First and Last Things: A Confession of Faith and Rule of LifeWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Philosophy
First and Last Things: A Confession of Faith and Rule of Life
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Conduct of life
Now it seems to me that a religious faith such as I have set forth in
the second Book, and a clear sense of our community of blood with all
mankind, must necessarily affect both our loving and our hatred. It will
certainly not abolish hate, but it will subordinate it altogether to
love. We are individuals, so the Purpose presents itself to me, in
order that we may hate the things that have to go, ugliness, baseness,
insufficiency, unreality, that we may love and experiment and strive
for the things that collectively we seek--power and beauty. Before our
conversion we did this darkly and with our hate spreading to persons and
parties from the things for which they stood. But the believer will hate
lovingly and without fear. We are of one blood and substance with our
antagonists, even with those that we desire keenly may die and leave
no issue in flesh or persuasion. They all touch us and are part of one
necessary experience. They are all necessary to the synthesis, even if
they are necessary only as the potato-peel in the dust-bin is necessary
to my dinner.
So it is I disavow and deplore the whole spirit of class-war Socialism
with its doctrine of hate, its envious assault upon the leisure and
freedom of the wealthy. Without leisure and freedom and the experience
of life they gave, the ideas of Socialism could never have been born.
The true mission of Socialism is against darkness, vanity and cowardice,
that darkness which hides from the property owner the intense beauty,
the potentialities of interest, the splendid possibilities of life, that
vanity and cowardice that make him clutch his precious holdings and
fear and hate the shadow of change. It has to teach the collective
organization of society; and to that the class-consciousness and intense
class-prejudices of the worker need to bow quite as much as those of the
property owner. But when I say that Socialism’s mission is to teach, I
do not mean that its mission is a merely verbal and mental one; it must
use all instruments and teach by example as well as precept. Socialism
by becoming charitable and merciful will not cease to be militant.
Socialism must, lovingly but resolutely, use law, use force, to
dispossess the owners of socially disadvantageous wealth, as one coerces
a lunatic brother or takes a wrongfully acquired toy from a spoilt and
obstinate child. It must intervene between all who would keep their
children from instruction in the business of citizenship and the lessons
of fraternity. It must build and guard what it builds with laws and
with that sword which is behind all laws. Non-resistance is for the
non-constructive man, for the hermit in the cave and the naked saint in
the dust; the builder and maker with the first stroke of his foundation
spade uses force and opens war against the anti-builder.
3.6. THE PRELIMINARY SOCIAL DUTY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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