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THE SHADOW ON THE DIAL CIVILIZATION THE GAME OF POLITICS A POSSIBLE BENEFACTOR WARLIKE AMERICA SOME FEATURES OF THE LAW ARBITRATION THE GIFT O' GAB NATURA BENIGNA INDUSTRIAL DISCONTENT WRITERS OF DIALECT CRIME AND ITS CORRECTIVES ON KNOWING ONE'S BUSINESS A TRADE OF REFUGE THE DEATH PENALTY RELIGION IMMORTALITY A ROLLING CONTINENT CHARITY EMANCIPATED WOMAN THE OPPOSING SEX A MAD WORLD THE AMERICAN SYCOPHANT DOG THE ANCESTRAL BOND THE RIGHT TO WORK TAKING ONESELF OFF A MONUMENT TO ADAM HYPNOTISM AT THE DRAIN OF THE WASH-BASIN GODS IN CHICAGO FOR LAST WORDS THE CHAIR OF LITTLE EASE A GHOST IN THE UNMAKING THE TURN OF THE TIDE FAT BABIES AND FATE CERTAIN AREAS OF OUR SEAMY SIDE FOR BREVITY AND CLARITY GENIUS AS A PROVOCATION A BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD

ANTEPENULTIMATA

THE SHADOW ON THE DIAL

There is a deal of confusion and uncertainty in the use of the words "socialist," "anarchist," and "nihilist." Even the 'ist himself commonly knows with as little accuracy what he is as the rest of us know why he is. The socialist believes that most human affairs should be regulated and managed by the state--the government--that is to say, the majority. Our own system has many socialist features and the trend of republican government is all that way. The anarchist favors abolition of all law and frequently belongs to an organization that secures his allegiance by solemn oaths and dreadful penalties. "Nihilism" is a name given by Turgenieff to the general body of Russian discontent which finds expression in antagonizing authority and killing authorities. Constructive politics would seem, as yet, to be a cut above the nihilist's intelligence; he is essentially a destructionary. He is so diligently engaged in unweeding the soil that he has not given a thought to what he will grow there. Nihilism may be defined as a policy of assassination tempered by reflections on Siberia. American sympathy with it is the offspring of an unholy union between the tongue of a liar and the ear of a dupe.

Socialism and Anarchism are parts of the same thing, in the sense that the terminal points of a road are parts of the same road. Between them, about midway, lies the system that we have the happiness to endure. It is a "blend" of Socialism and Anarchism in about equal parts: all that is not one is the other. Co?peration is Socialism; competition is Anarchism. Competition carried to its logical conclusion would leave no law in force, no property possible, no life secure.

Of course the words "co?peration" and "competition" are not here used in a merely industrial and commercial sense; they are intended to cover the whole field of human activity. Two voices singing a duet--that is co?peration--Socialism. Two voices singing each a different tune and trying to drown each other--that is competition--Anarchism: each is a law unto itself--that is to say, it is lawless. Everything that ought to be done the socialist hopes to do by associated endeavor, as an army wins battles; Anarchism is socialist in its means only: by co?peration it tries to render co?peration impossible--combines to kill combination. Its method says to its purpose: "Thou fool!"

Everything foretells the doom of authority. The killing of kings is no new industry; it is as ancient as the race. Always and everywhere persons in high place have been the assassin's prey. We have ourselves lost three presidents by murder, and shall doubtless lose many another before the book of American history is closed. If anything is new in this activity of the regicide it is found in the choice of victims. The contemporary "avenger" slays, not the merely "exalted," but the good and the inoffensive--an American president who had struck the chains from millions of slaves; a Russian czar who against the will and work of his own powerful nobles had freed their serfs; a French president from whom the French people had received nothing but good; a powerless Austrian empress, whose weight of sorrows had touched the world to tears; a blameless Italian king beloved of his people; such is a part of the recent record of the regicide, whose every entry is a tale of infamy unrelieved by one circumstance of justice, decency or good intention.

This recent uniformity of malevolence in the choice of victims is not without significance. It points unmistakably to two facts: first, that the selections are made, not by the assassins themselves, but by some central control inaccessible to individual preference and unaffected by the fortunes of its instruments; second, that there is a constant purpose to manifest an antagonism, not to any individual ruler, but to rulers; not to any system of government, but to government. The issue is defined, the alignment made, the battle set: Chaos against Order, Anarchy against Law.

M. Vaillant, the French gentleman who lacked a "good opinion of the law," but was singularly rich in the faith that by means of gunpowder and flying nails humanity could be brought into a nearer relation with reason, righteousness and the will of God, is said to have been nearly devoid of nose. Of this privation M. Vaillant made but slight account, as was natural, seeing that for but a brief season did he need even so much of nose as remained to him. Yet before its effacement by premature disruption of his own petard it must have had a certain value to him--he would not wantonly have renounced it; and had he foreseen its extinction by the bomb the iron views of that controversial device would probably have been denied expression. Albeit doomed to eventual elimination from the scheme of being, and to the anarchist even now something of an accusing conscience, the nose is indubitably an excellent thing on man.

We have grown so accustomed to the presence of this feature that we take it as a matter of course; its absence is one of the most notable phenomena of our observation--"an occasion long to be remembered," as the society reporter hath it. Yet "abundant testimony sheweth" that but a few centuries ago noseless men and women were so common all over Europe as to provoke but little comment when seen and heard. They abounded in all the various walks of life: there were honored burgomasters without noses; wealthy merchants, great scholars, artists, teachers. Amongst the humbler classes nasal destitution was almost as frequent as pecuniary--in the humblest of all, the most common of all. Writing in the thirteenth century, a chronicler mentions the retainers and servants of certain Suabian noblemen as having hardly a whole ear among them--for until a comparatively recent period man's tenure of his ears was even more precarious than that of his nose. In 1436, when a Bavarian woman, Agnes Bernaurian, wife of Duke Albert the Pious, was dropped off the bridge at Prague, she persisted in rising to the surface and trying to escape; so the executioner gave himself the trouble to put a long pole into her hair and hold her under. A contemporary account of the matter hints that her disorderly behavior at so solemn a moment was due to the pain caused by removal of her nose; but as her execution was by order of her own father it seems more probable that this "extreme penalty of the law" was not imposed. Without a doubt, though, possession of a nose was an uncommon distinction in those days among "persons designated to assist the executioner," as the condemned were civilly called. Nor, as already said, was it any too common among persons not as yet consecrated to that service: "Few," says the chronicler, "have two noses, and many have none."

Man's firmer grasp upon his nose in this our day and generation is not altogether due to invention of the handkerchief. The genesis and development of his right to his own nose have been accompanied with a corresponding advance in possessory rights all along the line of his belongings--his ears, his fingers and toes, his skin, his bones, his wife and her young, his clothes and his labor--everything that is his. In Europe and America to-day these things can not be taken away from even the humblest and poorest without somebody wanting to "know the reason why." In every decade the nation that is most powerful upon the seas incurs voluntarily a vast expense of blood and treasure in suppressing a slave trade which in no way is injurious to her interests, nor to the interests of any but the slaves.

To-day even the lowliest incapable of all Nature's aborted has a nose that he dares to call his own and bite off at his own sweet will. Unfortunately, with an unthinkable fatuity we permit him to be told that but for the very agencies that have put him in possession he could successfully assert a God-given and world-old right to the noses of others. At present the honest fellow is mainly engaged in refreshing himself upon his own nose, consuming that comestible with avidity and precision; but the Vaillants, Ravechols, Mosts and Hearsts are pointing his appetite to other snouts than his, and inspiring him with rhinophagic ambition. Meantime the rest of us are using these imperiled organs to snore with.

'Tis a fine, resonant and melodious snore, but it is not going to last: there is to be a rude awakening. We shall one day get our eyes open to the fact that scoundrels like Vaillant are neither few nor distant. We shall learn that our blind dependence upon the magic of words is a fatuous error; that the fortuitous arrangement of consonants and vowels which we worship as Liberty is of slight efficacy in disarming the lunatic brandishing a bomb. Liberty, indeed! The murderous wretch loves it a deal better than we, and wants more of it. Liberty! one almost sickens of the word, so quick and glib it is on every lip--so destitute of meaning.

I favor mutilation for anarchists convicted of killing or inciting to kill--mutilation followed by death; for those who merely deny the right and expediency of law, plain mutilation--which might advantageously take the form of removal of the tongue. Why not? Where is the injustice? Surely he who denies men's right to make laws will not invoke the laws that they have wickedly made! That were to say that they must not protect themselves, yet are bound to protect him. What! if I beat him will he call the useless and mischievous constabulary? If I draw out his tongue shall he demand it back, and failing of restitution shall he have the law on me--the naughty law, instrument of the oppressor? Why, that "goes neare to be fonny!"

Two human beings can not live together in peace without laws--many laws. Everything that either, in consideration of the other's wish or welfare, abstains from is inhibited by law, tacit or expressed. If there were in all the world none but they--if neither had come with any sense of obligation toward the other, both clean from creation, with nothing but brains to direct their conduct--every hour would evolve an understanding, that is to say, a law; every act would suggest one. They would have to agree not to kill nor harm each other. They must arrange their work and all their activities to secure the best advantage. These arrangements, agreements, understandings--what are they but laws? To live without law is to live alone. Every family is a miniature state with a complicate system of laws, a supreme authority and subordinate authorities down to the latest babe. And as he who is loudest in demanding liberty for himself is sternest in denying it to others, you may confidently go to the Maison Vaillant, or the Mosthaus, for a flawless example of the iron hand.

Laws of the state are as faulty and as faultily administered as those of the family. Most of them have to be speedily and repeatedly "amended," many repealed, and of those permitted to stand, the greater number fall into disuse and are forgotten. Those who have to be entrusted with the duty of administering them have all the limitations of intelligence and defects of character by which the rest of us also are distinguished from the angels. In the wise governor, the just judge, the honest sheriff or the patient constable we have as rare a phenomenon as the faultless father. The good God has not given us a special kind of men upon whom to devolve the duty of seeing to the observance of the understandings that we call laws. Like all else that men do, this work is badly done. The best that we can hope for through all the failures, the injustice, the disheartening damage to individual rights and interests, is a fairly good general result, enabling us to walk abroad among our fellows unafraid, to meet even the tribesmen from another valley without too imminent a peril of braining and evisceration. Of that small security the anarchist would deprive us. But without that nothing is of value and we shall be willing to renounce the anarchist.

Of all the wild asses that roam the plain, the wildest wild ass that roams the plain is indubitably the one that lifts his voice and heel against that Socialism known as "public ownership of public utilities," on the ground of "principle." There may be honest, and in some degree intelligent, opposition on the ground of expediency. Many persons whom it is a pleasure to respect believe that a government railway, for example, would be less efficiently managed than the same railway in private hands, and that political dangers lurk in the proposal so enormously to increase the number of Federal employees as government ownership of railways would entail. They think, in other words, that the policy is inexpedient. It is a duty to reason with them, which, as a rule, one can do without being insulted. But he who greets the proposal with a howl of derision as "Socialism!" is not a respectable opponent. Eyes he has, but he sees not; ears--O, very abundant ears--but he hears not the still, small voice of history, nor the still smaller voice of common sense.

Obviously to those who, having eyes, do see, public ownership of anything is a step in the direction of Socialism, for perfect Socialism means public ownership of everything. But "principle" has nothing to do with it. The principle of public ownership is already accepted and established. It has no visible opponents except in the camp of the anarchists, and fewer of them are visible there than soap and water would reveal. Antagonists of the principle of Socialism lost their fight when the first human government held the dedicatory exercises of a cave of legislation. Since then the only question about the matter has been how far the extension of Socialism is expedient. Some would draw the limiting line at one place, some at another; but only a fool thinks there can be government without it, or good government without a great deal of it. The word-worn example of our postal department is only one of a thousand instances of pure Socialism. If it did not exist, how bitter an opposition a proposal to establish it would evoke from adversaries of the Red Rag! The government builds and operates bridges with general assent; but, as the late General Walker pointed out, it may under some circumstances be more economical, or better otherwise, to build and operate a ferry boat, which is a floating bridge. But that is opposed as rank Socialism.

The truth is that the men of "principle" are a pretty dangerous class, generally speaking--and they are generally speaking. It is they that hamper us in every war. It is they who, preventing concentration and regulation of unabolishable evils, promote their distribution and liberty. Moral principles are pretty good things--for the young and those not well grounded in goodness. If one have an impediment in his thought, or is otherwise unequal to emergencies as they arise, it is safest to be provided beforehand with something to refer to in order that a right decision may be made without taking thought. But spirits of a purer fire prefer to decide each question as it comes up, and to act upon the merits of the case, unbound and unpledged. With a quick intelligence, a capable conscience and a habit of doing right automatically, one has little need to burden one's mind and memory with a set of solemn principles formulated by owlish philosophers who do not happen to know that what is right is merely what, in the long run and with regard to the greater number of cases, is expedient. Principle is not always an infallible guide. For illustration, it is not always expedient--that is, for the good of all concerned--to tell the truth, to be entirely just or merciful, to pay a debt. I can conceive a case in which it would be right to assassinate one's neighbor. Suppose him to be a desperate scoundrel of a chemist who has devised a means of setting the atmosphere afire. The man who should go through life on an inflexible line of principle would border his path with a havoc of human happiness.

When M. Casimir-Perier resigned the French presidency there were those who regarded the act as weak, cowardly, undutiful and otherwise censurable. It seems to me the act, not of a feeble man, but of a strong one--not that of a coward, but that of a gentleman. Indeed, I hardly know where to look in history for an act more entirely gratifying to my sense of the "fitness of things" than this dignified notification to mankind that in consenting to serve one's country one does not relinquish the right to decent treatment--to immunity from factious opposition and abuse--to at least as much civil consideration as is due from the church to the devil.

M. Casimir-Perier did not seek the presidency of the French republic; it was thrust upon him against his protestations by an apparently unanimous mandate of the French people in an emergency which it was thought that he was the best man to meet. That he met it with modesty and courage was testified without dissent. That he afterward did anything to forfeit the confidence and respect that he then inspired is not true, and nobody believes it true. Yet in his letter of resignation he said, and said truly:

"For the last six months a campaign of slander and insult has been going on against the army, magistrates, Parliament and the hierarchical Chief of State, and this license to disseminate social hatred continues to be called 'liberty of thought.'"

And with a dignity to which it seems strange that any one could be insensible, he added:

"The respect and ambition which I entertain for my country will not allow me to acknowledge that the servants of the country, and he who represents it in the presence of foreign nations, may be insulted every day."

These are manly words. Have we any warrant for demanding or expecting that men of clean life and character will devote themselves to the good of ingrates who pay, and ingrates who permit them to pay, in flung mud? It is hardly credible that among even those persons most infatuated by contemplation of their own merit as pointed out by their thrifty sycophants "liberty of thought" has been carried to that extreme. The right of the State to demand the sacrifice of the citizen's life is a doctrine as old as the patriotism that concedes it, but the right to require him to forego his good name--that is something new under the sun.

"Perhaps in laying down my functions," said M. Casimir-Perier, "I shall have marked out a path of duty to those who are solicitous for the dignity, power and good name of France in the world."

We may be permitted to hope that the lesson is wider than France and more lasting than the French republic. It is well that not only France but all other countries with "popular institutions" should learn that if they wish to command the services of men of honor they must accord them honorable treatment; the rule now is for the party to which they belong to give them a half-hearted support while suffering all other parties to slander and insult them. The action of the president of the French republic in these disgusting circumstances is exceptional and unusual only in respect of his courage in expressly resenting his wrong. Everywhere the unreasonable complaint is heard that good men will not "go into politics;" everywhere the ignorant and malignant masses and their no less malignant and hardly less ignorant leaders and spokesmen, having sown the wind of reasonless obstruction and partisan vilification, are reaping the whirlwind of misrule. So far as concerns the public service, gentlemen are mostly on a strike against introduction of the mud-machine. This high-minded political workman, Casimir-Perier, never showed to so noble advantage as in gathering up his tools and walking out.

It may be, and a thousand times has been, urged that abstention from activity in public affairs by men of brains and character leaves the business of government in the hands of the incapable and the vicious. In whose hands, pray, in a republic, does it logically belong? What does the theory of "representative government" affirm? What is the lesson of every netherward extension of the suffrage? What do we mean by permitting it to "broaden slowly down" to lower and lower intelligences and moralities?--what but that stupidity and vice, equally with virtue and wisdom, are entitled to a voice in political affairs?

A person that is fit to vote is fit to be voted for. He who is competent for the high and difficult function of choosing an officer of the state is competent to serve the state as an officer. To deny him the right is illogical and unjust. Participation in government can not be at the same time a privilege and a duty, and he who claims it as a privilege must not speak of another's renunciation as "shirking." With every retirement from politics increased power passes to those who remain. Shall they protest? Who else is to protest? The complaint of "incivism" would be more reasonable if there were some one by whom it could reasonably be made.

The public officials of this favored country, Heaven be thanked, are infrequently slandered: they are, as a rule, so bad that calumniation is a compliment. Our best men, with here and there an exception, have been driven out of public life, or made afraid to enter it. Even our spasmodic efforts at reform fail ludicrously for lack of leaders unaffiliated with "the thing to be reformed." Unless attracted by the salary, why should a gentleman "aspire" to the presidency of the United States? During his canvass he will have from his own party a support that should make him blush, and from all the others an opposition that will stick at nothing to accomplish his satisfactory defamation. After his election his partition and allotment of the loaves and fishes will estrange an important and thenceforth implacable faction of his following without appeasing the animosity of any one else. At the finish of his term the utmost that he can expect in the way of reward not expressible in terms of the national currency is that not much more than one-half of his countrymen will believe him a scoundrel to the end of their days.

The trend of political thought and action in all civilized countries toward absolute Socialism is so conspicuous a phenomenon that it not only impresses that rare and execrated intelligence, the impartial observer, "the looker-on at the game," but is seen with greater or less distinctness by the innumerable company of players. A political faith is a kind of mental disability; the patient dimly discerns some of the more salient of the "opposing facts," but those grateful to his disorder loom large indeed. The proposition that the established order of things is in peril, has, therefore, both a stammering and a stentorian assent and needs no proof. Whether that is for better or for worse is not to be answered in an epigram, nor in a paragraph, but from the viewpoint of the looker-on with no more than an observer's interest in the matter, little is seen to encourage the optimist--little even of the little that he requires.

Down to date the world never has had good government. For forms of government fools have contested from the dawn of history, but no form has given good and wise administration. Government is like medicine; those who administer it are, as a rule, wiser than those to whom it is administered, though not much. In point of conscience there is little to choose between them.

There are two forms of real government; absolute Monarchy and absolute Democracy; all others are bastard forms attesting the failure of these, and themselves doomed to fail. The cause of failure lies in the essential folly and badness of human nature. From a stupid and selfish people there is no certainty of getting a wise and conscientious sovereign. Even when that miracle has been wrought, good government has not resulted, for the sovereign, however absolute in theory, however good and wise in fact, is compelled to work through shallow and selfish officials. Democracy suffers the same disability, with the added disadvantage of a sovereign that is never wise and never just.

As to limited Monarchies and constitutional Democracies, they are similarly and equally futile. Divided authority is divided responsibility. Restraint of the power to do evil is restraint of the power to do good. Under the "one-man power" it is at least known who is to blame for sins of administration, and to whom is due the credit for what is creditable. The autocrat can not hide behind his own back.

In all the various and vain experiments in government the one cause of failure is eternally manifest; the general moral and intellectual delinquency that makes government necessary--the folly and depravity of human nature.

Do the socialists think that they can alter that?--do they believe that after all these centuries of thought and experiment in government in all possible conditions, it has remained for them to devise a system powerful to chain or persuasive to charm the hitherto indomitable and vigilant selfishness to which, despite its ghastly perversions, the race owes its continued existence? Do they believe that under Socialism the laws will execute themselves without human agency; that less than to-day the state will require a vast and complex administration, with the same and greater temptations and opportunities to ambition and cupidity?

Under any conceivable system the cleverest, most enterprising and least scrupulous men will be at the head of affairs, and they will not be there "for their health." You cannot keep them down, and you cannot keep the others up. If the socialist thinks that can be done, he must hold in hope a better kind of ballot than the kind that works him present woe, or a brand-new infallibility for its casting.

A government that does not protect life is a flat failure, no matter what else it may do. Life being almost universally regarded as the most precious possession, its security is the first and highest essential--not the life of him who takes life, but the life which is exposed defenceless to his hateful hand. In no country in the world, civilized or savage, is life so insecure as in this. In no country in the world is murder held in so light reprobation. In no battle of modern times have so many lives been taken as are lost annually in the United States through public indifference to the crime of homicide--through disregard of law, through bad government. If American self-government with its ten thousand homicides a year is good government there is no such thing as bad. Self-government? What monstrous nonsense! Who governs himself needs no government, has no governor, is not governed. If government has any meaning it means the restraint of the many by the few--the subordination of numbers to brains. It means denial to the masses of the right to cut their own throats and ours. It means grasp and control of all social forces and material enginery--a vigilant censorship of the press, a firm hand upon the churches, keen supervision of public meetings and public amusements, command of the railroads, telegraph and all means of communication. It means, in short, ability to make use of all beneficent influences of enlightenment for the general good, and to array all the powers of civilization against civilization's natural enemies--"the masses." Government like this has a thousand defects, but it has one merit: it is government.

Despotism? Yes. It is the despotisms of the world that have been the conservators of civilization. It is the despot who, most powerful for mischief, is alone powerful for good. It is conceded that government is necessary--even by the "fierce democracies" that madly renounce it. But in so far as government is not despotic it is not government. In Europe for the last one hundred years, the trend of government has been toward liberalization. Sovereign after sovereign has surrendered prerogative after prerogative; the nobility, privilege after privilege. Mark the result: society honeycombed with treason; property menaced with partition; assassination studied as a science and practiced as an art; everywhere powerful secret organizations sworn to demolish the social fabric that the slow centuries have but just erected, and unmindful that themselves will perish in the wreck. No heart can beat tranquilly under clean linen. Such is the gratitude, such is the wisdom, such the virtue of "The Masses."

That ancient and various device, "a republican form of government," appears to be too good for all the peoples of the earth excepting one. It is partly successful in Switzerland; in France and America, where the majority is composed of persons having dark understandings and criminal instincts, it has broken down. In our case, as in every case, the momentum of successful revolution carried us too far. We rebelled against tyranny and having overthrown it, overthrew also the governmental form in which it had happened to be manifest. In their anger and their triumph our good grandfathers acted somewhat in the spirit of the Irishman who cudgeled the dead snake until nothing of it was left, in order to make it "sinsible of its desthruction." They meant it all, too, honest souls! For a long time after the setting up of the republic the republic meant active hatred to kings, nobles, aristocracies. It was held, and rightly held, that a nobleman could not breathe in America--that he left his title and his privileges on the ship that brought him over. Do we observe anything of that in this generation? On the landing of a foreign king, prince or nobleman--even a miserable "knight"--do we not execute sycophantic genuflexions? Are not our newspapers full of flamboyant descriptions and qualming adulation? Nay, does not our president himself--successor to Washington and Jefferson!--greet and entertain the "nation's guest"? Is not the American young woman crazy to mate with a male of title? Does all this represent no retrogression?--is it not the backward movement of the shadow on the dial? Doubtless the republican idea has struck strong roots into the soil of the two Americas, but he who rightly considers the tendencies of events, the causes that bring them about and the consequences that flow from them, will not be hot to affirm the perpetuity of republican institutions in the Western Hemisphere. Between their inception and their present stage of development there is scarcely the beat of a pendulum; and already, by corruption and lawlessness, the people of both continents, with all their diversities of race and character, have shown themselves about equally unfit. To become a nation of scoundrels all that any people needs is opportunity; and what we are pleased to call by the impossible name of "self-government" supplies it.

The capital defect of republican government is inability to repress internal forces tending to disintegration. It does not take long for a "self-governed" people to learn that it is not really governed--that an agreement enforcible by nobody but the parties to it is not binding. We are learning this very rapidly: we set aside our laws whenever we please. The sovereign power--the tribunal of ultimate jurisdiction--is a mob. If the mob is large enough , even if composed of vicious tramps, it may do as it will. It may destroy property and life. It may without proof of guilt inflict upon individuals torments unthinkable by fire and flaying, mutilations that are nameless. It may call men, women and children from their beds and beat them to death with cudgels. In the light of day it may assail the very strongholds of law in the heart of a populous city, and assassinate prisoners of whose guilt it knows nothing. And these things--observe, O victims of kings--are habitually done. One would as well be at the mercy of one's sovereign as of one's neighbor.

The anarchist himself is persuaded of the superiority of our plan of dealing with him; he likes it and "comes over" in quantity, impesting the political atmosphere with the "sweltered venom" engendered by centuries of "oppression"--comes over here, where he is not oppressed, and sets up as oppressor. His preferred field of malefaction is the country that is most nearly anarchical. He comes here, partly to better himself under our milder institutions, partly to secure immunity while conspiring to destroy them. There is thunder in Europe, but if the storm ever break it is in America that the lightning will first fall. Here is a great vortex into which the decivilizing agencies are pouring without obstruction. Here gather the eagles to the feast, for the quarry is defenceless. Here is no power in government, no government. Here an enemy of order is thought to be the least dangerous when most free. And here is nothing between him and his task of subversion--no pampered soldiery to repress his rising, no iron authority to lay him by the heels. The militia is fraternal, the magistracy elective. Europe may hold out a little longer. The great powers may make what stage-play they will, but they are not maintaining their incalculable armaments solely for aggression upon one another and protection from one another, nor for fun. These vast forces are mainly constabular--creatures and creators of discontent--phenomena of decivilization. Eventually they will fraternize with Disorder or become themselves Praetorian Guards more dangerous than the perils that have called them into existence.

The gods kept their secrets by telling them to Cassandra, whom nobody believed. I am entrusted with the secret that the shadow on the dial of civilization is moving backward. Believe or disbelieve--what matter? Revelers with wine-dipped wreaths upon their heads do not care to know the hour. Yet there are signs and portents--whispers and cries in the air; stealthy tread of invisible feet along the ground; sudden clamor of startled fowls at dead o' the night; crimson dew-drops on the roadside grass of a morning. But pray do not disturb yourselves: eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow comes Logical Democracy.

CIVILIZATION

Concerning uncivilized peoples we know but little except what we are told by travelers--who, speaking generally, can know very little but the fact of uncivilization, as shown in externals and irrelevances, and are moreover, greatly given to lying. From the savages we hear very little. Judging them in all things by our own standards in default of a knowledge of theirs, we necessarily condemn, disparage and belittle. One thing that civilization certainly has not done is to make us intelligent enough to understand that the contrary of a virtue is not necessarily a vice. Because, as a rule, we have but one wife and several mistresses each it is not certain that polygamy is everywhere--nor, for that matter, anywhere--either wrong or inexpedient. Because the brutality of the civilized slave owners and dealers created a conquering sentiment against slavery it is not intelligent to assume that slavery is a maleficent thing amongst Oriental peoples where the slave is not oppressed. Some of these same Orientals whom we are pleased to term half-civilized have no regard for truth. "Takest thou me for a Christian dog," said one of them, "that I should be the slave of my word?" So far as I can perceive, the "Christian dog" is no more the slave of his word than the True Believer, and I think the savage--allowing for the fact that his inveracity has dominion over fewer things--as great a liar as either of them. For my part, I do not know what, in all circumstances, is right or wrong; but I know that, if right, it is at least stupid, to judge an uncivilized people by the standards of morality and intelligence set up by civilized ones. Life in civilized countries is so complex that men there have more ways to be good than savages have, and more to be bad; more to be happy, and more to be miserable. And in each way to be good or bad, their generally superior knowledge--their knowledge of more things--enables them to commit greater excesses than the savage can. The civilized philanthropist wreaks upon his fellows a ranker philanthropy, the civilized rascal a sturdier rascality. And--splendid triumph of enlightenment!--the two characters are, in civilization, frequently combined in one person.

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