that was really "accord-
ing to nature."
Civilized man, creature of art and of knowledge, has no
love for nature except as an object for the play of his fancy
and his wit. He means to live his own life, he means to
hold himself above nature with all his powers. Yet, obviously,
he cannot go on accumulating diseases, he cannot give his life-
blood to the making of a cancer while his own proper tissues
starve. He must somehow divert the flow of his energies,
his social blood-stream, so to speak, from the cancer to the
healthy growth. To abandon the metaphor, man will deter-
mine by the use of his reason what he wishes life to be; he
will choose the highest forms of it to which he can attain.
He will then, by the deliberate act of his own will, devote
his energies to those tasks; he will make for himself new
laws, new moral codes, new customs and ways of thought,
calculated to bring to reality the ideal which he has formed.
So only can man justify himself as a creator, so can he realize
the benefit and escape the penalties of his revolt from his
ancient mother.
And then, perhaps, we shall make the discovery that we
have come back to nature, only in a new form. Nature,
harsh and cruel, wasteful and blind as we call her, yet had her
deep wisdom; she cared for the species, she protected and
preserved the type. Man, in his new pride of power, has in-
vented a philosophy which he dignifies by the name of "in-
dividualism." He lives and works for himself ; he chooses
to wear silk shirts, and to break the speed limit, and to pin
ribbons and crosses on his chest. Now what he must do with
his new morality, if he wishes to save himself from degenera-
tion, is to manifest the wisdom and far vision of the old
30 Mind and Body
mother whom he spurned, and to say to himself, deliberately,
as an act of high daring: I will protect the species, I will
preserve the type ! I will deny myself the raptures of alcoholic
intoxication, because it damages the health of my offspring ;
I will deny myself the amusement of sexual promiscuity for
the same reason. I will devise imitations of the chase and
of battle in order that I may keep my physical body up to the
best standard of nature. Because I understand that all civilized
life is based upon intelligence, I will acquire knowledge and
spread it among my fellow men. Because I perceive that
civilization is impossible without sympathy, and because sym-
pathy makes it impossible for me to be happy while my fellow
men are ignorant and degraded, therefore I dedicate my ener-
gies to the extermination of poverty, war, parasitism and all
forms of exploitation of man by his fellows.
Professor William James is the author of an excellent essay
entitled "A Moral Equivalent for War." He sets forth the
idea that men have loved war through the ages because it has
called forth their highest efforts, has made them more fully
aware of the powers of their being. He asks. May it not be
possible for man, of his own free impulse, bom of his love
of life and the wonderful potentialities which it unfolds, to
invent for himself a discipline, a code based, not upon the
destruction of other men and their enslavement, but upon
cooperative emulation in the unfoldment of the powers of the
mind? That this can be done by men, I have never doubted.
That it will be done, and done quickly, has been made certain
by the late world conflict, which has demonstrated to all think-
ing people that the progress of the mechanical arts has been
such that man is now able to inflict upon his own civilization
more damage than it is able to endure.
CHAPTER VII
MAKING OUR MORALS
(Attempts to show that human morality must ckange to fit
human facts, and there can be no judge of it save human reason.)
Assuming the argument of the preceding chapters to be
accepted, it appears that human life is in part at least a
product of human will, guided by human intelligence. Man
finds himself in the position of the crew of a ship in the
middle cfi the ocean ; Tie does not know exactly how the ship
was made, or how it came to be in its present position, but
he has discovered how the engines are run, and how the ship
is steered, and the meaning of the compass. So now he takes
charge of the ship, and keeps it afloat amid many perils ; and
meantime, on the bridge of the vessel, there goes on a furious
argument over the question what port the ship shall be steered
to and what chart shall be used.
It is not well as a rule to trust to similes, but this simile
is useful because it helps us to realize how fluid and changeable
are the conditions of man's life, and how incessant and urgent
the problems with which he finds himself confronted. The
moral and legal codes of mankind may be compared to the
steering orders which are given to the helmsman of the vessel.
Northeast by north, he is told ; and if during the night a heavy
wind arises, and pushes the bow of the vessel off to starboard,
then the helmsman has to push the wheel in the opposite direc-
tion. If he does not do so, he may find that his vessel has
swung around and is going to some other part of the world.
Next morning the passengers may wake up and find the ship
on the rocks — because the helmsman persisted in following
certain steering directions which were laid down in an ancient
Hebrew book two or three thousand years ago !
If life is a continually changing product, then the laws
which govern conduct must also be continually changing, and
morality is a problem of continuous adjustment to new cir-
cumstances and new needs. If man is free to work upon this
changing environment, he must be free to make new tools and
devise new processes. If it is the task of reason to choose
31
32 Mind and Body
among many possible courses and many possible varieties of
life, then clearly it is man's duty to examine and revise every
detail of his laws and customs and moral codes.
This is, of course, in flat contradiction to the teachings of
all religions. So far as I know there is no religion which
does not teach that the conduct of man in certain matters has
been eternally fixed by some higher power, and that it is
man's duty to conform to these rules. It is considered to be
wicked even to suggest any other idea; in fact, to do so is
the most wicked thing in the world, far more dangerous than
any actual infraction of the code, whatever it may be.
Let us see how this works out in practice. Let us take,
for a test, the Ten Commandments. These commandments
were graven upon stone tablets some four thousand years ago,
and are supposed to have been valid ever since. "Thou shalt
not kill," is one ; others phrase it, "Thou shall do no murder" ;
and in this double version we see at once the beginnings of
controversy. If you are a Quaker, you accept the former ver-
sion, while if you are a member of the military general staff
of your country you accept the latter. You maintain the right
to kill your fellow men, provided that those who do the killing
have been previously clad in a special uniform, indicating their
distinctive function as killers of their fellow men. You main-
tain, in other words, the right of making war; and presently,
when you get into making war, you find yourself maintaining
the right to kill, not merely by the old established method of
the sword and the bullet, but by means of pcison gases which
destroy the lives of women and children, perhaps a whole city
full at a time.
And also, of course, you maintain the right to kill, provided
the killing has been formally ordered and sanctioned by a
man who sits upon a raised bench and wears a black robe,
and perhaps a powdered wig. You consider that by the simple
device of putting this man into a black robe and a powdered
wig, you endow him with authority to judge and revise the
divine law. In other words, you subject this divine law to
human reason; and if some religious fanatic refuses to be so
subjected, you call him by the dread name "pacifist," and
if he attempts to preach his idea, you send him to prison for
ten or twenty years, which means in actual practice that you
kill him by the slow effects of malnutrition and tubercular
infection. If he is ordered to put on the special costume of
The Book of the Mind 33
killing, and refuses to do so, you call him a "C. O./' and you
bully and beat him, and perhaps administer to him the "water
cure" in your dungeons.
Or taJce the commandment that we shall not commit
adultery. Surely this is a law about which we can agree!
But presently we discover that unhappily married couples
desire to part, and that if we do not ^low them to part, we
actually cause the commission of a great deal more adultery
than otherwise. Therefore, our wise men meet together, and
revise this divine law, and decide that it is not adultery if
a man takes another wife, provided he has received from a
judge an engraved piece of paper permitting him to do so.
But some of the followers of religion refuse to admit this
right of mere mortal man. The Catholic Church attempts to
enforce its own laws, and declares that people who divorce
and remarry are really living in adultery and committing mor-
tal sin. The Episcopal Church does not go quite so far as
that; it allows the innocent party in the divorce to remarry.
Other churches are content to accept the state law as it stands.
Is it not manifest that all these groups are applying human
reason, and nothing but human reason, to the interpreting
and revising of their divine commandments?
Or take the law, "Thou shalt not steal." Surely we can
all agree upon that! Let us do so; but our agreement gets
us nowhere, because we have to set up a human court to
decide what is "stealing." Is it stealing to seize upon land,
and kill the occupants of it, and take the land for your own,
and hand it down to your children forever? Yes, of course,
that is stealing, you say; but at once you have to revise your
statement. It is not stealing if it was done a sufficient number
of years ago; in that case the results of it are sanctified by
law, and held unchangeable forever. Also, we run up against
the fact that it is not stealing, if it is done by the State, by
men who have been dressed up in the costume of killers before
they commit the act.
Again, is it stealing to hold land out of use for speculation,
while other men are starving and dying for lack of land to
labor upon? Some of us call this stealing, but we are im-
politely referred to as "radicals," and if we venture to suggiest
that anyone should resist this kind of stealing, we are sen-
tenced to slow death from malnutrition and tubercular infec-
tion. Again, is it stealing for a victim of our system of land
34 Mind and Body
monopoly to take a loaf of bread in order to save the life of
his starving child? The law says that this is stealing, and
sends the man to jail for this act; yet the common sense of
mankind protests, and I have heard a great many respectable
Americans venture so far in "radicalism" as to say that they
themselves would steal under such circumstances.
One could pile up illustrations without limit; but this is
enough to make clear the point, that it is perfectly futile to
attempt to talk about "divine" rules for human conduct. Re-
gardless of any ideas you may hold, or any wishes, you are
forced at every hour of your life to apply your reason to the
problems of your life, and you have no escape from the task
of judging and deciding. All that you do is to judge right
or to judge wrong; and if you judge wrong, you inflict misery
upon yourself and upon all who come into contact with you.
How much more sensible, therefore, to recognize the fact of
moral and intellectual responsibility ; to investigate the data of
life with which you have to deal, the environment by which
you are surrounded, and to train your judgment so that you
will be able to fit yourself to it with quickness and certainty !
"But," the believer in religion will say, "this leaves man-
kind without any guide or authority. How can human beings
act, how can they deal with one another, if there are no laws,
no permanent moral codes ?"
The answer is that to accept the idea of the evolution of
morality does not mean at all that there will be no permanent
laws and working principles. Many of the facts of life are
fixed for all practical purposes — the purposes not merely of
your life and my life, but the life of many generations. We
are not likely to see in our time the end of the ancient Hebrew
announcement that "the sins of the father are visited upon the
children" ; therefore it is possible for us to study out a course
of action based upon the duty of every father to hand down
to his children the gift of a sound mind in a sound body.
The Catholic Church has had for a thousand years or more
the "mortal sin" of gluttony upon its list; and today comes
experimental science with its new weapons of research, and
discovers autointoxication and the hardening of the arteries,
and makes it very unlikely that the moral codes of men will
ever fail to list gluttony as a mortal sin. Indeed, science has
added to gluttony, not merely drunkenness, but all use of
alcoholic liquor for beverage purposes; we have done this in
The Book of the Mind 35
spite of the manifest fact that the drinking of wine was not
merely an Old Testament virtue, but a New Testament reli-
gious rite.
To say that human life changes, and that new discoveries
and new powers make necessary new laws and moral customs,
is to say something so obvious that it might seem a waste of
paper and ink. Man has invented the automobile and has
crowded himself into cities, and so has to adopt a rigid set of
traffic regulations. So far as I know, it has never occurred
to any religious enthusiast to seek in the book of Revelation
for information as to the advisability of the "left hand turn"
at Broadway and Forty-second Street, New York, at five
o'clock in the afternoon. But modern science has created
new economic facts, just as unprecedented as the automobile ;
it has created new possibilities of spending and new possibilities
of starving for mankind; it has made new cravings and new
satisfactions, new crimes and new virtues; and yet the great
mass of our people are still seeking to guide themselves in
their readjustments to these new facts by ancient codes which
have no more relationship to these facts than they have to the
affairs of Mars!
I am acquainted with a certain lady, one of the kindest
and most devoted souls alive, who seeks to solve the problems
of her life, and of her large family of children and grand-
children, according to sentences which she picks out, more
or less at random, from certain more or less random chapters
of ancient Hebrew literature. This lady will find some words
which she imagines apply to the matter, and will shut her
devout eyes to the fact that there are other "texts," bearing
on the matter, which say exactly the opposite. She will place
the strangest and most unimaginable interpretations upon the
words, and yet will be absolutely certain that her interpretation
is the voice of God speaking directly to her. If you try to
tell her about Socialism, she will say, "The poor ye have
always with you" ; which means that it is interfering with
Divine Providence to try to remedy poverty on any large
scale. This lady is ready instantly to relieve any single case
of want; she regards it as her duty to do this; in fact, she
considers that the purpose of some people's poverty is to
provide her with a chance to do the noble action of relieving
it. You would think that the meaning of the sentence, "Spare
the rod and spoil the child," would be so plain that no one
4
36 Mind and Body
could mistake it; but this good lady understood it to mean
that God forbade the physical chastisement of children, and
preferred them "spoiled." She held this idea for half a life-
time — ^until it was pointed out to her that the sentence was
not in the Bible, but in "Hudibras," an old English poem!
CHAPTER VIII
THE VIRTUE OF MODERATION
(Attempts to show that wise conduct is an adjustment of means
to ends, and depends upon the understanding of a particular set
of circumstances.)
Some years ago I used to know an ardent single tax propa-
gandist who found my way of arguing intensely irritating,
because, as he phrased it, I had "no principles." We would
be discussing, for example, a protective tariff, and I would
wish to collect statistics, but discovered to my bewilderment
that to my single tax friend a customs duty was "stealing"
on the part of the government. The government had a right
to tax land, because that was the gift of nature, but it had
no right to tax the products of human labor, and when it took
a portion of the goods which anyone brought into a country,
the government was playing the part of a robber. Of course
such a man was annoyed by the suggestion that in the early
stages of a country's development it might possibly be a good
thing for the country to make itself independent and self-
sufificient by encouraging the development of its manufactures ;
that, on the other hand, when these manufactures had grown
to such a size that they controlled the government, it might be
an excellent thing for the country to subject them to the
pressure of foreign competition, in order to lower their value
as a preliminary to socializing them.
The reader who comes to this book looking for hard and
fast rules of life will be disappointed. It would be convenient
if someone could lay down for us a moral code, and lift from
our shoulders the inconvenient responsibility of deciding about
our own lives. There may be persons so weak that they have
to have the conditions of their lives thus determined for them ;
but I am not writing for such persons. I am writing for
adult and responsible individuals, and I bear in mind that
every individual is a separate problem, with separate needs
and separate duties. There are, of course, a good many rules
that apply to everybody in almost all emergencies, but I cannot
think of a single rule that I would be willing to say I would
37
38 Mind and Body
apply in my life without a single exception. "Thou shalt not
kill" is a rule that I have followed, so far without exception ;
but as soon as I turn my imagination loose, I can think ot
many circumstances under which I should kill. I remember
discussing the matter with a pacifist friend of mine, an out-
and-out religious non-resistant. I pointed out to him that
people sometimes went insane, and in that condition they
sometimes seized hatchets and killed anyone in sight. What
would my pacifist friend do if he saw a maniac attacking his
children with a hatchet? It did not help him to say that he
would use all possible means short of killing the maniac; he
had finally to admit that if he were quite sure it was a ques-
tion of the life of the maniac or the life of his child, he would
kill. And this is not mere verbal quibbling, because such
things do happen in the world, and people are confronted with
such emergencies, and they have to decide, and no rule is a
general rule if it has a single exception. There is a saying
that "the exception proves the rule," but this is very silly; it
is a mistranslation of the Latin word "probat," Which means,
not proves, but tests. No exception can prove a rule. What
the exception does is to test the rule by showing that the
result does not follow in the exceptional case.
The only kind of rule which can be laid down for human
conduct is a rule in such general terms that it escapes excep-
tions by leaving the matter open for every man's difference
of opinion. Any kind of rule which is specific will sooner or
later pass out of date. Take, by way of illustration, the
ancient and well-established virtue of frugality. Obviously,
under a state of nature, or of economic competition, it is
necessary for every man to lay by a store "for a rainy day."
But suppose we could set up a condition of economic security,
under which society guaranteed to every man the full product
of his labor, and the old and the sick were fully taken care
of — ^then how foolish a man would seem who troubled to
acquire a surplus of goods! It would be as if we saw him
riding on horseback through the main street of our town in a
full suit of armor!
I devote a good deal of space to this question of a fixed
and unchangeable morality, because it is one of the heaviest
burdens that mankind carries upon its back. The record of
human history is sickening, not so much because of blood and
slaughter, but because of fanaticism; because wherever the
The Book of the Mind 39
mind of man attempts to assert itself, to escape from the blind
rule of animal greed, it adopts a set of formiilas, and proceeds
to enforce them, regardless of consequences, upon the whole
of life. Consider, for example, the rule of the Puritans in
England. The Puritans glorified conscience, and it is per-
fectly proper to glorify conscience, but not to the entire sup-
pression of the beauty-making faculties in man. Macaulay
summed up the Puritan point of view in the sentence that
they objected to bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the
bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. As a
result of applying that principle, and lacing mankind in a
straight-jacket by legislation, England swung back into a re-
action under the Cavaliers, in which debauchery held more
complete sway than ever before or since in English life.
This is a hard lesson, but it must be learned: there is no
virtue that does not become a vice if it is carried to extremes ;
there is no virtue that does not become a vice if it is applied
at the wrong time, or under the wrong circumstances, or at
the wrong stage of human development. In fact, we may
say that most vices are virtues misapplied. The so-called
natural vices are simply natural impulses carried to excess,
while the tmnatural vices result from the suppression and
distortion of natural impulses. The Greeks had as their
supreme virtue what they called "sophrosune." It is a beau-
tiful word, worth remembering; it means a beautiful quality
called moderation. We shall find, as we come to investigate,
that life is a series of compromises among many different
needs, many different desires, many different duties; and
reason sits as a wise and patient judge, and appoints to each
its proper portion, and denies to it an excess which would
starve the others. Such is true morality, and it is incompatible
with the existence of any fixed code, whether of htunan origin
or divine.
The fixed morality is a survival of a far-off past, of the
days of instinct and servitude. Human reason has developed
but slowly, and perhaps only a few people are as yet entirely
capable of taking control of their own destiny; perhaps it is
really dangerous to think for oneself I But if we investigate
carefully, we may decide that the danger is not so much to
ourselves as it is to others. The most evil of all the habits
that man has inherited from his far-off past is the habit of
exploiting his fellows, and in order to exploit them more
40 Mind and Body
safely the ruling castes of priests and kings and nobles and
property owners have taken possession of the moralities of
the world and shaped them for their own convenience. They
have taught the slave virtues of credulity and submission;
they have surrounded their teachings with all the terrors of
the supernatural ; they have placed upon rebellion the penalties,
not merely of this world, but of the next, not merely of the
dungeon and the rack, but of hellfire and brimstone.
I do not wish to go to extremes and say that the moral
codes now taught in the world are made wholly in this evil
way. As a matter of fact they are a queer jumble of the two
elements, the slave terrors of the past and the common sense
of the present. There is not one moral code in the world
today, there are many. There is one for the rich, and an
entirely different one for the poor, and the rich have had a
great deal more to do with shaping the code of the poor than
the poor have had to do with shaping the code of the rich.
There is one code for governments, and an entirely different
one for the victims of governments. There is one code for
business, and an entirely different one, a far more human and
decent one, for friendship. Above all, there is one code for
Sunday and another code for the other six days of the week.
Most of our idealisms and our sentimental fine phrases we
reserve for our Sunday code, while for our every-day code
we go back to the rule of the jungle : "Dog eat dog," or "Do
unto others as they would do unto you, but do it first." When
you attempt to suggest a new moral code to our present day
moral authorities, it is the fine phrases of the Sunday code
they bring out for exhibition purposes; and perhaps you are
impressed by their arguments — until Monday morning, when
you attempt to apply this code at the office, and they stare at
you in bewilderment, or burst out laughing in your face.
What I am trying to do here is to outline a code that will
not be a matter of phrases but a matter of practice. It will
apply to all men, rich as well as poor, and to all seven days
of the week. I am not so much suggesting a code, as pointing
out to you how you can work out your own code for yourself.
I am suggesting that you should adopt it, not because I tell
you to, but because you yourself have taken it and tested it,
precisely as you would test any other of the practical affairs
of your life — ^potatoes as an article of diet, or some particular
sack of potatoes that a peddler was trying to sell to you. It is
The Book of the Mind 41
not yet possible for you to be as sure about everything in
your life as you can be about a sdck of potatoes; human
knowledge has not got that far; but at least you can know
what is to be known, and if anything is a matter of uncer-
tainty, you can know that. Such knowledge is often the most
important of all — just as the driver of an automobile wants
to know if a bridge is not to be depended on.
So I say to you that if you want to find happiness in this
life, look with distrust upon all absolutes and ultimates, all
hard and fast rules, all formulas and dogmas and "general
principles." Bear in mind that there are many factors in every
case, there are many complications in every human being,
there are many sides to every question. Try to keep an open
mind and an even temper. Try to take an interest in learning
something new every day, and in trying some new experi-
ment. This is the scientific attitude toward life; this is the
way of growth and of true success. It is inconvenient, be-
cause it involves working your brains, and most people have
not been taught to do this, and find it the hardest kind of
work there is. But how much better it is to think for your-
self, and to protect yourself, than to trust your thinking to
some group of people whose only interest may be to exploit
you for their advantage !
CHAPTER IX
THE CHOOSING OF LIFE
(Discusses the standards by which we may judge what is best
in life, and decide what we wish to make of it.)
We have made the point about evolution, that it may go
forward or it may go backward. There is no guarantee in
nature that because a thing changes, it must necessarily be-
come better than it was. On the contrary, degeneration is as
definitely established a fact as growth, and it is of the utmost
importance, in studying the problem of human happiness and
how to make it, to get clear the fact that nature has produced,
and continues to produce, all kinds of monstrosities and para-
sites and failures and abortions. And all these blunders of
our great mother struggle just as hard, desire hfe just as
ardently as normal creatures, and suffer just as cruelly when
they fail. Blind optimism about life is just as fatuous and
just as dangerous as blind pessimism, and if we propose to
take charge of life, and to make it over, we shall find that we
have to get quickly to the task of deciding what our purpose is.
"Choose well, your choice is brief and yet endless," says
Carlyle. You are driven in your choice by two facts — first,
that you have to choose, regardless of whether you want to
or not; and second, that upon your choice depend infinite
possibilities of happiness or of misery. The interdependence
of life is such that you are choosing not merely for the present,
but for the future ; you are choosing for your posterity forever,
and to some extent you are choosing for all mankind. Matthew
Arnold has said that "Conduct is three-fourths of life"; but
I, for my part, have never been able to see where he got his
figures. It seems to me that conduct is practically everything
in life that really counts. Conduct is not merely marriage and
birth and premature death ; it is not merely eating and drink-
ing and sleeping : it is thinking and aspiring ; it is religion and
science, music and literature and art. It is not yet the light-
ning and the cyclone, but with the spread of knowledge it is
coming to be these things, and I suspect that some day it may
be even the comet and the rising of the sun.
42
The Book of the Mind 43
We are now going to apply our reason to this enormous
problem of human conduct ; we are going to ask ourselves the
question: What kind of life do we want? What kind of life
are we going to make ? What are the standards by which we
may know excellence in life, and distinguish it from failure
and waste and blunder in life? Obviously, when we have done
this, we shall have solved the moral problem ; all we shall have
to say is, act so that your actions help to bring the desirable
things into being, and do not act so as to hinder or weaken
them.
We shall not be able to go to nature to settle this ques-
tion for us. This is our problem, not nature's. But we shall
find, as usual, that we can pick up precious hints from her;
we shall be wise to study her ways, and learn from her suc-
cesses and her failures. We are proud of her latest product,
ourselves. Let us see how she made us ; what were the stages
on the way to man?
First in the scale of evolution, it appears, came inert matter.
We call it inert, because it looks that way, though we know,
of course, that it consists of infinite numbers of molecules
vibrating with speed which we can measure even though we
cannot imagine it. This "matter" is enormously fascinating,
and a wise man will hesitate to speak patronizingly about it.
Nevertheless, considering matter apart from the mind which
-studies it, we decide that it represents a low stage of being.
We speak contemptuously of stones and clods and lumps of
clay. We award more respect to things like mountains and
tempest-tossed oceans, because they are big ; in the early days
of our race we used to worship these things, but now we think
of them merely as the raw material of life, and we should
not be in the least interested in becoming a mountain or an
ocean.
Almost everyone would agree, therefore, that what we
call "life" is a higher and more important achievement of
nature. And if we wish to grade this life, we do so accord-
ing to its sentience — that is to say, the amount and intensity
of the consciousness which grows in it. We are interested in
the one-celled organisms which swarm everywhere throughout
nature, and we study the mysterious processes by which they
nourish and beget themselves; we suspect that they have a
germ of consciousness in them; but we are surer of the
meaning and importance of the consciousness we detect in
44 Mind and Body
some complex organism like a fish or bird. We learn to know
the signs of consciousness, of dawning intelligence, and we
esteem the various kinds of creatures according to the amount
of it they possess. We reject mere physical bigness and
mere strength. Joyce Kilmer may write:
"Poems are made by men like me,
But only God can make a tree" —
And that seems to us a charming bit of fancy ; but the com-
mon sense of the thing is voiced to us much better in the
lines of old Ben Jonson:
"It is not growing like a tree
In bulk doth make man better be."
If we take two animals of equal bulk, the hippopotaimis and
the elephant, we shall be far more interested in the elephant,
because of the intelligence and what we call "character" which
he displays. There are good elephants and bad elepliants,
kind ones and treacherous ones. We love the dog because we
can make a companion of him; that is, because we can teach
him to react to human stimuli. Of all animals we are fasci-
nated most by the monkey, because he is nearest to man, and
displays the keenest intelligence.
Someone may say that this is all mere human egotism,
and that we have no way of really being sure that the life of
elephants and hippopotami is not more interesting and sig-
nificant than the life of men. Never having been either of
these animals, I cannot say with assurance; but I know that
I have the power to exterminate these creatures, or to pen
them in cages, and they are helpless to protect themselves,
or even to tmderstand what is happening to them. So I am
irresistibly driven to conclude that intelligence is more safe
and more worth while than unintelligence ; in short, that intelli-
gence is nature's highest product up to date, and that to
foster and develop it is the best guess I can make as to the
path of wisdom — that is, of intelligence!
When we come to deal with human values, we find that
we can trace much the same kind of evolution. Back in the
days of the cave man, it was physical strength which dominated
the horde; but nowadays, except in the imagination of the
small boy, the "strong man" does not cut much of a figure.
The Book of the Mind 45
We go once, perhaps, to see him lift his heavy weights and
break his iron bars, but then we are tired of him. Mere
strength had to yield in the struggle for life to quickness of
eye and hand, to energy which for lack of a better name we
may call "nervous." The pugilist who has nothing but muscle
goes down before his lighter antagonist who can keep out of
his reach, and the crowd loves the football hero who can duck
and dodge and make the long runs. One might cite a thou-
sand illustrations, such as the British bowmen breaking down
the heavily armored knights, or the quick-moving, light vessels
of Britain overcoming the huge galleons of Spain. And as
society develops and becomes more complex, the fighting man
becomes less and less a man of muscle, and more and more
a man of "nerve." Alexander, Csesar and Napoleon would
have stood a poor chance in personal combat against many of
their followers. They led, because they were men of energy
and cunning, able to maintain the subtle thing we call prestige.
Now the world has moved into an industrial era, and who
are the great men of our time, the men whose lightest words
are heeded, whose doings are spread upon the front pages of
our newspapers? Obviously, they are the men of money.
We may pretend to ourselves that we do not really stand in
awe of a Morgan or a Rockefeller, but that we admire, let
us say, an Exiison or a Roosevelt. But Edison himself is a
man of money, and will tell you that he had to be a man of
money in order to be free to conduct his experiments. As for
our politicians and statesmen, they either serve the men of
money, or the men of money suppress them, as they did
Roosevelt. The Morgans and the Rockefellers do not do much
talking; they do not have to. They content themselves with
being obeyed, and the shaping of our society is in their hands.
And yet, some of us really believe that there are higher
faculties in man than the ability to manipulate the stock
market. We consider that the great inventor, the great poet,
the great moralist, contributes more to human happiness than
the man who, by cunning and persistence, succeeds in monopo-
lizing some material necessity of human life. "Poets," says
Shelley, "are the unacknowledged legislators of mankind."
If this strange statement is anywhere near to truth, it is surely
of importance that we should decide what are the higher
powers in men, and how they may be recognized, and how
fostered and developed.
46 Mind and Body
What is, in its essence, the process of evolution from the
lower to the higher forms of mental life? It is a process of
expanding consciousness; the developing of ability to appre-
hend a wider and wider circle of existence, to share it, to
struggle for it as we do for the life we call our "own." The
test of the higher mental forms is therefore a test of univer-
sality, of sympathetic inclusiveness ; or, to use commoner
words, it is a test of enlightened unselfishness.
Every human individual has the will to life, the instinct
of self-preservation, which persuades him that he is of im-
portance; but the test of his development is his ability to
realize that, important though he may be, he is but a small
part of the universe, and his highest interests are not in him-
self alone, his highest duties are not owed to himself alone.
And as the life becomes more of the intellect, this fact be-
comes more and more obvious, more and more dominating.
Men who monopolize the material things of the world and
their control are necessarily self-seeking; but in the realm
of the higher faculties this element, in the very nature of the
case, is forced into the background. It is evident that truth
is not truth for the Standard Oil Company, nor for J. P.
Morgan and Company, nor yet for the government of the
United States ; it is truth for the whole of mankind, and one
who sincerely labors for the truth does so for the universal
benefit.
There may be, of course, an element of selfishness in the
activities of poets and inventors. They may be seeking for
fame; they may be hoping to make money out of their dis-
coveries ; but the greatest men we know have been dominated
by an overwhelming impulse of creation, and when we read
their lives, and discover in them signs of petty vanity or
jealousy or greed, we are pained and shocked. What touches
us most deeply is some mark of self-consecration and humility ;
as, for example, when Newton tells us that after all his life's
labors he felt himself as a little child gathering sea-shells on
the shore of the great ocean of truth ; or when Alfred Russel
Wallace, discovering that Darwin had been working longer
than himself over the theory of the origin of species, gen-
erously withdrew and permitted the theory to go to the world
in Darwin's name.
There are three faculties in man, usually described as in-
tellect, feeling and will. According as one or the other faculty
The Book of the Mind 47
predominates, we have a great scientist, a great poet, or a
great moralist. We might choose a representative of each
type — let us say Newton, Shakespeare and Jesus — and spend
much time in controversy as to which of the three types is
the greatest, which makes the greatest contribution to human
happiness. But it will suffice here to point out that the three
faculties do not exclude one another; every man must have
all three, and a perfectly rounded man should seek to develop
all three. Jesus was considerable of a poet, and we should pay
far less heed to Shakespeare if he had not been a moralist.
Also there have been instances of great poets and painters who
were scientists — for example, Leonardo and Goethe.
The fundamental difference between the scientist and the
poet is that one is exploring nature and discovering things
which actually exist, whereas the other is creating new life
out of his own spirit. But the poet will find that his creations
take but little hold upon life, if they are not guided and shaped
by a deep understanding of life's fundamental nature and
needs — in other words, if the poet is not something of a
scientist. And in the same way, the very greatest discoveries
of science seem to us like leaps of creative imagination; as if
the mind had completed nature, through some intuitive and
sympathetic understanding of what nature wished to be.
The point about these higher forms of human activity is
that they renew and multiply life. We may say that if Jesus
had never lived, others would have embodied and set forth
with equal poignancy the revolutionary idea of the equality
of all men as children of one common father. And perhaps
this is true ; but we have no way of being sure that it is true,
and as we look back upon the last nineteen hundred years of
human history, we are unable to imagine just what the life of
mankind during those centuries would have been if Jesus had
died when he was a baby. We do not know what modern
thought might have been without Kant, or what modem music
might have been without Beethoven. We are forced to admit
that if it had not been for the patient wisdom and persuasive
kindness of Lincoln, the Slave Power might have won its
independence, and America today might have been a military
camp like Europe, and the lives and thoughts of every one of
us would have been diflFerent.
Or take the activities of the poet. Many years ago the
.writer was asked to name the men who had exercised
48 Mind and Body
the greatest influence upon him, and after much thought he
named three : Jesus, Hamlet and Shelley. And now consider
the significance of this reply. One of these people, Shelley,
was what we call a "real" person ; that is, a man who actually
lived and walked upon the earth. Concerning Hamlet, it is
believed there was once a Prince of Denmark by that name,
but the character who is known to us as Hamlet is the crea-
tion of a poet's brain. As to the third figure, Jesus, the authori-
ties dispute. Some say that he was a man who actually lived ;
others believe that he was God on earth; yet others, very
learned, maintain that he is a legendary name around which
a number of traditions have gathered.
To me it does not make a particle of difference which of
the three possibilities happens to be true about Jesus. If he
was God on earth, he was God in human form, imder human
limitations, and in that sense we are all gods on earth. And
whether he really lived, or whether some poet invented him,
matters not a particle so far as concerns his effect upon others.
The emotions which moved him, the loves, the griefs, the
high resolves, existed in the soul of someone, whether his
name were Jesus or John; and these emotions have been re-
corded in such form that they communicate themselves to us,
they become a part of our souls, they make us something
different from what we were before we encountered them.
In other words, the poet makes in his own soul a new life,
and then projects it into the world, and it becomes a force
which makes over the lives of millions of other people. If
you read the vast mass of criticism which has grown up about
the figure of Hamlet, you learn that Hamlet is the type of the
"modern man." Shakespeare was able to divine what the
modern man would be; or perhaps we can go farther and
say that Shakespeare helped to make the modern man what
he is ; the modern man is more of Hamlet, because he has taken
Hamlet to his heart and pondered over Hamlet's problem.
Or take Don Quixote. No doubt the follies of the "age of
chivalry" would have died out of men's hearts in the end;
but how much sooner they died because of the laughter of
Cervantes ! Or take "Les Miserables." Our prison system
is not ideal by any means, but it is far less cruel than it was
half a century ago, and we owe this in part to Victor Hugo.
Every convict in the world is to some degree a happier man
because of this vision which was projected upon the world
The Book of the Mind 49
fpom the sotil of one great poet. No one can estimate the
part which the writings of Tolstoi have played in the present
revolution in Russia, but this we may say with certainty : there
is not one man, woman or child in Russia at the present
moment who is quite the same as he would have been if
"Resurrection" had never been written.
In discussing the highest faculties of man we have so far
refrained from using the word "genius." It is a word which
has been cheapened by misuse, but we are now in position to
use it. The things which we have just been considering are
the phenomena of genius — and we can say this, even though
we may not know exactly what genius is. Perhaps it is, as
Frederic Myers asserts, a "subliminal uprush," the welling up
into the consciousness of some part of the content of the
subconscious mind. Or perhaps it is something of what man
calls "divine." Or perhaps it is the first dawning, the hrst
hint of that super-race which will some day replace mankind.
Perhaps we are witnessing the same thing that hapitened on
the earth when glimmerings of reason first broke upon the
mind of some poor, bewildered ape. We cannot be sure;
but this much we can say: the man of genius represents the
highest activity of the mind of which we as yet have knowledge.
He represents the spirit of man, fully emancipated, fully con-
scious, and taking up the task of creation ; taking human life
as raw material, and making it over into something more
subtle, more intense, more significant, more universal than it
ever was before, or ever would have been without the inter-
vention of this new Go,d-nian.
CHAPTER X
MYSELF AND MY NEIGHBOR
(Compares the new morality with the old, and discusses the
relative importance of our various duties.)
So now we may say that we know what are the great and
important things in hfe. Slowly and patiently, with infinite
distress and waste and failure, but yet inevitably, the life of
man is being made over and multiplied to infinity, by the power
of the thinking mind, impelled by the joy and thrill of the
creative action, and guided by the sense of responsibility,
the instinct to serve, which we call conscience. To develop
these higher faculties is the task we have before us, and the
supreme act to which we dedicate ourselves.
So now we are in position to define the word moral.
Assuming that our argument be accepted, that action is moral
which tends to foster the best and highest forms of life we
know, and to aid them in developing their highest powers ; that
is immoral which tends to destroy the best life we know, or
to hinder its rapid development.
Let us now proceed to apply these tests to the practices
of man; first as an individual, and then as a social being.
What are my duties to myself, and what are my duties to the
world about me?
You will note that these questions differ somewhat from
those of the old morality. Jesus told us, first, that we should
love the Lord our God, and, second, that we should love our
neighbor as ourself. Some would say that modem thought
has dismissed God from consideration ; but I would prefer
to say that modern thought has decided that the place where
we encounter God most immediately is in our own miraculously
expanding consciousness. Our duty toward God is our duty
to make of ourselves the most perfect product of the Divine
Incarnation that we can become. Our duty to our neighbor
is to help him to do the same.
Of course, as we come to apply these formulas, we find
that they overlap and mingle inextricably ; the two duties are
really one duty looked at from different points of view. We
60
The Book of the Mind 51
decide that we owe it to ourselves to develop our best powers
of thinking, and we discover that in so doing we make our-
selves better fitted to live as citizens, better equipped to help
our fellow men. We go out into our city to serve others by
making the city clean and decent, and we find that we have
helped to save ourselves from a pestilence.
The most commonly accepted, or at any rate the most
commonly preached, of all formulas is the "golden rule," "Do
unto others as you would have them do unto you." This
formula is good so far as it goes, but you note that it leaves
undetermined the all-important question, what ought we to
want others to do unto us. If I am an untrained child, what
I would have others do unto me is to give me plenty of
candy; therefore, under the golden rule, my highest duty
becomes to distribute free candy to the world. The "golden
rule" is obviously consistent with all forms of self-indulgence,
and with all forms of stagnation ; it might result in a civiliza-
tion more static than China.
Or let us take the formula which the German philosopher
Kant worked out as the final product of his thinking: "Act
so that you would be willing for your action to become a
general rule of conduct." Here again is the same problem.
There are many possible general rules of conduct. Some
would prefer one, some others ; and there is no possible way
of escape from the fact that before men can agree what to
do, they must decide what they wish to make of their lives.
To the formula of Jesus, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor
as thyself," the answer is obvious enough: "Suppose my
neighbor is not worthy of as much love as myself?" To be
sure, it is a perilous thing for me to have to decide this ques-
tion; nevertheless, it may be a fact that I am a great in-
ventor, and that my neighbor is a sexual pervert. There is,
of course, a sense in which I may love him, even so; I may
love the deeper possibilities of his nature, which religious
ecstasy can appeal to and arouse. But in spite of all ecstasies
and all efforts, it may be that his disease — physical, mental
and moral — has progressed to such a point that it is necessary
to confine him, or to castrate him, or even to asphyxiate him
painlessly. To say that I must love such a man as myself
is, to say the least, to be vague. We can see how the in-
discriminate preaching of such a formula would open the
flood-gates of sentimentality and fraud.
52 Mind and Body
Modern thinking says: Thou shalt love the highest pos-
sibiHties of life, and thou shalt labor diligently to foster them ;
moreover, because life is always growing, and new possibilities
are forever dawning in the human spirit, thou shalt keep an
open mind and an inquiring temper, and be ready at any time
to begin life afresh.
Such is the formula. It is not simple ; and when we come
to apply it, we find that it constantly grows more complex.
When we attempt to decide our duty to ourselves, we find that
we have in us a number of different beings, each with separate
and sometimes conflicting duties and needs. We have in us
the physical man and the economic man, and these clamor
for their rights, and must have at least a part of their rights,
before we can go on to be the intellectual man, the moral
man, or the artistic man. So our life becomes a series of
compromises and adjustments between a thousand conflicting
desires and duties ; between the different beings which we might
be, but can be only to a certain extent, and at certain times.
We shall see, as we come to investigate one field after another
of human activity, that we never have an absolute certainty,
never an absolute right, never an absolute duty; never can
we shut our eyes, and go blindly ahead upon one course of
action, to the exclusion of every other consideration ! On the
contrary, we sit in the seat of self-determination as a highly
trained and skillful engineer. We keep our eyes upon a dozen
different gauges ; we press a lever here and touch a regulator
there; we decide that now is a time for speed, and now for
caution ; and knowing all the time that the safety, not merely
of ourselves, but of many passengers, depends upon the deci-
sions of each moment.
CHAPTER XI
THE MIND AND THE BODY
(Discusses the interaction between physical and mental things,
and the possibility of freedom in a world of fixed causes.)
It is our plan, so far as possible, to discuss the problems
of the mind in one section of this book, and the problems of
the body in another; but just as we found that we could not
separate our duties to ourself from our duties to our neigh-
bors, so we find that the mind and the body are inextricably
interwoven, and that whenever we probe deeply into one, we
discover the other. The interaction of the mind and the body
is a fascinating problem into which we must look for a
moment, not because we expect to solve it, but because it
illuminates the whole subject.
The human body is a machine. It takes in carbon and
oxygen, and burns them, and gives out carbon dioxide and
other waste products, and develops energy in proportion to
the amount of carbon it consumes. This machine has its
elaborate apparatus of action and reaction, its sensory organs
where outside stimuli are received, its nerves like telegraph
wires to carry these impressions, its brain cells to store them
and to transform them into reactions. We know to some
extent how these brain cells work. We know what portions
of the brain are devoted to this or that activity. We know
that if we stick a pin into a certain spot we shall paralyze
the left forefinger. We know that by injecting a certain drug,
or by breathing a certain gas, we can cause this or that sensa-
tion or reaction, such as laughing or weeping or mania. We
Icnow what poisons are generated in the system by anger, and
what chemical changes takes place in a muscle that is tired.
All this is part of a vast new science which is called bio-
chemistry, or the chemistry of life.
Our bodies, therefore, are part of the material universe,
and subject to the laws or ways of being of this universe.
The first of these laws that we know is the law of causation.
Every change in the universe has its cause, and that in turn
63
54 Mind and Body
had another cause; this chain is never broken, no matter how
far we go, and the same causes universally produce the same
effects. If you see a ball move on a billiard table, you know
that the ball did not move itself ; you know that something
struck the ball or tilted the table. You discover that the motion
of the ball moves the air around it, and the waves of that
motion are spread through the room. They strike the walls,
and the motion is carried on through the walls, and if we
had instruments sensitive enough, we could feel the motion of
that billiard ball at the other side of the world, and a few
million years from now at the most remote of the stars. This
is what is called the law of the conservation of energy, and
when we discover something like radium which seems to violate
that law by giving out unlimited quantities of energy, we
investigate and discover a new form of energy locked up in
the atom. In the disintegration of the atom we have a source
of power which, when we have learned to use it, will multiply
perhaps millions of times the powers we are now able to use
on this earth. But energy, no matter how many times it is
transformed, and in what strange ways it reappears, always
remains, and is never destroyed, and never created out of
nothing.
My friend the great physiologist once took me into his
laboratory and showed me a little aquarium in which some
minute creatures were wiggling about — young sea-urchins, if
I remember. The physiologist took a bottle containing some
chemical, and dropped a single drop into the water, and in-
stantly all these little black creatures, which had been darting
aimlessly in every direction through the water, turned and
swam all in one direction, toward the light. They swam until
they touched the walls of the aquarium, and there they stuck,
trying their best to swim farther. "And now," said my friend,
"that is what we call a 'tropism,* and all life is a tropism.
What you see in that aquarium means that some day we shall
know just what combination of chemicals causes a human being
to move this way or that, to do this thing or that. When bio-
chemistry has progressed sufficiently, we shall be able to make
human qualities, perhaps in the sperm, perhaps in the embryo,
perhaps day by day by means of diet or injection."
Said I : "Some day, when bio-chemistry has progressed
far enough, you will know what combination of chemicals
causes a man to vote the Democratic or Republican ticket."
The Book of the Mind 55
"Why not?" answered my friend. (He has a sense of
humor about all things except this sacred bio-chemistry.)
Said I : "When you have got to that stage, keep the secret
carefully, and we will fix up a scheme, and a few days before
election we will release some gas in our big cities, and sweep
the country for the Socialist ticket."
But jesting aside: if the human body is a material thing,
existing in the material world and subject to causation, there
must be material reasons for the actions of human bodies,
just the same as for the moving of billiard balls. We hear
the sound of a billiard ball striking the cushion, and we are
prepared to accept the idea that the thing we call hearing in
us is caused by the impinging of sound waves upon our ear-
drums. And if we investigate human beings in the mass, we
find every reason to believe that they act according to laws,
and that there are material causes for their acts. If you get
up and shout fire in a theater, you know how the audience
will behave. If you study statistics, you can say that in any
large city a certain fixed number of human beings are going
to commit suicide every month; you can even say that more
are going to commit suicide in the month of June than in
any other month. You can say that more people are going
to die at two o'clock in the morning than at any other hour.
You know that certain changes in the weather will cause all
human beings to behave in the same way. You know that an
increase of prices or an increase of unemployment will cause
a certain additional number of men to commit crimes, and a
certain additional number of women to become prostitutes.
You know that if a man overeats, his thoughts will change their
color; he will have what he calls "the blues." I might cite a
thousand other illustrations to prove that human minds are
subject to material laws, and therefore to investigation by
the bio-chemists.
But now, stop a moment. Here you sit reading a book.
Something in the book pleases you, and you say, "Good!"
Perhaps you slap your knee or clench your fist. Now here
is a motion of your hand, which stirs the air about you, and
which, according to the laws of energy, will spread its effects
to the other side of the world, and even to the farthest of
the stars. Or perhaps the book makes you angry, and you
throw it down in disgust; an entirely different motion, which
will affect the other side of the world and the farthest of the
56 Mind and Body
stars in an entirely different way. The machine of the uni-
verse will be forever altered because of that slapping of your
knee or that throwing down of your book.
And what was the cause of these things ? So far as we can
see, the material cause was exactly the same in each case —
the reading of certain letters. Two human beings, sitting side
by side and reading exactly the same letters, might be affected
in exactly opposite ways. It seems hardly rational to main-
tain that the material difference of two pairs of eyes, moving
over exactly the same set of letters, could have resulted in
two such different motions of the hands. As a matter of fact,
the very same letters may affect the same person in different
ways. The composer, Edward MacDowell, once told me how
on his birthday his pupils sent him a gift, with a card con-
taining some lines from the opera "Rheingold," beginning,
"O singe fort" — that is, "Oh, sing on." But the composer
happened, when glancing at the card, to think French instead
of German, and got the message, "Oh, powerful monkey!"
This, of course, was disconcerting to a famous piano per-
former, and his pupils, if they had been watching his face,
would have seen an unexpected reaction. It seems manifest,
does it not, that the cause of this difference of reaction was
not any difference of the letters, but purely a difference of
thoughtf So it appears that thoughts may change the mate-
rial universe; they may break the chain of causation, and
interfere with material events.
Compare the two things, a state of consciousness and say,
a steam shovel. They are entirely different, and so far as we
can see, entirely incompatible and unrelated. Can anyone
imagine how a thought can turn into a steam shovel, or a
steam shovel into a thought ? We can understand how a steam
shovel lifts a mass of earth out of the ground, and we can
understand how a human hand moves a lever which causes
the shovel to act ; but we are unable to conceive how a state
of mind — whether it be a desire for pay, or an ideal of service,
or a vision of the Panama Canal — can so affect a steam shovel
as to cause it to move. We can sit and think motion at a
billiard ball for a thousand years, and it does not move; but
when we think motion at our hand, it moves instantly, and
passes on the motion to the billiard ball or the steam shovel.
When fire touches our hand it sends some kind of vibration
to the brain, and in some inconceivable way that vibration is
The Book of the Mind 57
turned into a state of consciousness called pain, and that is
turned, "as quick as thought," into another kind of motion,
the jerking back of our hand.
So it seems certain that consciousness really does "butt in"
on the chain of natural causation. And yet, just see in what
position this leaves the scientist who is investigating life I
Imagine if you can, the plight of a doctor who wanted to
prescribe a diet for a sick person, if he knew that every piece
of chicken and every piece of fish were free to decide of its
own impulse whether or not it would be digested in the human
stomach. But the plight of this doctor would be nothing to
the plight of the chemist or the biologist or the engineer who
was asked to do his thinking and his planning in a world con-
taining a billion and a quarter human beings, each one a law-
less agent, each one a source of new and unforeseeable energies,,
each one acting as a "first cause," and starting new chains of
activity, tearing the universe to pieces according to his own
tvhims. What kind of a universe would that be? It would
simply be a chaos; there could be no thinking, there could
be no life in it; there could be no two things the same in it,
and no laws of any sort.
So then we fall back into the hands of the "determinists,"
who assert one unbreakable chain of natural causation, and
regard the human body as an automaton. We go back to the
bio-chemist, who purposes some day to ascertain for us just
exactly what molecules of matter in just what positions and
combinations in the brain cells of William Shakespeare caused
him to perpetrate a mixed metaphor. We go back to the
belief that human beings act as they must act. because the
clock of life, wound up and started, must move in such and
such a fashion.
But now, let us see what are the implications of that
theory! Here am I writing a book, appealing to men to act
in certain ways. Of course, I know that not all will follow
my advice. Some will be foolish — or what seems to me foolish.
Others will be weak, and will resolve to act in certain ways,
and then go and act in other ways. But some will be just ;
some will be free; some will use their brains — because, you
see, I am convinced that they can use their brains ! I am con-
vinced that ideas will affect and stir them, in complete defiance
of the bio-chemist, who tells me that they act that way because
of certain chemicals in their brain cells, and that I write my
58 Mind and Body
book because of other chemicals, and that my idea that I am
writing the book because I want to write it is a delusion, and
that the whole thing is happening just so because the universe
was wound up that way.
Now, this is an unsolved problem, and I have no solution
to offer. What I have set forth is in substance one of the
four "antinomies" of Kant, and you can see for yourself how
it is possible to prove either side, and impossible to be sure of
either. Perhaps there is really a duality in life.' Perhaps
there are two aspects of the universe, the material and the
spiritual, and perhaps they do not really interact as they seem
to, but both are guided and determined by some higher reality
of life of which we know nothing. In that case there would
really be a chemical equivalent for every thought, and there
would be a trace of consciousness for every material atom
in the universe. Maybe the theologians are right, and in the
universal consciousness of God the whole future exists pre-
determined. Maybe to God there is no such thing as time;
the past, the present, and the future are all alike to Him.
There is nothing more painful to the human mind than to
have to confess its own impotence. Yet I can see no escape
from the dilemma we are here facing. There is not a man
alive who does not assume the freedom of the will, who does
not show in all his acts that he agrees with old Dr. Samuel
Johnson: "We know we are free and there's an end on't."
Without a belief in freedom we cannot get beyond the animal,
we cannot become the masters of our own souls. And yet, the
man who swallows that idea whole, and goes out into the
world and preaches personal morality to the neglect of the
fundamental economic facts, the facts of the body in its rela-
tionship to all other bodies — we know what happens to that
man; he becomes a shouting fool. Unless he is literally a
fool, or a knave, he quickly discovers his own futility, and
proceeds to use his common sense, in spite of all his theories.
"Come to Jesus !" cried William Booth, and he went out in the
streets of London to save souls with a bass drum; but pres-
ently, in day by day contact with the degradation of the Lon-
don slums, he realized that he could not save souls so long
as those souls were dwelling in starved and lousy bodies. So
William Booth with his Salvation Army took to starting night
shelters and cast-off clothing bureaus!
And of exactly the same sort is the bewilderment which
The Book of the Mind 59
falls to tlie lot of the scientist who is honest and willing to
face the facts. The bio-chemist with his test tubes and his
microscopes and his complex apparatus of research sits him-
self down and accumulates a mass of information about the
human body. He investigates the diseases of the body and
learns in detail just how these diseases spread and sometimes
how they are caused; he can present you with a diagnosis,
showing the exact stage to which the degeneration of a cer-
tain organ has proceeded, and perhaps he can suggest to you
a change of diet or some drug which will, for a time at least,
check the process of the breakdown. But in other cases he will
be perfectly helpless ; he will be, as it were, buried under the
mass of detail which he has accumulated ; he will find the vital
energy depressed, and he will not know any way to renew it.
But along will come some mental specialist, who in a half
hour's talk with the patient, by a simple change in the patient's
ideas, will completely make over the patient's life, and set
going a new vital process which will restore the body to its
former health- A religious enthusiast may do this, a psycho-
therapist may do it, a moral genius may do it ; and the physi-
cian with all his learning will find himself like a man on the
outside of a house, peering in through the windows and trying
in vain to find out something about the life of the family and
its guests.
This is humiliating to the chemist and the medical man, but
they have to face it, because it is a fact. In the seat of author-
ity over the human body there sits a higher being which, with-
out any religious implications, we may call the soul ; or, if it is
impossible to get away from the religious implication of that
word, we will call it the consciousness, or the personality.
This master of the house of life is in many ways dependent
upon the house. If the furnace goes out he freezes, and if
the house takes fire and bums up — well, he disappears and
leaves no address. But in other ways the master of the house
is really master, and is a worker of miracles. He does things
which we do not at all understand, and cannot yet even foresee,
but which often completely make the house over.
William James, a scientist of real authority, has a wonder-
ful essay, **The Powers of Men," in which he sets forth the
fact that human beings as a general rule make use of only a
small portion of the energies which dwell in their beings, and
that one of our problems is to find the ways by which we can
60 Mind and Body
draw upon stores of hidden energy which we have within us.
Also, in a fascinating book, "Varieties of the Rehgious
Experience," James has endeavored to study and analyze the
phenomena which hitherto the physician and the biologist have
been disposed to ridicule and neglect. But unless I am mis-
taken, every scientist in the end will be forced to come back to
the central fact, that life is a unity, and that the heart of it is
the spirit ; that what we call the will is not an accident, not a
delusion, not some by-product of nature, but is the very secret
of life ; and that behind it is a vast ocean of power, which now
and then sweeps away all dykes, and floods into the human
consciousness.
The writer of this book is now a patient and plodding
teacher of a certain economic doctrine, a preacher of what he
might call anti-parasitism. He has come to the conclusion that
the habit of men to enslave their fellows and exploit them and
draw their substance from them without return — ^that this
habit is destructive to all civilization, and is incompatible with
any of the higher forms of life, intellectual, moral or artistic.
He has come to the conclusion that there is no use attempting
to build a structure of social life until there is a sound founda-
tion ; in other words, until the capitalist system has been re-
placed by cooperation. But in his youth he was, or thought
he was, a poet, and touched upon that strange and wonderful
thing which we call genius. He saw his own consciousness, as
it were a leaf driven before a mighty tempest of spiritual
energy. And he believes that this experience was no delusion,
but was a revelation of the hidden mysteries of being. He
still has memories of this startling experience, still hints of it
in his consciousness ; something still leaps in his memory, like
a race-horse, or like the war-horse of Revelations, which
"scenteth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains and
the shouting." Because of these things he can never accept
any philosophy which shackles the human spirit, he will never
in his thought attempt to set bounds to the possibilities of
human life. The very heart of life beats in us, the wonder of
it and the glory of it swells like a tide behind us. New uni-
verses are born in us, or, if you prefer, they are made by us ;
and the process is one of endless joy, of rapture beyond any-
thing that the average man can at present imagine, or that
any instruments invented by science can weigh or measure.
CHAPTER XII
THE MIND OF THE BODY
(Discusses the subconscious mind, what it is, what it does to
the body, and how it can be controlled and made use of by the
intelligence.)
The importance of the mind in matters of health be-
comes clearer when we understand that what we commonly
call our minds — the mental states which confront us day by
day in our consciousness — are really but a small portion of
ouf total mind. In addition to this conscious mind there is an
enormous mass of our personality which is like a storehouse
attached to our dwelling, a place to which we do not often go,
but to which we can go in case of need. This storehouse is
our memory, the things we know and can recall at will. And
then there is another, still vaster storehouse — no one has ever
measured or guessed the size of it — ^which apparently contains
everything that we have ever known, perhaps also everything
that our ancestors have known. A common simile for the
human mind is that of an iceberg; a certain portion of it
appears above the surface of the sea, but there is seven times
as much of it floating out of sight under the water.
This subconscious mind seems to be the portion most
closely united with the body. It has its seat in the back parts
of the brain, in the spinal cord and the greater nervous ganglia,
such as the solar plexus. It is the portion of our mind which
controls the activities of our body, all those miraculous things
which went on before we first opened our eyes to the light,
and which go on while we sleep, and never cease until we die.
When we cut our finger and admit foreign germs to our
blood, some mysterious power causes millions of our blood
corpuscles to be rushed to this spot, to destroy and devour the
invading enemy. We do not know how this is done, but it is
an intelligent act, measured and precisely regulated, as much so
as a railroad time-table. When the supply of nourishment in
the body becomes low, something issues a notice by way of our
stomach, which we call hunger; when we take food into the
stomach, something pours out the gastric juice to digest it;
when this digested food is prepared and taken up in the blood
61
62 Mind and Body
stream, something decides what portion of it shall be turned
into muscle, what into brain cells, what into hair, what into
finger nails. Sometimes, of course, mistakes are made and we
have diseases. But for the most part all this infinitely intricate
process goes on day and night without a 1": ' tch, and it is all the
work of what we might call "the mind of ihe body."
And just as our material bodies are the product of an
age-long process of development repeated in embryo by every
individual, so is this mental life a product of long development,
and carries memories of this far-ofl process. In our instincts
there dwells all the past, not merely of the human race, but of
all life, and if we should ever succeed in completely probing
the subconscious mind and bringing it into our consciousness,
it would be the same as if we were free to ramble about in all
the past. Huxley set forth the fact that all the history of
evolution is told in a piece of chalk; and we probably do not
exaggerate in saying that all the history of the universe is in
the subconscious mind of every human being. When the par-
tridge which has just come out of the egg sees the shadow of
the hawk flit by and crouches motionless as a leaf, the partridge
is not acting upon any knowledge which it has acquired in the
few minutes since it was hatched. It is acting upon a knowl-
edge impressed upon its subconscious mind by the experience
of millions of partridges, perhaps for tens of thousands of
years. When the physician lifts the newly born infant by its
ankle and spanks it to make it cry, the physician is using his
conscious reason, because he has learned from previous expe-
rience, or has been taught in the schools that it is necessary for
the child's breathing apparatus to be instantly cleared. But
when the child responds to the spanking with a yell, it is not
moved by reasoned indignation at an undeserved injury; it is
following an automatic reaction, as a result of the experience
of infants in the stone age, experience which in some obscure
way has been registered and stored in the infant cerebellum.
Science is now groping its way through this underworld of
thought. Obviously we should have here a most powerful
means of influencing the body, if by any chance we could con-
trol it. We are continually seeking in medical and surgical
ways to stimulate or to retard activities of the body, which are
controlled entirely by this subconscious mind. If we are suf-
fering intense pain in a joint, we put on a mustard plaster,
what we call a counter-irritant, to trouble the skin and draw
The Book of the Mind 63
the congested blood away from the place of the pain. On the
other hand, we may stimulate the functions of the intestines
by the application of hot fomentations, to bring the blood more
actively to that region. But if by any means we could make
clear our wishes to the subconscious mind, we should be deal-
ing with headquarters, and should get quicker and more
permanent results.
Can we by any possibility do this? To begin with, let me
tell you of a simple experiment that I have witnessed. I once
knew a man who had learned to control the circulation of his
blood by his conscious will. I have seen him lay his two
hands on the table, both of the same color, and without moving
the hands, cause one hand to turn red and the other to turn
pale. And, obviously, so far as this man is concerned, the
problem of counter-irritants has been solved. He is a mental
mustard plaster.
And what was done by this man's own will can be done to
others in many ways. The most obvious is a device which we
call hypnotism. This is a kind of sleep which affects only the
conscious control of the body, but leaves all the senses awake.
In this hypnotic sleep or "trance" we discover that the sub-
conscious mind is a good deal like the Henry Dubb of the
Socialist cartoons ; it is faithful and persistent, very strong in
its own limited field, but comically credulous, willing to believe
anything that is told it, and to take orders from any one who
climbs into the seat of authority. You have perhaps attended
one of the exhibitions which traveling hypnotists are accus-
tomed to give in country villages. You have seen some bump-
kin brought upon the stage and hypnotized, and told that he is
in the water and must swim for his life, or that he is in the
midst of a hornets' nest, or that his trousers are torn in the
seat — any comical thing that will cause an audience to howl
with laughter.
These facts were first discovered nearly a hundred and
fifty years ago by a French doctor named Mesmer. He was a
good deal of a charlatan, and would not reveal his secrets, and
probably the scientific men of that time were glad to despise
him, because what he did was so new and strange. There is a
certain type of scientific mind which sits aloft on a throne with
a framed diploma above its head, and says that what it knows
is science and what it does not know is nonsense. And so
"mesmerism" was left for the quacks and traveling showmen.
64 Mind and Body
But half a century later a French physician named Liebault
took up this method of hypnotism, without all the fakery that
had been attached to it. He experimented and discovered that
he could cure not merely phobias and manias, fixed ideas, hys-
terias and melancholias; he could cure definite physical dis-
eases of the physical body, such as headache, rheumatism, and
hemorrhage. Later on two other physicians, Janet and Char-
cot, developed definite schools of "psychotherapy." They
rejected hypnotism as in most cases too dangerous, but used a
milder form which is known as "hypnoidization." You would
be surprised to know how many ailments which baffle the skill
of medical men and surgeons yield completely to a single brief
treatment by such a mental specialist.
All that is necessary is some method to tap the subconscious
mind. In many cases the subconsciousness knows what is
the matter, and will tell at once — a secret that is completely
hidden from the consciousness. For example, a man's hands
shake; they have been shaking for years, and he has no idea
why, but his subconscious mind explains that they first began
to shake with grief over the death of his wife ; also, the sub-
conscious mind meekly and instantly accepts the suggestion
that the time for grief is past, and that the hands will never
shake again.
Or here is a woman who has become convinced that
worms are crawling all over her. Everything that touches her
becomes a worm, even the wrinkles in her dress are worms,
and she is wild with nervousness, and of course is on the way
to the lunatic asylum. She is hypnotized and sees the operator
catching these worms one by one and killing them. She is told
that he has killed the last, but she insists, "No, there is one
more." The operator clutches that one, and she is perfectly
satisfied, and completely cured. Her husband writes, express-
ing his relief that he no longer has to "sleep every night in a
fish pond." This instance with many others is told by Pro-
fessor Quackenbos in his book, "Hypnotic Therapeutics."
Among the most powerful means to influence the subcon-
scious personality is religious excitement. Religion has come
down to us from ancient times, and its fears and ecstasies are
a part of our instinctive endowment. Those who can sway
religious emotions can cure disease, not merely fixed ideas, but
many diseases which appear to be entirely physical, but which
psycho-analysis reveals to be hysterical in nature. Of course
The Book of the Mind 65
these religious persons who heal by laying on of hands or by
purely mental means deny indignantly that they are using hyp-
notism or anything like it. I am aware that I shall bring upon
myself a flood of letters from Christian Scientists if I identify
their methods of curing with "animal magnetism" and "ma-
nipulation," and other devices of the devil which they repu-
diate. All I can say is that their miracles are brought about
by affecting the subconscious mind ; there is no other way to
bring them about, and for my part I cannot see that it makes
a great difference whether the subconscious mind is affected
by a hand laid on the forehead, or by a hand waved in the air,
or by an incantation pronounced, or by a prayer thought in
silence. If you can persuade the subconscious mind that God
is operating upon it, that God is omnipotent and is directing
this particular healing, that is the most powerful suggestion
imaginable, and is the basis of many cures. But if in order to
achieve this, it is necessary for me to persuade myself that I
can find some meaning in the metaphysical moonshine of
Mother Eddy — why, then, I am very sprry, but I really prefer
to remain sick.
But such is not the case. You do not have to believe any-
thing that is not true; you simply have to understand the
machinery of the subconscious, and how to ope rat e it. We are
only beginning to acquire that knowledge, and we need an
open mind, free both from the dogmatism of the medical men
and the fanaticism of the "faith curists." A few years ago in
London I met a number of people who were experimenting in
an entirely open-minded way with mental healing, and I was
interested in their ideas. I happened to be traveling on the
Continent, and on the train my wife was seized by a very
dreadful headache. She was lying with her head in my lap,
suffering acutely, and I thought I would try an experiment, so
I put my hand upon her forehead, without telling her what I
was doing, and concentrated my attention with the greatest
possible intensity upon her headache. I had an idea of the
cause of it; I understood that headaches are caused by the
irritation of the sensory nerves of the brain by fatigue poisons,
or other waste matter which the blood has not been able to
eliminate. I formed in my mind a vivid picture of what the
blood would have to do to relieve that headache, and I concen-
trated my mental energies upon the command to her subcon-
scious mind that it should perform these particular functions.
66 Mind and Body
In a few minutes my wife sat up with a look of great surprise
on her face and said, "Why, my headache is gone ! It went all
at once!"
That, of course, might have been a coincidence ; but I tried
the experiment many times, and it happened over and over.
On another occasion I was able to cure the pain of an ulcer-
ated tooth ; I was able to cure it half a dozen times, but never
permanently, it always returned, and finally the tooth had to
come out. My wife experimented with me in the same way,
and found that she was able to cure an attack of dyspepsia;
but, curiously enough, she at once gave herself a case of dys-
pepsia — something she had never known in her life before.
So now I will not allow her to experiment with me, and she
will not allow me to experiment with her! But we are quite
sure that people with psychic gifts can definitely affect the
subconscious mind of others by purely mental means. We are
prepared to believe in the miracles of the New Testament, and
in the wonders of Lourdes, as well as in the healings of the
Christian Scientists and the New Thoughters, which cannot be
disputed by any one who is willing to take the trouble to inves-
tigate. We can face these facts without losing our reason,
without ceasing to believe that everything in life has a cause,
and that we can find out this cause if we investigate
thoroughly.
CHAPTER XIII
EXPLORING THE SUBCONSCIOUS
(Discusses automatic writing, the analysis of dreams, and
other methods by which a whole new universe of life has been
brought to human knowledge.)
One of the most common methods of exploring the sub-
conscious mind is the method of automatic writing. I have
never tried this myself, but tens of thousands of people are
sitting every night with a "ouija" in front of them, holding a
pencil on a piece of paper and letting their subconscious minds
write what they please. Most of them are hoping to get mes-
sages from the dead — a problem which we shall discuss in the
next chapter. Suffice it for the moment to say that automatic
writing and table rapping and other devices of mediumship
have opened up to us a vast mass of subconscious mentality.
A part of the scientific world still takes a contemptuous atti-
tude and calls this all humbug, but many of our greatest scien-
tists have been persuaded to investigate, and have become con-
vinced that in this mass of subconsciousness there is mingled,
not merely the mind of the medium, but the minds of all those
present, and possibly other minds as well. For my part, I do
not see how any one can study disinterestedly the proceedings
of the Society for Psychical Research and not become con-
vinced that telepathy at least is one of the powers of the sub-
conscious mind.
Telepathy is what is popularly known as "thought trans-
mission." Every one must know people who are what is called
"psychic," and will know what is happening to some friend in
another part of the world, or will go upstairs because they
"sense" that some one wants them, or will go to the door
because they "have a hunch" that some one is coming. And
maybe these things are only chance, but you will be unscientific
if you do not take the trouble to read and learn what modern
investigators have brought out on such subjects.
This much is certain, and is denied by no competent investi-
gator : whatever has been in your mind is there still, and it is
possible to find a way of tapping the buried memory. An old
67
68 Mind and Body
woman, delirious with fever, begins to babble in a strange
language, and it is discovered that she is talking ancient
Hebrew. The woman is entirely illiterate, and her conscious
memory knows no language but her own, her conscious mind
has no ideas beyond those of her domestic life and the
gossip of the village. But investigation is made, and it is
discovered that when this woman was a girl, she worked in
the home of a Hebrew scholar, and heard him reading aloud.
She did not understand a word of what she heard, and was not
consciously listening to it ; nevertheless, every syllable of it had
been stored away forever by her subconscious mind. Innu-
merable cases of this sort have been established; and, as a
matter of fact, we might have been prepared for such dis-
coveries by the memory-feats of the conscious mind. It is
well known that Mozart, when a child, could listen to a new
opera, and go home and play it over note for note. At present
there is a child in America, giving exhibitions in public, carry-
ing on thirty games of chess at the same time. There have
been others who do sums of mental arithmetic, such as multi-
plying thirty-two figures by thirty-two figures, or reciting the
Bible backwards.
All this seems incredible; and yet there is something still
more incredible. Suppose that these same powers, which are
stored in our subconscious minds, were stored also in the minds
of animals ! A few years ago Maurice Maeterlinck pubhshed
a book, "The Unknown Guest," in the course of which he tells
about his experiments with the so-called Elberf eld horses : two
animals which had been trained for years by their owner to
give signals by moving their forefeet, and which apparently
could count and divide and multiply large sums, and extract
square and cube root, and spell out names, and recognize
sounds, scents and colors, and read time from the face of a
watch. Of course, it is easy to say that this is absurd, that
the horses must have got some signals from their trainer ; but,
as it happened, they would do their work in the absence of
their trainer; they would do it in the dark, or with a sack
over their heads, and the best scientific minds of Germany were
unable to suggest any test conditions which could not be met.
There have been many gigantic frauds in the world, and this
may have been one of them; on the other hand, there have
been many new discoveries, and for my part I will finish
exploring the miracles of the subconscious mind of man,
The Book of the Mind 69
before I presume to say that anything is impossible in the sub-
conscious mind of a horse or a dog. Also I will wait for some
learned person to explain to me how the subconscious minds
of horses and dogs know enough to build and repair their
bones and teeth, so cleverly that modem architectural and engi-
neering science could teach them nothing. I ask, also, if it is
possible to find a region in the subconsciousness which is com-
mon to two people, why is it absurd to suggest that there might
be a region common to a man and a horse? Why is this any
more absurd than that they should eat the same food and
breathe the same air and feel the same affection and be
frightened at the same dangers?
The only persons who will be dogmatic about such subjects
are the persons who are ignorant. Those who take the trouble
to investigate, discover more wonderful things every day, and
they realize that we have here a whole universe of knowledge,
to which we have as yet barely opened the doors. GDnsider,
for example, the facts which we are acquiring on the subject
of personality and what it means. You would say, perhaps,
that if there is anything you know positively, it is that you are
one person, and have never been anybody else, and that your
body belongs to you, and that nobody else ever has used or ever
can use it. But what would you say if I told you that tomor-
row "you" might cease to be, and somebody else might be in
possession of your body, walking it around and wearing its
clothes and spending its money? What if I were to tell you
that there might be in "you," or in your body, half a dozen
diflferent personalities which you have never known or dreamed
of, and that tomorrow there might break out a war between
them and "you," as to which of the half dozen people should
hear with your ears and speak with your tongue and walk
about with your clothes on ? Unless you are familiar with the
literature of multiple personality, you would surely say that
this was unbelievable — quite as much so as a mathematical
horse !
Let us begin with the case of the Reverend Ansel Bourne,
who was many years ago a perfectly respectable clergyman in
a Rhode Island town. One day he disappeared, and his family
did not hear of him, A year or two later there was a store-
keeper in a town in Pennsylvania, who suddenly came to him-
self as the Reverend Ansel Bourne, not knowing what he had
been in the meantime, or how he came to be keeping a store.
70 Mind and Body
Under hypnotism it developed that he had in him two per-
sonaHties, and his trance personaHty recollected all that had
been happening in the meantime and told about it freely.
Or take the still more fascinating case of the young lady
who is known in the literature of psychotherapy as Miss Beau-
champ. Her story is told in a book, "The Dissociation of a
Personality," by Dr. Morton Prince of Boston. Some thirty
years ago Miss Beauchamp, a very conscientious and dignified
young lady, became nervous and ill, and took to doing strange
things, which were a source of shame and humiliation to her.
Under hypnotism it was discovered to be a case of multiple
personality. The other personality, who finally gave herself
the name of Sally, was entirely different in character from
Miss Beauchamp, being mischievous, vain, and primitive as a
child. She conceived an intense dislike for Miss Beauchamp,
whom she called by abusive names ; at times when she could
get possession of Miss Beauchamp's body, she delighted in
playing humiliating tricks upon her enemy, spending her
money, running her into debt, breaking her engagements, dis-
gracing her before her friends. Sally was always well and
Miss Beauchamp was always ill, and Sally would take the
body, for which they fought for possession, and take it for
long and exhausting walks, and leave it cold and miserable,
lost and penniless, in the possession of Miss Beauchamp ! And
of course this made Miss Beauchamp more and more a wreck,
and Sally took possession of more and more of her time.
Sally knew everything that Miss Beauchamp did and thought,
but Miss Beauchamp did not know about Sally. She only
knew that there were gaps in her life, during which she did
things she could not explain. And because she did not want
her friends to think her insane, she would try to hide this
dreadful condition of affairs; but Sally would spoil her plans
by writing' letters to her friends, and also by writing insulting
letters for Miss Beauchamp to find when she took possession
again.
Then one day, after several years of treatment, there
appeared yet another personality, who knew nothing about
Miss Beauchamp or Sally either, and only knew what Miss
Beauchamp had known up to some years before. Miss Beau-
champ had a college education, and wrote and spoke French;
Sally knew no French, and tried in vain to learn it ; the new
personality did not have a college education at all. Neverthe-
The Book of the Mind 71
less, after long experiment, the story of which is as fascinating
as any novel you ever read, Dr. Prince discovered that this was
the real Miss Beauchamp; the others were "split off" per-
sonalities. He traced the cause to a severe mental shock, and
succeeded in the end in combining the first Miss Beauchamp
with the last, and in suppressing the obstinate and wanton
Sally. As you read this story, you watch him mentally mur-
dering a human being; "Sally" clamors pitifully for life, but
he condemns her to death, and relentlessly executes his sen-
tence. It is a "movie" thriller with a happy ending, and I
should think it would make disconcerting reading to persons
who believe that each of us is one immortal soul, or "has" one
immortal soul, and is responsible for it to a personal God.
There is never any end to the problems of these multiple
personalities, and each case is a test of the judgment and
ingenuity of the specialist. He will try to make one personality
"stick," and will fail, and will have to accept another, or a com-
bination of two. In one case, he found that he could not get
the right personality to "stick" except under hypnosis, so he
decided to leave the man in a mild state of trance, and the new
personality lived all the rest of its life in that condition. If
you wish to know more about this subject you can find books
in any well-equipped library. I mention one, "The Riddle of
Personality," by H. Addington Bruce, because it contains in
the appendix an excellent list of the literature of the subcon-
scious in all its many aspects.
There is another, and most fascinating method of exploring
this underworld of the mind, and that is the study of dreams.
Some fifteen years ago a psychotherapist in New York told
me about the discoveries of a physician in Vienna, and gave me
some pamphlets, written in very difficult and technical Ger-
man. Since then this Professor Freud has been translated,
and has become a fad, and the absurdities of his followers
make one a little apologetic for him. But we do not give up
Jesus because of the torturers and bigots who call themselves
Christians, and in the same way we have no right to blame
Freud for all the absurdities of the psychoanalysts.
Probably there never was a time in human history when
there were not people who interpreted dreams, and you can
still buy "dream books" for twenty-five cents, and learn that
a white horse means that you are going to get a letter from
your sweetheart tomorrow; then you can buy another dream
72 Mind and Body
book, telling you that a white horse means there is going to
be a death in your family within the year. Naturally this
prejudices thinking people against dream analysis ; yet, dreams
are facts, and every fact has its cause, and if you dream about
a white horse, there must assuredly be some reason for your
dreaming this particular thing. Of course we know that if
you eat mince-pie and welsh-rabbit at midnight, you will dream
about something terrible ; but will it be snakes, or will it be a
railroad wreck, or will it be white horses trampling over you?
Obviously, it may be a million different unpleasant things ; and
what is it that picks out this or that from the infinite store
of your memory, and brings it into the region of half-
consciousness which we call the dream?
Professor Freud's discovery is in brief that the dream is a
wish-fulfillment. Our instincts present to our consciousness a
great mass of impulses and desires, and among these the con-
sciousness selects what it pleases, and represses and refuses to
recognize or to act upon the others. But maybe these decisions
are not altogether satisfactory to the subconsciousness. The
mind of the body is in rebellion against the mind — shall we say
of reason, or shall we say of society? The mind of society,
otherwise known as the moral law, says that you shall be a
good little boy, and shall go to school and learn what you are
told, and on Sunday go to church and sit very still through a
long sermon; whereas, the body of a boy would rather be a
savage, hunting birds' nests and scalping enemies and explor-
ing magic caves full of precious jewels. So the subconscious-
ness of the boy, balked and miserable, awaits its time, and finds
its satisfaction when the boy is asleep and his moral censor has
relaxed its control.
This dream mind is not a logical and orderly thing like the
conscious mind ; it is not business-like and civilized, it does not
deal in abstractions. It is far more interested in things than
in words ; it does not present us with formulas, but with pic-
tures, and with stories of weird and wonderful happenings. It
is like the mind of the race, which we study in legends and
religions. It does not tell us that the sun is a mass of incan-
descent hydrogen gas, so and so many miles in diameter; it
tells us that the sun is a cosmic hero who slays the black
dragon of night. So the mind of our body presents us with
innumerable pictures and symbols, exactly such as we find in
poetry. There may be, and frequently is, dispute as to just
The Book of the Mind 73
what a poet meant by this or that particular image, but if we
read all the work of any particular poet, we get a certain
impression of that poet's individuality. If he is always talk-
ing about the perfume of women's hair and the gleam of the
white flesh of nymphs in the thickets^ we are not left in doubt
as to what is wrong with this poet.
And just so, when the expert sets to work to examine all
the dreams that any one person can remember, day after day,
sooner or later the expert observes that these dreams hover
continually about one particular subject; and by questioning
the person, he can find out what is the secret which is troubling
the person, perhaps without the person himself being aware of
it. Of course there are many people who like nothing so much
as to talk about themselves ; and many are spending their
time and their money on the latest fad of being "psyched,"
who would, in any properly organized world, be put to work
at hoeing weeds or washing their own clothes. Nevertheless,
it is a fact that there are real mental disorders in the world,
and innumerable honest and earnest people who have some-
thing the matter with them which they do not understand.
Here is one way by which the conscientious investigator can
find out what the trouble is, and make it clear to them, and by
establishing harmony between their conscious and their sub-
conscious minds, can many times put them in the way of health
and happiness.
Through psychoanalysis we are enabled to understand
the "split" personality and its cause. We discover that almost
everyone has more or less rudimentary forms of multiple per-
sonality hidden within him; made out of desires and traits
which he does not like, or which the world forces him to drive
into the deeps of his being. These may be evil impulses, of
sex or violence; they may be the most noble altruisms, or
artistic yearnings, ridiculous things in a world of "hustle." A
quite normal man or woman may keep a separate self, apart
from the world, living a Jekyll life of business propriety and
a Hyde life of religious or musical ecstasy. Or again, the
repressed impulses may integrate themselves in the un-
conscious, and you may have genius or lunacy or both —
"great wits to madness near allied." The modern knowledge
on such dark mysteries you may find in Hart's "The Psychol-
ogy of Insanity."
CHAPTER XIV
THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY
(Discusses the survival of personality from the moral point of
view: that is, have we any claim upon life, entitling us to live
forever?)
As we explore the deeps of the subconsciousness, our own
and other people's, we find ourselves confronting the strange
question: Is it all our own mind, and that of other living
people, or are we by any chance dealing with the minds of
those who are dead? A great many earnest people, and some
very learned people, are fully convinced that the latter is the
case, and we have now to consider their arguments.
When I was a little boy I used to read and hear ghost
stories, and would shudder over them; but I was given to
understand that all this was just imagination, I must not take
ghosts seriously, any more than fairies or dragons or nymphs
or satyrs. For an educated person to take ghosts seriously
— well, such a person would be almost as comical as that
supremely comical person, the flying-machine man. Would you
believe it, in those days there actually were people who believed
they could learn to fly in the air, and spent their time manu-
facturing machines for this purpose ! There was a scientist in
Washington who had this "bug," and built himself a machine
and started to fly, and fell into the Potomac river. We all
laughed at him — we laughed so long and so loud that we killed
the poor man ; and then, a few years later, somebody took that
machine of Professor Langley's and actually did fly with it!
But that was after I had grown up a bit more, and was not
quite so ready to laugh at an idea because it was new.
I remember vividly my first meeting with a man who
believed in ghosts. He was a Unitarian clergyman, the
Reverend Minot J, Savage of New York. I was sixteen years
old, and just breaking out of my theological shell, and
Doctor Savage helped to pry me loose. He was a grave and
kindly man, of great learning and intelligence, and I remember
vividly my consternation when one day he told me — oh, yes, he
had seen many ghosts, he was accustomed to talk with ghosts
74
The Book of the Mind 75
every now and then. There was no doubt whatever that
ghosts existed!
He told me many stories. I remember one so well that I do
not have to go back to his books to look up the details. It was
in the days before the Atlantic cable, and he had a friend who
took a steamer to England. One night Doctor Savage was
awakened and found the ghost of his friend standing by his
bedside. The ship had gone down off the Irish coast, so the
ghost declared, but the friend did not want Doctor Savage to
think that he had suffered from the pangs of drowning; he
had been struck on the left side of the head by a beam of the
ship and had been killed instantly. Doctor Savage wrote down
these circumstances and had them witnessed by a number of
people, and two or three weeks later he received word that the
body of his friend had been found on the Irish coast, with the
left side of the head crushed in.
So then, of course, I studied the subject of ghosts. I have
studied it oflf and on ever since, and have read most of the
important new discoveries and arguments of the psychic
researchers. To begin with, I will mention the contents of two
large volumes, Gurney's "Phantasms of the Living." In this
book are narrated many hundreds of cases, of which
Doctor Savage's story is a type. It appears that persons at the
moment of death, or in times of great mental stress, do some-
how have the power to communicate with other people, even
at the other side of the world. A few such cases might be
attributed to coincidence or to fraud, but when you have so
many cases, attested in minute detail by so many hundreds of
otherwise honest people, you are not being scientific but simply
stupid if you dismiss the whole subject with contempt.
Gurney discusses the phenomenon and its probable causes.
We know, of course, that hallucinations are among the most
common of psychic phenomenon. Your subconscious mind can
be caused to see and hear and feel anything; likewise it has
power to cause you to see and hear and feel anything. In
practically all cases of multiple personality some of the split-
off personalities can cause the others to see and hear and feel.
And the consciousness, you must understand, takes these things
to be just as real as real things; there is no way you can
tell an hallucination from reality — except to ask other people
about it. And if we admit the idea of telepathy, we may
say that phantasms are hallucinations caused by this means;
76 Mind and Body
that is, the subconscious mind of your wife or your mother or
your friend who is ill or dying, transmits to your subconscious
mind some vivid impression, which causes your own subcon-
scious mind to present to your consciousness a perfect image
of that person, walking and talking with you, and your con-
sciousness has no way of telling but that the image is real.
So much for phantasms of the living. But are there any
phantasms of the dead? Are there any cases in which the
time of the appearance can be proven to be subsequent to the
time of death ? Even this would not prove survival, of course ;
it is perfectly possible that the telepathic impulse might be
delayed in our own minds, it might not flash into consciousness
until our own state of mind made it possible. Can we say that
there are cases in which the facts communicated are such as
to convince us that the person was already dead, and was
telling us something as a dead person and not as a living one ?
Before we go into this question, let us clear the ground for
the subject by discussing the survival of personality from a
more general standpoint. What is it that we want to prove?
What are the probabilities of its being true? What would be
the consequences of its not being true ? Have we any grounds,
other than those of psychic research, for thinking that it is
true, or that it may be true, or that it ought to be true ? What,
so to speak, are the morals of the doctrine of immortality?
Well, to begin with, the survival of the soul after death
and forever is one of the principal doctrines of the Christian
religion. Many devout Christians will read this book, and I
will seem to them blasphemous when I say that this argument
does not concern me. I count myself one of the lovers and
friends of Jesus, I am presumptuous enough to believe that if
he were on earth, I would understand him and get along with
him excellently; but I do not know any reason why I should
believe this, that, or the other doctrine about life because any
religious sect, founded upon the name of Jesus, commands me
so to believe. I see no more reason for adopting the idea of
heaven because it is a Christian idea than I see for adopting
the idea of reincarnation because it is a precious and holy idea
to hundreds of millions of Buddhists. I have some very good
friends who are Theosophists, and are quite convinced of this
idea of reincarnation; that is, that the soul comes back into
life over and over again in many diflrerent bodies, thus com-
pleting itself and renewing itself and expiating its sins. My
The Book of the Mind 77
Theosophist friends have a most elaborate and complicated
body of what they consider to be knowledge on this subject;
yet I have to take the liberty of saying that I cannot see that
it has any relation to reality. It seems to me as completely
unproven as any other fairy story, or myth, or legend — for
example, the seven infernos of Dante, and the elaborate and
complicated torments that are suffered there.
But, it will be argued, Jesus rose from the dead, and thus
proved the immortality of the soul. Now, in the first place,
there are many learned investigators who consider there is
insufficient evidence for believing that Jesus ever lived; and
certainly if this be so, it will be difficult to prove that he rose
from the dead. Again, it was a common occurrence for cru-
cified men not to die ; sometimes it happened that their guards
allowed them to be spirited away — even nowadays we have
known of prison guards being bribed to allow a prisoner to
escape. Again, the events of the return of Jesus may have
been just such psychic phenomena as we are trying in this
chapter to explain. Or, once more, they may have been purely
legends. A very brief study will convince a thinking person
that the people of that time were ready to believe anything,
and to accept facts upon such authority, and to make them the
basis for a scientific conclusion, is simply to be childish.
I shall be told, of course, that it is in the Bible, and there-
fore it must be true. The Bible is inspired, you say ; and per-
haps this is so. But then, a great deal of other literature is
inspired, and that does not relieve me of the task of compar-
ing these various inspirations, and judging them, and picking
out what is of use to me. The Bible is the literature of the
ancient Hebrews for a couple of thousand years. It repre-
sents what the race mind of a great people for one generation
after another judged worth recording and preserving. You
may get an idea what this means, if you will picture to your-
self a large volume of English literature, containing some
Teutonic myths, and the Saxon chronicles, and the "Morte
d'Arthur," and several of Chaucer's stories, and some Irish
fairy tales, and some of Bacon's essays, and Shakespeare's
"Venus and Adonis,*' and the English prayer-book, and the
architect's specifications for Westminster Abbey, and a good
part of "Burke's Peerage" ; also Blackstone's "Commentaries,"
a number of Wesley's hymns, and Pope's "Essay on Man," and
some chapters of Carlyle's "Past and Present," and Glad-
78 jNIiND AND Body
stone's speeches, and Blake's poems, and Captain Cook's story
of his voyage around the world, and Southey's "Life of Nel-
son," and Morris's "News from Nowhere," and Blatchford's
"Merrie England," and scores of pages from Hansard, which
is the equivalent of our Congressional Record. You may find
this description irreverent, but do not think it is meant so. Do
me the honor to get out your Bible and look it over from this
point of view !
But, you say, if we die altogether when we finish - this
earthly life, what becomes of moral responsibility and the pun-
ishment of sins? What shall we say to the wicked man to
make him be good, if we cannot reward him with a heaven
and frighten him with a hell? Well, my first answer is that
we have been trying this process for a couple of thousand
years, and the results seem to indicate that we might better
seek out some other method of inducing men to behave them-
selves. They do not believe so completely in heaven and hell
these days, but there were times in history when they did
believe completely, and not merely were the believers just as
cruel, they were just as treacherous and just as gluttonous and
just as drunken. If you want to satisfy yourself on this point,
I refer you to my book "The Profits of Religion," page 129.
Now, as a matter of fact, I think I can discern the outlines
of a system of rewards and punishments automatically work-
ing in the life of men. I am not sure that I can prove that the
wicked always get punished and the virtuous always rewarded ;
yet, when I stop and think, I am sure that I would not care to
change places with any of the wicked people that I know m
this world. Life may not always be "getting" them, but it has
a way of "getting" their descendants, and I could not be
entirely happy if I knew that my son and his sons were going
to share the fate which I now observe befalling, for example,
the grand dukes of Russia and their children. Life is one
thing, and it does not exist for the individual, but for the race ;
its causes and effects do not always manifest themselves in one
individual, but in a line of descendants. "Why are they called
dynasties ?" asked one of my professors of history ; and a stu-
dent brought the session to an end by answering: "Because
that is what they always seem to do !"
But this is not perfect justice, you will argue. It is not
perfect, from the point of view of you or me ; but then, I ask,
what else is there in the world that is perfect from that point
The Book of the Mind 79
of view? Why should our justice be any more perfect than,
for example, our health or our thinking or our climate or our
government? And, may it not very well be that our justice is
up to us, in precisely the same way that some of these other
things are up to us ? Maybe what we have to do is to set to
work to see to it that virtue does always get rewarded and
vice does always get punished, right here and now, instead of
waiting for an omnipotent God to attend to it in some hypo-
thetical heaven.
I find this life of mine very wonderful, and enormously
interesting, I am willing to take it on the terms that it is
given, and to try to make the best of it ; and I do not see that
I have any right to dictate what shall be given me in some
future life. If my father gives me a Christmas present, I am
happy and grateful ; and, of course, if I know that he is going
to give rae another present next Christmas, I am still more
happy; but I do not see that I have any right to argue that
because he gives me one Christmas present, he must give me
an unlimited number of them, and I think it would be very
ungrateful of me to refuse to thank him for a Christmas
present until I had made sure that I was to get one next time !
Neither do I find myself such a wonderful person that I
can assert that the morality of the universe absolutely depends
upon the fact that I am immortal. Of course, I should like to
live forever, and to know all the wonderful things that are
going to happen in the world, and if it is true that I am so to
live, I shall be immensely delighted. But I cannot say that it
must be true, and all I can do is to investigate the prob-
abilities. On this point my view is stated in a sentence of
Spinoza's : "He who would love God rightly must not desire
that God love him in return."
To sum up, the question of immortality is purely a ques-
tion of fact. It is one to be approached in a spirit of open-
minded inquiry, entirely unaffected by hopes or fears or dog-
mas or moral claims. It is worth while to get clear that we
may be immortal, even though we do not now know it and
cannot now prove it; it is possible that all psychic research
might end in telepathy, and still, when we die, we might wake
up and find ourselves alive. It might possibly be that some of
us are immortal and not all of us. It might be that some parts
of us are immortal and not the rest. It might be that our sub-
consciousness is immortal and not our consciousness. It might
80 Mind and Body
be that all of us, or some part of us, survive for a time, but
not forever. This last is something which I myself am
inclined to think may be the case.
Also, it seems worth while to mention that it is no argu-
ment against immortality that we cannot imagine it, that we
cannot picture a universe consisting of uncountable billions of
living souls, or what these souls would do to pass the time. It
may very well be that among these souls there is no such thing
as time. It may be that they are thoroughly occupied in ways
beyond our imagining, or again, that they are not occupied, and
under no necessity of being occupied. Let the person who
presents such arguments begin by picturing to you how the
brain cells manage to store up the uncounted millions of
memories which you have, the thousands of words and com-
binations of words, and the thoughts which go with them,
musical notes and tunes, colors and odors and visual impres-
sions, memories of the past and hopes of the future and
dreams that never were. Where are all those hundreds of
millions of things, and what are they like when they are not
in our consciousness, and how do they pass the time, and
where were they in the hundreds of millions of years before
we were born, and where will they be in the hundreds of mil-
lions of years of the future ? When our wise men can answer
these questions completely, it will be time enough for them to
tell us about the impossibility of immortality.
CHAPTER XV
THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL
(Discusses the data of psychic research, and the proofs of
spiritism thus put before us.)
Let us now take up the question of survival of personality
after death from the strictly scientific point of view; let us
consider what facts we have, and the indications they seem to
jive. First, we know that to all appearances the conscious-
ness and the subconsciousness are bound up with the body.
They grow with the body, they decline with the body, they
seem to die with the body. We can irretrievably damage the
consciousness by drawing a whiff of cyanogen gas into the
lungs, or by sticking a pin into the brain, or by clogging one
of its tiny blood vessels with waste matter. It is terrible to us
to think that the mind of a great poet or prophet or statesman
may be snuffed out of existence in such a way ; but then, it is
no argument against a fact to say that it is terrible. Insanity
is terrible, war is terrible, pestilence is terrible, so also are
tigers and poisonous snakes ; but all these things exist, and all
these things have power over the wisest and greatest mind, to
put an end to its work on this earth at least.
And now we come with the new instrument of psychic
research, to probe the question: What becomes of this con-
sciousness when it disappears ? Can we prove that it is still in
existence, and is able by any method to communicate with us?
Those who answer "Yes" argue that the mind of the dead
person, unable to use its own bodily machinery any longer,
manages in the hypnotic trance to use the bodily machinery of
another person, called a "medium," and by it to make some
kind of record to identify itself.
This, of course, is a strange idea, and requires a good deal
of proof. The law of probability requires us not to accept an
unlikely explanation, if there is any more simple one which can
account for the facts. When we examine the product of auto-
matic writing, table-tipping, and other psychic phenomena, we
have first to ask ourselves. Is there anything in all this which
cannot be explained by what we already know ? Then, second,
81
82 Mind and Body
we have to ask, Is there any other supposition which will
explain the facts, and which is easier to believe than the spirit
theory ?
These "spirits" apparently desire to convince us of their
reality, and they tell us many things which are expected to
convince us ; they tell us things which we ourselves do not
know, and which spirits might know. But here again we run
up against the problem of the subconsciousness, with its in-
finite mass of "forgotten" knowledge. It is not so easy for
the "spirits" to tell us things which we can be sure our sub-
conscious mind could not possibly contain. Also, there comes
the additional element of telepathy. It appears to be a fact
that under trance conditions, or under any especially exciting
conditions of the consciousness, one mind can reach out and
take something out of another mind, or one mind can cause
something to be passed over to another mind ; and so informa-
tion can be communicated to the mind of a medium, and can
appear in automatic writing, or in clairvoyance, or in cr3'^stal
gazing.
One of the most conscientious and earnest of all the in-
vestigators of this subject was the late Professor Hyslop,
who many years ago sought to teach me "practical morality"
' (from the bourgeois point of view) in Columbia University.
Professor Hyslop worked for fifteen years with a medium
by the name of Mrs. Piper, who was apparently sincere and
was never exposed in any kind of fraud. In Professor
Hyslop's books you will find innumerable instances of amaz-
ing facts brought out in Mrs. Piper's trances. You will find
Professor Hyslop arguing that the only way telepathy can
account for these facts is by the supposition that there is a
universal subconscious mind, or that the subconscious mind
of the medium possesses the power to reach into the sub-
conscious mind of every other living person and take out
anything from it. But for my part, I cannot see that the
case is quite so difficult. Professor Hyslop recites, for example,
how Mrs. Piper would tell him facts about some long dead
relative — facts which he did not know, but was later able
to verify. But that proves simply nothing at all, because
there could be no possible way for Professor Hyslop to be
sure that he had never known these facts about his relatives.
The facts might have been in his subconscious mind without
having ever been in his conscious mind at all ; he might have
The Book of the Mind 83
heard people talking about these matters while he was reading
a book, or playing as a boy, paying no attention to what was
said.
And then came Sir Oliver Lodge with his investigations.
I will say this for his work — he was the first person who was
able to make real to my mind the startling idea that perhaps
after all the dead might be alive and able to communicate
with us. You will find what he has to say in his book, "The
Survival of Man," and it seems fair that a great scientist and
a great man should have a chance to convince you of what
seem to him the most important facts in the world.
Sir Oliver's son Raymond was killed in the war, and it
is claimed that he began at once to communicate with his
family. Among other things, he told them of the existence
of a picture, which none of them had ever seen or heard of,
a group photograph which he described in detail. But, of
course, other people in this group knew of the existence of
the photograph, and so we have again the possibility that some
member of Sir Oliver's family may have taken into his sub-
conscious mind without knowing it an impression or descrip-
tion of that picture. If you care to experiment, you will find
that you can frequently play a part in the dreams of a child
by talking to it in its sleep ; and that is only one of a thousand
different ways by which some member of a family might
acquire, without knowing it, information of the existence of
a photograph.
There is another possibility to be considered — ^that a por-
tion of the consciousness may survive, and not necessarily
forever. We are accustomed when death takes place to see
the body before us, and we know that we can preserve the
body for thousands of years if we wish. Why is it not possible
that when conscious life is brought to a sudden end, there may
remain some portion of the consciousness, or of the sub-
consciousness, cut off from the body, and slowly fading back
into the universal mind energy, whatever we please to call it?
There is a hard part of the body, the skeleton, which survives
for some time; why might there not be a central core of the
mind which is similarly tough and enduring? Of course, if
consciousness is a function of the brain, it must decay as the
brain decays; but how would it be if the brain were a func-
tion of the consciousness — which is, so far as I can see, quite
as likely a guess.
84 Mind and Body
I find many facts which seem to indicate the plausibility
of this idea. I notice that in trance phenomena it is the spirits
of those recently dead which seem to manifest the most vitality.
Of course, you can go to any seance in the "white light" dis-
trict of your city and receive communications from the souls
of Caesar and Napoleon and Alexander the Great and Poca-
hontas, and if the medium does not happen to be literary,
you can communicate with Hamlet and Don Quixote and
Siegfried and Achilles; but you will not find much reality
about any of these people, they will not tell you very much
about the everyday details of their lives. This fact that so
much of what the "spirits" tell us is of our own time tends
to cast doubt on the idea that the dead survive forever. How
simple it would be to convince us, if the spirit of Sophocles
would come back to earth and tell us where to dig in order to
find copies of his lost tragedies! You would think that the
soul of Sophocles, seeing our great need of beauty and wis-
dom, would be interested to give us his works ! From genius,
operating under the guidance of the conscious mind, we get
sublimity, majesty and power; but what the trance mediums
give us suggests, both in its moral and intellectual quality, the
operation of the subconscious. It is exactly like what we get,
for example, from dissociated personalities.
There are, to be sure, the books of Patience Worth, pro-
duced by the automatic writing of a lady in St. Louis, who
tells us in evident good faith that her conscious personality is
entirely innocent of Patience, and all her thought and doings.
Patience writes long novels and dramas in a quaint kind of
old English, and the lady in St. Louis knows nothing about
this language. But does she positively know that when she
was a child, she never happened to be in the room with
someone who was reading old English aloud ? Nothing seems
more likely than that her subconscious mind heard some quaint,
strange language, and took possession of it, and built up a
personality around it, and even made a new language and a
new literature from that starting point.
That is precisely the kind of thing in which the subcon-
scious revels. It creates new characters, with an imagination
infinite and inexhaustible. Who has not waked up and been
astounded at the variety and reality of a dream? Who has
not told his dreams and laughed over them ? The subconscious
will play at games, it will act and rehearse elaborate roles;
The Book of the Mind 85
it will put on costumes, and delight in being Caesar and
Napoleon and Alexander the Great and Pocahontas and Ham-
let and Don Quixote and Siegfried and Achilles. Yes, it will
even play at being "spirits"! It will be mischievous and
impish; it will be swallowed up with a sense of its own im-
portance, taking an insolent delight in convincing the world's
most learned scientists of the fact that its play-acting is reality.
It will call itself "Raymond" to move and thrill a grief-
stricken family; it will call itself "Phinuit" and "Dr. Hodgson,"
and cause an earnest professor of "practical morality" to give
up a respectable position in Columbia University and write
books to convince the world that the dead are sending him
messages.
Consider, for example, the multiple personality of Miss
Beauchamp. Remember that here we are not dealing with
any guess work about "spirits"; here we have half a dozen
different "controls," none of them the least bit dead, but all
of them a part of the consciousness of one entirely alive young
lady. A specialist has spent some six years investigating the
case, day after day, week after week, writing down the minute
details of what happens. And now consider the miscreant
known as "Sally." Sally is just as real as any child whom
you ever held in your arms. Sally has love and hate, fear
and hope, pain and delight — and Sally is a little demon, created
entirely out of the subconsciousness of a highly refined and
conscientious yoimg college graduate of Boston. Sally spends
Miss Beauchamp's money on candy, and eats it; Sally pawns
Miss Beauchamp's watch and deliberately loses the ticket;
Sally uses Miss Beauchamp's lips and tongue to tell lies about
Miss Beauchamp; Sally strikes Miss Beauchamp dumb, or
makes her hear exactly the opposite of what is spoken to her.
Yes, and Sally pleads and fights frantically for her life ; Sally
enters into intrigues with other parts of Miss Beauchamp,
and for years deliberately fools Doctor Prince, who is her
Recording Angel and Heavenly Judge!
And can anybody doubt that Sally could have fooled a
grieving mother, and made that mother think she was talking
to the ghost of a long lost child? Can anybody doubt that
Sally could and would play the part of any person she had
ever known, or of any historic character she had ever read
ab^ut? And don't overlook the all-important fact that the
c^iscious Miss Beauchamp was absolutely innocent of all this,
86 Mind and Body
and was horrified when she was told about it. So here you
have the following situation, no matter of guesswork, but
definitely established : your dearest friend may act as a medium,
and in all good faith may bring to the surface some part of
his or her subconsciousness, which masquerades before you in
a hundred different roles, and plays upon you with deliberate
malice the most subtle and elaborate and cruel tricks.
And how much worse the situation becomes when to this
there is added the possibility of conscious fraud! When the
mediimi is a person who is taking your money, and thrives
by making you believe in the "spirits" she produces! You
may go to Lily Dale, in New York state, the home of the
Spiritualists, where they have a convention every summer,
and in row after row of tents you may hear, and even see,
every kind of spirit you ever dreamed of, ringing bells and
shaking tambourines and dancing jigs. And you may see poor
farmers' wives, with tears streaming down their cheeks, listen-
ing to the endearments of their dead children, and to wisdom
from the lips of Oliver Wendell Holmes speaking with a
Bowery accent. This kind of thing was exposed many years
ago by Will Irwin in a book called "The Medium Game" ; and
then — after traveling from one kind of medium to another,
and studying all their frauds, Irwin tells how he went into a
"parlor" on Sixth Avenue, and there by a fat old woman who
had never seen him before, was suddenly told the most inti-
mate secrets of his life!
It has recently been announced that Thomas A. Edison is
at work upon a device to enable spirits to communicate with
the living, if there really are spirits seeking to do this. It is
Edison's idea that spirits may inhabit some kind of infinitely
rarefied astral body, and he proposes to manufacture an in-
strument which is sensitive to an impression many millions
of times fainter than anything the human body can feel. This
should make it easier for the spirits, and should constitute a
fairer test, possibly a decisive one. When that machine is
perfected and put to work by scientific men, I wish to suggest
a few tests which will convince me that there really are spirits,
and that the results are not to be explained by telepathy.
First, assuming that the spirits live forever, there are
some useful things which were known to the people of ancient
time, and are not known to anyone living now. For example,
let one of the Egyptian craftsmen come forward and tell us
The Book of the Mind 87
the secret of their glass-staining, which I understand is now
a lost art. And then Sophocles, as I have already suggested,
will tell us where we can find his lost dramas ; or if he doesn't
know where any copies are buried, let him find in the spirit
world some scribe or librarian or book-lover who can give
us this priceless information. All over the ancient lands are
buried and forgotten cities, and in those cities are papyrus
scrolls and graven tablets and bricks. Infinite stores of knowl-
edge are thus concealed from us; and how simple for the
ancient ones who possess this information to make it known
to us, and so to convince us of their reality!
Or, again, supposing that spirits are not immortal, but
that they slowly fade from life as do their bodies. Suppose
that a Raymond Lodge or other recently dead soldier wishes
to communicate with his father and to convince his father
that it is really an independent being, and not simply a part
of the father's subconscious mind — let him try something like
this. Let the father write six brief notes, and put them in
six envelopes all alike, and shuffle them up and put them in
a hat and draw out one of them. Now, assuming that the
experimenter is honest, there is no living human being who
knows the contents of that envelope, and if the medium is
dipping into the subconscious mind of the experimenter, the
chances are one in six of the right note being hit upon. Assum-
ing that spirits may not be able to get inside an envelope and
read a folded letter, there is no objection to the experimenter,
provided he is honest, and provided there are no mirrors or
other tricks, holding the envelope behind his back, and tearing
it open, and spreading it out for the convenience of the spirit.
And now, if the spirit can read that letter correctly every
time, we shall be fairly certain that whatever force we are
dealing with, it is not the subconscious mind of the experi-
menter.
Or, let us take another test. Let us have a roulette wheel
in a covered box, or hidden away so that no one but the
spirit can see it. We spin the wheel, and any one of the
habitues of Monte Carlo can figure out the chance of the little
ball dropping into any particular number. If now the spirit
can tell us each time where we shall find the ball, we shall
know that we are dealing with knowledge which does not exist
either in the conscious or the subconscious mind of any living
human being.
88 Mind and Body
Among the things that "spirits" have been accustomed to
do, since the days when they first made their appearance with
the Fox sisters in America, are the lifting of tables and the
ringing of bells and the assuming of visible forms. These
are what is known as "materializations," and when I was a
boy, and used to hear people talking about these things, there
was always one test required : let the materializations manifest
themselves upon recording instruments scientifically devised;
let photographs be taken of them, let them be weighed and
measured, and so on. Well, time has moved forward, and
these tests have been met, and it appears that "materializa-
tions" are facts — although it is still as uncertain as ever what
they are materializations of. An English scientist, Professor
Crawford, has published a book entitled "The Reality of
Psychic Phenomena," in which he tells the results of many
years of testing materializations by the strictest scientific
methods. When the medium "levitates" a table — that is,
causes it to go up in the air without physical contact — it
appears that her own weight increases by exactly the weight
of the table. When she exerts any force, which appa.rently
she can do at a distance, the recording instruments show the
exact counter-force in her own body.
The results of these investigations are calculated at first
to take your breath away. It begins to appear that the
theosophists may be right, and that we may have one or
more "astral" bodies within or coincident with the physical
body ; and that under the trance conditions we mold and make
over this "astral" body in accordance with our imaginations,
precisely as a sculptor molds the clay. At any rate, our sub-
consciousness has the power to project from it masses of
substance, and to cause these to take all kinds of forms, for
example, human faces, which have been photographed innum-
erable times. Or the body can shoot out long rods or snaky
projections, which lift tables, and exert force which has been
recorded upon pressure instruments and weighed by scales.
As I write, a friend lends me a fifteen-dollar volume, a
translation just published of an elaborate work by Baron von
Schrenck-Notzing, a physician of Munich, giving minute de-
tails of four years' experiments in this field. So rigid was
this investigator in his efforts to exclude fraud, that not merely
was the medium stripped and sewed up in black tights, but
the "cabinet" in which she sat was a big sack of black cloth.
The Book of the Mind 89
everywhere sewed tight by machine. Every crevice of the
medium's body was searched before and after the tests, and
every inch of the "cabinet" gone over. The investigators sat
within a couple of feet of the medium, and would draw back
the curtains, and while holding her hands and and feet, would
watch great masses of filmy gray and white stuff exude from
the medium's mouth, from her armpits and breasts and sides.
This would happen in red light of a hundred candle power,
by which print could be easily read; and the medium would
herself illuminate the phenomena with a red electric torch.
The investigators would be privileged to examine these
"phantom" forms, to touch them gently, and be touched by
them — soft and slimy, like the tongue of an animal ; but some-
times the things would misbehave, and strike them in the eye,
htirting them.
The medium, a young French girl living in the home of
the wife of a well-known French playwright, had begun with
spiritualist ideas, but came to take a matter-of-fact attitude
to what happened, and in her trances would labor to mold
these emanations into hands or faces, as requested by those
present. She finally succeeded in allowing them to separate
the soft mucous stuff from her body, and keep it for chemical
and bacteriological examination. All this time she would be
surrounded by a battery of cameras, nine at once, some of
them inside the cabinet; and when the desired emanation was
in sight, all these cameras would be set off by flashlight, and
in the book you have over two hundred such photographs,
showing faces and hands from every point of view. There
are even moving-pictures, showing the material coming out
of her mouth and going back!
It is evident that we have here a whole universe of unex-
plored phenomena; and it seems that many of the old-time
superstitions which were dumped overboard have now to be
dragged back into the boat and examined in the light of new
knowledge. What could smack more of magic and fraud
than crystal-gazing? Yet it appears that the subconsciousness
has power to project an image of its hidden memories into a
crystal ball, where it may be plainly seen. We find so well-
recognized an authority as Dr. Morton Prince using this method
to enable one of the many Miss Beauchamps to recall inci-
dents in her previous life which were otherwise entirely lost
to her. Likewise this exploration of the disintegration of
so Mind and Body
personality enables us to watch in the making all the phe-
nomena of trance and ecstasy which have had so much to do
with the making of religions. We know now how Joan of
Arc heard the "voices," and we can make her hear more voices
or make her stop hearing voices, as we prefer. Also we know
all about demons and "demoniac possession." We can cast
out demons — and without having to cause them to enter a
herd of swine ! We may some day be prepared to investigate
the wonder stories which the Yogis tell us, about their ability
to leave their physical bodies in a trance, and to appear in
England at a few moments' notice for the transaction of their
spiritual business!
But we want things proven to us, and we don't want
the people with whom we work to be animated either by
religious fanaticism or by money greed. We are ready to un-
limber our minds, and prepare for long journeys into strange
regions, but we want to move cautiously, and choose our route
carefully, and be sure we do not lose our way! We want
to deal rationally with life ; we don't want to make wild guesses,
or to choose a complicated and unlikely solution when a simple
one will suffice. But, on the other hand, we must be alive to
the danger of settling down on our little pile of knowledge,
and refusing to take the trouble to investigate any more. That
is a habit of learned men, I am sorry to say ; the law of inertia
applies to the scientist, as well as to the objects he studies.
The scientists of our time have had to be prodded into con-
sidering each new discovery about the subconscious mind, pre-
cisely as the scientists of Galileo's time had to be prodded to
watch him drop weights from the tower of Pisa. When he
told them that the earth moved round the sun instead of the
sun round the earth, they tortured him in a dungeon to make
him take it back, and he did so, but whispered to himself,
"And yet it moves." And it did move, of course, and con-
tinued to move. And in exactly the same way, if it be true
that we have these hidden forces in us, they will continue to
manifest themselves, and masses of people will continue to
flock to Lily Dale, and to pay out their hard-earned money,
until such a time as our learned men set to work to find out
the facts and tell us how we can utilize these forces without
the aid of either superstition or charlatanry.
CHAPTER XVI
THE POWERS OF THE MIND
(Sets forth the fact that knowledge is freedom and ignorance
is slavery, and what science means to the people.)
We have now completed a brief survey of the mind and
its powers. Whatever we may have proved or failed to prove,
this much we may say with assurance: the reader who has
followed our brief sketch attentively has been disabused of
any idea he may have held that he knows it all; and this is
always the first step towards knowledge.
The mind is the instrument whereby our race has lifted
itself out of beasthood. It is the instrument whereby we hold
ourselves above the forces which seek to drag us down, and
whereby we shall lift ourselves higher, if higher we are to go.
How shall we protect this precious instrument? How shall
we complete our mastery of it? What are the laws of the
conduct of the mind?
The process of the mind is one of groping outward after
new facts, and digesting and assimilating them, as the body
gropes after and digests and assimilates food. The senses
bring us new impressions, and we take these and analyze them,
tear them into the parts which compose them, compare them
with previous sensations, recognize difference in things which
seem to be alike, and resemblances in things which seem to
be different ; we classify them, and provide them with names,
which are, as it were, handles for the mind to grasp. Above
all, we seek for causes; those chains of events which make
what we know as order in the world of phenomena. And
when the mind has what seems to be a cause, it proceeds to
test it according to methods it has worked out, the rules and
principles of experimental science.
It is a comparatively small number of sensations which
the body brings to the mind of itself ; it is a narrow world in
which we should live if our minds adopted a passive attitude
toward Hfe. But some minds possess what we call curiosity ;
they set out upon their own impulse to explore life ; they dis-
cover new laws and make new experiences and new sensa-
91
V
92 Mind and Body
tions for themselves. The mind forms an idea, and at first,
after the fashion of the ancient Greek philosophers, it glorifies
that idea and sets it in the seat of divinity. But presently
comes the empirical method, which refuses authority to any
idea unless it can stand the test of experiment, and prove
that it corresponds with reality. Nowadays the thinker
amasses his facts, and forms a theory to explain them, and
then proceeds to try out this theory by the most rigid method
that he or his critics can devise. If the theory doesn't "work"
— that is, if it doesn't explain all the facts and stand all the
tests — it is thrown away like a worn-out shoe. So little by
little a body of knowledge is built up which is real knowledge :
which will serve us in our daily lives, which we can use as
foundation-stones in the structure of our civilization.
By this method of research man is expanding his universe
beyond anything that could have been conceived in the pre-
scientific days. Hour by hour, while we work and play and
sleep, the mind of our race is discovering new worlds in which
our posterity will dwell. For uncounted ages man walked
upon the earth, surrounded by infinite swarms of bacterial life
of whose existence he never dreamed. The invisible rays of
the spectrum beat upon him, and he knew nothing of what they
did to him, whetlier good or evil. He lifted his head and saw
vast universes of suns, in comparison with which his world
was a mere speck of dust; yet to him these universes were
globes or lanterns which some divinity had hung in the sky.
One of the most fascinating illustrations of how the mind
runs ahead of the senses is the story of the planet Uranus,
which, less than two hundred years ago, had never been beheld
by the eye of man. A mathematician seated in his study,
working over the observations of other planets, their motions
in relation to their mass and distance, discovered that their
behavior was not as it should be. At certain times none of
them were in quite the right place, and he decided that this
variation must be due to the existence of an unknown body.
He worked out the problem of what must be the mass and
the exact orbit of this body, in order for it to be responsible
for the variations observed ; and when he had completed these
calculations, he announced to the astronomical world, "Turn
your telescopes to a certain spot in the heavens at a certain
minute of a certain night, and you will find a new planet of
a certain size." And so for the first time the human senses
The Book of the Mind 93
became aware of a fact, which by themselves they might not
have discovered in all eternity.
Now, the importance of exact knowledge concerning a new
planet may not be apparent to the ordinary man; but if the
thing which is discovered is, for example, an unknown ray
which will move an engine or destroy a cancer, then we realize
the worth whileness of research, and the masters of the world's
commerce are willing to give here and there a pittance for
the increase of such knowledge. But men of science, who
have by this time come to a sense of their own dignity and
importance, understand that there is no knowledge about reality
which is useless, no research into nature which is wasted.
You might say that to describe and classify the fleas which
inhabit the bodies of rats and ground-squirrels, and to study
under the microscope the bacteria which live in the blood of
these fleas — ^that this would be an occupation hardly worthy
of the divinity that is in man. But presently, as a result of
this knowledge about fleas and flea diseases being in existence
and available, a bacteriologist discovers the secret of the dread
bubonic plague, which hundreds of times in past history has
wiped out a great part of the population of Europe and Asia.
Mark Twain tells in his "Connecticut Yankee" how his
hero was able to overcome the wizard Merlin, because he
knew in advance of an eclipse of the sun. And this was
fiction, of course; but if you prefer fact, you may read in
the memoirs of Houdin, the French conjurer, how he was
able to bring the Arab tribes into subjection to the French
government by depriving the great chieftains of their strength.
He gathered them into a theatre, and invited their mighty
men upon the stage, and there was an iron weight, and they
were able to lift it when Houdin permitted, and not to lift
it when he forbade. These noble barbarians had never heard
of the electro-magnet, and could not conceive of a force that
could operate through a solid wooden floor beneath their feet.
Such things, trivial as they are, serve to illustrate the
diflFerence between ignorance and knowledge, and the power
. which knowledge gives. The man who knows is godlike to
those who do not know; he may enslave them, he may do
what he pleases with their lives, and they are powerless to
help themselves. Anyone who would help them must begin
by giving them knowledge, real knowledge. There is no such
thing as freedom without knowledge, and it must be the best
94 Mind and Body
knowledge, it must be new knowledge ; he who goes against
new knowledge armed with old knowledge is like the Chinese
who went out to meet machine-guns with bows and arrows,
and with umbrellas over their heads.
Once upon a time knowledge was the prerogative of kings
and priests and ruling castes; but this supreme power has
been wrested from them, and this is the greatest step in human
progress so far taken, "Seek and ye shall find," is the law
concerning knowledge today. "Knock, and it shall be opened
unto you." In this, my Book of the Mind, I say to you that
knowledge is your priceless birthright, and that you should
repudiate all men and all institutions and all creeds and all
formulas which seek to keep this heritage from you. Beware
of men who bid you believe something because it is told you,
or because your fathers believed it, or because it is written
in some ancient book, or embodied in some ancient ceremonial.
Break the chains of these venerable spells; and at the same
time beware of the modern spells which have been contrived
to replace them! Beware of party cries and shibboleths, the
idols of the forum, as Plato called them, the prejudices which
are set as snares for your feet. Beware of cant — ^that para-
phernalia of noble sentiments, artificially manufactured by
politicians and newspapers for the purpose of blinding you to
their knaveries. Remember that you live in a world of class
conflicts ; at every moment of your life your mind is besieged
by secret enemies, it is exposed to poison gas-clouds deliberately
released by people who seek to make use of you for purposes
which are theirs and not yours. In the fairy-tales we used
to love, the hero was provided with magic protection against
the perils of those times; but what hero and what magic will
guard the modern man against the propaganda of militarism,
nationalism, and capitalist imperialism?
The mind is like the body in that it can be trained, it can
be taught sound habits, its powers can be enormously increased.
There are many books on mind and memory training, some
of which are useful, and some of which are trash. There is
an English system widely advertised, called "Pelmanism," of
which I have personally made no test, but it has won endorse-
ments of a great many people who do not give their en-
dorsements lightly.
This is the subject of applied psychology, and just as in
medicine, or in law, or in any of the arts, there is a vast amount
The Book or the Mind 95
of charlatanry, but there is also genuine knowledge being
patiently accumulated and standardized. When the United
States government had to have an army in a hurry it did
not make its millions of young men into teamsters or aviators
at random. It used the new methods of determining reaction
times, and testing the coordination of mind and body. Recently
I visited the Whittier Reform School in California, where
delinquent boys are educated by the state. A boy had been
set to work in the tailor shop, and it had been found that
he was unable to make the buttons and the buttonholes of a
coat come in the right place. For nine years the state of
California, and before it the state of Georgia, had been labor-
ing to teach this boy to make buttons and buttonholes meet;
the effort had cost some five thousand dollars, to say nothing
of all the coats which were spoiled, and all the mental suffer-
ing of the victim and his teachers. Finally someone persuaded
the state of California to spend a few thousand dollars and
install a psychological bureau for the purpose of testing all
the inmates of the institution ; so by a half hour's examination
the fact was developed that this boy was mentally defective.
Although he was eighteen years old in body, his mind was
only eight years old, and so he would never be able to achieve
the feat of making buttons and buttonholes meet.
This is a new science which you may read about in Ter-
man's "The Measurement of Intelligence." By testing normal
children, it is established that certain tasks can be performed
at certain ages. A child of three can point to his eyes, his
nose and his mouth ; he can repeat a sentence of six syllables,
and repeat two digits, and give his family name. Older chil-
dren are asked to look at a picture and then tell what they saw ;
to note omissions in a picture, to arrange blocks according
to their weight, to arrange words into sentences, to note ab-
surdities in statements, to count backwards, and to make
change. Children of fifteen are asked to interpret fables, to
reverse the hands of a clock, and so on. Of course there are
always variations ; every child will be better at some kinds of
tests than at others. But by having a wide variety, and
taking the average, you establish a "mental age" for the child —
which may be widely different from its physical age. You
may find some whose minds have stopped growing altogether,
and can only be made to grow by special methods of educa-
tion. Enlightened communities are now conducting separate
96 Mind and Body
schools for defective children — replacing the old-fashioned
schoolmaster who wore out birch-rods trying to force poor
little wretches to learn what was beyond their power.
In the same way psychology can be applied in industry,
and in the detection of crime. Here, too, there is a vast
amount of "fake," but also the beginning of a science. Our
laws do not as yet permit the use of automatic writing and
the hypnotic trance in the investigation of crime, but they
have sometimes permitted some of the simpler tests, for
example, those of memory association. The examiner pre-
pares a list of a hundred names of objects, and reads those
names one after another, and asks the person he is investigat-
ing to name the first thing which is suggested to him by each
word in turn. "Engine" will suggest "steam," or perhaps it
will suggest "train" ; "coat" will suggest "trousers," or per-
haps it will suggest "pocket," and so on. The examiner holds
a stop-watch, and notes what fraction of a second each one
of these reactions takes. The ordinary man, who is not trying
to conceal anything, will give all his associations promptly,
and the reaction times will be approximately alike. But sup-
pose the man has just murdered somebody with an axe, and
buried the body in a cellar with a fire shovel, and taken a
pocketbook, and a watch, and a locket, and a number of various
objects, and climbed out of the cellar window by breaking the
glass ; and now suppose that in his list of a hundred objects
the psychologist introduces unexpectedly a number of these
things. In each case the first memory association of the
criminal will be one which he does not wish to give. He will
have to find another, and that inevitably takes time. One or
two such delays might be accidental; but if every time there
is any suggestion of the murder, or the method or scene of
the murder, there is noticed confusion and delay, you may be
sure that the conscious mind is interfering with the subcon-
scious mind. The difference between the conscious and the
subconscious mind is always possible to detect, and if you are
permitted to be thorough in your experiments, you can make
certain what is in the subconscious mind that the conscious
mind is trying to conceal.
Here, as everywhere in life, knowledge is power, and
expert knowledge confers mastery over the shrewdest un-
trained mind. The only trouble is that under our present
social system the trained mind is very apt to be working in
The Book of the Mind 97
the interest of class privilege. The psychologist who is em-
ployed by a great corporation, or by a police department, may
be as little worthy of trust as a chemist who is engaged in
making poison gases to be used by capitalist imperialism for
the extermination of its rebellious slaves. But what this proves
is not that scientific knowledge is untrustworthy, but merely
that the workers must acquire it, they must have their own
organizations and their own experiments in every field. To
give knowledge to the masses of mankind, slow and painful
as the process seems, is now the most important task con-
fronting the enlightened thinker.
The method of psychoanalysis gives us also much insight
into the phenomena of genius, and the hope that we may
ultimately come to understand it. At present we are em-
barrassed because genius is so often closely allied to eccentric-
ity ; the supernormal appears in connection with the subnormal
— ^and it is often hard to tell them apart. Great poets and
painters in revolt against a world of smug commercialism,
adopt irresponsibility as their religion ; they live in a world of
their own, they dress like freaks, they refuse to pay their debts,
or to be true to their wives. They are followed by a host of
disciples, who adopt the defects of the master as a substitute
for his qualities. And so there grows up a perverted notion of
what genius is, and wholly false standards of artistic quality.
There is nothing mankind needs more than sure and exact
tests of mental superiority; not merely the ability to acquire
languages and to solve mathematical equations, but the ability
to carry in the mind intense emotions, while at the same time
shaping and organizing them by the logical faculty, selecting
masses of facts and weaving them into a pattern calculated to
awaken the emotion in others. This is the last and greatest
work of the human spirit, and to select the men who can do it,
and foster their activity, is the ultimate purpose of all true
science.
CHAPTER XVII
THE CONDUCT OF THE MIND
(Concludes the Book of the Mind with a study of how to
preserve and develop its powers for the protection of our lives
and the lives of all men.)
Someone wrote me the other day, asking, "When is the
best time to acquire knowledge?" I answer, "The time is
now." It is easier to learn things when you are young, but
you cannot be young when you want to be, and if you are
old, the best time to acquire knowledge is when you are old.
It is true that the brain-cells seem to harden like the body,
and it is less easy for them to take on new impressions; but
it can be done, and just as Seneca began to learn Greek at
eighty, I know several old men whom the recent war has
shaken out of their grooves of thought and compelled to deal
with modern ideas.
But if you are young, then so much the better ! Then the
divine thrill of curiosity is keenest; then your memory is
fresh, and can be trained; your mind is plastic, and you can
form sound habits. You can teach yourself to respect truth
and to seek it, you can teach yourself accuracy, open-minded-
ness, flexibility, persistence in the search for understanding.
First of all, I think, is accuracy. Learn to think straight !
Let your mind be as a sharp scalpel, penetrating unrealities
and falsehoods, cutting its way to the facts. When you set
out to deal with a certain subject, acquire mastery of it, so
that you can say, "I know." And yet, never be too sure that
you know! Never be so sure, that you are not willing to
consider new facts, and to change your way of thinking if it
should be necessary. I look about me at the world, and see
tigers and serpents, dynamite and poison gas and forty-two
centimeter shells — ^yet I see nothing in the world so deadly to
men as an error of the mind. Look at the mental follies
about you! Look at the prejudices, the delusions, the lies
deliberately maintained — and realize the waste of it all, the
pity of it all!
Every man, it seems, has his pet delusions, which he hugs
98 "
The Book of the Mind 9^
to his bosom and loves because they are his own. K you try
to deprive him of those delusions, it is as though you tore
from a woman's arms the child she has borne. I have written
a book called "The Profits of Religion," and never a week
passes that there do not come to me letters from people who
tell me they have read this book with pleasure and profit,
they are grateful to me for teaching them so much about the
follies and delusions of mankind, and it is all right and all
true, save for two or three pages, in which I deal with the
special hobby which happens to be their hobby! What I say
about all the other creeds is correct — ^but I fail to understand
that the Mormon religion is a dignified and inspired religion,
a gift from on high, and if only I would carefully study the
"Book of Mormon," I would realize my error! Or it is all
right, except what I say about the Christian Scientists, or the
Theosophists, or perhaps one particular sect of the The-
osophists, who are different from the others. Today there lies
upon my desk a letter from a man who has read many of my
books, and now is grief-stricken because he must part com-
pany from me; he discovers that I permit myself to speak
disrespectfully about the Seventh Day Adventist religion,
whereas he is prepared to show the marvels of biblical prophecy
now achieving themselves in the world. How could any save
a divinely revealed religion have foreseen the present move-
ment to establish the Sabbath by law? Yes, and presently I
shall see the last atom of the prophecy fulfilled — ^there will be
a death penalty for failure to obey the Sabbath law!
Cultivate the great and precious virtue of open-mindedness.
Keep your thinking free, not merely from outer compulsions,
but from the more deadly compulsions of its own making —
from prejudices and superstitions. The prejudices and super-
stitions of mankind are like those diseased mental states which
are discovered by the psychoanalyst ; what he calls a "complex"^
in the subconscious mind, a tangle or knot which is a center
of disturbance, and keeps the whole being in a state of con-
fusion. Each group of men, each sect or class, have their
precious dogmas, their shibboleths, their sacred words and
stock phrases which set their whole beings aflame with fanati-
cism. They have also their phobias, their words of terror,
which cannot be spoken in their presence without causing a
brain-storm.
At present the dread word of our time is "Communist.'*
100 Mind and Body
You can scarcely say the word without someone telephoning
for the police. And yet, when you meet a Communist, what
is he? A worn and fragile student, who has thought out a
way to make the world a better place to live in, and whose
crime is that he tells others about his idea! Or perhaps you
belong to the other side, and then your word of terror is the
word "Capitalist." You meet a Capitalist, and what do you
find ? Very likely you find a man who is kindly, generous in his
personal impulses, but bewildered, possibly a little frightened,
still more irritated and made stubborn. So you realize that
nearly all men are better than the institutions and systems
under which they live ; you realize the urgent need of applying
your reasoning powers to the problem of social reorganization.
Cultivate also, in the affairs of your mind, the ancient
virtue of humility. There is an oldtime poem, which perhaps
was in your school readers, "Oh, why should the spirit of
mortal be proud?" My answer is, for innumerable reasons.
The spirit of mortal should be proud and must be proud be-
cause life throbs in it, and because life is a marvelous thing,
and the excitement of life is perpetual. Yesterday I met a
young mother ; and of what avail is all the pessimism of poets
against the pride of a young mother? "Oh!" she cried, and
her face lighted up with delight. "He said 'Goo'!" Yes, he
said "Goo !" — and never since the world began had there been
a baby which had achieved that marvel. Presently it will be,
"Look, look, he is trying to walk!" Then he will be getting
marks at school, and presently he will be displaying signs of
genius. Always it will take an effort of the mind of that young
mother to realize that there are other children in the world
as wonderful as her own ; and perhaps it will take many gen-
erations of mental effort before there will be young mothers
capable of realizing that some other child is more wonderful
than her child.
In other words, it is by a definite process of broadening
our minds that we come to realize the lives of others, to trans-
fer to them the interest we naturally take in our own lives,
and to admit them to a state of equality with ourselves. This
is one of the services the mind must render for us; it is the
process of civilizing us. And there is another, and yet more
important task, which is to make clear to us the fact that we
do not altogether make this life of ours, that there is a uni-
verse of power and wisdom which is not ours, but on which
The Book of the IMixd 101
we draw. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,"
said the Psalmist, We know now that fear is an ugly emotion,
destructive to life; but it may be purified and made into a true
humility, which every thinking man must feel towards life and
its miracles.
Also the man will have joy, because it is given him to
share the high, marvelous adventure of being. To the pleasures
of the body there is a limit, and it comes quickly; but the
pleasures of the mind are infinite, and no one who truly under-
stands ttiem can have a moment of boredom in life. To a
man who possesses the key to modern thought, who knows
what knowledge is and where to look for it, the life of the
mind is a panorama of delight perpetually unrolled before
him. To the minds of our ancestors there was one universe ;
but to our minds there are many universes, and new ones con-
tinually discovered.
The only question is, which one will you choose? Will
you choose the imiverse of outer space, the material world of
infinity? Consider the smallest insect that you can see, crawl-
ing upon the surface of the earth; small as that insect is in
relation to the earth, it is not so small, by millions of times,
as is the earth in relation to the universe made visible to our
eyes by the high-power telescope, plus the photographic
camera, plus the microscope. If you want to know the miracles
of this world of space, read Arrhenius* "The Life of the
Universe," or Simon Newcomb's "Sidelights on Astronomy."
Suffice it here to say that we have a chemistry of the stars, by
means of the spectroscope ; that we can measure the speed and
direction of stars by the same means ; that we have learned
to measure the size of the stars, and are studying stars which
we cannot even see ! And then along comes Einstein, with
his theories of "relativity," and makes it seem that we have to
revise a great part of this knowledge to allow for the fact
that not merely everv^hing we look at, but also we ourselves,
are flying every which way through space !
Or will you choose the universe of the atom, the infinity
of the material world followed the other way, so to speak?
Big as is the universe in relation to our world, and big as is
our world in relation to the insect that crawls on it, the insect
is bigger yet in relation to the molecules which compose its
body ; and these in turn are millions of millions of times bigger
than the atoms which compose them ; and then, behold, in the
102 Mind and Body
atom there are millions of millions of electrons — ^tiny particles
of electric energy! We cannot see these infinitely minute
things, any more than we can see the electricity which runs
our trolley cars ; but we can see their effects, and we can count
and measure them, and deal with them in complicated mathe-
matical formulas, and be just as certain of their existence as
we are of the dust under our feet. If you wish to explore
this wonderland, read| Duncan's "The New Knowledge," or
Dr. Henry Smith Wilfiams* "Miracles of Science." 1
Or will you choose the universe of the subconscious, our
racial past locked up in the secret chambers of our mind ? Or
will you choose the universe of the superconscious, the infinity
of genius manifested in the arts? By the device of art man
not merely creates new life, he tests it, he weighs it and
measures it, he tries experiments with it, as the physicist with
the molecule and the astronomer with light. He finds out what
works, and what does not work, and so develops his moral
and spiritual muscles, training himself for his task as maker
of life.
Written words can give but a feeble idea of the wonders
that are found in these enchanted regions of the mind. Here
are palaces of splendor beyond imagining, here are temples
with sacred shrines, and treasure-chambers full of gold and
priceless jewels. Into these places we enter as Aladdin in
the ancient tale ; we are the masters here, and all that we see is
ours. He who has once got access to it — he possesses not merely
the magic lamp, he possesses all the wonderful fairy properties
of all the tales of our childhood. His is the Tarnhelm and
the magic ring which gives him power over his foes ; his is the
sword Excalibur which none can break, and the silver bullet
which brings down all game, and the flying carpet upon which
to travel over the earth, and the house made of ginger-bread,
and the three wishes which always come true, and the philter
of love, and the elixir of youth, and the music of the spheres,
and — ^who knows, some day he may come upon heaven, with
St. Peter and his golden key, and the seraphim singing, and
the happy blest conversing!
PART TWO
THE BOOK OF THE BODY
CHAPTER XVIII
THE UNITY OF THE BODY
(Discusses the body as a whole, and shows that health is
not a matter of many different organs and functions, but is one
problem of one organism.)
The reader who has followed our argument this far will
understand that we are seldom willing to think of the body
as separate from the mind. The body is a machine, to be
sure, but it is a machine that has a driver, and while it is
possible for a sound machine to have a drunken and irrespon-
sible driver, such a machine is not apt to remain sound very
long. Frequently, when there is trouble with the machine,
we find the fault to be with the driver; in other words, we
find that what is needed for the body is a change in the
mind.
If you wish to have a sound body, and to keep it sound
as long as possible, the first problem for you to settle is
■what you want to make of your life ; you must have a pur-
pose, and confront the tasks of life with energy and interest.
What is the use of talking about health to a man who has no
moral purpose? He may answer — indeed, I have heard vic-
tims of alcoholism answer — ^"Let me alone. I have a right
to go to hell in my own way."
I am aware, of course, that the opposite of the proposition
is equally true. A man cannot enjoy much mental health
while he has a sick body. It is a good deal like the old
question. Which comes first, the hen or the egg? The mind
and the body are bound up together, and you may try to deal
with each by turn, but always you find yourself having to
deal with both. Most physicians have a tendency to over-
look the mind, and Christian Scientists make a religion of
overlooking the body, and each pays the penalty in greatly
reduced effectiveness.
My first criticism of medical science, as it exists today,
is that it has a tendency to concentrate upon organs and
functions, and to overlook the central unity of the system.
You will find a doctor who specializes in the stomach and its
105
I'^S Mind and Body
diseases, and is apt to talk as if the stomach were a thing
that went around in the world all by itself. He will discuss
the question of what goes into your stomach, and overlook
to point out to you that your stomach is nourished by your
blood-stream, which is contiVsJled by your nervous system,
which in turn is controlled by hope, by ambition, by love, by
all the spiritual elements of your being, A single pulse of
anger or of fear may make more trouble with the contents
of your stomach than the doctor's pepsins and digestive fer-
ments can remedy in a week.
Of course, you may do yourself some purely local injury,
and so for a time have a purely local problem. You may
smash your finger, and that is a problem of a finger; but
neglect it for a few days, and let blood poison set in, and
you will be made aware that the human body is one organ-
ism, and also that, in spite of any metaphysical theories you
may hold, your body does sometimes dominate and control
your minii.
Some one has said that the blood is the life; and cer-
tainly t-he blood is both the symbol and the instrument of
the body's unity. The blood penetrates to all parts of the
body and maintains and renews them. If the blood is normal,
the work of renewal does not often fail. If there is a fail-
ure of renewal — that is, a disease — we shall generally find
an abnormal condition of the blood. The distribution of the
blood is controlled by the heart, a great four-chambeVed
pump. One chamber drives the blood to the lungs, a mass
of fine porbus membranes, where it comes into contact with
the air, and gives off the poisons which it has accumulated
in its course through the body, and takes up a fresh supply
of oxygen. By another chamber of the heart the blood is
then sucked out of the lungs, and by the next chamber it
is driven to every corner of the body. It takes to every cell
of the body the protein materials which are necessary for the
body's renewal, and also the fuel materials which are to be
burned to supply the body's energy; also it takes some thirty
million millions of microscopic red corpuscles which are the
carriers of oxygen, and an even greater number of the white
corpuscles, which are the body's scavengers, its defenders
from invasion by outside germs.
There are certain outer portions of the body, such as nails
and the scales of the skin, which are dead matter, produced
The Book of the Body 107
by the body and pushed out from it and no longer nourished
by the blood. But all the still living parts of the body are
fed at every instant by the stream of life. Each cell in the
body takes the fuel which it needs for its activities, and com-
bines it with the oxygen brought by the red corpuscles; and
when the task of power-production has been achieved, the
cell puts back into the blood-stream, not merely the carbon
dioxide, but many complex chemical products — ammonia, uric
acid, and the "fatigue poisons," indol, phenol and skatol. The
blood-stream bears these along, and delivers some to the
sweat glands to be thrown out, and some to the kidneys, and
the rest to the lungs.
All of this complicated mass of activities is in normal
health perfectly regulated and timed by the nervous system.
You lie down to sleep, and your muscles rest, and the vital
activities slow up, your heart beats only faintly ; but let some-
thing frighten you, and you sit up, and these faculties leap
into activity, your heart begins to pound, driving a fresh
supply of blood and vital energy. You jump up and run, and
these organs all set to work at top speed. If they did not
do so, your muscles would have no fresh energy; they would
become paralyzed by the fatigue poisons, and you would be,
as we say, exhausted.
All the rest of the body might be described as a shelter
and accessory to the life-giving blood-stream; all the rest is
the blood-stream's means of protecting itself and renewing
itself. The stomach is to digest and prepare new blood ma-
terial, the teeth are to crush it and grind it, the hands are to
seize it, the eyes are to see it, the brain is to figure out its
whereabouts. Man, in his egotism, imagines his little world
as the center of the universe; but the wise old fellow who
lives somewhere deep in our subconsciousness and looks after
the welfare of our blood-stream — ^he has far better reason
for believing that all our consciousness and our personality
exist for him!
Now, disease is some failure of this blood-stream properly
to renew itself or properly to protect itself and its various
subsidiary organs. When you find yourself with a disease,
you call in a doctor; and unless this doctor is a modern and
progressive man, he makes the mistake of assuming that the
disease is in the particular organ where it shows itself. You
have, let us say, "follicular tonsilitis." (These medical men
108 Mind and Body
have a love for long names, which have the effect of awing
you, and convincing you that you are in desperate need of
attention.) Your throat is sore, your tonsils are swollen
and covered with white spots; so the doctor hauls out his
little black bag, and makes a swab of cotton and dips it, say
in lysol, and paints your tonsils. He knows by means of the
microscope that your tonsils are covered and filled with a
mass of foreign germs which are feeding upon them ; also he
knows that lysol kills these germs, and he gives you a gargle
/for the same purpose, puts you to bed, and gradually the
swelling goes down, and he tells you that he has cured you,
and sends you a bill for services rendered. But maybe the
swelling does not go down ; maybe it gets worse and you die.
Then he tells your family that nature was to blame. Nature
is to blame for your death, but it never occurs to anyone to
ask what nature may have had to do with your recovery.
I do not know how many thousands of diseases medical
science has now classified. And for each separate disease
there are complex formulas, and your system is pumped full
of various mineral and vegetable substances which have been
found to affect it in certain ways. Perhaps you have a fever ;
then we give you a substance which reduces the temperature
of your blood-stream. It never occurs to us to reflect that
maybe nature has some purpose of her own in raising the
temperature of the blood ; that this might be, so to speak, the
heat of conflict, a struggle she is waging to drive out invading
germs; and that possibly it would be better for the tempera-
ture to stay up until the battle is over. Or maybe the heart
is failing; then our medical man is so eager to get something
into the system that he cannot wait for the slow process of
the mouth and the stomach, he shoots some strychnine di-
rectly into the blood-stream. It does not occur to him to
reflect that maybe the heart is slowing up because it is over-
loaded with fatigue poisons, of which it cannot rid itself, and
that the effect of stimulating it into fresh activity will be
to leave it more dangerously poisoned than before.
We are dealing here with processes which our ancient
mother nature has been carrying on for a long time, and
which she very thoroughly understands. We ought, there-
fore, to be sure that we know what is the final effect of our
actions ; more especially we ought to be sure that we under-
stand the cause of the evil, so that we may remove it, and
The Book of the Body 109
not simply waste our time treating symptoms, putting plasters
on a cancer. This is the fundamental problem of health;
and in order to make clear what I mean, I am going to begin
by telling a personal experience, a test which I made of med-
ical science some twelve or fourteen years ago, in connection
with one of the simplest and most external of the body's
problems — the hair. First I will tell you what medical science
was able to do for my hair, and second what I myself was
able to do, when I put my own wits to work on the problem.
I had been overworking, and was in a badly run down
condition. I was having headaches, insomnia, ulcerated teeth,
many symptoms of a general breakdown; among these I
noticed that my hair was coming out. I decided that it was
foolish to become bald before I was thirty, and that I would
take a little time off, and spend a little money and have my
hair attended to. I did not know where to go, but I wanted
the best authority available, so I wrote to the superintendent
of the largest hospital in New York, asking him for the name
of a reliable specialist in diseases of the scalp. The super-
intendent replied by referring me to a certain physician, who
was the hospital's "consulting dermatologist," and I went to
see this physician, whose home and office were just off Fifth
Avenue.
He examined my scalp, and told me that I had dandruff
in my hair, and that he would give me a prescription which
would remove this dandruff and cause my hair to stop fall-
ing out. He charged me ten dollars for the visit, which in
those days was more money than it is at present. Being of
an inquiring turn of mind, I tried to get my money's worth
by learning what there was to learn about the human hair.
I questioned this gentleman, and he told me that the hair
is a dead substance, and that its only life is in the root. He
explained that barbers often persuade people to have their
hair singed, to keep it from falling out, and that this was
an utterly futile procedure, and likewise all shampooing and
massage, which only caused the hair to fall out more quickly.
It was better even not to wash the hair too often. All that
was needed was a mixture of chemicals to kill the dandruff
germs; and so I had the prescription put up at a drug store,
and for a couple of years I religiously used it according to
order, and it had upon my hair absolutely no effect what-
ever.
110 Mind and Body
So here was the best that medical science could do. But
still, I did not want to be bald, so I went among the health
cranks — ^people who experiment without license from the med-
ical schools. Also, I experimented upon myself, and now I
know something about the human hair, something entirely
different from what the rich and successful "consulting der-
matologist" taught me, but which has kept me from becoming
entirely bald.
First, the human hair is made by the body, and it is made,
like everything else in the body, out of the blood-stream. It
is perfectly true that the dandruff germ gets into the roots,
and makes trouble, and that the process of killing this germ
can be helped by chemicals ; but it does not take a ten-dollar
prescription, it only takes ten cents' worth of borax and salt
from the corner grocery, (Put a little into a saucer, moisten
it, rub it into the scalp, and wash it out again.) But infi-
nitely more important than this is the fact that healthy hair
roots are a product of healthy blood, and that unhealthy
blood produces sick hair roots, which cannot hold in the
hair. Most important of all is the fact that in order to make
healthy hair roots the blood must flow fully and freely to
these hair roots; whereas I had been accustomed for many
hours every day of my life to clap around my scalp a tight
band which almost entirely stopped the circulation of the
life-giving blood to my sick hair roots. In other words, by
wearing civilized hats, I was literally starving my hair to
death.
As soon as I realized this I took off my civilized hat, and
have never worn one since. As a rule, I don't wear anything.
On the few occasions when I go into the city, I wear a soft
cap. Now and then I experience inconvenience from this —
the elevator boy in some apartment house tells me to come
in by the delivery entrance, or the porter of a sleeping-car
will not let me in at all. I remember discussing these em-
barrassments with Jack London, who went even further in
his defiance of civilization, and wore a soft shirt. It was
his custom, he said, to knock down the elevator boys and
sleeping-car porters. I answered that that might be all right
for him, because he could do it; whereas I was reduced to
the painful expedient of explaining politely why I went about
without the customary symbols of my economic superiority.
The "consulting dermatologist" had very solemnly and
The Book of the Body 111
elaborately warned me concerning the danger of moving my
hair too violently, and thus causing it to come out; but now
my investigations brought out the fact that moving the hair,
that is, massaging the scalp, increases the flow of blood to
the hair roots, and further increases resistance to disease. As
for causing the hair to fall out, I discovered that the more
quickly you cause a hair to fall out, the greater is the chance
of your getting another hair. If a hair is allowed to die in the
root, it kills that root forever, but if it is pulled out before
it dies, the root will make a new hair. Every "beauty parlor"
specialist knows this; she knows that if a hair is pulled, it
grows back bigger and stronger than ever, and so to pull
out hair is the last thing you must do if you want to get rid
of hairs!
I know a certain poet, who happens to have been well-
endowed with physic£il graces by o<ur mother nature. He
finds it worth while to preserve them — they being accessory
to those amorous experiences which form so large a part of
the theme of poetry. Anyhow, this poet values his beautiful
hair, and you will see him sitting in front of his fireplace,
reading a book, and meanwhile his fingers run here and there
over his head, and he grabs a bunch of hair and pulls and
twists it. He has cultivated this habit for many years, and
as a result his hair is as thick and heavy as the "fuzzy-
wuzzies" of Kipling's poem. It is a favorite sport of this
poet to lure some rival poet into a contest. He will mildly
suggest that they take hold of each other's hair and have a
tug of war. The rival poet, all unsuspecting, will accept the
challenge, and my friend will proceed to haul him all over
the place, to the accompaniment of howls of anguish from
the victim, and howls of glee from the victor, who has, of
course, a scalp as tough as a rhinoceros hide.
I am not a poet, and it is not important that I should be
beautiful, and I have been too busy to remember to pull my
hair ; but by giving up tight hats, and by limiting the amount
of my overworking, I have managed to keep what hair I had
left when the hair specialist had got througn with me. I tell
this anecdote at the beginning of my discussion of health,
because it illustrates so well the factors which appear in
every case of disease, and which you must understand in
seeking to remedy the trouble.
We have a phrase which has come down to us from the
112 Mind and Body
ancient Latins, "vis medicatrix naturae," which means the
healing power of nature. So long ago men realized that it
is our ancient mother who heals our wounds, and not the
physician. Out of this have grown the cults of "nature cure"
enthusiasts; and according to the fashion of men, they fly
to extremes just as unreasonable and as dangerous as those
of the "pill doctors" they are opposing. I have in mind a
man who taught me probably more than any other writer on
health questions, and with whom I once discussed the sub-
ject of typhoid, how it seemed to affect able-bodied men in
the prime of their physical being. This, of course, was con-
trary to the theories of nature cure, and my friend had a
simple way of meeting the argument — ^he refused to believe
it. He insisted that, as with all other germ infections, it must
be a question of bodily tone ; no germ could secure lodgment
in the human body unless the body's condition was reduced,
"But how can you be sure of that?" I argued. "You
know that if you go into the jungle, you are not immune
against the scorpion or the cobra or the tiger. There is noth-
ing in all nature that is safe against every enemy. What pos-
sible right have you to assert that you are immune against
every enemy which can attack your blood-stream?"
We shall find here, as we find nearly always, that the
truth lies somewhere between the extremes of two warring
schools. Our race has been existing for a long time in a cer-
tain environment, and its very existence implies superiority
to that environment. The weaklings, for whom its hardships
were too severe, were weeded out; hostile parasites invaded
their blood-stream and conquered and devoured them. But
those who survived were able to make in their blood-stream
the substances known as anti-bodies, the "opsonins," to help
the white blood corpuscles devour the germs. As the result
of their victory, we carry those anti-bodies in our system,
which gives us immunity to those particular diseases, or at
any rate gives us the ability to have the diseases without
dying. Every time we go into a street car, we take into
our throat and lungs the germs of tuberculosis. Examina-
tion proves that we carry around with us in our mouths the
germs of all the common throat and nose diseases, colds,
bronchitis, tonsilitis. No matter what precautions we might
take, no matter if we were to gargle our throats every few
minutes, we could never get rid of such germs. And they
The Book of the Body 113
"wage continual war upon the body's defenses; they batter in
vain upon the gates of our sound health. But take us to
some new environment to which we are not accustomed ; take
us to Panama in the old days of yellow fever, or take us to
Africa, and let the tsetse fly bite us, and infect us with
"sleeping sickness." Here are germs to which our systems
are not accustomed; and before them we are as helpless as
the ancient knights-at-arms, who had conquered everything
in sight, and ruled the continent of Europe for many hundreds
of years, but were wiped off the earth by a chemist mixing
gunpowder.
In the Marquesas Islands, in the South Seas, there lived
a beautiful and happy race of savages, believed to have been
descended, long ages ago, from Aryan stock. From the point
of view of physical perfection, they were an ideal race, living
a blissful outdoor life, which you may read about in Mel-j^*''
ville's "Typee," and in O'Brien's "White Shadows in the
South Seas." This race conformed to all the requirements
of the nature enthusiast. They went practically naked, their
houses were open all the time, they lived on the abundant
fruits of the earth. To be sure, they were cannibals, but
this was more a matter of religious ceremony than of diet.
They ate their war captives, but this was only after battle,
and not often enough to count, one way or the other, in
matters of health. They had lived for uncounted ages in
perfect harmony with their environment; they were happy
and free ; and certainly, if such a thing were possible to human
beings, they should have been proof against germs. But a
ship came to one of these islands, and put ashore a sailor
dying of tuberculosis, and in a few years four-fifths of the
population of this island had been wiped out by the disease.
What tuberculosis left were finished by syphilis and small-
pox, and today the Marquesans are an almost extinct race.
But there is another side to the argiiment — ^and one more
•favorable to the nature cure enthusiast. We civilized men,
"by soft living, by self-indulgence and lack of exercise, may
reduce the tone of our body too far below the standard which
our ancestors set for us ; and then the common disease germs
get us, then we have colds, sore throats, tuberculosis. The
nature cure advocate is perfectly right in saying that there
is no use treating such diseases; the thing is to restore the
body to its former tone, so that we may be superior to our
normal environment and its strains.
114 Mind and Body
You know the poem of the "One Hoss Shay,** which was
so perfectly built in every part that it ran for fifty years and
then collapsed all at once in a heap. But the human body is
not built that way. It always has one or more places which
are weaker than the others, and which first show the effects
of strain. In one person it will take the form of dyspepsia,
in another it will be headaches, in another colds, in another
decaying teeth, in another hardening of the arteries or stiffen-
ing of the joints. But whatever the symptoms may be, the
fundamental cause is always the same, an abnormal condi-
tion of the blood-stream, and a consequent lowering of the
body's tone. Therefore, studying any disease and its cure,
you have first the emergency question, are there any germs
lodged in the body, and if so, how can you destroy them?
As part of the problem, you have to ask whether your blood-
stream is normal, and if not, what are the methods by which
you can make it normal and keep it so? Also you have to
ask, what are the reasons why your trouble manifests itself
in this or that particular organ? Is there some weakness or
defect there, and can the defect be remedied, or can your
habits be changed so as to reduce the strain on that organ?
Are there any measures you can take to increase the flow of
blood to that organ, and to promote its activity ? In the study
of your health, you will find that circumstances differ, and
the importance of one factor or the other will vary ; but you
will seldom find any problem in which all these factors do
not enter, and you will seldom find an adequate remedy unless
you take all the factors into consideration.
CHAPTER XIX
EXPERIMENTS IN DIET
(Narrates the author's adventures in search of health, and
his conclusions as to what to eat.)
Students of the body assure us that every particle of
matter which composes it is changed in the course of seven
years. It is obvious that everything that is a part of the
body has at some time to be taken in as food ; so the problem
of our diet today is the problem of what our body shall con-
sist of seven years from now, and probably a great deal sooner.
I begin this discussion by telling my own personal ex-
periences with food. I am not going to recommend my diet
for anyone else; because one of the first things I have to
say about the subject is that every human individual is a
separate diet problem. But I am going to try to establish a
few principles for your guidance, and more especially to
point out the commonest mistakes. I tell about my own mis-
takes, because it happens that I know them more intimately.
I was brought up in the South, where it is the custom of
people to give a great deal of time and thought to the sub-
ject of eating. Among the people I knew it was always taken
for granted that there should be at least one person in the
kitchen devoting all her time to the preparing of delicious
things for the family to eat. This person was generally a
negress, and, needless to say, she knew nothing about the
chemistry of foods, nothing about their constituents or nu-
tritive qualities. All she knew was about their taste ; she had
been trained to prepare them in ways that tasted best, and
■was continually being advised and exhorted and sometimes
scolded by the ladies of the family on this subject. At the
table the family and the guests never failed to talk about
the food and its taste, and not infrequently the cook would be
behind the door listening to their comments ; or else she would
■wait until after the meal, for the report which somebody
■would bring her.
In addition to this, the ladies of the family were skilled
in what is called "fancy cooking." They did not bother with
115
116 Mind and Body
the meats and vegetables, but they mixed batter cakes, and
made all kinds of elaborate desserts, and exchanged these
treasures and the recipes for them with other ladies in the
neighborhood. In addition to this, there were certain periods
of the week and of the year especially devoted to the pre-
paring and consuming of great quantities of foods. Once
every seven days the members of the family expressed their
worship of their Creator by eating twice as much as usual;
and at another time they celebrated the birth of their Redeemer
by overeating systematically for a period of two or three
weeks. Needless to say, of course, the children brought up
in such an environment all had large appetites and large stom-
achs, and their susceptibility to illness was recognized by
the setting apart for them of a whole classification of troubles
— "children's diseases," they were called. In addition to
children's diseases, there were coughs and colds and sore
throats and pains in the stomach and constipation and diarrhea,
which the children shared with their adults.
I had a little more than my share of all these troubles.
Always a doctor would be sent for, and always he was wise
and impressive, and always I was impressed. He gave me
some pills or a bottle of liquid, a teaspoonf ul every two hours,
•or something like that — I can hear the teaspoon rattle in the
glass as I write. I had a profound respect for each and every
one of those doctors. He was wisdom walking about in
trousers, and whenever he came, I knew that I was going to
get well ; and I did, which proved the case completely.
Then I grew up, and at the age of eighteen or nineteen
became possessed of a desire for knowledge, and took to
reading and studying literally every minute of the day and a
good part of the night. I seldom let myself go to sleep before
two o'clock in the morning, and was always up by seven and
ready for work again. I did this for ten years or so, until
nature brought me to a complete stop. During these ten years
I was a regular experiment station in health; that is, I had
every kind of common ailment, and had it over and over
again, so that I could try all the ways of curing it, or failing
to cure it, and keep on trying until I was sure, one way or
the other. I came recently upon a wonderful saying by John
Burroughs, which will be appreciated by every author. "This
writing is an unnatural business. It makes your head hot
and your feet cold, and it stops the digesting of your food."
The Book of the Body 117
This trouble with my digestion began when I was writing
my second novel, camping out on a lonely island at the foot
of Lake Ontario. I went to see a doctor in a nearby town,
and he talked learnedly about dyspepsia. The cause of it, he
said, was failure of the stomach to secrete enough pepsin, and
the remedy was to take artificial pepsin, obtained from the
stomach of a pig. He gave me this pig-pepsin in a bottle
of red liquid, and I religiously took some after each meal.
It helped for a time; but then I noticed that it helped less
and less. I got so that a simple meal of cold meat and boiled
potatoes would stay in my stomach for hours, in spite of any
amount of the pig-pepsin ; I would lie about in misery, because
I wanted to work, and my accursed stomach would not let
me.
All the time, of course, I was using my mind on this
problem, groping for causes. I found that the trouble was
worse if I worked immediately after eating. I found also
that it was worse when I was writing books. When I got
sufficiently desperate, I would stop writing books and go off
on a hunting trip. I would tramp twenty miles a day over
the mountains, looking for deer, and I would come back at
night too tired to think, and in a week or two every trace
of my trouble would be gone. So my life regimen came to
be — first the writing of a book, and then a hunting trip to
get over the effects of it. But as time went on, alas, I noticed
that the recuperation was more slow and less certain. The
working times grew shorter, and the hunting times grew
longer, until finally I had got to a point where I couldn't
work at all ; I would go to pieces in a few days if I tried it.
It was apparently the end of my stomach, and the end of my
sleeping, and the end of my writing books. My teeth were
decaying, not merely outside but inside; I would have ab-
scesses, and most frightful agonies to endure. I would lie
awake all night, and it would seem to me that I could feel
my body going to pieces — an extremely depressing sensation !
I had been trymg experiments all this time. I had been
going to one doctor after another, and had got to realize that
the doctors only treated symptoms ; they treated the "diseases"
"when they appeared — but nobody ever told you how to keep
the "diseases" from appearing. Why could there not be a
doctor who would look you over thoroughly, and tell you
everything that was wrong with you, and how to set it right ?
118 Mind and Body
A doctor who would tell you exactly how to live, so that you
might keep well all the time! I was studying economics, and
becoming suspicious of my fellow man ; it occurred to me that
possibly it might be embarrassing to a doctor, if he cured
all his patients, and taught them how to live, so that none of
them would ever have to come to him again. It occurred to
me that possibly this might be the reason why "preventive
medicine," constructive health work, was getting so little at-
tention from the medical fraternity.
Two things that plagued me were headache and constipa-
tion, and they were obviously related. For constipation, the
•world had one simple remedy; you "took something" every
night or every morning, and thought no more about it. My
stout and amiable grandmother had drunk a glass of Hunyadi
water every morning for the last thirty or forty years, and
that she finally died of "fatty degeneration of the heart"
was not connected with this in the mind of anyone who knew
her. As for the headaches, people would tell you this, that,
and the other remedy, and I would try them — ^that is, unless
they happened to be drugs. I was getting more and more
shy of drugs. I had some blessed instinct which saved me
from stimulants and narcotics. I had never used tea, coffee,
alcohol or tobacco, and in my worst periods of suffering I
never took to putting myself to sleep with chloral, or to stop-
ping my headaches with phenacetin.
At the end of six or eight years of purgatory, I came upon
a prospectus of the Battle Creek Sanitarium. This seemed
to me exactly what I wanted ; this was constructive, it dealt
with the body as a whole. So I spent a couple of months
at the "San," and paid them something like a thousand dol-
lars to tell me all they could about myself.
The first thing they told me was that meat-eating was
killing me. It was perfectly obvious, was it not, that meat
is a horrible feeding place for germs, that rotten meat is
dreadfully offensive, and likewise digested meat — consider the
excreta of cats, for example! I listened solemnly while
Doctor Kellogg read off the numbers of billions of bacteria
per gram in the contents of the colon of a carnivorous person.
It certainly seemed proper that the author of "The Jungle"
should be a vegetarian, so I became one, and did my best to
persuade myself that I enjoyed the taste of the patent meat-
substitutes which are served in hundred calory portions in
the big Sanitarium dining-room.
The Book of the Body 119
There also I met Horace Fletcher, and learned to chew
every particle of food thirty-two times, and often more. I
exercised in the Sanitarium gymnasiimi, and watched the ster-
ilized dancing — the men with the men and the women with
the women. I was patiently polite with the Seventh Day
Adventist religion, and laid in a supply of postage stamps on
Friday evening. Finally, and most important of all, I went
once a day to the "treatment rooms," and had my abdomen
doctored alternately with hot cloths and ice. By this means
I kept up a flow of blood in the intestinal tract, and stimu-
lated these organs to activity ; so my constipation was relieved,
and my headaches were less severe — so long as I stayed at
the Sanitarium, and was boiled and frozen once every day.
But when I left the Sanitarium, and abandoned the treat-
ments, the troubles began to return. Meantinrke, however, I
had written a book in praise of vegetarianism — a book which
has got into the libraries, and cannot be got out again!
I went on to a new variety of health crank, the real
"nature cure" practitioners. Vegetarianism was not enough,
they insisted ; the evil had begun long before, when man first
ruined his food and destroyed its nutritive value by means of
fire. There was only one certain road to health, and that was
by the raw food route, the monkey and squirrel diet. I had
gone out to California for a winter's rest, and decided I would
give this plan a thorough trial. For five months I lived by
myself, and the only cooked food I ate was shredded wheat
biscuit. For the rest I lived on nuts and salads and fresh and
dried fruits; and during this period I enjoyed such health
as I had never known in my life before. I had literally not a
single ailment. I was not merely well, but bubbling over
with health. I had a friend who said it cheered him up just
to see me walk down the street.
I thought that it was entirely the raw food, and that I
had solved the problem forever; but I overlooked the fact
that during those five months I had done no hard brain work,
no writing. I went back to writing again, and things began
to go wrong ; my wonderful raw foods took to making trouble
in my stomach — ^and I assure you that until you try, you have
no idea the amount of trouble that can be made in your
stomach by a load of bananas and soaked prunes which has
gone wrong! For a year or two I agonized ; I could not give
up my wonderful raw food diet, because I had always before
120 Mind and Body
me the vision of those months in CaUfornia, and could not
understand why it was not that way again.
But the time came when I would eat a meal of raw food,
and for hours afterwards my stomach would feel like a blown-
up football. Then somebody gave me a book by Dr. Salis-
bury on the subject of the meat diet. Of all the horrible
things in the world, a meat diet sounded to me the worst;
I had been a vegetable enthusiast for three years, and thought
of eating meat as you would think of cannibalism. But there
has never been a time in my life when I would not hear
something new, and give it a trial if it sounded well; so I
read the books of Doctor Salisbury, which have long been
out of print, and have been curiously neglected by the med-
ical profession. Salisbury was a real pioneer, an experi-
menter. He wrote in the days before the germ theory, and
so missed his guess regarding tuberculosis, but he perceived
that most of the common diseases are caused by dietetic errors,
and he set to work to prove it. He showed that hog cholera
and army diarrhea are the same disease, and come from the
same cause. He took a squad of men and fed them on army
biscuit for two or three weeks, until they were nearly dead,
and then he put them on a diet of lean beef and completely
cured them in a few days. He did this same thing with one
kind of food after another, and in each case he would bring
his men as near to death as he dared, and then he would cure
them. He showed that meat is the only food which contains
all the elements of nutrition, the only food upon which a
person can live for an unlimited period. As Salisbury said,
"Beef is first, mutton is second, and the rest nowhere."
It was his idea that tuberculosis of the lungs is caused
by spores of fermenting starch clogging the minute blood
vessels. He claimed that there is an early stage of tubercu-
losis, in which the spores are floating in the blood stream ; he
put large numbers of patients upon a diet of lean beef,
ground and cooked, and he cured them of tuberculosis, and
if one of them would break the diet and yield to a craving
for starch or sugar, Salisbury claimed that he could find it
out an hour or two later by examining a drop of their blood
under the microscope. In his books he described vividly the
effects of an excess of starch and sugar in the diet. He
called it "making a yeast-pot of your stomach"; and you
can imagine how that hit my stomach, full of half digested
bananas and prunes!
The Book of the Body 121
I tried the Salisbury diet, and satisfied myself of this
one fact, that lean meat is for brain-workers the most easily
assimilated of all foods. Salisbury claimed that you could
not overeat on meat, but I do not believe there is any food
you cannot overeat on, nor do I believe that anyone should
try to live on one kind of food. We are by nature omnivorous
animals. Our digestive tracts are similar to those of hogs
and monkeys, which eat all varieties of food they can get. One
of the common errors of the nature cure enthusiast is to cite
the monkey and the squirrel as fruit and nut-eating animals,
•when the fact is that monkeys and squirrels eat meat when
they can get it, and the ardor with which they go bird-nesting
is evidence enough that they crave it. If there is any race of
man which is vegetarian, you will find that it is from neces-
sity alone. The beautiful South Sea Islanders, who are the
theme of the raw fooders' ecstasy, spend a lot of their time
catching fish, and sometimes they kill a pig, and celebrate
the event precisely as Christians celebrate the birth of their
Redeemer.
From this you may be able to guess my conclusions, as
the result of much painful blundering and experimenting.
So far as diet is concerned, I belong to no school; I have
learned something from each one, and what I have learned
from a trial of them all is to be shy of extreme statements
and of hard and fast rules. To my vegetarian friends who
argue that it is morally wrong to take sentient life, I answer
that they cannot go for a walk in the country without com-
mitting that offense, for they walk on innumerable bugs and
worms. We cannot live without asserting our right to sub-
ject the lower forms of life to our purposes; we kill in-
numerable germs when we swallow a glass of grape juice, or
for that matter a glass of plain water. I shall be much sur-
prised if the advance of science does not some day prove to
us that there are rudimentary forms of consciousness in all
vegetable life; so we shall justify the argument of Mr.
Dooley, who said, in reviewing "The Jungle," that he could
not see how it was any less a crime to cut off a young tomato
in its prime, or to murder a whole cradleful of baby peas in
the pod !
There is no question that meat-eating is inconvenient, ex-
pensive, and dirty. I have no doubt that some day we shall
know enough to be able to find for every individual a diet
122 Mind and Body
which will keep him at the top of his power, without the
maintenance of the slaughter-house. But we do not possess
that knowledge at present; at least, I personally do not pos-
sess it. I happen to be one of those individuals — ^there are
many of them — with whom milk does not agree; and if you
rule out milk and meat, you find yourself compelled to get
a great deal of your protein from vegetable sources, such as
peas, beans and nuts. All these contain a great deal of starch,
and thus there is no way you can arrange your diet to escape
an excess of starch. Excess of starch, so my experience has
convinced me, is the deadliest of all dietetic errors. It is also
the commonest of errors, the cause, not merely of the com-
mon throat and nose infections, but of constipation, and like-
wise of diarrhea, of anemia, and thus, through the weakening
of the blood stream, of all disorders that spring from this
source — deca3dng teeth and rheumatism, boils, bad complexion,
and tuberculosis. Starch foods are the cheapest, therefore
they form the common diet of the poor, and are responsible
for the diseases of undernourishment to which the poor are
liable.
On the other hand, of course, there are perfectly definite
diseases of ovemourishment ; high blood pressure, which cul-
minates in apoplexy; kidney troubles, which result from the
inability of these organs to eliminate all the waste matter that
is delivered to them; fatty degeneration of the heart, or of
the liver, or any of the vital organs. You may cause a head-
ache by clogging the blood stream through overeating, or you
may cause it by eating small quantities of food, if those foods
are unbalanced, and do not contain the mineral elements
necessary to the making of normal blood. Whatever the
trouble with your health, it is my judgment that in two cases
out of three you will find it dates back to errors in diet. I
do not think I exaggerate in saying that a knowledge of what
to eat and how much to eat is two-thirds of the knowledge
of how to keep yourself in permanent health.
CHAPTER XX
ERRORS IN DIET
(Discusses the different kinds of foods, and the part they
play in the making of health and disease.)
It is my purpose in this chapter to lay down a few general
principles to aid you in the practical problem of selecting
the best diet for yourself. But it must be made clear at the
outset that there can be no hard and fast rule. All human
bodies are more or less alike, but on the other hand all are
more or less different. Modern civilization has given very
few bodies the chance to be perfect; nearly all have some
weakness, some abnormality, and need some special modifi-
cation in diet to fit their particular problem. The ideal in
each case would be a complete study of the individual system.
Some day, no doubt, medical science will analyze the digestive
juices and the gland secretions and the blood-stream of every
htmian being, and say, you need a certain percentage of starch
and a certain percentage of protein ; you need such and such
proportion of phosphorus and iron ; you should avoid cer-
tain acids — and so on. But at present we are devoting our
science to the task of killing and maiming other people, in-
stead of enabling ourselves to live in health and happiness;
so it is that most of those who read this book will be too
poor to command the advice of a diet specialist. The best
you can do is to get a few general ideas and try them out,
watching your own body and learning its peculiarities.
Human food contains three elements: proteins, fats and
carbohydrates. The proteins are the body-building material,
and the foods which are rich in proteins are lean meat, the
white of eggs, milk and cheese, nuts, peas and beans. A cer-
tain amount of this kind of food is needed by the body. If
it is missing, the body will gradually waste away. If too
much of it is taken, the body can turn it into energy-making
material, but this is a wasteful process, and the best evidence
appears to be that it is a strain upon the system. Experi-
ments conducted by Professor Chittenden of Yale have proven
conclusively that men can live and maintain body weight upon
123
124 JMiND AND Body
much less protein food than previous dietetic standards had
indicated.
The fats are found in fat meats and dairy products, and
in nuts, olives, and vegetable oils. The body is prepared to
digest and assimilate a certain amount of fat, no one knows
how much. I have found in my own case that I require a
great deal less than people ordinarily eat. I have for many
years maintained good health upon a diet containing no more
fat than one gets with lean meat once or twice a day. I never
use butter or olive oil, nor any fat in cooking. My reason
for this is that fats are the most highly concentrated form of
food, and the easiest upon which to overeat. Excess of fat
is a cause, not merely of obesity, but also of boils and pim-
ples and "pasty" complexion, and other signs of a clogged
blood-stream.
The third variety of food is the carbohydrates, and of
these there are two kinds, starches and sugars. Starch is the
white material of the grains and tubers; the principal food
element of bread and cereals, rice, potatoes, bananas, and
many prepared substances such as corn-starch, tapioca, farina
and macaroni. Starchy foods compose probably half the
diet of the average human being. In my own case, they com-
pose about one-sixth, so you see to what extent my beliefs
differ from the common. Starch is not really necessary in the
diet at all. I have a friend who is subject to headaches, and
finds relief from them by a diet of meat, salads, and fresh
fruits exclusively. The first thing that excess of starch or
sugar does is to ferment in the system, and cause flatulence
and gas. But strange as it may seem, if the excess of starch
is perfectly digested and assimilated into the system, the con-
dition may be worse yet, because you may have a great
quantity of energy-producing material, without the necessary
mineral elements which the body requires in the handling of it.
If you cremate a human body and study the ashes chem-
ically, you find a score or more of mineral salts. You find these
in the blood, and no blood is normal and no body can be kept
normal which does not contain the right percentage of these
elements. It is not merely that they are needed to build
bones and teeth; they are needed at every instant for the
chemistry of the cells. Every time you move a muscle, you
fill the cells of that muscle with a certain amount of waste
matter. You may prove how deadly this matter is by bind-
The Book of the Body 125
ing a tight cord about your arm, and then trying to use the
arm. We are only at the beginning of understanding the
subtle chemistry of the body; but this much we know, the
cells transform the waste products, and they are thrown out
of the system as ammonia, uric acid, etc. ; and for this proc-
ess the blood must have a continual supply of many mineral
salts.
So vital are they, and so fatal to health is their absence,
that it is far better for you to eat nothing at all than to eat
improperly balanced foods, or foods which are deficient in the
organic salts. You may prove this to yourself by a simple
experiment. Put two chickens in separate pens, where nobody
can feed them but yourself. Feed one of them on water and
white bread, or corn starch, or sugar, or any energy-making
substance which contains little of the mineral elements. Feed
the other chicken on plain water. You will find that the
one which has the food will quickly become droopy and sickly ;
its feathers will fall out, it will have what in human beings
would be known as headaches, colds, sore throats, decaying
teeth and boils. At the end of a couple of weeks it will be
a dead chicken. The one which you feed on water alone will
not be a happy chicken, neither will it be a fat chicken,
but it will be a live chicken, and a chicken without disease.
I am going later on to discuss the subject of fasting. For
the present I will merely say that a chicken which has nothing
but water is living upon its own flesh, and therefore has a
meat diet, containing the mineral elements necessary to the
elimination of the fatigue poisons.
I am going to try not to be dogmatic in this book, and
not to say things that I do not know, I confess to innumer-
able uncertainties about the subject of diet; but one thing I
think I do know, and that is that human beings should elim-
inate absolutely from their food those modern artificial prod-
ucts, which look so nice, and are so easy to handle, and are
put up in packages with pretty labels, and have been in some
way artificially treated to remove the wastes and impurities —
including the vital mineral salts. Among such food substances
I include lard and its imitations made from cottonseed oil,
white flour, all the prepared and refined cereals, polished
rice, tapioca, farina, corn starch, and granulated and powdered
sugar. Any of these substances will kill a chicken in a couple
of weeks, and the only reason they take a longer time to kill
126 Mind and Body
you is because you mix them with other kinds of foods. But
to the extent that you eat them, your diet is deficient; and
do not console yourself with the idea that the mineral ele-
ments will be made up from other foods, because you don't
know that, and nobody else knows it. Nobody knows just
how much of any particular organic salt the body needs. All
we know is that the primitive races, which ate natural foods,
enjoyed vigorous health, while the American people, who
consume the greatest proportion of the so-called "refined"
foods, have the very best dentists and the very worst teeth
in the world.
There are many kinds of sugar, found in the sugar-cane
and the beet, and in all fruits. Sugar may also be made from
any form of starch; this is glucose, which is put up in cans
and sold as an imitation of maple syrup. The ordinary gran-
ulated and powdered sugar is made by taking from the natu-
ral syrup every trace of mineral elements; so I have no hesi-
tation in saying that the ordinary cane sugar and beet sugar
of our breakfast tables and our confectionery stores is not a
food, but a slow poison. The causes of the wonderful prog-
ress of American dentistry, which is the marvel of the civi-
lized world, are cane sugar, white flour, and the frying-pan,
each of which dietetic crimes I shall take up in turn.
We have the richest country in the world; we eat more
food, probably by 50 per cent, and we waste more food,
probably by 500 per cent, than any other people in the world ;
and yet, go to any small farming community in America, and
what do you find? You find the teeth of the young children
rotting in their heads, and having to be pulled out before
their second teeth come. You find these second teeth rot-
ting often before the age of twenty. A friend of mine,
who knows the American farmer, sums it up this way : "He
has two things that he requires if he is to be really respectable
and happy. First, he wants to get all the fireplaces in his
home boarded up, and all the windows nailed tight ; and sec-
ond, he wants to get all his teeth out, and an artificial set
installed. Out of the farmers* wives in my neighborhood, not
one in ten keeps her own teeth until she is thirty."
If you go to the Balkans, where the peasants live on sour
milk, with grains which they grind at home; or to southern
Italy and Sicily, where they live on cheese and black bread
and olives; or among savage people, where they hunt and
The Book of the Body 127
fish and gather the natural fruits, you find old men without a
single decayed tooth. There must be some reason for this,
and the reason is found in our denatured grocery-store foods.
The farmer's wife will gather up her eggs and her butter
and cheeses, and take them to the store and bring back cans
of lard and packages of sugar. The farmer will sell his per-
fectly good wheat and corn meal, and bring back in his wagon
cases of "refined" cereal foods, for which he has paid ten
times the price of the grain !
Dentists will tell you that the way candy injures the teeth
is by sticking to them and fermenting, forming acids, which
destroy the tooth structure. And that may be a part of the
reason. But the principal reason why the teeth decay is
because the blood-stream is abnormal, and is unable to keep up
the repairs of the body. Your teeth are living structures,
just as much as any other part of you, and they will resist
decay if you supply them with the proper nourishment.
You need sugar; you need a considerable quantity of it
every day. Nature provides this sugar in combination with
the organic salts, and also with the precious vitamines, whose
function in the body we are only beginning to investigate. All
the mineral substances which give the color and flavor to
oranges, apples, peaches, grapes, figs, prunes, raisins — all
these you take out when you make sugar. Or perhaps you
put in some imitations of them, made from coal tar chemicals,
and drink them at your soda fountains! So little apprecia-
tion has the American farmer's wife of natural fruits, that
when she preserves them, she considers it necessary to fill
them full of cane sugar; in fact, she has a notion that they
won't keep unless she cooks them up with sugar! So snob-
bish are we Americans about our eating, that we make the
best of our foods into bywords. We make jokes in our comic
papers about the "boarding-house prune" ; and yet prunes and
raisins are among the wholesomest foods we have, and if we
fed them to our children instead of cakes and candy and
coal-tar flavorings, our dental industry would rapidly decline.
And the same thing is true of bread. When I was a boy,
I thought I had to have hot bread at least twice a day, and
if I were called upon to eat bread that was more than a day
old, I felt that I was being badly abused by life. I used
to read fairy stories, in which something called "black bread"
was mentioned, something obscure and terrible ; the symbol of
128 Mind and Body
human misery was Cinderella sitting in the ashes and eating
a crust of dry "black bread." But now since I have studied
diet, I have taken my place with Cinderella. I can afford to
buy whatever kind of bread I want ; I can have the best white
bread, piping hot, three times a day, if I want it; but what
I eat three times a day is a crust of hard dry "black bread."
"Black bread" is the fairy story name for bread made of
the whole grain. It is eaten that way by the peasant because
he has no patent milling machinery at his disposal, to fan
away the life-giving elements of his food. Nearly all the
mineral elements of the grain are contained in the outer,
dark-colored portion. The white part is almost pure starch;
and when you use white flour, you are not merely starving
your blood-stream, your bones, and your teeth, you are also
depriving the digestive tract of the rough material which it
is accustomed to handle, and which it needs to stimulate it
to action. I am aware that whole grain products are a trifle
less easy of digestion, but we should not pamper and weaken
our digestive tract any more than we let our muscles get
flabby for lack of action. We should require our stomachs
to handle the ordinary natural foods, precisely as we accustom
our body to react from cold water, and to stand honest hard
work.
For ages the Japanese peasants have lived on rice, with
a little dried fish. Quite recently there began to spread through-
out Japan a mysterious disease known as beri-beri. It was
especially prevalent in the army, and so the scientists of Japan
set out to discover the cause, and it proved to be the modern
practice of polishing rice, which takes off the outer coating of
the grain. Rice is one of the most wholesome of foods, if
it is eaten in the natural state; but in order to get it in that
state in this country, you have to find a special food store of
the health cranks, and have to pay a special price for it. You
have to pay a higher price for whole wheat bread — because
ninety-nine people out of a hundred are ignorant, and insist
upon having their foodstuffs pretty to look at!
Probably you have read sea stories, and know of the hor-
rors of scurvy. Scurvy and beri-beri are similar diseases,
with a similar cause. The men on the old sailing ships used
to have to live on white biscuit and salt meat, and they always
knew that to recover from their gnawing illness, they must
get to port and get fresh vegetables and fruits, especially
The Book of the Body 129
onions and lemons, which contain the vitamines as well as
the salts. But you will see the modern housewife going into
the grocery store, and surveying the shelves of "package"
goods, and in her ignorance picking out the scurvy-making
products, and frequently paying for them a much higher
price than for the health-making ones!
Then, when she has got her white flour, and her cane
sugar, and her lard, she will take it home, and mix it up, and
put it in the frying pan, and serve it hot to her husband and
children. Nature has so constituted her husband and chil-
dren that they digest starch before they digest fat; that is to
say, the starch is digested mainly in the stomach, while the
fat is digested mainly after the food has been passed on into
the small intestine. But by frying the starch before it is eaten,
the housewife carefully takes each grain of the starch and
protects it with a little covering of fat. Thus the digestive
juices of the stomach cannot get at the starch, and the starch
goes down into the small intestine a good part undigested. If
some evil spirit, wishing to make trouble for the human or-
ganism, had charge of the laying out of our diet, he could
hardly devise anything worse than that. And yet it would
be no exaggeration to say that the average American, espe-
cially the average farmer, eats out of a frying-pan. If his
potatoes have to be warmed over, they go into the frying-pan ;
his precious batter-cakes and doughnuts are cooked in a fry-
ing-pan, and all his precious hot breads are mixed with lard.
If it were not for the fact that you cannot broil a beefsteak
over a modern gas range, I would tell you that the first step
toward health for the average American would be to throw
the frying-pan out of the window, and to throw the cook-
book after it.
The whole modern art of cooking is largely a perversion;
a product of idleness, vanity, and sensuality. It is one of
the monstrous growths consequent upon our system of class
exploitation. We have a number of idle people with nothing
to do but eat, and who demonstrate their superiority to the
rest of us by their knowledge of superior foods, and superior
ways of preparing them. They have the wealth of the world
at their disposal, also the services of their fellow man with-
out limit, and they set their fellow man to work to enable
them to give elaborate banquets, and to sit in solemn state
and gorge themselves, and to have a full account of their be-
130 Mind and Body
havior published in the next morning's newspapers. A great
part of this perverse art we owe to what is called the "ancient
regime" in France — a regime which starved the French peas-
antry until they were black skinned beasts hiding in caves
and hollow trees. So it comes about that our modern food
depravity parades itself in French names, and American snob-
bery requires of its devotees a course in the French language
sufficient to read a menu card. Needless to say, this elaborate
gastronomic art has been developed without any relation to
health, or any thought of the true needs of the body. It is
one of the products of the predatory system which we can
say is absolute waste. Having done my own cooking for the
past twenty-five years, I make bold to say that I can teach
anybody all he needs to know about cooking in one lesson of
half an hour, and that the total amount of cooking required
for a large family can be done by one person in twenty
minutes a day.
In the first place, a great many foods do not have to be
cooked at all, and are made less fit by cooking. In the next
place, the only cooking that is ever required is a little boil-
ing, or in the case of meat, roasting or broiling. In the next
place, the art of combining foods in cooking is a waste art,
because no foods should be combined in cooking. Every
food has its own natural flavor, which is lost in combination,
and if anybody is unable to enjoy the natural flavors of sim-
ply cooked foods, there is one thing to say to that person,
and that is to wait until he is hungry. Let him take a ten-
mile walk in the open air, and he will have more interest
in his next meal. I am not a fanatic, and have no desire to
destroy the pleasures of life; I am recommending to people
that they should seek the higher pleasures of the intellect,
and those pleasures are not found in standing over a cook
stove, nor in compelling others to stand over a cook stove.
Moreover, I know that the artificial mixing of foods to tempt
peoples' palates is one of the principal causes of overeating,
and therefore of ill health, and therefore of the ultimate
destruction of the pleasures of life.
I went out from the world of cooks before I was twenty.
I wanted to write a book, and to be let alone while I was
doing it. I lived by myself, and found out about cooking by
practical experience. On a few occasions since then, I have
lived in a house with a servant, and had some cooking done
The Book of the Body 131
for me, but it was always because somebody else wanted it,
and against my protest. In the last ten years we have had
no servant in our home, and because I want my wife to give
her energy to more important things than feeding me, I do
my share of getting every meal. We have worked out a
system of housekeeping by which we get a meal in five min-
utes, and when we finish it, it takes three minutes to clear
things away.
If I tell you what I eat, please do not get the impression
that I am advising you to eat these same things. My diet
consists of the foods which I have found by long experience
agree with me. There are many other foods which are just
as wholesome, but which I do not eat, either because they
don't happen to agree with me, or because I don't care for
them so much. I am fond of fruit, and eat more of that
than of anything else. It is not a cheap article of diet, but
you can save a good deal if you buy it in quantities, as I do.
A little later I am going to discuss the prices of foods.
For breakfast I eat a slice of whole wheat bread, three
good-sized apples, stewed, and eight or ten dates. It takes
practically no time to prepare this breakfast. The bread has
to be baked, of course, but this is done wholesale; we buy
four loaves at a time, and it is just as good at the end of
a couple of weeks as when we buy it. When I lived in the
world of cooks, I would call for apple sauce; which meant
that somebody had to pare apples, cut them up, stew them,
mix them with sugar, grate a little nutmeg over them, set
them on ice, and serve them to me on a glass dish, with a
little pitcher of cream. But now what happens is that I put
a dozen apples in a big sauce-pan and let them simmer while
I am eating. We have a rule in our family that we do
not do any cooking except while we are eating, because if
we try it at any other time of the day, we get buried in a
book or in a manuscript, and forget about it until the smoke
causes somebody in the street to summon the fire depart-
ment. So the apples for my breakfast were cooked during
last night's supper; and during the breakfast there will be
some vegetable cooking for lunch.
At this lunch, which is my "square meal," I cat a large
slice of beefsteak, say a third of a pound. Jack London
used to say that the only man who could cook a beefsteak
was the fireman of a railway locomotive, because he had a hot.
132 Mind and Body
clean shovel. The best imitation you can get is a hot, clean
frying-pan; and when you are sure that it is hot, let it get
hotter. The whole secret of cooking meat is to keep the
juices inside, and to do that you must cook it quickly. When
you slap it down on a hot frying-pan, the meat is seared, and
the juices stay inside, and if you do not turn it over until it
is almost ready to burn, you don't need to cook it very long
on the other side. That is the one secret of cooking worth
knowing; it doesn't cost anything, and saves time instead of
wasting it. As I have never found anybody else capable of
learning it, I reserve the cooking of the beefsteak as one of
my family duties.
To continue the lunch, a slice of whole wheat bread, and
a large quantity of some fresh salad, such as celery, or let-
tuce and tomatoes, without dressing. For a part of this may
be substituted a vegetable, one or two beets or turnips, cooked
during a previous meal, and warmed up in a couple of
minutes; and we do not throw away the tops of the turnips
and beets and celery, we put them on and cook them, and they
serve for the next day's meal. If you would eat a large quan-
tity of such "greens" once a day, you would escape many of
the ills that your flesh is at present heir to. Finally, for
dessert, an orange and a small handful of raisins, or one or
two figs.
The evening meal will be the same as the breakfast ; except
once in a while when I am especially hungry, and want some
meat. I am writing in the winter season, so the fruits sug-
gested are those available in winter. The menu will be varied
with every kind of fruit at the season when it is cheapest
and most easily obtained. The beefsteak will appear at about
three meals out of four; occasionally it will be replaced by
the lean meat of pork or mutton, or by fish. The bread may
be replaced by rice, or boiled potatoes, either white or sweet,
and occasionally by graham crackers. I know that these
contain a little fat and sugar, but I try not to be fanatical
about my diet, and the rules I suggest do not carry the death
penalty. There was a time when I used to allow my friends
to make themselves miserable by trying to provide me with
special foods when they invited me to a meal, but now I
tell them to "forget it," and I politely nibble a little of every-
thing, and eat most of what I find wholesome; if there is
nothing wholesome, I content myself with the pretense of a
The Book of the Body 133
meal. If I find myself in a restaurant, I quite shamelessly
get a piece of apple or pumpkin pie, omitting most of the
crust. As I don't go away from home ntore than once or
twice a month, I do not have to worry about such indulgence.
The main thing is to arrange one's home diet on sound lines,
and learn to enjoy the simple and wholesome foods, of which
there is a great variety obtainable, and at prices possible to
all but the wretchedly poor.
In conclusion, since everybody likes to have a feast now
and then, I specify that my diet regimen allows for holidays.
Assuming that I am your guest for a day, and that you wish
to "blow" me, regardless of expense, here will be the menu.
Breakfast, some graham crackers, a bunch of raisins, a can of
sliced pineapple in winter, or a big chunk of watermelon in
summer. Dinner, or lunch, roast pork, a baked apple, a
baked sweet potato and some spinach. Supper, lettuce, dates,
and a dish of popcorn flavored with peanut butter. Try this
next Christmas!
P. S. After this book had been put into type, I chanced
to be looking over Herbert Quick's illuminating book, "On
Board the Good Ship Earth." Discussing the importance of
certain organic salts to the body. Dr. Quick states: "Animals
have been fed, as an experiment, on foods deficient in phos-
phorus. For a while they seemed to do well. Then they
collapsed. It takes only three months of a ration without
phosphorus to wreck an animal. Individual creatures were
killed after a month of this diet, and it was found that the
flesh was taking the phosphate — for the phosphorus exists in
the body in that form — from the bones to supply its need. In
other words, the body was eating its own bones! When this
process had robbed the bones to the limit, the collapse came,
and the animal could never recover."
CHAPTER XXI
DIET STANDARDS
(Discusses various foods and their food values, the quantities
we need, and their money cost.)
I think there is no more important single question about
heahh than the question of how much food we should eat.
It is one about which there is a great deal of controversy, even
among the best authorities. We shall try here for a common-
sense solution. At the outset we have to remind ourselves
of the distinction we tried to draw between nature and man.
To what extent can civilized man rely upon his instincts to
keep him in perfect health ?
Let us begin by considering the animals. How is their
diet problem solved? Horses and cattle in a wild state are
adjusted to certain foods which they find in nature, and so
long as they can find it, they have no diet problem. Man
comes, and takes these animals and domesticates them; he
observes their habits, and gives to them a diet closely ap-
proaching the natural one, and they get along fairly well. But
suppose the man, with his superior skill in agriculture, taking
wild grain and planting it, reaping and threshing it by machin-
ery, puts before his horse an unlimited quantity of a con-
centrated food such as oats, which the horse can never get
in a natural state — will that horse's instincts guide it? Not
at all. Any horse will kill itself by overeating on grain.
I have read somewhere a clever saying, that a farm is
a good place for an author to live, provided he can be per-
suaded not to farm it. But once upon a time I had not
heard that wise remark, and I owned and tried to run a farm.
I had two beautiful cows of which I was very proud, and one
morning I woke up and discovered that the cows had got
into the pear orchard and had been feeding on pears all night.
In a few hours they both lay with bloated stomachs, dying.
A farmer told me afterwards that I might have saved their
lives, if I had stuck a knife into their stomachs to let out
the ga«. I do not know whether this is true or not. But
my two dead cows afford a perfect illustration of the reason
134
The Book of the Body 135
why civilized man cannot rely upon his instincts and his
appetites to tell him when he has had enough to eat. He can
only do this, provided he rigidly restricts himself to the foods
which he ate in the days when his teeth and stomach and
bowels were being shaped by the process of natural selection.
If he is going to eat any other than such strictly natural
foods, he will need to apply his reason to his diet schedule.
In a state of nature man has to hunt his food, and the
amount that he finds is generally limited, and requires a lot
of exercise to get. Explorers in Africa give us a picture of
man's life in the savage state, guided by his instincts and very
little interfered with by reason. The savages will starve for
long periods, then they will succeed in killing a hippopotamus
or a buffalo, and they will gorge themselves, and nearly all
of them will be ill, and several of them will die. So you see,
even in a state of nature, and with natural foods, restraint
is needed, and reason and moral sense have a part to play.
What do reason and moral sense have to tell us about
diet? Our bodily processes go on continuously, and we need
at regular intervals a certain quantity of a number of different
foods. The most elementary experiment will convince us that
we can get along, maintain our body weight and our work-
ing efficiency upon a much smaller quantity of food than
we naturally crave. Civilized custom puts before us a great
variety of delicate and appetizing foods, upon which we are
disposed to overeat; and we are slow observers indeed if we
do not note the connection between this overeating and ill
health. So we are forced to the conclusion that if we wish
to stay well, we need to establish a censorship over our habits ;
we need a different diet regimen from the haphazard one
which has been established for us by a combination of our
instincts with the perversions of civilization.
Up to a few years ago, it was commonly taken for granted
by authorities on diet that what the average man actually
eats must be the normal thing for him to eat. Governments
which were employing men in armies, and at road building,
and had to feed them and keep them in health, made large
scale observations as to what the men ate, and thus were
established the old fashioned "diet standards." They are ex-
pressed in calories, which is a heat unit representing the
quantity of fuel required to heat a certain small quantity of
water a certain number of degrees. In order that you may
136 Mind and Body
know what I am talking about, I will give a rough idea of
the quantity of the more common foods which it takes to
make 100 calories: one medium sized slice of bread, a piece
of lean cooked steak the size of two fingers, one large apple,
three medium tablespoonfuls of cooked rice or potatoes, one
large banana, a tablespoonful of raisins, five dates, one large
fig, a teaspoonful of sugar, a ball of butter the size of your
thumbnail, a very large head of lettuce, three medium sized
tomatoes, two-thirds of a glass of milk, a tablespoonful of oil.
You observe, if you compare these various items, how little
guidance concerning food is given by its bulk. You may eat
a whole head of lettuce, weighing nearly a pound, and get no
more food value than from a half ounce of olive oil which
you pour over it. You may eat enough lean beefsteak to
cover your plate, and you will not have eaten so much as a
generous helping of butter. A big bowl of strawberries will
not count half so much as the cream and sugar you put over
them. So you may realize that when you eat olive oil, butter,
cream, and sugar, you are in the same danger as the horse
eating oats, or as my two cows in the pear orchard ; and if
some day a surgeon has to come and stick a knife into you,
it may be for the same reason.
The old-fashioned diet standards are as follows : Swedish
laborers at hard work, over 4,700 calories ; Russian workmen
at moderate work, German soldiers in active service, Italian
laborers at moderate work, between 3,500 and 3,700 calories;
English weavers, nearly 3,500 calories; Austrian farm labor-
ers, over 5,000 calories. Some twenty years ago the United
States government made observations of over 15,000 persons,
and established the following, known as the "Atwater stand-
ards" : men at very hard muscular work, 5,500 calories ; men
at moderately active muscular work, 3,400 calories; men at
light to moderate muscular work, 3,050 calories; men at
sedentary, or women at moderately active work, 2,700 calories.
In the last ten or Bfteen years there has arisen a new
school of dietetic experts, headed by Professors Chittenden
and Fisher of Yale University. Professor Chittenden has
published an elaborate book, "The Nutrition of Man," in which
he tells of long-continued experiment upon a squad of soldiers
and a group of athletes at Yale University, also upon average
students and professors. He has proved conclusively that all
these various groups have been able to maintain full body
The Book of the Body 137
weight and full working efficiency upon less than half the
quantity of protein food hitherto specified, and upon any-
where from one-half to two-thirds the calory value set forth
in the former standards.
When I first read this book, I set to work to try its
theories upon myself. During the five or six months that I
lived on raw food, I took the trouble to weigh everything that
I ate, and to keep a record. It is, of course, very easy to
weigh raw foods exactly, and I found that I lived an active
life and kept physical health upon slightly less than 2,500
calories a day. I have set this as my standard, and have
accustomed myself to follow it instinctively, and without
wasting any thought upon it. Sometimes I fall from grace;
for I still crave the delightful cakes and candies and ice
cream upon which I was brought up. I always pay the pen-
alty, and know that I will not get back to my former state
of health until I skip a meal or two, and give my system a
chance to clean house. The average man will find the regi-
men set forth in this book austere and awe-inspiring; I do
not wish to pose as a paragon of virtue, so perhaps I should
quote a sarcastic girl cousin, who remarked when I was a boy
that the way to my heart was with a bag of ginger-snaps. I
live in the presence of candy stores and never think of their
existence, but if someone brings candy into the house and
puts it in front of me, I have to waste a lot of moral energy
in letting it alone. A few years ago I had a young man as
secretary who discovered this failing of mine, and used to
afford himself immense glee by buying a box of chocolates
and leaving it on top of my desk. I would give him back the
box — with some of the chocolates missing — but he would per-
sist in "forgetting it" on my desk; he would hide and laugh
hilariously behind the door, until my wife discovered his
nefarious doings, and warned me of them.
Professor Chittenden states quite simply the common sense
procedure in the matter of food quantity. Find out by prac-
tical experiment what is the very least food upon which you
can do your work without losing weight. That is the correct
quantity for you, and if you are eating more, you certainly
cannot be doing your body any good, and all the evidence
indicates that you are doing it harm. You need not have
the least fear in making this experiment that you will starve
yourself. Later on, in a chapter on fasting, I shall prove to
138 Mind and Body
you that you carry around with you in your body sufficient
reserve of food to keep you alive for eighty or ninety days;
and if you draw on a small quantity of this you do not do
yourself the slightest harm. Cut down the amount of your
food; eat the bulky foods, which contain less calory value,
and weigh yourself every day, and you will be surprised to
discover how much less you need to eat than you have been
accustomed to.
One of the things you will find out is that your stomach
is easily fooled; it is largely guided by bulk. If you eat a
meal consisting of a moderate quantity of lean meat, a very
little bread, a heaping dish of turnip greens, and a big slice
of watermelon, you will feel fully satisfied, yet you will not
have taken in one-third the calory value that you would at an
ordinary meal with gravies and dressings and dessert. The
bulky kind of food is that for which your system was adapted
in the days when it was shaped by nature. You have a large
stomach, many times as large as you would have had if you
had lived on refined and concentrated foods such as butter,
sugar, olive oil, cheese and eggs. You have a long intestinal
tract, adapted to slowly digesting foods, and to the work of
extracting nutrition from a mass of roughage. You have a
very large lower bowel, which MetchnikoflF, the Russian
scientist, one of the greatest minds who ever examined the
problems of health, declares a survival, the relic of a previous
stage of evolution, and a source of much disease. The best
thing you can do with that lower bowel is to give it lots of
hay, as it requires ; in other words, to eat the salads and greens
which contain cellulose material. This contains no food value,
and does not ferment, but fills the lower bowel and stimulates
it to activity.
If you eat too much food, three things may happen. First,
it may not be digested, and in that case it will fill your sys-
tem with poisons. Second, it may be assimilated, but not
burned up by the body. In that case it has to be thrown out
by the kidneys or the sweat glands, and this puts upon these
organs an extra strain, to which in the long run they may
be unequal. Or third, the surplus material may be stored up
as fat. This is an old-time trick which nature invented to
tide you over the times when food was scarce. If you were
a bear, you would naturally want to eat all you could, and be
as fat as possible in November, so that you might be able
The Book of the Body 139
to hunt your prey when you came out from your winter's
sleep in April. But you are not a bear, and you expect to
eat your regular meals all winter; you have established a
system of civilization which makes you certain of your food,
and the place where you keep your surplus is in the bank, or
sewed up in the mattress, or hidden in your stocking. In
other words, a civilized man saves money, and the habit of
storing globules of grease in the cells of his body is a sur-
vival of an old instinct, and a needless strain upon his health.
Not merely does the fat man have to carry all the extra
weight around with him, but his body has to keep it and tend
it; and what are the effects of this is fully shown by life
insurance tables. People who are five or ten per cent over
weight have five or ten per cent more chance of dying all
the time, while people who are five or ten per cent under
weight have five or ten per cent more than the average of
life expectation. There is no answer to these figures, which
are the result of the tabulation of many hundreds of thou-
sands of cases. The meaning of them to the fat person is to
put himself on a diet of lean meat, green vegetables and
fresh fruits, until he has brought himself down, not merely
to the normal fatness of the civilized man, but to the normal
leanness of the athlete, the soldier on campaign, and the
student who has more important things to think about than
stuffing his stomach.
There is, of course, a certain kind of leanness which is
the result of ill health. There are wasting diseases; tuber-
culosis, for example, and anemia. There are people who
worry themselves thin, and there are a few rare "spiritual"
people, so-called, who fade away from lack of sufficient in-
terest in their bodies. That is not the kind of leanness that
I mean, but the active, wiry leanness, which sometimes lives
a hundred years. Nearly always you will find that such people
are spare eaters; and you will find that our ideal of rosy
plumpness, both for adults and children, is a wholly false
notion. We once had in our home as servant an Irish girl,
who was what is popularly called "a picture of health," with
those beautiful flaming cheeks that Irish and English women
so often have. She was in her early twenties, and nobody
who knew her had any idea but that her health was perfect.
But one morning she was discovered in bed with one side
paralyzed, and in a couple of weeks she was dead with ery-
140 Mind and Body
sipelas. The color in her cheeks had been nothing but dis-
eased blood vessels, overloaded with food material ; and with
the blood in that condition, one of the tiny vessels in the brain
had become clogged.
In the same way I have seen children, two or three years
old, plump and rosy, and considered to be everything that
children should be; but pneumonia would hit them, and in
two or three days they would be at death's door. I do not
mean that children should be kept hungry; on the contrary,
they should have four or five meals a day, so that they do
not have a chance to become too hungry. But at those meals
they should eat in great part the bulky foods, which contain
the natural salts needed for building the body. If a child
asks for food, you may give it an apple, or you may give it
a slice of bread and butter with sugar on it. The child will
be equally well content in either case ; but it is for you, with
your knowledge of food values, to realize that the bread with
butter and sugar contains two or three times as much nutri-
ment as the apple, but contains practically none of the pre-
cious organic salts which will make the child's bones and
teeth.
So far I have discussed this subject as if all foods grew
on bushes outside your kitchen door, and all you had to do
was to go and pick off what you wanted. But as a matter
of fact, foods cost money, and under our present system of
wage slavery, the amount of money the average person can
spend for food is strictly limited. In a later book I am going to
discuss the problem of poverty, its causes and remedies. All
that I can do here is to tell you what foods you ought to
have, and if society does not pay you enough for your work
to enable you to buy such foods, you may know that society
is starving you, and you may get busy to demand your rights
as human beings. Meantime, however, such money as you
do have, you want to spend wisely, and the vast majority of
you spend it very unwisely indeed.
In the first place, a great many of the simplest and most
wholesome foods are cheap — often because people do not know-
enough to value them. We insist upon having the choice
cuts of meats, because they are more tender to the teeth,
but the cheaper cuts are exactly as nutritious. We insist upon
having our meats loaded with fat, although fatness is an
abnormal condition in an animal, and excess of fat is a
The Book of the Body 141
grave error in diet. I live in a country where jack rabbits
are a pest, and in the market they sell for perhaps one-
fourth the cost of beef, and yet I can hardly ever get them,
because people value them so little as food; they prefer the
meat of a hog which has been wallowing in a filthy pen, and
has been deliberately made so fat that it could hardly walk!
I have already spoken of prunes, a much despised and
invaluable food. All the dried fruits are rich in food values,
and if we could get them untreated by chemicals, they would
be worth their cost. I was brought up to despise the cheaper
vegetables, such as cabbage and turnips ; I never tasted boiled
cabbage until I was forty, and then to my great surprise
I made the discovery that it is good. Raw cabbage is as
valuable as any other salad; it is a trifle harder to digest
for some people, but I do not believe in pampering the
stomach. Both potatoes and rice are cheap and wholesome,
if only we would get unpolished rice, and if we would
leave the skins on the potatoes until after they are cooked.
Nearly all the mineral salts of the potato are just under the
outer skin, and are removed by the foolish habit of peeling
them.
The prices of food differ so widely at different seasons
and in different parts of the world, that there is not much
profit in trying to figure how cheaply a person can live. I
have found that I spend for the diet I have indicated here,
from sixty to eighty cents a day. I do not buy any fancy
foods, but on the other hand, I do not especially try to
economize ; I buy what I want of the simple everyday foods
in their season. Most everyone will find that it is a good
business proposition to buy the foods which he needs to keep
in health. If the average workingman would add up the money
he spends, not merely in the restaurants, but in the candy
stores, the drug stores, the tobacco stores, and the offices
of doctors and dentists, he would find, I think, that he could
afford to buy himself the necessary quantity of wholesome
natural foods. For a family of three, in the place where I
live, enough of these foods can be purchased for a dollar
a day, and this is about one-fourth what common labor is
being paid, and one-eighth of what skilled labor is being paid.
I will specify the foods: a pound and a half of shoulder
steak, a loaf of whole wheat bread or a box of shredded
wheat biscuit, a head of cabbage, a pound of prunes, and
four or five pounds of apples.
1^ Mind and Body
There are many ways of saving in the purchase of food
if you put your mind upon it. If you are buying prunes,
you may pay as high as fifty cents or a dollar a pound for the
big ones, and they are not a bit better than the tiny ones,
which you can buy for as low as eight cents a pound in bulk.
When bread is stale, the bakers sell it for half price, despite
the fact that only then has it become fit to eat. If you buy
canned peaches, you will pay a fancy price for them, and
they will be heavy with cane sugar; but if you inquire, you
find what are known as "pie peaches," put up in gallon tins
without sugar, and at about half the price. The butcher
will sell you what he calls "hamburg steak" at a very low
price, and if you let him prepare it out of your sight, he will
fill it with fat and gristle; but let him make some while you
watch, and then you have a very good food. One of my
diet rules is that I do not trust the capitalist system to fix
me up any kind of mixed or ground or prepared foods. I
have not eaten sausage since I saw it made in Chicago.
Also there is something to know about the cooking of
foods, since it is possible to take perfectly good foods and
spoil them by bad cooking. Once upon a time our family
discovered a fireless cooker, and thought that was a wonder-
ful invention for an absent-minded author and a wife who
is given to revising manuscripts. But recent investigations
which have been made into the nature of the "vitamines,"
food ferments which are only partly understood, suggest that
prolonged cooking of food may be a great mistake. The
starch has to be cooked in order to break the cell walls by the
expansion of the material inside. Twenty minutes will be
enough in the case of everything except beans, which need
to be cooked four or five hours. Meat should be eaten rare,
except in the case of pork, which harbors a parasite danger-
ous to the human body; therefore pork should always be
thoroughly cooked. The white of eggs is made less digestible
by boiling hard or frying. Eggs should never be allowed to
boil ; put them on in cold water, and take them off as soon
as the water begins to boil. It is not necessary to cook either
fresh fruit or dried. The dried fruits may be soaked and
eaten raw, but I find that several fruits, especially apples and
pears, do not agree with me well if they are eaten raw, so
I stew them for fifteen or twenty minutes. I have no ob-
tection to canned fruits and vegetables, provided one takes
The Book or the Body 143
the trouble in opening them to make sure there is no sign of
spoiling. If you put up your own fruits, do not put in any
sugar. All you have to do is to let them boil for a few
minutes, and to seal them tightly while they are boiling hot.
The whole secret of preserving is to exclude the air with its
bacteria.
If you live on a farm, you will have no trouble in fol-
lowing the diet here outlined, for you can produce for your-
selves all the foods that I have recommended; only do not
make the mistake of shipping out your best foods, and taking
back the products of a factory, just because you have read
lying advertisements about them. Take your own wheat and
oats and com to the mill, and have it ground whole, and make
your own breads and cereals. Try the experiment of mix-
ing whole com meal with water and a little salt, and baking
it into hard, crisp "corn dodgers." I do not eat these — but
only because I cannot buy them, and have no time to make
them.
Another common article of food which I do not recom-
mend is salted and smoked meats. I do not pretend to know
the effects of large quantities of salt and saltpetre and wood
smoke upon the human system, but I know that Dr. Wiley's
"poison squad" proved definitely that a number of these in-
organic minerals are injurious to health, and I prefer to take
fresh meat when I can get it. I use a moderate quantity of
common salt on meat and potatoes, because there seems to
be a natural craving for this. I know that many health en-
thusiasts insist that I am thus putting a strain on my kidneys,
but I will wait until these health enthusiasts make clear to
me why deer and cattle and horses in a wild state will travel
many miles to a salt-lick. I have learned that it is easy to
make plausible statements about health, but not so easy to
prove them. For example, I was told that it is injurious
to drink water at meals, and for years I religiously avoided
the habit; but it occurred to some college professor to find
out if this was really true, and he carried on a series of
experiments which proved that the stomach works better
■when its contents are diluted. The only point about drink-
ing at meals is that you should not use the liquid to wash
down your food without chewing it.
I can suggest two other ways by which you may save
money on food. One is by not eating too much, and another
144 Mind and Body
is by eating all that you buy. The amount of food that is
wasted by the people of America would feed the people of
any European nation. The amount of food that is thrown
out from any one of our big American leisure class hotels
would feed the children of a European town. I think it may
fairly be described as a crime to throw into the garbage pail
food which might nourish human life. In our family we
have no garbage pail. What little waste there is, we burn
in the stove, and my wife turns it into roses. It consists of
the fat which we cannot help getting at the butcher's, and
the bones of meat, and the skins of some fruits and vege-
tables. It would never enter into our minds to throw out a
particle of bread, or meat, or other wholesome food. If we
have something that we fear may spoil, we do not throw it
out, but put it into a saucepan and cook it for a few minutes.
If you will make the same rule in your home, you will stop
at least that much of the waste of American life ; and as to
the big leisure class hotels, and the banquet tables of the
rich — just wait a few years, and I think the social revolu-
tion will attend to them !
CHAPTER XXII
FOODS AND POISONS
(Concludes the subject of diet, and discusses the effect upon
the system of stimulants and narcotics.)
A few years ago there died an old gentleman who had
devoted some twenty years of his life to teaching people
to chew their food. Horace Fletcher was his name, and his
ideas became a fad, and some people carried them to comical
extremes. But Fletcher made a real discovery ; what he called
"the food filter." This is the automatic action of the swal-
lowing apparatus, whereby nature selects the food which
has been sufficiently prepared for digestion. If you chew a
mouthful of food without ever performing the act of swal-
lowing, you will find that the food gradually disappears.
What happens is that all of it which has been reduced to a
thin paste will slip unnoticed down your throat, and you may
go on putting more food into your mouth, and chewing, and
can eat a whole meal without ever performing the act of
swallowing. Fletcher claimed that this is the proper way to
eat, and that you can train yourself to follow this method.
I have tried his idea and adopted it. One of my diet rules,
to which there is no exception, is that if I haven't the time
to chew my food properly, I haven't the time to eat; I skip
that meal.
The habit of bolting food is a source of disease. To be
sure, the carnivorous animals bolt their food, but they are
tougher than we are, and do not carry the burden of a
large brain and a complex nervous system. If you swallow
your meals half chewed, and wash them down with liquids,
you may get away with it for a while, but some day you will
pay for it with dyspepsia and nervous troubles. And the
same thing applies to your habit of jumping up from meals
and rushing away to work, whether it be work of the muscles,
or of brain and nerves. Proper digestion requires the pres-
ence of a quantity of blood in the walls of the stomach and
digestive tract. It requires the attention of your subcon-
scious mind, and this means rest of muscles and brain centers.
145
3f^€ Mind and Body
If you cannot rest for an hour after meals, omit that meal,
or make it a light one, of fruit juices, which are almost im-
mediately absorbed by the stomach, and of salads, which do
not ferment. You may rest assured that it will not hurt you
to skip a meal, and make up for it when you have time to
be quiet. I have been many times in my life under very
intense and long continued nervous strain; for example, dur-
ing the Colorado coal strike, I led a public demonstration
which kept me in a state of excitement all the day and a
good part of the night several weeks. During this period
I ate almost nothing; a baked apple and a cup of custard
would be as near as I would go to a meal, and as a result
I came through the experience without any injury whatever
to my health. I lost perhaps ten pounds in weight, but that
was quickly made up when I settled back to a normal way
of Hfe.
I have been on camping trips when I had a great deal
of hard work to do, carrying a canoe long distances on my
back, or paddling it forty miles a day. On the mornings
of such a trip I have seen a guide cook himself an elaborate
breakfast of freshly baked bread, bacon, and even beans,
and make a hearty meal and then go straight to work. My
meal, on the contrary, would consist of a small dish of stewed
prunes, or perhaps some huckleberries or raspberries, if they
could be found. I will not say that I could do as much as
the guide, because he was used to it, and I was not. But I
can say this — if I had eaten his breakfast at the start of
the day, I would have been dead before night ; and I mean the
word "dead** quite literally. I know a man who started to
climb Whitefacc mountain in the Adirondacks. He climbed
half way, and then ate lunch, which consisted of nine hard
boiled eggs. Then he started to climb the rest of the moun-
tain, and dropped dead of acute indigestion.
There are few poisons which can affect the system more
quickly, or more dangerously, than a mass of food which is
not digested. The stomach is an ideal forcing-house for
the breeding of bacteria. It provides warmth and moisture,
and you, in your meal, provide the bacteria and the material
upon which they thrive. Under normal conditions, the stom-
ach pours out a gastric juice which kills the bacteria ; but let
this gastric juice for any reason be lacking — ^because your
nervous energy has gone somewhere else, or because your
The Book of the Body 147
blood-stream, from which the gastric juice must be made,
has been drawn away to the muscles by hard labor; then you
have a yeast-pot, with great quantities of gases and poisons.
In acute cases the results are evident enough : violent pains
and convulsions, followed by coma and the turning black of
the body. But what you should understand is that you may
produce a milder case of such poisoning, and may do it day
after day habitually, and little by little your vital organs
will be weakened by the strain.
It does not make any difference at what hour of the
twenty-four you take the great bulk of your food. It is
one of the commonest delusions that you get some strength-
ening effect from your food immediately, and must have this
strength in order to do hard work. To be sure, there are
substances, such as grape-sugar, which require practically no
digesting; you can hold them in the mouth, and they will be
digested by the saliva, and absorbed at once into the blood-
stream. But unless you have been starved for a long period
you do not need to get your strength in this rush fashion.
If you ate your normal meals on the previous day, your
blood-stream is fully supplied with nutriment which has been
put through a long process of preparation, and you can get
up in the morning and work all day, if necessary, upon what
is already in your system. To be sure, you may feel hungry,
and even faint, but that is merely a matter of habit ; your
system is accustomed to taking food and expects it. But if
you are a laborer doing hard work, you can easily train your-
self to eat a light meal in the morning, and another light
meal at noon, and to eat a hearty meal when your work is
done and you can rest. Two light meals and a hearty meal
are all that any system needs, and you can prove it to your-
self by trying it, and watching your weight once a week.
I have tried many experiments, and the conclusion to which
I have come is that there is no virtue in any particular meal-
hours or any particular nufnber of meals. For several years
I tried the experiment of two meals a day. I was living
a retired life, and had little contact with the world, and I
would make a hearty meal at ten o'clock in the morning, and
another at five in the afternoon. But later on I found that
inconvenient, and now I take a light breakfast, and two mod-
erate-sized meals at the conventional hours of lunch and
dinner. I can arrange my own time, so after meal times is
11
148 Mind and Body
when I get my reading done. Sometimes, when I am tired,
I feel sleepy after meals, but I have learned not to yield to
this impulse. I do not know how to explain this; I have
observed that animals sleep after eating, and it appears to
be a natural thing to do; but I know that if I go to sleep
after a meal, nature makes clear to me that I have made a
mistake, and I do not repeat it. I never eat at night, and
always go to bed on an empty stomach, so I am always hungry
when I open my eyes in the morning. I never know what it
is not to be hungry at meal times, and my habits are so
regular that I could set my watch by my stomach.
Another common habit which is harmful is eating be-
tween meals. I have known people who are accustomed to
nibble at food nearly all the time. Shelley records that he
tried it as an experiment, thinking it might be a convenient
way to get digestion done — but he found that it did not work.
The stomach is apparently meant to work in pulses; to do
a job of digesting, and then to rest and accumulate the juices
for another job. It will accustom itself to a certain regime,
and will work accordingly, but if, when it has half digested
a load of food, you pile more food in on top, you make as
much trouble as you would make in your kitchen if you
required your cook to prepare another meal before she has
cleaned up after the last one. Three times a day is enough
for any adult to eat. Children require to eat oftener, be-
cause their bodies are more active, and they not merely have
to keep up weight, but to add to it. The simplest way to
arrange matters with children is to give them three good
meals at the hours when adults eat, and then to give them a
couple of pieces of fruit between breakfast and lunch, and
again between lunch and supper. I have never seen a child
who would not be satisfied with this, when once the habit
was established.
I have already spoken of the cooking and serving of food.
I consider that the "gastronomic art," as it is pompously
called, is ninety-nine per cent plain rubbish. To be sure, if
foods are appetizingly prepared, and look good and smell
good and taste good, they will cause the gastric juices to flow
abundantly, as the Russian scientist Pavlov has demonstrated
hy practical experiment with the stomach-pump. But I know
without any stomach-pump that the best thing to make my
gastric juices flow is hard work and a spare diet. When I
The Book of the Body 149
come home from five sets of tennis, and have a cold shower
and a rub-down, my gastric juices will flow for a piece of
cold beefsteak and a cold sweet potato, quite as well as for
anything that is served by a leisure class "chef." Needless
to say, I want food to be fresh, and I want it to be clean,
but I have other things to do with my time and money than
to pamper my appetites and encourage food whims.
If you have a grandmother, or ever had one, you know
what grandmothers tell you about "hot nourishing food"; but
I have tried the experiment, and satisfied myself that there
is absolutely no difference in nourishing qualities between hot
food and cold food. If you chew your food sufficiently, it will
all be ninety-eight and six-tenths degree food when it gets
to your stomach, and that is the way your stomach wants it.
Of course, if you have been out in a blizzard, and are chilled,
and want to restore the body temperature, a hot drink wijl
be one of the quickest ways, and if the emergency is extreme,
you may even add a stimulant. On the other hand, if you
are suffering from heat, it is sensible to cool your body by
a cold drink. But you should use as much judgment with
yourself as you would with a horse, which you do not permit
to drink a lot of cold water when he is heated up, and is
going into his stall to stand still.
I have mentioned the word "stimulants," and this opens
a large subject. There are drugs which affect the body in
two different ways : some excite the nerves, and through the
nerves the heart and blood-stream, to more intense activity;
others have the effect of deadening the nerves, and dulling
the sense of exhaustion and pain. One of these groups is
called stimulants, and the other is called narcotics; but as a
matter of fact the stimulants are really narcotics, because they
operate by dulling the nerves whose function it is to prevent
the over-accumulation of fatigue poisons ; in other words,
they keep the nerves and muscles from knowing that they
are tired, and so they go on working.
It is possible, of course, to conceive of an emergency in
which that is necessary. Once upon a time, on a hunting trip,
I had been traveling all day, and was caught in a rain storm,
and exhausted and chilled to the bone; I had to make camp
without a fire, so when I got the tent up I wrapped myself
in blankets and drank a couple of tablespoons full of whiskey.
That is the only time I have ever taken whiskey in my life.
150 MmD AND Body
and it warmed me almost instantly, and did me no harm. In
the same way there were two or three occasions when I was
on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and could not sleep,
and let the doctor give me a sleeping powder. But in each
case I knew that I was fooling with a dangerous habit, and
I did no more fooling than necessary. No one should make
use of either stimulants or narcotics except in extreme emer-
gency, and never but a few times in a lifetime. What you
should do is to change your habits so that you will not need
to over-strain.
All these drugs are habit forming; that is to say, they
leave the body no better, and with a craving for a repetition
of the relief. When you are tired, it is because your muscles
and nerves are storing up fatigue poisons more rapidly than
your blood-stream can get rid of them. You need to know
about this condition, and exhaustion and pain are nature's
protective warning. If you put a stop to the warning, you
are as unintelligent as the Eastern despots who used to cut
off the head of the messenger who brought bad tidings. If,
when you have a headache, you go into a drug store and let
the druggist mix you one of those white fizzy drinks, what
you are doing is not to get rid of the poisons in your blood-
stream, but merely to reduce the action of your heart, so
as to keep the blood from pressing so fast into the aching
blood vessels and nerves. You may try that trick with your
heart a number of times, but sooner or later you will try it
once too often — ^your heart will stop a little bit quicker than
you meant it to!
Drugs are poisons, and their action depends upon their
poisoning some particular portion of the body, and tempo-
rarily paralyzing it. And bear this in mind, they are none
the less poisonous because they are "natural" products. You
can kill yourself by cyanide of potassium, which comes out
of a chemist's retort; but you can kill yourself just as dead
with laudanum, which comes out of a plant, or with the con-
tents of the venom sac of a snake. You are poisoning your-
self none the less certainly if you use alcohol, which is made
from the juices of beautiful fruits, and has had hosts of
famous poets writing songs about it; or you can poison
yourself with the caffein which you get in a lovely brown
bean which comes from Brazil, fragrant to the nostrils and
delicious to the taste. You may drink wine and tea and coffee
The Book of the Body 151
for a hundred years, and have your picture published in the
newspapers as a proof that these habits conduce to health;
but nothing will be said about the large number of people
who practiced these habits, and didn't live so long, and about
how long they might have lived if they hadn't practiced these
habits.
I was brought up in the South, and my "elders" belonged
to a generation which had grown up in war time. For this
reason many of the men both drank and smoked to excess,
and in my boyhood I lived among them and watched them,
and with the help of advice from a wise mother, I conceived
a horror of every kind of stimulant. The alcoholic poets
could not fool me; I had been in the alcoholic wards of the
hospitals. I had seen one man after another, beautiful and
kindly and gracious men, dragged down into a pit of tor-
ment and shame.
Alcohol is, I think, the greatest trap that nature ever set
for the feet of the human race. It is responsible for more
degradation and misery than any other evil in the world ;
and I say this, knowing well that my Socialist friends will
cry, "What about Capitalism?" My answer is that I doubt
if there ever would have been any Capitalism in the world,
if it had not been for alcohol. If the workers had not been
systematically poisoned, and all their savings taken from
them by the gin-mill, they would never have submitted to
the capitalist system, they would have built the co-operative
commonwealth at the time they were building the first fac-
tories. I listen to the arguments of my radical friends about
"personal liberty," but I note that in Russia, when it was a
question of making a practical revolution and keeping it alive,
the first thing the leaders did was to drag out the contents
of the wine-cellars of the palaces, and smash them in the
gutters.
Tea and coflFee are, of course, much milder in their effects
than alcohol ; you can play with them longer, and the punish-
ment will be less severe. But if you make habitual use of
them, you will pay the penalty which all drugs exact from
the system. Your brain and your nerve centers will be less
sensitive, less capable of working except under the influence
of drugs; their reacting power will be dulled, and they will
•wear out more quickly. I have watched the slaves of the
"morning cup of coffee," and know how they suffer when
152 Mind and Body
they do not get it. Likewise, I have watched the tea drinkers.
It is comical to live in England, and see all the able-bodied
men obliged to leave their work at four o'clock in the after-
noon, and seek the regular stimulus for their tired nerves.
If you are to meet anybody, it is always for "tea" that the
ceremony is set, and if you refuse to drink tea, your hostess
will be uncomfortable, unable to talk about anything but the
strange, incredible notion that one can live without tea. I
discovered after a while the solution of this problem; I
would say that I preferred a little hot water, if you please,
and so my hostess would pour me a cup of hot water, and I
would sit and gravely sip it, and everybody would be per-
fectly content: I was conforming to the outward appearance
of normality, which is what the British conventions require.
I have never drunk a cup of coffee, so I do not know
what its effect on me would be. But some fifteen years ago
I drank a glass of very weak iced tea at eight o'clock in the
evening, and did not get to sleep until four or five the next
morning. So I know that there is really a drug in tea. I
know also that I might accustom my system to it, just as I
might learn to poison my lungs with nicotine without being
made immediately and suddenly ill; but why should I wish
to do this? Life is so interesting to me that I do not need
to stimulate my brain centers in order to appreciate the thrill
of it. And when I am tired, I can rest myself by listening
to music, or by reading a worth-while novel — ^things which I
have found do not leave the after effects of nicotine.
I remember the first time I met Jack London. Our meet-
ing consisted in good part of his "kidding" me, because I
was lacking in the congenial vices of the cafe. He told me
how much I had missed, because I had never been drunk;
one ought to try the great adventure, at least once! Poor
Jack is gone, because his kidneys gave out at forty; and
nothing could seem more ungracious than to point out that
I am still alive, and finding life enjoyable. Yet, in this
book we are trying to find out how to live, and if there are
habits which wreck and destroy a magnificent physique, and
bring a great genius to death at the age of forty — surely the
rest of us want to know about it, and to be warned in time.
I mention Jack London in this connection, because he has
said the last word on the subject of alcohol. Read "John
Barleycorn," and especially read between the lines of it.
The Book of the Body 153
and you will not need my argument to persuade you to be
glad that the Eighteenth Amendment has been written into
the Constitution, and that it is your duty as a Socialist, not
merely to obey it, but to vote for its enforcement.
I am proceeding on the assumption that your life is of
importance to you ; that you have a job to do which you know
to be worth while, and to which you desire to apply your
powers. You agree with me that the workers of the world
are suffering, and that it is necessary for them to find their
freedom, and that this takes hard work and hard thinking.
You may say that I exaggerate the amount of harm that is
done to the system by tea and coffee, alcohol and tobacco.
Well, let us assume that in moderate quantities they do no
harm at all: even so, I have the right to ask you to show
that they do some good ; otherwise, surely, it is a mistake for
the workers to spend their savings upon them.
Consider, for example, the amount of money which the
wage slaves of the world spend upon tobacco. Suppose they
could be persuaded for two or three years to spend this
amount upon good reading matter — do you not think there
would be an improvement in their condition? Surely you
cannot maintain that the use of tobacco is necessary to the
activities of the brain! Surely you do not think that a man
has to have a cigarette in order to stimulate his thoughts, or
to smoke a pipe to rest himself after his work is done! I
offer myself as evidence in such a controversy; I have writ-
ten as many books as any man in the radical movement, and
the sum total of my lifetime smoking amounts to one-half
of one cigarette. I tried that when I was eight years old, and
somebody told me a policeman would arrest me if he caught
me, and I threw away the cigarette, and ran and hid in an
alley, and have not yet got over my scare.
In the "Journal for Industrial Hygiene" for October, 1920,
is an article entitled "Fatigue and Efficiency of Smokers in a
Strenuous Mental Occupation." Experiments were conducted
among telegraph operators, and the result showed that "the
heavy smokers of the group show a higher output rate at
the beginning of the day than the light smokers, but their
rate falls off more markedly in the late hours, and their
production for the whole day is definitely less than that of
the light smokers. The heavy smokers also show less ability
than the light smokers to respond to increasing pressure of
154 Mind and Body
work in the late hours of the day by handling their full 6hare
of the work presented."
One point upon which every medical authority agrees is —
that the use of nicotine is of deadly effect upon the immature
organism. Half-grown youths who smoke cigarettes will
never be full-sized men ; they will never have normal lungs
or a normal heart. And likewise, all authorities agree about
the effect of smoking upon the organism of women. I gave
what little help I could to the task of helping to set women free,
and to make them the equals of men ; but I was always pained
when I discovered that some of my feminist friends understood
by woman's emancipation no more than her right to adopt men's
vices. I would say to these ardent young female radicals, who
cultivate the art of dangling a cigarette from their lower lip,
and sip cocktails out of coffee-cups in Greenwich Village
cafes, that they will never be able to bear sound children ;
but I know that this would not interest them — they don't
want to bear any children at all. So I say that they will
never be able to think straight thoughts, and will be nervous
invalids when they are thirty.
We went to war to make the world safe for democracy,
and we put several millions of our young men into armies,
and if there were any of them who did not already know
how to smoke cigarettes, they learned it imder official sanc-
tion. So now we have a national tobacco bill that runs up
to two billions, and will insure us a new generation of "Class
C" rating. Speaking to the young radicals who are reading
my books, I say : We want to make the world over, to make
it a place of freedom and kindness, instead of the hell of
greed and hate that it is today. For that purpose we need
a new moral code, and we can never win our victory without
it. I have attended radical conventions, sitting in unven-
tilated halls amid clouds of tobacco smoke, and listening to
men wrangle all through the day and a great part of the
night ; I have watched the fatal dissensions in the movement,
the quarrelings of the right wingers and the left wingers and
all stages and degrees in between, and I have wondered —
not jestingly, but in pitying earnest — how much of all those
personalities and factional misunderstanding had their origin
in carbon dioxide and nicotine. There is no use suggesting
such ideas to the older men, whose habits are fixed; but a
new generation is coming on, with a new vision of the enor-
The Book of the Body ' 1^5
mous task before it; and is it too much to expect of these
young men and women, that they shall realize in adrance
the grim tasks they have to do, and shall learn to run the
machine of their body so as to get out of it the maximum
amount of service? Is it too much to hope for, that some
day we shall have a race of young fighters for truth and
justice, who are willing to live abstemious lives, and con-
secrate themselves to the task of delivering mankind from
wage slavery and war?
CHAPTER XXIII
MORE ABOUT HEALTH
(Discusses the subjects of breathing and ventilation, clothing,
bathing and sleep.)
In discussing the question of health, we have given the
greater part of the space to the subject of diet, for the rea-
son that experience has convinced us that diet is two-thirds
of health, and that nearly always in disease you find errors
of diet playing a part. There are, however, other important
factors of health, now to be discussed.
Everything of which the body makes use is taken in
the form of food and drink, with the exception of one sub-
stance, the oxygen we get out of the air. Every time we draw
a breath we take in a certain amount of oxygen, and every
time we expel a breath, we drive out a certain amount of a
gas called carbon dioxide, which is what the body makes of
the fuel it burns. The body can get along for several days
without water, and for two or three months without food, but
it can only get along for two or three minutes without oxygen.
It should be obvious that when the body expels carbon dioxide,
with a slight mixture of other more poisonous gases, and sucks
back what it expects will be a fresh supply of oxygen, it
wants to get oxygen, and not the same gases it has just ex-
pelled, nor gases which have been expelled from the lungs
of other people.
In the days when primitive man lived outdoors, he did
not have to think about this problem. When he breathed
poison from his lungs, the moving air of nature blew it away,
and the infinite vegetation of nature took the carbon dioxide
and turned it back into oxygen. And even when man built
himself shelters, he was not cunning enough to make them
air-tight; he had to leave a big hole for the smoke to get
out, and smaller holes through which to get light. But now
our wonderful civilization has solved these problems; we
make our walls of air-tight plaster, and we have invented a
substance which will admit light without admitting air. So
we have the "white plague" of tuberculosis, and so we have
156
The Book of the Body 157
innumerable minor plagues of coughs and colds and sore
throats.
In the summer time the solution of the problem is easy.
Have as many doors and windows in your home as possible,
and keep them open, and have nothing in your home to make
dust or to retain dust. But then comes stormy and cold
weather, and you have to close your doors and windows, and
keep your home at a higher temperature than the air outside.
How shall you do this, and at the same time get a continual
supply of fresh air?
I ;will take the various methods of heating one by one.
The problem in each case is simple and can be made clear
in a sentence or two.
First, the open fireplace. This is a perfect solution, if
you have enough fuel, and do not have to worry about the
waste of heat. An open fireplace draws out all the air in
the room in a short time, and you do not have to bother
about opening doors or windows; you may be sure that the
air is getting in through some cracks, or else the fire would
not burn.
Second, a wood or coal or gas stove in the room, provided
with a proper vent, so that all the gases of combustion are
drawn up the chimney. This changes the air more slowly
than an open fireplace, but it does the work fairly well. All
that you have to be careful about is that your vent is suf-
ficiently large and is working properly. If your fire does
not "draw," you will have smoke or coal-gas in the house,
and this is bad for the lungs; but worse for the lungs is a
gas that you can neither see nor smell nor taste, the deadly
carbon monoxide. This gas is produced by incomplete com-
bustion, and whenever you see yellow flames from gas or
coal, you are apt to have this poisonous substance. Small
quantities of it are sufficient to cause violent headaches, and
repeated doses of it are fatal. Men who work in garages
which are not properly ventilated run this risk all the time,
because carbon monoxide is one of the products of imper-
fect combustion in the gas engine.
Next, the furnace. A furnace sends fresh warm air into
your house; the only trouble is that it takes out all the
moisture, and some authorities say that this is bad for the
lungs and throat. I do not know whether this is true, but all
furnaces are supposed to have a water chamber to supply
158 Mind and Body
moisture to the air, and you should keep a pan of water on
every stove or radiator in your house.
Next, steam heat, which includes hot-water heating. This
is one of the abominations of our civihzation, and one of the
methods by which our race is committing suicide. There is
nothing wrong about steam heat in itself ; the room is warmed
in a harmless way; but the trouble is it stays warm only so
long as the doors and windows are kept shut. You are in
an air-tight box, and can be warm provided you do not mind
being suffocated. The moment you open a door or window,
you have a cold draft on your feet, and if you wish to change
the air entirely you have to let out all the heat ; so, of course,
you never do change it entirely, but go on breathing the
same air over and over, and every time you breathe it the
condition of your body is a little more reduced.
The solution of this problem is not to heat the air in the
room, but to use your steam coils to heat fresh air, and then
drive this air, already warmed, into the room, at the same time
providing a vent through which the old air can be pushed out.
This is the hot air system of heating, and it requires some kind
of engine or dynamo, and therefore is expensive. It has been
installed in a few office buildings and theaters. One of the
most perfect systems I ever inspected is in the building of
the New York Stock Exchange, where the air is warmed in
winter, and cooled in summer, and freed from dust, and
exactly the right quantity is supplied. It is a humorous com-
mentary upon our civilization that we take perfect care of
the breathing apparatus of our stock-gamblers, but pay no
attention to the breathing apparatus of our senators and con-
gressmen, whose one business in life is to use their lungs.
The stately old building with its white marble domes looks
impressive in moving pictures and on illustrated postcards,
but it has no system of ventilation whatever, and is a death-
trap to the poor wretches who are compelled to spend their
days, and sometimes their nights, within its walls. This con-
trast is one symptom of the rise of industrial capitalism and
the collapse of political democracy.
We have reserved to the last a method of heating which
is the worst, and can only be described as a crime against
health: the use of gas and oil stoves set out in the middle
of the room, without a vent, and discharging their fumes into
the room. These stoves are simply instruments of slow death.
The Book of the Body 159
and their manufacture should be prohibited by law. In the
meantime, what you have to do is to refuse to live in a
room or to work in an office where such stoves are used.
I have heard dealers insist that this or the other kind of
gas or oil stove was so contrived as to consume all the fumes.
Do not let anybody fool you with such nonsense. There has
never been any form of combustion devised which consumes
all the fumes. No such thing can be, because the products
of combustion are not combustible. The so-called "wickless
blue flame" stoves do bum all the oil, and a properly regu-
lated gas stove will burn all the gas, but that simply means
that it turns the oil and gas into carbon dioxide, the very sub-
stance which your lungs are working day and night to get
out of your body.
Moreover, there is no oil or gas stove which ever bums
perfectly all the time, either because there is too much gas
or insufficient air. Oil and gas stoves sometimes give a partly
yellow flame. You can cause them to give a yellow flame at
any time by blowing air against them, and that yellow flame
means imperfect combustion, and a probability of the deadly
carbon monoxide. These facts are known to every chemist and
to every student of hygiene, and the fact that civilized people
continue to bum such oil and gas stoves in their homes and
offices is simply one more proof that our civilization values
human welfare and health at nothing whatever in compari-
son with profits.
Not merely should you see that you have a continuous
supply of fresh air in your home, but you should try to keep
down dust in your home, and especially fine particles of lint.
Once upon a time our ancestors were unable to make houses
and floors tight, and so they put rugs on the floors and hung
tapestries on the walls to keep out the wind. We civilized
people are able to make both floors and walls absolutely tight,
and yet we continue to use rugs and curtains, it being the
first principle of our education that propriety requires us to
continue to do the things which our ancestors did. I am
unable to think of a more silly or stupid thing in the world
than a rug or a curtain, but I have lived in the house with
them all my life, because, alas, the ladies cannot be happy
otherwise. They want their homes to be "pretty," and so
they continue to set dust traps, and to set themselves futile
jobs of house cleaning and shopping.
160 Mind and Body
Not all of us are able to be out of doors as much as we ought
to be, but all of us spend seven or eight hours out of every
twenty-four in sleep, and this time at least we ought to spend
out of doors. I understand that this is futile advice to give
to the very poor. I was poor myself for many years, and had
to put all my clothes on at night in order to keep warm, and
even then I could not always do it. Nevertheless, from the
time I first realized the importance of ventilation I never slept
in a room with a closed window.
I say, sleep outdoors if you possibly can. You do not
have to be afraid of exposure, for cold will not hurt you if
you keep your body in proper condition. I have slept out
in a rubber blanket, with the rain beating on my head and
face; I have spread a rubber blanket on a hummock in the
midst of a swamp, and waked up in the morning with my
hair and face soaked in cold, white fog, but I never caught
cold from such things; there is no harm whatever in damp-
ness or in "night air," if you are in proper condition. Of
course, you may get your ears frostbitten in the middle of
winter, but you can have a sleeping hood to remove that
danger.
The "nature cure" enthusiasts, who lay so much stress
upon an outdoor life, also insist that the wearing of clothes
is a harmful civilized custom. They urge us to take "sun
baths" and to "ventilate the skin." Now, as a matter of fact,
the skin does not breathe, it merely gives out moisture, and
it does not give out any less because we have clothing on us,
provided the clothing is dry and clean, and will absorb moist-
ure. But bye and bye the clothing becomes loaded with the
•waste substances given out by the skin, and then it will
absorb no more, and if you do not change your clothing, no
doubt it may have some effect upon health.
But the principal evil of civilized clothing is that it binds
the body and prevents the free play of the muscles, and,
more important yet, stops the free circulation of the blood. I
have already discussed hats, which are the principal cause
of baldness. I will go to the other extremity of the body, and
mention tight shoes, which, strange as it may seem, cause
headaches and colds. You will be able to find a few civilized
men with normal feet, but you will hardly ever find a woman
whose toes are not crowded together and misshapen. I have
said that the human body is one organism, and that it is fed
The Book of the Body 161
and its health maintained by the blood-stream; I say now
that the circulation of the blood is one thing, and if you block
it at any one place, you block it everywhere. Of course, not
all the blood-stream goes down into the feet, but some of
it does, and if it is clogged in the feet, and the blood vessels
cramped and crowded, there is a certain amount of poison
kept in the system, which the system should have got rid of.
Why do women wear tight shoes? Because the leisure
class members of their sex have been kept in harems and
used as the playthings of men. To be fragile and delicate
was the thing admired by the masters of wealth, and to have
small hands and feet was a sign that women belonged to this
parasite class. Therefore at all hazards women's feet must
be kept small, even at the expense of their health and happi-
ness; and so they put themselves up on several inches of
heels, which cause them to toddle around like marionettes on
a stage, with all their toes crowded down into a lump.
Why do men wear tight bands around their scalps, which
cause their hair to drop out, and tight, stiff columns around
their necks, which stop the circulation of the blood into their
heads, and cause them to have headaches instead of ideas?
The reason is that for ages the rulers of the tribe have wished
to demonstrate publicly their superiority to the common herd,
which does the genial tasks. In England all gentlemen
wear tall black silk band-boxes on their heads, and in America
they have a choice among several varieties of round tight
boxes. All men who work in offices wear stiflfly starched
collars and cuflfs, as a means of demonstrating their supe-
riority to the common workers, who have to sweat at their
necks. I think it is not too much to hope that when class
exploitation is done away with, we shall also get rid of these
class symbols, and choose our clothing because it is warm and
comfortable, and not according to the perverted imbecilities of
"style."
The skin gives out perspiration which is greasy; also the
skin is constantly growing, putting out layers of cells which
dry up and are worn off. We need to bathe with soap to
remove the grease, and we need to rub with a towel to brush
away the dead cells of the skin, so that the pores may be
kept open. No one is taking care of his body who does not
wash and rub it once every twenty-four hours, and once or
twice a week with warm water and soap. It is often stated
M2 Mind and Body
that hot baths are weakening, but I have never found it so;
however, I think it is a bad practice to pamper the body,
which should be accustomed to the shock of cold water. The
rule as to bathing, both as to temperature and time, is simple.
If, after the bath and rub-down, your body has reacted and
you feel vigorous and fresh, that bath has done you good.
If, on the other hand, you feel chilled and depressed, then
you have been too long in the water, or its temperature was
too low. Every person has to find his own rules in such
matters. The only general rule is that as one grows older
the body reacts less quickly.
All day, as we work and think, we store up more poisons
in our cells than the body can get rid of, and the time comes
when the cells are so loaded with poisons that we have to
stop for a while, and let our blood-stream clean house. The
quantity of sleep one needs is a problem like that of cold
water; each person has to find his own rule. In general, one
needs less and less sleep as one grows older. Infants sleep
the greater part of the time; growing children should sleep
ten or eleven hours, adults seven or eight, and old people,
unless they have let themselves get fat, generally do not want
to sleep more than six, and part of this in short naps. When
you sleep, your bodily energies relax, and you make less heat,
therefore you need extra clothing; but this clothing should
never cover the mouth and nose, nor should it be so heavy
as to make breathing a burden. If you are in good condition,
it will do you no harm to be chilly when you sleep, except
that you do not sleep so soundly. Sleeping too much is just
as harmful as sleeping too little. Nature will tell you that.
The important thing, as in all other problems of health, is to
have something interesting to think about, some exciting work
to do in the world, and then you will sleep as little as you
have too.
CHAPTER XXIV
WORK AND PLAY
(Deals with the question of exercise, both for the idle and
the overworked.)
In discussing the important question of exercise, there is
one fundamental fact to begin with: that our present civili-
zation divides men sharply into two classes, those who do
not get enough exercise, and those who get too much.
Obviously it would be folly to make the same recommenda-
tions to the two classes.
I begin with those who get too much exercise. They
include a great number, probably the majority of those who
do the manual work of the world. They include the farmers
and the farm-hands, who work from dawn to sunset, and
sometimes by lantern light. They include also the farmers'
wives, the kitchen slaves of whom the old couplet tells:
"Man's work ends from sun to sun,
But woman's work is never done."
I am aware that men have worked that way for count-
less ages, and yet the race is still surviving; but I am aware
also that men wither up with rheumatism, and contract chronic
diseases of the kidneys and the blood vessels, consequent upon
the creation of greater quantities of fatigue poisons than the
body can regularly eliminate.
I have very little interest in the past, and none whatever
in finding fault with it. My purpose is to criticize the present
for the benefit of the future, and therefore I say that modern
machinery and the whole development of modem large-scale
production make it absolutely unnecessary that women should
slave all their waking hours in kitchens, or that men should
slave all day. I say it is monstrous folly that men should
work for twelve-hour stretches in steel mills, and for ten and
eleven hours in factories and mines. Organized labor has
adopted the slogan, "Eight hours for work, eight hoars for
sleep, eight hours for play"; but my slogan is "Four hours
for work, four hours for study, eight hours for sleep, and eight
hours for play."
12 1«3
164 Mind and Body
I know, and am prepared to demonstrate to any think-
ing man, that modern civilization can produce, not merely all
the necessities, but all the comforts of life for every man,
woman and child in the community, by the expenditure of
four hours a day work of the adult, able-bodied men and
women. So to all the wage slaves of the factories and mines,
the fields and the kitchens, I say that too much exercise is
what is the matter with you, and what you need is to get off in a
quiet nook in the woods and read a good novel, not merely for a
few hours, but for a few months, until you get over the
effects of capitalist civilization. I know that not many of
you can get away as yet, but I urge you to insist upon getting
away, to fight for the chance to get away; and I will here
suggest a few of the novels for you to read when finally you
do get away. I choose the easy ones, which the dullest and
most tired of you will love; I say, make up your mind to
read these thirty-two books before you die, and do not let
the world cheat you out of your chance!
/ Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's
Court. Charles D. Stewart: The Fugitive Blacksmith. W.
Clark Russell: The Wreck of the Grosvenor. R. L. Steven-
son: Treasure Island, Kidnapped. Jack London: The Sea
Wolf, The Call of the Wild, Martin Eden. Joseph Conrad:
Youth. H. G. Wells : The War of the Worlds, When the
Sleeper Wakes, The Sea Lady, The History of Mr. Polly,
The Food of the Gods, The Island of Dr. Moreau. Upton
Sinclair: The Jungle, King Coal, Jimmie Higgins, 100 Per
Cent. Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie. George Moore:
Esther Waters. Frank Norris: The Octopus. Brand Whit-
lock: The Turn of the Balance. De Foe: Robinson Crusoe.
Fielding: Tom Jones, Jonathan Wild the Great. Thackeray:
The Adventures of Barry Lyndon. Marmaduke Pickthall:
The Adventures of Hadji Baba. Blasco Ibanez: The Fruit
of the Vine. Frank Harris: Montes the Matador. Frederik
van Eeden : The Quest. Tolstoi : Resurrection.
And now for the people who do not get enough exercise.
In the armies of King Cyrus it was the law that every man
was required to sweat once every twenty-four hours, and that
js still the law for every business man and office-worker and
writer of books. There is no substitute for it, and there is
no health without it. I have heard Dr. Kellogg say that the
modern woman sends out her health with her washing, and
The Book of the Body 165
I have heard the leisure class ladies at the Sanitarium dis-
cuss this cryptic utterance and wonder what he meant by it.
I know that there is use telling leisure class ladies what ex-
ercise at the wash-tub would do for their abdomens and backs.
I will only tell them that unless they can find some kind of
vigorous activity which keeps them in a free perspiration for
an hour or two each day, they will never be really well, and
will never bear children without agony and abortion.
For myself, I have found that the minimum is three or
four times a week. Unless I get that much hard exercise I
am soon in trouble. So my advice to the business man is to
take off his coat and collar and turn out and help his truck-
man; my advice to the white collar slave is to get a part-
time job, and dig ditches the rest of the time. To the man
who has cares which pursue him, and likewise to the ardent
student and brain-worker, I say that they should find, not
merely exercise, but play. The distinction between the two
things is important. There can be play that is not exercise,
'for example cards and chess; and, of course, there can be
exercise that is not play. What you must have is something
that is both play and exercise; something that not merely
causes your heart to beat fast, and your lungs to pump fast,
and your sweat glands to throw out poisons from your body,
but something that fully occupies your mind and gives your
higher brain centers a chance to relax.
Our civilization has very largely destroyed the possibility
of play and the spirit of play. We civilized people no longer
know what play is, and regard the desire to play as something
abnormal — a form of vice. We allow children to play after
school hours, and on Saturdays; but for grown-up, serious-
minded men and women to want to play would be almost as
disreputable as for them to want to get drunk. What could
be more pitiful than the spectacle of tens of thousands of men
crowding into our baseball parks and amusement fields to
watch other men play for them! Imagine, if you can, a
crowd of people gathering in a restaurant or theater to watch
other people eat for them! Imagine yourself a man from
Mars, coming down to a world with so many people in want,
and finding whole classes of men forbidden to do any work,
under penalty of disgrace, and compelled, in order to exercise
their muscles, to pull on rubber straps and lift weights and
wave dumb-bells and Indian clubs in the air — methods of ex-
166 Mind and Body
pending their muscular energy which are respectable because
they accomplish nothing!
When I was a boy, I was fond of all kinds of games. 1
was a good tennis player, and in the country an incessant
hunter and fisherman. When on the city streets we boys could
not find any other game to play, we would get up on the roofs
of the houses and throw clothes-pins and snow-balls at the
"Dagoes" working in the nearby excavations; so we had the
fine game of being chased by the "Dagoes," with the chance,
real or imaginary, of having a knife stuck into us. But then,
as I grew older, and became aware of the pain and misery
of the world, I lost my interest in games, and for ten years
or so I never played ; I did nothing but study and write. So
my health gave way, and I had the problem of restoring it,
and I spent some twenty years wrestling with this problem,
before I thoroughly convinced myself on the point that there
can be no such thing as sound and permanent health without
a certain amount of play.
I don't think there is any kind of hard physical work I
failed to try, in the course of my experiments. I rode horse-
back, and took long walks, and climbed mountains, and swam,
and dug gardens, and chopped down whole groves of trees
and cut them up and carried them to the fireplace. I have
done this latter work for a whole winter in the country, sev-
eral hours every day, and it has done my health no good to
speak of ; I have been ready for a breakdown at the end of
it. The reason is that all the time I was doing these things
with my body, I was going right on working my brain. While
I was swimming or climbing a mountain or galloping on horse-
back, I was absorbed in the next chapter of the book I was
writing, so that I literally did not know where I was. I would
make up my mind that I would not think about my work,
and would make desperate efforts not to do so; but it was
like walking along the edge of a slippery ditch — sooner or later
I was bound to fall in, and go floundering along, unable to
get out again !
And the same thing applies to all gymnastic work. I have
experimented with a dozen different systems of exercises, and
with all kinds of water treatments; I have used dumb-bells
and Indian clubs and Swedish gymnastics, MacFadden's ex-
ercises in bed, and the Yogi breathing exercises, and more
Icinds of queer things than I can remember now ; but for me
The Book of the Body 16T
there is only one solution of the problem, which is to have
an antagonist. It may be a deer I am trying to shoot, or
some trout I am trying to lure out of their holes; it may be
some boys I am trying to beat at football or hockey, or it may
be the game I know best and find most convenient, which is
tennis. If it is tennis, then it has to be someone who can
make me work as hard as I know how; for if it is someone
I can beat easily, why, before I have been playing ten min-
utes, I am busily working out the next chapter of a book,
or answering letters I have just got in the mail.
Recently I came upon a book, "The Psychology of Relax-
ation," by Dr. Patrick, in which the theory of this is set forth.
Civilized man is working his higher brain centers more than
his body can stand; his brain is running away with him, ab-
sorbing a constantly increasing share of his energies. True
relaxation is only possible where the higher brain centers are
lulled, and the back lobes of the brain brought into activity.
One of the means of doing this is alcohol, and that is why
through the ages all races of men have craved to get drunk.
There is a method which is harmless, and does not break
down the system, and that is play. When we become really
interested in play, we are as children, or as primitive man;
we do all the things that our race used to do many ages ago ;
we hunt and fight, we pit our wits against the wits of our
enemies, and struggle with desperation to get the better of
them. If our play is physical play, if we are absorbed in a
game or bodily contest, then we are exerting and developing
all those portions of us which civilization tends to atrophy
and deaden.
There are people who will dispute with you about Social-
ism, and ask, how we are going to provide incentives if we
do away with wage slavery. When you tell them that activity
is natural to human beings, and that if there were no work,
men and women would have to make some, they shake their
heads mournfully and tell you about the problem of "human
nature." But consider games and sports: men do not have
to work their bodies, yet they go out and deliberately hunt
for trouble! They invent themselves subtle and complicated
games, and are not content until they find people who can
beat them at it, or at any rate can make them work to the
limit of their strength, until they are in a dripping perspira-
tion and thoroughly exhausted ! I may be too optimistic about
168 Mind and Body
"human nature," but I believe that this is the attitude every
normal human being takes toward the powers, both mental
and physical, which he possesses; he wants to use them, and
for all they are worth. If you don't believe it, just take any
group of youngsters, give them a baseball and bat, turn them
loose in a vacant lot, and watch them "choose up sides" and
fall to work, screaming and shouting in wild excitement!
There are some races of the earth which do not yet know
baseball, but the Filipinos and the Japanese have learned it,
and even the war-worn "Poilus" and the supercilious "Tom-
mies" condescended to experiment with it. And if you think
it is only physical competition that young human animals en-
joy, try them at putting on a play, or printing a magazine, or
conducting a debate, or building a house — ^anything whatever
that involves healthy competition, and is related to the big
things of life, but without being for the profit of some ex-
ploiter! Get clear the plain and simple distinction between
work and play: play is what you want to do, while work is
what the profit system makes you do!
CHAPTER XXV
THE FASTING CURE
(Deals with nature's own remedy for disease, and how to make
use of it.)
We have' next to consider the various human aihnents,
what causes them, and how they can be remedied. As it
happens, I know of a cure that comes pretty near being
that impossible thing, a "cure-all." At any rate, it is so far
ahead of all other cures, that a discussion of it will cover
three-fourths of the subject.
When I was a boy living in New York, there was a man
by the name of Dr. Tanner, who took a forty-day fast. He
was on public exhibition at the time, and was supposed to be
watched day and night; the newspapers gave a great deal
of attention to the story, and crowds used to come to gaze at
him. I remember very well the conversations I heard about
the matter. People were quite sure that it couldn't be true.
The man must be getting something to eat on the sly; he
must have some nourishment in the water he drank ; no human
being could fast more than five or six days without starving
to death.
In the year 1910 I published in the United States and
England a magazine article telling how on several occasions
I had fasted ten or twelve days, and what I had accomplished
by it. I found that I had the same difficulty to confront as
old Dr. Tanner; I received scores of letters from people who
called me a "faker," and I read scores of newspaper editorials
to the same effect. The New York Times published a dispatch
about three young ladies on Long Island who were trying
a three-day fast, and the Times commented editorially to the
effect that these young ladies were "the victims of a shallow
and unscrupulous sensationalist."
The notion that human beings can perish for lack of food
in a few days is deeply rooted in people's minds. Recently
a group of eleven Irishmen in jail set to work to starve them-
selves to death, as a protest against British rule in their
country. Day after day the newspapers reported the news
169
170 Mind and Body
from Q)rk prison, and at about the twentieth day they began
to state that the prisoners were dying, that the priest had
been sent for, that their relatives were gathered on the prison
steps. Day after day such reports continued, through the
thirties, and the forties, and the fifties, and the sixties, and
the seventies. One man died on the eighty-eighth day, and
MacSwiney died on the seventy-fourth. The other nine gave
up after ninety-four days and were all restored to health. I
watched carefully the newspaper and magazine comment on
this incident, yet I did not see a single remark on the med-
ical aspects of it; I could not discover that scientific men had
learned anything whatever about the ability of the body to
go without food for long periods.
Get this clear at the outset: Nobody ever "starved to
death" in less than two months, and it is possible for a fat
person to go without food for as long as three or four months.
People who "starve to death" in shorter times do not die of
starvation, but of fright. The first time I fasted happened
to be at the time of the Messina earthquake. I was walking
about, perfectly serene and happy, having been without food
for three days, and I read in my newspaper how the rescue
ships had reached Messina, and found the population raven-
ous, in the agonies of starvation, some of the people having
been without food for seventy-two hours! (It sounds so
much worse, you see, when you state it in hours.)
The second point to get clear is that the fast is a physio-
logical process; that is to say, it is something which nature
understands and carries through in her own serene and efficient
way. When you take a fast, you are not carrying out a freak
notion of your own, or of mine; you are discovering a lost
instinct. Every cat and dog knows enough not to take food
when it is ill ; it is only in hospitals conducted by modern
medical science that the custom prevails of serving elaborate
"trays" to invalids. I remember a story about a man who
made himself a reputation and a fortune by curing the pet
dogs of the rich. These beautiful little creatures, which sleep
between silken covers, and have several servants to wait upon
them, and are fed from gold and silver dishes upon rich and
elaborately cooked foods, fall victim to as many diseases as
their mistresses, and they would be brought to this specialist,
who conducted his dog hospital in an old brickyard. In each
one of the compartments of the brick kiln he would shut up
The Book of the Body 171
a dog with a supply of fresh water, a crust of stale bread,
a piece of bacon rind, and the sole of an old shoe; and after
a few days he would go back and find that the dog had eaten
the crust of bread, and then he would write to the owner
that the dog was on the high road to recovery. He would
go back a few days later and find that the dog had eaten
the piece of bacon rind, and then he would write that the
dog was very nearly cured. He would wait until the dog
had eaten the piece of shoe leather, and then he would write
that the dog was completely cured, and the owner might come
and take it away.
Just what is the process of the fast cure? I do not pre-
tend to know positively. I can only make guesses, and wait
for science to investigate. I believe that the main source of
the diseases of civilized man is improper nutrition, and the
clogging of the system with food poisons in various stages.
And when you fast you do two things : first, you stop entirely
the fresh supply of those food poisons, and second, you allow
the whole of the body's digestive and assimilative tract to
rest — ^to go to sleep, as it were — so that all the body's energy
may go to other organs. The body carries with it at all
times a surplus store of nutriment, which can be taken up
and used by the blood stream, apparently with much less
trouble than is required to convert fresh food to the body's
uses. In other words, the body can feed on its own tissues
more easily than it can feed from the stomach. In the fast you
may lose anywhere from half a pound to two pounds in weight
per day, and this will be taken, first from your store of fat, and
then from your muscular tissues. Every part of your muscular
tissue will be taken, before anything is taken from your vital
organs, vour nerves or your blood-stream. So long as there is
a particle of muscular material left, so long as you can make
even the slightest movement of one finger, you are still fasting,
and it is only when your muscular tissue is all gone that you
begin at last to starve. So far as I know, the cases of Mac-
Swiney and the other Irishman are the only cases on record
where fasters have died of starvation.
What the body does during the fast is quite plain, and
can be told by many symptoms. It begins a thorough house-
cleaning, throwing out poisonous material by every channel.
The perspiration and the breath become offensive, the tongue
becomes heavily coated, so that you can scrape the material
172 Mind and Body
off with a knife. I have heard vegetarians explain this by
saying that when the body is hving off its own tissues, it is
following a cannibal diet; but that is all nonsense, because
you can live on meat exclusively, and quickly satisfy yourself
that none of these symptoms occurs. It is evident that the
body is taking advantage of the opportunity to get rid of waste
products; and this will go on for ten days, for twenty days,
in some cases for as long as forty or fifty days; and then
suddenly occurs a strange thing: in spite of the "cannibal
diet" the symptoms all come to a sudden end. The tongue
clears, the breath becomes sweet, the appetite suddenly
awakens.
During the period of a normal fast you lose all interest in
food. You almost forget that there is such a thing as eating ;
you can look at food without any more desire for it than you
have to swallow marbles and carpet tacks. But then suddenly
appetite returns, as I have explained, and you find that you
can think of nothing but food. This is what students of the
subject describe as a "complete fast," and while I do not want
to go to extremes and say that the "complete fast" will cure
every case of every disease, I can certainly say this: in the
letters which have come to me from people who tried the fast
at my suggestion, there are cases of every kind of common
disease. In my book, "The Fasting Cure," I give the results
in cases reported to me after the publication of my first mag-
azine article. I quote two paragraphs:
"The total number of fasts taken was 277, and the average
number of days was six. There were 90 of five days or over,
51 of ten days or over, and six of 30 days or over. Out of
the 119 person who wrote to me, 100 reported benefit, and
17 no benefit. Of these 17 about half give wrong breaking
of the fast as the reason for the failure. In cases where
the cure had not proved permanent, about half mentioned
that the recurrence of the trouble was caused by wrong eat-
ing, and about half of the rest made this quite evident by
what they said. Also it is to be noted that in the cases of
the 17 who got no benefit, nearly all were fasts of only three
or four days.
"Following is the complete list of diseases benefited — 45
of the cases having been diagnosed by physicians : indigestion
(usually associated with nervousness), 27; rheumatism, 5;
colds, 8 ; tuberculosis, 4 ; constipation, 14 ; poor circulation, 3 ;
The Book of the Body 173
headaches, 5 ; anaemia, 3 ; scrofula, 1 ; bronchial trouble, 5 ;
syphilis, 1 ; liver trouble, 5 ; general debility, 5 ; chills and
fever, 1 ; blood poisoning, 1 ; ulcerated leg, 1 ; neurasthenia, 6 ;
locomotor ataxia, 1 ; sciatica, 1 ; asthma, 2 ; excess of uric
acid, 1 ; epilepsy, 1 ; pleurisy, 1 ; impaction of bowels, 1 ;
pczema, 2 ; catarrh, 6 ; appendicitis, 3 ; valvular disease of
heart, 1 ; insomnia, 1 ; gas poisoning, 1 ; grippe, 1 ; cancer, 1."
There are many diseases with many causes, and some
yield more quickly than others to the fast. In the first group
I put the diseases of the digestive and alimentary tract.
Stomach and bowel troubles, and the nervous disorders oc-
casioned by tTiese, stop almost immediately when you fast.
Next come disorders of the blood-stream, which are gen-
erally a second stage of digestive troubles. Everything im-
mediately due to impurities of the blood, pimples, boils, and
ulcers, inflammation, badly healing wounds, etc., respond to
a few days of fasting as to the magic touch of the old-time
legends. When it comes to diseases caused by germ infec-
tions, you have a double aspect of the problem, and must have
a double method of attack. I would not like to say that
fasting could cure such a disease as sleeping sickness, to the
germs of which our systems are not accustomed, and against
which they may well be helpless. On the other hand, in
the case of common infections, such as colds and sore throats,
the fast is again the touch of magic. Having been plagued
a great deal by these ailments in past times, I am accustomed
to say that I would not trade my knowledge of fasting for
everything else that I know about health.
The first thing you must do if you want to take a fast is
to read the literature on the subject and make up your mind
that the experiment will do you no injury. You should also
try to get your relatives to make up their minds, because
you are nervous when you are fasting, and cannot withstand
the attacks of the people around you, who will go into a
panic and throw you into a panic. As I said before, it is
quite possible for people to die of panic, but I do not be-
lieve that anybody ever died of a fast. I have known of
two or three cases of people dying while they were fasting,
but I feel quite certain that the fast did not cause their death ;
they would have died anyhow. You must bear in mind that
among the people who try the fast, a great many are in a
desperate condition; some have been given up by the doctors.
174 JMiND AND Body
and if now and then one of these should die, we may surely
say that they died in spite of the fast, and not because of it.
There is no physician who can save every patient, and it
•would be absurd to expect this, I have read scores of letters
from people who were at the point of death from such "fatal"
diseases as Bright's disease, sclerosis of the liver, and fatty
degeneration of the heart, and were literally snatched out of
the jaws of death by beginning a fast, I would not like to
guess just what percentage of dying people in our hospitals
might be saved if the doctors would withdraw all food from
them, but I await with interest the time when medical science
will have the intelligence to try that simple experiment and
report the results.
Just the other day in the Los Angeles county jail, a
chiropractor went on hunger strike, as a protest against im-
prisonment, and he fasted 41 days, Then he broke his fast,
the reason being given that his pulse was down to 54, and he
was afraid of dying. I smiled to myself. The normal pulse
is 70, I have taken my pulse many times at the end of a
ten-day fast, and it has been as low as 32, and I am not
dead yet, and if I wait to die from the symptoms of a fast,
I expect to live a long time indeed!
The first time I fasted, I felt very weak, and lay around
and hardly cared to lift my head; if I walked from my bed
to the lawn, I was tired in the legs. But since then I have
grown used to fasting. I have fasted for a week probably
twenty or thirty times, and on such occasions I have gone
about my business as if nothing were happening. Of course
1 would not try to play tennis, or to climb a mountain, but
it is a fact that on the seventh day of a fast in New York,
I climbed the five or six flights of stairs to the top of the
Metropolitan Opera House, and felt no ill effects from doing
this, I climbed slowly, and was careful not to tire myself.
The simple rule is not to have anything that you must do
on the fast, and then do what you feel like doing. Lie down
and rest, and read a book, and take as much exercise as
you find you enjoy. Keep your mind quiet and free from
worries, and lock out of the house everybody who tells you
that your heart is going to stop beating in the next few
minutes, and that you must have an injection of strychnine
to start it, and some beefsteak and fried onions to "restore
your strength." Give yourself up to the care of your wiso
The Book of the Body 175
old mother nature, who will attend to your heart just as
securely and serenely as she attended to it in the days before
you were born.
By fasting I mean that you take no food whatever. I
know some nature cure teachers who practice what they call
a "fruit fast." All I know is that if I eat nothing but fruit,
I soon have my stomach boiling with fermentation, and also
1 suffer with hunger; whereas, if I take a complete fast, I
promptly forget all about food. You must drink all the
water you can on the fast. This helps nature with her house-
cleaning; it is well to drink a glass of water every half hour
at least. Do not try to go without water, and then write me
that the fasting cure is a failure. Also please do not write
and ask me if it will be fasting if you take just a little crackers
and milk, or some soup, or something else that you think
doesn't count!
I recommend a dose of laxative to clean out the system
at the beginning of a fast, because the bowels are apt to
become sluggish at once, and the quicker you get the sys-
tem cleansed, the better. It does no good to take laxatives
if you are going to pile in more food, but if ^-ou are going
to fast, that is a different matter. You should take a full
warm enema every day during the fast, so long as it brings
any results. There are some people whose bowels are so
frightfully clogged that I have known the enema to bring
results even in the second and third weeks. On the other
hand, if there is no solid matter to be removed, a small
enema every day will suffice. Take a warm bath every day;
and needless to say, you should get all the fresh air you can,
and should sleep as much as you can. You may have dif-
ficulty in sleeping, because the fast is apt to make you nervous
and wakeful. I have known people who could not fast be-
cause they could not sleep, and I have taught them a little
trick, to put a hot water bottle at the feet, and another on
the abdomen, to draw the blood away from the head. So they
would quickly fall asleep, and they got g^eat benefit from
their fasts.
You should supply yourself with good music if you can,
and with plenty of good reading matter. You will be amazed
to find how active your mind becomes; perhaps you had
never known before what a mind you had. Your blood has
always been so clogged with food poisons that you didn't
176 Mind and Body
know you could think. My three act play, "The Nature
Woman," was conceived and written in two days and a half
on a fast; but I do not recommend this kind of thing — on
the contrary, I strongly urge against it, because if you work
your brain on a fast, you do not get the good from your
fast, and do not recover so quickly. Put off all your problems
until you have got your health back, and seek only to divert
your mind while fasting.
CHAPTER XXVI
BREAKING THE FAST
(Discusses various methods of building up the body after a
fast, especially the milk diet)
There remains, the question of how to break the fast,
and this is the most important part of the problem. You
may undo all the good of your fast by breaking it wrong, and
you are a thousand times as apt to kill yourself then, as while
you are fasting. When your hunger comes back, it comes
back with a rush, and some people have not the will power
to control it.
I do not advocate a complete fast in any case except of
serious chronic disease, and then only under the advice of
someone with experience; but I advocate a short fast of a
week or ten days for almost every common ailment, and I
know that such a fast will help, even where it may not com-
pletely cure. You may go on fasting so long as you are
quiet and happy; but when you find you are becoming too
weak for comfort, or for the peace of mind of your family
physician and your friends, you may break your fast, and
show them that it is possible to restore your strength and
body weight, and then they won't bother so much when you
try it again! Take nothing but liquid foods in the break-
ing of a fast; I recommend the juices of fruits and toma-
toes, also meat broths. If you have fasted a week or two,
take a quarter of a glass; if you have fasted a month, take
a tablespoonful, and wait and see what the results are. Re-
member that your whole alimentary tract is out of action,
and give it a chance to start up slowly. Take small quan-
tities of liquid food every two hours for the first day. Then
you can begin taking larger quantities, and on the next day
you can try some milk, or a soft poached egg, or the pulp
of cooked apples or prunes. Do not take any solid food
until you are quite sure you can digest it, and then take only
a very little. Do not take any starchy food tintil the third
day.
I have known people to break these rules. I knew a
177
178 Mind and Body
man who broke his fast on hamburg steak, and had to be
helped out with a stomach pump. Once I broke a week's
fast with a plate of rich soup, because I was at a friend's
house and there was nothing else, and I yielded to the claims
of hospitality, and made myself ill and had to fast for sev-
eral days longer.
The easiest way to break a fast is upon a milk diet. I
have seen hundreds of people take this diet, and very few
who did not get benefit. The first time I fasted, which was
twelve days, I lost 17 pounds, and I took the milk diet for
24 days thereafter, and gained 32 pounds. I took it at Mac-
Fadden's Sanitarium, where I had every attention. Since
then, I have many times tried to take a milk diet by myself,
but have never been able to get it to agree with me. I do
not know how to explain this fact; I state it, to show how
hard it is to lay down general rules. On the milk diet you
take into your system two or three times as much food as
you can assimilate, and this is a violation of all my diet
rules; but it appears that the bacteria which thrive in milk
produce lactic acid, which is not harmful to the system,
and if you do not take other foods you may safely keep the
system flooded with milk.
After a fast you should begin with small quantities of
milk, and by the third day you may be taking a full glass of
warm milk every half hour or every twenty minutes, until
you have taken seven or eight quarts per day. It is better
to take it warm, but sometimes people take it just as well
without warming. Dr. Porter, who has a book on the milk
diet, insists upon complete rest, and makes his patients stay
in bed. MacFadden, on the other hand, recommends gym-
nastics in the morning before the milk, and during the after-
noon he recommends a rest from the milk for a couple of
hours, followed by abdominal exercises to keep the bowels
open. This is very important during a fast, because you
are taking great quantities of material into your system and
it must not be permitted to clog. Therefore take an enema
daily, if necessary to a free movement. Also take a warm
bath daily. Take the juice of oranges and lemons if you
crave them.
Upon one thing everyone who has had experience with
the milk diet agrees, and that is the necessity of absolute
The Book of the Body 179
mental rest. If you become excited, or nervous, or angry
on a milk diet, you may turn all the contents of your stomach
into hard curds, and may put yourself into convulsions. The
wonderful thing about the milk diet is the state of physical
and mental bliss it makes possible. It is the ideal way of
breaking a fast, because it leaves you no chance to get hun-
gry; you have all the food you want, and your system is
bathed in happiness, a sense of peace and well-being which
is truly marvelous and not to be described. You gain any-
where from half a pound to two pounds a day, and you feel
that you have never before in your life known what perfect
health could be. The fast sets you a new standard, you
discover how nature meant you to enjoy life, and never again
are you content with that kind of half existence with which
you managed to worry along before you discovered this
remedy.
But let me hasten to add that I do not recommend the
fast as a regular habit of life. The fast is an emergency
measure, to enable the body to cleanse itself and to cure
disease. When you have got your body clean and free from
disease, it is your business to keep it that way, and you
should apply your reason to the problem of how to live so
that you will not have to fast. If you find that you con-
tinue to have ailments, then you must be eating wrongly, or
overworking, or committing some other offense against nature-;
either that, or else you must have some organic trouble — a.
bone in your spine out of place, as the osteopaths tell you,
or your eyes out of focus, or your appendix twisted and
infected. I do not claim that the fasting cure will supplant the
surgeons and the oculists and the dentists. It will not mend
your bones if you break them, and it will not repair your
teeth that are already decayed; but it will help to keep your
teeth from decaying in the future, and it will help you to
prepare for a surgical operation, and to recover from it
more quickly. I had to undergo an operation for rupture
a couple of years ago, and I fasted for two days before the
operation, and for three days after it, and I had no particle
of nausea from the ether, and was able to tend to my mail
the day after the operation.
There is one disease for which I hesitate to recommend
the fast, and that is tuberculosis, because I have been told
of cases in which the patient lost weight and did not recover
13
180 Mind and Body
it. However, in my tabulation of 277 cases, you will note
four cases of tuberculosis, and in my book is given a letter
from a patient who claimed great benefit. If I had the
misfortune to contract tuberculosis, I would take a three or
four day fast, followed by a milk diet for a long period.
The milk diet is pleasant to take, and it cannot possibly do
any harm. If it did not effect a cure, I would try the Salis-
bury treatment — ^that is, lean meat ground up and medium
cooked, and nothing else, except an abundance of hot water
"between meals. Prof. Irving Fisher wrote me that there
is urgent need of experiment to determine proper diet in
tuberculosis; and until these experiments have been made,
we can only grope. I am quite sure that the "stuffing system,"
ordinarily used by doctors, is a tragic mistake.
In the case of any other disease whatever, even though
I might take medical or surgical treatment, I would supple-
ment this by a fast, because there is no kind of treatment
which does not succeed better with the blood in good con-
dition. In the case of emergencies, accidents, wounds, etc.,
I would rest assured that recovery would be more prompt
if I were fasting. When David Graham Phillips was shot,
I wrote a letter to the New York Call, saying that his doctors
had killed him, because they had fed him while he was lying
in a critical condition in the hospital. To take nutriment
into the body under such circumstances is the greatest of
blunders.
The fast will help children, just as it helps adults, only
they do not need to fast so long. It will help the aged and
make them feel young. (You need not be afraid to fast,
no matter how old you are.) It is, of course, an immediate
cure for fatness, and strange as it may seem, it is also a
cure for unnatural thinness. People with ravenous appetites
are just as apt to be thin as to be fat, because it is not what
you eat that builds up your body, but only what you assim-
ilate, and if you eat too much, you can make it impossible to
assimilate anything properly. If you take a fast and break it
carefully, your body will come to its normal weight, and all
your functions to their normal activity.
A physician wrote me, taking me to task for listing among
the cures reported in my tabulation a case of locomotor ataxia.
This disease, he explained, is caused because a portion of a
nerve has been entirely destroyed, and it is a disease that is
The Book of the Body 181
absolutely and positively and forever incurable. I answered
that I knew this to be the teaching of present day medical
science, but I invited him to consider for a moment what
happens in nature. When a crab loses a claw, we do not
take it as a matter of course that the crab must go about
with one claw for the balance of its life ; nature will make
that crab another claw. Man has lost the power of replac-
ing a lost leg, but he stills retains the power of replacing
tissue which has been cut away by a surgeon's knife, and
medical science takes this as a matter of course. How shall
anybody say that nature has forever lost the power of re-
building a bit of nervous tissue? How shall anyone say that
if the blood-stream is cleansed of poisons, and the energy
of the whole body restored, one of the results may not be
the repairing of a broken nerve connection? I invite my
readers who have ailments, and especially I invite all med-
ical men among my readers, to make a fair test of the fast-
ing cure. The results will surprise them, and they will
quickly be forced to revise their methods of treating illness.
XXVII
DISEASES AND CURES
(Discusses some of the commoner human aihuents, and what
is known about their cause and cure.)
I begin with the commonest of all troubles, known as a
"cold." This name implies that the cause of the trouble lies
in exposure or chill. All the grandmothers of the world
are agreed about this. They have a phrase — or at least they
had it when I was a boy : "You will catch your death."
Every time I went out in the rain, every time I played with
wet feet, or sat in a draft, or got under a cold shower, I
would hear the formula, "You will catch your death."
And, on the other hand, there are the "health cranks,"
who declare vehemently that the name "cold" is a misnomer
and a trap for people's thoughts. Cold has nothing to do
with it, they say, and point to arctic explorers who frequently
get frozen to death, but do not "catch cold" until they get
back into the warm rooms of civilization. As for drafts,
the "health cranks" aver that a draft is merely "fresh air
moving" ; which is supposed to settle the matter. However,
when you come to think about it, you realize that a cyclone
is likewise merely "fresh air moving," so you have not decided
the question by a phrase.
While I was writing these chapters on health I contracted
a severe cold — which was a joke on me. The history of
this cold is as clear in my mind as anything human can be,
and it will serve for an illustration, showing how much truth
the grandmothers have on their side, and how much the
"health cranks" have.
To begin with, I had been overworking. All sorts of
appeals come to me ; hundreds of people write me letters, and
I cannot bear to leave them unanswered. I accepted calls to
speak, and invitations where I had to eat a lot of stuff of
which my reason disapproves ; so one morning I woke up
with a slight sore throat. I fasted all day, and by evening
'felt all right. But there came another call, and I consented
to take a long automobile ride on a cold and rainy night, and
182
The Book of the Body 183
when I got back home, after five or six hours, I was thor-
oughly chilled, and my "cold" came on during the night.
This explanation will, I imagine, be satisfactory to all
the grandmothers of the world. All the dear, good grand-
mothers know that an automobile ride on a cold, rainy night
is enough to give any man "his death." But listen, grand-
mothers! I have lain out watching for deer all night in the
late fall, with only a thin blanket to cover me, and gotten up
so stiff with cold that I could hardly move; yet I did not
"catch cold." When I was a youth, I have ridden a bicycle
twenty miles to the beach in April, with snow on the ground,
and plunged into the surf and swam, and then ridden home
again. I have bathed in the sea when I had to run a quarter
of a mile in a bathing suit along a frost-covered pier, and
with an icy wind blowing through my bones ; yet I never
took cold from that, and never got anything but a feeling of
exhilaration. So it must be that there is some reason why
exposure causes colds at one time and not at another.
The explanation takes you over to the "health cranks."
They understand that your blood-stream must be clogged,
your bodily tone reduced by bad air and lack of exercise,
and more especially by over-eating, or by an improperly bal-
anced diet. But then most of them go to extremes^ and in-
sist that the automobile ride and the chilled condition of my
body had nothing to do with my cold. But I know other-
wise — I have watched the thing happen so often. In times
when I was run down, the slightest exposure would cause
me a cold, literally in a few minutes. I have got myself a
sore throat going out to the wood-pile on a winter day with
nothing on my head. I have got a cold by sitting still with
wet feet, or by sitting in a draft on a warm summer day,
when I had been perspiring a little. How to explain this
I am not sure, but my guess is that you drive the blood
away from the surface of the body at a time when it is weak-
ened and exposed to infection, and you drive away the army
of the white corpuscles, and give the battlefield of your body
to the germs.
I know there are nature curists who argue that germs
have nothing to do with disease; but they have never been
able to convince me — ^germs are too real, and too many, and
too easy to watch. If you leave a piece of meat exposed to
the air in warm temperature, the germs in the air will settle
14
184 Mind and Body
upon it and begin to feed upon it and to multiply; the meat,
being dead, is powerless to protect itself. But your nose
and throat are also meat, and just as good food for the
germs. The only difference is that this meat is alive, there
is a living blood-stream circulating through it, and several
score billions of the body's own kind of germs, the blood
corpuscles. If these blood corpuscles are sound and properly
nourished, and are brought to the place of infection, they
are able to destroy all the common germs; so it is that you
do not have diseases, but instead have health. But your health
always implies a struggle of your organism against other
organisms, and it is the business of your reason to watch
your body and give all the help you can in protecting it.
Coughs and colds, sore throats and headaches, are the first
warnings that your defenses are being weakened. As a rule
these ailments are not serious in themselves, but they are
signs of a wrong condition, and if you neglect this condi-
tion, pretty soon you will find that you have to deal with
something deadly.
My cure for a cold is to take an enema and a laxative,
eat nothing for twenty-four hours, and drink plenty of water.
If you have a severe cold or sore throat, you will be wise to
lie in bed for a day or two, by an open window. You may
also use sprays and gargles if you wish, but you will find
them of little use, because the germs are deep in your mucous
membranes, and cannot all be reached from the outside. In
the old sad days of my ignorance I would get a cold, and go
to the doctor, and have my throat and nose pumped full of
black and green and yellow and purple liquids, which did
me absolutely no good whatever; the cold would stay on for
two or three weeks, sometimes for eight or ten weeks, and
I would be miserable, utterly desperate. I was dying by
inches, and not one of the doctors could tell me why.
The next most common ailment is a headache, and this
means poisons in your blood-stream. It may be from im-
proper diet, from alcohol, or drugs, or bad air, or nervous
excitement. If it is none of these things, then you should
begin to look for some organic difficulty, eye-strain, for
example, or perhaps defects in the spine. The osteopaths
and the chiropractors specialize on the spine, and have made
important discoveries. Their doctrine is, in brief, that the
nervous force which directs the blood-stream is carried to
The Book of the Body 185
the organs of the body by nerves which leave the spinal cord
through openings between the vertebrae. If any of these
openings are pinched, you have a diminished nerve supply,
which means ill-health in that part of the body to which
the nerve leads. That such trouble can be corrected by
straightening the bones of the spine, seems perfectly reason-
able; but like most people with a new idea, the discoverers
proceed to carry it to absurd extremes. I have before me
an official chiropractic pamphlet which states that vertebral
displacement is "the physical and perpetuating cause of ninety-
five per cent of all cases of disease; the remaining five per
cent being due to subluxations of other skeletal segments."
Naturally people who believe this will devote nearly all their
study to the bones and the nervous system. But surely, there
are other parts of your body which are necessary besides
bones and nerves! And what if some of these parts happen
to be malformed or defective? What if your eyes do not
focus properly, and you are continually wearing out the
optic nerve, thus giving yourself headaches and neurasthenia?
What if you have an appendix that has been twisted and
malformed from birth, and is a center of infection so long
as it remains in the body?
Several years ago I had an experience with the appendix,
from which I learned something about one of the commonest
of human ailments, constipation, or sluggishness of the bowels.
This is a cause of innumerable chronic ailments grouped under
the head of auto-intoxication, or the poisoning of the body by
the absorption into the system of the products of fermentation
and decay in the bowels. The bowels should move freely
two or three times every day, and the movements should be
soft. I suffered from constipation for some twenty years,
and tried, I think, every remedy known both to science and
to crankdom. In the beginning the doctors gave me drugs
which by irritating the intestinal walls cause them to pour
out quantities of water, and hurry the irritating substances
down the intestinal tract. That is all right for an emergency ;
if you have swallowed a poison, or food which is spoiled, or
if you have overeaten and are ill, get your system cleaned
out by any and every device. But if you habitually swallow
mild poisons, which is what all laxatives are, you weaken the
intestinal tract, and you have to take more and more of these
poisons, and you get less results. We may set down as posi-
186 Mind and Body
tive the statement that drugs are not a remedy for constipation.
Next comes diet. Eat the rough and bulky foods, say
the nature curists, and stimulate the intestinal walls to activ-
ity. I tried that. I listened to the extreme enthusiasts,
and boiled whole wheat and ate it, and consumed quantities
of bran biscuit, and of a Japanese seaweed which Dr.
Kellogg prepares, and of petroleum oil, and even the skins
of oranges, which are most uncomfortable eating, I assure
you. I would eat things like this until I got myself a case
of diarrhea — and so was cured of constipation for a time!
Strange as it may seem to you, there are even people who
tell you to eat sand. I listened to them, and ate many quarts.
Then there is exercise. MacFadden taught me a whole
series of exercises for developing the muscles of the abdom-
inal walls and the back, which are greatly neglected by
civilized man. The fundamental cause of constipation is a
sluggish life, and to exercise our bodies is a duty ; but to me
it was always an agony of boredom to lie on a bed and wiggle
my abdomen for a quarter of an hour. The same thing
applies to hot water treatments, . which are effective, but a
nuisance and a waste of time. I never could keep them up
except when I was in trouble.
Three or four years ago I began to notice a continual
irritating pain in my right side, which I quickly realized must
lie in the appendix. I tried massage, and hot and cold water
treatments, and my favorite remedy, a week's fast. The pain
disappeared, but it returned, so finally I decided, to the dis-
may of my physical culture friends, to have the appendix
out. For years I had been reading the statements of nature
curists, that the appendix is an important and vital part of
the body, which pours an oil or something into the intes-
tinal tract, and so helps to prevent constipation. Well, evi-
dently my appendix wasn't doing its job, so I took it to
a good surgeon. What I found was that it had been twisted
and malformed from birth, so that it was a center of con-
tinous infection. From the time I had that operation, I have
never had to think about the subject of constipation. This
experience suggests to me how easy it is for people to make
statements about health which have no relationship to facts.
I do not recommend promiscuous surgery, and I perfectly
well realize that if human beings would take proper care of
their health, the great proportion of surgical operations would
The Book of the Body 187
be unnecessary. I realize, also, that surgeons get paid by
the job, and therefore have a money interest in operating,
and it is perfectly futile to expect that none of them will
ever be influenced by the profit motive. Nevertheless, it is
true that sometimes surgical operations are necessary, and
that by standing a little temporary inconvenience you can
save yourself a life-time of discomfort.
Take, for example, rupture. The human body has here
a natural weakness, from which there results a dangerous
and uncomfortable affliction. Hundreds of thousands of men
are going around all their lives wearing elaborate and ex-
pensive trusses which are almost, if not entirely useless, and
trying advertised "cures" which are entirely fakes. An op-
eration takes an hour or two, and two or three weeks in bed,
and when our government drafted its young men into the
army and found that fourteen in every thousand of them
had rupture, it shipped them into the hospitals wholesale and
sewed them up. It happens that rupture affords one case
where scar tissue is stronger than natural tissue, and there
were practically no returns from the great number of army
cases.
Likewise you find extreme statements repeated concern-
ing the evils of vaccination; but if you will read Parkman's
"History of the Jesuits in North America," you will see
the horrible conditions under which the Indians lived in the
United States — noble savages, you understand, entirely un-
contaminated by civilized white men, and whole populations
regularly wiped out every few years by epidemics of small-
pox. That these epidemics ceased was due to the discovery
that by infecting the body with a mild form of the disease,
it could be made to develop substances which render it im-
mune to the deadly form. Here in California we have a
law which makes vaccination for school children optional,
and so we may some day have another epidemic to test the
theories of the anti-vaccinationists.
I know, of course, the dreadful stories of people who
have been given syphilis and other diseases by impure vac-
cines. I don't know whether such stories are true; but I
do know that people who live in houses are sometimes killed
by earthquakes and by lightning, yet we do not cease to
live in houses because of this chance. It seems to me that
the remedy for such vaccination evils is not to abolish vac-
188 Mind and Body"
cination, but to take more care in the manufacture of our
vaccines.
This danger is removed by using vaccines which are sterile,
and are made especially for each person. Germs are taken
from the sick person, and injected into an animal. The
body of the animal develops with great rapidity the "anti-
bodies" necessary to resistance to the germs; and as these
"anti-bodies" are chemical products, not affected by heat,
we can take a serum from the animal, sterilize it, and then
inject it into the system of the patient, thus increasing re-
sistance to the disease. I admit that the best way to increase
such resistance is to take care of your health; but some-
times we confront an emergency, and must use emergency
remedies. We have serums that really cure diphtheria and
meningitis, and one that will prevent lock-jaw; anyone who
has ever seen with his own eyes how the deadly membranes
of diphtheria melt away as a result of an injection, will be
less dogmatic about the efforts of science to combat disease.
Of course it is much pleasanter if you can destroy the
source of the disease, and keep it from getting into the human
body. Every few years the southern part of our country
used to be devastated by yellow fever epidemics. Every kind
of weird and fantastic remedy was tried; people would go
around with sponges full of vinegar hung under their noses;
they would burn the clothing and bedding of those who died
of the disease; they would wear gloves when they went shop-
ping, so as not to touch the money with their hands. But at
last medical experimenters traced the disease to a certain
kind of mosquito, and now, if we drain the swamps and
screen our houses and stay in doors after sundown, we do
not get yellow fever, nor malaria either. In the same way,
if we keep our bodies clean with soap and hot water, we
do not get bitten by lice, and so do not die of typhus. If we
take pains with our drains and water supply, so that human
excrement does not get into it, and if we destroy the filth-car-
rying housefly, we do not have epidemics of typhoid.
But under conditions of battle it is not possible for men
to take these precautions, and so when they go into the army
they get a dose of typhoid serum. And this illustrates the
difference between a true or hygienic remedy for disease,
and a temporary or emergency remedy. If you say that
you want to abolish war, and with it the need for typhoid
The Book of the Body 189
vaccination, I cheerfully agree with you in this. All that
I am trying to do is to point out the folly of flying to
extremes, and rejecting any remedy which may help. What
is the use of making the flat statement that vaccinations and
serums never aid in the cure of disease, when any man can
see with his own eyes the proof that they do? In the Span-
ish war, before typhoid vaccination, many times more soldiers
died of this disease than died of bullets; but in the late war
there was practically no typhoid at all in the army camps.
On the other hand, it was noticed that the men who had just
come in, and who therefore had just been vaccinated, were
considerably more susceptible to influenza; which shows that
vaccination does reduce the body condition for a time. The
reader may say that in this case I am trying to sit on both
sides of the fence; but the truth is that I am trying to keep
an open mind, and to consider all the facts, and to avoid mak-
ing rash statements.
One of the statements you hear most frequently is that
drugs can never remedy disease, or help in remedying it.
Now, I abhor the drugging system of the orthodox medical
men ; I have talked with them, and heard them talk with one
another, and I know that they will mix up half a dozen different
substances, in the vague hope that some one of them will have
some effect. Even when they know definitely the effects they
are producing, they are in many cases merely suppressing
symptoms. On the other hand, however, it is a fact that
medical science has had for a generation or two a specific
which destroys the germs of one disease in the blood, without
at the same time injuring the blood itself. That disease is
malaria, and the drug is quinine. Of course, the way to avoid
malaria is to drain the swamps ; but you cannot do that all at
once, nor can you always screen your house and stay in at
sundown. When you first go into a country, you have no
house to screen, and some emergency will certainly arise that
exposes you to mosquito bites. So you will need quinine, and
will be foolish not to use it, and know how to use it.
Recently medical chemists discovered another remedy, this
time for syphilis. It is called salvarsan, and while it does
not always cure, it frequently does. In laboratories today
men are working over the problem of constructing a com-
bination of molecules which will destroy the germ of sleep-
ing sickness, without at the same time injuring the blood.
190 Mind and Body
If they find it, they will save hundreds of millions of lives. I
do not see why we cannot recognize such a possibility, while at
the same time making use of physical culture, of diet and fasting.
When the manuscript of this book was sent to the printer,
there appeared in this place a paragraph telling of the work
of Dr. Albert Abrams of San Francisco, in the diagnosis and
cure of disease by means of radio-active vibrations. As the
book is going to press, the writer finds himself in San Fran-
cisco, attending Dr. Abrams' clinics ; and so he finds it possible
to give a more extended account of some fascinating dis-
coveries, which seem destined to revolutionize medical science.
If I were to tell all that I have seen with my own eyes in
the last twelve days, I fear the reader would find his powers
of credulity overstretched, so I shall content myself with trying
to tell, in very sober and cautious language, the theory upon
which Abrams is working, and the technic which he has evolved.
Modern science has demonstrated that all matter is simply
the activity of electrons, minute particles of electric force.
This is a statement which no present-day physicist would dis-
pute. The best evidence appears to indicate that a molecule
of matter is a minute reproduction of the universe, a system
of electrons whirling about a central nucleus. No eye has
ever beheld an electron, for it is billions of times smaller than
anything the microscope makes visible; but we can see the
effects of electronic activity, and all modern books of physics
give photographs of such. It is possible to determine the
vibration rates of electrons, and to Dr. Abrams occurred the
idea of determining the vibration rates of diseased tissue and
disease germs. He discovered that it was invariably the same ;
not merely does all cancerous material, for example, yield
the same rate, but the blood of a person suffering from cancer
yields that rate, at all times and under all circumstances. The
vibration of cancer, of tuberculosis, of syphilis — each is dif-
ferent, uniform and invariable. Likewise in the blood are
other vibrations, uniform and dependable, which reveal the
sex and age of the patient, the virulence of the disease and
the period of its duration — ^yes, and even the location in the
body, if there be some definite infected area. So here is a
modern miracle, an infallible device for the diagnosis of
disease. Dr. Abrams does not have to see the patient; all
he has to have is a drop of blood on a piece of white blotting
paper, and he sits in his laboratory and tells all about it.
The Book of the Body 191
and somewhere several thousand miles away — in Toronto or
Boston or New Orleans — a surgeon operates and finds what
he has been told is there!
And that is only the beginning of the wonder; because,
says Abrams, if you know the vibration rate of the electrons
of germs, you can destroy those germs. It used to be a
favorite trick of Caruso to tap a glass and determine its
musical note, and then sing that note at the glass and shatter
it to bits. It is well known that horses, trotting swiftly on a
bridge, have sometimes coincided in their step with the vibra-
tion of the bridge and thus have broken it down. On that
same principle this wizard of the electron introduces into
your body radio-activity of a certain rate — and shall I say that
he cures cancer and syphilis and tuberculosis of many years
standing in a few treatments? I will not say that, because
you would not and could not believe me. I will content
myself with telling what my wife and I have been watching,
twice a day for the past twelve days.
The scene is a laboratory, with rows of raised seats at
one side for the physicians who attend the clinic. There is
a table, with the instruments of measurement, and Dr. Abrams
sits beside it, and before him stands a young man stripped
to the waist. The doctor is tapping upon the abdomen of
this man, and listening to the sounds. You will find this the
weirdest part of the whole procedure, for you will naturally
assume that this young man is being examined, and will be
dazed when some one 'explains that the patient is in Toronto
or Boston or New Orleans, and that this young man's body
is the instrument which the doctor uses in the determining
of the vibration rates of the patient's blood. Dr. Abrams
tried numerous instruments, but has been able to find nothing
so sensitive to electronic activity as a human body. He ex-
plains to his classes that the spinal cord is composed of mil-
lions of nerve fibres of different vibration rates; hence a
certain rate communicated to the body, is automatically sorted
out, and appears on a certain precise spot of the body in the
form of increased activity, increased blood pressure in the
cells, and hence what all physicians know as a "dull area,"
which can be discovered by what is known as "percussion," a
tapping with a finger. To map out these areas is merely a
matter of long and patient experiment; and Abrams has been
studying this subject for some twenty years — he is author of
192 Mind and Body
a text-book on what is known as the "reactions of Abrams."
So now he provides the world with a series of maps of the
human body; and he sits in front of his "subject," and his
assistant places a specimen of blood in a little electrically con-
nected box, and sets the rheostat at some vibration number —
say fifty — and Dr. Abrams taps on a certain square inch of
the abdomen of his "subject," and announces the dread word
"cancer." Then he places the electrode on another part of the
"subject's" body, and taps some more, and announces that it
is cancer of the small intestine, left side ; some more tapping,
and he announces that its intensity is twelve ohms, which is
severe ; and pretty soon there is speeding a telegram to the phy-
sician who has sent this blood specimen, telling him these facts,
and prescribing a certain vibration rate upon the "oscilloclast,"
the instrument of radio-activity which Dr. Abrams has devised.
Now, you watch this thing for an hour or two, and you
say to yourself : "Here is either the greatest magician in the
history of mankind, or else the greatest maniac." You may
have come prepared for some kind of fraud, but you soon
dismiss that, for you realize that this man is desperately in
earnest about what he is doing, and so are all the physicians
who watch him. So you seek refuge in the thought that he
must be deluding himself and them, perhaps unconsciously.
But you talk with these men, and discover that they have
come from all over the country, and always for one reason —
they had sent blood specimens to Abrams, and had found
that he never made a mistake; he told them more from a
few drops of the patient's blood than they themselves had
been able to find out from the whole patient. And then into
the clinic come the doctor's own patients — I must have heard
sixty or eighty of them tell their story and many of them
have been lifted from the grave. People ten years blind
from syphilis who can see; people operated on several times
for cancer and given up for dying; people with tumors on
the brain, or with one lung gone from tuberculosis. It is
literally a fact that when you have sat in Abrams' clinic for
a week, all disease loses its terrors.
This, you see, is really the mastery of life. If we can
measure and control the minute universe of the electron and
the atom, we have touched the ultimate source of our bodily
life. I might take chapters of this book to tell you of the
strange experiments I have seen in this clinic — showing you,
for instance, how these vibrations respond to thought, how
The Book of the Body 193
by denying to himself the disease the patient can for a few
moments cancel in his body the activity of the harmful germs ;
showing how the reactions differ in the different sexes and at
different ages, and how they respond to different colors and
different drugs, Abrams' method has revealed the secret of
such efficacy as drugs possess — their work is done by their
radio-activity, and not by their chemical properties. Also the
problem of vaccination has been solved — for Abrams has dis-
covered a dread new disease, which is bovine syphilis,
originally caused in cattle by human inoculation, and now
reintroduced in the human being by vaccination, and becoming
the agent which prepares the soil of the body for such dis-
orders as tuberculosis and cancer. And it appears that we can
all be rendered immune to these diseases, by a few electronic
vibrations, introduced into our bodies in childhood ; so is opened
up to our eyes a wonderful vision of a new race, purified and
made fit for life. So here at last is science justified of her op-
timism, and our faith in human destiny forever vindicated. Take
my advice, whoever you may be that are suffering, and find out
about this new work and help to make it known to the world.
There are many romances of medical science, some of
them fascinating as murder mysteries and big game hunting.
Turn to McMasters' "History of the People of the United
States" and read his account of the terrible epidemic of yellow
fever in Philadelphia a hundred years ago; I have already
referred to the weird and incredible things the people did in
their effort to ward off this plague — sponges of vinegar under
their noses and "fever fires" burning in the streets; and then
a mosquito would fly up and bite them, and in a few hours
they would be dead! Or what could be stranger than the
tracing of the bubonic plague, which has cost literally billions
of human lives, to a parasite in the blood of fleas which live
on the bodies of rats! Or what could be more unexpected
than the tracing of our rheumatic aches and twinges to the
root canals of the teeth!
One of the common ailments which afflict poor humanity
is rheumatism, a cause of endless suffering. It was sup-
posed to be due to damp climate and exposure, and this
is true to a certain extent, in the same way that colds are
due to exposure. But the investigators realized that there
must be some bodily condition rendering one susceptible, and
they set to work to trace this condition down. The pains
of rheumatism are caused by uric acid settling in the joints
194 Mind and Body
of the body. What causes the uric acid? Well, there is
uric acid in red meat, so let us forbid rheumatic people to
eat it ! But this is overlooking the fact that the human body
itself is a uric acid factory; and also the fact that uric acid
taken into the stomach may not remain uric acid by the
time it gets to the blood-stream. We know that you may
eat a great deal of fruit acid without necessarily making
acid blood. On the other hand, you can make acid blood
by eating a lot of sugar! So you see it isn't as simple as
it sounds.
Rheumatism has been traced to its lair, which is found
to be the roots of the teeth. Here is a part of the body dif-
ficult to get at, and as a consequence of bad diet and un-
wholesome ways of living, infections will start there, and pus
sacs be formed, and the poisons absorbed into the blood-stream
and distributed through the body. The first thought is to
draw the infected teeth; but that is a serious matter, be-
cause you need your teeth to chew your food. So the dentist
has to go through a complicated process of opening up the
tooth and cleaning out the root canals, and treating the in-
fected spots at the roots. Then he has to fill the tooth all
the way down to the roots, leaving no place for infection
to gather. This, of course, takes time and costs money, and
is one more illustration of the fact that there is one health
law for the rich and another health law for the poor.
All the time that I write these chapters about health I
feel guilty. I know that the wholesome food I recommend
costs money, and I know that surgery and dentistry cost
money — yes, even sunlight and fresh air and recreation ; even
a fast, because you have to rest while you take it, and you
have to have a roof over your head, and warmth in winter
time, and somebody to wait upon you when you are weak.
I know that for a great many of the people who read what
I write, all these things are impossible of attainment ; I know
that for the great majority of the common people the ben-
efits of science do not exist. Science discovers how to pre-
vent disease, but the discoveries are not applied, because
the profit system controls the world, and the profit system
wants the labor of the poor, regardless of what happens to
their health. If the people fall ill, they are thrown upon
the scrap heap, and the profit system finds others to take
their place.
The Book of the Body 195
Take, for example, tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is a germ,
infection, but it practically never gets hold upon a human
body except when the body is reduced by undernourishment
and lack of fresh air. Tuberculosis, therefore, is a disease
of sltmis and jails. It is definitely and indisputably a dis-
ease of poverty. It could be wiped off the face of the earth
in a single generation; and the same is true of typhus and
typhoid. There is another whole host of ailments which
could be wiped out by measures of public hygiene, plus edu-
cation. This includes all the infant diseases, and the deadly
venereal diseases. But the profit system stands in the way;
and so, in these closing paragraphs of this Book of the Body,
I say that there is one disease which is the deadliest of all,
and the source of all others, and that disease is poverty.
I know a certain physician to the rich, who is an honest
and conscientious man. He said, "I loath my work. I am
wasting my time. I am called in by these fat, over-fed rich
people in their leisure class hotels, and what am I to say to
them? Shall I say to them, 'You are living an abnormal
life, and you can never be well until you cut out root and
branch all your habits of self indulgence which are destroy-
ing vou ?' But no, I can't say that — ^not one time in a thou-
sand. I am expected to be polite and serious, and to listen
to them while they tell the long tiresome story of their s)mip-.
toms, and I have to encourage them, and give them some
temporary device that will remove some of the symptoms
of their trouble."
And what should one say to this honest physk:ian ? Should
one tell him to go and be a physician to the poor? Would
he be any happier there? He could tell the poor the causes
of their diseases, and they would listen patiently — they are
trained to listen, and to accept what they are told. Here
is a girl living in an inside bedroom in a tenement, and work-
ing ten or eleven hours a day in an unvcntilated factory, and
she is ill with tuberculosis. The physician tells her that she
needs plenty of fresh air and rest, and a lot of eggs and
milk in her diet. He tells her that, and he knows that she
has as much chance of carrying out his orders as of flying
to the moon. Or maybe he comes upon a typhoid epidemic,
and discovers, as happened to a friend of mine in Chicago,
that there is defective plumbing in some houses owned by
the political leader of the district. Or maybe it is a case
14
196 Mind and Body
of venereal disease, in a young man who was drafted into
the army and turned loose amid the joys of Paris. Maybe
it is just a commonplace, every-day story of a room full cf
school children, 22 per cent of them undernourished, as is
the case in New York City, and the parents out of work
a part of the time, and with no possibility in their lives of
ever earning enough to feed the children properly. When
you confront these universal facts of our present social order,
you realize that the problem of disease is not merely a prob-
lem of the body, but is a problem of the mind as well; a
problem of politics and religion and philosophy, of the whole
way of thinking of the so-called civilized world. A book of
health which did not point out these facts would be, not a
book of health, but a book of sham.
But meantime, while we are trying to change the world's
ideas, we have to live, and we can do our work better if we
keep as well as possible. I have tried to point out the way;
it is, as you can see, a matter in part of the body and in part
of the mind. All the bodily regime here laid out has its basis
in mental habits; all wise and wholesome ways of life can,
at the age when our minds are plastic, be made into "second
mature" — ^things which we do automatically, without effort or
temptation to do otherwise. This is the real secret of true
happiness in the conduct of our personal lives ; to acquire self-
control, to rule our desires and our passions, not harshly and
spasmodically, but serenely, as one drives a car which he thor-
oughly understands. It is in vain that we preach freedom to
men who have not this self-mastery ; as the poet tell us : "The
sensual and the dark rebel in vain, slaves of their own com-
pulsion." And of all the personal possessions which man can
attain on this earth, the most precious is the one of a sound
mind controlling a sound body. I close this book by quoting
some verses written by Sir Henry Wotton three hundred years
ago, which I have all my life considered one of the noblest
pieces of poetry in our heritage:
THE CHARACTER OF A HAPPY LIFE
How happy is he born and taught
That serveth not another's will ;
Whose armour is his honest thought
And simple truth his utmost skill!
The Book of the Body 1^
Whose passions not his nlasters are,
Whose soul is still prepared for death.
Not tied unto the world with care
Of public fame, or private breath.
Who envies none that chance doth raise
Or vice; who never understood
How deepest wounds are given by praise;
Nor rules of state, but rules of good:
Who hath his life from rumours freed,
Whose conscience is his strong retreat;
Whose state can neither flatterers feed,
Nor ruin make accusers great:
Who God doth late and early pray
More of His grace than gifts to lend;
And entertains the harmless day
With a well-chosen book or friend;
— This man is freed from servile bands
Of hope to rise, or fear to fall;
Lord of hknself, though not of lands;
And having nothing, yet 'hath alL
INDEX
Abrams, Dr 190
Adultery 33
Adventist 99
Agriculture 25
Alcohol 151
Anti-bodies 188
Antinomies 58
Appendix 186
Arnold 42
Arrhenius 101
Automatic writing 67
Bairnsfather 29
Bathing 162
Battle Creek Sanitarium 118
Beauchamp 70, 85, 89
Beethoven 47
Bergson 17
Beri-beri 128
Bible 77
Bio-chemist 59
Black bread 128
Blood 106
Body 53, 105
Booth 68
Bourne 69
Bruce 71
Bury 15
Caffein 150
Calories 135
Candy 137
Capitalist , 100
Carbohydrates 124
Carbon monoxide 157
Children 140, 180
Chiropractors 174, 184
Chittenden 136
Christian Scientists 5, 65, 105
Clothing 160
Coffee 151
Colds 183
Commandments 32
Communist 99
Complete fast 172
Camstock 25
Conduct 42
Consciousness 56
Constipation 185
Cooking 129, 142
Crawford 88
Cyrus 164
Dandruff 109
\Dante 77
Darwin 17, 46
Dentistry 126, 190
Determinists 57
Diet 131
Diet Standards 135
Digestion 145
Diphtheria 188
Diseases 107, 117
Dogs 17
Draft 182
Drugs 118, 150, 185, 189
Dubb 63
Duncan 102
Dyspepsia 117
Eddy 65
Edison 45, 86
Einstein 101
Elberf eld horses 68
Evolution 8, 17
Exercise 163
Faith 9
Faith curists 65
Fast cure 171
Fatness 139
Fats 124
Fever 108
Food filter 145
Fourth dimension 5
Fireless cooker 142
Fireplace 157
Fisher 136
Fletcher 119, 145
Free thinker 15
Freud 71
199
200
Index
Fruit fast 175
Frugality 38
Frying-pan 129
Furnace 157
Gargles 184
Gastronomic art 148
Genius 49, 60
George 18
Germs 183
God 22, 50
Goethe 47
Golden rule 51
Greens 132
Gymnastic work 166
Hair 109
Hallucinations 75
Hamlet 48
Happiness 9
Harrison 6
Hats 110
Headache 122, 150, 184
Health cranks 182
Heart 108
Houdin 93
Hugo 48
Huxley 17, 62
Hyslop 82
Iceberg 61
Infanticide 28
Instincts 134
Intelligence 22
Immortality 79
Irwin, Will 86
James 30, 59, 60
Jesus 47, 48, 50, 51, 76
John Barleycorn 152
Johnson 58
Jonson 44
Kant, Immanuel.. ..4, 47, 51, 58
Kellogg, Doctor 118; 164, 186
Kilmer, Joyce 44
Knowledge 94
Kropotkia 18, 26
Langley 74
Lankester, Prof. E. Ray,... 23
Laxatives 175, 185
Leanness 139
Leonardo 47
Liebault 64
Life 3
Lily Dale 86, 90
Lincoln 47
Locomotor ataxia 180
Lodge, Sir Oliver 83
Lodge, Raymond 87
London, jack 153
Macaulay 39
MacDowell, Edward 56
MacFadden 178, 186
MacSwiney 170
Maeterlinck, Maurice 68
Malaria 189
Malthusian law 25
Marquesans 113
Materializations 88
Matter 8
Meal-hour 147
Measurement of Intelligence,
Terman's 95
Meat 121
Medical science 105
Mesmer 63
Messina earthquake 170
Metaphysics 4
Metchnikoff 138
Milk diet 128
Moderation 39
Monism 3
Morality 21, 31, 34, 50
Morgan 45
Mormon 99
Mozart 68
Multiple personality 69
Mutation 17
Myers 49
Nature 21, 24, 29
Nature cure 160
Nature Woman 176
Neighbor 50
Newcomb, Simon 101
Newton 47
Index
201
New York Times 169
Nicotine 154
Nietzsche 17
Novels 164
Nutrition of Man 136
Oil stoves 158
Opsonins 112
Optimism 42
Osteopaths 184
Ouija 67
Overeating 134
Oxygen 156
Patrick, Dr 167
Pavlov 148
Phantasms 75
Phillips, David Graham 180
Piper, Mrs 82
Play 165
Poisons 146
Pork 142
Porter, Dr 178
Positivists 6
Poverty 194
Prices of food 141
Prince, Dr. Morton 70, 89
Profits of Religion 78,99
Proteins 125
Prunes 127
Psychology QQ
Psychotherapy 64
Puritans 89
Quackenbos 64
Quinine 188
Quixote 48
Raisins 127
Raw food 119
Read, Alfred Baker 28
Reason 13
Refined foods 126
Relaxation 167
Religion 82
Reincarnation 76
Rest 146
Revelation 12
Rheumatism 193
Rice 128
Rockefeller 45
Roosevelt, Theodore 25, 45
Rugs 159
Rupture 187
Sabbath 99
Salisbury 120
Sally 70, 85
Salt 143
Meats, salted 143
Salts 124
Salvarsan 189
Savages 135
Savage, Rev. Minot J 74
Schrenck-Notzing 88
Scurvy 128
Seneca 98
Shakespeare 47
Shelley 45, 48
Sleep 162
Sleeping sickness 113, 173
Smokers 153
Socialism 167
Sophocles 87
Sore throat 188
Spencer 8
Spinoza 79
Spirits 82
Spiritualists 86
Starch 122, 124
Stealing 33
Steam heat 158
Stimulant 149
Stock Exchange 158
Stomach 105, 138, 148
Style 161
Subconscious mind 61
Sunday code 40
Sugar 126
Surgery 186
Survival 81
Survival of the fittest 22
Syndicalism 15
Syphilis 189
Tanner, Dr 169
Tariff 37
Tea 161
Teeth 127, 193
Telepathy 67, 75
Theosophists 76
202
Index
Tight shoes 161
Tobacc* 153
Tolstoi 49
Tonsilitis 107
Trance , 63
Tropism 54
Tuberculosis
112, 120, 179, 194, 195
Twain, Mark 93
Typhoid 112, 188, 192
Uranus 92
Uric acid 193
Vaccination 187, 189
Vaccines 188
Vegetarian 121
Vitamines 127, 142
Wallace 46
Wells, H. G 22
Williams, Dr. Henry Smith.. 102
Worth, Patience. 84
Yellow fever 188
Yogis 90
W.B.C.
THE BOOK OF LIFE
VOLUME TWO: LOVE AND SOCIETY
To
llate €tmt ^at^
in acknowledgment of her unceasing efforts for a
better world, and her fidelity to those
who struggle to achieve it
CONTENTS
PART THREE: THE BOOK OP LOVE
PAGfi
Chapter XXVHI. The Reality of Marriage .... 3
Discusses the sex-customs now existing in the world,
and their relation to the ideal of monogamous love.
Chapter XXIX. The Development of Marriage ... 8
Deals with the sex-relationship, its meaning and its his-
tory, the stages of its development in human society.
Chapter XXX. Sex and Young America IS
Discusses present-day sex arrangements, as they affect
the future generation.
Chapter XXXI. Sex and the "Smart Set" 23
Portrays the moral customs of those who set the fashion
in our present-day world.
Chapter XXXII. Sex and the Poor 29
Discusses prostitution, the extent of its prevalence, and
the diseases which result from it.
Chapter XXXIII. Sex and Nature 33
Maintains that our sex disorders are not the result of
natural or physical disharmony.
Chapter XXXIV. Love and Economics 36
Maintains that our sex disorders are of social origin, due
to the displacing of love by money as a motive in mating.
Chapter XXXV. Marriage and Money 40
Discusses the causes of prostitution, and that higher
form of prostitution known as the "marriage of conven-
ience."
Chapter XXXVI. Love versus Lust 46
Discusses the sex impulse, its use and misuse; when it
should be followed and when repressed.
vii
viii, Contents
PAGE
Chapter XXXVII. Celibacy versus Chastity .... 51
The ideal of the repression of the sex-impulse, as against
the ideal of its guidance and cultivation.
Chapter XXXVIII. The Defense of Love 55
Discusses passionate love, its sanction, its place in life,
and its preservation in marriage.
Chapter XXXIX. Birth Control 60
Deals with the prevention of conception as one of the
greatest of man's discoveries, releasing him from nature's
enslavement, and placing the keys of life in his hands.
Chapter XL. Early Marriage 66
Discusses love marriages, how they can be made, and the
duty of parents in respect to them.
Chapter XLI. The Marriage Club 71
Discusses how parents and elders may help the young to
avoid unhappy marriages.
Chapter XLII. Education for Marriage 75
Maintains that the art of love can be taught, and that
we have the right and the duty to teach it.
Chapter XLIII. The Money Side of Marriage .... 79
Deals with the practical side of the life partnership of
matrimony.
Chapter XLIV. The Defense of Monogamy 83
Discusses the permanence of love, and why we should
endeavor to preserve it.
Chapter XLV. The Problem of Jealousy 89
Discusses the question, to what extent one person may
hold another to the pledge of love.
Chapter XLVI. The Problem of Divorce 93
Defends divorce as a protection to monogamous love, and
one of the means of preventing infidelity and prostitution.
Chapter XLVII. The Restriction of Divorce .... 97
Discusses the circumstances under which society has the
right to forbid divorce, or to impose limitations upon it
Contents ix
PART FOUR: THE BOOK OF SOCIETY
PAGE
Chapter XL VIII. The Ego and the World 103
Discusses the beginning of consciousness, in the infant
and in primitive man, and the problem of its adjustment
to life.
Chapter XLVIX. Competition and Co-operation . . . 107
Discusses the relation of the adult to society, and
the part which selfishness and unselfishness play in the
development of social life.
Chapter L. Aristocracy and Democracy 115
Discusses the idea of superior classes and races, and
whether there is a natural basis for such a doctrine.
Chapter LI. Ruling Classes 119
Deals with authority in human society, how it is obtained,
and what sanction it can claim.
Chapter LII. The Process of Social Evolution . , . 122
Discusses the series of changes through which human
society has passed.
Chapter LIIL Industrial Evolution 126
Examines the process of evolution in industry and the
stage which it has so far reached.
Chapter LIV. The Class Struggle 132
Discusses history as a battle-ground between ruling and
subject classes, and the method and outcome of this
struggle.
Chapter LV. The Capitalist System 136
Shows how wealth is produced in modern society, and
the effect of this system upon the minds of the workers.
Chapter LVI. The Capitalist Process 142
How profits are made under the present industrial sys-
tem and what becomes of them.
Chapter LVII. Hard Times 145
Explains why capitalist prosperity is a spasmodic thing,
and why abundant production brings distress instead of
plenty.
X Contents
PAGE
Chapter LVIII. The Iron Ring . 148
Analyzes further the profit system, which strangles pro-
duction, and makes true prosperity impossible.
Chapter LIX. Foreign Markets 151
Considers the efforts of capitalism to save itself by mar-
keting its surplus products abroad, and what results from
these efforts.
Chapter LX. Capitalist War 155
Shows how the competition for foreign markets leads
nations automatically into war.
Chapter LXI. The Possibilities of Production . . . 158
Shows how much wealth we could produce if we tried
and how we proved it when we had to.
Chapter LXII. The Cost of Competition 162
Discusses the losses of friction in our productive ma-
chine, those which are obvious and those which are
hidden.
Chapter LXIII. Socialism and Syndicalism 166
Discusses the idea of the management of industry by the
state, and the idea of its management by the trade unions.
Chapter LXIV. Communism and Anarchism .... 170
Considers the idea of goods owned m common, and the
idea of a society without compulsion, and how these
ideas have fared in Russia.
Chapter LXV. Social Revolution 175
How the great change is coming in different industries,
and how we may prepare to meet it.
Chapter LXVI. Confiscation or Compensation . . . 179
Shall the workers buy out the capitalists? Can they
afford to do it, and what will be the price?
Chapter LXVII. Expropriating the Expropriators . . 183
Discusses the dictatorship of the proletariat, and its
chances for success in the United States.
Contents »
PAOS
Chapter LXVIII. The Problem of the Land .... 188
Discusses the land values tax as a means of social read-
justment, and compares it with other programs.
Chapter LXIX. The Control of Credit 192
Deals with money, the part it plays in the restriction of
industry, and may play in the freeing of industry.
Chapter LXX. The Control of Industry 198
Discusses various programs for the change from indus-
trial autocracy to industrial democracy.
Chapter LXXI. The New World 202
Describes the co-operative commonwealth, beginning
with its money aspects; the standard wage and its va-
riations.
Chapter LXXII. Agricultural Production 206
Discusses the land in the new world, and how we foster
co-operative farming and co-operative homes.
Chapter LXXIII. Intellectual Production 210
Discusses scientific, artistic, and religious activities, as
a superstructure built upon the foundation of the stan-
dard wage.
Chapter LXXIV. Mankind Remade 215
Discusses human nature and its weaknesses, and what
happens to these in the new world.
PART THREE
THE BOOK OF LOVE
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE REALITY OF MARRIAGE
(Discusses the sex-customs now existing in the world, and
their relation to the ideal of monogamous love.)
Just as human beings through wrong religious beliefs tor-
ture one another, and wreck their lives and happiness; just
as through wrong eating and other physical habits they make
disease and misery for themselves; just so they suffer and
perish for lack of the most elementary knowledge concerning
the sex relationship. The difference is that in the field of
religious ideas it is now permissible to impart the truth one
possesses. If I tell you there is no devil, and that believing
this will not cause you to suffer in an eternity of sulphur and
brimstone, no one will be able to burn me at the stake, even
though he might like to do so. If I advise you that it is not
harmful to eat beefsteak on Friday, or to eat thoroughly
cooked pork any day of the week, neither the archbishops
nor the rabbis nor the vegetarians will be able to lock me in
a dungeon. But if I should impart to you the simplest and
most necessary bit of knowledge concerning the facts of your
sex life — ^things which every man and woman must know if
we are to stop breeding imbecility and degeneracy in the world
— ^then I should be liable, under federal statutes, to pay a fine
of $5,000, and to serve a term of five years in a federal peni-
tentiary. Scarcely a week passes that I do not receive a letter
from someone asking for information about such matters ; but
I dare not answer the letters, because I know there are agen-
cies, maintained and paid by religious superstition, employing
spies to trap people into the breaking of this law.
I shall tell you here as much as I am permitted to tell, in
the simplest language and the most honest spirit. I believe
. that human beings are meant to be happy on this earth, and
to avoid misery and disease. I believe that they are given the
powers of intelligence in order to seek the ways of happiness,
and I believe that it is a worthy work to give them the knowl-
edge they need in order to find happiness.
3
4 Love and Society
At the outset of this Book of Love we are going to examine
the existing facts of the sex relationships of men and women
in present-day society. We shall discover that amid all the
false and dishonest thinking of mankind, there is nowhere
more falsity and dishonesty than here. The whole world is
a gigantic conspiracy of "hush," and the orthodox and respect-
able of the world are like worshippers of some god, who
spend their day-time burning incense before the altar, and
in the night-time steal the sacred jewels and devour the con-
secrated offerings. These worshippers confront you with the
question, do you believe in marriage; and they make the
assumption that the institution of marriage exists, or at some
time has existed in the world. But if you wish to do any
sound thinking about this subject, you must get one thing
clear at the outset; the institution of marriage is an ideal
which, has been preached and taught, but which has never
anywhere, in any society, at any stage of human progress,
actually existed as the general practice of mankind. What
has existed and still exists is a very different institution,
which I shall here describe as marriage-plus-prostitution.
By this statement I do not mean to deny that there are
many women, and a few men, who have been monogamous
all their lives ; nor that there are many couples living together
happily in monogamous marriage. What I mean is that, con-
sidering society as a whole, wherever you find the institution
of marriage, you also find, co-existent therewith and comple-
mentary thereto, the institution of prostitution. Of this double
arrangement one part is recognized, and written into the law;
the other part is hidden, and prohibited by law; but those
who have to do with enforcing the law all know that it exists,
and practically all of them consider it inevitable, and a great
many derive income from it. So I say: if you believe in
marriage-plus-prostitution, that is your right; but if marriage
is what you believe in, then your task is to consider such
questions as these: Is marriage a possible thing? Can it ever
become the sex arrangement of any society? What are the
forces which have so far prevented it from prevailing, and
how can these forces be counteracted?
It is my belief that monogamous love is the most desirable
of human sex relationships, the most fruitful in happiness and
spiritual development. The laws and institutions of civilized
society pretend to defend this relationship, but the briefest
The Book of Love 5
study of the facts will convince anyone that these laws and
institutions are not really meant to protect monogamous love.
What they are is a device of the property-holding male to
secure his property rights to women, and more especially to
secure himself as to the paternity of his heirs. In primitive
society, where land and other sources of wealth were held
in common, and sex monogamy was unknown, there was no
way to determine paternity, and no reason for doing so. But
under the system of private property and class privilege, it
is necessary for some one man to support a child, if it is to
be supported; and when a man has fought hard, and robbed
hard, and traded hard, and acquired wealth, he does not want
to spend it in maintaining another man's child. That he
should let himself be fooled into doing so is one of the great-
est humiliations his fellowmen can imagine. If you read
Shakespeare's plays, and look up the meaning of old words,
so as to understand old witticisms and allusions, you will
discover that this was the stock jest of Shakespeare's time.
In order to protect himself from such ridicule, the man
maintained in ancient times his right to kill the faithless wo-
man with cruel tortures. He maintains today the right to de-
prive her of her children, and of all share in his property, even
though she may have helped to earn it. But until quite recent
times, the beginning of the revolt of women, there was never
any corresponding penalty for faithlessness in husbands. Un-
der the English law today, the husband may divorce his wife
for infidelity, but the wife must prove infidelity plus cruelty,
and the courts have held thatthe cruelty must consist in knock-
ing her down. While I was in England, the highest court
rendered a decision that a man who brought his mistress to
his home and compelled his wife to wait upon her was not
committing "cruelty" in the meaning of the English law.
This is what is known as the "double standard," and the
double standard prevails everywhere under the system of
marriage-plus-prostitution, and proves that capitalist "monog-
amy" is not a spiritual ideal, but a matter of class privilege.
It is a breach of honor for the ruling class male to tamper
with the wife of his friend; it is frequently dangerous for
him to tamper with the young females of his own class ; but
it is in general practice taken for granted that the young
females of lower classes are his legitimate prey. In England
a man may have a marriage annulled, if he can prove that
2— May 22.
6 LoTE AND Society
the woman he married had what is called a "past" ; but every-
body takes it for granted that the man has had a "past"; it
is covered by the polite phrase, "sowing his wild oats." Wher-
ever among the ruling class you find men bold enough to
discuss the facts of the sex order they have set up, you find
the idea, expressed or implied, that this "wild oats" is a nec-
essary and inevitable part of this order, and that without
it the order would break down. The English philosopher,
Lecky, making an elaborate study of morals through the ages,
speaks of the prostitute in the following frank language:
"Herself the supreme type of vice, she is ultimately the
most efficient guardian of virtue. But for her, the unchal-
lenged purity of countless happy homes would be polluted,
and not a few who, in the pride of their untempted chastity,
think of her with an indignant shudder, would have known
the agony of remorse and despair. On that one degraded
and ignoble form are concentrated the passions that might
have filled the world with shame. She remains, while creeds
and civilizations rise and fall, the eternal priestess of human-
ity, blasted for the sins of the people."
I invite you to study these sentences and understand them
fully. Remember that they are the opinion of the most learned
historian of sex customs who has ever written in English;
a man whose authority is recognized in our schools, whose
books are in every college library. William Edward Hartpole
Lecky is not in any sense a revolutionist ; he is a conventional
English scholar, an upholder of English law and order and
patriotism. He is not of my school of thought, but of those
who now own the world and run it. I quote him, because
he tells in plain language what kind of world they have made ;
I invite you to study his words, and then judge my state-
ment that the sex arrangement under which we live in modem
society is not monogamous love, but marriage-plus-prostitu-
tion.
It is my hope to point the way to a higher system. I
should like to call it marriage; but perhaps it would be more
precise to call it marriage-minus-prostitution. In working it
out, we shall have to think for ourselves, and discard all
formulas. It is obvious that our present-day religious creeds,
ethical ideals, legal codes, and social rewards and punishments
have been powerless to protect marriage, or to make it the
rule in sex relationships. So we shall have to begin at the
The Book of Love 7
beginning and find new reasons for monogamous love, a new
basis of marriage other than the protection of private prop-
erty. We shall have to inform ourselves as to the fundamen-
tal purposes of sex; we shall have to ask ourselves: What
are the factors which determine rightness and wrongness in
the sex relationship ? What is love, and what ought it to be ?
These questions we shall try to approach without any fixed
ideas whatever. We shall decide them by the same tests that
we have used in our thinking about God and immortality,
health and disease. We shall ask, not what our ancestors
believed, not what God teaches us, not what the law ordains,
not what is "respectable," nor yet what is "advanced," accord-
ing to the claim of modern sex revolutionists and "free lovers."
We shall ask ourselves, what are the facts. We shall ask,
what can be made to work in practice, what can justify itself
by the tests of reason and common sense.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE DEVELOPMENT OF MARRIAGE
(Deals with the sex-relationship, its meaning and its history,
the stages of its development in human society.)
What, in the most elemental form, is sex? It is a differ-
ence of function which makes it necessary for two organisms
to take part in the reproduction of the species. The purpose,
or at any rate the effect, of this sex difference is the mixing
of characteristics and qualities. If the sex relationship were
unnecessary to reproduction, variations might begin, and be
propagated and carried to extremes in one line of inheritance,
without ever affecting the rest of the species. Very soon
there would be no species, or rather an infinity of them ; each
line of descent would fly apart, and become a group all by
itself. You have perhaps heard people comment on the fact
that blondes so frequently prefer brunettes, and that tall men
are apt to marry short women, and vice versa. This is
perhaps nature's way of keeping the type uniform, of spread-
ing quali4:ies widely and testing them thoroughly. Nature is
continually trying out the powers of every individual in every
species, and by the process of sexual selection she chooses,
for the reproduction of the species, the individuals which are
best fitted for survival. This, of course, refers to nature, con-
sidered apart from man. In human society, as I shall presently
show, sexual selection has been distorted, and partly sup-
pressed.
Sex differentiation and sexual selection exist almost uni-
versally throughout the animal and vegetable kingdoms, every-
where save in the lowest forms of being. They take strange
and startling forms, and like everything else in nature mani-
fest amazing ingenuity. People who wish to prove this or
that about human sex relations will advance arguments from
nature; but as a matter of fact we can learn nothing what-
ever from nature, except her determination to preserve the
products of her activity and to keep them up to standard.
Sometimes nature will give the precedence in power, speed
and beauty to the male, and sometimes to the female. She
8
The Book of Love 9
is perfectly ruthless, and willing in the accomplishment of
her purpose to destroy the individuals of either sex. She
will content the most rabid feminist by causing the female
spider to devour her mate when his purpose has been accom-
plished; or by causing the male bee to fall from his mating
in the air, a disemboweled shell.
As for man, he has won his supremacy over nature by his
greater power to combine in groups; by his more intense
gregarious, or herd instincts, which enabled him to fight
and destroy creatures which would have exterminated him
if he had fought them alone. So in primitive society every-
where, we find that the individual is subordinated to the group,
and the "folkways" give but little heed to personal rights.
Very thorough investigations have been made into the life
of primitive man in many parts of the world, and the anthro-
pologists are now arguing over the exact meaning of the data.
We shall not here attempt to decide among them, but rest
content with the statement that communism and tribal owner-
ship is a widespread social form among primitive man, so
much so as to suggest that it is an early stage in social
evolution.
And this communism includes, not merely property, but
sex. In the very earliest days there was often no barrier
whatever to the sex relationship; not even between brothers
and sisters, nor between parents and children. In fact, we
find savages who do not know that the sex relationship has
anything to do with procreation. But as knowledge increases,
sex "tabus" develop, some wise, and some foolish. From
causes not entirely clear, but which we discuss in Chapter
XLVIII, there gradually evolves a widespread form of sex
relationship of primitive man, the system of the "gens," as it is
called. This is the Latin word for family, but it does not mean
family in the narrow sense of mother and father and children,
but in the broad sense of all those who have blood relationship,
however far removed — uncles and aunts and cousins, as far
as memory can trace. In primitive communism a man is not
permitted to enter into the sex relationship with a woman
of the same gens, but with all the women of some other gens.
It is difficult for us to imagine a society in which all the
men named Jones would be married to all the women named
Smith; but that was the way whole races of mankind lived
for many thousands of years.
10 Love and Society
In that primitive communist society, the woman was gener-
ally the equal of the man. It is true that she did the drudgery
of the camp, but the man, on the other hand, faced the hard-
ships of battle and the chase on land and sea. The woman was
as big as the man, and except when handicapped by pregnancy,
as strong as the man ; she was as much respected, if not more
so. Her children bore her name, and were under her control,
and she was accustomed to assert herself in all affairs of the
tribe. In Frederick O'Brien's "White Shadows in the South
''Seas," you may read a comical story of a journey this trav-
eler made into the interior of one of the cannibal islands.
Everywhere he was treated with courtesy and hospitality, but
was embarrassed by continual offers from would-be wives.
In one case a powerful cannibal lady, whose advances he
rejected, picked him up and proceeded to carry him off, and
he was quite helpless in her grasp ; he might have been a
cannibal husband today, if it had not been for the interven-
tion of his fellow travelers.
The basis of this sex equality under primitive communism
is easy to understand. All goods belonged to the tribe, and
were shared alike according to need. Children were the tribe's
most precious possession; therefore the woman suffered little
handicap from having a child to bear and feed. Primitive
woman would bear her child by the roadside, and pick it up
in her arms, and continue her journey; and when she needed
food, she did not have to beg for it — if there was food for
anyone, there was food for her and her child. She did her
share of the gathering and preparing of food, because that
was the habit and law of her being; she had energies, and
had never heard of the idea of not using them.
This primitive communism generally disappears as the tribe
progresses. We cannot be sure of all the stages of its dis-
appearance, or of the causes, but in a general way we can
say that it gives way before the spread of slavery. In the
beginning primitive man does not have any slaves, he does
not have sufficient foresight or self-restraint for that. When
he kills his enemies in battle, he builds a fire and roasts
their flesh and eats them ; and those whom he captures alive,
he binds fast and takes with him, to be sacrificed to his voodoo
gods. But as he comes to more settled ways of living, and
as the tribe grows larger, it occurs to the chiefs in battle
that the captives would be glad to give their labor in return
The Book of LfOVE H
for their lives, and that it would be convenient to have some
people to do the hard and dirty work. So gradually there
comes to be a class at the bottom of society, and another class
at the top. Those who capture the slaves and keep them at
work lay claim to the products of their labor — ^at first better
weapons and personal adornments, then separate homes for
the chiefs and priests, separate gardens, separate flocks and
herds, and — what more natural? — separate women.
This process becomes complete when the tribe settles down
to agriculture, and the ruling classes take possession of the
land. When once the land is privately owned, classes are
fixed, and class distinctions become the most prominent fact
in society. And step by step as this happens, we see women
beaten down, from the position of the cannibal lady, who
could ask for the man she wanted and carry him off by
force if necessary, to the position of the modern woman,
who is physically weak, emotionally unstable, economically
dependent, and socially repressed. You may resent such
phrases, but all you have to do is to read the laws of civilized
countries, written into the statute books by men to define
the rights and duties of women ; you will see that everywhere,
before the recent feminist revolt, women were classified under
the law with children and imbeciles.
Maternity imposes on woman a heavy burden, and before
the discovery of birth control, a burden that is continuous.
For nine months she carries the child in her body, and then
for a year or two she carries it in her arms, or on her back;
and by that time there is another child, and this continues
until she is broken down. Having this burden, she cannot
possibly compete with the unburdened male for the posses-
sion of property. So wherever there is economic com-
petition; wherever certain individuals or classes in the tribe
or group are allowed to seize and hold the land; wherever
the products of labor cease to be the community property,
and become private property, the objects of economic
strife; then inevitably and by natural process, woman comes
to he placed among those who cannot protect themselves —
that is, among the children and the imbeciles and the slaves.
Of course, some children are well cared for, and so are some
imbeciles, and some slaves, and some women. But they are
cared for as a matter of favor, not as a matter of their own
power. They proceed no longer as the cannibal lady, but
12 Love and Society
by adopting and cultivating the slave virtues, by making
themselves agreeable to their masters, by flattering their mas-
ters' vanity and sensuality — in other words by exercising what
we are accustomed to call "feminine charm."
From early barbaric society up to the present day, we
observe that there are classes of women, just as there are
classes of men. The position of these classes changes within
certain limits, but in broad outline the conditions are fixed,
and may be easily defined. There is, first of all, the ruling
class woman. She must have birth ; she may or may not
have wealth, according as to whether the laws of that society
or tribe permit her to have possessions of her own, or to
inherit anything from her parents. If she has no wealth,
then she will need beauty. She is the woman who is selected
by the ruling class man to bear his name and his children,
and to have charge of the household where these children
are reared, and trained for the inheriting of their father's
wealth and the carrying on of his position. This confers
upon the ruling class woman great dignity, and makes her
a person of responsibility. She rules, not merely over the
slaves of the household, but over men of inferior social classes,
and in a few cases an exceptionally able woman has become
a queen, and ruled over men of her own class. This ruling
class woman has been known through all the ages by a spe-
cial name, and the ways and customs regarding her have
been studied in an entertaining book, "The Lady," by Emily
James Putnam.
Next in privilege and position to the "lady" is the mistress,
the woman who is selected by the ruling class man, not pri-
marily to bear his children, but to entertain and divert
him. She may, of course, bear children also. In barbaric
societies, and up to quite recent times, the importance of the
ruling class man was indicated by the number of concubines
he had, and the position of these women was hardly inferior
to that of the wife or queen. In the days of the French
monarchy, the king's mistress was frequently more impor-
tant than the queen ; she was a woman of ability, maintaining
her supremacy in the intrigues of the court. In ancient
Greek society, the "hetairae" were a recognized class, and
Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles, was the most brilliant and
most conspicuous woman in Athens. In modern France, the
position of the mistress is recognized by the phrase "demi-
The Book of Love 13
monde," or half-world. The American plutocracy has devel-
oped upon a superstructure of Puritanism, and therefore, in
America, hypocrisy is necessary. But in the great cities of
America, the vast majority of the ruling class men keep mis-
tresses before marriage, and a great many keep them after-
wards ; and these mistresses are coming to be more and more
openly flaunted, and to acquire more and more of what is called
"social position." It is possible now in the "smart set" for
a lady to accept the status of mistress, delicately veiled, with-
out losing caste thereby, and actresses and other free lance
women who got their start in life by taking the position of
mistress, are coming more and more to be recognized as
"ladies," and to be received into what are called the "best
circles."
There remains to be considered the position of the lower
class women. In barbarous society these women were very
little different from slaves. They had no rights of their own,
except such rights as their master man chose to allow them
for his own convenience. They were sold in marriage by
their parents, and they went where they were .sold, and
obeyed their new master. They became his household drudges,
and reserved their affections for him; if they failed to do
this, he stoned them to death, or strangled them with a cord
and tied them in a sack and threw them into the river.
And, of course, the rights of the master man yielded to the
rights of men of higher classes. The king or nobleman could
take any woman he wished at any time, and he made laws
to this effect and enforced them. In feudal society the lord
of the manor claimed the right of the first nigltf with the
wives of his serfs ; this was one of the ruling class privileges
which was abolished in the French revolution. Wherever
the French revolution did not succeed in affecting land tenure,
' the right of the land owner to prey upon his tenant girls con-
tinues as a custom, even though it is not written in the law,
and would be denied by the hypocritical. It prevails in Poland,
as you may discover by reading Sienkewicz's "Whirlpools";
it prevails in England, as you may discover from Hardy's
'Tess of the d'Urbervilles." You will find that it prevails
in every part of the world where women have poverty and
men have wealth and prestige, dress suits and automobiles.
You will find it wherever there are leisure class hotels, or
colleges, or other gatherings of ruling class yotmg males. You
14 Love and Society
will find it in the theatrical and moving picture worlds. It
is well understood in the theatrical world of Broadway that
the woman "star" in the profession gets her start in life by
becoming the mistress of a manager or "angel." In the mov-
ing picture world of Southern California it is a recognized
convention, known to everyone familiar with the business,
that a young girl parts with her virtue in exchange for an
important job.
CHAPTER XXX
SEX AND YOUNG AMERICA
(Discusses present-day sex arrangements, as they affect the
future generation.)
Our first task is to consider how people actually behave
in the matter of sex — as distinguished from the way they
pretend to behave. The first and most necessary step in the
cure of any disease is a correct diagnosis, and in this case
we have not merely to make the diagnosis, but to prove it;
because the most conspicuous fact about our present sex-
arrangements is a mass of organized concealment. Not merely
do teachers and preachers for the most part suppress all men-
tion of these subjects; but the defenders of our present
economic disorder are accustomed to acclaim the private prop-
erty regime as the only basis of family life. So long as people
hold such an idea, there is no use trying to teach them any-
thing on the subject. There is no use talking to them about
monogamous love, because all they understand is hypocrisy.
In this chapter, therefore, we shall proceed to hold up the
mirror in front of capitalist morality.
I pause and consider: Where shall I begin? At the top
of society, or at the bottom? With the city or the country?
With the old or the young? I think you care most of all
about your boys and girls, so I am going to tell you what
is happening to the youth of America in these days of tri-
umphant reaction.
I have a son, about whom naturally I think a great deal;
just now he is a student at one of our state universities,
and he wrote me the other day: "I went to a dance, and
believe me, father, if you knew what these modern dances
mean, you would write something about them." I know
what they mean. They have come to us straight from the
brothels of the Argentine, among the vilest haunts of vice in
the world. Others have come from the jungle, where they
were natural. The poor creature of the jungle has his sex-
desire and nothing else; he is not troubled with brains, he
does not have a complicated social organism to build up and
15
16 Love and Society
protect, consequently he does not need what are called "mor-
als." But we civilized people need morals, and we are losing
them, and our society is disintegrating, going back to the
howling and fighting and cannibalism of the jungle.
Prof. William James, America's greatest psychologist, tells
us that going through the motions appropriate to an emotion
automatically causes that emotion to be felt. If you watch
an actor preparing to rush on the stage in an emotional scene,
you will see him walking about, clenching his fists, stamping
his feet, making ferocious faces, "working himself up." And
now, what do you think is going on in the minds of young
men and women, while with their bodies they are going
through procedures which are nothing and can be nothing but
imitations of sexual contact?
The parents, it appears, are ignorant and unsophisticated,
and have left it for the children to find out what these dances
mean. In Rhode Island, one of our oldest states, is Brown
College, chosen by New England's aristocracy for the educa-
tion of its sons; and these boys go to social aflfairs in the
best homes in Providence, and they call them "petting-parties."
And here is what they write in their college paper :
"The modern social bud drinks, not too much, often, but
■enough. She smokes unguardedly, swears considerably, and
tells 'dirty' stories. All in all, she is a most frivolous,
passionate, sensation-seeking little thing."
This statement, published in a college paper, causes a
scandal, and a newspaper reporter goes to interview the col-
lege boy who edits the paper, and this boy talks. He tells
how he met a lovely girl at a dance, and his heart was thrilled
with the rapture of young love. "Frankly, between you and
me, I was pretty smitten with this particular little lady. Felt
about her, don't you krww, like a real guy feels about the
girl he could imagine himself married to. Thought she was
too nice to touch, almost; you know the grave sort of love
affair a man always has once in a lifetime. Well, we walked
a bit, and I guess I didn't say much, for a while. I felt
plenty — respectfully — just the same. And as we turned the
corner of one of the buildings here, she grasped my hand.
Hers was trembling. 'Love and let love is my motto, dearie,'
.said this seraph of my dreams; 'come, we're losing a lot of
time getting started.* That girl thought I was dead slow. She
■didn't know that just then I imagined the great love of my
The Book of Love 17
life was just entering the door. It was cruel the way she
got down from the pedestal I had built for her."
Suppose I should ask you to name the influence that is
having most to do with shaping the thoughts of young Amer-
ica — what would you answer? Undoubtedly, the moving
pictures. It is from the "movies" that your children learn
what life is; if I can show you that a certain thing is in the
"movies," you can surely not deny that it is passing every
day and night into the hearts and minds of millions of our
boys and girls. Take a vote among the girls, what would
they consider the most delightful destiny in life; surely nine
out of ten would answer, to become a screen star, and pose
before a world of admirers, and be paid a million dollars a
year. Make a test and see; and put that fact together with
the one I have already stated, that in order to get an impor-
tant job in the "movies," a girl must regularly and as a mat-
ter of course part with her virtue.
You will be told, no doubt, that this is a slanderous state-
ment, so let me give you a little evidence. I happened within
the past year to be in the private office of a well known mov-
ing picture producer, a man who is married, and takes care
to tell you that he loves his wife. He was producing a play,
the heroine of which was supposed to be a daughter of Puri-
tan New England. To play this part he had engaged a chaste
girl, and as a result was in the midst of a queer trouble,
which he poured out to me. His "leading man" had refused
to act with this girl, insisting that no girl could act a part of
love unless she had had passionate experience; no such thing
had ever been heard of in moving pictures before. Likewise,
the director agreed that no girl who is chaste could act for
the screen, and the producer asked my advice about it. Mr.
William Allen White, of Kansas, was present in the office,
and authorizes me to state that he substantiates this anecdote.
We both advised the producer to stand by the girl, and he
did so; and the picture went out, and proved to be what in
trade parlance is termed a "frost" ; that is to say, your children
didn't care for it, and it cost the producer something like a
hundred thousand dollars to make this attempt to defy the
conventions of the moving picture world.
I will tell you another story. I have a friend, a prom-
inent man in Los Angeles, who was appealed to by a young
lady who wished to act in the "movies." My friend intro-
18 Love and Society
duced this young lady to a very prominent screen actor, who
in turn introduced her to one of the biggest producers in
America, one of the men whose "million dollar feature pic-
tures" are regularly exploited. The producer examined the
young lady's figure, and told her that she would "do"; he
added, quite casually, and as a matter of course, that she
would be expected to "pay the price." The young lady
took exception to this proposition, and gave up the chance.
She told my friend about it, and he, being a man of the
world, accustomed to dealing with the foibles of his fellow-
men, wrote a note to the actor, explaining that inasmuch as
this young lady had been socially introduced to him, and by
him socially introduced to the manager, she should not have
been expected to "pay the price." To this the actor answered
that my friend was correct, and he would see the manager
about it. The manager conceded the point, and the young
lady got her chance in the "movies" and made good without
"paying the price." This story tells you all you need to
know about the difference in sex ethics that society applies
to the "lady" and to the daughter of the common people.
You know, of course, what is the stock theme of all
moving pictures — the virtuous daughter of the people, who
resists all temptations, and is finally rescued from her would-
be seducer by the strong and sturdy arm of a male doll.
Could one ask a more perfect illustration of capitalist hy-
pocrisy than the fact that the girl who plays this role is
required to pay with her virtue for the privilege of playing
it! And if you know anything about young girls, you can
watch her playing it on the screen, and see from her every
gesture that what I am telling you is true. My wife knows
young girls, and I took her, the other day, to see a moving
picture. She said: "I have solved a problem. When I
come home on the street-cars, it happens that I ride with a
lot qf young girls from the high school. I have been watch-
ing them, and I couldn't imagine what was the matter with
them. All simple, girlish straightforwardness is gone out of
them; they are making eyes, in the strangest manner — and
at nobody; just practicing, apparently. They wear yearn-
ing facial expressions; when they start to walk, they do not
walk, but writhe and wiggle. I thought there must be some
nervous eye and lip disease got abroad in the school.
But now, when I go to a moving picture, I discover what it
means. They are imitating the 'stars' on the screen!"
The Book of Love 1^
In these pictures, you know, there are "ingenues," young
girls engaged in making a happy ending to the story by
capturing a rich lover; and then there are "vamps," engaged
in seducing young men, or breaking up some happy home.
In old-style melodrama it was possible to tell the "ingenue"
from the "vamps"; the former would trip lightly, and glance
coyly out of the corners of her eyes, while the "vamp" moved
with slow, languished writhing, blinking heavy-lidded, sin-
ister eyes. But now-a-days the "vamps" have learned to
pjose as "ingenues," and the "ingenues" are as vicious as the
"vamps"; they both make the same glances, and culminate
in the same sensual swoon. It is all sex, and nothing else —
except revolvers and fighting, and wild rushing about.
And then, too, there are the musical comedies, made
wholly out of sex, being known as "girl shows," or more
frankly still, "leg shows." A row of half naked women,
prancing and gyrating on the stage, and in front of them
rows of bald-headed old men, gazing at them greedily; also
college boys, or boys too imbecile to get through college,
sending in their cards with boxes of costly flowers. You
will be shocked as you read my plain statements of fact, but
if you are the average American, you will take your family
to a musical show which has come straight from the brothels
of Paris, every allusion of which is obscene. I remember
once being in a small town in the South, when one of these
"road shows" arrived from New York, and I realized that
this institution was simply a traveling house of ill fame ; the
whole male portion of the town was a-quiver with excite-
ment, a mixture of lust and fear.
I live in Southern California, one of many places in
America where the idle rich gather for their diversion. The
country is dotted with palatial hotels, and a golden flood of
pleasure-seekers come in every winter. I have talked with
some of the college boys in this part of the country, and
also with teachers who try to save the boys ; they report
these "swell" hotels as hot-beds of vice, haunted by married
women with automobiles, and nothing to do, who wish to go
into the canyons for sexual riots. Even elderly women, white-
haired women, old enough to be your grandmother! I have
had them pointed out to me in these hotels, their cheeks and
lips covered with rouge, with pink silk tights on their calves,
and nothing else almost up to their knees and nothing at all
20 Love and Society
half way down their backs. These old women seek to prey
on boys, wanting their youth, and being willing to lavish
money upon them. They are preying on your boys — you
prosperous business men, who have preached the gospel of
"each for himself," and are proud of your skill to prey upon
society. You heap up your fortunes, and call it success, and
are secure and happy. You have made your children safe
against want, you think ; but how are you going to make them
safe against the "vamps" who prey upon the overwhelming
excitements of youth, and betray your sons before your very
eyes — teaching them lust in their youth, so that love may never
be born in their stunted hearts? All the haunts of "gilded
vice" are thriving, and somebody's boy is paying the interest
on the capital, to say nothing of paying the police.
Many years ago I paid a call upon Anthony Comstock,
head of the Society for the Prevention of Vice. Comstock
was an old-style Puritan, and many insist that he was like-
wise an old-style grafter. However that may be, he had a
collection of the literature of pornography which would cause
any man to hesitate in condemning his activities. There is
a vast trafific in this kind of thing; it is sold by pack-peddlers
all over the country, and it is sold in little shops in the neigh-
borhood of public schools. You may be sure that in your
school there are some boys who know where to get it, even
though they will not tell what they know. I will describe
just one piece that a school boy brought to me, a catalogue
of obscene literature, for sale in Spain, and to be ordered
wholesale. You know how men with wares to sell will
expend their imaginations and exhaust their vocabulary in
describing to you the charms of each particular article for
sale. Here was a catalogue of one or two hundred pages,
listing thousands of items, pictures, pamphlets and books,
and various implements of vice, all set forth in that imitation
ecstasy of department stores and seed catalogues: here was
"something neat," here was a "fancy one," this one was
"a peach," and that one was "a winner."
When I was a lad, I was tramping in the Adirondack
mountains and was picked up by an itinerant photographer.
We rode all day together, and he became friendly, and showed
me some obscene pictures. Presently he discovered that he
was dealing with a young moralist, and apparently it was
the first time he had ever had that experience; he talked
The Book of Love 21
honestly, and we became friends on a different basis. This
man had a wife and children at home, but he traveled all
over the mountains, and was like the sailor with a girl in
every port. Also he was thoroughly familiar with all forms
of unnatural vice, and took this also as a matter of course,
and spread it on his journeys.
The other day I read a statement by a prominent phy-
sician in New York; he had been talking with a police
captain, and had asked him to state what in his opinion was the
most significant development in the social life of New York.
The answer was, "The spread of male prostitution." Here
is a subject to which I have to admit my courage is unequal.
I cannot repeat the jokes which I have heard young men tell
about these matters, and about the attitude of the police to
them. Suffice it to say that these hideous forms of vice are
now the commonplace of the under- world of all our great
cities. The other day a friend of mine was talking with
a prostitute who had left a high-class resort, where the price
charged was ten dollars, and gone to live in a "fifty-cent
house," frequented by sailors. She was asked the reason, and
her explanation was, "The sailors are natural." Dr. William
J. Robinson has written in his magazine an account of the
haunts in Berlin which are frequented by the victims of un-
natural vice, there allowed to meet openly and to solicit.
Frank Harris, in his "Life of Oscar Wilde," tells how when
that scandal was at its height, and further exposure threatened,
swarms of the most prominent men in England suddenly
discovered that it was advisable for them to travel on the
Continent. The great public schools of England are rotten
with these practices; the younger boys learn them from the
older ones, and are victims all the rest of their lives. And
the corruption is creeping through our own social body — ^and
you think that all you have to do is not to know about it !
My friend Floyd Dell, reading this manuscript, insists that
this chapter and the one following are too severe. In case
others should agree with him, I quote two newspaper items
which appear while I am reading the proofs. The first is
from an interview with H. Gordon Selfridge, the London
merchant, telling his impressions of America. He tells about
the "flappers," and then about the "shifters."
"The other is the newly exploited 'shifters.' The 'shifters'
are an organization of mushroom growth among high school
8
22 Love and Society
girls and boys which is spreading through the eastern States
and winning converts among youngsters. It is described as
the 'flapper Ku Klux/ and its emblem, if worn by a girl,
according to high school teachers and children's society leaders
who oppose it, to be nothing more nor less than an invitation
to be kissed.
"To call it an organization even is exaggeration, for the
'shifters' are better described as a secret understanding with-
out any responsible head.
"From being a seemingly harmless group whose emblem
was originally a brass paper clip fastened in the coat lapel it
has developed by rapid strides. Manufacturers of emblems
are coining money by the sale of hands, palm outstretched.
The significance is take what you want or, as the motto of the
order says, 'be a good fellow; get something for nothing.'
One of the principles is to 'do' one's parents, referred to as
'they.' "
The second item is an Associated Press despatch:
"ST. LOUIS, March 10.— In reiterating his statement
that a girls' and a boys' secret organization requiring that all
applicants must have violated the moral code before admission
was granted, existed in a local high school, Victor J. Miller,
president of the Board of Police Commissioners, tonight named
the Soldan High School as the one in which the alleged
immoral conditions exist. The school is attended largely by
children of the wealthy West End citizens.
CHAPTER XXXI
SEX AND THE "SMART SET*
(Portrays the moral customs of those who set the fashion in
our present-day world.)
We have discussed what is happening to our young people ;
let us next consider what our mature people are doing. Hav-
ing mentioned conditions in England, I will give a glimpse of
London "high life" two years before the war.
As a visiting writer, I was invited to luncheon at the home
of a woman novelist, whose books at that time were widely
read both in her country and here. Present at the luncheon
was a prominent publisher, who I afterwards learned was
the lady's lover j also the lady's grown and married son.
The publisher looked like a buxom hunting squire, but the
lady told me that he was very unhappy, because his wife
would not divorce him. The lady had just come from a
week-end party at the home of an earl, who at this moment
occupies one of the highest posts in the gift of the British
Empire. Things had gone comically wrong at this country
house party, she said, because the hostess had failed to remem-
ber that Lord So-and-so was at present living with Lady
Somebody-else. One of the duties of hostesses at house parties,
it appears, is to know who is living with whom, in order
that they may be put in connecting rooms. In this case his
Lordship had been grouchy, and everybody's pleasure had
been spoiled.
This produced a discussion of the subject of marriage,
and the son remarked that marriage was like an old slipper;
you wore it, because you had got used to it, but you did
not talk about it, because it was unimportant and stupid. I
went away, and happened to mention these matters to a friend,
who had met this woman novelist in Nice. The novelist had
there, in a group of people, been introduced to a young girl
who was suffering from neurasthenia. "My dear," said the
novelist, affectionately, "what you need is to have an illegit-
imate baby."
This, you will say, is the "old world," and you always
23
24 LoTE AND Society
knew that it was corrupt. If so, let me tell you a few things
that I have seen among the "upper circles" of our own great
and virtuous democracy. My first acquaintance with New
York "society" came after the publication of "The Jungle."
As the author of that book I was a sensation, almost as much
so as if I had won the heavy-weight championship of the
world. Out of curiosity I accepted an invitation for a week-
end amid what is called the "hunting set" of Long Island.
Here was a gorgeous palace with many tapestries, and soft-
footed servants, and decanters and cocktails at every stage
of one's journey about the place, like coaling stations on the
trade routes of the British Empire. One of the first sights
that caught my young eye was a large and stately lady in
semi-undress, smoking a big black cigar. If I were to men-
tion her name, every newspaper reader in America would
know her; and before I had been introduced to her, I heard
two young men in evening dress make an obscenp remark
about her, and what she was waiting for that evening.
I discovered quickly that, while there was a great deal of
sex among these people, there was very little love. There was
principally a wish to score cleverly and subtly at the expense
of another person's feelings. It is called the "srhart set,"
you understand, and I will give you an idea of how "smart'*
it is. I was walking down a passage with a lady, and on a
couch sat another lady, side by side with a certain very
famous lawyer, whose golden eloquence you have probably
listened to from platforms, and whom for the purpose of this
anecdote I will name Jones. Mr. Jones and the lady on the
sofa were sitting very close together, and my companion, with
a bright smile over her shoulder, called out: "Be careful,
Mary; youll be scattering a lot of little Joneses around here
if you don't watch out!" Quite "continental," you perceive;
and a long way from the Puritanism of our ancestors!
From there I went to the billiard-room, and observed a
young man of fashion trying to play billiards when he was
half drunk. It was a funny spectacle, and they took away
his cigarette by force, for fear he would drop it on the cloth
of the billiard table. Pretty soon he was telling about a racing
meet, and an orgy with negro women in a stable. Therefore
I returned to where the ladies were gathered, and one middle-
aged matron, who had read widely, including some of my
books, engaged me in serious conversation. I came later on to
The Book of Love 25
know her rather well, and she told me her views of love;
the source of all the sex troubles of humanity was that they
took the relationship seriously. Modern discoveries made it
unnecessary to attach importance to it. She herself, acting
upon this theory, probably had had relations with — my friends,
reading the proofs of this book, beg me to omit the number
of men, because you would not believe me!
You may argue that this is not typical; say that I fell
into the clutches of some particular group of degenerates.
All I can tell you is that these people are as "socially prom-
inent" as any in New York City. I will say furthermore that
I have sat in the home of the best known corporation lawyer
in America, who was paid a million dollars to organize the
steel trust! — the late James B. Dill, at that time a member
of the Court of Appeals of New Jersey — ^and have heard him
"muck-rake" his business friends by the hour with stories of
that sort, I have heard him tell of the "steel crowd" hiring
a trolley car and a load of prostitutes and champagne, and
taking an all-night trip from one city to another, smashing
up both the car and the prostitutes. I have heard him tell
of sitting on the deck of a Sound steamer, and overhearing
two of his Wall Street associates and their wives arranging
to trade partners for the night.
I have mentioned a lady who had a great many lovers.
Once in the dining-room of a club on Fifth Avenue, commonly
known as "the Millionaires'," a companion pointed out various
people, many of whom I had read about in the newspapers, and
told me funny stories about them. "See that old boy with
a note-book," said my host. "That is Jacob So-and-so, and
he is entering up the cost of his lunch. He keeps accounts
of everything, even of his women. He told me he had had
over a thousand, and they had cost him over a million."
, It is impossible to say what is the most terrible thing in
capitalist society, but among the most terrible are assuredly
the old men. The richest and most powerful banker in Amer-
ica was in his sex habits the merry jest of New York society.
He took toward women the same attitude as King Edward
VH; if he wanted one, he went up and asked for her, and
it made no difference who she was, or where she was. This
man's personal living expenses were five thousand dollars a
day, and all women understood that they might have anything
within reason.
26 Love and Society
When I was a boy, living in New York, there was a cer-
tain aged money-lender about whom one read something in
the newspapers almost every day. He was a prominent figure,
because he was worth eighty millions, yet wore an old, rusty
black suit, and saved every penny. Every now and then you
would read in the paper how some woman had been arrested
for attempting to blackmail him in his office. It seemed
puzzling, because you wouldn't think of him as a likely sub-
ject for blackmail. Some years later I met Dorothy Richard-
son, author of "The Long Day," a very fine book which has
been undeservedly forgotten. Miss Richardson had been a
reporter for the New York Herald, and had been sent to
interview this old money-lender. She was ushered into his
private office, and as soon as the attendant had gone out and
closed the door, the old man came up, and without a word
of preliminaries grabbed her in his arms like a gorilla. She
fought and scratched, and got out, and was wise enough to
say nothing about it; therefore there was nothing published
about another attempt to blackmail the aged money-lender!
What this means is that men of unlimited means live lives
of unbridled lust, and then in their old age they are helpless
victims of their own impulses. There was a certain enor-
mously wealthy United States Senator from West Virginia,
who came very near being Vice President of the United
States. This doddering old man would go about the streets
of Washington with a couple of very decorous and carefully
trained attendants; and whenever an attractive young woman
would pass on the street, or when one would approach the
Senator, these two attendants would quietly slip their arms
into his and hold him fast. They would do this so that the
ordinary person would not suspect what was going on, but
would think the old man was being supported.
You do not have to take these things on my word; the
newspapers are full of them all the time, and they ar.e proven
in court. Just now as I write, the president of the most
powerful bank in America is claiming in court that his children
are not his own, but that their father is an Indian guide. His
wife, on the other hand, is accusing the banker of having
played the role of husband to several other women. He
would take these women traveling on his yacht, which, quaint-
ly enough, was termed the "Modesty."
Also the papers have been full of the "Hamon case."
The Book of Love 27
Here is a wealthy man, Republican National G)mmitteeman
from Oklahoma, who is about to go to Washington to advise
our new President whom to appoint to office from that state.
Before he goes, he casts off his mistress, and she shoots him.
She was his secretary, it appears, and helped him to make
his fortune; she has made many friends, and a million dol-
lars is spent to save her life. The prosecuting attorney calls
her a "painted snake," and accuses her of having sat week
after week "displaying to the jury twenty-four inches of silk
stockinged shin-bone." The jury, apparently unable to with-
stand this allurement, acquits the woman, and she announces
that she intends to bring suit under the man's will to get his
money! Also, she is going into the "movies," and tells us
that it is to be "for educational purposes." Everything in
our capitalist society must be "educational," you understand.
It was P. T. Barnum who discovered that the American people
would flock to look at a five-legged calf, if it was presented
as "educational."
The moving pictures and the theatres are the honey-pots
which gather the feminine beauty and youthful charm of our
country for the convenience of rich men's lust. These girls
swarm in the theatrical agencies, and in the artists* studios;
they starve for a while, and finally they yield. In every great
city there are thousands of men of wealth, whose only occu-
pation is to prey upon such girls. I know a certain theatrical
manager, the most famous in the United States, a sensual,
stout little Jew. He is a man of culture and subtle insight,
and in the course of his conversation he described to me, quite
casually and as a matter of course, the charm of deflowering
a virgin. Nothing could equal that sensation; the first time
was the last.
Many years ago there was a horrible scandal in New York.
The most famous architect in America was murdered, and
the newspapers probed into his life, and it was revealed to
us that many of the most famous artists and men about town
in New York maintained elaborate studios, equipped with
every luxury, all the paraphernalia of all the vices of the
ages ; and through these places there flowed an endless stream
of beautiful young girls. In every large city in America you
will find an "athletic club," and if you go there and listen to
the gossip, you discover that there are scores of idle rich men
with automobiles and private apartments, and a staff of pro-
28 Love and Society
curers used in preying, not merely upon young girls, but also
upon young boys. And these are not merely the children of
the poor, they are the children of all but the rich and power-
ful. In the "movies" you see pictures of girls lured into
automobiles, and carried out into the country, or seduced by
means of "knock-out drops," and you think this is just "melo-
drama" ; but it is happening all the time. In every big city
of our country the police know that hundreds of young girls
disappear every year. At a recent convention of police chiefs
in Washington, it was stated, from police records, that sixty
thousand girls disappear every year in the United States,
leaving no trace. Unless the parents happen to be in position
to make a fuss, not even the names of the girls are published
in the newspapers. I do not ask you to believe such things
on my word ; believe District Attorney Sims of Chicago, who
made the most thorough study of this subject ever made in
America, and wrote:
"When a white slave is sold and landed in a house or dive
she becomes a prisoner. ... In each of these places is a
room having but one door, to which the keeper holds the
key. Here are locked all the street clothes, shoes and ordinary
apparel. . . . The finery provided for the girls is of a
nature to make their appearance on the street impossible.
Then in addition to this handicap, the girl is placed at once
in debt to the keeper for a wardrobe. . . . She cannot
escape while she is in debt, and she can never get out of
debt. Not many of the women in this class expect to live
more than ten years — perhaps the average is less. Many die
painful deaths by disease, many by consumption, but it is
hardly beyond the truth to say that suicide is their general
expectation."
CHAPTER XXXII
SEX AND THE POOR
(Discusses prostitution, the extent of its prevalence, and the
diseases which result from it.)
It is manifest that the rich cannot indulge in vices, with-
out drawing the poor after them; and in addition to this,
the poor have their own evil instincts, which fester in neglect.
There were several hundred thousand dark rooms, that is rooms
without light or ventilation, in New York City before the war.
Now the country is reported to be short a million homes, and
in New York City working girls are sleeping six or eight in
a room. In the homes of the poor in the slums, parents and
children and boarders all sleep in one room indiscriminately,
and the world moves back to that primitive communism, in
which incest is an everyday affair, and little children learn
all the vices there are. I have in my hand a pamphlet by a
physician, in charge of a hospital in New York, who in
fifteen years has examined nine hundred children who have
been raped, and the age of the youngest was eight months !
I have another pamphlet by a settlement worker, who dis-
cusses the problem of the thousands of deserted wives, most
of them with children, many with children yet unborn. As
I write, there are millions of men out of work in our cotmtry,
and these men are desperate, and they quit and take to the
road. They join the army of the casual workers, the "blanket
stiffs"; and, of course, the more there are of these men, the
more prostitutes there have to be, and the more homosexuality
there will inevitably be.
Also the girls are out of work, and are on the streets.
Many years ago I visited the mill towns of New England,
"she-towns" they are called, and one of the young fellows
said to me that you could buy a girl there for the price of
a sandwich. Read "The Long Day," to which I have pre-
viously referred, and see how our working girls live. Dor-
othy Richardson describes her room-mate, who read cheap
novels which she found in the gutter weeklies. She read
them over and over; when she had got to the bottom of the
29
30 Love and Society
pile, she began again, because her mind was so weak that she
had forgotten everything. And then one day Miss Richard-
son happened to be groping in a corner of a closet, and
came upon a great pile of bottles, and examined them, and
was made sick with horror — abortion mixtures.
Dr. William J. Robinson, an authority on the subject,
estimates that there are one million abortions in the United
States every year. Some of these are accidental, caused by
venereal disease, but the vast majority are deliberate acts,
crimes under the law, murder of human life. Dr. Robinson
also estimates, from the many thousands of cases which come
to him, that ninety-five per cent of all men have at some time
practiced self-abuse. He is a strenuous opponent of what he
calls "hysteria" on the subject of venereal disease, and insists
that its prevalence is exaggerated; that instead of one person
in ten being syphilitic, as is commonly stated, the proportion
is only one in twenty. He insists that the percentage of per-
sons having had gonorrhea is only twenty-five per cent,
instead of seventy-five or eighty-five. I find that other author-
ities generally agree in the statement that fifty per cent of
young men become infected with some venereal disease before
they reach the age of thirty. The Committee of Seven in
New York estimated in 1903 that there were two hundred
thousand cases of syphilis in the city, and eight hundred
thousand of gonorrhea. There were villages in France before
the war in which twenty-five per cent of the inhabitants were
syphilitic, and in Russia there were towns in which it was
said that every person was syphilitic. We may safely say
that these latter are the only towns in Europe in which there
was not an enormous increase of this disease during and since
the war.
What are the consequences of these diseases? The con-
sequences are frightful suffering, not merely to persons guilty
of immorality, but to innocent persons. Dr. Morrow, gen-
erally recognized as the leading authority on this subject,
estimates that ten per cent of all wives are infected with
venereal disease by their husbands; he estimates that thirty
per cent of all the infected women in New York were wives
who had got the disease from their husbands. It is estimated
that thirty per cent of all the births, where either parent has
syphilis, result in abortions. It is estimated that fifty per cent
of childlessness in marriage is caused by gonorrhea, and twen-
The Book of Love 31
ty-five per cent of all existing blindness. In Germany, before
the war, there were thirty thousand persons born blind from
this cause. It is estimated that ninety-five per cent of all abdom-
inal operations performed upon women are due to gonorrhea.
And any of these horrors may fall upon persons who lead
lives of the strictest chastity. There was a case reported
in Germany of 236 children who contracted venereal disease
from swimming in a public bath.
All these things are products of our system of marriage-
plus-prostitution. They are all part of that system, and no
study of the system is complete without them. Everywhere
throughout modern civilization prostitution is an enormous
and lucrative industry. In New York it is estimated to give
employment to two hundred thousand women, to sav nothing
of the managers, and the runners, and the men who live off
the women. There are thousands of resorts, large and small,
high-priced and cheap, and the police know all about it, and
derive a handsome income from it. And you find it the same
in every great city of the world; in every port where sailors
land, or every place where crowds of men are expected. If
there is to be a football game, or a political convention, the
managers of the industry know about it, and while they
may never have heard the libel that Socialism preaches sex-
ual license, they all know that capitalism practices it, and
they provide the necessary means. In the United States
there are estimated to be a half a million prostitutes, count-
ing the inmates of houses alone.
During the late war, at the army bases in France, the
British government maintained official brothels; but if you
published anything about this in England, you ran a chance
of having your paper suppressed. During the occupation of
the Rhine country, the French sent in negro troops, savages
from the heart of Africa, whose custom it is to cut off the
ears of their enemies in battle; and the French army com-
pelled the German population to supply white women for
these troops. I have quoted in "The Brass Check" a pious
editorial from the Los Angeles Times, bidding the mothers
of America be happy, because "our boys in France" were
safe in the protecting arms of the Y. M. C. A. and the Knights
of Columbus. I dared not publish at this time a passage
which I had clipped from the London Clarion, in which A. M.
Thompson told how he watched the "doughboys" in the cafes
32 Love and Society
of Paris, with a girl on each knee, and a glass of wine in
each hand.
I will add one little anecdote, giving you a glimpse of the
sex conventions of war. The American army made desperate
efforts to keep down venereal disease, and required all men
to report to their regimental surgeon immediately after hav-
ing had sex relations. Our army moved into Coblentz, and
the regulations strictly forbade any fraternizing with the
inhabitants. But immediately it was discovered that there
was an increase of disease, and investigation was made, and
revealed that men had been ceasing to report to the surgeons,
because they were afraid of being punished for having "frat-
ernized with the enemy." So a new order was issued, pro-
viding that having sexual intercourse would not be considered
as "fraternizing." I do not know any better way to distinguish
my ideal of morality from the military ideal, than to say
that according to my understanding of it, the sex relationship
should always and everywhere imply and include "fraterniz-
mg.
Finally, in concluding this picture of our present-day sex
arrangements, there is a brief word to be said about divorce.
In the year 1916, the last statistics available as I write, there
were just over a million marriages in the United States, and
there were over one hundred and twelve thousand divorces.
This would indicate that one marriage in every nine resulted in
shipwreck. But as a matter of fact the proportion is greater,
because the marriages necessarily precede the divorces, and the
proportion of divorces in 1916 should be calculated upon the
number of marriages which took place some five or ten years
previously. Of the one million marriages in 1916, we may say
that one in seven or one in eight will end in the divorce
courts. Let this suffice for a gHmpse of the system of mar-
riage-plus-prostitution — a field of weeds which we have some-
how to plow up and prepare for a harvest of rational and
honest love!
CHAPTER XXXIII
SEX AND NATURE
(Maintains that our sex disorders are not the result of nat-
yral or physical disharmony.)
Elie Metchnikoff, one of the greatest of scientists, wrote
a book entitled "The Nature of Man," in which he studied
the human organism from the point of view of biology,
demonstrating that in our bodies are a number of relics of
past stages of evolution, no longer useful, but rather a source
of danger and harm. We have, for example, in the inner
corner of the eye a relic of that third eyelid whereby the
eagle is enabled to look at the sun. This is a harmless relic.
But we have also an appendix, a degenerate organ of diges-
tion, or gland of secretion, which now serves as a center of
infection and source of danger. We have likewise a lower
bowel, a survival of our hay-eating days, and a cause of auto-
intoxication and premature death. Among the sources of
trouble, MetchnikoflF names the fact that the human male
possesses a far greater quantity of sexual energy than is
required for purposes of procreation. This becomes a cause
of disharmony and excess, it causes man to wreck his health
and destroy himself.
Manifestly, this is a serious matter; for if it is true,
our efforts to find health and happiness in love are doomed
to failure, and Lecky is right when he describes the prosti-
tute as the "guardian of virtue," the eternal and necessary
scapegoat of humanity. But I do not believe it is true; I
think that here is one more case of the endless blundering
of scientists and philosophers who attempt to teach physi-
ology, politics, religion and law, without having made a study
of economics. I do not believe that the sex troubles of
mankind are physiological in their nature, but have their
origin in our present system of class privilege. I believe
they are caused, not by the blunders of nature, but by the
blunders of man as a social animal.
Let us take a glimpse at primitive man. I choose the
Marquesas Islands, because we have complete reports about
33
34 Love and Society
them from numerous observers. Here was a race of people,
not interfered with by civilization, who manifested all that
overplus of sexual energy to which Metchnikoff calls atten-
tion. They placed no restraint whatever upon sex activity,
they had no conception of such an idea. Their games and
dances were sex play, and so also, in great part, was their
religion. Yet we do not find that they wrecked themselves.
Physically speaking, they were one of the most perfect races
of which we have record. Both the men and women were
beautiful; they were active and strong from childhood to
old age, and — here is the significant thing — ^they were happy.
They were a laughing, dancing, singing race. They hardly
knew grief or fear at all. They knew how to live, and they
enjoyed every process and aspect of their lives, just as children
do, naively and simply. This included their sex life; and
I think it assures us that there can be no such fundamental
physical disharmony in the human organism as the great Rus-
sian scientist thought he had discovered.
Is it not a fact that throughout nature a superfluity of
any kind of energy or product may be a source of happiness,
rather than of distress? Consider the singing of the birds!
Or consider nature's impulse to cover a field with useless
plants, and how by a little cunning, we are able to turn it into
a harvest for our own use! In the life of our bodies one
may show the same thing again and again. We have within
us the possibility of and the impulse toward more muscular
activity than our survival makes necessary; but we do not
regard this additional energy as a curse of nature, and a
peril to our lives — we turn out and play baseball. We have
an impulse to see more than is necessary, so we climb moun-
tains, or go traveling. We have an impulse to hear more,
so we go to a concert. We have an impulse to think more,
so we play chess, or whist, or write books and accumulate
libraries. Never do we think of these activities as signs of
an irrevocable blunder on the part of nature.
But about the activities of love we feel differently; and
why is this? If I say that it is because we have an unwhole-
some and degraded attitude toward love, because, as a result
of religious superstition we fear it, and dare not deal with
it honestly, the reader may suspect that I am preparing to
hint at some self-indulgence, some form of sex orgy such
as the "turkey trot" and the "bunny hug" and the "grizzly
The Book of Love 35
bear," the "shimmy" and the "toddle" and the "cuddle." I
hasten to explain that I do not mean any of the abnormali-
ties and monstrosities of present-day fashionable life. Neither
do I mean that we should set out to emulate the happy can-
nibals in the South Seas. In the Book of the Mind I set
forth as carefully as I knew how, the difference between
nature and man, the life of instinct and the life of reason.
It is my conviction that if civilized life is to go on, there
must be a far wider extension of judgment and self-control
in human affairs; our lost happiness will be found, not by
going "back to nature," but by going forward to a new and
higher state, planned by reason and impelled by moral ideal-
ism.
But we find ourselves face to face with horrible sex dis-
orders, and a great scientist tells us they are nature's tragic
blunder, of which we are the helpless victims. Manifestly,
the way to decide this question is to go to nature, and see if
primitive people, having the same physical organism as ours,
had the same troubles and spent their lives in the same
misery. If they did, then it may be that we are doomed;
but if they did not, then we can say with certainty that it is
not nature, but ourselves, who have blundered. Our task
then becomes to apply reason to the problem; to take our
present sex arrangements, our field of bad-smelling weeds,
and plow it thoroughly, and sow it with good seed, and raise
a harvest of happiness in love. It is my belief that, admitting
true love — honest and dignified and rational love — it is pos-
sible to pour into it any amount of sex energy, to invent a
whole new system of beautiful and happy love play.
CHAPTER XXXIV
LOVE AND ECONOMICS
(Maintains that our sex disorders are of social origin, due to
the displacing of love by money as a motive in mating.)
If the cause of our sex disorders is not physiological,
what is it? Everything in nature must have a cause, and
this includes human nature, the actions and feelings of men,
both as individuals and as groups. We hear the saying : "You
can't change human nature" ; but the fact is that human nature
is one of the most changeable things in the world. We can
watch it changing from age to age, for better or for worse,
and if we had the intelligence to use the forces now at our
command, we could mold human nature, as precisely as a
brewer converts a carload of hops into a certain brand of
beer. Voltaire was author of the saying, "Vice and virtue
are products like vinegar."
Our civilization is based upon industrial exploitation and
class privilege, the monopoly of the means of production and
the natural sources of wealth by a group. This enables the
privileged group to live in idleness upon the labor of the
rest of society; it confers unlimited power with practically
no responsibility — a strain which not one human being in a
thousand has the moral strength to endure. History for the
past five thousand years is one demonstration after another
that the conferring upon a class of power without responsi-
bility means the collapse of that class and the downfall of
its civilization.
So far as concerns the ruling class male, what the system
of privilege does is to give him unlimited ability to indulge
his sex desires. What it does for the female is to submit
her to the male desires, and to abolish that mutuality in sex,
that interaction between male and female influence, which is
the very essence of its purpose. Woman, in a predatory
society, is subject to a double enslavement, that of class as
well as of sex, and the result is the perverting of sexual
selection, and a constantly increasing tendency towards the
survival of the unfit.
36
The Book of Love 37
In a state of nature the males compete among them-
selves for the favor of the female. The female is not raped,
nor is she kidnapped; on the contrary, she exercises her
prerogative, she inspects the various male charms which are
set before her, and selects those which please her, according
to her deeply planted instincts. The result is that the weak
and unfit males seldom have a chance to reproduce them-
selves, and the procreating is done by the highest specimens
of the type.
But now we have a world which is ruled by money, in
which opportunity, and indeed survival, depend upon money,
and the whole tendency of society is to make money stand-
ards supreme. We do not like to admit this, of course;
our instincts revolt against it, and our higher faculties rein-
force the revolt, so we carefully veil our money motives,,
and invent polite phrases to conceal them. You will hear
people deny it is money which determines admission into what
is called "society," the intimate life of the ruling class. They
will tell you that it is not money, it is "good taste," "refine-
ment," "charm of personality," and so on. But if you analyze
all these things, you speedily discover that they are made out
of money; they are symbols 6f the possession of money,
devised by those who possess it, as a means of keeping them-
selves apart from those who do not possess it. I would safely
defy a member of the ruling class to name a single element
in what he calls "refinement," or "good taste," that is not in
its ultimate analysis a symbol of the possession of money.
Let it be the pronunciation of a word, or the cut of a coat,
or the method of handling a fork — whatever it may be, it
is part of a code, revealing that the person, or more impor-
tant yet, the ancestors of the person, have belonged to the
leisure class, and have had time and opportunity to learn to
do things in a certain precise conventional way. I say "con-
ventional," for very frequently these tests have no relation-
ship whatever to reality. Considered as a matter of common
sense and convenience, it is a great deal better to eat peas
with a spoon than with a fork, and to use both a knife and
fork in eating lettuce; but if you eat peas with a spoon, or
use a knife on lettuce, every member of the ruling class will
instantly know that you are an interloper, as much so as
if you took to throwing the china at your hostess.
Our culture is a money culture, our standards are money
38 Love and Society
standards, and our sex decisions are based upon money, not
upon love. Any man can have money in our society, provided
the accident of birth favors him, and it is everywhere known
that any man who has money can get a wife. It is certainly
not true that any man with no money can get a wife, and
it is true that most men who have little money have to
take wives who have less — that is, who belong to a lower
class, according to the world's standards. The average young
girl of the propertied classes is trained for marriage as for
any other business. She is taught to be sexually cold, but
to imitate sexual excitement deliberately, so as to arouse it
in the male, and to keep herself surrounded with a swarm
of males; this being the basis of her prestige, the factor
which will cause the "eligible" man, the "catch," to desire
her. In polite society this proceeding is known as "coquetry,"
or "charm," and it would be no exaggeration to say that
seventy-five per cent of all the novels so far written in the
world are expositions of this activity; also that when we
go to the theater, we go in order to watch and sympathize
with these manifestations of pecuniary sexuality.
As a rule the young girl knows what she is doing, but
she is taught to camouflage it, to preserve her "innocence."
She would not dream of marrying for money; she wants to
marry something "distinguished" — that is to say, something
which has received the stamp of approval from a world which
approves money. She wants to marry somebody who is
"elegant," who is in "good form"; she wants to marry with-
out having to think about the horrid subject of money at all,
and so she is carefully chaperoned, and confined to a world
where nothing but money is to be met. In Tennyson's poem,
"The Northern Farmer," the old fellow is coaching his son
on the subject of marriage, and they are driving along a
road, and the farmer listens to his horses' hoofs, and they are
saying, "Proputty, proputty, proputty !" The farmer sums up
in one sentence the doctrine of pecuniary marriage as it is
taught to the ruling class virgin: "Doan't thee marry for
money, but goa wheer money is."
In this process, of course, the ruling class virgin must
spend a great deal of money in order to keep up her own
prestige; and when she is married, she must spend it to
keep up the prestige of her unmarried sisters, and then of
her children. As a result of this, the only ruling class males
The Book of Love 39
who can afford to marry are the rich ones. There are always
some who are richer, and these are the most desirable; so
the tendency with each generation is to put the period of
marriage further off; the man has to wait until he has accu-
mulated enough "proputty" to satisfy the girl of his desires —
a girl whom he admires because of her pecuniary prestige-
He delays, and meantime he satisfies his passions with the
daughters of the poor. As a result of this, when he does
finally come to marry, he is apt to be unlovely and unlovable.
The woman frequently does not love him at all, but takes
him cold-bloodedly because he is "eligible"; in that case she
is a cold and "sexless" wife. Or else, after she has married
him she discovers his unloveliness, and either decides that
all men are selfish brutes, and reconciles herself to a celibate
life, or else she goes out and preys upon the domestic hap-
piness of other women.
CHAPTER XXXV
MARRIAGE AND MONEY
(Discusses the causes of prostitution, and that higher form
of prostitution known as the "marriage of convenience.")
I realize that all these sex problems are complipated.
Every case is individual, and in no two cases can you give
exactly the same explanation. But it is my thesis that what-
ever the cause, if you trace down the causes of the cause,
you will find economic inequality and class privilege. It is
evident in the lives of the rich, and it is even more evident
in the lives of the poor, who are not permitted the luxury
of pretense. The poor live in a world dominated by forces
■which they seldom understand, subjected to enormous pres-
sure which crushes and destroys them, without their being
able to see it or touch it. In the world of the poor there
is first of all poverty; there is insecurity of employment and
insufficiency of wage, and the daily and hourly terror of star-
vation and ruin. Above this is a world of power and luxury,
a wonderland of marvels and thrills, seen through a colored
mist of romance. The working-class girl, born to drudgery
and perpetual child-bearing, has a brief hour in which her
cheeks are red and her beauty is ripe; and out of the heaven
above her steps a male creature panoplied in the armor of
ruling class prestige — ^that is to say, a dress suit — and scatter-
ing about him a shower of automobile rides, jewelry and candy
and flowers. She opens her arms to him; and then, when
her brief hour of rapture is past, she becomes the domestic
drudge of some workingman, or else the inmate of a brothel.
It is a custom of social workers and church people, seek-
ing data about these painful subjects, to interview numbers
of prostitutes, and question them as to the causes of their
"fall"; so you read statistics to the effect that seventeen per
cent of prostitution has an economic cause, that twenty-six
per cent is caused by love of finery, etc. These pious people,
employed by the ruling class to maintain ruling class prestige
by demonstrating that wage slavery has nothing to do with
40
The Book of Love *l
white slavery, attain their purpose by restricting the word
"economic" to food and shelter; forgetting that young girls
do not live by bread alone, but also by ribbons, and silk
stockings, and moving picture shows, and trips to Coney Island,
and everything else that gives a momentary escape from
drudgery into joy. We all understand, of course, that the
daughters of the rich are entitled to joy, and we provide
them with it as a matter of course; but the daughters of
the poor are supposed to work in a cotton mill ten or eleven
hours a day from earliest childhood, and the joy we provide
for them is vicarious. As a woman poet sets it forth:
"The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day.
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play."
Some years ago my wife and I were invited to meet Mrs.
Mary J. Goode, a keeper of brothels in the "Tenderloin,"
who had revolted against the system of police graft, and had
exposed it in the newspapers. My wife questioned her closely
as to the psychology of people in her business, and she insisted
that the majority of prostitutes were not oversexed, nor were
they feeble minded; they were women who had loved and
trusted, and had been "thrown down." As Mrs. Goode
phrased it, they said to themselves: "Never again! After
this, they'll pay!"
As a matter of fact, the causes of prostitution are so
largely economic that the other factors are hardly worth men-
tioning. The sale of sex is unknown in savage society, and
would be unknown in a Socialist society. If here and there
some degenerate individual would rather sell her sex than
do her share of honest labor in a free and just world, such
an individual would become a patient in the psychopathic
ward of a public hospital. Economic forces drive women to
prostitution, first, by direct starvation, and second, by teach-
ing them money standards of prestige, the ideal of living
without working, which is the heaven achieved by the rich
and longed for by the poor. Contributory to the process
are policemen, politicians, and judges who protect the prop-
erty of the rich, and prey upon the disinherited; also news-
paper editors, college professors, priests of God and preach-
42 Lo\TE AND Society
ers of Jesus, who attribute the social evil to "original sin,"
or the "weakness of human nature."
So far as men are concerned, economic forces operate
by three main channels ; late marriage, loveless marriage, and
drudgery in wives. You will find patronizing and maintain-
ing the brothels the following kinds of males; first, young
boys who have been taught that it is "manly" to gratify their
sex impulses; second, young men who take it for granted
that they cannot afford to marry; third, old bachelors who
have looked at marriage and decided that it is not a paying
proposition; fourth, married men who have been picked out
for their money, and have come to the conclusion that "good
women" are necessarily sexless; and finally, married men
whose wives have lost the power to charm them by continuous
childbearing, and the physical and nervous strain of domestic
slavery.
This latter applies not merely to the wives of the poor.
It applies to members of the middle classes, and even of the
richer classes, because the job of managing many servants
is often as trying as the doing of one's own work. To explain
how domestic drudgery is caused by economic pressure would
require a little essay in itself. The home is the place where
the man keeps his sex property apart under lock and key,
and it is, therefore, the portion of our civilization least
influenced by modern ideas. Women still drudge in separate
kitchens and nurseries, as they have drudged for thousands
of years. They cook their dinners over separate fires, and
have each their own little group of children, generally ill cared
for, because the work is done by an untrained amateur.
Moreover, the prestige of this home has to be kept up, because
the social position and future prosperity of the man depend
upon it. The children must be dressed in frilled and starched
clothing, which makes them miserable, and wears out the
tempers and pocketbooks of the mothers. Costly entertain-
ments must be given, and twice a day a meal must be prepared
for the father of the family — all good wives have learned the
ancient formula for the retention of masculine affections:
"Feed the brute!" Living in a world of pecuniary prestige,
every particle of the woman's surplus energy must go into
some form of ostentation, into buying or making things which
are futile and meaningless. In such a blind world, dazed by
such a struggle, women become irritable, they lose their sex
The Book of Love 43
charm, they forget all about love; so the husband gives up
hoping for the impossible, accepts the common idea that love
and marriage are incompatible, and adopts the formula that
what his wife doesn't know will not hurt her.
And step by step, as economic evolution progresses, as
vested wealth becomes more firmly established and claims for
itself a larger and larger share of the total product of society
— so step by step you find the pecuniary ideals becoming more
firmly established, you find marriage becoming more and
more a matter of property, and less and less a matter of love.
In European countries there may still be some love mar-
riages among the poor, but in the upper classes there is no
longer any pretense of such a thing, and if you spoke of it
you would be considere'd absurd. In countries of fresh and
naive commercialism, like America, the women select the men
because of their money prestige ; but in Germany, the process
has gone a step further — ^the men are so firmly established
in their class positions that they insist upon being bought
with a fortune. The same is true when titled foreigners
condescend to visit our "land of the dollar." They will
stoop to a vulgar American wife only in case her parents
will make a direct settlement of a fortune upon the husband,
and then they take her back home, and find their escape from
boredom in the highly cultivated mistresses of their own land.
Everywhere on the Continent, and in Great Britain also,
it is accepted that marriages are matters of business, and
only incidentally and very slightly of aflrection. The initiative
is commonly taken, not by the young people, but by the heads
of the families. Preliminary protocols are exchanged, and
then the family solicitors sit down and bargain over the mat-
ter. If they were making a deal for a carload of hams, they
would be governed by the market price of hams at the moment,
also by the reputation of that particular brand of ham; and
similarly, in the case of marriage, they are governed by the
prestige of the family names, and the market price of hus-
bands prevailing. Always the man exacts a cash settlement,
and in Catholic countries he becomes the outright owner of
all the property of his wife, thus reducing her completely to
the status of a chattel. If any young couple dares to break
through these laws of their class, the whole class unites to
trample them down. One of the greatest of English novel-
ists, George Meredith, wrote his greatest novel, "The Ordeal
44 Love and Society
of Richard Feverel," to show how, under the most favorable
circumstances, the union of a ruling class youth with a farm-
er's daughter could result in nothing but shipwreck.
The country in which the property marriage is most firmly
established is probably France; and in France the rights of
nature are recognized in a kind of supplementary union,
which constitutes what is known as the "domestic triangle,"
or in the French language, "la vie trois." The young girl
of the French ruling classes is guarded every moment of her
life like a prisoner in jail. She is sold in marriage, and is
expected to bear her husband an heir, possibly two or three
children. After that, she is considered, not under the law or
by the church, but by the general common sense of the com-
munity, to be free to seek satisfaction of her love needs. Her
husband has mistresses, and she has a lover, and to that
lover she is faithful, and in her dealings with him she is
guided by an elaborate and subtle code. Practically all French
fiction and drama deal with this "life in threes," and the com-
plications and tragedies which result from it. I name one
novel, simply because it happens to be the last that I myself
have read, "The Red Lily," by Anatole France.
Of course, every human being knows in his heart that
this is a monstrous arrangement, and there are. periods of
revolt when real feeling surges up in the hearts of men, and
we have stories of true love, young and unselfish love, such
<U for example as Goethe's "Hermann and Dorothea," or St.
' Pierre's "Paul and Virginia," or Halevy's "L'Abbe Constan-
tin." Everybody reads these stories and weeps over them,
but everybody knows that they are like the romantic shepherds
and shepherdesses of the ancient regime; they never had any
existence in reality, and are not meant to be taken seriously. If
anybody attempts to carry them into action, or to preach them
seriously to the young, then we know that we are dealing
with a disturber of the foundations of the social order, a
dangerous and incendiary villain, and we give him a name
which sends a shudder down the spine of every friend of
law and order — we call him a "free-lover."
I see before my eyes the wretch cowering upon the witness
stand, and the virtuous district attorney, who has perhaps
spent the previous night in a brothel, pointing a finger of
accusing wrath into his face, and thundering, "Do you believe
in free love?" The wretch, if he is wise, will not hesitate
The Book of Love 45
or parley ; he will not ask what the district attorney means by
love, or what he means by freedom. Here in very truth is a
case where "he who hesitates is lost !" Let the wretch instantly
answer. No, he does not believe in free love, he believes in
love that pays cash as it goes; he believes in love that
investigates carefully the prevailing market conditions, decides
upon a reasonable price, has the contract in writing, and lives
up to the bargain — "till death do us part." If the witness
be a woman, let the answer be that she believes in slave love ;
that she expects to be sold for the benefit of her parents,
the prestige of her family and the social position of her future
offspring. Let her say that she will be a loyal and devoted
servant, and will never do anything at any time to invalidate
the contract which is signed for her by her parents or
guardians.
CHAPTER XXXVI
LOVE VERSUS LUST
(Discusses the sex impulse, its use and misuse; when it should
be followed and when repressed.)
We have considered the sex disorders of our age and
their causes. We have now to grope our way towards a basis
of sanity and health in these vital matters.
Consider man, as Metchnikoff describes him, with his over-
plus of sex energy. From early youth he is besieged by
impulses and desires, and as a rule is left entirely uninstructed
on the subject, having to pick up his ideas from the conver-
sation of older lads, who have nothing but misinformation
and perversions to give him. Nearly all these older lads
declare and believe that it is necessary to gratify the sex
impulse, that physically it is harmful not to do so. I have
even heard physicians and trainers maintain that idea. Op-
posed to them are the official moralists and preachers of
religion, who declare that to follow the sex impulse, except
when officially sanctioned by the church, is to commit sin.
At different times in my life I have talked with all kinds
of people, young and old, men and women, doctors and clergy-
men, teachers and trainers of athletes, and a few wise and
loving mothers who have talked with their own boys and
other boys. As a result I have come to agree with neither
side in the debate. I believe that there is a distinction which
must be drawn, and I ask you to consider it carefully, and
bear it in mind in all that I say on the problem of happiness
and health in sex.
I believe that a normal man is one being, manifesting
himself in various aspects, physical, emotional, intellectual.
I believe that all these aspects of human activity go normally
together, and cannot normally be separated, and that the
separation of them is a perversion and source of harm. I
believe that the sex impulse, as it normally manifests itself,
and would manifest itself in a man if he were living a normal
life, is an impuse which includes every aspect of the man's
being. It is not merely physical desire and emotional excite-
46
The Book of Love 47
ment; it is intellectual curiosity, a deep and intense interest,
not merely in the body, but in the mind and heart and per-
sonality of the woman.
I appreciate that there is opportunity for controversy here.
As a matter of psychology, it is not easy to separate instinct
from experience, to state whether a certain impulse is innate
or acquired. Some may argue that savages know nothing
about idealism in sex, neither do those modern savages whom
we breed in city slums; some may make the same assertion
concerning a great mass of loutish and sensual youths. We
have got so far from health and soundness that it is hard
to be sure what is "normal" and what is "ideal." But with-
out going into metaphysics, I think we can reasonably make
the following statement concerning the sex impulse at its
first appearance in the average healthy youth in civilized
societies; that this impulse, going to the roots of the being,
affecting every atom of energy and every faculty, is accom-
panied, not merely by happiness, but by sympathetic delight
in the happiness of the woman, by interest in the woman, by
desire to be with her, to stay with her and share her life and
protect her from harm. In what I have to say about the
subject from now on, I shall describe this condition of being
and feeling by the word "love."
But now suppose that men should, for some reason or
other, evolve a set of religious ideas which denied love, and
repudiated love, and called it a sin and a humiliation; or
suppose there should be an economic condition which made
love a peril, so that the young couple which yielded to love
would be in danger of starvation, or of seeing their children
starve. Suppose there should be evolved classes of men and
women, held by society in a condition of permanent semi-
starvation; then, under such conditions, the impulse to love
would become a trap and a source of terror. Then the ener-
gies of a great many men would be devoted to suppressing
love and strangling it in themselves; then the intellectual and
spiritual sanctions of love would be withdrawn, the beauty
and charm and joy would go out of it, and it would become
a starvling beggar at the gates, or a thief skulking in the
night-time, or an assassin with a dagger and club. In other
words, sex would become all the horror that it is today, in
the form of purchased vice, and more highly purchased mar-
riage, and secret shame, and obscure innuendo. So we should
48 Love and Society
have what is, in a civiHzed man, a perversion, the possibility
of love which is physical alone; a purely animal thing in a
being who is not purely animal, but is body, mind and spirit
all together. So it would be possible for pitiful, unhappy
man, driven by the blind urge of nature, to conceive of desir-
ing a woman only in the body, and with no care about what
she felt, or what she thought, or what became of her after-
wards.
That purely physical sex desire I will indicate in our
future discussions by the only convenient word that I can
find, which is lust. The word has religious implications,
so I explain that I use it in my own meaning, as above.
There is a great deal of what the churches call lust, which
I call true and honest love; on the other hand, in Christian
•churches today, there are celebrated innumerable marriages
between innocent young girls and mature men of property,
which I describe as legalized and consecrated lust.
We are now in position to make a fundamental distinc-
tion. I assert the proposition that there does not exist, in
any man, at any time of his life, or in any condition of his
health, a necessity for yielding to the impulses of lust; and
I say that no man can yield to them without degrading his
nature and injuring himself, not merely morally, but men-
tally, and in the long run physically. I assert that it is the
duty of every man, at all times and under all circumstances,
to resist the impulses of lust, to suppress and destroy them
in his nature, by whatever expenditure of will power and
moral effort may be required.
I know physicians who maintain the unpopular thesis that
serious damage may be done to the physical organism of both
man and woman by the long continued suppression of the sex-
life. Let me make plain that I am not disagreeing with
such men. I do not deny that repression of the sex-life
may do harm. What I do deny is that it does any harm to
repress a physical desire which is unaccompanied by the
higher elements of sex; that is to say, by affection, admira-
tion, and unselfish concern for the sex-partner and her wel-
fare. When I advise a man to resist and suppress and destroy
the impulse toward lust in his nature, I am not telling him
to live a sexless life. P I am telling him that if he represses
lust, then love will come; whereas, if he yields to lust, then
love may never come, he may make himself incapable of love,
The Book of Love 49
incapable of feeling it or of trusting it, or of inspiring it in
a woman. And I say that if, on the other hand, he resists
lust, he will pour all the energies of his being into the chan-
nels of affection and idealism. Instead of having his thoughts
diverted by every passing female form, his energies will be-
come concentrated upon the search for one woman who
appeals to him in permanent and useful ways. We may be
sure that nature has not made men and women incompatible,
but on the contrary, has provided for fulfillment of the desires
of both. The man will find some woman who is looking
for the thing which he has to offer — ^that is, lov£^
And now, what about the suppression of love? Here I
am willing to go as far as any physician could desire, and
possibly farther. Speaking generally, and concerning nor-
mal adult human beings, I say that the suppression of love
is a crime against nature and life. I say that long continued
and systematic suppression of love exercises a devastating
effect, not merely upon the body, but upon the mind and all
the energies of the being. I say that the doctrine of the sup-
pression of love, no matter by whom it is preached, is an
affront to nature and to life, and an insult to the creator of
life. I say that it is the duty of all men and women, not
merely to assert their own right to love, but to devote their
energies to a war upon whatever ideas and conventions and
laws in society deny the love-right.
The belief that long continued suppression of love does
grave harm has been strongly reinforced in the last few years
by the discovery of psycho-analysis, a science which enables
us to explofe our unconscious minds, and lay bare the secrets
of nature's psychic workshop. These revelations have made
plain that sex plays an even more important part in our men-
tal lives than we realized. Sex feeling manifests itself, not
merely in grown people, but in the tiniest infants; in these
latter it has of course no object in the opposite sex, but the
physical sensations are there, and some of their outward mani-
festations; and as the infant grows, and realizes the outside
world, the feelings come to center upon others, the parents
first of all. These manifestations must be guided, and some-
times repressed; but if this is done violently, by means of
terror, the consequences may be very harmful — ^the wrong
impulses or the terrors may survive as a "complex" in the
unconscious mind, and cause a long chain of nervous disorders
50 Love and Society
and physical weaknesses in the adult. These things are no
matter of guesswork, they have been proven as thoroughly
as any scientific discovery, and are used in a new technic of
healing. Of course, as with every new theory, there are
unbalanced people who carry it to extremes. There are
fanatics of Freudianism who talk as if everything in the
human unconsciousness were sex; but that need not blind us
to the importance of these new jliscoveries, and the confir-
mation they bring to the thesis [that sane and normal love,
wisely guided by common sense and reasoned knowledge, is
at a certain period of life a vital necessity to every sound
human being/}
CHAPTER XXXVII
CELIBACY VERSUS CHASTITY
(The ideal of the repression of the sex impulse, as against the
ideal of its guidance and cultivation.)
There are two words which we need in this discussion,
and as they are generally used loosely, they must now be
defined precisely. The two words are celibacy and chastity.
We define celibacy as the permanent and systematic suppres-
sion of love. We define chastity, on the other hand, as the
permanent and systematic suppression of lust. Chastity, as
the word is here used, is not a denial of love, but a preparing
for it; it is the practice and the ideal, necessary especially
in the young, of consecrating their beings to the search for love,
and to becoming worthy for love. In that sense we regard
chastity as one of the most essential of virtues in the young.
It is widely taught today, but ineffectively, because unintel-
ligently and without discrimination; because, in other words,
it is confused with celibacy, which is a perversion of life, and
one of humanity's intellectual and moral diseases.
The origin of the ideal of celibacy is easy to understand.
At a certain stage in human development the eyes of the mind
are opened, and to some man comes a revelation of the life
of altruism and sympathetic imagination. To use the com-
mon phrase, the man discovers his spiritual nature. But under
the conditions then prevailing, all the world outside him is
in a conspiracy to strangle that nature, to drag it down and
trample it into the mire. One of the most powerful of these
destructive agencies, as it seems to the man, is sex. By
means of sex he is laid hold upon by strange and terrible
creatures who do not understand his higher vision, but seek
only to prey upon him, and use him for their convenience.
At the worst they rob him of everything, money, health, time
and reputation; at best, they saddle him and bridle him, they
put him in harness and set him to dragging a heavy load. In
the words of a wise old man of the world, Francis Bacon,
"He who marries and has children gives hostages to fortune."
In a world wherein war, pestilence, and famine held sway,
61
52 Love and Society
the man of family had but slight chance of surviving as a
philosopher or prophet or saint. Discovering in himself a
deep-rooted and overwhelming impulse to fall into this snare,
he imagined a devil working in his heart; so he fled away
to the desert, and hid in a cave, and starved himself, and
lashed himself with whips, and allowed worms and lice to
devour his body, in the effort to destroy in himself the
impulse of sex.
So the world had monasteries, and a religious culture,
not of much use, but better than nothing; and so we still have
in the world celibate priesthoods, and what is more danger-
ous to our social health, we have the old, degraded notions
of the essential vileness of the sex relationship — notions per-
meating all our thought, our literature, our social conventions
and laws, making it impossible for us to attain true wisdom
and health and happiness in love.
I say the ideal of celibacy is an intellectual and moral
disease ; it is a violation of nature, and nature devotes all her
energies to breaking it down, and she always succeeds. There
never has been a celibate religious order, no matter how noble
its origin and how strict its discipline, which has not sooner
or later become a breeding place of loathsome unnatural
vices. And sooner or later the ideal begins to weaken, and
common vSense to take its place, and so we read in history
about popes who had sons, and we see about us priests who
have "nieces" and attractive servant girls. Make the acquain-
tance of any police sergeant in any big city of America, and
get him to chatting on friendly terms, and you will discover
that it is a common experience for the police in their raids
upon brothels to catch the representatives of celibate religious
orders. As one old-timer in the "Tenderloin" of New York
said to me, "Of course, we don't make any trouble for the
good fathers." Nor was this merely because the old sergeant
was an Irishman and a Catholic; it was because deep down
in his heart he knew, as every man knows, that the craving
of a man for the society and companionship of a woman is
an overwhelming craving, which will break down every bar-
rier that society may set against it.
There is another form of celibacy which is not based upon
religious ideas, but is economic in its origin, and purely
selfish in its nature. It is unorganized and unreasoned, and
is known as "bachelorhood"; it has as its complements the
The Book of Love 68
institutions of old maidenhood and of prostitution. Both
forms of celibacy, the religious and the economic, are entirely
incompatible with chastity, which is only possible where love
is recognized and honored. Chastity is a preparation for love ;
and if you forbid love, whether by law, or by social conven-
tion, or by economic strangling, you at once make chastity a
Utopian dream. You may preach it from your pulpits until
you are black in the face; you may call out your Billy Sun-
days to rave, and dance, and go into convulsions; you may
threaten hell-fire and brimstone until you throw whole audi-
ences into spasms — but you will never make them chaste. On
the contrary, strange and horrible as it may seem, those very
excitements will turn into sexual excitements before your
eyes! So subtle is our ancient mother nature, and so deter-
mined to have her own way !
The abominable old ideal of celibacy, with its hatred of
womanhood, its distrust of happiness, its terror of devils,
is not yet dead in the world. It is in our very bones, and
is forever appearing in new and supposed to be modern forms.
Take a man like Tolstoi, who gained enormous influence, not
merely in Russia, but throughout the world among people who
think themselves liberal — humanitarians, pacifists, philosophic
anarchists. Tolstoi's notions about sex, his teachings and
writings and likewise his behavior toward it, were one con-
tinuous manifestation of disease. All through his youth and
middle years, as an army officer, popular novelist, and darling
of the aristocracy, his life was one of license, and the attitude
toward women he thus acquired, he never got out of his
thoughts to his last day. Gorky, meeting him in his old age,
reports his conversation as unpleasantly obscene, and his whole
attitude toward women one of furtive and unwholesome sly-
ness.
But Tolstoi was in other ways a great soul, one of the
great moral consciences of humanity. He looked about him
at a world gone mad with greed and hate, and he made con-
vulsive efforts to reform his own spirit and escape the power
of evil. As regards sex, his thought took the form of ancient
Christian celibacy. Man must repudiate the physical side of
sex, he must learn to feel toward women a "pure" affection,
the relationship of brother and sister. In his novel, "Resur-
rection," Tolstoi portrays a young aristocrat who meets a
beautiful peasant girl and conceives for her such a noble and
6
54 Love and Society
generous emotion; but gradually the poison of physical sex-
desire steals into his mind, he seduces her, and she becomes
a prostitute. Later in life, when he discovers the crime he
has committed, he humbles himself and follows her into exile,
and wins her to God and goodness by the unselfish and un-
sexual love which he should have maintained from the begin-
ning.
It was Tolstoi's teaching that all men should aspire toward
this kind of love, and when it was pointed out to him that if
this doctrine were to be applied universally, the human race
would become extinct, his answer was that there was no rea-
son to fear that, because only a few people would be good
enough and strong enough to follow the right ideal ! Here
you see the reincarnation of the old Christian notion that we
are "conceived in sin and born in iniquity." We may be pure
and good, and cease to exist; or we may sin, and let life
continue. Some choose to sin, and these sinners hand
down their sinful qualities to the future; and so virtue
and goodness remain what they have always been, a futile
crying out in the wilderness by a few religious prophets, whom
God has sent to call down destruction upon a world which
He had made — ^through some mistake never satisfactorily
explained !
It is easy nowadays to persuade intelligent people to laugh
at such a perverted view of life; but the truth is that this
attitude toward sex is written, not merely into our religious
creeds and formulas, but into most of our laws and social
conventions. It is this, which for convenience I will call the
"monkish" view of love, which prevents our dealing frankly
and honestly with its problems, distinguishing between v/hat
is wrong and what is right, and doing anything effective to
remedy the evils of marriage-plus-prostitution. That is why
I have tried so carefully to draw the distinction between what
I call love and what I call lust ; between the ideal of celibacy,
which is a perversion, and the idea of chastity, which must
form an essential part of any regimen of true and enduring
love.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE DEFENSE OF LOVE
(Discusses passionate love, its sanction, its place in life, and
its preservation in marriage.)
I have before me as I write a newspaper article by Robert
Blatchford, a great writer and great man. He is dealing
with the subject of "Love and Marriage," and his doctrine is
summed up in the following sentences : "There is a difference
between loving a woman and falling in love with her. The
love one falls into is a sweet illusion. But that fragrant dream
does not last. In marriage there are no fairies."
This expresses one of the commonest ideas in the world.
Passionate love is one thing, and marriage is another and
different thing, and it is no more possible to reconcile them
than to mix oil and water. Our notions of "romantic" love
took their rise in the Middle Ages, from the songs and nar-
ratives of the troubadours, and this whole tradition was based
upon the glorification of illegitimate and extra-marital love.
That tradition has ruled the world of art ever since, and rules
it today. I do not exaggerate when I say that it is the con-
ventional view of grand opera and the drama, of moving pic-
tures and novels, that impassioned and thrilling love is found
before marriage, and is found in adultery and in temptations
to adultery, but is never found in marriage. I have a pretty
varied acquaintance with the literature of the world, and I
have sat and thought for quite a while, without being able to
recall a single portrait of life which contradicts this thesis;
and certainly anyone familiar with literature could name ten
thousand novels and dramas and grand operas which support
the thesis.
English and American Puritanism have beaten the tradi-
tion down to this extent : the novelist portrays the glories and
thrills of young love, and carries it as far as the altar and
the orange blossoms and white ribbons and showers of rice
— and stops. He leaves you to assume that this delightful
rapture continues forever after; but he does not attempt to
show it to you — he would not dare attempt to show it, because
55
56 Love and Society
the general experience of men and women in marriage would
make him ridiculous. So he runs away from the issue; if
he tells you a story of married life, it is a story of a "triangle"
— ^the thrills of love imperiling marriage, and either crushed
out, or else wrecking the lives of the victims. Such is the
unanimous testimony of all our arts today, and I submit it
as evidence of the fact that there must be something vitally
wrong with our marriage system.
Personally, I am prepared to go as far as the extreme
sex-radical in the defense of love and the right to love. I
believe that love is the most precious of all the gifts of life.
I accept its sanctions and its authority. I believe that it is
to be cherished and obeyed, and not to be run away from or
strangled in the heart. I believe that it is the voice of nature
speaking in the depths of us, and speaking from a wisdom
deeper than we have yet attained, or may attain for many
centuries to come. And when I say love, I do not mean
merely affection. I do not mean merely the habit of living
in the same home, which is the basis of marriage as Blatch-
ford describes it. What I mean is the love of the poets and
the dreamers, the "young love" which is thrill and ecstasy, a
glorification and a transfiguration of the whole of life. [^I say
that, far from giving up this love for marriage, it is the true
purpose of marriage to preserve this love and perpetuate itj
r" To save repetition and waste of words, let us agree that
from now on when I use the word love, I mean the passion-
ate love of those who are "in love." I believe that it is the
right of men and women to be "in love," and Jthat there is no
true marriage unless they are "in love," and stay "in love."
I believe that it is possible to apply reason to love, to learn
to understand love and the ways of love, to protect it and
keep it alive in marriage. Blatchford writes the sentence,
"Matrimony cannot be all honeymoon." I answer that as-
suredly it can be, and if you ask me how I know, I tell you
that I know in the only way we really know anything —
because I have proven it in my own life. I say that if men
and women would recognize the perpetuation of the honey-
moon as the purpose of marriage, and would devote to that
end one-hundredth part of the intelligence and energy they
now devote to the killing of their fellow human beings in
war, we might have an end to the wretched "romantic tradi-
tion" which makes the most sacred emotion of the human
The Book of Love 67
heart into a sneak-thief skulking in the darkness, entering
our lives by back alleys and secret stairways — while greed
and worldly pomp, dullness and boredom, parade in by the
front entrance--, /
In the first ^ place, what is love — young love, passionate
love, the love of those who "fall in" ? I know a certain lady,
well versed in worldly affairs, who says that it is at once
the greatest nonsense and the deadliest snare in the world.
This lady was trained as a "coquette" ; she, and all the young
ladies she knew, made it their business to cause men to fall
in love with them, and their prestige was based upon their
skill in that art. So to them "love" was a joke, and men
"in love" were victims, whether ridiculous or pitiable. To
this I answer that I know nothing in life that cannot be
"faked" ; but an imitation has value only as it resembles some-
thing that is real, and that has real value.
I am aware that it is possible for a society to be so cor-
rupted, so given up to the admiration of imitations, of the
paint and powder and silk-stocking-clad-ankle kind of love,
that true and genuine love interest, with its impulse to self-
sacrifice and self-consecration, is no longer felt or under-
stood. I am aware that in such a society it is possible for
even the very young to be so sophisticated that what they
take to be love is merely vanity, the worship of money, and
the grace and charm which the possession of money confers.
I have known girls who were "head over heels" in love, and
thought it was with a man, when quite clearly they were in
love with a dress suit or a social position. In such a society
it is hard to talk about natural emotions, and deep and abid-
ing and disinterested affections.
Nevertheless, amid all the false conventions, the sham
glories and cowardices of our civilization, there abides in the
heart the craving for true love, and the idea of it leaps con-
tinually into flame in the young. In spite of the ridicule of
the elders, in spite of blunders and tragic failures, in spite
of dishonesties and deceptions — nevertheless, it continues to
happen that out of a thousand maidens the youth finds one
whose presence thrills him with a new and terrible emotion,
whose lightest touch makes him shiver, almost makes his knees
give way.
If you will recall what I have written about instinct and
reason, you will know that I am not a blind worshipper of
58 Love and Society
our ancient mother nature. I am not humble in my attitude
toward her, but perfectly willing to say when I know more
than she does. On the other hand, when I know nothing or
next to nothing, I am shy of contradicting my ancient mother,
and disposed to give respectful heed to her promptings. One
of the things about which we know almost nothing at present
is the subject of eugenics. We are only at the beginning of
trying to find out what matings produce the best offspring.
Meantime, we ought to consider those indications which nature
gives us, just as we consider her advice about what food to
eat and what rest to take.
It is not my idea that science will ever take men and
women and marry them in cold blood, as today we breed
our cattle. What I think will happen is that young men and
women will meet one another, as they do at present, and will
find the love impulse awakening; they will then submit their
love to investigation, as to whether they should follow that
impulse, or should wait. In other words, I do not believe
that science will ever do away with the raptures of love, but
will make itself the servant of these raptures, finding out
what they mean, and how their precious essence may be
preserved.
I perfectly understand that the begetting of children is not
the only purpose of love. The children have to be reared and
trained, which means that a home has to be founded, and
the parents have to learn to co-operate. They have to have
common aims in life, and temperaments sufficiently harmo-
nious so that they can live in the house together without tear-
ing each other's eyes out. This means that in any civilized
society all impulses of love have to be subjected to severe
criticism. I intend, before long, to show just how I think
parents and guardians should co-operate with young people in
love; to help them to understand in advance what they are
doing, and how it may be possible for them to make their love
permanent and successful. For the moment I merely state,
to avoid any possible misunderstanding, that I am the last
person in the world to favor what is called "blind" love, the
unthinking abandonment to an impulse of sex passion. What
I am trying to show is that the passionate impulse, the pas-
sionate excitement of the young couple, is the material out
of which love and marriage are made. Passion is a part of
us, and a fundamental part. If we do not find a place for it
The Book of Love 59
in marriage, it will seek satisfaction outside of marriage, and
that means lying, or the wrecking of the marriage, or both.
Passion is what gives to love and marriage its vitality,
its energy, its drive; in fact, it gives these qualities to the
whole character. It is a vivifying force, transfiguring the
personality, and if it is crushed and repressed, the whole
life of that person is distorted. Yet it is a fact which
every physician knows, that millions of women marry and
live their whole lives without ever knowing what passionate
gratification is. As a consequence of this, millions of men
take it for granted that there are "good" women and "bad"
women, and that only the latter are interesting. This, of
course, is simply one of the abnormalities caused by the sup-
planting of love by money as a motive in marriage. Love
becomes a superfluity and a danger, and all the forces of
society, including institutionalized religion, combine to outlaw
it and drive it underground. Or we might say that they lock
it in a dungeon — and that the supreme delight of all the
painters, poets, musicians, dramatists and novelists of all climes
and all periods of history, is to portray the escape of the
"young god" from these imj)risonments. The story is told
in six words of an old English ballad: "Love will find out
the way!"
Is it not obvious that there must be something vitally
wrong with our institutions and conventions in matters of sex,
when here exists this eternal war between our moralists and
our artists? Why not make up our minds what we really
believe ; whether it is true that poets are, as Shelley said, "the
unacknowledged legislators of mankind," or whether they are,
as Plato declared, false teachers and seducers of the young.
If they are the latter, let us have done with them, let us drive
them from the state, together with lovers and all other impas-
sioned persons. But if, on the other hand, it is truth the
poets tell about life, then let us take the young god out of his
dungeon, and bring him into our homes by the front door,
and cast out the false gods of vanity and greed and worldly
prestige which now sit in his place.
CHAPTER XXXIX
BIRTH CONTROL
(Deals with the prevention of conception as one of the great-
est of man's discoveries, releasing him from nature's enslavement,
and placing the keys of life in his hands.)
I assume that you have followed my argument, and are
prepared to consider seriously whether it may be possible to
establish love in marriage as the sex institution of civilized
society. If you really wish to bring such an institution into
existence, the first thing you have to do is to accomplish the
social revolution; that is, you must wipe out class control of
society, and prestige based upon money exploitation. But
that is a vast change, and will take time, and meanwhile we
have to live, and wish to live with as little misery as possible.
So the practical question becomes this: Suppose that you, as
an individual, wish to find as much happiness in love as may
now be possible, what counsel have I to offer? If you are
young, you wish this advice for yourself ; while if you are
mature, you wish it for your children. I will put my advice
under four heads: First, marriage for love; second, birth
control ; third, early marriage ; fourth, education for marriage.
The first of these we have considered at some length. A
part of the process of social revolution is personal conver-
sion; the giving up by every individual of the worldly ideal,
Che surrender of luxury and self-indulgence, the consecrating
of one's life to self education and the cause of social justice.
And do not think that that is an easy thing, or an unimpor-
tant thing, a thing to be taken for granted. On the contrary,
it is something that most of us have to struggle with at every
hour of our lives, because respect for property and worldly
conventions has become one of our deepest instincts; our
whole society is poisoned with it, and I can count on the
fingers of one hand the people I have known in my life who
have completely escaped from it. It is not merely a question
of refusing to marry except for love,lit is a question of refus-
ing to lo-^'e except for honest and worthy qualities^ It is a
question of saving our children from the damnable forces of
60
The Book of Love 61
snobbery, which lay siege to their young minds and destroy
the best impulses of their hearts, while we in our blindness
are still thinking of them as babies.
r Of the other three topics that I have suggested, I begin
with birth control, because it is the most fundamental and
most important. Without birth control there can be no free-
dom, no happiness, no permanence in love, and there can be
no mastery of life. Birth control is one of the great funda-
mental achievements of the human reason, as important to the
life of mankind as the discovery of fire or the invention of
printing. Birth control is the deliverance of womankind, and
therefore of mankind also, from the blind and insane fecun-
dity of nature, which created us animals, and would keep us
animals forever if we did not rebel, j
Ever since the dawn of history, and probably for long
ages before that, our race has been struggling against this
blind insanity of nature. Poor, bewildered Theodore Roose-
velt stormed at what he called "race suicide," thinking it was
some brand new and terrible modern corruption ; but nowhere
do we find a primitive tribe, nowhere in history do we find
a race which did not seek to save itself from overgrowth
and consequent starvation. They did not know enough to
prevent conception, but they did the best they could by means
of abortion and infanticide. And because today superstition
keeps the priceless knowledge of contraception from the vast
majority of women, these crude, savage methods still prevail,
and we have our million abortions a year in the United States.
Assuming that something near one-fourth our population con-
sists of women capable of bearing children, we have one
woman in twenty-five going through this agonizing and health-
wrecking experience every year. They go through with it,
you understand, regardless of everything — all the moralists
and preachers and priests with their hell fire and brimstone.
They go through with it because we have both marriage with-
out love, and love without marriage; also because we permit
some ten or twenty per cent of our total population to suffer
the pangs of perpetual starvation, because more than half our
farms are mortgaged or occupied by tenants, and some ten or
twenty per cent of our workers are out of jobs all the time.
Some of our women know about birth control. They are
the rich women, who get what they want in this world. They
object to the humiliations and inconveniences of child bearing.
62 Love and Society
and some of them raise one or two children, and others of
them raise poodle dogs. Also, our middle classes have found
out; our doctors and lawyers and college professors, and peo-
ple of that sort. But we deliberately keep the knowledge
from our foreign populations, by the terrors which the church
has at its command. And what is the practical consequence
of this procedure ? It is that while all our Anglo-Saxon stock,
those who founded our country and established its institutions,
are gradually removing themselves from the face of the earth,
our ignorant and helpless populations, whether in city slums
or on tenant farms, are multiplying like rabbits. Read Jack
London's "The Valley of the Moon" and see what is happen-
ing in California. You will find the same thing happening
in any portion of the United States where you take the trouble
to use your own eyes.
Now, I try to repress such impulses toward race prejudice
as I find in myself. I am willing to admit for the sake of
this argument that in the course of time all the races that are
now swarming in America, Portuguese and Japanese and
Mexican and French-Canadian and Polish and Hungarian and
Slovakian, are capable of just as high intellectual development
as our ancestors who wrote the Declaration of Independence.
But no one who sees the conditions under which they now
live can deny that it will take a good deal of labor, teaching
them and training them, as well as scrubbing them, to accom-
plish that result. And what a waste of energy, what a farce
it makes of culture, to take the people who have already been
scrubbed and taught and trained for self-government, and
exterminate them, and raise up others in their place ! It seems
time that we gave thought to the fundamental question, wheth-
er or not there is something self-destroying in the very process
of culture. Unless we can answer this we might as well give
up our visions and our efforts to lift the race.
Theodore Roosevelt stormed at birth control for something
like ten years, and it would be interesting if we could know
how many Anglo-Saxon babies he succeeded in bringing into
the world by his preachments. If what he wanted was to
correct the balance between native and foreign births, how
much more sensible to have taught birth control to those poor,
pathetic, half-starved and overworked foreign mothers of our
slums and tenant farms! I can wager that for every Anglo-
Saxon baby that Theodore Roosevelt brought into the world
The Book of Love 63
by his preachings, he could have kept out ten thousand foreign
slum babies, if only he had lent his aid to Margaret Sanger!
Ah, but he wanted all the babies to be bom, you say!
I see before me the face of a certain devout old Christian
lady, known to me, who settles the question by the Bible
quotation, "Be fruitful and multiply." But what avails it to
follow this biblical advice, if we allow one out of five of the
new-born infants to perish from lack of scientific care before
they are two years old? What avails it if we send them to
school hungry, as we do twenty-two per cent of the public
school children of New York City? What avails it if we
allow venereal disease to spread, so that a large percentage of
the babies are deformed and miserable? What avails it if,
when they are fully grown, we can think of nothing better
to do with them than to take them by millions at a time and
dress them up in uniforms and send them out to be destroyed
by poison gases? Would it not be the part of common sense
to establish universal birth control for at least a year or two
— until we have learned to take care of our newly born babies,
and to feed our school children, and to protect our youths
from vice, and to abolish poverty and war from the earth?
These are the social aspects of birth control. There are
also to be considered what I might call the personal aspects
of it. Because young people do not know about it, and have
no way to find out about it, they dare not marry, and so the
amount of vice in the world is increased. Because married
women do not know about it, love is turned to terror, and
marital happiness is wrecked. Because the harmless and
proper methods are not sensibly taught, people use harmful
methods, which cause nervous disorders, and wreck marital
happiness, and break up homes. fThorough and sound knowl-
edge about birth control is just as essential to happiness in
marriage as knowledge of diet is necessary to health, or as
knowledge of economics is necessary to intelligent action as
a voter and citizen J The suppression by law of knowledge
of birth control is just as grave a crime against human life
as ever was committed by religious bigotry in the blackest
days of the Spanish Inquisition.
Now this law stands on the statute books of our country,
and if I should so much as hint to you in this book what you
need to know, or even where you can find out about it, I
should be liable to five years in jail and a fine of $5,CXX), and
t
64: Love and Society
every person who mailed a copy of this book, or any adver-
tisement of this book, would be in the same plight. But
there is not yet a law to prohibit agitation against the law,
so the first thing I say to every reader of this book is that
they should obtain a copy of the Birth Control Review, pub-
lished at 104 Fifth Avenue, New York, and also should join
the Voluntary Parenthood League, 206 Broadway, New York.
Get the literature of these organizations and circulate them and
help spread the light!
As to the knowledge which you need, the only advice I
am allowed to give is that you should seek it. Seek it, and
persist in seeking, until you find it. Ask everyone you know ;
and ask particularly among enlightened people, those who
are wilHng to face the facts of human life and trust in
reason and common sense. I do not know if I am violating
the law in thus telling you how to find out about birth
control. One of the charming features of this law, and others
against the spreading of knowledge, is that they will never
tell you in advance what you may say, but leave you to say it
and take your chances ! I believe that I am not violating
any law when I tell you that there are half a dozen simple,
inexpensive, and entirely harmless methods of preventing
undesired parenthood without the destruction of the marital
relationship.
I am one of those who for many years believed that the
destruction of the marital relationship was the only proper
and moral method. I was brought up to take the monkish
view of love. I thought it was an animal thing which required
some outside justification. I had been taught nothing else;
but now I have had personal experience of other justifications
of love, and I believe that love is a beautiful and joyful rela-
tionship, which not merely requires no other justification, but
confers justification upon many other things in life.
I used to believe in that old ideal of celibacy, thinking it
a fine spiritual exercise. But since then I have looked out on
life, and have found so many interesting things to do, so
much important work calling for attention, that I do not
have to invent any artificial exercises for my spirit. I have
looked at humanity, and brought myself to recognize the plain
common sense fact — ^that whatever superfluous energy I may
have to waste upon artificial spirituality, the great mass of the
people have no such energy to spare. They need all their
The Book of Love 65
energies to get a living for themselves and for their wives and
little ones. They have their sex impulses, and will follow
them, and the only question is, shall they follow them wisely
or unwisely? The religious people decide that sexual indul-
gence is wrong, and they impose a penalty — and what is that
penalty? A poor, unwanted little waif of a soul, which never
sinned, and had nothing to do with the matter, is brought
into a hostile world, to suffer neglect, and perhaps starvation
— in order to punish parents who did not happen to be suffi-
ciently strong willed to practice continence in marriage!
I used to believe that there was benefit to health and in-
crease of power, whether physical or mental, in the celibate
life. I have tried both ways of life, and as a result I know
that that old idea is nonsense. I know now that love is a
natural function. Of course, like any other function it can
be abused; just as hunger may become gluttony, sleeping may
become sluggishness, getting the money to pay one's way
through life may become ferocious avarice. But we do not
on this account refuse ever to eat or sleep or get money to
pay our debts. I do not say that I believe, I say I know,
that free and happy love, guided by wisdom and sound knowl-
edge, is not merely conducive to health, but is in the long run
necessary to health.
People who condemn birth control always argue as if one
wished to teach this knowledge indiscriminately to the young.
Perhaps it is natural that those who oppose the use of reason
should assume that others are as irrational as themselves. All
I can say is that I no more believe in teaching birth control
to the young than I believe in feeding beefsteak to nursing
infants. There is a period in life for beefsteaks — or, if my
vegetarian friends prefer, for lentil hash and peanut butter
sandwiches ; in exactly the same way there is a time for teach-
ing the fundamentals of sex, and another time for teaching
the art of happiness in marriage, which includes birth con-
trol. That brings me, by a very pleasant transition, to the
other two subjects which I have promised to discuss: early
marriage and education for marriage.
CHAPTER XL
EARLY MARRIAGE
(Discusses love marriages, how they can be made, and the
duty of parents in respect to them.)
I have shown how economic forces in our society make for
later and later marriage; and at the present time economic
forces are so overwhelming that all other forces are hardly
worth mentioning in comparison. You are, let us say, the
mother of a boy of eighteen, and you have what you call
"common sense" — meaning thereby a grasp of the money facts
of life. If your darling boy of eighteen should come to you
with a grave face and announce, "Mother dear, I have met the
girl I love, and we have decided that we want to get married"
-^you would consider that the most absurd thing you had
ever heard in all your born days, and you would tell the lad
that he was a baby, and to run along and play. If he per-
sisted in his crazy notion, you and your husband and all the
brothers and sisters and relatives and friends both of the
boy and the girl would set to work, by scolding and ridiculing,
to make Kfe a misery for them, and ninety-nine times out of
a hundred you would break down the young couple's mari-
tal intention.
But now, let us try another supposition. Let us sup-
pose that your darling boy of eighteen should come to you
again and say, "Mother dear, some of the boys are going
to spend this evening in a brothel, and I have decided to go
along." Would you think that was the most absurd thing
you had ever heard in all your born days? Or would you
answer, "Yes, of course, my boy; that is what I had in
mind when I made you give up the girl you loved"? No,
you would not answer that. But here is the vital fact —
it doesn't matter what you would answer, for you would
never have a chance to answer. When a mother's darling
wants to get married, he comes and asks his mother's bless-
ing; but never does a mother's darling ask a blessing before
he goes with the other boys to a brothel. He just goes.
Maybe he borrows the money from some other fellow, and
66
The Book of Love 67
next day tells you he went to a theater. Or maybe he picks
up some poor man's daughter on the street, and takes her
into the park, or up on the roof of a tenement. Some such
thing he does, to find satisfaction for an instinct which you in
your worldly wisdom or your heavenly piety spurn and ridicule.
I do not wish to exaggerate. If you are an exception-
ally wise and tactful mother, you may keep the confidence
of your boy, and guide him day by day through his tempta-
tions and miseries, and keep him chaste. But the more you
try that, the more apt you will be to come to my conclusion,
that late marriage is a crime against the race; the more
aware you will be of the danger, either that his boy friends
may break him down, or that some lewd woman may come
to his bedroom in the night-time. Never will you be able
to be quite sure that he is not lying to you, because of his
shame, and the pain he cannot bear to inflict upon you.
Never will you be quite sure that he is not hiding some
cruel disease, sneaking off to some quack who takes his
money and leaves him worse than before — until finally he
shoots off his head, as happened to a nephew of an old and
dear friend of mine.
Such is the problem of the mother of a son; and now,
what about the mother of a daughter? This seems much
simpler; because your daughter is not generally troubled with
sex cravings, and if you teach her the proprieties, and see
that she is carefully chaperoned, you may reasonably hope
that she will be chaste. But some day you expect that she
will marry; and then comes your problem. If you are the
usual mother, you are looking for some one who can main-
tain her in the state of life to which she is accustomed.
If a fairy prince would come along, or a plaster saint, you
would be pleased; but failing that, you will take a success-
ful business man, one who has made his way in the world
and secured himself a position. But turn back to the figures
I gave you a while ago. If this man is thirty years of age,
there is at least a fifty-fifty chance that he has had some
venereal disease; and while the doctors claim to cure these
diseases absolutely, we must bear in mind that doctors are
human, and sometimes claim more than they perform. Every
doctor will admit, if you pin him down, that these diseases
burrow deeply into the tissues, and many times are supposed
to be cured when they are only hidden.
€8 Love and Society
Here is, in a nutshell, the problem of the mother of a
daughter. If you marry your daughter at seventeen to a
lad of her own age, you have a very good chance of marry-
ing her to a person who is chaste. If you marry her to a
man of twenty-five, you have perhaps one chance in a hun-
dred. If you marry her to a man of thirty-five, you have
perhaps one chance in ten thousand. You may not like
these facts ; I do not like them myself ; but I have learned
that facts are none the less facts on that account.
You know the average society bud of eighteen, and her
attitude to a boy of the same age. She regards him as a
child; and you think, perhaps, that it is natural for a girl
to be interested in men of thirty-five and even forty-five.
But I tell you that it is not natural, it is simply one of the
perversions of pecuniary sex. The girl is interested in such
men, because all her young life she has been carefully coached
'for the marriage market; because she is dressed for it, and
solemnly brought out, and introduced to other players of
this exciting game of marriage for money, with its incred-
ible prizes of automobiles and jewels and palaces full of
servants, and magic check-books that never grow empty.
But suppose that, instead of regarding her as a prize in a
lottery, you let her grow up naturally, and taught her the
truth about herself, both body and mind; suppose that, in-
stead of dressing her in ways deliberately contrived to
emphasize her sex, you put her in a simple uniform, and
taught her to be honest and straightforward, instead of minc-
ing and coy; suppose she played athletic games with boys
of her own age, and invited them to her home, not for "jazz"
dancing and stuffing cake and candy, but for the sharing of
good music and literature and art — don't you think that
maybe this girl might become interested in a lad of her own
age, and choose him with some understanding of his real self ?
You take it for granted that young people should not
marry until they can "afford it." But stop and consider, is
not this a relic of old days? Always it takes time, and delib-
erate effort of the reason, to adjust our conventions to new
facts; so face this fact — marriage today does not necessarily
mean children, it may just mean love. It involves little more
expense, because the young people need cost no more together
than they cost in the separate homes of their parents. If
they are children of the poor, they are already taking care
The Book of Love 69
of themselves. If they are children of the moderately well
off, their parents expect to support them while they are get-
ting an education; and why can they not just as well live
together, and the parents of each contribute their share?
Let the parents of the boy give him, not merely what it costs
to keep him at home, but also the sums which otherwise the
boy would pay to the brothels. By this argument I do not
mean that I favor keeping young people financially dependent
upon their parents. My own son is working his own way
through college, and I should be glad to see every young man
doing the same. All that I am saying is that if parents are
going to support their children while they are getting an
education, they might just as well support them married as
single, instead of penalizing matrimony by making all allow-
ances cease at that point.
I know a certain ardent feminist, who is all for late mar-
riage for women, and abhors my ideas on this subject. She
wants women to get a chance to develop their personalities;
whereas I want to sacrifice them to the frantic exigencies of
the male animal! Young things of seventeen and eighteen
have no idea what they are, or what they want from life;
the mating impulse is a blind frenzy in them, and they must
be taught to control it, just as they are taught not to kill
when they are angry!
In the first place, I point out that young ladies in col-
leges and in ballrooms give a lot of time and thought to
sex, even though they do not call it by that inelegant term.
I very much question whether, if we should apply our wis-
dom to the task of getting our young people happily mated
before we sent them off to college, we should not get a lot
more serious study out of them than we now do, with all
their "fussing" and flirting and dancing.
Second, I am willing to make heroic moral efforts, where
I see any chance of adequate results, but I have examined
the facts, and definitely made up my mind that it is not
worth while, in our present stage of culture, to preach to
the mass of men the doctrine that they should abstain from
sex experience until they are twenty-five or thirty years of
age. You may storm at them, but they only laugh at you;
you may pass laws, and try to put them in jail, but you only
provide a harvest for blackmailers and grafters. As to sacri-
ficing the girl, my answer is simply that I believe in love;
6
70 Love and Society
and in this I think the girl will agree with me, if you will
let her! I have never heard any qualified person maintain
that it hurts a girl to respond to love at the age of seventeen
or eighteen; nor do I think that it hurts a boy, provided that
he is taught the virtues of moderation and self-restraint.
Without these, it will hurt him to eat; but that is no argu-
ment for starving him. As for the question of his matur-
ity and power to judge, we are able at present to keep him
from marrying anybody, so I think we might reasonably hope
to keep him from marrying a wanton or a slut. Certainly we
might find somebody better than the peroxide blonde he now
picks up in front of the moving picture palace.
The question, at what ages we shall advise our young
couple to have children, is a separate one, depending upon
many circumstances. First, of course, they should not have
any until they are able financially to maintain them. As to
the age at which it is physically advisable, that is a question
to be settled by physicians and physiologists. I myself had
the idea that the proper age would be when the woman had
attained her full stature ; but my friend Dr. William J. Robin-
son sends me some statistics from the Johns Hopkins Hospital
Bulletin, which startle me. This publication for January,
1922, gives the results in five hundred childbirths, in which
the mother's age was from twelve to sixteen years inclusive.
It appears that pregnancy and labor at these ages are no
more dangerous than in older women ; but on the other
hand, the duration of the labor is actually shorter, and the
size of the children is not inferior. These facts are so con-
trary to the general impression that I content myself with
calling attention to them, and leave the commenting to be
done by feminists and others who oppose themselves to the
idea of early marriage.
CHAPTER XLI
THE MARRIAGE CLUB
(Discusses how parents and elders may help the young to
avoid unhappy marriages.)
I will make the assumption that you would like to have
a trial of my cure for prostitution. You would like to do
something right here and now, without waiting for the social
revolution. Very well: I propose that you shall find a
few other parents of boys and girls who are in revolt against
our system of hidden vice, and that you will meet and form
a modern marriage club. Only you won't call it that, of
course; you will tactfully describe it as a literary society,
or a social circle, or an Epworth League. The parents who
run it will know what it is for, just as they do today ; the
only difference being that it will exist to promote love matches
instead of money matches. It happens that I am myself
a tactless sort of a person, not skillful at avoiding saying
what I mean. So, in this chapter, I shall content myself
with setting forth exactly what this marriage club will do,
and leaving it to more clever people to supply the necessary
camouflage.
This club will begin by correcting the most stupid of all
our educational blunders, the assumption of the necessary
immaturity of the young. Our young people nowadays
have ten times as much chance to learn and ten times as
much stimulus to learn as we had; and it is a gen-
erally safe assumption that they know much more than
we think they do, and are ready to learn every sensible and
interesting thing. I am carrying on an epistolary acquaint-
ance with a little miss of twelve, who has read half a dozen
of my books — among the "worst" of them — and writes me
letters of grave appreciation. I have talked on Socialism to
a thousand school children, and had them question me for
an hour, and heard just as worth while questions as I have
heard from an audience of bankers. Never in my life have
I talked about real things with children that I did not find
them proud to be treated seriously, and eager to show that
71
72 Love and Society
they were worthy of that honor. A great part of our fooHsh-
ness with children is due to the emptiness of our own heads.
These parents will delegate one man and one woman to
make a thorough study of the sex education of the young.
Of course, there is knowledge about sex which has to be
given to the very youngest child, and more and more must
be given as they grow older and ask more questions. But
what I have in mind here is that detailed and precise knowl-
edge which must be given to the young when they approach
the period of puberty. At this age of fourteen or fifteen the
man will take each of the boys apart, and the woman will
take each of the girls, and will explain to them what they
need to know. This duty will not be trusted to parents, for
parents have an imbecile fear of talking straight to their
children, and try to get by with rubbish about bees and
flowers. Let every child know that the days of the hole-and-
corner sex business is forever past, and that here is an
instructed person, who talks real American, and knows what
he is talking about, and will deal with facts, instead of with
evasions.
This club will help to educate the youngsters, and also
to give them a good time, developing both their minds and
bodies, and learning to know them thoroughly. When they
are sixteen each one will have another talk, this time about
marriage and what it means ; learning that it is not merely
flirtations and delicious thrills, but a business partnership,
and the deepest and best of all friendships. So when John
finds that he likes Mary best of all the girls he knows, this
won't be a subject for "kidding" and sly innuendo, and
blushes and simpering on Mary's part, but an occasion for
decent and sensible talk about what each of them really is,
and what each thinks the other to be. If they think they
are in love, then there will be a council of the elder states-
men, to consider that case, and what are the chances of hap-
piness in that love. This may sound forbidding, but it is
exactly what is done at present — only it is not done honestly
and frankly, and therefore does not carry proper weight with
the young people.
fl am an opponent of long engagements, ^but I am also
an opponent of no engagements at all ; I know' no truer prov-
erb than "Marry in haste and repent at leisure." It would
be my idea that a very young couple should announce their
The Book of Love 73
engagement, and then wait six months, and be consulted
again about the matter, and have a chance to withdraw with
no hard feelings, if either party thought best. If they wished
to go on, they might be asked to wait another six months,
if their elders felt very certain there were reasons to doubt
the wisdom of the matcK.
There are, of course, people who, because of disease or
physical defect, should never be allowed to marry ; and others
who might marry, but should not be allowed to have children.
There should be laws providing for such cases, requiring
physical examination before marriage, and in extreme cases
providing for a simple and harmless surgical operation to
prevent the hopelessly unfit from passing on their defects to
the future. But dealing for the moment with normal young
persons, members of our modern marriage club, I should
say that if, after they have listened to the warning of their
elders, and have waited for a decent interval to think things
over, they still remain of the opinion that they can make a
successful marriage, then it is up to the elders to wish them
luck. I have known of young couples who have refused to
heed warnings, and regretted it; but I have known of others
who went ahead and had their own way and proved they were
right. There is a form of wisdom called experience and
there is another form called love.
I hear the worldly and cynical rail at the blindness of
"young love," and I can see the truth in what they say;
but also I can see the deeper truth in the magic dreams
of the young soul. Here is a youth who adores a girl, and
you know the girl, and it is comical to you, because you
know she is not any of the things the youth imagines. But
who are you that claim to know the last thing about a human
soul? Look into your own, and see how many different
things you are! Look back, if you can, to the time when
you were young, and remember the visions and the hopes.
They have lost all reality to you now; but who can say how
many of them you might have made real if there had been
one other person who believed in them, and loved them, and
would not give them up?
I write this ; and then I think of the other side — ^the fools
that I have known in love! The trusting women, marrying
rotten men to reform them! The pitiful people who think
that fine phrases and sentimentality can take the place of
74 Love and Society
facts! I implore my young couples to sit down and face
the realities of their own natures, to decide what they are,
and what they want to be — and if there is going to be any
change, let it be made and tried out before marriage! I
implore them to begin now to control their desires by their
reason and judgment; to begin, each of them at the very out-
set, to carry their share of the burdens and do their share
of the hard work. I implore them to value independence
and self-reliance in the other, and never above all things
to marry from pity, which is a worthy emotion in its place,
but has nothing to do with sex, which should be an affair
between equals, a matter of partnership and not of parasitism.
I think that, on the whole, the most dreadful thing in love
is the use of it for preying, for the securing of favors and
advantages of any sort, whether by men or by women.
CHAPTER XLII
EDUCATION FOR MARRIAGE
(Maintains that the art of love can be taught, and that we
have the right and the duty to teach it.)
I assume now that our young couple have definitely made
up their minds, and that the wedding day is near. They
are therefore, both the man and the woman, in position to
receive information as to the physical aspects of their future
experience. This information is now for the most part pos-
sessed only by pathologists — who impart it too late, after
people have blundered and wrecked their lives. The oppo-
nents of birth control ask in horror if you would teach it to
the young; I am now able to answer just when I would
teach it; I would teach it to these young couples about to
marry. I would make it by law compulsory for every young
couple to attend a school of marriage, and to learn, not merely
the regulation of conception, but the whole art of health and
happiness in sex.
Perhaps the words, "a school of marriage," strike you
as funny. When I was young I remember that Pulitzer
founded a school of journalism, and all newspaper editors
made merry — ^they knew that journalism could only be learned
in practice. But nowadays every city editor gives preference
to an applicant who has taken a college course in reporting;
they have learned that journalism can be taught, just like
engineering and accounting. In the same way I assert that
marriage can be taught, and the art of love, physical, men-
tal, moral, and even financial; I think that the day will come
when enlightened parents would no more dream of trusting
their tender young daughter to a man who had not taken
a course in sex, than they would go up in an aeroplane with
a pilot who knew nothing about an engine.
The knowledge which I possess upon the art of love I
would be glad to give you in this book ; but unfortunately, if
I were to do so, my book would be suppressed, and I should
be sent to jail.
Some ten or twelve years ago I received a pitiful letter
75
76 Love and Society
from a man who was in state's prison in Delaware, charged
with having imparted information as to birth control. Under
our amiable legal system, a perfectly innocent man may be
thrown into jail, and kept there for a year or two before he
is tried,- and if he is without money or friends, he might
as well be buried alive. I went to Wilmington to call on the
United States attorney who had caused the indictment in this
case, and had an illuminating conversation with him. The
official was anxious to justify what he had done. He assured
me that he was no bigot, but on the contrary an extremely
liberal man, a Unitarian, a Progressive, etc. "But Mr. Sin-
clair," he said, "I assure you this prisoner is not a reformer
or humanitarian or anything like that. He is a depraved
person. Look, here is something we found in his trunk when
we arrested him; a pamphlet, explaining about sex relations.
See this paragraph — it says that the pleasure of intercourse
is increased if it is prolonged."
I looked at the pamphlet, and then I looked at the attor-
ney. "Do you think you have stated the matter quite fairly ?"
I asked. "Apparently the purpose is to explain that the emo-
tions of women are more slow to be aroused than those of
men, and that husbands failing to realize this, often do not
gratify their wives."
"Well," said the other, "do you consider that a subject
to be discussed?"
"Pardon me if I discuss it just a moment," I replied. "Do
you happen to know whether the statement is a fact?"
"No, I don't. It may be, I suppose."
"You have never investigated the matter?"
The legal representative of our government was evidently
annoyed by my persistence. "I have not," he answered.
"But then, suppose I were to tell you that thousands of
homes have been broken up for lack of just that bit of
knowledge; that tens of thousands of marriages are miser-
able for lack of it." .
"Surely, Mr. Sinclair, you exaggerate!"
"Not at all. I could prove to you by one medical author-
ity after another, that if the desire of a woman in marriage
is roused, and then left ungratified, the result is nervous
strain, and in the long run it may be nervous breakdown."
The above covers only one detail of the pamphlet in
question. I read some pages of it, and argued them out with
The Book of Love Tl
the attorney. It was a perfectly simple, straightforward
exposition of facts about the physiology of sex; and one of
the reasons a man was to be sent to jail for several years
was — not that he had circulated such a pamphlet, not that
he had showed it to young people, but merely that he had
it in his trunk!
There is an honest and very useful book, written by an
English physician, Dr. Marie C. Stopes, entitled "Married
Love," published by Dr. Wm. J. Robinson of New York, a
specialist of authority and integrity. The book deals with just
such vital facts in a perfectly dignified and straightforward
manner; yet Dr. Robinson has been hounded by the post-
office department because of it; he was convicted and forced
to pay a fine of $250, and the book was barred from the
mails !
I have so much else of importance to say in this Book
of Love that it would not be sensible to jeopardize it by caus-
ing a controversy with our official censors of knowledge.
Therefore I will merely say in general terms that men and
women differ, not merely as a sex, but as individuals, and
every marriage is a separate problem. ( Every couple has to
solve it in the intimacy of their love life, and for this there
are needed, first of all, gentleness on the part of the man,
especially in the first days of the honeymoon; and on the
part of both at all times consideration for the other's welfare
and enjoyment, and above all, frankness and honesty in talk-
ing out the subject. Reticence and shyness may be virtues
elsewhere, but they have no place in the intimacies of the sex
life ; if men and women will only ask and answer frankly, they
can find out by experience what makes the other happy, and
what causes pain. J ^
We are dealing here with the most sacred intimacy of life,
and one of the most vital of life's problems It is here, in
the marriage bed, that the divorce problem is to be settled,
and likewise the problem of prostitution ; for it is when men
and women fail to understand each other, and to gratify each
other, that one or the other turns cold and indifferent, per-
haps ang^ and hateful — and then we have passions unsatis-
fied, and ranging the world, breaking up other homes and
spreading disease. So I would say to every young couple,
seek knowledge on this subject. Seek it without shame from
others who have had a chance to acquire it. Seek it also
78 Love and Society
from nature, our wise old mother, who knows so much about
her children!
Be natural; be simple and straightforward; and beware
of fool na'tions about sex. If you will look in the code of Ham-
murabi, which is over four thousand years old, you will see the
provision that a man who has intercourse with a menstruat-
ing woman shall be killed. In Leviticus you will read that
both the man and the woman are to be cast put from their
people. You will find that most people still have some such
notion, which is without any basis whatever in health. And
this is only one illustration of many I might give of igno-
rance and superstition in the sex life. I would give this
as one very good rule to bear in mind; your love life exists
for the happiness and health of yourself and your partner,
and not for Hammurabi, nor Moses, nor Jehovah, nor your
mother-in-law, nor anybody else on the earth or above it.
Great numbers of people believe that women are naturally
less passionate than men, and that marital happiness depends
upon men's recognizing this. Of course, there are defective
individuals, both men and women; but the normal woman
is every bit as passionate as a man, if once she has been
taught; and if love is given its proper place in life, and
monkish notions not allowed to interfere, she will remain so
all through life, in spite of child-bearing or anything else.
I say to married couples that they should devote themselves
to making and preserving passionate gratification in love ;
because this is the bright jewel in the crown of marriage, and
if lovers solve this problem, they will find other problems com-
paratively simple.
CHAPTER XLIII
THE MONEY SIDE OF MARRIAGE
(Deals with the practical side of the life partnership of mat-
rimony.)
So far we have discussed marriage as if it consisted only
of love. But it is manifest that this is not the case. Mar-
riage is every-day companionship, and also it is partnership
in a complicated business. In our school of marriage there-
fore we shall teach the rights and duties of both partners to
the contract, and shall face frankly the money side of the
enterprise.
One of the first facts we must get clear is that the eco-
nomics of marriage are in most parts of the world still based
upon the subjection of woman, and are therefore incom-
patible with the claims of woman as a partner and comrade.
They will never be right until the social revolution has abol-
ished privilege, and the state has granted to every woman a
maternity endowment, with a mother's pension for every child
during the entire period of the rearing and education of
that child. Until this is done, the average woman must
look to some man for the support of her child, and that,
by the automatic operation of economic force, makes her sub-
ject to the whims of the man. What women have to do is to
agitate for a revision of the property laws of marriage; and
meantime to see that in every marriage there is an extra-
legal understanding, which grants to the woman the equality
which laws and conventions deny her.
When I was a boy my mother had a woman friend who,
if she wanted to go downtown, would borrow a quarter from
my mother. This woman's husband was earning a generous
salary, enough to enable him to buy the best cigars by the
box, and to keep a supply of liquors always on hand; but
he gave his wife no allowance, and if she wanted pocket
money she had to ask him for it, each time a separate favor.
Yet this woman was keeping a home, she was doing just as
hard work and just as necessary work as the man. Mani-
festly, this was a preposterous arrangement. If a woman
79
80 Love and Society
is going to be a home-maker for a husband, it is a simple,
common-sense proposition that the salary of the husband shall
be divided into three parts — first, the part which goes to the
home, the benefit of which is shared in common; second, the
part which the husband has for his own use; and third, the
part which the wife has for hers. The second and third
parts should be equal, and the wife should have hers, not
as a favor, but as a right. If the two are making a homestead,
or running a farm, or building up a business, then half the
proceeds should be the woman's ; and it should be legally in her
name, and this as a matter of course, as any other business con-
tract. If the woman does not make a home, but merely displays
fine clothes at tea parties, that is of course another matter. Just
what she is to do is something that had better be determined
before marriage; and if a man wants a life-partner, to take
an interest in his work, or to have a useful work of her
own, he had better choose that kind of woman, and not merely
one that has a pretty face and a trim ankle.
The business side of marriage is something that has to
be talked out from time to time; there have to be meetings
of the board of directors, and at these meetings there ought
to be courtesy and kindness, but also plain facts and com-
mon sense, and no shirking of issues. Love is such a very
precious thing that any man or woman ought to be willing
to make money sacrifices to preserve it. But on the other
hand, it is a fact that there are some people with whom
you cannot be generous; the more you give them, the more
they take, and with such people the only safe rule is exact
justice. Let married couples decide exactly what contribu-
tion each makes to the family life, and what share of money
and authority each is entitled to.
I might spend several chapters discussing the various rocks
on which I have seen marriages go to wreck. For example,
extravagance and worldly show ; clothes for women. In Paris
is a "demi-monde," a world of brutal lust combined with
riotous luxury. The women of this "half-world" are in touch
with the world of art and fashion, and when the rich cos-
tumers and woman-decorators want what they call ideas, it
is to these lust-women they go. The fashions they design
are always depraved, of course; always for the flaunting of
sex, never for the suggestion of dignity and grave intelligence.
At several seasons of the year these lust-women are decked
The Book of Love 81
out and paraded at the race-courses and other gathering places
of the rich, and their pictures are published in the papers
and spread over all the world. So forthwith it becomes nec-
essary for your wife in Oshkosh or Kalamazoo to throw
away all the perfectly good clothes she owns, and get a com-
plete new outfit — because "they" are wearing something
different. Of course the costume-makers have seen that it is
extremely different, so as to make it impossible for your
wife and children to be happy in their last season's clothes.
I have a winter overcoat which I bought fourteen years ago,
and as it is still as good as new I expect to use it another
fourteen years, which will mean that it has cost me a dollar
and a half per year. But think what it would have cost me
if I had considered it necessary each year to have an over-
coat cut as the keepers of French mistresses were cutting
theirs !
But then, suppose you put it up to your wife and daughters
to wear sensible clothes, and they do so, and then they observe
that on the street your eyes turn to follow the ladies in the
latest disappearing skirt? The point is, you perceive, that
you yourself are partly to blame for the fashions. They
appeal to a dirty little imp you have in your own heart,
and when the decent women discover that, it makes them
blazing hot, and that is one of the ways you may wreck
your domestic happiness if you want to. Unless I am greatly
mistaken, when the class war is all over we are going to
see in our world a sex war ; but it is not going to be between
the men and the women, it is going to be between the mother
women and the mistress women, and the mistress women
are going to have their hides stripped off.
Men wreck marriage because they are promiscuous; and
women wreck it because they are parasites. Woman has
been for long centuries an economic inferior, and she has
the vices of the subject peoples and tribes. Now there are
some who want to keep these vices, while at the same time
claiming the new privileges which go with equality. Such
a woman picks out a man who is sensitive and chivalrous;
who knows that women suffer handicaps, pains of childbirth,
physical weakness, and who therefore feels impelled to bear
more than his share of the burdens. She makes him her
slave ; and by and by she gets a child, and then she has him,
because he is bowed down with awe and worship, he thinks
82 Love and Society
that such a miracle has never happened in the world before,
and ^he spends the rest of his life waiting on her whims and
nursing her vanities. I note that at the recent convention
of the Woman's Party they demanded their rights and agreed
to surrender their privileges. There you have the final test
by which you may know that women really want to be free,
and are prepared to take the responsibilities of freedom.
CHAPTER XLIV
THE DEFENSE OF MONOGAMY
(Discusses the permanence of love, and why we should en-
deavor to preserve it.)
So far in this discussion we have assumed that love means
monogamous love. We did so, for the reason that we could
not consider every question at once. But we have promised
to deal with all the problems of sex in the light of reason;
and so we have now to take up the question, what are the
sanctions of monogamy, and why do we refuse sanction to
other kinds of love?
First, let us set aside several reasons with which we have
nothing to do. For example, the reason of tradition. It is a fact
that Anglo-Saxon civilization has always refused legal rec-
ognition to non-monogamous marriage. But then, Anglo-
Saxon civilization has recognized war, and slavery, and specu-
lation, and private property in land, and many other things
which we presume to describe as crimes. If tradition can-
not justify itself to our reason, we shall choose martyrdom.
Second, the religious reason. This is the one that most
people give. It is convenient, because it saves the need of
thinking. Suffice it here to say that we prefer to think.
If we cannot justify monogamy by the facts of life, we shall
declare ourselves for polygamy.
What are the scientific and rational reasons for monog-
amy ? First among them is venereal disease. This may seem
like a vulgar reason, but no one can deny that it is real.
There was a time, apparently, when mankind did not suffer
from these plagues, and we hope there may be such a time
again. I shall not attempt to prescribe the marital customs
for the people of that happy age; I suspect that they will
be able to take care of themselves. Confining myself to my
lifetime and yours, I say that the aim of every sensible man
and woman must be to confine sex relations to the smallest
possible limits. I know, of course, that there are prophy-
lactics, and the army and navy present statistics to show that
they succeed in a great proportion of cases. But if you are
83
84 Love and Society
one of those persons in whose case they don't succeed, you
will find the statistics a cold source of comfort to you.
John and Mary go to the altar, or to the justice of the
peace, and John says : "With all my worldly goods I thee
endow." But the formula is incomplete; it ought to read:
"And Hkewise with the fruits of my wild oats." Marriage is
a contract wherein each of the contracting parties agrees to
share whatever pathogenic bacteria the other party may have
or acquire; surely, therefore, the contract involves a right
of each party to have a say as to how many chances of
infection the other shall incur. John goes off on a busi-
ness trip, and is lonesome, and meets an agreeable widow,
and figures to himself that there is very little chance that so
charming a person can be dangerous. But maybe Mary
wouldn't agree with his calculations ; maybe Mary would
not consider it a part of the marriage bargain that she should
take the diseases of the agreeable widow. What commonly
happens is that Mary is not consulted; John revises the con-
tract in secret, making it read that Mary shall take a chance
at the diseases of the widow. How can any thinking person
deny that John has thus committed an act of treason to Mary?
I know that there are people who don't mind running such
chances; that is one reason why there are venereal diseases.
All I can say is that the sex-code set forth in this book is
based upon the idea that to deliver mankind from the venereal
plague, we wish to confine the sex relationship within the
narrowest limits consistent with health, happiness and spirit-
ual development ; and that to this end we take the young and
teach them chastity, and we marry them early while they are
clean, and then we call upon them to make the utmost effort
to make a success of that union, and to make it a matter
of honor to keep the marital faith. We do this with some
hope of effectiveness, because we have made our program
consistent with the requirements of nature, the genuine needs
of love both physical and spiritual.
The second argument for monogamy is the economic one.
We have dreamed a social order where every child will be
guaranteed maintenance by the state, and where women will be
free from dependence on men. What will be the love arrange-
ments of men and women under this new order is another
problem which we leave for them to decide, in the certainty
that they will know more about it than we do. Meantime,
The Book of Love 85
we are for the present under the private property regime,
and have to love and marry and raise our children accord-
ingly. The children must have homes, and if they are
to be normal children, they must have both the male
and female influence in their lives; which means that
their parents must be friends and partners, not quarrel-
ing in secret. This argument, I know, is one of expediency.
I have adopted it, after watching a great number of people
try other than monogamous sex arrangements, and seeing
their chances of happiness and success wrecked by the pres-
sure of economic forces. To rebel against social compulsion
may be heroism, and again it may be merely bad judgment.
For my part, the world's greatest evil is poverty, the cause
of crime, prostitution and war. I concentrate my energies
upon the abolishing of that evil, and I let other problems
wait.
The third reason is that monogamy is economical pf hu-
man time and thought. The business of finding and wooing
a mate takes a lot of energy, and adjustment after marriage
takes more. To throw away the results of this labor and
do it all over again is certainly not common sense. Of course,
if you bake a cake and burn it, you have to get more ma-
terial and make another try; but that is a different matter
from baking a cake with the deliberate intention of throw-
ing it away after a bite or two.
The advocates of varietism in love will here declare
that we are begging the question. We are assuming that
love and the love chase are not worthy in themselves,
but merely means to some other end. Can it be that
love delights are the keenest and most intense that hu-
mans can experience, and that all other purposes of life are
contributory to them? Certainly a great deal of art lends
support to this idea, and many poets have backed up their
words by their deeds. As Coleridge phrased it:
"All thoughts, all passions, all delights.
Whatever stirs this mortal frame.
All are but ministers of Love
And feed his sacred flame."
This is a question not to be played with. Experimenting
in love is costly, and millions have wrecked their lives by
7
86 Love and Society
it. The sex urge in us is imperious and cruel ; it wants
nothing less than the whole of us, body, mind and spirit,
and ofttimes it behaves like the genii in the bottle — it gets
out, and not all the powers in the universe can get it back.
I have talked with many men about sex and heard them say
that it presents itself to them as an unmitigated torment,
something they would give everything they own to be free
of. And these, mind you, not men living in monasteries,
trying to repress their natural impulses, but men of the
world, who have lived freely, seeking pleasure and taking it
as it came. The primrose path of dalliance did not lead
them to peace, and the pursuit of variety in love brought them
only monotony.
I stop and think of one after another of these sex-ridden
people, and I cannot think of one whom I would envy. I
know one who in a frenzy of unhappiness seized a razor
and castrated himself. I think of another, a certain class-
mate in college whom I once stopped in a conversation, re-
marking: "Did you ever realize what a state you have got
your mind into ? Everything means sex to you. Every phrase
you hear, every idea that is suggested— you try to make
some sort of pun, to connect it somehow or other with sex."
The man thought and said, "I guess that's true." The idea
had never occurred to him before ; he had just gone on letting
his instincts have their way with him, without ever putting
his reason upon the matter.
That was a crude kind of sex; but I think of another
man, an idealist and champion of human liberty. One of the
forms of liberty he maintained was the right to love as many
women as he pleased, and although he was a married man,
one hardly ever saw him that he was not courting some
young girl. As a result, his mental powers declined, and
he did little but talk about ideas. I do not know anyone today
who respects him — except a few people who live the same
sort of life. The thought of him brings to my mind a
sentence of Nietzsche — a man who surely stood for freedom
of personality: "I pity the lovers who have nothing higher
than their love."
A question like this can be decided only by the experience
of the race. Some will make love the end and aim of life,
and others will make it the means to other ends, and we
shall see which kind of people achieve the best results, which
The Bcx)k of Love 87
kind are the most useful, the most dignified, the most original
and vital. I have seen a great many young people try the
experiment of "free love," and I have seen some get enough
of it and quit; I could name among these half a dozen of
our younger novelists. I know others who are still in it
— and I watch their lives and find them to be restless, jealous,
egotistical and idle. My defense of monogamy is based upon
the fact that I have never known any happy or successful
"free lovers." Of course, I know some noble and sincere
people who do not believe in the marriage contract, and
refuse to be bound by law; but these people are as monog-
amous as I am, even more tightly bound by honor than if
they were duly married.
It seems to be in the very nature of true and sincere
love to imagine permanence, to desire it and to pledge it.
If you aren't that much in love, you aren't really in love at
all, and you had better content yourself with strolling to-
gether and chatting together and dining together and play-
ing music together. So many pleasant ways there are in
which men and women can enjoy each other's company with-
out entering upon the sacred intimacy of sex ! You can learn
to take sex lightly, of course, but if you do so, you reduce
by so much the chances that true and deep love will ever
come to you; for true and deep love requires some patience,
some reverence, some tending at a shrine. The animals mate
quickly and get it over with; but the great discoveries
about love, and the possibilities of the human soul
in love, have come because men and women have been
willing to make sacrifices for it, to take it seriously —
and more especially to take seriously the beloved person,
the rights and needs and virtues of that person. From the
lives of such we learn that love is nature's device for taking
us out of ourselves, and making us truly social creatures.
Early in my life as a writer I undertook to answer Ger-
trude Atherton, in her glorification of the sex-corruptions of
capitalist society. She indicted American literature for its
"bourgeois" qualities — among these the fact that American
authors had a prejudice in favor of living with their own
wives. Mrs. Atherton set forth the joys of sex promiscuity
as they are understood by European artists, and I ventured
in replying to remark that "one woman can be more to a man
than a dozen can possibly be." That sounds like a paradox.
88 Love and Society
but it is really a profound truth, and the person who does
not understand it has missed the best there is in the sex
relation. There is a limit to the things of the body, but to
those of the mind and spirit there is no limit, and so there
is no reason why true love should ever fall prey to boredom
and satiety.
CHAPTER XLV
THE PROBLEM OF JEALOUSY
(Discusses the question, to what extent one person may hold
another to the pledge of love.)
Once upon a time I knew an Anarchist shoemaker, the
same who had me sent to jail for playing tennis on Sunday,
as I have narrated in "The Brass Check." I remember argu-
ing with him concerning his ideas of sex, which were of the
freest. I can hear the very tones of his voice as he put
the great unanswerable question: "What are you going to
do about the problem of jealousy?" And I had no response
at hand; for jealousy is truly a most cruel and devastating
and imlovely emotion; and yet, how can you escape it, if
you are going to preserve monogamy?
The Anarchist shoemaker's solution was to break down
all the prejudices against sexual promiscuity. Free and un-
limited license was every person's right, and for any other
person to interfere was enslavement, for any other person to
criticize was superstition. But the power of superstition
is strong in the world, and the shoemaker found men resent-
ful of his teachings, and disposed to confiscate the rights of
their wives and daughters. Hence the shoemaker's disap-
proval of jealousy.
Other men, less purely physiological in their attitude to
sex, have wrestled with this same problem of jealousy. H.
G. Wells has a novel, "In the Days of the Comet," in which
he portrays two men, both nobly and truly in love with the
same woman. One in a passion of jealousy is about to mur-
der the other, when a great social transformation is magically
brought about, and the would-be murderer wakes up to imi-
versal love, and the two men nobly and lovingly share the
same woman. Shelley also dreamed this dream, inviting two
women to share him. I have known others who tried it, but
never permanently. I do not say that it never has succeeded,
or that it never can succeed. In this book I am renouncing
the future — I am trying to give practical advice to people, for
the conduct of their lives here and now, and my advice on
89
90 Love and Society
this point is that polygamous and polyandrous experiments
in modern capitaHst society cost more than they are worth.
I once knew a certain high school teacher, who believed
religiously in every kind of freedom. When she married,
she and her husband, an artist, made a vow against jealousy ;
but as it worked out, this vow meant that the wife had a
steady job and took care of the husband, while he loafed and
loved other women. When finally she, grew tired of it, he
accused her of being jealous; also, she had brought it down
to the matter of money! I know another woman, an Anar-
chist, widely known as a lecturer on sex freedom. She laid
down the general principle of unlimited personal freedom for
all, and she tried to live up to her faith. She entered into
a "free union" with a certain man, and when she discovered
that he was making love to another woman, in the presence
of a friend of mine she threw a vase of flowers at his head.
You see, her general principles had clashed with another gen-
eral principle, to the effect that a person who feels deep and
strong love inevitably desires that love to endure, and cannot
but suffer to see it preyed upon and destroyed, j
Let us first consider the question, just what are the true
and proper implications of monogamous love? The Roman
Catholic church advocates "monogamy," and understands
thereby that a man and woman pledge themselves "till death
do us part," and if either of them cancels this arrangement
it is adultery and mortal sin. I hope that none of my readers
understands by "monogamy" any such system of spiritual
strangulation. My own idea is rather what some church-
man has sarcastically described by the term "progressive
polygamy." I believe that a man and woman should pledge
their faith in love, and should keep that faith, and endeavor
with all their best energies to make a success of it; they
should strive each to understand the other's needs, and unsel-
fishly to fulfill them, within the limits of fair play. But if,
after such an effort has been truly made, it becomes clear
that the union does not mean health and happiness for one
of the parties, that party has a right to withdraw from it,
and for any government or church or other power to deny
that right is both folly and cruelty.
Now, on the basis of this definition of monogamy — or,
if you prefer, of progressive polygamy — we are in position
to say what we think about jealousy. If two people pledge
The Book of Love 91
their faith, and one breaks it, and the other complains, we
do not call that jealousy, but just common decency. Neither
do we call it jealousy if one expects the other to avoid the
appearance of guilt; for love is a serious thing, not to be
played with, and I think that a person who truly loves will
do everything possible to make clear to the beloved that he
is keeping and means to keep the plighted faith.
You may say that I am using words arbitrarily, in en-
deavoring thus to distinguish between justifiable and unjusti-
fiable jealousy, and calling the former by some other nanre.
It does not make much difference about words, provided I
make clear my meaning. I could point out a whole string of
words which have good meanings and bad meanings, and can-
not be discussed without preliminary explanations and dis-
tinctions ; religion, for example, and morality, and aristocracy,
and justice, to name only a few. Most people's thinking
about marriage and love has been made like soup in a cheap
restaurant, by dumping in all kinds of scraps and notions
from such opposite poles of human thought as Christian
monkery and Renaissance license, absurdly called "romance."
So before you can do any thinking about a problem like
jealousy, you have to agree to use the word to mean some-
thing definite, whether good or bad.
We shall take jealousy as a "bad" word, and use it to
mean the setting up, by a man or woman, of some claim to
the love of another person, which claim cannot be justified
in the court of reason and fair play. This includes, in
the first place, all claims based upon a courtship, not
ratified by marriage. It is to the interest of society and
the race that men and women should be free to investi-
gate persons of the other sex, and to experiment with the
aflFections before pledges of marriage are made. If sen-
sible customs of iove and just laws of marriage were made,
there would be no excuse for a woman's giving herself to a
man before marriage; she should be taught not to do it, and
then if she does it, the risk is her own, and the disgusting
perversion of venality and greed known as the "breach of
promise suit" should be unknown in our law. The young
should be taught that it is the other person's right to change
his mind and withdraw at any time before marriage; what-
ever pains and pangs this may cause must be borne in silence.
The second kind of jealousy is that which seeks to keep
92 Love and Society
in the marriage bond a person who is not happy in it and
has asked to be released. The law sanctions this kind of
cowardly selfishness, which manifests itself every day on the
front pages of our newspapers — a spe:ctacle of monstrous and
loathsome passions unleashed and even glorified. Husbands
set the bloodhounds of the law after wives who have fled
with some other man, and send the man to a cell, and drag
the woman back to a loveless home. Wives engage private
detectives, and trail their husbands to some "love nest," and
then ensue long public wrangles, with washing of filthy linen,
and the matter is settled by a "separation." The virtuous wife,
who may have driven the man away by neglect or vanity or
stupidity, is granted a share of his earnings for the balance
of her life; and two more people are added to the millions
who are denied sexual happiness under the law, and are there-
by impelled to live as law violators.
For this there is only one remedy conceivable. We have
banned cannibalism and slavery and piracy and duelling, and
we must ban one more ancient and cruel form of human
oppression, the effort to hold people in the bonds of sex by
any other power save that of love. I am aware that the
reactionaries who read this book will take this sentence out
of its context and quote it to prove that I am a "free lover."
I shall be sorry to have that done, but even so, I was not
willing to live in slavery myself, and I am not willing to
advocate it for others. I am aware that there are degenerate
and defective individuals, and that we have to miake special
provision for them, as I shall presently set forth; but the
average, normal human being must be free to decide what
is love for him, and what is happiness for him. Every per-
son in the world will have to deny himself the right to demand
love where love is not freely given, and all lovers in the world
will have to hold themselves ready to let the loved one go
if and when the loved one dem,ands it. I am aware that this
is a hard saying, and a hard duty, but it is one that life lays
upon us, and one that there is no escaping.
CHAPTER XLVI
THE PROBLEM OF DIVORCE
(Defends divorce as a protection to monogamous love, and
one of the means of preventing infidelity and prostitution.)
You will hear sermons and read newspaper editorials about
the "divorce evil," and you will find that to the preacher or
editor this "evil" consists of the fact that more and more people
are refusing to stay unhappily married. It does not interest
these moralizers if the statistics show that it is women who are
getting most of the divorces, and that the meaning of the phe-
nomenon is that women are refusing to continue living with
drunken and dissolute men. To the clergy, the breaking of a
marriage is an evil per se, and regardless of circumstances.
They know this because God has told them so, and in the name
of God they seek to keep people tied in sex unions which have
come to mean loathing instead of love.
Now, I will assert it as a mathematical certainty that a con-
siderable percentage of marriages must fail. It is essential to
progress that human beings should grow, both mentally and
spiritually, and manifestly they cannot all grow in the same way.
If they grow diflFerently, must they not sometimes lose the power
to make each other happy in the marital bonds ? Who does not
know the man who masters life and becomes a vital force,
while his wife remains dull and empty ? If such a man changes
wives, the world in general denounces him as a selfish beast;
but the world does not know nor does it care about those thou-
sands of men who, not caring to be branded as selfish beasts,
fulfill the needs of their lives by keeping mistresses in secret.
I knew a certain country school teacher, one of the most
narrowly conventional young women imaginable, who was
engaged to a middle-aged business man. He went to New York
on a business trip, and stayed a couple of months, and wrote her
that he had met some Anarchists, and had discovered that all
he had read about them in the newspapers was false, and
that they were the true and pure idealists to whom the rest of
liis life must be devoted. The young lady was horrified ; nor
was she any happier when she came to New York and met her
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94: Love and Society
fiance's new friends. She ought in common sense to have
broken the engagement ; but she was in love, and she married, as
many another fool woman does, with the idea of "reforming"
the man. She failed, and was utterly and unspeakably
wretched.
I know another man, a conservative capitalist of narrow
and aggressive temper, whose wife turned into an ardent Bol-
shevik. The man thinks that all Bolsheviks should be shut up
in jail for life, while the wife is equally certain that all jails
should be razed to the ground and all Bolsheviks placed in con-
trol of the government. These two people have got to a point
where they cannot sit down to the breakfast table without flying
into a quarrel. I know another case of a modern scientist, an
agnostic, whose wife, a half-educated, sentimental woman, took
to dabbling in mysticism, and drove him wild by setting up an
image of Buddha in her bedroom, and consorting with "swamis"
in long yellow robes. I know another whose wife turned
into an ultra-pious Catholic, and turned over the care of his
domestic life to a priest. Is it not obvious that the only possible
solution of such problems lies in divorce? Unless, indeed, we
are all of us going to turn over the care of our domestic lives to
the priests !
Our grandfathers and grandmothers believed one thing, and
believed the same thing when they were seventy as when they
were twenty ; so it was possible for them to dwell in domestic
security and permanence till death did them part. But we are
learning to change our minds ; and whether what we believe is
better or worse than what our ancestors believed, at least it is
different. Also we are coming to take what we believe with
^more seriousness ; the intellectual life means more and more to
us, and it becomes harder and harder for us to find sexual and
domestic happiness with a partner who does not share our con-
victions, but, on the contrary, may be contributing to the
campaign funds of the opposition party.
I do not mean by this that people should get a divorce as
soon as they find they differ about some intellectual idea ; on the
contrary, I have advocated that they should do everything pos-
sible to understand and to tolerate each other. But it is a fact
that intellectual convictions are the raw material out of which
characters and lives are made, and it is inevitable that some
characters and lives that fit quite well at twenty should fit very
badly at thirty or forty. When we refuse divorce under such
The Book or Love 95
circumstances we are not fostering marriage, as we fondly
imagine ; we are really fostering adultery. It is a fact that not
one person in ten who is held by legal or social force in an
unhappy sex union will refrain from seeking satisfaction out-
side; and because these outside satisfactions are disgraceful,
and in some cases criminal, they seldom have any permanence.
Therefore it follows that "strict" divorce laws, such as the
clerical propaganda urges upon us, are in reality laws for the
promotion of fornication and prostitution.
There is a short story by Edith Wharton, in which the
"divorce evil" is exhibited to us in its naked horror ; the story
called "The Other Two," in the volimie "The Descent of Man."
A society woman has been divorced twice and married three
times, and by an ingenious set of circumstances the woman and
all three of the men are brought into the same drawing-room at
the same time. Just imagine, if you can, such an excruciating
situation : a woman, her husband, and two men who used to be
her husbands, all compelled to meet together and think of some-
thing to say ! I cite this story because it is a perfect illustration
of the extent to which the "divorce problem" is a problem of
our lack of sense. Mrs. Wharton will, I fear, consider me a
very vulgar person if I assert that there is absolutely no reason
whatever why any of those four people in her story should have
had a moment's discomfort of mind, except that they thought
there was. There is absolutely nothing to prevent a man and
woman who used to be married from meeting socially and being
decent to each other, or to prevent two men from being decent
to each other under such circumstances. I would not say that
they should choose to be intimate friends — though even that
may be possible occasionally.
I know, because I have seen it happen. In Holland I met a
certain eminent novelist and poet, a great and lovable man. I
visited his home, and met his wife and two little children,
and saw a man and woman living in domestic happiness. The
man had also two grown sons, and after a few days he
remarked that he would like me to meet the mother of these
young men. We went for a walk of a mile or so, and met a
lady who lived in a small house by herself, and who received us
with a friendly welcome and talked with us for a couple of
hours about music and books and art. This lady had been the
writer's wife for ten years or so, and there had been a terrible
uproar when they volimtarily parted. But they had refused to
96 Love and Society
pay attention to this uproar ; they understood why they did not
wish to remain husband and wife any longer, but they did not
consider it necessary to quarrel about it, nor even to break off
the friendship which their common interests made possible.
The two women in the case were not intimate, I gathered, but
they frequently met at the homes of others, and found no diffi-
culty in being friendly. I suggest to Mrs. Wharton that this
story is at least as interesting as the one she has told ; but I fear
she will not care to write it, because apparently she considers it
necessary that people who are well bred and refined should be
the helpless victims of destructive manias.
CHAPTER XLVII
THE RESTRICTION OF DIVORCE
(Discusses the circumstances under which society has the right
to forbid divorce, or to impose limitations upon it.)
We have quoted the old maxim, "Marry in haste and repent
at leisure," and we suggested that parents and guardians should
have the right to ask the young to wait before marriage, and
make certain of the state of their hearts. We have now the
same advice to give concerning divorce; the same claim to
enter on behalf of society — that it has and should assert the
right to ask people to delay and think carefully before breaking
up a marriage.
What interest has society in the restriction of divorce?
What affair is it of any other person if I choose to get a divorce
and marry a new wife once a month ? There are many reasons,
not in any way based upon religious superstition or conven-
tional prejudice. In the first place, there are or may be chil-
dren, and society should try to preserve for every child a home
with a father and a mother in it. Second, there are property
rights, of which every marriage is a tangle, and the settlement
of which the law should always oversee. Third, there is the
question of venereal disease, which society has an unquestion-
able right to keep down, by every reasonable restriction upon
sexual promiscuity. And finally, there is the respect which all
men and women owe to love. It seems to me that society has
the same right to protect love against extreme outrage, as it has
to forbid indecent exposure of the person on the street.
There is in successful operation in Switzerland a wise and
sane divorce law, based upon common sense and not upon super-
stition. A couple wish to break their marriage, and they go
before a judge, and in private session, as to a friendly adviser,
they tell their troubles. He gives them advice about their dis-
agreement, and sends them away for three months to think it
over. At the end of three months, if they still desire a divorce,
they meet with him again. If he still thinks there is a chance
of reconciliation, he has the right to require them to wait
another three months. But if at the end of this second period
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98 Love and Society
they are still convinced that the case is hopeless, and that they
should part, the judge is required to grant the divorce. You
may note that this is exactly what I have suggested concerning
young couples who become engaged. In both cases, the parties
directly interested have the right to decide their own fate, but
the rest of the world requires them to think carefully about it,
and to listen to counsel. Except for grave offenses, such as
adultery, insanity, crime or venereal disease, I do not think that
anyone should receive a divorce in less than six months, nor do
I think that any personal right in contravened by the imposing
of such a delay.
Next, what are we going to say to the right, or the claim to
the right, on the part of a man or woman, to be married once a
year throughout a lifetime ? In order to illustrate this problem,
I will tell you about a certain man known to me. In his early
life he spent a couple of years in a lunatic asylum. He lays
claim to extraordinary spiritual gifts, and uses the language of
the highest idealism known. He is a man of culture and
good family, and thus exerts a peculiar charm upon young
women of refinement and sensitiveness. To my knowledge he
was three times married in six years, and each time he deserted
the woman, and forced her to divorce him, and to take care of
herself, and in one case of a child. In addition, he had begotten
one child out of marriage, and left the mother and child to
starve. For ten years or so I used to see him about once in six
months, and invariably he had a new woman, a young girl of
fine character, who had been ensnared by him, and was in the
agonizing process of discovering his moral and mental derange-
ment. Yet there was absolutely nothing in the law to place
restraint upon this man ; he could wander from state to state,
or to the other side of the world, preying upon lovely young
girls wherever he went.
This particular man happens to call himself a "radical" ; but
I could tell you of similar men in the highest social circles, or in
the political world, the theatrical world, the "sporting" world ;
they are in every rank of life, and are just as definitely and
certainly menaces to human welfare, and progress as pirates on
the high seas or highwaymen on the road. Nor are they con-
fined to the males ; the world is full of women who use their
sex charms for predatory purposes, and some of them are far
too clever for any law that you or I can contrive at present.
But I think we might begin by refusing to let any man or
The Book of Love 99
woman have more than two divorces in one lifetime, in any
state or part of the world. If any man or woman tries three
times to find happiness in love, and fails each time, we have a
right to assume that the fault must lie with that person, and not
with the three partners.
I think we may go further yet ; having made wise laws of
love and marriage, taking into consideration all human needs,
we have a right to require that men and women shall obey the
laws. At present the great mass of the public has sympathy for
the law-breaker; just as, in old days, the peasants could not
help admiring the outlaw who resisted unjust land laws and
robbed the rich, or as today, under the capitalist regime, we can
not withhold our sympathy from political prisoners, even
though they have committed acts of violence which we deplore.
But when we have made sex laws that we know are just and
sensible — then we shall consider that we have the right to
restrain sex criminals, and in extreme cases we shall avail our-
selves of the skill of science to perform a surgical operation
which will render him unable in future to prey upon the love
needs of people who are placed at his mercy by their best
qualities, their unselfishness and lack of suspicion.
We clear out foul-smelling weeds from our garden, because
we wish to raise beautiful flowers and useful herbs therein.
There lives in California a student of plant life, who has shown
us what we can do, not by magic or by superhuman efforts,
but simply by loving plants, by watching them ceaselessly,
understanding their ways, and guiding their sex-life to our
own purposes. We can perform what to our ignorant ancestors
would have seemed to be miracles; we can actually make all
sorts of new plants, which will continue to breed their own
kind, and survive forever if we give them proper care. In
other words, Luther Burbank has shown us that we can "change
plant nature."
There flash back upon my memory all those dull, weary,
sick human creatures, who have repeated to me that dull,
weary, sick old formula, "You cannot change human nature."
I do not think I am indulging either in religious superstition
or in blind optimism, but am speaking precisely, in saying
that whenever human beings get ready to apply experimental
science to themselves, they can change human nature just as
they now change plant nature. By putting human bodies
together in love, we make new bodies of children more beautiful
100 Love and Society
than any who have yet romped on the earth ; and in the same
way, by putting minds and souls together, we can make new
kinds of minds and souls, different from those we have pre-
viously known, and greater than either the man-soul or the
woman-soul alone.
Also, by that magic which is the law of mind and soul
life, each new creation can be multiplied to infinity, and shared
by all other minds and souls that live in the present or may
live in the future. We have shown elsewhere how genius
multiplies to infinity the joy and power of life by means of
the arts ; and one of the greatest of the arts is the art of love.
Consider the great lovers, the true lovers, of history — ^how they
have enriched the lives of us all. It does not make any dif-
ference whether these men and women lived in the flesh, or in
the brain of a poet — we learn alike from Dante and Beatrice,
from Abelard and Heloise, from Robert and Elizabeth Brown-
ing, from Tristan and Isolde, from Romeo and Juliet, what is
the depth and the splendor of this passion which lies hidden
within us, and how it may enrich and vivify and glorify all Hfe.
PART FOUR
THE BOOK OF SOCIETY
CHAPTER XLVIII
THE EGO AND THE WORLD
(Discusses the beginning of consciousness, in the infant and
in primitive man, and the problem of its adjustment to life.)
We have now to consider the relationship of man to his
fellows, with whom he Hves in social groups. Upon this prob-
lem floods of light have been thrown by the new science of
psycho-analysis. I will try to give, briefly and in simple
language, an idea of these discoveries.
One of the laws of biology is that every individual, in his
development, reproduces the history of the race; so that im-
pulses and mental states of a child reveal to us what our
far-off ancestors loved and feared. The same thing is dis-
covered to be true of neurotics, people who have failed in
adjusting themselves to civilized hfe, and have gone back,
in some or all of their mental traits, to infantile states. If
we analyze the unconscious minds of "nervous patients," and
compare them with what we find in the minds of infants,
and in savages, we discover the same dreams, the same long-
ings and the same fears.
The mental life of man begins in the womb. We cannot
observe that life directly, but we know that it is there, because
there cannot be organic life without mind to direct it, and
just as there is an unconscious mind that regulates the bodily
processes in adults, so in the embryo there must be an uncon-
scious mind to direct the flow of blood, the building of bones,
muscle, eyes and brain. The mental life of that unborn crea-
ture is of course purely egotistical; it knows nothing outside
itself, and it finds this universe an agreeable place — every-
thing being supplied to it, promptly and perfectly, without
effort of its own.
But suddenly it gets its first shock; pain begins, and
severe discomfort, and the creature is shoved out into a cold
world, yelling in protest against the unsought change. And
from that moment on, the new-born infant labors to adjust
itself to an entirely new set of conditions. Discomforts
trouble it, and it cries. Quickly it learns that these cries are
103
104 Love and Society
answered, and satisfaction of its needs is furnished. Some-
how, magically, things appear; warm and dry covering, a
trickle of delicious hot milk into its mouth. At first the infant
mind has no idea how all this happens ; but gradually it comes
to realize objects outside itself, and it forms the idea that
these objects exist to serve its wants. Later on it learns that
there are particular sounds which attach to particular objects,
and cause them to function. The sound "Mama," for example,
produces a goddess clothed in beauty and power, perform-
ing miracles. So the infant mind arrives at the "period of
magic gestures" and the "period of magic words" ; correspond-
ing to a certain type of myth and belief which we find in
every race and tribe of human being that now exists or ever
has existed on earth. AU these stories about magic wishes and
magic rings and magic spells of a thousand sorts; and no-
where on earth a child which does not listen greedily to such
fancies ! The reason is simply that the child has passed
through this stage of mental life, and so recently that the feel-
ings are close to the surface of his consciousness.
But gradually the infant makes the painful discovery that
not everything in existence can be got to serve him; there
are forces which are proof against his magic spells; there are
some which are hostile, and these the infant learns to regard
with hatred and fear. Sometimes hatred and fear are
strangely mixed with admiration and love. For example,
there is a powerful being known as "father," who is some-
times good and useful, but at other times takes the atten-
tion of the supremely useful "mother," the source of food and
warmth and life. So "father" is hated, and in fancy he is
wished out of the way — which to the infant is the same thing
as killing. Out of this grows a whole universe of fascinat-
ing mental life, which Freud calls by the name "the CEdipus
complex" — after the legend of the Greek hero who murdered
his father and committed incest with his mother, and then,
when he discovered what he had done, put out his own
eyes. There is a mass of legends, old as human thought,
repeating this story; we cannot be sure whether they have
grown out of the greeds and jealousies of this early wish-life
of the infant, or whether they had their base in the fact that
there was a stage in human progress in which the father
really was killed off by the sons.
This latter idea is discussed by Freud, in his book, "Totem
The Book of Society 105
and Taboo." It appears that primitive man lived in hordes,
which were dominated by one old male, who kept all the wo-
men to himself, and either killed the young males, or drove
them out to shift for themselves; so the young men would
combine and murder their father. The forming of human
society, of marriage and the family, depended upon one fac-
tor, the decision of the young victors to live and let live. The
only way they could do this was to agree not to quarrel over
the women of their own group, but to seek other women from
other groups. This may account for what is known as
"exogamy," an almost universal marriage custom of primitive
man, whereby a man named Jones is barred by frightful taboos
from the women named Jones, but is permitted relations with
all the women named Smith.
To return to our infant: he is in the midst of a painful
process of adjusting himself to the outside world ; discovering
that sometimes all his magic words and gestures fail, his
wishes no longer come true. There are beings outside him,
with wills of their own, and power to enforce them; he has
to learn to get along with these beings, and give up his pleas-
ures to theirs. These processes which go on in the infant soul,
the hopes and the terrors, the griefs and the angers, are of the
profoundest significance for the later adult life. For noth-
ing gets out of the mind that has once got into it; the infan-
tile cravings which are repressed and forgotten stay in the
unconscious, and work there, and strive still for expression.
The conscious mind will not tolerate them, but they escape
in the form of fairy-tales and stories, of dreams and delu-
sions, slips of the tongue, and many other mental events which
it is fascinating to examine. Also, if we are weakened by
ill health or nervous strain, these infantile wishes may take
the form of "neuroses," and fully grown people may take to
stammering, or become impotent, or hysterical, or even insane,
because of failures of adjustment to life that happened when
they were a year or two old. These things are known, not
merely as a matter of theory, but because, as soon as by
analysis these infant secrets are brought into consciousness
and adjusted there, the trouble instantly ceases.
So it appears that the whole process of human life, from
the very hour of birth, consists of the correct adjustment of
men and women in relation to their fellows. Not merely is
man a social being, but all the prehuman ancestors of men.
106 Love and Society
for ages upon geologic ages, have been social beings ; they
have lived in groups, and their survival has depended upon
their success in fitting themselves snugly into group relation-
ships. Failure to make correct adjustments means punish-
ment by the group, or by enemies outside the group ; if the
failure is serious enough, it means death. We may assert that
the task of understanding one's fellow men, and making one's
self understood by^ them, is the most important task that con-
fronts every individual.
And if we look about the world at present, the most super-
ficial of us cannot fail to realize that the task is far from being
correctly performed. So many people unhappy, so many striv-
ing for what they cannot get! So many having to be locked
behind bars, like savage beasts, because they demand something
which the world is resolved not to let them have ! So many
having to be killed, by rifles and machine-guns, by high explo-
sive shells and poison gas — because they misunderstood the
social facts about them, and thought they could fulfill some
wishes which the rest of mankind wanted them to repress ! As
I read the psycho-analyst's picture of the newly born infant
with its primitive ego, its magic cries and magic gestures, I can-
not be sure how much of it is sober science and how much is
mordant irony — a sketch of the mental states of the men and
women I see about me — whole classes of men and women, yes,
even whole nations !
The eflfort of the following chapters will be to interpret to
men and women the world which they have made, and to which
they are trying to adjust themselves. More especially we shall
try to show how, by better adjustments, men may change both
themselves and the world, and make both into something less
cruel and less painful, more serene and more certain and more
free.
CHAPTER XLVIX
COMPETITION AND CO-OPERATION
(Discusses the relation of the adult to society, and the part
which selfishness and unselfishness play in the development of
social life.)
Pondering the subject of this chapter, I went for a stroll
in the country, and seating myself in a lonely place, became
lost in thought; when suddenly my eye was caught by some-
thing moving. On the bare, hot, gray sand lay a creature
that I could see when it moved and could not see when it
was still, for it was exactly the color of the ground, and fitted
the ground tightly, being flat, and having its edges scalloped
so that they mingled with the dust. It was a lizard, covered
with heavy scales, and with sharp horns to make it unattrac-
tive eating. At the slightest motion from me it vanished
into a heap of stones, so quickly that my eye could scarcely
follow it.
This creature, you perceive, is in its actions and its very
form an expression of terror; terror of devouring enemies,
of jackals that pounce and hawks that swoop, and also of the
hot desert air that seeks to dry out its few precious drops of
moisture. Practically all the energies of this creature are con-
centrated upon the securing of its own individual survival.
To be sure, it will mate, but the process will be quick, and
the eggs will be left for the sun to hatch out, and the baby
lizards will shift for themselves — that is to say, they will be
incarnations of terror from the moment they open their eyes
to the light.
The jackal seeks to pounce upon the lizard, and so inspires
terror in the lizard; but when you watch the jackal you find
that it exhibits terror toward more powerful foes. You find
that the hawk, which swoops upon the lizard, is equally quick
to swoop away when it comes upon a man with a gun. This
preying and being preyed upon, this mixture of cruelty and
terror, is a conspicuous fact of nature; if you go into any
orthodox school or college in America today, you will be
taught that it is nature's most fundamental law, and gov-
erns all living things. If you should take a course in polit-
107
108 Love and Society
ical economy under a respectable professor, you would find
him explaining that such cruelty-terror applies equally in
human affairs; it is the basis of all economic science, and
the effort to escape from it is like the effort to lift yourself
by your boot-straps.
The professor calls this cruelty-terror by the name "com-
petition"; and he creates for his own purposes an abstract
being whom he names "the economic man," a creature who
acts according to this law, and exists under these conditions.
One of the professor's formulas is the so-called "Malthusian
law," that population presses always upon the limits of sub-
sistence. Another is "the law of diminishing returns of agri-
culture," that you can get only so much product out of a
certain piece of land, no matter how much labor and capital
you put into it. Another is Ricardo's "iron law of wages,"
that wages cannot rise above the cost of living. Another
is embodied in the formula of Adam Smith, that "Competi-
tion is the life of trade." The professor enunciates these
"laws," coldly and impersonally, as becomes the scientist; but
if you go into the world of business, you find them set forth
cynically, in scores of maxims and witticisms : "Dog eat dog,"
"the devil take the hindmost," "business is business," "do
others or they will do you."
Evidently, however, there is something in man which rebels
against these "natural" laws. In our present society man
has set aside six days in the week in which to live under
them, and one day in the week in which to preach an entirely
different and contradictory code — that of Christian ethics,
which bids you "love your neighbor," and "do unto others as
you would they should do unto you." Between these Sun-
day teachings and the week-day teachings there is eternal con-
flict, and one who takes pleasure in ridiculing his fellow men
can find endless opportunity here. The Sunday preachers are
forbidden to interfere with the affairs of the other six days;
that is called "dragging politics into the pulpit." On the other
hand, incredible as it may seem, there are professors of the
week-day doctrine who call themselves Christians, and be-
lieve in the Sunday doctrine, too. They manage this by putting
the Sunday doctrine off into a future world; that is, we are
to pounce upon one another and devour one another under
the "iron laws" of economics so long as we live on earth,
but in the next world we shall play on golden harps and have
The Book of Society 109
nothing to do but love one another. If anybody is so foolish
as to apply the Sermon on the Mount to present-day affairs,
we regard him as a harmless crank; if he persists, and sets
out to teach others, we call him a Communist or a Pacifist,
and put him in jail for ten or twenty years.
In the Book of the Mind, I have referred to Kropotkin's
"Mutual Aid as a Factor in Evolution," which I regard as
one of the epoch-making books of our time. Kropotkin
clearly proves that competition is not the only law of nature,
it is everywhere modified by co-operation, and in the great
majority of cases co-operation plays a larger part in the
relations of living creatures than competition. There is no
creature in existence which is entirely selfish; in the nature
of the case such a creature could not exist — save in the
imaginations of teachers of special privilege. If a species
is to survive, some portion of the energies of the individual
must go into reproduction; and steadily, as life advances, we
find the amount of this sacrifice increasing. The higher the
type of the creature, the longer is the period of infancy, and
the greater the sacrifice of the parent for the young. Like-
wise, most creatures make the discovery that by staying
together in herds or groups, and learning to co-operate instead
of competing among themselves, they increase their chances
of survival. You find birds that live in flocks, and other
birds, like hawks and owls and eagles, that are solitary; and
you find the co-operating birds a thousand times as numerous
— ^that is to say, a thousand times as successful in the strug-
gle for survival. You find that all man's brain power has
been a social product ; the supremacy he has won over nature
has depended upon one thing and one alone — ^the fact that
he has managed to become different from the "economic man,"
that product of the imagination of the defenders of privilege.
It is evident that both competition and co-operation are
necessary to every individual, and the health of the individual
and of the race lies in the proper combination of the two. If
a creature were wholly unselfish — if it made no effort to
look after its own individual welfare — it would be exter-
minated before it had a chance to reproduce. If, on the other
hand, it cannot learn to co-operate, its progeny stand less
chance of survival against creatures which have learned this
important lesson. We have a nation of a 110,000,000 people,
who have learned to co-operate to a certain limited extent.
110 "LoYE AND Society
Some of us realize how vastly the happiness of these millions
might be increased by a further extension of co-operation;
but we find ourselves opposed by the professors of privilege
— and we wish that these gentlemen would go out and join
the lizards of the desert sands or the sharks of the sea,
creatures which really practice the system' of "laissez faire"
which the professors teach.
The plain truth is that we cannot make a formula out of
either competition or co-operation. We cannot settle any
problem of economics, of business or legislation, by proclaim-
ing, for example, that "Competition is the life of trade."
Competition may just as well turn out to be the death of
trade; it depends entirely upon the kind of competition, and
the stage of trade development to which it is applied. In the
early eighteenth century, when that formula of Adam Smith
was written, competition was observed to keep down prices
and provide stimulus to enterprise, and so to further abun-
dant production. But the time came when the machinery for
producing goods was in excess, not merely of the needs of
the country, but of the available foreign markets, and then
suddenly the large-scale manufacturers made the discovery
that competition was the death of trade to them. They pro-
ceeded, as a matter of practical common sense, and without
consulting their college professors, to abolish competition by
forming trusts. We passed laws forbidding them to do this,
but they simply refused to obey the laws. In the United
States they have made good their refusal for thirty-five years,
and in the end have secured the blessing of the Supreme
Court upon their course.
So now we have co-operation in large-scale production and
marketing. It is known by various names, "pools," "syndi-
cates," "price-fixing," "gentlemen's agreements." It is a bless-
ing for those who co-operate, but it proves to be the death
of those who labor, and also of those who consume, and we
see these also compelled to combine, forming labor unions
and consumers' societies. Each side to the quarrel insists
that the other side is committing a crime in refusing to com-
pete, and our whole social life is rent with dissensions over
this issue. Manifestly, we need to clear our minds of dead
doctrines; to think out clearly just what we mean by com-
petition, and what by co-operation, and what is the proper
balance between the two.
The Book of Society 111
I have been at pains in this book to provide a basis for
the deciding of such questions. It is a practical problem, the
fostering of human life and the furthering of its develop-
ment. We cannot lay down any fixed rule ; we have to study
the facts of each case separately. We shall say, this kind
of comjjetition is right, because it helps to protect human life
and to develop its powers. We shall say, this other kind
of competition is wrong because it has the opposite effect.
We shall say, perhaps, that some kind was right fifty years
ago, or even ten years ago, because it then had certain
effects; but meantime some factor has changed, and it is
now having a different effect, and therefore ought to be
abolished.
There has never been any kind of human competition
which men did not judge and modify in that way; there is
no field of human activity in which ethical codes do not
condemn certain practices as unfair. The average English-
man considers it proper that two men who get into a dispute
shall pull off their coats, and settle the question at issue by
pummeling each other's noses. But let one of these men
strike his opponent in the groin, or let him kick his shins,
and instantly there will be a howl of execration. Likewise,
an Anglo-Saxon man who fights with the fists has a loath-
ing for a Sicilian or Greek or other Mediterranean man who
will pull a knife. That kind of competition is barred among
our breeds ; and also the kind which consists of using poisons,
or of starting slanders against your opponent.
If you look back through history, you find many forms
of competition which were once eminently respectable, but
now have been outlawed. There was a time, for example,
when the distinction we draw between piracy and sea-war was
wholly unknown. The ships of the Vikings would go out and
raid the ships and seaports of other peoples, and carry off
booty and captives, and the men who did that were sung as
heroes of the nation. The British sea-captains of the time
of Queen Elizabeth — Drake, Frobisher, and the rest of them
— are portrayed in our school books as valiant and hardy men,
and the British colonies were built on the basis of their activ-
ities; yet, according to the sea laws in force today, they
were pirates. We regard a cannibal race with abhorrence;
yet there was a time when all the vigorous races of men
were cannibals, and the habit of eating your enemies in
112 Love and Society
battle may well have given an advantage to the races which
practiced it.
On the other hand, you find sentimental people who reject
all competition on principle, and would like to abolish every
trace of it from society, and especially from education. But
stop and consider for a moment what that would mean. Would
you abolish, for example, the competition of love, the right
of a man to win the girl he wants? You could not do it,
of course; but if you could, you would abolish one of the
principal methods by which our race has been improved.
Of course, what you really want is, not to abolish competi-
tion in love, but to raise it to a higher form. There is an
old saying, "All's fair in love and war," but no one ever
meant that. You would not admit that a man might com-
pete in love by threatening to kill the girl if she preferred a
rival. You would not admit that he might compete by poison-
ing the other man. You would not admit that he might com-
pete by telling falsehoods about the other man. On the other
hand, if you are sensible, you admit that he has a right to
compete by making his character known to the girl, and if
the other man is a rascal, by telling the girl that.
Would you abolish the competition of art, the effort of
men to produce work more beautiful and inspiring than
has ever been known before? Would you abolish the effort
of scientists to overthrow theories which have hitherto been
accepted? Obviously not. You make these forms of com-
petition seem better by calling them "emulation," but you do
not in the least modify the fact that they involve the right
of one person to outdo other persons, to supplant them and
take away something from them, whether it be property or
position or love or fame or power. In that sense, competition
is indeed the law of life, and you might as well reconcile
yourself to it, and learn to play your part with spirit and
good humor.
Also, you might as well train your children to it. You
■will find you cannot develop their powers to the fullest with-
out competition; in fact, you will be forced to go back and
utilize forms of competition which are now out of date among
adults. I have told in the Book of the Body how I myself
tried for ten years or more to live without physical competi-
tion, and discovered that I could not; I have had to take up
some form of sport, and hundreds of thousands of other men
The Book of Society 113
have had the same experience. What is sport? It is a deHb-
erate going back, under carefully devised rules, to the savage
struggles of our ancestors. The very essence of real sport
is that the contestants shall, within the rules laid down,
compete with each other to the limit of their powers. With
what contempt would a player of tennis or baseball or whist
regard the proposition that his opponent should be merciful
to him, and let him win now and then! Obviously, these
things have no place in the game, and to be a "good sport"
is to conform to the rules, and take with enjoyment what-
ever issue of the struggle may come.
But then again, suppose you are competing with a child;
obviously, the conditions are different. You no longer play
the best you can, you let the child win a part of the time;
but you do not let the child know this, or it would spoil the
fun for the child. You pretend to try as hard as you know
how, and you cry out in grief when you are beaten, and the
child crows with delight. And yet, that does not keep you
from loving the child, or the child from loving you.
The purpose of this elaborate exposition is to make clear
the very vital point that a certain set of social acts may be
right under some conditions, and desperately wrong under
other conditions. They may be rfght in play, and not in
serious things ; they may be right in youth, and not in matur-
ity; they may be right at one period of the world's develop-
ment, while at another period they are destructive of social
existence. If, therefore, we wish to know what are right
and wrong actions in the affairs of men, if we wish to judge
any particular law or political platform or program of busi-
ness readjustment, the first thing we have to do is to acquire
a mass of facts concerning the society to which the law or
platform or program is to be applied. We need to ask our-
selves, exactly what will be the effect of that change, applied
in that particular way at that particular time. In order to
decide accurately, we need to know the previous stages through
which that society has passed, the forces which have been
operating in it, and the ways in which they have worked.
But also we must realize that the lessons of history cannot
ever be accepted blindly. The "principles of the founders"
apply to us only in modified form; for the world in which
we live today is different from any world which has ever been
before, and the world tomorrow will bt different yet. We
114 LoTE AND Society
are the makers of it, and the masters of it, and what it will
be depends to some extent upon our choice. In fact, that
is the most important lesson of all for us to learn; the final
purpose of all our thought about the world is to enable us
to make it a happier and a better world for ourselves and
our posterity to live in.
CHAPTER L
ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY
(Discusses the idea of superior classes and races, and whether
there is a natural basis for such a doctrine.)
In the letters of Thomas Jefferson is found the follow-
ing passage:
"All eyes are open or opening to the rights of man. The
general spread of the light of science has already laid open
to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind
has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored,
few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by
the grace of God."
This, which Jefferson, over a hundred years ago, described
as a "palpable truth," is still a long way from prevailing in
the world. We are trying in this book not to take anything
for granted, so we do not assume this truth, but investigate
it; and we begin by admitting that there are many facts
which seem to contradict it, and which make it more difficult
of proof than Jefferson realized. It is not enough to point
out the lack of saddles on the backs, and of boots and spurs
on the feet of newly born infants; for the fact is that men
are not exploited because of saddles, nor is the exploiting
accomplished by means of boots and spurs. It is done by
means of gold and steel, banks and credit systems, railroads,
machine-guns and battleships. And while it is not true that
certain races and classes are born with these things on them,
they are bom to the possession of them, and the vast major-
ity of mankind are without them all their lives, and without
the ability to use them even if they had them.
The doctrine that "all men are created equal," or that
they ought to be equal, we shall describe for convenience as
the democratic doctrine. It first came to general attention
through Christianity, which proclaimed the brotherhood of
all mankind in a common fatherhood of God. But even as
taught by the Christians, the doctrine had startling limita-
tions. It was several centuries before a church council sum-
moned the courage to decide that women were human beings^
115
116 Love and Society
and had souls; and today many devout Christians are still
uncertain whether Japanese and Chinese and Filipinos and
Negroes are human beings, and have souls. I have heard old
gentlemen in the South gravely maintain that the Negro is
not a human being at all, but a different species of animal.
I have heard learned men in the South set forth that the
sutures in the Negro skull close at some very early age, and
thus make moral responsibility impossible for the black race.
And you will find the same ideas maintained, not merely as
to differences of race and color, but as to differences of eco-
nomic condition. You will find the average aristocratic Eng-
lishman quite convinced that the "lower orders" are perma-
nently inferior to himself, and this though they are of the
same Anglo-Saxon stock.
For convenience I will refer to the doctrine that there is
some natural and irremovable inferiority of certain races or
classes, as the aristocratic doctrine. I will probably startle
some of my readers by making the admission that if there
is any such natural or irremovable inferiority, then a belief
in political or economic equality is a blunder. If there are
certain classes or races which cannot think, or cannot learn
to think as well as other classes and races, those mentally
inferior classes and races will obey, and they will be made
to obey, and neither you nor I, nor all the preachers and
agitators in the world, will ever be able to arrange it other-
wise. Suppose we could do it, we should be committing a
crime against life; we should be holding down the race and
aborting its best development.
Is there any such natural and irremovable inferiority in
human beings? When we come to study the question we
find it complicated by a different phenomenon, that of racial
immaturity, which we have to face frankly and get clear in
our minds. One of the most obvious facts of nature is that
of infancy and childhood. We have just pointed out that
if you are competing with a child, you do it in an entirely
different way and under an entirely different set of rules, and
if you fail to do this, you are unfair and even crwel to the
child. And it is a fact of our world that there are some
races more backward in the scale of development than other
races. You may not like this fact, but it is silly to try to
evade it. People who live in savage huts and beat on tom-
toms and fight with bows and arrows and cannot count be-
The Book of Society 117
yond a dozen — such people are not the mental or moral
equals of our highly civilized races, and to treat them as equals,
and compete with them on that basis, means simply to exter-
minate them. And we should either exterminate them at once
and be done with it, or else make up our minds that they
are in a childhood stage of our race, and that we have to
guide them and teach them as we do our children.
There is no more useful person than the wise and kind
teacher. But suppose we saw some one pretending to be a
teacher to our children, while in reality enslaving and exploit-
ing them, or secretly robbing and corrupting them — what
would we say about that kind of teacher? The name of that
teacher is capitalist commercialism, and his profession is
known as "the white man's burden"; his abuse of power is
the cause of our present racial wars and revolts of subject
peoples. A fair-minded man, desirous of facing all the facts
of life, hardly knows what stand to take in such a controversy ;
that is, hardly knows from which cause the colored races suf-
fer more — ^the white man's exploitation, or their own native
immaturity.
To say that certain races are in a childhood stage, and
need instruction and discipline, is an entirely different thing
from saying they are permanently inferior and incapable of
self-government. Whether they are permanently inferior is
a problem for the man of science, to be determined by psy-
chological tests, continued possibly over more than one gener-
ation. We have not as yet made a beginning; in fact, we
have not even acquired the scientific impartiality necessary
to such an inquiry.
In the meantime, all that we can do is to look about us
and pick up hints where we can. In places like Massachu-
setts, where Negroes are allowed to go to college and are
given a chance to show what they can do, they have not ousted
the white man, but many of them have certainly won his re-
spect, and one finds charming and cultured men among them,
who show no signs of prematurely closed up skulls. And one
after another we see the races which have been held down
as being inferior, developing leadership and organization and
power of moral resistance. The Irish are showing themselves
today one of the most vigorous and high-spirited of all races.
The Hindus are developing a movement which in the long
run may prove more powerful than the white man's gold and
118 Love and Society
steel. The Egyptians, the Persians, the Filipinos, the Koreans,
are all devising ways to break the power of capitalist news-
paper censorship. How sad that the subject races of the
world have to get their education through hatred of their
teachers, instead of through love!
Of course, these rebel leaders are men who have absorbed
the white man's culture, at least in part; practically always
they are of the younger generation, which has been to the
white man's schools. But this is the very answer we have
been seeking — as to whether the race is permanently inferior,
or merely immature and in need of training. It is not only
among the brown and black and yellow races that progress
depends upon the young generations; that is a universal fact
of life.
In the course of this argument we shall assume that the
Christian or democratic theory has the weight of probability
on its side, and that nature has not created any permanently
and necessarily inferior race or class. We shall assume that
the heritage of culture is a common heritage, open to all our
species. We shall not go so far as the statement which Jef-
ferson wrote into the Declaration of Independence, that "all
men are created free and equal" ; but we shall assert that they
are created "with certain inalienable rights," and that among
these is the right to maintain their lives and to strive for
liberty and happiness. Also, we shall say that there will
never be peace or order in the world until they have found
liberty, and recognition of their right to happiness.
CHAPTER LI
RULING CLASSES
(Deals with authority in human society, how it is obtained,
and what sanction it can claim.)
It is possible to conceive an order of nature in which all
individuals were born and developed exactly alike and with
exactly equal powers. Such is apparently the case with lower
animals, for example the ants and the bees. But among hu-
man beings there are great differences; some are born idiots
and some are born geniuses. Even supposing that we are able
to do away with blindness and idiocy, it is not likely that we
can ever make a race of uniform genius. There will always
be some more capable minds, who will discover new powers
of life, and will compel the others to learn from them. It
is to the interest of the race that this learning should be done
as quickly as possible. In other words, the great problem of
society is how to recognize superior minds and put them in
authority.
We look back over history, and discover a few wise men,
and many rulers; but very, very rarely does it happen tha*^^
the ruler is a wise man, or a friend of wise men. Far more
often we find the ruler occupied in suppressing the wise man
and his wisdom. There was a ruler who allowed the mob
to crucify Jesus, and another who ordered Socrates to drink
the hemlock, and another who tortured Galileo, and another
who chopped off the head of Sir Walter Raleigh — and so on
through a long and tragic chronicle. And even when the
accident of a wise ruler occurs he is apt to be surrounded
by a class of parasites and corrupt officials who are busy to
thwart his will.
The general run of history is this: some group seizes
power by force, and holds it by the same means, and seeks
to augment and perpetuate it. Those who win the power
are frequently men of energy and practical sense, and do
fairly well as governors; but they are never able to hand on
their virtues, and their line becomes corrupted by sensuality
and self-indulgence, and the subject classes are plundered and
driven to revolt. Often the revolt fails, but in the course
119
120 Love and Society
of time it succeeds, and there is a new dynasty, or a new
ruling class, sometimes a little better than the old, sometimes
worse.
How shall one judge whether the new regime is better
or worse? Obviously, this is a most important question; it
has to do, not merely with history, but with our daily affairs,
our voting. As one who has read some tens of thousands of
pages of history, and has pondered its lessons with heart-sick-
ness and despair, I lay down this general law by which revolts
and changes of power may be judged: If the change results
in the holding of power by a smaller number of people, it is
a reaction ; but if the change results in distributing the power
among a larger group of the community, then that community
has made a step in advance.
I have seen a sketch of the history of some Central Amer-
ican country — Guatemala, I think— ^which showed 130 revo-
lutions in less than a hundred years. Some rascal gets
together a gang, and seizes the government and plunders its
revenue. When he lias plundered too much, some other ras-
cal stirs up the people, and gets together another gang. Such
"revolutions" we regard as subjects for comic opera, and for
the Richard Harding Davis type of fiction ; but we do not
consider them as having any relationship to progress. We
describe them as "palace" revolutions.
But compare with this the various English revolutions.
We write learned histories about them, and describe England
as "the Mother of Parliaments." The reason for this is that
when there was political discontent in England, the protest-
ing persons proceeded to organize thenvselves, and to under-
stand their trouble and to remedy it. They had the brain
power to do this; they maintained their right to do it, and
when by violence or threats of violence they forced the ruling
class to give way, they brought about a wider extension of
liberty, a wider distribution of power. Tennyson has pic-
tured England as a state "where freedom slowly broadens
down from precedent to precedent." We today, reading its
history, are inclined to put a sarcastic emphasis on the word
"slowly"; but Tennyson would answer that it is better for a
community to move forward slowly than to move forward
rapidly and then move backward nearly as far.
We have pointed out several times the important fact of
biology that change does not necessarily mean progress from
The Book of Society 121
any rational or moral point of view. Degeneration is just
as real a fact as progress, and it does not at all follow that
because things change they are changing for the better. It
is worth while to repeat this in discussing human society, for
it is just as true of governments and morals as of living spe-
cies. A nation may pile up wealth, and multiply a hundred-
fold the machinery of wealth production, and only be increas-
ing luxury and wantonness and graft. A nation may change
its governmental forms, its laws and social conventions, and
boast noisily of these changes in the name of progress, while
as a matter of fact it is following swiftly the road to ruin
which all the empires of history have traced. So far as I
can discover, there is one test, and only one, by which you
can judge, and that is the test already indicated : Is the actual,
effective power of the state wielded by a larger or a smaller
percentage of the population than before the change took
place ?
You will note the words "actual, effective power." Noth-
ing is more familiar in human life than for forms to survive
after the spirit which created them is dead; and nothing is
more familiar than the use of these forms as masks to deceive
the populace. There have been many times in history when
people have gone on voting, long after their votes ceased to
count for anything; there have been many times when people
have gone through the motions of freedom long after they
have been slaves. Mexico under Diaz had one of the most
perfect of constitutions, and was in reality one of the most
perfect of despotisms; and we Americans are sadly familiar
with political democracies which do not work.
Shall we, therefore, join the pessimists and say that his-
tory is a blind struggle for useless power, and that the notion
of progress is a delusion? I do not think so; on the con-
trary, I think it is easily to be demonstrated that there has
been a steady increase in the amount of knowledge possessed
by the race, and in the spread of this knowledge among the
whole population. I think that through most of the period
of written history we can trace a real development in human
society. I think we can analyze the laws of this development,
and explain its methods; and I think this knowledge is pre-
cious to us, because it enables us to accelerate the process and
to make the end more certain. This task, the analysis of
social evolution, is the task we have next to undertake.
CHAPTER LII
THE PROCESS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION
(Discusses the series of changes through which human so-
ciety has passed.)
We have now to consider, briefly, the history of man as
a social being, the groups he has formed, and the changes in
his group systems. Everything in life grows, and human so-
cieties are no exception to the rule. They have undergone
a long process of evolution, which we can trace in detail,
and which we find conforms exactly to the law laid down by
Herbert Spencer; a process whereby a number of single and
similar things become different parts of one complex thing.
In the case of human societies the units are men and women,
and social evolution is a process whereby a small and simple
group, in which the individuals are practically alike, grows
into a large and complex group, in which the individuals are
widely different, and their relations one to another are compli-
cated and subtle.
There are two powerful forces pressing upon human
beings, and compelling them to struggle and grow. The first
of these forces is fear, the need of protection against enemies ;
the second is hunger, the need of food and the means of
producing and storing food. The first causes the individual
to combine with his fellows and establish some form of gov-
ernment, and this is the origin of political evolution. The
second causes him to accumulate wealth, and to combine indus-
trially, and this is the origin of economic evolution. Because
the first force is a little more urgent, we observe in the his-
tory of human society that evolution in government precedes
evolution in industry.
I made this statement some twenty years ago, in an article
in "Collier's Weekly." I wrote to the effect that man's first care
was to secure himself against his enemies, and that when he
had done this he set out to secure his food supply. "Collier's"
called upon the late Professor Sumner of Yale University, a
prize reactionary and Tory of the old school, to answer me;
and Professor Sumner made merry over my statement, declar-
122
The Book of Society 123
ing that man sought for food long before he was safe from
his enemies. Some years later, when Sumner died, one of his
admirers wrote in the New York "Evening Post" that he had
completely overwhelmed me, and I had acknowledged my de-
feat by failing to reply — something which struck me as very
funny. It was, of course, possible that Sumner had over-
whelmed me, but to say that I had considered myself over-
whelmed was to attribute to me a degree of modesty of which
I was wholly incapable. As a matter of fact, I had had my
usual experience with capitalist magazines ; "Collier's Weekly"
had promised to publish my rejoinder to Sumner, but failed
to keep the promise, and finally, when I worried them, they
tucked the answer away in the back part of the paper, among
the advertisements of cigars and toilet soaps.
Professor Sumner is gone, but he has left behind him an
army of pupils, and I will protect myself againrt them by
phrasing my statement with extreme care. I do not mean to
say that man first secures himself completely against his ene-
mies, and then goes out to hunt for a meal. Of course he
has to eat while he is countering the moves of his enemies;
he has to eat while he is on the march to battle, or in flight
from it. But ask yourself this question: which would you
choose, if you had to choose — to go a couple of days with noth-
ing to eat, or to have your throat cut by bandits and your
wife and children carried away into slavery? Certainly you
would do your fighting first, and meantime you would scratch
together any food you could. While you were devoting your
energies to putting down civil war, or to making a treaty
with other tribes, or to preparing for a military campaign, you
would continue to get food in the way your ancestors had
got it; in other words, your economic evolution would wait,
while your political evolution proceeded. But when you had
succeeded in putting down your enemies, and had a long period
of peace before you, then you would plant some fields, and
domesticate some animals, or perhaps discover some new way
of weaving cloth — and so your industrial life would make
progress.
It is easy to see why Professor Sumner wished to con-
fuse this issue. He could not deny political evolution, because
it had happened. He despised and feared political democracy,
but it was here, and he had to speak politely to it, as to a
tiger that had got into his house. But industrial democracy
124 Love and Society
was a thing that had not yet happened in the world; it was
only a hope and a prophecy, and therefore a prize old Tory
was free to ridicule it. I remember reading somewhere his
statement — ^the notion that democracy had anything to do with
industry, or could in any way be applied to industry, was a
piece of silliness. So, of course, he sought to demolish my idea
that there was a process of evolution in economic affairs, par-
alleling the process of political evolution which had already
culminated in democracy.
Let us consider the process of political evolution, briefly
and in its broad outlines. - Take any savage tribe ; you find it
composed of individuals who are very much alike. Some are
a little stronger than others, a little more clever, more power-
ful in battle; but the difference is slight, and when the tribe
chooses someone to lead them, they might as well choose
one man as another. They all have a say in the tribe councils,
both men and women; their "rights" in the tribe are the
same. They are, of course, slaves to ignorance, to degrading
superstition and absurd taboos ; but these things apply to
everyone alike, there is no privileged caste, no hereditary
inequality.
But little by little, as the tribe grows in numbers, and in
power and intelligence, as it comes to capture slaves in battle,
and to unite with other tribes, there comes to be an hereditary
chieftain and a group of his leading supporters, his courtiers
and henchmen. When the society has evolved into the stage
which we call barbarism, there is a permanent superior caste ;
there are hereditary priests, who have in their keeping the
favor of the gods ; and there is a subject population of slaves.
The society moves on into the feudal stage, in which the
various grades and classes are precisely marked off, each with
its different functions, its different privileges and rights and
duties. The feudal principalities and duchies war and struggle
among themselves; they are united by marriage or by con-
quest, and presently some stronger ruler brings a great ter-
ritory under his power, and we have what is called a king-
dom; a society still larger, still more complex in its organi-
zation, and still more rigid in its class distinctions. Take
France, under the ancient regime, and compare a courtier or
noble gentleman with a serf ; they are not only different
before the law, they are different in the language they use,
in the clothes they wear, in the ideas they hold; they are
The Book of Society 125
different even in their bodies, so that the gentleman regards
the serf as an inferior species of creature.
The kings warred among themselves and emperors arose.
The ultimate ideal in Europe was a political society which
should include the whole continent, and this ideal was several
times almost attained. But it is the rule of history that
wherever a large society is built upon the basis of privilege
and enslavement, the ruling classes prove morally and intel-
lectually unequal to the burden put upon them; they become
corrupted, and their rule becomes intolerable. This happened
in Europe, and there came political revolutions — first in Eng-
land, which accomplished it by gradual stages, and then in
the French monarchy, and quite recently in a dozen monarchies
and empires, large and small.
What precisely is this political revolution? Let us con-
sider the case of France, where the change was sudden, and
the issues precisely drawn. King Louis XIV had said, *T am
the state." To a person of our time that might seem like boast-
ing, but it was merely an assertion of the existing political
fact. King Louis was the state by universal consent, and by
divine authority, as all men believed. The army was his army,
the navy was his navy, and wars, when he made them, were
his wars. Everyone in the state was his subject, and all the
property of the state was his personal, private property, to
dispose of as he pleased. The government officials carried
out his will, and members of the nobility held the land and
ruled in his name.
But now suddenly the people of France overthrew the
king, and put him to death, and drove the nobles into exile;
they seized the power of the French state, and proclaimed
themselves equal citizens in the state, with equal voices in its
government and equal rights before the law. So we call
France a republic, and describe this form of society as polit-
ical democracy. It is the completion of the process of polit-
ical evolution, and you will see that it moves in a sort of
spiral ; having completed a circle and got back where it was
before, but upon a higher plane. The citizens of a modern
republic are equal before the law, just as were the members
of the savage tribe; but the political organization is vastly
larger, and infinitely more complicated, and every individual
lives his life upon a higher level, because he shares in the
benefits of this more highly organized and more powerful
state.
CHAPTER LIII
INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION
(Examines the process of evolution in industry and the stage
which it has so far reached.)
And now let us consider the process of industrial evolu-
tion. We shall find it to be exactly the same thing, repro-
ducing the changes in another field of activity. You may
picture two gigantic waves sweeping over the ocean. In some
places the waves are far apart, and in other places they are
closer together; for a time they may mingle, and perhaps
their bases always mingle. It would be easy for a critic to
point out how political affairs play a leading part in indus-
trial evolution, and vice versa ; it would be easy to argue that
property rules the political state, or again, that the main func-
tion of the political state is to protect property. As I have
said, man has to fight his enemies, and he has to seek food,
and often he has to do the two things at the same time; but
nevertheless, broadly speaking, we observe two great waves,
sweeping over human society, and most of the time these
waves are clearly separated and easily distinguished.
Industry in a savage tribe is, like government, simple and
uniform; all the members of the tribe get their living in the
same way. One may be a little more expert as a fisherman,
another as a gatherer of cocoanuts, but the fisherman gathers
cocoanuts and the cocoanut-gatherer fishes. In the days of
primitive communism there is little economic strife and little
change; but as slavery comes in, and the private property
system, there begins industrial war — the members of the tribe
trade with one another, and argue over prices, and gradually
some get the better of others, they accumulate slaves and goods,
and later on they appropriate the land to their private use.
Of course, the men who do this are often the rulers of the
tribe, and so politics and industry are mixed ; but even assum-
ing that the state never interfered, assuming that the govern-
ment allowed business affairs to work themselves out in their
own way, the tendency of competition is always to end in
monopoly. The big fish eat the little fish, the strong gain
advantage over the weak, the rich grow richer, and the poor
126
The Book of Society 127
grow relatively poorer. As the amount of trading increases,
and men specialize in the arts of bargaining, we see again and
again how money concentrates in the hands of a few. It does
this, even when the political state tries to prevent it; as, for
example, when the princes and dukes of the Middle Ages
would torture the Jewish money-lenders and take away their
treasure, but the Jews never failed to grow rich again.
It is when political evolution has completed itself, and a
republic has been set up, that a free field is given to economic
forces to work themselves out to their logical end. We have
seen this in the United States, where we all started pretty
much on the same economic level, and where political tyranny
has had little hold. Our civilization is a civilization of the
trader — the business man, as we call him; and we see how
big business absorbs little business, and grows constantly
larger and more powerful. We are familiar with what we
call "graft," the use by business men of the powers of gov-
ernment to get trade advantage for themselves, and we have
a school of old-time thinkers, calling themselves "Jeffersonian
Democrats," who insist that if only there had never been any
government favors, economic equality and democracy would
have endured forever in our country. But it is my opinion
that government has done far more to prevent monopoly and
special privilege in business than to favor it; and neverthe-
less, monopoly has grown.
In other words, the tendency toward concentration in busi-
ness, the absorpytion of the small business by the big business,
is an irresistible natural process, which neither can be nor
should be hindered. The condition of competition, whether
in politics or in industry, is never a permanent one, and can
never be made permanent ; it is a struggle which automatically
brings itself to an end. Large-scale production and distribution
is more economical than small-scale, and big business has irre-
sistible advantages of credit and permanence over little busi-
ness. As we shall presently show, the blind and indiscriminate
production of goods under the competitive system leads to the
glutting of markets and to industrial crises. At such times
the weaker concerns are weeded out and the strong ones take
their trade; and as a result, we have the modern great cor-
poration, the most powerful machine of production yet devised
by man, and which corresponds in every aspect to the mon-
archy in political society.
128 Love and Society
We are accustomed to speak of our "captains of industry,"
our "coal kings," and "beef barons" and "lords of steel," and
we think we are using metaphors ; but the universality of these
metaphors points to a fundamental truth in them. As a mat-
ter of fact, our modern captain of industry fills in the eco-
nomic world exactly the same functions as were filled in
ancient days by the head of a feudal state. He has won his
power in a similar struggle, and he holds it by similar meth-
ods. He rules over an organization of human beings, arranged,
economically speaking, in grades and classes, with their author-
ities and privileges and duties precisely determined, as under
the "ancient regime." And just as King Louis said, "I am
the state," so Mr. Armour considers that he is Armour &
Co., and Mr, Morgan considers that he is the house of Mor-
gan, and that the business exists for him and is controlled
by him under divine authority.
If I am correct in my analysis of the situation, this proc-
ess of industrial evoluton is destined to complete itself, as
in the case of the political state. The subject populations of
industry are becoming more and more discontented with their
servitude, more and more resentful of that authority which
compels them to labor while others reap the benefit. They
are organizing themselves, and preparing for a social trans-
formation which will parallel in every detail the revolution
by which our ancestors overthrew the authority of King
George III over the American colonies, and made inhabi-
tants of those colonies no longer subjects of a king, but free
and equal citizens of a republic. I expect to see a change
throughout the world, which will take the great instruments
of production which we call corporations and trusts, out of
the hands of their present private owners, and make them
the property, either of the entire community, or of those who
do the work in them. This change is the "social revolution,**
and when it has completed itself, we shall have in that society
an Industrial Republic, a form of business management which
constitutes economic democracy.
The history of the world's political revolutions has been
written almost exclusively by aristocratic or bourgeois histo-
rians; that is to say, by men who, whatever their attitude
toward political democracy, have no conception of industrial
democracy, and believe that industrial strife and enslavement
are the normal conditions of life. If, however, you will read
' The Book of Society 129
Kropotkin's "Great French Revolution," you will be inter-
ested to discover how important a part was played in this
revolution by economic forces. Underneath the political dis-
content of the merchants and middle classes lay a vast mass
of social discontent of the peasants and workers. It was the
masses of the people who made the revolution, but it was
the middle classes who seized it and turned it to their own
ends, putting down attempts toward economic equality, and
confining the changes, so far as possible, to the political field.
And everywhere throughout history, if you study revolu-
tions, you find that same thing happening. You find, for
example, Martin Luther fighting for the right to preach the
word of God without consulting the Pope; but when the
peasants of Germany rose and sought to set themselves free
from feudal landlords, Luther turned against them, and called
upon the princes to shoot them down. "The ass needs to be
beaten, and the populace needs to be controlled with a strong
hand." The landlords and propertied classes of England
were willing to restrict the power of the king, and to give
the vote to the educated and well-to-do; but from the time
of Jack Cade to our own they shoot down the poor.
But meantime, the industrial process continues; the mod-
ern factory system brings the workers together in larger and
larger groups, and teaches them the lesson of class conscious-
ness. So the time of the workers draws near. The first
attempt in modern times to accomplish the social revolution
and set up industrial democracy was in the Paris Commune.
When the French empire collapsed, after the war with Ger-
many in 1871, the workers of Paris seized control. They
were massacred, some 50,000 of them, and the propertied
classes of France established the present bourgeois republic,
which has now become the bulwark of reaction throughout
the Continent of Europe.
Next came the Russian revolution of 1905, and this was
an interesting illustration of the relation between the two
waves of social progress. Russia was a backward country
industrially, and according to theory not at all prepared for
the social revolution. But nowadays the thoughts of men cir-
culate all over the world, and the exiles from Russia had
absorbed Marxian ideas, and were not prepared to accept a
purely political freedom. So in 1905, after the Japanese war,
when the people rose and forced the Czar to grant a par-
130 Love and Society
liament, the extremists made an effort to accomplish the social
revolution at the same time. The peasants began to demand
the land, and the workers the factories ; whereupon the capital-
ists and middle classes, who wanted a parliament, but did not
want Socialism, went over to the side of reaction, and both
the political and social revolutions were crushed.
But then came the great war, for which Russia with her
incompetent government and her undeveloped industry was
unprepared. The strain of it broke her down long before
the other Allies, and in the universal suffering and ruin the
Russian people were again forced to rise. The political revo-
lution was accomplished, the Czar was imprisoned, and the
Douma reigned supreme. Middle class liberalism throughout
the world gave its blessings to this revolution, and hastened
to welcome a new political democracy to the society of nations.
But then occurred what to orthodox democratic opinion has
been the most terrifying spectacle in human history. The
Russian people had been driven too far towards starvation
and despair; the masses had been too embittered, and they
rose again, overthrowing not only their Czar and their grand
dukes, but their capitalists and land-owners. For the first
time in history the social revolution established itself, and the
workers were in control of a great state. Ever since then
we have seen exactly what we saw in Europe from 1789 on-
ward, when the first political republic was established, and
all the monarchies and empires of the world banded them-
selves together to stamp it out. We have witnessed a cam-
paign of war, blockade, intrigue and propaganda against the
Soviet government of Russia, all pretending to be carried
on in the name of the Russian people, and for the purpose
of saving them from suffering — but all obviously based upon
one consideration and one alone, the fear that an effort at
industrial self-government might possibly prove to be a
success.
Whether or not the Soviets will prove permanent, no one
can say. But this much is certain ; just as the French revolu-
tion sent a thrill around the world, and planted in the hearts
of the common people the wonderful dream of freedom from
kings and ruling classes, just so the Russian revolution has
brought to the working masses the dream of freedom from
masters and landlords. Everywhere in capitalist society this
ferment is working, and in one country after another we
The Book of Society 151
see the first pangs of the new birth. Also we see capitalists
and landlords, who once found "democracy," "free speech"
and "equality before the law" useful formulas to break down
the power of kings and aristocrats, now repudiating their
old-time beliefs, and going back to the frankest reaction. We
see, in our own "land of the free," the government refus-
ing to reprint the Declaration of Independence during the
war, and arresting men for quoting from it and circulating
it; we even see the Department of Justice refusing to allow
people to reprint the Sermon on the Mount!
CHAPTER LIV
THE CLASS STRUGGLE
(Discusses history as a battle-ground between ruling and sub-
ject classes, and the method and outcome of this struggle.)
There is a theory of social development, sometimes called
the materialistic interpretation of history, and sometimes the
economic interpretation of history. It is one of the contri-
butions to our thought which we owe to Karl Marx, and like
all the rest of Marxian theory, it is a subject of embittered
controversy, not merely between Socialists and orthodox
economists, but between various schools of revolutionary doc-
trine. For my part, I have never been a great hand for
doctrine, whether ancient or modern; I am not much more
concerned with what Marx taught than I am with what St.
Paul taught, or what Martin Luther taught. My advice is
to look at life with your own eyes, and to state in simple
language the conclusions of your own thinking.
Man is an eating animal; he has also been described as a
tool-making animal, and might be described as an ideal-mak-
ing animal. There is a tendency on the part of those who
specialize in the making of ideals to repudiate the eating and
the tool-making sides of man; which accounts for the
quarrel between the Marxians and the moralists- All through
history you find new efforts of man to develop his emotional
and spiritual nature, and to escape from the humiliating limita-
tions of the flesh. These efforts have many of them been
animated by desperate sincerity, but none of them have
changed the fundamental fact that man is an eating animal,
an animal insufficiently provided by nature against cold, and
with an intense repugnance to having streams of cold water
run down back of his neck. The religious teachers go out
with empty purse, and "take no thought for the morrow";
but the forces of nature press insistently upon them, and little
by little they make compromises, they take to shelter while
they are preaching, they consent to live in houses, and even
to own houses, and to keep a bank account. So they make
terms with the powers of this world, and the powers of
132
The Book of Society 133
this world, which are subtle, and awake to their own inter-
ests, find ways to twist the new doctrine to their ends.
So the new rehgion becomes simply another form of the
old hypocrisy; and it comes to us as a breath of fresh air
in a room full of corruption when some one says, "Let us
have done with aged shams and false idealisms. Let us face
the facts of life, and admit that man is a physical animal,
and cannot do any sane and constructive thinking until he has
food and shelter provided. Let us look at history with un-
blinking eyes, and realize that food and shelter, the material
means of life, are what men have been seeking all through
history, and will continue to seek, until we put production and
distribution upon a basis of justice, instead of a basis of force."
Such is, as simply as I can phrase it, the materialistic
interpretation of history. Put into its dress of scientific lan-
guage it reads: the dominant method of production and
exchange in any society determines the institutions and forms
of that society. I do not think I exaggerate in saying that
this formula, applied with judgment and discrimination, is a
key to the understanding of human societies.
Wherever man has moved into the stage of slavery and
private property there has been some group which has held
power and sought to maintain and increase it. This group
has set the standards of behavior and belief for the commu-
nity, and if you wish to understand the government and reli-
gion, the manners and morals, the philosophy and literature
and art of that community, the first thing you have to do is
to understand the dominant group and its methods of keep-
ing itself on top. This statement applies, not merely to those
cultural forms which are established and ordained by the
ruling class; it applies equally well to the revolutionary
forms, the behavior and beliefs of those who oppose the rul-
ing class. For men do not revolt in a vacuum, they revolt
against certain conditions, and the form of their revolt is
determined by the conditions. Take, for example, primitive
Christianity, which was certainly an effort to be unworldly,
if ever such an effort was made by man. But you cannot
imderstand anything about primitive Christianity unless you
see it as a new form of slave revolt against Roman imperial-
ism and capitalism.
The theory of the class struggle is the master key to the
bewilderments and confusions of history. Always there is a
134 LoTE AND Society
dominant class, holding the power of the state, and always
there are subject classes; and sooner or later the subject
classes begin protesting and struggling for wider rights. When
they think they are strong enough, they attempt a revolt, and
sometimes they succeed. If they do, they write the histories
of the revolt, and their leaders become heroes and statesmen.
If they fail, the histories are written by their oppressors,
and the rebels are portrayed as criminals.
One of the commonest of popular assumptions is that if
the rebels have justice on their side, they are bound to succeed
in the long run; but this is merely the sentimental nonsense
that is made out of history. It is perfectly possible for a
just revolt to be crushed, and to be crushed again and again ;
just as it is possible for a child which is ready to be born to fail
to be born, and to perish miserably. The fact that the Huguenots
had most of the virtue and industry and intelligence of France
did not keep them from being slaughtered by Catholic bigots,
aftd reaction riveted upon the French people for a couple of
hundred years. The fact that the Moors had most of the indus-
try of Spain did not keep them from being driven into
exile by the Inquisition, and the intellectual life of the Spanish
people strangled for three hundred or four hundred years.
Some eight hundred years ago our ancestors in England
brought a cruel and despotic king to battle, and conquered
him, and on the field of Runnymede forced him to sign a grant
of rights to Englishmen. That document is known as Magna
Carta, or the Great Charter, and everyone who writes political
history today recognizes it as one of the greatest of man's
achievements, the beginning of a process which we hope will
bring freedom and equality before the law to every human
being on earth.
And now we have come to the stage in our industrial af-
fairs, when the organized workers seek to bring the monarchs
of industry into the council chamber, and force them to sign
a similar Great Charter, which will grant freedom and self-
government to the workers. Just as King John was forced
to admit that the power to tax and spend the public revenue
belonged to the people of England, and not to the ruler;
just so the workers will establish the principle that the finances
of industry are a public concern, that the books are
to be opened, and prices fixed and wages paid by the demo-
cratic vote of the citizens of industry. If that change is
The Book of Society 135
accomplished, the historian of the future will recognize it
as another momentous step in progress; and he wUl heed
the protests of the lords of industry, that they are being
deprived of their freedom to do business, and of their sacred
legal rights to their profits, as little as he heeded the protests
of King John against the "treason" and "usurpation" and
infringement of "divine right" by the rebellious barons.
CHAPTER LV
THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM
(Shows how wealth is produced in modern society, and the
effect of this system upon the minds of the workers.)
In the beginning man got his living by hunting and fish-
ing. Then he took to keeping flocks and herds, and later by
slow stages he settled down to agriculture. With the intro-
duction of slavery and the ownership of the land by ruling
classes, there came to be a subject class of workers, who
toiled on the land from dawn to dark, year in and year out,
and got, if they were fortunate, an existence for themselves
and their families. Whether these workers were called slaves
or serfs or peasants, whether their product was taken from
them in the form of taxes by the king, or of rent by the land-
lord, made no difference ; the workers were bound to the soil,
like the beasts with which they lived in intimate contact. They
were drafted into armies, and made to fight for their lords
•and masters ; they suffered pestilence and famine, lire and
slaughter; but with infinite patience they would rebuild their
huts, and dig and plant again, whether for the old master or
for a new one.
In the early days these workers made their own crude tools
and weapons; but very early there must have been some who
specialized in such arts, and with the growth of towns and
communications came a new kind of labor, based upon a new
system. Some enterprising man would buy slaves, or hire
labor, and obtain a supply of raw material, and manufacture
goods to be bartered or sold. He would pay his workers
enough to draw them from the land, and would sell the prod-
uct for what he could get, and the difference would be his
profit. That was capitalism, and at first it was a thing of
no importance, and the men who engaged in it had no social
standing. But princes and lords needed weapons and supplies
for their armies, and the men who could furnish these things
became more and more necessary, and the states which en-
couraged them were the ones which rose to power. Mer-
chants and sea-traders became the intimates of kings, and by
136
The Book of Society 137
the time of the Roman empire, capitalism was a great world
power, dominating the state, using the armies of the state for
its purposes. It went down with the rest of Roman civili-
zation, but in the Middle Ages it began once more to revive,
and by the end of the eighteenth century the merchants and
money lenders of France, with their retainers, the lawyers and
journalists, were powerful enough to .take the control of
society.
Then, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, came the
invention of machinery and of the power process. Capitalism
began to grow like a young giant among pygmies. In the
course of a century it has ousted all other methods of pro-
duction, and all other forms of social activity. A hundred
years ago the British House of Commons was a parliament
of landlords; today it is a Merchants' and Manufacturers'
Association. Out of the 707 members of the British House
of Commons, 361 are members of the "Federation of British
Industries," the labor-smashing organization of British "big
business." And the same is true of every other parliament
and congress in the modern capitalist state. Practically all
the wealth of the world today is produced by the capitalist
method, and distributed under capitalist supervision, and there-
fore capitalist ideas prevail in our society, to the practical
exclusion of all other ideas. I have shown in "The Profits
of Religion" how these ideas dominate the modern church,
and in "The Brass Check" how they dominate the modern
press. I plan to write two books, to show how they dominate
education and literature.
A hundred years ago an industry consisted of a half a
dozen or a dozen men, working under the personal super-
vision of an owner, and using crude hand tools. Today it
consists of a gigantic trust, owning and managing scores and
perhaps hundreds of mills and factories, each employing thou-
sands of workers. A corporation like the Steel Trust owns
enough of the sources of its raw material to give it prac-
tical monopoly; it owns a fleet of vessels especially designed
for ore-carrying; it owns its private railroads, to deliver the
ore to the mills. Through its system of dummy directorates
it has practical control of the main railroads over which it
distributes its products; also of banks and trust companies
and insurance companies, to gather the money of the public
to finance its undertakings. It owns huge office buildings.
138 Love and Society
and vast tracts of land upon which the homes of its workers
are built. It has a private army for the defense of its prop-
erty — a complete army of cavalry, infantry and artillery, in-
cluding a large and highly efficient secret service department,
with a host of informers and spies. It has newspapers for
the purpose of propaganda, and it controls the government
of every village, town and city in which it has important
interests. If you will take the trouble to visit a "steel town,"
and make inquiries among public officials, newspaper men,
and others who are "on the inside," you will discover that those
in authority consider it necessary and proper that "steel"
should control, and are unable to conceive any other condition
of affairs. If you go to other parts of the country, where
other great industries are located, you find it taken for granted
that "copper" should control, or "lumber," or "coal," or "oil,"
or whatever it may be.
Under the system of large scale capitalism, labor is a com-
modity, bought and sold in the market like any other com-
modity. Some years ago Congress was requested to pass a
law contradicting this fundamental fact of world capitalism.
Congress passed a law, very carefully worded so that no one
could be sure what it meant, and a few year^ later the Su-
preme Court nullified the law. But all through this political
and legal controversy the status of labor remained exactly the
same; there was a "labor market," consisting of those mem-
bers of the community who, in the formula of Marx, had
nothing but their labor power to sell. These competed for
recognition at the factory gates, and highly skilled foremen
selected those who ofiFered the largest quantity of labor power
for the stated wage.
So entirely impersonal is this process that there are great
industries in America in which ninety per cent of the common
labor force is hired and fired all over again in the course of
a year. These men are put to work in gangs, under a system
which enables one picked man to set the pace, and compel
all the others to keep up with him, under penalty of being
discharged. This process is known as "speeding up," and its
purpose is to obtam from each worker the greatest quantity
of energy in exchange for his daily wage. In the steel indus-
try men work twelve hours a day for six days in the week,
and then finish with a twenty-four-hour day. If they do not
work so long in other industries, it is because experience has
The Book of Society 139
proven that the greatest quantity of energy can be obtained
from them in a shorter time. There are very few men who
can stand this pace for long. Those who are not crippled or
killed in accidents are broken down at forty, and all the great
corporations recognize this fact. Their foremen pick out the
younger men, and practically all concerns have an age rule,
and never hire men above forty or forty-five.
I shall not in this book go into details concerning the fate
of the worker under the profit system. I have written two
novels, "The Jungle" and "King Coal," in which the facts are
portrayed in detail, and it seems the part of common sense to
refer the reader to these text-books. It will suffice here to
set forth the main outlines of the situation. In every capitalist
country of the world the masses of the people are herded
into industries, in whose profits they have no share, and in
whose welfare they have no interest. They do not know the
people for whom they work ; they have no himian relationship,
either with their work or with their employers. They see the
surplus of their product drawn off to maintain a class of
idlers, whose activities they know only through the scandals
of the divorce courts and the luxury-love of the moving pic-
ture screen. They compete with one another for jobs, and
bid down one another's wages ; and if they attempt to organize
and end this competition, their efforts are broken by newspaper
propaganda and policemen's clubs. At the same time they
know that monopoly, open or secret, prevails in the fixing of
prices, and so they find the struggle to "get ahead" a losing
one. In America it used to be possible for the young and
energetic to "go West"; but now the wave of capitalism has
reached the Pacific coast and been thrown back, and there
is no more frontier.
The man who works on the land has been through all the
ages a solitary man. He is better friends with his horse and
his cow than with his fellow humans. He is brutalized by
incessant toil, he lives amid dirt and the filth of animals,
he is, in the words of Edwin Markham :
''A thing that grieves not and that never hopes.
Stunted and stunned, a brother to the ox,"
He is a victim of natural forces which he does not under-
stand, and inevitably therefore he is superstitious. Being alone.
140 Love and Society
he is helpless against his masters, and only utter despera-
tion drives him to revolt.
But consider the capitalist system — how different the con-
ditions of its workers ! Here they are gathered into city
slums, and their wits are sharpened by continual contact with
their fellows. The printing press makes cheap the spread
of information, and the soap-box makes it even cheaper. Any
man with a grievance can shout aloud, and be sure of an
audience to listen, and he can get a great deal said before
the company watchman or the policeman can throttle him.
Moreover, the modern worker is not struggling with drought
and tempest and hail; he does not see his labors wiped out
by volcanic eruption or lightning stroke ; he is dealing with
machinery, something that he himself has made, and that
he fully understands. If a machine gets out of order, he
does not fall down upon his knees and pray to God to fix
it. All the training of his life teaches him the relationship
of cause and effect, the adjustment of means to ends. So
the modern worker, as a necessary consequence of his daily
work, is practical, skeptical, and unsentimental in his psy-
chology. And what is more, he is making all the rest of
society of the same temperament. He is building roads out
into the country, and building machines to roll over them;
he is running telephone lines and sending newspapers and
magazines and moving picture shows to the peasant and the
farmer; so the young peasants and farmers hunger for the
city, and they learn to fix machinery instead of praying to
God.
Such is the psychology of the modem working class ; and
the supreme achievement of their sharpened wits is an un-
derstanding of the capitalist process. As a matter of fact
they did not make this discovery for themselves ; it was made
for them by middle-class men, lawyers and teachers and
writers — Fourier, Owen, Marx, Lassalle. The modern doc-
trine is called by various names: Socialism, Communism,
Anarchism, Bolshevism, Syndicalism, Collectivism. Later on
I shall define these various terms, and point out the distinc-
tions between them. For the moment I emphasize the fac-
tor they all have in common, and which is fundamental : they
wish to break the power of class ownership and control of
the instruments and means of production; they wish to
replace private capitalism by some system under which the
The Book of Society 141
instruments and means of production are collectively owned
and operated; and they look to the non-owning class, the
proletarian, as the motive power by which this change is to
be compelled. I shall in future refer to this as the "social
revolutionary" doctrine ; taking pains to explain that the word
"revolutionary" is to be divested of its popular meaning of
physical violence. It is perfectly conceivable that the change
may be brought about peaceably, and I shall try to show
before long that in modern capitalist states the decision as
to whether it is brought about peaceably or by violence rests
with the present masters of industry.
CHAPTER LVI
THE CAPITALIST PROCESS
(How profits are made under the present industrial system
and what becomes of them.)
We have next to examine the structure of the capitalist
order, basing our argument on facts which are admitted by
everyone, including the most ardent defenders of the present
system.
All men have to have certain material things which we
describe as goods. As these goods do not produce them-
selves, it is necessary that some should work. The workers
must have tools; also they must have access to the land and
the sources of raw materials. These means of production
are owned by some individuals in the community, and this
ownership gives them power to direct the work of the rest.
Those who own the land and the natural sources of wealth
we call capitalists, or business men, and those who do not
own these things, or whose share in them is insignificant,
are the proletariat, or working class.
If you state to the average American that there is a
capitalist class and a proletariat in this country, he will point
out that many who are now members of the capitalist class
were originally members of the proletariat ; they have worked
hard and saved, and accumulated property. But this is mere-
ly confusing the issue. The fact that some proletarians turn
into capitalists and some capitalists into proletarians is im-
portant to the individuals concerned, but it does not alter
the fact that there are two classes, capitalist and prole-
tarian. Consider, by way of illustrating, a field with trees
growing on it; we have earth, and we have trees, and the
distinction between them is unmistakable. The roots of the
trees go down into the earth, and take up portions of the
earth and turn it into tree. The leaves and the dead branches
fall, and in the course of time are turned once more to
earth. There are all sorts of stages between earth and tree,
and between tree and earth ; but you would not therefore say
that the word "earth" and the word "tree" are misnomers.
142
The Book of Society 143?
The working men go to the business man and apply for
work. The business man gives them work, and takes their
product, and offers it in the market at a price which allows
him a profit above cost. If he can sell at a profit, he repeats,
the process, and the worker has a job. If he cannot sell
at a profit, the worker is out of a job. Here and there may
be a benevolent business man who, rather than turn his work-
ers out of a job, will sell his goods at cost, or even for a
short time at a loss ; but if he keeps the factory going simply
for the benefit of his workers, and with no expectation of
ever making a profit, that is a form of charity, and not the
common system under which our business is now carried on.
So it appears that the worker is dependent for his wages,
upon the ability of the business man to make a profit. The
worker's life is inextricably bound up with the profit of the
capitalist — no profit for the capitalist, no life for the worker.
The capitalist, going out to look for markets for his goods^
is seeking, not merely profit for himself, but life for his
workers.
Now, the business man pays a certain percentage of his.
total receipts for labor, another percentage for raw m'ate-
rials, another percentage for his overhead charges, and the.
rest is profit in various forms, rent to the landlord, interest
to the bondholder, dividends to the stockholder. All this
total sum goes to human individuals, and each has thus a,
certain amount of money to spend. They pay it over to
other individuals for goods or services, and so the money
keeps circulating, and business keeps going. That is as deep
as the average mind probes into the process.
But let us probe a little deeper. It is evident that, in the
course of all this exchanging of goods, some individuals get
a larger share than other individuals. Our government col-
lects an income tax, and thus we have statistics representing-
what people are willing to admit about the share they get.
In 1917 it appeared that, speaking roughly, one family out
of six had an income of over $1,000 a year, and one family
out of twelve had an income of over $2,000. But there were
19,000 families which admitted incomes of over $50,000 a.
year, and 300 with over $1,000,000 a year.
Now the families that get less than a thousand dollars a
year obviously have to spend the greater part of their income.
upon their immediate living expenscc. But the families that.
144 Lo^TE AND Society
get $50,000 a year do not need to spend everything, and most
of them take the greater part of their income and reinvest
it — that is, they spend it upon the creating of new machinery
of production, railroads, mills, factories, office buildings, the
whole elaborate structure of capitalist industry.
Exactly what proportion of the total product of industry
is thus taken and reinvested no one can say; but this we
know, our cities are growing at an enormous rate, our manu-
facturing power is increasing by leaps and bounds, we are
perfecting processes which enable one man to do the work
of a hundred men, which increase the product of one man's
labor a hundredfold. All this goes on bhndly, automatically;
a Niagara of goods of all sorts is poured out, and we call it
^'prosperity."
But then suddenly a strange and bewildering thing hap-
pens. All at once, and without warning, orders fall off,
values begin to drop, business collapses, factories are shut
down, and millions of men are thrown out of jobs. Mer-
chants look at one another with blanched faces ; each one has
been counting on paying his bills with the profits he was
going to make, and now his profits are gone, and he can't
pay. The newspapers and magazines keep insisting that it
can't be true, that business is going to revive next week, that
prosperity is just ahead. But the factories stay shut, and
the millions of men stay idle.
This is th^ condition in which we find ourselves as I write
this book, ft has been happening regularly in our history
every ten years or so, ever since America started; we have
had a hundred years to reflect upon it and to probe into the
causes of it, and such is business intelligence in the most
enlightened country in the world, you may search the pages
of our newspapers from the first column of millionaire
divorce suits to the last column of "situations wanted," and
-nowhere can you find one word to explain this mysterious
calamity of "hard times" — how it comes to happen to our social
system, or what could be done to prevent it! To supply this
deficiency in present day thinking is our next task.
CHAPTER LVII
HARD TIMES
(Explains why capitalist prosperity is a spasmodic thing, and
why abundant production brings distress instead of plenty.)
Let us picture a small island inhabited by six men. One
of these men fishes, another hunts, another gathers cocoanuts,
another raises goats for clothing, and so on. The six men
among them produce by their labor all the necessities of their
lives, and they exchange their products with one another. The
island is productive, and each of the men is free, and makes
his exchanges on equal terms; on that basis the industry of
the island can continue indefinitely, and there will never be any
trouble. There may sometimes be over-production, but it will
not cause anyone to starve. If the fisherman is unusually
lucky one day, he will be able to take a vacation for a few
days, living on his fish and the products he exchanges for
his fish. For the sake of convenience in future reference,
I will describe this happy island as a "free" society; mean-
ing that each of the members of this society has access on
equal terms to the sources of wealth, and each owns the prod-
uct of his own labor, without paying tribute to any one else
for the right to labor, or to exchange his products.
But now let us suppose that one of the men on the island
is strong and aggressive; he takes a club and knocks down
the other five men, and compels them to sign a piece of
paper agreeing that hereafter he is the president of the land
development company of the island, the chief stockholder in
the goat-raising company, and owner of the fishing conces-
sion and the cocoanut grove; also, that hereafter goods shall
not be bartered in kind, but shall be exchanged for money,
and that he is the banker, and also the government, with
the right to issue money. In this society you will find that
the real work, the actually productive work, is done by five
men, instead of by six, and these five do not get the full value
of their labor. The fisherman will fish, but his product will
no longer belong to himself ; he will get part of it as wages,
while the "business man" takes charge of the balance. So
145
146 Love and Society
when there is a lucky day, there will be prosperity in the
fishing industry, but this prosperity will not benefit the fisher-
man ; he will have only his wage, and when he has caught too
many fish, he will not have a few days' vacation, but will be
out of a job.
And exactly the same thing will happen to the goat-herd.
He will probably have work all the year round, because goats
have to be tended, but he will get barely enough to keep him
alive, and the surplus skins and milk will go to the owner
of the no-longer-happy island. Perhaps it will occur to the
owner that the man who raises cocoanuts might also keep an
eye on the goats, and so the goat-herd will be permanently
out of a job, and will turn into what is called a tramp, or
vagrant. Inasmuch as 'everything to eat on the island belongs
to the owner, the ex-goat-herd will be tempted to become a
criminal, and so it will be necessary for the owner to arm the
cocoanut man with a club and make him into a policeman;
or perhaps he will organize the fisherman and the hunter into
a militia for the preservation of law and order. They will
be glad to serve him, because, owing to the extreme produc-
tivity of the island, they will be out of jobs a great part of
the time, and but for the generosity of the business man,
would have no way of earning a living.
But suppose that the cocoanut man should invent a ma-
chine for gathering a year's supply of nuts in a week; sup-
pose the fisherman should devise a scheme to fill his boat
with fish in a few minutes; and suppose that as a result of
these inventions the business man got so rich that he moved
to Paris, and no longer saw his workers, or even knew their
names. Under these conditions you can see that overpro-
duction and unemployment might increase on the island; and
also the business man might seem less human and lovable to his
wage slaves, and might need a larger police force. It might
even happen that he would discover the need of a propaganda
department, in order to keep his police force loyal, and a secret
service to make sure that agitators did not get into the schools.
The five islanders, having filled all the bams and store-
houses, would be turned out to starve; and when they asked
the reason, they would be told it was because they had
produced a surplus of food. This may sound grotesque, but
it is what is being said to 5,000,000 men in America as I
write. There are clothing-workers who are going about in
The Book of Society 147
rags, and they are told it is because they have produced too
much clothing. There are shoe-workers whose shoes are fall-
ing off their feet, and they are told it is because they have
produced too many shoes. There are carpenters who have
no homes, and they are told that a great many homes are
needed, but unfortunately it doesn't pay the builders to go
ahead just now. This may sound like a caricature, but it
happens to be the most prominent single fact in the con-
sciousness of 5,000,000 Americans at the close of the year
1921. No wonder they are discontented with the present
order.
The solut'on of the mystery is so simple that the 5,000,000
unemployed cannot be kept permanently from understanding
it. The reason the five men on the island are starving is
because one man owns the island and the others own nothing.
If the island were community property, the five men would
each own a share of the contents of the barns and storehouses,
and would not be starving. If the 100,000,000 people of
America owned the productive machinery of America, then
instantly the unemployment crisis would pass like an evil
dream. The farm-workers who need shoes would exchange
their food with the starving shoe-workers, and the starving
shoe- workers would have jobs. They would want clothing,
and so the clothing-makers would start to work; and so on
all the way down the line. There is only one thing necessary
to make this possible, and that is the thing which we have
agreed to call the social revolution.
CHAPTER LVIII
THE IRON RING
J^ Analyzes further the profit system, which strangles produc-
tion, and makes true prosperity impossible.)
We have seen that in an exploiting society there is a sur-
plus which is taken by the exploiter; and that under the
modern system this surplus must be sold at a profit before
production can continue. The vital fact in such a society is
that the worker has not the money to buy back all that he
produces; therefore it is inevitable that a surplus product
should accumulate. When this happens, production must be
cut down, and during that period the worker is without a
job, and without means of living. The fact that he needs
the product does not help him; the point is that he has not
the money to buy it. In such a society the productive ma-
chinery is never used to the full. The machinery is controlled
by a profit-seeking interest, seeking an opportunity to make
sales, and restricting production according to the prospect
of sales. So the actual product bears no relationship to the
possible product, and people who live in an exploiting society
can form no conception of true prosperity.
For, you see, the market is limited by the competitive
wage system. We have seen that in our own rich, prosperous
country only one family out of six has more than $1,000
a year income; only one family out of twelve has $2,000 a
year. It does not make any difference that the warehouses
are bursting with goods; a family constitutes a market of
so many dollars a year, and then, so far as the profit system
is concerned, that family is non-existent; that family stops
consuming, and the productive machinery is halted to that
extent.
I have been accustomed to portray the profit system under
the simile of an iron ring riveted about the body of a baby.
That ring would cause the baby some discomfort at the begin-
ning, but it would not be serious, and the baby would get
used to it. But as the baby grew the trouble caused by fiie
ring would increase, and finally there would come a time
148
The Book of Society 149
when the baby would be suffering from a whole complication
of troubles, and for each of these troubles there would be
but one remedy — ^break the ring. Does the baby cry all the
time? Break the ring! Is its digestion defective? Break
the ring! Is it threatened with convulsions or with blood
poisoning? Break the ring!
Here is our industrial society, growing at a rate never
equalled by any human baby ; and here is this iron ring riveted
about its middle. Here is poverty, here is unemployment,
here is graft, here is crime, here is war and plague and famine ;
and for all these evils there is but one cause, and but one
remedy. Break the ring! Set production free from the
strangulation of the profit system.
I will admit that there may have been a time in the history
of the social infant when this ring was necessary. I admit
that if the great industrial machine was to be constructed,
it was necessary that the mass of the people should consume
only part of what they produced, and should allow the bal-
ance to be reinvested as capital. But now it has been done,
and the process is complete. We have a machine capable
of producing many times more than we can consume; shall
we still go on building that machine ? Shall we go on starving
ourselves, to save the money, to miiltiply over and over again
the products, in order that we may be thrown out of work,
and be starved even more completely?
A few generations ago we had in colonial America a so-
ciety that in part at least was "free." In that society every-
body got the necessities of life. They did not have the modem
Sunday supplement and the moving picture show, but they
had bread and meat and good substantial clothing, and fur-
niture so well made that we still preserve it. The children
in those days grew up to be strong and sturdy men and
women, who would have seen nothing to envy in the bodies
or minds of the slum population of New York and Chicago.
In short, they had all the true necessities of life ; and yet their
work was done by hand, the power process was unknown and
undreamed of.
Now comes modern machinery, and multiplies the pro-
ductive power of the hand laborer by five, by ten, sometimes
by a hundred. Here, for example, is the "Appeal to Rea-
son" selling millions of cheap books for ten cents apiece, and
making a profit on it; installing a gigantic press which takes
11
150 Love and Society
paper, sheet after sheet, prints 128 pages of a book at one
impression, and folds and stitches and binds the books, all in
one process, and turns them out complete at the rate of
lOjOOG copies per hour. Here is a factory which turns out
100,000 automobiles a month. Here is a mill which turns
•out many millions of yards of cloth a month. If our colo-
nial ancestors had been told about these marvels, they would
liave said instantly: "Then, of course, everybody in that
society will have all the books they want, and all the clothing
they want, and all the automobiles. Everybody in that society
will have five or ten or one hundred times as much goods as we
have."
Imagine the bewilderment of our colonial ancestor if he
had been told: "The majority of the people in that society
will not have so much of the real necessities of life as you
have. They will have a few cheap trinkets, designed to tickle
their senses; they will have cheap newspapers, carefully con-
trived to keep their minds vacant and to keep them contented
with their lot; they will have moving picture shows con-
structed for the same purpose; but all their material things
will be flimsy, put together for show and not for permanence ;
their food will be adulterated, their clothing will be shoddy,
everything they have will be made, not for their service, but
for the profit of some one who lives by selling to them. The
average wage earned by those who do the work of this new
machine civilization will be less than half the amount nec-
essary to purchase the necessities of a decent life, and one-
tenth of the total population will be living in such poverty
that they are unable to maintain physical fitness, or to rear
their children into full sized men and women."
CHAPTER LIX
FOREIGN MARKETS
(Considers the efforts of capitalism to save itself by market-
ing its surplus products abroad, and what results from these
efforts.)
If our analysis of present-day society is correct, we have
the enormous populations of the modern industrial coimtries,
living always on the verge of starvation, their chance for
survival depending at all times upon the ability of their em-
ployers to find a profitable market for a surplus of goods.
At first the employer seeks that market at home; but when
the home markets are glutted, he goes abroad ; and so develops
the phenomenon of foreign trade and rivalry for foreign trade,
as the basic fact of capitalism, and the fundamental cause of
modern war.
Let us get clear a simple distinction concerning foreign
trade. There is a kind of trade which is normal, and would
thrive in a "free" society. In the United States we can
produce nearly all the necessities of life, but there are a few
which we cannot produce — rubber, for example, and bananas,
and good music. These things we wish to import. We buy
them from other countries, and incur a debt, which we pay
with products which the other countries need from us ; wheat,
for example, and copper, and moving pictures with cowboys
in them. This is equal exchange, and a natural phenomenon.
A "free" society would produce such surplus goods as were
necessary to procure the foreign products that it desired.
When it had produced that much, the workers would stop
and take a vacation until they wanted nwre foreign prod-
ucts.
But under capitalism we have an entirely different con-
dition — we produce a surplus of goods which we have to sell
in order to keep our factories running, and to keep our work-
ing population from starving. And note that it does not help
us to get back an equal quantity of foreign goods in ex-
change. We must have what we call "a favorable balance";
that is, we must have other people going into debt to us, so
151
152 Love and Society
that we can be continually shipping out more goods than
we take back; continually piling up credits which we can
"negotiate," or turn into cash, so that we can go on and repeat
the process of making more goods, selling them for more
profits, and putting the surplus into the form of more ma-
chinery, to make still more goods and still more profits.
And then, after a while, we come upon this embarrassing
phenomenon; nations which buy and do not sell must either
do it by sending us gold, or by our giving them credit. The
sending of gold cannot go on indefinitely, because then we
should have all the gold, and if other natiens had none that
would destroy their credit. On the other hand, business can-
not be done by credit indefinitely; for the very essence of
credit is a promise to pay, and payment can only be made in
goods, and how can we take the goods without ruining our
own industry?
Fifteen years ago I pointed this out in a book. The
argument was irrefutable, and the conclusion inescapable,
but the few critics who noted it repeated their usual formula
about "dreamers and theorists." Now, however, the busi-
ness mills have ground on, and what was theory has become
fact before our eyes. We have trusted the nations of Europe
for some $10,000,000,000 worth of goods, and they are power-
less to pay, and if they did pay, they would bankrupt Amer-
ican industry. France wishes to collect an enormous indem-
nity from Germany, but nobody can figure out how this indem-
nity can be paid without ruining French industry. The
French have demanded coal from Germany, and have got
more than they can use, and are "dumping" it in Belgium
and Holland, with the result that the British coal industry
is ruined. The French clamor that the Germans must pay
for the destruction they wrought in Northern France, and
the Germans offer to send German workmen to rebuild the
ruined towns; but the French denounce this as an insult — it
would deprive French workingmen of their jobs! So I might
continue for pages, pointing out the manifold absurdities which
result from a system of industry for the profit of a few,
instead of for the use of all.
Ever since I first began to read the newspapers, some
twenty-five or thirty years ago, all our political life has been
nothing but the convulsions of a social body tortured by the
constricting ring of the profit system. Everywhere one group
The Book of Society 153
struggling for advantage over another group, and politicians
engaged in playing one interest against another interest! My
boyhood recollections of public life consist of campaign slo-
gans having to do with the tariff: "production and prosper-
ity," "reciprocity," "the full dinner pail," "the foreigner pays
the tax," etc.
The workingman, under the profit system, is like a man
pounding away at a pump. He can get a thin trickle of
water from the spout of the pump if he works hard enough,
but in order to get it he has to supply ten times as much to
some one who has tapped the pipe. But the tapping has been
done underground, where the workingman cannot see it. All
the workingman knows is that there is no job for him if the
products of "cheap foreign labor" are allowed to be "dumped"
on the American market. That is obvious, and so he votes
for a tax on foreign imports, high enough to enable his own
employer to market at a profit. He does not realize that he
is thus raising the price of everything that he buys, and so
leaving himself worse off than he was before.
All governments are delighted with this tariff device, be-
cause they are thus enabled to get money from the public
without the public's knowing it. "The foreigner pays the
tax," we are told, and as a result of this arrangement the
steel trust just before the war was selling its product at a
high price to the American people, and taking its surplus
abroad and selling it to the foreigner at half the domestic
price. And we see this same thing in every line of manufac-
ture, and all over the world. We see one nation after another
withdrawing itself as a market for manufactured products,
and entering the lists as a marketer. One more nation now
able to fill all its own needs, and going out hungrily to look
ior foreign customers, adding to the glut of the world's manu-
factured products and the ferocity of international compe-
tition !
At the close of the Civil War the total exports of the United
States averaged approximately $300,000,000, and the total im-
ports were about the same. In 1892 the exports first touched
$1,000,000,000, while the imports were about nine-tenths of
tliat sum. In the year 1913 the exports were nearly $2,500,-
000,000, while the imports were $600,000,000 less ; and in the
year 1920 our exports were over $8,000,000,000 and our im-
ports a little over $5,000,000,000! So we have a "favorable
154 Love and Society
balance" of almost $3,000,000,000 a year — and as a result we
are on the verge of ruin !
This "iron ring" of overproduction and lack of market
exercises upon our industrial body a steady pressure, a slow
strangling. But because the body is in convulsions, strug-
gling to break the ring, the pressure of the ring is worse at
some times than at others. We have periods of what we call
"prosperity," followed by periods of panic and hard times.
You must understand that only a small part of our business
is done by means of cash payments, whether in gold or silver
or paper money. Close to 99% of our business is done by
means of credit, and this introduces into the process a psy-
chological factor. The business man expects certain profits,
and he capitalizes these expectations. Business boonw, be-
cause everybody believes everybody else's promises ; credit
expands like a huge balloon, with the breath of everybody's
enthusiasm. But meantime real business, the real market,
remains just what it was before; it cannot increase, because
of the iron ring which restricts the buying power of the
mass of the people by the competitive wage. So presently
the time comes when somebody realizes that he has over-capital-
ized his hopes; he curtails his orders, he calls in his money,
and the impulse thus started precipitates a crash in the whole
business world. We had such a crash in 1907, and I remem-
ber a Wall Street man explaining it in a magazine article
entitled, "Somebody Asked for a Dollar."
We learned one lesson by that panic; at least, the big
financial men learned it, and had Congress pass what is called
the "Federal Reserve Act," a provision whereby in time of
need the government issues practically unlimited credit to
banks. This, of course, is fine for the banks; it puts the
credit of everybody else behind them, and all they have to
do is to stop lending money — except to the big insiders —
and sit back and wait, while the little men go to the wall,
and the mass of us live on our savings or starve. We saw
this happen in the year 1920, and for the first time we had
"hard times" without having a financial panic. But instead
we see prices staying high — because the banks have issued so
much paper money and bank credits.
CHAPTER LX
CAPITALIST WAR
(Shows how the competition for foreign markets leads nations
automatically into war.)
In a discussion of the world's economic situation, pub-
lished in 1906, the writer portrayed the ruling class of Ger-
many as sitting in front of a thermometer, watching the
mercury rising, and knowing that when it reached the top,
the thermometer would break. This thermometer was the
German class system of government, and the mercury was
the Socialist vote. In 1870 the vote was 30,000, in 1884 it
was 549,000, in 1893 it was 1,876,000, in 1903 it was 3,008,-
000, in 1907 it was 3,250,000, in 1911 it was 4,250,000.
Writing between 1906 and 1913, I again and again pointed out
that this increase was the symptom of social discontent in
Germany, caused by the overproduction of invested capital
throughout the world, and the intensification of the competi-
tion for world markets. I pointed out that a slight increase
in the vote would be sufficient to transfer to the working class
of Germany the political power of the German state; and I
said that the ruling class of Germany would never permit
that to happen — when it was ready to happen Germany would
go to war, to seize the trade privileges of some other nation.
There was a time when wars were caused by national
and racial hatreds. There are still enough of these venerable
prejudices left in the world, but no student of the subject
would deny that the main source of modem wars is commer-
cial rivalry. In 1917 we sent Eugene V. Debs to prison for
declaring that the late world war was a war of capitalist
greed. But two years later President Wilson, who had waged
the war, declared in a public speech that everybody knew it
had been a war of commercial rivalries.
The aims of modern war-makers are two. First, capital-
ism must have raw materials, including coal and oil, the
sources of power, and gold and silver, the bases of credit.
Parts of the world which are so unfortunate as to be rich
in these substances become the bone of contention between
rival financial groups, organized as nations. Some sarcastic
writer has defined a "backward" nation as one which has
gold mines and no navy. We are horrified to read of the
155
156 Love and Society
wars of the French monarchs, caused by the jealous quar-
rels of mistresses; but in 1905 we saw Russia and Japan go
to war and waste a million lives because certain Russian grand
dukes had bribed certain Chinese mandarins and obtained con-
cessions of timber on the Yalu River. We now observe France
and Germany vowed to undying hate because of iron mines
in Lorraine, and the efforts of France to take the coal mines
of Silesia from Germany, and give them to Poland, which is
another name for French capitalism.
The other end sought by the war-makers is markets for
manufactured products, and control of trade routes, coaling
stations and cables necessary to the building up of foreign
trade. England has been "mistress of the seas" for some 300
years, which meant that her traders had obtained most of
these advantages. But then came Germany, with her newly
develoDed commercialism, shoving her rival out of the way.
The Englishman was easy-going; he liked to play cricket,
and stop and drink tea every afternoon. But the German
worked all day and part of the night; he trained himself as
a specialist, he studied the needs of his customers — all of
which to the Englishman was "unfair" competition. But here
were the populations of the crowded slums, dependent for
their weekly wage and their daily bread upon the ability of
the factories to go on turning out products! Here was the
ever-blackening shadow of unemployment, the mutterings of
social discontent, the agitators on the soap-boxes, the workers
listening to them with more and more eager attention, and
the journalists and politicians and bankers watching this phe-
nomenon with a ghastly fear.
So came the great war. Social discontent was forgotten
over night, and England and France plunged in to down their
hated rival, once and for all time. Now they have succeeded :
Germany's ships have been taken from her, and likewise her
cables and coaling stations; the Berlin-Bagdad Railroad is a
forgotten dream; the British sit in Constantinople, and the
traffic goes by sea. American capitalism wakes up, and rubs
its eyes after a debauch of Presbyterian idealism, and dis-
covers that it has paid out sopie $20,000,000,000, in order to
confer all these privileges and advantages upon its rivals!
Ever since I can remember the world, there have been
peace societies; I look back in history and discover that ever
since there have been wars, there have been prophets de-
The Book of SociiyrY 157
claiming against them in the name of humanity and God. As
1 write, there is a great world conference on disarmament
in session in Washington, and all good Americans hope that
war is to be ended and permanent peace made safe. AH that
I can do at this juncture is to point out the fundamental
and all-controlling fact of present-day economics : that for the
ruling class of any country to agree to disarmament and the
abolition of war, is for that class to sign its own death war-
rant and cut its own throat. American capitalism can sur-
vive on this earth only by strangling and destroying Japanese
capitalism and British capitalism, and doing it before long.
The far-sighted capitalists on both sides know that, and are
making their preparations accordingly.
What the members of the peace societies and the diplo-
mats of the disarmament conferences do is to cut off the
branches of the tree of war. They leave the roots untouched,
and then, when the tree continues to thrive, they are astounded.
I conclude this chapter with a concrete illustration, cut from
my morning newspaper. We went to war against German
militarism, and to make the world safe for democracy — mean-
ing thereby capitalist commercialism. We commanded the
German people to "beat their swords into plough-shares";
that is, to set their Krupp factories to making tools of peace;
and they did so. We saddled them with an enormous indem-
nity, making them our serfs for a generation or two, and
compelling them to hasten out into the world markets, to sell
their goods and raise gold to pay us. And now, how does
their behavior strike us? Do we praise their industry, and
fidelity to their obligations? Here are the headlines of a news
despatch, published by the Los Angeles Times on December
10, 1921, at the top of the front page, right hand column,
the most conspicuous position in the paper. Read it, and
understand the sources of modern war !
NEW ATTACK BY BERLIN
DUMPING GOODS BY WHOLESALE
Cheap German Trash Puts Thousands of Americans
Out of Employment
Glove Plants Shut Down and Potash Industry Killed
by Teuton Intrigue
CHAPTER LXI
THE POSSIBILITIES OF PRODUCTION
(Shows how much wealth we could produce if we tried, and
how we proved it when we had to.)
One of the commonest arguments in defense of the present
business system runs as follows : The amount of money which
is paid to labor is greatly in excess of the amount which is
paid to capital. Suppose that tomorrow you were to abolish
all dividends and profits, and divide the money up among
the wage workers, how much would each one get? The
sum is figured for some big industry, and it is shown that
each worker would get one or two hundred dollars additional
per year. Obviously, this would not bring the millennium;
it would hardly be worth while to take the risk of reducing
production in order to gain so small a result.
But now we are in position to realize the fallacy of such
an argument. The tax which capital levies upon labor is not
the amount which capital takes for itself, but the amount
which it prevents labor from producing. The real injury of
the profit system is not that it pays so large a reward to a
ruling class ; it is the "iron ring" which it fastens about indus-
try, barring the workers from access to the machinery of
production except when the product can be sold for a profit.
Labor pays an enormous reward to the business man for his
management of industry, but it would pay labor to reward
the business man even more highly, if only he would take
his goods in kind, and would permit labor, after this tax is
paid, to go on making those things which labor itself so des-
perately needs.
But, you see, the business m^n does not take his goods
in kind. The owner of a great automobile factory may make
for himself one automobile or a score of automobiles, but
he quickly comes to a limit where he has no use for any
more, and what he wants is to sell automobiles and "make
money." He does not permit his workers to make auto-
mobiles for themselves, or for any one else. He reserves
the product of the factory for himself, and when he can
158
The Book of Society 159
no longer sell automobiles at a profit, he shuts the workers
out and automobile-making comes to an end in that com-
munity. Thus it appears that the "iron ring" which strangles
the income of labor, strangles equally the income of capital.
It paralyzes the whole social body, and so limits production
that we can form no conception of what prosperity might
and ought to be.
Consider the situation before the war. We were all of
us at work under the competitive system, and with the excep-
tion of a few parasites, everybody was occupied pretty close
to the limit of his energy. If any one had said that it would
be possible for our community to pitch in and double or
treble our output, you would have laughed at him. But sud-
denly we found ourselves at war, and in need of a great
increase in output, and we resolved one and all to achieve
this end. We did not waste any time in theoretical discus-
sions about the rights of private capital, or the dangers of
bureaucracy and the destruction of initiative. Our govern-
ment stepped in and took control; it took the railroads and
systematized them, it took the big factories and told them
exactly what to make, it took the raw materials and allotted
them where they were needed, it fixed the prices of labor,
and ordered millions of men to this or that place, to this or
that occupation. It even seized the foodstuffs and directed
what people should eat. In a thousand ways it suppressed
competition and replaced it by order and system. And what
was the result?
We took five million of our young men, the very cream of
our industrial force, and withdrew them from all productive
activities; we put them into uniforms, and put them through
a training which meant that they were eating more food and
wearing more clothing and consuming more goods than nine-
tenths of them had ever done in their lives before. We
built camps for them, and supplied them with all kinds of
costly products of labor, such as guns and cartridges, auto-
mobiles and airplanes. We treated two million of them to an
expensive trip to Europe, and there we set them to work
burning up and destroying the products of industry, to the
value of many billions of dollars. And not only did we sup-
ply our own armies, we supplied the armies of all our allies.
We built millions of dollars worth of ships, and we sent over
to Europe, whether by private business or by government loans.
160 Love and Society
some $10,000,000,000 worth of goods — more than ten years of
our exports before the war.
All the labor necessary to produce all this wealth had to
be withdrawn from industry, so far as concerned our domes-
tic uses and needs. It would not be too much to say that
from domestic industry we withdrew a total of ten million
of our most capable labor force. I think it would be rea-
sonable to say that two-thirds of our productive energies went
to war purposes, and only one-third was available for home
use. And yet, we did it without a particle of real suffering.
Many of us worked hard, but few of us worked harder than
usual. Most of us got along with less wheat and sugar, but
nobody starved, nobody really suffered ill health, and our
poor made higher wages and had better food than ever in
their lives before. If this argument is sound, it proves that
our productive machinery is capable, when properly organized
and directed, of producing three times the common neces-
sities of our population. Assuming that our average work-
ing day is nine hours, we could produce what we at present
consume by three hours of intelligently directed work per
day.
Let us look at the matter from another angle. Just at
present the hero of the American business man is Herbert
Hoover; and Mr. Hoover recently appointed a committee,
not of Socialists and "Utopians," but of engineering experts,
to make a study of American productive methods. The
report showed that American industry was only thirty-five or
forty per cent efficient. Incidentally, this "Committee on
Waste" assessed, in the case of the building industry, sixty-
five per cent of the blame against management and only
twenty-one per cent against labor; in six fundamental indus-
tries it assessed fifty per cent of the blame against manage-
ment and less than twenty-five per cent against labor. Fifteen
years ago a professor of engineering, Sidney A. Reeve by
name, made an elaborate study of the wastes involved in
our haphazard and planless industrial methods, and embodied
his findings in a book, "The Cost of Competition." His con-
clusion was that of the total amount of energy expended in
America, more than seventy per cent was wasted. We were
doing one hundred per cent of work and getting thirty per cent
of results. If we would get one hundred per cent of results,
we should produce three and one-third times as much wealth.
The Book of Society 161
and the income of our workers would be increased one or
two thousand dollars a year.
Robert Blatchford in his book, "Merrie England," has a
saying to the effect that it makes all the diflFerence, when half
a dozen men go out to catch a horse, whether they spend their
time catching the horse or keeping one another from catching
the horse. Our next task will be to point out a few of the
ways in which good, honest American business men and
workingmen, laboring as intelligently and conscientiously as
they know how, waste their energies in keeping one another
from producing goods.
CHAPTER LXII
THE COST OF COMPETITION
(Discusses the losses of friction in our productive machine,
those which are obvious and those which are hidden.)
The United States government is by far the largest single
business enterprise in the United States; and a study of con-
gressional appropriations in 1920, made by the United States
Bureau of Standards, reveals the fact that ninety-three per
cent of the total income of the government went to paying
for past wars or preparing for future wars. We have shown
that modern war is a product of the profit system, and if
civilized nations would put their industry upon a co-opera-
tive basis, they could forget the very idea of war, and we
should then receive fourteen times as much benefit from
our government as we receive at present; we should have
fourteen times as good roads, fourteen times as many schools,
fourteen times as prompt a postoffice and fourteen times as
efficient a Congress. What it would mean to industry to abol-
ish war is something wholly beyond the power of our imagina-
tion to conceive; for along with ninety-three per cent of our
government money there goes into military preparation the
vast bulk of our intellectual energy and inventive genius, our
moral and emotional equipment.
Next, strikes and the losses incidental to strikes, and the
costs of preparing against strikes. This includes, not merely
the actual loss of working time, it includes police and militia,
private armies of gunmen, and great secret service agencies,
whose total income runs up into hundreds of millions of
dollars per year. Industrial warfare is simply the method
by which capitalists and w»rkers determine the division of the
product of industry; as if two men should co-operate in rais-
ing poultry, and then fall to quarrelling over the ownership
of the eggs, and settle the matter by throwing the eggs at
each other's heads.
Next, bankruptcy. Statistics show that regularly some
ten per cent of our business enterprises fail every year. Take
any block occupied by little business men, grocers and haber-
162
The Book of Society 163
dashers and "notions," and you will see that they are always
changing. Each change represents a human tragedy, and the
total is a frightful waste of human energy; it happens be-
cause we can think of no better way to distribute goods than
to go through the work of setting up a business, and then
discover that it cannot succeed because the neighborhood is
already overstocked with that kind of goods.
Next, fires which are a result of bankruptcy. You may
laugh, perhaps, thinking that I am making a joke; but every
little man who fails in business knows that he has a choice
of going down in the social scale, or of setting fire to his stock
some night, and having a big insurance company set him on
his feet again. The result is that a certain percentage of
bankrupts do regularly set fire to their stores. Some fifteen
years ago there was published in "Collier's Weekly" a study of
the costs to society of incendiary fires. The Fire Under-
writers' Association estimated the amount as a quarter of a
billion dollars a year ; and all this cost, you understand, is paid
out of the pockets of those who insure their homes and their
stores, and do not burn them down.
From this follows the costs of insurance, and the whole
insurance industry, jvhich is inevitable under the profit sys-
tem, but is entire waste so far as true production is concerned.
Big enterprises like the Steel Trust do not carry insurance,
and neither does the United States Postoffice. They are
wealthy enough to stand their own losses. A national
co-operative enterprise would be in the same position, and the
whole business of collecting money for insurance and keep-
ing records and carrying on lawsuits would be forgotten.
Next, advertising. It would be no exaggeration to say
that seventy per cent of the material published in American
newspapers and magazines today is pure waste; and there-
fore seventy per cent of the labor of all the people who cut
down forests and manufacture and transport paper and set
up type and print and distribute publications is wasted. There
is, of course, a small percentage of advertising that is useful,
but most of it is boasting and falsehood, and even where it
tells the truth it simply represents the effort of a merchant
to persuade you to buy in his store instead of in a rival
store — an achievement which is profitable to the merchant,
but utterly useless to society as a whole.
This same statement applies to all traveling salesmen, and
164 Lo\TE AND Society
to a great percentage of middlemen. It applies also to a
great part of delivery service. If you live in a crowded part
of any city, you see a dozen milk wagons pass your door
every morning, doing the work which could be done exactly
as well by one. That is only one case out of a thousand I might
name.
Next, crime. I have already discussed the crime of arson,
and I might discuss the crimes of pocket-picking, burglary,
forgery, and a hundred others in the same way. I am aware
of the fact that there may be a few born criminals ; there may
be a few congenital cheats, whom we should have to put in
hospitals. But we have only to consult the crime records,
during the war and after the war, in order to see that when
jobs are hunting men there are few criminals, and when men
are hunting jobs there are many criminals, I have no figures
as to the cost of administering justice in the United States —
policemen, courts and jails — ^but it must be hundreds of mil-
lions of dollars every year.
I have discussed at great length the suppression of the pro-
ductive power of society. I should not fail to mention the sup-
pression of the inventive power of society, a factor less obvious,
but probably in the long run even greater. Every one familiar
with the inside of a big industry knows that hundreds and even
thousands of useful processes are entirely suppressed, because
it would not pay one particular concern to stand the expense of
the changes involved. You know how, during the war, our gov-
ernment brought all the makers of engines together and per-
fected in triumph a "Liberty motor." But now we have gone
back to private interest and competition, and each concern is
jealously engaged in guarding its own secrets, and depriving
industry as a whole of the benefit of everything that it learns.
Each is spying upon the others, stealing the secrets of the
others, stealing likewise from those who invent new ideas — and
thus discouraging them from inventing any more.
I use this word "discourage," and I might write a chapter
upon it. What human imagination can conceive the amount of
social energy that is lost because of the factor of discourage-
ment, directly caused by the competitive mfethod ? Who can
figure what it means to human society that a great percentage
of the people in it should be haunted by fear of one sort or
another — ^the poor in fear of unemployment, sickness and
starvation, the little business man in fear of bankruptcy and
The Book of Society 165
suicide, the big business man in fear of hard times and treachery
of his competitors, the idle rich in fear of robbery and black-
mail, and the whole community in fear of foreign war and
domestic tumult!
Anyone might go on and elaborate these factors that I have
named, and think of scores of others. Anyone familiar with
business life or with industrial processes would be able to put
his finger on this or that enormous saving which he would be
able to make if he and all his rivals could combine and come to
an agreement. This has been proven over and over again in
large-scale industry ; it is the fact which has made of large-scale
industry an overwhelming power, sucking all the profits to
itself, reaching out and taking in new fields of human activity,
and setting at naught all popular clamor and even legal terrors.
How can anyone, seeing these facts, bring himself to deny that
if we did systematize production and make it one enterprise,
precisely adapted to one end, we should enormously increase the
results of human labor, and the benefit to all who do the world's
work?
A good deal of this waste we can stop when we get ready,
and other parts of it our bountiful mother nature will replace.
When in a world war we kill some ten or twenty millions of the
flower of our young manhood, we have only to wait several
generations, and our race will be as good as ever. But, on the
other hand, there is some waste that can never be repaired,
and this is the thing truly frightful to contemplate. When
we dig the iron ore out of the bowels of the earth and rust it
away in wars, we are doing something our race can never undo.
And the same is true of many of our precious substances :
phosphorus, sulphur, potash. When we cut down the forests
from our mountain slopes, and lay bare the earth, we not
merely cause floods and washouts, and silt up our harbors, we
take away from the surface of our land the precious life-giving
soil, and make a habitable land into a desert, which no irrigating
and reforesting can ever completely restore. The Chinese have
done that for many centuries, and we are following in their
footsteps ; more than six hundred million wagon-loads of our
best soil are washed down to the sea every year ! If you wish to
know about these matters, I send you to a book, "On Board the
Good Ship Earth," by Herbert Quick. It is one of the most
heart-breaking books you ever read, yet it is merely a quiet
statement of the facts about our present commercial anarchy.
CHAPTER LXIII
SOCIALISM AND SYNDICALISM
(Discusses the idea of the management of industry by the
state, and the idea of its management by the trade unions.)
Let us now assume that we desire to abolish the wastes of
the competitive method, and to put our industry on a basis of
co-operation. How should we effect the change, and how
should we run our industry after it was done?
Let us take the United States Steel Corporation. What
change would be necessary to the socializing of this concern?
United States Steel is owned by a group of stockholders, and
governed by a board of directors elected by them. The owners
are now to be bought out with government bonds, and the board
of directors retired. It may also be necessary to replace a cer-
tain number of the higher executive officials, who are imbued
entirely with the point of view of this board, and have to do
with finance, rather than with production. Of course, some
other governing authority would have to be put in control.
What would this authority be ? There are several plans before
the world, several different schools of thought, which we shall
consider one by one.
First, the Socialist program. The Socialist says, "Consider
the post-office, how that is run. It is run by the President, who
appoints a Postmaster-General as his executive. Let us there-
fore turn the steel industry over to the government, and let the
President appoint another member of his cabinet, a Director of
Steel; or let there be a commission, similar to the Interstate
Commerce Commission, or the various war industry boards."
Any form of management of the steel industry which provides
for its control and operation by our United States government
is Socialism of one sort or another.
There has been, of late, a great deal of dissatisfaction with
government, on the part of the general public, and also of labor.
The postoffice clerks, for example, complain that they are in-
adequately paid and autocratically managed, deprived of their
rights not merely as workers but as citizens. The steel workers
complain that when they go on strike against their masters, the
166
The Book of Society 167
government sends in troops and crushes their strike, regardless
of the rights or wrongs of it. In order to meet such tactics,
labor goes into politics, and elects here and there its own repre-
sentatives; but these representatives become mysteriously
afffected by the bureaucratic point of view, and even where they
try hard, they do not accomplish much for labor. Therefore,
labor becomes disgusted with the political process, and labor
men do not welcome the prospect of being managed by govern-
ment.
If you ask such men, they will say: "No; the politicians
don't know anything about industry, and can't learn. The peo-
ple who know about industry are those who work in it. The
true way to run an industry is through an organization of the
workers, both of hand and brain. The true way to run the
Steel Trust is for all the workers in it, men and women, high
and low, to be recognized by law as citizens of that industry ;
each shop must elect its own delegates to run that shop, and
elect a delegate to a central parliament of the industry, and this
industry in turn must elect delegates to a great parliament or
convention of all the delegates of all the industries. In such a
central gathering every one would be represented, because every
person would be a producer of some sort, and whether he was a
steel worker or a street sweeper or a newsboy, he would have a
vote at the place where he earns his living, and would have a
say in the management of his job. The great central parliament
would elect an executive committee and a president, and so we
should have a government of the workers, by the workers, for
the workers." This idea is known as Syndicalism, derived from
the French word "syndicat," meaning a labor union. Since the
Russian revolution it has come to be known as soviet govern-
ment, "soviet" being the Russian word for trade council.
Now, taking these two ideas of Socialism and Syndicalism,
it is evident that they may be combined in various ways, and
applied in varying degrees. It is perfectly conceivable, for ex-
ample, that the people of the United States might elect a presi-
dent pledged to call a parliament of industry, and to delegate the
control of industry to this parliament. He might delegate the
control to a certain extent, and provide for its extension, step by
step ; so our society might move into Syndicalism by the way of
Socialism. You have only to put your mind on the possibilities
of the situation to realize that one method shades into the other
with a great variety of stages.
168 Love and Society
Consider next the stages between capitalism and Socialism.
We have in the United States some industries which are purely
capitalistic; for example, the Steel Trust, which is privately
owned, and has been powerful enough, not merely to suppress
every effort of its workers to organize, but every effort of the
government to regulate it. On the other hand, the United
States Postoffice represents State Socialism ; although the work-
ers have been forbidden to organize, and the management of the
industry is so arbitrary that I have always preferred to call it
State Capitalism. Likewise the United States army and navy
represent State Socialism. When we had the job of putting the
Kaiser out of business, we did not hire Mr. Rockefeller to do
it ; it never once occurred to our advocates of "individualism,"
of "capitalist enterprise and initiative," to suggest that we
should hire out our army and navy, or employ the Steel Trust
or the Powder Trust to organize its own army and navy to do
the fighting for us. Likewise, for the most part, we run the job
of educating our children by the method of municipal Social-
ism. We run our libraries in the same way, and likewise our
job of fire protection.
It is interesting to note how in every country the line be-
tween capitalism and Socialism is drawn in a different place. In
America we run practically all our libraries for ourselves, but it
would seem to us preposterous to think of running our theatres.
In Europe, however, they have state-owned theatres, which set
a far higher standard of art than anything we know at home.
Also, they have state-owned orchestras and opera-houses, some-
thing we Americans leave to the subscriptions of millionaires.
In Europe it seems perfectly natural to the poeple that the
state should handle their telegrams in connection with the post-
office; but if you urge government ownership of the telegraphs
in the United States, they tell you that the proposition is "social-
istic," and that saves the need of thinking about it. We take
it for granted that our cities could run the libraries— even
though we were glad when Carnegie came along and saved us
the need of appropriating money for buildings. Just why a city
should be able to run a library, and should not be able to run an
opera-house, or a newspaper, is something which has never
been made clear to me.
Let us next examine the stages between capitalism and Syn-
dicalism. A great many large corporations are making experi-
ments in what they call "shop management," allowing the work-
The Book of Society 169
ers membership in the boards of directors and a voice in the
conditions of their labor. This is Syndicalism so far as it goes.
Likewise it is Syndicalism when the clothing workers and the
clothing manufacturers meet together and agree to the setting
up of a permanent committee to work out a set of rules for the
conduct of the industry, and to fix wages from time to time.
Obviously, these things are capable of indefinite extension, and
in Europe they are being developed far more rapidly. For
example, in Italy the agricultural workers are organized, and
are gradually taking possession of the great estates, which are
owned by absentee landlords. They wage war upon these
estates by means of sabotage and strikes, and then they buy up
the estates at bargain prices and develop them by co-operative
labor. This has been going on in Italy for ten years, and has
become the most significant movement in the country. It is a
triumph of pure Syndicalism; and such is the power of pure
capitalism in the United States that the American people have
not been allowed to know anything about this change.
Next, what are the stages between Socialism and Syndical-
ism ? These also are infinite in number and variety. As a mat-
ter of fact, there are very few Socialists who advocate State
Socialism without any admixture of Syndicalism. The regular
formula of the Socialist party is "the social ownership and dem-
ocratic control of the instruments and means of production ;"
and what the phrase "democratic control" means is simply that
you introduce into your Socialist mixture a certain flavoring of
Syndicalism, greater or less, according to your temperament.
In the same way there are many Syndicalists who are inclined
toward Socialism. In every convention of radical trade union-
ists, such as, for example, the I. W. W., you find some who
favor political action, and these will have the same point of
view as the more radical members of the Socialist party, who
urge a program of industrial as well as political action.
CHAPTER LXIV
COMMUNISM AND ANARCHISM
(Considers the idea of goods owned in common, and the idea
of a society without compulsion, and how these ideas have fared
in Russia.)
The Russian revolution has familiarized us with the word
Communism. In the beginning of the revolutionary movement
Communism denoted what we now call Socialism ; for example,
the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels became the plat-
form of the Social-democratic parties. But because most of
these parties supported their governments during the war, the
more radical elements have now rejected the word SociaHsm,
and taken up the old word Communism. In the Russian revo-
lution the Communists went so far as to seize all the property
of the rich, and so the word Communism has come to bear
something of its early Christian significance.
It is obvious that here, too, it is a question of degree, and
Socialism will shade into Communism by an infinite variety of
stages, depending upon what forms of property it is decided to
socialize. The Socialist formula commonly accepted is that
"goods socially used shall be socially owned, and goods privately
used shall be privately owned." If you own a factory, it will
be taken by the state, or by the workers, and made social prop-
erty like the postoffice ; but no Socialist wants to socialize your
clothing, or your books, any more than he wants to socialize
your toothbrush.
But when you come to apply this formula, you run quickly
into difficulties. Suppose you are a millionaire, and own a pal-
ace with one or two hundred rooms, and a hundred servants.
Do you use that socially, or do you use it privately ? And sup-
pose there is a scarcity of houses, and thousands of children
are dying of tuberculosis in crowded tenement rooms? You
own a dozen automobiles, and do you use them all privately ? I
point out to you that in time of emergency the capitalist state
does not hesitate over such a problem ; it seizes your palace and
turns it into a hospital, it takes all your cars and uses them to
carry troops. It should be obvious that a proletarian state
would be tempted by this precedent.
170
The Book of Society 171
The Communists also have a formula, which reads : "From
each according to his ability, to each according to his necessity."
I do not see how any sensitive person can deny that this is an
extremely fine statement of an ideal in social life. We take it
quite for granted in family life; if you knew a family in which
that rule did not apply, you would consider it an unloving and
uncivilized family. I believe that when once industry has been
socialized, and we have a chance to see what production can
become, we shall find ourselves quickly adopting that family
custom as our law, for all except a few congenital criminals and
cheats. We shall find that we can produce so much wealth that
it is not worth while keeping count of unimportant items. If
today you meet someone on the street and ask him for a match
or a pin, you do not think of offering to pay him. This is an
automatic consequence of the cheapness of matches and pins.
Once upon a time you were stopped on the road every few miles
and made to pay a few cents toll. I remember seeing toll-gates
when I was a boy, but I don't think I have seen one for twenty
years.
In exactly the same way, under socialized industry, we shall
probably make street-car traffic free, and then railroad traffic ;
we shall abolish water meters and gas meters and electric light
meters, also telephone charges, except perhaps for long dis-
tances, and telegraph tolls for personal messages. Then, pres-
ently, we shall find ourselves with such a large wheat crop that
we shall make bread free; and then music and theatres and
clothing and books. At present we use furniture and clothing
as a means of manifesting our economic superiority to our fel-
lowmen. One of the most charming books in our langfuage is
Veblen's "Theory of the Leisure Class," in which these proc-
esses are studied. We shall, of course, have to raise up a new
generation, unaccustomed to the idea of class and of class dis-
tinction, before we could undertake to supply people with all
the clothing they wanted free of charge.
The Russian theorists made haste to carry out these ideas
all at once ; they tried to leap several centuries in the evolution
of Russian society. They ordained complete Communism in
land; but the peasants would have nothing to do with such
notions— each wanted his own land, and what he produced on
it. The Soviets have now been forced to give way, not merely
to the peasants, but to the traders ; and so we see once again that
it is better to take one step forward than to take several steps
172 Love and Society
forward and then several steps backward. The Russian revo-
lution is not yet completed, so no one can say how many steps
backward it will be forced to take.
This revolution was an interesting combination of the ideas
of Socialism and Syndicalism. The trade unionists seized the
factories, and made an effort at democratic control of industry.
At the same time the state was overthrown by a political party,
the Bolsheviks, who set up a dictatorship of the proletariat.
Because of civil war and outside invasion, the democratic ele-
ments in the experiment Tiave been more and more driven into
the background, and the authority of the state has correspond-
ingly increased. This causes us to think of the Soviet system
as necessarily opposed to democracy, but this is not in any way
a necessary thing. There is no inevitable connection between
industrial control by the workers and a dictatorship over the
state. In Germany the state is proceeding to organize a
national parliament of industry, and to provide for management
of the factories by the labor unions. The Italian government
has promised to do the same thing. These, of course, are cap-
italist governments, and they will keep their promises only as
they are made to; but it is a perfectly possible thing that in
either of these countries a vote of the people might change the
government, and put in authority men who would really pro-
ceed to turn industry over to the control of the workers. That
would be the Soviet or Syndicalist system, brought about by
democratic means, without dictatorship or civil war.
Another group of revolutionary thinkers whose theories
must be mentioned are the Anarchists. The word Anarchy is
commonly used as a synonym for chaos and disorder, which it
does not mean at all. It means the absence of authority ; and it
is characteristic of people's view of life that they are unable to
conceive of there being such a thing as order, unless it is main-
tained by force. The theory of the Anarchist is that order is a
necessity of the human spirit, and that people would conform to
the requirements of a just order by their own free will and
without external compulsion. The Anarchist believes that the
state is an instrument of class oppression, and has no other
reason for being. He wishes the industries to be organized by
free associations of the people who work in them.
Some of the greatest of the world's moral teachers have
been Anarchists : Jesus, for example, and Shelley and Thoreau
and Tolstoi, and in our time Kropotkin. These men voiced the
The Book of Society 173
highest aspirations of the human spirit, and the form of society
which they dreamed is the one we set before us as our final
goal. But the world does not leap into perfection all at once,
and meantime here we have the capitalist system and the cap-
italist state, and what attitude shall we take to them ? There are
impassioned idealists who refuse to make any terms with injus-
tice, or to submit to compulsion, and these preach the immediate
destruction of capitalist government, and capitalist govern-
ment responds with prison and torture, and so we have some
Anarchists who throw bombs.
There are those who call themselves "philosophic" Anar-
chists, wishing to indicate thereby that they preach this doctrine,
but do not attempt to carry it into action as yet. Some among
these verge toward the Communist point of view, and call them-
selves Communist-anarchists; such was Kropotkin, whose
theories of social organization you will find in his book "The
Conquest of Bread." There are others who call themselves
Syndicalist-anarchists, finding their centers of free association
in the radical labor unions.
After the Russian revolution, the Anarchists found them-
selves in a dilemma, and their groups were torn apart like every
other party and class in Russia. Here was a new form of state
set up in society, a workers* state, and what attitude should the
Anarchists take toward that? Many of them stood out for
their principles, and resisted the Bolshevik state, and put the
Bolsheviks under the embarrassing necessity of throwing them
into jail. We good orthodox Americans, who are accustomed
to dump Socialists and Communists and Syndicalists and
Anarchists all together into one common kettle, took Emma
Goldman and Alexander Berkman and shipped them over to
Russia, where we thought they belonged. Now our capitalist
newspapers find it strange that these Anarchists do not like the
Russian government any better than they like the American
government !
On the other hand, a great many Anarchists have suddenly
found themselves compelled by the Russian situation to face the
facts of life. They have decided that a government is not such
a bad thing after all — when it is your own government I Robert
Minor, for example, has recanted his Anarchist position, and
joined the Communists in advocating the dropping of all dif-
ferences among the workers, all theories as to the future, and
concentrating upon the immediate task of overthrowing cap-
174 Love and Society
italist government and keeping it overthrown. In every civil-
ized nation the Russian revolution has had this effect upon the
extreme revolutionists. It has given them a definite aim and a
definite program upon which they can unite ; it has presented to-
capitalist government the answer of force to force; it has
shown the masters of industry in precise and definite form
what they have to face — unless they set themselves immediately
and in good faith to the task of establishing real democracy in
industry.
CHAPTER LXV
SOCIAL REVOLUTION
(How the great change is coming in different industries, and
how we may prepare to meet it.)
From a study of the world's political revolutions we observe
that a variety of governmental forms develop, and that different
circumstances in each country produce different institutions.
Suppose that back in the days of the French monarchy some
one asked you how France was going to be governed as a politi-
cal republic; how would elections be held, what would be the
powers of the deputies, who would choose the premier, who
would choose the president, what would be the duties of each ?
Who can explain why in France and England the executive is
responsible to the parliament and must answer its questions,
■while in the United States the executive is an autocrat, respon-
sible to no one for four years? Who could have foreseen that
in England, supposed to remain a monarchy, the constitution
would be fluid ; while in America, supposed to be a democracy,
the constitution would be rigid, and the supreme power of
rejecting changes in the laws would be vested in a group of
reactionary lawyers appointed for life ? There will be similar
surprises in the social revolution, and similar diflFerences
between what things pretend to be and what they are.
I used to compare the social revolution to the hatching of an
egg. You examine it, and apparently it is all egg ; but then sud-
denly something begins to happen, and in a few minutes it is all
chicken. If, however, you investigate, you discover that the
chicken had been forming inside the egg for some time. I
know that there is a chicken now forming inside our social egg ;
but having realized the complexity of social phenomena, I no
longer venture to predict the exact time of the hatching, or the
size and color of the chicken.
Perhaps it is more useful to compare the social revolution
to a child-birth. A good surgeon knows what is due to happen,
but he knows also that there are a thousand uncertainties, a
thousand dangerous possibilities, and all he can do is to watch
the process and be prepared to meet each emergency as it arises.
175
i76 Love and Society
The birth process consists of one pang after another, but no one
can say which pang will complete the birth, or whether it will be
completed at all. Karl Marx is author of the saying that "force
is the midwife of progress," so you may see that I am not the
inventor of this simile of child-birth.
There are three factors in the social revolution, each of which
will vary in each country, and in different parts of the country,
and at different periods. First, there is the industrial condition
of the country, a complex set of economic factors. The indus-
trial life of England depends primarily on shipping and coal.
In the United States shipping is of less importance, and rail-
roads take the place. In the United States the eastern portion
lives mainly by manufacture, the western by agriculture, while
the south is held a generation behind by a race problem. In
France the great estates were broken up, and agriculture fell
into the hands of peasant proprietors, who are the main support
of French capitalism. In Prussia the great estates were held
intact, and remained the basis of a feudal aristocracy. In
America land changes hands freely, and therefore one-third of
our farms are mortgaged, and another third are worked by ten-
ants. In Russia there was practically no middle class, while in
the United States there is practically nothing but middle class ;
the rich have been rich for such a short while that they still
look middle class and act middle class, in spite of all their
efforts, while the working class hopes to be middle class and is
persuaded that it can become middle class. Such varying fac-
tors produce in each country a different problem, and make
inevitable a different process of change.
The second factor is the condition of organization and edu-
cation of the workers. This likewise varies in every country,
and in every part of every country. There is a continual strug-
gle on the part of the workers to organize and educate them-
selves, and a continual effort on the part of the ruling class to
prevent this. In some industries in America you find the work-
ers one hundred per cent organized, and in other industries you
find them not organized at all. It is obvious that in the former
case the social change, when it comes, will be comparatively
simple, involving little bloodshed and waste ; in the latter case
there will be social convulsions, rioting and destruction of prop-
erty, disorganization of industry and widespread distress.
The third factor is the state of mind of the propertied
classes, the amount of resistance they are willing to make to
The Book of Society 177
social change. I have done a great deal of pleading with the
masters of industry in my country; I have written appeals to
Vincent Astor and John D. Rockefeller, to capitalist news-
papers and judges and congressmen and presidents. I have
been told that this is a waste of my time ; that these people can-
not learn and will not learn, and that it is foolish to appeal
either to their hearts or their understanding. But I perceive that
the class struggle is like a fraction; it has a numerator and a
denominator, and you can increase the fraction just as well by
decreasing the denominator as by increasing the numerator.
To vary the simile, here are two groups of men engaged in a
tug of war, and you can affect the result just as decisively by
persuading one group to pull less hard, as by persuading the
other group to pull harder.
Picture to yourself two factories. In factory number one
the owner is a hard-driving business man, an active spirit in the
so-called "open-shop" campaign. He believes in his divine right
to manage industry, and he believes also in the gospel of "all
that the traffic will bear." He prevents his men from organiz-
ing, and employs spies to weed out the radicals and to sow dis-
sensions. When a strike comes, he calls in the police and the
strike-breaking agencies, and in every possible way he makes
himself hated and feared by his workers. Then some day
comes the unemployment crisis, and a wave of revolt sweeping
over the country. The workers seize that factory and set up a
dictatorship of the proletariat and a "red terror." If the owner
resists, they kill him ; in any case, they wipe out his interest in
the business, and do everything possible to destroy his power
over it, even to his very name. They run the business by a shop
committee, and you have for that particular factory a Syndical-
ist, or even Anarchist form of social reconstruction.
Now for factory number two, whose owner is a humane and
enlightened man, studying social questions and realizing his
responsibility, and the temporary nature of his stewardship.
He gives his people the best possible working conditions, he
keeps open books and discusses wages and profits with them,
he educates the young workers, he meets with their union com-
mittees on a basis of free discussion. When the unemployment
crisis comes and the wave of revolt sweeps the country, this
man and his workers understand one another. He says : "I can
no longer pay profits, and so I can no longer keep going under
the profit system ; but if you are ready to run the plant, I am
178 Love and Society
ready to help you the best I can." Manifestly, this man will
continue the president of the corporation, and if he trains
his sons wisely, they will keep his place ; so, instead of having
in that factory a dictatorship and a terror, you will have a
constitutional monarchy, gradually evolving into a democratic
republic.
CHAPTER LXVI
CONFISCATION OR COMPENSATION
(Shall the workers buy out the capitalists? Can they afford
to do it, and what will be the price?)
The problem of whether the social revolution shall be vio-
lent or peaceable depends in great part upon our answer to the
question of confiscation versus compensation. We are now
going to consider, first, the abstract rights and wrongs of the
question, and, second, the practical aspects of it.
There is a story very popular among single taxers and other
advocates of freedom of the land. An English land-owner met
a stranger walking on his estate, and rebuked him for trespass-
ing. Said the stranger, "You own this land ?" Said the other,
"I do." "And how did you get it ?" "I inherited it from my
father." "And how did your father get it ?" "He inherited it
from his father." So on for half a dozen more ancestors, until
at last the Englishman answered, "He fought for it." Where-
upon the stranger took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves and
said, "I'll fight you for it."
This is all there is to say on the subject of the abstract rights
of land titles. There is no title to land which is valid on a his-
torical basis. Everything rests upon fraud and force, continued
through endless ages of human history. We in the United
States took most of our land from the Indians, and in the
process our guiding rule was that the only good Injun was a
dead Injun. We first helped the English kings to take large
sections of our country from the French and Spanish, and then
we took them from the English king by a violent revolution.
We purchased our Southwestern states from Mexico, but not
until we had taken the precaution of killing some thousands of
Mexicans in war, which had the effect of keeping down the
purchase price. It would be a simple matter to show that all
public franchises are similarly tainted with fraud. Proudhon
laid down the principle that "property is theft," and from this
principle it is an obvious conclusion that society has the right
to scrap all paper titles to wealth, and to start the world's indus-
tries over again on the basis of share and share alike.
179
180 Love and Society
But stop and consider for a moment. "Property is theft/'
you say. But go to your corner grocery, and tell the grocer that
you deny his title to the sack of prunes which he exhibits in
front of his counter. He will tell you that he has paid for them ;
but you answer that the prunes were raised on stolen land, and
shipped to him over a railroad whose franchise was obtained by
bribery. Will that convince the grocer ? It will not. Neither
will it convince the policeman or the judge, nor will it convince
the voters of the country. Most people have a deeply rooted
conviction that there are rights to property now definitely estab-
lished and made valid by law. If you have paid taxes on land
for a certain period, the land "belongs" to you ; and I am sure
you might agitate from now to kingdom come without persuad-
ing the American people that New Mexico ought to be returned
to Mexico, or the western prairies to the Indian tribes.
Such are the facts ; now let us apply them to the right of
exploitation, embodied in the ownership of a certain number of
bonds or shares of stock in the United States Steel Corporation.
"Pass a law," says the Socialist, "providing for the taking over
of United States Steel by the government." At once to every
owner comes one single thought — are you going to buy this
stock, or are you going to confiscate it? If you attempt con-
fiscation, the courts will declare the law unconstitutional; and
you either have to defy the courts, which is revolutionary
action, or to amend the constitution. If you adopt the latter
course, you have before you a long period of agitation; you
have to carry both houses of Congress by a two-thirds major-
ity, and the legislatures of three-fourths of the States. You
have to do this in the face of the most bitter and infuriated
opposition of those who are defending what they regard as their
rights. You have to meet the arguments of the entire cap-
italist press of the country, and you have the certainty of
widespread bribery of your elected officials.
The prospect of doing all this under the forms of law seems
extremely discouraging ; so come the Syndicalists, saying, "Let
us seize the factories, and stop the exploitation at the point of
production." So come the Communists, saying, "Let us over-
throw capitalist government, and break the net of bourgeois
legality, and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat, which
will put an end to privilege and class domination all at once."
What are we to say to these different programs?
Suppose we buy out the stockholders of United States Steel,
The Book of Society 181
and issue to them government bonds, what have we accom-
plished ? Nothing, say the advocates of confiscation ; we have
changed the form of exploitation, but the substance of it
remains the same. The stockholders get their money from the
United States government, instead of from the United States
Steel Corporation; but they get their money just the same — the
product, not of their labor, but of the labor of the steel workers.
Suppose we carried out the same procedure all along the line ;
suppose the government took over all industries, and paid for
their securities with government bonds. Then we should have
capitalism administered by a capitalist government, instead of
by our present masters of industry; we should have a state
capitalism, instead of a private capitalism; we should have the
government buying and selling products, and exploiting labor,
and paying over the profits to an hereditary privileged class.
The capitalist system would go on just the same, except that
labor would have one all-powerful tyrant, instead of many
lesser tyrants, as at present.
So argue the advocates of confiscation. And the advocates
of purchase reply that in buying the securities of United States
Steel, we should fix the purchase price at the present market
value of the property, and that price, once fixed, would be per-
manent; all future unearned increment of the steel industry
would belong to the government instead of to private owners.
Consider, for example, what happened during the world war.
When I was a boy, soon after the Steel Trust was launched, its
stock was down to something like six dollars, and I knew small
investors who lost every dollar they had put in. But during the
war, steel stock soared to a hundred and thirty-six dollars per
share ; it paid dividends of some thirty per cent per year, and
accumulated enormous surpluses besides.
The same thing was true of practically all the big corpora-
tions. According to Secretary of the Treasury McAdoo, there
were coal companies which paid as high as eight hundred per
cent per year ; that is to say, the profits in one year were eight
times the total investment. Assuming that our government
bonds paid five per cent, it appears that the owners of these coal
companies got one hundred and sixty times as much under our
present private property system as they would have got under
a system of state purchase. Even completely dominated by cap-
italism as our courts are today, they would not dare require us
to pay for industries more than six per cent on the market value
13
182 Love and Society
of the investment; and from what I know of the inside graft
of American big business that would be restricting the private
owners to less than one-fourth of what they are getting at
present.
We have already pointed out the economies that can be
made by putting industry under a uniform system. But all
these, important as they are, amount to little in comparison with
the one great consideration, which is that by purchasing large
scale industry, we should break the "iron ring"; we should
thenceforth be able to do our manufacturing for use instead of
for profit, and so we should put an end to unemployment. Our
cheerful workers would throng into the factories, to produce
for themselves instead of for masters ; and in one year of that
we should so change the face of our country that a return to the
system of private ownership would be unthinkable. In one year
we could raise production to such a point that the interest on
the bonds we had issued would be like the crumbs left over
from a feast.
%
CHAPTER LXVII
EXPROPRIATING THE EXPROPRIATORS
(Discusses the dictatorship of the proletariat, and its chances
for success in the United States.)
I am aware that the suggestion of paying for the industries
we socialize will sound tame and uninspiring to a lot of ardent
young radicals of my acquaintance. They will shake their
heads sadly and say that I am getting middle-aged and tired.
We have seen in Russia and Hungary and other places, so many
illustrations of the quick and easy way to expropriate the
expropriators that now there is in every country a considerable
group of radicals who will hear to no program less picturesque
than barricades and councils of action.
In considering this question, I set aside all considerations of
abstract right or wrong, the justification for violence in the
overthrow of capitalist society. I put the question on the basis
of cash, pure and simple. It will cost a certain amount of
money to buy out the owners, and that money will have to be
paid, as it is paid at present, out of the labor of the useful
workers. The workers don't want to pay any more than they
have to; the question they must consider is, which way will
they have to pay most. The advocates of the dictatorship of
the proletariat are lured by the delightful prospect of not hav-
ing to pay anything; and if that were really possible it would
undoubtedly be the better way. But we have to consider this
question : Is the program of not having to pay anything a reality,
or is it only a dream? Suppose it should turn out that we
have to pay anyhow, and that in the case of violent revolution
we pay much more, and in addition run serious risk of not
getting what we pay for?
Here are enormous industries, running at full blast, and it
is proposed that some morning the workers shall rise up and
seize them, and turn out the owners and managers, and run the
industries themselves. Will anybody maintain that this can be
done without stopping production in those factories for a single
day ? Certainly production must stop during the time you are
183
184 Love and Society
fighting for possession; and the cruel experience of Russia
proves that it will stop during the further time you are fighting
to keep possession, and to put down counter-revolutionary con-
spiracies. Also, alas, it will stop during the time you are look-
ing for somebody who knows how to run that industry ; it will
stop during the time you are organizing your new administra-
tive staff. You may discover to your consternation that it
stops during the time you are arranging to get other industries
to give you credit, and to ship you raw materials ; also during
the time you are finding the workers in other industries who
want your product, and are able to pay for it with something
that you can use, or that you can sell in a badly disorganized
market.
And all the time that you are arranging these things, you
are going to have the workers at your back, not getting any pay,
or being paid with your paper money which they distrust, and
growling and grumbling at you because you are not running
things as you promised. You see, the mass of the workers are
not going to understand, because you haven't made them under-
stand ; you have brought about the great change by your pro-
gram of a dictatorship, of action by an "enlightened minority";
and now you have the terror that the unenlightened majority
may be won back by their capitalist masters, and may kick you
out of control, or even stand you up against a wall and shoot you
by a firing squad. And all the time you are worrying over these
problems, who can estimate the total amount the factory might
have been producing if it had been running at full blast?
Whatever that difference is, remember, it is paid by the work-
ers; and might that sum not just as well have been used to buy
out the owners?
If we were back in the old days of hand labor and crude,
unorganized production, I admit that the only way to benefit
the slaves might be to turn out the masters by force. But here
we have a social system of infinite complexity, a delicate and
sensitive machine, which no one person in the world, and no
group of persons understands thoroughly. In the running of
such a machine a slight blunder may cost a fortune ; and cer-
tainly all the skill, all the training, all the loyal services of our
expert engineers and managers is needed if we are to remodel
that machine while keeping it running. The amount of wealth
which we could save by the achieving of that feat would be
sufficient to maintain a class of owners in idleness and luxury
The Book of Society 185
for a generation ; and so I say, with all the energy and convic-
tion I possess, pay them! Pay them anything that is necessary,
in order to avoid civil war and social disorganization! Pay
them so much that they can have no possible cause of complaint,
that the most hide-bound capitalistic-minded judge in the coun-
try cannot find a legal flaw in the bargain ! Pay them so that
every engineer and efficiency expert and manager and foreman
and stenographer and office-boy will stay on the job and work
double time to put the enterprise through! Pay them such a
price that even Judge Gary and John D. Rockefeller will be
willing to help us do the job of social readjustment !
"Ah, yes," my young radical friends will say, "that sounds
all very beautiful, but it's the old Utopian dream of brother-
hood and class co-operation. That will never happen on this
"earth, until you have first abolished capitalism." My answer is,
it could happen tomorrow if we had sufficient intelligence to
make it happen. That it does not happen is simply absence of
intelligence. And will anyone maintain that it is the part of an
intelligent man to advocate a less intelligent course than he
knows ? What is the use of our intelligence, if we abdicate its
authority, and give ourselves up to programs of action which
we know are blind and destructive and wasteful ? We may see
a great vessel going on the rocks ; we may feel certain that it is
going, in spite of everything we can do ; but shall we fail to do
what we can to make those in the vessel realize how they might
get safely into the harbor?
We have had the Russian revolution before us for four
years. Mankind will spend the next hundred years in studying
it, and still have much to learn, but the broad outlines of the
great experiment are now plain before our eyes. Russia was a
backward country, and she tried to fight a modern war, and it
broke her down. She had practically no middle class, and her
ruling class was rotten, and so the revolutionists had their
chance, and they seized it. Perhaps it would be more correct
to say that they came to the rescue of Russia, saving her from
the hands of those who were trying to force her to fight, when
she was utterly exhausted and incapable of fighting.
Anyhow, here was your dictatorship of the proletariat. It
turned out all the executive experts, or nearly all of them,
because they were tainted with the capitalist psychology; and
then straightway it had to call them back and make terms with
them, because industry could not be run without them. And of
186 Love and Society
course these engineers and managers sabotaged the revolution —
every non-proletarian sabotaged it, both inside Russia and out-
side. You denounced this, and protested against this, but all
the same it happened; it was human nature that it should
happen, and it is one of the things you have to count on, in
any and every country where you attempt the social revolution
by minority action.
They have got power in Russia, and they dream of getting
power in America in the same way. But there is no such dis-
organization in our country as there was in Russia, and it
would take a generation of civil strife to bring us to such a con-
dition. We have a middle class, powerful, thoroughly organ-
ized, and thoroughly conscious. Moreover, this class has ideals
of majority rule, which are bred in its very bones ; and while
they have never realized these ideals, they think they have, and
they are prepared to fight to the last gasp in that belief. All
that the leaders of Moscow have to do is to bring about an
attempt at forcible revolution, and they will discover in Ameri-
can society sufficient power of organization and of brutal action
to put their movement out of business for a generation.
A hundred years ago we had chattel slavery firmly fixed as
the industrial system of one-half of these United States. To
far-seeing statesmen it was manifest that chattel slavery was a
wasteful system, and that it could not exist in competition with
free labor. There was a great American, Henry Clay, who
came forward with a proposition that the people of the United
States, through their, government, should raise the money,
about a billion dollars, and compensate the owners of all the
slaves and set them free. For most of his lifetime Henry Clay
pleaded for that plan. But the masters of the South were
making money fast ; they knew how to handle the negro as a
slave, they could not imagine handling him as a free laborer,
and they would not hear to the plan. On the other side of
Mason and Dixon's line were fanatical men of "principle," who
said that slavery was wrong, and that was the end of it. There
is a stanza by Emerson discussing this question of confiscation
versus compensation :
Pay ransom to the owner
And fill the bag to the brim.
Who is the owner? The slave is owner,
And ever was. Pay him.
The Book of Society 187
This, you see, is magnificent utterance, but as economic
philosophy it is reckless and unsound. The abolitionists of the
North took up this poem, and the slave power of the South
answered with a battle-song :
War to the hilt.
Theirs be the guilt,
Who fetter the freeman to ransom the slave!
And so the issue had to be fought out. It cost a million
human lives and five billions of treasure, and it set American
civilization back a generation. And now we confront exactly
the same kind of emergency, and are coming to exactly the same
method of solution. We have white wage-slaves clamoring for
their freedom, and we have business men making money out of
them, and exercising power over them, and finding it convenient
and pleasant. They are going to fight it out in a civil war,
and which side is going to win I am not sure. But when the
historians come to write about it a couple of generations from
now, let them be able to record that there were a few men in
the country who pleaded for a sane and orderly and human
solution of the problem, and who continued to voice their con-
victions even in the midst of the cruel and wasteful strife !
CHAPTER LXVIII
THE PROBLEM OF THE LAND
(Discusses the land values tax as a means of social readjust-
ment, and compares it with other programs.)
The writer of this book has been watching the social process
■for twenty years, trying to figure out one thing — how the
change from competition to co-operation can be brought about
with the minimum of human waste. He has come to realize
that the first step is a mental one; to get the people to
want the change. That means that the program must be sim-
ple, so that the masses can understand it. As a social engineer
you might work out a perfect plan, but find yourself helpless,
because it was hard to explain. As illustration of what I mean,
I cite the single tax, a theory which has a considerable hold in
America, but which politically has been utterly ineflfective.
A few years ago a devoted enthusiast in Southern Califor-
nia, Luke North, started what he called the "Great Adventure**
to set free the idle land. In the campaign of 1918 I gave my
help to this movement, and when it failed I went back and took
stock, and revised my conclusions concerning the single tax.
Theoretically the movement has a considerable percentage of
right on its side. Land, in the sense that single taxers use it,
meaning all the natural sources of wealth, is certainly an impor-
tant basis of exploitation, and if you were to tax land values to
the full extent, you would abolish a large portion of privilege —
just how large would be hard to figure. I was perfectly willing
to begin with that portion, so I helped with the "Great Adven-
ture." But a practical test convinced me that it could never
persuade a majority of the people.
The single tax proposal is to abolish all taxes except the
tax on land values. Then come the associations of the bankers
and merchants and real estate speculators, crying in outraged
horror, "What? You propose to let the rich man's stocks and
bonds go free? You propose to put no tax on his cash in the
vaults and on his wife's jewels? You propose to abolish the
income tax and the inheritance tax, and put all the costs of
government on the poor man's lot ?"
Now, of course, I know perfectly well that the rich man
dodges most of his income tax and most of his inheritance
188
The Book of Society 189
tax. I know that he pays a nominal pittance on his cash in the
bank and on his wife's jewels, and likewise on his stocks and
bonds. I know that the corporations issuing these stocks and
bonds would be far more heavily hit by a tax on the natural
resources they own; they could not evade this tax, and they
know it, and that is why they are moved to such deep concern
for the fate of the poor man and his lot. I know that the tax
on the poor man's lot would be infinitesimal in comparison with
the tax on the great corporation. But how can I explain all this
to the poor man? To understand it requires a knowledge of
the complexities of our economic system which the voters
simply have not got.
How much easier to take the bankers and speculators at
their word ! To answer, "All right, gentlemen, since you like
the income and inheritance taxes, the taxes on stocks and bonds
and money and jewels, we will leave these taxes standing.
Likewise, we assent to your proposition that the poor man
should not pay taxes on his lot, while there are rich men and
corporations in our state holding twenty million acres of land
out of use for purposes of speculation. We will therefore
arrange a land values tax on a graduated basis, after the plan
of the income tax ; we will allow one or two thousand dollars'
worth of land exempt from all taxation, provided it is used by
the owner ; and we will put a graduated tax on all individuals
and corporations owning a greater quantity of land, so that in
the case of individuals and corporations owning more than ten
thousand dollars' worth of land, we will take the full rental
value, and thus force all idle land into the market."
Now, the provision above outlined would have spiked every
single argument used by the opposition to the "Great Adven-
ture" in California in 1918; it would have made the real intent
of the measure so plain as to win automatically the additional
votes needed to carry the election. But I tried for three years,
without being able to persuade a single one of the "Great
Adventure" leaders to recognize this plain fact. The single
taxer has his formula, the land values tax and no other tax,
and all else is heresy. Actually, the president of a big single
tax organization in the East declared that by the advocacy of
my idea I had "betrayed the single tax !" We may take this as
an illustration of the difference between dogmatism and science
in the strategy of the class struggle.
I first suggested my program immediately after the war.
190 Love and Society
with the provision that the land thrown on the market should be
purchased by the state, and used to establish co-operative agri-
cultural colonies for the benefit of returned soldiers. But we
have preferred to have our returned soldiers stay without work,
or to displace the men and women who had been gallantly
"doing their bit." By this means we soon had five million men
out of work, and many other millions bitterly discontented with
their wages. Again I took up the proposition for a graduated
land tax, with the suggestion that the money should be used to
provide a pension, first for every dependent man or woman
over sixty years of age in the country, and second for every
child in the country whose parents were unable properly to sup-
port it, whether because they were dead or sick or unemployed.
You may note that in advocating this program, you would
not have to convert anybody to any foreign theories, nor would
you have to use any long words; you would not have to say
anything against the constitution, nor to break any law, nor to
give occasion for patriotic mobs to tar and feather you. To
every poor man in your state you could say, "If you own your
own house and lot, this bill will lift the taxes from both, and
therefore it will mean fifty or a hundred dollars a year in your
pocket. If you do not own a home, it will take millions of idle
acres out of the hands of the speculators, and break the price
of real estate, so that you can have either a lot in the city or a
farm in the country with ease."
Furthermore, you could say, "This measure will have the
effect of drawing the unemployed from the cities at once, and
so stopping the downward course of wages. At the same time
that wages hold firm, the cost of food will go down, because
there will be millions more men working on the land. In addi-
tion to that, the state will have an enormous income, many mil-
lions of dollars a year, taken exclusively from those who are
owning and not producing. This money will be expended in
saving from suffering and humiliation the old people of the
country, who have worked hard all their lives and have been
thrown on the scrap-heap; also in making certain that every
child in the country has food enough and care enough to make
him into a normal and healthy human being, so that he can do
his share of work in the world and pay his own way through
life."
I submit the above measure to those who believe that the
road to social freedom lies by some sort of land tax. But before
The Book of Society 191
you take it up I invite you to consider whether there may
not be some other way, even easier. There is a homely old say-
ing to the effect that "molasses catches more flies than vinegar" ;
and I am always looking for some way that will get the poor
what they want, without frightening the rich any more than
necessary.
I know a certain type of radical whom this question always
exasperates. He answers that the opposition will be equally
strong to any plan; the rich will do anything for the poor
except get off their backs — and so on. In reply I mention that
among the most ardent radicals I know are half a dozen million-
aires ; I know one woman who is worth a million, who pleads
day and night for social revolution, while the people who work
for her are devoted and respectful wage slaves. Herbert
Spencer said that his idea of a tragedy was a generalization
killed by a fact. I shall not sayihat the existence of millionaire
Socialists and parlor Bolsheviks kills the theory of the class
struggle, but I certainly say it compels us to take thought of the
rich as well as of the poor in planning the strategy of our cam-
paign.
And manifestly, if we want to consider the rich, the very
last device we shall use is that of a tax. Nobody likes to pay
taxes ; everybody agrees in classifying taxes with death. Each
feels that he is paying more than his share already ; each knows
that the government which collects the tax is incompetent or
worse. Stop and recall what we have proven about the "iron
ring"; the possibilities of production latent in our society.
Realize the bearings of this all-important fact, that we can offer
to mankind a social revolution which will make everybody
richer, instead of making some people poorer ! Exactly how to
do this is the next thing we have to inquire.
CHAPTER LXIX
THE CONTROL OF CREDIT
(Deals with money, the part it plays in the restriction of
industry, and may play in the freeing of industry.)
How is it that the rich are becoming richer? The single
taxer answers that it is by monopoly of the land, the natural
sources of wealth ; the Socialist answers that it is by the control
of the machinery of production. But if you go among the rich
and make inquiry, you speedily learn that these factors, large
as they are, amount to little in comparison with another factor,
the control of credit. There are hosts of little capitalists and
business men who deal in land and produce goods with machin-
ery, but the men who make the real fortunes and dominate the
modern world are those who control credit, and whose business
is, not the production of anything, but speculation and the
manipulation of markets.
"Money makes the mare go," our ancestors used to say;
and money today determines the destiny of empires. What is
money ? We think of it as gold and silver coins, and pieces of
engraved paper promising to pay gold and silver coins. But the
report of the U. S. Comptroller of the Currency for 1919 shows
that the business of the country was done, 5% by such means
and 95% by checks ; so, for practical purposes, we may say that
money consists of men's willingness to trust other men, or
groups or organizations of men, when they make written prom-
ise to pay. In other words, money is credit ; and the control of
credit means the control of industry. The problem of social
readjustment is mainly but the problem of taking the control of
credit out of the hands of private individuals, and making it a
public or social function.
Who controls credit today? The bankers. And how do they
control it ? We give it to them ; we, the masses of the people,
who take them our money and leave it with them. A very little
real money in hand becomes, under our banking system, the
basis of a great amount of imaginary money. The Federal
Reserve law requires that banks shall hold in reserve from seven
192
The Book of Society 193
to thirteen per cent of demand deposits ; which means, in sub-
stance, that when you leave a dollar with a banker, the banker
is allowed, under the law, to turn that dollar into anywhere
from seven to thirteen dollars, and lend those dollars out. In
addition, he deposits his reserves with the Federal Reserve
bank, and that bank keeps only thirty-five per cent in reserve —
in other words, the seven to thirteen imaginary dollars are mul-
tiplied again by three.
Under the stress of war, this process of credit inflation has
been growing like the genii let out of the bottle. Under the
law, the Federal Reserve banks are supposed to hold a gold
reserve of 40% to secure our currency. But in December,
1919, these banks held a trifle over a billion dollars* worth of
gold, while our paper money was over four billion. In addi-
tion, our banks have over thirty-three billions of deposits, and
all these are supposed to be secured by gold ; in addition, there
are twenty-five billions of government bonds, and uncounted
billions of private notes, bonds and accounts, all supposed to be
payable in gold. So it appears that about one per cent of our
outstanding money is real, and the rest is imaginary — that is,
it is credit.
The point for you to get clear is this : The great mass of
this imaginary money is created by law, and we have the power
to abolish it or to change the ownership of it at any time we
develop the necessary intelligence. Let us consider the ordinary
paper money, the one and two and five and ten dollar "bills,"
with which we plain people do most of our business. These
are Federal Reserve notes, and there are about three billions of
them ; how do they come to be ? Why, we grant to the national
banks by law the right to make this money; the government
prints it for them, and they put it into circulation. And what
does it cost them? They pay one per cent for the use of the
money ; in some cases they pay only one-half of one per cent ;
and then they lend it to us, the people — and what do they
charge us? The answer is available in a recent report of the
U. S. Comptroller of the Currency, as follows :
"I have the record of the loans made by one Texas national
bank to a hard-working woman who owned a little farm a few
miles from town. She borrowed, in the aggregate, $2,375,
making about thirty loans during the year. Listen to the
details of the robbery : $162.50 for 30 days at 36 per cent ; $377.
for 34 days at 44 per cent ; $620.25 for 23 days at 77 per cent ;
194 Love and Society
$11. for 30 days at 120 per cent ; $21.50 for 30 days at 90 per
cent ; $33. for 2 days at 93 per cent ; %27. for 15 days at 195 per
cent ; $1 10, for 30 days at 120 per cent — that was to buy a horse
for her plowing ; $20 for 48 days at 187 per cent ; $6 for 10
days at 720 per cent ; $7 for 3 days at 2,000 per cent, and so on ;
every cent paid off by what sweat and struggle only God
knows."
In Oklahoma, where the legal rate of interest is six per cent,
with ten per cent as the maximum under special contract,
harassed farmers paid all the way from 12 to 2400 per cent,
with 40 per cent as the average. In the case of one bank, the
Comptroller proved that not a single solitary loan had been
made under fifteen per cent. He cited one particular case that
he asked to be regarded as typical. In the spring the farmer
went to the bank and arranged for a loan of $200. Out of his
necessity he was compelled to pay 55 per cent interest charge.
Unable to meet the note at maturity, he had to agree to 100 per
cent interest in order to get the renewal. The next renewal forced
him up to 125 per cent. For four years the thing went on, and
all the drudgery of the father and the mother and the six chil-
dren could never keep down the terrible interest or wipe out
the principal. As a finish the bank swooped down and sold
him out ; the wretched man, barefoot and hungry, went to work
clearing a swamp, caught pneumonia and died; the county
buried him, and neighbors raised a purse to send the widow and
children back to friends in Arkansas.
This is the thing called the Money Trust in action, and this
is the power we have to take out of private control. It is our
first job, and all other jobs are in comparison hardly worth
mentioning. How are we going to do it ?
The farmers of North Dakota have shown one way. They
took the control of their state government into their own hands,
and the most important and significant thing they did was to
start a public bank. The interests fought them tooth and nail ;
not merely the interests of North Dakota, not merely of the
Northwest, but of the entire United States. They fought them
in the law courts, up to the United States Supreme Court, which
decided in favor of the people of North Dakota. Therefore,
make note of this vital fact — the most important single fact in
the strategy of the class struggle — every state can, under the
constitution, have a public bank ; every city and town can have
one, and no court can ever forbid it !
The Book of Society 195
Therefore, I say to all Socialists, labor men and social
reformers of every shade and variety, nail at the top of your pro-
gram of action the demand for a public bank in your commu-
nity, to take the control of credit out of the hands of specula-
tors and use it for the welfare of the people. Make it your first
provision that every dollar of public money shall be deposited
in this bank and every detail of public financing handled by
this bank; make it your second provision that the purpose of
this bank shall be to put all private banks out of business, and
take over their power for the people.
At present, you understand, it is taken for granted that the
first purpose of the government is to foster the private credit
system. Take, for example, the postal savings bank. The pri-
vate banks fought this for a generation, and finally they allowed
us to have it, on condition that it should be turned into a device
for collecting money for them. Our postal bank turns over all
its money to the private banks, at the grotesque rate of two per
cent interest ; and recently I read of the director of the postal
bank appearing before a convention of bankers, asking for some
small favor, and humbly explaining that it was not his idea to
make the postal bank a rival of the private savings banks. Why
should he not do so ? Let us nail it to our radical program that
the postal savings bank is to fight for business, just as do the
private banks, and lend its funds direct to the people on good
security.
Let our Federal banking system also become the servant of
the public welfare, and let its energy be devoted to breaking the
strangle-hold of predatory finance on our industry. Let the
government issue all money, and use it for the transfer of
industry from private into public hands. Do we want to social-
ize our railroads, our coal mines, our telegraphs and telephones ?
Do we want to buy them, in order to avoid the wastes of civil
war and insurrection ? We have agreed that we do ; and here
we have the way of doing it. If the bankers can create, out of
our willingness to trust them, billions upon billions of imaginary
money, then so can we, the people of the United States, create
money out of our willingness to trust ourselves. And do not
let anybody fool you for a single second by talking about "fiat
money" and "inflation of the currency." If you are paying
twice as much for everything as you did before the war, you
are paying it because the bankers have doubled the amount of
money in circulation — for that reason and that alone. That
196 Love and Society
double money the bankers own; the only question now to be
decided is, who is to own the double money that will be created
tomorrow ?
Make note of the fact that it costs nothing to start a public
bank. If you want to put the steel trust out of business by
competition, you have several hundred thousand dollars worth
of rolling mills and ore land to buy ; but the banks can be put
out of business by nothing but a law. The material parts of a
bank, the white marble columns and bronze railings and mahog-
any trimmings, are as nothing compared with the inner soul of
a bank, its control of the life-blood of your business and mine ;
and this we can have for the taking. We can keep our own
"credit" ; instead of sending it to Wall Street, where speculators
use it to bleed us white, we can set it to building up our own
community, under the direction of officials whom we select.
Also, we can have our gigantic national bank, controlling all our
thirty-three billions of dollars of deposits, and likewise the hun-
dreds of billions of credit built upon them.
The first time you suggest this plan to a banker or business
man, you will be told that increase of money by the government
does not benefit labor or the general consumer ; "inflation of the
currency" causes prices to go up correspondingly. To this I
will furnish an effective reply : that at the same time the gov-
ernment issues new money, the government will also fix prices ;
and then watch the face of your banker or business man 1 If he
is a man who can really think, and is not just repeating like a
parrot the formulas he has learned from others, he will perceive
that the combination of currency inflation and price-fixing would
catch him as the two parts of a nut-cracker catch a nut ; and he
will know that you can take the meat out of him any time you
please. He may argue that it is not fair ; but point out to him
that it is exactly what the big banks and the trusts have been
doing to us right along — increasing the amount of money in
circulation, and at the same time raising the prices we pay for
goods, and so taking out the meat from us nuts !
We have agreed that we do not mean to be unfair either to
the banker or the manufacturer; we are simply going to stop
their being unfair to us. We are going to convince them that
their power to catch us in a nut-cracker is forever at an end.
We allow them six per cent on their investments, and guar-
antee them this by turning over to them some of our new
money — that is, government bonds. When we have thoroughly
The Book of Society 197
convinced them that they can't get any more, they will take
these bonds and quit ; and thus simply, without violence or
destruction of property, we shall slide from our present system
of commercial cannibalism into the new co-operative common-
wealth.
We have had "cheap money" campaigns in the United
States many times, and as this book is written, it becomes evi-
dent that we are to have another. Henry Ford is advocating
the idea, and so is Thomas A. Edison. The present writer
would like to make plain that in supporting such a program, he
does it for one purpose, and one only — ^the taking over of the
industries by the community. The creation of state credit for
that purpose is the next step in the progress of himian
society; whereas the creation of state credit for the con-
tinuance of the profit system is a piece of futility amounting
to imbecility. This distinction is fundamental, and is the test
by which to judge the usefulness of any new program, and the
intelligence of those who advocate it.
CHAPTER LXX
THE CONTROL OF INDUSTRY
(Discusses various programs for the change from industrial
autocracy to industrial democracy.)
The program of the railway workers for the democratic
management of their industry is embodied in the Plumb plan.
You may learn about it by addressing the weekly paper of the
railway brotherhoods, which is called "Labor," and is published
in Washington, D. C. It appears that our transportation indus-
try can be at once socialized, because of a clause in the consti-
tution which gives the national government power over "roads
and communications." Through decades of mismanagement
under the system of private greed, the railroads have been
brought to such a financial condition that they will be forced
into nationalization, whenever we stop them from dipping their
fingers into the public treasury.
Under the Plumb plan the government is to purchase the
roads from their present owners, paying with government
bonds. The management is to be under the control of a board
consisting in part of representatives of the government, and in
part of the workers — ^this being a combination of the methods
of Socialism and Syndicalism. The same program can be
applied constitutionally to telegraphs and telephones, to inter-
state trolley systems, express companies, oil pipe lines, and all
other means of interstate communication and distribution.
The Plumb plan also deals with coal and steel and other
great industries. These could not be nationalized without a
constitutional amendment, but it appears that in the majority of
the constitutions of the states are provisions that all corporate
charters are held subject to the power of the legislature to
amend, modify, or revoke the same. That gives us a right to
take over these corporations through state action. The only
preliminary is to elect state administrations which will represent
us, instead of representing the corporations. Also, most state
constitutions contain the provision that "no corporation shall
198
The Book of Society 199
issue its stocks or bonds, except for money, labor, or property
actually received." The word "labor" gives the opening wedge
for the Plumb plan. The state can purchase these industries,
giving bonds in exchange, and can issue to the workers labor
stock, which stock will carry part control of the industry.
Also, the railroad brotherhoods have started their own bank,
in Cleveland, Ohio, and it is proving an enormous success.
Make note of this point; every large labor union can have its
own bank, to finance its industries and its propaganda. Stop
and consider how preposterous it is that the five million organ-
ized workers of the United States should deposit their hundreds
of millions of savings in capitalist banks, to be used to finance
private undertakings which crush imions and hold labor in
bondage. Let every big labor union have its own building, its
own banking and insurance business, its own vacation camp in
the country, its own school for training its future leaders.
Also, let every labor council in every big city start a labor daily,
to tell the workers the truth and point the way to freedom. Let
every farmers' organization follow suit; and let these groups
get together, to exchange their products upon a co-operative
basis. Already the railway men are arranging with the farm-
ers, to buy the farm products and distribute them co-opera-
tively ; they are getting together with the clothing workers, to
have the latter make clothing for them, and with the shoe-
workers to make shoes.
This is the co-operative movement, which has become the
largest single industry in Great Britain, and is the backbone of
industrial democracy and sound radicalism. It is spreading
rapidly in America now. It is taking the money of the people
out of the control of the profit system, and diverting it into
channels of public service. It is training men to believe in
brotherhood instead of in greed. It is giving them business
experience, so that when the time comes the taking over of our
industrial machine will not have to be done by amateurs, but by
men who know what co-operation is, and how to make a success
of it.
This work will go on more rapidly yet when the workers
have united politically, and brought into power a government
which will assist them instead of assisting the bankers. A most
interesting program for the development of working-class
financial credit is known as the "Douglas plan," which is advo-
cated by a London weekly, the "New Age," and is explained in
200 Love and Society
two books, called "Economic Democracy" and "Credit Power
and Democracy," by Douglas and Orage. This program is in
brief that the furnishing of credit shall become a function of
organized labor, based upon the fact that the true and ultimate
basis of all credit is the power of hand and brain labor to pro-
duce wealth. The labor unions, or "guilds," shall pay the man-
agement of industry and pay capital for the use of the industrial
plant, and shall finance production and new industrial develop-
ment out of their "credit power," their ability to promise pro-
duction and to keep their promises.
This "Douglas plan" seeks to break the Money Trust by the
method of Syndicalism. Another method of breaking it,
through state regulation of bank loans, you will find most com-
pletely set forth in an extremely able book, "The Strangle
Hold," by H. C. Cutting, an American business man, whom
you may address at San Lorenzo, California. Another method,
utilizing the third factor in industry, the consumer, is the
method of banking by consumers' unions. Such are the Raffei-
sen banks, widely known in Germany, and a specimen of which
exists in the single tax colony at Arden, Delaware. Those who
wish to know about the co-operative bank, or other forms of
co-operation, may apply to the Co-operative League of Amer-
ica, 2 West 13th Street, New York, whose president is Dr.
James P. Warbasse. Information concerning public ownership
may be had from the Public Ownership League, 127 N. Dear-
born Street, Chicago ; also from the Socialist party, 220 South
Ashland Boulevard, Chicago, and from the Bureau of Social
Research of the Rand School of Social Science, New York.
Also, I ought to mention the very interesting plan for social
reconstruction set forth by Mr. King C. Gillette, inventor of the
safety razor. This plan you may find in your public library in
two encyclopedic volumes, "Gillette's Social Redemption," and
"Gillette's World Solution." The politician seeks to solve the
industrial problem by means of the state, and the labor leader
seeks to solve it by the unions; it is to be expected that Mr.
Gillette, a capitalist, should seek to solve it by means of the cor-
poration. He points out that the modern "trust" is the greatest
instrument of production yet invented by man ; and he asks why
the people should not form their own "trust," to handle their
own aflFairs, and to purchase and take over the industries from
their present private masters. It is interesting to note that Mr.
Gillette's solution is fully as radical and thorough-going as those
The Book of Society 201
of the State Socialists or the Syndicalists. The "People's Cor-
poration" which he projects and plans some day to launch upon
the world would be a gigantic "consumers* union," whose
"credit power" would speedily dominate and absorb all other
powers in modern society ; it would make us all stockholders,
and give us our share of the benefits of social productivity.
CHAPTER LXXI
THE NEW WORLD
(Describes the co-operative commonwealth, beginning with
its money aspects; the standard wage and its variations.)
It has been indicated that the new society will be different
in different countries and in different parts of the same coun-
try, in different industries and at different times. No one can
predict exactly what it will be, and anyone who tries to predict
is unscientific. But every man can work out his own ideas of
the most economical and sensible arrangements for a co-opera-
tive society, and in these final chapters I set forth my ideas.
One of the first things people ask is, "Will there be money
in the new society, or how will labor be rewarded and goods
paid for ?" I answer that there will be money, and the business
methods of the new society will be so nearly the same as at
present that in this respect you would hardly realize there had
been any change. The only difference will be that in the new
society you will be paid several times as much for your labor ;
or, if you prefer to put it the other way, you will be able to buy
several times as much with your money. Why should we waste
our time working out systems of "credit-cards," when we
already have a system in the form of gold and silver coins and
paper currency? Why should we bother with "labor checks,"
when we have a banking and clearing-house system, understood
by everyone but the illiterate? The only difference we shall
make is that nobody can get gold and silver coins or paper cur-
rency, except by performing labor to pay for them; nobody
can have money in the bank and draw checks against it, until
he has rendered to society an equivalent amount of service.
When you have earned your money in the new world, you
will spend it wherever you please, and for whatever you please ;
the only difference being that the price you pay will be the exact
labor-cost of producing that article, with no deduction for any
form of exploitation. As I wrote sixteen years ago in "The
"Industrial Republic," you will be able to get, if you insist
upon it, a seven-legged spider made of diamonds, and the only
202
The Book of Society 203
question society will ask is, Have you performed services equiva-
lent to the material and labor necessary to the creating of that
unusual article of commerce? Of course, society won't put it
to you in that complicated formula; it will simply ask, "Have
you got the price?" Which, you observe, is exactly the ques-
tion society asks you at present.
The next thing that everybody wants to know is, "Shall we
all be paid the same wages?" I answer, yes and no, because
there will be three systems of payment. There will be a basic
wage, which everybody will get for every kind of useful service
necessary to production ; this will be, as it were, the foundation
of our economic structure. On top of this will be built a system
of special payments for special services, which are of an intel-
lectual nature, and cannot be standardized and dealt with
wholesale. In addition, there will be for a time a third arrange-
ment, applying to agricultural work, which is in a different
stage of development, and to which different conditions apply.
Let us take, first, our standard wage. The census of our
Utopian commonwealth reveals that we have ten million able-
bodied workers engaged in mining, manufacturing, and trans-
portation; this including, of course, office-work and manage-
ment — everything that enters into these industries. By scien-
tific management, the best machinery, and the elimination of all
possible waste, we find that they produce eighty million dollars
worth of goods an hour. A portion of this we have to set aside
to pay for the raw materials which they do not produce, and
for the upkeep of the plant, and for margin of error — what our
great corporations call a surplus. We find that we have fifty
million dollars per hour left, and that means that we can pay
for labor five dollars per hour, or twenty dollars for the regular
four-hour day. This is our standard wage, received by all able-
bodied workers.
But quickly we find that our industries are not properly bal-
anced. A great many men want to work at the jobs which are
clean and pleasant, such as delivering mail, and very few want
to work at washing dishes in restaurants and cleaning the sew-
ers. There is no way we can adjust this, except by paying a
higher wage, or by reducing the number of hours in the work-
ing day, which is the same thing. The only other method would
be to have the state assign men to their work, and that would
be bureaucracy and slavery, the essence of everything we wish
to get away from in our co-operative commonwealth.
204 Love and Society
What we shall have, so far as concerns our basic industries,
is a government department, registering with mathematical
accuracy the condition of supply and demand in all the indus-
tries of the country. Our demand for shoes is increasing, for
some reason or other ; a thousand more shoe-workers are needed,
therefore the price of labor in the shoe industry is increased
five cents per day — or whatever amount will draw that number
of workers from other occupations. On the other hand, there
are too many people applying for the job of driving trucks,
therefore we reduce slightly the compensation for this work.
There are more men who want jobs in Southern California than
in Alaska, therefore the payment for the same grade of work in
Alaska has to be higher. AH this is not merely speculation, it is
not a matter of anybody's choice ; it is an automatic, self-adjust-
ing system, subject to precise calculations. The only change
from our present system is from guesswork to exact measure-
ment. At present we do not know how many shoes our country
will require next season, neither do we know how many shoes
are going to be made, neither do we know how many people can
make shoes, nor how many would like to learn, nor how many
would like to quit that job and take to farming. It would be
the simplest matter in the world to find out these things — far
simpler that it was to register all our possible soldiers, and
examine them physically and mentally, and train them and
ieed them and ship them overseas to "can the Kaiser."
Of course, we drafted the men for this war job ; but in the
new world nobody is drafted for anything. It is any man's
privilege to starve if he feels like it ; it is his privilege to go out
into the mountains and live on nuts and berries if he can find
them. Nobody makes him go anywhere, or makes him work at
anything — unless, of course, he is a convicted criminal. To the
free citizen all that society has to say is, if he buys any prod-
ucts, he must pay for those products with his own labor, and
not with some other man's labor. Of course, he may steal, or
cheat, as under capitalism; our new world has laws against
stealing and cheating, and does its best to enforce them. The
difference between the capitalist world and our world is merely
that we make it impossible for any man to get money legally
without working.
Under these conditions the average man wishes to work,
and the only question remaining is, how shall he work? If he
wants to work by himself, and in his own way, nobody objects
The Book of Society 205
to it. He is able to buy anything he pleases, whether raw
materials or finished products. If he wants to buy leather and
make shoes after his own pattern, no one stops him, and if he
can find anyone to buy these shoes, he can earn his living in that
way. He is able to get land for as long a time as he wants it, by
paying to the state the full rental value of that land, and if he
wants to farm the land, he can do so, and sell his products. As
a matter of theory, he is perfectly free to hire others to farm
the land for him, or with him. There is no law to prevent it,
neither is there any law to prevent his renting a factory and
buying machinery, and hiring labor to make shoes.
But, as a matter of practical fact, it is impossible for him to
do this, because the community is in the business of making
shoes, and on an enormous scale, with great factories run demo-
cratically by the workers, and there is very small chance of any
private business man being able to draw the workers away from
these factories. The community factories have all the latest
machinery ; they apply the latest methods of scientific manage-
ment, and they turn out standard shoes at such a rate that pri-
vate competition is unthinkable. Of course, there may be some
special kind of shoes, involving an intellectual element, in which
there can be private competition. This kind of manufacture is
covered in our second method of payment ; but before we dis-
cuss it, let us settle the problem of our most important basic
industry, which is agriculture.
CHAPTER LXXII
AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION
(Discusses the land in the new world, and how we foster
co-operative farming and co-operative homes.)
Farming the land is a very ancient industry, and while its
tools have been improved, its social forms have been the same
for a long time. The worker on the land is conservative, and
the Russian Bolsheviks, who tried to rush their peasants into
Communism, found that they had only succeeded in stopping
the production of food. We make no such blunder in our new
society. We have found a way to abolish speculation in land,
and exploitation based on land-ownership, while leaving the
farmer free to run his business in the old way if he wants to.
In our new society we take the full rental value of all land
•which is not occupied and used by the state. The farmer and
the city dweller alike "own" their land, in the sense that they
have the use of it for as long as they please, but they pay to the
state the rental value of the land, minus the improvements. So
they cannot speculate in the land or rent it out to others ; they
can only use it, and they only pay for what they actually use.
They may put improvements on the land, with full assurance of
having the use and benefit thereof, and they may sell the
improvements, and the new owner enters into possession, with
no obligation but to pay the rental value of the unimproved land
to the state.
The farmer goes on raising his products, and if he wants
to drive to town and deliver them to his customers, he may do
so; but he finds it cheaper to market them through the great
labor co-operatives and state markets. As there is no longer
any private interest involved in these activities, no one has any
interest in cheating him, and he gets the full value of the prod-
ucts, less the cost of marketing. If the farmer wishes to con-
tinue all his life in his old style individualistic method of work-
ing the land, he is free to do so. But here is what he sees going
on within a few miles of his place :
The state has bought a square mile of land, and has taken
down the fences and established an agricultural co-operative for
206
The Book of Society 207
purposes of experiment and demonstration. The farm is run
under the direction of experts ; the soils are treated with exactly
the right fertilizers for each crop, the best paying crops are
raised, the best seed is used, and the best machinery. The work-
ers of this new agricultural co-operative receive the standard
wage, and they live in homes specially built for them, with all
the conveniences made possible by wholesale production. Also,
these co-operators live in a democratic community; they deter-
mine their ov/n conditions of labor, being represented on the
governing board, along with the experts appointed by the state.
The farmer watches this experiment, at first with suspicion ;
but he finds that his sons have less suspicion than he has, and
his sons keep pointing out to him that their little farm is not
making the standard wage or anything like it ; and, moreover,
the standard wage is constantly increasing, whereas, the price
of farm-products is dropping. And here is the state, reaay to
direct new co-operative ventures, inviting a score of farmers in
the community to combine and buy out the unwilling ones, and
establish a new co-operative. Sooner or later the old farmer
gives way ; or he dies, and his sons belong to the new world.
So ultimately we have our national agricultural system, in
which all the requirements of our people are studied, and all the
possibilities of our soil and climate, and the job of raising
the exact quantities of food that we need, both for our own use
and for export, is worked out as one problem. We know how
much lumber we need, and we raise it on all our hillsides and
mountain slopes, and so protect ourselves from floods and the
denuding of our continent. We know where best to raise our
wheat, and where best to raise our potatoes and our cabbages,
and we do not do this by crude hand-labor, nor by the labor of
women and children from daybreak till dark. We have special
machines that plant each crop, and other machines that reap it
or dig it out of the ground and prepare it for market.
A few days ago I read a discussion in the Chamber of Com-
merce of Calcutta. Some one called attention to the wastes
involved in the current method of handling rubber. One con-
signment of rubber had been sold more than three hundred
separate times, and the cost of these transactions amounted to
three times the value of the rubber. This is only one
illustration, and I might quote a thousand. If you doubt my
figures as to the possibility of production in the new society,
remind yourself that a large percentage of the things you use
208 LoYE AND Society
have been bought and sold many scores of times before you get
them. Consider the cabbage, for which you pay six or eight
cents a pound in the grocery store, and for which the farmer
gets, say, half a cent a pound.
In this new world the state has an enormous income, derived
from its tax on land values. It no longer has to send around
men once a year to ask you how many diamond rings your wife
has, and to tax you on your honesty, if you have any. It no
longer has to make its money by such lying devices as a tariff,
therefore its moral being is no longer poisoned by a tariff -lobby.
It taxes every citizen for the right to use that which nature
created, and leaves free from taxation that which the citizens'
own labor created ; this kind of taxation is honest, and fair to
all, because no one can evade it. The state uses the proceeds of
this land tax in the public services, the libraries and research
laboratories and information bureaus ; in free insurance against
fire and flood and tempest ; and in a pension to every member of
society above the working age of fifty-five, or below the work-
ing age of eighteen. Of course, the state might leave it to every
man to save up for his old age, but not all men are this wise,
and the state cannot afford to let the unwise ones starve. It is
more convenient for the state to figure that all men, or nearly
all, are going to be old, and to hold back some of their money
while they are young and strong, in the certainty that when they
are old, they will appreciate this service. Also the state takes
care of the sick and incapacitated, and the mentally or physi-
cally defective. But we do not leave these latter loose m the
world to reproduce their defects; we have in our new world
some sense of responsibility to the future, and there is nothing
to which we devote more effort than making certain that noth-
ing unsound or abnormal is allowed entrance into life.
The problem of the care of children is a complicated one,
and our new society is in process of solving it. We look back
on the old world in which the having of children was heavily
taxed, in the form of an obligation to care for these children
until they were old enough to work. Then the parents were
allowed to exploit the labor of the children, so that among the
very poor the raising of children was a business speculation,
like the raising of slaves or poultry. But in our new world we
consider the interest of the child, and of the society in which
that child is to be a citizen. We decide that this society must
have citizens, and that the raising of the future citizens is a
The Book of Society 209
work just exactly as necessary and useful as the raising of a
crop of cabbages. Therefore, we pay a pension to all mothers
while they are raising and caring for children. At the same
time we assert the right to see that this money is wisely spent,
and that the child is really cared for. If it is neglected, we are
quick to take it away from its parents, and put it in one of our
twenty-four-hour-a-day schools.
We realize that the home is an ancient industry, even more
ancient than agriculture, and we do not try to socialize it all at
once. But just as we demonstrate to farmers that the indi-
vidual farm does not pay, so we demonstrate to mothers the
wastefulness of the single laundry, the single kitchen, the single
nursery. We establish community laundries, community kitch-
ens, community nurseries, and invite our women to help in
these activities, and to learn there, under expert guidance, the
advantages of domestic co-operation. We convince them by
showing better results in the health and happiness of the chil-
dren, and in the time and strength of the mothers. So, little by
little, we widen the field of co-operative endeavor, and increase
the total product of human labor and the total enjoyment o£
human life.
CHAPTER LXXIII
INTELLECTUAL PRODUCTION
(Discusses scientific, artistic and religious activities, as a
superstructure built upon the foundation of the standard wage.)
Karl Kautsky, intellectual leader of the German Social-
democracy, gives in his book, "The Social Revolution," a useful
formula as to the organization of the f uttu-e society. This for-
mula is : "Communism in material production, Anarchism in
intellectual production." It vi^ill repay us to study this state-
ment, and see exactly what it means.
Material production depends directly upon things; and as
there is only a limited quantity of things in the world, if any
one person has more than his share, he deprives some other
person to that extent. So there have to be strict laws concern-
ing the distribution of material products. But with intelloc-
tual things exactly the opposite is the case. There is no limit in
quantity, and aiiy one person can have all he wants without
interfering with anybody else. Everybody in the world can
perform a play by Shakespeare, or play a sonata by Beethoven,
and everybody can enjoy it as much as he pleases without keep-
ing other people from enjoying it all they please. Also, mate-
rial production can be standardized ; we can have great facto-
ries to turn out millions of boxes of matches, each match like
every other match, and the more alike they are the better. But
in intellectual affairs we want everyone to be different, or at
least we want everyone to be free to be different, and if some
one can become much better than the others, this is the most
important kind of production in the world, for he may make
over our whole intellectual and moral life.
Por the production of material things our new society has
great factories owned in common, and run by majority vote of
the workers, and we place the products of that factory at the
disposal of all members of society upon equal terms. That is our
"Communism in material production." On the other hand, in
our intellectual production we leave everybody free to live his
own life, and to associate himself with others of like aims, and
we place as few restrictions as possible upon their activities.
210
The Book of Society 211
This is the method of free association, or "Anarchism in intel-
lectual production."
Our problem would be simple if material and intellectual
production never had to mingle. But, as it happens, every kind
of intellectual production requires a certain amount of material,
and every kind of material production involves an intellectual
element. Therefore, our two methods have to be combined, and
we have a complex problem which we have to solve in a variety
of different ways, and upon which we must experiment with
open minds and scientific temper.
First, let us take the intellectual elements involved in the
production of purely material things, such as matches and
shoes and soap. Let us take invention. Naturally, we do not
want to go on making matches and shoes and soap in the same
old way forever. On the contrary, we want to stimulate all the
workers in these industries to use their wits and improve the
processes in every possible way. The whole of society has an
interest in this, and the soap workers have an especial interest.
Our soap industry has an invention department, with a group
of experts appointed by the executive committee of the national
council of soap workers. All soap workers are taxed, say five
cents a day, for the support of this activity. Likewise the state
contributes a generous sum out of its income toward the work
of soap research. In addition to this, the soap industry offers
prizes and scholarships for suggestions as to the improvement
of every detail of the work, and at meetings of every local of
soap workers somebody m^es new suggestions as to methods
of stimulating their intellectual life — not merely as regards
soap, but as regards citizenship, and art and literature, and
human life in general. Our soap workers, you must under-
stand, are no longer wage-slaves, brutalized by toil and poverty ;
they are free citizens of a free society. Our soap workers' local
in every city has its own theatre and concert hall and lecture
bureau, and publishes its own magazine.
Every industry has its immediate intellectual problems, its
trade journals in which these are discussed, and its research
boards in which they are worked out. The ambitions of the
young workers in that industry are concentrated upon getting
into this intellectual part of their trade. Examinations are held
and tests are made to discover the most competent men, and
written suggestions are considered by boards of control. It is,
of course, of great importance to every worker that the chan-
212 Love and Society
nels of promotion should be kept open, and that the man who
really has inventive talent shall get, not merely distinction and
promotion, but financial reward, so that he may have time and
materials to continue his experiments.
This research department, you perceive, is a sort of super-
structure, built upon the foundation of our standard wage ; and
this same simile applies to numerous other forms of intellectual
production. For example, our community paper mills turn out
paper, and our community printers are prepared to turn out
millions of books. How shall we determine what is to be the
intellectual content of these material books? There are many
different methods. First, there is the method of individualism.
A man has something to say, and he writes a book ; he works in
the soap factory, and saves a part of his standard wage, and
when he has money enough he orders the community printers
to print his book, and the community booksellers to handle it
for him, and the community postofifice to deliver it for him.
Again, a group of men organize themselves into an association,
or club, or scientific society, and publish books. The Authors'
League takes up the work of publishing the writings of its
members, and the Poetry Society does the same.
This is the method of Anarchism, or free association. But
there is no reason why we should not have along side it the
method of Socialism; there is no reason why we should not
have state publishing houses, just as we have state universities
and state libraries. The state should certainly publish standard
■works of all sorts, bibles and dictionaries and directories, and
cheap editions of the classics. In this new world our school
boards are not chosen by business men for purposes of graft,
they are chosen by the people to educate our children; so it
seems to us perfectly natural that the National Educational
Association should conduct a publication department, and order
the printing of the school books which the children use.
In the same way, anyone is free to write a play, or to put
on a play, and invite people to come and see it. But, like the
individual farmers and the individual mothers of families, the
play-producer in our society is in competition with great com-
munity enterprises, which set a high standard and make com-
petition difficult. The same thing applies to the opera, and to
concerts, and to all the arts and sciences. You can start a pri-
vate hospital if you wish, but you will be in competition with
public institutions, and you can only succeed if you are a man
f
The Book of Society 213
of genius — ^that is, if you have something to teach, too new and
startling for the public boards of control to recognize. You try
your new method, and it works, and that becomes a criticism of
the public boards of control, and before long the people by their
votes turn out the old board of control and put you in.
That is politics, you say ; but we in our new world do not
use the word politics as one of contempt. We really believe
that public sentiment is in the long run the best authority, and
the appeal to public sentiment is at once a social privilege and a
social service. What we strive to do is to clear the channels of
appeal, and avoid favoritism and stagnation. To that end we
maintain, in every art and every science and every department
of human thought, endless numbers of centers of free, inde-
pendent, co-operative activity, so that every man who has an
inspiration, or a new idea, can find some group to support him
or can form a new group of his own.
This is our "Anarchism in intellectual production," and it is
the method under which in capitalist society men organize all
their clubs and societies and churches. Devout members of the
Roman Catholic Church will be startled to be told that theirs is
an Anarchist organization ; but nevertheless, such is the case.
The Catholic Church owns a great deal of property, and specu-
lates in real estate, and to that extent it is a capitalist institu-
tion. It holds a great many people by fear, and to that extent
it is a feudal institution. But in so far as members of the
church believe in it and love it and contribute of their free will
to its support, they are organizing by the method which all
Anarchists recommend and desire to apply to the whole of
society. Anarchist clubs and Christian churches are both free
issociations for the advocacy of certain ideas, the only differ-
^ce being in the ideas they advocate.
In our new world such organizations have been multiplied
many fold, and form a vast superstructure of intellectual activ-
ity, built upon the foundation of the standard wage. In this
new world all the people are free. They are free, not merely
from oppression, but from the fear of oppression ; they have
leisure and plenty, and they take part naturally and simply in
the intellectual life. The old, of course, have not got over the
dullness which a lifetime of drudgery impressed upon them,
but the young are growing up in a world without classes, and in
which it seems natural that everyone should be educated and
everyone should have ideas. They earn their standard wage,
16
214 Love and Society
and devote their spare time to some form of intellectual or
artistic endeavor, and spend their spare money in paying writers
and artists and musicians and actors to stimulate and entertain
them.
These latter are the ways of distinction in our new society ;
these are the paths to power. The only rich men in our world
are the men who produce intellectual goods ; the great artists,
orators, musicians, actors and writers, who are free to serve or
not to serve, as they see fit, and can therefore hold up the public
for any price they care to charge. Just now there is eager dis-
cussion going on in our world as to whether it is proper for an
opera singer, or a moving picture star, or a novelist, to make a
million dollars. Our newspapers are full of discussions of the
question whether anyone can make a million dollars honestly,
and whether men of genius should exploit their public. Some
point out that our most eminent opera singer spends his mil-
lions in endowing a conservatory of art; but others maintain
that it would be better if he lowered his prices of admission,
and let the public use its money in its own way. The extre-
mists are busy founding what they call the Ten-cent Society,
whose members agree to boycott all singers and actors who
charge more than ten cents admission, and all moving picture
stars who receive more than a hundred thousand dollars a year
for their service. These "Ten-centers" do not object to paying
the money, but they object to the commercializing of art, and
declare especially that the moral effect of riches is such that no
rich person should ever, under any circumstances, be allowed
to influence the youth of the nation. In this some of the great-
est writers join them, and renounce their copyrights, and agree
to accept a laureateship from some union of workers, who pay
them a generous stipend for the joy and honor of being associ-
ated with their names. The greatest poet of our time began life
as a newsboy, and so the National Newsvenders' Society has
adopted him, and taken his name, and pays him ten thousand
dollars a year for the privilege of publishing his works.
CHAPTE-R LXXIV
MANKIND REMADE
(Discusses human nature and its weaknesses, and what hap-
pens to these in the new world.)
We have briefly sketched the economic arrangements of
the co-operative commonweahh. Let us now consider what are
the effects of these arrangements upon the principal social dis-
eases of capitalism.
The first and most dreadful of capitalism's diseases is war,
and the economic changes here outlined have placed war, along
•with piracy and slavery, among the half-forgotten nightmares
of history. We have broken the "iron ring," and are no longer
dependent upon foreign concessions and foreign markets for
the preservation of our social system and the aggrandizement
of a ruling class. We can stay quietly at home and do our own
work, and as we produce nearly everything we need, we no
longer have to threaten our neighbors. Our neighbors know
this, and therefore they do not arm against us, and we have no
pretext to arm against them. We take toward all other civilized
nations the attitude which we have taken toward Canada for
the past hundred years.
We have a small and highly trained army, a few regiments
of which are located at strategic points over the country. This
army we regard and use as we do our fire department. When
there is widespread damage by fire or flood or storm or earth-
quake, we rush the army to the spot to attend to the work of
rescue and rebuilding. Also, we have a small navy in interna-
tional service ; for, of course, we are no longer an independent
and self-centered nation ; we have come to realize that we are
part of the world community, and have taken our place as one
state in the International Socialist Federation. We send our
delegates to the world parliament, and we place our resources
at the disposal of the world government. However, it now
takes but a small army and navy to preserve order in the world.
We govern the backward nations, but the economic arrange-
ments of the world are such that we are no longer driven to
exploit and oppress them. We send them teachers instead of
215
216 Love and Society
soldiers, and as there are really very few people in the world
who fight for the love of fighting, we have little difficulty in pre-
serving peace. We pay the backward peoples a fair price for
their products which we need. Our world government takes no
money out of these countries, but spends it for the benefit of
those who live in the countries, to teach them and train their
young generations for self-government.
Next, what are the eflfects of our new arrangements upon
political corruption and graft? The social revolution has
broken the prestige of wealth. Money will buy things, but it no
longer buys power, the right to rule other men; it no longer
buys men's admiration. Everybody now has money, and
nobody is any longer afraid of starvation. It is no longer the
fashion to save money — any more than it is the fashion to carry
revolvers in drawing-rooms or to wear chain mail in place of
underclothing. So our political life is cleansed of the money
influence. People now get power by persuading their fellows,
not by buying them or threatening them. The world is no
longer full of men ravenous for jobs, and ready to sell their
soul for a "position." So it is no longer possible to build up a
"machine" based on desire for office.
The changes have resulted in an enormous intensification of
our political activities. We hare endless meetings and debates ;
we have so many propaganda societies that we cannot keep
track of them. And some of these societies, like the Catholic
Church, have a large membership, and large sums of money at
their disposal. But a few experiments at carrying elections by
a "campaign-chest" have convinced everybody that to have the
facts on your side is the only permanent way to political power.
Our new society is jealous of attempts to establish any sort of
ruling class, and the surest way to discredit yourself is to advo-
cate any form of barrier against freedom of discussion, or the
right of the people's will to prevail.
Next, what is the status of crime? We have too recently
escaped from capitalism to have been able to civilize entirely
our slum population, and we still have occasional crimes of vio-
lence, especially crimes of passion. But we have almost entirely
eliminated those classes of crime which had to do with property,
and we have discovered that this was ninety-five per cent of all
crime. We have eliminated them by the simple device of mak-
ing them no longer profitable. Anybody can go into our com-
mimity factories, and under clean and attractive working condi-
The Book of Society 217
tions, and without any loss of prestige or social position, can
earn the means of satisfying his reasonable wants by three
hours work a day. Almost everybody finds this easier than
stealing or cheating.
But more important yet, as a factor in abolishing crime, is
the abolition of class domination and the prestige of wealth.
We no longer Have in our community a ruling class which lives
without working, and which offers to the weak-minded and
viciously inclined the perpvetual example of luxury. We no
longer set much store on jewels and fine raiment; we do not
make costly things, except for public purposes, where all may
enjoy them; and nobody stores great quantities of money,
because everyone has a guarantee of security from the state.
So we are gradually putting our policemen and jailers and
judges and lawyers to constructive work.
Next, what about disease? The diseases of poverty are
entirely done away with. We are now able to apply the knowl-
edge of science to the whole community, and so we no longer
have to do with tuberculosis and typhoid, or with rickets and
anaemia in children, or with heavy infant mortality. We have
sterilized our unfit, the degenerates and the defectives, and so
do not have to reckon with millions of children from these
wretched stocks. We now give to the question of public health
that prominence which in the old days we used to give to war
and the suppression of crime and social protest. Our public
health officers now replace our generals and admirals, and we
really obey their orders.
Next, as to prostitution. Just as in the case of crime, we
are still too close to capitalism not to have among us the victims
of social depravity, both men and women. We still have a great
deal of vice which springs from untrained animal impulse, and
we have some cultivated and highly sophisticated pornography.
But we have entirely done away with commercial vice, and we
have done it by cutting the root which nourished it. Women in
our communities are really free ; and by that we do not mean
the empty political freedom which existed in the days of wage
slavery — we mean that women are permanently delivered from
economic inferiority, by the recognition on the part of the state
of the money value of their special kind of work, the bearing
and training of children. This kind of work not merely
receives the standard wage, it also receives the best surgical and
nursing treatment free. Housework and home-making are
218 Love and Society
legally recognized services; and the woman before marriage
and after her children have been nursed is free to go into the
community factories and earn for herself the standard wage,
with no loss of social position. Consequently, no woman sells
her sex, and no man buys it.
This does not mean, of course, that we have solved the sex
problem in our new society. There are two great social prob-
lems with which we have to deal, the first of these being the sex
problem, and the second the race problem. Our scientists are
occupied with eugenics, and we are finding out how to guide
our young people in marriage, so that our race may be built up,
and the ravages of capitalism remedied as quickly as possible.
Also we are trying to find out the laws of happiness and health
iia love. We are founding societies for the purpose of pro-
tecting love, and, as hinted in the Book of Love, we have a
determined social struggle between two groups of women — ^the
mother-women and the mistress-women — ^those who take love
gravely, as a means of improving the race, and those who take
it as a decoration, a form of play. Our men are embarrassed
by having to choose between these groups, and occupy them-
selves with trying to keep the struggle from turning into civil
war.
Second, the race problem. Our economic changes have, of
course, done away with some of the bitterest phases of this
strife. White workingmen in the North no longer mob and
murder negro workingmen for taking their jobs, and in the
South our land values tax prevents the landlord from exploiting
either white or negro labor. But our white race is still irresisti-
bly bent upon preserving its integrity of blood, and the more
far-seeing among the negroes have come to realize that there
can never be any real happiness for them in a society where
they are denied the higher social privileges. There is a move-
ment for the development of a genuine Negro Republic in
Africa, and for mass emigration. Also there is a proposition,
soon to be settled at an election, for the dividing of the United
States into three districts upon racial lines. First, there are to
be, in the Far South, three or four states which are inhabited
and governed solely by negroes, and to which white men may
come only as temporary visitors ; a large group of states in the
North which are white states, and to which negroes may come
only as visitors ; and finally, a middle group of states, in which
both whites and black are allowed to live, as at present, but with
The Book of Society 219
the proviso that no one may live there who takes part in any
form of racial strife or agitation. This program gives to race-
conscious negroes their own land, their own civilization, their
own chance of self-realization ; it gives to race-conscious white
men the same opportunity ; and it leaves to those who are not
troubled by the problem, a country where black and white may
dwell in quiet good fellowship.
Finally, what has been the effect of our economic changes
upon the purely personal vices which gave us so much trouble
and unhappiness in the old days ? What, for example, has been
the effect upon vanity ? You should see our new crop of chil-
dren in our high schools! There are no longer any social
classes among them ; the rich ones do not arrive in private auto-
mobiles, to make the poor ones envious, and they do not isolate
themselves in little snobbish cliques. They arrive in community
automobiles, and all wear uniforms — one of the simple devices
by which we repress the impulse of the young toward display
of personal egotism. They are all full of health and happy
play, and their heads are busily occupied with interesting ideas.
Our girls are trained to thinking, instead of to personal adorn-
ment ; they are developing their minds, instead of catching a
rich husband by sexual charms. So we have been able, in a sin-
gle generation of training, to make a real and appreciable differ-
ence in the amount of vanity and self -consciousness to be found
among our young people.
And the same thing applies to a score of other undesirable
qualities, which, under the system of competitive commercial-
ism, were overstimulated in human beings. In those old days
everyone was seeking his own survival, and certain qualities
which had survival value became the principal characteristics of
our race. Those qualities were greed and persistence in acquisi-
tiveness, cunning and subtlety, also bragging and self-assertive-
ness. In that old world people destroyed their fellows in order
to make their own safety and power; they wasted goods in
order to be esteemed, to preserve what they called their "social
position." But now we have cut the roots of all these vile
weeds. We have so adjusted the business relationships of men
that we do not have to have hysterical religious revivals in order
to keep the human factors alive in their hearts. We have estab-
lished it as a money fact, which everyone quickly realizes, that
it pays better to co-operate ; there is more profit and less bother
in being of service to others. So we have prepared a soil in
220 Love and Society
which virtues grow instead of vices, and we find that people
become decent and kindly and helpful without exhortation, and
with no more moral effort than the average man can comfort-
ably make. Of course, we have still personal vices to combat,
and new virtues to discover and to propagate ; but this has to do
with the future, whereas we are here confining ourselves to
those things which have been demonstrated in our new society.
INDEX
Abortion 61
Abortions 30
Advertising 163
Agricultural co-operative 206
Anarchism 210
Anarchist 89, 90
Anarchy 172
Anglo-Saxon 62, 111
"Appeal to Reason" 149
Aristocratic doctrine 116
Armour 128
Atherton, Gertrude 87
Babies 63
Bachelorhood 52
Bacon, Francis 51
Banking system 192
Bankruptcy 162
Barbarism 124
Barnum, P. T 27
Berkman, Alexander 173
Biology 103
Birth control 61, 76
Birth Control Review 64
Blatchford, Robert 55, 161
"Blind" love 58
Bolsheviks 172
Breach of promise suit 91
Brothel 66
Brothels 31
Burbank, Luther 99
Business man 143
Capital 158
Capitalism 136, 168
Capitalists 142
Carnegie 168
Catholic Church 213. 216
Celibacy 51, 52, 64
Chastity 51
Chattel slavery 186
Childbirths 70
Children 70, 72, 85, 208
Christianity 115, 133
"Clarion" 31
Class struggle 133, 177
Clay, Henry 186
Coleridge 85
"Collier's Weekly" 122, 163
Committee on Waste 160
Commune 129
Communism 10, 170, 210
Compensation 179
Competition 108, 127
Competitive wage system 148
"Complex" 49
Comstock, Anthony 20
Confiscation 179
Congress 138
Contraception 61
Co-operation 109, 199, 200
Coquetry 38
Corporation 127
Courtship 91
Credit 152, 154, 192, 200
Credit-cards 202
Crime 164, 216
Culture 62
Cutting, H. C 200
Dances 15
Debs, Eugene V 155
Degeneration 121
"Demi-monde" 80
Democratic doctrine 115
Dictatorship 180, 183, 185
Dill, James B 25
Disarmament 157
Discouragement 164
Disease 217
Divorce 32, 93, 97
Double standard 5
"Douglas plan" 199
"Dumping" 152
Economic evolution 123
Economic man 108
Emerson 186
Emulation 112
Engagements 72
England 120, 156, 175
Eugenics 58
221
222
Index
Evolution 122
Exogamy 105
Exploitation 181
Exploiting 148
Exports 153
Factory system 129
Farming 206
"Favorable balance" 151
Fear 122, 164
Federal Reserve Act 154
Feminist 69
Feudal stage 124
Fires 163
Foreign trade 151
"Free love" 44. 87
"Free lover" 92
France 175
France, Anatole 44
Freud 104
Gens 9
Germany 155, 156
Gillette, King C 200
Goldman, Emma 173
Gonorrhea 30
Goode, Mary J 41
Government 166
"Graft" 127, 216
"Great Adventure" 188
Hammurabi 78
*'Hamon case" 26
"Hard times" 144
Hardy 13
Harris, Frank 21
"High life" 23
Home 42, 209
HonejTnoon 56
Hoover, Herbert 160
House of Commons 137
Huguenots 134
Human nature 99
Himger 122
Meals 132
Imports 153
Income tax 143, 188
Industrial evolution 126
Infant 103
Infanticide 61
Inflation 196
Inheritance tax 188
"Ingenues" 19
Instinct 57
Insurance 163
Intellectual production 211
"Iron ring" 158
Island 145
I. W. W 169
James, William 16
Jealousy 89
Jews 127
Kautsky, Karl 210
"King Coal" 139
Kropotkin 109, 129, 173
Labor 158
Labor checks 202
Labor union 199
Laissez faire 110
Land tax 190
Land titles 179
Land values 208
Late marriage 67
Lecky 6, Z7>
Leviticus 78
Liberty motor 164
London, Jack 62
Los Angeles Times 157
Love 2>^, 47, 100, 112, 218
Lust 48
Luther, Martin 129
Luxiu-y 60
Machinery 149
"Magic gestures" 104
Magna Charta 134
Malthusian law 108
Markham, Edwin 139
Marquesas Islands ZZ
Marriage 4
Marriage club 71
Marriage market 68
Marx, Karl 132, 138, 176
Materialistic interpretation . . . 132
Index
223
Material production 210
Maternity endowment 79
Meredith, George 43
"Merrie England" 161
Metchnikoff, Elie 23, 46
Mexico 121
Middle class 176, 186
Minor, Robert 173
Mistress 12
Money 37, 192, 202
Money Trust 194
Monogamy 5, 83, 90
jMoors 134
Moralists 59
Morgan 128
Mother's pension 79
Moving pictures 17
Negro 218
Negroes 116
Neuroses 105
Neurotics 103
North Dakota 194
North, Luke 188
O'Brien, Frederick 10
Oedipus complex 104
"Open-shop" 177
Panic 154
Parasitism 74
Passion 58
Permanence 87
Piracy Ill
Pity 74
Plumb plan 198
Political evolution 123
Political revolution 125
Politics 213
Pornography 20
Postal savings bank 195
Poverty 40
Primitive man 9
Privilege 36
Professor Sumner 122
Profit system 148, 158
"Progressive polygamy" 90
Proletariat 142
Promiscuity 87
Property marriage 44
Prosperity 144
Prostitute 6
Prostitution 4, 31, 41, 217
Proudhon 179
Psycho-analysis 49, 103
Public bank 194
Publishing 212
Quick, Herbert 165
Race prejudice 62
Race problem 218
Racial immaturity 116
Raflfeisen bank 200
Reeve, Sidney A 160
Republic 125
Research 212
"Resurrection" 53
Revolt 134
Ricardo 108
Richardson, Dorothy 26
Ring 148
Robinson, Dr. William J,
21,30,70,77
Roman Catholic church 90
"Romance" 91
"Romantic" love 55
Roosevelt 61
Rulers 119
Russia 129, 185
Sanger, Margaret 63
School of marriage 75
Selection 8
Sex 8
Sex education 72
Sex impulse 46
Sex problem 218
Sex urge 86
Sex war 81
Shelley 59, 89
"She-towns" 29
Shop management 168
Sienkiewicz 13
Sims, District Attorney 28
Single tax 188
Slavery 10, 126, 136
"Smart set" 24
Smith, Adam 108
Snobbery 61
224
Index
Socialism 166
Social revoluton 128, 147, 175
Soviets 130, 171
"Speeding up" 138
Spencer, Herbert 122
Spirituality 64
Sport 113
Standard wage 203
Steel Trust 137
Stopes, Dr. Marie C 11
Strikes 162
Syndicalism 167
Syphilis 30
Tabu 9
Tariff 153
'Taxes 191
Tennyson 38, 120
"The Brass Check" 31, 137
"The Conquest of Bread".... 173
"The Cost of Competition".. 160
"The Industrial Republic".... 202
"The Jungle" 139
"The Lady" 12
"The Long Day" 26, 29
"The Nature of Man" 33
"The Profits of Religion".... 137
"The Social Revolution" 210
"The Strangle Hold" 200
Thompson, A. M 31
Tolstoi S3
"Totem and Taboo" 104
"Triangle" 56
Unconscious 105
Unemployment 147
"Vamps" 19
Vanity 219
Varietism 85
Venereal disease 30, 67, 83
Voltaire 36
Voluntary Parenthood League 64
War 162
Wars 155
Waste 165
Wells, H. G 89
Wharton, Edith 95
"Wild oats" 6
White man's burden 117
White, William Allen 17
Worker 140
Workers 176
Working class 140
IWoman 12
"Young love" 56. 73
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