12 
LAND & WATER 
March i, 1917 
exaggeration, which concentrates on - they disputes the 
Vote alla\s and overlooks those it causes, a good example 
is afforded by the controversy about Women's I'ranchiso. 
It is commonly assumed that the women will act as 
a like-minded linit, and we hear much of the disputes that 
will be immediately settled when the women throw their 
united vote into one scale of the balance. We hear little 
of the new disputes that will arise among themselves. 
I heard it said the other day that as soon as the women 
are enfranchised they will iiirmediately tackle " the evils 
of the home." It would be truer to say that they will 
immediately discover their disagreements as to what 
the evils of the home reaUy are. What some women Con- 
sider the greater evils, others will consider the lesser 
evils; while a third party will maintain they are not 
evils at all, but, on the contrary, goods. In short the 
women instead of voting together as a like-minded unit 
will vote against one another as a many-minded nniltitude, 
just as the men have been doing for generations. They 
will cancel one another's votes. Just so with the Irish 
Parliament, if ever it comes. Does anybody suppose 
that an Irish Parliament would be unanimous about 
anything, or that there would be no Opposition, or that 
the party in power, whatever their policy might be, 
would ha\e an easy time of it ? There would be much 
more in an Irish Parliament than the " settlement " of 
disputes. There would be a new crop of them. 
The Two Cults 
The fighting cult, which has its headquarters in Germany 
and the voting cult, which has its headquarters in Anglo- 
Saxon countries, have therefore this in common, that 
they both attach exaggerated importance to the settle- 
ment of disputes and by dwelling upon this continually 
come at length to regard it as the primary business of 
human life, the Sword or the Vote being the rival in- 
struments, and the chief instruments, of progress. The' 
cults further resemble one another in producing, by over 
emphasis on their respective rites, a gross and palpable 
neglect of common sense, kind feeling and good manners. 
That this is so, few persons would deny in regard to the 
fighting cult ; that the voting cult works in a similar 
manner we may presently come to see. Whichever 
method we adopt' we multiply quarrels and maintain them 
at their maximum intensity, with bloodshed or without — 
which latter is generally but not always the lesser of 
two evils. When this "has been widely recognized we 
shall perhaps turn our attention to devising some form 
of the common life in which disputes are less Hkely to 
occur in the first instance — a proposal pointing to a 
regime of common sense, kind feeling and good manners, 
combined with a minimum of voting. 
There was a time when everyone who fancied himself 
a man carried a sword or a cudgel. Nowadays every- 
body who fancies himself a man (or a woman) claims to 
carry a vote. The swords and the cudgels have been given 
up. \N'ill the votes follow suit ? 
For the present there seems no prospect of this. Tlie 
tendency of our time is not to take votes from those 
who have them but to give them to those who have them 
not. There are many indeed who resist further extensions 
of the franchise, but I have never yet heard of any- 
body who would voluntarily relinquish his own. On 
the whole, so far as I can see, the extension of the fran- 
chise is bound to go on for some time to come. And this 
is a thing to be desired, especially by those who, like the 
present writer, are heretics in respect of the Voting Cult. 
The insignificance — the comparative insignificance — 
of the vote as an instrument of human progress will 
never be fully realized imtil everybody who wants it gets 
it. Thus, for my part, I would welcome the accession of 
women to the electorate, though in giving them the vote 
I should feel disposed to assure them tliat they are 
worthy of something better, and to apologise for the 
meanness of the gift. Nothing has tended more to main- 
tain the inflated reputation of the vote than the refusal 
of it to women. It seems probable that women on being 
enfranchised would discover how inflated a reputation it 
is. They would not only realize the insignificance of 
enfranchisement for themselves, but would help the men 
to realize it as well. They have always been our superiors 
in those three (jualities which I have named as the 
main sources of human progress, and on disco\ering, 
as they would discover, .the;dc;adly blight which " politics" 
ciist on these things th'ey mightraise an outcry that would 
bring us all to our senses. 
1 am told that in .N't-w Zealand, where women are 
eufranclnsed, tiiey are liable to a fine for not exercising 
their \otes. Apparentlv many of them are unwilling to 
use their pri\ilege and must be lashed to the poll in 
consequence. What, I wonder, is the cause ot their 
indifference ? Can it be that these women of New Zea- 
land have been studying Plato ? For it was Plato who 
declared that only those who are imwilling to exercise 
political power are fit to be entrusted with it— as fine 
a piece of political wisdom as ever fell from the lips of 
man, but fatal to the voting cul,t. 
At all events while our votes are temporarily out ot 
commission it is instructive to take a more detached view 
of their value and ask ourselves whether they are really 
worth the fuss we make about them. We might reflect 
for example on all the great achievements of mankind 
which have not been accomplished by means of the Vote — 
for example, the Bible, the Parthenon, the Greek Drama, 
Roman Law, the Catholic Church, the Divine Comedy, 
the Discovery of America, Shakespeare's Sonnets, the 
Invention of the Steam-engine, the French Revolution, 
and the Population of the Globe ; and then side by side 
with these we might make out a list of the mighty works 
of the Vote; finally asking ourselves quite candidly 
which of the two sets of achievement is better worth 
the trouble bestowed upon it — which in short is the 
more important contribution to progress. Or, framing 
the question rather differently, we might ask how much 
of what makes hfe worth living is due to voting on the 
one hand, and how much to common sense, kind feeling 
and good manners on the other ; and again, how much that 
has the contrary effect of making hfe a burden has been 
voted into existence by people who were politically 
enfranchised but deficient in these diviner qualities. 
F'rom this it would be a short step to the conclusion — 
which I think would be entirely sound — that the over- 
emphasis we have placed on this thing is responsible in no 
'small measure for the present deplorable decadence of 
all the arts and for the singular dearth of great men in the 
modern world. 
The arts wither because the life, the energy, the faith 
they require are all drained off into politics, debating 
societies and legislation. Yet politics and legislation, 
even at their best, will never confer upon mankind one 
tithe of the happiness that comes from the creation of 
beauty. This is one of the most certain of truths. But 
the Voting Cult renders men incapable of believing it, 
forbids them to befieve it, and if they do believe it treats 
them as faddists or lunatics. What chance have the 
arts in such an atmosphere? Asxto the great men, 
how can they survive when everv little man holds a public 
licence to put them down ? What spectacle more tragic 
than that of a man with a great soul being voted upon by 
a crowd of men with little souls ? It is at such moments 
that we hesitate in deciding whether Fighting or Voting 
has done more harm to mankind. The fighters can kill 
the body ; but the \ oters can kill the soul. 
To the multitude whd have read Sir Oliver Lodge's Ray- 
mond, or Life and Death, ^w^ commend a perusal of Raymond. 
A Rewinder, by Paul Hookham (B. H. Blackwell, Oxford, is.) 
In this pamphlet Mr. Hookham questions the validity of 
certain evidence and of Sir Oliver Lodge's conclusions regarding 
it. The criticism is couched in the gentlest language ; there 
is nothing to offend even those who hold most closely to these 
conclusions, but it does throw a new light on the evidence 
which induces the author of Raymond to accept the survival of 
personality as an established fact. As regards the series of 
sittings with a medium, etc., etc., Mr. Hookham writes : 
" Taken altogether, they fonn a complete and invariable 
proof of the ime.xplored, unknown, and limitless faculties 
of the human mind. It is shown again and again that mind 
communicates certainly with mind and possibly with matter 
in a way which is incomprehensible to our normal senses and 
capacity of reasoning." In another place he adds : " We 
are, when sitting at one of these medium-conducted functions, 
in the presence of an abnormal person. . . . May we not 
unconsciously help to give form to the image of our desires 
and clothe tliem with the characteristics which we ourselves 
have initiated." This is the perplexing doubt which gives 
pause to many, who will not dispute this other saying of our 
pani[)hletcer : " If it is lesitimate to take luiman survival for 
gnintcd, one scarcely sees tlKMii'cessity fordcmon''.tration." 
