Coventry University

About: Coventry University is a education organization based out in Coventry, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Context (language use) & Population. The organization has 4964 authors who have published 12700 publications receiving 255898 citations. The organization is also known as: Lanchester Polytechnic & Coventry Polytechnic.

The Soul of Man under Socialism

Abstract: The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody In fact, scarcely anyone at all escapes Now and then, in the course of the century, a great man of science, like Darwin; a great poet, like Keats; a fine critical spirit, like M Renan; a supreme artist, like Flaubert, has been able to isolate himself, to keep himself out of reach of the clamorous claims of others, to stand ‘under the shelter of the wall,’ as Plato puts it, and so to realise the perfection of what was in him, to his own incomparable gain, and to the incomparable and lasting gain of the whole worldThese, however, are exceptionsThe majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism — are forced, indeed, so to spoil them They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is muchmore easy to have sympathywith suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficultyThe proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by thosewho suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good; and at last we have had the spectacle of men who have really studied the problem and know the life — educated men who live in the East End — coming forward and imploring the community to restrain its altruistic impulses of charity, benevolence, and the like They do so on the ground that such charity degrades and demoralises They are perfectly right Charity creates a multitude of sins There is also this to be said It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property It is both immoral and unfair Under Socialism all this will, of course, be altered There will be no people living in fetid dens and fetid rags, and bringing up unhealthy, hunger-pinched children in the midst of impossible and absolutely repulsive surroundingsThe security of society will not depend, as it does now, on the state