The letters which are here collected together were published in the "Times" in the course of the months of December, 1890, and January, 1891.
The circumstances which led me to write the first letter are sufficiently set forth in its opening sentences; and the materials on which I based my criticisms of Mr. Booth's scheme, in this and in the second letter, were wholly derived from Mr. Booth's book. I had some reason to know, however, that when anybody allows his sense of duty so far to prevail over his sense of the blessedness of peace as to write a letter to the "Times," on any subject of public interest, his reflections, before he has done with the business, will be very like those of Johnny Gilpin, "who little thought, when he set out, of running such a rig." Such undoubtedly are mine when I contemplate these twelve documents, and call to mind the distinct addition to the revenue of the Post Office which must have accrued from the mass of letters and pamphlets which have been delivered at my door; to say nothing of the unexpected light upon my character, motives, and doctrines, which has been thrown by some of the "Times'" correspondents, and by no end of comments elsewhere.
If self-knowledge is the highest aim of man, I ought by this time to have little to learn. And yet, if I am awake, some of my teachers--unable, perhaps, to control the divine fire of the poetic imagination which is so closely akin to, if not a part of, the mythopoeic faculty--have surely dreamed dreams. So far as my humbler and essentially prosaic faculties of observation and comparison go, plain facts are against them. But, as I may be mistaken, I have thought it well to prefix to the letters (by way of "Prolegomena") an essay which appeared in the "Nineteenth Century" for January, 1888, in which the principles that, to my mind, lie at the bottom of the "social question" are stated. So far as Individualism and Regimental Socialism are concerned, this paper simply emphasizes and expands the opinions expressed in an address to the members of the Midland Institute, delivered seventeen years earlier, and still more fully developed in several essays published in the "Nineteenth Century" in 1889, which I hope, before long, to republish.
See Collected Essays, vol. i. p. 290 to end; and this volume, p. 147.
The fundamental proposition which runs through the writings, which thus extend over a. of twenty years, is, that the common a priori doctrines and methods of reasoning about political and social questions are essentially vicious; and that argumentation on this basis leads, with equal logical force, to two contradictory and extremely mischievous systems, the one that of Anarchaic Individualism, the other that of despotic or Regimental Socialism.
Whether I am right or wrong, I am at least consistent in opposing both to the best of my ability. Mr. Booth's system appears to me, and, as I have shown, is regarded by Socialists themselves, to be mere autocratic Socialism, masked by its theological exterior. That the "fantastic" religious skin will wear away, and the Socialistic reality it covers will show its real nature, is the expressed hope of one candid Socialist, and may be fairly conceived to be the unexpressed belief of the despotic leader of the new Trades Union, who has shown his zeal, if not his discretion, in championing Mr. Booth's projects.
[See Letter VIII.]
Yet another word to commentators upon my letters. There are some who rather chuckle, and some who sneer, at what they seem to consider the dexterity of an "old controversial hand," exhibited by the contrast which I have drawn between the methods of conversion depicted in the New Testament and those pursued by fanatics of the Salvationist type, whether they be such as are now exploited by Mr.
Booth, or such as those who, from the time of the Anabaptists, to go no further back, have worked upon similar lines.
Whether such observations were intended to be flattering or sarcastic, I must respectfully decline to accept the compliment, or to apply the sarcasm to myself. I object to obliquity of procedure and ambiguity of speech in all shapes. And I confess that I find it difficult to understand the state of mind which leads any one to suppose, that deep respect for single-minded devotion to high aims is incompatible with the unhesitating conviction that those aims include the propagation of doctrines which are devoid of foundation--perhaps even mischievous.
The most degrading feature of the narrower forms of Christianity (of which that professed by Mr. Booth is a notable example) is their insistence that the noblest virtues, if displayed by those who reject their pitiable formulae, are, as their pet phrase goes, "splendid sins." But there is, perhaps, one step lower; and that is that men, who profess freedom of thought, should fail to see and appreciate that large soul of goodness which often animates even the fanatical adherents of such tenets. I am sorry for any man who can read the epistles to the Galatians and the Corinthians without yielding a large meed of admiration to the fervent humanity of Paul of Tarsus; who can study the lives of Francis of Assisi, or of Catherine of Siena, without wishing that, for the furtherance of his own ideals, he might be even as they; or who can contemplate unmoved the steadfast veracity and true heroism which loom through the fogs of mystical utterance in George Fox. In all these great men and women there lay the root of the matter; a burning desire to amend the condition of their fellow-men, and to put aside all other things for that end. If, in spite of all the dogmatic helps or hindrances in which they were entangled, these people are not to be held in high honour, who are?
