Just for the moment the odds are in favour of the term “loyalty”—it has a fine chivalric ring and makes an admirable mask; so men who continue to work for the profit of their masters during a strike are called “loyal.” To insist upon one’s right to sell one’s labour at one’s own price, instead of being ruled by some corrupt trade union leader who has been bought by the masters, is to be “disloyal” to one’s union, or even to one’s “leader.”
There is quite a chance that the words “loyal” and “loyalty” will capture the position, and that a few generations hence we may have placards on the wall, “Notice: A disloyal employee of the Meat Trust is at large,” with a description of him following; and then we shall have “loyalty” courts for trying and punishing people who rebel against compulsory labour.
Another word which is still in the running is the word “constitutional”; it has a grander sound than “loyal,” but it is less tender. Men acting as free men are nearly always striking “unconstitutionally,” breaking the terms secretly purchased by the capitalists from a “leader.” “Loyal” has also a better chance than “constitutional,” because it is a shorter word; but perhaps the two will be used side by side. The legal indictment against a runaway slave, a couple of centuries hence, will be, perhaps, that his act was “unconstitutional,” while the conventional term will, perhaps, be “disloyal”—or there may be some new term. But two things are probable—not certain: (1) that compulsory labour will come; (2) that it will be given some name not even remotely connected with the idea of slavery or compulsion.
Probable, not certain; for who can tell, in the millioned complexity of affairs, what new factor may not arise? A man may go round on a mule calling himself a prophet, and change the whole world tomorrow.
Yet men prophesy today, when all is mist and fog. They prophesy as never did they prophesy before: with an assurance and a conviction born of physical science misapplied.
This passion for prophesying has several sources which converge to produce such modern folly. I think the strongest motive is mere relief to the nerves. Men find that, by prophesying that a thing will take place which they desire to take place, they are themselves soothed.
One could make shoals of books by merely cutting such pronouncements out of the European papers during the last ten years, cuttings in which it would be manifest that the writer was in a reckless mood, indifferent to the probability of his assertion.
Another motive is the motive of reputation; for if the prophet brings it off, he can point to his success and be sure of a following, whereas if he does not bring it off, he can rely upon that atrophy of the memory which the universal reading of the daily press has brought about. Another cause, as I have said, is the influence of physical science, that influence which affects the whole of modern life, and nearly always for ill. Physical science has proceeded from discovery to discovery in our time, until men are prepared for any marvel. It is true that side by side with this advance in the control of physical things there has gone a corresponding decline in the critical faculty, in the powers of reason: and a still more rapid decline in morals. But the main fact is familiar to the whole world, and is, superficially, the most astonishing thing of today. Our time has advanced in its knowledge of inanimate nature and in its control thereof as no other past time advanced.
Now this process was everywhere accompanied by, and tested by, prophecy. The seeker after some new “law” (as a sequence of physical phenomena is rather oddly called) would experiment until sequence was discovered, and, when it was discovered, he could confidently presume upon its completion; as, for instance, in the series of atomic weights. He could say, “You will find that this series will follow upon such and such a course,” and when he was proved right he had achieved his end. The whole method of the progress was of this nature. It was like a man plotting down points upon a curve until he had aligned a sufficient number to give him the general formula, after which he could confidently say, “You will find, when the curve is fully described, such and such other points to lie along it.” Or it was like a man reestablishing a Roman road. He says: “I find a section of it here pointing right to a neighbouring port, and a little way on another section still pointing the same, and I am confident that I shall find some place-name or parish boundary or other relic confirming that Roman road throughout.” He is pretty certain to be right.
On the parallel of physical science, this habit of prophecy as the confirmation of judgment spread to things, in which, by their nature, mechanical judgment is impossible.
Another negative source was ignorance, and especially ignorance of the past. Our moderns have more and more lost the knowledge of the past. They have been taught to despise it; they think of it first as of something foreign and odd; later, if they study, as of something very different from what it was. They, therefore, miss the lessons of the past, and especially the chief lesson, which is that the developments of society follow no mechanical process; that their way is not the way of an arrow, but of a serpent. Ignorant of this, men fall into the simple error of taking the tangent to the curve, of prolonging the actions of causes immediately before their eyes, and of conceiving the future in terms of the present, as children do. Hence these confident assertions that in so many years such and such a country will have grown to such and such a population:
