Disappointment

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 32 of 189 · 20 per page

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  than repudiated, his radical ideas. As an anti-aristocratic gesture he henceforth wrote his surname as one word, Lammenais; and his Paroles d’un Croyant (1834) was a sustained attack on tyranny, an aggressive defence of democracy, and a plea for ‘a free church in a free state’ – he prophesied that God would shortly transform society by casting down the oppressors of the poor, and by inaugurating a new age of justice, peace and love. Thus Lammenais in his own lifetime had come full circle, from a legitimist condemnation of revolution to the hope of a Christian millenium. The book was the subject of an explicit papal condemnation, and for the rest of his life (he died in 1854) Lammenais, though never excommunicated, was pushed into the shadows of Catholic disapproval. The failure of his movement meant that the Church in France lost the romantic intellectuals – Victor Hugo, Alfred de Musset, Alfred de Vigny, Lamartine and many others. Thus at the very moment when the Oxford intellectuals – or some of them – were moving to Rome and even crossing the Tiber, the Paris intellectuals were moving out. Intellectually, they met on the drawbridge – some pursuing authority, others fleeing it. But it would not be true to say that the Church, or even specifically the triumphalists, learned nothing from Lammenais. They accepted his view that the Church could become a popular institution, and the Pope a populist leader. What they denied was his assumption that the Church needed to compromise on its traditional social attitudes to win such support. Indeed some of them, if only dimly, grasped the important point that it was the very refusal of the papacy to compromise that, for many, formed its chief attraction. What repelled a Lammenais attracted a Manning; and not just Mannings but men and women of all classes and nations who saw the Vatican fortress as a security-symbol. It was this instinct which lay behind the success of Giovanni Mastari-Ferretti, who became Pope as Pius IX on the death of Gregory XVI in 1846. His life was a Lammenais-type pilgrimage in reverse. He was an aristocrat and a soldier, but epilepsy forced him to give up the army. He had been to Latin-America during the anti-colonial period, and he began his pontificate with a series of liberal reforms in the papal states. He visited prisons and released political prisoners, allowed some freedom of the press, reformed the criminal code, excused Rome’s Jews from attending compulsory sermons, installed gas-lighting and built a railway. The desperate revolutionary year of 1848 turned him round completely: thereafter, for the next thirty years, he aligned himself totally with reaction in Church and State, and set his face steadily against liberalism in any form. In his old age,

• From The Decameron (1353)

  TENTH STORY Pietro di Vinciolo goes out to sup with Ercolano, and his wife lets a young man in to keep her company. Pietro returns, and she conceals the youth beneath a chicken coop. Pietro tells her that a young man has been discovered in Ercolano’s house, having been concealed there by Ercolano’s wife, whose conduct she severely censures. As ill luck would have it, an ass steps on the fingers of the fellow hiding beneath the coop, causing him to yell with pain. Pietro rushes to the spot and sees him, thus discovering his wife’s deception. But in the end, by reason of his own depravity, he arrives at an understanding with her . When the queen’s tale had reached its conclusion, they all praised God for having given Federigo so fitting a reward, and then Dioneo, who was not in the habit of waiting to be asked, began straightway as follows: Whether it is an accidental failing, stemming from our debased morals, or simply an innate attribute of men and women, I am unable to say; but the fact remains that we are more inclined to laugh at scandalous behaviour than virtuous deeds, especially when we ourselves are not directly involved. And since, as on previous occasions, the task I am about to perform has no other object than to dispel your melancholy, enamoured ladies, and provide you with laughter and merriment, I shall tell you the ensuing tale, for it may well afford enjoyment even though its subject matter is not altogether seemly. As you listen, do as you would when you enter a garden, and stretch forth your tender hands to pluck the roses, leaving the thorns where they are. This you will succeed in doing if you leave the knavish husband to his ill deserts and his iniquities, whilst you laugh gaily at the amorous intrigues of his wife, pausing where occasion warrants to commiserate with the woes of her lover. Not so very long ago, there lived in Perugia 1 a rich man called Pietro di Vinciolo, who, perhaps to pull the wool over the eyes of his fellow-citizens or to improve the low opinion they had of him, rather than because of any real wish to marry, took to himself a wife. But the unfortunate part about it, considering his own proclivities, was that he chose to marry a buxom young woman with red hair and a passionate nature, who would cheerfully have taken on a pair of husbands, let alone one, and now found herself wedded to a man whose heart was anywhere but in the right place. Having in due course discovered how matters stood, his wife, seeing that she was a fair and lusty wench, blooming with health and vitality, was greatly upset about it, and every so often she gave him a piece of her mind, calling him the foulest names imaginable.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  penalties for transgressions, it added: ‘And otherwise than thus, what is herein forbidden, all men may walk as their consciences persuade them, every one in the name of his God. And let the saints of the Most High walk in this colony without molestation, in the name of Jehovah their God, for ever and ever.’ This was confirmed by royal charter in 1663: ‘No person within the said colony, at any time hereafter, shall be in any wise molested, punished, disquieted or called in question, for any differences in opinion in matters of religion, and who do not actually disturb the civil peace of our said colony; but that all . . . may from time to time, and at all times hereafter, freely and fully have and enjoy his and their own judgments and consciences, in matters of religious concernments.’ This was the first commonwealth in modern history to make religious freedom, as opposed to a mere degree of toleration, the principle of its existence, and to make this a reason for separating Church and State. Its existence, of course, opened the door to the Quakers and the Baptists, and indeed to missionaries from the Congregationalists of the north and the Anglicans of the south. In fact, once this decisive breach had been made, it was inevitable that America, with its lay predominance, should move steadily towards religious liberty and the separation of Church and State, and that the vision should cease to be Augustinian and become Erasmian. Economic factors pushed strongly in this direction. The later waves of emigrants had not, for the most part, experienced ‘conversion’ and ‘saving grace’; they tended, increasingly, to be a mere cross-section of Englishmen (and later of Northern Irish and Scottish Presbyterians). A New England synod of 1662 declared that baptism was sufficient for church membership, but not for full communion. This ‘halfway Covenant’ was the beginning of the end of a pure Church, which went into a period of what was woefully termed ‘declension’; calamitous events, such as Indian attacks, were seen as divine punishments. In 1679 it was decided to make ‘a full inquiry . . . into the cause and state of God’s controversy with us’. Thus a ‘Reforming Synod’ was called and reported: ‘That God hath a controversy with his New England people is undeniable, the Lord having written his displeasure in dismal characters against us.’ A new covenant and confession of faith were produced, but everything, it seemed, conspired to frustrate the elect. James II’s attempt to reintroduce Catholicism, the Glorious Revolution, and the subsequent settlement, imposed toleration, an Anglican element, and a franchise based on property rather than church membership. Church leadership was discredited by the

• From The Decameron (1353)

  FIRST STORY A worthy knight enters the service of the King of Spain, by whom he feels that he is ill-requited; so the King gives him irrefutable proof that the fault lies, not with himself, but with the knight’s own cruel fortune, in the end rewarding him most handsomely. I account it an especial favour, honourable ladies, that our king should have singled me out to speak first on so weighty a theme as that of munificence, which, even as the sun embellishes and graces the whole of the heavens, is the light and splendour of every other virtue. So I shall tell you a little story, which to my way of thinking is most delightful, and which surely cannot be other than profitable to recall. You are to know, then, that of the many gallant knights who have graced our city for longer than I can remember, there was one in particular, Messer Ruggieri de’ Figiovanni, 1 who was possibly the finest of them all. Being both wealthy and stout of heart, and seeing that, because of the general tenor of Tuscan manners, there would be little or no opportunity for him to prove his worth by remaining in these parts, he made up his mind to spend some time with King Alphonso of Spain, 2 who was better renowned for his prowess than any other ruler of his day. And so he set out with a most impressive array of armour and horses and a large retinue, and made his way to Alphonso’s court in Spain, where the King accorded him a gracious welcome. There accordingly he settled, and because of his princely style of living and the prodigious feats he accomplished in the field, he quickly made his mark as a man of valour. But the longer he remained at Alphonso’s court, the more it seemed to him, through closely observing the ways of the King, that he was granting castles, towns and baronies to one man after another with very little discretion, giving them to people who had done nothing to deserve them. Now, Messer Ruggieri was conscious of his own merits, and since nothing was given to him, he considered that his own standing was thereby greatly diminished. He therefore decided to leave, and went to the King to ask his permission to do so. The King granted his request, and presented him with a most handsome- looking mule, the finest that any man had ever ridden, for which Messer Ruggieri was grateful in view of the long journey ahead of him. The King then instructed one of his confidential servants to arrange as best he could to accompany Messer Ruggieri throughout the first day of his journey without allowing him to suspect that he had been sent by the King, and to make a mental note of everything Ruggieri said about him, so that he could report it later word for word.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  had no answer to the Depression. It regarded the New Deal and similar interventionist schemes as unscriptural and sinful. Hence the great majority of Protestant periodicals and ministers, except in the South, favoured the Republicans and opposed Roosevelt. One survey showed that in the 1936 Roosevelt landslide, over seventy per cent of 21,606 Protestant ministers polled voted for Roosevelt’s Republican opponent, Landon, who also received the majority of the votes of all Protestant church members. Among the Congregationalists, the élite of the traditional Protestant dominance, the vote for Landon was as high as seventy-eight per cent. Thus the 1930s and 1940s marked a Protestant political retreat, before a Democratic coalition in which Jews and Catholics and progressives all had increasing roles to play. Yet it was some time before the weakening in Protestant ability to influence events, or set the tone of society, was translated into figures of church attendance, or was recognized as merely one aspect of a general contraction of Christianity. The number of those actually affiliated to particular churches appeared to be rising. It was calculated at forty-three per cent of the population in 1910, and almost exactly the same in 1920. By 1940 it had risen to forty-nine per cent, and there appears to have been an impressive post-war ‘revival’ to fifty-five per cent in 1950 and sixty-nine per cent in 1960. The phenomenon was not easy to explain. Within academic Protestantism there had, indeed, been an intellectual revival. It sprang originally from Switzerland, where Pastor Karl Barth, the latest in a long line of innovatory theologians who have found inspiration in the Epistle to the Romans, published his Commentary in 1918, followed by his Church Dogmatics in the 1930s. This neo- orthodoxy, as it is termed, reversed the liberal and rationalist attempt to translate Christianity into a formula for progress and reform – the raison d’être of Protestant triumphalism – and emphasized the fact that the Christian hope or kerygma is essentially other-worldly. The new theological philosophy, as it might be called, was Germanic in origin, and in a sense was an attempt to understand or explain the hateful fact of world war. But it proved powerfully attractive to American Christian intellectuals in the 1930s – themselves trying to understand the hateful fact of the Depression – who no longer equated Christianity with the American way of life and capitalist democracy. They believed Christianity was millenarian, but not in a materialist sense at all. Reinhold Niebuhr’s Introduction to Christian Ethics (1935) denied ‘the illusion of liberalism that we are dealing with a possible and prudential

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  passions of young boys’; he told his circle he had seen Erasmus walking ‘arm in arm with the devil in Rome’. As Luther consolidated his position, and the secular powers – as Erasmus had feared – became involved, the old scholar kept his distance from the reformers. In Hyperaspistes, 1526–7, he re-emphasized his plea for a minimum theology: ‘In sacred literature there are certain sanctuaries into which God wills that we shall not penetrate further.’ He held to what he called ‘natural religion’. He refused to break with Rome: ‘I shall bear with this church until I find a better one . . . he does not sail badly who steers a middle course between two evils.’ He concentrated on attacking persecution and the Inquisition; and on pressing for peaceful coexistence. On the Emperor Charles V he urged compromise: the eucharist in both kinds, married clergy, toleration laws. He spent his last years in various free cities, such as Basle and Freiburg, which he hoped would escape the coming religious devastation: ‘I am a citizen of the world, known to all, and to all a stranger.’ He was grievously shocked by Henry VIII’s execution of his friend Thomas More. What had happened to the gifted and enlightened young king he had known? And why had More been so foolish as to defy him on an arguable point? Was the world going mad? Among his last works was On the Sweet Concord of the Church, a plea for mutual toleration, radiant with meekness, goodwill and moderation. It was violently attacked by both sides. Erasmus undoubtedly had a huge constituency in Europe. At one time there seemed a real chance that his approach to reform might win the consensus, and be carried through. He had admirers over a very wide spectrum of opinion. In 1518, for instance, the orthodox controversialist Johann Eck had written: ‘With the exception of a few monks and would-be theologians, all learned men are followers of Erasmus.’ The moderate reformer Oecolampadius wrote to him in 1522: ‘We want neither the Catholic nor the Lutheran church. We want a third one.’ As late as 1526, the imperial chancellor, Mercurio Gattarina, said he saw Christendom divided into three parts: Roman, Lutheran, and those who sought nothing but the glory of God and human welfare – this was the party of Erasmus and he was proud to belong to it. Erasmus himself referred to ‘the third church’. But an eirenic mood was essential to its construction, and its chances crumbled as the gap between Rome and Germany widened, and the battlelines were drawn. At the same time, it is incorrect to present the Lutheran movement as a catastrophe which prevented the carrying through of an Erasmian programme within

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  If he does not judge and criticise immediate achievements, which always involve compromise, in the light of his absolute ideal, the radical force in history, whether applied to personal or to social situations, finally sinks into the sands of complete relativism. Once the religious quality of the proletarian creed is abandoned, and the eschatological emphasis in Marxism is disavowed, evolutionary socialism may easily lose the furious energy which alone is capable of moving against the stubborn inertia of society. There is no way of measuring the perils of fanaticism against the perils of opportunism; but it is rather obvious that society as a whole is more inclined to inertia than to foolish adventure, and is therefore in greater need of the challenge of the absolutist than the sweet reasonableness of the rationalist. Communism is bound to become a force in modern society, as certainly as modern society disinherits a portion of its community completely. Perhaps that fact ought to be welcomed. Perhaps communism will furnish the criticism which will save parliamentary socialism from complete opportunism and futility. Parliamentary socialism is imperilled not only by the loss of the religious absolutism, which characterises unspoiled proletarian thought, but by the temptations which arise from the practical tactics which it must pursue. It must collaborate with other parties in the administration of government. In such co-operation it must try to bargain for the realisation of as much of its programme as the opposition will accept. This bargaining must be done by leaders, who are increasingly drawn into the high places of government, who consort with the great and mighty in the financial and industrial world, and are subject to all the blandishments with which aristocracies have learned to confuse their political opponents. If they are not unusually discerning and intellectually stubborn they will forget the viewpoint of the toilers, who endowed them with political power, and will unconsciously absorb the social and political viewpoints of the more privileged groups. If they are not more than usually honest their ambition will be tempted by the power and prestige which they may win as national rather than as proletarian leaders. Parliamentary socialism presents a dismal story of repeated apostasies, too frequent to be regarded as exceptional and politically insignificant cases of personal weakness. MacDonald and Snowden in England, Millerand, Viviani and Briand in France; Scheidemann and Noske in Germany, are but a few of the more conspicuous examples. Sometimes the apostasy expresses itself in terms of complete severance from the socialist party; at other times it is seen in the abandonment of socialist principles and in the defense of national policies which are inimical to labor. This phenomenon of perennial apostasy in parliamentary socialism has two aspects. The personal and moral aspect is less significant than the political one, but it is interesting.

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  But our present time seems to promise distinctly the close of an old epoch in world relations and the opening of a new....Under the solemn teaching of the War, most of the nations have made political commitments which are of signal promise for international discipline and for still further and more effective governmental acts.” {10} This glorification of the League of Nations as a symbol of a new epoch in international relations has been very general, and frequently very unqualified, in the Christian churches, where liberal Christianity has given itself to the illusion that all social relations are being brought progressively under “the law of Christ.” William Adams Brown speaks for the whole liberal Christian viewpoint when he declares: “From many different centres and in many different forms the crusade for a unified and brotherly society is being carried on. The ideal of the League of Nations in which all civilised people shall be represented and in which they shall co-operate with one another in fighting common enemies like war and disease is winning recognition in circles which have hitherto been little suspected of idealism....In relations between races, in strife between capital and labor, in our attitudes toward the weaker and more dependent members of society we are developing a social conscience, and situations which would have been accepted a generation ago as a matter of course are felt as an intolerable scandal.” {11} Another theologian and pastor, Justin Wroe Nixon, thinks that “another reason for believing in the growth of social statesmanship on the part of business leaders is based upon their experience as trustees in various philanthropic and educational enterprises.” {12} This judgment reveals the moral confusion of liberal Christianity with perfect clarity. Teachers of morals who do not see the difference between the problem of charity within the limits of an accepted social system and the problem of justice between economic groups, holding uneven power within modern industrial society, have simply not faced the most obvious differences between the morals of groups and those of individuals. The suggestion that the fight against disease is in the same category with the fight against war reveals the same confusion. Our contemporary culture fails to realise the power, extent and persistence of group egoism in human relations. It may be possible, though it is never easy, to establish just relations between individuals within a group purely by moral and rational suasion and accommodation. In inter-group relations this is practically an impossibility. The relations between groups must therefore always be predominantly political rather than ethical, that is, they will be determined by the proportion of power which each group possesses at least as much as by any rational and moral appraisal of the comparative needs and claims of each group. The coercive factors, in distinction to the more purely moral and rational factors, in political relations can never be sharply differentiated and defined.

• From Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (1988)

  Finally, anyone observing the contrast between the careers of the two bishops might well conclude that Augustine’s version of the politics of Paradise proved effective in dealing with the politics of the fifth-century Roman Empire, whereas Chrysostom’s version failed. Both Augustine, born in Tagaste, North Africa, in 354, and John Chrysostom, born in Antioch either the same year or a few years earlier,106 grew up in a world ruled for more than a generation by Christian emperors—a succession interrupted only by Julian’s abrupt two-year reversion to imperial patronage of paganism. But Augustine’s responses to the new constellation of imperial power were very different from Chrysostom’s. Chrysostom lost his father at a young age, was raised with his sister by his Christian mother, was baptized at the age of eighteen, and became a monk. In one of his first publications, Comparison Between a King and a Monk, written at a time when the world, the imperial court, and the church were mingling in unprecedented ways, Chrysostom passionately defended sacred against secular power—a theme that would preoccupy him throughout his lifetime. Some twelve years later, as we noted earlier, after the people of Antioch had rioted and smashed the imperial statues in protest against the emperor, John Chrysostom addressed an audience waiting in terror of imperial reprisals, and dared proclaim, not, as Augustine might have, that even the Christian is subject to the emperor, but that the emperor himself needs the priest and is subject to the priest’s superior authority: “He is himself a ruler, and a ruler of greater dignity than the other; for the sacred laws place under his hands even the royal head.”107 When the bishop intervened with the emperor to settle the crisis, John said that those events proved to unbelievers “that the Christians are the saviors of the city; that they are its guardians, its patrons, and its teachers.… Let all unbelievers learn that the fear of Christ is a bridle to every kind of authority.”108

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  They completely disregard the political necessities in the struggle for justice in human society by failing to recognise those elements in man’s collective behavior which belong to the order of nature and can never be brought completely under the dominion of reason or conscience. They do not recognise that when collective power, whether in the form of imperialism or class domination, exploits weakness, it can never be dislodged unless power is raised against it. If conscience and reason can be insinuated into the resulting struggle they can only qualify but not abolish it. The most persistent error of modern educators and moralists is the assumption that our social difficulties are due to the failure of the social sciences to keep pace with the physical sciences which have created our technological civilisation. The invariable implication of this assumption is that, with a little more time, a little more adequate moral and social pedagogy and a generally higher development of human intelligence, our social problems will approach solution. “It is,” declares Professor John Dewey, “our human intelligence and our human courage which is on trial; it is incredible that men who have brought the technique of physical discovery, invention and use to such a pitch of perfection will abdicate in the face of the infinitely more important human problem. What stands in the way (of a planned economy) is a lot of outworn traditions, moth-eaten slogans and catchwords that do substitute duty for thought, as well as our entrenched predatory self-interest. We shall only make a real beginning in intelligent thought when we cease mouthing platitudes....Just as soon as we begin to use the knowledge and skills we have, to control social consequences in the interest of a shared, abundant and secured life, we shall cease to complain of the backwardness of our social knowledge....We shall then take the road which leads to the assured building up of social science just as men built up physical science when they actively used techniques and tools and numbers in physical experimentation.” {1} In spite of Professor Dewey’s great interest in and understanding of the modern social problem there is very little clarity in this statement. The real cause of social inertia, “our predatory self-interest,” is mentioned only in passing without influencing his reasoning, and with no indication that he understands how much social conservatism is due to the economic interests of the owning classes. On the whole, social conservatism is ascribed to ignorance, a viewpoint which states only part of the truth and reveals the natural bias of the educator. The suggestion that we will only make a beginning in intelligent thought when we “cease mouthing platitudes,” is itself so platitudinous that it rather betrays the confusion of an analyst who has no clear counsels about the way to overcome social inertia.

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  That possibility seems to justify the ambition of socially minded educators, to save society by increasing the social and political intelligence of the general community through the agency of the school. One of the most prominent and most imaginative of these leaders in America, Professor Harold Rugg, states the social ideal of education in these words: “The new secondary curriculum will introduce youth frankly and courageously to the difficulties of experimenting with democracy in a country of large territory, of varied climate, of heterogeneous population and increasing urbanisation. It will reveal the tendency of dominant economic classes to control local state and national governments....Correspondingly the creative imagination of our secondary school youth will be released and set at the task of helping to erect a nationwide planned regime, in which the expert functions of government are performed by trained and experienced specialists in these fields.” {136} While this hope of the educators, which in America finds its most telling presentation in the educational philosophy of Professor John Dewey, has some justification, political redemption through education is not as easily achieved as the educators assume. The very terms in which they state the political problem proves that they are themselves bound by middle-class perspectives, which will naturally increase in force and narrowness in proportion to the distance from the ideal of the educator. Thus Professor Rugg, in the very book in which he clearly analyses the economic influences upon culture, gives himself nevertheless to the hope that education can really achieve a significant critical detachment from a contemporary culture and its official propagation in the public schools. Furthermore the ideal of a planned society is projected without recognition of the fact that social planning is possible only by the rigid circumscription or total abolition of the rights of property. {137} It is implicitly assumed that modern society fails to plan its economic processes because it lacks the intelligence to do so; and that the schools will furnish this intelligence. The fact is that the interests of the powerful and dominant groups, who profit from the present system of society, are the real hindrance to the establishment of a rational and just society. It would be pleasant to believe that the intelligence of the general community could be raised to such a height that the irrational injustices of society would be eliminated. But unfortunately there is no such general community. There are many classes, all of them partially deriving their perspectives from, or suffering them to be limited by, their economic interest. The failure of modern socially minded educators to realise this fact proves that their very educational theory, which partly transcends the impulses of the dominant economic groups by force of sheer intellectual honesty and penetration, is also partly bound and limited by the environment of their own class, the middle class.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Having already made up his mind what he should do, as soon as the wedding was over he sought the King’s permission to depart, saying that he wished to return to his own estates and consummate his marriage there. So he duly set out on horseback, but instead of going to his estates he came to Tuscany, where he learned that the Florentines were waging war against the Sienese, 3 and resolved to offer them his assistance. The Florentines welcomed him with open arms and placed him in command of a sizeable body of men, paying him a good stipend, and for a long time thereafter he remained in their service. His bride was far from happy with the turn events had taken, and in the hope of persuading him to return to his estates by her wise administration, she went to Roussillon, where all the people received her as their rightful mistress. Since there had been no Count to govern the territory for some little time, she was faced on her arrival with nothing but confusion and chaos. But being a capable woman, she applied herself with great diligence to the task in hand, and soon had everything restored to order, thus winning the profound respect and devotion of her subjects, who were enormously pleased by her endeavours and strongly critical of the Count because of his indifference towards her. Having fully restored the Count’s domain to order, the lady communicated this fact to her husband by way of two knights, beseeching him to inform her whether it was on her account that he was deserting his lands, in which case she would go away in order to please him. He answered them very brusquely, saying: ‘She may do whatever she likes. For my own part, I shall go back to live with her when she wears this ring upon her finger, and when she is carrying a child of mine in her arms.’ The ring was very dear to him, and he never let it stray from his finger on account of certain magical powers which he had been told that it possessed. The knights realized that it was virtually impossible for the lady to comply with either of these harsh conditions, but no amount of reasoning on their part could shift him from his resolve, and they therefore returned to their mistress to acquaint her with his answer. Their tidings filled her with dismay, but after giving some thought to the matter she decided to try and find out how and where these two things might be accomplished, thus enabling her to win back her husband. Having carefully considered what she must do, she called together a group of the leading notables of those parts, gave them a highly succinct and moving description of all she had done out of her love for the Count, and pointed out the results of her endeavours.

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  They hope that the next generation will be entirely emancipated from it. Waldo Frank reports the following interesting conversation with a communist factory director: “‘Is there then no danger,’ I said at last, ‘to your communist ideal?’ ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need’ has always seemed to me to be the golden rule of socialism....Yet here you are, remunerating inventions with money, paying superior sums of money to the more capable men. Here you are, planning your new hierarchy of merit by the old hated symbol of money....It almost seems to me as if you were fighting the old order by infecting yourselves with the disease which rotted it.’ The communist answers him....’To meet the temporary emergency, we must induce the men we have, men brought up in the capitalist world, men still open to capitalist ideas, to speed up production. We must do this by any means that will convince them....But meantime, our children are being brought up on pure communist values.’ ‘You mean that the standard by which your young people are being taught to live will be stronger than the example they see before them?...When has education been according to an ideal superior to the practised way of life? And when has an ideal prevailed against the reality which belied it?’” {133} Inequality of reward need not of course, even if it represents a permanent concession to the weaknesses of human nature, as is probably the case, result in the old inequalities of power which breed inequalities of privilege, which are either disproportionate or totally irrelevant to the importance of function and the efficiency with which function is performed. It is possible for society to prevent accumulations of unequal rewards from being transmuted into instruments of social power. But it cannot prevent them from becoming symbols of unequal social prestige. In other words, if the desperate means which the communist uses are to be justified by the totally different and more ideal society which he creates, the justification is not as convincing as it seems to the romantic communist. If the new society does not eliminate the weaknesses of human nature, which cause injustice, as completely as he supposes, he has lost the moral advantage of his absolutism. Perhaps a society which gradually approximates the ideal will not be so very inferior morally to one which makes one desperate grasp after the ideal, only to find that the realities of history and nature dissolve it. Absolutism, in both religious and political idealism, is a splendid incentive to heroic action, but a dangerous guide in immediate and concrete situations. In religion it permits absurdities and in politics cruelties, which fail to achieve justifying consequences because the inertia of human nature remains a nemesis to the absolute ideal. Individuals may aspire to the absolute with more justification and less peril than societies. If the price which they must pay is high, the probable futility of their effort involves only their own losses.

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  And the sense of a noble tragedy may compensate for the defeat. But societies risk the welfare of millions when they gamble for the attainment of the absolute. And, since coercion is an invariable instrument of their policy, absolutism transmutes this instrument into unbearable tyrannies and cruelties. The fanaticism which in the individual may appear in the guise of a harmless or pathetic vagary, when expressed in political policy, shuts the gates of mercy on mankind. CHAPTER EIGHT — JUSTICE THROUGH POLITICAL FORCETHE division of the working class into a more favored and a less favored group, roughly identical with the skilled and the unskilled workers, has been previously considered. The group, which feels itself defrauded of its just proportion of the common wealth of society, but which has a measure of security and therefore does not feel itself completely disinherited, expresses its political aspirations in a qualified Marxism in which the collectivist goal is shared with the more revolutionary Marxians, but in which parliamentary and evolutionary methods are substituted for revolution as means of achieving the goal. In all industrial nations, except America, the trade unions are the source of the voting strength of this evolutionary socialism, though its political philosophy has usually been elaborated by middle-class intellectuals. In America the trade unions still adhere to the futile policy of rewarding their friends and punishing their foes in the old parties. Their failure to recognise the futility of this procedure proves how difficult it is to transfer the results of social experience from one nation to another; for the history of European industrial nations has fully discredited this kind of political strategy. Inasfar as it rests upon confidence in the adequacy of the purely economic weapons of the trade union movement it is no less fallacious. The combination of political and economic power which the dominant classes set against the worker in the modern state must be met by a combination of political and economic power. The power of the worker in the economic society (chiefly the weapon of the strike) is not adequate for the defense of his interests. It suffers from several limitations. It is lamed by the state, which under the influence of the dominant classes passes legislation to diminish the power of the strike weapon as much as possible. The use and abuse of federal injunctions in labor disputes, compulsory arbitration, the declaration of martial law and the use of troops against the strikers are a few of the many methods used by the state against the worker. Even without facing the opposition of political power, the worker’s economic weapon is weak, and is becoming weaker. It is weak because the worker is never able to match the economic resources of the owner in a dispute of some duration. He can be starved into submission.

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  If the farmer should try to save himself from his present plight in an industrial civilisation by voluntary co-operative enterprises or if he should be reduced to the status of a proletarian by large scale capitalistic farm projects, he may ultimately come to terms with the urban industrial worker. If he attempted escape by way of voluntary cooperatives he would discover that increased efficiency alone would not establish his prosperity, as long as greater economic and political power is used against him in determining state policies detrimental to his interests. The greater efficiency of cooperative farming would not eliminate the handicaps of tariff and money policies which financial and industrial classes force upon the state at the expense of the farmer. Gradual disillusionment, which may require many decades, might in that event force the farmer on the side of his natural ally, the industrial worker. If large scale farming, backed by strong financial interests, should reduce the independent farmer to the position of an agrarian proletarian, the convergence of the political theories of the farmer and the worker might also proceed more rapidly; but in either case such a development is not to be reckoned with in any realistic political prognostication limited to the next decades. The hope of establishing a third party in America on the combined strength of the farmer and the worker, will remain unrealistic for many decades to come. {138} It may never be realized. It may be that the farmer will never be able to espouse collectivist political goals fervently, no matter how much he suffers from a capitalistic system. The necessities of an industrial civilisation may never seem relevant to the needs of an agrarian, who wants his own piece of land more than he wants anything else, and who will never quite understand the industrial worker’s passion for common ownership. {139} It is not even certain that Russia, where the industrial worker established complete political supremacy by a momentary convergence of agrarian and proletarian political interests, and then used that supremacy to force the peasant into collectivisation, may not yet witness the revenge of the peasant upon the industrial worker. It may be that the proletarian will be able to use force upon the peasant long enough to change the circumstances of his life so completely, that collectivist social ideals will finally be accepted by the agrarian. But the degree of force which the Russian dictatorship is using is so great, that it would be rather remarkable if it did not create profound psychological and moral reactions. It may, as in the case of suppressed nationalities, generate and increase a vehemence of resentment which will be its ultimate undoing. At any rate it is not safe to count upon the farmer as a political ally of the industrial worker, however much the logic of economic facts might seem to make him a natural ally of the proletarian.

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  Sometimes the sociologists are so completely oblivious to the real facts of an industrial civilisation that, as Floyd All-port for instance, they can suggest that the unrest of industrial workers is due not to economic injustice but to a sense of inferiority which will be overcome just as soon as benevolent social psychologists are able to teach the workers that “no one is charging them with inferiority except themselves.” {5} These omniscient social scientists will also teach the owners that “interests and profits must be tempered by regard for the worker.” Thus “the socialisation of individual control” in industry will obviate the necessity of “socialistic control.” Most of the social scientists are such unqualified rationalists that they seem to imagine that men of power will immediately check their exactions and pretensions in society, as soon as they have been apprised by the social scientists that their actions and attitudes are anti-social. Professor Clarence Marsh Case, in an excellent analysis of the social problem, places his confidence in a “reorganisation of values” in which, among other things, industrial leaders must be made to see “that despotically controlled industry in a society that professes democracy as an article of faith is an anachronism that cannot endure.” {6} It may be that despotism cannot endure but it will not abdicate merely because the despots have discovered it to be anachronistic. Sir Arthur Salter, to name a brilliant economist among the social scientists, finishes his penetrating analysis of the distempers of our civilisation by expressing the usual hope that a higher intelligence or a sincerer morality will prevent the governments of the future from perpetrating the mistakes of the past. His own analysis proves conclusively that the failure of governments is due to the pressure of economic interest upon them rather than to the “limited capacities of human wisdom.” In his own words “government is failing above all because it has become enmeshed in the task of giving discretionary, particularly preferential, privileges to competitive industry.” {7} In spite of this analysis Sir Arthur expects the governments to redeem our civilisation by becoming more socially minded and he thinks that one method which will help them to do so is to “draw into the service of the public the great private institutions which represent the organised activities of the country, chambers of commerce, banking institutions, industrial and labor organisations.” His entire hope for recovery rests upon the possibility of developing a degree of economic disinterestedness among men of power which the entire history of mankind proves them incapable of acquiring. It is rather discouraging to find such naïve confidence in the moral capacities of collective man, among men who make it their business to study collective human behavior. Even when, as Professor Howard Odum, they are prepared to admit that “conflict will be necessary” as long as “unfairness in the distribution of the rewards of labor exists,” they put their hope in the future.

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  If we thus exclude the middle-class urbanite and the farmer as possible adherents of a parliamentary socialist party, we must arrive at the conclusion that the possibility of winning a parliamentary majority for evolutionary socialism is fairly remote and may be entirely out of question. If this should be the case, the same political forces which make the victory of revolutionary socialism doubtful would also cast doubt upon the possibility of a final triumph for melioristic socialism. If these conclusions are valid we would be forced to the further conviction that there is no single political force which can break through and completely reorganise the present unstable equilibrium of forces in modern society. If such a conclusion should be correct (always with the reservation that another war might completely change the picture), it would become necessary to abandon the hope of achieving a rational equalitarian social goal, and be content with the expectation of its gradual approximation. The latter expectation need not be abandoned, because the economically and politically weaker classes of society have not yet, in any nation, developed the full strength which they potentially hold. They can exert more political and economic pressure than they have thus far exerted. Furthermore the social intelligence of the general community, or rather of all classes in the community, can rise higher than its present level, even if there are limits beyond which it cannot rise. If it is the fate of modern society thus to approach a gradual approximation of a rational social ideal by the progressive adjustment and readjustment of power to power, and interest to interest, a non-violent type of political coercion is clearly preferable to a violent one. Parliamentary socialism would, in that case, be justified, even if it were robbed of the hope of a final and complete triumph. It would be justified because no community can live in a permanent state of civil war, which would result from a revolutionary socialism unable to press through to its goal. If violence can be justified at all, its terror must have the tempo of a surgeon’s skill and healing must follow quickly upon its wounds. A parliamentary socialism which presses toward the goal of social ownership by exerting the full force of the worker’s political power in the shifting equilibrium of social and political forces, without certainty that the ultimate goal can be reached, and which is forced to use the method of collaboration with other parties, is, however, under some moral and psychological difficulties which have not been fully appreciated by socialists. The abandonment of the eschatological element in socialism means the sacrifice of its religious fervor and the consequent loss of motive power. The effort of evolutionary socialists to interpret this loss as a gain merely proves that they have become too completely rationalistic to understand the roots of human fervor. The goal, said Eduard Bernstein, philosopher of evolutionary socialism, means nothing, the movement everything.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Rinuccio was heartbroken over what had happened, and cursed his evil luck, but instead of going home, he waited till the officers had gone, and returned to the place where he had dumped Alessandro. He then began to grope about on hands and knees in search of the body so that he could carry out the rest of his assignment, but being unable to find it, he assumed it had been taken away by the officers, and sadly made his way back home. Not knowing what else he could do, Alessandro likewise returned home without ever having discovered who had fetched him from the tomb, feeling bitterly disappointed that things should have turned out so disastrously. Next morning, when Scannadio’s tomb was found open and there was no sign of the corpse (Alessandro having rolled it down into the lower depths), the whole of Pistoia was alive with rumours as to what exactly had happened, the more simple-minded concluding that Scannadio had been spirited away by demons. Each of the lady’s suitors informed her what he had done and what had happened, and, apologizing on this account for not carrying out her instructions to the full, demanded her forgiveness and her love. But she pretended not to believe them, and by curtly replying that she wanted no more to do with either of them, as they had failed to carry out her bidding, she neatly rid herself of both. SECOND STORYAn abbess rises hurriedly from her bed in the dark when it is reported to her that one of her nuns is abed with a lover. But being with a priest at the time, the Abbess claps his breeches on her head, mistaking them for her veil. On pointing this out to the Abbess, the accused nun is set at liberty, and thenceforth she is able to forgather with her lover at her leisure. When Filomena was silent, the good sense shown by the lady in ridding herself of those she had no wish to love was praised by the whole of the company, who one and all described not as love but as folly the daring presumption of the lovers. Then Elissa was graciously asked by the queen to continue, and she promptly began as follows: Dearest ladies, the manner in which Madonna Francesca released herself from her affliction was indeed very subtle; but I should now like to tell you of a young nun who, with the assistance of Fortune, freed herself by means of a timely remark from the danger with which she was threatened. As you all know, a great many people are foolish enough to instruct and condemn their fellow creatures, but from time to time, as you will observe from this story of mine, Fortune deservedly puts them to shame. And that is what happened to the Abbess who was the superior of the nun whose deeds I am now about to relate.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  I can’t let you in at present, because this accursed brother of mine, who came to supper with me yesterday evening, still hasn’t gone. However, he’ll be going soon, and when he does, I’ll come and let you in right away. I had an awful job to tear myself away from him just now, so that I could come and encourage you not to take offence over having to wait.’ ‘But, madam,’ said the scholar, ‘I implore you for the love of God to let me in, so that I can take shelter, for there was never such a heavy fall of of snow as this, and it’s still coming down. Once you’ve let me in, I’ll wait as long as you please.’ ‘Alas, my dearest, I can’t do that,’ said the lady. ‘This door makes such a din when it’s opened that my brother would be sure to hear it. But I’ll see if I can persuade him to go away now, and then I’ll come back to let you in.’ ‘Go quickly then,’ said the scholar. ‘And I beg you to make sure there’s a nice big fire, so that I can warm myself up when I come in. I’m so cold that I scarcely have any feeling left in my body.’ ‘I don’t see how that can be possible,’ said die lady. ‘You always claim in your letters that you are burning all over because of your love for me. But it’s clear to me now that you must have been joking. However, I must go now. Wait here, and keep your fingers crossed.’ The lady’s lover, having heard every syllable, was mightily pleased, and returned with his mistress to bed, where they slept very little, but spent virtually the entire night disporting themselves and making fun of the unfortunate scholar. Perceiving that he had been duped, the scholar, whose teeth were chattering so vigorously that he seemed to have been turned into a stork, 3 tried the door several times to see whether it would open, and searched all round the courtyard for some other way out. But finding none, he paced to and fro like a lion in a cage, cursing the severity of the weather, the perfidy of the lady, the inordinate length of the night, and his own stupidity. So indignant did he feel about the way he had been treated by the lady that his fervent and longstanding love was transformed into savage and bitter hatred, and his mind dwelt on various elaborate schemes for securing his revenge, which he now desired far more ardently than he had formerly yearned to hold her in his arms. It seemed to him that the night would never end, but eventually the dawn began to appear, and the maidservant, following the instructions of her mistress, came down to open the courtyard gate. Pretending to be very sorry for him, she said: ‘A curse on that brother of hers for coming here yesterday evening.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The vital sap which all plants need to make them grow had already arrived, when Father Gianni, standing back, said: ‘Alas! Neighbour Pietro, what have you done? Didn’t I tell you not to say a word no matter what you saw? The mare was just about to materialize, but now you’ve ruined everything by opening your mouth, and there’s no way of ever making another.’ ‘That suits me,’ said Neighbour Pietro. ‘I didn’t want the tail. Why didn’t you ask me to do it? Besides, you stuck it on too low.’ To which Father Gianni replied: ‘I didn’t ask you because you wouldn’t have known how to fasten it on, the first time, as deftly as I.’ The young woman, hearing these words, stood up and said to her husband, in all seriousness: ‘Pah! what an idiot you are! Why did you have to ruin everything for the pair of us? Did you ever see a mare without a tail? So help me God, you’re as poor as a church mouse already, but you deserve to be a lot poorer.’ Now that it was no longer possible to turn the young woman into a mare because of the words that Neighbour Pietro had uttered, she put on her clothes again, feeling all sad and forlorn. Meanwhile her husband prepared to return to his old trade, with no more than a donkey as usual: then he and Father Gianni went off to the fair at Bitonto4 together, and he never asked the same favour of him again. * * * How the ladies laughed to hear this tale, whose meaning they had grasped more readily than Dioneo had intended, may be left to the imagination of those among my fair readers who are laughing at it still. However, the stories were now at an end, the sun’s heat had begun to abate, and the queen, knowing that her sovereignty had run its course, rose to her feet and removed her crown. This she placed upon the head of Panfilo, who alone remained to be invested with the honour; and smiling she said: ‘My lord, you are left with an arduous task, for since you are the last, you must make up for the failings of myself and my predecessors in the office to which you have now acceded. God grant you grace in this undertaking, as He has granted it to me in crowning you our king.’ Accepting with joy the honour she had bestowed upon him, Panfilo replied: ‘Your own excellence, madam, and that of my other subjects, will ensure that my reign is no less worthy of praise than those that have preceded it.’ Then, following the example of his predecessors, he made all necessary arrangements with the steward; after which he turned to address the waiting ladies: