Book: Freeland

T >> Theodor Hertzka >> Freeland




This does not prevent us in Freeland--as our actions show--from condemning
the violence that has been offered to those who formerly were oppressors,
and from trying to make amends for it as well as we can. Hence we hold that
the people of Russia, Egypt, and China--in short, everybody--would do well
to follow the example given by the United States of America. We think thus
because this wise generosity is shown to be advantageous not merely for the
wealthy classes, but also for the workers. Unfortunately it is not in our
power at once to instil into the Russian muzhik, the Egyptian fellah, or
the Chinese cooley such views as are natural to the workers of the advanced
West. History is the final tribunal which will decree to everyone what he
has deserved.

As no one else was down to speak on this point of the Agenda, the President
closed the debate upon it, and opened that upon the fifth point:

_Are economic justice and freedom the ultimate outcome of human evolution;
and what will probably be the condition of mankind under such a régime?_

ENGELBERT WAGNER (_Right_): We are contemplating the inauguration of a new
era of human development; want and crime will disappear from among men, and
reason and philanthropy take possession of the throne which prejudice and
brute force have hitherto occupied. But the apparent perfection of this
condition appears to me to involve an essential contradiction to the first
principle of the doctrine of human blessedness--namely, that man in order
to be content needs discontent. In order to find a zest in enjoyment, this
child of the dust must first suffer hunger; his possessions satiate him
unless they are seasoned with longing and hope; his striving is paralysed
unless he is inspired by unattained ideals. But what new ideal can
henceforth hover before the mind of man--what can excite any further
longing in him when abundance and leisure have been acquired for all? Is it
not to be feared that, like Tannhaüser in the Venusberg, our descendants
will pine for, and finally bring upon themselves, fresh bitternesses merely
in order to escape the unchangeable monotony of the sweets of their
existence? We are not made to bear unbroken good fortune; and an order of
things that would procure such for us could therefore not last long. That
the world if once emancipated from the fetters of servitude will again cast
itself into them, that the old exploiting system shall ever return, is
certainly not to be feared, according to what we have just heard; even a
relapse into the material misery of the past through over-population is out
of the question. But the more irrefragably the evidence of the
impossibility of the return of any former kind of human unhappiness presses
upon us, so much the more urgently is an answer demanded to the question:
What will there be in the character of man's future destiny, what new
ideals will arise, to prevent him from being swamped by a surfeit of
happiness?

The PRESIDENT (Dr. Strahl): I take upon myself to answer this question from
the chair, because I hope that what I am about to say will close the
discussion upon the point of the Agenda now before us, and consequently the
congress itself. From the nature of the subject we cannot expect any
practical result to follow from the debate upon this last question, which
was added to the Agenda merely because our foreign friends wished to learn,
by way of conclusion to the previous discussions, what were our ideas as to
the future. No mortal soul can have any definite ideas as to the future,
for we can know only the past and the present. I venture to make only one
positive assertion--namely, that the order of things which we propose to
inaugurate will be in harmony with the general laws of evolution, as every
foregoing human order has been; that it cannot be permanent and eternal;
and that consequently it will by no means put an end to human striving and
change and improvement. This holds good even with respect to the material
conditions of mankind. In the future, as in the past, labour will be the
price of enjoyment, and there is no reason to fear that in future the wish
will lag behind the effort necessary to realise it. Thus mankind will not
lack even the material stimulus to progress and to further striving. But
man possesses intellectual as well as material needs, and the less
imperative the latter become, so much the more widely and powerfully do the
former make themselves felt. Intellectual hunger is a far more influential
stimulus to effort than material hunger; and at present at least we are
forced to believe that the former will never be appeased.

The fear that our race will sink into stagnation when the aims which have
hitherto almost exclusively dominated its circle of ideas have been
attained, is like the fancy of the child that the youth will give himself
up to idleness as soon as he escapes the dread of the rod. It would be
useless to attempt to make the child understand those other, and to him
unknown, motives for activity by which the youth is influenced; and so we,
standing now on the threshold of the youthful age of mankind and still half
enslaved by the ideas of the childhood of our race, cannot know what new
ideas mankind will conceive after the present ones have been realised. We
can only say that they will be different, and presumably loftier ones. The
new conditions of existence in which man will find himself in consequence
of the introduction of economic freedom, will bring to maturity new
properties, notions, and ideas, which no sagacity, no gift of mental
construction possessed by anyone now living, is able to prefigure with
accuracy. If, nevertheless, I venture to indicate some of the features of
the future, I ask you not to attach to them any greater importance than you
would to the fancies of a savage who, standing on the threshold leading
from cannibalism to exploitation, might thousands of years ago have
undertaken to form a conception of those changes which the invention of
agriculture and of slavery would produce in the circumstances of his
far-off successors. In this respect I have only one advantage over our
remote ancestor: I know his history, while that of his ancestors was
unknown to him. I can, therefore, seek counsel of the past in order to
understand the future, while for him there was merely a present. I will now
make use of this advantage; the course of human evolution in the past shall
give us a few hints as to the significance of that phase of evolution into
which we are now passing.

The original condition of mankind was freedom and peace in the animal
sense--that is, freedom and peace among men, together with absolute
dependence upon nature. The first great stage in evolution reached its
climax when man turned against his fellow-men the weapon which had in the
beginning been employed only in conflict with the world of beasts:
dependence upon nature remained, but peace among men was broken.

The second stage in evolution is distinguished by the fact that man turns
against nature, who had hitherto been his sovereign mistress, the
intelligence which he had employed in mutually destructive warfare. He
discovers the art of compelling nature to yield what she will not offer
voluntarily--he produces. The chain by which the elements hold him bound is
in this way loosened; but the first use which man makes of this gleam of
deliverance from the bonds of merely animal servitude is to place fetters
upon himself. The relaxing of dependence upon external nature and the
alleviation of the conflict among men themselves--these are the acquisition
of the second period.

The third stage of development begins with the dominion over nature
gradually acquired by controlling the natural forces, and ends with the
deliverance of mankind from the bonds of servitude. Independence of
external control, freedom and peace among men, are its distinguishing
features.

Here I would point out that the theatre of each of these phases of human
progress has been a different one. The original home of our race was
evidently the hottest part of the earth; under the tropics, in our
struggles with the world of animals, we gained our first victories, and
developed ourselves into warlike cannibals; but against the forces of
nature, which reign supreme in that hot zone, we in our childhood could do
nothing. Production, and afterwards slavery, could be carried on only
outside of the tropics. On the other hand, it is quite as certain that man
could not remove himself very far from the tropics so long as the
productivity of his labour was still comparatively small, and he could not
compel nature to furnish him with much more than she offered voluntarily.
It is no mere accident that all civilisation began and first flourished
exclusively in that zone which is equally removed from the equator and from
the polar circle. In that temperate zone were found united all the
conditions which protected the still infantile art of production from the
danger of being crushed on the one hand or stunted on the other by the
overwhelming power or the parsimony of nature. But this mean temperature,
so favourable to the second phase of evolution, proved itself altogether
unsuitable to the last step towards perfect control over nature. As human
labour met with a generous reward, there was nothing to stimulate man's
inventiveness to compel nature to serve man by her own, instead of by
human, forces. This could happen only when the civilisation, which had
acquired strength in the temperate zone, was transplanted into colder and
less friendly regions, where human labour alone could no longer win from
reluctant nature wealth enough to satisfy the claims of the ruling classes.
Then first did necessity teach men how to employ the elemental forces in
increasing the productiveness of human labour; the moderately cold zone is
the birthplace of man's dominion over nature.

But when the third phase of evolution has found its close in economic
justice, there will be, apparently, yet another change of scene. It might
be said, if we cared to look for analogies, that this change of scene will
be of a double character, corresponding to the double character of the
change in institutions. The perfected control over nature will be seen in
the fact that the whole earth, subjugated to man, has become man's own
property; on the other hand, peace and freedom--which in themselves
represent nothing new to mankind, but are as it were merely the return of
the primitive relation of man to man--will find their analogies in the
return to the primitive home of our race, the tropical world. That vigorous
nature, which had formerly to be left lest civilisation should be killed in
the very germ, can no longer be a hindrance, can only be a help to
civilisation now that man, awaked to freedom, has attained to a full
control over those forces which can be made serviceable to him. It will
probably need several centuries before the civilised nations, whose
northern wanderings and experiences have made them strangers in their
birthplace, have afresh thoroughly acclimatised themselves here. In the
meantime, the charming highlands which nature has placed--one might almost
believe in anticipation of our attempt--directly under the equator, offer
to the wanderers the desired dwelling-places, and, at any rate, the
agriculture of the now commencing epoch of civilisation will have its
headquarters here. Slowly but surely will man, who henceforth may freely
choose his dwelling-place wherever productiveness and the charms of nature
attract him, press towards the south, where merely to breathe and to behold
is a delight beyond anything of the kind which the north has to offer. The
notion that the torrid zone engenders stagnation of mind and body is a
foolish fancy. There have been and there are strong and weak, vigorous and
vigourless peoples in the north as well as in the south; and that
civilisation has celebrated its highest triumphs under ice and snow is not
due to anything in chilly temperatures essentially and permanently
conducive to progress, but simply to the temporary requirements of the
transition from the second to the third epoch of civilisation. In the
future the centres of civilisation will have to be sought in proximity to
the equator; while those countries which, during the last centuries--a
short span of time--have held up the banner of human progress will
gradually lose their relative importance.

That man, having attained to control over the forces of nature and to
undivided proprietorship of the whole planet, will ever actually take
possession of and productively exploit the whole of the planet, is scarcely
to be expected. In fact, past history almost tempts us to believe that the
population of the earth has undergone scarcely any material change since
civilisation began. Certainly, Europe to-day is several times more populous
than it was thousands of years ago; and in America--putting out of sight
the unquestionable extraordinary diminution in the population of Mexico and
Peru--there has undeniably been a large increase in the number of
inhabitants. Against all this we have to place the fact that large parts of
Asia and Africa are at present almost uninhabited, though they formerly
were the homes of untold millions. Thus, taking everything into
consideration, the variations in population can never have exceeded a few
hundred million souls. But assuming that the introduction of the new order
of things, with its sudden and general diminution of the death-rate, will
produce a revolution in this respect, that man's control over nature will
be connected with a general increase in the number of the earth's masters,
yet it may be considered as highly improbable that this increase will be
particularly rapid, and that it will go on for any great length of time.

In one respect, certainly, there can and will be a sudden and considerable
increase in the number of the living. In consequence of the greater
longevity which will be the necessary result of rational habits of life,
generations that have hitherto been consecutive will then be
contemporaneous. In the exploiting world, on the average the father, worn
out by misery, toil, and vice, died ere the son had reached maturity; in
the future the parents will be buried by their great-grandchildren, and
thus the number of the living will be speedily rained from a milliard and
a-half to two milliards or to two and a-half, without any increase in human
fecundity. But assuming that there be for a time an actual growth in
population over and above that caused by this greater longevity, I hold it
to be in the highest degree improbable that this growth can be a rapid one,
and still less a continuous one. My opinion--based, it is true, upon
analogy--is that a doubling of the population is the utmost we need reckon
upon, so that the maximum population of the world may grow to five
milliards. This number, very small in proportion to the size and productive
capacity of our planet, will find abundant room and food in the most
beautiful, most agreeable, and most fertile parts of the earth. Ninety-nine
per cent. of the land superficies of the earth will be either not at all or
very sparsely populated--so far as the population depends upon the
production of the locality--and ninety per cent, will be cultivated either
not at all or only to a very trifling extent.

That under the new order the earth will be transformed into a swarming
ant-hill of thickly crowded inhabitants, that complete control over the
elemental forces will lead to a destruction of all primitive natural
fertility, there is therefore no reason whatever to fear. On the contrary,
the more rationally distributed inhabitants will not crowd upon each other
in the way in which they do at present in most civilised countries; and the
greater fertility of the cultivated land of the future, in connection with
the improved methods of cultivation, will make it possible to obtain from a
smaller area a ten-fold greater supply for a double or a triple number of
people than can be now obtained by the plough. The beauty and romance of
nature are exposed to no danger whatever of being destroyed by the
levelling instruments of future engineers; nay, it may be anticipated that
a loving devotion to nature will be one of the chief pleasures of those
future generations, who will treasure and guard in every natural wonder
their inalienable and undivided property.

It is impossible to predict what course the development of material
progress will take under the dominion of the new social principle. So much
is evident, that the spirit of invention will apply itself far more than it
has hitherto done to the task of finding out fresh methods of saving
labour. This is a logical consequence of the fact that arrangements for the
sparing of labour will now become profitable and applicable under all
circumstances--which has hitherto been the case only exceptionally. But it
is probable that the future will surpass the present also in its
comparative estimate of intellectual as more valuable than material
progress. Hitherto the reverse has been the case: material wealth and
material power have been the exclusive aims of human endeavour;
intellectual culture has been at best prized merely as the means of
attaining what was regarded as the real and final end. There have always
been individuals who looked upon intellectual perfection as an end in
itself; but there have always been isolated exceptions who have never been
able to impress their character upon the whole race. The immense majority
of men have been too ignorant and rude even to form a conception of purely
intellectual endeavour; and the few who have been able to do so have been
so absorbed in the reckless struggle for wealth and power, that they have
found neither time nor attention for anything else. In fact, it lay in the
essence of the exploiting system that under its dominion intellectual
interests should be thrust into the background. In the mutual struggle for
supremacy only those could succeed in becoming the hammer instead of the
anvil who knew how to obtain control of material wealth; hence it was only
these latter who could imprint their character upon the society they
dominated, whilst the 'impractical,' who chased after intellectual aims,
were forced down into the great subjugated herd. And the teaching of the
history of civilisation compels us to admit that in the earlier epochs the
chase after wealth could legitimately claim precedence over purely
intellectual endeavour. It is true that intellectual perfection is the
highest and final end of man; but as a certain amount of wealth is an
indispensable condition of success in that highest sphere of effort, man
must give to the acquisition of wealth his chief attention until that
condition of higher progress is attained. That condition has now been
attained, that amount of wealth has been acquired which makes the supply of
the highest intellectual needs possible to all men; and there can be no
doubt whatever that man will now awake to a consciousness of his proper
destiny. That which he has hitherto striven after only incidentally, and,
as it were, accidentally, will now become the object of his chief
endeavour.

That this intellectual progress must produce a radical revolution in the
sentiments and ideas of the coming generations is a matter of course. This
holds good also of religious ideas. These have always been the faithful and
necessary reflection of the contemporary conditions of human existence. In
primitive times, so long as man carried on the struggle for existence only
passively, like the beasts, he, like them, was without any religious
conceptions. When he had taken the first step towards active engagement in
the struggle for existence, and his dependence upon nature was to some
extent weakened, but peace had not yet been broken with his fellow-men, he
began to believe in helpful higher Powers that should fill his nets and
drive the prey into his hands. When the war of annihilation broke out
between man and man, then these higher Powers acquired a cruel and
sanguinary character corresponding to the horribly altered form of the
struggle for existence; the devil became the undisputed master of the
world, which, regarded as thoroughly bad, was nevertheless worshipped as
such. Next the struggle for supremacy superseded the struggle of
annihilation; the first traces of humanity, consideration for the
vanquished, showed itself, and in harmony with this the good gods were
associated with the gods of evil, Ormuzd with Ahriman; and the more the
horrors of cannibalism were forced into the background by the chivalrous
virtues of the new lords of the world, the more pronounced became the
authority of the good gods over the bad. But since it was the dominant
classes who created the new faith, and since they needed for their
prosperity the obedience of the subjugated, they naturally transplanted the
principle of servitude into their heaven. The gods became severe, jealous
masters; they demanded blind obedience, and punished with tyrannical
cruelty every resistance to their will. This did not prevent the rulers
from holding this to be the best of all worlds, despite its servitude and
its vices; for to _them_ servitude was well-pleasing, and as to the vices,
they would be rid of the 'evil gods' if only the last remnant of resistance
and disobedience--the only sources of all evil--were rooted out.

This kind of despotism was first attacked when the slaves found spokesmen.
The most logical of these was Buddha, who, as he necessarily must from the
standpoint of the slaves, again declared the world to be evil, and thence
arrived at the only conclusion consistent with this assumption--namely,
that its non-existence, Nirvana, was to be preferred to its continued
existence. Christ, on the other hand, opposed to the optimism of domination
the optimism of redemption. Like Buddha, he saw evil in oppression, not in
disobedience; whilst, in the imagination of other nations, the good gods
had fought for the conquerors and the bad ones for the subjugated, he now
represented the Jewish Jehovah as the Father of the poor and Satan as the
idol of those who were in power. To him also the world was bad, but--and
this was the decisive difference between him and Buddha--not radically so,
but only because of the temporary sway of the devil. It was necessary, not
to destroy the world, but to deliver it from the power of the devil, and
therefore, in contrast to Buddhistic Quietism, he rightly called his church
a 'militant' one. Both founders, however, being ignorant of the law of
natural evolution, were at one in regarding the contemporary condition of
civilisation as a permanent one, and therefore they agreed that oppression
could be removed only by condemning riches and declaring poverty to be the
only sinless state of man. The Indian king's son, familiar with all the
wisdom of the Indians of his day, saw that reversion to universal poverty
meant deterioration, therefore destruction, and, in his sympathy with the
oppressed in their sorrow, he did not shrink from even this. The
carpenter's Son from Galilee held the equality of poverty to be possible,
and He was therefore far removed from the despondent resignation of His
Indian predecessor--He proclaimed the optimism of poverty.

The later official Christianity has nothing at all in common with this
teaching of Christ. The official Christianity is the outcome of the
conviction, derived from experience, that the millennial kingdom of the
poor preached by Christ and the Apostles is an impossibility, and of the
consequent strange amalgamation of practical optimism with theoretical
pessimism. Jehovah now again became the gaoler of the powerful, Satan the
tempter who incites to disobedience to the commands of God; at the same
time, however, the order of the world--though instituted by God--was
declared to be fundamentally bad and incapable of improvement, the work of
redemption no longer being regarded as referring to this world, but merely
to the next. The exploiting world for the last fifteen centuries has
naturally adhered to the new doctrine, leaving asceticism to a few
anchorites and eccentric persons, whose conduct has remained without
influence upon the sphere of practical human thought. Not until the last
century, when the old industrial system approached its end, and the
incipient control of man over nature gradually made the institution of
servitude a curse to the higher classes, did pessimism--this time,
philosophic pessimism--lift up its head once more. The world became more
and more unpleasant even to the ruling classes; they were made to feel
fettered and anxious by the misery around them, which they had previously
been able easily to explain by a reference to the inscrutable counsels of
God; they were seized by a dislike to those enjoyments which could be
obtained only by the torture of their brethren, and, as they held this
system, despite its horrible character, to be unchangeable, they gave
themselves up to pessimism--the pessimism of Buddha, which looked for
redemption only in the annihilation of just those more nobly constituted
minds who did not allow themselves to be forced by the hereditary
authoritative belief to mistake a curse for a blessing.

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