Kitabı oku: «Not Guilty: A Defence of the Bottom Dog», sayfa 10
Now, truism as it may seem, I think it necessary to say here that a man cannot be convinced by abuse, nor by punishment He can only be convinced by reason.
Yes. If we wish a man to believe a thing, we shall find a few words of reason more powerful than a million curses, or a million bayonets. To burn a man alive for failing to believe that the sun goes round the world is not to convince him. The fire is searching, but it does not seem to him to be relevant to the issue. He never doubted that fire would burn; but perchance his dying eyes may see the sun sinking down into the west, as the world rolls on its axis. He dies in his belief. And knows no "better."
CHAPTER ELEVEN – SELF-CONTROL
THE subject of self-control is another simple matter which has been made difficult by slovenly thinkers.
When we say that the will is not free, and that men are made by heredity and environment, we are met with the astonishing objection that if such were the case there could be no such things as progress or morality.
When we ask why, we are told that if a man is the creature of heredity and environment it is no use his making any effort: what is to be, will be.
But a man makes efforts because he wants something; and whether he be a "free agent," or a "creature of heredity and environment," he will continue to want things, and so he will continue to make efforts to get them.
"But," say the believers in free will, "the fact that he tries to get things shows that his will is free."
Not at all. The fact is that heredity and environment compel him to want things, and compel him to try for them.
The earth does not move of its own free will; but it moves. The earth is controlled by two forces: one is centrifugal force, the other is the force of gravity. Those two forces compel it to move, and to move in a certain path, or orbit.
"But a man does not move in a regular path or orbit." Neither does the earth. For every planet draws it more or less out of its true course. And so it is with man: each influence in his environment affects him in some way.
In every case the force of heredity compels us to move, and the force of environment controls or changes our movements.
And as this is a subject of great importance, and one upon which there is much confusion of thought, I shall ask my readers to give me their best attention, so that we may make it thoroughly clear and plain.
The control of man by heredity and environment is not the end of all effort; on the contrary, it is the beginning of all effort.
We do not say that the control of the earth by gravity and centrifugal force is the end of its motion: we know that it is the cause of its motion.
But, we shall be told, "the earth cannot resist. It is compelled to act Man is free."
Man is not free. Man is compelled to act. Directly a child is born it begins to act From that instant until the end of its life, it continues to act It must act It cannot cease from action. The force of heredity compels it to act.
And the nature of its actions is decided:
1. By the nature of the individual: which is his heredity.
2. By his experiences and training: which are his environment
Therefore to cease from all action is impossible. Therefore it is nonsense to say that if we are creatures of heredity and environment we shall cease to act.
But, it may be said, a man can cease from action: he has power to kill himself.
Well: the earth has power to destroy itself if it is caused to destroy itself. And man cannot destroy himself unless he is caused to destroy himself.
For the nature of a man – through heredity – is to love life. No man destroys himself without a cause. He may go mad, he may be in great grief, he may be disappointed, jealous, angry. But there is always a cause when a man takes his own life. And, be the cause what it may, it belongs to environment. So that a man cannot even take his own life until heredity and environment cause him to do it.
But there is a second argument, to the effect that if we believe ourselves to be creatures of heredity and environment we shall cease to make any effort to be good, or to be better than we are.
Those who use such an argument do not understand the nature and power of environment. Environment is powerful for good as well as for evil.
Well. We have seen that it is impossible for us to cease to act. Now we are told that we shall cease to act well.
But our acting well or ill depends upon the nature of our heredity and environment.
If our heredity be good, and if our environment be good, we must act well: we cannot help it.
If our heredity be bad, and if our environment be bad, we must act ill: we cannot help it.
"What? Do you mean to say I cannot be good if I try?"
Is it not evident that you must have some good in you if you wish to try? That good is put there by heredity and environment.
"But even a bad man sometimes tries to be good."
That is slovenly thinking. 'A man who is all bad has no desire for good. Any man who has a desire for good is not all bad.
Therefore a man who is "bad" never tries to be good, and a man who tries to be good is not "bad." When it is said that a bad man tries to be good the idea is that a very imperfect man tries to be rather better.
And he tries to be rather better because heredity or environment causes him to wish to be rather better.
Before a man can wish to be good he must know what goodness is. All men are born destitute of knowledge. To know what goodness is he must learn. All learning is environment.
But when a man knows what is good, and wishes to be good, he will try to be good. He cannot help trying. And he will try just as hard, and just as long as his temperament and training cause him to try; and he will succeed in being just as good as his temperament and training cause him to be. And his temperament is heredity, and his training is environment.
It does not follow, then, that because a man is that which heredity and environment make him, he will be nothing, for they will make him something. It does not follow that he will be bad, for they will make him good or bad, as they are good or bad.
"Then," exclaims the confused opponent, "the man himself counts for nothing: he is a mere machine."
No. He is not a "mere machine": he is a mere man; and he counts for just as much as his heredity and environment amount to, for his heredity and environment are he.
"But to tell a youth that he is a creature of heredity and environment would discourage him." Not if he understood what was meant. As we want to get this subject perfectly clear let us put a speech in two ways.
A youth tells his father that he would like to be a painter. The father's reply may be varied as follows. First, let us suppose the father says:
"You will be just as good a painter as your heredity and environment allow, or compel you to be.
"If you have any hereditary talent for the art, so much the better. But painting requires something more than talent: it requires knowledge, and practice. The more knowledge and practice you get the better you will paint. The less hereditary talent you possess, the more knowledge and practice you will need. Therefore, if you want to be a good painter, you must work hard."
The second speech would leave out the word hereditary before the word talent, and would begin, "You will be just as a good a painter as your talent and industry will make you." Otherwise the speeches would not differ.
But are we to suppose that the first speech would discourage a boy who wanted to be a painter? Not at all: if the boy understood what heredity and environment mean. It tells him that he can only be as good a painter as his talent and his industry will make him. But it does not tell him what are the limits of his industry and talent, for nobody knows what the limits are. That can only be settled by trying.
To know that he cannot get more out of a gold reef than there is in it, does not discourage a miner. What he wants is to get all there is in it, and until he wants no more, or believes there is no more, he will keep on digging.
It is so with any human effort. We all know that we cannot do more than we can, whether we believe in free will or no. But we do not know how much we can do, and nobody can tell us. The only way is to try. And we try just as hard as our nature and our desire impel us to try, and just as long as any desire or any hope remains.
Not only that, we commonly try when the limit of our attainment is in sight. For we try to get as near the limit as we can.
For instance. A young man adopts literature as his trade. He knows that before he dips a pen into a bottle that he will never reach the level of Shakespeare and Homer. But he tries to do as well as he can. A miner might be sure that his reef would not yield a million; but he would go on and get all he could.
So it is in the case of a desire for virtue. A man knows that he cannot be better than his nature and his knowledge allow him to be. He knows that he will never be as good as the best. But he wants to be good, and he tries to be as good as he can. The fact that a private soldier is not likely to get a commission does not prevent him from trying to get a sergeant-major's stripes. The knowledge that he is not likely to get twenty-one bull's-eyes in a match does not prevent a rifleman from getting all the bull's-eyes he can.
So with our young painter. All desire is hereditary. All knowledge is environment. The boy wants to be a painter, and he knows that industry and practice will help to make him a good painter. Therefore he tries. He tries just as hard as his desire (his heredity) and the encouragements of his master and his friends (environment) cause him to try.
We do not say that it is no use trying to be good, no use trying to be clever. On the contrary, we say that no man can be good or clever unless he does try; but that his desire to try, his power to try, and his knowledge of the value of trying are parts of his heredity and environment A boy says, "I cannot do this sum." His friend says, "Try again. I had to try six times; but I did it." That encouragement is environment.
A man says, "I cannot keep steady. I have tried." His friend says, "Yes, you can. Try again. Keep on trying. Try for your children's sake." That speech is environment. We advise a weakly lad to try a course of gymnastics, and encourage him to persevere. That is environment.
In another book of mine, "God and My Neighbour," I said something that was pounced upon as inconsistent with my belief. One paper asked what I would give to "cancel that fatal admission." Many critics said in their haste that I had "given my case away."
But I am so far from regretting that paragraph that I will repeat it here, and will prove that it is not inconsistent with my belief, and that it does not "give my case away." The passage is as follows:
I believe that I am what heredity and environment made me. But I know that I can make myself better or worse if I try. I know that because I have learnt it, and the learning has been part of my environment.
What is there in that paragraph that is inconsistent with my belief?
"I know" – how do I know anything? All knowledge is from environment. "I know" (through environment) that I can do something "if I try."
What causes me to try? If I try to write better, or to live better, it is evident that I wish to write better, or to live better. What makes me wish? Heredity and environment.
It may be inherited disposition to do the things called good. It may be love of approbation. Those are parts of my heredity.
It may be that I wish to do the things called good because I have been taught that I ought to do them. That teaching would be part of my environment Therefore the desire to be good, or better, and the knowledge that I can be good, or better, if I try, arise from and belong to heredity and environment.
"But to try. Does not that show free will?" I have just proved that I try because I wish to succeed, and that environment has taught me that I cannot succeed without trying.
"But does not the free will come in when I decide whether to do good or bad things?" No. For that has already been decided for me by heredity and environment, which have made me wish to do good things.
So there is nothing wrong with that paragraph. The fault was in my critics, who had failed to understand the subject upon which they were trying to argue.
A man can only try if heredity or environment causes him to want to try, and he can only keep on trying as long as heredity and environment cause him to keep on.
One man is born with more talent than another. And one man is born with more industry, or with more ambition, or with more hope, patience, determination, than another.
And the man who is more ambitious, or more patient, or more hopeful, or more determined, will try harder, and will try longer than the man who is less ambitious, or hopeful, or determined.
Heredity settles that.
But the man who has less of the qualities that make one try, may be spurred on by a teacher, a friend, or a powerful motive, and so may try harder and longer than the stronger man.
As, for example, a man who has given up trying to succeed in some enterprise, may fall in love, and then the added desire to marry the woman he loves, may cause him to try harder than ever, and may lead him to succeed.
But these things belong to his environment.
Not only that, but they are a proof that environment can move a man when free will fails. For the man has a free will before he falls in love. But he loses heart, and does not succeed in his enterprise. But love, which is environment, supplies a new desire, and he does succeed.
Why does he succeed? Because he wants to marry, and he cannot marry until he succeeds. This desire to marry comes of environment, and it rules the will, and compels the will to will a further effort. Is it not so?
Although we say that man is the creature of heredity and environment, we do not say that he has no self-control. We only say that his self-control comes from heredity and environment, and is limited and controlled by heredity and environment.
He can only "do as he likes" when heredity and environment cause him "to like," and he can only "do as he likes," so far and so long as heredity and environment enable him to go on.
A man "can be good if he tries," but not unless heredity and environment cause him to wish to try.
But for heredity he could not lift a finger: he would not have a finger to lift. But for environment he could not learn to use a finger. He could never know good from bad.
We all know that we can train and curb ourselves, that we can weed out bad habits, and cultivate good habits. No one has any doubt about that. The question is what causes us to do the one or the other. The answer is – heredity and environment.
We can develop our muscles, our brains, our morals; and we can develop them enormously.
But before we can do these things we must want to do them, and we must know that we can do them, and how to do them; and all knowledge, and all desire comes from environment and heredity.
A youth wishes to be strong. Why? Say he has been reading Mr. Sandow's book. He is told there that by doing certain exercises every day he can very greatly increase his strength. This sets him to work at the dumb-bells. There may be many motives impelling him. One group form a general desire to be strong: that is heredity. But the spur that moves him is Sandow's book, and that spur, and the information as to how to proceed, are environment.
The youth begins, and for a few months he does the exercises every morning. But they begin to get irksome.
He is tired, he has a slight cold, he wants to read or write. He neglects the exercises. Then he remembers that he cannot get strong unless he perseveres and does the work regularly, and he goes on again. Or he neglects his training for awhile, until he meets another youth who has improved himself. Then he goes back to the dumb-bells.
Is not this, to our own knowledge, the kind of thing that happens to us all, in all kinds of self-training, whether it be muscular, mental, or moral?
What causes the fluctuations? Let the reader examine his own conduct, and he will find a continual shifting and conflict of motives. And he will never find a motive that cannot be traced to his temperament or training, to his heredity or environment.
A man wants to learn French, or shorthand. Let him ask himself why he wants to learn, and he will find the motive springs from temperament or training. He begins to learn. He finds the work difficult and irksome. He has to spur himself on by all kinds of expedients. Finally he learns, or he gives up trying to learn; and he will find that his action has been settled by a contest between his desire to be able to write shorthand, or to speak French, and his dislike to the drudgery of learning; or that his action has been settled by a conflict between his desire to know shorthand, or French, and his desire to do something else. He does the thing he most desires to do. And all desire comes from heredity or from environment.
Every member of his body, every faculty, every impulse is fixed for him by heredity; every kind of knowledge, every kind of encouragement or discouragement comes of environment.
I hope we have made that quite clear, and now we may ask to what it leads us.
And we shall find that it leads us to the conclusion that everything a man does is, at the instant when he does it, the only thing he can do: the only thing he can do, then.
"What! do you mean to say-?" Yes. It is startling. But let us keep our heads cool and our eyes wide open, and we shall find that it is quite true, and that it is not difficult to understand.
CHAPTER TWELVE – GUILTY OR NOT GUILTY?
WE are to ask whether it is true that everything a man does is the only thing he could do, at the instant of his doing it.
This is a very important question, because if the answer is yes, all praise and all blame are undeserved.
ALL PRAISE AND ALL BLAME
Let us take some revolting action as a test.
A tramp has murdered a child on the highway, has robbed her of a few coppers, and has thrown her body into a ditch.
"Do you mean to say that tramp could not help doing that? Do you mean to say he is not to blame? Do you mean to say he is not to be punished?"
Yes. I say all those things; and if all those things are not true this book is not worth the paper it is printed on.
Prove it? I have proved it. But I have only instanced venial acts, and now we are confronted with murder. And the horror of murder drives men almost to frenzy, so that they cease to think: they can only feel.
Murder. Yes, a brutal murder. It comes upon us with a sickening shock. But I said in my first chapter that I proposed to defend those whom God and man condemn, and to demand justice for those whom God and man have wronged. I have to plead for the bottom dog: the lowest, the most detested, the worst.
The tramp has committed a murder. Man would loathe him, revile him, hang him: God would cast him into outer darkness.
"Not," cries the pious Christian, "if he repent."
I make a note of the repentance and pass on.
The tramp has committed a murder. It was a cowardly and cruel murder, and the motive was robbery.
But I have proved that all motives and all powers; all knowledge and capacity, all acts and all words, are caused by heredity and environment.
I have proved that a man can only be good or bad as heredity and environment cause him to be good or bad; and I have proved these things because I have to claim that all punishments and rewards, all praise and blame, are undeserved.
And now, let us try this miserable tramp – our brother.
GUILTY OR NOT GUILTY?
The tramp has murdered a child for her money. What is his defence?
I appear for the prisoner, and claim that he is not responsible for his act.
(Cries of shame! bosh! lynch him!)
I will first of all remind the court of the reasons upon which I base my claim.
(Gentleman in white tie rises and declaims vehemently against the immorality of the defence. Talks excitedly about the flood gates of anarchy, and the bulwarks of society, and is with difficulty persuaded to resume his seat.)
Clerical environment does not make for toleration and sweet reasonableness. I proceed to open my case.
Every quality of body or mind possessed by a child at birth has been handed down to the child by its ancestors.
The child could not select its ancestors; could not select its own qualities of body and mind.
Therefore the child is not to blame for any evil quality of body or mind with which it is born.
Therefore this tramp was not to blame if, at the moment of birth, his nature was prone to violence or to vice.
The prisoner is a criminal. He is either a criminal born, or a criminal made.
If he is a "born criminal" he is a victim of atavism, and ought not to be blamed, but pitied. For it is not a fault, but a misfortune, to be born an atavist.
Had a tiger killed the child, we should have to admit that such is the tiger's nature; as it is the nature of a lark to sing.
But, if the prisoner is an atavist it is his nature to be furious and cruel.
We cannot, however, be sure that a man is a "born criminal" because he commits a murder. So great is the power of environment for evil, as well as for good, that perhaps the most innocent and humane man in this court might, by the influence of an evil environment, have been made capable of an act as horrible.
If the prosecution adopt the course I expect them to adopt, and claim that the unfortunate prisoner "knew better": if they succeed in proving that the prisoner was well-educated, carefully brought up, and never in all his life was once exposed to any evil influence, then I shall claim that such evidence proves the prisoner to be atavist, and entitles him to a verdict of unsound mind.
Because no man whose whole environment had been good, would be capable of murdering a child for a few coppers, unless he were an atavist or insane.
On the other hand, if it should appear, in the course of evidence, that the prisoner was born of criminal and ignorant parents, was brought up in an atmosphere of violence and crime, was sent out, untaught, or evilly taught, and undisciplined, to scramble for a living; if it should be proved that he fell into bad company, that he turned thief, that he was sent to prison and branded as a felon: if it should be proved that he has been hunted by the police, flogged with the "cat" by warders, bullied by counsel, denounced by magistrates and judges; if it should be proved that he has been treated at every turn of his wretched career as a wild beast or a pariah; if it should be proved that he has been allowed to degenerate into an ignorant, a savage, a bestial and a drunken loafer; then, I shall plead that this miserable man has been reduced to his present morose, cruel, and immoral state by evil environment; and I shall ask for a verdict in his favour. (Cries of Monster! Hang him! Lynch him!)
It is said the prisoner is an inhuman monster. He has been made a monster by a monstrous heredity; or he has been made a monster by a monstrous environment.
No man of sound heredity ever becomes a monster save by the action of an evil environment.
Say the prisoner is an atavist; a man bred back to the beasts. Then he is entitled to be judged by the standard we apply to beasts.
Some of you will remember Poe's story of the murder in the Rue Morgue, in which a terrible murder is done by an ape. In such a case our horror and our anger would probably cause us to shoot the ape. But that would be the uprising within us of our own atavistic and brutish passions; it would not be the result of our promptings of our human reason. Reason might prompt us to kill the ape as a precaution against a repetition of violence. But anger and hate are not reasonable, not human: all anger and all hate are bestial – like the hate and the anger of the tramp. But if the prisoner is not an atavist, or brute-man, if he has been reduced to his present moral state of environment, ask for some measure of compensation from the society; unjust laws, and dishonest social conditions, and immoral neglect are responsible for the fact that a brother man has been allowed, or rather compelled, by society, to grow up an ignorant and desperate savage.
Be that as it may, the prisoner is a creature of heredity and environment; and, as he is bad, the heredity, or the environment, or both, must be bad. And I ask for a verdict in the prisoner's favour.
Will any man on the jury say me nay? The prisoner has defied the law, he has injured society, has outraged morality. Have law and morality not injured him? Has society not injured him?
He has committed a terrible crime, for which it is claimed that he should be punished. Who shall be punished for the crimes of the law and of society against him?
There is much proper and natural sympathy expressed by the prosecution with the parents of the murdered child. Is there no sympathy with this unhappy victim of atavism, or of society? This prisoner has been bred as a beast, or treated as a savage, until he has become a savage and a beast.
Here stands a human being, poisoned, battered, and degraded beyond all human semblance. Here stands a brother man, whose soul has been murdered by inches, has been murdered by the society that now hales him here to be denounced, and execrated, and hanged.
Do I speak truth, or falsehood? Is logic true? Are facts true? That which society has here planted it has here to reap. Not all the law, the piety, and education in the wide, wide earth can make this ruined and degraded prisoner the man he might have been. Not all the repentance we can feel, not any compensation we can offer can buy him back the soul we have destroyed. It is too late.
Gentlemen of the jury, is it nothing to you? You are accessories to the fact. I appeal to your justice, to your pity —
(A voice: How much pity had he for the child?)
None. There is no pity in his soul. Either his forefathers put none there, or society has destroyed it.
(Cries of monstrous! immoral! preposterous! shame!)
I hear cries of monstrous and immoral. But I do not hear any voice say "false." Is there a man in court can impeach my reasoning, or disprove my facts? Is there a man in court can deny one statement I have made? Is there a man in court can break one link of the steel chain of logic I have riveted upon our metaphysicians, our moralists, our kings, our judges, and our gods?
You say my defence is unreasonable and immoral. You dread the effects of justice and of reason upon society. You talk of crime and cruelty, of law and order. You want the prisoner punished. You ask for justice: but you want revenge. Give me a fair hearing, and I will speak of these things to you.
When you cry out that to deny responsibility is immoral you are thinking, at the back of your heads, that men can only be kept within the law by fear; that wrong-doing can only be repressed by punishment.
It is the old and cruel conventions of society that hold you fast to the error that blame and punishment are righteous and salutary. It is ignorance of human nature that betrays you into the belief that men can be made honest and benevolent by cruelty and terror.
Punishment has never been just, has never been effectual. Punishment has always failed of its purpose: the greater its severity, the more abject its failure.
Men cannot be made good and gentle by means of violence and wrong. The real tamers and purifiers of human hearts are love and charity and reason.
You seem to think it is a noble thing to be angry with a criminal, and to be angry with me for defending him. But it is always ignoble to be angry.
Some of you deny this blood-stained murderer for your brother; but directly your features are distorted by passion, directly your fury overcomes your reason, directly you begin to shriek for his blood, your close relationship to him appears.
Reason, patience, self-control, these are lacking in the savage criminal: I look around for them in vain amongst the crowd in this court.
I said that I would take note of what our Christian friend said about repentance. I will speak to that question now. There are few who so often forget the tenets of their own religion as the clergy. I have found it so.
The clergy are always amongst the first to raise the cry of immorality when one speaks against punishment as unjust, or useless.
Yet the clergy preach the doctrine of repentance. It is only a few weeks since the English papers printed a letter from a murderer under sentence of death, in which he spoke of meeting his relatives "at the feet of Jesus."
In a week from the date of his letter he expected to be in heaven. In a month from the time when he murdered his wife, he expected to be with Jesus, and to live in happiness and glory for ever.
That is what the prison chaplain had taught him. It is what the clergy do teach. They talk of the folly and the immorality of abolishing prison and gallows; and then they offer the perpetrators of the most inhuman and terrible crimes a certainty of everlasting bliss in a sinless heaven.
If it is immoral and absurd to say that all criminals are sinned against as well as sinning; if it is immoral and absurd to say that we ought not to hang a man, nor to flog, nor to imprison him, what kind of morality and wisdom lie in offering all criminals an eternity of happiness and glory?
The clergy are that which their environment has made them. What kind of reasoning can we expect from men who have been taught that it is wicked to think?
Before you are angry with me for defending the prisoner be sure that you are not confounding the ideas of the criminal and the crime. I hate the crime as much as any man here; but I do not hate the criminal. I am not defending evil; I am defending the evil-doer.
Before you plume yourselves too much upon your superior morality and greater love of justice, allow me to remind you that I am asking that the world shall be moral, and not only this man: I am demanding justice for all men, and not for a few. But you – you think you have acted righteously and honourably when you have hanged a murderer; but you have not a thought for the inhuman social conditions that make men criminals. This prisoner is but a type: a type of the legion victims of a selfish and cowardly society. Every day, in every city, in every country, innocent children are being poisoned and perverted by millions. Which of you has spoken a word or lifted a hand to prevent this wholesale wrong? What man of you all, who are so fierce against crime, so loud in praise of morality, has ever tried in act or speech to combat the crime and the immorality which society perpetuates: with your knowledge and consent? You who are so anxious to punish crime, what are you doing to prevent it?
