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 26 pages The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of
Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from that
sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present condition of
things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody. In fact, scarcely anyone at
all escapes. Now and then, in the course of the century, a great man of science, like
Darwin; a great poet, like Keats; a fine critical spirit, like M. Renan; a
supreme artist, like Flaubert, has been able to isolate himself, to keep
himself out of reach of the clamorous claims of others, to stand 'under the
shelter of the wall,' as Plato puts it, and so to realise the perfection of
what was in him, to his own incomparable gain, and to the incomparable and lasting
gain of the whole world.� These,
however, are exceptions.� The majority
of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism -are
forced, indeed, so to spoil them.� They
find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous
starvation.� It is inevitable that they
should be strongly moved by all this.�
The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man's intelligence;
and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism,
it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have
sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected
intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the
task of remedying the evils that they see.�
But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it.� Indeed, their remedies are part of the
disease. They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the
poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor. But this is not a solution:� it
is an aggravation of the difficulty.�
The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that
poverty will be impossible.� And the
altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim.� Just as the worst slave-owners were those
who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being
realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who
contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who
do most harm are the people who try to do most good; and at last we have had
the spectacle of men who have really studied the problem and know the life -
educated men who live in the East End � coming forward and imploring the
community to restrain its altruistic impulses of charity, benevolence, and the
like. They do so on the ground that such charity degrades and demoralises. They
are perfectly right. Charity creates a multitude of sins. There is also this to be said.�
It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible
evils that result from the institution of private property.� It is both immoral and unfair....... To order click and type
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