LITERATURE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6910, 21 July 1890, Page 1

LITERATURE.

LOOKING BACKWARD.

2000H887.

[By Edward Bellamy.]

Chapter XXYL— (Continued.)

"Some two or three centuries ago an •«ct of barbarity was committed in India, which, though the number of lives desixoyed was but a few score, was attended by such peculiar horrors that its memory is likely to be perpetual. A number of English prisoners were shut up in a room •containing not enough air to supply onetenth of their number. The unfortunates were gallant men, devoted comrades . in service, but, as the agonies of suffocation began to take hold on them, they forgot all else, and became involved in a hideous struggle, each one for himself and against all others, to force a way to one of the :small aperbures at which alone it was possible to get a breath of air. It was a struggle in which men became beasts, and the recital of its horrors by the few Burvivors so shocked our forefathers that for 4k century later we find it a stock reference in their literature as a typical illustration of. the extreme possibilities of human misery, as shocking in its moral as in its physical aspect. They could scarce have anticipated that to as the Black Hole of Calcutta, with its preßß of maddened men tearing and trampling one another in the struggle to win a place at the breathing ."holes, would seem a striking type of the society of their age. It lacked something -of being a complete type, however, for in the Calcutta Black Hole there were no tender women, no little children and old men and women, no cripples. They were •at least all men strong to bear, who - suffered.

11 When we reflect that the ancient order of which I have been speaking was prevalent up to the end of the nineteenth century, while to us the new order which succeeded it already seems antique, even our parents having known no other, we cannot fail to be astounded at the suddenness with -which a transition so profound beyond all previous experience of the race, must have been effected. Some observation of the -state of men's minds during the last quarter -of the nineteenth century will, however, in great measure dissipate this astonishment. Though general intelligence in the modern sense could not be said to exist in any community at that time, yet, as compared with previous generations, one then on the stage wsb intelligent. The inevitable consequence of even this comparative degree of intelligence had been a perception of the evils of society such as had never before been general . It is quite true that these evils had been even worae, much worse, in previous ages. It -was the increased intelligence of the masses which made the difference, as the dawn reveals the squalor of. surroundings which in the darkness may have seemed tolerable. "The key-note of the literature of the period was. one of compassion for the poor and unfortunate, and indignant outcry against the failure of the social machinery to ameliorate the miseries of men. It is plain from these outbursts tbat the moral hideousness of the spectacle about them was, at least by flashes, fully realised by the best of the men of that time, and that the lives of some of fcho more sensitive and .generoxis hearted of them were rendered wellnigh unendurable by the intensity of their sympathies.

•• Although the idea of the vital unity of the family of mankind, the reality of human brotherhood, was very far from being apprehended by them as the moral axiom it seems to us, yet it is a mistake to suppose that there was no feeling at all •corresponding to it. I could read you passages of great beauty from some of their writers which show that the conception was clearly attained by a few, and no doubt vaguely by many more. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that the nineteenth century was in name Christian, and the fact that the en,tire commercial and industrial frame of society was the embodiment of the anti-Christian spirit, must have had some weight, though. I admit it was strangely little, with the nominal followers of Jesus Christ.

"When we inquire, why it did not have more, why in general, long after a vast majority of men had agreed as to the crying abuses of the existing social arrangement, they still tolerated it, or contented themselves with talking of petty reforms in it, we couie upon an extraordinary fact. Ib was the sincere belief of even the best of men at that epoch that the only stable elements in human nature, on which a social system could be safely founded, were its worst propensities. They Lad been taught and believed that greed and self-seeking wer9 all that held mankind together, and that all human associations wonld fall to pieces if anything were done to blunt the edge of these motives or curb their operation. In a word, they believed — even those who longed to believe otherwise — the exact reverse of what Seems to us self-evident; they believed, that is, that the anti-social qualities of men and not their social qualities were what furnished the cohesive force of i society. It seemed reasonable to them that men lived together solely for the purpose of overreaching and oppressing one another, and of being overreached and oppressed, and that while a society that gave full scope to these propensities could : stand, there would be little chance for one based on the idea of co-operation for tbe benefit of all. It seems abßurd to expect any one to believe that convictions like these were ever seriously entertained by men; but that they were not only ■ entertained by our great-grandfathers, but were responsible for the long delay in doing away with the ancient order, after a conviction of its intolerable abuses had become general, is as well established as any fact in history can be. Just here you will find the explanation of the profound pessimism of the literature of the last •• quarter of the nineteenth century, the - note of melancholy in its poetry, and the • cynicism of its humour. "Feeling that the condition oE the race was unendurable, they had no clear hope •of any thing better. They believed that the evolution of humanity had resulted in leading it into a cul de sac, and that there was no way of getting forward. The frame of men's minds at this time is strikingly illustrated by . treatises] which have come ' down to us, and may even now be consulted in our libraries by the curious, in which laborious arguments are pursued to prove that despite the evil plight of men, life was still, by some slight ' preponderance of considerations, probably better worth living than leaving. Despising themselves, they despised their Creator. There was a •general decay of religious belief. Pale and watery gleams, from skies thickly veiled by doubt and gloom, alone lighted up the chaos of earth. That men should • doubt Him whose breath is in their no3trils, or dread the hands that moulded them, seems, to us indeed a pitiable insanity ; but we must remember that children who are brave by day have sometimes foolish fears at night. The dawn has come since then. It is very easy to believe in the -fatherhood of God in the twentieth century. " Briefly, as must needs be in a discourse ■Jof tbischaracter, I have adverted to some of the causes which had prepared men's ' minds for' the' change from the old'to^the' ,iiew 6rder>'as well a'S'some causes of the- ' conservatism of despair which for a while ;. held i6baok : after the ; time waa ripe; To w6nief ; a6 i: the rapidity with 'Which.' the. -change was completed, after its possibility eras first entertained, is to forget the in«

toxicating effect of hope upon minds ldng accustomed to despair. The sunburst, after so long and dark a night, must needs have had a dazzling effect. From the moment men allowed themselves to believe that humanity after all had not been meant for a dwarf, that its squat stature was not the measure of its possible growth, but tha'c it stood upon the verge of an avatar of limitless development, the reaction must needs have been overwhelming. It is evident that nothing was able to stand* against the enthusiasm which the new faith inspired.

"Here at last, men must have felt, was a cause compared with which the grandest of historic causes had been trivial. It was doubtless because it could have commanded millions of martyrs, that none were needed. The change of a dynasty in a petty kingdom of the old world often cost more lives than did the revolution which set the feet of the human race at last in the right way.

" Doubtless, it ill beseems one to whom the boon of life in our resplendent age has been vouchsafed to wish his destiny othex," and yet I have often thought that I would fain exchange my share in this serene and golden day for a place in that stormy epoch of transition, when heroes burst the barred gate of the future and revealed to the kindling gaze of a hopeless race, in place of the blank wall that had closed its path, a vista of progress whose end, for the very excess of light, still dazzles us. Ah, my friends', who will say that to have lived then, when the weakest influence was a lever to whose touch the centuries trembled, was not worth a share, even in this era of fruition ?

"You know the story of that last, greatest, and most bloodless of revolutions. In the time of one generation men laid aside the social traditions and practices of barbarians, and assumed a social order worthy of rational and human beings. Ceasing to be predatory in their babies, they became co-workers, and found in fraternity, at once, the science of wealth and of happiness. ' What shall I cat and drink, and wherewithal shall I be clothed?' stated as a problem beginning and ending in self, had been an anxious and an endless one. But when once it was conceived, not from the individual but the fraternal standpoint, ' What shall we eat and driDk, and wherewithal shall we be clothed ?' — its difficulties vanished.

(To be continued.)