Pullman herald. [volume] (Pullman, W.T. [Wash.]) 1888-1989, 1890-03-22
eElLAMY.s UTOPIA.
Social Philosophy Can Not Approve of the
Novelist's Fancies.

Social Philosophy Can NOT approve Oh Ine
Novelst's Fancies.
Nor, while dismissing thus Mr.. Bel
lamy's scheme, can the social philosopher
even admit that the object which that
scheme proposes is desirable. Were the
fantasy of a state in which every one
should have enough and to spare, in
which the conditions of life should cease
to be arduous and stern, from which care
and solicitude for the future should be
banished and the necessaries, comforts
and wholesome luxuries of life should
come easy to all-were this wild, weak
dream shown to be capable of realiza-
ton well might the philanthropist ex-
/ claim, Alas for mankind! There have
been races that have lived without care,
without struggle, without pains; but
these have never become noble races.
Except for care and struggle and pains
men would never have risen above the
intellectual and physical stature of
Polynesian savages. There are cares
that cark and cares that kill: there are
struggles that are unavailing; there are
pains that depress, and blight, and
dwarf. Well may we look forward to a
better state, in which much of the harsh
ness of the human condition shall by
mans own efforts, HI We been removed.
But it was no Bellamy who said that in
the sweat of their brows should men eat
bread: that with agony should they be
born into the world: and that in labor
always, in disappointment and defeat
often, with anxious thought and with
fOreboding that ceases only at the grave,
should they live their lives through,
dying weary of the struggle, yet rejOic-
ing in the hope of better fortune and
more generous terms for those who are
to come after
Quite as little can we approve of the
fundamental law of Mr.. Bellamy's mill
tary republic, that there should be no
distinction of material condition among
its members. Mr.. Bellamy tries to place
this prescription on high ethical grounds,
but all his fine phrases do not disguise
the fact that the proposed distribution
involves the grossest violation of COM
mon honesty, as every plain man under
stands it. To say that one who produces
twice as much as another shall yet have
no more is palpable robbery. 1t is to
make that man for half his time a slave,
working for others without reward. 1t
is one of the dangers of transcendental
reasoning about rights and morals that
the finest of sentiments are often found
in close proximity to the baldest of
rascality.
But the fragrant dishonesty of the
proposition to destroy all distinction in
the material condition of the comm unity
is, l make bold to say, the least obiec-
ton to it. Such a leveling downward
would bring a speedy end to all intel
lectual and social progress, to be fol-
lowed at no late day by retrogression and
relapse. 1t is only by the distinction Of
some that the general character of the
mass is to be raised. There are plenty
of tribes and races among which Mr..
Bellamy's creative principle of absolute
equality of condition is and has been i'm
memorially in full operation. Unfor-
tunately for his case, they are all miser-
able imbruted savagess Even the fact
that among some of them the additional
principle of the selection of chiefs by the
elders of the tribe is of unknown anti
guilty has not served to lift them in the
scale Of humanity. They are still poor,
squalid wretches in spite of the adOp-
ton of both these prescriptions for turn
ing the earth into paradise without
any intervening change in human nat
ure.-Francis A. Walker, in Atlantic.