Freeland

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(_End of Third Day's Debate_)

CHAPTER XXVI

FOURTH DAY

The PRESIDENT (Dr. Strahl): We have reached the third point in the agenda:
_Are not want and misery necessary conditions of existence; and would not
over-population inevitably ensue were misery for a time to disappear from
the earth?_ I call upon Mr. Robert Murchison.

ROBERT MURCHISON (_Right_): I must first of all, in the name of myself and
of those of my colleagues who entertained doubts of the practicability of
the work of social reform, formally declare that we are now thoroughly
convinced, not only of the practicability, but also of the inevitable
accomplishment of that reform. Moreover, what has already been advanced has
matured our hope that the other side will succeed in removing as completely
the doubts that still cling to our minds. In the meantime I hold it to be
my duty, in the interest of all, to seek explanations by strongly stating
the grounds of such doubts as I am not yet able to free myself from. By far
the most important of these doubts, one which has not yet been touched
upon, is the subject now before us for discussion. It refers not to the
practicability, but to the durability of the work of universal freedom and
prosperity. Economic justice must and will become an accomplished fact:
that we know. But have we a right to infer that it will permanently assert
itself? Economic justice will be followed by wealth for all living. Want
and misery, with their retinue of destructive vices, will disappear from
the surface of the earth. But together with these will disappear those
restraints which have hitherto kept in check the numerical growth of the
human race. The population will increase more and more, until at
last--though that day may be far off--the earth will not be able to support
its inhabitants. I will not trouble you with a detailed repetition and
justification of the well-known principle of my renowned countryman,
Malthus. Much has been urged against that principle, but hitherto nothing
of a convincing character. That the increase in a geometric ratio of the
number of living individuals has no other natural check than that of a
deficiency of food is a natural law to which not merely man but every
living being is inexorably subject. Just as herrings, if they could freely
multiply, would ultimately fill the whole of the ocean, so would man, if
the increase of his numbers were not checked by the lack of food,
inevitably leave no space unoccupied upon the surface of the globe. This
cruel truth is confirmed by the experience of all ages and of all nations;
everywhere we see that it is lack of food, want with its consequences, that
keeps the number of the living within certain limits; and it will remain so
in all future times. Economic justice can very largely extend the area
included in these sad limits, but can never altogether abolish the limits.
Under its _regime_ the food-supply can be increased tenfold, a hundredfold,
but it cannot be increased indefinitely. And when the inevitable limit is
reached, what then? Wealth will then gradually give place to privation and
ultimately to extreme want; a want that is the more dreadful and hopeless
because there will be no escape from its all-embracing curse--not even that
partial escape which exploitation had formerly offered to a few. Will,
then, mankind, after having passed from cannibalism to exploitation and
from that to economic justice, revert to exploitation, perhaps even to
cannibalism? Who can say? It seems evident that economic justice is not a
phase of evolution which our race could enjoy for any great length of time.
It is true that Malthus and others after him have proposed to substitute
for the repressive law of misery certain preventives of over-population.
But these preventives are all based upon artificial and systematic
suppression of the increase of population. If they could be effectively
employed at all, such an employment of them is conceivable only in a poor
population groaning under the worst consequences of misery; I cannot
imagine that men enjoying abundance and leisure, and in possession of the
most perfect freedom, will subject themselves to sexual privations. In my
opinion, this kind of prevention could not under the most favourable
circumstances, come into play in a free society until the pressure of
over-population had become very great, and the former prosperity, and with
that perhaps the sense of individual liberty also, had been materially
diminished. This is not a pleasant prospect, quite apart from the moral
repulsiveness of all such violent interference with the relations of the
sexes--relations which would be specially delicate under the _regime_ of
economic justice. The perspective shows us in the background a picture
which contrasts sadly with the luxuriant promise of the beginning. Do the
men of Freeland think that they are able to defend their creation from
these dangers?

FRANZISKO ESPERO (_Left_): Man differs from other living beings in having
to prepare food for himself, and, in fact, in being able, with increasing
civilisation, to prepare it the more easily the denser the population
becomes. Carey, an eminent American economist, has pointed this out, and
has thereby shown that the otherwise indisputably operative natural law,
according to which a species has an inevitable tendency to outgrow its
means of sustenance, does not apply to man. The fact that want and misery
have, notwithstanding, hitherto always operated as checks upon the growth
of the population is not the result of a natural law but of exploitation.
The earth would have produced enough for all if everyone had but been able
to make free use of his powers. But, as we have seen, exploitation is an
institution of men, not of nature. Get rid of that, and you have driven
away the spectre of hunger for ever.

STEFAN VALO (_Freeland_): I think it will be well at once to state what is
the Freeland attitude towards the subject now under discussion. The
honourable member from Brazil (Espero) is correct in connecting the actual
misery of mankind--in the epoch of exploitation--with human institutions
instead of with the operation of natural forces. The masses suffered want
because they were kept in servitude, not because the earth was incapable of
yielding more copious supplies. I will add that this actual misery never
prevented the masses from multiplying up to the point at which the further
increase of population was checked by other factors--nay, that as a rule
misery acted as a stimulus to the increase of the population. Our friend
from Brazil is in error, however, when, relying upon the empty rhetoric of
Carey, he denies that the growth of the population, if it could go on
indefinitely, would necessarily at last lead to a lack of food. The first
of the speakers of to-day has rightly remarked that in such a case the time
must come when there would no longer be space enough on the earth for the
men who were born. But can we conceive the condition possible in which our
race should cover the surface of the earth like a plague of locusts? Nay, a
really unlimited and continuous increase in the number of human beings
would not merely ultimately cover the whole surface of the earth, but would
exhaust the material necessary for the crowded masses of human bodies. The
growth of the population _must_, therefore, have some limit, and so far are
Malthus and his followers correct. Whether this limit is to be found
exactly in the supply of food is another question--a question which cannot
be satisfactorily answered in the affirmative until it has been positively
shown, or at any rate rendered plausible, that other factors do not come
into play long before a lack of food is felt--factors whose operation is
such that the limit of necessary food-supply is never, except in very rare
cases, even approximately reached, to say nothing of its being crossed.

ARTHUR FRENCH (_Right_): What I have just heard fills me with astonishment.
The member of the Freeland government admits--what certainly cannot
reasonably be denied--that unlimited growth of population is an
impossibility; and yet he denies that a lack of food is the sought-for
check of over-population. It may be at once admitted that Malthus was in
error in supposing that this natural check had already been operative in
human society. Men have suffered hunger because they were prevented from
supplying themselves with food, not because the earth was incapable of
copiously--or, at least, more copiously--nourishing them all. Exploitation
has therefore proved to be a check upon over-population operating before
the limit of necessary food has been reached; it has been a kind of
hunger-cure which man has applied to himself before nature had condemned
him to suffer hunger. I am less able to understand what the speaker means
when he says the misery artificially produced by exploitation has sometimes
proved to be, not a check, but rather a stimulus to the growth of
population. But I should particularly like to hear more about those other
factors which are alleged to have acted as effective checks, and which the
speaker evidently anticipates will in future regulate the growth of the
population. These factors are to produce the wonderful effect of preventing
the population from ever getting even approximately near to the limit of
the necessary food-supply. They cannot be artificial and arbitrarily
applied means, otherwise a member of the Freeland government, of this
commonwealth based upon absolute freedom, would not speak of them so
confidently. But apart from all this, how can there be any doubt of the
operation of such an elementary factor of restriction as the lack of food
in human society, whilst it is to be seen so conspicuously throughout the
whole of organic nature? Is man alone among living beings exempt from the
operation of this law of nature; or do the Freelanders perhaps know of some
means that would compel, say, the herrings so to control their number as
not to approach the limit of their food-supplies, or, rather, induce them
to preserve such a reasonable rate of increase as would be most conducive
to the prosperous continuance of their species?

This cutting apostrophe produced a great sensation. The tension of
expectancy was still further increased when several members of the Freeland
government--including Stefan Valo, who had already spoken--urgently begged
the President to take part in the debate. The whole assembly seemed
conscious that the discussion--not merely the special one of the day, but
the general discussion of the congress--had reached its decisive point. If
the advocates of economic justice were able successfully to meet the
objections now urged by their opponents, and to show that those objections
were groundless, then the great argumentative battle was won. What would
follow would not concern the question _whether_, but merely the question
_how_, the new social order could be well and lastingly established. But if
the Freeland evidence failed upon this point--if the structure of
Opposition argumentation could not in this case be blown down like a house
of cards--then all the previous successes of the advocates of economic
justice would count for nothing. To remove the misery of the present merely
to prepare the way for a more hopeless misery in the future, was not that
which had aroused men's enthusiasm. If there remained only a shadow of such
a danger, the death-knell of economic justice had been sounded.

Amid breathless silence, Dr. STRAHL rose to speak, after he had given up
the chair to his colleague Ney, of the Freeland government.

Our friend of the Right (he began) ended his appeal to us with the question
whether we in Freeland knew of any means which would compel the herrings to
confine the increase in their numbers within such bounds as would best
conduce to the prosperous continuance of their species. My answer is brief
and to the point: Yes, we know of such a means. [Sensation.] You are
astonished? You need not be, dear friends, for you know of it as well as we
do; and what leads you to think you do not know of it is merely that
peculiar mental shortsightedness which prevents men from perceiving the
application of well-known facts to any subject upon which the prejudices
they have drunk in with their mother's milk prevent them making a right use
of their senses and their judgment. So I assert that you all know of the
means in question as well as we do. But I do not say, as you seem to
assume, that either you or we were in a position to teach this prudence to
the herrings--a task, in fact, which would be scarcely practicable. I
assert, rather, that our common knowledge of the means in question is
derived not from our gift of invention, but from our gift of
observation--in other words, that the herrings have always acted in the way
in which, according to the opinion of the propounder of the question, they
need to be taught how to act by our wisdom; and that, therefore, in order
to attain to a knowledge of the mode of action in question, we need merely
first, open our eyes and see _what_ goes on in nature, and secondly, make
some use of our understanding in order that we may find out the _how_ of
this natural procedure.

Let us, then, first open our eyes--that is, let us remove the bandages with
which inherited economic prejudices have blinded us. To make this the
easier, my friends, I ask you to fix your mind upon any living thing--the
herring, for example--without thinking of any possible reference which it
may have to the question of population in human society. Do not seek among
the herrings for any explanation of human misery, but regard them simply as
one of the many kinds of boarders at the table of nature. It will then be
impossible for you not to perceive that, though this species of animal is
represented by very many individuals, yet those individuals are not too
numerous to find places at nature's table. Nay, I assert that--always
supposing you keep merely the herring in mind, and are not at the same time
looking at human misery in the background--you would think it absurd to
suppose for a moment that the herrings, if they were more numerous than
they are, would not find food enough in the ocean--that there were just as
many of them as could be fully fed at the table of nature. Or let us take
another species of animal, the relations between which and its food-supply
we are not obliged to arrive at by reflection, but, if necessary, could
easily discover by actual observation--namely, the elephant. Malthus
calculated how long it would take for a pair of elephants to fill the world
with their descendants, and concluded that it would be lack of food which
would ultimately check their indefinite increase. Does not the most
superficial glance show you that nowhere on the earth are there nearly so
many elephants as would find nourishment in abundance? Would you not think
anyone a dotard who would try to convince you of the contrary? Thus you all
know--and I wish first of all to make sure of this--that every kind of
animal, whether rare or common, more or less fruitful, regularly keeps
within such limits as to its numerical increase as are far, infinitely far,
removed from a deficiency in the supply of food. I go further: you not
merely know that this is so--you know also that it must be so, and why it
must be so. Careful observation of natural events teaches you that a
species which regularly increased to the very limit of the food-supply, and
was, therefore, regularly exposed to hunger and privations, must
necessarily degenerate--nay, you cannot fail to see that to many kinds of
animals such an increase to the limit of the food-supply would mean sudden
destruction. For the animals sow not, neither do they reap; they do not
store up provisions for the satisfaction of future needs: and if at any
time they were obliged to consume all the food that nature had produced for
them, they would thereby, as a rule, destroy the source of their future
food-supply, and would not merely suffer hunger, but would all starve. You
know, therefore, that that inexhaustible abundance which, in contrast to
the misery of human society, everywhere prevails in nature, and which,
because of this contrast, the thinkers and poets of all ages have spoken
and sung about, is not due to accident, but to necessity; and it only
remains now to discover that natural process, that causal connection, by
virtue of which this state of things necessarily exists. Upon this point
men were treated to nothing but vague phrases when Malthus lived. The veil
which hid the history of the evolution of the organic world had not then
been lifted; men were therefore obliged to content themselves with
explaining all that took place in the kingdoms of animals and plants as the
work of Providence or of the so-called vital force--which naturally even
then prevented no one from seeing and understanding the fact as well as the
necessity of this formerly inexplicable natural phenomenon. But you, living
in the century of Darwin, cannot for a moment entertain any doubt upon this
last point. You know that it is through the struggle for existence that the
living beings have developed into what they are--that properties which
prove to be useful and essential to the well-being of a species are called
forth, perfected, and fixed by this struggle; and, on the other hand,
properties which prove to be detrimental to the well-being of a species are
suppressed and removed. Now, since the property of never increasing to the
limit of the food-supply is not only advantageous but absolutely necessary
to the well-being--nay, to the existence--of every species, it must have
been called forth, perfected, and fixed as a permanent specific character
by the struggle for existence. You knew all this, my friends, before I said
it; but this knowledge was so consciously present to your mind as to be of
use in the process of thinking only when purely botanical or zoological
questions were under consideration: as soon as in your organ of thought the
strings of social or economic problems were struck, there fell a thick,
opaque veil over this knowledge which was so clear before. The world no
longer appeared to you as it is, but as it looks through the said veil of
acquired prejudices and false notions; and your judgment no longer obeyed
those universal laws which, under the name of 'logic,' in other cases
compelled your respect, but indulged in singular capers which--if the said
veil had not fallen over your senses--could not have failed to make you
laugh. Indeed, so accustomed have you become to mistake the pictures which
this veil shows to you for the actual world that you are not able to free
yourselves from them even after you have roused yourselves to tear the veil
in pieces. The false notions and erroneous conclusions of the Malthusian
theory arose from the fact that its author was not able to discover the
true source of the misery of mankind. He asked himself why did the Irish
peasant and the Egyptian fellah suffer hunger? He was prevented by the
above-mentioned veil from seeing that they suffered hunger because the
produce of their labour was taken away from them--because, in fact, they
were not permitted to labour. But he perceived that the masses everywhere
and always suffered hunger--in some places and at some times less severely
than in other places and at other times: yet, in spite of all their painful
toil and industry, they perpetually suffered hunger, and had done so from
time immemorial. Hence he at last came to the conclusion that this
universal hungering was a consequence of a natural law. He further
concluded that the fellah and the Irish peasant and the peoples of all
parts of the world and of all times had suffered and still suffer hunger
because there are too many of them; and there are too many of them because
it is only hunger that prevents them from becoming still more numerous.
That the world, perplexed by the enigma of misery, should believe _this_
becomes intelligible when one reflects that misery must have a cause, and
erroneous explanations must obtain credence when right ones are wanting.
But it is remarkable, my friends, that you, who have recognised in
exploitation and servitude the causes of misery, should still believe in
that strange natural law which Malthus invented for the purpose of
constructing out of it the above-mentioned makeshift. This means that,
though you have torn the veil in pieces, your mind and your senses are
still enveloped in its tatters. You have released yourselves sufficiently
to see why the fellah and the Irish peasant suffer hunger to-day, but you
tremble in fear that our posterity will have to endure the horrors of
over-population. You still see the herring threatened with starvation, and
the elephant wandering with an empty stomach over the bare-eaten
forest-lands of Hindostan and Africa; and you pass in thought from the
herring and the elephant to our poor over-populated posterity.

Tremendous applause burst forth from all parts of the hall when Dr. Strahl
had finished. As he passed from the speaker's tribune to the President's
chair, he was cordially shaken by the hand, not only by his friends who
crowded around him, but also by the leaders of the Opposition, who gladly
and unreservedly acknowledged themselves convinced. The excitement was so
great that it was some time before the debate could be resumed. At last the
President obtained a hearing for one of the previous speakers.

ROBERT MURCHISON (_Right_): I rise for the second time, on behalf of those
who sit near me, first to declare that we are fully and definitively
convinced. You will readily believe that we do not regret our defeat, but
are honestly and heartily glad of it. Who would not be glad to discover
that a dreadful figure which filled him with terror and alarm was nothing
but a scarecrow? And even a sense of shame has been spared us by the
magnanimity of the leader of the opposite party, who laid emphasis upon the
fact that not merely we, but even his adherents outside of Freeland, still
cherished in their hearts the same foolish anxiety, begotten of acquired
and hereditary prejudices and false notions. The phantoms fled before his
clear words, our laughter follows them as they flee, and we now breathe
freely. But, if we might still rely upon the magnanimity of the happy
dwellers in Freeland, the after-effects of the anxiety we have endured
still linger in us. We are like children who have been happily talked out
of our foolish dread of the 'black man,' but who nevertheless do not like
to be left alone in the dark. We would beg you to let your light shine into
a few dark corners out of which we cannot clearly see our way. Do not
despise us if we still secretly believe a little in the black man. We will
not forget that he is merely a bugbear; but it will pacify us to hear from
your own mouths what the true and natural facts of the case are. In the
first place, what are, in your opinion, the means employed by nature, in
the struggle for the existence of species, to keep the growth of numbers
from reaching the limit of the food-supply? Understand, we ask this time
merely for an expression of opinion--of course, you cannot, any more than
anyone else, _know_ certainly how this has been done and is being done in
individual cases; and if your answer should happen to be simply, 'We have
formed no definite opinion upon the subject,' we should not on that account
entertain any doubt whatever as to the self-evident truth that every living
being possesses the characteristic in question, and that the origin of that
characteristic must be sought somewhere in the struggle for existence. In
order to be convinced that the stag has acquired his fleetness, the lion
his strength, the fox his cunning, in the struggle for existence, it is not
necessary for us to know exactly how this has come about; yet it is well to
hear the opinions as to such subjects of men who have evidently thought
much about them. Therefore we ask for your opinions on the question of the
power of adaptation in fecundity.

LOTHAR WALLACE (_Freeland_): We think that the characteristic in question,
as it is common to all organisms, must have been acquired in a very early
stage of evolution of the organic world; from which it follows that we are
scarcely able to form definite conceptions of the details of the struggle
for existence of those times--as, for example, of the process of evolution
to which the stag owes his swiftness. We can only say in general that
between fecundity and the death-rate an equilibrium must have been
established through the agency of the mode of living. A species threatened
with extinction would increase its fecundity or (by changing its habits)
diminish its death-rate; whilst, on the other hand, a species threatened
with a too rapid increase would diminish its fecundity or (again by
changing its habits) increase its death-rate. Naturally the death-rate in
question is not supposed to depend upon merely sickness and old age, but to
be due in part to external dangers. The great fecundity, for example, of
the heiring would, according to this view, be both cause and effect of its
habits of life, which exposed it in its migrations to enormous destruction.
Whether the herring and other migratory fishes adopted their present habits
because of their exceptional fecundity--the origin of which would then have
to be sought in some other natural cause--or whether those habits were
originally due to some other cause, and provoked their exceptional
fecundity, we cannot tell. But that a relation of action and reaction
exists and must necessarily exist here is evident, since a species whose
death-rate is increased by an increase of danger must die out if this
increase of death-rate is not accompanied by an increased fecundity; and,
in the same way, increased fecundity, when not followed by an increased
death-rate, must in a short time lead to deterioration. At any rate, it can
be shown that, whether deterioration or extermination has been the agent,
species have died out; and it can be inferred thence that some species do
not possess this power of effecting an equilibrium between fecundity and
death-rate. But this conclusion would be too hasty a one. All natural
processes of adaptation take place very gradually; and if a violent change
in external relations suddenly produces a very considerable increase in the
death-rate, it may be that the species cannot adapt its fecundity to the
new circumstances rapidly enough to save itself from destruction. To infer
thence that the species in question did not possess this power of
adaptation at all would be as great a mistake as it would be to argue that,
for example, because the stag, or the lion, or the fox, notwithstanding
their fleetness, strength, or cunning, are not protected from extermination
in the face of overpowering dangers, therefore these beasts do not possess
swiftness, strength, or cunning, or that these properties of theirs are not
the outcome of an adaptation to dangers called forth in the struggle for
existence.