Page:Johann Jacoby - The Object of the Labor Movement - tr. Florence Kelley (1887).djvu/16

 Rh Ages. And is it otherwise now?

Does not the order of society to-day, rest in spite of the much-praised progress of Civilization, upon the same principle of human subservience? Has the Present a right to look back to the conditions of heathen antiquity and of the Christian Middle Ages with pride and self-satisfaction?

With a frankness which leaves nothing to be desired a statesman of the Nineteenth Century, Count Joseph de Maistre, has expressed himself, literally, thus:

"The human race was created for the benefit of a few men. It is the business of the clergy, the aristocracy, and the higher officers of the State to teach the people what is good or bad, true or false in the worlds of morals and intellect. Other persons have no right to dispute about such matters, they must endure without murmuring."

If this is rather highly colored, the picture is none the less drawn from nature. So long as the shepherds of the nations go to war without saying "by your leave" to the people, so long as ecclesiastics come together in council and synod "To judge false human science under the auspices of the Holy Ghost," so long we have no right to accuse de Maistre of falsehood. But wrong and incomprehensible it is that de Maistre approves this state of things, that he dreams such conditions can and will endure for all time.

Let me produce another witness:

Robert Owen, the founder of the co-operative system in England, once met in the house of a Frankfort banker Fredrich von Gentz, the well-known statesman. Owen set forth the excellence of his socialistic system and observed:

"If only unity could replace disunion all men would have enough to live upon."

"That may be true," replied von Gentz, "but we do not wish the masses to be prosperous and independent of us, for how could we then continue to govern?"

There we have the whole Social Question of the present in a nutshell! If Owen speaks the word of deliverance, the Unity of Mankind, Gentz proclaims the fundamental evil that stands in the way of redemption: the love of power of the more favored classes. Aristotle also divided mankind, it will be remembered, into two classes, such as are destined to command and such as are born to serve. But it was difference of nationality, as between Greeks and Barbarians, which lay at the foundation of his distinction. Gentz and de Maistre on the contrary draw a dividing line within the same race, between the upper ten thousand who are ordained to rule and prosper, and the remaining masses destined to be governed and to languish.

Whether we examine the state of the Church, the State or Society everywhere—we cannot ignore it—we meet with the class rule of the Middle Ages, the mediæval system of guardianship. In one point only does the Present differ