And so also was it with the dullness and sterility that prevailed in the intellectual world. The master-class did not want ideas—it only wanted to be let alone; and so it put in the seats of authority men who were blind to the blazing beacon-fires of the future. It would be no exaggeration to say that the intellectual and cultural system of the civilized world was conducted, whether deliberately or instinctively, for the purpose of keeping the truth about exploitation from becoming clear to the people.
The master-class owned the newspapers and ran them. It had built and endowed the churches, and taught the clergy to feed out of its hand. In the same way it had founded the colleges, and named the trustees, who in turn named the presidents and professors. The ordinary mortal took it for granted that because venerable bishops and dignified editors and learned college-professors were all in agreement as to a certain truth, there must be some inherent probability in that truth; and never once perceived how the cards were stacked and the dice loaded—how those clergymen and editors and professors had all been selected because they believed that truth to be true, and believed the contrary falsehood to be false!
And how smoothly and automatically the system worked! How these dignitaries stood together, and held up each other's hands, maintaining the august tradition, the atmosphere of authority and power! The bishops praising the editors, and the editors praising the professors,* and the professors praising the bishops!
And when the circle was completed, what Use majeste it seemed for an ordinary mortal to oppose their conclusions !
The bishops, one perceived, were "orthodox"—that is to say they were concerned with barren formulas; and they were "spiritual"—they were concerned with imaginary future states of bliss. The editors were "safe" and "conservative"—that is to say, their souls were dead and their eyes were sealed and their god was property. And when it came to the selecting of the college professors, of the men who were to guide and instruct the forthcoming generations—what precautions would be taken then! What consultations and investigations, what testimonials and interviews and examinations ! For after all, in these new days, it could be no easy matter to find men whose minds were sterilized, who could face without blenching all the horrors of the capitalist regime! Who could see courts and congresses bought and sold; who could see children ground up in mills and factories, and women driven by the lash of want to sell their bodies; who could see the surplus of the world's wealth squandered in riot and debauchery, and the nations armed and drilled and sent out to slaughter each other in the quest for more. Who could know that all these things existed, and yet remain in their cloistered halls and pursue the placid ways of scholarship; who could teach history which regarded them as inevitable; who could care for literature that had been made for the amusement of slave-drivers, and art which existed for the sake of art, and not for the sake of humanity; who could know everything that was useless, and teach everything that was uninteresting, and could be dead at once to the warnings of the past, and to all that was vital and important in the present.
THE MASTERS OF THE SNARE 535
§ 11. NOT since he had discovered the master-key of Evolution had Thyrsis come upon any set of ideas that meant so much to him. It was not that these were new to him—they were the stuff out of which his whole life had been made; but here they were ordered and systematized—he had a handle by which to take hold of them. The name of this handle was "the economic interpretation of history". And its import was that ideas did not come by hazard, or out of the air, but were products of social conditions; and that when one knew by what method the wealth of any community was produced, and by what class its "surplus value" was appropriated—then and then only could one understand the arts and customs, the sciences and religions, which that community would evolve.
In the light of this great principle Thyrsis had to revise all his previous knowledge; he had to cast out tons of rubbish from the chambers of his mind, and start his thinking life all over again. Just as, in early days, he had exchanged miracles and folk-tales for facts of natural science; so now he saw political institutions and social codes, literary and artistic canons, and ethical and philosophical systems, no longer as things valid and excellent, having relationship to truth—but simply as intrenchments and fortifications in the class-war, as devices which some men had used to deceive and plunder some other men. What a light it threw upon philosophy, for instance, to perceive it, not as a search for truth, but as a search for justification upon the part of ruling classes, and for a basis of attack upon the part of subject-classes !
So, for instance, on the one side one found Rousseau, and on the other Herbert Spencer. Thyrsis had read Spencer, and had cordially disliked him for his dogma-
tism and his callousness; but now he read Kropotkin's "Mutual Aid as a Factor in Evolution", and came to a realization of how the whole science of biology had been distorted to suit the convenience of the British ruling-classes. Laissez-faire and the Manchester school had taught him that "each for himself and the devil take the hindmost" was the universal law of life; and he had accepted it, because there seemed nothing else that he could do. But now, in a sudden flash, he came to «ee that the law of life was exactly the opposite; everywhere throughout nature that which survived was not ruthless egotism, but co-operative intelligence. The solitary and predatory animals were now almost entirely extinct; and even before the advent of man with his social brain, it had been the herbivorous and gregarious animals which had become most numerous. When it came to man, was it not perfectly obvious that the races which had made civilization were those which had developed the nobler virtues, such as honor and loyalty and patriotism? And now it was proposed to trample them into the mire of "business"; to abandon the race to a glorified debauch of greed! And this travesty of science was taught in ten thousand schools and colleges throughout America—and all because certain British gentlemen had wished to work their cotton-operatives fourteen hours a day, and certain others had wished to keep land which their ancestors had seized in the days of William the Conqueror! Shortly after this Thyrsis came upon Edmond Kelly's great work, "Government, or Human Evolution"; and so he realized that Herbert Spencer's social philosophy had at last been cleared out of the pathway of humanity. And this was a great relief to him—it was one more back-breaking task that he did not have to contemplate!
THE MASTERS OF THE SNARE 537
§ 12. THEN one of his Socialist friends sent him Thorstein Veblen's "Theory of the Leisure Class"; a book which he read in a continuous ebullition of glee. Truly it was a delicious thing to find a man who could employ the lingo of the ultra-sophisticated sociologist, and use it in a demonstration of the most revolutionary propositions. The drollery of this was all the more enjoyable because Thyrsis could never be sure that the author himself intended it—whether his sesquipedalian irony might not be a pure product of nature, untouched by any human art.
Veblen's book might have been called a study of the ultimate destiny of "surplus value"; an economic interpretation of the social arts and graces, of "fashions" and "fads". Where men competed for the fruit of each other's labor, the possession of wealth was the sign of excellence. This excellence men wished to demonstrate to others; and step by step, as the methods of production and exploitation changed, one might trace the change in the methods of this demonstration. The savage chief began with nose-rings and anklets, and the trophies of his fights; then, as he grew richer, he would employ courtiers and concubines, and shine by vicarious splendor. He would give banquets and build palaces -—the end being always "the conspicuous consumption of goods". j.