Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/665

 A SKETCH OF SOCIALISTIC THOUGHT IN ENGLAND 649

I admire a nation which fancies it will die if we do not undersell all other nations to the end of the world. Brother, we will cease to undersell them ; we will be content to equalsell them ; to be happy selling equally with them! I do not see the use of underselling them. Cotton cloth is already twopence a yard or lower, and yet bared backs were never more numerous among us. Let inventive men cease to spend their existence incessantly contriving how cotton can be made cheaper ; and try to invent a little how cotton at its pres- ent cheapness could be somewhat justlier divided among us. Let inventive men consider whether the secret of this universe, and of man's life here, does after all, as we rashly fancy it, consist in making money ! There is one God, just, supreme, almighty ; but is mammon the name of him? With a hell which means "Failing to make money," I do not think there is any heaven possible that would suit one well ; nor so much as an earth that can be habit- able long. In brief, all this mammon gospel of supply and demand, competi- tion, latssez faire, and devil take the hindmost, begins to be one of the shab- biest gospels ever preached, or altogether the shabbiest. 1

Auguste Comte's influence promised at one time to become the dominant one in English social philosophy. Harriet Mar- tineau made such an excellent two-volume abridgment of his ponderous work that he had it retranslated into French. Lewes and George Eliot preached positivism incessantly to their large coterie of influential friends, including the young Frederick Harrison destined to be the greatest champion of positivism in England. Herbert Spencer, whatever be his own opinion in the matter, is generally conceded to have helped to spread the posi- tive philosophy. The most successful workers in the field of social reform in the seventies were the positivists. Today the two little rival religious bodies which continue to hold their

1 References. The best estimates of Carlyle's teachings and influence are to be found in SCHULZE-GAEVERNITZ, Zttm socialen Frieden, I, 77-290, Leipzig, 1890, printed separately as "Thomas Carlyle;" and CLARKE, "Carlyle and Ruskin and their Influence on English Thought,' 1 New England Magazine, December 1893. CAR- LYLE, Sartor Resartus, Past and Present, Chartism, Latter Day Pamphlets, Correspondence between Goethe and Carlyle, 1887, Correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson, Boston, 1 886 ; Early Letters, London, 1886; Letters, London, 1888. FROUDE, J. A., Thomas Carlyle's First Forty Years, 2 vols., London, 1890; Thomas Carlyle in London, 2 voU., 1890. JENKS, Thomas Carlyle and J. S. Mill, London, 1 888. NlCHOL, Thomas Carlyle (Eng- lish Men of Letters). TAINE, English -. V,,l .II. FI.OOEL, Carfyle's religiose und sittliche Knhvicklung, Leipzig, 1887. \V 11 1 1 v \ N . \\ .. Prose Works, 168-78, Phila- delphia, 1892.