The morning call., 1895-01-16
SOCIAL PROBLEM SOLVED.
Lawrence GrOnlund Tell How to
Improve Society.
All Difficulties Will Fade Away When
COllectiyiSm Has Been Firmly
Established.

The author of "Co-operative Common
wealth." Lawrence Gronlund, delivered a
lecture on ''The Moral Regeneration of
Society" before an appreciative audience
in the Central Methodist Church last
evening.
The speaker was introduced by Rev. Mr..
Ollie, pastor of the church. He said he
had read with interest a number of the
great economists books and pronounced
them among the best of their kind.
81 call myself collectivist," said the
lecturer, 'that is believe we are quickly
approaching the perfect state which He
gel defined as the state where all the pri-
vate interests of citizens coincide with the
public interests. Collectivism is rational
socialism. Now claim that this collectiv-
ism will, and it alone can, regenerate us
morally. The word moral is now the
vaguest and loosest word in our language,
and the reason is that we are at sea as to
the meaning of life. We have lost the I'M
clouded assurance of our predecessors, the
faith of our ancestors. Collectivism will
restore that faith, but, observe, 1 do not
mean faith in dogmas, but in humanity
and its destiny. For the inner, underly-
ing meaning of all robust faith of the past
was sense of human solidarity, as we call
1t with a weak word, a sense of humanity
as an organism. 1t is this sense that we
have lost.
eve prate about brotherhood, but we do
not mean it, or mean it only in a Pick
wickian sense, for as soon as ANYTHING
practical is proposed you are Mortified. No,
in place of it we have adopted the teach
ings of Herbert Spencer, that we are auton-
omouS individuals; that men have come
into this world each for the sake of him
self, and that humanity instead of being
an organism, is rather, so to say, a heap of
conscious grains of sand. Collectivism
alone can restore that sense.
"Now, how can we have sound notions
of morality we, to whom life has no mean
ing at all, or such palpably false one as
that we are conscious grains of sand whose
business is simply to get along as best we
may. Our ethics naturally is one of two
things-either lubricant, kind of grease
to ease the social friction, but containing
not one element of law, and hence in no
sense moral, or it is pure Pharisaism teach
ing respectable people how to be better
than their neighbors, how to hold aloof
from their fellows, the reverse of morality
which wants to bind men together. Let
us heed the last words of Emile de Lave
leye addressed to us, TO issue from print
tive simplicity and suddenly to grow enor-
mously rich threatens immortality and
ruin-this we now witness in the United
States
''But we with collectivism recover the
sense of human solidarity" said the
speaker in conclusion, when we shall
have the collectivist ethics higher ethics
that will be truly law. Note that hui
man solidarity does not mean self-sacri-
fee; it simply means that to seek directly
for personal happiness is not the path to
blessedness; that on the contrary, the APP
pointed WaV to orr individual welfare orr
temporal and eternal welfare, lies through
the collective well-being. Collectivist
ethics therefore is essentially social ethics,
social morality, and all personal morality
should be means to, a servant of, social
morality"