"Well, tell me about it meantime and save me the trouble. I sometimes prefer my friends to their books."
"You were always lazy," he said smiling. But he began to talk, laying down his philosophy of life, which was simple enough, though I could not follow him very far. I had been trained in too strict a school to accept doctrines so radical. And but that I saw him and John Marvel and Eleanor Leigh acting on them I should have esteemed them absolutely utopian. As it was, I wondered how far Eleanor Leigh had inspired his book.
x.x.xVIII
WOLFFERT"S PHILOSOPHY
(WHICH MAY BE SKIPPED BY THE READER)
As Wolffert warmed up to his theme, his face brightened and his deep eyes glowed.
"The trouble with our people--our country--the world--is that our whole system--social--commercial--political--every activity is based on greed, mere, sheer greed. State and Church act on it--live by it. The success of the Jew which has brought on him so much suffering through the ages has revenged itself by stamping on your life the very evil with which you charge him--love of money. What ideals have we? None but money. We call it wealth. We have debased the name, and its debas.e.m.e.nt shows the debas.e.m.e.nt of the race. Once it meant weal, now mere riches, though employed basely, the very enemy and a.s.sa.s.sin of weal. The covetousness, whose reprobation in the last of the commandments was intended as a compendium to embrace the whole, has honeycombed our whole life, public and private. The ama.s.sing of riches, not for use only, for display--vulgar beyond belief--the squandering of riches, not for good, but for evil, to gratify jaded appet.i.tes which never at their freshest craved anything but evil or folly, marks the lowest level of the shopkeeping intellect. The Argands and the Canters are the aristocrats of the community, and the Capons are the fit priests for such people."
He turned away in disgust--but I prodded him.
"What is your remedy? You criticise fiercely! but give no light. You are simply destructive."
"The remedy is more difficult to give," he said gravely; "because the evil has been going on so long that it has become deep-rooted. It has sunk its roots into, not only the core of our life, but our character.
It will take long to eradicate it. But one economic evil might be, and eventually must be changed, unless we wish to go down into the abyss of universal corruption and destruction."
"You mean----?"
"Capitalism--the idea that because a man is accidentally able to acquire through advent.i.tious and often corrupt means vast riches which really are not made by himself, but by means of others under conditions and laws which he did not create, he may call them his own; use them in ways manifestly detrimental to the public good and, indeed, often in notorious destructiveness of it, and be protected in doing so by those laws."
""Accidentally"--and "advent.i.tious means"! That does not happen so often. It may happen by finding a gold mine--once in ten thousand times--or by cornering some commodity on the stock or Produce Exchange once in one hundred thousand times, but even then a man must have intellect--force--courage--resourcefulness--wonderful powers of organization."
"So has the burglar and highwayman," he interrupted.
"But they are criminals--they break the law."
"What law? Why law more than these others? Is not the fundamental law, not to do evil to others?"
"The law established by society for its protection."
"Who made those laws?"
"The people--through their representatives," I added hastily, as I saw him preparing to combat it.
"The people, indeed! precious little part they have had in the making of the laws. Those laws were made, not by the people--who had no voice in their making, but by a small cla.s.s--originally the Chief--the Emperor--the King--the Barons--the rich Burghers--the people had no part nor voice."
"They received the benefit of them."
"Only the crumbs which fell from their masters" tables. They got the gibbet, the dungeon, the rack, and the stick."
"Wolffert, you would destroy all property rights."
"My dear fellow, what nonsense you talk. I am only for changing the law to secure property rights for all, instead of for a cla.s.s, the necessity for which no longer exists, if it ever did exist."
"Your own law-giver recognized it and inculcated it." I thought this a good thrust. He waved it aside.
"That was for a primitive people in a primitive age, as your laws were for your people in their primitive age. But do you suppose that Moses would make no modification now?"
"I have no idea that he would. For I believe they were divine."
"Surely--Moses acted under the guidance of the great Jehovah, whose law is justice and equity and righteousness. The laws he gave were to inculcate this, and they served their purpose when Israel served G.o.d.
But now when He is mocked, the letter of the law is made an excuse and is given as the command to work injustice and inequity and unrighteousness. Surely they should be, at least, interpreted in the spirit in which they were given. You claim to be a Christian?"
"A very poor one."
"In name, at least, you claim that there has been a new dispensation?"
"Yes--an amplification--a development and evolution."
"Precisely. In place of an "eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth--the other cheek turned--to do to others as you would have them do to you!""
"That is the ideal. I have not yet reached that degree of----" I paused for the word.
"I, too, acknowledge that evolution, that ideal. Why should we not act on it?"
"Because of human nature. We have not yet reached the stage when it can be practically applied."
"But human nature while it does not change basically may be regulated, developed, uplifted, and this teaching is based on this principle. It has not yet borne much apparent fruit, it is true; but it is sound, nevertheless. We both in our better moments, at least, feel it to be sound, and there has been a little, however little uplift, and however hard to maintain.
"You believe in the development of man; but you look only to his material development. I look for his complete development, material and spiritual. As he has advanced through the countless ages since G.o.d breathed into him the breath of Life, and by leading him along the lines of physical development to a station in creation where the physical evolution gave place to the ever-growing psychical development; so I believe he is destined to continue this psychical or spiritual growth, increasing its power as the ages pa.s.s and mounting higher and higher in spiritual knowledge, until he shall attain a degree of perfection that we only think of now as a part of the divine. We see the poet and the saint living to-day in an atmosphere wholly distinct from the gross materialism of common humanity. We see laws being enacted and principles evolved which make for the improvement of the human race. We see the gradual uplifting and improvement of the race. War is being diminished; its horrors lessened; food is becoming more diffused; civilization--material civilization--is being extended; and the universal, fundamental rights are being a little more recognized, however dimly. This means growth--the gradual uplifting of mankind, the diffusion of knowledge, as well as of food--the growth of intellectuality. And as this comes, think you that man will not rise higher? A great reservoir is being tapped and from it will flow, in the future, rich streams to fertilize the whole world of humanity.
Aspirations will leap higher and higher, and the whole race in time will receive new light, new power, new environments, with an ever-widening horizon, and a vast infinitude of spiritual truth as the field for the soul"s exercise."
"It is a dream," I said, impressed by his burning eyes, his glowing face, as he drifted on almost in a rhapsody.
"Yes--a dream; but it might come true if all--if you and all like you--I mean all educated and trained people, would unite to bring it about.
Your leader preached it, you profess the principles now, but do not practise them. The State has been against it--the Church equally. It is full of sham."
"It was Jerusalem that stoned the prophets," I interrupted. He swept on with a gesture.
"Yes, yes--I know--I am not speaking now as a sectarian."
"But, at least, as a Jew," I said, laughing.
"Yes, perhaps. I hardly know. I know about Hannan the High Priest. He tried to stand in with Pilate. He thought he was doing his duty when he was only fighting for his caste. But what an Iliad of woes he brought on his people--through the ages. But now they know, they profess, and yet stone the prophets. Your church, founded to fight riches and selfishness and formalism, is the greatest exploiter of all that the world knows.
Two generations sanctify the wealth gotten by the foulest means. The robber, the murderer, the destroyer of homes are all accepted, and if one protests he is stoned to-day as if he were a blasphemer of the law.
If the Master to whom your churches are erected should come to-day and preach the doctrines he preached in Judea nineteen hundred years ago, he would be cast out here precisely as he was cast out there." He spoke almost fiercely.
"Yet his teachings," he added, "are nearer those of the people I represent than of those who a.s.sail them. Why should we not act on it?
Possibly, some others might see our good works, and in any event we shall have done our part. John Marvel does."
"I know he does, but he is a better Christian than I am, and so are you."