June 9, 192 1] 



NATURE 



453 



Avhich the existence of aggregates of the lower 

 organisms is brought to an end." 



These charges are driven home in the 

 most forcible manner. The old craftsman, 

 who made a pair of boots and enjoyed his 

 work, has been displaced by a crowd of 

 factory hands, not one of whom could make a 

 pair of boots, and whose work is irksome 

 drudgery. By absorption into an organised aggre- 

 gate the workman has become functionally atro- 

 phied ; he has undergone degeneration. The work- 

 ing class is composed of men of a low average 

 intelligence, in adjustment to the relatively small 

 demands for intelligence made by the conditions 

 of machine production, "That the working class 

 consists largely of men of very slight skill was 

 clearly shown during the war, when so-called 

 ' skilled ' men were called up for service and were 

 easily replaced by admittedly unskilled men, or 

 even by shop-girls and domestic servants." 

 \ Machinery has changed a skilled into an unskilled 

 population. The crew of the Mayflower could 

 have established a civilised community ; a modern 

 company of factory hands and the like, who are 

 normally parasitic on some machine, would 

 starve on an uninhabited island, or relapse into 

 complete barbarism. 



Mr. Freeman has some criticisms, as true as 

 they are scathing, on the component parts of our 

 society. "Mere learning or scholarship, unaccom- 

 panied by additions to the sum of existing know- 

 ledge, furnishes no evidence of faculty above the 

 level of mediocrity." "The professional politician 

 whom democracy has brought into existence 

 differs entirely from other professional men. He 

 is totally unqualified. Such knowledge as the old 

 parliamentary hand has acquired has no relation 

 to social phenomena. It is purely egoistic." Our 

 Government is as absurd as if medical and 

 surgical knowledge were cultivated only by de- 

 tached savants, while medical treatment was con- 

 ducted and surgical operations were performed 

 by strenuous but unlearned "men of action." The 

 First Lord of the Admiralty may be a publisher, 

 a brewer, or a stockbroker. Now that Govern- 

 ment control is being extended in every direction, 

 the system is disastrous, and has already pro- 

 duced social, economic, and industrial chaos. Our 

 elaborate technical education, instead of training 

 artists and craftsmen, produces only art-school 

 masters and mistresses and technical-school 

 teachers. The trade unions "have made no 

 effort to regain liberty for their members as free 

 workers or collective owners ; though the money 

 spent on a great strike would be sufficient to 

 establish co-operative works on an extensive scale." 

 NO. 2693, VOL. 107] 



The manual workers are becoming frankly anti- 

 social as well as anti-democratic. Their activities 

 are directed, not against the employers, but 

 against the community. "The working man 

 tends to be a bad citizen." He plots "to starve 

 the country into submission; to treat his fellow- 

 citizens as a somewhat uncivilised invading army 

 would treat an enemy population." "The pro- 

 found lack of the most rudimentary ethical con- 

 ceptions which underlies these anti-social actions 

 becomes manifest when we contrast the implied 

 standard of conduct with that of the more intelli- 

 gent classes." We cannot imagine the medical 

 profession striking for larger fees in the midst of 

 an epidemic. The bulk of the men no doubt do 

 not realise that they are committing a crime 

 against their fellow-citizens ; but this only proves 

 the very low quality of their intelligence. " The 

 sub-man is usually a radically bad citizen." 



Society, in a word, is disintegrating. 

 Parasitism, the curse of humanity, is becoming 

 almost universal. "The manual labourer has long 

 since ceased to support himself completely "; "he 

 has obviously arrived at the belief that he has a 

 definite lien on the property of his fellows." The 

 industrious and intelligent — "the only class that 

 matters " — are being taxed and bullied out of 

 existence. 



Mr. Freeman has perhaps not allowed quite 

 enough for the power of a body politic, when 

 attacked by disease, to generate anti-toxins to 

 resist the invasion. But though his pessimism 

 may seem too unqualified, the justice of his stric- 

 tures can scarcely be denied. His remedy, how- 

 ever, is not practicable. It is the "voluntary 

 segregation of the fit " ; the establishment of self- 

 contained communities of skilled craftsmen and 

 others, who would help each other to live a whole- 

 some and happy life. Such a community might 

 well be founded in a new country — in Western 

 Canada, Southern Chile, Tasmania, or Rhodesia; 

 the experiment would be well worth making; but 

 in this country the new community would not 

 escape ruinous taxation for the benefit of in- 

 capables outside, and would, moreover, be 

 attacked and destroyed by the trade unions. 



(2) Dr. Muller-Lyer's book is as typically pre- 

 war as Mr. Freeman's is post-war. It rests 

 throughout on the assumptions of evolutionary 

 optimism. Civilisation must be progressing to- 

 wards a higher state. The author seems to be 

 an admirer of Marx, for he repeats the false 

 statement, so often refuted, that the course of 

 industrialism has tended to make the rich richer 

 and the poor poorer. The presuppositions of the 

 book vitiate its argument, but it contains many 



