90 



MY LIFE 



[Chap. 



Of course, it was objected that Owen's principles were 

 erroneous and immoral because they wholly denied free-will, 

 because he advocated the abolition of rewards and punish- 

 ments as both unjust and unnecessary, and because, it was 

 argued, to act on such a system would lead to a pandemonium 

 of vice and crime. The reply to this is that, acting on the 

 principle of absolute free-will, every government has alike 

 failed to abolish, or even to any considerable degree to 

 diminish, discontent, misery, disease, vice, and crime ; and 

 that, on the other hand, Owen did, by acting on the principle 

 of the formation of character enunciated by him, transform 

 a discontented, unhealthy, vicious, and wholly antagonistic 

 population of 2500 persons to an enthusiastically favourable, 

 contented, happy, healthy, and comparatively moral com- 

 munity, without ever having recourse to any legal punish- 

 ment whatever, and without, so far as appears, discharging 

 any individual for robbery, idleness, or neglect of duty ; and 

 all this was effected while increasing the efficiency of the 

 whole manufacturing establishment, paying a liberal interest 

 on the capital invested, and even producing a large annual 

 surplus of profits which, in the four years 1809-13, averaged 

 ;£'40,ooo a year, and only in the succeeding period, when the 

 new shareholders agreed to limit their interest to 5 per cent, 

 per annum, was this surplus devoted to education and the 

 general well-being of the community. 



In view of such an astounding success as this, what is the 

 use of quibbling about the exact amount of free-will human 

 beings possess? Owen contended, and proved by a grand 

 experiment, that environment greatly modifies character, that 

 no character is so bad that it may not be greatly improved 

 by a really good environment acting upon it from early 

 infancy, and that society has the power of creating such an 

 environment. Now, the will is undoubtedly a function of the 

 character of which it is the active and outward expression ; 

 and if the character is enormously improved, the will, result- 

 ing in actions whether mental or physical, is necessarily im- 

 proved with it. To urge that the will is, and remains through 

 life, absolutely uninfluenced by character, environment, 



