Before I go on to point out the broad principles of action that flow from this wide conception of Socialism, I may perhaps give a section to elucidating1 that opposition2 of hate and love I made when I dealt with the class war. I have already used the word love several times; it is an ambiguous word and it may be well to spend a few words in making clear the sense in which it is used here. I use it in a very broad sense to convey all that complex of motives4, impulses, sentiments, that incline us to find our happiness and satisfactions in the happiness and sympathy of others. Essentially5 it is a synthetic6 force in human affairs, the merger7 tendency, a linking force, an expression in personal will and feeling of the common element and interest. It insists upon resemblances and shares and sympathies. And hate, I take it, is the emotional aspect of antagonism8, it is the expression in personal will and feeling of the individual’s separation from others. It is the competing and destructive tendency. So long as we are individuals and members of a species, we must needs both hate and love. But because I believe, as I have already confessed, that the oneness of the species is a greater fact than individuality, and that we individuals are temporary separations from a collective purpose, and since hate eliminates itself by eliminating its objects, whilst love multiplies itself by multiplying its objects, so love must be a thing more comprehensive and enduring than hate.
Moreover, hate must be in its nature a good thing. We individuals exist as such, I believe, for the purpose in things, and our separations and antagonisms9 serve that purpose. We play against each other like hammer and anvil10. But the synthesis of a collective will in humanity, which is I believe our human and terrestrial share in that purpose, is an idea that carries with it a conception of a secular11 alteration12 in the scope and method of both love and hate. Both widen and change with man’s widening and developing apprehension13 of the purpose he serves. The savage14 man loves in gusts15 a fellow creature or so about him, and fears and hates all other people. Every expansion of his scope and ideas widens either circle. The common man of our civilized16 world loves not only many of his friends and associates systematically17 and enduringly, but dimly he loves also his city and his country, his creed18 and his race; he loves it may be less intensely but over a far wider field and much more steadily19. But he hates also more widely if less passionately20 and vehemently21 than a savage, and since love makes rather harmony and peace and hate rather conflict and events, one may easily be led to suppose that hate is the ruling motive3 in human affairs. Men band themselves together in leagues and loyalties22, in cults23 and organizations and nationalities, and it is often hard to say whether the bond is one of love for the association or hatred24 of those to whom the association is antagonized. The two things pass insensibly into one another. London people have recently seen an edifying25 instance of the transition, in the Brown Dog statue riots. A number of people drawn26 together by their common pity for animal suffering, by love indeed of the most disinterested27 sort, had so forgotten their initial spirit as to erect28 a monument with an inscription29 at once recklessly untruthful, spiteful in spirit and particularly vexatious to one great medical school of London. They have provoked riots and placarded London with taunts30 and irritating misrepresentation of the spirit of medical research, and they have infected a whole fresh generation of London students with a bitter partizan contempt for the humanitarian31 effort that has so lamentably32 misconducted itself. Both sides vow33 they will never give in, and the anti-vivisectionists are busy manufacturing small china copies of the Brown Dog figure, inscription and all, for purposes of domestic irritation34. Here hate, the evil ugly brother of effort, has manifestly slain35 love the initiator and taken the affair in hand. That is a little model of human conflicts. So soon as we become militant36 and play against one another, comes this danger of strain and this possible reversal of motive. The fight begins. Into a pit of heat and hate fall right and wrong together.
Now it seems to me that a religious faith such as I have set forth37 in the second Book, and a clear sense of our community of blood with all mankind, must necessarily affect both our loving and our hatred. It will certainly not abolish hate, but it will subordinate it altogether to love. We are individuals, so the Purpose presents itself to me, in order that we may hate the things that have to go, ugliness, baseness, insufficiency, unreality, that we may love and experiment and strive for the things that collectively we seek — power and beauty. Before our conversion38 we did this darkly and with our hate spreading to persons and parties from the things for which they stood. But the believer will hate lovingly and without fear. We are of one blood and substance with our antagonists39, even with those that we desire keenly may die and leave no issue in flesh or persuasion40. They all touch us and are part of one necessary experience. They are all necessary to the synthesis, even if they are necessary only as the potato-peel in the dust-bin is necessary to my dinner.
So it is I disavow and deplore41 the whole spirit of class-war Socialism with its doctrine42 of hate, its envious43 assault upon the leisure and freedom of the wealthy. Without leisure and freedom and the experience of life they gave, the ideas of Socialism could never have been born. The true mission of Socialism is against darkness, vanity and cowardice44, that darkness which hides from the property owner the intense beauty, the potentialities of interest, the splendid possibilities of life, that vanity and cowardice that make him clutch his precious holdings and fear and hate the shadow of change. It has to teach the collective organization of society; and to that the class-consciousness and intense class-prejudices of the worker need to bow quite as much as those of the property owner. But when I say that Socialism’s mission is to teach, I do not mean that its mission is a merely verbal and mental one; it must use all instruments and teach by example as well as precept45. Socialism by becoming charitable and merciful will not cease to be militant. Socialism must, lovingly but resolutely46, use law, use force, to dispossess the owners of socially disadvantageous wealth, as one coerces47 a lunatic brother or takes a wrongfully acquired toy from a spoilt and obstinate48 child. It must intervene between all who would keep their children from instruction in the business of citizenship49 and the lessons of fraternity. It must build and guard what it builds with laws and with that sword which is behind all laws. Non-resistance is for the non-constructive man, for the hermit50 in the cave and the naked saint in the dust; the builder and maker51 with the first stroke of his foundation spade uses force and opens war against the anti-builder.
1 elucidating | |
v.阐明,解释( elucidate的现在分词 ) | |
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2 opposition | |
n.反对,敌对 | |
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3 motive | |
n.动机,目的;adv.发动的,运动的 | |
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4 motives | |
n.动机,目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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5 essentially | |
adv.本质上,实质上,基本上 | |
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6 synthetic | |
adj.合成的,人工的;综合的;n.人工制品 | |
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7 merger | |
n.企业合并,并吞 | |
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8 antagonism | |
n.对抗,敌对,对立 | |
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9 antagonisms | |
对抗,敌对( antagonism的名词复数 ) | |
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10 anvil | |
n.铁钻 | |
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11 secular | |
n.牧师,凡人;adj.世俗的,现世的,不朽的 | |
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12 alteration | |
n.变更,改变;蚀变 | |
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13 apprehension | |
n.理解,领悟;逮捕,拘捕;忧虑 | |
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14 savage | |
adj.野蛮的;凶恶的,残暴的;n.未开化的人 | |
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15 gusts | |
一阵强风( gust的名词复数 ); (怒、笑等的)爆发; (感情的)迸发; 发作 | |
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16 civilized | |
a.有教养的,文雅的 | |
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17 systematically | |
adv.有系统地 | |
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18 creed | |
n.信条;信念,纲领 | |
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19 steadily | |
adv.稳定地;不变地;持续地 | |
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20 passionately | |
ad.热烈地,激烈地 | |
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21 vehemently | |
adv. 热烈地 | |
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22 loyalties | |
n.忠诚( loyalty的名词复数 );忠心;忠于…感情;要忠于…的强烈感情 | |
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23 cults | |
n.迷信( cult的名词复数 );狂热的崇拜;(有极端宗教信仰的)异教团体 | |
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24 hatred | |
n.憎恶,憎恨,仇恨 | |
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25 edifying | |
adj.有教训意味的,教训性的,有益的v.开导,启发( edify的现在分词 ) | |
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26 drawn | |
v.拖,拉,拔出;adj.憔悴的,紧张的 | |
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27 disinterested | |
adj.不关心的,不感兴趣的 | |
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28 erect | |
n./v.树立,建立,使竖立;adj.直立的,垂直的 | |
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29 inscription | |
n.(尤指石块上的)刻印文字,铭文,碑文 | |
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30 taunts | |
嘲弄的言语,嘲笑,奚落( taunt的名词复数 ) | |
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31 humanitarian | |
n.人道主义者,博爱者,基督凡人论者 | |
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32 lamentably | |
adv.哀伤地,拙劣地 | |
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33 vow | |
n.誓(言),誓约;v.起誓,立誓 | |
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34 irritation | |
n.激怒,恼怒,生气 | |
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35 slain | |
杀死,宰杀,杀戮( slay的过去分词 ); (slay的过去分词) | |
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36 militant | |
adj.激进的,好斗的;n.激进分子,斗士 | |
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37 forth | |
adv.向前;向外,往外 | |
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38 conversion | |
n.转化,转换,转变 | |
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39 antagonists | |
对立[对抗] 者,对手,敌手( antagonist的名词复数 ); 对抗肌; 对抗药 | |
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40 persuasion | |
n.劝说;说服;持有某种信仰的宗派 | |
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41 deplore | |
vt.哀叹,对...深感遗憾 | |
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42 doctrine | |
n.教义;主义;学说 | |
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43 envious | |
adj.嫉妒的,羡慕的 | |
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44 cowardice | |
n.胆小,怯懦 | |
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45 precept | |
n.戒律;格言 | |
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46 resolutely | |
adj.坚决地,果断地 | |
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47 coerces | |
v.迫使做( coerce的第三人称单数 );强迫;(以武力、惩罚、威胁等手段)控制;支配 | |
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48 obstinate | |
adj.顽固的,倔强的,不易屈服的,较难治愈的 | |
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49 citizenship | |
n.市民权,公民权,国民的义务(身份) | |
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50 hermit | |
n.隐士,修道者;隐居 | |
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51 maker | |
n.制造者,制造商 | |
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